The Obama administration won’t initiate Executive Branch investigations of the Bush administration officials in order to prosecute them; but that hardly precludes some sort of lustration process—say, in Congress, with grants of immunity—that documents their misdeeds and leads to prosecutions outside the US.
AP, “Obama Has More Threats Than Other Presidents-Elect” (15 Nov ’08):
[I]n a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into “The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool,” saying the money would go to [...]
Next up: Switzerland.
AFP (“Swiss Fear More Pressure on Bank Secrecy after Obama Victory,” 10 Nov ’08):
Switzerland is likely to come under further pressure from the United States over its prized system of banking secrecy after the election last week of Barack Obama, key sector players predicted. The newly-elected US president, who formally takes office in [...]
Krugman, “The Obama Agenda,” NYT (7 Nov ’08):
This year, however, Mr. Obama ran on a platform of guaranteed health care and tax breaks for the middle class, paid for with higher taxes on the affluent. John McCain denounced his opponent as a socialist and a “redistributor,” but America voted for him anyway. That’s a real [...]
DPA, “Queen Baffled at Delay in Spotting Credit Crunch,” Sydney Morning Herald (6 Nov ’08):
Prof Garicano said afterwards: “The Queen asked me: ‘If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them? Why did nobody notice it’?”
Her Royal Hghness must’ve been awfully upset to ask “How come”; but, then, losing lots of money does [...]
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the WP’s Dan Froomkin wrote (“Who’s in Charge? Karl Rove!”, 15 Sep ’05):
Rove’s leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye [...]
FT (van Duyn/Bullock, “New York Governor Urges State Spending Cut,” 28 Oct ’08):
Mr Bloomberg, addressing a securities industry gathering, said he was already seeing a direct impact of the financial crisis. He said he had dinner on Monday night in a usually full Italian restaurant in Brooklyn in which only three tables were being used. [...]
Jerry Sanders, the Mayor of San Diego, explains his change of heart:
He puts the lie to the stone-faced doom-mongering and martial mummery right-wing cowards are forever hiding behind.
According to Rebecca Abrahams (“White House Emails: The Missing Link?”, Huffington Post, 21 Oct ’08), Mike Connell,
the architect and cyber keymaster of George W. Bush election websites including GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com, the site Karl Rove used for 95-percent of his email communication…is also the CEO of Govtech Solutions, the company responsible for building and managing [...]
NYT head (29 Oct ’08):
Intelligence Agencies Face Austerity
Body:
Spending on intelligence operations increased by some 9 percent last year, to $47.5 billion, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said on Tuesday. That figure includes most intelligence spending, including the budget for the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the operations of spy satellites, [...]
Bailoutsleuth notes creeping secrecy in the bailout:
The Treasury Department has hired two big accounting firms to help keep tabs on the government’s financial-industry rescue program, and once again certain basic elements of the deals are shrouded in secrecy. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP will provide internal controls for the government’s $700 billion bailout fund. Ernst & Young will [...]
It seems that public figures are fair game:
In case you didn’t get the message, CNN ran it front and back:
Embedded video from CNN Video
Naming names is good; aiming guns at people is bad.
(calculated risk)
Here:
To: Nettime-l <nettime-l {AT} kein.org>
Subject: <nettime> how to fix a liquidity crisis
From: t byfield <tbyfield {AT} panix.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007
Until just a few months ago, received wisdom held that the “modern” global financial system had become so complex and intertwingled that it had developed a de facto ability to absorb and dissipate almost any [...]
WSJ publishes a commonsensical defense of “piracy” by Lessig, who bridles:
Sorry to disappoint, but my new book, Remix, is not “A Defense of Piracy,” whatever the Wall Street Journal’s headline writers may think.
Note to Larry:
“Piracy” is defined by the Content Cartels, not by WSJ headline writers—and, according to the CCs, you’re defending piracy. If you [...]
“When Republicans say that Democrats ‘just don’t get it,’ this is the ‘it’ to which they refer.”
So what about when net-heads said it about bell-heads?
(the muted horn)
Dan Froomkin (White House Watch column, “Bush Just Makes It Worse,” WP, 10 Oct ’08)
Although Bush didn’t announce it this morning, there are signs that he will eventually sign off on a radical, but at least theoretically effective, next move—even though it violates his core political principles and is exactly the approach his administration rejected [...]
Wilson (op-ed), “The Swill Is Gone,” NYT, 29 Sep ’08):
In China, journalists have known of the poison milk for months, but weren’t allowed to spread the news because of the Olympics.
MacLeod, “Many Chinese Doubt Food Scandals Will End,” USA Today, 7 Oct ’08:
The current scandal, which involves more than one-third of China’s producers of milk [...]
The NYT offers a curious meditation on the historical parallels between the collapse of the USSR (when “shock therapy” was the order of the day) and the US’s current difficulties:
Just in time:
“The time of domination by one economy and one currency has been consigned to the past once and for all,” Medvedev said during a [...]
It’s morning in America.
When was the last time GWB gave a press conference in light like that? Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Did Rick Davis have his hooks in Dean’s operations in early ’04?
3EDC’s website as archived on 10 Jun ’04:
Who’s we?
So what was Rick Davis up to in early summer ’04?
3EDC’s website as archived almost three months earlier, on 18 Mar ’04, said: “Welcome nicco.trueserver.com to Your New Server!”
Who’s nicco?
How about Nicco A. Mele, former deanforamerica.com [...]
Waxman to former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld:
In conversations with Committee staff, your counsel stated that he and his team are working on collecting your e-mails from this time period, but they expect to produce relatively few to the Committee because you were an infrequent user of e-mail.
Your counsel and his team have also informed Committee [...]
The U.S. Mint is temporarily halting sales of its American Buffalo 24-karat gold coins because it can’t keep up with soaring demand as investors seek the safety of gold amid economic turbulence. The 1-ounce coin has a face value of $50 but is priced for sale according to the fluctuating value of gold.
Which aspect of [...]
“Olympic Mottoes Borrow Lines from O Canada,” CBC, 25 Sep ’08:
Two phrases borrowed from Canada’s national anthem have been chosen as the mottoes for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and organizers have already moved to protect the commercial rights to the lines.
The lines “With glowing hearts” from the English version and “Des plus [...]
A-list blogger 1:
(Desperate and Reckless: Ramp up Georgia crisis for votes; call off half the GOP convention; pick a demonstrably unqualified freshman governor to salvage his campaign; call for firing head of the SEC; now ask to have presidential debates delayed or canceled so he can politicize the bailout debate…)
A-list blogger 2:
Why he seems so [...]