the geebus

Why Obama’s Defying The GOP And Appointing Top Consumer Watchdog

2012-01-05T12:13:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama

Brian Beutler January 4, 2012, 9:54 AM

Update 10:17 Eastern. This post has been updated from an earlier version in order to reflect the full confirmation that has now come in.

The White House confirmed Wednesday morning that President Obama will announce a recess appointment for Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at a speech in Ohio later today [embedded below]. Cordray was a well-liked Ohio Attorney General until last year, after he was toppled by the GOP midterm wave in 2010.

Cordray's an accidental victim of a brazen act of GOP obstruction. They're refusing to allow an up-or-down vote on any CFPB nominee until the agency itself is fundamentally weakened — an extra-legal attempt to nullify a key portion of an act of law.

Obama actually missed his best opportunity to recess appoint his top consumer watchdog on Tuesday. But there are reasons Obama opted to take a more confrontational approach.

Though the Obama administration has made a couple dozen recess appointments since 2009, only a tiny fraction have been for officials in truly crucial positions, and none have occurred in the past year. This has frustrated progressives and good government advocates who worry that the executive branch has become riddled through like Swiss cheese with vacancies and can't function properly.

On Tuesday, they believed Obama could take advantage of a precedent set by Teddy Roosevelt, and filled those vacancies with the stroke of a pen and the blast of an email in the seconds-long window between sessions of the 112th Congress.

He didn't do it. That meant the Senate went back in "pro forma" session, lackadaisically gaveling in and out every three days to avoid a technical "recess," and thus prevent a recess appointment.
It's customary for Presidents to heed this defensive tactic. But there's nothing that says they have to. And Obama concluded he could move ahead. According to the Wall Street Journal the administration's own attorneys don't think they do — the Senate's "pro forma" sessions are meaningless and Obama retains the Constitutional right to recess appoint whomever he wants until session begins in earnest.

This creates a significant new precedent — a bold power play in the face of an unprecedented act of GOP obstruction, but also something to which Obama (and Democrats more generally) have been pretty averse. Given that aversion, it's hard to figure why Obama would choose to create a new precedent rather than avail himself of an existing one — unless you imagine he's daring the GOP to make a big stink about it, and thus loudly side with Wall Street against him and middle-class consumers. It's a safe bet that's part of his thinking.

Brian Beutler

Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.

_________

Jon Stewart on the whole 'recess appointment' thing:

Lindsey Graham: Consumer Protection Bureau 'Is Something Out Of The Stalinist Era'

2011-12-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

Sent from Evernote

Clipped from: Huffington Post

Lindsey Graham: Consumer Protection Bureau 'Is Something Out Of The Stalinist Era'

First Posted: 12/11/11 12:02 PM ET Updated: 12/11/11 03:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that an agency established to protect consumers from financial fraud "is something out of the Stalinist era."

Graham, speaking on NBC's "Meet The Press," was asked why Senate Republicans had filibustered President Obama's nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created as part of 2010's Wall Street reform.

Graham spoke as if the bureau had yet to be created and debate was over how to shape it, rather than discussing the nominee, Richard Cordray, the former attorney general in Ohio.

"This consumer bureau that they want to propose is under the Federal Reserve, no appropriation oversight, no board. It is something out of the Stalinist era," Graham said.

The CFPB moved through both chambers of Congress and passed the Senate in a landslide, winning 60 votes, including three Republicans.

"The reason Republicans don't want to vote for it is we want a board, not one person making all the regulatory decisions," said Graham, continuing to talk as if the bureau doesn't yet exist.

Republicans have insisted that they will oppose any nominee unless a board of bank regulators is empowered to veto decisions the consumer bureau makes. The GOP also wants Congress to be able to restrict the bureau's funding, as it regularly attempts to do with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other agencies whose missions are opposed by big business.

"There's no oversight under this person. He gets a check from the Federal Reserve. We want him under the Congress so we can oversee the overseer," Graham said.

On "Fox News Sunday," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) explained the filibuster by saying that his party opposed a "czar" with unlimited authority.

Under the structure of the CFPB, there is, in fact, a board of regulators who can veto rules proposed by the bureau, but a two-thirds vote is needed.

Tens of millions of Russians were killed during the Stalinist era; millions more were imprisoned in gulags.

it's on: Wall Street vs. Warren

2011-12-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

From Evernote:

it's on: Wall Street vs. Warren

Clipped from: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/2359?m=1

Livewire | TPM

SourceURL: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/2359?m=1

12-02-2011 2:47 PM

Report: Wall Street Gearing Up To Take Down Elizabeth Warren

A report from the Center for Public Integrity today reveals plans by Wall Street groups and K Street lobbyists to fight Elizabeth Warren's Senate campaign. According to the report, they will be fundraising for incumbent Sen. Scott Brown and see his re-election as a major priority.

Asked about the report by the Washington Post, a Warren spokeswoman replied : "She stood up to Wall Street and the big banks, demanded and won oversight and consumer protections they didn't want. No one should be surprised they don't want her in the Senate."

K Street, Wall Street line up behind Sen. Scott Brown in his race against Elizabeth Warren | iWatch News

SourceURL: http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/12/02/7546/k-street-wall-street-line-behind-sen-scott-brown-his-race-against-elizabeth-warren

Republican Scott Brown is vying with Democrat Elizabeth Warren for the Senate seat in Massachusetts. Josh Reynolds, Gretchen Ertl/AP

Prospect of Elizabeth Warren in the U.S. Senate motivates K Street, Wall Street to support Scott Brown

By Peter H. Stone

15 hours, 33 minutes ago Updated: 15 hours, 33 minutes ago

Sen. Scott Brown's campaign and his political action committee are hustling for millions of dollars from K Street lobbyists and Wall Street interests to keep the Massachusetts seat of iconic Democrat Edward M. Kennedy in Republican hands.

Whether the freshman senator can win re-election in the predominantly Democratic state could be a critical factor in GOP efforts to wrest control of the Senate.

Next week, Brown backers are slated to hold at least two fundraisers to fill the coffers of Scott PAC and his campaign. On Dec. 7, his campaign is hosting a money bash at the National Theater, where the play "Jersey Boys" is currently running. And on Dec. 11, Scott PAC is holding a fundraiser at Fed Ex Field when the Washington Redskins take on the New England Patriots.

Financial service lobbyists and other K Street advocates have for weeks been working hard to help the freshman senator win his high-stakes battle for re-election against Elizabeth Warren, a liberal Harvard law professor. Warren is anathema for many finance-sector lobbyists and Wall Street leaders who abhor the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau— a centerpiece of the financial services overhaul—of which Warren was the intellectual architect.

Even though Brown's campaign had over $10.5 million in the bank as of Sept. 30, lobbyists are in overdrive to raise millions more because Warren's campaign is off to a fast start and a new poll shows her with a slight edge over Brown.

Deep-pocketed GOP allies such as Crossroads GPS, the Karl Rove-founded group backed by secret donors, have sought to help Brown with negative TV spots against Warren. Last month, Crossroads GPS spent about $600,000 on an ad that said "Elizabeth Warren sides with extreme left protesters," a reference to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In response, Warren was blunt: "It's fair to say that I've been protesting Wall Street for years and years," she said in a TV interview with a Boston station. But when pressed about the tactics of the protesters, Warren said, "Everybody has to follow the law. There's no exception on that."

Other advertising firepower on Brown's behalf is expected to come from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The business behemoth will be engaged early and heavily in Massachusetts with ads as the Chamber did, to the tune of about $1 million, when Brown won his special election in early 2010.

Inside the Beltway, fundraising has been heating up too. On Nov. 30, veteran financial services lobbyist Dan Crowley, a partner at K & L Gates, hosted a breakfast fundraiser for the senator that drew about a dozen other lobbyists. "There is no Senate race that more clearly reflects the choice for the future direction of the country," Crowley said, pitting the role of government versus the role of the private sector.

Other GOP lobbyists are also in high gear to boost Brown.

"Sen. Brown's politics are tailor made for New York Republicans who tend to be very concerned about economic growth and fiscally conservative, but more libertarian on social issues," Wayne Berman, vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, told iWatch News.

Berman, whose lobbying clients include financial heavyweights like the Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group, co-hosted an early November breakfast fundraiser for Brown at New York's tony Lever House.

In his two Senate races, Brown's top five contributors included four financial giants: Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., and Liberty Mutual Insurance, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The most generous donor has been FMR Corp., the parent of Fidelity Investments, chipping in at least $97,000 to his campaign committees from executives and the firm's PAC.

Executives and PACs affiliated with Goldman Sachs pumped at least $60,500 into Brown's coffers; at least $51,000 from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance; and at least $46,000 from Liberty Mutual Insurance.

This largess underscores Brown's role as a solid, but hardly perfect, ally of financial service interests since he took office last year. The Bay State senator has helped big local companies like Fidelity Investments and Wall Street giants by pushing for changes in the financial services legislation last year that met some key concerns. One example: Brown helped eliminate a proposed $19 billion tax on banks.

Nevertheless, Brown's was the vital 60^th vote that smoothed passage of the financial reform bill last year.

The importance of the Brown-Warren race was underscored in early November at an annual retreat held by the National Republican Senatorial Committee for its big donors at a Sea Island, Ga., resort. Brown was the NRSC's featured candidate at the retreat, and a morning pep talk/campaign update that the senator delivered drew dozens of GOP lobbyists eager for news about his prospects.

Campaign finance analyst Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, predicts a deluge of money from both sides. "This will be a showcase race in 2012. There's big money from Wall Street lining up behind Brown and more lining up against Warren because she's such a controversial figure. Outside groups supporting Warren will draw a lot of money from wealthy liberals and small donors to attack Brown."

Already, Democrats and Warren's nascent campaign are mobilizing to mount a well-funded challenge and some recent polls show her running even.

In less than a quarter of fundraising, the Warren campaign had raised over $3 million, according to its Sept. 30 filing at the Federal Election Commission. Her biggest PAC contributors included the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, the United Steelworkers and former Sen. Russ Feingold's group, Progressives United.

Outside Democratic groups including a few Super PACs are providing crucial advertising backing and other support.

American Bridge 21^st Century, a Super PAC that does opposition research, was an early ally. This fall, the group was credited by the Boston Globe with uncovering a personal values statement of Brown's on his website that was almost identical to a passage in Elizabeth Dole's autobiography. Rodell Mollineau, the president of American Bridge, told iWatch News that Warren's "race is important to Democrats because we want a fighter for the middle class in the seat."

One of Warren's heftiest allies is likely to be Majority PAC, a Super PAC set up this year to help Senate Democrats keep control of the chamber. Majority PAC, which can accept unlimited sums but must disclose donor's names, has been busy hitting up wealthy allies who would like to defeat Brown.

The PAC is hoping to raise millions of dollars for ads to assist Warren's cause. "There's a lot of excitement in the donor community for Majority PAC's plans to support Elizabeth Warren," said Monica Dixon, the executive director of the PAC.

Other outside Democratic allies are already producing ads attacking Brown's credentials. In mid November, the League of Conservation Voters launched a month-long almost $2 million ad blitz. An early spot stated that "Brown took $152,000 from Big Oil."

Another new Super PAC, dubbed Rethink PAC, was started earlier this year expressly to help defeat Brown. The PAC boasts considerable union support in the state: 1199 SEIU and the Massachusetts Teachers Association are two of its financial backers.

Like our Politics coverage on Facebook and get the latest news instantly.

Wall Street gears up to stop Elizabeth Warren - The Plum Line - The Washington Post

SourceURL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/wall-street-gears-up-to-stop-elizabeth-warren/2011/12/02/gIQAZk1WLO_blog.html

Posted at 02:25 PM ET, 12/02/2011

Wall Street gears up to stop Elizabeth Warren

Wall Street executives have been quite open about the fact that they really, really don't want to see Elizabeth Warren get anywhere near the Senate. And it looks like they're about to ratchet up their efforts to help Scott Brown prevent it from happening — including the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Center for Public Integrity reports today that Wall Street and K Street lobbyists are firing up the fundraising on behalf of Brown in a big way. The report quoted multiple big finance types saying Brown's reelection campaign is crucial, and it noted — without sourcing — that the U.S. Chamber "will be engaged early and heavily in Massachusetts with ads."

Asked for comment, a Chamber spokesman, J.P. Fielder, emailed me: "Stay tuned." He declined to say more, claiming he couldn't discuss the group's potential political activities, but the Chamber spent big on ads to help get Brown get elected in 2010, so more is likely now on the way. This comes after the New York Times reported that Warren's "enemies" on Wall Street are getting ready to throw themselves behind Brown, who they view as a key ally, with "new intensity."

Here's why this is important: It suggests these powerful interests may think Warren has already shown she's a threat to Brown. Yesterday, national Republicans were dismissive of a new online poll finding that Warrren is statistically tied with the incumbent. But the unusually early involvement of outside groups suggest that GOP-aligned special interests may in fact see Warren's challenge to the Senator they're backing as a serious one.

Here's another data point. The Rove-founded Crossroads GPS recently went up on the air with a six-figure ad buy slamming Warren for embracing Occupy Wall Street. Yet only weeks before that, Crossroads' spokesman went on record saying the group was unlikely to get involved in the race unless it "tightened." Which would suggest the race has ... tightened.

Asked for comment on the U.S. Chamber and other activity gearing up, Warren campaign manager Mindy Myers emailed:

"She stood up to Wall Street and the big banks, demanded and won oversight and consumer protections they didn't want. No one should be surprised they don't want her in the Senate."

The question is whether influential liberal groups will start spending big on the race to match the right. Environmental groups have spent some money — environmentalism is a resonant issue in Massachusetts, particularly among independents — but the big money has yet to flow. Warren herself has embarked on an unusually early and aggressive effort to introduce herself to the state with a minute-long biographical spot backed by six figures, and for now, it's basically her versus her long time antagonist: Wall Street.

About Cheney

2011-08-31T14:13:00.000-07:00

democracynow.org

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell & Salon.com political and legal blogger Glenn Greenwald.

Crowdsourced Fact Checking

2011-08-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

NewsTrust on Fact-Checking and the Wisdom of Crowds
the Atlantic (Walter Frick)

[F]act-checking politicians heading into election season is akin to playing Whack-A-Mole. No matter how many claims these and other fact checkers beat back, new whoppers keep popping up.

But what if you could scale these laudable efforts by harnessing the wisdom of the crowds? That's what NewsTrust, a nonprofit news aggregator, set out to do when it piloted its collaborative fact-checking site Truthsquad.com in 2010. Now, just over a year later, NewsTrust is shifting its focus to devote more time and resources to that effort.

[Frick] spoke with NewsTrust executive director Fabrice Florin by email to learn more about how he and his team plan to leverage crowdsourcing to fact-check the 2012 elections. [full article]

. . . .

NewsTrust is now pivoting from a standalone news curation site to a consultancy that will serve the needs of larger partners and help their communities become better informed about important public issues. Our initial focus will be on fact-checking services to expose misinformation in the public debate. We will also explore partnerships that enable us to provide news literacy and civic engagement services through popular consumer and educational channels.

. . . .

For each claim we fact-check (example), our editors provide links to factual evidence supporting or opposing that claim. We then invite our community to review these links before giving a final answer. Participants can also add more links, as described in our pilot FAQ.

The purpose of this key feature is to encourage participants to base their answers on facts, not just their own opinions. Reviewing a variety of links about a claim can help you weigh the evidence from all angles and reach a more informed decision. We also think that getting citizens to reach beyond their comfort zone and regular news sources can help them develop a more open mind, build their research skills and appreciate the value of looking at the world from different perspectives.

You can read more about our approach and overall mission in this article from the Nieman Journalism Lab.

[full article]

. . .. ... .. . .

& flashback 2.2.2008

Franken Family Focus

2011-07-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

TPM

* * * *

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, Sen. Franken noted that the group's testimony listed the benefits of children "living with their biological and/or adopted mothers and fathers" as surpassing those of children "living in any other family form." He observed they listed a Department of Health and Human Services study as backing that up.

"I actually checked it out," Franken said in reference to the study [Focus on the Family]'s Thomas Minnery has cited. He then observed it uses the term "nuclear families" without specifically mentioning "opposite sex married families."

"Isn't it true, Mr. Minnery, that a married same-sex couple that has had or adopted kids would fall under the definition of a nuclear family in the study that you cite?" Franken asked.

"I would think that the study, when it cites nuclear families would mean a family headed by a husband and wife," Minnery said.

"It doesn't," Franken said, getting laughs from the audience.

"The study defines a nuclear family as one or more children living with two parents who are married to one another and are each biological or adoptive parents to all the children in the family," Franken continued. "And I frankly don't really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies these ways."

* * * *

Jay Rosen & Clay Shirky discuss New Media

2011-05-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

NYU via Six Degrees of Separation

playlist on YouTube

US Senate: Levin-Coburn Report on Wall Street & The Financial Crisis

2011-04-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

PSI Wall Street Crisis 041311

. . .. ... .. . .

& PSI Hearings April 13, 2010

& FDIC Complaint vs. WaMu execs March 16, 2011

WaMu in the News

2011-03-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Bethany McLean
Slate

A couple of weeks ago, the government started signaling, at long last, that it was ready to get tough on the bankers who caused the 2008 financial crisis. On March 16 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, sued three former top executives of Washington Mutual, or WaMu, for taking "extreme and historically unprecedented risks," thereby causing the bank to lose "billions of dollars." That same day, the New York Times reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission had sent so-called Wells notices—often a sign that civil charges are imminent—to a handful of former executives at mortgage-securitization giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The targets seem well-chosen. The collapse of WaMu, acquired by JPMorgan Chase at a fire-sale price in the fall of 2008 was, according to the FDIC, the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. ... [more]

. . .. ... .. . .

& WaMu Hearings April 14, 2010

& business insider March 18, 2011

& FDIC pair growth bnet March 18, 2011

. . .. ... .. . .

Complaint:

FDIC vs. Killinger, et al., Complaint (3/16/2011)

Rep. John Dingell: Litany of Violent Rhetoric

2011-01-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

Joe Scarborough & Glenn Beck

2011-01-12T12:32:00.000-08:00

msnbc via HuffPo

0:50 "turn the music down"

___________________________

cf. truthbus 6.17.2007

TPM Guide for the Perplexed

2011-01-10T18:52:00.000-08:00

TPM, Josh Marshall

In the aftermath of the Giffords shooting there's been a lot of talk about political speech, politicians and whether there's a climate of violent political rhetoric. And it's been clear that a lot of politicians weren't clear that certain phrases and statements -- like calling for armed revolution or target practice at fundraisers -- might lead to misunderstandings. So in the spirit of ettiquette manuals, I thought I'd start putting together a list of things it's probably best not to say simply to avoid misunderstandings or criticisms the next time there's an attempt on the life of a politician.

Refrain from telling supporters that winning the election may require active exercise of their "second amendment" rights.
Refrain from suggesting it's time for "armed revolution", even if Thomas Jefferson once kinda sorta suggested that.
Refrain from holding political fundraisers focused around use of automatic weapons, especially target practices with initials, name or images of your political opponent.
Refrain from telling supporters you want them to be "armed and dangerous."
Refrain from making campaign posters with opponent's head in gun sights.
Refrain from saying that bullets will work if ballots don't.
Suggest that supporters not bring weapons to opponents' political rallies.

. . .. ... .. . .

fact check

2010-11-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

& HuffPo 101105

the shellacked and the furious

2010-11-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

tpm

model US president

2010-10-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

h/t mom

Obama Signs Wall Street Reform Into Law

2010-07-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

. . .. ... .. . .

Flashback 1.22.2010

fake president obama & oil

2010-06-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

& tpm 6.17.2010 Obama: gimme 20; BP: Yes, Sir!

YouTube - President Obama at Michigan Commencement

2010-05-02T22:21:00.000-07:00

YouTube - President Obama at Michigan Commencement

WaMu Bank Failure

2010-04-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

C-SPAN

Senate Committee Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs | Investigations

Panelists testified on the role of high risk mortgages, focusing on Washington Mutual Bank (WaMu), which was the nation’s largest thrift with more than $300 billion in assets, $188 billion in deposits, and 43,000 employees. Bank officials testified about events that led to the bank's failure, business and accounting practices, and the role of federal regulation. This hearing was the first of a series of hearings the subcommittee held on Wall Street and the 2008 financial crisis.

1

2

3

2010-04-07T17:40:00.000-07:00

vanity fair via HuffPo

Recently Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and [Vanity Fair] contributing editor Michael Lewis sat together onstage in front of an intimate crowd at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and discussed Lewis’s new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, which tackles the question of what caused the U.S. economy to tank. (It was excerpted in the April issue.)

Among those who attended the event were writers Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly, and Time Inc.’s John Huey. Now you too can hear the entire conversation between Carter and Lewis—just click here. But be careful visiting that link. You will probably get sucked into Lewis’s hour-long talk, just as the House Republican book group became engrossed in a lecture Lewis gave about the financial collapse.

“I was supposed to be there for an hour,” says Lewis in the clip above, referring to his visit with the Hill staffers. “I was there for almost three. And nobody left. And their questions were increasingly: ‘Oh my God, Goldman Sachs did what? A.I.G. did what?’ They didn’t understand it ... The minute they started to understand, they were outraged. And I think the more things are explained, the more outraged people will get.”

Armageddon? Repeal?

2010-03-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

C&L

Fox's Shepard Smith interviews Michael Steele. Really? Armageddon? Really?

. . .. oOo .. . .

GOP plans to campaign on repeal of HCR?

~ 24:00

soundbite (tpm)

"Now that we passed it, they're already promising to repeal it. They're actually going to run on a platform of repeal this November," Obama said. "And my attitude is, 'Go for it.'"

"If they wanna have that fight, we can have it," he went on. "Because I don't believe the American people are gonna put the insurance industry back in the driver's seat. We've already been there, we're not going back. This country's moving forward."

. . .. ... .. . .

flash forward:
CBS via TPM April 2011:

Healthcare Reform

2010-03-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

pretty much over ...

. . .. oOo .. . .

3.22.2010 t-bus Obama!

Senate Banking

2010-03-15T19:06:00.000-07:00

HuffPo

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Monday unveiled a sweeping financial regulatory reform bill designed to prevent future Wall Street bailouts and to protect borrowers with a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau housed at the Federal Reserve.

During a press conference at the Capitol, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee emphasized the need for consumer protection, adding that the financial crisis and resulting recession were caused by predatory lending.

"The root cause of our economic crisis was a lack of consumer protection," Dodd said, emphasizing that the current regulatory structure is "hopelessly inadequate."

more ...

____________

Dodd Financial Reform Proposal (March 2010 Update) -

full bill:
On Scribd

The Revision Thing

2010-03-08T13:01:00.001-08:00

RB @drewconway

. . .. oOo .. . .

Charges and Counter-Charges: Did Bush Knowingly Lead the U.S. into War with Iraq?
David Corn 3.30.2010

not campaigning

2010-02-25T12:02:00.000-08:00

. . .. ... oOo ... .. . .

wonkroom on 'reconciliation' [w]

. . .. ... oOo ... .. . .

John McCain

tpm

longer version huffpo

. . .. ... oOo ... .. . .

John Boehner

huffpo

During a segment of the meeting devoted to cost control and federal entitlements, John Boehner instead trotted out just about every single GOP scare story about the bill - insisting it was a government takeover, calling it a massive bureaucratic mess, and even remarking about the number of pages in the legislation.

Coming after a fairly substantive policy debate, and having literally nothing to do with the point of the conversation, [Boehner's] diatribe evidently struck the president as a cheap shot and distraction.

And he responded by essentially putting Boehner on time out, telling him he'd get to his concerns after class.

John, you know, the challenge I have here, and it happens periodically, is every so often we have a pretty good conversation trying to get on some specifics, and then we go back to, you know, the standard talking points that the Democrats and Republicans have had for the last year. And that doesn't drive us to an agreement on issues.

There are so many things you just said that people on this side would profoundly disagree with and I would have to say based on my own analysis just aren't true that I think the conversation would start bogging down pretty quick.

Now, we were trying to focus on the deficit issue and the fact of the matter is, as we indicated before, according to the Congressional Budget Office this would reduce the deficit. [Rep.] Paul [Ryan, (R-Wisc.)] has different ideas about it. Other folks might think there are better ways of doing it. But right now what we are focusing on is the issue of federal entitlements and whether we can make some changes.

I will come back to you, I think, at the end of this session to answer the range of questions you just asked.

Watch

. . .. ... oOo ... .. . .

Oma's Story

An open letter to President Obama.

Carnival Games

2010-02-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Summit's Eve

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Vancouverage 2010

tpm liveblog ...

. . .. ... .. . .

spelling humor

Independence

2010-02-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

Michael Smerconish, "For Me the Party is Over"

HuffPo

.... Collegiality is nonexistent today, and any outreach across an aisle is castigated as weakness by the talking heads who constantly stir a pot of discontent. ... All of which leaves homeless those of us with views that don't stack up neatly in any ideological box the way we're told they should.

....

I think President Obama is earnest, smart, and much more centrist than his tea party caricature suggests. He has never been given a fair chance to succeed by those who openly crow about their desire to see him fail (while somehow congratulating one another on their relative patriotism). ... I'm not folding the tent on him. Not now. Not with the nation fighting two wars while its economy still teeters on the brink of collapse.

All of which leaves me in a partisan no-man's-land, albeit surrounded by many others, especially my neighbors. By quitting the GOP, I have actually joined the largest group of American voters.

. . .. ... .. . .

cf. Ranking Conservatives 2007.06.17

Bob Schieffer interviews Colin Powell

2010-02-21T15:39:00.000-08:00

Face the Nation via huffpo

Dick Cheney's charges that the country is less safe because of the way Barack Obama has handled national security matters don't hold water, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "To suggest that somehow we have become much less safe because of the actions of the administration, I don't think that's borne out by the facts," Powell said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Powell pointed out that Obama has kept in place most of the programs enacted by the Bush administration. "The Transportation Security Administration created by George Bush is still in action working in our airports," Powell told host Bob Schieffer. "They take care of me every day that I go to an airport."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was also created under President Bush, "and it is still under President Obama, working hard," Powell continued. "Our counterterrorism authorities and forces are hard at work. Our law enforcement officials are hard at work. We have gone after the enemy in Afghanistan with 50,000 more troops, more predators are striking al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. We have continued the policies that President Bush put in place with respect to Iraq. And so I don't know where the claim comes that we are less safe."

. . .. ... .. . .

flashback 2008.10.19

Elder Law

2010-02-17T11:40:00.000-08:00

new york times

By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Published: February 16, 2010

Put aside for a moment the populist pressure to regulate banking and trading. Ask the elder statesmen of these industries — giants like George Soros, Nicholas F. Brady, John S. Reed, William H. Donaldson and John C. Bogle — where they stand on regulation, and they will bowl you over with their populism.

They certainly don’t think of themselves as angry Main Streeters. They grew quite wealthy in finance, typically making their fortunes in the ’70s and ’80s when banks and securities firms were considerably more regulated. And now, parting company with the current chieftains, they want more rules.

While the younger generation, very visibly led by Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, lobbies Congress against such regulation, their spiritual elders support the reform proposed by Paul A. Volcker and, surprisingly, even more restrictions. “I am a believer that the system has gone badly awry and needs massive reform,” said Mr. Bogle, the 80-year-old founder and for many years chief executive of the Vanguard Group, the huge mutual fund company.

Mr. Volcker, 82, signed up the support of nearly a dozen peers whose average age is north of 70 and whose pedigrees on Wall Street and in banking are impeccable. But while Mr. Volcker focuses on a rule that would henceforth prohibit a bank that takes deposits from also buying and selling securities for its own account — risking losses in the process — most of his prominent supporters see that as a starting point in a broader return to regulation. And most do not hesitate to speak up in interviews.

... more

trap

2010-02-12T12:49:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Apparent Trap

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Obama: Ixnay on the Olshevik-Bay

2010-01-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

TPM

Speaking to House Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore today, President Obama expressed frustration with the argument that the Democrats' health care reform effort is creeping socialism. Obama pointed to support from people such as former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Howard Baker, plus former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and insisted that the proposed reforms have more moderate goals than some GOPers contend.

"Now you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and certainly you don't agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that's not a radical bunch," said Obama. "But if you were to listen to this debate, and frankly how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot."

"We've got to close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality."

Watch the video:

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HuffPo: full video / text of Obama's remarks to House GOP Retreat in Baltimore

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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flash forward (post-passage) 3.24.2010 Anthony Weiner (D-NY) to Bill O'Reilly:

"You've really got to stop making things up about the bill."

Warren

2010-01-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

huffpo

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

. . .. ... .. . .

flash forward 7.21.2010

Roots

2009-12-21T11:02:00.000-08:00

David Heath, HuffPo Investigative Fund

At Top Subprime Mortgage Lender, Policies Were Invitation to Fraud

First of two articles about the roots of the subprime lending bubble

Bad loans ultimately led to the collapse of Long Beach Mortgage and its owner, Washington Mutual, in the biggest bank failure in history.

An inside look at Long Beach Mortgage – many of whose lending practices were common among subprime loan companies – adds another dark chapter to the evolving narrative of the financial crisis.

“open source” investigation

2009-12-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

Op-Ed Contributors - Show Us the E-Mail - NYTimes.com

WE end this extraordinary financial year with news that the Treasury is in discussions with American International Group about selling the taxpayers’ 80 percent ownership stake in that company. The government recently permitted several banks to break free of its potential oversight by repaying loans made during the rescue. But with respect to A.I.G., the Treasury should not move so fast. There is one job left to do.

A.I.G. was at the center of the web of bad business judgments, opaque financial derivatives, failed economics and questionable political relationships that set off the economic cataclysm of the past two years. When A.I.G.’s financial products division collapsed — ultimately requiring a federal bailout of $180 billion — those who had been prospering from A.I.G.’s schemes scurried for taxpayer cover. Yet, more than a year after the rescue began, crucial questions remain unanswered. Who knew what, and when? Who benefited, and by exactly how much? Would A.I.G.’s counterparties have failed without taxpayer support?

The three of us, as experienced investigators and prosecutors of financial fraud, cannot answer these questions now. But we know where the answers are. They are in the trove of e-mail messages still backed up on A.I.G. servers, as well as in the key internal accounting documents and financial models generated by A.I.G. during the past decade. Before releasing its regulatory clutches, the government should insist that the company immediately make these materials public. By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of “open source” investigation.

Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story. In past cases of financial fraud — from the complex swaps that Bankers Trust sold to Procter & Gamble in the early 1990s to the I.P.O. kickback schemes of the late 1990s to the fall of Enron — e-mail messages and internal documents became the central exhibits in our collective understanding of what happened, and why.

So far, prosecutors and regulators have been unable to build such evidence into anything resembling a persuasive case against any financial institution. Most recently, a jury acquitted Bear Stearns employees of fraud related to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, in part because available e-mail messages suggested the employees had done nothing wrong.

Perhaps A.I.G.’s employees would also be judged not guilty. But we would like to see the record to find out. As fraud investigators, we would like to examine the trading patterns of A.I.G.’s financial products division, and its communications with Goldman Sachs and other bank counterparties who benefited from the bailout. We would like to understand whether the leaders of A.I.G. understood that they were approaching a financial Armageddon, and whether they alerted their counterparties, regulators and shareholders to the impending calamity.

We would like to see how A.I.G. was able to pay huge bonuses to its officers based on the short-term income they received from counterparties for selling guarantees that, lacking adequate loss reserves, the companies would never be able to honor. We would also like to know what regulators knew, and what they did with the information they had obtained.

Congress wants answers, too. This month, during hearings on Ben Bernanke’s nomination to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, several senators fumed about being denied access to his A.I.G.-related documents.

No doubt, some of the e-mail messages contain privileged conversations among lawyers. Others probably include private information that is irrelevant to A.I.G.’s role in the crisis. But the vast majority of these documents could be made public without legal concern. So why haven’t the Treasury and the Federal Reserve already made sure the public could see this information? Do they want to protect A.I.G., or do they worry about shining too much sunlight on their own performance leading up to and during the crisis?

A.I.G.’s board of directors, a distinguished group of senior business executives, holds the power to decide whether to publish the e-mail messages and other documents. But those directors serve at the behest of A.I.G.’s shareholders. And while small shareholders of public corporations generally do not have the right to force publication of internal documents, in this case one shareholder — the taxpayer — holds an 80 percent stake. Anyone with such substantial ownership has effective control over corporate decisions, even if the corporation is a large public one.

Our stake is held by something called the A.I.G. Credit Facility Trust, whose three trustees are Jill M. Considine, a former chairman of the Depository Trust Company and a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Chester B. Feldberg, a former New York Fed official who was chairman of Barclays Americas from 2000 to 2008; and Douglas L. Foshee, chief executive of the El Paso Corporation and chairman of the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Ultimately, these three trustees wield all the power at A.I.G., and have the right to vote out the 11 directors if the directors are unwilling to publish the e-mail messages. In other words, if these three people ask A.I.G.’s board to post the messages and other documents, the board will have no choice but to comply. Ms. Considine, Mr. Feldberg and Mr. Foshee have the opportunity to be among the most effective and influential investor advocates in history. Before A.I.G. escapes, they should demand the evidence.

The longer it remains hidden, the less likely we will be to answer many questions about the A.I.G. collapse and the larger economic crisis — including the most important one: how do we prevent a repeat? Time is the enemy of effective investigation; records disappear, memories fade. The documents should be released — without excuses, or delay.

Eliot Spitzer is a former attorney general and governor of New York. Frank Partnoy is a professor of law at the University of San Diego. William Black is a professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology | Video on TED.com

2009-12-16T14:28:00.000-08:00

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology | Video on TED.com

I meant to post this a while back:

Bloggingheads.tv - Science Saturday: Looking for Love

2009-12-02T13:55:00.000-08:00

Bloggingheads.tv - Science Saturday: Looking for Love

Jon Stewart | Sean Hannity

2009-11-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

Jon Stewart Replays His Live Reaction to Sean Hannity's Personal Apology to Him | TPMTV

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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Sean Hannity Apologizes to Jon

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Complexity, by Roger Lewin: The complexity perspective, in business

2009-11-03T15:45:00.000-08:00

Complexity, by Roger Lewin: The complexity perspective, in business

Pp. 198-202:

If, as complexity scientists believe, complex adaptive systems of all kinds -- in the natural world and the world of business -- share fundamental properties and processes, then the science offers a way to understand and work with the deep nature of organizations. Because the dynamics of complex adaptive systems are complex and largely unpredictable, accepting businesses as being such systems requires a mindset different from that associated with long-established business models: managers and executives cannot control their organizations to the degree that the mechanistic perspective implies, but they can influence where their company is going, and how it evolves.

In nature, species exist in an ecological community as part of a rich network of connections, forming the local ecosystem that has system-level properties. In the same way, companies operate within a rich network of interactions, forming the local economy on a local scale and the global economy on a global scale. An important point about the view of businesses through the complexity science lens is that businesses do not merely resemble natural ecosystems; rather, they share some fundamental properties -- specifically nonlinear processes -- because both are complex adaptive systems and thus follow the same deep laws. These laws will not play out in exactly the same way in economies as they do in biology, largely because in economies conscious decisions are made by people, whereas in biology there is no conscious intent of that kind. Nevertheless, an understanding of these laws in nature will lead to a greater understanding of the workings of companies and the economy of which they are a part.

The Origin of Mechanistic Management

In 1992, the Harvard Business Review carried an article titled "Is Management Still a Science?" The author, David Freedman, answered the question thus: "Management may indeed be a science -- but not the science most managers think."' In other words, the way scientists perceive the world has changed dramatically in recent decades, but many managers still follow an outdated scientific mind set, one that is now heading toward the intellectual scrap heap -- namely, the mechanistic, reductionistic perspective.

The prevailing style of management was developed early this century by Frederick Winslow Taylor, an American industrialist. His book, The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, became a classic in management literature, and its effect lingers today. Taylor was strongly influenced by prevailing scientific thought, particularly Newton's laws of motion and the new science of thermodynamics, which together allowed scientists to calculate how a machine could operate with maximum efficiency. Taylor imposed this collective, mechanistic paradigm of science on the world of work, where he became obsessed with efficiency as applied to organizations. There was tremendous waste of effort, he said, because management was unscientific.

In the best reductionist tradition, Taylor analyzed the system down to its component parts, saw how each worked, and then sought the "one best method" to attain the greatest possible efficiency. Workers, he said, were to be viewed as "passive units of production," and the system, or the workplace, was like a machine. The job of the manager was to ensure that the machine ran smoothly. The workers, while offered financial incentives for faster work, were merely cogs in the machine. The system was extremely hierarchical, with workers expected simply to carry out their narrowly-defined jobs.

Taylorism was responsible for tremendous increases in productivity in the workplace, and effectively created modern Industrial Age management. Although management theory has undergone many revisions since the early decades of the century, particularly with the impact of Peter Drucker's thinking,2 Taylorism still remains the dominant influence today, with the machine model of business as its core, and embodied in a command and control style of management.

By contrast, complexity science implies that CEOs and managers must give up control -- or, rather, the illusion of control -- when they are trying to lead their organization to some goal. But they do need to create the environment in which creativity can emerge. The message of complexity science is not simply to stand back and wait for the right solutions to emerge. Too little control is just as misguided a business strategy as too much. Some structure is necessary. The degree and nature of control that CEOs establish in their companies strongly influences what emerges, in terms of culture, creativity, and adaptability.

The Complexity Perspective in Business

The recognition that businesses are complex adaptive systems allows us to learn more about business dynamics -- within and among companies -- based on what is known about such systems, in computer simulations and in nature.

In other words, complexity science offers a new management theory. Most management theories attempt to transform businesses into something new, something that is supposedly designed to make them more efficient, such as the recent (and now faded) enthusiasm for reengineering. Complexity science says, let us recognize that businesses are complex adaptive systems -- and always have been.

You don't have to bring complexity to the world of business: It is already there. We saw in earlier chapters that computer-based complex adaptive systems can be tuned to a static state, a chaotic state, or to a zone of creativity in between, the edge of chaos. A command-and-control, or mechanistic, style of management tends to keep companies close to the static state, because it minimizes interactions among its components, which in turn impedes the emergence of creativity from the level of front-line people. This model of management worked well enough in the Industrial Age economy, but is much less effective in the connected economy. The challenge for managers -- indeed, for anyone who works -- today is to find ways of enhancing the potential creativity of businesses as complex adaptive systems, from the level of the individual, through teams, to the organization as a whole and its interaction with other organizations.

It is important to recognize, however, that mechanistic management is sometimes appropriate, when goals are clear and there is little uncertainty in the prevailing business environment. Management practice guided by complexity science therefore does not replace mechanistic management.

Rather, it encompasses it in a larger context. As we said, it even welcomes periods of chaos as not only natural but sometimes desirable. For instance, when old ways of doing things have to be abandoned and new ways found, a brief period of chaos allows the exploration of many different possibilities in an innovative manner. So, just as natural complex adaptive systems fluctuate among the three states-stasis, chaos, and edge of chaos depending on the prevailing environment, so, too, will a company fluctuate among the three states. Such fluctuation represents the capacity to adapt to changing environments.

One of the key discoveries of complexity science, as we saw in chapter 3, is that computer models of complex adaptive systems often evolve themselves to a critical point poised between the chaotic and static states, the edge of chaos, where the emergent response is most creative. There are strong indications that the same is true in nature, as we saw in chapters 4 and 6. Order emerges at the edge of chaos -- this is the phenomenon of self-organization. The order that arises is not imposed from above; it flows from distributed influence through the interactions of the system's agents. It is hard -- and often impossible -- to predict in detail what emergent order will look like, but it is certain that order will emerge.

Complexity models also show that the emergent order will be richer, more creative and adaptable, if there is a diversity of agents in the system, agents with different characteristics and different behaviors.

The message for business leaders is obvious: encourage diversity if you want to achieve creativity and adaptability. Nurture distributed control -- that is, true empowerment -- and people will self-organize around problems that need to be solved.

P. 211:

These aspects of complex systems-unpredictability and the possibility of extinction because of changes in other parts of the system -- are distinctly unnerving to those who cherish predictability and control. Embracing complexity in the business context is not particularly comforting. The strength of complexity science lies in giving business a perspective that is grounded in reality.

Taleb quote from Black Swan

2009-11-03T14:27:00.000-08:00

P. 21 The Black Swan:

So I stayed in the quant and trading businesses (I'm still there), but organized myself to do minimal but intense (and entertaining) work, focus only on the most technical aspects, never attend business "meetings," avoid the company of "achievers" and people in suits who don't read books, and take a sabbatical year for every three on average to fill up gaps in my scientific and philosophical culture. To slowly distill my single idea, I wanted to become a flaneur, a professional meditator, sit in cafes, lounge, unglued to desks and organization structures, sleep as long as I needed, read voraciously, and not owe any explanation to anybody. I wanted to be left alone in order to build, small steps at a time, an entire system of thought based on my Black Swan idea.

--NN Taleb

Herman Hesse: Siddharta

2009-11-03T13:38:00.000-08:00

Govinda once spent a rest period with some other monks in the pleasure grove which Kamala, the courtesan, had once presented to the followers of Gautam. He heard talk of an old ferryman who lived by the river, a day's journey away, and whom many considered to be a sage. When Govinda moved on, he chose the path to the ferry, eager to see this ferryman, for although he had lived his life according to the rule and was also regarded with respect by the younger monks for his age and modesty, there was still restlessness in his heart and his seeking was unsatisfied.

He arrived at the river and asked the old man to take him across. When they climbed out of the boat on the other side, he said to the old man: 'You show much kindness to the monks and pilgrims; you have taken many of us across. Are you not also a seeker of the right path?'

There was a smile in Siddhartha's old eyes as he said: 'Do you call yourself a seeker, O venerable one, you who are already advanced in years and wear the robe of Gautam's monks?'

'I am indeed old,' said Govinda, 'but I have never ceased seeking. I will never cease seeking. That seems to be my destiny. It seems to me that you also have sought. Will you talk to me a little about it, my friend?'

Siddhartha said: 'What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.'

'How is that?' asked Govinda.

'When someone is seeking,' said Siddhartha, 'it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking, that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.'

Hulu - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Thu, Oct 29, 2009 - Watch the full episode now.

2009-11-02T20:40:00.000-08:00

Hulu - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Thu, Oct 29, 2009 - Watch the full episode now.

contra negantem principia

2009-10-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

contra negantem principia
non est disputandum

There is no disputing against one who denies first principles.*

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Or is there?

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The White House - Blog Post - Weekly Address: Taking the Insurance Companies on Down the Stretch

2009-10-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

The White House - Blog Post - Weekly Address: Taking the Insurance Companies on Down the Stretch

"But what I will not abide are those who would bend the truth or break it to score political points and stop our progress as a country."

AFP: Billionaire's indictment is warning to traders: US watchdog

2009-10-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

AFP: Billionaire's indictment is warning to traders: US watchdog:

"'It would be wise for investment advisors and corporate executives to closely look at today's case, their own internal operations, and the increasing focus and scrutiny on hedge fund trading by the SEC and others,' said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's enforcement division."

Kutuzov

2009-10-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

War and Peace Book 15, Chapter V

IN 1812 AND 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blunders. The Tsar was dissatisfied with him. And in a recent history inspired by promptings from the highest quarters, Kutuzov is spoken of as a designing, intriguing schemer, who was panic-stricken at the name of Napoleon, and guilty through his blunders at Krasnoe and Berezina of robbing the Russian army of the glory of complete victory over the French. Such is the lot of men not recognised by Russian intelligence as “great men,” grands hommes; such is the destiny of those rare and always solitary men who divining the will of Providence submit their personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd is the punishment of such men for their comprehension of higher laws.

Strange and terrible to say, Napoleon, the most insignificant tool of history, who never even in exile displayed one trait of human dignity, is the subject of the admiration and enthusiasm of the Russian historians; in their eyes he is a grand homme.

Kutuzov, the man who from the beginning to the end of his command in 1812, from Borodino to Vilna, was never in one word or deed false to himself, presents an example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice and recognition in the present of the relative value of events in the future. Kutuzov is conceived of by the historians as a nondescript, pitiful sort of creature, and whenever they speak of him in the year 1812, they seem a little ashamed of him.

And yet it is difficult to conceive of an historical character whose energy could be more invariably directed to the same unchanging aim. It is difficult to imagine an aim more noble and more in harmony with the will of a whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find an example in history where the aim of any historical personage has been so completely attained as the aim towards which all Kutuzov’s efforts were devoted in 1812.

Kutuzov never talked of “forty centuries looking down from the Pyramids,” of the sacrifices he was making for the fatherland, of what he meant to do or had done. He did not as a rule talk about himself, played no sort of part, always seemed the plainest and most ordinary man, and said the plainest and most ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de Staël, read novels, liked the company of pretty women, made jokes with the generals, the officers, and the soldiers, and never contradicted the people, who tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rastoptchin galloped up to him at Yautsky bridge, and reproached him personally with being responsible for the loss of Moscow, and said: “Didn’t you promise not to abandon Moscow without a battle?” Kutuzov answered: “And I am not abandoning Moscow without a battle,” although Moscow was in fact already abandoned. When Araktcheev came to him from the Tsar to say that Yermolov was to be appointed to the command of the artillery, Kutuzov said: “Yes, I was just saying so myself,” though he had said just the opposite a moment before. What had he, the one man who grasped at the time all the vast issues of events, to do in the midst of that dull-witted crowd? What did he care whether Count Rastoptchin put down the disasters of the capital to him or to himself? Still less could he be concerned by the question which man was appointed to the command of the artillery.

This old man, who through experience of life had reached the conviction that the thoughts and words that serve as its expression are never the motive force of men, frequently uttered words, which were quite meaningless—the first words that occurred to his mind.

But heedless as he was of his words, he never once throughout all his career uttered a single word which was inconsistent with the sole aim for the attainment of which he was working all through the war. With obvious unwillingness, with bitter conviction that he would not be understood, he more than once, under the most different circumstances, gave expression to his real thought. His first differed from all about him after the battle of Borodino, which he alone persisted in calling a victory, and this view he continued to assert verbally and in reports and to his dying day. He alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In answer to the overtures for peace, his reply to Lauriston was: There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He alone during the retreat of the French said that all our manœuvres are unnecessary; that everything is being done of itself better than we could desire; that we must give the enemy a “golden bridge”; that the battles of Tarutino, of Vyazma, and of Krasnoe, were none of them necessary; that we must keep some men to reach the frontier with; that he wouldn’t give one Russian for ten Frenchmen. And he, this intriguing courtier, as we are told, who lied to Araktcheev to propitiate the Tsar, he alone dared to face the Tsar’s displeasure by telling him at Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier would be mischievous and useless.

But words alone would be no proof that he grasped the significance of events at the time. His actions—all without the slightest deviation— were directed toward the one threefold aim: first, to concentrate all his forces to strike a blow at the French; secondly, to defeat them; and thirdly, to drive them out of Russia, alleviating as far as was possible the sufferings of the people and the soldiers in doing so.

He, the lingerer Kutuzov, whose motto was always “Time and Patience,” the sworn opponent of precipitate action, he fought the battle of Borodino, and made all his preparations for it with unwonted solemnity. Before the battle of Austerlitz he foretold that it would be lost, but at Borodino, in spite of the conviction of the generals that the battle was a defeat, in spite of the fact, unprecedented in history, of his army being forced to retreat after the victory, he alone declared in opposition to all that it was a victory, and persisted in that opinion to his dying day. He was alone during the whole latter part of the campaign in insisting that there was no need of fighting now, that it was a mistake to cross the Russian frontier and to begin a new war. It is easy enough now that all the events with their consequences lie before us to grasp their significance, if only we refrain from attributing to the multitude the aims that only existed in the brains of some dozen or so of men.

But how came that old man, alone in opposition to the opinion of all, to gauge so truly the importance of events from the national standard, so that he never once was false to the best interests of his country?

The source of this extraordinary intuition into the significance of contemporary events lay in the purity and fervour of patriotic feeling in his heart.

It was their recognition of this feeling in him that led the people in such a strange manner to pick him out, an old man out of favour, as the chosen leader of the national war, against the will of the Tsar. And this feeling alone it was to which he owed his exalted position, and there he exerted all his powers as commander-in-chief not to kill and maim men, but to save them and have mercy on them.

This simple, modest, and therefore truly great figure, could not be cast into the false mould of the European hero, the supposed leader of men, that history has invented.

To the flunkey no man can be great, because the flunkey has his own flunkey conception of greatness.

__________

& google books

Tolstoy on History

2009-10-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

From War and Peace translation by Constance Garnett

TOWARDS THE END of the year 1811, there began to be greater activity in levying troops and in concentrating the forces of Western Europe, and in 1812 these forces—millions of men, reckoning those engaged in the transport and feeding of the army— moved from the west eastward, towards the frontiers of Russia, where, since 1811, the Russian forces were being in like manner concentrated.

On the 12th of June the forces of Western Europe crossed the frontier, and the war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and all human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another so great a mass of crime—fraud, swindling, robbery, forgery, issue of counterfeit money, plunder, incendiarism, and murder—that the annals of all the criminal courts of the world could not muster such a sum of wickedness in whole centuries, though the men who committed those deeds did not at that time look on them as crimes.

What led to this extraordinary event? What were its causes? Historians, with simple-hearted conviction, tell us that the causes of this event were the insult offered to the Duke of Oldenburg, the failure to maintain the continental system, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

According to them, if only Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand had, in the interval between a levée and a court ball, really taken pains and written a more judicious diplomatic note, or if only Napoleon had written to Alexander, “I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg,” there would have been no war.

We can readily understand that being the conception of the war that presented itself to contemporaries. We can understand Napoleon's supposing the cause of the war to be the intrigues of England (as he said, indeed, in St. Helena); we can understand how to the members of the English House of Commons the cause of the war seemed to be Napoleon's ambition; how to the Duke of Oldenburg the war seemed due to the outrage done him; how to the trading class the war seemed due to the continental system that was ruining Europe; to the old soldiers and generals the chief reason for it seemed their need of active service; to the regiments of the period, the necessity of re-establishing les bons principes; while the diplomatists of the time set it down to the alliance of Russia with Austria in 1809 not having been with sufficient care concealed from Napoleon, and the memorandum, No. 178, having been awkwardly worded. We may well understand contemporaries believing in those causes, and in a countless, endless number more, the multiplicity of which is due to the infinite variety of men's points of view. But to us of a later generation, contemplating in all its vastness the immensity of the accomplished fact, and seeking to penetrate its simple and fearful significance, those explanations must appear insufficient. To us it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connection between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them.

For us of a later generation, who are not historians led away by the process of research, and so can look at the facts with common-sense unobscured, the causes of this war appear innumerable in their multiplicity. The more deeply we search out the causes the more of them we discover; and every cause, and even a whole class of causes taken separately, strikes us as being equally true in itself, and equally deceptive through its insignificance in comparison with the immensity of the result, and its inability to produce (without all the other causes that concurred with it) the effect that followed. Such a cause, for instance, occurs to us as Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula, and to restore the duchy of Oldenburg; and then again we remember the readiness or the reluctance of the first chance French corporal to serve on a second campaign; for had he been unwilling to serve, and a second and a third, and thousands of corporals and soldiers had shared that reluctance, Napoleon's army would have been short of so many men, and the war could not have taken place.

If Napoleon had not taken offence at the request to withdraw beyond the Vistula, and had not commanded his troops to advance, there would have been no war. But if all the sergeants had been unwilling to serve on another campaign, there could have been no war either.

And the war would not have been had there been no intrigues on the part of England, no Duke of Oldenburg, no resentment on the part of Alexander; nor had there been no autocracy in Russia, no French Revolution and consequent dictatorship and empire, nor all that led to the French Revolution, and so on further back: without any one of those causes, nothing could have happened. And so all those causes—myriads of causes—coincided to bring about what happened. And consequently nothing was exclusively the cause of the war, and the war was bound to happen, simply because it was bound to happen. Millions of men, repudiating their common-sense and their human feelings, were bound to move from west to east, and to slaughter their fellows, just as some centuries before hordes of men had moved from east to west to slaughter their fellows.

The acts of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words it seemed to depend whether this should be done or not, were as little voluntary as the act of each soldier, forced to march out by the drawing of a lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the whole decision appeared to rest) should be effective, a combination of innumerable circumstances was essential, without any one of which the effect could not have followed. It was essential that the millions of men in whose hands the real power lay—the soldiers who fired guns and transported provisions and cannons—should consent to carry out the will of those feeble and isolated persons, and that they should have been brought to this acquiescence by an infinite number of varied and complicated causes.

We are forced to fall back upon fatalism in history to explain irrational events (that is those of which we cannot comprehend the reason). The more we try to explain those events in history rationally, the more irrational and incomprehensible they seem to us. Every man lives for himself, making use of his free-will for attainment of his own objects, and feels in his whole being that he can do or not do any action. But as soon as he does anything, that act, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irrevocable and is the property of history, in which it has a significance, predestined and not subject to free choice.

There are two aspects to the life of every man: the personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.

Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of will, but he serves as an unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once committed is irrevocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others, has an historical value. The higher a man's place in the social scale, the more connections he has with others, and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the inevitability and predestination of every act he commits. “The hearts of kings are in the hand of God.” The king is the slave of history.

History—that is the unconscious life of humanity in the swarm, in the community—makes every minute of the life of kings its own, as an instrument for attaining its ends.

Although in that year, 1812, Napoleon believed more than ever that to shed or not to shed the blood of his peoples depended entirely on his will (as Alexander said in his last letter to him), yet then, and more than at any time, he was in bondage to those laws which forced him, while to himself he seemed to be acting freely, to do what was bound to be his share in the common edifice of humanity, in history.

The people of the west moved to the east for men to kill one another. And by the law of the coincidence of causes, thousands of petty causes backed one another up and coincided with that event to bring about that movement and that war: resentment at the non-observance of the continental system, and the Duke of Oldenburg, and the massing of troops in Prussia—a measure undertaken, as Napoleon supposed, with the object of securing armed peace—and the French Emperor's love of war, to which he had grown accustomed, in conjunction with the inclinations of his people, who were carried away by the grandiose scale of the preparations, and the expenditure on those preparations, and the necessity of recouping that expenditure. Then there was the intoxicating effect of the honours paid to the French Emperor in Dresden, and the negotiations too of the diplomatists, who were supposed by contemporaries to be guided by a genuine desire to secure peace, though they only inflamed the amour-propre of both sides; and millions upon millions of other causes, chiming in with the fated event and coincident with it.

When the apple is ripe and falls—why does it fall? Is it because it is drawn by gravitation to the earth, because its stalk is withered, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it?

Not one of those is the cause. All that simply makes up the conjunction of conditions under which every living, organic, elemental event takes place. And the botanist who says that the apple has fallen because the cells are decomposing, and so on, will be just as right as the boy standing under the tree who says the apple has fallen because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it to fall. The historian, who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and was ruined because Alexander desired his ruin, will be just as right and as wrong as the man who says that the mountain of millions of tons, tottering and undermined, has been felled by the last stroke of the last workingman's pick-axe. In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself.

Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free-will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

peace prize

2009-10-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

. . .. ... ..... ........ ............. ..................... ............. ........ ..... ... .. . .

on viscosity...

2009-10-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

Bloggingheads.tv - on viscosity...

Mandelbrot Interview

2009-10-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

FT.com c/o @valdiskrebs

. . .. ... oOo ... .. . .

RB the geebus 2006.04.14

Emergence NOVA

2009-10-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Emergence (NOVA 1-2)

YouTube - Emergence (NOVA 2-2)

Lawrence Lessig on Remix and Digital Culture

2009-10-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Lessig on Remix and Digital Culture : The Primate Diaries

Tom Ridge talks to Rachel Maddow

2009-09-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

Bloggingheads.tv - more video on the web

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

There is a beautiful moment starting around 6:30 when Maddow reads a quote from the book jacket contradicting Ridge's just stated, revised claims. A Woody Allen moment,

AnyClip.com

2009-09-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

AnyClip

(via @jdlasica)

Welcome to AnyClip. Find any moment from any film, instantly.

The White House - Blog Post - Streaming at 1:00: In the Cloud

2009-09-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

The White House - Blog Post - Streaming at 1:00: In the Cloud

(via @timoreilly)

Today, I am excited to announce that we have launched Apps.gov to help continue the President’s initiative to lower the cost of government operations while driving innovation within government. I'll be discussing this in a speech at the NASA Ames Research Center at 1:00 EDT...

Apps.gov is an online storefront for federal agencies to quickly browse and purchase cloud-based IT services, for productivity, collaboration, and efficiency. Cloud computing is the next generation of IT in which data and applications will be housed centrally and accessible anywhere and anytime by a various devices (this is opposed to the current model where applications and most data is housed on individual devices). By consolidating available services, Apps.gov is a one-stop source for cloud services – an innovation that not only can change how IT operates, but also save taxpayer dollars in the process.

The federal government spends over $75 billion annually on information technology (IT). This technology supports every mission our government performs— from defending our borders to protecting the environment. IT is essential for the government to do its work, and it is essential that we have access to the latest and most innovative technologies.

However, federal agencies and departments encounter many difficulties in deploying new IT services and products. Procurement processes can be confusing and time-consuming. Security procedures are complex, costly, lengthy and duplicative across agencies. Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology. Past practices too often resulted in inefficient use of purchased IT capabilities across the federal government. We are dedicated to addressing these barriers and to improving the way government leverages new technology.

Now, we can start to address some of these challenges by adopting the use of cloud computing in the federal government through Apps.gov. Cloud computing is defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology as a computing model where IT capabilities are delivered as a service over the Internet to many users. Like a utility such as electricity or water, cloud computing allows users to only consume what they need, to grow or shrink their use as their needs change, and to only pay for what they actually use. With more rapid access to innovative IT solutions, agencies can spend less time and taxpayer dollars on procedural items and focus more on using technology to achieve their missions.

We are just beginning this undertaking, and it will take time before we can realize the full potential of cloud computing. Like with Data.gov, Apps.gov is starting small – with the goal of rapidly scaling it up in size. Along the way, we will need to address various issues related to security, privacy, information management and procurement to expand our cloud computing services. Over time, as we work through these concerns and offer more services through Apps.gov, federal agencies will be able to get the capabilities they need to fulfill their missions at lower cost, faster, and ultimately, in a more sustainable manner.

Vivek Kundra is the U.S. Chief Information Officer.

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer P. 163-165

2009-09-14T11:58:00.000-07:00

In chapter 5 of his book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer discusses back pain and what changed after the MRI became a "crucial medical tool. It allowed doctors to look, for the first time, at stunningly accurate images of the interior of the body.” Unfortunately without a proper context including a much better understanding of the human body, this ‘accurate evidence’ gave them a false confidence in their decisions. This appears to have resulted in lots of unnecessary tests, procedures and surgeries.

p. 163-164 How we Decide

“A large study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) randomly assigned 380 patients with back pain to undergo two different types of diagnostic analysis. One group received x-rays. The other group got diagnosed using MRIs, which gave doctors much more information about the underlying anatomy.

Which group fared better? Did better pictures lead to better treatments? There was no difference in patient outcome: the vast majority of people in both groups got better. More information didn't lead to less pain. The stark differences emerge when the study looked at how the different groups were treated. Nearly 50% of MRI patients were diagnosed with some sort of disc abnormality, and this diagnosis led to intensive medical interventions. The MRI group had more doctor visits, more injections, more physical therapy, and were more than twice as likely to undergo surgery. These additional treatments were very expensive, and they had no measurable benefit.”

I posted a video yesterday of Nassim Taleb, saying the same thing about certain financial metrics: the (false) precision of the measure gives a trader or bank executive a false understanding of the risk being taken and a false confidence in his/her understanding.

p. 165 How we Decide

“The problem with diagnosing the origins of back pain is really just another version of the strawberry-jam problem*. In both cases, the rational methods of decision-making cause mistakes. Sometimes, more information and analysis can actually constrict thinking, making people understand less about what's really going on. Instead of focusing on the most pertinent variable -- the percentage of patients who get better and experienced less pain -- doctors got sidetracked by the irrelevant MRI pictures.

When it comes to treating back pain, this wrong-headed approach comes with serious costs. "What's going on now is a disgrace," says Dr. John Sarno, a professional of clinical rehabilitation at New York University Medical Center. "You have well-meaning doctors making structural diagnoses despite a serious lack of evidence that these abnormalities are really causing chronic pain. But they have these MRI pictures and the pictures seem so convincing. It's amazing how perfectly intelligent people will make foolish decisions if you give them lots of irrelevant stuff to consider."

*Strawberry Jam problem: in blind taste tests, students’ tastes correlated with a panel of experts, but when asked to explain their decisions, another group of students showed no correlation. i.e there are situations when rational-decision making causes worse decisions.

“The old ways that led to this crisis cannot stand.”

2009-09-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

On Wall Street, Obama Pushes Stricter Finance Rules - NYTimes.com:

"“I want everybody here to hear my words,” Mr. Obama said. “We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.”

Mr. Obama touted the administration’s plans to increase capital cushions at big banks, give the Federal Reserve new powers to oversee system-wide risks to the financial system and establish a new consumer-protection agency, which would have broad powers over home mortgages and other consumer loans.

Mr. Obama also urged banks to adopt changes before Congress acts by simplifying the language they use with consumers, overhauling their pay structures or allowing shareholders vote on 2009 bonuses."
.
.
.
“At the same time, what we must do now goes beyond just these reforms,” Mr. Obama said. “For what took place one year ago was not merely a failure of regulation or legislation; it was not merely a failure of oversight or foresight. It was a failure of responsibility that allowed Washington to become a place where problems — including structural problems in our financial system — were ignored rather than solved.”

YouTube - Nassim Taleb attacks VaR in Congress

2009-09-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Nassim Taleb attacks VaR in Congress

VaR

Art by Novik | Blurb

2009-09-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

Art by Novik | Blurb

I put together a cool little art book. It is 7 inches X 7 inches and its pages are graced with beautiful reprints of eighty-five paintings by my friend, the painter Novik. We are selling the book for a limited time at cost ($34 + tax and shipping), but after a short time the price will increase to $100. The idea is to let friends, etc. purchase this collection at cost, but then raise the price to better reflect its value. Eventual profits, if any, will first go toward paying for production expenses and then toward the continued promotion and advancement of Novik's work. The first fifteen pages can be previewed by following the link.

Art by Novik

By Mark E. Merritt

Book Preview

Frankentone

2009-09-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

HuffPo

While coverage of the health care reform debate has focused on yelling, booing and fistfights, not all engagements between lawmakers and constituents turn hostile. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) discussed his beliefs and goals about health care reform at the Minnesota State Fair Wednesday with a group of constituents, and calmed down some who were upset, giving clear, honest answers to thought-out, sincere questions. "I thank you for your passion," he says to a vocal member of the crowd, "we need that, and we need to have these conversations."

And then, remarkably, she calms down, and everyone discusses the matter in a reasonable and cool-headed manner.

"We all want reform, the question is how do we do it," Franken said. A mixed bag of opponents and supporters gathered around as the senator explained his perspective, how he will vote, and how he believes the legislation will benefit the people of Minnesota and the nation.

Watch:

Applied Rheology

2009-09-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Republican recounts lessons of the past
by Lisa Vorderbrueggen,
Contra Costa Times
August 21, 2009

David Harmer, a case study in Applied Rheology ;)

Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On: Web 2.0

2009-08-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Web Squared

Ever since we first introduced the term "Web 2.0," people have been asking, "What’s next?" Assuming that Web 2.0 was meant to be a kind of software version number (rather than a statement about the second coming of the Web after the dotcom bust), we’re constantly asked about "Web 3.0." Is it the semantic web? The sentient web? Is it the social web? The mobile web? Is it some form of virtual reality?

It is all of those, and more.

The Web is no longer a collection of static pages of HTML that describe something in the world. Increasingly, the Web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an "information shadow," an aura of data which, when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind bending implications. Web Squared is our way of exploring this phenomenon and giving it a name.

Read the whole thing here.

Rule of Law

2009-07-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

Newsweek

[I]n late June [US Attorney General Eric] Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general's thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Department office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as "the dark side." He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was "shocked and saddened," he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America's name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue. [p.4]

Joint IG Report re B43 Domestic Surveillance

2009-07-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

TPM

Bush Administration domestic surveillance programs much broader than previously known. Spencer Ackerman has more. Here's the joint report from the inspectors general [& with bookmarks].

We're going through the report now, but for a frame of reference let me refer you back to this TPMmuckraker report by Paul Kiel and Spencer Ackerman from two Julys ago. I dare say we were on to something.

2009.07.10 TPM: Bush personally sent Card

2007.05.15 g-bus David Corn re Comey testimony

B43 Justice

2009-07-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

TPM

At long last Karl Rove faced congressional investigators today in the U.S. attorneys firings and related investigations of the politicization of the Bush-era Justice Department. He was deposed by House Judiciary Committee attorneys for most of the day, committee chairman John Conyers tells Politico.

. . .. ... .. . .

& WaPo

& TPM

The news that Karl Rove has finally testified before lawyers for the House Judiciary committee about his role in the US Attorney firings and the prosecution of Don Siegelman represents, in one sense, the culmination of years-long battle. That fight has pitted Congress, determined to get to the bottom of the firings, against the Bush White House, which has dragged its feet at virtually every stage. And yet, the path from here to a full public accounting of what happened remains unclear at best.
Rove's deposition put a cap on a protracted legal standoff between the committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and the Bush White House. Conyers, investigating the late 2006 firing of nine US Attorneys, had first subpoenaed Rove in 2007. Citing executive privilege, the White House refused to let Rove testify. That eventually prompted Congress to hold Rove in contempt, and ultimately to file a lawsuit seeking to compel Rove to testify. A district court ruled in Congress's favor last year, but the White House appealed that ruling, and Rove continued to be a no-show at several committee hearings to which he had been called to testify. Eventually, in March, lawyers for President Bush reached an agreement with the committee, securing Rove's and Harriet Miers' testimony. Even since then, though, it's taken over four months to arrange for Rove's sit-down. (Miers had hers last month.) ....

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

2009-07-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

7/07/2009 09:37:00 PM

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

controls

2009-06-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

NY Times

By LYNNLEY BROWNING and DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Published: June 29, 2009

. . . .

[A]s Hernán E. Arbizu tended the fortunes of his gilded South American clients, he says he also illegally took millions of dollars from them for years while at [UBS and Chase], without being detected.

What is more, Mr. Arbizu said he regularly dipped into UBS client accounts — and even visited the Swiss giant’s offices in Manhattan to ensure that the illicit transactions went through — for at least a year after he left UBS for a new job at Chase in the fall of 2006.

The fast-lane world of private banking has hit some serious speed bumps in recent months, its affluent clientele hit by Ponzi schemers, failed hedge funds and tax evasion investigations from Washington to Europe.

. . . .

In telephone and e-mail interviews held in the last eight months, Mr. Arbizu put himself in what he said was the “3 percent of bankers who at some point get confused because of the pressure."

“We feel like we can take risks that other people don’t even dream to do, and that we can manage that risk — I don’t know why.”

. . . .

Yet while his actions pale in comparison with Bernard L. Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, Mr. Arbizu’s tale contains the same “rob Peter to pay Paul” logic that apparently guided Mr. Madoff.

. . . .

In June 2008, weeks after Mr. Arbizu was indicted in New York, the Argentine authorities raided JPMorgan Chase’s offices in Buenos Aires and confiscated records of 200 wealthy Argentine clients, many of them Mr. Arbizu’s, whose names and assets were then published in a local newspaper. [re Argentine reaction]

. . . .

“I know I am stupid,” Mr. Arbizu said. “I feel that in all these years I had my head divided into two sections, in one small section all this problem and in the rest my ‘normal’ life.”

. . .. ... .. . .

full NYT article [reg. req.], "Private Banker Moved Funds Undetected"

From Dan Froomkin's Last Column at WaPo

2009-06-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

WaPo

....

When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. There were so many. Lies about the war and lies to cover up the lies about the war. Lies about torture and surveillance. Lies about Valerie Plame. Vice President Dick Cheney's lies, criminally prosecutable but for his chief of staff Scooter Libby's lies. I also think about the extraordinary and fundamentally cancerous expansion of executive power that led to violations of our laws and our principles.

And while this wasn't as readily apparent until President Obama took office, it's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can down the road – either ignoring problems or, even worse, creating them and not solving them. This was true of a huge range of issues including the economy, energy, health care, global warming – and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.

How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, Murray Waas, Michael Massing, Mark Danner, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage and Philippe Sands; there was also some fine investigative blogging over at Talking Points Memo and by Marcy Wheeler. Notably not on this list: The likes of Bob Woodward and Tim Russert.

Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars.

It's also worth keeping in mind that there is so very much about the Bush era that we still don't know.

....

iPhone blogging

2009-06-21T15:55:00.001-07:00

From Andrew Sullivan

"Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive," - Mir Hossein Mousavi.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/quote-for-the-day-ii-8.html

Thanks,

Mark

Sent from my iPhone

It Really Should Have Been Called The iPhone 3G V - For Video

2009-06-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

It Really Should Have Been Called The iPhone 3G V - For Video

from techcrunch:

Not only does the 3G S shoot video in fairly nice (VGA) quality (with the possibility of doing HD quality someday), it is dead simple to upload to YouTube — it is literally the click of one button. Almost immediately after unboxing the 3G S I shot a quick 30 second video ~~(embedded below)~~, and within minutes it was online being viewed on YouTube — and that was transferring it to YouTube via 3G. (Over WiFi, it’s obviously even faster.) No, that’s not as real-time as live video streaming that a service like Qik would like to offer (but is currently being restricted from doing so), but again, it’s fast enough for most consumers, and it’s much better quality to boot.

And one thing that sets it apart from competitor smartphones with similar functionality, like the Google Ion (aka the G2 or HTC Magic), is that the 3G S has dead-simple video editing capabilities right on the device. You simply drag your finger across the video timeline along the top of a video to trim it down to just the part you want before you upload it. And playback of these videos on the device itself looks great.

Clay Shirky

2009-06-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

. . .. ... .. . .

TED Q&A re Iran/Twitter 6.16.2009

. . .. ... .. . .

5.15.2008: bh.tv: transparency

. . .. ... .. . .

6.6.2009 bigthink.com:

more shirky bigthink

¿was it the internet?

cell phone video camera

2009-06-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

Post-Election Iran as it Develops « niacINsight

Someone I assume to be a government official walking up to a car with hand raised, in gray suit, condescendingly saying “Droplets of water, return to the ocean.” (it’s a reference to a poem)

The cameraman asking him: “Have you not been looking to the streets? Just look at the streets!”

Second cameraman: “Mr. Mirzavi, we liked you.” [too many people talking at the same time - inaudible] Cameraman again: “Just don’t cheat this time.”

Then they start screaming “MOUSAVI!” when Ahmadinejad shows up and “LIAR!” when he is pulling away, and then my favorite: “Ahmadi Bye bye.”

post-election internet traffic in Iran

2009-06-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

from HuffPo: Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising

"Unlike Burma, Iran has significant commercial and technological relationships with the rest of the world. In other words, the government cannot turn off the Internet without impacting business and perhaps generating further social unrest. In all, this represents a delicate balance for the Iranian government and a test case for the Internet to impact democratic change."

Who Knew?

2009-06-14T13:12:00.001-07:00

Andrew Sullivan

. . .. ... ..... ... .. . .

Howard Rheingold, for one ...

Biz Stone for another ...

Push the Hill Without Charging

2009-06-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

CQ Politics | David Corn

....

Like a general focused on the lesson of the last war, Obama is refusing to get tied down in the nitty-gritty of the legislative process. And that's probably wise. He wants to push the Hill without charging the Hill. But will that be enough? How long can he avoid weighing in on the critical issues? Perhaps it's a matter of timing, and he's waiting for the right moment to make a move. But with so much at stake for his presidency and the public in this endeavor to remake the nation's health care system, he will have to do more than watch.

more ...

Who am I, Eric Schmidt?

2009-06-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Edge: Reflections on A Crisis

2009-06-05T15:57:00.001-07:00

Obama in Cairo

2009-06-04T10:44:00.000-07:00

whitehouse.gov | YouTube

Full transcript.

TPM abridged version:

@ Buchenwald 6.5.2009

NYT: Financial Overhaul Plan

2009-06-01T18:06:00.000-07:00

The New York Times
By STEPHEN LABATON
June 1, 2009

Washington is asking some painful questions about how to prevent the next financial meltdown. Should it reinvent the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation? Abolish the seemingly feckless overseer of savings and loans? Grant new powers to the Federal Reserve?

All that — and more — is on the table as the Obama administration prepares to overhaul the regulatory apparatus that failed to prevent the gravest economic crisis since the Depression. Under consideration is everything from mortgages to credit cards to hedge funds to insurance. One possibility is creating a regulator to watch over companies that might put financial system in peril again should they run into trouble.

The plan, a central plank of the administration’s response to the current crisis, has already provoked a fierce lobbying battle by the various financial services industries that it could touch. The Treasury Department aims to complete the effort by mid-June, and senior Democrats in the House and Senate have vowed to complete legislation by the end of this year.

One radical proposal — combining the four federal agencies overseeing banks and thrifts into a single, super-regulator — already seems to be losing favor, lawmakers and policymakers said. But there is a growing consensus that one of the four, the Office of Thrift Supervision, which was responsible for oversight of the American International Group, should be eliminated as part of an effort to streamline oversight.

more ...

Lee Smolin on Science and Democracy

2009-05-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

Physicist Lee Smolin talks about the scientific community and democracy.

Lessig

2009-05-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

Change Congress

Change Congress co-founder Lawrence Lessig keynotes Brennan Center campaign finance reform conference. (May 8, 2009)

Atlantis Solar Transit

2009-05-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

STS-125 Atlantis Solar Transit (200905120002HQ) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

oops!

2009-05-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

Bloggingheads.tv - Percontations: Religiosity Rematch

whole diavlog

Dan Dennett on dangerous memes | Video on TED.com

2009-05-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

Dan Dennett on dangerous memes | Video on TED.com

Sind Banker Königswürde?

2009-05-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

"Are Bankers Royalty?"

Why Are Bankers Still Being Treated As Beltway Royalty?

by Arianna Huffington, HuffPo

During Wednesday night's press conference, President Obama said that he's been "sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow" and "humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life and there are a lot of different power centers."

Well, one of those different power centers -- the entrenched special interests that continue to call so many shots on Capitol Hill -- is the main reason change in DC comes so slow.

This, of course, will not come as news to anyone who has paid even the briefest attention to Washington over the last 30 years. Indeed, I've been writing about it for over a decade.

But despite all that I know about the reform-killing power unleashed by the nexus of lobbying, campaign cash, and legislation, I have been flabbergasted by the amount of behind-the-scenes influence recently being wielded by the banking lobby.

Just this week, the bankers and their lobbyists -- who you might have reasonably thought would be the political equivalent of lepers in the halls of power these days -- have kneecapped substantive bankruptcy reform in the Senate, helped pull the plug on a government-brokered deal with Chrysler, and tried feverishly to throw up a roadblock in the way of credit card reform in the House.

You heard me right. America's bankers -- those wonderful folks who brought us the economic meltdown -- are still being treated as Beltway royalty by those in Congress.

According to Sen. Dick Durbin, the banks "are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

When it comes to reforming our financial system, we are truly through the looking glass.

I mean, since when did it become "to the vanquished go the spoils"? How do the same banks that have repeatedly come to Washington over the last eight months with their hats in their hands, asking for billions to rescue them from their catastrophic mistakes, somehow still "own the place"?

But the banks continue to be rewarded for their many failures.

* * * *

... (check out this video of the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual meeting, held the night before the cramdown vote, and note the overpowering scent of self-congratulations).

And their aim was true -- and deadly. Heading into the vote, those pushing for reform hoped to gather the 60 supporters needed to bring the cramdown amendment to a final vote. Instead, Durbin struggled to find 45 Senators willing to side with consumers. The final tally: Bankers 51, Consumers 45.

Twelve Democrats sided with the banks -- Max Baucus, Michael Bennet, Robert Byrd, Tom Carper, Byron Dorgan, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Arlen Specter, and Jon Tester -- as did every Republican who voted.

* * * *

In the run-up to the vote, Durbin called it a "test": "Who is going to win this debate?" he asked. "The mortgage bankers and the American Bankers Association or the consumers across America?"

We just got our answer.

The shocking swagger of those in the financial sector was also evident in the negotiations that resulted in Thursday's announcement that Chrysler would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

For much of the back-and-forth between Chrysler, its lenders, and the Treasury Department, those lenders (comprised of banks, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JP Morgan -- all recipients of bailout money -- and private equity firms) were playing hardball. They repeatedly rejected attempts by Treasury to get them to lower the amount of Chrysler's debt.

The car company owes its creditors $6.9 billion. Treasury proposed that the banks and private equity firms accept 15 percent of what they are owed. The creditors scoffed at that and suggested they'd settle for getting 65 percent of what they are owed (around $4.5 billion), plus a 40 percent stake in Chrysler and a seat on the company's board.

Picture this for a moment. On one side you have the Treasury, which has helped funnel tens of billions of dollars to these banks, making what it considers an equitable proposal. On the other side, you have the bankers, the recipients of that government largess, showing their gratitude by scoffing at Treasury's proposal and demanding a much, much better deal. Clearly, Goldman has gotten way too used to sweetheart deals like the 100-cents-on-the-dollar payout it received as part of the AIG bailout.

Treasury eventually upped the proposal to $1.5 billion (22 percent of what the creditors were owed) and a 5 percent equity stake in the carmaker. Again the bankers scoffed, before finally, at the 11th hour, agreeing to accept $2 billion (around 29 percent) and a small equity stake.

A Treasury official took a victory lap, calling the deal "an exceptional accomplishment in line with the President's firm commitment that all stakeholders sacrifice to make this deal succeed."

Then the 12th hour arrived and the hedge fund managers, who hold around 30 percent of the Chrysler debt, decided they didn't want to sacrifice that much after all and refused to sign off on the deal -- even after the offer was sweetened with an additional $250 million. At least the hedge funds had not improved their balance sheets with billions in taxpayer dollars and government loan guarantees before scuttling the deal.

* * * *

So no matter how badly the banking industry fails and how much its failures cost us, it continues to be Washington's 800 lb gorilla -- and the greatest risk to Barack Obama's presidency.

At his press conference, Obama bemoaned the fact that he "can't just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want."

It's too bad the same can't be said for the bankers, who keep pressing Congress's buttons, and getting pretty much what they want.

Condinixon

2009-04-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

young turks via andrew sullivan

"The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture... The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture," - Condi Rice.

Isn't it telling that the first person to ask her this question this directly in public was not a professional journalist? One of these days, those guys' jobs could be in jeopardy ... oh, wait!

* * * *

& ForeignPolicy.com 4.30.2009

Cloud Computing: From Object to Fabric

2009-04-24T13:20:00.001-07:00

Edge 282

MARKOFF: ... there was this other — the Mirror Worlds notion .... Because it basically — you know, computing reflects reality.

GELERNTER: Exactly. As the Gaussian code, as the scientific computing, spun off in one direction, my own interests were really in the other direction. More at the user level. The Mirror Worlds idea began with the idea of delocalized information floating out there so that I could look into my computer and without knowing where to look, what file on which computer, I can sort of tune in the information I wanted the way I tuned in CNN on a TV. I don't have to know where CNN is and I don't have to know on what operating system my TV is running, or the software on my cable box — I just tune it in and I assume it's there.

That was the basis, together with the little towns and villages in New England where my wife comes from. She comes from Cape Cod, so then we were driving around in beautiful little village-lets and they really look the way they're supposed to look. A large white church in the center and they often have a pond next to the church and a mill maybe and the pond is absolutely still. Not all the time. But, you know. So you look at the pond and you see a perfect reflection of the church and stuff like that. This is not a revelation. This is the way mirrors work.

So this is going to the cybersphere and the real world will be mirrored on the surface of software essentially. Instead of having to penetrate the real world, go places, deal with institutions in their real-world manifestations, which involves a lot of trouble and a lot of time and a lot of energy, in some cases necessary and desirable but not always, I'll be able to tune in any part of reality I want. The university I'm a student at, the company I work for, the local school my kid goes to, a hospital where I help, for instance, and so forth.

MARKOFF: What's so striking about that to me is that

the world is just now catching up with that.

Ideologically where you were, and what so hit me over the head at that point where Mirror Worlds came up, is that that was in a sense flying in the face of the computing ideology of the times, which were predominantly personal. You, and to a certain extent Mark Weiser at Xerox, had this notion — his notion of ubiquitous computing had many echoes of your ideas. This so much flew in the face of the computing industry and the nature of our view of computing at that point. And we still haven't caught up, basically. It's clear now with cloud computing that that's the direction the world's moving in. But only now.

GELERNTER: I think that's absolutely true. You, John, were the first guy to tell me, "When I look at the Web, it is sort of like a mirror world, although it's not quite there in that it doesn't have the real time flow, it's more static." I started thinking about it then — I think you were the first person actually to put that proposition to me.

After that there was really a flood of a lot of people saying, "Well, this is an important book, it predicted the Web, blahblahblah." If anything, the fault of the book — well, there are plenty of faults in the book — is that it was too conservative, in one sense. It was published in '91 and said, "We're going to start seeing this ten years from now; take it from me, you're going to start seeing something like this in reality." But in '94 the Web took off.

We still aren't at a Mirror World type situation where we're at a real time mirror of reality. But in other respects,

the technology is bubbling up all over.

SHIRKY: In some highly instrumented domains we are starting to see it, where people are instrumenting things with sensors. The other thing I think is so striking about it — John mentioned this, right — is that you were flying in the face of the dominant view of the computing industry. What you said, which is simple economics but radical to the industry is, computers will become abundant because people care about them. And when they become abundant enough, we'll stop caring about them.

Because then we can take them for granted. In '91, no one was ready to take computers for granted yet. They were the fetish object themselves. What I got from it — to me it was a revelation, I was just moving in this direction in those times and I felt like I'd been given a new brain reading it — was the sense of, "oh right, this is going to fade into the background and the computer stops being the object you care about."

That movement from object to fabric was absolutely prescient.

GELERNTER: Object to fabric is a beautiful way to put it. I think a lot of the computing industry is still stuck at the object level. I mean it's the engineering in the box that really, really matters. I started telling my students at some point in the 90's, "The picture is the system." They'd say, "Tell me about GUI design but we're going to go the graphic art department, or something. We don't have to talk about the interface here. We have more important things to do. We're talking about the real technology." As far I was concerned, I didn't care about the machine. I mean I cared about it, but the machine wasn't the point. The interconnect wasn't the point. It was a picture. I was dealing with a picture — the picture matters to me. I didn't really care how the picture was produced, but the picture from my point of view was the system.

SHIRKY: That was not the way the computing industry wanted to think, certainly not in the 1990's. Although there were people at Sun whose work on Java was — there was a lot of prescience in the Mirror Worlds thinking — and so on JINI and JXTA.

And in more recent years, the book has been — Technology Review ran a piece [sub. req.; video] two or three years ago saying, "Well, Google Earth is just taken from a figure." They ran a piece about Google Earth with figures from the Mirror Worlds book and saying "You see this is just what Mirror Worlds said about it." And Second Life and stuff like that, but for other reasons.

. . .. ... ..... oOo ..... ... .. . .

Shirky TED June 2009

emergence

2009-04-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

update: Dear Conservative Americans, TPM 3.23.2010

. . .. oOo .. . .

C: Thought this might be of interest.

I: it was. thank you. i am heartened by the character of the debate. it feels to me like these issues are moving into the light, where they belong.

C: Debate always good. Lying to get elected always bad, but all too common.

I: well, unlike you and the wsj editorialist, it is too early for me to reach conclusions about the nature of the obama adminstration's positions and actions. for example, the obama administration's legal positions (especially to the extent they advance some of the same arguments of the predecessor administration) may be interpreted as merely presenting the question appropriately to the other co-equal branches of government.

To the courts: advancing legal positions has the effect of squarely (and appropriately) asking for an adjudication. Whatever the arguments on the merits of the issue, the obama administration is here recognizing the judiciary's check on executive power. The administration's positions may be upheld or overturned; but they will needs be decided! To the extent the administration merely drops the arguments, that moots the question for the courts, removing it from judicial purview. These questions have perhaps never been so cleanly teed-up, with so vivid and complete a factual record. The obama administration's actions are (so far as I can tell, anyway) dramatically increasing the possibility that the questions will receive appropriate jurisprudential and public scrutiny. Which may have a dramatic influence in bringing about a world resembling the one evoked by obama's campaign rhetoric decrying the previous administration's policies. That is, a world in which our constitutional principles have been restored, and in which the rule of law exists and applies.

To Congress: Similarly, the Obama administration's positions, e.g., with regard to prosecutions of previous administration officials, have been criticized as inconsistent with previous campaign rhetoric. Yet, the administration's positions and actions have the effect of teeing up the issues for analysis and investigation by an appropriately independent DOJ, as well as by the Congress. Much work is being done, and we will shortly be seeing some more of the results, which will at the very least inform our own ability to analyze what is going on, and whether it is good or bad, or a lie or what-have-you.

C: Hmmm.

Seems to me there was no advancing in the courts (Ninth Circuit) of Bush's wire tapping policies, much to the consternation of the judges. Not much public scrutiny here, only bashing Bush while doing the same thing that he was. Besides that the Constitution grants the President powerful tools to defend the country from attack that were never intended to be adjudicated.

The rule of law will mean that people who want to cut our heads off with a steak knife while chanting to their God (see Berg video) will all claim they were tortured and their cases will be thrown out and they will be released. (By the way if you have not had the stomach to watch this you really should. Kind of puts the threat that civil society faces from these folks in perspective).

Hopefully my family will not suffer the consequences.

I think our enemies are laughing at Obama and preventing another 9-11 should be done by any means in order to preserve civil liberties. If there is another 9-11, I doubt there will be many left.

Extraordinary times require new and sometimes extreme measures. See FDR wiretapping anyone, at any time, for any reason without a warrant. And then of course the small infringement on Japanese American's civil liberties. Another minor matter when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. These actions, while violating the rule of law, ultimately preserved civil liberties for all and did not result in the creation of a police state.

Just like with a sausage it is sometimes best to not know what is going into it.

[I]: Sounds like Peggy Noonan:

C: Brave men are doing, or were doing, difficult things so we can sleep warm and safe at night. Why hamper their efforts by granting people who want to kill you and me the constitutional rights of an American citizen? To make it easier for them?

What you refer to as work appears to me to be politics at its worst - essentially maintaining many of the same policies while bashing those that created them. Very easy to be a Monday morning quarterback while forgetting the post 9-11 environment that the Bush administration was faced with.

Finally if you are going to release details about CIA methods why not include the results that those methods were responsible for? But then again I am sure we could have gotten the same thing by yelling at them.

I remain hopeful that those who believe in the rule of law will keep a close eye on this administration and speak out just as forcefully as they did against Bush. I am certain there will be ample opportunity to do so, like 90% tax rates for certain groups etc.

Small government, low taxes, and free markets!!

I: speaking of FDR:

"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

... You and I are definitely not perceiving anything like the same elephant -- I don't know what-all you base your opinions on, but they come out sounding a lot like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and the neoconservatives, and Dick Cheney , and Karl Rove's politics of fear. Sure there are scary terrorists out there with steak knives, etc. ... But geez, calm down. Don't let your reason continue to be hijacked by fear. The sky is not falling. Open your mind and pay attention, using the tools of the information age. You have to read something other than the WSJ and that same old echo chamber.

As I wrote to you last May, my own politics are guided by principles which I believe are not, fundamentally, in conflict with yours. I think we just have very, very different understandings of the facts and of the processes by which understandings of the facts are formulated. I do value your friendship, and I still think it is worthwhile to continue to work to understand each other's views and find common ground.

By 'processes by which understandings of the facts are formulated,' I mean something along the lines of the following (also from our May 2008 exchange):

We are seeing the emergence of filtering, accreditation, and synthesis mechanisms as part of network behavior. These rely on clustering of communities of interest and association ... but offer tremendous redundancy of paths for expression and accreditation. These practices leave no single point of failure for discourse: no single point where observations can be squelched or attention commanded – by fiat or with the application of money. Because of these emerging systems, the networked information economy is solving the information overload and discourse fragmentation concerns without introducing the distortions of the mass-media model. Peer production ... is providing some of the most important functionalities of the media. These efforts provide a watchdog, a source of salient observations regarding matters of public concern, and a platform for discussing the alternatives open to a polity. [Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 271-72.]
While there is enormous diversity on the Internet, there are also mechanisms and practices that generate a common set of themes, concerns, and public knowledge around which a public sphere can emerge. Any given site is likely to be within a very small number of clicks away from a site that is visible from a very large number of other sites, and these form a backbone of common materials, observations, and concerns. ... Users self-organize to filter the universe of information that is generated in the network. This self-organization includes a number of highly salient sites that provide a core of common social and cultural experiences and knowledge that can provide the basis for a common public sphere, rather than a fragmented one. [Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 256; see also].

C: Maybe you should come talk to some of my Irish friends who were in the towers on 9-11 and tell them they have nothing to fear. That would be an interesting conversation that I would pay money to watch.

My opinions are rooted in historical fact and not the product of any news organizations. Appeasement of ones enemies has never worked and it never will. The FDR quote you site is referring to the economy and not external threats.

I always find it interesting that the left attacks the messenger (Bill O'Reilly, Limbaugh etc.) rather than sticking to the details at hand. So one more time, did FDR's and Lincoln's actions merit prosecution or where they actions taken that were necessary given the conditions at the time? Is Israel a police state where there are no civil rights or are they just doing what is necessary to stay alive, realizing that civil rights are of no use if you are dead?

... You have the luxury of not fearing people who openly state their desire to kill Americans wherever they can be found. The President does not have that luxury. He can not sit quietly while people, who are in the country illegally, are learning to fly jet planes while showing no interest in how to land them -- see Bill Clinton and Janet Reno.

Anyway I think we simply need to agree to disagree. I believe that people checking out books on how to wage Jihad and build dirty bombs should get a visit from the FBI and you do not. ([I]: You don't know what I believe.)

While [my wife] might look OK in a Burka [my daughter] would not.

I: ok, I agree to disagree.

and FDR was talking about fear not being a good strategy. that's what I'm talking about.

[I]: Obama, 5/16/2008

Sen. Leahy 4.22.2009

"I kind of like to read the page before I turn it."

legal opinion

2009-04-21T09:55:00.000-07:00

frankenpresser

2009-04-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

the uptake

re MN Senate Election Contest Ruling:

Senator-elect Al Franken speaks to reporters outside his downtown Minneapolis townhome following a three-judge panel ruling [.pdf] declaring Al Franken the victor in the U.S. Senate contest.

Shot by Noah Kunin, Edited by Chuck Olsen, April 13, 2009.

oOo

flashback 01.17.2007

flash forward: 05.04.2009

oOo

07.08.2009 with interest

disarming america

2009-04-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

tpm

Wolfram|Alpha

2009-04-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

Kicking off our conversation, Stephen remarks that, “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t really a search engine, because we compute the answers, and we discover new truths. If anything, you might call it a platonic search engine, unearthing eternal truths that may never have been written down before.”

Despite his disclaimer, Wolfram|Alpha looks like a search engine, in that there’s a one-line box where you type in a question. The output appears a second or two later, as a page of text and graphics below the box. What's happening behind the scenes? Rather than looking up the answer to your question, Wolfram|Alpha figures out what your question means, looks up the necessary data to answer your question, computes an answer, designs a page to present the answer in a pleasing way, and sends the page back to your computer.

He regards Wolfram|Alpha as a natural outgrowth from his own work on Mathematica and on the NKS notions of complex computation. “Most of us only have one idea,” he remarks. “My idea is to make the world computable. Mathematica was about finding the simplest primitive computations, and designing a system where humans could hook these computations together to create patterns of scientific interest. NKS was about the notion that that we can start with primitive computations and not bring in humans at all. If you do a brute search over the space of all possible computations, you can find ones that are rich enough to produce the natural-looking kinds of patterns that you want. And Wolfram|Alpha is about how we might build the edifice of human knowledge from simple primitive computational rules.”

* * *

5.8.2009 readwriteweb.com

Inside Obama's bank CEOs meeting

2009-04-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

politico via tpm

The bankers struggled to make themselves clear to the president of the United States.

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

The fresh details of the meeting — some never before revealed — come from an account provided to POLITICO by one of the participants. A second source inside the meeting confirmed the details, and two other sources familiar with the meeting offered additional information.

The accounts demonstrate that despite the public comments on both sides that the meeting was cordial, the tone in the room was in fact one of mutual wariness. The titans of finance — men used to being the most powerful man in almost any room — sized up a new president who made clear in ways big and small that he expected them to change their ways.

There were signs from the outset that this was a business event, not a social gathering. At each place around the table sat a single glass of water. No ice. For those who finished their glass, no refills were offered. There was no group photograph taken of the CEOs with the president, which typically happens at ceremonial White House gatherings but not at serious strategy sessions.

“The only way they could have sent a more Spartan message is if they had served bread along with the water,” says a person who attended the meeting. “The signal from Obama’s body language and demeanor was, ‘I’m the president, and you’re not.’”

According to the accounts of sources inside the room, President Obama told the CEOs exactly what he expects from them, and pushed back forcefully when they attempted to defend Wall Street’s legendarily high-paying ways.

Fractal Quantum Gravity

2009-04-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

NewScientist.com

re T.N. Palmer, Invariant Set Hypothesis (2008.12.05)

* * * *

What has been missing, [Palmer] argues, are some key ideas from an area of science that most quantum physicists have ignored: the science of fractals, those intricate patterns found in everything from fractured surfaces to oceanic flows (see What is a fractal?).

Take the mathematics of fractals into account, says Palmer, and the long-standing puzzles of quantum theory may be much easier to understand. They might even dissolve away.

It is an argument that is drawing attention from physicists around the world. "His approach is very interesting and refreshingly different," says physicist Robert Spekkens of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. "He's not just trying to reinterpret the usual quantum formalism, but actually to derive it from something deeper."

* * * *

Palmer believes his work shows it is possible that Einstein and Bohr may have been emphasising different aspects of the same subtle physics. "My hypothesis is motivated by two concepts that wouldn't have been known to the founding fathers of quantum theory," he says: black holes and fractals.

Palmer's ideas begin with gravity. The force that makes apples fall and holds planets in their orbit is also the only fundamental physical process capable of destroying information. It works like this: the hot gas and plasma making up a star contain an enormous amount of information locked in the atomic states of a huge number of particles. If the star collapses under its own gravity to form a black hole, most of the atoms are sucked in, resulting in almost all of that detailed information vanishing. Instead, the black hole can be described completely using just three quantities - its mass, angular momentum and electric charge.

Many physicists accept this view, but Palmer thinks they haven't pursued its implications far enough. As a system loses information, the number of states you need to describe it diminishes. Wait long enough and you will find that the system reaches a point where no more states can be lost. In mathematical terms, this special subset of states is known as an invariant set. Once a state lies in this subset, it stays in it forever.

A simple way of thinking about it is to imagine a swinging pendulum that slows down due to friction before eventually coming to a complete standstill. Here the invariant set is the one that describes the pendulum at rest.

Because black holes destroy information, Palmer suggests that the universe has an invariant set too, though it is far more complicated than the pendulum.

Complex systems are affected by chaos, which means that their behaviour can be influenced greatly by tiny changes. According to mathematics,

the invariant set of a chaotic system is a fractal.

Deborah Gordon digs ants | Video on TED.com

2009-03-31T20:44:00.000-07:00

Deborah Gordon digs ants | Video on TED.com