Kind of forgot this blog was here for a while. What to talk about?

1: America, Land of Solipsism
So let me get this straight: as outrageous as the porno scanners (Jane Hamsher’s term) the TSA uses are – and even worse, their thuggish assaults on anyone who won’t go through one – this is what gets Americans upset? Really? Not mass murder, not mass torture, not execution of American citizens, but backscatter x-ray scanners?

They are truly awful machines, and the TSA is outright lying when they say they can’t store and transmit pictures, of course – and there’s considerable debate over whether they might cause skin cancer. Personally, given the FDA’s track record, when credible scientists say to worry, I do.

2: Still No Need for Foreclosure Moratorium
Remember this? John Cole from October 12th:

That isn’t taking the side of the banksters, that is taking the side of common sense. What possible use could there be for a nationwide halt to foreclosures?

Yep. Couldn’t do any good. Not like the current system is a total con job, HAMP an abject failure by design, and the big banks all largely insolvent.

Everything’s just working swimmingly, and the housing market is doing its job in an orderly fashion:

Hundreds — and possibly thousands — of Massachusetts homeowners are facing back-to-back foreclosures as lenders realize there were problems with property titles the first time around. Those lenders, often unable to obtain title insurance, are opting to start from scratch with what is being called a “re-foreclosure.’’

And it’s not like the current borderline anarchy brings us the risk of another complete collapse, right?

The Congressional Oversight Panel, the TARP watchdog program formerly chaired by Elizabeth Warren and now helmed by former Senator Ted Kaufman, has released a report detailing the failures in the mortgage servicing industry, and the threats to the overall housing market, financial sector and greater economy. The report is chilling; while it rightly says that we don’t yet know the extent of the fraud involved (they call it “irregularities”), even a small chunk of the mortgage-backed securities market going sour would have major implications for all of us. As Ted Kaufman notes, the private-label MBS market totals $7.6 trillion dollars. You don’t have to see much of that break down before you get to the total market capitalization of the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street.

Which naturally leads to the question on everyone’s lips: When will Obama bail out the banks again? Well, perhaps quite soon, with an assist from the thoroughly captured Democratic party:

There are rapidly emerging signs the Obama Administration and Congress may be actively, quickly and covertly working furiously on a plan to retroactively legitimize and ratify the shoddy, fraudulent and non-conforming conduct by MERS on literally millions of mortgages.

But hey, at least the banks aren’t killing people, right?

In a nation with millions of foreclosed homes, the one next door proved the most dangerous for 2-year-old Isaac Dieudonne.

On Oct. 11, 2009, Margarrette and Woulby Dieudonne were moving into their new home in the 6700 block of Southwest 26th Street in Miramar when their son Isaac strolled unnoticed out the family’s open front door. Minutes later, the toddler was found floating facedown in the algae-ridden backyard pool of a neighboring foreclosed home.

A neighbor administered CPR as the foul water spewed from Isaac’s mouth. Thirteen minutes after arriving at the hospital, he was pronounced dead.

…

Untold thousands of foreclosed homes across the United States pose an added public safety hazard because of their green, murky backyard pools, which can breed mosquitoes, nourish problem animals and rodents, or, in the case of Isaac Dieudonne, attract young children.

The Dieudonnes’ lawsuit hinges on a simple, but painful, question: Who is most liable for the boy’s accident? Was it the parents who were watching him or the property owners, servicing companies and maintenance firms that were responsible for making sure the vacant house met public safety requirements?

Like millions of foreclosed properties across the country, the home where Isaac drowned has been awash in legal action over the years, making it difficult to determine who owned the property at the time of the accident.

It took months for the family’s attorney, Janet Spence of Pembroke Pines, to sort through the property’s muddied chain of title possessions and transfers. At one point, Spence said, the home had two separate foreclosure actions pending simultaneously.

Yeah. What was that Cole said again?

That isn’t taking the side of the banksters, that is taking the side of common sense. What possible use could there be for a nationwide halt to foreclosures?

Well, it might prevent a financial meltdown, but if that’s not reason enough, we might have fewer dead kids.

Then again, that second bit’s an argument that would have worked against the war in Iraq too…

Fuck all these people, in the Administration, the big banks, and yes, in the legions of sycophants who carry water for the lot of them on this issue.

3) Matt Yglesias is the Stupidest Motherfucker Alive
Seriously. He proposed, in all apparent seriousness, pushing seniors from Medicare, with its extremely low overheads, onto private insurance in the heavily subsidized exchanges, to save money.

I suspect that part of the issue is that the implications of the Affordable Care Act haven’t really sunk in yet. Traditionally raising the Medicare eligibility age more than a teensy bit would be unthinkable, since absent Medicare an elderly person would be totally uninsurable. But under ACA that’s not the case. Of course subsidies will be needed for most retirees, but a workable highly progressive system would be in place to ensure that nobody has to go without access to health coverage.

Atrios took him to task:

Saying that “the Affordable Care Act haven’t really sunk in yet” is another way of saying that the assumptions used to calculate cost savings to the government of increasing the Medicare eligibility age are quite wrong. Shifting old people out of an efficient insurance provider into an inefficient one that they pay for with government subsidies isn’t sound policy.

At which point, as is his wont, he backtracked to cover up for his own inability to do basic reasoning (spending more money means you end up with less, the sort of thing 3rd graders can grasp).

Sigh. Matt Yglesias, ladies and gentlemen.

There, that’s as much strength as I have to navigate this lousy hotel wifi. Vacay time!