December 19, 2006
PPI - Biggest Jump in 30 Years
Hate to be such a bear, but this is getting very scary.
"Because the PPI fell 1.6 percent in October, some said the latest report simply smoothes out the bumps."
I hope they're right, but this statement vaguely reminds me of the shills at NAR saying the RE market is just "adjusting" and its now a "great time to buy!"
Posted by smashmonster at 09:22 PM
November 28, 2005
Bill Moyers on the Moral Rot that Informs Catastrophic Conservatism, Texas Style
Excellent blog post on the Huffington Post. Thanks to my friend George for the heads up.
An excerpt:
Everything President George W. Bush knows, he learned here, as the product of a system rigged to assure the political progeny needed to perpetuate itself with minimum interference from the nuisances of liberal democracy. You remember liberal democracy: the rule of law, the protection of individual and minority rights, checks and balances against arbitrary power, an independent press, the separation of church and state. As governor, Bush was nurtured by the peculiar Texas blend of piety and privilege that mocks those values. With the election of 2000, he and his cohorts arrived in Washington like atheists taking over the Vatican; they had come to run a government they don’t believe in.
The results have been disastrous: reckless tax cuts, a relentless assault on social services, monumental debt, pre-emptive war, an exhausted military, booming corporate welfare and corruption so deep and pervasive it has touched every facet of American government.
Posted by smashmonster at 07:52 PM
November 15, 2005
Rove and the Relativity of Truth
Interesting piece in the LA Weekly on how Karl Rove has fared previously when under oath. There is something so creepy about this character. In the quote below, not the push-polling tactic Rove is famous for - if you haven't seen the documentary Bush's Brain, see it, as there are many more examples of this type of push-polling.
Rove told the attorney representing the trial lawyers that he had a firm agreement with the governor to recuse himself from anything having to do with tobacco. A “Chinese wall” separated his tobacco consulting from his work for Bush. The lawyers knew the answers to some of the questions before they asked them. They knew that Rove had been involved in polling funded by the tobacco lobby. One of the polls was a piece of political trash, a push poll asking respondents how they would vote if they knew the Democratic attorney general had provided financial support to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — which he never had. The day the results were released, Rove attended a tobacco-lobby meeting and immediately took the poll to Bush chief of staff Joe Allbaugh.
For those who don't know what push-polling is, here is a basic primer on the slimy practice: you call voters during an election campaign and you ask them, for example, who are you voting for? If they say, Candidate X and that is not YOUR party's candidate you say, "Would you still vote for Candidate X if you knew he supported the Man-Boy Love Association? Or plug in any scandalous association -- would you vote for him if you found out he once belonged to the Communist Party...he'd given money to charities that have since been shown to be funnels for terrorist organizations...if you found out he was once accused of molesting children?
It's a truly disgusting practice and one of the ways these types of operators undermine the fundamental processes of a democracy. When wing nuts like Ann Coulter rant about "treason" she should be targeting those who have corrupted the democratic process, the very foundation of free elections, first.
Posted by smashmonster at 09:02 PM
October 01, 2005
They Came, They Saw, They Screwed It Up
Michael Klare via TomDispatch takes a look at American "oil policy" in Iraq - pre-war to post-Katrina.
Also,
The failure to rebuild key components of Iraq's petroleum industry has impeded oil production and may have permanently damaged the largest of the country's vast oil fields, American and Iraqi experts say.Engineering mistakes, poor leadership and shifting priorities have delayed or led to the cancellation of several projects critical to restoring Iraq's oil industry, according to interviews of more than two dozen current and former U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry experts.
In-fighting and some really dumb screw ups - read it and weep.
Posted by smashmonster at 05:13 PM
September 30, 2005
Must Read - TNR's Swimming with Sharks
From the October 3, 2005 issue of The New Republic...
Rove, Abramoff, Delay...they didn't pop from Zeus' head. The Young Republicans get early training in sabotage, manipulation, and deception to influence and control elections. Some tactics:
Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent's "homosexuality"; rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don't; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters.
Consider this - the CRNC (College Republican National Committee) chairman who "wins" the election earns 75K a year and pretty much guarantees a future in politics. Challenge him, you may as well change careers - no head of FEMA for you! There has been internal dissent over such pesky issues as financial misdealings (kickbacks and various schemes to profit from their unique 527 status - unique because their Democratic counterpart has not pursued this avenue).
Read the article. It won't shock or appall you unless you have been asleep the last 10 years.
Compare them to their Democratic counterpart:
Unlike the College Republicans, Democratic students are not organized as an independent 527. They reside within the Democratic National Committee and exist largely to supply campaign volunteers. Woodard makes all his calls after 9 p.m., "when I get free cell phone minutes," he told me. His salary is $75,000 lower than the one Chairman Paul Gourley receives--that is to say, nonexistent. The contrast between the two organizations is remarkably vivid.
And the Democrats haven't figured out how to hire a direct mail firm to manipulate Senior Citizens out of their life savings to save America from Democrats - one of the more unseemly scandals of their Republican counterpart.
Although I certainly would not want to see young Democrats mimicking the nefarious goings-on of the young Republicans, they might not want to seem so relaxed about the state of the Democratic Party. They can get more serious and play hard ball without succumbing to corruption. Or atleast prepare themselves to handle these types of tactics as they pursue careers in politics.
If you know someone is going to spread rumors you are a pedophile to try to influence an election...you might be better armed to defend against it. And you might be better prepared to enlighten the rest of the voting public about how such tactics are undermining our status as a free and democratic nation.
Posted by smashmonster72 at 01:33 PM
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