Thursday, August 27, 2009
Does President Obama have the guts?
Could Hillary Clinton have been right about Barack Obama? Could she have been right when she said that he was the candidate of lofty promises —"the skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect" — and not the candidate of real leadership?
In her former life as a presidential candidate, Clinton warned voters that Obama would let them down. She warned them that when the going got tough, he would fold up.
She said it was not just a matter of Obama lacking experience — that was the least of it — but that he lacked the strength, the toughness, the will to get the job done.
In January 2008, at Nashua High School North just before the New Hampshire primary, Clinton said of Obama: "I applaud his incredible ability to make a speech that really leaves people inspired. My point is that when the cameras disappear and you're there in the Oval Office having to make tough decisions, I believe I am better prepared and ready to lead our country."
Democratic voters disagreed with her (though she did win New Hampshire), and Obama went on to win both his party's nomination and the presidency. But Clinton, now his secretary of state, left him with a warning: "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose."
It is prose time for Obama.
And we are now going to see how he governs when it comes to meaningful health care reform. In his heart and in his head he knows what it takes for such reform. He knows that a public option — a government-run health care program like Medicare — has the best chance of competing with the insurance industry.
Zero Hedge Claims that the Federal Reserve ITSELF Traded Over a Trillion Dollars Worth of Derivatives in March Alone
You know Zero Hedge, the popular website which has broken major stories like Goldman's dominance of high-frequency trading.
Some say that Zero Hedge occasionally breaks stories before adequately fact-checking them. I don't know whether that is true or not, but I do know that - in the months I've been reading the site - ZH has broken a number of major stories which:
(1) Were later covered by the world's biggest financial news outlets
and
(2) Have caused Congress members, Senators, the New York Stock Exchange and others to take action to change reporting requirements and to shut down questionable practices
Zero Hedge is now claiming that the Federal Reserve itself traded over a trillion dollars worth of derivatives in March alone:
Federal Reserve Disclosed Trading $1.4 trillion in OTC "Other" Derivatives in March 2009 *corrected
The Federal Reserve has apparently been engaged in OTC derivatives trading. As of March 2009, they began publishing this information in several categories broken down by 'risk'. Tyler discovered this bombshell last Friday. In Treasury TIC data there are large sums classified as "Other Contracts". While it is not clear what specifically is being traded , we know these are not "Single-currency Interest Rate Contracts" nor are they "Foreign Exchange Contracts". These contracts are classified as "Other Contracts by Type of Risk" -- and they include $85 billion in OTC equity derivatives , and $1.169 trillion (yes, with a T) in OTC credit derivatives.
What is interesting here is that prior to March 2009 such trading was not reported in detail. The March disclosure by category is what is completely new. These Fed OTC derivatives have $1 trillion+ in capital in "Other". It is unclear what aspect of the credit capital markets this is allocated to or propping up: is it CDS? And if so, what entities are the contracts written on? At this time, it is unclear what relationship, if any, these $1.4 trillion in Federal Reserve OTC derivatives have to the unusual market activity many of us have been observing.
If Zero Hedge is right about this one, it will end up being one of the biggest stories of the year.
See this.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/08/zero-hedge-claims-that-federal-reserve.html
Insurers admit 50,000 employees lobbying Congress to claim profits fair
Memo tells employees to keep a low profile
A spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group, admitted in an article published Monday that as many as 50,000 industry employees are involved in an effort to fight back against aggressive healthcare reform.
The admission, published in the last sentence of a Wall Street Journal article, highlights the stakes of potential healthcare reform for the private health insurance industry. Insurers and investors alike are terrified at the prospect of a so-called "public option," which would create a government-run health insurance program to compete with private insurers. Because the government plan wouldn't have to earn a profit, the plan would be able to undercut the premiums of private firms, pressuring profit margins.
"The health-insurance industry is sending thousands of its employees to town-hall meetings and other forums during Congress's August recess to try to counter a tide of criticism directed at the insurers and remain a player — and not an outsider — in the debate over the future of the health-care system," the Journal's Vanessa Fuhrmans and Avery Johnson wrote Monday.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/24/health-insurance-employees-lobbying-congress/
PETA Wants to Buy Lighthouse as a Fish Empathy Center
by Erik Deckers
I think PETA is getting into comedy, because their latest caper just screams hilarity.
They want to buy the Grand Haven lighthouse on Lake Michigan as its new anti-fishing campaign headquarters and memorial center, says the Detroit News. PETA applied to take over the lighthouse through a federal program that allows nonprofits to take control of the country's lighthouses as a way for the federal government to reduce operating costs.
"We want to renovate the Grand Haven lights as a memorial to the billions of fish killed annually by sport fishermen, as well as for their flesh (commercial fishing industry)," said Lindsey Rajt, manager of PETA's campaigns department. "We also want to make it a fun and educational place."
Muh-huh.
You know, I'm thinking we need a grain empathy center to commemorate the billions of tons of grains killed to make the granola PETA loves so much. We'll build it in an abandoned barn I saw a couple hours north of Indianapolis. And we'll start a similar one for a soybean memorial center for all the tofu they've preyed upon over the years.
http://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/2009/08/peta-wants-to-buy-lighthouse-as-fish.html
Poll: 8 in 10 Back Public Option
A new survey conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates asks respondents to what degree they support or oppose "[s]tarting a new federal health insurance plan that individuals could purchase if they can't afford private plans offered to them" -- a public option, in other words. The results are interesting, though not necessarily surprising to those who have been closely following the debate.
All: 79 percent favor/18 percent oppose
Democrats: 89 percent favor/8 percent oppose
Republicans: 61 percent favor/33 percent oppose
Independents: 80 percent favor/16 percent oppose
Not only does a public option enjoy strong support (37 percent strongly support such a choice), it enjoys broad support -- a finding based not only in this new survey but also in SurveyUSA polling released last week. Indeed, a supermajority of even Republicans supports a federal program to provide individuals with a choice for their health insurance coverage, with just a third of the party membership opposing such a plan.
So why, again, are supporters of a public option finding such difficulty in Congress?
New meth formula avoids anti-drug laws
By Associated Press
TULSA, Okla. (AP) - This is the new formula for methamphetamine: a two-liter soda bottle, a few handfuls of cold pills and some noxious chemicals. Shake the bottle and the volatile reaction produces one of the world's most addictive drugs.Only a few years ago, making meth required an elaborate lab - with filthy containers simmering over open flames, cans of flammable liquids and hundreds of pills. The process gave off foul odors, sometimes sparked explosions and was so hard to conceal that dealers often "cooked" their drugs in rural areas.
But now drug users are making their own meth in small batches using a faster, cheaper and much simpler method with ingredients that can be carried in a knapsack and mixed on the run. The "shake-and-bake" approach has become popular because it requires a relatively small number of pills of the decongestant pseudoephedrine - an amount easily obtained under even the toughest anti-meth laws that have been adopted across the nation to restrict large purchases of some cold medication.
"Somebody somewhere said 'Wait this requires a lot less pseudoephedrine, and I can fly under the radar,"' said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control.
An Associated Press review of lab seizures and interviews with state and federal law enforcement agents found that the new method is rapidly spreading across the nation's midsection and is contributing to a spike in the number of meth cases after years of declining arrests.
The new formula does away with the clutter of typical meth labs, and it can turn the back seat of a car or a bathroom stall into a makeshift drug factory. Some addicts have even made the drug while driving.
The pills are crushed, combined with some common household chemicals and then shaken in the soda bottle. No flame is required.
Using the new formula, batches of meth are much smaller but just as dangerous as the old system, which sometimes produces powerful explosions, touches off intense fires and releases drug ingredients that must be handled as toxic waste.
"If there is any oxygen at all in the bottle, it has a propensity to make a giant fireball," said Sgt. Jason Clark of the Missouri State Highway Patrol's Division of Drug and Crime Control. "You're not dealing with rocket scientists here anyway. If they get unlucky at all, it can have a very devastating reaction."
One little mistake, such as unscrewing the bottle cap too fast, can result in a huge blast, and police in Alabama, Oklahoma and other states have linked dozens of flash fires this year - some of them fatal - to meth manufacturing.
"Every meth recipe is dangerous, but in this one, if you don't shake it just right, you can build up too much pressure, and the container can pop," Woodward said.
When fire broke out in older labs, "it was usually on a stove in a back room or garage and people would just run, but when these things pop, you see more extreme burns because they are holding it.
Gay Boise Air Force Pilot 'outed' by false accusation
The Air Force found out the Boise airman was gay when he had to defend himself. The Pentagon chief says such cases may justify changing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'
BY DAN POPKEY
On April 3, 2003, Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach flew his F-15E toward an Iraqi ambush site about a mile from U.S. Army troops advancing on Baghdad airport.Fehrenbach faced anti-aircraft fire, surface-to-air missiles and a mechanical problem on his wingman's plane. Still, he destroyed the enemy position and helped clear the way for the Army to take the airport that night. For his heroism, the Notre Dame grad won an Air Medal with a valor device, one of his nine Air Medals.
Five years later, Fehrenbach confronted a crisis in a very different setting. A Boise police detective sat across a conference table questioning him about an alleged crime.
Fehrenbach, stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base, was in a Catch-22. To clear himself of the claim he'd raped a man, Fehrenbach could tell police his side of the story. But admitting he'd had consensual sex could get him kicked out of the Air Force he loved after 18 years.
Fehrenbach asked Detective Mark Vucinich whether his employer had a right to see his statement. Yes, replied Vucinich.
Fehrenbach then told the detective he had sex with Cameron Shaner on May 12, 2008. He'd met Shaner, 30, on a gay Web site and invited him to his southeast Boise home.
Fehrenbach was soon cleared by police and the Ada County prosecutor's office. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations subsequently found no violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. AFOSI concluded that Fehrenbach and Shaner had consensual sex, and that Shaner was an "unreliable source of information."
But the Air Force wasn't done: Fehrenbach's admission he'd had gay sex was a violation of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law.
"Because of the criminal allegation, Victor confirmed the fact he was gay," said Emily Hecht, a lawyer for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund. "That's all the Air Force needed. Had his accuser been a woman, he'd have gone back to work with no further issue."
FIGHTING BACK, CHANGING POLICY
Fehrenbach, 40, was notified in September that he would be discharged, costing him a $46,000 annual pension and the dignity of retiring on his own terms, as his Air Force parents both had.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Seven Points on the CIA Report
You can catch my review of the CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's report on BBC's "The World" or on MSNBC's Live with Carlos Watson today at 11 ET. Here, in the meantime, are seven points that I draw from it:
-
The worst is yet to come. Yesterday the CIA released a fresh copy of the report with roughly half of the "case study" discussion now unmasked. But context and placement suggest that the material that remains concealed contains some of the worst discussion of abuse in the report. The heavy redactions start around page 25, and the redactions cover discussion of the origins of the program and the approval process, as well as the discussion of specific prisoners, notably Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammad. Although cases in which the guidelines provided by the Justice Department were exceeded have been discussed, it's likely the case that the still blacked-out passages cover instances where Justice gave a green light but the conduct was so gruesome that CIA wants to keep it under wraps. That means we haven't heard the last of the Helgerson report, and further disclosures are likely.
-
Opposition from within. For years the CIA has said that CIA personnel would be demoralized and the reputation of the agency would be damaged by disclosure of the contents of the report. But the report documents just the opposite. The Inspector General's review was launched by complaints coming from valued senior employees who felt that the Bush Program (as John Yoo has dubbed it) was wrong. One of them actually expresses his worry that those involved will be hauled before the World Court at some point because of [and that's redacted!] This makes clear that good employees of the agency opposed the Bush Program, were vocal in their opposition, and focused concern on the program's illegality. The OLC memos were intended to silence these complaints, but they only accentuated the agency's morale problems by enmeshing it in obviously illegal and immoral conduct. By contrast, the number of CIA personnel involved in pushing it through and supporting it is tiny—probably not many more than two dozen—though their voices are heard very loudly. It's interesting that in a stream of appearances by CIA personnel on TV yesterday—Tyler Drumheller, Jack Rice, Bob Baer and others—all said that a criminal investigation was a good idea. The official spokesman of the CIA torture team remains, as for the last seven years, David Ignatius.
-
George Tenet and Michael Hayden misled the public. Both directors from the Bush years made numerous statements in which they argued that all the procedures used were closely policed and clearly legal. Previously I discussed Hayden's appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he gave broad assurance that the law was carefully studied and enforced. But the IG report, which Tenet and Hayden read, makes clear that these claims are false. Tenet and Hayden were put on notice that internal efforts to police the process had collapsed and that there were serious legal issues surrounding what was done. We know that Tenet and Hayden vehemently opposed release of the Helgerson report. It's now evident why. This report casts them as liars.
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All trails lead to the Vice President's office. At several points, redactions begin just when the discussion is headed toward the supervision or direction of the program and context suggests that some figure far up the Washington food chain is intervening. Moreover, as Jane Mayer recounts in Dark Side, Helgerson's report was shut down when he was summoned, twice, to meet with Dick Cheney, who insisted that the report be stopped. Cheney had good reason to be concerned. This report shows that the vice president intervened directly in the process and ensured that the program was implemented. The OPR report likewise shows Cheney's office commissioning the torture memos and carefully supervising the process. It is increasingly clear that torture was Dick Cheney's special project and that he was personally and deeply involved in it. And the CIA report has some amazing nuggets that show Cheney's hand. In 2003, after Jay Bybee departed OLC, Cheney struggled to have John Yoo installed as his successor, but ultimately John Ashcroft's candidate, Jack Goldsmith, prevailed. Goldsmith quickly backtracked on the torture authorizations that Yoo and Bybee gave. The result? The CIA stopped taking its cue from OLC and instead turned to the White House for guidance. It is remarkably vague on the particulars, and blackouts emerge just as passages seem to be getting interesting. But there's little doubt that Dick Cheney and his staff were pushing the process from behind the scenes.
Still crazy after all these years
The perils of losing one's grip on reality
NOT long after the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, the Senate contemplated a bill to tighten federal control over the sale of guns through the post. Three gun-lovers drove 2,500 miles from Arizona to Washington, DC, to protest. One argued that the bill was part of "a further attempt by a subversive power to make us part of one world socialistic government" and that it could "create chaos" and help "our enemies" to seize power. Not much has changed since Richard Hofstadter described this incident in a hugely influential book, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". Gun-lovers still argue that the slightest curb on their right to bear arms will make America vulnerable to tyranny. And in other areas, too, the paranoid style is alive and frothing.Some of Barack Obama's detractors content themselves with arguing that he is a bad president. Others go further. "Birthers" insist that he was not born in the United States and is therefore constitutionally barred from being president. Yet Mr. Obama's birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii, and there is not a shred of evidence to the contrary. There is even an announcement of his birth in the archive of the Honolulu Advertiser, a local newspaper. Yet the internet crackles with theories as to how all this was faked so that, 48 years later, Mr. Obama could impose a socialist state on America. And a YouGov poll for The Economist found that 26% of Republicans think Mr. Obama is probably foreign-born.
Other conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama are even loopier. For example, some Americans think he is the Antichrist. The evidence for this, apparently, is that in the Bible Jesus is quoted as predicting that Satan will come down like lightning from heaven, and the words for “lightning” and “heaven” in Hebrew sound a bit like “Barack Obama”. Plus, his presidential limo is nicknamed “The Beast”. For those who think this is too far-fetched, there is the theory that Mr. Obama is a closet Nazi. He thinks abortion should be legal. Historically, some abortion advocates have also been eugenicists. Therefore he must be one of them. Also, he wants to discourage smoking. So did Hitler!
Hofstadter, writing at the time of Barry Goldwater’s insurgency, argued that political paranoia—a mix of anger, heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy—was most evident on the extreme right. And there are plenty of examples of right-wingers peddling nutty tales. Isolationists in the 1940s accused Franklin Roosevelt of deliberately letting the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour to provide an excuse for war. Talk-radio crackpots in the 1990s accused the Clintons of having Vince Foster, a depressive friend of theirs who killed himself, murdered.
But the left is hardly immune to such fantasies. Some people, including Mr. Obama’s own former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, believe that AIDS was cooked up by the government to kill blacks. A staggering 18% of Americans think that the government of George Bush probably knew in advance about the attacks of September 11th 2001 but allowed them to proceed anyway. Some even contend that Mr. Bush orchestrated the attacks himself, to create an excuse for invading Iraq. To believe this, you have to believe that the Bushies were both wicked enough to murder thousands of Americans and brilliant enough to execute such a mind-bogglingly sophisticated plot without a single leak—in a culture where Richard Nixon could not even hush up a burglary.
Belief in conspiracy theories can be comforting. If everything that goes wrong is the fault of a secret cabal, that relieves you of the tedious necessity of trying to understand how a complex world really works. And you can feel smug that you are smart enough to “see through” the official version of events. But widespread paranoia has drawbacks. For a start, it makes calm, rational debate rather tricky. How can you discuss the trade-offs of health-care reform, for example, with someone who thinks the government is plotting to kill grandma? It does not help, either, that politicians on both sides are willing to fan the flames. Sarah Palin calls Mr. Obama’s health-care proposals “evil”. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, calls the protesters who loudly oppose them “evil-mongers”. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, calls them “un-American”.
It’s serious
In his book “Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History”, David Aaronovitch argues that conspiratorial fantasy can have dangerous real-world consequences. Hitler read and believed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a bogus account of a global Jewish conspiracy. So did the founders of Hamas. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a bomb in Oklahoma in 1995 because he thought the federal government was hatching various dastardly plots.
Some people watch the ferment at town-hall meetings in America today and worry that another Oklahoma-style atrocity is brewing. A few protesters are waving placards wishing for Mr. Obama’s death. Others are ostentatiously wearing firearms outside his rallies. A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Centre describes an uptick in the number of “Patriot” militia groups since Mr. Obama’s election and frets that some could turn violent.
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14258768
Sphere: Related Contentnumber 9, number 9, number 9....
If you say you want a revolution, next month could (or could not) mark the milestone many of you have been either awaiting or dreading. The infamous "tipping point" in music digital delivery, where an event or series of events will trigger the proverbial nail in the coffin for physical CD's, just may be set in motion by the those darling moptops from Liverpool.
The folks over at Apple are pretty good at keeping things quiet, but there seems to be some sort of event planned for September 9th. This is usually the time period where they do their annual pre-holiday dog and pony show...a new Mac, app, iPhone or whatever. So be it either wishful thinking or the real deal, the buzz is that it could be the debut of iTunes 9....which will have an app for linking your social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. And along with that, there could also be an announcement that the Beatles digital download store is open for business.
Now history shows that there is a long line of legal mojo between Apple and Apple Corp, and recent quotes from Dhani Harrison in Blender would lead you to believe it's all about the Beatle's wishes not to sell single song downloads. But then there's Sir Paul who told the Guardian recently that "The last word I got back was it's stalled at the whole moment, the whole process... I really hope it will happen because I think it should".
Now if you want to look at some numbers, iTunes now sells 25% of all music sold in America. They are the number one music retailer, with Wal Mart coming in second at 14% , and followed by Best Buy. The IFPI, the international equivalent of the RIAA, has put out new stats claiming that only 5 percent of all music downloads in 2008 were legal. The group estimated that 40 billion tracks were shared illegally last year, or an average of almost 30 songs for every internet user worldwide. So in other words....say it ain't so....it's pretty much over for CD's folks.
Another note about all this....a study released yesterday by Forrester Research states that "9 out of 10 cell phone users do not listen to music on their phones". And 60% of the people polled say they have "no interest" in ever getting their music that way. In fact, there is much more interest in streaming than cell phone music distribution.
My point...if there is one, other than speculation....is that sometime in the next three weeks the Beatle's new digitized catalog will be uploaded to any number of P2P sites, as well as posted on music blogs in some way, shape or form. No law will stop it, no country can bar it...it simply will happen. The two remaining Beatles and the family members of the two estates probably know that this would be not only the opportunity to generate a huge amount of revenue, but also the chance to lead the revolution...one more time.
Reader’s Digest files for bankruptcy protection
Reader's Digest, publisher of the monthly magazine which claims the largest circulation in the world, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday in an agreement with its major lenders.
Reader's Digest Association said that as part of its previously announced restructuring plan it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which protects a company from its creditors while it restructures.
It said the Chapter 11 filing only applies to its US businesses and not its operations in other countries.
Reader's Digest said last week that the restructuring agreement calls for a "substantial portion" of its 1.6 billion dollars in debt to be swapped for equity and ownership of the company to be transferred to the lender group.
A total of 550 million dollars in debt will remain on Readers's Digest's books when it emerges from bankruptcy.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/24/readers-digest-files-for-bankruptcy-protection/
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