Let's run the numbers

Bush Criticism Part Deux Forgot one big one, the new White House e-mail system where you have to say whether you agree or disagree with one of the president's policies. Also, this doesn't include the president directly, but the economic road-show traveling through Michigan and Wisconsin has protest zones set up far away from where the Secretaries of Labor, Commerce, and Treasury are appearing. Keeps those pesky signs out of the photo-ops, doncha know :)

Does Bush hate criticism? Just a couple of examples. First of all, there's that guy down in South Carolina who had a "No Blood for Oil" sign at the airport when Bush flew in. He was arrested. People with welcoming signs weren't arrested. Secondly, this past weekend I was down near the White House. On the Ellipse just south of the White House, there was a protest for a Korean peace treaty. It was in the northwest part of the Ellipse. But in the middle of the Ellipse, there was a large area cordoned off by police. This area was U-shaped, and covered the entire area that could be seen from the South Lawn and presumably the Oval Office. Sort of like this: (Deleted my attempt at text drawing. Imagine an oval with a U taken out of the upper middle part.) No, I'm not an artist. But it was sort of interesting, that the area blocked off was the area that could be seen from the White House. If anyone wants to remind me of other overt movements keepi...

A slow week For me, anyway. I have a cold. So, my usual wit and rapier-sharp insightfulness is blunted. Bunch of bad stuff going on, like utility deregulation, but I can't chase them all right now. See this article: Energy Monoliths Could Return . This power company thing sounds a lot like the phone companies. "Deregulate us, and we'll compete!" Then, after we deregulate them: "Oh, the market doesn't work. Deregulate us more!" Sounds a lot like the cable companies too. "We'll have the worst of all worlds: deregulated monopolies," said Lynn Hargis, a former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission lawyer now with the advocacy group Public Citizen.

Democratic Lawmakers Flee Texas Again Oh, for the love of god. These Texas Republicans have no shame. They're trying to redraw the boundaries again! And this time they're trying to change the rules of the Texas Senate to do it. Previously, the Senate required a 2/3 majority to bring up a issue to debate. The Republicans want to change the rules to allow them to bring up redistricting with only a simple majority. The current districts were done in 2000. Because they obstructed the redistricting then, it was thrown into court and done by a judge. Now they want to redraw the boundaries to suit themselves. The House Democrats stopped it the first time by leaving the state. Now the Senate Democrats have done their part to stop this obscene power grab. With regard to the Republicans, the only thing I can think of is "What goes around comes around." They're overplaying their hand, and people who are fairminded are a bigger bunch than Republicans or Demo...

More on the anti-Greenspan front Paul Krugman lets him have it. Is this just the cyclical bash Alan week, or is this a sign of a deeper problem? Recall that when the recession started, he got a lot of criticism for not having raised interest rates during the stock bubble to put the breaks on the equity market. So, is this the usual, or signs of a new, less friendly, pattern? If it is, this goes along with the idea that the financial markets have lost confidence in the Fed's ability to act. As an aside, isn't the recent rise in long-term rates proof that Krugman was right, and that loony right-wing commentator who was calling him inconsistent in his treatment of interest rates is full of crap, considering it's playing out about the way he said it would? Dropping the Bonds By PAUL KRUGMAN In his July testimony to Congress on monetary policy, Alan Greenspan was cautious but - adjusting for his usual funereal demeanor - quite upbeat. "Although the uncert...

Suddenly, Greenspan Is, Well, Mortal How did I miss this article last weekend about Alan torpedoing the bond market? I should be paying more attention. Basically this is another sign that the "maestro is losing his touch." First this, then the Steven Roach column I cited earlier this week, the Paul Krugman gets his digs in. Suddenly, Greenspan Is, Well, Mortal Suddenly, Greenspan Is, Well, Mortal By GRETCHEN MORGENSON LIKE the statues of dictators, investment icons have toppled one by one since the stock market peaked in 2000. Chief executives, once lionized by their shareholders, are now often viewed with mistrust. Stock analysts who were once Wall Street's equivalent of rock stars are now seen as carnival barkers. But through it all, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, kept deity status. Not long ago, one lawmaker predicted that Mr. Greenspan would be remembered as the greatest central banker of all time. Even after years of fal...

TSA keeps two lists of people to check And the second list has nothing to do with terrorism. This is some scary stuff here, boys and girls. If I get strip-searched because I run a blog critical of that incurious imperial president, I will raise all manner of blue bloody hell. Hell, it's already having a chilling effect; I wonder if it's safe for me to travel to Ireland this fall. Have to e-mail Tom Tomorrow and ask him if he got hassled. This article is from Salon; normally I wouldn't force y'all to sit through their ads, but this is important. Just think if the government is keeping a second list of people who it wants to hassle while traveling. Think of what that means. People who aren't terrorists, who don't want to blow things up, who just want to exercise their First Amendment rights to criticize the government, are being tracked and subjected to humiliating searches. Grounding the Flying Nun July 25, 2003 | Ever since the terrorist ...

Steven Roach thinks the Fed is losing control And with the economy teetering on the brink of deflation, this could be very bad indeed. I posted this on Atrios's comments this morning: I think this will contribute to deflation. The Federal Reserve needs to be unambiguous in its deflation-fighting and start using some of its nontraditional methods such as buying longer-term bonds to inject cash into the economy and drive long-term rates down. It doesn't matter if they only do a little of it, as long as the Fed shows it can and will, it will reassure the animal spirits of the traders. Global: Losing Control Stephen Roach (New York) What happened? No one wants to accept blame for bad things -- least of all the Federal Reserve. But America’s central bank is hardly an innocent bystander in the extraordinary volatility that has afflicted the bond market. A deflation-fighting Fed initially encouraged the markets to accept two key premises -- the first being it that it ...

Letters to the Editor A former colleague of mine, Cornie Strawser, got a letter to the editor published in today's Washington Post . Thanks for John Berry's July 11 Business story, "Number Crunchers vs. Recession," which pointed out that the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has added a new indicator -- monthly real gross domestic product -- and assigned greater weight to GDP estimates in determining when the end of the recession may be reached. When I looked up the latest NBER analysis and compared it with the one issued two months earlier, I found that the committee had downgraded its emphasis on employment statistics even more than Mr. Berry's story indicated. In April the committee wrote: "Economy-wide employment and real personal income are the most important monthly indicators . . . employment is probably the single most reliable indicator." But in July the statement ranked employment...

Campaign Donations Sway Lawmakers' Vote Pretty damning evidence . Of course, anyone with eyes already knew that. And the recipients of all of this largesse (Tom DeLay) keep saying that it doesn't affect them. This is just another piece of evidence of the corrosive effect of money on our political system. Publicly funded campaigns are the best hope for us. And the incumbents who have mastered the current bribery system will fight public funding tooth and nail. WASHINGTON - You don't need a scorecard to figure out how lawmakers vote on major issues. You just need to tabulate their campaign donations. The Associated Press looked at six measures in the House — medical malpractice, class action lawsuits, overhauling bankruptcy laws, the energy bill, gun manufacturer lawsuits and overtime pay — and compared lawmakers' votes with the financial backing they received from interest groups supporting or opposing the legislation. The House passed five of the six bi...

RIAA's Subpoena Onslaught Aimed at Illegal File Sharing Are they really this desparate? Are they out of their minds? From the Washington Post : The music industry has won at least 871 federal subpoenas against computer users suspected of sharing copyrighted music files on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved every day, U.S. court officials said yesterday. (snip) The Recording Industry Association of America has said it expects to file several hundred lawsuits seeking financial damages in the next eight weeks. U.S. copyright laws allow for the awarding of damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person's computer, but the RIAA has said it will be open to settlement proposals from defendants. (snip) In some cases, subpoenas cite as few as five songs as "representative recordings" of music files available for downloading from these users. The trade group for the largest music labels, the Washington-based RIAA, ...

White House E-mail System under Denial-of-Service attack Go on hiatus for five minutes, and the fun starts. Oh well. Anyway, the latest buzz is that the new White House e-mail the president system is staggeringly user-unfriendly, making the writer go through nine pages, selecting a subject from a list, and indicating whether you agree or disagree with the president's position. Apparently, after word got out about the new system, everybody is going to check it out, to see if it is that shockingly horrible, and have caused it to crash. Guess nobody thought it needed to be robust. Besides, donors to the president have a secret e-mail, igavetwogrand@whitehouse.gov. Here's the article from The Register , and here's the original via Yahoo! . Now, for a serious word. If your subject isn't in the list, you don't have the option of other. Also, what if you're writing the president about something that you don't know the president's positi...

On Hiatus Not for long, but will be a few days before I blog more. My nephew flew up today, and so we're going to do some sightseeing. It's fun to play tourist here in Washington. We might even get over to the US Botanical Garden, and see the corpse flower. 6 feet tall, and smells like rotting meat. Just what a teenager would think is kinda cool. :) Laying around swimming pool tomorrow. Anyway, I'll be back soon.

Soldiers To Be Punished For Comments to Good Morning America Our army has lost confidence in its leadership. So, what does the leadership do? Punish them, of course. "The beatings will continue until morale improves." From The Washington Post : [Gen. John] Abizaid also addressed the growing morale problems in the 3rd Infantry Division. He said that soldiers quoted yesterday on ABC News' "Good Morning America" questioning their mission in Iraq and calling for Rumsfeld's resignation were wrong and could be disciplined. "None of us that wear this uniform are free to say anything disparaging about the secretary of defense or the president of the United States. We're not free to do that. It's our professional code," he said. One of the soldiers, a specialist, said, "If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I'd ask him for his resignation." Another private added, "I used to want to help these people, but now, I don...

Former Defense Secretary Warns of War with North Korea Some of my blogging colleagues believe this is getting juiced up because the Bush Administration wants to distract people from the lies they told over Iraq. I don' t think so, because it is their FUBARed [1] policy that has lead us to seriously contemplating war with North Korea. We know they have nuclear ambitions, so what do we do? Rather than engage them, we tell them to fuck off. Granted, the threat isn't what the Bush Administration would want us to believe, that they have an ICBM capable of hitting San Francisco. They might be able to aim it at San Francisco, but chances are it would just ruin the day of a bunch of fish 1,000 miles away. No missile defense system is needed here. Instead, the threat is that they will produce a half dozen nuclear bombs, and then sell them to terrorists. This is where I disagree with Secretary Perry. He thinks that North Korea will test a bomb soon. I'm thinking...

North Korea now claims to have fuel for six bombs Remember how I thought they had fuel enough for three back in April ? According to the New York Times , now North Korea claims they have fuel for six. The only part missing previously was that there hadn't been Krypton gas detected according to reports in the Washington Post and New York Times. Now the Chosun Ilbo is reporting that Krypton gas is being detected (see article below). Now, do we think they'll test one first, or just start selling them on the open market? If they test one, it's definately proof that they work. But then it might be harder to smuggle it out, so it might be better to go ahead and sell two or three to a party, let them test by using them. You know what the most aggravating part of this is? That we could have stopped this before it started by dealing with North Korea in a forthright manner, not jerking them around about the pressurized water reactors we were supposed to be giving the...

Colin, time to update the webpage If you think it's only the President Dubya lying to us, check this little blurb out. I tried to find this on the State Department website, but it must have been deleted by now. But at least all departments of the government were on message. That message being lie to the American people. From the Washington Post column In the Loop : There are doubtless some "fact sheets" the State Department might want to delete from its Web site. Take for example the one issued Dec. 19 titled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council." One example, under the heading "Nuclear Weapons," says: " * The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. " * Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?" Yeah, why is that? Just because the procurement program didn't exist doesn't mean they have a right to hide it. A...

20 Lies Over on the Atrios Gang blog, there's a link to a story in the Independent (UK), 20 Lies About the War . Suddenly I realize why the U.S. media is cranking up about the Axis of Yellowcake lie, because the Brits are showing them up!

NBER adjusting its definition of recessions From the Washington Post , the National Bureau of Economic Research is trying to find a way to fudge it's definitions so it can call the end of the recession. I'm not sure how I feel about this, in that it seems that the economy is growing, albiet sluggishly, but in general people are worse off. The economy being up some means that the stock market is up some, so my retirement fund is up some. But that's not what people use to buy dinner, or pay the mortgage, unless there's nothing left. "While NBER has yet to declare the recession over, the reality is that real GDP bottomed two years ago," economist David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch & Co. told his firm's clients yesterday. "Employment . . . has never been down so much this far into a post-recessionary phase," he said, noting that payroll employment is still 2 percent below its peak, compared with being roughly 5 percent higher at the sa...

Uranigate? While it is heartening that the country is finally starting to pick up on the pattern of lies, deceptions, and bullshit that is coming out of the White House, I find it somewhat curious that the press is focused on a very small part of it, the uranium-Niger-Iraq "Axis of Yellowcake". Still, I'll settle for this. Once the press starts reporting this, and then gets bored with it, maybe some of the other lies will grab their attention. Ari Fleischer (Didn't this guy resign a long time ago?) had a good whopper yesterday , "the president has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well." I don't think they have. I hope not, anyway. Now, today, on the Washington Post website, there is an article about the senior administration officials going on the Sunday talking head programs saying that "President Bush's disputed statement about Iraqi uranium shopping in Africa was accurate, even while conceding...

Jobless Recoveries Stacey L. Schreft and Aarti Singh have a good article on 'jobless recoveries' up in the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Review Second Quarter 2003. Summary: Recovery from 1990 and 2001 recessions was much slower than previous recessions. Employment has not grown, but has continued to decined since economy "bottomed out". This is not only due to slower recovery, because by Okun's Law should have some employment growth when economy grows. Just-in-time employment practices, such as overtime and use of temporary workers, grew in these recoveries, while less-flexible employment such as permanent full-time workers continued to decline. Employers substitute just-in-time employees for permanent full-time workers. Part-time employment has increased as well, and we do not have good statistics for it, in that anyone who works more that 35 hours total is considered full-time, even if they work a second job that is part-time. U...

Just how bad is President Bush's record on job creation? Billmon has an answer here . I'll reprint his wittiest lines: Just how bad is President Bush's record on job creation? It's like asking: "Just how bad was that fire aboard the Hindenberg?" (snip) Tip O'Neill used to complain that the problem with the Democrats is they keep turning voters into Republicans. The problem with the GOP, it seems, is that it keeps trying to turn them back into Democrats again. Go to his website, The Whisky Bar , and take a look at his numbers. They'll give you pause. Who's the only president since Truman who's had a decline in number of jobs in the country? Guess who.

From my undisclosed location I was just reading the paper here in my undisclosed location, which rhymes with Shmattanooga, and looked at the editorial page. Both of the letters to the editor dealt with the alleged wrongs of the Clinton Administration. Guys, it's been three years. If you want to bitch about him that bad, repeal the twenty-second amendment and let the big dog run again. Otherwise, open yourself a big can of STFU.

Bush Asks Congress For $30 Billion To Help Fight War On Criticism Has The Onion started running real news stories? Read on and decide for yourselves. I'll be back in a few days. WASHINGTON, DC—Citing the need to safeguard "America's most vital institutions and politicians" against potentially devastating attacks, President Bush asked Congress to sign off Monday on a $30 billion funding package to help fight the ongoing War On Criticism. "Sadly, the threat of criticism is still with us," Bush told members of Congress during a 2 p.m. televised address. "We thought we had defeated criticism with our successes in Afghanistan and Iraq. We thought we had struck at its very heart with the broad discretionary powers of the USA Patriot Act. And we thought that the ratings victory of Fox News, America's News Channel, might signal the beginning of a lasting peace with the media. Yet, despite all this, criticism abounds." Critical activitie...