The 11th Circuit Rules That HCR Individual Mandate Provisions Are Unconstitutional

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court. It ruled that the individual mandate portion of the health care reform package is unconstitutional.

The divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the so-called individual mandate, which is considered the centerpiece of the law, siding with 26 states that had sued to block the law. But the panel didn't go as far as a lower court that had invalidated the entire overhaul as unconstitutional.

Government attorneys can — and likely will — ask the full 11th Circuit to review the panel's ruling. They also can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which many legal observers expect to have the final say on the issue.

White House adviser Stephanie Cutter said the administration strongly disagreed with the ruling and was confident it would not stand.

"Individuals who choose to go without health insurance are making an economic decision that affects all of us — when people without insurance obtain health care they cannot pay for, those with insurance and taxpayers are often left to pick up the tab," Cutter said.

The states and other critics argued the law violates people's rights, while the Justice Department countered that the legislative branch was exercising a "quintessential" power.

The decision, penned by Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Circuit Judge Frank Hull, found that "the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress's enumerated commerce power."

So, what exactly is the importance of the individual mandate provisions? Well, it acts as a tax/penalty to get people to buy insurance who might otherwise opt out because they're in good health.

This is a not insignificant sum of money we're talking about. This provision is expected to raise several billion dollars every year it is in operation beginning in 2014, and is part of the revenue side of reforming the health care funding across the country. It is also seen as a critical tool to getting people into the health care insurance pools so that they can help spread the costs of health care for those who are more likely to utilize the insurance policies.

These are set forth at 26 USC 5000A (the Internal Revenue Code). It imposes an annual penalty of $95, or up to 1% of income, whichever is greater, on individuals who do not secure insurance in 2014, which rises to to $695, or 2.5% of income, by 2016 and after (and adjusted for inflation). Families are hit with higher penalties. There are exemptions to the "fine" in cases of financial hardship or religious beliefs.

The Circuit Court website has been unavailable for most of the day, as people try to access the decision. When I'm able to obtain a copy of the decision, I'll post it here with additional comments.

Assad's Brutal Crackdown Continues For Another Week

Bashar al Assad's brutal crackdown against any and all opposition to his regime continues. Reuters got a hold of video showing attacks against a mosque minaret - showing it being destroyed by what was likely large caliber gunfire:



Yet, Assad claims that he's done no such thing and that his security forces are responding only to clear cities of saboteurs and terrorists. Curiously, Assad has yet to show off any bodies of these so-called terrorists or insurgents.

The reason he hasn't done so is that all too many civilians have been murdered by his security forces, and that there aren't terrorists or insurgents operating in Syria as claimed. Rather, his security forces are brutalizing people who simply want a better life for themselves without Assad's regime holding sway.

46 people have been murdered by Assad's goons in the past couple of days alone. The overall death toll is now well over 2,000.

Despite the crackdown, Syrians continue taking to the streets in protest.

UPDATE:
What does it take for Assad's security forces to open fire on crowds? How about chanting: We Will Not Kneel.

ARC Tunnel Was No Panacea To Ongoing NJ Transit and Amtrak Delays

This past week has been a horror show for commuters along the Northeast Corridor and other train lines into New York Penn Station. A supposed minor derailment led to massive delays that lasted more than 24 hours and a further minor derailment in Sunnyside Yards led to additional delays.

Then, this morning signal problems led to still more delays.

All these problems have apparently resurrected calls to build new tunnels into Manhattan or otherwise castigate New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for cancelling the ARC Tunnel project.

I doubt any of these people actually reviewed the ARC tunnel project and knew how the tracks and station were configured.

Had they done so, they would have realized that the new tunnel project would have succumbed to exactly the same kinds of delays. In fact, it would have likely resulted in even greater delays.

ARC would have built 2 single track tunnels to a new station underneath Herald Square that had multiple platforms. That means that all the tracks would have had to funnel into one track for each direction. Considering that the derailment was in the same kind of location - a choke point - a derailment within the ARC tunnel project would have resulted in the same kinds of delays.

Actually, the delays could have been far worse. You see, the ARC tunnel station had no space to store additional trains. At New York Penn Station, out-of-service trains are stored in Sunnyside Yards in Queens. The ARC station had no such facilities or access, meaning that a derailment would have blocked multiple track platforms and once any trains sitting in the station could be moved out, there were no additional trains that could be brought in in a timely fashion. It would have increased delays, and meant that commuters would have to shuffle over to New York Penn Station and hope that NJ Transit could have equipment in place to handle the overflow.

As we've seen, NJ Transit has been incapable of handling overflow situations, even where the track capacity is available. If it doesn't have equipment in the right place at the time, you'd still get the massive delays.

In other words, Gov. Christie was correct to kill the ARC tunnel, which was the wrong answer to a big question - how to get more commuter and high speed trains into New York. The Gateway proposal is a better setup as it increases tunnel capacity into New York Penn directly, along with the Sunnyside Yards. It would enable high speed rail for Amtrak, and better handle delays or breakdowns along the NEC.

Gateway is the solution to the question, not ARC.

Cautious Optimism On Novel Gene Therapy Cure For Leukemia

A very small study involving three patients receiving a novel gene therapy treatment appeared to cure two patients completely of a common form of leukemia. The third patient showed significant improvement.

I'm stressing the small size of the study, because such results might not be found when applied to a larger group and that many additional studies will be needed to confirm the early findings.

"It worked great. We were surprised it worked as well as it did," said Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "We're just a year out now. We need to find out how long these remissions last."

He led the study, published Wednesday by two journals, New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine.

It involved three men with very advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL. The only hope for a cure now is bone marrow or stem cell transplants, which don't always work and carry a high risk of death.

Scientists have been working for years to find ways to boost the immune system's ability to fight cancer. Earlier attempts at genetically modifying bloodstream soldiers called T-cells have had limited success; the modified cells didn't reproduce well and quickly disappeared.

June and his colleagues made changes to the technique, using a novel carrier to deliver the new genes into the T-cells and a signaling mechanism telling the cells to kill and multiply.

That resulted in armies of "serial killer" cells that targeted cancer cells, destroyed them, and went on to kill new cancer as it emerged. It was known that T-cells attack viruses that way, but this is the first time it's been done against cancer, June said.

For the experiment, blood was taken from each patient and T-cells removed. After they were altered in a lab, millions of the cells were returned to the patient in three infusions.

The researchers described the experience of one 64-year-old patient in detail. There was no change for two weeks, but then he became ill with chills, nausea and fever. He and the other two patients were hit with a condition that occurs when a large number of cancer cells die at the same time — a sign that the gene therapy is working.

"It was like the worse flu of their life," June said. "But after that, it's over. They're well."

The main complication seems to be that this technique also destroys some other infection-fighting blood cells; so far the patients have been getting monthly treatments for that.

Penn researchers want to test the gene therapy technique in leukemia-related cancers, as well as pancreatic and ovarian cancer, he said. Other institutions are looking at prostate and brain cancer.

This study should spur investment and research at utilizing similar treatments for other common cancers.

While the imminent side effect of a bad flu lasting a week or so would be a vast improvement over the kinds of side effects from current treatment options, that include everything from prolonged weakness, hair loss, organ failure, auto-immune disorders, among others, that other immune cells are affected might have long-term consequences that need to be studied as well.

These patients will need to be studied over the next couple of years to see if their cancer remains in remission or if there are thus-far undiscovered side-effects such as other forms of cancer or illnesses that result from the gene therapy.

Still, that this development is going to spur investment and research on this technique is a major breakthrough and here's hoping that the results hold up.

Statue of Liberty To Close In October For Renovations and Security Upgrades

Despite calls from several members of Congress to keep the Statue of Liberty open and accessible during renovations and security improvements, the Statue will close to visitors beginning in October and running for about a year.

The National Park Service, which manages the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island, said it will close the monument on Oct. 28, after the 125th anniversary of its dedication.

It will be closed the following day, and workers from Joseph A. Natoli Construction Corp., of Pine Brook will install "code-compliant" stairways and upgrade electrical and fire suppression systems, elevators and bathrooms.

The National Parks Service told The Associated Press in August 2010 that it would close the statue's crown to upgrade the stairwells and improve safety at Lady Liberty.

One reason, the service said at the time, was that the newest fire codes mandate escape routes that would allow the statue to be evacuated within two hours, but the current staircases on either side of the pedestal do not meet the standards.

The statue was closed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks for security precautions, but the base reopened in 2004 after a $20 million security upgrade. The observation deck at the top of the crown was reopened on July 4, 2009.

The National Parks Service controls the number of visitors to the crown, saying about 240 people visit each day. About 3.5 million people visit the monument every year.

The main staircase, which is part of the structure holding up the copper skin of the statue within the statue, was designed by none other than Gustaf Eiffel, who designed and built the epoynmous Eiffel Tower in Paris. The spiral staircase is a dizzying trek up to the crown and that's one of the reasons that the crown was closed for so long after 9/11.

While the NPS says that the work will affect a minority of those visiting Liberty Island, the fact is that the NPS has been limiting access to the statue for years, and that's limited the number of people who can potentially be affected by the work. There's no word on whether the construction work will expand the number of people who can make the trek up to the crown.

Sanctions Wont Stop Assad's Brutalization of Syria

The UN is contemplating stepping up sanctions against Bashar al-Assad and Syria, but does anyone think that sanctions are going to stop his brutalization of Syrians, murdering, torturing, and engaging in war crimes and crimes against humanity all because some Syrians have the audacity to question the autocrat's right to govern in a peaceful manner.



Assad keeps trying to claim that the military crackdown is necessary because of terrorists involved in the opposition, but there's no evidence that anyone is actually fighting back against the Syrian security forces that have laid siege against multiple towns and cities throughout the country.

Yet, there are signs that Assad's support is splintering. Yet, despite 5 months of crackdowns, there's no sign of an actual uprising or revolution in the air among Syrians. Assad, by playing out of the Hama rules playbook, has thus far been able to contain the threat to his regime, but at a cost of more than 2,000 dead and thousands detained.

Assad can try to rebrand his regime as new and more moderate, but it's still as evil as it ever was.

The US has widened its sanctions against Syrian assets, including a bank and telecommunications company. That comes as Assad's security forces raided Homs and killed at least another dozen people.

A Perimeter Walk Around Ground Zero

The tour starts outside Engine 10 located on the South side of Ground Zero. We're looking North across the WTC memorial and towards 1WTC. The World Financial Center is in the background:

This photo shows from left to right, the Goldman Sachs building (just outside Ground Zero to the NW), the Freedom Tower (1WTC), 7WTC, and 4WTC. The low-slung brick-faced building in the center is Fiterman Hall.

Crossing West Street, this is a view from the SW corner of Ground Zero and you can see across the Memorial Plaza and the WTC Museum protruding in the background. In the foreground, exhaust ducts for PATH and other underground facilities are clad in stainless steel:

1WTC as viewed from West Street looking North:



Looking back towards the SE corner of Ground Zero, you can see where the former Deutsche Bank building once stood and where the Vehicle Security Center facility is underway:


Taken from inside the World Financial Center, this shows the underground connector that will take commuters from the WFC into the PATH Transit Hub and then across to the Fulton Street Transit Center via the Dey Street Connector:


Looking up at 1WTC from 7WTC. You can see the service elevators and the side-mounted crane that is at the corner of Vesey and West Street:

A close up of the new Fiterman Hall. It isn't actually clad in brick, but rather in concrete panels that have been made to look like brick. The panels were hoisted into place and the building is starting to be sealed with window installation that began over the past two weeks:

All photos were
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Indictment Issued In Latest Fort Hood Terror Plot

Naser Jason Abdo was formally indicted today on multiple charges.

Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, 21, was indicted in Waco on charges of possession of an unregistered destructive device, possession of a firearm and possession of ammunition by a fugitive from justice, according to federal prosecutors. He faces up to 10 years in prison on each charge if convicted.

He is being held without bond and has yet to enter a plea. His attorney, Keith Dorsett, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Tuesday.

Abdo was arrested two weeks ago at a Killeen motel near Fort Hood. Investigators say they found a handgun, an article titled "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom" and the ingredients for an explosive device, including gunpowder, shrapnel and pressure cookers. An article with that title appears in an al-Qaida magazine.

The soldier was approved as a conscientious objector this year after citing his Muslim beliefs, but that status was put on hold after he was charged with possessing child pornography. He went absent without leave from Fort Campbell, Ky., last month.

A day after his arrest, a defiant Abdo shouted "Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009!" as he was led out of a federal courtroom, an apparent homage to the suspect in the worst mass shooting ever on a U.S. military installation. He condemned that attack less than a year ago, but is now accused of trying to carry out another deadly attack.

It was previously reported that Abdo had admitted to plotting attacks against restaurants outside Fort Hood that cater to soldiers from the base. He also shouted out the name of the Fort Hood massacre shooter, Nidal Hasan, and referenced an ugly incident involving Fort Campbell soldiers from the 101 Airborne, Abeer Quassim al Janvi, a 12-year-old girl that was raped in Iraq in 2006 and whose family was murdered. Several soldiers involved in that incident were convicted or entered guilty pleas relating to that incident.

Assad Widens Crackdown and Asserts Control Over Hama

After days of punishing gunfire and assaults against Hama, the regime claims it is once again in control of the city.

To the east, troops seized control of another flashpoint city, Deir el-Zour, after four days of intense shelling and gunfire.

The government took journalists on a tour to see a rare glimpse of Hama, a city of 800,000 which has seen some of the largest anti-government protests of the 5-month-old uprising.

About 50 armored personnel carriers were placed on flatbed trucks heading out of the city after a weeklong military assault that the government said was aimed at rooting out "terrorists." The government blames the unrest in Syria on foreign extremists, a claim dismissed by most observers.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said his ambassador reported that tanks and security forces had begun to withdraw from Hama.

"Let's hope that this development results positively and that within 10 or 15 days the process is completed so that steps toward reforms are taken in Syria," Erdogan said.

In Hama, cement and metal barriers blocked streets and soldiers were removing some of the barricades. Piles of uncollected garbage littered the streets. At the southern entrance of the city, a two-story police station was burnt.

"We have finished a delicate operation in which we eradicated terrorists' hideouts," an army officer told reporters.

As Assad has done since the beginning, he's blaming all the violence on terrorists, rather than the peaceful protesters that his security goons have repeatedly brutalized as witnessed on countless videos that have made their way out of the country.

Assad also rebuffed Turkey's requests to end the crackdown. Syria's military has also been working close to Turkey's border, which has Turkey concerned about the ongoing refugee issue as well.

Syria's massive crackdown has done little to help one of Assad's proxies - Hizbullah. Lebanon is starting to realize the devil's deal they have with that terror group now that it is firmly entrenched in the legislature despite the fact that it continues to violate UN SCR 1701 and maintains its own military.

At recent protests, Syrians demonstrating against President Bashar Assad have also unleashed their anger at the Shiite Hezbollah over its blunt support for the regime. Some protesters have set fire to the yellow flag of Hezbollah and pictures of the group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

Such outcry is startling in a country that prides itself for being a bastion of resistance against the U.S. and Israel and has lionized Hezbollah. Syrians and Arabs around the region have in recent years elevated Nasrallah to the status of a nationalist hero after his guerrillas' 2006 war with Israel, and posters of the turbaned, bearded sheik are one of the top selling items in Syrian souvenir shops.

The anger at Hezbollah illustrates the delicate, contradictory position of the Shiite movement. On the one hand, the source of its popularity — even among many Sunnis in the region — has been its image as a patriotic force to defend Lebanon against Israel, and it is highly protective of that image. On the other, its close alliance to Syria and, even more, to Iran make it vulnerable to accusations that it is merely a well-armed tool for those regimes.

Newly released indictments by the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon accusing four Hezbollah members in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's most powerful Sunni leader, further cast a shadow over its reputation.

NJ Transit Again Graces Commuters With Significant Delays

Apparently NJ Transit couldn't be held to its word after it said that it would be able to repair the "minor derailment" outside NY Penn Station in time for a normal morning rush hour.

Indeed, it had sent out alerts to riders as of around 4am claiming that there would be a normal commute, but yet alerts began being sent out as of 7am saying that delays would continue through the morning rush, and by the middle of the rush hour, the delays were reported at more than an hour. NJ Transit said that PATH would be cross honoring tickets, which meant that delays and larger than normal crowds flowed into PATH.

The delays are absolutely inexcusable. NJ Transit claimed that they had to wait until after 8pm last night to shut down the overhead catenary lines so that a crane could remove the second of two railcars that had derailed. Why wait? NJ Transit could carry out an investigation and shut down the overhead lines so that the cranes could have removed the train during the day yesterday. That wasn't done, so the delays persisted.

It turns out that this minor derailment wasn't so minor. The only thing minor about it was that there were thankfully no injuries and that the railcars remained upright. Everything else was a major headache for commuters throughout the entire region.

Now one has to wonder why NJ Transit sent out alerts saying that traffic had returned to normal and yet reverse course a few hours later when it was not completed with the repairs.

At the same time, where is Gov. Chris Christie to hold NJ Transit accountable for its woeful performance during a service disruption. For those who think that Christie's killing of the ARC Tunnel would somehow have prevented this problem, think again. The ARC Tunnel would not have been in place until the end of this decade at the earliest. That means that NJ Transit would have been building a major capital project it can't afford to actually operate and can't deal with a service disruption on its existing service without inconveniencing the maximum number of people possible.

The Legislature should be holding NJ Transit accountable as well. Where are calls for an investigation on that front? The Legislature helps set the budget and is charged with oversight, and yet there's no accountability from anyone.

That means that NJ Transit continues to lurch from one mess to another and commuters only recourse is to continue giving NJ Transit failing grades for service, especially during service disruptions.

So, if you're a NJ Transit commuter, go ahead and fill out the customer service survey and let them get an earful about just how badly they've screwed things up - even with higher fares and less service.

The Bait and Switch

Last week, the Port Authority unveiled a plan to raise fares and tolls. That plan would have raised peak-hour E-ZPass tolls on those crossings to $12 a ride, up from $8, cash tolls on those crossings would be raised by $7, to $15 a trip, and PATH fares would jump $1 to $2.75.

Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo both weighed in showing concern over the plan.

Outrage over the hikes was pretty much absolute.

Yet today we learn that the plan was floated so that a still significant hike would appear to be far more palatable. We're supposed to be thankful that the fares would rise only 50 cents, to $2.25 on PATH, and that tolls would rise to $10 from $8.

The steep hikes sought by the Port Authority for the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and other crossings, and the PATH train are not expected to be as high as you think.

Kramer has learned that the $4 increase in tolls during peak hours is now only expected to be $2. The $2 off-peak increase is now expected be only $1. And the PATH train rates are expected to go up 50 cents, not $1.

Sources told Kramer on Tuesday that the lower rates were always the goal. They only asked for the higher rate as part of a carefully orchestrated political ballet to give Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Gov. Chris Christie cover for approving any hike at all.

The push back from the original Port Authority plan released just last Friday is already in full gear.

It was always about the politics - to secure an increase while opposing cuts that would never have had a chance of passage.

Consider this a fait accomplis.

The hikes are supposed to cover major infrastructure improvements, including replacement of stringers on the George Washington Bridge, raising the Bayonne Bridge to accommodate super-Panamax ships, ongoing work around Ground Zero, additional railcar purchases for PATH, and other projects in the region.

NJ Transit Must Be Held Accountable For Today's Massive Delays

NJ Transit had what it later described as a minor derailment during this morning's rush hour. What it called a minor derailment caused massive delays throughout both the morning and evening rush hours. In fact, the delays spilled over to rail lines that should never have been affected but for the agency's massive failures.

There was no reason for the kinds of delays seen on the train lines running out of Hoboken. There was a time when Hoboken could handle traffic from the Midtown Direct trains and all of its existing rail lines (Bergen/Main, Pascack, Montclair-Boonton, and other lines) without succumbing to the delays seen today. In fact, there was more train traffic just a few years ago before NJ Transit cut service.

That goes to the incompetence of the agency to deal with the derailment.

Why couldn't the agency make the necessary repairs from what it considered a minor derailment in time for the evening rush hour? Why did it delay making repairs until after 8pm tonight, rather than trying to get everything fixed in time for the evening rush hour? Delays may have eased on the Bergen/Main line, but can riders expect a normal commute in the morning?

I doubt it.

Those are mistakes that cost riders real time and money and countless hours of aggravation.

NJ Transit deserves all the scorn and derision one can muster for its awful performance once again. It belatedly admitted that there was a derailment on the NEC; had it done so from the outset, commuters who know better than to trust agency pronouncements about delays would know better than to contemplate traveling altogether and/or preparing for a real long commute. Instead, it stuck to claims that there were 60-90 minute delays on the NEC and NJCL, while 15-20 minutes on the other lines. Problem is that the Bergen-Main line delays were self inflicted with extra time spent waiting at Secaucus for trains that were supposedly canceled or not operating.

It's absolutely inexcusable.

Meanwhile, all the talk about how the Gateway/ARC tunnel would have alleviated this mess is ignoring the fact that NJ Transit is hopelessly incapable of informing riders of delays or resolving problems in a timely manner. It has cut train service into Hoboken and yet it was forced to cancel trains on unaffected lines for no reason. It couldn't find train crews to man trains that were fully loaded. Those have nothing to do with Gateway or the lack of new tunnels, and everything to do with failure of management to deal with contingencies that it knows are likely.

It acted as though this was the first time that there have been problems on the NEC; when it's had problems on a weekly basis. You can't solve those problems with new tunnels alone - and with NJ Transit showing itself to be a poor steward of its capital program, the $1 billion in expected cost overruns for the ARC tunnel were going to seem like rosy projections. NJ Transit couldn't afford ARC, neither could taxpayers, and commuters would have had to shell out even more outrageous fares to cover the agency's multiple failures.

Assad Digs In Even As US Tells Him He's Got To Go

Syria's Bashar al Assad is nothing if not predictable. He's continuing the brutal crackdown against Syrians who have waged protests against his regime and the bodies are starting to stack up like so much cords of wood.

Not only that, but he's again claiming that the military is going after terrorists - that anyone his regime has killed are terrorists, not protesters waging peaceful protests. Facts and reality clearly don't converge here; multiple videos from the past few months show Assad's statements to be nothing but lies.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Tuesday his forces would continue to pursue "terrorist groups" after Turkey pressed him to end a military assault aimed at crushing protests against his rule.

Syria "will not relent in pursuing the terrorist groups in order to protect the stability of the country and the security of the citizens," state news agency SANA quoted Assad as telling Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

"But (Syria) is also determined to continue reforms ... and is open to any help offered by friendly and brotherly states."

While the two men held talks in Damascus, Syrian forces killed at least 30 people and moved into a town near the Turkish border, an activist group said.

The National Organization for Human Rights said most of the fatalities occurred when troops backed by tanks and armored vehicles overran villages north of Hama, while four were killed in Binnish, 30 km (20 miles) from the border with Turkey.

Meanwhile, the US is expected to toughen its stance against Assad, by formally calling for Assad to step aside:

The Obama administration is preparing to explicitly demand the departure of Syrian President Bashar Assad and hit his regime with tough new sanctions, U.S. officials said Tuesday as the State Department signaled for the first time that American efforts to engage the government are finally over.

The White House is expected to lay out the tougher line by the end of this week, possibly on Thursday, according to officials who said the move will be a direct response to Assad's decision to step up the ruthlessness of the crackdown against pro-reform demonstrators by sending tanks into opposition hotbeds. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials previously had said Assad has "lost legitimacy" as a leader and that he either had to spearhead a transition to democracy or get out of the way. They had not specifically demanded that he step down. The new formulation will make it clear that Assad can no longer be a credible reformist and should leave power, the officials said.

It took the Obama Administration long enough to get around to this position, but it's the right one - Assad has to go in order for there to be true reform in Syria. The Syrians are going to have to do this themselves as they aren't going to have NATO carry out military operations, and the US isn't going to unilaterally involve itself here either.

Thus far, the Syrian people haven't mobilized in a way that say the Libyans have. With Assad in full control over the military (he booted a top military commander, with reports claiming it was due to health reasons, but much more likely because he wasn't producing the kind of results Assad wanted), the situation is a stalemate between protesters who are showing a willingness to stand up and be counted against Assad and a military willing to murder its fellow citizens.

London Burning; Hundreds Rioting With Businesses and Cars Torched Across City

Three days of rioting is leaving its mark, and the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) is looking to deploy more than 10,000 police to quell the rioting. There's even word that the government will send in the Army to stop the protests.

At the same time, the police said they had launched a murder inquiry after a 26-year-old man, who was not identified by name, was shot and killed in a car in Croydon, south of London, late Monday as rioters torched and looted buildings — the first known fatality since the unrest began in another part of the city on Saturday.

Mr. Cameron spoke after cutting short a vacation in Tuscany to return home as violence convulsed at least eight new districts in the metropolitan area late Monday and early Tuesday and broke out for the first time in other locations including Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham.

Coming after a cascade of crises, the measures announced by Mr. Cameron seemed to represent a bid to restore some appearance of official authority after nights of chaos and near-anarchy with rioters taunting or outmaneuvering the police, raiding stores and torching buildings.

This is a black eye on the government with the 2012 Olympics just a year away. Some of the businesses near Olympic sites have been hit by rioters.

And there's word that the rioting has spread to other cities as well.

So, what started the riots? Well, it appears to be traced back to the death of a suspected drug dealer at the hands of police. Yet, the riots went from being one of protest about the death to a general riot for the sake of rioting and copycatting. Some are also tracing the protests to cuts in various programs as part of the government's austerity package to bring the government spending in line with receipts.

The riots appeared to have little unifying cause — though some involved claimed to oppose sharp government spending cuts, which will slash welfare payments and cut tens of thousands of public sector jobs through 2015.

Others appeared attracted simply by the opportunity for violence. "Come join the fun," shouted one youth, racing along a street in the east London suburb of Hackney, where shops were attacked and cars torched.

Rioters were left virtually unchallenged in several neighborhoods and able to plunder from stores at will or attempt to invade homes. Restaurants and stores fearful of looting closed early across London.

Expect the damage to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars before all is said and done - as businesses close in fear of damage and people attempt to recover from damage done to their properties.

Another Day, Another Major Delay on the Northeast Corridor

Once again, the Northeast Corridor (NEC) is hit with major delays as a NJ Transit train derailed in the Hudson River tunnels between Secaucus and NY Penn Station.

The first we heard of problems was as our Bergen Line train approached Secaucus and conductors warned that there was no inbound traffic to New York so that everyone would be diverted to Hoboken.

NJ Transit first claimed that there was a signal problem before indicating that there was a disabled train causing the delays at 8:12AM. That was followed by a notice at 8:22 that there was a disabled train and 30-60 minute delays.

That's not entirely true as NJ Transit is canceling trains up and down the NEC and other lines that feed through the Hudson River tunnels, so your delays could potentially be much more severe.

NJ Transit hasn't updated to note that a train has derailed. For that, I had to check other news outlets. It turns out that two railcars on an outbound NJ Transit train from Penn Station derailed, snarling traffic through the system. 300 people were on board the derailed train, but there's no word of injuries.

Why is it that the NJ Transit alerts page is last to know what's going on?

The agency recently announced the results of a customer satisfaction survey, and the harsh reality is that the agency has failed on dealing with delays and service disruptions and today's events reinforce the fact that the agency has learned nothing from its prior issues to better distribute news of disruptions and what to do in a timely fashion.

The Twitter feed is furiously slamming the agency for not getting the job done - not informing riders of the disruptions in a timely fashion and ruining yet another commute.

UPDATE:
It's after 1PM local time and the transit agency has no idea whether they can resolve the derailed train and restore full service by the afternoon rush hour, but that news didn't come from the NJ Transit site - it came from NJ.com. They've still got a notice on their site that there are 60-90 minute delays due to a disabled train posted at 9:49AM and that other agencies are cross-honoring tickets.

It's the Economy Stupid; About That S&P Downgrade, Ratings, and Fundamentals

The DJIA is down over 200 points this morning, but Treasuries are actually showing serious strength. It's gotten to the point where even Warren Buffet has said that the S&P downgrade was wrong. S&P's spoke loudly and clearly when it downgraded US debt, but the Treasury market on Monday didn't appear to be listening; it was rallying. Buffet says the US Rating Still AAA, No Matter What S&P Says

"If anything, it may change my opinion on S&P," the legendary investor said.

Buffett is a big shareholder in Moody's [MCO Loading... () ], rival to S&P.

And Buffett is putting his money where his mouth is. As of June 30, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway [BRKA 106450.00 -850.00 (-0.79%) ] had $47 billion in cash and equivalents. Buffett tells me that at least $40 billion of that is in U.S. Treasury bills. Not only that, Buffett says almost all of his own personal holdings in cash and equivalents are in T-bills as well.

"I wouldn't dream of putting it anywhere else," says Buffett, adding that at Berkshire, the only reason he's sold U.S. Treasurys in the past is to buy stocks or make acquisitions. And Buffett says Berkshire is still buying T-bills, even though yields have fallen so low. "If I have to buy (Treasurys) at a zero percent yield [cnbc explains] , I will," he says. "I don't like it, but we'll do it."

Well, considering that he's a major investor in S&P's competitor Moody's, you have to take some of this with a grain of salt.

Frankly, I find the focus on the downgrade to be misleading. After all, the same credit watchers completely botched the CRA and real estate meltdown - claiming that all kinds of investments were safe when they were anything but. It's quite possible that they've been overstating the strength of the various paper across sectors for years - and that they could have downgraded the US at any number of points in the past couple of years. That Moodys hasn't has as much to do with politics as the S&P decision to downgrade.

Still, it's all relative as far as risk is concerned. If you're an institutional investor, where are you going to put your money in a safe haven? The US is still a better risk that pretty much everyone else. China may be squawking loudly about things, but they've got their own mess and aren't nearly as transparent on their financial situation as the US. That's the position that Buffet is really iterating - that with all the problems with the US market and financial situation, it's still a better risk than everyone else. Despite the brinksmanship over the debt ceiling, it got done and the US still paid its bills. It was an ugly mess, but the ceiling was advanced. It will continue to be advanced despite the know-nothings in the Tea Party who are trying to disrupt all manner of governance simply by saying no to anything and everything.

It's the underlying economy that continues to be the drag on the markets. Real estate is dragging down manufacturing, fewer jobs and unemployment are all factors, and there's little that the federal government can do at this point despite all the talk of stimulating jobs growth. A new stimulus package wont get off the ground with the Tea Party firmly in control in the House, and taxes can't be cut further in many instances because the Senate is controlled by the Democrats. Neither side is going to compromise and this will again be the central issue in the 2012 elections.

UPDATE:
Nate Silver at the NYT takes S&P to task for all manner of problems with how it issues its ratings on countries. Perhaps the most serious problem deals with how the S&P issues only step warnings. It wont issue a major downgrade, but rather issues a downgrade and warns of further downgrades (that come in short order):

But this is essentially what S.&P. does. Rather than downgrade (or upgrade) a country by several notches, even when there is abundant to support it, they instead do so in stages. Greek debt, for instance, has been downgraded seven times since January 2009, as S.&P. has slowly caught up with the grim realities that investors had long ago perceived.

I suspect the reason that S.&P. behaves this way is because they know that their ratings can have reverberations on the market and are trying to avoid a sudden downgrade that might induce panic.

But in so doing, they are violating their mission of providing the most earnest and accurate assessment of a country’s default risk at any given time. A country that is downgraded from AAA to AA is riskier, in S.&P.’s view, than one that was just upgraded from A to AA — even though they now have the same rating — since the former country is likely to be downgraded again and the latter is likely to be upgraded again. S.&P. knows this, and smart investors know this. But they won’t tell you this because dumb investors might get spooked, which could rattle the markets.

A more cynical view is that S.&P. is playing the role of the schoolmarm, looking for excuses to reward or punish countries based on good behavior — and that this is getting in the way of their objectivity. Investors think, for instance, that France is 2 or 3 times more likely to default in the next five years than the United States based on France’s exposure to Greek debt. However, France maintains its AAA rating whereas the U.S. was just downgraded to AA+. Arguably, it is not France’s “fault” for being exposed to Greek debt — whereas the United States’ fiscal problems are largely of its own making. But France is probably the riskier bet all the same.

None of this is necessarily to disagree with the downgrade in the United States’ rating. A rating system based on objective factors, like debt-to-G.D.P. ratios, might plausibly have the U.S. rated even lower than AA+.

Assad's Brutal Crackdown Spreads To Cities Beyond Hama

Hama has been on the firing line for weeks, but it is hardly the only city to take a pounding from Bashar Assad's brutal military crackdown against the slightest dissent and protests against his regime.

Together, the two cities — Syria’s fourth and fifth largest — have been the most defiant in a five-month uprising against four decades of rule by the Assad family. After a week of strong rebukes by a chorus of international voices, from the United Nations to the pope, the renewed assault confirmed what many saw as the determination of President Bashar al-Assad’s government to keep power through violence.

By the count of some human rights groups, more than 2,000 people have been killed in the crackdown so far.

Other signs of pressure on the government have emerged, perhaps most importantly indications that the business elite in Damascus has begun preparing for the government’s fall. That elite has long proved one of the most important pillars of the Syrian leadership, notably during the Islamist revolt in 1982.

“The regime is its own worst enemy, and it can’t be saved from itself,” said a Damascus-based analyst who asked to remain anonymous. “It is ripe for collapse, but the question remains what will trigger it and when.”

Residents put the death toll in Deir al-Zour at 42, and one of them said a family of six trying to escape — a couple with four children — was among the dead. Activists said that many residents had left in recent days. A local man who gave his name as Maamoun said that pickup trucks packed with as many as 25 women and children each were fleeing down abandoned streets.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, which is comprised of several Middle Eastern countries, issued a statement denouncing Assad's crackdown. Assad's propagandists have responded by claiming that the GCC isn't in possession of the facts and circumstances of the opposition violence against the regime. The death toll tells a different tale.

Fact is that despite whatever reforms Assad has offered up, his security apparatus has accelerated its crackdown against the opposition. It has no problem murdering civilians by the score in launching artillery strikes against cities such as Hama or military operations against other cities that have witnessed protests condemning Assad's brutality elsewhere in the country.

Where protests were once focused on trying to improve the economic and political conditions in the country, they've morphed into protests seeking Assad's removal because of the ongoing brutalization of the Syrian people.

It's gotten to the point where even the Turkish government is issuing warnings to Assad to cease and desist from its crackdown because the Turks will join with international efforts to impose sanctions or other actions.

At the same time, the Saudis and Kuwaiti governments have recalled their ambassadors from Damascus over the ongoing violence. The Saudis had no problem assisting Bahrain in putting down its own protests, but the bloodshed in Syria seems to be too much for even the Saudi regime.