deadissue.com

Kevin Drum was the first person to notice her pick

A CONTEST….Let’s have a contest. As we all know, Hillary Clinton chose filly Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby today. Instead, EB came in second and then had to be euthanized after breaking both ankles right after crossing the finish line. So here’s the contest: Who do you think will be the first pundit/columnist/talking head to use this as an idiotically extended metaphor for the state of Hillary Clinton’s campaign? Matthews? Dowd? Jonah Goldberg?

Or has someone already done it?

This reminds me of the Jim Rome show, where Rome says he doesn’t want to talk about something and then proceeds to talk about how bad it would be to talk about something for an hour. While at the same time making sure that no detail goes unmentioned. My favorite example of this was when Rome “talked” about the couple with 17 kids, he said he did not want to talk about it, and then proceeded to mention all of the kids names, and discuss various e-mails about the moms ability to enjoy sex, and the state of her breasts. It was truly an example of taking the hi-road.
With all that said Hillary could not have picked a better horse to symbolize her campaign.

I made an appointment to get a vasectomy today.  The procedure sounds pretty easy, I did not even need a pre-surgery appointment and my co-pay is only $40.  This seems like a no-brainer when one looks at the cost of raising a child.  Plus, in my case my dog, Kip, hates kids.  If I ever had a kid I would have to give up him up, (my dog not the kid, although it would probably be smarter to give up the kid, as I am sure most dogs are better companions than the drooling poop factories that some people call children) 

It is interesting that more men don’t decide to go child free, most my friends who have children don’t seem that happy about the situation, they either complain that they cannot do the things they want to do.  Or in some cases they complain about being stuck in a bad relationship for the sake of the children.  I know Al might disagree with me on this but when I look at parents I see people who are tired and have that look of someone who is trying to run out the clock. 

I like the idea that I can live in a small place in a bad school district and be very happy.  Children would ruin that, suddenly I would have to listen to my realtor when he talks about the need to live in a “good area”.  I might even need to worry about finding a good paying carreer so that I could one day send my kid to college.  Thanks to a $40 dollar co-pay I can insure happiness for a very long time.  I think my ROI on this $40 might be almost infinite.

From washingtonmonthly

Ninety-two percent of farm-dwellers derive either all or most of their income from sources other than farming or subsidies….The other 8 percent — commercial farmers who derive most of their income from farming and subsidies — earned an average of $200,000 last year — an increase of 22 percent from 2006. This year, income for this group is projected to hit $230,000 — another 9.3-percent increase. The USDA, which calculated these estimates, reported last year that the windfall for commercial farmers is due in large part to “demand from the rapid expansion of ethanol production.”

….Right now, Congress is attempting to renew farm subsidies for five more years, even though the vast majority of the payments go to farmers who are making six figures a year. The chief obstacle is President Bush, who has threatened to veto the bill in its current form. Bush, who signed the massive 2002 farm bill, has set an unbelievably low bar for Congress to clear, calling only for modest spending restraint in the wake of record farm incomes. Yet Congress cannot even bring itself to cap payments to millionaires, among other simple reforms.

Every now and again Bush does something smart and this might be one of thise times. I really wonder why everyone finds it necessary to pander to the farmers.

Taken from Matthew Yglesisas

Rob Goodspeed points out that we have substantial evidence that consumers bear only around half the burden of gasoline taxes over the long run, with the rest of the incidence falling on the oil companies. Here’s one study:

Using the estimated coefficients, we can determine the incidence of federal and state specific taxes. An increase in the federal tax by 1¢ raises the retail price by 0.47¢ and decreases the wholesale price by 0.56¢. Thus, consumers and wholesalers each pay roughly half of the federal specific tax.
In other words, we really should be raising the gas tax. There are a billion reasons this won’t happen, but if we were to raise the gas tax, then rebate half the revenues to citizens on some kind of flat per person basis, and make the other half available to fund transit projects, there’d be no net burden on the population, you’d create an incentive to use alternative forms of transportation where they exist, and you’d have a pool of revenue available to create alternative forms of transportation

Higher gas taxes also have the benefit of decreasing consumption which should be good for the enviroment as well. The gas tax holiday is one of the dumbest ideas ever, once again Hillary Clinton shows her poor judgement with her support of the idea.

Grown-ups are trying to stop the Hillary/McCain pander fest

She definitely campaigns like a Republican

Reverend Wight is going around the country talking about how America has failed god Maybe it is the other way around, maybe religous belief has failed America and mankind in general. Pretending that their is an all knowing being who is going to look out for you, while it might make you feel good, does nothing to improve your own lot in life. Unfortunately, for true believers the idea that their “god” has failed them is unacceptable, so they blame anyone and everyone else. Natural disasters become the fault of homosexuals, terrorists attacks become proof that we have displeased god somehow. The reality is, worshipping god does nothing to improve your life on planet earth, but it does seem to make people angry when they are not rewarded for their worship. That is they get mad when something happens to them when in thier mind they have been “good Christians” or “good Muslims”
If Obama does lose the Democratic nomination or the presidental election it will be because of his “god” worship and who he chose to mentor him in his beliefs. At least maybe Democrats will learn something from this debacle and keep religion out of the public square

I have been hearing this from a lot of Hillary supporters:

If Democrats are going to win the White House in November, they need a shotgun wedding in June. This is not something that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton wants to hear, nor is it anything party leaders have been willing to say — at least not publicly. But without both Clinton and Obama on the same ticket, Democrats stand a good chance of suffering a humiliating defeat in the general election.

As the mathmatics of the nomination become obvious to anyone not named Clinton, their will probably be a lot of calls for Hillary as VP. This would be an awful idea, she has supported the war with Iraq and seems to support war with Iran, just like John McCain. Picking Hillary as a running mate would signal that deep down Obama agrees with the hawks and would validate John McCains hundred year war strategy. In addition Hillary on the ticket would energize the conservative base(even though she is the most conservative candidate in the race right now, they still hate her).
Hillary Clinton is a less likeable Joe Lieberman at this point,having anywhere near the presidential campaign may help republicans but it does nothing for democrats trying to end the war in Iraq or end the Bush/Cheney depression.

This should be the end of Hillary, she will not be the leader in pledged delagates or leading in the popular vote on June 3rd.

“The rules say [superdelegates] can make up their mind in August if they want to, but there are a lot of Democrats myself included, Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi, and many many others who understand that we want the voters to have their say, that’s over on June 3rd, and then the unpledged delegates really have got to make up their mind.
“None of the so-called party elders that I’ve talked to thought that this should go to the convention and I agree with that.”

The only person who wants the nomination to go to the convention floor is Hillary Clinton, which is the only way she gets Florida and Michigan counted, and the only way she gets the nomination.
If Hillary is smart, something she has not shown to this point, she will see what she can get for dropping out now. I don’t think she would be a good choice for VP, especially given her war support. she might make a good supreme court justice. I don’t think the Democratic party wants to humiliate her but she has to go.

From Newsweek via TPM

I’m beginning to think Hillary Clinton might pull this off and wrestle the nomination away from Barack Obama. If she does, a lot of folks—including a huge chunk of the media—will join Bill Richardson (a.k.a. Judas) in the Deep Freeze. If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in “The Godfather,” where the watchword is, “It’s business, not personal.”

Not that anyone will be sleeping with the fishes with Hillary in the White House, but with the Clintons it’s business and it’s personal. Just think of all the scores to settle, the grievances to indulge. Bill Clinton provided a preview this week, blaming the Obama campaign for playing the race card against him. Tricky maneuver, but perhaps the only way the former president can come to grips with his loss of standing in the African-American community, once his strongest constituency. (South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, an undeclared superdelegate who is African-American, told the New York Times this week that the black community had supported Clinton during his impeachment and that “I think black folks feel strongly that this is a strange way [for him] to show his appreciation.”)

Given that Obama has taken more liberal positions on most issues it seems likely that more traditionally liberal groups have supported him. Thia means that most traditionally liberal groups can look forward to Clinton retribution. It would not surprise me if Clinton starts a war with Iran just to show the anti-war crowd what happens when you go against Hillary.
The Clintons are starting to seem more like people who value personal loyalty above all else, which is really another way of saying they value themselves above all else.

Rush Limbaugh always a class act:

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments calling for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

“Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday’s radio broadcast. He then went on to say that’s the best thing that could happen to the country.

Steven Colbert may go down as the greatest pundit ever

I don’t think anyone expected this:

The two biggest U.S. warehouse retail chains are limiting how much rice customers can buy because of what Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., called on Wednesday “recent supply and demand trends.”

Mostly this sounds like restaurants stockpiling:

The move comes as U.S. rice futures hit a record high amid global food inflation, although one rice expert said the warehouse chains may be reacting less to any shortages than to stockpiling by restaurants and small stores.

Another issue might be the declining value of the US dollar in relation to other currencies. I don’t know much about the rice market but it seems that as the Dollar declines in value a US rice producer would make more money by exporting his product and foreign rice growers get more money by selling to other countries. Currency devaluation is probably a factor in high oil prices as well. Maybe presidential candidates should start talking about how to get the Dollars value higher in relation to other currencies, instead of promising to open the strategic petroleum reserve or offering a gas tax holiday.

This presidental campaign has been souring me on politics and specificaly democratic politics, (Hillary please quit before the democrats lose an entire generation of voters)

But then I read about sweatshop Bob  and listen to some of the rightwingers that try to defend him and I realize that the volunteer work that I do for the democratic party helps keep people like Bob Schaffer out of office . Even though a certain presidential candidate might annoy the crap out of me, overall liberal values are still much better than the nothing but dollars, values of the republican party.

Some foreign countries are refusing to import US beef until the US bans “downer cows” Maybe they could just serve all the the meat from downer cows to US school children and export the good stuff to other countries where their governments are concerned with the welfare of their citizens.

The Humane Society has sued to enforce a complete ban on downers, and some in Congress have supported legislation to accomplish the same thing.

“This is a welcome step forward,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., author of a bill to enact a total downer ban. “These organizations represent a substantial portion of the industry, and this is a responsible move on their part.”

The American Meat Institute and the National Meat Association said they would encourage companies to enact a voluntary moratorium until the Agriculture Department changes the rule.

“Allowing the current rule to remain in force could ultimately undermine the confidence of U.S. consumers and foreign customers, in markets that are proving difficult to reopen in the first place,” said AMI President and CEO J. Patrick Boyle.

Some industry watchdogs were skeptical.

“It’s taken our trading partners to force them into doing the right thing,” said Tony Corbo of Food & Water Watch, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group. He noted that South Korea agreed last week to resume U.S. beef imports only after pressuring the U.S. to strengthen controls on feed to reduce chances of infection. A proposed Food and Drug Administration rule to accomplish those changes had been pending for months.

It is sad foreign government have to force the US beef industry to improve their products safety.
The entire article can be seen here

As this article shows McCain is not a strong candidate. He is starting to look like a philandering buffoon who is mostly interested in helping his friends make money at the expense of the taxpayers. In other words he is a typical republican minus the mens bathroom antics.

From TPM Election central

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

This sounds like Bush at his worst, I don’t see how anyone who claims to have progressive values could support this neo-con.

McCain has anger issues and Lieberman finds it sexy:

Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: “His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him.”

A spokesman for McCain’s campaign said he would be unavailable for an interview on the subject of his temper. But over the years, no one has written more intimately about McCain’s outbursts than McCain himself. “My temper has often been both a matter of public speculation and personal concern,” he wrote in a 2002 memoir. “I have a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public’s.”

Even McCain knows his temper is a problem, but not self appointed  McCain fluffer,
Joe Lieberman:

Does he get angry? Yes,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who supports McCain’s presidential bid. “But it’s never been enough to blur his judgment. . . . If anything, his passion and occasional bursts of anger have made him more effective.”

The article also talks about McCain getting into an altercation with Senator Charles Grassley, most of us would be looking for a new job if we started an altercation with a co-worker. We might even face criminal charges, not John McCain though he gets the republican nomination for president. McCain should be in anger management classes not running the country.

One of these days I am going to stop writing about why Hillary Clinton is not winning the nomination, until then here is another snippet, from TPMcafe, as to why Hillary does not seem to be winning the hearts and minds of America:

But what is clear in both in my memory and my notes is that there was extensive, hard-nosed discussion about why masses of voters did not support Clinton or trust government or base their choices on economic as opposed to what people saw as peripheral life-style concerns. Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices — usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is.

I vividly remember at the time finding it impressive that Bill Clinton (not Hillary Clinton) showed real empathy for the ordinary people whose motives and supposedly misguided choices were under analysis. Ironically, just as Barber reported, Bill Clinton was the one who combined analysis and empathy, much as Obama himself did in his full San Francisco remarks.

In the end it seems pretty clear that Hillary does not care about people that are not useful to her, and she seems to surround herself with people like Solis-Doyle and Penn who seem to share her lack of caring. It seems like the reason Clintonian politics worked for Bill Clinton and are not working for Hillary is that she really doesn’tcare about the people involved in her policies and it shows when she trys to get people to support her.

With that said I have been working on a piece about why I think Hillary would be a good choice for VP, mostly I think she would be a good attack dog and at some point Obama will have to do something to bring the party together. That will probably mean either a cabinet post for Hillary or offering her the VP spot. Many people are very loyal to the Clintons I worked with one at a voter registration drive today, and something needs to be done so they don’t see Obama as intentionally humiliating Hillary. Mr Obama is probably going to need all of his political skills for that one.

More Super-delegates including Sam Nunn and David Boren have come out for Obama. Infact the AP says, “Obama appears on track to finish the primary campaign fewer than 100 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed to win.”

I hope this guy is right. I am really tired of being mad at Hillary and Bill Clinton and for that matter Chelsea. The sooner Obama can wrap this thing up, the sooner the Democrats can move-on to defeating John McCain and ending the Iraq fiasco.

I got this from Ezra Klein

I can’t find the article on the Mother Jones web site, but the new issue has a piece by Paul Roberts (author of the terrific book the End of Oil, and the forthcoming “End of Food”)on the 7 Myths of Energy Independence. In it, he makes the point that one of oil’s great advantages is that it exists in a sort of economic isolation. If you use more oil, you don’t have less of anything but oil. Trying to replace oil with another energy source, however, has huge, rippling impacts. Biofuels, like ethanol, mean you suddenly have a whole lot less corn, which means you have less food. Windmills mean a lot less land, whole most solar strategies are chemically intensive. In other words, nothing really exists as an easy swap, because ramping up to a full energy economy will have huge, and possibly unexpected, impacts downstream. The only strategy that doesn’t gave this particular tradeoff is conservation, but since that’s neither very exciting nor obviously profitable, you’re seeing relatively little in the way of coordinated efforts to cut — rather than replace — energy usage.

The last sentence summarizes the problem nicely, no one makes money off of conservation so it is not encouraged. I know you free market zealots are going to argue that consumers can save money by conserving and they will realize this at some point and start spontaneously conserving energy. It has not happened yet, partially because people who have incentive to keep people acting against their own best interests have large marketing budgets and perhaps the idea that consumers are rational is a myth. Markets while they may be good for making money, might not always produce the best outcome for everyone involved. This is true in health care where the marketing efforts of big medicine overwhelm any idea someone has about thier own health. The same thing seems to happen with big oil and their ability to make conservation a dirty word.

I have been worried that I might sprain my ankle so I think I will have my legs removed

Stephanie Queller was an unreconstructed glamour girl who worked as a fashion designer and wore Manolo Blahniks and rhinestone-studded tank tops. Cancer, first in her breasts and then in her ovaries, destroyed her body, leaving her unable to eat or care for herself, before killing her at the age of 58. Eleven months later her daughter Jessica, a writer for the TV show “Gossip Girl,” tested positive for the breast cancer gene mutation BRCA1, at the age of 34. Queller learned that she had an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer and a 44 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer. At the time she was hoping to get married and start a family. Instead she had to decide whether to remove her breasts and ovaries to reduce her odds of developing the disease. In her new memoir, “Pretty Is What Changes,” Queller writes that “deciding whether to go to law school or take one’s chances as a writer is a hard decision … Deciding to cut off your breasts when you don’t have cancer and possibly never will? To me, that was insanity.” Yet she ultimately decided to have a prophylactic double mastectomy, reducing her risk for breast cancer to just 3 percent, and plans to have her ovaries removed before she turns 40. (She’s now 38.) Her sister Danielle also tested positive for BRCA and had a prophylactic mastectomy as well. Queller spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Jennie Yabroff about her choice, her plans for children and her hopes for the future of breast cancer research.

The stastics don’t seem to make sense, an 87% chance of breast cancer makes me think that their would be a lot more people getting breast cancer, if it was really that likely. Plus, if caught early the less radical treatments work well
Any time a person has surgery they are putting themselves at risk for all sorts of problems. In addition randomly removing body parts can have unintended consequences, it sounds like this person may have gotten bad advice. Unfortunately the person advising this women probably got paid well to perform these surgeries, and got a lot of publicity as well. Thanks to the publicity more people will probably elect to have this surgery and before long it will be a standard procedure. While we are removing ovaries why not prevent testicular cancer by removing testicles, it is best to do this in children before the age of two.
Now that I think about this a little bit I am all in favor of this, not only will a population of eunichs be less competition for dating, it will help cut down on over-population. So come on parents, you owe it to your kids get their ovaries and testicles removed immediately.

Talkleft seems to be arguing for unity, which might make sense if the eventual Democratic nominee were in doubt. It is not, Obama has a sizeable lead in pledged delagates as well as a lead in the popular vote. The only way Hillary gets the nomination is by a rule change that counts Michigan and Florida. She agreed to the rules at the start of the primary and she should stop trying to get them changed now that she has lost the nomination. Talklefts call for unity makes sense in that people should get behind the de-facto nominee, Barack Obama.
At this point the only reason Hillary is still in the race is to harm the Democratic nominee for president. I don’t know if she is doing this because she is bitter about losing the nomination or if she really thinks McCain would be a better president. She certainly seems to agree with McCain when it comes to foreign policy. Given her silence on most issues for the past eight years it seems like she has been pretty happy with the way things have gone, maybe she really does want to see McCain continue the Bush presidency.
Whatever her reasons for staying in the race Hillary needs to understand in the race for the whitehouse she placed third(she got a bronze as Mitt would say) it is time for her enablers to say enough is enough. The Democrats have an election to win and a country to run, catering to Hillarys ego should not be a priority item on the agenda.

This article points out that vaccines may lead to fevers which may in turn lead to neurological damage:

… in November, the government conceded one of the claims. The parents of Hannah Poling have shown that she suffered a high fever and eventually became autistic following the administration of five shots when she was about two years old. She was later diagnosed as having a mitochondrial disorder, a condition in which brain cells malfunction because they lack energy to deal with stresses like fever.

In some ways it becomes a chicken or the egg question. Did the vaccine in some way lead to a mitochondrial disorder? Or did the child have the disorder and the fever caused by the vaccine led to the autism. It does not seem that “experts” are interested in that question:

Most experts, like Edwin Trevathan, director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have discounted the significance of the Poling case. No one has previously linked vaccines to mitochondrial disorders, he pointed out. However, doctors have often seen that fevers from vaccine-preventable diseases led to the onset of neurological disorders in kids with mitochondrial dysfunction.

This guy sounds like a spin doctor, he is essentially saying that even if the vaccine did lead to autism in this case in other cases they might prevent high fevers that lead to autism. This is sort of like listening to Rush Limbaugh talk about global warming, where he argues that it is not happening but even if it is, it is a good thing.
The vaccine industry is a multi-billion dollar business and this guy sounds like he wants to make sure the cash continues to flow whether these vaccines are safe or not. Before the US can reform our health care system the conflicts of interest that permeate the medical profession need to be dealt with.