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.

Raisin' Some Hell For 2012

Video #1 is a strange paen to Sarah Palin by a PAC called "Ethnic Cleansing for America." (Ok, just kidding. Sort of.)

In video #2, we have the Palinator doing a folksy, quite charming interview in front of a slaughterhouse for turkeys, in which turkeys...are being slaughtered...right behind her. A special touch when the turkey farmer, while draining out their blood, stares vacantly at the camera.

I'm sure you've seen these through your various real or fake nooz outlets, but I just need to embed these for posterity, and note that once upon a time, people, even Americans, would look at themselves and say, "Whoa, I can't put that on teevee because it'd look like, ahh, I'm an ignominious twit."

Also, I wish noticed that Presidential hopeful Mike Hukabee, the republican governor of the Land o' Goshen, already kicked off his 2012 campaign in Iowa.

Goodbye Cruel World

Occasional visitors here will by now have noticed a certain format to the postings, one which may be a little jarring, de-focused, or hard to categorize. It's intentional: as an adult, I've been described as "intense," and fully indulging that tendency would make this blog one ongoing predictive contrarian rant about what I've known would happen to the country and world, how the shifting obliquities of the ecliptic relate to the Mayan calendar, to the reversal of the earth's polarity as foretold by mnemoic devices found in Viking sagas, I Told You I Was Sick, etc. Which it very much is. So what I do is intersperse a mix of snark, cool little things, fluffy kitties, technology, the smell of diesel fumes mingling with hot-fresh baguettes at dawn in Paris as contrasted to what I wake to now, the traces of Irish mists lingering in my son's hair. Arguably more faithful to how life unfolds.

In baseball, pitchers set up batters with change of pace, and I try to nibble at the edges of the strike zone with off-speed stuff, setting you up for the chest-high fastballs that could come all day. Besides, the nibbling is really good for me, it's challenging, makes me stretch, makes me have fun, and I hope for you, too. Having done so for a string of posts, I'm entitled to throw heat for a few days, days which will assuredly shake the world like an old Mustang convertible crashing through East River pot-holes on bald tires, way, way too much engine and busted springs. In the drag-race to the United States presidential election, I'm being deluged with information, as we all are, we can all feel it building, and if I re-published every top-notch story I received in email (especially the past week), well...that would take all day, every day. Which I don't have.

What you take in, comes out, and thank you all for sending those stories. I read them, and fortunately the insurgent mosh pit in the culture war we're winning turns up some lasting stuff, like a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist's take on the meta-questions. My wife passed on a post by Jane Smiley (A Thousand Acres, 1992), a disciplined, scalpel-sharp writer and journalist who cuts away nuance and leaves essence, sharing glimpses of a possible, likely, necessary future, the basic qualities of its tenor and tone. It's not an easy future, rather, in a way, it is the reverse. But at least it will be aware:

"...the right wing experiences the world as cruel and arbitrary, they have no inhibitions about enhancing that cruelty -- as in "Hurricane Katrina", as in "Iraq War", and in "Abu Ghraib".

This is the world we have been living in for the past thirty years.

In a week, we have a chance to leave this world behind. If we look at our two candidates, the differences between them are stark. John McCain, who was raised by and accepts the authoritarian model, is evidently never at peace. He is hot-headed, erratic, and has been remarkably cruel. He claims to have principles, but his principles change every time he loses his cool. The more he is pushed, the more it becomes evident that he lives by his own selfish desires -- for money, for power, for women. He's is a classic avoider, who can't even answer the simplest question -- if something "unpleasant" comes up, he changes the subject.

Barack Obama rarely changes the subject, because he is fully capable of looking at an issue and considering it. He seems to have been reared in a non-authoritarian household, by a loving mother and loving grandparents. He thinks that the world is a rational place that can be understood and modified. His own family seems happy and loving. Right wingers think he is shallow, but he isn't shallow -- he's well-adjusted. And we've had two whole years to poke him and prod him and discover this. Obama has grown through campaigning because he has learned from it. McCain gets ever smaller and more weird as he campaigns because he doesn't understand what is happening to him.

When we choose between these two men, we are choosing between two worlds -- the world of ignorance, fear, manipulation, and cruelty, and the world of rational investigation, weighing of options, and planning. This world is a world where sexual preference is not such a big deal, salvation is not an eternal mystery, and life goes on. It's a world where bad things happen, but there is no malign Godly intention behind them. It is world that understands the temptations of human nature and attempts to deal with them rationally and systematically. Some of these attempts will fail, but on balance, not as many as have failed in the last twenty-five years."

Observations like these, insights into the hearts which makes systems beat, are why we're increasingly subjected to barrages of lies and misdirections from the Mercenary Media every day. For the other side, screaming is now the normal mode of communication. For our side, our alien mediators have decided that it's ok for us to have hope. Resilient, rational, respirating, resourceful Hope.

The McCain Prescription For America's Health Care

Here's what John McCain wrote in the new issue of Contingencies, the exciting bi-monthly magazine for the American Academy of Actuaries:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Available in a .pdf file, John's plan, Better Care at Lower Cost for Every American, explains that the Liberian Medical Model (LMM) offers a promising roadmap to innovation. Liberia's health care system is completely free of state regulation, so innovative products are naturally super-abundant. Also, outcomes-based witch doctors are the backbone of the compelling system, and these doctors compete so vigorously they sometimes kill each other, eating the deceased medicine man's brain in order to capture his healing powers.

LMM is far more cost-effective than the current US health care system, is even better at customer service, and might duplicate the last decade's banking industry miracles. Sign us up, John!

Does Life Begin At Rape For The Republican Base?

What with the recent excitements and claims on time, I've sat too long on a news article Lord Wife passed on from The Frontiersman, Alaska's newspaper. It's just the story those Special Republicans in your life need to know about: Sarah Palin isn't pro-woman. She's more like a Moosellini, and she was for rape before she was against it. Once upon a time, back in 2000, then-governor Tony Knowles signed a law expressly intended to stop the Wassila police department from charging rape victims for their post-assault exams:

The new law makes it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims insurance companies for the costs of examinations that take place to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault did occur.

When the law was passed, Police Chief Charlie Fannon's reaction was to bitch that it might cost his department an extra $5,000 to 14,000 per year. Who was responsible for such blatancy? Sarah Palin. Yep. Charisma-saurus fired Fannon's predecessor in 1997, a man who had not thought it appropriate to bill rape victims $1,200 for their "rape exam kits." And don't tell me she wasn't aware of what was going on: the governor of Alaska publicly slapped her policy down.

The story of how Sarah Palin privatized rape in Wasilla is spreading through the blogsphere. Hopefully it will reach mainstream coverage, as it should on oppugnant Base States like North Carolina which jackboot their rape victims in similar fashion. It's not benign neglect. This is the lowest, most niggardly, mean-spirited, screwed-up pie-eyed pile of puritan crap in the whole vile bumper crop of government-as-business bullshit. It's preying on victims at their most violated and vulnerable, as in, "Oh, you were raped? How unfortunate. Here's our $2,000 bill for your police exam, doctor's exam, lab tests, and nurse assistance."

I made a $10 donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, and the thank-you recipient is the McCain campaign, as suggested by Firedoglake affiliate TBogg:

In discussions with various people in my real life (not the Demonic Conservative Ridicule Machine I play at night) I find that people are willing to brush off or justify Sarah Palin's lack of experience, qualifications or, well. smarts because of her novelty factor. But the one thing that stops them dead in their tracks is the story of Sarah Palin and the Pay As You Go Rape Kits:

I sat with a rape victim during the “harvesting of evidence”. Mascara smeared eyes stared blankly out from a cave of shame. “We’ve got swimmers,” announced the forensic tech in the lab next door. My friend didn’t look surprised. In her 60’s, she was still asked if she felt the need for emergency contraception. Surviving the process would have only been compounded and made worse with an itemized bill; victimized twice courtesy of Sarah Palin and the city of Wasilla.

Much can be learned about the Palin Administration’s family values from reviewing their spending priorities. Former Chief of Police Irl Stambaugh included forensic rape kits (up to $1,200 per kit) in his budget requests. He was fired by Palin in 1997. In her termination letter, Palin wrote, “…I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla. Therefore I intend to terminate your employment. . . ” Staumbaugh headed the police department since it was created in 1993. Before that, he served 22 years with the Anchorage Police Department rising to the rank of captain. Sarah Palin hired Charlie Fannon as the new Wasilla Chief of Police and said it was one of her best decisions as mayor. Fannon eliminated the forensic rape kits from the budget. Though the number of rapes weren’t reported, Fannon claimed it would save Wasilla taxpayers $5,000 to $14,000 a year.

When Eric Croft, a Democrat Legislator from Anchorage, learned of Wasilla’s policy, he drafted HB 270, which Governor Tony Knowles signed into law. The new law made it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims’ insurance companies for the costs of examinations to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault actually occurred. Upon signing the law, Governor Knowles said, “We would never bill the victim of a burglary for the cost of gathering evidence, nor should we bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies.”

Wasilla Police Chief Fannon protested the new law stating it would require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams. Really? Are the true costs of sexual assault and forcible rape in a community only measured and reflected in the dollars spent on the forensic rape kit?

God only knows how Sarah Palin would answer that question and, as we well know, she ain't talkin'.

Fortunately the state of Alaska saw fit to remedy the benign neglect that characterized Pailn's attitude towards rape victims. But there is still something that you can do for all women in all fifty states since they can hardly count on Vice President Palin to look out for anything other than her own blind ambition.

Per an email I received last night (and also noted here):

Instead of us all sending around more emails about how horrible Sarah Palin is, let's all make a donation to Planned Parenthood.

In Sarah Palin's name.

And here's the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.

Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website

You'll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online"

The minimum donation is $5 ...and did I mention that it's tax deductible?

Being a slow blogger has its rewards: ABC News is reporting online that Sarah Palin actively impeded and de-funded an anti-rape initiative in Alaska, a state which has the highest rate of sexual assault in the country. The initiative was formulated by Public Safety Commissioner Dan Moneghan, whom she fired.

OK, So Maybe Obama Won't Win Georgia

This is the probably best signage I've seen yet out of the McCain campaign, brilliantly themed as grass-roots folk art. It's in Florida, but they filmed "In the Heat of the Night" in Georgia or Mississippi or someplace with swamps, so I'm going for the Virgil Tibbs angle. It's in a town called "Barefoot Bay." From the actual news story, here's what the man displaying the new McCain slogan has to say:

Lacasse put the sign in his front yard four days ago. ‘If I see anybody touching that sign, I got a club sitting right over there,’ Lacasse said.

The next lawn sign for McCain supporters will read: "Obama Half-Breed Muslin Lawyer."

The Case For American Mania

On one morning when my wife and young son were to go on a trip, I woke up at 4:02 AM, having had almost 5 hours of good sleep. My son was right next to me, covers thrown off as usual, his feet digging under my shins. At 5:30, I tried to steal away downstairs to grab a laptop and work before taking them to the airport. Halfway down, a wooden stair creaked in the dark, and my beloved child sat bolt upright and demanded: "Who said that!??"

He is an American. That is to say, he shares behavioral features commonly described as distinctly American--he has a high degree of "get up and go," all curiosity packed intensely into a burning ball of energy. These qualities are blessings, to be sure, but ones not unalloyed on a personal level. If scaled upwards into larger organizations, they would be recognizable, pronounced, and always looking for trouble.

At this very moment, off the top of your head, you could certainly recite at least 5 ongoing whacked-out things about America. And why is this so? A far more homogenous nation, Japan for example, which I assure you is completely insane, is only so on a few dimensions. Ditto Germany. And England, oh, you're definitely a rival, England, culturing your eccentricities like yeast strains in Public Trust, but can you really hope to compete on our scale of self-aggrandized Special Ness? I think not.

Maybe it's not an accident that my son (aka Lord Running Boy), his mom, and to a lesser extent, me, share a newly studied condition called Restless Leg Syndrome, which is associated with growth factor genes MEIS1, BTBD9 and MAP2K5 and is 5-10 times more common in populations of Northern European descent than of Asian, African, or Mediterranean. There's no effective cure. Many Americans I've known have something of this "movement urge" quality, for example a longest-term girlfriend always fidgeted while waiting in line, same as me. Whereas I've not much run across that in distant habitudes. In myriad Old-World queues, I've stood and noted how they form wordlessly, by automatic consent, its members then exhibiting the patience of cattle, the posture of glaciers. Americans, by contrast, must frequently be told to form lines, then reminded. We find the word "queue" repellent, and therefore employ it only when conversing in Latin.

I've begun to suspect that we and I, along with millions of our fellow citizens, share a genetic mutation--and that there exists a biological, self-selected basis for the crazes of our nation. If you live abroad, you will eventually recognize Americans strictly by their walks: aggressive, rolling, forward angles, lots of arm/shoulder movement. Europeans walk possessively, far less arm movement, posture further back with a tendency to glide. Asians, well, they almost vanish at times, and could probably walk unnoticed through an Alice in Chains mosh pit. Generally, where nature leaves off and nurture takes over is mysterious, but Americans can be spotted when not walking, too. I've been sitting mutely in foreign coat, clothes, hat, haircut, and shoes, reading a foreign book or drinking a foreign drink when people approached to ask me a question in English. They could have been reading behavioral signatures, true, but Germans have also reflexively decoded my ancestry, a good part of which is from there, while correctly noting a Czechoslovakian influence.

Jack Kerouac perfectly captures American cultural distinctions throughout 'On The Road,' a book he wrote in 20 days using benzedrine and a 120-foot roll of typing paper. It explores America, criss-crosses its essence, and revels in restlessness while an archetypally manic Neal Cassady searches for "it." Cassady isn't alone. In one anecdote, two big farmboys from Minnesota pick hitchhikers up on their flatbed Chevy truck on the way to California. Blonde Swede-descended bats out of high-decibel hell, they drive through the night, eight unmuffled cylinders banging the air for speed, wooden planked bed kicking up violently over bumps following characters who would hot-rod Southern California. In other forms of wildlife, new traits are expressed quite rapidly as environmental pressures draw out mutations. Humans have shown varieties of imaginative and remarkable knowledge-based adaptations to environmental circumstance, but in the migratory magnet of the American Experiment, have we unknowingly bred a hyper-culture? It would explain much, so let's take a crack at it.

Freud believed all psychotic disorders are forms of narcissim; with mania, one becomes the anointed, the savior, the One with ecstatic insight and a license to redeem everyone and everything if they can only be made to comprehend, to see, to agree. With dementia praecox and depression, one is singled out for crucifictions, is helotized, degraded, paranoia transforming politesses into Parthian shots. Dr. Ronald Fieve, the psychiatrist who pioneered lithium treatment for patients with bipolar disorder, gave us a clue. Years ago he noted that 90% of North Americans who come under treatment are diagnosed as manic-depressive, only 10% schizophrenic, remarkable in that the percentage of these clinical pathologies is reversed in Europe.

I'm not a geneticist, but as an observer of human history, I'm well aware that even in the face of war, persecution, and famine, for every 2 people who flee, 98 stay put; only prolonged starvation causes mass migrations. This is entirely consistent with primate behavior, where those most likely to migrate are the edge-dwellers, usually aggressive low-level males. They leave their tribe (the term is used intentionally) not because they're driven out, but because they seek opportunity and are optimistic enough to countenance risk, unattached enough to leave their loved ones.

The migrant monkeys and apes who make it through the meat gauntlet to seed a new troop are the smartest and most hardy, so in their new troops they often wind up on top, creating species-level evolutionary impacts. Some of my other forebears crossed the Atlantic in what were accurately called "coffin ships," and despite the Great Famine, despite the lethality of Black '47 and years to come, more of the Westies stayed in Ireland than ever left. Even under the worst circumstances, the ones who crossed the water were the most motivated and the most dissatisfied, traits which they passed down culturally.

Accordingly, if I were a geneticist, to prove my case for American Mania I would search for studies that look along mammalian pleasure stations, the dopamine receptors. Examples are readily found: "Dopamine D4 Receptor Exon III Polymorphism Associated with the Human Personality Trait of Novelty Seeking;" Evidence that the Dopamine D4 Receptor Is a Susceptibility Gene in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; and "Population Migration and the Variation of Dopamine D4 Receptor Allele Frequencies around the Globe."

Well, then. People who can get up and go, they echo or amplify a core human evolutionary advantage. We got the hell off the Savannah and went looking for the smorgasbords of our prophecies. Whether it was catastrophe, longing, or wild hairs, something made us leave behind the security of our lakes in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. The D4-7 allele is a comparatively young recombinant outlier which differs by 6 sequential mutations from the common DRD4 alleles, and the American population is full to the gills with it. To quote the team of the latter migration study above, "we propose that this (D4-7) allele originated as a rare mutational event that nevertheless increased to high frequency in human populations by positive selection." The optimisms which can shift into pitiless, uncontrollable ecstasies, the energies which can be encased in the painful thralls of ADHD, they are our birthrights.

There are a host of implied linkages about how our genetics shaped the American interpretations of commerce and capitalism, winner-take-all competition as tied to Smithian evolutions, and greater-sum game theories. But if I wanted to write a book about it, and someone will, I would no longer be a knock-about blogger, would I? Therefore I'll just climb up on de Toqueville's imposing back:

"Choose any American at random and he should be a man of burning desires, enterprising, adventurous, and above all an innovator. The same bent affects all he does--his politics, his religious doctrines, his theories of social economy, his domestic occupations--he carries it with him into the depths of the backwoods as well as into the city's business."

(Democracy in America, Vol. I, Pt. II, Chapter 10)

That's still how Europe sees us. Like an aching knee foretells the storm, every day I stare down the ugly barrel of what I know is an epic, unfolding seizure in the American Experiment. Every week I give a thought to leaving, just like all my grandparents or great-grandparents did, just like the majority who have ever settled here, be they rapacious Vikings, religious nuts financed on a stock swindle, Scots-Irish Picts looking for somebody to shoot, huddled puking masses waiting to jump ship, economic refugees slaving over gourmet meals in L.A., or the elite and brilliant scions of India out to make a Silicon Valley fortune. Where else would we go? We have traveled the world, and it is not enough.

Many now argue for American post-exceptionalism, and I positively ache for it, but it's not that simple. That much must be confessed; I and my country-mates are genetic outliers. A collection of mutants, our bodies process the very pleasures of life differently, and we are a manic nation. Quod erat demonstratum, U+220E. At the very least, and more charitably, we are comparatively hyperactive and cannot alter our inner structures.

The next time we hear someone preaching crazy-ass moonshines from our national podium, there's a good chance they actually mean them, but require medication. Self-knowledge, after all, is a most valuable tool for managing temperaments, moods, reactions, selves, nations. We are Americans. Brown, yellow, black, red or white, we're crazier than thou and our genes went through serious shit to make it this far. We don't need an economist. We don't need an enabler-politician. We don't need a preacher. We need a good psychiatrist.

Sarah Palin's News Roundup

Believe it or not, I've been arguing for days with various smart folk that the Republican VP choice on McCain's behalf was brilliant. A gamble, sure, but a bold one which shows a real grasp of the country. First off, it was far better than McCain's top picks, ending his ongoing, agonized personal debate between the Toady Party's Joe Lieberman and the Desperate Housewives show's Nicolette Sheridan. Having only met Sarah Palin once, big-on-blondes McCain didn't remember her name and after repeated promptings, got impatient and said, "Whatever! Hey, I'm just the candidate--if Karl Rove says I'll run with a flock of flamingos, what choice do I have?"

Really, though, Rove & Co. outdid themselves on this one. Ha-ha-ha, change? You want change?? Palin is a Fundie who sports an impressive resume for the 80% of America which reads nothing except free People, Us, and tabloid periodicals you find at beauty parlors, dentist offices, church foyers and oil change franchises. She is perfect for the 95% of America that thinks 'Foreign Affairs' refers to the upcoming Boris and Natasha movie starring the "Beef, It's What's for Dinner" spokesman Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson (who recently broke up with Lance Armstrong!).

Palin, a former Alaska runner-up for the Miss America Pageant who married her high-school sweetheart, has also been a sports anchor, a small-town mayor, has 5 children, is a no-rapes-barred pro-lifer, and before being governor of the Toughest State in the Union for the past two years, was Alaska's Oil and Gas Commissioner. She catches salmon, is a former secessionist, wants creationism taught in schools, shoots caribou, hunted bear as a child, she commands the Alaskan National Guard, and was once on a jet that re-fueled in Ireland. People keep telling me how these are bad things, and I reply, "Don't you get it?! This is nothing less than a breakthrough in American Politics. It's like we're primates picking at grubs and the monolith from the movie 2001 appears above us and says, 'Finally--the Trailer Park President has arrived!!'"

Seriously, check your rationality at the door, it doesn't belong inside the US ballot box. Rove & Co has their psychographic act down and the lurps are on the case. Exhibit #227 in How Not to Think About America: Steny Hoyer, US House Majority Wet Noodle, last Friday called Palin "a worse choice for VP than Dan Quayle." Precisely, Steny my shell-shocked glossolalia victim, precisely. Quayle, back in those distant, beatific days of Acadia, was famous only for his ingratiating dumbness and cheerful blondeness, and if I remember correctly, he became George Bush Senior's Vice President after they won the god-damned election together, Steny you good-for-nothing Congress-bastard! (Calm, soothing thoughts, breezes, pretty butterflies landing on flowers.) So...what kind of sick elitist allows themselves to go around being called "Steny," anyway?

Now the Republicans have an improved, supercharged version of Dan Quayle. In fact, to the evangelicals, Palin makes Dan Quayle look like Dustin Hoffman when he played 'Rainman.' As America's first VPILF, she did not disappoint, delivering her acceptance speech, "I Will Break America's Glass Ceiling With These Award-Winning Breasts" to thunderous applause while McCain (I am not kidding) approved of her nether regions. She has dominated the media play ever since, even fueling wild speculations she covered for her daughter Bristol by claiming her illegitimate Down's Syndrome baby as her own. Jesus, you just can't make this stuff up.

Yeah, she has a few scandals going and is insane in that special way that's so common among people who long for Armageddon. But she gave a speech in Texas (back in April, when she was already being considered as the VP pick) apparently with amniotic fluid leaking down her leg, then she hopped a 10-hour flight to Alaska so her commercial fisherman husband could drive her to their little home-town hospital and she could have a baby. That might have been incredibly dumb, but far more importantly it was tough. The Fundies aren't disturbed by a pregnant teenager here, a fired ex-brother-in-law there. C'mon. They identify with that shit, and they will reach for their unmaxed credit cards to give money to the McCain campaign when their preachers tell them to.

Let's face it: Sarah Palin is someone right wing evangelicals, the biggest political force in American history, can get behind. And that's not even getting into her possible resonance with women. It'll be very interesting to see how the scandals play out, but the ones on the table right now probably don't shake core appeal. (And since when have scandals prevented most Republicans from getting elected?) Presidential politics are emotional politics, and whichever way you slice it, naming a Fundie as VP reinvigorates The Base--something a McCain, a Romney, a Lieberman, a Pawlenty could never do. I predict that the next McCain announcement will be that they've raised more donations than in any month before.

(Update Shocker: The atheists who run Us magazine came out with a hard-hitting cover that's on the stands now, themed 'Babies, Lies, & Scandal.' The word you're looking for Mitt Romney, is schadenfreude. Watch for it on your next supermarket trip, with bonus reportage on other shocking teen pregnancies.)

(Update Shocker 2: The NYT is reporting his team couldn't move Oldfinger off his Lieberman Fixation until just 2 weeks ago. Infighting would explain the story's theme of incomplete vetting, making it more likely Palin hoodwinked 'em on something big. Here's hopin'!)

Why American Presidents Must Pander To Crazy People

Short answer: there are crazy people here in abundance. In fact, they've become our #1 export. They're homicidally ignorant and will stay that way. The funny thing is, the crazier and more abundant they are, the more motivated they are to vote. If, as I assume, you are mostly sane and really, really don't like this fact, you might consider working in Switzerland, which is always looking for good contractors, is beautiful, peaceful, pays top Euro, and has an awesome state-run pension plan. Oh, and everybody who's Swiss is rich. I tried working a spell there and wholeheartedly recommend it. As a bonus, the politics in Switzerland are so boring they don't elect Prime Ministers, they just pass the office along round-robin style. You can ask a Swiss who their next PM will be and they'll purse their lips, scowl at you for asking an impudent question, and after an embarrassing pause say, "These things do not concern you. But I think perhaps Appenzell is next. They haven't had it for a while."

Between July 4th and November 4th, the Obama campaign will move uncomfortably right in order to cramp McCain's political space. Obama has already branded himself in the archetypal mold of JFK, as a fresh, genuine leader unsullied by palace life. He risks diluting a successful brand and dissatisfying Democrats enough so they'll vote for Nader. His potential reward is winning the Independent voters who usually decide elections, and perhaps more critically, reducing Republican motivation to vote at all. While I don't quite expect Team Obama to start singing country songs ("By golly gosh darn damn, my fellow Americains. Pick up the truck and fry the bacon, we got a hoe-down in the makin!") or riding in an M1Abrams tank, it's not a hard calculation to see they'll be going center-right. Into the Landslide Territory.

Voters in democracies long for authenticity from candidates and leaders, making it paradoxically easier to exploit that longing. My main criticism of Obama's pandering speech to the Merchants of Mid-East Death, the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), was that he forgot to wear a yarmulke. Israelis have a big vote, and maybe more consequently, it would be child's play for them to set up a massive car bomb at a Detroit campaign stop and hang blame on the 250,000 Arabs who live there. During an election, the only reasonable question to ask AIPAC is,"How can we make you happier?" The competing candidates have to read the desires in America's cultural landscape like a General's staff surveys the battlescape of a military campaign. Their positioning, or manufactured authenticity, will have much more to do with the voting blocks than with themselves, or about any fundamental policies, and both McCain and Obama are prepared to imitate Silly Putty.

Obama will be taking his daughters wild boar hunting, doing 200 sit-ups per day and getting a tattoo that says, "Freedom Isn't Free" across his newly ripped abdominals. These details will be leaked to the press at the appropriate time. McCain will donate to sperm banks to demonstrate his virility and tap out press conference answers with a chunk of concrete in Morse code, just like he did in the Hanoi Hilton. Those are the kind of stunts it takes to get the Marginal Middle vote in this country, and if you don't believe me, picture Hillary Clinton downing shots of uncut Jim Beam whiskey. She did it without throwing up, it was pandering at its most transparent. It worked, and that was with Democrats. Obama is going to piss sane people off because he has no choice.

To wit, the progressive blogsphere is seething with disappointment over his vote supporting FISA immunity, i.e., that telecom providers cannot be prosecuted for spying on citizens for Bush-Cheney in the name of national insecurity, and by extension that the Two-Headed Dicks will never be punished for their crimes. This betrayal came after he had stoked progressive hopes by making "restoration of the Constitution" promises in his earlier campaign. Well...it's no longer the same campaign. Now he's running against a Republican, and he doesn't want to repeat the horrible, suicidal strategic mistakes of Gore and Kerry, who thought they could run as slightly different versions of the Bobbsy Twins but lost to the Lowest Common Dubnominator. As Obama put it to his staff after wrapping up his party's nomination, he will "have to be a better candidate" to win the general election. Voting for FISA immunity was clearly the right thing to do as a candidate because he took a sure angle of attack completely away from McCain.

This is the brutality. This is how the brutality works: at minimum, Obama must be proud that Jesus was an American. If he isn't, then he doesn't want to run this asylum. Policies can always be fixed if you're President, especially now, when a President can legally have people buried alive. But we'll discuss Congress at another time. Obama, explaining his FISA vote, said he'll go back and change immunity after he seizes power and runs the country on Black Panther Party principles. Whether he ultimately does so or not, campaigns are about winning elections, winning requires maneuvering, and maneuvering means carefully changing positions to maximum advantage so you choke off your opponent's windpipe.

It's all about claiming ground, seizing resources, and blunting the enemy's advances--just like war, as de Toqueville remarked about our two-party democratic system, the elections are typically winner-take-all. The American way of choosing Presidents has many egregious flaws, but it's somewhat like an institutional revolution--the people who bet on the wrong horse get to eat the winner's manure for at least 4 years, and the people who won get to feed it to them. God knows I'm sick of what Republican shit tastes like, so please bear that in mind when I'm dismissive about casting votes for shining knights in principled armor who ride around trailing Sancho Panza. No, this is my country: remember how Dubya said he was the most bipartisan candidate since Errol Flynn, a Uniter not a Divider? Hahahaha! Yeah. That was sincere, all right. And yet, Independents bought it.

It's understandable for our politicians to be inauthentic, to hide un-folksy things about themselves. It's also no coincidence that most of them are lawyers who were trained to use the camouflage of sincerity like ninjas are trained to use night. Besides, falsely posturing for gain is a human repertoire. My son, a.k.a. Lord Running Boy, has been known to test various crying expressions out in front of mirrors, most recently in the passenger-side rear-view mirror of our car before an outing, like he was doing a quick rehearsal for later use: "OK. If they say no to ice cream, I'll hit 'em with this, a variation of You Stepped on My Hand." Politicians are like that, only they're seasoned professionals who have competed in front of audiences for money. Is it any wonder their addresses are outcome-oriented?

Obama writes most of his own speeches and actually understands what he's saying. In itself, this is odd, and is in no way necessary to win an election. For example, even before he had Alzheimer's, Ronald Reagan never had a full grasp over his speeches; he was a Hollywood studio actor who had specialized in emoting sincerity, concentrating conviction, good cheer, and in not blowing his lines. Every speech was posturing, with precisely the same earnestness as when he did cigarette ads, which you'd think would've been worth remembering.

There are tells, of course. Oliver Sacks, the NY-city based neurologist, once had to answer an emergency call to the floor of his mental health facility because all the patients on the aphasic ward were laughing hysterically. They were watching a Reagan speech, and because the physical gestures were inappropriate for his words, their disconnected speech centers thought he was the funniest thing they'd ever seen. Nixon tried optimistic gestures, only he was stiff and edgy about it, usually while wearing the facial expressions of a cabin fever victim. Like he was hiding an axe behind his back, sidling up close to slam it into your brainpan. And watching Mitt Romney (former candidate for this Republican nomination) closely was like, wow, like seeing a Picasso painting come to life. Hortatory cubism. He didn't win, just got amazingly more than zero votes.

We fall for this because we want to. Ronald Reagan was only halfway decent at the act, yet he's revered as Morning in America, the best politician of our lifetime, The Gipper, destroyer of communism, Mr. Genuine, consummate orator, Mr. Likeable, Uncle Ronnie. Yet he was the same neurotic actor freak with Miss Anorexia Nervosa for a wife, whose children all hated him and who gave previous speeches like these:

This Christmas, I'm sending Chesterfields to all my friends. That's the merriest Christmas any smoker can have--Chesterfield mildness plus no unpleasant after-taste!

Unpleasant after-taste? As Hunter S. Thompson said in the opening to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "You poor bastard. Wait'll you start seeing the bats." Obama needed soaring rhetoric to win Democratic voters over and displace the entrenched proprietorship of an ineffective, highly corrupt party. Check, done. He doesn't need much of the same to beat a dogged, ill-tempered Pug Party which can't move or think very well and, at this point, just charges forward to kill. The last thing he needs is to play up his progressive authenticity, which he possesses, but which is now far more of a liability than a strength. He has to "pass."

His overall election strategy will be to deride McCain as "predictable," and to associate him tightly, inescapably with the sordid deeds of the Republican party, a body arguably responsible for the all-encompassing mess we're in. Even if you and I know the reality is far more complex than that, it will negate whatever advantages McCain has. Shorthand: Republicans Are F***ers. McCain Is A Republican. Dumb War. Bad Economy. High Gas Prices. Bad Ju-Ju. Change!

Blaming an entire party and welding your opponent to it is straight out of Reagan's famous "There you go again!" debate playbook vs. Carter, made into a theme. McCain's only unassailable differentiation lies in repeating, "When I was a prisoner of war..." If he does that much more, even the denizens of the Reich Wing will want to gag, and it plays right into the Predictable Brand. As it is branded as Just Another Republican, it's very likely the McCain campaign will be forced into wild errors. (Probably their best play is to brand Obama as a radical socialist who is hiding his real agenda, since there's much in his past to validate that view. Going there was a mixed bag for the Hillary campaign, so they didn't.) In any case, the Pugs will have to make an early, emphatic retreat behind the Ugly Fear Line which, once again, plays into the Obama campaign's strategy. They're running a different race, one stressing generational politics. They actually want the opposition to run commercials with black look-alikes posing as muggers and carjackers: "Go ahead, bring on Willie Horton. It'll mean you're screwed."

Obama doesn't need to abandon his JFK approach, his positive campaigning or Brand of Change. He can introduce new issues under that umbrella and maintain its overall tone. His message, sense of timing and tactics seem similar to FDR's, who also realized when an estate-wide political transformation was required and was able to craft and execute a successful bipartisan message. What Obama must do is augment his progressive themes with pragmatism so he "becomes" more like the country he's asking to elect him. Doing so will box McCain in and blunt his strong suits: security, bipartisanship, and knowing how to bomb civilians.

You can bet the Obama staffers keenly recall how Hillary took votes away when she started morphing into John Wayne and making off-hand remarks like "Dust my britches and call me a tumbleweed." The tough posturing gets results because it assuages the massive insecurity of the American psyche. It's also practical. Independents are often swayed by tough talk because it saves them time, and they devote about two minutes per month to thinking about politics to being with. Republicans are swayed by it because they spend all their time debating which gun oil is best at protecting rifling grooves from the corrosive effects of black powder. And it makes them feel like home.

I'm sure politicians enjoy it when they get to be honest, as habitually lying or withholding real belief tires out most souls, but it's a dangerous luxury in an election. Honesty is beside the point. The point is to get votes and take power. I love Dennis Kucinich for his bravery and getting impeachment on the table. As President, they'd love him in Switzerland a lot better. He'd be perfect for Appenzell, a region there famous for its short people. I am very fond of Ralph Nader, but must admit to mixed feelings about how he happened to personally screw me and my family, not to mention 20 million Iraqis. Bemoan their fates, and ours, rage against the machine, sure, but please--we live in America. This place is bonkers, and still in massive, murderous denial. We must accept that the core issues, such as the fact that we've already pissed away an empire, are well into the process of killing the earth, and are the most naively, sociopathically cruel nation in the world--won't be directly discussed during the election. Even if we, the candidates, and their staffs all know damned well it's there and think about it every day.

Bill Clinton once scornfully described Obama as "a roll of the dice," and it was the nicest thing I've ever heard about a Presidential candidate. It meant there was a chance for some change. There still is. Right now, however, there's a deal to seal. There is plenty of room for the OB campaign to move "Right" and capture voters concerned with toughness precisely because of his early, outspoken anti-war position. That was a great position. To the Independent and undecided voters, it's also ancient history. How, they ask, is he going to get us out of Iraq? "Cautiously, manfully, steadily," will be the answer. (In truth it's going to be next to impossible for him or anyone else to completely get the US out of Iraq because oil is so militarily and economically important.) His campaign will adapt the rhetoric of Republican toughness and spin it into something else, maybe something like this: "They were Dumb-Tough. We are Smart-Tough." I'll hate it as much as you will, but to use an appropriately American metaphor, it'll win the election just like Grant took Richmond.

Please Give To The Houston Victims Today

I was hoping to find an April Fool's graphic for today, but time was taken up by work and desperately filling out paperwork. This picture came along during a few out-of-context stolen blogging moments, and my media-saturated brain said to itself, "Huh. Self, look at these ex-Presidents pimping to get tsunami donations for Houston. Standing in front of a kid's crayon drawing of a Sky-Crane dropping supplies. And Houston's never going to be hit by a tsunami anyway! Why does it need a fund? Is there a depth to which these swine won't stoop?"

A few seconds later, it dawned on me it was from back when they were fund-raising for the tsunami that hit Banda Aceh and Thailand. April Fool's on me. (The sign's syntax does sorta put Houston first.)

Mental Notes, Come The Revolution

1) Scalia is a troll. 2) Another federal court Bush appointee has allowed a money-laundering Swiss bank to shut down the wikileaks.org site.

Scalia ignores the Constitution and stare decisis to impose his support for cruel and unusual punishment:

The National Lawyers Guild calls on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself from any case coming before the Supreme Court involving the constitutionality of torture as an interrogation technique. In a BBC interview that aired on Tuesday, Scalia defended the use of torture to extract information from persons in custody by law enforcement officials in some cases.

Although no case involving the use of torture is currently before the Court, recent events suggest that such a case may be forthcoming.

Guild President Marjorie Cohn said: “The Guild is appalled that a sitting Justice of the United States Supreme Court has ventured in a public forum his belief that it is justifiable to attempt to extract information from persons in custody by the use of torture. A justice of the highest court in the land, sworn to uphold the Constitution, whose views so undermine the fundamental right of security of the person guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, is unfit to sit on that Court.”…read on

California District Court Judge Jeffrey White denied, without recourse or notice, a popular whistleblower site on the behalf of a foreign bank. This means war in Web-Land:

In a pretty extraordinary ex-parte move, the Julius Baer Bank and Trust got Dynadot, the U.S. hosting company and domain registrar for Wikileaks, to agree not only to take down the Wikileaks site but also to "lock the wikileaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar." Judge Jeffrey White in the U.S. District Court for Northern California signed off on the stipulation between the two parties last week without giving Wikileaks a chance to address the issue in court. ...read on

This is pure First Amendment violation, not even involving security. No different from blocking a newspaper or magazine from publishing on its web site.

(via Crooks & Liars, from Common Dreams, by way of Cat in the Bag)

I'm Glad This Exists, Because I Have Nothing To Hide!

The FBI Deputizes Coroporations, via the Progressive:

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.
InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.

“At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector,” the InfraGard website states. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.”

In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that “350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.”

To join, each person must be sponsored by “an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.” The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

In an interview with InfraGard after the conference, which is featured prominently on the InfraGard members’ website, Mueller says: “It’s a great program.”

The ACLU is not so sanguine.

“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” the ACLU warned in its August 2004 report The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.

Immigration Officials Detaining And Deporting US Citizens

First, they came for the people with funny names...

Marisa Taylor, McClatchy News - Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack was told he would be released. Immigration authorities were finally able to verify his citizenship.

The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens.

Read More...

The Face Of A Terrorist

Cute women from Iceland want to destroy our Homeland.

Erla Osk Lilliendahl, pictured above, flew first-class to New York City with her girlfriends before Christmas, "to go shopping, eat good food, and enjoy life." Sure, lady...sure. Just like Mohammad Atta went to a strip club and ordered champagne with his co-terrorists the night before 9/11.

Back in 1995, Erla came to the US and went undercover, out-staying her visa by three weeks, then coming back the next year to case the joint further. But this time Homeland Security caught the fugitive potential murderer at passport entry in JFK. After babbling incoherent lies about those fateful missing weeks 12 years prior, she was taken away, handcuffed, chained to a wall, interrogated, and left in detention to cool off for awhile. Later, she was marched through the airport in chains, driven to a shit-hole jail cell in New Jersey, shaken or shouted awake when she tried to sleep, and given no food or water. That'll teach her!

She took a longer vacation than was allowed by law, and that required justice. But you see, some of these foreign terrorist women are uppity. After being held for a mere 24 hours and deported back to Iceland, a.k.a. The Axis of Evil Farm Team, Lilliendahl wrote a blog post about her Big Apple caper and called it "the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected." She then complained to the Icelandic Foreign Minister, who met with some minor U.S. ambassador to demand an apology.

The DHS was forced to announce a fictional investigation to "review its work procedures" and to express "regrets." Now, why did she have to go and do that? What a spoil-sport! And she wasn't even tortured. Maybe next time.

Mucking Through The Mortgage Middens

Why does "Wall Street" exist?

Looking down from the bozosphere where theories live, its function is to finance innovation in exchange for higher average returns. Dig deep in the trenches, though, and you savvy up fast. You realize Wall Street's real job is to generate the most important thing in the universe: your bonus. Which should be an ample bounty borne on a padded carpet of minimal risk. That's what Wall Street is from the inside, when it works: a carpet ride designed to cushion you from banality, from boredom, and from risk while fleecing insufferable suckers.

People who want to live large are constantly seeking to engineer a popular sting, to hucksterize a wave of investors into waddling in and parting with their dough. Part tent revival, part holy temple, once a good scam is rolling, nothing can stop Wall Street from riding the wave until it really starts to crash. When the bodies pile up and the cops start to show up. Then the perps go look for a new wave. A lot of Wall Street types should be looking for a new wave right now, because like the S&L, junk bond, and dot-com crazes did before, the beautiful mortgage pipeline is going banzai.

The mortgage craze differs from the priors in an important respect. This time, they got people to bet their houses. Although the easy credit climate wasn't confined to housing, not hardly, housing is more or less the basis of broad prosperity. So when I hear the Fed say yet again that subprime write-offs won't spill over into the general economy, I think, "Hahahaha! These jokers should die."

Like ships with too little ballast, borrowers relying on top-heavy ARMs and exotic new payment schemes are more prone to capsize. Many mortgages are already "upside down," or value-negative, and exponentially more go upside-down every day. As credit naturally tightens across all borrowers, and banks have less money to lend because they've lost it, the process becomes self-accelerating. Even in a white-hot market like the San Francisco Bay Area, easy credit is gone: it takes $175k in household income to buy a million-dollar house, as it always should have. The problem, to quote (via Herb Greenberg) veteran mortgage salesman Mark Hanson, "...we have 90% fewer qualified buyers for 5 times the number of homes." 50x more homes on sale for every qualified buyer in the Bay Area. That's some powerful negotiating leverage.

Union Bank of Switzerland just wrote off $10 billion in quarterly losses and went to Singapore, the government of, for a cash infusion. 6,000 people in Cleveland just showed up to apply for 300 Wal-Mart jobs. These events are connected as directly as strands stretch across a spider's web.What we're staring down isn't a subprime crisis. It's not even a housing loan crisis. It's a systemic global credit crisis, a cancer on the entire financial body which cannot be excised, but can only be induced to recede by either steady or severe credit adjustment. How bad? Hard to tell. At least property has implicit value, unlike many of the financial instruments based upon home mortgage loans. But even in relatively unscathed Seattle, my house's real value could drop up to 50%. The bright side? We like the neighborhood.

Air-Mobile Blogging

The young luggage carrier zipping through the airport above is the biggest worry in my world, and will probably continue to be for some time. He is known in these parts as Lord Running Boy. But there are a lot of things to worry about. For example, I'm very anxiety-prone when it comes to racial differences, gays, and lesbians, these issues occupying spots on Page 27 of my single-spaced list of worries, right after my entry for "Do Koreans eat too much damned garlic?"

Air travel comes early on Page 2 of my List of Worries, whereas it used to be high on Page 1 of my List of Sinful Pleasures. In my younger days there as a word for people like me: "jet-setter." Air travel still held vestiges of glamor, adventure, and mystique. Now I'm not sure what connotations it should carry when a nation is deliberately and sadistically torturing a generation of travelers in the name of security.

Heard of "waterboarding?" Yeah. Victims call it dying, sure, but it's mercifully quick (as long as they don't revive you and repeat the process 5 times a day--then it's very annoying). By contrast, there is no end to "airboarding," a training process intended to induce cow-like obedience and placid paranoia, the abbatoir-queued tableau punctured only occasionally by the insane screams of travelers as they're tazered to death. This might be less disturbing to the seasoned, thick-skinned traveler if the entire world weren't being turned into one giant Airport Arrival Centre. ("Your Honor, there was reason to believe the subject might have had explosive charges/guns/knives/nuclear device/et cetera hidden in his shoes/pocket/jacket/trunk/et cetera, so I had no choice but to shoot.")

But allow me to share my reveries. Once upon a time, I was coddled by Icelandic stewardesses. Yes, that was the proper word, and every one of them would've looked at home in the pages of a men's magazine; they would touch your arm, and I assume were trained if not encouraged to pleasantly violate your personal space by resting their hand on the back of your neck while asking if you needed anything else besides the entire bottle of champagne at your disposal. One of my most delicious meals ever was a rib-eye steak with red wine glaze in the lonely Aer Lingus first class on a Christmas eve. Once upon a time, before Homeland Security, immigration-check guards greeted me with a welcome and a smile, showing what, for lack of a better word, seemed like respect.

Respect was all well and fine, but what about the glamor? You want glamor?? Glamor is when you're waiting in line for the bathroom on a 747 and a girl people pay money to take pictures of taps you on the shoulder and gives you her phone number. She doesn't care if you have to pee like a race horse. You're on a 747, flying to Tokyo, so you must be interesting. You might even be somebody. Over the ice caps of Greenland in the middle of the night, over Siberia, Sakhalin, the Mediterranean, and Formosa, I've imbibed umbrella drinks and smoked cigarettes while standing in the back of the plane with ten other people, having parties. Remember the Mile High Club? It existed.

Now, if people attempt to have sex on a plane, obscure fines and charges are levied and levelled at and against them. Sex on a plane is a crime against humanity, the hapless participants are pilloried in the press as perverted fools, and governments practically come out and say "Ewww!" I suppose it's a security threat of some sort, and potentially inconsiderate, but sex on planes was generally once considered a Good Thing. Or at least an acceptable thing which individual humans might discreetly do, as individuals, against better private judgement. Even for me, it's hard to believe it ever was so, hard to track the dots of change which led us to this place in which a stewardess does not caress my neck but has morphed into a flight attendant and looks at me like she wants to spray me with disinfectant or bug killer and says, "Fill out your arrival form." I ask, "Could I borrow a pen?" She's Dutch, on KLM, and coolly remarks, "You must be an American." This was in business class, and I assumed one could ask for a pen without being directly insulted. "Ah, yes," I reply..."and you must be a German." Then she makes the facial expression for I Will Have You Killed.

The cliche says that all good things have to come to an end. I had hoped it didn't encompass air travel. It was so grand not having to undress, get x-rayed, take off your shoes, squeeze out your toothpaste tube, have your leatherman confiscated, your baby woken up, held on a runway without heat, food, drink, or the freedom to leave your seat to use the bathroom for 6 hours, and it was lovely to never hear a woman burst into sobbing tears of angry frustration and her husband say, "Oh now that's just great! That's all we needed!" It was wonderful not being officiously treated like a perpetrator, a bother to disregard, a malefactor in waiting. It was the best, and I miss it so. Maybe if you work hard enough in the Ownership Society to own your private jet, it gets better.

Have We Met The Enemy, Pt. XIX: Wal-Mart

From Mother Jones:

Just when you think that Wal-Mart had already exhausted every last
possible strategy for screwing over its employees, here comes this
story in the Wall Street Journal. Deborah Shank, a Wal-Mart employee gets
into an accident with a semi and ends up permanently brain-damaged a
few years back. Her Wal-Mart health insurance paid her medical bills, but
she also sued the trucking company for damages. She wins $700,000,
which after legal fees and expenses, nets her about $400,000, which was
put in a trust to pay the nursing home she now lives in.

But Wal-Mart gets wind of the settlement and turns around and sues
Shank for $470,000, the money its insurance company paid for her care
from the accident. Now, the woman is reliant on Medicaid and Social
Security and Wal-Mart apparently got a much needed windfall.

Wal-Mart isn't alone in such behavior. Insurance companies seizing
lawsuit winnings from catastrophically injured Americans is a common
practice that gives lie to the notion that anyone gets rich off a
personal injury lawsuit these days, as insurance companies often get first
dibs on any judgment or settlement in such cases. But Wal-Mart's cruelty,
as always, is extreme in this case. Not only is Shank profoundly
disabled, but while her family was fighting off the company in court, her
son was killed while fighting the war in Iraq. Not even bad PR like this,
apparently, can eke out a drop of compassion from the retail giant.

Not sure if the story is apocryphal or not, or what the suit's outcome was. Will check further before my HQ is overrun and I'm forced to call artillery down onto my own position. (Research credit to Lord Wife.)

Update: the above story is legit, Wal-Mart won its suit, and the practice of health care cost "recovery" by corporations is becoming common policy, written into the fine print of health care plans. From the Wall Street Journal health blog:

A collision with a truck left Deborah Shank brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. A settlement awarded her $700,000 but what’s left of that money — after legal fees — is slated to go to Wal-Mart Stores Inc., her former employer, WSJ’s Vanessa Fuhrmans reports in a Page One story.

Wal-Mart’s health plan covered Shank’s medical costs, which were more than $460,000. Later Wal-Mart won a lawsuit against Shank seeking $469,215 in medical costs, legal fees and interest for the cost of suing.

The move by Wal-Mart is one that’s becoming increasingly popular by employers, insurers and union-administered who are struggling to deal with rising health costs. A provision, commonly found in health plans, allows the employer to recoup settlement money that it paid out in medical costs.

The argument that Wal-Mart and others makes is that Shank shouldn’t be paid for the same medical care twice. (In a similar dispute, a Supreme Court ruling sided with a health plan.) However, Shank’s lawyer argues that she could use the settlement money for future care and she wasn’t fully compensated for her injuries, a common claim in large settlements.

Companies are even starting to go after smaller claims.

A cottage industry of auditing firms helps recoup payments and they estimate that between 1% and 3% of health-care spending is potentially recoverable. Hospital-chain HCA says it has seen recouped claims rise to $1.8 million in 2006 from just under $800,000 in 2000 after hiring one such firm, Benefit Recovery Inc.

“In the past, employers used to think of this as an afterthought,” says Tom Lawrence, Benefit Recovery. But now they’re apparently banking on it as a revenue stream.

My Thanksgiving Prayers Had Nothing To Do With This...

Vice President Dick Cheney was hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat today. Wouldn't it be just...terrible? And just in time for the holidays! Come to think, though, it probably would be terrible for whichever one of his clones they're planning to harvest organs from next.

This knowledge came to me via Young Goodman-Blogger Who is IOZ, who filed it under "Headlines We Love." Above the headline, IOZ put up a video of a pertinent dark song, so that inspired me to go Youtubing for a version of Nick Lowe's 'The Beast in Me.' It's a great song, and someone set the track to images of Henry the Eighth (VIII), and I hereby dedicate it to the health, physical and mental, of our dearest leaders.

Philip Atkinson Lampoon: "Conquering The Drawbacks Of Democracy" Reply

"The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead.”

If you don't recall the name, Philip Atkinson is or was a contributing editor for Family Security Matters (Matters? Yes it does. More than sanity!). He wrote the nostrum above as part of "Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy," an op-ed which made people, myself included, wonder whether he was taking the piss, was part of a government psy-op, or was serious. How a disabled clerk came to write for a flag-waving, cross-bearing organization connected to Dick Cheney, I do not know. But there is a page cached by Google with his article on it, and he has written much in a similar vein elsewhere.

As part of his conviction that the West is a declining civilization, Atkinson expressed a longing for a Bush President for Life, and for America's adoption of the dictatorial ideals of the Roman Empire in its final centuries. I would speculate that he read Toynbee's 1950s reference to democracy being a form of last-phase government, yet lacked the intellectual rigor or background to realize Toynbee didn't mean to impugn democracy as a bad thing, rather, as the highest although naturally impermanent evolution of government.

I have Philip Atkinson's personal email address (smartboard@bigpond.com) so in the spirit of possible fun, I will send him the following:

Dear Philip:

I read your historically informed editorial on FSM with enthusiasm. It was truly a "Must Read," and an affirmation of the most obvious lessons of civilization. Why was it not given more time in the spotlight? Finally, someone came forward and uttered what we really think! My congratulations to you, sir.

I do have some concerns to share, fine points of disagreement on the way to explaining a plan one hopes you'll seriously consider. The main thrust is put thus: is returning to the Roman model and razing one recalcitrant country and killing all its people really enough? Would not a return to quasi-prehistoric times be superior in many ways? By creating a greater gap, as it were, between civilization and barbarian than the Romans enjoyed?

By starting a wider, surprise nuclear war, for example, we could get rid of nearly all undesireables and genuinely start anew. Such a sweeping, albeit ruthless act would engender, in effect, a return to the Garden of Eden. After a few short years of sheltering to escape any fallout and suitable desolation, re-growth would ensue, and there would then be resources for colonization and peace in abundance. I ask you: is this not better in many ways than needing to constantly manage unbiddable, lazy, obnoxious and unruly savages?

While I realize this idea is a less sophisticated alternate to the biogenetic targeted warfare plan now circulating the upper echelon of government (as Operation Vigilant Mutation), it has the decisive merit of being actionable now, and surer. The weapons are proven effective to the task and readily at hand. We need not develop new ones with undemonstrated efficacies bearing unanticipated, possibly counterproductive effects. Whereas a Nuclear Die-Off is as our greatest leader would say, do-able. We can strike immediately.

While I may not object to its central tenets, your proposal for an American Caesar has a somewhat discomfiting drawback, in that you incite treason by advocating the overthrow of the US system of government itself. Even the barbarians who serve as proof of democratic decline did not attempt so lofty a goal--indeed, terrorists have recently proven quite happy with democracy as a system once they held free and fair elections. While your bold approach differentiates you from those terrorists, it also exposes you to certain scrutinies, perhaps by the Department of Homeland Security itself. In short, while theoretically laudable, your plan may prove too domestically ambitious to be practicable.

Finally, your proposal's high risk profile precludes its employment. The hypothesis that punishing one country like Iraq will bring all other countries to heel ignores the risk of retaliation in kind by others, beady-eyed others, who already possess nuclear weapons, and is likely to test false. Sadly, this is where we differ from the Roman Empire, which never contended with Germanni and Picts harboring nuclear missiles. If you live, as you may well, in Washington, D.C. or its environs such missiles might impose brutish and short personal consequences upon yourself. However salutary the object may be, the in toto retaliatory risk from a limited deployment of nuclear weapons for the purpose of an exemplary genocide is, as they say in these deplorably modern times, a "deal-breaker."

No, the central problem with your proposal is not that it goes too far--simply that it does not go far enough. I strongly suggest you lend your support to our Nuclear Die-Off Proposal (NDOP). Your talents of persuasion would be most welcomed, and I think you'll find an inviting and stimulating home for a classically minded intellect. Won't you join us?

The NDOP, Mr. Atkinson, maximizes the long-term odds of survival for enlightened, nobler people such as ourselves. We contemplate pre-emptive strikery on the grandest scale in history, free from the petty restraints of diminutive, ineffective committees. Has a surer cure for a civilisation in democratic decline yet existed? Our enemies will die like flies in an incinerator, which is to say, as humanely as possible under the exigencies forced upon us. We are an elite group, and have formed a Political Action Committee to see the necessities through. We will submit the mock-up links for our interactive web site, "Friends of The Solution," in a following mail. I look forward to your further correspondence and support.

Courage,
Pierce T. Inverieraghty, Esq.

One does what one can. He's right about one thing. The crimes of this administration are so legion there can be no going back for them. If Caesar had returned obediently from Gaul, he probably would've been promptly assassinated by the Senators. If and when this clique falls from power, it would mean jail, or worse. At this point, not just the Bush Administration but the entire nation, the entire "West," shares in these crimes against humanity. Which goes a long way to explaining why the Clintons ("The Surge is working.") are busy donning the Neo-con mantle.