So why are American homeowners extrimmensaordinarily screwed? Well first, there's this:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the biggest U.S. lender by assets, is segregating almost half its 13.9 million mortgages into a “bad” bank comprised of its riskiest and worst-performing “legacy” loans, said Terry Laughlin, who is running the new unit. [...]

The legacy portfolio will hold 6.7 million of loans with outstanding principal balance of about $1 trillion, according to a presentation to investors today. The split leaves home loan President Barbara Desoer with about half her previous portfolio, as well as new lending going forward.

Laughlin’s portfolio will include loans that are currently 60 or more days delinquent as well as riskier types of loans the bank no longer originates, such as subprime, Alt-A, interest- only and option adjustable-rate mortgages, he said. He said the portfolios will be completely split by March 31 and that his will be liquidated over time. Of the 13.9 million loans Bank of America services, about 3.5 million are held by the company on its balance sheet. The rest are owned by other investors.

You got that? Literally half of BofA's mortgages are garbage that the company wants to sweep under the rug. Here's the punchline:

“It’s a way to get investors focus on the good,” said Paul Miller, a former examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and analyst at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia. “It’s a way to talk about good things and ignore the bad.”

I'm not sure how declaring that nearly 7 million of your mortgages are worthless pieces of trash gets anyone to focus on the positive, but hey, whatever gets you through the night and so forth.

Meanwhile, America's attorneys general have released their proposed settlement terms with the banks over their widespread use of fraudulent practices during thousands of foreclosure cases across the country. Needless to say, the proposal is underwhelming. Felix Salmon breaks it down thusly:

For those who can wade through it, however, it really is a code of best practices for servicers and it’s sorely needed. There’s much to love here, but it all basically comes down to the golden rule: treat your borrowers with honesty and humanity and common sense and you’ll be fine. Do servicers really need to be told that if they make more money from a loan mod than from a foreclosure, they should do the loan mod? Or that “sworn statements shall not contain information that is false”? Evidently, yes, they do. [...]

[T]he big question here isn’t whether the settlement is reasonable — yes, it’s entirely reasonable. Instead, we should ask what the penalties for non-compliance are, since just about every servicer will be non-compliant for the foreseeable future.

Those penalties come at the end of the document and they’re extremely vague: there’s talk of “monetary penalties and additional remedial actions”, but there’s also talk of “failure to meet timelines”, which implies that much of this stuff could be pushed off far into the future and of “a special master or referee to resolve violations”, with no indication of how such a person might be chosen.

This is pretty much what I've come to expect from the American government when confronted with a case of widespread, systematic fraud committed by the financial services industry: Issue a bunch of vaguely-worded guidelines, lightly chide the banks for their ever-so-naughty behavior and make murky declarations that maybe in the future someone will be held accountable for defrauding people, but not right now.

Stephanie at FedUpUSA drops her jaw at the fact that part of the AGs' "settlement" mandates that banks promise to, you know, obey laws that apply to just about everyone else:

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The bobbleheads sure are doing their part in the Bush Magical Legacy Rehabilitation Tour. First we have the mysterious "Miss me yet?" billboard, then Tweety "Doesn't he look yummy in a flight suit?" Matthews asks if the nation will feel "nostalgia" for Bush with his memoir coming out, and every time you turn around there's a Bushie or a Cheney promoting the failed policies that saw Bush leave office with a record disapproval rating. Talk about a disconnect--or maybe it's just willful misinformation. There are no Americans wishing back for the days of the Bush presidency, for crissakes. We're still scarred from it, why would Americans want to open those wounds again?

Whichever way you want to categorize it, there is nothing more ludicrous and absent of facts than Kathleen Parker insisting that Bush has acted "nobly" since leaving office.

Is that right?

So is criticizing his successor not once, but twice--even after saying that the new Commander-in-Chief "deserved his silence", noble? Don't forget one was when he went to a foreign country--his speech in Calgary, Canada--and took thinly veiled swipes at Obama, saying that the two month old presidency harkened back to Hoover?

Is saying that Jimmy Carter "made his life miserable" noble?

Bush's post-presidency life has been fairly low-profile, especially in comparison to his ever-present and compulsively vocal vice president. He's made a few paid speeches, wrote his memoirs (which garnered him a comparatively small advance--perhaps a better indicator of how much Bush is expected to be missed by the American people) and worked on his fundraising for his library housed at SMU, whose primary purpose appears to be to rehab his legacy, much to the consternation of the staff there:

Their objections stem from the fear that the Bush center will act like a private think tank for neoconservative ideologues. “They get the cover of a university without having to play by its rules,” says Benjamin Johnson, an associate professor of history whose Bush Library Blog detailed the controversy at its height, between 2007 and 2008. The plans for the Bush institute sailed through S.M.U.’s administration, however, with the help of people like Ray Hunt, the oilman and longtime Bush supporter and friend, who is on the university’s board of trustees.

“We’re not going to have any of the usual controls over teaching and research hires and reviews,” complains Johnson. “My concerns have actually been heightened by the collapse of the Bush administration because it seems to me he and his circle are intent on rehabilitating him, and he is held in such disrepute by so many people across the country and the planet. I’m afraid this is going to be the main vehicle by which they try and rehabilitate their reputation.”

And by no measure, Kathleen Parker, can that be considered a noble effort.

Alternate Brain: BWA HAHAHAHA...Rethugs claim they're upholding the legacy of MLK

Scott Horton: The Guantanamo "Suicides": A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle

Main Justice: The FBI invoked non-existent terrorism emergencies to illegally collect phone records betweem 2002 and 2006

One Penny Sheet: What Bush did to Haiti

Seeing the Forest: Health Care

HOLY CRAP: Killing ragheads for Jayzus...Tea Party same as old party...The Family that prays together...The Book of Moron...When Timmy met Jimmy...Dawkins vs Creationist...Ministerial propriety...Cult ...What would God say?...Oh noes!...What's God got to do with it?...God and Steele..Last word on Holy Hume...Goldberg's religion problem...

It's been over a year since Americans elected Barack Obama, but we're still living in George Bush's world – two wars, a recession, a deficit, and so much more.

President Obama has his hands full cleaning up these messes and establishing a legacy on healthcare and climate change. I get that. But there's one blind spot that he can't afford to ignore any longer.

We're living under the rule of George Bush's judges. He picked over 40% of all current federal judges. We're talking about lifetime appointees, and so few cases ever make it to the Supreme Court that they usually get the last word.

Bush's judicial legacy didn't happen by accident, or overnight. He made it a priority. The numbers are telling: as Obama approaches the end of his first year, he’s picked roughly 30 nominees, 11 of whom have been confirmed. By the end of his first year, Bush had nominated 65, and nearly 30 had been confirmed.

To be sure, Republicans have been obstructing Obama's nominees at every turn – that's why so few have been confirmed. But Obama has played into their hands by not nominating more people, which would throw their obstruction into sharp relief and amp up pressure on the GOP.

I know it might not seem this way – in the midst of the healthcare fight – but Obama's legacy, the future of progressive legislation, and the well-being of our nation depend on the character, and quantity, of the judges he nominates. This issue deserves equal billing with the others at the very top of the administration's agenda.

The good news is that, unlike with many problems we face, Obama can ramp up nominations without sacrificing progress on his other priorities. There is no shortage of highly qualified – and progressive – nominees, and Senate Democrats can crush judicial filibusters when they set their mind to it.

The bottom line is that Obama may never have another opportunity like the present, with 60 Democrats in the Senate, to push through his nominees and return some balance to the judicial branch. And he has only four or so months before the 2010 election season causes the Senate to grind to a halt.

President Obama, your legacy clock is ticking. We need you to act now.

No matter how big his media empire, or how staunch his devotion to conservatism, Rupert Murdoch's enduring legacy is, from this day forward, that he brought to the world Glenn Beck boiling a handful of rubber frogs as a metaphor for "The American People."

Open Thread below....

I'm not as optimistic as this reporter, but then, I don't live on Planet Beltway, either. George Bush's legacy lives on - we still have a commercial real estate crash to get through, and the banks have only postponed their day of reckoning. (Although the Onion has a slightly brighter forecast):

Despite an emerging economic expansion, businesses were sufficiently skittish about the future that the job market continued its long, steep decline in August, according to a new government report Friday. The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent, from 9.4 percent, as employers shed jobs for the 20th straight month, the Labor Department said.

The increase was greater than many analysts had forecast, and it undermined hopes that the corporate sector will rapidly rebuild its workforce following the economic trauma of the last year. That in turn could keep a self-sustaining recovery from taking hold, as Americans have less money to spend and less confidence about their own job prospects.

"Our clients tell us they will not hire in anticipation of a recovery, but will wait until they see it," said Jonas Prising, an executive vice president at Manpower, the giant employment services firm. "In a normal recession, people would now start to feel more comfortable and start hiring, but nobody is doing that today. They'll do it when they see real orders and real business."

The new numbers included some silver linings: The 216,000 jobs that employers shed in August was the slowest rate of job loss in a year, which drove the stock market up 1.3 percent, as measured by the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.

Companies are not laying people off at the same furious pace they were a few months ago -- the number of people to lose their jobs in mass layoffs fell 26 percent in July. But neither are they willing to take the risk of bringing on new workers, despite signs that there could be better times ahead.

As I've been following the health care reform debate, the media frame the three House bills as basically phony documents. It's like that branch of the government is a front group that pays for an apartment that nobody occupies and only lives to be bossed around by the House of Lords. And when it comes to the Senate, the media only bow down to the mighty Baucus Dogs. All I keep hearing is politicians wishing that Ted Kennedy was able to be involved in the health care reform process. Republicans are actually saying that -- guys like John McCain.

Well then, he should honor Kennedy's legacy and negotiate in good faith, but that will never happen:

Speaking to George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, John McCain argued that the real hindrance to health-care reform is the absence of Sen. Ted Kennedy. "It's huge that he's absent," McCain said, "not only because of my personal affection for him, but because I think the health-care reform might be in a very different place today."

This stuff just isn't plausible. Kennedy was around in 1994 and there was no deal. More to the point, Kennedy's committee, the HELP Committee, has passed health-care reform. Kennedy's staff, as you might expect, led their effort. But neither Kennedy nor his staff can make the deals for another committee. If Kennedy were in the Senate now, health care would be exactly where it is: Through Ted Kennedy's Committee and stuck in the morass of Max Baucus's Gang of Six.

Meanwhile, if John McCain wants to honor Ted Kennedy, he shouldn't just talk the guy up. He should play a constructive role in passing the legislation that Kennedy considered the cause of his life. McCain says that Kennedy "had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions," but surely McCain can decide what concessions those should be and present them to Max Baucus — or the New York Times — in exchange for his vote.

McCain and the Republicans would be playing the same games with or without Ted having an active role right now, but his power would be in dealing with the American people. He'd be pounding the talk shows, town halls and radio airwaves with solid reasoning behind his health care reforms. And President Obama needs good surrogates to go out there and explain to Americans why we need health care reform.

I think we all miss Ted and wish he were knocking heads in Congress and in the media, but Chris Dodd has taken over his committee and they released a bill that was crafted by Kennedy's staff which I assume is one that he's in favor of. So we have four bills done and a fifth one that's in limbo but should be done soon. Why is it that the only bill that matters to the Villagers is the Baucus/Senate Finance Committee bill? Why is that the Holy Grail? Would some talking head at least explain to America what is contained in the HELP bill? Is that too frakkon' much to ask?

Outta the Cornfield:  Last year's Memorial Day post will be next year's as well

The Seminal: War and the reasons

Leftist Grandpa: The 'Terror Plot' that wasn't

AverageBro: Well, at least you've got Lebron...

The Existentialist Cowboy: When you die in America, it will be because you are NOT RICH

Words of Power: Of Yeats, Genocide, and the Blogosphere - Looming deadlines that frame our future and determine our legacy

Bob Woodward scoops another one, this time getting a top Pentagon official to admit, on record, that the United States did indeed torture Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who allegedly "hoped" to become part of the 9/11 attack.

The Age:

THE official in charge of the military commission process at Guantanamo Bay has become the first senior Bush Administration figure to publicly admit that a detainee was tortured.

Judge Susan Crawford, who was in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees — beginning with Australian David Hicks — to trial, has concluded that the US military tortured a Saudi Arabian who allegedly planned to take part in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

She said Mohammed al-Qahtani was interrogated with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, public nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition".

"We tortured Qahtani," Judge Crawford said in her first interview since her appointment by Defence Secretary Robert Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case (for prosecution)."

Take special note of that last part. This is exactly why torture is counterproductive. Not only is it morally reprehensible and of dubious efficacy, it ends up prohibiting us from prosecuting these criminals the real American way.

The GWOT really is a "war of ideas." When we torture and imprison indefinitely those those seek to attack us, we drag ourselves down to their level, all the while showing the world that we don't really stand for what we say we do. This is George Bush's true legacy. He and his cronies may be running around trying to convince you otherwise. But I know you're all smart enough to know better.

Un-fricking-believable. Bush, talking to ABC's Martha Raddatz, does a Cheney on the lies leading up to the Iraq invasion and the messy misadventure of the occupation:

BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–

RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.

Dubya and his whole administration are determined to spin the whole of the last eight years as "ancient history". Raddatz should have thrown out her script at that point and eaten him alive, but she didn't. Yet another failure of the tame media, who are too afraid of losing their precious access to ask the obvious questions even now. Ian Williams of The Guardian laments the paucity of journalistic backbone on display:

With a few notable exceptions like Helen Thomas, Bush's press conferences have not generated the indignation he so richly deserves from a largely quiescent White House press corps that needs government inspectors and Congressmen to tell it when it can be surprised and even occasionally indignant.

In a parochial way, one can understand why the press corps lacks indignation over Iraq's 100,000 civilian dead and over two million external refugees, plus untold more internally displaced.

But it is still surprising that so many reporters can be polite and deferential with someone who has turned the US Federal Reserve into a giant Ponzi scheme and broken the world's strongest economy. They defer humbly to someone who has contrived the deaths of 4,200 US servicemen and women in Iraq. It even failed to follow through on questions about the president's murky military record with the Texas Air National Guard while his peers were dying in Vietnam. This intrepid press

corps showed no compunction in following in minute detail Clinton's screwing

around, but kept silent as Bush screwed entire nations.

Last week, a Senate report pointed the finger directly at Bush and his senior officials for authorising - indeed, ordering - torture and abuse of detainees. But no one threw any shoes.

It is that fawning quiescence that allowed Bush to tell Bob Woodward: "I'm the commander – see, I don't need to explain – I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

I'll give the Newshogger's Journalist of the Year Award to the first reporter to say to Dubya "You're the President, so what? You work for us, you're not the king."

Crossposted from Newshoggers