Russian Fiction

This is an interesting link.

Not sure I believe it, but it is sourced to Bloomberg, so I believe that the Russian Professor there quoted said what he reportedly said.

He claims that the U.S. is on a rapid decline and will fairly soon break into six autonomous countries over the financial crisis.

Those regions are the Pacific Coast, the South, Texas, the Atlantic Coast, the Central States and the Northern states.

I think I'd bet against it, so I'm not sure why I'm posting it, I'm just finding it fascinating the kinds of speculations people are putting on the financial crisis.

Liam.

Pardon Me, Did You Say 'Torture'?

An interesting article from the Wall Street Journal today (well, yesterday now).

The White House is asserting that because they wrote up judicial memos of dubious legality justifying torture, that there's no need to pardon any of the people who took part in the torture program, because they didn't commit any crime. This is essentially like when Richard Nixon tried to claim that it was impossible for the President to violate the law, because "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal", and it is clearly not true.

But my take on this is that this is a smoke screen, largely hoping to avoid having those who might be left twisting in the wind by not being pardoned to feel abandoned, disgruntled, and perhaps eventually inclined to testify about the program in a future investigation, if offered an immunity deal.

Because here's the dirty little secret: The President cannot issue blanket pardons. A pardon requires specificity, both in terms of the specific person or persons (by name) being pardoned and the actions (potential crimes, whether charges have been brought or not) for which they are being pardoned.

Now, imagine what would happen if President Bush were to start issuing pardons with that specificity. He would essentially be admitting that torture took place and would be giving enough detail for future investigations to determine just exactly what took place. And he would be removing the threat of prosecution from the very people who might now be called to testify on such extreme interrogation programs, people who would now have only to fear prosecution for failure to provide accurate testimony (contempt of court/congress, for example).

Recall that President Bush can not pardon himself, and that Presidential pardons only apply in the United States. If we did torture, even once, it violates international law (in the form of the Geneva Convention, to which we are a signatory nation), and even if the Obama Administration or some future one declined to prosecute, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the International Court might decide to take a crack at it, given sufficient evidence that such violations occurred.

So really, there is nothing to be gained and everything to lose for President Bush to offer those pardons. This justification is (to use a much maligned phrase) lipstick on a pig.

Liam.

The Ongoing Bailout

Wow, this is a scary number I just heard on the Rachel Maddow show...

The current price tag thus far spent on bailouts for the current crisis (not including Citigroup) is about $4.3 trillion.

According to Barry Ritholtz, author of "Bailout Nation", even after adjusting for inflation, that sum costs more than each of the following:

• Marshall Plan
• The Louisiana Purchase
• The race to moon
• The Savings & Loan Crisis
• The Korean War
• The New Deal
• The invasion and ongoing war in Iraq
• The Vietnam War
• The entire budget of NASA over its entire existence

Not individually, COMBINED.

Adjusted to today's dollars, those nine historical events cost $3.92 trillion.

And one more interesting number: According to one site I found, the total of all mortgages in the United States today is estimated to be about $12 trillion. Which means in trying to solve a crisis sparked by bad mortgages, we have spent an amount sufficient to pay off more than a third of every mortgage in the country.

(Not that I'm suggesting using the money in that fashion would be a good idea, after all, supposedly there's some chances that we as a country may get some portion of that $4.3 trillion back, either in loan repayments or because we've assumed ownership of a portion of the assets of those we've bailed out. Still, though, it's a sobering number).

Liam.

Conditional Ethics

OK, folks, there's being sad your guy lost and then there's going crazy. Let's all calm down until at least after January 20th, OK?

There are two things which make me write this. First, there are already at least three different "Impeach Obama" groups on Facebook, the first has more than 700 members, the other two have over 150 members each.

Now, Impeachment is for the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors while in office, so... what say we wait until there's even a chance to commit some before calling for such a drastic step. Certainly it calls into question the sincerity of your charges if you began making them before it was even possible for the crime to have been committed.

"But Liam," I hear some of you cry, "there are over 95 'Impeach Bush' groups on Facebook. What about them?"

First, I'd bet most of them began SINCE some of the more controversial of Bush's actions in office. (Actually, that's not a fair bet, since Facebook didn't really exist before Bush took office, but still...) and any such groups on other sites which might have begun a campaign to have him impeached before he took office were similarly tainted.

Second, there are some real questions about some of Bush's conduct. I know some of the Bush supporters in my reading audience will disagree, but an objective look at some of his behaviors gives at least legitimate reason to question whether unconstitutional and other un-American activities have gone on, and certainly with the extent to which constitutionally mandated Congressional oversight has been thwarted, Impeachment might have been one way to end the stalling and allow Congress to do it's job. There's a huge difference between calling for the investigation and possible removal from office of someone whose actions seem questionable and calling for the investigation and possible removal from office of someone who has yet to even take the oath of that office or even, technically, be elected (remember, the Electoral College does not actually cast it's official ballots for another few weeks, Obama is not technically our "President Elect" yet).



But the other thing that prompted this message is Senator John Kyl. You may remember this interview and ones like it back in April of 2006, during the debate over the so-called "nuclear options", when the Republicans in charge of Congress were considering shutting down the filibuster power of the minority party over some nominations to certain judicial positions. Kyl was one of the more outspoken Republicans expressing outrage that these nominees weren't getting their "up or down" votes and essentially implying that the Democrats were sneaky, underhanded and downright immoral for exercising what little power our system of government leaves the minority party to check the power of the majority. (By the way, I'll bet the Republicans are pretty glad now they didn't do away with filibuster, eh?)

So of course, this man who felt so strongly about up or down votes, he'll certainly support holding votes on every Obama nominee, right?

Well, not so much. And he's not even waiting for a hypothetical "bad" nominee to come along, he's ALREADY issued a statement saying that if Obama nominates justices whom he (Kyl) disagrees with, he intends to filibuster them.

Now, maybe I'm old fashioned, but wasn't there a time when people at least pretended to hold true to their principles? A time when a Senator such as Kyl, having made such pious pronouncements on the sanctity of up-or-down votes on judicial nominees would wait until such a nominee was actually announced and then, with much faux hand-wringing, announced that while he still held his prior beliefs, this particular nominee was so egregious that he had no choice but to violate his principles?

What a two-faced buffoon, announcing at this stage of the game his intention to play by exactly the same set of rules that he so decried Democrats for playing by.

Nice conditional ethics there, Kyl.

Liam.

A Different Special Comment

OK, a lot of people have stopped listening to Keith Olbermann's Special Comments, because after the first few, he has occasionally gone over the top, expressing a level of umbrage not necessarily justified by the facts.

But this one... this one is not politics, particularly. It's about California's Prop 8 and propositions like it around the country.

For what it's worth, I was on a discussion board of fellow Obama supporters as the results came in on Tuesday last, and I recall saying that the results on Prop 8 were preventing me from feeling much joy at Obama's win, that all of the change that the Obama win represented for me was overshadowed by the narrow minded public support of hate inherent in the passage of Prop 8. Sure, there have been other such measures in other states, but this one was different. This was California. Tolerant, liberal, inclusive California, telling the gay members of their state that they were no longer full citizens, and telling those who had already been married under the state's gay marriage rules that their marriage didn't really count. Technically, the proposition doesn't retroactively un-marry those people, it simply says that the state "does not recognize" those marriages. A distinction without a difference.

And one wonders what will happen when the first of those marriages head to divorce court, as happens in half of heterosexual marriages, so we can hardly expect gay marriages to fare any better. If the state no longer recognizes those marriages, does that mean it can no longer legally recognize them enough to perform a divorce? Must those gay couples married under California law now travel to MA or CT or NH or one of the other gay-marriage supporting states in order to obtain a divorce of a marriage which is in a sort of legal "limbo"?

No, this is the sort of institutionalized bigotry and hatred I simply cannot understand, and so it made me ever so happy to see this Special Comment out of Mr. Olbermann.

Liam.

Good Laugh This Morning

On a news article about how Obama is getting his first tour of the White House and first post-election meeting with Bush, I was idly scanning the comments, and found this one:


I can't believe Obama hasn't even taken the oath of office and he's ALREADY sitting down with an unpopular, aggressive world leader without preconditions.

Oh, One More Cabinet Position

I don't know as he'd be interested in the position, but it might be nice to see someone like Al Gore in charge of the EPA.

Depending on global warming being the huge ecological catastrophy some have said (and not the latest "chicken little" issue) one could argue that solving our ecological crisis is our single most pressing problem right now.

After all, if we're slowly transforming the planet into an uninhabitable rock in space, perhaps "little things" like our financial crisis and our war on terror may not matter so much.

(Yes, I'm being facetious when I refer to those things as "little things", but the truth (in the words of psychologist Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Need") is that when you're on fire, that's generally the thing you worry about most, and it's not until the flames are extinguished that you consider the fact that you're also ravenously hungry and utterly broke.)

Liam.

President Obama's First Hundred Days

Finally for tonight, a lot of people are debating what priorities President Obama should have right off the bat in his Administration, and while I know that he will have access to information I don't have (and thus make some decisions that I might personally not understand), there are two mainstays of his campaign appearances that will be an important measurement for me as to whether President Obama will be the man he promised to be, or just another lying politician.

First, there are Executive Orders and Signing Statements. Having seen him speak several times, I can tell you that candidate Obama promised regularly during the campaign that one of the first things he'd do in office was direct his Attorney General to go through all of the Executive Orders and the controversial Signing Statements of the Bush administration with an eye towards identifying those which de facto (if not outright de jure) violate Constitutional principles. He has promised that as they are identified, he will move swiftly to counter them with Executive Orders of his own.

Now, you may not be as bothered as I am by the orders and statements that the Bush Administration has issued, but that was definitely a major supporting piece of the "change" message Candidate Obama ran on, and I will be interested in watching whether President Obama delivers.

The second thing I'm looking for out of President Obama is an immediate return to the days when the Geneva Convention was an honored piece of human rights legislation that we followed and expected others to follow as well, rather than a thorny inconvenience to be ignored or outright derided.

How will this manifest? I don't know. It will show up in how we handle Guantanamo Bay going forward. It will show up in how the trials of those in that prison are handled. It will show up in whether we try to continue the legal fiction that by creating a new label, "enemy combatant", we can then claim that people in that category are not due any of the rights they would previously have been under any of the existing labels.

I don't know exactly how any of these things will change. Guantanamo Bay and the greater war on terrorism are sticky situations, we need to take extra careful steps in trying to resolve them.

Still, I am watching to see how these change.

Liam.

Fraud Waiting to Happen

[I wrote this up a week ago, but never got around to posting it. I figure it was probably too late to change it for this time around anyway, but it'd be nice to consider before the next election.]

Yeah, I've been kind of quiet on here recently. I had a long argument with several family members in e-mail a few weeks back, culminating in one of the people involved arguing against the progressive tax system ultimately proposing an alternative that results in nearly exactly the same effective tax rate at all levels of income... just calculated in a different way.

I got so exasperated that I stopped writing about politics for a while. The truth is, there's not much time to change anyone's mind at this point anyway...

But, I learned today of something that I think needs to be fixed, and I wanted to comment on it.
Now, to begin with, I'm sure that the people who are doing this have the best of intentions, but... Apparently, at least here in NH, lists of which people have voted are available to the campaigns, ostensibly so that they can contact their supporters who have not yet voted and "get out the vote", offering rides and encouragement, etc.

But here's the scoop: this should NOT be allowed as long as identification is not required at the polling places. Now, I'm not one that's calling for ID in order to vote, I think our current system works pretty well. But let's not make it that easy to commit fraud by presenting lists to both sides of people who have not yet voted.

(Technically, no such lists are presented, it's only lists of people who HAVE voted, but if you have a pretty good list of registered voters and get a list of who has voted, it's not difficult to find the people who HAVEN'T.)

My feeling is that the "ride to the polls" service on both sides is pretty well publicized. There's simply no reason that any citizen who wishes to vote should fail to be able to do so due to lack of transportation. Thus, if you don't care enough to bother to vote, I'm not sure your vote should count just because someone was able to guilt you into it.

Especially when you compare that to the potential for people showing up to the polls claiming to be someone they aren't and casting a ballot that the actual citizen might not have agreed with.

Of course, the best way to make sure your own personal vote isn't stolen by someone who supports different priorities than you do is to make sure to cast your own vote, but so long as nearly 40% of our society can't be bothered to show up and cast a vote, these lists are a dangerous precedent to set.

Liam.

Everyman Strategy

Y'know, I've been thinking about this tonight (I have a pretty high fever, so I'm sort of lying here unable to do much and doing a lot of thinking, probably very little of it coherent), and I'm trying to figure out why "just like us" / "joe six pack" is a winning strategy and "elitist" is a bad thing in our government officials.

Now before anyone tells me why, I actually do get the human nature principles involved, but for me, I would really like to see the people involved in our government be WAY smarter than average. When it comes to movie stars or sports heroes, the "just like me / would I enjoy hanging out and having a beer with them" yardstick may be perfectly reasonable.

But we've got some pretty serious problems in our country right now. Two wars. A catastrophic financial crisis. Others.

I'd really kind of like to have the most elitist people we can find (in terms of education, intelligence and capability) working on those problems. The "just like me" test may bring us people we feel closer to, or people we may believe more likely to understand our particular situation, but I wouldn't want me working on many of the problems of the world. I want someone way smarter than me working on those problems.

Liam.

Next Cabinet Position: Secretary of the Treasury

A lot of speculation has been running around about Paul Volcker as the new Secretary of the Treasury, but I've been wondering whether a different Paul would be the way to go...

In specific, I'm thinking of Paul Krugman. Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics this year, and whenever I've heard him interviewed, he's made a lot of sense to me.

Now, economics is not a discipline in which I can claim any expertise, so perhaps I could be way off on this one, but I wonder if the two Pauls wouldn't do well in a combination of Treasury and FED chairman (the term of Ben Bernanke (the current FED chairman) does not end until 2010, so President Obama won't need to choose a replacement (or choose to renew his tenure) until then.

Still, Paul Krugman seems like a smart guy and perhaps one whom President Obama should tap for his expertise.

Liam.

The Obama Cabinet

I've been thinking a lot about who I'd like to see in the Obama cabinet.

Of course, we all know that often cabinet positions are filled not with high profile people but with people we've never heard of, and so of course the odds are that anyone's list of who's likely will be wrong.

However, there are several people I'd like to see in there, and I'd like to list them here, for my own amusement.

Richard Clarke - National Security Advisor or Secretary of Homeland Security
Chuck Hagel - Secretary of Defense
Colin Powell - Secretary of Education
Howard Dean - Surgeon General

I had been pulling for John Edwards as Attorney General, but I'm afraid his recent scandal makes him untouchable, so I'm not counting on that one.

But the truth is that Obama had promised us during the campaign that he'd like to surround himself with advisors from all over the political spectrum, in order to make informed decisions.

By the way, I know Powell has already said he does not want a position, so he's probably out of the running.

Still, over the next few days or weeks, until the cabinet is announced, I'll probably be stopping in here occasionally to comment on this person or that whom I think would make a good addition to the cabinet.

Liam.

McCain Concession Speech

Now THAT was a speech. If McCain had spoken like that during the campaign, he might not have lost.

Seriously.

President Barack Obama.

That's all that needs to be said tonight.