Patti LaBelle — The Alphabet gospel style on Sesame Street.

What’s on your mind?

Tags: gospel, late late nite firedoglake, Patti LaBelle, Sesame Street, The Alphabet Song, YouTube

The people living there decided to pull letters out of a bag, like you do to start a game of Scrabble™.

Well, that’s a C, eh?

And an N, eh?

And a D, eh?

And, more specifically, here’s the top ten reasons to live in Vancouver:

1. Weed
2. Two million people and two bridges
3. The local hero is a pot-smoking snowboarder
4. The local wine doesn’t taste like malt vinegar
5. Your $400,000 Vancouver home is 5 hours from downtown
6. A university with a nude beach
7. You can throw a rock and hit three Starbucks locations
8. If a cop pulls you over, just offer them some of your hash
9. There’s always some sort of deforestation protest going on
10. Cannabis

And, to honor the Canadan hockey team which won a Gold Olympics™ medal to the United States of America’s Platinum Olympics™ medal, here’s some Manitoba jokes:

You know your from Manitoba, Canada, when….

You only know three spices – salt, pepper and ketchup.

You design your Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.

The mosquitoes have landing lights.

You have more miles on your snowblower than your car.

You have 10 favourite recipes for moose meat.

Canadian Tire on any Saturday is busier than the toy stores at Christmas.

You live in a house that has no front step, yet the door is one meter above the ground.

You’ve taken your kids trick-or-treating in a blizzard.

Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled in with snow.

You owe more money on your snowmobile than your car.

The local paper covers national and international headlines on 1/4 page, but requires 6 pages for sports.

At least twice a year, the kitchen doubles as a meat processing plant.

The most effective mosquito repellent is a shotgun.

Your snowblower gets stuck on the roof.

You think the start of moose season is a national holiday.

You head south to go to your cottage.

You frequently clean grease off your barbeque so the bears won’t prowl on your deck.

You know which leaves make good toilet paper.

The major parish fund-raiser isn’t bingo – it’s sausage making.

You find -40C a little chilly.

The trunk of your car doubles as a deep freezer.

You attend a formal event in your best clothes, your finest jewelry and your Sorels.

You can play road hockey on skates.

You know 4 seasons – Winter, Still Winter, almost Winter and Construction.

The municipality buys a Zamboni before a bus.

You actually get these jokes and forward them to all your Northern friends.

And, finally, for those of you from elsewhere who have a hard time telling Australians, Brits, Canadans, and USAmericans apart, here’s a primer:

Aussies: Dislike being mistaken for Pommies (Brits) when abroad.

Canadians: Are rather indignant about being mistaken for Americans when abroad.

Americans: Encourage being mistaken for Canadians when abroad.

Brits: Can’t possibly be mistaken for anyone else when abroad.

Aussies: Believe you should look out for your mates.

Brits: Believe that you should look out for those people who belong to your club.

Americans: Believe that people should look out for & take care of themselves.

Canadians: Believe that that’s the government’s job.

Aussies: Are extremely patriotic to their beer.

Americans: Are flag-waving, anthem-singing, and obsessively patriotic to the point of blindness.

Canadians: Can’t agree on the words to their anthem, when they can be bothered to sing them.

Brits: Do not sing at all but prefer a large brass band to perform the anthem.

Americans: Spend most of their lives glued to the idiot box.

Canadians: Don’t, but only because they can’t get more American channels.

Brits: Pay a tax just so they can watch four channels.

Aussies: Export all their crappy programs, which no-one there watches, to Britain, where everybody loves them.

Americans: Will jabber on incessantly about football, baseball, and basketball.

Brits: Will jabber on incessantly about cricket, soccer, and rugby.

Canadians: Will jabber on incessantly about hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, and how they beat the Americans twice, playing baseball.

Aussies: Will jabber on incessantly about how they beat the Poms in every sport they play them in.

Americans: Spell words differently, but still call it “English”.

Brits: Pronounce their words differently, but still call it “English”.

Canadians: Spell like the Brits, pronounce like Americans.

Aussies: Add “G’day”, “mate” and a heavy accent to everything they say in an attempt to be cool.

Brits: Shop at home and have goods imported because they live on an island.

Aussies: Shop at home and have goods imported because they live on an island.

Americans: Cross the southern border for cheap shopping, gas, & liquor in a backwards country.

Canadians: Cross the southern border for cheap shopping, gas, & liquor in a backwards country.

Americans: Drink weak, bad-tasting beer.

Canadians: Drink strong, bad-tasting beer.

Brits: Drink warm, bad-tasting beer.

Aussies: Drink anything with alcohol in it.

Americans: Seem to think that poverty & failure are morally suspect.

Canadians: Seem to believe that wealth and success are morally suspect.

Brits: Seem to believe that wealth, poverty, success and failure are inherited things.

Aussies: Seem to think that none of this matters after several beers.

Happy End of The Canuckistan Olympics, everyone!

And — you may now go back to loving San Francisco best of all the West Coast cities.

Tags: Canada, humor, Olympics

Winston (Kamal Angelo Bolden) and John (LaShawn Banks) in Athol Fugard's The Island, Remy Bumppo Theater

Last night I took a stroll up to a performance by my favorite theater company. Remy Bumppo was presenting Athol Fugard’s The Island and I was looking forward to a good production and one of Remy’s interesting post-play discussions. It was all of that but so much more – and it got me thinking about what we so often miss in our politics and activism. For Fugard – and this particular production – raises important political issues but he also reminds us of simple humanity. For all that is moving about this tale of Robben Island and oppression and apartheid – and the power of art in the face of that oppression,  at the core, The Island breaks through our intellectualized distance, our rhetorical sympathy and asks us to see the two men themselves, not only as symbol but as just simply real.

One of the actors, LeShawn Banks, said after the play that we in America often hold the world at arms length, at a distance, that we are able to do that, are protected by that and yet so many in this world have no such distance from suffering.

And so I walked home thinking about just that. And about the ways we distance ourselves even in the midst of our engagement with political issues and progressive movements.

We abstract, analyse, argue so well but how very hard it is, sitting in our land of privilege (even when times are “tough”) to really feel what so many of our brothers and sisters in humanity live – so often as the direct consequence of our country’s very inhuman drive for control or wealth or power.

So rather than pick apart yet another set of examples of our government’s wars, I hope we can take some time to pause and recognize the oh so human reality of those who live with the repercussions: Christian families being terrorized in Mosul, the mother of a child killed in Afghanistan or the Palestinian father whose child is arrested and tortured by Israeli troops.

If you are in Chicago, there’s still one more week to see The Island at Remy. If not, what reconnects you to the humanity behind the rhetoric?

Tags: Afghanistan, Athol Fugard, Chicago theater, Gaza, Remy Bumppo, The Island, theater, Torture

image courtesy of lumaxart (flickr)

Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student loan company, is fighting to defeat President Obama’s plan to cut subsidies to private lenders of student loans. Currently, private lenders get all kinds of government subsidies, and Sallie Mae wants them all, even if it means less money for Pell Grants for our kids. To help us understand what’s at stake, I’ve been reading their SEC filings.

Sallie Mae (ticker symbol SLM) is a giant finance company. It borrows money from banks and investors, and gets more from its wholly-owned bank, and lends it to students at public and private schools at fixed interest rates. Much of its borrowing bears interest at floating rates, and some of the money it borrows is from overseas, in Euros, for example. It hedges the risk of floating rates and currency fluctuations with derivatives, primarily interest rate swaps and currency swaps.

SLM makes money in two ways: a) it profits if the total interest it pays to borrow money is less than the total interest it gets from the loans it makes to students; and b) it earns servicing fees on loans it has made and for servicing loans other companies make. In its most recent 10-K covering the year 2008, Sallie Mae says it is the nation’s largest servicer of student loans. P.6.

This .pdf document shows on lines 4-24 the income statement for the full year 2009 from SLM’s Earnings Release. SLM doesn’t report its earnings for its servicing business separately from its loan business. Making it even harder to understand, it classifies a remarkably large amount of revenue as “Other” (line 23 on the .pdf), which includes income that is attributable to the loan portfolio and to servicing income (10-K, Note 14, P. F-73). I have allocated “Other”, in part by annualizing the results on the 9/30/09 10-Q, showing my work on the .pdf.

Surprisingly, servicing income for 2009 is about $266 million greater than income from the loan portfolio. One big reason is losses from derivatives and hedging of its borrowings, $604.5 million in 2009 (line 19). That loss exceeds its net interest income after provision for loan losses of $603.8 million (line 15). Unimpressive.

It is easy to see the nature of the loan business in the financial statements. SLM borrows from a number of sources, including banks, the federal government, foreign lenders, and the shadow banking system. 10-K, P. F-44. A large part of its loans have been transferred to securitized asset trusts. SLM consolidates a number of these trusts on its own financial statements, despite the sale. The rest probably will be consolidated going forward. 10-Q, Note 1, P. 7-8.

The goal of the loan business is to lend at a higher rate than the rate it pays to borrow. That proved to be a serious problem, beginning in 2008. Its sources of borrowing were drying up, and SLM was in trouble. It was saved by the federal government, which created several programs to help student loan companies, as part of the TARP bailout and under a separate law, the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act. 10-Q P. 113 et seq.

Even so, there are problems with the business model of Sallie Mae. An S&P research report estimates that in 2010, SLM will have an interest rate spread, the difference between the rate at which it borrows and the rate at which it lends, of 1.6%, before expenses. That is higher than 2009, which will help profits. But, in order to protect itself, the company will have to continue its practice of hedging and use of swaps. The only way it can grow this part of the business is to make more loans. That will not be easy in this environment. Fitch downgraded the stock last September, citing problems with the company’s business model.

The company hasn’t paid a dividend since 2007, and hasn’t bought back its stock. In fact, it lost $2 billion trying to hedge the price of its own stock for repurchase. 10-K, P. F-64-5.

With profitability in question, and concerns about its business model, and no money for shareholders, why does SLM want to stay in this business? The answer is cash flow. At the end of 2009, the company had total loans on its books of about $144 billion. This number, and the interest income flow that it creates, justifies the outlandish salaries paid to its management. With all that money sloshing around, there is plenty for the massive lobbying effort.

No wonder SLM is resisting the effort to cut back its subsidies. How will its President, Al Lord, be able to afford clubs for his new golf course if he all he has is the profitable but boring and low-margin servicing business?

Tags: financial industry, sallie mae, sec filings, student loans

I was watching The Daily Show on Hulu recently, catching up, and saw the segment above where Jon Stewart expertly documents yet another Democrat snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Stewart seems outraged, as well as genuinely surprised, which he might not be if he had read the excellent Greenwald piece on the Democratic party and its strategy of rotating villains. However, when I watched this play out in video clips for the umpteenth time, it suddenly occurred to me (and I’m ashamed it hadn’t until now):

The Democratic Party is a Pro-Wrestling Federation.

Now, hear me out. Professional Wrestling is often misunderstood as being a ‘fake sport’, when in reality it’s a long running soap opera with most of the parts played by professional stuntmen. As such, it is an essentially static form of entertainment, where the same Manichean, Good vs. Evil, black and white struggle plays out, week after week, year after year. This is essential; delivering a consistent product brings in the advertisers (in both politics and wrestling, this means large corporations), who are buying a known quantity.

At the same time, in order to keep its audience, wrestling has to present the illusion of dynamism, or ‘change’ in the present parlance. Nobody wants to watch the exact same story all the time. So wrestling takes this static product and dresses it up in the paegentry of conflict, with most actors playing a rotating series of Good or Evil roles; in Wrestling terms, most wrestlers alternate between heroes (Faces) and villains (Heels).

So last week, what we saw with Senator Rockefeller, blatantly flip-flopping on his passionately stated (staged) support of the Public Option by refusing to pass it using reconciliation, that wasn’t a betrayal of the voters (audience), or of his principles; it was what is known to Wrestling fans as a ‘Face Heel Turn‘.

The only thing missing was a folding chair to the back of the Public Option’s skull.

Likewise, when Senator Lieberman came out as the (apparrently self-designated) front-man on repealing DADT, he was executing a perfect ‘Heel Face Turn’. Now he’s a Face, at least on this issue, and will fill that role. (Unfortunately for Joementum, he’s a natural Heel, and is particularly unconvincing in the Face role, but hey, you go to pay per view (election years) with the cast you have, not the cast you might want or wish to have)

As with all models, the Democratic Party as WWE model, to be useful, should allow us to make some predictions about the real world:

The Powerless Chairman (or President)

(I’ll betray my teenage’d self’s preference for the WWF with this passage, if any wrestling fans read this)

In Wrestling as in the Democratic Party, someone has to be the Boss. In both cases, the Boss is an odd figure: extremely powerful, but almost entirely unable to get results. For some reason, despite the audience (voters) being constantly reminded of the importance, power and prestige of the Boss figure, his will rarely translates into reality. Sometimes the Boss (Vince McMahon for a handy example) plays a Heel, sometimes a Face, but in either case, oddly, their power is dependent on the ‘unpredictable’ actions of their employees. A number of reasons could be posited, ranging from populist appeals (hah, look at the rich man losing again), to structural (if the Boss just fired a wrestler he didn’t like, it would endanger the suspension of disbelief).

As we’ve seen over the last year, this is no less true in the Democratic Party than in the WWE. President Obama, despite having an enormous bully pulpit, and control over both chambers of Congress, was strangely paralyzed all year. One Heel after another after another took their turn dashing his agenda; Baucus, Nelson, Lieberman, Reid, now figures like Rockefeller are getting their star turn as heels. As in wrestling, where it never occurs to Vince McMahon that, no, he doesn’t have to get in the ring with a huge steroidal hulk, President Obama seems to have never considered bringing the weight of the DNC down on a single solitary bad actor. Nor has he used the President’s natural bully pulpit, or the overwhelming level of public support for, say, the Public Option, to get what he supposedly wanted.

Prediction: More of the same will follow, on every major issue. We should be treated to a regular calvacade of Face Heel Turns over the coming year, as one lone Democrat after another after another plays spoiler to our Designated Hero and his agenda. Likewise, no actual price will be paid by any of these Heels. If there are changes, they’ll be in areas that are unthreatening to the sponsors and thus don’t affect the corporate cash flow (even more important in our post-Citizens United world). So, a repeal of DADT is entirely possible (why should GE care?), but you might as well give up now on meaningful climate reform. Obama’s stated agenda is merely the broad outline for a script of regular Face Heel Turns.

The Ringside Commentators

Wrestling just wouldn’t be the same without its commentary. From the side of the ring, much like in real sports, you get live expert analysis, background information and speculation, which helps to fill in any gaps in the viewer’s (voter’s) knowledge of the storyline, as well as tell people who to root for and who to root against generally.

Of course, it’s all ultimately fake. The commentators are in on it, their ’surprise’ at shocking plot twists faked, and they can be relied upon not to call attention to anything that might undermine the show.

Democratic politics is precisely the same. This handily explains why groups like NARAL and Parenthood fail to mobilize their members against actual threats to choice, or why liberal economic groups fail to campaign against the excesses of Geithner’s buddies on Wall Street. That’s not in the script! Bart Stupak was slated for his star turn as a Heel ruining the House bill, and Geitner’s been designated as a Face in the banking crisis (another questionable bit of casting). The ringside guys aren’t going to say anything against the narrative, anymore than their wrestling counterparts would tell you that one of the wrestlers just palmed a razor blade so he could make a tiny cut in his forehead to get some real blood. It’s not going to happen.

Prediction: More of the same. Expect Heels turned Faces like Joe Lieberman to be praised from the rooftops by members of the Veal Pen for their sudden good will, while Heels are condemned in ways precisely calibrated to have no impact on their reelection prospects or power.

The Republicans Are On Another Network

If the Democrats are a wrestling federation, then who are the Republicans? Well, they are too; they’re just a less popular troupe, aimed at a different audience, on another network.

They still follow the same formula, but they’re geared toward different viewers. Their Faces might resemble our Heels, in terms of the way they act, but the party works much the same way. Republican voters elect their Faces to drown government in the bathtub, put gays back in the closet, what have you, only to see them pull Face Heel Turns at crunch time, enacting their real priorities like big corporate tax cuts. Then they can run against each other, with noble arch-conservative Faces forcing the ‘moderate’ Heels to see the light in time for an election, lather, rinse, repeat. You get the idea.

Prediction: If the Democratic spectacle keeps losing ratings, the Republican brand might attract enough viewers to make crossover specials between the two groups (bipartisanship) more workable. In that case, both sides will play the centrists in their own party as Heels who are sadly forcing them to compromise on, well, pretty much exactly the most lucrative middle ground for their shared pool of sponsors. This lets them build up Faces in their own parties with what they think is an appearance of credibility.

My Conclusion: Unless the Democratic Wrestling Federation wants to see a lot of viewers jump ship to their rival, they’d better realize they have a serious surplus of Heels and not enough Faces. There’s no drama if the ‘good guys’ always lose.

Cross-posted from my personal blog which is of little interest to anyone.

[Welcome Moshe Adler, and Host Max Fraad Wolff.] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book.  Please take other conversations to a previous thread.  - bev]

Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal

Moshe Adler’s Economics for the Rest of Us is a strong introduction to the core conceits and theories of modern economics. The book takes readers on a well written tour of leading thoughts on key topics of perennial concern. Employment, equality, efficiency, wages are thrown around moving minds and legislation. As we struggle with high unemployment, stagnant wages and international competition, these issues must be understood. I would recommend this work as a intellectually curious guide to thinking about vital issues and the discipline of economics. It is valuable to have a fast, smooth run through of these topics. The interplay between the field of economics and the economy is a long ignored and vital discussion.

As an economist, it was a pleasure to read through Economics for the Rest of Us and see the material presented in a user friendly format that encourages debate and social analysis.

Tags: Economic Efficiency, economics, Economics for the Rest of Us, Efficiency Wages, Executive Compensation, income inequality, Max Fraad Wolff, minimum wage, Moshe Adler, Redistributing Goods, Role of Government, Theories of Wages, Unemployment

As we learned in an SJC hearing last summer (where this exchange took place), in addition to giving Jay Bybee and John Yoo two opportunities to respond to the OPR report, DOJ also let CIA review the report. That’s why I was so interested to see details of a John Rizzo letter (dated October 5, 2009) cited heavily in the second Yoo [pdf] and Bybee [pdf] responses.

In this post, I will reconstruct the letter, to the extent possible, to show what John Rizzo has to say for himself. I laid out the raw mentions of Rizzo’s letter in this working thread. Here, I just put those raw mentions in the paragraph order in which they appear in Rizzo’s letter.

[Paragraph 1] “CIA did not ask OLC to provide an exhaustive memorandum that thoroughly discussed all possible counter arguments,” but rather sought “OLC’s best judgment about the correct answer to a difficult question of law.” Rizzo was “aware that the issues were uncertain and that there were no controlling precedents.” “When [Rizzo] asked for OLC’s views, [his] overriding objective was to secure a definitive opinion on an expedited basis.”

[Paragraph 2] Rizzo “had substantial personal involvement in the process.” The “OLC lawyers worked diligently on the issues, raised questions, sought out relevant factual information, and solicited input from a number of Executive Branch lawyers.” OLC “did not simply ‘rubber stamp’ everything the CIA was considering.” [almost certainly with a reference to mock burial]

[Paragraph 3] “All of the Executive Branch lawyers involved in reviewing the issues were satisfied that the memos reasonably concluded that the techniques at issue would not constitute torture.” Rizzo confirmed that Bellinger “did not express reservations about the conclusions set forth in the memos” and “was firmly on board with OLC’s assessment that the techniques at issue did not meet the restrictive definition of torture set forth in the statute.” Rizzo was “principally concerned with the conclusions in the Classified Bybee Memo”

[Paragraph 4] Rizzo believes that ”the memos adequately informed [him] about the relevant risks and provided [him] with the information that [he] needed to advise the CIA.” The Levin Memo “did not fundamentally alter” his “understanding of the” ”application of the statute to the enhanced interrogation techniques” and “did not change the answer” to the question of legality.

[Paragraph 5] Once Rizzo was “advised that the Criminal Division would not issue an advance declination of prosecution, [he] did not pursue the issue any further.” Rizzo confirmed that he never interpreted the Bybee Memo to immunize interrogators so long as they had a motive to obtain information, did not cause organ failure, acted pursuant to the Commander-in-Chief power, or asserted a common law defense. “[I] did not interpret the 2002 Bybee Memos to mean … that the interrogators would be immune from prosecution if they cross the careful lines drawn in the [Classified Bybee Memo].” Rizzo “interpreted the Commander-in-Chief section to refer to interrogations personally ordered by the President but [he] did not view it as a form of ‘immunity”.” In advising the CIA, Rizzo “relied on the analysis and limitations set forth in the [C]lassified Bybee Memo because it specifically addressed the application of the statute to the proposed conduct”

[Paragraph 6] Rizzo concluded that he was “satisfied” that Judge Bybee “met the standard of care.”

Something that doesn’t appear to be in Rizzo’s letter, though appears in the Report (though it is redacted–Bybee quotes it from the report in his response) is Rizzo’s claim that he didn’t think he had to go back and get each new torture program approved.

Rizzo’s recollection that neither Bellinger nor Yoo expected him to brief OLC “on every new variation or technique that comes up,” Report at 233,

Rizzo’s letter is nothing radical: it’s John Rizzo writing a letter that Yoo and Bybee could use to buttress their claim that “their client” (I’ll come back to this in a later post) knew how to use the memos. Rizzo claimed that he stopped asking for an advance declination after he was told no, that he did not view the Bybee One memo as a Get Out of Jail Free card, and that he focused primarily on the Bybee Two memo laying out specific techniques. If you ignore the statement Rizzo apparently made directly to OPR–that he felt free to approve torture that varied from the descriptions included in the Bybee Two memo–bthen it goes some way to rebut all the evidence that Yoo and Bybee oversaw the writing of a Get Out of Jail Free card.

But in addition to that conflict, this letter crystallizes another question I’ve got about the CIA’s involvement.

The OPR report says that CIA wanted an advance declination from the very first discussions of the Bybee Memos–so as early as April 11, 2002. The report even suggests (though Rizzo denies it) that Rizzo brought a draft advance declination to a meeting in that timeframe. Chertoff refused the advance declination in a meeting on July 13 and after that directed Yoo to write CIA a letter informing them of that refusal (Yoo drafted it a few days later but never sent it). On July 16, Addington appears to have instructed Yoo to include the Commander in Chief and affirmative defense sections to accomplish the same purpose. On July 24, Yoo gave Rizzo oral approval to use attention grasp, walling, facial hold, cramped confinement, and wall standing. It wasn’t until July 26, when OLC was giving oral approval for waterboarding (but not, because it would take too much time, mock burial) that CIA first asked for written approval for specific torture techniques.

Particularly given Rizzo’s claim that he was primarily interested in the Bybee Two memo, purportedly a document placing strict limits on torture, even though Rizzo admitted to OPR that he felt free to free-lance from there, why did CIA wait until after almost two weeks Chertoff refused to give CIA an advance declination until they even asked for the Bybee Two memo?

In other words, John Rizzo writes a nice fairy tale in his letter for Yoo and Bybee. But his story appears not to correlate with his actions on the memos at all.

I wondered in January if Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a/k/a Abu Dujaanah al-Khorasani, the al-Qaeda double agent who killed seven CIA & Blackwater operatives at FOB Chapman in Khost Province, was tortured by the Jordanians during his crucial moment in their custody in early 2009. According to a new as-Sahab “martyrdom” video of Khorasani — basically his last propaganda testament before the December attack — probably not.

Evan Kohlmann translated the video and emailed his findings to reporters. (Thanks, Evan.) Here’s how the doctor, extremist-web-forum enthusiast and soon-to-be-murderer describes his experience in a Jordanian prison:

In truth, it all began with the Jordanian security organs entering my house at 11:30. They came and knocked at the door of my house. My wife came to me terrified, and told me, “There are police outside.” I knew that the moment of arrest had arrived. They came in, searched the house, confiscated my computer, and arrested me. The arrest warrant had written on it “Possession of prohibited materials,” which is a lie. They always lie and use this or any other allegation to arrest a Muslim. So they arrested me and sent me to Wadi as Sir, to the intelligence bureau there. I swear by Allah, the only thing that I was worried about was that I was in contact with the brothers through the forums, and I was afraid that Muslim brothers – my beloved Mujahideen – would be attacked from my flank. This is what I was concerned about, but – all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds – this didn’t happen, because Allah blinded their sights. They could have gotten their hands on some extremely valuable information about Jihadi work, but Allah decreed something else. After they arrested and interrogated me, especially during the second night, I sat and prayed to Allah. No human power can prevent a slave from calling on his Lord. So I sat and prayed to Allah to deliver me and protect the Mujahideen from any danger which might emanate from me, and I prayed that I not cause harm to any Muslim. I prayed to Allah thus: “O Lord, I would rather die in my cell than be a cause of harm to any Muslim.” So all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds: the intelligence officer – whose name was Abu Zaid [Ali bin Zaid], and who works with Abu Faisal in the Counter-Terrorism Division – was an idiot, and Allah made His plotting manifest itself by way of this idiot, who asked me to work with the security organs in spying on the Mujahideen in Waziristan and Afghanistan. So this step began with this proposal. They proposed that I go to Waziristan and Afghanistan to spy on Muslims. But the amazing thing which I could hardly believe is that I had been trying to mobilize to Jihad in Allah’s path but had been unsuccessful, then this idiotic man comes along and proposes that I go to the fields of Jihad. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds: it was a dream come true!

At a separate point in the interview, Balawi/Khorosani describes himself as “a broken prisoner in the prison of Jordanian intelligence,” but that’s it, along with the oblique reference to his “second night” of interrogation. Frankly, it’s a bit surprising that he didn’t even claim to be tortured. The point of the video is to deride and humiliate the capabilities of Jordanian intelligence, which Balawi/Khorosani successfully manipulated into believing he was going to penetrate al-Qaeda in Waziristan. He gives very detailed information — I have no idea whether it’s true — about the layout of the offices of the Jordanian intelligence apparatus, and calls it a “hired dog” of the CIA. This is how he describes his handler, Abu Zaid:

Abu Zaid used to say to me in his letters, all of which I still have with me, “You’ve lifted our heads! You’ve lifted our heads in front of the Americans.” Allah is the Greatest! I swear by Allah the Magnificent, everyone who works in Jordanian intelligence, even their cooks and drivers…everyone who works in Jordanian intelligence, even if he works in the garden or carwash, is an apostate from Allah’s religion [I'm not going to quote this next part, which is mere incitement]. These are the hired dogs.

And still he doesn’t call them torturers.

One last thing. Balawi traces the road that led him to become “Khorosani.” For instance: “My trip with Jihad began a few years ago, after the American invasion of Iraq. I made many attempts to join the Jihad in Iraq, but Allah decreed something else for me.” So he becomes basically a top commenter on the extremist forums. Then, during the Gaza invasion he sees an al-Jazeera report not just about the deaths of civilians in Gaza but featuring “the daughters of Zion… watching Gaza as it was being bombed by F-16 fighter jets. They were using binoculars and watching the Muslims get killed, and it was as if they were just observing some natural phenomenon.” Then he writes an impassioned blog post and the Jordanians pick him up fairly soon after.

The matrix of sick motivations that leads a professional man — not the wretched of the earth, but a doctor — to become a murderer is a complex one. But neither the Iraq war nor the Gaza war was a necessary war for either America or Israel. If neither had taken place, seven CIA and Blackwater operatives would still be alive, and al-Qaeda could not claim this propaganda success.

Would you pay $133 for this haircut?

“First Senator from the Tea Party” Marco Rubio got hammered last week when it came out that he ran up large personal expenses on the Florida GOP’s credit card — and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio admitted Friday that he double-billed state taxpayers and the Republican Party of Florida for eight plane tickets when he was speaker of the Florida House. Calling the billing “a mistake,” Rubio said in a written statement that he will personally repay the party about $3,000 to cover the flights because the trips in 2007 were for state business, not politics.

And Rubio still isn’t coming clean.

His campaign said Friday it had not identified any additional expenses that need to be repaid. The credit card records, however, indicate that at least some of Rubio’s personal expenses were covered by the party. [...] Rubio’s campaign would not provide a list of all the personal expenses he repaid.

And here’s why. One tidbit that has emerged is that Rubio spends an embarassing amount of money on his hair.

Needless to say, Charlie Crist is having a lot of fun with that.

“What’s up with getting a $133 haircut? What is he a model? I don’t understand this kind of behavior and this is the guy that says he is going to spend less money? I spend $11 on a haircut,” said Crist.

George Will praised Rubio for his “spending restraint.” Guess that didn’t apply to his hair care.

Tags: Marco Rubio, Republican Hypocrisy, Tea Party, teabaggers, US Senate, Winguttia

Without better regulation, it's all just an expensive game. (photo: tamaki via Flickr)

President Obama recently called for specific changes to regulation of the finance business. One of these proposals is an especially good idea.

The President also announced a new proposal to limit the consolidation of our financial sector. The President’s proposal will place broader limits on the excessive growth of the market share of liabilities at the largest financial firms, to supplement existing caps on the market share of deposits.

There doesn’t seem to be a written proposal. The New York Times reported the following:

The administration wants to expand that cap to include all liabilities, to limit the concentration of too much risk in any single bank. Officials said the measure would prevent banks at or near the threshold from making acquisitions but would not require them to shrink their business or stop growing on their own.

The Obama administration said the new proposals were in the “spirit of Glass-Steagall” — a reference to the Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banking, which was repealed in 1999.

The anonymous administration person betrays a fundamental ignorance of Glass-Steagall. As the NYT reporters indicate, it didn’t have anything to do with concentration. It simply barred commercial banks from engaging in investment banking. Concentration is an anti-trust issue. However, an aggressive form of the President’s proposal should help control the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the finance business again.

Fortunately, one of the smartest Republicans, Senator Bob Corker of my home state, realizes that financial regulation is a non-partisan issue, and is working with Senator Dodd. Good financial regulation rationalizes markets, raises the opportunity cost of fraud, and gives the taxpayers some hope that they won’t be called on to bail out banks in another crisis. Senator Corker is trying to find enough common ground to move something forward. I hope he and others will recognize the value of the President’s proposal.

This stuff is complicated, and requires explanation. Here are the bullet points.

1. There is a problem of concentration in swaps dealings.
2. Trading in swaps isn’t like a real market.
3. Risk management for swaps is problematic.
4. Crucial aspects of swaps trading cannot be captured in models.
5. Counterparty risk cannot be calculated accurately.
6. There is no evidence that benefits of swaps exceed their costs.
7. How would it actually work?

I’ve written about all these things in earlier posts and will take them up again. For now, here are short takes on 2 and 7.

2. Trading in swaps isn’t like a real market.

Let’s start with credit default swaps. Theoretically, CDS players try to maintain balanced books. Suppose JPMorgan agrees to sell protection on a specified reference entity. To balance its book of CDSs, it must either sell the CDS or buy protection from another player. AIG failed to balance its book, and we know how that turned out. JPMorgan claims that it has a reasonably balanced book.

There isn’t anyone who needs to be a protection seller. Each time JPMorgan becomes a party to a new CDS, it has to engage in active selling, either to sell its CDS or to persuade someone else to sell it protection, in which case, the problem moves to that seller.

The British Financial Services Authority did a study of the retail side of Lehman Brothers swaps. It found that 46% of 157 cases involved unsuitable advice. There are plenty of similar cases of “unsuitable advice” in the US, although I am not aware of a similar study. Some people might use a tougher term than “unsuitable advice”.

The same thing is true for interest rate swaps. The big difference is that actual banks, as opposed to Goldman Sachs, have huge loan portfolios, so some interest rate swaps might balance their own loan portfolios.

This isn’t how real markets work. People aren’t talked into buying bread or TVs. When they do buy, they shop. They don’t wait for their grocer to “put them into” chicken thighs, the way brokers “put their customers” into ETFs or BBB corporate bonds. This is a business that only exists if traders can talk someone else into being a counterparty.

7. How would it actually work?

For this purpose, banks are i) bank holding companies under current law, and ii) finance businesses which would be considered too big to fail under proposed law. Initially, banks would be limited to the amount of swaps and related derivatives (those listed in the OCC reports) that they currently have. Each quarter they would be required to reduce their holdings by a specified amount. Banks insist that there is a real market. Therefore, we can expect that other buyers and sellers will take up the slack. The level of exposure would be reduced over time so that no bank would have more than 5% of the outstanding notional values of any of the various swaps.

President Obama thinks that a good idea is a good idea, regardless of who comes up with it. I hope Senator Corker and some of the other smart Republicans see the wisdom of this theory.

Tags: Corker, credit-default swaps, Dodd, financial regulation, Glass Steagall, markets, New York Times, Obama

In the late 1930s, Depression-weary Americans turned to a movie (based upon the James Hilton novel), Lost Horizon, about a hidden Himalayan paradise, Shangri-La. In the 2000s, anxious Americans turned to Lost, a sophisticated sci-fi mystery television show set on a hidden island. As Lost’s Mr. Eko warns, we shouldn’t mistake coincidence for fate. Still…

There’s more than escapism to the popularity of Lost and Lost Horizon. Both stories call upon the yearning for freedom and for solidarity among a people challenged by divisive circumstances and their own irascibility. Freedom and solidarity aren’t idle fantasies. America was founded upon their possibility.

Storytellers have long understood that character is best revealed in crisis. Just think of the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad and Odyssey. Our contemporary economic, political and environmental crises are producing just such character-revealing moments. Conservatives want to turn back the clock to some imagined paradisiacal past. Progressives want to do what their name implies, move onward through the fog.

This tug-of-war in time has always been a part of our culture, if not every culture. It is certainly represented in both Lost and Lost Horizon. Both tales are marked by conflict between characters who want to press forward and those who want to go backward.

In recent decades, the backward-tugging team is winning. The rise of the Right has pulled the nation further and further from its true horizon. Fear, retrenchment and retreat have weakened the promise of popular democracy, of freedom and empathic solidarity.

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama seemed to understand and speak to a hopeful, yearning, forward-looking spirit. He was Robert Conway, the optimistic seeker of Lost Horizon. John McCain was like Conway’s brother, George, whose fear made him want to return to the past, for a yesterday he at least could understand. George persuades Robert to leave, with tragic consequences. While I hate to say it, the Republicans appear to be turning Obama away from the future as well. At the end of Lost Horizon, Robert Conway heads again for Shangri-La. We’ll have to wait and see what Obama does.

Looking at political realities through popular cultural narratives can often tell us more about ourselves than dry analyses can. Lost deserves a look in this regard, though the series is far more than a simple political parable.

Lost is in its sixth and final season. The story does, of course, draw upon Lost Horizon and many, many other movies and films. Plane crashes land the heroes of both stories in their strange new worlds. However, their respective presences in Tibet and on the mysterious island are not accidental. Others manipulated their arrivals. The unnamed island of Lost is no paradise. It is home, though, to the odd Dharma Initiative, a Buddhist name for a distinctly Western,  scientific experiment whose participants live odd, Stepford-Families-On-An-Army base lives.

Despite its presence in Tibet, Shangri-La is peculiarly Western, too. A French priest, not a Buddhist monk, founded it. Fellows named Chang introduce newcomers to the lost worlds in both Lost and Lost Horizon. Both Shangri-La and the island of Lost seem to have magic healing powers. Shangri-La is based on the legendary lost Tibetan paradise of Shambhala. Unsurprisingly, a popular song from the 70s, “Shambala,” accompanies a wonderful moment in Lost’s third season that celebrates hope, freedom and solidarity (See the clip above).

At the heart of Lost are familiar themes. A diverse and all-too-human group of people find themselves in a strange new world. They struggle to survive. They struggle with one another. They find love and lose it, too. Despite constant references to the battle between good and evil, just who or what is good or evil remains ambiguous, at least for now.

The allusions, narrative switchbacks and time displacements of Lost make it one of the most complex and puzzling shows ever to air on network television. The mysteries and head-scratching enigmas are fun — and intellectually stimulating –  for fans. Complexity itself seems a central character. In fact, one could speculate that at the core of Lost lies the question, “Can love survive in a complex world?”

Damn good question.

Lost worlds like Plato’s Atlantis or Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island focus human drama and perhaps wring it dry, leaving either utopia or hell in place of everyday life. Sometimes, though, humanity proves more than either heaven or hell can bear.  When we tell each other our dream-stories from such transformative times and places, we may be indulging in fantasy. But we should look to these stories for clues and maybe even solutions to our real predicaments.

“Did you ever go to a totally strange place and feel certain that you’d been there before?” Robert Conway asks in Lost Horizon. Every great story makes that odd feeling rise in our hearts. Freedom feels like home.

Our popular culture is full of tales of hope and liberation. We dream of communion, cooperation and individual fulfillment. If we can dream it, we can achieve it, if only we  will heed our stories of horizons lost — and found.

Tags: Barack Obama, James Hilton, Lost, Lost Horizon

photo: woodleywonderworks via Flickr

[Ed. note: This is the first in a series of articles about mortgage modification programs. If you or someone you know needs help, the Obama Administration has a website with more information about home mortgage refinancing options at www.MakingHomeAffordable.gov.]

Earlier this month the bankruptcy courts of the Second Circuit here in New York put on an incredibly informative seminar called “The Intersection of the Bankruptcy Loss Mitigation Program with HAMP/HARP.”  It was presented for the education of bankruptcy practitioners and lawyers who represent consumers. It featured bankruptcy judges from the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, a senior manager for Government Programs and New Initiatives for Fannie Mae (the Home Affordable Modification Program and the Home Affordable Refinance Program being “new initiatives”), a VP/Deputy General Counsel for Fannie Mae, and the Director of Foreclosure Prevention at Brooklyn Legal Services.

For those folks living in New York state, the best news is that a version of this same program was presented two weeks earlier to both bankruptcy court judges AND NYS judges who will be staffing the mortgage foreclosure parts. The program was live streamed into the courthouses, so nobody had to miss it.

The Bankruptcy Loss Mitigation Program was begun in the Southern District of New York in 2008 and was adopted in the Eastern District of New York in late 2009.

In the current economy, home foreclosures often yield a loss-loss situation for homeowners and lenders. One bankruptcy court has launched an innovative program that tries to help both sides avoid such mutual dissatisfaction.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York offers “loss mitigation”—a program that encourages debtors who have filed for bankruptcy protection and their secured creditors to sit down and discuss ways foreclosure might be averted.

“The Bankruptcy Code does not allow me to rewrite a residential mortgage,” said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia Morris, the program’s primary architect. “But it does allow me to say to both sides that they need to talk, in the hope that they may avert either the loss of a debtor’s property to foreclosure, increased costs to the lender, or both.”

The New York State Residential Foreclosure Program also provides for a process to force lenders to the bargaining table.

Eligibility
In an effort to streamline the process for homeowners in danger of foreclosure, the court has established a Residential Foreclosure Program. Homeowners are eligible to participate in this program if the subject property meets all of the following criteria:

• It is an owner-occupied residence.
• It is a one-to-four family dwelling.
• The mortgage in question was originated between
January 1, 2003 and September 1, 2008.
• The mortgage is a sub-prime, non-traditional, or high-cost loan.

Settlement Conferences
If you meet the above criteria, a Foreclosure Settlement Conference is mandatory provided the case was commenced on or after September 1, 2008. If your case was commenced before September 1, 2008, you may still participate on a voluntary basis. The plaintiff is required to identify eligible cases and provide your contact information when filing them with the court. The court will then schedule the conference within 60 days after you have been served with court papers. Please be aware that the court conference does not relieve you of your obligation to respond to the plaintiff’s papers in a timely manner. If you come to the conference without an attorney, you may be entitled to a court-appointed lawyer.

At the conference, the court will:
• discuss the rights and obligations of the parties
• determine whether the parties can reach a resolution to avoid foreclosure
• evaluate workout/settlement options such as payment schedules or loan modifications
• design a plan to streamline subsequent court proceedings if a settlement cannot be reached

There was such an enormous volume of information and insights provided at this seminar that it will take me many blog posts to arrange it all and add in the links to augment. Expect to see many more posts on this topic. And for those of you outside NYS, bankruptcy is a matter of federal law. What happens in a bankruptcy case in NY can be relevant to what happens in your own state.

It was most encouraging to find that the judges appear to be disinclined to let lenders run roughshod over homeowners and are finding new and creative solutions to allow homeowners to bargain with creditors to modify their loans. At the same time, Fannie and Freddie have a stated purpose to help homeowners modify their loans and keep their houses. Whether all those noble aspirations will translate into real relief for homeowners remains to be seen—the system has a long way to go, which I will discuss I future posts; but at the very least, the plight of homeowners has not fallen on deaf ears in the courts.

Please stay tuned, there’s more to come…

Tags: bankruptcy, Bankruptcy Loss Mitigation Program, Fannie Mae, foreclosure, Freddie Mac, HAMP, HARP, homeowners, judicial, legal, loan modifications, MakingHomeAffordable.gov, mortgage crisis, mortgage modification, mortgages

One of the defenses that John Yoo [pdf] and Jay Bybee [pdf] made in response to the Office of Professional Responsibility [OPR] Report with which I’m sympathetic is the argument that, if they are going to be held accountable, so should all the other Executive Branch lawyers who approved of torture. Jay Bybee even included a pretty little graph of all the other lawyers who approved torture (I’ve excerpted the list at the end of the post).

To support his case that everyone in the Bush Administration signed off on this torture, Bybee included extensive descriptions of the approval top Bushies gave to torture (though he admittedly seems to have forgotten to include Cheney and Addington–maybe that has something to do with the defense fund that got set up around the time this letter got drafted).

There are the meetings during the drafting of the memo, during which Condi and Hadley and Gonzales were briefed on Abu Zubaydah’s torture, including the night before the torture memos were signed:

[Bellinger] hosted the initial meeting with OLC and the CIA on April 16, 2002, and assumed responsibility for briefing NSC Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Deputy NSC Advisor Stephen Hadley, and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. Report at 40, 42. He continued to attend meetings during the summer (id at 46,61), including the July 13,2002 meeting, where Yoo provided him with a copy of the Memorandum. Id. at 47. Bellinger also attended an NSC meeting with Rice, Hadley, and [Moseman] (CIA Director Tenet’s Chief of Staff) the day before the memos were due, which included a discussion of the proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Id at 61

Then there were details concerning the July 29, 2003 meeting, attended by Tenet, Muller, Cheney, Condi, Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Bellinger. Though Ashcroft would contest the description of what he said at this meeting, the OPR Report says (Bybee reveals) that Ashcroft strongly endorsed the program’s legality.

Later, at a meeting [redacted] Ashcroft “forcefully reiterated the view of the Department 0f Justice that the techniques employed by CIA were and remain lawful and do not violate either the anti-torture statute or US obligations under the [CAT].” Report at 107-08. At the same meeting. Ashcroft and Philbin gave a “lengthy explanation of the law and the applicable legal principles” regarding the interrogation program. Id at 109. [2 lines redacted] Ashcroft himself “had reviewed and approved them as lawful under US law.”

Most strikingly, Bybee explains that the National Security Council got together on July 2, 2004 to discuss “interrogating” a detainee (who Bybee says is named Janat Gul though note my doubts here).

Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Comey joined Ashcroft at a NSC Principals Meeting on July 2, 2004 to discuss the possible interrogation of CIA detainee Janat Gul. Report at 123. Ashcroft and Comey conferred with Goldsmith after the meeting, leading to Goldsmith’s letter to Muller approving all ofthe techniques described in the Classified Bybee Memo except for the waterboard. Id (PDF 26-27)

As I said, Bybee seems to be focusing on people like Condi and Ashcroft and Bellinger, to the exclusion of people like Cheney (I’ll come back to that). But he does lay out several high level meetings Bush’s top aides–many of them lawyers–attended and did not object to torture.

But note: I’m getting these references from Bybee’s citations of the OPR Report, not from the OPR Report itself. In the publicly released OPR Report, these meetings appear behind page after page of complete redaction.

Much of this information–particularly discussions of Ashcroft’s approval of torture at the July 29, 2003 meeting–have appeared elsewhere (the CIA IG Report and the SSCI narrative include a discussion of that meeting). But in the OPR Report, the discussion of the July 29, 2003 meeting appears in the huge redacted section that extends from PDF 111 to 116.

So why did CIA or DOJ redact all discussion of these meetings approving torture?

If DOJ has decided this was all sloppy but not legally sanctionable, then why is our government still hiding complicity of the torture gang?

• John Ascroft
• Alberto Gonzales
• Larry Thompson
• Jim Comey
• Jay Bybee
• Daniel Levin
• Steven Bradbury
• Michael Chertoff
• Tim Flanigan
• David Addington
• Scott Muller
• John Bellinger
• John Rizzo
• John Yoo
• Patrick Philbin
• (Probably) Jennifer Koester
• Adam Ciongoli

Justice Antonin Scalia: Newest poster boy for defense lawyers

Following up on its activist behavior in going out of its way to hear and decide on the Citizens United case, our radically conservative Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday in the third of a series of cases involving the concept of “honest services” as it appears in fraud statutes. This action appears to echo what bmaz described when he said: “the Roberts court does seem to have a hard on for this issue” with regard to the Citizens United case.

Here is SCOTUSblog setting the stage for arguments:

For the third time this Term, the Supreme Court will examine the scope of the controversial 1988 law that makes it a crime to commit fraud that deprives someone, such as one’s company, of “the intangible right of honest services.” It does so in the leading criminal case growing out of the Enron business scandal. This time, however, the Court may confront the constitutionality of that law, since the new case involves a claim that the law is so broadly worded that no one can know what it outlaws, thus making it unconstitutionally vague.

Here is how Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) frames the arguments in the set of three cases on “honest services”:

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, backing defendants in the new cases, says the “honest services” provision of U.S. fraud law is unconstitutionally vague and gives prosecutors unbridled discretion to enforce their own views of what’s illegal. On the other side, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington deems the law an invaluable prosecutorial tool against corruption.

In a remarkable twist, Justice Antonin Scalia is aligned with the defense lawyers. Continuing from the CREW link:

Justice Antonin Scalia, who complained in February about the law’s indefinite terms, said it “invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators and corporate CEOs.” He was the lone dissent as the court declined to hear a dispute over the law’s breadth last term. Since then, the other justices changed their minds and decided to enter the fray.

Okay, so the strange bedfellows aspect of Scalia suddenly siding with defense lawyers is resolved when we realize that the list of high profile cases where convictions have been won is taken right from the social list of his buddies who support our corporatist states of America. From CREW, again:

The anti-fraud law at the heart of three disputes before the Supreme Court has been used against such high-profile defendants as lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former Illinois governor George Ryan and his successor, Rod Blagojevich.

In addition, the other two cases heard on “honest services” this term include the convictions of Conrad Black and former Alaska legislator Bruce Weyhrauch.

Bringing the Skilling case to SCOTUS on “honest services” seems to me to be especially shaky, since SCOTUSblog reminds us that his conviction under the “honest services” provision applied to only one of the many counts on which he was convicted:

On May 25, 2006, after the four-month trial, Skilling was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud (the “honest services” charge is keyed to that count), 12 counts of securities fraud, five counts of making false statements to accountants, and one count of insider trading.

Further, Skilling’s challenge centers more on another aspect of his conviction than it does on the “honest services” issue:

Much of Skilling’s challenge deals with his claim that he could not possibly have gotten a fair trial in Houston amid what his lawyers call the “devastating impact” of the scandal on the entire city and region, and the resulting “vitriolic” and “blistering” publicity about the accused executives. His attorneys claimed in the petition that “the community passion” stirred up by the case “was as dramatic as any in U.S. criminal trial history.”

God help us if “too evil to convict” joins “too big to fail”. Fortunately, we have the counterexample of attempting to try KSM in New York City to put up against the Skilling conviction in Houston on that point.

At any rate, I don’t have sufficient legal training to evaluate whether the language of the “honest services” provision is indeed too vague for consistent application or if what we have here is another example of our very own SCOTUS engaging in behavior that robs the citizens of “honest services” being performed by Supreme Court justices.

Tags: Antonin Scalia, Citizens United, Enron, honest services, Jeff Skilling, Rod Blagojevich

by twolf1 (click to embiggen)

In January of 2009 the U.S. Government disappeared in the buildings on K Street in Washington D.C. while trying to reform heath care…  A year later, it still hasn’t been found.

This week I’m adding listings for Virtually Speaking Sundays, Jay Ackroyd’s Second Life talk show.  Tonight’s guests are watertiger and Cliff Schecter.  Should be a good show, eh.  The show’s also available as a podcast, if you check the link you’ll find Marcy’s appearance from last week.

Oh, and the game starts at 3pm et, USA! USA!

Washington Journal: 7:45am – Thomas DeFrank, NY Daily News, & April Ryan, American Urban Radio Networks.  8:45am – James Dobbins, RAND Corporation & Fmr. Special Envoy to Afghanistan.  9:15am – Larry Sabato, UVA Center for Politics, Director.

ABC’s This Week: Host Elizabeth Vargas.  The Health Care Summit. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), then Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN).   Roundtable: George Will, Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, Paul Krugman. Topics: health care debate, the jobs package, Toyota.

Amanpour: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.  “Christiane asks him about Iran, the Mossad and revelations of the son of Hamas’ founder may have spied for Israel.”

CBS’ Face The Nation: Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN); Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD); Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK); Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND); Jim VandeHei, Politico.

Chris Matthews: David Ignatius; Kelly O’Donnell; Kathleen Parker; Michael Duffy.  Topics: Real Cost of Health Care: Is The Prize Worth The Pain for Obama?  Romney Off And Running: Does He Have The Right Stuff for 2012?

CNN’s State of the Union: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).  Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).  Roundtable: Ceci Connolly, Amy Walter.

Fareed Zakaria – GPS: George Soros on the economy, banker bonuses, and the administration.  And a roundtable: is Obama making a comeback?

Fox News Sunday: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).  Then, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).  Fox News AllStars: Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson, Liz Cheney, Juan Williams.  Power Player of the Week: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

NBC’s Meet The Press: Sen. John McCain.  Then, the Director of the White House Office of Health Reform, Nancy-Ann DeParle. Roundtable: Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), National Urban League President Marc Morial, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL); Katty Kay; Ron Brownstein.

Newsmakers: Rep. George Miller (D-CA) on the debate on health care reform, job creation, and student loan bills.

Q & A: Photographer Kike Arnal, featuring his newest book “In the Shadow of Power,” Mr. Arnal originally came to Washington to do a photo project on Washington’s decaying library system. While he was here, he began to see a side of the Capital city much different than that seen in tourist photos.

Religion & Ethics: Egypt’s Coptic Tensions – Violence between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims.  Spiritual Directors – Their work is often described as “Holy Listening.” Orthodox Fasting – For Eastern Orthodox, Lent is the year’s longest season of fasting.  Religion and Government News Roundup.

60 Minutes: Stealing American Secrets – “60 Minutes” has obtained an FBI videotape showing a Defense Department employee selling secrets to a Chinese spy that offers a rare glimpse into the secretive world of espionage and illustrates how China’s spying may pose the biggest espionage threat to the U.S.  Battle Over History – The Armenian Holocaust – the 1915 forced deportation and massacre of more than a million ethnic Armenians by the Turks – an event that the Turks and our own government have refused to call genocide.  Kathryn Bigelow – Academy Award best-director nominee for “The Hurt Locker.”

To The Contrary: Topics: 1- Female sailors on submarines; 2- Tweeting an abortion; 3- Advancing women in technology from the classroom to the boardroom.  Panelists: Tara Setmayer; Melinda Henneberger; Karen Czarnecki; Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever.  TTC web extra: Retirement Rules
The Vice President wants to revise 401(k) and IRA regulations.

Univision’s Al Punto: Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA); Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Melinda French Gates, Co-Founder Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Cesar Conde, President Univision Networks; Ralph De La Vega, President and CEO AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets.

Virtually Speaking Sundays: Cliff Schecter and watertiger.  “Virtually Speaking With Jay Ackroyd is a weekly talk show entirely produced within the online virtual world Second Life. Visit www.secondlife.com and sign up for a FREE Second Life account and attend one of our shows in 3D virtual reality.”

C-SPAN’s Book TV.

FDL Book Salon: Chat with Moshe Adler about his new book, Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal, hosted by Max Fraad Wolff.  “With clarity, and in language any educated person can grasp, Adler shows how economics largely abandoned concern with how economic efficiency is affected by distribution of resources and equality in favor of precepts that favor concentration of wealth and income.”  5pm ET.

FDL Movie Night Monday: The story of the fight for The Barnes Art Collection  Don Aragott, director, and John Anderson, author, discuss their movie The Art of the Steal with host Lisa Derrick.  Monday, 8pm ET.

Tags: bobbleheads, Sunday Talking Heads