More weakness in housing report

What's worse between a 9% drop and a 12 year low for new homes? Either way, the Bush/GOP economy continues to falter and we're all stuck with the lousy results. How many times have we heard "record low" about another failed GOP economic policy in recent months? Read the rest of this post...

I'm Mike Huckabee?

"Dammit! Who put a question mark on the prompter? How many times do I have to tell you that he will read anything put on that prompter!"

Huckabee said 660 Pakistanis entered the country illegally last year. When asked by a reporter the source for that statistic, Huckabee appeared unsure, saying, "Those are numbers that I got today from a briefing, and I believe they are CIA and immigration numbers." The Huckabee campaign later said the figure came from a March 2006 report by The Denver Post. But the Border Patrol told CNN on Friday that it apprehended only "a handful" of illegal immigrants from Pakistan in 2007.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican Iowa front-runner, Mike "Ron Burgandy" Huckabee!

You stay classy, Little Rock.

Remember way back when, how we decided nobody without extensive experience in (or at least understanding of) foreign affairs could ever be elected president? Riiiiiight . . . Read the rest of this post...

Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 12/28/2007

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

This week we will have to be quite brief, but I do come bearing gifts. The brevity is due to the fact that your humble blogger, who has now inhabited this Corner for exactly two years (that's right, an anniversary of sorts!), also happens to be enjoying a birthday today.

I use the term "enjoying" loosely, for as I become firmly entrenched in my mid to late 30s, well, we all know what can happen. In case, you don't, observe the dual visages of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in their mid thirties:


So any day now I could have that male pattern kick in and suddenly feel the urge to purge the world of brown people. It is, to be sure, a dangerous age.

I joke of course. I am off to see what my parents feel like spending on me.

In the meantime, enjoy this brilliant video by one of my bloggers and AMERICAblog commenter, the ingenius Gottalaff. She is a comedy writer by trade, so I am sure you will find this video compilation as hilarious as I did. Oh, and one more thing, my blog, no Ablog powerhouse to be sure, just passed the 1 million mark. Not too shabby for 10+ month's time. So come on by and say hello. We'll leave the doors unlocked and the windows open!

Happy New Year all!

Read the rest of this post...

If Al Qaeda really was behind Bhutto's assassination, then Bush has some explaining to do

A new intercept purportedly shows Al Qaeda admitting they were behind Bhutto's killing. If this is true, and let's face it, I wouldn't put it past the Pakistani government to start pointing fingers elsewhere, then Bush needs to explain to the American people why he's been ignoring Al Qaeda since 2003? Invading Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and in fact, Bush closed the CIA shop in charge of searching for Osama in 2003. Bush also moved lots of military assets from Afghanistan to Iraq, assets that were looking for Al Qaeda and Osama. Bush has ignored Al Qaeda - uh, the folks who killed 3000 Americans, remember them? - since 2003 and no one has held him accountable. What's worse, we've let him (and Giuliani and others) crow about how Democrats are the ones who don't understand the threat from Al Qaeda.

Hello, Democrats... anyone home? Read the rest of this post...

One of the 50 most loathsome people in America: YOU

You are one of the 50 most loathsome people in America:

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn't get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn't cover. You deserve it, chump.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush to veto pay raise for the troops. Merry Christmas!

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Bush announced today that he's going to veto the Defense Authorization bill. This is legislation that's already passed Congress, and that the administration had no problem with. Now, suddenly, Bush is against it and is going to veto it, threatening pay raises for the troops and more.

Part of what troubled Bush about the legislation is that it would permit US troops to seek compensation for having been tortured by Saddam during the first Gulf War.

The provision that is causing problems would have allowed the victims of the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam to seek compensation in court, Democrats said. The Iraqi government has warned that former U.S. prisoners of war from the first Gulf War might cite this legislation in an attempt to get money from the Iraqi government's reported $25 billion in assets now held in U.S. banks, they say.

Nice. Now who hates the troops? (And how much do you want to bet that the Democrats will fail to capitalize on this issue?) How the Democrats brought this on themselves, after the jump...

Putting aside for a moment how unprofessional it is to announce a veto of legislation AFTER it's passed, rather than objecting to it prior to its passage, I think something more is up here. Bush is struggling to be relevant, so he needs to keep vetoing legislation, anything he can get his hands on, to show how "strong" he is. And all the better that it's a defense bill. The Democrats are scared to death of anything dealing with "defense," so the more Bush blusters, the more they cringe and fall back. By creating an issue out of nothing, and nowhere, Bush will again get the Dems to "cave" and will prove that not only is he "strong" on defense, but they're "weak" on defense - even though this is a non-issue. This is the legacy of the Dems constantly caving on every issue, especially defense issues. If you refuse to fight back, don't be surprised that the bully continues to find new ways to kick sand in your face. Read the rest of this post...

Democratic Dead heat in Iowa

There have been several new Iowa polls released this week -- and expect a couple more. On the Democratic side, both the LA Times/Bloomberg and Strategic Vision, a Republican polling firm, show dead heats. (More on the polls after the break)

One thing I'm intrigued by is sample for these polls. In 2004, approximately 120,000 Iowa Democrats attended the caucus. Yeah, that's all. From the beginning of September, according to Pollster.com, there have been approximately 40 polls conducted in Iowa. Adding the sample pools, almost 23,000 Iowans have been polled as likely caucus goers on the Democratic side -- or almost 1/5 of the actual amount of caucus goers have been polled. That's quite amazing, if, in fact, it proves to be true. This has got to be the most oversampled, over studied pool of 120,000+ voters in history. More after the jump...

LA Times:

In Iowa, which opens the 2008 presidential voting with its Jan. 3 caucuses, the poll found Sen. Obama of Illinois, Sen. Clinton of New York and former Sen. Edwards of North Carolina in a statistical three-way tie.

But other poll findings suggest Clinton might gain stature in both states if Democrats' concern about world affairs increases after Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The poll shows that Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire consider Clinton far better equipped than her rivals to safeguard national security -- as do Democrats around the country.

Politico on the Strategic Vision poll:

John Edwards appears to have risen to a new highpoint in Iowa, marking an upward trend over the past two weeks that places him in a statistical tie with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

A new Strategic Vision poll released Friday finds that Edwards has the support of 28 percent of likely Democratic cacucusgoers, his best standing in Iowa over the past six months. Edwards now trails Clinton by only one point and Obama by two points, well within the poll’s margin of error of 4.5 percent.

Today’s survey confirms a string of polls in the past two weeks - another by Strategic Vision as well as recent polls by CNN and InsiderAdvantage. All demonstrate a steady ascension by Edwards, while Clinton and Obama appear to have stabilized.

Read the rest of this post...

"We did better when (Bill) Clinton was in than we did with Bush."

Words from a registered Republican. With new polls pointing towards the economy and health care as the key issues for 2008, the GOP is in trouble. Americans trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on these issues. The question now, is which Democrat do we believe will be the strongest candidate for these issues?

Six out of 10 people polled said they believe it is at least somewhat likely that the U.S. economy will enter a recession next year. Slightly more — 64 percent — said they worried about a major unexpected medical expense, and 55 percent worried that the value of their stocks and retirement investments would drop.
More on the middle class concerns, after the jump.

Forty-four percent said they were concerned that the value of their homes would decrease during the next six months. That sentiment was especially strong in the mountain states.

"Middle class America is being chipped away at," said Edward Lemieux, a 57-year-old pattern maker from North Smithfield, R.I., who plans to support Obama for president.

His view is influenced by the flight of manufacturing jobs from his state, by the "For Sale" signs that outnumber the "Sold" signs on neighborhood lawns and by his mother's health care needs.

"We're all of a sudden becoming a country of rich and poor," he said. "The middle class is eroding."

Read the rest of this post...

More Bhutto fallout

The two threads of analysis from Bhutto's assassination in Pakistan yesterday are, generally, the geopolitical impact and the effects (if any) on the US primaries. Some commentators are lamenting the latter; I think it's a natural and unavoidable response, especially because it's not like a unilateral refusal to engage in politics following tragedy has served Dems very well in the past.

That said, I continue to think that the domestic political impact of this event will be minimal. Given how little people pay attention to the specifics of international events, especially in countries that aren't named Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran, any interpretation of this is likely to be either (1) meta (i.e. focused on broad issues of judgment or crisis-handling or whatever), or (2) by foreign policy nerds. The meta angle tends to have an impact when it's terrorism (see: bin Laden, 2004), but not much else -- does everybody remember the huge impact of the assassination of Indira Gandhi (India's prime minister) the week before the 1984 presidential election? I didn't think so. More after the jump...

The only way this really breaks into the primaries is if somebody really screws it up, and Huckabee is (rightfully) taking flak for being completely uninformed about the situation (or, more specifically, committing the sin of revealing his lack of knowledge), and then there's the flap over Obama advisor David Axelrod. He made a point yesterday that's absolutely true and worth discussing, that Iraq has taken our focus off of Pakistan and Afghanistan (and terrorism in general); unfortunately, he did it in a way that made it sound like he was, in part, blaming Hillary for Bhutto's death. Bad choice. Fortunately for Obama, only about 300 people have ever heard of Axelrod, and most of them live in D.C.

Which brings us to the actual foreign policy impact. Pakistan is most definitely in flux right now: Bhutto's party is in disarray, as she dominated it, and there's no certain successor; the other major "moderate" party has already decided to boycott the Jan. 8 elections (if they're even held then); and violence has erupted in various parts of the country. Ironically, Musharraf may solidify his hold on power by *keeping* the elections in January since both opposition parties will either boycott or be totally disorganized in the wake of these events, and he could claim a victory for democracy even as he decimates the parties that would likely have won a plurality in the elections.

It remains to be seen whether the international community will encourage Musharraf to postpone the elections, but for the moment there's been immediate reaction toward a domestic crack-down. Any smart leader knows when to loosen control a little to let emotions run their course, and Musharraf, whatever his other failings, isn't stupid. But on a broader level, it really is quite a setback for democracy, and as I said yesterday, a huge blow to US policy, which was bad to begin with and is now essentially eviscerated. Read the rest of this post...

McCain on Mitt: He's in a tailspin. Mitt fights back with ads trashing McCain.

The GOP campaign is getting really ugly in NH. Mitt Romney, clearly in some kind of panic mode, has been lashing out at all of them. Earlier this week, the Mittster was in New Hampshire trashing John McCain over taxes and immigration (because Mitt's so pure, you know).

McCain's response was pretty funny and pretty bitchy:

"I know something about tailspins, and it's pretty clear Mitt Romney is in one," McCain said in the statement. "It's disappointing that he would launch desperate, flailing, and false attacks in an attempt to maintain relevance. As the Union Leader said today, New Hampshire voters just aren't buying his act, and these latest attacks won't help him."

More after the jump... Mitt's one of those guys who always got what he wanted. And, he wants to be President now and can't believe lowlifes like McCain and Huckabee are getting in his way. He's fighting back against McCain with a new negative ad:

Mitt Romney takes GOP presidential rival John McCain to task on taxes and immigration in a new advertising push in New Hampshire as he seeks to fend off the Arizona senator's challenge.

"John McCain, an honorable man. But is he the right Republican for the future?" an announcer asks in the ad that starts airing Friday in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first presidential primary on Jan. 8. "McCain opposes repeal of the death tax. And voted against the Bush tax cuts - twice. McCain pushed to let every illegal immigrant stay here permanently. Even voted to allow illegals to collect Social Security."

Go Mitt. And, back to you Senator McCain. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Remember right before the 2004 elections when bin Laden released a tape aimed at American voters? Remember how that played right into the hands of George W. Bush? And, it sure helped keep the worse foreign policy president in history in office. That is the most recent precedent for a major national security event directly impacting American elections. And, we saw how that worked out -- not well. Lots of speculation already, but in six days (an eternity in politics) we'll see if or how the Bhutto assassination impacts this cycle.

Okay, what are you hearing? Read the rest of this post...

What better way to celebrate the Christmas season?

Absolutely disgraceful. Last August I visited the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem where similar stories were mentioned. It was astonishing to hear about silly arguments that dragged on for centuries, even leaving the church roof in tatters for decades because the different religious orders (all Christian) could not agree on much of anything. If this is the best they can do, why bother?

Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning on Thursday.

A cleaning session that turned violent. In one of the holiest sites during the Christmas season. Are they serious? Read the rest of this post...

Citi, Merrill and JPMorgan to write down even more in Q4

Bad debt from the subprime crash continues to be a moving target. Despite teams of expensive experts, this is like the Keystone Cops comes to Wall Street. It's hard to keep up with the downwardly revised numbers, but not to worry, these people are "experts" and know what they are doing.

Just because they change their write downs more often than they change their underwear, don't worry. Bush says the economy is jut fine and Wall Street keeps trying to tell us the same. It's just those doggone facts that keep getting in the way. Damned facts! Damn! Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Long day of news... Read the rest of this post...