Vote With Your Feet

Arianna Huffington posts a fine idea for the new year:

If you bank with one of the big four banks - switch banks.



I doubt the banks will smart too hard - but given the high quality of service you're likely to find at a local credit union, what are you doing in a huge bank anyway?

Heath Care: The End Of The Beginning

In the confused dialog of what passed vs. what ought to have passed in the Senate - I've found two items I'd highlight.

Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight.com) and Marcy Wheeler (at Emptywheel) are going at it hammer and tongs over whether the Senate Health Care bill is or is not the apocalypse.

Unlike virtually everything you are likely to see on network - this is a discussion of people who are data driven and committed to having an informative debate.

Nate: Postscript

Marcy: “Affordable” Health Care

Nate: The Senate's Bill Helps Working Families

Marcy: Why Can’t Bill Supporters Say “Affordable”?

Nate: Health Insurance and the Family Budget: Highly Affordable for Some, More Affordable for All

I have great respect for these two bloggers - and a written back and forth can do a lot to clarify an otherwise very murky landscape.

---

The other item is just the observation from a blog I wish I could remember (it'll come to me)...

This nonsense coming out of the right to run on "repealing ObamaCare" makes for a good demo, but puts the GOP in the unenviable position of telling America that they want to restore recission. That the GOP wants people to be disqualified for pre-existing conditions.

Of course the GOP does not want that - or at least those in the GOP that want that are smart enough to know they cannot say that. So they will have to say they will keep the good parts of ObamaCare and just remove the bad parts - which is a much harder soundbite to serve or swallow.

Securitized Snake Oil Is Still Snake Oil

Yves Smith is as scathing as ever, discussing deceptive selling practices of the big firms:

Goldman is trying to diffuse the increasingly harsh light being turned on its dubious practices in the collateralized debt obligation market, with the wattage turned up considerably last week by a story in the New York Times that described how a synthetic CDO program called Abacus was the means by which Goldman famously went “net short” subprime. We’ve mentioned Abacus repeatedly because AIG wrote guarantees on at least some of the Abacus trades.

One of the things that has been frustrating in watching this debate is the peculiar propensity of quite a few observers to defend Goldman and its brethren, and to argue, effectively, caveat emptor. Contrary to the fantasies of libertarians, that is not in fact how markets, particularly securities markets, operate. In virtually every market in the world, when someone represents his wares as being sound and safe and they turn out to be “bad” and dangerous, the seller is considered to have some responsibility for the damage. Remember those Pintos that turned into fireballs when rear-ended? The pets that died from pet food laced with melamine from China? No one suggested that the buyers of those products were at fault.

I’m deliberately using extreme examples, but as we proceed, you will see they are not unreasonable. Those products did not fail by design (well, the faults of the Pinto were known and left uncorrected). By contrast, Goldman wanted its Abacus trades to fail.

I've wondered before about the limits to which a strategy of profitable failure could be pushed. (For example, could a firm obtain multiple Credit Default Swaps for the same bad bond and receive multiple payouts?)

I mean - what is the difference between the Abacus CDO scheme and a boilerplate pump-and-dump stock scheme?

(H/t DailyCurator.com)

Cassano? WaPo has your email

Ahh, the wonderful durability of the computer record...

E-mails inside AIG reveal executives struggling with growing crisis

(Via DailyCurator.com)

Next time, just kill yourself in private - okay?

To Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

I get that you're a screwed-up, lonely young man. But how sad do you need to get to you fall in with terrorists?

And how depressed do you have to be to let them talk you into offing yourself and trying to take a plane load of people with you?

Using a bomb - that you smuggle onboard in your underwear?

I mean, how lonely do you have to get to think Yes - that looks like a better option?

And then to top it off you suck at the bombing thing. Specifically, you fail to successfully detonate your underwear.

So not only are your family disappointed and shamed forever, not only are you facing (if you are lucky) a lifetime in prison but you're going to go into prison with the world laughing at your internet posts and with the prison monicker "the underwear bomber"

Dude... next time just buy a copy of Final Exit or go see a shrink, eh?

Yeesh.

A for-pay model to stop corruption

(Via Newshoggers)

Graft and corruption have both a demand and a supply side.
-Shaffi Mather

You have to love this man.



Here's a guy that brought a for profit, self supporting, ambulance service to India as a response to inadequate public service.

Now he's using a business model to go after a more pervasive problem.

In the modern day world where time is premium and [the] battle for subsistence is unimaginably tough, the hapless common man simply gives in and pays the bribe just to get on with life.

A group of us have been working on a pilot basis to address individual instances of demands for bribes for common services or entitlements. And in all 42 cases where we pushed back such demands using existing and legitimate tools like the Right To Information Act, video, audio, or peer pressure we have successfully obtained whatever our clients set out to achieve without actually paying a bribe and with the cost of these tools being substantially lower than the bribe demanded.

I believe that these tools that worked in these 42 pilot cases can be consolidated in standard processes in a BPO kind of environment and made available on web, call center and franchise physical offices - for a fee - to serve anyone confronted with a demand for a bribe.

The target market is as tempting as it can get. It can be worth up to 1 trillion dollars being paid in bribes being paid every year or equal to India's GDP and it is an absolutely virgin market.

I propose to explore this idea further. To examine the potential of creating for a for-profit, fee-based BPO service to stop bribes and prevent corruption.

You have to root for this guy - but you hope he sets a good amount of his budget aside for personal and site security.

As he puts it in the video: I just have to get through the initial days where I don't get...eliminated.

Here's to ya, man. The market is huge, the margins are ripe for plucking.

What a great f-ing idea.

What'd we tank on? and What'd we miss?

Once again Foreign Policy magazine gives us the 10 worst predictions of 2009

Noteworthy items include:

1) "Energy Bill: Not..
"I do know this. At the end of this first year of Congress, there will be an energy bill on the president's desk."
—Rahm Emanuel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, April 19, 2009

3) The swine flu is coming!
"While the precise impact of the fall resurgence of 2009-H1N1 influenza is impossible to predict, a plausible scenario is that the epidemic could: produce infection of 30-50% of the U.S. population this fall and winter, ... lead to as many as 1.8 million U.S. hospital admissions during the epidemic, ... [and] cause between 30,000 and 90,000 deaths in the United States."
—Report to the President on U.S. Preparations for the 2009-H1N1 Influenza, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Aug. 7, 2009

(as an aside, I invite you to reconcile this NYT article with this CDC update)

5) Krauthammer is still an idiot.
Chris Wallace: "Best guess: Will the president end up giving McChrystal the troops he wants, or will he change the war strategy?"
Charles Krauthammer: "I think he doesn't and McChrystal resigns."
—Fox News Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009

7) Honduras: Fail
"I'm very pleased to announce that we've had a breakthrough in negotiations in Honduras. I want to congratulate the people of Honduras as well as President Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti for reaching an historic agreement.... I cannot think of another example of a country in Latin America that having suffered a rupture of its democratic and constitutional order overcame such a crisis through negotiation and dialogue."
—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Oct. 30, 2009

Meh.

And FP gives us the top 10 Stories we missed in 2009

Here are two notables:

1) The Northwest Passage Opens For Business
The mythic Northwest Passage still captures imaginations, but this September, two German vessels made history by becoming the first commercial ships to travel from East Asia to Western Europe via the northeast passage between Russia and the Arctic. Ice previously made the route impassable, but thanks to rising global temperatures, it's now a cakewalk. "There was virtually no ice on most of the route," Capt. Valeriy Durov told the BBC. "Twenty years ago, when I worked in the eastern part of the Arctic, I couldn't even imagine something like this."

and

7) Dead Man Gets Passport
A GAO investigator managed to obtain four genuine U.S. passports using fake names and fraudulent documents. In one case, he used the Social Security number of a man who had died in 1965. In another, he used the Social Security number of a fictitious 5-year-old child created for a previous investigation, along with an ID showing that he was 53 years old. The investigator then used one of the fake passports to buy a plane ticket, obtain a boarding pass, and make it through a security checkpoint at a major U.S. airport. (When presented with the results of the GAO investigation, the State Department agreed that there was a "major vulnerability" in the passport issuance process and agreed to study the matter.)

Double Meh.

Watching the watchers

You gotta be kidding me. Insurgents have been able to tap into video feeds of US surveillance drones.

Here's Danger Room:

Using cheap, downloadable programs like SkyGrabber, militants were apparently able to watch and record the video feed — and potentially be tipped off when U.S. and coalition forces are stalking them. The $26 software was originally designed to let users download movies and songs off of the internet. Turns out, the program lets you nab Predator drone feeds just as easily as pirated copies of The Hangover.

And here’s the real scandal: Military officials have known about this potential vulnerability since the Bosnia campaign. That was over 10 years ago.

How is this possible? Witness the foresight of the US Army:

The Army drones are the most vulnerable to interception, because they broadcast their feeds unencrypted and in every direction. Retrofitting the hand-held Raven UAVs will take “at least two years,” Col. Gregory Gonzalez tells Hoffman. Locking up the Army’s other drones may take even longer.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

Butterfly effect, magnetar edition

Phil Plait has a great post about a one centimeter shift occurring in a magnetar star 50,000 light years away.

Yeah, I know: small, far away - Why do I care?

Because a one centimeter star-quake on a magnetar (even one 50,000 light years away) creates a wave of energy:

This enormous wave of fierce energy was so powerful it actually partially ionized the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and it made the Earth’s magnetic field ring like a bell. Several satellites were actually blinded by the event.

This thing is almost on the opposite side of the galaxy - and a ripple on its surface can blind our satellites. Dr. Plait goes on to point out that we have magnetars as close as 7,000 light years and that similar events occurring at that distance would turn the bulk of our orbital hardware into potato chips.

That's just freaky.

Rooting for Penelope

I've posted before about the trials and tribulations of Ms. Penelope Trunk - this holiday, it sounds like she's on a pace to outdo herself:

Last week, in addition to being lost at work, I was lost trying to cope with the farmer ending our engagement. So I flipped a grilled cheese with my bare hand instead of the hand holding the spatula: Insane pain. I drove myself to the emergency room, and they said I was actually at risk of going into shock behind the wheel. Okay. So it was bad enough that they gave me vicodin.

I don't deny following her blog to shocked and appalled - but I have a great deal of sympathy for this person. Given her background, I doubt I would be anywhere near functional. And she keeps trying. Then she relates her experience with candor that informs without pretense.

Reading her posts you don't get

GUESS what happened??!!

rather, you get-

Here is what happened.

That she not only keeps trying but keeps writing is nothing short of amazing.

You might show up for the trainwreck - but you're going to leave with something more tangible and worthwhile.

WSJ to CitiBank: "You was robbed!!"

And CitiBank says "Nuh uh"

Curiously, and impressively - the WSJ is opting for Yeah huh!

Read CJR's recap

-or hit the WSJ directly (subs. required)

The decade of the facade

Franch Rich vents his spleen about Tiger Woods and the uncritical acceptance of eyewash:

Tiger Woods, Person of the Year

AS we say farewell to a dreadful year and decade, this much we can agree upon: The person of the year is not Ben Bernanke, no matter how insistently Time magazine tries to hype him into its pantheon. The Fed chairman was just as big a schnook as every other magical thinker in Washington and on Wall Street who believed that housing prices would go up in perpetuity to support an economy leveraged past the hilt. Unlike most of the others, it was Bernanke’s job to be ahead of the curve. Yet as recently as June of last year he could be found minimizing the possibility of a substantial economic downturn. And now we’re supposed to applaud him for putting his finger in the dike after disaster struck? This is defining American leadership down.

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled.

Worth a read.

Fade to Black

(Via Ms. No-H and J)

Rather gripping video of the jobless rate over time, plotted on a US map by county

View it full screen or view the original site:



Yeeg.

Obligatory post on global warming

Provoked only by the utter dipsh!t I had to sit and listen to this morning.

*Sigh* Yes, the world is warming. No, it's not a giant conspiracy

• How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic
• Anti Global Heating claims - a reasonably thorough debunking
• Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away

And because it made me laugh - here's the kind of evidence you would need to convince me of some kind of conspiracy going on.

(H/t to Bad Science)
Late edit: added that third link. Whoops.

I am so glad I am not this guy

Coding Horror has just had one of those moments we pretend only happen to other people.

Here's what happened:

1. The server experienced routine hard drive failure.
2. Because of the hard drive failure, the virtual machine image hosting [Coding Horror's] blog was corrupted.
3. Because the [Coding Horror] blog was hosted in a virtual machine, the standard daily backup procedures at the host were unable to ever back it up.
4. Because I am an idiot, I didn't have my own (recent) backups of Coding Horror. Man, I wish I had read some good blog entries on backup strategies!
5. Because there were no good backups, there was catastrophic data loss. Fin, draw curtain, exeunt stage left.

Note to self: do some test file restores from Carbonite - and get E to do some as well.

Ow. That hurts just thinking about it.

Also: He links to a fairly solid post stating the elusive (yet obvious) truth about backups. Backups can only get you halfway.

Meeting equipment

Next time you're in a meeting and have working speakers - try these websites on for size:

• instantrimshot.com
• sadtrombone.com
• instantcrickets.com
  

 No, they're not brilliant - but thanks to the interweb - they're never far away when you need them.

The Price of Empathy

Enjoyment at work is largely dependent on the people around you. They're happy - you're happy.

Mind you, I'm talking about genuine happiness here - not that faux cheer corp types use to mask their inner demons. I used to work with a guy who was so deleriously positive about everything - I wondered if he was unstable (he was).

If the people around you are miserable, it becomes exponentially more difficult to be happy about anything. Misery may love company - but it seems to prefer miserable company.

Which brings me to The Prince of Darkness. TPoD is an occasional client of mine with a amazingly bleak outlook on the world. If I'm being fair - I'd say that they came by this honestly. CorpWorld can do untold damage to your psyche, and I'm guessing TPoD is the product of eating many a sh!t sandwich while being paid a good wage.

I'm sure that does different things to different people - but in the case of TPoD they appear to have had all their optimism surgically removed and replaced with a black hole that only affects enthusiasm. I dread all meetings with this person.

And not because of their knee-jerk pessimism, but because they are generally well informed and I'm afraid their outlook might be justified. With the current financial climate being what it is - CorpWorld morale is at an all time low. Being around TPoD is a reminder that somewhere in the CorpWorld Castle, people you will never meet could destroy you without a second thought.

TPoD delights in illustrating the many pointless tasks of CorpWorld. Again, this wouldn't be so demoralizing if they didn't have a point.

Anyone who thinks there isn't a shocking amount of waste in the private sector hasn't been looking very hard. They should talk to TPoD. Their war stories run the gamut of Fortune 500 f____-ups:

Inflexible procedure, inconsistent procedure, silo'ed production, silo'ed waterfalls in parallel, dependent silo'ed waterfalls in parallel, unsynchronized dependent silo'ed waterfalls in parallel without change management, groupthink, I think, Don't think, duplicate documentation, incomplete documentation, dated documentation, no documentation mascarading as agile development, pilot projects without goals or desired ROI, projects based on the (still incomplete) pilot project without goals or desired ROI, factions, anti-factions, neophytes, free-agents, charlatans, tyrants, rabbits, sheep, and the ever-present specter of corporate death.

And that's just the warm up act. TPoD can spin real world stories for each of these that would drive the Dali Lama into a week-long bender.

Worse, they can re-cast your perception of your work product as the least essential part of a pointless and doomed exercise. They have a comeback for everything.

"But I want to help." You are not helping. You are merely dragging out this part of the process.

"We'll get more done if we just work." No, we won't. Everything we do will be reversed in the approval process.

"What if we get their buy in first?" They don't want buy in. They want to reverse whatever we recommend.

"How does that make sense?" Because it is consistent with how everything else is done around here.

You come out of every meeting with TPoD feeling like you should immediately call your account rep and demand they send a rescue team to get you. Like you won't survive a collision with the full tonnage of corporate stupid coming your way.

With the meeting's over, you're left with some menial to-do. Something that will inspire a sense of futility all out of proportion with the scant minutes it takes to complete. Why am I even doing this? What's the point?

If you're lucky, you'll have a different project to focus on to snap you out of it. If not, you'll end the day with TPoD's cynicsm ringing in your ears, following you home - making you wonder if you've completely wasted the years you've spent here.

I've never met anyone who quite matches the soul-sucking pessimism of TPoD. A worldview unblemished by concepts like hope or progress. Things suck, but they pay me.

I was naive a lot longer than I should have been, and I suppose there is value in a parallax with undiluted pessimism.

But I just can't give into that worldview.

Sure, things do suck, but they don't have to.

I just wish I didn't have regular contact with those who believe otherwise.

Paul Volcker: Wake up gentlemen

This is a beautiful thing to read:

Here's Volcker responding to the WSJ's Future of Finance Initiative proposals:

I heard an awful lot of particulars here that I agree with to some degree, but my overall impression is that you have not come anywhere near close enough to responding with necessary vigor or structural changes to the crisis that we have had.

If it is really true that financial weaknesses brought us to the brink of a great depression that would have ended your livelihood and destroyed a lot of the global economy, then let me explain.

You concluded with financial-services executives showing cultural sensitivity and responsible leadership. Well, I have been around the financial markets for 60 years, and how many responsible financial leaders have we heard speaking against the huge compensation practices?

Every day I hear financial leaders saying that they are necessary and desirable, they are wonderful and they are God's work. Has there been one financial leader to stand out and say that maybe this is excessive and that maybe we should get together privately to think about some restraint?

I hear about these wonderful innovations in the financial markets, and they sure as hell need a lot of innovation. I can tell you of two—credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations—which took us right to the brink of disaster. Were they wonderful innovations that we want to create more of?

You want boards of directors to be informed about all of these innovative new products and to understand them, but I do not know what boards of directors you are talking about. I have been on boards of directors, and the chance that they are going to understand these products that you are dishing out, or that you are going to want to explain it to them, quite frankly, is nil.

I mean: Wake up, gentlemen. I can only say that your response is inadequate. I wish that somebody would give me some shred of neutral evidence about the relationship between financial innovation recently and the growth of the economy, just one shred of information.

Volcker's take on financial "innovation?" the only financial innovation he can think of that improved society was the ATM.

Love it.


(H/t CJR)

Ice cream for freaks

Wondering what Bernie Madoff is up to these days? Here's a bit from the Wall Street Journal.

Some of Mr. Madoff's fellow inmates suspect he has money hidden somewhere and try to cozy up to him in hopes of learning its location. But correctional officers keep a close watch on Mr. Madoff and don't allow groups to crowd around him.

I'll bet.

(H/t to CJR)

Plutocracy

Here's a string of happy stories about where we are now, how we got here, and why we're unlikely to ever leave:

Citigroup is doing great. Really. No, don't look at the collasal tax break the government just gave them.

Why? because if do look you might realize that if Citi had to follow existing tax law they would have to go out and raise more capital. Why are they low on capital? Because they paid back the loans the taxpayers gave them. Make sense? Not really.

Financial firms argue that a 70 year old law is too old to apply to them - and the SEC buys it.

I'm wondering how old the property tax laws are in my neighborhood - maybe I could try this crap on my local government. Anyone care to give odds? Read the whole thing, if only for the guest appearance by everybody's favorite vampire squid.

Ginnie? You're starting to remind me of Fannie and Freddie

Yes, another federally backed entity enabled the creation and securitization of crappy loans. What else is new?

A group of old, white guys has decided the status quo should not be altered.

Or rather, it should be altered - but only in a way that most benefits their financial backers and least benefits the people they claim to work for.

We may live here - but it's for damn sure somebody else owns the place.

(H/t as ever, to CJR)

Taibbi on Obama

and it ain't pretty.

Here's my pick for the nut 'graph:

There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.

Fields of Athenry

Further proof (as if any was needed) that I am completely losing my mind.

Exhibit #435 - Driving home in perhaps the most domestic vehicle possible while screaming along to The Dropkick Murphys like I was some kind of drunken Irish patriot (when I am none of those things).

Lowes.com: Fail

Cooks Illustrated is one of those odd-duck magazines I can't seem to quit. The founder and editor, Christopher Kimball, is barking mad yet manages to oversee the publication of an engaging guide to the art and science of cooking.

And they review kitchen gear - the kitchen's traditional gateway drug for men.

Their reviews are right in line with my philosophy of gear - function over form, ease of use over style.

So what the hell does this have to do with Lowes?

Well, this month's issue reviews kitchen fire extinguishers and - having recently watched the mushroom-cloud detonation of a grease fire on Mythbusters - I figured I'd take them up on their advice.

Cooks Illustrated recommends the Kidde 10-B:C Kitchen Fire Extinguisher and even recommends a vendor - Lowes.com

It's less than twenty bucks and (serendipity!) I have two gift certificates to Lowes courtesy of my mother. The fact that there isn't a Lowes anywhere near where I live is beside the point. I have the interweb!!

Sadly - Lowe's website experience can be summarized as "there's no there, there."

CI gives me the item number, so I can instantly display the product I want (Item #: 121309)

Huzzah!

Only the website doesn't offer me an option to put this item in my cart.

Odd.

And it's telling me the nearest Lowes store doesn't carry this item. Why do I care? This is the interweb!!. The site's giving me a dropdown filled with other stores I can pick from.

They can't really expect me to...

But they do. I cannot buy this product from their website, unless I can select a store that stocks it. I blink through seven of the nearest stores, the nearest of which is hours away from my home. None of them carry this item.

So I can't put it in my cart and buy it. They list the product on their website and (last I checked) there is a vast and vibrant shipping industry in this country - yet Lowes not only wants me to road trip to their store, they want me to manually locate which of their hundreds of locations actually stocks this item.

Each store selection helpfully supplements this process with the equivalent of: Wrong! Guess again! after each selection.


As doing this for all stores in my region seems insane, I call their 800 number. After a suitably annoying IVR tree, I get connected with a rep. She verifies that, yes indeedy, there isn't a store near me that stocks this item - but she will check to see if there is a shipping option.

She asks for my name, address, and phone number to do this. Lowes will (get this) call me back within 24 hours.

Okay, I realize I'm spoiled by online vendors that ship products directly - but does Lowes really think that an online shopping experience that is shackled to the local inventory of their stores is what consumers want?

I don't care if the stores nearest me have this product - I went to a website so Lowes could find the item and ship it to me. The voodoo of whether it came from down the block or across the nation, I'll leave to their software. Just sell me the damn item.

But no, I have to call them and then wait for a call back.

When they do call back (predictably) I'm not around and they leave a message with E. They'll ship the item to my home but there's a UPS charge of $45. For a product they're selling for less than $20.

In other words - we don't want to sell you this item.

I realize that there's serious infrastructure issue in getting stores to pass inventory to each other for these kinds of sales - but cripes, they built the website to make it easy for me to find products I want only to discover they won't sell them to me.

Rrrgh!

Thirty seconds later, I discover that Amazon will connect me to a vendor in North Carolina that will ship the same extinguisher to me for $34 including shipping.

Way to go, Lowes. You should have just told me you don't have the item at all - I'd still be buying from someone else, but I'd at least feel inclined to give your site another shot.

538 does 2010 WC

I knew there was a reason I liked this guy.

FiveThirtyEight.com's Tom Schaller runs the numbers on the 2010 World Cup draw.

Nice crunchy analysis of who's favored to do well.

Downer: He's thinking we only have a 48% chance to advance out of our group.

Go Bucky

Somewhere, I am sure my former crim law professor is laughing his @ss off.

I mean - like all thinking people - I hate Duke's basketball team, but somehow this failure seems extra special.

You rah rah, baby.

I might watch that show

Megan Garber and Tom Schaller have already said most of what needs to be said about That Couple of dorks who managed to sneak into a state dinner.

But the best one liner on this topic yet comes from Republican Strategist Ed Rollins:

These people want a reality TV show, give them one. It’s called ‘Dealing With the Federal Prosecution System of the District of Columbia.

"Now that sounds like compelling television," chimes CJR's Alexandra Fenwick.

I couldn't agree more.

Another health care case study

Trudy Lieberman shows us how little the current health reform will do for a family unfortunate enough to have high deductible health insurance.

The net effect of all the "reforms?" - They get to keep the lousy coverage they have.

Paying for Pride

Felix Salmon has another delightfully provocative post where he skewers an American sacred cow.

He asks the logical question: if you're underwater on your mortgage, why pay?

Seriously.

As he puts it, when Hank Paulson was at Goldman he "would have fired anyone" who similarly threw good money after bad.

Here's my favorite bit:

It’s asymmetrical, it’s unfair, and it’s about time that homeowners started being informed that a ding to their credit score is not the end of the world; that no one would expect a capitalist company to behave in the way that individuals are being told to behave; and that their options are in fact broader than they might believe.

Twilight zone, or "God how I hate vampire fic"

I had listened to some fawning NPR piece about the Twilight book series and felt like venting my spleen on how stupid the whole concept of vampire lit is.

Set aside the fact that the series is based on a girl being madly in love with an animated corpse - the biggest problem I have with vampire-as-beau plotlines is that they attempt to bestow nobility on staying in a relationship with a man who poses a mortal threat to your existence.

Oh...isn't she brave for staying with a flesh-eating monster?

What a colossal crock of sh!t.

But only those who truly know the series can skewer it the way it deserves, so I'll link to the better work of others.

• Top 20 unfortunate lessons girls learn from Twilight
• Twilight and abusive relationships
  

It takes a Turk to do that

I'm having entirely too much fun with the website Letters of Note.

The latest find that had me laugh out loud was this exchange between British diplomats during WWII.:

H.M. EMBASSY
MOSCOW

Lord Pembroke
The Foreign Office
London

6th April 1943

My Dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.

We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.

(Signed)

Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr,
H.M. Ambassador.

Google makes me laugh

Guaranteed comic gold in three steps.

1. Go to Google's homepage
2. Type this into the search box and wait for the suggested auto-complete phrases to appear:
   
   Google won
   
   
3. Look at the suggestion about Chuck Norris

Like that?

Try these items as well:

• How to tell (look for the cat reference)
• How to ra (look for the children reference)
• I op (look for the wallet reference)
• Robots are (look for the medicine reference) 
• I like Jesus (don't worry, you'll see it) 
  

All of these, courtesy of Autocomplete Me

Love, Kurt - Jr.

Letters of Note posted a copy of the first letter then-Private Kurt Vonnegut Jr. sent to his family after being freed from German custody in WWII.

It's a good read:

I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God.

Are there more like you at home?

Felix Salmon tags Judge Jeffrey Spinner, of Suffolk County Supreme Court, as his hero of the day.

And no wonder.

The case involves IndyMac (which, you'll recall, exists only in memory) going after a homeowner in such a disgraceful way that the judge not only rejects their claim, not only dismisses any IndyMac claim on the house, but buries them with a motherload of judicial snark.

Here's just a sampling:

Regrettably, the Court has been unable to find even so much as a scintilla of good faith on the part of Plaintiff. Plaintiff comes before this Court with unclean hands yet has the insufferable temerity to demand equitable relief against Defendant

Ahhh... poetry.

Strict, but only when it's convenient

Tom Schaller over at FiveThirtyEight.com has a great post pummeling the typical knee-jerk argument that "Where in the Constitution does it say...?" that we see every time some kook doesn't like what they're seeing on the news.

A sample:

...if you want to be a strict constructionist, fine, but be one even when it’s inconvenient. Imagine if the Second Amendment read as follows: “A woman’s ability to survive childbearing being necessary to a free state, the right to abort a fetus shall not be infringed.” Now, do you think the anti-choice movement would simply ignore the leading clause and resign themselves to the idea that a woman has an unconditional right to abortion? Not a chance, and they'd be right to fight because the language clearly implies a conditional right.

And yet we almost never hear gun rights advocates mention the actual Second Amendment’s leading clause, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state….,” which at least suggests a collective right—indeed, obligation—to an armed defense of the state, rather than an individual’s right to use arms to protect himself and his property. For the record, I support gun rights with some restrictions, but that’s besides my point, which is that you can’t be so selective in citing the language in the Constitution that you chop off inconveniently ambiguous parts of the same sentence upon which you base a categorical claim.

Strict constructionalism is a perfectly valid viewpoint, so long as those espousing it understand how radically different it is from the America the founders tried to create - and the one espoused by the political right.

Rather like those cautionary tales about "be careful what you wish for." If we had only what was literally spelled out in ink in the Constitution - we would have a truly bizarre nation.

Polanski gets bail

(via the Beeb)

A Swiss court has accepted film-maker Roman Polanski's plea to be freed on $4.5m bail from a Swiss jail where he is being held for a US child sex case.

The court said Polanski could stay at his chalet in the Swiss Alps. He would be monitored by an electronic tag.

Even if you believe he won't pry off the tag and spirit himself across the border at the earliest opportunity - where is the compelling need for him to await extradition in a chalet as opposed to a cell?

Weak.

Two addendums:

It is highly unusual for extradition subjects to be granted bail in Switzerland, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes, adding that Polanski's first application was refused.

and from the Beeb's timeline:

It is thought Polanski will remain in jail until the Swiss Justice Ministry decides whether to appeal against the ruling.

Nice Exit

An overwrought developer tells their employer they are leaving - with style:

Respect.

(H/t Alltop)

Health Care, cost controls, and choice

It's really hard to know what to believe about heath care reform these days.

You read Robert Reich and this much ballyhoo'ed Public Option sounds more like a horse that's been compromised into a camel:

...the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House's shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and "centrists" in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

Yet this is the provision that will be filibustered by the right wing. Because it will destroy private health insurance and turn us into a socialist state.

Uh-huh.

Then you read Ronald Brownstein - and get a totally different perspective on what is and is not happening in the bill when it comes to cost controls:

...the Reid bill's fiscal strategy, and its vision of how to "bend the curve," almost completely follows Baucus' path from September. Baucus' bill was the first to establish the principle that Congress could expand coverage while reducing the federal deficit; now that's the standard not only for the Senate but also the House reform legislation. And, perhaps even more importantly, the Reid bill maintains virtually all of Baucus ideas' for shifting the medical payment system away from today's fee-for-service model toward an approach that more closely links compensation for providers to results for patients. In the Reid bill, there is some backtracking from Baucus' most aggressive reform proposals, but not much.

Almost everything Baucus proposed to control long-term costs have survived into the final bill. And, with only a few exceptions, that's just about all the systemic reforms analysts from the center to the left have identified as the most promising strategies for changing the economic incentives in the medical system. (The public competitor to private insurance companies championed by the Left would affect who writes the checks in the medical system, but not what the checks are written to pay for.)

That post heaps praise onto Sen. Reid's bill for a host of measures that are not part of the current media scream fest.

Then you have Lieberman. No, no - Trudy Lieberman - the one with a soul. She's been dogging this story since the beginning, dredging up all sorts of untidy details. Here's her latest find:

[it's] one of those pesky details embedded in both the House and Senate bills—a clause that lets insurance companies cross state lines to sell their wares. Way before last year’s election, Ronald Williams, the CEO of Aetna, told the Senate Finance Committee that allowing cross-state purchasing of health insurance was a necessary ingredient for reform. The Senate Finance Committee, along with the House, heard his plea.

The provision, euphemistically named the Health Care Choice Compact, would work like this: Two or more states could join together and allow insurers selling health coverage to be governed by the laws and regulations of the state where the policy was issued, not the rules of the state where they’re sold. So a company wanting to sell in, say, Wyoming or South Carolina—which may have weak regulations—could choose to issue its policies in those states but actually sell them in New York or California—where the rules are tougher. If policyholders have problems with their coverage, too bad: the rules of the weaker state would apply, and they could be out of luck.

Insurers, looking toward lucrative new markets, want to fashion their new policies without having to deal with the restrictions and consumer protections required by some states. In other words, the current definition of market reform will mean they have to insure sick folks; in return, they will offer policies with less coverage and fewer protections. Think of it as back-door underwriting—a process that limits these companies’ liability for high-cost claims.

This is the core of the insurers’ business strategy, wrapped in the guise of consumer choice. Remember, this is the Health Care Choice Compact we’re talking about. If consumers want a policy with few benefits or no protections, that’s their choice. It’s kind of like letting a U.S. toy manufacturer sell yo-yos that conform to Chinese—not American—regulations. Take your choice: a yo-yo with lead, or one without?

This is the same crap McCain tried to sell in the election. The same notion that candidate Obama dismissed as something that would lead insurance to follow the pattern of credit cards: a race to the bottom of customer service and value.

Seriously, WTF is going on up there? We're going to have grandstanding about the Public Option and miss the fact that insurance companies are going to end run consumer protection laws? And what about the cost control stuff? If it's good, how come we're not seeing it placed front and center in the discussions?

Instead, we breathless coverage of the vote count, and who's in and who's out. This isn't a horse race - this is the future of how families get health care. Let's nut up and talk policy, now. Otherwise we're going to see a CMFA for the health care industry squeak through while the talking heads blather on about the vote count.

Sudokubomber: is nothing sacred?

Officials of The Philadelphia Inquirer National Sudoku Championship have disqualified the third-place winner of the Oct. 24 tourney after an investigation, which included a retesting at The Inquirer last week.

Eugene Varshavsky of Lawrenceville, N.J., was stripped of his $3,000 prize after doing poorly in the retest.

Now that's just sad.

Not the cheating, but that this guy was smart enough to cheat his way into the final, but too dumb to fill in just a few numbers to win second place. I mean, if you're going to cheat, you could at least bother to learn the basics of the game.

Weak.

(H/t CJR)

Tactics of the collection agencies

This American Life had an interesting segment about a man plagued by bill collectors.

Not that he was being stalked, but the surprisingly varied tactics his creditors used to get in touch with him. One mailed him a bill every single day. Another called him only to play a Madonna song (in its entirety) and hang up.

The odd things they do are most of the fun, but Bill Cotter's nonchalant delivery is entertaining in itself.

The 445-year old bird

Saw this on the Beeb

Yes, that is a middle finger - and yes, it belongs to Galileo.

Volt porn

G'wan... you know you want it...

(Click for slideshow)

OoooOooOOoOoooooooo.....

(H/t Good blog)

Kwak, translating for Barofsky, sheds light on Maiden Lane III

Maiden Lane, the government's financial simulacrum on the A.I.G. bailout, has never made a lot of sense.

The IG report came out and (at least for types like me) is nigh impenetrable. Enter James Kwak over at Baseline Scenario. He's done the dirty work and written a seriously crunchy post on what happened and why we should give a damn.

Here an especially chewy bit:

...first AIG contributed $5 billion to Maiden Lane III and the New York Fed gave it a $24.3 billion loan. Then Maiden Lane III gave all $26.8 billion to the banks in exchange for the CDOs. (The banks accepted $26.8 billion because they already held $35.0 billion in collateral; together that makes $61.8 billion — as I said, I can’t get $300 million to reconcile.) Then Maiden Lane III gave $2.5 billion right back to AIG (this is the amount by which AIG had overcollateralized). As part of the deal, the banks agreed to tear up the original CDS on the CDOs, so AIG couldn’t lose any more on the CDS (which, remember, are separate from the CDOs).

The controversy is not over paying $29.3 (or $29.6) billion for the CDOs, since that was the market price. The controversy is over whether AIG should have agreed to settle the CDS at 100 cents on the dollar (meaning that the banks get the difference between the face value of the CDOs and their current market value). Bloomberg reported a while back that prior to the government bailout, AIG had been trying to negotiate a settlement at 60-70 cents on the dollar, but that that portion of the term sheet was crossed out in the final agreement. The implication is that paying the swaps off in full was a back-door, off-the-books way of funneling cash to banks that we didn’t want to fail.

So that's the setup. The Fed steers major cash into Maiden Lane, which offers insanely good terms to A.I.G.'s creditors.

This scenario would be made considerably worse if these were "naked swaps" (i.e. not swaps designed to insure the creditor's investment - but a bet that somebody else's investment was about to tank).

Did banks have their bets paid in full by taxpayers?

Let's ask our illustrious Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner:

"I will not answer that question."

Now, that's according to an interview with Rep. Peter DeFazio - and the NY fed is disputing this - but don't you think we should have a firm answer on this question?

Somebody knows the answer for real and should be able to prove it.

Did we cover their bets?

UEFA monitors betting patterns?

Here we go again:

About 200 European football games are under investigation in a match-fixing inquiry, German prosecutors have said.
...

On Thursday police carried out about 50 raids in Germany, the UK, Switzerland and Austria, making 17 arrests and seizing cash and property.

Yeah, yeah... more corruption, but what's interesting - at the end of the article about (yet another) investigation of match fixing in European soccer, there was this little tidbit:

[Following a German scandal in 2005] Uefa has since introduced an early warning system which flags up unusual betting patterns.

The betting fraud detection system monitors real-time betting, giving investigators an immediate idea of whether there are irregular patterns.

The recent arrests would seem to indicate the detection process is working, but the scale of the manipulation must be a concern...

I'll just *ahem* bet

FIFA to Ireland: Get over it

It's official. FIFA will do nothing about Thierry Henry's blatant handball that led to Ireland's elimination from the 2010 World Cup.

Gasp.

I get why FIFA isn't eager to change the status quote. Setting a precedent for "do-overs" (or writing a rule enshrining them) would be the thin end of a wedge of problems.

But you would think that at an individual level, they could address the conduct of the player. Henry could get the card he should have received for the handball.

Denying France their star striker in the group stage is no compensation for Ireland. But the current situation is tells players to do whatever they can get away with.

Ft. Hood: Yet again, the first draft is wrong

This is old news by now, but I thought it was interesting.

Here's the account of an eyewitness to the shooting of Maj. Hasan, as recorded by the NYT:

[The witness] said he was walking in a roadway between the main building, known as the Sportsdome, and five smaller buildings. Major Hasan was headed toward the main building, the witness said, when Sergeant Munley came around the corner of a smaller building. Major Hasan wheeled on her and shot her several times, the witness said. It was unclear whether she squeezed off a shot or not, but she fell over backward, with wounds in her legs and her wrist, the witness said.

Major Hasan then turned his back and began to shove another magazine into his pistol. He did not appear wounded, the witness said. A few seconds later, Sergeant Todd came around another corner of the same building, raised his weapon and fired several times at Major Hasan, who pitched over backward and stopped moving.

“He shot her, turned away from her and was reloading when he was shot,” said the witness, who was nearby.

Which is not to say this eyewitness couldn't be wrong, but read the full story if you haven't already seen it. It makes a case that the news networks might do a better job reporting if they shut up for awhile and got their facts right.

Draft Elizabeth Warren

(Via CJR)

“The time for pitchforks and torches is over.”
Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, discussing the current appetite for financial regulation.

All due respect, Mr. Talbott - but you're totally full of sh!t.

Prof. Elizabeth Warren has been uncovering all manner of shameful behavior by public and private financial officials. While I've loved her message, I've thought that it was tragic that the only reason she would speak the truth is because her right to speak was her only power.

Bloomberg has a great profile of Prof. Warren and her effect to date - but here's the bit that leaps off the page for me:

The House of Representatives will vote in December on [Prof. Warren's] idea. She suggested a Financial Product Safety Commission in a 2007 article in the magazine Democracy. President Barack Obama proposed it to Congress in June as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Warren won’t discuss whether she may be a candidate to lead the authority, which would have the power to regulate $13.7 trillion of debt products. A Warren nomination would tell banks that Obama is determined to force reduced checking-account fees and limit lender claims in mortgage advertising, among other measures the industry opposes, said Thomas Cooley, dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Now, I can appreciate that there are many hurdles before you have Prof. Warren heading a consumer protection agency with regulatory powers - but this sort of thing was only voiced by crazies only a few months ago. Now you have Bloomberg covering it as a tangible "what-if."

Wild.

Erin go whaa?

That's soccer.

Whenever a bad call is made by the ref or their assistants - this is the mantra that is spit out in the name of moving on.

The goal was clearly offside, yet was allowed to count. That's soccer.

Or:

We were denied a clear penalty, but that's soccer.

I suspect the line is an easy refuge for those who are prevented from expressing their true opinion. It lets them assume the mantle of sportsmanship - of stepping back to see the bigger picture. And in some cases, this can be more than just posturing - it can be an asset to the game.

But then there's sh!t like this:

That, is most definitely not soccer. That is cheating. That it is being done by the greatest player of the '86 World Cup (who suggested his goal was due to the "Hand of God") makes no difference. The world saw him cheat - then watched as FIFA did nothing about it.

That's soccer is not going to make something like that go away.

Neither is it going to do anything for the Irish - who are the latest victims of the policy that the on field ref is the sole arbiter of the game.

Ireland was tied at 1-1 on aggregate with France, which pushed them into extra time at the Stade de France. On a free kick into the Irish box - the ball went to France's Thierry Henry - who then palmed the ball to keep it from going out of bounds, directed the ball towards his foot, and then flicked the ball to Gallas - who nodded in the easy header.

It's on video and it's big as life. Henry even admits the ball hit his hand - although he hasn't admitted that it hit his hand because he grabbed the ball.

So the French go to the World Cup finals and the Irish go home.

Ireland is demanding a re-match - and FIFA is trying to stick to their guns. I understand the principle: once you open these things to any kind of after the fact arbitration, you turn soccer into politics and open the door for (yet more) corruption.

But fans will never forgive the injustice.

FIFA and the French are trying the "that's soccer" route - and it's ringing more hollow than ever. The French coach utterly disgraced himself by suggesting that we should all move on. "It's in the past, let's enjoy the moment..." to which the Irish manager (with admirable restraint) simply asked him if he'd seen the same match everybody else had.

In the past, bad calls were seen by a relatively small percentage of fans. But the speed of modern media makes it possible for a majority of fans to scream in unison and in real time.

FIFA simply cannot continue to sit on the sidelines.

Federal Court to the Corps: pay up

A small acknowledgment of the colossal failure of the Army Corps of Engineers to protect New Orleans:

"It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the Corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MRGO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia and short-sightedness," U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. wrote in his lengthy ruling, referring to the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet canal.

Oh, and they ordered a payout of just over $700,000.

I'm picturing a metaphorical levee, holding back hundreds of thousands of similar legal claims.

-and I'm thinking that levee won't hold.

TARP Inspector General's report: weak

Ryan Chittum is all over the latest chapter of how badly US taxpayers were served by the TARP bailout.

And he directs us to Yves Smith venting his spleen about the whole mess.

Cripes.

Also, I love the little addendum to Chittum's other post on this. He's quoting Floyd Norris - who asks:

If Goldman and other banks hedged against A.I.G. blowing up and defaulting on the credit default swaps, what companies agreed to cover the risk that A.I.G. would blow up?

Those companies were spared billions worth of losses by the A.I.G. rescue - and we don't even know who they are. The risk kept getting passed around, but somebody knows. And since we all generously agreed to save these people from their bad bet, I think they owe us the courtesy of an introduction.

Detroit gone wild

James Griffioen is a self-described freelance writer and photographer living in Detroit, Michigan.

He's posted an amazing collection of photographs of his city's abandoned houses. He calls them Feral Houses, and you'd be hard pressed to come up with a better name.

Modern Detroit is a boom town of abandoned structures. The usual remedies for such things don't appear to be able to cope with the current numbers.

So - nature's giving a hand:

(H/t E)

Odd science fact of the day, starring... Lithium

Courtesy of Dr. Phil Plait: (emphasis mine)

Somehow, having planets means a star loses its lithium. How the heck does that happen?

A brief digression. Lithium is a weird element. It’s the third lightest after hydrogen and helium, and unlike every other element after it on the periodic table, we don’t think it’s made inside stars. It’s too fragile; the nuclei get smashed up easily, and so it doesn’t last long in the cores of stars. That means that as far as we can tell, all the lithium in the Universe was created in the Big Bang.

Just because it gets wrecked in the cores of stars does not mean they have no lithium at all. Lithium created in the Big Bang would have been in clouds where stars formed, and if a lithium nucleus can avoid the core of the star by staying nearer the surface, it can survive. The Sun has lithium in it, for example, but at far less abundance (<1%) than what you see out in gas clouds. That means the Sun has destroyed a lot - but not all - of its lithium supply.

When astronomers look at other stars like the Sun, the amount of lithium they possess varies wildly. But now it appears that the amount of lithium in a Sun-like star depends on whether it has planets or not. Stars without planets have, on average, 10 times the lithium as stars with planets in the sample.

Weird.

The Stolen Valor of Vietnam

Several years ago, I remember watching a news story about a medal of honor winner. This man was in his sixties and had chosen to devote his golden years to exposing impostors who claimed to have won the Medal of Honor.

He was driven. His eyes flashed when he talked about those who he'd exposed as frauds. How dare they?

At the time, I'd discussed this story with a family member who scoffed at this man. "Sounds pretty sad to me," they'd said, "embarrassing these old frauds - and for what?"

I think they'd have had a point if the veteran was doing it for the sake of their own award. It would seem petty and prideful. But this man's drive was on behalf of others - dead men who'd won an honor. And their honor was being diminished by the undeserving.

To me, the distinction was ennobling.

Today, I read about a man with a similar quest - and I have to say my impression was the same. In the latest issue of  Columbia Journalism Review, Russell Working revisits the 1998 book Stolen Valor and I have to say I'm sad to have missed it the first time around.

It's by a man named B.G. Burkett, who is determined to point out that popular view of Vietnam veterans is absolutely backward. Burkett's aim was to expose the complete lack of journalism standards in news accounts of Vietnam veterans. Using basic tools like FOIA requests, Burkett let the air out of stories where criminals blamed non-existent Vietnam experiences. Journalists wrote the stories that fit the public mood, and basic fact checking wasn't done. Brazen frauds became heroes, and the collective reputation of veterans became an unjust stereotype.

It's not often you read something that reverses a long held view, but these three paragraphs did for me:

     For reporters trying to make sense of the phenomenon of [Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome], Stolen Valor offers particular cause for concern. Since the war's end, veterans' activists have claimed that anywhere from 200,000 to 2 million of the 3.3 million men who served in the Vietnam theater suffer from PTSD - never mind that fewer than 15 percent of those who set foot in the country were in front-line combat units, Stolen Valor notes. A four-year, $9 million study commissioned by Congress and undertaken by North Carolina researchers concluded that 830,000 Vietnam veterans were suffering from full or partial PTSD.

     Impressive numbers indeed. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that only 2.2 percent of Vietnam veterans had the disorder. And the North Carolina study clearly had some methodological flaws. For example, it cited six women who claimed their disorder had been caused by being prisoners of war. "Apparently," write [authors] Burkett and Whitley, "no one involved in analyzing the survey realized that not a single American military woman was ever a prisoner in this war."

     This is not only a matter of principle, but of public finance. The VA offers life-long disability payments to those suffering from PTSD, we read, yet is willing to accept documentation from veterans without checking military records to see if the form has been altered. The result, according to Stolen Valor, is an inflated roster of PTSD victims earning $32,076 per year tax-free for 100 percent disability at taxpayer expense - and more, if there are dependents.

Which is not to suggest that there's no such thing as a PTSD afflicted Vietnam veteran. But the idea that large percentages of them are drug users, psyche cases and criminals deserves a brutal dose of skepticism.

Maj. Hassan, Political Correctness, and Utter Insanity

“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance,” [Senator] Lieberman said. “He should have been gone.”

First off, somebody get that man a puppy already. I'm tired of listening to his desperate pleas for attention.

Second - let's just look at the idiocy of his remark. I've yet to see an account of Maj. Hassan saying to people he had become an Islamist extremist. I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate - but I'd guess when a person consciously decides to become an extremist, I think it's atypical for them to refer to themselves as an extremist. After all, they're not crazy - everybody who disagrees with them is.

Now, Maj. Hassan did give a truly odd presentation in June 2007 entitled The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military. Stranger yet, he did this when he was expected to speak on a medical topic. His presentation was 50 slides long. It begins with general facts and figures about Islam and ended with the recommendation that Muslims soldiers be allowed to become conscientious objectors to increase troop morale and "decrease adverse result." In between are the controversial slides depicting Koranic verse that suggests that unbelievers will taste punishment of blazing fire, "like boiling oil, it will boil in their bellies" and that "as often as their skins are roasted through, We shall change them for other skins that they may taste the punishment."

That ought to have earned him some unfriendly attention. I've yet to see anything that definitively establishes that his supervisors did anything or not. But the expectation that this speech alone could be turned into grounds for dismissal from the service....?

Think about what that would mean. About what kind of a message that sends to loyal Muslim soldiers - or to Muslim Americans in general. "Sure, we'll let you in the military, but as soon as you say your religion is better than ours we're kicking you out."

I've been in the company of plenty of servicemembers who thought their religion meant that all non-Christians were going to roast in hellfire. A standard that would retain their services yet discharge Muslims for similar views is about as transparently bigoted as you can get.

But the far right is ready for that argument - it responds that "Political Correctness" has made us less safe. That somehow equality and diversity in the ranks has eroded the military's ability to protect itself.

First off, the militant who is dismissed from the service is merely a pissed off militant in the civilian sector. If Maj. Hassan had become citizen Hassan and had walked into a shopping mall with his two pistols - what would have been achieved? And we'd have the cost to decent, law-abiding Muslims who would suddenly be second class citizens at the insistence of a frenzied majority.

Memo to the nut-bags on the right: the idea that Muslims be treated differently under the law than members of other faiths is un-American. More importantly, it is unconstitutional, and an assault on a founding principle of democracy: equality under the law.

If you're against that, you are against the constitution - and I cannot imagine how you can defend America by undermining the very document to which this nation owes its creation and identity.

Scratch four

In counter-insurgencies, you read a lot about how the bad guys attack and then fade away before the cavalry arrives.The IED-centric nature of the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan bears this out. You have troops stressing over getting killed by bombs placed by people they have never seen.

Well, Free Range International's babatim has a post that establishes that bad guys in A-stan are perfectly capable of doing something incredibly stupid.

While enjoying a morning cup of coffee and checking email up on the Baba Deck with a group of friends who are in from the States we saw what was clearly the signature of a tanker attack just up the road. That has never happened this close to Jalalabad before so we conducted a brief staff meeting which consisted of saying “let’s go” and headed up the road to see what was what.

What was what was a Taleban ambush of a fuel tanker convoy Jalalabad had just kicked off - and the bad guys had picked the wrong place and the wrong time.

Worth a read.

A way out of our national debt

(Via the Onion News Network)


U.S. Government Stages Fake Coup To Wipe Out National Debt

Ok, I should not have laughed at this, but

(Via the Onion News Network)

(Oh, NSFW - Use headphones)


Victim In Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck

Stewart rips Glenn Beck a new one

(Via TPM)

Is there anything better than well aimed satire?



Mr. Beck? I believe you've been served.

Credit to the man from Minnesota

Apropos of nothing, I was looking up the process by which we passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That'd be the one that prohibited the government from regulating the Credit Default Swaps that encouraged big investors to take massive risks. These were the  financial products that brought down A.I.G, and damn near everything else..

Anyway - Phil Gramm gets most of the blame for this little slice of legislation, but I remember reading how this was a bipartisan bill.

So, I'm looking it up and find the House Roll Call, noting that my very progressive representative voted for it, but the Senate passed it by unanimous consent - meaning that there was no recorded roll.

Huge spending bill, including provisions that would nearly destroy our economy - no record of who was for and against. Interestingly enough, the agreement to pass the bill by unanimous consent was constructed such that objections after the agreement did not invalidate unanimous consent.

Of the two senators who spoke up - one was the late Senator from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone:

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President I want to voice my strong objection to 
the process by which this legislation is being passed by the Senate. 
The Omnibus Appropriations conference report--containing numerous other 
pieces of unrelated legislation--is being passed by the Senate tonight 
under a consent agreement that was entered suddenly by the Majority 
Leader without the normal notification process. We should have had a 
recorded vote. Since I first came to the Senate 9 years ago I have felt 
that it does the Senate no credit to pass such significant budgetary 
legislation--literally hundreds of billions of dollars--without a 
recorded vote. We cannot be held accountable as Senators to our 
constituents when such bills are passed in this manner. I want to make 
it clear; I oppose this legislation and I would like the Record to show 
that I would have voted no had there been a recorded vote.

Now, I won't presume that Sen. Wellstone foresaw any looming financial cataclysm, but his point here is well made. The Senate used procedure to obscure who supported a piece of legislation that they were passing. I'm sure this continues in many forms, but I think Sen. Wellstone's position is only amplified by that fact.

You pass a bill, your name should be recorded.

Goldmann + New Century = Evil

Ryan Chittum raves about another McClatchy piece documenting how hip deep Goldman Sachs was in the subprime mess. He does the blow by blow of Goldman's dealings with New Century, then follows up a nice summation of what passed for subprime underwriting according to Goldman Sachs:

Goldman Sachs Mortgage, however, published guidelines in early 2007 indicating that it would accept a "stated income, stated asset" loan for a person with a subpar credit score of 600 who was borrowing 90 percent of his or her home's value. The designation meant that although the borrower had poor credit, his or her claimed income and financial background would go unchecked.

He also links back to a lurid 2008 BusinessWeek article that sounds like it came from TV. Chittums pull quote is enough to get you to read it, but here's the one I'd have pulled:

"I didn't want to be a mortgage slut."

Death in perspective

Information is Beautiful has a new graphic depicting the causes of all recorded deaths in a 300 day period.

The graphic's creator, Michæl.Paukner, sources the data to a web app called the world clock, which is in turn sourced to the WHO data - which appears to be estimated.

However, the perspective is still useful.