What would happen if a 300 mile asteroid collided with earth? Total extinction even courtesy the Discovery Channel. Make sure to watch in HD for full effect. Depressing, but it has some amazing visuals in it:

PS: If you think these things can’t happen watch Shoemaker-Levy hitting Jupiter

This is no Hollywood movie with easily identifiable good guys and bad guys. In this production they all suck. In the end Hamas got what it wanted: An Israeli strike and war. Arguably they got more this time than they bargained for. Yes, Israel cannot tolerate rockets flying into its territory every day. But where is the perspective? Hamas is obviously hapless as these rocket attacks  result in minimal casualties. Yes, you can argue any casualty is too much, but let’s be honest here: More Israelis die in car crashes than from Hamas rocket attacks. “Rocket attacks” sounds dramatic but in reality they haven’t produced much at all. So what’s the response? Shock and awe and over a thousand casualties in a matter of days, but hey we have an election to win. Sorry to be so cynical, but the basic truth that everyone in the world knows is this: These people are all incapable of solving their problems.

How many US presidents, conferences, peace treaties, UN resolutions, negotiations have produced exactly what? Nothing. The region is in the the same state since Jewish settlers declared Israel an independent state after spending decades of (initially) covertly buying land.

What’s so valuable about the land? Nothing really, but three major religions claim major roots here so on we go and go with no end in sight. Nobody seems to have a solution. Well I have one:

Since both Israelis and Palestinians act like children they need to be treated as such and the entire border dispute will need to be resolved by a UN mandate. Both parties should be disenfranchised from any decision authority. The UN should draw the map for a two state solution with a 5 year mandatory military enforcement commitment. If Israelis and Palestinians don’t like it, well tough. The world is sick of your crap.

Side notes:

1. Why did Israel attack now? Well for one Obama is not in power yet, but more importantly Congress approved the sale of bunker busting bombs to Israel in  September. Delivery just took place in early December. So let’s be clear whose bombs are killing Palestinians.

2. Despite Arab protests across the region a lot of the regional powers are actually pleased. Oil has jumped from $34 to $40 in a matter of two days. Little known problem: Saudi Arabia and Kuwait can’t meet their budgets of oil stays below $50 and $42 per barrel respectively.

3. After the military action is complete how long will it take for Hamas to reconstitute its military capabilities? 6 months? Will the recent Israeli action result in anything useful long term? Nope.

In order to have a political debate that produces actually positive results and improvements we need to acknowledge reality. What are we good at, what are we lacking in, where can we make progress. You cannot train for a race thinking you are the best when in reality you are not. You will fail with this approach. Sadly, we have too many people in this country believing that the United States is some sort of God chosen country that is a shining light on a hill. That sounds nice, but it is not. The simple truth is much blander. The United States does many things well, and excels in certain fields, but it is also a country that has made shockingly little progress in many areas, and worse, is falling behind the rest of the world in many others.

This post then is a beginning of a series aimed that showing factually how the Unites States compares to the rest of the world. This is not an attempt to slander or diminish, but rather to establish a baseline of reality. Only when you understand where you need to improve can you then make then an attempt to improve.

My goal is to continue to post as data becomes available. So readers please forward reliable and verifiable data to me.

So first up: Women in politics. Hillary didn’t make it. Palin (thank goodness in this case) didn’t either. Britian had Thatcher, Germany has Merkel, even Pakistan had a woman president once. She is of course dead now after her assassination recently. Where does the US rank compared to other countries with women in politics? See for yourself:

Is it me, or was he struggling to keep a straight face?

I’m sensing he’s trying to outdo Clinton with his instant classic.

$50 billion fraud. Nobody knew right? Wrong. Another Bush appointee asleep at the wheel. SEC head Chris Cox ignored it completely. How could he have known? Well:

Madoff_SECdocs_20081217

How dramatic has the decline in oil been? This dramatic:

The world is trying to move forward on gay rights. An important step was undertaken by the United Nations this week:

Sixty six countries supported a Franco-Dutch declaration that called for anti-gay laws around the world to be scrapped. The declaration says that “sexual orientation or identity should never be cause for any legal sanction such as execution, arrest or detention

The opposition:

Resistance to the declaration was led by the Vatican, with the support of 56 countries. Archbishop Migliore says the Vatican sees no good in the declaration because it would create “new categories which have to be protected from discrimination.

Right, because once we start protecting one group of people from discrimination who knows who else needs to be protected from discrimination. Who wants that? Seriously, who are these people? But the Vatican can be proud of the company it keeps:

Mr Dittrich thinks that most opposition will come from conservative Islamic countries. “Countries such as Egypt, Uganda and Saudi Arabia are strongly opposed to the merest discussion of the fact that human rights violations should end, so that you cannot simply put gays in prison, or torture them or condemn them to death. They don’t want to talk about that.”

Maybe Christopher Hitchens has a point after all.

I received this email from a friend. It makes a very good point:

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother hurried him along,  but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

As we pointed out Rick Warren is not the kindest of Christians. He supports political assassination and equates gay marriage to incest and statutory rape. He’s just an all around swell guy. While he wraps himself in a cloak of a gentle, compassionate guy, he is none of the sort. In fact, part of the ugly truth came out in an interview with Ann Curry. Reading the transcript I was at first rolling my eyes at the generalities she asked of him when she came out with this line of questioning which produced a shockingly honest response:

Ann Curry: If science finds that this is biological, indisputably, not something that can be explained in any other way except that people are born to be gay, would you change your position?

Rick Warren: No.  And the reason why–

Ann Curry: Why?

Rick Warren: I’d be happy to tell you why. The reason why is because it doesn’t matter to me.  If it’s biological, we’ll be glad to know.  We all have biological predispositions.  Some people struggle with anger.  And other people say, “I don’t struggle with anger, but I sure struggle with fear.”  Some people say, “Oh, I don’t struggle with this.  I struggle with being shy.”

What an incredibly arrogant and quite frankly stupid thing to say. It doesn’t matter to him that it is biological? He equates being gay with anger and fear? All species are predominantly heterosexual because of biology. It’s a very basic fact, that’s how the entire planet procreates. Asking gay people to then stop being gay is the same thing as asking heterosexual people to stop being heterosexual. Seriously, imagine you the reader, as a heterosexual, to be asked by some quack to stop being attracted to your wife, girlfriend, husband, or boyfriend? Stop being angry, or fearful, just be gay! It’s obviously absurd when flipped like this, but this is exactly what Warren and his ilk are asking of gay people. It’s simply ignorant and it is based on a perverse notion of pretending to understand what an imagined God entity considers to be right or wrong.

But of course it’s all a matter of picking and choosing isn’t it?

Ann Cury: You said that God says in the Bible that a man and a woman should cling to each other for life, but it does not say that a marriage is only between a man and a woman. In fact the Bible says that King Solomon had 700 wives. Leviticus speaks of homosexuality as being a sin, but also orders the death penalty for eating fish that had fins and getting a tattoo.

Rick Warren: The people that make that argument don’t understand there are three kind kinds of law in the Bible that are very different. There’s civil law, which is for the nation of Israel. There’s ceremonial law, which is for the Jewish priesthood. And there is moral law, which is for everybody. The laws about eating fish and stuff, those are civil and ceremonial laws for Israel. No Christian follows those.

How convenient. What he neglects to mention of course is that Jesus was Jewish and never disavowed the Jewish practices. That took later men who were eager to spread the new religion and various Jewish practices just seemed to get in the way of quick adoption. Circumcision is a good example. For some reason adult males in the 1st and 2nd centuries were not too keen of having their genitalia cut with a dull blade. So Paul conveniently got rid of the requirement. Reducing the barrier to adoption was a well understood marketing concept by him.

Bottom line, Warren spreads a message of ignorance and division that is in direct contrast to the teachings of the man he claims to follow. Sadly the following fact remains:

Despite the furor, Pastor Rick Warren remains the most influential evangelical in the country and his inspirational messages resonate with millions.

I ask: Why?

The last few years have not been kind to the notion that all is well with the US economic and political system. Far from it. We endured various corruption/fraud scandals such as Enron, Worldcom, questionable elections, hanging chads, automated voting machines with doubtful accuracy, voter intimidation. Now we are dealing with Madoff, Blagojevich, a financial system based on a house of cards, corruption seems rampant. Congress continues to operate with all time low approval ratings and general trust in the political system and our leaders is low. No wonder Obama ran on a platform of change.

How ugly the corrupt influence of money is, can be seen in former President Clinton’s disclosure of his donor lists. Clinton, of course, was forced to release the list in order to make way for his wife to become Secretary of State. The flow of money and favors is mind boggling, and it is just absurd to think that people that contribute these obscene amounts of money do not wield influence.

This is, unfortunately, not a unique practice. President Bush is already busy seeking contributions for his library and “legacy”. How can one not wonder what favors are dished out in advance in order to ensure payment at a later date? Absurd you say? Why, after seeing scandal after scandal over the years how can one not be cynical? Read this:

For instance, mining financier Frank Giustra gave Clinton between $10 million and $25 million along with a donation of $1 million to $5 million from his private foundation.

In 2005, Giustra flew Clinton to Kazakhstan on his private jet, where the ex-prez sang the praises of the Central Asian nation’s autocratic leader. Giustra then won a lucrative uranium mining contract.

Homegrown billionaires weren’t shy to open their wallets either. Stephen Bing, an old “Friend of Bill” and real-estate heir, handed over between $10 million and $25 million, as did New York’s independent political power broker Thomas Golisano and Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner.

Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg and Cameron Diaz donated as well. Songwriter Denise Rich gave between $250,000 and $500,000 and saw her tax-cheating husband, Marc, pardoned in 2001.

More modestly, US sugar baron Alfonso Fanjul Jr., the man who famously called Clinton in the Oval Office when Monica Lewinsky was hanging out, gave between $50,000 and $100,000.

Among other big donors are TV producer Haim Saban, who splits his time between California and Israel and gave between $5 million and $10 million. And American Israel Public Affairs Committee board member and Slim-Fast founder S. Daniel Abraham gave in the $1 million-to-$5 million range.

Now any ex president has the right to make a living. But these are obscene amounts of money and I don’t think anyone is naive enough to believe these people give that much money out of the goodness of their hearts. Yet there is no transparency. Who is looking out for the voter and the country? Where is the oversight?

Let’s face it, our system is a sham. And looking at the shambles that is our entire current economic system we can’t really be surprised, or can we?

Well at least it’s out in the open. Some people are perfectly content to use blowtorches on suspected prisoners. Whatever it takes. And the hypocrisy on top: It’s ok if Americans do it, but it’s wrong for others to do it to Americans.

We’ve discussed this torture issue at length here and here.

No discussion of the possibility that the unspeakable could be done against innocents. Given the track record of incarcerating innocent victims in Gitmo you would think that some might pause to think. But they don’t care. They buy into the simple minded and stupefying argument of the ticking bomb which, of course, has no practical relevance in the first place. It’s a hypothetical, and it’s wrong. Torture does not work. Despite how many times they argue that is does, it doesn’t. It’s immoral, it’s unethical, it’s illegal, it’s barbaric, and it’s stupid. I cant make it any clearer than that.

This clip gives a good overview of the arguments:

Alright then, here’s Obama’s first misstep. By selecting Rick Warren to give his invocation Obama is giving a green light to a hack. Clearly a political move to appear bi-partisan it is nevertheless elevating further a man who, in my book, has one principle agenda: Himself. Wrapped in “moderate” clothing Warren is a wolf nevertheless, a Christian only by self description, not by word. Specific recent examples:

Equating gay marriage with rape and incest:

He went on to say he’s opposed to gay marriage the same way he is opposed to a brother and sister marrying (that would be incest), a man marrying a child (that would be statutory rape), or someone having multiple spouses (that would be polygamy). Pressed by Waldman, Warren said he considered those crimes equivalent to gay marriage

Claiming that gay marriage would impede free speech:

Warren claimed he supported Proposition 8 because of a free-speech issue — asserting that “any pastor could be considered doing hate speech . . . if he shared his views that homosexuality wasn’t the most natural way for relationships.”

What a crock!

Rick Warren surely is busy on the political front. Gay marriage is tremendously important apparently. What about things like torture? Surely a Christian pastor would be actively engaged against this?

WARREN - Well, and you know what - some of the stuff I saw looking at Guantanamo looks like clearly it was torture. To me, if you torture someone, you put yourself no better than the enemy. We must maintain the moral highground. You have no right to condemn the immoral actions of others if we’re doing the same thing. And we should expect that others will torture our people if we’re torturing them.

BELIEFNET- Did you ever talk to President Bush to try to convince him to change his policy?

WARREN - No. No.

BELIEFNET- Why not?

WARREN — Never got the chance. I just didn’t. In fact, in the first place, I’m a pastor, and people might misunderstand - I don’t deal with policy issues with Barack Obama or President Clinton or John McCain. I just don’t. that’s not my role. My role is to pastor these guys. As a leader I understand stress.

And even when I disagree with positions they hold, they’ve got plenty of political advisors. They don’t need me to be a political advisor. I’m not a pundit. I’m not a politician and that’s why I don’t take sides. But I am a pastor. And I can deal with “how’s your family doing? How’s your stress level doing?”

I thought so…AWOL…To be clear, in regards to torture, it’s not his business, he doesn’t deal with policy issues…but two people of the same sex loving each other and wanting to get married, that deserves his full attention…

The lack of rigor regarding torture is a telling sign, especially when viewed in the context that the symbol of the religion he espouses is that of a man tortured to death. One would think it might enter his mind when speaking to the person who authorized it all. Would Warren have kept silent with Pilate? “Oh I won’t bother you about that guy Jesus in your custody, how’s your family? Anyone gay?”

Pathetic.

Must. Sell. Books.

Ah surely the Bible teaches: Thou shall not kill. So assassinations out of question right? No:

Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to “take out” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, “Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?” Warren responded, “Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped…. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.”

Of course we, the good ones, get to decide who is evil and who is not. We decide who gets assassinated and who does not. God is with us.

This is all pseudo Biblical hogwash that has precious little to do with the spirit of the Jesus Christ of the New Testament. But, hey, he’s sold 25 million books and presides over the 4th largest church in the country, so he’s mainstream and acceptable.

Sorry, but preaching exclusion and hatred are never mainstream, especially not from a hypocrite. Rick Warren is a marketing package, a sales man, but as so often, an empty shell behind the glitter. Another pretend Christian. And that’s who Obama chose for his invocation. Disappointing.

While Germany had officially no role in the Iraq invasion (in fact the government was opposed to it publicly) it turns out that the country provided important intelligence support via two intelligence agents placed in Baghdad. The details are quite eye opening:

On that day, Johannes H., the BND agent (or “resident”) in Baghdad at the time, sent an extremely important message to his counterparts with the Iraqi intelligence service. The core of the message consisted of only one sentence, but it was practically an ultimatum: “The United States and Great Britain consider Iraq’s refusal to destroy the Samud II missiles to be a casus belli.”

When the Iraqis hesitated, the BND agent told them that the Latin term means “cause for war.” Suddenly they understood the message. “Both men seemed very concerned,” the station chief noted in a memo for BND headquarters. The Iraqis had suggested that their boss was likely to “take the message directly to IRQ President Saddam Hussein.”

The delivery of this explosive news was one of the resident’s last official actions. After that, the new special team took over the BND’s Baghdad operations. The two new agents were trained soldiers. Mahner was a lieutenant colonel and had served in the German Air Force, and Heinster was a paratrooper. The BND duo began making reconnaissance trips. Using a secure satellite line, they transmitted about 130 reports, including photographs and GPS data, to BND headquarters. They reported sandbag positions and machine gun nests and, after reporting the positions of Iraqi troops near their own location, they requested that “Special Forces be used to fight these troops; no rockets, and definitely no artillery.”

While some German officials continue to deny a critical support role, their American counterparts have a different view:

The Americans interviewed by SPIEGEL could tell the Bundestag committee a different story about the relevance of the BND reports. In their view, these reports even played a role in critical combat decisions, such as that relating to commencement of the ground offensive.

Several members of General Marks’ staff remember the reactions triggered by the German reports.

“The March 5 report was especially important to us,” says a senior member of the oil reconnaissance team, who works for a security agency today and therefore wishes to remain anonymous. The reports and the increased monitoring of the facilities that ensued, he says, resulted in substantial changes to and acceleration of the war plans. …..Centcom Commander Franks agreed. A few hours later, he gave 140,000 coalition troops their marching orders. As a result, the ground war began earlier than planned, and Franks’ decision went down in US military history as “G before A,” or “ground before air.” By March 21, the US Marines reported that their mission had already been accomplished. They had crossed the border without encountering significant resistance, and had taken control of Iraq’s central oil fields. “The Germans and their reliable information played a significant part in the war beginning earlier than planned,” says Marks.

For years Bush kept reciting, like a parrot really, the phrase “free market principles”. With the phrase “free market principles”, or its related buzz word “deregulation”,  everything was justifiable: Lowering taxes on the wealthy to keep jobs going, avoiding mandatory health insurance coverage to avoid imposing taxes on employers, basically anything that would hurt businesses. Never mind, that some segment in the population would always get the short end of the stick.

Well game over. Another one of the mindless platitudes this president has inundated the American people with over the past 8 years has been exposed as empty rhetoric:

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN television, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.

As with the war, or anything else, it came down to ideology. The phrases balance, or broader perspective never entered the vocabulary.

What a disgrace. In the final month of his presidency Bush had now to abandon the one principle Republicans have liked to cling to since Reagan: Free market principles. What a disaster that it took a scorched United States economy to realize that pure free market principles don’t work. As Ronald Reagen used to say ” Trust but verify”.

As we pointed out Sunday night these are dangerous time to be short the market. The Fed surprised the market today buy cutting rates even further than the expected 50 basis point cut:

The Federal Reserve slashed its target for overnight interest rates to a record low of zero to 0.25 percent

The Federal Reserve will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability,” the Fed said.

The cut in the federal funds rate pushes it to its lowest level on records dating to July 1954, and the central bank said it would likely keep it at “exceptionally low levels for some time.”

“There is no more room to cut rates, as the target cannot go negative,” said economist Chris Rupkey of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.  “Quantitative easing will be the new way for the Fed to stimulate the economy going forward.”

In addition to the rate cut, the Fed said it was prepared to expand already announced large purchases of debt issued by government-sponsored mortgage agencies to support the battered US housing market.

This action set the stage for a massive buying and short covering rally just a week before the Christmas holiday. Given seasonality, I still expect short sellers to stand aside to avoid what might turn out to be a freight train of equity money wanting to salvage portfolios in the next few days. January 6th, however, all bets are off the table…

The intermediate good news for homeowners is that they can expect mortgage rates to come down to the 4.5% range in the next few months. I continue to maintain that is took the Fed way too long to recognize the severity of the problem. Worried about inflation when deflation was  the concern, they eased too slowly, resulting in the fact they now had to take rates to 0. Standing against the wall, classic capitulation.

On the record, on tape, on video, Vice President Cheney admits his involvement in rendering the US Constitution invalid and authorizing war crimes. Torture is a war crime. The US has signed the Geneva Convention.
Anyone who claims that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques were not torture is encouraged to go through the techniques themselves. I doubt they could handle them without screaming for them to stop. Shy of that opportunity I would encourage Americans to read Nazi Germany’s Gestapo manual on “sharpened interrogation”. Proud of the company we kept? This is the America of freedom, democracy, the shining light? The America that defeated Nazism without resorting to these methods? Notice no water boarding was authorized. We took that from Pol Pot and the Spanish Inquisition.

More background here:

The Iraq war was a major strategic blunder that cost thousands of lives and over half a trillion dollars. The Bush administration pursued a particular angle to convince the American people that the war was necessary. That angle was principally based on the threat of WMD. Even Karl Rove admitted that the war would not have take place without the belief that weapons were there.

Now we are witnessing an amazing case of attempted historical revisionism, or more bluntly, a pack of lies. Vice President Cheney now claims that we would have gone to war even if he had known there were no WMD. Oh really? What was the ultimatum based on? Give up WMD’s or we attack. That was the argument.  Disarm from what? Would we have stated an ultimatum in the first place? On what basis would we have attacked? How could Saddam have avoided war? The entire argument is absurd, and it has to be. It is not based on the facts. The facts are that WMD, in particular the stated threat of a nuclear attack on the United States was used as the central premise to justify an invasion.

Chris Matthews does a good job here of challenging Frank Gaffney on the facts, well worth watching. Gaffney bases his entire argumentation of on woulda, coulda, shoulda.. Of course he did not risk his family’s lives on that premise, but he states the American troops did have to die. Just unbelievable. Either they have no conscience or they are in denial:

Amazing video of twisted logic expressed by President Bush. First he makes the argument that Iraq needed to be invaded since it has been a “major theater against Al-Qaeda”. When the reporter confronts him with the reality that it only became an Al-Qaeda theater after he invaded, Bush responds with: “So what?”.

How dumb does he think the American public is? Seriously.

The analogy would be to say:

” Hey we needed to operate to prevent an infection from spreading.”

“But there was no infection prior to the operation”

“So what?”

Footage from Greece, and apparently the Greek police is running out of tear gas.

To understand the current economic woes it helps to get a longer term perspective on how leverage has infiltrated the system. Leverage can also be defined as spending money one doesn’t have, but gets to “play” with through easy access of credit. This works well on the upside, but is disastrous on the way down:

From torture to real time events, Bush’s instinct seems to be to deny reality. The latest incident in the form of an Iraqi journalist throwing shoes at him is symptomatic. This pool report of the President’s interview with reporters on the way to Afghanistan is a very good example:

Q Well, not to belabor the point too much, on this man, but I have a serious question about it. Obviously he’s expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, and —

THE PRESIDENT: How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he’s expressing? Who —

Q We had a translator who said he shouted about the widows and orphans.

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know. I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I heard he was representing a Baathist TV station. I don’t know the facts, but let’s find out the facts. All I’m telling you, it was a bizarre moment.

Q I wanted to ask something broader.

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate.

Q Well, then, separately from him —

THE PRESIDENT: That’s exactly what he wanted you to do. Like I answered on your question, what he wanted you to do was to pay attention to him. And sure enough, you did. Now, look, I’m not suggesting you can’t avoid it. But it —

He can’t even acknowledge the obvious and well known fact: Many people in Iraq hate him. They don’t view him as a liberator, they view him as someone who has brought death to tens of thousands of their family members. This is why his presidency has been such a disaster. The complete inability to seek out and acknowledge a comprehensive view of reality. He only believes what he wants to believe, and based on that notion he makes decisions. Decisions with deadly and disastrous consequences.

Heck of a job Brownie.

I should add here that the entire pool report shows no critical questions for Bush, no mention of the Senate report on torture and Bush’s obvious public statements contrary to the known truth inside his administration. Once again the press is utterly useless, but I’m glad they got some giggles and laughter with the president.

A bipartisan Senate report released last week leaves little doubt that the Bush administration lied from the top down as the scandal unfolded. The detailed report is here.

Dan Froomkin has outlined a detailed analysis here.

A couple of highlights:

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own,” the report finds. “The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”

The report notes that in early 2002, not long after the Defense Department legal counsel’s office started exploring the application of the sorts of abhorrent practices later documented at Abu Ghraib, Bush signed a memo exempting war-on-terror detainees from the Geneva Conventions. “[T]he decision to replace well established military doctrine, i.e., legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to interpretation, impacted the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody,” the report states.

And the report concludes: “The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at [Guantanamo]. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.”

Attempts by senior officials to portray [the bad apples scenario] to be the case while shrugging off any responsibility for abuses are both unconscionable and false. Our investigation is an effort to set the record straight on this chapter in our history that has so damaged both America’s standing and our security. America needs to own up to its mistakes so that we can rebuild some of the good will that we have lost.”

The report and article provide detailed and factual back-up. There is no doubt that there was a planned effort to legalize torture under President Bush. And he authorized it. And then he lied about it repeatedly. There is only one purpose to exempt prisoners from the Geneva convention. It is to torture. And this will be one of his legacies. An American President who betrayed the US Constitution and the American people.

How to explain these actions from a President who claims to be a man of faith? Andrew Sullivan has an interesting take:

This Christianist president has a hard time with actual Christianity. He is of the fundamentalist psyche that holds that since he is on the side of the angels, he cannot do evil. And so even when presented with indisputable evidence of his own acts, his own memos, his own staff’s decisions, he cannot own the consequences. He asked for memos from apparatchiks saying it wasn’t torture, as if this guaranteed it wasn’t torture. He reacted to the tangible consequences of his own decisions as if someone else had been president, or someone else’s signature was on those memos, or someone else’s vice-president had publicly embraced torture as a “no-brainer.”

The house as a piggy bank concept is long gone. News hits the wires today that home values have dropped a staggering $2 trillion in 2008. Since housing does not yet have seemed to bottomed we are likely to see this number increase when all is said and done. With high debt levels and lower values in 401Ks and homes, combine with pressures on the job market, it is no wonder that consumers don’t feel like shopping.

The best hope for homeowners right now is that interest rates will continue to drop which will give many an opportunity to refinance at lower rates.

For some that is little comfort, however:

Some 11.7 million Americans are now “underwater,” owing more on their mortgage balances than their homes are worth.

Free Mercedes anyone?

The market did not sell off last week. It tried, but it didn’t. It had every excuse in the world to do so as the news flow was just atrocious. AND on top we were totally overbought, but it didn’t sell. Bears take note, this week may surprise many on both sides of the equation. While the news flow will continue to be poor here are several key considerations arguing for a massive rally:

1. The 50 day SMA on the S&P 500 has dropped to 908, and will be even lower this week. This means the market as an excellent opportunity to rally through it. The last test of the 50 SMA was in September. I fully expect any initial push through to ultimately retreat back to the 50 SMA , however, the first attempt through may go a lot higher than people expect. The short covering will be brutal. The upper Bollinger band is not until 931 and the early November high was a tad over 1,000. After a 3 month consolidation pattern the market just begs to test these areas.

2. The VIX broke its recent trendline to the downside on Friday. This means volatility is coming out of the market, this will embolden funds to return money to the market

3. It is, for all intents and purposes, the last full week before Christmas. Seasonality plays a role, although the biggest upside typically are the last few days between the holidays. With thin trading stocks are easily moved upward.

4. Option expiration on Friday, Fed cut this week, OPEC cutting production, banks reporting and further bad news removed from the system.

5. Funds are underinvested with a serious sense of performance anxiety.

Seriously, this is a dangerous time to be short. There is a reason why Bill Fleckenstein has shut down his exclusively bearish short fund.

If anything, it might be much wiser to short once the S&P 500  does test the 1,000 range. The time to trade more safely long would be once the 50 day SMA has been successfully retested on the way down.

So increasingly, the battlelines are becoming clear. Traders, take note.

I would expect one solid down day this week, but a strong bias to the upside.

Some people are downright giddy about bad economic times. Their business model thrives on it:

Bad times are good for evangelical churches.

“It’s a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us,” said the Reverend A.R. Bernard, founder and senior pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York’s largest evangelical congregation, where regulars are arriving earlier to get a seat. “When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors.”

Nice. Keep in mind that this is the same crowd that also can’t wait for the world to end…

But why the evangelical churches seem to thrive especially in hard times is a Rorschach test of perspective.

For some evangelicals, the answer is obvious. “We have the greatest product on earth,” said the Reverend Steve Tomlinson, senior pastor of the Shelter Rock Church.

Indeed, they do…it can’t be seen, can’t be inspected, is not subject to scrutiny, is tax exempt, has a no return policy and can be sold in perpetuity. Brilliant!

A fitting end to Bush’s presidency. Making a “farewell” trip to Iraq, Bush has to duck a pair of  shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist, a customary gesture of discontent:

Video here.

Aspiring scientists from the Zurich School of Applied Sciences have built a video simulation that displays the flight path of every commercial flight in the world over a 24-hour period:

Media outlets are like drones that just repeat stories even though they are not true. Take this example: Apparently Playboy magazine got in trouble because they supposedly printed a cover with a nude Virgin Mary on the cover of its Mexican addition. The only problem is: She ain’t nude. At all.

But it gets repeated everywhere nonetheless.

Seriously, this is nude? I see more breast exposure going to the mall on Saturday. And that would be topless at best, but it’s not even that.

And what’s the controversy? The image itself, or where the image appears? From what I can tell the Virgin Mary is not all that picky in terms of where she appears. Heck, she has even appeared on a piece of toast.

Another proud moment in US legislative history:

Totally absurd.

Update: Anyone notice how there is talk of a new Bill of Rights at the end of the clip?

Man, just scanning the headlines these days it’s hard not to get the sense that everything is rigged, corruption is rampant and the world is filled with hustlers. A quick scan:

Siemens to settle corruption charges

Hospital CEO pleads guilty in fraud

The Madoff scandal

The Blagojevich scandal

And now even chess players are doping!

But hey, at least we always have Michael Jackson!