Posts by sarabeth
Rand Paul, Man Of Principles
(1) The gloss on Rand Paul has been that he is one of those lunatic libertarians who allow themselves to be hypnotized by their least-government-is-always-best principles into embracing some truly ridiculous and even some clearly reprehensible positions. The most glaring example of this is his view that America would be better off if businesses were [...]
Cruel Halloween Trick
Meg Whitman was hoping for a treat, but California voters seem to have played a cruel Halloween trick on her instead. Unless something rather unexpected happens in the next week, she is going to get roundly beaten by Jerry Brown in the gubernatorial election. According to a Los Angeles Times/USC poll released over the weekend, [...]
The More The Merrier?
As if peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghanistan government weren’t already fraught with enough complications, Pakistan wants to get into the act too. Underlining the constructive role they have played throughout the war in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis are threatening to derail any peace agreement that might be reached without their participation: Pakistani security [...]
Our Sometimes Non-Existent Nuclear Weapons Capability
Hugh Shelton was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Bill Clinton‘s second term. In his just published memoir, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior he tells a strange little story about how the top-secret codes needed by the president to launch a nuclear strike went missing for months towards the end [...]
Meet David J. Stern, Alleged Fraudulent Foreclosure King
For a while, we’ve been hearing about fraudulent mortgage paperwork being rampant — across different banks, across different parts of the country — including forged documents, but without any specific details about the forgery allegations. That started to change last week, with reports of a sworn statement to the Florida attorney general by an ex-employee [...]
Foreclosure Paperwork Problems Fixed PDQ
On Thursday, October 1, Bank of America announced that it was suspending all foreclosures in 23 states “where courts have jurisdiction over foreclosures”. (The bank later went on to suspend all foreclosures in the other 27 states too.) On Monday, October 18, Bank of America announced that it will lift its foreclosure freeze in these [...]
Some Crazy Possibilities And Probabilities: An Update
On October 14, I had a post about the probabilities assigned by Nate Silver to victories by four of the crazier Republican Senate candidates. Now that we are five days older and wiser, how does it look? The 56% he had for Sharron Angle beating Harry Reid in Nevada has climbed to 62%. Ken Buck [...]
Miller-time In Alaska
If there are three things we know that Tea Partiers solemnly believe in, it’s freedom, liberty and fiscal responsibility. Okay, so that’s really two things. But freedom/liberty is really, really important. That’s why it’s best to put it first, and count it twice. The dedication to fiscal responsibility is upheld by their full-throated support for [...]
Foreclosure Crisis Rides Again
On September 29, the Washington Post had an article (by Ariana Eunjung Cha) about the brewing foreclosure mess which talked about “allegations of forged documents and signatures and other similar problems”. Apart from one solitary reference to forged paperwork, the issue was never fleshed out. It wasn’t clear at all what kind of forgeries were [...]
Some Crazy Possibilities And Probabilities
The weather I have this morning is cold and wet and dreary, so here’s a post to match that mood. Let’s pick, pretty much at random, four of this year’s crop of truly lunatic Republican Senate candidates. And let’s look at how likely they are to be making a complete fool of themselves on Capitol [...]