The subprime madness merrily goes on — personal evidence

At my apartment complex, Gehan Homes just got done doing a mass windshield-flier bombing of all the cars on the parking lot. Read this:

Free on-site loan approval. Credit issues OK. Be sure to ask about lease buyout. $0 total move-in.

Gehan Homes can rot and burn, and so can the mortgage brokers working with it.

Court tells NHTSA to come up with real CAFE standards for light trucks and SUVs

And start over:

A federal appeals court on Thursday threw out federal fuel economy standards for many sport-utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks.

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the standards, which were to go into effect next year, didn't properly assess the risk to the environment and failed to include heavier SUVs and trucks, among several other deficiencies the court found.

The decision resulted from a lawsuit filed by 11 states and environmental groups that argued federal regulators ignored the effects of carbon dioxide emissions when calculating fuel economy standards for light trucks.

The new mileage standards, announced in March 2006, required an increase in the average fuel economy for all passenger trucks sold in the United States from 22.2 miles per gallon to 23.5 miles per gallon by 2010.

Filed last year, the suit sought to force the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recalculate its mileage standards from scratch, with carbon dioxide emissions taken into account as a major factor in the agency's analysis.

Hmm. Too bad we can’t talk Nancy Pelosi to court to get new long-term CAFE standards before the full House for a vote.

Given the SCOTUS ruling earlier this year that the government, specifically the EPA, has the statutory power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, this ruling certainly should stand up should the NHTSA be knot-headed enough to appeal it.

Army lied about hiding Gitmo detainees from Red Cross

And now, the proof is out.

A leaked copy of "Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta,” a 238-page manual for Guantanamo Bay operations signed by Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander there, has the details.

The manual indicates some prisoners were designated as off limits to visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross, something the military has repeatedly denied.

Nice to see the military’s been caught red-handed in this one.

Guantanamo spokesman Lt. Col. Ed Bush simply said rules have “evolved significantly” from the 2003 date of the manual. He had no specific comment about “ghost detainees.”

So, why should we believe him now when he claims rules have “evolved significantly” if we know the Army’s been caught in a huge lie on ghost detainees?

The leaked manual was posted on Wikileaks. The top leak currently there is a 2,000 page document of all units in Iraq with U.S. weaponry; allegedly, that includes low-grade U.S. chemical weapons.

Why is Pelosi blocking new auto CAFE standards?

Apparently, we need to blame the Speaker and not John Dingell. Gregg Easterbrook, who while too conservative in some ways for me, has some decent insights on environmental issues, says that’s not the only thing wrong with Nancy Pelosi’s green credentials:

Raising mileage standards for vehicles and enacting a carbon trading system for electric power generation are two highly desirable actions Congress can take right now, without doing economic harm, to cut greenhouse emissions, improve national security by reducing U.S. reliance on Persian Gulf oil and push Detroit automakers to become more competitive so they stay in business. But instead of taking badly needed action, the House of Representatives last week spent $89,000 of taxpayers' money to purchase 30,000 tons' worth of "carbon offsets" for its antiquated coal-burning powerhouse. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared the U.S. Capitol will be green by 2008, but this sounds to me like political yammer.

First, according to estimates by resource economists, carbon offsets need to cost $20 to $25 per ton in order to generate a significant profit incentive for innovators, and thus inspire technical breakthroughs that will stave off artificial global warming. If the Capitol paid only $3 per ton, it wasn't buying much. More important, if you really believe artificial global warming is a huge menace to society, you don't just buy offsets and continue using your antiquated coal-fired powerhouse -- because, after all, the offsets only prevent emissions from rising, doing nothing to reduce emissions. If you really believe artificial global warming is a menace, you buy offsets and cut your own carbon output, thus reducing emissions. This is the big fault with Al Gore's patting himself on the back for buying offsets: He has not reduced his carbon footprint. If he believed his own speeches, he'd both buy the offsets and cut back his carbon-intensive jet-set lifestyle.

Pelosi's talk of a "green" U.S. Capitol is especially phony when she refuses to allow the House of Representatives to vote on proposals to increase fuel-economy standards for vehicles. Higher mpg standards -- the average fuel economy of new cars, trucks and SUVs has not risen since 1988 -- are a million times more important to preventing artificial global warming than symbolic actions such as those being taken at the Capitol. Stricter mileage rules would not only reduce U.S. payments to Persian Gulf dictatorships but also make a significant dent in greenhouse gases because greenhouse emissions are proportional to fossil fuel burned. Yet while Pelosi announces lofty promises about a renewable Capitol, she won't schedule a vote on the strict new mileage standards backed by figures as diverse as President Bush and Barack Obama.

Easterbrook is an equal-opportunity excoriator on politicos from both parties, though.

What of other political leaders? George W. Bush has proposed an international conference to negotiate nonbinding future goals for greenhouse gas reduction — exactly the empty gesture his father proposed in 1992! As Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post shows, all contenders for the presidency have embraced climate proposals that seem bold and sweeping. But read closely: None would have teeth until long after the bold politicians making the sweeping proposals leave office. Hillary Clinton, for instance, wants bold, sweeping action against greenhouse gases by 2030, when she would have been out of office for at least 14 years. John Edwards, whom TMQ likes because he emphasizes the forgotten issue of poverty, wants bold, bold, really bold action by 2050, when he will be 97 years old. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pulling this fast one, too. His bold, bold California climate plan has gotten him fawning press but does not require any action until after Schwarzenegger is out of office.

This is a complaint I’ve had for a long time. And, if you think I have this complaint about global warming, I have it in spades about Peak Oil.

Top books: Amazon readers weigh in

And, so do Amazon’s editors. Read both their lists of top-100 books. From the editors, on the nonfiction side, there’s sublists of top-10s in current events, history and general nonfiction. Customers have top-10 lists of biographies, history and general nonfiction.

A definite favorite of mine, Chistopher Hitchens’ “God is Not Great,” was No. 5 among all books, on the customers’ top 100. Say what you will about Hitch on the Iraq War, this was better than Richard Dawkins, a fair amount better than Dan Dennett, and far, far better than Sam Harris on the last year or two’s spate of atheism apologias.

Why? Two reasons.

First is that you get Hitch’s acerbic wit.

Second is that, unlike Dawkins and Dennett, who generally go light on Eastern religions, and Harris, who positively cozies up to Buddhism, Hitchens is ready to say the Dalai Lama has just as much no clothes as the Pope or Pat Robinson.

Gore’s “Assault on Reason” was No. 14 with customers; Greenspan’s book was the only higher-ranked political book.

Jeffrey Toobin’s “The Nine” topped editors’ current events top 10. Greenspan was second, followed by Robert Draper’s new W bio.

Colbert’s “I Am America,” at No. 10, was tops among political books on the editors’ top-100. They had Hitch at No. 22.

Charles Schumer, official dickhead on Mukasey

)Seconded by Harry Reid, though.)

First, Frank Rich rips him a new one, then the NYT editorial board piles on.

First, the editorial, which begins by taking a shot at Harry Reid, without naming him:

Democrats offer excuses for their sorry record, starting with their razor-thin majority. But it is often said that any vote in the Senate requires more than 60 votes — enough to overcome a filibuster. So why did Mr. Mukasey get by with only 53 votes? Given the success the Republicans have had in blocking action when the Democrats cannot muster 60 votes, the main culprit appears to be the Democratic leadership, which seems uninterested in or incapable of standing up to Mr. Bush.

Then, it focuses on Schumer:

The claim that Mr. Mukasey will depoliticize the Justice Department loses its allure when you consider that he would not commit himself to enforcing Congressional subpoenas in the United States attorneys scandal.

Then, it finishes by shooting at all the Democrats on this one:

All of this leaves us wondering whether Mr. Schumer and other Democratic leaders were more focused on the 2008 elections than on doing their constitutional duty. Certainly, being made to look weak on terrorism might make it harder for them to expand their majority.

And, here’s a thought from Rich:

What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on.

Don’t worry, though: Schumer is out saving hedge funds from additional taxation as we speak.