He will not be listed

Army Spc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer dies of wounds from Iraq, five years after his service there.

There is an "official" list of those soldiers who have died as a result of the Iraq war. Then there are the thousands like Army Spc. Joseph Patric Dwyer who shall never be acknowledged as casualties of Dear Leader's war to make Iraq safe for... what? A democratically-elected President who spent Saddam Hussein's regime as a guest of the Iranians? Oil concessions for Big Oil? For what? I don't know, and nobody has ever been able to give me any reason that made sense. Is profit for Vice President Halliburton's company it? Is that all? I don't know. All I know is that too many have died, and so many of them, especially those whose injury was mental rather than physical, will never be listed on whatever monument of ignominy is ever set up for the veterans of the Iraq war.

-- Badtux the Memorial Penguin

Emmylou Harris - Pancho and Lefty

xxx

You was wrong, Gordon. This ain't a great song sung by a great singer. This is a great song written by a great songwriter sung by a great singer. So there!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
And Gordon knows what I'm talkin' about, you betcha :-).

McCain gets chilly reception in Detroit

After his chief economic advisor called the U.S. "a nation of whiners" and said the only recession was a "mental recession", John McCain got a chilly reception from a hand-picked audience of Republicans in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. He spluttered and stuttered trying to convince these Republicans that he wasn't the kind of "let them eat cake!" person that Gramm's statements imply, but apparently they were not convinced. The WaPost reports that the audience was "grim" and "sat in stony silence".

It couldn't happen to a better madman. Heh.

-- Badtux the Politics Penguin

Tired

The Mighty Fang catches up on his sleep, as is true for 21 hours of the day.

-- Badtux the Sleepy Penguin

Fannie and Freddie on the ropes

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may no longer be able to guarantee loans shortly.

Turns out that the housing bust has hit even "prime" mortgages. People are walking away from their homes, and Fannie/Freddie, as the owners of those loan, are taking the hit. They guaranteed a certain rate of return to the investors who bought the bundled mortgages from them, and aren't getting the cash flow in to pay that rate of return out. The doomsday scenario, shortly to arrive, is when they're no longer capable of paying the full amount to the investors who bought the "mortgage-backed securities". At that point they will be in default, and effectively bankrupt.

Now, the question is this: What do we do about it? There's a couple of scenarios. First, there's the Takeover scenario. In this case, the U.S. Treasury takes on the job of paying off the losses. Of course, the U.S. Treasury has no money -- the U.S. is trillions of dollars in debt already, and this would add another trillion dollars in debt -- but at least this prevents the sudden disappearance of a trillion dollars out of the economy, a staggering deflation that would create a deflationary spiral that would make 1929-1933 look like child's play. In this scenario the U.S. Treasury basically is printing the money that disappeared (i.e., issuing T-bills that are then "bought" by the Federal Reserve in exchange for freshly-printed cash), leading to no major net change in the money supply.

The next scenario: Let them collapse. This basically cuts off mortgage lending other than FHA loans. Housing prices slowly at first, then faster and faster, plummet to the amount of lending available (i.e., the FHA loan limits). People lose all the equity they had in their homes and can no longer use it as backing for loans or sell their homes to extract the equity, decreasing the effective money supply. Furthermore, the investors lose a trillion dollars of value for their mortgage-backed securities, getting back maybe 40c on the dollar. To counteract that much money evaporating out of the economy, the Federal Reserve would have to crank up the printing presses overtime, and there's just not much of a mechanism for getting that money into people's hands in this scenario to re-inflate the money supply.

The final scenario would be that rather than a bail-out, the U.S. Treasury take on the job of mortgage lending and send Fannie and Freddie to their graves. The job of securitizing mortgage loans then falls to Ginnie Mae through a takeover of the assets and liabilities of Freddie and Fannie and a vastly-expanded FHA loan program. The FHA loan program has traditionally been reserved for inexpensive "starter" homes. Loans are originated by banks or other approved brokers, and must follow a fairly stringent credentialling process to make sure that the home being purchased is in fact in livable shape and that the person borrowing for the home has the ability to repay the loan. FHA loans haven't done anything "imaginative" or "creative", they just keep plugging away and the default rate is fairly low on them compared to other forms of "sub-prime" loans aimed at first-time buyers of "starter" homes. Expanding this program would bring stability to the housing market and avoid staggering deflation, at the expense of making Fannie/Freddie stockholders VERY upset.

Personally, I think the Fannie/Freddie stockholders ought to just take their lumps anyhow, so I'm not personally interested in any solution that protects them. These stockholders were all too ready to allow Fannie/Freddie take on far too many questionable loans as long as they got their guaranteed dividend checks every quarter. These stockholders allowed the management of Fannie/Freddie to lead extravagant lifestyles and build extravagant offices and exercise lax lending oversight as long as the stockholders got their dividend checks every quarter. Fuck the stockholders, in other words. And frankly, I'm not so eager to protect the morons who bought those mortgage-backed securities either, they had to know that the housing bubble that backed those securities was going to get punctured sooner or later and with it would go the value of the mortgages underlying those securities. But unfortunately a bailout is the simplest way to avoid a 1929-1932 style deflationary spiral, so we have to bail out someone. Given that the stockholders have already lost all their value as Fannie/Freddie stocks have collapsed... (shrug). Let them eat cake? But we simply can't do that for the buyers of these mortgage-backed securities. A trillion dollars vaporizing out of the economy... (shudder). Talk about making the Great Depression look more like the Somewhat Large Depression, gah!

-- Badtux the Economy Penguin

Friday Netflix blogging

Today's Netflix: The Horse Whisperer. This was a 1998 critical flop but commercial success directed by and starring Robert Redford as a rugged rancher type who manages to deal with problem horses by, apparently, staring at them until they get the idea. Or something of the sort. There apparently were some real-life training methods that were described in detail in the original book that the movie is based on, but of course that all got mangled for the movie due to the limitations of movie-making. Movies just aren't set up to depict multi-page treatises on horse training, apparently.

Now, the basic problem is that there is no -- zero -- chemistry between Robert Redford and his supposed love interest in this film, Kristin Scott Thomas. The psychotic horse that is the plot device used to push Redford and Thomas together has more chemistry with Redford than Thomas does, and Redford and the horse are mostly just staring at each other. Thomas excels when she's portraying a driven pushy micromanaging mother who's not quite as firm and decisive as she likes to pretend, but the 30 minutes or so of the film where she and Redford are mooning over each other are just a total waste of time. And by waste of time, I mean a *lot* of time -- this movie drags out for over two freakin' hours of wasted time.

So why do I give this film three herrings out of five? Mostly because of the performances of Thomas when not rote-acting her way through mooning over Redford, and, especially, the performance of a very young Scarlett Johansson as Grace, who portrays very well the anger, bitterness, insecurities and fears of a young teenage girl whose leg was lost in the same accident that somehow caused the horse to become psychotic. Johansson's character was driven by her perfectionist mother to herself seek perfection. Now suddenly she is very imperfect indeed in a very fundamental way and has to somehow deal with that. Tom Booker (Redford)'s interactions with Grace show an understanding of adolescent psychology that, as a former high school teacher, I "get" instinctively. There is a simple but effective chemistry between them as Redford's character slowly teases Grace out of her funk. If the 30 minutes devoted to sappy Kristin/Robert staring longingly at each other were chopped out and more attention paid to this sub-plot then this movie would have been a great horse/kid/family movie of tragedy, recovery, and redemption. As is, it's merely an overly-long decent movie flawed by over-indulgent directing by its formerly hunky but now just plain old star.

-- Badtux the Movie Penguin

"Let them eat cake"

Declining value of your house got ya down? Got a foreclosure notice? A layoff notice? Have to go to the food pantry to make ends meet every month? Can't get health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or bankrupted by a lengthy illness? Well, Phil Gramm, John McInsane's equally insane economic advisor, has a word for you: Quit whining. It's all in your head, Dr. Phil says from the security of his $500,000 a year consultancy.

I swear, all Republican pronouncements on the economy need to be accompanied by that warning sign to the right. Because they're all predicated on sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the clear reality that too many everyday Americans are living. In the end, they all boil down to, "Let them eat cake". The rich are doing well, after all. The little people? Well, who cares about the little people? I swear, their favorite toy growing up must have been the Marie Antoinette Barbie...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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

Reminder: Don't talk to cops

A lawyer tells you why. Even if you're innocent as the driven snow, a) it can't help, and b) anything you say can and *will* be used against you, even if it has to be taken woefully out of context to do so. Follow the advice there. Martha Stewart didn't, and she went to jail. In prison state USA, if it is anything other than a routine traffic stop, figure that the cop wants you in jail -- and 99% of the time, he'll get you there. That's NINETY-NINE PERCENT. Innocent or no, it doesn't matter. As a police officer explains in one of those videos, you have two strikes against you just showing up in court -- you have a police officer testifying against you, and you are sitting there in court in the first place. Add a third strike with something you say, no matter how innocuous it seems in context, and you're going to jail. That's just how it works in Prison State USA, the nation which imprisons the largest percentage of its population of any nation on the face of the planet.

-- Badtux the Legal Penguin

Want some torture with your peanuts?

It takes a lot to make this penguin speechless. But the Department of State Security (abbreviated "S S") has done so with their proposal to make all fliers wear torture devices upon their wrists. Because, apparently, if you haven't done anything wrong, there's nothing wrong with having an electronic tracking and torture device on your wrist.

But before we do that, I have a modest proposal. Let's make it mandatory that all Americans wear these whenever they're out in public. Because, after all, if you haven't done anything wrong, why would you be upset that the Department of Fatherland Security can track your every move and can submit you to excruciating pain whenever you are not immediately obedient to any S.S. trooper's orders? I mean, if you haven't done anything wrong, why not?

America. Land of the Free. For some definition of "free" I'm not aware of (maybe Josef Stalin's definition, huh?).

-- Badtux the Unsnarky Penguin

Obama the scary nigger

All the tighty rightie dismissals of Obama's "judgement", of Obama's "unpredictability", "trustworthiness", and so forth, all boil down to one phrase: "Obama is a scary nigger!". That's it.

Now, there's lots of reasons why *not* to vote for John McCain -- he's old, he's senile, he's crazy, he's been a rubber-stamp for the failed policies of the Bush Administration and there's no reason to think he's going to do anything other than continue those same failed policies that have led to disaster in Iraq and disaster for the domestic economy -- but anywho. Let's now talk about something else: Why to vote for Obama.

Okay, here we go....

1. Obama is smart. He's got a law degree, has a smart wife, has run for the most part a smart campaign (though I'm starting to get worried that he's listening to John Kerry's advisors now regarding how to respond to Rethuglican scare campaigns). You listen to him talk about real problems, it's clear that Obama knows his stuff -- he's not just talking in lame talking points and such, he's got his shit together.
2. Obama has been right on every major issue to come up over the past eight years. He was right on Iraq. He was right about the aftermath of attacking Iraq. He was right about the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy being a fiscal disaster. He is right on the need to improve healthcare. He is right about the current state of race relations in the United States, and right about the need for a major alternative energy program. John McCain, of course, has been wrong on all those issues.
3. Obama knows about the world. Obama doesn't get mixed up on Sunni vs. Shia. Obama knows who is in charge in Iran (hint: It's Supreme Leader Khamenei, not President Ahmadinejad, who is little more than the mayor of Tehran and has the power to issue parking tickets, maybe... what is it about the phrase "Supreme Leader" that is so confusing to tighty righties and John McInsane?).
4. Obama is dignified. Obama doesn't give unwanted back rubs to foreign leaders or treat them with undignified jocularity. Obama doesn't behave in humiliating ways that make America look like it's ruled by morons and idiots.
5. Obama understands the proper use of force -- as a response to attacks against America, not as a substitute for diplomacy and sanctions. As he said prior to the start of the attack on Iraq, "I am not against all war. I am against dumb wars. And this war [Iraq] is a dumb war." He was right in supporting invading Afghanistan to take out Osama bin Forgotten, and right on opposing invading a nation (Iraq) which was no threat to America and had no potential to be a threat to America for many years.
6. Obama doesn't want our troops to be in Iraq for 100 years. 'Nuff said :-).

No, Obama is not the second coming of Jesus Christ. That's this guy, who is riding a 500 pound motorcycle in deep sand and there isn't even any damage to his plastics! Obama is, in the end, a politician, with all the limitations that this implies -- i.e., that his first allegiance is to his political goals, not to any specific agenda that progressives might like him to swear allegiance to. But compared to the other guy, whose sole case to vote for him devolves to "I was a POW! And I'll continue the Bush economic and foreign policies! And I'm 90 years old so I got lots of experience!"... well, there's no comparison, really, y'know?

-- Badtux the Politics Penguin

A poison on the Internet

Domain Name System is busted. DNS is what takes a name like "blog.badtux.net" and turns it into a numeric address that can look up the actual computer that corresponds to that name (since computers only understand numbers, not names).

Sigh. Not surprised at all. This is another protocol, like Telnet protocol, that originated in the days back when all Internet sites on the planet Earth could be counted on you and your best friends' fingers and toes and were run by defense contractors or universities with defense contracts. ISCC, the makers of BIND (which is the DNS server used by most Linux and Unix vendors and by MacOS) claim that the problem is inherent in the DNS protocol and cannot be fixed.

So in other words, when you go to blog.badtux.net there's no way of knowing that you're really going to blog.badtux.net. You could be going to someone else's malicious site that then hijacks your computer and sends you to a dozen porno sites promising photos of Hillary Swank and Scarlett Johansson nude. If you click on this blog and that's what happens to you, you know that's what happened. After all, penguins have no interest in pictures of nude monkeys...

-- Badtux the Internet Penguin

Iraqi Prime Minister basically sez, "Yankee, go home"

Maliki says "Mission Accomplished", congratulates his own troops for defeating terrorism in Iraq -- and omits any mention of the U.S. Army.

I think Maliki wants us gone, and that's why he didn't mention the U.S. Army. Recent talk about a timetable for withdrawal tends to reflect that. Now that the Iraqi army has been purged of its Sunnis (other than the Kurds) and has basically become the Badr Brigade militia, and now that the police forces have increasingly become an arm of Maliki's militia, it may be that he feels he has enough boots on the ground to at least fight to a draw with Sadr's forces. Maliki is receiving substantial Iranian help, and it may be that he's decided it's time to throw in with the Iranians 100% and send the U.S. packing before the U.S. takes on his biggest backer, otherwise he has a big ole' target on his own behind when the U.S. bombs Iran.

Oh, if that scenario plays out, expect that Maliki will be calling on the Iranians for the logistical and air support currently provided by the Americans... and the Iranians will be happy to oblige, as well as happy to oblige with weapons and training (but not military forces, the Farsi-speaking Iranians would be as out of their depth policing in Iraq as the U.S. forces are). Maliki obviously thinks he now has enough boots to not need any more boots. If he has enough boots, then all he needs is the logistics, training, and air support -- and Iran can provide those as easily as the United States can.

-- Badtux the Geopolitics Penguin

A UFO

The coppers cracked the case quickly when a frantic homeowner called about a UFO hovering over her yard...

No, not Mississippi. South Wales. Same difference, I guess.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Like the crack of doom

Like the crack of doom, $4.99 gas in Santa Barbara underneath the doomsday sky of the GAP Fire.

-- Badtux the Photo Penguin

How to lie with statistics

Tighty righties are always saying, "the economy is doing fine! Unemployment is low! People are making more money than ever! U S A! U S A! WOOT!". So what's the real story?

Answer: SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F*cked Up). According to the Feds, the economy has lost 500,000 jobs over the past six months. According to the Feds, the economy needs to add 100,000 jobs every month to account for population growth. (See: News stories in every major newspaper after the Feds released June's employment figures). Ergo: There are 1.1 million more unemployed Americans today than there were in January.

Question: Where are they?

Answer: They've been "disappeared" as "no longer in workforce". You can verify this with labor force participation statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). For example, here's June's numbers straight from the BLS web site:

Change in Unemployment Level: +12,000 in Jun 2008
Change in Employment Level: -155,000 in Jun 2008
Change in Civilian Labor Force Level: -144,000 in Jun 2008

Only 12,000 of the newly-unemployed workers in June were considered "unemployed" and counted in the unemployment statistics. 144,000 unemployed people were "disappeared" as "no longer in workforce", and the BLS isn't even shy about it, knowing that the average American, even if he notices this, will merely scratch his head rather than realize that this is a systematic scam to produce false unemployment numbers (an old scam, BTW -- Clinton's BLS did it too, during Clinton's "full employment" I saw plenty of people looking for work who weren't being counted as "unemployed", I was working for a small computer shop at the time and we were always having people knocking on our door looking for work even though we supposedly had "full employment"). This trend continues on backward if you look at previous BLS news releases -- most of the newly unemployed have been counted as "no longer in workforce" rather than, well, unemployed. They aren't employed. They aren't unemployed. They just aren't.

Regarding income growth, real inflation-adjusted wages have declined by approximately 7% since the 1970's. The inflation-adjusted median wage for an American male was $45,000 in 1977, and $41,500 in 2004 (note: statistics from U.S. Census Bureau, 2004, latest I found at the time I was compiling them).

However, median family income has increased to $48000 over that time. How did that happen? More women working, duh. But there are no more women to add to the workforce, thus the declining median wage is hitting all families now, not just single-parent families.

In short: Statistics show that the economy is FUBAR. The only reason the unemployment statistics aren't showing 15%+ unemployment is because hundreds of thousands of Americans are being classified as not employed, not unemployed, just... not. No people, no problem. Stalin was an amateur compared to our current government statisticians, who don't need a gulag to disappear people, why, they do it with the stroke of a pen every day!

We're still nowhere near Great Depression levels of poverty and unemployment, and hopefully our new President in November will do something to encourage employers to start employing more Americans that'll keep us out of that, sorta like the Canadians do (they give massive tax credits to people creating new qualifying jobs up there, to the point where if you open a factory in Canada, your entire workforce is basically "free" for the first three years -- one reason why so many auto assembly plants have moved north of the border). Unfortunately, until the outrageous health care costs in the U.S. are dealt with, it's still going to be hard to encourage manufacturing jobs to come back to the United States... and every solution proposed to cure outrageous health care costs in the U.S. are derided and called "socialism" by folks who have no idea what "socialism" is, but who know it's bad, whatever it is. Sigh. Ignorance. The world's #1 renewable resource.

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

A journey

Over at MotoTux.

-- Badtux the Motorcyclin' Penguin

Giant hairball

Something hacked up a giant hairball on my futon.

-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin
Yes, that blasted box is *still* on my futon... every time I go to throw it away, I discover it's occupied!

Caturday shiny box photo

I spent most of the day riding my motorcycle. So here is a shiny cat in a box to keep you company.

-- Badtux the Shiny-cat-owned Penguin