Observations on current events

Economics:

Robert Scheer: Sucking Up to the Bankers: A Bipartisan Lovefest
"This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them. Yet both of our leading presidential candidates are scrambling to enlist not only the big-dollar contributions but, more frighteningly, the 'expertise' of the very folks who advocated the financial industry deregulations at the heart of this meltdown..."


Iraq:

AFP: Audit finds millions wasted in Iraq reconstruction contract
"Millions of dollars were likely wasted on a 900 million dollar army contract to build courthouses, prisons, police and other security facilities in Iraq, an audit released Monday has found.
The audit by the congressionally appointed Special Inspector General for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, found that the contractor, Parsons Delaware Inc., completed only about a third of 53 planned construction projects..."


Electronic Voting:

The Raw Story: Documents show Georgia's Secretary of State knew of Diebold patch
"On Dec. 3, 2002, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox’s office faxed documents to the then-president of Diebold Election Systems Bob Urosevich listing a series of issues that occurred shortly before the November 2002 election.
Documents provided to RAW STORY by a whistleblower close to Cox’s office show that one of the key problems Georgia officials were trying to resolve was related to an unauthorized patch installed on machines prior to the election..."

Iran:

Scott Ritter: Acts of War
"The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities which result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions which took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today..."


George Monbiot: We Lie and Bluster About Our Nukes — and Then Wag Our Fingers at IranBy failing to disarm and breaking the rules when it suits, nuclear states are driving proliferation as much as Ahmadinejad
"..The security council’s offer to Iran claimed that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a 'Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction'. But like every other such document, it made no mention of the principal owner of weapons in the region: Israel. According to a leaked briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs. But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn’t yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess.
This subject is the great political taboo. Neither Brown nor Obama mentioned it last week. The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel. During a parliamentary debate in March the British defence minister Bob Ainsworth was asked whether he thought that Israel’s nuclear weapons are 'a destabilising factor' in the Middle East. 'My understanding,' he replied, 'is that Israel does not acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons. Does Mr Ainsworth really buy this nonsense? If so, can we have a new minister? If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels threatened.
But we make the rules and we break them. The non-proliferation treaty (NPT) obliges the five official nuclear states, of which the UK is one, to work towards 'general and
complete disarmament'. On Friday, the Guardian published the notes for a speech made last year by a senior civil servant, which suggested that the decision to replace the UK’s nuclear missiles had already been made, in secret and without parliamentary scrutiny. Since then defence ministers have told the Commons on five occasions that the decision has not yet been made..."


Iraq:

WSJ: Perle Linked to Kurdish Oil Plan
"Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals..."


Corruption:

Sen. Stephens (R) AK, has company!

Beyond Delay
"The 22 most corrupt members of Congress"

...and the 'legal' variety of corruption: campain contributions...

Washington Post: Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling
"...Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May..."


Energy:

Victoria Times Colonist (CA) - A Model for Real Community Energy Self-Sufficiency
"The recent G8 Summit achieved one important result. It showed that too many of our leaders still think energy 'security' can be achieved by calling for an increase in the rate of oil extraction at the expense of human and ecosystem health.
They are looking for security in the wrong places. For a real lesson in energy security, and a glimpse of the healthy local economy of the future, they could start with a small town in Germany, just one of many in northern Europe that are charting a course toward true energy autonomy, based on renewable sources of energy.
The town of Freiamt generates its entire electricity needs from locally owned renewable sources, and then sells a 30 per cent surplus to generate revenue..."


Abuse of Executive Priviledge:

AfterDowningStreet.org Hearing on Impeachment Videos

The comments by Bruce Fein and Vincent Bugliosi are most interesting.

The Rule of Law:

John Dean: Congressman Kucinich's Impeachment Resolution, the Parallel to Nixon, and Why Even Nixon's Defenders Finally Abandoned Him
"Given the fact that Bush will be out of office in less than six months, it is not likely that the Kucinich resolution will receive the consideration it deserves. This is unfortunate. It has been clear to me since 2004, when I wrote Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, in which I analyzed the basis for the very charge that Kucinich has now leveled, that Bush’s actions with regard to Congress – in essence, telling Congress and the American people a deadly lie involving the nation’s blood and treasure – constituted, without question, a 'high crime' and impeachable behavior...

...Based on conversations with members of the House and Senate, and countless public statements, there is no question that Congress understands that the Bush/Cheney presidency treats its members as if they were, and should be, a decidedly lesser branch. Nixon did the same, but with a difference. When Nixon was president, Congress reached a point where it was determined to end his abuses of presidential power. Yet pointing out this out would have been testifying to the obvious, and there is nothing I could say that would give those on Capitol Hill without spine the fortitude needed to take action. As with Nixon, Congress will have to stand up to the bully at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue on its own – or never do so.

Also, there is no shortage of witnesses who can discuss the abuses of power by Bush and Cheney, to create a record of how they have gone beyond established constitutional limitations. The examples are well-known: their excessive and unnecessary secrecy, their incessant stonewalling and refusal to provide information to Congress, the issuance of executive orders that have rewritten important laws (like Bush’s virtual repeal-by-executive-order of the Presidential Records Act of 1978), their politicization of the Department of Justice, their striking disregard for civil liberties, their exclusion of Congress from the necessary national security information when it votes on legislation like the FISA amendments (leaving Congress with no idea what the changes do or do not do), their deceiving Congress about the reasons for war in Iraq, their relentless expansion of purported executive prerogatives, their ongoing politicization of the federal judiciary, their violations of longstanding treaties in order to embrace a policy of torture, their utilization of the concocted theory of executive power known as 'the unitary executive theory,' and their endless signing statements accompanying legislation and claiming the right to not enforce laws enacted and signed by the president. And this is to name merely a few of the matters with which the Congress is painfully familiar..."

Technology and Privacy:

Heise Online (DE) - Speculation over back door in Skype
"According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged. The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations. At a meeting with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception of IP based services held on 25th June, high-ranking officials at the Austrian interior ministry revealed that it is not a problem for them to listen in on Skype conversations.
This has been confirmed to heise online by a number of the parties present at the meeting. Skype declined to give a detailed response to specific enquiries from heise online as to whether Skype contains a back door and whether specific clients allowing access to a system or a specific key for decrypting data streams exist. The response from the eBay subsidiary's press spokesman was brief, 'Skype does not comment on media speculation. Skype has no further comment at this time.' There have been rumours of the existence of a special listening device which Skype is reported to offer for sale to interested states.
There has long been speculation that Skype may contain a back door. Because the vendor has not revealed details of its proprietary Skype protocol or of how the client works, questions as to what else Skype is capable of and what risks are involved in deploying it in an enterprise environment remain open.
Last week, Austrian broadcaster ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, reported that the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections. Interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia declined to provide heise online with a comment on the matter. He did, however, offer general comments on the meeting, which were, however, contradicted by other attendees.
In contrast to statements from the interior ministry, the meeting was not attended solely by technical staff; those present included lawyers, regulatory experts and staff at the regulator. Neither were the ministry representatives mere technicians, rather they were high-ranking officials in management positions. They demanded from the ISP representatives present an 'Austrian industry solution' for accessing data traffic. They called for ISPs to allow the interior ministry to install network bridges and Linux computers in their network centres. These would be used to copy and filter data traffic and forward it to the interior ministry via an encrypted connection. To facilitate filtering, ISPs should assign fixed IP addresses to customers being monitored..."


Science:

NASA has published a collection of amazing pictures of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Astronauts.

NASA: NASA Images

Is This What Viacom's Lobbying Of McCain Buys?

CBS NEWS STANDARDS....SEC111-5....EDITING:
"Interviews are to be edited in a straightforward manner, preserving the sense of the interview. Even a short sound bite should accurately reflect the spirit of the entire interview. An answer may not be taken out of context if the result is to distort the original meaning. If a question to an interview subject is used, the answer must be to that specific question. The question and the answer may be edited, but not in a way that would distort the meaning of either. Answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response. In short, we cannot create an answer merely because we wish the subject had said it better."

In violation of their own standards, CBS did this...

CBS edits McCain gaffe from interview, provides fake answer for viewers to cover for McCain
"This one is hard to even explain, it's so bizarre. McCain, looking just awful on camera, made yet another major gaffe about national security policy, on CBS. So what did Katie Couric do? She aired the interview with McCain, aired the question that led to the gaffe, and then inserted an "answer" to the question that wasn't the real gaffe-filled answer - it was something McCain said in a total other part of the interview. It's absolutely astounding how far the corporate media is willing to go in order to defend John McCain..."

Obama and The Afghan Trap:

Robert Scheer: Obama on the Brink
"Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.
Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration. Both candidates are embracing, rather than challenging, the fundamental irrationality of Bush’s 'war on terror,' which substitutes hysteria for rational analysis in appraising the dangers the country faces.
Terrorism is a social pathology that needs to be excised with the surgical precision of detective work, inspired by a high level of international cooperation, the very opposite of the unilateral war metaphor that recruits new generations of terrorists in the wake of the massive armies we dispatch. At a time when we desperately need a president to remind us we have nothing to fear but fear itself, we are increasingly being treated to a presidential campaign driven by fear.
Both candidates supported the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has everything to do with violating the basic freedoms of our citizens and nothing to do with making them safer. There was no shortage of alarming intelligence warning the Bush administration of the impending 9/11 attacks, but rather an utter lack of competency in evaluating the abundance of evidence..."


On Torture:

The Raw Story: ACLU: Memos authorized CIA torture
"As long as CIA agents could convince themselves they were not deliberately inflicting severe pain or suffering on detainees, they were free to do virtually anything in their questioning of suspected terrorists, including waterboarding. Furthermore, the agents' belief they weren't in fact torturing their captives didn't even need to be 'reasonable.'
These are the implications of a controversial August 2002 memo from the Justice Department to the CIA that was released Thursday. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained several internal Bush administration documents it says authorizes the CIA to torture detainees.
'These documents supply further evidence, if any were needed, that the Justice Department authorized the CIA to torture prisoners in its custody,' Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, said in a news release. 'The Justice Department twisted the law, and in some cases ignored it altogether, in order to permit interrogators to use barbaric methods that the U.S. once prosecuted as war crimes.'
The documents were heavily redacted. For example, the government blacked out 10 full pages of the 18-page August 2002 memo, written by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, before releasing it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Most of the text on the remaining pages was similarly blacked out, but the released version of the Bybee memo does provide some insight..."


Follow The Money:

Amy Goodman: Who’s Paying for the Conventions?
"The election season is heating up, with back-to-back conventions approaching — the Democrats in Denver followed by the Republicans in St. Paul, Minn. The conventions have become elaborate, expensive marketing events, where the party’s 'presumptive' nominee has a coronation with much fanfare, confetti and wall-to-wall media coverage. What people don’t know is the extent to which major corporations fund the conventions, pouring tens of millions of dollars into a little-known loophole in the campaign-finance system.
Stephen Weissman of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute explains the unconventional funding:
'It’s totally prohibited to give unlimited contributions to political parties. It’s totally prohibited for a corporation or a union to just go right into its treasury and give money to political parties. Yet, under an exemption that was created by the Federal Election Commission, which essentially is made up of representatives of the two major parties, all of this money can be given if it’s given through a host committee under the pretense that it’s merely to promote the convention city.'
According to CFI’s new report, 'Analysis of Convention Donors,' since the last presidential election, the corporations funding the conventions have spent more than $1.1 billion lobbying the federal government. Add to it the millions they pour into the conventions. Says Weissman: 'In return for this money, the parties, through the host committees, offer access to top politicians, to the president, the future president, vice president, cabinet officials, senators, congressmen. They promise these companies who are giving that they will be able to not only get close to these people by hosting receptions, by access to VIP areas, but they’ll actually have meetings with them.'
Disclosure of what corporations are giving is not required until 60 days after each convention, which is essentially Election Day, so there is no time to challenge a candidate on particular corporate donors..."


The Fourth Estate:

Chris Hedges: So Goes the Newsroom, the Empire and the World
"The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print...
...The Internet will not save newspapers. Although all major newspapers, and most smaller ones, have Web sites, and have had for a while, newspaper Web sites make up less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue. Analysts say that although Net advertising amounts to $21 billion a year, that amount is actually relatively small. So far, the really big advertisers have stayed away, either unsure of how to use the Internet or suspicious that it can’t match the viewer attention of older media.
Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of local, state and federal government. Newspapers hire people to write about city hall, the state capital, political campaigns, sports, music, art and theater. They keep citizens engaged with their cultural, civic and political life. When I began as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, most major city papers had bureaus in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Moscow. Reporters and photographers showed Americans how the world beyond our borders looked, thought and believed. Most of this is vanishing or has vanished..."


YouTube As Self-Appointed Censor?

Greg Mitchell: 'Wall Street Got Drunk' - 'Banned' Bush Video Surfaces
"An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week -- capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.
The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: 'There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk ---that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.'
Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: 'And then we got a housing issue... not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker.'
No one is saying how ABC's Miya Shay got the video or how it emerged. UPDATE: The YouTube version of the video is now axed..."

Energy:

As disappointing as the Senator's positions have been on FISA and other failures to hold the Bush 'Unitary Executive' to account, his position on oil shale is well-reasoned.

The oil sands being extracted in Canada involve massive water use, environmental/landscape change, and significant energy use to refine to the same qualities/properties as conventional crude.

Sen. Ken Salazar (D) CO - Heedless Rush to Oil Shale
"...energy companies are still years away -- 2015 at the earliest -- from knowing whether this technology can cost-effectively produce oil on a commercial scale.
To reach the 2015 goal, we must avoid the pitfalls that have trapped us in the past: the speculation and hype, the shortage of water and power, and the failure to plan for environmental and social impacts. Unless development proceeds in a thoughtful and responsible manner, we risk another massive bust..."


Money:

MainStreet.com - There's A Law That Takes Away Money If You Leave U.S. Citizenship?
"A lot of people probably can't understand why someone would voluntarily give up American citizenship -- but if someone wanted to do that, they'd now incur financial penalties for it.
Congress just passed a new law that will stop your capital -- or at least a good portion of it -- at the border, should you decide not to be a U.S. citizen anymore. Is it, perhaps, in preparation for the possibility that Americans might rebel at the debt and taxes incurred by their government by leaving for lower-tax locales?
You probably didn't notice this little provision inserted into the Heroes Act of 2008, passed by Congress on June 17. The headlines in the press release about the law were about the increased benefits for veterans and families of deceased military.
But Richard Kohan of Price WaterhouseCoopers drew my attention to one section of the act, which states that anyone voluntarily giving up his or her citizenship will be taxed on all of his assets as if he or she had sold them -- paying capital gains on assets that have increased in value, even though they have not been sold.
That's right. While everyone in the media is focused on keeping aliens out of America, Congress has voted to lock its citizens - or at least a good portion of their assets -- into America! Maybe they're thinking that patriotism won't be enough to keep the smart money from recognizing the coming increases in the tax burden..."


Immunity Is Convenient:

AFP: Berlusconi escapes trial thanks to new immunity law
"Italy's Senate on Tuesday passed into law a bill that effectively grants Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution during his time in office, the ANSA news agency reported.
The law grants political immunity to the incumbents of Italy's four most powerful positions: the posts of prime minister, president and the speakers of the two parliamentary chambers.
It was approved by 171 votes to 128 against, with six abstentions, ANSA reported.
Italy's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, approved the bill earlier this month.
The most immediate beneficiary of the law is Berlusconi, who had been facing trial on a charge of having paid his British lawyer David Mills, 600,000 dollars (380,000 euros) to give favourable testimony in two trials..."


On Torture:

LA Times: Evidence against terrorism suspect barred at Guantanamo trial
"A military judge says some statements by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden, were made in 'highly coercive' settings. It could set a standard for other cases..."

The Rule Of Law:

...presents an inconvenient obstacle to the Unitary Executive agenda.
Why the People's Representatives tolerate this sort of behavior of the Executive is a real mystery. Are they being blackmailed (via illegal wiretaps), or just too blind to see what these people are up to?

Bob Herbert: Madness and Shame
"You want a scary thought? Imagine a fanatic in the mold of Dick Cheney but without the vice president’s sense of humor.
In her important new book, 'The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,' Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David Addington, Dick Cheney’s main man and the lead architect of the Bush administration’s legal strategy for the so-called war on terror.
She quotes a colleague as saying of Mr. Addington: 'No one stood to his right.' Colin Powell, a veteran of many bruising battles with Mr. Cheney, was reported to have summed up Mr. Addington as follows: 'He doesn’t believe in the Constitution.'
Very few voters are aware of Mr. Addington’s existence, much less what he stands for. But he was the legal linchpin of the administration’s Marquis de Sade approach to battling terrorism. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror — regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say — was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it..."

Electronic Voting:

Raw Story:GOP cyber-security expert suggests Diebold tampered with 2002 election
"A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections.
Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election...
...Spoonamore received the Diebold patch from a whistleblower close to the office of Cathy Cox, Georgia’s then-Secretary of State. In discussions with RAW STORY, the whistleblower -- who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation -- said that he became suspicious of Diebold's actions in Georgia for two reasons. The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds. The source states that Cox was not privy to these changes until after the election and that she became particularly concerned over the patch being installed in just those two counties.
The whistleblower said another flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock, which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address..."

Campaign 2008:

It seems the only people who are taxed more under Obama's plan are those who earn more than $600,000.

Washington Post: McCain & Obama's Federal Income Tax Plans

Iran:

Scott Ritter: Iran Shows Its Cards
"There can no longer be any doubt about the consequences of any U.S. and/or Israeli military action against Iran. Armchair warriors, pundits and blustering politicians alike have been advocating a pre-emptive military strike against Iran for the purpose of neutralizing its nuclear-related infrastructure, as well as retarding Iran’s ability to train and equip 'terrorist' forces on Iranian soil before dispatching them to Iraq or parts unknown. Some, including me, have warned of the folly of such action, and now Iran itself has demonstrated why an attack would be insane..."


Economics:

Robert Scheer: The Real Legacy of the ‘Reagan Revolution'
"McCain campaign co-chair Phil Gramm is right: We have 'become a nation of whiners.' But who is whining more than the bankers that former Sen. Gramm’s financial deregulation legislation benefited? The very bankers who now expect a government bailout, such as those at UBS Investment Bank, where Gramm found lucrative employment.
As chair of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, Gramm engineered passage of legislation that effectively ended the major regulatory restraints applied to the financial industry in response to the Great Depression. The purpose of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act-co-authored by Gramm, passed in 1999 by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton-was to liberate the banks, stockbrokers and insurance companies from restraints imposed on their activities more than seven decades ago. It was legislation that the financial community, which contributed heavily to Gramm’s campaigns in the previous five years, desperately wanted and obviously has abused. So why now bail these institutions out?
Hows about some 'tough love' for those bankers suddenly in trouble? You know, the sink-or-swim approach of 'welfare reform' that Gramm and Clinton applied to poor people to end their addiction to government handouts. Or, perhaps a heavy dose of 'faith-based' personal responsibility initiatives to get those knaves who messed up our entire housing market back on the straight and narrow. Sounds ridiculous I know, because nothing but the bleeding-heart, big-government, throw-money-at-the-problem approach will do when it comes to salvaging corrupt corporations...
...Why in the world would you designate as your key economic adviser someone who left the Senate to become an officer of the bank that is at the very center of this mess, a former senator who not only secured highly paid employment with a banking giant that benefited from legislation he helped pass, but who then lobbied Congress for even more of the deregulatory breaks that got the bank into such deep trouble?
The answer cannot simply be that McCain doesn’t care much about economics, as he himself has indicated. Perhaps that would explain his having voted for all of the measures pushed through the Senate by Gramm. Perhaps it even would explain McCain’s having been chair of Gramm’s own failed presidential bid. But indifference to economics does not explain the prominence of Gramm in the McCain campaign as the top economic adviser during these past months of the U.S. financial crisis. Indifference to the folks losing their homes is a more plausible explanation."


The Rule of Law:

Glenn Greenwald: The motivation for blocking investigations into Bush lawbreaking
"Harper's Scott Horton yesterday interviewed Jane Mayer about her new book, The Dark Side. The first question he asked was about the Bush administration's fear that they would be criminally prosecuted for implementing what the International Red Cross had categorically described as 'torture.'
Mayer responded 'that inside the White House there [had] been growing fear of criminal prosecution, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Geneva Conventions applied to the treatment of the detainees,' and that it was this fear that led the White House to demand (and, of course, receive) immunity for past interrogation crimes as part of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But Mayer noted one important political impediment to holding Bush officials accountable for their illegal torture program:
'An additional complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned this program, so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised,'..."

Iraq's Oil:

Nick Turse: The Iraqi Oil Ministry’s New Fave FiveAll the Oil News That’s Fit to Print (Attn: The New York Times)
"On June 19th, the New York Times broke the story in an article headlined 'Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back: Rare No-Bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.' Finally, after a long five years-plus, there was proof that the occupation of Iraq really did have something or other to do with oil. Quoting unnamed Iraqi Oil Ministry bureaucrats, oil company officials, and an anonymous American diplomat, Andrew Kramer of the Times wrote: 'Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP… along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields.'
The news caused a minor stir, as other newspapers picked up and advanced the story and the mainstream media, only a few years late, began to seriously consider the significance of oil to the occupation of Iraq.
As always happens when, for whatever reason, you come late to a major story and find yourself playing catch-up on the run, there are a few corrections and blind spots in the current coverage that might be worth addressing before another five years pass. In the spirit of collegiality, I offer the following leads for the mainstream media to consider as they change gears from no-comment to hot-pursuit when it comes to the story of Iraq’s most sought after commodity. I’m talking, of course, about that 'sea of oil' on which, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz pointed out way back in May 2003, the month after Baghdad fell, Iraq 'floats.,'...”


Las Vegas Sun Editorial: Profiting from Iraq
"There is a lot of money to be made in Iraq. Apparently, all it takes is the right connections to get a piece of the action. Halliburton Co. had those connections. The Houston-based oil services company that was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney set the gold standard for war profiteering. Now comes word that Dallas billionaire Ray Hunt, a crony of President Bush’s and a member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is getting his share of the spoils..."

Iran's Euro Oil Bourse:

Humayun Gauhar: The oil bomb
"Iran has really gone and done it now. No, they haven’t sent their first nuclear sub into the Persian Gulf. They are about to launch something much more deadly...
...Iran did this to break free from the tyranny of the dollar. Russia and Europe welcomed the Iranian oil bourse because 70 percent of Europe’s oil is imported from Iran. The two most oil-hungry nations growing hungrier by the day, China and India, also said that they were very interested. Now you see why Iran’s president is 'the most dangerous man in the world?' It has nothing to do with the damned nuclear bomb. It has to do with the detonation of the oil bomb that has detonated the dollar bomb. For America this is war, literally, because having left the Gold Standard in 1971 it had, de facto, made oil the commodity on which the dollar is based by ensuring that oil is sold mostly in dollars. (When Saddam said in April 2002 that he was considering selling some Iraqi oil in Euros he signed his death warrant). Came the decline in the dollar came the decline in the value (purchasing power) of oil revenues as well as OPEC’s dollar-based assets. Oil-exporting countries started thinking in terms of selling some oil in Euros. This would put the dollar even more on the skids. President Bush’s first Middle East trip this year, ostensibly a 'peace mission', was actually to deliver what Mike Whitney calls 'the horse’s head' (as in the film, The Godfather). 'Bush went to the trouble of travelling half-way around the world to tell the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf States that they were going to continue linking their oil to the dollar or they were going to 'sleep with the fishes.'
Why did the Arab countries say that they might shift partly to Euro? With the fall in the dollar’s value, OPEC saw the real value of its oil, its dollar surpluses and dollar holdings decline too. Since oil has largely been sold in dollars through NYMEX and IPE, oil sellers put their hordes of surplus 'petrodollars' in US banks, real estate and other investments. But now the dollar’s decline has made selling in dollars no longer as valuable as it was..."


Economics:

E.J. Dionne: The Death of Reaganomics
"The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades.
Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing.
You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn't matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to 'grow the pie' is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is 'protectionism.'
The old script is in rewrite. 'We are in a worldwide crisis now because of excessive deregulation,' Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview.
He notes that in 1999 when Congress replaced the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act with a looser set of banking rules, 'we let investment banks get into a much wider range of activities without regulation.' This helped create the subprime mortgage mess and the cascading calamity in banking.
While Frank is a liberal, the same cannot be said of Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yet in a speech on Tuesday, Bernanke sounded like a born-again New Dealer in calling for 'a more robust framework for the prudential supervision of investment banks and other large securities dealers.'
Bernanke said the Fed needed more authority to get inside 'the structure and workings of financial markets' because 'recent experience has clearly illustrated the importance, for the purpose of promoting financial stability, of having detailed information about money markets and the activities of borrowers and lenders in those markets.' Sure sounds like Big Government to me..."

Energy:

$4.00/gal. fuel is not that high, by comparison.
In most of the EU it's over $7.00 and in Oslo, Norway (an oil-producer), it's $9.85, but the relative weakness of the US$ has a lot to do with that.

LA Times: What a gallon costs around the globe

Technology:

Compatibility testing is a pain, but so very necessary...

Donna Frasier: Microsoft Windows XP Update (KB951748) & ZoneAlarm firewall
"Those users who have recently installed the Windows update whom are using Zone Alarm or Zone Alarm Security Suite, you will probably be already aware your internet connection has just died.
Why is this you're asking? Well as I discovered Microsoft's new security update for Windows XP (KB951748) is rendering incompatible with Zone Alarm, therefore making you have no internet connection. As there are so many users of the Firewall Zone Alarm, ISP’s and Microsoft are inundated with calls of their loss of connection.
Zone Alarm’s Forum report’s that they are investigating the problem and either uninstall the recent update till they can get it fixed..."

ZA's work-around is here.

Our (Fleeting) Constitutional Rights:

NY Times Editorial: Compromising the Constitution Over FISA
"Congress has been far too compliant as President Bush undermined the Bill of Rights and the balance of powers. It now has a chance to undo some of that damage — if it has the courage and good sense to stand up to the White House and for the Constitution...
...Lawmakers are already justifying their votes for making major changes to that proven regime by saying that the bill is a reasonable compromise that updates FISA technologically and will make it somewhat harder to spy on Americans abroad. But none of that mitigates the bill’s much larger damage. It would make it much easier to spy on Americans at home, reduce the courts’ powers and grant immunity to the companies that turned over Americans’ private communications without a warrant.
It would allow the government to bypass the FISA court and collect large amounts of Americans’ communications without a warrant simply by declaring that it is doing so for reasons of national security. It cuts the vital 'foreign power' provision from FISA, never mentions counterterrorism and defines national security so broadly that experts think the term could mean almost anything a president wants it to mean.
Supporters will argue that the new bill still requires a warrant for eavesdropping that 'targets' an American. That’s a smokescreen. There is no requirement that the government name any target. The purpose of warrantless eavesdropping could be as vague as listening to all calls to a particular area code in any other country.
The real reason this bill exists is because Mr. Bush decided after 9/11 that he was above the law. When The Times disclosed his warrantless eavesdropping, Mr. Bush demanded that Congress legalize it after the fact. The White House scared Congress into doing that last year, with a one-year bill that shredded FISA’s protections. Democratic lawmakers promised to fix it this year..."

Environment & Energy:

NY Times: Cheney’s Office Said to Edit Draft Testimony on Warming
"Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was involved in removing statements on health risks posed by global warming from a draft of a health official’s Senate testimony last year, a former senior government environmental official said on Tuesday.
The former official, Jason K. Burnett, made the assertion and described similar incidents in a three-page letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who is the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee..."

The Rule Of Law:

Ryan Singel: Analysis: NSA Spying Judge Defends Rule of Law, Congress Set to Strip His Power
"Just days before the Senate will convene to give a final blessing to President Bush's secret, warrantless wiretapping program, a federal court judge ruled that his legal justification for the surveillance has no legal merit.
He's the same judge Congress is trying to save the nation's telecoms, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, from having to face in court.
Late Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling (.pdf) in a case against the government alleging illegal spying, finding that in 1978 Congress had clearly set out the rules for wiretapping inside the United States and that Bush's claims to have inherent authority outside of those rules did not pass Constitutional muster..."


Energy:

Clearly, the price of fuel is not yet high enough to change Mr. Gingrich's mind, or people who think like he does.
Continuing to insist on powerful vehicles in a time of high demand for a precious natural resource, merely to feed the perceived need for 'social expression,' is the stupidest, most arrogant, wasteful and irresponsible thing I've read in a long while.

NY Times: American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot
"...low-priced gasoline has long been part of the American social contract, according to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Republican leader. While in office, Mr. Gingrich battled efforts to modulate demand through tools like increased gas taxes and tighter fuel standards, and he argues that voters won’t support such measures even now.
'They will work if you coerce the entire system and if you pretend the American people are Japanese and Europeans,' Mr. Gingrich says. 'Our culture favors driving long distances in powerful vehicles and the car as a social expression,'..."

The Bush Legacy:

Andrew J. Bacevich: What Bush hath wrought
"...in crucial respects, the Bush era will not end Jan. 20, 2009. The administration's many failures, especially those related to Iraq, mask a considerable legacy. Among other things, the Bush team has accomplished the following:

Defined the contemporary era as an 'age of terror' with an open-ended 'global war' as the necessary, indeed the only logical, response;

Promulgated and implemented a doctrine of preventive war, thereby creating a far more permissive rationale for employing armed force;

Affirmed - despite the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001 - that the primary role of the Department of Defense is not defense, but power projection;

Removed constraints on military spending so that once more, as Ronald Reagan used to declare, 'defense is not a budget item';

Enhanced the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security, effectively eviscerating the system of checks and balances;

Preserved and even expanded the national security state, despite the manifest shortcomings of institutions such as the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff;

Preempted any inclination to question the wisdom of the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus, founded on expectations of a sole superpower exercising 'global leadership';

Completed the shift of US strategic priorities away from Europe and toward the Greater Middle East, the defense of Israel having now supplanted the defense of Berlin as the cause to which presidents and would-be presidents ritually declare their fealty..."