He's not wrong.

Our garbage national legislature put together a weak relief bill that failed to take into account the actual economic pain that the deliberate refusal to pass an earlier relief bill would have ameliorated.

And the President slagged the bill in a video speech, demanding more individual relief and the removal of foreign aid. No, he didn't quite threaten to veto it. Yes, he's playing the chaos agent again. And yes, he's deliberately kicking Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP in the shins.

But no, he's not wrong about the inadequacies and flaws of the package. His proposal back in October was double this thing, and if it had been passed then, we would not be seeing the widened abyss we are now. But the Custeresque octogenarian leading the House scuttled negotiations for partisan advantage (oops), so here we are. 

Is 40% of a loaf better than none at all? Small business needs the cash ASAP.

Can we get to a compromise more like three-quarters of a loaf before December 29? Because $600 isn't a much of a hedge against an ugly-looking winter.

Stay tuned.

Enjoy the summer and early autumn.

 

 

Get out, travel as best you can during the corona, spend time with family and friends.

Make good memories.

Because after that first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, such opportunities will be much scarcer.

Both sides are now firmly convinced that the other will win only by fraud. 

And a permanent crisis of legitimacy leads to nowhere good.

"Police accountability activists" have considerably broadened their platform and methods.

The historical phrase is direct action.

Demanding people give up their homes in the middle of the night and supporting looting as "reparations" are both in the wheelhouse of direct action.

If you are of a mind to shrug off the latter as just big guys getting a minor insurance headache, you (1) are part of the problem, and (2) incredibly wrong. 

And in five years when the locals are wondering why they are living in broadened food deserts and have to travel 30 miles into the (inexplicably extra-defensive, gimlet-eyed) suburbs, there won't be any wondering why.

In an interesting turn of events, African-American residents of the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago weren't having any part of a demonstration against their police precinct.

“Y’all don’t come out when the kids get shot. Y’all come out when it has something to do with the f—ing police,” Smith said. “We out here every day watching our kids get their brains blown out, with no budget, no resources. Y’all motherf—ers getting all the resources, and you want to come over here and disrupt our neighborhood.”

At least this demonstration wasn't showing signs of revolutionary mission creep, and stuck to police-related issues. Nevertheless, the demonstration dispersed shortly afterwards.

It is difficult for me to explain my anger right now.

At least in a way that is somewhat family-friendly or dignified.

A violent mob is threatening to destroy the above monument in Washington D.C.

Never mind that--UNIQUELY--it was entirely paid for by former slaves who had been liberated by the Emancipation Proclamation--many of whom were Union soldiers.

Never mind that Frederick Douglass gave a masterful speech at the dedication of the Memorial in 1876--one that acknowledges the failings of Lincoln even as it shows his greatness.

I do not share citizenship in the same nation with the mobs. Yes, they are presumably composed of American citizens, but shared citizenship indicates devotion to common ideals no more than standing in the same line at a McDonald's does. My enmity for them grows by the day.

There is a hellish spectre abroad in our land right now, and it has possessed countless mobs. That self-same mania is aided and abetted by the sympathy of countless political figures, or the cynical calculation, cowardice or fecklessness of the rest. The rage we are seeing was ably described by a wiser man than we currently possess as "the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge." It is a hatred for our past and all that represents it, and no amount of explanation or context matters.

As the proverb goes, you cannot reason someone out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.

And what will happen when they run out of memorials to destroy? Communal violence gets nearer by the day.

I will leave you with extensive quotations from Frederick Douglass's oration at the dedication, which was attended by everyone in high federal office from President Grant on down:

For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the Republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting
the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of after-coming generations may read,something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln,the first martyr President of the United States.

. . .

Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.

He was pre-eminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race.

To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the States where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed constitutional guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave States. He was willing to pursue, recapture,and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration.

Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most ernest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor.

Instead of supplanting you at this altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect; let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fulness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.

Fellow-citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor,and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed.

When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defence of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Frémont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition.

Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln,and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position.We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln.

It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States. When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete.

Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood;under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slaveholding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave-trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln,after giving the slaveholders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.

And it is the memorial dedicated by this speech that the hate-filled mobs have come for now.

Worse is yet to come. We are not close to the bottom of this spiral.

The Memorial for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment was defaced during the protests.

That regiment was the all-black unit immortalized in the film Glory.

Men who had been born free fighting for the liberation of their enslaved brethren in the Confederacy.

So, makes perfect sense that the protests would vandalize that one.

Current mood: this.

Turns out it's a regular target of the Epsilons (yes, I'm really hacked off) who will eventually run the show.

"A thousand men signed up just after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, just think about that," said Liz Vizza, executive director of Friends of the Public Garden. "These are men who, if they were captured in the south, would be enslaved or murdered. But this cause was so important to them, they signed up to go fight for their freedom."

The memorial has been vandalized before – with paint in 2012, and the sword was broken off in 2015 and 2017.

The Memorial is one of the great achievements of America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. 

Wise people know its significance as a timeless tribute to the black American in arms--and to liberty itself.

But we seem to have hit "peak wisdom" some time back, and it continues to dwindle away by the hour.

I have a friend who lost both of his inlaws to coronavirus thanks to Cuomo's nursing home orders in New York.

So I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that my mother-in-law is still with us in Michigan.

But the outsized praise for Governor Whitmer needs to be doused with ice cold water.

That frigid blast? Her executive order turning nursing homes into overflow centers for Covid patients:

The [Michigan] Senate COVID-19 oversight committee had many questions for the Health and Human Services Department about Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Emergency Order.

The order creates what they’re calling “regional hubs” and expires on Wednesday. Many members of the senate oversight committee are calling for the governor to change the policy -- calling it an extraordinarily bad policy.

The Department of Health and Human Services gave Local 4 more insight into its regional hub system. There are now 21 of them. The state is paying these homes $5,000 per COVID-19 positive case they take.

We also learned that there are some nursing homes taking these patients that do not have the same strict separation policies that regional hubs are required to have. Only about half of the state’s nursing homes have been inspected since the policy went into effect last month.

HHS Director Robert Gordon originally intended to use the TCF Center instead of the regional hubs -- but then opted out. Detroit State Rep. Leslie Love is stunned that didn’t happen.

“They said the population that would be most affected was our seniors so to not outfit those facilities to handle the very population they said would need it seems ridiculous to me,” she said."

So we send patients to the most vulnerable possible population clusters and don't even bother to check to see if the homes are equipped to take them in.

Involuntary manslaughter is the nicest thing you can call it.

My mother in law's home has been closed to visitors since the second week of March. But coronavirus patients are still rolling in. We'd like to see her before dementia takes away her last memories of us. The longer her home keeps taking in patients, the less good our odds are.

From the Moral Relativism Files.

Our nation's leaders have deemed that those who intervene to prevent or punish the rape of boys in Afghanistan must themselves be punished:

“'The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,' said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. 'But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.'

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander.

'The Army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way (a contention that I believe is nonsense),' Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who hopes to save Sergeant Martland’s career, wrote last week to the Pentagon’s inspector general."

I think you'd be wise to be concerned.

About Ebola, that is. The genie is out of the bottle in West Africa, and once Liberia and Sierra Leone collapse (which is increasingly likely), the refugee crush is going to be horrific:

(4) Let’s put aside the Ebola-as-weapon scenario—some things are too depressing to contemplate at length—and look at the range of scenarios for what we have in front of us, from best-case to worst-case. The epidemiological protocols for containing Ebola rest on four pillars: contact tracing, case isolation, safe burial, and effective public information. On October 14, the New York Times reported that in Liberia, with “only” 4,000 cases, “Schools have shut down, elections have been postponed, mining and logging companies have withdrawn, farmers have abandoned their fields.” Which means that the baseline for “best-case” is already awful.

In September, the CDC ran a series of models on the spread of the virus and came up with a best-case scenario in which, by January 2015, Liberia alone would have a cumulative 11,000 to 27,000 cases. That’s in a world where all of the aid and personnel gets where it needs to be, the resident population behaves rationally, and everything breaks their way. The worst-case scenario envisioned by the model is anywhere from 537,000 to 1,367,000 cases by January. Just in Liberia. With the fever still raging out of control.

By which point, all might well be lost. Anthony Banbury is coordinating the response from the United Nations, which, whatever its many shortcomings, is probably the ideal organization to take the lead on Ebola. Banbury’s view is chilling: “The WHO advises within 60 days we must ensure 70 percent of infected people are in a care facility and 70 percent of burials are done without causing further infection. .  .  . We either stop Ebola now or we face an entirely unprecedented situation for which we do not have a plan [emphasis added]”.

What’s terrifying about the worst-case scenario isn’t just the scale of human devastation and misery. It’s that the various state actors and the official health establishment have already been overwhelmed with infections in only the four-digit range. And if the four pillars—contact tracing, case isolation, safe burial, and effective public information—fail, no one seems to have even a theoretical plan for what to do.

(5) And by the way, things could get worse. All of those worst-case projections assume that the virus stays contained in a relatively small area of West Africa, which, with a million people infected, would be highly unlikely. What happens if and when the virus starts leaking out to other parts of the world?

I think the President's plan to try to contain it in Africa is laudable, even though we have to acknowledge that some of the thousands we are sending are going to die.

However, the way the government has addressed the virus since it arrived on our shores is beyond incompetent.

A stop-motion look at too much of Detroit.

The Detroit News chronicles the death of Garland Street over the past decade.

The heart breaks:

Click to enlarge.

An out-of-state friend of mine saw Google Earth pictures of Detroit and couldn't believe how much of it had been reclaimed by nature.

"Is Detroit really that bad?" he asked.

Not all of it, of course. Unfortunately, too many parts of it truly are, most of it located in a wide belt astride the city's midsection. There are numerous Garland Streets across Motown's 142 square miles--and no prospect that they will be repopulated any time soon.

If you're in the area, take the Chalmers Street exit (No. 222) off of I-94. Then take Hayes Street directly north. There are blocks upon blocks like Garland, former residential neighborhoods now reverting to forest. With the exception of Outer Drive, there aren't any stable zones until you get to around five blocks south of Eight Mile Road. 

What Detroit needs more than anything is people. And that's what she is losing by the literal truckload.

 

Sums it up.

Hat tip to Jeff Goldstein of the indispensible Protein Wisdom.

I don't like being on the other side of the cultural divide from people I like, but there you have it.

More soon.

"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

This is known as "Stein's Law."

Just something to ponder, as we consider the Fed's enabling of fiscal irresponsibility:

The central bank's recently announced bid to stimulate the economy has also taken the pressure off politicians to deal with the U.S. fiscal cliff, Lindsay argued, which could result in destabilizing tax hikes and spending cuts automatically taking effect early next year.

"The Fed, maybe because it can't do otherwise, has told the Congress: 'We're going to buy your bonds no matter what,'" Lindsey said. "I think that's keeping the pressure off the president, off the Congress."


The effective of QE3 on interest rates may also keep Congress from reining in borrowing.

"If the (Fed) chairman's estimates of the effectiveness of QE3 on interest rates come true, we're going to be down to an average cost of borrowing for the government of 0.6 of a percentage point," Lindsey said. "Why would any Congress not borrow and spend if they could borrow at 60 basis points?"

Buckle up. I'm not sure where this ride ends, but the destination is almost certainly going to be some place we never wanted to go, nor ever imagined we would be.

Feasibility studies and you.

Admiral Miklos Horthy was the dictator of Hungary from 1920 until was deposed in a pro-Nazi coup in 1944. He had served as a reasonably competent officer in the Hapsburg Empire's navy, and declared himself "Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary," despite not wanting to let the Hapsburg claimants back in. The Hungarian joke was that Hungary "was a kingdom without a king, ruled by an admiral without a fleet, in a country without a coastline."

For a moment, Wyoming was threatening to resurrect that joke in an American setting. The context was the study of a doomsday continuity-of-government bill--not a crazy idea in a world of fast-moving disease, weapons of mass destruction and EMP. However, an early draft of the bill provided for a feasibility study for Wyoming's acquisition of strike aircraft and...an aircraft carrier.

An aircraft carrier.

For...Wyoming.

Wyoming.

WYOMING.

I hate to bring this up, Utah, and I'm not trying to get all rumory, but I think the folks in Cheyenne might have some long-term designs on the Great Salt Lake. You might want to consider some way to maintain naval superiority starting right...now.

Fortunately, the attempt to float a Nimitz class carrier in the nation's Mountain West has been axed from the current reading.

Or...has it?

Watch your back, Utah.

Last Man Standing?

Rick Santorum continues to amaze me with his resiliency. The primary hat trick was astonishing, given the relative paucity of resources and organization, and has shot him at least temporarily into the lead.


Jay, Paul, and Don have a lot of useful commentary worth reading.

One caveat, though--a commenter on a political blog pointed out that Santorum a couple of weeks ago that Sanrotum was something of a proxy for "generic Republican" in the polls. He hadn't had a crapstorm hurled at him by either the media or his opponents. But it's hitting him now, and I'm worried.

The President's Loyalist Media Auxiliary is already starting to soundbite him to death. The oily crapweasel Charlie Rose's interview was a case in point. Even though Santorum kept trying to shift it to economic issues, Rose was able to frame the narrative.

That can't keep happening. Even if it's just one question in an interview, five minutes out of an hour, that's what going to be highlighted in the reporting. He has to fight the culture war--the President certainly is--but he can't be painted into a corner on it. He can't abandon it, either--it is a winner, as Jay notes. But it's a winner as part of an overall package, one that frames the other guy as an out of touch extremist. The populist angle can work, if he can keep hammering it. Leave the culture war stuff to the proxies for now.

He has to frame the narrative and not let others do it for him. Otherwise, the rise is just another not-Romney  boomlet that will pass.

The Arab Spring continues to waft rose petals into the air.

The Salafis are on the march in Libya, to the sorrow of the Sufis.


The desecration of graves belonging to Sufi saints and sages in recent months have put the peaceful Sufis on the defensive, prompting some to post armed guards at their mosques and lodges to ward off hardline thugs.

But the birthday of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, one of the highpoints in the Sufi calendar, is on Saturday and Libyan Sufis are determined to take their traditional processions through the streets to show they will not be cowed.

At a meeting of Sufi scholars to plan the celebrations, Sheikh Adl Al-Aref Al-Hadad said even being driven out of his zawiyah (Islamic school) late last year by Islamists known as Salafis would not deter him from marching.

"I'm worried but I'm not afraid," said Al-Hadad, whose Tripoli school was stormed by armed men who burned its library, destroyed office equipment and dug up graves of sages buried there. They turned the school into a Salafi mosque.

Just because people want to be freed from a particular dictator does not mean they want freedom.

Phoney War redux?

On September 3, 1939, two days after the German invasion of Poland, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany.

And they promptly launched a ferocious, unrelenting offensive in support of their beleaguered Polish ally

No, there was a half-hearted French invasion of the lightly-defended Saarland, quickly ended, some bombing by the British (much of it involving leaflets) and a few minor sea battles, but essentially the Western Allies chose to stand on the defensive while Poland was wiped off the map.

Eight months later, the Germans, fully ready for war, began it in earnest. It was France's turn to be invaded, swiftly defeated and dismembered.

Now that the Administration has indicated that it is in earnest in imposing its morality on Catholics, via a mandate for abortifacients, sterilization and contraceptives, what has been the response? So far, a pretty impressive list of episcopal protests, some of which are even surprising, given the men in question. But that is not enough. Not even close. As Paul Zummo and Patrick Archbold have correctly noted, this is a full-fledged declaration of war by the administration. And it is being led by a nominal Catholic, Kathleen Sebelius. One whose bona fides were loudly extolled by the usual suspects.

The next step is clear--Sebelius has to be excommunicated. Let me repeat: she must be excommunicated. Counseled beforehand, of course. But if she persists, excommunicated. There is no dancing around the fact any more. It apparently wasn't enough for her to celebrate the gory work and unfailing support of the late George Tiller (I find OR obnoxious, but hey--they had the proof). No, now she is the willing edge of the sword hacking the Catholic conscience to ribbons. Enough. No more.

There is precedent as well. In 1962, Joseph Rummel, Archbishop of New Orleans, excommunicated three segregationists who protested the integration of Catholic schools. In 2012, Kathleen Sebelius launched a nationwide assault countless Catholic schools, hospitals and other institutions. If she will not repent of it, she has to face the dreadful but necessary sanction of excommunication. Will there be shrieking and howls (oh, and with malicious irony, too) regarding the separation of church and state? Will there be soft-focus profiles of Sebelius' saintly qualities? Will there be the usual comments from speed-dial Catholic commentators, ever-ready to offer a critical soundbite when a bishop has to offend the leftist moral code? Count on it. But it still has to be done. The line has to finally be drawn. Otherwise, the nice-sounding episcopal protests will be another useless exercise in leaflet bombing.

Oh, and someone needs to smack Republican Gov. Sam Brownback upside the head for his recommendation of her for the HHS post. Heckuva job, Brownie.

The Legislator-Lobbyist Complex at Work.

Countrywide Chris Dodd's latest disgrace, shilling for SOPA.

Note carefully how the hard-nosed journalists at MSNBC dutifully rub his tummy.

Once I had a railroad, made it run...

From the "Things that keep me up at night" File--this would be number 1.

Yet it is some of those very conditions-the slashing of consumer debt (or deleveraging), reticence to spend and general risk aversion-that helps drive Rosenberg's depression case.

"It will take time and shared burden by lenders, households and future generations of taxpayers before we hit bottom in this credit contraction," he wrote. "Time is certainly going to be a big part of the solution, and history tells us that the deleveraging cycles last years."

Indeed, ominous signs abound.

Strategists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch earlier this week published a note with the sub-heading of, "The chart that keeps us up at night." The particular chart in question tracks the bond yield differences, or spreads, in the European financial credit default swaps market .

The instruments are insurance against debt defaults and the spreads, BofAML says, have gone 0.70 percentage points or so beyond their levels at the 2008 financial crisis apex. The same spread for US financials is only about 0.40 percentage points away from late 2008, while high yield spreads are right at the point they were the day before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

Scary stuff, even for a firm saying that the chance of a recession remains below 50 percent.

"The experience of 2008 has taught us that once the level of distress in the financial system reaches a certain level, it can become an uncontrollable force, with the potential to push market participants into deleveraging as counterparty exposures are being cut," the firm said.

"We may not be at that point yet, but we believe we might not be too far away from it, and with the markets behaving the way they have over the past few weeks, we could get there quickly."

I strongly doubt Europe is going to get its act together--the way it has handled its debt contagion is reminiscent of the way Russian prisons have handled tuberculosis.

I'm finishing up this solid treatment of the Depression era, and have Amity Shlaes' work in the hopper next. The subject seems to be disturbingly topical, sad to say.

"May you live in interesting times."

Start the impeachment proceedings.

Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has suggested we need to jail Americans who manage the childishly simple task of offending violent Muslim theocrats.

Fortunately, we have Mark Steyn to take out the garbage:


A mob of deranged ululating blood-lusting head-hackers slaughter Norwegian female aid-workers and Nepalese guards — and we’re the ones with the problem?

I agree with the Instaprof: Lindsey Graham is unfit for office. The good news is there’s no need for the excitable lads of Mazar e-Sharif to chop his head off because he’s already walking around with nothing up there. And, as for his halfwitted analogy with World War II, he’s too ignorant to realize it but he’s singing the dhimmi remake of an ancient Noel Coward satire.

The reason we’re losing this thing is because of a lack of cultural confidence, of which the fetal cringe of this worthless husk out-parodies anything Coward could have concocted.

If Graham wants further input, I am happy to refer him to my unofficial spokesman, Haywood Jablomi.

I guess we won't have to make Costco runs for toilet paper any more.

We'll just go to the nearest ATM instead.