A day without Berlusconi is like a Dave without sunshine:

Berlusconi vows to leave ‘shitty’ Italy in conversation recorded by police

Just when it seemed it couldn’t get any weirder.

From The Guardian: How US firms profited from torture flights

men on these flights were usually sedated through anal suppositories before being dressed in nappies and orange boiler suits, then hooded and muffled and trussed up in the back of the aircraft.

The coup de grâce:

In between rendition flights the aircraft was used to fly the Boston Red Sox baseball team

And what’s going to be done about it?

About that continuing Macondo Well oil leak that doesn’t exist: Who you going to believe, BP or your lyon’ eyes?

More exciting news from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Chokeholds, slaps, what next–fisticuffs?

And more on one of my favorite issues:

“The Electronic Privacy Information Center has “obtained more than one hundred fifty pages of documents [through FOIA] detailing the Department of Homeland Security’s development of mobile body scanners and other crowd surveillance technology. . . . The documents also reveal that the mobile backscatter machines cannot [meet] American National Standards Institute ‘certified people scanners’ because of the high level of radiation output and because subjects would not know they have been scanned.”

WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says

Regulations, taxes aren’t killing small business, owners say

NHS plans will mean putting wealthy first, says doctors’ leader

Rupert and James Murdoch called to testify again, this time under oath

Struggling with a great contraction

Probably nothing. When victims of rendition tried to introduce this evidence to challenge their detention the government invoked the state secrets privilege. Now it shows up in a run-of-the-mill civil suit.

Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head: How did so many people know about this atrocity and yet nothing in the media?

NHS plans will mean putting wealthy first: That’s always been the Achilles’ heel of NHS–it’s funded under a discretionary budget, so whenever the conservatives come in they cut it.

Keep the people “hungry, illiterate and pregnant.”

Did you see this part of the story? That a Terry A. Hogan, who apparently is fictitious, authorized the flights? Maybe they’ll just blame good ol’ Terry and let him take the fall. It’s sort of a built-in cover-up, isn’t it?

That wouldn’t be this Terry Hogan by chance?

Hahahahahaha. Here’s one for you; scroll to the video. A friend swore she thought it was a debate between Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman.

Mass misreporting all over the media tonight: “Firefighters responding to 9/11 at increased cancer risk”

The study found nothing of the kind: Cancer rates of exposed firefighters were well within the expected margin of error.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60989-6/abstract

” . . . Obama didn’t capitulate to House Speaker John A. Boehner when he agreed to postpone by a day his jobs speech to a joint session of Congress. Obama wasn’t a poor communicator. He hadn’t caved to Republicans.”
Whew. I’m sure glad that’s cleared up.

Wikileaks Releases Entire 65 Gigabyte Uncensored Cablegate Archive (With Or Without Bank Of America Disclosure)

Here.

“In pushing for the Obama Administration’s approval of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the North American oil industry and its political patrons argue that the pipeline is necessary for American energy security and its construction will help wean America of dependence on Mideast oil. But a closer look at the new realities of the global oil market and at the companies who will profit from the pipeline reveals a completely different story: Keystone XL will not lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, but rather transport Canadian oil to American refineries for export to overseas markets.”

More here.

Yves has a roundup of some recent stories on the mortgage securitization shitpile:

The More You Look, The More Bank Criminality You Find in Mortgage Land

Her leadoff story is a beaut. Title: “Robo-signed mortgage docs date back to late 1990s: Widespread robo-signing of mortgage documents found as far back as 1998 could haunt owners.” I might start training windsprints again soon. Want to be able to do my part.

Her narration includes this reminder of what the problem is with the false-document-covered securitization chain messup:

The failure to get the notes to the securitization trust correctly does NOT mean that no one has the right to foreclose. It does mean that the party that can foreclose is someone earlier in the securitization chain who was paid for the note but in effect, no one bothered to collect it from him. No one wants that party to foreclose because, first, it would prove that the securitization did not have the note and investors were misled, and second, there is no way to get the proceeds into the trust for the benefit of the investors.

[Her emphasis.] The first of those reasons why “no one” wants the actual, intermediate holder of the note to foreclose sounds to this laywoman’s ear like something resembling fraud, while the second is an actual loss to the investors.

Btw, I’ve noticed that some denigrate the use of that term “investor” in this market. But, all of our pension funds and the like were among the ultimate buyers of these things. That is why providing investment grade ratings was so lucrative to Moody’s, Fitch, and the abominable S&P (which last is at it again like they think we’re stupid).