It appears that he ditched his old family, changed his name, and bigamously started a new one.
I guess that this beats, “My dog at my homework“.
Year: 2007
Clinton Promises Major Increase in Autism Funding
Full disclosure, my son is on the spectrum, very high functioning Aspergers, so I consider this statement from the front runner that she plans to increase funding for research and education to $700 million a year to be a very good thing.
By way of comparison, that figure is 7½ days in Iraq.
I once read that a majority of people in prison were learning disabled, when we neglect them, we neglect the needs of the greater society.
Rumsfeld Torture Case Dismissed
French prosecutors have dismissed a torture case against Donald Rumsfeld based on “customary immunity”…Funny thing though…I’ve never heard them claim this immunity with Israelis. (FWIW, I do believe that Sharon should have spent some time in the clink for his roll in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, because he was at the very least criminally negligent).
My guess is that this came straight from Sarkosy.
Oral Roberts’ Son Resigns as President of Oral Roberts University
Shades of Elmer Gantry. They go into the more prosaic stuff, like a nearly $40 thousand shopping spree, and a nearly $30 thousand senior trip for his kids, repeatedly remodeling their home, and requiring students to work on a political campaign for a specific candidate.
There are also allegations that his wife had an inappropriate relationship with an underage student, or students, at the university.
There is a lot to be found, now that the rock has been turned over. I could see a reprise of the Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker PTL ministries.
Bush’s Australian Lapdog Goes Down to Defeat
Bush’s best friend in the South Pacific, and a race baiting demagogue, John Howard, has gone down to defeat in Australia. He placed combat troops in Iraq, and endorsed the politics of fear with a zeal that rivals that of Bush and His Evil Minions™.
What’s more, John Howard will lose his own seat, and his party is in opposition in every state and territory.
The Australian people were sick and tired of a government that was more frightening them than it was in serving then.
Would that we had a parliamentary system here.
Gee, People are Upset That Edwards Tells the Truth
I’m not a fan of Senator Clinton. I am less of a fan of Obama, whose Adlai Stevensonesque Hamlet act is very old, and whose homophobic dog whistle overtures to socially conservative black Democrats in South Carolina are despicable.
What John Edwards is saying is factually accurate. Clinton is refusing to commit to removing troops from a combat role in Iraq, and while not personally corrupt herself*, she has surrounded herself with people who make money lobbying for big money interests, Mark Penn only being the most egregious case, and she has defended this system of pay to play in the debates.
It is a legitimate course for Edwards to take. For what it’s worth, FDR was very much the slick prepackaged politician in 1932, so Hillary may be better than I expect if she gets the nomination, and wins the general, which is the likely result for any Democrat who wins the nomination this time around.
*She is arguably the second most investigated individual of the past 30 years. The best that Richard Mellon Scaife could come up with Whitewater, a land deal in which she lost money.
Courts Allowing Electronic of Suspects Without Probable Cause
Welcome to 1984, only 23 years late.
The feds are increasingly using the enhanced 911 services to track people’s movements, and most of the judicial precedent at this point is saying that they do not need probable cause to get a court order, it is noted that, “Such requests run counter to the Justice Department’s internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas”, so we get
In one case last month in a southwestern state, an FBI agent obtained precise location data with a court order based on the lower standard, citing “specific and articulable facts” showing reasonable grounds to believe the data are “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation,” said Al Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, who reviews data requests for carriers.
Which means that the agents think that all they need to show is that they want the information.
Paul Set to Break $12 Million for Fund Raising for This Quarter
I believe that these sorts of numbers will place Paul in the top three in fund raising for this quarter.
If he spends this money, he could surprise people, at least in the primary states. The caucus states, with their structure being designed to reinforce party orthodoxy, are less fertile ground for him.
We Are Losing Afghanistan
The Taliban has a PERMANENT presense in 54% of Afghanistan. The picture shows it all:
Both Afghanistan ahd PAKISTAN are in the process of being overrun.
Conversational Hebrew
This little tidbit from the times gives one a pretty good idea how people think what they really think about Condoleeza Rice:
The long buildup to Annapolis, together with Ms. Rice’s many trips to the region, have given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: “lecondel,” meaning, to come and go for meetings that produce few results. The word is based on Ms. Rice’s first name.
This misadministration still shocks me with its incompetence.
New Hampshire Primary Tuesday, January 8
Not a big surprise, but it’s now official.
Blogging will be sporadic, at best. I’m working on my MIL’s machine, which is old, may be spyware laden, and only has Internet Explorer (**blarf**)
Steam Trek: The Moving Picture (Star Trek Parody)
Full version is on website at www.sisterson.co.uk.; stills, credits and making-of info at steamtrek.blogspot.com.)
My connectivity, and hence posting, will be diminished over the Thanksgiving Holiday…I will be visiting my mother-in-law in Monsey, New York.
Republican Rivals Start Opposition Research Huckabee
Well, this is pretty good evidence that he has them running scared.
I’m not sure really why the need to do the research though. They already have the very public case of Wayne Dumond, where Huckabee lobbied for the convicted rapist’s parole, and Dumond later raped and murdered a neighbor.
He did this because Dumond’s first victim was a distant cousin of Clinton, so the wingers were claiming that he was “railroaded”, because…well…it involved Bill Clinton.
This is how Wingnuts thing.
Home Prices Down
Down 2% year over year as of the end of September.
Note that more expensive houses are moving more, so this is a lagging indicator.
Georgia’s Sex Offender Housing Laws Overturned
This law basically amounted to exile from the state, as it prohibited “registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches and other areas where children congregate”, and the Georgia supreme court has ruled it unconstitutional.
There were a number of problems with the law:
- It applied to all sex offenders, so people who were no threat to children, like indecent exposure, public sex or lewdness (like Larry Craig), etc. were covered.
- It covered 150,000 school bus stops in the state, making it’s coverage too broad.
- As the court noted, offenders obeying the law, “face the possibility of being repeatedly uprooted and forced to abandon homes.”
Honestly, it’s not like pedophiles can’t drive. I understand that the case that brought this on was a sex offender that was living near a day care center and re-offended, but this should be handled through the corrections process, such as longer sentences, and probation conditions.
Mike Huckabee Calls for Investigation of Bush Over Plame Leak
I think that Huckabee has been tacking a bit against Bush, he unfavorably compared Bush and Musharraf, but his latest statement, calling for an investigation of Bush on the Plame affair, is kind of stunning.
I think that Huckabee believes that he can win by tacking against Bush. There is a significant enough plurality of Republicans who are sick of Bush to put him over the top in a multi candidate field.
Clinton And Edwards Won’t Cross Picket Line For Debate
Good for them. CBS News writers are on strike, and they won’t cross the picket line for the December debate on CBS.
It’s the right thing to do.
RGE – With the Recession Becoming Inevitable the Consensus Shifts Towards the Hard Landing View. And the Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown
Noriel Roubini’s latest prediction:
I now see the risk of a severe and worsening liquidity and credit crunch leading to a generalized meltdown of the financial system of a severity and magnitude like we have never observed before. In this extreme scenario whose likelihood is increasing we could see a generalized run on some banks; and runs on a couple of weaker (non-bank) broker dealers that may go bankrupt with severe and systemic ripple effects on a mass of highly leveraged derivative instruments that will lead to a seizure of the derivatives markets (think of LTCM to the power of three); a collapse of the ABCP market and a disorderly collapse of the SIVs and conduits; massive losses on money market funds with a run on both those sponsored by banks and those not sponsored by banks (with the latter at even more severe risk as the recent effective bailout of the formers’ losses by theirs sponsoring banks is not available to those not being backed by banks); ever growing defaults and losses ($500 billion plus) in subprime, near prime and prime mortgages with severe known-on effect on the RMBS and CDOs market; massive losses in consumer credit (auto loans, credit cards); severe problems and losses in commercial real estate and related CMBS; the drying up of liquidity and credit in a variety of asset backed securities putting the entire model of securitization at risk; runs on hedge funds and other financial institutions that do not have access to the Fed’s lender of last resort support; a sharp increase in corporate defaults and credit spreads; and a massive process of re-intermediation into the banking system of activities that were until now altogether securitized.
Let’s be clear, Dr. Roubini is, and always has been, a bear. Truth be told, Since I started following this in 2001, so have I.
More important that this is that the bears in general, and Dr. Roubini in particular, have been right time and time again.
We have trillions of dollars in leverage in instruments that no one understands, and when this unwinds, it will be ugly.
1000 Words, Economy Edition
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Huckabee Ties Romney in Iowa
It’s a statistical tie, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, errore of 5% +/-.
Mitt Romney, 28 percent
Mike Huckabee, 24 percent
Fred Thompson, 15 percent
Rudy Giuliani, 13 percent
John McCain, 6 percent