Friday Orchid Blogging

This is another paphiopedilum cross that I current have in bloom. You may remember the plant I posted a few weeks ago. This one is similar, yet different. The last one had long tendrils. This one has shorter tendrils, that are sort of thicker and spotty at the top. And look at those stripes. These are really the kings of Paphs, I think. Not the easiest to grow, in my opinion - well, they need a good amount of light, all year round. But just look at that. A truly amazing flower. Enjoy. Read More......

Hate on a map

A reader had sent me this map the other day (Ben Smith linked to it today and reminded me I'd forgotten to post it). It's a detailed map of every Prop 8 donor in the nation. You have to zoom in on a particular city in order to see the incredibly large list (it may only look like a few if you're zoomed out). Wild stuff. And remember, it was the Prop 8 organizers - the bigoted Mormons and their religious right brethren - how came up with the tactic of exposing those who donated to the anti-8 side of the debate. So this kind of thing is their idea.

Here's San Francisco:

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Have commercial jets ever safely landed in water before?

Josh Marshall asks the question:

[H]ere is a list on Wikipedia of survival rates in cases where planes were intentionally ditched or landed in water. The examples run the gamut. But the gist is that while there are a couple cases of 100% survival, those were with planes that were much smaller and carried far fewer people. A Russian passenger plane was ditched in the Neva River in 1963. And everyone survived. But the plane had only a third the number of passengers as yesterday USAir flight had. A plane went down in the water in Java in 2002 after an engine flameout during a hail storm. In that case, one flight attendant died -- out of 66 people aboard the plane.

Most of the ditchings seem to end something like how this one did in 1970 in the caribbean -- with a substantial number of people surviving, but a lot of fatalities too....

I thought the same thing as Josh. In spite of the "in case of water landing" safety lectures you get when you fly over water, i can't think of a commercial jet that's ever been forced to land in water and done it without casualties. Read More......

Obama to ban torture

Change is coming:

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to prohibit the use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques by ordering the CIA to follow military rules for questioning prisoners, according to two U.S. officials familiar with drafts of the plans. The proposal Obama is considering would require all CIA interrogators to follow conduct outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the officials said. The plans would also have the effect of shutting down secret "black site" prisons around the world where the CIA has questioned terror suspects — with all future interrogations taking place inside American military facilities.

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GE Capital, Hertz announce major job cuts

If only some people would stop talking about the bad economy, banks and business wouldn't be cutting jobs. It's a mental recession and has nothing to do with the real world so turn that frown upside down and watch the jobs come rolling in.

General Electric's GE Capital unit will cut between 7,000 and 11,000 jobs, sources told CNBC.

GE Capital employs 75,000 and has said it would reduce costs in the unit by $2 billion in 2009. A company spokesman said headcount reductions were expected as part of the cost cuts but didn't elaborate on a number.

The spokesman said the financial services unit is strategically reshaping itself to become smaller and more focused.

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Arlen Specter: All bark, no bite

Over and over and over during the Bush years, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, quite possibly the biggest blowhard in the Senate, would puff out his chest about some outrage. He'd talk tough. But, within days, Specter would back down.

For the past couple weeks, Specter has been on the warpath against Attorney General designee Eric Holder. But, it's all hot air. After yesterday's hearing, AP reports that Holder's confirmation is looking good:

There was one angry exchange when the panel's senior Republican, Arlen Specter, said Holder's decision not to investigate Democrat Al Gore's fundraising "raises the question of your fitness for the job."

Holder hit back, saying: "You're getting close to questioning my integrity and that is not fair."

Yet, overall, Republicans did little to try to block Holder's path to become the first black attorney general in the nation's history.

There's a lesson here: Ignore Arlen Specter. He's all talk. No action. And, even his GOP colleagues ignore him.

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"Semi-nationalization" is out and "nationalization" appears to be in

What else would you expect from Republican-style economics? After decades of telling everyone about the benefits of industry self-regulation they carried it to the extreme and both the GOP and industry got what they wanted. Of course it was going to fail but the bumbling fools all thought that their cute experiment would bring benefits, which it did. The problem was that only a few benefited and the rest are stuck with the tab as we are at the beginning of a new banking phase that is going to take years - a decade or more, perhaps - to correct. From the quietness of the Republicans you might never know this was the cornerstone of their economic policy until very recently. Thanks to them, bring on the socialism and don't be shy with the heaping servings.

Last fall, as Federal Reserve and Treasury Department officials rode to the rescue of one financial institution after another, they took great pains to avoid doing anything that smacked of nationalizing banks.

They may no longer have that luxury. With two of the nation’s largest banks buckling under yet another round of huge losses, the incoming administration of Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve are suddenly dealing with banks that are “too big to fail” and yet unable to function as the sinking economy erodes their capital.

Particularly in the case of Citigroup, the losses have become so large that they make it almost mathematically impossible for the government to inject enough capital without taking a majority stake or at least squeezing out existing shareholders.

And the new ground rules laid down by Mr. Obama’s top economic advisers for the second half of the $700 billion bailout fund, as explained in a letter submitted to Congress on Thursday, call for the government to play an increasing role in the major activities of the banks, from the dividends they pay to shareholders to the amount they can pay executives.

“We are down a path that this country has not seen since Andrew Jackson shut down the Second National Bank of the United States,” said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “We are going to go back to a time when the government controlled the banking system.”

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Elvis is leaving the building

The long national nightmare is coming to an end.

The president will be the president until 12 noon Tuesday, but most of his employees will be gone by the close of business Friday.

They’ll turn in their BlackBerrys, laptops, building passes and gym keys.

And by the time the weekend is out — before the new administration can reverse course on waterboarding or SCHIP or anything else — teams of painters and carpet cleaners will have wiped away any hint that they ever set foot in the White House.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Actually... do.

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Rick Warren cited Hitler Youth as model for Christian activism

I actually refused to believe this story until I listened to the tape of his speech.

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Advice from Krugman to Obama: Protect and defend the Constitution from those who have violated it

Krugman is right, as usual. Obama can't let Bush and his cronies get away with crimes. It's not about Obama and his team. It's about the Constitution -- and the rest of us:

Now, it’s true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we’ll guarantee that they will happen again.

Meanwhile, about Mr. Obama: while it’s probably in his short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he’s going to swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s not a conditional oath to be honored only when it’s convenient.

And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that’s not a decision he has the right to make.

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Gallup: Obama's tranistion "receives a remarkably high 83% approval rating"

Bush could barely fill a room at the White House with all of his supporters last night. Our next president is receiving very high marks for his transition. People really do want change and are willing to cut him some slack (for now). From Gallup:

President-elect Barack Obama receives a remarkably high 83% approval rating for the way in which he has handled the presidential transition, significantly higher than the approval level for either of his immediate predecessors just before they first took office.

Obama's transition approval rating has actually increased slightly over the last month, despite the fact that he has encountered a few "speed bumps" in terms of his Cabinet appointments, including the withdrawal of his appointee for commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was forced to drop out owing to investigations into possible improper business dealings in his home state.

For comparison, Gallup found Clinton's transition approve/disapprove was 68%/18%. For Bush, the breakdown was 61%/25%.
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Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's 11 degrees in D.C., but feels like -4. We have a "Wind Chill Advisory." It's going to be a balmy 33 degrees on Inauguration Day.

So, Bush said his farewell to us last night. The guy is truly delusional. I guess it's hard for the Bush crew to accept that most of the country hates him. He pretty much had every remaining supporter at the White House to clap for him last night. Delusional and destructive. Four more days.

And, how about that "Miracle on the Hudson"? When I looked up at my t.v. yesterday and saw a plane in the water, my stomach turned. Amazing work on behalf of the pilot. And, those NY and NJ ferries were on the scene within minutes. I'm in awe of everyone involved.

Okay...let's get it started... Read More......

Anglo Irish Bank nationalized

And the good news from our trustworthy friends in banking continues, on both sides of the Atlantic. From The Independent:The Irish government stepped in last night to take full ownership of Anglo Irish Bank to prevent the collapse of the country's third biggest lender, as nationalisation fears inc-reased throughout the banking sector.

The republic's government made its move to stop runs on the bank's dep-osits and shares that could have caused it to implode. Confidence in Anglo Irish has collapsed since the resignations of its chairman, Sean Fitzpatrick, and chief executive, David Drumm, last month after it revealed that Mr FitzPatrick had concealed €87m (£78m) of loans from the bank. Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, said: "The funding position of the bank has weakened and unacceptable practices that took place within it have caused serious reputational damage to the bank at a time when overall market sentiment to-wards it was negative."

If Anglo Irish had been declared insolvent, the Government would have been left responsible for about €100bn of liabilities after guaranteeing all deposits in Irish banks last year. Read More......

Investment bankers made $20 million for BoA-Merrill merger

Taxpayers stuck with what now looks like a $45 BILLION to make the deal work. Well, those investment bankers did work a long weekend to put together a deal that could only work after massive government subsidies and they probably had their annual bonuses trimmed back a bit, so that's fair. Just because the already too-big-to-fail businesses are even larger now and that the ultimate US mega-bank (Citigroup) is being chopped into pieces and sold because they were too big, why not hand out more to delay the inevitable overhaul of Bank of America? Yea, they're probably going to fire even more people with this merger but I haven't heard of employment being much of an issue today.

Who doesn't want to sacrifice $20 million to help a poor, starving investment banker? Anyway, it's probably not any business of Congress to ask questions so I guess it's OK.

But BofA's latest problems also add to the questions that have been swirling about the bank's decision, reached early on the morning that Lehman Brothers collapsed in mid-September, to pay billions of dollars to acquire Merrill. The big brokerage firm has been hit hard by bad bets on mortgage-related securities.

BofA completed the Merrill deal Jan. 1 - but only after receiving assurances that the government would help defray losses tied to the Merrill deal, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday.

But CEO Ken Lewis' decision to buy Merrill isn't the only thing that looks questionable now. So does the advice he and the BofA board got on the hastily arranged Merrill deal from the bank's advisers, Fox-Pitt Kelton and J.C. Flowers & Co.

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Obama's official White House photo

What do you think? As a photographer myself, I don't love it. I think the camera angle makes him look small (it's shot from too high up), the blue shirt looks too blue-collar for a president, and the jacket droops on his shoulders (I don't even like the tie or the way it's tied). The entire photo is diminutive of a man who is about 6-1, intensely charismatic, and leader of the free world. The only part of the photo I like is his face. The eyes are piercing, and I like that. The lips are pursed, not sure I like that. But the rest of the photo just isn't presidential to me. To you? Read More......