Yet ANOTHER reason why HRC should get her ass out of the way

as long as hrc is hanging in there by the skin of her teeth, refusing to step aside and let obama begin campaigning against mccain, mccain, now minus any republican competition, is going to do shit like this, running around acting all presidential, while the obama campaign is focusing all of its energy beating back mark penn and company...

As Sen. John McCain's Democratic rivals slug it out with no end in sight, the Republican presidential nominee is carefully laying plans to stay in the headlines -- from an official foreign trip next week to a biographical campaign tour across America to a swing through economically disadvantaged areas and minority communities.

McCain is traveling to Iraq, Israel, London and Paris with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), colleagues on the Armed Services Committee who are also staunch campaign supporters.

The trio will meet with King Abdullah in Amman, Jordan; Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem; British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London; and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.

On March 26, shortly after his return, McCain will give a speech on foreign policy and national security to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

fercrissake, hillary... do you REALLY give a shit about your country...? i mean, REALLY...??

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"Bank run" - the NYT headline that tells it like it is

i haven't seen another headline referencing the bear stearns collapse that comes right out and says it... the others are more like this...

wapo...

Fed Comes To Rescue As Wall St. Giant Slips

la times...

Bear Stearns gets emergency loan from Fed

ah, but the nyt... now, HERE'S a headline with stones...

Run on Big Wall St. Bank Spurs Rescue Backed by U.S.

Just three days ago, the head of Bear Stearns, the beleaguered investment bank, sought to assure Wall Street that his firm was safe.

But those assurances were blown away in what amounted to a bank run at Bear Stearns, prompting JPMorgan Chase and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to step in on Friday with a financial rescue package intended to keep the firm afloat.

The move underscores the extreme stresses that the credit crisis has imposed on the financial system and raises the once-unthinkable prospect that major Wall Street firms might fail.

The developments may only postpone the eventual sale of all or part of Bear Stearns, which has had crippling losses on mortgage-linked investments. To keep the 85-year-old firm solvent, JPMorgan, backed by the New York Fed, extended a secured line of credit that gives Bear Stearns at least 28 days to shore up its finances or, more likely, to find a buyer.

News of the bailout ignited fears that other big banks remain vulnerable to the continuing credit crisis, and stocks tumbled in another rocky day for the markets. Financial shares led the way, with shares of Bear Stearns plunging 47 percent. Hours after the rescue was announced, another Wall Street firm, Lehman Brothers, said it had secured a three-year credit line from banks. Its stock fell 15 percent.

i posted on thursday about carlyle capital and the rumors swirling around bear stearns... i'm absolutely convinced we haven't seen nothin' yet...

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Joe Courtney (D-CT) on yesterday's House FISA vote

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Greg Palast fills in the blanks to the Bernanke-Spitzer backstory

and what a story it is...

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.

How? Follow the money.

The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.

Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime.’

Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 monthly payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. The Grinnings move into their Toyota.

Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.

‘Steering,’ sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called ‘fraudulent conveyance’ or ‘predatory lending’ under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.

But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hardy – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.

But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.

Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.

Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.

Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup’s Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called “securitization.”

What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinning’s, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into “tranches” of bonds which were stamped “AAA” - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).

When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will ‘earn’ a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.

But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide’s stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bailout. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.

And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

yeah, it's a little more than "fair use," but, hey... it deserves wide exposure...

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Lies and the lying liars

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Attacking Obama: How Fox spreads the virus

a new video clip from robert greenwald and brave new films...

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YAY...! House rejects telecom amnesty and warrantless surveillance

damn... i wasn't at all confident THIS was going to happen... what a GREAT way to start a weekend --- for a change...

glenn greenwald...

The House just now approved a new FISA bill that denies retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms and which refuses to grant most of the new powers for the President to spy on Americans without warrants. It passed comfortably, by a 213-197 margin.

As impressive as the House vote itself was, more impressive still was the floor debate which preceded it. I can't recall ever watching a debate on the floor of either House of Congress that I found even remotely impressive -- until today. One Democrat after the next -- of all stripes -- delivered impassioned, defiant speeches in defense of the rule of law, oversight on presidential eavesdropping, and safeguards on government spying. They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve, rejecting the principle that has predominated political debate in this country since 9/11: that the threat of the Terrorists means we must live under the rule of an omnipotent President and a dismantled constitutional framework.

[...]

It's hard not to believe that there's not at least some significant sea change reflected by this. They have seen that they can defy the President even on matters of Terrorism, and the sky doesn't fall in on them.

WOO-HOO...! even if it's only the weekend that i have the smile on my face, it's one hell of a lot better than the news that's been trickling in the past year...

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George W. "Walking Eagle" Bush

true or not, it's simply too good to pass up...

President Bush was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation last weekend in Arizona. He spoke for almost an hour on his future plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living. He referred to his career as Governor of Texas, how he had signed "YES" 1,237 times for every Indian issue that came to his desk for approval.

Although the President was vague on the details of his plan, he seemed most enthusiastic about his future ideas for helping his "red brothers".

At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented the President with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name - Walking Eagle. The proud President then departed in his motorcade, waving to the crowds.

A news reporter later inquired to the group of chiefs of how they come to select the new name given to the President.

They explained that Walking Eagle is the name given to a bird so full of shit it can no longer fly.

i need something to make me smile while following the fisa debate...

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Robert Parry nails HRC's strategy: "An unqualified black man is cutting line in front of a better qualified white woman"

that about sums it up, dontcha think...?

The cumulative effect of Clinton’s attacks on Obama’s qualifications – combined with her campaign’s efforts to turn many white voters against him as the “black candidate” – has buoyed Republican hopes for November.

By simultaneously marginalizing and dirtying up Obama, the Clinton campaign also has tamped down the excitement of many Democrats, especially the young, for a candidate that they see as offering a refreshing message of hope and change.

Replacing Obama’s message of reform and reconciliation is a Clinton message of resentment and victimization, as voiced by former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro who claimed that Clinton confronts “sexist media” bias as a woman while Obama gets an easy ride because he’s black.

[...]

The idea that a black man in America, who was raised by a single mother and who bears an exotic foreign-sounding name, would be deemed “very lucky” struck many Americans as a bizarre choice of words. But it fits with a key sub rosa theme of the Clinton campaign, that an unqualified black man was cutting line in front of a better qualified white woman.

it also bodes ill for stopping the drum-beating for war with iran, particularly now that fallon has been unceremoniously shoved aside...

Since Fallon’s sudden resignation, intelligence sources have said they do not foresee an imminent U.S. assault on Iran, although one source said Fallon quit, in part, over a new White House demand for an updated attack plan.

More likely, the sources say, the issue of how to deal with Iran will pass to the next president. In that regard, McCain and Clinton promise more tough talk and belligerence, while Obama vows to speak directly with Iran’s leaders over how to reduce tensions.

although parry only hints at it obliquely, i am not at all sure that an attack on iran isn't in the cards before the end of bush's term...

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Speaking of the WaPo, here's yet another war-mongering editorial, this one about Fallon

only in the warped, parallel universe occupied by the bush administration and the washington post, could being an advocate for NOT waging war lead to war...

A Failing Campaign
By swearing off military action, a U.S. commander weakens the diplomatic offensive against Iran.

[...]

[I]t's more likely that Adm. Fallon increased rather than lessened the small chance of war by stating publicly during his travels in the region that there would be no U.S. attack. Not one for diplomatic nuance, the blunt-spoken seaman appeared unable to grasp that in the absence of a credible threat of force, the U.S.-led campaign to stop Tehran's nuclear program by peaceful means would not succeed, leaving war and acquiescence to an Iranian bomb as the only alternatives.

despite the disclaimer and the mention of diplomacy in the lede...

As we have said, we oppose an attack on the Iranian nuclear program by this administration.

absolutely nowhere in the editorial was a serious proposal made for direct diplomacy...

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The "no-big-secret" secret session

a wapo follow-up to to the "secret session" (see my post from last night)...

"I will bring information . . . to the secret session that some members are aware of but others are not," promised a coy Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), declaring it his solemn "obligation to bring information and communicate information that is confidential and that I believe ought to be kept secret."

[...]

They sounded like schoolgirls whispering among themselves in class. Except they weren't schoolgirls: They were members of Congress, debating whether to grant immunity to telecom companies that cooperate in a clandestine government eavesdropping program. A vote on that program, a rewriting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will come today. Last night was the time for an hour-long secret debate about the spy bill -- preceded by a 90-minute public debate about whether to have the secret debate.

[...]

Blunt finally ... offered some soothing words.

"I have not suggested this is at the top-secret level," he said.

The secret was out! The man who requested the secret session in the first place finally admitted he had no big secrets to divulge.

the money quote...

"There are some of us here who feel that this country has drifted toward a version of a national security state," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).

uh... yeah... no kidding...

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One reason why it's nice to live in Argentina (at least for now)

i've been curious why i am getting more peso for my dollar now than i was last year... i'm not complaining, mind you, but, as i've watched the dollar's dizzying fall, i've begun to wonder if something bad is about to happen...

i read today that argentina claims it's keeping the peso artificially weak in order to keep its exports competitive, something i had thought was going on but hadn't been quite sure of since i don't follow much of the local news... browsing nouriel roubini's rge newsletter this morning, i got an eyeful...

here's how a basket of south american currencies, plus the euro as a point of comparison, stack up exchange rate-wise vis a vis the dollar over the past two years... that last graph will undoubtedly smack you right in the face as it definitely did to me...



U.S. Dollar vs. Brazilian Real
(approx. 20% appreciation)



U.S. Dollar vs. Chilean Peso
(approx. 18% appreciation)



U.S. Dollar vs. Colombian Peso
(approx 10% in two years,
but 23% from that peak)



U.S. Dollar vs. Peruvian Neuvo Sol
(approx 16% appreciation)



U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro
(approx 21% appreciation)



U.S. Dollar vs. Argentina Peso
(approx. 2% depreciation)

in short, the current rate of exchange i enjoy - $USD1 = $3.15AR - would be $USD1 = $2.80 - had argentina allowed the peso to appreciate against the dollar...

mark turner writing in rge...

Argentina is now officially playing with fire. It doesn't take Einstein to work out that the Peso is lagging behind all other regional currencies (check those charts again), and by going to the open foreign exchange market with a fixed amount of Pesos to sell they are making a huge tactical mistake. The well-founded word on the street a couple of weeks ago was that economy minister Lousteau was very close to resigning. When the forex market has finished with him and his half-baked plan, he might just get fired first.

if and when that devaluation comes - and you can bet it will, sooner or later - a lot of people here, myself included, are going to get nailed, which will be just one more chapter in this boom-bust-boom-bust country that has been going on for over a hundred years...

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House in secret session for the first time in 25 years

this can't be good, particularly since it was called by the r's...

The House of Representatives will shutter C-Span's cameras Thursday afternoon and evict citizens and reporters from the chambers to hold an extremely rare, one-hour secret session where Republicans say they will present information about the current spying debate that cannot be publicly discussed.

The secret session, only the sixth in the House's history and the first since 1983, comes just hours ahead of a planned vote on a new proposal from House Democrats who oppose giving amnesty to telecoms that helped President Bush's warrantless, domestic wiretapping program.

i'm dreading the outcome...

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Question for Nancy Pelosi: Is the President lying?

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The imminent collapse of the financial markets

yeah, i say "imminent" but it's really like watching a giant train wreck in slo-mo... i suppose there are a lot of other relevant analogies that could be visualized in slo-mo, my recent fave being the house of cards, but i guess we're only limited by our imaginations...

Global stock markets may have cheered the US Federal Reserve yesterday, but on Wall Street the Fed's unprecedented move to pump $280 billion (£140 billion) into global markets was seen as a sure sign that at least one financial institution was struggling to survive.

The name on most people's lips was Bear Stearns. Although the Fed billed the co-ordinated rescue as a way of improving liquidity across financial markets, economists and analysts said that the decision appeared to be driven by an urgent need to stave off the collapse of an American bank.

“The only reason the Fed would do this is if they knew one or more of their primary dealers actually wasn't flush with cash and needed funds in a hurry,” Simon Maughan, an analyst with MF Global in London, said.

Mr Maughan said that the most likely victim was Bear Stearns, the first bank to run into trouble in the sub-prime crisis and the one that, among all wholesale and investment banks, is most reliant upon the use of mortgage securities for raising funds in the money markets.

“The average financial institution was up 7.5 per cent yesterday after the Fed's actions, but Bear Stearns rose just 1 per cent on massive trading volume,” Mr Maughan said. “The market is telling you it's Bear Stearns.” [emphasis and italics added]

ya gotta love that phrase, "primary dealer"... it kinda has the same ring to as "my main man" and i can't help but picture a drug kingpin in a dusty, abandoned warehouse, doing a deal...

bonddad at daily kos notes the above and adds in carlyle capital to come up with this prognosis...

Simply put, folks, things are getting incredibly nasty. And there isn't much of a respite in sight.

if the fed would simply stop creating worthless money out of thin air and throwing it at the problem, hoping against hope it will go away, we'd see a very rapid collapse... but they'll keep on doing it as long as they think they can stave off the ultimate fate of their clients, the super-rich elites, and continue to do it on the backs of us campesinos...

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Carlyle Capital bites the dust

one of the bigger cards in the increasingly unstable and in-danger-of-falling, global financial house of cards falls flat...

A publicly traded affiliate of the Carlyle Group said yesterday that lenders were seizing its assets, sending the fund, Carlyle Capital, into insolvency.

The collapse of Carlyle Capital is the first time a Carlyle Group fund has failed and is a stinging embarrassment for the District private-equity powerhouse, which has built an international reputation with a client list that reaches around the world.

The high-profile downfall, part of the broad turmoil in credit markets worldwide, followed a week of frantic negotiations between the Carlyle Group and a number of lenders. Carlyle Group's three founders as recently as Monday were considering injecting cash into the fund as a way to usher it through the credit crisis.

By yesterday the fund had defaulted on $16.6 billion of debt and said it expected to default soon on its remaining debt. The fund's $21.7 billion in assets were exclusively in AAA mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, traditionally considered secure and conservative investments, which it was using as collateral against its loans.

In a statement, Carlyle Capital said that it had been unable to meet margin calls in excess of $400 million over the past week and that it expected its lenders to take control of its remaining assets.

this is only the beginning, but a very portentous one... carlyle is totally a creature of the super-rich, powerful elites, the very ones who have been holding the better part of the world in thrall... stay tuned...

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Drat...! Problems with the And, yes, I DO take it personally radio show

there was a bit of a problem with last week's show, namely, we didn't have one... i do the show via skype live from here in argentina, but i experienced, for the second time, a weird problem... my microphone ceased working, but ONLY with skype... i'll spare you the boring details of the numerous fixes and workarounds i attempted before FINALLY getting it to work again... now, a new glitch...

i was preparing to put up this post about the show and i decided to check blogtalk just for the heck of it only to find that i hadn't scheduled any shows past last thursday (you can only schedule a month in advance) and it won't let me schedule for the current day... sigh... i have it scheduled for next thursday but didn't put any down for after that because i believe i will be leaving for afghanistan shortly thereafter and have no idea if i will have adequate access or, if i do, if i will be able to access at the right time... since kabul is 12 1/2 hours ahead of u.s. pacific time, that would be 8:30 p.m. there which, if i have decent access where i'll be staying, would be just fine... whatever the access, i'm sure it will be by satellite which also means having to deal with that infuriating 1-2 second delay as the signal goes up and comes back down...

i wrote co-host, brother tim, that, if he feels up to it - and i hope he does - i would be happy for him to do the show himself... maybe he could invite a guest or two so he doesn't feel compelled to carry the entire weight of 30 minutes alone... better yet, any of you readers could also be guests... just make your wishes known in the comments...

in the meantime, join me, raphael (profmarcus), and brother tim NEXT WEEK, March 20th, live, for 30 minutes of the "And, yes, I DO take it personally" radio show on blog talk radio, starting at 8 a.m. PDT, 11 a.m. EDT, 2 p.m. ART (Argentina Regional Time) and 6 p.m. GMT... we'll be kicking around the issues of the day and also hear from a few callers... feel free to call in at 646 200 0056, or +1 646 200 0056 from outside the u.s... we'll have the chat window open if you don't want to use up your long distance minutes or think you might have a little stage fright... in any case, stop by... we don't bite... we promise...!



the above link will take you to the show's page on blog talk radio where you can also listen to all the archived broadcasts or find other great listening material on every conceivable subject...

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It is to laugh

atrios has a post up entitled "my formative years"... while it's really a dig on some of the 80s taste-free popular culture, i just had to laugh reading the title... i turned 60 last december and, without a doubt, i am STILL in my "formative years..." i simply cannot recall a single year out of the past twenty-seven (and, yes, that is a very consciously-chosen number) that i haven't looked back on the prior year and marveled at how much i had learned in such a short time... and, yes, that leads directly to the inescapable conclusion that, for the better part of my life, i had my head firmly wedged where the sun does not usually shine...

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Not necessarily directly related: Olbermann lets HRC have it full blast, and HRC apologizes

when you've passed so far beyond the pale that you've incurred the wrath of keith olbermann, it's already too late for an apology...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did something Wednesday night that she almost never does. She apologized. And once she started, she didn't seem able to stop.

[...]

Her biggest apology came in response to a question about comments by her husband, Bill Clinton, after the South Carolina primary, which Obama won handily. Bill Clinton said Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, a comment many viewed as belittling Obama's success.

"I want to put that in context. You know I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive," Hillary Clinton said. "We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama."

[...]

Earlier in the day, Hillary Clinton supporter and fundraiser Geraldine Ferraro gave up her honorary position with Clinton's campaign after she said in an interview last week that Obama would not have made it this far if he were white. Obama said Ferraro's remarks were "ridiculous" and "wrong-headed."

Of Ferraro's comment, Hillary Clinton told her audience: "I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply that it was said. Obviously she doesn't speak for the campaign, she doesn't speak for any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee."

[...]

Her third conciliatory statement of the evening was more in keeping with that fighting stance.

Asked about the government's efforts in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina, Hillary Clinton turned an apology into a criticism of President Bush, who happened to be speaking at a Republican event in another room at the same hotel.

"I've said it publicly, and I say it privately: I apologize, and I am embarrassed that our government so mistreated our fellow citizens ... It was a national disgrace," she said.

other than the fact that i would like nothing better than to see a woman elected president (except perhaps a black woman or, better yet, a black, lesbian woman), the only time i have given an ounce of support to hrc was when i hadn't yet learned due diligence, and her performance on the campaign trail so far has amply demonstrated why i am so dead set against her now... i grudgingly award her a few points for delivering an apology at all, but i deduct even more due to the fact that it's too little, too late... imho, hrc is toast, and the best thing she could do at this point is to bow out gracefully... let's hope to sweet jeebus on a pogo stick that barack has the right stuff...

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Taxi to the Dark Side

1:18:52...

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Total Information Awareness

the aclu posts a diary on daily kos...

By Barry Steinhardt, director the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project.

Yesterday’s report in The Wall Street Journal about the NSA’s domestic spy dragnets should be major, major news. It is nothing less than the return of TIA: "Total Information Awareness." Yet there has been barely any followup coverage of the story in the mainstream media. I know the media thinks the sexual behavior of the governor of New York is earth-shatteringly important for American life – but this NSA report actually is.

I mean, when we warn about a "surveillance society," this is what we’re talking about. This is it, this is the ballgame. Mass data from a wide variety of sources – including the private sector – is being collected and scanned by a secretive military spy agency. This represents nothing less than a major change in American life – and unless stopped the consequences of this system for everybody will grow in magnitude along with the rivers of data that are collected about each of us – and that’s more and more every day.

The TIA program, you may recall, was a massive Pentagon plan (run by Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame) to tap into as many databases containing personal information about Americans as possible (program materials listed "Financial, Education, Travel, Medical, Veterinary, Country Entry, Place/Event Entry, Transportation, Housing, Critical Resources, Government, Communications"). All that information would then be pulled together and scanned for "suspicious" patterns. Given the density of the "data trails" that we all create in our daily lives today and in the future, it was a recipe for the routine surveillance of Americans and their every move.

TIA was supposed to have been killed off by Congress in 2003 amid widespread objections to its sweeping Orwellian scope. There have been always been hints about a secret annex to the law that permitted some limited aspects of TIA to operate within the Pentagon’s black budget for intelligence and with respect to foreigners only. Now it appears that, like a vampire that can’t be killed except with a stake through its heart, TIA has arisen again from its coffin in full body with its voracious appetite for privacy of Americans and foreigners alike.

The reporter on the Journal piece, Siobhan Gorman, describes stunning new spying capabilities that flow from a distributed collection of new domestic spying capabilities (each of which the ACLU has long warned against):

• TIA and data mining more broadly


• The NSA’s illegal wiretapping program, the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP)


• The Patriot Act’s broadening of FBI power to collect third-party personal information without a subpoena through Section 215 searches and National Security Letters.


• The Treasury Department’s expanded surveillance of financial transactions through Cash Transaction Reporting and Suspicious Activity Reporting.


• The CIA’s illegitimate access to the SWIFT database to monitor international financial transactions.


• DHS’ efforts to increase collection and monitoring of airline passenger data.


• Partnerships between government agencies and private sector entities to collect and monitor customers’ data and transactions.


• The erosion of privacy through the judicial creation of a distinction between content and "transactional" or "addressing" information (such as the recipients of e-mails or phone calls and the times and dates of each communication) through the Patriot Act and prior developments.
  

In the ongoing battle over FISA and the NSA’s warrantless spying program (which appears to be but one part of this larger effort), the government has been saying in effect, "trust us." Why should we trust an agency that has been running this secret program in contravention of the Wyden Amendment, the law passed by Congress shutting down TIA.

It’s time for Congress to find out exactly what is going on here, inform the public, and put a stop to what appears to be the construction of a sweeping infrastructure for the routine mass surveillance of innocent people.

anybody who wants to believe that this shit started with the bush administration is certainly entitled, but, when it all comes rolling out into the cold, hard light of day - as it will, eventually - there are many of us who will not be in the least bit surprised to learn that it's been going on at least since echelon was revealed in the mid-90s and probably for quite a bit longer than that...

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Just say "NO" to John McCain

ouch... from a relatively high profile former supporter, this has GOTTA HURT...!

NoJohn.com exists for the sole purpose of defeating John McCain in his run for President of the United States.
Your donations will make it possible for us to produce and distribute cutting-edge videos and the FACTS about Senator John McCain to voters across America.

(thanks to john at americablog...)

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So, unlike David Vitter and Larry Craig, Spitzer is quitting

i don't have a dog in this fight, but i was secretly hoping spitzer would stonewall it and continue right along serving his term like craig and vitter... i do believe that resigning is the honorable thing to do but i don't see any reason why spitzer should be any more "honorable" than those other two slimeballs...

Spitzer Aides Say Governor Will Resign Today

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, reeling from revelations that he had been
a client of a prostitution ring, will resign today, some of
his aides said they have been told, though the precise timing
remains unclear.

don't do it eliot... the r's are in high dudgeon over this and maybe their elevated blood pressure will cause a few aneurysms...

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Scott Horton: "The curtain continues to fall over American democracy"

i notice that even i, as one who has ranted and raved for nearly three years about the shredding of our constitution, have fallen into a mild torpor over the continuing abuse of our fundamental constitutional principles by the bush administration... maybe i'm just tired of repeating myself... maybe i'm just tired... am i still deeply disturbed over what's happening...? yes, more than i can possibly express, but perhaps most of all by our national denial that a crisis even exists, overlain by our childlike belief that the november election will be our salvation...

scott horton...

[T]he darkness continues to descend in Washington, the powers of the state continue to grow and the mechanisms of accountability rot away unused. Americans are focused on the selection of a new president. Many of them share the naïve assumption that on January 20, 2009, when a new leader takes the oath of office from the south steps of the Capitol Building, the Founders’ constitutional order will once more be set aright and the extra-constitutional excesses of the Bush years will be but a bad memory. But whoever is installed as the new guardian of presidential power will not likely part with many of the rights that Bush claimed and was allowed to use, unchallenged.

[...]

The curtain continues to fall over American democracy. Americans understandably are sickened by the tragi-comedy that spreads itself across this stage. But their faith in another presidential election and another leader is misplaced. They need to reserve their faith not for the new, but for the old: for the constitutional model that the Founders left. It needs to be forced to work. And all those who undermine it must be held to account. That includes the should-be watchdogs, who slobbering at the prospect of a few drug-drenched sirloins hurled their way, are failing in their duty to protect their true masters: the American people.

We live in the age of the Great Betrayal, in an age in which too few are willing to state the obvious. There is still time to check the progress of tyrannical power, but the hour grows late, and the sounds of alarm no longer seem to register with a somnolent populace.

all i can do is keep pounding the drum even when it takes every ounce of strength i have left to keep doing it...

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And we should not find anything suspicious about this because...?

isn't it just so very interesting how so very many of those who question things they aren't supposed to question end up this way...?

UK Top Cop Who Led CIA Probe Found Dead

A city police chief who led an investigation into charges that Britain cooperated with secret CIA flights to transport terrorism suspects without formal proceedings has been found dead, his deputy said Tuesday.

Manchester Chief Constable Michael Todd, 50, was found dead in Snowdonia, about 240 miles northwest of London, Deputy Chief Constable Dave Whatton said. He had been missing since going out for a walk Monday during his day off.

Whatton said the body, which was found Tuesday afternoon, had not yet been formally identified but he believed it was Todd.

He said a coroner's inquest would investigate the cause of death and did not give any further details.

Todd was elected vice president of the Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales in 2006, according to a biography on his Web site.

The association gave him the task of looking into accusations that Britain allowed the CIA to use the country's airports to fly terrorism suspects to other countries without any extradition hearings, a clandestine procedure known as "extraordinary rendition."

Todd's investigation concluded last June that there was no evidence to back the claim. Last month, however, Britain admitted one of its remote outposts in the Indian Ocean had twice been used by the United States as a refueling stop for the secret transfer of two terrorism suspects.

that "remote outpost" would be the indian ocean island of diego garcia about which i've posted numerous times...

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$1 trillion in losses for the financial system

uff-da *...

from nouriel roubini's rge monitor...

How many steps away are we from a systemic financial meltdown? By now, it seems that Nouriel Roubini’s 12 step scenario is growing more likely by the day. A growing number of leading academics and financial analysts are now endorsing the once seemingly extreme estimate of $1 trillion in losses for the financial system.

oops... my years in minnesota have a way of slipping out...

* Uff da (can also be spelled uff-da, uffda, uff-dah, oofda, ufda, oofta or ufta) is an exclamation of Scandinavian origin that is relatively common in the Upper Midwestern states of the United States. It roughly means "drats," "oops!" or "ouch!", especially if the "ouch!" is an empathetic one. In Norwegian Midwestern USA cultures, "Uff Da" translates into: "I am overwhelmed."

"Uff da" is often used in the Upper Midwest as a term for sensory overload. It can be used as an expression of surprise, astonishment, exhaustion, relief and sometimes dismay. The term has been heard among men when a particularly attractive woman enters a room. Conversely, many Roto-rooter and septic system repair trucks have "Uff da" proudly painted on the back.

"Uff da" has become a mark of Scandinavian roots, particularly for people from Minnesota. Mohr, the author of "How to talk Minnesotan: a visitor's guide", has therefore included it in his book.

as i'm fond of repeating ad nauseam, "c'mon, house of cards, fall down, y'hear...?"

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Shit... Fallon resigns... Goddam George W. Bush...

from defense tech...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that Admiral William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East, is resigning.

Gates said Fallon had asked Gates for permission to retire and that Gates agreed.

Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Fallon has had a 41-year Navy career. He took the Central Command post on March 16, 2007, succeeding Army Gen. John Abizaid, who retired. Fallon previously served as commander of U.S. Pacific Command.

Fallon released a statement blaming his quotes from the Esquire piece as the reason for his resignation and President Bush put out his own statemement praising Fallon's service. Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who was the head of Iraqi army training before becoming the CENTCOM number two, will take over in the interim.

Methinks the Esquire interview was 100 percent intentional and that he contemplated this move beforehand. But that's just me...

what a crock o'shit...

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$200B in funny money causes Dow to surge

a headline to make a grown man cry...

Stocks Surge After Fed Lends $200 Billion to Banks

Wall Street enjoyed its best trading day in more than five
years on Tuesday -- complete with a 400-point gain in the Dow
Jones industrial average -- after the Federal Reserve
injected a burst of financial adrenaline into the ailing

oh, yay...

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No torture. No exceptions.

the cover of the washington monthly special issue [PDF] of january/february/march 2008...

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Help tear down Guantánamo, stop torture and end illegal U.S. dententions

sign amnesty international's pledge here...

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McJoan: Why isn't Mark Klein being called to testify before Congress?

from mcjoan at daily kos, a follow-up to my post the other day on babak pasdar... important enough to post the whole thing...

Mark Klein is the former AT&T technician who exposed the infamous secret room at AT&T's facility in San Francisco, the room that was equipped to vacuum up "comprehensive customer usage data ... and transforms it into actionable information.... (It) provides complete visibility for all internet applications." For his efforts in exposing this massive warrantless wiretapping program by AT&T on behalf of the NSA, Klein received the Electronic Frontier's Foudnation Pioneer award.

What he has yet to receive is an invitation from any committee of Congress to testify about AT&T's illegal activity. In fact, the only member of Congress to make an attempt to reach out to him has been Senator Chris Dodd.

In this video, Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin interviews Klein and EFF legal director Cindy Cohn about the case, the Congress, and the Constitution. Klein has some harsh words for Democrats who care to listen.

Maybe it's time for Mark Klein to have his day testifying before Congress. While they're at it, they could invite whistleblower Babak Pasdar who tells a very similar story about one of the nation's major wireless carriers, ironically enough very likely the wireless carrier that sponsored that video you just watched.

It's unbelievable that these stories haven't been heard by Congress, that the Democratic leadership and the chairs of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees haven't given them the opportunity to tell what they know about this highly controversial, and illegal spying on Americans.

Instead, they want to sweep it all under the rug. Tell them not to. Call your Senators and Representative and tell them to demand a hearing for these allegations. No further action on FISA until they, and we, have heard the whole story.

Call leadership and the intelligence committee chairs, and tell them, too.

Harry Reid, Phone: (202) 224-3542, Fax: (202) 224-7327
Nancy Pelosi, Phone: (202) 225-4965, Fax: (202) 225-8259
Jay Rockefeller, Phone: (202) 224-6472, Fax: (202) 224-7665
Silvestre Reyes, Phone: (202) 225-4831, Fax: (202) 225-2016

Update: Adding in Judiciary Chairs, because they could probably find some angle to bring these guys in with, and frankly would be a lot more likely to do it.
Patrick Leahy, Phone: (202) 224-4242, Fax: (202) 224-3479
John Conyers, Phone: (202) 225-5126, Fax: (202) 225-0072

yeah, it may be nothing more than the little dutch boy, sticking his finger in the dike, but we gotta keep fightin' against our police state...

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The back-BACK-story on the Spitzer outing?

kevin at cryptogon has his usual interesting take...

This is probably a FBI counterintelligence operation targeting a Mossad HUMINT operation. The fact that the U.S. is going with prostitution/money laundering probably indicates that some kind of deal has been worked out between the U.S. and Israeli governments.

he's got a lot more... go read it...

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$109 a barrel oil and a weaker dollar

holy crap...

Oil prices soared past $109 a barrel after rising to a record in the previous session as the U.S. dollar weakened further.

Speculation that rising prices for oil and other commodities will offset the falling dollar has driven oil's rally from $87 a barrel in January.

The dollar has fallen to three-year lows against the yen and the head of the European Central Bank expressed concern Monday about the "disorderly movements" of exchange rates.

c'mon, house of cards... c'mon... c'mon... collapse already...

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More details on extensive domestic surveillance

from the wsj via raw story...

According to current and former intelligence officials, [NSA] now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

didja note this part --- "began YEARS BEFORE the 9/11 attacks"...? (not that we didn't know that, of course...)

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Pay no attention to 60 Minutes... Carl Ichan is NOT a capitalist hero...

Carl Icahn

yesterday on 60 minutes...

Intimidating, relentless and rich. That, in a nutshell, is Carl Icahn. His investment strategy is simple: find a company he thinks is poorly run and then start buying up shares of its stock. Then, start agitating until changes are made. Along the way, the companies he chooses generally start improving, improving his bottom line over and over.

there's nothing that makes me want to puke faster than watching our worthless news media lionize a super-rich, arrogant, sociopathic, greedy, capitalist son-of-a-bitch like carl icahn... that business about "the companies he chooses generally start improving" is pure horseshit... if they do, it's only incidental to his primary goal which is lining his own pockets... here's what he did to twa...

Under Icahn's direction, many of [TWA's] most profitable assets were sold to competitors, much to the detriment of TWA. Icahn also moved the company's headquarters from New York City to his hometown, Mt. Kisco, New York. Icahn was eventually ousted in 1993, though not before the airline was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1992. Icahn emerged unscathed. TWA moved its headquarters from Mt. Kisco to the former headquarters building of McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis soon after Icahn left.

When Carl Icahn left in 1993, he arranged to have TWA give Karabu Corp., an entity he controlled, the rights to buy TWA tickets at 45 percent off published fares through September 2003. This was named "The Karabu Deal". The ticket program agreement, which began on June 14, 1995, excluded tickets for travel which originated or terminated in [TWA's hub airport] St. Louis, Missouri. Tickets were subject to TWA's normal seat assignment and boarding pass rules and regulations, were non-assignable to any other carrier, and were non-endorsable. No commissions were paid to Karabu by TWA for tickets sold under the ticket program agreement.

By agreement dated August 14, 1995, Lowestfare.com LLC, a Karabu wholly owned operating subsidiary, was joined as a party to the ticket program agreement. Pursuant to the ticket program agreement, Lowestfare.com LLC could purchase an unlimited number of system tickets. System tickets are tickets for all applicable classes of service which were purchased by Karabu from TWA at a 45 percent discount from TWA's published fare. In addition to system tickets, Lowestfare.com LLC could also purchase domestic consolidator tickets, which are tickets issued at bulk fare rates and were limited to specified origin/destination city markets and did not permit the holder to modify or refund a purchased ticket. Karabu's purchase of domestic consolidator tickets was subject to a cap of $70 million per year based on the full retail price of the tickets.

Hence, on most TWA flights, Karabu could buy and then sell a sizable portion of the available seats, leaving TWA to pay for its operating cost with the revenue accrued through the sale of any remaining ticket sales. In other words, TWA was flying passengers who were not paying them, but someone else. This deal left the company powerless. If TWA wanted to increase revenue on busy routes by putting a large plane into service, Karabu could only claim more seats. It is estimated TWA was losing around $150 million a year in revenue with this deal.

In trying to ameliorate the Karabu deal, TWA went in and out of bankruptcy in 1995.

lovely, eh...?

in 1999, i had an opportunity to see first-hand what icahn had done to twa when i was the general manager of an airport operation for united airlines... twa had decided to fly into the airport where i was stationed and we won the contract to ground handle their one daily flight... i got to know a few twa people and heard their icahn horror stories... much more damning, however, was to see the condition of their airplanes...

since their aircraft stayed with us overnight, that meant we had to move it off the gate to a remote pad, bring it back in the morning, and clean the interior before loading the passengers up for the morning flight out... i remember riding in the cockpit one evening as the aircraft was being towed to the remote pad... it was raining and i noticed a small puddle of water had collected between the rubber seal and the reinforced glass of the window on the pilot's side of the cockpit... i also noticed that a few food service napkins had been stuffed in there previously to try to soak it up, and it was obvious that it had been a problem for some time... on top of that, the smell from the lavatories was horrible... airplane lavatories are supposed to be thoroughly scrubbed and disinfected once a month, in addition to being emptied, flushed and cleaned daily... twa was obviously skimping on even the most minor maintenance... very sad, really, and all thanks to carl icahn...

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Propaganda

from postmodern times...

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Sic 'em, Bob

Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL), one of Floida's few Patriotic Politicians.

This is in response to George W Bush's personal attorney, Michael Mukasey.





His attitude IS rubbing off on his fellow-congressmen. Will it be too little, too late? Will it be before the Cabal takes up residence in Paraguay?

Lord, Help Us.

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Waterboard Bush

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Sunday videoblogging: out and about on a weekend in Buenos Aires

weekends are for getting out and about, poking around in places familiar or new, and enjoying the generally slower pace... buenos aires residents love hanging out in their cafes for hours on end and then walking leisurely up and down the streets window-shopping before taking the subte back home to spend the rest of the day relaxing...



a typical saturday or sunday morning at las violetas, a restaurant and coffee house that opened in buenos aires in 1884...



this short clip of the arrival of an "a" line train at the rio de janeiro station gives you just a bare glimpse of the wood and tulip light fixtures in the old, original cars that are, sadly, gradually being replaced...

from urbanrail...

The Buenos Aires Subte [Subte = subterraneo], the oldest in Latin America [the first subway line in New York City started service in 1904], is now privatised and is operated by Metrovías has been started refurbishing stations and buying new rolling stock to replace older trains, some of which have been running since the Subte opened.

The total network is approx. 46.8 km (2007) and totally underground.

The first line of the metro, Line A, was built and initially operated by a private company called Anglo Argentine Tramway Company and opened already in 1913.

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Barack OBollywood

and now, for something completely different...



(thanks to tom tomorrow...)

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Finally.....................

..........a video on he proper use of hand-grenades.





and Muqtada is right..........it's the musicians that get all the women.

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