Our Dying Economy

Banks are slashing jobs. I guess giving all that free money to “job creators” didn’t work out the way it was supposed to.

If Dodd-Frank could do what it was supposed to, the Feds would be busy resolving Bank of America right now–before the many suits, objections to settlements, and put-back claims put it out of business w/the FDIC stuck holding the depositer’s bag.

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Chief International Advisor, Nathan Sheets, has done the bureaucratic equivalent of jumping off a sinking ship: leaving, with apparently no notice, the day before the FOMC meets, in the middle of a massive international crisis. He’s cashing out his vacation days so as to give a month’s notice without actually have to stick around.

Justice and Injustice

The Merit System Protection Board has upheld a decision by TSA to fire an air marshall who whistleblew that the government was cutting back air marshall coverage. This is another one of those cases where the government is punishing someone for leaking information that was not even classified (properly).

Our Dying Empire

A McClatchy report notes that the 30 Americans lost over the weekend were fighting in an area where locals, because they’re sick of our night raids, now sympathize with the Taliban. The same article notes that more than 50% of our night raids hit the right target–which is another way of saying almost 50% don’t hit the right target. Also, it seems we have lost track of the guy we thought was mediating peace talks with the Taliban, which is supposed to be the whole point of these attacks against the Taliban. Remind me again how this is helping us beat the fewer than 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan?

An Egyptian court fined Hosni Mubarak and two others for shutting down the InterToobz in a bid to stop protests earlier this year. They responded by saying that others–including the current head of the Army Council, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, that is running the country right now and longtime US ally Omar Suleiman–were involved in the decision. The judge wants to see the meeting notes to prove that. Those details may be very interesting, not least given the Egyptian military’s close ties to the US.

Carol Rosenberg reports that over half the detainees at Gitmo are choosing not to observe the Ramadan fast this year. The story also notes that we very thoughtfully switch to nighttime feeding schedule for those we force feed to prevent hunger strikes. I’m not sure we can make any conclusions about why prisoners are doing what they’re doing given that we talk about religiously observant forced feeding.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is back–with the scoop that the Osama bin Laden raid was sourced not to any detainee intelligence, but to a walk-in looking for the $25 million reward. (h/t CTuttle) Apparently, they were going to use a cover story of a drone strike, but the downed chopper made that impossible. I find the timing of this scoop–along with that of the of the New Yorker puff piece–interesting.