Political News Bits of the Day
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Home sales plummeted 13% in 2007
The most severe real estate recession in a generation sent sales of existing homes plunging 13% last year — the steepest annual dive in 25 years — and the median U.S. home price fell, probably for the first year since the Great Depression, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.
The 2008 outlook remains equally grim, though many experts expect the housing market to bottom out by the middle or end of the year.
Sales could fall a further 13% this year, says Doug Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association — and even more if the overall economy falls into recession. He puts those odds at 50-50.
USA TODAY
The most severe real estate recession in a generation sent sales of existing homes plunging 13% last year — the steepest annual dive in 25 years — and the median U.S. home price fell, probably for the first year since the Great Depression, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.
The 2008 outlook remains equally grim, though many experts expect the housing market to bottom out by the middle or end of the year.
Sales could fall a further 13% this year, says Doug Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association — and even more if the overall economy falls into recession. He puts those odds at 50-50.
USA TODAY
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"Prayers" Just Won't Do
By Tim Rutten
The Los Angeles Times
Saturday 16 February 2008
It's been a particularly grim and bloody month on one of the world's great killing fields - the United States of America.
On Friday, Los Angeles paused for the largest police funeral in its history when it buried...
<snip examples>
All these wrenchingly tragic crimes are linked by a common factor - the ubiquity of guns in America. Given that we're in the midst of the most hotly contested presidential campaign in recent memory, you'd think that all this bloodletting might become a campaign issue. If you thought that, you'd have reckoned without regard to the gun lobby's near-total victory among the politicians of both political parties. The 2nd Amendment fundamentalists who cluster around the National Rifle Assn. are the most successful single-issue constituency in modern American politics.
The truth is that guns make the malicious, the malcontent and the mad powerful. They confer the power of life and death on the demented and deranged - and yet we do nothing. There are more guns circulating in the U.S. today than ever before, somewhere around 250 million, according to projections by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
...
Twelve state legislatures - those in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington - are considering bills that would allow students who obtain concealed-weapons permits to carry guns on campus. Presumably, they'll only fire in self-defense.
Confronted with this sort of social idiocy, it's hard to know whether to chortle or choke.
...
At the moment, we are a nation held hostage by the pandemic of gun violence. We need leaders brave enough to admit that, and to offer our children something more than a collective shrug and the chance to join the arms race that has made our school campuses a killing ground.
LINK
By Tim Rutten
The Los Angeles Times
Saturday 16 February 2008
It's been a particularly grim and bloody month on one of the world's great killing fields - the United States of America.
On Friday, Los Angeles paused for the largest police funeral in its history when it buried...
<snip examples>
All these wrenchingly tragic crimes are linked by a common factor - the ubiquity of guns in America. Given that we're in the midst of the most hotly contested presidential campaign in recent memory, you'd think that all this bloodletting might become a campaign issue. If you thought that, you'd have reckoned without regard to the gun lobby's near-total victory among the politicians of both political parties. The 2nd Amendment fundamentalists who cluster around the National Rifle Assn. are the most successful single-issue constituency in modern American politics.
The truth is that guns make the malicious, the malcontent and the mad powerful. They confer the power of life and death on the demented and deranged - and yet we do nothing. There are more guns circulating in the U.S. today than ever before, somewhere around 250 million, according to projections by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
...
Twelve state legislatures - those in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington - are considering bills that would allow students who obtain concealed-weapons permits to carry guns on campus. Presumably, they'll only fire in self-defense.
Confronted with this sort of social idiocy, it's hard to know whether to chortle or choke.
...
At the moment, we are a nation held hostage by the pandemic of gun violence. We need leaders brave enough to admit that, and to offer our children something more than a collective shrug and the chance to join the arms race that has made our school campuses a killing ground.
LINK
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"The Labor Department said Tuesday that wholesale prices rose 1 percent last month, more than double the 0.4 percent increase that economists had been expecting.
The January surge left wholesale prices rising by 7.5 percent over the past 12 months, the fastest pace in more than 26 years, since prices had risen at a 7.5 percent pace in the 12 months ending in October 1981."
link
The January surge left wholesale prices rising by 7.5 percent over the past 12 months, the fastest pace in more than 26 years, since prices had risen at a 7.5 percent pace in the 12 months ending in October 1981."
link
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The Most Wanted List: International Terrorism
By Noam Chomsky
TomDispatch.com
Tuesday 26 February 2008
Excerpt:
...It is common, for example, to read that "the world" fully supported George Bush when he ordered the bombing of Afghanistan. That may be true of "the world," but hardly of the world, as revealed in an international Gallup Poll after the bombing was announced. Global support was slight. In Latin America, which has some experience with U.S. behavior, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama, and that support was conditional upon the culprits being identified (they still weren't eight months later, the FBI reported), and civilian targets being spared (they were attacked at once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world for diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by "the world."
...
Car Bomb
Plainly, the 1985 Tunis bombing was a vastly more severe terrorist crime than the Achille Lauro hijacking, or the crime for which Moughniyeh's "involvement can be ascertained with certainty" in the same year. But even the Tunis bombing had competitors for the prize for worst terrorist atrocity in the Mideast in the peak year of 1985.
One challenger was a car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque, timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the blast "burned babies in their beds," "killed a bride buying her trousseau," and "blew away three children as they walked home from the mosque." It also "devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut suburb, reported Nora Boustany three years later in the Washington Post.
The intended target had been the Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by Reagan's CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain's help, and was specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's account in his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Little is known beyond the bare facts, thanks to rigorous adherence to the doctrine that we do not investigate our own crimes (unless they become too prominent to suppress, and the inquiry can be limited to some low-level "bad apples" who were naturally "out of control").
LINK
By Noam Chomsky
TomDispatch.com
Tuesday 26 February 2008
Excerpt:
...It is common, for example, to read that "the world" fully supported George Bush when he ordered the bombing of Afghanistan. That may be true of "the world," but hardly of the world, as revealed in an international Gallup Poll after the bombing was announced. Global support was slight. In Latin America, which has some experience with U.S. behavior, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama, and that support was conditional upon the culprits being identified (they still weren't eight months later, the FBI reported), and civilian targets being spared (they were attacked at once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world for diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by "the world."
...
Car Bomb
Plainly, the 1985 Tunis bombing was a vastly more severe terrorist crime than the Achille Lauro hijacking, or the crime for which Moughniyeh's "involvement can be ascertained with certainty" in the same year. But even the Tunis bombing had competitors for the prize for worst terrorist atrocity in the Mideast in the peak year of 1985.
One challenger was a car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque, timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the blast "burned babies in their beds," "killed a bride buying her trousseau," and "blew away three children as they walked home from the mosque." It also "devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut suburb, reported Nora Boustany three years later in the Washington Post.
The intended target had been the Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by Reagan's CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain's help, and was specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's account in his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Little is known beyond the bare facts, thanks to rigorous adherence to the doctrine that we do not investigate our own crimes (unless they become too prominent to suppress, and the inquiry can be limited to some low-level "bad apples" who were naturally "out of control").
LINK
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58. How important do you think it is right now for members of Congress to question the Bush Administration about the way the intelligence was used in order to make the case for going to war in Iraq– do you think it is very important, somewhat important, not too important, or not important at all?
56% Very
24% Somewhat
9% Not too
9% Not at all
NYT's/CBS poll (pdf)
- Dardedar
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"In a remarkable financial recovery, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton raised $35 million in February even as Democratic rival Barack Obama was outspending her in key March 4 battlegrounds."
McCain:
"Likely Republican presidential nominee John McCain raised a little over $12 million in February, two campaign sources tell CNN’s John King."
"Barack has raised possibly 50 million from some reports in the same time period."
link
McCain:
"Likely Republican presidential nominee John McCain raised a little over $12 million in February, two campaign sources tell CNN’s John King."
"Barack has raised possibly 50 million from some reports in the same time period."
link
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Pivotal Gay Marriage Hearing Tuesday in State Supreme Court
Crystal Carreon reports for The Sacramento Bee, "The California Supreme
Court is set Tuesday to consider a pivotal civil rights question that
has sparked controversy in courthouses and contentious public debate:
Should gay couples be allowed to marry? ... [A] decision by this high
court, in the state with the largest number of homosexual couples, could
reverberate well beyond California."
LINK
CREATIONISTS LOSE IN TEX PRIMARY
/ The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – Veteran State Board of Education member Pat Hardy of Fort Worth was defeating a challenger in the GOP primary Tuesday night, holding off an effort by social conservatives to gain a working majority on the politically divided board. ...
The Fort Worth Republican had been targeted by some social conservative groups for her independent voting ways and her frequent opposition to a bloc of seven social conservatives on the 15-member board.
Social conservatives threw their support behind Cleburne urologist Barney Maddox, known for his strong support of creation science and calls to revamp textbooks used in classrooms across Texas.
The board currently has 10 Republicans – including seven social conservatives who frequently vote together – and five Democrats. Seven members are up for election this year, but the only primary races are in District 11 (Ms. Hardy's seat) and District 2 in South Texas.
In the latter contest, incumbent Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, easily defeated a challenger in the Democratic primary who also supported creation science as a better explanation of the origin of man than Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Board members are expected to deal with the subject when they adopt new science curriculum standards this year
story here
/ The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – Veteran State Board of Education member Pat Hardy of Fort Worth was defeating a challenger in the GOP primary Tuesday night, holding off an effort by social conservatives to gain a working majority on the politically divided board. ...
The Fort Worth Republican had been targeted by some social conservative groups for her independent voting ways and her frequent opposition to a bloc of seven social conservatives on the 15-member board.
Social conservatives threw their support behind Cleburne urologist Barney Maddox, known for his strong support of creation science and calls to revamp textbooks used in classrooms across Texas.
The board currently has 10 Republicans – including seven social conservatives who frequently vote together – and five Democrats. Seven members are up for election this year, but the only primary races are in District 11 (Ms. Hardy's seat) and District 2 in South Texas.
In the latter contest, incumbent Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, easily defeated a challenger in the Democratic primary who also supported creation science as a better explanation of the origin of man than Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Board members are expected to deal with the subject when they adopt new science curriculum standards this year
story here
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Buh Bye Tucker! MSNBC Cancels Carlson’s Show
What an idiot.
***
Major Democratic Victory - Hastert’s IL Seat Goes To Bill Foster
"Hastert served as Speaker of the House from 1999 till 2007 when the Democrats took control of Congress. If a Democrat can win in a republican district like this, it bodes well for Democrats nationwide looking ahead in 2008." LINK
What an idiot.
***
Major Democratic Victory - Hastert’s IL Seat Goes To Bill Foster
"Hastert served as Speaker of the House from 1999 till 2007 when the Democrats took control of Congress. If a Democrat can win in a republican district like this, it bodes well for Democrats nationwide looking ahead in 2008." LINK
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"The book [War and Decision] also reveals that at a December 18, 2002 meeting of the National Security Council, Bush said "war is inevitable" -- weeks before UN weapons inspectors were to issue their findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Baghdad, according to the Post."
LINK
LINK
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Quite a compilation:
Arkansas Bad Cop Week
It has been a bad week for the image and fact of justice in Arkansas, as law enforcement officers continued to commit serial abuses of power. Of course, one poster commented earlier that it is a good week for the people when the cops don't shoot and kill an unarmed mentally-handicapped citizen who has committed no crime.
the rest
Arkansas Bad Cop Week
It has been a bad week for the image and fact of justice in Arkansas, as law enforcement officers continued to commit serial abuses of power. Of course, one poster commented earlier that it is a good week for the people when the cops don't shoot and kill an unarmed mentally-handicapped citizen who has committed no crime.
the rest
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Thanks Lou Dobbs:
"It’s not enough to hate illegal immigrants anymore–you must despise anyone who dares speak Spanish in public too. A Ross Perot loving—anti-Hispanic bigot got grumpy because two Latino customers didn’t know exactly what equipment they wanted—thought it was a hassle to help them—heard them speak Spanish—then demanded proof of citizenship for one of them before he would sell the items. He even threatened to call ICE and arrest them himself. Both people are US citizens."
LINK
"It’s not enough to hate illegal immigrants anymore–you must despise anyone who dares speak Spanish in public too. A Ross Perot loving—anti-Hispanic bigot got grumpy because two Latino customers didn’t know exactly what equipment they wanted—thought it was a hassle to help them—heard them speak Spanish—then demanded proof of citizenship for one of them before he would sell the items. He even threatened to call ICE and arrest them himself. Both people are US citizens."
LINK
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An editorial in The New York Times fact-checks President Bush’s speech at the Economic Club of New York.
Through Bush-Colored Glasses:
Mr. Bush said he was optimistic because the economy’s “foundation is solid” as measured by employment, wages, productivity, exports and the federal deficit. He was wrong on every count. On some, he has been wrong for quite a while.
Mr. Bush boasted about 52 consecutive months of job growth during his presidency. What matters is the magnitude of growth, not ticks on a calendar. The economic expansion under Mr. Bush — which it is safe to assume is now over — produced job growth of 4.2 percent. That is the worst performance over a business cycle since the government started keeping track in 1945.
...
Finally, Mr. Bush’s focus on the size of the federal budget deficit ignores that annual government borrowing comes on top of existing debt. Publicly held federal debt will be up by a stunning 76 percent by the end of his presidency. Paying back the money means less to spend on everything else for a very long time.
NYT's
Through Bush-Colored Glasses:
Mr. Bush said he was optimistic because the economy’s “foundation is solid” as measured by employment, wages, productivity, exports and the federal deficit. He was wrong on every count. On some, he has been wrong for quite a while.
Mr. Bush boasted about 52 consecutive months of job growth during his presidency. What matters is the magnitude of growth, not ticks on a calendar. The economic expansion under Mr. Bush — which it is safe to assume is now over — produced job growth of 4.2 percent. That is the worst performance over a business cycle since the government started keeping track in 1945.
...
Finally, Mr. Bush’s focus on the size of the federal budget deficit ignores that annual government borrowing comes on top of existing debt. Publicly held federal debt will be up by a stunning 76 percent by the end of his presidency. Paying back the money means less to spend on everything else for a very long time.
NYT's
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"On Super Tuesday, February 5th, the Minnesota DFL Party held precinct caucuses. The previous record turnout was around 60,000 people, but this year, some were predicting that as many as 75,000 people might attend caucuses.
Wrong.
Over 215,000 people packed into noisy, sweaty, chaotic rooms to take part in the process, a scene repeated all over the country." --Air America newsletter
DAR
Yeah, Demo's aren't energized. "McCain's already won..." <snort>
Wrong.
Over 215,000 people packed into noisy, sweaty, chaotic rooms to take part in the process, a scene repeated all over the country." --Air America newsletter
DAR
Yeah, Demo's aren't energized. "McCain's already won..." <snort>