Last Call

Obama has decided that the UN conference on racism "unfairly singles out Israel" and will boycott it.

The United States is boycotting a U.N. conference on racism next week over a document that "singles out" Israel in its criticism and conflicts with the nation's "commitment to unfettered free speech," the U.S. State Department said Saturday.

The Obama administration made the decision not to attend the Durban Review Conference in Geneva "with regret," a State Department statement said.

Two months ago, the administration had warned that it would boycott the conference if changes were not made to the document to be adopted by the conference. In recent weeks, discussions over the document have fueled several revisions, but the changes to the language didn't meet U.S. expectations, the statement said.

The current draft is "significantly improved," but "it now seems certain these remaining concerns will not be addressed in the document to be adopted by the conference next week."

State Department officials say the document contains language that reaffirms the Durban Declaration and Programme of Actions from the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, which the United States has said it won't support. The 2001 document "prejudges key issues that can only be resolved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians," the statement said.

An African-American president facing racism on an unprecedented scale is boycotting a UN racism conference because Israel's feelings may be hurt. But hey, it's not like Israel treats Palestinians as subhuman or anything. They learned that from us, after all. Dehumanize the enemy, and then you don't feel bad at all when you call for their death.

But then again, Israel runs our foreign policy anyway. We have to run everything past the Israeli Prime Minister anyhow, and if they don't approve, well then decisions are made for Mr. Obama.

It's sad, but it's the truth. They even deign to tell an African-American President what America's international stance on racism should be.

That's mind-blowing.

If The Other 182 Times Fail, Just Keep Moving Forward

So, turned out we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed One Hundred and Eighty-Three times in one month as Marcy Wheeler does a little research.

I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Note, the information comes from the CIA IG report which, in the case of Abu Zubaydah, is based on having viewed the torture tapes as well as other materials. So this is presumably a number that was once backed up by video evidence.

So yes. Monsters. Inhuman, sadistic, crazed, insane monsters. No wonder this guy went insane and told CIA interrogators inquisitors wild goose chase stories. We sadistically tortured this guy 183 times. I don't care about the CIA's feelings. Obama absolutely has to prosecute these people. Period.

We got a grand total of zero useful information out of him. So we waterboarded him again and again and again and again. We did this. Not China, not North Korea, not some Afghan warlord or Pakistani tribal leader or Iranian mullah. We did this. Americans. In the name of America.

If Obama does not prosecute the people who performed these war crimes, then justice in America does not exist any longer. I beg of you, Mr. President. Make this right. You have to for the sake of humanity. If you do not, then we as a country are lost.

My god, I'm physically ill right now. We are sick, terrible bastards if we allow these people to skate. Only when the American people stand up for justice will we be able to put an end to this.

I pray we find the courage to do so. Obama has no choice now. The world is watching, and the UN is suggesting that not prosecuting the people who did this in and of itself constitutes a war crime.

“Like all other contracting states to the UN convention against torture, the US has committed to conduct criminal investigations of torture and to bring all persons to court against whom there is sound evidence,” Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, told Austrian weekly paper Der Standard.

“They are party to the convention and the convention is very, very clear,” Nowak told the paper. “The fact that you carried out an order doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility.”

“In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manfred Nowak [...] said the United States had committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Nowak, who said he would soon travel to Washington for meetings with officials, also called for a comprehensive independent investigation into the matter and added it was important to compensate the victims,” the paper continued.

“Nowak said he did not think the president would not go so far as to issue an amnesty law for CIA operatives. Therefore US courts could still try torture suspects,” reported Earth Times.

The evidence is now a matter of international public record. Prosecute these men, Mr. President.

Or it may destroy this country.

Carolina Kool-Aid

At a teabagger rally on Friday in Greenville, SC, Republican Congressman Gresham Barrett was heckled and booed by the crowd. These folks apparently aren't too happy with Barrett voting for the bailout a few months ago, and they're letting it be known that the Great Purge of the Unfaithful is on in the GOP.

Barrett, who voted in favor of the $700 billion bailout to stabilize the financial sector, despised by many of the demonstrators, knew what he was getting into. South Carolina grassroots conservatives have been blasting the congressman for months because of his vote on the Bush administration's bill last October. Previewing his Tea Party speech earlier this week, The Greenville News wrote that Barrett was headed “into the Lion’s Den.”

But that may have been an understatement, according to video of his remarks captured by the South Carolina political Web site “The Palmetto Scoop.” From the moment he was introduced to the Greenville crowd, his speech was drowned out by boos, turned backs and angry shouts “Go Home!”

“I know you’re mad,” Barrett said, prepared for the chilly reception. “I know you're frustrated, and I hear you, and the American people hear you, and that’s what this thing is about, it’s about people being heard.”

Barrett got one of the loudest jeers of the speech when he told the crowd: “You may boo, you may turn your back, but I have devoted my life to the conservative cause.”

The booing and shouting continued for the entire five minutes Barrett was on stage. When he pointed out that he recently introduced a bill called the TEA Act to stop wasteful government spending, one protested yelled repeatedly: “Too late!”

How interesting. I'd say that it was amusing to see the Wingers eat their own, but then again Democrats have their own problem with purging conservatives and moderates from their party. I can actually relate, I have my own list of Democrats I'd like to see lose in a primary challenge, starting with Evan Bayh.

The difference is of course that the center of America is siding firmly with Obama at this time. The GOP is countering by moving the party to as far to the right as possible, alienating more centrists and independents all the time.

Still, it's clear that both parties are becoming more polarized.

To Kill A Mocking-Bag

The Power Line guys are fuming because somebody told them that CNN's Anderson Cooper, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, Daily Show's Jon Stewart, and basically everybody at MSNBC was mocking the Tea Parties with the "teabagging" schtick. Hey, I did it myself.

There is something funny going on here, if not exactly where Cooper, Maddow and Sullivan find it. Cooper is widely reputed to be homosexual. Maddow and Sullivan are of course public homosexuals. It is funny in an ironic sort of way that these folks choose to disparage the tea party protestors from somewhere deep inside the homosexual subculture. Why not just call the protestors girly boys and let everyone in on the joke? Or would that spoil the fun?

There is not only something funny going on here, there is a story here. These supposed journalists and their networks (or publisher, in Sullivan's case) have rather seriously insulted the citizens who colorfully took to the streets to air respectable views in a most civil fashion. If they had any decency, Cooper et al. would apologize for their vile reference to homosexual practices in the context of ordinary citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Here's the difference, Power Whiners. Pay attention. Yes, the Left makes silly, juvenile double entendre references to teabags and mocks people. You brilliant scholars only managed to now figure out how laughably simple it was to viciously mock these fools because a reader told you that the teabaggers were being mocked by these double entendres (you apparently couldn't figure it out yourselves), and you only found out about it four days later.

And as for the reasons the teabaggers were so cruelly mocked in the national media?

But as you can see, the actual tea party attendees you are so eager to defend showed up with signs like this. So tell me, gentlemen...while you're so bloody angry at teabag puns (Olbermann actually said "But it doesn't make a vas deferens!" on Countdown this week and I almost fell out of my chair) which is really the bigger outrage? Puns? Or comparing the President to Hitler?

Honestly. Assholes.

And Speaking Of Piracy

Somali pirates are still out there, and have captured a Belgian ship today.

Somali pirates attacked two ships off the Horn of Africa on Saturday, seizing one Belgian vessel carrying 10 crew. NATO forces intervened in the other assault, chasing the pirates down and freeing 20 fisherman on a Yemeni dhow hijacked earlier.

In the first attack, pirates hijacked the Belgian-flagged Pompei in the Indian Ocean, a few hundred miles (kilometers) north of the Seychelles islands, said Portuguese Lt. Cmdr. Alexandre Santos Fernandes, who is traveling with the NATO fleet patrolling the region.

Belgium reported the ship issued two warnings early Saturday morning that it was under attack on its way to the Seychelles. It had 10 crew: two Belgians, one Dutch, three Filipinos and four Croatians.

Hours after the first attack, pirates further north in the Gulf of Aden attacked a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, which Fernandes said issued a distress call shortly after dawn when it came under attack with small arms and rockets.

NATO forces in the area responded to the Handytankers Magic's call and followed fleeing pirates to a Yemeni-flagged fishing dhow that had been sized Sunday, Fernandes said.

He said pirates were using the Yemeni vessel as a "mother ship," a boat that allows the pirates' tiny skiffs to operate far off the Somali coast.

Dutch commandos then freed 20 fishermen from the dhow. Their nationalities were not known. Dutch forces also briefly detained seven pirates and seized seven Kalashnikov rifles and one rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

It's getting pretty bad out there, and I honestly believe it will only get worse.

For You Are A Pirate!

The strange case of Stardock Games continues. The PC game maker's CEO, Brad Wardell, is paying the price for being terribly naive about copy protection, piracy, and gaming in this economy in general. The company's newest title, Demigod, has turned into a complete disaster only hours after its release earlier this week as the Ars Technica guys give us the post mortem.

Stardock CEO Brad Wardell became a star in the world of PC gaming when he took a strong anti-DRM stance and decided the best course of action was simply to ignore the piracy. The pirates will do what they do, and the fans who were going to buy the games anyway will appreciate the lack of invasive programs. This easygoing, anti-DRM attitude also brings the added benefits of good press, good will, and all around good vibes. The problem, as he found out with the launch of Demigod, is that you can't always ignore the pirates; they can hurt you in very real ways.

"The system works pretty well if you have a few thousand people online at once. The system works… less well if there are tens of thousands of people online at once," Wardell wrote on his blog, describing the launch of the game. Stardock had 120,000 connections to deal with, a number well outside its projections for online play. The system melted down, causing many customers to have issues connecting to online games.

The number of those connections that were legitimate? It's estimated to be around 18,000.

As the comments have pointed out, getting an early copy of the game was not tricky, as GameStop simply broke the street date. "Our stress tests had counted on having maybe 50,000 people playing at once at peak and that wouldn’t be reached for a few weeks by which time we would have slowly seen things becoming problematic... So during the day today, people couldn’t even log on, and in some cases, the Demigod forums, which use one of the affected databases for some piddly thing were even down," he wrote. "Even getting the game running was a pain today because a simple HTTP call to see what the latest version would get hung leaving people looking at a black screen. Stuff of nightmares."

The team is working around the clock to fix the issues—Wardell points to having developers in Europe and the US as a good thing, and claimed he was just ending a 56-hour day—but the damage may have already been done.

The sad part is I'm one of the people who bought the game legitimately, and I can tell you multiplayer connections are a disaster right now. They are slow, connections are dropped, and the game's not very much fun online. I'm a big fan of Stardock games and have a couple of their strategy game products (which did not have major piracy issues) that play fine. I highly recommend both Galactic Civilizations II and Sins of a Solar Empire, as a matter of fact. But those are niche strategy games, not the kind of big name multiplayer action releases that Demigod was. Pirates didn't really care about a geeky space empire building game like GalCiv 2 or an equally geeky real-time strategy title like Sins.

But Stardock really, really should have gone to better copy protection a while ago. While games like Spore have notoriously nasty copy protection that is in fact crackable, doing so is difficult. Demigod's lack of real protection made it so easy that, well, five times the number of pirates have the game at release than legitimate buyers. Demigod bears a striking resemblance to a hugely popular Warcraft 3 mod called Defense of the Ancients, and that alone should have set off major alarm bells in Stardock HQ. It's so popular in fact that I honestly believe for one reason or another, DotA players pirated the game just to play it. In fact, Stardock should have seen this coming and should have made copy protection a priority with Demigod. I could have told you that in this economy, gamers will turn to piracy rather than spend any amount on a game, especially the ones playing a free mod on a 7 year old game that still has a majorly active multiplayer community. The result is that multiplayer Demigod turned into a complete disaster.

"Before [Demigod] shipped, I wrote a scary email to our team saying how disastrous things would be and predicted doom for us and [Gas-Powered Games] if there were problems with multiplayer," Wardell wrote. "At the time, my worry was about things like disconnects and CVP. It didn’t occur to me that we’d have near MMO user connections to throw in."

The problem was that reviewers were trying to play the game, and they weren't liking what they saw as a major problem with online play. "Connecting to other players takes an inordinately long time, if it happens at all... Furthermore, the game client may hang should you try to exit while the game attempts to connect players, leading to an unhandled exception error dialogue (and a game reboot). Connection issues are widespread, which is a disastrous blow in a game that requires online play to be of much value," GameSpot wrote in its review of the game, giving it a 6.5 for a variety of reasons.

That score is going to be mixed in with the others in metacritic, and it will hold a ton of power for the length of the game's life, long after the connection issues have been fixed... if they aren't already. It seems like Stardock had a realistic plan for rollout of the online play, only to be slammed by overwhelming piracy, a problem it didn't plan for or expect. Now the company will be punished in the gaming press and gaming fora when players have issues connecting.

Wardell reacted to the GameSpot review on the blog. "First, I totally understand that connectivity is central to a game like this. I totally agree. But I think that should be weighted with what the average user who gets Demigod will experience and in reality, as annoying as this issue is, it’s not something that’s going to be an ongoing issue, it’s something that is likely to be taken care of in the next day or two," he wrote. "So this time next week, players will be happily playing but GameSpot’s review will live on." He wonders about the IGN and 1UP reviews, worried that they will dock points for the same issue.

And those reviews were just as bad for the same reasons (the game sits at 70 on Metacritic right now), which now means a lot fewer people will buy the game, and the fact of the matter is much like a movie, bad reviews and word of mouth can kill it in the first week.

Demigod may not come back from the dead on this one. And it's unfortunate. It's a fun game, and once Stardock takes action to expand the servers and stabilize connections, it should be a blast.

That is, if there's anyone left who actually will play the game. In an economy this bad, Demigod serves as a major warning to game makers. Protect your stuff. Piracy will only get worse as the economy continues to sink worldwide.

Remember the lesson of Demigod, folks. Be prepared.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition

• North Korea announced today that it would view any international sanctions as "a declaration of war."
• Texas Dems have responded to Gov. Rick Perry's recent secession talk by slashing the budget for the governor's office by 96%.
• The US Supreme Court is expected to issue a possibly landmark ruling on racial discrimination on Wednesday.
• Obama plans to ask Cabinet department heads for recommendations for budget cuts.
• VP Joe Biden launches the Department of Energy's "smart grid stimulus" program.

Last Call

Daniel Sinker at HuffPo reminds us that with the Left finally back in power that This Too Will Pass.

And so now a new group of the dispossessed have taken to the streets, arriving through a multitude of pathways, to speak in one voice against.... Taxes? Gun rights? States rights? Immigration? Obama? Coffee?

OK, maybe it's not one voice. And maybe it's not a coherent message -- actually, strike the "maybe" in that sentence. And maybe most of the groups are simply showing up to rally around their specific cause, and don't actually care about tea at all. And maybe the whole choice to rally around the term "teabagging" without double-checking its sexual meaning wasn't the brightest decision in the world, making it a very easy target for the Rachel Maddows of the world.

But haven't we been here before?

Haven't we -- the left -- been the teabaggers for decades? As you write off the right's tea parties as messageless, unfocused, marginalized ranting, don't forget that the left had our fair share of messageless, unfocused, marginalized ranting over the last twenty years. And that, ultimately, we needed those twenty years to understand how to become organized and take back power for ourselves. Without two decades wandering the desert, we wouldn't have built the modern infrastructure that the left stands on now. So laugh if you want, but today's teabaggers may be tomorrow's resurgent right.

That resurgent right will have a legitimate issue unless Obama changes his tune on the economy and wiretapping damn fast.

And that fact that he won't unless forced to do so by circumstance all but assures that the Left will not have 28 years in power like the Right did with the dawn of the Reagan Era. We had 20 years of Republicans in the White House, and the one Democrat that got in not only would qualify as a conservative Red State Dem today, he managed to hand Congress over to the Republicans as well, ultimately leading to Dubya and the situation we have today.

I'm still convinced that only the failed economy crashing in October plus the devastatingly bad performance of Sarah Palin killed the GOP. Otherwise we'd be looking at President McCain right now and a spending freeze in the middle of the worst economy in 80 years.

Keep that in the back of your mind. If Lehman Brothers had been saved and the economy held up until after the election, and McCain had picked, oh, anybody else as a Veep...Obama would have almost certainly lost and right now we'd be in an even worse economic situation. But you know what? The Democrats would still be in the wilderness.

Zandar's Thought Of the Day

Let's face reality here. Despite all that happened this week on the unfinished Bush Business front, it means precisely nothing in the end.

Congress will never investigate the torture regime, no matter what Patrick Leahy says. Too many Democrats signed off on these memos: Pelosi, Reid, Jay Rockefeller, Dianne Feinstein, Silvestre Reyes, Alcee Hastings...the list goes on. They knew exactly what we were doing. They would have to implicate themselves if they dug too deep...well before the axe swung on Bush or Cheney.

There's even less of a chance of any serious investigation of wiretapping, despite DiFi's calls for it. Not since a Senator of Illinois named Barack Obama voted for the gutting of FISA and decided to expand the Bush Doctrine on spying on Americans.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will complain too loudly. As far as Washington is concerned, the book is closed on Bush for good. Short of a miracle, these abuses will now be codified into US law by every President after Obama. These abuses will be expanded year after year by both parties.

And America will continue to commit war crimes in our name.

More Screw Jobs

The monthly state unemployment numbers are out for March, and they paint a particularly dismal picture in states like Oregon and Michigan.

In March, Michigan again reported the highest jobless rate, 12.6 percent. The states with the next highest rates were Oregon, 12.1 percent; South Carolina, 11.4 percent; California, 11.2 percent; North Carolina, 10.8 percent; Rhode Island, 10.5 percent; Nevada, 10.4 percent; and Indiana, 10.0 percent. Nine additional states and the District of Columbia recorded unemployment rates of at least 9.0 percent. The California and North Carolina rates were the highest on record for those states. (All state series begin in 1976.)

That's 17 states above 9.0% unemployment plus DC, up from 14 last month. That leaves U-6 estimates for the now 8 states in double digit unemployment ranging from about 17.8% for Indiana to close to 22.0% for Michigan at this point.

Look for DC, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio to join the double digit club next month. As I live in the Cincy area, the tri-state border of Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky (states all at or close to double digit unemployment now) I can tell you that the job picture here is still moderately okay. So far a lot of the really bad numbers from these states are coming from places that locally have 15% unemployment or worse like Elkhart, Indiana, Youngstown, Ohio, and Jackson County, Kentucky.

Still, it's going to continue to get worse. Expect to see a number of states, possibly as many as 20, in double digit unemployment by mid-July.

Torture Apologists

There seem to be three main avenues of arguments defending the torture memos yesterday.

1) The Cheney Attack: Obama made us less safe by releasing the memos. That's the line parroted by the Bushies dragged out to play CYA. Everything was legal, but by revealing specific tactics and methods, we have warned terrorists of our techniques and now they can compensate for things like the Deadly Caterpillar Plan. Americans that are killed by terrorists are now all on Obama's head.

This is stupid and inane, as Greg Sargent explains.

The claim is largely bogus. While a few technical torture details in the memos were new, much about the techniques themselves had already been public. Indeed, what’s actually new about the memos is that they reveal in unprecedented detail the Bush administration’s effort to legally justify already-known techniques.

Case in point: Two top former Bush administration officials, CIA director Michael Hayden and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to blast Obama. They argued that public disclosure of the memos might “diminish the effectiveness of these techniques” and makes their suspension permanent, since you wouldn’t ever revive techniques that have “already been disclosed in detail.”

This, the two men warned, means tying the hands of Obama and future presidents in the war against terrorists.

But much about these techniques was already publicly known. For instance, the recently released report from the Red Cross contains detailed descriptions of techniques such as hurling suspects against a wall; face-slapping; confinement in a box; prolonged nudity; sleep deprivation; waterboarding; etc., etc. These were the techniques detailed in yesterday’s memos. This stuff is detailed in other places.

Strike one for the neo-cons.

2) The Sensible Centrist Attack: The entire issue is moot because no crimes were committed. Obama could never prosecute the CIA or Bush, so he's attacking them in the court of public opinion instead. Since nothing illegal was done, there was no reason to release the memos in the first place other than to attack the Bush administration and the CIA in a nasty, partisan manuever.

But that argument too dies a nasty death. Marcy Wheeler points out that the practical upshot is that the CIA's John Rizzo misrepresented what it was doing to the DoJ.

I hate to say it, but the 10 high value detainees, each reporting the same treatment independently, are a lot more credible than Steven Bradbury repeating John Rizzo's empty assurances.

Which suggests that, rather than rebutting "erroneous and inflammatory assumptions," the real concern the release of these memos ought to raise is the misrepresentations CIA apparently made to DOJ. By no means do I mean to excuse John Yoo and Steven Bradbury for their "banality." But John Rizzo was lying. Blatantly. In his claims to OLC as he tried to get stuff approved.

Contrary to Obama's suggestion, these memos should not correct any assumptions we've made about the torture our government conducted in our name. Rather, they should make it crystal clear that John Rizzo lied repeatedly about what the CIA was doing.

So there's a very good chance that crimes indeed were committed and investigation is needed of the people involved. Strike Two.

3) The Lunacy Attack: Obama only released these memos because he wanted to detract from the success of the Tea Party movement. But that's the weakest of the argments. Indeed, the court order to release the information to meet the ACLU's FOIA request had a deadline of April 16. Obama you see was just following the law...he had no choice.

Even so, the officials described the president's process of deciding how much to release in response to the suit as very difficult. Over four weeks, there were intense debates involving the president, Cabinet members, lower-level officials and even former administration officials.

Obama was concerned that releasing the information could endanger ongoing operations, American personnel or U.S. relationships with foreign intelligence services. CIA officials, in particular, needed reassuring, the officials said.

But in the end, the view of the Justice Department prevailed, that the FOIA law required the release and that the government would be forced to do so by the court if it didn't do so itself, the officials said.

Strike Three, wingers.

You're out.

Marked To Market

Now this is an interesting story. CNBC is going out of its way to promote the idea that the financials are legitimately solvent and stable because banks did NOT make mark-to-market accounting changes for Q1.

Accounting changes aimed at helping the balance sheets of banks with toxic assets appear to be providing little or no help so far with earnings reports.

The accounting rules, known as mark-to-market, were amended so that banks stuck with underperforming assets—particularly mortgage and other credit-related securities—could value them at their future projected worth and not at current value.

But the early earnings are showing that the rules probably won't be reflected until second-quarter results are reported. And that has some investors hoping that financial earnings, which have been better-than-expected so far, will do even better once market-to-market accounting takes effect.

"I hope we're going to see the financial system on an upward track," says former FDIC Chairman Bill Isaac, who helped draft the rule changes. "It's probably not going to be a straight line for all institutions. There will be some varied results. We are in a very favorable climate right now for banking institutions because they're cost of funding is so low."

Though the cost of lending for banks is near zero, a strong effort to reduce debt among financial firms and with the mark-to-market changes is providing an uncertain earnings environment.

"We have an accounting rule change and we're in the middle of the transition," David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors, told CNBC. "We won't know the eventual impact of that until the June 30 quarter."

CNBC's Jeff Cox there would have you believe that not only are banks doing well, but that critics of mark-to-market like myself who said that banks were going to use mark-to-market to inflate assets have been completely discredited now. Could it have something to do with General Electric, owner of NBC-Universal, having one of the financial divisions in trouble? Naah. Course not.

But there's no mystery. We know exactly why the banks are reporting such fantastic earnings this quarter without mark-to-market. AIG's counter-party payments explain everything. AIG got billions to pay off their debts to other banks, the other banks got paid off through AIG. The banks are merely counting these billions in payments from AIG as assets for Q1.

And presto! Record quarterly earnings for bank after bank! And mark-to-market had nothing to do with it, so the banks are fine and profitable again and the economy has been fixed!

It's nothing more than three-card monte. Follow the red card...oh, that's too bad. You lose!

We all lose.

It's A Gas Gas Gas

As widely expected, the EPA has moved to classify CO2 and other greenhouse gases as a pollutant in order to smack Congress in the back of the head to get to work on cap-and-trade.

Having received White House backing, the Environmental Protection Agency declared Friday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a significant threat to human health and thus will be listed as pollutants under the Clean Air Act — a policy the Bush administration rejected. "This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement.

The move could allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, but it's more likely that the Obama administration will use the action to prod Congress to pass regulations around a system to cap and then trade emissions so that they are gradually lowered.

Indeed, the EPA emphasized that the congressional route was preferred to EPA regulation. "Both President (Barack) Obama and Administrator Jackson have repeatedly indicated their preference for comprehensive legislation to address this issue and create the framework for a clean energy economy," the EPA said in its statement.

About time. If Congress won't make laws, then Obama will go with executive orders on global warming.

Still, the point has been made, and it shows Obama is serious about getting legislation crafted and passed ASAP.

Madden-ing

Taking a break from caterpillars, prosecution of war crimes, the next American Civil War and the death of irony, I nearly forgot to post about John Madden retiring from NFL broadcasting. Say what you will about the old man, he got to work 30 years at a job he loved, he got to be in video games, and his ride kicks ass.

Not a whole lot of people in any profession in America can lay claim to all that.

Here's to ya, John.

Be Secedin' Ya, Buddy

Good ol' Rasmussen. You can always count on them for some wacky poll fun, and this one is outright silly. Turns out 18% of Texans want to secede from the United States.

Thirty-one percent (31%) of Texas voters say that their state has the right to secede from the United States and form an independent country.

However, the latest Rasmussen Reports poll in the state finds that if the matter was put to a vote, it wouldn’t even be close. Three-fourths (75%) of Lone Star State voters would opt to remain in the United States. Only 18% would vote to secede, and seven percent (7%) are not sure what they'd choose.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, in response to a reporter’s question about secession at a protest "tea party," said Wednesday, "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." The comment was widely reported in the media.

Really? Roughly one in five Texans want to form their own country? Nobody else finds this disturbing that a couple million folks want to actively leave the US?

Weren't anti-war protesters told to "love America or leave it" by the Right during the Bush years? Weren't they told that by weakening America, they made it less safe?

And now less than three months, and millions of Texans want to leave it, and the Right now calls them heroes and brave resisters of the Obama tyranny.

But it's not just Republican governors messing about with this "We do not recognize federal authority" thing. Oh no. It's Democrats, too.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has signed into law a bill that aims to exempt Montana-made guns from federal regulation, adding firepower to a battery of legislative efforts to assert states’ rights across the nation.

“It’s a gun bill, but it’s another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana,” Democrat Schweitzer said.

Since the law applies only to those guns that are made and kept in Montana, its impact is limited. The state is home to just a handful of specialty gun makers, known for recreating rifles used to settle the West, and most of their customers are out-of-state.

But supporters of the new law hope it triggers a court case testing the legal basis for federal rules governing gun sales.

Again, where were these outrages against Bush?

Germ Killer

So, one of those unintended consequences of global warming is that things frozen in glacier ice are thawing out. Things like million-year-old bacteria.

But under the Taylor Glacier on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, near a place called Blood Falls, scientists have discovered a time capsule of bacterial activity.

At chilling temperatures, with no oxygen or sunlight, these newly found microbes have survived for the past 1.5 million years using an "iron-breathing" technique, which may show how life could exist on other planets.

For years the reddish waterfall-like feature on the side of Taylor Glacier captured the attention of explorers and scientists. Earlier research indicates the color of Blood Falls is due to oxidized iron, but how the iron got to the surface of the glacier remained a mystery.

"When I saw iron, I thought, 'Wow -- that's an energy source for microbes. There has got to be microbes associated with that,' " said Jill Mikucki, lead author of a study about the strange bacteria, published this week in the journal Science.

Scientists found these isolated microorganisms use iron leached from the glacial bedrock in a series of energy-producing metabolic reactions. With the help of sulfate, the iron is transformed and eventually deposited on the surface of the glacier. Air oxidizes the iron, giving Blood Falls its redish hue.

"We don't fully understand the extremities of life: What cuts off life? What are the upper and lower temperatures limits? What are the parameters that life can handle?" said Mikucki, a geomicrobiologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

"Microbes really defy those limits and can get into the extreme environments and tell us a little bit about the natural history of our earth."

As cool as this is, there's a plot for Michael Crichton or Dan Brown. Ancient iron-eating microbes thaw out from global warming and start killing people by eating all the iron in their blood!

OK, come to think of it, that would be a pretty damn cool book. And iron-munching microbes may actually be on other "lifeless" planets.

Kickback Backfire

When the Obama administration does the right thing , such as yesterday's memos on torture, I applaud them. But I've found whenever the Obama administration does the right thing, it's almost invariably followed up by breaking news of something maddeningly stupid.

Steven Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration's auto task force, was one of the executives involved with payments under scrutiny in a probe of an alleged kickback scheme at New York state's pension fund, according to a person familiar with the matter.

A Securities and Exchange Commission complaint says a "senior executive" of Mr. Rattner's investment firm met in 2004 with a politically connected consultant about a finder's fee. Later, the complaint says, the firm received an investment from the state pension fund and paid $1.1 million in fees.

The "senior executive," not named in the complaint, is Mr. Rattner, according to the person familiar with the matter. He is co-founder of the investment firm, Quadrangle Group, which he left to join the Treasury Department to oversee the auto task force earlier this year. Neither Mr. Rattner nor Quadrangle has been accused of any wrongdoing. Mr. Rattner did not return calls for comment.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury, which is in charge of the auto task force, said that "during the transition, Mr. Rattner made us aware of the pending investigation."

Honestly. You couldn't find somebody to run the car czar position that wasn't under investigation for something?

Barack And Raul's Excellent Adventure

What a difference 90 days with "smart power" makes. Raul Castro is apparently now open to high-level diplomacy with the US where "everything is on the table".

"We've told the North American government, in private and in public, that we are prepared, wherever they want, to discuss everything -- human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners -- everything, everything, everything that they want to discuss," Cuban President Raúl Castro said Thursday at a summit of leftist Latin American leaders in Venezuela.

The response came days after President Obama lifted all restrictions on the ability of American citizens to visit relatives in Cuba as well as to send them remittances. Travel restrictions for Americans of non-Cuban descent will remain in place.

This week's move represents a significant shift in a U.S. policy that had remained largely unchanged for nearly half a century. The U.S. government instituted the embargo three years after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

Cuba Libre indeed. Here's hoping to bring the Castros...and the GOP...around to the power of diplomacy with Secretary Clinton.

New tag: Cuba.

Dear America:

"Well, I hope you're happy, Mr. President. Now that the world knows about Operation That's Not A Caterpillar Inside The Box, It's Really The Goddamn Batman, and the fact you refuse to slam people's heads into walls and waterboard the bejeezus out of them, we're less safe now and that's bad enough. But your real sin was making the CIA look bad. And for that, Mr. President Obama man, well you'd better watch your ass from now on."

--Michael Mukasey and Michael Hayden

"Dick Cheney was right. Obama is a complete pussy."

--Jennifer Rubin

Oh, and my favorite piece of winger stupidity? Obama only released these memos to distract the media from the most successful grassroots protest in the history of the world, for in the desperate twilight of the failed Obama Presidency, it's the last gambit of a fascist dictator. After all, no crimes were committed, so the only possible reason for the timing was to try weakly to stop the teabag tsunami.

Le sigh.

StupidiNews!

• A train collision in Germany has injured 24.
• President Obama is already under attack by former Bush administration officials for yesterday's torture memo release.
• US experts fear there's little to stop Pakistan from becoming a nuclear Islamist state.
• The Obama adminstration is expected to give Chrysler and GM another $5.5 billion in aid.
• Time Warner's download caps program is ending after a major public outcry.