The Pogram Program

Via Contentions, John Mearsheimer gave a speech at the Palestine Center in DC on his favorite topic: The Israel Lobby. His latest innovation: dividing American Jews into three groups according to their attitudes towards Israel's "apartheid" state.* The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews v New Afrikaners

First, there are the Righteous Jews, who are "liberal," profess to "love" Israel, but are not afraid to criticize her:

Righteous Jews have a powerful attachment to core liberal values. They believe that individual rights matter greatly and that they are universal, which means they apply equally to Jews and Palestinians. They could never support an apartheid Israel. They also understand that the Palestinians paid an enormous price to make it possible to create Israel in 1948. Moreover, they recognize the pain and suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Finally, most righteous Jews believe that the Palestinians deserve a viable state of their own, just as the Jews deserve their own state. In essence, they believe that self-determination applies to Palestinians as well as Jews, and that the two-state solution is the best way to achieve that end. Some righteous Jews, however, favor a democratic bi-national state over the two-state solution.

Sounds like a great buncha guys. Mearsheimer helpfully identifies some of these "Righteous Jews:"

The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

FYI, I try to keep myself off of lists that include Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein.

Next, Mearsheimer defines "Afrikaner Jews." You might want to listen to some ominous music while reading this:

These are individuals who will back Israel no matter what it does, because they have blind loyalty to the Jewish state. This is not to say that the new Afrikaners think that apartheid is an attractive or desirable political system, because I am sure that many of them do not. Surely some of them favor a two-state solution and some of them probably have a serious commitment to liberal values. The key point, however, is that they have an even deeper commitment to supporting Israel unreservedly. The new Afrikaners will of course try to come up with clever arguments to convince themselves and others that Israel is really not an apartheid state, and that those who say it is are anti-Semites. We are all familiar with this strategy.

And, here's a list of "Afrikaners"

I would classify most of the individuals who head the Israel lobby's major organizations as new Afrikaners. That list would include Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress, and Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, just to name some of the more prominent ones. I would also include businessmen like Sheldon Adelson, Lester Crown, and Mortimer Zuckerman as well as media personalities like Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, and Martin Peretz of the New Republic. It would be easy to add more names to this list.

Yes, and I'm sure you'd love to be the one who gets to make that list. (the third group are what many would call the mushy middle: they like Israel fine, but wish they didn't have to see so many caterwauling Palestinians on TV and feel guilty because they seem so upset. No list, sadly).

Mearsheimer is dead serious about this, and so are a lot of other people on the Left. They really believe that Israelis are operating an apartheid state and that the suicide bombing Palestinians are uniquely deserving of world-wide sympathy. All of this for the people who cheered the 9/11 attacks...

*Mearsheimer is now forecasting a future in which Israel will rule over the West Bank and Gaza under a form of apartheid government that denies Palestinians any rights whatsoever. But, Mearsheimer believes apartheid-style government will not last and eventually a bi-racial democracy will evolve, which will be dominated by the more numerous Palestinians. I'd like to see the Palestinians evolve a democracy over themselves before I believe they will join in a democracy with the Israelis! Anyway, Mearsheimer admits that this would represent the end of Israel as a Jewish state, which is sporting of him, I guess.

Too Good To Be True

You may not believe it - I didn't believe it until I checked it myself - but the US Supreme Court has already weighed in on the constitutionality of a law allowing police to check on the immigration status of people about whom they have a reasonable suspicion said immigrants are, ahem, not *quite* legal. Not only has the Court declared such state action to be within constitutional bounds, police are even allowed to do a form of racial profiling as part of the investigation. It's The Law, folks! Legal Insurrection has the goods: Do Not Read This Supreme Court Decision

Some quick research, available to all the people screaming about the Arizona law, reveals that the U.S. Supreme Court has reviewed the issue of questioning potential illegal aliens regarding citizenship or immigration status, and has found such questioning permissible provided that the "characteristic appearance" of the person was not the sole factor giving rise to a "reasonable suspicion" that the person might be here illegally.

In U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975), the Supreme Court unanimously (with various concurring opinions) held that "roving patrols" by the U.S. border patrol (which by regulation had to be within 100 miles of the border) could not stop vehicles and question the occupants as to immigration status based solely on the occupants appearing to be Mexican. (I assume this case is why the Arizona statuteforbids using race, color or national origin as the sole factor.)

Rather, the Supreme Court held there had to be other articulable factors which formed a reasonable suspicion under a "totality of the circumstances" test:

The Government also points out that trained officers can recognize the characteristic appearance of persons who live in Mexico, relying on such factors as the mode of dress and haircut....

In all situations the officer is entitled to assess the facts in light of his experience in detecting illegal entry and smuggling....

In this case the officers relied on a single factor to justify stopping respondent's car: the apparent Mexican ancestry of the occupants. We cannot conclude that this furnished reasonable grounds to believe that the three occupants were aliens." [case citations and footnotes omitted.]

Just so you know, this isn't some crazy artifact of the (Democrat dominated) Plessey v Ferguson court, or the civil rights denying Rehnquist court. This is a decision from 1975 with paleo-cons like William O Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, and Walter Brennan joining in the opinion. These were the days when the words "sensible" and "liberal" could often be found in the same sentence.

That Ought to Hold the Little SOB's

This is classic: PM Brands Gran A Bigot

(you see, kids, this is what the news looks like when it isn't dominated by mega-corporations concerned with preserving "access")

We should never forget that what tripped Brown up wasn't that he insulted this woman into a live mike. It's that she tied him into knots with an off-hand comment about immigration, an issue on which progressive elites and the citizenry are hopelessly at odds. Brown & co. are so used to having their way on this issue that it is second nature to them to regard any criticism of immigrants as racist, even when there is no racism in evidence.

It reminds me of when how liberals used to be derided as "soft on crime" back when I was a kid because, frankly, they were... soft on crime, pursuing policies rightly seen as tying the hands of the police and favoring the criminals; all the while lecturing people on "root causes" and racism. Nixon was the first one to really go after liberals on this issue (for which he was promptly labeled a racist), but as late as 1988, the GOP was able to run their effective "Willie Horton" ads against Michal Dukakis. And it wasn't until Rudy Giuliani began enforcing the law, rather than appeasing criminals, that the great urban crime wave of the Seventies and Eighties began to recede.

Liberals might see immigration as an irresistible wedge issue, but they have no good answers to the questions people have about unrestrained immigration, especially when the vast majority of illegal immigrants come from one country - Mexico - for no better reason than it shares our southern border. Indeed, liberals have declared legitimate complaints about immigration to be verboten: The Obama Syndrome

Chandra Levy was a lovely young woman murdered at age 24 while jogging in D.C. Although her secret lover, former Congressman Gary Condit, was suspected originally, the police eventually arrested an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. My friend Amy has a beloved daughter around the same age as Chandra.

Most liberals, like Amy, envision illegals as those pleasant maids or house-painters who could do no harm. And that benign image often is accurate.

But there are numerous Americans who've learned the darker side of illegal immigration. The families of Chandra Levy and, more recently, Arizona rancher Robert Krentz have been victimized by sociopaths from south of the border. Other citizens have seen their kids destroyed by drugs from Mexico or Colombia.

But the public doesn't get to hear much about the wreckage, except for a quick news flash when tragedy occurs. The rest of the time, there's silence in the service of political correctness. Even when a virulent new flu strain threatens to cause worldwide casualties, no one dares call it by its source of origin -- the "Mexican flu."

Given the times, what Arizonians did was amazingly gutsy. They said the unthinkable: that law-abiding Americans suffer when law enforcement is not allowed to actually enforce laws. And -- most taboo of all -- that Americans matter.

Liberals may not want to talk about this, but Americans - like many in Britain - look like they're ready for a conversation, but only if there is some sort of border enforcement first. But, just as liberals could not stop themselves from coddling criminals, they are constitutionally incapable of dealing frankly with the immigration issues that confront us. How long before "soft on immigration" is an election-winning pejorative?

The Apt Pupils

In the wake of the Arizona illegal alien law, San Francisco has been shocked by a wave of attacks on city immigrants by ignorant xenophobic locals who cling bitterly to their guns and fear their way of life is being overwhelmed by immigrants whose insular community and odd social practices would seem to make assimilation into the "community" impossible. And so these racists lash out in the only way they know how: attacking the old and defenseless as a proxy for their fear of The Other. Yes, even in San Francisco, the dark night of fascism is descending, as gangs of toughs roam the streets looking for immigrants to "bash." Why hasn't there been more outrage from the progressive community? Well, (cough cough) the wrong kind of bashers are bashing the wrong kind of immigrants: Asian American Attacks Focus at City Hall

On March 22, Mrs. Cheng was checking on her daughter who was late coming home on the bus. Standing on the Third and Oakdale Muni platform, she recalls being grabbed from behind, choked and thrown off the 5-foot-high metro stop and into the street.

The impact knocked her unconscious, shattered some of her teeth and left her lying in the path of a bus. The attacker was identified as a 15-year-old African American boy who was charged with robbery. But he threw her to the ground for no apparent reason.

Cheng was just one of the nearly 300 Asian Americans who showed up at City Hall to share story after story about being assaulted, robbed and intimidated. The two hours of testimony were tearful and angry. The need to share their stories was triggered by Cheng's experience; the January beating death of Huan Chen, 83, as he left a bus station at Third Street and Oakdale Avenue; and Tian Sheng Yu, who died after he was punched by an 18-year-old African American man in Oakland.

The stories highlighted what will be a difficult conversation. The speakers said they felt they were being targeted by African American teenage boys.

We've heard a lot of pompous denunciations of Arizona as the land of the new Jim Crow, and the like. But, right now, the only place in America where immigrants are bring assaulted by American citizens is right here in "progressive" San Francisco. And no one wants to do anything about it, including the police:

Bayview police station Capt. Greg Suhr says the police are responding, including adding 32 officers to his station to make Muni safer. But he thinks the racial issue is clouding perceptions.

"We are seeing large kids or kids in large numbers taking advantage of people of smaller stature," Suhr said. We have Hispanics in the neighborhood who are targeted fairly frequently."

See! They're beating up Hispanics, too! I feel safer already. How this clears up the "cloudy" racial issue is beyond me. In fact, it's crystal clear. Ignorance and "hate" are not the sole provenance of white people and "teabaggers;" it's universal. Luckily, most people are educated and compassionate enough that they are able to look past skin color and see a human being. But there are always those in society who don't get the memo, as these kids demonstrate.

The Skeptical Inquirer

Steve Poizner, candidate for the GOP nomination for CA governor, has written a book about his experiences teaching at a San Jose high school a couple of years ago. The school was Mount Pleasant and it would not seem to be a "school of destiny" in that it was in the 40th percentile for CA schools, and - in Poizner's telling - was a tough inner-city school. Does San Jose even have an inner city? (Actually, Poizner says the school is in "East San Jose," which sounds more butch somehow). Anyway the book was #5 on the NY Times best-seller list, but it hasn't been without controversy, including protests by Mount Pleasant students and staff at a Poizner book signing.

NPR's Ira Glass did a 10 minute piece on Poizner's book. Now, we all know that 99.99999% of the time that the media guy doing a story on a just-published book may not have read the table of contents, let alone the whole book. Authors can pretty much appear, say their piece, and take off. But, for some crazy reason, Glass was inspired to travel to San Jose (sorry East San Jose), visit the school, and interview some of the students and staff. Glass's findings were surprising: True Urban Legends

For years, I was a reporter in the Chicago public schools for NPR's daily news programs. I've been in great schools, I’ve been in dangerous schools—urban schools, suburban schools. Mt. Pleasant is definitely one of the better public high schools I've ever visited. And I know it may seem like I'm belaboring all this, putting this book under a microscope point-by-point, but so many of the political discussions in our country seem so disconnected from reality. Every year there are egregious examples of politicians and commentators who believe if they repeat some non-fact over and over, it becomes true. And the more I looked into Poizner's book, the more it seemed like one of those rare cases that's so obviously and provably untrue. Though in Poizner's case, what made it especially interesting was that from his book it seemed very possible that he really is just a well-meaning, idealistic guy who wants to help people, who just got a lot of this wrong.

The school isn't unusually dangerous

There is a gang presence in the area. They’ve been here for - we’re into the second and sometimes third generation of gang families, we know this, but at school we don’t have gang problems per se. Our students are able to sit next to each other in a classroom and not have conflicts. We don’t have fights in the classroom. We don’t have fights on campus. We have few fights. Off the top of my head, I think we’ve had about a dozen fights this year.

While the school is not quite Harvard, it does OK:

This school has 150 students studying animation in a special studio with rows of Macs and animation stands - this was all going on while Poizner was at the school, too. There are 19 AP classes. There's a vocational program teaching metal and woodworking and computer-aided design, plus a variety of special projects and programs to close the achievement gap and get less privileged kids to college. School attendance is 95 percent.

Glass also drives around Hell's Kitchen, I mean, East San Jose:

Driving around the neighborhood, it is hard to disagree with the teachers who say it's a perfectly nice middle class and working class area. Occasionally you'll see a house in bad shape, but overwhelmingly it's neatly tended yards, garages, decent cars and SUVs in the driveways. It's suburban. I was surprised to learn that when Poizner taught here in 2003 there was a golf course just a few blocks from the school -there's still a lake and the Raging Waters water park. He doesn't mention those in the book. We called a half dozen local real estate agents who confirmed what teachers told us - that the neighborhood looks the same today as it did back in 2003. If anything, they said, with the recession it's gotten a little worse – the average house price in 2003 near the school was $457,000. Today it's $317,000.

Glass also plays a tape of the drama kids singing a tune from The Music Man, just to hammer the point home.

When I started reading Glass's transcript, I thought I would be blogging about how this pompous NPR guy was picking on Poizner for daring to criticize public schools, but Glass's reporting makes clear that Mount Pleasant is providing a decent education, at least to the kids who want to learn. I guess Poizner should feel lucky Glass didn't notice that Poizner also referred to the school as "Mount Pregnant" (badum-bump!) to further heighten the "bitches & ho's" atmosphere he was trying to conjure up.

Anyway, Glass seems to have the goods on Poizner who kinda maybe should be a little embarrassed by all this. But, maybe Glass should ask himself what inspired him to come down so hard on Poizner. A lot of work went into this investigation; a lot more work than I've seen politicians' books normally receive. And there are plenty of questionable political books out there, hiding in plain sight, if Glass or anyone cares to look.

Class Action

GM's high profile claim that it has repaid its federal loans "in full" has generated wide ranging skepticism, and no wonder. When you pay back a "loan" with government TARP money - itself a loan - rather than earnings from selling Aveos, that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Also, the "loan" repayment amounted to $6.7 billion. Wait a minute, didn't the feds invest $50 billion other dollars in GM? Why, yes they did! Gee, it's almost like they're trying to fudge the difference in the hope that taxpayers won't notice. And,what happened to that money? Well, the hope is that the taxpayers will recover its investment when GM has its IPO "this fall." Who wants to bet that GM will quietly miss that deadline?

In the meantime, we are left to ponder what kind of world we live in where a corporation can use accounting trickery in a PR effort that seeks to benefit its bottom line AND provide a propaganda coup to the government, with even the president blithely hyping the "repayment." Under normal circumstances, Whiteacre could face potential securities fraud liability for this sort of thing, as Powerline explains, but he knows he can make these outrageous claims because its all done in service of Washington. Investigate This

Whitacre omitted two facts that rendered his column highly misleading. They are the kind of omissions that constitute securities fraud when made by a company in connection with the purchase or sale of a security or when a company reports its financial results.

If any investor bought GM shares based on Whitacre's column, it appears to me that the investor would have a good claim against GM. The SEC would in any event be warranted in taking a look at Whitacre's shenanigans on behalf of the company.

First, Whitacre omitted any mention of the remaining $50 billion or so that the government has sunk in the company's equity. Second, Whitacre omitted any mention of the source of the funds with which GM "repaid" the loan. According to TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, the source of the funds in whole or in substantial part was the United States government TARP program, not GM earnings.

There's more at the link. Coming at the same time as Carl Levin (D-GM) was cussing out Goldman Sachs for "fraud," and coming after a decade in which "Enron-accounting" became a watchword for the abuses of laissez-faire capitalism, this is almost a too cute example of political corporatism at work.

Conclusion: It's the Sh*ts

Powerline aptly summarizes today's Goldman hearings: Demonizing Goldman Sachs

Today's inquisition was a sideshow. Here is what really happened: there was a bubble in housing prices. The bubble was mostly the result of government policy--loose money, combined with pressure on banks to make bad loans to unqualified home buyers. It all worked for a while because Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, under the leadership of Congressman Barney Frank and others, created a secondary market for shaky mortgages. Goldman Sachs participated in this market, downstream, along with many other players. But the whole thing wasn't an accident or a conspiracy, it was government policy. The home price bubble could have only one possible result. All bubbles burst--there is nothing else they can do--and the bursting of a bubble is always painful. The whole disaster that began in 2008 was the inevitable result of government policy, which is why Senators are so anxious to pass the buck to Goldman Sachs.

What's funny is most people instinctively understand this and more, which only goes to underscore the farcical nature of these proceedings. While people are struggling with mortgages on houses that have declined in value, members of the US Senate (many of whom appear to be in their seventies) are grandstanding on television over some French kid's emails and their effect on the global economy.

Some thoughtful people have wondered whether the Crash of '08 has revealed dangerous flaws in the institutions of capitalist democracy. I don't know about the institutions themselves, but certainly the people inhabiting those institutions are hopelessly flawed and increasingly dangerous as they cast about desperately for a solution to a problem they don't understand.

More Sh***y Senators

Jesus S. Christos! Carl Levin isn't the only Senator sticking his nose into the few thriving corners of the economy today. Senators Schumer, Begich, Bennet, and Franken have sent a letter to Facebook complaining about that site's privacy policy and connections to third party websites. Does any of this make sense? Senators' Letter To Facebook

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

We are writing to express our concern regarding recent changes to the Facebook privacy policy and the use of personal data on third party websites. While Facebook provides a valuable service to users by keeping them connected with friends and family and reconnecting them with long-lost friends and colleagues, the expansion of Facebook – both in the number of users and applications – raises new concerns for users who want to maintain control over their information.

Pretty strong words from four guys who just voted for Obamacare, a bill that will - if it survives - give the government unprecedented free rein to interfere in every American's health and medical care. Here's is one of their complaints:

1. Publicly available data. Facebook’s expansion of publicly available data to include a user’s current city, hometown, education, work, likes, interests, and friends has raised concerns for users who would like to have an opt-in option to share this profile information. Through the expanded use of “connections,” Facebook now obligates users to make publicly available certain parts of their profile that were previously private. If the user does not want to connect to a page with other users from their current town or university, the user will have that information deleted altogether from their profile. We appreciate that Facebook allows users to type this information into the “Bio” section of their profiles, and privatize it, but we believe that users should have more control over these very personal and very common data points. These personal details should remain private unless a user decides that he/she would like to make a connection and share this information with a community.

????

(As an aside, I want to say to any would be tech entrepreneurs out there: if you find yourself at the head of a billion dollar start-up, you might as well re-register as a Republican now. You might think Democrats are hip and innovative - hey, Al Franken was on Saturday Night Live! - but they are the only ones on the political spectrum who think nothing of sending out pompous letters of "concern" to private entities)

(Also as an aside, there's something about Facebook that seems to bug the hell out of certain people.)

Why in the world do these guys care? The Facebook "community" is known for bristling at that company's efforts to mine data from its users. There have been some pretty high profile cases where Facebook withdrew certain services after users complained that they didn't like how their personal data was being used/displayed. And, needless to say, Facebook membership is entirely voluntary. There are no Facebook "mandates," for example. You can join, quit, or not join at all. It's between you and Facebook, something the Facebook Four just can't seem to abide.

One Sh***y Senator

via Breitbart, here's the video of Senator Carl Levin (D-Failure) saying the word "sh***y" 11 times in reference to the "notorious" Goldman Sachs housing short. Levin was't inadvertently caught on tape at a bar with Patrick Kennedy. No, this is from the Big Goldman Sachs Hearing. You have to feel sorry for the Goldman executive who is at the receiving end of this bogus "populist" cussing. Note to anyone preparing to go before a hostile Congressional committee. It works out better for you if you yell back at these jerks:

Levin is 75 years old. Presumably he will run for re-election in 2014. His state is the absolute bottom of the economic barrel, and got there thanks to the sort of pro-union, high-tax, demonize The Rich posturing that is Levin's political bread and butter. He should have as much credibility on economic issues as Jim DeMint would have on the mechanics of delivering abortion services. Yet here he is grandstanding with all his might against a company that managed to use its wits to survive the Crash of '08 while others were destroyed. Where are the internal emails for Fannie and Freddie, Senator? When are you going to tell Franklin Raines and his successors that they did a sh***y job enabling the subprime explosion?

Economic crises come and go, but pompous liberals are forever.

Getting The Job Done

Looks like the Senate GOP has managed to at least temporarily halt the rush to pass Obamafinance. The Repubs say they want a bill, and everyone still seems to think that a bi-partisan bill will eventually emerge. In the meantime, Chris Dodd is engaging in one last bout of whining for the cameras:

“We are as vulnerable as we are today in the waning days of April 2010 as we were in the fall of 2008 when we saw what happened to our economy,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the banking committee, who is the primary sponsor of the legislation. “Nothing has changed, except, of course, jobs have been lost, homes have gone into foreclosure, retirement incomes have evaporated, housing values have declined. Almost $11 trillion in household wealth has been lost.”

Mr. Dodd continued, “Now, that’s what’s happened in the last 18 months, but we have yet to stand up and address what caused that to happen in our country, to fill in those gaps, provide the regulation, put the cops on the beat.”

Wah. Wah. Look, Doddy, I've survived the Crash of '08, the Little Depression, 9/11, the bursting of the Internet Bubble, the end of the Cold War, and the Space Shuttle explosion. Come back when you have a real emergency to complain about. Anyway, I don't know if the Senator from Wall Street, who is leaving office in November because he couldn't be re-elected, is the right guy to be the pointman on this effort; but inappropriate spokesmen have been one of the hallmarks of the era of Bailouts, I guess.

In the meantime, Arnold Kling offers his Ideal Financial Reform:

The overarching principle I have is that we should try to make the financial system easy to fix. The more you try to make it harder to break, the more recklessly people will behave. By reducing the incentives for debt finance and for exotic finance, you help promote a financial system that breaks the way the Dotcom bubble broke, with much lesser secondary consequences.

Why do I get the feeling this is the last thing on anyone's mind?

Saching the Quarterback

The NY Times has the latest scoop in the Goldman Sachs matter. A Senate subcommittee chaired by Carl Levin (D-Failure) has released emails in which GS execs say they could make "serious money" shorting the housing bubble, which is scandalous somehow. What were they supposed to be doing, making cupcakes? Goldman Sachs Messages Show It Thrived As Economy Fell

In late 2007, as the mortgage crisis gained momentum and many banks were suffering losses, Goldman Sachs executives traded e-mail messages saying that they would make “some serious money” betting against the housing markets.

The messages, released Saturday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, appear to contradict statements by Goldman that left the impression that the firm lost money on mortgage-related investments.

In the messages, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the bank’s chief executive, acknowledged in November 2007 that the firm had lost money initially. But it later recovered by making negative bets, known as short positions, to profit as housing prices plummeted. “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” he wrote. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”

He added, “It’s not over, so who knows how it will turn out ultimately.”

Wow! You can practically see him chuckling and swirling his brandy! GS was taking a short position as a hedge against their wide ranging exposure to America's falling real estate market and didn't know how it would resolve! You can see why GS is called the "Vampire Squid."

I make no great claims to knowing whether GS committed fraud somewhere along the line. But, one thing is undeniable: GS is one (of many) institutions that managed to survive the Crash of '08 while others were overwhelmed and destroyed. Where is the SEC complaint against the executives who enabled the failures? You say Goldman was shorting housing in 2007. At that point, isn't that something any prudent investor would have done, simply as a hedge? But that's not what happened. A lot of Goldman's rivals doubled down or tried to pretend there was no problem. How did that work out for their shareholders and employees?

After months of presidential and senatorial demonization of Goldman Sachs, it might be hard to remember that the Crash of '08 and the Little Depression arose from mismanagement and fraud at banks that went out of business precisely because of ... mismanagement and fraud! The world didn't turn upside down because Goldman shorted the housing bubble. Wall Street "died" because Bear, Lehman, Merrill, Fannie, Freddie, WaMu, Wachovia, Countrywide, AIG, and dozens of others went long at precisely the moment they should have been getting out! These companies, and their executives, are the ones who helped cause the Crash, but they seem immune from any sort of attention, let alone government sanction.

Of course, Levin might not understand what it might mean when a company sets out to actually make money, rather than mollify economically illiterate politicians. Given where Levin hails from, he actually might have a different image of what success looks like:

Gusher

Robert Bryce offers five myths about green energy for you to ponder. Bryce is the author of A Gusher Of Lies, and is one of the few available rational voices on American energy policy out there. Bryce's ideal world is one in which "idealistic" Greens admit that their favorite energy sources are no match for the efficiency and power of oil and coal; and where "moderate" Republicans stop subsidizing boondoggles like ethanol. In other words, Bryce is a Cassandra no one listens to. Too bad:

Myth 1: solar and wind power are the greenest tech of all: actually, they would require the use of enormous real estate, and wouldn't come anywhere near to replacing the capacity of gas, oil or nukes.

Myth 2: Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes: You poor fools. Surely you know that the Chinese control virtually all of the known reserves for the exotic earth elements that power the batteries at the heart of green tech?

Myth 3: A green American economy will create green American jobs. Query - how can something be called a "job" if it has to be subsidized by the government?

Myth 4: Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil: The electric car is so futuristic and innovative that it's been around since 1911. Not only that, today's electric car advocates have no better answer for the limited range and performance problems that once frustrated Thomas Edison.

Myth 5: The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green: This is the part of China that Thomas Friedman has not visited yet:

Unfresh

Sly Stone roused himself from the crackhouse long enough to appear at Coachella with predictable results: Down In The Valley

The 67-year-old finally turned up on stage nearly four hours after his allotted time, which can be attributed either to an exaggerated sense of his current status in the rock world or an aftermath of reported drug abuse in decades past. Wearing a policeman's uniform and what appeared to be a woman's silver wig, he lay down on the stage and mumbled a bit, then struggled at the electric piano through abbreviated and disjointed versions of some of his classics as his band, featuring three original members of the Family Stone, looked on uncomfortably. Finally, he was led away.

Stone(d) wasn't just appearing at a rock festival. He was one of the featured performers on the main stage with a prime early evening timeslot, all of which he pissed away, just as he has been doing since, oh, about 1971. Will we ever be rid of self-destructive Baby Boomer "icons?"

Here is some "real" Sly, if he cares.

No

UPDATE: OTOH, here's Sly in Tokyo a couple of years ago looking/sounding better. No drugs available in Japan?