go!

An attack on Iran is basically inevitable at this point. The only thing that could maybe stop it is impeachment of Bush and Cheney, but that will never happen as long as Republicans or Democrats are in control of Congress. It is obvious that it will be a disaster, and nobody is going to stop it. Way to go, team America!

pictures

Moving into the new place. Lots of cat pictures.

Support the troops, Bush style

How the fuck does anyone take Bush seriously when he talks about supporting the troops? The man is a fucking psychopath.

Ohio

I don't even know where to start writing; I feel like so much has happened. The bottom line is that I am now in Ohio. I loaded up the Penske truck last Wednesday and Thursday, closed on the house Friday afternoon, and arrived here very late Friday night. By Sunday we had dumped everything from the truck into the house, and here I am now, amidst the boxes and clutter.

Our new place is kind of a dump, but I kind of love it. We don't have air conditioning or a dishwasher. We have one small bathroom that smells a little funny no matter how much we clean it. It is a 10 minute walk from campus and we look out our front door to the local high school. I have some pictures I can post if I find my camera sometime soon. Our cats seem to like it here. Our rent is $325/month.

I'm glad to be here. I'm glad that my house sold, that the long drive went smoothly, and that my wife will be starting school again next Tuesday. We've found a farmers market for fresh locally-grown produce, and a family farm that raises grass-fed beef and pork, and free range poultry and eggs. We stocked up on good beer and wine. Life is good.

Any questions?

Today I played some poker. The following hand happened. I offer it without further comment for your entertainment.

Full Tilt 1/2 Hold'em (6 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)


Preflop: adspar is UTG with Kh, 6h.

UTGA raises, 2 folds, Button calls, SB calls, 1 fold.



Flop: (7 SB) Ks, 4c, 9h (3 players)

SB checks, UTGA bets, Button calls, SB calls.



Turn: (5 BB) 4h (3 players)

SB checks, UTGA bets, Button calls, SB calls.



River: (8 BB) 6c (3 players)

SB checks, UTGA bets, Button calls, SB calls.



Final Pot: 11 BB


Results:

SB has 8d Th (one pair, fours).

adspar has Kh 6h (two pair, kings and sixes).

Button has 3s 3d (two pair, fours and threes).

Outcome: adspar wins 11 BB.

While that was happening, so was this:

well...

This might kill it for us:

McLean, Va., (August 20, 2007) - Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE: COF) today announced that it will cease residential mortgage origination operations at its wholesale mortgage banking unit, GreenPoint Mortgage, effective immediately. Current conditions in the secondary mortgage markets create significant near-term profitability challenges, given the company's "originate and sell" business model. Further, recent and continuing developments in the mortgage markets reduce the long-term outlook for profitability in the business, as the company expects markets for prime, non-conforming mortgage products are likely to remain challenged for the foreseeable future.

This might save it for us. Let's hope:

GreenPoint Mortgage will cease making new loan commitments immediately, however, it will continue to meet its contractual obligations to customers for loan commitments that are in the pipeline with rates locked.

more 'fuck this shit'

this time from digby

Hold on for a week

The events of the next week will have a huge effect on the next several years of my life. If my house sells next Friday, then I'm off on a new path with some reasonable financial buffering to ease the transition. If the deal falls apart, I have no idea what I'll do, but I'll be in a terrible financial situation with a few unattractive options.

I have no idea how to tell what will happen. We have a contract in place, and if everything goes as planned, I'll be moving on Friday and quite happy. But the mortgage and real estate markets are descending into chaos, so things could easily go bad in the next 7 days. My buyer is selling property to pay for mine, so that means there are twice as many lenders who could go bankrupt overnight, and twice as many buyers who could panic and walk away. That would leave me hanging in a painful way.

I assume that everyone involved in both transactions wants to see the deals happen. The two buyers get nice new houses, the two sellers get the sale they wanted, the three realtors get their commissions, the two settlement companies get their fees, the two mortgage brokers get their commissions, and the two lenders get their loan assets. Hopefully it all works for everyone.

I'm nervous as hell, and I've got another week before I know what will happen.

Always something

Just when I thought I could breathe easy, the Washington Post runs this article:

Approved Home Loans No Longer Done Deals

Ugh.

Letters from lenders approving loans "used to be a reason to exhale, a reason to believe that a deal is done," said Leisa Hart, an agent with Long & Foster Real Estate. "We no longer have reason to exhale until we've gotten to the settlement table and until that loan has been fully funded."

Yup.

chomsky, trivers

That's it

If IOZ wasn't already my favorite blogger, this seals it:

If you asked me, "What would a contemporary police state look like?" I'd reply that it would look an awful lot like what America looks like right now. I would tell you that subsidized consumer affluence has proven a far more effective method of social control than centrally planned, faux-egalitarianism. I would tell you that someone finally figured out that breadlines breed rebellion but lines at the multiplex for the midnight opening of the next blockbuster do not. I would tell you that keeping up with the Joneses has proven a more effective enforcer of conformity than any book of Dear Leader's wisdom ever did. I would tell you that hope for Vegas vacations beats fear of the work camps for quashing dissent. I would tell you that subtle is better than overt, seemingly random better than routine, carnivalesque better than somber, colorful better than drab. Look at the billions of dollars and man-hours thrown into deciding between a guy from Massachusetts and a gal from New York who evince no convincingly held differences of belief. Has ever a nation been farther from revolution than the United States in the year 2007?

I feel a great many people waiting, breathing shallowly, as if one day at last the whole edifice will tip over and reveal its infested foundation. It won't. I feel as if a great many people are waiting for a president to suspend the government, or for black-hood squads to start snatching people in broad daylight, or for the police to establish checkpoint entrances to our cities and loyalty oaths in our schools. (That last, of course, already . . . ) They are waiting, in other words, for incontrovertible and public evidence that Denmark is rotten, some moment of national epiphany when Candidate-for-Life Benito Giuliani descends through the clouds in his own airline trailing some athletic blond with a camera on his way to a firelit vigil in Yankee Stadium.

There is an office tower in Pittsburgh with a good view of the county jail, and cells at the county jail with views of downtown offices. I imagine the populations of one or the other spend a great deal of time thinking, "Poor bastards, stuck in that place . . ."

terrorists terrorizing terrorfully? terribly terrifying!

So Bush has now declared that Iran's military force is a terrorist organization. Awesome!

Winter Patriot:

Science fiction? Au contraire! It's the Washington Post, which also says:

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said.

Involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan? Support for extremists?

Come on! Can't they do any better than that??

How remarkable. How utterly Orwellian. We've never had a clear definition of "terrorism" in the "post-9/11 world", but this is getting even more ridiculous than ever!

The president declares a branch of a foreign country's military to be terrorists, and to justify the declaration, he cites their alleged involvement in two countries which he himself invaded and occupied under false pretenses!!

Oh, well. He's the president, and I'm not. I guess they must be terrorists!

Chris Floyd:

The reality is that this move is just one more piece of groundwork for a military strike on Iran that is indeed inevitable – and vital too, at least for the ambitions of the "global domination" crowd embodied in the big slab of electronically-maintained meat known as Dick Cheney. As Cooper finally acknowledges – in the 22nd paragraph – such a designation is merely symbolic, as the Revolutionary Guards have very few if any assets in the United States or associated with United States financial institutions in any way that would fall under the measure's ban. It is intended as just one more shot across the bow, one more provocation aimed at goading the Iranians into a response that could be seized upon as a further "justification" for war.

And it is yet another round in the endless PR campaign to demonize Iran in the eyes of the American people: A government that has an officially designated terrorist organization as part of its armed forces! My God, better order some more haz-mat suits for Sump City, Iowa, before they sarin-gas the county fair! Better go fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here!

Colin Powell

I'm always confused when I hear someone speak highly of Colin Powell. I'm inclined towards Chris Floyd's opinion of him (from May, 2002):

The former general has long been regarded by the "serious" media on both sides of the Atlantic as a "moderate" maverick on Bush's hard-right team. Liberal commentators praise Powell as a "restraining influence" on more bellicose insiders like Cheney and Rumsfeld, and a wise, guiding hand for a president unschooled in the subtleties of world diplomacy.

It's all a sham, of course. Powell is nothing more than a lifelong bagman for powerful interests. His willingness to play ball, to look the other way, has made him a convenient tool for the some of the most violent and undemocratic forces ever to pollute American society.

Brush with greatness

Last night I randomly logged in to Full Tilt to terrorize the $1/2 games. I was absolutely crushing it for like 6 or 8 big bets, so I started snooping around and noticed there was some kind of "chat with the pros" section and there happened to be a live chat going on. Erica Schoenberg was the featured pro. I had never heard of her, so I decided to join the chat. I fired off a few questions, hoping some of them would be selected for her to answer.

2007-08-14 03:52:36.47 who are you?

2007-08-14 03:54:47.10 do you find that your anonymity inspires fear?
especially when you play against people i've heard of

Meanwhile some of her answers to other questions included Seinfeld quotes, references to the NBA, and her speaking french. Some questions seemed to imply that she was attractive. What was going on here?

2007-08-14 03:56:56.20 As a female who likes Seinfeld, do you find that I should know who you are? If so, why don't I?

2007-08-14 03:59:37.03 do you think that full tilt should sheild you from the tough questions? if not, please tell me who you are.

2007-08-14 04:02:08.53 lebron? francais? seinfeld? some full tilt tech geek just made you up right?

2007-08-14 04:04:10.16 all my questions concern your likely nonexistence. how do you handle the pressure of this kind of scrutiny?

Around this point it became obvious that this girl was dating some famous high-roller named David and happened to win a tournament. Apparently that makes her some kind of celebrity. My questions kind of deteriorated from here (or improved, depending on your perspective).

2007-08-14 04:11:37.30 did you and i ever play $15/30 together at the
taj? if so, did we flirt a lot and then never fully realize our
desires?

2007-08-14 04:14:27.18 i have AJo in the small blind. do you know
phil ivey?

2007-08-14 04:17:47.04 6 dude one time my buddy knocked gavin smith
to the ground cause he was so drunk. true story. now, hypothetically if
i shared a poilte lunch with you, who would have had a bigger brush with
greatness?

2007-08-14 04:25:28.31 if you could have dinner with any 5 people,
living or dead, would your zombie magic make you famous enough for me to
have heard of you?

At this point I decided to google this girl, I found pictures of her. She's kind of pretty.

2007-08-14 04:31:51.50 all those questions about who you are were
just jokes! who is this david, and why does your prettiness make my
tummy feel weird?

I later found out that her primary claim to fame is that she is engaged to David Benyamine and was part of some kind of strip poker DVD where she took her top off. (I'd link to pictures but this is a family blog. I'm sure you can find them though.) Only one of my questions made it through before she signed off.

[adspar]: who are you?
EricaSchoenberg: who are you?

fuck this shit

I just watched Bill Kristol tell preposterous lies right to Jon Stewart's face and when it was done, Stewart giggled and shook Kristol's hand. Then it cut to a commercial for the Democrat Senate election committee. Fuck this shit. Even the dissenters are lame-ass establishment pimps. God fucking damn this all.

this is me

Romney: bigot, hypocrite

Romney says: I'm a bigot against some people!!
Christians say: We're bigots against Romney!!
Romney says: Bigotry is wrong!!


I've come to realize that principles mean nothing to these people. They're just convenient props for self-promotion. Until they become inconvenient, at which point they're completely disposable. Fucking assholes.

if you're so inclined

Far-flung correspondent for the New Yorker writes about bonobos, and Frans de Waal responds. Frans is cool. Bonobos are cool.


Giuliani loves his money.


Republicans are like children.


IOZ calls it like it is.

the real estate blues

A few weeks ago I accepted an offer on my house. If everything goes as planned, we'll close in 2 weeks. I'm extremely nervous about it though, because my buyer is selling a condo before moving here. That buyer is 100% financed, and we haven't heard a final loan approval from that lender. The mortgage market is a disaster right now, and those kinds of loans are particularly suspect. I'm concerned that the deal is going to fall apart and severely mess up our plans.

There's nothing I can do, and there's nothing you can say. I'm just nervous and can't sleep and need to vent.

Another objectionable mass email

A relative sent this email to most of my family.

Subject: Fw: News Flash

> Verified with SNOPES--this is unnerving
>
> AT A CITGO STATION REGULAR WAS PRICED AT $2.82 PER GALLON, NO
> CUSTOMERS, HOWEVER ACROSS THE STREET IT WAS SELLING FOR $2.85 PER
> GALLON AND ALL PUMPS WERE HAD CARS
> WAITING TO FUEL. HERE'S WHY!!!!
>
> Have you noticed how the Citgo signs have disappeared in the past 7-8
> months? Very clever move by Chavez. But guess what...........
> CITGO IS CHANGING ITS NAME...this is serious Americans...make sure you
> read ..
>
> NEWS FLASH:
>
>
> Chavez is NOW getting a Russian Weapons Factory built by Putin The
> RUSSIANS are building an AK-47 Kalashnikov Assault Rifle factory in
> Venezuela , to give armament support to Communist Rebel groups
> throughout the Americas.
>
> Chavez NOW has IRANIANS operating his oil refineries in Venezuela for
> him. It is likely only a matter of time, if not already, before Chavez
> has Iranian built LONG RANGE missiles, with variety of warhead types
> aimed at: Guess Who?
>
> CITGO is NOW in the process of Changing Its Name to PETRO EXPRESS due to
> the loss of gasoline sales in the USA due to the recent publicity of
> ownership by Chavez of Venezuela .
>
> Every dollar you spend with CITGO or PETRO EXPRESS gasoline will be
> used against you, your basic human rights, and your freedoms. He will
> start wars here in the Americas that will probably be the death of
> millions.
>
> THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT because Chavez is starting to feel the loss of
> revenue from his holdings. HE OWNS CITGO. This is a very important move
> that everyone should be aware of.
>
> ANNOUNCED JUST RECENTLY, CITGO, BEING AWARE THAT SALES ARE DOWN DUE TO
> U.S. CUSTOMERS NOT WANTING TO BUY FROM "CITGO-CHAVEZ", HAVE STARTED
> TOCHANGE THE NAME OF SOME OF THEIR STORES TO: "PETRO EXPRESS"
> DO NOT BUY FROM "PETRO EXPRESS" EITHER!!! "PETRO EXPRESS" IS ALSO 100%
> OWNED BY "CHAVEZ."
>
> KEEP THIS MEMO GOING SO THAT EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING.
>
> BOYCOTT "CITGO" AND "PETRO EXPRESS"
>
> MAKE SURE THIS IS PASSED ON TO EVERYONE IN YOUR E-MAIL LIST IN THE
> UNITED STATES AND OUTSIDE OF AMERICA

I sent this response to everyone.

If we're concerned about weapons in the hands of dangerous people that might be counter-productive to America's interests, we might want to be more concerned about this kind of thing. Nobody arms dangerous people with more weapons than the United States.

Additionally, some of the claims in the email might be a wee bit silly, like " Every dollar you spend with CITGO or PETRO EXPRESS gasoline will be used against you, your basic human rights, and your freedoms." This article explains how this claim is wildly inaccurate from an economic perspective, although economics are the least of the problems there. The idea that Hugo Chavez is actively attempting to violate American human rights and freedoms on a massive scale is pretty silly. Note that he has offered cheap heating oil to American poor. In his own country, he's fought poverty in numerous ways, getting real results. Let's worry about human rights violations and attacks on personal freedoms committed by our own government before we start worrying about hypothetical future violations by someone else.

Or "he will start wars here in the Americas that will probably be the death of millions." If we're worried about wars that will probably be the death of millions, maybe we ought to get our own forces of Iraq. As of a year ago, the best scientific estimate of the number of Iraqi deaths that had occurred since our invasion that wouldn't have happened if we had not invaded was 655,000. We're easily on pace to kill well over a million.

Note that none of this should be construed as blanket support for Hugo Chavez. There might well be valid criticisms of his policies and practices, but absurd fear-mongering hype isn't the way to address such issues. And my other objection is that if we're concerned about war and weapons and personal freedom, we'd be wise to tend to our own affairs first.

un-crazy

I think I have to agree with Trakker and Capt. Fogg that it is no longer crazy to suspect that Bush doesn't intend to stop being The Decider in 2009.

fuck the democrats

They could stop it, but they don't. Fucking assholes. There is no hope.

Glenn Greenwald:

With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who -- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it -- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.

John Cole:

At any rate, well done Democrats. If you are wondering why your poll numbers in Congress are so low, it is because the Republican opposition hates you, and the people who voted for you hate you more. Why? Because of stuff like this.

Grow a spine, you cowards.

Thoreau:

You mean to tell me that Harry Reid couldn’t get 8 more Democrats 40 of his 49 Democrats (plus Bernie Sanders) (edit) to say no to a President whose approval rating is currently a complex number with a negative real part and a large imaginary part? WHAT THE FUCK DID WE ELECT YOU SONS OF BITCHES FOR??!?!?!?!?!?

A.L.:

What's important to understand is that this bill would allow much broader surveillance than what the Bush administration has so far acknowledged doing. Until the administration actually discloses what activities it has engaged in and promises to abide by FISA, I just don't see how any self-respecting member of Congress could vote to give the administration additional powers. I understand that FISA is not a perfect law and there are ways it could be improved and further-modernized, but until you actually know what the administration has been doing over the last six years and the extent to which it is willing to comply with even an amended FISA, you're just legislating in the dark. It's craven and reckless.

The six months sunset provision doesn't give me much reassurance either. If Congress is too craven to withstand administration pressure in this scenario, does anyone believe they'll actually have the stones to take existing powers away when they come up for renewal? Not likely.

Who is IOZ?:

The senate just voted overwhelmingly to further expand the Executive Surveillance State, because, after all, this Executive has proven to be ethically rigorous and practically restrained in its use of the vast powers already conferred on it by the Congress

The government of the United States is just a criminal cartel. Democrats are just as much a part of it.

Jason Bourne kills your dinner plans

I love the Jason Bourne movies. They're on a select list of flicks that I can't turn off if I see them on TV. Tonight I saw the newest, The Bourne Ultimatum, and it somehow gave me a way to finally start blogging about food like I've been meaning to.

Bourne 3 deals with the idea of understanding the reasons for our actions. Assassins are told who to kill and aren't supposed to ask why. But Bourne, former CIA assassin, is troubled by the moral abominations of his past life and struggles to understand how he came to be in those situations.

There's a flashback scene where Bourne is given a gun and ordered to kill a hooded man, told only that doing so will help save American lives. Would you pull the trigger? I think that most people with a functioning moral compass answer that they would be reluctant to kill in almost any circumstances, and that in this specific scenario they'd minimally have to know a lot more before they'd take a life.

But if they were actually put into the situation, many more would kill than say they would. Why? Because people are social creatures, and they tend to follow orders. They rationalize that if an authoritative figure is giving them a command, there must be a good reason for it, and they probably ought to listen. Even if it turns out the order was morally wrong, it can't really be my fault, right? I was just following orders. The famous Milgram experiment chillingly documented this behavior.

Normal people can be manipulated or coaxed into doing things that they themselves would find morally wrong in other circumstances. Authority is one social mechanism to induce morally conflicted behavior. Another is the power of normalization - peer pressure, following the crowd. And yet another is to hide from people the immorality of the action. If everyone else does something, and I can't see anything obviously wrong with it, what harm can there be, right? Especially if the authorities are saying it is ok. That logic makes sense in the heat of the moment, but doesn't cut it for us as we carefully contemplate morals in a detached way. We see the moral obligation to make a reasonable effort understand the consequences of our actions before we act.

So what does Jason Bourne's moral crisis and the rest of this discussion have to do with food? Ask yourself these kinds of questions:

• Do you understand where your food comes from?
• Do you know how it gets from the ground to your plate?

If you're like most people, you don't know much about that. You know an apple grew on a tree and an egg came from a chicken on a farm, but you don't really know the whole process. And you certainly have very little idea about the complicated manufacturing project, the logistical miracle, that resulted in that soda or that microwave dinner or those corn chips.

Does it matter? Well, how about these questions:

• Do you understand the environmental impact of that process?
• Do you understand the public health impact of that process?
• Do you understand the political impact of your food choices?
  
• Do you know how the animals that you eat are treated?
• Do you know how the people who work along your food chain are treated?

If one or more of those sound like they might be issues of moral concern, you're probably a normal human being. You eat hundreds of times per year, spending thousands of dollars on food, and you don't know anything about the moral consequences of your actions. You don't know the answers to those questions because they're deliberately hidden from you. You eat more or less the way everyone else does, and it isn't something you've often thought to even question, aside from a few nutritional facts here and there. You compare prices, see what tastes good, and maybe try to be healthy sometimes.

Are you doing something morally wrong? Something to which you'd object if you only understood the whole situation? Would you kill a man without knowing why? Have you already? Why?

If you're like me, these are troubling questions. No wonder Bourne gets headaches. At first he tried to run away from the nightmare of all his questions, an understandable reaction. It is tempting to just try to forget about all this and keep eating the same way. Eventually Bourne realizes that he has to confront the questions.

And the answers turn out to be even more troubling. In real life and in the movie. No wonder Bourne is on an international rampage to get to the bottom of things. He has to understand it all before he can ever hope to make it right and try to be at peace.

visit him often

Who Is IOZ? operates on a few basic principles best expressed thusly: When the government talks, it lies. When Democrats and Republicans tell you what they're going to do, the Republicans are lying about the what and the Democrats about the do.

more bridges that might fall down

Perlstein:

The Minnesota bridge that plunged into the Mississippi River yesterday, killing four, and almost killing a school bus full of kids, was rated "structurally deficient."

So how about bridges in other states? Via the magic of Google, I did a quick and selective canvass...

Abuse of power: why worry about that?

Over the last year I've been involved in a series of heated email exchanges with the man who used to be known as "check my ip." He's a textbook authoritarian, reflexively defending the Bush administration's crimes in the name of security, while openly scoffing at the idea that government abuse of power is something reasonable people should be concerned about. I've given up on the emails, but I can't help but wonder what empty excuse he'd muster to salve the cognitive dissonance from the story about how the FBI concealed evidence that would have spared four men from 30 years in prison, rewarded and promoted those who orchestrated the cover-up, and now the taxpayers have to pay the $100,000,000 settlement. I'm sure he'd mutter something about a few bad seeds and then blame the liberal media.

Racism

Alive and well in America!

3 fun things to read

Ethanol is a terrible energy solution, but that won't stop our politicians from promoting it. As long as their corporate masters make money, they're happy. Who cares about the rest of the world, right?

George Bush can take all your money if you say bad things about him, and you can't do anything about it. Welcome to America, fucker!

Torture and rape make for good common ground with our new friend Libya.