The Official Rick Bell Blog

Twitter This!

Quick! What’s the most important issue you are following this week? Obama’s Supreme Court nomination? GM’s impending bankruptcy? Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of the Taliban?

Well if you are a devotee of the rapidly growing social networking and micro-blogging site Twitter, it’s more likely that what tops your list is Star Trek movie reviews, the latest topless photos of Miss California or the most imaginative fake porn star names you can use to spice up your online accounts.

Be brief. Be bright. Be gone. Such is the mantra of Twitter, the service that allows users to instantaneously send and read updates known as ‘tweets.”  With a maximum of 140 characters per tweet, Twitter might even have the Ritalin crowd wondering “is that all?”

The well-funded site is in the midst of a heavy media blitz that has organizations like CNN and The New York Times singing its praises. Where there is smoke there is fire. Where there is hype surrounding a new technology… well, I’ve been an IT consultant for 15 years and unfortunately high tech hype usually means a PR firm just snagged a big retainer.

But not wanting to judge too harshly, I decided to sign up for a free Twitter account (the company has yet to monetize its site) and give it a go. With three email accounts, a cell phone, a Blackberry, a LinkedIn account, a FaceBook account, a Tagged account, a subscription to The Wall Street Journal Online  and monthly subscriptions to Audible and  Jigsaw I was a bit reluctant to sign on for yet another techno-distraction. But sign on I did and I boy was I ever under whelmed.

The gist of the site is that you can follow other Twitter account holders who post short answers to the question of what are they doing right now. I signed on to follow everyone from The New York Times, a handful of celebrities, ESPN, and anyone in my Yahoo contact list that happened to be signed up as well.

Following just 19 accounts, the to do list of tweets demanding my attention filled up quickly. What was I doing? I already have 1116 lower priority work emails dating back months that I have yet to open and another 2119 on Yahoo and 514 on Gmail that will likely never see the light of day. On a good week, I am only four days late on responding to messages on FaceBook--and I haven’t had a good week in some time. I have long since given up monitoring my RSS newsreader that tracks my favorite blogs and news sources.

But I trudged forward. As I scanned through the tweets, ranging from news headlines with imbedded hyperlinks to the full story to the inane “Hi, I just flew in from DC and the flight seemed longer than usual” all I could think of if the was a book I read back in ’92 by Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.

Postman’s contention is that in a Technopoly, technology is god. If it is newer, flashier or faster it’s undoubtedly better. Questioning the techno-god is heresy. The result, Postman contends, is a glut of quickly delivered information that loses its usefulness and becomes “a source of confusion rather than coherence.”

The Twitter press spin is that tweets matter. They allow members pose important questions and track important events. Examples floated in The New York Times, for example, depict Twitterers (“twits” for short?) asking followers if they know of any research related to a particular topic or allowing them to follow the removal of a brain tumor by asking important questions of the surgeon such as “what music are you listening to?” Heady stuff.

In my area of specialization--PeopleSoft HR/Payroll systems--multiple forums, user groups and bulletin boards have existed for years. These resources allow me to solicit feedback from my peers… and allow for responses in full sentences, and, dare I say, paragraphs. A witty micro-blurb might not prove too useful when 15,000 employees are waiting for me to debug their payroll system.

Though I appreciated how easy Twitter made it to follow news sources and blogs, I already have online tools for this. Different isn’t necessarily better.

What’s more, there is the question of whether society benefits from being deluged with yet more information that may or may not do much real informing. The UK’s Daily Mail, for example, recently reported on a study at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California that indicates that the digital torrent of information from networking sites could have a long-term damaging effect on the emotional development of younger people’s brains.

Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, coauthor of the best selling book on attention deficit disorder (ADD), Delivered from Distraction, also question the impact of such technologies. “Raised on a diet of sound bites and electronic stimulation, children can lose the ability to carry on extended conversations or listen to one,” Hallowell notes. He goes on to raise the concern that the onslaught of new technologies may actually be “training” our children to develop ADD.

Questioning new technology is not all together new. In Plato’s Phaedus, King Thalmus questioned the god Theuth as to whether the invention of writing would create a vast population of readers with declining memory skills. Readers filled with the “conceit of wisdom” instead of real wisdom as they were doing little more than regurgitating someone else’s words.

In hindsight, most of us agree that society has benefited from the written word, especially since the advent of the printing press. This is true even though not all that is written is beneficial. Books, newspapers and websites are awash with written garbage. And, more relevant, much that is published is little more than a form pop culture cotton candy for the brain.

Does it matter that Twitter’s primary use is little more than a delivery source for pop candy? One can not live on steak and potatoes alone. There is nothing wrong with the occasional sweet treat in an otherwise balanced diet. Like the concern over the advent of writing, I’ll leave the final verdict on Twitter for a later date. But on first glimpse, the concern should be raised that the more we use technology to deliver pop candy fixes, the more we risk losing our appetite for more substantive fare and degrading our ability to tackle challenging mental tasks.

Debunking the NY Times Myth of Boy Scouts as Hitler Youth

The Internet is broken… and I don’t know who to call.

It’s not that the whole darn thing is awry. You can still get email, download ITunes, and, I heard from a friend, view rather disturbing porn. But the doohickey that corrects erroneous posts by The New York Times is on the fritz.

What’s frustrating for troubleshooters is that the problem seems to be intermittent.  When NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd ripped on Dick Cheney again using a chunk of copy lifted from Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Point Memo last week the problem was spotted immediately by bloggers—two days later the Times posted a correction acknowledging Dowd’s lack of “attribution.” But when Times’ reporter Jennifer Steinhauer unfairly characterized the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) as morphing into an extremist paramilitary organization the same week, the Internet’s NY Times truth filter crapped out.

Steinhauer’s article set off my personal bullpucky alert system as I have some familiarity with the BSA. My father was a Scoutmaster for 15 years and I participated in the program as a Scout from age 8 to 16, a leader for 3 years and an active participant in Scouting activities with my two stepsons for another 7 years. But while I read the story and cried “bunk,” the collective wisdom of the Internet failed to amend the alarmist “reporting” replete with carefully edited, terribly inflammatory quotes and staged photos designed to elicit a negative, emotional response.

The article was so distorted and slanted that to distinguish it from a National Enquirer piece Steinhauer had to drop in five dollar words like “obstreperous” to let readers know they were getting their information from the venerated New York Times.

Though entitled “Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More” the article reported on the activities of Explorers, not Scouts. Associating Scouts with Explorers is like associating the USC football team with the Phi Beta Kappa weekend softball team just because they happen to be affiliated with the same university—though the latter far more loosely.

Exploring, which comprises about 10% of BSA-affiliated participants, is about career exploration, not the woodworking, Scout-O-Ramas, camping and merit badges the general public pictures when Scouting is mentioned.  Explorers fall under a not-for-profit corporation called Learning for Life that is merely a coeducational affiliate of the BSA. Explorer “posts” are run by sponsoring police departments, fire stations, or private sector organizations in areas such as law, health, engineering, skilled trades  or aviation.

News flash Steinhauer, the fact that some Explorer posts are affiliated with the U.S. Border Patrol does not signal an “intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions...” Though I traded Scouting for dating when I turned 16, the age at which most youth begin participating in Exploring, several friends joined the program. Guess what? 30 years ago Explorers were riding along with cops, going through training simulations with SWAT teams and role playing with undercover agents assigned to drug details.

Jennifer, my dear, perhaps you don't like that the Border Patrol arrests your beloved illegal... strike that... "undocumented" immigrants or that it considers marijuana an illicit substance. It may irk you that they don’t coddle terrorists.  But their training simulations are hardly a new aspect of the Exploring program. New to you doesn’t make it is news.

That the Times slanted the story surprises me little. But where is the Internet and blogosphere on all this? My beloved, do-a-good-turn-daily, borderline pyromaniac, Boy Scouts aren’t training to fight terrorist or anything else for that matter. For Pete’s sake, the BSA still includes paintballing and laser tag on their list of unauthorized activities. 

Having gone on many a campout in recent years, I am more than familiar with the Scouting version of don’t ask, don’t tell. When the urge to paintball (or man’s-most-awesome-invention-ever as I like to call it) gets too strong, Scout troops unofficially organize wildly popular ‘This-isn’t-a-Scouting-Activity!” paintballing  excursions.

Oh, and Ms. Jennifer, when boys assume a stance for pictures with their paintball guns, they try to look as menacing as the Explorers in your photos with their air soft plastic pellet guns—it’s what teenagers do. They strike a pose. They scowl. They play the bad-ass role. They act like teenagers.

Working for an organization with a propensity to cherry pick the facts that best conform to its worldview, Steinhauer didn’t just report on a competition held by an obscure group of Explorer posts in Imperial County, California (with advisors suffering, admittedly, from severe foot-in-mouth disease), she made the extra effort to abruptly segue into allegations that police officers are sexually abusing Explorers.

The blogosphere went wild regurgitating her allegations and her reference to an unspecified University of Nebraska (NU) study as proof that Boy Scout leaders were ramping up to give Catholic priests a run for the dubious lead in the ‘No-Child’s-Behind-Left” sweepstakes. Not one of the 23 blogs I visited dug deep enough into her mention of a report to find that it was a study by Samuel Walker and Dawn Irlbeck, entitled: “Police Sexual Abuse of Teenage Girls: A 2003 Update on Driving While Female.”

The NU report, which focused primarily on allegations by teenage females pulled over by cops and prostitutes threatened with arrest by cops, did indicate that there had been some allegations of abusive comments or actions directed towards female Explorers who had gone—unescorted--on ride alongs with male officers. Hmmm, coupling teenage girls with male cops is a bad idea? Who would of thunk?

Unlike the Times or the blogs, the NU study did note that when the problem surfaced over a decade ago, Explorers implemented a requirement that at least two adult, non-police supervisors act as chaperones at all Explorer functions.

Perhaps the blogosphere didn’t dig deeper into the difference between Explorers and Scouts or the facts surrounding old allegations of sexual abuse because they were too busy crafting predictable Hitler Youth analogies. Depending on how the blog leaned politically, headlines portrayed “Scouts” as either ‘Cheney Youth” or “Obama Youth.”

(Cheney, of course, is fun to hate. Obama took a hit because the Times article mentioned that a role played by a “terrorist” in one of the simulations was that of a “disgruntled Iraq war vet,” rekindling outrage on the right over a recent Department of Homeland Security document identifying Second Amendment supporters, pro-life advocates, and returning war veterans as potential terrorists.)

Smart move on the Times’ part. By distracting the right wing bloggers with the war-veteran-turned-terrorist angle, traditional supporters of the BSA got off track in their commentary and “analysis.” Instead, they joined the fray labeling Scouts as “Boy Storm Troopers of America” and “Homeland Gestapo.”

The fact that the commentary quickly degraded into Nazi comparisons may provide an insight into why the Internet didn’t self correct. Early pioneers of the Internet who posted discussions on Usenet forums found that arguments, if carried on long enough, frequently resulted in someone dropping a Nazi or Hitler comparison. This occurred so frequently that an adage known as Goodwin’s Law developed stating that such comparisons were almost inevitable.

A corollary to Godwin’s Law states that once a Nazi analogy is made the debate is over and whoever made the comparison automatically loses the debate. In the case of the Scouting story, commentators bypassed reasoned discourse and immediately played the Nazi card. The discussion terminated and truth lost out.

Is the Media's Love of Obama Killing Objectivity?

Working as an indentured servant for my school newspaper 20 years ago I was awarded the distinction of “Best News Writer of the Year.” What a sham!

No, there wasn’t any Joe Biden-esque plagiarism. It’s just that I never conformed to the role of a true reporter. The practice of gathering and disseminating information while striving for unbiased viewpoints was not a concept I grasped. My opinions have always run deep. I was an editorial-page columnist masquerading as a reporter. Whether covering campus pay phone contracts (hey, this was 20 years ago) or a proposed baseball stadium, my point of view guided how I selected and strung together the facts. Objectivity was for sissies.

Operating under the “it-takes-one-to-know-one” principle, it’s painfully obvious that the majority of the “reporters” working today have that same objectivity-be-damned perception disorder when it comes to covering Barack Obama. During the campaign, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, John McCain and Hillary Clinton all complained that the media fix was in for Obama. Now, a recent study by the respected Pew Research Center gives weight to those allegations.

In reviewing Obama’s first 100 days in office, Pew noted that Obama enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George Bush during the same period of time—42 percent of the Obama stories were positive compared to 27 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for Bush. Another 30 percent were neutral.

Rather than blush, the media scoffed at these findings. “The newscasts reflect reality,” said Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “Everyone, including Republicans, would have to say his first 100 days have been great.”

Apparently Kaplan was too busy polishing his “Change We Can Believe In” buttons to note the Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll from May 3rd, 2009 that found that 43 percent of voters disapprove somewhat with Obama’s performance and 32 percent of the nation’s voters strongly disapprove.

I’m no right winger, and it’s in my best interest as an American if Obama hits a homerun with his agenda, but when I turn on the news I want fair and balanced—and I ain’t getting it.

In his first 100 days Obama slammed in the single largest government expenditure ever--a nearly $820 billion stimulus package--without the transparency and five day online public review period of all legislation he promised during the campaign. His deficit-laden $3.2 trillion budget--the largest ever—also warrants more than a little scrutiny.

Where was the mainstream media on Obama using the stimulus package to undo Clinton’s Welfare Reforms of 1996, or creating a $5.2 billion pot that the scandal-plagued ACORN operation can tap or slipping in highly controversial controls of doctors in private practice?

Perhaps it would help my objectivity-challenged counterparts in the press to pick up a copy of “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.” Written by Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS newsman, the book bemoans the self-induced collapse of his beloved profession.  Less of a slam of Obama than the title implies, Goldberg laments the demise of honest journalism. Even the most strident Obama supporter will wince reading the section in which The Washing Post’s ombudsman Deborah Howell admits to the media bias in her own paper.

But honestly, do you need a book to see that the mainstream media loves Obama to a fault? The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics requires its members to distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. I, for one, can’t keep my opinion out of my writing. I understand first hand how difficult it is to be a true reporter. But is it too much to suggest that journalists who can’t distinguish between fact and commentary bow out of the newsroom and find their rightful place in the editorial department?

My Night With Perez Hilton

Taking a sauna at a West Hollywood bathhouse with Michael Huffington last night the thought occurred to me to ask him about his ex-wife’s liberal news website--The Huffington Post. “Mikey,” I said, “people are saying that Arianna’s news lackeys are unfairly and illegally using copyrighted material to stuff their pages full of content. Whatcha think about that?”

“That dumb bitch is going to kill my Google stock if she doesn’t knock that crap off,” he erupted. “I wish she’d take some lessons from my buddy Perez.”

On cue, gossip-blogger-turned-erstwhile-beauty-pageant-judge Perez Hilton popped up from Michael’s lap.

“Dumb bitch,” chimed in Hilton, “I’ve got the easiest gig on the planet and she’s going to jack it up.”

“I have no discernable talent, no original thoughts, but I’m a great plagiarist,” Hilton boasted as he rubbed his plump, red cheeks. “I learned the hard way that you can’t just blatantly reproduce copyrighted material. You’ve got to do a little transformation. Ingest, digest, excrete… that’s my mantra. The problem with Arianna is she’s pushing it too far and might call down the wrath of the traditional media on us all.””

Perez should know. Since founding perezhilton.com (formerlySixSixSix.com) in late 2004, Hilton has been hit with numerous copyright infringement suits for offenses such as posting Britney Spears songs before they were released, linking to a copy of Colin Farrell’s infamous sex tape and posting a copyrighted paparazzi photo of John Mayer and Jessica Simpson.

Like many on the net, Perez didn’t immediately grasp the concept that just because you know how to copy and paste, copyright holders still have some protection from having the potential market for their work diminished.

“It’s all about understanding the ‘fair use’ doctrine,” Hilton opined. “The Constitution protects copyright holders. Fair use allows the limited use of material without requiring permission from the rights holder. But fair use means I have to use that material for purposes such as criticism, comment, or,” he winked, “news reporting.”

“Now I’m just a drama grad from New York University,” Hilton added, “but my attorney taught me that the law favors ‘transformative’ uses of copyrighted material. I’ve found that jotting down a few lines of commentary underneath a video post or digitally altering a photo covers my oft-admired buttocks.”

“So that’s what’s up with all the inane comments you couple with your pinched videos and the sophomoric doodles on the photos you post,” I observed.

“You betcha, cupcake,” he twittered. “Post an untouched AP photo of Mike Tyson and I’m looking at another lawsuit. “ But if I use the Telestrater effect in Photoshop to create an amateurish illusion of semen dripping out of Tyson’s mouth, I’ve got the Los Angeles Times defending my right to achieve a ‘satiric or humorous end’. If I want to add a video clip from Extra! on Lindsay Lohan, I just jot down some comments about how she’s ditching the ‘bush’ and going back to the ‘peen’. Copyright problem solved.”

Hilton continued, “That’s what HuffPo doesn’t get. They grab a couple of paragraphs verbatim from someone else’s website and call it a ‘Quick Read.’ The problem is there is no commentary, no opinion, just copy and paste.”

“They argue that the ‘Read the Whole Story Here’ hyperlink they add constitutes fair use because readers can use it to link to the original work... Wrong! Hilton snapped angrily. “This is the Internet. The simpletons who visit aggregation sites like mine read in snippets. Welcome to Web 2.0. Someone who has read two entire paragraphs of a story can hold themselves out as a de facto subject matter expert when they regurgitate what they read on their own blog. No one is savoring every syllable of a 2,000+ word news story anymore.”

The heat of the sauna was starting to sap my strength. Michael retreated to a corner of the sauna bustling with activity and obscured by steam. But Perez just continued pontificating:

“Worse yet, Huffington doesn’t quite get that another tenet of fair use is that the courts look at how much of the work is quoted in relationship to the entire body of work. Back in December of ’08, Arianna’s minions grabbed two paragraphs from a Chicago Reader blog for one of their entries. That’s two paragraph’s from a post that, in its entirety, was a whole two paragraph’s long.”

“Huffington needs to calm the hell down or she’s going to blow it for the rest of us,” Perez vented. “The courts have yet to weigh in definitively on whether search engines and aggregators have a valid fair use claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Google is copying the headlines it displays word for word and media giants such as News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and MediaNews executive Dean Singleton are starting to squeak about how this skirts the fair use provision.”

Perez made me think. America loves to litigate. Media giants, who continue over leveraging their companies even as subscriptions and ad revenues plummet, might just see dollar signs in going after news aggregators. The need for short-term cash to make interest payments might just blind them to the fact that most aggregators are actually driving eyeballs to their sites and to their online advertising.

There is a big difference between someone like Matt Drudge (who coincidentally was sharing a sauna with us but will deny it if ever asked) who just posts hyperlinked headlines that takes the reader directly to the original source and Huffington who reproduces enough of the news post to make clicking through to the original source unnecessary. But will the courts see that?

Don’t ruin it for all of us Arianna! Whether my frontal lobotomy has me jonesing for a quick recap of far left news or oxygen deprivation has me veering off to the far right, I love biased sites that pull together the selective snippets of news that support their flawed, unbalanced arguments.

The more I thought about what she was doing, the angrier I got. “Stop flagrantly skirting fair use you dumb bitch!” I muttered as I snuggled up to Perez. “There, there honey cheeks,” Hilton said soothingly, “Arianna might goad big media into crushing us, but you got to knock off the potty talk. It’s just ugly and misogynistic when a straight man talks that way.”

Bailout Misdirection

Misdirection. As bailout billions fly around Washington DC, be wary of the frantically waving right hand. More likely than not, it’s pulling your attention away from the left hand that’s pulling off nasty little tricks.
 
After DC fanned the populist outrage over retention “bonuses” paid to AIG’s troubled Financial Products division, Congress has since been consumed with using the tax code to retroactively target those greedy executives and grandstanding to see which congressperson can express the most disgust.

The public’s focus is squarely on the $165 million paid to AIG executives and what on what the government can do to limit compensation at companies receiving bailout funds. And given the shenanigans surrounding the rest of the bailout funds, many in Washington probably prefer it remains that way.

Debating government oversight of compensation is a bit of a red herring. When Chrysler received government loan guarantees in the ‘70s, the necessity of cutting wages was agreed to before Congress voted. Similarly, when the Big Three automakers approached Congress late last year looking for a handout, few had an issue with the government asking for executive compensation and union contracts to be revisited.

 It’s a simple case of the Golden Rule: He who has the gold (or Chinese-financed deficit spending) makes the rules. Congress could have better addressed the AIG bonuses upfront if the legislation wasn’t so rushed.

So why is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanting to keep the focus on this topic by expanding it? “The issue of excessive compensation extends beyond AIG and requires reform of the system of incentives and compensation in the financial sector,” Geithner said Monday in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee.

In Monday’s committee hearing it seemed that Geithner opted to stoke the compensation furor rather than directly address the few brave congressmen and women who pressed him on where the bulk of the bailout funds were going.

Nice diversion.

Less than 0.1% of the $180 billion received so far by AIG went for bonuses—payments that Obama’s Treasury Department and Senator Christopher Dodd wrote language to protect in the so-called stimulus bill.  Though the campaign of “change” promised transparency, the White House, Treasury Department and majority of Congress seem hesitant to discuss the remaining $179,835 billion.

Like the stimulus bill, the bailout bill was hastily written and pushed through with negligible review, discussion or debate. Almost $335 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds have been committed to date and it doesn’t appear a single troubled asset has been removed from any bank balance sheet.

Where did the money go? Though the Treasury Department isn’t saying much, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that in the case of AIG, billions in TARP funds are being funneled to US banks, foreign banks and investment houses that used “naked” credit default swaps (CDSs) to gamble on the collapse of the housing bubble.

No wonder DC isn’t talking. The TARP bailout is essentially like using taxpayer monies to cover a Las Vegas casino’s house losses because the bookmaker got the line wrong.

Unmerited executive bonuses are simple to understand, so they make for an easy distraction. CDSs are a little more obscure… and those who profited from them, along with their lackeys in public office, seem intent on keeping it that way.

Basically, a CDS is a contract that allows an “investor” to bet that a credit instrument, like a bond or loan, will go into default. All the buyer needs to do is make a small (often less than 0.25% of the contract amount) annual payment to the issuer—one shiny quarter, well played, can earn you $100.00. These unregulated derivative “investments” even allow for betting that a company’s credit rating will be downgraded.

As it is for Amish folk vacationing on the French Riviera, the problem with these swaps is the rampant nudity. Since CDSs are basically unregulated, naked or unsecured swaps are allowed. An investor can purchase a CDS even though he does not own any of the insured instruments or have a stake in the company being bet against. Naked swaps aren’t about prudently hedging an investment; they are just cheap bets with long odds and a ridiculously high upside.

AIG’s Financial Products division was a major player in the CDS market that exploded to a notational value of $45 trillion by the end of 2007. Once considered sucker bets because defaults and bankruptcies are historically rare, naked CDSs exposed AIG to devastating losses because a number of institutions used the swaps to speculate correctly on the demise of the securitized mortgages that glutted the market. AIG bet otherwise, held no offsetting investments, and priced the swaps too cheaply. When the market went bust, the otherwise profitable AIG faced ruin because of one risk-laden business unit.

Before the dust could settle, billions in bailout out dollars where pouring into AIG. No one told the public anything other than “AIG is too big to fail.” When folks went in for a closer look… BAM! The bonus and compensation furor was ignited.

The truth, however, is that the billions being pumped into AIG were being paid out to speculators who arguably should have taken a haircut.

Goldman Sachs, for example, got an estimated $12.9 billion of the AIG dollars even though the Goldman noted on a March 20th, 2009 public conference call that their exposure was minimal if AIG had been liquidated.

AIG's other trading partners—such as Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays—received $32.7 from AIG to settle the derivative contracts, essentially pushing more cash to the same group that had already received TARP money or foreign banks that taxpayers might take issue with subsidizing.

The dirtiest secret of all is that these institutions were fronting bets placed by hedge funds. Note that in 2008—the year that most investors realized staggering market losses—the top 25 hedge fund managers garnered a total of $11.6 billion in compensation because their funds reaped hundreds of billions by betting on the housing bust. TARP dollars insured that these bets were paid in full instead of being used to address “troubled assets.”

Hedge fund managers, as exemplified by George Soros who put up tens of millions in “soft money” to get Obama elected, are notorious for pumping millions into campaign coffers—65% to the Democrats and 35% to the Republicans in 2008. SNAP! Don’t look at that! What do you know, Soros—who personally made $2.9 billion using swaps to bet on the housing bust—just cropped up in the Wall Street Journal with an op-ed piece calling for CDS regulation… joined days later by Geithner expressing the same opinion. Kind of like Bonnie and Clyde calling for improved bank security… after they robbed the banks.

Was 'W' the Worst President Ever?

As orgasmic liberals sharpen their chisels and survey Mt.Rushmore to determine the best placement of Barack Obama’s head shot, their cohorts in academia are working overtime  to put a punctuation mark on the election of ‘08: Ensuring that George “don’t-call-me-shrub” Bush is recorded in the annals of history as “The Worst President Ever.”

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Following 911, George’s approval rating soared above 90%. But with an unpopular war, a ballooning deficit and a Dick for a vice president, George wound up his second term less popular than a website hawking used hemorrhoid cushions. In an informal History News Network  poll of 109 professional historians (academic “Doctors” who can’t prescribe the stuff that kept Anna Nicole Smith looking so lucid before she kicked) 61% rated Bush Part Deux as the worst in the nation’s history.

Granted, it’s hard to argue the ‘W’ will ever crack the top ten (or even the top forty) list of all time greatest presidents, but worst ever? This is America people. A man (for now) has had to sell his soul so many times over to get a sniff at the presidency that the office, by definition, has attracted some of the most questionable characters of all time.

With no universally-accepted metrics for gauging “worst ever,” the label is so subjective that, depending on your perspective, it can be slapped on just about any president. Consider this:

Worst President Ever – The Libertarian View:

As a closet Libertarian my philosophy is simple: Elect the person who will do the least--and by least I mean expansion of government. Every night I run to the TV set hoping that Obama will drop a Regan-esque: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But alas, all I hear is “stimulus” and ‘investment.”

Poll my fellow delusional, took-one-too-many-political-philosophy-classes Libertarian party members and one name rises to the top of the worst: Franklin Roosevelt. While those not delusional enough to see limited government as viable, consistently rank FDR up with Lincoln and Washington (I suspect because he repealed prohibition) Frank New Deal-ed the federal government into the ever growing behemoth that frightens the bejesus out of Libertarians around the country.

Worst President Ever – The Economist View:

Since 1854 the U.S. economy was been through 32 cycles of expansion and contraction. It’s what free market economies do. Yet for some reason we give some president too much credit for the expansions and curse others for the contractions—and economists can’t agree on why.

For every economist who wants to blame Bush deficits and bank deregulation for the current fiscal crisis, you’ll find others that blame Clinton’s pressure on lenders to offer home loans to the economically disadvantaged. Randomly pick economist and you’re sure to find one that pegs Hooverat the worst because of his association with the Great Depression, Carter as the worst for his association with stagflation or Ford as the worst for his association with ever rising golf course green fees.

Worst President Ever – The Dove View:

The historians surveyed by HNN frequently slammed Bush for dragging us into a “totally unnecessary“ war with Iraq. As opposed to the totally necessary wars with Spain, Korea, Vietnam and Grenada? One can argue that Bush believed his own weapons of mass destruction argument. You can hardly say that for Lyndon B. Johnson who, according to recently declassified files, gave a false pretext for The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave him the exclusive right to use military force in Vietnamwithout consulting the Senate.

Vietnam War American Casualties: 58,209. Iraq War American Casualties: 4,257+. (And Google “Filipino civilian casualties during the Spanish-American War” before playing that card.)

Worst President Ever – The “What Happened To My Beachfront Hacienda?” View

Speaking of a false pretext for war, let’s not forget James Polk. Rebuffed in his attempt to purchase the Mexican territories we now know as California, Nevada and Arizona, the mullet-sporting Polk goaded the newly independent nation of Mexicointo a war in 1846 so he could justify the annexation of those lands.

Realizing the great injustice that was done, it speaks well for the Holy Trinity of Liberal Saviors--Barbara Streisand, Susan Sarandon and Sean Pean—that they have collectively agreed to sign over the deeds to their California estates to the first (don’t-you-dare-call-them- illegal) ‘immigrants’ that can trace their lineage trace back to General Santa Anna.

Worst President Ever –The AndersonCooper Metrosexual View:

Tipping the scale at over 300 pounds and the last, to date, commander-in-chief to sport facial hair, no president screams “makeover” like William Taft. Would he even get a sniff in the era of television?

Worst President Ever – The Mormon View:

In 1862 Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act declaring that the practice of polygamy was illegal in all U.S. territories. The same woman every night? I think not.

Worst President Ever – The Anyone with a Shred of Integrity View:

“I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false…” “What do you mean do I remember a blue denim dress?”

Worst President Ever – The April 15^th View

After a 10 year trial run in the 1800’s, the Supreme Court declared federal income tax unconstitutional in 1872. Leave it to Woodrow ‘who-names-their-kid-Woodrow’ Wilson and the 16^th Amendment to make federal income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. Every April we can celebrate the little amendment that gave rise to Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930’s, Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960’s and Obama’s And-You-Thought-Bush-Knew-How-to-Run-Up-a-Deficit Spendfest of 2009.

My worst president ever? Did I mention I am a closet Libertarian?