The internets have been with us for quite awhile now, and still there are people who think that the generous use of capital letters is an effective debating tactic.
Saw a lot of Clinton supporters out on the streets today and not so many Obama supporters, though whether my route through the city was representative of anything I have no idea. Obama people did have a registration table at the Reading Terminal Market and I didn't see one from Clinton people.
It's absurd but nonetheless completely normal that 5 years later, anti-war voices are almost completely missing from our mainstream public discourse and all of the idiots who cheered this thing on are given platform after platform to describe their intellectual journey or whatever. I don't really understand the degree of narcissism that many of them exhibit, unable to recognize that what the world really needs is for them to shut the fuck up and turn their microphones over to people who didn't cheer on this horrible disaster.
The reaction of some of Mr. Clinton’s allies suggests that might have been a wise decision. “An act of betrayal,” said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.
“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.
Four more US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, bringing the death toll since the invasion in 2003 close to 4,000.
The US military said that in the latest incident on Saturday, three soldiers died when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb north-west of Baghdad.
Another soldier died from injuries sustained in an attack south on Friday.
Indio, with nearly 1,500 homes in foreclosure in the city's limits, is leading valley cities in taking a stand.
A new law goes into effect April 4 targeting abandoned homes with overgrown landscaping, stagnant pools and other eyesores that scream "empty" to squatters.
The law requires that abandoned properties be registered with the city and maintained. If not, the owner - usually the bank in foreclosed situations - could face fines or criminal prosecution.
...
In Desert Hot Springs, where abandoned homes also are being used for unsupervised parties by youths, a similar ordinance was approved Tuesday by its City Council.
In Palm Springs, the subject of abandoned buildings including homes was discussed at a recent City Council study session.
The problem Indio and other cities face with foreclosed homes is not knowing who the owner of a home is and who is responsible for its maintenance.
Homeowners are walking away from their homes without notifying their lenders, Meadows said.
And banks in some cases won't take responsibility for properties until more than six months into the foreclosure process, he said.
It'd be a great thing if we had an election where you had two people who love this country, who were devoted to the interest of the country and people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues instead of all this other stuff which always seems to intrude on our politics.
LOS ANGELES — In August 2007, investigator Eric Bremner found evidence in a shredder at Olympic Escrow that he says confirmed borrowers' complaints that they had never signed the mortgage documents that pushed them into a financial hell.
Bremner found pieces of documents that had been cut to remove signatures and notary seals. Loan applications, escrow agreements and other documents had signatures that had been taped on, he said.
...
The group is accused of targeting unknowing homeowners whose homes had escalated in value by offering dreamlike mortgage refinancing offers, with promises of cash back and lower monthly payments, Bremner said.
Victims later learned they had been locked into high-interest rate loans, excessive fees and unfavorable terms. In some cases, the cash back never materialized.
Late Tuesday, the alleged ringleader in the scam, 25-year-old Eric Pony, and his sister, Paulette Pony, 23, turned themselves in to police to face charges including conspiracy, grand theft, forgery and elder abuse. Five other suspects were also arrested.
...
For Tracylyn Sharrit, 40, the regulations would be too late. After meeting with Eric Pony, she said she found her signature forged on loan documents and the monthly payments on her three-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot home in San Bernardino jumped from $1,070 to $1,868.
The money promised to her in an equity cash-out has been whittled away on fees, and her loan amount ballooned from $167,000 to more than $260,000.
Sounds like they conned some people into signing up for shitty mortgages with bait and switch tactics, and just went ahead and forged documents for others.
As I wrote before, while it would be absurd to claim that Clinton is treated well be the press - she's treated horribly in general - it's also the case that anyone else would be subjected to a louder and increasingly derisive drumbeat for her to get out of the race.
I'm not saying that would be right, either, but that's the way it would be.
You know, it's their job to try to make sense of the news and explain it to the rest of us. David Gregory, 7/22/07:
Mr. KARL ROVE: (July 8) I think Iraq may or may not be the big issue. It depends on where Iraq is by March or April or May of next year. I think it's likely not to be the dominant issue because I think--I--because of my assumptions about where it is--where I think it's likely to be.
MATTHEWS: Where they serving Kool-Aid out there in Aspen or what? `It may not be the big issue.'
What's he know that you know?
Mr. DAVID GREGORY: (NBC News Chief White House Correspondent): Well, that's the question. I mean, how can Karl Rove possibly know where things are going to be? Either he knows that the president's going to pull out, you know, a lot faster than people think and the president's saying or that somehow things are going to improve in a way that people can anticipate.
MATTHEWS: Mm. OK, report, David. What do you think it is? Do you think there's a chance there is a secret plan to yank?
Mr. GREGORY: Well, yeah, I don't know there's a secret plan. I think there's no question that Bush wants to change the footprint. In other words, bring troops home. And I think by next spring, we're not going to be at 160,000 troops. Maybe it's less than 100,000. Our role is redefined.
I was going to let this go, but I just can't. Will "Too Stupid To Tie Shoes" Saletan wrote his little "How a supergenius like me helped cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people" piece for Slate as a list of "lessons learned." All relatively innocuous until you get to the last one.
8. Consider the opportunity cost. The problem with dumb war isn't that it's war. The problem is that it costs you the military, economic, and political resources to fight a smart war. Everything Bush wrongly attributed to Iraq turns out to be true of Iran. But we can't confront Iran with the force it probably requires, because we wasted our resources in Iraq. Americans, having been suckered in Iraq, won't accept evidence of Iran's nuclear program. Countries that might have supported us in a strike on Iran won't do so now, since we led them astray. Our coffers have been emptied to pay for the Iraq occupation. Our troops are physically and spiritually exhausted. In the name of strength, Bush has made us weak.
In other words, the real problem with the Iraq war is that it's made it impossible to... repeat the mistake with Iran.
Our discourse is ruled by monstrous fools. Why can't Saletan just go back to telling women how they're supposed to feel when they have abortions?
Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for inappropriately looking at Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's passport file.
Spokesman Sean McCormack Thursday night confirmed instances of what he called "imprudent curiosity" by the State Department employees.
McCormack said the department itself detected the breaches, which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14.
Glenn correctly mocks Slate doing yet another round of "how could all of you intellectual and moral superhuman liberal hawks have fucked the whole world up."
A larger question, though: Why should you waste your time, at this late date, ingesting the opinions of people who were wrong about Iraq? Wouldn't you benefit more from considering the views of people who were right? Five years after this terrible war began, it remains true that respectable mainstream discussion about its lessons is nearly exclusively confined to people who supported the war, even though that same mainstream acknowledges, for the most part, that the war was a mistake. That's true of Slate's symposium, and it was true of a similar symposium that appeared March 16 on the New York Times' op-ed pages. The people who opposed U.S. entry into the Iraq war, it would appear, are insufficiently "serious" to explain why they were right.
The right has thrown down the gauntlet: rehabilitate Bush, to rehabilitate conservatism, and if they can't do that, sever Bush from conservatism.
The thing is, they just can't "sever Bush from conservatism." The entire conservative movement hung it all on Iraq. Huggy Bear is hanging it all on Iraq. At the moment Iraq is the conservative movement. There's nothing else. The only way to sever bush from conservatism is to sever conservatism from Iraq. And they can't.
For the 5 people who care about this stuff, neither the Obama campaign nor the Clinton campaign have been super awesome about reaching out to people like me in a general sense, though they may be doing so in a more targeted way which I'm not party to, but the Obama campaign has been significantly better.
By reaching out I don't mean kissing up to, just distributing speeches and appearance info and general information like that.
This post isn't meant as criticism, just observation.
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