Akkam’s Razor

The twilight of the Bush Presidency provides many loose threads, with a long list of rogues who may know ‘where the bodies are buried’. I suspect that the Bush legacy will include NOT pardoning the most notorious of his merry band of thieves, such as Scooter, Rummy, and Fredo Gonazalez, in order to preserve his legacy, but also to provide ‘red meat’ for the lunatics to fight over as a Democratic Congress and President attempt to restore order.

That’s why I think Obama should pardon the operators who executed potentially un-Constitutional orders from above - the nameless and faceless non-political law enforcement officials, military personnel, and other career governmental employees. None of them deserve to be haunted with the specter of future prosecution on the grounds of political opportunism, regardless of the party that benefits. But with strings attached.

• Island of Broken Dreams | Newgeography.com - Indeed, land use regulation throughout the New York suburbs downstate, in New Jersey and Connecticut has long since rationed land for development. As a result, once loose mortgage loan standards became the practice, house prices escalated. Throughout the New York metropolitan area, the Median Multiple – median house prices divided by median household incomes rose from 3.2 to 7.0, in the decade ending in 2007. In traditionally regulated markets – like Long Island in the past and still much of the country in the present – the Median Multiple has been 3.0 or less for decades.

• Daily Kos: Cardinal Stafford criticizes Obama as ‘aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic’ - Cardinal James Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, delivered a lecture on Thursday saying that the future under President-elect Obama will echo Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. Criticizing Obama as "aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic," he went on to speak about a decline in respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the values of marriage and human dignity.
• Bailout is not that likely… -

I was just forwarded the wingnut porno flick blaming brown people for our long, national, economic nightmare.   The central point of the video is that DC liberals forced minorities to buy mortgages they couldn’t afford, and it wrecked our economy.  Is it true?

No.

Low interest rates, plus speculation, plus derivatives, plus a lack of regulation and the manipulation of so called “free markets”, along with a staggering lack of trust caused the problem.  Now that it’s all going to shit, no one wants to get stuck with the check, without a seat when the music stops, or holding the hot potato.  They are counting on you being stupid enough to believe what they’re selling.

• slacktivist: She doesn’t care - We've seen this disease before. We've been watching it for eight years now. This is ignorance born of incuriosity. And that incuriosity arises from a lack of empathy. Like President Bush, Gov. Palin doesn't know because she doesn't care.
• OverFed? - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog - Until this past year, the Fed’s balance sheet was simple and clean: basically, it held Treasury bills, and its only liabilities worth mentioning were the money supply (strictly speaking, the monetary base.) And there was next to no risk. Now the Fed holds a vast array of “liquidity tools” — loans under the various emergency programs, the TAF, the TSLF, and all that; and it’s taken on quite a lot of risk.

• Economic Stimulus Bill Text Tracker - GovTrack.us - This is a special GovTrack feature! We've gathered a few drafts of what's currently the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, H.R. 3997, the $700 billion "bail-out" bill, and are highlighting below the changes made from one draft to the next. We hope this makes it easier to understand what's happening right now in Congress.

Where to begin? For starters, Dear Leader provides proof positive of exactly how bad things are, reiterating that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself“. The comments are not very Presidential and are sure to shake the confidence of both the American people, institutions, and our global partners.

Bush’s dire words will have consequences. For starters, there’s this little bit of great news from China [Reuters] followed by a swift reversal/denial [also Reuters]:

Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

This really should come as no surprise, as McCain has an established track record of pulling the ejection handle or rapid reverses.  By now you’ve certainly heard that John McCain has ’suspended’ his campaign.

(Yeah, yeah - I know its an F-16, an Air Force jet, and the Thunderbirds.  But it works…)

This morning, the WSJ reports the following occurred: