Freeper Logic...

With respect to my post below, on how conservatives are equating conservatism with criminality, (it's their talking point, so don't blame me; I'm only relaying what was blast-faxed) for "balance," and for your enjoyment, I humbly submit for your coinsideration this post on Free Republic.

To: Pokey78

I read somewhere else this morning that Delay's fundraising has set a new record high in the last three months. The democrats tactics continue to backfire.

3 posted on 10/15/2005 6:03:41 AM PDT by somemoreequalthanothers (All for the betterment of "the state", comrade)
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To: martin_fierro
Kristol may have nothing to fear but his headline is oh so correct. Criminalizing conservatives .. also include Christians.
4 posted on 10/15/2005 6:07:03 AM PDT by svcw
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To: Pokey78

The connect the dots exercise is fine.All too well known here at FR maybe. Question is, what is the GOP gonna do about it?
Can we also PLEASE throw up some shameless, focussed, disingenuous, victory-at-all-costs politicians in the Dem mould? ...

To: Pokey78
This is the situation: There are so many laws and regulations that everyone has probably committed a felony sometime in their life, almost all of them unknowingly.

Conservativss are held to the absolute letter of the law, even when trying their best to avoid violating any law, they sometimes fail. Now I don't think Delay has even done that.

On the other hand we have corruption by Liberals on a massive scale with stealing elections, stealing money, selling secrets to the enemy, sexual pervision, the list goes on and on. If anyone tries to hold them accountable, they are attacked in the most vicious manner by the media, and Democratic apparatus.

It really is that shocking.
9 posted on 10/15/2005 6:15:44 AM PDT by yarddog
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That last one was particularly interesting: the "everybody does it, multiple wrongs make a right" defense.

To: Pokey78
Criminalization is a reflection of a deep malady at the heart of American politics..

If criminal prosecution is seen to loom ahead for every politician who begins to act out his or her beliefs in unconstitutional government or politics, perhaps reform will be sustainable.

We don't need to pretend to have all the answers, or a solid answer even to one of these questions.
But it's a reasonable bet that when it became clear that a comprehensive strategy of criminalization has been implemented to inflict defeat on politicians who seek to govern as socialists, that true reform would soon follow.
12 posted on 10/15/2005 6:26:53 AM PDT by faireturn
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Um, they tried that in the 30s. It was a kind of insurrection against Roosevelt.

Now for a bit of denial:

To: Pokey78
You don't have to read down too far before he begins accusing this administration of classified leaks. The Plame leak being the most serious.

Kristol has truly lost his mind, but then I never thought he had much of an intellect.

More like a useful idiot for McCain.
13 posted on 10/15/2005 6:37:47 AM PDT by OldFriend (One Man With Courage Makes a Majority ~ Andrew Jackson)
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And denial-er:

To: Pokey78
"Why are conservative Republicans, who control the executive and legislative branches of government for the first time in living memory, so vulnerable to the phenomenon of criminalization?"

First of all, conservative Republicans do NOT control the legislative branch, which of course, hamstrings the President. The legislative branch is controlled by a cabal of Senate Democrats and RINO's.......and when you get right down to it, the Senate is controlled by 6 or 7 faux Republicans in the McCain, Chaffee, Snowe mold. One might also add to this the "gang of 14" which deftly seized control in the judicial appointments process, again hamstringing the President.

Second, Republican solons don't know how to fight back and they never have. They are not alley-cat fighters like the Dems have always been. This pussiness is always praised by purists as being something "noble". About as "noble" as the phoney Nobel peace prizes.

Right off the bat, the "new tone" in DC disarmed the GOP victors. It lulled them, and soon, they preferred the state of lullness to any meaningful confrontations. The GOP elected hierarchy are, for the most part, paper tigers big on talk, short on wielding the big stick.

Mr. Krystal, you know the answer to your own question as well as we, you are just too delicate, sensitive and wussy to articulate it. Perhaps you fear a more manly critique of the fighting spirit of the DC GOP might hurt sales of your magazine. If so, then you are part of the problem.

Years ago, GOP "compassionate conservatism" in DC morphed into "dispassionate conservatism".....and therein lies the rub.

Leni
28 posted on 10/15/2005 7:21:02 AM PDT by MinuteGal (Re: The Anti-War Sheehan-ites - They want to live in the garden but not tend the garden)
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Nice handle...and finally, projection and paranoia:

To: yarddog

Your post is an accurate description of American politics since at least Watergate times. To me the mystery is why Pubbies don't figure it out and naively keep kicking Lucy's football, expecting a different outcome "this time." The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that they truly don't comprehend the depth of Democrat corruption, cynicism, America-hatred and ruthlessness.

35 posted on 10/15/2005 8:06:44 AM PDT by Bernard Marx (Don't make the mistake of interpreting my Civility as Servility)
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To: Pokey78

The criminality of dissenting opinion is a central tenet of leftist strategy and rhetoric. These specific cases are merely the public tip of a very large iceberg.

Out here in the trenches, even the dimmest liberal conformist sheep know that the first reaction to criticism, dissent, or opposition should be to represent such opposition as a criminal attack on liberal rights. Last week, I spoke with a high school English teacher who was almost comically obtuse about this.
She literally could not conceive of the idea that criticizing, say, the Dixie Chicks was not a criminal attack on their rights. She had no conception of the irony of pretending that total stone silence from those with certain opinions was the only way to protect "free expression."
Two generations of Americans have now been indoctrinated to believe implicitly in these imaginary rights for liberals and leftists: the right to the forum of their choice, the right to an audience, the right to financial support, and the right to be taken seriously.

36 posted on 10/15/2005 8:17:23 AM PDT by atomic conspiracy (Islamo-terrorists: Strike force of the MSM)
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To: atomic conspiracy
I like your tag line. I also agree with what you said.

I have come to believe there is a vast left wing conspiracy in this country. I am not kidding BTW.

I have always loved conspiracy theories, they are so darned interesting but I didn't really believe in them. In the last few years I have come to to totally believe in them. The only problem I have is many who think the same thing really are nuts.

How would I join in with a bunch that I know to be mostly if not all, at least a little strange?

Maybe 20 years ago, I noticed these things seemed to be staged and pushed by real forces. I am not even saying they are all wrong.

First of all came the anarchists and atheists who were also communists. Next came the civil rights movement. Then the sexual revolution, attack on the family (along with feminism) and open immigration.

I can remember back around 1988 when I was in grad school mentioning to a friend that the next big push was going to be homosexual rights. I also said I thought they had finally overstepped. Boy was I wrong.

A few days ago on the History Channel they had a program on secret societies. Among them was "skull and bones" and the various groups such as the CFR, Trilateral Commisssion and the Bilderbergers.

Then it hit me. These groups are just what the right wing nuts called them. They really are conspiracies to take over the world.

In fact they are really conspiracies right on the face of it, hiding in plain sight. The only thing which could be argued is what they are doing.
37 posted on 10/15/2005 8:47:14 AM PDT by yarddog
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There's a lesson here: don't sound like them, but we must insist on clean government, whether Repub or Democratic.

Why the Republican Party is a Clear and Present Danger

I saw this phrase: "conservatives who seek to govern as conservatives" within the context of an alleged "criminalization of politics," from at Hunter's post on that "new meme" at Kos.

We're talking about real crimes and serious ones, too; felonies, some involving national security, and some that are, IMO, as important as national security (i.e., buying the legislative process lock, stock, and barrel is as great a threat to the functioning of our democracy as any foreign threat; indeed, with multinational corporations today with allegiance to no border, it's the same damned thing if they're calling the shots in Washington).

But, as Hunter quotes Kristol and Jeffrey Bell this is merely what happens when there are in power "conservatives who seek to govern as conservatives." (This is also the meme in the attack dog ad against non-partisan DA Ronnie Earle put up by Tom De Lay to try to tamper with the prospective jury.)

So they themselves are making the equation: conservatism is lawlessness run amok; it endangers national security, it is sleaze personified.

Hope that cleared everything up for you. It'll be great fodder for Democratic politicians the 2006 elections. The only thing I'd add is that not only is governing with criminality the style of conservatives, but also being inherently anti-democratic; it's why they attack liberals so much. They just don't seem to like folks having civil liberties, I think.

The Sunday Times: Funny; you like armageddon, I like following treasongate...

Today's New York Times - as anyone who's read the blogosphere knows by now- has "its" story on Judith Miller, treasongate, etc.


While others have extensively commented on it, what strikes me about the story is the degree of denial and delusion present at the Times and their editors. Anybody who calls this paper a "liberal" paper after reading this story is basically being dishonest.

Ms. Miller said she was proud of her journalism career, including her work on Al Qaeda, biological warfare and Islamic militancy. But she acknowledged serious flaws in her articles on Iraqi weapons.

"W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong," she said. "The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them - we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could."

In two interviews, Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes.

No she didn't do the best job she could; from way back where I sit I could smell something out of place. If I, with only publicly available information could have my bullshit detector blinking red, why couldn't Miller's?

Well, the answer's contained in that article; rather than being skeptical, rather than endeavoring to find the facts, Ms. Miller - and by extensin the Times- were basically being sycophants to power, not speaking the truth about power, which, I submit, should be their mission.

Their objective was to cultivate powerful sources, to let them have their say, not to put the powerful sources in the context of reality.

This long article is well worth reading, because - unintentionally- over and over again this sub-text appears. There is no ethical requirement to protect a source unless you are engaged in the mission of actually, you know, finding out the truth.

And, if you think that speaking about power, but not necessarily putting power in the context of reality isn't part of the Times' game plan (and why you'd think that at this point is beyond me) all you have to do is consider their business plan. They get more money if they get more viewers of their content- just like Fox. The only difference is they start from different demographics and delivery systems.

Which brings me to their "Armageddon's Bustin' Out Everwhere" article.

Today, only about a third of evangelicals are truly dispensationalists, estimated Richard Cizik, vice president of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, although he said he thought most evangelicals are generally pre-millennial, harboring a more pessimistic outlook on history.

But the dispensationalists remain the most vocal segment, Mr. Cizik said. Aided by books, television and the Internet, they have shaped a fascination in evangelical culture on the end of days, said Craig C. Hill, a professor of New Testament theology at Wesley Theological Seminar in Washington and the author of "In God's Time: the Bible and the Future," about biblical prophecy. Preaching on the end times is an obvious way to draw an audience, Mr. Hill said.

"It's inherently interesting," he said. "If you have a sign out for the sermon, 'Our obligation to the poor,' you won't get anybody. If you have a sign out for, 'The Internet and the Antichrist,' you'll bring them in."

And so it is with this brand of Evangelicals, which the Times has previously noted somewhere that it'd like to bring in to its demographic. They're interested in "bringing them in," in increasing market share, regardless of whether or not there's a good relationship to reality. When market share is your ultimate objective, fidelity to reality will suffer sometimes. Period.

Not unexpected, one or two bits of facts that annihilate dispensationalism are left out of the Times article; the most obvious one to me is the whole history of how Revelation got into the bible in the first place- traditionally explictly understood as an allegory, with most references explicitly to the Roman empire.

But that would ruin a narrative that brings 'em in...

Isn't there better ways to use this technology?

From Krauthammer in the Washington Post, "A Flu Hope, Or Horror?", comes this scare- you'd think that "terrists" would have more fun putting the DNA sequence for delta-9 THC into something like strawberries or something.:

While official Washington has been poring over Harriet Miers's long-ago doings on the Dallas City Council and parsing the byzantine comings and goings of the Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury, relatively unnoticed was perhaps the most momentous event of our lifetime -- what is left of it, as I shall explain. It was announced last week that U.S. scientists have just created a living, killing copy of the 1918 "Spanish" flu...

Which brings us to the second element of this story: Beyond the brilliance lies the sheer terror. We have brought back to life an agent of near-biblical destruction. It killed more people in six months than were killed in the four years of World War I. It killed more humans than any other disease of similar duration in the history of the world, says Alfred W. Crosby, who wrote a history of the 1918 pandemic. And, notes New Scientist magazine, when the re-created virus was given to mice in heavily quarantined laboratories in Atlanta, it killed the mice more quickly than any other flu virus ever tested .

Now that I have your attention, consider, with appropriate trepidation, the third element of this story: What to do with this knowledge? Not only has the virus been physically re-created, but its entire genome has also now been published for the whole world, good people and very bad, to see...

On the other hand, resurrection of the virus and publication of its structure open the gates of hell. Anybody, bad guys included, can now create it. Biological knowledge is far easier to acquire for Osama bin Laden and friends than nuclear knowledge. And if you can't make this stuff yourself, you can simply order up DNA sequences from commercial laboratories around the world that will make it and ship it to you on demand. Taubenberger himself admits that "the technology is available."

What Krauthammer fails to note, though is that this is MAD with a bullet: you can't control this stuff if you get it out without a vaccine; meaning that all good Muslims or Bible believers - that is those -who support the terrorists would be killed too. Everybody dead except for those with natural immunity.

Who could be, well, folks opposed to terrorism.

Try again, smartypants.

They've got to be kidding...Syria?

With the prospect of a continued quagmire in Iraq- "If they vote down this constitution we'll do the process all over again" is what soldier in the scripted photo-op said the other day- now we find out that there's border skirmishes with Poland...er...I mean... Syria?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in the Iraq war, according to current and former military and government officials.

The firefight, between Army Rangers and Syrian troops along the border with Iraq, was the most serious of the conflicts with President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to American and Syrian officials.

...

Wait, wait, here it comes...here it comes...

One of Mr. Bush's most senior aides, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that so far American military forces in Iraq had moved right up to the border to cut off the entry of insurgents, but he insisted that they had refrained from going over it.

But other officials, who say they got their information in the field or by talking to Special Operations commanders, say that as American efforts to cut off the flow of fighters have intensified, the operations have spilled over the border - sometimes by accident, sometimes by design.

Some current and former officials add that the United States military is considering plans to conduct special operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering.

You know, if they don't have the testicular fortitude to come right out and own up to their own propaganda, why should we believe any "unnamed administration official?"

Now, for the gratutious Vietnam analogy...

Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to the Iraq war what Cambodia was in the Vietnam War: a sanctuary for fighters, money and supplies to flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a shadow struggle.

To reiterate: this is worse than Vietnam, far worse. As with Vietnam, there isn't a chance we can ultimately achieve our objective:regional hegemony. But unlike Vietnam, there's the entire lynchpin of the American economy riding on this. It's the greatest disaster, challenge, or opportunity that's ever faced the US.

Too bad we have a hack failed ex-oil executive in charge, who got there only by nepotism.

Neil Boortz steps in doo-doo

Boortz, a "libertarian" basically said...

"Neal Boortz said that in times of disaster we should save the rich people first." Well, hell, yes, we should save the rich people first. You know, they're the ones that are responsible for this prosperity. I mean, you go out there and you look at this vast sea of evacuees, OK? You want to get an economy going in some city? Well, who you gonna take back? The people who own businesses? Or the people that sit around waiting to get their minimum wage job, work 'til Friday, get a paycheck and then not show up again until the following Wednesday?

Note that:

1. Boortz assumes there's no middle class. Got that folks? He thinks you're either rich or you're poor. Do you feel rich? Do you feel like if you don't work your butt off that you might be poor? (This is a good topic for a Buddhist post on wealth, but I'll note that and go on...)

2. Everyone who flies coach can see what model Boortz is using.

3. Note the Newspeak: "You know, they're the ones that are responsible for this prosperity." Prosperity? I paid $50 for a doctor visit and an antibiotic on a co-pay; 3 years ago it cost me $20. Gasoline? Heating? Prosperity? I don't think violence is ever the answer but in a more informed society I'd expect people to be storming the barricades over the prosperity we'll have if current trends continue.

Do you all want to fly coach the way it is today?

The middle class is threatened in America with extinction. This is the agenda of the Bush regime. It's not an exageration to say that. What is most odd about Boortz's remark is that he already assumes this extinction has taken place. It is not the rich, it is the middle and working classes that "create wealth." The rich just profit from it.

More pundit absurdity...

Robert J. Samuelson writes in the Washington Post...and it's clear he's so out of touch with ordinary Americans that he's not aware a) we're already feeling the pinch, b) we're all concerned about our retirement, c) the impending bird flue epidemic is going to shake things up so randomly that we can't sort it out, and d) even we get that the long term trend is to erode our standard of living. He says:

This need not be a disaster. On paper, the economy could compensate in many ways: more exports and fewer imports (much U.S. consumer spending went to imports); stronger business investment; extra government spending for hurricane rebuilding. Britain's recent experience could be suggestive. Two years ago home prices were soaring (roughly 20 percent annual increases), interest rates were low, homeowners were extracting huge cash profits (equal to 9 percent of disposable income at the peak) and consumer spending was high, says economist Howard Archer of Global Insight in London. Worried about inflation, the Bank of England raised interest rates. Consumer spending, economic growth and home price increases (now about 3 percent annually) all abated. Unemployment has edged up; still, there's been no recession.

The fading of America's wealth effect, should it occur, might be equally dull and benign. But there are grimmer possibilities. One is that many adverse forces are now converging: higher energy prices, higher interest rates and debt payments, higher inflation, falling wealth gains. None matters much alone, but "their combination is creating more consumer risk," writes Susan Sterne of Economic Analysis Associates. For two decades free-spending American consumers have anchored the U.S. and world economies. If they no longer play that role, it's an open and worrisome question who will.

Until we have disincentives for corporations to import, and we have incentives for education, manufacturing, and socialized health care, yeah, its downhill from here, with a bullet, especially if the Fed raises rates to cut our gas consumption...

Important read from Kos...

Say what you will politically about Kos, this diary by Hunter on the subtext of the Plame story is well worth reading. It's as though we're unaware of the big "inside story" of the fact that the Washington D.C. media has been co-opted by the Bush regime on the Plame affair, or at least has stories they don't like to bring up very much.

But there's other stories ignored or forgotten here too; Hunter, for all his dilligence, doesn't recall the fact that these are very, very rich people involved; the "secret identity" of Andrea Mitchell, is never brought out, but somehow she thinks it's OK to minimize the impact of disclosing the really, really secret identity of a covert operative.

This economics stuff is complex...

Link

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Prices of goods imported into the U.S. climbed 2.3% in September, the highest in 15 years, as costs of natural gas and oil continued to rise.

he September import price index was far above the 0.9% expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch.

Prices for imported natural gas rose 28.8% in September, as imported oil prices rose 7.3%, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

Excluding oil, import prices climbed a record 1.2%. Excluding all fuels, prices rose 0.4%.

August's import price index was revised to 1.2% from 1.3%.

Now let's see...with labor squeezed, this should keep the tendency toward recession, but this will show up as price increases all around, and for lots of stuff people actually use: construction materials, seafood, half the crap at Wal-Mart, etc.

This type of price increase can't be washed away by raising interest rates; it can only be addressed by doing something that hasn't been done for a while: making more goods in the US.

But why do that? Is there a real cost-advantage yet? Probably not; I don't think we're at this point yet, where workers making stuff by themselves can cut out the middle man and make a profit.

Cool Link: Financial Markets Center

The Financial Markets Center, which helps "provide information, analysis and teaching tools about central banking and the financial sector." Cool to read: Financial disclosures for each Fed governor.

Oddly enough some have lots of money in stocks as of this report, but not Greenspan; T-Bills are his primary instrument of choice.

How to marginalize the Republicans...

I, like Mark Schmitt and Kevin Drum have read The Politics of Polarization.

I happen to have read it though, at the time I heard about "What's the Matter with What's the Matter in Kansas," or at least the summary presented in Common Dreams. Those 2 things deserve to be read together...

So here's my synthesis and critique of all of the above:

• When the authors of Polarization say:
  
  

  Stop hiding behind domestic policy and honestly confront the biggest issue
  of our time: national defense, and especially the use of military force.
  
  ...Democrats must emphasize the importance of the American military as a potential
  force for good in the world, and in so doing they need to engage “Michael Moore
  Democrats,” who instinctively view American power as suspect.

  
  
  This is quite wrong, right there, and that gets my radar up. I know very few "Michael Moore Democrats." I suspect Michael Moore is not a "Michael Moore Democrat."
  
  Democrats need to confront, perhaps this smear by the right, but a smear it most definitely is. I for one think the Republicans are dangerous to our defense precisely because they are so quick to deploy and use force for imperial ends. But we have no need to do that. We do need to defend ourselves, and to do so in a fashion that makes sense. We need to address our strategic weaknesses, oil dependency and health care dependency on foreign countries chief among them.
  
  But if somebody attacks us, we should respond. Going after Saddam was an act of mendacity, not bravery. Letting bin Laden go was being weak on defense. The Republicans are guilty of that charge.
  
  
• When the authors say,
  
  

  Show tolerance and common sense on hot-button social issues.

  
  
  They say "don't back gay marriage," and of course Kerry didn't and Clinton didn't. This much is true:
  
  

  At the same time, Democrats must paint a clear picture of Republican extremists, who advocate a level of government intrusion into people’s lives that conflicts with their desire to be left alone.

  
  
  
• When they say, "Support an economic policy that embraces global competition and a modernized social safety net that protects American workers in a vibrant and churning economy," I would say, ripping a page from Gingrich: be futurist, be passionately for human rights, for the environment, and understand the interconnectedness of things: Say "peak oil," call the Republicans on their atavistic response to bird flu, etc.
  
  
• The closest thing that the authors of Polarization get to my final topic here is "Finally, Democrats have to pay more attention to the very personal quality of elections, especially presidential elections, in the media age," which while worth reading ignores the current golden opportunity presented by Frist, De Lay, Rove et al. as alluded to by Kos here: political corruption is the new abortion and being weak on defense rolled into one. Look at a commercial like this:
  
  Voice over w/ black and white "historical" photos and video framed on a black background: The Roman Empire...The French Bourbon dynasty...Argentina....all these governments declined and fell because at least in part of rampant corruption...
  
  You get the picture. Corruption in government can be "Willie Hortoned," and be used to get the populace up in arms over the current state of affairs: but only if we have an articulate and disciplined vision of being against corruption. We need specific policies that wedge Repubs, and keep government honest.
  
  This also syncs with what I read in the summary of WTMWWTMIK, by Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation.
  

Moral people should be morally outraged at what's going on in Washington with the Repubs. The meme propagated must be "who cares about abortion?" We'll all get bird flu in the Repubs continue in power. Because it's true.

Special rights for evangelical Christians?

Link

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - President Bush and his advisers on Wednesday defended their efforts to inject religion into the confirmation fight over Harriet Miers, suggesting that faith is a legitimate factor in evaluating her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Presidential aides have cited Miers' membership in an evangelical Christian church in urging conservatives to support her.

"People want to know why I picked Harriet Miers. They want to know Harriet Miers' background," Bush said. "Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion. Part of it has to do with the fact that she was a pioneer woman and a trailblazer in the law in Texas...

Ummm...there shouldn't be litmust tests for anybody's religious beliefs or lack thereof.

It's not surprising, of course, but it is certainly offensive; would her religious beliefs be "a factor" if she was a Hindu? A Muslim? A Wiccan? A Buddhist?

I don't expect people to be put on the court - or kept off it- because they're any of the above mentioned religions, or if they have no religion at all.

Stupid Market Article of the Day...

Link

A growing group of forecasters see a monster-sized rally just ahead. Here's why -- plus 15 of StockScouter's top-rated market giants.
The professional Wall Street spin machine has kicked into overdrive in the past two weeks. A slew of strategists have stridden into the teeth of Hurricane October with forecasts saying stocks in the final three months of this year will clock in with a juicy 8% gain -- equal to the average fourth-quarter gain over the past decade.

As you might expect, there is plenty of bearish dissent, and the doomsayers certainly appear to have the upper hand of late. But more remarkable, perhaps, is a growing minority of forecasters who are looking for much, much better results...

A key element of both the Dent and Hays outlook is the observation that most extreme bull phases of the last century – 1915 to 1919, 1925 to 1929, 1935 to 1937, 1985 to 1987 and 1995 to 1999 -- were preceded by major corrections (or crashes), followed by a strong initial recovery and then a one-to-two-year trading range. Of course, the implication is that the crash in this case was the 2000-2002 bear market, the recovery rally happened in 2003 and the trading range was seen from 2004 to 2005. Dent suggests that the markets “are simply waiting for signs that the Fed can’t tighten much further” and for oil to correct below $58-to-$62 support levels “to suggest a top in that bubble.”

One prominent analyst who is looking for quite the opposite of a bull move is veteran technician John Murphy. In a note to clients over the weekend, he said a combination of Elliott Wave analysis, the four-year presidential cycle, seasonal trends, weekly and monthly index charts, sector rotations, rising inflation and higher interest rates have persuaded him that the cyclical bull market that started in the spring of 2003 “is just about over.” He added: “The most dangerous time for the market is the autumn of 2005 to the autumn of 2006."

You've got even below $58 dollar a barrel oil a significant dent in people's pocket books from higher gas and heating prices, you've got interest rate hikes with no immediate sign of stopping, you've got a president known for putting cronies above competence in charge of naming the next Federal Reserve Bank chairman, you've got the prospect of continued commodity inflation if the rest of the world continues on a growht course, and you've got bird flu, a wild card, that could kill tens of millions of people in the space of a short amount of time.


For some reason the markets have ignored the sage advice today from Jon Markman, contributing editor for MSN Money. I can't imagine why.

Finally! The hope for liberty in the US!

Cheney! Yes! Cheney!

But wait- there's more...Raw Story is reporting that the WSJ will report on Fitzgerald looking into broader conspiracy charges from the White House "Iraq Group."

And just two days ago or so Thich Nhat Hanh was marching for peace.

Pretty powerful practice, no?

I know, I know, it's a coincidence. But hey, it's a nice coincidence.

Couple that with the news on Frist's not so blind trust (who must be overjoyed that his legal troubles are for the moment overshadowed by bigger fishes), and Tom DeLay's indictment (will Abramoff sing?) and it looks like a trifecta.

Update: And if you are still in denial why treasongate matters, firedoglake explains it all for you...

Update: Kevin Drum says the WSJ article merely says,

....Mr. Fitzgerald's pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent's name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.

I agree with Drum; although it's not yet the proverbial fat lady singing, it isn't good news for Rove or Cheney. We will see soon enough, but yeah, it's feelin' a lot like Christmas Eve.

Morgan Stanley: No Harriet Myers-types for the Fed, please

More from Stephen Roach...
link

Historically, the Fed has always been a chairman-dominated institution. Yes, policy is made by committee -- a seven-person Board of Governors, joined by a rotating group of five of the 12 District Bank presidents (that always includes the representative from New York). While each member of the Federal Open Market Committee has one vote, the Chairman’s vote has always carried the greatest weight in the deliberations of the modern-day Fed. As such, it should not be surprising that financial markets take the transition to a new Fed Chairman as a very serious event. This one person has long been emblematic of the character of the institution.

The history of recent Fed leadership transitions does not read well in the financial markets. The last one occurred in August 1987, when Alan Greenspan assumed the reins of power. A little more than two months later, the US stock market crashed. Paul Volcker became Chairman in August 1979 -- a transition that that was quickly followed by a wrenching sell-off in the bond market. And the US dollar was in serious trouble from the very start of G. William Miller’s brief term as Fed chairman, which commenced in March 1978...



... Going from the known to the unknown is invariably unsettling -- even under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, the circumstance surrounding the last three Fed transitions were far from ideal.

Alas, that is very much the case today. Saddled with a record current account deficit, the US is more dependent than ever on the confidence of foreign investors to fund ongoing economic growth. When Greenspan hands over the reins to his successor in early 2006, the current account deficit will be at least 6.5% of GDP. That’s more than four times the average external shortfall of 1.5% that prevailed during the three most recent transition points -- 1978, 1979, and 1987. Moreover, in a post-Katrina, energy-shocked climate, there is good reason to expect additional reductions in personal and government saving in the months ahead -- actually, deeper dis-saving (deficits) on both counts. As a result, already-depressed national saving should move even lower, prompting further deterioration in America’s already massive current account deficit. In other words, America’s dependence on the “kindness of strangers” is likely to increase significantly at precisely the point of an historically-delicate transition to a new a new Fed chairman.

And that, I’m afraid, brings me to the most controversial point of all -- the selection process, itself. With the consent of the US Senate, the choice of selecting a new Fed chairman falls to the President. Generalizing on the basis of George W. Bush’s most recent senior appointments, I suspect the President will look for three key traits in a new Fed chairman -- familiarity, loyalty, and a pro-growth bias. This is not meant to be critical. It is a carefully determined observation based on the President’s record. In the case of a Fed Chairman, those criteria imply that President Bush will probably not select the next Paul Volcker -- a tough, independent policy maker who might be predisposed toward “tight money.” While this is inconsistent with the President’s statement on this matter at a recent press conference, in the end, I still believe George W. Bush will opt for a trusted team player who shares the goals and objectives of his political agenda.

This could well pose a serious problem for US financial markets. With America’s external financing critically dependent on the foreign confidence factor, any doubts over central bank independence will not go over well. That’s especially the case for a US economy beset with record imbalances, a potential inflation scare, and bubble-like conditions in asset markets. Foreign investors have been extraordinarily generous in the terms they have offered for funding America’s external deficit. In part, that generosity may reflect the “Greenspan factor” -- the confidence that investors have in Alan Greenspan’s adroit management of periodic international financial crises. With the Greenspan factor about to be taken out of the confidence equation, any fears of an “easy money” Fed could well prompt foreign investors to exact concessions in those financing terms in the form of a weaker dollar and higher real interest rates.

Thich Nhat Hanh leads 3,000 on a peace march in LA...

link

LOS ANGELES, USA -- There was no cheering, no chanting and no sign waving. The march organized by Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh brought together 3,000 people to enjoy an unusual state in this city silence.

Activist mom Cindy Sheehan, who garnered national attention this summer with her anti-war vigil outside President Bush's Crawford ranch, was among those who attended the Saturday event at MacArthur Park west of downtown Los Angeles. She and Hanh embraced before the march began, but Hanh was not shy about expressing his view of Sheehan's tactics.

"I don't think shouting angrily at government can help us end the war," he said. "When we are able to change our own thinking, the government will have to change."

Hanh later told the audience: "We don't think shouting in anger can help. If you make people angry and fearful, then you cannot reduce violence and fear.

"When you speak to people, you should speak to them in a language they can understand. By doing that, we can turn our enemies into our friends."

He's right, but I'd also say it's understandable why emotions fly high here: we are, after all, talking about matters of life and death. Putting that energy to good use to stop the killing is what being skillful is about; it takes a long time, and understanding that we haven't walked the full distance in another's shoes.

(HT: Danny Fischer @ The Buddhist Chaplains' Sangha)

Przewalski's horse is coming back...

link

Luckily the horses, incapable of speech as they are, don't have to pronounce their name (przh-VAHL-skee, I suspect, not zhe-VALH-skee).

Anyway, here's some basic Russian phrases...you never know when they might come in handy, especially if you're a horse...

Heeeeere's Crony!

Link

Or, as they used to say in the old Spy Magazine, "log rolling in our time"...

"You are the best governor ever - deserving of great respect," Harriet E. Miers wrote to George W. Bush days after his 51st birthday in July 1997. She also found him "cool," said he and his wife, Laura, were "the greatest!" and told him: "Keep up the great work. Texas is blessed."...

Mr. Bush returned the admiration, the files show. After Ms. Miers's birthday wishes, he wrote thanks and a "happy 52nd to you." He added, "I appreciate your friendship and candor - never hold back your sage advice."...

Mr. Bush added: "When it comes to cross-examination, Harriet can fillet better than Mrs. Paul. I know first-hand. She is my lawyer."

A few days later, Ms. Miers wrote to thank the Bushes, saying, "Texas has a very popular governor and first lady!" She recalled a little girl who collected Mr. Bush's autograph and said, "I was struck by the tremendous impact you have on the children whose lives you touch.

However, we do get a peek into her judicial philosphy...

Minutes of [lottery] commission meetings showed Ms. Miers in command, questioning employees and other commissioners on topics like advertising, charitable bingo operations and bids to help manage the lotteries. One lawmaker asked what groups could run bingo, saying, "Could the Ku Klux Klan?"

Ms. Miers responded, "Well, I would certainly hope not."

Must...resist...referring...to...Bob...Jones...

(Via ATL Dem @ Kos)

Where to put one's money: Current economic/political trends...

I am thinking about the general problem of retirement portfolio allocation, given the current economic conditions. This is a classical allocation problem, where putting money in one set of aset classes has a certain risk/reward profile. But it is also a mirror of the current economic and political trends facing America today.

• Peak oil: despite the polyanna-ish voices to the contrary (it is astounding to me that anyone actually questions this assumption), there is a limit to which we can pump the gooey stuff to make the explosive stuff. Peak oil may - probably- not produce, in my opinion, exactly a "clusterfuck nation," but it will certainly impose a constraint on which economies grow and how fast in the short term, and in the long term should - I think, if handled wisely, certainly not the way Bush is doing it with crony capitalism- actually produce sustained long term benefits for the US economy...but...we still have...
  
  
• Inflation: and what I suspect is the relative inability of the Fed to control it. This, I think is a huge threat to the economy; yeah, there's this huge corporate, government, and personal debt, and an epidemic of over-consumption of Americans on all levels. But the paradoxical thing, is that much of the shit people need is expensive: a roof over their heads, an education for their kids, and medical care are already obscenely priced. "Cheaper" needs such as food, clothing, also cost money, and the latter two will be subject to inevitable commodity inflation. Discretionary spending will likely be cut, but after a while, people will be paying for the "necessities," as well as their own debt service.
  
  
• The end of the US "ownership" of "creative destruction" of the American economy. If, as I believe, Europe and Japan embrace "creative destruction," with a human face, there will be very little reason for investment in the US; we'll be like Argentina, in the near term.
  
  
• The rise of emerging markets: still very risky, this is a new source of both demand and cheaper labor/goods. Emerging markets will basically help produce cheaper goods until they don't.
  
  
• Bird flu. This scenario (to have been another chicken-little-was-right thingy) actually goes against the prevailing economic trends, but not in a pretty way: if 5% or 10% of all people who get this die, this will have a notable impact on demand in the short term, sending it substantially lower world wide. In the long term, it might actually, uh, makes the survivors richer; at least that's what happened on a mass scale after the black plague.
  
  
  

Putting it all together here's my short and mid and longer term prognostications; your mileage may vary:

1. There is no reason for US markets to perform any better than European or Japanese markets in the near, mid or long term..

2. There is no reason to be anything other than a dollar bear in the mid-to long term; the end of "peak oil" means the end of dollar supremacy.

3. Emerging markets will likely get their act together because they can. Brazil is self-sufficent in fossil fuels, and has told the world it won't pay royalties on AIDS drug patents. Argentina gave the IMF the finger. In the last couple of years, those countries' equity markets have skyrocketed. Of course, the rub is all emerging markets are not alike.

4. The US with its high rates of consumption of everything, and its high rates of importing everything, is most susceptible to commodity inflation. If the US uses the Fed to "control" inflation with higher interest rates, it risks playing a global game of chicken that goes in 2 directions: one way (interest rates too low) discourages investors in American debt, the other way (interest rates too high) brings on a global recession(we are, after all the consumers of last resort). Everybody- everybody wants a "soft landing," but because the central banks always work with a limited amount of information, sooner or later they will fail to achieve it and there will likely be a global recession or, if you like, a "restructuring."

5. Demographics and the bird flu favor pharmaceutical companies; the US at some point will have to get tough with them, though.

Given all the above, it is clear that an underweighting of US equities, an overweighting of Europe/Japan equities, and an overweighting of emerging market equities (carefully chosen) is in order. In addition, some protection in hard currency/commodities is needed too (if only because the "gold standard" nuts on the right might push events in that directon). Note that I'm speaking of "weighting" within the context of some assumed portfolio allocation; I should at some point set up the "general" problem, which will be a nice exercise in the math at least for me.

Because of this math I haven't sketched out yet, bonds are tricky; there is some optimum overall allocation of bonds by country, risk, and maturity; suffice it to say that putting your nest egg into long term bonds denominated entirely in US dollars isn't a good idea in my opinion.

Update: on energy, I think this is pretty good middle of the road advice:

For policymakers, the oil market presents a classic case of decision under uncertainty. There are two axes to consider. First, either the optimists are right or wrong. Second, either the world invests in technology/exploration, or it does not. So there are four combinations. (1) Optimists right/Few investments: Civilization is safe, with little waste. (2) Optimists right/Big investments: Civilization is safe, but has wasted some resources. (3) Optimists wrong/Few investments: Civilization is NOT safe. (4) Optimists wrong/Big investments: Civilization safe, but not as rich as if oil were unlimited. For a policymaker, it is better to spur the investments, because the worst possible outcome is a bit of waste. This waste can likely be absorbed by economic growth.

For individual investors, the problem is different, because investment portfolios are necessarily small and concentrated. From this viewpoint, a more effective mechanism for pooling global energy risks seems advisable. Clearly, individual investments in energy development, technology, and conservation will be a growing part of portfolios over the years to come.

Moreover, a key point is that the disagreement between optimists and pessimists is about prospects in the long term, not short term. Hence, immediate investment implications are not very different. There will likely be more attraciveness in investments in energy technology, exploration, and conservation.

Not to mention environmental technologies spurred by alternative investments in energy...

More gloom and doom...

I'll briefly quote one of the Marketwatch stories mentioned below:

Investors who can overcome their myopia stand to gain huge amounts over the very long term.

These and related thoughts went through my mind when I read the most recent issue of Fosback's Fund Forecaster, edited by Norman Fosback. In it, Fosback explored developments that may not have any noticeable impact on the markets over the next week, month, or even the next year - but which could very well have a huge impact over the next several decades...

The picture that emerges is, in Fosback's words, "not pretty": Foreign opinion of the U.S. has already begun to fall markedly, and will likely continue falling. Though the downward pressure of this on U.S. investment markets will not be felt overnight, over the next several decades its impact will be profound...

In a nutshell, Fosback argues that the U.S. experience in Iraq and Katrina has eroded the world's belief in U.S. invincibility and competence. What's happening in Iraq is revealing to the world "our inadequacy of imposing a political vision on those to whom that vision is alien. Now, in the New Orleans aftermath, the world has witnessed firsthand America's extraordinary ineptitude in dealing with a purely internal, and preventable, crisis."

As a result, according to Fosback, the "American leadership mystique has been shattered." To put this another way, "the U.S. 'model' is no longer viewed by billions around the globe as the world's one best hope."

Which brings me to the venerable Stephen Roach, and his sunny outlook for today:

Hindsight is always a great luxury. This would certainly have been the year for global investors to have avoided dollar-denominated assets. While the dollar itself has held up surprisingly well, US stocks and bonds have not. Year to date, the S&P 500 is down 1.3% versus a 9.5% increase for the All-Country World ex US Index (in US dollars). Returns in Japan, Europe, and most emerging markets have been terrific. Despite all the euphoria over sustained upside earnings surprises in the US, equity returns have been hammered by a wrenching compression of multiples. US sovereign bonds have also underperformed most of their global counterparts; year-to-date returns of 1.7% on 10-year Treasuries have fallen far short of above 9% returns for German bunds and emerging market debt. Only Japanese government bonds have lagged those in the US -- hardly surprising in light of the nascent recovery in the Japanese economy.

The single most important question for global asset allocation is whether this year’s under-performance of dollar-based assets is just an anomaly, or the beginning of a multiyear trend. For what it’s worth, I suspect it’s the latter. The metrics I continue to use suggest that there has been only scant progress on the road to global rebalancing. The disparity between the world’s current account surpluses and deficits continues to widen, likely to hit a record of nearly 5% of world GDP in 2006. America’s massive external deficit of 6.4% of GDP in the first half of 2005 -- on track to account for 70% of all the world’s deficits this year -- seems set to go from bad to worse over the next year, as the US saving shortfall is exacerbated by energy-related pressures on households and Katrina-related pressures on the Federal government. And the US consumption share remains at a record 71% of GDP, well in excess of shares in Europe (58%), Japan (55%), and China (42%). The world may have woken up to the imperatives of rebalancing. So far, however, there is very little to show in the morning after.

The good news is that the laggards of the world are on the mend. Restructuring and reforms are leading the way in the surplus-saving economies of Japan and Europe. Yet it is very different in America. Suffering its greatest shortfall of domestic saving in modern history -- a net national saving rate that has averaged just 1.5% of GDP since early 2002 -- the US lacks the internal wherewithal to support investment in public goods such as infrastructure, homeland security, and a safety net for the underclass (see my 9 September 2005 dispatch, “The Shoestring Economy”). When saving-short America needs funding, it turns to the rest of the world to provide the capital. Global lenders have been delighted to so -- and, so far, have offered the flows at extremely generous financing terms insofar as the dollar and real interest rates are concerned...

America has long stood alone in embracing the “creative destruction” of corporate restructuring. The US penchant for shredding social contracts and forcing bad companies out of business is widely viewed as a unique aspect of “flexibility” that other nations were reluctant to embrace. America was the unquestioned front-runner in the global restructuring sweepstakes.

That was then. Today, the restructuring playing field has many more players than was the case in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s certainly been the case in Japan over the past several years and now appears to be so in Germany. The balance between headcount reductions and job creation is key in discerning the macro impacts of ongoing micro shifts in corporate performance. The first phase of restructuring is usually dominated by plant closings, outsourcing, and net job destruction -- a distinct negative for personal income generation and consumption. In the second phase, the balance shifts toward renewal, expansion, and net job creation -- conditions that foster a healing of consumer confidence and income generation, which eventually sets the stage for a pickup in private consumption. After a decade of restructuring, Japan may well be on the cusp of entering the healing phase. In Germany, corporate restructuring remains in the painful first phase -- although the gap between job reductions and creation has been narrowing this year. That’s usually a good leading indicator of a shift to the healing phase.

The point is that the US no longer has the restructuring story to itself -- a distinct shift from the climate of the past 20 years. Moreover, Delphi’s bankruptcy underscores the heavy lifting that still lies ahead for Corporate America and the US workforce. That, in turn, draws into question the relative restructuring premium that has benefited dollar-denominated assets over this period. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that the US model will now have to face some new and important challenges of its own -- not just the pension time bomb symbolized by Delphi but also the downside of another asset bubble, shifting political winds, new leadership at the Fed, and the inevitable current account adjustment. This spells unrelenting pressure on US-centric global growth and asset allocation.

There's probably still lots of money to be made overseas, but I tend to agree with the above 2 gentlemen; unless Americans figure out "Phase 3," there doesn't seem much point to keep money invested in the US, unless you know exactly where it's going and why.

Read these 2 Marketwatch Stories.

This one.

And this one.

Just read 'em.

Joe Liberman, Lowell Weicker, National Review, Jury Trials, and civic responsibility...

The usual gang is harrumphing about faux democrat Joe Liberman's showing up at "National Review's 50th Birthday Party," or whatever.

Atrios, linked above, links to a pretty racist rant from National Review back when I was a day short of two months old. While I agree with Atrios that the idea of supporting a journal that makes the early days of Planned Parenthood look, well, oh, heck, they were racist, too...I was struck by this bit:

National Review editorial, 8/24/1957, 4:7, pp. 148-9: The most important event of the past three weeks was the remarkable and unexpected vote by the Senate to guarantee to defendants in a criminal contempt action the privilege of a jury trial. That vote does not necessarily affirm a citizen's intrinsic rights: trial by jury in contempt actions, civil or criminal, is not an American birthright, and it cannot, therefore, be maintained that the Senate's vote upheld, pure and simple, the Common Law...

Now jury trials exist to make sure that "one's peers" judge one; not instruments of the state, and therein lies the rub: I don't have links handy, but jury trials in America often devolve into spin games between prosecution and defense; it's information that's kept from juries that is often evocative of guilt or innocence.

Grand juries, of course, are another matter entirely; in Grand juries the jurors can often ask questions; the "ham sandwich can be indicted" chestnut is true because, as I understand it, the standard of proof is pretty low.

Therein lies my dilemma: I've been called for jury duty. If empanelled, chances are I'll be excused. I actually do believe there's such a thing as "jury nullification." If drug cases came before me, I'd be more inclined to acquit than anything else; I think as a society the way we handle even meth cases is apalling.

Moreover, I understand the spin game; I'd have reasonable doubts unless the prosecutor presented a slam dunk case but even then...why didn't the defendant plead down?

I've been called before to jury duty & never served because attorneys see the occupation "engineer" and it invariably raises a red flag to them. Too reality-oriented for them.

So to tie loose ends together: I suspect that jury trials, as done in the US, at least at the petit jury level, don't often produce justice, because of the above effects; so despite National Review's early racist elitism, I suspect that the way it's done in certain other countries might actually produce justice more often, provided there's an accountable government to begin with, which, given the current regime in power, is indeed quite an assumption. So I'm conflicted over the whole thing, but ideally,, would want to, you know, actually have the possibility of justice. As long as things are as they are now, it's probably not likely. I could, do a "not commit" Supreme Court thingy in being empanelled, that would likely be seen in a microsecond by proscution or defense in voir dire. Or, I could be perfectly honest with them (which is likely what I would do anyway). But even that doesn't seem like justice to me; there ought to be people like me on juries, despite the inconvenience of it to me personally (busy, busy time at work).


Anyhow, Lowell Weicker was the guy Liberman beat way back when. Liberman does support nasty things; he's in hock to the insurance and banking interests, and should go Republican. Weicker, bless his heart, left the Repubs a while back. He was as good a Republican as you'd get.

Good voter guide for Vancouver, WA

The folks at "LifePac" (who appear to be another zygotes-are-people-as well-as-brain-dead-are-people anti-human life group)want to keep Vancouver, WA libraries decrepit because, apparently, adults can read on the internet there, semi-privately, what they, LifePac, call "pornograpy."

Vancouver WA needs very badly better libraries. In the process, these busybodies have filed "candidate questionaires" seeking candidates positions on, inter alia, "Intelligent" "Design" being "taught" in schools.

Anybody living locally, you know what to do: put the kibosh on anyone they recommend, and vote for anyone they oppose.

The Mayor of Vancouver will be a toughie, though; both seem to be insensitive to religious plurality, but the fact that they don't like Royce Pollard and their almost recommended opponent is less qualified to run a city than my 4 year old son speaks for something.

Unleash Chang...

This story about Jeb Bush came out recently...

Unleash the who? ...

Amid all the stories about destruction from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it was easy to miss other happenings around the world over the past month.

Take, for example, a story out of Florida that chronicled Gov. Jeb Bush ending a state congressional swearing-in ceremony by telling attendees of his imaginary warrior friend named Chang.

Bush shared that Chang is a mystical hero who believes in the purest of conservative political ideals, and that when Bush is politically perplexed, he "unleashes the Chang" to help him make the right decision.

After a standing ovation, Bush unveiled a golden sword that he presented as a gift to Rep. Marco Rubio, the new speaker of the state house and advised him to become a great conservative warrior.

Luckily, Brad De Long has an explanation:

When George H. W. Bush in the 1970s and 1980s threatened to "unleash Chang" on his tennis opponents, he was referring to China's onetime strongman and thereafter Taiwan's dictator Chiang Kaishek, leader of the Nationalist Party, the man who had largely reunified China in the 1920s with his army's "Northern Expedition," lost the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party, and then taken refuge with his Guomindang party cadres on Taiwan. After the start of the Korean War, the American 7th Fleet protected Chiang (and Taiwan) from Mao's People's Liberation Army.

Republican wingnuts, however, pretended that the 7th Fleet actually protected Mao's Communists (who had, after all, won the Chinese Civil War) from Chiang's Nationalists (who had, after all, lost it) by keeping Chiang Kaishek leashed. They periodically called for the U.S. to "unleash Chiang Kaishek"--so that Chiang, you see, could invade and conquer the Chinese mainland.

When George H. W. Bush, playing tennis (and losing) in the 1970s and 1980s, would threaten to "unleash Chiang," he was mocking the right-wing nuts of his generation.

That clears that one up...

On second thought, though, I think "JEB" Bush actually knows the origin of Chang, and despite De Long's opinion that Jeb's incurious, I opine otherwise: no, he's cynical, and assumes incuriousness on the part of his fellow conservatives. Which I think would be a spot on assumption.

Robert Bork calls the Harriet Miers pick a "disaster."

link

But I'm sure he meant it in the nicest possible way.

In case you didn't know the death toll from Katrina

Currently it "offically" stands at 1003.

However, despite the fact that the search is officially "over," it doesn't mean that no more bodies will be found.

Good thing Karl Rove is out as Katrina-hand-out-the-booty-Tsar...

The Sonny Bono wildlife refuge?

Link

A bird refuge near the Salton Sea has joined the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and an Arizona refuge overrun with illegal immigrant traffic on a list of threatened nature preserves across America.

The Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, home to one of the most diverse collections of bird life in North America, is on a list of the nation's most endangered wildlife refuges.

The list released Wednesday by the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife was culled from 545 refuges in 50 states and five territories.

The 10 on the list were selected because they are critical to American wildlife and are also facing clear and present threats to their continued viability.

About 400 species of birds have been spotted at the Sonny Bono refuge, making it the second-most diverse national refuge in terms of birds.

But it is also facing imminent demise if the shrinking sea leaves the shoreline refuge high, dry and facing potentially toxic dust storms.

To me; a Sonny Bono wildlife refuge presumes the existence of a Cher wildlife refuge,...

Another parallel between the US and Argentina

One of the cool things about the 'net is the ability to virtually visit pretty much anywhere on earth. I had previously mentioned that I am thinking about putting a bit of money into Argentina, as based on their recent crisis and their subsequent reaction to the IMF, they are likely to figure out their economic woes before the US does.

At the moment, though, Argentina is pissed at France because the Argentines are getting screwed over privatization of their water and sewage systems.

That might pan out in favor of the Argentines.

What strikes me though, about Argentina, is that its governmental structure is curiously similar to the United States, and evidently has been so for a long, long time.

This doesn't bode well for the US; it may mean that our historical and economic trajectory might emulate Argentina's if it hasn't started doing so already.

For balance, here's the official webpage of the Falkland Islands...

The case for an oil bubble and the bird flu bubble...

Yet again, good analysis from Jerome a Paris @ Kos. I've been out of oil...

The next thing, of course, is the Bird Flu bubble...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history.

A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to reach the United States within "a few months or even weeks."...

The plan outlines a worst-case scenario in which more than 1.9 million Americans would die and 8.5 million would be hospitalized with costs exceeding $450 billion.

It also calls for a domestic vaccine production capacity of 600 million doses within six months, more than 10 times the present capacity.

On Friday, President Bush invited the leaders of the nation's top six vaccine producers to the White House to cajole them into increasing their domestic vaccine capacity, and the flu plan demonstrates just how monumental a task these companies have before them.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration's efforts to plan for a possible pandemic flu have become controversial, with many Democrats in Congress charging that the administration has not done enough. Many have pointed to the lengthy writing process of the flu plan as evidence of this.

Watch Sofi Aventis, Roche, and IXJ (Ishares global pharaceuticals)...

Depeche Mode mood...

Stripped:

Come with me
Into the trees
We’ll lay on the grass
And let the hours pass

Take my hand
Come back to the land
Let’s get away
Just for one day

Let me see you
Stripped down to the bone
Let me see you
Stripped down to the bone

Metropolis
Has nothing on this
You’re breathing in fumes
I taste when we kiss

Take my hand
Come back to the land
Where everything’s ours
For a few hours

Let me see you
Stripped down to the bone
Let me see you
Stripped down to the bone

Let me hear you
Make decisions
Without your television
Let me hear you speaking
Just for me

Let me see you
Stripped down to the bone

Let me hear you speaking
Just for me

Let me see you
Stripped down to the bone let me hear you crying
Just for me

...

New dress...

Sex jibe husband murders wife
Bomb blast victim fights for life
Girl thirteen attacked with knife

Princess Di is wearing a new dress

Jet airliner shot from sky
Famine horror, millions die
Earthquake terror figures rise

Princes Di is wearing a new dress

You can’t change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world

In black townships fires blaze
Prospects better premier says
Within sight are golden days

Princess Di is wearing a new dress

You can’t change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world

Princess Di is wearing a new dress

Two items side by side...

The Supreme Court is considering Oregon's assisted suicide law...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - The question of assisted suicide reached the Supreme Court for the second time in eight years on Wednesday, although the profound issues of professional ethics and personal autonomy that have animated the national debate largely remained outside the courtroom.

nstead, lawyers for the federal government and for Oregon, the only state to have authorized physician-assisted suicide, argued over a single question: whether John Ashcroft acted within his authority as attorney general when he decided in 2001 that doctors would lose their federal prescription privileges if they followed the Oregon law's procedures and prescribed lethal doses of lawful medications for terminally ill patients who wanted to end their own lives.

This is a straightforward question of federal administrative law, the bread and butter of the Supreme Court's docket. A federal appeals court ruled last year that in enacting the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, Congress did not give the attorney general the unilateral authority to penalize doctors who follow state law in prescribing federally regulated medications. The case, now known as Gonzales v. Oregon, No. 04-623, is the Bush administration's appeal.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was an active participant in the questioning. He asked Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who was defending the Ashcroft action, for "the closest analogy you have, other than this case," in which the attorney general had "impinged on" a state regulation of medical practice.

When Mr. Clement began to describe the Food and Drug Administration's effort some years ago to stop the use of laetrile, an anticancer drug that was permitted in 17 states, Chief Justice Roberts cut him off. "That's the F.D.A.," he said. "I'm talking about the attorney general under this statute."

Mr. Clement, an admired Supreme Court advocate who speaks without notes, at first said he could not think of an example. Then he offered the government's prohibition against using marijuana for medical purposes, which the Supreme Court upheld in June.

This drew an objection from Justice David H. Souter, who said that Congress's desire to stop "drug pushing and drug abuse in the conventional sense" did not support the government's position on assisted suicide.

Greensmile's post, where he quotes this recent study...

In the study, 20 participants 10 to 20 years old being treated at either St. Jude or Sydney Children's Hospital participated in one of three end-of-life decisions: enrollment on a Phase I study of a drug that would not benefit them in their terminal stage (seven patients); adoption of a "do-not-resuscitate [DNR]" order (five patients), or initiation of terminal care, i.e., aggressive treatment of disease symptoms rather than the disease itself (eight patients).

A striking finding was that consideration of others' preferences was the factor most frequently reported to affect decision making by patients, parents and physicians, Hinds said. This indicates that human relationships strongly influence end-of-life decisions in pediatric oncology, she added.

Another key finding was that, among 11 of the 20 patients, a part of the decision-making process included the wish to benefit others, even though they themselves would not benefit. The St. Jude investigators say they did not anticipate this finding since such behavior is not reflected in existing theories of child development, which maintain that children expect personal benefit when they help someone else. ...

Young patients who wanted to end all therapy, even if that therapy might extend their lives (65 percent), came to that decision because of "wanting no more," the researchers report. For example, a 15-year-old girl with acute lymphoblastic leukemia said, "We decided not to go with chemo because I don't want to be sick the rest of my days, and it's not like it is going to cure me, so I just said, 'We'll go home and take it from there.'" Other patients said they were ready to die and go to heaven (50 percent) or that they had seen other patients die on mechanical support and wanted to avoid that course of treatment (50 percent).

Clinicians see this type of research as a priority because they often feel unprepared to offer adequate assistance to parents and patients during this time, according to Wayne Furman, M.D., a member of the Department of Hematology-Oncology and deputy director of the Solid Tumor Clinic.

"Knowing what their child's end-of-life care preferences are would let parents and clinicians honor them where possible," said Furman, the paper's senior author. "This could provide comfort to parents after the loss of their child and reassure clinicians about the quality of care they provide. It might also give patients a sense of control during a time when most decisions are not within their control."

Greensmile's point is dead on:

If kids can make sound and generously humane decisions about their own end-of-life,
WHY THE HELL IS SOME STUPID CHURCH PUSHING SOME STUPID JUDGES TO TAKE THESE DECISIONS AWAY FROM GROWN UPS?

I think, unfortunately, the answer is simple: Because there's more power and money to be gained by making political footballs out of the dying, to get political support based on the pro-suffering morality of the anti-human life crowd (that is, the zygotes=brain dead people=living people crowd).

I wonder if they got a Patent Incentive Award?

Link

2 other patents reference it...

Toy gas fired missile and launcher assembly

Abstract

A toy gas-fired missile and launcher assembly whose missile is composed of a soft head and a tail extending therefrom formed by a piston. The piston is telescoped into the barrel of a launcher having a closed end on which is mounted an electrically-activated ignitor, the air space between the end of the piston and the closed end of the barrel defining a combustion chamber. Joined to the barrel and communicating with the chamber therein is a gas intake tube having a normally-closed inlet valve. To operate the assembly, the operator places the inlet tube with its valve open adjacent his anal region from which a colonic gas is discharged. The piston is then withdrawn to a degree producing a negative pressure to inhale the gas into the combustion chamber to intermix with the air therein to create a combustible mixture. The ignitor is then activated to explode the mixture in the chamber and fire the missile into space.

The march of the frogs...

Link

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others.

The U.S. attorney's manual requires prosecutors not to bring witnesses before a grand jury if there is a possibility of future criminal charges unless they are notified in advance that their grand jury testimony can be used against them in a later indictment.

Rove has already made at least three grand jury appearances and his return at this late stage in the investigation is unusual.

The prosecutor did not give Rove similar warnings before his earlier grand jury appearances...

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said Thursday he would not comment on any ongoing discussion he has had with Fitzgerald's office but that he has been assured no decisions on charges have been made. Rove would first have to receive what is known as a target letter if he is about to be indicted.

''I can say categorically that Karl has not received a target letter from the special counsel. The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl,'' Luskin said.

Larry O'Donnell notes (HT: Pachacutec @ Kos)

Fitzgerald does not have to send Rove or anyone else a target letter before indicting him. The only reason to send target letters now is that Fitzgerald believes one or more of his targets will flip and become a prosecution witness at the pre-indictment stage. A veteran prosecutor told me, "If Fitzgerald is sending target letters at the end of his investigation, those are just invitations to come in and work out a deal."

Prosecutors prefer pre-indictment plea bargaining to post-indictment because they have more to offer you, like not being indicted at all or downgrading your status to unindicted co-conspirator. And pre-indictment plea bargaining can greatly enrich the indictments that the prosecutor then obtains. If, for example, Fitzgerald has a weak case against, say, Scooter Libby, imagine how much Rove's cooperation might strengthen that case.

There's going to be something; O'Donnell says 3 indictments. I don't know, but I do know there will be something...

Rove is evidenlty quaking...spendid...

The Bush regime reminds me of Argentina...

I was considering putting some money in Argentina (but I think it's still not a good idea just yet - it seems inflation's picking up there...but I am still thinking about it), and by coincidence, I ran across this op-ed by William Pfaff...

The military junta that had governed Argentina since 1975 was projecting disorder as a deliberate distraction from the murderous disorder it imposed within its own society. Its invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 was based on Argentina's historical claim to the islands, which it maintains today. (Britain's claim to the islands goes back to 1765. It has governed them as a Crown Colony since 1832.) The aggression was condemned by the UN Security Council, 10-to-1...

In the course of the Argentine military dictatorship's rule, it caused from 13,000 to 15,000 people, whom it considered internal opponents, to "disappear." They were usually tortured, and many were subsequently dropped into the sea from aircraft, sometimes still alive.

The Argentine generals participated in the "Condor" alliance with General Augusto Pinochet's Chile and a corrupt Brazilian military regime, a cooperative project to pursue and kill political dissidents throughout the region.

The Argentine generals' total and costly defeat in the Falklands by a brilliantly commanded British military expedition precipitated their fall from power. Argentina held a presidential election in 1983, and civilian rule was restored...

It seems curious that President George W. Bush's administration has never mentioned the Falklands precedent for what it says its intervention in Iraq is meant to accomplish. Bush want to change the political climate in the Middle East, but few in the region fail to understand that the basic Bush motive was to take control of Iraq and its resources, and put in place a government friendly to American interests. This automatically undermines the democratization argument.

Sidney Blumenthal helps make my point:

The party runs the state. Politics drives economics. Important party officials are also economic operators. They thrive off their connections and rise in the party apparatus as a result of their self-enrichment. The past three chairmen of the Republican National Committee have all been Washington lobbyists.

An oligarchy atop the party allocates favors. Behind the ideological slogans about the "free market" and "liberty," the oligarchy creates oligopolies. Businesses must pay to play. They must kick back contributions to the party, hire its key people and support its program. Only if they give do they receive tax breaks, loosening of regulations and helpful treatment from government professionals.

Those professionals in the agencies and departments who insist on adhering to standards other than those imposed by the party are fired, demoted and blackballed. The oligarchy wars against these professionals to bend government purely into an instrument of oligopolies.

Corporations pay fixed costs in the form of legal graft to the party in order to suppress the market, drastically limiting competitive pressure. Then they collude to control prices, create cartels and reduce planning primarily to the political game. The larger consequences are of no concern whatsoever to the corporate players so long as they maintain access to the political players.

The sums every industry, from financial services to computers, spends on lobbying are staggering. Broadcast media firms spent $35.88 million in 2004 alone on lobbyists in Washington, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Telephone companies spent $71.97 million; cable and satellite TV corporations, $20.22 million. The drug industry during the same period shelled out $123 million to pay 1,291 lobbyists, 52 percent of them former government officials. The results have been direct: The Food and Drug Administration has been reduced to a hollow shell, and Medicare can't negotiate lower drug costs with pharmaceutical companies. In the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry paid out $87 million in campaign contributions for federal officials, 69 percent of them flowing to Republicans.

Whereas almost all lobbying before the Bush era was confined to Capitol Hill, now one in five lobbyists approaches the White House directly. Consider the success story of one Kirk Blalock, a former aide to Karl Rove as deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, where he coordinated political links to the business community. Now, one year out of the White House, he's a senior partner in the lobbying firm of Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock, boasting 33 major clients, 22 for whom he lobbies his former colleagues in the White House. Indeed, the Bush White House boasts 12 former lobbyists in responsible positions, from chief of staff Andrew Card (American Automobile Association Manufacturers) on down.

The parallels between the Argentine dictatorship, and its corruption, and its economic decline, and the Bush regime, and its culture of corrpution are undeniable.

As I'd said somewhere before, these corporations do this because they can't compete on a level playing field.

They use the corruption to try to forestall the day when they might actually have to, uh...you know, compete in the marketplace, but there is ultimately only so much the government can do short of reinstituting slavery...which, I think might eventually raise a few alarm bells even among conservatives.

Anyway, til I see otherwise, I'd underweight America; I suspect Argentina might get its act together before America at this rate.

Now it's time for my market prediction:

As I posted on Kos yesterday (while Blogger was asleep) several brokerage houses and Marketwatch's "technical" analysts (which are like entrails readers for all their vaunted savvy) predicted stocks to take off despite the obvious signs to all middle class folks: skyrocketing energy prices, prices at the pump, promises of unnatural natural gas prices, etc.

I could have added "health care costs exploding" (it cost me $50 bucks in co-pays alone to see the doctor and get a scrip filled the other day), and inflation at the vending machine...

Well my prediction: sell, sell, sell.

It's going to be one heck of an October for the market...Merrill says, btw...

In our opinion, investors appear overly complacent in the face of higher energy prices
and rising short-term interest rates, and we question the prevailing assumption that U.S.
consumers will be able to maintain their high spending levels. Additionally, we believe
that expectations for corporate earnings are overly optimistic, and we expect to see
earnings disappointments for the next couple of quarters. In this sort of environment, we
continue to recommend that investors follow a conservative investment strategy. Stocks
and bonds have both produced lackluster returns this year, and it is difficult to make a
case for major changes in this trend over the next six to 12 months. While we do not
expect a significant drop in equity prices, we would encourage investors to wait for a
less risky time before adopting a more aggressive investment stance. Equity investors should
look for buying opportunities, which could be signaled by signs that the Fed is pausing,
by lower stock prices as a result of disappointing earnings or by lower energy prices.

Which I guess is broker-speak for "Run away! Run away! Run away!"

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Yeah, I'm stealing the metaphor from Kos, but this is wonderful news:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal prosecutor investigating who leaked the identity of a CIA operative is expected to signal within days whether he intends to bring indictments in the case, legal sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday.

As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets, said the lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Fitzgerald could announce plea agreements, bring indictments, or conclude that no crime was committed. By the end of this month he is expected to wrap up his nearly two-year-old investigation into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

The inquiry has ensnared President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The White House had long maintained that Rove and Libby had nothing to do with the leak but reporters have since named them as sources.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.

I love a good frog-march in the autumn. Looks like...victory...

Happy News

Link

Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.

But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea...

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors...

While household incomes in Bhutan remain among the world's lowest, life expectancy increased by 19 years from 1984 to 1998, jumping to 66 years. The country, which is preparing to shift to a constitution and an elected government, requires that at least 60 percent of its lands remain forested, welcomes a limited stream of wealthy tourists and exports hydropower to India.

"We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other."

It is a concept grounded in Buddhist doctrine, and even a decade ago it might have been dismissed by most economists and international policy experts as naïve idealism...

In Canada, Hans Messinger, the director of industry measures and analysis for Statistics Canada, has been working informally with about 20 other economists and social scientists to develop that country's first national index of well-being...

Later this year, the Canadian group plans to release a first attempt at an index - an assessment of community health, living standards and people's division of time among work, family, voluntarism and other activities. Over the next several years, the team plans to integrate those findings with measurements of education, environmental quality, "community vitality" and the responsiveness of government. Similar initiatives are under way in Australia and New Zealand.

Ronald Colman, a political scientist and the research director for Canada's well-being index, said one challenge was to decide how much weight to give different indicators.

For example, Dr. Colman said, the amount of time devoted to volunteer activities in Canada has dropped more than 12 percent in the last decade.

"That's a real decline in community well-being, but that loss counts for nothing in our current measure of progress," he said...

Well, it's nice to see the return of ideas like this...

DeLay will cop a plea

Clearly the latest indictments against him show that Earle brought the original indictments as part of a plea deal. If you haven't been listening to "those moonbats at Air America" you can be forgiven for not knowing that as of today Tom DeLay is staring at life- and that's "Texas justice life". Two dozen stories on Harriet Miers and one tiny blurb on DeLay.

Meanwhile I've got 2 reasons for Dems to oppose Miers:

1. Bush v. Gore, and

2. The unresolved status of whether you can indict a sitting president. I was always for this- always. If he's a common criminal, then, dammit, lock him up. Cronyism ensures that a Bush "always has a seat on the court." What the hell kind of a precedent is that? Affirmative action for 1 family?


Anyway, Auf Wiedersehen, Herr DeLay...

I've skimmed all the left blogs, but I wonder...

Especially after Yglesias' Frum quote, do we really want a Supreme Court appointee who will no doubt have been compared to the illustrious Michael Brown, who, I suppose, Bush could've picked as well?

I guess I should write a letter to the NY Times...

"For the Anti-Evolutionists, Hope in High Places" the article says...

EXCEPT for the robes and the fact that each is addressed as "His Holiness," it would be hard to find much in common between Pope Benedict XVI and Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Yet both have recently expressed an unhappiness with evolutionary science that would be a comfort to the Pennsylvania school board now in a court fight over its requirement that the hypothesis of a creator be part of the science curriculum...

Neither of these men believes that a religious text, whether the Bible or the Diamond Sutra, should be given a strictly literal reading. Yet they share with evangelicals an aversion to the notion that life emerged blindly, without supernatural guidance. Particularly offensive to them is the theory, part of the biological mainstream, that the engine of evolution is random mutation...

Sigh..."Randomness to a scientist is inherently phenomenological and says nothing about metaphysics; any other interpretation of 'random' simply cannot be expressed in mathematical or scientific terms" I keep saying over and over and over, and other scientists and engineers and mathematicians say the same thing and yet the NY Times persists in making this distinction...which of course would mean that

In a new book, "The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality," the Dalai Lama laments what he calls "radical scientific materialism," warning that seeing people as "the products of pure chance in the random combination of genes" is an invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty. "The view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is, to my mind, as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality." Both, he suggests, are legitimate interpretations of science.

is quite in line with what evolution already implies...and

[C]ompare his words to those of the Discovery Institute in its call for the overthrow of scientific materialism - "the simplistic philosophy or world view that claims that all of reality can be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone." The institute says it hopes "to reverse the stifling dominance" of this perspective and replace it with a "science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

this marginlizes that the "Discovery" "Institute" "theory" of "Intelligent" "Design" claims to be able to do this reversal from scientific perspective- which, for reasons already stated, it cannot.

David Brooks: Why is this man given a megaphone?

From last night's News Hour with Jim Lerher:

Bill Frist has a lot of problems which we've talked to about on this show. To me, personal corruption is not one of them. I do not see him. I've looked at his career quite a lot. Any sense of venality, of trying to profit in financial terms, I just, for a guy who's led his life so carefully, to risk it for a few -- even a couple of million bucks or a couple of hundred thousand bucks, this plan of becoming President of the United States, I just don't buy it.

Really? Lived his life carefully? Let's see, he was first elected in 1994...

What about this?

He's been a major stockholder of a company that had the largest fraud fine in American history and he's "led his life so carefully?"

"We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes..."

Link

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party...

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities...

But the Education Department has since defended its payments to Mr. Williams, saying his commentaries were "no more than the legitimate dissemination of information to the public."

The G.A.O. said the Education Department had no money or authority to "procure favorable commentary in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition" in federal law.

The ruling comes with no penalty, but under federal law the department is supposed to report the violations to the White House and Congress.

Democrats: you have your homework: toughen up this law.

Make this sort of behavior a felony, with real jail time.

Anything that erodes the public trust, IMO, like this, is a greater threat to the American government than any communist cell operating in the US. It's a greater threat than al Qaeda, actually, because al Qaeda has just the opposite effect: if it were to strike it would make people blindly turn towards the government.