Over two million people filed bankruptcy in 2005, a 32% jump from the year before, or approximately a half million more filers than in 2004. That's a nice round number, a half million: the number of people who filed the week before YBK last October was just over a half million. Chapter 7 filings were up almost 50% from the year before; about one in 53 households filed for bankruptcy protection in 2005.

At least one Democratic Senator is going to have to face a strong primary challenge this year, but it's not (yet) the one you're thinking of. In Hawaii, Representative Ed Case has tossed his lei into the ring in an effort to unseat the 81-year old incumbent, Daniel Akaka. With a popular GOP incumbent governor, having two octogenarian Senators is increasingly risky for the Democrats, putting at risk any chance the party might have of recapturing (and keeping control of) the U.S. Senate over the next four years.

Case, however, is from the Lieberman "New Democrat" school, with an ambitious streak to boot; after running (and losing) a run for governor in 2002, he won a special election to fill the seat of the late Patsy Mink in 2004, defeating her widower. Having him replace the dependable liberal stalwart Akaka (who himself was appointed to replace a deceased Senator, Spark Matsunaga, in 1990) would be a bitter pill to swallow. Chalk it up to the perils of gerontocracy.

Cuba, si !!! Reversing course, the Bush Administration has o.k.'ed the participation of Cuba in the upcoming World Baseball Championship. Now, the big question is whether Japan will send a real team....

Trivial Pursuits? I know it's not as important as, say, the Washington Post ombudsman deciding not to respond to LGF-style spamming from lefty bloggers, but it appears the battle may finally be joined in the Alito nomination:

A procession of Democratic senators, including two who supported the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., said yesterday that they will oppose the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. They warned that he would not provide a judicial check against the expansion of presidential power or be properly vigilant about protecting the rights of ordinary Americans.

The mounting Democratic opposition underscored the sharp partisan divide that has developed over Alito's nomination, after Roberts was confirmed with 78 votes and solid bipartisan support. But although Democrats appear increasingly united in their opposition to Alito, they remain divided over whether to pursue a filibuster against the nomination.

A filibuster is increasingly less likely, Democratic strategists say, despite pressure from some liberal interest groups for Democrats to keep the option alive. But Democrats are more united in their desire to seek an extended floor debate over Alito -- even as they acknowledge that his confirmation is virtually assured -- because they believe polling shows that the more the American people learn about Alito's record and writings on civil liberties and other subjects, the more they will oppose his addition to the high court.

The newly announced opponents included Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee; Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the Democratic whip; and Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.). Leahy and Salazar had voted in favor of Roberts. On Wednesday, Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.), another Roberts backer, said he will oppose Alito.

Baucus' opposition is a pleasant surprise, indicating that it will be very hard for Strip Search Sammy to reach 60 votes. Regardless of what anyone is saying now, once a filibuster (or, shall I say, "extended floor debate") is started on the Senate floor, all bets are off. No Democrat is going to want to be the one who effectively ends Choice by voting for cloture.

Our long national nightmare? It's so over !!! After seven years and $21 million, the inquiry into whether former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros did something horrible enough to justify spending $21 million, Independent Prosecutor David M. Barrett has finally called it a day:

Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.

His report says Justice Department officials refused to grant him the broad jurisdiction he wanted; for example, Attorney General Janet Reno said he could look at only one tax year. And after Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington took a Cisneros investigation out of the hands of district-level officials in Texas, the agency deemed the evidence too weak to merit a criminal inquiry, a conclusion strongly disputed by one Texas investigator.

Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.

After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.

BTW, the "lie" Cisneros told to FBI investigators during a background check was not whether he paid off a blackmailing mistress, but the exact amount. Needless to say, it was well under the amount spent to investigate him; the entire debacle arose out of the bitter relationship between President Clinton and then-FBI chief Louis Freeh, whose obsession with the President on this and other matters inevitably hampered his agency's ability to handle somewhat more arcane matters, such as fighting terrorism.

Reading between the lines, it seems Mr. Barrett didn't have the goods on the "tax evasion" charge either, hence the obligatory attack on Clinton, Reno, etc., in his final report. In the words of a Justice Department attorney quoted in the article, it was "a fitting conclusion to one of the most embarrassingly incompetent and wasteful episodes in the history of American law enforcement."

So what was the point again? Three months later, we are beginning to see some trends:

Three months after a new bankruptcy law took effect, the overwhelming majority of debtors seen by credit counseling agencies are filing for bankruptcy instead of using repayment plans envisioned by the law's supporters.

The law requires debtors to see credit counselors before they file for bankruptcy protection. It is a prerequisite that banks and credit card issuers hoped would steer consumers away from bankruptcy court and into plans that would allow them to repay debts over a few years.

But so far, that is not happening.

The counseling agencies say most debtors are in such deep financial trouble that they cannot qualify for a debt-management plan.

"Typically, consumers are too far gone when they get to us," said Ivan L. Hand Jr., president and chief executive of Money Management International Inc. (MMI), the nation's largest credit-counseling organization.

(snip)

The pre-bankruptcy credit-counseling requirement was initiated by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) during the 10-year battle to enact a new law. He said in a recent interview that it was "disappointing" to learn that so few consumers have signed up for a debt-management plan. He said he intends to monitor the law's progress and was "not prepared to give up on this."

This bears out what I've been seeing as well. I have yet to see the mandated credit counseling do anything more than confirm the debtor's first instinct: that he needs to file bankruptcy pronto. All that's changed was the time and paperwork...and the explosion in filings engendered by the pre-YBK panic in October.

It's one thing to constantly rehash a bad call that costs your team a game, but to act like a whiny-ass bitch over a bad call in a game your team won is pathetic. C'mon, it didn't affect the outcome of the game, unlike the bad call last week in Tampa, where a game-tying fourth quarter Bucs TD was ruled incomplete. The Steelers still won, by the same margin they likely would have won by had the interception stood (assuming the Colts would have picked up a concession touchdown at the end); unless you had some weird teaser action, it didn't mean anything even if you had your house and car wagered on the game. So who the f*** cares?

Yet there has been more complaining, by the winning team and the media, about an unimportant call that ultimately meant nothing than there was by the losing team, last fortnight, over two botched calls in the Rose Bowl that actually decided the national championship (Young's forward lateral whilst on his knee in the second quarter, and a Polamaluesque catch/fumble by Texas early in the fourth), both of which were even worse than the call on Sunday. The first bad call gave Texas a gift touchdown, the second prevented SC from blowing the game wide open, but both plays were forgotten in the afterglow of the memorable comeback win by the Longhorns.

Memo to the Steelers: if you're going to restart the habit of winning big games again, try showing some class in victory.

Don't Mess with Texas: Last month, over 15% of the new foreclosures nationwide were in the Lone Star State. One out of every 631 households are in some stage of the foreclosure process in Texas, encompassing 12,753 homes, and the numbers rose 61% for the month of December. In comparison, California, which also saw a significant jump in December, reported only 7,674 homes in foreclosure. Other states joining Texas at the bottom of the heap are Utah, Indiana and Ohio, which regular readers of this site know have also seen the smallest increase in property values over the last five years, as well as the highest bankruptcy rates.

Prof. Kleiman, on getting CAPPED:

conservatism has never gone through the process of separating itself from the bigots, as liberalism separated itself from the communists during the Cold War period. Conservative politicians are delighted to receive the support of bigoted voters, the dollars of bigoted contributors, and the endorsements of bigoted TV preachers, and reluctant to do anything to alienate that large chunk of the 'base.'

He's right, but then again conservatives have not seen any political reason to do so. In fact, throughout the history of American politics, the side that best speaks the "code" of racial politics is the one that wins elections most frequently. Bigots outnumber blacks in the electorate, and for the GOP to renounce the "code" would place them in the same situation that LBJ perceived for the Democrats after he signed the Voting Rights Act.

Forget what anyone is saying right now about the chances of a filibuster over the Alito nomination. They are mainly commenting on whether a filibuster has a chance of success, which isn't the same thing as actually attempting one; once it gets started, with the debate centering on the nominee's membership in a white supremacist group, as well as his more recent lying about same, it will take on a momentum of its own. Even Democrats like Nelson and Baucus will have to take a stand when the time comes.

In any event, Lieberman's announcement this morning that a filibuster is definitely in play for him is far more important. It was the then-rookie Senator's decision to renounce a filibuster, while at the same time publicly opposing the nominee, that allowed the Thomas nomination to squeak through fifteen years ago. Without Lieberman, it becomes a lot harder to find at least five Democrats (and that's assuming the GOP can hold all of its caucus) to vote for cloture.

In spite of what may have transpired at the hearings (which it is safe to say that no one watched), I think Alito is in worse shape than Clarence Thomas was in 1991 at the same point in time.

Obviously, the right does not hold a monopoly on political criticism of the Stalinoid variety. To wit, David Sirota:

If you want to know why many people believe the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) severely hobbles the Democratic Party and gives cover to the worst right-wing stereotypes, just take a look at a guy they employ named Marshall Wittman. Now, I tend to think giving any publicity to people who are hacks gives them undue attention - but in this case, Wittman provides a cautionary tale about Democrats' "big tent" mantra, where everyone gets accepted no matter how idiotic, dishonest, uninformed or dangerous their blather is.

Wittman is a former Republican operative and Christian Coalition official who now purports to speak for Democrats from his post at the DLC - an institution that has over the years been funded by, among others, Enron, Philip Morris, and Chevron. He is now trying to make a name for himself defending President Bush's illegal domestic spying operation - again, while pretending to speak for Democrats. Here's what he says:

"There is absolutely no evidence that [Bush] was attempting to do anything else but protect America...We can have a reasoned debate about this issue without impugning the motives of a Commander in Chief who was attempting to defend the nation."

Earlier today, I wrote a piece about a new form of journalism sweeping the nation: it's called Rectal Journalism, and it features reporters and supposedly objective experts basically pulling things out of their asses and peddling it as fact - when it is anything but. Wittman represents Rectal Punditry - the art of commenting on current events without bothering to actually look at the facts, and instead relying only on what the pundit pulls out of their ass. And Wittman does it in a way that exposes his own ideological motives, which are clearly to undermine the courageous Democrats who have questioned the President's behavior.

(snip)

...Wittman wants us to forget all the facts that provide ample reason for us to suspect the White House was trying to do something other than protect America when it ordered the illegal surveillance operations and refused to get warrants. He wants us to simply swallow what he's pulling from his ass - no matter how smelly the turds of dishonesty are.

This is why the DLC is dangerous. For all their claims of supposedly wanting to help Democrats, they employ people like Marshall Wittman who specifically try to undermine the Democratic Party, even if it means he has to publicly defecate out the most rank and easily-debunkable lies. They reguarly give credence to the right wing's agenda and its worst, most unsupportable lies. They are the real force that tries to make sure this country is a one party state and that Democrats never really challenge the Republicans in a serious way. [Emphasis mine]

Those damned Weimar Democrats...acting as if they had as much right to criticize liberals as, lets say, someone else might have in stabbing a Fighting Democrat in the back who's running for the Senate in Ohio.

Memo to David Sirota: Democrats have been winning statewide elections in Montana for more than a century. Almost every person who's ever been elected to the Senate from that state has been a Democrat. Hell, Dukakis almost won that state in 1988, and he got killed everywhere else. Your gravytraining off of the victory of a multimillionaire last year doesn't impress. You bring nothing to the table.

Any inclination I might have toward giving Judge Alito a break is tempered by the fact that he just isn't credible on his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton. If he had answered this morning that thirty years ago, he was an inmature sexist bigot, but that through the normal passage of life, having to witness what his wife and daughter go through every day (for example), he had come to regret such dealings, and become more sensitive to the difficulties people outside his privileged circle face, I would say it was a non-issue, in the same way I treat Senator Byrd's role as a recruiter for the Klan sixty years ago. Now is now.

But to pretend that he not only has no idea why he joined, but that he can't recall why he listed his membership in the organization ten years later in his c.v., that doesn't pass the giggle test. When he applied for a job with the Meese Justice Department, he knew who his audience was, what sort of code they paid attention to, and stating that he belonged to CAP spoke volumes. No Democrat could possibly vote for this guy in good conscience.

UPDATE [1/11]: "Armando" from DK, who has been a must-read since the hearings started, has more on why CAP (and Alito's mendacity) is important.

Michael Hiltzik's follow-up to last week's critique of media critic types in the blogosphere can be found here. He seems to have generated a great deal of heat, if not a lot in careful rebuttal. While he goes overboard when he ascertains motives to others (ironically, since his targets base most of their obsessive behavior on proscribing ideological motives to journalists), and he seems to have no problem ignoring the same problems when they occur on the left, the reaction to his post does seem to indicate that certain bloggers have a problem when the factchecking spotlight is focused on them.

Those who pore over every front-page article, cherrypicking any picayune example of ideological bias (such as whether an item of news is placed on page one, or inside the paper), are engaged in an attempt to subvert journalism, whether they do so from the right or left. To use the analogy Eric Alterman is so fond of, they are playing the role of a coach who paces the sideline, constantly yelling and getting in the face of the ref, in the hope they can plant a seed that will lead to a more favorable call later in the game. Whatever "working the ref" is, it's not designed to produce a fairer or better officiated game. And particularly since conservatives holds the reigns of power at almost every level of our society, any effort to mau-mau journalists into putting government spin on an equal billing with objective fact will fundamentally limit all of our freedoms.

What Hiltzik did here was to apply objective analysis to the task of reviewing the work of a blogger. The hysterical reaction from the right is a sign that the blogosphere is not ready to deal with constructive criticism, or even a factchecker.

A good rundown of the obstacles facing Judge Alito en route to confirmation, here. The first day of hearings are always the best for the nominee. He gets to put on his best face, introduce his wife and family, pablumate his great love for the Constitution and America, etc., while his adversaries always shoot themselves in the foot, by making long-winded, pompous opening statements. The polling is decisively in his favor right now, although that seems to be based on the erroneous notion that he would vote to preserve privacy rights, not limit Roe, etc..

Memo to Charles Schumer: if you can't say what you need to say in 30 seconds or less, STFU !!! This nomination is important to the rest of us; the last thing we need is for you to be sabotaging the opposition because you love the sound of your own voice.

The Guardian reports that George Galloway is a contestant on a British celebrity version of Big Brother. I think I'd rather have him as a housemate than Norm Coleman, but prefer him less to Hitch the Snitch. Actually, whichever of the three hogs the TV the least would be best, so never mind.

UPDATE: One of Gorgeous George's housemates, it turns out, is none other than the Worm.

UPDATE [1/13]: According to someone who has actually watched the program, the show also features actress Rula Lenska, most famous in this country (if that's the right word) for having done Alberto vo5 ads in the '70's, in which she was referred to as an "international film star", even though no one had actually heard of her. As a fan of obscure British TV actresses, I salute her.

Texas 41, USC 38: The computers nailed this one...but I'm still trying to figure out this analogy:

So the Trojans are denied a second straight championship. Not a third. USC and its fans have been talking a lot about a "three-Pete" -- as in Pete Carroll, you see -- because the Trojans were No. 1 in the final Associated Press poll in 2003.

But the 2003 national champion was LSU. The Bowl Championship Series is a lousy system, but it's the system USC signed up for. You can't agree to play for a championship under one set of rules, then, when you don't win the championship, say, "Well, we won the championship under these other rules."

Unless you think the accountants at Enron were straight shooters.

Huh?!? Does that go the same for people who think Raging Bull was a better pic than Ordinary People? I guess they're screwed too, since the Academy had the final say in 1981.

Last time I checked, there is no official "national champion" in college football, since, unlike every other Division 1 college sport, there is no playoff. The BCS has a system that's supposed to match-up the two best teams, and remove most of the controversy, but it didn't work out in 2003. The best-ranked team that year failed to make it, so the vast fraternity of college football fans outside of Baton Rouge, Lousiana, treated it the same way boxing fans have learned to ignore the machinations of the WBC when determining who the "real" heavyweight champ is. They went with the best team, the team that earned it on the playing field, phony system be damned.

In fact, the same writer observed at the time:

This is of course what's so great about the BCS: It's complete nonsense. It was supposedly designed to end these end-of-year arguments over who should be named the national champion by presenting a championship game between the top two teams. It does no such thing. But here's a shocking secret: That wasn't the real purpose. You mustn't tell anyone.

The BCS ought to be used in business schools as a lesson in how not to approach problem solving. The Cliffs Notes version is that the people trying to solve the problem have to have clear, attainable objectives, and they have to be free of conflicts of interest.

The professed objective of the BCS is to crown a true national champion. If that were really the goal, the plan would be to figure out a way to have a playoff system, same as they have in Divisions I-AA, II and III. Simple. But the real purpose is to crown a national champion using a system that increases profits and consolidates power for the six biggest conferences, the four biggest bowls and the TV networks, the parties that created the BCS. That's a very different thing, and an impossible one.

Two years ago, he was as apparently deluded as Enron's investors. Thank god Vince Young made it safe for him to jump on an another bandwagon. Not even Plaschke is this loathsome.

Although this may come as a surprise to those who watched last night's thriller, it has been scientifically proven that soccer is the most exciting spectator sport, sayeth the Beeb.

We're all MSM'ers Now: Kos has a point.

With the Rose Bowl coming up in 15 minutes, check out the site of USC's number one gay conservative blogfan.

The press will take the ABA's rating of Judge Alito as "Well Qualified" more seriously than it deserves. No matter the ideology, most of the candidates for this position are, by definition, exceedingly "qualified", that is, they have graduated from elite schools, worked at the right law firms, and held the standard jobs within government. The GOP's efforts of late to paint the nation's bar associations as liberal cabals ignores the plain fact that they're all old boys' networks, run by wealthy corporate shills and entirely comfortable with the status quo.

It's when they withhold the highest rating that there's a story. Once Clarence Thomas received only a "Qualified" rating from the ABA in 1991, his nomination was destined for trouble; it gave the fencesitters in the Senate, like Howell Heflin, a way to vote against him without having to fear any political repurcussions. The "Not Qualified" rating Janice Rogers received from the State Bar of California when she was first nominated for the state Supreme Court (based mainly on a lack of judicial temperament) has trailed after her ever since, symbolizing her as just another in a long line of empty suits the GOP trots out to prove they aren't racists. All Alito has done is clear a very low hurdle.