Resentment Over Darwin Evolves Into a Documentary

By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Published: April 18, 2008

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

Positing the theory of intelligent design as a valid scientific hypothesis, the film frames the refusal of “big science” to agree as nothing less than an assault on free speech. Interviewees, including the scientist Richard Sternberg, claim that questioning Darwinism led to their expulsion from the scientific fold (the film relies extensively on the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy — after this, therefore because of this), while our genial audience surrogate, the actor and multihyphenate Ben Stein, nods sympathetically. (Mr. Stein is also a freelance columnist who writes Everybody’s Business for The New York Times.)

Food miles don't feed climate change - meat does

7:00 18 April 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Ewen Callaway

That locally-produced, free-range, organic hamburger might not be as green as you think.

An analysis of the environmental toll of food production concludes that transportation is a mere drop in the carbon bucket. Foods such as beef and dairy make a far deeper impression on a consumer's carbon footprint.

Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'

Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 17, 2008 10:38:37 PM

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

McCain’s Economic Remedy: A Double Dose of the Same

By Robert Borosage
Created 04/16/2008 - 12:40pm

Summary:

Sen. John McCain this week delivered what the campaign billed as a major address on the economy. And while McCain says he understands people are hurting, he hasn’t allowed this to clutter his thinking. He just recycles the old platitudes of the market fundamentalists.

On Wall Street, the masters of the universe have turned to prayer and worry beads. At the Federal Reserve, a full night’s sleep is a fading memory. Across Main Street, the recession is starting to hit, stores are shutting down, bankruptcies are spreading, houses are being foreclosed or abandoned. The pain of the recession is just beginning to hit.

Paul Krugman: Clinging to a Stereotype

Will Barack Obama’s now famous “bitter” quote turn out to have been a big deal politically? Frankly, I have no idea.

But here’s a different question: was Mr. Obama right?

Mr. Obama’s comments combined assertions about economics, sociology and voting behavior. In each case, his assertion was mostly if not entirely wrong.

Start with the economics. Mr. Obama: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration.”

There are, indeed, towns where the mill closed during the 1980s a

The Price of the Surge

By Steven Simon

From Foreign Affairs , May/June 2008

---

Summary: The Bush administration's new strategy in Iraq has helped reduce violence. But the surge is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state and may even have made such an outcome less likely -- by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni tribes and pitting them against the central government. The recent short-term gains have thus come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

STEVEN SIMON is Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1994 to 1999, he served on the National Security Council in positions including Senior Director for Transnational Threats.

In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new approach to the war in Iraq. At the time, sectarian and insurgent violence appeared to be spiraling out of control, and Democrats in Washington -- newly in control of both houses of Congress -- were demanding that the administration start winding down the war. Bush knew he needed to change course, but he refused to, as he put it, "give up the goal of winning." So rather than acquiesce to calls for withdrawal, he decided to ramp up U.S. efforts. With a "surge" in troops, a new emphasis on counterinsurgency strategy, and new commanders overseeing that strategy, Bush declared, the deteriorating situation could be turned around.

Tax Day Gifts for the Rich

by Holly Sklar

When it comes to cutting taxes for the wealthy, President Bush can truly say, "Mission accomplished."

The richest 1 percent of Americans received about $491 billion in tax breaks between 2001 and 2008. That's nearly the same amount as U.S. debt held by China -- $493 billion -- in the form of Treasury securities.

Do you want our government to mortgage more of our nation's future to finance tax breaks for the rich?

Dean: I need a decision 'now'

Posted: 06:55 AM ET

(CNN)— An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.”

“We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”

Digby: Who Will Tell The People?

As you well informed blog readers all know by now, last week ABC broke an interesting little story. It was about how Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Colin Powell, George Tenent, John Ashcroft and other Bush "Principals" all gathered in regular meetings in the White House to discuss and approve of the various torture methods being used against prisoners held by the United States in the War On Terror. ABC interviewed the president a couple of days later and asked him if he was aware of these meetings and he said he was not only aware of them, but that he'd approved of them. Moreover, he specifically said he had no regrets about what was done to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who we know was tortured with simulated drowning --- also known as "waterboarding" --- which is considered by the entire civilized world to be torture.

Robert Fisk: Semantics can't mask Bush's chicanery

This goes beyond hollow laughter. Since when did armies go around 're-liberating'

Saturday, 12 April 2008

After his latest shenanigans, I've come to the conclusion that George Bush is the first US president to march backwards. First we had weapons of mass destruction. Then, when they proved to be a myth, Bush told us we had stopped Saddam's "programmes" for weapons of mass destruction (which happened to be another lie).

Now he's gone a stage further. After announcing victory in Iraq in 2003 and "mission accomplished" and telling us how this enormous achievement would lead the 21st century into a "shining age of human liberty", George Bush told us this week that "thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of success".

McCain Shows Us How to Kill an Army

By Sara Robinson, TomPaine.com
Posted on April 17, 2008, Printed on April 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82597/

John McCain, who from the early 1980s worked hard to establish himself as one of the Senate's shining champions of Vietnam veterans' issues, completed his betrayal of the Iraq-era troops today. Brandon Friedman of vetvoice.com has the details:

Yesterday VoteVets.org delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures to the office of Sen. John McCain. Through that petition, we asked him to support Sen. Jim Webb's new GI Bill. And less than 24 hours later, we have an answer:

"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill ..."

Credit Bubble Bulletin: The Greenspan episode

Commentary and weekly watch by Doug Noland

Former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, once famed for his reticence and oblique statements on the economy, seems to have spent the time since he retired from the Fed in 2006 rebuilding his persona, at least the reticence part.

Yet, though he now seems unable to decline an interview opportunity, it is increasingly evident that Greenspan is not going to be of much help when it comes to the critical issue of exploring what went terribly wrong with monetary policy and the financial system.

Treasury outlines toothless hedge-fund rules

Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 15, 2008 10:29:09 PM

WASHINGTON — With an eye toward shoring up shaky financial markets, Treasury Department officials unveiled a plan Tuesday to provide greater transparency and management of risk in hedge funds.

However, the Bush administration's "best practices" proposal is voluntary, and less than two dozen of the more than 8,000 registered hedge funds signed onto the plan.

Hedge funds are large pools of investment capital owned by the wealthy. They are largely unregulated.

Ron Wexler's Ten Commandments Commission ready to roll

House resolution congratulates the TCC and its supporters for their "key role in promoting and ensuring recognition of the Ten Commandments as the cornerstone of Western law"

Did you know that for the past two years, Congress has designated the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend (TCW)?" Most of us pay little attention to congressional resolutions. All sorts of resolutions are proposed; some pass, others are tabled, and still others are withdrawn.

These days, two resolutions relating to the Ten Commandments are being considered by Congress; one will again designate the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend," while the other aims to celebrate the Ten Commandments Commission (TCC), an organization led by a former veteran of the Israeli Armed Forces, and made up of a host longtime conservative evangelical Christian leaders.

Not to Be Trusted

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, April 15, 2008; 1:20 PM

The Bush administration's latest story line about Iraq -- that Iran is now the primary problem there -- should be greeted with profound skepticism.

Not only is it the latest in a series of rationales for U.S. involvement in Iraq, most of which have turned out to be based on flawed intelligence, misrepresentations or outright dishonesty.

But there are at least two illegitimate reasons why the White House would want the American public to see Iran as a threat right now.

Democrats must renew bond with working class

By Peter S. Canellos
April 15, 2008

WASHINGTON - During the five decades that the New Deal coalition governed national politics, from the 1930s to the 1980s, the relationship between the Democratic Party and working-class voters was an economic bond: Generations of Americans took it as an act of faith that Republicans represented the moneyed elites while Democrats stood up for the little guy.

Since 1980, that relationship has eroded and now it's in tatters. Democrats have lost significant support among the working class. They have made big gains among upper-middle-class voters.

Fears of long recession rising

Growing number of economists worry that second-half recovery is out of reach and that recession will be longer and more painful than current forecasts.

By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: April 14, 2008: 3:57 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- There is little debate about whether the U.S. economy is in a recession. The question is how painful and long the downturn will be.

There is a growing fear among some economists that the recession will be particularly bad.

"We just can't believe it's going to be short. The question is how bad can it get? The situation is moving more towards severe than towards mild," said Allen Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics.

"Marriage Savers" Lobbies for Repeal of No-Fault Divorce

Picture yourself an 11-year-old boy witnessing a drunken argument between your parents, invites Pastor Bob Dailey of Bedford, Indiana. Words fly and so do objects, an ashtray narrowly missing your mother’s head. When you grow up and attempt to put this traumatic lesson to good purpose, do you work on domestic violence initiatives that will make women feel safer both in their marriages, or in leaving them if necessary? Or do you use the story to illustrate a new divorce reform movement that re-labels the liberalized “no-fault” divorce standards adopted in the 1970s as “unilateral divorce” inflicted on one spouse without the other’s consent?

If you chose answer B, ding-ding.

Dailey’s anecdote is included on the website of Reform Divorce, launched today by Marriage Savers, a 22-year old anti-divorce organization headed by conservative Christian president and co-founder Mike McManus.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Oil Rules!

It's strange that the business and geopolitics of energy takes up so little space on American front pages -- or that we could conduct an oil war in Iraq with hardly a mention of the words "oil" and "war" in the same paragraph in those same papers over the years. Strange indeed. And yet, oil rules our world and energy lies behind so many of the headlines that might seem to be about other matters entirely.

Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based.

Where Your Tax Dollars Go

y Mike Lillis 04/15/2008 08:47AM To celebrate tax season, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has compiled a nice summary of where your dollars go (or, more specifically, where they went last year.)

In brief, the federal government took in more than $2.5 trillion in tax revenues in fiscal 2007, and spent more than $2.7 trillion (the $162 billion difference represents the budget deficit, to be paid by your kids and grandkids).

Trading Science for Politics

Why EPA Head Stayed Silent on Key Agency Findings, Despite a Science Background

By Matthew Blake 04/15/2008

The Environmental Protection Agency, on its Web site, describes air quality on the U.S.-Mexico border as "abysmal" and getting worse, due to rapid industrialization. Yet when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced plans last week to complete the border fence by waiving environmental laws, the EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, was silent. The EPA is supposed to address air quality programs under the Clean Air Act, but agency spokesman Jonathan Shrader said he wasn't aware of anyone from homeland security even bothering to check with the environmental agency.

A little knowledge is dangerous

By Rick Perlstein
April 11th, 2008 - 11:43am ET

Progressive blogger and professional economics student Kathy G is involved in a tussle with libertarian blogger and professional economics know-nothing Megan McArdle over the economic concept of "monopsony"—actually not much of a tussle, because Megan, as yet, won't cowboy up and join the battle, nor even link to Kathy G. The term sounds technical, but Kathy pulls you through the concept with admirable clarity and bite. Basically, the monopsony model is one of the many ways economists, abiding by the most rigorous neoclassical principles, are able to demonstrate that laissez-faire markets, acting on their own, can deliver both unfair and inefficient outcomes. Which opens the door to the conclusion that, sometimes, government intervention makes markets work better and more fairly.

NYT: Retailer bankruptcies set to prompt thousands of store closings

A growing number of bankruptcies among US retailers is set to prompt thousands of store closings, the New York Times will report on the front page of its Tuesday edition.

"The consumer spending slump and tightening credit markets are triggering a wave of bankruptcies in American retailing," with ensuing store closures "expected to remake suburban malls and downtown shopping districts across the country," writes Michael Barbaro for the Times.

The fiscal consequences of the Bush administration

By Clive Crook
Financial Times
Published: April 13 2008

Competition for “most damaging legacy of the Bush administration” is lively. Iraq is the front-runner, of course, but bear in mind the wreckage of fiscal policy – although to use that term is to imply that the US even has a fiscal policy, when it does not. It would be more accurate to talk of fiscal consequences or fiscal footprint (an apt metaphor) than to imply anything as deliberate as “policy”.

All three presidential contenders criticise the administration on this, but none is offering much improvement. The Democrats remind the country that in the late 1990s the Clinton administration ran a budget surplus. With ill-designed tax cuts and reeling indiscipline on spending (partly, but not only, because of the war) the Bush administration turned this into a deficit. Barack Obama’s answer is the same as Hillary Clinton’s: undo the tax cuts and then raise spending by even more. John McCain, the Republican nominee and supposed fiscal conservative, is against raising taxes and promises to get spending down instead – but will not say how to do it.

Daily Kos: Died hanging from wrists and gagged, with over 25 rib fractures

by bewert

Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 03:05:50 PM PDT

This is my first of a series of diaries about prisoners murdered by US forces. It will tell the story of an Iraqi man who died hanging by his cuffed wrists from a door frame, gagged, and beaten to death by his US interrogators. As the Final Autopsy Report noted:

The remains are received clad in a white shirt, white pajama type pants, and white
undershorts. Feces covers the clothing from the waist down....There is gauze dressing on the left wrist. No other evidence of medical intervention is noted.... The right chest wall has fractures of ribs three through seven anteriorly and ribs six through twelve posteriorly. The left chest wall has fractures of ribs two through nine anteriorly and ribs seven through twelve posteriorly. There are fractures of the lateral aspect of ribs nine and ten on the left side. There is a horizontal fracture through the mid-portion of the body of the sternum."

'This is a Class War' -- Auto Workers Fight 50 Percent Pay Cut Demand

By Wendy Thompson, Labor Notes
Posted on April 15, 2008, Printed on April 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82319/

Holbrook Avenue is a busy thoroughfare stretching from I-75 to downtown Hamtramck, a small town enclosed on all sides by Detroit. Cars honk in support of striking members of UAW Local 235 as they pass five picket lines filled 24 hours a day on both sides of the street along the large American Axle and Manufacturing (AAM) complex.

There are five more lines going south on St. Aubin Street, and two to the north. Spirits are high, and strikers are dressed warmly to face the bitter tail of winter weather.

Wall Street and Washington Are Failing Spectacularly -- Where Do We Go?

By Joe Costello, AlterNet
Posted on April 15, 2008, Printed on April 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82339/

I was 19 in October 1979, when I first stepped into a campaign office. It was the Draft Kennedy (Teddy) for President office, located directly east across the Daley Plaza from Chicago's City Hall. I would work on that campaign across the country for ten months, and it would instill in me an interest in politics, more accurately an interest in the politics of self-government that has lasted 30 years. It was a time when economics dominated political discourse from the nightly news to the kitchen table. Unfortunately, little did I understand, two months before I walked into that campaign office in 1979, President Jimmy Carter had appointed Paul Volcker head of the Federal Reserve, an event that would change American politics for the next three decades. Almost everything I learned on the Kennedy campaign about how American politics worked collapsed over the course of the next ten years. A new political regime, people, institutions, thinking, and culture replaced what had been the dominance of New Deal politics. Monetarism, Reaganomics or Neoliberlism, call it what you may, would totally dominate the American political landscape until today.

How Republicans Quietly Hijacked the Justice Department to Swing Elections

By Steven Rosenfeld, Ig Publishing
Posted on April 15, 2008, Printed on April 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82348/

The following is an excerpted chapter by Steve Rosenfeld from the new book "Loser Take All," edited by Mark Crispin Miller (Ig Publishing, 2008).

Jim Crow has returned to American elections, only in the twenty-first century, instead of men in white robes or a barrel-chested sheriff menacingly patrolling voting precincts, we are more likely to see a lawyer carrying a folder filled with briefing papers and proposed legislation about "voter fraud" and other measures to supposedly protect the sanctity of the vote.

Since the 2004 election, activist lawyers with ties to the Republican Party and its presidential campaigns, Republican legislators, and even the Supreme Court -- in a largely unnoticed ruling in 2006 -- have been aggressively regulating most aspects of the voting process. Collectively, these efforts are undoing the gains of the civil rights era that brought voting rights to minorities and the poor, groups that tend to support Democrats.

Housing Woes in U.S. Spread Around Globe

DUBLIN — The collapse of the housing bubble in the United States is mutating into a global phenomenon, with real estate prices swooning from the Irish countryside and the Spanish coast to Baltic seaports and even parts of northern India.

This synchronized global slowdown, which has become increasingly stark in recent months, is hobbling economic growth worldwide, affecting not just homes but jobs as well.

In Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere, housing markets that soared over the last decade are falling back to earth. Property analysts predict that some countries, like this one, will face an even more wrenching adjustment than that of the United States, including the possibility that the downturn could become a wholesale collapse.

Foreclosure Politics

With foreclosures running at about 20,000 per week, at least 100,000 more families are likely to lose their homes before Congress passes a relief bill. And even then, the measure may fail to stanch the problem unless Congress comes up with something that is significantly better than proposals currently in either chamber.

To produce a worthy relief package, lawmakers will first have to scrap most of the provisions in a bill passed last week by the Senate.

That bill would cost $21 billion over 10 years, with $15 billion of the total going to tax cuts that offer no direct help to at-risk families or hard-hit communities. One set of cuts would subsidize renewable energy; another would let businesses take temporarily larger write-offs for losses. A proposed $7,000 tax credit for buyers of foreclosed homes could backfire, encouraging more foreclosures by allowing banks to charge more for repossessed property. A measure to let non-itemizers deduct property taxes is dubious tax policy and bad foreclosure prevention, since it does not target the neediest.

Paul Krugman: Crisis of Confidence

The Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan has been tracking American economic perceptions since the 1950s. On Friday the center released its latest estimate of the consumer sentiment index — and it was a stunner. Americans are more pessimistic about their situation than they have been for more than a quarter century.

Meanwhile, a recent Pew report found that the percentage of Americans saying that they’re better off than they were five years ago is at its lowest level in 44 years of polling.

Co-Payments Soar for Drugs With High Prices

By GINA KOLATA

Published: April 14, 2008

Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

Will the Constitution Be Altered to Eliminate Key Liberties?

By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on April 14, 2008, Printed on April 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81638/

Though little discussed on the campaign trail, a crucial issue to be decided in November is whether the United States will return to its traditions as a constitutional Republic respecting "unalienable" human rights or whether it will finish a transformation into a frightened nation governed by an all-powerful President who can do whatever he wants during the open-ended "war on terror."

That reality was underscored on April 1 with the release of a five-year-old legal opinion from former Justice Department official John Yoo asserting that President George W. Bush possessed nearly unlimited authority as Commander in Chief, including the power to have military interrogators abuse terror suspects.

The full subprime letter from Hayman’s Kyle Bass

Hayman Capital 2626 Cole Avenue, Suite 200
Dallas, TX 75204
July 30th, 2007

Dear Investors,
Over the past few months, we have seen the exacerbation of the Subprime problem accelerate at a precipitous pace. Wait a minute…I thought the Subprime problem was neatly contained in a nice little box of risk that the Fed had put it in? After many meetings and conversations with the various leaders of brokerage firms and asset managers, I don’t think the Subprime problem is as contained as many would like for you to believe. To understand the massive ripple effects of the Subprime problem, you have to look deeply into who owns the eventual risk and furthermore, how it will affect their behavior going forward.

Did the Fed Prevent a Financial Chernobyl?

There are two useful but frustrating articles addressing different aspects of the extraordinary measures implemented by the Federal Reserve in the last ten days, in particular the bailout of Bear Stearns.

A New York Times article, "What Created This Monster," is very much worth reading despite its shortcomings. It attempts to say how we got to where we are today, but lacking a clear problem definition (are the markets in trouble due to excessive leverage? Overly complex instruments? Lack of transparency? Poorly thought and inadequate regulations? Those negative real interest rates under Greenspan?) it comes off being unfocused. However, it interviews a lot of Big Names and have some fascinating moments. My fave is this one:

Two months before he resigned as chief executive of Citigroup last year amid nearly $20 billion in write-downs, Charles O. Prince III sat down in Washington with Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Among the topics they discussed were investment vehicles that allowed Citigroup and other banks to keep billions of dollars in potential liabilities off of their balance sheets — and away from the scrutiny of investors and analysts.

“Why aren’t they on your balance sheet?” asked Mr. Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts. The congressman recalled that Mr. Prince said doing so would have put Citigroup at a disadvantage with Wall Street investment banks that were more loosely regulated and were allowed to take far greater risks. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Prince confirmed the conversation.)

Pyramids Crumbling

My college experience dates so far back that it can only be labeled "ancient history." Still, there are a few seminal lessons I learned at Duke University—unfortunately none of them having much to do with the classroom. "Ticket Scalping 101" and "Beginning Blackjack" probably head the list, but not far behind would be "Introduction to Pyramid Schemes." While the first two courses may be rather unique to my own experience, the latter I assume is standard fare, and has been since the first diploma was awarded at Harvard, Yale or whichever college claims to have been the "firstest" with the "mostest." A second semester senior who never signed up for a dorm-born chain letter cannot really claim to have received a college education at all. The chain’s lesson was that you should be the originator of the letter, not the 500^th recipient. You wanted your name at the apex of this upside down pyramid not at the broadened top, which signaled the exhaustion of additional fish, tuna or whatever derogatory noun one could employ to signify the university’s last few suckers.

Wall Street and its global lookalikes, of course, are life’s largest colleges where lessons can be mighty expensive and downright bankrupting. The last two decades alone have witnessed pyramid schemes involving savings and loans/junk bonds, the small investor/dot.coms, and now global bonds/subprimes. I could go on and you have your own candidates to be sure, but in each and every case the originator of a surefire "can’t miss" concept collected huge premiums from a willing investment public, only to see the pyramid collapse either of its own merits or from the lack of additional gullible investors. There will be more to come, much like a regular university that welcomes a never-ending stream of new "students" who pay annual "tuition" to be "educated."

Daily Kos: Rolling a Hard Six with the Economy

by Devilstower

Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 10:11:00 AM PDT

I usually leave the technical economic stories to more fiscally knowledgeable editors (and considering the state of my checking account, that would be everyone). But here's a story on which I feel I can write with equal authority to those who account for every last penny, because in this story no one knows what's going on. Not me. Not economists. Not Ben Bernanke. Not even the investment bankers involved in the story. Certainly not the government, because -- as part of the worship of free markets -- this is an area that's completely unregulated.

It's called credit default swaps. Just defining a credit default swap can be difficult, but here's my best shot. When you buy one of these things, you're buying a level of protection for an investment. For example, say someone has some double-yuck rated bonds, and is concerned that these things may soon be worth as much as a Zimbabwean dollar. With the right credit default swap, you can pay out a small amount over time to ensure that the the bonds still pay out close to face value in case of a default. So, in a sense, a credit default swap is insurance you buy for a risky investment.

Wealthy pimp Rand to college students through eager universities

Posted by Charles II on April 12, 2008

There is hardly any act more intrinsically corrupt than a college professor accepting cash to teach the writings of someone. And yet that seems to have happened, as universities have lined up to pimp right-wing novelist Ayn Rand to unsuspecting college kids. Matthew Keenan, Bloomberg:

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand….

“A corporation crosses a line and a university is complicit in crossing the line if it accepts money” and accedes to a request to assign specific books, said Jonathan Knight, director of the program on academic freedom, tenure and governance for the American Association of University Professors, in Washington. “It’s unique in my experience.” Knight has worked in the field for 31 years….

Mythbusting the right's subprime excuses

Rick Perlstein
April 11th, 2008 - 7:32am ET

It's one of the most brazen and absurd pieces of right-wing propaganda out there: the claim that liberals caused the subprime housing crisis by pressuring Congress to force banks to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers. At the American Progress web site, Robert Gordon explains where the "idea" came from:

The idea started on the outer precincts of the right. Thomas DiLorenzo, an economist who calls Ron Paul "the Jefferson of our time," wrote in September that the housing crisis is "the direct result of thirty years of government policy that has forced banks to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers." The policy DiLorenzo decries is the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to lend throughout the communities they serve.

The Blame-CRA theme bounced around the right-wing Freerepublic.com. In January it figured in a Washington Times column. In February, a Cato Institute affiliate named Stan Liebowitz picked up the critique in a New York Post op-ed headlined "The Real Scandal: How the Feds Invented the Mortgage Mess." On The National Review's blog, The Corner, John Derbyshire channeled Liebowitz: "The folk losing their homes? are victims not of 'predatory lenders,' but of government-sponsored -- in fact government-mandated -- political correctness."

Ouch! The Daily Show's Eviscerating "Documentary" About Fox News

The Daily Show's John Oliver put togther a stunning smackdown of Fox News on last night's show, punctuated by some damning clips showing egregious comments from some anchors (John Gibson, natch) and some — gasp! — flip-flopping on certain positions (like, say, executive privilege). Watch as Oliver tries to sneak into Fox HQ dressed as the Statue of Liberty, hosts a pundit shoutfest, and waves many flags. Featuring Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, Chris Wallace, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Bill Hemmer, Megyn Kelly, Jim Pinkerton, Peter Hart, Newt Gingrich and the super-chipper Gretchen Carlson.

The Very Annoying Washington Post

By Robert Parry
April 11, 2008

One of the many annoyances about living in George W. Bush’s Washington is to read the commentaries about the Iraq War on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Possibly never in modern times has a major newspaper been more wrong, more consistently with more arrogance than has the Post on this vital issue.

Beyond getting almost nothing right – from the Post’s certitude over Iraq’s WMD to its reverence for Colin Powell’s U.N. testimony to its excitement over the purple-ink elections to its enthusiasm over whatever latest corner has been turned – the Post also has this obnoxious tendency to mock Americans who don’t share the paper’s wisdom.

One might have thought that editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt and the Graham family would have learned a few lessons in humility from their wretched record as cheerleader for what even many Republicans now acknowledge has been a disastrous war.

Judge dismisses challenge to lobbying disclosure law

By Kevin Bogardus
Posted: 04/11/08 08:50 PM [ET]

The National Association of Manufacturers suffered a major blow Friday in its legal battle against the new ethics and lobbying law.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court dismissed the group’s challenge to a key provision of the law. The group took issue with the clause that would require disclosure of the member companies of “stealth lobbying” coalitions.

Frank Rich: The Petraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook

THE night before last week’s Senate hearings on our “progress” in Iraq, a goodly chunk of New York’s media and cultural establishment assembled in the vast lobby of the Museum of Modern Art. There were cocktails; there were waiters wielding platters of hors d’oeuvres; there was a light sprinkling of paparazzi. Then there was a screening. We trooped like schoolchildren to the auditorium to watch a grueling movie about the torture at Abu Ghraib.

Not just any movie, but “Standard Operating Procedure,” the new investigatory documentary by Errol Morris, one of our most original filmmakers. It asks the audience not just to revisit the crimes in graphic detail but to confront in tight close-up those who both perpetrated and photographed them. Because Mr. Morris has a complex view of human nature, he arouses a certain sympathy for his subjects, much as he did at times for Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary, in his Vietnam film, “Fog of War.”

Juan Cole: The Iraq wars

Confused by the war in Iraq? No wonder. There isn't just one, there are three.

April 13, 2008

AT LAST WEEK'S Iraq hearings on Capitol Hill, amid the talk of progress, withdrawal timetables, and casualty numbers, one crucial question was largely ignored: How much of Iraq can American troops really expect to fix?

American leaders and media tend to focus on the insurgency in Baghdad and its environs, but that's only a small part of the total picture. When the United States toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, it engendered a series of power struggles around the country.

Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in U.S.

Congressional Critics Want More Assurances of Legality

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 12, 2008; A03

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

U.S. Attempt to Control Iraq's Oil and Economy Continues Behind the Scenes

By Maya Schenwar, TruthOut.org
Posted on April 7, 2008, Printed on April 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81573/

As violence rises again in Iraq, negotiations to institutionalize US economic dominance continue unabated.

While the battle of Basra raged last week, a series of talks between the Bush administration and the US-backed Maliki government rolled forward. These negotiations may have at least as many implications for Iraq's future as the violence on the ground.