Brainiac Conspiracy

The Light at the End of The Endless Tunnel

Hard to see how we ever extricate ourselves from the economic doldrums unless and until our leaders get serious about reforming our outlaw system of housing finance. Because they weren't serious about it four years ago, and they're still not now:

The financial crisis in 2008 was made worse when Wall Street traders made bets against their customers and the American public. Now, some see similar behavior, only this time by traders at a government-owned company who are using leverage, which increases the potential profits but also the risk of big losses, and other Wall Street stratagems. “More than three years into the government takeover, we have Freddie Mac pursuing highly levered, complicated transactions seemingly with the purpose of trading against homeowners,” says Mayer. “These are the kinds of things that got us into trouble in the first place.”

---Vitelius

Spending Isn't Up, Revenues Are Down

As anyone who has devoted ten minutes to the economics of the recession can figure out. Unfortunately, our Democratic leaders have chosen to spend the last year prattling on about the need for deficit reduction through spending cuts and "entitlement reform" when the real solution to the deficit (besides raising taxes on rich people) is to return to full employment and getting all those jobless people, you know, paying taxes again. Failing to make this point creates a mammoth-sized opening for the lying liars to hammer a credulous news media over "runaway government spending", which isn't really happening but which becomes the overriding issue of our time to the Gregorys and Blitzers in TV Land because Republicans insist that it must be so because deficits can only be caused by spending too much money for the benefit of lazy poor people. Maybe our Democratic leaders would consider, as an alternative, ceasing their endless parroting of right-wing talking points?

---Vitelius

Only a Moron

Would write this:

“Obama’s ratings have been consistently among the most polarized for a president in the last 60 years,” concludes Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones in a memo summing up the results. “That may not be a reflection on Obama himself as much as on the current political environment in the United States, because Obama’s immediate predecessor, Bush, had similarly polarized ratings, particularly in the latter stages of his presidency after the rally in support from the 9/11 terror attacks faded.”

Our guess is that Jones’ latter hypothesis is the right one---that we are simply living in an era in which Democrats dislike a Republican president (and Republicans dislike a Democratic one) even before the commander in chief has taken a single official action.

Uh huh. Remember how many Democrats disapproved of the last Republican President at the end of his first year in office?

Bush begins 2002 still enjoying wide support from the public. His current rating of 83% represents a slight decline from his high of 90%, and is tied for the 19th highest job approval score Gallup has recorded since 1938. Currently, Bush enjoys a 98% approval rating among Republicans, 81% among independents and 69% among Democrats.

How about all those Democrats who disapproved of the President two years later?

Just over half of Democrats approve of the president's job performance, 52%, while 39% disapprove.

Actually, jackoff, Democrats approved of the last GOP President when it looked like he knew how to do his job, and disapproved when it became apparent he didn't. But because the Republican Party is currently caught in the grips of mass psychosis, in official Washington that naturally means that Democrats must be equally psychotic. This is how the law of false equivalencies works---let's call it Cilizza's Law from now on---where Republicans are never fully responsible for anything they say or do because Democrats, you know, are always equally unhinged.

---Vitelius

Not Making My Day

By starting it off with this welcome news, then realizing I live a block away from the Israeli consulate. Oh well, if the truck bombs start detonating on Wilshire Boulevard this year, you'll hear it here first.

As an alternative, perhaps some people in our government would consider adopting policies that would make it less, not more, likely that any truck bombs go off in my quiet and lovely neighborhood this year?

---Vitelius

27 Percent

It really is uncanny how often that number pops up in opinion polls.

---Vitelius

Playing Hardball

With criminals generally does not involve negotiating with criminals ahead of time over the severity of punishment the criminals find appropriate for their crimes.

Besides, whether the criminals agree to pony up $25 or $35 or $50 billion, it doesn't really alter the greater reality that the criminals are fundamentally insolvent and need to be broken up.

Also too, bad, terrible, really bad politics.

---Vitelius

Our Liberal Media

Have never been, frankly, very liberal at all:

The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are still posted abroad.

Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

Yes, it's not a new article, but it's well worth re-reading, especially for those of us (present company included) who had forgotten about it, and for what it portends about the state of our national news media coverage---then and, quite possibly, now:

“There is quite an incredible spread of relationships,” Bader reported to the senators. “You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.”

And to think so many of us were up in arms over the impropriety of "embedded journalists" in Iraq. Who knew the Pentagon was only following tradition?

---Vitelius

Technocrats

Are pretty much the same everywhere: Interested only in efficient outcomes, and free from ideological bias. They simply don't believe in democratic rule.

---Vitelius

Little Blogging Today

Tending to work-related stuff today, and need to take a break from griping about our terminally diseased political system anyway. Or maybe it's just the unbearable inevitability of Romneyhood that's got me trapped in ennui. Whatever, practice random acts of austerity while I regenerate some excess bile.

---Vitelius

The Ethics of Warfare

Always kind of cracks me up when I hear people bringing up the the subject since, well, war is pretty much universally unethical. Even so, for the sake of discussion, it's hard to see how leveraging technology to make war easier and less bloodless to fight is ever going to deter people from waging it. Then again, maybe that's the point.

Still, don't you ever find yourself wishing we'd use some of that money for stuff like soil conservation or food inspection? Like the old saying goes, you can't eat a Tomahawk missile.

---Vitelius

Alchemists

Have at last divined the method for turning shit into gold:

1. Give banks more free money to ease credit markets.
2. Banks hoard the money; credit markets tighten.
3. ???
4. Morning in America!

Meanwhile, people who need some quantitative easing.

---Vitelius

Investors' Darlings

We all know who they are: Plucky entrepreneurs who anticipate market trends by developing innovative new products that regularly exceed their earnings forecasts by logging record sales. Investors take their profits, shareholders reap dividends, consumers get shiny new toys to play with, and jobs are created as the business expands. It's win-win-win-win! Who says capitalism has to be a zero-sum game?

Meanwhile, labor camps.

Also too, sick people:

Apple's reticence was heavily criticised last May, when at least 62 workers fell sick after inhaling n-hexane used to clean touch screens at a Wintek electronics factory in Suzhou. The managers at the Taiwan-owned plant reportedly switched to the noxious chemical---which can cause nerve damage for up to two years---apparently because it dried more quickly than alcohol, thus increasing efficiency.

Hospitalised victims, cited in the new Green Choice video, said they made products for Apple and have written to the company's chief executive, Steve Jobs, requesting an explanation.

---Vitelius

Retaining Top Talent

Is one of the hoariest old canards our job creators offer up to justify their often-outlandish compensation packages. But at least a business case can be made for lavishing huge sums of money onto people if and when they display a genuine talent for increasing market share, profitability, etc., but when they've only proven themselves to be a bunch of dissembling incompetents who've grenaded their own companies, wouldn't it be better for the business to either (a) fire them and replace them with competent people, or at very least, (b) reduce their pay and let them leave if they don't like it?

Although generally he limited cash compensation and made some reductions in pay, the Special Master still approved total compensation packages in the millions. Special Master [Kenneth] Feinberg said that the companies pressured him to let the companies pay executives enough to keep them from quitting, and that Treasury officials pressured him to let the companies pay executives enough to keep the companies competitive and on track to repay TARP funds.

Given OSM's overriding goal, the seven companies had significant leverage over OSM by proposing and negotiating for excessive pay packages based on historical pay, warning Special Master Feinberg that if he did not provide competitive pay packages, top officials would leave and go elsewhere.

It's still one of the great mysteries of our time: Why our leaders allowed a bunch of executives who failed spectacularly to keep their jobs in the first place. They didn't extend this courtesy to GM; why did Goldman and JPMorgan get favored? There are any number of theories you can likely come up with to explain this, but whichever one you choose, none reflects well on the administration.

---Vitelius

Could Have Saved a Lot of Time

Not to mention the expense of flying halfway around the world for the conference in Switzerland of the Very Serious People when you knew ahead of time that the Very Serious People were only going to use the event as another excuse to drink, party, spend lots of their investors' money, and draft the next ransom note with a fresh set of demands. You can read it all here, but in shorthand, it says:

1. Give the banks as much money as they want.
2. Balance your budgets. Pulverize unions.
3. ???
4. Prosperity for all!

Glad we're agreed on that. I was beginning to think that armed insurrection was the only viable alternative.

---Vitelius

A Time-Honored Formula

For leaders the world over: if you have a knotty policy problem, which you have a vested interest in avoiding but which the public is demanding you address, you appoint a commission to investigate the problem and to recommend best practices, even though everybody already knows what the problem is, and what those best practices should be. Then make sure the commission chairs are people who share your agenda and your aims, hand them their marching orders, and move on to the next problem. This delegation of authority serves a number of useful purposes: it allows you to take credit for addressing head-on the knotty problem the public is demanding fixes for; it buys you time in hopes that the public will eventually forget about the problem and move on to other concerns; it provides you with handy political cover when the commission's final report can't agree on what the problem really is or what the best solutions would be; and it gives you a place where you can install other investigators who would normally fall outside your authority but who could cause trouble by launching freelance investigations of their own. I can't say for certain that this is what's happening here, but it sure seems as though our leaders are determined to ignore the true nature of the problem for as long as they possibly can. Too bad the rest of us will have to live with the consequences.

---Vitelius

Income Inequality

Even the world's job creators acknowledge there's a problem. What's more, they're ready to lead by example:

“The global social-economic order will change, if we want it or not,” Pinchuk wrote in an e-mail. In a second e-mail, he said businesses should concentrate on both maximizing profits and assuring “a more just distribution of wealth.”

Pinchuk, who will host an event in Davos about philanthropy moderated by Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton, celebrated his 50th birthday in the French ski resort of Courchevel in December 2010 with several hundred friends. The party featured performances by Christina Aguilera and a troupe of Cirque du Soleil acrobats, according to an account in the Los Angeles Times. Dennis Kazvan, a spokesman for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which is sponsoring the Davos event, declined to comment about the party.

The best way to address tensions over income inequality, Pinchuk said, is for conference-goers and complainers to chat.

---Vitelius

SOTU, STFU, Etc.

The Baron's Digest version:

The Greatest Generation excelled at kicking foreign ass. We must answer their challenge and do more of the same.

Bin Laden, bitches! This President knows how to kick foreign ass, too.

Income inequality "the defining issue of our age. Replaces previous defining issues (financial crisis, global warming, deficit reduction).

Let's throw more money at corporations to adopt business models that they'd be following anyway if our tax and trade laws favored exports and domestic labor.

Let's fiddle with the tax code so people like Mitt Romney pay eminently fair 17.9% tax instead of grossly unfair 13.9% tax.

Let's fire teachers who suck, and pay teachers who are awesome more money. Who decides who sucks and who's awesome? Who knows?

If cash-starved universities can't lower tuition, we'll stop giving them money, which will probably force them to, uh, raise tuition.

Let's use Iraq war money for infrastructure, even though there never was any Iraq war money in the budget to begin with.

We don't recognize Chinese sphere of influence in the Pacific. Even though that same attitude helped drag us into war with Japan 70 years ago.

Our Middle-East policy will still be defined by giving Israel whatever it wants, and by threatening to kick Iranian ass.

We need to shrink the size of the government. Because Abe Lincoln said so.

We need to cut more than a trillion dollars from the deficit. Because I said so.

Let's drill for more oil, even though we're using less oil.

BP must be held accountable for oil spills while we open up more lands offshore for future oil spills.

Let's frack safely for more natural gas, even though there's no such thing as safe fracking. I'll insist on a list of carcinogens the energy companies are using so at least we'll know what's poisoning us.

It's only three years too late, but I'm finally asking Holder to investigate financial crimes, even though he's never needed permission up to now, and we're on the verge of a negotiated settlement with the criminals anyway.

We have expanded our foreign ass-kicking to Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. Let freedom ring throughout the Muslim world.

Killing Bin Laden was awesomely bipartisan, wasn't it?

God bless America.

Grade: Any SOTU speech that goes on for more than an hour is too long. Rhetoric: B. Policy: D. Overall: C.

---Vitelius

We're the Type of Nation That's Built to Last

Works for me. If only.

---Vitelius

Learning Something New Every Day

We're all Paulites now, or something like that. I took this quiz, and guess who won?

On the other hand, the candidate least like me is Romney, which strikes me as something to be proud of. Click on this link to find out who your real candidate is.

---Vitelius

Political Suicide

Looks an awful lot like this.

Could the administration really be that stupid? In a fucking election year? The opposition party may very well be on the verge of nominating a guy to run for President who's a poster child for everything that's sick and diseased about the kind of crony capitalism that most Americans despise, and the White House thinks it might be a good idea to throw a get-out-of-jail lifeline to a bunch of, well, crony capitalists?

I know, I know, 11-Dimensional Yahtzee and all that. But if they really insist on going through with this, they honestly don't deserve to win in November. Besides being wretched policy (essentially setting a future price tag for moral hazard: $1,800 per sucker), it's utterly wretched politics, and the GOP will laugh all the way to the polls reminding their credulous enablers in the Washington news media every day for the next six months that Obama and Team Democrat are nothing more than weak-kneed knaves for a gang of rapacious bankers. And to a certain extent, in an obviously cynical and self-serving manner, they'd be absolutely right. Let's hope this story is being leaked with the intent of tossing a monkeywrench into the machinery because otherwise, there's going to be shitstorm of payback come November.

---Vitelius

Neck and Neck With Bobo

For the title of America's dumbest op-ed columnist:

For months now, even as the rest of the conservative commentariat has gradually resigned itself to the existing presidential field, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol has continued to pine---publicly, unstintingly, immune to either embarrassment or fatigue---for another candidate to jump into the race. He’s dreamed of Mitch Daniels, touted Chris Christie, talked up Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, name-dropped Jeb Bush, and circled back to Daniels once more. He’s quoted poetry on behalf of his cause---Yeats, and (with some revisions) Andrew Marvell. He’s endured snark from the Huffington Post, eye-rolling from Slate, mockery from New York Magazine. But he’s continued undeterred — and in the wake of Newt Gingrich’s South Carolina victory, he was back at it again, throwing out a link to “a new online petition was launched Saturday night . . . at runmitchrun.com.”

And do you know what? He’s been right all along. Right that the decisions by various capable Republicans to forgo a presidential run this year have been a collective disgrace; right that Republican primary voters deserve a better choice than the one being presented to them; and right, as well, that even now it isn’t too late for one of the non-candidates to change their mind and run.

Notwithstanding the nagging little fact that Bill Kristol has been consistently and catastrophically wrong about virtually everything, it's a great little theory.

With one tiny exception. Steve Benen:

Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have already weighed in, and Florida is a week away. I don’t blame Republicans for feeling underwhelmed, at a minimum, by the prospect of a Gingrich or Romney nomination, but it’s past time for the right to come to terms with the reality of the situation.

There are no white knights coming to rescue the party. It’s simply too late. As Eric Kleefeld documented nicely, “In every primary state up through early April, the filing deadlines have passed. That includes the very delegate-rich Super Tuesday of March . . .[F]or a Republican hero to ride in on a white horse, it would take a scenario that verges on political science fiction: A combination of write-in voting where applicable---and for Romney to fully drop out and endorse this new savior candidate, to essentially bequeath his place on the ballot by telling his pledged delegates elected in this manner to go along with it.”

And what about talk of a brokered Republican convention? That’s “not going to happen,” either.

On the other hand, maybe one of Bill Kristol's favorite political figures will appear at the 11th hour to be offered up as a draft nominee at the party convention. It worked out so well the last time they took his advice.

People who don't know shit about electoral politics really should think about covering some other topic.

And congratulations to Steve for a job well done, and for the job yet to come. Have they hired a replacement blogger at the Monthly yet?

---Vitelius

Self-Deportation

Was an awesome idea that Romney proposed to solve our immigration problem last night, and it reminded me of how effective and efficient it has proven to be as a border-security policy tool. Like, remember all those Bosnians who self-deported themselves from Sarajevo back in the '90s, and all the Albanians who self-deported themselves from Kosovo a few years later? Good times!

Snark aside, I think this is a prima facie justification for holding many, many more, not less, of these GOP debates. The more these guys run off their mouths in prime time, the more the American people---outside of the knuckle-draggers---see what depraved little shits they are. I have no doubt that this development is a direct result of voter debate fatigue. Newt is already loathed by the masses, Santo won't even be able to win his home state in a general, and Paul is, well, Paul. Here's hoping Fox, CNN and MSNBC continue to give the voters what they actually need to make the most informed decision they can come Election Day: Uncensored exposure to the wingnut id.

---Vitelius

Lies, Damned Lies, and Oil Companies

Bloomberg's news reporting is usually better than "opinions differ" crap like this, but I guess a certain amount of pimping for the oil business comes along with the territory. I mean, you've got a guy in the White House who is arguably the most business-friendly Democratic President in the last 100 years, a private sector that's flush with record profits, and a gang of rich Republicans job creators in the petroleum industry who insist that he's the most anti-business President ever. Something's gotta give, right?

Of course it does, and it's buried down by the bottom of the story:

The Republican narrative is that Obama is shoveling huge amounts of money to his cronies in the renewable industry, and blocking the real energy that American needs . . . It’s a false narrative. The administration has been focused on green energy, but they haven’t been against fossil fuels.

But then there wouldn't be any story to report, now, would there?

---Vitelius

Flawed Outcomes

They generally flow from false assumptions, and in the case of our leaders, flawed outcomes were all but guaranteed before the game even got underway:

On a frigid January evening in 2009, a week before his Inauguration, Barack Obama had dinner at the home of George Will, the Washington Post columnist, who had assembled a number of right-leaning journalists to meet the President-elect. Accepting such an invitation was a gesture on Obama’s part that signalled his desire to project an image of himself as a post-ideological politician, a Chicago Democrat eager to forge alliances with conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill. That week, Obama was still working on an Inaugural Address that would call for “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

Obama sprang coatless from his limousine and headed up the steps of Will’s yellow clapboard house. He was greeted by Will, Michael Barone, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Lawrence Kudlow, Rich Lowry, and Peggy Noonan. They were Reaganites all, yet some had paid tribute to Obama during the campaign. Lowry, who is the editor of the National Review, called Obama “the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.” Krauthammer, an intellectual and ornery voice on Fox News and in the pages of the Washington Post, had written that Obama would be “a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin,” who would “bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.” And Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard and a former aide to Dan Quayle, wrote, “I look forward to Obama’s inauguration with a surprising degree of hope and good cheer.”

Over dinner, Obama searched for points of common ground. He noted that he and Kudlow agreed on a business-investment tax cut. “He loves to deal with both sides of the issue,” Kudlow later wrote. “He revels in the back and forth. And he wants to keep the dialogue going with conservatives.” Obama’s view, shared with many people at the time, was that professional pundits were wrong about American politics. It was a myth, he said, that the two political parties were impossibly divided on the big issues confronting America. The gap was surmountable. Compared with some other Western countries, where Communists and far-right parties sit in the same parliament, the gulf between Democrats and Republicans was narrow.

Yes, that much is true---inasmuch as both political parties have made pronounced shifts to the right over the past two generations---but the obvious mistakes in judgment here were twofold: Namely (1) that this narrow ideological divide was somehow a good thing that could be leveraged to achieve desirable results, and (2) that a gaggle of right-wing pundits with a proven track record of being wrong about virtually everything that has occurred in this country over the past 30 years was a reliable source to tap for sound policy recommendations.

I think this also goes a long way towards explaining why we still have not reformed our rogue financial system in any seriously meaningful way; why insolvent banks have been showered with government cash but insolvent homeowners stuck in foreclosure have been largely left to their own devices; why extrajudicial killings and detentions are still abetted, and war criminals left unmolested; why health-care "reform" will only improve individual health coverage at the expense of enriching powerful corporate interests and driving a lot of physicians out of business; why unemployment remains depressingly high, working-class wages continue to stagnate, and unions continue to come under assault; why upward mobility becomes less achievable for growing numbers of Americans, and why income distribution continues consolidating ever upward, into fewer and fewer hands. All of these things represent the obvious and all-too-predictable outcome that flowed from failing to understand that much of what ails the commonweal---and what candidate Obama campaigned against in 2008---is the practical byproduct of 30 years of right-wing political and economic theory, and that attempting to seek common ground with the architects and apologists for these same failed practices was insanely foolhardy, not to mention that it necessitated subverting the popular will. Is it any wonder that a loud and angry protest movement would arise from such self-negating tactics? The fact that the Teabillies were mad at the wrong people is really only tangential to the more salient fact that voters generally don't like it when their voices aren't being listened to, and will turn against you in a heartbeat if you're not attentive of their desires. Give the GOP lizard brain trust credit---they saw the growing level of public rage and disillusionment over half-measure post-partisanship, over banker-friendly economics and corporate-friendly healthcare policy, and they harnessed that unrest to gain a political bargaining chip they'd have otherwise never had. Were only Obama and his administration colleagues so perceptive.

Not to short-change the President's legislative accomplishments---there have been quite a few, some of them notable---but when voters have handed you a landslide mandate and huge majorities in Congress with which to govern, you don't start out the game by trying to cut deals with the losers---you move the goalposts to a spot that works to your greatest advantage, and force the losers to cut a deal with you if they want to score any political points. That's not partisanship, it's Horse-Trading 101, and the President's failure to grasp this basic reality of our adversarial style of politics all but assured that what we'd end up with was not the kind of systemic overhaul of our government and financial institutions that was needed (and still is) but a tinkering at the margins of discredited, deficient policies. Three years into his administration, he finally seems to have come to grips with the inescapable fact that he'll eventually be judged to have been a success or a failure not for having governed as a conciliator but for having governed as a Democrat, and to that end he seems to have recalibrated his message accordingly. The only question now is whether it's too late in the game for him and his party to effect the kind of substantive policy changes that were sorely needed in 2008 and are still needed now. Who knows, perhaps some Liberal Renaissance will take seed and flower in a second Obama administration---assuming there even is one---and many of the first administration's shortcomings addressed and corrected. For some reason, though, I'm not too optimistic about the prospects.

---Vitelius

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Whether it's the Federal Reserve throwing free money at our banker overlords that they can sell back for a profit, or private-equity guys leveraging cheap interest rates to load up debt onto troubled companies while collecting huge fees, or even fund managers' Romneyesque income-tax rates, the common operational thread that runs through our job creators' various preferred business models is the process of, yep, income redistribution: Namely, income flowing away from you (via the Fed or Treasury), and towards them, with any losses borne by the government (i.e., you, for a second time). Do you suppose anyone will mention this in any big speeches tonight? Just asking.

(Thanks to Yves Smith for the video link.)

---Vitelius

Saul Alinsky

It's wingnut code for "communist Jew," whether they care to admit it or not, and it's only practical use in political discourse is to induce involuntary mouth-foaming from the faithful. Of that much, at least, they are perfectly cognizant:

One GOPAC memo indicated that Gingrich’s tapes would emphasize the importance of using language as a “key mechanism of control.”

---Vitelius

War Crimes We Can Believe In

I guess it stand to reason, in our Orwellian day and age, that it is an unpardonable offense for ex-government officials to disclose that their former employers no longer feel compelled to obey their own laws:

The Justice Department on Monday charged a former CIA officer with repeatedly leaking classified information, including the identities of agency operatives involved in the capture and interrogation of alleged terrorists.

The case against John Kiriakou, who also served as a senior Senate aide, extends the Obama administration’s crackdown on disclosures of national security secrets. Kiriakou, 47, is the sixth target of a leaks-related prosecution since President Obama took office, exceeding the total number of comparable prosecutions under all previous administrations combined, legal experts said.

Kiriakou, who was among the first to go public with details about the CIA’s use of water-boarding and other harsh interrogation measures, was charged with disclosing classified information to reporters and lying to the agency about the origin of other sensitive material he published in a book. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Liberal Democratic administration, my ass. Greenwald's next column just wrote itself.

---Vitelius

Outsourcing

All those low-paying jobs aren't being shipped to Bangladesh and Taiwan. Many, in fact, are being created right here in the U.S. of A.

Perhaps someone might mention this in a certain speech tomorrow night?

---Vitelius

Nobody Could Have Possibly Predicted

That invading a strategically important country with more-or-less stable political institutions was a bad idea because, among other things, dismantling those institutions and replacing them with unproven alternatives would run the risk of, well, destabilizing the country, possibly to the point of civil war. But of course, many people did predict this at the time, and they were largely ridiculed, or at best ignored, by the Serious Persons of Washington: Fools and Frenchmen, bitches.

But wrong as they may have been, the Serious Persons can always expect someone in our government to cover for their perpetual wrongness:

President Barack Obama may even have made things worse last month when he hosted Maliki in Washington and hailed him as the leader of "Iraq's most inclusive government yet."

"Iraqis are working to build institutions that are efficient and independent and transparent," Obama said.

The speech enraged Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni who is a deputy prime minister.

"What I heard from Obama was deceiving both for Americans and Iraqis," Mutlak told McClatchy. "Obama is telling Americans that they were victorious in Iraq, they liberated the country and Iraqis are now very well situated, and the hero of Iraq, the prime minister, has made an inclusive government in Iraq. But it is the opposite."

---Vitelius

Always Longing for 1995

Because our political discourse was so much more civil then. Good times!

---Vitelius