Today's Must Read

By Paul Kiel - January 11, 2008, 10:07AM

As far as international incidents go, this one's a little baffling.

On Tuesday, we gave you the rundown of Sunday's incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when three hulking American naval ships were greeted by five Iranian speedboats. U.S. officials said that the boats maneuvered aggressively, dropped two white boxes in the water, and issued threats over the radio. Just when the boats were getting too close for comfort, they said, and the Americans were preparing for a warning shot, the boats sped away.

Controversial Voting Section Deps Get Demoted

By Paul Kiel - January 11, 2008, 5:48PM

The changes keep on coming in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Less than a month ago, former voting section chief John "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first" Tanner got canned. And today, his replacement, Christopher Coates, a veteran of the section, demoted Tanner's controversial deputy chiefs, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere and Yvette Rivera. The changes were announced in an email to voting section staff.

Digby: Let's Hope Not

Can I just say how skeptical I am that the Bradley Effect was a factor in yesterday's primary? I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but the modern Democratic party showed nearly 25 years ago that being African American isn't necessarily an impediment to winning primaries and I would hope it's become even more accepted since then:

In the [1984]primaries, [Jesse] Jackson, who had been written off by pundits as a fringe candidate with little chance at winning the nomination, surprised many when he took third place behind Senator Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale, who eventually won the nomination. Jackson garnered 3.5 million votes and won five primaries and caucuses, including Louisiana, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, Virginia and one of two separate contests in Mississippi,

Digby: Push It A Little

The progressive phone network, Working Assets, has put together a petition that's worth signing. There is a moment here, where the media has egg on its face after wrongly calling the Democratic race over (although all the polls were dicey) and they are being criticized so heavily for their repulsive coverage in New Hampshire, that we might make a tiny impact.

Straits of Tonkin

by dday

After a few days of scrutiny, the Straits of Hormuz "incident" with Iranian gunships is completely falling apart. Not for the President - he's still using it as a scaremongering tool - but for anyone who's seriously looking at this thing.

It's important to note that non-events like this happen in the Gulf with regularity. In military parlance it's described as "free training". And certainly, from the video released by the Pentagon, it doesn't look like a whole lot more than that.

Digby: Tweety's New Meme

Matthews flogged the Bradley Effect yesterday like he'd just discovered gold ... in his pants. Among other panels with whom he blathered on endlessly on the topic, he had Pat Buchanan, Dr. Eric Dyson and Dee Dee Myers on. Dr. Dyson felt there was evidence of the Bradley Effect and Buchanan disagreed:

Buchanan: ...I think there's a lot of special pleading here, going on right now. All those races you mentioned were general election races. This was a race inside the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton benefited from a surge of women to her candidacy. Edwards collapsed. The Bradley Effect cannot explain why Edwards did so poorly when the pollsters said he was going to beat Hillary Clinton. I think the piling on by the media, and the gloating over her tears, and people thinking coming out of Iowa that you're supposed to coronate Barack Obama was a tremendous backlash among New Hampshire, voters and independents said you're not gonna impose your fellow on us, we'll choose our own, and the women said we're gonna go in there and we're gonna pick up Hillary Rodham Clinton and stop what's bein' done to her.

Giant Write-Down Is Seen for Merrill

By JULIA WERDIGIER and JENNY ANDERSON

Merrill Lynch is expected to suffer $15 billion in losses stemming from soured mortgage investments, almost double its original estimate, prompting the firm to raise additional capital from an outside investor.

Merrill, the nation’s largest brokerage firm, is expected to disclose the huge write-down when it reports earnings next week, according to people who have been briefed on its plans. The loss far exceeds the $12 billion hit many Wall Street analysts had forecast.

Americablog: Wall Street powerhouses to be bailed out - by foreign governments

by Chris in Paris · 1/10/2008 08:47:00 PM ET · Link

Is it really safe to allow some of the largest and most important banks on Wall Street to become closely tied with foreign governments? I couldn't even imagine such a possibility a few years ago but now that they have all lost billions, anything goes. It's interesting to see these previously high flying companies do a global tour with hat in hand. Only a few years ago they all had their own colonial ambitions and now, it's those same countries who are bailing them out.

Digby: A Gathering Of "Reasonable Conservatives"

I was looking at the schedule for this year's Take Back America Conference and was reminded that the annual conservative conference is scheduled for next month. I love reading about CPAC, where the conservatives get together and get so excited they think nobody can hear what they are saying. Last year featured Newt Gingrich sharing his deepest insights:

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

Paul Krugman: The Comeback Continent

Today I’d like to talk about a much-derided contender making a surprising comeback, a comeback that calls into question much of the conventional wisdom of American politics. No, I’m not talking about a politician. I’m talking about an economy — specifically, the European economy, which many Americans assume is tired and spent but has lately been showing surprising vitality.

Why should Americans care about Europe’s economy? Well, for one thing, it’s big. The G.D.P. of the European Union is roughly comparable to that of the United States; the euro is almost as important a global currency as the dollar; and the governance of the world financial system is, for practical purposes, equally shared by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve.

When Will Global Warming Reach a Political Tipping Point?

By , Sierra Magazine
Posted on January 11, 2008, Printed on January 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/72999/

Presidential candidates traditionally blow off the environment as an issue. But can they continue to dither as the world heats up?

"What should be the nation's top concern?" When pollsters pose such a question to voters, few, historically, have answered "the environment." Yet when asked specifically about how important global warming will be to their vote for U.S. president in 2008, more than half of respondents to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll last May answered "extremely" or "very."

$60mil to punish "anti-business": We create wrong impressions

by rhfactor

Tue Jan 08, 2008 at 01:49:44 PM PST

Chamber of Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates

WASHINGTON -- Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business. ...

"I'm concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media," he said. "It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits -- and who it is that eats them."

Americablog: Surprise! U.S. Concedes Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats

by John Aravosis (DC) · 1/10/2008 02:22:00 PM ET

The Bush Pentagon lied again about a threat from a Middle Eastern power and the entire media just believed and repeated it, hook, line and sinker. No one could have imagined they'd lie (again). Oh wait, we did. From ABC:

Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

As talk of economic stimulus grows, doubts about its effect

Kevin G. Hall and Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: January 09, 2008 07:25:13 PM

WASHINGTON — As President Bush and Congress weigh the need for a stimulus package to ensure that the slowing economy keeps growing, experts warn that there's insufficient evidence the effort is needed and that it could do more harm than good.

No one can yet say with certainty that the U.S. economy is about to enter a recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. And by the time that becomes clear, a stimulus plan could be too late to do much immediate good.

"I just don't see anything useful getting done quickly, and the first half of the year is the critical period," said David Wyss, the chief economist for the rating agency Standard & Poor's in New York.

"It's Time to Stand up and Fight Back"

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Remember the Rumble in the Jungle? In the 1974 heavyweight title bout, Muhammad Ali absorbed furious body blows from George Foreman for seven straight rounds. Then, in the eighth round, Ali dropped the exhausted Foreman and reclaimed the championship. In the Senate, this year should be our eighth round. This should be the year when Democrats stop playing rope-a-dope and put up a fight for people who are hurting. Caseworkers in my Vermont office are sensing a level of desperation among low-income people that has not been seen for a very long time. Similar scenes are taking place all across the country. Homeless shelters are running out of beds. Food banks have depleted their supplies. Many elderly and poor people will soon be going cold in their homes because a federal program is running out of funds to help pay record-high heating bills.

Experts Warn of Recession -- Duh, We're Living in One Already

By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com
Posted on January 10, 2008, Printed on January 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/73286/

The soothsayers have slaughtered the ox and are examining the gloppy entrails for signs: Rising unemployment, a falling dollar, weak consumer spending, the credit crisis, a swooning stock market. Could there be something wrong here? Could we actually be approaching a, god forbid, recession?

To which the only sane response is: Who cares? According to a CNN poll, 57 percent of Americans thought we were already in a recession a month ago. Economists may complain that this is only because the public is ignorant of the technical -- or at least the newspapers' standard -- definition of a recession, which specifies that there must be at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the GDP. But most of the public employs the more colloquial definition of a recession, which is hard times. If hard times have already fallen on a majority of Americans, then "recession" doesn't seem to be a very useful term any more.

Glenn Greenwald: The role of political reporters

At The New Republic's blog, Jason Zengerle confesses what is and has long been too obvious to require much proof -- the media is uncontrollably in love with John McCain. And Zengerle's reason why this is so is equally unsurprising: McCain gives them unfettered access, so they love him. Everything is about them, and whichever politician flatters and charms these adolescent, coddled narcissists is the recipient of their uncritical love (that explains much, though not all, of their profound failure in covering the Bush campaigns and administration). Zengerle also says:

Speaking of McCain and the media, I was at a dinner tonight with various political reporters who are up here to cover the happenings, and it was pretty funny how giddy/relieved they were at the prospect of a McCain-Obama general election campaign, as opposed to, say, a Romney-Clinton one. Suddenly, the next 11 months of their lives look a whole lot more enjoyable.

Those preferences -- all based in their own petty personal desires -- couldn't be more obvious in the media narrative spewing forth.

Bagram detention centre now twice the size of Guantanamo

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 08 January 2008

The United States has quietly expanded the number of "enemy combatants" being held in judicial limbo at its Bagram military base in Afghanistan, a facility which has now grown to more than twice the size of the controversial and much more widely discussed military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Bagram has received just a fraction of the world attention paid to Guantanamo, but the two facilities have prompted very similar complaints – about prisoners held incommunicado for weeks or months, the lack of recourse to any system of legal redress, and persistent reports of prisoner mistreatment that many human rights campaigners have characterised as torture.

New study: US ranks last among other industrialized nations on preventable deaths

101,000 fewer Americans would die annually if the US improved its preventable death rate

January 8, 2008, Bethesda, MD—The United States places last among 19 countries when it comes to deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, according to new research supported by The Commonwealth Fund and published in the January/February issue of Health Affairs. While other nations dramatically improved these rates between 1997–98 and 2002–03, the U.S. improved only slightly.

If the U.S. had performed as well as the top three countries out of the 19 industrialized countries in the study there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths in the U.S. per year by the end of the study period. The top performers were France, Japan, and Australia.

Study proves the co-pay connection in chronic disease

Lowering drug co-pays for chronic disease patients increases use of important preventive medicines

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — As 2008 begins, millions of Americans are having to dig deeper into their own pockets every time they refill a prescription or see a doctor.

The reason" Higher co-payments that took effect January 1, as employers try to deal with the rising cost of health insurance by making employees and retirees pay more.

But a new study finds that instead of going up, co-pays should go down – at least for some people taking some drugs.

An Imperialist Comedy

Open Steve Coll's aptly titled book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, at almost any page and you're likely to find something that makes a mockery of the film Charlie Wilson's War. There, on p. 90, for instance, is the larger-than-life CIA director of the era, William Casey, the "Catholic Knight of Malta educated by Jesuits," who "believed fervently that by spreading the Catholic Church's reach and power he could contain Communism's advance, or reverse it." And, if you couldn't have the Church do it, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, then second best, Casey believed, were the Islamic warriors of jihad, the more extreme the better, with whom, in his religio-anticommunism, he believed himself to have much in common. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.)

Digby: Compromising Blowhards

So, I hear that Bush dog Democrat Dan Boren of Oklahoma is supporting Huckabee's regressive fair tax. I can't say that surprises me. Being a vacuous blowhard evidently runs in that family.

Just in case anyone's forgotten or are too young to remember --the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma and current Unity 08 poobah, David Boren, is an egomaniac who stabbed Bill Clinton in the back repeatedly when he was trying to pass his economic plan in 1993.

Digby: Partisan Bickering

Via the Sideshow and C&L

More about partisan bickering here, here and here.

Update: I'm getting tired of constantly being accused by Obama supporters of trying to hurt him if I write anything about the foibles of bipartisanship. I'm not crazy about his stump speech on the subject, but it's not really about that.

I'm actually trying to help all the candidates, by shining a light on how the villagers seize the political agenda with their tiresome insistence on "unity" and bipartisanship as the highest of political virtues. I'm trying to give readers a bit of perspective on what we're up against. This is about Broderella and the sell-out Bush dogs and the VRWC and how they manipulate things to keep the status quo. It's analysis, not advocacy.

Digby: Culture 'O Life

I'm finally getting around to watching the Republicans debate from yesterday and listened to all of them (except for Ron Paul) enthusiastically sign on to the Bush Doctrine and war without end against the islamofasciterrorists and anybody else who looks at America sideways.

Pollution shrinks foetus size: Brisbane study finds

Exposure to air pollution significantly reduces foetus size during pregnancy, according to a new study by Brisbane scientists.

Queensland University of Technology senior research fellow Dr Adrian Barnett said the study compared the foetus sizes of more than 15,000 ultrasound scans in Brisbane to air pollution levels within a 14km radius of the city.

George McGovern: Impeach Bush and Cheney

Posted on Jan 6, 2008

One-time presidential candidate, World War II hero and former Sen. George McGovern penned a bombshell of an Op-Ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, trotting out a list of impeachable offenses that he said President Bush and Vice President Cheney have committed and asserting that the case for their impeachment “is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election.”

---

McGovern in The Washington Post:

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional standard.

Paul Krugman: From Hype to Fear

The unemployment report on Friday was brutally bad. Unemployment rose in December, while job creation was minimal — and it’s highly likely, for technical reasons, that the job number will be revised down, showing an actual decline in employment.

It’s the latest piece of bad news about an economy in which the employment situation has actually been deteriorating for the past year. It’s no longer possible to hope that the effects of the housing slump will remain “contained,” as one of 2007’s buzzwords had it. The levees have been breached, and the repercussions of the housing crisis are spreading across the economy as a whole.

US 'almost opened fire' on Iranian ships

Map: where the ships clashed

James Orr and agencies
Monday January 7, 2008

Guardian Unlimited

US warships came close to opening fire on Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, the Pentagon said today.

The incident followed a series of "aggressive" provocations by five boats believed to belong to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.

US officials told CNN the boats were "attack craft" which had approached US vessels in international waters on Saturday.

Oil prices rose about 30 cents to more than $98 (£50) a barrel following the incident, with traders citing increased risk of possible disruptions to oil shipments.

U.S. Rep. Frank to scrutinize housing and credit cards

By John Poirier
Fri Jan 4, 6:35 PM ET

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee will this year scrutinize the mortgage lending industry and draft new consumer protections for credit card holders, he said on Friday.

Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, also said he will fiercely defend his plan to create a government-funded program that would boost the country's supply of housing for low-income families.

"I think the lack of affordable housing is now clear to everyone as a contributing factor to the subprime crisis," Frank said in an interview with Reuters. "If people want to make that a fight, I think we win."

Frank Rich: They Didn’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

AFTER so many years of fear and loathing, we had almost forgotten what it’s like to feel good about our country. On Thursday night, that long-dormant emotion came rushing back, like an old dream that pops out of the deepest recesses of memory, suddenly as clear as light. “They said this day would never come,” said Barack Obama, and yet here, right before us, was indisputable evidence that it had.

What felt good was not merely the improbable and historic political triumph of an African-American candidate carrying a state with a black population of under 3 percent. It was the palpable sense that our history was turning a page whether or not Mr. Obama or his doppelgänger in improbability, Mike Huckabee, end up in the White House. We could allow ourselves a big what-if: What if we could have an election that was not a referendum on either the Clinton or Bush presidencies? For the first time, we found ourselves on that long-awaited bridge to the 21st century, the one that was blown up in the ninth month of the new millennium’s maiden year.

Shocking Allegations From London: Corrupt U.S. Officials Sold Nuclear Weapons Secrets

By , The Times of London UK
Posted on January 6, 2008, Printed on January 7, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/72851/

A whistleblower has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency's Washington field office.

Oil futures fall on economic concerns

By JOHN WILEN, AP Business Writer
Mon Jan 7, 3:32 PM ET

Oil futures fell sharply Monday, extending their retreat from $100 as investors sold on concerns that a cooling economy will curb demand for oil and gasoline.

Comments by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Monday suggesting there is no simple fix for the nation's housing crisis added to worries about the economy raised by last Friday's Labor Department jobs report; the government's data showed that employers added far fewer jobs last month than expected.

Traders seemed to shrug off news of a confrontation Sunday between U.S. and Iranian warships in the Strait of Hormuz.