More Indictments Expected in Muni-Bond Scandal

Considering the amount of politicians, financial houses, and others associated with the muni-bond scandal this isn't much of a surprise. Add to this the fact that states such as West Virginia and Florida have increased the pressure to find out what happened and you have a recipe for trials and prosecutions across the country.

(Bloomberg) CDR Financial Products Inc. and three of its employees aren’t entitled to early access to prosecution evidence in a U.S. antitrust investigation of the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market and more indictments are expected, a prosecutor told a federal judge in New York.

Lawyers for the CDR defendants went to court yesterday to ask U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero to direct the government to give them early access to the evidence and identify material that might help clear their clients. Rebecca Meiklejohn, a lawyer with the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said the government’s investigation is still moving ahead.

“This is a very expansive case,” Meiklejohn told Marrero. “Just this week the government indicted more individuals in connection with this investigation. This is a continuing investigation and we expect there to be more indictments.”

CDR and the three employees are charged as part of an ongoing probe of bid- and auction-rigging in the municipal bond market. Three ex-bankers with a General Electric Co. unit were indicted on July 27 in the same federal probe.

The federal probe already has drawn in more than a dozen banks and financial services companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG, according to court records and regulatory filings.

We have already seen the indictment of ex General Electric executives, guilty pleas from others, and the only thing that saved BOA was the fact that they have decided to work hand in hand with the DOJ. To this day I am convinced Bill Richardson and company were too big to fail and dodged a huge bullet courtesy of Eric Holder.

USA-India Nuclear Ties Grow

Consider this a continuation of policy from The Bush admin:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and India on Friday formally signed an agreement on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel that U.S. officials hope will allow American firms a share of India's $150 billion nuclear energy market.

The agreement, signed by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns and Indian Ambassador to the United States H.E. Meera Shankar, will enable Indian reprocessing of U.S.-originated nuclear material under the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

It is part of the countries' 2008 bilateral civilian atomic pact that ended India's nuclear isolation after its 1974 atomic test. The pact gave India access to U.S. technology and fuel, while also opening up the global nuclear market to India.

"Increased civil nuclear trade with India will create thousands of new jobs for the U.S. economy while helping India to meet its rising energy needs in an environmentally responsible way by reducing the growth of carbon emissions," the U.S. State Department said in a press release.

There are still some hold ups, primarily the fact that there is no cap on damages if there is an industrial accident making US companies leery of investing if there is a chance they lose their shirts. By the way Russia and France assume the risk for their respective companies and State run companies in India have a cap of 450 million dollars,

Spain Likely to Have Credit Rating Cut and American Troubles Mount

Nothing surprising and the Dems will be using this an excuse to raise taxes and speak of "investments". As for Spain I guess that green jobs thing just didn't pan out.

Spain will probably lose its Aaa credit rating after the country was put under review for possible downgrade in June, and the U.S. needs a “clear plan” to tackle its deficit, Moody’s Investors Service said.

“Spain is very highly rated and I can’t say where that rating will end up, but it’s likely to go down a bit,” Steven A. Hess, senior credit officer at Moody’s, said in an interview in Sydney yesterday. In the U.S., slower growth may hinder government efforts to address the budget shortfall, he said.The Spanish government is trying to cut the third-largest budget deficit in the euro region while returning to growth after an almost two-year recession. Spain’s classification may be lowered as much as two grades, Moody’s analysts said June 30, citing “deteriorating” economic prospects and the challenges the government faces to achieve its fiscal targets.

“We’re watching the government’s measures that they are implementing and we’ll probably try to put that rating at the level we think it should belong for some time to come,” Hess said. “We don’t see it moving down as many notches as Greece did.”

Oh well, once the dominoes start to fall we can only hope the damage is minimal.

Build America Bonds Renewal Moves Forward

Its been successful, but with concerns:

(BONDBUYER) WASHINGTON — House Ways and Means Committee chairman Sander Levin Wednesday introduced a new bill that enables Congress to make another attempt at extending several bond provisions slated to expire at the end of the year, including Build America Bonds.

The Investing In American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act — HR 5893 — would extend BABs for two years, along with other extensions to temporary bond provisions first enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The bill “is about moving forward to create opportunities for Americans in America using job-creating programs such as the Build America Bonds,” Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in a statement. “Experts have deemed these bonds, which helped support nearly two million jobs, to be one of the most successful recovery efforts in place. Republican and Democratic governors alike have praised these programs.”

House Democrats plan to bring the bill straight to the House floor and hope to pass it before Congress breaks for a month-long recess beginning Aug. 9, according to sources. The Senate would then take up the measure after the break.The House previously passed a bill extending temporary bond provisions, but it ground to a halt in the Senate after Democrats were unable to garner 60 votes on the package to block a filibuster threatened by Republicans. The bond provisions were eventually stripped from that bill, but have found a new home in Levin’s measure.

The legislation would gradually reduce the subsidy rate for BABs from the current 35% level to 32% for bonds sold in 2011, and 30% for those sold in 2012.

Its a 2.8 trillion dollar market, so they better have their ducks lined up on the issue.

Ex-General Electric Executives Indited in Muni-Bond Scandal

We have seen politicians go down in flames and we currently have the trial of top CDR executives. Here we have the other side of the equation as top financial executives have been indited for bid rigging in collusion with CDR:

WASHINGTON—Three former financial services executives have been indicted for their participation in fraud schemes and conspiracies related to bidding for contracts for the investment of municipal bond proceeds and other municipal finance contracts.

The 12-count indictment was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York City. The indictment charges Dominick P. Carollo, Steven E. Goldberg, and Peter S. Grimm, all former executives at financial service companies or financial institutions, with participating in wire fraud schemes and separate fraud conspiracies at various time periods from as early as 1999 until 2006.

Basically they used inside info about competitors bids to insure they would win the buisness, if true its a classic case of bid -rigging:

Carollo, Goldberg, and Grimm obtained from CDR and other co-conspirator brokers information about the prices, price levels or conditions in competing providers’ bids, a practice known as a “last look,” which is explicitly prohibited by U.S. Treasury regulations. As a result of the information, various providers won investment agreements and other municipal finance contracts at artificially determined price levels. In exchange for this information, Carollo, Goldberg, and Grimm submitted intentionally losing bids for certain investment agreements and other contracts when requested, and, on occasion, agreed to pay or arranged for kickbacks to be paid to CDR and other co-conspirator brokers.

The indictment also alleges that Carollo, Goldberg, Grimm, and co-conspirators misrepresented to municipal issuers or bond counsel that the bidding process was in compliance with U.S. Treasury regulations. This caused the municipal issuers to award investment agreements and other municipal finance contracts to providers that otherwise would not have been awarded the contracts if the issuers had true and accurate information regarding the bidding process. Such conduct placed the tax-exempt status of the underlying bonds in jeopardy.

According to court documents, the efforts by Carollo, Goldberg, Grimm, and their co-conspirators to control and manipulate the bidding for investment contracts, and the execution of a variety of certifications that covered up their scheme, also obstructed the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) ability to monitor compliance with U.S. Treasury regulations and impeded the IRS’s ability to determine whether municipal issuers had correctly accounted for any money that was owed to the U.S. Treasury.

Its a safe assumption these won't be last indictments as the DOJ has a massive case in regards to the bid rigging that may have been endemic within the muni-bond community. As for Carollo, Goldberg, and Grimm, they were former GE executives and the accusations revolve around their work at GE and in the institutions after they left:

(Bloomberg)“The individuals charged today allegedly participated in complex fraud schemes and conspiracies to manipulate what was supposed to be a competitive process,” Christine Varney, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said yesterday in a statement.

The charges are a result of an antitrust investigation, begun more than three years ago, into the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market. The probe has drawn in more than a dozen banks and financial services companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG, according to court records and regulatory filings.

The case centers on guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs, that municipalities purchase with money raised by selling bonds, allowing them to earn a return until the funds are needed for schools, roads and other public works.

Collusion, Kickbacks

The U.S. Treasury Department encourages public bidding for GICs to ensure that localities are paid proper market rates. Prosecutors allege that bankers submitted sham bids and acted through the brokers to carve up the market for themselves, then compensated the brokers with kickbacks disguised as fees on derivative transactions.

Since October, three one-time executives of Los Angeles- based CDR Financial Products Inc. have been indicted, while three others pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. In May, a former UBS banker, who also agreed to cooperate, pleaded guilty, marking the first time a bank employee admitted to participating in the alleged conspiracy.

Yesterday’s indictment also involves Goldberg and Carollo’s work after they left GE. Goldberg went to Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd., a former unit of Brussels-based Dexia SA, while Carollo went on to work for Royal Bank of Canada.

As for GE, their had been rumors swirling around them late last year they were somehow linked to the muni-bond scandal and it appears GE was trying to settle (with the SEC at least) as a way to head off the worst. In regards to penalties, they could end up being quite swift for the gentleman in question:

(BondBuyer) Goldberg is charged with eight counts of conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud. Grimm is charged with five counts of conspiracy and one count of wire fraud. Carollo is charged with four counts of conspiracy and one count of wire fraud.

The alleged fraud conspiracies each carry a maximum penalty per count of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The wire fraud charges each carry a maximum penalty per count of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The maximum fines for each of the offenses may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims of the crime, if either amount is greater than the statutory maximum fine, U.S. attorneys said.

The Press Release from the FBI.

Will Democrats Lose the Senate?

Color me skeptical, but if the wave is as big as they say it is possible the GOP will take the Senate or simply split the difference and tie the Dems as 50 to 48 with two Independents. (In that case they will split the committees and have co-chairs, assuming Sanders and Lieberman vote with the Democrats).

(The Economist) Only 37 of the Senate’s 100 seats will be up in November. The Democrats are defending a majority of 59 to 41 (though their majority includes two independents), which means that the Republicans need a net gain of ten seats to win control. Until recently this feat was thought to be beyond their reach, and many pollsters continue to think so. RealClearPolitics, a website that publishes an average of multiple polls, is projecting a Republican gain of only six. To gain ten, as the Wall Street Journal argued recently, the Republicans would have to win virtually every competitive seat without losing any of their own.

That is a very tall order. And yet Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, thinks that this could be another of those election years, such as 1980, 1986 and 2006, when most of the close races tip in the same direction and produce a shift of control. It is certainly the case that many once-safe Democratic seats, such as Wisconsin and Washington, are looking vulnerable. The Cook Political Report now judges it possible for the Republicans’ Carly Fiorina, the deep-pocketed former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, to defeat the sitting Democrat, Barbara Boxer, in California. As well as winning the House and Senate, says Mr Galston, the Republicans could hit the trifecta, capturing Mr Obama’s former seat in Illinois, Vice-President Joe Biden’s in Delaware and, in Nevada, unseating Harry Reid, the majority leader.

For the RCP average check here.

The Economist on Afghan Doc Dump

A nice take that dispels some of the melodrama about this:

FOR anyone with a penchant for wading through impenetrable military-speak then the extraordinary cache of more than 90,000 documents released by Wikileaks today is Christmas come early.

But while this unvarnished heap of military intelligence adds a lot of colour to our understanding of the war in Afghanistan, the first headlines to have come streaming from the mess of it tell us little that we did not know already.

As Andrew Exum, a guru within the counter-insurgency community, puts it sarcastically, it is well known that Pakistan's intelligence agency plays a vital role in helping insurgents. But these documents do not provide the ultimate smoking gun. If they did, America might presumably have reason to be gearing up for an invasion.

And the Americans have for a long while been quite open, even boastful, about the huge amount of killing and capturing that their special-forces teams have been getting up to. This was greatly ramped up by General Stanley McChrystal—to the extent that there are often as many as 15 distinct missions run per night.

In regards to special forces, expect more not less a terror threats remain but the appetite for conventional occupation and combat wanes.

Muni-Debt on The Rise

Reading stories like this makes me think of the warning signs on Fannie and Freddie that were creeping into the public realm before the great collapse. The problems are manifold, on the one hand you have politicians who convince themselves that high ticket structures need to be built to create an economic renaissance for their localities. The other problem is politicians simply want to spend money and perhaps even lard their allies coffers and floating a bond seems like the easiest way to do it. Of course with the muni-bond scandal threatening the very heart of the market we could be looking at a series of fiscal time bombs that are scattered all across the country:

(Steve Malanga-City) In the early 1970s, New Jersey officials decided to build a sports facility in the Meadowlands, the state’s wetlands just outside New York City. To help pay for it, they formed the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA), a quasi-governmental agency with the power to issue debt. The authority floated $302 million in bonds, used the proceeds from the bond sale to construct Giants Stadium and a Meadowlands racetrack, and planned to pay off the debt in 25 years, largely with proceeds from the track but also with some help from the stadium. Horse racing proved a big hit, and the plan seemed bound for success.But the pols couldn’t resist soaking the Meadowlands. They siphoned track proceeds into the state budget; repeatedly refinanced the NJSEA’s bonds, pushing repayment dates far into the future; and relied on the authority’s good credit rating to launch other building schemes, including a costly but unsuccessful aquarium in Camden. Today, 35 years after its first bonds, the NJSEA is $830 million in hock. Worse, it can’t repay that debt because business has cratered at the racetrack, still the Meadowlands’ principal revenue source. As for Giants Stadium, it was demolished this year, and its replacement won’t be contributing much to the debt repayments. The state, facing its own cavernous budget deficits, has had to assume the authority’s interest payments—about $100 million this year on bonds that now stretch out to nearly 2030. “The sports authority is paying the consequences for politicians using it for their pet projects,” observes Steve Lonegan, former mayor of Bogota, New Jersey.

Stories like that have become frustratingly common around the country. State and local borrowing, once thought of as a way to finance essential infrastructure, has mutated into a source of constant abuse. Like homeowners before the housing bubble burst, states and cities have gorged on debt, extended repayment times, and used devious means to avoid limits on borrowing—all in order to finance risky projects and kick fiscal problems down the road. Though the country’s economic troubles have helped expose some of these unwise practices, the downturn has brought not reform but yet more abuse. Even as Tea Party protesters and taxpayer groups revolt against excessive government spending and taxes, they are paying too little attention to the gigantic state and local debt bomb. If it can’t be defused, we’re all at risk.

It should come as no surprise that some of the most egregious abuses occurred in California as numerous semi-independent agencies were created that could actually raise property taxes and issue debt to restore "blighted" areas. The result has been a series of stadiums and theaters that are of little value and in some cases make less revenue then their actual debt payments. Not that California is alone in such questionable choices. For example Charlotte and Atlanta are now in a hundred million dollar bidding war over who can build a museum for Nascar, its almost as if the municipalities are trying to outdo each other and fiscal responsibility be damned!

Korean-US Exercises Begin

North Korea has decided to increase its rhetoric in the face of these exercises, hopefully its posturing, but after the Cheonan who can say?

The United States and South Korea on Sunday kicked off their largest joint war game in years, with a nuclear-powered American aircraft carrier prowling off the east coast of South Korea while North Korea threatened to retaliate with its nuclear weapons and reportedly put its military on an alert for war.

Rising tensions demonstrated how tenuous peace remained on the divided peninsula after the Korean War was temporarily halted in a ceasefire between the U.S.-led United Nations forces and the communist troops from North Korea and China 57 years ago on Tuesday.

The current spate of tension was sparked when a South Korean warship was blown up in March, killing 46 sailors. A team of investigators from South Korea, the United States and other countries that joined the U.N. forces during the war determined in May that North Korea torpedoed the ship.

As for their weapons threats, this is the longest range weapon they have:

This assumes the weapon can get off the platform. The real danger is a short range bombardment of Seoul which happens to be near the border. For more on their missile technology watch the clip:

California Tax Revenues Shrink

Just great and considering that California has decided to spend its time going after the state rock is anyone too surprised?

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Assessed property values in California are likely to decline for the second year running, according to a Bond Buyer review of data from the state’s larger counties.

Even though the state’s tax assessment system has the effect of muting the volatility of property assessments, 11 of the state’s 12 largest counties experienced a decline in their property tax roll this year.

County assessors are required to provide property assessments as of Jan. 1, and deliver a report on their tax rolls by summer. Final figures on the tax rolls of all 58 counties will be tallied in late summer or early fall by the state’s Board of Equalization.

A review of early figures from the state’s biggest 12 counties — accounting for more than 78% of the state’s overall 2009 tax roll — indicates that the statewide roll will drop for the second year running.

Last year’s final statewide tax roll was down 2.4% — the first year-over-year decline since statewide record keeping began in 1933, according to the Board of Equalization.This year, the 12 largest counties are down 1.8%, according to data collected from 11 of the county assessors’ offices.

Final data is not yet available from Los Angeles County, the state’s largest. Los Angeles County plans to release its figures Aug. 4, according to Robert Knowles, spokesman for County Assessor Robert Quon.Los Angeles County officials assumed a 2% reduction in the tax roll in budget preparations.

IOU's anyone?

Ford Posts a Profit

Perhaps we should thank Harry Reid?

DEARBORN, Mich. — The Ford Motor Company on Friday said it earned $2.6 billion in the second quarter and expected to have more cash than debt by the end of 2011. It was the fifth consecutive quarterly profit and best earnings report in more than six years for Ford, whose turnaround has been gaining momentum as it has increased sales and market share in the United States.

Ford, the only Detroit automaker not to file for bankruptcy protection or receive emergency federal aid, said it expected to be profitable in the second half of this year and deliver even stronger results in 2011. It said second-half profit in 2010 would be less than the $4.7 billion it earned in the first six months, however, due to seasonal changes in demand and new product introductions.

“We delivered a very strong second quarter and first half of 2010 and are ahead of where we thought we would be despite the still-challenging business conditions,” Ford’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, said in a statement. “Our progress is being led by the strength of our new products and our leaner, global structure.”Excluding special items, Ford earned $2.9 billion before taxes, or 68 cents pa share. A year ago on that basis, the company lost $554 million, or 21 cents per share.

It earned $2.1 billion from its automotive operations, including $1.9 billion in North America, compared with losses a year ago. All other regions also were profitableThe automaker’s financing arm, Ford Motor Credit Company, earned $888 million. Executives said Ford Credit is not expected to perform as well in the second half but that it would finish the year more profitable than 2009.

Ford reported positive cash flow of $2.6 billion in the second quarter, leaving a total of $21.9 billion in reserves as of June 30. In 2008, Ford was burning through nearly $2 billion of its cash every month.But the company ended the quarter with $27.3 billion in debt, even after paying down $7 billion. Executives said Ford would move into a net cash position by the end of next year.

Good Work and enjoy the profits!

Jounolist Hits Just Keep on Coming

Are morally enlightened superiors in victory mode:

LAURA ROZEN, MOTHER JONES (NOW POLITICO): Can you imagine if these bozos had won?

Nov. 7

LAURA ROZEN: People we no longer have to listen to: would it be unwise to start a thread of people we are grateful we no longer have to listen to? If not, I’ll start off: Michael Rubin.

MICHAEL COHEN, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: Mark Penn and Bob Shrum. Anyone who uses the expression “Real America.” We should send there ass to Gitmo!

JESSE TAYLOR, PANDAGON.NET: Michael Barone? Please?

LAURA ROZEN: Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich (afraid it’s not true), Drill Here Drill Now, And David Addington, John Yoo, we’ll see you in court?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, THE NEW YORKER: As a side note, does anyone know what prompted Michael Barone to go insane?

MATT DUSS: LEDEEN.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Let’s just throw Ledeen against a wall. Or, pace Dr. Alterman, throw him through a plate glass window. I’ll bet a little spot of violence would shut him right the fuck up, as with most bullies.

JOE KLEIN, TIME: Pete Wehner…these sort of things always end badly.

ERIC ALTERMAN, AUTHOR, WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA: Fucking Nascar retards…

Nov. 12

MICHAEL HIRSH, NEWSWEEK: so many of you still seem tied down to your old ideological moorings. on the early evidence obama is not similarly tied down on any level, whether diplomatically or economically (or politically: note his big-tent approach to joe lieberman). a post-ideological presidency — what a novelty, and what a relief! but this new obamian world view, i fear, also puts many of you who are part of this group in danger of imminent irrelevance. cheers, mike hirsh

Where to begin? Nascar Retards is about as bigoted and stereotypical as one can get and shows a small minded man who clearly is ignorant about whole swaths of the country. Personally I find Michael Hirsh's comments even more stunning. Non-ideological? Is this guy serious? Additionally, it appears the reaction to the Palin pick appears to have been released today.

Members of Journolist As Tolerant as You Would Think

This segment of the political class is simply despicable(On a related note, read this piece from The American Spectator). What is striking about this whole "Journolist" is how stupid these people are. Teenagers are told all the time, be carefull what you type on the internet, it lasts forever. As for their ideology, its boilerplate leftism and less a sign of wisdom and more sign of stale dogmatism. As for Fox, here is the relevant exchange:

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.

“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”

And so a debate ensued. Time’s Scherer, who had seemed to express support for increased regulation of Fox, suddenly appeared to have qualms: “Do you really want the political parties/white house picking which media operations are news operations and which are a less respectable hybrid of news and political advocacy?”

But Zasloff stuck to his position. “I think that they are doing that anyway; they leak to whom they want to for political purposes,” he wrote. “If this means that some White House reporters don’t get a press pass for the press secretary’s daily briefing and that this means that they actually have to, you know, do some reporting and analysis instead of repeating press releases, then I’ll take that risk.”Scherer seemed alarmed. “So we would have press briefings in which only media organizations that are deemed by the briefer to be acceptable are invited to attend?”

John Judis, a senior editor at the New Republic, came down on Zasloff’s side, the side of censorship. “Pre-Fox,” he wrote, “I’d say Scherer’s questions made sense as a question of principle. Now it is only tactical.”

The fact that progressives are having a debate about the merits of censorship highlights what the left is all about, power! I highlighted the section by Daniel Davies for it points to the real shock that Fox has "Gone off the reservation" in regards to the rest of the media and as such it is a threat. By the way, there is a lot more to the article then just Fox, it includes the joy one of the enlightened ones would feel watching Rush Limbaugh die and the now obligatory Tea Partiers are racist,fascist,etc,etc...By the way, this is the Tea Party I attended, you tell me what it looks like.

By the way for more snippets like the one below, check here:

Obamcare Debacle Continues

Considering the President lied this isn't that much of a surprise:

(THE HILL) However, the public has made it clear it likes neither the product (about which more is being learned by the day) nor the process that led to passage. Many of the deals needed to piece together majorities in the House and Senate received enough publicity at the time to outrage many, but as time goes on revelations about additional concessions made to woo votes are justifying what were dismissed as simple partisan attacks during the debate.

Moreover, the possible consequences of the bill are making many wake up and take note.

When critics of the legislation alleged during the debate that the enforcement of its many provisions would vastly increase the power of the IRS and empower tax collectors to go where they had never gone before, administration spokesmen reacted in outrage. The president’s critics, they charged, were not just wrong, but lying to scare people.

It turns out that the critics were dead right and that if there was any lying going on, they weren’t the guilty ones. In the days since passage, we have learned that the IRS will have to hire literally thousands of new agents, auditors and analysts to make sure everyone required to buy into the program does so and to catch those who violate its many provisions as well as to collect the data that will be required of small businesses to help the government collect new taxes to pay for the scheme.

The result is that small-business owners who were promised they would benefit from the new law are up in arms as they discover that they will in fact be targets of an IRS planning to impose even more regulations on the way they operate. The absolute ludicrousness of the new requirements is that business owners will apparently now be required to file forms reporting on aggregate annual payments of as little as $600 to “vendors” like Staples or the office coffee supplier.

Obamcare, a stake in the heart of the economy.

Military Finds Ways to Save Lives

Staff Sgt. Michael Kain and Pvt. William Fiel display a high-explosive round and a ‘Smurf’ round.

Good Work:

WARDAK PROVINCE, Afghanistan —In combat, sometimes a small adjustment can mean preserving innocent life. Some artillerymen here have embraced that concept and developed a new way to reduce the chances of collateral damage.

Embracing the current rules of engagement, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team’s 4th Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment (Task Force King) has begun using less-explosive training shells during the "adjustment phase" of fire support. That means the first, and possibly subsequent rounds fired while getting on target, won't cause nearly the level of damage that high-explosive rounds would. After the artillerymen ensure they're on target, the gloves come off, and they quickly transitioning to the high-explosive, lethal rounds.

The immediate result is fewer live rounds being fired, fewer chances for an errant round to cause unintentional injury or damage, and no decrease in effect of the support to ground units.


“The insurgents are choosing to fight among the people, employing them as human shields; this amounts to an avoidance strategy,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Dennis Woods, Task Force King's senior enlisted man. “Our enemy knows when we use artillery in a conventional firefight, there's a possibility of unintended collateral damage. In our efforts to avoid that, commanders have previously been far less inclined to use artillery. The enemy has been using this assumption to avoid our fire support advantage … until now.”

Muni-Bonds Still Performing Well

Considering the one two punch of the muni-bonds scandal as well as the desperate fiscal portrait that is haunting various municipalities, these bonds seem to be shaking it off:

(BONDBUYER)Municipal bond mutual funds’ assets climbed to a new record total as they continue to command new money from investors in spite of low yields and a nonstop wave of bad headlines in the mainstream press over state and local government credit.During the week ended July 14, investors entrusted $612.5 million to municipal bond mutual funds that report their figures weekly, according to Lipper FMI.

Based on the weekly reporting funds, investors have bestowed new money on the municipal fund industry 12 out of the past 13 weeks.Among all funds, including those that report their figures monthly, inflows have averaged $359 million a week the past four weeks — still solid, but far below the record pace of nearly $2 billion a week established late last year.

Municipal funds commanded $78.55 billion in new money last year, and recorded $42 billion in market gains.Inflows for 2010 now exceed $20.7 billion, according to Lipper, which combined with $15.2 billion in market gains has pushed the industry’s assets to a record $502 billion. The industry has grown 47% since the end of 2008.

Jeffrey Cleveland, an analyst with Payden & Rygel, said that while low nominal yields and constant bad press may have turned some retail investors off, the lighter pace of inflows has done little to harm municipal bond values.The five-year triple-A municipal yields just 1.4%, according to Municipal Market Data. That just about matches the record low established in December, when inflows were at their peak. Municipals have returned 4.3% this year, according to the S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Bond Index.

The reason, Cleveland said, is the supply of tax-exempt bonds continues to dwindle, as about a quarter of new issues are siphoned into the taxable market through the Build America Bonds program.

The BAB program has been quite a success, with some concerns of course.

Total Lie: Obama and Health Care Mandate Tax

The President is a liar, first here is the report about the mandate now being called a tax:

(July 16th 2010)NYTIMES---WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.

How much of a falsehood, lets listen to someone supporting Obama:

Jack M. Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School who supports the new law, said, “The tax argument is the strongest argument for upholding” the individual-coverage requirement.Mr. Obama “has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this bill,” Mr. Balkin said last month at a meeting of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal organization. “This bill is a tax. Because it’s a tax, it’s completely constitutional.”

Now this is from Obama's interview with George Stephanolpolous on Sept 20th 2009:

(Emphasis Mine) President Obama signaled in our interview that he was prepared to address some of the concerns raised by key Senator Jay Rockefeller, who called the Baucus bill a "big middle class tax increase" this week.That means he'll support more subsidies for middle class families.

But in our most spirited exchange, the President refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy health insurance is equivalent to a tax.

Here it is:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You were against the individual mandate...

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ...during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?

OBAMA: Well, hold on a second, George. Here -- here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average -- our families -- in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's...

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. The -- for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy...

OBAMA: No, but -- but, George, you -- you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase. Any...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Here’s the...

OBAMA: What -- what -- if I -- if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that's not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don't want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I -- I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but...

OBAMA: ...what you're saying is...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're going to have an individual mandate or not, but...

Now here is the clip:

Oh well, at least the President is relaxing!

Columbia Research Scandal

I guess elite universities do have different standards then the rest of us:

Columbia University has quietly suspended research at a nationally prominent brain-imaging center and reassigned its top managers after federal investigators found that it had routinely injected mental patients with drugs that contained potentially dangerous impurities.The investigations found that the center — regarded by experts as the nation’s leader in the use of positron emission tomography, or PET, for psychiatric research — repeatedly violated Food and Drug Administration regulations over a four-year period.

“Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in legal action without further notice,” the agency wrote to Columbia in December 2008, citing lax internal quality control and sloppy procedures for formulating drug injections.

F.D.A. investigators returned in January 2010 and found that many of the center’s lab’s practices had not changed, and cited a long list of specific violations, including one instance in which the staff hid impurities from auditors by falsifying documents.“They raided the place like it was a crime scene, seizing hard drives,” said one former lab worker, who requested anonymity because he feared reprisals from the university.

In a statement, the university said on Friday that it had conducted its own investigation of the lab at the request of the F.D.A. had and reported to the agency on July 6 that it found no evidence of harm to patients. The F.D.A. did not publicize its investigations; The New York Times learned of them from doctors who were familiar with the lab’s problems.The office under fire, the Kreitchman PET Center, on West 168th Street in Manhattan, has attracted millions of dollars in research funds from the federal government and pharmaceutical companies to study drug actions and the biology of brain disorders, among other things.

In a nutshell certain compounds known as radio tracers are injected to emit low level radiation to be picked up by scanners and it appears certain protocols may not have been followed. How bad did it get?

Agency investigators also found a forged document, a hard copy record that had been altered to hide a drug impurity that showed up clearly in the computer records.Former employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they worked in the imaging field or hoped to, said those practices were not only commonplace but also condoned. They described a center under such pressure to produce studies that it papered over and hid impurities in drugs to stretch its resources and went ahead with business as usual despite F.D.A. warnings.

“These are not the actions of a rogue, but instead are systematic forgeries condoned and approved by the lab director,” wrote one employee in a 2009 resignation letter addressed to Dr. Ronald L. Van Heertum, the PET center’s co-director at the time.

Pretty damn bad.

Blount and LaPierre Settle SEC Suit

Blount and La Pierre were the private citizens who provided the connection
between Mayor Langford and the institutions that structured the disastrous sewer debt deal for JeffCo Alabama.

Two men who pleaded guilty to roles in the bribery of Larry Langford for part of Jefferson County's sewer bond business won't face fines in a civil suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a federal judge's order issued today.Bill Blount, his Montgomery investment firm, and former lobbyist Al LaPierre recently reached agreements with the SEC.


The SEC is continuing the lawsuit against Langford after it could not reach an agreement.Terms of the agreements were incorporated into final orders issued today by U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon. Blount, LaPierre, and Blount Parrish & Co. Inc., are ordered not to violate five securities rules or laws. Claims for fines or penalties by the SEC were also dismissed against the two men and company.


In the orders it says the firm, Blount and LaPierre agreed to the final judgment and permanent injunctions "without admitting or denying the allegations of the (SEC) Complaint."Blount and LaPierre pleaded guilty last year to charges involving the bribery of Langford for part of Jefferson County's sewer bond business. Langford was president of the Jefferson County Commission and former mayor of Birmingham.

Off course the collapse of Jefferson County has been the the worse example of muni-bond malfeasance.

Democrats Whine Over Gibbs Inconvenient Truth

Its always a desperate sign when people go crazy and attack their allies for simply voicing an inconvenient truth:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats criticized his spokesman on Wednesday for saying they may lose control of the House of Representatives in the November election."It was an absolutely ridiculous thing for him to say," said Representative Louise Slaughter, a member of Democratic leadership. "We didn't appreciate it."

"It's not helpful," groused Representative George Miller, quickly adding that Democrats expect to retain the House."What the White House spokesman should be talking about is what we've done," like overhauling U.S. healthcare, said Representative Xavier Becerra. "That's the real story."

The remarks exacerbated Democratic frustration with the increasingly unpopular White House, which also came under fire on Wednesday from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The business group accused it of stifling economic growth with burdensome regulatory and tax policies.

At a closed-door meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped into White House press secretary Robert Gibbs for saying Republicans may take over the House. Pelosi referred to Gibbs' remarks as "friendly fire," and said they are "very damaging," according to an aide who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified by name.

The aide paraphrased Pelosi as telling House Democrats that people ask her: "Why should I give money to you guys if you're are going to lose the majority?"

And that is whats driving them bananas. The Dems have 3 advantages this election cycle, the general inertia of having to be knocked out of office, the ability to reward groups with federal funds, and large pools of cash in the form of donations. Take one away and it their position deteriorates further.

Chase Sees Profits Soar

Along with Bill Richardson they certainly did alright considering what they were connected to:

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second- biggest U.S. bank by assets, said profit rose 76 percent, more than analysts estimated, as a reduction in provisions for soured mortgages and credit-card loans buoyed results.

Second-quarter net income climbed to $4.8 billion, or $1.09 a share, from $2.72 billion, or 28 cents, in the same period a year earlier and from $3.33 billion in the first quarter, the New York-based company said today in a statement. The per-share earnings compared with an average estimate for adjusted earnings of 71 cents projected by 22 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

“It’s great to see credit finally confirmed, that the trend is improving,” Gary Townsend, president of Hill-Townsend Capital LLC in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a hedge fund that specializes in financial firms, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The earnings estimates for this company are going up,” said Townsend, who owns JPMorgan shares.

Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, 54, who has kept the bank profitable by relying on investment-banking revenue, said the results were “still unacceptable” because consumer lending charge-offs and late payments remain high. The company cut provisions for bad loans in the retail-banking business by $2 billion in the second quarter as investment-banking profit dropped 44 percent from the first quarter.

Poor Larry Langford, got left holding the bag!

California Moves Against the State Rock

Priorities!

LOS ANGELES — Empirically speaking, geologists are not a particularly irascible group. But those who make their living studying rocks, minerals and gems in California — and increasingly those scientists beyond the state’s borders — are enraged over a bill in Sacramento that would knock serpentine, the official state rock, off its mantle.

The lawmaker and others who would like to see serpentine stripped of its title say the olive green rock found all over the state is a grim symbol of the deadly cancers associated with asbestos, which can be found in the rock. Geologists, who have taken to Twitter on behalf of the rock, assert that serpentine is harmless and is being demonized by advocates for people with asbestos-related diseases and possibly their trial lawyers, too.

The bill to defrock the rock — which recently passed the full State Senate and is awaiting a vote in the Assembly — is sponsored by Senator Gloria Romero, a Los Angeles Democrat, with the strong support of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization.

Lets see, the state is a fiscal disaster that has had its bond rating cut to the lowest in the country, and this is what they wasting time on?

60% of Country Loses the Hope Thing

Maybe Hope and Change can now be called Hopelessness and Despair:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 60 percent of American voters say they lack faith in President Barack Obama, according to a public opinion poll published on Tuesday.

The results of the Washington Post/ABC News poll are a reversal of what voters said at the start of Obama's presidency 18 months ago when about 60 percent expressed confidence in his decision making.Confidence in Obama is at a new low but the poll found that his numbers are still higher than lawmakers of either major party four months ahead of the November congressional elections

Asked how much confidence they have in Obama to make the right decisions for the country's future, 58 percent of respondents said "just some" or "none."Sixty-eight percent expressed the same sentiments about Democrats in Congress and 72 percent said the same of Republicans.

The Post said problems in the housing industry, sluggish job growth and other economic issues may have taken a toll on Obama's approval rating.Just 43 percent of all Americans, including a third of Democrats, now say they approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove.

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Are they serious in comparing the President's numbers to Congress as if that is a good thing? For full results of the poll check here. For the record the partisan breakdown is 31 DEM, 24 GOP and 40 Independent.

Portugal's Debt Rating Cut

Add it to the club with Greece and Spain:

BRUSSELS — Portugal’s credit rating was cut two notches Tuesday by Moody’s Investors’ Service, lending urgency to the discussions of European Union finance ministers about how banks would be affected if a government were to default on its debts.

Moody’s said it was cutting Portugal’s sovereign bond ratings to to A1 — still investment grade — from Aa2. The ratings agency noted that the national debt had risen sharply relative to gross domestic product as a result of spending on economic stimulus measures, and it warned that weak growth would weigh on government finances for two or three more years.

Meanwhile, officials in Brussels were discussing for a second day how much information to release from bank stress tests when data are made public July 23. The tests are meant to reassure investors that a 750 billion euro, or nearly $1 trillion, safety net will be enough to calm a debt crisis in Europe. But the results could also force banks to seek additional financing to increase the cushion against potential losses.

“The European banking sector is, over all, resilient,” Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said at a news conference Monday night. “At the same time when we publish the stress tests we will have to prepare for any pockets of vulnerability.”

Al-Shabab Terror Group Likely Behind World Cup Massacre

These would be the same murderers who exploited children for their murderous plans:

(Bloomberg) At least 70 people died in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in two bomb attacks suspected to have been carried out by Somali insurgents linked to al-Qaeda, Ugandan security officials said.

The blasts occurred at two bars where crowds were watching the soccer World Cup final, Fred Opolot, director of the Uganda Media Center, told reporters today in the city. The first blast went off at the Ethiopian Village Restaurant in the south of Kampala at 10:25 p.m. local time and the second followed at the Kyadondo Rugby club at 11:15 p.m., he said. Some of the 67 people injured later died in the hospital, James Kakooza, minister of state for health, said in a phone interview.

“According to the inspector-general of police, there is an indication it’s linked to al-Shabaab,” Felix Kulayigye, a spokesman for the Ugandan army, said in a phone interview today. “This is a terrorist act. The intention is to instill fear.”

Ugandan soldiers form part of an African Union-led peacekeeping force in Somalia, where al-Shabaab has been battling the country’s Western-backed government since 2007. The U.S. accuses al-Shabaab of having links to al-Qaeda, which has said it plans to establish an Islamic government in Somalia. Burundi also has peacekeepers in Somalia.

Bastards. Of course these are also the same people who happened to use amputations as a way of maintaining control over their fiefdom.

CDR Financial Products and the Banks Acccused of Bid Rigging Acrossed the Board

Yeah, we know:

(Bloomberg) An indictment, guilty pleas, recorded calls and e-mails reveal how bankers and financial advisers paid kickbacks and skimmed money from public funds—corrupting the $2.8-trillion municipal bond market.

A telephone call between a financial adviser in Beverly Hills and a trader in New York was all it took to fleece taxpayers on a water-and-sewer financing deal in West Virginia. The secret conversation was part of a conspiracy stretching across the US by Wall Street banks in the $2.8-trillion municipal bond market.

The call came less than two hours before bids were due for contracts to manage $90 million raised with the sale of West Virginia bonds. On one end of the line was Steven Goldberg, a trader with Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd. On the other was Zevi Wolmark, of advisory firm CDR Financial Products Inc. Goldberg arranged to pay a kickback to CDR to land the deal, according to government records filed in connection with a US Justice Department indictment of CDR and Wolmark.

West Virginia was just one stop in a nationwide conspiracy in which financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Wachovia Corp. and 11 other banks.They rigged bids on auctions for so-called guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs, according to a Justice Department list that was filed in US District Court in Manhattan on March 24 and then put under seal. Those contracts hold tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The workings of the conspiracy—which stretched from California to Pennsylvania and included more than 200 deals involving about 160 state agencies, local governments and non-profits—can be pieced together from the Justice Department’s indictment of CDR, civil lawsuits by governments around the country, e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News and interviews with current and former bankers and public officials.

“The whole investment process was rigged across the board,” said Charlie Anderson, who retired in 2007 as head of field operations for the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt bond division. “It was so commonplace that people talked about it on the phones of their employers and ignored the fact that they were being recorded.”

In a nutshell CDR is accused of giving local municipalities false information and then funneled insider info to banks. With the extra profits from these ill gotten gains the banks would then allegedly kickback the money to CDR. In some cases such as Jefferson County Alabama, the results were disastrous. Of course some of these municipalities it was more then getting false information, it was also alleged influence peddeling that allowed these deals to go foward.

The heart of the case, the informant from BOA:

A key witness in the government’s case is a former banker whom the government hasn’t named, according to a civil lawsuit filed by Baltimore, Maryland, and six other municipal borrowers against Bank of America, JPMorgan and nine other banks. The banker is providing evidence against his peers.

The witness, who was employed by Bank of America Corp. starting in 1999, has laid out the inner workings of the scheme in confidential meetings with investigators, according to the civil lawsuit.Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has also been providing prosecutors with evidence since at least 2007. The bank voluntarily reported its own illegal activity and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s antitrust division, according to a press release from the company.

In exchange, the government promised in an amnesty agreement not to prosecute the bank. Bank of America spokesman Shirley Norton in San Francisco said in an e-mail the firm is continuing to cooperate.

And to think they created a task force to deal with these issues.

Why the NRA Might Support Reid.

If the rational is too keep Durbin and Schumer away from the leadership slot, I would say that's rather shortsighted:

(Open Secrets) NRA CONSIDERING ENDORSING REID: The National Rifle Association is drawing the ire of conservative activists over the possibility that it may endorse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for re-election over his Republican rival, Sharron Angle.


The group has indicated in statements that it is concerned a gun control advocate like Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) or Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would become the majority leader should Angle win, Politico reports.


Although loathed by many conservatives, Reid has a mixed record on gun rights. He has received both A's and F's from the NRA on its congressional scorecard.
And the association has a history of working with both parties as well. During the 2008 election cycle, about one-fifth of its top 50 recipients of campaign contributions on the federal level were Democrats.

How about just getting a senate composed of gun rights supporters?

Advance on AIDS Vaccine Moves Forward

Some hopeful news to start out the Friday: Advance on AIDS Vaccine Moves Forward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have discovered antibodies that can protect against a wide range of AIDS viruses and said they may be able to use them to design a vaccine against the fatal and incurable virus.

The bodies of some people make these immune system proteins after they are infected with the AIDS virus, when it is too late for them to do much good. But a properly designed vaccine might help the body make them much sooner, the researchers reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"I am more optimistic about an AIDS vaccine at this point in time than I have been probably in the last 10 years," Dr. Gary Nabel of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Good Work.

Guilty Plea in Gitmo

For some time the Obama admin had drifted away from its dramatic if ill informed plan to shut down Gitmo. At first they hinted and then simply conceded they had no idea what they were doing to do. In the process they pitched Greg Craig over the side and then finally decided to bring back the tribunals. Yesterday, in Gitmo, a guilty plea was given and now we await sentencing.

(CNN) -- A former driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden pleaded guilty Wednesday before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to supporting al Qaeda and conspiring to commit terrorism, the Department of Defense announced.Sentencing for Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, 50, will take place in August, the department said in a news release.

Under questioning from the military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, al Qosi "admitted that he engaged in hostilities against the United States in violation of the laws of war," the department said.It said al Qosi testified under oath that he followed bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996 and spent six years providing "logistical support" to the al Qaeda leader.

"He admitted that he knew that al Qaeda was and is recognized around the world as an international terrorist organization," the department said.

Of course there other aspects Obama has speeded up down there.

Yes We Can!

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3 Arrested in Norway Suspected of Al Qaeda Connections

Perhaps we will never know what motivated them!

OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian police arrested three men on Thursday suspected of planning an attack and having links to al Qaeda and people under investigation in the United States and Britain.The arrests were brought forward by fears details of the investigation would appear in public, police told Reuters.

"We were afraid evidence would be destroyed, because we knew that an international media organization was about to publish details of the case. That made it urgent to make the arrests," said Janne Kristiansen, head of the Police Security Service.

Kristiansen earlier told a news conference the three were arrested for "planning a terrorist strike.""We believe this group has had links to people abroad who can be linked to al Qaeda, and to people who are involved in investigations in other countries, among others the United States and Britain," she said.

No word yet in the intended target.

The Economist Looks at the Latest Warming Debacle

Not much of a surprise from the hysterical "reality based community" which somehow managed to lose the debate on Global warming despite dominating so much of the airwaves and elite circles.

FOR everyone else it was the glaciers: for the Dutch it was the flooding. Last January errors in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hit the headlines. The chapter on Asia in the report by the IPCC’s second working group, charged with looking at the impact of climate change and adapting to it, mistakenly claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. This contradicted some reasonably basic physics, had not been predicted by the glacier specialists in the first working group (which deals with the natural science of past and future climate change) and was unsupported by any evidence. There was a report from the 1990s which said something similar about all the world’s non-polar glaciers, but it gave the date as 2350. Then there was a crucial typo and some shoddy referencing. Nevertheless the IPCC’s chair, Rajendra Pachauri, had lashed out at people bringing the criticism up, accusing them of “voodoo science”. He then had to eat his words, and set up, with Ban Ki-moon, a panel to look into ways the IPCC might be improved.

Inspired by this to look for other errors, a journalist for a Dutch newspaper spotted that the chapter on Europe gave a figure for the area of the Netherlands below sea level that was much too large. The area at risk of flooding by the sea had been conflated with that at risk of flooding by the Rhine and the Meuse rivers. That the careful Dutch should have provided faulty information and not spotted it in the review process was an embarrassment to the then environment minister, Jacqueline Cramer; following a debate in parliament she called on the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), an independent body, to look at all the regional chapters in the working group II report and make sure they were up to snuff. This the PBL has now done; its report was published on July 5th.

The authors try hard to make clear that their findings do not undermine the IPCC's conclusions on climate change. And there is nothing in their report as egregious as the glaciers or as embarrassing as the Dutch sea level. But they did find a number of things to take issue with, most of which they thought minor but eight of which they classed as major; and their work seems to bring out a systemic tendency to stress negative effects over positive ones. This tendency can be defended. But a reading of the report suggests there may also be broader and potentialy more misleading bias. The PBL report chose as its main focus a table in the “Summary for Policymakers” of the IPCC’s 2007 “Synthesis Report”, which brings together the results of working groups one, two and three (which deals with responses to climate change). Where did these bullet points actually come from, the PBL team asked, and how well supported were they?

Oh well, keep hope alive comrades! As for the debate, well the fact that so many enviornmentalists and the in general are reduced to using the BP/Obama spill debacle testifies to much the argument has shifted in favor of the skeptics. Add that to Al Gore's 600 dollar "misunderstanding" and you have near fatal blows to the warmers.