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Friday night music

Friday, July 27, 2007

Bruce Springsteen singing We Shall Overcome:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovgPaVwgpdw[/youtube]

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Channeling Condi

Friday, July 27, 2007

When I was in college, I took a sociology course from a very bright professor, who told us that certain industries, including banking, avoid hiring intelligent people because they ask too many questions. It certainly does seem that the folks who have brought us he latest housing bubble are none too smart. Consider Angelo R. Mozilo, chief executive of Countrywide Financial, a company that was an innovator in subprime lending. Here’s Mr. Mozilo in this morning’s Times, reacting to comments from St. Louis Fed President William Poole, who, with amazing hindsight, blamed bankers like Mr. Mozilo for the current collapse of the housing and stock market:

Angelo R. Mozilo, Countrywide’s chief executive, doesn’t think he should be blamed. Talking to analysts this week, he called Mr. Poole’s comments “unbelievable” and criticized the Fed for first raising interest rates and then forcing banks to tighten their lending standards.

When an analyst suggested that Countrywide, the country’s largest mortgage lender, should not have made those loans, Mr. Mozilo sounded as if he had no more choice than a lemming going over the cliff.

“Our place in the industry would have changed dramatically because we would have arbitrarily made a decision that was contrary to what everything appeared to be — values going up and no delinquencies, no foreclosures — and we suddenly stop the music,” he said.

“Nobody saw this coming,” he added.

Apparently Mr. Poole is to home mortgage lending as Condoleeza Rice is to fighting terrorism.

But how can I criticize? How could anyone see this coming? They had an ironclad business plan.

First, find a person who has bad credit. Lend that person 100% of a mortgage on a home, 80% at an initial low rate that balloons beyond what they can pay in a mere two years, and finance the 20% balance at a fixed, high rate. Look the other way when scam artists loan brokers like Jose Guzman submit loan applications that overstate borrower’s incomes. Now, do the same thing a few million more times and sell the debt to suckers even stupider than you. When those rates balloon the buyer can always refinance or sell at a higher price to someone else, because real estate prices will just continue to rise.

What could go wrong?

What’s that you say? How can the pool of people with bad credit bail each other out of these loans at ever higher prices when wages for the working and middle classes are stagnant? Isn’t all this just a variant on a Ponzi scheme? Won’t we end up with an astronomical rate of default? Sorry, I can’t hear you.

Of course, besides normal ordinary people who nobody listens to, there were people with national platforms who saw this coming. Paul Krugman has been writing about the coming housing collapse for years, see, e.g., Running Out of Bubbles and That Hissing Sound from May and August of 2005.

But the fact is, folks like Mozilo have no incentive to see the obvious, anymore than Mr. Ponzi did. They have even less, because what they do is perfectly legal. They’ll walk away with millions, leaving us holding the bag. Maybe my old professor had it wrong.

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Saint Joe visits the asylum

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Max Blumenthal has guts. Here he visits a convention of Christians United for Israel, a group of certified nutcases who want to provoke a war with Iran in the hopes that they can bring on Armageddon. Featured Speaker: Our own Joe Lieberman. Is there a way to impeach a Senator?

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost and Vimeo.

What I find odd about all this is Lieberman’s lack of historical perspective. Who does he think is using who? At bottom, it’s pretty clear these people are anti-Semites. They’ll turn on the Jews as soon as it becomes clear that sane people in Israel aren’t really interested in being burned to a crisp so that Christians from Texas can ascend to the right hand of Jesus.

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House votes contempt, but …

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The House Judiciary Committee has voted to hold Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolton in contempt. The vote was along party lines. Yet more evidence that the system of checks and balances has been all but destroyed. One must wonder whether the White House has conveyed more than brilliant legal arguments to the House Republicans in order to keep them in line. Are there any horses out there that are missing their heads?

For reasons that are mystifying, the Democrats have decided to cite them for statutory contempt, which is unenforceable without the cooperation of the United States Attorney. There is no reason to think the U.S. Attorney will depart from the legal “principle” that was leaked last week. In other words, the U.S. Attorney will decline to present the case to a grand jury.

It was observed in the Federalist Papers that the executive would always be the most energetic branch, but there is something about the slow, plodding style of the Congressional Democrats that would surprise even Hamilton.

Bush has announced in advance that he will frustrate the will of Congress. We are beyond the point where any reasonable person can believe that he will act responsibly. There is no reason to believe that he will not do just as he says. Why go through the charade when a perfectly viable option, that of inherent contempt, exists. At the very least, Miers and Bolten will be rotting in jail while the case plays out in court. Congress merely advertises its own impotence by taking what should be a momentous step, only to have absolutely nothing happen as a result. It’s not as if they have to go this route to hold on to Republican support. They have no Republican support. They do, however, have the support of the nation. Put the nice lady in jail and let Bush play catch-up. If the courts are going to make Bush into a dictator, we might as well find that out now.

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Another impeachment target

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

So many criminals, and always the same excuse: so little time.

Apparently the news networks were obsessed with the fact that soda can be harmful to your health, so they didn’t give much coverage to the serial perjury being committed by the Attorney General of the United States. There is extensive coverage at TMP Muckracker. The coverage consists of a series of posts starting here. You can get to succeeding posts by clicking the “next” link. Each posts contains a video. Here’s the first, in which both Leahy and Specter question Gonzales credibility.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWIxG-ww2Ms[/youtube]

I haven’t watched them all, something I intend to do after I hit the publish button on this post. But it seems clear that at this point Gonzales doesn’t care what they think. He is basically in their face because he knows that ultimately, there’s nothing they can do to him. After all, only the Justice Department can bring perjury charges against him, and he runs the Justice Department. He doesn’t even attempt to make his lies credible or his excuses defensible. The wonder is that he hasn’t just told the Senate that he won’t testify invoking the magic doctrine of executive privilege.

There is something they can do, although I’m getting tired of typing the word. Impeach him too. There might actually be enough Republican votes to convict him.

By the way, no posts yesterday because I was attending a meeting of the Charter Revision Commission about which more, perhaps, in the next few days.

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Debating impeachment

Sunday, July 22, 2007

There is a fascinating exchange in the comments at Ezra Klein’s blog. Klein advocates impeachment, and quotes from the Paul Craig Russell column to which I linked recently ctblueblog.com/?p=307, and the possibility of a coup or coup-like denouement to the Bush Administration, possibly in the form of a “temporary” seizure of power after a conveniently timed 9/11 type attack.

One commenter argues that such a terror attack would undermine the “we have to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here” argument, but that type of argument assumes people behave and think rationallly. In our world, dominated as it is by Orwellian modes of governing, it will be no task at all for Republicans and Bush to consign the here/there rhetoric to the memory hole. The press will go along and the attack, a clear demonstration of Bush incompetence, will be successfully used as a reason for continuing either him or the Republicans in power. So far as terrorism issues are concerned, the Democrats operate in a no-win situation; both Republican success and Republican failure argue for continued Republican “leadership” and that’s the way it will be spun. Indeed, it has often been observed that the knee jerk Bush response to his own failures is to demand more power to abuse.

On the large issue of impeachment versus some other unspecified manner of halting the Republican subversion of the Constitution, it must be admitted that both sides have problems. It’s quite true that it is probably impossible (as things stand now) to gain a conviction in the Senate, since the Republicans there will fall on their swords for Bush, no matter the scope of his crimes or the depth of his contempt for them. That outcome might, in fact, legitimize his claims to power, i.e., that a Republican president cannot be checked by Congress. This expansion of presidential power will become null and void should a Democrat gain office, but will reappear as soon as the Republicans come back to power, an event sure to happen quickly given Republican domination of the corporations and media. The problem, of course, is that doing nothing also ratifies Bush’s power grab. Stymied investigations won’t establish a counter-precedent. Neither, at this point, will censure such as Senator Feingold is again suggesting. Exercising the power of inherent contempt might do the trick. Future presidential enablers might be somewhat deterred if they knew they would have to rot in prison for a couple of years beyond the reach of the presidential pardon power.

There may or may not be another coup (either crudely explicit justified by a terror event, or more subtle, by another stolen election), but even if there’s not, there remains the question of how we deal with this pattern of executive lawlessness by Republican presidents, aided and abetted by Republican courts and Republican legislators. Impeachment is one answer. Criminal prosecution by succeeding Democratic administrations is another possibility, but in the current climate it would likely be frustrated by the Republican courts and media, which would brand any such prosecutions as political. We learned that with the Libby case, in which the establishment press was overwhelmingly sympathetic to Libby.

Whatever the solution, the first step is for the Democratic establishment to recognize the problem, and to commit themselves to solving it. Right now we’re getting, with some noble exceptions, nothing but hand wringing and lectures about the rule of law. Whether impeachment is the ultimate answer or not, it’s the Constitutional method that people can rally around. If pressure for impeachment forces Democrats to develop alternative, effective strategies, so much the better. Unless there is pressure in that direction Democrats will just punt until the next election, and the Bush theory of the Republican unitary executive will have been ratified.

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Great moments in the law

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Upper Darby Township in PA is being sued by an 82 year old man whose civil rights were violated when he protested a visit by George Bush.

Defense attorneys have filed a motion seeking to preclude the mention of Bush’s name at the trial, arguing that Bush is so unpopular that mentioning Bush’s name would cause undue prejudice to the defense.

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Told you so

Sunday, July 22, 2007

As most people know by now, Joe Wilson’s lawsuit against Cheney, et al. has been dismissed by a right wing judge. So far it has played out pretty much as I predicted when it was filed.

First, they couldn’t have gotten a worse judge . Judge John D. Bates is a former Ken Starr deputy , who has already issued some questionable rulings shielding the Bush Administration from the kind of scrutiny to which he fought so hard to subject Clinton. He apparently believes that public policy affairs should be conducted in private, while those of a sexual nature are matters of grave public concern.

…

Each of the defendants has been sued in his individual capacity only. I assume the purpose for not suing them in their official capacity is to maximize the possibility that the case will not be dismissed on a claim of immunity. Wilson will be arguing that Cheney, Rove and Libby were acting outside of the scope of their employment and are therefore not entitled to any immunity.

The federal based claims are of two types. Bivens claims and claims under 42 USC 1985. Bivens refers to the case of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics. In that case, the Supreme Court held that citizens of the United States could sue government employees for violations of their constitutional rights. The court held that citizens had a right to bring suit as a matter of constitutional right, and that there was no need for them to rely on any enabling legislation.

You really can’t argue with the idea that a public official shouldn’t be sued every time they act in good faith, and turn out to be wrong. There are a lot of unanswered constitutional questions. So the courts have fashioned the doctrine of qualified immunity. One court put it this way :

The balance of societal interests is achieved by shielding public officials from liability for civil damages so long as their conduct does not violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818. “[A]s long as their actions could reasonably have been thought consistent with the rights they are alleged to have violated,” federal employees are protected from suit. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 638.

You and I might think that the right to speak your mind free of government retaliation is a clearly established constitutional right. We might also think that Wilson had a clearly established statutory right to have her identity kept secret by government officials. And yet…, somehow I don’t think Judge Bates will see it that way. Might he even accept one of the most loathsome justifications advanced by the right-that this is merely an attempt to criminalize hard ball politics?

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Bates will rule against Wilson. The DC Circuit may or may not reverse. This will not be a judicial process, it will be a political process, with decisions being made for political reasons. Most likely it will end up in the Supreme Court. Bush’s judges will be sorely taxed. They will have to come up with a justification for dismissing this case, while leaving the door open for a wholesale judicial assault on Bush’s successor, should that person be a Democrat. We know that Scalia, Alito, Roberts and Thomas are up to the task. Once again, Kennedy will be the swing vote, and my guess is he swings to the right on this one.

So far so good (or bad). Bates did rule that the miscreants were immune because they were acting within the scope of their duties. According to his view, apparently you are acting within the scope of your duties if the means you use to achieve an illegal end are the same as the means you might use to achieve a legal end.

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Brownback’s friends on the web

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Okay, I’ll admit it, it took me a while to figure out whether this was a parody site or not (Baptists for Brownback). The fact that I found this post, on Tammy Faye, through a link from Jesus General, put me somewhat on notice, but I had to ponder hard and long nonetheless. The design of the site is brilliant, as is the writing. Even the comments are great.

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Satan’s minions, Bronx Division

Sunday, July 22, 2007

A Yankee Fan admits the obvious, in a very funny article in the New York Times:

[E]very baseball season is a narrative, and this would have been much too early an exit for the villain of the piece. What is “Othello” without Iago, after all? That’s “Othello” the play, not the character. Othello the character would exist just fine without Iago; a lot like the Red Sox without the Yankees, he’d be better off, just not as interesting.

This is why I’ve always found it somewhat distasteful when Boston-ites make so much of the “rivalry” between the Red Sox and the Yankees. It’s presumptuous of them to claim the Yankees as “their” rival, their Moby Dick. That’s Moby Dick the whale, not the novel. The point is (and it’s not only permissible but a matter of pride for a Yankee fan to admit it) that the Yankees are the devil, the sporting version of a malevolent deity that can never be entirely defeated but only fought to a temporary standstill.

Well, I disagree somewhat. We Red Sox fans have a claim to being first among equals in the Yankee hating department. A long train of abuse and usurpations allow us to claim preeminence. From Ruth through Dent to the turncoat Clemens, we can claim pride of place in doing battle with (and unfortunately usually succumbing to) the Devil Incarnate.

But that’s a mere quibble. Author Bruce Weber, a Yankee fan himself, has it mostly right. We need the Yankees, for what is good without evil?

The only vague analog might be Richard Nixon, who was wrong when he claimed we wouldn’t have him to kick around anymore. Like the Yankees, he had his fans, too, but also like the Yankees, he never seems to go away. We — or at least Democrats — go out of our way to keep his memory alive to kick him around. What a pleasing coincidence that yet another batch of Nixon White House tapes surfaced just as the Yankees were poking their noses back into the pennant race.

Alas, there is more serious drama in the world, but it too is often spurred by what seems like pure villainy, entities so threatening or repugnant that masses of otherwise disconnected people are moved to stand together in outrage and resistance rather than cower individually in despair. And sport is a symbol, right? In this way, like literature or even politics, it’s a refuge — an alternate, benign universe where the hero doesn’t have to survive to satisfy us (which is why Harry Potter’s fate, it would seem, is inconsequential), and where no one terrorizes in the name of a god, where unfair advantage is a big payroll rather than a nuclear weapon and where dogs are safe from torture. It’s a place where evil can be blotted out with a big noise — Booooo! — like the name of Haman in a Purim service, and where the villain is, well, familiar. The devil you know versus the devil you don’t? No contest.

So you’re glad to have the Yankees hanging around, yes? A sniff of wickedness makes goodness seem all the purer, doesn’t it? And the most compelling and suspenseful story line, after all, is whether the devil gets his due.

Here’s hoping the devil does get his due. With only the Red Sox standing between him and triumph, that’s a slim hope indeed.

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