I found the interview with John Bolton to be very instructive.

1. He is as ideologically blind as I thought that he was.

2. The British interviewer was impressive and would never be able to get a job in the MSM here.

3. I have complained for years that American (i.e. the American public's) reaction to many events can only be explained by assuming that the public suspends its independent and critical judgment of events and instead relies on the pronouncements of the central government or their mouthpieces, the MSM. One could argue that the MSM's unwillingness to provide "just the facts, ma'am" and their willingness to insert their particular spin and/or omit relevant facts and information exacerbates that reliance. In this regard, the exchange over the wisdom of the removal of Saddam Hussein is instructive. Mr. Bolton asserts on several occasions that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct one without ever bothering to support the assertion. Presumably, his unwillingness to provide rationale for the statement is part of the government's attitude of "don't bother your pretty little heads" with this stuff. The British interviewer wasn't buying it but, instead of asking the bald question: "Why was overthrowing Saddam Hussein such a good idea?", he puts the situation in context and asks if a dictatorship isn't better than a failed state which isn't the same question. He thus allows Mr. Bolton to duck the why question and instead express yet another opinion that living in a failed state is preferable. Although he expresses this opinion in a passive sense (well, if you prefer a dictatorship to a failed state, that's your option) rather than a positive sense (yes, it is), he is in no way qualified to hold that opinion. To be valid, an opinion must be grounded in facts and experience. Mr. Bolton offered no facts and, as he has never lived in either a dictatorship or a failed state, he has no experience upon which to base that opinion.

Until such time as the public starts exercising the missing element, we will remain mired in partisanship which, of course, is nothing but ideological opinionating and bad decision making. Exercising the missing element can be done absenting the assistance of the MSM but it would be much easier if they provided facts and context instead of merely opinions and spin.

It's been widely reported that the White House is writing the report, not General Petraeus. Why is anyone paying any attention at all to this farce? The regime in Washington isn't reality based anyway and, therefore, has no need for facts.

See subject.

And I believe you do them a disservice. It's pretty clear that the mortgage market is in the shit can but I don't believe you can lay the responsibility for that at Countrywide's doorstep. Countrywide's problems came not from loan defaults or excessive late payments (i.e. they didn't have an unexpected drop in income which would be indicative of poor lending practices), nor did they get in trouble with the point spread between their short term borrowing and their long term lending per se. They got in trouble because short term credit dried up thanks to what other lenders were doing.

As soon as I read your article, I went to the Countrywide website and found a rebuttal to the NYT article that so lambasted them. If you haven't read it, it's here http://about.countrywide.com/about/Docs/cfclendingpractices.pdf. What I found written up there struck me as a very fair set of lending practices and much of their process I can personally verify to be accurate and has been consistent over time. Full Disclosure here: In 1994 I found myself financially distressed as a result of a divorce and child support obligations and desperate to hang onto the house that my kids had been growing up in. I was prepared to sign up to any loan that would allow me to buy my ex out of her equity and keep the house. Countrywide told me that I qualified for a prime loan and they gave me one and they verified all my income and expense data - it wasn't taking my word for it as you hear so much of today. And the rest of their process as they describe it is pretty much as I remember it. It worked out fine for everybody involved. In that regard, I would also point out that making subprime loans is not always predatory. Stealing Monte Python's lesson in formal logic, A propositions may only be partially converted (the resulting proposition is called an I proposition). Thus while all of Alma Cogan is dead, only some of the class of subprime loans are predatory. And we want our bankers to make subprime loans. There is an excellent discussion of this in the book "Paper Money" by Adam Smith (a pseudonym, of course).

So they're going to lay off 12,000 people. I certainly feel sorry for the people involved but if their business is off, what do you expect? There is no company or industry that I know of that can experience a precipitate drop in business and stay the same size.