brainiac conspiracy

Quote of The Day

Ah, those pesky New York booking agents.

Sarah Palin is said to have pocketed a $7 million advance for the 400-page memoir she turned in four months early, but she might not have such an easy time on the lecture circuit.

After quitting as governor of Alaska in July, Palin signed with the top-notch Washington Speakers Bureau, which also reps George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice, hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger, LA Dodgers manager Joe Torre, and magician David Blaine.

Palin's bookers are said to be asking for $100,000 per speech, but an industry expert tells Page Six: "The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot."

Sometimes the free market really is omniscient in its wisdom, isn't it? You betcha!

--Vitelius

But Officer, He Asked Me for a Shot and a Beer

This is easily the most awesome idea ever!!

Starting Wednesday, those carrying concealed weapons are allowed to enter Arizona's roughly 5,300 establishments licensed to sell alcohol, as long as they don't drink. If those bar and restaurant owners don't want guns on the property, they must post a sign indicating that they are not allowed.

. . . the new law was an eventual compromise between those who wanted to preserve business owners' rights and those concerned with gun-carry rights. Rather than allowing "open carries," the law restricts the gun owner to concealed weapons. The gun owner also is not allowed to drink.

Those who do drink while carrying -- or who bring concealed weapons into establishments that have posted bans -- could face Class 3 misdemeanor charges, punishable by 30 days' jail time and a fine of up to $500, according to Steve Duffy, an attorney who represented the beverage association. They also risk loss of their concealed-carry permits.

And who's going to make sure all those drinkers at the bar aren't packing? Bartenders? Waitresses? The hidden hand of the free market?

Okay, whatever. What makes this doubly awesome is the obvious social benefit derived from putting people with lots of guns in close proximity to lots and lots of alcohol:

The correlation between alcohol consumption and criminal behavior has received a great deal of attention. A recent report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (1997) found that 80% of individuals in prisons and jails in this country are or have been major substance abusers. According to the study, 21% of state prison inmates and 11% of federal inmates incarcerated for violent crimes were under the influence of alcohol (and no other substance) when they committed their crime. A United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics survey (1992) noted that 59% of victims of violent crimes reported that the offender was under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. A 1987 report by the Secretary of Health and Human Services cited that "alcohol is a key factor in up to 68% of manslaughters, 62% of assaults, 54% of murders/attempted murders, 48% of robberies, and 44% of burglaries" (Minnesota Institute of Public Health 1995). In addition to violent crimes, the problems of "DUI" or "DWI" (driving under the influence or driving while intoxicated) crimes clearly pose dangers to law-abiding citizens.

I can't wait for us to make the top of this list. Break out those foam fingers, cowboys!

---Vitelius

Fear of a Black Marxist Chicago Olympics

The serious and level-headed pragmatists at Foreign Policy are concern-trolling the Chicago Olympics today. Maybe it's a slow day at the Iranian Affairs Bureau:

All of this makes Obama's Olympic mission a political gamble both at home and abroad. If he pulls it off and brings the games to Chicago, he will add a gleaming, but low-carat, gem to his crown. For there is nothing that fades more quickly from the American mind than a quadrennial Olympiad.

Perhaps, and perhaps not. Those of us who are longtime residents of the West Coast, though, have vivid memories of the '84 Olympics---and in fact, they're still paying dividends, 25 years later.

The lifelong legacy of the Los Angeles Olympic Games, though, goes beyond the athletes themselves. It also busted the myth that the Olympics were a money pit for municipalities. The Los Angeles Games generated $232.5 million dollars in profits, with 40 percent of that ($93 million) becoming an enduring endowment for youth sports in Southern California, administered by the LA84 Foundation. The Games also netted $2.3 billion in economic activity for the L.A. economy. To date, the foundation has funded more than 1,000 youth sports organizations and more than 2 million young athletes.

The City of Chicago forecasts:

• The expected impact in Chicago is $13.7 billion.

• The total expected incremental job creation of hosting the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Illinois is expected to be in excess of 315,000 job-years.

• Of the job-years created, 172,000 will be in Chicago.

• Job-years aggregates total hours of jobs created—full- and part-time, permanent and temporary—into the equivalent of full-time jobs.

Jobs will be created across a variety of industries, with a concentration in hospitality and construction.

All that stimulus for a Socialist Hellhole™ like Chicago? No wonder the sensible wonks at FP don't approve.

Okay, but Obama still shouldn't make a pitch to the IOC, our blogger warns, because, well . . . because foreigners are corrupt. And they awarded the Winter Games to Putin. And because Obama doesn't know what he is getting into.

Even so, let Obama be forewarned. The IOC's bidding competitions do not reward political virtue or any other kind of good intentions, as their award of the 2014 games to the gravedigger of Russian democracy makes abundantly clear. They reward those who promise to bring further celebrity and an aura of dignity to the IOC. The portable ice-rink Putin brought to Guatemala City was an extravagance that was calculated to set certain wheels spinning inside Olympian minds -- the promise of gaudy spectacle and, perhaps, a hint of improbable piles of cash that would somehow overflow their coffers into certain pockets. This is how the Olympic bidding game has always been played, and one wonders whether the good world citizen Obama may have gotten into this one way over his head.

This really is amazing, the notion that's being peddled here: because the world is incorrigible, Obama shouldn't attempt to exert any of his considerable leadership skills as leverage against it. And should he choose to do so, he must be hopelessly naive. Which begs the question: with healthcare reform on the front burner in Washington and a war going to the dogs in Afghanistan, do the beautiful minds at Foreign Policy really think that a guy like Barack Obama would go to all the time and trouble to try to win a "low-carat gem" for his adopted hometown if he didn't already have a pretty good idea that a personal appeal in Copenhagen would likely cinch the deal? If there's anything we've learned up to now about the Obama presidency, it's this: as a matter of temperament, he rarely plays long odds. That's just the way he's wired.

---Vitelius

Well, That's Some Improvement

Hmmmm. Yesterday, the Legion of the Deranged was debating whether or not Obama should be killed. Today, they're apparently willing to settle for a military coup instead:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it won't. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

Of course not. Like Beck, he's just sayin'.

Next comes the generic laundry list of grievances: "losing" Afghanistan, abandoning Israel, gutting our military, "impending inflation" (whatever the hell that is) and blah blah woof woof. For which there can only be one sure solution:

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a "family intervention," with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Yessiree. The best way to defend the Constitution is to let a bunch of generals ignore it and make up their own rules.

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

Ain't that the reason we hold elections in the first place? So voters can change their minds on matters of policy without having to call out the Marines to solve their problems for them?

And here's the money shot (warning: Irony-Free Zone ahead):

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

In other words, we failed as citizens to take adequate responsibility for ensuring our liberties and our freedoms last year, soooo . . . we need the Army and the Air Force to take responsibility for us now.

These people are seriously, seriously confused.

---Vitelius

Raw Deal

Proof yet again that nobody could have possibly predicted that putting an aging B-movie actor in charge of our state government for seven years would be the most awesome thing our enlightened voters could ever have done. As if we hadn't already been warned:

As the California economy roared in the 1990s and tax revenues poured into a treasury overseen by Gov. Pete Wilson, the state laid plans for a series of new office buildings in Sacramento to spare itself from paying rent to other landlords.

Barely a decade later, the Schwarzenegger administration is launching a process to sell many of the same buildings that were originally touted as long-term money savers for taxpayers. The goal today is more immediate: pay off debt and steer cash into the state's depleted general fund. It's among a variety of short-term crisis solutions that include selling surplus state property, moves also being undertaken in cash-strapped Arizona.

In California, 11 state-owned sites with an estimated value of almost $2 billion will be listed for sale in early 2010 to pay off about $1.4 billion in bonds and net another $600 million "to support other critical state government programs," said state Department of General Services spokesman Eric Lamoureux.

They want to move that much property? In today's commercial real estate market? Bwahahahahahahaha!!!

The Moody's/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices fell 5.1 percent in July from the month before, Moody's said today in a statement. The index is down almost 39 percent from its October 2007 peak. The decline in June was 1 percent.

Commercial property sales this year may fall to an 18-year low . . . Office sale prices fell 23 percent from a year ago in New York, 27 percent in San Francisco and 22 percent in Washington, according to the report.

But wait. It gets even better:

Specifically, the state is proposing a so-called "sale/leaseback" deal in which buyers of state buildings would rent them to the state afterward.

"We intend to maintain 100 percent occupancy in the buildings just as we have today," said Lamoureux, whose department manages state buildings. "We're just looking to sell the property and lease back over an extended term, probably along the line of 20 years or so."

Brokers say the lease-back provision is likely to stir interest among risk-averse investors known in the trade as "coupon clippers." Those are big institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies.

And we know how well those institutions are faring these days:

Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis that's been looming for years. Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are healthy.

The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little or nothing to the funds, year after year.

The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion.

With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion.

We need to look no further than our own backyard to see how awesomely healthy these coupon clippers are nowadays:

The two largest pension funds in California, the California Public Employeesí Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), have lost billions of dollars in value. Hundreds of thousands of retiring state employees and teachers now face the stark choice of accepting much reduced pension checks or working past their retirement age.

CalPERS is the largest pension fund in the US and the fourth largest in the world. At its height in October 2007 it had $260 billion in assets, comparable to the GDP of Poland, Indonesia or Denmark. At the end of 2008 CalPERS was worth $186 billion, one of its worst annual declines since the fund's inception in 1932. It is one of the latest casualties of the financial collapse on Wall Street.

Honestly. In today's craptastic CRE market, no lending institution in its right mind is going to offer anything but a debt-equity swap for these piles, so if Ahnuld really wants to move these properties, the red pen will need to come out, with steep discounts and writedowns the result. Better yet, you the taxpayer will continue to pay for these buildings, which you no longer owe, for the next 20 years (or longer) via monthly rent checks made out to some institutional lending firm that's most likely already on the federal dole. Here's the money shot:

Every time I think it would be impossible for this governor [to] add a new high to his list moronic decisions, he proves me wrong. Let's see, we are going to sell our State buildings at the bottom of the market, producing revenue that will be burned up within one year . . . Following that, the State becomes a tenant in perpetuity, paying ever increasing rates when the market rebounds. He must have produced this idea while sitting in the tub, smoking a cheap stogie and admiring his testicles.

Welcome to California: The Shriveled Testicle State.

---Vitelius

Awesomeness of Lead Poisoning Confirmed

USA! USA! USA!

Over the last decade, the drinking water at thousands of schools across the country has been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxins.

An Associated Press investigation found that contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states -- in small towns and inner cities alike.

But the problem has gone largely unmonitored by the federal government, even as the number of water safety violations has multiplied . . .

Experts and children's advocates complain that responsibility for drinking water is spread among too many local, state and federal agencies, and that risks are going unreported. Finding a solution, they say, would require a costly new national strategy for monitoring water in schools . . .

. . . EPA officials acknowledge the agency's database of violations is plagued with errors and omissions. And the agency does not specifically monitor incoming state data on school water quality.

Heaven forbid we'd actually want to give the federal government the information it needs to monitor the quality of our drinking water since that would be the first step down the long road to tyranny by infringing on states' rights. Also by depriving us of our freedoms which come from God to chemically contaminate our children the way we parents, all the moms and dads out there---not some bureaucrats in Washington---the way we best see fit also.

---Vitelius

Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb The Van'

So the big bad Iranians kept a naughty little secret from the UN, and now wingnut heads are exploding across the blogosphere, as exemplified by informed comment such as this:

James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, tells NRO that the revelation of a second uranium enrichment site in Iran presents serious challenges to the Obama administration. "Since the top levels of the government in Iran are constituted of theocratic, totalitarian, and genocidal maniacs, it shouldn't be too surprising that they also violate treaties and lie about their nuclear sites," he says.

Genocidal? Excuse me for being such a fuzzy-headed liberal, but if the Iranians are actually intending to build a nuclear warhead to launch against Israel, the proper term would be "suicidal," don't you think?

One assumes we'll hear the usual members of the 101st Chairborne brayng and bleating on the Sunday talk shows about the imminent need for yet another war. Yet one can't help but wonder why these brave and stalwart men continue to overlook the looming threat to the existence of the Republic that's posed by a nation in our very own hemisphere: A socialist hellhole that enslaves its people. That has all but outlawed capitalism. That openly trades with our enemies. That wallows in all manner of immorality and filth. That mocks our values, and which hates us for our freedoms that come from God also:

"Our use of American institutions," they said, "or our lazy, even abject imitation of them has caused an uncritical acceptance of ideas and assumptions which are alien to our tradition."

Alien to our tradition. Did I mention that this hellhole nation also serves as a welcome conduit to terrorists who would invade our shores to do us harm?

My fellow Americans, the time for talk is over. Now we need action. Not sanctions or boycotts or sternly worded warnings, but a preemptive strike against this existential menace.

As an incidental benefit, the cost of this war will not be an issue. Besides the fact that its downtrodden citizens will greet our soldiers as liberators, its oil revenues will more than cover the costs:

Real men go to Ottawa.

---Vitelius

I'm Not Really a Birther . . .

I only play one on TV!

I guess it should be self-evident that these people are quacks:

The program was produced by LivePrayer.com, a Web site affiliated with Bill Keller, a fundamentalist Christian minister who also hosts the infomercial.

Imprisoned in the late 1980s after an insider trading conviction, Keller later committed his life to God, attended Liberty University in Virginia, and founded Bill Keller Ministries, according to his bio.

And you gotta love the fact that the star witness in this compelling expose goes by the name of Kreep. It just gets better and better with these knuckleheads.

---Vitelius

Cash for Carcinogens

Yet another example of what happens when you combine the dynamic forces of our most awesomest free enterprise system with kinder, gentler government oversight:

Environmental groups are calling on the Obama Administration or Congress to direct General Motors Company to adhere to a contract signed by the old GM requiring it to pay for the removal and disposal of mercury switches from GM vehicles headed for the scrap yard.

Given the criticism the Administration is taking over the unpopular auto bailouts, it is unlikely that it will interfere in bankruptcy law, so another solution must be pursued.

A spokesperson for Motors Liquidation Company -- the legal name of the old bankrupt GM that is being liquidated -- told The Detroit Bureau that it "is carefully analyzing about half-a-million contracts of the former General Motors Corp. This agreement is among them. Ultimately, any decision made on any contract will be consistent with our obligations under the bankruptcy code."

Translation: there is no legal reason to continue the contract, so GM will not.

So, okay, what the heck are these mercury-switch thingies?

Mercury switches were used to operate hood and trunk lights in virtually all U.S.-made vehicles before 2004, when automakers, under increasing pressure from environmental groups and states, finally stopped their use.

According to industry estimates, GM vehicles on the road contain more than 18 million mercury switches, or 39,000 pounds of the highly toxic substance.

Unless these switches are removed before scrapping, the mercury will be released into the air as automotive steel is recycled at mills, which virtually all of it is.

Hmmmm. This doesn't sound good:

Very high exposures to mercury vapor in the air can cause acute poisoning. Symptoms usually begin with cough, chest tightness, trouble breathing and upset stomach. This may go on to pneumonia, which can be fatal.

If the inorganic mercury compounds are swallowed, nausea, vomiting diarrhea and severe kidney damage can occur.

Exposure to any form of mercury on a repeated basis, or even from a single, very high exposure can lead to the disease of chronic mercury poisoning. There are three main symptoms:

• Gum problems. The gums become soft and spongy, the teeth get loose, sores may develop and there may be increased saliva.

• Mood and mental changes. People with chronic mercury poisoning often have wide swings of mood, becoming irritable, frightened, depressed or excited very quickly for no apparent reason. Such people may become extremely upset at any criticism, lose all self-confidence, and become apathetic. Hallucinations, memory loss and inability to concentrate can occur.

• Nervous system. The earliest and most frequent symptom is a fine tremor (shaking) of the hand. A tremor may also occur in the tongue and eyelids. Eventually this can progress to trouble balancing and walking.

But back to our narrative. So naturally, after they stopped using mercury in light switches, the government simply ordered GM to issue a series of batch recalls of all their pre-2004 cars and had the switches removed, right? Mercury is a known carcinogen, after all.

Oh wait. That would assume that there had not been . . .

. . . years of political squabbling over whom should pay for the recycling of mercury switches. Auto and truck makers repeatedly delayed action on the national level. Steel mills flatly refused to install the necessary pollution equipment that would stop toxic emissions when steel was re-melted. State attorney generals had no interest in taxing their voters to cover the clean-up costs but insisted someone, anyone pay.

Ultimately, EPA cut a deal with vehicle manufacturers, and a bounty system was set up to pay otherwise uninterested scrap yards to remove the switches before the vehicle was crushed or shredded and sent to the mills.

A company known as End of Live Vehicle Solution (ELVS) administers the program, and a $4 million fund was established using a proportional fee system based on the number of mercury switches produced. Fees rewarded dismantlers/recyclers in the participating states on a first-come, first-serve basis over a planned 3-year period.

ELVS has now told participating states and the EPA that unless GM acts now, it will have to stop accepting mercury switches from scrap-yard bound GM vehicles starting January 1, 2010. This could result in tons of unnecessary mercury emissions pouring from smoke stacks across the country, especially given that more than 700,000 vehicles are now in the system because of the recently concluded "Cash for Clunkers" program. (Emphasis added.)

And you thought Cash-for-Clunkers was a clean, green program? Bwahahahahahahaaaa!!

Ladies and gentlemen, the New GM: Your latest EPA Superfund site. Being a taxpayer never felt so good.

Don't get me wrong here: in theory at least, the CARS program was a terrific idea. And in one sense, as a cost-effective form of short-term stimulus, the plan was an unqualified success. Assuming (conservatively) an average price of $25,000 per new car sold under the program, that works out to some $17 billion dollars in new-vehicle sales. It also means an infusion of somewhere between $1 and $2 billion dollars to state and local governments in the form of sales tax receipts, vehicle registration fees and the like; and a roughly equal amount found its way into the pockets of thousands of dealership employees across the country in the forms of sales commissions, salaries and bonuses. So strictly in terms of dollars and cents, that's not bad for a $3 billion outlay.

But clearly, some parts of the plan were not very well hashed-out. And it's not too surprising to see why, when you think about it. Look at it this way: Did anyone in the Washington policy establishment really think that the program would have any discernible effect on the economy beyond the purely symbolic? I mean, who's gonna go shopping for a big-ticket item like an automobile in the middle of a recession---for only a piddly $4,500 rebate, and with 30-odd pages of government restrictions for consumers to plow through? How else, then, to explain CARS's utterly muddled execution after millions of Americans actually decided to take the government up on its offer? Neither Congress, nor NHTSA, nor the Obama administration actually envisioned this scenario ahead of time, hence the lack of preparation for for the tidal wave of demand that the program stimulated. At least that's my read of it.

And, as is becoming clearer, the potential environmental impact of having to dismantle and recycle 700,000 junk cars---which are chock-full of all sorts of noxious substances---not to mention the issue of who was actually going to pay for the cleanup---appears to have been given short shrift in the discussion.

Long story short: well-intentioned though it surely was, the CARS program was clearly not very well thought-out on some basic and elemental levels. And now, it looks like someone---guess who---will need to dole out another few billion dollars to clean up tons of toxic OEM waste that the Feds should simply have outlawed years ago.

And the long-term stimulus effect of Cash for Clunkers? For what it's worth, not much.

---Vitelius

Journalism Fail

Today's lucky winner: Mikey Bloomberg, come on down!

Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin used her first trip to Asia to attack the for creating asset bubbles and encouraging excessive risk-taking that hurt working-class Americans.

In a wide-ranging, 80-minute speech to fund managers in Hong Kong today, Palin spoke about issues ranging from Alaskan fishing to energy independence to U.S.-Sino ties. She repeated calls for "market-oriented" health-care reform and said governments shouldn't regulate executive compensation.

"The Fed and the government sent a message to companies that the bigger that you are, the more problems that you get yourself into, the more likely the government is to bail you out," Palin said in the closed door speech, according to a tape of the event given to Bloomberg News. "Of course the little guys are left out then. We're left holding the bag, all the moms and pops all over America."

That would be the barf bag you would presume that some of the attendees were clutching. I mean, I don't normally feel much sympathy for a bunch of wealthy fund managers, but Jesus---they paid for a speech, and ended up having to sit through 80 minutes of this crap?

But I digress:

The speech was Palin's first major public appearance since quitting as Alaska governor on July 26, less than a year after she ran with John McCain in an unsuccessful campaign against now-President Barack Obama. People at the event said she focused on a wide range of global and domestic issues rather than her own political future.

"It was a very safe speech," said Suyeon An of RCM Asia Pacific Ltd, who left before Palin stopped talking. "Boring, I have to say."

Zzzzzzzz . . . Now, compare and contrast to AFP's take on the same event:

Her performance, which was closed to the media, divided opinion.

Some of those who attended praised her forthright views on government social and economic intervention and others walked out early in disgust.

"She was brilliant," said a European delegate, on condition of anonymity.

"She said America was spending a lot of money and it was a temporary solution. Normal people are having to pay more and more but things don't get better. The rich will leave the country and the poor will get poorer."

Two US delegates left early, with one saying "it was awful, we couldn't stand it any longer" . . .

Although she touched on the threat posed to the United States by terrorism and talked about links with traditional US allies in Asia such as Japan, Australia and South Korea, one Asian delegate complained she devoted too much time to her home state of Alaska.

"It was almost more of a speech promoting investment in Alaska," he said, declining to be named.

"As fund managers, we want to hear about the United States as a whole, not just about Alaska. And she criticised Obama a lot but offered no solutions."

Another said he was disappointed that she took only pre-arranged questions . . .

Several delegates saw the speech as a sign of her ambitions to run as a presidential candidate in 2012 and a useful indication of the potential direction of US politics in the future.

"It was fairly right-wing populist stuff," one US delegate said.

Palin blasted Obama's proposals on healthcare, reiterating a previous statement made to the press that the plan would include a bureaucratic "death panel" that would decide who gets assistance, he said.

Another [delegate] from the United States said: "She frightens me because she strikes a chord with a certain segment of the population and I don't like it."

Amazing. The rampant "death panel" bullshit. The media lockout. The pre-approved questions. The small-minded (and shameless) Alaskan parochialism. The utter lack of any substance on matters of policy. The "right-wing populism." The American delegates walking out on her speech, and the others who couldn't stand her rap. The polarizing nature of her message: All on display in the AFP dispatch, none of it in Bloomberg. Channeling DeLong, why oh why can't we have a better French press corps?

---Vitelius

Nobody Could Have Possibly Predicted

That something like this was bound to happen:

The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official says the word "fed" was scrawled on his chest.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.

Investigators have said little about the case. A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, tells The Associated Press the word "fed" was written on the dead man's chest.

FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is helping state police determine if Sparkman's death was the result of foul play, and if so, whether it was related to his census work.

Anybody wanna guess who'll be the first wingnut bloviator to pin the blame for this on ACORN? Because, you know, the Congress took away their census money last week and so they had to exact their revenge, voter-frauding thugs that they are. And because rural Kentucky is such a hotbed of Marxist sentiment also.

I fear much worse than this is coming down in the weeks and months ahead.

---Vitelius

It's All About the Money

Over at Helium Heaven today, John Cole mulls over the ongoing shenanigans in the Massachusetts legislature, and concludes:

There is no excuse for this kind of nonsense. I fully understand there are times for partisanship, but not when dealing with the law. This kind of gamesmanship, jiggering the law to put ideological allies in office, destroys confidence in the system, pisses away the moral high ground, and gives people the right to make arguments about "the Democrats are no better," because in this case, they aren't.

Well, yes and no. Yes, it's gamesmanship, and in retrospect, the Brahmins would have been wiser to leave well enough alone and allow Mittens to appoint his Kerry successor; recall if you will that Romney had not yet descended into the nether regions of Galtistan at the time and was deemed by most observers to be a fairly rational man. On the other hand, I don't think that this kind of procedural maneuvering, while patently cynical, is really that big of a deal in the grander scheme of things. Maybe in Massachusetts, but does the rest of the country really give a rat's ass about this? Does a game of parliamentary dodgeball really undermine Americans' faith in their political system any more severely, or promote the "dime's worth of difference" meme more convincingly, than stuff like this?

Federal prosecutors have accused a major Democratic fundraiser with ties to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that involved swindling several major banks out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and using some of the proceeds to fund political candidates and PACs.

According to a Justice Department press release, Hassan Nemazee was indicted this afternoon by a grand jury, charged with using fake documents and signatures to bilk Citibank, Bank of America, and HSBC out of over $290 million, in an alleged scheme that dates back to 1998. Nemazee alleged used the Citibank money to repay the B of A loan, and vice versa. And even after being questioned by FBI agents about the Citibank loan last month, Nemazee allegedly went to HSBC to fraudulently draw down a line of credit, which he tried to access funds to pay back Citibank . . .

Nemazee, 59, was Hillary Clinton's finance chair during her 2008 presidential run. He then became a top bundler for Barack Obama's campaign. He has also been a prolific contributor to Democrats himself.

And crap like this, to my mind, is simply the absolutely fucking worst:

Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross -- a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate -- sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment and an independent appraisal say it was worth.

The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out.

Ross sold the real estate in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 -- an eye-popping number for real estate in the tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock.

"You can buy half the town for $420,000," said Adam Guthrie, chairman of the county Board of Equalization and the only licensed real estate appraiser in Prescott.

But the $420,000 was just the beginning of what Ross and his pharmacist wife, Holly, made from the sale of Holly's Health Mart. The owner of USA Drug, Stephen L. LaFrance Sr., also paid the Rosses $500,000 to $1 million for the pharmacy's assets and paid Holly Ross another $100,001 to $250,000 for signing a non-compete agreement. Those numbers, which Ross listed on the financial disclosure reports he files as a member of Congress, bring the total value of the transaction to between $1 million and $1.67 million.

And that's not counting the $2,300 campaign contribution Ross received from LaFrance two weeks after the sale closed.

Shit like this is the real reason why we can't get sensible healthcare legislation passed in this country, and why we don't see any meaningful regulation of the financial markets being proposed, and why we never hear any discussions of reducing defense spending, and why a one-percent increase in the top marginal tax rate is branded as Mugabe-style totalitarianism, and why no one in Washington---but no one---ever suggests raising the corporate income tax, now and forevermore; and it's why, quite frankly, we will never be allowed to have anything resembling genuinely liberal government in the United States again. And in this sense, too many Democrats have become exactly like Republicans---not necessarily for their stated positions on any specific issue but because the means they've come to rely on to achieve the ultimate end of keeping their jobs are mirror-image identical to the GOP's: The obsequious and ceaseless deference to the corrosive demands of corporatist cash.

One of the truly tragic lessons we've learned from the current healthcare-reform debate, to my mind, is this: in a bizarre yet undeniable way, a nutjob like Glenn Beck is absolutely right on the money if you think about it---for all practical purposes, we as individual voters are nearly completely disenfranchised from our current government in Washington, just not for the reasons that Beck and his amen chorus believe. The bat-handle buffoonery in Boston, from a public-relations standpoint, strikes me as child's play by comparison.

Sadly, it looks a though our Federalist Society strict constructionist Supreme Court is about to rule that there isn't enough corporate money slushing around our political system, and they're going to do their damnedest to open the spigots ever wider. How any of this bodes well for the commonweal, I am at a loss to explain.

---Vitelius

Barack Obama, Villager-in-Chief

I am sorry, but this is truly, truly lame:

Saying he is a "big newspaper junkie," President Obama expressed hope on Friday that newspapers can find their way through the financial crisis most are now mired in.

In an Oval Office interview with editors from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade, the President talked about the vital role journalism and newspapers play in American society.

"Journalistic integrity, you know, fact-based reporting, serious investigative reporting, how to retain those ethics in all these different new media and how to make sure that it's paid for, is really a challenge," Mr. Obama said. "But it's something that I think is absolutely critical to the health of our democracy."

Across the country, newspapers are struggling to maintain readership and advertising revenue that has been lost to the Internet. Thousands of journalists have been laid off, and over the last year several newspapers have closed.

The Rocky Mountain News in Denver ceased operations, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer now publishes only on the Internet, and several large newspaper corporations have filed for bankruptcy, including the Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

Mr. Obama said he noted the trend. "I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," the President said. (Emphasis added.)

"What I hope is that people start understanding if you're getting your newspaper over the Internet, that's not free and there's got to be a way to find a business model that supports that."

Wow. He's already shown he's not afraid to throw progressives under the bus on healthcare reform, climate-change legislation, and DADT to name but a few, but now it's the bloggers' turn, too?

Apparently our President prefers to place his trust for news in the same Serious & Respectable People who obediently pushed the establishment party line on Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch, WMDs in Iraq, Suck on This, and the Saddam-Osama alliance than the shrill and unruly likes of Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall. Jesus.

Note to Barack Obama: We are the fact-checkers in today's mass media. Companies like the Times and the Post don't employ those types of workers anymore. And yes, of course, there will always be plenty of fact-free shouting in the blogosphere as long as there's a Corner, a Red State, or an Atlas Shrugs to service the fever dreams of the Glenn Beck voter demographic, but as the President might say, let's be clear: Some of us out here have dedicated our blogging careers to debunking patently phony Beltway nonsense, not parroting it; to calling out the myriad lies of serial fabricators in government; to providing more accurate context to the news of the day; and to promoting a richer and more complex understanding of current issues than the loudmouth Tea Party headline-grabbers who stand athwart history yelling "ACORN"!

Oh, and a few of us helped get you elected President too. Do you still really want that second term?

---Vitelius

Because Nobody Went Broke UnderestimatingThe Vapidity of the American Newsmedia

Non-revelation of the day:

Today on CNN's State of the Union, Obama responded to these charges from conservative leaders, stating, "You know, I'm amused. I can't tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don't understand why people would call you socialist, in my country, you'd be considered a conservative."

Yep, and those same conservative leaders are gonna accuse you of being a fascist-socialist-Marxist-racist subversive, no matter what you fucking do. So how about pursuing a liberal agenda instead?

---Vitelius

Guess Who's Bailin' For Dinner

For those of you who took me up on my bet: Bwahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!

First, there's Ken Morris---Wall Street whiz, trader-turned-financial-thriller-novelist, whose top bid exceeded $50,000 . . . What was he hoping if he won "the experience"? He explained it this way.

There exists an emotional divide in this country that I've not experienced since I attended the University of California near the end of the Vietnam War. As a protester who took to the streets post the bombings of Cambodia and being tear-gassed on three occasions and nearly arrested twice, I was part of the schism that ripped apart our generation. While leaving scars that thickened the hearts of many from that era, the ending of the war allowed for a healing to begin. Painful, but now mostly a distant memory.

Today's rancor, however, troubles me more profoundly. Why? Maybe it's because I don't see a catalyst---like the end to a tragic war---that will magically lead us to end this political divide. Politically biased "news" channels, over-heated rhetoric by bloggers, and (in my view at least) the demise of investigative mainstream journalism and the role of Watergate-like Fourth Estate, are here to stay. This period has more the odor of the Civil Rights debate that ripped apart the South during the administrations of President Kennedy and Johnson. A rift that has never been bridged.

How, I'll ask Ms. Palin, can we work together (meaning not just her and me, but all people on both sides of the political fence) to begin to fix this? I'll ask her a few questions that might seem harsh, but aren't intended to offend---after all, we must be honest, no? Do your regret saying several hundred times that our president "palled around with terrorists"? Do you really believe that providing health insurance to all Americans is socialism or fascism or Nazism or that there are truly "death squads" in these proposals?

Bridging divides? Pallin' around with terrorists? Serious discussion about policy? Death panels? We can almost imagine Palin's handlers smacking down a big red rubber stamp on Ken Morris's application: REJECTED.

That brings us to our second candidate, dubbed c***i by the Ebay alias assignment team, and known to those in the outside world as Joe McGinniss. McGinniss, also an author by trade is best known for his books The Selling of the President about Richard Nixon, and Going to Extremes, about Alaska, oil and the 1970s pipeline boom. McGinniss is an outspoken critic of Palin, evidenced most recently by his article for Conde Nast's Portfolio entitled Pipe Dreams, which cast a critical eye on Palin's handling of the ever-elusive Alaska gasline. McGinniss is currently working on a book whose focus will be the ex-governor herself.

McGinniss, hoping to win the auction had the high bid at one point close to the end. The amount was a whopping $60,101.01, and he was willing to go higher. And then something interesting happened. The Alaska Dispatch came out with a story identifying McGinniss as one of the bidders. When the unsuspecting c***i went to place his next bid in the amount of $60,301.01, he was met with this message:

Despite his previous pre-approval, this dreams of sniping the auction were dashed. McGinniss was unapproved, with only an hour to go, and the brief and glorious career of c***i was cut off at the knees. Presumably this untimely freeze-out allowed the Palin camp to avoid future embarrassment.

Can anyone in the Palin camp feel any kind of emotion that even resembles embarrassment? I mean, that would actually entail having some kind of moral compass, wouldn't it?

---Vitelius

The Awesomeness of the Second Amendment

Maybe they'll start letting us carry guns on airliners soon also. Oh, wait.

---Vitelius

Tell it to Michael Dukakis

Sullivan today, on Republicans and race:

These people are going off the deep end entirely: open panic at a black president is morphing into the conscious fanning of racial polarization, via Gates or ACORN or Van Jones or a schoolbus in Saint Louis. What we're seeing is the Jeremiah Wright moment repeated and repeated. The far right is seizing any racial story to fan white fears of black power in order to destroy Obama. And the far right now controls the entire right.

Do they understand how irresonsible this is? How recklessly dangerous to a society's cohesion and calm? Or is that what they need and thrive on?

Yes they do. And what we've been seing in recent days is not so much the replaying of a Jeremiah Wright Moment but a Willie Horton Moment, because that's how long they've been playing politics with the white man's Negro Terror. Why? Because they found out that Fear Works---that the stoking of racial anxieties is a powerful motivator in the lives of many rural white voters. Bill Clinton, a political prodigy of the dingbat South, was able to preempt the GOP on the issue in the '92 primary season with his self-righteous scolding of an obscure rap artist, but otherwise, race-baiting Democrats has been a staple of the Republican Party playbook for decades. They've just got a bigger microphone, and a much more powerful amplifier, than they had in the late 1980s, which is the only reason why their deliberate fomenting of racial hysteria seems so much more pronounced today.

And unless Barack Obama can somehow change the color of his skin . . . well, we are in for an ugly ride for awhile.

---Vitelius

Nobody Could Have Possibly Predicted

That this Serious Person's advisory council would adopt the business model of an extortion racket:

Last week I received a fax that began:

"Late yesterday, Newt's Business Defense and Advisory Council named you as a 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year representing Illinois."

It came on the letterhead of Newt Gingrich, general chairman. It invited me to a "private dinner‚" on the evening of Oct. 7 in Washington, where I would get my award and Newt and I would exchange ideas on getting the economy moving again. At the bottom of the letter in a font designed to look as if it were handwritten, it said, "Newt is looking forward to finally meeting you face to face and get your thoughts on Cap and Trade and Obama's Tax Policy."

Awesome news! Why don't these things ever happen to the Baron?

I called back the next day to sign up and to see if they had any hotel deals. I also decided to get something out of the way: "I know you probably can't answer this question, but are they going to try to strong-arm me to give them money if I come?" The woman who answered this time---apparently, Newt was still away---replied: "There is a cost to come. It is $5,000 per couple."

It gets even better.

While it had become evident to me that Newt has little respect for entrepreneurs, I did wonder if he really would send out the award if someone wanted it. So I called back and asked.

"Have you donated any money?" asked the woman who answered.

"No."

"We can send you the award if you give us $250."

No shame.

None of which, I am willing to wager, will prevent this Respected Elder Statesman™ from being invited back to at least one Sunday talk show this weekend. Let me know if it happens.

---Vitelius

The Eternal Sunshine of the Clueless Mind

In the wake of the anniversary of September 11th, a pause to remember our brave leader in those dark days, ever steadfast and resolute in times of great crisis:

We were faced with a dilemma: Should Bush still go out and address the nation, or should he cancel? And if he did go out, what should he say? Ed, typically, told us to write two drafts for the address to the nation---one outlining the proposal as originally announced and another that only discussed the "principles" the legislation needed to incorporate to win the administration's support. Chris and I looked at each other warily. Two versions of a major prime-time address that may or may not be given hours from now? Sure, no problem. Ultimately, Ed decided to go with the second speech. But he clearly didn't share his plan with the president. When the president came into the Family Theater to rehearse the speech in front of a teleprompter, he didn't like the idea of just talking about principles. It sounded like the administration was backing away from its own plan (which it was).

"We can’t even defend our own proposal?” the president asked. “Why did we propose it, then?” This was not bold decision making. There were about a dozen people gathered in the theater to watch him rehearse, and all of us remained silent as the president looked at us for an answer . . .

"Too late to cancel the speech?" the president asked into the air. He was joking, I think. Finally, Ed (who hadn't exactly rushed to jump into the line of fire) explained that we had to make this change to the address because the proposal the president liked might not end up being the one he had to agree to. "Then why the hell did I support it if I didn’t believe it would pass?" he snapped. There was yet another uncomfortable silence.

Finally, the president directed us to try to put elements of his proposal back into the text. He wanted to explain what he was seeking and to defend it. He especially wanted Americans to know that his plan would likely see a return on the taxpayers' investment. Under his proposal, he said, the federal government would buy troubled mortgages on the cheap and then resell them at a higher price when the market for them stabilized.

"We're buying low and selling high," he kept saying.

The problem was that his proposal didn't work like that. One of the president's staff members anxiously pulled a few of us aside. "The president is misunderstanding this proposal," he warned. "He has the wrong idea in his head." As it turned out, the plan wasn't to buy low and sell high. In some cases, in fact, Secretary Paulson wanted to pay more than the securities were likely worth in order to put more money into the markets as soon as possible. This was not how the president's proposal had been advertised to the public or the Congress. It wasn't that the president didn't understand what his administration wanted to do. It was that the treasury secretary didn't seem to know, changed his mind, had misled the president, or some combination of the three . . .

After finally getting the speech draft turned around and sent back to the teleprompter technicians, we trudged back to the Family Theater, where the president rehearsed. In the theater, the president was clearly confused about how the government would buy these securities. He repeated his belief that the government was going to "buy low and sell high," and he still didn't understand why we hadn't put that into the speech like he'd asked us to. When it was explained to him that his concept of the bailout proposal wasn't correct, the president was momentarily speechless. He threw up his hands in frustration.

"Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don't understand what it does?" he asked.

As if Iraq, Katrina and 9/11 didn't convince you already. I can't think of a more fitting epitaph to engrave on this idiot's memorial when the time comes to lay him to rest. This is one kiss-and-tell book I definitely look forward to devouring.

---Vitelius

This is Really Getting Ridiculous . . .

Because we don't really have any more pressing business to attend to, now do we:

MSNBC is reporting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold a vote early next week on whether to censure Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), unless he apologizes on the House floor for heckling the President.

This is cretin-level stupid for two reasons:

1. By dragging Joe Wilson into the well and humiliating him in front of his colleagues, you are only creating yet another martyr for the cause of Winger Jihad. The President doesn't seem to have gotten too excised over the matter, having graciously accepted Wilson's apology, such as it was, and moved on to more urgent issues. Perhaps the Speaker of the House might consider taking a tip from the President?

Then again, I nearly forgot that Nancy Pelosi's political instincts are so much keener than Barack Obama's. Silly me.

2. It's all about priorities, baby. You're willing to take the time during a legislative session to "get tough" with some hillbilly backbencher over a two-second outburst on the floor of the House. How about getting tough with Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo instead? How about getting tough with Citigroup, or United HealthCare, or Blue Cross/Blue Shield, or Roche Pharmaceuticals? How about getting tough with Monsanto or Peabody Coal? How about getting tough with your own warrantless-wiretapping, indefinite-detaining President? Or maybe you'd consider getting tough with the war criminals who preceded him in the Oval Office?

Oh, I'm sorry. That would require a bit of steely resolve, wouldn't it?

I think the problem is that this is a national security issue, and there are so many more challenging issues -- as one official put it to me the other day
-- on which the President has already shown some ankle, whether it's about talking to Iran or whether it's his rather pronounced silence vis-a-vis North Korea, or whether it's something as minuscule as lifting some travel restrictions on Cuban Americans for Cuba. They don't believe they can show another square centimeter of ankle on national security, because the Republicans will eat their lunch, and every time I'm told this I die laughing. I say, your guys are captured by the Sith Lord, Dick Cheney, you're captured by Rush Limbaugh, whose real radio audience is about 2.2 million, and whose employer, Clear Channel, lost $3.7 billion in the second quarter of this year. I said, when are you gonna wake up? These are kooks. And Cheney is the kook leader. But [Nancy] Pelosi and [Harry] Reid are such feckless leaders they haven't got any spine. We have no leadership in the legislative branch on either side of the aisle . . .

I become exasperated. There's just no courage, there's no moral courage whatsoever in the Democratic Party.

Nope. Just a bunch of timid and tone-deaf parochialists who seem absolutely determined to revert to a Congressional minority as soon as they possibly can.

---Vitelius