"The worst of the recession"

Is not over for an awful lot of us.

And I do not want to hear that my government will "sacrifice" like "American families" do, because all that means is that people in my situation and people far worse off will be the sacrificial animals.

Someone, convince me that we're not fucked.

WTF

I'm telling myself that the president is SO HIP, he knows what Winning The Future becomes on Twitter.

Epiphany

So perhaps the secret to keeping down the blood pressure is simply this: get all news in written form. News outlets, blogs, doesn't matter. Also NPR, NPR is fine. The only thing that matters is that one avoids, at all costs, television news.

Because as soon as you turn on the cable, you will see and hear the incestuous paid anchors and analysts and assorted denizens of the echo chamber that is "I get paid to talk about this" TV news, and they will always- always- offer some tidbit, some SURPRISING observation, which will drive up the damn blood pressure once again.

So yesterday, after I had blogged about not having the capacity for shock, outrage, or snark these days, I turned on MSNBC for a bit and got to hear Pat Buchanan (and who isn't surprised that he's on TV at all?) say that we are in a "near 1930 situation in the financial sector, and hoping it doesn't spill over to the larger economy".

What fucking planet does he live on? Why is he ever on my teevee?

So that was, perhaps, my first surprise! for the new year. And the accompanying epiphany: If I need something to get angry about (because anger is often a prime inspiration for action), all I need to do is spend a bit of time with cable news.

Alaska Trooper-gate

Anchorage Daily News:

Palin's lawyer has asked the Legislature to drop its investigation. He had the governor file an ethics complaint against herself, in a bid to turn the entire matter over to the state Personnel Board, which would hire an independent investigator.

This is not an open and transparent attempt to establish Gov. Palin's accountability. It is an attempt to drag out the investigation until after voters decide the fate of her vice-presidential bid.

Hey national media: does this one pass your muster? Or would you rather continue to self-obsess over whether you're allowed to talk about her family?

Who's more scary: the racist "base" or the guys at the top?

The other night at a barbecue, a man asked me, regarding Obama:

Do you really think he'll live through his first term?

I answered first, I certainly hope so. Second, and more importantly, I don't think fear is a rational basis for making such a decision, so I don't contemplate that question very much.

It is very likely true, as Dave Neiwert posits, that when Obama takes the office, there will be a far-right backlash, sort of the '90s on steroids. It is also possible that we will avoid another Oklahoma City, and that presidential security is strong enough to thwart assassination. After all: meth-heads plotting assassination last week were arrested before they could leave their hotel room.

But Neiwert has a frightening post today on those meth-heads: why, when the FBI wanted them charged with conspiracy to assassinate Senator Obama, the Rove appointed US attorney declined.

Amy Goodman was charged this week with Conspiracy to Commit Riot for the crime of stepping off the convention floor and into the street.

These men had a plan and the equipment to carry it out, the fed has weapons and testimony to convict with, and the US Attorney declined?

Another funny thing: When a black man in prison sent a threatening letter containing baby powder to John McCain, Troy Eid brought down the full force of the law, complete with press conferences and public declarations that "We won't stand for threats of this kind in Colorado."
But when it’s a claque of white men with rifles, disguises, and all the accoutrement of a conspiracy – as well as open admissions to it – Troy Eid isn’t worried. After all, they just a bunch of harmless, tweakers, right? … Just like little Timmy McVeigh.
But then, when you’re a Karl Rove operative promoted to deliver justice the Republican way, as Troy Eid is, that’s the way the scales fall. As Marcy reported at the time, Eid in fact nearly didn't get the Colorado job because of concerns about "improper lobbying."
His failure to take this matter seriously is itself a serious matter. When law-enforcement officials let this stuff slip by, they send a dangerous message to other would-be plotters out there. And next time, they may in fact be more competent.

I really don't know what else to say.

When the Grand Old Party comes to town

College students, hide your laptops and whatever you do, don't stay with a bunch of friends in a single house. Because freedom of assembly is not guaranteed to dirty fucking hippies.

Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald are in Minneapolis, and when word got 'round of SWAT raids on 5 DFH houses, they took their cameras and hit the streets.

Black clad, heavily armed officers entered without warrant, handcuffed occupants and laid them face down on floors for up to 45 minutes. Laptops and political materials confiscated, no charges filed, except for two people who will be charged with "conspiracy to commit riot", a vague statute which has, apparently, never been used up to know, and which will almost certainly face a constitutional test in the courts after this weekend's raids.

Glenn's post has video and links to local coverage. Jane has more.

I was at an end of summer pool party yesterday, and talking with a man who's political cynicism was palpable. You know the drill: both parties corrupt, no difference, we're screwed. I made a rather impassioned plea for practical engagement over cynicism: of course we can screw it up if we win, on any number of fronts and in any number of ways. The point is to try, and to put your support behind the candidate who lays out ideas that you believe are most likely to give good results.

"But it doesn't bother you that they can record all of your email and collect all of your data and spy on you without reason and," etcetera.

Of course that matters to me! It matters deeply to me! Which is why I cannot fathom allowing the party that has worked so hard to strip us of constitutional protections to retain power.

This weekend's raids underscore this for me, in dramatic fashion. Police in Denver may have behaved badly with protesters, and the DNC may have been overly aggressive in keeping the scene media-friendly for the candidate.

But the RNC will preemptively attack anyone who may pose a political threat: through political prosecutions approved by the justice department, and by raiding groups whose crime is, say, non-violent political protest.

The RNC is criminal. Their use of local and national law enforcement is criminal.

Wondering what kind of media coverage this story will get.

Calling all PUMAS: you're embarrassing me

The McCain camp's big strategy for this week is to use the simple little women it can get near to sow discontent in the Democratic party and peel away feminist support for Barack Obama. And the disgusting thing is that there seem to be quite a few simple little women lining up to help them do it.

Witness the ad they released: a Washington nurse and Hillary delegate, telling you "It's okay" to vote for a man who voted against the Lebetter legislation on equal pay this year.

Witness the pandering "Happy Hour for Hillary" party they're throwing in Denver.

Are you all so stupid that you don't understand you're being used? Are you all so self-involved that you don't notice when you're being lied to?

Got a problem with Obama referring to someone as "sweetie"? What about McCain referring to his wife as a cunt?

You wanna buy the idea that he will support Roe v. Wade? Did you watch the Saddleback forum? Have you listened to anything he has said on the subject during his entire public life- other than one comment in 1999? How about checking something easy- like his campaign website?

"Country before party"? So you think that the economy is swell, war is good, and if we deregulate everything except equal pay we'll be better off after 4 years of McCain? And that's why you were supporting Hllary Clinton?

I understand that there is an argument for acknowledging your disappointment. I know that you aren't fond of Obama, for whatever reason. But if your answer to all of this is to let the Republicans use you, you're an embarrassment.

I want my habeas back

The AG thinks the FBI needs broader surveillance powers, and he's fixin' to do something about it. From NYT:

WASHINGTON — A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.

The plan, which could be made public next month, has already generated intense interest and speculation. Little is known about its precise language, but civil liberties advocates say they fear it could give the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations.

On Tuesday, I listened to a really great Fresh Air with Terry Gross segment with Michael Beschoss, on his book Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964.

A couple of bits of the original tapes from October 1964 are fascinating and have topical relevance. LBJ is on the eve of a reelection campaign, and his private conversations with a couple of key figures kept me in my car. Listen to his conversation with Billy Graham (about 9 minutes in at the link above) if you think that using evangelical leaders to cover one's political ass was invented in 1980.

The segment that I'm thinking about this morning, though, was a conversation toward the end of October with J. Edgar Hoover.

LBJ is worried, because there are rumors of a pending "October Surprise" planned by the Goldwater camp. Specifically, he's worried that Goldwater's team may have found and will name secret homosexuals within the administration, or photos of Johnson himself with a woman of ill repute. A Republican operator has scored a point earlier in the month, discovering that close Johnson aide Walter Jenkins was arrested at a DC YMCA having sex with a man. The press was tipped off, and Johnson suddenly feels vulnerable on the "morality" issue.

On the one hand, this tape has a comic edge: Johnson is aware of the rumors about Hoover's sexuality, so he is probably taking some real pleasure in pressing him about how one might know that someone was "queer". It's amusing if disgusting as they discuss the ways men part their hair, "walking funny", mannerisms, and the like.

But this conversation is only one part of a broader narrative. Johnson was on the phone with The director of the FBI a lot during these weeks, for one reason and one reason only: to put a stop to any opposition research hitting the press in the run up to the election.

Beschloss makes the point that this was in no way atypical presidential behavior. That the FBI should be used to silence potential scandal doesn't appear to have been questioned. We talk about the "hands off" approach that the press took with FDR's disabilities or JFK's private life, but I wonder how much of that had to do with the presidential ability to call out the goons when needed to squelch gossip or unflattering information.

The Nixon administration's grasping paranoia brought an end, for a time, to the use of the FBI as a private security force and the DOJ as a political shield. But since 9/11/01, new fears and paranoia have given strength to the expansion of executive power and the lessening of restrictions or oversight with regard to the practices of the military, the FBI, the NSA, and the DOJ. The agencies and institutions which could wreak the most damage to a constitutional republic have been steadily freed from restrictions designed to protect the country and its citizens from constitutional abuse, while the institutions whose role it is to provide oversight and correction have seen their influence steadily usurped (congress) or undermined through political maneuvering and deck-stacking (the courts, the free press). All under the undying zombie meme that they need all these "tools" to prevent another major terrorist attack.

But. It has been extensively documented that the failures of the FBI and intelligence agencies prior to 9/11/01 were due not to a lack of information, but a lack of action. The FBI had plenty of dots to connect, plenty of actionable intelligence. The lack was in leadership. Anti-terrorist investigation was not given priority, and key information was not shared up the chain of command.

The idea that 9/11/01 would have been prevented if only the agencies had better tools is false. But it's prevalent, and it has lead to the destruction of law and order, and of constitutional protections. While I'm sure that Bush and Mukasey really just want to keep everybody safe, they are creating tools which can -and will, given our history- be used as political bludgeons, and undermine the integrity of our criminal justice system.

Quite a legacy.

Mukasey, for his part, says that the new guidelines are intended merely to assist poor, confused agents, who cannot seem to figure out the rules as they are (this is the same reason Mukasey gives for the politicization of Justice under AG Gonzalez). He has agreed not to sign the new guidelines until after a congressional hearing on 9/17.

Let's hope the congress shows some spine. That would be a nice change.

If not racism, then what?

I have been thinking for a couple of weeks about the "If we can't have Hillary, we will elect McCain" camp. And I have been thinking that if their issue with Obama isn't race, then I don't know what it is.

Now, I do know people who are disheartened by Obama's nomination victory. They really believed in Hillary, and they're not so sure about Obama. And they frankly aren't sure what they want to do on election day.

I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about this guy and this woman.

Surely it's not about feminism. For one thing, I doubt the Texas good ole boy has been waiting and pleading with the gods for a woman POTUS his whole adult life. Sure, I'm making assumptions based on his gender and where he's from, but I'd say they're pretty safe assumptions.

Aside from that, though, there isn't any reason for a feminist to want McCain in the White House, unless they're hoping that he'll screw women over so badly that there'll be a decades long backlash against conservative patriarchy. And that would be a considerable longshot.

Policies not having to do with women? Ok, so maybe they really want a POTUS who casually tosses around the idea of bombing several million people into oblivion. They thought Hillary could do it, now she won't have the opposrtunity, and MCCain certainly loves to talk about fire power.

But for one to be exercised enough about jumping to McCain, for one to make a few waves and get some screaming into the collective consciousness, one is presumably paying attention to the politics, has some strong opinions on policy and the direction of the country. This type of person couldn't easily switch from the first serious female democratic nominee to John McCain over Barack Obama based on policy ideas, could they?

I'm doubting it.

It's race.

Fortunately, I don't belive that racism will win this time around.

Sunday schadenfreude- of the primary sort

Part I

I really don't believe that Hillary meant to evoke threats to Barack's safety when she talked of RFK's assasination. In her tired tin-eared way, she was trying to make the case that Bobby was still in the race heading in to the summer, and the nominating process was still way up in the air.
And yes, it is entirely plausible that he was just on her mind. The Kennedys are on a lot of our minds this week: Ted's diagnosis, Bobby on the cover of
Vanity Fair, and many of us hoping that we're headed for a new frontier.

So enough about that, already.

Tidbit- extra icky update

Update: Sadly, No! points us to Zirkle's campaign blog.
No, I know: it's not that I'm worried about him being elected. It's that sometimes, words are so weird you can't let them go.

Like "Derringers for Dildos", for instance. I kid you not.

More from Orcinus here.


This was one of the ickier stories from the week. When I start to feel like maybe So Cal isn't really such a bubble, that things can't be that different here, I see a story like this and thank the universe that I live here.

Yes, dismiss him as a fringe freak- by all means. But he was an Indiana State's attorney. He had a job- a respected title. He was... respectable.

Just ick.

Economy- macro

Mack has been busy, busy, busy, writing papers and giving talks and fleshing out his analysis of the problems in our speculative economy.

I love to talk with Mack about these things, because while he goes off into concepts and jargon that I am completely unfamiliar with and cannot directly address (securities, commodities, these are his things), we eventually come to places where I feel solid footing, and we tend to agree on end points.

Anyway: we've been talking a lot about structural problems, and I want to get into them in more depth here, but I have to read and think first. My essential position is what I've written about before: betting the proverbial farm on deregulation and rampant speculation, and this is deeply flawed, and we keep acting suprised every time our bets are called and the bank can't pay.

As we autopsied dead savings and loans, we were absolutely amazed by the number of ways thrift rogues were able to circumvent, neuter, and defeat firewalls designed to safeguard the system against self-dealing and abuse. One of the favorite methods was to link up like-minded thrifts in the daisy chains through which they could circulate inflated assets and hide their rotten loans to each other and to each other's customers from regulators.

Banks that need to get money to a troubled securities affiliate will do exactly the same thing. By linking up three or more banks, each with its own securities subsidiary, a daisy chain will facilitate a round robin of reciprocal loans in times of need. Then, the next time we have a Black Monday on Wall Street, this daisy chain will swing into action as a handful of mega-banks try to prop one another's securities subsidiaries and their customers as the market plummets.

In such a scenario, billions of federally insured dollars will disappear in the twinkle of a few program trades.

That will happen, not might happen but will happen, and when it does these too-big-to-fail banks will have to be propped up with Federal money. In the smoking aftermath, Congress can stand around and wring its hands and give speeches about how awful it is that these bankers violated the spirit of the law, but once again, the money will be gone, the bill will have come due, and taxpayers will again be required to cough it up.

That was testimony given before congress in 1991 by Stephen Pizzo, and recounted recently by Andrew Leonard on his (very excellent) blog, How the World Works.

If you're looking for some homework and you want to stretch your brain, try some commodities reading. Here's Mack.

The Charmer

I have been promised by a dear friend that this country will never elect a President Huckabee.

Today in Michigan:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

ht Lawyers Guns & Money