The Conservative Paper

Cop Smells Pot, Drug Bust Ensues

conservative — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:36:43 +0000

Officer Thomas Lucasiewicz either has the most highly trained nose ever (and we know how great police training is…) or he just might have had some insider info when he let his nose lead him to a massive drug bust in Middlesex County, New Jersey. This wasn’t just any bust…this is the single largest [...]

J.R. Smith Dunk

conservative — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:23:35 +0000

Dude! The Denver Nuggets have some effing talent. Did you see the sick-nasty 360 slam dunk that J.R. Smith had against the Timberwolves? In case you missed it:

Merlin Olsen Dies

conservative — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:16:30 +0000

After a long battle with cancer, Merlin Olsen “one of the greats” dies at the age of 69. The hall of famer was a member of the Los Angeles Rams “fearsome foursome” defensive line. Post football he embarked on a television journey staring in NFL broadcasts, commercials and as Jonathan Garvey on “Little House on the [...]

Dismantling America

Patrick J. Buchanan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:26:44 +0000

Though Bush 41 and Bush 43 often disagreed, one issue did unite them both with Bill Clinton: protectionism.

Globalists all, they rejected any federal measure to protect America’s industrial base, economic independence or the wages of U.S. workers.

Together they rammed through NAFTA, brought America under the World Trade Organization, abolished tariffs and granted Chinese-made goods unrestricted access to the immense U.S. market.

Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services has compiled, in 44 pages of charts and graphs, the results of two decades of this Bush-Clinton experiment in globalization. His compilation might be titled, “Indices of the Industrial Decline and Fall of the United States.”

From 2000 to 2009, industrial production declined here for the first time since the 1930s. Gross domestic product also fell, and we actually lost jobs.

In traded goods alone, we ran up $6.2 trillion in deficits — $3.8 trillion of that in manufactured goods.

Things that we once made in America — indeed, we made everything — we now buy from abroad with money that we borrow from abroad.

Over this Lost Decade, 5.8 million manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had in Y2K, disappeared. That unprecedented job loss was partly made up by adding 1.9 million government workers.

The last decade was the first in history where government employed more workers than manufacturing, a stunning development to those of us who remember an America where nearly one-third of the U.S. labor force was producing almost all of our goods and much of the world’s, as well.

Not to worry, we hear, the foreign products we buy are toys and low-tech goods. We keep the high-tech jobs here in the U.S.A.

Sorry. U.S. trade surpluses in advanced technology products ended in Bush’s first term. The last three years we have run annual trade deficits in ATP of nearly $70 billion with China alone.

About our dependency on Mideast oil we hear endless wailing.

Yet most of our imported oil comes from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Angola. And for every dollar we send abroad for oil or gas, we send $4.20 abroad for manufactured goods. Why is a dependency on the Persian Gulf for a fraction of the oil we consume more of a danger than a huge growing dependency on China for the necessities of our national life?

How great is that dependency?

China accounts for 83 percent of the U.S. global trade deficit in manufactures and 84 percent of our global trade deficit in electronics and machinery.

Over the last decade, our total trade deficit with China in manufactured goods was $1.75 trillion, which explains why China, its cash reserves approaching $3 trillion, holds the mortgage on America.

This week came a report that Detroit, forge and furnace of the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II, is considering razing a fourth of the city and turning it into farm and pastureland. Did the $1.2 trillion trade deficit we ran in autos and parts last decade help kill Detroit?

And if our purpose with NAFTA was to assist our neighbor Mexico, consider. Textile and apparel imports from China are now five times the dollar value of those imports from Mexico and Canada combined.

As exports are added to a nation’s GDP, and a trade deficit subtracted, the U.S. trade deficits that have averaged $500 billion to $600 billion a year for 10 years represent the single greatest factor pulling the United States down and raising China up into a rival for world power.

Yet what is as astonishing as these indices of American decline is the indifference, the insouciance of our political class. Do they care?

How can one explain it?

Ignorance of history is surely one explanation. How many know that every modern nation that rose to world power did so by sheltering and nurturing its manufacturing and industrial base — from Britain under the Acts of Navigation to 1850, to protectionist America from the Civil War to the Roaring Twenties, to Bismarck’s Germany before World War I, to Stalin’s Russia, to postwar Japan, to China today?

No nation rose to world power on free trade. From Britain after 1860 to America after 1960, free trade has been the policy of powers that put consumption before production and today before tomorrow.

Nations rise on economic nationalism; they descend on free trade.

Ideology is another explanation. Even a (Milton) Friedmanite free-trader should be able to see the disaster all around us and ask: What benefit does America receive from these mountains of imported goods to justify the terrible damage done to our country and countrymen?

Can they not see the correlation between the trade deficits and relative decline?

Republicans seem certain to benefit from the nation’s economic crisis this November. But is there any evidence they have learned anything about economics from the disastrous Bush decade?

Do they have any ideas for a wholesale restructuring of U.S. trade and tax policy, for a course correction to prevent America’s continuing decline?

Has anyone seen any evidence of it?

EXPLOSIVE: Lehman - Where Are The Cops?

conservative — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:40:00 +0000

Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to prevent crap like this:

From the paper:

Lehman employed off-balance sheet devices, known within Lehman as “Repo 105” and “Repo 108” transactions, to temporarily remove securities inventory from its balance sheet, usually for a period of seven to ten days, and to create a materially misleading picture of the firm’s financial condition in late 2007 and 2008.2847

Oh yeah, that's legal? It's not supposed to be!

Lehman regularly increased its use of Repo 105 transactions in the days prior to reporting periods to reduce its publicly reported net leverage and balance sheet.2850 Lehman’s periodic reports did not disclose the cash borrowing from the Repo 105 transaction – i.e., although Lehman had in effect borrowed tens of billions of dollars in these transactions, Lehman did not disclose the known obligation to repay the debt.2851 Lehman used the cash from the Repo 105 transaction to pay down other liabilities, thereby reducing both the total liabilities and the total assets reported on its balance sheet and lowering its leverage ratios.

Isn't that special?

It gets better, as you might expect.

The Examiner concludes that colorable claims of breach of fiduciary duty exist against Richard Fuld, Chris O’Meara, Erin Callan, and Ian Lowitt, and that a colorable claim of professional malpractice exists against ~~Arthur Anderson~~ Ernst & Young.2915 (strikethrough mine, not in the original)

It is stated that Government Regulators (FRBNY and The SEC) had "no knowledge" of these practices. Perhaps true. But this calls into question why we're hearing of this just now, and whether other firms have or are at present doing the same sort of thing.

There also appears to be a colorable claim that Lehman Management was fully-aware of what was going on:

Although interview statements given to the Examiner were inconsistent at times, no reasonable dispute exists that each of Lehman’s Chief Financial Officers from late 2007 to September 2008 possessed some knowledge of and/or involvement with multiple aspects of Lehman’s Repo 105 program, including the existence of firm-wide Repo 105 limits, the volume of Repo 105 activity Lehman engaged in at quarter‐end, and Lehman’s efforts to manage its balance sheet using Repo 105 transactions.

Well that's special.

But we're just getting warmed up.

Remember, The Feral Reserve is supposed to by the "uber-regulator" and the "safety and soundness" manager for the financial system.

They did a great job, right? Well...

For example, when

the Examiner questioned Lehman executives and other witnesses about Lehman’s financial health and reporting, a recurrent theme in their responses was that Lehman gave full and complete financial information to Government agencies, and that the Government never raised significant objections or directed that Lehman take any corrective action.

True? Let's see what the Examiner had to say:

Although various Government agencies had information that raised serious questions about Lehman’s reported liquidity and about the sufficiency of its capital and liquidity to withstand stress scenarios, the agencies generally limited their activities to collecting data and monitoring.

Oh. They looked but didn't act. I see.

Indeed, they looked pretty closely....

After March 2008 when the SEC and FRBNY began onsite daily monitoring of Lehman, the SEC deferred to the FRBNY to devise more rigorous stress‐testing scenarios to test Lehman’s ability to withstand a run or potential run on the bank.5753 The FRBNY developed two new stress scenarios: “Bear Stearns” and “Bear Stearns Light.”5754 Lehman failed both tests.5755 The FRBNY then developed a new set of assumptions for an additional round of stress tests, which Lehman also failed.5756 However, Lehman ran stress tests of its own, modeled on similar assumptions, and passed.5757 It does not appear that any agency required any action of Lehman in response to the results of the stress testing.

So let's see what we got here. They ran two sets of stress tests and the firm failed both. Not satisfied with the results they then designed a third set, which the firm also failed (we can reasonably presume the third had less stringent requirements than the other two!)

Instead of applying any of these three, FRBNY, which was run by one MR. TIMOTHY GEITHNER, NOW OUR TREASURY SECRETARY WHO REPORTED TO ONE BEN BERNANKE, instead took Lehman's word that all was ok and did nothing.

Nor did it end there.

The SEC inspection revealed significant problems at Lehman. The SEC found that Lehman’s Price Valuation Group was understaffed; and it found that Lehman’s asset pricing function was overly “process driven.”5761 But the SEC did not release its findings or formally present them to Lehman prior to Lehman’s demise.

So The SEC knew, and they too did nothing.

It's worse. While Geithner is implicated as being "concerned" about Lehman in the paper, the most-troubling part the narrative is here:

The challenge for the Government, and for troubled firms like Lehman, was to reduce risk exposure, and the act of reducing risk by selling assets could result in “collateral damage” by demonstrating weakness and exposing “air” in the marks.5823

Air?

Uh, that's an apparent admission that FRBNY and Tim Geithner specifically knew that the marks that these banks were taking on their assets was materially and intentionally false.

Where have we seen this of late? Oh yeah - in all those banks that have failed of late, with 25-40% discounts to their claimed balance sheet values when the marks are actually reduced to losses to the deposit fund by the FDIC!

So let's see here. We now have:

Geithner, and presumably everyone under him, knew the marks on these assets were fictions months before Lehman failed, yet they intentionally concealed this fact from the market and took no action (nor did the SEC) to disclose this intentional misdirection.
The misdirection and false claims in this regard are almost certainly continuing today, as evidenced by the FDIC seizures literally on an every-week basis.

How about Bernanke? While he maintains (as did Geithner) that primary responsibility lay with the SEC, he also said:

Our concern was about the financial system, and we knew the implications for the greater financial system would be catastrophic, and it was.”

What does all this say about the stability of things now?

Yeah, I know, everyone's "too big to fail."

But what if the truth is that they're "too big to bail", for instance, if one of the "big four" was to get in trouble today due to a recognition in the marketplace that not only is this what blew up Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, but that the same chicanery with "asset values" is continuing even today, and as such one cannot be reasonably certain that liquidity provided today will be repaid tomorrow?

Why is it that if the implications would be catastrophic (and they were), both the SEC and FRBNY knew that Lehman had insufficient liquidity long before the collapse (and they did) neither the SEC, The Federal Reserve or FRBNY did a damn thing to blow the whistle on this crap and put a stop to it?

This report sets out a damning case against the pseudo-government and government actors, who it is alleged were well-aware of critical weaknesses in Lehman's risk controls and liquidity months before it collapsed, yet none of them did a damn thing about it until days before the bankruptcy filing.

Why should any of the clown-car riders who clearly knew that this situation existed for literal months before it blew up, yet did nothing, still retain their jobs and, in Geithner's case, obtain a promotion? These people are unqualified for supervisory positions involving anything more complicated than handing out towels in the men's room.

The key question facing the nation this evening is not, however, the past. It is the future. We have over 100 literal instances in which banks have been seized by the FDIC since Lehman blew up in which their balance sheet "asset values" have been shown by the FDIC's own DIF loss projections to be abject fictions, yet none of these institutions have been flagged to investors or the public, no indictments or civil complaints have been brought by the SEC or Department of Justice, and they have remained operating for months with these bogus values exhibited for bank examiners and regulators to see.

IF - and I stress IF - these fictions are also present in our large banking institutions, and there is NO REASON TO BELIEVE THEY ARE NOT, it is simply a matter of time before one or more of them detonates in a similar if not identical fashion. Since these firms are all much larger than Lehman and neither the FDIC or Treasury has a spare $500 billion laying around for the potential payout to depositors that might be necessary in such an instance, we cannot reasonably assume that the risk of financial Armageddon has in fact passed until we know for a fact that all fictional balance sheets are excised and all off-sheet exposures accounted for.

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

conservative — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:05:49 +0000

Big tip of the hat to NBers Gregory J. and Patrick G.

Group Demands Olbermann Apologize for Comparing Jewish Attorney to Nazi Collaborator

conservative — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:52:29 +0000

The Media Institute, a Washington-based non-profit, has called on Keith Olbermann to apologize for comparing one of its Jewish staff members to a Nazi collaborator.

During a January 21 screed regarding the controversial Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission -- in which the Supreme Court granted all companies the same rights as MSNBC's parent company GE -- Olbermann called the Media Institute's Floyd Abrams, a Jew, "the Quisling of freedom of speech in this country."

Vidkun Quisling, for those who don't know, was a Norwegian Nazi collaborator who aided in the Third Reich's conquest of his country by disclosing vital defense information to the Nazis. If Benedict Arnold had been complicit in genocide, we might consider Quisling his Norwegian equivalent.

The Media Institute wrote Olbermann an open letter yesterday calling on him to issue a public apology:

As members of The Media Institute’s First Amendment Advisory Council, we are writing to take strong issue with your “special comment” of January 21, 2010, in which you personally attacked one our members, the preeminent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, for his role in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Just to be clear at the outset, we are not concerned about the fact that you expressed a strong opinion about a Supreme Court case that has generated a great deal of public comment and controversy. Quite to the contrary, we celebrate the fact that you are free to express your opinions without fear of government reprisal. Many of us admire the fact that you emerged as a prominent critic of federal policies at a time when many others were still trying to find their voices.

But our admiration stops when confronted with the type of personal invective that you heaped upon Mr. Abrams for the fact that he represented a client whose position you dislike in Citizens United…

Floyd Abrams is the foremost First Amendment advocate of our time. He also is Jewish. For any Jew to be compared to a Nazi collaborator is vile, but in the case of Floyd is simply beyond comprehension. But your offhanded inclusion of this ugly epithet points to a deeper problem that has degraded public discourse – the breakdown of civility…

Many of the freedoms you enjoy as a journalist exist because of the work of Floyd Abrams throughout his exemplary career. Yet even if Mr. Abrams had not blazed important paths for the rights of the press, he does not deserve to be personally insulted, which for you may have seemed like nothing more than a clever turn of phrase.

Of course, you have the right to say what you did in your “special comment.” None of us questions that, and each of us would be willing to defend against any attempt to suppress your speech. We do not doubt your rights – just your judgment. It does not endanger free expression to counsel self-control and civility.
Reasonable minds can differ on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and we fully expect it will be just the beginning of a continuing contentious debate on campaign speech and regulation. We look forward to your contributions to that debate. But we also look forward to your public apology to Floyd Abrams for your unwarranted personal attack.

If Olbermann does apologize, don't be surprised if it sounds somewhat like his apology to Sen. Scott Brown.

Olbermann has left us no reason to believe he has any interest in contributing to the ongoing debate over free speech in this context. Godwin's law has become his modus operandi.

Merlin Olsen Death Mesothelioma

conservative — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:05:44 +0000

Merlin Olsen has died of Mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer he could not defeat. He was pronounced dead today in California. Olsen will be remembered as one of the Los Angeles Rams Fearsome Foursome, but he also was a TV actor and commentator. Olsen was 69-years-old.

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer in which cancerous cells are produced in the mesothelium, the protective membrane that covers all of our internal organs. Statistics say that this type of cancer is shown in 2,000 people each year in America. Although it has been found in people of both sexes and all ages, it seems thie highest part of patients are men, and the risk increases with age.

Rest in Peace Merlin Olsen. Those were the news on Merlin Olsen Mesothelioma.

Lefty Jon Stewart Hits Bush Speechwriter for Living in ‘Selective World,’ Tells Him to Respond on Internet

Scott Whitlock — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:30:28 +0000

Liberal comedian Jon Stewart featured a rare conservative voice on Tuesday's Daily Show, former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen. As he often does during the occasions he talks to right-leaning guests, Stewart turned combative, attacking Thiessen for "living in a selective world."

The ex-Bush aide appeared to promote his new book Courting Disaster, which defends and advocates for the administration's CIA's interrogation program. After Thiessen argued that the tactics stopped another terror attack in the U.S. after 9/11, Stewart lectured, "The bombings in Britain, the bombings in Afghanistan, the bombings in a Iraq. It's a selective world that you live in and you must be lovely to live there. Things are not so clear cut."

At the end of the segment, Stewart started to go to break and added, "We'll go to commercial and then we'll keep talking." An incredulous Thiessen retorted, "So, you talk and we go to commercial?" He challenged, "I can't get my points on the air?" A sarcastic Stewart quipped, "Geez, I'm trying to think of a way can I remove what I said and just have you speak." He then offered Thiessen a chance for rebuttal on the internet.

This did happen, but very few people are actually going to go to Comedy Central's website and listen to the extended segments.

(Thanks to Ben Graham for transcribing the segment.)

A partial transcript of the March 9 segment follows:

JON STEWART: Let me get to the larger point here which I think is maybe the issue. The thing that I object to is the idea of safety. And I'll explain that. The idea that that can be a concrete certainty. This makes us safe. This doesn't. These are subjective realities. The idea of something that makes us safe, you can make the argument that Guantanamo keeps us safe because there are bad people in it. They can make the argument that by having Guantanamo open it allows easier recruitment for terrorists, which ultimately-

MARC THIESSEN: I disagree with that entirely.

STEWART: I know you disagree with it, but I'm saying that is a valid argument.

THIESSEN: Well, I don't think it is. There was no Guantanamo Bay when they tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.

STEWART: It's not the only reason but it all goes into- What I'm saying is-

THIESSEN: Let me make my point-

STEWART: Let me just very quickly go. [Thiessen laughs in frustration.] It's a- As conservatives would like to say it's a complex adaptive system very similar to climate change.

THIESSEN: Except it's real. [Laughs.]

STEWART: And Republicans and conservatives are suggesting without any of the science that backs climate change that they know the equation, that they can solve the unsolvable, that Liz Cheney knows more about this than say Matthew Alexander who was doing the interrogating.

THIESSEN: Matthew Alexander interrogated people for three months. The people that --

STEWART: How long did Liz Cheney do it for?

THIESSEN: The interrogators that I talked about in this book, where you meet the interrogators who--

STEWART: Not all of them, the ones that you chose.

THIESSEN: The ones that-

STEWART: Not all of them.

THIESSEN: The ones that ran the program.

STEWART: Ali Soufan is not in this book.

THIESSEN: Actually he is in the book.

STEWART: Well, he wouldn't talk to you in the book.

THIESSEN: He wouldn't talk to me, but I talked about him.

STEWART: Oh, I know.

THIESSEN: Ali Soufan, the sainted hero of left who says we can get all this information.

STEWART: [interrupting] Sorry, sorry.

THIESSEN: I appreciate the enthusiasm. Ali Soufan the sainted hero of left who says we can get all this information with the FBI's techniques. He was put in charge of the interrogation of Muhammad Al Qahtani, the 20th hijacker in Guantanamo Bay and got nothing from him. Ali Soufan then threw him into the navy brig for two months. Told them that he could have no human contact, people had to wear masks. This is in the department of Justice report and got nothing still. It was only when the military took over his interrogation that they got interrogation reports out of him. Ali Soufan failed with his techniques to break. And on top of that Muhammad Al Qahtani said the worst thing that happened to him in Guantanamo Bay was Ali Soufan putting him in two months in isolation. This is not so clean.

STEWART: Absolutely. I think the point is that it's not clean. You can't know for certain.

THIESSEN: No you can't.

STEWART: And when these things.

THIESSEN: Jon--

STEWART: Yeah, sorry.

THIESSEN: Jon, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was brought into CIA custody he had information about terrorist attacks planned on the united states. We were not attacked for seven years after the 9/11 attacks. So there's a reason for it.

STEWART: We were not attacked for seven years after the first World Trade Center- on our homeland.

THIESSEN: Not on our home land. They blew up the World Trade Center, the bombings in east Africa, the USS Cole, then finally 9/11.

STEWART: The bombings in Britain, the bombings in Afghanistan, the bombings in a Iraq. It's a selective world that you live in and you must be lovely to live there. Things are not so clear cut. And the idea that you can state equivocally that these lawyers- Let me say this quickly. We'll go to commercial and then we'll keep talking.

THIESSEN: [Laughes wryly] So you talk and we go to commercial?

STEWART: That's right. Honestly when I come on your show I'd be delighted you to let you do that. But, the idea that you can castigate people as though they are purposefully making America less safe and in league with the terrorists that we're fighting because they disagree with your ideas about safety, I think what is offensive about that. We can talk about. It won't be on the show. It will be on the internet unedited.

THIESSEN: I can't get my points out on the air?

STEWART: I thought-

THIESSEN: You did most of the talking.

STEWART: I apologize then. I will let you- Geez, I'm trying to think of a way can I remove what I said and just have you speak. Honestly you feel like you I've not let you make any points.

THIESSEN: I think you talked right through me.

STEWART: I sincerely apologize. We will. We will come back. You can correct it on the web and people will judge how poorly you've been treated. I do apologize. It's techniques I learned.

Mesothelioma symptoms treatments and legal advice

conservative — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:41:18 +0000

Treatment of malignant mesothelioma using conventional therapies in combination with radiation and or chemotherapy on stage I or II Mesothelioma have proved an average of 74.6 percent success rate in extending the patient#39;s life span by five years or more [commonly known as remission][this percentage may increase or decrease depending on date of discovery / stage of malignant development] (Oncology Today, 2009). Treatment course is primarily determined by the staging or development. This is u