Ode To An Old Ford Truck

Recent politics make an unwilling participant pine for the good old days. Many of mine fortunately comprised a smooth bench seat, flimsy lap-belts, and a sightly lass crowding me in a Ford truck. This Craigslist ad for a '65 F-100 transcends its genre by a far piece, so far it's told with a sigh, ages and ages hence, with fitting humor and honesty. Pics of a vehicle less traveled:

(Hat tip to Blunt Jackson)

FOR SALE: 1965 FORD F-100 PICKUP. RUNS.

The late Dick Helmold, of Helmold Ford in Raleigh, told me that in 1965 the Ford Motor Company began to use inferior steel in their truck bodies. Weakened the stock, he said. I'm pretty sure he was correct.

More rust than paint, dry-rotten tires, one missing and three mismatched hubcaps, a gas pedal that sticks and brakes that fail (DOT-3 is my co-pilot), no radio, interior lights, or heat, but with a three-on-the-tree gearshift and an amusing horn, this heart-breaking truck is difficult to give up, or even to give away. The driver's door opens only from the inside, so you must enter the vehicle through the passenger side door. Fortunately, the bench seat makes it a breeze to slide across. You may exit via the driver's door, but please don't slam the door shut, or the window will fall down the well and I'll have to take the door panel off to pull it back up and re-engage it with the window knob linkage thingy.

I have owned this dysfunctional vehicle around 18 years. I promise it starts; you'll just have to be patient. The application of jumper cables is a given, so you will need another vehicle for that, and a little cleaning solvent sprayed in the carburetor helps, as long as you don't overdo it, because then flames will shoot out of the engine compartment when it kicks over. If it finally does start, on the 14th attempt, the neighborhood children usually stop what they're doing, because they know that as I crawl up the street in first gear, I'll be laying heavy on the "ahh-OOOGG-ahh" horn and embarrassing their parents who should by now be inured to this spectacle.

This truck can only live in Carrboro. I can't remember the last time it went to Chapel Hill. It is so not Meadowmont. If it showed up in the Oaks and leaked fluid on the golf course, someone would call 911. If it tried to drive up and down the hills of Lake Forest, it would get sick and throw up.

When you see it on the street, though, this rattling deathtrap is a quite the head-turner, even as it tends to slip out of first gear with a loud bang, as if the non-committal transmission is in active rebellion against any rules of engagement, and must be coaxed gently back in as soon as the gears stop whining and grinding and throwing their little tantrum. This is most likely to happen at noon in heavy traffic, in the middle of a left turn at a traffic signal, downtown. I'm not proud of it, but I admit that I bear some personal responsibility for many of the multiple-light-cycle delays in Carrboro since 1991. When the bed of the truck is overflowing with three cubic yards of mulch or groaning under the weight of the rocks from a dismantled farmhouse chimney, I can swear that the leaf spring suspension is literally cracking in two beneath my bench seat as I motor slowly along the two-lane road while the other drivers line up behind me, waiting for their chance to pass. Some of them give me a happy thumbs-up gesture, or roll down their windows and shout "I love your truck". The others, I assume, are silently wondering what kind of jerk would over-compensate for his shortcomings by foisting this ersatz mockery of a truck upon the rest of the driving public. Honestly, though, am I really so different from the farmers who used to drive their tractors into town for a haircut at the Friendly Barber Shop? Well—yes, I am. I grew up in suburban New Jersey for starters, and have a couple of college degrees, so I don't exactly have my rural bona fides. Luckily, to date, nobody has actually yelled at me, "I hate your truck".

I first suspected something was strange about this truck twelve years ago, when it decided to sit in our yard on Maple Avenue for the entire month of December, dressed effeminately, draped in foliage and refusing to do any work whatsoever. This truck loved Christmas; it truly lived for the holiday. It would get all giddy around Thanksgiving, pulling old boxes of its grandmother's Christmas lights out of the attic. At first, I was embarrassed—what would the neighbors think, and all that stuff that tells you more about my own fears than anything else. I must have thought it was just a phase, but in retrospect, of course, I was in complete denial. And even if it was the truck's idea, I was definitely an enabler. My wife said, "Let it do what it wants to do. It's not hurting anyone." And in time, I realized that I still loved it, that being different was okay, and who was I to tell it not to follow the internal combustion engine at its heart?

But the truth was that over time, the truck had become increasingly unreliable. Like Lindsay Lohan, this baby is one hot mess.

For the past two years, I've kept my increasingly unstable truck in a kind of halfway house, sort of a "Club Chevy Nova". I've left it parked on a lot I own along the hill on South Greensboro St, below the road grade. The only way out is a steep incline to the street. You know what they say: out of sight, out of mind. It wasn't invited to my stepdaughter's garden wedding at our house in May—it just sat and sulked, full of bent-up metal poles, a discarded lawn mower and cans of old paint. I won't even try to take it out without getting a spotter to halt traffic in both directions while I burn out the clutch climbing up the driveway. The last person to perform this duty was a wide-eyed impoverished sculptor (you know the Carrboreal archetype) who claimed to love the truck just as it is, and likely only agreed because he wanted to buy it from me, but I don't think I dislike this young artist enough to do inflict any more suffering upon him. Maybe if he wants to just plant it in his yard and nurture it...

So over the last 18 years, this truck has consistently passed, albeit with a D-minus, every test I have devised for him. And now, as much as any under-performing teenager with a mohawk, eyeliner, and a bull ring in his nose, he needs to leave home and find his place in the world. I have turned his plates in, I'm no longer paying his insurance, and he is technically no longer my dependent. I will either donate him to Durham Tech or to the local high school, where I hope he will at least take some shop classes, maybe get his GED, or learn a useful skill. He says he wants to design sport roadsters in Italy. If so, wonderful. For all I know, maybe he'll end up opening a tattoo and piercing body shop on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh and hanging out at Sadlack's, and I'll be okay with that. I'll still love him. But for now, I think he's spinning his wheels drinking coffee at the Open Eye, buying American Spirits at TJ's, and hooping at the Weave on Thursdays. He just needs a little push, is all.

De-Regulation, Illustrated

Here we have video of a nice contemplative day of ice fishing Russian-style, with male bonding and the sheer joy that springs from communing with nature and harvesting its bounty. The fisherman starts beating the fish, soon to freeze like popsicles, to death with a shovel at about the 1:35 mark.

The Best Parts

Come when you've got everything squared away. It has probably been more or less so for main winter festivities since we used mammoth tusks for tent poles. Squared away, as in a presentable abode and comestibles arrayed an hour or hopefully more before a brood of family and friends arrive for a party. In our case for Christmas Eve, and as the duck said in the movie 'Babe,' Christmas means carnage.

However achieved, the best parts come when you find yourself relaxing and reflecting on good fortune. There's that point where you think, "It is done. Ready. Chaos lurks, but let not perfection be the enemy of the good. Disapprove of the downstairs bathroom disarray as you will. Screaming children, all you crazed little wanting machines and rug-rats, come and do your worst."

Foods are best simple, easily wolfed down. The freshest finest bagels available can serve as vehicles for a commanding centerpiece of fat and salt, for example cream cheese Grandma mixed with Grandpa's toothsome smoked salmon. Chips of both kinds (potato and tortilla), salsas and dips, veggies crackers basic wines and beers fill out a conveniently accessed table. Prime rib is fine, but nobody really expects or requires more than peasantries, those foods which first tend to dance in the imagination if cruel circumstance ever conspires to make us prisoners. Speaking of which, guests unaccustomed to hard liquors need not be entrapped nor enticed. Good people and the smell of oranges and cloves suffice.

After the kids are in bed and the presents are all done up (or after the UPS truck delivered them pre-wrapped), there's another of those moments, the closest thing to ritual remaining to most of us religion-free types. The evergreens, the mistletoe and lights are ancient symbols of coming Spring and eternal life; an Egyptian from 3,000 years ago would recognize a Christmas tree's purpose instantly.

Yes, there is pervasive commercialism just this side of mind control, the distracted drivers running stoplights, the twisted and counter-twisted wires, facile vengeance of Chinese slave labor, maddeningly secure toys to cardboards. There are tiny screws, assemblies, plastics, packaging, disposal of same. There was having the house clean a grand total of 4 hours. But there is at least as much solstice as there is Santa, and there is having to wait until next year.

Obama's West Point Speech and Karl Rove's Congratulations

I am the government's unwilling mule hit with IRS kicks and satrap whips as they drive me up through one last 13,000 foot high pass sucking the biting air in through my helpfully slit nostrils and the atrophied ass of my imagination. I bring strapped to my back explosives down at dawn into another hidden valley to the people hibernating there who when they cry out as loud as human throats can throw sounds of pain and mourning will be muffled in our angels' hierarchies.

When phosphorus bombs were raining down on Tokyo in the Good War to start a firestorm the rice farmer said to the shopkeeper don't worry friend it's only politics. Our man-designate went to West Point again this week in blackface to sing and dance the golden oldies of Al Jolson crooning my Mammy because even the great-hearted become small-minded when faced with the prospect of wild Indians all smart enough to press plastic buttons duct-taped to wires rigged to hypothetical nukes. Myths are far more potent than realities and somewhere there are people who still remember if Zeus slew Uranus or Uranus slew Zeus and super-sized are the fears that gnaw on our comfortably guilty imperial innards.

The War is homeowner's insurance for Uncle Sam and of course it's not meant to be won. The enemies don't even qualify as enemies just as tragically paid extras in gruesome comedies and when all this is gone they'll still be there and victories over cockroaches aren't possible nor do they matter. It's the victories over concepts which are key thus the wars must continue and flow into each other and death to reality as molten ores flow into the forms of shining cities on hills. The thirst for retribution remains and bring me the head of Osama bin Laden speaking of myths may he rest in peace and attentions turn to the next object of collective ire.

The speech was the past and no different speech could be given. Our way of corporation which is to say profit and self-embodiment depends upon the gray pulverized dust of the Hindu Kush so invasion is withdrawal a puppet is a nation and self-determination is occupation. As hierarchies crumble they rely increasingly on lies ably abetted by cupidity base stupidity and meanness but this is simply how it must be done and look look pay attention to the stagecraft and flourish. There's recognition behind the blackface that it can't keep going although it must keep going it will keep we are the noble experiment anointed by the hand of god. Now give us more money and if not just remember how found our embodiment is of saying well if they all hate us anyhow let's drop the big one now. Boom goes London. Boom Paree. More room for you and more room for me.

I am a little toiling mule not invited to parties by the only important party called the Property Party which has politely devolved into arms dealers drug lords and jailors. Its parliament of whores and two right wings plan to keep the poor the black the anti-imperialists and malcontents like me divided and entertained with videos of cats flushing toilets. When you're born into this world you get a ticket to the freak show just like George Carlin said and when you're born in America you get a front-row seat. A brittle democracy's lost moral imperative may occur to us at any time our burritos are on the line and the war is on all as Bismarck said it's business by other means.

I catch artisanal bread and my wife can get us backstage to the Cirque de Soleil. I feel the ship of state's skin stretching and buckling hear John Wayne's rivets popping bulkheads bitching Elvis is gyrating history is ending and I remember when Rome was the biggest game in town and it went down because they hollowed it from the center and reneged on their veterans' pay. The Senators took their mistresses to their villas and families waiting in Spain and the south of France. They think we're easier to be played on than a pipe and their plan will work until it doesn't and when it doesn't it's going to not work in a very big way.

Happy Thanksgiving

Some nice, calming footage of The Other Dark Meat strolling around unsuspectingly on their organic farm.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, Priced Per Ounce of Gold

The fascinating chart above provides a thought-provoking alternative scope for viewing US economic history as its its assets became more publicly traded.

The Great Crash of 1929 looks like a minor bobble in a steeplechase. The broad-based post-WWII economic expansion capped by the Go-G0 '60s began to falter congruently with US fortunes in Vietnam, then was followed by a steep crash brought on by the conflict's huge debt overhang. As the US went off the gold standard at Bretton Woods II and printed money to pay those debts, the Dow/gold ratio touched its century-long low in the late '70s as the Fed raised interest rates to century-long highs in order to stanch hyperinflation.

Finally, the Dow-gold multiple scaled a cliff wall in the '90s as simultaneous housing and dot-com bubbles rapidly filled in the mid-'90s, with a decade-long decline which shows no technical or fundamental sign of abating, and which at @10:1 is still at least twice the previous century's non-bubble baseline. Physical gold and other industrial metals are compelling portfolio investments in that context.

On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month, the Guns Fell Silent

Am commemorating Veteran's Day by waiting in an internet cafe at the airport, aware that many have been sacrificed for the privilege of my doing so. The above Black Adder clip, while comedic, might as well be a real transcript of low-level British commanders steeling themselves with black humour before embarking on a suicidal attack in the Great War. Here's Hugh Laurie of "House M.D." fame playing the Leftenant who greets a glum Captain Darling, sent down by a general to join the deadly fanfaronnade:

Laurie: "Well this is splendid comradely news! Together we'll fight for king and country and we'll be sucking down sausages in Berlin by tea-time!"

Darling: "...rather hoped I'd get through the whole show. Go back to work at Pratt & Sons...keep wicket for the Croydon Gentlemen...marry Dorothy. Made a note in my diary on the way here...it simply says, 'Bugger.'"

(Credits to "WTF is it now?")

Afghanistan Updates

Abdullah Abdullah, presidential challenger to Hamid Karzai, announced that he was quitting the runoff election. In a choked-up voice he cited concerns about increased violence in Afghanistan and outrage at the fraudulent election process. The election was canceled and Karzai was declared president.

More U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in October than in any month since that war began eight years ago. A suicide bombing by Taliban militants killed six U.N. staff, and Major General Mike Flynn, director of intelligence for General Stanley McChrystal's headquarters in Kabul, warned that the number of insurgents in Afghanistan (many of whom were from other countries) was now between 19,000 and 27,000, a ten-fold increase since 2004. "I wouldn't say it's out of control right now," Flynn explained, "but this is a California wildfire and we're having to bring in firemen from New York." President Barack Obama caved to pressure from Congress and military contractors and passed a $680,000,000,000 defense bill.

Nuristan, a province on the Pakistani border, essentially fell to the Taliban after the U.S. withdrew its forces from four key bases. Similarly in Khost, another eastern province bordering Pakistan where U.S. forces once registered much-publicized gains (and which Richard Holbrooke, now President Obama's special envoy to the region, termed "an American success story"), the Taliban is largely in control. It is, according to Yochi Dreazen and Anand Gopal of the Wall Street Journal, now "one of the most dangerous provinces" in the country. Similarly, the Taliban insurgency, once largely restricted to the Pashtun south, has recently spread fiercely to the west and north. At the same time, neighboring Pakistan is an increasingly destabilized country amid war in its tribal borderlands, a terror campaign spreading throughout the country, escalating American drone attacks, and increasingly testy relations between American officials and the Pakistani government and military.

Meanwhile, the U.S. command in Afghanistan is considering a strategy that involves pulling back from the countryside and focusing on protecting more heavily populated areas (which might be called, with the first U.S. Afghan War of the 1980s in mind, the Soviet strategy). The underpopulated parts of the countryside would then undoubtedly be left to Hellfire missile-armed American drone aircraft. In the last week, three U.S. helicopters -- the only practical way to get around a mountainous country with a crude, heavily mined system of roads -- went down under questionable circumstances (another potential sign of an impending Soviet-style disaster). Across the country, Taliban attacks are up; deadly roadside bombs or IEDs are fast on the rise (a 350% jump since 2007); U.S. deaths are at a record high and the numbers of wounded are rising rapidly; European allies are ever less willing to send more troops; and Taliban raids in the capital, Kabul, are on the increase. All this despite a theoretical 12-1 edge U.S., NATO, and Afghan troops have over the Taliban insurgents and their allies.

Finally, the New York Times revealed that the President's alleged drug-kingpin brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, whom American officials regularly and piously denounce, is, in fact, a long-term paid agent of the CIA and its literal landlord in the southern city of Kandahar. If you were a Taliban propagandist, you couldn't make this stuff up.

(Adapted from Harper's and TomDispatch news updates.)

White House Moderates Position On Protected News Sources

Call it the Judith Miller Law, but here's a first tangible move toward re-charging a First Amendment effectively trashed by perpetual Fake War footing and the threat of reporters going to jail while protecting confidential sources. The impending compromise gives more discretion to individual judges in deciding when it is in the public's interest to protect source identity.

It doesn't take a genius to predict that a flurry of appealed Supreme Court-bound cases will surely ensue, but the implications for increased transparency are positive. Whistle-blowers won't have to risk as much, so the flow of information to reporters will open up a bit. Not to expect Edward R. Murrow to resurrect or anything, but it's the first bright spot for traditional news reporting in a long time. It could even have commercial benefits--the news media seldom ruminate on how we The People might be buying less because they're putting out crappy, weakly-reported product.

The White House had been holding the hard-line status quo, and President "Make Me" Obama deserves an attaboy for giving some ground:

“We expect this proposal to move forward with bipartisan support, and the president looks forward to signing it into law,” said Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, who noted that the Obama administration was “the first administration in history to support media shield legislation.”

The protection would apply not only against subpoenas for reporters’ testimony or information but also against investigative efforts to obtain phone and Internet records to find out who had been talking with them.

Under the agreement, the scope of protection for reporters seeking to shield the identities of confidential sources would vary according to the nature of the case: civil, criminal or national security.

In civil cases, the litigants seeking to force reporters to testify would first have to exhaust all other means of obtaining the information. Even then, the judge would apply a “balancing test,” and the burden would be on the information seekers to show by a “preponderance of the evidence” why their need for the testimony outweighed the public’s interest in news gathering.

Full article at the New York Times.

South Carolina Legislature Rethinks Socialism, Taps Stimulus $$

The state legislature in South Carolina acted Wednesday to send millions of dollars in benefits to the unemployed, reports Yvonne Wenger of the Post and Courier. The state legislature acted to correct an "oversight" that prevented the use of stimulus funds, Wenger reports, extending benefits for five months. About 113,000 residents have exhausted their benefits so far this year.

Dispatch from the Unserious Empire

On the White House's chess game with the military, I've really got to hand it to them. Their "credible partner" position is a well-constructed ruse for buying some time.

Upside, the position calls out the elephant in the room, i.e., Hamid Karzai's highly in-credible government. It waits to see the outcome of the predicted-here November run-off election between him and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. Does anyone seriously think Karzai, having fixed 30% of the votes in the prior election, isn't going to run the same play again? When he wins, the White House can pen the Pentagon and coup d'etat Republicans in by saying, "Look, you've got a fine plan for nation-building there, but you yourselves have said it requires a credible partner to work. Which we unfortunately don't have. What's military theory say have to say about this new situation?"

Downside is, the White House's position is a lawlerly, even pharisaical ploy unlikely to achieve much else. It was just a political punt, and puts off the hard decisions of reallocation. Or as history will call it, withdrawal, defeat, ignomy. Worse, if the challenger is somehow elected, Afghanistan will remain a country with a puppet government everyone hates, one which will continue to generate a major insurgency. Unlikely as it may be, the military could point to an Abdullah Outcome and say, "Look, here's your credible partner. Ante up."

Wheels within wheels, but the net-net is we're still left with a war and an exceptionalist mindset which are together responsible for not having universal health care domestically, for an increasingly patronage-based economy, and for generating motivation for well-deserved vengeance on US civilians across much of the world.

For a more professional take, check out Frontline’s interview with former Col. Andrew Bacevich, author of the bestseller 'The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.' The interviewer and Bacevich discuss the short tours of duty Marines have in Afghanistan and how that's contrary to basic principles of counterinsurgency doctrine. They have this exchange:

Bacevich: “A serious imperial country is a country that is willing to send its young men, and now young women, to these far-off places and leave them there indefinitely. That's not what I would hope we would do. But if indeed you're serious about fixing a place like Afghanistan, that's the level of commitment that probably would be required.”

Interviewer: “We're a reluctant empire?”

Bacevich: “We're not a reluctant empire. We're an unserious empire."

For all their sins, China, Russia, Holland, Spain, England, these weren't fly-by-night operations. America has been, turning on its partners as soon as the price in Rome got right. As T. Boone Pickens bitterly complained, the Iraqis are going to let Chinese companies drill in the most desirable oil fields left on earth; I remain fervently against the Iraq invasion and detest oil companies, that's sheer lunacy. Every person killed and maimed in the effort to bring Iraq and its resources into the United States' orbit is mocked.

Bacevich points out in his book that the failure is systemic, and can't simply be hung on the NeoCons, who are far from the only Americans who believe in preemptively managing history with illusion. Military service, once civic function, has transformed into an economic enterprise, one directly and indirectly employing a large fraction of Americans. I and my partners were once again asked to be in the pay of that effort today, times have been tough, and it has given us reason for personal pause.

Psyche's News Roundup

14 Americans Killed In 2 Afghan Helicopter Crashes
Fareed Zakaria - Zakaria: Obama should weigh troop level carefully - washingtonpost.com -Think Before Surge
The 'benefit' of Somalia's pirates - Channel 4 News Now | the fishermen are able to catch up to £200 worth of fish per day in an area where the average daily earnings are less than £5

Saudi journalist, Rozanna al-Yami, faces lash over sex talk | The Australian A Saudi court has sentenced a journalist to 60 lashes after she was charged with involvement in a TV show in which a Saudi man talked about sex.
BBC NEWS | Europe | German on trial for Muslim murder
Iraq Ministries Targeted in Car Bombings; Over 130 Dead - NYTimes.com

Reid: "The Public Option With An Opt-Out Is The One That's Fair" (let the South opt-out; Rhobama not thrilled with public option but will go along)
Schumer: We Prevailed On White House That Public Option Was The Way To Go | TPMDC (Obama favored Queen Olympia Snowe's plan?)
Scott Berman - Health care reform is moral battle for the soul of a nation -- themorningcall.com

Healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year | U.S. | Reuters ("For one example, a paper-based system that discourages sharing of medical records accounts for 6 percent of annual overspending")
Dems push for benefits to start by 2010 - Carrie Budoff Brown - politico.com
Obama's Pointless Pursuit of Olympia Snowe | Newsweek Voices - Howard Fineman | Newsweek.com Obama's pointless bipartisanship (a lightbulb grows in Fineman)

Calculated Risk: SF Fed: Recent Developments in Mortgage Finance
Trying to Rein In ‘Too Big to Fail’ Institutions - NYTimes.com
How the U.S. Blew Trillion-Dollar Trade of Century: Mark Fisher - Bloomberg.com (print the money)

McDonald’s Closes in Iceland as Crisis Makes Chain Unprofitable - Bloomberg.com
We attacked the bankers, but took our eyes off the whole rotten system | Gary Younge | Comment is free | The Guardian
Detroit house auction flops for urban wasteland | Special Coverage | Reuters

Forget the rush on that H1N1 swine flu vaccine; 62% of Americans have no intention of getting it anyway | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times
Asteroids should be next small step for man in space, panel tells President Barack Obama - Telegraph
Beliefs - Changes in Religion All Over the Map, Report Shows - NYTimes.com 6 out of 10 Americans pray one or more times each day; high percentages report feeling close to God, experiencing God’s presence or guidance on most days

Don't Feed the Animals: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Couples Edition)
Emily Howell, the virtual composer making waves in the computer world - Times Online
Circulation drops at U.S. newspapers as readers turn to online news sources -- latimes.com
Internet set for change with non-English addresses

Hasta la Vista, baby: Ars reviews Windows 7 - Ars Technica
Every Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcut You'll Ever Need - Windows 7 shortcuts - Gizmodo

Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact the lives of untold numbers of Americans.

His very name made his life's work almost inevitable, a matter of destiny. William Wayne Justice was a Federal judge for the Eastern District of Texas. That's right,he was "Justice Justice." And he spent a distinguished legal career making sure that everyone - no matter their color or income or class - got a fair shake. As a former Texas lieutenant governor put it last week, "Judge Justice dragged Texas into the 20th century, God bless him."

Dragged it kicking and screaming, for it was Justice who ordered Texas to integrate its public schools in 1971 - 17 years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision made separate schools for blacks and whites unconstitutional. Texas resisted doing the right thing for as long as it could. Many of its segregated schools for African-American children were so poor they still had outhouses instead of indoor plumbing.

This small town lawyer appointed to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered Texas to open its public housing to everyone, regardless of their skin color. He looked at the state's "truly shocking conditions" in its juvenile detention system and said, repair it. He struck down state law that permitted public schools to charge as much as a thousand dollars tuition for the children of illegal immigrants.

And Justice demanded a top-to-bottom overhaul of Texas prisons, some of the most brutal and corrupt in the nation. He even held the state in contempt of court when he thought it was dragging its feet cleaning up a system where thousands of inmates slept on the dirty bare floors of their cellblocks and often went without medical care. The late, great Molly Ivins said, "He brought the United States Constitution to Texas."

Some say that justice stings. William Wayne Justice certainly did - and his detractors stung back with death threats and hate mail. Carpenters refused to repair his house, beauty parlors denied service to his wife. There were cross burnings and constant calls for his impeachment.

After he desegregated the schools he was offered armed guards for protection. He turned them down and instead took lessons in self-defense.

The rest here.

Has The US Housing Market Bottomed?

Lord Wife and I drove back yesterday AM from dropping Running Boy (age 5-1/2) and Mr. Grunt-n-Grab (age 11 months) at their respective stations. We were listening to National Public Radio since it was finally being safe to go back. NPR recently directed its longest-ever local fund drive, ending it only after resorting to stories like "How My Cello Wound Up in Poland."

While we crossed under the freeway, a young reporter quoted a disappointing housing starts report from September. She then invited a Subject Matter Expert from Columbia University onto her segment, and it went like this:

NPR Reporter asks the Expert questions, he fluently rattles off data, we draw closer to home. Reporter asks another question, Expert begins to deliver a matter-of-fact, dismal interpretation of housing market prospects. NPR Reporter suddenly interrupts to say, "I'm sorry--I have to cut you off now."

Lord Wife and I looked at each other with arched brows. Rookie reporter surprised by a vet producer, and-or a "Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella" reporting policy becoming painfully obvious? Not 100% sure, but in context it seemed like an openly Pravda Moment on NPR.

The Main Stream Media has by consensus already called the bottom on the real estate market, often citing a stabilization or drop in the rate of foreclosures. On the surface, that's very comforting data. As a homeowner, I certainly don't want to see more of my remaining equity go up in smoke. But...I also have to face facts, which involves objectively thinking about whether there is cause for being perky, and if so, what it is. This in turn means remembering how bankers think, which is to say, they greatly prefer not to.

In short, at some point banks stop foreclosing on properties in hard-hit locales, so I strongly suspect a lowering foreclosure rate is a false-positive indicator. This local tendency may have become a national reality. Either way, aggregate stabilization is being impacted by banks not wanting to take on properties that won't find buyers quickly. Apart from further driving down a bank's on-hand portfolio value, foreclosure costs and hassle factors are high. From the lender's perspective, a property must re-sell in a reasonable time. It must be appealing enough that someone will bid significant cash for it at a sheriff's auction.

There's an unspoken truth here that banks and real estate professionals are keenly aware of: houses do not go up in value. Unless maintained and updated, their value goes down. This is far more true for a McMansion 5 miles from Microsoft than for a grimy hovel in Detroit: if the McMansion sits unoccupied for two years without regular (and to the bank, bothersome) maintenance, its value plummets. The Detroit hovel is a walk-away, and for the attractive McMansion, everything hinges on how fast it can be re-sold. The bulk of properties are in between those extremes, but they're still subject to the same pressures. The more properties that sit empty, the more reluctant banks are to take on more.

A much stronger indicator for measuring "the bottom" would be to track the number of foreclosure filings compared to the number later sold at auction, observing percentage, time to sale, and foreclosure/auction price ratios. But that data isn't tracked officially. Even that data would fail to measure when someone walks away and the bank simply doesn't bother to file foreclosure. Walk-aways by both borrower and lender have already become common in some of the most depressed markets, as described in this local article from Dayton, Ohio:

In some instances, lenders don’t even bother to file a foreclosure. Figures by RealtyTrac released this week show foreclosure filings in the greater Dayton area are down almost 21 percent.

John Carter, housing inspector with the city of Dayton, finds the decline in foreclosures “very scary,” because houses are continuing to go vacant.

For every 100 houses that he orders boarded up, he said, 40 to 50 properties have a mortgage but no foreclosure filed. When he contacts the banks, they sometimes tell him they have no plans to foreclose.

“That makes it look like the foreclosure numbers are going down, but in actuality the banks are not even starting foreclosure,” Carter said. “So there’s no number to track now.”

I'm not trying to stop anyone from buying or selling a home, rather have pointed out basic problems with the Party Line's reasoning. At best, there are wide blind spots in the metrics being used by top prognosticators, the market really has bottomed, and we got lucky. Yet it seems more likely it has not, and officials are trying to talk the market up while looking through their binoculars backwards. These are mostly the same folks who told everybody you can't get hurt buying a home.

Calling the bottom is generally less important than having cash to put on a porch rail. Just as with previous Recession/Depressions, there are major opportunities for people willing to convert paper into property, and it's hard to think of a safer long-term investment in this environment than free and clear ownership of real estate.

Unaware Of Their Own Irony

I'll sneak in one more drive-by post.

In the first government analysis of the Stimulus Bill, the Southern states, after throwing partisan shit-fits against it, are receiving the majority of its benefits. This is ironic, but typical, and has been the case since FDR's New Deal. They're all bluster and bombast, full of hortatory pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps sermons in the front of the building, then they're constant crybabies in the alley out back. Maybe we should look at it as war reparations.

Money Well Spent?

The health care sector has spent $263 million this year lobbying Congress for changes to reform plans, a government watchdog group estimates.

That works out to roughly $500,000 per Congressman and Senator just this year, quite a bit higher for many key committee members and none for people like Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur, Ron Paul, et al. (Hopefully et al.)

If You Don't Know Where You're Going, You Might Not Get There

A week or so back a story came out in the WSJ reporting the president had just finished reading Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam.

The book's narrative arc concerns a White House "being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead," urged on by a hyperbolic Pentagon that saw commies under coffee tables while committing unbelievably basic mistakes on the ground. As the story goes, Tom Donilon (a long-time Biden ally), the deputy national security advisor, gave Rahm Emanuel a copy of 'Lessons,' then Rahm went to pass it on the prez but learned he was already reading it, so he loaned it to David Axelrod. Obama passed his own copy on to Biden, whereupon it became required reading for all of Washington and sold out of bookstores. It still must be back-ordered on Amazon.

The Pentagon, now hyperventilating about islamo-fascists under coffee tables, prefers a different narrative arc, one conveyed in A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. This work has the US military finally figuring out how to apply COIN principles and win, which it was manifestly starting to do by 1971-72, only to have its plug pulled after 8 previous years of patient learning and sacrifice, all wasted by a White House too focused on political gain. Various generals have been pressing the book on their subordinate chains of command since 2005, the WSJ article relates, and it is currently sold out at Amazon.

The broad lines of debate are exposed. Regular readers (Jon in particular) might expect me to dump on the military's choice of exemplar, but not in this case. Creighton Abrams took over Vietnam's command from William Westmoreland in 1968 and promptly switched the strategic focus to protecting villages from incursion and training a truly effective indigenous army (ARVN). Abrams was one of the best military minds in the 20th century in both combat and command, and given a couple more years' head start and 500,000 men, he probably would have succeeded in at least partitioning Vietnam's narrow isthmus. The book is an excellent choice on which to base an argument of COIN and see-it-through.

The White House's book is similarly well-chosen, in that its focus is on McGeorge Bundy, one of the so-called "best and brightest" or "wise men" in the Kennedy Administration, in which he served as National Security Advisor. Having been born to one of Boston's elite families and pledging as member #322 of the Skull and Bones society while at Yale, he was tapped at age 30 to serve on the Council of Foreign Relations while the Marshall Plan was being implemented in Europe as an anti-communist firewall. From there he went to serve as Harvard's youngest ever Dean of Faculty. In the Kennedy Administration, he was an outspoken hawk for escalation, but was first of the early hawks to change his mind and advocate cutting the losses. Like the current think-tankers paid to wind up generals, airwaves and representatives, Bundy knew nothing about war's conduct. He had never studied it.

The arcs don't apply particularly well because Afghanistan is far larger, less stable, more permeable, hostile, and diverse than Vietnam. Afghanistan is a failed state starting from a point of near-zero cohesion, whereas Vietnam had two systems of governance, each entertaining useful thralls of competing ideologies, each on the cusp of establishing a post-Colonial national identity. In Kabul, no one collects the garbage, the Karzai government huddles behind sandbags collecting drug money while it piles higher, and every time the author of a strategic plan relieves themselves on a toilet in the US embassy and flushes, they literally shit on the city's residents. The city's sewage system is its streets.

The Obama Administration's only strategic goal in Afghanistan is to simply contain al-Qaeda, which has already been accomplished. They're re-fighting Vietnam while al-Qaeda openly blossoms orange and red in Pakistan, and it seems that Vietnam is aiming too high.

"You Can't Take The High Horse, And Then Claim The Low Road"

Ohh, but yes, you can. Just for old time's sake and some perspective after the first Nobel Prize ever given to a US President for merely restoring dignity and respect for protocol, I looked up some old Dubya bloopers. The main problem was choice overload, of course, but the compilation above is a good selection. The clip below is instructive, too, because Bush's pre-recorded speech to an international audience is being fed through his earpiece at a volume high enough to be picked up by his podium's microphones. His answers to the reporters' pre-submitted questions are all pre-recorded as well, and are fed through the Telepreznit's magic earpiece. Maybe Obama deserves the Prize after all.

A Bright Shining Showdown

Give the picture above a close look; it's the first time the President of the US and the commander of his ground forces in Afghanistan met 1-1. Today is the Year Eight of the war they're conferring over, and their body language is telling. Obama's posture is patient, explanatory, verging on remonstrative; Stanley McChrystal's is taut, defensive, and tilting to one side. The general looks like he might be struggling to maintain his composure while thinking, "I could spatter his head like a bug."

Obama's intellectual training was primarily by Socratic method, which emphasizes dialectical questions designed to get one party in a debate to tellingly contradict themselves, strengthening the inquirer's point. I have been very critical of the President for asking for a report he knew would, in a word, suck. In his defense, maybe he didn't know it would suck this badly, and didn't expect it to collapse so easily upon an amateur's inquiries. For example, BHO may have asked self-contradicting questions like these:

"Are you telling me that 40,000 more troops are enough to decisively defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, once and for all?"

"How will these new troops limit al-Qaeda's continuing growth in Pakistan, where we know it's becoming a deadlier domestic and international threat?"

Stanley A. McChrystal is a Crusader, a third-gen Military Industrial Complex product deeply in the pocket of the NeoCons, and Fred Kagan, who authored the bribe-the-Sunni-insurgents-and-leave plan known as The Surge in Iraq, is his strategy advisor. He has gone on 60 minutes to tout his plan. He has given a speech to an international crowd in London. His allies, one would hope not his own office, leaked his classified troop request report to the press. His disdain for Obama, his commander-in-chief, is visible, quotable, and wholly insubordinate. Obama is likely too smart to fire him, and McChrystal is probably too dumb to resign. I suspect McC's superior, Gen. David Petraeus, has masterfully set up a good soldier to take a fall for him.

When it comes to making war or anything else, Fred Kagan and the NeoCons are turds in a picnic cooler. One must assume the questions, simple questions above were put to their report, and no good answers were blurted. Obama today announced, as expected, that there will be no withdrawal. That sounds bland and depressing enough, but he also set no timeline on a decision for escalation, no numbers on additional troops at all. In other words, it is the omission which speaks loudest, and he's breaking the news to the NeoCons softly. Refer again to the body language in the picture above.

In D.C. Newspeak, Obama's announcement today signifies No Buildup. There may be a token compromise (a.k.a. Operation Kevlar Chandelier), but bottom line, this is an infuriating hog-tying for the NeoCons and their Generals, and they're off in basements and bars this evening uttering vile oaths, making pacts and desperately sharpening knives. Having been brilliantly stalemated, the best they can do is cry, "leisurely," and "too deliberate!" For once since his election, I stand in admiration and applaud: Barack Hussein Obama didn't give them the satisfaction of a clear "No."

California Screamin'

I'm heading towards Hollywood and Vine to close down an un-airconditioned office a few stories above the walk of fame for a client. I'm waiting out tough times underneath a palm tree, waiting for the stop light and economic shoots to turn green as a cunningly bleached blonde sits up high in an onyx Porsche Cayenne Turbo SUV. She crosses our path in front and dawdles to turn left while a little white dog nestles on her breast looking down at me and nervously at the cars, the kind of dog that's not good for much but luxuriating or tossing up in the air to punt over a fence.

The girl's wearing goggle-sized sunglasses and maybe she'll turn 20 years old while she waits for oncoming traffic to clear and my friend, an L.A. resident, who has been fielding my questions about the Governator's budget crisis follows up with, "They just announced they're cutting summer school and child care programs for migrant workers." "Oh, yeah," I sigh. "Now that makes a hell of a lot of sense. That's really cutting the fat out of a budget! Bold leadership. Political courage!"

To my right, a sun-baked caucasian man, fiftyish, drags down the sidewalk like a grimy, dessicated crustacean with about an hour to live, trailing a torn t-shirt devoid of color, dust in his hair sticking up in the air ike free beauty parlor product, greasy gray jeans hanging off him obscenely. No one at the bus stop sees him, he's magic, he's an invisible man. So I'm sitting there thinking, look pal, it's right here, the future is being spelled out in front of your face on a big mind-reading neon sign just like with Steve Martin in LA Story. Stop for a minute and read.

California's got it all. It's the #1 Death Factory and it's the #1 Dream Factory in the US and the world. Tops in arms production and entertainment. 8th biggest economy on the planet, huge wine producer, agribusiness, no slouch in the ganja department. Companies like Apple, Google, Disney, Miramax, and YoYodyne are all in California. It is the most fungible entity imaginable.

Yet it's bankrupt, its bonds are junk, it is now paying state worker in scrip and its population is shrinking for the first time since the conquistadores brought the plague. Now, I'm thinking at the stoplight, we must be suffering from a philosophical conundrum. A triumph or failure of Reaganomics, of scientology, of pull yourself up by your bootstraps, trickle down Wysocki, trickle down. If you can keep your income inequality when all around you are losing theirs then you will be a man my son.

America has never viewed its working classes through the sentimental fug of an Edwardian music hall, but when treated well one time they promptly payed back with the greatest explosion of prosperity and technology in known history. But that's a bygone era, constantly memorialized and milked for every last drop of hope in repeating a Greatest Generation. California, particularly its coastal southern cities, provides a juxtaposition of glittering got-it-made success and violent squalor, with pernicious polarizing influences and taxes that keep regressing. It's the Big vs. the Little Lebowskis, and it's actually hard to tell who's winning--half the time the plot's entertaining, half the time it's frightening, and half the time it's disastrous. Because it's California, the halves add up.

But uh-oh. Cali's attached. It's kind of attached to the US like a skull, in fact. Am I looking at the future of my entire country? Well, it was America's bellwether state of the 20th century, so yes, it would seem so. Reading Will California become America's first failed state?, a competently researched and interviewed article in the Guardian, triggered the above memory of a recent trip to L.A., and the upshot of it is that public services will be shut down to reduce the budget gap, that's not going to be enough, and people will think of something because Californians are innovative.

Metaphorically, to take California's lead, the United States has a case of brain cancer, and it's not ready to start dealing with it in any serious way. Delusion is the order of the day. The recession is over, I'm sure you've heard. Tide's still up, sky's still blue and the myth of the California Dream is going to die hard, like a butthole surfer screaming "whooaaa, duuuude," as he bashes up repeatedly against the stony crags of Monterey.

To end on a glass half full, as required, California dreamers hang it out innately, they don't know any different, which means America's problems tend to crop up first and most prevalently in that state. Presumably, so will solutions.