Hemingway’s Alternate Endings To Be Published

Taking right action, however, based on what we hear, is harder still.

One facet of being human is to do that which is hard.

Matt Taibbi continues the tale:

This email amazes for a few reasons. One, it suggests that Barclays, which is currently carrying the standard in the LIBOR-manipulation scandal, was actually bringing up the rear — that all of the other banks were in on it, and Barclays only attracted the government’s notice because they were last.

The second is the apparent revelation that Tucker was acting on orders, or at least suggestions, from Whitehall. If nothing else, this is an awesome piece of political jungle defense by Diamond, tossing a hand-grenade into the seat of Her Majesty’s government minutes before he’s supposed to be grilled by parliament. This revelation is almost certain to inspire an Aldrich-Ames-style manhunt for the Whitehall figures responsible for this alleged communication to Tucker. And if this turns out to be true? Wow.

Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal?

0657: Anniversary of US shooting of Iranian civilian airliner

So, when was the last time you read our founding document from beginning to end?

I do hope that NPR goes for 24 this morning…

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

This 4th of July, these two grievances leap out at me:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

They were wrong of England’s King George III, they were wrong for President George Walker Bush and they continue to be wrong for President Barack Hussein Obama.

I do miss Thomas Jefferson.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Last week I took a hard crack at the reporting by Crain’s and the Plain Dealer about the Browns announcement of a new deal with chefs for food service at the city’s football stadium. The two news outlets ate it up.

Both articles failed to report what it would cost and who was paying the bill.

I questioned that and a lot more.

Subsequently, I got an e-mail from Joel Hammond, who wrote the Crain’s piece, that he check with the Browns and was told the following:

The Browns project, the team tells me, was paid for as part of its new agreement with Aramark (the concessionaire), in other words, Aramark is footing the bill for the physical improvements to Cleveland Browns Stadium.

So take that Bartimole.

Hammond was upset at being, as he noted, “scathingly attacked.” Continue Reading »

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The Plain Dealer and columnist Mark Naymik are performing the kind of the service newspapers should provide the public. They have spotlighted the poor job the State of Ohio has been doing on Cleveland area state parks and beaches.

They are reporting it in a way that those with the responsibility to perform cannot ignore. It is being reported and followed up. That’s like a good right and then a good left from a fighter. It’s exactly the kind of persistence often missing in reporting.

But there’s a problem.

I hope the Plain Dealer and Naymik don’t do a disservice by pushing the public into demanding that Cleveland Metroparks to take over the parks presently leased to the state. They seem to be grabbing on to that solution too quickly.

The reason is simple.

In the 1970s Cleveland was experiencing dire financial problems. Then City Planner Norm Krumholz tried to convince Mayor Ralph Perk to give up Cleveland parks – Edgewater, Gordon and Wildwood – to the state. The State of Ohio had more resources than the city. It would lighten the city’s burden.

Republican Perk balked at first – during the term of Gov. John Gilligan – but deeper financial problems and, oh yeah, the change in governorship to Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes, made it more palatable Continue Reading »

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

What great advice.

Matt Taibbi concludes:

Libor manipulation is a crime that already robs the public to create bonuses for bankers. By artificially lowering interest rates, the banks caused cities, towns, countries, and other public entities to receive smaller returns on their variable-rate investment holdings. If it turns out that taxpayers end up paying the fine for RBS’s crime of robbing taxpayers, how perfect would that be?

0421: German court rules against circumcision

Jacob Appelbaum, the Internet freedom activist and WikiLeaks associate, has been targeted by the U.S. Government in multiple ways despite never having been charged with any crime, including constant border harassment, laptop seizures, and the secret issuance of “national security letters” to his Internet providers and other services. Watch this short video as he takes advantage of the opportunity to question the FBI’s Deputy General Counsel at an event at which she recently appeared.

Why are we so afraid that we, as a nation, are OK with this?

Glenn Greenwald rightly asks:

But what’s the principled distinction that makes assassinating Awlaki acceptable but not Nicholson? The most likely answer is that Awlaki was in Yemen while Nicholson is in the U.S., but that’s just a pragmatic difference, one that cannot make any legal or Constitutional difference: American citizens don’t renounce their Constitutional protections against the U.S. Government when they leave the country. If the President has the legal authority to assassinate U.S. citizens without charges on the ground that they are allegedly plotting against the U.S. when they’re on foreign soil, then shouldn’t the President have this same right for citizens on American soil? Think Progress celebrates the Awlaki assassination as an Obama “success”; would they do the same if the President ordered Nicholson ordered assassinated without charges?

That Greenwald, that I, that citizens of the United States of America can even consider this question without revulsion is perhaps my greatest reason for not voting in November to re-elect/elect a major party candidate to the office of President of these United States of America.

One of my all-time favorite television shows, and one of the very best endings to a show, because while our lives diverged in many ways, Kevin Arnold and I are both members of the class of ’73. My one regret in life has been that the ending with my Winnie didn’t go as well as Kevin’s.

(Although both did involve hitchhiking…)

Yesterday my dad taught me how to read minds. The bit of card magic below illustrates how good I am now at knowing your inner-most thoughts.

Look at the six cards below.

Pick a card, any card.

Got one? Good.

Now mouse-over the picture and you’ll see that I’ve removed your card.

Move the mouse away and pick another card.

Mouse-over agan and, ta da! I’ve removed your card again.

Don’t hate me when you figure this out.

From my dad, of course…

This morning, a Navy buddy linked to this definition on Facebook:

Ineptocracy -(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy)- A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

I call bullshit.

Good morning Don,

This makes me think of the “Approval Rating of Congress” that has been bantered about so prominently. The members of Congress have very high approval ratings as evidenced by their 80 percent plus re-election rating, yet We The People don’t approve of Congress. Why is that?

I have to believe that this frustration arises in part because we have lost sight of the fact that the opposite of “stupid” or “inept” is not “that which I believe to be true.”

The stated task of our government — consisting of both elected and appointed individuals — as laid out in the Preamble to our Constitution is:

…to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The key words here, for me, are “common” and “general.” Unless we want to go all Jeremiah Johnson, we have to live with people who are not our mental clones.

The only individuals who get to decide what is right are dictators. Everyone else has to deal with the messy business of differing view points as evidenced by the recent decision by our Supreme Court.

Unanimous decisions by the court are rare — before I began to write this, I was only aware of one, Brown v. Board of Education, yet I discovered that not one but two 9-0 decisions were reached this week — in the history of the Supreme Court (I hate the whole acronym meme of using SCOTUS and POTUS) and unheard of in every other corner of a democracy (even Joseph Stalin never got 100 percent of the vote each time he was re-elected). What I would have thought could have been a unanimous decision, the declaration of war against Japan, Germany and Italy on 8 December 1941 was not a universally supported vote.

If any person believes that their representative is inept or stupid then they have an obligation to do the serious work, to do, as President John Kennedy famously said in his moon speech, the hard work, to educate and enlighten, either the object of their derision or, and I think this is key, themselves.

Do all you can to make today a good day,

Jeff

One of the questions that I hear repeatedly (and myself ask) is: When are the evil fecks who engineered the Great Recession going to do hard time?

I know, I know, probably, almost certainly, never, but Matt Taibbi writes this month in Rolling Stone about one federal case that has potential.

The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from “virtually every state, district and territory in the United States,” according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being ­cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.

How much did these pathetic wastes of genome steal from your community?