Jay Haynes

The U.S. Balance Sheet

Pete Peterson's $1 Billion Bully Pulpit.

Imagine a humongous business with assets of $1.6 trillion, balance sheet liabilities north of $10 trillion and off-balance-sheet obligations of $41 trillion. That's debt--whether explicit liabilities, commitments and contingencies, or implicit exposure--that produces a debt to assets ratio of 32-to-1, roughly similar to the late and not-so-great Bear Stearns and the quickly departed Carlyle Credit Corp., which lost a bundle for its well-heeled investors.

One Day = $720 Million

Cost of the Iraq war every single day.

Imagine what we could do.

How To Jam an Election

From Someone Who Has Done It .

In Raymond's telling, the phone-jamming scheme reached up the ranks to the top echelons of the Republican National Committee and even to the White House. In his estimation, nobody in the RNC would cook up such a scheme without prior authorization from the top.

"The Bush White House had complete control of the RNC and there was no way someone like Tobin was going to try what he was proposing without first getting it vetted by his higher-ups," Raymond writes.

Presidential Power

Glenn Greenwald.

In response to a questionnaire on presidential power:

...the most extraordinary answers come from Mitt Romney. Romney's responses -- not to some of the questions but to every single one of them -- are beyond disturbing. The powers he claims the President possesses are definitively -- literally -- tyrannical, unrecognizable in the pre-2001 American system of government and, in some meaningful ways, even beyond what the Bush/Cheney cadre of authoritarian legal theorists have claimed.

Snack Foods

Here's a good reason to block legislation that would make kids healthier:

Republicans had concerns about restrictions on snack foods.

Huckabee's Dukakis Moment

Think Progress.

“Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post,” reveal that, as governor, Mike Huckabee pushed for the release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond despite being warned that the convict would strike again. After being released, Dumond raped and murdered Carol Sue Shields.

Evangelicals Don't Like Mormons

Religious Infighting.

Can't wait for the Romney speech.

Republicans Boo a General

The American Prospect.

In a breathtaking moment for us queer folk, a question submitted by an openly gay retired brigadier general was aired by Anderson Cooper, who is rumored to be gay. The general not only challenged the "Don't ask, don't tell" military policy; he did so by turning the tables. Why, he wanted to know, did the candidates not trust the professionalism of American soldiers to work with gay men and lesbians?

As it turns out, the good general was in the audience, and when Cooper gave the elderly gentleman -- who served more than 40 years in the military -- the microphone, Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr (ret.) was booed by an audience of Republicans. There's your patriotism for you.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

New York Times.

Marking the 14th anniversary of legislation that allowed gay men and lesbians to serve in the military but only if they kept their orientation secret, 28 retired generals and admirals plan to release a letter on Friday urging Congress to repeal the law.

“We respectfully urge Congress to repeal the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” the letter says. “Those of us signing this letter have dedicated our lives to defending the rights of our citizens to believe whatever they wish.”

The retired officers offer data showing that 65,000 gay men and lesbians now serve in the American armed forces and that there are more than one million gay veterans.

Rudy's Ties to Terrorism

Village Voice via HuffPo.

As incredible as it might seem, Rudy Giuliani--whose presidential candidacy is steeped in 9/11 iconography--has been doing business with a government agency run by the very man who made the attacks on 9/11 possible.