Every time I come back from abroad around the holidays

i don't know quite what to make of it... this is the third time i've come back to the u.s. just before the holidays only to face heavy snow in the high desert... we woke up this morning to 8 inches and i was out shoveling the driveway shortly after 5 and just finished doing it again for the second time today... the snow seems to have tapered off for now, but the f'cast is calling for the possibility of more this evening followed by two more storms coming in from the pacific yet this week...


1 p.m.
7 December 2009
High desert, Nevada

on the flip side, most of the time i was in kosovo and the entire time i was in macedonia, there was sunshine... prior to my arrival it had been nothing but rain and the rain started right up again after i left... ah, well...

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The Family - NPR's Terry Gross on Fresh Air

a disturbing interview with jeff sharlet...

A secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians includes some names that have recently been prominent in the headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts. Writer Jeff Sharlet describes the men's involvement with the Family, and discusses recent developments within the group.

listen here...

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Only AFTER giving handouts to the super-rich elites, do we NOW consider using TARP for jobs

sheesh... how low can we go...? using federal bailout money to bailout REAL people who really NEED it... f*****g commie socialists...

During a speech about the economy next week, President Obama is likely to endorse using some of the government's $700 billion financial bailout for a new jobs-creation program, the White House said Friday.

"The president thinks we should and must do everything in our power to create an environment for job growth and job creation," press secretary Robert Gibbs said. When asked whether Obama will talk on Tuesday about the use of bailout funds, Gibbs said, "I think that's likely."

this week's unemployment report is being trumpeted as if it was the second coming but let's not forget, REAL unemployment is still pushing toward 20%, foreclosures have shown no signs of slowing down, and the middle class in the u.s. is still swirling the drain...

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And the sunrises ain't bad either...

taken from the same spot as the sunset photo in the earlier post...






All photos taken at 6:58 a.m.
4 December 2009
High desert, Nevada

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Spitzer: The Rx has been wrong from the beginning

and THIS, dear friends, is precisely WHY spitzer had to be taken out...

eliot spitzer in an interview on democracy now...

[I]t wasn’t that the Fed was asleep at the switch; they were actually complicit. And by that, what I mean is that the Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner, when he was the president of the New York Fed, actually built and participated in creating the structure that now has collapsed. And that, I think, is what is so problematic to so many of us. They are now claiming credit for having taken trillions of our tax dollars and given those dollars back to the banks to return them to solvency, when the initial bankruptcy and the initial illiquidity and the initial crisis was very much a consequence of the very policies they put in place.

Stepping back for a moment, we have a major crisis in this nation, and that crisis is jobs. That crisis is that we are seeing the elimination of the middle-class job foundation that permits most Americans to do better year after year after year. The reality is median family income has been stagnant for forty years, and the policies of what I call financialization, which is major banks trading assets back and forth, the Wall Street banks, such as Goldman, which is rightly a lightning rod right now for much of what’s going on, buying and selling, playing with tax dollars in proprietary trading—they make huge money, nothing is added to the economy, jobs are sent overseas. All of this going on simultaneously. That is what our economy has become.

And Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner were the architects of this. And now they are saying, “Didn’t we do a good job six months ago giving money to the banks?” No. Go back two, three, five years. Where were they? Tim Geithner, over and over, bailed out the banks. He was, as president of the New York Fed, the overseer of the institution that collapsed. And so, it’s akin to going to a doctor who has said, “I have a great technique for you: I’m going to bleed you,” and he bleeds you, and he gets you more and more sick and sick and sick. Then when you’re about to die, he puts a tourniquet on you and says, “Gee, I’m good.” No, your prescriptions have been wrong since the beginning.

you simply CAN'T have a truth-teller in a position of power, not in this country, not at this time...

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Back in the land of terrific sunsets

4:41 p.m.
High desert
Nevada
3 December 2009

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'There hasn't been two seconds of intelligent discussion about living standards in Afghanistan'

this guy is talking about the afghanistan i have personally experienced...

The poverty in Afghanistan is almost beyond imagining. Thirty Afghans die from TB every day; life expectancy is 43 years; per capita income is $426; only 13% have access to sanitary drinking water; fewer than one in four are literate; access to electricity is among the lowest in the world. Conditions for women are brutal. If Obama plans to address these issues, he's pretty much keeping it secret, points out world poverty expert Jeffrey Sachs. But without addressing them, can stepped-up American military involvement succeed? Or is it bound to fail?

and he makes the same point i've been making ever since my feet first hit the ground in kabul back in march 2008...

Columbia University economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, one of the foremost experts on extreme poverty in underdeveloped nations, says it is past time for the United States to end its war in Afghanistan, the world’s fifth poorest nation. In an interview with Nieman Watchdog in November, Sachs said the United States should reverse its priorities and fund major sustainable development programs, which would not only help reduce Afghanistan’s overwhelming poverty but would be a surer way to help achieve greater U.S. security.

As Sachs wrote last May in The Guardian newspaper of London, U.S. foreign policy “has failed in recent years mainly because the U.S. has relied on military force to address problems that demand development assistance and diplomacy. Young men become fighters in places such as Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan because they lack gainful employment. Extreme ideologies influence people when they can’t feed their families, and when lack of access to family planning leads to an unwanted population explosion.”

This applies particularly to Afghanistan and the neighboring provinces of Pakistan, which “are impoverished regions, with vast unemployment, bulging youth populations, prolonged droughts, widespread hunger and pervasive economic deprivation. It is easy for the Taliban and al-Qaida to mobilize fighters under such conditions.” With improved economic conditions, a major recruiting tool for the Taliban and al-Qaida – as well as extremists’ threats to the United States – would be substantially weakened.

i've said it repeatedly - desperate people will do desperate things... why can't we see that and do something to break the cycle...?

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7 nights with Newsmax, Ralph Reed, Dick Morris, John Fund and Grover Norquist... A trip to DIE for...!

< snark >

i'm packin' my bags...



if this doesn't get your juices pumpin', i don't know what will...

a perfect stocking-stuffer...!

< /snark >

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Kiss my butt, BofA

with real unemployment hovering well in excess of 17%, it's positively gagging to read a story of how bank of america, the recipient of more than $45B of taxpayer largesse, can now, as a result of being able to pay it back and thus sidestep federal compensation regulations imposed on bailed out banks, contemplate paying ken lewis' replacement an equally bloated, obscene salary...

gag me with a spoon...

Despite continuing problems with its loans to struggling homeowners and consumers, Bank of America plans to return the $45 billion in aid that it received at the height of the financial panic — a step that, only months ago, would have been almost unimaginable.

But like many other big banks, Bank of America is once again making money, in large part through Wall Street businesses like trading stocks and bonds, rather than by making loans. Its recovery, while many ordinary Americans are still struggling, is an important milestone in the government’s yearlong effort to stabilize the nation’s financial industry.

[...]

It is a particularly delicate time for Bank of America, which has struggled to find a replacement for Mr. Lewis. By paying back the money that it received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, Bank of America will free itself from exceptional federal oversight of its executives’ pay — a thorny issue in recruiting a new chief executive.

Indeed, Bank of America’s board has been riven by dissent over just who should lead the bank into its post-bailout period. Several potential candidates have said they were not interested in the job, in part because of the bank’s federal bailouts and the strings attached to them.

why is bofa's recovery so goddam important "while many americans are still struggling"...? huh...? why...?

the only way i can see to stop this naked highway robbery is to systematically purge the government of the super-rich, elite former banksters that are now (and have been for some time) calling the shots for our economy... they're not going to be stopped by a mere hold on a nomination (see previous post)... they have to be removed... all of them...

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Big news - Bernie Sanders puts a hold on Bernanke's nomination

O. M. G...! am i witnessing an outbreak of senatorial cojones...?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

“The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few,” Sanders said. “What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.”

As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.

He could have insisted that large bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30 percent or more on credit cards, but he did not.

He could have broken up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that took Federal Reserve assistance, but he did not.

He could have revealed which banks took more than $2 trillion in taxpayer-backed secret loans, but he did not.

“The American people want a new direction on Wall Street and at the Fed. They do not want as chairman someone who has been part of the problem and who has been responsible for many of the enormous difficulties that we are now experiencing,” Sanders said. “It’s time for a change at the Fed.”

not only did sanders have the guts to do it, he also had the guts NOT to do it anonymously...

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The last time there was a troop surge in Afghanistan, 3M people fled to Pakistan

juan cole...

The last time a foreign military staged a 'surge,' i.e. the Soviets in the early 1980s, it produced so much violence that 3 million Afghans were forced to flee to northern Pakistan. Islamabad is wary lest that patter be repeated.

which would explain why pakistan has more than a few concerns about obama's proposed escalation in afghanistan... i know quite a few afghans who had to beat feet across the khyber pass to peshawar and beyond to save their skins when things got too hot in kabul... the refugee existence was unimaginably miserable for most of them, one which nobody i know desires to repeat any time soon...

al jazeera...

Pakistani government officials have expressed concern about President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy, which calls for Pakistan to step up its co-operation against the Taliban in exchange for a pledge of a long-term partnership.

In an address to unveil a new strategy for the eight-year conflict in Afghanistan, Obama said on Tuesday a cancer had taken root in Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan and promised US help to end it.

The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a cautious response that stressed the "need for clarity" in the new US policy.

"Pakistan looks forward to engaging closely with [the] US in understanding the full importance of the new strategy and to ensure that there would be no adverse fallout on Pakistan," the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Pakistan and the US need to closely co-ordinate their efforts to achieve shared objectives. There is certainly the need for clarity and co-ordination on all aspects of the implementation of the strategy."

what puzzles me the most is that job creation and poverty alleviation, two critical elements that almost every afghan i talk with says could significantly reduce the level of violence, were nowhere to be found in obama's speech ... it was only two weeks ago that i posted (here) on a poll taken by oxfam in afghanistan that unequivocally said this...

Poverty and unemployment are overwhelmingly seen as the main reasons behind conflict in Afghanistan, according to a survey in that country.

[...]

Oxfam said the survey showed that the country needed more than military solutions.

so, who the hell is obama listening to anyway...? oh, never mind... silly me... it must be the defense contractors...

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Mr. CIA - more on Erik Prince and Blackwater

hoo-boy... surprising but not surprising if you know what i mean...

[T]he truth about [Erik] Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction. For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence.

no question about it... you couldn't make this shit up...

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In only ONE YEAR, Sprint gives law enforcement agencies GPS info 8 MILLION TIMES...!

ummm... whaddaya say to this except, HOLY SHIT...! i mean i knew it was happening but not on this scale...

chris sogohian via emptywheel...

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

The evidence documenting this surveillance program comes in the form of an audio recording of Sprint's Manager of Electronic Surveillance, who described it during a panel discussion at a wiretapping and interception industry conference, held in Washington DC in October of 2009.

It is unclear if Federal law enforcement agencies' extensive collection of geolocation data should have been disclosed to Congress pursuant to a 1999 law that requires the publication of certain surveillance statistics -- since the Department of Justice simply ignores the law, and has not provided the legally mandated reports to Congress since 2004.

meanwhile, our "change we can believe in" president keeps on keepin' on...

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God, I'm sick of context-free news reportage

having just spent some time working in kosovo while getting a "deep-dive" education on current goings-on in that relatively newly-hatched country and then reading this, i'm once again left amazed at just how much what can only be a deliberate omission of relevant context can skew a news story...

Despite its troubles, Kosovo offers model for nation-builders
In newest country, improvements come slowly but steadily

[...]

And yet, in spite of its problems and growing pains, Kosovo is cited by many diplomats as a credible model of nation-building, a sign -- relevant to the current debate over Afghanistan -- that a determined effort by foreigners can help to build a country from the ashes.

After years of ethnic conflict, security and stability are taking root.

[...]

[C]onstruction cranes rise like green shoots from the skyline of Pristina, Kosovo's capital, which is in the midst of a building boom thanks to foreign aid.

In another hopeful sign, Kosovo in mid-November held its first municipal elections since declaring independence on Feb. 17, 2008. Although there were a handful of violent incidents during the campaign, voters cast their ballots in peace and there were no major allegations of fraud.

it would have been helpful to provide a little more context although i despair of finding that most basic journalistic blandishment in the wapo of the 21st century...

the context that is sadly missing is the enormous corruption that fuels kosovo... with a massive set of laws on the books, all written by outsiders but virtually no functioning justice system to apply them, kosovo is nearly as much of a wild, anything-goes frontier as is afghanistan... (having spent considerable time recently in both places, i believe the comparison is apt...)

bootlegged and counterfeit products, human trafficking, a vibrant drug trade, politicians openly on the take, brand new roads and buildings already crumbling due to lack of any construction codes or standards, all conspire to make the wapo's rosy picture of a nation "a-building" more than a bit lame...

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