by Malooga

lifted from a comment

@Copeland:

BO’s qualities as a human being are irrelevant.

As Arthur Silber has pointed out numerous times, the office of the
Presidency — Commander-in-Chief of the greatest, fastest collapsing,
Empire in History — requires a level of pathological violence which no
one here would countenance in a family member, and which instantly
would land you in jail, or worse, if you were a member of the
underclass and stole one billionth of what any President does, or were
responsible for one billionth of the death, destruction, violence, and
mayhem.

It requires misstating, or perpetrating non-existent threats, in
Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Cuba,
Bolivia, North Korea, and a dozen other places around the globe, as BO
already has done, in the murderous interest of said Empire. It requires
terrorizing and subduing populations of those countries so that
ostensibly US-based corporations can appropriate the resources and
wealth of those lands. It requires the use of CIA, special-ops, death
squads, aerial bombing, remote bombing, drones and surveillance
aircraft, spraying of toxic chemicals, radiological poisoning, killing
of union leaders, economic suasion (starvation, destruction of critical
infrastructure, destruction of drug manufactories, economic embargos,
etc.), proxy wars, wars on drugs, wars with drugs, wars funded by
drugs, humanitarian wars, concentration camps (1 1/2 M in Gaza),
spying, data-mining, eavesdropping, propaganda, fear-mongering,
threats, lying, duplicity, fear, subversion, etc. in pursuit of those
goals.

Cont. reading: On What The Presidency Requires

Reuters wants us to react to this:

U.N. investigators have found traces of uranium at a Syrian site Washington says was a secret nuclear reactor almost built before Israel bombed the target last year, diplomats said on Monday.
…
"It isn’t enough to conclude or prove what the Syrians were doing but the IAEA has concluded this requires further investigation," said one diplomat accredited to the IAEA.

"It was a man-made component, not natural (ore). There is no sign there was already nuclear fuel or (production) activity there," another diplomat told Reuters.

Let’s determine the validity of this.

This news is obviously not an IAEA finding but something someone planted with Reuters. The information was leaked by diplomats and  "The International Atomic Energy Agency and Syria had no immediate comment."

The IAEA has such fine instruments that it can detect artificially altered, i.e. man-made, Uranium atoms about everywhere in the world. Thanks to the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in 1945 and lots of open air nuke testing in the following years the existence of man-made components of uranium is inevitable and meanwhile provable anywhere on this planet.

The alleged reactor in Syria was supposed to be a copy of the North Korean Yongbon type which is a copy of the UK’s Magnox reactor.

That type uses natural uranium to breed bomb-quality U235 and plutonium. To moderate the process such a reactor needs tons of graphite. If the alleged Syrian whatever was loaded with natural uranium or graphite, lots of such would have been found in detectable traces in the nearby environment.

As there is no leak or factual report that points to increased levels of
natural uranium or graphite in the samples the IAEA took around the site
after the Israelis bombed it, one can only conclude that the Syrian
installation, if it was a reactor at all, was not a filled reactor near operational capability.

Instead some diplomats, i.e. Israeli, U.S. and U.K. operatives accredited to the IAEA in Vienna, now leak that the IAEA found some traces of man-made Uranium around the site.

That might well be correct. They would have found such in my living room too. But that fact would neither prove that my toaster is a nuclear something nor does it prove that my TV was build with the intend of converting it into a reactor.

There is so far nothing, zero, nada that would prove that Syria had one or another kind of nuclear program at all. There was a "Box on the Euphrades" that some Israeli bombers hit for whatever reason. There is zero believable prove that the site had to do with WMDs or other nefarious things.

Cont. reading: Uranium Traces in Syria – Laughable Nonsense

A prime case study on how to ruin a retail company:

• Profits from sales were down a bit, because some retail sales changed to the Internets.
• Management switched salespersons from commission based pay to meager hourly wages.
• Sales droped further.
• Management fired long-term, experienced and expensive salespersons and hires unqualified but cheaper people instead.
• Sales drop further.
• Overpaid management gets fired.
• New management finds the company is bankrupt.

Cont. reading: How To Ruin A Retail Company

The U.S. government will invest additional $40 billion into the bankrupt insurer A.I.G. The company will use the money to buy up more or less worthless Collateral Debt Obligations and Mortgage Backed Securities who’s value A.I.G. originally insured. Two off-balance-sheet vehicles will be created to hold these papers. Losses in those off-balance-sheet entities will mostly have to be carried by the government.

The NYT writer trying to explain the issue falls for the sales-pitch. He has been told that the government would get something tangible for its investment in form of more A.I.G. shares. But the numbers do not add up:

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve were near a deal to abandon the initial bailout plan and invest another $40 billion in the company, these people said.
…
At the same time, the government, using part of the $700 billion fund, would buy $40 billion in preferred shares in A.I.G.
…
A.I.G. negotiated the original $85 billion revolving credit line with the Federal Reserve after its efforts to raise money from private lenders failed in the panic of mid-September.
…
In exchange for making the loan, the Fed was promised a 79.9 percent stake in A.I.G.

The $40 billion of preferred shares will not change the size of the government’s stake in A.I.G., people briefed on the plans said.

How is this supposed to work?

The government already owns 80% of A.I.G.’s shares. It will get more shares now for handing over more money. But the size of the government stake in A.I.G. will not increase?

Cont. reading: More Taxpayer Rip-Offs

Your news & views …

GM, Ford and Chrysler are on the brink of bankruptcy and may run out of money by the end of the year.

Should they get taxpayer money in an attempt to keep them alive?

The big three are said to have four major structural problems:

• uncompetitive products
• customers depend on debt to buy cars
• the dealership structure
• high cost due to health care and pension obligations

It is not true that GM and Ford do not have the products that are more environment friendly, have low mileage and would probably sell better. Ford Europe and GM’s Opel/Vauxhall in Europe offer attractive small  and medium size cars with low mileage. It should be no problem to transfer production lines for these to the U.S. under U.S. brands. But the U.S. management seems to be unwilling to do so. They believe that such cars do net sell and push them into niche brands. GM has a total of thirteen brands, Toyota has three. Who is doing better?

The basic idea that car manufacturers should offer producer finance to car buyers seems wrong to me. Companies and their management usually make either good products or are good in banking operation. Partnering with local banks for car finance might be a better way to do that business. And why do consumer finance cars at all? It is quite expensive if you include the full insurance that is demanded.

The dealership structure in the U.S. is a consequence of the historic buying/selling habits that are no longer justified. The manufacturers send cars to the dealers in various colors and with various features independent of real customer demand. The dealers are supposed to sell the cars they get upfront, not the cars the customers really want. A different selling system would provide the dealers with one car of each type. The customer could test-drive that car, smell it, feel it and check the possible variants. The buyer could then decide what features and color s/he exactly wants. A clever produce-on demand system could deliver the individualized car within one or two weeks. And why not sell such individually configured cars through the internet?

Health care is an issue where the government could really help the car companies. Single payer universal health care in a regulated government provided system would do a lot to lower health care costs in the U.S. while providing, in average, much better service. For companies like the car manufacturers the effective hourly wage cost would sink and make them more competitive.

Many of the pension obligations companies and cities, counties and states have are already under-financed. Many of their pension funds will go bust and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp will have to take care of them. The PBGC is backstopped by the federal government. One can argue that the under-financed pension funds are already a form of silent socialization of risk and losses and in effect a scam. Socialize the companies’ and other pension funds now by putting their money and their obligations into an extended social security system. The effects will be the same than with universal health care.

In my view the government could and should help the car manufacturers. But just to provide loans now when it is obvious that without deep structural changes more loan requests will follow before the inevitable bankruptcy, does not help.

Band aid is not sufficient now. The debt bubble busted and there is deep need for structural changes to get back to some healthy economy. The government can provide some of these structural changes, especially in health care and pensions. The other structural changes have to be in the mindset of the car manufacturers and their management. Any loan to these companies should be conditioned on such changes taking place.

A hefty unemployment report was released to day by the Labor Department:

Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  October’s drop in payroll employment followed declines of 127,000 in August and 284,000 in September, as revised.

The headline number is the U3 measurement of unemployment which not very inclusive. The realistic number measured as U6 includes "Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers" is at a seasonal adjusted 11.8%.

Average hours of those employed are down while seasonal and inflation adjusted hourly wages are up a bit.

Notice that the original number for September 2008 was a drop of 159,000. It was now revised to 284,000. The original August number was a drop of 84,000, now revised to 127,000. The October number published today will likely need a huge correction.

On October 27 the Dow was at a low of 8,175. It rallied from there to 9,625 on November 4. Since then it is down to 8,800 and I expect it to at least retest the 2002 low of 7,528. It could go down much lower though because current earning expectations are still much too high.

It took the New York Times three month, four reporters and lots of expenses to provide news that I provided here within hours after the war over South Ossetia started.

One wonders why the Times needed so long.

Who gave the orders to hold the truth back and who allowed it to be printed today?

The New York Times sells this news today, November 7 2008:

Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

Moon of Alabama provided this news for free on August 8 2008, 8:00am est:

Despite yesterday’s announced ceasefire, the government of Georgia today launched an all out military attack on the breakaway South Ossetia region in northern Georgia.

NYT on Nov 7:

Two senior Western military officers stationed in Georgia, speaking on condition of anonymity because they work with Georgia’s military, said that whatever Russia’s behavior in or intentions for the enclave, once Georgia’s artillery or rockets struck Russian positions, conflict with Russia was all but inevitable. This clear risk, they said, made Georgia’s attack dangerous and unwise.

MoA on Aug 8, 8:00am est (headlined: Saakashvili Wants War – He Will Get It)

For internal reasons as much as on foreign policy ground Russia will
not allow Saakashvili to take over South Ossetia. It will either support the Ossetians with weapons which may lead to a prolonged guerrilla war, or it may even invade on its own.

Cont. reading: Who Ordered The Slow News On Georgia

Politico does a wrap up piece on the McCain campaign. In it Mark Salter, the co-writer of McCain’s books, says:

“Our polling showed that more than 60 percent of voters identified Obama as a liberal. Typically, a candidate is not going to win the presidency with those figures. But I think the country just disregarded it. People didn’t care. They just wanted the biggest change they could get.”

That is a wrong, but typical Washington inside talk.

"People do not want liberals," the elite in DC says. How do they know?

Could the fact that lots of people voted for someone they (falsely?) perceived as liberal be explained by their will to put a liberal into the White House? Yes, it could and it is the most logical explanation.

But the Washington elite is full of this nonsense. "The country must be ruled from the center," they now say. What bullshit. Did Bush ever ruled from the center?

Now give the people what they asked and voted for.

Today the Washington Post reports:

Gen. David H. Petraeus has decided to reduce the number of U.S. combat brigades in Iraq from 15 to 14 about six weeks earlier than planned, as a result of dramatically lower violence there, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
..
The departing brigade has served in Baghdad, where attack levels have plunged.
Combat Brigade Is Cut 6 Weeks Early in Iraq

Petraeus is right to withdraw troops from Iraq. He is wrong in asserting ‘dramatically lower violence there.’ That is simply a lie to justify moving troops to Afghanistan as his new Commander in Chief demands.

There are 150,000 U.S. soldiers and ten thousands of security-contractors in Iraq. But they seem to make little difference to the ongoing violence.

There were at some twenty bomb explosions in Baghdad in just the last four days. The civil war is back in Iraq and there is nothing the U.S. can do about it. The war will stop only after the U.S. has left.

Monday:

One of the explosions hit the busy Karrada district, damaging many shops.
…
One bomb was detonated outside a police building in eastern Baghdad, and then as people ran away, a second bomb was set off in their path.

Police appeared to have been the target in the most serious attack, but it claimed the lives of six civilians.

In the third explosion, the deputy oil minister of Iraq escaped a bomb attack on his convoy with minor injuries but a bodyguard was seriously hurt.

One policeman was killed in a bombing north of Baghdad, while another bomb exploded near a police patrol in west Baghdad, injuring one policeman and a civilian, police said.
Seven dead in Baghdad bomb blasts

Tuesday:

Cont. reading: This Week In Baghdad

Ynetnews: Aide to Rahm Emanuel: Obama pro-Israel

Despite
reports in US media that Illinois Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel has
accepted US president-elect Barack Obama’s offer to serve as White
House chief of staff, a source close to Emanuel told Ynet he has not
yet accepted and was still considering the offer due to personal and
family reasons.

Emanuel is the son of American Jew and Israeli immigrant Dr.
Benjamin Emanuel. The source told Ynet on Wednesday, "Emanuel is
pro-Israeli, and would not be willing to consider accepting the job
unless he was convinced that President-elect Obama is pro-Israel."

Haaretz: Obama kick-starts transition, picks Israeli Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff

Emanuel is the son of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun (Etzel or IZL), a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948.

J’Post: Obama names Emanuel chief of staff

Emanuel, who served in the Clinton White House, has Israeli family and spent significant amounts of time in Israel.
…
In an interview with Ma’ariv, Emanuel’s father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son’s appointment would be good for Israel. "Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he was quoted as saying. "Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House."

The Ma’ariv article also quoted Dr. Emanuel as saying that his son spends most summers visiting in Tel Aviv, and that he speaks Hebrew, but not fluently.

I happen to agree with both, Malooga’s stirring piece below (which I lifted from a comment), and John B. Judis’ analysis on America the Liberal

If Obama and the Democrats in Congress act boldly, they can not only arrest the downturn, but also lay the basis for an enduring majority. As was the case with Franklin Roosevelt, many of the measures necessary to combat the recession–such as spending money on physical and electronic infrastructure, adopting national health insurance–will also help ensure a Democratic majority. The rural South remained Democrat for generations because of Roosevelt’s rural electrification program; a similar program for bringing broadband to the hinterland could lead these voters back to the Democratic Party. And national health insurance could play the same role in Democrats’ future prospects that Social Security played in the perpetuation of the New Deal majority.

…
The Republican Party will be divided and demoralized after this defeat. Just as the Great Depression took Prohibition and the other great social issues of the 1920s off the popular agenda, this downturn has set aside the culture war of the last decades. It wasn’t a factor in the presidential election. And the business lobbies that blocked national health insurance in 1994 will incur the public’s wrath if they once again try to buy Congress.

If, on the other hand, Obama and the Democrats take the advice of official Washington and go slow–adopting incremental reforms, appeasing adversaries that have lost their clout–they could end up prolonging the downturn and discrediting themselves. What could have been a hard realignment could become not merely a soft realignment, but perhaps even an abortive one. That’s not the kind of change that America needs or wants–and, hopefully, Obama and the Democrats understand that.

—

by Malooga:

Remember those old TV commercials where the unsuspecting housewife
learns that her old brand of laundry detergent has been surreptitiously
replaced with a newer better brand, and she just can’t believe it?

Well, that’s what happened to us. The brand was changed with the
pre-planned financial collapse and the largest transfer of wealth in
human history. We all really know this, but because the corporate press
does not "catapult the propaganda" it still doesn’t seem real.

Cont. reading: Change: The Possible One And The One You Might Get

NEW YORK, Nov 5  (RBN and agencies) – The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has hired the former chief risk officer of Bear Stearns Cos, Michael Alix, to advise on bank supervision, according to a release in the Fed’s Web site.

Alix will serve as a senior adviser to William Rutledge in the Bank Supervision Group and his appointment is effective Nov. 3, according to the release dated Oct. 31

Mr. Rutledge praised the exceptional experience of his new hire: "He has been through all this stuff. He knows how people escape effective risk supervision. Micheal now joins us to make sure that they will continue to do so."

At Bear Stearns, an investment bank that collapsed in March and has become hallmark of the global credit crisis, Alix served as chief risk officer from 2006 to 2008 and global head of credit risk management from 1996 to 2006.

Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the New York Fed and a possible Secretary of the Treasury candidate under President-elect Obama emphasized the good relation the Fed had with Alix while he was working at Bear Stearns: "He called me just in time to sell my Bear Stearns shares. Without his advise, me and my colleagues would have lost millions."

Mr. Geithner expects a bigger future role for Mr. Alix: "Michael will not only advise on the supervision of other banks, but will also help us to assess risk the Federal Reserve Bank and the Treasury have taken on." 

"He’ll let me know when the time has come to move my retirement savings from treasuries to gold."

The interview was cut short, when Mr. Geithner received an urgent call from Mr. Alix.

Congratulations!

Thanks to all who helped.

(The Israeli government welcomed Obama’s win by killing six people in Gaza. Didn’t Biden say Obama would be ‘tested’ within six month? Seems like Israel conceded him six minutes.)

When the results come in, I will be asleep. That is a time zone issue, but also the fact that knowing the results today or tomorrow will not change anything.

Anyway – please let us know in comments what the results are and, more importantly, what the reaction to these are. Parties in the streets?

Assessing from far away, anything but a sound Obama win would lead to serious riots. I think the elites and the media know as much and will take care that it does not happen. Obama will win and they will press him to go along with their program: Ross, Rubin and Rahm may give you an idea of what that program will be.

An Obama win will make little difference for the world. McCain would probably bomb other people than Obama will bomb. To the folks who will have their limbs teared off, to prove the U.S. president’s copulation capacities to the U.S. population, that will make no difference at all.

Sorry for such pessimism. But Obama did not beat the system – he simply was more effective using it than McCain. Maybe he will use the power he gained wisely.

But that is unlikely – and a frightening thought.

During Georgia’s war over South Ossetia Human Rights Watch asserted that Russia used cluster bombs. Russia denies to have used any cluster ammunition in that war. My analysis of the pictures provided by HRW and supposed to show such weapon use found that the weapons in question were obviously of ‘western’ origin.

A few days later HRW acknowledged that Georgia used cluster bombs in that war but kept up the claim that some of its pictures showed Russian ammunition debris even while the pictures provided obviously do not show the ammunition type HRW claims they show.

In further backtracking HRW now acknowledges that it were Georgian cluster bombs that killed Georgian people. Writes the Wall Street Journal today:

Georgia used cluster bombs that malfunctioned and fell into towns and villages, killing several of Georgia’s own civilians during its summer war with Russia, according to new research by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based humanitarian organization. Georgia called that conclusion "impossible."

The group found that Russia also made extensive use of cluster bombs during the brief war.
…

Cont. reading: Human Rights Watch Again Backtracks – Still Keeps Up False Claism

Amuse-gueule: Obama Takes Dixville Notch Away From The GOP

The first results are in for the 2008 general election, with the small village of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire again performing its tradition of having everyone turn out to vote at midnight and then immediately reporting the results.

Result: Obama 15 votes, McCain 6.

In my life so far I never experienced voting lines, non-paper ballots or election fraud. People here are amazed that U.S. elections are not organize better. Then again – we do not elect dog catchers, judges, sheriffs or school boards and do not have many prop. x, y and z. So voting here is a bit easier. It is also usually done on a Sunday.

To folks in the U.S. – please let us know what you see in the streets. How are people feeling about it? What do they expect?

We all know that Obama’s emphatically denies his Jewish Ties but what about his cabinet?

Rahm Emanuel is floated as a possible chief of staff in the White House:

When Bill Clinton began his campaign for presidency, he appointed Rahm Emanuel to direct the campaign’s finance committee. But Emanuel left when the Gulf War broke out, in order to volunteer in the IDF.

He served in one of Israel’s northern bases until the war ended, and upon his return to the US became Clinton’s advisor in the White House for almost eight years.

There is also Dennis Ross, who may become Sec State or at least Middle East handler. WINEP, an AIPAC outlet, names him as no.2 in their staff listing. Ross also heads the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute in Jerusalem:

JPPPI’s work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.

Ross was involved in a recent Bipartisan Policy Center report: (ms word):

The report is the product of a high-level bipartisan Task Force led by former Senators Daniel Coats and Charles Robb, and including Ambassador Dennis Ross and Steve Rademaker, ..
…
It advises the new President to engage Iran in negotiations with a pre-determined timetable once our European allies impose greater economic sanctions.  If negotiations fail, the report advises the U.S. to pursue more aggressive tactics, including possibly blockading Iran’s gasoline imports and eventually its crude oil imports.

Those folks seem dangerous.

Then again – anyone who wants to strangle crude oil imports to Iran, a tactic that I suspect to fail, may not have the capacity to do real damage.

It seems like the Democrats attract only the interlectually lower level of the neocons. That may change though.

It might not be a 1964 or 1972 or 1984 style absolute landslide, especially in the electoral college, where the Republicans have built in structural advantages (like the overweights given to small rural states), but — again, assuming Gallup is even close to right — there shouldn’t be any doubt on Wednesday morning that the country has decisively rejected both the Republican Party and the conservative ideology that has dominated American politics since Ronald Reagan first took office.

Some fun, huh?

Billmon: Landslide Watch

Unexpected busy day for me.

But long term barfly anna missed is now blogging at annamissed.com – good thoughts and pictures.

Please use this as an open thread …