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Guests: Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Jonathan Alter, Eugene Robinson, Willie Brown, Alan Simpson, Martin Nolan, Joan Walsh
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Irish wake.
Let's play HARDBALL.
Good evening. I'm Chris Matthews in New York.
It's not just a man who passed away this week, but an era that's now passed. It's not the new frontier figures like JFK, Jackie, Pierre Salinger, the Irish mafia, Kenny O'Donnell, and Larry O'Brien, and Dave Powers, and, of course, Lyndon Johnson, and Lady Bird.
It's the generation of Massachusetts politicians who s came later, Tip O'Neill, and Sil Conte, and Gerry Studds, and top insiders like Kirk O'Donnell and Leo Diehl. They're all gone, and now Eunice and Teddy, the obituary page, the Irish sports page.
This year, the traffic has been brisk, and not just in the political world. So, what we're seeing right now is a victory, not of violence or disease, but of time and change. That's what we're watching this weekend, the end of an era.
The question is, what is coming in to replace it? That's the big one.
All day today and late into last night, tens of thousands paid their respects to Senator Kennedy at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. And, tonight, in a memorial service at the JFK Library, the senator's life will be celebrated by speakers, including John McCain, Chris Dodd, Orrin Hatch, John Kerry, Vice President Biden, also Caroline Kennedy.
Tomorrow, a funeral mass will be held at Boston's Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, a church where the senator prayed during his daughter Kara's battle with cancer. President Barack Obama will deliver the eulogy.
Following the funeral, Kennedy's body will be flown to Washington and will be buried near his brothers John and Robert at Arlington Cemetery.
My colleagues Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow will be joining me later in the broadcast. Then, at 6:00 Eastern time, please join us for live coverage of the Kennedy memorial service tonight.
And, tomorrow, we will be back with live coverage of the funeral mass and the burial itself at Arlington beginning at 10:00 in the morning.
With me now is "The Washington Post"'s Eugene Robinson—he's also an MSNBC political analyst—and the former Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown.
Gentlemen, I can't think of two greater guys to have on to start our coverage tonight.
And I want Gene to start, and then Mayor Brown to pick up on this.
The importance of this passing, I think it's an era. I think something really big is happening. It's not disease or violence that won this week. It's time.
EUGENE ROBINSON, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it is...
MATTHEWS: Gene first.
ROBINSON: It is time, time that won, and time will always win.
Eras do begin and end. It's—it's—it's—it's a very special thing that's ending that—right now, though, the—the Kennedy—not the Kennedy mystique, but the Kennedy substance, what the Kennedys meant to the nation and especially to the Democratic Party.
It, of course, started with—with Jack, but—but, then, when Bobby came along, the Kennedy name really came to represent a—a—a kind of liberalism that—a kind of concern for those in our society who are—who are neediest, who have least.
And Ted Kennedy then carried that on for decades, and he was always
there. And—and since he was always there, that element, that—that
concept, that—that concern for the poor was—was—was a central part
of what the Democratic Party stood for. And it had—it had a figure of -
of such substance and vigor to represent that—that view.
And—and now I think we're going to feel his absence in just many, many ways.
MATTHEWS: Mayor—Mayor Brown, it seems to me that the Kennedys were among perhaps a subset of the Irish, the Irish Americans, who remembered what it was like when the Irish were a minority, back when they were the downtrodden.
And, unlike some of the other Irish, who became middle class and upper middle class and became conservative Republicans, for whatever reason, the Kennedys, under a more conservative Jack, and ending up with a more liberal Teddy, said, no, we're going to stake our claim with the minorities.
WILLIE BROWN (D), FORMER MAYOR OF SAN FRANCISCO: And that is exactly what Ted Kennedy did.
But let me tell you, I don't think this is the end, frankly. As I observed, there are Kennedys in Rhode Island. There are Kennedys in Maryland. There are Kennedys in Massachusetts. There are even Kennedys, by one method or another, here in California, in the form of Maria Shriver.
I suspect that we have not seen the end of what the Kennedys have meant to this country, nor will we for a very long time. There are a whole lot of Kennedys.
MATTHEWS: Let's take a look at something. I want to get into something a little grittier right now.
Here is Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius talking about the health care bill. And, of course, that's central to Ted Kennedy and his legacy. Here she is.
KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, U.S. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: I think naming is a decision that the United States Senate will make.
I—I think passing it is—is the big first step. And that's what Senator Kennedy would want.
I hope, also, that, if people are truly interested in honoring his legacy—and there's a lot of conversation about that—the best possible legacy is to pass health reform this year, and have a bill that President Obama could sign. And, hopefully, at every step along the way, they will ask themselves, "What would Teddy do?" and move it forward.
MATTHEWS: Well, Gene, without getting too partisan, the—the grave-robbers are already out, the ghouls, if you will, are out there, already building the case that somehow the memorial tonight and tomorrow to Ted Kennedy and his belief in health care reform—health care for everyone is somehow an exploitation.
ROBINSON: Right, I have heard that. We have seen the—seen the stories, the rumblings and the—and the nonsense, in my view, that's already been spewed on—on radio and elsewhere.
This—health—health care was the cause of—of Ted Kennedy's life, as he himself described it. We are in the middle of a—of a huge and consequential argument, hopefully, one that bears fruit, over health care.
And it—it—it would be absurd not to recognize that context. And
and the idea that, to—to mention that, in fact, we are on the verge, perhaps, of—of—of reaching some of the health care reforms that he fought for, for, literally, decades, that—that somehow mentioning that is—is out of bounds, I think, is—is ridiculous, and—and to—they haven't even had the memorial service yet.
I think it's—it's ghoulish, inappropriate, and—and—and, frankly, just in awful taste.
MATTHEWS: You know, it seems odd, Mayor Brown, that the—the people on the far right, the—sort of the screeching right, the intemperate right, are already attacking what they think is a coming win one for the Gipper mood, when, in fact, win one for the Gipper was pretty effective as a Republican battle cry for all those years.
BROWN: There's no question about it.
And they are, frankly, ruining any possibility that their criticism could ever be viewed as legitimate. When the secretary said what she said, she didn't say, there is a bill. There are—there—she didn't say, these items of health reform. She simply said, in a most civil and direct way, this man lived his life in pursuit of health care for all.
In view of the fact that we are where we are now and we are near the finish line, it would be highly appropriate, when we reach those confrontations and can't figure out where to go, take a look and see what Teddy would have done.
That might be instructive. She didn't say, that's the only way to solve it. She simply said, that's one of the ways to solve it. And she didn't say, it should be out of sympathy. She said, clearly, it should be out of honor and respect.
I think that the right has gone too far in their criticism. They should wait for the Wellstone-type speech before they come with the Wellstone answer.
MATTHEWS: Well said. Well—well said.
Mr.—Mr. Brown, Mr. Mayor, my friend, close friend of the Kennedys for generations, tonight is going to be so good. I was just reading Chris Dodd's remarks. I don't know if you gentlemen have seen it yet. It's—it's unbelievably wonderful.
And Brian Stokes Mitchell is singing tonight.
MATTHEWS: Have you guys all heard him sing? He is the greatest singer today, a close friend of Teddy Kennedy's.
I once heard him at one of Teddy's birthday parties. He's going to sing "Impossible Dream" tonight and bring down the house.
I just want to give you a chance, in a non-musical way right now, Mr. Mayor, who I respect all these years, as an ally of the Kennedys and Tip O'Neill, my old boss, I want you to take a moment and talk about Ted.
BROWN: Ted Kennedy was for me—he's of my generation.
There's no greater pride I could have in any politician than one who's charming, who's clever, who listens, and who succeeds in putting together a program needed for people in the most unselfish way.
That's who Ted Kennedy was, from Willie Brown's perspective. And I hope someone says something like that about me when I pass on.
MATTHEWS: Well, 100 years from now, sir, perhaps.
MATTHEWS: Let me go to Eugene Robinson.
I will now once again bestow on you the crown you have earned again, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson.
Sir, given your literary ability, a thought on Ted Kennedy.
ROBINSON: Well, I—I think Ted Kennedy just did something really remarkable.
I think he—the youngest of this—of this—of nine children in this extraordinary family, he was never supposed to—to—to rise to the heights. That was for—for Joe or for Jack or for Bobby.
For a long time, I think the family didn't—didn't quite know how Teddy was going to—going to turn out. He was the prince who would never be king. Yet, he—he did this extraordinarily difficult thing to—to find—to define for himself such a—such a constructive role, such a meaningful role, to become a—a titan of the—of the Senate, to—to fight for causes in which he—he believed so passionately, and to—to get results.
It is so appropriate that—that Brian Stokes Mitchell will be singing "The Impossible Dream." I have heard him sing that in "Man of La Mancha," and it—and—and there wasn't a dry eye in the—in the house. And this was just at the—at the theater here in Washington.
Tonight, it will surely be a—a highly emotional moment, one that's
that's entirely appropriate, because he believed in the impossible dream. And he was—you know, and—and the emotion of that song and the
and the optimism of that song, I think, just is—is perfect for who Ted Kennedy was.
MATTHEWS: Well, gentlemen, one of the great opportunities I have right now is to let you guys talk on television, and I really appreciate you coming on tonight.
MATTHEWS: What an emotional night it's going to be, as we get further and further into this passing of time and perhaps of the torch to Barack Obama. We will see.
Eugene Robinson of "The Washington Post," Former mayor and former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of California.
Coming up, we're going to talk to one of Senator Kennedy's longtime Senate colleagues, former Senator Alan Simpson. What a guy he is, a great friend of the senator's, and I think also of mine. What a great guy, Alan Simpson, who knows what the old Senate was like, the grand Senate of friends across the aisle.
The memorial service, by the way, is set to begin at 7:00 Eastern tonight up in Boston. There you see Ted Kennedy under the flag there. There's Vicki Kennedy, his wife, and Joe Kennedy, his nephew. And, well, we will be spotting those people all night tonight, as—as they pass before us.
You're watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
We're about to hear from someone you're only going to hear from right now in this whole period of days of mourning right now, former Republican Senator from Wyoming Alan Simpson.
Senator Simpson, thank you for joining us from your wonderful romantic trip to Europe with Annie, your wife.
What do you want to say about Ted Kennedy, your old pal?
ALAN SIMPSON ®, FORMER U.S. SENATOR: Well, Chris, it's nice for you to call, because Ann and I feel very sorrowful that we can't get back. We're on a cruise. This is our 55th wedding anniversary. We planned it for about a year on the Danube, the Rhine. I am right now between (INAUDIBLE) and Amsterdam.
Let me tell you, Ted Kennedy was a dear friend of mine. You didn't have to agree with him, didn't have to judge him. We had a lot of fun together, and we did a lot of work together, because he was a master legislator.
He—he believed in the 80/20 rule. If you can't get everything, get 80 percent. Let the other 20 percent go over to the Hill and let them fight over that. But we had some wonderful times. And—and I grieve, I really do, because—and I think you know me well enough to know how much I cared about him.
I kept sending him marvelous notes and messages filled with earthy commentary. And he loved it.
SIMPSON: I know he did, because Vicki would write and say, he just threw his head back and laughed and (INAUDIBLE)
SIMPSON: But, anyway, I shall miss him.
But, shoot, ask anything you wish.
MATTHEWS: Well, you know, Wyoming, you were lucky—well, not lucky
I was lucky to be your guest out there a couple weeks ago, you and Pete, your brother, at the University of Wyoming.
And I know it's a conservative part of the country, maybe not Laramie, but the rest of the state. What was it like to be a friend of Ted's and still get reelected as a conservative in—in Wyoming?
SIMPSON: Well, it was about like if—if I had walked down the street in Boston with Ted.
SIMPSON: And, often, we would—we would always get out there to the library. He would have some function. He—he and Vicki would invite Ann and I. And people would look around and say, what's he doing here?
That's the way it works. And then if I dragged him to—only, I never could get him here. But I met him first in Wyoming at Sweeler's (ph) Bar & Grill in 1960, when he was campaigning with his—for his brother.
That's where I met Ted. And he went on to ride a horse at Frontier Days. He insisted he rode the whole eight seconds, but he didn't. He only rode seven.
SIMPSON: He got tossed off.
But, anyway, it started. And then he was in the Congress and the Senate with my father. He and my dad started together in '62. And when I got elected in '78, the old man said, look, Al, get to know Kennedy. You know, he didn't agree, but he caused his parents as much pain as you have caused your mother and I.
MATTHEWS: Wow.
Let me ask you about Mike Enzi. When I was out there, I heard about your successor out there in the Senate. He's playing quite a role, perhaps a bipartisan role—we will see down the road—in this health care discussion. What do you think it's going to be?
SIMPSON: Let me tell you, if he's in the game, you want to—you want to be sure that it—it could work.
But let me tell you, Ted Kennedy and Mike Enzi, when Mike succeeded me, I went to Ted and I said, Ted, get to know this guy. Don't judge him. He's another one of those Republicans from Wyoming.
And he and Ted Kennedy—go look it up—did 28 bills together on health care, quality of life, OSHA, and no one ever wrote about that. They did 28 bills together that went in to pass into law. And that's the way Ted worked.
He—if he were—if he were around, this logjam would not be—would not be there. He would go to Henry Waxman. He would go to Pelosi. He would go to McConnell. He would say, look, forget all this stuff. What the hell is going on? Let's get it work—get it working.
MATTHEWS: Senator Alan Simpson, it's great. You and Annie have a good time out there on your 55th. What an honor that is, just to be married to her. That's bigger than being a senator, I think, for you.
SIMPSON: Well, yes.
SIMPSON: She said it was like a religious experience, a living hell.
No, she didn't.
SIMPSON: She loves me.
SIMPSON: But let me tell you, the greatest time I had with Ted, we did "Face-Off" on Mutual Radio for eight years. Now, if you can't have a bond of affection whacking each other around five days a week for eight years, that's where it all started.
MATTHEWS: Well, I want to thank you, former United States senator from Wyoming, former son—or son of a former senator, and more importantly, one of the leaders of the Kennedy library and the Kennedy Institute of Politics up at Harvard. Anyway, thank you, Senator Simpson. Have a nice trip over there.
SIMPSON: Thank you, Chris. Best to all. Bye-bye.
MATTHEWS: Marty Nolan's a long-time reporter from "The Boston Globe."
I am a huge fan of Marty Nolan's because I remember a lot of his columns.
Marty, you once said—and I want to get into tribal politics here. Tell me the reason why the Kennedy Library we're having this lying in state tonight is not at Harvard?
MARTIN NOLAN, FORMER "BOSTON GLOBE" REPORTER: Well, in 1963 in April, President Kennedy went to speak at the 100th birthday of Boston College. And I was in the motorcade following him, like a lot of "Globe" guys, and the motorcade went over to Brighton and then to Cambridge, right near Harvard. And Kennedy jumps out and he's looking at it and, Whoa, he's choosing a site for his presidential library.
Well, you know, presidential libraries go up quickly, but not in Boston, and particularly not in Cambridge. All the Brattle Street crowd, the professors and all that, objected to having—oh, they didn't mind the library and the archives, but the museum would bring in all these schoolchildren, all these Americans, you know?
NOLAN: It was rather like, you know, when Stanford rejected the Reagan library. You know, these professors are too important. They're more important than presidents. Well, I don't think so.
But one of Ted Kennedy's earliest supporters, Robert C. Wood, whose name should be familiar to you as the author of "Suburbia," who later was deputy secretary of HUD—he became president of U. Mass. out there in Dorchester, on the other end of the subway line from Harvard, the real working-class section of Boston, as you know, Chris...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
NOLAN: ... right near Dorchester and South Boston. And he took Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and looked at this beautiful site and said, Isn't this nice? Wouldn't Jack like this? And she bought it. And of course, he didn't tell her that when Fred Allen, the great radio comedian, was a child, he played in what was known as the Mile Road Dump, and so did Speaker McCormack, and it had been literally a dump.
But Wood was so smart to say—to see the great possibility there.
And now that's a thriving academic neighborhood, with U. Mass. and B.C.
High and the future Edward M. Kennedy Institute.
MATTHEWS: Yes. Well, Marty, you said the first time that what the real Cambridge intellectuals and WASP-y Brahmin-type professors didn't want to see was all those Catholic school buses...
MATTHEWS: ... coming into Cambridge to look at the remnants of the Kennedy era. I like that.
Tell me now about the Kennedys. Why do you think, among the Irish in Boston, they stayed liberal? In fact, got more liberal, as I'm sure you know—Teddy being more liberal than Bobby, Bobby more liberal than Jack. Why did they stay and think of themselves as a minority, a little person, rather than joining the upper middle class, like the other Irish did?
NOLAN: Well, Teddy I think was one of the few politicians—and you and I know this—that he really enjoyed campaigning. A lot of them do it as a painful duty, but Teddy really enjoyed it. And the more—the older he got, Chris, I think, the more he resembled Tip O'Neill, your pal and mine, who really loved campaigning and loved to talk to ordinary people. And that was a great gift because it infused and animated his own legislation. He combined the two. He had the good—he had street smarts and he understood legislation. It's a great combination.
MATTHEWS: Tell me about the differences among the three brothers.
You covered them all.
NOLAN: Oh, boy. Bobby—Bobby—Bobby did not have much time for the Senate. He was—"abrasive" is too easy a word.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
NOLAN: Dirksen told me once that when Dirksen was approached by Bobby about some legislation, asked for Republican prospects, and Dirksen in his deep voice said, Well, Senator, I think it's going to be difficult to get votes, and then Bobby says, You've hated all the Kennedys, don't you?
NOLAN: And Dirksen said, No, I love Jack, I love Teddy. So that was Bobby, different. But I think Jack was more between the two extremes, I think—Teddy a real great street politician, Bobby not, and Jack somewhere in the middle.
MATTHEWS: Well said. Marty Nolan, we miss you at "The Globe." I've been reading "The Globe" all summer. I hope "The Globe" survives.
NOLAN: Well, it's doing all right. And listen, one thing—it's a grand Irish wake, and as you understand and appreciate, Ted Kennedy is his own advance man for this.
NOLAN: He laid out the route.
MATTHEWS: Well, I used to say about Tip O'Neill, he was his own Thanksgiving Day parade float.
MATTHEWS: He got there before he (ph) did.
NOLAN: That's true.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. Wait'll you see—wait'll you read or hear Chris Dodd tonight. I've read the speech. Wait'll you hear Chris Dodd tonight.
NOLAN: Oh, Chris—Chris was a great pal of Teddy's, as we all know.
MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you. Marty Nolan—"Mah-tin" Nolan...
NOLAN: Yes.
MATTHEWS: ... from "Bah-ston," now living in San Francisco.
MATTHEWS: Up next, a preview of our documentary, "The Kennedy Brothers," as we continue our coverage of this night of tribute to Ted Kennedy—Teddy.
You're watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: Tonight at 10:00 Eastern, we're going to show "The Kennedy Brothers," or documentary again for those who missed it, also a great chance to catch up. There's so much to that hour, the incredible saga of these three brothers, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and of course, Ted Kennedy, Edward Moore Kennedy. We've just lost him. It's about their enormous influence on this country.
In this clip, Bobby Kennedy follows in the footsteps of brother John and announces that he's running for president. This was in 1968.
SEN. ROBERT F. KENNEDY (D), NEW YORK: I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies.
MATTHEWS (voice-over): Robert Kennedy's impassioned 1968 campaign had little in common with the well-oiled Kennedy campaign machine that made Jack president eight years earlier.
(on camera): The Bobby Kennedy campaign—what was different about that from what you remember and knew about the Jack Kennedy campaign?
KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND, BOBBY KENNEDY DAUGHTER: Well, it was a lot less organized. As you know, my father was very ambivalent as to whether to run, and so it was put together more on a haphazard way. It was his spirit that got you through, rather than the organization.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was this enormous, enormous surge everywhere he went of youthful enthusiasm. It was extraordinary, the grabbing and mauling him and snatching his cufflinks and kids on tricycles and bikes pumping along the motorcade.
MATTHEWS: "The Kennedy Brothers" airs tonight at 10:00 PM Eastern, as I said, after our live coverage of the memorial service for Senator Ted Kennedy this evening.
Up next: What does the death of Senator Kennedy mean for President Obama, the man to whom he did hand that torch last year? Much more on this night of tribute to Senator Kennedy when we come back.
You're watching it—HARDBALL on MSNBC.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Over the past several years, I've had the honor to call Teddy a colleague, a counselor and a friend, and even though we have known this day was coming for some time now, we awaited it with no small amount of dread.
MATTHEWS: Joining me right now is Joan Walsh of Salon and "Newsweek's" Jonathan Alter, who's also an MSNBC political analyst.
Let's do a little political business. The other day, Rush Limbaugh, in his inimitable fashion, said that I had done something he would have gotten in trouble for. Please explain. I need a biblical exegesis for this...
MATTHEWS: I said that last year, Ted Kennedy passed the torch of the
Kennedy brotherhood to Barack Obama, making him the next Kennedy. And it
was so clear to everybody that's what was going on. In fact, we put it in
the documentary. He said if he had said something like that, he would have
been accused of making an ethnic slur because I used the word "brother,"
even though in terms of the brotherhood, I pointed out I'm not using this -
I said it at the time—not in an ethnic sense, not in a racial sense, brother in the sense of sibling brother, actual brother.
JOAN WALSH, SALON.COM: Right.
MATTHEWS: And he jumped up and made himself into a victim again. What is the matter with these people? Can't they take a week off, Jonathan? Just take a week off. It's a funeral. Take a week off from politics.
WALSH: Really.
JONATHAN ALTER, "NEWSWEEK," MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, he's one of the—if Ted Kennedy is one of the great senators of our time, Rush Limbaugh takes the crown as the great blowhard of our time. There's nobody who would have criticized Rush Limbaugh if he had talked about a brother because there's so many other things to criticize him for, other outrageous things that he says almost every day on the radio. So he's just blowing smoke.
MATTHEWS: I think it's an attempt at victimhood.
WALSH: He loves the victimhood. I don't understand it. I mean, he's also got all that anxiety about having to "bend over" for Obama. I always bring that up.
MATTHEWS: Oh, that's a cutie.
WALSH: Yes, it's cute. He shows his anxiety in every way. And what you said was the highest praise for Obama. There was nothing ethnic, nothing racial in it. It was just what happened.
MATTHEWS: It was my highest tribute, Rushbo!
WALSH: Thank you.
MATTHEWS: Let me—let me ask you, do you think he's rooting for Donovan McNabb or Michael Vick now?
MATTHEWS: Because having spent a good part of his broadcasting and sports career saying that McNabb doesn't have it, do you think he's going to be rooting for him to lose the starting line-up QB spot in Philly?
WALSH: You take that.
ALTER: Yes, he probably would go for the dog killer.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this attempt at footsteps here on the part of the right to interrupt this—I called them ghouls a few minutes ago...
WALSH: Right.
MATTHEWS: ... grave robbers. They're trying to get into this story by saying the Democrats are going to do a "Win one for the Gipper." Well, to me, if Audie Murphy served his country and fighting for us, we'd say, Well, let's try to do something, as well.
WALSH: Right.
MATTHEWS: Let's try to be equally courageous. If somebody dies in a battle, you say, Let's try to carry it on, carry the banner forward. That seems to be very American. They're turning that on the right as some kind of, Well, they better not try that.
ALTER: We've seen this before. The year was 1964. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated and Lyndon Johnson said, Let's pass the Civil Rights Act as a memorial to the slain president.
MATTHEWS: Let us continue.
WALSH: Right.
ALTER: And the right wing at that time said that it was improper. The bill was passed, and Ted Kennedy told me once that it was one of the top three accomplishments of the United States Senate in all the years that he was there, the Civil Rights Act of '64.
WALSH: Of course it was. And you know, passing a great health care reform bill would be another signature accomplishment. And he deserves it. And no one is dictating what should be in the bill, but to accuse—to say that that's playing politics is just ridiculous. That is what the man stood for.
MATTHEWS: Isn't it funny that people have memories so slight, the ADD that overcomes them, not in a clinical or medical sense, but just in a political sense? How many times in our lives in the last 20 or so years have you heard the phrase, "Win one for the Gipper"?
WALSH: Right.
MATTHEWS: It's hilarious. It's a hoot. Now they're saying, Don't do what we do.
ALTER: I'll give you another example of that. You hear a lot of the conservatives nowadays are saying, We got to stop this health care bill to protect seniors, right? They're pandering—they're pandering on Medicare...
MATTHEWS: Keep government out of medical...
ALTER: These were the folks who did everything they could to stop Medicare, and as recently as last year, they were trashing Medicare. And now they're arguing that, you know, this bill has to be defeated to defend Medicare. It's insane.
MATTHEWS: So they're acting like the people in those first lifeboats getting off the Titanic, beating off the other survivors so they don't crowd the boats, right?
WALSH: Absolutely. It is ghoulish. It's truly ghoulish. I hope—
I know it'll be a wonderful memorial. I know it will. Senator Kennedy deserves that. I don't see anyone booing the Republicans. I'm not a booer. I'm a baseball fan. I don't even boo the Dodgers. I think that's wrong, but if they're going to make...
MATTHEWS: You won't be too welcome in Philly!
WALSH: I actually like the Phillies, Chris.
MATTHEWS: No, I'm talking about the fans...
ALTER: ... great Norm Coleman victory.
MATTHEWS: Let me go back to a couple speaking tonight—Caroline Kennedy, who is not a politician—that's established—Joe Biden, who is certainly, John Culver, former senator from Iowa, good friend of Teddy—I think roommates at Harvard—Tommy Menino, the great senator (SIC), "Mumbles" they call him, the mayor from up there. Brian Stokes Mitchell will give the greatest political speech of the night, which will be "The Impossible Dream" speech when he sings that song. That's going to be the inspiring moment tonight, Joan.
WALSH: That's—that was my dad's favorite song, so it's very moving.
MATTHEWS: And I've heard him give that song. John Kerry's going to -
and Orrin Hatch. So among the Republicans tonight in this—apparently, this partisan festival, the voices you're going to hear are Orrin Hatch of Utah, John McCain of Arizona. So I don't think they can really put this down as a Paul Wellstone funeral!
ALTER: Hatch makes it really hard. And Hatch and Kennedy had a really special relationship. And Kennedy was there for Hatch. He showed up in Utah at a funeral of somebody very close to Orrin Hatch. And from that day on, the two really connected, and they worked together on a lot of legislation. But even when they bitterly opposed each other on the substance, they were very close personally.
MATTHEWS: Do you have a sense that this death of Ted Kennedy will have any effect whatever on whether we get a deal on health care, a deal makes the liberals happy enough, the conservatives mollified enough that something can get through?
WALSH: Honestly, Jonathan and I may differ on this. I don't think he's going to get Republican votes, even if he throws the public option overboard. If they push for some kind co-op compromise, they will fight that. They are fighting everything.
I do want to say, I appreciate and honor Senator Kennedy's friendship with Orrin Hatch, but there's been an element of trying to drag out Ted would have made this work. You know, Hatch and McCain had the chance to vote for Ted Kennedy's bill in Ted Kennedy's committee.
MATTHEWS: McCain was on that health committee. He could have voted for it.
Let me ask you this. I'm still a believer that it's possible to get to 60 in the Senate and 218 in the House with smart legislation thinking here, maybe a one or two-step process, maybe not everything, a trigger of some kind, some kind of major historic commitment of health care for everybody, an enrollment of everyone, to start with, and all the reforms, maybe not everything, in the first graph.
ALTER: I think so too. I agree with Joan that it's not going to be done with significant Republican support. But they are going to need a couple. They are going to need Olympia Snowe and maybe Susan Collins.
MATTHEWS: By definition, they need at least one.
ALTER: And so—and they're going to need those moderate Democrats, some of whom are getting unenthusiastic, like Joe Lieberman. So the idea that somehow this is going to be rammed through with everything that the Democrats is unrealistic and it's also un-Ted Kennedy. He took what he could get. He compromised.
MATTHEWS: What's the big—I'll give you my premise. That's the way we do things on cable television. I'll tell what you I think, and then say do you agree or not. I think the keys are within the Democratic party. They need to have a meeting of their caucus and write a bill. If they can get 60, they are going to get somebody from Massachusetts appointed in the next couple weeks. That's going to happen. They aren't going to let that start.
They are going to get 60 Democratic senators. The question is can they get those 60 Democratic votes. That's the key to me. I wonder if they can do that, they are going to have a bill. It's as a simple as that;
60 Democrats will make this happen. Will they get them?
ALTER: I think they will, but they are going to have to tell the liberals, particularly on the House side, that this idea of drawing a line in the sand, and saying, it's public option or bust, that they cannot vote for a bill that does not include a public option, is the opposite of the direction they need to go.
I'm strong in favor a public option. They should push for it all the way. But if they can't get it, if the system doesn't allow that, they have to do what FDR did, what LBJ did, and what Ted Kennedy did, over and over again, and that is not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
MATTHEWS: I think we need to make our insurance companies public utilities, like Krauthammer said in his column today. Then regulate them and keep their profits down. That's another way to keep them competitive. Treat them like oil or gas or electric companies.
WALSH: But there are not 60 votes for that either. We really have to face it. I'm going to be the die-hard liberal here.
MATTHEWS: You don't want a bill, that's fine.
WALSH: I want a bill.
MATTHEWS: There won't be a bill if you're playing it that way, though.
WALSH: I disagree with you.
MATTHEWS: How are you going to get 60 votes?
WALSH: I don't know. I'm praying to Teddy.
ALTER: There's many, many other extremely important things—
MATTHEWS: Up next, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are going to join me to preview tonight's memorial for Senator Ted Kennedy. This is HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: We're back and I'm joined right now by my colleagues Keith Olbermann of "COUNTDOWN" and Rachel Maddow of "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW." The three of us will bring you live coverage of the memorial service tonight for Senator Ted Kennedy. It's going to go on throughout the evening and I expect it's going to be a long evening.
One thing before we get into this ceremony tonight is to remind ourselves what's at stake in American politics. Let's start with the issue that really drove the Barack Obama campaign, drove the Democrats victory in 2006, the Iraq war. Let's not forget Ted Kennedy voted against both Iraq wars. He took a strong position. I happen to support those positions. I think it was wrong even to get in that part of the world and get involved as deeply as we did initially.
It seems to me that was the key thing that defined the success of the Barack Obama campaign, going into the primaries, coming out of the primaries, the role that Ted Kennedy played. They all agreed. To me, that was the great coincidence, Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy thought U.S. policy in that part of the world was wrong.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC ANCHOR: When Kennedy made that momentous decision in late January 2008 that he was going to endorse Obama over the express wishes of both Clintons that he stay out of it, if he felt like he couldn't endorse Hillary Clinton, that was reinforced that as the most important cleavage in the Democratic field. Hillary Clinton had voted for the war in Iraq. She'd voted for the use of force authorization, even though she said she was disappointed with how it went on.
MATTHEWS: And her husband supported the first war.
MADDOW: Kennedy had been against both of them. By siding with Obama, it sort of crystallized that as the issue that made a difference among the Democratic field.
KEITH OLBERMANN, MSNBC ANCHOR: And obviously it connected the two
men, as you point out. If you're in a bunker with somebody—and the war
analysis is entirely inappropriate. We're talking about people voting
against a war. But essentially, politically, that's where anybody who was
if you cast your mind back to that time, anybody who stood up at that point in 2002, 2003 and said no, this is wrong; I don't care what you're doing in this country; I don't what we think is going to happen there; this is not the correct response—took a certain willingness to see the big picture. And I think that's what connected Kennedy to Obama in the first place. That's how you get through the front door with Ted Kennedy, I would imagine.
MATTHEWS: And tonight, as we look forward as well as backwards, the question is will the president we have now—and I have called him the next brother, kind of like the last brother—the next brother, he's taken the torch from the Kennedys. And whatever he does with it we'll have to see. He hasn't done it yet, that's what I would say. He has yet to command the leadership of this country on policy as president. What do you think?
MADDOW: One of the questions about Ted Kennedy's enforcement of Obama and the way that he identified him so strongly with that—I don't know if the answer is knowable to this, but it's certainly a question for me, is whether or not he got a commitment from Obama, in exchange for that endorsement, that Obama would champion universal health care. Again, that was a split between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Would it cover everybody? Would it truly be universal? Would it be everybody in, nobody out?
Was that part of the deal between them? Will Obama, once this initial period of mourning is over, take up universal health care in an impassioned way, which he hasn't necessarily done yet, in the name of Ted Kennedy.
OLBERMANN: That quote that we attributed to the president as candidate, I promised Teddy, we don't know exactly what the promise was. Was it a full bill? Was it any bill? And that's the ultimate issue. And I wondered to what degree though that as much as that's an Obama/Kennedy promise, that it plays out against the backdrop of the senator's death—to what degree can even this president, no matter what his influence might be, influence that?
MATTHEWS: We're watching—as we talk here, we're watching the
Kennedy closest family arrive. Caroline Kennedy is apparently going to get
there she is getting out of that car right there, the black car we're watching. The camera hasn't quite caught up with her. There she is there with Eddie Shlosberg (ph), her husband, walking into the Kennedy Library.
I guess there's a question there. I'm a real political student, as we all are. And I'm thinking exactly how it gets done. To me, the how question is interesting. The important question is will or will it not? There's all kinds of smart legislating that could be done, trigger mechanisms. There's ways to get where you have to get. I have looked at the transition of these bills. How did we get the civil rights? '57, the first shot. Eisenhower, a bill where the teeth was taken out of it because of the jury trial. '64 it finally happened.
When is the critical point of no return, when you say, we're going to universal coverage, and how do you get on that course irrevocably. I think that's what we're arguing about, not the date it happens, but when is the irrevocable decision made we're going to national health, and joining the other industrialized powers in doing so?
MADDOW: I was thinking about that today, and looking at lists of Kennedy's achievement, and the things that he really championed on the issue of health care. He made a key decision that he really wanted to prioritize the health committee in the Senate over his—the equal opportunity he had on the Judiciary Committee. He really decided to go with health.
You look at the litany of things he accomplished, COBRA for people who lose their jobs, a way to hold on to their health insurance, S-CHIP, a way for kids to have health insurance, regardless of the situation of their parents, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Ryan White Care Act funding. The way that he expanded existing commitments that we had made on health care in ways that looked momentous at the time, and in perspective, looking back, you realize they're big incremental gains.
MATTHEWS: Ironically, it was Charles Krauthammer in his column today, a very conservative guy, who pointed out, this is the way they'll do it if they're smart. Not that he advocates it. He's more fearful of it, that he might do it this way. We'll be right back with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, as we await the beginning of tonight's ceremony, the wake, if you will, in honor of Ted Kennedy. You're watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: We're back with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, my colleagues here. I don't know. This is a bit sentimental for us, but perhaps not tonight. I am confounded by the number of people who have offered personal testimony, not just about this man's legislative work, but personal—personal accounts of personal compassion. Not theoretical, not Wilsonian, I love mankind but nobody individually, but real humanity.
Here's a quote from tonight's religious service: "think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say, my glory was I had such friends." That's from Yates, of course. An amazing number of—I'm stunned by it. It's almost like you hear how could Santa Claus go to so many houses at night?
OLBERMANN: Yes. What was it that was attributed to him? Somebody said why do you have such a passion for fighting poverty. And he went, you've never read the Bible? It was the answer to him. And he wasn't Bible thumping in that sense. He did not wear it on his sleeve. But he thought he was that was a perfect summary of where he stood; this is the way people are supposed to interact, period.
MATTHEWS: Quiet things—I know a little bit about him personally. The quiet stuff—a lot of people go to church for show. They hold the Bible in front of the church and all of that stuff. He would come to this little quiet suburban Catholic church where I went in the afternoon wearing a leather jacket, all closed. He liked to go to the banjo mass with the kids. Nobody was around. Nobody shook his hands. Nobody noticed him.
He was a church goer, not that you brag about that. It's an individual decision. But he didn't make it a political thing.
MADDOW: One of the things that have been paying attention to in the last week—I live in western Massachusetts. And I've been looking out at some of the local papers out in western Massachusetts, the "Berkshire Eagle" in Pittsfield, and "The Daily Hampshire Gazette" in North Hampton, those papers, and finding out what people are saying locally about him. He is my senator. He was my senator. He's been a senator from Massachusetts for 47 years.
Beyond the regular constituent services, which has I think bought him 47 years of loyalty from the people of Massachusetts, there are a lot of those personal individual connections.
MATTHEWS: We have heard a lot of them. The memorial service for Senator Ted Kennedy begins in one hour. And Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow will be with me throughout the evening. We continue now with our special coverage.
OLBERMANN: For the third time, the nation mourns a Kennedy brother. The first two, crystalline memories of our youths, vivid, horrid. The third of our own day, wrapped in the curse and the blessing of inevitability, of a man, loan of the Kennedy men to grow old in the service of his nation, not reaching the presidency, nor cut down with it nearly in his grasp, but content, and every increasingly so, with a hand more of influence and shaping than of pomp and grandeur, near half a century in the Senate of this land.
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As Homeowners Struggle, Freddie Mac Benefits
A report by NPR and ProPublica finds that Freddie Mac bet billions of dollars against homeowners' ability to refinance their mortgages. Public documents show Freddie Mac sought to make gains through complex securities which would make money for Freddie Mac, but homeowners with high-interest rate loans would not be able to qualify for refinancing. This is not illegal, but it does raise questions about a conflict of interest within a federally-owned company that is supposed to make getting a mortgage easier.
Chris Arnold is a correspondent here at NPR. He worked with ProPublica on the investigation of Freddie Mac, which came out this morning. He's with us here in Studio 3A. Nice to have you in Washington.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Thank you, Neal.
CONAN: Also here in the studio is NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax. And, Marilyn, good to have you back on the program.
MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Hi, Neal.
CONAN: And, Chris, let's start with you. So how does a large taxpayer-owned company get involved in betting against refinanced mortgages, which everybody says would be great not only for the mortgage holders but for the economy?
ARNOLD: Right. Well, I can see how you would think that. Part of what you need to understand to understand the story is that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are kind of two companies inside of themselves. So take Freddie Mac, it does a guarantee business, which most people know them for, you know, you get a home loan, they guarantee the loan, they allow the mortgage market to work well that way. That was sort of what their mission was built around, you know, going back decades, that they help foster homeownership.
But at the same time, they also have what could be described as a hedge fund inside of the same company, and they make all kinds of investments. So it's within that sort of hedge fund side of the business that we found this was going on. And I was working on this with ProPublica and a reporter there, Jesse Eisinger, who we should mention, too.
CONAN: Of course. So the way this works is that hedge fund part was betting against homeowners refinancing. In other words, if you're paying 7 or 8 percent on your mortgage, they are betting that you will not be able to refinance, therefore you will be paying a lot more on your mortgage payments every month. While it might be in everybody else's interest that the mortgage rate come down to what it is, three and a half, 4 percent.
ARNOLD: Right. And one way to think about this is let's say you're going to buy a house, Neal, and you want to borrow $100,000. So Marilyn and I...
CONAN: Cheap house.
ARNOLD: Well, yeah, in D.C., imagine...
ARNOLD: ...this is in another part of the country. So, you know, it's public radio. We have to do what we can do.
ARNOLD: But - so Marilyn and I loaned you the $100,000, and you're paying 7 percent interest. And then, you decide, well, jeez, look, I can get three and a half percent or three and seven-eighths. I'm going to refinance. And that's a little sad for Marilyn and I because we don't get the 7 percent interest payment anymore, but we do get our $100,000 back, right? When you refinance, you pay off...
CONAN: I refinance with the ABC Mortgage Company, and they pay you the $100,000?
ARNOLD: Exactly. Right. So that is very different than what Freddie Mac has done with these investments. Because what Freddie Mac did is they owned these mortgages, but they sold off their right to collect that principal. And all they have the right to do now in these trades is to collect that 7 percent interest. Does that make sense?
CONAN: Well, I guess, it makes sense for Freddie Mac, and that 7 percent that they're collecting, that's why they want to make this short-term bet that a lot of people will not be able to refinance - President Obama spoke about last week.
ARNOLD: Right, right. And the thing is since they have given up the right to collect the principal, that's all they have, right? So if you stop paying the 7 percent and I'm Freddie Mac, I lose everything. I mean, I don't get any money from you. I don't get the $100,000 back. And so it's a more concentrated way to invest in the mortgage market and it - bond traders say the only reason you would do that is if you were betting against homeowners being able to refinance.
GEEWAX: And, Neal, could I just make a point here?
CONAN: Marilyn Geewax, go ahead.
GEEWAX: Yes. The thing that is unusual about this is Wall Street is full of hedge funds and big investors, and some of them go broke, and some of them make tons of money. But wait a minute, Freddie Mac is owned by the taxpayers these days. So it is...
CONAN: Didn't those taxpayers just bail it out a couple of years ago?
GEEWAX: Yeah. So in 2008, when there was the financial crisis, it's a long story, but fundamentally, the taxpayers now own Freddie Mac. So one might wonder why taxpayers are involved in acting like a hedge fund. Now, it may be in Freddie Mac's best financial interest to make all sorts of investments that could be very profitable for them, but there may be some questions here about: Should Freddie Mac be involved in these kinds of things when they have to take very risky positions like that? Is that a role for a taxpayer-owned entity that has the mission of helping homeowners?
CONAN: We're talking with Marilyn Geewax, who's an editor here at NPR, and Chris Arnold, NPR correspondent. If you've tried to refinance lately and you've had troubles, give us a call. 800-989-8255. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com. And, Marilyn, that raises another question. Freddie Mac's role is to facilitate good mortgages. If it's betting on the short term that people would not be able to refinance, is it blocking people's ability to refinance?
ARNOLD: Well, and this is something, you know, we want to be careful got to overstate here. And what Freddie Mac says is there is a firewall between the investment part of its business and the part of its business that sets policy for homeowners and for refinancing, some things like that. So they say whatever might be going on on those two businesses, it's a coincidence of - you know, whatever, that it's not a concerted, calculated effort to profit by, you know, doing wrong by homeowners. But even at best, what our reporting has shown is that they're making a calculated bet against homeowners being able to refinance, and that - you know, is that an appropriate bet for a company that can control homeowners' ability to refinance to be making?
CONAN: Is it, Marilyn, a legal bet? There seems to be a conflict of interest.
GEEWAX: And there are people in Congress now who are starting to wonder about whether or not this should be changed, at the moment, as the laws are structured, and as Freddie Mac's mission is, which is to not go broke. You know, it's supposed to be a solvent organization doing its business, but it's also supposed to be helping homeowners. This structure could be called into question.
And one senator, for example today, Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, sent a letter to the president urging him - I'm quoting from the letter - he says, "to put an end to these practices immediately, to ensure that the investment decisions being made by Freddie Mac are in line with the intent of Congress and the greater needs of our economy." So we also spoke today with Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican from Georgia, who's also interested in reforming Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. So I think there are people on Capitol Hill who are starting to really ponder: What is the structure of these organizations and what role do they play? What's appropriate for them to do? And this is just sort of an interesting look at conflicts of interest. We are not, in any way - our story has not said that it is illegal, just that it raises questions about how it functions.
CONAN: Well, you did quote Alan Boyce in your story, a former bond trader who's been involved in efforts to push for more refinancing of home loans. Freddie Mac, he said, prevented households from being able to take advantage of today's mortgage rates and then bet on it. You say, well, Freddie Mac has two arms, one, the left hand, did not necessarily know what the right hand is doing. However, they seemed to be miraculously working in concert.
ARNOLD: Well, and the timing of some of these, too, you know, lending would be - or credit would be tightened. One example was Thanksgiving evening or somewhere around there, and then very soon after that, some trades were made that were betting against homeowners. So, you know, but again, we can't prove that the left and the right arms were working together. What is being referenced in that quote, as well, is that Freddie Mac has been making it harder for homeowners to refinance. They've been putting additional fees in place, additional restrictions. Some of that is justified.
The whole lending community has been making things tighter since the housing market collapsed, but more and more economists, you know, are saying, look, the pendulum's probably swung too far. We should - especially when it comes to refinancing. We've got hundreds of - we got tens of millions of homeowners who are stuck in higher-interest-rate loans. Wouldn't it be good for them, wouldn't it be good for the economy if they had some more money in their pocket to spend? You know, let's let some more of those people refinance.
GEEWAX: Neal, if I could just make one point. The important thing here, in all of this discussion of these big terms - hedge funds and Freddie Mac and some of these unfamiliar things - the issue here is the housing crisis. That's something we all know a lot about. It's affected everyone in this country, and particularly in states like Florida, California, Arizona, Nevada. These states have been hit hard because of this housing crisis. Many people have homes that are underwater. They want to refinance. The economy has really been slowed by the housing crisis. So all of this is not just a strange academic discussion about what is the role of a government-sponsored blah, blah, blah, you know.
CONAN: Quasi-governmental corporation, yeah.
GEEWAX: It's about: Can we end this housing crisis? How do we get to the end of what has been a nightmare for the country? And would - is Freddie Mac part of the solution, or is it sort of part of the problem right now because of its structure? And I think we've seen in the Florida primary the topic of Freddie Mac last week, listening to the debates, how many times that name came up. It's been a big issue, because when you're talking Florida, you're talking housing. People care about this topic, and it's not some esoteric, weird discussion among academics and investment bankers. It's something that touches millions of people's lives.
CONAN: Let's get a caller in on the conversation. Let's start with Jeff, Jeff with us from Pleasant Hill in California.
JEFF: Good afternoon. First time caller, many years listener. And this is a subject that I am - I'm almost speechless that I'm able to talk to you about this today because I've been following this for many, many months. My spouse and I purchased a home here in the Bay Area in 2008. It dropped 40 percent in value in the last three-and-a-half years. We both are employed. We have excellent credit. We've been trying to refinance, but basically, they're asking us - and our current mortgage holder - is to re-buy our house a second time, to come up with up to 75 and up to $80,000 to make up for the lost equity. I've been following this program last summer. I've been contacting my mortgage company weekly. Finally, two weeks ago, my mortgage company said that the rules are finally in place, and we might be able, might be able to refinance at the current rate starting after February 6th.
The issue is Freddie Mac keeps changing the rules. There isn't any teeth into the programs. There's no penalty involved for people like us who cannot refinance because, if we have to get an appraisal, our house is worth less than what we paid for it three years ago.
CONAN: Underwater - that's the underwater mortgage. And, Chris Arnold...
ARNOLD: Yeah. This gets to the heart of one of the big issues that this story raises. And, you know, there have been some baby step - I guess you might call it - efforts to allow underwater borrowers and other borrowers to get these lower rates - if, as the caller says, you know, they have good credit, they've got jobs, they can pay. It's just here they are stuck, you know, in a higher interest rate.
President Obama has talked about this. Lots of economists have talked about this. There's a program called HARP. I believe it's the Home Affordable Refinancing Program.
CONAN: Refinancing program, yes.
ARNOLD: So, you know, the idea is here we could help millions of people. So far, I think just about a million people have been helped through that program, but there are 10 or 20 million other people out there who haven't been able to access it. And so the question implicitly of the story is, well, you know, it certainly can't help that there are conflicts of interests within these companies that are at the heart of allowing these people - you know, if Freddie Mac is making bets against homeowners like this, you know, is that helping things?
CONAN: Jeff, how much difference would it make to you if you were able to refinance at, say, three and three quarters? I think Jeff has left us, so we thank him for his call.
GEEWAX: Well, this is really the heart of the issue, too, Neal, that what we're talking about when we say there's refinancing. If you think, hey, I'm renter. I don't care. What's it to me? It matters to the economy for this reason: right now, we have a lack of demand. Consumers haven't been spending enough money, and that hurts people at restaurants. It hurts retailers. It hurts car dealers. People need more money in their pockets, and this is one way that you could actually boost people's incomes. Now, perhaps they'll use that money.
Let's say you save $500 a month. Maybe all you're going to do is pay down your dentist bill and your credit card. Maybe that doesn't stimulate the economy tomorrow morning, but it does help that dentist's office get the bill paid. And it does start to free up room on your credit card so that by summer, maybe you can take a vacation. Really, to heal the economy, it has to start with this housing problem.
CONAN: NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax, also with us NPR correspondent Chris Arnold. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
And a similar email from Allen, who emails: My wife and I have credit scores that our mortgage broker has termed beyond excellent. Still having trouble getting a mortgage because of retail lenders' concern over their ability to resell our mortgage to Fannie or Freddie. So even if you're talking to the bank down the street, Chris Arnold, you're also talking to Fannie and Freddie.
ARNOLD: You know, Fannie and Freddie, they're kind of the great eyes behind the curtain. You know, I mean, you don't see them. You might interface with somebody else. But, yes, they control, essentially, the entire mortgage market right now. You know, in the wake of the housing debacle, everything is going to Fannie and Freddie (unintelligible).
CONAN: I got a lot of emails and calls along these lines. From Ricky: What's the role of Dodd-Frank? And this - that, of course, the financial reform package that was passed in the previous Congress. Does this not stop it?
ARNOLD: Well, there's a lot we could talk about there and probably don't want to get into. But one thing is, lenders will say that Dodd-Frank makes it harder for them to refinance people. So they say this new regulation is making things tougher, you know, but we could have a whole show on the merits of that claim, probably.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get another caller in. Let's go to Richard, and Richard with us from Wichita.
RICHARD: Yes. Real quick question. It was commented that Freddie Mac sold off the rights to collect the principal in the home loans, and I would like to know who bought those rights and what percentage of the principal they paid for the right to collect on those - on the principal.
CONAN: Any idea, Chris?
ARNOLD: Those are all good questions. The takeaway in all of that is that the - those rights were sold off into the market, so investors all over the world potentially could have bought them. Critics of these deals also say that, look, if Freddie Mac had just gone out and sold these mortgages in a simple fashion, it would have gotten more money for them than it got by cutting them up into 20 pieces and selling them the way that it did.
CONAN: But this quick question is: investors?
ARNOLD: Investors.
CONAN: Investors bought these. Richard, sorry if we can't be more precise than that...
CONAN: ...but that's kind of the way these commodities work. We thank you for the call. And more on this story later today on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Chris Arnold, thanks very much for your time.
ARNOLD: Thanks, Neal.
CONAN: NPR's Chris Arnold worked with ProPublica on the investigation of Freddie Mac's bet against homeowners. Also with us, NPR senior business editor Marilyn Geewax, both here in Studio3A. Tomorrow, a provocative proposal: Instead just reading and listening to people who agree with you, why not seek out the other side in political commentary? Join us for that. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
We really enjoyed the first book in this series, and can't wait to get to reading this one! Read below for an insane teaser (seriously, it is a deadly tease!) and play the fun mafia game to see which family you will belong to!!!
Nixon Abandonato made his choice. And now he has to pay the price. Tracey is the love of his life, but being with him has made her a target of his family's enemies. The only way to keep Trace alive is convince the world she means nothing to him.
Trace Rooks has fallen irrevocably in love with the son of her family's sworn rival, and she knows in her bones nothing can tear them apart. Until Nix suddenly pushes her away and into the arms of his best friend... But Trace isn't ready to give up on a future with Nix--and if he won't fight for them, she will.
Trace Rooks has fallen irrevocably in love with the son of her family's sworn rival, and she knows in her bones nothing can tear them apart. Until Nix suddenly pushes her away and into the arms of his best friend... But Trace isn't ready to give up on a future with Nix--and if he won't fight for them, she will.
In the end, a sacrifice must be made. A life for a life. For what better way to cover a multitude of sins than with the blood of a sinner . . .
Purchase Links:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | ibooks
How about an excerpt--
How about an excerpt--
"Let's make a pact." Chase put his hand on my shoulder.
"A pact?" I sniffled and turned to him. "What kind of pact?"
"One that's forever. One that protects people rather than hurts them."
"How do we do that?" I was suddenly interested. What if I could make all the hurt go away? What if I could save everyone!
"We do this." Chase pulled out his pocketknife and cut open his hand, then nodded to me to do the same thing. Without pausing I cut open my hand and handed back the knife. "Blood brothers. We're never gonna hurt each other and we're gonna save those like your ma, Nixon. Ones who can't save themselves. We're going to protect them."
"How?" I watched as the blood dripped from my open palm.
"Rules." Chase shrugged. "They keep people safe, right? At least that's what my mom says." He smiled. "We make rules and we start our own club. That way, we don't have to listen to anyone but us."
I liked it. I chewed on my lower lip. "What do we call ourselves?"
"The chosen?" Chase offered.
"No, that sounds lame. We have to sound… more powerful than that."
My eyes flickered to the road, and a sign poked into the ground. It said election. "Elect." I pointed. "Let's call ourselves The Elect." It made sense; after all, the president was elected, wasn't he? We weren't exactly chosen, but we were making the choice, we were electing ourselves protectors. That's what we were.
"Who else can join?" Chase asked.
"Tex and Phoenix. They'll want to." A weight suddenly felt like it was being lifted off my twelve-year-old shoulders. "Should we shake on it?"
"Yeah." Chase smashed his hand against mine as our blood mixed. "No going back, Nixon."
"No." I shook my head. "No going back."
I pressed my fingers to my temples and watched, replaying that moment over and over again in my head as the outline of Chase and Tracey flickered in the moonlight. Would he really do this to me? After all the shit we'd been through?
I gauged her reaction, hoping that I would be wrong. Praying to God that Trace would just this once listen to me. Her eyes flickered with interest for a few brief seconds before she looked down at the ground.
"Shit." I waited in the shadows. A part of me knew this would happen. The part that told me to damn my feelings to hell and ignore all the warning signs that I'd been seeing. But now it seemed like it was too late. I stayed, planted where I was, watching, waiting.
"Chase, you can't…" Trace shook her head. "You can't be like this. We can't do this!"
"We aren't doing anything," Chase said in low tones, reaching for Trace's hand. "Don't you?" He looked directly at me, although all he saw was a shadow. I knew I was well hidden. "Don't you feel the same way?"
Trace jerked her hand away from Chase's. "It doesn't matter what I feel. It's not about me, Chase."
"But it is." Chase reached for her again. This time her hand grasped his in such an intimate embrace I thought I was going to vomit all over the ground. The outside air was cold as hell as little pieces of ice tried to find their way into my wool coat.
"It isn't." Trace sighed. "It never was."
Chase jerked her toward him. She fell against his chest and looked up into his eyes. "What are you doing?"
Chase sighed. "What I should have done a long time ago." He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her in for a kiss. Their lips touched.
I had to look away.
The only sound in the night was that of my soft footsteps as I walked away… leaving my heart in broken pieces where I'd last stood. She was lost to me; it wasn't even the Sicilians that had taken her, but my best friend.
A gunshot rang out loud and clear in the night air. I turned back around just in time to see Trace collapse into Chase's arms.
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As the lights dimmed in the gymnasium at Oak Grove High School in San Jose on Feb. 2, 2013, 103-pound Gunn High School junior Cadence Lee stepped onto the spotlit wrestling mat and faced down her final opponent of the day.
In 55 seconds, the match was over. Lee had pinned Kayla Walker of Leigh High School to clinch her third straight title in the CCS/SF Girls Wrestling Championships.
Lee, 16, wasn't alone that day. Gunn teammates Jessica Sun, 17, took second in the 138-pound division; Grace Robinson, 16, took third in the 118-pound category; Ziwew "Zee" Peng, 17, got her first pin in competition; and Alexa Austin, 16, from Palo Alto High School won two matches in the consolation round. Together, the girls reflect the increasing number of girls who have joined wrestling teams in recent years, breaking into a sport long comprised solely of boys.
This year the tournament had a record 177 entries from 57 different schools in the Central Coast Section (CCS), up from about 100 entries when the girls-only tournament was founded in 2010.
Initially Lee didn't want to join wrestling. She was active in judo and preferred to play soccer, among other activities. But with two brothers on the wrestling team at Terman Middle School, her father, who also wrestled in high school, pressed her to try out the sport in seventh grade and keep at it.
"At first I didn't really know anyone. It's all sweaty, and wrestling around on the mat just seemed kind of gross to me," Lee said. "But once you develop a passion for it, it's addicting."
The only girl on the team when she joined as a Gunn freshman, Lee quickly demonstrated her skill. She won a CCS title her first year on the team. Now a junior, Lee has an overall record of 24-2, three CCS titles, was a runner-up in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) state championships in 2012, won the 108-pound Cadet title at the 2012 National Freestyle Championships, competed in the 2012 FILA Cadet World Championships and became the first girl to win a weight division at the Bianchini Memorial Tournament in its 27-year history.
Lee's coach, Chris Horpel who coached at Stanford for 20 years and has been at Gunn for 10 attributes her success to her strength, technique and attitude.
"Cadence is a phenomenal wrestler. ... She's got this well-rounded attack and just a great competitive spirit. Of the 24 victories she's earned, 20 or so of those have been against boys," Horpel said.
Wrestling is not a sport for everybody. The back of Paly's team sweatshirts reads "Tough Sport for Tough People." Gunn's sweatshirts display Olympian wrestler Dan Gable's quote: "Once you've wrestled, everything else in life is easy."
They endure practice for two hours, five days a week, often undergoing grueling body-conditioning and strength-training exercises. Then there are the drills in which wrestlers practice technique against one another in rounds ranging anywhere from one minute to 10 minutes.
Horpel compares the sport to gymnastics but one in which "the apparatus strikes back."
"It's like getting into a fistfight over and over and over but trying not to make a big deal out of it," Horpel said.
Gunn's Peng said that people often have misconceptions about the sport.
"Wrestling is really hard. Some people don't really know much about it and just think it's a two-minute match and that people are just hugging each other. But it's absolutely different from anything else. You have to use your energy both mentally and physically, and it's really tough."
Horpel said: "It's hard, and that's why it's not for everybody. But surprisingly I have a very large team and a fair amount of female wrestlers."
Why girls decide to give wrestling a shot varies widely. Peng and Austin were encouraged by P.E. teachers to try it out. Sun liked the workouts after previously trying out cross country, track, swim and cheer. Robinson, who had been doing mixed martial arts since she was 5, was encouraged to join the team by Lee.
Despite its rough reputation, the girls said they love the sport because they value the mental and physical challenge and the thrill of going head-to-head against an opponent in competitions.
"At the end of my first day of conditioning, I just thought, 'Wow, did I really just do all that?' It was just a real sense of accomplishment at the end of the day," Austin said.
"You really have to get your mind set and want to win. ... It's almost like a battle," Sun said.
The recent addition of girls to team rosters, Horpel said, is due to a change of attitudes in society as more women join the sport on a national level.
"Back when I wrestled, there was almost none, but girls and women are viewing activities differently than they used to," he said. "They say, 'Hey, you want to try wrestling? Yeah, let's try wrestling.'"
There's still not enough interest from girls to create girl-centric wrestling teams, he said, so for now most girls in high school are on co-ed teams, and some wrestle against boys in competitions.
Though girls are not often placed in competitions against boys in the higher weight divisions due to a more dangerous strength-to-weight ratio, they say the sport still presents a motivating challenge.
"It's not about if you're a boy or a girl; it's about who do you want to be? Do you want to be mentally tough or not?" Peng said. "As a girl, physically I know I'm weaker than boys, so I know I need to work much harder to reach my goals and reach that level (of competing against boys)."
Robinson, Lee, Peng and Austin all agree that going up against boys does vary a bit from competing against girls in matches.
"Right off the bat, boys are a little more aggressive in the first 0.5 seconds of the match, whereas girls calculate what they want to do a little bit more. However, they're equally aggressive throughout the match," Robinson said.
"I actually like wrestling boys more because I feel like it makes me stronger and it challenges me a lot more," Lee said.
Gunn's team over the past 10 years has had between one to six girl wrestlers at a time , with the girls training side by side with the boys.
"Wrestling girls for me is a daily thing, and I don't think it's a big deal. Some days I only wrestle Cadence and Grace and not a single boy, and it does not matter to me," Gunn sophomore Anton "Shelby" Oyung said.
"Wrestling girls in competition is very different. Normally when I wrestle girls I know their skill level beforehand. Either I have heard of the girl before, meaning she's very good, or no one has ever seen her, meaning she isn't very good," he said. "But I try not to pay great attention to who I'm wrestling in order to stay focused on my match."
Sometimes girls face skeptical male opponents. Lee said that when she first started wrestling boys in competitions they would say the match must be a joke or that wrestling a girl would be easy.
"I think there's still that aspect when guys wrestle me they're afraid to lose because they don't want to lose to a girl, and that makes me really kind of mad. I just want to show them that I'm not going to be a pushover," Lee said.
With the sport of wrestling's status in the Olympics in flux after the International Olympic Committee's decision to cut it from the 2020 lineup, many wrestlers are wondering about the future of competition in the sport.
But as more and more colleges are offering scholarships to female-focused wrestling programs, the sport has an entirely new future, Robinson added.
"Obviously we're just starting, but there's a lot to come from girls. We have a lot to offer, and it's different from what the guys have been offering for awhile. I think it's kind of a fresh start, and it will be really cool to see what girls can offer."
Lee, Sun and Robinson will compete at the CIF Girls Wrestling State Invitational Championships this weekend, Feb. 22-23, at Lemoore High School in Lemoore, Calif.


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If criminals were to target unsecured wireless routers, they could create an attack that could piggyback across thousands of Wi-Fi networks in urban areas like Chicago or New York City, according to researchers at Indiana University.
The researchers estimate that a Wi-Fi attack could take over 20,000 wireless routers in New York City within a two-week period, with most of the infections occurring within the first day.
"The issue is that most of these routers are installed out of the box very insecurely," said Steven Myers, an assistant professor at Indiana University, who published the paper in November, along with researchers from the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Torino, Italy,
The researchers theorize that attack would work by guessing administrative passwords and then instructing the routers to install new worm-like firmware which would in turn cause the infected router to attack other devices in its range.
Because there are so many closely connected Wi-Fi networks in most urban areas, the attack could hop from router to router for many miles in some cities.
The team used what is known as the Susceptible Infected Removed (SIR) model to track the growth of this attack. This methodology is typically used to estimate things like influenza outbreaks, but it has also been used to predict things like computer virus infections, Myers said.
Although the researchers did not develop any attack code that would be used to carry out this infection, they believe it would be possible to write code that guessed default passwords by first entering the default administrative passwords that shipped with the router, and then by trying a list of one million commonly used passwords, one after the other.
They believe that 36 percent of passwords can be guessed using this technique.
Even some routers that use encryption could be cracked, if they use the popular WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) algorithm, which security experts have been able to crack for years now.
Routers that were encrypted using the more-secure WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard were considered impossible to infect, Myers said.
Myers' model is based on data compiled from the Wireless Geographic Logging Engine (WiGLE), a volunteer-run effort to map Wi-Fi networks around the world, which has over 10 million networks in its database.
Using this data, they were able to map out large networks of made out of Wi-Fi routers that were each no more than 45 meters (49 yards) from the network — in other words, close enough for an infection to spread. The largest such network in New York included 36,807 systems; in Boston it was 15,899; and in Chicago: 50,084.
Because New York is such a dense city with a relatively low percentage (25.8 percent, according to the researchers) of encrypted routers, it was particularly susceptible to this type of attack. San Francisco, on the other hand, where 40.1 percent of routers are encrypted and which had a lower density of routers was less susceptible.
Myers says that because the attack would be technically complex, he doubts that criminals will attempt it any time soon. There are simply too many other, easier ways to take over computers, he said.
Still, he thinks hardware makers should take note. "The bigger point for developers and people making wireless information technology is to realize that there are serious security issues."


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This is one of the most satisfying things I've seen in a long time: watch Jar-Jar Binks—the biggest assclown in the galaxy far far away—getting killed in a deleted Star Wars scene that has been perfectly edited by fans.* Again. And again. So satisfying.
So, why did they take this scene out? Or did they? Maybe it was meant to be included, but he was going to survive the fall? Perhaps the public cheered during the test screenings and they realized they had to take it out. Or did Lucas want to kill Jar-Jar in the first place? Did ILM just make this scene on purpose to clean his reputation? Is this all a big joke by some wonderful person at ILM or elsewhere? (If it is, thank you! And please don't tell me.)
So many questions. Who cares. Watching again.
*Update: As some readers have confirmed, it turns out it was a deleted scene edited by some wonderful person. Here's the actual scene:
I don't care. I will treasure this forever. Thanks Nightwheel and other readers.


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"Death is coming for everyone and everything" in the brand new Game of Thrones trailer. There's tons of new footage from the third season including one great shot of the dragon babies in flight. We also spied Mance Rayder and The Unsullied (hooray!). The new season returns on March 31st on HBO. Can't wait.
Vizio's Latest TVs Go All Quantum


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A sensitive portrait of childhood just before pubescence — when bodies and identities are still fluid — Tomboy astutely explores the freedom, however brief, of being untethered to the highly rule-bound world of gender codes.
About 20 minutes elapse before we learn the real name and biological sex of a gangly, short-haired kid about to go into fourth grade. Laure (a revelatory Zoé Héran) is first seen getting driving lessons from her father (Mathieu Demy, himself once an adorable, gender-blurring child performer in films by his mother, Agnès Varda). Laure's family — which includes an extremely pregnant mother (Sophie Cattani) and 6-year-old, pink-obsessed sister Jeanne (Malonn Lévana) — has just moved, not for the first time, to a suburban apartment complex a few weeks before the school year begins. They're a tight, loving, supportive nuclear unit: The parents try to assuage any unease their children might have about their new home and the new baby; Laure is a devoted, protective older sibling to Jeanne. The clan's relocation provides Laure an opportunity for reinvention, introducing herself to her neighbors and playmates as Mikael — an identity that gives her the liberty to go shirtless and rassle with the other boys, attracting the attention of crushed-out Lisa (Jeanne Disson), the same age as Laure but already sprouting breasts.
The second movie by writer-director Céline Sciamma, Tomboy is expansive and relaxed, a marked contrast to her debut, the promising but overdetermined and airless Water Lilies (2007), which centered on the erupting desires of a trio of 15-year-old girls. Sciamma shows a real gift for capturing kids at play, an arena that is simultaneously anarchic and regimented. She and her cinematographer, Crystel Fournier, film the August afternoons devoted to truth or dare, capture the flag, soccer, and water fights as their own otherworldly time zone — idyllic, adult-free hours when hierarchies are formed, toppled, and reconfigured.
But Sciamma doesn't present a sanitized, uncomplicated view of childhood. Although Laure's hormone production hasn't yet surged, her developmental stage isn't wholly innocent. Laure/Mikael, beginning to reciprocate Lisa's smitten feelings, lives in anxiety of being found out as much as she revels in being a boy. Worried that she'll have to think of an excuse not to go swimming with her friends, she soon proves adept at sex subterfuge, cutting her one-piece bathing suit into Speedo-like briefs and filling it with a tiny appendage she made out of Play-Doh (which, after the lake adventure, she hides as a keepsake in a small box that contains her baby teeth).
When Laure's gender illusion is inevitably exposed, Sciamma handles it with a mostly light touch, even though these scenes include Tomboy's most unbearable moment: her mother demanding that she wear a dress as they go door-to-door, explaining to her pals and their parents who Mikael really is. The lightly ruffled blue tunic might as well be a hair shirt.
The tough love doled out by Laure's mother and the taunts by her buddies that follow are undeniably heartbreaking. Extremely empathic, Tomboy isn't simply an earnest plea for tolerance, though: Its detailed, nuanced observations about kids' capacity for cruelty and understanding suggest divisions more complicated than just bullies versus victims. Childhood itself, the film intimates, is full of ambiguities (if not as extreme as Laure's), of sorting out what you are drawn to and what repels you — all subject to change by the minute. A hopeful, not saccharine, ending leaves the impression that Laure will have not only the support of both her friends and family but also the psychic space to be exactly what she wants to be. Which is something she has yet to determine.


text: Would you pay a burglar to break into your own house? Most smart people would probably say no, but smart tech companies are increasingly saying yes. Companies like Google are offering serious rewards to hackers who can find ways to break into their software.These companies frequently pay thousands of dollars for the discovery of a single bug--enough so that bug hunting can provide a significant income. And on a different, broader level, the hacker who finds the best way to protect Windows applications from being compromised is in line to take home a cool $200,000 from Microsoft in its BlueHat Prize competition.The companies involved say that the bounty programs make their products safer. "We get more bug reports, which means we get more bug fixes, which means a better experience for our users," says Adam Mein, a security program manager responsible for the Web Application division of Google's Vulnerability Reward Program. "We also develop positive relationships with the researchers who are finding these bugs."But the programs aren't without controversy. Some companies, notably Microsoft, believe that bounties should only be used to catch bad guys, not to encourage people to find holes. And then there's the issue of double-dipping--the possibility that a hacker might collect a prize for finding a vulnerability, and then sell information on that same exploit to malicious buyers.The Big DanceThe World Series of Poker for hackers is Pwn2Own, the annual hacking competition that occurs each year during the CanSecWest security conference."Our large cash bounties attract press coverage from major media outlets, raising awareness among consumers about security vulnerabilities," says Pwn2Own Logistics Manager Aaron Portnoy. "That puts pressure on vendors like Apple and Google to address the security of their products."Anyone who successfully hacks a phone or Web browser at Pwn2Own takes home a $15,000 cash prize, as well as the device they used to perform the hack. Google sweetens the deal by rewarding security researchers who successfully hack a Google product with an additional $20,000 prize. All told, the competition has awarded more than $160,000 in cash prizes since it began in 2007.But that's chump change compared to the bounties that Google has posted on its own products. Since the program's inception last November, the Google Vulnerability Reward Program has paid out nearly $500,000 to bug hunters who report security vulnerabilities in Chromium (the open-source basis for the Google Chrome browser) or for any of Google's many Web apps.That's a hefty sum, but in return the company has squashed hundreds of bugs that otherwise might not have been discovered until malefactors took advantage of them to launch some type of intrusion. The folks at Google view the bounties as a worthwhile expense because they encourage security researchers to report software vulnerabilities to the developers instead of exploiting those vulnerabilities for private gain.Google has already hired one bounty hunter as a full-time security researcher, and more hires may follow. Clearly, big bounties have a way of bringing out the best and brightest bug hunters--some so good that they could make a living identifying bugs. Scan the Chromium Security Hall of Fame, for instance, and you'll see that researcher Sergey Glazunov has earned almost $20,000 this year as a bug hunter. And that's just from Google. With the proliferation of big bounties being offered by vendors or security research groups like TippingPoint (recently acquired by HP) it's now possible for talented researchers to earn a decent living as bug bounty hunters.Zero Day InitiativeBy giving security researchers positive recognition--and big cash rewards--for reporting security flaws, the Zero Day Initiative, a vulnerability purchasing program, hopes to make the Internet safer for everyone. Once the ZDI pays a bounty on a bug, it informs the vendor responsible for the vulnerability, free of charge."Every year we report hundreds of vulnerabilities to Microsoft and Adobe for free," notes Aaron Portnoy, who manages the Zero Day Initiative in addition to his work with the Pwn2Own competition. "If the vendor doesn't have a patch ready in six months, we release the details of the exploit publicly. We put pressure on vendors to fix these problems."But the ZDI isn't entirely altruistic. It can afford to pay hefty bounties (up to $25,000) for bug reports because the organization monetizes the bugs via Digital Vaccine, a subscription-based malware filter service from HP (which also owns the ZDI). Digital Vaccine provides immediate protection from the exploits collected by the ZDI to those willing to pay for it, allowing ZDI to profit while rewarding security researchers.What About Double-Dipping?One obvious question is, how can Google and the ZDI ensure that a hacker who finds a vulnerability and claims a reward for it won't also sell information on that exploit to bad guys? The answer is they can't. But that may not matter as much as you'd think.Every bounty program we investigated maintains an honor system that excludes researchers who double-dip. But in the long run, the bounty payers don't worry too much about the possibility that bug bounty hunters may pass along known vulnerabilities to bad guys, because those vulnerabilities will become obsolete in the next patch. Ultimately ZDI make money by selling Digital Vaccine to subscribers who pay for the privilege of receiving near-immediate bug fixes for their favorite products and services, instead of waiting for the vendors to patch the uncovered vulnerabilities.Target Hackers, Not BugsThe philosophy of bug bounty programs boils down to this: Catching burglars is too hard, so instead let's make sure the house is really secure. "Targeting hackers is increasingly difficult," says Portnoy. "The Web is anonymous. Hackers can easily share exploits, so it's a lot easier to just eliminate the exploits."Not every company agrees with that point of view, though. Microsoft maintains that cash bounties should be posted only to paint a tantalizing bull's-eye on notorious hackers."The only 'bounty' programs offered by Microsoft are rewards for helping bring criminals to justice," writes Jerry Bryant, a group manager of the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Group, in an email to PCWorld. "These are quite different from 'bug bounty' programs, which we do not offer."Microsoft has posted multiple $250,000 bounties for information leading to the arrest of infamous hackers, including those responsible for the Rustock botnet, the Conficker virus, and the Sasser worm. The Sasser bounty led to the arrest of a teenager who allegedly wrote the worm (he was turned in by two friends). The other bounties haven't yet led to arrests.BlueHat PrizeAt this year's Black Hat Security Conference, Microsoft announced a different kind of bounty. This one doesn't target bad guys or bugs. Instead, the BlueHat Prize is a $200,000 cash bounty for the most innovative prototype that prevents exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities in Windows applications."When considering the BlueHat Prize, we wanted to look beyond standard 'pay per vuln' programs and address the really big issues impacting the security industry, and reward work on innovative solutions that can mitigate entire classes of attacks," writes Microsoft's Bryant. In other words, enterprising bounty hunters should go big or go home.


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This is a US Patent for a surfboard.
Every Fire & Pine piece is made 100% in South Carolina.
Due to the nature of wood and our process, every piece will be unique in wood tone and grain texture.