SEC: the anti regulator

The NYT covers the massive document dump on the Madoff scandal.

Hundreds of exhibits supporting a scathing report on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s past investigations of Bernard L. Madoff were released on Friday by the author of the report, the agency’s inspector general, H. David Kotz.

...

The exhibits provide additional details about Mr. Madoff’s comments, including his observation that the agency’s investigators seemed to find it “inconceivable” that he was operating a massive fraud.

Indeed, he said he got the impression through all the examinations and investigations over the years that "it never entered the S.E.C.’s mind that it was a Ponzi scheme," according to a 12-page summary of the interview.

Mr. Madoff said he was "worried every time" examiners from the agency showed up. "It was nightmare for me," he said. adding "I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago."

Here was the paragraph I loved:

The report also documented that Mr. Madoff frequently cited the S.E.C.’s various investigations to reassure investors that he had passed muster with government regulators. The exhibits include numerous reports from investors that they had been lured into the Ponzi scheme by exactly those assurances.

Not exactly what we were shooting for in a regulator, guys.

Better luck next time.

Of Jedis, airmen, and incredibly stupid regulations

What the hell are these people doing?

It has to do with how much they hate wearing their reflective belts.

Ya gotta love how the internet has enabled the shaming of stupid things.

Epidemic of Fear

Wired's November issue has a great profile of Paul Offit, vaccination advocate and dedicated advocate of science-based medicine.

Which makes him a hated man. Why?

...what has this award-winning 58-year-old scientist done to elicit such venom? He boldly states — in speeches, in journal articles, and in his 2008 book Autism’s False Prophets — that vaccines do not cause autism or autoimmune disease or any of the other chronic conditions that have been blamed on them. He supports this assertion with meticulous evidence. And he calls to account those who promote bogus treatments for autism — treatments that he says not only don’t work but often cause harm.

As a result, Offit has become the main target of a grassroots movement that opposes the systematic vaccination of children and the laws that require it. McCarthy, an actress and a former Playboy centerfold whose son has been diagnosed with autism, is the best-known leader of the movement, but she is joined by legions of well-organized supporters and sympathizers.

This isn’t a religious dispute, like the debate over creationism and intelligent design. It’s a challenge to traditional science that crosses party, class, and religious lines. It is partly a reaction to Big Pharma’s blunders and PR missteps, from Vioxx to illegal marketing ploys, which have encouraged a distrust of experts. It is also, ironically, a product of the era of instant communication and easy access to information. The doubters and deniers are empowered by the Internet (online, nobody knows you’re not a doctor) and helped by the mainstream media, which has an interest in pumping up bad science to create a “debate” where there should be none.

Amy Wallace unabashedly uses this profile to (once again) recite the reasons why vaccination is a good thing. It's sad that she needs to do this -

-but she needs to.

...the number of people who choose not to vaccinate their children (so-called philosophical exemptions are available in about 20 states, including Pennsylvania, Texas, and much of the West) continues to rise. In states where such opting out is allowed, 2.6 percent of parents did so last year, up from 1 percent in 1991, according to the CDC. In some communities, like California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco, non-vaccination rates are approaching 6 percent (counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth).

That may not sound like much, but a recent study by the Los Angeles Times indicates that the impact can be devastating. The Times found that even though only about 2 percent of California’s kindergartners are unvaccinated (10,000 kids, or about twice the number as in 1997), they tend to be clustered, disproportionately increasing the risk of an outbreak of such largely eradicated diseases as measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough). The clustering means almost 10 percent of elementary schools statewide may already be at risk.

Arnold speaks his mind

I still can't believe a sitting governor would do this - but I guess expecting more than juvenile level tactics is asking a bit too much these days.


"It's just a weird coincidence," Aaron McLear, the governor's spokesman, said Wednesday, doing his best to play it straight.

Yeah, sure pal.

(H/t E)

Steven Ratter spills his guts on the auto bailouts

Heard about this from NPR's piece. Steven Rattner, head of the auto task force assigned to restructure GM and Chrysler, gives a marvelous account of what went down.

The picture isn't pretty - but like a horrific car wreck, it uncomfortably fascinating.

Here's a great bit:

...under the previous administration's loan agreements, Treasury was to approve every GM transaction of more than $100 million that was outside of the normal course. From my first day at Treasury, PowerPoint decks would arrive from GM (we quickly concluded that no decision seemed to be made at GM without one) requesting approvals. We were appalled by the absence of sound analysis provided to justify these expenditures.

In other words - GM management was asking to blow $100 million on something and they hadn't bothered to justify it with research.

Every time somebody tells me that private organizations are so much more efficient than public one - I think of stuff like this. Or some of the insane waste I see at CorpWorld on a regular basis. Private institutions big accountability is that they can go under. They make bad decisions long enough, they go under. But that sidesteps the issue of exactly how much money can vanish into thin air while the company does just well enough not to go under.

And it ignores transparency issues.

Remember WorldCom loaning over $300 million dollars to Bernie Ebbers? Had the telecom boom continued, that loan would never have seen the light of day. WorldCom's bookkeeping would have kept shareholders in the dark - and shielded its board from the consequences of such an idiotic decision.

Which is not to suggest that gov't institutions don't have waste (good God, we know they do) but this fundamentalist view that private = efficient deserves a thourough and regular public beatdown.

Here's a nice segment on dealing with Chrysler's creditors:

The President's announcement that he was prepared for bankruptcy dramatically changed the nature of the discussions we were having with the stakeholders, none so much as those with Chrysler's 45 senior lenders.

Led by Jimmy Lee, J.P. Morgan's top banker and a long-standing business friend of mine, the banks had been insisting that, as secured lenders, they were entitled to repayment of their entire $6.9 billion. "And not a penny less," Jimmy said to me on more than one occasion.

From the outset that had struck us as ridiculous. The debt was trading at about 15¢ on the dollar, and according to Chrysler's analysis, the liquidation value of the company was around $1 billion. Clearly the banks didn't believe that the government would push back and let the lenders take over the company, if necessary. Until they heard the President speak on Monday morning. Almost immediately afterward, Jimmy called with a new message: "We need to talk."

Read the whole article. Great stuff.

100 cents on the dollar

(Via CJR)

That's what we paid the big banks on their swaps when AIG was bought up by the government. This was obscene and more than one commentator pointed it out at the time. So, to take one recipient at random, Goldman Sachs hedges to the tune of $12.9 billion dollars and gets paid $12.9 billion dollars by you and me.

That's just sick - but it gets worse when you read in Bloomberg that AIG had been trying to get Goldman to take haircuts on their swaps. i.e. AIG was driving a hard bargain with Goldman - but soon as the Feds took over, they meekly forked over the full amount.

Weak, weak, weak.

Rape is a pre-existing condition

You gotta be kidding me.

C'mon, we know you were on Facebook

The airline pilots who overflew Minneapolis by 150 miles are now claiming that they were using their laptops and were not (as had been speculated) asleep.

According to the pilots, they were checking their schedules using their laptops.

Somehow, I don't see even the most riveting schedule could keep a pilot incommunicado for over an hour.

You have to wonder what they were really up to.

NYT calls him out

Mr. President, you had this coming:

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama’s passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush’s abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability...

...the Obama administration has repeated a disreputable Bush-era argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever it makes a blanket claim of national security. The ruling rejected that argument and noted that the government’s theory would “effectively cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law.”

The Obama administration has aggressively pursued such immunity in numerous other cases beyond the ones involving Mr. Mohamed. We do not take seriously the government’s claim that it is trying to protect intelligence or avoid harm to national security.

The NYT does well to put this down in print - here's hoping this issue gets regular coverage until something is done.
This president should not be allowed to silently collect on the Bush administration bets. Nor should they be allowed to keep playing the same game.

I don't for a moment think this will be a turning point editorial, but the facts need to get a wider audience.

In defense of the post office

Tom Schaller has a great post on that perennial whipping boy, the US Postal Service.

The idea that a private company would both deliver mail to every office and home six days a week, and collect it from the same plus thousands of drop boxes scattered across the nation-- all the while maintaining walk-up offices in every town--and still be able to deliver a first-class envelope to any address for a mere 44 cents (an amount that hasn't changed in real terms after 30 years) is simply an absurd expectation.

I've always said the Post Office is a classic government role. Nobody wants to pay the freight to do door-to-door service to every address in America, or they'd be doing it. FexEx and UPS cherry pick the stuff they can make money on - and leave the rest to Uncle Sam.

Don't miss the comment from the Oklahoma postal worker in Tom's post - it's priceless.

So, next time you hear somebody say they don't want their health care run like the Post Office, you can ask them "You mean, you don't want it to be universally accessible and cheap?"

(and only because I cannot resist repeating this - you could also ask them if they would prefer to have a post office run like the insurance companies "We've decided not to mail your letter...because it's just too far).

I'm really starting to like this guy

Rep. Grayson is every inch a drama queen - but as Glenn points out they guy knows how to beat on stupidity.

Unimpeachable

A WWII vet speaks his peace on Question 1 in Maine.



Kick crazy @ss

(Via Where's the outrage and DailyKos)

Congratulations, Ms. Trunk

She's taken a leap - a good one.

Wellstone would approve

Al Franken, dishin' it out on health care.



(H/t to Where's the Outrage?)

I'd agree with Felix, "wow"

Kenneth Feinberg, pay warrior

Tabletop RPG

This is cool, yet it somehow makes me feel old.



(H/t to Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Goo: name your price

The World of Goo had a promo where users were allowed to buy the game at whatever price they wanted to pay.

How did it go?

2D BOY made around $100,000 in a week. That’s $50,000 each for writing a blog post about a game they finished a year ago. By letting people pay whatever they wanted. That’s damned important information.

I'd say so.

Gitmo scorecard

ProPublica has a really nice interactive scorecard for the Gitmo prisoners. Current status of all prisoners whose cases have been put before US courts.

A great reference and worth a look.

Lead poisoning = crime?

(Via Emptywheel)

Okay, this freaked me a bit:

Given the decrease in lead exposure among children since the 1980s and the estimated effects of lead on crime, reduced lead exposure could easily explain a very large proportion — certainly more than half — of the crime decrease of the 1994-2004 period.

This is from a book by Mark Kleiman - and there's more to boot. Seriously weird correlation. If that holds ups to scrutiny, you gotta wonder what the hell is going on there.

Philip Howard, corporate slut

Yesterday I watched perhaps the most obvious corporate shill I've ever seen. His name was Philip Howard, and he was on CBS Sunday Morning to do two things:

1) pitch his new book; and
2) sell corporate privilege to the masses, disguised as a populist cause

CBS treated him at his word - which was maddening. The standard, reverent hook intro-

He's a maverick you see - a high powered corporate lawyer speaking against lawyering. Oooh, iconoclast! He zigs where other lawyers zag!

We have too much law - he argues. Lawsuits, they've made playgrounds too safe - you see...

There is literally nothing in a playground in America for a child over the age of four. There are no jungle gyms. There are no seesaws. There are no climbing ropes. There are no high slides. It's very important for children to learn to understand their own limits, to take care of themselves.

Alright, set aside the fact that modern playgrounds have all these things - they just no longer have them over bare asphalt. Let's ignore the fact that 9 year olds will play on any structure they can climb. Let's just focus on Mr. Howard's [utterly disingenuous] argument.

It's about getting rid of law in people's daily lives...Teachers feel that they can't maintain order in the classroom, and doctors go through the day seeing every patient as a potential plaintiff. Camp counselors won't put an arm around the crying child. It's this idea that anything that goes wrong can be a lawsuit, and no one's drawing a boundary about what's a valid lawsuit and what's not.

Ahh, getting rid of law in people's daily lives. We're getting closer to what he's after. Dial down the image of a crying kid not getting a hug from their counselor - focus on that last sentence:

...no one's drawing a boundary about what's a valid lawsuit and what's not.

Now we're getting somewhere. This guy wants to get rid of lawsuits he thinks are invalid.

And what lawsuits in particular? Surely this corporate soldier wasn't writing a book to save hugless children from boring playgrounds.

Here's the CBS article:

...when it comes to medical claims, he indeed has no faith in juries . . . none at all . . . and wants the law changed.

Today, says the medical profession, fear of lawsuits has pushed medical malpractice insurance through the roof, and forced doctors to practice what's called "defensive medicine," meaning more tests and higher costs.

Howard wants malpractice cases decided not by a jury of laymen and women, but by special courts.

And THERE we are.

After all the fluff about playgrounds and life being full of disappointments -we find out what Mr. Howard is really about.

He's no maverick - he's just the latest tool whining about how corporations need to be protected from litigation. He wants special courts. And we're all familiar with how corporate alternatives to civil courts have protected people's rights so well in the past. Like Binding Arbitration - where consumers are forced to sign away their right to litigate as a condition of sale. Then arbitratration judges screened by the corporations hear the case and (in the case of California) rule in favor of the corporation 94% of the time.

Civil courts are scary to Mr. Howard, because his corporate masters don't control the outcome enough. Never mind they have the dollars to outclass the majority of their potential adversaries. They don't utterly dominate - and therefore, the law must change.

Having seen the benefit to the corporate interests - less damages - let's look at the cost. Here's CBS reporter, Jeff Greenfield:

It sounds as if one of the trade-offs we would have to make as a society to get law out of our hair is indeed to accept the fact that sometimes I'm going to be hurt and there's nothing I can do about it...Sometimes I'm going to be treated badly and there is no remedy.

Howard's response? "That's absolutely right."

Got that? Suck it up, America - we're tired of paying every time we grieviously injure your loved ones - or when your child gets strip-searched unjustly.

Howard's saying there's too much law, but his proposed remedy reveals what he's really saying.
We don't have too much law in the US, we just need to stop allowing citizens to use it so much.

To it's credit, the Sunday Morning report points out that medical malpractice and personal injury claims have gone down over the last decade. I'd add that the cost of medical malpractice lawsuits (while arguably too high) is the barest fraction of what we spend on health care in this country. I'm all for minimizing the effect of medical malpractice costs to certain medical specialties - but denying a citizen the right to sue in court?

Screw that.

I'll give CBS props for rebutting a few of Howard's points, but surely they could have winnowed through his fluff to expose him as the corporate tool he was and is. He's got every right to shill for his point of view, but this man-of-the-people common sense persona he's selling should never have been allowed to stand.

Best. Defense Spending. Headline. Evah.

Gates to Murtha: Kill the Obamacopter, or the Defense Bill Gets It

Got Bank Statements? Get approved!

When big banks claimed they had nothing to do with the mortgage crisis, Joe Nocera threw their own sales brochures back at them.

(H/t CJR)

Also Dean Starkman has a nice write up on how Citi was up to its eyes on subprime.

Flip the lights on...

...and watch the roaches scatter.

The British courts have ruled against American and British assertions of national security in the Binyam Mohamed case.

I have to say, I'm completely unimpressed with the Obama administration's reflexive defense of Bush era secrets. So it's good to see some daylight finding its way to the public, even if it had to happen overseas.

David eats Goliath

Why is this man going crazy?

Ask Brazil.

Hee hee hee

Oh, that was frickin' beautiful. Down a man and extra time.

Rock on.

Cash and Carry

In the course of some recreational research into firearms laws in my state - I ran across the gunshow loophole.

I thought I'd found it closed, too - but apparently I was wrong.

Short version is that buying a gun requires a background check - so long as you are buying from a licensed dealer. That dealer will collect your name and address and send it to to the Fed's background check to see if you should be allowed to buy a firearm.

At gun shows, however private party sales do not require this kind of check. I had thought that the transaction would still be recorded. Who sold what to who. Not an ironclad method - just a record of the sale.

But apparently that's not so. Dealers deliberately avoid getting licenses and sell as collectors - and do not collect any record of the sale.



That... is seriously messed up.

I mean- have a law, don't have a law... but if you're going to have a law - don't leave loopholes you could drive 348 SKS rifles through.

(H/t FiveThirtyEight)

The Yanks are Coming

Yeah, I know the US qualified for South Africa in the Honduras match, but they just pulled out a barn burner against Costa Rica - and it feels pretty good.

Here's the setup.

Rising star Charlie Davies is out (injured in a horrific car crash) - the US is down 2-1 and playing with ten men.

Five minutes into injury time. The ninety-fifth freaking minute.

They get a corner kick - the ref's looking at his watch and -

-Jonathan Bornstein heads the ball in seconds before time.

Ahhh... poetry. The US wins the group and Costa Rica has to go play Uruguay to qualify.

I know, big picture this isn't a lasting win - and Onyewu's injury could be costly.

Still - it's good to see the US dig one out in front of the home team.

We'll have to leave it there

Odds are, you've seen this already - but if you haven't watched Jon Stewart beat the daylights out of CNN - you should.



(H/t TPM)

Tim Minchin's Storm

A hilarious beat poem by unapologetic skeptic Tim Minchin. (If in polite company, headphones are required.)



Entirely too funny.

(H/t to Bad Astronomy)

And now we know that we shall never know

Liebermann's transparent attempt to conceal evidence of the abuse of prisoners in American custody is all but assured of passage.

That would be a Democratic congress, working in harmony with a Democratic President, to hide evidence of crimes ordered by the previous administration.

What an absolute disgrace.

Candor from Elizabeth Warren

Prof. Warren may not have power, but she has access to information - and we have access to her.

She needs as wide an audience as possible.

Shorter Nobel Citation

Dear President Obama,

Thank you for not being George W. Bush.

Love,
Europe

Hannity vs. Moore

I don't have a lot of use for Michael Moore - but watch him debate with Sean Hannity about the causes of the mortgage crisis:



It's stunning to these two not shouting at each other - they are actually debating. Against all the expectations I would have for these two, they actually talk.

Hannity being Hannity, is an ignorant ass - but he's very civil as he demonstrates his ignorance.

Michael Moore can be very tiresome - but here he actually knows his statistics and he beats the living crap out of Hannity.

(H/t to Where's the Outrage?)

Crooks and Liars has the first part of the interview as well.

Pedros

Once again, something I learned from FRI: I learned what a Pedro is.

They're pretty fricking amazing.

Not included in the total

ProPublica reminds us that every time we are told the number of American casualties in a place like Iraq (As of today, somewhere around 4,300 deaths and over 30,000 wounded) we should append another number - that of the American contractors who bleed there as well.

Contractor casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan so far amount to over 1,500 dead and another 35,000 wounded.

And while a small portion of those contractors are trigger pullers - you're mostly talking about a people who signed up to mundane work - like drive trucks.

ProPublica tells the story of one of them - a man named Reggie Lane.

Reggie Lane was once a hulking man of 260 pounds. Friends called him "Big Dad." Now, he weighed less than 200 pounds and his brain was severely damaged. He groaned angry, wordless cries.

Mr. Lane's story is a window into a larger issue of what happens when civilians supporting the war effort in theater, become casualties of that war. They're supposed to be provided insured under a regulation called the Defense Base Act.

....back home, the American government consigned [civilian contractors] to a federal insurance system marked by substandard care and excessive delays, according to a joint investigation by ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times and ABC News. Military veterans and former cops were forced to fight for basic medical care, psychological counseling, even prosthetic legs. Janitors and cooks from impoverished countries hired to work at U.S. military bases were never told of their rights to medical treatment. Widows and children have been left in poverty.

And who is the primary provider of this second rate care? Three letters.

A. I. G.

Case study in E. Coli, or "Why hamburgers should scare you"

(Via trainreq)

The NYT relates the literally gut-wrenching story of Stephanie Smith, who was paralyzed after eating a hamburger contaminated by E. Coli bacteria.

All due respect Ms. Smith, the worst bit isn't her situation - it's the what her situation brought to light.

The offending burger in question, creatively labeled "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties" was made by food giant Cargill using ingredients "from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria."

The article revels in the contrast between what is commonly thought of as ground beef (beef put into a grinder and ground) and what goes into a product that is sold under the label "ground beef."

Here's what went into Ms. Smith's burger:

• From Nebraska: a 50/50 mix of beef trimmings and fat.
• From Texas and Uruguay: leaner trimmings meant to offset the higher fat content of other ingredients; and
• From South Dakota: a product that starts with 50-70% fat, which is spun off in a centrifuge and treated with ammonia

The article then lets the other shoe fall:

To finish off [Ms.] Smiths’ ground beef, Cargill added bread crumbs and spices, fashioned it into patties, froze them and packed them 18 to a carton.

The listed ingredients revealed little of how the meat was made. There was just one meat product listed: “Beef.”

Owch.

Blue horseshoe loves Simmons Bedding

In this case, the role usually played by Michael Douglas will be played by Thomas H. Lee Partners of Boston.

Simmons bedding is a 133 year old company that THL bought in 2003.

They are now imploding, costing bondholders millions - but THL has profited hansomely.

They've done so using practices that make no sense to a business interested in continuing to make mattresses, but make lots of sense if you're a private-equity firm interested in gutting the place for your own enrichment.

Twice after buying Simmons, THL borrowed more. It used $375 million of that money to pay itself a dividend, thus recouping all of the cash it put down, and then some.

A result: THL was guaranteed a profit regardless of how Simmons performed. It did not matter that the company was left owing far more than it was worth, just as many people profited from the mortgage business while many homeowners found themselves underwater.

Investors who bought that debt are getting virtually nothing in the new deal.

Same old Wall Street - they get theirs and everybody else gets the shaft.

Peter W. Galbraith throws down

(Via CJR)

The (former) second highest ranking U.N. official in Afghanistan has gone postal over the reasons why he was canned.

In a WaPo OpEd.

Short version: The U.N. is choosing to ignore Pres. Karzai's corruption in this election. I could not.

Read the whole screed.

Letterman's choice of words

Just a minor observation about David Letterman's televised admission of affairs with co-workers/subordinates.

He repeatedly used two words to describe what he did. One word was fairly typical:

"Terrible."

It's a word you can focus inward as well as outward.

I have done terrible things.

But the other word wasn't.

That word was 'creepy.'

That is not a word whose natural focus is internal. You don't call yourself creepy. Things done by others are creepy.

But Letterman said what he did was creepy.

And why did he do that?

Because he knows that at least some of details of his misdeeds will end up make it into the public eye - so he's telling you up front that some of it will make your skin crawl.

And that - for lack of a better word - is creepy.

Meet out the measure

I remember watching a comedy routine at the Apollo where a comic pantomimed stoic civil rights marchers enduring physical abuse while trying their best to sing:

We shall (whack!) over- (whack!) -come...

He contrasted that with the South African marches against Apartheid, then hurled himself into a frenzy of leaping and shouting.

"When we march in South Africa, we MARCH!! That ain't 'we shall overcome' that's 'we gonna kick your ass!'"

Seems to me, progressives have been longing for someone to kick some ass. Enduring eight years of full on stupidity and two years of progressive impotence - it's a lot to take. Too much.

Pres. Obama is never going to swing a partisan bat - so we're left wondering who on the left is going to spit fire and call out the BS on the right.

Rude Pundit makes a great case for Rep. Alan Grayson:

...this dude knows how to apologize to right-wingers. Pushed by Michael Steele to beg forgiveness from Limbaugh like so many Republicans did, Grayson offered, "I’m sorry Limbaugh called for harsh sentences for drug addicts while he was a drug addict. I’m also sorry that he’s bent on seeing America fail. And I’m sorry that Limbaugh is one sorry excuse for a human being."

Read the whole thing - good stuff.

Kick ass.

(H/t to trainreq)

FRI to Afghan ISAF: Mind your manners

Recently the French closed a major highway in Afghanistan for six hours because they had an accident. Everyone had to wait until they had recovered the vehicle.

Free Range International offers the following to coalition forces in Afghanistan:

...the US Army continues to roll through downtown Jalalabad instead of using the brand new high speed truck by pass which is faster and safer for them.  Their focus in exclusively internal.  They plan all operations, movements, and interactions with the Afghans (when they manage to get off a FOB) based on what is easiest and safest for them with no consideration of the Afghan people.  This is an “effects based” opinion based on what I see daily.  The only military unit I have been able to observe in the planning stages were the Marines in Helmand where I listened in on planning  to build military roads designed to avoid adversely impacting the local people in the Helmand Green Zone.  The Marines focus was exclusively external on what was convenient for the Afghans not what was easiest for them.  This may explain why they have taken such a large chunk of the Helmand River Valley and dominated it with little to no post assault fighting while the British army is unable to walk 100 meters off their combat outposts in the same river valley without getting blown up or in a fire fight.

Bat signal

(Via TechnoHell)

Death from above: keeping score

The Long War Journal lays down some interesting data on drone strikes in Pakistan.

Check this graphic out:

There's a series of supporting graphs as well.

I'd be interested to see how these stats hold up under scrutiny, but the numbers clearly support earlier coverage of an increase in drone strikes. Whether this trend is part of an earlier decision that was slow to build - or a more recent shift - it's suggesting we're getting some bad guys.

We've taken a lot of deserved heat for civilian deaths in Afghanistan. If this account of our efforts in Pakistan can be believed - we're doing a lot better on the other side of the border.

The death of Baitullah Mehsud was a major coup - and bringing death to the faction leaders seems like a like a high ROI way to go after these factions. They will adapt, however - and you wonder what tactic we will have once they learn how best to go to ground.

Get off your ass

Every house has its share of projects. My house has its share and a few other houses' shares as well.

I've learned two things from my experience with Five Minute Jobs:

1. Simple jobs almost always get more complicated; and
2. Simple jobs that stay simple are merely bait to lure you into future disasters

You add that to my list of things I haven't done to the house - and you have a recipe for inaction.

I'll explain.

Back when we bought our house - the house inspection identified a number of things we needed to do to the place. I added my own items to it and turned it into a pretty hefty list.

Long lists are pretty intimidating by themselves, but long lists of home jobs are really lists of lists.

Any one item turns into countless more detail. A list of things to do before you start. Tools you will need to rent or purchase. Parts and supplies you will need to buy. Research you will need to do.

And then of course - the list of stuff you will need to do when you actually start the job and find out your initial plan just isn't going to work.

The knowledge that each and every item could balloon into a total nightmare is a powerful motivation to put stuff off.

But some jobs can't be ignored.

The patio project was a bit of a watershed moment. The patio was a must. It was a giant mud bog behind our house - and (to my mind) was going to be far too expensive to pay somebody to put in a brick patio for us.

Had to be done. Hiring somebody is out of bounds.

This is not to say I haven't ignored other jobs like that before, but the patio was a job was something else, too. It was accessible. It didn't have to be done in a hurry. And starting it didn’t require me to turn my entire house upside done.

So I took the plunge. And I accidentally learned something obvious about home jobs.

Yeah, I screwed up. And took too long. But after I put down the last brick, I got to go back to my list and write the words DONE after the patio job.

Hadn't done that in awhile. And having something on the list that was done was a big help.

I think of my dad's ability to fix damn near anything and I think I get it now. My dad was tenacious, sure - but his defining trait in this sphere was his total lack of inertia. It drove him crazy when stuff didn't work properly, or was done wrong. I have that trait - but I have inertia. Lots of it.

But I'm stubborn, too. And I know if I start a job - giving up will bug me beyond my ability to deal.

So: I get off my @ss, - stuff will get done. My list has helped prove that to me.

Now I keep a google doc with my list so I can access it anywhere. Everything on it is Active, Pending, or Done.

Active jobs have to-dos by them and dates when they were updated.
Pending jobs are supplemented with supporting data (needed parts, contact information for vendors)

and Done jobs? They're there so I can review them and see that stuff got done. Motivate myself to do more stuff.

Tenacity will get me out the other side if I just start. And I can always hire a pro if need be. But putting stuff off that affects quality of life - is robbing me and my family of quality of life.

And I'm done putting up with crap like that.

Sen. Graham, I agree with you

I'll be damned.

Media whore and US Senator Lindsay Graham has said something I would agree with:

"Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party as far as I can tell. He's aligned with cynicism, and there's always been a market for cynicism."

Of course, if Glenn Beck's political allegiance came to a vote, Sen. Graham would vote party line.

But still... credit for a good soundbite.

Garbage in the green bin

(Via GOOD blog)

Something I've been wondering about:

What Happens When Non-recyclables End Up in the Blue Bin?

Letterman's mea culpa

Wow.

Blackmail forces David Letterman to admit his affairs with staffers.

(Via TPM)

Who says Auto tune is the harbinger of cultural doom?

It spruced up Carl Sagan - and now it gives life to Billy Mays. (Headphones suggested, but not required).

H/t DB

Sing with me...

Are you tired of using sprays that only mask odors?