Bush Pardon Watch

George W. Bush is apparently trying to get out of town ASAP, but he still has a few hours to go to pardon members of his administration for their illegal spying on Americans, torture, and other such crimes. This is a running post that's going to be updated throughout the day with Bush's pardons as they happen.

Update #1: Bush commutes sentence of two Border Patrol agents convicted by a jury of shooting a unarmed Mexican man in the back then tried to cover it up. Because, apparently, shooting an unarmed "cockroach" in the back should get a commendation, not a prison sentence, oKKKay?

Update #2: It is now past midnight in Washington D.C. and Bush's pardon power has turned into a pumpkin. Unless he unloads a whole stack of'em signed today on tomorrow morning with that shit-eatin' grin of his, that's all, folks. Makes you wonder what he has on Obama such that he's so sure Obama isn't coming after him or his administration for what they did, illegally spying on Americans and all that. Or maybe he figures that with a Supreme Court stacked with his and his daddy's appointees, any attempts at prosecuting him and his cronies will run into a Supreme blockade. Or maybe he just doesn't give a shit anymore, made sure his own hands were clean and doesn't give a shit about anybody else in his administration, and will laugh and laugh and laugh when the Bigus Dickus gets indicted for outing a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband's coming out against the Iraq war or gets indicted for war crimes for ordering the torture of prisoners of war...

-- Badtux the Watching Penguin

War crimes

Israeli apologists say "if the Palestinians don't want to be slaughtered, they should expel Hamas."

And if the hostages at a bank robbery don't want to be slaughtered by the cops when the cops open fire on the bank robbers, they should, err, expel the bank robbers? Even though the bank robbers have guns and, err, they don't?

The average Palestinian doesn't give a shit for any of this. They just want to live their life in peace. A CARE worker and his six children sleeping on the street because they'd rather be blown to pink mist by a bomb than die a slow and miserable death under the ruins of their home is a typical Palestinian. What is this guy, a CARE worker who specializes in running women's programs, supposed to do? Go up to the Hamas compound, which is guarded by a bunch of people with AK-47's and RPG's, and do *what*? Blaming him and his children for their own brutal death at the hands of an Israeli bomb is an atrocity. They are hostages to Hamas as much as the bank customers in my example above are hostages to bank robbers. If Israel's beef is with Hamas, they should send in soldiers to homes where Hamas leaders are and execute the Hamas leaders. Expecting unarmed women and children and CARE workers to do something Israel's own soldiers are apparently too gutless and cowardly to do is just *wrong*.

And before someone accuses me of having a double standard, I feel the same way about the Busheviks and their war crimes in Iraq such as the rape of Fallujah (*twice*). The whole lot of them -- the Busheviks, Hamas's leadership, Israel's leadership who violated the cease-fire on November 4 and incited the war to time with the U.S. holidays and the end of the Bush regime -- should get a fair trial for war crimes, then hung by the neck to die, just like the Japanese and Nazi war criminals at the end of WWII. They're all war criminals, in the end. Sad to say, they'll all die of old age, instead of swinging at the end of a rope like they deserve. So it goes.

- Badtux the War Crimes Penguin

Warning! Warning Will Robinson!

Terrier alert based on five year old information from a dead man! Time to activate the Terrier Defense System!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

More about deflationary spirals

Here's the deal with deflationary spirals. First thing that happens is that a bank collapses for one reason or another. This reduces the amount of currency in the system. Less currency, same amount of goods and services, means prices -- and salaries -- go down. Depressed prices and salaries mean that producers and consumers can no longer pay their debts. This causes more banks to collapse, thereby removing far greater amounts of currency from the economy (thanks to ye olde fractional reserve lending), which in turn furthe reduces prices and salaries. Repeat until done, with no functional banking system and the economy pretty much deflated to 10% of what it once was. The end result of the deflationary spiral is to transfer virtually all real assets in an economy from the debtor class to the creditor class at fire-sale prices. Since the debtor class in our current economy is pretty much *everybody* other than the top few percent, what you end up with is a society that looks an awful lot like a banana republic, with a handful of land-rich mega-plutarchs and hoards of desperate starving peasants.

Even more important is the *political* results of this happening. We already know what happened in Germany and Italy when things hit bottom. It almost happened here too, and the only reason it didn't was because there was still a strain of progressivism extant whose credibility had not yet been completely demolished by Republican chants of "government is the problem, not the solution". That is no longer true here today. Our modern-day Father Coughlans are much more widespread and much more powerful than they were then, not to mention that we don't have a progressive equivalent to FDR (who was a very ruthless man with no compunctions about silencing opponents) today to keep our modern-day Father Coughlans from backing a fascist take-over of the government. When people are desperate, they will cling to anybody who offers hope. When the system has been systematically degraded and its credibility destroyed over the past thirty years by Republican action, the chances that this hope will arise outside the system and end up like Germany/Italy in the 1930's is far greater than I like.

Anyhow, that's why I say that avoiding a deflationary spiral has to be the #1 thing we do here. Yes, the currency was inflated with bogus financial instruments. Yes, this means we're going to have to take the politically risky step of swapping those bogus financial instruments for treasuries in order to prevent deflation from setting in and collapsing the system. But it has to be done or we risk a deflationary spiral and its very unpleasant aftermath. The problem I have is that the administration's proposal appears to be a license to loot, not that it pretty much trades bogus financial instruments for treasuries.

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

They just can't stop looting...

Okay, folks. Here's the deal. The entire financial system risks collapse if those toxic mortgages aren't taken off their books once and for all. Simply foreclosing on those homes and selling them at auction isn't going to stop the bleeding, if the banks take those losses (basically putting housing prices back at 1998 levels, or roughly a 60% markdown) they are bankrupt. Actually, they're bankrupt right now, they're just holding foreclosed houses off the market so they don't have to make it official (if they have a home on their assets list that they say is worth $600K, but manage to sell it for only the $200K that it's worth today, then they have to actually report the $400K loss they've already incurred).

Okay, so now we propose to take those toxic mortgages off the books. It has to happen, or we risk the 1930-1932 scenario. But these stupid bastards simply can't help themselves. The current proposal is just a friggin' blank check for looting. The Treasury Secretary is authorized to give out money to anybody for any reason as long as he states that it is "mortgage-related". And there is no proposal to take over management and/or ownership of the institutions holding these toxic mortgages in exchange for taking the bad loans off their books, which is the only way to keep them from writing more toxic mortgages. Instead, it's just money thrown at the same bastards who got us into this situation in the first place.

What we need is a new "Resolution Trust Corporation" that takes over the ownership of troubled institutions and runs them on behalf of the taxpayers who are bailing them out. At some point in the future we can then sell these organizations back to private investors and have them open up under new management, but they're basically bankrupt now, the whole lot of them, and we need to make it official, take the bloodbath of writing down all those toxic loans, and take over ownership of the banks and mortgage that wrote these bad loans. Bad for investors? Oh sorry! You shoulda appointed better managers for your money, huh? But the important thing is a) to get the toxic mortgages out of the system, and b) make sure that the people who profited from the toxic mortgages are not in a position to do it again. The solution is not to throw money at the same goddamned looters who make it possible to write those bad mortgages in the first place -- but sad to say, the first instinct of any Bush Administration official is, "how can I loot the government treasury for the benefit of my cronies in private enterprise?". Sigh. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. It'd be a good idea.

-- Badtux the Financial Penguin

Yesterday's bailouts

Rather than comment further on $300B of money just *printed* by the Federal Reserve and flooded onto the financial marketplaces, the proposal that the Federal government take on all the bad mortgage loans, etc., I will instead show a re-creation in lolcat form of a typical Bush Administration official responding to criticisms of flushing all this money down the toilet, starring Mencken playing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson...

  moar cat pictures

Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Yet another consequence of the irresponsible Bush fiscal policy

The Japanese battery for my KLR-650 that cost me $72 four years ago, will cost $105 today because the Bush Administration has been printing dollars with the fervent avarice of the Weimar Republic finance ministry (via running up gigantic deficits, which produces t-bills, which are an asset that can be used as backing for loans, which create money). When you print dollars like this, dollars become worth less and it takes more of them to buy stuff. So it goes. Sigh.

-- Badtux the Inflation Pengui

Karl Rove and the Constitution

"What, you Congressmen want to talk to me and the Constitution says you have the power to do so? Fuck the Constitution!"

Karl Rove will testify over his dead body. No joke. The Emperor's stewards sneer at that "Congressional subpoena" thing. Remember, if the Emperor does it, it's not illegal.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Love song for New Orleans

xxx

This evening's Netflix was A Love Song for Bobby Long. The plot and such were pretty thin, and John Travolta chewed up the scenery as his trademarked charming villainous rascal while Scarlett Johansson did an okay job but that's all you can say about it, but it was an affecting movie for me anyhow mostly because of one of the uncredited stars of the movie: New Orleans and its musical culture, destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.

I watch Travolta, then Scarlett Johansson, walk past places I knew, places I've seen, and realize that they're no longer there, not in any meaningful way. The musical culture depicted in the movie... it's not there anymore. Destroyed. All gone. Nothing left but a Disneyfied New Orleans, purged of what made it one of the great cultural cities of the United States, and one that is still surrounded by rotten levees patched with sand that will break when the next moderate-sized hurricane hits.

Anyhow, the song above is by Grayson Capps, a New Orleans musician. It's not one of his best songs, go to Youtube and search for his name for better songs, his music is what New Orleans was, a mixture of blues and jazz and rock and roll all mixed up into one spicy gumbo. But this particular song is a lament that still is not being heard. A great American city was destroyed by neglect and incompetence, and what little rebuilding has been done by locals with whatever scrap they could scrape together. There is a trillion dollars to bring "democracy" to Iraqis, but not a dime to bring safe levees to New Orleans. And nobody seems to care, or give a damn, or see a thing.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

625,000 American casualties in Iraq

Folks say "well, sure, the Iraq war has been hard on Iraqis, but at least there aren't hundreds of thousands of American dead." Well, true enough. Modern body armor will keep our soldiers from dying. But 620,000 soldiers and Marines -- or roughly 1/3rd of those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan -- come back and end up either disabled or suffering PTSD. To quote a report on the topic:

According to an April 2008 study by the Rand Corporation, 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans currently suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Another 320,000 suffer from traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage. A majority are not receiving help from the Pentagon and VA system which are more concerned with concealing unpleasant facts than they are with providing care.

And from the Bush Administration, all you hear is that adequate VA care for these disabled is "pork", thus why they're fighting the latest war funding act which calls for full funding for the VA as well as full funding of the GI Bill to pay for college for veterans. They call this "pork". And say we can't afford this -- the minimum that we owe to veterans for sending them into harm's way in a useless war. For shame, George W. Bush and Republicans. For shame. Why do you hate our veterans so much? Is it because they're heros, and you're just a draft dodging dry drunk whose daddy's friends bought you the Presidency but you will always, forever and ever, be a failure? Or is it just that you're an evil mean-spirited dry drunk? I suppose we'll never know...

-- Badtux the Unsnarky Penguin

More on nuclear reactors in Syria

The notion that anybody in this day and age can build a nuclear plant in secret is just ludicrous. The North Koreans didn't do it, the Pakistanis didn't do it, the Iranians haven't managed to keep their nuclear facilities secret, Israel wants to believe their nuclear facilities are secret but everybody knows about them anyhow. Everybody and their brother keeps close tabs on any technology that can be used to build nuclear power plants. Even the North Koreans had to import most of the stuff for their power plants, and Syria is just as dirt-poor as North Korea and has even less industry -- poorer, maybe, because at least North Korea gets cash for their missiles and nuclear technology, while all Syria gets is bribes to let Hizballah rockets pass through their territory to Lebanon.

But, could it have happened for the first time ever? Well, thanks to Bryan at Why Now, I now can look at pictures of the purported nuclear reactor. And the answer is: Bwaahahahahah!

As Bryan points out, the chances of there really being a nuclear plant out there are pretty much non-existent because, well, the Syrians are friggin' flat broke and the North Koreans ain't a charity outfit. The pictures pretty much verify that. This setup looks more to me like a house and a generating station for the pumping station down at the river, for pumping water somewhere uphill. I bet if we look at this area real closely on Google Earth we'll see a water tower further uphill, and a town somewhere nearby that the water tower serves.

Hmm, just found it on Google Earth, and uphill from this is...

a water treatment plant. (And just for comparison, Tempe, Arizona's water treatment plant -- quite similar in many respects).

Well. Wouldn't be the first time that U.S.-built bombs smashed a water treatment plant, eh?

As for the building itself, Google Maps shows it as being 150 feet by 150 feet square (move the building over the scale to see what I mean). Or roughly 22,500 square feet. Not small, but not large enough for the purpose indicated. Crap, your typical Safeway grocery store is twice the size (the average Safeway is 44,000 square feet, and the new ones average 55,000 square feet). Unless the Syrians have mastered Dr. Who's interdimensional Tardis technology, you simply can't fit what the U.S. is saying was in there into the building that was there...

I am SOOO tired of these lying liars and their continued lies... sigh.

- Badtux the Fact-checking Penguin

FAA covers up air traffic control mistakes

Fly the Dangerous Skies. As usual, the Busheviks fall back on their "hide, obfuscate, lie" tactics to avoid doing their job, which in the case of the FAA is air safety. When you have a group that attains power who believes that the only job of government is to help them loot money from the rest of America, that's what kinda shit you get...

If my job required me to travel via air, I'd be looking for a new job right now given all the air safety stuff now coming out. The Busheviks have gutted pretty much every safety-oriented department of the government, which is alarming in many instances, but when we're talking about airplanes, those motherfuckers fall out of the air when they ain't safe. And penguins don't fly too well if not sitting in an airplane. Well, penguins don't fly at all. Sorta like turkeys, except we swim better.

So I'm going to leave that flying shit to other people right now. Besides, who wants to get rectal exams every time they go through a friggin' security checkpoint?!

-- Badtux the Flightless Penguin

I know nothink!

Busheviks say they weren't covering up suicide rate amongst veterans, rather, the problem is "It's been hard to track exactly". In other words, it's the Sergeant Shultz Defense:

I know nothink!

Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snark Penguin

Nuclear reactors in Syria

Yeah, yeah, pull the other flipper. And I bet people who believe this bullshit believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, too. Idiots. Anybody who believes anything the Busheviks say without verifying with multiple independent bodies involved in checking for nuclear proliferation activities (such as, say, the IANA) is so stupid that they probably can't chew gum and walk at the same time. That is, typical American voters. Alas :-(.

-- Badtux the Skeptical Penguin

Anatomy of a Bushevik power grab

Department of Homeland Security Chairman Skeletor says number of security attacks on government installations doubled last year, according to intrusion reports filed with the US-CERT clearinghouse. In response, he calls for a "reverse Manhattan Project" to fend off security attacks. The details of this latest "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" initiative (not to be confused with the 2003 initiative of the same name) are largely secret, but involve allowing the NSA to monitor all U.S. government computer systems at the very least, as well as authorizing DHS's new Cyber Security Center to go into all federal agencies and install their own firewalls (and there is new firewall technology which will allow this to happen invisibly, called "transparent firewalls", which look like a bridge or switch to the network but which internally are capable of deep inspection of the traffic going through).

Now, the statistic about the number of security attacks doubling sounds alarming -- until you realize that the number of government computers monitored directly via US-CERT's "Einstein" program doubled last year. Most agencies not monitored by Einstein are not running intrusion detection systems capable of detecting security attacks. So double the number of computers monitored by Einstein, double the number of intrusion reports. Duh.

So there you have it, all the hallmarks of a Bushevik power grab: a) Find a statistic that can be spun out of context to create a "crisis". b) Raise a ruckus about how dire the situation is. c) Propose a solution that sucks yet more power into the hands of the military-security apparatus of the government. d) Ponies!

And oh, Chairman Skeletor? I happen to be one of the computer security professionals you're asking to join your team on this "reverse Manhattan Project" that you're talking about. I got just one thing to say to you: Kiss my fine-feathered ass. Clear enough? You made sure the DHS got created without Civil Service protection so that all employees were political employees, so why the fuck would I want to go to work for you, when I'd just get fired and replaced by the next President's team when he got into office? I swear, Chertoff is the stupidest bastard on the planet, when he's not being evil. Fuck, even when he is being evil. (See: Katrina).

-- Badtux the Security Penguin

CIA says Taliban, al Qaeda killed Bhutto

Really. Nevermind that the area where Bhutto was killed has no al Qaeda or Taliban presence and that it's unlikely that al Qaeda or Taliban could operate freely there...

ICanHasCheezeburger.com

Okay. Pull the other one, okay?

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

A model for the Bush Administration

In China, a failed chief executive doesn't desperately cling to power with feeble excuses and desperate attempts to blame others for their problems. I hereby call on every senior official of the Bush Administration, especially George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, to follow the example of Zhang Shuhong, a man who truly put his neck on the line for justice.

C'mon, Busheviks. Save us the trouble before rope goes up in price after the war crimes trials. Sheesh!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

As usual, screw the little guy

As I mentioned before, the major hirers of illegals use the "labor contractor" cutout to insulate them from legal repercussions. That is, they hire temp workers from "labor contractors" (one guy with a disposable cell phone and pickup truck) in order to avoid having to pay employment taxes on the worker or have any knowledge of the legal status of the worker. No knowledge = no liability. The "labor contractor" has the liability, but good luck tracking him down -- he's one guy with a pickup truck and a disposable cell phone.

So anyhow, the Bush Administration has released their illegal immigration crackdown plan. Go read it, then come back and tell me which of the items in that plan address the "labor contractor" loophole.

Yes?

I'm waiting. C'mon, which item addresses the "labor contractor" loophole?

Still waiting!

Uhm, alrighty then! As usual, the big guys are gonna skate on this one. Some guy with a pickup truck and a throw-away cell phone might (or might not) get busted, and poor sods who tried to do the right thing and hire people as full-time workers with benefits are gonna get reamed, but the big guys? Oh come on now. You didn't think the Bush Administration would really go after their big contributors, like the Halliburton subsidiaries who imported thousands of illegals into South Louisiana to "rebuild", did you?!

Indeed, the only decent thing about the plan is that it does include revisions to the H2A and H2B programs (for hospitality, restaurant, and agricultural temp workers) so that there is a reasonable legal means for Mexican immigrants to come across the border and work. Other than that, it's a joke.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

I read World Nut Daily so you don't have to

World Nut Daily (replace the "u" in "Nut" with "e" and Google for it if you want) is a well-known neo-con web site. During the Clinton Administration, they were always on the case of drugs in Mena, shady real estate deals, the murder of some dude that the Clintons obviously offed because they were sleazy, you know the deal. During the Bush Administration... [crickets].

Like all the neo-cons, they're always late to the game. For example, I just got a breathless message from WND. "Iraqi Prime Minister has ties to Iran!" Which is a MEMRI (Mossad) translation of an Egyptian newspaper article, and to which my response is... duh? Look, you stupid neo-con morons, all you had to do was read Professor Juan Cole's excellent web site where he translated articles from the Arab press to that effect literally years before Mossad managed to get around to it. Maliki's ties to SCIRI and its Badr Brigade militia go back literally years. And SCIRI was set up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iranian intelligence services in the first place as an anti-Saddam force. If you weren't such stupid fucking Mossad suck-ups who refuse to read anything not "ideologically correct", you would have known about this literally years ago.

I mean, c'mon. Back in 2002, before Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck started, I told the dumbasses that invading Iraq would turn it in to Iran West. Shit, George Herbert Walker fuckin' BUSH said the same godammed thing in his memoirs back in '96. What part of "Iraq is sixty percent Shiite" do these stupid fucking neo-cons not understand? But noooo... they knew best. The only problem we were gonna have with the invasion of Iraq, they said, was what to do with all the goddamned flower petals that the population showered us with. Yeah, some flower petals. Are neo-cons the stupidest, most blood-thirsty fucking assholes on the planet, or what?

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

Should we get the government we deserve?

H.L. Mencken once said of democracy, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

Well, in 2000 and 2004, that was pretty much true. (And spare me the silliness about the Busheviks "stealing" those elections... if the apathetic majority had really cared who was President, the only way the Busheviks could have "stole" those elections would have been at gunpoint). But in 2006 something odd happened: The common people changed their mind.

The result from the Busheviks has been... telling. Right-wing zealots who only months before had been touting the virtues of democracy are now showing their true colors as anti-democracy royalists. They want democracy only when the people vote for them. When the people do NOT vote for them, the right-wing zealots say "governing is too important to leave to the people!" and want to impose a military dictatorship.

Personally, I believe that the common people deserve to get what they want good and hard. They want lower taxes? Fine. They get what they want good and hard, in the form of collapsing government services, corrupt officials, disintegrating schools, and crumbling national infrastructure. Sooner or later the common people usually come to their senses and want something else good and hard. The same, unfortunately, is not true of dictators. Generally dictators just continue on their path until they destroy their country. Or as Winston Churchill once put it, "Democracy is the worst of all forms of government except all the others that have been tried." As for the Bushevics and the 27-percenters who still support them, I have only one question: Why do you hate democracy?

-- Badtux the Democratic Penguin