Juan Cole points out that this doesn't quite square with this.
"My first reaction on this report from the battlefield is that the Iraqis are beginning to show me something," Bush told National Public Radio on Monday.
Baldface lie, or is he that ill informed?
According to a very close friend of Nancy Pelosi, she feels that Bush is simply ill equipped for his job. An incompetent, nothing more. I believe that his astounding lack of intellectual curiosity would easily lead him to ignore any and all details concerning Iraq on which he is briefed. It's not fun to pay attention to any more.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The Sad Truth
Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler nails the sick way in which our punditry is incapable of treating Hillary as anything but a militant harpie, here.
The sad truth is that even though Somerby and Glenn Greenwald (here)make all of the right points, the fact is that this meme resonates in a way that cannot be underestimated. We can label Matthews and MoDo and the even more blatantly offensive "wingnuts" as such, but the size of their megaphone and the simplistic appeal of their arguments weaves their narrative more effectively into the national discourse than the more reasoned responses of a hundred bloggers. Unfortunately, "liberal=unpatriotic, probably treasonous", "conservative=strong on defense from the islamonazis" is a more powerful message than the logic of the blogs.
In the end, it will be the humiliation and the cost of Iraq that will sink the Boy King.
The sad truth is that even though Somerby and Glenn Greenwald (here)make all of the right points, the fact is that this meme resonates in a way that cannot be underestimated. We can label Matthews and MoDo and the even more blatantly offensive "wingnuts" as such, but the size of their megaphone and the simplistic appeal of their arguments weaves their narrative more effectively into the national discourse than the more reasoned responses of a hundred bloggers. Unfortunately, "liberal=unpatriotic, probably treasonous", "conservative=strong on defense from the islamonazis" is a more powerful message than the logic of the blogs.
In the end, it will be the humiliation and the cost of Iraq that will sink the Boy King.
Another blow to the boutique investment banking model
The WSJ reports today that Goldman got received a no-action letter from the SEC giving them broad access to using client-commission arrangements. Through these arrangements, Goldman and other large sell side investment banks will act as "commission catchers" for smaller research boutiques. Mutual funds like this because they can be sure of Goldman's top notch execution and still receive and pay for boutique firms' research. It's really just another version of soft-dollar commission payment, but one that specifically cuts out the small trading desks that most regional and boutique I-banks still maintain.
Hedge funds won't like the service much, because they'll find it tougher to mask their trading flow, and they suspect (quite rightly) that Goldman and the other bulge bracket firms are trading against their flow.
The real losers, though, are the traditional boutique investment banks that still struggle to make the old cash equity model work. The cold economic reality is that the cash equities business is going away.
Hedge funds won't like the service much, because they'll find it tougher to mask their trading flow, and they suspect (quite rightly) that Goldman and the other bulge bracket firms are trading against their flow.
The real losers, though, are the traditional boutique investment banks that still struggle to make the old cash equity model work. The cold economic reality is that the cash equities business is going away.
Audacity
I think this comment from the NYT article will go down as an epitaph for this administration:
In an interview on Monday, Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, “This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable.”
It perfectly captures their firm belief in the essential rightness of this administration's policies, whether we like it or not. Rosen's confidence comes from the same place that TPM Muckraker hits upon in this post on Condi Rice's evasion of Jim Webb's direct question regarding the administration's ability to attack Iran without Congressional approval. Link
Webb's questions really answer themselves, don't they?
In an interview on Monday, Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said, “This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable.”
It perfectly captures their firm belief in the essential rightness of this administration's policies, whether we like it or not. Rosen's confidence comes from the same place that TPM Muckraker hits upon in this post on Condi Rice's evasion of Jim Webb's direct question regarding the administration's ability to attack Iran without Congressional approval. Link
Webb's questions really answer themselves, don't they?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Steve Gilliard (commenting on TAPPED) has an interesting post up about Cheney. I love how The News Blog is unafraid of putting it out there. They've been outspoken on a number of very controversial calls, in particular, the increasing isolation and psychosis of the President, the reality of Sadr's power base, and our impotence in addressing that movement, and now the funk that surrounds this administration, as they begin the inevitable circling around the drain. I think that many who don't follow things closely will be surprised by how much resentment exists close to the surface in the new majority party. Many on that side of the aisle will never forgive the treatment that Clinton received at that hands of the Republicans.
Tapped has this up
Even without the Libby trial, and I can't imagine him keeping his job if he testifies, Cheney is a very sick man He has fallen asleep in public. Part of his dogmatic nature is due to his ill health. He is on at least 10 different drugs for his heart and related illnesses.
It is a shock he has lasted this long.
However, if Cheney goes, Bush will be soon to follow. He has been his buffer.
If Cheney is eased out, be sure that health will be the cover.
I think when people start investigating, the conspiracy to hide Cheney's health problems will stun them.
The end of Cheney
Tapped has this up
FINAL SACRIFICE. For all the talk in the '90s about how Bill Clinton epitomized the self-absorption of the Baby Boomers, the current White House occupant has magnified Clinton's failures by several orders of magnitude. All must be sacrificed to George W. Bush's whim, his need to be right, his desire to find now the affirmation and self-regard that so painfully eluded him before his 40th birthday.
All of which is preview to this prediction: Dick Cheney will be sacrificed. The Libby trial currently underway is certainly part of his whacking (to use Eugene Robinson's Sopranos metaphor from today's Washington Post column). But the story seems to me larger than trooping various White House officials into court to narrow the culprits in the Plame leak episode to Cheney and his close confederates.
Cheney is the final sacrifice -- the last layer between Bush and the disapproving public, the skeptical media, and the angry Democrats. In one sense, having him there has always provided Bush a human (and humanizing-by-contrast) buffer against the hordes who oppose him and his policies. To sacrifice Cheney is therefore to have sunk to but one level above the very bottom, the core of the presidency itself. When Cheney goes on television, as he did last week with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, proclaiming the Iraq war a success, he demonstrates that he is either (a) unhinged from reality; or (b) playing a willing role in his own, inevitable discrediting and marginalization.
Under either scenario, his neck is moving slowly but inevitably toward the noose. Somebody, after all, has to pay for the complete collapse of the Republican majority and the conservative agenda. And since Bush himself has never paid the price of his own failures in life, it is Cheney who will pay for them next.
--Tom Schaller
Even without the Libby trial, and I can't imagine him keeping his job if he testifies, Cheney is a very sick man He has fallen asleep in public. Part of his dogmatic nature is due to his ill health. He is on at least 10 different drugs for his heart and related illnesses.
It is a shock he has lasted this long.
However, if Cheney goes, Bush will be soon to follow. He has been his buffer.
If Cheney is eased out, be sure that health will be the cover.
I think when people start investigating, the conspiracy to hide Cheney's health problems will stun them.
I'm going to start to record some thoughts on the almost surreal situation that we find ourselves in, midway through the now repudiated presidency of the Boy King. I get the feeling that we really are living in profoundly important times, which corresponds roughly to an Irish blessing of some sort, I realize.
What the internets need like a frozen boot to the head is another half-informed blogger, ranting and raving about the abominations that have befallen this country, this world, under this administration, I am aware. That said, perhaps if I blog only when I feel compelled to do so, I may add a unique perspective to the discourse. We'll just see about that.
My guess is that each individual synthesizes current events and what they may mean differently, and that this medium may provide some outlet for putting those thoughts into words in a way that may be interesting to others.
What the internets need like a frozen boot to the head is another half-informed blogger, ranting and raving about the abominations that have befallen this country, this world, under this administration, I am aware. That said, perhaps if I blog only when I feel compelled to do so, I may add a unique perspective to the discourse. We'll just see about that.
My guess is that each individual synthesizes current events and what they may mean differently, and that this medium may provide some outlet for putting those thoughts into words in a way that may be interesting to others.
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