BREVITAS
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter. - African proverb
POCKET PARADIGMS
WIRED - Connecticut senator Christopher Dodd's threatened filibuster of a bill giving immunity to telecoms that helped the government spy on Americans unexpectedly carried the day Monday, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to postpone the vote on the measure until after the winter break. The announcement was an unexpected victory for civil liberties groups, whose anti-immunity fortunes looked grim this morning as the Senate looked primed to pass an expansive spying bill that would free telecoms like AT&T and Verizon from privacy lawsuits. Dodd showed his moxie and determination all day, as he held the floor for long stretches, railing against an administration-backed bill that would have freed telecoms from 40-odd lawsuits pending against them in federal court.
NO KNOCK SEARCHES UP 16 TIMES SINCE 1981
NEW JERSEY FIRST STATE TO END CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN 42 YEARS
AMERICAN VOTERS are a pretty unhappy lot these days, but here's one thing they really like once they've tried it: instant runoff voting. From San Francisco to Henderson, NC, exit polls in each of the five jurisdictions that have adopted IRV find support in the 71-89% range.
RALPH NADER GETS A FAIR DOCUMENTARY and here's where you find out when it will be on your local PBS station
INDEPENDENT, UK - Jacob Zuma is set to topple President Thabo Mbeki from the ANC leadership in a fight that will reverberate across continent
JACOB ZUMA: A left-winger with the common touch
AP - A federal judge has ordered a hearing on whether the Bush administration violated a court order by destroying CIA interrogation videos of two al-Qaida suspects. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy rejected calls from the Justice Department to stay out of the matter. He ordered lawyers to appear before him Friday morning.
AP - White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws.
INTERNET SIGHTINGS: How does a sailboat with an 85 foot mast go under a 65 foot bridge? Answer here
NY TIMES - Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves. John Gamboa and Robert Gnaizda of the Greenlining Institute, a housing advocacy group, warned the Fed in 2004 about unscrupulous lenders. Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor . . . warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford.. . . In 2001, a senior Treasury official, Sheila C. Bair, tried to persuade subprime lenders to adopt a code of "best practices" and to let outside monitors verify their compliance. None of the lenders would agree to the monitors, and many rejected the code itself.
WASHINGTON TIMES - Forty percent of Americans say they would vote to keep Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton from winning the presidency, more than twice the total for their No. 2 "anti" pick, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. In a new Fox 5-The Washington Times-Rasmussen Reports survey, 64 percent of Republicans, 42 percent of third-party or independent voters, and 17 percent of Democrats said the candidate they most want to keep from the White House is Mrs. Clinton. While Mrs. Clinton performed poorly among most demographics, younger male voters were particularly cold. More than half of the adult men younger than 40 said they would use their vote to keep Mrs. Clinton from returning to the White House.
SF GATE - The dream of generating electricity from the ocean's waves will take a major step forward when Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announces its support for plans to build the nation's first commercial wave power plant off the coast of Northern California. . . The plant will consist of eight buoys bobbing in the water 2 1/2 miles offshore, each buoy generating electricity as it rises and falls with the waves. If all goes as planned, the "wave park" will begin operating in 2012. The power it generates won't be much - enough to light 1,500 homes at most. But it represents another potential front in the fight against climate change.
RADAR - Like most congressmen, Rep. Charles Rangel worked late ushering essential, earmark-laden spending legislation through the House of Representatives. But unlike his colleagues, Charles Rangel is not a chump who will settle for earmarks that don't aggressively promote the Charles Rangel brand. Ergo, the $1.95 million for creating the Charles Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York which, according to this report, will include a "Charles Rangel Conference Center," a "Charles Rangel Library" and a "well-furnished office for Charles Rangel." MORE
SEATTLE'S CROCODILE CLUB has closed. "Word of the closure spread quickly through the city's music blogs, with surprised Croc fans mourning the passing of a place that played such a vital part in Seattle's vibrant club scene in the 1990s."
MORE EVIDENCE that the retail market is not doing well this season from ABC: ComScore Inc. reported on Sunday that online sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 14 rose 18 percent -- less than the 26 percent growth rate seen in the same period a year ago and the 20 percent projection for the season. Trying to look on the bright side, ABC tries to balme it on procrastination.
LA TIMES - While in private business, Mitt Romney utilized shell companies in two offshore tax havens to help eligible investors avoid paying U.S. taxes, federal and state records show. Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But aides to the Republican presidential hopeful and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney's former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.
AP - Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien plan a Jan. 2 return with fresh episodes, ending two months of reruns brought on by the writers' strike, the network said Monday. But until the strike is settled, the hosts will be on their own. "I will make clear, on the program, my support for the writers and I'll do the best version of `Late Night' I can under the circumstances," O'Brien said in a written statement. "Of course, my show will not be as good. In fact, in moments it may very well be terrible." Both NBC hosts indicated it was a torturous decision for them to come back, torn by their support for the writers and knowledge that several dozen other staff members would be laid off if the shows remained dark. Some of the late-night stars covered employees' salaries during the holiday season.
THE CLINTON-BUSH CONNECTION CROPS UP AGAIN: Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the current president - Bush's son, George W. Bush. - CNN
6 Comments:
Range Voting is a simpler and much better voting method than IRV, that is rapidly gaining popularity among election methods enthusiasts.
The Ralph Nader documentary reminded me of all that can be good in politics. To hear the frothy-mouthed blathering of Alterman, et. al. also reminded me that the Democratic reaction to Nader is not only symtomatic of but also precisely what I find wrong with the Democratic party.
Do not lecture me on "spoilers" when your arguments by their very nature negate conceptions such as "democracy," "freedom," "The Constitution of the U.S.," "civics," "pubilc welfare," etc.
The fact of the matter is that if you support progressive causes, you MUST support progressive candidates. The history of the Democratic party, especailly since Clinton, is one of running scared from not only progressive, but also from basic American values- head on into a trap set specifically and purposefully by the Republicans.
Shame on anyone who falls into such a lame trap. The next time someone claims to remove your nose, please make sure the protrusion from between their fingers isn't really just their thumb. Especially if the future is at stake.
Where's the sailboat link?
wellbasically
Ron Paul's the kind of progressive I want. Progress right back to our Constitutional libertarian heritage.
Funny thing about Paul, though. He calls himself a libertarian, but he's opposed to liberty for women, gays, and non-Christians in any number of ways. He seems to mainly be for liberty when it comes to letting corporations do whatever they like.
Funny thing about Paul, though. He calls himself a libertarian, but he's opposed to liberty for women, gays, and non-Christians in any number of ways. He seems to mainly be for liberty when it comes to letting corporations do whatever they like.
Your claims about Ron Paul are simply false. I'm an atheist and an ardent Ron Paul supporter. At a rally this Sunday, I talked to a Muslim Pakistani-Indian woman who told me that most of her family came to support Ron Paul after researching his positions. My girlfriend, who worked at an abortion clinic for over a year, supports Ron Paul in spite of his pro-life stance, because he believes in states' rights, and doesn't believe it's the job of the federal government to dictate abortion policy to states.
As for corporations, Ron Paul believes in in capitalism, not corporatism. He would work to end corporate subsidies, and stop the Bush practice of appointing as leaders of regulatory agencies, people from the industry being regulated.
Compare Ron Paul's record to that of every other candidate in either major party. He returns a portion of his paycheck back to the federal government each year. He votes in favor of the Constitution, relentlessly -- a stark contrast to a hack like Hillary Clinton, who voted for such gems as the Flag Desecration Amendment (who needs free speech?), and the Patriot Act. Paul voted against the Patriot Act.
NONE of the Democrats have promised a swift and total withdrawal from Iraq. Paul has promised not only that, but to bring our troops home from essentially every outpost around the world - because there's simply no reason for us to be the world's police.
Paul understands monetary policy, and has been talking about the inflation crisis for years. No other candidate is talking about it, but Greenspan and Wallstreet pros are certainly starting to acknowledge it. The "inflation tax", as Paul calls it, hurts the poor and middle-class. Ron Paul would end it, and use sound spending policy to pour vastly more wealth into our economy, meaning we'd have fewer people in need of social safety-nets, and more money to properly fund the ones we do have.
Research Ron Paul's real policies, instead of the myths tossed around by supposed "progressives". It's utterly naive to think there's any other candidate who could make half as good a President.
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