Short form: He doesn't need us and he thinks were wrong about the most important things. K? Thanks. Bye.

Long form:

#1: Bloggers did not, as a group, endorse Obama until their audiences had already gone for him in large numbers. Rule #1 of political influence - if I can get your constituency without your help, I owe you nothing.

#2: Obama's own internet outreach has been stunningly succesful, and it is essentially a pyramid with the campaign controlling it and able to milk it for funds and volunteers. Obama can directly milk the netroots without going through gatekeepers like ActBlue or bloggers.

More after the jump DIGG IT!

Ok, based on Hilary's mention today that RFK was still campaigning in June when he was assassinated, I'm hearing reasoning that Clinton is staying in because if Obama gets assassinated, then she'll get the job.

Enough. Does no one think these things through for two seconds before setting fingers to keyboard?

So follow with me down the following logic chain. Clinton drops out this very second and does not release her delegates. Obama is assassinated before the convention. Who has the most nominees? Who is most likely to get the nod?

It is, in fact, damn near unthinkable that Clinton would not get the nomination in that case. Hilary Clinton does not need to stay in the nomination race in order to be the nominee if someone assassinates Obama.

1) Neither Clinton nor Obama is a progressive or a liberal. They are both centrist democrats with the voting records of centrist dems. However, between the two of them, Clinton is the more liberal.

2) Obama is less electable than Clinton. The Clinton campaign is correct to say that "it's not the math, it's the map". You have to win specific states to win the election, and the states are winner take all. Virtually every series of electoral vote counts on MyDD's election tracker (look top right and left), which uses state rather than national polls, for the last month or more has shown Clinton walloping McCain. Obama is only occasionally ahead.

The Washington Times published an article on how McCain is allowing bloggers on his conference calls. And not just conservative ones, but non-political bloggers and even liberal bloggers.

This has caused a certain stir amongst liberal bloggers, because Obama doesn't invite us to his calls, and never has. Clinton does, but she certainly doesn't invite conservative bloggers.

So, let's lay this out simply and get past the "participation" BS.

Progressive national bloggers as a group did not go pro-Obama until Edwards dropped out. Also, in most cases the readers were pro-Obama first, not the other way around. Obama reached our audience without going through us, and sees no reason to bother with outreach to us. Bloggers who now support Obama do so despite the fact that Obama can't be bothered to do blogger outreach.

Obama only works with groups who can deliver votes he can't easily get on his own. So SEIU has a voice. We do not because we did not deliver our readers, he got them on his own.

Word is that Bob Barr is probably going to accept the Libertarian party nomination. Up until this point I had assumed that the battle between McCain and Obama was roughly even, because:

1) Many Americans don't like Blacks. Yes, you're a liberal, and you don't want to hear this, and everyone hates the media for talking about it. But, y'know, it just happens to be true. When resumes with black names get two thirds the interview requests as otherwise identical resumes with white names, no one can tell me racism doesn't matter in America. Americans won't hire blacks for normal jobs, but they will hire one as President?

2) McCain's brand is Maverick Man of Principle! That's a powerful brand. Sure, it's BS. But then Bush wasn't a compassionate conservative, and Kerry wasn't a coward. Reality and American elections don't even have a passing acquaintance with each other.

Balancing that, is:

1) Obama is an amazing speaker.

2) McCain's a Republican and he is going to get tarred with Bush's unpopular occupation of Iraq and Bush's lousy economy. Normally any Democrat could win the election due to those two things. Of course, mind you, the economy was lousy leading up to 2004 too, and by all normal metrics Kerry should have won, so I take such things with a grain of salt these days. The media was for the war, and they really didn't mind Bush's economic policies that much—the elite opinion makers, after all, like their tax cuts.

But Bob changes things. If the Paulites rally to him and if his popularity in Georgia causes it to flip to Obama, well, it's a whole new ball game. McCain could get buried. This election is close enough that even a couple percent in a few key states could turn it into an Obama landslide.

Lambert doesn't like what Matt Stoller saying about how Obama ran his campaign and how he's now consolidating power. He thinks Matt's kissing Obama's boots.

What Matt is saying is simple:

Obama is taking over the party and cutting out everyone who isn't in his camp. He believes in post-partisanship (this doesn't contradict having Daschle as your bud, y'know). Money flow is going to come mostly from Obama going forward, unless he loses the election. The independents-folks like MoveOn, ActBlue, the netroots, etc... are being cut out or marginalized, whether they realize it or not (and I know that some don't.) Obama doesn't feel he really needed them (sorry MoveOn), and he isn't planning on giving them any real say or power.

As Dave Neiwart points out over at FDL, the results for Hillary in North Carolina and Indiana were less than she needed, and may have destroyed her chances with the superdelegates. Her speech sounded suspiciously like a concession speech. Now anyone counting Hillary out until she formally says she's out is taking a big chance, this is the energizer bunny of candidates. But let's assume she will decide the gig's up and to throw in the towel and turn our eyes forward.

Obama has his work cut out for him. The possibility that a lot of Hillary's white working class base could turn to McCain or stay home should be a real worry for him. There's been a great deal of bitterness and anger on both sides of the fight. And, to be crass and point out the unpalatable truth, there isn't a lot in it for Hillary to back Obama in a more than pro-forma "going through the motions" fashion. If he loses, she's the presumptive nominee in 4 years, after all. If he wins, she probably has to wait 8 years, and she's not getting any younger. If she really wants to be president, well, Obama's still in the way. Now I'm not saying she won't help Obama even if such thoughts are going through her mind, no doubt she understands what another 4 years of a Republican presidency would mean. Still, there's help, and there's going all out. And there's a lot of space between the two.

So if I'm Obama; if I'm one of Obama's advisors, no matter how much I may share the view of some associated with the campaign about Hillary, I'd be thinking real hard right now about what it's going to take to bring her and Bill onboard in a big way, so that they do everything possible to really deliver the votes of their supporters.

For Bill, probably a seat on the Supremes if the opportunity comes up (and it will, if Obama is elected.) For Hillary? Probably Senate Majority leader—it's not like Harry Reid really likes the job anyway.

For our hopes of there being a Democratic President taking office in 2009 I trust that similar thoughts are going through Obama's mind. Because he's going to need all the help he can get.

A few weeks ago I received the news that my old coach and math teacher, Craig Newell, had died. I haven't written about it till now because I've been thinking of him since then. He was an odd man, spare and lean, with the whippet body of a greyhound, and he had a way of cocking his head when he looked at you which was inevitably parodied every year when the seniors did their annual play.

I spent five years around him, in high school, a boarder in an all boys school. It was an excellent school, well run, with fair rules and no brutality, but I hated the place and was miserable most of the time, though still happier there than I would have been at home. Mr. Newell was my grade 9 math teacher, but I didn't really make a connection with him till a few months into the year.

The end of cheap food, and absolute shortages are on the way. There are a number of reasons, which include the following:

1) The early instability caused by global warming, whose first effects are less increased temperatures than unpredictable weather patterns has lead to key areas having lower crops than in the past.

2) Aquifers in large parts of the world are being drained at unsustainably fast rates. This includes most of the American southwest, large parts of China, huge swathes of India and many areas in Africa. In India there are already villages that have had to be abandoned because no matter how deep they drill, there's no water. This is only going to get worse.

3) Desertification and reduced fertility. US farmland fertility is less than half of what it was 50 years ago. Large areas of China are deserts, with dust storms boiling out of them on a regular basis. It is only a matter of time before we have full on dust bowls in many major food producting regions, just as we did in the 20's and 30's.

4) Modern agriculture is actually very dependent on oil, and the demand and supply curves for oil are not looking good. Reduced soil fertility has been made up for by increasing the amount of energy used. That energy, at the very least, is becoming more and more expensive and will continue to do so. That will drive up food prices significantly, or force a return to the use of much more human labor. Probably both.

5) In the short run foolish subsidies for ethanol have driven up the price of food staples as farmers switch to corn to sell for ethanol.

I hardly expect the current administration to do a great deal about this, but I still encourage people to sign the ONE Campaign's petition for Bush. Making it very clear that this is an issue that matters to a lot of people is the only way that politicians will take it seriously. The sooner we start, the better, and the life you save (or the pocketbook you help) will as likely be your own as anyone else's.

So please take a few moments and go sign.

Seeking Alpha has up a pretty good history of the last 30 years of deregulation. It's worth your while to read, but was I find most interesting is this:

Is this what we have reduced our financial system to? Where it is so weak and fragile that the failure of a single investment bank threatens a widespread financial calamity. If so, how did we let it reach this point? In my mind, extremist laissez-faire deregulation surely played a heavy part.So where do we go from here? By no means am I advocating that we turn back time and reinstall the regulations that previously existed "as is".

Remarkable. Lists the history, says he doesn't have a solution but doesn't favor going back to old regulations. No one has ever explained adequately to me in what way the old regulations were worse than the repeated bubbles and bailouts (the S&L crisis was bailout 1, the 2001/2 tax cuts were the bailout for the stock collapse, and we're now onto bailout 3).

The fact of the matter is that very sophisticated financial instruments are not necessary for the functioning of a modern economy. Simple stocks, bonds, futures and insurance of vanilla varieties handle the vast majority of real needs. Nor is there any evidence I am aware of that mega-banks/investment houses/brokerages/insurers serve customers better than the older businesses which were forced to concentrate on just one area.

Certainly we can't just roll back the clock, yet the truth is that much of what happened would never have happened if the old rules had been enforced. They were, in fact, specifically put in place to avoid exactly what has happened, by people who were around for the last big clusterf*ck in the 20's and 30's. And if you read a history of the period, the parallells aren't just echoes, they are so close it's like reading the script for a movie remake.

A good chunk of the old regulations should, in fact, simply be reinstituted. It'll cause some hardship for Wall Street, but my heart doesn't bleed for people who paid themselves more than the raises of 80 million Americans and now want the taxpayer to bail them out.

So Paulson has come out (pdf) with a plan. It's primarily a reorganization plan, pushing the Thrift regulator into the SEC, creating a federal mortgage regulator, giving the Fed the right to inspect the new firms that now have access to its liquidity. There's some talk about being objectives based. It's almost always a bad sign when the primary "reform" is to create new agencies or merge old ones and Krugman is right to ridicule it as The Dilbert Strategy. What don't I see here?

I recently had an acquaintance ask what leverage was, which made me realize that many of our readers without financial backgrounds may be scratching their heads.

Let's give a simple example (when I used to trade I was shocked and astounded when I first realized just how much leverage they allowed).

Let's say that you have a trade or investement that you expect will make 5%. Say you've got a $1,000 to trade with. Your normal profit would be $50. Not bad, but meh, you want more.

So, borrow more money against it - borrow $29,000. Now you have $30,000. By $30,000 worth of the stock. Your profit? $1,500.

JP Morgan is considering increasing their offer by $8/share to $10/share after Bear Sterns shareholders threatened to sue. Many of those most hard hit, of course, were Bear Sterns employees who held a great deal of stock. The whining from Bear Sterns shareholders is beginning to grate on my nerves, especially that some of them are blaming the Fed, who apparently didn't want JP Morgan to offer more than $2.

The thing is that if the Fed hadn't intervened Bear Sterns shareholders would have lost everything. Absolutely every cent their stock was worth, because they were bankrupt and when you're bankrupt stock holders get in line last. There would have been nothing left after all the folks who Bear Sterns owed money to got through with them. $2/share was more than Bear Sterns was worth, it was worth nothing. This sort of special pleading is one of the reasons why some think the market should just be allowed to take companies down. JP Morgan would not have offered 2 cents a share for Bear Sterns without the Fed's funds and guarantees.

contra Paul Krugman, is not so much this:

As I said, the important thing is to bail out the system, not the people who got us into this mess. That means cleaning out the shareholders in failed institutions, making bondholders take a haircut, and canceling the stock options of executives who got rich playing heads I win, tails you lose.

But is instead to make the condition of any bailout structural changes to the financial system that make another financial bubble impossible. We had the S&L in the 80's. The nineties ended with the Naz bubble and now we have this. The reason is that there were, and are, structural incentives for executives to gamble, because "head I win, tails the taxpayers lose". If taxpayers are going to have to essentially wind up owning the financial sector, and they are, then taxpayers should insist that the financial sector that comes out of it serves the real economy, is not prone to bubbles and is under tight and brutal regulatory control.

One problem with Central Banks is that too many people think they're all powerful. For years the Fed chairman was considered America's economic manager, and folks suggested that what the rest of the government did mattered little. So, in the 90's, we had adulation of Alan "the Maestro" Greenspan.

And it's true that central banks, and especially the Fed, are very powerful. Practically the first piece of investing advice I ever received was "don't fight the Fed." But the Fed, while powerful, is not all-powerful and the Fed's instruments are rather crude.

The Fed's main economic management tools all fall under what is known as "monetary policy." The Fed controls, to some extent, how much money there is in the economy and how much you have to pay for it. (Interest rates are the price of money.) It doesn't just have monetary powers, of course, it also has regulatory powers over banks, but mostly, if the Fed wants to accomplish something it does that by manipulating how easy, or how hard, it is for folks to get short term money (the supply of long term money is much less under Fed control). In addition to changing the price of money through changes in short term interest rates, the Fed can also engage in open market operations in which it buys or sells securities and it can also simply "print money."

Lillie Yifu tagged me with the book meme. For those few who haven't seen it yet, the rules are:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

"Coup D'etat", Edward Luttwak, 1968, Penguin.

The page doesn't have 5 sentences, so I'll start with the first complete one.

If we can set up efficient defensive road blocks at the appropriate places we should be able to deny their entry into the capital city for the short period required, that is, until we have established ourselves as the government and received the allegiance of the bulk of the state bureaucracy and military forces. Thus, by the time the forces of intervention have reached the scene of the action they will be the isolated band of rebels. The most suitable place to block a road with a small number of men and limited equipment, as well as the techniques and implications of such actions, are discussed in Appendix B and also in Chapter 5 where we deal with the direct neutralization of the identified loyalist forces.

Tagged: Sean Paul (he's played before, but I know he wants to play again). Stirling Newberry. AJ Rossmiller. Numerian. Scarecrow.

What are you reading? Tell us in comments.

Back in November, I wrote a brief article describing how I expected the financial meltdown underway to continue, and how I expected it to impact the real economy.

Below I'm reprinting the 10 predictions I made and I've bolded those which have already occurred.

1. Housing prices and sales will continue to decline. Expect 3 years before the bottom, as a very optimistic best case scenario.
2. Commerical real-estate will suffer a steep decline as well.
3. Consumer demand will drop. Unemployment will rise.
4. The US will go into a recession at best, a depression at worst. Expect first stagflation (high inflation and high unemployment), both because of the increased price of imports and deliberate pump priming by the Fed, then deflation, as asset prices collapse so hard they take everything else with them. The other likely scenario is stagflation followed by hyperinflation. Formal inflation numbers put out will become not just a joke amongst market-watchers, but amongst the actual population. Same thing with unemployment numbers.
5. The Asian economies are not going to "decouple", they are going to have their own financial crises and recessions. Yes, this includes China.
6. China's stock market will collapse some time next year. China will go into a recession. There will be huge amounts of violence and the Chinese government will redirect anger towards the US and Japan.
7. Multiple banks will probably go insolvent. They are simply holding too much crap paper. There will be an extreme tightening of consumer debt of all kinds, including consumer loans, credit cards and mortgages (this is already beginning, but you ain't seen nothing yet). Even people with good credit will start having difficulty getting loans.
8. Protectionism is going to get stronger. Even if Clinton, a free trader, is put in power, by the time the 2010 Congressional elections are over no "free trade" bill will be able to pass Congress and in fact actual tariffs are likely to be put in place.
9. I wouldn't be surprised, at some point, to see capital controls put in place to stop money-flight from the US.
10. When the full extent of how bad things are hits Joe Public, expect a move for reregulation of Wall Street and to reinstitute something similiar to Glass-Steagall.

Chris Bowers over at Open Left seems to think that the "leak" about Obama privately walking back his promise to renegotiate NAFTA if he wins the election was a deliberate attempt by the Canadian government, run by Prime Minister Harper of the Conservative party, to help McCain and damage Obama.

True? I haven't the faintest and there's no way to know. Plausible? Sure. The Conservative party has deep ties to the Republican party, Harper is personally on good terms with many US conservatives, and Harper's mentor is a standard Straussian who believes that dirty tricks in a good cause are entirely acceptable.

On the other hand, Obama's quite likely to wind up as United States president, and only someone who is a fool, or who puts his own interests before Canada's, would deliberately try to sandbag a possible US president unless he was sure it would take him out (and maybe not even then: sandbagging a president is a good way to make a lot of Senators angry, and Senators have a loooooong memory). One would like to think that Harper and the Conservatives are not that ideologically blind, or that self confident. But Harper, unfortunately, is something of an ideologue and thinks very very well of himself. He's brilliant, and he knows he's brilliant.

So...we can't rule Harper's intervention out.

Raul Castro will probably take over, though he's not the only contender. If he does, I wonder if his economic reforms will work out as well as he hopes and if he'll be able to control the political consequences.

Say what you will about Fidel, and there's plenty bad to say, but I find it hard to get too down on a man who raised so many of his countrymen out of poverty, who provides universal healthcare, and whose country's main export these days is doctors.

UPDATE Feb 24:

** Raul Castro named Cuban president
** Raul Castro Will Succeed Brother as President of Cuba (Update3)

In policy terms, and even now in messaging terms, the campaign between Clinton and Obama is becoming less about change and about experience than it is about two issues.

The War in Iraq and Health Care.

I've watched this with great interest. Obama has a slightly better record on Iraq than Clinton (he was against it in a speech when he had no power, then when he was in power had an essentially identical vote record on the issue with Clinton.)

His current plan to end the Iraq occupation is somewhat better than hers, but not much. So the real problem with Clinton, and it's a big one, is that she won't admit she made a mistake voting for the war.

In terms of health care, Obama's plan is not universal, and everything I know about underwriting and actuarial science tells me the same thing Krugman has been saying, that it will cost a lot more per capita to cover people under Obama's plan. Paying more to get less, it's just a continuation of the American way in healthcare. On top of that, indications are that universal healthcare is simply not a serious priority for Obama.

I have often said that Americans want universal health care. The polls back me up, sometimes even if it would require an increase in taxes. But just like with anything else in a world where you can't have everything, real demand for something means making choices.

The choice that Democratic primary voters are making is for the man who doesn't offer a universal healthcare plan at all. Debate everything you want, but even Obama doesn't pretend his plan is universal.

I've lost a close friend and a friendly acquaintance in the last 4 years because they lived in America and didn't have insurance and I don't even live in the US. I'm sure most Americans know far more than two people who have died or had their lives ruined by health care costs. Why Americans aren't up in arms about this, why this isn't something that Democratic primary voters care enough about to force Obama to at least suggest a universal plan, I don't know. But I guess people get what they vote for, and right now democratic primary voters are voting against universal health care.

The voters are speaking, and what they are saying is being heard loud and clear in Washington: that even the hardest of the hardcore on the left, people who care enough to vote in democratic primaries, don't prioritize universal healthcare. Clinton has hammered the issue, it has been something she has repeatedly worked Obama over on for weeks now, and it hasn't worked.

So clearly it isn't that important an issue.

Duly noted by the people who matter, you can be exactly sure. And next year, when I'm arguing with insiders about universal healthcare, and I will be, because I have for years, I will be told "they had a chance to vote for it, and they didn't. Americans just don't care that much about it. Heck, even most Democrats don't."

It’s said that the genius of the American system as created by the founders is that it can survive incompetent, venal or malign office holders. The system includes checks and balances precisely so that the actions of any one or a few individuals can’t capsize it. In this it is superior to either monarchical systems or parliamentary systems (which have fewer checks – Prime Ministers are often very close to elected dictators).

There’s a fair bit of truth to the statement – or there was.

The Imperial Presidency. The founders relied upon the jealousy of prerogatives of the other branches of government. They gave the Senate significant checks on Presidential power, for example, and assumed that whoever was in power in the Senate would protect those powers even against a judiciary or president they agreed with because they would want to protect their own power even against their own. That has broken down – the Senate is only too eager to give up power, because when it gives up power its members also give up responsibility. It’s the calculus of electibility. When Congress gave up its oversight on war making, for example, it also gave up responsibility for how the war was played out.

Mike Lux takes it on:

But there are still certain things that make me really, really nervous about Obama. At the top of that list is the health care debate, where I think he's just wrong about the importance of universality, and where he's employed Harry and Louise-style tactics to argue against Clinton's plan. My concerns shifted into overdrive, though, when I noticed that the Obama campaign is now using Rep. Jim Cooper as a spokesperson/surrogate on health care.

I was part of the Clinton White House team on the health care reform issue in 1993/94, and no Democrat did more to destroy our chances in that fight than Jim Cooper. We had laid down a marker very early that we thought universal coverage was the most essential element to getting a good package, saying we were to happy to negotiate over the details but that universality was our bottom line.

Cooper, a leader of conservative Dems on the health care issue, instead of working with us, came out early and said universality was unimportant, and came out with a bill that did almost nothing in terms of covering the uninsured. He quickly became the leading spokesman on the Dem side for the insurance industry position, and undercut us at every possible opportunity, basically ending any hopes we had for a unified Democratic Party position.

I remain befuddled and bemused at the way Obama supporters seem to think their man is particularly progressive. He's a centrist, who chose Joe Lieberman as his Senate mentor and whose voting record is not significantly different from Clinton's, including on key issues like the occupation of Iraq. He has very effectively built up a large following, whom he will betray in 2009 and 2010 with triangulation to the right. If he does pass a health care bill, as Mike says, it will be a massive insurance company sell-out like the drug benefit.

Jesse Wendel nails it, in my opinion.

For a long time I didn't get Obama. I'd read the speeches and I'd read the position papers, and since I don't have a TV I'd hear that he was "a good speaker", but without seeing and hearing them myself, of course, I didn't really understand how good he was.

So I'd read the speeches, and I'd find they were mostly pretty empty--full of platitudes. I'd read the position papers and they were fine, but in most cases they weren't substantially different from Clinton's. Some worse, some better, ho-hum.

So I stared watching streaming video, and his speeches struck me as motivational speeches. You felt real good during them, and even after, until you asked you asked yourself "what did he actually say?"

I'm seeing far too much "I won't vote from your candidate in the general" and I'm seeing more of it coming from Obama supporters than from Clinton. It smacks of an infantile "if I can't have my toy, I'm going home" jagfest.

The bottom line is simple, and it's why I'll urge everyone to support the Democratic candidate no matter who it is--do you want John McCain choosing one or two more Supreme Court justices and do you want war with Iran and endless occupation of Iraq?

If you think voting for Hillary (or Obama) is worse that those things then by all means, stay home. I never piled on the Nader supporters after 2000, since I figure the Democratic party has to earn its own votes. But at the same time, I just can't see the argument that McCain isn't so much worse than Hillary that holding your nose and voting Clinton isn't both the moral thing to do and in your self interest if you are anything resembling a liberal or progressive. Sure, she's a centrist, but so is Obama, the difference is a molehill, being made into a mountain by the supporters of both.

McCain, on the other hand, is the continuation of Bush's policies. Can you honestly argue that Hilary wouldn't be better than that? For all the problems of the 90's, was not the best Republican president of your lifetime (Bill Clinton) so much better than Bush that it's night and day?

They say you get the leaders you deserve. Hillary's nothing great (and neither is Obama) but they're both a hundred miles better than McCain.

I have a slight preference for Hillary at this point, but it's so slight that I really don't much care who anyone votes for in the primary and I completely understand the pro-Obama arguments. Both the candidates are very flawed, in my opinion. But this idea that you're going to punish Hillary by not voting for her in the general is just a way of punishing yourself. She won't lose her civil liberties (the rich do fine). Neither she nor her family members will have to fight the Iran or Iraq wars. She doesn't need universal health care. Not taxing capital gains at the same level as earned income will be to her personal advantage, but it probably won't be to yours.

No, Hillary might not like losing, but it won't hurt her material well-being in any significant fashion.

Hope you can say the same.

I believe the expression is "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

Coming out of Super Tuesday, a day which didn't turn out to determine much of anything, folks started looking seriously at delegate numbers. And what they found was that the folks who are likely to make the difference are the so-called Super-Delegates, members of the Democratic party who have a vote in the nomination due to their position. A lot of people are made somewhat nauseous by the though that unelected delegates could determine who winds up as the nominee, something that seems suspiciously undemocratic. Perhaps worse than that, if super-delegates are the determining factor, the other candidate's supporters may not feel the nominee is legitimate.

Which brings us to the Super Delegate Transparency Project. The project is tracking who each delegates constuents (if any) voted for and matching them up against the delegates declared support. And if it doesn't match, well, some pressure might be applied. Jennifer Nix explains what's going on, and you can see the project itself here.