Bad things come in threes

Intelligence Court Rules Wiretapping Program Legal
The ruling is expected to validate the president’s power to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail without a court order.

U.S. foreclosure filings in 2008 rose 81% from 2007
U.S. foreclosure filings in 2008 rose 81% from 2007 and tripled from 2006, RealtyTrac reported on Wednesday.

Bank of America to Get Billions in U.S. Aid
Sides Finalizing Terms for Fresh Bailout Cash; Lender Told Treasury That Without Funds, It Couldn't Close Deal for Ailing Merrill

(On BOA -  I'm with Barry: Hey Lewis, you bought it, its yours, leave us out of your mess!)

Well, at least its sunny & warm outside...

Late edit: There is some other good news - the FISA ruling is actually quite limited in scope. It addresses only the question of whether or not the Protect America Act is at odds with the Fourth Amendment. It has no ruling on the legality of the NSA wiretapping itself. Mr. Greenwald justifiably takes the article to task for its mischaracterization of the ruling.

I'm about to cost you $20

How?

Easy, three steps.

1) Go to World of Goo's website

2) Download their free Demo (For Windows or Mac)

3) Play

You get to the end of the demo, I defy you to not shell out the measly $20 bucks for the whole shebang.

Seriously, World of Goo rocks. The best games have simple rules and complex strategy.

World of Goo is both, plus it's hilariously maddening.

I do Goo, do you?

Letter from a dead man

(via CJR)

There are few monuments to fallen journalists, but the last editorial of slain Sri Lankan reporter Lasantha Wickramatunga should be graven in stone and placed where the world can see it.

In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

[snip]

I - and my family - have now paid the price that I have long known I will one day have to pay. I am - and have always been - ready for that. I have done nothing to prevent this outcome: no security, no precautions. I want my murderer to know that I am not a coward like he is, hiding behind human shields while condemning thousands of innocents to death.

Risking your life for your beliefs is one thing - to willfully choose death over betraying them is another thing entirely.

Too dangerous to release, impossible to prosecute

It's jarring to finally hear someone in a postion to do something express the appropriate level of outrage for what has been going on at Gitmo.

US agents at Guantanamo Bay tortured a Saudi man suspected of involvement in the 11 September attacks, the official overseeing trials at the camp has said.

Susan Crawford told the Washington Post newspaper that Mohammad al-Qahtani had been left in a "life-threatening condition" after being interrogated.

[snip]

Ms Crawford, who was appointed convening authority for military commissions in February 2007, said Mr Qahtani had been interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day almost continuously for eight weeks.

[snip]

Ms Crawford said she was shocked, upset and embarrassed by the treatment he had received.

She said: "If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques?

"How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

But the article ends with the exact conundrum that the incoming administration faces: a collection of prisoners who cannot be prosecuted if we follow our law, but are clearly dangerous men.

What the hell do you do with this hand-me-down catastrophe? Following our laws would tear huge holes in whatever cases we had against these men. If the prosecutions were to fail - would anyone have the stomach to release them?

I could see us returning them to a facility in Afghanistan "to face charges there," but as a practical matter - the US would have to provide the security or they'd break out.

I can't imagine there are countries lining up to take these guys on, either. Our gun to the head diplomacy days are over, so I'd imagine our allies will be less willing to do us a solid on this issue.

Obama's made the right noises about closing Gitmo, but I cannot fathom what path gets us out of there.

It's like Iraq in general. I just don't see anything but a very ragged ending.

Ben Bernanke: Let's buy crap

Brainiac Ben has an idea on how we should spend the other $350 billion.

He wants to buy the crap that the world managed to talk Sec. Paulson out of buying a few months ago.

One question, Ben - did you the banks leave a horsehead in your bed this morning.

Idiot.

If you live in fear of crime

...CrimeReports.com is the google maps mashup for you:

Crime reports for selected areas, plotted on a map.

Hey look, an assault near my house!

Truly, a golden age.

Flames from the Gov.

(Via CJR and the Anchorage Daily News)

Gov. Palin takes issue with the ADN's treatment of her. Sadly, she does not help herself. The ADN's editor has helpfully posted their email exchange.

Home town pride

SI's Mitch Albom writes about his town in The Courage of Detroit

We don't talk about whether Detroit will be fixed but when Detroit will be fixed.

And we are modest. In truth, we battle an inferiority complex. We gave the world the automobile. Now the world wants to scold us for it. We gave the world Motown music. Motown moved its offices to L.A. When I arrived 24 years ago, to be a sports columnist at the Detroit Free Press, I discovered several letters waiting for me at the office. Mind you, I had not written a word. My hiring had been announced, that's all. But there were already letters. Handwritten. And they all said, in effect, "Welcome to Detroit. We know you won't stay long, because nobody good stays for long, but we hope you like it while you're here."

Nobody good stays for long.

We hope you like it while you're here.

How could you not stay in a city like that? 

Albom bites back about everything, the big three, the Lions... You name it, he wants you to know - he's and the rest of Detroit can take what you're dishing out.

(H/t emptywheel)

If a prank happens to a clueless sot, is it still funny?

Answer: Yes.

Okay, today my daughter was fiddling with the buttons on our land line phone and managed to play our outgoing message. To E's surprise it is in the voice of our friend R (married to my man C) saying

You've reached [murph's family], they've been incarcerated for insider trading. Please leave a message.

Needless to say, I'm a bit embarrassed. R stayed at our house over two months ago.

I knew nobody ever called our house, but now at least we know why - everyone thinks we're in prison.

Good one, R&C. You totally win.

(And god help you if you ever let us stay at your house.....)

*grin*

Calvinism

(via The Big Picture)

Too perfect.

The single best analogy of evolution that I've ever heard

...courtesy of (of all things) a reader comment on a Roger Ebert movie review:

Imagine flipping a coin over and over. For each toss, the odds are fifty-fifty that it will come up heads (a one-in-two chance). The odds of getting two heads in a row is a one-in-two-to-the-power-of-two chance, or one-in-four. Five heads in a row is 1:2^5, or one-in-thirty-two. A hundred heads? 1:2^100, or roughly one in 1.3 trillion trillion trillion (thank Gates for the little calculator program on my computer). A creationist would claim that all the lucky chances that evolution requires is like getting not one, not five, but millions upon millions of heads in a row.

"But the creationists are forgetting something. Evolution ISN'T random, as they often claim. It's selected...What if, after every toss, we had the option of not counting it? What if we were allowed to simply discard every toss that came up tails? Now, given the ability to select, how long would it take to rack up a hundred heads in a row? About two hundred throws.

"Once you understand the concept of selection, and how it applies to evolution, you realize that what was thought to be vanishingly unlikely actually becomes virtually inevitable."

What a great way of expressing such a complicated thing!

As long as I'm getting clarity from strange sources - I'd go on to say this analogy meshes nicely with a game I own called Evo. The scoring mechanic of Evo reward species that maintain a high population over time. The central game mechanic exterminates life that cannot survive its changing environment.

And there it is.

Mutation flips the coin - the environment tosses out the results it doesn't like.

Color vision is the equivalent to flipping heads a thousand times in a row? No problem.

The black & white vision predator lives well until prey until they've killed off all the high contrast prey. (Flip, tails: discard). Enter that one color vision predator who feasts on the prey that (in color) is easy to find. (Flip, heads: keep).

Over time - the black & white vision predator leaves less offspring behind (Flip, tails: discard)
-while the color vision predator produces more offspring - (Flip, heads: keep) (Flip, heads: keep) (Flip, heads: keep)

And so on. Pretty easy to get to a thousand that way.

We'll have what Warren's having, thank you

Dean Starkman spots a few good bits from the Post and Bloomberg.

Upshot is: Warren Buffet invested in banks and got good terms. The TARP bailout invested in those same banks and got considerably less bang for the buck. Half? No. Try a tenth of what WB got.

Here the home run bit of data:

The government has received warrants [rights to buy shares] valued at $13.8 billion in the 25 biggest capital injections from TARP, according to Bloomberg data. Under the terms Buffett negotiated for his $5 billion stake in Goldman Sachs, the TARP certificates would have been worth $130.8 billion.

This is what happens when Congress legislates with a (perceived) gun to their heads.

Late edit: The Big Picture has Bloomberg's graphics on this. Visuals help, I think.

Remote control

The Long War has posted transcripts of the Mumbai terrorists talking to their handlers. They came from The Hindu, which obtained the dossier India gave to Pakistan. The dossier details their argument that the attackers were aided by elements within Pakistan.

Reading the exchanges between the attackers and their controllers is plenty creepy - but the Long War is posting that American intelligence officials are (informally) saying the voice of one of the controllers is that of former Pakistan ISI head, Hamid Gul.

That...would not be good.

How your 15 minutes of fame can get you killed.

(via Editor & Publisher)

Joe the Plumber is "going to Israel as a war correspondent."

Seriously.

Pretending to be a plumber is one thing - but pretending to be a war correspondent could get you dead.

The next to worst option

Pietro Veronesi & Luigi Zingales of the U of Chicago release a paper called Paulson's Gift on the financial bailout.

The Big Picture has the abstract (emphasis added)

We calculate the costs and benefits of the largest ever U.S. Government intervention in the financial system. We estimate that the revised Paulson plan increased the value of banks’ financial claims by $109 billion at a taxpayers’ cost of $112 -135 billions, creating no value in the banking sector. We compare the cost of Paulson’s plan with the costs of alternative solutions that would have achieved the same objective in term of solvency of the banking system. We find that the revised Paulson plan is the most expensive for the taxpayers, second only to the original Paulson plan. The biggest beneficiaries of this massive redistribution were the debtholders of financial institutions, especially those of the three former investment banks and of Citigroup. The equity holders just broke even.

Nice to see Paulson looking out for his own - except, when you're the Treasury Secretary - "your own" means taxpayers as a whole, not just the ones you used to work with.

Kool-aid merchant

Elinore Longobardi takes New York magazine to task for its coverage of former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld.

Here's the bit I like - right about when NY is letting themselves view poor, poor Mr. Fuld as a victim in all of this (emphasis mine):

He’d held on to 10 million shares of Lehman stock until the end and lost almost $1 billion—‘He drank the Kool-Aid,’ said one executive. ...Fuld goes to his office ...he’s still nominally the CEO of Lehman—and talks on the phone to a few former colleagues... They often work one another to the edge of rage trying to decipher ‘the mystery,’ as Fuld still thinks of Lehman’s collapse. Why didn’t the government save Lehman the way it saved so many others...? Fuld and his allies can’t help but blame Paulson, whom he’d trusted and, until the end, viewed as an ally and even a friend. Yet Paulson, for reasons Fuld doesn’t yet understand, participated in making him the scapegoat. ‘He feels betrayed,’ said one friend.

Wait, Fuld feels betrayed? What kind of Alice-in-Wonderland world is this? Fuld didn’t just drink the subprime Kool-Aid, but mixed the stuff up and passed it around.

Mr. Fuld - the mystery isn't why your firm was allowed to fail - the mystery is why so many of your colleagues' firms weren't. You are a scapegoat, but there should be a whole lot more of your buddies up there on the wall of shame with you.

I've got another mystery for you - how come you still own a home? Why aren't you out there pouding the pavement trying to get some menial service job because the financial sector views you as something they wouldn't bother to step on.

You and your colleagues robbed everyone's future to roll in cash today. Seems to me you have a lot farther to fall before anyone feels sorry for you.

Judicial snark: Telco immunity version

(H/t to emptywheel)

In Re: NSA telecommunications records litigation

The judge's option cites the plaintiff's argument (and question):

Do defendants mean to assert their theory of unfettered presidential power over matters of national security - the very theory plaintiffs seek to challenge in this case - as a basis for disregarding this court’s FISA preemption ruling and defying the current access proceedings under section 1806(f)? So it seems.

To which Judge Walker adds:

So it seems to the court also.

Snark!

And he goes on:

It appears from defendants’ response to plaintiffs’ motion that defendants believe they can prevent the court from taking any action under 1806(f) by simply declining to act.

[snip]

For the reasons stated herein, defendants’ motion to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment (Doc #475/49), is DENIED.

Not nearly snarky enough, for my tastes - but snark nonetheless.

Choke point

With reports of the Taliban shutting off the Khyber pass (which has since re-opened) I was wondering what that means in a larger strategic sense.The military has gone on record as saying these attacks were insignificant, but Danger Room has some context that makes you wonder (emphasis added):

Here's the problem: the mission in Afghanistan are sustained by supplies trucked in overland from the Pakistani port city of Karachi. According to the Armed Forces Press Service, the Khyber Pass route provides three quarters of the supplies for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, creating a vulnerable choke point. Late last year, militants stepped up attacks in the Khyber Pass area; they also staged a dramatic attack on a NATO truck depot near the border city of Peshawar, destroying dozens of military trucks. 

The Taliban aren't stupid. They can count.

• Number of ports in Afghanistan: zero. 
• Number of countries bordering on Afghanistan with deep-water ports: two (which is effectively one, since one of those countries is Iran)
  

Driving up from Karachi, we go through Spin Boldak or Khyber. That's two roads for all the shipped in gear. We can fly stuff into the northern border countries, but no way we want to spend that kind of money over the long haul.

It's a helluva place to fight a war.

The MacBook Wheel

The Onion rips Apple a new one...


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

A deserved spanking

While I'm all about the poorly-informed rant - here's a very useful screed about the current financial mess. And it's from people who know a thing or two.

A sample:

IT’S not hard to see why the S.E.C. behaves as it does. If you work for the enforcement division of the S.E.C. you probably know in the back of your mind, and in the front too, that if you maintain good relations with Wall Street you might soon be paid huge sums of money to be employed by it.

The commission’s most recent director of enforcement is the general counsel at JPMorgan Chase; the enforcement chief before him became general counsel at Deutsche Bank; and one of his predecessors became a managing director for Credit Suisse before moving on to Morgan Stanley. A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the whole point of landing the job as the S.E.C.’s director of enforcement is to position oneself for the better paying one on Wall Street.

G'wan, Read it.

(H/t CJR)

Late edit: there are two editorials, one from Jan. 3, and one from Jan 4 - but they are both solid gold. Here's just a sample nugget:

Rather than tackle the source of the problem, the people running the bailout desperately want to reinflate the credit bubble, prop up the stock market and head off a recession. Their efforts are clearly failing: 2008 was a historically bad year for the stock market, and we’ll be in recession for some time to come. Our leaders have framed the problem as a “crisis ofconfidence” but what they actually seem to mean is “please pay no attention to the problems we are failing to address.”

In its latest push to compel confidence, for instance, the authorities are placing enormous pressure on the Financial Accounting Standards Board to suspend “mark-to-market” accounting. Basically, this means that the banks will not have to account for the actual value of the assets on their books but can claim instead that they are worth whatever they paid for them.

This will have the double effect of reducing transparency and increasing self-delusion (gorge yourself for months, but refuse to step on a scale, and maybe no one will realize you gained weight). And it will fool no one. When you shout at people “be confident,” you shouldn’t expect them to be anything but terrified.