Links, 8/9/11
Our Dying Economy
Update: Reid just named his three picks for SuperCongress: Patty Murray, Max Baucus, and John Kerry. IMO, Kerry is actually a worse choice than Baucus (yeah, that's me saying that), since Kerry was in favor of the 4T bargain…
Donald Rumsfeld's Torture Defense and Appendix M
As I noted yesterday, the 7th Circuit has permitted a Bivens lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld to move forward.
I wanted to turn to a dispute not resolved in the opinion, which should be: whether or not Rummy changed the Army Field Manual after…
Attacking Romney Rather than the People Looting our Economy
This Politico story--"revealing" Obama's campaign plan to brand Multiple Choice Mitt as "weird"--has gotten a lot of attention in the twittersphere.
Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign…
Another Day, Another Person Suing Donald Rumsfeld for Torture
The 7th Circuit has just issued a decision in yet another case where a US citizen (actually, two of them--Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel) are suing Donald Rumsfeld for the torture they suffered at the hands of the military. (h/t scribe) The opinion…
Links, 8/8/11
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…
Mexico Drug Cartels: Fighting Transnationalism with Transnationalism
Particularly in light of the Administration's recent rollout of its Transnational Criminal Organization program, the NYT's article on our escalating war in Mexico raises several concerns. As I laid out, that program basically applies a number…
The UndieBomber Trial Gets Interesting
I used to have a bit of a party trick last year before I moved out of SE Michigan. At some opportune time, I'd surprise folks by telling them the UndieBomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was in a prison just 20 miles from where we were in Ann…
Obama's Slogan for Trade: "Displaced workers ... Made in America"
When I saw Obama's pivot to creating Korean jobs on Tuesday, I actually thought he had mangled his script.
And I want Congress to pass a set of trade deals -- deals we’ve already negotiated -- that would help displaced workers looking…
The End of the American Empire
I write about our dying empire just about every day in my links posts. But given the debt limit debate and Friday's S&P downgrade, I wanted to look at four pieces that examine where we are more closely (note, all of these are well worth…
Who Will Be the Last 31 Americans to Die in Effort to Kill the Last 31 Al Qaeda Members in Afghanistan?
There are early reports out that the Taliban shot down a NATO helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade. Hamid Karzai has said the casualties include 31 Americans and 7 Afghans. And while President Obama has not put a number on the deaths,…
Trash Talk With Stevie Nicks
Hello mothers, hello others; welcome to The Wheel, brothers. So, we are kind of in the ether, the no mans land, the void and vacuum between the end of basketball and the start of football again.
Yeah, yeah, that little soccer interlude was…
The $100 Billion TeaBagger Tax
Last week, when analysts were contemplating a debt downgrade, they put a price tag on it: $100 billion.
A downgrade of the United States' AAA credit rating is a bigger risk than a default and could over time add up to 0.7 percentage point to…
Links, 8/5/11
Banana Republic of America
The S&P is reportedly about to downgrade America's credit. So the wingnut hostage-taking will end up costing us about $100B. [Update: While we are so badly governed we no doubt deserve to be downgraded,…
John Brennan: Immunizing the Truth
The first time I read Nicholas Schmidle's breathtaking account of Osama bin Laden's killing, I gave up when I got to this passage:
John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, told me that the President’s advisers began an “interrogation…
"Sustainable Growth" Wasn't
There's something that bugged me about this article (indeed, bugs me about most economic analyses of our current crash). Amidst a discussion that fairly lays out some of the problems with the global economy (all the while ignoring that one critical…
Links, 8/4/11
As anticipated, the French have just opened an investigation into whether IMF Chief Christine Lagarde intervened in a settlement Bernard Tapie won with a state-owned bank during her tenure as Finance Minister. At the rate we're going, the developing…
Reliability and the UK's Guidelines on Using Torture
The Guardian has liberated the UK's policy on cooperating with liaison services that torture. ((h/t Rosalind) As the Guardian explains the policy basically sets up a bureaucracy to weigh whether the value of the information outweighs the imperative…
Judge Brinkema Cites Espionage Act to Protect Reporter's Privilege
Charlie Savage tells the headline story from Leonie Brinkema's opinion on whether or not James Risen must testify in Jeffrey Sterling's leak trial.
“A criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter’s…
Buffalo Hangs Its Head In Shame as L'il Luke Laughs at Slaves and Dead Workers
Susie linked to this clip.
And while she's right to point to all the evidence that L'il Luke Russert is an ignorant toad about how many jobs Obama's trade deals will send overseas, I'm more amazed by his arrogant response to being asked…
Links, 8/3/11
Our Dying Economy
The National Employment Law Project has a report showing how this Depression is hollowing out middle class jobs, with 8.4% of all middle wage jobs gone (and that's on top of a process that had already started before…