Jim Webb

Jim Webb is the new Democratic Senator from Virginia, beating Sen. George 'Macaca' Allen. He was a Marine in Vietnam and the former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. His son is a Marine in Iraq. He's a remarkable guy, exactly the type we need in Congress. He also has incredible restraint in not punching out our great President at this reception...

At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia's newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn't long before Bush found him.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said.

"How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

The Washington Post article is here. Aside from all his other faults, anybody else notice that Bush is a total jerk?

The Lost Seinfeld Episode

Classic!

SOTD: Almadrava - If You Could See My Eyes

MS Dewey

From Market Position

Bored with normal search? Microsoft has quietly launched a Live.com powered engine called MsDewey.com.This flash based search engine offers a semi-interactive search hostess named MS Dewey who chides, jokes, has an interest in Halo, and more.

No wonder Microsoft did it "quietly". It's bizarre and embarrassing.

SOTD: Prince - Baby Knows

Fark.com

It's not news, it's Fark.

Failure Pays

From The Corporate Library. Here's the "free market" at work...

A newly released study by The Corporate Library ("TCL") of executive incentive compensation practices finds that the gap between pay and performance over the past five years is most pronounced at 11 of the largest U.S. companies. At the 11 companies in the study, Pay for Failure: The Compensation Committees Responsible, The Corporate Library found that compensation committees authorized a total of $865 million in pay to CEOs who presided over an aggregate loss of $640 billion in shareholder value.

The 11 companies are some of the biggest household names in Corporate
America.

AT&T Inc. (T)
BellSouth Corporation (BLS)
Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ)
Home Depot, Inc. (The) (HD)
Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU)
Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK)
Pfizer Inc. (PFE)
Safeway Inc. (SWY)
Time Warner Inc. (TWX)
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT)

Each of the 11 companies: received a high risk rating from The Corporate
Library; paid their CEOs in excess of $15MM in the last two available fiscal years; had a negative return to stockholders over the last five years; and underperformed their peers over the same period. “Our research shows that the link between long-term value growth and long-term incentive awards is broken at too many companies – if it was ever forged properly in the first place,” says one of the report’s authors, TCL Senior Research Associate Paul Hodgson.The study examines in detail the incentive policies at each of the 11 companies; finding high proportions of fixed pay, poorly chosen performance metrics, and rewards for below median performance. The report also looks at the make-up of the compensation committees at the companies, listing the members by name, along with their compensation. The report also gives examples of Pay for Success compensation.

SOTD: Al Green - Simply Beautiful

Housing Bubble Links

Remember, it's "a great time to buy or sell a home".

If you're a realtor's client paying big commissions that is.

Nice ad campaign. Maybe Charles Schwab can start one with "Now is a great time to buy or sell shares of Intel."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Housing construction plunged to the lowest level in more than six years in October as the nation's once-booming housing market slowed further. The Commerce Department reported on Friday that construction of new single-family homes and apartments dropped to an annual rate of 1.486 million units last month, down a sharp 14.6 percent from the September level.

The decline, bigger than had been expected, was the largest percentage decline in 19 months and pushed total activity down to the lowest level since July 2000...

The housing market in recent years has been in a bubble of historic proportions. Prices all over the country lost any connection to economic reality, largely due to the funny financing that is without precedent.

Here's a sample of various bearish (i.e., realistic) housing-related blogs, in no particular order and of varying quality, with a California bias.

Home sellers probably won't want to look.

The Housing Bubble Blog

Housing Panic

Forsaken

Paper Money

The Foreclosure Report

Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking

Bubble Meter

Irving Housing Blog

OC Flip Track

Orange County Register

San Diego Market Monitor

SoCal RE Bubble Crash

This Old House Flip

Senator Russ Feingold

Feingold makes a lot of sense. Too bad he's not running for President.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Russ Feingold's call for troops to withdraw from Iraq has helped set him apart from other potential presidential candidates. But he said Thursday he believes in a "muscular" response to terrorism and it would be wrong to categorize him as an anti-war candidate.

"I've never been anywhere near one-dimensional on these issues," Feingold, D-Wis., said in an interview. "I think that I've become — I hope — a credible spokesman for a muscular view of anti-terrorist activity by the Democrats as well as the country. The fact is, I've never been just an anti-war guy."

Feingold made the remarks as he prepared to introduce a Senate resolution calling for the U.S. to strengthen its efforts in Afghanistan, where Taliban militants have stepped up attacks this year.

"To some extent, we gutted our capacity to finish the job in Afghanistan, and allowed the Taliban and others to come back in by putting too much emphasis on Iraq," Feingold said.

...Last year, Feingold was the first senator to call for a timetable to bring troops back from Iraq. This year, he teamed with Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential nominee, on a proposal that would have required troops to leave Iraq by July of next year.

"It is time to tell the Iraqis that we have done what we can do militarily," Feingold said during debate over that proposal, which failed on an 83-13 vote.

Feingold said he's no pacifist.

"Absolutely not," he said. "I believe in the right of self-defense" — including the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "I believe what we did in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with self-defense."

Feingold's criticism of the Bush administration on Iraq and other issues has won him support. But he said he sometimes make his audiences uncomfortable when he talks about a need to "drop bombs" on people like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaida leader in Iraq killed in a U.S. airstrike in June.

SOTD: Placebo - Nancy Boy

Bechtel Departure Removes More Illusions

From Past Peak

Halliburton's not the only company with friends in high places that is making a killing in Iraq. There's also construction giant Bechtel, who has picked up $2.3 billion for accomplishing next to nothing. Now they're leaving.

The decision of the giant engineering company Bechtel to withdraw from Iraq has left many Iraqis feeling betrayed. In its departure they see the end of remaining hopes for the reconstruction of Iraq. [...]

Bechtel, whose board members have close ties to the Bush administration, announced last week that it was done with trying to operate in the war-torn country. The company has received 2.3 billion dollars of Iraqi reconstruction funds and U.S. taxpayer money, but is leaving without completing most of the tasks it set out to.

On every level of infrastructure measurable, the situation in Iraq is worse now than under the rule of Saddam Hussein. That includes the 12 years of economic sanctions since the first Gulf War in 1991, a period that former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Dennis Halliday described as "genocidal" for Iraqis.

Bring in FEMA to fix it.

SOTD: Pavement - Gold Soundz

Social Insecurity

From Housing Panic

The Re-Weighting of Commodity Indices

Enough politics for now.

Bill Cara has a pretty good investment blog... I've been curious about the effects of reweighting various commodity indices on the underlying commodities. Here was the most interesting part of the linked article, from a UBS report:

On this assumption there will be heavy buying of Nat gas, coffee and crude and large selling of nickel zinc, wheat and copper. Substantial selling is likely in nickel and zinc; less selling in copper and aluminum. We suspect these changes will occur during the January roll-period.

Maybe this wouldn't be the worst time to add to or get back in oil and gas stocks. Probably not good for drivers though.

Oh Thank God

Heckuva job, Shrub!

Go Jim Webb!

Check out the great Think Progess site for election coverage.

When do you think Rumsfeld will resign?

Vote

When even The American Conservative is against the GOP, you know they're in trouble.

...The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can’t face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile, America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country—which once symbolized hope and justice—to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.

There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country’s reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7. If we are fortunate, we can produce a result that is seen—in Washington, in Peoria, and in world capitals from Prague to Kuala
Lumpur—as a repudiation of George W. Bush and the war of aggression he launched against Iraq...

Pat Buchanan was dead right about Iraq from the beginning.

SOTD: Waldeck - Defenceless

Thomas Jefferson on Banks

From the excellent Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their
fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)

Of Course It's About The Oil

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.

Bush lied? What a shock.

Bad Data

This is stunning...not the facts, but the fact that they're admitting it....

In an apparent and rare in-house critique, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said that because of faulty inflation data, the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long earlier this decade, fueling speculative housing activity.

Its Still the Economy, Stupid

The Republicans Have Already Raised Your Taxes

From The Angry Bear

... the GOP wants to change the subject and tell you that only they will keep your taxes low permanently. But as long as you accept the Milton Friedman realism that To Spend is to Tax, one knows that someone will pay more in taxes in the future as the GOP has no clue where to reduce spending....

So here’s the real deal. Someone will face a future tax increase. To paraphrase Walter Mondale’s courageous statement to the 1984 Democratic National Convention – Dick Cheney “will raise your taxes; so will I. He won't tell you; I just did”. The Republican’s secret plan is to impose massive tax increases on workers. Congressman Rangel would rather have some of the future tax increase placed on high income individuals. There in is the real choice facing voters. So get out and vote tomorrow.

Vote

9/11
Iraq
Katrina
Foley
Illegal Immigration
Halliburton
Tom Delay
Duke Cunningham
Abu Ghraib
Rove
Libby
Cheney
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz
Perle
Ken Lay
Michael Brown
Michael Chertoff
Abramoff
Mission Accomplished
North Korea
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Prince Bandar
Pakistan
Sudan
Bin Laden (still alive)
The Deficit
Port (in)security
Afghanistan
Housing Bubble
Oil Prices
Health Insurance
Corporate Corruption
Dollar collapse
Online Poker Ban
Habeas Corpus (RIP)
etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum


Make it stop!

Inflation

Great link above about stocks, money supply, inflation and gold.

Since July 2001, the US Dollar has lost about 30% of its purchasing power vs. a basket of foreign currencies.

Keep Expectations Low

Mission accomplished!

Two Sides of the Same Corporate Coin

Unlike Mexico or China, our elections are based upon the will of the people.

And by "the people" I mean those Corporations with at least $358,000 to bribe, I mean give.

Congressional Elections 2006

Corporate Donations To Candidates

Top Ten To Democrats
AFLAC INCORPORATED $587,000
UNITED PARCEL SERVICE INC. $565,071
LOCKHEED MARTIN EMPLOYEES'$532,200
AT&T INC. $515,750
FEDERAL EXPRESS $434,000
COMCAST CORP. $401,600
RAYTHEON COMPANY $393,049
VERIZON COMMUNICATION INC $382,750
BELLSOUTH CORPORATION EMPLOYEES'$367,450
GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY $358,950

Top Ten To Republicans
UNITED PARCEL SERVICE INC. $1,342,608
AT&T INC. $1,253,933
AFLAC INCORPORATED $875,500
FEDERAL EXPRESS $866,400
PFIZER INC. $865,750
LOCKHEED MARTIN EMPLOYEES' $831,803
UNION PACIFIC CORP. $736,256
BURLINGTON NORTHERN SANTA FE $685,499
VERIZON COMMUNICATION INC $651,650
WAL-MART STORES INC. $641,000

Stock Charts

If you are an investor who believes in technical analysis and tea leaves and animal entrails, you could do worse things than check out the charts and read the comments of Howard Blackstein, even with the ALL CAPS and stream of consciousness posts...

Example #43,993

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein. But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

Gee, wingnuts, you think Iran uses "the Google" to read "the internet", which, as we all know, is simply a series of tubes?

SOTD: Mazzy Star - Fade Into You

Crooks & Liars

Outstanding site with too many good stories to list here. Just check it out.

Edging Towards Chaos

A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

Apparently, we're somewhere between "burning your hand on the frying pan" hot and "nuclear fusion" hot on the colorful scale.

Iraq, of course, is on the brink of chaos because of John Kerry, online gambling, gay marriages and flag burning. Unlike mere mortals, Bush never makes any mistakes (that he can remember).


Past Peak summed up the classified report nicely:

Everything the White House has been saying about Iraq is a lie. It's getting worse. Iraqi security forces will never be in a position to "stand up" so US forces can "stand down". The Iraqi "unity government" is a Green Zone fiction. It will all end in chaos. What then?

What then? Well, we could always attack Iran.

This Is Who W Learned Compassion From

...why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him [GW] suffer. - Barbara Bush, to Diane Sawyer

Sort of like her post-Katrina banter while touring a relocation site:

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality." "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

C.S. Lewis

"Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations...

The nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right."

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan's outstanding site.