Lambert will be liveblogging the election starting at 4 PM! Be sure to come back, bring popcorn, and discuss in comments. And you should give him a big round of applause for his stalwart and thorough coverage of the runup to the election.
Your humble blogger is also under the weather, big time. So please be nice to the guest bloggers!
How I Hacked An Electronic Voting Machine PopSci (Robert M)
Water supply ‘at weather’s mercy’ BBC
0 Percent Comparison Rate. Skippy tells us subprime auto finance is alive and well in Oz too. And this, also from Skippy, is just puzzling: Green Moon owner Lloyd Williams spends $30 million to win Melbourne Cup but he doesn’t watch it live News.com.au
Briton Killed in China Had Spy Links Wall Street Journal
China’s economic destiny in doubt after leadership shock Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Apple Explores Switch From Intel Chips for the Mac Bloomberg. Ah, yes, the original NeXT had Motorola chips…
Storm porn continues (Lambert has more granular stuff in Campaign Coverage):
How Did the MTA Restore Subway Service in Time for Monday’s Rush Hour? New York Magazine (Lambert). I have to say I’m amazed they got most of the fully flooded sections back so quickly. And these were…gasp….public officials and union members.
The Lines At NYC’s Port Authority Are Like Nothing We’ve Ever Seen Before Clusterstock. So much for the idea that “operational” = “back to normal”. The F train to Queens had 2-3 hour waits last Friday, no updates on what they were like today.
Mayor Bloomberg’s Response to Sandy Leaves Many New Yorkers Out in the Cold Daily Beast (Ms G)
What Sandy Is Teaching New York City That 9/11 Didn’t Bloomberg. More signs of zeitgeist shift on global warming.
Obama and Romney remain silent on climate change, the biggest issue of all George Monbiot, Guardian
New York braced for new storm Financial Times
Sandy: The October Surprise Comes in a Perfect Storm OilPrice
Re-elected Obama would push quickly for fiscal deal -party aides Reuters
Fiscal cliff looms over campaign climax Financial Times. Larry Fink is positioning himself to be Treasury Secretary, as the more effective Erskine Bowles.
Why Californians MUST Vote George Washington
What a ginormous pile of crap! bob somerby. A must read. On the origins of post-truthiness
Gov. Cuomo allows displaced New Yorkers to vote anywhere Raw Story (furzy mouse)
Goldman Sachs slashes number of partners Guardian
Hero of the day, CPDO edition Felix Salmon (John M) and Australian Court: Standard and Poor’s Liable for Bad Ratings on Securities Firedoglake. Ha, no one overseas cares about the US First Amendment “journalism” nonsense. Wait until German investors get their teeth into this. Wonder how the plaintiffs collect on these cases, though….
War of words erupts among rating agencies Financial Times
Foreclosures Drawing Cash as 401K Returns Sag: Mortgages Bloomberg (Lisa E)
Crystal Ball Department: Bankruptcy Filings to Rise in a Few Years Jean Braucher, Credit Slips
Supreme Court Hears 2 Cases Over Class Actions New York Times
Bank of America doubles repurchase risk exposure Housing Wire
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lambert here:
Mission elapsed time: T + 57 and counting*
24 24 hours to go / I wanna be sedated. — The Ramones, I wanna be sedated
Occupy. Occupy Sandy: “Distribution centers and volunteer hubs are now located in Sunset Park, Astoria, Brighton Beach, DUMBO, East Village, Lower East Side, Jersey City, Red Hook, Rockaway, and Staten Island.”
Hurricane Sandy
NY. Maypr-for-Life Bloomberg’s generator clusterfuck: “The city left more than a dozen generators and other pieces of heavy equipment — desperately needed by cold and hungry New Yorkers who lost their homes to Hurricane Sandy — still stranded in Central Park yesterday and this morning. Five light towers, that can expand up to 30 feet in the air, were sitting unused on the east side of Central Park near 72nd Street today, as horrified passersby demanded to know why the equipment hadn’t been deployed to devastated neighborhoods. Stashed near the finish line of the canceled marathon yesterday were 20 heaters, tens of thousands of Mylar ‘space’ blankets, jackets, 106 crates of apples and peanuts, at least 14 pallets of bottled water and 22 five-gallon jugs of water.” Photos. Bonus fun: Read the story to parse “Mike’s” statement! …Mayor-for-Life Bloomberg offers a helping hand: “You can die from being cold.” No, duh! Maybe if you distributed some Mylar blankets? .. Brooklyn: “The impromptu charging station was set up by a company called BioLite [here], which enables users to ‘cook dinner and charge electronics anywhere, with just a handful of kindling.’ We’re told that the stoves can charge a cell phone in the time that it takes to charge up your phone using a laptop. The stoves can also be used to power LED lights.” … Staten Island: “After talking with city and Office of Emergency Management officials, each of whom had a different answer to what was needed and where–and if anyone was in charge, no one knew who it was, or at least they weren’t telling the Islanders and volunteers asking for answers–we headed down the road to the next relief station, where the rough consensus was that our supplies would be better put to use. En route, ‘our’ cop stopped to talk with several colleagues he knows–none of whom knew what was happening beyond their sight lines. “It’s complicated” was the refrain we kept hearing from dispirited city officials (Cops just said “I don’t know,” or “maybe try over there.” … Red Hook: “A full week after Hurricane Sandy came and went, thousands of furious Housing Authority tenants in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan struggled Monday to survive in squalid conditions as NYCHA scrambled in vain to turn on power, heat and water. “Nobody comes here to help. It’s the land of the lost,” declared a frustrated Ralph Fret, 64, pointing at the black fetid water that remained in the basement of his building – nearly to the ceiling. “You see all that water? You see a pump anywhere? They’re not doing anything.'” Who’s in charge of NYCHA? Some privatizing mole? … Breezy Point: ” Breezy Point could have been mistaken for a Soweto shanty town Sunday as residents picked through the ruins of their homes and used blankets to ward off the cold.” … Rockaways: “FEMA “stacked everything in front of the building and a lot of people couldn’t come down to get it.” Residents of the 12-story Dayton Tower high-rise co-op on Shore Front Parkway developed a system to deal with the lack of elevators by deputizing younger residents as runners to communicate with the elderly and infirm. ‘We run up and down the buildings and ask people what they want — milk, toilet paper, water,’ said Kevin Garcia, 15.”Solidarity! … Rockaways: “There are no stores open in the eastern reaches of the Rockaways. There is nowhere to buy food. There is no subway service. There are no cabs. If you lived in Edgemere and you had a car, it has almost certainly been totaled by seawater. There is no light in these towers. Elevators don’t work and the windowless stairways are dark with a darkness that most New Yorkers never see, a pervading absolute blackness like something from the lower reaches of an uncharted cave.” … Food: “More than 1.1 million pounds of food will pour into areas of New York devastated by Hurricane Sandy after the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the state’s request for emergency food resources.” … FEMA: ” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday 4,800 staffers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are in the area, working to solve the mammoth housing crisis — and that solution may include trailers and pre-fab houses similar to those deployed after Hurricane Katrina.” Oh, that’s a relief. … Information blackout: “Of the total, at least 20,000 are in public housing, some of which will be out of commission for ‘a very long time,’ Bloomberg said without naming which NYCHA developments will be shut for repairs. Milda Arriaga, who has lived in the houses for five years, said the week-long power outage was made worse by an information blackout. “Nobody is telling us anything. If it’s not safe, we wouldn’t even know,” the 31-year-old physical therapist said.” … Photos: Gallery. … Photos: Iwan Baan on his already famous Manhattan SOPO photo for New York Magazine (here): “As I looked at the glowing Goldman Sachs tower and the bright buildings surrounding this financial icon–I saw who has the power and how problematic that is for this country.”
NJ. Earthquake: “This [new Noreaster] comes in addition to a minor earthquake that shook northern New Jersey in the middle of the night.” From the Department of Please! Make It Stop! … Jersey City: “‘Give us power!’ Those were the words shouted from an upper-floor window by a resident of the Marion Gardens public-housing complex in Jersey City, where the power has been out since Hurricane Sandy made landfall last Monday” … FEMA: “FEMA won’t duplicate benefits paid by private insurance, so homeowners must settle claims before FEMA will evaluate, said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. And most of its recovery aid comes in the form of low-interest disaster loans, he said. ‘If you have insurance, file your claim. That’s the first answer,’ Fugate said. ‘If you don’t have insurance or have uninsured losses, the next step is an SBA disaster loan.” Yes, let’s get the post-disaster economy roaring back to life. … Petroleum: “Still, two NJ refineries and 10 regional petroleum terminals remain off-line, according to the Department of Energy.”
NOTE: Swing states in bold italic, with (poll closing).
CO (9:00pm ET) Legalization: “According to PPP, 52 percent of voters support Amendment 64 while only 44 percent are opposed to the measure leaving the state ‘set to legalize marijuana tomorrow,’ PPP’s Tom Jensen writes about the results of their latest survey.
FL (7:00pm ET for eastern part of state; 8pm ET for the west) Voting: “Early voting and in-person absentee ballots in FL: [T]wo different systems to verify the identify of the voter, with two different sets of possibilities of a ballot being accepted or rejected.” What could go wrong?
IA (10:00pm ET) The Romney: “[ROMNEY:] ‘You measure change in achievements. His record is very different from his words,” Romney said, pointing to higher health care costs, higher gasoline prices and lower take home pay as vestiges of the president’s White House term.” All true, sadly. Still, at least a neo-liberal shill won’t win. Oh, wait…
NJ. Voting: “Late today, Ernest Landante, a spokesman for Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, said the state does require e-mail voters to also send in hard copies of their ballots by regular mail immediately, and no special exemptions are being made for Sandy victims.” … Voting: “County election administrators are, according to anecdotal reports, simply not responding to all requests for ballots. In two major counties, the email address advertised on the website of the county clerk is not even accepting email. ”
NH (7:00pm ET for most of state; 8pm ET for a few bigger cities). Results: “This year ten voters showed up [at the Dixville Notch midnight vote] and they split evenly — five votes apiece — for Obama and Romney. Dixville Notch and its 10 voters may be symbolic, but they’re not a bellwether for the state. ”
NY. Greens: “Donald Hassig, the Green Party candidate in the 21st Congressional District, will be voting for D incumbent Bill Owens [as LOTE] on Tuesday, according to a post on Hassig’s blog filed Saturday evening — two days after the release of a Siena poll showing Hassig pulling 4 percent in a race that’s a statistical dead heat: Owens led R Matt Doheny in that survey by a point, 44-43 percent. The state Green Party repudiated Hassig after his comments at a voter forum knocking Mexican farm laborers as potentially harmful to cattle due to their poor English skills. The candidate claimed his comments were mischaracterized.” … Greens: “It may be one of the closest congressional races in the country. It would be tough to get any closer. A final poll shows R Ann Marie Buerkle and D Dan Maffei each with 44% of the vote. A third party [Green] candidate, Ursula Rozum, has eight percent support. Just three percent are undecided.” … Voting: “As of yesterday, less than 72 hours before Election Day, tens of thousands of voters were confusingly assigned new poll sites after Hurricane Sandy knocked out power to or damaged the usual spots where they cast their ballots.”
NV (10:00pm ET). Ryan: “The battle for NV’s six electoral votes came down to the wire Monday as R vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan made a final stop [in Reno] while campaign workers for Obama worked phones, fanned out into neighborhoods and handed out fliers.” Note the editorialzing photo: Ryan with a spike in his head.
OH (7:30pm ET). Voting: “Under a little-noticed provision of Ohio law, federal election results cannot be challenged in state court.” … Swing state Keynsianism: “[T]his year polls suggest that Ohio is slightly D-leaning. That divergence — driven by the auto rescue and the state’s improved economy, local analysts said — may prove determinative” (Nate SIlver) Why bail out the American people when you just need to bail out and industry in two swing states? It’s visionary minimalism!
The trail. Military voting:” ‘Among presidential swing states, CO now allows [military] voters to email ballots if mail is unavailable, FL permits them to fax ballots, IA accepts emailed or faxed ballots from those in ‘imminent danger’ and NV allows email or faxes from those who attest to their voting eligibility under penalty of perjury.’ David Jefferson, a computer scientist at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who calls email and fax transmission “by far the most dangerous forms of voting ever implemented in the U.S.,” said that the Pentagon program’s and Carey’s advocacy ‘have done grave damage to U.S. national security, and it will be very difficult to undo it.'” … Microtargeting: “The parties have both embraced research showing that nothing beats a personal appeal from ‘trusted peers’–friends, neighbours, relations or those with shared interests–either on a doorstep or by telephone. The psychology of shame has been scoured for tips about the importance of securing an ‘affirmative’ pledge to vote.” Iin other words, the entire process has become something nobody with any sense of shame whatever should even think of participating in, much like all other forms of human interaction devised by rentiers. … Gallup: “Romney takes 49% support over Obama’s 48% in the poll of likely voters. The survey was conducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 4 and has a 2 percent margin of error. Romney led the same poll 51 to 46 percent on Oct. 28, the final day Gallup polled ahead of the storm.” … Nooners: “We begin with the three words everyone writing about the election must say: Nobody knows anything. Everyone’s guessing. I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled. ” (haw). … Nate Silver: “When the hurricane made landfall in New Jersey on Oct. 29, Mr. Obama’s chances of winning re-election were 73 percent in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. Since then, his chances have risen to 86 percent, close to his highs on the year.” (Nate Silver).
* Slogan of the day:’Field Training Will Make Our Blue Heart Follow The Obama Forever!
* * *
Antidote du jour (furzy mouse):
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Comments are closed.
The horse is a Gypsy Vanner.
They prefer “Romani”.
(kidding)
Who knew?
Recipe for making Romani Chicken;
First you steal a chicken….
on the relationship between sandy & climate change, here’s what we know: sea surface temperatures in the area of the atlantic the storm transversed were some 5°F above the 30-year average, or “normal,” for late october, and with every degree of temperature, the atmosphere can hold 4% more moisture, so the storm was able to pick up more moisture & expand more than an average late october storm could…and instead of tracking into the north atlantic, as october storms normally do, Sandy was turned towards the coast by a blocking ridge of high pressure over greenland, something that occurs only 2% of the time in the fall; and as Dr Jeff Masters points out, that by contributing to a negative North Atlantic Oscillation, arctic sea ice loss can cause such blocking ridges to form…then the storm blew up to historical proportions when it joined with an arctic front created by an unusually sharp dip in the jet stream into the eastern US, that was also blocked by the same high pressure ridge…but whether storms like this become the norm or not, we do know that sea levels are rising, and will continue to rise, probably faster than expected, possibly by as much as 5 meters this century, for at least 50 years, irregardless of what we do about carbon emissions or anything else…so it might behoove us to start thinking like the Dutch, and put our unused human & construction capacity to use building the necessary seawalls, dikes, and levees to protect our major cities on the coasts…
The weather – Sandy was weather, not climate – all of the above conditions were such that they could happen whether or not there is ongoing climate change. What is your definition of climate change? Mine is an event like the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago and the continued warming since then. How warm was Greenland when the Vikings colonized it? – raised cattle and vegetables – people are finding Viking relics in many areas where the glaciers have retreated. I am not denying that the globe has been marginally warmer since the 80s so many glaciers are retreating – they were advancing as recently as the 1600s in the little ice age (was that climate change?) but I have seen nothing that approaches climate change. And yes I believe man’s technology has advanced enough so that there can be and are man made alterations to the environment for the worse. Man made increase in CO2 is not one of them. It is a shame to spend energy and money on what is still just a possibility when there are many real problems that are not the product of constantly changing computer models and the surmises of many climatologists. Take the jet streams – I have read no convincing explanation of how temperature differences and physical gas laws plus geography explain coherently defined tunnels of 100 plus mile an hour winds circling the globe such that they can predict what they are going to do from month to month much less year to year. Yet I am to believe that the advocates of AGW know enough to predict what the global temperature will be decades from now and what effects it will have.
“Ah, yes, the original NeXT had Motorola chips.”
Actually, so did all the original Mac models in the ’80s and early ’90s. IIRC, it was John Scully who brought Intel chips into the Mac production line.
Steve Jobs brought Intel chips to Macs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors
Can you imagine how different the outcome might be today if we had instant-runoff voting? If I could pick Jill Stein as my first choice, then Rocky Anderson, with Obama as #3 for example.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-11-05/trillions-dollars-securities-may-have-been-destroyed-hurricane-sandy
Uh, I thought that was all electronic, and backed up 12 or more times. You know, never a good idea to store paper in the basement…
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
US Down and out in the Romney Motel
By Pepe Escobar
Very good article. Here is another with a chart that shows the links mentioned:
via:
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2012/11/karl-roves-empire-is-all-set-to-work-its-old-black-magic-on-nov-6/
Karl Rove’s “empire” is all set to work its old black magic on Nov. 6
Rove Vote-Switching ‘Empire’ Alleged to Threaten Nov. 6 Results
By Andrew Kreig
A well-funded alliance of Rove-linked Republican companies linked also to the Bush and Romney families is poised to repeat previous successes in decisive election-machine vote manipulation on Nov. 6.
That is the claim of Ohio attorney Clifford Arnebeck, below, and several other attorney and author activists who for years have been protesting voting machine electronic software as impossible to secure. They have announced a financial chart of a Rove “empire” to bolster their argument that authorities should prevent so-called “emergency” measures to assist Internet-enabled voting. “I feel for the Hurricane Sandy victims,” electronic voting critic Jill Simpson told me in a phone interview on Nov. 4, “but it’s very dangerous to the entire voting process to encourage Internet voting, as New Jersey’s governor has suggested.”
Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reported massive frustration by early voters in Florida and Ohio, the two biggest swing state for the presidential race and each run by Republican governors suspected of trying to suppress votes in Democratic areas so that Republican Mitt Romney will win their state’s electoral votes.
Read more and the chart is in the following linked article:
http://www.justice-integrity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=687:rove-vote-switching-empire-alleged-to-threaten-nov-6-results&catid=44:myblog
……
And, here is a wonderful way to contribute today to the good fight:
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The Rovian machinations I suspect are more for the down ticket races. He’s very much a Bush Consigliere: If Romney wins, his boy Jeb may never get a shot unless he’s willing to run as a much older man–2020? 2024? Sounds like the Corporate Media want to create a bit of a show before the inevitable.
How can Bloomberg publish a widely-quoted article about Apple possibly switching to ARM chips in 2017, without even mentioning that Apple’s archrival Microsoft made the switch this year with its Surface RT tablet?
In other words, if Apple does make the switch, Microsoft will have beaten it to the punch by five calendar years … or 35 dog years, a more pertinent measuring stick in the tech biz.
Mobile phones are small but fully featured computers these days, which probably spells doom for the desktop PC as a mass market product. Even Apple’s svelte MacBook Air laptops use Intel chips that slurp 17 watts of power, placing a heavy load on the battery. By contrast, the ARM chips used in phones often burn less than one watt, allowing a much smaller battery.
A Mac-oriented site poses Apple’s dilemma this way:
‘Infinite resources’ — LOL! That sort of brute force thinking is precisely Intel’s problem.
For instance, unmanned drones were developed by model aircraft enthusiasts, not by giant manufacturers such as Boeing and Lockheed. Drones were first mass produced in the 1930s by Reginald Denny; Alvin Ellis perfected modern drones in the 1970s in Israel. Both were RC aircraft hobbyists.
ARM, one of whose resources is a transgendered ace chip designer named Sophie Wilson, has been thinking small for 20 years. ‘Big Iron’ Intel is likely to be no more successful at building low-power chips than GM, Ford and Chrysler were at making the first generation of ‘compact cars’ in the 1960s.
Small is beautiful, and it’s synonymous with limited resources. Less is more.
Jim, what happens when serious osteoarthritis kicks into the thumbs of the hot shots then years from now, if not sooner? Crippled hands are Waay cool.
Planned obsolescence and tech greed with a vengeance is the name of this brutal game. And they mean to sink the “keyboard literate touch-type” class of We the People. How these misanthropic techies despise humanity. They want everyone to be as limited as they are: robots in flesh with no heart. They have self-selected as gods eager to make the world in their image. To Sheol with them.
Jim Haygood: How can Bloomberg publish a widely-quoted article about Apple possibly switching to ARM chips in 2017, without even mentioning that Apple’s archrival Microsoft made the switch this year with its Surface RT tablet?
Because Bloomberg knows the difference between apples and oranges. Apple already uses ARM designs in their tablets. The article is about switching laptops from Intel to ARM.
Jim Haygood: Even Apple’s svelte MacBook Air laptops use Intel chips that slurp 17 watts of power, placing a heavy load on the battery. By contrast, the ARM chips used in phones often burn less than one watt, allowing a much smaller battery.
More apples to oranges. The MacBook processors are designed for laptops, and so have a completely different power/performance tradeoff. Some of the IBM PowerPC’s are power hungry buggers too, yet are used in top-of-the-list Green500 computers.
anonymously quoted Apple fanboy site: So why is Intel so behind ARM in the mobile space? Simple: Intel screwed up.
Another genius explaining luck as foresight. ARM has been in the embedded CPU business for 22 years, and those of us in the industry have known about them for that long. They’re a great company. Personally I like their stuff. But they lucked out with smart phones. ARM designs were used in dumb phones (and loads of other embedded apps) and their higher end designs slipped nicely into the Next Big Thing. They didn’t plan it.
Jim Haygood: ‘Infinite resources’ — LOL! That sort of brute force thinking is precisely Intel’s problem.
More fanboy talk. Do you know anything about the semi business? Intel has the most advanced digital fab processes (and has for years). Yes, they need to tweak for power vs. performance (like most fabs they can easily run both processes on the same line). I certainly wouldn’t write off the first company to introduce hi-k dielectrics as having no expertise in low power processes.
What about Intel Corp. vs. ARM Ltd? Again, apples and oranges. ARM is fabless. They sell all kinds of licenses for their architectures. One of the best implementations is the Qualcomm Snapdragon, but it’s not an ARM Ltd. design even at the RTL level.
Jim Haygood:‘Big Iron’ Intel is likely to be no more successful at building low-power chips than GM, Ford and Chrysler were at making the first generation of ‘compact cars’ in the 1960s.
You do realize that the reason Apple switched from PowerPC’s to Intel was because the Intel chips were more power efficient, right?
Jim Haygood: Small is beautiful, and it’s synonymous with limited resources.
Right. I gave up my laptop for a smart phone. Conservationist me. I don’t text while driving my car, but I do like using it from the comfort of my air-conditioned home.
Lambert, the Guardian featured an editorial by Gary Johnson on 3 Nov 2012. Under the circumstances, might this be an *advertorial*? How did this come to pass? What does this imply? Will we see more of this kind of *product placement* by *Candidate Editorial* at the Guardian, especiallly by an American Presidential Candidate in Campaign Mode offering sage advice to the population at large? Might London have an interest in the outcome?
Is this a new way for the Mother Country to try to position her preference for “the next go-round” here? Does Gary Johnson have a *dual passport* to cover all Anglo bases? Does he have “old school” type ties in England?
Doesn’t this cast a cynical pall over the “Third Party Alternative” to Business As Usual? Is it just a guy thing?
Re-elected Obama would push quickly for fiscal deal -party aides: Reuters
Nice to see Obama and his Democratic whores in Congress sharpening the shears to cut social welfare in the USA even before most of the vote has been cast.
I don’t know why anyone who can call themselves left-of-centre can actually vote for Obama, particularly given many are aware of his ‘Grand Bargain’ on cutting back welfare whilst attending to the desires of the 1% and military-industrial complex.
Whilst Stoller, Walsh and Chomsky have advised swing state voters to cast a vote in favour of Obama, I firmly believe that this is tactically egregious given the facts, as the Reuters story highlights, Obama is poised to pounce on the social welfare safety net once the counting is over.
Any one with a brain must see that Obama must be stopped from taking the Whitehouse again for another 4 years and whilst its difficult to believe, the social safety net would be safer with Romney in the Whitehouse than Obama – this based on the reality that the Democrats would not allow a ‘cutting’ Romney to trim away at social welfare – obviously, this cannot be said of an Obama Whitehouse given the fact that leading Democrat’s in both Houses’s are sharpening the shears on a grinding stone as I type this.
The gross hypocracy of the Democrat’s – or its leadership at least – knows no bounds, at least we all know the Republican’s are bad and mad, regrettably, the Dem’s are bad, mad and pure evil – so poised is its well with neoliberalism, greed and lust for absolute power.
If you wish to delay significant attacks upon what remains of social welfare, vote Romney – if you wish to see the end of social welfare to those that actually need it, and huge handouts to those that don’t, the 1%, vote for Obama – its a tough call and I’ve made my opinion known – I wish it were not so, but the Reuters story underscores exactly what will happen once Obama re-enters the Whitehouse.
Good luck to all of you and thankfully one is not in a position to vote, hence this horrible personal choice I do not have to make.
The “95%” who voted dem or repug in 2008… represented only 56.8% of the voting population. – or jusr over 132 million people.
That year O produced a mini surge –previously
2004 55.3% voted
2000 51.3%
1996 49.1% [the lewinsky mess destroyed bubba’s mandate AND gopers weren’t excited about their choice.
1992 55.1% ushered in Bubba
1988 only 50.1% cared to play
SO – the mandate IS EVAPORATING>
My thoughts are that without controversial state ballot issues.. these buggers would be getting fewer than 45% of the REGISTERED voters thumbs up.
My prediction is that this will be another low turnout year… many many people hate their choices… but have an interest in the ballot questions.
Tweedles Dum or Dee ain’t gonna cut it much longer
DO” NOT VOTE>>> or vote 3rd party… it does NOT matter who wins.
O needs to lose because he committed date rape. Romney should win so we can be reminded that there is NO DIFFERENCE between these bastards.
The only higher percentage achieved in a presidential election was 1968 – when 60.8% of the voters cast their ballots.. but even then, it was only 73 million and change out of a possible 120 million registered voters.
SO O had a bigger mandate than Kennedy — and he pissed on us.
oops I got my timeline messed up.
enormous apologies..
the 49.1% mandate for Clinton’s re-election happened BEFORE the Lewinsky scandal… I dashed that off without thinking.
I saw the stat and immediately tied it to Lewinsky – but in 1996 she was still boinking him unbeknownst to anyone but the Mrs…
Sorry again… but I have never considered why only 49.1% of registered voters participated in the 1996 election … his second term was NOT a mandate in any sense
Everything’s in place for a chaotic clusterfuck with a concession arbitrated in private by elites to simulate public choice – just like ’00 and ’04 and the decisive ’08 Dem primary.
HAs anyone noticed that with each “DISASTER” – event, October Surprise.. call them what you want..
Notice that the events favor the party in power —
OKC, Ruby Ridge, Waco — even the Matthew Shepard ‘attack’ – favored the Clinton Agenda. He cleaned up the militias through a series of false flags.. I have already told you all of the alcoholic CIA operative whose wife figured out what happened to Shepard when she received a call from her husband the night the gay kid was murdered and hung on a fence — the EVENT was supposed to garner support for gays… Clinton needed a victim – and his operatives gave him one.. not unlike the boys at Pearl Harbor…
or the occupants of the Trade towers.
The LARGER issue was the necessary mandates.
But back to my point…
Clinton’s events favored his agenda.. Bush’s EVENTS favored the GOP, military, Israeli agenda..
now O – using the exact same tactics — I don’t know how… I just know the EVENTS of this administration favor the global warming conversation.. AND the need for more government.
We must start to look at these EVENTS and ask
WHO BENEFITS — forget the victims.. they are collateral damage.. to the LARGER AGENDA
So Sandy was engineered by Obama? Wow, I’m impressed, this guy is a bigger blowhard than i thought …
HAARP
The Feds have been manipulating weather and storms for years.
sorry… I put NOTHING past this bunch.
or the other bunch.
I saw something about this on the weather channel a few years back… they were showing us how the heat coming off the city of Albuquerque is just enough to keep thunderstorms at bay… making Gallop and Grants wetter.. and ABQ dryer.
the HAARP program was designed to manipulate these patterns… make rain where there is none… and steer storms.
China is already using these techniques at the chagrin of world meteorologists… we don’t know the implications yet.
or ever..
but don’t think they cant use this system to steer storms.. because they can.
“…give him a big round of applause for his stalwart and thorough coverage of the runup to the election.”
Absolutely! Thanks very very much to Lambert, especially today, but also Yves for their intelligent consistent work! It’s a difficult job! And with wit too!
Absolutely, Lambert has done us a tremendous service, most intelligently. Both he and Yves are heroes in defense and promotion of freedom of speech and of the press for We the People. When’s the Pulitzer coming?
Indeed! If it weren’t for this site I might be in a room with padded walls. I hope you feel better soon, Yves.
I for one got tired of the cynicism in the election coverage. It is unproductive. I had to take a break from this site for several months because it became so over the top and bordered on whining. Should we sit on the sidelines and point out the flaws in the system or should we be working within the system to change it? There is no way Jill Stein is going to win and voting for her isn’t going to ‘send a message’ because it will be drowned out by the system. It is tilting at windmills in my mind. If you really want to fix it, run for office yourself on the local level. Influence the makers and shakers in your own town. Teach them another way. Find others who believe the same as you and get them involved locally too. Teach one or two or small groups there how their daily small decisions on what to buy, where to work, how they bank their money is important, then expand it to your whole town. Each single person can make a difference if they affect two or three others and start a chain reaction. I can’t control the rest of the country, but I can work on changing the things that affect me everyday.
Maude – all the stuff you talk about is what Stein has tried to do – you should read her description of why she got involved – she saw a problem in her med practice with taking care of patients and prescribing for them, then having to send them out into the milieu that is making them sick. She figured all she had to do was, as you say, work with local officials and let them know what the problem was so it could be fixed. After making such efforts, she realized that what was actually needed was to “throw the bums out” and she was off to the races. She says she is practicing “political medicine” because politics, as it is, is “the mother of all illnesses”. She has diagnosed the problem and now proposes a cure that the current quacks, blood letters and snake oil salesmen in office will not acknowledge …
My experience over 20 years ago was similar – if you have ANY prolonged experience with the political establishment, you will discover the same. She is doing what needs to be done and deserves the support of all who really do “get it” …
I didn’t say I had a problem with Jill Stein, just that voting for her for president is like tilting at windmills. We need some Greens in the House and Senate. Throw all your energy behind getting them in local and state office all over the country and then go for President.
“I didn’t say I had a problem with Jill Stein, just that voting for her for president is like tilting at windmills.”
Wrong. Stein won’t win but voting for her this year would represent another almost infinitesimal crack in the current two-in-one-party hegemony, and when there are enough infinitesimal cracks…..
“Once there was a silly old ram
Thought he’d punch a hole in a dam
No one could make that ram, scram
He kept buttin that dam
Cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes
He had high apple pie, in the sky hopes
So any time your feelin bad
Stead of feelin sad
Just remember that ram
Oops there goes a billion kilowatt dam.”
“There is no way Jill Stein is going to win and voting for her isn’t going to ‘send a message’ because it will be drowned out by the system. It is tilting at windmills in my mind.”
Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy. This exact attitude is what’s killing nus.
Lambert, I can no longer afford to subscribe to the Times, but I just saw on their homepage a few minutes ago (“Times Wire”) that the ex-Dean of St. John’s was dead of an “apparent suicide.” Does anyone else know about this?
Yes, LBR, the story is also covered at the NY Daily News website (no charge).
Cecilia Chang apparently had a long career as an all-round criminal. Besides using scholarship students in the Asian Studies dept. as personal servants in her home, she was accused of stealing over $1M and using it for shopping & gambling. Her appearance yesterday in court showed a woman breaking under the strain of exposure.
Monday’ Daily News reported her first husband was apparently the victim of a hit-job, and his dying words in hospital accused his wife. But she was only questioned, never charged. However, very recently the FBI took a new interest in that case. She also apparently entered a sham marriage with someone undocumented (for cash I’m sure).
I don’t understand why the Queens D.A. let her stay at home; the woman was a flight and suicide risk.
She tried to throw St. John’s former and current presidents under the bus (in court!). The apparently looked vigorously the other way in exchange for favors. And so on….
Scholarship students as personal servants.
They say to become a sushi chef, you have to spend the first few years mopping the kitchen floor.
There is the ideal in Asian cultures that teaching extends beyond the classroom.
Then there is the abuse of using your students as servants.
It depends on one’s luck. As I don’t know her, I can’t say what is involved here.
In this case most of the students already had partial scholarships; she offered them total scholarships in exchange for work-study assignments. However, all the work was personal in nature (laundry, errands, burning evidence) performed in her home.
Students testified that Chang told them they would lose their scholarships if they didn’t comply with her requests/orders.
Lambert and Yves, I thank you and I hope you take heart in being beacons of light on a (still dark) NY, NJ, et al….
The impact of Sandy is just starting to be understood….
The NY area leaders and government officials are as prepared for rebuilding and dealing with this crisis as the Bush Army was ready for rebuilding Iraq after they toppled the Sadaam Statue…
but as Mayor Bloomberg has learned from reading Lessons in Unpreparedness by Donald Rumsfield, who probably said more than once: “Shit happens….It’s a tough slog….ya fight with what ya brought, Who Knew ?? and Oh, WTF !!…”
I voted for Jill Stein here in Columbus (OH) this morning.
My one reservation: Man I hate Republicans. And all their cheating. The line was the longest since I moved here in 2006, and is a direct result of their screwing around with the early voting. For example, there was no place downtown for it (you used to be able to vote early at E. Broad St.).
On the other hand, thanks to cynical Democratic triangulation, we’ll always have Republicans to deal with. The GOP should have disappeared into the dustbin of history after 2008. President Obama saved them, 1) by giving them passes for all their crimes, and 2) by pursuing many of their worst policies.
The ‘lesser evil’ will only continue to get more evil as long as it can take its voting base for granted.
~
Well said. Republicans will be Republicans; it’s up to the Democratic party to reign them in, and if they refuse to do it, what does that tell us?
I’m kinda hoping a second Obama term will be nail in the coffin.
For the first time in my life, I voted a straight ‘D’ ticket. For the past 12 years or so, there has been a last one ‘R’ in a minor state role who I felt was more qualified.
I just couldn’t do it this time. I don’t think there are any ‘R’s left that believe in Science over Creationism, that feel Global Climate Change is a threat, and that women are smart enough to be able to control their own uteri.
Whose coffin are you nailing? A vote for DorR is a nail in our collective coffin …
Early voting was moved from broad street due to lack of space. In non presidential years, it is at the BOE offices on E Broad. In the last presidential election, it was located at Vet’s memorial across the river, but that location was still too small and the lines were obscenely long. So it was moved to a former department store on the north side of town. Early voting turnout was greater in 12 than it was in 08, and the extra space made the lines move much quicker.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/11/06/68989-vote-early-in-franklin-county.html
You can’t walk there from downtown.
~
P.S. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted estimated that more than 1.7 million Ohio voters had cast an early ballot.
“Everything is going very smoothly,” Husted said.
Husted is a Koch whore. He’s done everything he can to make it harder to vote in Ohio.
~
I care not about he who casts the vote – only about he who counts it… – Stalin
Husted had nothing to do with where each county holds early voting. The state house only allows counties one early voting location. Husted is not a state rep.
ps: when there is only one early voting location per county, pretty much everyone is unable to walk to it.
A look at http://www.jillstein.org today, Election Day: 5 Nov 2012, shows that “the Green Party of the United States” already has devolved into canned crap for consumption by *useful idiots* and the creamed masses. The carbon credit racket shall feed the swine to bursting, from Luxembourg to the City of Dis.
It’s a tragic travesty that such a fine, eminently respectable human being; such a quick, intelligent woman; such an accomplished professional in the field of Medicine who sought to bring her deep knowledge of humanity to We the People; that Dr. Jill Stein should have been thrown into the meat grinder of dead “American Economics + Politics” so soon. The REAL Dr. Jill Stein was too good for us.
This truly is a Day of Ignominy for We the People of the United States. Clearly iIt’s time to leave the *London Music Hall of American Mockery* for keeps. Shame on my People, more yet, again.
“THE PROPHETS” by Abraham Joshua Heschel lives on in tragic agony, for shame.
“Obama and Romney remain silent on climate change, the biggest issue of all”
Obama’s silence is better than Romney’s silence.
sincerely, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, etc.
Touche!
Lots of silver-haired, toothless Boomers are jauntily tapping their canes to the music of Springsteen and Dylan:
Hey, you, get offa my lawn!
J.Haygood: Enough with the nasty “silver-haired, toothless boomers tapping their canes” trope. If you have a legitimate criticism to make (which I doubt, given the slurs), make it.
Surely you know the “Boomer generation” extends from 1943-1960/4. A lot of punkers in there. Also, as someone who has a cane not from old age but illness, I don’t appreciate your implying we’re senile, either.
“Lots of silver-haired, toothless Boomers”
While I neither know nor care whether she dyes her hair or the state of her dental health, Yves is a boomer.
Prejudice and generalizations: because thinking makes your head hurt.
/From *Global Economic Intersection* —
Geopolitics, Trigger of a Big New Global Shock?
November 5th, 2012
in Op Ed
Editor’s Note:This article is republished with permission of LEAP/E2020. See end of article for credits./
[EXCERPT]
//- Public announcement GEAB N°68 (October 16, 2012) –
For several months we have anticipated a major shock for the economy and global political stability for Autumn 2012. We are maintaining this “Red Alert” and will take stock mid-November 2012, at the same time as our annual analysis of the 2013 “risk-countries”, and on the state of the world at this time.
These last few weeks, as predicted by our team, the world geopolitical situation has rapidly deteriorated: the Syrian conflict has become a regional conflict in which the major powers are now trying not to be drawn in beyond the limits that they have set (1); to the North of the Sahel (Mali, Niger, …) a new military confrontation between Islamists and the West is in the offing (2); the China Sea has been turned into zone of “tepid” conflicts across the board with Japan and China in the middle of brewing chaos (3); the major world economies are all entering recession (4); social unrest is growing just like tax pressure,… and there is no more liquidity available (even QE has an effectiveness in freefall (5)) as was still the case in 2009.//
MORE at:
http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog2.php/2012/11/05/geopolitics-trigger-of-a-big-new-global-shock
——————————–
YVES, can we place our bets on these predictions OTC or in a Futures Exchange? Have Wall Street Biggies and Hedgies established a “free market” in these “intellectual commodities” and established a re-hypothecation system for YIELD on compound derivatives on the same, for those *on the right side of the market*? Will Muppet Mania be churned in the Predictions Racket?
Early update:
Apple stock started up, but now is flat. Despite all the stickers everyone is wearing, looks like the iVoted release didn’t live up to the hype.
Your Bloomberg news on Apple/ARM is 18 months old.
http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-laptop-lines/
And the update on that story two months ago:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/24/an-update-on-apple-moving-away-from-intel/
Thanx – I have an old Powerbook G4 (IBM chip) that is limping along – no longer supported for OS or anything else –
So, think i will wait to “upgrade” when Apple makes the switch, or i will be stuck with an Intel chip model that won’t be supported for long either …
Thanks ‘c’. That’s a good explanation of what Apple is doing and why – a refreshing change from fanboy garbage. It all adds up too, going back at least as far as their acquisition of PA Semi.
It’s election day… and today’s political cartoon theme is…
The true meaning of bipartisanship, part 1 http://www.cartoonaday.com/images/cartoons/2011/01/bipartisanship-cartoon-color-598×334.jpg
The true meaning of bipartisanship, part 2 http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FqQEHPUq6Zc/SaMMMoYq0bI/AAAAAAAAF1I/hikvBClQ-Ug/s400/bitter-stimulus-pill.jpg
The true meaning of bipartisanship, part 3 http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/l/B/4/Bipartisan-Insanity.jpg
The true meaning of bipartisanship, part 4 http://www.chrisweigant.com/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/bipartisan.jpg
I’ve been wondering what happened to Bert http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/bipartisan-cartoon.jpg
Ha, ha – Fink as Treas. Sec. – now it’s official ….
Re: What a ginormous pile of crap!
In 1996, Gary Webb published a series of articles
in the San Jose Mercury News on drugs, the CIA and
the contras. Later, the book “Dark Alliance” by Webb
came out.
—
Youtube video of Gary Webb (2004):
“Gary Webb In his own words” and a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WguildZ_kM8
And then subsequently he “committed suicide” — with two bullets to the head.
I wanna be sedated.
yeah me too… well, more like a blend of stoicism and hedonism ;)
“meet the new boss same as the old boss” – Wont Get Fooled Again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp6-wG5LLqE
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s China’s leadership shock.
Not reallyt that shocking, if you look at the worsening wealth inequality under Hu.
The next 10 years won’t be like the last 10.
Interesting that Japan is expecting America to take on China over Diaoyu/Senkaku while China is manipulating Japan to buy dollars.
I think at the mininum, the US should get China and Japan to antoganize each other over territorial disputes.
In other words, everyone wants to get the other two parties to do his work.
It looks that we have 3 identical ‘Artists of War” (Sunzi’s) here. This could be a 3-way tie.
By the way, at the ‘UN,’ we have a situation similar to our electoral college.
If the United Nations is about all nations and their citizens, and if popular votes are important, then, China, India and Indonesia, each should have more votes than, say, France.
But, luckily for the French, like our 2 senators per state here, each nation gets one vote, in the general assembly regardless of her population size. So tiny Monaco gets one vote, just like Russia. And in the security council, we have five permanent members.
“the US should get China and Japan to antagonize each other…”
Frankly, that’s been the game plan for awhile. Japan is our wingman in the Pacific – it’s job is to tweak/undermine China in the industrial sense.
Because Japan is ultraconservative, more like Mil-Ind.Corp. “Republicans.” They still revere their Divine Sun Emperor, don’t they?
“[Japan’s] job is to tweak/undermine China in the industrial sense”
That probably explains why Japan has moved so much of their production to China.
Actually, Alex, Japan is much more involved in designing/engineering production lines/facilities in China.
I remember reading a very interesting post on Nouriel Roubini’s site 2 years ago from a Swedish engineer who went to China on business. He was astonished at how obsolete (at least 15 yrs out) the technology was in several brand-new Chinese factories he saw. They were all built under Japanese design and supervision.
He implied it was deliberate.
That brings to mind the legend(s) – one of a princess and one of monks – of how the secret of silk was smuggled out of ancient China, as it was illegal for anyone to do so.
Reverse the situation and China would do the same.
“Actually, Alex, Japan is much more involved in designing/engineering production lines/facilities in China.”
How do you determine that they’re _more_ involved in that than in manufacturing in China? Japan is involved in both businesses, but Japanese MNC’s do a lot of manufacturing in China.
“Swedish engineer who went to China on business. He was astonished at how obsolete (at least 15 yrs out) the technology was in several brand-new Chinese factories he saw.”
Not surprising – you see this sort of thing in many low wage countries. Where labor is cheap you use labor instead of investing capital in fancy equipment. Factories that are outmoded for use in Japan or Sweden might make perfect sense w/ Chinese economics.
Video of voting machines altering votes.
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/11/06/reddit-user-captures-video-of-2012-voting-machines-altering-votes/
If you have ever shopped at Whole Phonies, or bought organic food anywhere, please don’t miss the link in the heading at the top of the page that you might think only applies to Calfornians:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/11/why-californians-must-vote.html
Well I just cast my vote for Jill Stein. Too bad I don’t live in a battleground state.
Lambert: what is the address to send you links? Thanks.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org
Modern Money and the Altruistic Gene
Posted on November 6, 2012 by Devin Smith | 4 Comments
By J. D. Alt
———-
//What is fascinating to contemplate (and in some cases observe) is how the altruistic gene—so vulnerable to domination and defeat within every social group to which it belongs—nevertheless has succeeded in driving and organizing a level of social cooperation that is unprecedented in the history of the earth. Human history thus shows that, in spite of overwhelming setbacks to individuals, in the long run the altruistic gene is the more powerful trait. The election we are about to have in the U.S. appears to be an operational moment of this genetic guidance system. The change in course will be nuanced, but it will be interesting to see which gene, at this particular juncture of our evolution, will be selected.
. . .
When MMT begins to take root in the mainstream minds of economic thinking, its message that the concept of limited dollar resources is a false premise (that, in fact, a sovereign nation issuing its own fiat currency has unlimited dollars available to spend as it chooses) this message is clearly a potential tool of enormous power for the altruistic gene. Not only does it remove the divisive and false choices the limited dollar argument foists upon society, denying the selfish-gene one its most effective and clever gambits, it places the opportunity for great deeds and actions clearly in the hands of those who wish to benefit society as a whole.//
MORE:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/11/modern-money-and-the-altruistic-gene.html#more-3645
I think it would help if we know it would be ‘clearly in the hands of those who wish to benefit the society as a whole.’
Speaking of the selfish gene, when money is mentioned, it’s always your money, his money, our money, their money, etc.
“Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.” – Guy Debord
(In other words, the spectacle, driven by commercial interests, always makes us choose the smallest and safest experience over the most imaginative one.)
The best thing about voting where I live is the cupcakes! My polling place is the local middle school, only 1 block from my house, and there’s always a student bake sale set up on the exit side of the gym on election day. Cupcakes are going for a $1 each this year, brownies too… and cookies were 50¢ each.
Dessert , the best anti-dote http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3Fen6YkFWOI/TdRjZdJjDTI/AAAAAAAAEr8/mJ3pq3gkk3Q/s1600/stress+baker+cartoon.jpg
The bake sale as financial paradigm (lots of cartoons with this theme) http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9Pv1irNHdNY/TclNSFourMI/AAAAAAAAF4M/Fjzl6GYwifs/s1600/8.gif
A politically correct bake sale http://laloalcaraz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Affirmative-Action-Bake-Sale.gif
Those damn regulations http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/waiting-period-cupcake-bake-sale-loophole-cartoon.jpg
Go green! http://www.wearebaked.com/wp-content/uploads/wppa/44.png
Ooops…the 3rd cartoon doesn’t accept ‘hot links’ so to see it you’ll have to copy the URL and paste into a new tab or window.