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Music-only journal on Dreamwidth [05 Jul 2009|12:11pm] [ mood | accomplished ] Okay, so I've decided to make my Dreamwidth journal a music-only journal. Entries from there will be crossposted here, but not visa-versa, and music posts will originate on that journal. So if you're only here for the music and really Do Not Want To Hear about the rest of it, you can go over there. It's a cheerier place, really. ^_^ post comment

Well, that's good timing [05 Jul 2009|11:22am] [ mood | amused ] The day after I posted a warning that banks are jacking around credit-card customers in advance of legislation preventing them from arbitrarily changing contract terms and other such jackassery, an immediate friend1 got a notice from his credit-card lender informing him that they were 1. raising his credit card interest rate, 2. changing it from fixed-rate to adjustable, and doing so in 3. such a way that the rate can only go up. Awesome. (For the record, his credit is perfect.) If you're eligible to join a credit union and get a card through them, I suggest doing so. Regardless, be on the alert for such machinations. They're happening right now. 1: name withheld because he's nervous about such things 4 comments|post comment

Well that was quite pleasant [05 Jul 2009|11:08am] [ mood | busy ] It's quite clear now that I should go to Woodinville - when I busk at Woodinville - first thing in the morning. Their market opens at 9am, which is crazytalk, but that's when the customers arrive, and more importantly, that's when it's loads cooler and the sun's at a low enough angle that I can play around market entrance and still be in lovely, lovely tree shade. Also - and I knew this before, but I keep having to relearn it - you make a lot more money hanging around market entrance and exit, because people see you twice - on the way in, and then again on the way out, when they're done with all their purchases. Markets have lately been putting me places that are basically market centre, which is probably best for ambiance, but people really only see you once at that point, and their minds are still on shopping - they're on task and not readily diverted away. So I'm going to be a bit more on point about hanging out at entrances from now on. It's not just that the money's better - tho' it is, and that matters - it's also that now that people are done shopping, they're a lot more likely to just hang out a bit and listen, which means audience, which means a lot more fun for me as well as them. It's not as much fun as a stage show, mind you, but is is fun, and I'm all over that. ^_^ post comment

Reportedly, Northeastern maintains a Great Depression-compatible counter [05 Jul 2009|11:04am] [ mood | busy ] According to Ambrose Pierce-Evans at The Telegraph, The Centre for Labour Market Studies (CLMS) in Boston (US spelling: Center for Labor Market Studies (Northeastern University, Boston), because if you google Centre for Labour Market Studies, even with Boston, you get a different economic group) keeps a count of unemployment using the pre-WWII measurement system, which makes comparisons to the Great Depression possible. That number rose to 18.2% in May, the most recent number noted. He also mentions - I forgot to include this in my last post - that hours per week have fallen to the lowest since the number started being recorded, to 33 hours per week. Anyway, I suggest reading the article, because the deflationary wage cycle is pretty clear at this point, and he outlines how much of it is hidden via unpaid furloughs and so forth. One thing I did not put together, however, is this little comparison: Some 342,000 homes were foreclosed in April, pushing a small army of children into a network of charity shelters. This compares to 273,000 homes lost in the entire year of 1932. That's quite the cold splash of water, even given the large differences in population. Say, why don't we do that math? US population, 1932: 124,840,471. US today: 306,839,779 (est), 2.46 times as many people. Adjusting for that would make 1932's foreclosure rate yield 682,500 foreclosures per year. April 2009's rate yields, 4,104,000 per year. That's six times the rate of 1932. Also note that April was still in an era of partial foreclosure forbearance, and that's over now, so the rate is probably going to climb from that, not fall. eta: rozasharn looked up data and did math in comments below! Adjusting for homeownership rates on top of population, her math shows we're at four times the foreclosure rate of 1932. Thanks, rozasharn, for being less lazy than me! ^_^ 8 comments|post comment

all this and something more [03 Jul 2009|12:01am] [ mood | sleepy ] Brad Setser has an interesting post with one key graph that sums up the US balance of payments situation and history. Worth reading. Something weird happened on Tuesday, in that someone without collateral needed money overnight very badly. The Fed overnight rate is running between 0 and 0.25%; someone had to pay 7%. In this climate, someone needed to do that and was willing. Karl at Market Ticker thinks someone is in real trouble. No idea who, tho'. US Consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in June (more here), and that was before the latest jobs report that I discussed earlier. Here's CNBC's story, and here's what Mish has to say about jobs. So does The Financial Post, which notes that every job gained over the last decade is now lost. "Prime" home mortgage delinquencies doubled last month, with foreclosures topping 300,000 yet again. Prime mortgages >60 days late are up to 2.9% - a very large number for prime. CNBC was reporting a decline in the rate of price collapse as a sign of "stability", which I think not so much, but you just keep spreading that fertiliser, CNBC. The June retail sales report (Redbook) was rather bad - worse than expected, with year-to-year declines worse than the previous month and worse than expected. China is indicating that it's done stockpiling commodities - whether this is true or not, I can't say. Sweden has gone negative, cutting the deposit rate to negative 0.25%. (-0.25%). The United Kingdom's GDP dropped 2.4% in the first quarter. That's actually a revision worse. Zero Hedge is one of several people very upset with the NYSE over reductions in transparency involving automated/programme trading. I'm too sleepy to write up an explanation, go read the URL. It's a bad idea. Here's the NYSE's response to that complaint. Watch your credit cards carefully: banks are raising rates and minimum payments abruptly ahead of a new low restricting how much they can do that. That's all for now; g'night! 3 comments|post comment

Take that, Mets! [02 Jul 2009|10:44pm] [ mood | awesome ] "Furries Convention keeps Mets awake." Apparently the New York Mets were in Pittsburgh just in time for Anthrocon - and shared the hotel. Says WABC: Playing an afternoon game, the Mets might be a little tired because of The Furries. The Mets, who played in Pittsburgh for a weather make-up game on Thursday, stayed at the same hotel as the Furries Convention. Lots of Mets players were Tweeting that they could not get any sleep due to people dressed as furry animals running around the hotel. In related news, here's a blog consisting entirely of pictures of foxes. 16 comments|post comment

too many tabs open [02 Jul 2009|07:12pm] [ mood | busy ] Too many tabs open, time to make some links! If you favour an inclusive ENDA and have a US Congressional representative, please follow this link and see if your Representative in Congress is part of the problem, because there is one - reportedly, there still aren't enough Representatives signed on. Awesome, by which I mean fuck all of you, but, well, don't tell them that. Just say "stop being dicks and sign on." Oh wait, no, don't use the word "dicks." The Volokh Conspiracy has commentary on Mr. Obama's speech regarding Don't Ask/Don't Tell. The EFF reports on warrantless mass email snooping that's still, of course, ongoing. Isn't that nice. Remember, Mr. Obama is for this. Here's an action item on repealing the FISA extensions many of us were fighting last year. To the surprise of no one, even the minimal protections and restrictions of these act have done no good whatsoever and are being ignored. The Obama administration has also invoked state secrets to block another EFF lawsuit, this one for a proposed treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). What's in it? We don't know, but it reportedly looks a lot like DMCA II, as a treaty: Very little is known about ACTA, currently under negotiation between the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries, other than that it is not limited to anti-counterfeiting measures. Leaked documents indicate that it could establish far-reaching customs regulations governing searches over personal computers and iPods. Multi-national IP corporations have publicly requested mandatory filtering of Internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material, as well as the adoption of "Three Strikes" policies requiring the termination of Internet access after repeat allegations of copyright infringement, like the legislation recently invalidated in France. Last year, more than 100 public interest organizations around the world called on ACTA country negotiators to make the draft text available for public comment. Isn't that lovely. Always remember that treaties have more power than laws, in the US system. Oh, and the national ID card is being revived in the Senate, this time as "PASS ID" rather than "REAL ID." Here, have more on NPR and the torture lies. Eastside asshat Ken Hutcherson gets some time on the American Family Association's pet news service, One News Now, by attacking GBLT rights and Mr. Obama's commentary last Monday. The Washington Post got caught red-handed selling access to its reporters and "those powerful few" who were not named but are described as "Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less." Also, members of the newspaper staff. After being busted, they're saying the flyer was "prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by... the newsroom." Sure, whatever. I'd comment on "must've been nice having credibility," but, well, that horse left the barn some time ago. 3 comments|post comment

Jobs report, and a thought experiment. [02 Jul 2009|10:24am] [ mood | busy ] When I hear a new jobs report is out, the first thing I always do is go check the Birth/Death Model to see how many "modelled" jobs were added to the unadjusted numbers this month. This time, it's +185,000 jobs! Yay! Keep in mind that the Birth/Death Model has not gone consistently negative at any point in this recession, tho' it did go negative - like it always does, even in good economic times1 - last January. But that was it. The BLS talks about the birth/death model - which models jobs added or lost (in theory) due to new businesses starting up and old businesses failing or closing - and how tends to lag behind turning points in the economy - it'll keep adding jobs for a while as jobs are actually lost, then more accurately reflect reality as job losses accelerate in the depths of the recession, then lose jobs when jobs are starting to be added in real life, then add jobs as the recovery picks up steam and real job additions are increasing. But beyond that, they refuse to disclose how it works, in any way. It's a black box. At this point, of course, everyone who follows it just assumes it's a number-massaging tool to make things look better than they are. I certainly do. But it occurred to me: what if it's not? Let's pretend, for a moment, that the BD model is honest, and just broken, and is lagging economic reality, as is stated. Just as a thought experiment. That would imply that we're still in stage one - adding jobs as jobs are lost early in the recession. Before job losses get really bad and the recession really starts to grind home. In the last recession, you had a substantial streak of at least well-mixed negative/positive birth/dead adds and losses - say, from 2002, from July 2002 to February 2003, you had adds and losses that came to a total of -151,000. More importantly - because of January - you had birth/death model job losses four months out of eight, or, backing up out of 2003, three months out of six. That's what the "bottoming out" period looks like in this model, when the worst of the recession is upon us. We don't have that yet. What does that, in turn, imply? Taking data again from the previous recession - which is unfortunately the only one using this model - it implies substantial continuing job losses into 2010 and quite possibly 2011, and I suspect that's where the "green shoots"/"recovery" combined with "continuing rise in unemployment" mixed message comes from.2 It implies a target U-3 (headline number) unemployment rate of somewhere between 11% and 13.5%, and a U-6 (under- and unemployment) in the 23%ish-range - something comparable to the Great Depression. (And if you didn't read footnote 1 when it was referenced above, please go do so.) Of course, that assumes it's not just a numbers-manipulation tool. It's probably that. But if it's not - if we take them at their word - then you have this message from their model: unemployment is going to get substantially worse before anything gets better. Good luck. 1: From BDA historical model: Jan08: -378,000. Jan07: -175,000. Jan06: -193,000. Jan05: -280,000. Jan04: -321,000. Jan03: -391,000. In other words, the January 09 subtraction of -356,000 number is less than the numbers shown at the worst of the previous recession, in the tech crash, and not hugely out of line in comparison to non-recessionary periods such as January 04. It has functionally never turned negative in this recession. 2: And if the "green shoots" terminology doesn't remind you of Hoover administration propaganda from 1931, it should. It really, really, should. post comment

A second open letter to NPR [30 Jun 2009|05:43pm] [ mood | cranky ] [ music | Up Your Shaft | James Lileks ] Were I willing to give more time to it, I'd write a shorter letter. But I'm not, because I've already told them what I think about all this bullshit. Still, I keep throwing myself against this wall, and here's my new one: Dear Ms. Shepard, et al - I see that in response to the reportedly overwhelming torrent of criticism of NPR adopting White House talking points to describe the American torture programme - and then pretending that there is an "argument" over what is torture, rather than the reality that there's an argument over whether the US should be torturing, in violation of tradition, law, and treaty - you have restated NPR's position against the use of plain language to describe plain and legal reality, primarily on the basis that powerful ("responsible") people don't like it, and say that the word doesn't apply. You also claim that using this word is somehow "loaded" and taking a position in a debate, when in reality, adopting White House talking points and language in opposition to commonly and historically used language is directly taking sides in the very reframing of the debate the White House wanted to achieve! You are taking a side, and arguing that you must, in order to "avoid taking sides." How sad. NPR is, apparently, an enthusiastic adopter of such tactics - as long as those behind it are powerful, "responsible" people. It is good to know that NPR will allow the powerful to change reality and the definitions of words when such actions suit their political goals. I look forward to NPR pressing the current administration on its need to apologise to all the war criminals (both foreign - Nazi, Imperial Japanese, and so on - and American) that it has tried and convicted for engaging in exactly these same practices that you now refuse to describe as torture. However, even should that happen, NPR will no longer be seeing my sponsorship dollars. That will await a return to reality-based reporting. Sincerely, solarbird For all the good that'll do. 10 comments|post comment

Still wrong [30 Jun 2009|05:15pm] [ mood | disgusted ] [ music | Getting Away With It | Electronic ] NPR's Ombudsman, Alicia C. Shepard, responds to critics (including myself) about not calling American torture "torture," but instead "harsh" or "enhanced" interrogation techniques: But no matter how many distinguished groups -- the International Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioners -- say waterboarding is torture, there are responsible people who say it is not. Former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, their staff and their supporters... The entire argument can be summed up as "because powerful people say it's not torture, we won't call it torture, no matter what else." The American government therefore owes an absolute assload of apologies to Nazis and other war criminals it prosecuted under whoops-I-guess-it's-not-torture-after-all laws against torture. I can't wait until "responsible people" - of power - decide to say that the earth is flat, or the sun rises in the west, or up is down, or what the fuck ever. I can't wait for NPR's reporting on that one. Fact-based reporting isn't, apparently, for "reasonable people," as she describes herself and her colleagues - it's for suckers. So fuck you, NPR. My original letter stands: until you return to reporting reality rather than apologising for torturers, the donation window is closed. 4 comments|post comment

American torture deaths [30 Jun 2009|10:29am] [ mood | busy ] [ music | Talking Back To The Night | Steve Winwood ] There's a report coming out - against Obama administration wishes - on deaths in the American torture programme. Some of it's already out, but this will be a larger, less censored version. One takeaway: The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody -- at least. While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that's one reason we've always considered those tactics to be "torture" when used by others -- because they inflict serious harm, and can even kill people. Those arguing against investigations and prosecutions -- that we Look to the Future, not the Past -- are thus literally advocating that numerous people get away with murder. Some autopsy reports from murder victims of the US torture programme, such as this one, prepared by US military doctors and brought to the public by the ACLU. Many of these cases list "cause of death" as "undetermined," allowing those responsible to remain undisciplined in any way. eta: lyonesse has issues with my issues with the use of the word "undetermined"; see comments below. Meanwhile, the NPR ombudsman has refused interview by Salon regarding the NPR's policy against calling torture "torture" when it is conducted by the United States. 6 comments|post comment

incomplete reactions [29 Jun 2009|10:21pm] [ mood | busy ] [ music | Go Away Godboy | S.J. Tucker ] Mr. Obama gave his address today to the LGBT community. I've read through it once; it sounds okay, but as everyone here should know, I don't give a rat's ass what you say until and unless it actually produces action, which so far, Mr. Obama has not done. Dan Savage is mostly holding off on comment until tomorrow, except for a first-read reaction of, "I'm not sure we should be applauding the president for passing the buck, however eloquently he is while he does so." Pam at Pam's House Blend is not impressed because of the contradictions between his speech tonight and Mr. Gibbs in the press briefing earlier in the afternoon. (For example: in his speech, he claims he's working with the Pentagon on DADT; Mr. Gibbs earlier had said Mr. Obama hadn't been involved in any meetings.) So that's that, so far. The first link (...and also the second) contains the full text of the address, so read it for yourself. 7 comments|post comment

not normally a series of tiny links [29 Jun 2009|09:52pm] [ mood | busy ] [ music | Good Beltane Fire | Tricky Pixie ] I'm sorry, I don't normally post a series of single-link posts like this, but Nathan Martin has a lovely series of Federal Reserve charts grouped together in a way that really tell quite a story. Check it. 1 comment|post comment

oh this is bad [29 Jun 2009|03:46pm] [ mood | blah ] [ music | I Can't Read | Tin Machine ] Thanks to cow for pointing out this blog post talking about this Bloomberg story pointing out that 20% of new bank loans made in China from January thought May 2009 went right into the Chinese stock market. That's 1.16T yuan, or about US$170B. And that's how you've got an even-for-China freaky rally in Chinese stocks so far this year. However, these schemes always end in tears. It's one of those "never do this" things. Ever. Bluntly, you should just assume this will crash and take the Chinese stock markets with it. It might not; I mean, it could work out fine. But it'll take a bloody blinking miracle. 3 comments|post comment

monday miscellanea [29 Jun 2009|11:04am] [ mood | busy ] Good morning. It's a short week, with Canada Day on Wednesday, and Independence Day (US) on Friday, but a lot of data is coming out anyway as the week goes on. Today's Citizensbank Canada daily FX commentary contains two notes of relevance. The first: The Bank for International Settlement released its annual report in which it states that the various stimulus plans might fail and lead to a prolonged period of economic stagnation because banks are not being pushed hard enough fix the problem of toxic assets on their books. The problem seems to be ignored as long as bank stocks increase in value, the KBW index of the 24 largest US banks has doubled in value since March. The BIS essentially condemns programs such as TARP as failures because it should have been used for its original intended purpose, to remove these assets off banks’ balance sheets rather than for guarantees and capital infusions to bail out the banks. There is no problem as long as the values continue to go up; it’s unthinkable that these assets could possibly depreciate, isn’t it? Karl Denninger has more commentary on this phenominon here, as well as more on the collapse of the PPIP. Secondly, from today: The May National Activity Index, prepared by the Chicago Fed, fell to -2.30 from a downwardly revised -2.27 in April. The index is an extremely comprehensive snapshot of US economic activity comprising of 4 broad categories. The conclusion of the report is that economic activity in the US remains consistent with a continuing severe recession. Those are pretty strong words. Yes, they are. Key was a faster rate of fall in US industrial production in May, down 1.1% vs. April's slower 0.7% rate of decline. Mainland China and the Hong Kong SAR have set up a facility to allow companies to settle cross-border transactions in yuan. They want to have it operating next month. This is another indicating of growing dissatisfaction with the US dollar as a trade and reserve currency. Also note Chinese proposals, ongoing, for a new global reserve currency. (The commentary section is worth skimming, for once - normally, they aren't.) Those interested in the US international debt position may find Brad Setser's analysis of the last decade to be of interest. Again, the commentary section is useful, as it often is in his posts. Seeking Alpha thinks the hyperinflation trade (or train, given the illustrative photo) is looking awfully crowded, and discusses the ramifications of the collapse of a currency bubble - which is to say, persistent currency and price deflation, which is to say, hello, Japan, but on a larger scale and without savings. Fun times. Here, have a potpourri of news items: Oil is approaching US$72/barrel. A variety of people are talking about the US dollar being under pressure, but I don't see it in the charts. On the plus side, Japanese factory output rose for the third straight month, tho' still dramatically below one year ago. Unfortunately, retail sales were flat month-to-month. Bank of America and Wells Fargo are hedging about taking California state warrants, or "IOUs," which are expected to be issued starting next week or so. These will be in lieu of actual money. Bloomberg has an article up, "Bond Dealers Say Worst Over as Demand Soars at Sales." They're referring to this: Bonds rallied last week as indirect bidders, a class of investors that includes foreign central banks, purchased 67.2 percent of the record $27 billion in seven-year notes sold on June 25, or double the amount of bids than at the last sale in May. Sounds awesome, right? Except the definition of "indirect bidders" changed to include a lot more buyers, mostly domestic. This statistic is yet another one which has been rendered meaningless for historical comparison purposes. We were talking earlier about changes in definitions being used to pop up fake good news, and I noted that typically the financial press wasn't too bad about doing that - this is a counterexample. That's all for now; good luck. post comment

heading in to the new week [28 Jun 2009|11:46pm] [ mood | okay ] I'm really busy in the summer with music, so here's another list of headlines I thought were interesting enough to keep open in tabs towards the end of last week. The initial jobless claims report last week jumped substantially. Some people are pretending this will level off now, but that assumes that GM and Chrysler won't be engaging in substantial layoffs. We call that world "fantasyland." US GDP for 1Q 2009 was revised slightly upwards, however, to -5.5% annualised. (Last post, I asked why these things always seemed to be revised worse. This is an exception, so there you go.) CEO Jeffrey Hoffman of Inventory Liquidator says to expect a lot more retail bankruptcies. The Harry Schultz Letter is predicting a bank holiday sometime probably this summer. There are reports that Citigroup has halted the unit responsible for about half of the mortgages it processes. Rolling Stone has a big article on the political influence of Goldman Sachs, but I can't link to it because, "Rolling Stone hates the internet." However, I can link to the summary, which I did. Martin Weiss has a shorter-than-it-should-be post about California's collapsing economy. Karl Denninger notes the withdrawal of a Federal Reserve primary dealer. At the same time, "Officials in the Obama administration are moving quickly to develop the investment infrastructure behind the president’s proposal for mandatory automatic enrollment in individual retirement accounts, which could be supported by the creation of Treasury-issued retirement bonds." Well, that's one way to funnel money into the T-bill arena. Japan is seeing significant price deflation, seeing a new negative record. Mish has a lot to say about this. The Swiss have been intervening significantly in their currency transactions. Talking of interventions and manipulations, programme trading is now 40% of actions on the NYSE, which makes market manipulation downright trivial. Best of all, the entities doing it have US government backstopping. That's all for now. Good luck this week. post comment

yarrrrr [28 Jun 2009|09:12pm] [ mood | amused ] I never saw the video for The Last Saskatchewan Pirate before now. ^_^ 6 comments|post comment

hither and yon [28 Jun 2009|07:02pm] [ mood | sleepy ] [ music | Theme to the Tonight Show | Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me ] I'm thinking of making my dreamwidth.org account sort of my music-only journal. If I do that, I'll crosspost everything back to LJ, of course, because I like having everything together in one place - at least, everything that doesn't just end up in my handwritten old-school journal, which I might transcribe at some point and might not. I don't know! Bothell Market is a bit of an odd one; they have a nice performer page, and they have my picture up (yay!) and they have a nice little tent and they give you bagels and doughnuts! But they don't give an audience any place to sit down, so you're generally performing to people walking by - and if they do stop, they end up blocking traffic, so they can't really stick around. (Also, on the bill, they have a note that music is sponsored by someone. Well, what's sponsored is the tent, not the musicians. So I need a good way of indicating that, for moneys.) I had a nice time on Friday, though, despite that little hitch - after the show, I talked with some of the vendors who talked about the difficulties they're having with the economy, and a couple asked if I'd play a little for them, since they were at the far end and away from the stage, so couldn't hear much. I demurred until a child passing by asked if I'd play something, so of course I then did. Saturday wasn't on my show page because that was just busking in Woodinville, and that was a bright, sunny day and as such awfully hot. After the show, I finally found some hair ties I like again, and when I asked how much one was, the seller just gave it to me, which was super nice, so I bought a second one. ^_^ Then I went and helped with Vixy and Tony and tereshkova2001 and (in part) gfish's megamove, with a whole lot of other people, and that was hard work but actually kinda fun. I'd never seen the Brainpan before, and it was awfully adorable - but the new place is much bigger and very nice in its own way too, so. Then today I went down for my Only One Hour at Lake Forest Park - I hate that "one hour then stop" rule, but it's their market and their rules. Even with it, though, I like playing LFP - the previous time there was kind of awesome, I can walk there, and afterwards I do my shopping! It turned out that my hauling work yesterday tired me out more than I realised, so it took a few songs to get warmed up at all, but after that, things went well enough. A few of the vendors afterwards told me they wished I was playing longer, and I explained it was market policy and maybe they could tell the market management they'd like it if musicians played longer! Also, it was unexpectedly blustery today - people were holding on to their tents and several vendors lost merchandise off tables. And also warm. So after my hour, I ate a chocolate-covered frozen banana. Mmmmm, chocolate banana. ^_^ 4 comments|post comment

stonewall [28 Jun 2009|09:34am] [ mood | cranky ] From the White House press briefing on Friday, regarding Pride Month and Stonewall 40: Q I was just wondering what -- are we to expect any substantive announcements on the two issues that that community has right at the forefront right now -- Defense of Marriage and "don't ask, don't tell"? MR. [ROBERT] GIBBS: No. Well, that's clear enough. Here, go read all these. And figure it out already: the Obama administration is not your friend and not on your goddamn side. 7 comments|post comment

More on Mr. Obama's plans for indefinite detention without trial [27 Jun 2009|09:05am] [ mood | tired ] Glenn Greenwald discusses the indefinite-detention-without-recourse trial balloon here, and the wretched journalistic practices at work in it. Then he moves on to Mr. Obama directly - and this is significantly trimmed down, go read the whole thing - noting that: There has now emerged a very clear -- and very disturbing -- pattern whereby Obama is willing to use legal mechanisms and recognize the authority of other branches only if he's assured that he'll get the outcome he wants. If he can't get what he wants from those processes, he'll just assert Bush-like unilateral powers to bypass those processes and do what he wants anyway... where those processes impede Obama's will, he'll just bypass them and assert the unilateral power to do what he wants anyway... That... is the precise pattern that's driving his suppression of torture photos. Two federal courts ordered the President to release the photos under the 40-year-old Freedom of Information Act. Not wanting to abide by that decision, the White House (using Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman) tried to pressure Congress to enact new legislation vesting the administration with the power to override FOIA. When House progressives blocked that bill, the White House assured Lieberman and Graham that Obama would simply use an Executive Order to decree the photos "classified" (when they are plainly nothing of the sort) and thus block their release anyway. ... This was also the mentality that shaped Obama's "civil liberties" speech generally and his "prolonged detention" policy specifically. In that speech, Obama movingly assured us that some of the Guantanamo detainees will be tried in a real court -- i.e., only those the DOJ is certain ahead of time they can convict. For those about whom there's uncertainty, he's going to create new military commissions to make it easier to obtain convictions, and then try some of the detainees there -- i.e., only those they are certain ahead of time they can convict there. For the rest -- meaning those about whom Obama can't be certain he'll get the outcome he wants in a judicial proceeding or military commission -- he'll just keep them locked up anyway. In other words, he'll indulge the charade that people he wants to keep in a cage are entitled to some process (a real court or military commissions) only where he knows in advance he will get what he wants; where he doesn't know that, he'll bypass those pretty processes and assert the unilateral right to keep them imprisoned anyway. A government that will give you a trial before imprisoning you only where it knows ahead of time it will win -- and, where it doesn't know that, will just imprison you without a trial -- isn't a government that believes in due process. It's one that believes in show trials.... If there's one principle that can be described as fundamental to the American founding, it's that the state -- and certainly the President -- do not have the power to order people imprisoned without charges. Thomas Jefferson said that trials by jury is "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." Why is this painfully obvious proposition still necessary to defend after the November election? Bold as in the original. 17 comments|post comment

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