I say "supposed profits" because the profits are a pittance compared to the huge TARP expenditures, and only represent profits on the first wave of repayments -- which, for all we know, may also be the last round of repayments.

Many of the repayments were made by banks which apparently didn't even need the money, but just thought they should sign up for free taxpayer cash if the government were giving it away anyhow, then repaid early because they didn't like the strings attached.

So their behavior says little about the banks that really needed TARP funds to continue operations.

Anyway, Barney Frank is ready to spend it all:

Frank, however, wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the "TARP for Main Street" proposal would take $1 billion "from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided underÂ…the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called "neighborhood stabilization" fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.

The "TARP for Main Street" bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to "stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure."

Frank's proposal comes at a time when Republicans, and some Democrats, are expressing concern about the continued use of TARP money. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch recently complained that TARP funds are "now being used as a go-to solution to address all of our nation's economic ills." Hatch and Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln recently introduced a bill that would require that TARP money goes back to the Treasury for debt reduction.

And that is kinda how the bubble was blown up in the first place.

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (4)
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How the Cookie in Chief crumbles:

While President Obama's approval-to-disapproval numbers after months in office remain a more than respectable 57 percent to 33 percent, his standing among independents has moved in a negative direction by a net 12 points, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted June 23-29.

Fifty-two percent of independents approve of Obama's performance compared to 37 percent who don't, a falloff from the 57 percent to 30 percent standing with them he enjoyed in early June.

...

"Those who liked President Obama the most from the start - African-Americans, Democrats, women - still like him by the same margins, but a chunk of voters who were undecided have decided he's not their cup of tea," said Quinnipiac's Peter Brown. "Among independents, men, white Catholics, white evangelical Christians and Republicans, his numbers have fallen. He still has a ways to go before his coalition becomes politically unstable, but there are some groups and issues - especially the economy - where he needs to make sure this trend does not continue."

Voters approve of Obama's handling of the economy by 52 percent to 42 percent, a margin five points less than in April. In this category, independents divide by 47 percent to 46 percent.

...

It's a closer call on health care where 46 percent approve of Obama's handling of the issue compared to 42 percent. Independents disapprove 48 percent to 37 percent.

Those economic numbers don't seem too good to me, either, especially with independents now splitting against him.

Rasmussen finds similar erosion on the economy.

A Rasmussen video report notes that 42% now give the President good or excellent marks for handling the economy . ThatÂ’s his lowest rating to date Â…

Overall, 53% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the PresidentÂ’s performance so far. Forty-six percent (46%) disapprove.

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 AM | Comments (1)
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Sorry about that, folks. Looks like we had a drive fail. Second one this week.

Fortunately, this server has hardware RAID, so we didn't lose anything. Unfortuntely, the drive had a whole lot of crazy to get out of its system before going into that good night, and took the server down with it.

We might need another brief outage to get the drive replaced, but other than that, we should be good.

Update: YES, I DO KNOW ABOUT HOT-SWAP DRIVES THANKS! Whether that will actually work perfectly with these drives, this controller, and this kernel, is something I don't know and can't easily test, since I only have one of these servers, which is why I'm allowing for a maintenance window.

We now return you to our regular program of... Uh, stuff.

Otherwords [Gabe]: Hoowee, tsk tsk tsk, guys. Don't want to piss a boy named Pixy off. He controls your sun and stars (also known as this website), y'know.

Update: The RAID controller is reporting a "bad stripe", which apparently means that the whole thing could die at any time, so I get to back up sixteen million files* to another server, then reformat the entire thing, and then copy them all back again. It might be fixable without doing that, but attempting the fix might destroy the drive array, so I have to do the backup regardless.

Enjoy your long weekend, folks, because we might be in for a few hours of downtime.

* Yes, really.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:49 AM | Comments (1)
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Negotiating with terror networks. For corpses. Which is the stock in trade of terror networks.

On Jan. 20, 2007, five American soldiers were killed and three seriously wounded in Iraq. As Bill Roggio relates at the Long War Journal, it was a daring operation: a twelve-man terrorist team disguised as U.S. servicemen attacked our troops as they held a previously arranged meeting with local officials in Karbala. Four of the soldiers were alive when they were abducted from the scene. They were handcuffed and murdered in a remote location when the coalition forces attempting to rescue them closed in.

Given the sophistication of the raid and the intelligence required to pull it off, it was a virtual certainty that the mullahsÂ’ special forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, were behind it....

Unquestionably, Iran, acting through the Qazali network — which is better known as Asaib al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous — was responsible for the murder of our troops in Karbala. As Ledeen documents in his book The Iranian Time Bomb (reviewed here), Gen. David Petraeus made that clear at an April 2007 press conference. Petraeus detailed that the Qazali brothers were among “the key members” of a network of “extremist secret cells.”

...

About two weeks ago, the Obama administration released Laith Qazali after extensive negotiations with the Asaib al-Haq terror network. That network has long been in negotiations with the fledgling Iraqi government, dangling the possibility of laying down its arms, renouncing violence, and integrating into Iraqi society, provided that its top members — particularly Qais and Laith Qazali, as well as Ali Mussa Daqduq — be released. Realizing, however, that these terrorists were responsible for kidnapping and killing American soldiers in gross violation of the laws of war, the Bush administration had declined to release them.

The Obama administration has not only released Laith Qazali, it has been in negotiations to release his brother, Qais Qazali, as well. The negotiations and release were carried out in flagrant disregard of the longstanding policy against exchanging prisoners for the release of hostages. Undermining that policy endangers all American troops and civilian personnel — as well as the troops and civilian personnel of our allies — by encouraging terrorists to kidnap them to use as bargaining chips.

...

Asaib al-Haq operatives told Iraqi-government officials that they would release the Brits in exchange for the Qazali brothers and Daqduq. The Bush administration refused....

By contrast, President Obama was persuaded to free Laith Qazali outright...

And although the administration has attempted to pass off Laith QazaliÂ’s release as a necessary compromise of American national interests for the purportedly greater good of Iraqi reconciliation, the camouflage is thin indeed. Transparently, the terrorist has been freed as a quid pro quo for the release of British hostages. According to the New York Times, Sami al-Askari, another Maliki mouthpiece, told an interviewer:

This is a very sensitive topic because you know the position that the Iraqi government, the U.S. and British governments, and all the governments do not accept the idea of exchanging hostages for prisoners. . . . So we put it in another format, and we told them that if they want to participate in the political process they cannot do so while they are holding hostages. And we mentioned to the American side that they cannot join in the political process and release their hostages while their leaders are behind bars or imprisoned.

Since Palin Steele wants me to say nice things about Obama: He's exactly who we thought he was. That's something, I guess.

Thanks to Arthur.

BTW, apologies for the outage.

And, BTW, this article is a week old, but still important.

Corrected: I confused the terrorist to be released with the terrorist already released, and first wrote the release was coming. I have rewritten the headline to correct.

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (2)
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I just saw Pixy on his way to the hamster shed with a bunch of cattle prods, so the comments should be back in a little bit. While we're waiting, a poll for you to consider.

Relating to this post at the Corner, what day is Saturday:

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:46 AM | Add Comment
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It becomes more apparent crisis by crisis that President Obama believes his status as Supreme Leader of the New America, you know the one we can now be proud of, will serve as the guarantor of our national security. All the trappings of a cult of personality surround and engulf him, a state press, nationalized infrastructure, and the belief that he can mint money to institutionalize the state's control of production and distribution. While his rampant theft of our capitalist system is horrifying, his foreign policy is completely Obama-based and doomed to failure.

Love letters to the Mullahs are rewarded with wholesale slaughter in the streets. Yet his unconditional negotiations with them will go on and we all trust they will be swayed by the unalloyed charm of the Obama. Our democratic allies in Honduras act to stop their President from pulling a Chavez and who does the Obama back, a fellow Cult of personalitarian.

He shows an affinity for those, like him who know best how the plebes should live and prefers to deal with them. It is much easier to negotiate Poobah to Poobah without all those pesky democratic organs mucking things up. If the Iranians had an actual representative government he loses the chance for his big Nobel Peace prize for a grand bargain a la Jimmah Cahtah. In Honduras he declares their own Supreme Court broke their own laws in collusion with their entire legislature. Obviously another Jefe para Vida would be easier to deal with. Heck he might even catch another Nobel for his Latin alliance with Chavez, the Castros, Velaya and the other populist socialists in our hemisphere. Next he will pat Lil' Kim on the head and ask him to kindly refrain from lobbing missiles at his favorite vacation spot and voila another entire region pacified under the benevolent dictatorship of Obama the First.

I assume after eight years rule would pass by fiat to the Michelle and she could eradicate those last non-PC vestiges of racist Old America. There was a point in the Presidential race where anyone calling Obama a socialist was ridiculed. That ridicule was justified, his plans are more sweeping than that. Flash back to last November and put the list of his "accomplishments" thus far up as his promise for the first six months. Can you imagine his election? Sadly I still can, but as his unbridled egotism fails to overcome the pesky reality-based world we can only hope America is paying the fuck attention.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 08:08 AM | Comments (1)
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I tried to add this to the Sanford post, but the system is doing "that thing" again.

Some budding Harlequin romance writers in the comments. ParanoidGirlinSeattle:

I think I read that book, the descriptions of the sex scenes were way over the top, lots of throbbing pulsating manhood and soft wet caves of desire.

PaleoMedic:

Her bosom heaved like a college freshman on dollar beer night."

Seems like a good game: write the book that Mark Sanford's just dying to write. At the moment I can only think of this line, borrowed from satirical playwright Chris Durang:

He came down on her with the force of a thousand violins.

I also added:

He dipped his man-spoon into her quivering cup of lady-chowder.

Posted by: Ace at 08:07 AM | Comments (3)
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Posted now at IB, with interesting discussion in comments.

Unemployment for June went up only 0.1%, although 467,000 jobs were lost. In May, unemployment increased .5% with 504,000 jobs lost. The difference is because people not actively searching for work are not included within the meaning of "unemployment"--including people who would like to work, but gave up.

Still, it's nice to see a bit of leveling off. We're in the core construction season now, which hopefully means more jobs available. Things could be much worse in the fall.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:50 AM | Comments (1)
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I thought I'd linked this yesterday but I hadn't.

Sanford can be criticized for a lot post-scandal alone. For one thing, love is inherently foolish and anyone talking about it sounds like a fool. He should know this; he is not a teenager. There are ways to allude to the fact that this isn't (in his mind) a sleazy one-night affair without gushing on about it like a ten year old.

For another thing, not only did he give the AP quotes about his "soul mate" and his "forbidden" and "tragic" love, but he allowed them to record the interview, and, it seems, gave them permission to run that audio. Obviously you can cut commercials with audio, and they'll be more effective than commercials with print-only text.

This may not hurt Sanford much, whose career is over, but it's not a good thing for all those people, including political supporters and fellow Carolina Republicans, that he spent half of his first press conference apologizing to.

At first I thought I should give him points for maximum candor. But when I wrote that, I presumed he didn't want to talk about these things, so offering maximum candor was a difficult, painful thing for him, and therefore had some nobleness in it.

I don't think that any more. He wants to talk about this. He wants to shout out his forbidden love for his soul-mate from the rooftops. So this is selfish rather than selfless.

Worse than selfish, really. Many serious-minded men are very selfish at times, but it doesn't reduce their seriousness. (It does reduce their virtue, of course, but that's one of the first luxuries to go in politics.)

What this is is self-indulgent, which is more unforgivable. You can get away with being a bastard, but you can't get away with being a buffoon.

I have long thought that the real way to win on a television reality show, if you must be one at all, is to keep your dignity. Whether you win the money is secondary to whether you keep your dignity intact. Sanford has failed in the impromptu reality show he's decided to both produce and star in.

P-shop by Slublog, thanks to an idea by a commenter.

Posted by: Ace at 07:32 AM | Add Comment
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They've got places to go and...well, more places to go.

WASHINGTON -- Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as "codels," has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.

Cost of meals and hotels alone? $57,697

Posted by: Slublog at 06:41 AM | Add Comment
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