The Perils of Polling

pa href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/42_say_climate_change_bill_will_hurt_the_economy"img title="in_polls" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="138" alt="in_polls" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/SoRvDWdflzI/AAAAAAAAA0k/Mh7P96Sktek/in_polls%5B4%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="138" align="right" border="0" / Rasmussen/a and a href="http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1730"Zogby/a both have polls out that aim to figure out how Americans feel about the climate change legislation travelling through Congress./p pIf Rasmussen happened to call you, you were in a a href="http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/money_politics/archives/2009/08/dueling_polls_o.html"bad mood/a:/p blockquote pIn late June, Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1000 adults. The poll showed that only 12% of respondents were strongly in favor, while 25% were strongly opposed. And 42% said that the measure would hurt the economy, while only 19% said it would help./p /blockquote pAnd you were much happier when Zogby caught up with you:/p blockquote pNow comes a competing poll from Zogby, which presents a far different picture. In this poll, a stunning 45% of the 1005 respondents were strongly in favor of the climate bill. Only 19% strongly opposed it./p /blockquote pWhat does this mean? Well, Business Week’s John Carey thinks that Zogby put the most positive spin possible on their questions while Rasmussen aimed at “objectivity” – emgood luck on that one!/em Carey concludes that “the public really doesn’t yet know what to think.” /p pWell, maybe. But we like the idea that Scott Rasmussen offers – that he was aiming to create a baseline for future polls. That works for both Zogby and Rasmussen. The trick is to see where the numbers go in future polls – especially as people start paying attention after the health care kerfluffle clears out and climate change comes back to the fore./p pFor ourselves, and only for right now, we’d lend more weight to Zogby because 45 in favor, 19 against (and presumably 36 undecided) seems a more plausible starting point for legislation not quite in the public eye but one about which strong advocates – and the House – have weighed in fairly positively. /p pA few more polls on the topic (from Gallup and Pew but really anyone) wouldn’t hurt, either./p pWe expect the polls will get really interesting when the Senate starts fighting over the bill in the Fall. Until then, let’s just say the numbers are all over the map./p pemDo you favor puppies or kittens? Why, yes, yes I do./em/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-5680988791433813785?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div

Mid-week music madness

Helen, my caseworker, proving that it is not just sorting out tax credits and benefits that she is good at. Apparently, this is a live version of the band's single.br /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IaJAd1GXGUshl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IaJAd1GXGUshl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-3874157639956516010?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Takes on Facebook

A

Gene Wojciechowski is standing outside Derek Jeter's window, lofting a boom box into the air

Shorter a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_geneid=4392903sportCat=mlb"Wojo/a:blockquotEIf Derek Jeter is discovered to have used PEDs, I, too, will pump my fist -- span style="font-style:italic;"into my own broken heart/span!/blockquoteArguably the worst part of drug war moralism (Sporting Division) is that people like Gene Wojciechowski are permitted to earn a living by repeating the idiotic fantasy that certain players bear within them with game's Purity of Essence. It's bad enough that such declarations of abiding love for the game actually indicate their opposite, but when this peculiar form of romance is folded into the catechism of the Order of St. Jeter, it's difficult not to feel embarrassed for the guy. I mean, imagine if the "template for baseball professionalism" included, say, not adding superfluous leaps to routine grounders, or sharing pernicious viruses with supermodels -- ihow could Gene Wojciechowski face his children each morning?/idiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1742663981554836374?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

The Pain of Prayer

Jesus called his followers to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. This is the cross-life. It is the only entry into the abundance life Christ promised. Yet it involves suffering and hard work (not to earn salvation, but in following the Savior).br /br /Part of the pain is prayer. Prayer, especially as praise and thanksgiving, can be joyful--communion with God as he reveals his goodness. But prayer can be hard and agonizing work. It often is for me. I must deny myself to pray over worries and concerns regarding myself, others, and this fallen and bleeding world, to keep praying when nothing seems to be happening, when my thought wander. Yet Jesus said to his disciples before his own supreme suffering, "Could you not pray for emone hour/em?" How many of us in America today pray for one hour at a time, or even one hour a week? I mean time dedicated only to prayer, not prayer throughout the day or ten second prayer before a meal.br /br /Jesus said we should not make a spectacle of our prayer, as did the Scribes and Pharisees, but how do we pray with feeling and intelligence publicly in a way that reveals our anguished yearning for the greater span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"in-breaking/span of God's Kingdom? How often do we weep over the world's woes as we pray--in the manner of Jeremiah?br /br /In hedonistic American, where for so many, the principal values are personal peace and affluence (Francis span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"Schaeffer/span), we tend to avoid the difficult and medicate the painful at all costs. Yet the gospel calls us to embrace certain kinds of pain--the pain of struggling against a sinful world and self--for the sake of the greater good of the Kingdom of God.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-2647710029436726451?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

Mortgage Laws and the Case for Moving Insurance Across State Lines

The most common argument against allowing health insurance to move across state lines is that each state has their own state laws governing health insurance and thus it is not practical to do this. Different states have different levels of regulations and allowing health insurance to cross state lines would turn into chaos and take power away from the states the critics say. The critics say that insurance companies will simply set up shop in those states with the a href="http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/triage/2008/10/purchasing-insu.html"loosest regulations/a.br /br /blockquoteToday, I asked Sandy Praeger to share her perspective on the issue. Praeger is insurance commissioner for Kansas and president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.br /br /Praeger told me she was against lifting restrictions on the sale of insurance across state lines.If the change was implemented, here’s what she predicts will happen: Insurers will set up shop in states with few regulations and market low-cost policies to people across the country. These policies will offer minimal coverage and appeal primarily to younger consumers.br /br /“It will be a race to the bottom,” Praeger said, and there will be “very few consumer protections. … You’ll have plans that don’t cover the benefits that people need. … And healthy people are going to buy those less costly plans, because they don’t think they need [the protection].”br //blockquotebr /br /br /Now, I have dealt with something similar in mortgages for years. In fact, in mortgages, there are numerous state laws and federal laws. For instance, in Illinois, there is something called the Illinois a href="http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-75019525.html"high cost law/a. This law does two things. First, it sets a maximum rate that any borrower can be charged on any loan. Second, it sets the maximum fees that can be charged on any loan, 5.5%. My only experience with a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2007/12/illinois-high-cost-and-my-favorite.html"Illinois high cost /awas when a protege of mine tried to do a difficult loan that was deemed illegal at the end of the process. This was a loan on an investment property with a borrower with a marginal credit score and they were putting little down to purchase the property. As such, the rate on the loan approached 11%. Everything seemed fine until we got the loan ready to close and the bank realized it couldn't be done because the rate was illegal. In fact, there was no way to make the loan legal.br /br /Illinois high cost also comes up often fora href="http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page?_pageid=73,1827594amp;_dad=portalamp;_schema=PORTAL" FHA loans/a. That's because there is a 1.5% fee that FHA charges up front for Mortgage Insurance Premiums. As such, before anyone charges a single dime, there is already 1.5% of the 5.5% used. Of course, different banks have different interpretations of whether or not that 1.5% should be counted in the overall 5.5%. So, often there are disputes between bank and broker about whether or not a loan has exceeded the Illinois High Cost law.br /br /That's just in the state of Illinois. The state of a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2008/02/minnesota-case-study-in-complexities-of.html"Minnesota has created all sorts of state laws to prohibit "predatory lending". /aThe state of a href="http://www.hud.gov/local/nc/homeownership/predatorylending.cfm"North Carolina /aalso has very strict "predatory lending" laws. If a bank wants to do business in any state, they must follow the laws of that state along with federal laws as well rules set out by Fannie/Freddie and FHA. Sometimes, laws become so burdensome that banks actually stop doing business in a state. For instance, a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2007/12/sb-1167-and-my-favorite-reagan-quote.html"HB 4050/a, in my county of Cook, became so burdensome in 2006 that dozens of banks simply stopped doing business in that County.br /br /Why do I point this out? It's because mortgages is among the most heavily regulated industries in the country. Anyone who has ever closed on a loan knows full well just how regulated it is since they sign hundreds of pages worth of closing documents in response to regulation. We have something called a a href="http://www.bankersonline.com/regs/226/226.html"regulation z/a. That's because there are so many regulations that they span the alphabet. Each individual state sets out their own regulations along with federal regulations. Yet, banks are able to sell loans across state lines even despite this hyper regulation.br /br /In other words, the mortgage industry allows for mortgages to "cross state lines" despite the plethora of competing regulations. In fact, banks, much like insurance companies, set up shop in one state and then sell mortgages across state lines. They are able to figure out how to navigate all of the state laws, federal laws, and other regulations, and still be able to produce their product in all fifty states at one time. The regulations and complexity of mortgages is no less than is the regulations and complexity of health insurance. Yet, banks are able to figure out how to sell mortgages across state lines, and no one is claiming that you can only get a mortgage from a bank in your home state. In the same way, we could figure out how to sell health insurance across state lines.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-6595817996692559023?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

The Russians are Coming?

With Akula subs off the coast, is it time to start re-reading The Hunt for Red October?br /br /Some of my thoughts over at a href="http://sitrep.globalsecurity.org/articles/090811443-the-russians-are-coming-3.htm"GlobalSecurity.org/a.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19194934-6828975014671744022?l=washingtonrealist.blogspot.com'//div

The Inner Limits of Debate: STP and Its Critics

pa href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/SnyP1MrnQ7I/AAAAAAAAAzs/XYhLN6Ycsho/s1600-h/STP%5B10%5D.jpg"img title="STP" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="133" alt="STP" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/SnyP1SpFzRI/AAAAAAAAAzw/r5f_7TlH4wE/STP_thumb%5B6%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="194" align="right" border="0" //a Environmentalist groups do a lot of good work, so we’re happy to help them raise money, if being against nuclear energy helps them do that, but we would suggest that such groups freshen up their messages a bit. Or maybe take the financial hit and allow that maybe nuclear energy isn’t all that ghastly. But one or the other, please./p p---/p pSo here’s the deal./p pCPS Energy wants to a href="http://www.cpsenergy.com/About_CPS_Energy/News_Features/News/062909_nuclear_recommendation_NR.asp"add units/a to the a href="http://www.stpnoc.com/"South Texas Project/a, which it co-owns with NRG Energy and Austin Energy:/p blockquote pThe recommendation to the CPS Energy Board of Trustees comes after three years of detailed study of various energy options.#160; It also aligns with the Strategic Energy Plan, CPS Energy’s four-objective roadmap for satisfying future energy requirements./p /blockquote pIn CPS’s view, electricity demand will outstrip supply in its area of Texas (including San Antonio) soon enough, and CPS has already invested heavily in solar, wind and hydro power. So now, it’s time for more nuclear energy./p pWe like the idea (big surprise), but there could certainly be arguments to make against it:/p blockquote p“We are targeting no more than 5 percent bill increases every other year or roughly half that amount annually,” [Interim General Manager Steve Bartley] said.#160; “We’re well aware of the current economic downtown, so we’re trying our best to make this project affordable for our customers.#160; Even if we decide not to participate in STP expansion, we will still need customer bill increases to meet the demands of growth on our system.”#160;#160; /p /blockquote pWe suspect a href="http://www.cpsenergy.com/"CPS/a could charge less without the nuclear units, so a viable argument may be that Texans can’t afford the rate hike. One could also say that CPS’ do-or-die approach to this project is unproductive energy brinksmanship. And that’s just off the top of our heads. We don’t necessarily believe any of it, but they’re valid points of contention./p p---/p pSo we now bring you Energia Mia, a group opposed to any such expansion. South Texas Project has been so- so- well, to be honest, it’s been a safe, reliable neighbor for 20 years. But you have to a href="http://www.energiamia.org/pr_080509.html"start somewhere/a:/p blockquote pCPS has said that 5-8% rate hikes would be needed every two years for the next ten years to pay for more nuclear power. Electric rates could increase nearly 50% as a result./p /blockquote pAh, emthere’s/em our argument. That 50% figure at the end of 10 years seems to come out of thin air and even 25% seems high. But STP let itself in for this one. /p blockquote pquot;CPS wants to use old, outdated technology. Nuclear power is a thing of the past, a dinosaur, and we want San Antonio to instead look toward new technologies and today's energy solutions,quot; said Mariana Ornelas, an active member of AGUA, Aquifer Guardians of Urban Areas./p /blockquote pBy all means, throw mature (but we should note, continually developing) technology overboard. Newer and shinier objects await./p blockquote p“Exposure to radiation can lead to cancer and genetic damage, and nuclear reactors create radioactive waste for which there is no safe storage solution,quot; said community leader and former city council member Patti Radle./p /blockquote pSafe storage is kind of a non-starter – at least for now, used fuel doesn’t leave the plant – but it’s a debate worth having – the rest not so much./p blockquote pquot;CPS will not have any incentive to pursue efficiency if nuclear power is the goal,quot; said David Wells, with the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club. quot;Vast financial resources would go into nuclear power, and then instead of conserving, CPS would be trying to find buyers for the excess power generated.quot;/p /blockquote pWhat? They’d make money to share with ratepayers and stock holders? The horror of it. This one doesn’t make sense. CPS can presumably pursue nuclear energy and energy efficiency – and solar – and wind – and – you get the idea./p pemstrongUpdate (August 12): see the comments. The Sierra Club’s David Wells writes that he wasn’t correctly quoted in the original article and provides his full quote, which belies our “doesn’t make sense” jibe. Our apologies to Mr. Wells if we only intensified his distress. Newspapers can be awful manglers of quotes./strong/em/p p---/p pNow, we should note that nuclear energy is pretty small beans in terms of advocacy intensity. Most arguments pro and con stay at least within hailing distance of the same fact set and the amount of out and out lying about it is vanishingly small. (See the current health care debate for arguments that are, um, counterfactual and prone to emotional overkill.) That said, we could use a hardier debate – STP is winning this one in a walk./p p/p pema href="http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/fnotes/fnEnergy08/nuclear.html"The South Texas Project/a. “acronymSTP/acronym has the lowest production cost reported by nuclear power plants nationwide, at 1.356 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2006. acronymSTP/acronymS’s combined operating, maintenance and fuel expenses were the lowest among plants that report those costs to federal regulators.” And that’s lower than just about any plant of any kind – running costs of nuclear units is what makes them appealing despite their admittedly breathtaking construction costs – hey, Energia Mia should use that one!/em/p pemWe’re only discussing CPS here, but presumably NRG and Austin will weigh in here too. We’ll poke around and see what we see./em/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-3735788560390506636?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div

The little girl who talked about mean signs at the Obama town hall (Dem plant - proof)

a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2313884/posts"Via FreeRepublic:/abr /br /br /blockquotep align="justify"The second person "randomly" selected to ask a question was a young girl called Julia Hall from Malden MA (asks question at 29m:25s). /pp align="justify"br /a href="http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/08/11/HP/R/22002/Pres+Obama+Senators+Hold+Health+Care+Town+Halls.aspx"http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/08/11/HP/R/22002/Pres+Obama+Senators+Hold+Health+Care+Town+Halls.aspx/a/pp align="justify"br /Julia read the following question off a piece of paper: "As I was walking in I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming healthcare. How do kids know what is true and why do people want a new system that can help more of us".br /br /This randomly asked question gave Obama the perfect opportunity to dismiss talk about "death panels that will pull the plug on Grandma" and to blame Republicans for everything. Over on the town hall comments thread AtomicPunk09 discovered someone on facebook who might possibly be Julia's mother and had a photo of her with Obama:br /br /br /a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Kathleen-Manning-Hall/1545820503"http://www.facebook.com/people/Kathleen-Manning-Hall/1545820503/abr /br /All old information and it cannot be proven that Kathleen is Julia's mother, right????br /br /br /Hold on, look who is sitting next to Julia in the video:br /br /br /img src="http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p170/MarkNH/arf/obama-planted-question.jpg" /br /br /br /br /Another "coincidence" is that Julia said she lives in Malden MA and Kathleen Manning Hall's campaign contributions list the occupation "Legal Asst, Looney and Grossman LLP" and a home address in Malden MA:br /br /a href="http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=nameamp;lname=Manning+Hallamp;fname=Kathleen"http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=nameamp;lname=Manning+Hallamp;fname=Kathleen/abr /br /Looks like she donated $636 to Obama in 2008.br /br /br /But wait, there's more:br /br /a href="http://www.city-data.com/elec2/elec-MALDEN-MA.html"http://www.city-data.com/elec2/elec-MALDEN-MA.html/abr /br /This lists donations to Obama of $230 on 6/15/07, $250 on 9/28/07, $500 on 9/30/07, $300 on 3/2/08br /br /a href="http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=locamp;addr=16+APPLETON+STamp;zip=02148"http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=locamp;addr=16+APPLETON+STamp;zip=02148/abr /br /On that link we have the $636 previously mentioned from "Kathleen Manning Hall" but we also have $1355 donated to Obama by "Kathleen Hall, Legal Assistant, Looney amp; Grossman" at the same address.br /br /(as an aside Looney and Grossman loves Democrats - their employees donated $12,101 in total to Democrats and $0 to Republicans)/p/blockquotediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-2529888690251492426?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Government Health Care and "Death Panels" (Just call them "end of life decision panels")

a href="http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/08/there-he-goes-again.html"Tom Maguire .../abr /br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"Somebody call White House flack Linda Douglass at Fishy-1-1 - Mickey Kaus is circulating discouraging arguments suggesting Obama's risky health reform scheme might actually lead to "death panels", and yet again he is relying on Obama's own words:br /br /If, as Harold Pollack argues, "rationing of life-saving or life-extending care" would not really be a priority for the "effectiveness" panels--such as the Obama-endorsed IMAC--then it was all the more stupid to bring the topic up, no? Here's the first graf from a Bloomberg account of an early Obama health care foray back in April:br /April 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.br /br /Gee, where could the misinformed town hall crazies have gotten the idea that Obama was thinking about saving money by denying expensive procedures toward the end of life? ... [via Dish] ... 1:49 P.M./span/blockquotebr /Team Obama insists it's just a LIE, a LIE, I tell you ...br /br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"So Obama "suspects" that the legislative process will produce some sort of independent group that can give non-determinative "guidance" on end-of-life care for the chronically ill, with an eye towards saving money. Just don't call them death panels!/span/blockquotebr /I mean, how else you gonna save money? No hip replacement for you if you're too old! And the young don't need hips and knees and arthritis racked joints replaced. Think of the cost saving! it's mind boggling!br /br /a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/08/12/will-you-won-t-you-be-on-my-death-panel.aspx"And Mickey Kaus opines/a:br /blockquotespan style="color:#3333ff;"Yikes. ... I'm sure the "not determinative" part was very important to Obama. Still! He's talking about a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level. And he thought it would be in the bill that emerges. ... It's also pretty clear that something like the "IMAC" panel is what he has in mind. Whether or not the IMAC would actually do this--Harold Pollack says end-of-life issues are well down the curve-bender's list, for example--Obama thought it would do it. . ./span/blockquotebr /br /Racists.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-7988067026972080740?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Good Luck With That

a href="http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2009/08/11/politico-report-add-santorum-to-potential-presidential-candidate-list/"This could be a chance/a for some profitable InTrade arbitrage.br /br /Although, in fairness, he has a more plausible path to the nomination that Guiliani did...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-8614316703354303081?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Rasmussen: Presidential Approval Index rating of -8

blockquotediv align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"Obama's poll numbers are in free fall, despite the full-throated support of the GCM (Government Controlled Media)br /br /Overall, 50% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove.br /br /The President earns approval from 85% of Democrats while 84% of Republicans disapprove. /spanspan style="color:#3333ff;"strongAs for those not affiliated with either major party, 42% give the President their approval.br //strongbr //spanspan style="color:#3333ff;"strongCongress earns good or excellent reviews from 14%.br //strongbr //spanstrongspan style="color:#3333ff;"In the health care debate, 41% view the town hall protesters favorably while 35% have an unfavorable view. Twenty-five percent (25%) agree with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that health insurance companies are villains. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree./span /strong/div/blockquotebr /Team Obama, the Democracts in Congress, and their willing allies in the SCM are losing the support of the American people as evidenced by the polls and the financial condition of the media.br /br /There is only one answer if you are a community organizer from Chicago, go for the muscle and intimidate the oppostion. Look for events to get hotter and things to turn violent. a href="http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2009/08/man-gets-attacked-for-selling-flags-at.html"Kenneth Gladney was only the first./a Don't think it can't happen here.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-5721455266796222260?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

The Democrats Vs. the Tea Parties Day 8: Taking Stock

Right now, Fox News is carrying a town hall debate held by Arlen Specter in Lebanon, Pa. that is illuminating. First, it's the way all town hall debates should go if those that attend want to make sure that it's killed. So far, there have been fifteen people to ask questions. So far, fourteen have spoken out against the bill and one spoke in favor of it. The questions have been tough and probing. There has been passion but the Senator has been allowed to answer the questions. The questioners raised all sorts of concerns in the health care bill. A teacher said the bill was a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/08/ambiguity-real-house-health-care-bill.html"incomprehensible/a and suggested that all bills be written so that an eighth grader could understand it. One lady said that between the stimulus, cap and trade, and this health care bill the government is taking us on a path toward to socialism. Several folks were concerned that illegal aliens would be a part of the new health care bill and be a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/definitive-dossier-on-house-health-care.html"given free health services/a. Several people were very concerned that the government would be given access to the a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/07/definitive-dossier-on-house-health-care.html"people's financial statements. /aSeveral other people were concerned that the new health care bill would have government paid abortions.br /br /Specter, for his part, has said over and over that there is no Senate bill. He has rejected his support for any bill that gives the government access to people's bank accounts, vague standards, and imposes government funded abortions. As such, he would, if he kept his word, have to vote against HB 3200. One lady summed up what is going on with these town halls when she said this "you awakened a sleeping giant with this out of control government take over". What is clear from this town hall is that none of the folks were part of a mob, astro turfers, or organized by nefarious forces. Anyone that saw any of this particular town hall knows that in Lebanon, Pa. don't fit any of the stereotypes perpetrated by the Democrats and the media.br /br /Meanwhile, Senator Cardin held a town hall meeting yesterday evening that was a lot more combative.br /br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/k4TSCWrfQLkamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/k4TSCWrfQLkhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /Last night on the Panel on Special Report, there was generally agreement among the panel that the behavior at these town hall debates is actually helping the Democrats. This was a point first raised by Stephen Hayes on a href="http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/08/democrats-vs-tea-parties-day-5-changing.html"Sunday/a. I think pundits simply don't get it. The anger is real. The passion is real, and that's because Americans are angry and scared. This is a wholesale rejection of not only the health care bill but frankly the entire agenda coming out of D.C. Of course, the latest polling shows evidence that I am right as public approval for Obama Care continues to be in a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/august_2009/support_for_congressional_health_care_reform_falls_to_new_low"free fall/a. It's now in the low 40's and I said it would get into the 30's before the end of the month.br /br /I have also said that as this develops it will also evolve. I said that some of these folks would wind up being interviewed on television and that's what's starting to happen now. The first is Dr. Brian Hill. He's a urologist, and independent, and he was confronted by Congressman Scott in Georgia. Here he is confronting the Congressman on CNN.br /object height="344" width="425"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/a5i7EgDqY0oamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/a5i7EgDqY0ohl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /This clip is of the man that confronted John Dingell at a town hall debate.br /br /embed id="mediumFlashEmbedded" name="undefined" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://foxnews1.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/foxnews1-foxnews-pub01-live/current/videolandingpage/fncLargePlayer/client/embedded/embedded.swf" width="305" height="275" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#000000" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" quality="high" play="false" scale="noscale" menu="false" salign="LT" scriptaccess="always" wmode="false" flashvars="playerId=videolandingpageamp;playerTemplateId=fncLargePlayeramp;categoryTitle=Health Careamp;referralObject=8052415amp;referralParentPlaylistId=19d7b8500c13fb2a903fb9742d79d71c5d8d78bcamp;referralPlaylistId=07373bea2a547ca71dccc8cfc357419426028f5c"/embedbr /br /So, over the next week, watch for this story to evolve from one that focuses on the passion of the protesters to one that focuses on the specific probing questions and the answers. I will give Specter credit for taking the fire. He took serious fire about two weeks ago at another town hall debate with Secretary Sebelius. Most pols would have cancelled future town halls after taking that much fire. That said, he clearly didn't know much of the details of the House plan. Over and over, he answered specific questions by saying there is no Senate plan yet. There is however a House plan and he clearly doesn't know the details of that plan. I suspect that is the knowledge of almost all politicians about the specifics of the bill. As voters continue to question pols about specifics of the bill, it will become clear that the politicians voting on the bill will know less than the voters themselves.br /br /The riveting story of the Democrats vs. the Tea Parties, as represented by the town hall protesters, continues and continues to evolve. It continues to move full steam ahead toward nailing the final nail in the coffin of this health care reform.br /br /Finally, so far, locally, the only town hall debate is from Rep. Jan Schakowsky. It will be at Niles West High School at 6:30PM on August 31st.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-3948797179056722944?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

D.D, Guttenplan: American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone

American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stonebr /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/"Politics of Culture/abr /br /img src="http://media.us.macmillan.com/jackets/500H/9780374183936.jpg"br /br /Investigative journalism is an endangered species. One of its most renowned and revered purveyors was I.F. Stone, a man who ran his own newspaper and never took advertising. D.D. Guttenplan has written a biography that puts Stone into the context of American history and politics. Will Lewis interviews him.br /br /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc090728american_radical_the"To Listen to the Interview/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-7041303089818735742?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Groothuis Sermon Available On Line

My sermon at West Bowles Community Church, "Christianity in the Marketplace, I" (Acts 17:16-23) is a href="http://www.westbowleschurch.com/flash/"on line at their web page/a. Go to the "Sermon Archive" for July 26, 2009.br /br /I give the second installment on August 2 at 10:00 AM. This covers verses verses 24-34, the meat of Paul's remarkable speech to the philosophers of Athens.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-3096296035552808089?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

Diplomatic Language Changes: Semantics or Policy Shift?

A

How ObamaCare will control cost

div align="justify"Via Powerline:br /br //divblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"At the end of the day there is STILL no way to have all three simultaneously of: (1) universal guaranteed coverage; (2) comprehensive quality and choice; (3) cost control....cannot be done...you get two out of three at most. Clearly the Obamacrats intend on sacrificing (2) since they are massively constrained by deficits and the basic premise of the middle class entitlement state is that it will never cost (you) anything...only "them"..."villains" or the "rich"....so the only choice is limiting choice and quality....and that in turn requires a de facto single payer accomplished through the subterfuge of dictating the terms of "private" insurance, turning them into all but public utilities, engineering the transfer to the "public option" over a relatively short period of time, and then dictating payment terms to providers through rate setting, service bundling and, most important in this context, the MedPAC council which will determine "quality-adjusted effective" treatment protocols. The net effect is that an elderly person won't get a hip replacement or a coronary bypass....and will have nowhere --- in the US --- to turn. /span/pp align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"br /The disingenuousness of the left on this point is breathtaking. Perhaps some are just too stupid to get the point....but the issue is NOT euthanasia, living wills etc....that's a pure straw man however insidious the proposal is and however dishonest they have been in covering it up or describing it. The real issue is the MedPAC council....there won't be any actual "death panel" adjudicating case-by-case....there won't need to be!....the MedPac council will set up criteria and rules, more or less in secrecy....rules determined by "experts" and by design removed from Congress to prevent pressure to approve expensive protocols at the end of life....or for "life unworthy of life"....a faceless bureaucracy with a maze of rules will simply be built into the system....diffused responsibility, nobody accountable, just the way it will be, no one can do anything about it.br /br /That's why they MUST control all provision through a de facto single payer...and effectively outlaw private provision....otherwise it will be seen that treatments are available and that some are "unfairly" grabbing medical "resources"...and they will not be able to control cost with a global budget.br /br /That's the basic issue with Medicare...it's single payer, universal for those over 65, permits unlimited demand and choice....and has no cost controls...and is bankrupting the government while simultaneously through cost-shifting wrecking the private market. Politically, it's the only way to control Medicare costs: fold it into a universal single payer plan with effective global budgeting and cost controls.br /br /Most people can see this or intuit it...and Obama and his minions have been effectively exposed as lying weasels....and liars who mistakenly assume that people are too dumb to figure out what's going on and what their real intentions and plans are.br /br /It's another post but it is truly glorious to see them all hoist on their own petard of Medicare and demonizing the elderly after demagoging SS and Medicare for decades./span/p/blockquotediv align="justify"br /br /Bottom line: no one will tell you that you can't have medical care as you get older. It will the "rules" that will tell doctors and hospitals what treatment is provided and what is not. Pain pills will usher you into the next life./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-2314637912071930460?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Engaging with the electorate

It is unlikely that even the Tories can afford to repeat the Totnes open primary experiment too often. The cost was estimated to be about £50,000. However, there is no doubt that the exercise gave the eventual winner a head start in contesting what is effectively a marginal seat at the next General Election.br /br /That does not mean though that other parties should rule out doing something similar in the future. Indeed the challenge is finding a form of selection that is much more inclusive and representative than the present party-based method whilst, at the same time, being affordable.br /br /a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6742614.ece" target="_blank"David Miliband's idea, published in Tribune/a of widening the party franchise is therefore worth serious consideration. He suggests emulating the model pioneered by the Greek socialist party, Pasok, in which sympathisers can register as “friends” and then take part in selection contests:br /br /em“The traditional political structures of mainstream political parties are dying and our biggest concern is the gap between our membership and our potential voter base,” he writes.br /br /“We need to expand our reach by building social alliances and increasing opportunity for engagement and interaction with our party.”br /br /He adds: “We say we want to listen to our voters, why not a system of registered voters as in the US to create the basis for primaries?”/embr /br /All the major parties have seen a fall in their membership base and this is one way to widen engagement in a structured and affordable manner as well as to restore confidence in politicians by giving people a greater stake in who the candidates are. The Liberal Democrats should not leave it to other parties to take the lead on this.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-5964305154910669146?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

Some Perspective On Universal Health Care and the Founding Fathers

How many times have you heard a Democratic politician or pundit say a href="http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/3/9/18277/26800"something like this/a?br /br /blockquotepAmong the OECD's 30 members -- which include Australia, Austria, Belgium,Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom -- there are only three lacking universal health coverage. The other two happen to be Mexico and Turkey, which have the excuse of being poorer than the rest (and until the onset of the world economic crisis, Mexico was on the way to providing healthcare to all of its citizens). The third, of course, is us."/pp(Here is a href="http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2009doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT00000B6A/$FILE/JT03259332.PDF"the actual report/a from the OECD web site)br /br /"The story gets worse as the details emerge. Although the public share of health expenditure in the United States is much lower than any other OECD country except Mexico, the public expenditure on healthcare is much higher per capita than in most OECD countries. So we pay a lot more in taxes devoted to medical care -- not including insurance premiums, co-payments, fees, and other health costs -- than taxpayers in those 27 countries that have universal coverage. Our public expenditure provides coverage only for the elderly and some of the poor (through Medicaid and the SCHIP program for children) while other countries provide universal coverage while spending less."br //p/blockquotebr /br /Let's think about this for a minute. The U.S. doesn't have universal health insurance coverage and many pundits and Democratic politicians think this is bad. Isn't having health insurance a choice? If it's a choice what does it say about all those nations that have universal coverage. It means that there is no choice.br /br /This country was founded on liberty. It was founded on the principle that the government would leave the citizenry alone and only performing the basic functions of protecting the citizens. Now, we bemoan the fact that the U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn't have universal coverage. Of course, universal coverage means forced coverage.br /br /What would the founding fathers think of someone proclaiming that the lack of "universal health care" in the U.S. is a bad thing? Health insurance wasn't even a creation when the Revolutionary War was fought. Now, some politician thinks that it should not only be a right but a demand of the citizens. In fact, anyone that views our nation as the only industrialized without universal coverage as a bad thing knows very little about the principles that this nation was founded on.br /br /This nation was founded on the principle of liberty. Health insurance should be as available and cheap as possible. It should not be mandated. It should NOT be paid for by the taxes of someone else. That infringes on the liberty of those being taxed. Anyone that looks at our place in the world, as the only industrialized nation without universal health care, and thinks that's a bad thing simply has no idea what this country was founded on.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-8589921342364534774?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

Capitol Hill Democrats Have Met Their Enemy and It Is Them

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /Earlier this week, I asked a veteran Washington-based Democratic political operative who has worked for more than his share of liberals whether he had seen any indication that grass-roots “progressives” were getting angry with the party’s performance on Capitol Hill and were starting to make their anger known. br /br /“No. No. Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “Right now we are just happy to be in the majority. We were out of power for a long time,” he laughed. “But it will come; it will come,” sighed the Washington veteran, looking as if he might like either a glass of scotch or at least a couple of aspirin.br /br /Twenty-four hours later, I was interviewing a reliably liberal Democratic candidate running in 2010 in a swing state. I asked him what he will say when his formidable Republican opponent argues that the country doesn’t need yet more Democrats in Washington, D.C. — that it needs more officeholders who will act as a check on President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress.br /br /“I’ll say that if you look at what has been happening in Congress right now, we appear to have plenty of Democrats who are acting as checks on Democrats in Washington,” he answered with a smile.br /br /Rattle off names such as Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) or Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) to a member of Democratic House or Senate leadership, and they are likely to think, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”br /br /Democratic Blue Dogs and deficit hawks are showing their muscle right now. Whether it’s out of principle or merely a political reflection of the president’s loss of support on health care among independent voters in a number of recent surveys, moderates in the president’s own party are now driving the bus.br /br /The Democratic grass roots so far have been patient with Congress, but at some point that patience may wear out.br /br /Few people outside of the political class understand how Capitol Hill works, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many Democrats around the country assumed that a 60-seat Senate, an overwhelmingly Democratic House and a Democratic president would pass a health care bill with a public insurance option rather easily.br /br /Ultimately, the president is likely to get a health care bill that he will sign. No bill means broken promises by both the White House and the Congressional leadership, and with the healthy majorities that Democrats have on Capitol Hill, blaming Republicans will almost certainly not work, no matter how damaged the GOP brand currently is.br /br /But it is increasingly obvious — indeed it has been rather clear for at least the past couple of weeks — that the final health care reform product won’t be what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, would prefer. Nor will it be the bill that Obama would write, if he had the power to do so.br /br /Still, the president is likely to hail passage of any bill as a historic achievement, taking credit for “the most dramatic health care reform in the nation’s history,” or words to that effect. It really doesn’t matter exactly what is and what is not in the bill. The president will have to claim victory for producing “change” no matter the specifics.br /br /The key for Democrats is how much discontent will be caused by a bill that disappoints, maybe even angers, the party’s more liberal wing.br /br /Will activists be so happy to get anything that they swallow hard and smile even if the final bill lacks a pure public insurance plan option? Will they accept the president’s likely assessment of the final product, when he says that the final bill is a huge step toward universal coverage and controlling cost?br /br /The president continues to draw strong support from Democrats, particularly the most liberal in his party. Gallup’s massive mid-July aggregated weekly tracking numbers show Obama’s job approval at 92 percent among Democrats and 95 percent among liberal Democrats.br /br /Both groups apparently have great confidence in him and are likely to give his interpretation of the final bill great weight. But between now and final passage, will the voices on the Democratic left get louder and more angry? And if they do, what will that mean for the rest of the Obama agenda?br /br /The division within the Democratic Party has Republicans feeling almost giddy. The health care debate, following the stimulus bill, the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill, the auto industry bailout and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has resurrected two issues, spending and taxes, dear to GOP hearts. And many Republicans are now confident that the pendulum is swinging back to them.br /br /These are interesting times politically, even if Democrats do control all of the levers of power in Washington, D.C.br /br /a href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_13/rothenberg/37207-1.html"emThis column/em/aem first appeared in /ema href="http://www.rollcall.com/"emRoll Call/em/aem on July 27, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission./emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-9014232215637853832?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Hall of Fame Game Live Blog

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitfLYqWEGtoz0jk5Qg6pK4Npsi1MHw6nvp4bvtcntY95rCF-HPdQ05gNaVVfYzqhXvOLRywkc1SowIMldo7PIlRych8PMp_ZQNCLhC0Mv9kRjEkEeR0Y0T_Cc9lf36K_bL6ujOih5n8t4w/s1600-h/Class_700b.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 196px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitfLYqWEGtoz0jk5Qg6pK4Npsi1MHw6nvp4bvtcntY95rCF-HPdQ05gNaVVfYzqhXvOLRywkc1SowIMldo7PIlRych8PMp_ZQNCLhC0Mv9kRjEkEeR0Y0T_Cc9lf36K_bL6ujOih5n8t4w/s400/Class_700b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368122921669980050" border="0" //abr /As I mentioned on Friday, I will be live blogging the first preseason game over at a href="http://12stepdrop.com/"12StepDrop/a tonight at 8pm. We decided we might try something a little different and embed the viewer here as well. It will have a fantasy slant, but if you are watching a Buffalo-Tennessee preseason game, chances are you play a little fantasy ...br /br /If you haven't been by 12StepDrop yet, checkout the a href="http://12stepdrop.com/chatter/"Chatter/a section. It filters out all the useless tweets by the players and shows you just their thoughts on camp and their teams. Just what the internet needs, more fantasy data.br /br /See you back here at 8 ...br /br /iframe src="http://embed.scribblelive.com/6/1/3/8/" style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" frameborder="0" height="800" width="450"/iframediv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-7463526901110327225?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=A_gEy3UVWtY:mLuqrVjMdz4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=A_gEy3UVWtY:mLuqrVjMdz4:63t7Ie-LG7Y"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=A_gEy3UVWtY:mLuqrVjMdz4:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=A_gEy3UVWtY:mLuqrVjMdz4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?i=A_gEy3UVWtY:mLuqrVjMdz4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a
/div

Beat Me in St. Louis

div align="justify"Mark Steyn on the beating that the MSM is covering u p.br /br //divblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"As Jim Treacher says:br /br //p/spanblockquotep align="justify"span style="color:#3333ff;"If Kenneth Gladney was an Obama supporter, right now he'd be more famous than Rodney King./span/p/blockquotep align="justify"br /br /span style="color:#3333ff;"Gotta love this "post-racial America": Democrat union heavies can beat up a black guy using racial epithets and leave him in a wheelchair unable to speak — and happily (unlike, say, a black professor being asked for picture ID) it's not "symbolic" of anything at all. Not a Sharpton in sight to speak up for him: Mr. Gladney's only shot at fame is an entry in The Guinness Book of Records under "Least Famous Black Hate-Crime Victim In America."/span/p/blockquotediv align="justify"br /br /Of course Mort Kondracke will not take notice. He's too busy castigating impolite people at Town Hall meetings. And Charles Krauthammer doesn't believe that this will lead to a backlash because ... it's what union thugs do ... and the NY Times will not take notice. /divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7158917-9145012423679044132?l=moneyrunner.blogspot.com'//div

Sizing Up the 2010 Senate Contests in the Summer of 2009

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /Six months ago, the 2010 Senate battlefield looked relatively bare, with a few obvious skirmishes mostly in states with GOP incumbents. Three months later, the outlook had brightened dramatically for Democrats, largely the result of a number of GOP retirements and solid Democratic recruiting on those open seats.br /br /But now, as the dog days of summer begin, the landscape has shifted again, this time improving significantly for Republicans.br /br /Democrats no longer have the momentum they once possessed. Even more important, signs of some Democratic vulnerability have appeared, giving the National Republican Senatorial Committee opportunities to shoot at, rather than forcing it to play an entirely defensive game, as it has the past two cycles.br /br /Fifteen months before the midterms, Democrats have major problems in two states — Illinois and Connecticut — while a third, Nevada, remains a potential headache. Republicans, on the other hand, have serious vulnerabilities in four states — Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio — and potential problems in two others. But of late, even those Republican vulnerabilities look less daunting than they once did.br /br /The announcement by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) that she will seek re-election rather than run for the Senate (or governor) immediately boosted Republican prospects in what remains a very difficult state for the GOP. But Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) should be a formidable candidate, while Democrats have a field that is less than intimidating.br /br /And in Connecticut, veteran Sen. Chris Dodd (D) has aired multiple TV ads in an attempt to remind Constitution State voters what he has accomplished and what he stands for — an open acknowledgment that he has work to do to repair his image. Republicans now worry that Dodd, who just announced he will have surgery for prostate cancer, will retire rather than seek re-election, thereby damaging their prospects of winning the seat.br /br /Democrats have two formidable candidates in Kentucky, while Republicans recently received a gift from Sen. Jim Bunning (R) when the endangered two-term incumbent announced that he would not seek a third term. That means Secretary of State Trey Grayson will likely be the GOP nominee, dramatically increasing the chances that Republicans can retain the seat.br /br /Former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R) is moving toward a Senate bid in the Granite State’s open-seat contest, and while she is not yet a proven campaigner, insiders who know her speak effusively about her abilities and appeal. Democrats once viewed their likely nominee, Rep. Paul Hodes, as a solid favorite to win the seat, but the race now looks like a tossup, at best, for Democrats.br /br /Meanwhile President Barack Obama’s sliding popularity is at least a troubling sign for Democrats in both Missouri and Ohio, where Republican Senate candidates may benefit from the public’s growing concerns about federal spending, possible tax hikes and bigger government.br /br /Republicans still lack a top-tier challenger to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) recent personal troubles certainly don’t boost Republican prospects next year. Still, as the president’s point man in the Senate, Reid simply makes himself a juicy target in the midterm elections.br /br /Democrats have potential opportunities in North Carolina and Louisiana, but they still have work to do in both. The party has not yet recruited a serious threat to Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and while Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) is widely rumored to be leaning toward a challenge to Sen. David Vitter (R), the state’s fundamentals and the midterm environment raise questions about the viability of the challenge.br /br /Republicans have three longer-shot opportunities that shouldn’t yet be completely discounted — Arkansas, Colorado and Pennsylvania — though in each case the Democratic incumbent has a considerable advantage. Pennsylvania, in particular, is intriguing, since a truly nasty Democratic primary seems likely and the GOP nominee, former Rep. Pat Toomey, is not without appeal.br /br /Eleven Republican and 12 Democratic Senate seats up next year now look safe. But if Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) decides to run for the Senate, as some GOP insiders now believe he will, another of those safe Democratic seats suddenly becomes a tossup.br /br /Republicans would be wise not to celebrate just yet. Their diminished vulnerability is, in part, the result of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s leaving the GOP, which cost them a seat that they probably were going to lose next year. And with Democrats controlling 60 of the Senate’s 100 seats going into next year’s elections, any additional Republican losses would add to the party’s existing woes.br /br /The widely expected resignation of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in the fall, which will lead to a special election in the first half of 2010, also creates some uncertainty. While Republicans will have a strong nominee and the NRSC will spend what it takes to hold the seat, the special election is at least a major distraction for the national GOP.br /br /If politics is about momentum and message, then the outlook for ’10 has changed considerably over the past couple of months. Democrats still have a wealth of opportunities and some advantages, but Republicans now have momentum and an improving issue mix. For the first time this cycle, I can imagine a scenario where Democrats do not gain Senate seats in 2010.br /br /a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_17/rothenberg/37443-1.html"This column/aspan style="font-style: italic;" first appeared in /spana style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com"Roll Call/aspan style="font-style: italic;" on August 3, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-8724781095903172515?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Bookworm: Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies

Amitav Ghosh - emSea of Poppies/embr /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/"Bookworm/abr /Host: Michael Silverblattbr /br /img src="http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/ebooks/product/400/000/000/000/000/096/309/400000000000000096309_s4.jpg"br /br /With Sea of Poppies, a trilogy begins! Few know that the opium that fueled the Opium Wars was grown and processed in India. Ghosh locates the heart of a pernicious global network — drugs, slavery, indentured servitude, profiteering on a previously unimagined scale — in the innocent poppy blossom.br /br /a href="http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw090108amitav_ghosh"To Listen to the Interview/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-465310884902839603?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Now Also Appearing at ID...

In addition to my duties at LGM, a href="http://www.informationdissemination.net/2009/08/new-contributor-alert.html"I will now/a periodically be blogging at a href="http://www.informationdissemination.net/"Information Dissemination/a. The focus there will be more maritime oriented, and a bit more policy wonkish.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-9104123558940476213?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Degree of Difficulty

This dude's job a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8096137.stm"kind of sucks. /a br /blockquoteIf you think you face an uphill challenge at work today, spare a thought for Farah Ahmed Omar, the man in charge of Somalia's navy. He has neither boats nor equipment and admits he has not been to sea for 23 years.br /br /The interim government does not control much of the 3,000-km (1,860-mile) Somali coastline and then there is the headache of plentiful pirates. Mr. Omar said he was first put in charge of the navy in 1982, but speaking to the BBC by phone from the capital, Mogadishu, he did not sound too daunted by the task ahead. /blockquotebr /Responsibility without power... Via a href="http://warisboring.com/?p=2464"Axe./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-5339203470888210067?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Rachel Maddow: Exposing the PR Firms Behind the Fake "Grass Roots" Anti-Healthcare Movement

I just watched this for the second time--this is essential viewing for a mapping of the method in which corporate culture is propagated through "astro turf" groups advocating as populist movements.br /br /Very simple, notice the way she maps out who "supports" the groups and who "runs" them and what that says about the ideological/organizational impulse of the architects of a movement. In other words the "ideas"... the money... and the organization... is directed by multi-millionaire, neo-conservative, corporate executives. br /br /Follow the money...br /br /object width="400" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ct--N3hJfxscolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcffeature=player_embeddedfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ct--N3hJfxscolor1=0xb1b1b1color2=0xcfcfcffeature=player_embeddedfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="400" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-8019415537560442265?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Danger Then, Danger Now

a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdG0fQD4d6Zu745XnrY4KKX5wZXLTeFl-KMev9cXHVdaZpNhy-5hAjFIR32E5nBISMiaKtW2rFerJp4V6Lt-_lEaQ8oUrLieu8UdsuCPpxBH5vGqDuC6OsoZ9-2aMypoEseFilwRknql6P/s1600-h/images.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366723204671130290" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 130px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 125px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdG0fQD4d6Zu745XnrY4KKX5wZXLTeFl-KMev9cXHVdaZpNhy-5hAjFIR32E5nBISMiaKtW2rFerJp4V6Lt-_lEaQ8oUrLieu8UdsuCPpxBH5vGqDuC6OsoZ9-2aMypoEseFilwRknql6P/s400/images.jpg" border="0" //abr /divListen to a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs"Ronald Reagan warning of socialized medicine several decades ago./a The last minute should give you chills, because we are now at the moment Reagan feared--the imposition of socialism and the obliteration of the American tradition of liberty./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-2307096191057542410?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

Educating America About a Judge and Other Summer Follies

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /br /a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_8/rothenberg/36846-1.html?type=printer_friendly"This column/aspan style="font-style: italic;" first appeared in /spana style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/"Roll Call/aspan style="font-style: italic;" on July 16, 2009./spanbr /br /In a stunning statement Monday sure to affect her confirmation prospects, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor pledged her “fidelity to the law.” That must have been regarded as big news to the folks over at the Washington Post, since that was the bold headline on Page One of Tuesday’s newspaper.br /br /Tomorrow’s headline in the newspaper may well be “Dog Bites Mailman,” or possibly, “Wednesday Followed Tuesday.”br /br /The New York Times apparently wasn’t as excited by Sotomayor’s stunning admission. Its headline, “Judge Focuses on Rule of Law at the Hearings,” was more matter-of-fact, though the newspaper’s first paragraph noted that the nominee said that a judge’s job “is not to make law” but “to apply the law.” Wow.br /br /The Boston Globe’s Tuesday headline about the hearings was a straightforward “Sotomayor Makes Her Case,” but the subhead was “Nominee Pledges Allegiance to the Law.” Double wow. Just once, mind you, I’d like to hear a Supreme Court nominee refuse to pledge allegiance to the law. Imagine if Sotomayor, for example, had said that the law was a bucket of warm spit. Now that would have been newsworthy.br /br /One of the Senators who introduced the nominee, New York’s Charles Schumer (D), crawled way out on a limb to suggest that the judge “puts rule of law above everything else.” (Personally, I put a flawless third-to-second-to-first double play or my mother’s chopped chicken livers above the rule of law, but I suppose that disqualifies me from ever being on the Supreme Court.)br /br /So let’s see, the big news is that Sotomayor is going to follow the law, as opposed, I guess, to following the editorials of the New York Times, the public opinion polls or the sentiments of bloggers over at Daily Kos or RedState. My, that’s a relief. I really was afraid that Sotomayor might call someone at random from the Cedar Rapids phone book to ask how to vote on a case.br /br /We are told repeatedly that each confirmation is an opportunity to teach the American public about the political process and the law, but as far as I can tell, this confirmation, like other recent ones before it, will be little more than an opportunity for Senators to ramble on about their own views and for the nominee to duck and dodge her way to confirmation.br /br /The fact of the matter is that you could ask anyone currently on the Supreme Court and they, too, would say they had “fidelity to the law,” are “impartial” and “apply the law,” not make it. And yet, they can have totally different views of cases and produce wildly different opinions.br /br /No judge in his right mind who wanted to be confirmed by the Senate would testify that he planned to “make law” from the bench. But it’s done all the time. Call it “interpreting the Constitution” if you’d like, but many Supreme Court decisions have the effect of creating rights or obligations that did not exist.br /br /For Sotomayor, the confirmation process is now about not making mistakes, not being too clear about where she stands. If this is a “teaching moment,” it’s a lesson about platitudes, vagueness and glittering generalities. By all means, let’s cover it 24/7.br /br /The Sotomayor coverage is only the latest spectacle. This has been one of the weirder summers in recent memory, and we still have many more weeks ahead of us for other strange developments to materialize.br /br /The media’s frenzy over South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R) “disappearance” and subsequent acknowledgement of an affair with a woman in Argentina could have been short-circuited only by something as unexpected as entertainer Michael Jackson’s death, an ending that was as bizarre as the rest of his life was.br /br /Since I expect Members of Congress to try to politicize everything and to interject themselves into every pop culture development, I wasn’t shocked when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) announced that she would introduce a resolution honoring the late singer.br /br /Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) quickly snuffed out that idea. That’s too bad. I would have loved to hear the House debate whether to pass that resolution. In fact, I would have paid to hear it. (Maybe that’s a way for Congress to raise additional revenue: pay-per-view Congressional floor debates over mind-bogglingly silly resolutions. Of course, C-SPAN might object.)br /br /Then there was Sarah Palin, who didn’t merely announce that she wouldn’t seek re-election; she announced that she was stepping down from her post almost immediately. After she said something about lame ducks and dead fish, she went fishing.br /br /Conservatives were outraged at the criticism of the Alaska governor, even though if the same thing had been done by a liberal Democrat they would have raked that person over the coals. And liberals slammed the governor for her action, even though if it had been done by a liberal Democrat they would have defended her just like the conservatives did.br /br /Just another summer in your nation’s capital. Health care reform, anyone?br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-356373662374733429?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Government Motors Has a Great PR Day

If you've ever been to an auto show, you're likely to see some very cool concept cars. For instance, back in 1986, I saw a car with a map that could give directions in it. It was quite a concept back in the 1980's. At this past year's auto show, Saturn had a concept car that was a hybrid that runs on battery and natural gas. This car was still year's away from being on the market. The thing about concept cars is that the technology is always fascinating. Can you imagine how innovative it was in the mid 1980's to see a car that could give you directions?br /br /So, it was a bit puzzling that everyone is going so ga ga over the a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/32370001"GM Volt/a.br /br /blockquotea href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/mtlqq"General Motors/aa href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/mtlqq" said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the mileage of the current champion, the /aa href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/tm"Toyota/aa href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/mtlqq" Prius/blockquote/abr /br /Yes, I realize that the number quoted is eye popping, but so was a map that could you anywhere in the mid 1980's. Yet, I don't remember the hoopla surrounding that concept car when it rolled out of the auto show in 1986.br /br /It's true that the Volt isn't so much a concept car but one that is near ready for production. Of course, this same Volt has been ready for production for the last four years. In fact, at the last three auto shows I attended, the Volt was supposed to be out the very next year. Now, it's once again scheduled to be officially rolled out at the end of 2010.br /br /Yet, a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/11/wow-chevy-volt-to-get-230-mpg-in-the-city/"the /ahoopla a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124998537270122333.html"surrounding /athis a href="http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/shifting-gears/2009/08/11/chevy-volt230-mpg"announcement/a has a href="http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2009/08/chevrolet_volt.html"been /afiercea href="http://www.hybridcars.com/fuel-economy/chevy-volt-230-mpg-rating-what-does-it-mean-25986.html" and /aoverwhelming. A spokesperson for Center for American Progress called the Volt a "game changer". Here's a car that won't be out for a year and a half at a minimum and it's being characterized as a "game changer". In fact, the success of the Volt is integral to the success of the Obama administration. Its out of this world gas mileage, not verified yet by the EPA, fits into an overall strategy of turning us green, energy efficient, and away from oil. Its success would mean that GM would be successful and thus would make the government's takeover of GM be seen as a success.br /br /So, it's not surprising that the Center for American Progress, run by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, would consider this car the "game changer". Don't get me wrong, I hope the Volt is everything that they say it is. That's still far from clear. First, it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 per year. Second, a plug in is not exactly perfect for everyone. Third, at the last auto show, the numbers were significantly more conservative than they are now. What I don't want is for news to turn into propaganda. A car still a year and a half, minimum, from being ready for sale shouldn't get this kind of hoopla. All concept cars have innovative technologies and so the Volt is no different. What's different is that the Volt is owned in part by the government, and it's part of an overall vision that the administration has for the industry and the country. I hope that's not what's driving the hoopla surrounding the roll out of this news. The hoopla seems to be way over done. After all, so far it's made exactly ZERO dollars for GM. Maybe, we should all temper the excitement until we have an actual car to examine.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3098264341625381422-4773807882056623539?l=theeprovocateur.blogspot.com'//div

My favourite blogposts and nominations

As part of the a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/lib-dem-blog-of-the-year-awards-2009-15844.html" target="_blank"Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards 2009/a Liberal Democrat Voice have set us all a href="http://www.libdemvoice.org/ldv-weekend-meme-your-favourite-blogpost-15847.html" target="_blank"a meme to list our favourite posts since 1 September 2008/a so as to assist others in nominating for the category of best posting on a Lib Dem blog.br /br /I do not believe that I have anything on this blog of sufficient quality to compete in this category and cannot come anywhere near reaching the level of a href="http://fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/my-inner-disgusted-colonel/" target="_blank"last year's winner from Alix Mortimer/a but nevertheless I have trawled my blog and found a few that may be worth reading through again:br /br /First up a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/09/uniqueness-of-welsh-liberal-democrats.html" target="_blank"from September 2008 is this post/a in response to a BBC journalist who blogged in Welsh about the Liberal Democrats in which he repeated almost verbatim every myth and smear directed at my party by our opponents as if they were fact. I was irked to say the least:br /br /emIf there is a consensus in Wales it is not a liberal one. It is a paternalistic, state-knows-best, politically-correct blanket, smothering individuality and innovation. The Welsh Liberal Democrats have tolerated and co-operated with this view for too long and in doing so we have allowed our values to slip. It is for this reason that Vaughan Roderick is fundamentally wrong. By embracing our liberalism we can underline our distinctiveness and break that consensus once and for all./embr /br /In the same month I was tempted into responding to an anonymous comment a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-regional-am-do.html" target="_blank"to outline precisely what it is that a Regional Assembly Member does/a:br /br /emOf course none of this will satisfy those who want rid of me for their own reasons or just believe that the Assembly is a waste of money and should be abolished. Being a full time politician is not like any other job that I have done. It is challenging and it is hard work. I am often tired but that is something I have learnt to live with, because whenever I feel that I cannot go on something comes along to make it all worthwhile and that is normally news that a constituent I have been helping has won their appeal, got the house they have been trying for or just had their problem sorted out thanks to my intervention./embr /em/embr /emAt the end of the day helping people is what I am there to do and nothing beats the feeling when it all works out for the best./embr /br /In November 2008 we had just started the contest for leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/11/breath-of-fresh-air.html" target="_blank"I set out my stall as a supporter of Kirsty Williams/a:br /br /emThe one advantage Kirsty does have is her ability to unite the group behind her. By instinct she is a conciliator and has always been at the centre of efforts to resolve disagreements within the group. In fact the present leader relies on her to do this job as he is not comfortable with it himself./embr /br /In December 2008 I courted controversy by inviting the poet Patrick Jones to read his poetry at the Welsh Assembly after the launch of his new book was cancelled by Waterstones due to protests by Christian fundamentalists. a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-welsh-tory-leader-democrat.html" target="_blank"This blog entry recorded what happened/a. For some reason the excellent Western Mail video has been deleted by YouTube:br /br /emToday was a good day for democracy in Wales. Patrick Jones came to the Welsh Assembly to read from his controversial book of poems, ‘Darkness Is Where The Stars Are’, whilst 250 Christians sang and prayed outside.br //embr /In January 2009 there was a a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-are-plaid-cymru-for.html" target="_blank"more partisan blog asking 'what Plaid Cymru are for'/a as well as a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/01/fighting-for-jobs.html" target="_blank"a more routine post/a dealing with some of the day to day work that I undertake as an Assembly Member.br /br /I have written numerous posts on the proposed referendum to give the Assembly full law-making powers in the fields of responsibility defined by Part Four of the Government of Wales Act 2006. This one however, a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/03/campaigning-for-yes-vote.html" target="_blank"in March 2009/a is the closest I have come to being able to define what is at stake in that referendum and why claims that we are asking for full law-making powers is just playing into the hands of the 'No' campaign:br /br /emWe will not be going so far as to create a Scottish Parliament-type of institution nor will we be even going as far as the Richard Commission envisaged, what we will be doing is voting 'yes' to an effective law-making government that is accountable solely to the electorate for delivering its democratically mandated manifesto./embr /br /Oh, yes and from the same month a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/03/salome-yn-gymraeg-sarcasm-warning.html" target="_blank"a comment on the sort of cultural imperialism we have to put up with in Wales/a whenever a London-based journalists are forced to cross the Severn Bridge:br /br /emIt must be really difficult working for the Guardian, especially when the editor insists that his reporters abandon their safe desks in the heart of the English metropolis and rough it in the provinces. If he did it more often then the paper's arts correspondents might discover that Britain has a rich and diverse linguistic and cultural tradition, not all of which is delivered through the medium of the English language./embr /br /In April the Welsh Liberal Democrats exposed the hypocrisy of Labour and Plaid Cymru Assembly Members in speaking on behalf of students and lecturers against cuts in further education when they in fact voted for the measures. I blogged on it a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/04/hypocrisy-on-further-education.html" target="_blank"here/a and our very effective video can be found a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/04/hyprocrite-plaid-and-labour-protesting.html" target="_blank"here/a:br /br /emToday, there was a well-attended demonstration outside the Senedd against these cuts. A number of backbench Government Assembly Members spoke in support of the protestors including Helen Mary Jones, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, Alun Davies and Joyce Watson. They told the protestors that they opposed the cuts in further education. It was a Damoscene conversion.br /br /On 11 March the Welsh Liberal Democrats tabled a motion to Plenary that read: the National Assembly for Wales calls on the Welsh Assembly Government to re-examine its financial support for post-16 education. Amongst those voting against that motion were Helen Mary Jones, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, Alun Davies and Joyce Watson.br /br /The sheer hypocrisy of their stance is breathtaking.br //embr /In June 2009 I a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-we-should-not-ban-bnp-from-our.html" target="_blank"blogged in support of Nick Cohen in the Observer on why the BNP should not be banned from our classrooms/a:br /br /emObjectionable as they are the BNP are a legitimate party. We must fight them by exposing the bankruptcy of their ideas, by putting in place solutions to the problems they exploit and by campaigning hard on the issues in the communities they are targeting. Their creed has no place in the classroom but teachers must be judged on their behaviour and their teaching methods not on the labels they wear./embr /br /Finally, a href="http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2009/07/those-dodgy-immigrants.html" target="_blank"in July/a I posted on the threat to biodiversity from the importation of plants and species into a foreign environment:br /br /emMeanwhile, the Sun reports on another troublesome immigrant. They say that Britain is being invaded by killer chipmunks. We are told that the animals, who are described as vicious, disease-riddled rodents, have escaped or been released into the wild by traders or domestic owners terrified of infection. In addition the UK is apparently on high alert in case a wave of the vermin, which have wreaked havoc in France, pours through the Channel Tunnel.br /br /The chipmunks are an ideal target for The Sun because of their promiscuity. The females can have up to 16 babies a year, so the population will be growing fairly rapidly. If they could claim benefits then the story would amount to a 'perfect storm' for the paper. /embr /br /The question as to who is going to win the prize of Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year is already the subject of much speculation on the blogosphere and on Twitter. There is consensus that three bloggers in particular are in the running. These are a href="http://charlottegore.com/" target="_blank"Charlotte Gore/a, a href="http://markreckons.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Mark Reckons/a and a href="http://himmelgartencafe.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Costigan Quist/a. However there are many more excellent Liberal Democrat blogs out there including a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Liberal England/a, a href="http://sarabedford.com/blog/" target="_blank"Sara Bedford/a, a href="http://linlithgow-libdems.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Stephen Glenn/a, a href="http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/" target="_blank"Jenny Rigg/a and a href="http://janewatkinson.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"Jane Watkinson/a to name but a few. It is a crowded field of exceeding high quality and I have no idea who might win. though I nominated Charlotte Gore just because she dropped so many hints all over the place.br /br /Last year I won the award for Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office, it is still on my mantlepiece. That is another tough field though I have nominated a href="http://blogs.myspace.com/adriansandersmp" target="_blank"Adrian Sanders/a as an MP who has been blogging for some time on My Space, who has a loyal following, is not afraid to innovate and take risks and who deserves some recognition for his work.br /br /I would also like to see the new Welsh Liberal Democrat collaborative blog a href="http://www.freedomcentral.org.uk/" target="_blank"Freedom Central/a get shortlisted in the category of Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st September 2008), however I would not expect it to win.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Update:/span aftera target="_blank" href="http://charlottegore.com/2009/08/09/top-5-tips-for-politicians.html" this post by Charlotte Gore/a I am seriously reconsidering my support for her to be blog of the year on behalf of kittens everywhere.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8266684-7203297425971963536?l=peterblack.blogspot.com'//div

An Argument For Localism?

a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090810/us_time/08599191496100"Horrible stuff/a:br /br /blockquotebr /The bountiful harvest of California strawberries, melons, grapes, peaches and nectarines overflows the nation's summer tables. But that luscious crop mostly emerges thanks to farm workers who labor in flat fields under a scorching sun - and has a price higher than the grocery-store bill. Every year many farm workers become sick, and some die. Typical of the fatalities was Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who was just 17. In May 2008, she died after picking grapes in Merced County for nine hours in 95-degree heat. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended her funeral and promised to do more to protect workers./blockquotebr /br /I thought about excising the black comedy of the last line, but thought I should leave it in. Schwarzenegger may like the idea of protecting farm workers in theory, but if it might require a marginal increase in tax revenues to enforce the law, I think he'll quickly forget the whole thing. Priorities, you know...div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1373524026747954691?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

Baitullah Mehsud, Tehrik-i-Taliban Leader: Is He or Isn’t He?

A

Another Obama Disaster

Read this a href="http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/07/an_open_letter_to_president_ob.html"open letter to Obama on his "science czar" John span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Holdren/span./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14410967-335284048486760840?l=theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com'//div

It’s Time for All to Recharge Their Batteries

By Stuart Rothenbergbr /br /If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the photograph on the cover of this newspaper’s July 28 edition is worth an entire library.br /br /The photo, showing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) looking straight ahead in a trance-like state and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), slightly out of focus, standing just behind her, is a modern political version of “American Gothic,” the famous 1930 Grant Wood painting.br /br /But it’s more than that. It perfectly captures where the country and the Congress are after the first six months of the Barack Obama administration.br /br /Almost every time that I have seen Pelosi either in person or on TV since she became Speaker, she has looked bright-eyed, often with a big smile on her face. Like Hoyer, her deputy and sometimes adversary, she is an energetic legislator who clearly relishes the spotlight and the day-to-day grind of politics.br /br /But the Roll Call photograph reveals a very different side of the Speaker — as a 69-year-old woman who looks just plain worn out. Hoyer, who turned 70 in June, looks as serious and as fatigued at Pelosi. Together, they are a couple of senior citizens who have had an unusually hectic six months.br /br /It has been 11 months since the nation’s financial services industry began to implode, leading to a dramatic increase in government intervention in the banking sector and then the automobile industry.br /br /During that time, we’ve had a presidential election and inauguration, multiple bailouts, a massive economic stimulus package and a Supreme Court vacancy and nominee. We’ve also had multiple developing political scandals featuring Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a close Pelosi ally.br /br /Then there has been the cacophony of chatter about cap-and-trade legislation, health insurance and health care reform, taxes, and spending. And I didn’t even mention Cabinet appointees who dropped out, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Bernie Madoff, Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney.br /br /The White House has been in “crisis” mode for the past six months, in part as a way to ram controversial legislation through Congress. But while that strategy helped bring swift passage of the stimulus bill, it has lost much of its steam.br /br /Both legislators and many in the public are simply tired of all of the chaos, and waiting an extra month or two or three to get the best health care bill possible doesn’t seem like a huge price to pay. And, of course, it isn’t — except that delay increases the chances that Republicans will be able to derail the entire package.br /br /One of the problems Democrats now face, and this includes the strategists at the White House, is that there have been so many estimates, promises, warnings, deadlines and projections that it’s hard to take any of them very seriously at this point.br /br /Does anybody really believe the president when he talks about how many jobs will be “saved” or created by the passage of a particular bill? Does anyone really know whether the Congressional Budget Office’s projections about savings (or the lack of savings) from a House Democratic health care bill are on the money? Would any sensible person really believe projections coming out of the Center for American Progress on the left or the Heritage Foundation on the right?br /br /Often I don’t know what to believe, so I don’t believe any of them. And I’m willing to bet that a lot of Americans feel the same way.br /br /It’s certainly not that voters have any greater faith in the Republicans these days. Polling doesn’t show dramatically increased confidence in the GOP or in Republican leaders.br /br /It’s simply that all of the activity of the first six months of the Obama administration has created enough skepticism and doubt around the country and on Capitol Hill to make things much harder for the president and Congressional leaders than things were in February or March.br /br /Democrats continue to have a couple of considerable advantages. While the president’s job approval numbers have slipped, they remain good. And he is still a strong communicator. Voters still have greater confidence in the Democratic Party than in the GOP on most of the key issues of the day — though no longer on the deficit and taxes.br /br /A month away from Washington, D.C., even to try to “sell” the Democratic health care agenda, could well re-energize Pelosi and Hoyer. And given the intensity of the legislative sprint that started at Obama’s inauguration, both parties — as well as the American public — could use a breather.br /br /a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_20/rothenberg/37575-1.html"This column/aspan style="font-style: italic;" first appeared in /spana style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.rollcall.com"Roll Call/aspan style="font-style: italic;" on August 6, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission./spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16918071-7304848962132998704?l=rothenbergpoliticalreport.blogspot.com'//div

Natasha Singer: Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapy

Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapybr /By NATASHA SINGERbr /a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"The New York Times/abr /br /Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.br /br /The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.br /br /But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.br /br /The ghostwritten papers were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment. The articles appeared in 18 medical journals, including The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.br /br /The articles did not disclose Wyeth’s role in initiating and paying for the work. Elsevier, the publisher of some of the journals, said it was disturbed by the allegations of ghostwriting and would investigate.br /br /The documents on ghostwriting were uncovered by lawyers suing Wyeth and were made public after a request in court from PLoS Medicine, a medical journal from the Public Library of Science, and The New York Times.br /br /A spokesman for Wyeth said that the articles were scientifically accurate and that pharmaceutical companies routinely hired medical writing companies to assist authors in drafting manuscripts.br /br /The court documents provide a detailed paper trail showing how Wyeth contracted with a medical communications company to outline articles, draft them and then solicit top physicians to sign their names, even though many of the doctors contributed little or no writing. The documents suggest the practice went well beyond the case of Wyeth and hormone therapy, involving numerous drugs from other pharmaceutical companies.br /br /“It’s almost like steroids and baseball,” said Dr. Joseph S. Ross, an assistant professor of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who has conducted research on ghostwriting. “You don’t know who was using and who wasn’t; you don’t know which articles are tainted and which aren’t.”br /br /a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/health/research/05ghost.html?_r=2pagewanted=1hp"To Read the Rest of the Article/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6323968-5016785610004433946?l=dialogic.blogspot.com'//div

Your MLB Announcing Schedule For The Weekend Of 8/8

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3A3UYBVK9N6TSjk8qcLqQnKestm0BvklcVnoY7LT2EaGnpi7TG9ucQ6c5-UTwXv5CsR-lTKJj6IcJZnzhgWBLAXiJgA9KLm0bMlfDv2vbijEYRq8LJFi7X6EHSY62-FgOXeSyqgUAdSnh/s1600-h/papi.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 251px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3A3UYBVK9N6TSjk8qcLqQnKestm0BvklcVnoY7LT2EaGnpi7TG9ucQ6c5-UTwXv5CsR-lTKJj6IcJZnzhgWBLAXiJgA9KLm0bMlfDv2vbijEYRq8LJFi7X6EHSY62-FgOXeSyqgUAdSnh/s400/papi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367283226926244882" border="0" //abr /span style="font-weight: bold;"uSaturday, August 8th:/u/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees /spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"(FOX, 4:10, 88%) /spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"- /spanspanJoe Buck, Tim McCarver and Ken Rosenthal/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Markets Include:/span Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Boston, Buffalo, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Denver, Detroit, Fort Myers, Greensboro, Greenville, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Knoxville, Las Vegas, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Raleigh, Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Tulsa, Washington, West Palm Beachbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Texas Rangers at Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim /spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"(FOX, 4:10, 11%)/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" - /spanspanThom Brennaman and Eric Karros/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" /spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Markets Include:/span Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Antoniobr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"uSunday, August 9th:/u/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Minnesota Twins at Detroit Tigers (TBS, 1pm) -/span Chip Caray and Dennis Eckersleybr /span style="font-weight: bold;"Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" (ESPN, 8pm)-/span Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Steve Phillipsbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"uMonday, August 10th:/u/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Detroit Tigers at Boston Red Sox/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" (ESPN, 8pm)-/span Dan Shulman, Orel Hershiser and Steve Phillipsbr /___________________br /br /Also a quick FYI to all you fantasy heads out there. You may have noticed the number of posts has gone down a bit in recent weeks. This is because I've been working on a bit of a side project involving Fantasy Football. The site is called a href="http://12stepdrop.com"12 Step Drop/a, and even though it's still in the early stages of development, you should still check it out. It's a twist on the standard sites that are all stats and injuries, and I think you'll get a kick out of it.br /br /Myself and a few friends will be live-blogging the Hall of Fame Game over there this Sunday, so please stop by and comment if you have a second.br /br /a href="http://12stepdrop.com"12 Step Drop/abr /br /input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"!--Session data--input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"div id="refHTML"/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28221516-1152729147655512951?l=awfulannouncing.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare"
a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:63t7Ie-LG7Y"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?a=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Awfulannouncing?i=tKiHGnXemUY:a7mpq40ACqE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a
/div