A tale of two teams

Slipstream-Chipolte is a cycling team that looks, on the face of it, like they are trying to seriously combat doping in cycling, to the point where they are explicitly stating that they'd like to win races, but they are not all about winning. The feeling is, by doing so they are removing some of the pressure on their riders to dope. Slipstream is also implementing a state of the art rider monitoring system to, to the degree they can, ensure that their riders don't dope. They are going to be my team to root for in 2008.

On the other side, Astana may have a rival, Rock Racing. In fact, I'm betting that this team implodes completely in 2008. It doesn't hurt my prediction that they just signed Tyler Hamilton to race for them in '08. He joins Santi Botero who hasn't really raced since rumors started flowing about him while Phonak was blowing up. Cycling doesn't need Rock Racing right now.

Circuit City

I posted on Circuit City here. How are they doing now? Not so well:

Circuit City Stores Inc., the second-largest U.S. consumer-electronics retailer, reported a fifth straight loss and said it won't make money this quarter, when it typically generates most of its annual profit. The chain dropped 32 percent in early New York trading.

Buh-bye.

I LOVE the WSJ Editorial Page

Since the Weekly World News is out of print. Today's Op-Ed:

[Obama] skips the tie at major indoor events, not just outdoor rallies and Rock the Vote concerts sponsored by MTV. He goes tieless not merely in his shirtsleeves, or even with a blazer. He carries the open-necked look into a realm it was never meant to go: with the two-piece, dark business suit.
This heresy earns the young senator praise from today's keepers of the style tablets. The Washington Post's Robin Givhan -- the acid-penned Madame Blackwell of the Beltway -- could hardly contain herself. "[Obama's] tieless suit," she gushed, "[is] a cross between the style of a 1950s home-from-the-office dad and a 1990s GQ man about town. It is warmly, safely, nostalgically . . . cool."
Others have noticed something else. Take the impeccably liberal Jeff Greenfield. Ask yourself," he challenged his CNN audience, "is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of GQ to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable." We can thank Mr. Greenfield for being reckless enough to say what many were thinking. But he mistakes Mr. Ahmadinejad's source. Mr. Obama may have gotten the idea from GQ, but the Iranian President got it from the Ayatollah Khomeini.
One of the lesser-known outcomes of the 1979 Iranian revolution was the stigmatization of the tie as a tool of Western Imperialism. The Ayatollah even denounced some of his perceived enemies as "tie-wearing cronies of the West." Today in much of the Islamist world, the tie is seen as not merely pro-Western but anti-Islamic, even though no prohibition of the garment can be found in Islamic law. There is a stricture against men wearing silk, but Muslim dandies can get around that by wearing cashmere or linen ties -- and many do.
It's hard to think of anything less hip -- or less intended to be hip -- than Islamist dogma on personal grooming. Yet despite traveling radically different routes along the way, Messrs. Obama and Ahmadinejad somehow manage to wind up in the same sartorial spot. Sort of like the way Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich share virtually identical foreign policies.

My goodness that's a good piece. In one piece they imply that Obama may not wear ties out of some fealty to Khomeni (perhaps his bare neckedness is supposed to be to Muslims what Bush's "Don't put a period on the sentence..." bullshit is to fundamentalist Christians?), but also equate Ron Paul with Kucinich. That is professionalism. That is efficiency. My one critique is that they never got Obama's middle name into the piece, but perhaps they thought it would be too obvious?

This is an embarrassment, even by the low standards of the WSJ editorial page.

Charlie Wilson's War

I read the book a few years ago and was appalled. For those of you who didn't read it, Charlie Wilson was a Congressman who secretly funded the Afghans in their battle against the Soviets during the 80's and 90's. He did it through his control of defense spending, particularly black box spending that he was able to allocate without oversight or approval.

I assume the movie is going to cast Wilson as a swashbuckling, larger-than-life, go-it-alone American misfit does good character. If so, and if that sort of story appeal to you, please keep the following in mind:

1. Wilson was funding the Taliban when they were fighting the Soviets. Money that he secretly sent to them was used to purchase weapons that are likely killing American soldiers today.
2. Since this was all done secretly, nobody within the policy arm of the government could comment on whether this was, or was not, a good idea.
3. This was done at a time when there still was government oversight - imagine what similar black box ops are being funded right now. Look for some of these to blow up in the coming decades as well.

I don't understand the appeal of Charlie Wilson. Check that, I get it (rule breaker, love maker, drug taker) he's a prototypical American hero, I just don't understand why more people don't look at his rule breaking with utter revulsion.

Thoughts?

Different take on e-paper

It's not a reader, but a writer:

So long as the user writes on paper printed with a special pattern, the smartpen transforms what is written into interactive text. For example, the pen has a recording function, called paper replay, that can record sound and connect it to what the user writes while the sounds are being recorded. Later, the user can tap the pen over what she wrote and replay the associated sounds. "We're starting to make the whole world of printable surfaces accessible and functional," says Livescribe CEO Jim Marggraff.

The idea and the product have been around for a few years in a number of iterations and form factors. The thing I like about this one is the recording ability - you can retain both the spoken words and your written notes and pair them up. In fact, it could change note-taking altogether since you will no longer have to capture the words spoken, but can instead riff on the ideas.

I'm a pen and paper guy, so the feel of the paper and the pen are going to be issues for me, but it seems like it could be a really cool thing.

Question of the Day

Do Bonds and/or Clemens get into the Hall of Fame?

Baseball and Steriods

Suppose I should say something about this. I've been saying for a while that in aerobic sports (running, cycling) there are no longer any legitimate superhuman efforts. It just can't happen. Looks like the same applies to non-aerobic sports as well.

Any thoughts on whether the players' association will agree to blood testing for HGH? I'm going with a solid "no" because I'm not sure how much people really care about athletes cheating and as long as the union can dig in its heels, I don't see much substantive change.

Hilliary and Message Discipline

Boy, there sure are a bunch of Hilliary staffers releasing unapproved messages these days. A positively alarming amount of freelancing. I really hope she can corral those bad eggs.

End of year time again

Yes, it's approaching, and with the end of the year comes the inevitable lists and quizzes. So far, this has been my favorite quiz. I scored an 89% (16/18). Good luck.

Rate freeze

Well, it doesn't really look like anyone has a really solid understanding of what's going to happen. On a quick read around, I think that the actual number of people that will be eligible and participate in this program is far lower than the 1-1.5 million I keep seeing quoted.

I don't think that this is really going to do all that much for the economy or the housing crisis - at best it avoids some foreclosures (which is a good thing). At worst, it's lots of activity with little impact.

It's cold and flu season

I got my flu shot today. You should too.

Mortgage Workout

Still trying to work through it, I'll have something tomorrow. Right now I'm trying to figure out who is left holding the bag, and it seems like it may be the bondholders. I can't see how that happens though. More tomorrow.

What the hell is wrong with Martin Feldstein?

He has an amazing Op-Ed in today's WSJ called "How to Avert Recession". I'm not sure he gives a way to avert recession in the piece, but he sure does give a few ways to completely fuck the country.

When you read it, you'll likely be lulled into a false sense of security. He starts out sounding very reasonable and reasoned, making one sound non-controversial statement after another. Then this happens:

What's really needed is a fiscal stimulus, enacted now and triggered to take effect if the economy deteriorates substantially in 2008. There are many possible forms of stimulus, including a uniform tax rebate per taxpayer or a percentage reduction in each taxpayer's liability. There are also a variety of possible triggering events. The most suitable of these would be a three-month cumulative decline in payroll employment. The fiscal stimulus would automatically end when employment began to rise or when it reached its pre-downturn level.

Are you kidding me? He wants to reduce tax rates at precisely the same time that the government is going to realize falling tax revenues (falling corportate profits, personal incomes, investment gains)? What would that do to the dollar? Falling interest rates and massive amounts of borrowing to close a spiraling deficit due to increased fiscal expenditures and decreasing revenues would kill the dollar, reserve currency or not, this would be a dollar bloodbath.

Later:

Even if the Fed decides that it should not cut rates further at the present time, (HA! Good luck with that. - Jim) it would not raise rates to offset the stimulus effect of the fiscal change. From the Fed's point of view, the tax cuts can provide a desirable short-run stimulus without the inflationary impact that would result from a lower interest rate and an increase in the stock of money. Some reliance now on a fiscal stimulus rather than easier money would also take pressure off the exchange-rate adjustment. While further declines of the dollar are necessary to shrink the massive U.S. trade deficit, continued rapid declines might lead to counterproductive retaliatory actions by some of our trading partners.

"[T]he tax cuts can provide a desirable short-run stimulus without the inflationary impact that would result from a lower interest rate and an increase in the stock of money." Is he serious? A plunging dollar would again make oil prices surge and that would flow through to the rest of the economy. And for those of you who still insist on looking at "core inflation" only (for whatever reason), $200/barrel oil would flow through the entire economy. Lower interest rates with massive borrowing is an economic disaster in the making.

And the final part of the quote above makes no sense to me either. Announcing this would lead to "counterproductive retaliatory actions" by some of our trading partners who would be forced to start and reallocate foreign exchange portfolios away from dollars.

It seems like we are currently playing a global game of chicken with the world saying, in effect, we don't think that you will move away from dollars in the near future because doing so would seriously impact the value of of your own reserves, that is, you can't afford to move away from dollars. I wouldn't be so sure. If our trading partners become convinced that the dollar is going to continue its decline, why wouldn't they start to get out now while they can? It's a dangerous game we're playing.

Hi Rudy, remember Alan?

You should. Rudy:

We knew that Rudy eventually had Judi Nathan assigned her own NYC police security detail. Now it seems that while their affair was still a secret and while Rudy was still married, he set his mistress up with her own personal driver and NYC-taxpayer funded car to get around town.

Alan:

State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi today quit his post and pleaded guilty to a single felony charge after arranging a deal with prosecutors that will spare him prison time.
His decision to step down came as Albany prosecutors were preparing to ask a grand jury to indict him on charges of defrauding the government and on other felonies stemming from his use of state employees as chauffeurs and aides to his wife, a law enforcement official said, charges that could have yielded a prison sentence had he been convicted.

I wish I could say that this would end his campaign, but I've called more ends to his campaigns than market crashes and the continuation of both is starting to make me look silly. But this really should end his campaign.

UPDATE:

Oh well, this is why there are professionals out there:

Again, this is preliminary and we're in touch with experts on New York law. But the law that snagged Hevesi applies to state officials, not all public officials in the state of New York. So even though Rudy did something considerably more egregious we're pretty sure the law simply doesn't apply to him as a city elected official (probably a case where the diminutive nature of his office is something he's thankful for).

Citi of Arabia

That is, I swear, the title of an editorial in today's WSJ. It's an amusing read. Apparently the WSJ believes in free markets up to the point where the markets do something that they don't like. Like having shifty Arabs buy up our good assets. Harsh? Judge for yourself:

Abu Dhabi's 4.9% stake combined with the 3.9% stake of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal makes them the bank's dominant shareholders, and who knows how many other smaller holdings are in Middle Eastern hands. The small Gulf states may be governed separately from Saudi Arabia, but they are closely linked by geography, family ties, and national interests. For purposes of political influence, they often behave as part of the same tribe.

Got that? "[S]ame tribe." Nice. And these are just the big deals. Who knows how many other Arabs from the same tribe have bought little pieces of Citi - hell, Arabs may own all of it for all we know! And if they own it they'll use it... for what exactly?

and it offers a Middle Eastern entree into the U.S. financial system that since 9/11 plays a pivotal role in the war on terror.

Ah, yes, they'll have an entree into the U.S. financial system which up until this time has been great at stopping Saudi Arabia and others in the tribe from funding terrorism. WTF? Note to the WSJ: they really don't need the U.S. financial system to fund terrorists.

And, on top of all the other nonsense, the editorial uses a weird phrase:

Citigroup did have to shore up its balance sheet, and we suppose petrodollars are a better source of capital than U.S. taxpayers under a "too big to fail" doctrine. On the other hand, where were Mr. Rubin and the bank board when Citi was betting so much on subprime?

Did you catch it? How in the hell is that an "On the other hand"? It's my understanding that when one uses those words, it indicates that you are making a counterpoint to your previous statement. Most of the time it wouldn't be a big deal and I'd let it go, but it stuck out for me because they do it again later in the editorial:

Readers of these columns might recall in particular Abu Dhabi's adventures in Beltway banking. It was Sheik Zayed, the father of the current ruler of
Abu Dhabi, who owned the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or
BCCI, whose fraudulent tentacles spanned the globe, including the highest levels
of Washington politics a decade and a half ago.

The current emir, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, is not his father -- who always maintained that he was a victim of the BCCI fraud himself. And Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney who investigated BCCI, tells us that Abu Dhabi "has been responsible" since BCCI.

On the other hand, the bank was forced to settle for hundreds of millions of dollars after lying to evade American banking laws. Mr. Morgenthau also recounted that the elder Sheik Zayed once called to inform the State Department that, if Mr. Morgenthau indicted anyone in the royal family over the scandal, he would pull his billions out of the U.S. and make no further investments here.

So in the 80's, al Nahyan's father led BCCI. However, al Nahyan is not his father, and Abu Dhabi has been fine since BCCI. On the other hand, in the 80's his father was a crook and said unpleasant things.

If this was an off-the-cuff speech maybe I'd understand, but I'd expect someone proofread this. Perhaps I expect too much.

One last thing to keep in mind, the next paragraph after the excerpt above reads:

Mr. Morgenthau says this message was passed to him via the Justice Department. His reply: "Tell them that you don't control that cranky S.O.B. in New York." As a long-time New York DA, Mr. Morgenthau could stand up to such political pressure the way the Justice Department might not. In certain corners of the world, large investments come with political expectations.

"The way the Justice Department might not." Truer words were never written on in a WSJ editorial. When it comes down to our safety, or the profits of the friends of highly placed Republicans, even the WSJ knows what the score is.

Cycling Update

Haven't had one of these in a while. T-Mobile is out as a sponsor:

T-Mobile, the professional cycling team that began this year with the sport’s largest budget and an ambitious plan to reform the sport’s drug problem, lost its sponsor yesterday because of continuing doping controversies.

The team will continue, just not as T-Mobile. That's two major sponsors (Discovery being the other) who have left the sport and teams have not been able to replace either. Adidas also dropped its sponsorship of the ex-T-Mobile team today.

Astana, a.k.a. "Team Syringe" is having difficulty getting off the ground. You'll remember that's where Johan Bruneel went after deciding that this wasn't the right time to bring a new sponsor into cycling to take over the Discovery team. He took Contador, Levi, and some other Disco boys with him.

Well, it seems that the Astana license is being held up, something about the former managers not paying their riders - go figure. Right now, it's unclear how and when the situation will be cleared up. I'd assume that Astana will get their new licence in time for next year, but hey, you never know.

Should be an interesting spring.

More updates later this week on the US scene.

Marriage

I had to read this Op-Ed from Monday's NYT a few times and I'm still not sure I understand what exactly Stephanie Coontz is advocating. I'm not sure if she does or does not want the state involved in marriage.

Does anyone have an idea?

Does anyone have any idea why the NYT would run something like this now?

Books and e-Books

Amazon introduced the Kindle yesterday. Amusingly, it's gotten 2 of 5 stars on Amazon's own web site (based on 353 reviews). The reviews I've read so far aren't even that effusive. It seems to have a few minor drawbacks, but with wireless connectivity and access to newspapers and magazines, this could be the wave of the future. Kindle seems to be taking what Sony did with its reader and moving it to the next level. So why am I so ambivalent?

I think it comes down to the format itself. I love the display on the Sony e-book reader too, and the form factor is amazing. What bugged me about the Sony reader was (1) the price, (2) that you couldn't annotate the pages as you read them, (3) the price of the titles. Kindle doesn't seem to address any of these issues. It adds wireless connectivity so I can download the NY Times on my way to work, but I still can't underline articles or make notes in the margins.

I'm a book person at heart, and a paper person generally. I still print things out when I need to proof them carefully, still do much of my thinking with pencil (yes, pencil) and paper. And I still like the feel of books. The e-paper used in e-books is amazing, I like it much better than even LCD screens, but until I can write on it I'm not going to get all worked up about it.

It's just weird

That Goldman can issue a "Sell" rating on Citibank. I'd think there'd be a conflict or two when these entities rate one another.

Another interesting factoid, Goldman's bonus pool is larger than Bear Stearns' market cap.

Housing and the Economy - Chapter 35

In which Jim links to Nouriel Roubini who solidifies Jim's current biases:

In this regard, evidence is mounting that a debt-burdened and saving-less US consumer – that until recently used its home as an ATM and borrowed against its housing wealth - is now on the ropes and at its tipping point.

Roubini's post is long, but worthwhile to read in its entirety.

Brave

Senators McCain, Dodd, Biden, Obama, Clinton, Cornyn, and Alexander, way to show bravery and leadership by not voting either way for Mukasey yesterday. Five of you are running for president. Way to go.

At least Feinstein, Landrieu, Nelson, Leiberman, Carper, Bayh, and Schumer had the balls to say they were OK with the US torturing people.

Yesterday was the time to make a stand and, once again, no stand was made. Oh, and I guess you can't hide behind the 60-vote minimum thing anymore either, huh?

Once again, to shed the reputation of being soft, you, well, have to not be soft.

Random Observations

Been a while, sorry about that, yadda-yadda, you all know the drill by now.

Profoundly disappointed in Schumer and Feinstein. I don't care what Schumer was told behind closed doors, what matters to me is that Mukasey was not willing to call waterboarding torture when he was in front of an open mike. And as far as "enforcing all the laws", when exactly did that become the bar over which the AG had to jump? Wasn't that once considered a core part of the gig?

Schumer and Feinstein have now made torture a US thing, not a Republican thing. It was bad enough to not aggressively pursue criminal complaints, but to endorse Mukasey is to give the OK to torture - plain and simple. Schumer is up again in (I believe) 2010. I don't live in NY anymore, but will gladly support a primary challenger.

Hard to see how telco's can get retroactive immunity after the testimony provided yesterday. Of course, they probably will thanks to Jay Rockefeller, but that doesn't mean that they should. Amazing.

Although, as down as I am on the Democrats these days, I am in awe of the Republicans. Pat Robertson endorses Giuliani? Seriously? What a hack. I hope that Ron Paul asks Rudy about Robertson's 9-11 comments at the next Republican debate.

Did I miss anything else?

Some very long knives

out for Jimmy Cayne:

In the 10-day span that led to the collapse of the firms’ High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies and Enhanced Leverage funds, Mr. Cayne was playing at a bridge tournament in Nashville, without a cell phone or e-mail device, the Journal said.
Insiders also told the Journal that Mr. Cayne would sometimes smoke marijuana at the end of the day during his bridge tournaments. In 2004, following a game of bridge at a Doubletree hotel in Memphis, he shared a joint with a woman in a lobby men’s room, a source told the Journal.

A Dangerous, Dangerous Man

In all seriousness, I think that Giuliani may be nuts. Here are some of his thoughts on waterboarding as torture:

It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is. Because I’ve learned something being in public life as long as I have. And I hate to shock anybody with this, but the newspapers don’t always describe it accurately.

Um, what changes to the description would make it ok for you, Rudy? Only a little water? And can you please describe for us the "liberal media"? Does the "conservative media" have a different definition of waterboarding? Can we please hear that definition?

So I think America should never be for torture. America should be against torture. It violates the Geneva Convention. Certainly when we’re dealing with armed combatants, we shouldn’t get near anything like that. There is a distinction, sometimes, when you’re dealing with terrorists. You may have to use means that are a little tougher.

Um, why would you have to be tougher with a terrorist? What is it about terrorists that require them to be treated with greater toughness? Why would that greater toughness work with terrorists but not armed combatants? If it really is important to get the information, wouldn't you use the same tactics regardless of category? Why reserve your most effective (i.e. tough) methods just for terrorists?

And I see, when the Democrats are talking about torture, they’re not just talking about even this definition of waterboarding, which again, if you look at the liberal media and you look at the way they describe it, you could say it was torture and you shouldn’t do it. But they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly. That’s silly.

This nonsense drove me crazy when Rumsfeld said it (I stand all day, why can't prisoners stand? It's not torture if I do it myself), and it drives me nuts here too. Rudy, your sleep deprivation is VOLUNTARY and, I'd be willing to bet, you are not up for 24 hours at at stretch. Plus, I'd be willing to bet that when you do sleep, you sleep in a pretty nice bed. Wait, we KNOW that you do, when you are not busy staying awake on Gulfstreams. To speak about it in the way that you do is to (purposefully) obscure what's really going on. Just as the people forced to stand for days on end eventually had their legs burst out in sores, keeping people up for days and interrupting their sleep cycles can be vicious and psychologically devastating. It makes a big difference if you can sit down when you feel like it and sleep when you feel like it.

The entire piece is worth reading simply to discover for yourselves how crazy and dangerous Giuliani is. He is a madman.

Book Review

Finished A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin and thought it was OK.

Did you all know that Alan Turing was arrested in Britain for homosexual acts and chemically castrated? And that he committed suicide? I didn't. Did you know that Kurt Godel was so paranoid towards the end of his life that he didn't eat and died of starvation in 1978? I didn't.

Levin is a physicist at Columbia and does an interesting job of presenting a short biographical fiction of these two men - basically she combines actual events and real conversations with some fictional settings to paint a picture of the lives of both of these men over a period of about 50 years. It's an interesting approach and interesting too that she chose Turing and Godel since they had very different world views (Turing believed that humans were essentially computing machines, while Godel was famous for proving that there are some things in mathematics that we can't prove - thus can't be computed and we are more than just computing machines).

3/5 stars from me.

California Fires

This put it into perspective for me.

San Clemente to the Mexican border is on fire.

Some thoughts on Presidential Powers

I don't believe the president, any president be it Bush, or Clinton, or the goddamn Dalai Lama, should have unchecked or unfettered powers. One of the many, many issues I have with the Bush administration is the aggressive expansion of executive power and how hard it is going to be to put the genie back in the bottle once it's out. Because out, it's a hard thing to surrender.

I think that the only way it could be done is if there is some sort of "Truth Commission" after the elections in 2008 where Congress conducts real investigations with real penalties for what's happened over the past 6 years. Of course, it will never happen.

I'm afraid that the Dems are slowing down their pursuit of Bush et. al. because they feel that it may be their turn in 2008 and why should they take those tools away when it will be their guy/girl who gets to weild them? Like the slow walking of the Gonzalez investigations (where a number of Dems were in no hurry to wrap them up because they believed that the great press and the embarrassing issues were a winner - they'd STILL be investigating without sanction if Gonzalez hadn't up and quit), I fear that they think these could be winning tools once they control all 3 branches of government. Which is, of course, silly. The Republican noise machine, sputtering somewhat but still effective, would never allow a Democratic president to get away with half of what the Bushies have gotten away with (and I'd agree with them). Dems could slow walk these investigations too in hopes of retaining the powers only to be bashed on the head with those powers. It is right in principle and right in politics to move aggressively to investigate an administration out of control.

Hillary is a prime example I can point to to explain why I'm so down on the Dems these days. She has recently said that she would review presidential powers if she was elected president and would consider giving some of those up. That's a good thing and the issue of presidential power is one that I've been struggling with for a while. Then, she turns around and issues a wishy-washy response on what she would do about FISA. It doesn't get much more clear than FISA. Are you willing to grant blanket immunity to companies without even knowing what they've done, when we're pretty sure that they illegally aiding the government in spying on us, or are you not? Are you interested in the rule of law, or are you not? And sadly, I can't say that Dems these days are 100% behind the rule of law. And that is profoundly disappointing.


There are some bright spots - Waxman for instance - but looking at the overall picture, I'm not at all encouraged.

WHAT?!!?

Wow, even I never thought that this would happen. It's true, he's willing to do and say ANYTHING to get the nomination:

Sounds like a baseball flip-flop. Rudy Giuliani, a lifelong New York Yankees fan, said Tuesday he's pulling for their most hated rivals, the Boston Red Sox, to win the World Series over the Colorado Rockies. "I'm rooting for the Red Sox," the Republican presidential contender said in response to a question, sparking applause at the Boston restaurant where he was picking up a local endorsement.

Jesus, the man knows no limits.

Beer

My favorite fall beer turned out to be the Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale. My least favorite? Surprisingly it was the Gritty's Halloween - even on cask I was not impressed. DFH Punk was good, Shipyard Pumpkinhead, Geary's Autumn, Smuttynose Pumpkin all worth a try.

Starting to get tired of the pumpkins though (happens every year), ready for the next season.

Markets?

Monday the market went up. It's up again right now. Apparently and obviously I know nothing about the market. I do wonder though how people are going to keep spending and what happens once people internalize the fact that housing is in real trouble.

Blast from the Past

Buh-bye:

Robert Chambers Jr., the so-called “Preppy Killer,” who strangled a young woman in Central Park in the 1980s, was arrested in Manhattan last night on charges of selling cocaine from his east midtown apartment, the police said.

[...]

According to narcotics detectives, Mr. Chambers and Ms. Kovell had been placed under investigation about five months ago after neighbors complained of heavy traffic to and from the apartment at all hours of the night. In that time, particularly over the summer, undercover detectives visited the apartment and made several purchases of powdered cocaine, the police said. They said that some of those sales were for multiple grams of cocaine at one time, rising to the level of Class A felonies that carry potential sentences of up to 30 years in prison.

Uh-Oh

Market down big today, but fasten your seatbelts for Monday:

Rumors were flying during the last hour of trading of problems at Merrill and Bear. The Merrill rumor was of a special board meeting this weekend with possible additional writedowns - we will see.

Oh boy.

OK, circle up, circle up...

And FIRE!

Dodd is threatening to filibuster the FISA bill, Armenian genocide declaration dies on the floor, opinions all over the place on Mukasey.

Quite the circular firing squad Dems have got going on these days.

Sigh

What a bunch of cowards.

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Are they willing to fight for anything? No wonder they are so easily painted as weak on defense, they don't appear to be willing to fight hard for anything. Telecom blanket immunity before we know what went on? Sure, no problem. Mukasey's confirmation hearings happening before we get anything from DOJ? Sure, why not. Compromise on SCHIP? What the hell, what have we got to lose?

At some point they are going to have to realize that they are considered shoo-ins in 2008 because people think that they are actually going to DO something, to change things. If they don't show any inclination to change things, I'm not sure how excited everyone is going to be. You actually have to be different from the other party to avoid the criticism that all politicians are the same.

Housing

Good stuff here. Still much more to come in the housing correction.

Book Reviews

I finished The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and I fucking hated it. Too bad too, because I thought that the premise was interesting: we underestimate both the probability of rare events (black swans) and their impact. The errors are due principally to a misunderstanding of randomness, or rather a miscategorization of random events.

Taleb, however, couldn't get his fucking ego out of the way long enough to fully talk about either, focusing instead on how stupid everyone else in the world is and on how much money he made during the stock market crash of 1987. "F*** you money" he calls it, which annoys the fuck out of me. If you are writing your own goddamn book and you want to say , "Fuck you money" then say "Fuck you money". Let the NY Times edit it to "F*** you money". Whatever.

I have a cold today and am grumpy, but even if I were on top of the world, I still wouldn't give this book more than 1/5 stars.

I also finished Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo and wasn't too fond of that one either. It read like a movie or a mini-series and I wouldn't be surprised to find it made into either. The story was compelling (relief work in Sudan), but the characters were poorly developed and inconsistent, to the point where they interfered rather than contributed to the story. Then again, this book won the Pulitzer Prize so what the hell do I know. 2/5 stars from me.

Reading A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, well see if I can turn my streak around.

Random Observations

UPDATE: I corrected this post.

Two observations struck my funny bone lately. The first one was in the men's room of a local restaurant. Following the trend of many bars/restaurants lately this one has a chalkboard up to allow patrons to write on the walls without actually defacing the bathroom. This one is a particularly big chalkboard and written waaaay up at the top was the following:

"I peed on the chalk"

Juvenile? Sure, but it made me laugh out loud.

Second observation was on a bumper sticker in a parking lot:

"Sorry I missed church, I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian"

Obviously, I have nothing today.

Uh-oh

In some work I do for my day job, one of the things I looked at recently was California's GDP vs. the US GDP over time. Two trends emerged: (1) CA GDP is more volatile than the US GDP (2) CA typically leads the country in and out of recessions. With that, this can't be a good sign:

Based on sales tax revenue, it now appears that the California economy is in recession.

I've been saying for a while that the economy is going into the shitter, CA is just getting there first.

Larry Yun, COME ON DOWN!

You're hacktacular!

Lawrence Yun, NAR senior economist, notes that widening credit availability will help turn around home sales. “Conforming loans are abundantly available at historically favorable mortgage rates. Pricing has steadily improved on jumbo mortgages since the August credit crunch, and FHA loans are replacing subprime mortgages,” he said.

And a surge of troops will help people who hate each other work together, and cutting taxes always increases revenues, yadda, yadda, yadda. YOU'VE GOT TO BELIEVE, PEOPLE!

A little perspective:

Data released over the past few weeks suggest a further weakening of the housing market, exacerbated by the breakdown in the subprime and prime jumbo mortgage markets. Delinquencies among subprime loans are increasing by more than expected, home sales continue to fall, unsold inventories remain near all-time highs, national house prices are falling, and housing starts have dropped to the lowest levels recorded since 1995. Amid these disruptions in the mortgage and housing market, lenders reported a lack of investor demand for high credit quality jumbo mortgages and other mortgages not eligible for agency purchase. This dislocation pushed the cost of prime jumbo financing significantly higher relative to rates on conforming loans... This spread has moderated somewhat over the past couple of weeks, however, and fell below 80 basis points in late September, suggesting some modest improvement in the market conditions for prime loans with balances above the conforming loan limit. Even so, the spread remains historically wide -- suggesting that the prime jumbo market remains in distress.

Yun is living in his own world if he thinks that (1) housing has bottomed (2) 2008 is going to be any better.

So now what?

From the Washington Post:

Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services."I don't think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. "To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power."

So the surge was undertaken to provide stability so that the Iraqis could forge some political reconciliation. Did someone actually ask the Iraqis about it? Wait, don't answer that. So, what do we do now that every stated reason for our troops to be in Iraq are no longer operable? At what point can we start to say that US soldiers are dying for no reason? At what point does "support the troops" come to mean "get them out of the meat grinder"?

It's got to stop sometime

And when it does, it's going to be a doozy:

Outstanding U.S. consumer debt rose at an annual rate of 5.9% in August, pushed higher mostly by a hefty gain in credit-card debt, the Federal Reserve reported Friday...Revolving debt such as credit cards was the biggest driver behind the overall rise in August, the data show. That debt climbed by 8.1% in August, or by $6.1 billion.

I talked about this back in July. With no home equity to pull out of their houses and no bankruptcy protection to shed credit card bills, people are in for a world of hurt. Looking forward to the Christmas season, people have essentially two choices - plunging further into credit card debt and committing financial suicide or restraining their spending and killing retailers. Smart money's on the former.

Boy, Cycling Sure is a Dirty Sport

Ladies and gentlemen, your winner of the Women's 100 meter dash in the 2000 Sydney Olympics... Marion Jones! Ekaterini Thanou! Um..

For the 2004 Summer Olympics, Thanou was one of the main hopes of the home crowd for winning an athletics medal. However, on the day prior to the opening ceremony, Thanou and her training partner Konstantinos Kenteris failed to attend a drugs test, and later the same night were hospitalised, claiming they had both been injured in a motorcycle accident. In the ensuing doping scandal, Kenteris and Thanou announced their withdrawal from the Games on August 18, after a hearing before the Disciplinary Commission of the IOC. An official Greek investigation into their alleged accident, ruled that it had been staged. Their coach Christos Tsekos was also suspended and was later caught with large amounts of steroids and other drugs in his possession.

Damn it! Scratch Thanou! Tanya Lawrence? Lawrence, anything? No? Good! For now, your 2000 Women's 100 Meter Dash champion, Jamaican Tanya Lawrence. WAIT, SHE'S FREAKIN' JAMAICAN? Oh Christ...

Meanings and Meaninglessness

“We do not torture.”

At what point do those words lose their meaning? At what point can we say that those words are, in fact, incomprehensible? And what does it mean when we’ve reached that point?

With the ways that this administration has parsed, dissembled, and outright lied about this topic I don’t feel that anyone can say, with any authority, that they know what the words, “We do not torture” mean anymore.

I don’t know what to do about that.

I bow to professional writers

Glenn Greenwald. Go read the whole thing.

And we have decided, collectively as a country, to do nothing about that. Quite the contrary, with regard to most of the revelations of lawbreaking and abuse, our political elite almost in unison has declared that such behavior is understandable, if not justifiable. And our elected representatives have chosen to remain largely in the dark about what was done and, when forced by court rulings or media revelations to act at all, they have endorsed and legalized this behavior -- not investigated, outlawed or punished it.

A ruling by the Supreme Court in Hamdan that the President's interrogation and detention policies violated the law led Congress to enact the Military Commissions Act to legalize those policies. Revelations that the President and telecom companies were breaking our surveillance laws led to the legalization of much of that program and will soon lead to amnesty for the lawbreakers. With regard to all of the most severe acts of illegality, no criminal prosecutions have been commenced and no truly meaningful Congressional investigations have been pursued.

[...]

We always possess the choice -- still -- to take a stand for the rule of law and our basic national values, but with every new day that we choose not to, those Bush policies become increasingly normalized, increasingly the symbol not only of "Bushism" but of America.

As I suggested, go read the whole thing.

On a different front

This is pretty cool.

Thoughts

Calmed down a bit. Here are my thoughts.

I was elated in November when the Democrats won both the House and the Senate. Finally, we could begin to have some oversight! We could begin to stop the damage being done to America on a daily basis by an out-of-control administration! We could begin to hold people accountable! That's gone, all gone now.

It's been almost a year and what exactly has changed? Gonzalez is gone. Big deal, we're still torturing people, still disappearing people. We're still politicizing the law and all of our institutions. FISA's been gutted and we're on the verge of granting retroactive immunity to telecoms who cooperated with the government. We still have no idea how often or how deeply our government is spying on us. We're still in Iraq and it looks like we'll be there forever. We still don't know why we invaded, don't know where the intelligence went wrong, don't know how many Iraqis we're killing, don't know how much we're paying mercenary firms like Blackwater, don't know what types of provocations we're launching at Iran. We don't know how our soldiers are outfitted and equipped, don't know what the toll on them and their families is, don't know if their care is improving. We still don't know where Osama is and we don't seem to care.

SCHIP got passed and vetoed. Dems need about 16 votes to override which they won't get - they haven't got the balls to get the votes.

I am truly disgusted right now. I thought Dems were better than this. I was wrong.

Democrats are Pussies

Started a longer post, but I'm too disgusted right now to write it.

Source of my frustration.

Friedman

Tom Friedman has a very odd Op-Ed in today's NY Times. In many ways, it is a classic Tom Friedman piece (sounds worldly, says nothing). For instance, it says this early on:

Look, I get pork-barrel politics. I understand senators from oil states protecting the windfall profits of oil companies. Ditto for farm subsidies. It’s an old story: Protect my winnings, and I’ll reward you with campaign contributions. I get it. I get it.

Followed by this:

What I don’t get is empty-barrel politics — Michigan lawmakers year after year shielding Detroit from pressure to innovate on higher mileage standards, even though Detroit’s failure to sell more energy-efficient vehicles has clearly contributed to its brush with bankruptcy, its loss of market share to Toyota and Honda — whose fleets beat all U.S. automakers in fuel economy in 2007 — and its loss of jobs. G.M. today has 73,000 working U.A.W. members, compared with 225,000 a decade ago. Last year, Toyota overtook G.M. as the world’s biggest automaker.

Which means he obviously doesn't get pork-barrel politics at all. American car manufacturers fight higher mileage standards for a number of reasons, the two primary reasons being that (1) American car manufacturers currently make much more money on low mileage cars and trucks and (2) Foreign manufacturers are much better at making high mileage cars and would, in the view of the American car manufacturers, increase their market share in the short and medium terms if higher mileage standards were mandated.

So, American car manufacturers contribute huge sums to ensure that fuel standards are not raised, and they are not raised. That is pork-barrel politics. What the politicians care about is raising enough money to get re-elected. They really don't care much what happens to Ford, GM, et al in 10 years if they themselves don't survive the next election cycle. It would be responsible for Congress to raise fuel standards, but if those in Michigan voted for it, they'd be operating outside of pork-barrel politics rather than inside it. Friedman doesn't get it, regardless of how many times he says he does.

Further on, he states:

But assisting Detroit’s suicide seems to be contagious. Everyone wants to get in on it, including Toyota. Toyota, which pioneered the industry-leading, 50-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, has joined with the Big Three U.S. automakers in lobbying against the tougher mileage standards in the Senate version of the draft energy bill.

Which does sound weird. Why would Toyota, a company that makes the Prius lobby against the new bill?

Is it because Toyota wants to slow down innovation in Detroit on more energy efficient vehicles, which Toyota already dominates, while also keeping mileage room to build giant pickup trucks, like the Toyota Tundra, at the gas-guzzler end of the U.S. market?

Oh, that makes perfect sense! They then can sell very profitable Tundras while at the same time continuing to dominate the fuel efficient markets. That makes sense to me. They are in a win-win situation then, regardless of the outcome. If they succeed in getting fuel standards stalled, they sell Tundras. If they fail, they sell Prius's. I'm not saying I agree with the strategy, but it sure seems to be logical and one that could be very successful. So, he doesn't get pork-barrel, but he gets the Toyota strategy. Bring it home, Thomas!

Sad. If Toyota were to take the lead on this front, it could enhance its own reputation and spur the whole U.S. auto industry to become more globally competitive. Hey, Toyota, if you are going to become the biggest U.S. automaker, could you at least bring to America your best practices — the ones that made you the world leader — instead of prolonging our worst practices? We have enough people helping us commit suicide.

Um, whaaaa? WTF? Toyota has a great reputation, I'm not sure it really needs any additional "enhancing" at the current time. People love Toyota (with the exception of Joe White at the Journal, of course). And why should Toyota help the U.S. auto industry become more globally competitive? I mean seriously, WTF? Is he really asking Toyota to let its competition back into the game? Really? And finally, isn't Toyota bringing their best practices here? After all, they aren't exactly camped out in Detroit talking to the UAW now, are they?

Sadly, this is increasingly a typical Friedman column - world-weary, preachy, ignorant babble.

And to preempt some comments, let me say that I don't necessarily like the fact that Toyota is selling Tundras, nor do I like the fact that they are campaigning against CAFE. I'm just saying that the strategy is (obviously) a winner.

2007, cycling's annus horribilis?

Paolo Bettini won the elite men's road race yesterday. Bettini had come under fire last week for not signing the full anti-doping charter (in a fit of self-importance he claimed that signing the charter would violate his human rights) and for allegedly being the person who supplied the testosterone cream to Patrik "Whoopsie" Sinkewitz (who crashed out of the TdF then came up positive).

Group this with Cancellara's repeat as world ITT champ, the rumors surrounding Contador, the clusterfuck that was Astana, the embarrassment of Rassmussen, the nightmare of the Giro, the Landis comedy...

In all, this was a pretty dim year cycling-wise. I wish I could say I had higher hopes for next year, but with Bruneel moving to DS of Astana (rumor is that he's bringing Trek with him), and the continued vow of omerta within the ranks, I'm not sure that next year will be any better.

It's enough to make one go watch clean sports like baseball or football.

Hmmm

Fabian Cancellara repeated as world individual time trial champion yesterday. He stomped on the field. Now, it is the end of the season and so form is generally all over the place. And Cancellara may have prepared specifically for this race while many other riders may not have. That said, he still took over 2 minutes out of Zabriskie, Wiggins and Millar - ITT specialists all (and Zabriskie fresh off of his defence of his US ITT title).

Add this performance to his performances in the TdF and file the whole shebang under "Suspicious".

The Return of Scott Nichol

a.k.a. Chuck Ibis.

Ibis was a high-end bike company in the 90's and early '00's. They made 3 bikes that I absolutely lusted after: a Ti road bike that was beautiful, stiff and very expensive, an innovative full-suspension mountain bike that used the flex in the Ti chainstays as the rear suspension rather than installing a hinge (thus lowering the weight of the bike to about 22 lbs.) and, my favorite, the Hakkalugi cyclocross bike initially only available in "Gang Green".

Nichol sold the original Ibis, the new Ibis went out of business , but now the original Ibis is back in business. It looks like they are now building in carbon fiber rather than Ti or steel. Happy to see them back in business.

Cars

There are three columnists in the WSJ who generally make me scratch my head in confusion, or drop my jaw in awe, when I read them. They are Hollman Jenkins, Daniel Henninger and Joseph White. Today we will focus on White.

White is the automotive columnist for the WSJ and is generally incoherent. His latest column is titled "Seeking a Cure for Automotive Ennui" and yes, prepare to be wowed. Here's how he starts:

New-car sales are sagging in America and car makers are blaming the housing slump or the credit crunch. I suspect something else. I suspect boredom.

Yep. Boredom. Not the housing market going to hell. Not the tightening credit standards that are slowing the ability of people to secure car financing. Nope. It's that consumers are bored. Why are they bored?

Face it. A lot of the cars sold in America are just dull. Whose heart leaps at the thought of firing up a Toyota Corolla? If you took away the logos, who could discern a significant difference among the interiors of any five $35,000 luxury cars? Black plastic, faux wood grain, even "metallic look" plastics -- clichés all. Sport utility vehicles and crossovers? Ho hum.

Under the hood, too many cars sold in America are equally uninspiring. Car makers have done wonderful things improving upon century-old gasoline internal-combustion engine technology. But it's still a century old. It's as if, instead of the iPod, we still got our music from lacquer records that had been refined to hold 100 minutes of songs.

So, what he's looking for is bold design and a successor to the internal combustion engine? Is that all? Is that the cure for automotive ennui? Maybe, maybe not.

If the cars don't bore you, the driving probably will. In most urban areas, getting anywhere now is about as exhilarating as sitting through a PowerPoint talk on the latest revisions to the company 401(k). The latest Urban Mobility Report released by the Texas Transportation Institute finds that urban congestion has intensified to the point that "free-flowing traffic is seen less than one-third of the time in urban areas over 1 million population."

Oh, so the problem is traffic? So people aren't buying new cars because if they do, they are likely to sit in traffic? Well, that makes sense to me. Why would I want to spend $35,000 on a glorified couch? But wait, that's not it either:

Americans -- consumers, car makers and regulators -- have only themselves to blame for automotive ennui.

Ah-ha! It's our fault! So what's the solution? What kind of new technology, new styling will cure us of our self-inflicted ennui? White presents... Euro Civic!

The Euro-diesel Civic is more fun to look at than most American small cars. It has a three-door hatchback profile, but look carefully and you see the car has four side doors. The front and back are decorated with chromey jewelry. The dashboard glows at night with a techno blue light... You start up the Euro Honda by turning the key, then hitting the red "Engine Start" button – like a race car.

THAT'S the cure? A four-door hatchback with an "Engine Start" button? One that is more fun to look at than "most" American small cars? And could someone please tell me why "chromey jewelry" is great design while "metallic look plastics" are a cliche? Is it the increased chromeyness? Are you kidding me? Apparently not. And, it's much, much better than the Prius:

What's most enjoyable is that despite the donkey-hauling performance characteristics, the Euro Civic averaged about 44 miles per gallon (5.3 liters per 100 kilometers.) By comparison, the Toyota Prius's combined mileage rating, under the new, more stringent Environmental Protection Agency labeling system, is just 46 miles per gallon.

Yes, that's right, "just" 46 mpg. The Prius only gets 2 mpg MORE than the Civic. Oh, and the Prius has a start button which doesn't require you to stick the key into anything other than your pocket and is available in the US right now. Honda, meanwhile, has no plans to introduce the Euro Civic into the US.

And what any of this would do to reduce traffic is anyone's guess.

UPDATE:

Re-reading this, I realized I may not have been sufficiently explicit in my criticism of White. In the past, he has gone after Prius purchasers for being irrational since they could buy a Corolla for less than a Prius and the difference in price could not be made up by a savings in gas. In that case, a car purchase is a purely rational decision and purchasers should be entirely rational when they purchase a car. Then he writes a column like this one that basically takes the opposite side - that car purchasers are bored and need chromey goodness to get them all excited and eager to buy. To a certain extent he's only and constantly arguing with himself, but it gets me frustrated all the same.

It's about time

Finally:

The long awaited decision is in, and Floyd Landis has lost his appeal to the American Arbitration Association to overturn the sanction for his positive drug test from the 2006 Tour de France. The three member arbitration panel, led by president Patrice Brunet along with Christopher Campbell and Richard McLaren, was split 2-1 in the guilty verdict, with Campbell dissenting. The decision will likely have some instant effects, with the ASO champing at the bit to remove Landis as the 2006 winner. The next possible steps in the case involve either Landis accepting his sanction from USADA or appealing the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland – with the second much more likely.

It was embarrassing that this took over a year to get done.

Politics

OK, so blogging has been somewhat, um, erratic lately. Hopefully things will turn around and settle down a bit.

Presidential race - although it's too early to make a choice, my preferences are Edwards, Obama then Clinton. I think that Edwards is the most wonkish and has thought through many of the big issues. It also helps that he's been through the process before. My one concern with Edwards, and it is a big one, is that he doesn't appear able to attack, to put his political foes on the defensive. That's a big problem for him and would, I think, doom his presidency.

On the Republican side, I really don't like any of 'em. I'd be willing to bet that Rudy isn't the candidate but really don't care who runs, "R" is going to be a hard letter to overcome in '08.

UPDATE:

Wanted to expand a bit on the post from last night. The thing that dismays me about Edwards is his inability to stick in the shiv. It's necessary in politics and he's been unwilling, or unable, to do it so far. He seems to have outsourced the role of attack-dog to his wife (Ann Coulter, Hilliary Clinton) which only exacerbates the issue. I don't get the feeling that he'd be capable of fighting against a hostile Congress (and if the threshold is 60 votes in the Senate, Congress will remain hostile) to get any of his ideas implemented. His are the ideas I like best right now, but he is not the person I see getting them through.

Which then brings it to Obama or Hilliary. I think that both have shown a level of ruthlessness, and both would be very capable. Selfishly, I'd like Obama simply because I don't want to go through a campaign season reading nothing in the Times and the Post but stories about whether Hilliary and Bill are still knocking boots.

Anyone else with early thoughts on the Dems?

As far as the Republicans, well, the field is a joke. Rudy changes his position on gun control after 9/11? Really? Were the people in Cantor going to pull .38's and shoot the planes out of the sky before they hit the towers? He's a joke and sooner or later someone is going to start slapping him around. Romney? McCain? Really, those are the choices?

Coming into my favorite time of the year

Pumpkin beers are out, other fall and winter brews are coming.

Smuttynose Pumpkinhead, Gearys Autumn both worth drinking. Gritty's Halloween is out, but as of today untried. Ditto with Shipyard Pumpkin.

Waiting for my usual fall favorite, Dogfish Head Punkin'. Stay tuned.

Fine? That's not a fine

From today's NYT:

The National Football League fined New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick $500,000 yesterday, and the team will forfeit its first-round draft pick in 2008 if it makes the playoffs, for violating league rules Sunday when a Patriots staff member was discovered videotaping signals by Jets coaches during the season opener at the Meadowlands. The Patriots will be fined $250,000. If they fail to make the playoffs, they will forfeit their second- and third-round picks in 2008.

Yeah, yeah, big deal. Want to see a fine? Here's a fine:

McLaren Mercedes, the leading team in the Formula One championship, was fined $100 million on Thursday and excluded from the constructors’ title in the spying scandal that has plagued the sport all season. The International Automobile Federation, the sport’s governing body, found the McLaren guilty of cheating by using data obtained from Ferrari, its main rival, to improve its own car, the federation said in a statement issued following a hearing in Paris.

$100 MILLION. That'll change behavior.

Look out!

August jobs data:

Investors were unpleasantly surprised by the Labor Department's report that payrolls fell by 4,000 in August, the first decline since August 2003, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.6 percent as expected.

June and July were also revised downward. Without the ability to extract wealth from their houses, people cannot fund lifestyles that are built upon a negative savings rate. Credit at all levels is evaporating.

At some point corporate profits will have to suffer because at some point people will have to stop buying things. I'd predicted a Q3 '07 recession and I'm becoming more convinced that will be a correct statement.

NAR, it's hacktacular!

Guess who's won More Palaver's "Hack of the Day" award for the second time? Yes, it's Lawrence Yun! Congratulations Mr. Yun for being the first multiple (and so far only) winner of this prestigious award! Here is a link to the first win for Mr. Yun. Here is why he is winning again today:

The National Association of Realtors' index for pending sales of existing homes decreased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 12.2% to 89.9 in July from June's 102.4, the industry group said Wednesday.

[...]

"These temporary problems are primarily with jumbo loans, and there are continuing issues for subprime borrowers, but there are no serious problems for the majority of buyers who qualify for conventional financing or FHA-insured loans," Mr. Yun said. "Some consumer concerns remain, but since mid-August the market has been stabilizing somewhat.

"[S]tabilizing somewhat"?!!! "Some consumer concerns remain"?!! He increasingly looks like the ROTC cadet standing in the middle of the street at the end of Animal House. Sorry, but everything is not going to be OK.

The Quiet American

So I went and read The Quiet American. It was one of those books I was always going to read/supposed to read/assigned to read but never read. I figured with the whole Bush kerfuffle now was as good a time as any.

Having read it, I don't think that the White House made a mistake at all equating Bush with Pyle. Pyle is a by-the-book, upfront kind of guy (as evidenced by his dealings with Fowler over Phoung), idealistic and in pursuit of world betterment. Sure he gets used by others for their own purposes (General The), but his heart is in the right place and, most importantly, pure. I'd be willing to bet that that meme plays with a fairly significant part of the country.

Of course, all of this assumes that some critical mass of Americans have actually read (and remember) The Quiet American. If not, this is (just another) an example of geeks yelling at each other over something that nobody cares about.

I really liked the book, by the way, and would recommend it to those of you who've never read it, or who don't remember reading it.

Read the Rudy today, oh boy

If anything, Kaplan was too nice. The article, for those of you interested in reading this piece of shit, is here.

Seriously, Kaplan gives Rudy a BIG pass on some things. Here's one:

America is a nation that loves peace and hates war.

As opposed to whom? Where are the war-loving nations out there? And, for a nation that loves peace, we sure to get ourselves into a whole lot of war. And, just to be clear, I'm not anti-war, but to say that we are a nation that goes around singing "Kumbaya" all day and night is delusional. And it's particularly jarring when Rudy says it because he spends the rest of your essay describing the ass kickings he will dole out as president. But that isn't even the worst sentence in that paragraph:

At the core of all Americans is the belief that all human beings have certain inalienable rights that proceed from God but must be protected by the state.

Which is a curious thing for him to say because I really don't recall him coming out against our policy of sending people down a rathole to be tortured simply because we think they are one of the "bad guys". Oh, and by the way, I am an American and I don't happen to believe that the rights afforded to me in this country (those remaining rights anyway) proceeded from God. But hey, know what? THAT isn't even the worst sentence in that paragraph. This is:

Americans believe that to the extent that nations recognize these rights within their own laws and customs, peace with them is achievable. To the extent that they do not, violence and disorder are much more likely.

If I'm reading this correctly, and I've read it a number of times just to make sure I am, he's saying that we are going to not be at peace (although peace and America are BFF) with any country that does not respect the same inalienable God-given rights that we do. He has just declared that any liberal democracy is going to be treated as a hostile entity under a Rudy presidency. Fan-fucking-tastic!

Let's fast-forward to this little gem:

For diplomacy to succeed, the U.S. government must be united. Adversaries naturally exploit divisions.

Great, then I've got an idea, why don't you stop calling Democrats terrorist appeasers who are going to get everyone killed if they get anywhere near the White House. Because remember, unity begins at home (Mr. Third Marriage). I am so sick of the most divisive people on the planet calling on everyone to be united when it suits their purposes only to later cudgel the slobs stupid enough to go for it. Rudy is a hyper-partisan and whenever you hear him talk about unity, he's really talking about suppressing any type of dissent.

More insanity here:

Defeating the terrorists must be our principal priority in the near future, but we do not have the luxury of focusing on it to the exclusion of other goals. World events unfold whether the United States is engaged or not, and when we are not, they often unfold in ways that are against our interests. The art of managing a large enterprise is to multitask, and so U.S. foreign policy must always be multidimensional.

Claptrap! What is he talking about here? Does he really think that we should have a hand in EVERYTHING that's happening? Good luck with that.

Kaplan mentions this, but I'd like to quote it again for shits and giggles:

U.S. relations with China and Russia will remain complex for the foreseeable future. Americans have no wish to return to the tensions of the Cold War or to launch a new one. We must seek common ground without turning a blind eye to our differences with these two countries. Like America, they have a fundamental stake in the health of the international system. But too often, their governments act shortsightedly, undermining their long-term interest in international norms for the sake of near-term gains. Even as we work with these countries on economic and security issues, the U.S. government should not be silent about their unhelpful behavior or human rights abuses. Washington should also make clear that only if China and Russia move toward democracy, civil liberties, and an open and uncorrupted economy will they benefit from the vast possibilities available in the world today.

This may be one of the most arrogant and paternalistic things I've ever read from Rudy, and boy that's saying something. THEY act shortsightedly? I've got a 4-letter word for Rudy, I-R-A-Q. Some great long-term thinking there. And, to be blunt, China has been kicking our ass in strategic thinking and the judicious use of soft power lately. Lastly, as Kaplan also points out, China and Russia seem to be doing OK in the world without our help (lead paint aside).

He calls for the invasion of Cuba:

But America should take nothing for granted. It must stand ready to help the Cuban people reclaim their liberty and resist any step that allows a decrepit, corrupt regime from consolidating its power under Raúl Castro. Only a commitment to free people and free markets will bring a prosperous future to Cuba and all of Latin America.

And makes absolutely no sense about the UN:

The UN has proved irrelevant to the resolution of almost every major dispute of the last 50 years. Worse, it has failed to combat terrorism and human rights abuses. It has not lived up to the great hopes that inspired its creation. Too often, it has been weak, indecisive, and outright corrupt. The UN's charter and the speeches of its members' leaders have meant little because its members' deeds have frequently fallen short. International law and institutions exist to serve peoples and nations, but many leaders act as if the reverse were true -- that is, as if institutions, not the ends to be achieved, were the important thing. Despite the UN's flaws, however, the great objectives of humanity would become even more difficult to achieve without mechanisms for international discussion.

Got that? The UN is a worthless piece of shit taking up good real estate on the East Side, but hey, it's a worthless piece of shit working towards the "objectives of humanity". To quote Jon Stewart, "WHAAAA?"

Like I said, Kaplan let's him off the hook too often. But I guess that's my point. Everyone, anyone, could read through this piece of garbage and come up with pages and pages of nonsense without overlapping things that were previously pointed out. It's not just bad, it's breathtakingly bad. It's nauseatingly bad.

One final thought - as bad as it is, I'm also amazed at how little it says. Beyond platitudes and generalizations that is. Kaplan is right on that, Rudy doesn't say how he's going to do anything. Well, that's not entirely true, he is going to "give people a hand up rather than a handout". Hey Rudy, the 80's are calling, they have your hair and would like to trade it for their handout statement.

I really, really don't like Rudy Giuliani.

Some perspective please?

Vino:

In cycling nobody respects human rights," said Vinokourov in an exclusive interview with Reuters. "The situation is now worse than any other sport. I hope the truth will be found and I am going to fight for it."
Greeted by his father and about 20 supporting fans who were decked out with flowers and banners, Vino said, "I am not going to end my career like this so we will fight on."
Vino denounced cycling's current anti-doping procedures, calling them "a clear violation of human rights." He added, "You have to say three months in advance where you are planning to be, at what hour and minute. It's not possible."

Vino, stop talking. Now. You cheated and got caught. Want to cheat and not get caught? Go play soccer. Or baseball, they celebrate cheats there.

Not a good day for Rudy

Sick, exaggerating son-of-a-bitch:

A complete record of Mr. Giuliani’s exposure to the site is not available for the chaotic six days after the attack, when he was a frequent visitor. But an exhaustively detailed account from his mayoral archive, revised after the events to account for last-minute changes on scheduled stops, does exist for the period of Sept. 17 to Dec. 16, 2001. It shows he was there for a total of 29 hours in those three months, often for short periods or to visit locations adjacent to the rubble. In that same period, many rescue and recovery workers put in daily 12-hour shifts.

So, maybe he misspoke last week? No:

And in September 2006, The Associated Press quoted him as saying of ground zero, “I spent as much time here as anyone,” and then adding, “I was here five, six times a day for four months. I kind of thought of it as living here.”

That kind of takes the whole, "What I meant was the initial 4 days..." argument. How does his office respond to this information? Like this:

“Hundreds of thousands of people around the country and the world saw Rudy Giuliani’s steadfast and determined leadership firsthand at a time when we needed it most,” the statement said. “In the days surrounding September 11th, the safety and health of all those involved in the search and recovery efforts was Mayor Giuliani’s No. 1 one priority. Make no mistake, it is the very same concern Mayor Giuliani continues to express today when it comes to all those who have made tremendous sacrifices at ground zero.”

For those of you who need a bullshit to English translation, it means (roughly), "Whoa, when the fuck did you start fact-checking shit?"

He is a bad, bad man. I don't care how much the media loves him, his story, his jackboots. I still maintain that there is no way he wins the nomination, and I personally intend to sit around with a great big bowl of popcorn as I watch him go down in flames.

Rudy

I must admit, I'm now interested in reading the FA piece he did. Kaplan's read it. He's not very impressed:

Rudy Giuliani's essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, laying out his ideas for a new U.S. foreign policy, is one of the shallowest articles of its kind I've ever read. Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus (with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible). That it was written by a man who wants to be president—and who recently said that he understands the terrorist threat "better than anyone else running"—is either the stuff of high satire or cause to consider moving to, or out of, the country.

Now that's a lede! In fact, it's my second favorite ever lede about Rudy. This one is my favorite:

On 9/11, all Americans were frightened children, and in a moment of mythic personal heroism, Mayor Giuliani filled the gaping leadership void. The president looked like a petrified chimp; Cheney was spirited to an underground bunker. Only Giuliani could pull himself together sufficiently to get on TV in the midst of the wreckage and show America that a grown-up was still breathing. On that terrible day our reptile brains looked at Rudy Giuliani and said, "We're OK now. Daddy's home."

And we forgot, some for a moment, some permanently, that Daddy was psycho.

Anyway, back to Kaplan. He picks apart Rudy's piece by exerpting a section then ripping it to shreds. Perhaps not the most fair treatment, context and all that does matter sometimes, but it is very entertaining to read. And Kaplan really doesn't hold back:

"Constellations of satellites that can watch arms factories everywhere around the globe, day and night, above- and belowground ... must be part of America's arsenal."

Yes, and while we're at it, let's build anti-gravity machines, mind-reading robots, X-ray-vision telescopes, speed-of-light transporter-beams, time-travel kits, and intercontinental heat-seeking bullets. It's bad enough that so many foreigners believe in the omniscience of U.S. intelligence agencies; it's appalling that a presidential candidate seems to believe such sci-fi fantasies, too.

I'm going to read the FA piece in full. Somehow I don't think that Rudy is saved by context.

Rudy is emerging as a joke, a really dangerous joke, but a joke nonetheless. The more I hear, the more important it becomes to me to make sure this man never gets near the White House.

Why I don't watch much TV

Carpetbagger.

I heard Biden on the original quote and realized that I really dislike Joe Biden. To say that John Kerry was not a religious candidate was to completely, intentionally, not pay attention to the last election.

We all know my views on religion - I'm clearly no fan of the religious posturing that consumes politicians in this country. To somehow state that politicians on either side aren't sufficiently religious is just ridiculous.

This is one example among many where the media is manufacturing a meme out of thin air. They should be called on it more than they are.

More housing

Same article as a prior post.


For those of you without subscriptions to the WSJ, the article profiles a family, the Montes, who bought a house 2 years ago in Fullerton, California. Their credit wasn't that good, and they had a combined income of $90,000/year. They decided they should go and buy a $567,000 house with no money down and a 2/28 interest-only mortgage.


They are going to lose their house. It doesn't say so explicitly in the article, but there is no way they'll be able to keep it. The current payment on the house is $3,200/month in interest, which will reset in December for the remaining 28 years on the note. They estimate that their monthly payments may rise to $4,200/month. That's just the note. On top of that they have taxes, insurance and $700/month in car loans. The article doesn't mention credit card debt, but I'm going to assume that the Montes are like every other American family out there and throw in some of that too. Figure $200/month in credit card debt. That's over $5,000 in debt servicing, a ratio of 66%.


Let me say that again, 2/3 of their GROSS income will go to servicing debt.


They are going to lose their house.


This is where this whole housing mess gets very complicated for me. Clearly, the Montes bought a house that they couldn't afford and have, for the past two years, been living in a house that they shouldn't be living in. I'd usually be inclined to write them off - hey sometimes bad decisions have consequences. But I waver when I read things like this:

Like many people who jumped into the rising housing market in recent years, they had little money for a down payment and chose a loan that would hold their monthly payments down for the first two years, then "reset" to a much higher level. Mr. and Mrs. Montes say their mortgage broker assured them they would be able to refinance in a couple of years to keep their payments affordable.

And this:

The Montes family got their loan through a mortgage broker in Rancho Cucamonga. Using what was then a common formula, the broker offered to arrange for two loans, one to cover about 80% of the home price and the other, a so-called piggyback loan, for the rest. For the first two years, their total monthly mortgage payments are about $3,200. The loans are initially interest-only. Mr. Montes recalls feeling edgy about whether he would be able to afford the higher costs -- about $900 more per month -- due to take effect after two years. But he says the broker assured him he could refinance before those costs kicked in.

paired with this:

Worse for the Monteses, they learned that they faced a $12,000 prepayment penalty if they refinanced within three years of the original mortgages -- something that Mr. Montes says wasn't made clear to him when he took out those loans.

Housing is one place where I really struggle balancing the free market with paternalism. At a minimum, mortgage brokers should have a fiduciary responsibility to the people they arrange mortgages for. I think there are a huge number of people who got talked into something - namely a house they couldn't afford - that they wanted very badly. They got talked into it by a series of people who likely won't get badly hurt if the deal goes bad - the dealmakers will still have a home to live in at least. It just doesn't really seem all that fair to me.

Some interesting housing stats

From today's WSJ:

Being stuck with little or no home equity is no longer a rare situation. Christopher Cagan, director of research at First American CoreLogic, a housing and mortgage data supplier in Santa Ana, recently found that nearly 7% of 32 million U.S. households studied as of December owed more than their homes were worth, based on computer estimates of the property values. An additional 4% had home equity of 5% or less. Since then, house prices have edged down in much of the country, erasing more home equity.

[...]

Partly as a result, foreclosures are surging. Moody's Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pa., projects that lenders will acquire about 760,000 homes through foreclosure this year and 935,000 in 2008, up from an average of about 440,000 a year from 2000 through 2006.

I'm throwing the bullshit flag

On this:

"We couldn't in good conscience ask someone to spend the sort of money that it would require to sponsor the team in the current situation," said Bill Stapleton, general manager of Tailwind Sports. "It's not an environment conducive in our opinion to make an investment."

[...]

"We had a firm commitment for three years. It wasn't signed and sealed, but we were 90 percent there," Armstrong said. "No. 1, this isn't about a lack of a sponsor. If that were the case we would say that in October, not in August. No. 2, it's not a statement. We're just deciding it's a good time to step aside."

[...]

"It's a sad for American cycling," Armstrong said. "The guys at ASO are talking about taking the Tour back to national teams like they did in the olden days. If something like that would happen, someone's $15 million investment is
worth zero. Issues like that are too unknown. It's too risky to ask that kind of money. There are too many questions within the sport."

For crying out loud, just say you couldn't find someone willing to pony up the $45 million in today's market. Boy, it sure is nice that Lance, et. al. are watching out for all those corporations to make sure they don't waste their money on sponsorship.

The reasoning provided is absurd. Do they think that anyone believes it? How dumb do they think we are?

Umm...

Posted without further comment:

Sioux Falls police Tuesday arrested a 60-year-old man for burglary and for what they believe is at least two years worth of video-taped public sex acts. Verle Peter Dills was arrested at his home at 2613 W. Bailey St. after a man who lives in the 1200 block of North Kiwanis Avenue chased Dills out of his yard Monday evening, police spokesman Loren McManus said. The man saw Dills with a video camera and tripod and chased him for a short distance, McManus said. When the man returned home, Dills also returned with his camera and again was chased from the yard. He was seen entering the garage at 2613 W. Bailey St., McManus said. There police found the video camera and a “large amount” of 8mm and VHS video of Dills engaged in masturbation and sex acts with traffic signs near his home, McManus said.

How do I hate Rudy?

Let me count the ways!

Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said: "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. ... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

It could be me, but as I remember it, as I was sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn breathing the stench that blew over from NYC for months after 9/11, or while I was walking from the subway to work, right past the smoldering site, I really don't recall seeing many pictures of Rudy in the pit digging. I do remember some speeches but, and please feel free to correct my faulty memory, I really don't recall the former Mayor pitching in much on the physical side of things. I cannot imagine what those workers went through in clearing up the site and I'd be embarrassed if anyone made any type of comparison between me and them (in a similar vein I get pissed when people talk about how heroic they were to go back to work downtown after the attacks). It takes hubris the size of Cleveland to proclaim yourself one of them because you occasionally went down there for some death tourism and a photo op.

"As often, if not more"?! Those guys worked 60-80 hour weeks down there for months. Jesus Rudy, who do you think you are? Wait, could he actually think he's... Jesus?

He's done enough to finish his campaign three times over already. How he is still campaigning is beyond me.

Shit like this is why I have such a back load in housing posts.

Discovery done!

Wow.

Tailwind Sports has announced the end of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team today, confirming rumours that cropped up when the team failed to announce a new sponsor after winning the Tour de France. The team was given notice that the Discovery Channel would not renew its sponsorship back in February, leading to a long and intensive search for a replacement sponsor. Despite having won eight Tours de France, the team will fold at the end of this season, leaving 27 riders looking for new jobs, including 2007 Tour winner Alberto Contador, third place finisher Levi Leipheimer, and eighth place finisher Yaroslav Popovych. American George Hincapie is rumoured to have already signed with T-Mobile for the upcoming year, a team whose sponsor was uncertain to continue in the sport until rigorous talks led to a renewal of commitment from the sponsor with plenty of conditions.

Lots of talent out there for the taking now.

Housing

Much more coming from me on this over the next few posts, but for now, I'd like to you join the NAR in clapping louder:

The National Association of Realtors again lowered its forecast for existing U.S. home sales in 2007, but said the market wasn't likely to suffer any further sharp downturns.

[...]

Lawrence Yun, NAR's senior economist, said the market was likely to be relatively stable going forward, suggesting that the worst drops in activity are behind the housing sector. "Existing-home sales should be relatively stable over the next few months, holding in a modest range, with some pent-up demand growing from buyers who've been on the sidelines," Mr. Yun said in a statement. Mr. Yun continued to forecast a relatively mild upturn in housing activity towards the end of this year and going into 2008. "A modest upturn is projected for existing-home sales toward the end of the year, with broader improvement to include the new-home market by the middle of 2008," he said.

I've got one question for Mr. Yun: where are these people going to get the financing? I can't see mobs of people storming into the real estate market right now. Or any time soon. Mr. Yun, you earn More Palaver's "Hack of the Day" award for Thursday, August 10. Congratulations!

The New Hampshire primary moved again!

To yesterday! Take that South Carolina!

Uh-oh

Wonder what this is all about:

Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has scheduled a press event this Friday in Spain, but says he will decline to answer reporters' questions after he reads a prepared statement. Contador issued a release Wednesday notifying media of his plans to read a statement at the offices of Spain's national sports council - the Consejo Superior de Deportes - in Madrid.

I'm assuming it's Puerto-related stuff, but these days who the hell knows.

In other news, another Astana rider has come up positive for blood doping. Must be Thursday.