Epistemic Ingemination

The US Chamber of Commerce has decided to call in what it figures that it bought and paid for.

This letter was hand delivered to every member of Congress yesterday:

September 29, 2008

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation representing more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region, urges Congress to immediately pass the bipartisan financial rescue package to stem the financial panic. Congress must not adjourn without taking action to stabilize the financial markets.

Today’s failure to approve legislation addressing the financial crisis has resulted in uncertainty and turmoil that have dramatically affected the markets, and lowered equity prices, eroding individual savings and destroying billions of dollars of household wealth.

Make no mistake: when the aftermath of Congressional inaction becomes clear, Americans will not tolerate those who stood by and let the calamity happen. If, on the other hand, Congress supports a plan to successfully restore the financial system and preserve the flow of credit to the economy, the American people will recognize that act of courage.

The Chamber urges Congress to immediately pass financial rescue legislation. The Chamber will score votes on, or in relation to, this issue in our annual How They Voted scorecard.

Sincerely,
R. Bruce Josten

The “CEO” President has run another of his “companies” into the ground. One may say what one cares to say about the guy, but inconsistency is not one of his issues.

Dow -777. Worst point drop evah! (But nowhere near the worst percentage drop, which actually matters.) In any case, I’m sitting here channel surfing the train wreck on TV.

I just stumbled upon an elderly bald guest on CNBC, wearing a $3000 Brooks Brothers double-breasted pinstripe suit, exuding an air of gravitas. In reference to the Republican’s actions today, he quoted a line from the “jive” scene in the movie Airplane:

Chump don’t want no hep, chump don’t get no hep.

Now there’s some delightful cognitive dissonance…

From a protest outside of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday…

Beware the Hedge Fund action, starting tomorrow:

First, the money rushed into hedge funds. Now, some fear, it could rush out.

Even as Washington reached a tentative agreement on Sunday over what may become the largest financial bailout in American history, new worries were building inside the nearly $2 trillion world of hedge funds. After years of explosive growth, losses are mounting — and so are concerns that some investors will head for the exits.

No one expects a wholesale flight from hedge funds. But even a modest outflow could reverberate through the financial markets. To pay back investors, some funds may be forced to dump investments at a time when the markets are already shaky.

The big worry is that a spate of hurried sales could unleash a vicious circle within the hedge fund industry, with the sales leading to more losses, and those losses leading to more withdrawals, and so on. A big test will come on Tuesday, when many funds are scheduled to accept withdrawal requests for the end of the year.

I genuinely hope that the bailout bill fails this week.

And, yeah, I understand what the consequences might be.

But I also understand that this is not a fiscal crisis. It is a financial crisis, and more specifically, a credit liquidity crisis. The only reason that this is happening is because financial institutions are scared to make short term loans to one another.

If the world’s economy can be held hostage to that kind of sheep-like fear — well, children, let’s let it all go down in flames, bite the bullet and make a new economy, one where corporations and brokers and insurance companies are hogtied once and for all. An economy based upon production, not credit.

We’re told that this will hit “main street” the hardest, the middle class and the poor. Here’s a news flash: the middle class and poor people already know how to be poor. They have to make hard financial decisions every single day.

It wouldn’t bother me a bit to see more people in this country learn what it’s like. The people who will be hit the hardest are speculators and system-gamers. The vultures that have been handing out money to poor folks who had no means of repaying deserve to lose everything. Let’s see a few of these scavengers reduced to kiting checks to feed their children. It’ll build character. And when they’re back on their feet, they can take 25% of their profits to reestablish the 401Ks of “main street” that they’ve decimated.

And perhaps, just maybe, we might all end up with a nation where the populace realizes that what happens in Washington D.C. matters. Maybe they’ll pay attention to what is going on. That would be nice.

I was working last night, so I had to watch reruns this morning. I’m kind of surprised that polls give it handily to Obama; it didn’t seem like a slam dunk to me. Obama certainly takes it on social grace, though; he talked into the camera and directly to McCain. McCain didn’t even look at Obama for the entire debate, and he spoke to the audience, not the folks in their living rooms. And he spent the first half hour blinking like his head was going to explode from the repressed rage.

No huge gaffes on either side, or at least none that are going to resonate with voters. McCain said that Pakistan was a “failed state” when Musharraf took over; that’s not true. But I don’t think that that one has any legs.

So, according to the polls (and, I guess, me too) Obama won, and on McCain’s strongest turf, Foreign Policy. That’s very bad news for McCain. The next debate is an open forum town hall, where McCain and Obama are equally adept — and Obama thinks much more quickly and clearly, and has more factual information at his fingertips to illustrate his arguments.

The third debate will focus on domestic and economic policy, and it’s likely to be where Obama shines with down-home kitchen-table wonkery. I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama closes the deal in the third debate, and it’ll be the last impression before the election.

The fun one? The Vice Presidential debate on Thursday. It could be anything from a yawner to a bloodbath — and all of that depends upon how Biden decides to approach it. I hope that he relentlessly exposes Palin as the Pentacostal right-wing policy-free know-nothing wingnut that she is, gallantry be damned. We are not talking about a pretty hockey mommy from Alaska. We’re talking about a manifestly unqualified candidate for Vice President, and Vice President to a man who only has a statistical slightly-better-than-even chance of surviving the next five years.

Don’t be surprised if you hear the new “Conservative” talking point espousing that the current financial crisis is due to a Carter-era law called the “Community Reinvestment Act.” Translation: “They made us loan money to white trash and niggers and spics, and they took the economy down.”

Nonsense. Pure fiction at face value. The CRA worked just fine for a quarter century without creating a housing bubble or markedly increasing subprime defaults on mortgages and small business loans. It is a good program that has brought millions of economically disadvantaged people of all kinds into the middle class.

So, what changed? How about Republican free-market arch maniac wingnut Phil Gramm’s “Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act?” The law that allowed banks, securities firms and insurance companies to get into each other’s lines of business?

I’ve been following this for a while. Check here, and here, and read this from 2004.

Look, this economy has been running on borrowed money for most of the decade. Alan Greenspan kept interest rates artificially low; the Republicans assured a cash party by reducing taxes on capital gains, allowing Fannie and Freddy to have unheard of debt-to-liquid ratios, and making sure that there would be no genuine regulation by decimating regulatory agencies and installing cronies. Hell, Greenspan knew what was happening as early as 2003 — he actually Officially Recommended that people refinance their fixed rate mortgages into adjustable rate mortgages. Why? To keep the country running on credit, to keep the money churning back & forth. Greenspan wanted to be able to control and adjust the interest rate on every home in America whenever he chose to do so. But I digress.

Anyway, these newly-minted “Financial Services” companies (read: BankerRealtorInsurerBrokers) responded by loaning money like rats in heat, rolling those notes (in-house) into a new derivative called “Mortgage Backed Securities” and selling them (in-house) as investment grade paper similar to bonds.

Pretty straightforward. You put on your Realtor hat and find a buyer for some property. You then put on your banker hat and make a loan, making sure that it’s insured by Fannie or Freddy, and remembering to take out your closing cost and realtor fees. Then you put on your insurance hat and insure that property, remembering to take your underwriters fee. Then you put on your Broker’s hat and sell a piece of the expected profit on the mortgage and insurance to someone, remembering of course, to take out your brokers fee. Then, finally, you wrap the mortgage and it’s derivatives into a wholly different entity and try to sell the whole thing to someone else at a very favorable discount, noting that it’s an insured mortgage. They now own the mortgage and you have a nice little chunk of cash in hand.

Now, multiply this transaction by hundreds of millions of finances and refinances and secondary mortgages and derivative transactions. Since these were done in-house, there was absolutely no incentive to follow standard practices and due diligence. Just shovel ‘em in the front door and out the back, as fast as you can.

Nouriel Roubini, who knows more about this than just about anyone, explains it for real:

First, you take a bunch of shaky and risky subprime mortgages and
repackage them into residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS);
then you repackage these RMBS in different (equity, mezzanine, senior)
tranches of cash CDOs that receive a misleading investment grade
rating by the credit rating agencies; then you create synthetic CDOs
out of the same underlying RMBS; then you create CDOs of CDOs (or
squared CDOs) out of these CDOs; and then you create CDOs of CDOs of
CDOs (or cubed CDOs) out of the same murky securities; then you stuff
some of these RMBS and CDO tranches into SIV (structured investment
vehicles) or into ABCP (Asset Backed Commercial Paper) or into money
market funds. Then no wonder that eventually people panic and run – as
they did yesterday on an apparently safe money market fund such as
Sentinel. That toxic waste of unpriceable and uncertain junk and
zombie corpses is now emerging in the most unlikely places in the
financial markets.

Second example: today any wealthy individual can take $1 million and
go to a prime broker and leverage this amount three times; then the
resulting $4 million ($1 equity and $3 debt) can be invested in a fund
of funds that will in turn leverage these $4 millions three or four
times and invest them in a hedge fund; then the hedge fund will take
these funds and leverage them three or four times and buy some very
junior tranche of a CDO that is itself levered nine or ten times. At
the end of this credit chain, the initial $1 million of equity becomes
a $100 million investment out of which $99 million is debt (leverage)
and only $1 million is equity. So we got an overall leverage ratio of
100 to 1. Then, even a small 1% fall in the price of the final
investment (CDO) wipes out the initial capital and creates a chain of
margin calls that unravel this debt house of cards. This unraveling of
a Minskian Ponzi credit scheme is exactly what is happening right now
in financial markets.

By the time that these derivatives of derivatives of derivatives made their way into otherwise legitimate investment portfolios worldwide, the bubble started to burst. Everywhere, we began to see unprecedented default rates, which in retrospect was wholly predictable.

Paper turned into what it always had the potential to be: paper. Not only a zero return on investment, a 100% loss of everything. No value there at all to salvage. Poof. And these are going bust at a potential ratio of 100 dollars to every one dollar of the base-line of that expected profit, now nonexistent. It is that simple.

You, citizen, are now being asked to pay for a huge Ponzi scheme gone bust, after all of the money is long gone. The flim-flam man left town in the middle of the night, long ago.

But just remember: Poor li’l Jimmy Carter had nothing to do with it. And what of the one person who did the most to facilitate this catastrophe? His name is William Philip “Phil” Gramm, and he is the primary economic adviser to John McCain, the Republican nominee for President in this election.

Finally. From one of our own.

James K. Galbraith – A Bailout We Don’t Need

It is such a pleasure to see George W. Bush living the life of the Lamest of Lame Ducks, ever. Radioactive. Finally.

This is really neat; via Joe Windish at The Moderate Voice blog. From The Chronicle Of Higher Education:

Who needs college credit when you have a makeshift diploma from a superstar professor?

David Wiley taught an online course at Utah State University last fall and let anyone fully participate, even if they weren’t enrolled. In the end, five people the registrar had never heard of joined discussions with the 15 or so regular students and got papers graded by Mr. Wiley, who considered the extra work a public service.

The unofficial students paid no tuition and got no formal credit, but they did end up with something tangible: a homemade certificate signed by Mr. Wiley, who at the time directed the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning and is well known in the area of online learning.

That was plenty of recognition for Antonio Fini, a doctoral student at the University of Florence, in Italy. “I include it in my CV,” he says.

Open Teaching is the name Mr. Wiley and others use for their experimental knowledge giveaway. And it suggests how the Web could soon force colleges to re-examine their offerings in the age of digital delivery.

M.I.T. started this movement several years ago with their Open Courseware. Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, Johns Hopkins and several others subsequently followed suit to varying degree.

Donating time to actually grade papers for online students of this type is a whole new thing, and it seems to me to be pubic service of the highest caliber. Kudos to the Dave Wileys of this world.

Boy. Deer, meet headlights. This is a person that promotes a calm trust, through his sheer power and maturity in a time of crisis, innit? (I’ve added a caption that CNN inadvertently left out.)

Just reading a post article. McCain is shameless. I wish that we had the right to append footnotes… hmm…

“Look, have no doubt about it, the capabilities of Senator Obama to a debate — I mean, he’s very, very good^[1],” McCain said. “He was able to beat Senator Hillary Clinton, who, as we all know, is very accomplished, very accomplished.”

McCain said that Obama “was able to, I think, with his eloquence inspire a great number of Americans.^[2] So these are going to be tough debates.”

“But I believe that on the substance, on the substance, I can convince the American people that I can reform government^[3], restore prosperity^[4] and keep the peace^[5],” he said.

[1] “I’m running scared, and must downplay expectations.”
[2] “And I don’t.”
[3] “Although I haven’t done anything towards this goal in my 26 years as a Representative and Senator, except co-sponsor campaign reforms that I am currently violating.”
[4] “Because, being one of the Keating five and having been at the center of the S&L meltdown, I know a little something about bailouts.”
[5] “By being in a permanent state of war.”

Wow.

A new American Research Group poll shows that “[n]o Americans say that the national economy is getting better,” while 82 percent say it is getting much worse. Only 17 percent approve of President Bush’s handling of the economy, with 78 percent disapproving. Even among Republicans, more disapprove of his economic performance than approve: (…)

Overnight, the last two big investment banks turned into bank holding companies.

Where are you, all of my pseudo-libertarian free-market capitalist friends? You seem to be awfully quiet this weekend.

I’ve been listening to your Ethically Pure economic drool and spittle for decades. “Let the market determine things! Don’t hamper our brave Capitalists as they Create Wealth for All Of Us! Cutting taxes raises revenue! A rising tide lifts all boats! The only problem with our economy is over-regulation! Anything other than this leads to — dear God — socialism!!”

Where are you now, my deep-thinking brave capitalist dittoheads?

Were you cheering the market on as you watched your 401k lose 20% of its value last week? Were you proudly beaming, holding your copy of the Cliff Notes of “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” to your bosom, as the big five investment banks went to four, and then three, and then two? Do you have tears of joy and unfettered capitalist pride watching your home’s value drop below its mortgage payoff balance?

Or could it be that you’re exactly the kind of person that you’ve always accused others of being on this subject, and now we — the sane ones — are supposed to, once more, bail you out and clean up your messes?

Where’s your copy of Ayn Rand this weekend? You don’t seem to have it with you anymore.

Do you still have enough working independent brain cells to see that in your brand of “capitalism,” you have no problem with keeping your profits — but the minute that your judgement is eclipsed by your greed (as it always will be) you expect that your losses should be — dear God — socialized?

How does it feel to have the “Invisible Hand” slap you upside the head?

I have some better ideas. We can start with something called “regulation.”

Let’s see. How do I illustrate?

I presume that you would refuse to give a loaded handgun and a bottle of tequila to your teenage son along with the car keys on a Saturday night. Because of all of the damage that he could cause to both your interests and, especially, innocents.

Similar to that, but more tailored to your specific insanities.

Robert Reich has some good ideas on how to structure a bailout. I’m reproducing it here in its entirety:

The frame has been set, the dye cast. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, presumably representing the Bush administration but indirectly representing Wall Street, and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, want a blank check from Congress for $700 billion or possibly a trillion dollars or more to take bad debt off Wall Street’s balance sheets. Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of so many for (at least in the first instance) so few.

Put yourself in the shoes of a member of Congress, including our two presidential candidates. The Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair have told you this is necessary to save the economy. If you don’t agree, you risk a meltdown of the entire global financial system. Your own constituents’ savings could go down with it. An election is six weeks away. Besides, in the last two days of trading, since rumors spread that the Treasury and the Fed were planning something of this sort, stock prices revived.

Now – quick — what do you do? You have no choice but to say yes.

But you might also set some conditions on Wall Street.

The public doesn’t like a blank check. They think this whole bailout idea is nuts. They see fat cats on Wall Street who have raked in zillions for years, now extorting in effect $2,000 to $5,000 from every American family to make up for their own nonfeasance, malfeasance, greed, and just plain stupidity. Wall Street’s request for a blank check comes at the same time most of the public is worried about their jobs and declining wages, and having enough money to pay for gas and food and health insurance, meet their car payments and mortgage payments, and save for their retirement and childrens’ college education. And so the public is asking: Why should Wall Street get bailed out by me when I’m getting screwed?

So if you are a member of Congress, you just might be in a position to demand from Wall Street certain conditions in return for the blank check.

My five nominees:

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public. So when and if Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.

2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability. Why should taxpayers feather their already amply-feathered nests?

3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers. Why should taxpayers finance Wall Street’s outsized political power – especially when that power is being exercised to get favorable terms from taxpayers?

4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be convened immediately. After all, inadequate regulation and lack of oversight got us into this mess.

5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes. Why should distressed homeowners lose their homes when Wall Streeters receive taxpayer money that helps them keep their fancy ones?

Wall Streeters may not like these conditions. Well, you should tell them that the public doesn’t like the idea of bailing out Wall Street. So if Wall Street doesn’t accept these conditions, it doesn’t get the blank check.

Okay. If we’ve learned anything over the last eight years, we’ve learned that legislation that is proposed by the Bush administration and rushed through congress as an emergency measure, is going to contain trojan horses.

So now we have the fast-track plan. Here are a few choice quotes from the article (emphasis mine):

The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed to Congress what could become the largest financial bailout in United States history, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets.

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

…

Mr. Bush also sought to portray the plan as benefiting every American. “The government needed to send a clear signal that we understood the instability could ripple throughout and affect the working people and the average family, and we weren’t going to let that happen.”

Key Democratic lawmakers have made clear that they want to include in the legislation at least some assurance that the administration would use its new role, as the owner of large amounts of mortgage debt, to move aggressively to help hundreds of thousands of troubled borrowers at risk of foreclosure.

…

Some Congressional Republicans warned Democrats not to overreach. “The administration has put forward a plan to help the American people and it is now incumbent on Congress to work together to solve this crisis,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader.

Mr. Boehner added: “Efforts to exploit this crisis for political leverage or partisan quid pro quo will only delay the economic stability that families, seniors, and small businesses deserve.”

Okay, there we have it.

“It’s good for the regular guy,” says Bush. “Cool. Let’s make sure that we write that into it,” says the Democrats. And the leader of the Republicans immediately says “Emergency! Emergency! You’re holding things up and endangering the economy!”

Okay, guys. All of you. Pull it on over. Let’s take a look at this thing.

Ahh. Here it is:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

These corrupt greedhead traitors want you to give the biggest blank check in the history of the known universe to Henry Paulson: Former aide to John Ehrlichman in the Nixon white house, former co-head of Investment Banking, and then, Chief Operating Officer, and then Chief Executive Officer for Goldman Sachs. And how he uses that $700 BILLION dollar blank check “may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

It is beyond chutzpah; this is naked greed and power on a scale never before seen on this planet. This isn’t just letting the fox into the henhouse. This is signing over the title to the farm to the foxes with no exchange of value whatsoever.

So here we have it. The final Bush crowd end run. On a Saturday morning, out of the news cycle. The last trick. This is where they get to raid the treasury in whatever manner that they choose, give it to whomever they want, and do it without any oversight whatsoever.

Are you happy with the government you elected eight years ago?

Are you better off today than you were in 2000?

And if you voted for Bush, are you aware of how egregiously you have failed this country in your duties as a citizen?

Sunday update: I’m pleased to report that this is now being recognized for exactly what it is.

One obvious thing that I didn’t mention above should be said: this is unlike any “bailout” in history. With the S&Ls in the 80’s or banking in the 30’s, the govenment seized and closed the institutions in question to protect the taxpayers interests. Only after taxpayers were covered were any remaining assets liquidated. The institutions in question simply ceased to be, as it should be.

This one is wholly different. This is simply buying bad investments from the institutions that made those bad investments, so that they can continue to turn a profit.

I don’t recall a constitutional guarantee for a profit to corporations.

Finally, banks and other financial institutions have weighed in on this plan. They really like it a lot. But they have concerns:

“We’re opposed to adding provisions that will affect [or] undermine the deal substantively,” said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, whose members include the nation’s largest banks, securities firms and insurers.

I sure you are, Mr Talbott.

In my wandering through news sites and political blogs and such, I increasingly see well known republicans fretting about the damage done to the republican “brand” over the last eight years.

As if governing is a question of appropriate marketing.

It’s very telling, and it is now apparently so infused into their thought patterns that it is no longer distinguishable from reality in their minds.

This is the same mindset that gave us that most unpatriotic “PATRIOT Act.” Gave us the “Clear Skies Act” that guts pollution control regulation. Gave us the “No Child Left Behind Act” that has resulted in a 50% dropout rate in Hispanic and African American neighborhoods.

This country needs to get wise to the fact that these people are interested only in themselves, and that they are incapable of governing this country. Virtually every time that they come into power, they loot the treasury and give it to their friends, declare open season on labor and create more poor people as a policy, get us into a war, dismantle regulation of the powerful, run the economy into a ditch, break the law and pardon any of their own who get caught — while they question the patriotism of anyone who points out their corruption and incompetence.

“Lipstick on a pig” indeed.

The damage over the last eight years was done to the people of the United States of America. And that damage was done by elected human beings belonging the Republican Party, not a “brand.”

History repeats; 1932 is still clear in the personal memory of millions. Maybe the republicans will have another generation out of power to think about the quality of their “brand.” If we’re lucky, they’ll have so egregiously miscalculated this time around that theirs will soon have the same marketing strength as that other famous one: the Whigs.

Well, maybe not so much of a “chuckle”… it’d be great satire if it wasn’t all true. But it’s brilliant.

From “Bill in Portland Maine” over on DailyKos: his imaginary interview w/ Charlie Gibson.

In what respect, Charlie?

What do you interpret it to be?

Well, Charlie, that’s tough.  Is it the Bush doctrine that says you can go back on your promise to cut global emissions as soon as you take office?  Or the one that says ignore PDBs that warn of an imminent attack on the United States?  Perhaps you’re speaking of the Bush doctrine of sticking the government’s nose into private family health decisions?  Or the one that says you can spy on any American at any time for any reason?  Or maybe the one that says, hey, let’s politicize the Department of Justice!  How about the one where you can divert resources from the war on terror to invade a country because its leader once tried to kill your daddy?  Or ignore congressional subpoenas at will?  Or change laws anytime with signing statements?  That doctrine?  Am I close?

Well, I was thinking…

Wait, I know!  Is it the Bush doctrine that says torture is okay and that the writ of habeas corpus is “quaint?”  Or the Bush doctrine that says the free market will regulate itself and bring us endless prosperity?  Is it the doctrine that says deficits don’t matter?  Or the one that says cronies are competent stewards of the nation’s safety?  Maybe it’s the doctrine of thinking that cutting taxes in the middle of two wars is smart?  Or the doctrine that says government commissions—like the Iraq Study Group—should be taken seriously until they release their report, after which they should be ignored?  Then there’s this one: no matter how much people beg for relief, don’t lift a finger to fix the health care mess in this country, but do pass major legislation that increases the profits of drug companies.  How about the doctrine that says any country that doesn’t make themselves over in America’s image should be mocked and ridiculed and even invaded?  Hey, here’s a great doctrine: running the Iraq war “off the books” so it looks like it’s not costing us anything.  Brilliant!  Are these doctrines ringin’ any bells, Charlie?

Err…um…

Is it the Bush doctrine that says you should commute the sentence of a top White House official who committed perjury to help cover up the fact that you outed a covert CIA operative as an act of political revenge?  Or the one that says vote for me because I’m a CEO and I know what I’m doing?  That is, unless it’s the one that says vote for me because I’m an oilman and I’ll keep gas prices low?  How about the one that says let’s privatize Social Security by putting it into the hands of companies like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers?  Maybe it’s the doctrine that says it’s a good idea to taunt terrorists by sneering, “Bring ‘em on!”  Wait a minute!  It must be the Bush doctrine of raising the terror threat level when it’s politically expedient!  Oh, wait…it could be the doctrine of spending more time on vacation than any other president in history.  Actually, it might be the doctrine that says let’s fuck up the country as much as possible and then blame it on the Democrats.

Tell me, Charlie: which Bush doctrine are you referring to?

The Bush Doctrine as I understand it is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense.  That we have the right of a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us.  Do you agree with that?

Hell, I dunno.  Ask the lady over there beating her ex-brother-in-law with a moose antler.

Oooh, yeah. Game On, Gloves Off.

Earlier today:

John McCain’s new found support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement. John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it.

…

This morning, instead of offering up concrete plans to solve these issues, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book — you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing — this isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it, John McCain won’t, and that’s the choice for Americans in this election.

Finally! You’ll want to be watching this…

Lose your house, lose your vote.

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

Told you about it below. It’s real. These people, these so-called “Republicans” are beneath contemptible.

I’ll just give you an excerpt of what I wrote two years ago. I still feel exactly the same way.

First, I didn’t write about 9/11 yesterday because I have no desire to memorialize 9/11.

I think that we should memorialize 9/12 — the day that the world came together. 9/11 is about a group of theocracy-deranged punk criminals with box cutters who pulled off a very dramatic act of suicidal vandalism and murder. It was a criminal act, and should have been treated as such. On 9/11, we were shocked.

On 9/12, we were one people, world wide, and, properly, good solid police work was being done to find those responsible. We were all family on 9/12/2001. We were not afraid, we were full of love and hope and courage, and we — billions of us — were determined to make our world safe from evil, together, as one.

And then, the tiny men, the so-called “leaders” of our country purposefully turned 9/11 into an act of “terrrism” for political and monetary profit, and we gave the perpetrators of the act exactly what they wanted. We were led into a cultural panic, like so many sheep, by men who found it to be useful to encourage such behavior. We have savaged our constitution, almost destroyed the ideals that this country was founded upon, and incurred the enmity of the world with our swaggering drunken-teenager-with-a-gun schoolyard bully behavior. We have destroyed our soul.

We had a chance to bring the world together as one human family, for the first time in history. We have done the opposite. It makes me physically sick when I think about it too much.

So, no, do not ask me to memorialize 9/11/2001. It is the darkest day in the history of this country. But not for the reasons the talking heads on CNN and Fox tell you.

Support your troops. Get them the hell out of there and let the policemen do their job. We are manufacturing “terrrists” wholesale, every day, right now.

Yes indeedy, Andrew Tobias is on his game this morning:

They want an apology for using the word lipstick? How about an apology for what they’ve done to this country these last eight years? They’ve cut the value of the dollar nearly in half. They’ve borrowed $4 trillion from our kids to give tax cuts to billionaires. They’ve sent thousands of our kids to die invading the wrong country. They’ve diminished our standing in the world. They’ve done nothing on health care. They’ve held back stem cell research. They’ve fought against worker protections and against benefits for returning veterans. They’ve installed corporate lobbyists as regulators. (Their Interior Department, we learned on last night’s news, was literally in bed with the oil industry.) They’ve dug us into a deep, deep hole. And they want an apology? The only thing more ridiculous than their wanting an apology from us is their wanting four more years.

Yes, Sarah Palin is monumentally unqualified to be even the Vice Presidential nominee, much less to hold the office. She’s hardly a “maverick” and it’s laughable to call her a “reformer.” Her public politics are standard reactionary me-first Republican, and her personal politics are about two clicks to the right of Ghengis Khan.

All indications are that she has unlawfully abused the power of her office to improperly bully and/or fire people for personal reasons. She has apparently defrauded the Alaskan government by taking travel per diems while living at home, for months at a time. And even the Murdoch-owned WSJ admits that she is a serial liar.

But I think what will really hurt their ticket is something more human: her voice. Having now watched several of her speeches, she has a very weird nasal accent that sounds like a cross between Bronx and Minnesota, with maybe a dash of South Chicago. Which would be great if she were doing hopeful or visionary speeches; it’s a regular-folks accent in that context. But she’s a woman, and she’s the designated attack dog for the McCain campaign. You need a voice with gravitas for that job. She does not have it, and it is a error to put her there.

This all may be socially impolitic to say much about; whether she’s a woman should matter not at all, and she should be judged only on the merits of her arguments, etc. The fact of the matter, though, is that politics is about people, and people are the ones who will be doing the voting. I think that McCain is a bellicose old fool wrapped in a carefully crafted soft-spoken veneer, and I think that Hillary is overly shrill on the stump, too. But Sarah has them beat; she’s in a completely different league, and I suspect that it’s going to be a huge unwritten factor for the McCain campaign.

I’ve only seen her four or five times now, and I’m already cringing. Wait until America has endured several hours worth.

Just thinking out loud here…

Lifted directly from slashdot:

“Bev Harris over at Black Box Voting has done everyone a favor and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit as an ebook. It’s like Cliff notes of Bev’s 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook presents succinct information to get individuals actively involved in the full-contact sport that is democracy. The target audience is those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up to vote once every four years those who know that something’s up with those voting machines. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy-nominated HBO documentary ‘Hacking Democracy.’ I’ve been working on election integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several times. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out.”

Listen gang, it is important to realize that Republicans have now permanently institutionalized voter suppression through the use of bogus Caging lists on a national scale, county by county. They routinely send out “do not forward” mail to registered Democrats. If the mail is undeliverable for any reason, they challenge the voter registrations associated with that address, and the county clerk, by law, is required to make your vote “provisional” (and not counted) until you go to the trouble of proving that it is a valid vote.

Nice folks, those Republicans. True patriots.

Please make sure that you are actually registered to vote at your current address by the deadline this year. (October 6, 2008 in Texas. Texans can check their registration status over here.)

If you feel like you want to do a little more, grab Bev Harris’ PDF guide to election protection. Lots of good stuff.

You know, I have several Very Conservative friends that I keep in touch with. We argue when it suits us, and enjoy the company of one another when it doesn’t. They’re all good folks; we all have our little insanities.

I’ve noted something different recently, though. Several of these folks have volunteered lately that “Republicans can’t govern.” It’s an exceedingly small statistical sample to be sure, but there seems to be some kind of zeitgeist happening nonetheless. They’re all grumbling about having nowhere to turn, and mumbling the word “libertarian.”

Cool. I can actually meet them over on the far side of libertarian. Very refreshing. Maybe there’s hope, yet.

Register.

Vote.

Who are these ones who would lead us now
To the sound of a thousand guns
Who’d storm the gates of hell itself
To the tune of a single drum

Where are the girls of the neighborhood bars
Whose loves were lost at sea
In the hills of france and on german soil
From saigon to wounded knee

Who come from long lines of soldiers
Whose duty was fulfilled
In the words of a warriors will
And protocol

Where are the boys in their coats of blue
Who flew when their eyes were blind
Was God in town for the roman games
Was he there when the deals were signed

Who are the kings in their coats of mail
Who rode by the cross to die
Did they all go down into worthiness
Is it wrong for a king to cry

And who are these ones who would have us now
Whose presence is concealed
Whose nature is revealed
In a time bomb

Last of all you old seadogs
Who travel after whale
You’d storm the gates of hell itself
For the taste of a mermaid’s tail

Who come from long lines of skippers
Whose duty was fulfilled
In the words of a warrior’s will

And protocol.

Gordon Lightfoot. “Protocol.”

Thirty four years ago today, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.

One could look upon it as a turning point in our country’s history, a bellwether moment. The moment that taught our country that if you’re powerful enough, and if your crimes are great enough, then you can be above the law, cash in, and walk away.

Here we are, a generation later, and our sitting President and Vice President are guilty of violating their oath to “preserve and protect the constitution”; they are almost certainly guilty of internationally accepted definitions of war crimes; they are prima facie guilty of repeatedly and systematically violating the civil service regulations of the Federal Government.

They are arguably guilty of treason against the citizens of the United States. They are most certainly guilty of impeachable offenses, and should have long since been removed from office.

But here we sit, watching as our constitution and our rule of law is once again trashed. Boys will be boys. They’re almost out of office. Never mind.

Thanks, Gerald. Nice work there. Good precedent. Scooter thanks you too, by the way.