Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Why is it that the same people that rightfully remind us that policework is a dangerous job and that cops can get killed...

A madman shot five officers, killing three, in Pittsburgh. These men did protect and serve. The gunman was taken into custody, too late to save three of the officers.

... are the same ones who criticize the police for putting the safety of their officers first?

Wrote Steyn: “If you ever have to call 911, it may be worth requesting that kind of service rather than the world’s most heavily armed and lavished equipped yellow-tape installers.”

That’s cold, but it appears to be fitting. I wonder if anyone in New York state will dare hold the Binghamton Police accountable for their inaction in the face of danger.

If the police cannot serve and protect, let’s get rid of them.

So which is it, Don Surber? Should officers be concerned about their safety when they are facing people armed with guns in a job where they can get killed themselves or get others killed, or are they negligent for allowing people to die when trying to safely operate in a clearly dangerous environment?

It's a difficult job and way the hell too easy to criticize in hindsight when the bullets aren't flying, man. It's even worse when you use that to score political points.

The Nuclear Option

Over at the Daily Beast, Scott Horton reveals that Senate Republicans appear to be playing hardball on the issue of torture and Justice Department nominees (emphasis mine):

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.

Bottom line, if the Obama administration releases those John Yoo torture memos, Republicans will scuttle the nominations of the people who are most likely to prosecute the offenses these memos entail.

It very much is blackmail if that is the case, and Obama should immediately release the memos and bury the GOP if they try to block Dawn Johnsen and Harold Koh. I say pull the trigger and make the bastards pay. Scuttle the Republicans. If they block the rest of Obama's appointments, then they'll never shake the Party of No label.

If Obama caves on this one, then we've lost ourselves as a country.

Congratulations Are In Order

Because Shelly Bachmann has finally crossed over into Godwin's Law territory with her stupidity, thus earning her my eternal scorn and a tag for future derisive snark.

The launching point of Bachmann's remarks was the widely popular and bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which would expand national community service programs from 75,000 positions to 250,000.

"It's under the guise of -- quote -- volunteerism. But it's not volunteers at all. It's paying people to do work on behalf of government," said the Minnesota Republican. "I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."

The Obama White House did not immediately return request for reaction. The Kennedy Serve America Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 275 to 149 and the Senate, by a vote of 79 to 19.

Needless to say, new tag for the Distinguished Nutbar From Minnesota: Bachmanniac.

The woman's persecution complex could power Minneapoils for days on end.

[UPDATE] And pray she doesn't see this article, either. Actually, I hope she does. The freak-out should be impressive.

Some Real High School Garbage Going On

Greg Sargent picks up on the GOP eating its own over the weekend, particularly stabbing current House Minority Leader John Boehner in the back and pumping up the stock of current GOP Whip Eric Cantor.

You know there’s serious disarray afoot among a party’s Congressional leaders when the principals and their staffs start leaking damaging info about each other, and that now seems to be happening among House GOP leaders.

Check out this nugget from Ben Pershing’s piece on increasing tensions among House Republicans. It appears that someone is trying to pin the blame for the House GOP’s politically-disastrous, numbers-free budget on John Boehner:

Privately, Cantor and the lawmaker tasked with writing the GOP budget, Rep. Paul D. Ryan, had urged the party to hold off going public until it could produce a finished product. Both men wanted a more detailed proposal with dollar figures that would make it a more defensible document. Boehner and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence disagreed, hoping to counter as quickly as possible Democrats’ charge that Republicans are “the Party of No.” The result was a botched rollout and bad press.

And someone wants to shift the blame for the botched budget rollout away from Eric Cantor.

Boehner survived one attempt on his job after the election, but it's looking like Cantor's crew has declared "Game on!" and aren't waiting for 2010. Then again, if the contest if between the GOP as the Party of No and the GOP as the Party of Stupid Ideas, does it matter who wins?

Leading The Witness, Your Honor

Steve Benen has more on that zany North Korean missile poll from Rasmussen that just seems to be full of complete insanity.

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."

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.

And people wonder why nobody takes Republicans (or Rasmussen) seriously.

Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Today's Wingnut Stopped Clock Is Right Alert goes to "Cap'n" Ed Morrissey of The Malkinvania Reserve Squad Hot Air, who rightfully points out that Obama's statement this weekend that "We're not at war with Islam" is something Bush said on a number of occasions first.

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:

• “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.

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.

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

A pretty good opinion piece in today's WSJ from economists Vernon Smith and Steven Gjerstad explaining the bubble economics of the last several decades and how this crash keeps looking more and more like 1929. (emphasis mine)

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.

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.

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.

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

Time's Michael Schuman asks:

Is the Dollar Doomed?

Four words for you.

Helicopter Ben's printing press.

Control Freaks

A new Senate bill would give the President the power to declare a national cyberspace emergency, shut down the internet in the US, and monitor all internet communications without need for a warrant.

Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency?

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."

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.

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.

Last Call

I leave you with this because I had to watch it and experience the pain, and I just don't see why I should have to suffer this misery alone (h/t Instaputz):



Share and Enjoy.

Sure, Let's Have Another War

I wonder how long it will take the wingers and neocons to jump on this one.

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.

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.

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:

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.

Currently, 39% are Very Concerned about a possible nuclear attack from North Korea.

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...

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.

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.

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?

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

Jobless benefits are beginning to expire for those laid off this time last year.

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.

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.

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.

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 has a fantastic interview with William K. Black, Mizzou economist and former S&L crisis bank regulator. He explains in layman's terms about the current financial crisis and the very scary truth that America's banks are insolvent.

BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them?

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, I've been saying this for quite a long time now. Regulators turned the other way, and banksters made billions off of pure fiction.

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

North Korea has tested its missile, to the surprise of absolutely no one as this week's worst kept secret missile launch ever.

No object entered orbit, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said Sunday, after North Korea claimed it had launched a satellite.

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.

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.

We should thank Bush for allowing Kim Jong-Il to get nukes (even crapass ones.)