Laila Fadel, McClatchy's Baghdad bureau chief, doubts Bush administration claims that The Surge is working, an assertion based on specific statistical data gathered by McClatchy paired up against vague and ill-defined claims offered by US military officials. She also reports that US officers stationed in Baghdad believe that what progress that has been realized depends upon the various factions settling their differences and establishing a real government. Is that why Iraq is "set up for a major political change"?

Blogger Rick Moran of The American Thinker espouses the view that "Maliki has seen his government lose both credibility and along with it, power," so it isn't at all clear just what can be achieved with this announcement. ABC News later reported that little was accomplished, as the moderate Iraqi Islamic Party led by Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi refused to be a part of this latest dog and pony show. But Maliki, surely with massive amounts of prodding from the Bush administration desperate from some cover for their future assertion of success to be issued by Gen. David Petraeus, is pressing onward with only two-thirds of a loaf.

This is causing concerns among the world's observers that more trouble is being created than is being cured. Correspondents in Baghdad writing for The Australian point out that the largest prize in the Bush Oil War pantheon - the new oil law donating a huge chunk of Iraq's oil reserves to foreign (read: US) oil companies - will likely be passed by the new Shi'a-Kurd coalition. These two groups will retain some of the remaining oil reserves, but there is no guarantee that any crumbs will remain for the Sunnis who won't play George's way.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, editorialized [links added]:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was calling for a crisis summit because half his Cabinet has been emptied by boycotts and resignations. A crumbling of the government is occurring while the U.S. "surge" supposedly is producing positive results. It has been clear for some time now that fractious politics in Iraq could render largely irrelevant any gains on the battlefield because religious and ethnic factions act as though they do not wish to coalesce as a nation. The government is run by the Shiite majority, the Sunni minority feels put upon and many Kurds would just as soon go their own way. With astonishing understatement, an Associated Press dispatch says, "A full-scale disintegration could touch off power grabs on all sides and seriously complicate U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Iraq."

On the eve of the secession of the slave-owning states over the election of Abraham Lincoln, The Valley Spirit of Franklin County, Virginia published on December 26, 1860 one of the most honest contemporary admissions that the pending internecine strife was in part about race:

"The Democratic Party maintain that our government was formed by white men to be controlled by white men for the prosperity and happiness of their race."

Just because the South lost the Civil War doesn't mean that this attitude had changed - not in the slightest. As New Republic assistant editor Clay Risen wrote in the Boston Globe on March 5, 2006:

"For almost 100 years, a coterie of white elites had controlled the South by leveraging racial antagonisms and legal discrimination to ensure white solidarity behind the Democratic Party. Southern historians argue that the initial shift to the right was led by older whites in a backlash against [Lyndon] Johnson's civil rights efforts. [Johnson] forfeited the region to the Republicans by signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Legend has it that as he put down his pen Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation."

[I]t's hard to ignore the decades of subtle and not-so-subtle efforts by Republican presidential tickets to court white racism.... According to the conventional wisdom, ... white voters were soon gobbled up by Nixon's racially coded "Southern strategy."

Guardian columnist Max Hastings writes:

"The US and its allies do not play by the rules they impose on others. Higher standards are expected from a sovereign state than a terrorist organisation. Somehow, though surely not under this US President, this is what we must regain."

The Hiroshima bomb, known as "Little Boy" - a reference to former President Roosevelt, devastated an area of five square miles (13 square kilometres). More than 60% of the buildings in the city were destroyed.

Official Japanese figures at the time put the death toll at 118,661 civilians. But later estimates suggest the final toll was about 140,000, of Hiroshima's 350,000 population, including military personnel and those who died later from radiation. Many have also suffered long-term sickness and disability.

Back in 1987, the movie Wall Street introduced the central meme of the 1980's and after to the general public: "Greed.... is good." Christoph Uhlhaas, writing for Scientific American, wondered about that bold and unsubstantiated assertion, claiming that the large number of successful transactions on sites such as eBay refutes the common wisdom regarding "Homo economicus (economic man)" being "a rational, selfish person who single-mindedly strives for maximum profit."

Studies led by economist Axel Ockenfels of the University of Cologne in Germany, conducted with economist Gary Bolton of Pennsylvania State University, tend to support that doubt. They found through their studies that a sense of fairness is the largest determinant in the conduct of transactions, but that the balance between fairness and selfishness can be manipulated.

Such manipulations are rife within the collapsing home mortgage industry. After share trading of American Home Mortgage was halted by the New York Stock Exchange, American Home Mortgage's lenders (Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bear Stearns Cos, Credit Agricole SA's Calyon affiliate, and UBS AG) cut off their credit, leaving AMC holding worthless contracts for new home loans valued at over $300 million, with as much as another $500 million in existing loans no longer secured.

Other lenders, MGIC Investment Corp and Radian Group Inc, are now tilling the same barren patch, facing the necessity of writing off over $1 billion in loans themselves. New Century Financial Corp. has already filed for bankruptcy protection, and Countrywide is struggling to stay on their feet.

That's what they get for allowing their greed to overrule their traditional conservative practice of not making loans to people who could not document income or assets just because profits were (temporarily) very lucrative when doing otherwise.

Facing up to the inevitable (something the Bush administration should be doing about so many things), American Home Mortgage Chairman Michael Strauss closed the business, terminating over 7600 employees, including over 1400 in Melville, NY and 155 in hard-hit Northern Indiana. In addition, thousands of housing hopefuls are now back in the market seeking sheltering loans in a much harsher economic environment.

But don't cry for these mortgage brokers, who lost their jobs to sub-prime lending. Michael Strauss shares their pain having experienced the loss $42.8 million in 20 minutes the other day before trading was halted. That sense of fairness referred to by Professors Ockenfels and Bolton leads one to feel sympathy for everyone affected by the collapse of American Home Mortgage - until one discovers that Strauss provided for himself to the tune of $1.8 million, an amount that none of his employees can expect to see.

I guess that proves that greed really is good - if you are the sole beneficiary. Otherwise, ask not for whom greed toils, for it does not toil for thee.

John Dean, in his 07/25/07 post, says that "Conservatives fight dirty and dishonestly." As a former member of the infamous Nixon White House staff, he would certainly know. Just today comes proof of Dean's charge against the neo-confidence men:

"If there are cover-ups, the public has a right to know what has been covered up," Mr. Bruno said, speaking to reporters at Saratoga Springs, the Associated Press reported. He said the [executive] office "has seen fit to abuse the power of that office to spy and track and attempt to really destroy what apparently the [executive] office considers a political rival," according to the Associated Press.