The American Spirit

  The American frontier spirit of free enterprise has been savaged, hacked into little pieces by Lehman Brothers, guaranteed by AIG and rated Triple A by Moody's ratings services. Warning against the ravages of a socialized health care system, that would turn the US into France, the decades long swing that has favored government by Dow has ended. 

Restraining Sarkozy's Bling

In a somewhat surprising development the 31 year old Jerome Kerviel, hedged his bets and lost the French Bank Societe Generale billions has become somewhat of a celebrity in France.

The young Kerviel is being celebrated in a world wide movement as the hero who's run on the French Bank is being touted as a good spanking to the anti-socialist President Sarkozy, who is red faced with embarrassment over the banks loss of standing. Sarkozy is defiant, stating that he will not let his bank be bought! Touche!

What's Best for the Bank

Herectics and rebels around the world are celebrating Jerome Kerviel as their new hero.

In Crises there is opportunity.

Did you know the Citibanks biggest holder is Prince Alaweed of Saudi Arabia. Big whigs have been flying back and forth from the US to Arabia, making dozens of phone calls to the chief shareholder in Citibank.

What will be the bottom line on the write down of all this bad paper. No one knows. But many changes are coming. Old CEO's gone, new ones coming in.

The talk is that Robert Rubin, Clinton's Secretary of Treasury will be the Super Hero and try and save Citibank.

Interesting scenario with significant and practical implications. - Promoted by Specter

Today the Supreme Court will hear likely the most influential case in decades. The question being decided boils down to can banks, lawyers, accountants and suppliers be held liable for scheming with publicly held companies that deceive their stockholders?

The suit involves cable TV investors and cable TV providers who spent billions on upgrades for cable and internet serivce. Charter one of the parent companies, to offset the always needed revenue growth numbers to satisfy Wall Street falsely inflated its revenue statements, by 292 million for which four executives eventually pleaded guilty. Charter used revenue payments for advertising as revenue and this bundled sum cost was grouped in with the $17 million for a quarterly total.

Lawyers for Charters investors say the 'sham' deal and the lack of transparency caused their clients harm, and are asking for reparitions.

Short Overview

------ The Final Failure of the Bush Foriegn Policy is The Iraqi Refugee Crises------

One of the consequences of War in Iraq is the millions of well educated middle class Iraqi's that are fleeing their home country. The first time such a dynamic has played out, where refugees are not starving, but waiting out an end to a war, living on their savings. They have been swelling the ranks of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The poets, the technocrats, doctors, professors, the educated class, that graduated from Iraq's many Universities, speak English well that have fled the war zone, hoping to 'wait out' the war, earnestly waiting for the now broken promise from the US, of a new and stable Iraq. At the moment these once well to do Iraqi's are not so much concerned about food, but about their children who are not attending school, because there aren't any schools to go to.

As these once well to do refugees run out of money their choices are stark. The uprooted families and their children who have not attended school are desparate. How will they view the 'liberation' of Iraq by US forces. Will they hold a lasting resentment against the US? Will they be recruited to fight to expel US forces from the region, especially if the US decides to attack Iran. What recourse do these Iraqi refugees have? They can't return home, and they are a burden on their host countries who are no longer accepting Iraqi refugees.

Promoted by Brendan

Five Empty Lecterns

There's a long-scheduled Republican debate Thursday night on issues of concern to minority voters, and five GOP candidates are taking a pass. The four leading contenders -- Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and John McCain -- all pleaded schedule conflicts. Tom Tancredo dropped out several days ago.

The debate moderator is Tavis Smiley, the place is PBS.The panel is made up exclusively of journalists of color.

General Patraeus and Stiffling Dissent

Yes sir! No sir!

The military is necessarily an authoritarian organization. It is imperative that the men in the field not question orders.
The troops are taught to always defer to the higher ups. It is hardly what you could call a democratic organization. It is more
of a social authoritarian organization, one for all and all for one, with a top down dictatorial rule. This is the way
the military functions, so that when men are given an orders, they don't question it. It is necessary training for the battlefield.

A thoughtful and creative diary about the instabilities that emerge when the market is based on credit lines. Promoted by Specter

Our hero, Narcissis, was so taken with his own self image as an elite invester that he could not turn away. It would be his nemesis. He was making money in an unregulated hedge fund market. The scenario for profit was so tantalizingly and unimaginably beautiful, hedging complex market bets so you never lose, with naked shorts, imaginary IOU's for stocks that you bet will lose money, then sell without actually owning them and made a tidy profit. The final fantasy of all gambling men, making money at the craps game by betting on the loss. Narcissus was intoxicated, imagining the wealth created by this ultimate and sophisticated market fantasy, he could not stop himself from making money and falling in love with his own cleverness at playing the system. It was a beautiful scheme that would not stop staring him in the face.

Updated to change title.

Just a quick dairy to bring attention to a frigtening trend in civil appointments of privelege and power in our government, the Attorney General scandal, and those missing RNC e-mails.

When Paul Krugman and David Frum agree it brings more validity to the charges of cronyism.

The questions swirling around Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is it scandal or is it standard operating procedure. The reach around of the normal process for appointing State Prosecuting Attorneys that was slipped into the Patriot Act has seen some faces swollen red with indignation or embarassment. And what about those 5 million missing e-mails.

What is an activist to do when the party that "says" it represents you seems hell bent on a suicide mission?

On the Democratic side:

Do you find that title offensive?

If so, how about this?

Obama the 'Magic Negro'

That IS the title of today's opinion piece by David Ehrenstein in the LA Times

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

I am getting the biggest kick out of the conservative reaction to Dinesh D'Souza's latest book the enemy at home, in which D'Souza whole heartedly blames the cultural left for everything that is wrong with America (where have we heard that before). Then proceeds to blame the cultural left for the Osama bin Laden's rise to power.

This book uncovers the links between the spread of American pop culture, leftist ideas, and secular values, and the rise of anti-Americanism throughout the world.

IN the strangest of ironies, D'Souza's book has aroused a huge reaction from conservatives, to get this...... defend liberals. I am laughing out loud as I type.

D'Souza accuses conservative bloggers like Scott Johnson of a wholesale and massive ignorance of Islam. HIs goal, he says, is to better understand why radical Islam is becoming so populist in the muslem culture.

Since I have a good knowledge of both Western and non-Western cultures, I approached the leading thinkers of radical Islam in an attempt to study what their ideas are, and why they are winning so many converts to their nefarious cause. My objective is to understand the enemy, so that we can fight him better.

Or how Mr. Johnson Goes Nativist (As an aside Mr. Johnson is The Powerline Blogger responsible for the downfall of Dan Rather.) Johnson asserts that "D’Souza identifies “the cultural left” that is responsible for 9/11 as “the left wing of the Democratic Party” and “a few Republicans, notably those who adopt a left-wing stance on foreign policy and social issues.” Going on in McCarthy like fashion, with an enemies lists of who's who in the liberal wing of the Democratic party, or all the liberals that conservatives loves to hate.

The rub seems to come when D'Souza, in calls for fair justice and a fair accounting, of the often reprehensible over reaction against defenseless muslems. "“No one can deny the horror of Palestinian and Chechen attacks on civilians, but these have to be measured against the state-sponsored terror on the other side: the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, the shooting of stone-throwing teenagers.”

There is is in all it's horror. D'Souza a proud mulitcultural left hater, had the audacitiy to criticize Israel as a "state sponsor of terror". Watch the neoconservatives explode with rage. How dare anyone say such a thing about poor defenseless Israelites. Then further enraging Islamophobes, D'Souza even has the nerve to say out loud, "“This may come as news to some conservatives, but Wahhabi Islam is not a breeding ground of Islamic radicalism. It is a breeding ground of Islamic obedience.”

Escalation Without Commitment

Joe Lieberman an "independent" democrat has highlighted his reasons for sticking with the fight , in todays Washington Post, citing the same arguments we have heard over and over and over again, because the consequences of losing will be "catastrophic" we must summon the vision and courage to escalate the fight in Iraq with more troops. The killing fields will fill with blood if we don't keep up the "good fight" and the US will lose face with the wolrd. "The troop surge should be militarily meaningful in size, with a clearly defined mission. More U.S. forces might not be a guarantee of success in this fight, but they are certainly its prerequisite."

I think it is time for everyone to take a hard look at trying to restore the two state solution for Israel/Palestine conflict, said to be the source of many of the problems in the Middle East.

Jimmy Carter has written a new book 'Palestine Peace Not Apartheid' designed to engage in a fresh debate and a fresh look at restarting peace talks for the Middle East. The title is provacative on purpose.

Let those that are provoked by the title open the debate. A fairly small segment of the hard right in Israel have not honored the boundaries outlined in the 1967 Peace Treaty and it has been the source of much death and many conflicts. Yet as in our own country within the center of Israel the people hold a much more liberal view, operate an enterprising country, and are not so interested in pushing the boundaries of Israel past those declared in the treaty.