Month: June 2009

In order for Al Franken’s mere presence in the Senate to make a difference, two things need to happen. First, the Democrats will need to get both Robert Byrd and Teddy Kennedy to show up to cast a vote for cloture. That is not an easy thing to do, given their health issues. Second, the Democrats have to remain totally united. If they can do both those things, they can pass anything they want on any terms they want. It will be possible on certain votes to get one or two or three Republicans to cross-over and make up for Byrd and/or Kennedy’s absence, or for a couple of Democratic defections (I’m looking at you Lieberman, Carper, Baucus, Ben Nelson, Pryor, Lincoln, etc.).

In reality, Franken doesn’t make much difference. The real difference is that with Franken in the Senate, the Dems have no ready-made excuses for failing to pass their agenda.

It’s the end of the month again. This site, like so many others, cannot operate without generous donations from people like you. In this down economy, all media outlets are suffering from a dramatic drop-off in advertising revenue, and the blogosphere is no exception. It’s unfortunate, but new media is coming under tremendous financial stress and cannot exist without citizen support. To everyone who has lent support in the past, thank you for making it possible for me to get my voice out there. Making people like Dana Milbank confront his own vanities is only one of the many joys of blogging. Calling the Obama administration on their plans for indefinite detention is another. Anything you can contribute this month will be very, very appreciated. And, since I need to update the books section (I get 7.5% of all sales purchased through Powell’s Books), you can use this as a thread for listing any books that are out there that you want to read, or have read and want to recommend to others. Thanks again, and please help keep the Frog Pond around as a voice in our barren media landscape.

Please go to http://cotocrew.wordpress.com and read the article by Caitlin McNulty of VenezuelanAnalysis.com.
The more articles I read like this, the more I realize how advanced countries are with single-payer systems and how the AMA and the Insurance Companies and the Pgharmaceuticals Companies have been able to use MONEY to keep us pinned against the wall.

Make sure to pass this article on.

Under The LobsterScope

Somewhere in Iran, there are terabytes of data – unseen photos, unwatched videos and unread words that have captured events that have yet to be seen by those of us in the “West.”

The Ahmadinejad regime has struggled to tamp out communication among the Iranian people, now keeping it to a very slow drip. Hardly anything comes out from Iran these days, unlike the deluge that we have seen in the past. Keep in mind, Iran is the biggest blogging nation in the world outside of the United States. The culture there, with a majority of the population being young, is a wired culture. Hell, we are a wired planet, so why should Iran be any different?

Inside Iran blogs are down, tweets are non-existent, cell phone service is a joke and the web is a firewalled ghost town. But here comes the problem – the Ahmadinejad regime knows the people of Iran are pissed beyond belief and the people know what the government did to the people – those images of Neda are NOT going to go away anytime soon. The regime also knows that they are sitting on a powder keg of frustration and their only move is to keep the internet out of the hands of the people. It isn’t a question of blocking the West, the incriminating data is inside the country – on cell phones, cameras and camcorders and all sorts of digital recording devices. The data is stored in Iran and the regime cannot afford to allow it to leak to the West or even to the west side of Tehran. An Azure Curtain, an analogy to the Soviet’s Iron Curtain, has to fall across Iran and the regime has to hope that will be enough, but it won’t.

The Ahmadinejad regime is screwed long term (maybe even short term). They cannot hope to keep a smart, empowered population like Iran in the dark for long. Data will start flowing with the use of USB drives, CDs and home produced DVDs that will contain unseen images – all of which will spread like a virus. But knowing Iranians, this is probably already underway. Then someone will sneak a thumbdrive out of the country and more stuff will be dumped to the web.

Iran cannot hope to remain a modern country without the web. Hospitals, educators, manufacturers, banks, shopkeepers, everyone in that country benefits from the web and the only way the Ahmadinejad regime can keep control is to shut off the web and drive their population to the level of North Korea – a complete sequestration of Iranians from the world and each other – that is the regime’s only viable step.

The regime cannot stay in power when a huge swath of their population are bloggers and citizen journalists. Benjamin Franklin would be proud, Khamenei is probably horrified.

Do demons really have a sexual orientation and are they really more likely to be gay than straight?

I will confess that until last week, I had no idea demons even had sexual orientations. Or, for that matter, sex. Then I happened upon a video that is making the rounds online. It depicts members of your congregation conducting what can only be described as the “gay exorcism” of a 16-year-old boy.

He convulses on the floor as if in the grip of a seizure while adults circle above, apparently attempting to holler the gay out of him. They yell things like, “C’mon, you homosexual demon! We want a clean spirit!”

And . . . “Come out of his belly! It’s in the belly!”

If more are straight (and let’s face it there are a lot more straight people fooling around than gay folks), why do we only need to exorcise the gay demons? All things considered, I bet that good Christan leaders like Governor Sanford and Senators Vitter and Ensign would have appreciated an exorcism of their demons before they succumbed to their evil masters’ wishes and had sex with all those women not specifically bound to them by the vows of holy matrimony, don’t you agree? I mean even their allegiance to Saint Ronald of Reagan and the sanctity of their marriages weren’t enough to armor themselves against an infestation of the straight demons who plagued them with all those unholy sexual urges for women who hadn’t walked down the aisle with them.

And where do all those gay demons go when you do dig them out of those poor teenage souls? Demons being demons and all, isn’t the most likely thing for them to do is to wait until the exorcists turn their backs or leave to go save the next poor victim of the gay and then jump right back into the soul of the poor unfortunate boy or girl who just got exorcised? Seems likely to me. Especially with the unavailability of live swine around these days to hide out in.

I guess that’s why I’m no theologian. These questions just make my head hurt. Besides, I’d rather worry about all the demons that make people want to start wars for known good reason and torture people to death. Why don’t we have any good exorcists working on those little devils?

Update [2009-6-30 17:20:28 by Steven D]: The video!

The full video the Church of Manifest Glory posted is at this link.

Another link.

Second Update [2009-6-30 17:27:56 by Steven D]::

White churches do gay exorcisms too!

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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Hey, Norm, it’s never too late to be gracious. What’s on your mind?

Update [2009-6-30 16:12:21 by BooMan]: Coleman concedes.

From Todd Purdum’s piece on Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair:

What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

Got any simple answers?

Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, is definitely not optimistic about Iraq’s chances now that the deadline has arrived for American troops to leave the cities. Basically, he assumes that a power vacuum will be created into which will rush the same toxic brew of militias, inter- and intrasectarian and ethnic fighting we witnessed in 2006-2007.

My worry is that I don’t see the political situation as being much different than it has in the past. Nothing much has changed from the previous rush to failures. As readers of this blog have seen me say before: the surge succeeded tactically but failed strategically. That is, as planned, it created a breathing space in which a political breakthrough might occur. But Iraqi leaders, for whatever reason, didn’t take advantage of that space, and no breakthrough occurred. All the basic issues that faced Iraq before the surge are still hanging out there: How to share oil revenue? What is the power relationship between Shia, Sunni and Kurd? Who holds power inside the Shiite community? What is the role of Iran, the biggest winner in this war so far? And will Iraq have a strong central government or be a loose confederation? And what happens when all the refugees outside the country and those displaced inside it, who I think are majority Sunni, try to go back to their old houses, now largely occupied by Shiites and protected by Shiite militias?

Maybe a better series of questions would revolve around how long it will take Iraq to work its way through these problems and how badly these problems will reflect on the job the Americans have done there. One school of thought is that Iraq will move through a period of deep disequilibrium, but they will reach a balance more quickly with the Americans out of sight than they would with another year of the status quo. Another school of thought is that the training and equipment and stability being provided by America’s security-presence in the cities is working but hasn’t reached a sufficient point yet. More time might not be a guarantee of anything, but pulling back now puts what has been gained at unnecessary risk.

I don’t know which school of thought is more accurate, to be honest. And I don’t think I would even trust our best experts to know either. I do know that the Iraqis are celebrating today and taking pride in the notion that Iraq’s cities will be policed solely by Iraqis. They want us to leave. They have their fears, too, but it appears that a nearly unanimous majority are willing to take their chances. And that is the best sign I know of for guiding our policy.

Let’s say you go to your bank for a loan and find that your credit isn’t good enough, or that the home equity line you thought you had no longer exists because the remaining equity in your house has less value than than a wet cardboard box on skid row. What do you do if you need money for a security deposit to move into a new apartment, consolidate credit card debt, or pay a medical bill your (ahem) health insurance conveniently doesn’t cover? Never fear, here comes Pere-to-Peer (P2P) lending to the rescue!

“Twebster302” needed $1,200 for a root canal. “JulesWWC” wanted $13,000 to open a fair-trade chocolate shop. “Needhelp,” who said he’s a state employee, asked for $1,000 to get his finances in order and help his handicapped brother. […]

Known as peer-to-peer lending &mash; or P2P for short — it’s a 4-year-old industry that’s flourishing amid the current credit crisis.

“It’s a complete 180 in terms of how people look at their debt, but there’s no better time for something like this,” said Curtis Arnold, author of a book on the burgeoning industry.

And you thought you could only find love (or foreign brides) on line. Well surprise, surprise. Now you can go to Lendingclub.com, for example, and beg for someone to float your financial boat. Or, if you are tired of losing money in the stock market, you can take a chance at becoming a financier of someone else’s debts. It’s the Brave New World of internet lending!

You can even find a college loan there if you don’t qualify for the federal government’s financial aid programs. And, for all you private lenders investors out there these P2P loans may may even be regulated by the SEC (for all the good that will do you). As for borrowers, here’s a way to get funded by your rich relatives (i.e., anyone with a job) without worrying about running afoul of the IRS regulations on gifts — maybe*:

Are you on the good side with your rich Aunt Mary? If so, getting a P2P loan from Virgin Money to pay for graduate school might be a great option. Loans on this site are made between family members or friends, so lack of a credit history — or having a less-than-stellar one — isn’t an issue.

Of course, the questions about how safe the loans operations of these P2P lending organizations really are is another matter, entirely. Despite these companies having to register with the SEC, there is little real oversight of this growing market for what are essentially loan syndication networks. And what’s to prevent someone from inventing the next great Ponzi scheme under the aegis of a P2P lending site? And with the sites bundling lots of small loans by investors, some for as little as $50 to $100, the incentive for individuals to sue in the event of fraud is infinitesimally small. Considering the limitations placed on class action lawsuits put in place during the Bush administration, and the inability of the SEC to adequately monitor traditional Wall Street firms, much less jokers like Bernie Madoff, one has to wonder what the future will hold for this new “financial product.”

Still, for now, if you can’t find the money you need any other way, this may be your best bet. And if you are willing to risk some of your savings in order to get higher returns than what Bank CD’s, Treasury Bills or the stock market can offer right now, have at it. But if you do, don’t forget that old Latin saying: caveat emptor. In this economy, loans of any kind, even to family members, much less total strangers, are not certain of repayment. And even with the largest of these new online lending firms, what you think you know about the people who become your borrowers may be far less than advertised:

But lenders must be wary. Even sites that require borrower disclosure do not verify the data from all applicants.

Between Sept. 1, 2007, and Aug. 31, 2008, [Prosper.com, one of the largest P2P lenders] verified employment and income for only about 23% of certain borrower listings that were attracting a lot of lender interest.

That’s a big red flag, buckaroos. No real bank would make a loan to people whose income and employment it couldn’t verify. Even credit card companies do a better job of verification, and they charge significantly higher rates of interest to cover the risk of defaults (as most of you well know). So if you have surplus savings you want to risk in the hopes of getting an 8-10% return, be my guest. On the other hand, if you need a loan and want to get a significantly lower interest rate than what your friendly Megabank or credit card company would force down your throat, this looks like a reasonable thing to do.

* Please don’t consider anything I say here valid legal advice. Quite the contrary. I have no idea how the IRS would treat a loan between family members who make use of these sites.