"Why government authorized torture" is the primary question that smacks me upside my head every time I read another expose of BushCo’s torture(ous) machinations.  The latest one in Vanity Fair by Philippe Sands, The Green Light puts more meat on the bones of  the story that should have been clear to Americans from the "Bybee(-Yoo) Memo" and the Senate hearings into Abu Ghraib in the spring of '04.  

Anyone remember Gore in late '03?  At the nadir of his public career, he bucked the DLC machine by endorsing Dean.  Took a chance on doing the right thing because by then he couldn't sink much lower with the institutional wing of the Democratic Party.  The DEM chorus telling him to go away after 2000 was as loud as the GOP chorus singing the same tune.  In Sept.'02 (before the IWR had been submitted for a vote in the Senate), he gave a great speech denouncing the insanity of rushing into a war with Iraq.  The DEM party leaders yawned and told him to fuck off.  So, perhaps his endorsement of Dean wasn't and honest and courageous moment for Gore.  It could have been that he was simply poking a stick in the eye of those who had told him to get lost.  The jab didn't even connect with the face much less the eye.

Paulson finally speaks the truth, sort of:

After years of unsustainable price appreciation and lax lending practices, a housing correction was inevitable and necessary.  That correction is underway. Over the next two years, we also face an unprecedented wave of 1.8 million subprime mortgage resets, raising the potential of a market failure. Because the industry does not have the capacity to manage this volume, without action, unnecessary foreclosures would result.

Then the denial (or lies crept) back in:

Nobody EVER wants to admit that she or he is wrong.  Whereas, cognitively almost everybody can admit to themselves that they have been wrong,  if not often, at least occasionally.  (Even the most pathological narcissistic of individuals, who have little capacity for self-examination and evaluation, aren’t completely deficient in the ability to recognize that they aren’t always right.  The evidence for that is that they work hard to hide their errors and shortcomings from others, and the more successful they are at that, the better able they are to delude themselves which is positive reinforcement for their narcissism.)  Our ability to spontaneously recognize an error, or consider the possibility of error, and to admit it to ourselves and others is a measure of maturity and how much practice we’ve had in learning and exhibiting this skill.

Many will have heard that Clinton was upbeat and confident in her little private DC meeting with very important people today.  As reported by TPM  Clinton is predicting that "...we're gonna win this,..."  Her key advisors, aides and super-delegates made presentations and reinforced the message of "Yes, we will" win.

But who was the audience for this public relations event?

we'd be about mid-way through it.

The protagonist has been given heroic qualities.  He parlayed his reputation for busting big-time white collar criminals into the governorship of a large state.  From that powerful position, he continues to be a thorn in the side of the Wall St. crooks and liars.  Yet for all his smarts, he somehow overlooks that the prey he's stalking has friends in very high places.  Then because he can't help himself, he consorts with a high priced hooker.  Leaving behind the evidence of the arrangement of the assignation.  The  prostitution ring is busted by the Feds and Mr. Hero gets scooped as client #1.  But no John Doe invisibiilty cloak for our hero.  He's outed immediately in the media.

Democrats have no one to blame for this but themselves.  Long before the MSM ‘00 swoon for McCain, Democrats in DC were telling the nation that McCain was okay.  That he is a good Republican.  I don’t know when this began, but it was concurrent with the historical revisionism of Goldwater by Democrats.  "Goldwater was a good guy" and since McCain is essentially AuH20 v. 2.0, he’s a good guy too.  

In that milieu, is it any wonder that the former Goldwater Girl would be simpatico with McCain?  Pictures of the two of them together look as if they have the hots for each other.  More so than seems apparent from pictures of either of them with their respective spouses.  So, how big of a step was it for her to state that she and McCain are peers and Obama is a piece of fluff that wandered in from Hicksville. Neither invited nor welcome at their party.

In the presidential campaign TV advertising awards.  Time will tell if it’s as effective and therefore, as brilliant as the best of the best over the past fifty years.  What can be said is that it’s competing in a category with no prior winners or even honorable mentions.   Let’s first review one observer's top choices since the dawn of TV political advertising:

Not Backing Hillary.  

...Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo and her gross pandering on flag-burning are just contemptible little dodges.
...

Today the NYTimes reports that Warren Buffet has stepped up and offered to insulate the municipal bond portfolios of MBIA, AMBAC and Financial Guaranty Ins from the "great shitpile," as Atrios refers to it.  The other day I suggested that Congress needed to do something to protect those portfolio guarantees.  The consequences of doing nothing and letting MBIA etc. slowly work their way towards bankruptcy would escalate the already dire financial future we are looking at.  In this instance, Buffett is doing something that is for the good of this country and should not be viewed as simply the action of a savvy businessman looking to skim off the cream of some troubled companies, although that is true as well.

Do you remember when you first heard these words?

...
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.
...
... Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade-long war. Not only against soldiers, but against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq.

It was somewhat bizarre to read and listen to liberal bloggers and talk show folks maintaining that there was nothing odd about the New Hampshire Democratic primary election results; whereas, the professional pollsters have been scratching their heads and struggling to come up with an explanation.  I’m quite confident that these same liberals would be screaming "fraud" and demanding a recount if this had been a general election and the pre-election polls had the Republican down by nine points and then she/he won by three points.  Statistically, what happened in New Hampshire is, by several magnitudes, less likely than what happened in OH in 2004.  Or FL 2000.  The votes may well have been recorded and counted accurately, but  it’s crazy to cavalierly dismiss such a wide disparity between the pre-election polls and the results as a function of "women coming home to Hillary" because Hillary showed some feeling and/or an angry response to how the MSM trashing of Hillary for it.      

And was the result what all of them expected or wanted?  (Note: all this assumes that Hillary won fair and square in, around and to the northeast of Manchester and the NH DEM machine didn't rig the vote count.)

For the record, at this time in US history, I’ve had no doubt that a woman or any minority could win the Presidency.  After eight years of GWB, a Republican win has been in the impossible dream arena .  However, I’m hard pressed to view Hillary as a success story for women or Barack as a success story for African Americans.  Yet, of the two, Obama’s candidacy sends nothing but a positive, non-stereotypical message to African Americans; whereas, embedded in Hillary’s campaign is the message that women still need to marry the right man.

Can we name that tune with one note?

In 2004, it took two notes for me to call the general election.  Of course that one might have appeared to be a bit easier because the Republican opponent was predefined.  I mourned after the New Hampshire primary because it meant that the race was over.  GWB would be around for another four years.  

I uttered a few expletives upon reading that Mr. Finger Wagging is now saying "Blame Me for Health Failure."  No, we wouldn't want to blame your wife for putting together a complex unworkable and insurance company driven plan.  Not now when it could impact her run for the White House.    

But you see, it wasn't really his fault either, because there was no money to pay for it.  This time will be different.  There will be money.  "This time, when you let the tax cuts for upper-income people expire, it'll create a pool of money that wasn't there last time," Bill Clinton said.  Let's run that through again.  There was no money for the eight years he was President.  Then GWB succeeds him and cuts taxes which runs up a few trillion more in the National Debt but as soon as the tax cuts expire there will be money for health care.  Total bullshit.

An evangelical "christian" on Krasny's "Forum" (KQED-NPR) this morning insisted that torture is not a black and white issue.  In his world a pro-war, pro-torture, pro-choice POTUS candidate is preferable to an anti-war, anti-torture, pro-choice candidates.  In his world abortion is a black and white issue for evangelicals.  What is mind-boggling is that not one of his positions is supported by the "New Testament."  What support there is for war and torture in the "Old Testament" was specifically rejected by the leader of the Christian movement.  

If these people were physicists, they would put Newtonian physics on equal footing with modern physics.  Instead of being subordinate to and not correct in all aspects to a larger, more complete understanding of physics.  I would have no more respect for such people than I do the so-called "Christian" evangelicals.  Although the former would be a hell of a lot less dangerous than the former.

Those were the words of a manager to me after an in-house attorney nixed the squirrely deals with Enron that the manager had been pursuing.  I listened and mouthed something that could pass for empathy for the manager's difficult job.  As the attorney was very sharp and the manager wasn't, I needed no more information to know who had made the right call.  Of course the attorney and manager weren't speaking the same language.  The attorney was only concerned with the legal implications of the deal while the manager was confident that Enron could buy its way out of any legal difficulties that in this particular deal were unlikely to materialize.  

Businessmen and businesswomen are suckers for deals that promise high returns and no risk.  Throw caution to the wind.  Ignore the rules, the law and/or financial principles.  Only the plodders, risk averse and mental midgets need rules, laws and principles.  Financial giants and geniuses make their own rules and can defy gravity.  

With all the reporting and public disclosure requirements of modern presidential elections, comparing this aspect of the various presidential campaigns should be a simple and straightforward task.  But it's far easier said than done.  As good as opensecrets.org is, it's still easy to misrepresent the financial condition of a campaign.  To spin the numbers in campaign press releases and for the MSM to do less than accurate and or full reporting.  So far the two most misleading reports are those for candidates Clinton and Romney.