THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It would be obvious to any business person who had spent a day in public administration that government and business are antithetical. That's not a flaw in the system. Government exists to take on precisely those tasks the private sector can't or won't do.

These include caring for the penniless; maintaining common amenities such as parks, schools, and universities; and creating infrastructure with broad value but unspecific beneficiaries, such as freeways and the Internet (which in coming days undoubtedly will be used by many readers to inform me by e-mail that they don't see how government serves any purpose).

Most of these functions can't be made to "pay" in the sense that a business strategy does. But they can be neglected or privatized only at great cost to society.

// posted by montag @ 1:38 PM 0 Comments

If your last joint was experienced while coughing along to a Bob Dylan album in the '70s, Ramsay's offerings will seem incredibly far out. I mean, incredibly.

On the other side of the building, patrons are spoiled by a choice of varieties whose pothead names are lagging behind the contemporary, therapeutic image of marijuana -- sorry, cannabis -- in all its boutique wonder. Kushage bestows a high helpful for brainstorming. Sour Cream is so calming. Kish is fruity but potent. Martian Mean Green flowers up a stench, but the buds burn real stoney...

When alcohol was chased underground during Prohibition, the resulting clandestine booze was notoriously rank -- the paint-stripping moonshine, the barely drinkable homemade wine. Marijuana, however, has undergone radical advances since the war on drugs sent it deep into the shadows 25 years ago.

// posted by montag @ 12:40 PM 1 Comments

North Carolina counties which use touch-screen voting systems will now have to post a "Voter Alert" at precincts warning voters about potential problems with the machines following a complaint [PDF] filed in federal court by the state's Republican Party on Friday. The lawsuit, heard today on an expedited basis, was filed after voters in several counties had reported to party officials that their attempts to vote for straight-ticket Republican ballots were flipping on the screen to straight-ticket Democratic ballots.

Those reports of vote-flipping led to the NC GOP issuing a threat late this week to sue the State Board of Elections (BoE) if their demands were not met to order certain precautions be taken at polling places which used the 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems. After the Executive Director for the BoE sent a letter in response to the GOP's demands, downplaying the reported incidents as "isolated" and "no different than ones that must be addressed in every election," the Republican complaint was filed in federal court on Friday afternoon.

// posted by montag @ 11:39 AM 1 Comments

This country club elite, he said, is happy for Tea Partiers to put up signs, work the phones and make “those pesky little trips” door-to-door that it finds a frightful inconvenience. But the members won’t let the hoi polloi dine with them in the club’s “main dining room” — any more than David H. Koch, the billionaire sugar daddy of the Republican right, will invite O’Donnell into his box at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center to take in “The Nutcracker.”

The main dining room remains reserved for Koch’s fellow oil barons, Lott’s clients, the corporate contributors (known and anonymous) to groups like Rove’s American Crossroads, and, of course, the large coterie of special interests underwriting John Boehner, the presumptive next speaker of the House. Boehner is the largest House recipient of Wall Street money this year — much of it from financial institutions bailed out by TARP.

His Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell, will be certain to stop any Tea Party hillbillies from disrupting his chapter of the club (as he tried to stop Rand Paul in his own state’s G.O.P. primary). McConnell’s pets in his chamber’s freshman G.O.P. class will instead be old-school conservatives like Dan Coats (of Indiana), Rob Portman (of Ohio) and, if he squeaks in, Pat Toomey (of Pennsylvania). The first two are former lobbyists; Toomey ran the corporate interest group, the Club for Growth. They can be counted on to execute an efficient distribution of corporate favors and pork after they make their latest swing through Capitol Hill’s revolving door.

What the Tea Party ostensibly wants most — less government spending and smaller federal deficits — is not remotely happening on the country club G.O.P.’s watch. The elites have no serious plans to cut anything except taxes and regulation of their favored industries. The party’s principal 2010 campaign document, its “Pledge to America,” doesn’t vow to cut even earmarks — which barely amount to a rounding error in the federal budget anyway. Boehner has also proposed a return to pre-crash 2008 levels in “nonsecurity” discretionary spending — another mere bagatelle ($105 billion) next to the current $1.3 trillion deficit. And that won’t be happening either, once the actual cuts in departments like Education, Transportation and Interior are specified to their constituencies.

// posted by montag @ 11:06 PM 0 Comments

In 2008, the message was him. The promise was him. And that’s why 2010 is a referendum on him.

With his coalition and governing majority shattering around him, President Obama will have to summon political skills — starting Wednesday — that he has not yet shown he has...

We want the best people to govern us, but many voters are so turned off by Obama’s superior air that they’re rushing into the arms of disturbingly inferior pols.

// posted by montag @ 10:19 PM 0 Comments

Progressives, I know you are disillusioned, you hate the Democrats. Well, I hate my cell phone company. I don't replace it by rubbing dog shit on my teeth.

// posted by montag @ 7:27 PM 0 Comments

The seizure of $55.9 million worth of heroin - more than 2,000 pounds - and the discovery of four clandestine drug-producing labs in Nangarhar province of eastern Afghanistan was touted by U.S. officials as a major success and a sign of international cooperation to fight narcotics - the first time Americans and Afghans teamed up with Russians on a military operation.

// posted by montag @ 1:00 PM 0 Comments

IV. Strange behavior:

A) Sent his mother to the final primary debate as his stand-in.

B) Told an interviewer that upon arriving home, she has her staff check the shrubbery in front of her house to make sure no enemies are hiding in the bushes.

C) Failed to make sure the phone was really hung up before engaging in a conversation that included the name of his female opponent and the word “whore.”

D) Has never satisfactorily explained why the family yacht is named “Sexy Bitch.”

E) Raced off the stage just before his final statement in the one and only governor’s debate in order to use the bathroom.

F) Ran an endorsement ad starring a dead senator.

1) Jerry Brown (California, governor)

2) Christine O’Donnell (Delaware, Senate)

3) Rick Scott (Florida, governor)

4) Lisa Murkowski (Alaska, Senate)

5) Carl Paladino (New York, governor)

6) Linda McMahon (Connecticut, Senate)

// posted by montag @ 12:46 PM 0 Comments

He runs his campaign less like a public official in training than an investor planning a hostile takeover — from headquarters high up in a Fort Lauderdale office tower with a security guard keeping track of who gets in.

Republican strategists say his style fits the moment; even a pro-business candidate with unanswered questions can win in a race against a Democrat in office. “He happens to have entered this race at the precisely the right time for someone with his background,”

// posted by montag @ 12:07 PM 0 Comments

An internal Pentagon study has found that most U.S. troops and their families don't care whether gays are allowed to serve openly and think the policy of "don't ask, don't tell" could be done away with, according to officials familiar with its findings.

The survey results were expected to be used by gay rights advocates to bolster their argument that the 1993 law on gays could be repealed immediately with little harm done to the military. But the survey also was expected to reveal challenges the services could face in overturning the long-held policy, including overcoming fierce opposition in some parts of the military even if they represent a minority.

// posted by montag @ 1:45 PM 0 Comments

The California Air Resources Board today will unveil new rules and regulations for a cap-and-trade program. It will set a ceiling on the amount of carbon that refiners, power companies and major manufacturers can emit each year.

While details of the regulations aren't yet available, ARB officials have already indicated that they plan to take a pro-business approach. They will initially give companies pollution allowances for free, rather than selling them at auction.

"Because of the state of the economy, to go to a large auction quickly just isn't realistic," ARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols said in a legislative hearing earlier this month.

The cap-and-trade program essentially places a cap on the amount of carbon emitted by the state's 500 largest polluters. Companies that pollute less then their limit – to be set by the state – can sell their unused allowances to companies that pollute heavily, creating market incentives for the companies to reduce emissions voluntarily.

// posted by montag @ 1:25 PM 0 Comments

future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.

// posted by montag @ 12:44 PM 1 Comments

The accusations of voter fraud flying around the Nevada Senate race are little more than a setup for Republicans to question the election's outcome if Republican challenger Sharron Angle loses, says a leading Nevada political reporter.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in a tight race against Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle going into the mid-term vote next week, with the latest poll showing Angle four points ahead of Reid, and a running average showing less than two percentage points separating them.

With the outcome so uncertain, both sides have grown sensitive about the potential for voting irregularities.

But John Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun told Fox News' America's Newsroom Thursday that the allegations coming from the Angle campaign are baseless.

"All they have are these wisps of information from voters complaining about various things, which happens every year," Ralston said. "But they're making a pre-emptive strike here, the Republicans are, just in case Sharron Angle loses, so they can cry fraud."

// posted by montag @ 11:52 AM 0 Comments

A district school board member in Arkansas will resign after making comments on Facebook saying that gays should commit suicide.

"I am going to resign from the school board," Clint McCance told CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday.

McCance is vice-president of the Midland School District in Pleasant Plains, Arkansas.

The Advocate first reported Tuesday that McCance had posted a screed on Facebook wishing that gays would "commit suicide" and "give each other AIDS and die." He also used words like "queer" and "fag."

// posted by montag @ 11:30 AM 0 Comments

A high-ranking Homeland Security official says the agency will protect Americans' civil liberties and privacy while it partners with the military to protect the nation's computer networks.

An agreement with the military announced two weeks ago "in no way changes our respective departments' promises to protect civil liberties and privacy," Rear Adm. Michael Brown said Wednesday at the National Symposium on Homeland Security and Defense in Colorado Springs.

// posted by montag @ 11:59 PM 0 Comments

In recent years, the giant energy services company has found itself under scrutiny over allegations that it performed shoddy, overpriced work for the United States military in Iraq, bribed Nigerian officials to win energy contracts and did brisk business with Iran at time when it faced sanctions.

On Thursday, a government investigation panel said that Halliburton might have played an important role in the April explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico by supplying cement that the company knew was unstable to BP, which used it to seal the well. Halliburton has repeatedly blamed BP, the owner of the well, of failing to test the cement and making other errors that led to the accident, which killed 11 people and spewed millions of barrels of crude oil into the gulf...

In its report, investigators said that internal tests run by Halliburton found that the cement mixture it had developed for use at BP’s well, called Macondo, did not meet industry standards for stability. Halliburton had shared some but not all of the test results with BP, and the companies proceeded to use the faulty mixture.

The report did not conclude that the problems with the cement caused the disaster, but did say that they raised the likelihood that a blowout would occur.

// posted by montag @ 10:33 PM 0 Comments

And the O'Donnell effect has larger implications. Republican gains next week are inevitable. But if Senate candidates on the right end of Republican politics lose here and in most of the other states they are contesting (Colorado, Wisconsin, Alaska, Kentucky and Nevada), conservatives will have trouble claiming this election as an ideological mandate and a sign that the country had moved well to the right of where it was two years ago.

So far, being righter-than-right has been anything but helpful. O'Donnell's nomination virtually sealed a victory for Democrat Chris Coons. In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, after spending the summer under assault from anonymously funded conservative groups, has been closing in on Tea Party favorite Ken Buck. In Wisconsin, Sen. Russ Feingold has narrowed Republican Ron Johnson's once substantial lead.

In Alaska, the Tea Party's Joe Miller faces a formidable write-in challenge from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whom he defeated in the Republican primary, even as Democrat Scott McAdams battles to sneak through on the GOP split.

Republican Rand Paul has clung to a lead over Democrat Jack Conway in Kentucky, a very red state where a Republican should not be having so much trouble. As for Nevada, nobody knows if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will prevail over marquee Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle, but Angle's bizarre brand of conservatism is the one thing giving Reid a fighting chance.

// posted by montag @ 1:23 PM 3 Comments

Yet the reality of the modern Republican Party is that Boehner has to prove himself every day to his truculent colleagues, which is part of the reason he has offered such consistently unyielding opposition to Obama. It’s impossible to imagine a Speaker Sam Rayburn adopting a “Hell, no!” strategy with Dwight D. Eisenhower, or a Tip O’Neill adopting it with Ronald Reagan, whatever their real policy differences or partisan electoral objectives might have been. Were he to be left to his own devices, it would be easy enough to imagine that Boehner might like to close the sale for a change, instead of just closing the door. But he can’t—it would cost him his job. It was Boehner himself who shouted “Hell, no!” on the House floor just before the final vote on the health-care bill. Although he likes to say that Obama has refused to listen to G.O.P. ideas or bargain in good faith, the truth is the other way around. Boehner was among the architects of the strategy by Republicans in both houses to resist the president at every turn, regardless of whether they thought his proposals made sense or might be good for the country. Led by Boehner in the House, the Republicans voted down measures they had previously agreed with, even been the first to propose. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, has openly acknowledged that this approach was a deliberate effort to build the party’s political fortunes at the expense of the president’s.

// posted by montag @ 10:45 PM 0 Comments

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) was flying his twin-engine Cessna 340 down to Port Isabel, Tex., on Thursday, headed to his house on South Padre Island. It's something he's done every so often for the past 50 years.

There were these huge (60 feet long by 10 feet wide) yellow X's on the main runway, which aren't there to mark the landing spot. The big signs were laid out to indicate that the runway was closed. There were workmen painting and doing general maintenance on the runway.

Inhofe, who was traveling with three others, told us Tuesday that he was "getting ready to land, then I saw a big X," and the workers and equipment. So he flew the six-seater over the workers and landed "well off to the side," he said.

Runway closures and other important information are highlighted in what's called a Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM, which all pilots are supposed to read before take-off. Inhofe said he "didn't have a NOTAM."

On Sunday, Inhofe headed back home - but not without incident. Fortunately, he didn't try to take off on the closed runway. Actually, he didn't try to take off on any of the four bi-directional runways at the airport. He chose instead to use a taxiway.

"I really didn't have a choice," he explained, "given the size of the plane. The taxiway is very wide and long, better than the rough runways" at that airport. "There was no alternative," he said. And he notified the airport official that he intended to use the taxiway.

// posted by montag @ 1:24 PM 1 Comments

What to do? We suggest an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and a requirement that all notes be produced by purported holders of mortgages within a reasonable length of time. If they cannot be found, the mortgages -- as well as the securities that pool them -- are no longer valid. That means that the homeowners are not indebted, and that the homes are owned free and clear. And that, dear bankers, is a big, big problem. It is also the law -- without evidence of debt, there is no debtor and no creditor.

The assertion that the SDIs cannot be resolved because of their size is unsupported. Very large institutions have already been resolved both in this country and abroad. The "too big to fail" (TBTF) doctrine has always been unproven, dangerous, and counter to the law. An institution that is not permitted to fail faces obvious adverse incentive problems. It also destroys healthy competition with institutions that are not considered TBTF. It encourages risk-taking and fraud. And it subverts the law, which requires that insolvent institutions must be resolved.

As we write this piece, the markets are taking it upon themselves to begin to close down the control frauds -- with homeowners fighting the foreclosures and investors demanding that the banks take back the toxic waste. Unfortunately, following the market solution will be a long-drawn-out and costly process -- both in terms of tying up the judicial system but also in terms of the uncertainty and despair that will persist. At the end of that process, the banks will have to be resolved. No matter how much the politicians dislike it, they will end up with the banks in their hands -- either now or later. Taking them now is the right thing to do.

// posted by montag @ 12:39 PM 0 Comments

We can get out there and make our voices heard, or we can let the forces of nihilism take over.

// posted by montag @ 12:02 PM 0 Comments

The two men fought. The 5-foot-7, 230-pound Bowman fired his gun. The bullet hit Bumpus in the arm, went through and lodged near his ribs.

Even though he was shot, Bumpus continued fighting - and won.

"He got the gun away from (Bowman), he grabbed (Bowman) by the hair and beat him down. He beat the (daylights) out of him," Nelson said.

That's about when several of Bumpus' friends, also dressed as women, flagged down Cincinnati Police Officer Dave Kennedy. Other Bumpus friends helped Bumpus beat Bowman.

"The cops showed up during the beat down," Nelson said. "The cops said it was one of their more memorable arrests of their lives."

// posted by montag @ 10:13 PM 0 Comments

Aging and corroded pipes are bursting somewhere every couple of minutes. Dilapidated sewer systems are contaminating waterways and drinking water. Many local systems are so old and inadequate — in some cases, so utterly rotten — that they are overwhelmed by heavy rain.

As Charles Duhigg reported in The Times last March: “For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.”

There is, of course, no reason for this to be the case. If this were a first-class society we would rebuild our water systems to the point where they would be the envy of the world, and that would bolster the economy in the bargain. But that would take maturity and vision and effort and sacrifice, all of which are in dismayingly short supply right now.

We can’t even build a railroad tunnel beneath the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York.

// posted by montag @ 11:17 AM 0 Comments

The United States has dropped out of the "top 20" in a global league table of least corrupt nations, tarnished by financial scandals and the influence of money in politics, Transparency International said on Tuesday (link).

Somalia was judged the most corrupt country, followed by Myanmar and Afghanistan at joint second-worst and then by Iraq, in the Berlin-based watchdog TI's annual corruption perceptions index (CPI).

The United States fell to 22nd from 19th last year, with its CPI score dropping to 7.1 from 7.5 in the 178-nation index, which is based on independent surveys on corruption.

This was the lowest score awarded to the United States in the index's 15-year history and also the first time it had fallen out of the top 20.

In the Americas, this put the United States behind Canada in sixth place, Barbados at 17th and Chile in 21st place.

// posted by montag @ 10:55 AM 0 Comments

Republican US Senate nominee Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday night he "admired" outgoing Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who was hoisted into national spotlight this year for single-handedly and repeatedly blocking attempts to extend unemployment benefits.

// posted by montag @ 10:50 AM 0 Comments

Sharron Angle, Nevada's Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for US Senate, is attacking Latinos again in a new ad that depicts images of Hispanic men with menacing looks next to depictions of white students and college graduates.

"Waves of illegal aliens streaming across our border, joining violent gangs, forcing families to live in fear," the announcer intones.

Angle’s "ad is especially surprising considering the fact that many outlets are reporting that Latinos may decide the tight Nevada senatorial race," Think Progress, the liberal blog which highlighted the ad, noted.

// posted by montag @ 10:28 AM 0 Comments

Emerson is a leading member of a multimillion-dollar industry of self-proclaimed experts who spread hate toward Muslims in books and movies, on websites and through speaking appearances.

Leaders of the so-called "anti-jihad" movement portray themselves as patriots, defending America against radical Islam. And they've found an eager audience in ultra-conservative Christians and mosque opponents in Middle Tennessee. One national consultant testified in an ongoing lawsuit aimed at stopping a new Murfreesboro mosque.

But beyond the rhetoric, Emerson's organization's tax-exempt status is facing questions at the same time he's accusing Muslim groups of tax improprieties.

"Basically, you have a nonprofit acting as a front organization, and all that money going to a for-profit," said Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group. "It's wrong. This is off the charts."

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

// posted by montag @ 10:47 PM 0 Comments

The story of Marie and her cousins has become commonplace: Since the earthquake, more than 7,300 boys and girls have been smuggled out of their homeland to the Dominican Republic by traffickers profiting on the hunger and desperation of Haitian children, and their families. In 2009, the figure was 950, according to one human rights group that monitors child trafficking at 10 border points.

Several smugglers told the newspaper that they operate in cahoots with crooked officers in both countries — their versions verified by a United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF report and child advocates on both sides of the border.

"All the officials know who the traffickers are, but don't report them. It is a problem that is not going to end because the authorities' sources of income would dry up," said Regino Martínez, a Jesuit priest and director of the Border Solidarity Foundation in Dajabón, a Dominican border town.

The buscones (hustlers), as the smugglers are known, not only deliver children on request. They also deliver them a la carte to strangers. "You choose the age, what sex, skills of the Haitian kid you want," one smuggler told an El Nuevo Herald reporter.

// posted by montag @ 10:15 PM 0 Comments

The group, which calls itself NOM in court papers, is involved in legal fights in several states, seeking to ban homosexual marriages.

NOM wants to run an advertising campaign in favor of Paladino, but the group said it does not want to conform to state election laws that would require it to register as a political committee. If it does register as a political committee in New York, the group would have to file financial reports with the state Board of Elections, listing its donors by name.

Last week, NOM asked Arcara to declare a portion of state election law unconstitutional, but the judge refused today.

The lawsuit is premature because, so far, NOM has not tried to run any of its ads in New York, and the state has not officially declared NOM to be a political committee, the judge wrote in a nine-page ruling.

There is "no evidence" that NOM ever discussed the situation with Board of Elections officials before filing its lawsuit, Arcara wrote.

// posted by montag @ 4:50 PM 0 Comments

What we do know is that the inadequacy of the stimulus has been a political catastrophe. Yes, things are better than they would have been without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: the unemployment rate would probably be close to 12 percent right now if the administration hadn’t passed its plan. But voters respond to facts, not counterfactuals, and the perception is that the administration’s policies have failed.

The tragedy here is that if voters do turn on Democrats, they will in effect be voting to make things even worse.

The resurgent Republicans have learned nothing from the economic crisis, except that doing everything they can to undermine Mr. Obama is a winning political strategy. Tax cuts and deregulation are still the alpha and omega of their economic vision.

And if they take one or both houses of Congress, complete policy paralysis — which will mean, among other things, a cutoff of desperately needed aid to the unemployed and a freeze on further help for state and local governments — is a given. The only question is whether we’ll have political chaos as well, with Republicans’ shutting down the government at some point over the next two years. And the odds are that we will.

// posted by montag @ 1:09 PM 0 Comments

A candidate as stupid as Miller, he writes, can't possibly have graduated from Yale Law School -- Stein's alma mater -- unless "he somehow slipped through the Ivied doors when they weren't looking."

Maybe Miller thinks he is boss of some kind of third world country and his mirrored sunglass-wearing Tontons Macoutes can just bully anyone who gets in his way.


That is not what the Tea Party is all about. It is certainly not what the GOP is about. It isn't even what the Democratic Party is about.

// posted by montag @ 12:45 PM 0 Comments

Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted to CNN on Monday that he has received cash payments from Iran after a New York Times report fingered his chief of staff as carrying bags of money back from trips to Iran.

Little noticed in his interview, however, is that he said that President George W. Bush knew Afghanistan was getting cash from their western neighbor.

"Even when we were at Camp David [Maryland] with President [George W.] Bush, this is nothing hidden," Karzai remarked.

Karzai likened the bags of cash that he received, which his staff doled out to "Afghan lawmakers, tribal elders and even Taliban commanders to secure their loyalty," to the billions of dollars in US aid his country receives.

"The cash payments are done by various friendly countries to help the president's office and to help dispense assistance in various ways to the employees around here, to people outside, and this is transparent and this is something that I have discussed," Karzai said. Iran, he added, "asked for good relations in return and for lots of other things in return."

// posted by montag @ 12:09 PM 0 Comments

Former Republican Governor and Fox News' host Mike Huckabee blasted the "country club attitude" of Republican strategist Karl Rove and other members of the "Republican establishment," as Politico reports.

Speaking to radio host Aaron Klein on Sunday, Huckabee said he was "very disappointed" that Rove and others were "so dismissive of Christine O'Donnell." ...

"Unfortunately, there is an elitism within the Republican establishment. And it's one of the reasons the Republicans have not been able to solidify not only the tea party movement but solidify conservatives across America because a lot of people know it is not so much about the principles of really controlling government and having responsible people in office, it's about making sure the right people get into the game to play."

// posted by montag @ 11:53 AM 0 Comments

Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida has marshaled some key advantages for his seventh reelection race: He has outraised his GOP opponent, and has the rare distinction of being a Democrat endorsed by both the National Rifle Assn. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Boyd also voted in favor of the healthcare overhaul this year, and like other Democratic incumbents now faces a barrage of attacks by little-known conservative groups funded by anonymous donors.

The latest came last week from an organization called the Center for Individual Freedom, created more than a decade ago by former tobacco industry executives who sought to counter government restrictions on smoking.

Now headquartered in the top floor of a townhouse in Alexandria, Va., the center recently launched more than $2 million worth of ads in the districts of nine vulnerable Democrats, including Boyd, with more possible in coming days.

The group is no longer associated with tobacco or smoking. In recent years, its $5-million to $7-million annual budget has been focused on an eclectic range of topics. It has promoted a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget, attacked the Mongolian government's industrial policy and criticized a tray mat featuring an overweight Statue of Liberty that appeared in the Subway chain's European restaurants.

// posted by montag @ 2:09 PM 0 Comments

In an unusual weekend hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public's right to know about candidates outweighed Miller's right to privacy.

"I hold that although Mr. Miller has a legitimate expectation of privacy in those documents, Mr. Miller's right to privacy is indeed outweighed by the public's significant interest in the background of a public figure who is running for the U.S. Senate," the judge said. He noted that U.S. senator is among the highest elected offices in the nation.

// posted by montag @ 1:02 PM 0 Comments

More than a million survivors of Haiti's devastating January earthquake are crowded into tent cities around Port-au-Prince with poor sanitary conditions and little access to clean drinking water.

Aid officials have described the prospect of cholera in the city as "awful".

Those in the camps are highly vulnerable to the intestinal infection, which is caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food.

Cholera causes diarrhoea and vomiting leading to severe dehydration, and can kill quickly if left untreated through rehydration and antibiotics.

With 2,674 cases of the disease reported, health officials have been trying to contain the outbreak in Artibonite and Central Plateau.

They said they had stepped up disease prevention measures and surveillance at the tent camps, and sent medical teams north to treat those infected so they did not travel to the capital to seek help.

// posted by montag @ 12:18 PM 0 Comments

The United Nations' point man on torture is calling on the Obama administration to open a full investigation into newly-released documents that suggest the US may have turned a blind eye to torture in Iraq.

Manfred Nowak, the UN's special rapporteur on torture, told the BBC Saturday that the US has an "obligation" to look into reports of torture within the nearly 400,000 war documents released by WikiLeaks on Friday.

The documents chronicle numerous allegations of torture by Iraqi forces against their own citizens, as well as what appears to have been a standing order in the US military to ignore the allegations -- potentially a violation of international conventions on torture.

"There is an obligation to investigate whenever there are credible allegations torture has happened – and these allegations are more than credible – and then it is up to the courts," Nowak, an Austrian human rights lawyer, said,

// posted by montag @ 11:31 AM 0 Comments

We can blame much of this turn of events on the deep pockets of oil billionaires like the Koch brothers and on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which freed corporations to try to buy any election they choose. But the Obama White House is hardly innocent. Its failure to hold the bust’s malefactors accountable has helped turn what should have been a clear-cut choice on Nov. 2 into a blurry contest between the party of big corporations and the party of business as usual.

// posted by montag @ 11:10 PM 0 Comments

A 62-year-old Ecuadorean man managed to ignore the uproar of a teeming Madrid shopping center and snore long enough to win what was billed as Spain's first siesta championship.

Organizers on Saturday proclaimed unemployed security worker Pedro Soria Lopez the champion for sleeping 17 minutes.

They said he not only slept soundly but his snoring on Tuesday also registered 70 decibels - roughly the equivalent of the noise of someone talking loudly. That earned him extra points and enough to defeat the runner-up who had slept for 18 minutes.

"Oh I am so happy to be the first champion," said a laughing Quito-born Soria Lopez, who sported a handsome paunch and a drop-bar black mustache. He said he was a regular siesta taker, and it looked as if was telling the truth.

"My wife made me do this, but then they couldn't wake me up. Naturally, the lunch I had before with the 7 euros ($10) they had given me helped," he said before collecting the ‚1,000 ($1,400) winning check.

// posted by montag @ 10:10 PM 1 Comments

We can get fired up about Lady Gaga and the Tea Party crackpots. We’re into fantasy football, the baseball playoffs and our obsessively narcissistic tweets. But American soldiers fighting and dying in a foreign land? That is such a yawn.

I would bring back the draft in a heartbeat. Then you wouldn’t have these wars that last a lifetime. And you wouldn’t get mind-bending tragedies like the death of Sgt. First Class Lance Vogeler, a 29-year-old who was killed a few weeks ago while serving in the Army in his 12th combat tour. That’s right, his 12th — four in Iraq and eight in Afghanistan.

Twelve tours may be unusual, but multiple tours — three, four, five — are absolutely normal. We don’t have enough volunteers to fight these endless wars. Americans are big on bumper stickers, and they like to go to sports events and demonstrate their patriotism by chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” But actually putting on a uniform and going into harm’s way? No thanks.

Sergeant Vogeler was married and the father of two children, and his wife was expecting their third.

The war in Afghanistan, the longest in our history, began on Oct. 7, 2001. It’s now in its 10th year. After all this time and all the blood shed and lives lost, it’s still not clear what we’re doing. Osama bin Laden hasn’t been found. The Afghan Army can’t stand on its own. Our ally in Pakistan can’t be trusted, and our man in Kabul is, at best, flaky. A good and humane society would not keep sending its young people into that caldron.

Shakespeare tells us to “be not afraid of greatness.” At the moment, we are acting like we’re terrified.

// posted by montag @ 12:58 PM 0 Comments

I hope that progressives, liberals, Democrats, all those on the left will realize that holding their noses and voting for the weak Democrats is better than letting the unrepentant Republicans take over, with their increasingly radical right-wingnuts. It's true that the Democrats are total chickens, but they're our chickens for the most part, and if we abandon them to the wolves they'll get eaten and then we are all screwed.(my em)

// posted by montag @ 12:43 PM 0 Comments

His contract was terminated, she said, because “he had several times in the past violated our news code of ethics with things that he had said on other people’s air.”

On one such occasion last year, Mr. Williams said on Fox that Michelle Obama has “got this ‘Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress’ thing going,” an allusion to a leader of the black power movement of the 1960s.

In each instance, Ms. Schiller said, “We called him on it, we had a discussion, we asked him not to do it again.” NPR’s ethics code states that journalists “should not express views” in other outlets, like TV shows, that “they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.”

People deserve second chances, Ms. Schiller said, but “we made the decision here because, at a certain point, if someone keeps not following your guidance, you have to make a break. And that’s what we did.”

“And that is the sole reason,” she added. “This is not a First Amendment issue.”

Jennifer Houlihan, a spokeswoman for New York Public Radio, said the issue “was not hurting” pledges. “We’re hitting or surpassing our goal at this point,” she said.

// posted by montag @ 11:55 PM 0 Comments

First, it is time to stop the foreclosures until the banks and servicers adopt corrective steps, certified as adequate by FDIC, that will prevent all future foreclosure fraud. They must also adopt plans to remedy the injuries their foreclosure frauds have already caused, and assist the FBI, Department of Justice, and legal ethics officials investigations of their officers' and attorneys' frauds and ethical violations.

Second, it is time to place the financial institutions that committed widespread fraud in receivership. We should remove the senior leadership of the banks and replace them with experienced bankers with a reputation for integrity and competence, i.e., the honest officers that quit or were fired because they refused to engage in fraud. We should prioritize the receiverships to deal with the worst known "control frauds" among the "systemically dangerous institutions" (SDIs). The SDIs' frauds and fraudulent leaders endanger the global economy.

We propose Bank of America for the first receivership. In the last few weeks, the SEC has obtained a large (albeit grossly inadequate) settlement of its civil fraud charges against the former senior leaders of Countrywide. (Bank of America acquired Countrywide and is responsible for its frauds.) Fannie and Freddie's investigations -- with their findings reviewed by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) -- have identified many billions of dollars of fraudulent loans originated by Countrywide that were sold fraudulently to Fannie and Freddie through false representations and warranties. The Fed, BlackRock, and Pimco's investigations have identified many billions of dollars of fraudulent loans provided by Countrywide under false reps and warranties. Ambac's investigation found that 97% of the Countrywide loans reviewed by Ambac were had false reps and warranties. Countrywide also engaged in widespread foreclosure fraud. This is not surprising, for every aspect of Countrywide's nonprime mortgage operations that has been examined by a truly independent body has found widespread fraud -- in loan origination, loan sales, appraisals, and foreclosures. Fraud begets fraud. Lenders that are control frauds create criminogenic environments that produce "echo" epidemics of control fraud in other professions and industries.

We have been amazed that, as one financially sophisticated entity after another found widespread fraud by Countrywide in the entire gamut of its operations, the administration, the industry, and the financial media act as if this is acceptable. Countrywide made hundreds of thousands of fraudulent loans. It fraudulently sold hundreds of thousands of loans through false reps and warranties. It fraudulently foreclosed on large numbers of loans. It victimized hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of financial institutions, causing hundreds of billions of dollars of losses. It has defrauded more people, at a greater cost, than any entity in history.

// posted by montag @ 10:16 PM 0 Comments

If I get to the other side and God's like, 'You know what, yep, you were a monkey once,' I'll be shocked, but I'll be cool with it.

// posted by montag @ 5:40 PM 0 Comments