The key question was worded, "If North Korea launches a long-range missile, should the United States take military action to eliminate North Korea's ability to launch missiles?" In response, according to Rasmussen, 57% said, "Yes."And people wonder why nobody takes Republicans (or Rasmussen) seriously.I can only assume those 57% haven't thought this through. If the U.S. were to "eliminate" North Korea's ability to launch missiles through military action, that would instigate a rather dramatic regional conflict, involving South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia. A majority of Americans really prepared to jump into this over a launch that, by some measures, was a failure?
In the meantime, Newt Gingrich believes the Obama administration should launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, and use "lasers" to take out the country's missile capabilities. Gingrich added that Obama has a "dangerous ... fantasy foreign policy."
Yes, the guy who wants to shoot frickin' lasers at North Korea believes the president's foreign policy is the stuff of fantasy. Got it.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Leading The Witness, Your Honor
Stopped Clock Is Right Alert
Yes, because George Bush spent the last seven years blaming the entire Muslim world for the 9/11 attacks, right? Right? Er, no, as this collection of Bush quotes regarding Islam makes excruciatingly clear. In fact, Bush emphasized friendship with Muslims from the very start of the war:And that's the one thing even I have to admit Bush did correctly, he resisted the calls from the right to turn this into a crusade and did go out of his way to make partnerships with Muslim countries.
- “I’ve made it clear, Madam President, that the war against terrorism is not a war against Muslims, nor is it a war against Arabs. It’s a war against evil people who conduct crimes against innocent people.” — Remarks by President George W. Bush and President Megawati of Indonesia The Oval Office, Washington, D.C. September 19, 2001
- “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.” — Remarks by the President at Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. September 17, 2001
- “All of us here today understand this: We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil.” — Remarks by President George W. Bush to the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism November 6, 2001
- “I have assured His Majesty that our war is against evil, not against Islam. There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know — that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion. The exact opposite of the teachings of the al Qaeda organization, which is based upon evil and hate and destruction.” — Remarks by President George W. Bush and His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan The Oval Office, Washington, D.C. September 28, 2001
- “Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion.” – Remarks by President George W. Bush on U.S. Humanitarian Aid to Afghanistan Presidential Hall, Dwight David Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C. October 11, 2002
And so on; there are plenty of examples to make the point. Obama spoke in the tradition established by Bush over the last seven-plus years of emphasizing that America did not declare war on Islam. That’s been obvious through our partnership with Islamic nations, such as Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, just to name a few. And he’s right; the last thing we would want to do would be to declare war on a billion people just on the basis of their religion. The more we can keep the Muslims on the sidelines, the better off we are in fighting against the radicals.
Those partnerships however are in various states of disarray (especially in Turkey) which is why Obama is out there trying to fix them. Bush may have not declared war on Islam, but there's a pretty large gap between all out war and best friends forever, and Bush did leave many of those relationships in the dirt.
The Worst Kind Of Bubble
The events of the past 10 years have an eerie similarity to the period leading up to the Great Depression. Total mortgage debt outstanding increased from $9.35 billion in 1920 to $29.44 billion in 1929. In 1920, residential mortgage debt was 10.2% of household wealth; by 1929, it was 27.2% of household wealth.Translation: the easiest way to screw any capitalist financial system is a massive increase in mortgage debt. Once again, we learn that in the end, it all comes back to the housing depression. As long as that continues unabated, our entire system is at stake.The Great Depression has been attributed to excessive speculation on Wall Street, especially between the spring of 1927 and the fall of 1929. Had the difficulties of the banking system been caused by losses on brokers' loans for margin purchases in 1929, the results should have been felt in the banks immediately after the stock market crash. But the banking system did not show serious strains until the fall of 1930.
Bank earnings reached a record $729 million in 1929. Yet bank exposures to real estate were substantial; as the decline in real estate prices accelerated, foreclosures wiped out banks by the thousands. Had the mounting difficulties of the banks and the final collapse of the banking system in the "Bank Holiday" in March 1933 been caused by contraction of the money supply, as Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz argued, then the massive injections of liquidity over the past 18 months should have averted the collapse of the financial market during this current crisis.
The causes of the Great Depression need more study, but the claims that losses on stock-market speculation and a monetary contraction caused the decline of the banking system both seem inadequate. It appears that both the Great Depression and the current crisis had their origins in excessive consumer debt -- especially mortgage debt -- that was transmitted into the financial sector during a sharp downturn.
What we've offered in our discussion of this crisis is the back story to Mr. Bernanke's analysis of the Depression. Why does one crash cause minimal damage to the financial system, so that the economy can pick itself up quickly, while another crash leaves a devastated financial sector in the wreckage? The hypothesis we propose is that a financial crisis that originates in consumer debt, especially consumer debt concentrated at the low end of the wealth and income distribution, can be transmitted quickly and forcefully into the financial system. It appears that we're witnessing the second great consumer debt crash, the end of a massive consumption binge.
And considering housing and commercial real estate prices are expected to continue to fall for another year or more, it may be enough debt strain to shatter the system.
In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions
Is the Dollar Doomed?Four words for you.
Helicopter Ben's printing press.
Control Freaks
Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency?We already know Bush abused wiretapping power. Now we're tempting Obama with the same power, plus the ability to define anything to be an emergency and have the Commerce Department check all internet traffic.Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) think so. On Wednesday they introduced a bill to establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor—an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. That broad power is rattling some civil libertarians.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any "critical" information network "in the interest of national security." The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president.The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also grants the Secretary of Commerce "access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws.
Rockefeller made cybersecurity one of his key issues as a member of the Senate intelligence committee, which he chaired until last year. He now heads the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which will take up this bill.
"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs—from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records—the list goes on," Rockefeller said in a statement. Snowe echoed her colleague, saying, "if we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina."
At least the British are honest about their efforts to snoop on all of its ctizens' communications.
StupidiNews!
- A 6.3 magnitude quake rocked central Italy this morning, leaving scores dead.
- Chile's Llaima volcano erupted, leaving ash and smoke across the area.
- President Obama's European tour continues in Turkey as he moves to smooth over Bush-era differences.
- The IBM/Sun Microsystems deal has crashed, and Big Blue is pulling the plug.
- Nintendo launches its third DS portable, the DSi, with on-line game purchases.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Sure, Let's Have Another War
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of U.S. voters nationwide favor a military response to eliminate North Korea’s missile launching capability. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 15% of voters oppose a military response while 28% are not sure.So what, are we supposed to blast Pyonyang into dust? Then what? Methinks we can't exactly afford a Second Korean War on top of the two and a half wars we have right now with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. But here's the depressing part:North Korea defied international pressure and launched a missile last night. Officials from that country claim a satellite was placed in orbit. U.S. defense officials confirm that a missile was launched but that no object was placed in orbit.
"With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations,” President Obama said.
The telephone survey was conducted Friday and Saturday, April 3-4, the two days immediately prior to North Korea’s launch. The question asked about a military response if North Korea actually did launch a long-range missile.
Support for a military response comes from 66% of Republicans, 52% of Democrats and 54% of those not affiliated with either major political party. There is no gender gap on the issue as a military response is favored by 57% of men and 57% of women.
Seventy-three percent (73%) are at least somewhat concerned that North Korea will use nuclear weapons against the United States. That’s up just a few points from 69% who held that view in October 2006. Prior to that survey, North Korea had successfully conducted an underground nuclear test.So yeah, apparently a whole hell of a lot of us are concerned about Korean nukes blowing up Joliet or Boulder or Tallahassee. Once again, thanks Dubya! Couldn't have done it without ya. Let's push for another war! After all, we still have unemployed neocons looking for something to do, well here you go guys. This seems like a no-brainer to me...Currently, 39% are Very Concerned about a possible nuclear attack from North Korea.
That'll be a great idea!
Seriously. This seems like the dumbest poll ever. As Bob Farley points out at LGM:
Ahem. If you believe that 75% of the registered voters in the United States were closely following the North Korean missile launch on Friday, then I have a tea party to sell you.In other words, none of this makes any sort of sense whatsoever. Oh but it gets worse. Guess who wants us to attack North Korea now?
When you have a poll that suggests that 40% of registered voters have been following a national security event "very closely," and then you note that the poll was taken before the missile launch even occurred, you should know that there's a problem somewhere...
This reveals how useless polling on obscure issues can be. Rasmussen would have us believe that more people want us to go to war with North Korea than favor the current wars in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
This is farcically stupid; although it appears that Newt Gingrich came out in favor of a preventive strike on North Korea, it's a position that's held by approximately zero policymakers on either side of the aisle. That said, I'd love to see the Republicans try to run in 2010 on a platform of starting a third unpopular war...And yet we already have Republicans like Newtie trying to do just that.
Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion
In the coming weeks and months, hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits, just when it's never been harder to find a job.It gets worse. The unemployment market won't begin to recover until 2010 at the earliest, meaning that by the first part of next year, we'll have millions of Americans running out of unemployment benefits.Congress extended unemployment aid twice last year, allowing people to draw a total of up to 59 weeks of benefits. Now, as the recession drags on, a rolling wave of people who were laid off early last year will lose them.
Precise figures are hard to determine, but Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute, estimates that up to 700,000 people could exhaust their extended benefits by the second half of this year.
Some will find new jobs, but prospects will be grim: Layoffs are projected to go on, and many economists expect the jobless rate, already at 8.5 percent, to hit 10 percent by year's end.
"It's going to be a monstrous problem," Vroman said.
U.S. employers shed 663,000 jobs in March, and the jobless rate now stands at its highest in a quarter-century. Since the recession began in December 2007, a net total of 5.1 million jobs have disappeared.
They'll lose their homes in 2010, meaning that home prices will continue to fall and more and more as more homes enter the market. No stabilization in the housing depression. No stabilization in the greater economy, just continuous descent into miasma. More families out on the streets, less spending, more layoffs, more unemployment, more people exhausting their benefits...
As bad as 2009 has been and will continue to be, 2010 will be far, far worse. The pace of entropy is accelerating.
No Surprise Here
BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them?Now, I've been saying this for quite a long time now. Regulators turned the other way, and banksters made billions off of pure fiction.WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, absolutely. This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a Congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it's scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined."
BILL MOYERS: So if your assumption is correct, your evidence is sound, the bank, the lending company, created a fraud. And the ratings agency that is supposed to test the value of these assets knowingly entered into the fraud. Both parties are committing fraud by intention.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right, and the investment banker that — we call it pooling — puts together these bad mortgages, these liars' loans, and creates the toxic waste of these derivatives. All of them do that. And then they sell it to the world and the world just thinks because it has a triple-A rating it must actually be safe. Well, instead, there are 60 and 80 percent losses on these things, because of course they, in reality, are toxic waste.
BILL MOYERS: You're describing what Bernie Madoff did to a limited number of people. But you're saying it's systemic, a systemic Ponzi scheme.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, Bernie was a piker. He doesn't even get into the front ranks of a Ponzi scheme...
BILL MOYERS: But you're saying our system became a Ponzi scheme.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Our system...
BILL MOYERS: Our financial system...
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Became a Ponzi scheme. Everybody was buying a pig in the poke. But they were buying a pig in the poke with a pretty pink ribbon, and the pink ribbon said, "Triple-A."
Now the bill has come due, and the banksters know that the easiest way to avoid paying was to make sure the collapse was so systemically massive that revealing the truth would plunge the world into absolute anarchy. It's trillion dollar extortion. And it was the plan from the absolute beginning.
The country is bankrupt, but calling us on it will in turn bankrupt the entire global financial system. Now, everyone's trying to figure out how to save themselves. It won't work. The party is indeed over. We'll refer to 2009 as "the good times" before too long.
Your standard of living and mine are about to be sharply adjusted downward over the next several years.
Push The Button, Kim
No object entered orbit, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said Sunday, after North Korea claimed it had launched a satellite.Russians and NoKos say there's a satellite up there, rest of the world calls BS, anything the UN will try to do will get vetoed by China and Russia, and nothing will happen.North Korea launched a long-range rocket Sunday, and called it a successful, peaceful launch of a satellite. But U.S. and South Korean officials called it a provocative act, amid international fears that the launch could be a missile with a warhead attached.
International reaction to reports of the launch -- which took place at about 11:30 a.m. local time -- ranged from calls for an immediate U.N. Security Council meeting to calls for measured diplomacy.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, the U.S. and a Canadian organization that monitors space activity released a statement about the launch."Officials acknowledged today that North Korea launched a Taepo Dong 2 missile at 10:30 p.m. EDT Saturday, which passed over the Sea of Japan and the nation of Japan," the statement said. "Stage one of the missile fell into the Sea of Japan. The remaining stages along with the payload itself landed in the Pacific Ocean. No object entered orbit and no debris fell on Japan."
But North Korean and Russian officials said the communist nation successfully launched a satellite in orbit, according to the nations' news agencies.
We should thank Bush for allowing Kim Jong-Il to get nukes (even crapass ones.)
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Getting Out Of Control
The latest gun massacre occurred this morning in Pittsburgh. This one had a more political bent than most.Poplawski made his own choice in the end, just like the suspect in yesterday's killing. But if all people have on hand to make choices are ignorance and hatred, they will make bad choices if constantly fed lies and misinformation.A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he recently had been upset about losing his job and that he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns. [...]
Friends identified the suspect as Richard Poplawski, 23, but police would not immediately confirm his name. The gunman was arrested after a four-hour standoff, police said. [...]
Edward Perkovic said Poplawski, his best friend, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."
It wouldn't be fair to blame right-wing propaganda for Poplawski slaying these police officers. Plenty of people have heard the far-right talking points and only a small handful have been driven to violence. As John Cole noted this morning, "Sure, crazy people do crazy things. But that doesn't make it responsible to encourage them, which is what a lot of really foolish people are doing right now for purely political reasons."
And sometimes those choices lead to tragedy. The Left blames the Right for hate radio and talk to revolution against the government. The Right blames the Left for the exact same thing. It's important to note that there's talk like that on both sides.
But the hate rhetoric serves no one in the end. People are dying because of it. This country was born out of violent revolution, and it has been used as an excuse ever since. I don't like guns. They are designed to kill things. You can own them in America. My friends argue "Look, if you outlaw guns, then people will still get them and take what they want. Millions of Americans own guns legally."
That's the problem. Millions of Americans own guns legally. And as the economy gets worse, these incidents will only rise. We're a country of people with itchy trigger fingers. If somebody wants to use a gun to kill a dozen people, then they can. You can kill them, but you know what? They have a gun too. They're just as likely to kill you as you are them.
We're a violent, angry people. Everything this country has ever really achieved has been through violence and killing, frankly.
But the time for the false moral equivalency arguments are over. Eight years of Bush and the Left talked about impeachment, winning electoral victories, and non-violent protests against the specific acts that Bush did while in office. Legal avenues of redressing grievances, even at the most heated.
But ten weeks of Obama and the Right is talking about a new world order, revolution, and the "illegitimate Muslim usurper." They are accusing him of fascism, of trying to destroy the country, of trying to take their guns away when he's just tried to clean up Bush's mess. They are advocating a very, very different path. And down that path are massacres like we had over the last two days.
When one points this out, one is accused of being paranoid, unhinged, and insane. Doesn't stop it from being the truth sometimes, but then again, the truth hurts.
Responsibility
A Pakistani Taliban militant leader has claimed responsibility for the attack on a U.S. immigration center in New York state in which 13 people were killed, Reuters reported....Or the claim that the Mehsud story is in fact a clever ruse in order to spread "anti-American propaganda"..."I accept responsibility. They were my men. I gave them orders in reaction to U.S. drone attacks," Baituallah Mehsud told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location on Saturday.
U.S. officials were not immediately available for comment about Mehsud's claim, Reuters reported, and one Pakistani security analyst dismissed the claim as a publicity stunt.
But we all know this “acceptance of responsibility” is an outright lie. We may not know why Jiverly Voong went off the deep end, but we know he had zilch to do with Pakistan. So, why did Reuters think it a story worthy of reporting? There can only be one reason....or the belief that Mehsud is actually telling the truth and America's under siege.
You see by telling us the lie of Baitubooolah Meshaweazel Muhammad something-or-another who is claiming he was responsible for the rampage Reuters can also promulgate anger toward our Predator drone program that has been so successful in killing these Taliban and al Qaeda scum-bags.
Reuters knows full well the story is bunk. But if it helps turn more people against the U.S. efforts to stop Islamofascist terror, well, that is a tale worth telling.
Was there more than one gunman? I liveblogged the coverage and for a couple of hours during the day they thought there was. Who assisted the gunman? Whose car did he use to barricade the back door to stop people from escaping? How many were involved? What's on the murderer's hard drive? Will law enforcement give us the straight story?The Occam's Razor assumption that Mehsud is just yanking our chain hasn't occured to the wingers yet, but then again this is the kind of thing they live for.
No doubt they're trying to figure out how this somehow proves Obama is a Muslim Manchurian Candidate.
No Longer Any Excuses
You can think about it like this. When you try to recruit someone to spy for you against his own government your number one obstacle is not overcoming their innate patriotism. You've probably already identified some weakness on their part (substance addiction, homosexuality, a sick child, etc.) that you can exploit. Your number one obstacle is convincing them that you can keep the arrangement a secret and that you can take care of them if anything goes wrong. If your government cannot keep a secret, them you'll have a hell of a time convincing anyone to spy for you. Therefore, it's bad idea for the government to discuss clandestine operations in public.This morning that argument became an utterly moot point. The Brits announced their own "truth and reconciliation" investigation into torture and human rights abuses.What's true about recruiting agents is tenfold more true about foreign intelligence services. You cannot expose a foreign intelligence service as being complicit in torture, for example, and think that they will ever cooperate with you again on sensitive intelligence matters.
That's the legacy that the Bush administration left us. If we have a full airing of the black sites, the extraordinary renditions, and the 'enhanced interrogations', it will severely damage our vital relationships with several foreign intelligence services. And that can really and truly put our country at unnecessary risk.
MPs are to undertake the most far-reaching inquiry into Britain's role in human rights abuses in decades as allegations mount to suggest that officials repeatedly breached international law.The Commons foreign affairs select committee will examine Britain's involvement in the detention, transfer and interrogation of prisoners held during the so-called war on terror. Among the matters to be examined later in the year are allegations, reported in the Guardian over the past two years, that British intelligence officers colluded in the torture of Britons held in Pakistan and Egypt.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, will give evidence to the inquiry although he and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, refused, earlier this year, to appear before parliament's joint committee on human rights, which is looking into reports that British officials were complicit in torture.
The foreign affairs committee will investigate:
Mike Gapes, the committee's Labour chairman, said this would be the first time it would attempt to investigate the range of allegations about British conduct. "We are very concerned about these, and thought it was important to branch out," he said. The committee has yet to decide whether to ask the security or intelligence agencies to give evidence.
- The case of Binyam Mohamed.
- Allegations of British complicity in torture.
- The practice of extraordinary rendition, including the possible use of the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia.
- The transfer of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Allegations of sexual abuse at the British embassy in Baghdad.
- The oversight of private security companies employed by the Foreign Office.
As you can see there by that last sentence, the Brits are struggling with the intelligence question as well, the argument is that revealing anything about our intel sources and methods will do far more damage to our country than the continuing mistrust that refusing to release the information is causing or will cause. However, that's no longer the point. The Brits have all but played our hand by deciding that the intelligence agency evidence question is not stopping them from launching a full inquiry.
At this point I don't see how Obama can now continue to refuse to hold similar hearings. It needs to be done. Period. Redact the methods and sources if you must, but after this, there's no longer any excuse. Particularly given the very, very real possibility of the British investigation implicating American officials in some way, we now have no choice. The British Parliament has made Obama's decision for him.
The UK and the US are so inextricably linked that US officials have to and will be implicated in the British inquiry. Sunlight is about to be shined on the whole black, rotten mess underneath the rock that it has been buried under. The risk of this happening means that the US should now conduct its own investigation before the British one embarrasses the US any further.
And regardless of the state of the intelligence question, the Brits are again proceeding with a full inquiry. We now look like fools because of our President's stubborn refusal to do the same. Nobody will trust us on anything anyway.
StupidiNews, Weekend Edition
- France makes its return as a full military NATO member.
- Norm Coleman vows to take his election case before the Supreme Court and "expects to win."
- Sharia Islamic law is clamping down on Pakistan's Swat valley region.
- The owner of the Texas Rangers has defaulted on loan payments for the baseball team.
- MIT scientists have come up with a battery made with electrodes created by a virus.
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