They lived to touch the stars

By Summer Ash

  -  

Thu Jan 27, 2011 7:07 PM EST

Today is the day NASA sets aside to remember those who gave their lives in pursuit of our dreams to explore above and beyond the surface of our planet.

• January 27, 1967 - the Apollo 1 space capsule was engulfed in flames during a pre-launch test.
• January 28, 1986 - the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded less than a minute and a half after launch.
• February 1, 2003 - the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up upon re-entry.

While I wasn't alive during the Apollo program, I am old enough to remember exactly where I was during both the Challenger and Columbia disasters. They both affected me deeply.

I have been in love with the Universe for as long as I can remember. I'm pretty sure it was a done deal when I first saw the moon in the night sky. My mom can attest to that. Be it movie, book, or museum, I devoured all things space related. And while I've come out the other side of my astronaut phase (for various reasons), I would still gladly sit on top of a rocket, no matter what the risks, to have the chance to touch the stars. And I know each of the astronauts who lost their lives in these disasters felt the same.

So I'm glad NASA has established this day of remembrance to honor both the sacrifice that comes with exploration and the dreams that drive us to explore in the first place. Ad astra per aspera.

FCIC: What Caused the Financial Crisis

So far, only the New York Times has the story — nothing from the WSJ or Bloomberg yet:
The FCIC found that the crisis was caused by “widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street” — but I expect this to be explosive in advance of the actual FCIC release on Thursday.
The many causal factors highlighted in the FCIC report:

• Alan Greenspan’s malfeasance — his refusal to perform his regulatory duties because he did not believe in them — allowed the credit bubble to expand, driving housing prices to dangerously unsustainable levels; Greenspan’s advocacy for financial deregulation was a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” and “the prime example” of government negligence;
• Ben S. Bernanke failed to foresee the crisis;
• The Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” — saving Bear, but allowing Lehman to crater — “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.”
• Bush Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. wrongly predicted in 2007 that subprime meltdown would be contained.
• The Clinton White House, including then Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, made a crucial error in “shielding over-the-counter derivatives from regulation [CFMA]. This was “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.”
• Then NY Fed President, now Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner failed to “clamp down on excesses by Citigroup in the lead-up to the crisis;” Further, a month before Lehman’s collapse, Geithner was still in the dark about Lehman’s derivative exposure;
• Low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession “created increased risks” but were not chiefly to blame, according to the FCIC (I place some more weight on Ultra-low rates than they do);
• The financial sector spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with the industry made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions. The impact of which an incestuous relationship between bankers and regulators, Congress and bankers, and classic regulatory capture by the industry.
• The credit-rating agencies “cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.”
• The Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the 5 biggest banks to ramp up their leverage, hold insufficient capital, and engage in risky practices.
• Leverage at the nation’s five largest investment banks was wildly excessive: They kept only $1 in capital to cover losses for about every $40 in assets;
• The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency along with the Office of Thrift Supervision, “federally pre-empted” (blocked) state regulators from reining in lending abuses;
• The report documents “questionable practices by mortgage lenders and careless betting by banks;”
• The report portrays the “bumbling incompetence among corporate chieftains” as to the risk and operations of their own firms:
-Citigroup executives admitting that they paid little attention to the risks associated with mortgage securities.
-AIG executives were blind to its $79 billion exposure to credit default swaps;
-Merrill Lynch top managers were surprised when mortgage investments suddenly resulted in billions of dollars in losses;
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “contributed to the crisis but were not a primary cause.” (Or as I called them, they were just two more crappy banks) The various home ownership goals set by the government were not culprits either.

I feel terrifically vindicated by what I have seen so far. About 90% of Bailout Nation is in accordance with the commission’s findings. The 10% difference being the impact of Ultra low rates as the spark that lit the fire, sending managers scrambling to buy all of this junk paper.

Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds

January 25, 2011
Financial Crisis Inquiry Report   (the entire report here)

Stefan Zaklin/European Pressphoto Agency

The commission’s report finds fault with two Fed chairmen: Alan Greenspan, right, a skeptic of regulation who led the central bank as the housing bubble expanded, and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, who did not foresee the crisis but then played a crucial role in the response to it. 

By SEWELL CHAN

WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.
The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans.
“The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,” the panel wrote in the report’s conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. “If we accept this notion, it will happen again.”
While the panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, accuses several financial institutions of greed, ineptitude or both, some of its gravest conclusions concern government failings, with embarrassing implications for both parties. But the panel was itself divided along partisan lines, which could blunt the impact of its findings.
Many of the conclusions have been widely described, but the synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony, along with its government imprimatur, give the report — to be released on Thursday as a 576-page book — a conclusive sweep and authority.
The commission held 19 days of hearings and interviews with more than 700 witnesses; it has pledged to release a trove of transcripts and other raw material online.
Of the 10 commission members, the six appointed by Democrats endorsed the final report. Three Republican members have prepared a dissent focusing on a narrower set of causes; a fourth Republican, Peter J. Wallison, has his own dissent, calling policies to promote homeownership the major culprit. The panel was hobbled repeatedly by internal divisions and staff turnover.
The majority report finds fault with two Fed chairmen: Alan Greenspan, who led the central bank as the housing bubble expanded, and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, who did not foresee the crisis but played a crucial role in the response. It criticizes Mr. Greenspan for advocating deregulation and cites a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” under his leadership as a “prime example” of negligence.
It also criticizes the Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” to the crisis — allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse in September 2008 after earlier bailing out another bank, Bear Stearns, with Fed help — as having “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.”
Like Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Bush’s Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., predicted in 2007 — wrongly, it turned out — that the subprime collapse would be contained, the report notes.
Democrats also come under fire. The decision in 2000 to shield the exotic financial instruments known as over-the-counter derivatives from regulation, made during the last year of President Bill Clinton’s term, is called “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.”
Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the crisis and is now the Treasury secretary, was not unscathed; the report finds that the New York Fed missed signs of trouble at Citigroup and Lehman, though it did not have the main responsibility for overseeing them.
Former and current officials named in the report, as well as financial institutions, declined Tuesday to comment before the report was released.
The report could reignite debate over the influence of Wall Street; it says regulators “lacked the political will” to scrutinize and hold accountable the institutions they were supposed to oversee. The financial industry spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with it made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions.
The report does knock down — at least partly — several early theories for the financial crisis. It says the low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants; and the “aggressive homeownership goals” set by the government as part of a “philosophy of opportunity” were not major culprits.
On the other hand, the report is harsh on regulators. It finds that the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to require big banks to hold more capital to cushion potential losses and halt risky practices, and that the Fed “neglected its mission.”
It says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates some banks, and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees savings and loans, blocked states from curbing abuses because they were “caught up in turf wars.”
“The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire,” the report states. “The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble.”
The report’s implications may be felt more in the political realm than in public policy. The Dodd-Frank law overhauling the regulation of Wall Street, signed in July, took as its premise the same regulatory deficiencies cited by the commission. But the report is sure to be a factor in the debate over the future of Fannie and Freddie, which have been run by the government since 2008.
Though the report documents questionable practices by mortgage lenders and careless betting by banks, one striking finding is its portrayal of incompetence.
It quotes Citigroup executives conceding that they paid little attention to mortgage-related risks. Executives at the American International Group were found to have been blind to its $79 billion exposure to credit-default swaps, a kind of insurance that was sold to investors seeking protection against a drop in the value of securities backed by home loans. At Merrill Lynch, managers were surprised when seemingly secure mortgage investments suddenly suffered huge losses.
By one measure, for about every $40 in assets, the nation’s five largest investment banks had only $1 in capital to cover losses, meaning that a 3 percent drop in asset values could have wiped out the firm. The banks hid their excessive leverage using derivatives, off-balance-sheet entities and other devices, the report found. The speculative binge was abetted by a giant “shadow banking system” in which the banks relied heavily on short-term debt.
“When the housing and mortgage markets cratered, the lack of transparency, the extraordinary debt loads, the short-term loans and the risky assets all came home to roost,” the report found. “What resulted was panic. We had reaped what we had sown.”
The report, which was heavily shaped by the commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, is dotted with literary flourishes. It calls credit-rating agencies “cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.” Paraphrasing Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” it states, “The fault lies not in the stars, but in us.”
Of the banks that bought, created, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in mortgage-related securities, it says: “Like Icarus, they never feared flying ever closer to the sun.”        

Goldman Sachs stumps taxpayers

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

GOP giving up smart for spark in 2012

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Marijuana & Drug War Questions Dominate Obama's YouTube Chats -- President Backs Prohibition, Agrees Drug Debate 'Legitimate'

By Sahil Kapur, Raw Story
Posted on January 27, 2011, Printed on January 27, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149709/

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Thursday said America's long-running prohibition of drugs serves an important purpose, but advocated for "shifting resources" away from incarcerations of "nonviolent, first time drug offenders."

"I think this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate," Obama said from the White House during an interview broadcast live on YouTube.

But, he added, "I am not in favor of legalization."

His remarks came in response to a videotaped question from retired deputy sheriff MacKenzie Allen about whether the drug war may be counterproductive by way of fueling violence in market pushed underground.

"We have to go after drug cartels that are not only selling drugs but also creating havoc on the US-Mexican border," Obama said. But he added that drugs should be treated as a public health issue and that the United States would benefit by spending less time and money jailing offenders.

"On drugs, I think that a lot of times we have been so focused on arrests, incarceration, interdiction, that we don’t spend as much time thinking about how we shrink demand," he said.

The Associated Press reported last May that "[a]fter 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread."

"The president talks a good game about shifting resources and having a balanced, public health-oriented approach, but it doesn't square with the budgets he's submitted to Congress," said Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore narcotics cop and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

"Still," Franklin added, "it's historic that the president of the United States is finally saying that legalizing and regulating drugs is a topic worthy of discussion."

The question about the drug war, which came from a member of LEAP, was voted the most popular ahead of the interview. All but a few of viewers' 200 top-rated questions touched on different aspects of the drug war.

Obama's remarks reflect an unchanged stance but different tone on the issue than in 2009, when he was asked about drug legalization and responded: "I don't know what this says about the online audience -- but, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow the economy."

Religious Right on Dangers of Environmentalism

RWWBlog | November 29, 2010 | 85 likes, 1,212 dislikes

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content...
Various Religious Right leaders appear in a video entitled "Resisting the Green Dragon" about the dangers of the environmental movement.

This are just the first page of comments

• This is a Saturday Night Live sketch, right?
  Bgirl2000 2 weeks ago 12 
• Wow. People will reach any amount of self-delusion in order to keep living selfish, destructive lifestyles.
  alejo699 2 weeks ago 5 
  
  
  • wow, so many unsubstantiated claims. Idiots
    gofindyourownawesome 3 hours ago
  • Christian filth. 
    KeepEuropeWhite 4 hours ago
  • Are you fucking kidding me... I have seen some fucked up religions shit but this is just sad....
    Jameswptv 11 hours ago
  • I'm having a difficult time telling if this is even real....could the people in this video really be that dumb?
    Lesterfinnigan 15 hours ago
  • Geez, even the Bible tells people to take care of the earth. The only threat the Green Dragon poses it to the control these fundamentalist christians have over the gullible.
    mrbarbieux 1 day ago
  • The Republicans have gone too far this time!! These freaks better hope they never meet me in a dark alley. I just hope anyone who watches this has enough common sense to know these people have no clue what they're talking about.
    KingChimp100 2 days ago
  • 85 people are dumb beyond words.
    KingChimp100 2 days ago
  • the "Religious" Right calling environmentalism as believing in myths and having false assertions. oh man the disconnect.
    sapier 2 days ago
  • It's better that we destroy God's creation! Environmentalism isn't our friend, but of enemy. WTF These rightwing lunatics are completely nuts!!! God didn't entrust the planet for us to abuse and destroy it for our own kicks and enjoyment.
    Rob14or15 2 days ago
  • Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, WallBuilders. Just Wiki these groups for yourself, it's a who's who of the far Christian right. Unfortunately Fascism is carrying a flag and a bible these days.
    TheSuperLiberal 2 days ago