A review of documents provided by the university to The Day also shows that the governor's office did not fully comply with previous requests for public records, leaving out a handful of e-mail responses from Moody to Dautrich, including a message that thanks the professor for his help in crafting Rell's budget speech.
Harris declined to comment on any of the new findings in the UConn documents, but said in an interview this week that the Moody e-mails had been withheld from a reporter inadvertently because the governor's staff had not correctly used the "Find" function in the Outlook e-mail program when complying with The Day's records request.
1st thing: Harris, she wasn't complying with The Day's record request. You know... Kind of like what happens in a "cover-up". A really big part of this story.
2nd thing:Was Dautrich Rell's equivalent of Bush's Brain? Because her excuse is what I might expect to hear from a child. Her messaging is all over the place without his focus group tested waste of taxpayers' money asshattery.
Rell's politics and policies were always marginal. Now her excuses for them are too.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And William Black, where is the outrage? It seems to me, at this stage, with the—as the foreclosures continue to escalate in numbers, and yet we’re seeing these enormous profits less than a year after the financial crisis. There doesn’t seem to be the kind of outrage, even in Congress, that there was six months or eight months ago.
WILLIAM BLACK: There’s no palpable outrage, certainly not in Congress. The reform efforts on derivatives, for example, are a scandal. They exempt virtually all of the problem derivatives, and they’re designed to exempt it. And that’s the bill that’s introduced, and of course it’s likely to get worse with additional lobbying from the special interests.
Link the things that you’ve just been talking about. You talked about foreclosures reaching record highs. But in fact, foreclosures, relative to delinquencies, are quite low compared to historical ratios. In other words, banks have tons of folks who are not paying their mortgages on time, and they’re not foreclosing. And the reason they’re not foreclosing is, once you foreclose, you have to recognize losses under the accounting rules. And the banks gimmicked the accounting rules. They put pressure on Congress, and Congress put pressure on the accounting profession to gimmick the accounting rules now about a year ago. Now, these bonuses, of course, are paid compared to alleged profits. What happens if you understate your losses dramatically? You report much higher profits and much higher bonuses. So this is a web of fraud, in which they are getting as much as they can before the place goes to hell in a handbasket again.
The Dow is Up but Your House is Gone So here we have another bankster scam being waged on the consuming public. The scam is to create another "too big to fail" scenario as they make record profits and pay out record bonuses by rigging their books.
But the good news is the Dow is up.
So you or someone you care about is likely without a job or looking for more work. But the elite are rigging the system again, and you are going to fix things next time by voting for a Republican.
And what are these bankers with their Enron style accounting doing to help the homeowners that are on the verge of losing their homes? You can be certain that they are still out there offering ARMs to unsuspecting victims of their financial rape of the world.
It's time to recognize what it means to be part of the billionaire-bailout nation. Citizenship comes in three distinct flavors.
If you are wealthy, it's fantastic to take part in the resurgent Wall Street boom. You are thrilled to see the trillions in taxpayer dollars successfully prop up the financial sector. After all it's not really your money -- your tax shelters take care of that. You love the rise in the markets. You are now reaping the rewards of investing in a sector that rests firmly upon government welfare, and in which the largest institutions are guaranteed from failure. It feels good to see double-digit returns again, which you feel you truly deserve.
The gap between your wealth and the average American's is utterly fantastic. Life is good. If you have a job, you are feeling better than a year ago. Your 401k is coming back from the dead. The stimulus program seems to be helping with your employment. You may even get some relief from health care reform. But you are not seeing your wages increase. (Overall the average production workers real wages are down more than 18 percent since the mid-1970s.) It's not easy to maintain a middle-class existence or get anywhere near one if you're not already there. Layoffs might be slowing down but you are still petrified that your job will soon disappear. You are unsure you can provide for your children's education and your own retirement. The future seems much less secure than it did for your parents' and grandparents' generations.
If you don't have a job you're in deep trouble. You are a "lagging indicator."
If you are among the Nouveaux Welfare Riche of the world?
Then your life is still good. The rest of us will never have a chance unless they fix the real problems.
But his refusal to subpoena records involving Countrywide Financial, a company blamed for lending practices that contributed to the subprime mortgage crisis, has made Mr. Towns himself the target of criticism.
Now, I don't really care about the faux smears of some Democrats that underlie the overall schemes of the opposition party. The real problem here is that if they start looking at the symptoms of this Great Recession? The Bank of America owned Coutrywide mortgage mills?
Apparently, when you say something long enough and loud enough, people start to believe it, even when it defies reality. Here, for instance, is the normally skeptical Barney Frank on the subject: “What happened was an explosion of loans being made outside of the regular banking system. It was largely the unregulated sector of the lending industry and the underregulated and the lightly regulated that did that.”
To which I can now triumphantly reply: Oh, really???
Last weekend, after the column was published, an angry mortgage broker — someone who felt she and her ilk were being unfairly scapegoated by the banking industry — sent me a series of rather eye-opening documents. They were a series of fliers and advertisements that had been sent to her office (and mortgage brokers all over the country) from JPMorgan Chase, advertising their latest wares. They were dated 2005, which was before the subprime mortgage boom got completely out of control. They’re still pretty sobering.
“The Top 10 Reasons to Choose Chase for All Your Subprime Needs,” screams the headline on the first one. Another was titled, “Chase No Doc,” and described the criteria for a borrower to receive a so-called no-document loan. “Got Bank Statements?” asked a third flier. “Get Approved!” In a number of the fliers, Chase makes it clear to the mortgage brokers that the bank doesn’t need income or job verification — it just needs to look at a handful of old bank statements.
On Wednesday prosecutors painted a different story, claiming that the men knew their success as managers of mortgage-related funds was coming to an end in the spring of 2007, so they began a campaign of lies to keep investors from withdrawing their funds in the hopes of turning things around. The funds collapsed in July of that year, costing investors about $1.6 billion.
Messrs. Cioffi, 53 years old, and Tannin, 48, potentially face a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of the several fraud counts of which they were charged in 2008, after a year-long investigation.
Defense lawyers have stressed that most of the investors were banks, insurance companies and investment funds, who knew the risks of investing in the Bear Stearns funds.
It's "human nature" to "use hindsight bias" against people after "things don't turn out well," but "that's not fair to Matt," Ms. Brune said about her client. "This is a case about trying to do your best," she said.
Since we know that they haven't stopped selling junk mortgages even as they are purposely ignoring the billions and billions in mortgages that should be putting them into the major losses category so they can continue to get their great bonuses, and they are still gambling with credit derivatives and credit default swaps at the same unregulated pace that brought the economy of the world down...
It will be impossible for them to claim the "hindsight bias" defense the next time this comes down the pike.
You don't have to be a financial genius to know it is all coming again because none of the problems, the real causes like Derivatives and CDS and myriad practices of these Wall Street financial fraudsters, nor the symptoms like the mortgage mills offering up ARMs and other economic disasters waiting to happen, have been stopped:
I have posted this warning of Bank of America's (BAC) naked swap writing to my subscribers a few weeks ago. Since BAC is reporting this week, I have decided to make my suspicions public. I have found evidence that this bank has $32 billion of naked (as in apparently unhedged) swaps on its books - just like AIG. The difference is this bank is bigger, probably has more exposure, and has already been bailed out - several times. Oh, did I mention the insured collateral is nearly half BBB rated or lower? How about extreme management issues at the top, and I mean all the way to the top (the CEO may actually bring down the ex-treasury secretary and maybe even the Fed Chairman). A trunk full of junk, surrounded by drama. It should be an interesting conference call today when they report, that is if anybody decides to ask the right questions.
As many of my subscribers and readers know, I have caught many companies on the short side as they imploded. One company that I did not get was American International Group. The reason it escaped me? I was too close to it. I have met Frank Tizzio (then president), Maurice Greenburg (then CEO and Chairman), and a several of their upper management to collaborate on deals, and was impressed with the way they ran their shop. Because of this, I didn't apply the same critical, skeptical eye that I used with the other prospects. Alas, because of such, I overlooked the inevitable, and in retrospect, the blatantly obvious.
Every step of the way the banks have been trying to stick us with more and more losses as they find new ways to profit off of the government troughs.
in 2 short paragraphs. A relatively long post for Atrios. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!
What's The Goal? Others have made this point in various ways, but if the goal is to bail out the banksters and keep the existing too big to fail financial order in place with the same cast of characters in charge, then all of this sounds like a cunning plan.
If the goal was really to get banks lending again they'd be funneling large sums of money to healthy (mostly smaller) financial institutions who actually made sensible choices over the last few years.
Meanwhile a fire sale is going on:
Lenders have become so overwhelmed by the foreclosure crisis that they are starting to unload properties in bulk to investor groups at steep discounts. Investors then flip the properties for a profit without necessarily improving the home.
For example, a unit of Citigroup, the troubled financial giant, sold a foreclosure in Temecula to an Arizona investment firm for $139,000 when comparable homes in the area were selling for $240,000 to $260,000.
The firm listed the home for $249,000, received multiple offers and the property has entered escrow, said Amber Schlieder, the real estate agent who handled the listing.
So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.
Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide's former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.
"It has been very successful - very strong," John Lawrence, the company's head of loan servicing, told Mr. Kurland one recent morning in a glass-walled boardroom here at PennyMac's spacious headquarters, opened last year in the same Los Angeles suburb where Countrywide once flourished.
The Treasury has shown a willingness to recklessly toss all of our futures away to keep these "Too Big Failures" operating in their self-entitled comfort zone.
What incentive do the banks have to sell these properties for as much as they can when they can sell them in bulk at a loss to their buddies' companies (or even their own companies) so they can turn a profit on them and doing this knowing the failure bankers can ship off all of the bills for the losses to us? Think about it.
If Geithner were handing these trillions to the smaller more responsible bankers some of us little people would be able to buy these cheap houses...
But this way the elite get to keep all of the assets in their greedy hands and have us pay for their gambling addiction failures too. And then they will turn a profit on selling us these properties AGAIN.
“While some critics are distressed that Mr. Kurland and his team are back in business, the executives say that PennyMac’s operations serve as a model for how the government, working with banks, can help stabilize the housing market and lead the nation out of the recession. “It is very important to the entire team here to be part of a solution,” Mr. Kurland said
Important for Whom? You, maybe, but not me.
I am thinking predatory lenders should already be in jail and that this is a model for more financial disaster for taxpayers. I smell smoke and all I see is a fire and a bunch of greedy arsonists standing around with their gasoline soaked hands in our pockets..
And, so far, the elite are achieving their goal of bailing out themselves with our money.
From buhdydharma at dKos, some extra food for thought:
Hard Not To Call It Evil According to people who should know, The Ruling Class is using our money....draining our money, the money we use to survive and feed our children and to actual produce things, to rescue the very structure...that allows them to BE The Ruling Class. The structures that enable them to Rule us by controlling credit, capital, and our pensions and IRA's and 401k's.
And our regulatory agencies and politicians. And so by extension our military. Which is then used in the service and interests of The Ruling Class and their Party of Business, the GOP.
These people, the Ruling Class, are the ones who got us into this financial armageddon. These are the same Ruling Class that took us to war in Iraq, after ignoring the warnings that an attack was coming.
They are the same people who made America into a nation that tortures people they KNOW to be innocent. They are the same people...if they even deserve the name...who are stopping any serious efforts to mitigate a Climate Crisis of incomprehensible scope.
They are the same people that so unprecedentedly had the Supreme Court decide Bush vs. Gore, so they could have Bush cut their taxes and deregulate the very same structures that we are now being called to give OUR money to prop up. Yes, the very same people who are directly responsible for everything that has gone wrong in our world, are the people who are now telling us....not asking us....telling us, that we have to bail them out. While as always, not telling us the whole story, not telling us what they are doing behind the scenes and behind our backs.
At this very moment Banks are making up books telling Wall Street how profitable they are but it is all a massive illusion as what they are really doing is hiding losses and managing to turn it into their own personal profits for their insider friends and even themselves. They are doing all of this using our tax dollars to create some kind of warped Capitalist Welfare Elitist society. And it is not like the some people in the financial world haven't noticed:
Is it time to say that this is truly economic warfare on the people of the world and start calling it the financial terrorism that it all really is?
Because until some of the real problems that lead to all of the other problems that everyone knows still exist are fixed... This is exactly what it is.
The rapidly growing trade in derivatives poses a "mega-catastrophic risk" for the economy and most shares are still "too expensive", legendary investor Warren Buffett has warned.
The world's second-richest man made the comments in his famous and plain-spoken "annual letter to shareholders", excerpts of which have been published by Fortune magazine.
The derivatives market has exploded in recent years, with investment banks selling billions of dollars worth of these investments to clients as a way to off-load or manage market risk.
But Mr Buffett argues that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and "financial weapons of mass destruction" that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole economic system.
There are so many ways that financial tools have been developed to terrorize the people...
And this is all the rest of the people, the one's that are not the Noveaux Welfare Riche, have to show for it:
"Large, often confused, crowds formed ragged lines behind police barricades where officers handed out color-coded wristbands. Blue meant they were from Ontario and could remain. Orange indicated they had to provide more proof to avoid ejection, and white meant they had a week to leave.
Pattie Barnes, 47, who had her motor home towed away last week, shook with anger.
As many as 1200 homeless? "Some nearby homeowners have reportedly complained about the tent cities, but Sacramento's new mayor, former NBA star Kevin Johnson, has suggested that the tent cities might provide a temporary solution to the lack of shelter. As many as 1,200 people may be living in these tent cities, according to the local ABC 7 News."
"A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer.
Then others appeared — people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.
Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" — an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.
From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation."
"authorities in Fresno are trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood."
"Wayne Hill packed up his meager belongings last week and moved his home deeper into the woods.
Hill's red tent and neighboring homes had inched too close to the nearby highway, and police told him to move.
"We've asked them to move back off the road a little bit," Athens-Clarke police Maj. Carter Greene said. "It seemed they were encroaching on Lexington Road."
snip
But Tent City limits slowly crept downhill, so now people look up from Lexington Road and a perimeter off-ramp to see campsites and junk piles."
Can you just imagine the horror of having to actually see the homeless?
"Activists point to the annual One Night Count as evidence that not enough shelter beds exist. During the count of the homeless in Seattle and other parts of King County on Jan. 25, volunteers counted 2,631 people sleeping in cars and trucks, doorways and parks and under highways, or walking around or riding buses to stay warm in freezing temperatures. When comparing similar areas counted a year ago, the number of homeless increased 15 percent.
An additional 2,515 people spent the night in emergency shelters, with 3,293 more in transitional housing, for a total of 8,439 homeless people."
"To its credit, Nashville recognizes that there is a problem with the "system" and, as the community slowly works towards correcting these problems, understands that there is at least a temporary need for the existence of homeless encampments.
To its discredit, Nashville is currently engaged in dismantling Tent City, the largest (the population fluctuates wildly at times, but is consistently around 50) and oldest (in existence since the mid 1980s) homeless camp in the area, which is slated to close June 1, 2009; sooner if outreach workers are able to find housing for the remaining residents."
"The demolition of Tent City left many of Chattanooga's homeless without a place to live.
But not so for one lucky man.
For the first time in six years Richard Waldrep has a home to call his own.
Waldrep has spent the last several years on the streets, for the last few months he called "Tent City" home.
But, now that home has been destroyed.
Due to safety concerns and liability issues Norfolk Southern Railroad bulldozed the property leaving Waldrep and almost 30 others to find another place to live. "
"Police officers with box cutters showed up where St. Pete's tent city residents had moved and set up. The cops slashed their tents to the ground as residents watched in shock. Now one homeless group is moving to label St. Petersburg as the 'meanest city in the nation.' Video by Tina May."
The police destroying the few meager belongings left to these homeless people. Is that what the mandate of police officers is supposed to include today? What happened to serve and protect?
Do you know of any of these tent cities or Bushvilles near you that the media has yet to disclose of? If you do... Links, photos, and videos need to be added to our own archives in order to document the widespread disaster that is a very result of this failed Bush economy and the free-market run amok.
There are reports of tent cities popping up across the country as unemployment rises in a worsening economy. The biggest and highest-profile shantytown is in Sacramento, where hundreds of newly-homeless tent residents are cooking soup in old coffee cans.
We want to know where else this is happening.
HuffPost readers: Is there a tent city near you? Have you noticed a newly-formed community of people living together in improvised housing in a public space? Email us! Send any information you've got (or pictures) to submissions+homeless@huffingtonpost.com.
Sacramento's KCRA reported this week that city officials plan to shut the tent city down:
While this is a good idea - documenting where they exist is really only Step 2 because it is an idea without a real humane purpose.
Rather than just documenting these stories, perhaps we should try to solve the problems? In some of these Bushvilles there are already people working to help fix the problems as both short term and long term solutions are needed.
Many more community's across the country, have looked to us for answers to help the homeless population that is growing bigger each year. When People come out to visit us , they are amazed at what we have set up and how we help the 50 to 60 homeless people that live here at any given time, a stepping stone effect that gives each person living here a chance to help themselves regain a new start to gain main stream living again.
All of this comes from donations from viewers and visitors that help to support our goals.
Dignity Village has been working this way since 2001 and long before Bushvilles started popping up. I imagine that they are probably experiencing a huge surge in people needing their help as the economy has collapsed over the last few months.
The right did not solve the problem of Hoovervilles, but the left did with the bold and visionary leadership of FDR. Many on the right would like nothing more than to ignore Bushvilles because it exposes the reality of their political ideology taken to extremes.
We can and will solve the problem of Bushvilles.
I am no community organizer, but I imagine that we need to take these steps first:
1. Identify the major problem - done
2. Identify where it exists - ?
3. Identify problems that are more local to each area - ?
4. Get to work solving the short term problems on a local area needs basis - ?
5. Get to work solving the long term problems on a local area needs basis - ?
Are any of you up to a real challenge?
Are any of you interested in beginning Step 2 and starting to document as many of these tent cities and Bushvilles as we can? Searching for links, getting out in the streets and photographing and videoing these places AND, more importantly, documenting the problems they face so we can try to find real solutions would be no small undertaking.
Something tells me we ain't seen nothing yet from these financial terrorists... Because we have all seen these Bushvilles growing more and more as things have gotten worse and worse and nobody has done a God-damned thing about them, either.
Not fixing the problems, and not fixing what caused them all.
"I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news. There is no way Barack Obama earned it in the nominations period."
"Recognizing the severity of John McCain's issues with violence and its appropriate use, the Nobel Committee awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize primarily just for beating him. [...snip...] You award accomplishments. And Obama's main accomplishment in the area of peace is that he denied the Gods of War their choice of president." - BooMan
Poll watchers are expecting the largest election turnout in ever in Bucks County. The poll watchers who expect that are mostly in the Republican Party and we know how many things they’ve gotten right lately.
Today, I will be facing my toughest campaign, if not my first. To be sure I am running unopposed, but unless you or anybody, including myself, come out and votes for me, I cannot move on to the November election when I expect to be running opposed. Some may scoff at the dire need for votes when running unopposed, but those are people who don’t understand the power of write in votes nor the infamous 2000 presidential race when Al Gore ran against pretty much nobody and lost. Let us not let the Middletown Township auditor primary race end up being decided by the Supreme Court. America, nor Middletown Township cannot bear another unnecessary war.And, while my race is obviously the most watched in Middletown Township, I also ask you to consider the other decisions you will be making today and ask you to make the right one.
Both Liu and de Blasio had the endorsement of the Working Families Party, yesterday and in their original primaries two weeks ago. De Blasio’s ties to the party are particularly tight.
The victories yesterday continue a very successful election year for the Working Families Party. In the Sept. 15 primary, challengers backed by the party toppled four sitting council members.
“The Working Families Party, once derided as a ragtag collection of Brooklyn progressives, is now the pre-eminent political force in New York City politics, replacing a forlorn, disorganized Democratic Party,” Michael Barbaro observed in the City Room.
The kinds of issues that the Working Families Party pursues?
This:
Billionaires for Budget Cuts is a diverse group of insurance company CEOs, bailed-out Wall Street executives and hedge fund managers, united to stop even a pay increase in taxes on the very rich, even if it means slashing healthcare and education.
Our healthcare system is broken. Costs are through the roof, and yet we still have hundreds of thousands of families in Connecticut without coverage. It's time for a high quality public health option. Read more.
And the other thing:
Paid Sick Days. Between the outbreak of swine flu and the recession, it's clearer than ever that working families need paid sick days. We're leading the fight. Learn more.
I don't expect that they will see a lot of corporate money flooding their coffers as they endorse candidates from every and any party that has a proven record of voting for the little guy.
In The News:
Read the our great CT Post Op-Ed on why people are voting Working Families and help spread the word:
"When you vote for a Democrat or a Republican on the Working Families line, you're vote counts for the candidate just the same as a vote on the major party line. But a Working Families vote also sends a powerful message to all politicians that it's time to put working families first again.
The real work to fix our economy will start the day after Election Day. Our elected officials will have to make difficult choices to put our country and our state back on the right track.
Voting on the Working Families line is a small way that each of us point our politicians in the right direction -- and give them a little push."
Those who know me well know that I am a part-time insomniac. At times I can go days without sleeping before I finally burn and crash. Many of the posts I have written were done in the middle of the night and saved to post later. Don't ask me which ones' because I probably won't remember. Now I may be able to tell you why:
You shouldn't stay up all night worrying about it, but a new study has found a connection between a lack of sleep and a biomolecule thought to be important in the development of Alzheimer's disease.
In both humans and mice, levels of a peptide called amyloid-β rise during waking hours and decline during sleep, researchers have found. They also report that sleep-deprived mice are more prone to developing deposits of amyloid-β, called plaques, like those found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Although far from proven, the finding suggests that sleep disorders could be a risk factor for Alzheimer's. On a brighter note, it also hints at new avenues of treatment.
Many lines of evidence suggest that the naturally occurring amyloid-β builds up in the brain over many years in people who develop Alzheimer's disease, beginning long before people show signs of memory loss. But very little is known about what factors might influence levels of the peptide in the brain, says David Holtzman, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis in Missouri.
Please remind me if I forget to post this diary...
And enjoy this barenaked lady I found in the bathroom in the middle of the night:
In this video, taken on Saturday, September 26th, '09, Senator Chris Dodd makes sense on the situation in Afghanistan. It starts with Nutmegger John Kantrowitz, from My Left Nutmeg and the Conn-Post Blogs, discussing the shades of Vietnam parallels. But there is an 800 pound guerrilla that too many ignore that I try to point out at the end of the video:
The first chapter of Petraeus's manual calls for a "force ratio" of 25 counterinsurgents (here meaning US, allied, and Iraqi soldiers and police) per 1,000 residents. In Baghdad that would require a total force of 120,000. But even with the additional 17,500 US troops President Bush has called for, and a reallocation of Iraqi troops from the North to Baghdad, the total force will be approximately 80,000, a full third less than what the manual prescribes.
I was shooting from the hip and based on my faulty memory, but the numbers I was talking about were sufficiently close to make the point. Thinking in terms of the situation in Afghanistan a quick look at the math tells you what you need to know.
By Genral Petraeus' own standard that is how many soldiers would be needed to effectively stabelize Afghanistan. Accounting for US, UN and even the Afghanistan soldiers that have been trained up to provide security there are nowhere near enough. And there will never be anywhere near enough without a draft. That is an 800 pound guerilla that nobody will address.
Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a “comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.” All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.
As it happens, this was never Obama’s “war of necessity.” It was always Petraeus’s. And the new report from McChrystal and the Surgettes is undoubtedly Petraeus’s progeny as well. It seems, in fact, cleverly put together to catch a cautious president, who wasn’t cautious enough about his war of choice, in a potentially devastating trap. The military insistence on quick action on a troop decision sets up a devastating choice for the president: “Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure.” Go against your chosen general and the failure that follows is yours alone. (Unnamed figures supposedly close to McChrystal are already launching test balloons, passed on by others, suggesting that the general might resign in protest if the president doesn’t deliver — a possibility he has denied even considering.) On the other hand, offer him somewhere between 15,000 and 45,000 more American troops as well as other resources, and the failure that follows will still be yours.
It’s a basic lose-lose proposition and, as journalist Eric Schmitt wrote in a New York Times assessment of the situation, “it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal.” No wonder the president and some of his men are dragging their feet and looking elsewhere. As one typically anonymous “defense analyst” quoted in the Los Angeles Times said, the administration is suffering “buyer’s remorse for this war… They never really thought about what was required, and now they have sticker shock.”
At this moment in time the Generals are asking for more troops and, even by Petraus' own standards, they aren't asking for enough to deal with the issue. And that is assuming the strategy of more boots on the ground is even an effective one. It isn't because the whole strategy is based on loonytunes logic [emph. mine], according to Pen and Sword's Jeff Huber:
Obama said that he would only approve another escalation if he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be." McChrystal’s report is incoherent on the subject of strategy.
It says, “We must conduct classic counterinsurgency operations” and states that success depends not on “seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces” but on “gaining the support of the people.” That’s laughable in light of the fact that classic clear-hold-build counterinsurgency operations involve seizing terrain and destroying the insurgent forces that occupy it.
The notion that we can separate the Afghan people from the insurgents is as ludicrous as the idea of invading Mexico to separate the Hispanics from the Latinos. Nor can we pretend to be the good guys when the Karzai government we prop up is as bad or worse than the insurgents. McChrystal admits that Afghans have “little reason to support their government.”
McChrystal says he sees no sign of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So, his argument goes, in order to disrupt al-Qaeda terror network, we need 45,000 more troops to occupy a country al Qaeda is not in to make sure it doesn’t come back. And what exactly is this al-Qaeda juggernaut we’ve come to quake in fear of? As former CIA officer Philip Giraldi recently noted, “An assessment by France’s highly regarded Paris Institute of Political Studies [suggests that] Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not.”
If McChrystal and his allies get their way, we’ll have deployed over 135,000 troops to Afghanistan—on top of the roughly 130,000 troops still in Iraq—for the purpose of rounding up fewer than a dozen bad guys. Daffy Duck and Wiley Coyote could come up with a better strategy than that. Our military leadership and its supporters are a thundering herd of buffoons whose only real objective is to keep the cash caissons rolling and the gravy ships afloat and the wild blue budget sky high.
ProPublica is reporting that Blue Dog Congressman Mike Ross (DINO-AR) "sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment and an independent appraisal say it was worth."
Who did he sell it to? An Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with an interest in defeating universal health care.
Ross sold the real estate in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 -- an eye-popping number for real estate in the tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock.
"You can buy half the town for $420,000," said Adam Guthrie, chairman of the county Board of Equalization and the only licensed real estate appraiser in Prescott.
But it's not just $420,000. There is an extra almost 1 million dollars that went to the Rosses in the deal. The total value of the transaction is between $1 million and $1.67 million.
Any other Blue Dogs or Money Party candidates in Congress want to reconsider selling out Americans to the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations? If we don't hear from you, you will very likely hear from us...
Update: Rachel Maddow gives the story a little love:
"Let this be a warning to those who think they can roll the American people and get away it. Exhibit A is the quick destruction of ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - after several videos showed their members setting up prostitution ring and one member bragging how she shot her husband dead without anyone knowing about it - until she told the tale on tape."
If the pitiful head Connecticut Republican mobile liquor sponge would turn off Glen Beck and the FOX noise for a few minutes he might begin to realize how much of a joke he really is.
When the actors approached Ms. Kaelke with their provocative costuming and outlandish scenario, she could not take them seriously. So she met their outrageousness with her own personal style of outrageousness. She matched their false scenario with her own false scenarios.
“They were not believable”, said Ms. Kaelke of the two actors. “Somewhat entertaining, but they weren’t even good actors. I didn’t know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me. Like Stephan Colbert does – saying the most outrageous things with a straight face.” While her sense of humor might not be funny to many people, the fact is that she spun false scenario after false scenario and the videographer ate them up.
For example, in response to the set-up by the filmmakers in which they say they are trying get the young woman away from her abusive pimp, she responds that she was abused by her former husband as well (true) and that she shot and killed him (false). He is very much alive and living near Barstow, CA.
However, this is taken as the gospel truth, not just in the film itself, but also by several “news” personalities, indicating that no journalistic standards were applied to making the video or vetting it for broadcast.
And here’s a report from the San Bernadino police department:
An undercover video reportedly filmed in the San Bernardino office for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was recently released on the Internet. The film depicts a worker talking about her past involvement in prostitution and the alleged self- defense killing of her former husband.
The San Bernardino Police Department is investigating the claims made regarding
the homicide. From the initial investigation conducted, the claims do not appear to be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party’s known former husbands, who are alive and well.
Of course when the video popped, righties didn’t apply their b.s.-filters and like when Cheney said Iraq would greet us as liberators, just assumed all was as it appeared.
Yet again... Joke is you.
Healy is, still, clearly "Fat, drunk and stupid" if he thinks anyone is buying the Republican snake oil he sells.
"...no evidence that he understands how to talk to voters who have the kinds of problems that average Americans in Connecticut face each and every day, no evidence that he'd be effective in the Senate and no evidence that he has even the vaguest idea how to put together a campaign"
But while Schiff will have tens of millions to spend savaging the Republican party, he may actually be late to the main event: Linda McMahon vs. Rob Simmons, which now appears to be a rematch of an under-the-radar fight the two had in 2006.
In late September 2006, as then-Congressman Rob Simmons was busy trying to fend off Joe Courtney in the closing weeks of what turned out to be an historically close election in eastern Connecticut, Greenwich multimillionaire McMahon from the other side of the state contributed $10,000 to the DCCC to help give Simmons that final push off the ledge:
McMahon, Linda E.
Greenwich, CT 06831
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE (D) $10,000
primary 09/29/06
In a brilliant bit of political theater, the 9/11 tea party in Bridgeport was interrupted by the legendary Ray Charles, singing an American classic! Ann Coulter was on the stage when it happened.
They don't seem to appreciate having their voices drowned out by America, the beautiful, when they are trying to speak. Imagine that? And, of course, those were happy threats of violence they were loudly sharing with the neighborhood.
I was checking out The Field Negro's Blog and Wayne had something far more interesting on his sidebar than anything he has written lately, to myself at least. (Sorry Field, not knocking your writing but I am a veteran.)
I have not checked out the background on this project or the "producer" myself, so if you are interested in helping out on this I suggest you use due diligence and verify before you give. I'll try and check if Wayne has looked into yet, himself. ([UPDATE] I just got an email back from Wayne and he said that he did do "some" looking into it and it appears legit. Again and always, do use due diligence and verify before you give.)Anyways, below is what Wayne had up there on the sidebar:
HEY FOLKS, PLEASE READ THIS AND SHOOT AN E-MAIL TO THIS BROTHA TO SEE HOW YOU CAN HELP HIM. THANKS!
Choc’late Soldiers From The USAA Landmark Television Project Po Box 63511 Philadelphia, PA 19147 215-627-6265 Heshprod@gmail.com
Dear Field:An attorney friend of mine referred me to you as a possible source of help.In fewer than 70 days, Choc’late Soldiers from the USA (CSUSA), a landmark documentary about the service, sacrifice and bravery of African American soldiers in Great Britain and Europe during World War II is scheduled to premiere (see attachment) at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on November 10, 2009.
My primary sponsor who had promised funds for the documentary’s premiere and completion is unable to fulfill its obligation, so I am left to scramble for completion funds. I am requesting that you use your blog to bring attention to my situation, which could result in an influx of sponsors in time for the November 10th premiere.CSUSA is the untold story of African American soldiers in wartime England and Europe. It was in England where many Blacks experienced, for the first time, what it was like to be treated as Americans, and as equals. It was in England where many fell in love with British women, and some go on to have families. When Blacks left England for war-torn Europe, they demonstrated their mettle and courage in combat; some took pay cuts and had their rank reduced for the privilege of volunteering for combat. It was these character-shaping experiences that gave Black veterans the courage and conviction to fight for civil rights in America during the following decades. All of us stand on the shoulders of this “The Greatest Generation.” CSUSA can go a long way toward educating Americans, of all colors, about the sacrifices Black Americans have made in defending a democracy, which, for most of its history, has denied them the rights and privileges of being an American. Surely these men and women, who fought in a segregated army and who were thwarted at every turn by racist practices, deserve to be honored as “The Greatest of the Greatest Generation.”
But time is running short. Every day 1,200 WWII veterans die. Soon they will all be gone and no one will be left to tell their heroic sagas, the stories of unbelievable patriotism against overwhelming odds. CSUSA is an unprecedented opportunity to tell an untold American story and to once and for all let these African American heroes take their rightful places in American history.While we await a decision from a major foundation, we are seeking $332,000 to complete CSUSA in time for the Smithsonian Institution’s premiere on November 10, 2009. (Sponsors usually give increments of $50k) I am pulling out all stops to secure the funds for completion, which is why I am contacting you. Anyone who underwrites the premiere and completion of CSUSA will receive the following benefits:• Their name/organization in the film credits and all accompanying materials such as brochures, posters and study guides• A tax deduction up to the maximum allowed by the IRS• Inclusion of their name in major newspaper and magazine articles as a supporter of the project• Their personal legacy linked to helping complete an enduring piece of American historyAs a former high school and college educator, I am dedicated to the long-term proposition of teaching young people about black World War II veterans.
Part of the budget will be used to develop high school and college-level curricula for American and British students. I can think of no better gift to bequeath to future generations.Choc’late Soldiers from the USA has already generated enthusiastic interest from civilians, veterans and scholars in the U.S. and Britain, and has been featured at academic conferences and commemorative ceremonies.
Also, as a work-in-progress documentary, it placed third in competition at the D.C. Independent Film Festival in 2008. I am enclosing a verifiable list of veterans, historians and sponsors who are directly involved with CSUSA.Field, I am requesting that you use you blogging influence to help me raise funds for the Smithsonian Institution premiere and completion for PBS slated for next year.
I hope you are able to help me.
Sincerely,Gregory S. CookeProducer. [p.s. He will take donations starting from a $1.00 Just think, you can be a part of making this happen for a $1.00. Now that I like.]
Three years ago the state AFL-CIO convened in New Haven and embraced U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s reelection. Thursday the AFL-CIO reconvened here — and made Lieberman its target.
The occasion was the state labor movement’s biennial convention at the Omni Hotel. The convention runs through Friday. A central theme of this year’s convention: Push politicians in Washington to pass universal health care with a “public option” — government-backed insurance.
The results beg the question of why some more of Connecticut's Congress critters are not leading the charge for the Public Option? They know the people want it and they have to know that it is the right thing to do.
It is an all around political winner and just plain old common sense good public policy.
We can systematize these results by means of a regression analysis that accounts for the Obama vote share and the poverty level in each district. (Technically, we'll be using a logistic regession, treating each of the voters included in one of these surveys as a separate data point.) This analysis finds that support for the public option nationwide is about 55 percent, against 36 percent opposed, similar results to what I believe to be the most reliable polls on the subject.
What's more interesting, though, is where we project the public option in individual districts. We find that:
-- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 291 of the 435 Congressional Districts nationwide, or almost exactly two-thirds. -- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 235 of 257 Democratic-held districts. -- The public option is estimated to have plurality support in 34 of 52 Blue Dog - held districts, and has overall popularity of 51 percent in these districts versus 39 percent opposed.
Obviously, there is a margin of error inherent to this analysis when applied to any individual district. The polls that inform this analysis themselves have a margin of error, and there is an additional layer of error introduced by the statistical process that we apply to the data.
There is some pretty good reasoning behind this data to tell the few Blue Dogs trying to stand in the way of the Public Option to suck it up and do the right thing, as well. Go and take a look at the data yourself. The information is a real eye opener as to where there is some really strong support for the Public Option even in some supposedly "conservative" districts.
Pres.Truman: “On several occasions
during the past year I have reported to the Congress and to the Nation
on our general economic situation. These reports have told of new high
levels of production and employment. Farmers are producing 37% more
than in 1929. Industry is producing 65% more. In terms of actual
purchasing power, the average income of individuals after taxes has
risen 39%. The rapid growth of our post-war activity has exceeded
expectations, and has revealed anew the potentialities of our economy.
In each of my reports however, I have had to warn of dangers that lie
ahead. Today, inflation stands as an ominous threat to the prosperity
we have achieved. We can no longer treat inflation with spiraling
prices and living costs as some vague condition we may encounter in the
future. We already have an alarming degree of inflation.
And even more alarming, it is getting worse. Since the middle of
1946, fuel has gone up 13%. Clothing prices have gone up 19%. Retail
food prices have gone up 40%. The average for all cost of living items
has risen 23%. The housewife who goes to buy food today must spend ten
dollars to buy what seven dollars bought a year and a half ago. She
must spend ten dollars to buy what seven dollars would have bought a
year ago. The cost of living is still climbing. In the past four months
it has risen at the rate of 16% a year. Wholesale prices are rising
too. They affect every industry and trade. And they are soon translated
into retail prices. Since the middle of 1946, wholesale textile prices
have gone up 32%. Metals have gone up 36%. Building materials have gone
up 42%. Wholesale prices on the average have gone up 40%. The harsh
effects of price inflation are clear. They are felt by wage earners,
farmers and businessmen. Wage earners are finding that bigger paychecks
this year buy less than smaller paychecks bought last year.”
But Obama can feel free to be that President... Because when it comes to real healthcare reform?
We know that the biggest reason you all are pissed about this is that your failed Reagonomic free-marketeers-run-amok ideas that caused the shadow bank meltdown and the economic mess we are in now have already been discredited to the point that nobody wants to hear them anymore. Don't tell me that your answer to healthcare is the free market.
a moral responsibility those words are clearly applicable to the health care crisis in this country. Intellectually I knew that long before I first read (and wrote about) the Remote Area Medical Mission in Wise Virginia. I lost any doubt during the weekend I spent there in July, which is why I am taking the first weekend in October to go to a similar event in Grundy, VA.
How do we compromise on morality? IF we can make the case that what we are attempting do is a moral obligation, then I believe the politics will be on our side - the conscious of most people can be challenged. Clearly the late Senator Kennedy understood this, which is why the words of Matthew 25 were so prominent at his funeral. For whatever human flaws he had (and acknowledged both in his letter to the Pope and in his soon to be published memoir). on this he did not lack moral clarity.
Part of the responsibility of those of us who speak out on issues is to remember our dual responsibility to afflict the comfortable as we comfort the afflicted.
Yes, in politics we must look at what is possible. We must "advance the ball" down the field, since Americans are too fond of football metaphors. But one should also remember that it matters not who gains the most yardage, only who scores the most points. Thus speak not to me of points of agreement in negotiation if those do not lead to meaningful action in legislation that becomes law.
After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.
The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.
Guaranteed Trickle Down Death
That is what happens when you put a dollar value on life. Investors would have twice the incentive to deny care to the elderly. What incentive would investors in healthcare insurance corporations have to keep them alive if they can make more money denying care to them and then, also, make more money on their investments in reverse mortgages?
