Just popped in after a long walk under the stars, and Attaturk’s here. Hiya!

The WaPoo Times always protects its fellow Villagers. Apparently DC is Irving’s place. Always room for “serious” trashers of the Constitution and warmongers. No room for the DFH’s and the 65% of Americans who agree with them.

Thanks for keeping us safe Fred! As Willard says, “the most important job of government is keeping its people alive”. Wanking Fred certainly subscribes to that!

Thanks Wapoo!

Good Morning http://www.nolanchart.com/article844.html some off topic Ron Paul weirdness the Paulites are trying to claim that their boycott of Fox News and dumping of the stock is already having an effect. This is the kind of thing I think we can do!

Scooter never even went to jail but now he needs a pardon? Paris Hilton went to jail for a day or two but Scooter is to delicate to even do that much time for lying to a judge? Regular people go to jail all the time and don’t get pardons.
Pardons should be given if the convicted person has accepted that he did something wrong and expressed remorse about it by trying if possible to make it right.
Which in Scooters case that would mean naming Darth.
Unless of course you follow Huckbee’s reasons for giving early release and I presume pardons.

Good morning, pups. What a way to go back to work… MoDo starts off the New Year by trivializing the campaign yet again. She’s called the thing that she’s typed “Deign or Reign,” and she says it comes down to this: Will Queen Hillary reign? Will Prince Barack deign? And who is owed more? Maureen, compare and contrast their health care platforms to John Edwards’, why don’t you? Oh — that would be work. Never mind…

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and the biscuits are out of the oven. It’s hovering around freezing here, and I’ll be scrambling around after I get home from work trying to protect my Swiss chard and one or two plants in the front from an expected hard freeze tonight, with temps nearing 20. 384 days until W slinks off to wherever he’s going. Have a good day.

The WaPoo Times always protects its fellow Villagers. Apparently DC is Irving’s place. Always room for “serious” trashers of the Constitution and warmongers. No room for the DFH’s and the 65% of Americans who agree with them.

Thanks for keeping us safe Fred! As Willard says, “the most important job of government is keeping its people alive”. Wanking Fred certainly subscribes to that!

Thanks Wapoo!

(my bold) Just as long as medical intervention isn’t called for, way to call it, wankers

Good Morning, Firepups! (waves hello to Marion)

It’s cold, with a strong wind making it feel much, much colder, in central Jersey, and the forecast calls for temperatures to fall the rest of the day (so this is the best time of day! brrrr).

I don’t have quite the spread that Marion has put out–just coffee and tea, and fresh bagels. I’m grabbing a poppy seed bagel, and finishing up chores before heading back to work.

New parental worries: my mom (who we just visited in SC) is in the hospital with pneumonia. Mr. NJP’s parents have been our concern for months (his mom never really recovered from surgery last spring, and will spend the rest of her life in a nursing home; his dad just came home after six weeks in rehab, following a short hospitalization, but he is very frail, and we are actively looking for an assisted living facility–home health aides for a few hours five days a week isn’t enough anymore). To all the other boomers fretting about parents, a special wish for peace in the new year.

Happy New Year to all, with a wish for peace, truth, and justice.

Work for peace, every day.

From Seeking Alpha The Pakistani Stock market has taken a hit and more hits are expected. I’m guessing that General Musharraf’s base is the same as Bush’s, so if the Pakistani stock market tanks then they are losing confidence in him. http://seekingalpha.com/articl…..ed-for-now

Unlike America where we have had a somewhat peaceful transitions of power when Nixon left I’m guessing Pakistanis in the know are not expecting a peaceful transition. They will sell ahead of a revolt,coup or resignation since anyone with inside knowledge will warn their cousins to sell as a family duty.
All though they might not explain why they think they should sell People know better than to ask to many questions.

A run on the Pakistani stock market should be considered a potential warning sign that something bad is going to happen in Pakistan.

Good Morning!,
hmmm, biscuits or bagels? decisions decisions.

here’s what’s on Washington Journal this morning:
Tuesday, January 1
7:05- Phoner: John Deeth, Political Blogger
7:30am – Charles Hurt, New York Post, Washington Bureau Chief
8am – Kevin Madden, Romney for President, Senior Strategist
8:30am – Iowa State Rep. Wayne Ford (D), Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)Supporter | Related Link
9am – J. Ann Selzer, Des Moines Register Poll, Director

PY This is from Seeking Alpha an economics and stock blog. I love the attitude these people bring to their writing when they dismiss the happy talk from the business channels of the MSM.

” Dawn Bennett of Bennett Financial Services recently appeared on Bloomberg and nonchalantly mentioned expectations of the 10-year note coming down to 2.25% in 2008. She also asserted that there was no inflation — only phantom inflation. She used the ridiculous comparison of gas prices in the US to gas prices in the UK to illustrate this. (As an aside, my cost of healthcare benefits rises 15% next year).

Somehow, she manages $1B; I have no clue who would give someone like this a penny to manage. I can only hope that the market is as forgiving to me when I misstep.

Last week I mentioned Scott Minerd from Guggenheim also calling for 2.5% on the 10-year note, ostensibly to draw buyers back into the housing market. I wondered just how that was going to happen — are there that many idiots in the markets and how have they managed not to lose all of their money?”

http://seekingalpha.com/articl…..tes-at-2-5

Good morning Attaturk and firepups.

Kevster @ 2: Thanks for keeping us safe Fred! As Willard says, “the most important job of government is keeping its people alive”. Wanking Fred certainly subscribes to that!

Arnie @ 6:
ust as long as medical intervention isn’t called for, way to call it…

Actually, I’d settle for a government that refrained from killing or otherwise savaging its own people.

Mod can you please get rid of the PY in the first letters of my comment @ 11?

Imagine how much money we could save with an amnesty for all nonviolent offenders unless they engaged in white collar crimes of over a million or so.
Freeing the potheads is good but the more people we free the less money we need for taxes.

Beeb running live news conference from Islamabad with announement that elections will be postponed at least one month to 18 Feb.

Thank heaven for the Beeb. If I watch the news on TV at all I watch BBC America. Lord knows American “news” programming is a joke.

Last week I mentioned Scott Minerd from Guggenheim also calling for 2.5% on the 10-year note, ostensibly to draw buyers back into the housing market. I wondered just how that was going to happen — are there that many idiots in the markets and how have they managed not to lose all of their money?”

This is silly. In a rational world, the interest rate on mortgages needs to reflect the risk of the loan. The higher the risk (danger of not being repaid), the higher the rate. With all the funny-business loans in disrepute and housing still far overpriced in many areas, does anyone think banks are going to loan money for houses at a fixed rate of 2.5% for 30 years? That’s financial suicide.

njprogressive, I think I’ll take one of those poppy seed bagels off to work with me. Stay warm up there.

We have huge deficits, a currency declining in value and inflation returning but the Talking Heads on the business channels are predicting ten year notes of 2.5%?
Just how high did interests rates have to go in the 70s to stop the dollar slide when circumstances were similar?
Just who is promoting this talking point and who are they protecting?

OT. A featured FDL news item this morning:

Pak govt makes U-turn on cause of Bhutto’s death

In a dramatic U-turn, Pakistan government has “apologised” for claiming that former premier Benazir Bhutto died of a skull fracture after hitting the sunroof of her car during a suicide attack.

Caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan has asked the media and people to “forgive and ignore” comments made by his ministry’s spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema which were slammed by her Pakistan People’s Party as “lies” and led to an uproar at home and abroad.

My bold.

Forgive and ignore, absent any explanation as to why these claims were made in the first place? I don’t think so.

Good morning back.

OK, it’s serious diet time no biscuits or bagels—one bowl of Joe’s O’s and that’s it.

Time to get back to work and the rest of the world. Not looking too good right now—the rest of the world, that is.

Yes I agree but if they deny that there are any problems and call for insane ten year rates as a solution, which is just not going to happen.
Well I’m thinking that this is another time bomb the GOP and the business community is setting for a Democratic President.
Come to think of it why isn’t Larry Kudlow’s MSNBC show considered a paid commercial for the GOP? Its all pro Reagen propaganda. Its all Democrats are bad. Its all Laffer Curve, Milt Friedman is God at the expense of the facts.
Larry is why we need a facts doctrine of some kind as well as a return to the fairness doctrine.

I wonder why Bush just doesn’t offer Scooter a free ride if he were to serve in Iraq in the Greenzone? I’m sure that we have people serving public or private there who are his age.

yes, now’s the time to make up for all the good eating, and rid ourselves of that extra chocolate we all ate by bringing in more and better Democrats this year! Then the world will look a lot better.

OK the President can commute sentences, pardon people etc. But he can’t do a thing about war crimes can he, at least not if the criminals are arrested in another country.
Which means that all the Bushies can never leave!

…and we will get better gas milage.

Kudlow is one of the people the term “barking mad” most aptly describes. How someone of his ilk is given a public forum is simply beyond comprehension….

from nyt today:
Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 commission.

…So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah. A second set, even more important in our view, asked for details about the translation process in the interrogations; the background of the interrogators; the way the interrogators handled inconsistencies in the detainees’ stories; the particular questions that had been asked to elicit reported information; the way interrogators had followed up on certain lines of questioning; the context of the interrogations so we could assess the credibility and demeanor of the detainees when they made the reported statements; and the views or assessments of the interrogators themselves.

The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies. The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any form. Not satisfied with this response, we decided that we needed to question the detainees directly, including Abu Zubaydah and a few other key captives.

In a lunch meeting on Dec. 23, 2003, George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, told us point blank that we would have no such access. During the meeting, we emphasized to him that the C.I.A. should provide any documents responsive to our requests, even if the commission had not specifically asked for them. Mr. Tenet replied by alluding to several documents he thought would be helpful to us, but neither he, nor anyone else in the meeting, mentioned videotapes.

A meeting on Jan. 21, 2004, with Mr. Tenet, the White House counsel, the secretary of defense and a representative from the Justice Department also resulted in the denial of commission access to the detainees. Once again, videotapes were not mentioned.

As a result of this January meeting, the C.I.A. agreed to pose some of our questions to detainees and report back to us. The commission concluded this was all the administration could give us. But the commission never felt that its earlier questions had been satisfactorily answered. So the public would be aware of our concerns, we highlighted our caveats on page 146 in the commission report.

As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taiibi on Imus this morning. Here’s the debrief:

T: Republican candidates like the Addams family
I: Huckabee = batsh*t insane [well, okay, he may not have “said” batshit but that was the tone]
T: homoerotic commercial between Huckabee and Chuck “third fist” Norris
T: polling all over the place because nobody can stand these guys for more than five mins at a time
I: isn’t any of them worse than what we’ve got now.

T: Democratic wives in a snit over Michelle Obama’s boots

okay, guys, I want the boot report.

I know that we will not take him seriously but what about all the people who get their information from TV? Kudlow repeats the same themes GOP good, Democrats bad over and over again.
We need to fight back and shutdown this fact free GOP commercial paid for by General Electric. We need to stop the GOP from getting around campaign finance laws.
Just because we think we can win this election is no reason to let the GOP keep an unfair advantage in advertising.
Come to think of it will any major news network show Michael Moore’s “Sicko” on tv. Probably not and our media is a lot more accurate than their stuff is.

I’m still celebrating New Year’s

In Norway there’s no tradition for fireworks arranged by the city. It’s too cold in January to gather downtown for the celebrations, so everyone just go out into their gardens or a nearby open spot, launch their rockets and then head back inside. The result is more than simply beautiful.

We need to fight back and shutdown this fact free GOP commercial paid for by General Electric. We need to stop the GOP from getting around campaign finance laws.

The question being, “How?” As one person I don’t watch the cr*p; also try to refrain from buying products made by them but, until the majority of Americans follow suit, what can be done? Aint’ no way pols are gonna actually *do* something about it. :-(

Kudlow’s GOP commercial has to be in violation of campaign finance laws.

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