Obama ordered his cabinet to cut $100,000,000 from the nation's budget in the next three months. So this is obviously political theater, since $100M is a totally irrelevant amount of money. Here's a handy graph (click to embiggen):



So what does he think this accomplishes? It just opens him to attack for being disingenuous. Seems like a politically dumb thing to do. Plus, it even sounds small. He could have gone for $700M which sounds much bigger, sort of like TARP. I'm sure that would have still been pretty easy to do.

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I go to starbucks fairly often. When I order a drink, they always ask my name and write it on the cup. When they finish my drink, they announce what it is ("grande decaf latte") and put it on the bar. They almost never mention my name.

So what was the point of asking it and writing it on the cup to begin with?

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Finally, when will this damn oven repair guy get here? This is getting ridiculous.

This might be a counterexample to my last post on corruption: the London Times reports that four members of the house of lords are involved in a bribery scandal:

The Sunday Times said that four Labour peers offered to help their reporters when they posed as lobbyists representing a fictitious Hong Kong businessman who wanted to set up a chain of shops in the UK, but was unhappy about legislation currently before Parliament.

What's interesting about this is that the House of Lords is pretty powerless in the English system. The average Lord probably has less power than a minority member of an important committee here in the US, and yet they were still being bribed.

Also of note: one of the Lords in question? Lord Snape. Harry was right not to trust that guy.

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The Volokh Conspiracy notes some text from the House version of the stimulus package:

None of the funds provided by this Act may be made available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illinois. The preceding sentence shall not apply to any funds provided directly to a unit of local government (1) by a Federal department or agency, or (2) by an established formula from the State.

Awesome. Is this unprecedented?

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Lastly, here's an update to my stuff Obama's done so far post. The NYTimes reports that Obama ordered the EPA to reconsider their rejection of California's greenhouse gas regs:

Mr. Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush administration’s past rejection of the California application. While he stopped short of flatly ordering the reversal of the Bush decision, the agency’s regulators are now widely expected to do so after completing a formal review process.

The president also directed the Transportation Department to draw up rules to implement a 2007 law requiring a 40 percent improvement in gas mileage for autos and light trucks by 2020. The Bush administration failed to write any regulations to enforce the new law.

I actually think the fuel efficiency rules are pretty useless in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To the extent that car miles are elastic, more fuel efficient cars will consume more miles, offsetting some of the gains. Plus, car companies will find ways to weasel out of them, just as they did by getting SUV's classified as trucks with much lower mileage standards. It would be much better just to tax carbon and let people figure out the best way of reducing it.

Obama now has his own satellite channel. It's hard to believe that running a two minute ad on a loop is the best way to use it.

Larry Flint is producing a porno starring a fake Sarah Palin. In related news, some bar in Chicago has a nude portrait of Palin up.



I think those things are very uncool. If we had an attractive male candidate, like JFK, would there be pornos and nude portraits? I don't think so.

By now you've seen the tax break for wooden arrows in the just-passed bailout bill. Everything tastes better with a little pork! Though I do wonder why on earth wooden arrows were subject to a 39 cent excise tax in the first place.

And, finally, Ted Stevens has requested a mistrial due to prosecutors failing to turn over some evidence. Nice one guys. Of course, that would just mean another trial -- it's not like he's free and clear if that happens. It might improve his reelection chances, though.

This is something you should all know: John McCain is a Cylon. Sarah Palin is evidently Laura Roslin, though, which suddenly gives me hope for our country.

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From daviddfriedman, here's a letter written about Sarah Palin by a resident of Wasilla. A newspaper investigated to find out if this is real, and it apparently is.

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From evwhore, for my like three readers that read me but not him, these are awesome:

The DNC in one minute

Then RNC in one minute

Seymour Hersh reports that Cheney and friends considered faking an attack from Iran as a pretext for war. At least they didn't go through with it. I think you could argue that the administration falsely and knowingly used the anthrax attacks shortly after 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Now, it seems that those attacks came from our own bioweapons lab, which we know because the lead suspect just committed suicide.

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The WSJ just ran a column with a headline I never expected to see: Is John McCain Stupid?. Talking about how he's running his campaign, of course. Which I think is a little questionable, but whatever.

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Speaking of his campaign, watch his latest ad, below. If the sound is off or you weren't paying attention, would you think this was an ad for McCain, or for Obama? This has to be the worst political ad I've ever seen -- I have to think that this will help the other team (not that ads matter all that much at this point).



I suppose if the point was to get a lot of publicity for not very much money, it worked. He's getting a lot of free press about it. Unfavorable, of course, at least mostly, but that may have been the intent.

Also, I really think you need a better punch line or slogan at the end there. The "is he ready to lead" line made more sense with his last ad:



I like that his images of worthless celebrities includes Paris Hilton. I mean, yeah, she certainly fits the bill -- but do you really want to go after the daughter of a big supporter?

Anyway, I think the celebrity ad is way more effective than the The One one above. Perhaps voters are better at grasping subtlety than I think they are.

CBS has posted the entirety of the original Star Trek for your free streaming pleasure. It's even way better quality than youtube.

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Jonathan Coulton has hit the big time: today he was featured on Yahoo!'s front page.

I want one of these half pony half monkeys:

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I thought this article on why some foreclosures are failing was fascinating.

Judges in at least five states have stopped foreclosure proceedings because the banks that pool mortgages into securities and the companies that collect monthly payments haven't been able to prove they own the mortgages. The confusion is another headache for U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as he revises rules for packaging mortgages into securities.

...

More than $2.1 trillion, or 19 percent, of outstanding mortgages have been bundled into securities by private banks, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a Bethesda, Maryland-based industry newsletter. Those loans may be sold several times before they land in a security. Mortgage servicers, who collect monthly payments and distribute them to securities investors, can buy and sell the home loans many times.

Each time the mortgages change hands, the sellers are required to sign over the mortgage notes to the buyers. In the rush to originate more loans during the U.S. mortgage boom, from 2003 to 2006, that assignment of ownership wasn't always properly completed, said Alan White, assistant professor at Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana.

``Loans were mass produced and short cuts were taken,'' White said. ``A lot of the paperwork is done in the name of the original lender and a lot of the original lenders aren't around anymore.''

More than 100 mortgage companies stopped making loans, closed or were sold last year, according to Bloomberg data.

I am amazed that banks, whose raison d'etre is to track money, have lost the paperwork for that many houses. Obviously it's easy to make money in an environment where nobody knows who owns what but is still willing to pay for it, but the unwinding is going to be a bitch.

Scientific American has a lovely article on Sex, Math, and Science, interesting given intelligence discussions we've had.

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Think Progress points out that paper shredding contracts have skyrocketed during the Bush years (from $452k in 2000 to $2.9M in 2006). Hmmmm.

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Apparently the Lakota Indians have withdrawn from treaties with the US and declared independence.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

Yeah, good luck with that. This depressing statistic caught my eye, though:

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

I hope that's wrong -- a life expectancy of 44 is just shameful. I knew we treated reservation Indians poorly, but that is just absurd.

OMG I totally have that shirt. Katy got it for me.

I can't decide if I'm happy he has a sense of humor about it, or if I'm pissed he fucked it up in the first place.

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Why might invading Iraq be a bad idea? Dick Cheney had lots of thoughts about why it could go wrong.

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Ew. Note to self: avoid pissing off squid.

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And then there were 10. At least until Newtie or some other Thompson jumps in.