Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

MINSKY

My wife and I were talking this evening about this strange gift I seem to have for seeing the things in the media that turn into actual news stories. I get most of my news from the Internet, but it sometimes seems that, if I turn the TV on for five minutes, I'll see the clip that everyone repeats for the next couple of days. If I flip though a random magazine on the john, I'll happen to read the article that everyone talks about for the next little while. I don't mean to overstate this, but it happens often enough that we have remarked on it. It's not because I'm smart or handsome or anything.

I wrote a tiny little report on here in November about a book I had been reading: Manias, Panics, and Crashes, A History of Financial Crises, by Charles P. Kindleberger. One of the first chapters discusses the so-called "Minsky Cycle" (or something like that), named after economist Hyman Minsky. In brief, it's the life cycle of an asset bubble. Like the one that's bursting now. But y'all, I had never heard of this guy before that.

So I read this book, and understood some portion of it, back in the spring. (I ordered it from Amazon in December 2006!) Since then, I have run across a big pile of articles and blog posts with titles like "Are we at the peak of the Minsky credit cycle?" or "A 'Minsky Moment'", and the like. Just today, I open the latest New Yorker, and the first talk of the Town feature is titled, "The Minsky Moment."

(And y'all, everyone seems to focus on the moment when the bubble bursts, but here's a clue: the important moment comes well before, when we enter the "euphoria" stage. That's when the people who control the banking apparatus decide whether or not to open the spigot to all these speculators who have no business borrowing these small fortunes to invest in whatever the overspriced asset du jour is. But nobody cares about that.)

And all this from a book I read because Kevin Drum said he liked it. Like I said, I don't want to make more out of this than it really is. But damn if it isn't kind of spooky.

Oh, and really effing bad news for the economy. But who cares about that? posted by Carlton at 9:44 PM

EDWARDS OUT

As I've written before, I would gladly vote for any of the top three Dem candidates for the Big Job . As I've also written before, I can't believe that a guy like John Edwards would be THIRD in this race -- given his charisma, ceaseless campaigning, and powerful personal story.

But now he's out. He did a lot for the race -- pushing an anti-poverty agenda, making the other candidates speak in detail about health care, etc. His wife even took down Ann Coulter on TV.

Thanks, John. Maybe another time. posted by Carlton at 9:41 PM

INSTEAD OF WATCHING THE SPEECH

Read this chart.

Enjoy. posted by Carlton at 10:14 PM

BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH

I heard this on the radio this morning, and I just had to look it up. Regarding the vote on the FISA bill today:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) . . . observed succinctly: "It’s not about frightening the American people. The American people should be frightened and remember full well what happened on 9/11."

[Edited to remove some silliness that took away from the utter inanity of the quote.]

It's hard to replicate this in the laboratory. I tried to come up with a snappy line to parrot the internal anti-logic of the quote, but nothing is better than the thing itself. posted by Carlton at 7:19 PM

SOUTH CAROLINA

My girl Hillary got quite the drubbing in SC yesterday -- which is OK. She can take it. (And if she can't she shouldn't win.) Like Kevin Drum, I still think it's likely that she'll get the nomination on the end, although I'm happier about it than he is, for sure. As I've said before, however, it's OK with me if it's Obama.

People are all atwitter about Bill Clinton's comments about SC in general, comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson (as in, someone who won South Carolina in the primaries). I'll admit that he's kind of pushing it, here -- but I see where he's going, strategically. Obama wants to be this transformative, post-race figure, and so his message has a racial aspect to it, by definition. Bringing up Jackson, who is not terribly popular even among blacks, I think, does call back some unpleasant memories and paste them onto Obama. This may backfire, especially if, as I think, Obama comes off so well in the comparison that he does seem like the post-race candidate.

But some people, you know, object. I have a hard time getting worked up about this, at this stage. The Dems are still paying Laser Tag in order to get ready for the Somme. If Hillary wins, the tactic will have the victor's genius. If she loses, no one will really care. posted by Carlton at 4:59 PM

FOOLS DO WHAT WE ASK

It's a bit late to psychoanalyze the current administration, but here's another shot at it. This is probably more descriptive than analytical, exactly, but it's something I've noticed a couple of times in recent news items, and it seems to go back a ways.

Readers may remember a recent post about the Dulles-DC Metro link project -- how state and local planners had undergone a lengthy revision process at the behest of the administration, changing the plan, reducing the budget, increasing the percentage of local participation. After doing everything that the Federal Transit Administration asked, checking all the boxes, etc., the administration finally shrugs its shoulders and says that they don't really like public transit after all. The demands were just a smokescreen.

That resonated with something I saw at uber-blogger Glenn Greenwald's site . The underlying story is about Sen. Dodd's attempt to block passage of legislation giving telecom companies retroactive immunity for cooperating with the administration's (probably illegal) wiretapping programs:

As always, the significance of what has occurred here shouldn't be overstated. The only reason Senate Democrats became angry on Thursday is because Republicans actually refused to allow Democrats to capitulate, as they were ready and eager to do. Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from caving in completely to Bush because they didn't want this issue resolved. They wantto ensure that Bush, in Monday's State of the Union address, can accuse Senate Democrats of failing to act on FISA, and thus attack and mock them as being weak on national security and causing the Terrorists to be able to Slaughter Us All.

And, rather pitifully, some Democrats are shocked -- so very upset -- that, yet again, their demonstrated willingness to give the Republicans everything they demanded has not prompted a Good, Nice, Courteous Response. "We did everything you told us to do. Why are you being so mean and unfair?" That sad posture is what led even Jay Rockefeller apparently to announce that he will vote against cloture on his own bill.

And let's not forget this golden oldie, from March of 2003 (which is exactly what I thought of when I saw what Greenwald had written). Remember, before we invaded Iraq, how we insisted that we had to invade Iraq because they wouldn't disarm, specifically that they had all these awesome missiles that were such a big threat?

Iraq today resumed destroying its short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles. . .

President Bush, in his weekly radio address today, took a far harder line
than the United Nations weapons inspectors, declaring that Iraq ''is still
violating the demands of the United Nations by refusing to disarm.''

Mr. Bush dismissed the destruction of the Samoud missiles as ''a public
show of producing and destroying a few prohibited missiles,'' and argued anew
that American intelligence -- which the administration has declined to release
-- ''shows that even as he is destroying these few missiles, he has ordered the
continued production of the very same type of missiles.''

In Iraq, the government destroyed 6 of the short-range Samoud missiles
after a one-day hiatus, bringing the total destroyed under United Nations
supervision in the last week to 40 -- approximately one-third of Iraq's known
stock of the missiles.

The Iraqis knew what was up, though, even if no one on our side could puzzle it out:

''We are all afraid because we expect we could be attacked at any minute,'' said
Raghad Majid, a 23-year-old art student. ''They want to attack no matter what.''

The administration's goals do not change. They do not compromise. They do not tell the truth. They enter into negotiations only as a pretense, to delay or in order to demand concessions that are (hopefully) impossible for their adversaries to provide. This bad faith comes to light most glaringly when they actually get what they say they want, and have to 1) insist that, as much as it may appear that you did what they asked, you didn't, or 2) completely reverse position without explanation, leaving those across the table to realize that we were chumps even to talk to them. In every case, if pressed, they will accuse the opposition of dishonesty.

They are not affected by changes in facts or circumstances. They do not get embarassed. They have no concept of good faith. In fact, if you aren't One of Them, they will go out of their way to rip you off, waste your time, ruin your good name.

It's fascinating, really. Pathological. posted by Carlton at 4:00 PM

ON LIVING FOREVER

I undertook some long-postponed maintenance this weekend, and the results were good. First was an eye exam, which I hadn't had in over three years.

Result? I am not going blind. In fact, I am exactly the same amount of myopic/astigmatic as I was three years ago. So . . . if I stay away from flying awls and exploding meth labs, I should be OK.

The other was a trip to the dentist. It's been a long time, y'all. I haven't had a regular dentist in YEARS. I don't hate the dentist -- I've never had a bad experience, but it was never a priority.
I brush, etc., but I was really afraid that my mouth was going to be a chamber of horrors.

Result: Fine. The guy wants to seal a couple of my back teeth, but it isn't pressing. See you again in six months, doc.

Anticlimactic, huh? posted by Carlton at 9:45 PM

IN MY COUNTRY THERE IS PROBLEM . . .

and that problem is transport.

(Some background: There are two airports in Northern Virginia, one small and close in -- Reagan -- and one big and far out -- Dulles. Flying into/out of Reagan is more convenient and more expensive, and those two things are probably related. A cab ride from my house to Reagan is $15-20. A cab ride to Dulles is $85. Dulles is much less useful to the area than it might be because it's really hard to get there and back.)

Federal officials remain skeptical of the plan to extend Metrorail to Dulles International Airport and might reject it, even though their consultants recently found that the proposal meets requirements for full funding, government and project sources said.

Officials with the Federal Transit Administration say they are concerned about the
price tag and the specter of another Big Dig, the Boston project built by the same contractor in charge of the Dulles rail line, which took years longer and cost millions more than planned, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are sensitive. In addition, the agency has been reluctant to promote large-scale transit projects.

That last line is the key, apparently. DOT: "It's not that this project doesn't meet any of the criteria we came up with, or that you haven't changed it in accordance with all the requests we've made, or that you didn't trim the budget the way we asked. It's just that we don't like public transit, and we don't want to do it. Even more than that, all the things we asked you to do with this project were just a smokescreen. We took advantage of your mistaken impression that this project might ever happen."

State and local officials, as well as project advocates, say they are ready to
meet any requests by the federal government. Officials slashed $300 million from
the budget in September. The project is to link the region's major
international and transcontinental airport to the rest of the transportation
network and help remake Tysons Corner. But without the more than $900 million in federal funding requested by Virginia, the plan would collapse.

Nine hundred million sounds like a lot, doesn't t it? Not according to Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia:

"We can see no reason why the project would be rejected at this point," Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said during a question-and-answer session yesterday on washingtonpost.com. "Under normal conditions, communities often put up 20 to 30 percent of the costs of these transit projects with the federal government picking up the remaining share. In this instance, the local share is more than two-thirds, and Congress has already demonstrated that this is a project of national importance by allocating significant budgetary resources."

Putting aside the fact that Tyson's corner is a regional business center, and that it might be nice to be able to, say, get into the city without having to sit in out crippling gridlock for a couple of hours (to go 15 miles), not to mention alleviating some of said crippling gridlock by having some light rail. It's not that it's not too expensive, it's not that it wouldn't work, it's not that anyone in the affected areas isn't in favor of it -- it's just that the Bush people don't like the idea. And they don't need any reasons.

Reasons are for people who aren't 100% sure that they are right. posted by Carlton at 6:37 PM

NEVADA

I have no idea who will win Nevada, of course. I'm for Hillary in the long run, as I've stated. Part of me hopes that Edwards takes it by a whisker, just to shake things up.

And as things turn dirty, and as all these soandsos on DailyKos and elsewhere are just horrified that Ms. Clinton's campaign might be -- heavens -- implicating indirectly the fact that Obama is black, admitted to using drugs, said something nice about Ronald Reagan (for God's sakes, man) . . . to those people I say, buckle up. If Obama wins the nomination, she will have done him a favor. You don't win a Democratic primary by race-baiting the electorate, and she knows that. But he wants to be the "post-race" candidate, the uniter -- if she is implicating race, and some people seem to think she is, the stategy is just to make him talk about it, throwing him off message. And it may work. Horrors.

But you know, if he can't deal with this kind of subtle, arched-eyebrow, tone of voice, veiled-statement-by-surrogate-followed-by-apology kind of semi-assault, he can't take on the Republicans in November. They'll get their machine cranked up and have people claiming he was giving crack to 13 year-old white girls in exchange for anal sex in a mosque while listening to gangster rap. posted by Carlton at 11:20 PM

GEEKING OUT

The other day I was watching David Tennant's video diary serialized on YouTube -- DT being the actor playing the tenth incarnation of Doctor Who. They were behind the scenes on the episode "The Age of Steel" which aired in the second season. One outdoor scene, already hopelessly behind schedule, was interrupted by a freak snowstorm which wouldn't let up.

One of the producers of the show looks into Tennant's camcorder and says, "We may be getting ready for a 'Claws of Axos' rewrite."

A WHAT? To the internets!

Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

The Claws of Axos is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from March 13 to April 3, 1971.

and, most importantly,

During the location shooting of the scenes with the tramp, an overnight snow
storm necessitated the creation of a line in the programme to explain that the
variations of weather from shot to shot in these scenes are "freak weather
conditions" as a result of Axos' arrival.

Geeking OUT. posted by Carlton at 10:54 PM

JUST DO WHAT MR. CHENEY SAYS, OK?

I'd like to call my readership's attention to this story, regarding a fracas between a citizen, Steven Howards, and Vice President Dick Cheney last year. Accounts vary, but most agree that Mr. Howards approached Mr. Cheney to express displeasure with the Administrations' policies at a Colorado ski resort. To make his point, he touched M. Cheney in some way. He says it was a "pat"; others at the time say it was more aggressive. Cheney's Secret Service detail pointed out Howards to a Secret Service Agent named Reichle, who arrested Howards. Howards spent a few hours in a county jail. Howards has since sued.

Clear enough? It gets tricky . . .

The agent who made the arrest, Virgil D. Reichle Jr., said in a deposition that
he was left hanging with an untenable arrest because two agents assigned to
the vice president had at first agreed with a Denver agent that there had
been assault on Mr. Cheney by Mr. Howards, then changed their stories to say
that no assault had occurred.

Mr. Reichle, who did not witness the encounter, said in his deposition that
he believed the vice president’s security detail had wanted the Howards arrest
to go away so that Mr. Cheney would not be inconvenienced by a court case.

Come on, Reichle, go along! The VP just wanted to teach the guy a little lesson, let him sweat it in jail for a while. The actual law and facts don't matter when the VP is involved! Do you know what happens when you don't play along?

This happens:

But one of the three agents assigned to [Cheney], Daniel McLaughlin, said in his
deposition that Mr. Reichle’s description was backward. Mr. McLaughlin
said Mr. Reichle, who has since been transferred to Guam, asked
him in a call several hours after the encounter to say that there had been an
assault to bolster justification for the arrest.

Emphasis mine, naturally. And the private citizen whose rights were (probably) violated? Who cares? He's just some guy. This is CHENEY we're talking about.

posted by Carlton at 10:43 PM

WELL, ACTUALLY

I wasn't totally wrong. I was wrong about Edwards winning anything, of course, but I had Hillary in NH. And I was/am right about the Dem race going deep into the primaries. I believe I'm still right about Clinton.

I was wrong about the Repubs, though, in that I predicted Romney. And the whole shebang is not decided -- unless it turns out to be McCain in the end, and then I can claim that NH was dispositive and I was right after all. (This is what keeps our well-coiffed TV oracles in business, the ability to make a dozen conflicting predictions and crow with glee when one of them turns out to be true.)

I found Tuesday night to be tremendously exhilarating (exHillaryating? ugh.) Not only for the result, which I supported on the Dem side, or for the upset of the ConWis (which was pretty nice, to be honest). Nope, the best thing was that once again, the awesome depth of the Democratic bench was on display.

I heard Edwards' concession speech first, as did everyone, and thought: This guy is handsome, charismatic, tireless, eloquent, with a powerful and timely populist message and he's THIRD? You have to be kidding me! And his wife has incurable cancer? Come on!

But then there was Obama's speech -- and he's not necessarily better in any particular way than Edwards, but he's got a certain something. Based on the very little reading I've done, he seems the weakest on actual policy -- kind of a centrist mushball. But he's got that je ne sais quois, and that voice . . . and you see why he's beating Edwards. (Plus he's raised a lot more money.) Over the past few days, I gave some serious thought to an Obama nomination, and decided that I'd be OK with it. I might even be enthusiastic, after a few quiet moments of mourning for my favored one.

And then there's Hillary. Picard may have told Data that it is possible to make no mistakes and still lose -- which is bullshit, by definition (I really hate ST: TNG, in case anyone cares) -- but Hillary in NH may be a case of winning through the right sort of "mistake." (And I don't mean her victory jacket -- but what was that, anyway?) Fascinating.

Yeah, this is all ajumble, so I'll quit now. Any thoughts? posted by Carlton at 9:42 PM

MOLLY'S NEW SITE PLUS *BOOK*

Check out the link to Molly's new site, at left. She's got some crazy idea about drawing every day and posting, so be sure to egg her on.

And check out her book, which is avaialble for purchase and download (for free, until she figures out how to fix it -- act now!) here. posted by Carlton at 9:19 PM

ON HOW I WAS RIGHT

. . . about literally nothing. Huck and the Big O teamed up to blow a hole in the ConWis that Oprah Winfrey could Jazzercise though. Quite possibly my girl H-bomb's chances of becoming president of the Twelve Colonies . . . I mean the US . . . are sunk as a consequence. Oh well. Obama would be fine with me.

I maintain, however, that we will not have a President Huckabee any time in the near future. posted by Carlton at 9:13 PM