December 24, 2009 archive

gather ye round

yea, gather ye round

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(another reprint)

.

One of Us

I’ve always liked this song.

If God had a name what would it be?

And would you call it to his face?

If you were faced with Him in all His glory

What would you ask if you had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great

Yeah, yeah, God is good

yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us?

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Tryin’ to make his way home?

Bernie Sanders, Member of the Progressive Caucus, Cuts to Chase with Maher



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Open Light

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Christmas Eve…

(Happy Christmas, Kyoko

Happy Christmas, Julian)

So this is Christmas

And what have you done

Another year over

A new one just begun

And so this is Christmas

I hope you have fun

The near and the dear ones

The old and the young

A very merry Christmas

And a happy New Year

Let’s hope it’s a good one

Without any fear

And so this is Christmas

(War is Over)

For weak and for strong

(if you want it)

The rich and the poor ones

(War is Over)

The road is so long

(now)

So happy Christmas

(War is Over)

For black and for white

(if you want it)

For yellow and red ones

(War is Over)

Let’s stop all the fight

(now)

A very merry Christmas

And a happy New Year

Let’s hope it’s a good one

Without any fear

And so this is Christmas

(War is over)

And what have we done

(if you want it)

Another year over

(War is Over)

And a new one just begun

(now)

And so this is Christmas

(War is Over)

And we hope you have fun

(if you want it)

The near and the dear ones

(War is Over)

The old and the young

(now)

A very merry Christmas

And a happy New Year

Let’s hope it’s a good one

Without any fear

War is over

if you want it

War is over

now

Happy Christmas

Goldman Sold Bad Debt Bet Against It And Won

According to the NYT, Goldman Sachs and other banks sold their customers collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, and then bet heavily that these investments would fail.

Goldman Saw It Coming

Before the financial crisis, many investors – large American and European banks, pension funds, insurance companies and even some hedge funds – failed to recognize that overextended borrowers would default on their mortgages, and they kept increasing their investments in mortgage-related securities. As the mortgage market collapsed, they suffered steep losses.

“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

The woeful performance of some C.D.O.’s issued by Goldman made them ideal for betting against. As of September 2007, for example, just five months after Goldman had sold a new Abacus C.D.O., the ratings on 84 percent of the mortgages underlying it had been downgraded, indicating growing concerns about borrowers’ ability to repay the loans, according to research from UBS, the big Swiss bank. Of more than 500 C.D.O.’s analyzed by UBS, only two were worse than the Abacus deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12…

Lewis Sachs, left, who oversaw C.D.O.’s before becoming a Treasury adviser (ie he works for Geithner now) , and John Paulson, whose company profited as the housing market collapsed.:

So, basically, not only are we not regulating these guys, we’re rewarding them– and more importantly promoting them into the government to run the show–where they presumably steal directly from the US Treasury.

How is this different from what Mussilini had in mind as a system of government? Such a constant revolving of government, military, and corporate figures, that the lines are entirely blurred.  

Health Care Truths, Not Health Care Myths

Having passed a long-overdue Health Care Reform Act, expect the media to dust off long-composed narratives it kept in cold storage until this point.  The instant President Obama signs the bill into law in a massive ceremony full of important people, flashbulbs, and saturation coverage, there will be many who will seek to make the gravity of the event better understood by means of analysis and interpretation.  Contrary to what some may write, I am not entirely convinced that Health Care saved Obama’s Presidency, though it would certainly have removed the last of the luster around him had it failed.  There will be many contentious fights to come, but the passage of the bill will likely limit GOP gains in next year’s Mid-Congressional election.  It will provide momentum to force through other reform measures and will be a face saving device to aid vulnerable incumbents.  But like much of politics, the ultimate impact of it all is indebted to future understanding and events yet to come, of which none of us is privy.  

Also to be found in copious quantity are the requisite gross of stories lamenting the end of good cheer among legislators of different parties.  One would think that this health care bill has ushered in a golden age of distressing polarity, but it has not.  Most people are terrified of change.  Many will sign on to change in the abstract, but once the concrete is poured, their opposition hardens.  Trusting in the known is much like betting on the favored horse, but trusting in the unknown possibility comes with it 50-1 odds.  Most people are not riverboat gamblers, but if they were, they’d often reap the rewards of taking a chance for the sake of positive gain.  This truism has no allegiance to party or ideological affinity.  Nor is it an American institution.

While the Senate has always been structured to foster some degree of collegiality by its very makeup and its relatively small size, one mustn’t let the myth obscure the facts.  The Senate may be a family, but it is a strangely dysfunctional one, and the House equally so.  This is, we needn’t forget, the same collective body where Representative Preston Brooks savagely bludgeoned Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the latter chamber’s floor.  At other crucial points in our nation’s history, decorum has been replaced by nastiness and I think perhaps our latest group of elected representatives do not remember or have not studied precisely what happens when measures this large and all encompassing are further hyper-charged by massive displays of public sentiment and outcry.  Regarding this subject, Senator Orrin Hatch strikes back at us in the blogosphere for daring to hold his feet to the fire as well as the feet of other legislators.  We ought to take this as proof of a job well done and aim to keep it going.  

I am also not particularly sympathetic to Representatives and Senators who have complained about the extended hours needed to pass this bill.  If they had resolved it in a more timely fashion, then this matter would have been dealt with long ago.  Republicans have used stalling tactics and obstructionist procedural measures, but as we all knew, the Democratic party itself was the real enemy at work.  Attempting to pacify various factions within itself to hold together a fragile coalition is what took so long to reach resolution.  Moreover, if this is what it takes to achieve true fairness and equality, I wish they’d be in session every year and even up until Christmas Eve, if needed.  It is, of course, true that Senators need to spend a certain amount of time campaigning, raising funds, and observing for themselves the nuts-and-bolts of the policy issues upon which they will propose and vote.  However, too often these are excuses cited for not being in session at all, especially when needed legislation is allowed to die a needless death or is tabled in committee with no re-introduction ever intended.

It is true that,

[f]or more than 30 years, the major parties – Democrats and Republicans – worked every angle to transform politics into a zero-sum numbers game. State legislatures redrew Congressional districts to take advantage of party affiliation in the local population. The two-year campaign cycle became a never-ending one.

Politics, however, has always been a game of knees to the groin and leaps to the jugular.  When contentious matters and contentious times existed, collegiality was the first thing to be discarded and shed.  In times of plenty with few especially pressing matters, then party lines could sometimes seem obscured or unimportant.  The so-called “Culture Wars” are a partial explanation for that which we have been facing.  In truth, the Republican party began to take a sharp right turn beginning with the Contract with America in 1994 and then culminating in the election of George W. Bush.  When Bush played directly to the Republican base at the expense of the middle, this caused a correspondingly swift and sharp reaction in the left wing of the Democratic party, which the Progressive blogosphere correctly considers a call to arms.  Returning to the idea of truth versus saccharine sugarcoating, yet again, it is tempting for all of us to invent our own mythology, particularly when it suits our cause, but this is a compulsion we must never adopt for whatever reason may be.  The truth will set us free, but freedom is often pricey, especially when we remove it from circulation.      

Lindorff: A Visit From St. Barack

Original article, by David Lindorff and subtitled An Afghan Christmas, via counterpunch.com:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land

Not a creature was stirring in Afghanistan.

The bedrooms were bunkered with piles of hard stones

To protect from attacks by the Predator drones.

The children were huddled, afraid, in their beds

While visions of night raiders danced in their heads.

Unfortunately appropriate for the season.

A Holiday Greeting

It’s that time of the year when I step back from my keyboard, post my usual, bilingual Happy Holidays message at my blog, and shuffle off for a week or so for an end-of-the-year break.

So this is a good time to wish all of you Happy Holidays and a healthy and prosperous New Year.  Won’t it be great to have 2009 in our rear view mirror?

This is a time of year when I want particularly to remember all of those in the US who are imprisoned.  There are about 2 million people incarcerated.  My work in real life is being a criminal defense lawyer. I’ve done this work for more than thirty years, and I’m passionate about it (that is the subject of an upcoming essay in 2010 about Gideon v. Wainwright and me).  Sometimes I fail; sometimes my clients go to prison.  Some go for very, very long periods of time.  My clients who have been convicted and imprisoned, I have discovered, are not much different from me.  But their lives are far harder. The prison walls keep them in while they serve their time, but the walls also keep me and you out, isolating those who are locked up and making it likely, unless they are our immediate family or close friends, that we might forget that they are imprisoned.  Many who are locked up are estranged from their families, and if they’re not, they might be far away from them geographically.  So this time of year increases their suffering. There can, it turns out, be extreme loneliness even in the midst of complete, institutional lack of privacy.  And suffering can be increased even by monotony. Anyway, particularly at this time of year, I hope that we can pause for just a moment and remember those who are behind the walls.  And that they are just like us.  And wish for them happiness and a cessation of their suffering.

I’m thankful that every year there are stories like this one.  I wish there were more stories like this.

The ragged men in ragged clothes,

The silver thorn of bloody rose,

Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,

How you suffered for your sanity,

How you tried to set them free.

Random Thoughts / Open Wolfy Thread

Good morning, my dear ones.

I was sitting on the couch to type something, you know, remotely profound, when the wolf decided to come and have his morning “greet-greet” ritual. He’s a very old man now, but has a spring in his step this morning. So his head rested on my knee, until I performed my alpha duty: “Rub this ear mom, wait, wait, now that ear mom, ok this side of my face itches, and the shoulder too. Ok, now get the eye boogers out of my eyes!” Then he has to smell my hand and make sure all of the scent glands on his neck has marked me as his, and off he goes, tail up and prancing, all perfect in his world. He loves the cold, but it is getting really hard on his hips. Sometimes he engages the young stupid dogs in play and forgets he can’t really wrestle. I sometimes forget how stunningly beautiful he is. He is a McKenzie Valley Grey Wolf, with a 2nd generation strain of Arctic. After raising 3 hybrids previously, I ended up having to take him on for my breeder, who had to move when her husband died. He was to be breeding stock. He is no hybrid. Unlike the cubs I got at 6 weeks, I got him at 6 months old. He was extremely shy for a long time, though in his old age and running with the pure-dogs as pack these last years of his life has mellowed him. He has always been a sucker for women. Little girls? Jeeez. They can maul him. Little boys (other than Jake) he would just as soon hide from. Too rowdy for his taste.

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Docudharma Times Thursday December 24




Thursday’s Headlines:

Army’s new all-terrain vehicle debuts in Afghanistan

Ben Chu: There’s a good reason why climate naysayers are failing

Taking Hold in Silicon Valley, a Ping-Pong Boom

Black men hit hard by unemployment in Milwaukee

In Yemen, tribal tradition trumps education

Iranian security forces suppress new wave of opposition protests in Isfahan

A child is reborn

Pakistani Taliban sends reinforcements to Afghanistan

The unfinished business of Romania’s revolution

Who’s killing cock robin? Activists point finger at Cyprus

Colombia’s FARC rebels kill governor, prompting calls for security shift

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