The NY Times has just barely caught up to the AP newswire but John McCain has just been declared the winner in the South Carolina primary. Even though The Swamp Has also yet to catch up to the closing SC polls, this is what Lisa Anderson had to say about it a little over an hour ago:

The latest exit polls from the Associated Press showed that among moderates, who represented about a quarter of the vote, McCain was beating Huckabee two-to-one. The majority of the South Carolina electorate was conservative but Huckabee had only a narrow lead over McCain among them.

McCain, 71, led easily among older voters; those 65 years old or older made up about a quarter of the vote in a state heavy with retirees.

Now, it’s been rumored that I’m a liberal with progressive tendencies, so I cannot very well cheer on a Republican running for President, especially since every one of them without exception (except for perhaps Ron Paul) is guilty of saying batshit insane things during this marathon election season.

Still, Republican voters have to vote for someone that comes with an “R” after their names and their choices must be respected.

However, it baffles me how McCain can win any state primary by garnering a third of the vote (Huckabee got 29-30% with over 90% of the precincts reporting in). Anderson’s observation is a good one: McCain is 71 and will be 72 just after the GOP national convention this summer. That means he’ll be a 76 year-old incumbent running for re-election if he somehow wins.

Anyone who’s a critic of the Iraq war cannot in good conscience vote for McCain because McCain wanted an even bigger surge than Bush had initially proposed (although, as we all know, the 20,500 additional troops got bloated to over 30,000 when the administration, in a very belated postscript said, “Oh, didn’t we mention the support personnel we’d also need to send over?” Such bait and switch tactics disguised as oversights is the only way in which oversight actually exists in the massive corporate boardroom into which our legislative and executive branches have been metamorphosed).

McCain is openly advocating and even joking about bombing Iran while completely ignoring the NIE that has expressed grave reservations that they even have had a nuclear weapons R&D program since 2003. Even Bush, as clearly detached and insane as he is, at least has enough respect for a cynical public to pretend that diplomacy and other non-invasive measures are still on the table. McCain obviously won’t even lie to respect your intelligence.

Then last year, on (appropriately, April Fool's Day) he jeopardized his own life and the lives of over 100 US troops just so he could cautiously meander in a Baghdad market that wound up getting bombed, anyway, just he could show us all how safe it really was.

In John McCain, we see a man who should’ve been beaten by Governor George W. Bush fair and square in South Carolina and who later humped his leg in public and began sucking up to Jerry Falwell after calling him “an agent of intolerance” that same year, not a maverick Republican who had bravely persevered and was vindicated by beating not Bush but a motley crew of freshman Republican presidential contenders who (Romney aside) have not won more than one primary or caucus.

So McCain won the Matlock vote. So what?

Let’s take stock, people: The GOP presidential campaign is working out better than we could’ve dreamed. Duncan Hunter dropped out before the SC polls even closed. Giuliani’s an afterthought and is becoming increasingly irrelevant as he tries to hit a home run in Florida. Huckabee won a caucus, Romney’s picked up only Michigan and Nevada (after running as unopposed as Hillary in Michigan, which the late Gov. George Romney posthumously won for his greaseball son.). Fraud Thompson’s been sleepwalking down the campaign trail and his poll numbers reflect that. Ron Paul is too progressive for many stick-in-the-mud Republicans and who is this Alan Keyes of whom you speak, stranger?

As the pundits have been saying since the Iowa caucus and before, there’s no clear front-runner on the Republican side while people on our side are watching Obama and Hillary switch victories as if they’re at a tennis match.

The Republicans are beating the shit out of each other and when their field winnows down to one man at the convention, most of Republican America will be left with a Brooks Brothers-suited zombie whom they never wanted. We could be seeing Republican voters coming out in record low numbers, which will make Democratic pollsters’ and pundits’ fears that Hillary will unify and energize them seem laughable in retrospect.

And if Hillary Clinton, as fairly and unfairly hated across the red states as she is, cannot unify and mobilize the GOP vote, how could the Republican party’s current, pathetic crop of divisive losers do so?

Well, it looks like the media is going to get its wish of a two-person race for the Democratic nomination.

With 97% of precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton has won the Nevada caucuses with 51% of the vote. Barack Obama is at 46% and John Edwards is a distant third at 4%.

This presents a quandry for Edwards supporters, and for John Edwards himself. Assuming that if Edwards weren't in the race and every Edwards supporter caucused instead for Obama, the vote difference between Clinton and Obama (which currently stands at 478) would instead be 128 and Clinton would still win, but the race would be much closer. And of course it's moot because by Nevada's arcane allocation standards, Obama won the delegate count 13 to 12.

I firmly believe that Edwards' dismal performance today is less a function of rejection of message than it is a perception, fed by the media, that there are only two candidates that matter. Once that happens, there is a human tendency to want to "get with a winner" -- and the media have been telling us for months now that John Edwards is not a winner.

As I've written before, Bill Maher asked Edwards jokingly back in February whether it was "unfair baggage" that he was the white guy in the race. It was a joke at the time, but there's something to it. At a time when the Republicans are running a bunch of pasty white men who traffic in nothing but fear and loathing, there IS something "some old, same old" about a white man from the south -- for all that not even a year ago, another southern white man -- former Virginia governor Mark Warner -- was being touted by the Democratic party as the Great White Hope.

I haven't been under any illusions for a long time that John Edwards would ultimately be able to fight the more compelling media story of the woman and the African-American man. I've supported his candidacy, even knowing his voting record, because I believe it's entirely possible that one votes differently when one is representing a conservative Southern state than one does when realizing that there has to be a significant change in the way our government works and who it serves. I still believe that John Edwards is the candidate who is mostly likely to fight for things like universal health care and keeping jobs in this country.

I still believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton is at heart what used to be called a Rockefeller Republican and that she will do the bidding of her corporate donors. Of the two "front-running" candidates, I think that Barack Obama is the best positioned to represent something different, but I also think he's all too aware of the transformational quality of his own candidacy, and so I expect him to tread carefully so as not to rock the boat -- even if doing so means that the orders to steer the S.S. United States directly towards the iceberg that are being given by the Republicans stand.

So I'm torn as a result of the Nevada result. I believe that the primaries are the time when you have the luxury of voting your conscience. But what do you do when voting your conscience may mean that the candidate you can least support might win the nomination? How is there democracy when the media are allowed to decide which candidates are "for real" and anoint others as having no chance after only two small states have voted? How is there democracy when all that Americans who aren't steeped in politics the way I and most blog readers are know is what the candidates' favorite Bible story is or how faith informs their life or whether they think the Giants or Packers will win tomorrow -- because that's all that's asked of them in debates?

But what does it say that I even feel I need to write this post when John Edwards has picked up 5% nationally in the last week while Barack Obama has dropped 3% and Hillary Clinton 7 percentage points?

Have Americans really received enough easily-accessible information to make informed choices about their candidates?

What does it say about our democracy when robocalls are being made that are designed to make voters identify a candidate with Islamic terrorists?

The Obama campaign has provided NBC News with a recording of robocall that a Nevadan received. The call, first reported by the Politico, repeats the Illinois senator’s middle name, Hussein and attacks his relations with “Washington lobbyists” and “special interest groups.” It makes no mention of Clinton or Edwards.

It's unclear how many Nevadans heard it. The Politico mentions just one who did.

Here's the a full transcript of the roughly 30-second call is below: “Hi, I'm calling with some information about Barack Hussein Obama that you don't know. Barack Hussein Obama says he doesn't take money from Washington lobbyists or special interest groups, but the record is clear. He does. In fact, Barack Hussein Obama has taken millions of dollars from federal lobbying firms, Wall Street fat cats, big oil and pharmaceutical companies. It's all there on the record, the facts are clear. We just can't take a chance on Barrack Hussein Obama.”

It's unclear who's behiind the robocalling, but you can bet it's neither the Edwards nor the Obama campaign. But what does it say when we hear reports that the Clinton campaign engaged in the kind of thuggish vote suppression tactics in Nevada today that we usually associate with Republicans? What does it say when the art of persuasion that is so important in the caucus structure deteriorates into bullying and intimidation?


With Hillary Clinton representing an increasingly odious prospect every day, and Barack Obama not having convinced me yet that his "reach across the aisle", conciliatory message is going to result in anything other than a bloody stump, what's a Super Duper Double-Dog Tuesday Edwards voter to do?

Labels: 2008 election

John Gideon of VotersUnite.org is reporting over at BradBlog that ES&S Notronic (heh...NO-tronic) voting machines have failed in 100% -- yes, folks, that's ALL -- of Horry County, South Carolina's precincts.

This is happening in a state where election officials were recently asked about their paperless ES&S iVotronic touch-screen (DRE) voting system and the fact that other states have found the machines to be insecure, poorly designed, inaccurate and not accessible for voters with disabilities. These officials have all said that they anticipate a smooth voting process for both the Republican presidential preference primary on Jan. 19 and the Democratic primary on Jan. 26 in South Carolina.

Prior to the reports of the mass failure of their voting machines, Horry County had released their plan on how they were going to conduct two primary elections on two straight Saturdays.

Late in the week poll workers picked up the iVotronic machines that they are using today. They took them home on voting machine "sleepovers" and then set-up the poll sites for today's primary.

Today only the Republicans are voting.

When the polls close this evening all memory cards, machines and supplies will be returned to the county election office.

The tallies will be done and results reported. The machines will then be prepared to be picked-up next Thursday by the same poll workers who will take them home and repeat the "sleepover" process for the Democratic primary next Saturday.

This plan seems to be a welcome mat for security problems, since the machines are highly susceptible to tampering, and even short periods outside the view of the public and election officials can be a recipe for disaster. Also in question is whether memory cards will be saved between the two primaries, as per federal law. This Train Wreck will probably throw a locomotive wheel into the counties plans.

SLEEPOVERS????

Poll workers are allowed to take these machines HOME with them?

There's too much to excerpt any more here, but if you want a taste of what's to come in November, go read the whole story. And if you still think this isn't important, take twenty bucks out of your anticipated "tax rebate" and order a copy of "Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections" to watch and pass along to your friends. Because if we can't have any faith in the electoral process, then what does democracy mean?

Labels: 2008 election, electronic voting machines

Don't fall for it again, folks.

I'm not sure what we would do if Charles Schultz hadn't created the indelible image of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown again and again and again, because it's so evocative of life in these here United States during the Bush years.

Remember back in 2001, when you got a check for $300 and they called it a "tax rebate"? And remember how it turned out to be not a rebate at all, but an advance against your tax refund (assuming you got one) resulting from the decrease in the bottom rate from 15% to 10%? I seem to recall a lot of letters to the editor back then from people screaming bloody murder when they found themselves getting back less than they expected because they'd already spent that $300. Never mind that if you're getting a tax refund at all it's because you just gave the government an interest-free loan for a year (far better to have to PAY a modest amount and RECEIVE an interest-free loan FROM the government for a year)...the fact is that you got scammed.

And they're about to do it again:

Experts believe Bush’s proposal hints at a tax-rebate program, much like the one that was conducted in 2001 when Bush was first elected. Where would the rebate come from?

No one knows for sure, but an analysis by the Tax Foundation speculates that the current 10 percent tax bracket would be dropped to 0 percent for one year – meeting Bush’s goal of creating a temporary but swift break.

Currently, single filers pay 10 percent tax on about $8,000 in taxable income, while married couples pay 10 percent on the first $16,000 they earn. By dropping this bracket to zero, singles would pay $800 less and married couples would pay $1,600 less on their 2008 returns.

But because Bush wants to stimulate the economy quickly, the tax cut would be advanced to taxpayers through checks sent by the Internal Revenue Service.

Does this mean that the 10% rate will be dropped for the 2007 tax year or the 2008 tax year? If it's being dropped retroactively for 2007, then it means that you'll be getting your refund before you even do your taxes...assuming you're due a refund. If you're eligible (and the numbers I'm seeing is that this so-called rebate is only going to be sent for single taxpayers earning less than $85,000/year and couples earning less than $110,000) then it really is a rebate against taxes you already paid in. But I suspect (and I'm trying to find confirmation) that this is not a retroactive tax cut, but instead a cut for 2008, with the checks being an advance on potential overpayments for 2008 that would be refunded otherwise in 2009 -- thereby leaving the taxpayer surprise for after the Bush Administration leaves office.

From what I'm reading, it sounds like the cut being proposed is for 2008 taxes -- which means that you may be surprised next year, long after the check is spent and promptly forgotten.

Labels: economic death watch, taxes

In 1929 it was stockbrokers jumping from skyscraper office windows. Today it's mortgage brokers jumping from bridges:

A high-ranking executive of a collapsed subprime mortgage lender jumped to his death from the Delaware Memorial Bridge on Friday, shortly after his wife's body was found inside their Burlington County home, authorities said.

The deaths of Walter Buczynski, 59, and his wife, Marci, 37 -- the parents of two boys -- were being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office.

Prosecutor Robert Bernardi said Evesham Township police went to the couple's home in the Marlton section of the township around noon after a male caller asked them to check on Marci Buczynski's welfare. Her body was found in a bedroom.

Authorities would not provide further details on her death, saying only that she was pronounced dead at the scene and that an autopsy would be performed sometime Saturday by the county medical examiner's office.

About 20 minutes after her body was found, officers from the Delaware River and Bay Authority Police Department received reports that a man -- later identified as Walter Buczynski -- had parked his car on the bridge and jumped from the span.

Crews continued to search for his body Friday night.

Bernardi said a motive for the murder-suicide was not immediately clear. The couple's children were being cared for by family members, Bernardi said.

Walter Buczynski was vice president of Columbia, Md.-based Fieldstone Mortgage, a high-flying subprime mortgage lender that made $5.5 billion in mortgage loans and employed about 1,000 people as late as 2006.

However, it has since filed for bankruptcy and now has less than 20 employees. The company had recently filed court papers seeking approval to pay about $1.1 million in bonuses that would be divided among Buczynski and other staffers so the company could wind down its lending operations and go out of business.

With the nation's economy no longer sinking slowly into the shitter, but on an active and increasingly-fast rollercoaster ride into it. somehow I think we're going to be reading more stories like this in the weeks and months to come.

Labels: economic death watch

(Tip o' the tinfoil hat to regular reader Libby Spenser @ the Impolitic.)

If you're supporting John Edwards, or even if you're leaning towards supporting him or are unsure; if you're troubled by Barack Obama's continued insistence on using right-wing framing to sell his candidacy (the latest being to praise Ronald Reagan for bamboozling working people in 49 states to vote for an anti-union, anti-middle-class elitist in 1980); or even if you don't like the fact that Timmeh and Brian and Katie and Charlie and Morning Joe and Tweety are trying to turn the Democratic contest into a steel-cage match betweeen the woman and the black guy (where are the "two Jews and a cripple" (sic), consider donating to John Edwards today.

If your friends and family who don't eat, sleep, and breathe politics the way you do don't know that Edwards is in the race, or if they think that he's a fringe candidate like Mike Gravel, perhaps this is why:





On the Republican side,

I've made no secret that I'm supporting John Edwards in the primary race. Some of the Obamaniacs who spam the diaries at Le Grand Orange trying to squelch all criticism of their candidate, have called for Edwards to leave the race in the name of party unity. I say fuck that. The primaries are the only place (and this year, even New Jersey has a voice) where you can vote for the candidate you want. I haven't wanted to turn B@B into an Edwards campaign blog, because his campaign already has an excellent one. But Edwards' campaign wants to send a message by raising $7 million in one day -- today.

So if you've been thinking you really should donate, today is the day, and now is the time. Click the image above or here.

Labels: 2008 election, John Edwards

Christofascist Zombies sure spend a lot of time obsessing about bestiality, don't they?

Mike Huckabee picks up Rick Santorum's baton in an interview with Beliefnet:

QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.
HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

(via TPM)

Why do these people think so much about other people's sex practices? I don't think about it. Do you think about it? As I've written before, every time one of these religious nuts reveals what concerns them about what other people do, they are telling you a lot more about themselves, and what they would like to do, than they are about anyone else. That's why they want to impose their religious restrictions on the rest of us -- because they can't imagine anyone being able to control themselves without it.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Mike Huckabee

Well, now Ive seen everything....

I guess the heat got too hot in the frying pan at MSNBC, and after a phone interview with Morning Joe last week, "Standing by his words..."
and an insane visit with Jay Leno this week, much the same, chuckling and guffawing about how he is the non PC, wild man of politics...grasping on the slippery slope, the vines snapped tonight and there he was at 5PM, looking dolefully into the camera, and telling me something serious.
Something to the effect of; I know I'm wild and crazy; I know I shoot from the hip; but thats who I am. I said some things about Hillary and they were mean...and probably wrong...and unfair too...and I hurt people!! But, I LOVE POLITICS...I love Johnny and Baracky andHill...I love Mittsy and bootsy and bitsy and Bushy....I LOVE YOU ALL!...(and thats why I hit you!)
CAN I , PHULEEZE, STAY ON THE AIR??...Stop the complainin' to the bosses here!!
Now lets get on with the show!

I dont buy it...no, I dont...not even a little...
I wish I had been a fly on the wall in those meetings...imagine what goes into making Matthews make a sincere and personal apology into the camera, between him and us?

And in breaking the 4th wall, (of which 2.5 are made of freakish bluster, even though he technically "talks" to us,) acting as if he sincerely sees us and is communicating from the heart, he proved that he really shouldn't do that; Leave that territory to Keith Olbermann and his brilliant comments. It came off as forced and disingenuous. But what else would we expect from out Tweety?

c/p RIPCoco
c/pSweetJesusIHateChrisMatthews

Labels: Chris Matthews, lies, sociopathy

Yesterday I wrote about an editorial in the New York Times that focused on the delay in publishing the results of a study of two new cholesterol-lowering drugs -- results that showed the drugs' ineffectiveness in lowering the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Today the paper has an article revealing that the entire conventional wisdom about cholesterol -- conventional wisdom that is making a ton of money for pharmaceutical companies in the form of statin drugs -- may be wrong:

For decades, the theory that lowering cholesterol is always beneficial has been a core principle of cardiology. It has been accepted by doctors and used by drug makers to win quick approval for new medicines to reduce cholesterol.

But now some prominent cardiologists say the results of two recent clinical trials have raised serious questions about that theory — and the value of two widely used cholesterol-lowering medicines, Zetia and its sister drug, Vytorin. Other new cholesterol-fighting drugs, including one that Merck hopes to begin selling this year, may also require closer scrutiny, they say.

“The idea that you’re just going to lower LDL and people are going to get better, that’s too simplistic, much too simplistic,” said Dr. Eric J. Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, Calif. LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, is the so-called bad cholesterol, in contrast to high-density lipoprotein, or HDL.

For patients and drug companies, the stakes are enormous. Led by best sellers like Lipitor from Pfizer, cholesterol-lowering medicines, taken by tens of millions of patients daily, are the largest drug category worldwide, with annual sales of $40 billion.

Despite widespread use of the drugs, though, heart disease remains the biggest killer in the United States and other industrialized nations, and many people still have cholesterol levels far higher than doctors recommend.

As a result, drug companies are investing billions of dollars in experimental new cholesterol-lowering medicines that may eventually be used alongside the existing drugs. If the new questions result in slower approvals, it would be yet another handicap for the drug industry.

Because the link between excessive LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease has been so widely accepted, the Food and Drug Administration generally has not required drug companies to prove that cholesterol medicines actually reduce heart attacks before approval.

They have not had to conduct so-called outcome or events trials beforehand, which are expensive studies that involve thousands of patients and track whether episodes like heart attacks are reduced.

So far, proof that a drug lowers LDL cholesterol has generally been enough to lead to approval. Only then does the drug’s maker begin an events trial. And until the results of that trial are available, a process that can take several years, doctors and patients must accept the medicine’s benefits largely on faith.

“You’ve got a huge chasm between F.D.A. licensure and a clinical events trial,” said Dr. Allen J. Taylor, the chief of cardiology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Nonetheless, the multistep process has worked well for several cholesterol drugs — including Lipitor and Zocor, which are in a class of drugs known as statins. In those cases, the postapproval trials confirmed that the drugs reduce heart attacks and strokes, adding to confidence about the link between cholesterol and heart disease.

Doctors generally believe that the amount by which cholesterol is lowered, not the method of lowering it, is what matters.

That continues to be the assumption of Dr. Scott M. Grundy, a professor of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who was the chairman of a panel in 2001 that set national guidelines for cholesterol treatment.

“LDL lowering, however it occurs, delays development of coronary atherosclerosis and reduces risk for heart attack,” Dr. Grundy said this week. In atherosclerosis, plaque builds up in the arteries, eventually leading to blood clots and other problems that cause heart attacks and strokes.

In the last 13 months, however, the failures of two important clinical trials have thrown that hypothesis into question.

More here.

The unstudied wild card in the study of health risks in America is the impact of stress. Whether stress causes obesity directly by spurring release of an excess of cortisol, or if, as a 2003 study suggests, cravings for fats and carbohydrates that often accompany stress cause a reduction in the secretion of stress hormones, remains to be seen. The role of inflammation in maladies such as heart disease and diabetes remains under-studied. Conventional wisdom, for example, is that obesity leads to diabetes. But with one-third of Americans being defined as obese, with only seven percent being diabetic, perhaps the connection made by the medical profession is backwards.

It's easier for the bedrock of American society for so-called "lifestyle diseases" to be blamed on personal behavior. If you have heart disease, it's because you eat too many spare ribs. If you have diabetes, it's because you stuff yourself with sweets. If you are overweight it's because you're a glutton. When the notion that we can't afford health care for everyone is discussed, there's always an undercurrent of people with these diseases don't "deserve" health care because "they brought it on themselves."

But what if they didn't?

What if the cause of these diseases, and even the cause of obesity, is the stress of living in a country where consumption is the primary virtue, that has a diminishing job base, and where your willingness to devote your every waking hour to work is a benchmark of how valuable you are as an employee?

It's well-known that Americans receive and take less vacation time than their peers in the rest of the developed world. As jobs become less secure, Americans are even less inclined to take time off, lest their employers decide that they aren't really necessary. It's gotten worse over the last seven years, where people who used to earn a living salary at one job are now trying to cobble an income together working multiple jobs. Remember the single mother who told George W. Bush in 2005 that she works three jobs, and he said it was "fantastic":

"You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that...do you get any sleep?"

That isn't just a Bushism, it's Republican policy. Minnesota wingnut Michelle Bachman said just the other day:

I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.

Yup...working two jobs just to eke out an existence is a great and wonderful thing. Too bad Congressional Republicans don't do the same.

Is it an accident that obesity rates have skyrocketed in recent years and heart disease remains the biggest killer in the country at the same time as Americans feel less secure about their futures? Even those who are still drinking the Republican kool-aid about the economy still obsess about the Scary Brown Men from the Middle East who are coming to kill them. After all, the fear of terrorism causes its own brand of stress.

But of course it's easier to stuff people with statin drugs and blame them for their own health problems than to examine the stresses in the culture in which we live and perhaps make changes to the workplace and the community that might reduce the stress that may be the single greatest contributor to so-called "lifestyle diseases".

Labels: health

Sam Seder talks to New Hampshire Republican voters and finds out that if a way could be found to dig up Ronald Reagan and re-animate him, supporters of the current crop of nimrods would change allegiance in a heartbeat:



(Hey, Mark Green....you DO have three hours every weekday mornings that need to be filled now....)

Labels: 2008 election, comedy, New Hampshire, Sam Seder

Surprise, surprise: There seem to be some inaccuracies in New Hampshire's vote count after all. Brad Friedman has the update:

Numbers are now being posted from both the Democratic and Republican hand-counts in the NH Primary Election contest. So far, only wards in Manchester (Hillsborough County) have been hand-counted, and disparities between the original counts from the Diebold optical-scan machine and the hand inspections seem to be occurring in many wards, and for many candidates.

Here is the SoS Recount page with the totals, that I haven't yet been able to review in full.

While sources on the ground at the counting today have told me that officials were not announcing the originally counted results at the counting room, the SoS web page lists what they claim are the original counts --- previously verified by nobody --- versus the recounted numbers.

The disparities, as I've quickly been able to review them, are small, but consistent, in ward after ward, across almost all of the candidates. I'm told that the manufacturers of the optical-scan machines (in this case, Diebold) have estimated an expected error rate of 1% on this type of tallying device which, as noted by one of our contacts in NH, is ridiculous, if you consider that most states and counties only kick in "automatic recounts" when the margin between the two leading candidates is less than .5% or so.

ADDITIONALLY...Public records requests are being made on the spot, for errors and malfunctions at various voting precincts. An early review of the error forms turned over from the public record request made by Election Integrity experts overseeing the counting, has revealed that in Stratham there were some 550 ballots that were not read by the op-scan at all. They were seen as blank ballots. Officials there noticed the problem, and then hand-counted some 3000 ballots after the error was discovered.

Apparently, as we've seen elsewhere, voters were given the wrong pen to use and the op-scanners did not "see" this particular type of ink.

[snip]

LHS, apparently, is the one responsible for tracking (or not) and reporting (or not) any such errors, rather than the Secretary of State or local election officials, it would seem. That tracks with previous BRAD BLOG reporting on LHS, and how they operate in Connecticut, where there are similar concerns for whether or not the SoS even knows what the error rates are for the system they use, since problem reports are given to LHS instead of to public officials.

The BRAD BLOG has reported within the past few days machine problems during the election in a number of towns. In fact, of the first four towns we called that used the Diebold machines, all four reported machine failures of one type or another.

No one's saying at this point that there was deliberate tampering with the machines, or that the recount will change the outcome. But if you look at the recount report so far, you see changes in the vote totals just about across the board.

If it's YOUR vote that isn't counted because Diebold regards a 1% error rate as acceptable, that's disenfranchisement the same as if it's 100 votes that aren't counted. If the whole point of going to electronic voting machines was to ensure a more accurate count, and the counts are even LESS accurate than hand-counted votes, then you don't have to be a genius to do the math and see that these machines are just not an acceptable voting mechanism.

If you haven't already bookmarked Bradblog, I highly recommend you do so now. Because this is only one primary, there are 22 of them on Super Duper Hi Test Tuesday, and there's much more of this to come.

Labels: 2008 election, Diebold, New Hampshire

A few weeks ago, there was an article about a study that listed four things people can do to extend their lifespans. The study found that simply taking exercise, not drinking too much alcohol, eating enough fruit and vegetables and not smoking extended lifespan "regardless of how overweight or poor they were." Sort of tosses the whole BMI, overweight always = unhealthy conventional out on its ear, doesn't it? Imagine a world in which "living a healthy life" doesn't always require the kind of lifelong obsession with everything one puts into one's mouth that the diet/regain/diet/regain cycle that most overweight people live on does.

When you hit 50, the doctors start wanting to start you on statin drugs if your cholesterol is a tenth of a point above optimal, despite the fact that recent research seems to indicate that inflammation is a greater cause of heart disease than simple blood cholesterol levels, and despite the fact that one of the early statin drugs, lovastatin, was simply red yeast rice -- a dietary supplement that the FDA banned in 1999 after studies showed that it was effective in lowering cholesterol. Yes, folks, the FDA banned an inexpensive dietary supplement so that the pharmaceutical companies could make money selling it to you as a prescription drug. So far I've avoided the siren song of statins, admittedly by just not getting blood drawn for the past year, choosing instead to address saturated fat intake and banning trans fats from my diet.

Now the results of a clinical study show that a new cholesterol-lowering drug, Zetia, and its combination form, Vytorin, are not only ineffective in reducing the growth of fatty plaques, but even accelerated such growth.

But buried in this New York Times editorial on how long it took for the companies that produce the drug to release the study results is this (emphasis mine):

The findings also raise doubts about the current belief that lowering cholesterol is the key to cardiovascular health. The study showed that Vytorin reduced bad cholesterol significantly more than Zocor alone. The problem was that it failed to reduce the formation of plaque.

Say what? Uh...isn't it just as important that the study calls into question the entire notion of cholesterol being a significant risk factor for heart disease as that the drug doesn't work? Then why the hell are millions of Americans on statins, thinking that it's some kind of gospel truth that lowering cholesterol is some kind of magic bullet?

Labels: FDA, pharmaceutical industry

So I hear there was a Democratic debate last night. Actually, I heard the Democratic debate last night, or what NBC regards as a debate. It's interesting that NBC, along with the rest of the media, is still regarding Rudy Giuliani as a front-runner after two sixth-place finishes worthy of reporting at the same time that NBC felt it was worth spending the money to go to court to block Dennis Kucinich from participating in last night's debate. Bill Richardson finished fourth twice and dropped out, but the so-called "journalists" of the news media, who are about the only people in the world for whom NOT to know Rudy is to love him does not apply, are still in love with Rudy.

For Rudy, Florida has become his own personal "surge", and his acolytes in the media are willing to play the "Rudy wins Florida and then the rest of it doesn't matter" game.

Newsday:

An embattled but comfortable Rudy Giuliani turned up the anti-terror rhetoric yesterday to receptive crowds across the state in a last fierce dash to lock in votes before Republican rivals converge on Florida next week

MSNBC's First Read:

Giuliani has been telling voters throughout his statewide bus tour to vote early. But his comments Tuesday highlighted an added benefit of the strategy. By getting voters to the polls through the two weeks of early voting, he can secure their support before they see him likely lose in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina, and before other Republicans start campaigning and advertising in the Sunshine State.

Campaign aides acknowledged its part of the plan, but they said the early and absentee ballot push is more focused on ensuring his supporters actually go to the polls.

Faux Noise portrays Rudy as the heir apparent staying above the fray until the New York expatriates in Florida crown him their king:

After weeks of staying “above the fray,” Rudy Giuliani drew a line in the Florida sand Tuesday, signaling that his rivals’ fiscal records will be in his sights when they arrive in the Sunshine State next week.

The L.A. Times, at least, is skeptical:

For an hour Monday, Rudolph W. Giuliani passionately made his case to voters seated in the Shell Point retirement community chapel.

He talked of tax cuts and terrorist attacks, of building up the military and cracking down on illegal immigration.

Dozens of the more than 1,000 who attended the town hall event took off before Giuliani finished his speech, leaving rows of seats empty.

"I didn't hear anything I hadn't heard before," said Barbara Vitello, 71. "It's the first time ever I'm going into the [presidential] election not knowing who I'll vote for," she said.

But with only Mike Gravel as the other Democrat besides Kucinich still in this race, that Kucinich is now the default fourth place finisher makes him unworthy to participate, while I'm sure that Rudy will continue to receive his place of honor when the Republicans go at each other.

But back to the Democrats...

I can't believe I actually stayed up to watch all of that. I've rarely seen anything as disingenuous as the Hillary/Obama love feast, particularly when Hillary Clinton is still coming right out and saying that she's taking Bob Johnson at his word when he says, days after alluding to Barack Obama being practically a drug dealer, that he was referring to Obama's "community organizing". This is into serious "peeing on my head and telling me it's raining" territory. Did anyone actually buy this?

Meanwhile, Obama, as he is in so many of these debates, was tentative and unsure, stammering over his words and answering the "biggest fault" job interview question with saying that he's disorganized and tends to lose things: "I need to have good people in place to make sure that systems run". I'm sure he thought this was an unimportant thing, but all I could think of was President Obama losing a Presidential Daily Briefing with the headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." and wondering about who the people in place are who are going to make sure the systems run and how much we're going to know about what they're doing. Obama may have drawn a contrast with George W. Bush, who may be efficient but doesn't listen to anyone, but it was hardly a confidence-inspiring moment. That the question was ridiculous, as were most of the questions asked by Brian Williams and Tim Russert, is beside the point. This question is the "gotcha" moment of any job interview, and Obama blew it.

Hillary was somewhat less testy and arrogant than usual, but I don't think she changed any minds last night. At least she didn't change mine. My eyes glazed over about a half-hour into the so-called debate at the utter lack of substance being blathered by the two supposed front-runners. Only John Edwards tried to turn the debate back to substantive issues, and once again, he was fiercely and stubbornly on-message. Like the continued credibility of Rudy Giuliani's campaign because the media continue to cover him, that same media's ignoring of John Edwards is causing Americans to ignore the most focused candidate in the race; the candidate who is letting Americans know exactly what he stands for whenever he gets the opportunity -- which is more than the other two are doing.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may have wanted to put the politics of race and gender behind them last night, but with the media focused on them to the exclusion of John Edwards ONLY because, as Bill Maher said a year ago, he has "the unfair baggage" of being the white guy in the race, the politics of race and gender are here to stay.

Labels: democratic debate

I have good news for you! Instead of your harsh slogan of "Kill all the lawyers", you can do the next best thing and send them out of the country.

On Wednesday, January 16 and Thursday, January 17, 2008, the American Conference Institute will be hosting the "India LPO Summit" at The Grand Hyatt in New York City.

Forrester Research forecasts that the value of legal outsourcing to India will grow to $4 billion by 2015 from $80 million today. Legal Process Outsourcing, or LPO as it is popularly called, is the latest trend in outsourcing. The impact of globalization along with the significant cost savings and increases in productivity and efficiency which can be realized, are but a few of the reasons why law firms and in-house counsel are shifting operations abroad.

Some of the latest legal specialties and tasks that "...are susceptible to outsourcing": (or, in other words, Jobs Americans Won't Do - JAWD) are:

• Litigation - Document reviews, compliance and research (legal and business information)
• Corporate - drafting and revising, abstraction, due diligence, corporate governance and corporate secretary, credit analysis.
• Patent - search, drafting, analysis, enforcement and monetization, and patent litigation.

To be honest, most of this work is not even done by full-fledged lawyers, but by law clerks, paralegals, legal secretaries, word processors, or (if given a chance) even just smart people off the street. Junior lawyers may be found doing this work as entry-level work assignments.

Is it even necessary for me to say that many Americans enjoy this type of work, and find it challenging and rewarding rather than mundane and routine? Or how about the fact that top-level lawyers start off by doing this kind of work, which can serve as a solid foundation for a successful career?

One of the speakers is David Perla, the Co-CEO of Mumbai-based Pangea3 LLC. The Careers section of their website indicates openings in India for contract lawyers, scientists, engineers, technologists, patent lawyers, legal researchers and litigation lawyers. Notice how the New York office only publishes openings for a Litigation Sales Lawyer and a Patent Lawyer. Notice also how the openings in India specify they want applicants who have between 2-10 years of experience or 1-7 years of experience. I'm not sure what 40-year old Indians are supposed to do with themselves after they've reached the upper limit on the experience chart.

Check out the Pangea3 blog section where Kevin Colangelo, on December 6, 2007, wrote about the presentation he gave at the Center for Economic Policy Studies’ (CEPS) Fall Symposium at Princeton University:

Simply stated, it’s clear to me that the intellectual debate over offshoring has become merely that: intellectual. Finally. Complex, thoughtful discussions on global economics are indeed valuable and necessary, but at the end of the day, a roomful of non-attorneys did not seem fazed by the notion of Pangea3’s Indian attorneys doing U.S. and U.K. legal work. Their questions were focused on the details of how we do the work, rather than whether it is good for the economy or how this will impact the distinguished U.S. and U.K. legal professions.

I’m hopeful that the insight demonstrated at this Symposium is further proof that offshoring, and in particular, the offshoring of legal services, has matured to the point where it is viewed as a key, but uncontroversial, element of our economy.

In other words, the offshoring geniuses don't have to justify sending our jobs overseas anymore. They are off the hook. Everyone does it now, and there's not a damn thing the peasants can do about it.

(Special thanks to a loyal reader for letting me know about Pangea3. Cross-posted to Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: offshoring, outsourcing

Fred Kaplan writes in Slate about George W. Bush's cavalier dismissal of the National Intelligence Estimate showing that Iran has dismantled its nuclear weapons program:

In the latest Newsweek, Michael Hirsh reports that, during a private conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Bush "all but disowned" the agencies' Dec. 3 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. A "senior administration official who accompanied Bush" on the trip confided to Hirsh that Bush "told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views."

The NIE—which was signed by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies—concluded "with high confidence" that Iran had "halted its nuclear weapons program" back in the fall of 2003. The estimate, released to the public in sanitized form, seriously undercut efforts by the Bush-Cheney White House to portray Iran's nuclear ambitions as an imminent threat—and left the world either relieved or (especially in Israel's case) alarmed that the option of a U.S. airstrike on Iran was pretty much off the table.

[snip]

For the president of the United States to wave away the whole document—which, in its classified form, is more than 140 pages and has nearly 1,500 source notes, according to an enlightening story in today's Wall Street Journal—is gratuitous and self-destructive.

Then again, such behavior is of a piece with the pattern of relations between President Bush and his intelligence agencies. In September 2004, when he was asked about a pessimistic CIA report on the course of the occupation in Iraq, Bush replied that the agency was "just guessing."

Until now, the most glaring incident of George W. Bush choosing to ignore intelligence was his response to the infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing. In his book "The One Percent Doctrine", Ron Suskind states that the CIA briefer who brought this document to George Bush while the latter was on vacation in Crawford during the summer of 2001 was met with the response, "All right. You've covered your ass now." To me, this has always been some of the most damning evidence of at least some degree of presidential foreknowledge that SOMETHING was going to happen. Whether the details were known remains to be seen. Of course it's entirely possible that the response was just the reaction of a spoiled brat not wanting to deal with work during a vacation well-deserved (*snark*) after seven months on the job; seven months in which he had to deal with the captivity of pilots of a U.S. spy plane in china after a collision with a Chinese jet fighter and the embarrassment of a submarine in which rich Republican oil tycoons were allowed to take a turn at the wheel colliding with and sinking a Japanese fishing boat.

It's hard to imagine a more demoralized group than those working for U.S. intelligence agencies, after seven years in which delivery of a document showing that an attack on the U.S. was likely was angrily dismissed, an agent working in nonofficial cover on nuclear nonproliferation activities was outed because the President and Vice President were pissed at her husband for calling them on their lies, and an exhaustive report on Iran's nuclear capacity is dismissed as "just guessing."

When I was a kid, we regarded U.S. intelligence agencies with fear. The acronym "CIA" was the stuff of which paranoia was made. Today, the intelligence agencies have been completely defanged by a president whose grasp on reality is at the very least in serious question, thus putting our safety and our entire relationship with the world in the hands of an apocalyptic lunatic who may very well have just given Israel the green light to do our dirty work for us.

Labels: delusion, George W. Bush, Iran

That's what Abdul Qadir, the Iraqi Defense Minister, says is necessary before Iraq can secure its own borders:

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.

Those comments from the minister, Abdul Qadir, were among the most specific public projections of a timeline for the American commitment in Iraq by officials in either Washington or Baghdad. And they suggested a longer commitment than either government had previously indicated.

Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.

President Bush has never given a date for a military withdrawal from Iraq but has repeatedly said that American forces would stand down as Iraqi forces stand up. Given Mr. Qadir’s assessment of Iraq’s military capabilities on Monday, such a withdrawal appeared to be quite distant, and further away than any American officials have previously stated in public.

Mr. Qadir’s comments are likely to become a factor in political debate over the war. All of the Democratic presidential candidates have promised a swift American withdrawal, while the leading Republican candidates have generally supported President Bush’s plan. Now that rough dates have been attached to his formula, they will certainly come under scrutiny from both sides.

Senior Pentagon and military officials said Mr. Qadir had been consistent throughout his weeklong visit in pressing that timeline, and also in laying out requests for purchasing new weapons through Washington’s program of foreign military sales.

“According to our calculations and our timelines, we think that from the first quarter of 2009 until 2012 we will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country,” Mr. Qadir said in an interview on Monday, conducted in Arabic through an interpreter.

“In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020,” he added.

He offered no specifics on a timeline for reducing the number of American troops in Iraq.

Well, isn't that convenient, that a representative from the puppet government installed by the Bush Administration in Iraq has decided to do his buddy George W. Bush a favor and try to hogtie the next president into continuing to pour money into Iraq?

For the last few years I wondered if Bush and Cheney were actually going to leave when their terms were up. In my more tinfoil moments, I figured they would once again allow a terrorist attack to play out so they could cancel the elections this year. But now I'm not so sure. They don't even have to stay on in order to continue reaping the financial rewards of the Iraq War. All they need do is make sure that leaving is not an option for another ten years. And if it finishes the job of flushing the U.S. economy and the next generations' economic future down the toilet, well, they aren't his base.

Labels: Iraq

I kid, of course. But when you look at how ugly the Clinton/Obama race is becoming, reinforcing the worst right-wing memes about identity politics, wouldn't it make sense to completely disarm the Tweetys of the world by nominating a southern white guy running on an unabashedly progressive agenda?

But the Clintonistas don't care if they end up passing the White House back to the Republicans, as long as Hillary gets the nomination. Here's the kind of company they're keeping these days:

From the moment he took the microphone at a Clinton town meeting at Columbia College, Johnson came across as an accident waiting to happen. He started off referring to Barack Obama as "a young, articulate black man" before explaining, "As a black person, I can call him articulate." Johnson ended up sniffing that Obama is "a guy who says that: I want to be a reasonable, likable Sidney Poitier [in] 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.'"

But these were not the lines that gave Johnson Sunday honors for self-inflicted political wounds. What did it was Johnson's riff that Bill and Hillary Clinton were "deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood ... I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book." Despite the laughter from the largely white crowd sparked by the obvious cocaine reference, the Clinton campaign later released a statement from Johnson claiming (warning to readers: Be prepared to giggle) that he was "referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer."

It is implausible that Clinton (or anyone else in her campaign) whispered to Johnson backstage, "Bob, be sure to mention that coke thing." As political surrogates, billionaires -- just like big-name actors -- are the sort of ego-driven figures who are far too self-assured to follow the make-no-waves scripts provided by a campaign. But what Johnson's off-message comments may reflect is the larger frustration within the Clinton campaign over how to challenge Obama, a candidate bathed in non-stick coating.

Normally, the afterglow from winning the New Hampshire primary lasts more than five days. But Sunday was a day unlikely to be commemorated in Hillary's personal highlight reel. In addition to Johnson's gift of gab, Clinton had to endure an hour of jousting with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," complaining on six separate occasions that her words were being "taken out of context." She was buffeted over her earlier maladroit comment that Lyndon Johnson had more to do with passing civil rights legislation than Martin Luther King Jr. (It is never a good sign when a Democratic candidate feels compelled to stress, "Dr. King ... is one of the people I admire most in the world.") And once again Clinton had to justify her 2002 vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq. (It is never a good sign when a candidate for president complains to Russert that he is pursuing a "Jesuitical argument.")

After facing off with Russert, Clinton found blessed refuge at Sunday services at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Columbia. Speaking from the pulpit to the largely black congregation, Clinton declared, "This is a moment worthy of celebration. Many of our parents and our grandparents -- and, I dare say, probably many of us -- never thought they would see the day when an African-American and a woman were competing for the presidency of the United States." John Edwards is, of course, still in the mix, but it is a telling symbol of change that the white male is running third.

The Daily Background has more on Bob Johnson and his habit of reinforcing right-wing talking points.

I'm not black, so I can't speak for how it feels to have a white woman campaigning on an "I'm blacker than he is" platform. But isn't it just possible that all this identity politicking is going to turn off not just the sanctified independents that pundits think are so important, but also Democratic voters who want to hear candidates talking about the issues? The Clinton attacks put Obama into an untenable position in which he has to respond, but not too angrily, lest he feed white people's "Angry Black Man" fears.

Is this what it's come to? Are the Clintons so hungry for a restoration that they're willing to jeopardize the best chance for a Democratic sweep in a generation? And if so, doesn't that make them just like the Bush family with whom they're so chummy?

Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

If you think that George W. Bush went to the Middle East to try to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to make nice, guess again. This lunatic is going to have his war against Iran come hell or high water:

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday that Iran was threatening security around the world by backing "extremists" and urged its Gulf Arab allies to "confront this danger before it is too late".

Speaking in Abu Dhabi, the third stop of his tour of Arab allies, Bush said that Shi'ite Muslim Iran was the world's number one sponsor of terrorism and accused it of undermining peace by supporting the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon, Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and Shi'ite militants in Iraq.

"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the Gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late," he said in his keynote speech which, with the auditorium two-thirds full, received only polite applause at the end.

"Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home."

Returning to familiar themes that have been at the core of Bush's approach during seven years in the White House, the president praised democratisation efforts in the Arab world, but acknowledged "some setbacks". He did not name any country but cited arrests of political opponents.

Earlier in the day, Bush visited the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain amid new tensions with Iran over an incident in which Washington says its ships were harassed in the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States says Iranian boats threatened its warships on Jan. 6 along the vital route for crude oil shipments from the world's biggest producing region.


'DEADLY SERIOUSLY'

Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the Fifth Fleet, made it clear to Bush his forces took the incident "deadly seriously," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.

"All of the people in the military remember what's happened in the past such as the USS Cole," she said, referring to the attack on the U.S. warship in Yemen in 2000 using a boat packed with explosives.

During a stop in Israel at the start of his Middle East trip last week, Bush warned Iran of "serious consequences" if it attacked U.S. ships and said all options were on the table.

Labels: George W. Bush, insanity, Iran

And speaking of William Kristol....

Is there anything that better represents the folly of "reaching out" to conservatives than the New York Times deciding that Kristol would be a good conservative voice for the paper?

Believing that William Kristol will somehow turn into William Safire is sort of like Barack Obama believing that his sheer force of personality will turn intransigent Republicans into happy furry puppies panting at his feet to compromise on policies on which he's running.

Like today's Republican Party, Kristol isn't content to follow the "intelligent people of good will can disagree" notion that even as big an idiot as David Brooks at least seems to remember. Instead, Kristol is perfectly willing to take a paycheck from the New York Times for trashing its readership:

When President Bush announced the surge of troops in support of a new counterinsurgency strategy a year ago, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democratic Congressional leaders predicted failure. Obama, for example, told Larry King that he didn’t believe additional U.S. troops would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.” Then in April, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, asserted that “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.” In September, Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus that his claims of progress in Iraq required a “willing suspension of disbelief.”

The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began.

Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?

No. It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge — let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq. When asked recently whether she stood behind her “willing suspension of disbelief” insult to General Petraeus, Clinton said, “That’s right.”

When Obama was asked in the most recent Democratic presidential debate, “Would you have seen this kind of greater security in Iraq if we had followed your recommendations to pull the troops out last year?” he didn’t directly address the question. But he volunteered that “much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar Province, Sunni tribes, who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what? — the Americans may be leaving soon. And we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shias. We should start negotiating now.”

But Sunni tribes in Anbar announced in September 2006 that they would join to fight Al Qaeda. That was two months before the Democrats won control of Congress. The Sunni tribes turned not primarily because of fear of the Shiites, but because of their horror at Al Qaeda’s atrocities in Anbar. And the improvements in Anbar could never have been sustained without aggressive American military efforts — efforts that were more effective in 2007 than they had been in 2006, due in part to the addition of the surge forces.

Last year’s success, in Anbar and elsewhere, was made possible by confidence among Iraqis that U.S. troops would stay and help protect them, that the U.S. would not abandon them to their enemies. Because the U.S. sent more troops instead of withdrawing — because, in other words, President Bush won his battles in 2007 with the Democratic Congress — we have been able to turn around the situation in Iraq.

No, I'm not willing to say "the surge worked." The increased troop levels in the occupation of Iraq have caused a decrease in violence that is dependent upon those increased troop levels being there in perpetuity, at a cost of $15 billion a month. Can you say that "the surge worked" when it is not a surge but an indefinite, perpetual occupation that continues to bankrupt the country?

Apparently, when your name is William Kristol and you're collecting three or four paychecks for saying so, you can.

Labels: Iraq, William Kristol, wingnuttia

Thus spake the local Fox affiliate (WNYW) on its morning news show today. Yes, folks, the reason we're heading into recession has nothing to do with the imploding housing market, the mortgage mess, or the spiralling amount of debt that George W. Bush is piling on us so he can save face in Iraq till he can head back down to Crawford for a life of clearing brush at taxpayer expense. No, folks, the reason we're heading into recession is because YOU DIDN'T SPEND ENOUGH MONEY AT CHRISTMASTIME.

Did you decide to spend $1500 on a flat-panel TV for the entire family instead of the $4000 you would have paid buying individual gifts for everyone, including a diamond bracelet for your wife, a WII for the kids, and that fur coat your mom has been eying? Then YOU're the reason we're going into recession. Or so sayeth Fox. The article on the web site is more nuanced, but the television teaser was plain that cutbacks in spending by consumers is going to be the tipping point.

Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services, puts the odds of a recession as high as 40 percent. "There are a lot of headwinds and the economy probably has enough momentum to get through, but when things get rough, there are a lot of ways things could go wrong," Cheney said.

The fear is that people will clamp down on the spending and businesses will put a lid on hiring and capital investment, sending the economy into a tailspin.

By one rough rule of thumb, a recession occurs when there are two consecutive quarters -- six straight months -- when the economy shrinks.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the recognized arbiters for dating recessions, uses a more complicated formula. It takes into account such things as employment and income growth. By that measure, the last recession was in 2001, starting in March and ending in November.

Tax rebates aimed at stimulating the economy were part of Bush's $1.35 trillion in tax cuts in 2001. They were credited with helping to make the recession short and mild.

Yes, folks, the forty-six bucks you got from Bush's 2001 tax cuts and promptly spent were what kept the recession from being worse than it was.

I pile on Fox, but the so-called "liberal" paper that just hired William Kristol and whose public editor defended the decision yesterday, climbs on board the "Spend Or We'll Shoot This Dog" bandwagon as well:

Strong evidence is emerging that consumer spending, a bulwark against recession over the last year even as energy prices surged and the housing market sputtered, has begun to slow sharply at every level of the American economy, from the working class to the wealthy.

The abrupt pullback raises the possibility that the country may be experiencing a rare decline in personal consumption, not just a slower rate of growth. Such a decline would be the first since 1991, and it would almost certainly push the entire economy into a recession in the middle of an election year.

There are mounting anecdotal signs that beginning in December Americans cut back significantly on personal consumption, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

A raft of consumer companies — high-end stores like Nordstrom and Tiffany, and middle-of-the-road ones like Target and J. C. Penney — reported a pronounced slowdown in growth last month, and in several cases an outright drop in business.

American Express said that starting in early December the growth in the rate of spending by its 52 million cardholders, a generally affluent group of consumers, fell 3 percentage points, from 13 percent to 10 percent, the first slowdown since the 2001 recession.

And consumer confidence, an important barometer of economic health, has plunged. Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, says consumer satisfaction with the economy has reached a 15-year low, according to the firm’s polling.

Even wealthier consumers, who were seen as invulnerable to rising gasoline prices and falling home values, are feeling the squeeze.

“People are clearly concerned that we are headed into a recession,” said Stephen I. Sadove, the chief executive of Saks Fifth Avenue, the upscale department store whose runaway growth throughout much of the year slowed markedly in December.

Gia Trumpler, 37, a travel consultant who lives in Manhattan, shops at luxury chains like Saks. But she is trimming costs where she can by bringing lunch to work from home, rather than eating out. “Everything just feels more expensive to me now,” she said, including the cost of heating her apartment this winter.

[snip]

There are some bright spots now in consumer spending. Sales of sports gear and electronic gadgets — particularly G.P.S. navigation devices and flat-panel television sets — have risen over the last three months. To Stephen Baker, vice president for industry analysis at the research firm NPD Group, that suggests there is still enough purchasing power for people to buy what they really want.

“We probably would not have seen strong sales for electronics products that people really want if the overriding issue was economic,” Mr. Baker said.

Someone ought to remind Mr. Baker of all those "eighteen months with no interest" payment plans that go with those flat-panel television sets.

So far, at least, Mr. Brilliant and I are both working. Three-dollar-a-gallon home heating oil is taking a toll, as well as increases in costs for electricity and gasoline, but the fact that we carry very little debt over and above the mortgage and we've delayed or foresworn the gratification of significant interior remodeling of the house until and unless we can afford to pay for it now, means that so far we're not hurting. On the other hand, we're not the kind of spenders that have been propping up this house of cards from the beginning. Still, we're reliant on two incomes, especially with these increased costs, and current economic conditions make us think three times now, instead of just twice, before spending.

So how are YOU feeling about your economic state? What do YOU expect this year to bring?

Labels: economic death watch

It snowed in Baghdad yesterday.
In a scene straight out of solemn black and white stories of cease fires at Christmastime, residents of the war torn city marveled at the beauty of the white crystals falling, even if they melted upon hitting the torn apart streets. It hasn't snowed in Baghdad for as long as anyone can remember.

We are living in strange times, my friends.

This past week has been backwards crazy like that; on the heels of Olbermann's O'Reilly puppet theater the other night, in which O'Reilly unsuccessfully messes with Obama security, and then reports of Hannity being chased through NH by Ron Paul supporters, stirred up because Faux News didn't allow Paul to participate in the debate... Along came Dan Abrams complaining that he felt lately that Hillary was being shoved at us by the media! Oh really? The sweet indignation of just realizing what has been happening all along.


....and now Obama is suddenly the second coming!? What was Dan thinking when he was the program director of this very station and he supported the chronically low ratings of Scrappy-doo-Tucky-Carlson, the Libertarian fool, and the non stop rantings of Tweety Matthews, acting as if Hillary was a done deal and there was no point in even discussing other candidates. So sure were the M$M pundits about Hillary, that I started switching it off, because I am just fucking weary of being told what to do by pasty white men.

Yeah, Abrams' outrage rings a little hollow. NOW Dan is with us, in the face of the big bad M$M machine? Well, its possible, I suppose, since MSNBC is maybe the best of the worst of the M$M, but God, who in their right mind allows the likes of Willie Giest to ascend to the role of snide janitor, much less sidekick to the repugnant Morning Joe, and who kept Carlson employed against the usual formula of ratings and sponsors? I wasn't a fly on those walls, but if appearances mean anything, Tucker rode along on his relationships rather than ratings, long after it was clear that any retooling could help him in any way, and once the suits got involved there were slap-downs of Tucker and the "rumors" that Tuckie was on his way out (...also, didn't Tucker thank his 10 viewers on air, and then get reprimanded for it by the bosses?)

Granted, they have got Rachel Maddow on every show in a row, just about every night! (and, having quietly shot a pilot already, maybe she can get Kent Jones a gig there...he is sorely missed on Rachel's AAR show!) One good move doesn't clean the slate, but if they do start to build a decent lineup based around Keith, with Rachel taking the nine o'clock slot, it could be great programming for the upcoming Democratic majority! If New Hampshire is any indication, the snotty conservative pundits who used to have a stranglehold on all of the airtime they wanted, haven fallen from favor, along with their masters in the White House...

After writing the above rant the other day, I was surprised, pleased, and honored to receive an invitation to join Jill's newest project: a blog called Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews!
Not only was I pleased that she would consider my pitiful missives that are coming pretty irregularly lately, but also I'm kinda thrilled that we are all on the same page about this thing. I spend alot of time wondering if I'm just a crazy fool who was born at the wrong time, in the wrong world, and when I get any sort of confirmation of my sanity and/or remaining humanity around me, I feel so much better! Thats what got me started writing this opinion sort of stuff (and who watches more MSNBC than me??) and thats whats allowed me to go on through the morass of the Bush years and the press playing along like some sort of hired PR team.

And, it wasn't only me and Jill; it was also the entire newscycle, that left old Chris, by last Thursday, saying things like "the popular feeling is that the media...well, me actually..." influenced the outcome of the elections.... So, after years of being a sort of political kingmaker, in servitude to whosoever's stock was going up, and manipulating the American people by playing along with the farce that is his shtick; that no one could have known that any one thing or another was gonna turn out badly in this nightmare called the Bush years; no one could have known? I knew! So many of us knew! How come there were printed bumper stickers, way back then, that said "ATTACK IRAQ? NO!!," (to which has been added a new horrific array of other versions and countries,) right here in my neighborhood?

And regardless if who Tweety Matthews has ever written a speech for or been on staff with, it is an inarguable fact that he, and most of the other M$M pundits were decidedly leaning towards the talking points that were coming out of the White House in their reportage of the news leading up to this fiasco, and ever since. Its not even like any of the press would have had to look far or confirm all that much of the reams of information that was being dumped in their laps, already having been researched and confirmed. The only would have had to put their jobs on the line to report it.

So, when Tweety Matthews and his producers felt it prudent to give the stage to Michelle Malkin, as if she deserved to be on any show further towards the mainstream than the Jerry Springer Show; when they chose to allow old Tweety to literally drool on Ann Coulter, as if this is the kind of woman that anyone (especially a college crowd, which he was entertaining that week,) should aspire to be like some mean trannie with an ax to grind and books to sell, its so far beyond the pale, and begs some programming and social questions at the very least....Unless, of course, MSNBC aspires to be more like Fox News.

The pale? Well, here is a guy who finds all of this politics stuff so fun and interesting, like alot of us do. He rubs his hands together and turns all red, practically jumping up with anticipation of the upcoming primaries and what they could possibly mean. But somewhere along the line, he seems to have disconnected with the reality of what he is doing ,and what it means in the life and death struggles of not only our soldiers around the world, but of the growing number of Americans who are suffering due to the economy and our lack of health care.

So, even with the turn back towards the middle, and the network's seeming attempt to start to show a little deference to what is actually happening in the country, there is still a bit of problem with the ongoing bipolar swings of not only Tweet, but the bunch of them. When you start to wish that all pundits could be as stable as old Pat Buchanan (even if you disagree with him,) you're in trouble. When you start to think from time to time that Morning Joe has a point or two right, you're in big trouble...but across the board, we all think that something is wrong, and getting wronger, with Tweety.

On the heels of this week, came word that Timmeuh Russert is going to give Hillary an entire hour on Sunday; and entire hour! Not only was Timmeuh featured on Hardball to promote this hour, but Tweet went on about how it was going to be the hardest hitting, most important interview in the whole wide world!! And this, as part of the umpteenth time that Tweety was musing on how Hillary should and would concede; bow out of the whole show, gracefully...you know, back off.

It makes me think of how Kos has supposedly been trying to manipulate the republican primaries by having dems vote for Romney...met by such outrage! Such venom!...on both sides....But How are we supposed to view a 1 hour "hard hitting" commercial for Hillary to display her newest self? And how are we supposed to take an entire segment of Timmeuh and Tweet's delight at being able to present her newest self?

Crazymaking; after so many months of beginning every interview with anyone even remotely involved in the election process with a question like "With Hillary as the obvious candidate of choice for the democrats, what do you think of....?" Then planning her fall...now he views this interview as the most historic, interesting, and hard hitting thing to ever happen!
Either he is just trying to go with the flow as he sees it day by day, he is seriously bi-polar and not in control of which way his mania is leading him on any particular day, or this has all been a plan to try to shape the discourse....And, if so, I don't think that its working. Its clear anyway that he is not all that fond of Hillary...or women in general.

The feeling that I'm getting is that in the shadow of being so wrong all the time lately, fearing that his power is slipping as a new generation of more liberal pundits makes their way into his world, and the reality of electing a woman as president looms large, he is very confused about how to act, but is sure that he must keep being the boisterous Chris Matthews that he always was. Whats clear is that something is wrong. Ive watched him almost daily for years, as something that I turn on in the background while I putter in the evening, and something that my entire family watches, and there is something amiss there.

Look for Tweety to pull out some of his personality to match Hillary's new campaign of showing people more of who she is emotionally. I want to start a pool about tears; the tears of Hillary, the tears of Tweet, the tears of all the clowns! (cue: circus music)

c/p RIPCoco
c/p Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews!

Labels: Chris Matthews, MSNBC, Tim Russert

Is there anything that more fully encapsulates how George W. Bush takes care of his base -- the haves and the have-mores, than the saga of Countrywide Mortgage? Here's a company that doled out mortgages to unqualified buyers like Hershey bars to six-year-olds on Halloween. While Countrywide isn't solely responsible for the mortgage mess, it certainly bears a sizable share of the blame.

So what are the consequences? The same consequences that have befallen executives of other large companies -- a nice, fat severance package for the CEO, with the added attraction of a taxpayer bailout.

Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilio is expected to pocket a package worth $110 million, along with paid health insurance for himself AND his wife, if the company's sale to Bank of America goes through (emphasis mine):

Such a payout would come on top of huge gains Mozilo has made selling Countrywide stock during the mortgage crisis. As the mortgage industry went into a nose dive in late 2006 and 2007, Mozilo cashed out about $140 million in stock options, becoming one of the highest-paid executives in the country, the L.A. Times reported in November.

The newspaper reports tonight that in his contract agreement, which extended the 69-year-old's employment contract through 2009, Mozilo was guaranteed three times his base salary, plus a cash payment equal to three times the greater of his average bonus or the incentive bonus paid the previous year. Net value: $87.8 million.

In addition, Mozilo has two pensions that his severance agreement gives him the right to receive as a lump sum upon his departure. Those pensions were worth $24 million as of December 2006, the last time the company was required to report their value.

There is more. The Times reports Mozilo would receive continuing health benefits for life for himself and his spouse, three years of life and financial planning benefits, and "tax-gross-up payments" to compensate him for any penalties he'd have to pay for receiving payments the IRS might consider excessive.

Given the slashing of 10,900 jobs at Countrywide this year, and the 81% decline in Countrywide stock over the last year, it is likely Mozilo's severage package will prove more controversial than his previous stock sales.

It's the same old story -- greedy bastard at the top gets to cash out, while tens of thousands of people lose their jobs. We saw it at Enron, we saw it at Worldcom, we're seeing it at the financial companies and banks who bundled these bad mortgages as "investment" vehicles and are now being sold to foreign companies and governments, and we're seeing it at Countrywide. Except that in THIS particular company collapse, you get to help defray the cost of Angelo Mozilio's golden parachute:

Guess who's helping Bank of America pay for its $4.1 billion purchase of Countrywide Financial? Answer: The taxpayers of the United States.

That's because Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), which is solidly profitable, will be able to use some of Countrywide's losses to offset its own taxable income. The tax break could total about half a billion dollars over the first five years, according to an estimate by tax guru Robert Willens, who left Lehman Brothers Friday after a 20-year run and will be in business as Robert Willens LLC starting next week. The losses could be worth considerably more to Bank of America starting in the sixth year, depending on how big Countrywide's losses are when Bank of America formally acquires it.

At this point, of course, no one knows how much in losses Countrywide has run up since the junk mortgage market began souring and defaults accelerated. Countrywide (CFC, Fortune 500) itself probably doesn't know. But it seems almost certain to ultimately be in the billions.

In tax circles, Bank of America is famous for its 1988 purchase of the failed FirstRepublic Bank of Dallas, which was being auctioned off by federal regulators. Bank of America, then known as NCNB Corp., the parent of North Carolina National Bank, discovered a way to structure the deal to save $1 billion of taxes, using a convoluted strategy that none of the other bidders knew about. That allowed NCNB to outbid its rivals for the bank, and still come out way ahead.

The Countrywide tax break isn't in that league, but it would still be worth a lot of money. Willens estimates that Bank of America will be able to deduct $270 million of Countrywide's losses annually for the first five years it owns the firm.

[snip]

A $270 million annual deduction would save Bank of America something more than $100 million a year in federal and state income taxes. The long-term tax-exempt rate, which is based on Treasury rates and other things so complicated that they make my teeth hurt. The rate changes each year, Willens says, but not by much. When I asked how it's calculated, Willens, a master of tax arcana, threw up his hands. (Metaphorically, of course.) "It's like the formula for Coca-Cola," he said, "no one outside the circle knows it" and it's so complicated that, "no one else wants to find out."

So over the first five years, Bank of America can use a total of $1.35 billion of Countrywide's losses to shelter its income. (That's five years of $270 million annual losses.) If Countrywide's embedded losses when Bank of America buys it exceed $1.35 billion, Willens says, the bank will be able to deduct the rest of the losses, without limit, starting in the sixth year.

Isn't America great?

Now remind me again, Sens. Clinton and Obama, just why we should give these people ANY say WHATSOEVER in setting policies that will affect the people you're supposed to represent?

In a sane world, John Edwards would be running away with the Democratic nomination, because it's stories like this, which we see over and over again in every industry in America, that point out just how rotten and corrupt our system has become, as our representatives have become enthralled with the campaign cash being doled out by these corporations and working Americans pay the price.

Labels: corporatism, greed, mortgage crisis