The Ohio Attorney General, Richard Cordray, is swinging sweet, sweet lullabies:

Ohio’s attorney general sued Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings on Friday, asserting that they provided misleading credit ratings that led to hundreds of millions of losses for state funds.

The official, Richard Cordray, filed the lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on behalf of five Ohio funds that assert they lost more than $457 million because of “false and misleading ratings” of mortgage-backed securities by the ratings agencies.

Officials at Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which is owned by McGraw-Hill, could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesman for Fitch Ratings, which is owned by Fimalac S.A., had no immediate comment.

I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time.

I’m still following the CNN story about the Killings at the Canals, and this piece today about the soldier who finally broke silence and reported the murders, Jess Cunningham, included this charming tidbit:

Based on Cunningham’s information, the Army launched an investigation in January 2008.

Asked why he did not report the crime earlier, Cunningham said, “Retaliation. Fear of being alone, fear of being the only one that had a problem with it, fear of so many things that could have happened to me.”

Cunningham was among 13 soldiers at the canal. He and another sergeant were charged with conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, but the charges were dropped. Cunningham received immunity for testifying.

David Court, who is Hatley’s attorney, said Cunningham “did not come forward for any altruistic motive. He only mentioned this because he thought it would get him less punishment. He didn’t do it because he thought, ‘I’ve got to blow the whistle.’ “

Court said, “If I were Sgt. Cunningham, I’d be worried that, having broken the band of brothers, something might happen to me.”

Cunningham said that is exactly why he did not come forward earlier.

How is that not intimidating a witness? How is that legal? And maybe people unfamiliar with the military don’t get it, but for those of you who do, can you not see right away the sort of cult-like following that Hatley had in that unit? We’ve all seen this dynamic. The more I read about this company, the more dysfunctional it sounds.

I’m going to keep repeating it until someone notices. CNN’s current series Killing at the Canals, which focuses on the investigation and conviction of the Army NCOs who murdered detainees execution style and dumped their bodies into canals, is about the First Sergeant who commanded Scott Beauchamp. His name is First Sergeant John Hatley, and he wrote the following letter to outside sources trashing Beauchamp, a soldier in his command:

My soldiers conduct is consistently honorable. This soldier has other underlining issues which I’m sure will come out in the course of the investigation. No one at any of the post we live at or frequent, remotely fit the descriptions of any of the persons depicted in this young man’s fairy tale. I can’t and won’t divulge any information regarding this soldier, but I do sincerely appreciate all the support from the people back home. Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here. I’m currently serving with the best America has to offer. I have worked and fought closely with every soldier within my company and they are consummate professionals in an area most people can’t fathom. I’m proud of my soldiers and would gladly give my life for any one of them. Please continue to keep them with you in your prayers and thank God that we have these courageous men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, Americans, and the people of this struggling nation.

Sincerely,

1SG Hatley

1SG Hatley and the other NCOs executed these men in March of 2007. Scott Beauchamp wrote Shock Troops in July 2007. Hatley wrote this letter after July of 2007, insisting that Beauchamp was disturbed because he wrote about making fun of someone in a cafeteria or running over a dog. He wrote that letter attacking Beauchamp, knowing that just a few weeks earlier, he and others had taken it upon themselves to put a gun to the back of several detainee’s heads, pull the trigger, and dump their bodies into a canal.

But they would have you believe that no one in their unit would run over a dog.

Or play with bones.

By the way, Scott Beauchamp is still in uniform serving his country honorably. None of the wingnuts who freaked out about him at the Weekly Standard or elsewhere have gotten around to enlisting.

*** Update ***

God, watching the CNN show tonight was just gut-wrenching. They didn’t just murder four men, they also have put their wives and loved ones through sheer hell. No matter what these men did, you have to feel bad for their families.

Bart Stupak is either lying or stupid (or both) when he said this:

Whether public funds should be used for abortion services is exactly the sort of issue we should be debating openly on the floor of the House of Representatives. My amendment to include Hyde language in H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, is not new or out of line with the current policies regarding federal funding for abortions. There is a strong precedent going back more than 30 years for adding Hyde language. The ban on federal funding for abortions is a long-standing American policy that has been in place since the 1970s and has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

This amendment is not about limiting choice when it comes to abortion services. There is nothing in the amendment that prevents those who choose to obtain abortion services from doing so. The Hyde language simply says taxpayer dollars should not be used to pay for those services. Just as the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) does not provide plans that cover abortion services, nor should the plans for individuals who enter into the public option or receive federal subsidies for healthcare cover abortions. They are free to purchase a supplemental plan or pay for these services with their own money should they so choose.

And this:

No. They’ve been fighting me since July on this. My reaction is that they are saying that no insurance policies will be able to sell abortion coverage, and that is not true. All the members have to do is look at their update that they got from the majority leader, Steny Hoyer [D-MD], that he sent to us about three minutes before 10 [o’clock Saturday night], before we voted on the amendments. Basically, he said, ‘Look, the Stupak amendment is the Hyde amendment. You can’t use federal funds to pay for abortions. However, you can get supplemental coverage, and it does not prevent private insurance companies from selling elective abortion coverage.’ I think the only surprise I have is how much they’ve mischaracterized the amendment, even after their own majority leader report that we all get before we vote clearly states the purpose of the amendment and shows it’s not greater than current law, so all this about taking away women’s rights, restricting it—it’s no different from the restrictions right now.

Because the facts in this case pretty clearly demonstrate that the Stupak amendment goes well beyond Hyde and is a radical piece of legislation:

The George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services has analyzed Stupak-Pitts, and concludes that “the Amendment would produce industry-wide effects, leading to the elimination of health plan coverage for nearly all medically indicated abortions.”

Additionally, “based on past experiences with claim administration decisions involving treatment exclusions,” the analysts conclude that insurers are likely to interpret the exclusion broadly, and exclude not just elective abortions, but also medically indicated abortion and “treatments for serious illnesses, injuries, and medical conditions that include an abortion undertaken for health reasons.” Insurance administrators, they find, are likely to err on the side of coverage denail in order to avoid sanctions.

So not only does Bart Stupak either not know what his amendment does, or he is lying about it, but he wants to blow up the entire health care bill if he doesn’t get his way in the Senate, a legislative body of which he is not even a member.

Who do we send money to to primary this guy? I left the GOP in large part because of the godbotherers.

Bart is at it again:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) pledged on Tuesday morning to defeat healthcare reform legislation if his abortion amendment is taken out, saying 10 to 20 anti-abortion-rights Democrats would vote against a bill with weaker language.

“They’re not going to take it out,” Stupak said on “Fox and Friends,” referring to Senate Democrats. “If they do, healthcare will not move forward.”

He’s basically a political terrorist a kidnapper. He doesn’t have the votes in the Senate to get what he wants, so he’s threatening them- take this amendment out, and we kill your loved one. Steve Benen points out that it is all sound and fury, but should Stupak actually attempt to blow up health care reform because not everyone in the House and Senate is a pro-life extremist, the Democrats should kick him out of their caucus. That might seem harsh, but this is the most important (or so they say) piece of legislation the Democrats have pursued for decades, and anyone who intentionally sabotages it for his own little culture war BS should be forced to pay a price.

*** Update ***

Some of you hate the terrorist bit. Probably right and it is over the top. I apologize. But what really irritates me about this is that Stupak isn’t concerned about the actual health care bill- he’s concerned with advancing his religious agenda through a health care bill, and if he doesn’t get what he wants in the OTHER branch of Congress, he will work to blow up the whole bill. That is infuriating and wrong.

Hell, I’d even understand it if pro-choice advocates had tried to advance the ball in the pro-choice direction, and Stupak said “If they do that, I am voting against it.” But he isn’t doing that, and what he is doing is much more extreme. He is going well beyond the Hyde amendment, and then threatening to blow up the bill if people don’t follow through with his religious beliefs. He’d let tens of millions of people go without health insurance just because he couldn’t for private insurance companies to no longer cover abortion. That makes him pretty despicable in my book. And the fact that the more conservative Senate Democrats aren’t even going to give him the time of day tells you everything you need to know, if the Fox news appearances didn’t already.

I realize that full-throttle wankery is not to everyone’s tastes. But if you like the stuff, do yourself a favor and read Lee Siegel’s “Obama’s Dangerous Obsession” piece. The idea is that Obama’s remarks at Fort Hood betray a dangerous infatuation with Lincoln and that, although everyone loves Lincoln, the guy presided over a bloody civil war, so we might also expect presidents who like Lincoln to want to preside over bloody wars. It’s more complicated than that and, honestly, I’m not sure that it makes any kind of logical sense. But he really explores the studio space. It’s a little hard to believe that it’s not parody.

Obviously, we can’t hold Congressmen to the same high standards as late night comedians:

On the House floor last night, Media Matters points out, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) made his case against holding trials for 9/11 suspects in New York City, directing a question to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“I saw the mayor of New York said today, ‘We’re tough. We can do it.’ Well, Mayor, how are you going to feel when it’s your daughter that’s kidnapped at school by a terrorist?” Shadegg said.

I’m kind of surprised they haven’t used the “if it was your child strapped to that ticking bomb” argument in favor of torture more, to be honest with you.

More good news about the Goldman boys and Tim Geithner:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York gave up much of its power in high-pressure negotiations with the American International Group’s trading partners last year, according to a government report made public on Monday.

Just two days before the New York Fed paid A.I.G.’s partners 100 cents on the dollar to tear up their contracts with the insurance giant, one bank volunteered to take a modest haircut — but it never got the chance.

UBS, of Switzerland, alone offered to give a break to the New York Fed in the negotiations last November over how to keep A.I.G. from toppling and taking other banks down with it. It would have accepted 98 cents on the dollar.

But UBS’s good-faith gesture was quickly drowned out by Goldman Sachs and the top French bank regulator. They argued, with others, that it would be improper and perhaps even criminal to force A.I.G.’s trading partners to bear losses outside of bankruptcy court.

The banks and the regulator were confident that the New York Fed was not willing to push A.I.G. into bankruptcy, because earlier in the fall the New York Fed had stepped in with $85 billion to prop up the insurer.

The New York Fed, led then by Timothy F. Geithner, who is now the Treasury secretary, therefore had little leverage in the negotiations, according to a post-mortem of what has emerged as the most inflammatory episode in the rescue of A.I.G.

In the Army, we had a saying called “Fuck up, move up.” Looks like that sure was the case for Geithner. And you just have to love the sense of entitlement from the Goldman boys- it would be illegal for them to not get paid in full! And, because of who they are and where their people are in our government, the gambit worked.

I seriously think Goldman Sachs and the folks like them are the biggest threat to the future of this country, but since they own everyone, they’ll just keep siphoning off the money until the nation collapses.

I agree with Atrios that the “great failure of the Right since their awesome adventure in Iraq has been to create a new Hitler for us to fear and fight”. I don’t think that Chavez or Kim Jong-Il cuts it. And I think the Hitler-within strategy they’re trying with Obama genuinely does alienate those moderate voters Cokie and Broder are always talking about.

The logical candidate for the next Hitler is China. While the right has yet to settle on a single Chinese leader as Hitleresque, that shouldn’t be a problem. There must be some with Maoist ties and, in the Beckian calculus, that pretty much makes them Hitler.

Yesterday, two prominent neocons, Bobo and Niall Ferguson, both started in on this (I’m positive they coordinated these things). Ferguson warned Americans about the dangers of Chinese aircraft carriers. Bobo explained that the reason Americans feel shitty right now isn’t that they don’t have jobs and health insurance, it’s that we’re jealous of China; the solution to this, interestingly enough, is to move to a Chinese-style government-directed economy.

Now, I don’t think an actual war, or even a Cold War, with China is in the cards. But I think conservatives could say things like “if China gets to Mars before we do, we lose” or “if we don’t build more aircraft carriers, then there will be an aircraft carrier gap and then what” or “if we don’t let Phil Gramm have control of the economy, we can’t compete”. And, of course, Obama can be accused of dithering about China, lacking a comprehensive Chinese policy, and so on.

I’m not sure this will work, but they’ve got to give it a try.

Update. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out how awful the first two paragraphs of Bobo’s piece are, not just because they summarize all of American history in four sentences, but because of the way the opening resembles an unholy marriage of Neil Young’s “Helpless” and the last chapter of The Great Gatsby.

Update update. This is interesting, from commenter comrade scott’s agenda of rage:

Hi, former intelligence officer here responsible for, among other things, Chinese naval stuff, back when I was at the Pentagon.

Yes, a lot has changed in the last 15 years in China’s military, new weapons systems, better production of higher tech things, etc.

One thing hasn’t changed: the answer to the strategic question regarding a Chinese aircraft carrier. That answer? They don’t need any. Sure, they might build 1-2 just to show the world they can do it but that’s it.

I suspect good progressives are too hip ever to have watched Judging Amy, but the new infotainment-friendly Sarah Palin strikes me as the runaway offspring that Tyne Daly was too embarrassed to tell Amy Brenneman and her siblings about…

Andrew Sullivan complains “She wants to be a celebrity, not a politician. And if she could get to be a politician using the prerogatives of a celebrity – and a propaganda channel like Fox News – she would be happy. That’s what’s at stake here – beneath this farce.” Which is a pretty good summary, assuming that the nouns in the second sentence got swapped in the heat of live-blogging: Palin wants to be a celebrity, and was willing to act out what she understood to be a politician’s role to get the prerogatives of celebrity. When Bill Kristol’s Cruise Ship of Fools Neocons breezed into Juneau, Palin had aged out of the beauty-queen pageantry competitions that seem to have been her formative social training, her unwillingness or inability to handle the tedium of actual governance had her underlings trembling on the edge of revolt, and her attempts to reclaim Modern Supermom status on her own or by proxy weren’t going so well. It was… providential!... that Someone should send unto her a Messenger, trailing clouds of astroturfing calculation, proclaiming that Sarah Palin could be chosen to stand among the Elect. For lo, all her life she had been journaling, recording both the firewood-stacking and the prayers that were the Aleph and Omega of her Real American™ small-town red-state life—and at last her determined piety was rewarded! Prosperity Gospel, unbelievers!

Even the liberal Mark Shields misses George W. Bush.

SHIELDS: We have a president of real intellectual horse power who is cool, detached and analytical and if anything you can watch the emotional side of him emerge in this whole process. … There’s an emotional aspect, the comforter in chief as well as the commander in chief. Both roles. And I think it makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.

(via)

Update. I watched it again and I’m pretty sure he’s being sarcastic. If I’d known he was from Weymouth, I would have guessed this right off.

It’s easy to romanticize the past, of course. But I distinctly remember that 20 years ago, things like sudden increases in the number of people going hungry were considered important issues. Nowadays to even muse about whether this is something we can do something about as a society marks you as an unserious hippie. Even as we speak, Slate/Levitt/TNR are probably writing something along the lines of “you think that having a high percentage of the population without access to food is bad, but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords, you’ll see that blah blah blah.” David Brooks is probably on the Snooze Hour telling E. J. Dionne that the only solution is food vouchers and, anyway, in Red America, the hungry can always visit the Applebee’s Salad Bar for free. Robert Samuelson and Fred Hiatt are cooking up some bogus figures to tell us that there is no way that we, as a society, can do anything about this. And, anyway, Michael Moore is fat, so how can anyone really be hungry?

What the hell happened? How did all the conservative talking points become so thoroughly internalized in this country?

I love stuff like this:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama’s health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation’s economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official.

The e-mail, written by the Chamber’s senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a “respected economist” to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.

Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: “The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document.”

From an interesting piece about substituting pop-Christianity for clinical treatment of war-induced psychological disorders (via Sully):

In 2008 the RAND Corporation put a number on the problem, reporting that one in five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has suffered some form of mental illness, mostly PTSD and depression.

“God doesn’t like ugly,” one political appointee told Paul Sullivan, an analyst in the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration, in a clumsy attempt to reduce the cost of caring for psychologically traumatized veterans. “You need to make the numbers lower.”

The whole article is well-worth reading. The passage Sully quotes is good too, particularly this disturbing bit from VA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon:

The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.”

I did some searchers on “dithering” in the New York Times and Washington Post archives. In the Times, there were eleven uses of the word post-Cheney out of a total of 47 in the past year. In the Post, there were 36 post-Cheney out of a total of 46 in the past 12 months.

Michael Gerson, Jackson Diehl, and David Broder have all accused the president of “dithereing” post-Cheney. Gerson also used the phrase about a week before Cheney’s speech. Ronald Krebs and Dana Milbank also wrote pieces accusing Obama of dithering before Cheney’s speech (Jim Hoagland also wrote a piece, praising the dithering). The phrase seems to have originated with Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on October 4.

It’s interesting how these words take off and I think it’s likely that neocons settled on it and that Krebs, Gerson, and Cheney all using it within a week of each other was no accident (Diehl and Broder fall more in the category of useful idiots).

The word “dithering” appeared only once on the NYT’s editorial page, in a Maureen Dowd piece satirizing Cheney.

Update. This is apropos of John’s last post, for those to whom that isn’t obvious.

Update. Halperin fronts Broder channeling Cheney. The circle is complete. Tinkers to Evers to Chance.