Woman’s lost iPod returned to her - they tracked her via her music

More creepiness. Her songs had her email address embedded. Which isn't a huge deal. I just wish we knew how much "anonymous" stuff we have that actually contains info saying exactly who we are. Read the rest of this post...

Nearly half of voters unhappy with candidates for president

Who really likes any of them? The Republicans are all nuts except for the guy who will say anything. Even for Obama, I know two people who think he's doing a great job but the others who voted for him remain highly disappointed at best and others often disgusted. Perhaps the more people get to know the wacky GOP candidate the more they will gravitate towards Obama but he certainly won't win over many with his record. The question for Gallup is whether this will be more like the election of 1994 or 2000. Gallup:

Americans give mixed signals in response to these poll questions asking about the state of the presidential election this year. They are not strongly pleased with the choice of presidential candidates so far in this campaign, suggesting, as was the case in 1992, that a third-party challenger -- or a new candidate emerging to challenge for the GOP nomination -- could find some success. Americans are also displeased with the way in which the campaign process is working, which could be part of the more general negative attitude Gallup is finding toward the way the nation's government is working. On the other hand, Americans' views of the candidates' ideas for solving problems are actually more positive now than they were in 1992, although less positive than in January 2008.

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Romney criticized Obama in 2007 for saying he’d go into Pakistan unilaterally to get Osama

You may have that this past weekend Romney tried to diminish the US strike against Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, saying "any president" would have ordered the raid. What he forgot to add was, "any president but President Romney." Mediaite dug up an old Romney quote from 2007, criticizing then candidate Obama for saying he'd go into Pakistan, unilaterally if need be, if we had actionable intelligence that an Al Qaeda threat was there:

"I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours... I don't think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort," Romney told reporters on the campaign trail....

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops "shouldn't be sent all over the world." He called Obama's comments "ill-timed" and "ill-considered.""

So for the record, there is one president who wouldn't have ordered the attack against Osama bin Laden. That would be President Romney.

The man just cannot be consistent about anything.
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Wild mountain gorillas ’groom’ human

If you're an animal person it's hard not to love this video. It's one of those rare and amazing experiences that not many people have the chance to enjoy first hand. My wife Joelle and I are both animal fans and loved our time in Africa, so this is especially fantastic to watch. Seeing the mountain gorillas up close is way up there on our to do list. Read the rest of this post...

Apparently today’s new EPA mercury rules are a big deal

From Grist:

Finally controlling mercury and toxics will be an advance on par with getting lead out of gasoline. It will save save tens of thousands of lives every year and prevent birth defects, learning disabilities, and respiratory diseases.

So anyway, this is an historic day and a real step forward for the forces of civilization. It's the beginning of the end of one of the last of the old-school, 20th-century air pollution problems. (Polluters and their rented conservatives will try to kick up dust about this, but check out this letter to Congress [PDF] from a group of health scientists, which says "exposure to mercury in any form places a heavy burden on the biochemical machinery within cells of all living organisms.") Long after everyone has forgotten who "won the morning" in the fight over these rules, or what effect they had on Obama's electoral chances, the rule's legacy will live on in a healthier, happier American people.

I want a presidential election every year. Read the rest of this post...

Cruickshank: Occupy is only part of what's needed

I've been operating at the 15,000 foot level lately, discussing constitutional coups and rule of law (one of which we have, and one of which we'd like to have).

But there are many layers below that. One is the presidential layer — whom to vote for, whether to primary Obama or support him, whether to push for a 3rd party challenge or not. (I'll have more on that shortly.)

The layer below that — the organizing layer — is Robert Cruickshank's specialty. He's a California-based organizer who understands winning coalitions and how to get things done at the state and local level.

He's recently written about the Occupy Movement, what its effect has been and what steps are needed next. The whole article is well thought out (and is being studied in a number of quarters).

Cruickshank's bottom line is that to really fix the country, we need an "inside game" and an "outside game" (not his language, though the meaning is the same).

While the whole piece should be read (it's clear and not that long), I'd like to point you to this. In arguing that office-holders are needed to implement policy, he says this:

[I]t is those who are best organized who will prevail even if street action leads to major political change.

That is the key lesson of history. In February 1917 a mass movement took to the streets of the Russian Empire and overthrew the tsar. But because they were the best organized, it was the Bolsheviks who ultimately prevailed, even though most Russians seemed to prefer a more moderate and democratic outcome. In February 1979 a mass movement that had been in the streets of Iran for nearly a year finally toppled the shah. Many of the leaders of that movement wanted Iran to become a western-style liberal democracy. What they got was the Islamic Republic, because the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers were by far the best organized group in the country.

In February 2011 a mass movement took to the streets of Egypt and overthrew Hosni Mubarak. But because they were the best organized, it was the Muslim Brotherhood that won the fall elections and is now poised to govern Egypt. The people of Tahrir Square are struggling to maintain their vision of the revolution and are finding that taking to the streets is a tactic that can work at times, but isn’t enough to produce long-term change. If it were, the occupations of Syntagma Square would have stopped Greece from imploding on austerity, and would have brought down the neo-Thatcherism of the Cameron-Clegg government in the UK.

Progressives were not wrong to care about winning elections and making sure the right people were in government. That matters a great deal. Who controls the levers of government, whose ideas prevail in a campaign, which ballot initiatives win and lose, which budgets get cut and which budgets get increased – all of these things are crucially important. And ultimately, if we are going to take our money back from the 1%, it’s going to require governmental action.

What progressives were wrong to do was to make electoral organizing such a central focus of their work, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

This makes two points. One, that office-holders — for example, Darcy Burner, whom he endorses — are needed. (I'd add Ilya Sheyman in Illinois as well, and will offer a full list in due course.)

But the other point is about cadre revolutions. Cruickshank is not the first to note that Lenin didn't topple the Czar, he toppled the movement that toppled the Czar. (My thoughts here.)

His question is important — if the Occupy Movement does destabilize the regime (or "elite establishment" if that term is more comforting), who will pick up the pieces?

Cruickshank's answer is exactly right: the most organized group will win the round after that.

Offered for your consideration.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Romney’s white Momentum

Mitt Romney released a new campaign ad a few days ago that shows hundreds of supporters waiting in line to hear Mitt speak, meeting Mitt in line, then finally watching him on stage.  Not a non-white face in the house.  Then the Romney ad highlights 23 people in particular with cameos.  Their races are, in chronological order: white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white.

Seriously, no one at Romney headquarters thought it might make sense to at least find one black, Latino, Asian - heck, even a WASP with a tan?  The only person apparently not of European heritage is South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, whose parents are from India (but you wouldn't know that without having googled her name). Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: Will China’s bubble break?

Paul Krugman on the current situation in China:

Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated “shadow banking” neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting — and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.

Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I’m talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn’t need this right now.

Krugman notes that consumer demand is weak in China (35% of GDP, about half our level) and getting weaker; the rest being made up in trade. But they, like us have a real estate-driven boom in investment spending. The trick is to know how much, since number coming out of China are generally fudged to look better than they are.

The problem is that even these fudged numbers don't give the Professor a good feeling:

The obvious question is, with consumer demand relatively weak, what motivated all that investment? And the answer, to an important extent, is that it depended on an ever-inflating real estate bubble. Real estate investment has roughly doubled as a share of G.D.P. since 2000, accounting directly for more than half of the overall rise in investment. ... Do we actually know that real estate was a bubble? It exhibited all the signs: not just rising prices, but also the kind of speculative fever all too familiar from our own experiences just a few years back — think coastal Florida.

Krugman asks how much damage the bursting Chinese bubble will do to the world economy. He considers both sides of the question — China's undemocratic government is freer to act than our own, but everything coming out of China sounds like famous last words. Then concludes: "it’s impossible not to be worried".

Indeed. An excellent short piece to get you oriented to what's happening across that other ocean.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Why the US and France are credit risks and the UK is not

Christian Noyer, the chairman of the French central bank is complaining that Britain's bonds should be downgraded rather than those of France because the UK economy is in worse shape.

I am not an economics major, but I have had enough experience of the bond markets to know that a bond rating is an estimate of the risk of default. UK bonds have a high rating because the UK borrows in its own currency. There is no risk of default because however short of cash the government might be, the Bank of England will always print more. This is not a painless option, increasing the money supply will feed inflation and reduce the value of the pound relative to other currencies. But this represents a currency risk rather than a default risk.

France does not borrow in its own currency because it does not have one. France has to borrow in Euro and if they run short the only way they can make more is to either persuade every other member of the Eurozone of the need to print it or leave the Euro and reintroduce their own national currency. That will not happen unless the Germans either suddenly lose their fear of inflation or leave the Eurozone. So whatever the state of the UK economy, there is a real possibility that France might default on Euro bonds while a UK default is a purely theoretical possibility.

If the reason that the UK gets a AAA rating is that it borrows in its own currency, why then (beyond politicing) did S&P give the US a lower rating?

The sole cause of the US ratings downgrade is the US Republican party. Not the deficit, not the debt, not the state of the economy: The Republican party. Even though the US borrows in its own currency, the markets have suddenly discovered that the US Treasury might not be able to print as much money as it needs to repay its debts. And the reason that it has made this discovery is the GOP attempt to use the debt ceiling limit for political brinksmanship. The effect of this discovery is that a US default is no longer a purely theoretical possibility, there is a real (albeit small) chance that the brinksmanship will lead to catastrophe.

A divided government in which the executive and legislative powers are held by opposing parties cannot exist in the UK parliamentary system and so a manufactured political crisis cannot result in a default as we now know it can in the US. Read the rest of this post...

SC Baptist leader: "Conservatives... struggle to understand how anyone could be a Mormon and call themselves ’Christian’"

Ouch.

"In South Carolina, Romney's Mormonism will be more of a cause of concern than Gingrich's infidelity," said Atkins, the pastor at Powdersville First Baptist Church in the Upstate.

"Conservatives can process and pray their way through the issue of forgiveness toward a Christian that has had infidelity in their life, but will struggle to understand how anyone could be a Mormon and call themselves 'Christian.'"

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Weigel: If Ron Paul wins Iowa...

From Dave Weigel in Slate:

If Paul wins Iowa, that stops. The conservative press, which has been bored but hostile to Paul all year (just see the National Review’s cover story), will remind its readers that Paul wants to legalize prostitution and narcotics, end aid to Israel (as part of a general no-aid-for-anyone policy), and end unconstitutional programs like Medicare and social security. The liberal press will discover that he’s a John Birch Society supporter who for years published lucrative newsletters studded with racist gunk. In 2008, when the media didn’t take him seriously, Paul was able to get past the newsletter story with a soft-gummed Wolf Blitzer interview. (“Certainly didn't sound like the Ron Paul that I've come to know and our viewers have come to know all this time,” said Blitzer.) This was when Paul was on track to lose every primary. It’ll be different if the man wins Iowa.

Maybe all of this would drag Paul down. But would it have to? In 2008, the candidate stuck it out through every primary. In 2012, he’ll have more cash than anyone except Romney or Perry—he just raised $4 million in a weekend moneybomb. His supporters will blow off the scrutiny as just so much crap from the corporate media. (Alex Jones will quibble with this characterization: It’s really the “illuminati” media.) No, Paul will stick in the race. Mitt Romney will get to contrast himself with the new-new-new-new insurgent. In that case, the GOP base and donor class will have the easiest pick-a-door choice it’s ever had. Do you go with the guy from Massachusetts who’s not all that convincing of a Reagan clone, or do you go with the guy who wants legal heroin and a pissed-off Benjamin Netanyahu?

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John Boehner: Worst. Speaker. Ever.

If the Republicans are going to keep wooing crazies to their party, then they need to learn how to control the crazies once they're in office.  Washington Post:

The undoing of what many on both sides of the aisle thought was a deal on Saturday is a reflection of the continued difficulty Boehner has had in managing his cantankerous caucus.

Repeatedly, over the past year, he has allowed some of the most conservative members, particularly an influential group of freshmen, to call the shots at crucial moments.

This time, Boehner and his leadership team may have allowed the House Republicans to place their party in real political peril with no obvious exit strategy.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) left a meeting with House leaders on Friday believing that Boehner and his top deputy, House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.), would find the votes to approve a two-month extension of the tax holiday. Both Boehner and Cantor have since disavowed giving McConnell the go-ahead to make the deal, and McConnell has issued a statement supporting Boehner’s position.

Regardless of what exactly was said, McConnell, a 27-year veteran of the Senate, has a reputation as a master negotiator, known for playing hardball and then cutting the best deal possible; he has no history of communication errors.

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The threat of summary execution has an amazing effect on synchronicity

It's amazing the North Korean dictatorship has survived this long. Perhaps it's easier to manager absolute terror in a small state. The funny (sad) thing is they think this kind of thing actually somehow burnishes their image. I find them creepy.

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French humor

In French, "ail" is the word for "garlic,"
 and it's prounounced "eye."  Okay, it made me laugh

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