Gift card theft is skyrocketing!

Oh my gosh! One clerk even stole $130,000 so set the alarm, call the police and prepare the firing squad. Retail lost billions they tell us. Life as we know it might be over. Businesses are surely going to upset with this new study, but maybe we all ought to be a lot more worried about the pilfering done from the top such as the trillions that are never coming back on Wall Street. The inside thieves are wrong, but I suspect they will be treated much more harshly than the CEOs and senior executives who ravaged the global economy.

After watching this last economic meltdown and banking recovery (with bonuses to match), I really don't have the stomach to listen to anyone complaining about small time theft like this. I suppose I'm equally wrong for not giving a damn but that's where I am following this disgraceful economic cycle. If I ever noticed honest leadership from our so-called leaders in politics or business, I might feel differently but that's not going to happen. Read the rest of this post...

THIS JUST IN: Limbaugh rushed to hospital with chest pains

Apparently just reported. Read the rest of this post...

I might have to check with my wife about this

This article could only be done by the British press. Yes, the subject is a new book from a French psychologist with some controversial issues. However, nobody can quite turn out stories about France being over-sexed quite like the British media. I remember taking the bus into Paris with an American who asked me if it's true what they say about everyone in France having affairs with everyone else. It's sort of like people outside of the US asking if everyone in America owns a gun and has violent crime on their doorstop every day.

If nothing else, it's worth a laugh because it's so typically British press. I really don't see where France is any different from any other country in terms of affairs. Somehow not the Daily Mail or Sun, but The Telegraph, of course:

Maryse Vaillant claims French men should stop being castigated for being serial womanisers and that keeping a mistress can actually improve their marriage.

In a controversial new book on the effects of infidelity on married life, Men, Love, Fidelity, Miss Vaillant says her aim is to "re-habilitate infidelity".

According to figures cited in the book, an estimated 39 per cent of French men cheat on their wives at some stage in their life.

Read the rest of this post...

White House releases another 25,000 visitors records

Following through on the commitment to transparency. Read the rest of this post...

New report documents Bush admin's early failures in Afghanistan caused by political pressures and Iraq war

James Dao got his hands on a Pentagon report titled, "A Different Kind of War." It's a history of the early years in Afghanistan -- and it paints an ugly picture of failed leadership. We're still enmeshed in that conflict because our political leaders, starting with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, didn't pay any attention to the needs of the military people in that country:

The historians say resistance to providing more robust resources to Afghanistan had three sources in the White House and the Pentagon.

First, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had criticized using the military for peacekeeping and reconstruction in the Balkans during the 1990s. As a result, “nation building” carried a derogatory connotation for many senior military officials, even though American forces were being asked to fill gaping voids in the Afghan government after the Taliban’s fall.

Second, military planners were concerned about Afghanistan’s long history of resisting foreign invaders and wanted to avoid the appearance of being occupiers. But the historians argue that this concern was based partly on an “incomplete” understanding of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.

Third, the invasion of Iraq was siphoning away resources. After the invasion started in March 2003, the history says, the United States clearly “had a very limited ability to increase its forces” in Afghanistan.

It's good timing for the release of the report. Republicans -- and Joe Lieberman -- are huffing and puffing about national security today. But, that same crowd screwed up the war in Afghanistan -- against Al Qaeda and its allies -- and we're still paying the price. It's important to remember how inept our leaders were. With this record, how Dick Cheney or any Republican -- or Joe Lieberman -- has any credibility on national security is beyond me.

We're still dealing with the after effects of Bush's complete failure in Afghanistan. We're talking about Yemen now because Bush didn't do the job back then. Read the rest of this post...

Politico: President Obama takes the heat President Bush did not

Politico:

Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of Sept. 11. But it was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate.

That stands in sharp contrast to the withering criticism President Barack Obama has received from Republicans and some in the press for his reaction to Friday’s incident on a Northwest Airlines flight heading for Detroit.

Democrats have seized on the disparity and are making it a centerpiece of their efforts to counter GOP attacks on the White House. “This hypocrisy demonstrates Republicans are playing politics with issues of national security and terrorism,” DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan said. “That they would use this incident as an opportunity to fan partisan flames … tells you all you need to know about how far the Republican Party has fallen and how out of step with the American people they have become.”

I suspect a few things are going on here. First, the shoe bomber incident was three months after September 11. We were all still shell-shocked. Rather than being afraid to criticize the president, I think we were all so scared, the thought didn't even cross our minds (and the same thing applied to the media, which was also tempered following 9/11). Second, Democrats aren't as good at political PR as Republicans are. Republicans are always looking for an opportunity to take advantage of a situation, a crisis. Democrats tend to be more principled. And finally, Republicans are better at shutting down criticism. If Democrats had tried to speak out, the GOP would have accused us of being un-American, and the Democrats would freak. Read the rest of this post...

Rather strong WH statement taking on Cheney

UPDATE: Had the wrong, link - correct one is there now. This is good. Very good. Let's have more of this.

[I]t is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers....

First, it’s important that the substantive context be clear: for seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq – a country that had no al Qaeda presence before our invasion – Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda's leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States. Meanwhile, al Qaeda also regenerated in places like Yemen and Somalia, establishing new safe-havens that have grown over a period of years....

To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President....

President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies.

Read the rest of this post...

The year in gay

Kerry Eleveld at the Advocate reviews the President's handling of gay civil rights over the past year. Her opinion matters greatly in the gay community. Here's an excerpt:

But perhaps what is most peculiar for a president who ran on an aggressive equality platform was the Office of Personnel Management’s recent decision not to provide same-sex partner benefits to a federal employee, defying a federal judge who ordered the agency to do so in a dispute resolution case.

Based on guidance from DOJ, OPM reasoned that the order was not legally binding because the judge was acting in an administrative capacity rather than a court case. Representatives from Lambda Legal, the organization representing the federal employee, countered that a federal judge is always imbued with the power of a federal judge regardless of what proceeding he’s presiding over.

Without getting too bogged down in legalese, suffice it to say that the case presents in shades of gray and could be interpreted by reasonable lawyers different ways. The real question is, if the administration has to lean one way or the other, why not lean toward equalizing treatment for gay couples, as candidate Obama consistently claimed he would?

“I don't understand why they are so focused on finding reasons to not do this -- it seems to me that they had all the cover they needed if they had wanted to reach a different result,” Richard Socarides, a New York attorney and former LGBT advisor to President Clinton told me. Just as the agency argued the order was not legally binding, he added, “they could have also chosen to comply and said they were being directed to do so by a federal appellate judge.”

Read the rest of this post...

When 'natural' isn't natural

Slimy corporate marketing double-talk at its best.

Until early 2009, Silk brand soy milk was made using organic soybeans. But earlier this year, Dean Foods (owner of the Silk brand) quietly switched to conventional soybeans, which are often grown with pesticides. But they kept the same UPC barcodes on their products, and they kept the product label virtually the same, only replacing the word "organic" with "natural" in a way that was barely noticeable. They also kept the price the same, charging consumers "organic" prices for a product that was now suddenly made with conventionally-grown soybeans.

Many retailers and consumers never noticed the bait-and-switch tactic, so they kept buying Silk, thinking it was still organic. The shift on the product label from "organic" to "natural" wasn't well understood by consumers, either. Many consumers continue to think that the term "natural" is basically the same as "organic," when in fact they are almost opposites. The term "natural" is entirely unregulated, and almost anything can be claimed to be "natural" even when it's sprayed with pesticides or treated with other chemicals.

Read the rest of this post...

Maureen Dowd on WH's handling of terrorist attack aftermath

I think she's right. I don't think they're handling this well from a PR perspective. And yes, PR matters. It is important that the public feel that their leader gets it, that he's running the show, that he knows there's a problem, and that he is trying to fix it.

The Republican attacks against Obama over the past few days have hurt. But only because the White House hasn't exactly done a stellar job of managing the public response to the attack. The President should have been out there on day one, he shouldn't have gone golfing right after speaking to the nation about the attack (does no one in the White House watch old footage of Bush?), and it's not at all clear that he should have remained on vacation in "exotic" Hawaii (again, no memory of the campaign and the "Hawaii problem"?). And the last thing the WH should have done is sent Napolitano on TV, had the WH repeat the allegation, that everything worked really well AFTER the nut got away with trying to blow up a jet. The President even defended Napolitano yesterday. He didn't just defend the secretary, he defended her words. His staff said the President thought she was right, that the system did work well.

Oy.

As Maureen Dowd would say, lose the Spock. It doesn't matter if you're technically correct if your words come off as creepy and aloof. After some guy who paid $3000 in cash for his ticket, didn't check luggage, was on a terror watch list, whose own father called the US to warn that his son had become an extremist, waltzes on to a plane full of Americans and tries to blow it up - and only gets caught because some Dutch guy, not an air marshal, but a Dutch guy, jumped him, and the fairy dust in his crotch didn't fully ignite - after all of that, there is simply no circumstance, short of presenting the public with Osama bin Laden's head on a spit, that merits calling the day anything other than an unmitigated disaster.

It just looks bad, and whether folks like it or not, appearances matter in leadership. Just because the Republicans are trying to make hay of the entire incident doesn't mean the White House is handling it correctly. Read the rest of this post...

My CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield premium just got hiked 15%

Which is a step in the right direction, considering they've been hiking it over 20% a year the past several years. I can't wait until the health care reform bill lowers my premiums and increases my benefits, just like the Democrats promised. How much do your premiums go up a year? (Though if you're with a private company that has insurance, your premiums probably go up less - self-employed people get screwed.) Read the rest of this post...

Republicans are giddy about using the terror issue as a political issue again

Republicans really only had one political issue for the past few election cycles: Fear. They won when they could scare the American people. And, in the wake of the latest terrorism incident, the Republicans are hoping their glory days of scaring Americans are back:

As the GOP seeks a path out of the political abyss in the 2010 elections, its leaders seem to be turning to the issue of terrorism, which worked for them in the 2002 congressional midterms and in President George W. Bush's 2004 reelection.

"They just don't get it," Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, wrote in a fundraising letter for his gubernatorial campaign. "These are the same weak-kneed liberals who have recently tried to bring Guantanamo Bay terrorists right here to Michigan!"

Yes. Hoekstra is already using what happened on the flight to Detroit as a fundraising tool. Republicans see national security as a political issue. If they were serious about it, we wouldn't still be waging a war in Afghanistan. And, Valerie Plame would still be working as an undercover spy.

And, there's this:

The Republican strategy is further complicated by the fact that the nation's counterterrorism intelligence and security procedures were created after Sept. 11, 2001, by Bush and congressional Republicans. Current watch-list systems were put in place years ago and have not changed. In addition, the former Guantanamo Bay detainees who showed up in the al-Qaeda leadership in Yemen were released by Bush two years ago.

Read the rest of this post...

GMAC to pick up another $3.5 billion from government

Is now the time to throw more money at this industry? Maybe GMAC is behaving better than others but this has to be the last place anyone wants to give money to during these lean times. Reuters:

GMAC Financial Services is close to getting about $3.5 billion in added aid from the U.S. government, on top of the $12.5 billion already received since December 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The announcement is expected within days and will coincide with GMAC taking additional steps to absorb losses related to its mortgage operations, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Yemen. As we end 2009, that's the new word. Yeah, that's the country we'll be hearing a lot about. Joe "Yemen will be tomorrow's war" Lieberman and his merry band of warmongers, the ones who never provided any oversight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are already ginning up.

Too bad our military is stretched thin in wars that were never effectively managed. And, it's probably not such a good thing that the U.S. military kicks out Arab linguists -- and other personnel -- just because they're gay. If only we had a President who was committed to ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- and would actually follow through on that commitment.

Also, for anyone who missed it, the key architect of the campaign to save marriage by attacking the gays, Karl Rove, is abusing the sanctity of marriage and destroying that hallowed institution himself. He's getting a divorce -- another divorce. It's his second. There are many right wing theocrats who think divorce is really the biggest threat to marriage. They have a new poster boy now. Oh, Rove wants privacy as he goes through this process. But, I just think, from a public policy perspective, that can't be the case. Rove made saving marriage a big campaign issue. Unfortunately, I think we need all the details of this sordid destruction of the sacred rite, you know, to see how marriage can be protected from the likes of Karl Rove.

Let's get started... Read the rest of this post...

Report: Riskiest mortgage lenders were most active lobbyists

Of course, the heavy lobbying never stopped even when these groups had no money to spend. They just spent the TARP money to lobby again to make sure the obedient Congress would not bother to introduce anything they didn't like. Best system money can buy. Thanks for nothing, Congress. Again.

The study did not name any of the lenders but the language in it implied that they were among the biggest banks and mortgage brokerage companies in the nation.

"Lenders that lobby more intensively on these specific issues have (i) more lax lending standards measured by loan-to-income ratio, (ii) greater tendency to securitize, and (iii) faster growing mortgage loan portfolios," the report said.

"Ex post, delinquency rates are higher in areas in which lobbying lenders' mortgage lending grew faster, and, during key events of the crisis, these lenders experienced negative abnormal stock returns," it added.

Read the rest of this post...

China thumbs nose at world over execution

Because executing a person with a documented history of mental problems is perfectly fine. Would Texas even do this? If China wants to sit at the big table and do business globally, they really need to learn how to accept criticism better than this. The Guardian:

The dispute intensified early today when it was confirmed that China had ignored pleas for clemency from the British government and executed the 53-year-old from north London. Campaigners insisted Shaikh had a severe personality disorder and had been duped by gangsters into carrying 4kg of heroin in a suitcase.

The prime minister, who had called China's premier, Wen Jiabao, to urge him to halt the execution, said he was "appalled and disappointed" at the execution.

In a "difficult" meeting at the Foreign Office, the UK minister Ivan Lewis told the Chinese ambassador Fu Ying that her government had failed in its basic human rights responsibilities by ignoring representations about Shaikh's mental health. "It's a deeply depressing day for anyone with a modicum of compassion or commitment to justice," Lewis said.

Read the rest of this post...