Link

I say all this to say that if I regret anything it is my pose of powerlessness -- my lack of faith in American democracy, my belief that the war didn't deserve my hard thinking or hard acting, my cynicism. I am not a radical. But more than anything the Iraq War taught me the folly of mocking radicalism. It seemed, back then, that every "sensible" and "serious" person you knew -- left or right -- was for the war. And they were all wrong. Never forget that they were all wrong. And never forget that the radicals with their drum circles and their wild hair were right.

But at the same time, it is also instructive to remember that the war did happen, after all that.

Great image from 2008.

An Iraqi woman, in 2008, walks past a British soldier and military vehicle with a poster of a dollar bill inscribed, in Arabic: 'You can get some money, in exchange for some information.' Photograph: Essam al-Sudani/AFP/Getty Images

As reported in the WPOST:

An escort who appeared on a video claiming that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) paid her for sex has told Dominican authorities that she was instead paid to make up the claims and has never met or seen the senator, according to court documents and two people briefed on her claim.

In light of this article, I believe it's appropriate for Bird Dog to admit that he was not sufficiently skeptical of conservative media outlets and that his earlier claims about liberal bias in the media were likely inaccurate: major media should not have paid more attention to the Menendez story. If anything, the so-called liberal media were also insufficiently skeptical of hackish conservative sources, though not as credulous as BD.

The story originally appeared in The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson's outfit. Remember when Carlson was on Swords Crossed Crossfire and, like Josh Trevino, fashioned himself as a conservative intellectual interested in debate? That was the point of Tucker's bow tie, modeled after conservative intellectuals like George Will and Murray Rothbard. Tucker even had the rumpled hair of am ivy league researcher, a man of ideas. 

A salon piece a few months ago cataloged Tucker's "downward spiral" and claimed that "in many ways Tucker Carlson’s a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck or the late Andrew Breitbart". The piece also seems to have its finger on the conservative zeitgeist that produced our own Trevino nonsense.

The intellectual, bow-tie wearing honest man of ideas and debate is no longer a viable business model for young conservatives, so instead we get transparently corrupt, smug, hacks (Tucker pictured at CPAC last month):

The conspirators at volokh.com heaped praise on Senatorial candidate Ted Cruz last year, including high profile contributors Orin Kerr and Eugene Volokh (the site's founder).

However, now that it has surfaced that Cruz said there were "twelve Communists" on the faculty of Harvard Law School who "who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government" they have remained studiously silent.

Guess what, guys. That means you're political hacks.

Ezra wrote about some reasons for economic optimism here:

1) Health-care costs are slowing, and not just because of the recession. If the cost controls being rolled out in Obamacare can hold the trend, much in the U.S. economy, from the budget deficit to wages, looks much brighter.

The budget deficit isn't a problem, if it is a problem, for economic growth for many yrs. into the future. Unfortunately, recent slowing health care costs haven't been correlated with higher wages for consumers. Klein doesn't give any reason to believe that will change. 

2) Housing is turning around.

The question is whether housing's tailwinds are greater than austerity's headwinds. Ezra doesn't attempt to gauge the overall balance. 

3) It’s possible that the worrying descent into genuine malgovernance in the past few years was caused by the extraordinary stresses the recession put on the political system.

Was this really written the same week the sequester went into effect? Also, gridlock has kept Obama and others from implementing austerity at a time when we now know would've probably sent the economy back into a recession, given the low growth that occurred and that the housing market hadn't yet turned around.

4) Corporate profits remain strong

This doesn't signal likely growth, as the entire recovery period has shown. Worse, some of these profits have come from reducing consumer's paychecks.

5) Neither Europe nor China appear to be tumbling off an economic cliff.

China was never headed for a cliff, and Europe's recession has been deepening.

6) [Some anecdotes about job-creating tech advances].

These are anecdotal.

7) Natural gas. Natural gas. Natural gas.

Is this the jobs boom spoken of in pro-fracking propaganda?

8) an “insourcing boom” ... we might be moving into a period when outsourcing is less attractive and our exports are more attractive.

Klein links to a December 2012 Atlantic article that focuses heavily on GE CEO Immelt's story about how GE's plant in "Appliance Park" will look to hire more American workers and how "Outsourcing, says Jeffrey Immelt, is quickly becoming “outdated as a business model for GE Appliances.”

In February 2013, GE laid off 500 workers at Appliance Park.

9) economic confidence is rebounding.

Some economists consider consumer confidence a lagging as opposed to leading indicator.

10) Add in that we are, after the last decade, understandably used to being unpleasantly surprised, and understandably reluctant to get our hopes up, and it becomes even likelier that we’re underestimating our economic potential. 

The Fed and most forecasters have overestimated growth each of the past three years, in addition to under-estimating austerity's effects internationally.

Not only was this not very convincing by Ezra Klein, it wasn't particularly informed. 

on a tiny number of 700+ families during the housing crisis.

What's it called when normal people use force or the threat of force to try and take permanent possession of property?

Good thing it's illegal for both of us to live under a bridge.

When regulators forced them to take a close look at their loans, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, the largest loan servicers, each discovered about 200 military members whose homes were wrongfully foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010, according to the people with direct knowledge of the findings. Citigroup had at least 100 such foreclosures. The foreclosures violate the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a federal law requiring banks to obtain court orders before foreclosing on active-duty members.

 

“It’s absolutely devastating to be 7,000 miles from your home fighting for this country and get a message that your family is being evicted,” said Col. John S. Odom Jr., a retired Air Force lawyer in Shreveport, La., who represents military members in foreclosure cases. “We have been sounding the alarms that the banks are illegally evicting the very men and women who are out there fighting for this country. This is a devastating confirmation of that.”

The banks note that the wrongful evictions make up a fraction of the foreclosures under review. Bank of America analyzed more than 1.2 million loans, and JPMorgan assessed roughly 900,000.

h/t FDL

Canon Tests the most Sensitive Sensor in the World

...over there!

My Trout for dinner, (a most easy whole fish to cook, which is why I make them, though I caution that a little Rosemary  goes a very long way {a sprinkle of this spice and rocky sea salt in the cavity of fish's body with some sliced lemon, bake or grill after a light brushing of Olive Oil} and....a perfect dinner; even an alone guy like me can spectacularly make).

http://www.pbase.com/cichallenge/image/149067582

An then, of course, you get to make something interesting out of it after dinner photographically!

Best Wishes, Traveller

you'll probably want to steer clear of this.

http://www.foodrepublic.com/2011/11/08/finally-whiskey-horrible-people

have taken to painting self portraits in their retirement.

Link.

Obama continues wasting his entire 2nd term, spending all of his re-election political capital on a deficit hawk Grand Bargain to cut spending and cut social insurance in exchange for less than 1/2 the amount in tax increases.

With Obama's poll #s coming down, with the sequester and debt ceiling ghosts from his 1st term deficit hawkery still haunting the country month after month into his second term, Obama doesn't appear capable of accomplishing anything positive before becoming a lame duck.

If he'd made an all-out, focused push on immigration reform after his re-election, he might've had a shot at it. We'll never know because a center-right Grand Bargain has been Obama's overriding domestic priority since 2010. What a waste.

....are now capable of making assault weapons.

Sigh...technology may well best my most correct (and I am right in this) arguments.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21639015

Traveller

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/saudi-seven-crucifixion-arme...

While they are everybody's allies, and have within their country the Kaaba and all that, maybe someone should mumble something?

Link

Link

Just something happening that you don't hear much about:

now, this, rather than sabre-rattling on Iran, seems a real threat.  NK seems to be squeezed between the USA and China.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/07/north-korea-threatens-nuclea...

Happy Friday!

made to cough up $100,000. Dude needs an ass kicking too. 

http://wonkette.com/505026/wonket-sexclusive-totally-blameless-crime-sto...

that Barack Obama enjoys yanking the chain of conspiracy theorists.   After Brennan got filibustered over the question of droning US citizens in the US,  it was arranged for Brennan to get sworn in using a copy of the US Constitution with the Bill of Rights missing.

any residual respect Manish has left for science professors.

64-year UNC physics prof believed Denise Milani wanted him to bring her a suitcase from Bolivia.

Mod 62 so much he took down his diary,  or is site gobbling posts again?

Efforts to automate the detection of doctored images are bearing fruit. Last year Fourandsix Technologies, a start-up based in Silicon Valley, began selling an add-on for Photoshop, called FourMatch, that determines whether an image has come straight from a camera or has been manipulated. It compares the “metadata” associated with the image against a database of signatures that represent the characteristic ways in which different devices capture and compress image data, to ensure that the image is what it claims to be. FourMatch is sold primarily to law-enforcement agencies and costs $890. But it cannot tell whether a manipulated image has been slightly tweaked or extensively doctored. So a human analyst is still needed “in the loop”, says Mr Farid, one of the firm’s co-founders. A trained eye can spot inconsistencies in shadows, reflections and incorrect perspective.

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21572915-digital-imaging-insurers-publishers-law-enforcement-agencies-and-dating-sites-are

​A long article, but Very interesting in listing all the ways an image can be ill used to defraud and whatnot! Good stuff.

Best Wishes, Traveller

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/the-cracks-of-dawn/

usually in winter the Arctic forms a large ice pack over the NH.  And after a big melt, there is usually a rebound.  However, following last year's record melt, this year's winter ice is showing significant observational changes.  Read all about it, utterly fascinating stuff.  

And pretty dramatic, how our little individual human activities can change an entire planet's weather system.

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674huge_arctic_sea_ice_c...