Bill Perkins Bailout Cartoon

Appeared recently in the New York Times print edition. More here.

Declan McCullagh notes the large amount of pork in the bill that passed Friday.

Updates on the $700,000,000,000 Fed / Wall Street / Mortgage Bailout

Lori Montgomery & Paul Kane:

The proposed legislation would authorize Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to initiate what is likely to become the biggest government bailout in U.S. history, allowing him to spend up to $700 billion to relieve faltering banks and other firms of bad assets backed by home mortgages, which are falling into foreclosure at record rates.

The plan would give Paulson broad latitude to purchase any assets from any firms at any price and to assemble a team of individuals and institutions to manage them. In wielding those powers, Paulson and others hope to contain a crisis that already has caused the failure or forced the rescue of a half-dozen major Wall Street firms and unnerved markets around the world.

• Draft Bailout bill (200K PDF)
• Letter to Paulson & Bernanke
• Larry Summers:

  Congressional negotiators have now completed action on a $700bn authorisation for the bail-out of the financial sector. This step was as necessary as the need for it was regrettable. There are hugely important tactical issues regarding the deployment of these funds that the authorities will need to consider in the weeks and months ahead if the chance of containing the damage is to be maximised. I expect to return to these issues once the legislation is passed.

  In the meantime, it is necessary to consider the impact of the bail-out and the conditions necessitating it on federal budget policy. The idea seems to have taken hold in recent days that because of the unfortunate need to bail out the financial sector, the nation will have to scale back its aspirations in other areas such as healthcare, energy, education and tax relief. This is more wrong than right. We have here the unusual case where economic analysis actually suggests that dismal conclusions are unwarranted and the events of the last weeks suggest that for the near term, government should do more, not less.

• Tom Wolfe's latest is worth a read.
• My email to our Washington delegation.

My Thoughts on the Proposed $700,000,000,000 Fed/Wall Street / MortgageBailout

My email to Wisconsin Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl. I also sent this to Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin:

Dear Senator Feingold:

I am writing to express my opposition to the proposed $700,000,000,000 toxic debt instrument bailout.

I believe it is wrong for us to continue the practice of spending beyond our means and simply passing more debt to our children and grandchildren. It is also wrong to stoke the fires of inflation.

If you believe these funds are necessary, then I suggest the following:

1. Mandatory across the board spending cuts that pay for at least 50% of this initiative. They must be across the board.
2. A slight change in tax policy so that every American pays some taxes. The annual base tax cost should follow spending changes. Choose a small number. Think of this as a "co-pay". We have a real problem with the perception that federal (and state) dollars somehow fall out of the sky.
3. You might be able to insert the beginning of a consumption tax. I would be in favor of such a tax on luxury vehicles, large boats and private aircraft over $1M.
4. Restore the estate tax rate to early 1990's levels.
5. Gas tax. Add a provision to raise the gas tax annually. We need to do this for economic and national security reasons.

Best wishes,

Jim

Related:

• Financial sector lobbying
• Public markup of the draft bailout legislation.
• SEC Oversight flaws
• NY Times on Countrywide Mortgage's favorable deals with Senators Chris Dodd & Kent Conrade.
• Politico on Senator's favorable mortgage deals.

America Must Rescue the Bonuses at Goldman Sachs: Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis:

Anyone who caught even a sliver of yesterday's hearings in the U.S. Senate on the proposed Treasury bailout of the mortgage-backed securities market knows that the current financial crisis is far from over. Suddenly all sorts of previously unthinkable catastrophes seem possible.

The total collapse of the global financial system is one thing -- everyone at Davos in January saw that coming. But the shrinkage of the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bonus pool is another. Whatever else the Treasury achieves it must know that if the employees of Goldman suffer any sort of pay cut, it will be judged to have failed. And our country may never recover.

Last year Goldman paid its employees $20 billion, 44 percent of the firm's revenue. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein took home $68.5 million, and many otherwise ordinary human beings took home $10 million or mor

Notes from the Federal Bailout Hearing

Mike Nizza:

From Paulson to You | 11:41 a.m. In response to a question, Secretary Paulson sought to clear the air about who the bailout was supposed to help. "This is all about the American taxpayer," he said. "That's all we care about." He continued:

Any banking operation in the United states that is doing business with the American public is important. The American public in dealing with the financial system doesn't know who owns that bank.

Later, he added, "You ask me about taxpayers being on the hook? Guess what, they are already on the hook."

The Power of One

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to hear "her deepness" Sylvia Earle speak. She included this short video in her presentation - "the Power of One".

Earle emphasized the opportunities we all have to change the world. I recalled her talk while visiting with Hal Herron recently. Herron, of Riverton, Wyoming has been adding outdoor art to his home town in an interesting way.

Museums often create large banners to promote an exhibit. Herron sought out these banners after a showing is complete. He pays for shipping to Riverton and places them around the community for all to enjoy. Fascinating. He forwarded two photos, seen below:




Bill Perkin's full page New York Times ad in today's paper is another illustration of the "Power of One".

Perkins approach requires a certain size checkbook, of course :)

All of which reminds me of the "two greatest commandments".

"The Era of Leverage is Over"

Gillian Tett:

A few years ago, senior officials at the Bank for International Settlements started ringing alarm bells about the scale of leverage that was quietly building up in the financial system. Back then, though, it was fantastically hard to get American policymakers - let alone bankers - to listen.

In the go-go days of the credit bubble, Washington policymakers blithely assumed that the Western financial system had plenty of capital to cope with any potential risks. Consequently, as one former BIS official admits: "Worrying about leverage wasn't fashionable at all - no one wanted to hear."

Fast-forward a couple of years and, my, how those Western financiers are having to eat humble pie (even to the point of accepting a helping hand from the once-ailing Japanese). After all, the events of the past year have now made it patently - horrifically - obvious that the Western banking system has become dangerously undercapitalised in recent years, to the point where even the Federal Reserve is having to shore up its defences.

Moreover, it is now also clear that Western policymakers are belatedly trying to correct this state of affairs. The days when high leverage, mega bonuses and wacky instruments were equated with financial virility have gone; instead a more humble, back-to-basics and slim-line approach is what investors are demanding. Thus, deleveraging is now all the rage - in whatever form it might take.

Five Reasons to Give Thanks for the Financial Collapse of the Decade

Michael Lewis:

One of life's rules is that there's bad in good and good in bad. The total collapse of the U.S. financial system is no exception. Even in the midst of the current financial despair we can look around and identify many collateral benefits.

A lot of attractive office space seems to be opening up in midtown Manhattan, for instance, and the U.S. government is now getting paid to borrow money. (And with T-bills yielding 0 percent, they really ought to borrow a lot more of it, and quickly.)

And so as Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer John Mack blasts short sellers for his problems, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein swans around pretending to be above this little panic, we ought to step back and enjoy the positives.

Yankee Stadium VR Scene

Thanks to Pete for emailing Vincent LaForet's very nice scene, not that I'm a Yankee fan.

Madison Farmer's Market Flowers

Justice Wheels in Madison

www.justicewheels.org

The Presidential Contest in Wisconsin

The Economist:

TAMMY WYNEN stands near the back of a crowd outside a paper mill in Kimberly, Wisconsin. At a bank of microphones, speakers rail against Adam Smith; one, from the United Steel Workers, literally blames "The Wealth of Nations" for the mill's impending closure. Many also hint that the soon-to-be unemployed mill workers should vote for Barack Obama in November.

But Mrs Wynen, a 27-year veteran of the paper mill, is not so sure. She cannot remember the last time she saw Mr Obama recite the pledge of allegiance. And her family loves Sarah Palin, John McCain's new running-mate. Her children have lines from Mrs Palin's convention speech off pat. Still, Mrs Wynen says she doesn't know who she will vote for. The candidates look poised to spend a lot of time and money in Wisconsin wooing her.

Ken Burns' Latest: National Parks

Christopher Reynolds:

It's too early for civilians. As dawn's first light falls on the jagged peaks, creeps down the dwindling glaciers and glides across glass-faced Swiftcurrent Lake, most of the tourists in the Many Glacier Hotel are still snoozing.

But down at water's edge, three early risers huddle around a camera. One of the guys, leaning on a tripod and waiting for the clouds to arrange themselves over the jagged peaks, has a Beatles haircut, the build of a shortstop and a face you've seen before somewhere.

Perhaps during pledge week.

"I want more of the color," he says, peering through a viewfinder. "OK, I'm doing it." And the film rolls.

Yes, it's Ken Burns, solemn PBS documentarian of the Civil War, jazz, baseball, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mark Twain, Congress, the Brooklyn Bridge, and more than a few other American characters and institutions. Beside him stand cinematographer Buddy Squires and writer Dayton Duncan. Upstairs in the hotel, Burns' wife and 3-year-old are sleeping.

KAL Illustrations at the Republican Convention

The Economist. Democrat convention illustrations can be found here.

Great stuff.

Obama 12 Sighting

Driving the speed limit early this morning, a dark blue car with flags zoomed past. A blur on my left. The nearby stop light provided an opportunity to take this photo.

Obama 12? Does it imply there are numbers 1 to 11 driving around? Or, is it a play on Adam 12? One needs to be of a certain age to recall the TV series Adam 12.

Finally, the car is a new Chevy Malibu. It's interesting that there is no mention of Joe Biden on the flags, stickers or plate, which is perhaps, for the best.

Political Cartoonist KAL at the Democratic Convention

The Economist:

Every day this week, our cartoonist is sending his sketches from the Democratic convention in Denver, Colorado. Sketches from previous days can be found here. You can find up-to-the-minute coverage on our American politics blog.

Beijing's Ghost Town

Zach Honig:

About ten hours after the end of last night's closing ceremony, I headed to the Olympic Green, completely unsure of what I'd find when I got there. I hadn't heard much about when the Green will open to the ticketless public, or if it would stay open until the Paralympics -- so I knew it would either be packed to the brim, or completely deserted. I arrived to find the latter.

When I approached the Olympic subway line, the streets packed with tourists and scalpers just yesterday were now empty, and only one of dozens of security checkpoints to access the subway was open -- and there wasn't even anyone in line. Unsure if my accreditation card would still be valid, I approached the checkpoint to find a guard waving me through. Two of the guards were even taking a nap -- it was obvious that I was their first customer for quite some time.

The Diver's View

A beautiful vr scene from the diving platform in Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympic Games.

The new age of authoritarianism

Chrystia Freeland:

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, democracy was on the march and we declared the End of History. Nearly two decades later, a neo-imperialist Russia is at war with Georgia, Communist China is proudly hosting the Olympics, and we find that, instead, we have entered the Age of Authoritarianism.

It is worth recalling how different we thought the future would be in the immediate, happy aftermath of the end of the cold war. Remember Francis Fukuyama's ringing assertion: "The triumph of the west, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism."

Even in the heady days of 1989, that declaration of universal - and possibly eternal - ideological victory seemed a little hubristic to Professor Fukuyama's many critics. Yet his essay made such an impact because it captured the scale, and the enormous benefits, of the change sweeping through the world. Not only was the stifling Soviet - which was really the Russian - suzerainty over central and eastern Europe and central Asia coming to an end but, even more importantly, the very idea of a one-party state, ruthlessly presiding over a centrally planned economy, seemed to be discredited, if not forever, then surely for our lifetimes.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

BRODY MULLINS and ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON:

When the Democratic Party holds its convention the week after next, members of Congress will be able to hear singer Kanye West at an all-expenses paid party sponsored by the recording industry.

They can play in a poker tournament with Ben Affleck, courtesy of the poker industry. They can try to hit a home run at Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, thanks to AT&T Corp. Free drinks and cigars will be on offer at a bash thrown by the liquor industry.

The corporate largesse is on tap despite new ethics laws and rules that both chambers of Congress adopted in 2007, aimed at weakening the links between lawmakers and lobbyists. Spearheaded by the Democratic Party, the ethics effort included an attempt to ban corporations and lobbyists from throwing lavish parties for members at the national political conventions.

But in the months since the new rules took effect, lawmakers have watered down the guidelines, and Capitol Hill and K Street have teamed up to find ways around the guidelines as written. Politicians and lobbyists are now preparing about 400 of the biggest parties -- both at the Democratic gathering in Colorado and when Republicans convene the following week in St. Paul -- that conventioneers have ever seen.

The Front-Runner’s Fall

Joshua Green:

For all that has been written and said about Hillary Clinton’s epic collapse in the Democratic primaries, one issue still nags. Everybody knows what happened. But we still don’t have a clear picture of how it happened, or why.

The after-battle assessments in the major newspapers and newsweeklies generally agreed on the big picture: the campaign was not prepared for a lengthy fight; it had an insufficient delegate operation; it squandered vast sums of money; and the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia—one day a shots-’n’-beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel mom. Through it all, her staff feuded and bickered, while her husband distracted. But as a journalistic exercise, the “campaign obit” is inherently flawed, reflecting the viewpoints of those closest to the press rather than empirical truth.

Olympic Photography Gear

Newsweek's setup.

Air Travel: 2008 - A Time When Standing Still Dominates

This is one of those moments when a camera in hand meets a scene waiting to be photographed: a beleaguered traveller resorting to solitaire on his PC while waiting for the promised next flight. The blue sky ignores the chaos below. Air travel is certainly, as a fellow passenger lamented, "not what it once was".

"Catch the Spirit Block Party"

I have no idea what these "mimes" were publicizing at the corner of Oakland Avenue and Monroe on a Sunday evening.

Midwest Airlines Employees - Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Benet Wilson:

I had to sigh when I read this article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on the draconian pay cuts Midwest Airlines is asking its employees to take in order to survive. Having worked at two airlines during turbulent times, I too faced the decision on what to do when management imposed pay cuts.

In the first case, I took a temporary cut at Mesa Air Group after the horror of 9/11, when airlines didn't know how long it would take to recover from the week-long shutdown of the air system and travelers deciding to fly again. The second time found me swallowing hard as I took a pay cut at Delta Air Lines after the carrier filed for Ch. 11.

But these cuts were nothing compared to what Midwest is asking of its employees -- pay cuts of up to 65% for union pilots and flight attendants to avoid filing for bankruptcy. And this is on top of grounding its MD80s -- almost half the fleet -- and laying off hundreds of workers.

Chicago White Sox vs the Cubs: Capturing the "Spirit of the Weekend"

Walking around Chicago this weekend, I observed no shortage of White Sox and Cubs paraphernalia (the two teams played one another at Wrigley Field). This couple certainly expressed the spirit of the weekend.

Drained Lake Delton VR Scene

Full Screen VR

2008 Bratfest VR Scene

View Larger Map

A Tear: Vietnam Approves a $4.5 Billion Dollar Coastal Casino Project. Atlantic City on the South China Sea?

Bruce Stanley:

Communist Vietnam is set to become the latest country in Asia to embrace Las Vegas-style casinos, with a Canadian property developer planning to break ground Saturday on the first phase of a $4.5 billion casino-resort project on the nation's southern coast.

The project, called Ho Tram, will be the biggest foreign investment to date in Vietnam, said Michael Aymong, chairman of Toronto-based Asian Coast Development Ltd., the project's lead investor, with a 30% stake. Its main partner in the project is New York hedge fund Harbinger Capital LLC, which has a 25% share.

The initial phase will cost $1.3 billion and consist of two five-star hotels with a combined 2,300 rooms and a casino with approximately 90 gambling tables, 500 slot machines and an area for VIP customers. When completed in 2015, the resort will comprise five hotels with 9,000 rooms and a second casino, Mr. Aymong said.

Ho Tram also will target vacationing families, with features including an 18-hole golf course designed by Greg Norman, a Cirque du Soleil theater, and a site for guests to swim with dolphins.

"It's a needed project in Vietnam" that, in spite of the country's poor infrastructure, will be able to "effectively compete" with integrated resorts in neighboring China, Malaysia and Singapore, Mr. Aymong said

The photo was taken on Highway 1 several hundred kilometers northeast of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

A Scooter Rant

Peter DeLorenzo:

But I reserve particular ire for the burgeoning scooter movement that’s being written about on an alarmingly frequent basis in the media with every new report of another record price for a barrel of oil. Now, don’t get me wrong, because I have nothing against scooters. I like them, as a matter of fact. They can be fun, efficient and even cool in the right circumstances. But presenting scooters as a viable transportation option for the masses in this country is flat-out irresponsible.

Let me backup here for a second and repeat that sentence: “...can be fun, efficient and even cool in the right circumstances.” Guess what, folks - riding your Vespa down Woodward Avenue, Michigan Avenue or Fifth Avenue does not constitute “the right circumstances.” Americans clearly watched too many Italian movies from the 60s and became enamored with the whole "sweater tied around the neck/sunglasses on top of your head/voluptuous girl hanging on the back of the scooter" thing, and this latest gas frenzy has started to warp their thinking, big time.

"Crisis of Confidence in Dane County and Madison Leadership"

Jason Shepard, speaking on UW-Madison graduate Greta Van Susteren's program mentioned that a "crisis of confidence exists in Dane County and Madison Leadership". Jason discussed the growing controversy over murder victim Brittanny Zimmerman's botched 911 call.



Fox News link (will disappear at some point)

40MB MPEG4 download for ipod/iphone/playstion and others. CTRL Click here.

VIDEO: Brazilian priest takes a ride with helium balloons and goes missing

Flight Global:

The Roman Catholic priest who took flight by tying himself to a chair with hundreds of helium balloons has gone missing off the coast of Brazil.

He was trying to to break a 19-hour balloon flying record to raise money for a spiritual rest stop for truckers in Paranagua according to a news report.

Another Round for the Guild

Private Equity Hub:

The Guild Inc., a Madison, Wis.-based online art retailer, has raised $2.5 million in Series C funding, according to a regulatory filing. Shareholders include Dolphin Equity Partners

Related: A Pravda View of Guild and 1/11/2006: Guild Raises another $6M.

Fascinating.

"The Best in April Foolery Around the Web"

Tom Weber:

OK, so maybe you’re working today instead of surfing around the Web for April Fool’s jokes. Fear not: Buzzwatch is here to help with a roundup of April Foolery online.

At Google, where April 1 is celebrated annually with jokes throughout the company’s sites, the main offering this year is a chance to join “Project Virgle” and become a Mars colonist.

Google’s Gmail has its own prank. Users today are informed of a new “Custom Time” feature that promises to predate emails so they appear to have been sent in the past. “Worry less,” Gmail says. “Forget your finance reports. Forget your anniversary. We’ll make it look like you remembered.”

If you’re looking to stage your own joke on a coworker today, Lifehacker has an excellent list of suggestions. One example: replace someone’s Windows desktop with an image of the desktop and watch the victim try to click on the unclickable icons. Ah, sometimes it’s the simple things.

Even NASA can’t resist joining the foolery. From the space agency’s popular Astronomy Picture of the Day site comes news that the new space station robot is demanding that humans call it by the name “Dextre the Magnificent.”

"Quote du jour"

Brad Templeton:

Cable is not a monopoly. You can choose from any cable company you want in America, just by moving your house.

MAD Magazine's Fold-in Illustrator

Neil Genzlinger:

THIS was going to be a simple artist-at-work article about Al Jaffee, a man who could lay claim to being the world’s oldest adolescent and who just now is enjoying a fresh burst of public and professional recognition. The idea was to look in on him as he created the latest installment of a feature he has been drawing for Mad magazine since, incredibly, 1964.

But because that feature is the Mad Fold-In, which embeds a hidden joke within a seemingly straightforward illustration, it should come as no surprise that the simple article ended up being not so simple after all. There were times when Mr. Jaffee, who faced a serious health scare over the last few weeks, thought it might be something closer to a eulogy.

If you were young at any time in the last 44 years, you know the fold-in: the feature on the inside of Mad’s back cover that poses a question whose answer is found by folding the page in thirds. September 1978: “What colorful fantastic creature is still being exploited even after it has wiggled and died?” A picture of a garish butterfly, folded, becomes an equally garish Elvis.

Scenes

Ho Chunk Honeys?

Lessig Launches Change Congress 3/20/2008

Via email:

Colorado Congressman Wayne Allard has taken over $45,900 from ConAgra
Food Corporation and over $405,000 from the oil and gas industry. His campaign is fueled by over $3.6 million in PAC contributions. He is just one example of a problem that affects members of both parties. And just one example of why the system in Washington D.C. puts special interests before the American people.

That system will not change on its own. It will only change if people like you and me stand up and fight for it.

A month ago I considered running for Congress to help bring about this change from the inside. Many of you supported the idea and urged me to run. After thinking very hard about whether such a campaign
could win, I decided against it. And instead I am asking you to join me in a new grassroots effort to Change Congress.

Tibet: Fire on the Roof

The Economist:

THE Chinese authorities had been fearing trouble, but nothing on this scale. An orgy of anti-Chinese rioting convulsed the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on Friday March 14th, leaving security forces uncertain how to respond. For many hours mobs controlled the streets, burning and looting as they pleased.

The approach of Beijing’s Olympic games in August is seen by many of Lhasa’s residents as an opportunity to put their contempt for Chinese rule on display to the outside world. China’s desire to ensure the games are not marred by calls for boycotts is tying its hands as it considers how to respond.

Your correspondent, the only foreign journalist with official permission to be in Lhasa when the violence erupted, saw crowds hurling chunks of concrete at the numerous small shops run by ethnic Chinese lining the streets of the city’s old Tibetan quarter. They threw them too at those Chinese caught on the streets—a boy on a bicycle, taxis (whose drivers are often Chinese) and even a bus. Most Chinese fled the area as quickly as they could, leaving their shops shuttered.

So, the Fed is in the Mortgage Business?

Steve Barr:

Apparently, Britney has some shaky assets on her balance sheets. Well, don’t worry Britney. You’re not the only one.

In an announcement that has sent produced a large and varied reaction, the FED has announced that they will attempt to bail out banks by letting them use mortgage-backed securities as collateral for loans. This move is unprecedented in the Fed’s history. For the first time, they are entering the mortgage business. Since its inception, the Fed has used open market operations (the buying and selling of treasury bonds) to expand or contract the monetary policy. A good detailed discussion is here, at interfluidity. Simplistically, the Fed’s balance sheet looks like:

Last week, it was a $200 billion cash-for-bond swap for the banks.

This week, it was a $200 billion bond-for-bond swap for the big investment houses.

If they keep this up, pretty soon you'll be able to walk into any Federal Reserve bank and hock that diamond brooch you inherited from Aunt Mildred.

Forget all that nonsense about the Bernanke Fed being too timid or behind the curve. In the face of what is turning into the most serious financial market crisis since the Great Depression, the Fed has been more aggressive and more creative in using its limitless balance sheet -- in effect, its ability to print money -- than at any time in history.

We can argue till the cows come home about whether this is a bailout for Wall Street. It is -- but only to the extent that it is also a bailout for all of us, meant to prevent a financial and economic meltdown that drags everyone down with it. In broad strokes, we're going through a massive "de-leveraging" of the economy, wringing out trillions of dollars of debt that had artificially driven up the price of real estate and financial assets, and, more generally, allowed Americans to live beyond their means. The Fed's goal has not been to impede that process, simply to make sure that it proceeds in an orderly fashion. But even that has required central bank intervention that is unprecedented in scale and scope. And despite yesterday's huge rally in the stock market, Fed officials warn that this de-leveraging is nowhere near finished.

Evaluating the Proposed Delta/Northwest Merger

Victor Cook:

Doug Parker had a vision. His successful America West had completed a merger agreement with bankrupt US Airways Group on May 19, 2005. With this deal he planned to become the dominant low cost carrier in the country as the new US Airways (NYSE: LCC). And he would be its CEO. The next day CNN reported that "Parker thinks he can buck history and make a success out of merging his more successful airline with one in bankruptcy." The company's press release said:

Building upon two complementary networks with similar fleets, closely- aligned labor contracts and two outstanding teams of people, this merger creates the first nationwide full service low-cost airline.

On September 29, 2005 trading began for Mr. Parker's new carrier. On that day its stock closed a little above $20. Then in a remarkable run-up to November 24, 2006 it was trading at around $63. Doug Parker seemed close to realizing his vision. Close, but no cigar. The run-up was followed by a steady erosion in shareholder value that on Friday March 7, 2008 saw his stock close at just under $11. That represented an 82% loss in value from its peak and a 46% loss from its initial price. What went wrong?

NSA's Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data

Siobhan Gorman:

Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn't disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The "500 True Believers"

Tom Peters:

The deal is, we've been told, that CEO pay is so high because demand for the 9-sigma talent of these Water Walking Wonders, so very beyond your and my shriveled imaginations, wildly exceeds supply when it comes to the 500 jobs as Fortune 500 CEOs. I contend that there are exactly 500 Guys (almost all guys, hence I can safely use the term) who believe that line of reasoning—namely the 500 CEOs of the F500 companies. (I guess I could also throw in the heads of the biggest search firms, who unearthed many of these so-far-beyond-the-pale dudes, which perhaps puts the total at 505 True Believers.)

The Inspiring Invincibles! Chuck Prince (Citigroup, formerly head of)! Stan O'Neal (Merrill Lynch, formerly head of)! Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide, formerly head of)! Tough cookies, each one. And yet, somehow, on their watches, The Three Geniuses allowed their firms, through grotesque negligence—maybe silliness or Theaters of the Absurd would be better words if the stakes weren't so high—to get into positions in which tens upon tens of BILLIONS of greenbacks had to be written off from their books of account. Dodger, my 5-year-old Aussie, could have done a better job. (He could have bitten anybody who tried to make a $500K loan to someone who had never had a job or paid a bill and signed his name with an "X"; and peed on the pants of any 22-year-old University of Chicago PhD who said, "With my clever algorithm I've designed what's called a 'derivative'—it'll make risk a thing of the past." Yes, had Dodger bitten and peed on schedule, the likes of Citigroup would be ten or twenty billion ahead of their current position.) But, since the demand is so strong for the 500 different-from-mere-vice-presidents-Monumental-Management-Marvels, and the supply is so short, The Three Geniuses, on the basis of "Upside Potential," were able to chalk up about a half BILLION buckaroos on their pay stubs over the last five years, while busily installing the tools necessary for Global Economic Meltdown. Well, I guess that means they're "excellent" at something. Isn't there some line about wool & eyes & pulling? (In most cases, their pay deals, especially the parts about "if you turn out to be an idiot, we'll pay you a king's ransom to clean out your desk," were effectively set before they set foot in the executive suite. Wow, I wanna piece of that action!)

The Gospel According to Matthew

Mimi Swartz:

The Coronado Club, in downtown Houston, is an unlikely place to contemplate the end of life as we know it. Plush and hushed, with solemn black waiters in crisp black jackets, the private enclave practically exudes wealth and stability. Captains of local industry enter and exit purposefully, commanding their usual tables, wearing the best suits. Everybody knows everybody else. The light is flattering. The wine room is nicely stocked.

But here is Matthew R. Simmons, the head of one of the largest investment banking firms in the world, stabbing at his salad greens and heatedly discussing the chaos to come when, as he has long predicted, global oil production peaks and for the rest of our time on earth we struggle and suffer and barely endure under a diminishing supply of fuel until it disappears entirely. This idea is known as “peak oil,” and Simmons is its most fervent, and fearsome, apostle. As he puts it, “I don’t see why people are so worried about global warming destroying the planet—peak oil will take care of that.”

Slashing through his entrée, barely stopping for breath, he describes a bleak future, in which demand for oil will always surpass supply, the price will continue to rise—“so fast your head will spin”—and all sorts of problems in our carbon-dependent world will ensue. As fuel shortfalls complicate global delivery routes and leave farmers unable to run their tractors, we will face massive food shortages. Products made with petroleum, from asphalt and plastic to fabrics and computer chips, will also become scarcer and scarcer. Standards of living will fall, and people will not be able to pay their debts. Lending will tighten, and eventually there will be major defaults. Growth will cease, and hoarding will set in as oil becomes increasingly rare. Then, according to Simmons, the wars will begin. That is the peak oil scenario.

A Font We Can Believe in

Gary @ Helvetica, The Film:

Unless you’ve been avoiding television, newspapers, and all other forms of mass media for the past few months, you’ve probably seen Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In” and “Stand for Change” banners. The typophiles among you have realized that the “change” font Obama’s campaign uses is Gotham, designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones, originally as a commission for GQ Magazine.

4GW Meets Campaign '08: Is Obama inside Hillary's OODA Loop?

James Fallows, viewing events from Beijing:

I have known and liked Chuck Spinney for a very long time, since I wrote about him and his original "defense reform" colleagues, notably John Boyd and Pierre Sprey, in the Atlantic and in National Defense in the early 1980s. Boyd of course originated the concept of the "OODA Loop." This was the idea, derived from Boyd's "Patterns of Conflict" briefing, that the victor in any conflict would not necessarily be the stronger or better-prepared party. Rather it would be the one who recognized changing realities, and chose and implemented the right new course of action, faster than the opponent. Boyd came up with the theory by analyzing aerial combat among fighter planes, but in his view it could be applied to every sort of human contest, from sports to business to armed conflict.

(OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. To react to changing reality faster than the opponent can, or to interfere with the opponent's ability to perceive realistically what is happening to him, is to "get inside his OODA loop." Everything anyone would ever want to know about Boyd, Spinney, Sprey; about their contemporary colleagues like Chet Richards, Donald Vandergriff, WIlliam Lind, GI Wilson, etc; and about OODA loops and the related concept of 4GW, or Fourth Generation Warfare, can be found at two excellent, related "Defense and the National Interest" sites, here and here.)

And the theory also applies to politics, as Spinney has argued in a recent item about the contest for the Democratic nomination. His analysis, "Is Obama inside Hillary's OODA loop?" comes after the jump. The incidents he mentions are all familiar; what's at least a little new is his combination of them in Boyd-style perspective -- in particular Bill Clinton losing his sense for how the battle is shifting. I am posting this before the Wisconsin results are known, and before the (in my view bogus) "plagiarism" flap has died down, so that Spinney's observation can be tested against those results.

Winter Sunrise Photos

A beautiful, yet cold morning for Wisconsin's spring primary election. While the endless winter continues, it is great to see the sun. Note the large icycles on these homes. Inevitably, spring will arrive.

Herb Kohl's Office on FISA

I phoned Senator Kohl's Washington office [(202) 224-5653] regarding his vote against the Dodd/Feingold telco immunity amendment yesterday. The telephone operator said that Senator Kohl supported an amendment that would have the government (we taxpayers) defend the telcos in court and that these cases should be heard in a court where intelligence information could be shared. John McCain voted with Senator Kohl, while Barack Obama voted with Russ Feingold and Hillary Clinton did not vote. David Isenberg has more as does Dave Farber. The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a summery here.

Barack Obama in Madison

A few photos from a late arriving visitor to the University of Wisconsin's Kohl Center.

While I did not arrive early enough to catch the speech inside the Kohl Center, I always find it interesting to note the political opportunism during these events. Governor Doyle, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and local Mayor Dave Cieslewicz all rated a nod from Obama. John Kerry's 2004 appearance with Bruce Springsteen included a number of local politicians, including Elizabeth Burmaster, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent (a nonpartisan position).

Finally, a few Ron Paul supporters promoted their candidate in front of the proceedings.

Microsoft will pay high price for failing to learn history lessons

John Naughton:

It's the metaphors and similes that get me. It's a shotgun marriage, declared one commentator, 'with Google holding the gun'. Putting Microsoft and Yahoo together, said another, was like trying to produce an eagle from an alliance of two turkeys.

T his is unfair. Microsoft isn't a turkey, but a profitable, boring mastodon that entertains fantasies about being able to fly. Yahoo, for its part, is an ageing hippy who invented hang- gliding but aspired to fly 747s and then discovered that he wasn't very good at it. The mastodon hopes that by employing the hippy it will learn to hang-glide. The hippy's feelings about the whole deal are plain for all to see.

Microsoft's $44.6bn offer of cash plus shares for Yahoo has got everyone in a spin, partly because of its sheer size but mostly because they fondly imagine it heralds an exciting future. At last, they think - something that might stop the inexorable advance of Google toward world domination! If that's what they're hoping for, then this ain't it, alas. This isn't the opening of a new chapter in the history of the computing business, but - as John Markoff observed in the New York Times - 'the final shot of yesterday's war'. And even if the merger does take place in a reasonable timescale - and if it can be made to work - it won't make much of a dent in Google.

Back to Reality: Sunrise After Madison's Big Snowstorm

After pondering summer with a few photos, we're back to reality blowing snow this morning. I think this photo captures our existence rather well, at the moment. Note the snow depth next to my snowblower's intake. 13.3" according to Channel3000.

The streets I drove were in good shape early today.

A Conversation About Peak Oil

Nicholas Jackson:

NATE HAGENS is an editor of The Oil Drum, an online community that seeks to raise awareness about energy issues. A Ph.D. candidate in Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, Hagens’s particular areas of interest are the principles of net energy and the bio-physiological factors that drive our energy demand.

MATT SAVINAR is the editor and writer of Life After the Oil Crash, a blog which paints a bleak picture of what life on earth will look like when natural oil supplies run out. Savinar recently received his J.D. from the University of California at Hastings College of the Law, and his work is quoted extensively on the floor of the United States Congress.

One article in this month’s issue of Texas Monthly centers on Matthew Simmons, a Houston investment banker described as the most fervent apostle behind the idea of peak oil. How does the apocalyptic world that Simmons and other energy pessimists foresee in the near future—massive food shortages, a falling standard of living, wars—compare to your own predictions? What does the world look like with less oil?

Oil Demand, the Climate and the Energy Ladder

Jad Mouawad:

Energy demand is expected to grow in coming decades. Jeroen van der Veer, 60, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, recently offered his views on the energy challenge facing the world and the challenge posed by global warming. He spoke of the need for governments to set limits on carbon emissions. He also lifted the veil on Shell’s latest long-term energy scenarios, titled Scramble and Blueprints, which he will make public next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Following are excerpts from the interview:

Q. What are the main findings of Shell’s two scenarios?

A. Scramble is where key actors, like governments, make it their primary focus to do a good job for their own country. So they look after their self-interest and try to optimize within their own boundaries what they try to do. Blueprints is basically all the international initiatives, like Kyoto, like Bali, or like a future Copenhagen. They start very slowly but before not too long they become relatively successful. This is a model of international cooperation.

Ubiquitous Packer Paraphernalia

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This photo was snapped at an early morning swim meet this weekend.

All Roads Still Lead to Lombardi

Dave Anderson:

All you need to know about Green Bay is that Lambeau Field is on Lombardi Avenue.

Even the numerals in the Packers’ address, 1265 Lombardi Avenue, are significant — 12 for the franchise’s record number of N.F.L. championships, 6 when Curly Lambeau was the coach, 5 when Vince Lombardi was the coach. The 1996 team won the other title in Super Bowl XXXI with Mike Holmgren as the coach (he later defected to Seattle) and Brett Favre at quarterback (he is still the face of the franchise). But Lambeau and Lombardi remain its cornerstones.

Lambeau, a star tailback at Green Bay East High School who left Notre Dame after a year, organized the original Packers team at a meeting in the dingy Press-Gazette newspaper offices in 1919 when a local meatpacking company put up $500 for uniforms and pro football was a small-town sport.

Lombardi, a New Yorker originally out of Sheepshead Bay, St. Francis Prep and Fordham before coaching at St. Cecilia’s in Englewood, N.J., at Army under Red Blaik and the Giants’ offense for five seasons (including the 1956 championship team), gilded Green Bay with a major league mystique.

GPS Liability?

Adena Schutzberg:

In early January accident, a California computer technician turned his rental car onto some train tracks in New York per the directions of his sat nav system. The car became stuck and he had to abandon it before an oncoming train hit it. There were no injuries, but there were significant delays in travel. "The rental car driver was issued a summons and is being held liable for the damage to the train and track."

That leads a real live lawyer, Eric J. Sinrod, writing at c|net to examine the potential of a driver to point to the GPS manufacturer as being at fault. The article points out:

On Sears & Lands End: Retailer's Profit Warning Signals a Persistent Slide

Gary McWilliams:

Sears Holdings Corp., the storied retailer that helped civilize the American frontier with its catalog sales and later defined the modern department store, is searching for a new compass.

The retailer yesterday warned results for its fiscal fourth quarter and year would fall well below its expectations, continuing a sharp slide in sales and profit. Even during the best two months of the year, sales at stores open at least a year fell 3.5% compared with a year ago, the company said. Shares tumbled 5% to a more than two-year low, down $4.79 to $91.38 on the Nasdaq. The stock is off 49% in the past year.

But its record in acquisitions has been dismal. In 2002, it paid $3 billion for mail-order firm Lands' End, a business that has declined since the deal.

New Years Eve 2008 Panoramic Scenes

Hans Nyberg has compiled a great set of New Year's Eve 2008 Panoramas, including one I shot in Quebec City. Thanks much to Hans for a great site and for rendering my scene.

Quebec City celebrated the beginning of their 400th anniversary celebrations that evening. Learn more, here. 2008 is the 400th anniversary of Champlain's landing in Quebec.

Cyberwar Comes of Age

Adam Elkus:

The digitized specter of cyberwar is haunting the boardrooms, barracks, and law offices of America. China’s audacious September 2007 infiltration of secure Pentagon networks and government servers in several other nations has powerfully demonstrated that cyberwar’s moment has arrived. Cybersecurity analysts have estimated that 120 different nations are working to evolve cyberwar capabilities. Most of today’s current cyberwar operations involve hackers probing civilian and military networks for vulnerabilities and restricted information, operations that focus less on disruption than recon and surveillance.

Pre Steroid Era Brewer Logo?

I saw a young man wearing a classic Brewers baseball cap earlier today. It occurred to me that this is the "pre steriod era" logo.

Everyone's Poop

Nate Blakeslee:

“Down the drain, off the brain” is how most people think about it, but human waste—or effluent, as the professionals call it—has a lot to tell us about how we live, what we eat, and who we are.

They say that shit runs downhill. This is commonly understood to mean that the world is an unfair place, except among those few people who actually work with the substance, for whom it is considered something of an article of faith. This is because municipal sewerage systems are powered almost entirely by gravity, which means that when working properly, they move millions of gallons of sewage a day across considerable distances with only a minimum expenditure of energy, a feat of efficiency virtually unparalleled in the annals of engineering. When sewage stops running downhill, as it inevitably does from time to time, very bad things indeed can happen, as they did on Pecan Springs Road, in the Austin neighborhood known as Windsor Park, one morning last September.

I was spending the day with an Austin Water Utility emergency-response crew when dispatch got a call from a woman reporting that two rooms of her house were flooded with sewage. Our crew consisted of a TV truck, piloted by a twenty-year line-maintenance veteran named David Eller, and a flusher truck, driven by another longtime utility employee, named Dale Crocker. At the house, Eller, who wears wraparound sunglasses and looks a little like the country singer Dwight Yoakam, unspooled a thick red cable from the back of his truck. On the end of the cable was a camera about the size of a roll of quarters, which Crocker shoved down into a PVC clean-out pipe near the curb in the front yard. The woman leaned on a walker in her driveway, looking worried.

Snowblower Zeitgeist, or the Best Urban Snowblower

I've manually moved snow for the past 14 years - my entire post UW time in Madison. Always thinking that the act was a bit of exercise until a neighbor mentioned his back difficulties and said "it's not worth it".

Last spring's deluge, a particularly wet and heavy snowstorm, was the impetus to turn over the shovel, fire up my browser and shop for a snowblower.

My first stop was Ariens' website. Ariens is a classic family owned Wisconsin based firm that manufactures snowblowers and lawn mowers.

Most serious snowblowers, defined as two stage models from the likes of Ariens, John Deere, Honda and Toro among many others are at least 24" wide (Toro has a 22" model). That width is a problem for small garages like mine.

Ariens offered a useful 20" model that featured a multiple speed transmission - perfect for a variety of snow conditions and available at a reasonable price. Conveniently, their website offers online ordering which made it simple for me to enter a bit of information and a few days later the snowblower arrived at my home. Ariens customer service was great, as was their local dealer - Middleton Power Center.

About the snowblower zeitgeist. The owner of a working, somewhat powerful snowblower on a day like today (crunchy, heavy snow) quickly has the opportunity to converse with the neighbors. Typical conversations include:

• "Can I pay you to clear my driveway (no, if I have enough gas and time, I'll be happy to)
• "My snowblower won't start."
• "I attempted to purchase a snowblower yesterday, but just before I said that I'll take the last one, someone else grabbed it."
• or, Chaplin moments when a neighbor is somberly pondering the large, heavy pile of snow recently deposited by the City plow in his driveway as I'm clearing another neighbor's walks and driveway.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the powerful prose at work marketing such machines. Arien's description of their model 624E:

624E Compact

After 9 months of hibernation, this compact monster, has an appetite for the cold and crystallized.

When the white and fluffy flakes begin to fall; the corners of the 24” clearing width begin to salivate. The 120 volt electric start quickly awakens the 6HP Snow King® OHV Engine. You fear nothing! Snow fears this trusted Sno-Thro® midsized monster. Keep the snow afraid and out of your way.

A Glimpse of Pottersville

Daniel Munson:

THE 1946 MOVIE IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has become a holiday favorite for many Americans. The heart-rending story of George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart), who in his hour of despair is vouchsafed a glimpse of what the world would be like if he'd never been born, holds great meaning for many Americans. So does the drama played out between George and his father, Peter, and their professional nemesis, rich old banker Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore), which provides a vivid look at the dramatic changes that had taken place in American finance in the years leading up to the time the movie was made.

The recent problems in the mortgage market bring the story and its characters to life once again. The Baileys and Old Man Potter disagreed about a number of things, but principally about the credit-worthiness of what Potter calls "the riff-raff," the average citizens in their home town of Bedford Falls. The Baileys believe they are credit-worthy, and Potter generally does not.

Potter remembers the recent past, when lenders made the rules, insisting on repayment in gold coin or its equivalent, on big down payments and short terms. Most important for middle-class folks, Potter sees residential real estate as illiquid, mediocre collateral. George and Peter Bailey and their Building & Loan envision a future of suburban development, of small down payments and decades to pay. When George looks at the world had he never been born -- and sees a vacant field instead of the Bailey Park housing development financed by the Bailey Building & Loan -- he is looking at what would have been Pottersville.

Leslie Feist Concert Rocks Madison (Video Slide Show)

Leslie Feist rocked Madison Friday evening, 16 November 2007. Despite her severe ankle sprain (evidently while running in Omaha, NE the prior day), Feist and her band entertained the sold out Orpheum Theatre with ouststanding vocals, delightful instruments and an elegant video art show. Check out the playlist here.

More, please.

Watch an MPEG-4 Video Slideshow:

• 1280 x 768 106MB Version [Watch or CTRL_Click to Download]
• 20.5MB MPEG-4 Version for iPod and similar devices. CTRL-Click to download.

Rob Thomas attended the concert and wrote this.

Pomp, Circumstance & Hockey: Wisconsin Badgers vs. North Dakota Fighting Sioux

Details of the Badgers 4-0 win available here. North Dakota had an amazing 43 shots on goal, including 25 in the third period. A tremendous, fast paced game. One of the best I've seen.

Former Technician 'Turning In' AT&T Over NSA Program

Ellen Nakashima:

His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002 when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency to an office of AT&T in San Francisco.

"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.

A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, nearly caused him to fall out of his chair. The documents, he said, show that the NSA gained access to massive amounts of e-mail and search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecommunications providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network at a facility in San Francisco and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.

Klein is in Washington this week to share his story in the hope that it will persuade lawmakers not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its anti-terrorism efforts.

Morning Workout Zeitgeist, or "Let's turn the Capitol into a Casino/Waterpark"

Props to the early morning workout group for this inspiration.

On Political Corruption

Larry Lessig turns his attention to political corruption. Video. Well worth watching.

Prosecutor Over-Reaching

Dee Hall covers an issue vital to our democracy - over zealous prosecutors:

A Wisconsin State Journal investigation, however, found instances in which court records and transcripts back up his critics' claims that he has crossed ethical lines. Stretching back to the early 1990s, Humphrey has been the subject of criticism accusing him of ethical lapses, poor judgment and unreasonably aggressive tactics. Critics have included defendants, defense attorneys, judges and three of the four district attorneys who've supervised him.

The State Journal examined more than 2,000 pages of documents, including records from Humphrey's office files obtained under the open-records law. The newspaper also interviewed more than two dozen attorneys, judges, defendants, legal experts and law-enforcement officials.

The newspaper's investigation found that the veteran prosecutor:

— Wrongfully kept a young man in the Dane County Jail for a month, even after he was repeatedly notified of the error.

— Made false or misleading statements in affidavits, in correspondence and in court hearings to advance his case or to cover up mistakes.

— Charged two witnesses and had a third arrested for failing to show up for trials that had been cancelled — a tactic his boss had warned him was "an abuse of your authority."

— Aggressively pursued seven felony charges against a bankrupt father who was $2,846 behind in child support — a prosecution the judge said should "make one wonder about the integrity of (the) justice system."

— Twice pursued vehicular-homicide charges using speed estimates his own experts told him were inflated.

One of those cases was Humphrey's failed prosecution of Adam Raisbeck, a 17-year-old from Marshall. Humphrey's actions in the case prompted a blunt reprimand from his boss, and the misconduct findings that are headed to the Supreme Court.

Opus on Air Travel

Classic Opus Cartoon.

Wisconsin Congressional Earmarks: Spending our Children's Money via a Bloated Defense Bill

Taxpayers for Common Sense posted a very useful and in some ways surprising look at $3,000,000,000 in Congressional Earmarks attached to a $459,600,000,000 defense appropriation bill (not the entire defense budget). This amount is $40,000,000,000 more than last year's authorization (nice). Wisconsin congressional earmarks are lead by long time incumbent David Obey with $42,000,000, who also conveniently serves as Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Obey's earmark methods have been criticized recently: John Solomon & Jeffrey Birnbaum writing in the Washington Post:

Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now Democrats are poised to do the same.

"I don't give a damn if people criticize me or not," Obey said.

Obey's spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said his intention is not to keep the projects secret. Rather, she said, so many requests for spending were made to the appropriations panel -- more than 30,000 this year -- that its staff has been unable to study them and decide their validity.

1. David Obey 42,000,000 (Unique ID Column 837, 854, 874, 921, 947, 1053, 1093, 1165)
2. Tammy Baldwin $7,500,000 (Unique Id Column 56, 740, 1334)
3. Steve Kagen $5,000,000 (Unique ID 496, 561, 562)
4. Ron Kind $4,000,000 (Unique Id 1033 and 1083)
5. Tom Petri $4,000,000 (Unique Id 782)
6. Gwen Moore $2,000,000 (Unique Id 575, 898, 978 and 1151)
7. Paul Ryan $0.00
8. Jim Sensenbrenner $0.00 (shocking)

Much more on local earmarks, here [RSS Feed on earmarks]

All City Swim 2007 Photos

Many more photos here.

American Family Children's Hospital Grand Opening Photos

AirTran's Presentation to the Midwest Airlines Board of Directors

Presentation via www.sec.gov.

Airliners.net extensive discussion.

The demise of Midwest into AirTran will be a dark day for travelers....

Rory Stewart in Kabul

Stewart, who now heads a nongovernmental organization called the Turquoise Mountain Foundation (TMF), had come into Aziz's good graces by way of his ongoing efforts to save the Old City from imminent destruction. One could be forgiven for assuming that, in Afghanistan, such a threat might be related to Taliban missiles or suicide bombers. But in counterintuitive fact, the culprit is a real estate boom. Everywhere in Kabul, bulldozers are flattening whole city blocks of traditional Afghan mud architecture to make room for modern glass-and-concrete buildings, fueled by billions of dollars in aid money and opium profits.

Stewart and I had spent the morning slogging through the mucky, trash-strewn lanes of the Old City, specifically a quarter called Murad Khane on the north bank of the Kabul River. Initially I had a hard time appreciating exactly what it is that's worth saving. Murad Khane is a warren of boxy, flat-topped, one- and two-story mud buildings laced with winding passageways so packed with decades of uncollected garbage that street levels had risen seven feet (two meters) in some areas, forcing residents to contort themselves to enter their front doors. There was no plumbing, no sewage system, no electricity. Residents relieved themselves in the open. Loitering men smoked hashish.

Memorial Day 2007

Presidio Cemetery, San Francisco, CA.

Bratfest 2007: Brats, Hot Dogs Entertainment and Advertising

The Bratfest folks announced that they had sold over 4000 brats during their first hour today. The path to the brat sales tent [image] is surrounded by a stage, rides, games, community tents [image] and some advertising [image].

And, of course, the requisite Oscar Meyer weinermobile [image].

The $1.50 veggie brat made for a good lunch on a pleasant Friday.

Happy Mother's Day!

Farmer's Market flowers.

"Save the Cookie"

Kurt Vonnegut Dead at 84

Happy Easter!

Wake-up Call

AT AGE 42, NIALL FERGUSON HAS BECOME one of the world's most famous and provocative historians, with high-profile posts ranging from Harvard to Oxford to Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Born in Scotland and educated at Oxford, he is not only a prolific author of books, including Colossus (2004), an examination of American empire, and The War of the World (2006), a study of World War II, but a media star with a weekly newspaper column and numerous television projects. Ferguson also has developed a growing fan club on Wall Street and in British financial circles, where he has stressed in speeches that investors are too complacent about geopolitical risk, notably growing instability in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Geopolitical issues and economic history are Ferguson's specialty, and he approaches both with uncommon intelligence, style and vigor. His rightward-leaning views have been embraced by those who believe that the American empire can and should be a force for good in the world. Some on the left have attacked him, perhaps unfairly, as an apologist for imperialism -- Britain's in days of old, and the American strain that critics charge has mired the U.S. in Iraq. In a recent column, reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, Ferguson berated Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, "with his melting-pot roots and his molten-hot rhetoric," for calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by March 2008, in the misguided notion it would hasten a peaceful solution to that nation's "internecine conflict."

Amplifying this theme, Ferguson told Barron's that America's speedy departure likely would transform Iraq into "as violent and unstable a place as Central Africa was in the 1990s." An ardent supporter of Britain's former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, he is about to be named an adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

FERGUSON IS FASCINATED by what he calls the "paradox of diminishing risk in an apparently dangerous world." By that, he means ebullient global stock markets and record-tight yield spreads between risk-free U.S. Treasuries and junk bonds and emerging-market debt. He also cites declining volatility in stock, bond and foreign-exchange markets, and an abiding faith in the ability of the Federal Reserve and other central banks to rescue the investment community from any potential financial crisis. Although the global stock-market selloff two weeks ago wasn't spurred by geopolitical events, it validated his concern that investors have willingly downplayed risk.

French Airbus Protest VR Scenes

Delightful

Cheeseheads' Taste of Chester

Ryan peddled the cards until he got the camera. Forty-nine years later, the big picture hasn't changed much. He's still fighting and selling relentlessly.

"You've got to sell," he said, "because a lot of times you're a perfect stranger trying to convince somebody to do something they might not want to do. If I wasn't a coach, I'd probably be a salesman. I've got to have that competition."

Now Ryan sells Badger basketball - to recruits, to his players, to boosters, to the media, to the nation. With that slick exterior abetted by street smarts, he has transformed Wisconsin, once an off-the-rack program, into one of the hottest items on college basketball's shelf.

The Age of Perpetual Conflict

Blind men and women have been the motor of modern history and the source of endless misery and destruction. Aspiring leaders of great powers can neither understand nor admit the fact that their strategies are extremely dangerous because statecraft by its very nature always calculates the ability of a nation's military and economic resources to overcome whatever challenges it confronts. To reject such traditional reasoning, and to question the value of conventional wisdom and react to international crises realistically on the basis of past failures would make them unsuited to command. The result is that politicians succeed in terms of their personal careers, states make monumental errors, and people suffer. The great nations of Europe and Japan put such illusions into practice repeatedly before 1945.

At the beginning of the 21st century only the U.S. has the will to maintain a global foreign policy and to intervene everywhere it believes necessary. Today and in the near future, America will make the decisions that will lead to war or peace, and the fate of much of the world is largely in its hands. It thinks it possesses the arms and a spectrum of military strategies all predicated on a triumphant activist role for itself. It believes that its economy can afford interventionism, and that the American public will support whatever actions necessary to set the affairs of some country or region on the political path it deems essential. This grandiose ambition is bipartisan and, details notwithstanding, both parties have always shared a consensus on it.

Anna Christie

Following the success of 2005’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, Artistic Director Richard Corley returns to America’s greatest playwright. Winner of the 1922 Pulitzer Prize, Anna Christie is the tale of a mid-western girl who loses and finds her way amid New York’s waterfront bars and barges, and the two men who fight for her body and soul. One of the finest female roles ever written, Anna Christie has been played by actresses as diverse as Greta Garbo, Natasha Richardson, Liv Ullman, and Celeste Holm.

"Use the Web, Luke" - Presidential Candidates Embrace the Web

In choosing the Internet to announce she intends to run for the presidency in 2008, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton bowed to the burgeoning political power of the medium and offered a preview of how she hopes to harness it to her purposes.

In declaring "I'm in" the White House race in a video clip on her new campaign website, HillaryClinton.com, the New York Democrat did considerably more than simply appear before the cameras; she invited supporters to join an almost Oprah Winfrey-like session of give and take.

"Let's talk. Let's chat. Let's start a dialogue about your ideas and mine.... " she told viewers."With a little help from modern technology, I'll be holding live online video chats ... starting Monday."

By doing this, Clinton signaled her intention of using the Internet to shore up one of her chief political weak points, what independent analyst Charlie Cook called the caricature of her as "this shrill, raving, partisan, liberal lunatic."

Buckley on Iraq

You are a Republican legislator, retiring after this, your fifth term. Last night, into midnight hours, you composed a questionnaire for yourself. You vowed to submit to it before your committee speech. You'd flower up the language a bit — but not the thought. You wake up this morning and turn to last night's self-quiz.

American Samoa Exempt from Minimum Wage Hike?

House Republicans yesterday declared "something fishy" about the major tuna company in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district being exempted from the minimum-wage increase that Democrats approved this week.

"I am shocked," said Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican and his party's chief deputy whip, noting that Mrs. Pelosi campaigned heavily on promises of honest government. "Now we find out that she is exempting hometown companies from minimum wage. This is exactly the hypocrisy and double talk that we have come to expect from the Democrats."

On Wednesday, the House voted to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour.

The bill also extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws.

A Semi Self Defense of Enron

I also have a minor challenge for aficionados of the Enron case.

Years ago, when I was at the Washington Post, one of my colleagues on the science desk—Bill Booth—called up a dozen or so Nobel Laureates in physics and asked them to explain, in plain language, the nature and significance of the Higgs Boson atomic particle. None of them could. This was at a time, mind you, when the physics community was arguing passionately for the construction of a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator to look for things like the Higgs Boson. So it wasn’t for lack of interest. They were gung-ho for nailing the Higgs Boson. They just couldn’t explain the Higgs Boson.

Can anyone explain—in plain language—what it is Jeff Skilling and Co. did wrong?

TSA's Latest: Sponsored X-Ray Bins

The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is launching a one-year pilot programme to allow companies to place advertisements in bins at passenger screening checkpoints at “select” US airports in return for equipment donations.

The effort follows a 3-month test programme at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) security checkpoints that started in July.

TSA is looking for commercial advertising companies who will team with an airport to provide divestiture bins (the plastic bins used to transport passenger carry-on items through the X-ray machine); divestiture and composure tables; and bin return carts free-of-charge to the TSA. In return, the companies will be allowed to place airport-approved ads “on the bottom of the inside of the bins,” says a TSA spokeswoman. Airports partnered with ad companies will ultimately be required to screen the materials for “offensive, obtrusive, political or controversial” content, she adds.

Guns to Caviar Index

Reading the news, it's easy to get the sense that the world is at war: strife in Afghanistan, chaos in Iraq, genocide in Darfur, upheaval in Lebanon, and a variety of insurgencies and border squabbles around the globe. Reading the news, it's also easy to get the sense that the world is in the midst of a golden age of peaceful prosperity. Each year, tens of millions of Indians and Chinese join the middle class. Latin America and South America, previously dominated by authoritarian regimes and civil wars, are now generally democratic and enjoying steady growth.

So, which is it? Is the world more peaceful or more warlike? Since Americans are doing the lion's share of the fighting and military policing, it's difficult for us to answer the question objectively. Fortunately, there is an unbiased global economic indicator that sheds some light on the question: the Guns-to-Caviar Index.

Gerald R. Ford and Presidential Approval

Charles Franklin:

President Gerald R. Ford died last night. Today's initial stories have stressed his role in restoring the country after Watergate, and have emphasized that he was a decent man. They also dwell on his pardon of President Nixon. I thought it might be worthwhile to review President Ford's approval ratings as an alternative way of recalling his presidency. While less easy to judge "good" and "bad", the data are also less sentimental about his time in office.

Photos of the Year 2006

The NYT has posted its Year in Pictures, featuring images of war, politics, sports, and more. It's amazing how quickly events can fade from our (or at least my) consciousness, often just months after they occur.

MSNBC has some terrific galleries from this past year. (Bet you've never seen a bull doing a headstand before.) See also Time's collection.

The Surgeon Undergoes Surgery

Dr. DeBakey, one of the most influential heart surgeons in history, assumed his heart would stop in a few seconds.

“It never occurred to me to call 911 or my physician,” Dr. DeBakey said, adding: “As foolish as it may appear, you are, in a sense, a prisoner of the pain, which was intolerable. You’re thinking, What could I do to relieve myself of it. If it becomes intense enough, you’re perfectly willing to accept cardiac arrest as a possible way of getting rid of the pain.”

But when his heart kept beating, Dr. DeBakey suspected that he was not having a heart attack. As he sat alone, he decided that a ballooning had probably weakened the aorta, the main artery leading from the heart, and that the inner lining of the artery had torn, known as a dissecting aortic aneurysm.

Merry Christmas

• Wikipedia