The Hackenblog

“A PSYCHOLOGICAL barrier still exists among home buyers here. Downtown is the center of an east-west divide, with the established and famous Hollywood Hills the hub of desirability to the west. To the east, there is a historic hilly area. If Angelenos know about it at all, they generally consider it a less attractive part of town.”
Northeast Los Angeles: Ready for a Close-Up, by Lisa Chamberlain, NYT RE, March 25, 2007 (via Franklin Avenue)

I foresee an explosion in the Hummer and Starbucks populations (like a Starbucks will open in Highland Park because there’ll be enough people who can afford it). Oh well. Must be time to move a little east and a little south.

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“Even though I have by most definitions good coverage — about $400 per month covers me and my daughter, with a $2,500 deductible for each of us — I’m afraid that I still have to count myself among the underinsured, if only because there’s nothing to stop my out-of-pocket cap from being raised to whatever Blue Cross feels like raising it this spring.

“They can’t single out sick subscribers by raising only their premiums or deductibles. But they can raise the out-of-pocket cap, because (as a customer service rep explained to me over the phone) that’s considered “a benefit.” And of course, only sick subscribers even know what an out-of-pocket cap is.

“I typically reach my $2,500 deductible by January and my $7,500 out-of-pocket cap by February. This means that after I pay $7,500 in co-payments, Blue Cross covers 100% of my expenses for the rest of the year.

“The last hike was from $5,000 to $7,500 in 2004. My big fear now is that in order to make up for that $200,000 fine, Blue Cross will raise the out-of-pocket cap for my category of policy from $7,500 to $12,000 to $15,000 to $20,000 to God knows what. The ultimate aim would be for all but the richest sick patients to drop out because they can’t afford coverage anymore.”
Werewolves of Wellpoint, by Catherine Seipp, PajamasMedia, January 9, 2007 (via Calitics)

Rest in peace Catherine Seipp.

If this isn’t an argument for universal healthcare, written by a conservative no less, then I don’t know what is. Just expand Medicare in stages to cover everyone, it can’t be that difficult. The health insurance companies can go into other businesses, like arms dealing or slavery; they’d be naturals.

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If you have small children, I suggest you avert their eyes.

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“Marty Lederman at Balkinizatin points to a second instance of this kind of thinking this weekend, in an interview given by John Yoo to the British weekly Spectator, and reprinted in the Montreal Gazette. Yoo, author of the infamous ‘torture memo’ that came out of the Office of Legal Counsel in August of 2002 and became public in the summer of 2004, continues to defend the legality of the president’s right to torture suspects. (The OLC subsequently withdrew the memo.) Yoo’s argument rests largely on more of this same ‘greater-power-includes-the-lesser-power’ analysis. As he explains to his interviewer, ‘Look, death is worse than torture, but everyone except pacifists thinks there are circumstances in which war is justified. War means killing people. If we are entitled to kill people, we must be entitled to injure them.’ He goes on to say, ‘I don’t see how it can be reasonable to have an absolute prohibition on torture when you don’t have an absolute prohibition on killing.’”

~snip~

“The real trick, as Jack Balkin of Yale Law School points out, is convincing your listener that the same rules and norms that govern the ‘greater’ category also govern the ‘lesser.’ You need to convince them that if the state is allowed, for instance, to execute criminals, any laws regarding cruel and unusual treatment simply go away. In the case of the U.S. attorney firings, that would mean insisting that the same rules and norms that govern presidential authority over U.S. attorney appointments govern everything to do with the Justice Department’s oversight of individual (partisan, political) criminal investigations and prosecutions. You would similarly need to insist that the rules that govern the president’s power to kill someone during wartime also govern his authority to torture a suspect during an undeclared war on terror. Professor Dave Glazier makes this point very clearly at the blog Balkinization.”
When Less Is More - The nutty legal syllogism that powers the Bush administration, by Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, Posted Wednesday, March 21, 2007, at 6:12 PM ET (via Rebecca’s Pocket)

Let me get this straight: because the Federal government has the power to execute people (kill them, destroy their bodies beyond functioning), it therefore also has the power to just maim them. Huh. Sounds more like a good abolish the death penalty argument to me.

Does anyone know why John “Torture Memo” Yoo is teaching at one of the finest universities in California? Does anyone know why the man who was able to stick his finger far enough into his moral throat and puke up a justification for the psychos of the bush junta to torture, well, anyone really is teaching at UC Berkeley? Anyone? I mean, Berkeley of all places. Does Berkeley even know what they’ve hired to teach “law”? Perhaps someone should tell them.

Added 061907: “2. Who is ultimately responsible for the abuses?
If there’s a smoking gun, it’s in the hands of John C. Yoo. He worked at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and he’s the guy behind the August 1, 2002, memo that said interrogators could do what they wanted as long as the intensity of pain inflicted was less than “that which accompany serious physical injury such as death or organ failure.” It created conditions that allowed for almost any sort of physical abuse. So guys like Yoo and Timothy Flanagan, who was deputy White House counsel under Alberto R. Gonzales, discussed techniques like stress positions and sleep deprivation that were approved for high-level Al Qaeda suspects—and those techniques were used on Iraqi civilians. I had a heartfelt conversation with Flanagan and told him what I had heard from Iraqis: that these techniques had been used on men, women and children in Iraq. He feels bad about it; I know he does. But the fact is that he and Yoo and some of these other people from the best law schools and universities in this country were the ones who came up with the legal definitions that allowed for the abuse to happen.”
Six Questions for Tara McKelvey on Detainee Abuse, Harpers, May 9, 2007

Thank God for Harpers Magazine.

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Congratulations to Molly Kiely and her husband James Brewer on the birth of their daughter

Perla

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The Hackenblog finally joins the 21st century. Yay!

Please update your bookmarks, rss feeds, whatnot.

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Update 031807: The comments on both these posts are worth reading. GM

Also update 031807: The Great Unraveling, by Stephen S. Roach (not Dr. Krugman), morganstanley.com, March 16, 2007 and

The Fingers of Housing Instability, by John Mauldin, safehaven.com, March 17, 2007

“BOCA RATON – Retired Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking at a Futures Industry Association annual conference here on Thursday, said the problems of the subprime mortgage market had more to do with home prices than easy credit.

“‘If we could wave a wand and housing prices go up 10 percent, the subprime mortgage problem would disappear,’ he said.

“What kind of a rock does this fucking idiot Alan Greenspan live under?”
Amazing Mental Rot, JH Kunstler, March 17, 2007

And…

“Thanks, jackasses.

“Irvine-based New Century Financial Corp. wasn’t the only so-called sub-prime lender, passing out easy-money loans to people who probably shouldn’t have gotten one. But the company’s collapse has so far been the most dramatic, and already appears to be impacting the economy as a whole.

“Now, if more and more homeowners default on their loans — flooding the market with foreclosures — and the marketplace starts to clamp down on who qualifies for a loan (limiting the number of available buyers), all of us homeowners could be in for a shock.

“If home values start to really drop, those of us who bought in the past few years could suddenly see our homes worth less than our mortgages.

“Of course, this is exactly what a lot of people — including me — thought would eventually happen: Loads of defaults and foreclosures once the rash of ARMs first approved in 2005 and 2006 suddenly adjusted.

“This was a recipe for disaster: Take people with low credit scores and no downpayment money. Give them a manageable adjustable rate mortgage to get their foot in the door — but with a catch: The loans will soon adjust to a new rate nearly double that original rate. C’mon!

“New Century apparently couldn’t help itself. Risky loans were the only way to prop up their sales volume last year, as the market began to cool. Perhaps they were deluded — after all, defaults were rare until recently, as people who couldn’t afford their adjusted mortgage rates could either sell their house at a hefty profit, or refinance.”
Angelenos of the Week: New Century Financial Corp., Franklin Avenue, March 16, 2007

You’re damned if you rent and you’re damned if you buy. I think I’ll sit tight in my little one-bedroom in a well-kept fourplex in Lincoln Heights a little longer. My landlord’s cool; he knocked $20/month off the perfectly legal rent increase when I asked him to, so I might as well stick around.

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“The method of attack has got to be quite troubling for MS on many grounds. The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? If this gets widespread, and I hope it will, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people

“It won’t take long for boxes bought at retail to be activated before they are bought, and the people who plunk down money for the mal^h^h^hsoftware for real get ‘you are a filthy pirate’ messages. Won’t that be a laugh riot at the MS phone banks in Bangalore.”
Vista activation cracked by brute force, The Inquirer, March 1, 2007

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

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“Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb: Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It regularly allows U.N. International Atomic Energy Authority inspectors access to its nuclear facilities. Under that treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium in order to make electrical power. This program is the focus of arms control concern as the some process can be used to make weapons. Iran says it does not intend to make a bomb. The U.S. says it does. All intelligence agencies (with the possible exception of the Israelis) say that it would be years before Iran could make a nuclear weapon if that is its true intent. U.N. officials recently asserted that U.S. “evidence” about a planned Iranian bomb has not proved true.”

~snip~

“Congress does have the power to stop an attack on Iran. There is no question that under the Constitution, Congress can refuse to allow the executive to spend our tax money on another war.”
Iran for peace activists, Happening Here, February 26, 2007

Has the U.S. signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Anybody know?

There’s lots of good information in this post. Just say NO to more war.

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Arnold Drake
1924-2007

Well, 83 years is a pretty good run. Arnold Drake wrote my favorite, and in my opinion, best Jonah Hex story for Weird Western Tales #20. You can read, here, how much I liked it. It’s the only book I’ve so far recommended anyone buy for their collection.

I met Mr. Drake last year at Comic Con San Diego. He was sharing a panel with Luis Dominguez and I asked Mr. Dominguez about Jonah’s facial disfigurement. Bless his little heart, Mr. Dominguez seemed not to understand my question, even after I repeated it, rephrased it, and practically danced it, even after Mr. Drake yelled at him, I still never got much of an answer. However, Mr. Drake was sharp as a tack and remembered the Jonah Hex issue he wrote like he wrote it yesterday. He was wonderful to talk to and I’m very glad I ditched the webcomics panel and joined his, swelling our numbers to, um, six, I think. Oh well.

Rest in peace, Mr. Drake.

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Marine Wedding

Nina Berman takes astonishing photographs. Lindsay interviews her at Salon, where there’s a “before” photo of the couple. (Via MahaBarb)

This is why war must be the last resort of civilized people.

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