I’m Baaack

Posted on December 29, 2011 by lmsinca

We’re still crawling out from under the Christmas Tree around here but I read this interesting post and immediately thought of all of you.  It’s a little deep in the weeds but I found it a fascinating read for the progressive/liberal end of the political spectrum.  I guess I’m assuming I’m not the only one who thinks about these issues so we’ll see if anyone else thinks they’re important in an election year.

Last night I had a little free time and as it seemed pretty quiet around here, I went over to the Plumline to see what everyone was discussing and I thought the most interesting links in the Happy Hour thread were those relating to the “Drones”.  The discussion was launched by a piece from Greg Miller over at the WaPo and then the reaction from a few left leaning bloggers.

Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.
The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.
In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.
The convergence of military and intelligence resources has created blind spots in congressional oversight. Intelligence committees are briefed on CIA operations, and JSOC reports to armed services panels. As a result, no committee has a complete, unobstructed view.
With a year to go in President Obama’s first term, his administration can point to undeniable results: Osama bin Laden is dead, the core al-Qaeda network is near defeat, and members of its regional affiliates scan the sky for metallic glints.
Those results, delivered with unprecedented precision from aircraft that put no American pilots at risk, may help explain why the drone campaign has never attracted as much scrutiny as the detention or interrogation programs of the George W. Bush era. Although human rights advocates and others are increasingly critical of the drone program, the level of public debate remains muted.
Senior Democrats barely blink at the idea that a president from their party has assembled such a highly efficient machine for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists. It is a measure of the extent to which the drone campaign has become an awkward open secret in Washington that even those inclined to express misgivings can only allude to a program that, officially, they are not allowed to discuss.

Judging from the comments I’m not actually convinced that everyone read the Miller piece, or the other commentary, but that’s neither here nor there.  I’m finding it fascinating that there is so little outcry from left leaning pundits and citizens and when I read the following piece it crystallized for me that we’re becoming either immune or unconcerned or maybe just apathetic to the most important issues of our time.  Over at America Blog they’ve been tracking viewer hits through Blogger and have put together what appear to be the top three issues based upon stories on their website.  Granted these are issues that matter to the left, I’m not even going to pretend to understand the issues through a conservative lens, but I think Obama and Company have quite possibly undercut liberal ideals to a pretty remarkable extent.  And I also believe the whole “drone” story will become issue number four.

1. There’s an interest in these subjects (NDAA, PIPA, & mortgage fraud) that’s deep and persistent. All of our site’s regulars have weighed with their “views” a long time ago. As near as I can tell, the driver to all three posts is Google (search terms: PIPA, NDAA, “whistleblower found dead”) as new people search on these subjects. If so, Google is telling us something.

2. Message for the left — If this really is a clue to the mind of left-leaning voters, it would be smart to hit these subjects hard, starting now. There are far more listeners, I suspect, for whom the PIPA, NDAA, and mortgage fraud messages resonate, than anyone appreciates.

I’d suggest taking advantage of this opportunity. If our small indicators are right, the time to plant seeds is now, not months from now. The soil is ready, so to speak. Let’s not lose the chance.

3. Note to Obama & his merry band — I would not underestimate the extent to which these issues, especially NDAA, are a bridge too far for your base. It seems you’ve been playing a game of “how low can we go” — how far can we stoop to the demands of the money-soaked property rights and national security establishments and not lose our dependable triangulated base. 

NDAA=Indefinite Detention 

PIPA=Kill the Internet Bill

Mortgage Fraud=Whistle Blower Death in Nevada

Maybe it’s just me but I’d rather spend more time discussing these kinds of issues than the GOP primaries and their merry host of actors.  Just in case no one reads the original story in America Blog, the point is that the three stories linked just above keep popping up in the Best of the Week and Best of the Month categories long after they should have disappeared from the forefront.  My contention is that the “Drone” story may be another one.

Filed under: NDAA, Obama | Tagged: , , , | 73 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Wednesday Night Open Mic)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis

And this is probably my last one, until next Monday.

If you’re a fan of the original Fellowship of the Ring, you might want to check out Drew McWeeny’s liveblog of his watching of the Blu-Ray extended-edition of same. I often disagree with Mr. McWeeny, but in this case I think he’s got it exactly right. Love that movie. Love them all, and look forward to getting the extended editions on Blu-Ray in the not-too-distant future.

Also, the latest production video from The Hobbit—in this case covering the huge production that is location shooting on such an elaborate film—is up. Can’t. Wait.

***

Honesty in advertising:

From the Very Depressing Children’s Books category:
Here’s a lawsuit waiting to happen:
I didn’t think you could really improve on water. I never considered adding H2O to the mix!
This is why considering the surrounding environment is so important when choosing a retail location.
What’s lurks in the hearts of men (and women)? The shadow knows.
That’s it for tonight. Happy New Years, everybody!

— KW

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Morning Report

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1263.3 3.1 0.25%
Eurostoxx Index 2294.1 3.790 0.17%
Oil (WTI) 100.9 -0.440 -0.43%
LIBOR 0.5793 0.004 0.61%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 79.741 -0.095 -0.12%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.00% -0.01%

Another low-volume day is on tap with no economic data. Tomorrow, we have initial jobless claims, and if they are good, that may be the excuse portfolio managers use to do a little window dressing on the second-to-last trading day of the year. Separately, Italy had a good bond auction, selling 9 billion euros of debt. Bid to cover was 1.7, and the 10 year yield dropped 14 basis points.

Is the US going to bail out Europe? A commentary piece in this morning’s WSJ suggests we already are. We are lending to the ECB through currency swaps, which aren’t technically loans. The ECB then lends dollars to the sick banks of Europe.

Money quote from the article: “This Byzantine financial arrangement could hardly be better designed to confuse observers, and it has largely succeeded on this side of the Atlantic, where press coverage has been light. Reporting in Europe is on the mark. On Dec. 21 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted on its website that European banks took three-month credits worth $33 billion, which was financed by a swap between the ECB and the Fed. When it first came out in 2009 that the Greek government was much more heavily indebted than previously known, currency swaps reportedly arranged by Goldman Sachs were one subterfuge employed to hide its debts.“

When is the next Humphrey-Hawkins anyway?

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Bits & Pieces (Tuesday Night Open Mic)

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis
Online Christmas Day spending up 16.4%, mobile sales up 173%. That’s good news, right? Overall retail sales look to be up, too. 
New homes sales were up in November, but 2011 figures still suck. But, maybe November is a good sign?
***
Animals’ reactions to being placed inside a cardboard box:
Hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ. Also from Ace of Spades:
It’s funny because it’s true. Also from Ace, to Troll McWingnut’s point about Ron Paul not being a great contrarian voice. 

***

Also, Kraft’s Velveeta Fudge recipe. If you go that route, don’t be afraid to throw in an extra teaspoon of vanilla. The more fattening version uses full fat Velveeta (what I’d recommend) and adds a 1/2 cup of dry milk.

I’ve never had the more elaborate Paula Deen version, but it looks evil. Watch Ellen Degeneres help her make it. She rolls it peanuts, but I’d still go for the pecans, if I were you. My theory is that you ought to add a little extra Velveeta, vanilla, and pecans to any Velveeta fudge you choose to make. Feel free to double pecans and vanilla, maybe add another a couple of cubes of Velveeta (up it about 15%). But, that’s me, your mileage may vary.

— KW

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I Hope I Never Have to Look for a Job Again

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis

I will not do well with interview questions like these, in part because they piss me off. But then, I’ve never been a fan of brain teasers.

Although I’ve been through my share of irritating job interviews. I had one where the guys wanted me to write out a SQL query longhand to create a database an automatically populate it and some other stuff—and I would never be able to write out an extended SQL procedure and have it work the first time. They could have just asked me that to begin with, and saved us all a lot of time. Almost nothing I write works the first time—I write, debug, write some more, debug some more, look on the Internet to see how this or that works again, to refresh my memory.

Of course, I’ve been on the opposite end of that, interviewing people for a position who didn’t seem to read the job description. We were always explicit about what you should know about, yet people would show up not knowing any of things we had asked about. It just mystified me.

Of course, the qualified people often bailed when they found out what the position was offering. We were cheap. Of course, if any of those people are still working in the design field, they probably aren’t making any more than what we offered at the time. Graphic design has a definite undersupply of jobs and an oversupply of talent.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Morning Report

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1263 2.7 0.21%
Eurostoxx Index 2293.2 2.790 0.12%
Oil (WTI) 100.53 0.850 0.85%
LIBOR 0.5758 0.002 0.35%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 79.844 -0.077 -0.10%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.02% 0.00%

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.

Markets are up this morning in thin holiday trading. Needless to say, not a lot of news this Tuesday morning after the holiday.

Case-Schiller was released this morning, and the results are slightly lower than expected. The 20 city index dropped 3.4% at an annual rate to 140.3, which puts the US real estate market back to May of 2003 levels. Denver and Washington DC were up in Oct, while Detroit and Atlanta experienced 2% + declines. Remember, there is a lag with CS, so these numbers are October numbers and we are going into a seasonally weak period. I wouldn’t be surprised to see prices take out the post recession lows this spring.

On the bright side, consumer confidence has rebounded smartly from this summer’s lows. The conference board consumer confidence level came in at 64.5 vs. street expectations of 58.9. While we are still at extremely depressed levels historically, the mood has brightened considerable with the index jumping from 40.9 in Oct to 64.5 in Dec. Interestingly, the retail ETF (XRT) yawned at the number – I would have expected to see analysts take up their comp sales estimates for Dec. Retailers will report Dec comp sales on Jan 5.

Chart: Consumer Confidence

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Good Morning TMW

Posted on December 27, 2011 by markinaustin

We are on the road in 25 minutes or so, and I won’t check in again until tomorrow night, but I thought TrollMcWingnut would find this NYT column of interest.

DECEMBER 26, 2011, 9:00 PM

Whose Tea Party Is It?

By THEDA SKOCPOL and VANESSA WILLIAMSON
Newt Gingrich’s brief turn as presidential front-runner was only the latest paroxysm of a tumultuous Republican primary season. What’s going on? Tensions within the Tea Party help explain the volatility of the Republican primary campaign, as candidates seek to appeal to competing elements of the Tea Party with varying success.
For our new book, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” we interviewed Tea Party activists across the country over a sixteen-month period and found that the movement is not the monolith it is sometimes portrayed as. The conservative political upsurge has grassroots and elite components with divergent interests and goals. Mitt Romney, no favorite of the Tea Party grassroots, is currently pitching his candidacy to Tea Party elites, while Newt Gingrich and other contenders are vying for the rank-and-file Tea Party supporters.
We learned about grassroots Tea Party groups by attending their meetings, interviewing active members and reading hundreds of their websites and message boards. In early 2011, these Tea Partiers had no consistent favorite for the Republican nominee, supporting everyone from Ron Paul to Mike Huckabee to Donald Trump, but they did have one goal in mind for 2012: beating Barack Obama. As one Tea Party member we met in Virginia put it, “we have to get Obama out. Obama and the Communists he’s surrounded himself with.”
In recent weeks, Gingrich has reached out to these grassroots Tea Party voters, older white middle-class conservatives who remember him from his glory days as an insurgent Democrat slayer. Gingrich’s aggressive style and blistering critiques of the Democrats resonate with Tea Party voters. Gingrich has accused Democrats of socialist tendencies for decades; as early as 1984, he claimed that a Democratic member of the House of Representatives was distributing “communist propaganda.”

But Gingrich has also tapped into what we identified as Tea Partiers’ most fundamental concern: their belief that hardworking American taxpayers are being forced to foot the bill for undeserving freeloaders, particularly immigrants, the poor and the young. Young people “just feel like they are entitled,” one member of the Massachusetts Tea Party told us. A Virginia interviewee said that today’s youth “have lost the value of work.”
These views were occasionally tinged with ethnic stereotypes about immigrants “stealing” from tax-funded programs, or minorities with a “plantation mentality.” When Gingrich talks about “inner-city” children having “no habits of working,” he is appealing to a widely held sentiment among the Tea Party faithful.
What’s more, Gingrich’s comparatively humane stance on immigration reform — offering immigrants a path to legal status with the approval of local community members — is more palatable to Tea Party members than one might expect. First, it reduces federal authority over a key Tea Party issue, a policy that appeals to the “states’ rights” conservatives who fill the seats at Tea Party meetings. Crucially, Gingrich is not offering, as Rick Perry did, taxpayer-funded benefits to unauthorized immigrants, a policy described by one Tea Party activist we spoke to as money wasted on “moochers.”
Immigration was always a central, and sometimes the central, concern expressed by Tea Party activists, usually as a symbol of a broader national decline. Asked why she was a member of the movement, a woman from Virginia asked rhetorically, “what is going on in this country? What is going on with immigration?” A Tea Party leader in Massachusetts expressed her desire to stand on the border “with a gun” while an activist in Arizona jokingly referred to an immigration plan in the form of a “12 million passenger bus” to send unauthorized immigrants out of the United States.
In a survey of Tea Party members in Massachusetts we conducted, immigration was second only to deficits on the list of issues the party should address. Another man, after we interviewed him in the afternoon, took us aside at a meeting that evening to say specifically that he wished he had said more about immigration because that was really his top issue.
Tea Party activists are not uniformly opposed to government social programs, however. Our interviewees were very anxious that Social Security and Medicare be maintained. “I’ve been working since I was 16 years old, and I do feel like I should someday reap the benefit. I’m not looking for a handout. I’m looking for a pay out of what I paid into,” one Tea Party member explained. Their support for these programs was not just self-interested; several Tea Partiers said they would take a benefit cut if the savings stayed in the Social Security fund. One woman, a regular attendee of her local Tea Party, offered solutions that seemed totally out of keeping with the stereotypes of Tea Party members as knee-jerk tax cutters. After suggesting that any benefit cuts be aimed at those in the “upper income brackets,” she went so far as to say that she “would not mind a tax increase to try to get the country right again.”
Given the Tea Partiers’ abiding support for two key pillars of the American social safety net, it is no surprise that Gingrich’s plan for a Social Security overhaul is aimed only at young workers, not the retirees filling the rows at Tea Party meetings. But Mitt Romney has taken a different path, expressing his support for the Ryan budget plan that features huge tax cuts for the very wealthy paid for with relatively near-term Medicare cuts.
Many observers have suggested that Romney’s support for the unpopular Ryan budget was a misstep. But considered from another perspective, Romney is making a strategic move to aim for a different part of the Tea Party, the free-market elites and funders.
Cutting these programs is unlikely to appeal to the grassroots Tea Party, but local Tea Party members are only marginally aware of the national advocacy occurring in their name. Asked about national groups, local activists tended to shake their heads in confusion. In a typical complaint, one leader of a local Arizona Tea Party group told us, “sometimes when you sign up for a site, it puts out tentacles,” sharing information so that visitors receive a bewildering array of emails from other groups.Long-standing elite advocacy organizations that rallied around the Tea Party label in 2009 and 2010, like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, were crucial to the Tea Party phenomenon, providing funding for national rallies and conservative candidates, and focusing attention on well-practiced spokespeople to represent the Tea Party in the media and in Washington. But the national advocates have only tenuous ties to the grassroots Tea Party groups and are in no way accountable to the Tea Party at the local level. Their policy agenda is different as well. FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have sought major reforms of Social Security and Medicare for years — long before the Tea-Party label gained currency.
Tea Partiers also receive their information primarily, or in some cases exclusively, from Fox News and talk radio, outlets that are unlikely to turn a critical eye on conservative advocacy organizations. This lack of connection between grassroots and elite Tea Party-ism may allow Romney to placate the wealthy opponents of Social Security and Medicare without irking the Tea Party base.
For both Romney and Gingrich, appealing to the Tea Party is a bit of a stretch. Both men have been around too long not to have taken positions too moderate for the new, extreme-right, tea-infused Republican Party. In particular, there is little Romney can do to make Tea Party activists enthusiastic about him during the primary season. Though his claims to a businessman’s expertise should appeal to the many small business owners in the Tea Party, no one we interviewed had good things to say about anything but his potential electability.
But Republican primary voters, including those in the Tea Party, want to win the 2012 general election. As one Tea Partier told us, Romney is “not quite conservative enough – but we have to get Obama out.” They will overlook past heresies, even “RomneyCare,” in a candidate they believe can win the general election.
As long as the big Tea Party funders back Romney’s candidacy or stay on the sidelines, Romney has a good chance of riding out other candidates’ surges in popularity and using his vast organizational and financial advantages to beat out his opponents for the Republican nomination. At that point, the grassroots Tea Party members will have little influence; instead, momentum will shift even further towards the elite policy advocates. And these well-funded groups, which benefited from the Tea Party’s momentum in the first years of the Obama administration, will continue to seek their own policy goals, including those at odds with the positions of local Tea Partiers.
Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard University, and Vanessa Williamson, a graduate student in government and social policy at Harvard, are the authors of the new book “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.”

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Merry Christmas to ATiM!

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Michigoose

Merry Christmas to all!  I hope you’re having the happiest of days, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.  I wanted to share this video with you; I really liked it for a variety of reasons: (1) I like choral music–there’s nothing like the blending of voices in song to touch the heart, (2) I think that Andrea Bocelli is one of the most beautiful singers of our time (and I don’t like opera in general), and (3) I love the way the cinematographer took a quintessentially Christian prayer and applied it to all mankind.  May you all have a wonderful and joyous day!

(BTW, that’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra backing Andrea Bocelli, they’re an amazingly talented group of volunteer singers and musicians.)

 I’ve searched long and hard for a video of Martina McBride doing “O Holy Night” a capella the way I first saw her perform it, and haven’t been able to (probably no surprise, since that must have been in the late ’80’s/early ’90’s).  This is the closest I’ve been able to come; don’t feel obligated to watch the whole clip (her singing ends at 2:42).  This is my favorite Christmas carol, along with “Silent Night”, and if I remember right it’s lms’ favorite, too:

And this is my second favorite version of a song which isn’t technically a Christmas carol but which should be.  I love Kathy Mattea’s voice and, as a guitar player, this is almost as good as it gets (“Silent Night” being best, but I can’t find a video of one that I like). 

 
Finally, here is  a fantastic cover of Garth Brooks’ “Belleau Wood”  I wish all our soldiers a peaceful night, wherever they may be.

Filed under: Merry Christmas | 18 Comments »

LIONS!

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Brent Nyitray

That is all.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Virginia Graveyard

Posted on December 24, 2011 by nsullivan12

Apparently Gingrich and Perry also failed to qualify for the Virginia ballot. I’ll leave it to others better informed sources to explain why that happened, and merely note that, from my
vantage point, Virginia’s appears to have positioned itself, for now, as the state in which presidential ambitions are buried and, quite probably, one of the major factors in Romney taking the nomination.

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