Good. The Serbia lost any claim to the region when it attempted Genocide.

The Russians are upset, but with recognition from the US, UK, and France, that does not mean much.

From Eric Alterman’s reader mail:

Name: Julie Nelsen
Hometown: Salt Lake City

One reason to support Senator Clinton that I’ve not seen anywhere, (probably due to the high-minded notion currently in the air that we need to unite and avoid retribution), would be the video of George and Laura forced to greet Bill and Hillary at the White House on Inauguration morning next year. Since George is unlikely to be tried for his crimes, would not such a humiliation be at least a small down payment on the punishment he deserves?

Agreed, though I still want to see him in the dock at the Hague.

F-35 STOVL nozzle in action:

Well, it’s nice to know that we in the US don’t have a monopoly on ignorant, incompetent, militaristic prats.

The MoD is claiming that wind farms are a threat to national security, because the large rotating blades of the turbines interfere with the early warning radars.

I do understand that the British military is concerned about the possibility of the USSR launching nuclear armed bombers against the British Isles, but I think that a slightly more immediate threat is sending money to supporters or right wing religious fanaticism, like…I don’t know…the House of Saud.

From the undisputed world champion of heavyweight snark, Keith Olbermann.

When discussing reports that John McCain was considering Joe Lieberman as his running mate, Keith finished off the report with, “Yeah, like that helped Al Gore.”

ROTFLMAO.

Banks are petitioning theFinancial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to relax rules on non performing home loans. They say that the rules are too complex and difficult.

The rule in question, Financial Accounting Standard 114, “Accounting by Creditors for Impairment of a Loan”, is also fifteen years old.

Before FAS 114, banks could count non-performing loans on their books as if they were to be paid back in full, which meant that defaults would almost never show up on the balance sheet until too late.

It should be noted that these banks that are crying that this is too difficult have been applying it without difficulty to commercial mortgages and corporate loans for the past 15 years.

You can do this in Excel^®, BTW.

This is not about complexity. It’s about concealing losses from the public.

Hat tip to Danger Room for finding this 1979 ad for Pakistan International Airlines:

This is really, really, really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY creepy.

It appears that everyone is telling Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) not to run for reelection.

They are afraid that he would turn the district blue.

I don’t know why…Hip deep in Abramhoff, at least one aide already sentenced for corruption, and…oh yeah…that bit where he’s paying his wife large sums of money to fund raise for him.

Even if the last one is not illegal, it won’t play well in November.

Run Johnny, run!!

Todd Breeton, of MYDD, has obtained a list of the 40 districts targeted by the DCCC in 2008:

• AK-AL: Don Young
• AZ-01: Open
• AZ-03: John Shadegg
• CA-04: John Doolittle
• CA-26: David Dreier
• CA-50: Brian Bilbray
• CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
• CT-04: Chris Shays
• FL-08: Ric Keller
• FL-09: Gus Bilirakis
• FL-13: Vern Buchanan
• FL-24: Tom Feeney
• ID-01: Bill Sali
• IL-10: Mark Kirk
• IL-11: Open
• IL-14: Open
• MI-07: Tim Walberg
• MI-09: Joe Knollenberg
• MN-03: Open
• MN-06: Michele Bachmann
• MO-06: Sam Graves
• NV-03: Jon Porter
• NJ-03: Open
• NJ-07: Open
• NM-01: Open
• NM-02: Open
• NY-13: Vito Fossella
• NY-25: Jim Walsh
• NY-26: Tom Reynolds
• NY-29: Randy Kuhl
• NC-08: Robin Hayes
• OH-01: Steve Chabot
• OH-02: Jean Schmidt
• OH-14: Steve LaTourette
• OH-15: Open
• OH-16: Open
• PA-03: Phil English
• WA-08: Dave Reichert
• WV-02: Sheley Moore Capito
• WY-AL: Open

Here is the interesting part. There are no races taht they are targeting in the South.

Those Florida districts don’t count. They are South Florida, which is the “non-southern” part of the state. It’s where liberals come from in Florida.

This is an acknowledgment of a fact: there is very little of value in the south that has not already been taken.

What’s left is an electorate which is either 80%+ Democratic/Minority gerrymanders, and the Apartheid whites that still exist.

The former already had Democratic representatives, and the latter will never vote for anyone who allows N***ers to vote.

The Democratic party needs to stop distorting its message in an attempt to win the south, and this is a good start.

Dennis Kucinich’s 52-year-old brother found dead in his home. No evidence of foul play.

My sincerest sympathies go out to the Kucinich family.

They face up to 40 years in Federal prison, and the jury has decided that their $2 million dollar house was used in the commissiion of a crime and so forfeited.

As horrific as the testimony given in the case was, a landscaper testified that the women begged for food, these high profile cases involving domestic servants are really the small minority of the cases.

Most are larger scale, involving sweatshops and prostitution, and they are far more appalling.

Bush administration pushes for control of promotions of military lawyers – The Boston Globe

Remember when I complained about the Washington Post spreading the completely fraudulent story about Obama being a Crypto-Muslim?

Well, editorial cartoonist Tom Toles has something to say about this:
I think that it might clarify this if you know that the employer of Tom Toles is, yes, you guessed it, The Washington Post.

It appears that the SEC is concerned that they have been concealing the extent of their mortgage debt losses.

I think that this will be the first of many investigations.

Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people’s needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death. But, at least there is symmetry.

IBM says it has a new way to profit from patents – and wants to patent the idea.

The US military is scheduling, under pressure from the Bush administration, the trials in order to maximize their impact on the 2008 elections.

There is nothing in the Bush administration that politics does not trump.

Traitors.

I blogged about this in June, but it bears repeating again.

Former Quest CEO is appealing his insider trading conviction, and a part of his defense was to be that he expected to win secret contracts, but that the CIA, NSA, etc. retaliated after Qwest refused illegal wiretapping requests.

The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest.

The documents indicate that likely would have been at the heart of former CEO Joe Nacchio’s so-called “classified information” defense at his insider trading trial, had he been allowed to present it.

…..

The documents suggest U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham refused to allow Nacchio to present the argument about retaliation. Nottingham also said Nacchio would have to take the stand to raise the classified defense.

…..

Nacchio was convicted last spring on 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million of stock sales in April and May 2001, and sentenced to six years in prison. He’s free pending appeal.

The partially redacted documents were filed under seal before, during and after Nacchio’s trial. They were released Wednesday.

Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply.

The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.

The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.

USA Today reported in May 2006 that Qwest, unlike AT&T and Verizon, balked at helping the NSA track phone calling patterns that may have indicated terrorist organizational activities. Nacchio’s attorney, Herbert Stern, confirmed that Nacchio refused to turn over customer telephone records because he didn’t think the NSA program had legal standing.

In the documents, Nacchio also asserts Qwest was in line to build a $2 billion private government network called GovNet and do other government business, including a network between the U.S. and South America.

I’ve also saved quite a bit of money too.

Contained in a book review of Alan Greenspan’s new book, of all things. It’s a wonderfully snarky review, in the tradition of Rex Reed.

It wasn’t a rhetorical question, apparently. This was in the late 1950s. By then, Rand had published her two thick, preposterous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and stood poised on the brink of international stardom. Her creepy philosophy of Objectivism, placing the self at the center of the moral universe, was being enthusiastically embraced, as it still is, by tens of thousands of pimply teenage boys in the dreamy moments between fits of social insecurity and furious bouts of masturbation. As her cultish fame spread, Rand wanted to keep tabs on her most intimate acolytes. Of these Greenspan was the most promising and, by all appearances, the most normal. Which worried her.

He had, for example, a life; most of the members of the Collective–the name her dozen closest followers attached to themselves–did not, devoting themselves to her welfare exclusively. Greenspan was making good money, soon to be great money, as a savvy economics consultant. He lunched with bond traders, corporate leaders, even titans of industry, real-life versions of the planet-girding capitalists Rand fantasized about and invented for her books. On Saturday nights Greenspan, then in his early thirties, would gather with his fellow Collective members in Rand’s dim, shuttered apartment in midtown Manhattan (she kept the windows closed and the blinds drawn for many years, after one of her beloved cats tumbled tragically to its death). There in the grim presence of their idol they would sit on folding chairs and release expletives of thrilled admiration as her writings were read aloud. One memoir from the Collective, My Years with Ayn Rand by Nathaniel Branden, shows that even then Greenspan’s mode of communication was Greenspanian.

“Ayn,” Alan would say, overcome by some Randian insight, “upon reading this, one tends to feel exhilarated!”

heh. Spot on.

All emphasis mine.

At the US embassy in Baghdad, nothing works, not even the fire sprinkler system.

Let’s see, constructed by forced labor by bush cronies, and they did not follow the drawings?

To quote Claude Rains

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]
Captain Renault: Everybody out at once!

Time Magizine goes into the irregularities. Most notably, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbiest and principal witness against Siegelman offered information about numerous Republicans too, but none of them were even investigated.

I have to agree with Josh Marshall’s rule of thumb, “Not that there’s nothing fishy there, but as a rule, the more moving parts to an alleged conspiracy, the more skeptical I am,” but more and more about this seems just plain whack.

What is most concerning is that if this was a conspiracy, it means that hundreds of people, from the US Attorney to low level clerks and secretaries had to be aware of it, and no one said anything.

This implies that the politicization of the DoJ is basically complete.