One sex, two sex, red sex, blue sex

Sorry, too much Seuss lately. Anywho an article in the New Yorker discusses the difference between red states and blue states when it comes to sex and marriage. It ain't what the red staters would have you believe:

In 2004, the states with the highest divorce rates were Nevada, Arkansas, Wyoming, Idaho, and West Virginia (all red states in the 2004 election); those with the lowest were Illinois, Massachusetts, Iowa, Minnesota, and New Jersey. The highest teen-pregnancy rates were in Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas (all red); the lowest were in North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Maine (blue except for North Dakota). “The ‘blue states’ of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have lower teen birthrates, higher use of abortion, and lower percentages of teen births within marriage,” Cahn and Carbone observe. They also note that people start families earlier in red states—in part because they are more inclined to deal with an unplanned pregnancy by marrying rather than by seeking an abortion.

Of all variables, the age at marriage may be the pivotal difference between red and blue families. The five states with the lowest median age at marriage are Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas, and Kentucky, all red states, while those with the highest are all blue: Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The red-state model puts couples at greater risk for divorce; women who marry before their mid-twenties are significantly more likely to divorce than those who marry later. And younger couples are more likely to be contending with two of the biggest stressors on a marriage: financial struggles and the birth of a baby before, or soon after, the wedding.

Won't you please help?

Sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise

MSNBC

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

When the fundies spend more time worrying about the state of the organ between a woman's ears than they do the state of the organs between a woman's legs, the world will begin to be a much better place.

What it always comes down (up?) to in this man's world

WaPo

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes -- followed by a request for more pills...

"If you give an asset $1,000, he'll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone," said Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company. "Even if he doesn't get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it."

The key, Smith said, is to find a way to meet the informant's personal needs in a way that keeps him firmly on your side but leaves little or no visible trace.

I'm sure the 8 year old brides of the 60+ year old chieftains will be thrilled that their new husbands can sustain multi-hour erections. I thought we were supposed to be winning HEARTS and MINDS. I don't remember reading anything about winning penises. But, I guess our attitude is "whatever works." Screw the young women (literally) of Afghanistan, who are already considered property. As long as the chieftain gets bragging rights around the male-only campfire while being served by mute covered women, I guess, well, whoooo-aaaah.

Network lockdown on TVA Spill

What's up w/the big three (four?) networks? Why isn't this getting carried?

Monday, more than 500 million gallons of toxic coal sludge burst through a retention wall in eastern Tennessee, causing massive property and environmental damage and leaving residents holding their breath over possible long-term consequences. Environmentalists said the spill was more than 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The incident underscored the false nature of the “clean coal” propaganda. In an interview with NBC Nightly News, Elliott Negin of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained:

This disaster shows that the term ‘clean coal’ is an oxymoron. It’s akin to saying ‘safe cigarette.’ Clean coal doesn’t exist.

Here's the NY Times

But a draft report last year by the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that fly ash, a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity, does contain significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations. The report found that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.

Similarly, a 2006 study by the federally chartered National Research Council found that these coal-burning byproducts “often contain a mixture of metals and other constituents in sufficient quantities that they may pose public health and environmental concerns if improperly managed.” The study said “risks to human health and ecosystems” might occur when these contaminants entered drinking water supplies or surface water bodies.

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed stricter federal controls of coal ash, but backed away in the face of fierce opposition from utilities, the coal industry, and Clinton administration officials. At the time, the Edison Electric Institute, an association of power utilities, estimated that the industry would have to spend up to $5 billion in additional cleanup costs if the substance were declared hazardous. Since then, environmentalists have urged tighter federal standards, and the E.P.A. is reconsidering its decision not to classify the waste as hazardous.

Holy Smoke - An Actual Journalist Exists

More wingnut weirdity around women

The right wing fundagelicals (in this case Dennis Prager) are at it again. Explaining to women why it's not OK to say "no" to your husband. Pandagon

It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom...

First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wifes refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him.

That's news to me Dennis.

This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

As Pam says in the Pandagon link, how about talking to your wife there dude? Instead of the oh-so-effective "male clam up", how about actually discussing what the problem might be? You know, COMMUNICATING, that ingenious method we humans have developed to solve the problem of diverging needs without always resorting to the nearest rock to the head (or the nearest prostitute)? Ring any bells Dennis? Talking? Maybe seeking outside help? Naw, better to guilt the Christian women into just "doing it" for the sake of the guys' wittow itty bitty huwt feewings and their god-given right to sex whenever they feel like it and no discussion necessary.

PS - As Pam points out. Dennis is divorced. Fancy that!

PPS - I'm fairly certain that studies show that the "men are horndogs and women don't care about sex" meme is pretty much garbage. Some men want a lot of sex. So do some women. Some men want less sex. So do some women. Could it be something about the fundagelicals who slam the "sex is dirty" thoughts into their daughters' heads from the second they understand words that causes these wide disparities between Christian men and their loving wives? Perhaps if they all acknowledged that sex is normal and good between consenting adults (within or without marriage) they might have a shot at more normal marital relations; rather than the "do it because you have to" approach.

Holiday Gift in the Air

EDF

In a major decision benefiting clean air and public health, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today issued an order that leaves the Clean Air Interstate Rule in effect while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency develops a new clean air program for power plants.

"Today's court decision is a welcome gift for the millions of American's that face serious health threats from power plant pollution. Power plants across the East will reduce millions of tons of smog and soot pollution today while America's new leadership fixes the mistakes made by the Bush Administration," said Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel at Environmental Defense Fund.

Granting aspects of rehearing requests from the Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council, the court found that the rule is an "integral action" and stated:

"Here, we are convinced that, notwithstanding the relative flaws of CAIR, allowing CAIR to remain in effect until it is replaced by a rule consistent with our opinion would at least temporarily preserve the environmental values covered by CAIR."

Judge Judith Rogers wrote a separate concurrence stating that CAIR is "so intertwined" with the nation's air quality management regulatory framework that "its vacatur would sacrifice clean benefits to public health and the environment while EPA fixes the rule."

The timing of this decision is critical. January 1, 2009 is the first important compliance deadline under EPA's Clean Air Interstate Rule -- requiring substantial reductions in year-round emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) to protect human health from this damaging pollutant.

Breathe a long lovey clean holiday breath. Happy New Year.

Slavery today

Foreign Policy

Standing in New York City, you are five hours away from being able to negotiate the sale, in broad daylight, of a healthy boy or girl. He or she can be used for anything, though sex and domestic labor are most common. Before you go, let’s be clear on what you are buying. A slave is a human being forced to work through fraud or threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. Agreed? Good.

Most people imagine that slavery died in the 19th century. Since 1817, more than a dozen international conventions have been signed banning the slave trade. Yet, today there are more slaves than at any time in human history...

If you’re interested in taking your purchase back to the United States, Benavil tells you that he can “arrange” the proper papers to make it look as though you’ve adopted the child...

The negotiation is finished, and you tell Benavil not to make any moves without further word from you. Here, 600 miles from the United States, and five hours from Manhattan, you have successfully arranged to buy a human being for 50 bucks....

Every single man, woman, and child in Lohagara Dhal is a slave. But, in theory at least, Garg neither bought nor owns them. They are working off debts, which, for many, started at less than $10. But interest accrues at over 100 percent annually here. Most of the debts span at least two generations, though they have no legal standing under modern Indian law. They are a fiction that Garg constructs through fraud and maintains through violence. The seed of Gonoo’s slavery, for instance, was a loan of 62 cents. In 1958, his grandfather borrowed that amount from the owner of a farm where he worked. Three generations and three slavemasters later, Gonoo’s family remains in bondage.

To all of us, on the good earth

The Guardian

Forty years ago this Christmas the first human beings reached the moon. But their historic feat is better remembered for an image of what they left behind - planet Earth.

Looking back from more than 200,000 miles away, the crew of Apollo 8 saw Earth floating "like a Christmas tree ornament lit up in space, fragile-looking". They pointed their cameras through smeared porthole windows and began snapping. It seems almost incredible now, but nobody thought to take a photo of Earth until they saw it, because nobody had seen it before...

In what now seems symbolic of the impact of seeing the whole planet for the first time with human eyes, Borman appeared to cast off the nationalistic cold war fervor surrounding the mission and ended the broadcast saying: "A merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

Whether you celebrate the coming of the Son or the coming of the Sun, I wish you a very happy holiday season and a healthy and peaceful New Year.

If C were a religion

(you mean it isn't?). Here's an excerpt of a really funny piece that includes LISP, PERL, and even our old favorite, COBOL.

C would be Judaism - it's old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.

Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of "goto hell" was abandoned.

Offshoring - bad in so many ways

...and here's another way it's bad...when the profits go offshore, but the costs and bailouts stay in the US: Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007.

The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits.

Goldman Sachs, which today reported its first quarterly loss since going public in 1999, lowered its rate with more tax credits as a percentage of earnings and because of “changes in geographic earnings mix,” the company said.

The rate decline looks “a little extreme,” said Robert Willens, president and chief executive officer of tax and accounting advisory firm Robert Willens LLC.

“I was definitely taken aback,” Willens said. “Clearly they have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions.”

U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern.

“This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs,” Doggett said. “With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.”

This has always been my complaint about "free markets" and globalization. They're nothing but races to the bottom. States and countries will always be around to offer less taxes than their neighboring states and countries. Companies will always flock there with their dough. That leaves us in the good old US of A to deal with all the costs of the corporate "plants" here in the US (roads, education, unemployment benefits, medicare, etc.) while the companies move their "corporate headquarters" offshore to take advantage of the tax rates. Why are most large US firms "headquartered" in Delaware? Comfy tax laws? Yup. I'm sure there are ways to legislate around this slimy problem. But the Dems don't seem to have the will to lift a finger.

Thought for the day

Bush likes looking into a person's sole, right? Like Putin.

Wait. What? Oh soul.

Nevermind.

Can the commercials at the movies

I just saw Frost/Nixon. Good movie. Shitty commercials at the Regal Theater before the movie. Just went and signed a petition at CaptiveAudience.org

An Open Letter to Regal Cinemas and other theater owners:

This is the last straw. You've done a great job conditioning the movie-going public to accept pre-movie billboard ads, your commercial theater radio networks, and nearly every other form of commercialism under the sun. Now, after the lights go down and we're entrenched in our seats, you've decided to expand into pushing TV commercials. It now seems the only difference between a movie screen and a TV screen is size.

We, the captive audience, have had enough.
TV commercials belong on television, not before movies that we pay for.

They have a nifty little sign you can print out and put on your seat so you can step out for the commercials and then come back in when they're over.

Seriously Regal, keep this up and I'll forget about movies again. My home is a fine place to watch a movie and I don't have to put up with Kid Rock extolling the virtues of killing as on the National Guard ad.

What's next "commercial breaks" in the middle of the movie? Oh, dang, you probably didn't want us to know about those for a while, huh? Not until we'd all gotten comfortable with the ads before the movie.

Monetary policy vs. government spending

I've been hearing a lot in the past few weeks about how Obama can't spend us out of this nightmare and that only monetary policy can save us. Naturally, most of the speakers are from the American Enterprise Institute and other believers in the magic of the market. From the NY Times Mag

The Remedist, by Robert Skidelsky: Among the most astonishing statements to be made by any policymaker in recent years was Alan Greenspan’s admission ... that the regime of deregulation he oversaw ... was based on a “flaw”... The “whole intellectual edifice,” he said, “collapsed...”

What was this “intellectual edifice”? ... Greenspan must have believed ... that financial markets always price assets correctly. Given that markets are efficient, they would need only the lightest regulation. ...

Today, [John Maynard] Keynes is justly enjoying a comeback. For the same “intellectual edifice” that Greenspan said has now collapsed was what supported the laissez-faire policies Keynes quarreled with in his times. Then, as now, economists believed that all uncertainty could be reduced to measurable risk. So asset prices always reflected fundamentals...

Keynes ... starting point was that not all future events could be reduced to measurable risk. There was a residue of genuine uncertainty, and this made disaster an ever-present possibility, not a once-in-a-lifetime “shock.” Investment was more an act of faith than a scientific calculation of probabilities. And in this fact lay the possibility of huge systemic mistakes.

The basic question Keynes asked was: How do rational people behave under conditions of uncertainty? ... People fall back on “conventions”.... The chief of these are ... that the future will be like the past... Above all, we run with the crowd. ...

Keynes’s prescriptions were guided by his conception of money... The “desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future. . . . The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the premium we require to make us part with money is a measure of the degree of our disquietude.” ...

It is this flight into cash that makes interest-rate policy such an uncertain agent of recovery. If the managers of banks and companies hold pessimistic views about the future, they will raise the price they charge for “giving up liquidity,” even though the central bank might be flooding the economy with cash. That is why Keynes did not think that cutting the central bank’s interest rate would necessarily — and certainly not quickly — lower the interest rates charged on ... loans. This was his main argument for the use of government stimulus to fight a depression. There was only one sure way to get an increase in spending..., and that was for the government to spend the money itself. Spend on pyramids, spend on hospitals, but spend it must. ...

Keynes’s ... purpose, as he saw it, was not to destroy capitalism but to save it from itself. He thought that the work of rescue had to start with economic theory itself. Now that Greenspan’s intellectual edifice has collapsed, the moment has come to build a new structure on the foundations that Keynes laid.

If people see real infrastructure projects being enacted; if they see friends and neighbors going back to work; if they get real, measurable goods out of the deal (solar panels, roads, bridges that don't fall into the Mississippi), they will begin to relax. My only hope is that they will spend wisely and not drunkenly as they did in the days of real estate "flips" and easy money with no visible means of support. Count me a Keynesian.

Rick Cizik, a voice of reason, resigns

Naturally, reason has no place in the National Association of Evangelicals.

A top evangelical leader has resigned his post following an uproar over a recent interview when he said he supports civil unions for gays.

The National Association of Evangelicals says the Rev. Richard Cizik (SIGH-zik) quit Thursday as the group's representative in Washington.

The announcement follows Cizik's Dec. 2 interview on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" program. Cizik said on the show that he backs same-sex civil unions and made other comments that the evangelical group says don't reflect their values.

Cizik had already made enemies of some evangelical leaders because of his high-profile fight against global warming.

The National Association of Evangelicals is an umbrella group for thousands of churches.

It's too bad. Cizik really did what many non-evangelicals advocate: be like Jesus. Every time I heard Cizik, I heard a voice who actually sounded like someone with whom Jesus would get along. Not like Falwell, Dobson, Robertson, and the other money-makers clothed in priestly garb. Oh well, the republigelicals will eventually keep-the-faith-themselves right out of existence. The world seems to progress toward equality, dignity, tolerance and away from lynchings, burnings, and madness. At least in the long run.

The age old struggle to bust the unions

...carries on to this day; even to the detriment of the entire economy. Hey, they figure, they've got their chance, so why not finally drown the unions in a bath tub as they've been wont to do for at least a century. Maddow has more. From Crooks and Liars

Rachel Maddow hits the nail on the head with this one. The GOP has now decided it is good for them politically to rail against unions and against Americans earning a living wage. I'd love to know just how low the wages of auto workers should go before it would satisfy these guys if someone is a union member, or if it just doesn't matter as long as the UAW is busted and their foreign interests in their states are satisfied.

It's a fine rant, kind of like an extended symphony, and she wraps it up by setting off the cannons behind Barack Obama's express concerns about the "devastating ripple effect throughout our economy" the collapse of the Big Three would have:

Maddow: That's what most Americans are worried about with this issue. What are the Republican Senators worried about who say they don't want to deal unless they can break the unions in this way? Besides their friends in Japan, I guess, who have state-subsidized plants in their home states, we can tell that Senator Corker's plan requires even further cuts from union workers and stakeholders in the companies than already have been offered. Blame the workers -- especially, blame the United Auto Workers. That's what we're hearing from Senate Republicans as our auto industry skids toward the brink of extinction. And they're saying if you do save the industry, they want to do it with conditions that break the unions while the industry is being saved.

It appears to me that Senate Republicans are on an ideologically driven union-busting adventure here, that happens to have the prospect of increasing the market share of the foreign-owned companies who work in their states. American-owned companies and the American economy as a whole be darned -- those foreign-owned companies that serve the individual states of these senators who are objecting to this bailout, they're the ones who are getting served.

Small negative interest rate is apparently appealing these days

...remember the old joke? The Treasury can't issue debt at below 0% because you'd basically be paying the gov't to take your money. Well, apparently losing a little and holding a T bill is better than losing a lot holding a stock or losing nothing by keeping the money under your pillow. NY Times

Investors were so desperate to put their cash into government notes that they were willing to pay a penalty for the privilege: three-month notes traded at a negative yield, meaning that investors will receive about 99 cents on the dollar in return after the note matures. The news sends a sobering signal: in this environment, losing only a small amount of money on an investment is tantamount to coming out ahead.

Four-week Treasury bills, considered one of the safest possible short-term investments, traded at zero percent yields, and investors snapped up $30 billion worth. It was the lowest yield since the Treasury began issuing the notes in 2001.

Even perfect bodies are not perfect (enough)

Daily Mail
How sad is it that a size two, lovely woman still isn't "good enough." Why does it take the Barbie silhouette, the "no rib cage" look, for a woman to look good enough to hawk booze? I mean seriously, if not even the most beautiful amongst us is beautiful enough, why don't we all just hang it up and forget the whole thing: sweats every day, no shaving, lots o' comfort food, and a general acceptance that nothing we do will ever quite cut it? At least we'd be happy? Happier? UGRGHH!

Why don't they just stop using real people as the starting point and just have one generic blond, and one generic brunette, totally "perfect" as defined by Madison Avenue and go from there?

And why don't we show this image and others like it to our sons and daughters every day so they can understand how false these ads are and how much they need to remember that every day, in every transaction and in every image?

Banks and toasters, together again

At least the Brits get it...

...too bad the American politicians don't. Independent

Banks will face huge fines if they do not treat their customers fairly, under a crackdown to be announced by the Government today.

Ministers have decided to turn the voluntary code of practice operated by the banks into a legally-binding one, amid mounting concern that they are flouting their own rules during the credit crunch. The move follows claims that small businesses and individual customers have had the terms and conditions of their loans and overdrafts changed overnight by their banks.

Small firms have complained to ministers that they have received letters or emails unilaterally changing agreements, demanding that homes are put up as collateral for loans and giving customers just 48 hours to sign up to such new arrangements. "There is mounting evidence that the banks are not sticking to their own code," one government source said last night.

Hmmm...mandating practice by law. What a concept. Too bad we don't have a representational government yet in the US. Though I've heard rumors that perhaps we will be eligible for one on Jan. 20, 2009.

Quote of the day

Lending money to poor people doesn't make you poor. Lending money poorly to rich people does. - Daniel Gross, Newsweek

...answering the right-wing meme that the reason for the financial meltdown was lending money to minorities and the poor.

The Bush administration's great Ponzi scheme

The Bush boys have no interest in anything save squeezing the last drops out of our economy and stuffing them into their own pockets. They allowed a catastrophe to happen, even though warned by regulators, and they don't care, so long as they walk away with the better part of the spoils. AP

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents....

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.

Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.

In 2005, faced with ominous signs the housing market was in jeopardy, bank regulators proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans. Today, in the midst of the worst housing recession in a generation, the proposal reads like a list of what-ifs:

_Regulators told bankers exotic mortgages were often inappropriate for buyers with bad credit.

_Banks would have been required to increase efforts to verify that buyers actually had jobs and could afford houses.

_Regulators proposed a cap on risky mortgages so a string of defaults wouldn't be crippling.

_Banks that bundled and sold mortgages were told to be sure investors knew exactly what they were buying.

_Regulators urged banks to help buyers make responsible decisions and clearly advise them that interest rates might skyrocket and huge payments might be due sooner than expected.

Those proposals all were stripped from the final rules. None required congressional approval or the president's signature.

Ah, yes, the prescient all-knowing, all-correcting market. The Bush boys have no faith in any deity, no faith in government, no faith in humanity. But they have an unshakable faith that all will turn out right in the end if we only trust the collective wisdom of The Market. Only people acting out of naked self-interest will save us, according to their religion. Government only gets in the way. Smart people, nay "Masters of the Universe", will not do stupid things. These are Harvard MBAs for craps sake. These are the scions of the "better people" with generations of selective breeding. These are the men with every advantage of birth, wealth, nurturing and education. Surely they know what they are doing; unlike the unwashed masses in regulatory offices. What $50k a year pencil-pusher knows better than a "master of the universe?" How dare someone from the middle-classes, some grubby little bean counter, dare to tell the erudite Armani-clad nobleman at Citi or Goldman what to do with their (our) money?

As Dr. Phil would say, "how's that working out for y'all?"