And yet….
[Coleman Attorney Joe] Friedberg: In point of fact, even though I did something I wasn’t supposed to do with the application, my ballot should still count because my signature is genuine.
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann: Not according to the procedures we use to determine whether the signature is genuine.
Friedberg: I don’t care about your procedures.
(Franken lawyer calls an objection, is sustained.)
Friedberg: Okay, I do care…
Via Crooks and Liars:
The FBI was aware for years of “pervasive and growing” fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America’s financial meltdown, but did not take definitive action to stop it.
“It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes,” said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002.
The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities.
“We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt,” the first of the retired FBI officials told the Seattle P-I. “Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism.”
The FBI not only lacked the resources, but also never got the tips it needed from the banking regulatory agencies. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency also failed to detect the securities issue, said the first retired FBI official.
“These are very resource-intense cases that take a lot of work by very skilled people,” said John Falvey Jr., a former federal prosecutor who currently does white-collar criminal defense work in Boston.
And Falvey said that financial executives who deliberately chose not to learn the facts about dicey mortgage-lending practices in their companies — who chose to be “willfully blind” to such practices and the subsequent securitization of those mortgages — could be vulnerable to prosecution for securities fraud.
Both retired FBI officials asserted that the Bush administration was thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counterterrorism duties.
This mass reassignment was first chronicled by the Seattle P-I in the Terrorism Tradeoff, a series of investigative reports beginning in 2007 and stretching into 2008. That administration policy, the P-I reported, resulted in a dramatic plunge in FBI criminal investigations and referrals for prosecution. And recent data from Syracuse University researchers shows the problem has worsened.
I was thumbing through some of my old issues of the New Yorker and The Atlantic this morning and I came across Andrew Sullivan’s article in the November issue of the Atlantic called “Why I Blog.” It got me thinking about blogging because, since Sarah Palin’s remarks attacking “bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie,” I’ve seen a lot of “in defense of bloggers” type posts lately. But this article really summed up the essence of blogging and speaks more “in defense” of blogs than any post I’ve seen.
Sullivan writes:
The word blog is a conflation of two words: Web and log. It contains in its four letters a concise and accurate self-description: it is a log of thoughts and writing posted publicly on the World Wide Web. In the monosyllabic vernacular of the Internet, Web log soon became the word blog.
This form of instant and global self-publishing, made possible by technology widely available only for the past decade or so, allows for no retroactive editing (apart from fixing minor typos or small glitches) and removes from the act of writing any considered or lengthy review. It is the spontaneous expression of instant thought—impermanent beyond even the ephemera of daily journalism. It is accountable in immediate and unavoidable ways to readers and other bloggers, and linked via hypertext to continuously multiplying references and sources. Unlike any single piece of print journalism, its borders are extremely porous and its truth inherently transitory. The consequences of this for the act of writing are still sinking in.
He likens a blog to a ship’s log, an unintentional narrative that progresses backwards as you read through the pages. Any good blog that’s been around a while has pages of archives chronicling the lives and thoughts of its author over a span of years. A blog is such a personal thing, no matter the subject matter, because it represents a little piece of the writer. We all have our favorite bloggers that we feel a certain connection to, whether lurking in the background for years, or through the dialog spawned through comments. Blogging is really a remarkable phenomenon.
Anyone who has blogged his thoughts for an extended time will recognize this world. We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges. We blog now—as news reaches us, as facts emerge. This is partly true for all journalism, which is, as its etymology suggests, daily writing, always subject to subsequent revision. And a good columnist will adjust position and judgment and even political loyalty over time, depending on events. But a blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater.
No columnist or reporter or novelist will have his minute shifts or constant small contradictions exposed as mercilessly as a blogger’s are. A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to the world. For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.
You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before.
This is the essence of blogging. And whether you use it as a personal diary or political commentary, a journalistic platform or just a mis-mash of thoughts, a food log or your thoughts on the latest tech gadgets, or, like me, a platform for ranting about things you can’t say at work or to people you know, don’t let comments like Sarah Palin’s get in the way of what you want to say. Its your thoughts. She, and other new public figures, will get used to being tried in the court of public opinion- and having those opinions posted so all the world can see. But that doesn’t mean we’re not held accountable for what we say. Yes, you can post whatever the hell you want, but the backlash still comes in the form of comments and emails, also posted where all the world can see
Blogging—even to an audience of a few hundred in the early days—was intoxicatingly free in comparison [to journalism]…
Alas, as I soon discovered, this sudden freedom from above was immediately replaced by insurrection from below. Within minutes of my posting something, even in the earliest days, readers responded. E-mail seemed to unleash their inner beast. They were more brutal than any editor, more persnickety than any copy editor, and more emotionally unstable than any colleague.
Again, it’s hard to overrate how different this is. Writers can be sensitive, vain souls, requiring gentle nurturing from editors, and oddly susceptible to the blows delivered by reviewers. They survive, for the most part, but the thinness of their skins is legendary. Moreover, before the blogosphere, reporters and columnists were largely shielded from this kind of direct hazing. Yes, letters to the editor would arrive in due course and subscriptions would be canceled. But reporters and columnists tended to operate in a relative sanctuary, answerable mainly to their editors, not readers. For a long time, columns were essentially monologues published to applause, muffled murmurs, silence, or a distant heckle. I’d gotten blowback from pieces before—but in an amorphous, time-delayed, distant way. Now the feedback was instant, personal, and brutal.
And so blogging found its own answer to the defensive counterblast from the journalistic establishment. To the charges of inaccuracy and unprofessionalism, bloggers could point to the fierce, immediate scrutiny of their readers. Unlike newspapers, which would eventually publish corrections in a box of printed spinach far from the original error, bloggers had to walk the walk of self-correction in the same space and in the same format as the original screwup. The form was more accountable, not less, because there is nothing more conducive to professionalism than being publicly humiliated for sloppiness. Of course, a blogger could ignore an error or simply refuse to acknowledge mistakes. But if he persisted, he would be razzed by competitors and assailed by commenters and abandoned by readers. In an era when the traditional media found itself beset by scandals as disparate as Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Dan Rather, bloggers survived the first assault on their worth. In time, in fact, the high standards expected of well-trafficked bloggers spilled over into greater accountability, transparency, and punctiliousness among the media powers that were.
So you see Sarah, we can still be held accountable. Lies are punished with harsh criticism, and opinions are brutally mocked. Readers, by way of trackbacks, links, and Google, are able to verify or disprove anything a blogger writes so blatent lies are hard to pass off. There are bloggers on the national stages that suffer just as much scrutiny and flack as you, and for less serious errors. We’ve all had our egos bruised and days ruined from a particularly nasty troll whose only intent is to cause pain.
The blog remained a superficial medium, of course. By superficial, I mean simply that blogging rewards brevity and immediacy. No one wants to read a 9,000-word treatise online. On the Web, one-sentence links are as legitimate as thousand-word diatribes—in fact, they are often valued more. And, as Matt Drudge told me when I sought advice from the master in 2001, the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks.
But the superficiality masked considerable depth—greater depth, from one perspective, than the traditional media could offer. The reason was a single technological innovation: the hyperlink. An old-school columnist can write 800 brilliant words analyzing or commenting on, say, a new think-tank report or scientific survey. But in reading it on paper, you have to take the columnist’s presentation of the material on faith, or be convinced by a brief quotation (which can always be misleading out of context). Online, a hyperlink to the original source transforms the experience. Yes, a few sentences of bloggy spin may not be as satisfying as a full column, but the ability to read the primary material instantly—in as careful or shallow a fashion as you choose—can add much greater context than anything on paper. Even a blogger’s chosen pull quote, unlike a columnist’s, can be effortlessly checked against the original. Now this innovation, pre-dating blogs but popularized by them, is increasingly central to mainstream journalism.
A blog, therefore, bobs on the surface of the ocean but has its anchorage in waters deeper than those print media is technologically able to exploit. It disempowers the writer to that extent, of course. The blogger can get away with less and afford fewer pretensions of authority. He is—more than any writer of the past—a node among other nodes, connected but unfinished without the links and the comments and the track-backs that make the blogosphere, at its best, a conversation, rather than a production.
So you see, blogging moderates itself, in a sense. Most bloggers don’t try to pass themselves off as journalists as others, like Palin, have claimed. Nor are bloggers something to discount. Like newspaper columns and editorials, blogs can be personal opinions, reviews, or serious articles. Everything you read, whether on a blog or in a magazine or newspaper, should be taken with a grain of salt.
So, lay off Sarah.
A political action committee dedicated to furthering the interests of Sarah Palin and those like her.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sarah Palin has launched a new political action committee called SarahPac, signaling that the Alaska Governor intends to remain a player in national politics even after her failed bid to become the country’s first female vice president.
“SarahPac will support local and national candidates who share Gov. Palin’s ideas and goals for our country,” says the PAC’s Web site, which promises that Palin will be “a strong voice for energy independence and reform.”
A spokesperson for SarahPac confirmed that Palin is behind the group and said it was registered with the Federal Election Commission on Monday evening. The Web site went live on Tuesday morning and is already soliciting donations.
“The PAC is a smart thing to do because she’s getting so many speaking requests still, so if she gets a request from, say, Bob McDonnell in Virginia, she could do that travel out of her PAC money,” explained the spokesperson, noting that Palin has been in high demand from Republicans around the country since the campaign ended. In December, the governor traveled to Georgia to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Saxby Chambliss in that state’s runoff election.
Excuse me while I go kill myself.
Sitting in the waiting room at my doctor’s office this morning I was forced to endure nearly an hour of Fox News, and I was just amazed at what I was hearing. In response to Nancy Pelosi’s defense of part of the economic stimulus being directed toward family planning services, several Fox news commentators likened her comments to population control and publicly funded euthanasia. Really? Sensationalism, anyone?
One of the more level headed commentators (a democrat) agreed with Pelosi, saying that, especially for poorer people or those hit hardest by the financial crunch, less children was wise. Agreed. The more mouths to feed, the less to go around… so I don’t see the problem with practicing a little control, government sponsored or not, in tough times.
However, the second commentator just about had a hernia in response to these comments. She claimed that the democrats were brain dead and that he was suggesting population control; next you would see publicly funded euthanasia. She was literally screaming, so incensed was she over his comments. And they call this news? Is it me or does Fox have no sense of decorum?
Anyway, while we brain dead democrats exercise birth control, the wingnuts are free to breed uncontrollably and contribute more people to our already overburdened country.
In better news: only a few days into his administration Obama has managed to crank out some pretty amazing executive orders. He has ordered Gitmo closed and put a hault to the show trials, banned torture and ordered a full review of U.S. detention policies and procedures, and repealed the Global Gag Rule.
Go Team.
There are now 3 (count them, three!) girls engaged to be woefully unhappy for the rest of their lives married in my office, and while the tortuous exclamations of female glee that accompany engagement proclamations are enjoyable for some, I am not one of those people who delights in absurdly excited prattle about frilly white dresses and wedding venues. And yet, much to my chagrin, that’s ALL they want to talk about.
Compounding my torture is the fact that two of our young male coworkers have announced that their wives are currently burdened with floating fetuses…er, I mean, pregnant, which means I am also forced to listen to and (please help me) participate in discussions concerning fetus gender, the cost/benefit analysis of boy vs. girl, and how to not piss off wildly hormonal women. Unfortunately one of these guys has, somehow, endeared himself to me so I must play nice while he gushes about last week’s doctors visit and shows me pictures of a jelly bean with ‘arms.’
As for the women, I am not particularly fond of any of them so I don’t have to appear overly enthused about their nuptials, but I did manage to squeeze out a congratulations without so much as a grimace when a ring-adored hand was shoved into my face last week. (This particular hand belonging to the coworker who has been threatening her boyfriend of less than 2 years with desertion if he didn’t produce a ring soon, despite his insistence that he was not keen on marriage… so I’m sure that will be a happy, long-lasting union.)
I’m not really sure where I was going with this post, other than documenting my irritation with an over-hyped, patriarchal institution and the muss and fuss that accompanies it, but I can already see the comments forming from some people: “you’re just jealous of them” and ” you wouldn’t be so negative if you didn’t secretly wish for the same thing” and other related bullshit. Let me just nip that in the bud before it starts. I have no desire for marriage (and thankfully, neither does LMC) so I know it won’t be happening in the foreseeable future, nor will gestating the primordial soup that ends with birthing a small, alien-looking creature. Its just not in the cards for this misanthropist.
I guess all I’ve been saying is, PLEASE, stop the madness! I don’t want to hear anymore about weddings or babies for the next 17.3 years. And just because you’re bathing in the glow of imagined wedded-bliss, please don’t ask me when LMC and I plan to get married; the answer will always be NEVER. You see, not everyone has the same goals as you (this directed toward the girl who gushed about how much she has dreamed of her wedding day since she was a child… because you know, as a child you fully comprehend the consequences of marriage and it’s every bit as magical as your six-year-old self imagined).
My biggest fear in all of this madness is that, after the birthing of the… erm, babies, they will bring them up to work to show them off and I will be force to hold one. I don’t know why, but those things kind of creep me out.
There are 14 geese littering the floor of our lobby at work. And 5 flying overhead. Literally. They’ve scattered those fake Canadian geese through the lobby, and have hung five ‘flying’ geese from the ceiling.
There is also a tent pitched in the hallway.
I get strange looks from people walking through the door.
THIS is better than Caroline Kennedy?
Gillibrand has described her own voting record as “one of the most conservative in the state.” She opposes any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, supports renewing the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning up to $1 million annually, and voted for the Bush-backed FISA bill that permits wiretapping of international calls. She was one of four Democratic freshmen in the country, and the only Democrat in the New York delegation, to vote for the Bush administration’s bill to extend funding for the Iraq war shortly after she entered congress in 2007. While she now contends that she’s always opposed the war and has voted for bills to end it, one upstate paper reported when she first ran for the seat: “She said she supports the war in Iraq.” In addition to her vote to extend funding, she also missed a key vote to override a Bush veto of a Democratic bill with Iraq timetables.
Granted I didn’t believe Caroline was right for the job just because of the Kennedy legacy, but she was at least prefereable to this. And from what I hear, this will allow the wingnuts a chance to grab the seat back because of the conservative leanings of the district. *sigh*
There have been a lot of comments on Obama’s inaugural speech ranging from “his worst speech” to “the purest poetry” and I find myself falling on the side of poetry. His words held such beautiful imagery and were delivered with such passion that the inaugural poet’s words fell flat in trying to follow. With phrases like “rising tides of prosperity” and “still waters of peace,” Obama sets himself apart as an orator in a way that no other modern president has. Honestly, you would never catch Bush stumbling through a lament for “fallen heroes who… whisper through the ages.”
For the last eight years we’ve had to suffer mediocrity personified in a president who lacked a knowledge of the basic fundaments of our language, but Obama breathes life into the stale genre of political speeches. As Walter Shapiro comments, “President Obama reminded the nation that here was a man who wrote himself into his job.” Obama is a true academic, something much needed and appreciated by those of us who care.
