This may very well be the quote of the campaign.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Strange Political Season: Actual Journalism Observed
I though that journalism was extinct in the wild, existing only within specific preserves, like The Daily Show and Countdown, With Keith Olbermann, but it appears that a specimen has escaped to the wilds of ABC.
In a report on his nationwide cable TV buys, which BTW are a very good idea in terms of bang for the buck, the Obama stated that, “The DNC has consistently said that we have not broken that pledge.”
Well it appears that ABC News’ Teddy Davis actually checked the facts about that claim:
Obama’s claim is not true.
“The DNC has not weighed in on the pledge because it was a pledge with the state party chairs from the four early states, not the DNC,” DNC spokeswoman Stacie Paxton told ABC News.
I’m stunned and amazed.
I’m also waiting for the same scrutiny to be applied to Senator Keating 5 McCain.
It will probably be a while.
A Myth of Espionage
Here is an intersting bit of information on Tsien Hsue-shen, the 96-year-old architect of China’s ballistic missile program.
The story goes that he was deported back to China in September, 1955, taking with him information in his head about the US Titan missile program, which he used to develop Chinese ICBMs.
Small problem though, first contract for the Titan development program was not let until October 1955, a, “full month after he was deported to China.”
D’oh!!!! Maybe, just maybe, this guy was a rocket scientist, and had some brains about him.
Freddie Has Left The Building
Yes, the Freddie Thompson clown show has ended with
his withdrawal from the Presidential race.
I heard a discussion on Olbermann wondering who he might endorse. After all, that compulsive throat clearing demographic is crucial.
I’m sad…I’m without a pathetic Republican candidate to ridicule…except for Giuliani…I’m feeling much better now.
The First Act of Bush and His Evil Minions&trade Upon Squatting at 1600 Was to Trash the Email Archive System
The Washington Post has a pretty good summary, though they soft pedal the conclusion.
Let’s make this clear, the Clinton administration got into legal trouble with a small problem with backups, the Reagan administration had its email backups used to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal, but somehow these folks, who have a pathological need for secrecy, just screwed up.
Yeah, sure.
First MRAP Fatality
Not surprising. The “bomb proof trucks” merely result in a change in tactics by the insurgency. They develop a tactic, than we respond, and then they respond.
The way to get them to stop killing our troops is to get the hell out.
700 MHZ Auction & “D Block” Wireless Auctions
Just go read Harold Feld’s take.
He’s an expert in this area, and I don’t have any insights to add.
Hopefully, this will bring network neutrality to at least a bit of the spectrum.
The Cash Crunch is Hitting the Primaries, But Only for Republicans
While Obama and Clinton are considering Super Bowl ads, Republican candidates are running short on cash.
Romney appears to be considering spending some more of his own money on the race, while in the Huckabee campaign, some aides are not being paid, and others have left, and insiders in the McCain campaign are admitting that things are tight.
Gee, if you screw up the economy badly enough, I guess that Republican donor Rodney Richpigge* won’t crack open his check book, because high taxes on some profits is better than no taxes on losses.
*Internet high 5 if you pick up the reference.
Probation Office Recommends 60 Years for Wilkes
Yes, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the gift that keeps on giving. the probation office of the DoJ has recommended, Brent Wilkes, who bribed Cunningham, and might have other bribes outstanding, be given a 60 year sentence.
Note that this is the probation office, not the prosecutor.
Judges take these recommendations rather seriously.
If Wilkes other figures that he can roll on, now would be a good time for him.
The US Attorney Firing Scandal Continues
It appears that the investigations by the DoJ’sof Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) are picking up steam.
Investigators from these offices have been questioning whether senior officials lied to Congress, violated the criminal provisions in the Hatch Act, tampered with witnesses preparing to testify to Congress, obstructed justice, took improper political considerations into account during the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and created widespread problems in the department’s Civil Rights Division, according to several people familiar with the investigation.
The internal Justice Department probe cannot bring charges but can refer findings to a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia or a special prosecutor, who could then pursue a criminal investigation. One source close to the investigation expects the offices to issue a scathing report within the next three months, but they have not announced a timeline for their joint inquiry.
In addition, it appears that the Senate Ethics Committee has spent money to send investigators to Arizona, where former US Attorney David Iglesias alleged that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) pressured him to engage in prosecutions for political gain.
We have allegations of violations of the Hatch Act and obstruction of Justice by some of the people involved.
The Hill expects for a report to be issued in the next few months, but I think that the DoJ will get it pushed back until after the elections.
Use Your Land Line Before Going to Bed
Researchers working on behalf of the mobile phone industry :rofl: have discovered that exposure to cell phone emissions can interfere with your sleep cycle.
Obviously, there is a need for more study, but the methodology, where a group of volunteers were exposed to either 884 MHz signals, or to a sham signal, seems to be a pretty good study format.
I am not sure if this was single, or double blind. (in the latter, the researchers don’t know who got the placebo either).
Definitive word to my mind:
Dr Chris Idzikowski, the director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, says: “There is now more than sufficient evidence, from a large number of reputable investigators who are finding that mobile phone exposure an hour before sleep adversely affects deep sleep.”
It’s the 35th Anniversary of Roe V. Wade
As a political issue, it’s always been a proxy for the SCOTUS decision to allow the IRS to strip tax exempt status from segregated institutions, but it bears note.
My take, not one step back on the terrorists whose goal is to criminalize a woman’s right to choose.
What’s more, we should go PATRIOT act on the asses of organizations that provide material aid to doctor murderers and clinic bombers.
Nature In All its Majesty
WSJ Saying that this Recession Could Be Nasty
Though, of course, the author, Justin Lahart, hedges about whether we will actually have a recession (My take is that we’ve been in one for some time, and that we have been experiencing a recession like living standards, based on percentage of population employed, since 2001)
His Article uses terms like, “on track to be at least as bad as the five most catastrophic financial crises to hit industrialized countries since World War II”, and makes reference to Japan’s “lost decade” in the mid 1990s.
The idea that this is going to be a bad one is hitting the mainstream.
Culinary Union Gets Ahead of Its Members
It turns out that the Culinary Union got ahead of its members in Nevada, which is why Clinton won 7 of the 9 at-large caucus sites on the Strip.
They endorsed too late, and did not involve their membership sufficiently, and as a result, their members tended not to follow the endorsement.
Interesting read for any organizers.
Military Clamps Down on Obama “Crypto Muslim” Email
The Boston Globe has noted that the military is telling soldiers not to forward the dispicable “Obama is a Crypto-Muslim” email.
It’s against military and civil service regulations.
My guess is that someone in the military realized that this guy might be C-in-C in under a year, and it was ass covering time.
Anyone know what proportion of this spam is coming from military servers.
No Good Comes of Treating Insolvency as Illiquidity
As the good doctor Roubini says, there is a difference between an illiquidity crisis, and an insolvency crisis.
A corollary is that dealing with insolvency as illiquidity simply throws good money after bad*, and the extensions that are being granted to ACA Bond Holdings to “unwind” its credit swaps, is an attempt to deal with insolvency as illiquidity.
ACA has lost 97% of its market cap over the past year, it’s been downgraded to CCC last month (12 steps all at once), and it’s currently being run by its regulator, the Maryland Insurance Administration, which, “extended an agreement that waives collateral requirements, policy claims and termination rights until Feb. 19, the New York-based company said in a statement on Business Wire late yesterday.”
It’s hit an ice berg, and it’s going down. Delaying this in the hope of finding stupid investors is going to help no one in the long term.
*To quote Roubini on the difference, “But the current market turmoil is much worse than the liquidity crisis experienced by the US and the global economy in the 1998 LTCM episode. Let me explain why. Economists distinguish between liquidity crises and insolvency/debt crises. An agent (household, firm, financial corporation, country) can experience distress either because it is illiquid or because it is insolvent; of course insolvent agents are – in most cases – also illiquid, i.e. they cannot roll over their debts. Illiquidity occurs when the agent is solvent – i.e. it could pay its debts over time as long as such debts can be refinanced or rolled over – but he/she experiences a sudden liquidity crisis, i.e. its creditors are unwilling to roll over or refinance its claims. An insolvent debtor does not only face a liquidity problem (large amounts of debts coming to maturity, little stock of liquid reserves and no ability to refinance). It is also insolvent as it could not pay its claim over time even if there was no liquidity problem; thus, debt crises are more severe than illiquidity crises as they imply that the debtor is insolvent, i.e. bankrupt, and its debt claims will be defaulted and reduced. In emerging market crises of the last decade, we had liquidity crises (i.e. a solvent but illiquid sovereign) in Mexico, Korea, Brazil, Turkey; we had debt/insolvency crises (a sovereign that was both illiquid and insolvent) in Russia, Ecuador, Argentina.”†
†You have to just love this, footnotes almost twice as long as my post.
Who Bombed the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center (AMIA,) In 1994
It certainly does paint the picture of an incompetently run investigation, with conclusions being driven by political believs, rather than the facts, which is a characteristic of Bush and His Evil Minions™.
That being said, that the finger being pointed at Iran significantly began with the Clinton administration, and the inclination to blame Iran for anything bad happening in the world dates to the late 1970s, so there is a bureaucratic imperative at work here in both the US intelligence services, and the State Department.
Gareth Porter’s article is interesting, but it raises more questions than it answers.
Oh Belgium, I’m Sorry!!!!!
In my post, The World’s Lamest Flash Games I checked out the games on my computer with the sound off, as is my normal want, as I don’t like being surprised by sounds.
I had no idea that the flash games that I posted as windows had that unbelievably tacky music playing.
It has been replaced by links.
I’m sorry.
I Completely Spaced Out the Debates
So I’m trying to catch up via Youtube.
If this is any indications, it got nasty between the front runners.
John Edwards won this debate, just by not being involved in the nastiness.
That being said, I think that Obama lost worse than Hillary, because she has some leeway to be angry, and he by virtue of racism in American society, does not.