A blog for all seasons; A blog for one; A blog for all. As the 11th most informative blog on the planet, I have a seared memory of throwing my Time 2006 Man of the Year Award over the railing at Time Warner Center.
Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue
At a time when New York City Democrats are smarting over the way President Obama snubbed Democrat Bill Thompson in his election bid to unseat incumbent mayor Independent Mike Bloomberg last week and Governor David Paterson is trying to overcome largely negative ratings and antipathy from the White House, President Obama has decided to campaign for Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, who's embroiled in scandals arising from his cozy relationship with Countrywide Mortgage.
Embattled Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.), whose low approval ratings make him one of the most vulnerable Democrats seeking re-election next year, gets help from President Obama tonight.
Obama will appear at a $1,000-per person fundraising event for Dodd in Stamford.
(snip)
Dodd’s low approval ratings stem from several factors, including the sluggish economy and questions raised about favorable treatment he received on a mortgage from Countrywide Home Loans.
So, why is Obama willing to appear with Dodd? Well, it's all about the politics of securing passage of financial services overhaul legislation. Never mind that Dodd is ethically challenged over his ties to the industry and his committee has failed in its oversight function on numerous occasions. In fact, Dodd purposefully excluded AIG from employment compensation limits, causing a kerfuffle over bonuses provided AIG executives paid out from bailout funds, even though Congress was well aware of the existence of the exclusion.
New York Democrats have to wonder why they aren't getting the support that their fellow Democrats in New Jersey and Connecticut received, even though in both instances, the candidates were seriously flawed.
Even if you consider unemployment to be a lagging indicator of economic health, the latest monthly reports from the federal government should give one pause. Unemployment is actually at 17.5%. That's from the NYT, which gives it top billing. The shine is off the Administration's stimulus efforts because it shows that many people have given up their job hunting and who are underemployed:
With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.
In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.
This includes the officially unemployed, who have looked for work in the last four weeks. It also includes discouraged workers, who have looked in the past year, as well as millions of part-time workers who want to be working full time.
The official jobless rate — 10.2 percent in October, up from 9.8 percent in September — remains lower than the early 1980s peak of 10.8 percent.
The rate is highest today, sometimes 20 percent, in states that had big housing bubbles, like California and Arizona, or that have large manufacturing sectors, like Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
Moreover, there's few signs that this situation is improving as the rate jumped from September to October by four points. (9.8 to 10.2). That suggests we have yet to reach a peak in unemployment, even if you consider this a lagging indicator of economic health, the trend should be worrisome; which itself builds in caution to employers considering employment decisions.
The Administration's efforts to limit unemployment have met with abject failure considering that the Administration hoped that the stimulus would limit the peak of unemployment to 8% and thought that if nothing were done, unemployment would peak around 9% (graphic via Heritage Foundation). The problem is that the stimulus effort has done nothing to limit unemployment, and may have actually made the situation worse.
Whereas many hoped that the unemployment rate would top out, it appears that we have not yet seen the peak unemployment under any of the metrics used to measure unemployment. That means there are more job losses on the horizon and job creation is simply not occurring to replace those lost jobs. It also should raise red flags on the holiday shopping season when retailers hope to make the majority of their annual revenues. If people are out of work, they're not in a position to spend, and that affects consumer sentiment.
During the past week, there were reports that Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority President, did not want to run for reelection and would not seek another term. Media reports flailed about wondering what it would mean for President Obama's peace process plans and the Palestinian-Israeli relations.
All of these reports gloss over inescapable facts. Abbas was never in a position to make a peace deal with Israel because the Palestinians themselves are split between Hamas who is on the record as never accepting a two-state solution and which refuses to recognize Israel's existence and Fatah, which seeks to impose a one-state solution and is willing to destroy Israel through the thousands of papercuts of diplomatic maneuverings to force concessions from Israel without making any in return.
Moreover, this is little more than a plot to attempt to gain still more concessions from Israel - threatening the very peace process that Abbas has done nothing to advance - to gain an advantage against Israel. Abbas got President Obama to make Abbas "reconsider" his choice of not to run for office by saying that Obama would recommit to a peace process - and recent statements by the Obama Administration point to further pressure on Israel to force concessions. Other nations are pursuing a similar course of action as they are hoping to get Abbas to reconsider.
Palestinians have done nothing to advance the cause of peace with Israel; Israel has withdrawn from Gaza unilaterally, and Gazans turned the region into an armed camp from which to launch thousands of rockets and engage in war crimes in the process.
In sum, this is little more than yet another ploy by Palestinian leaders to gain concessions against Israel without having to give anything up in return. Israel would be wise to be wary to any such machinations. Moreover, who exactly is set to run for Palestinian Authority President? Is anyone going to be in a position to sign a two-state peace deal?
The answer to that question is no.
There are no Palestinian leaders who are going to sign such a deal because it would be a death warrant because of generations of Palestinians being taught and indoctrinated into accepting nothing less than Israel's destruction. They are unwilling to unlearn those lessons - to accept a two-state solution with Israel's existence alongside a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Palestinians don't just lament the lack of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but in all of Israel. Maps produced by the PA and much of the Arab world pointedly omit Israel altogether.
Moreover, Fatah isn't exactly in a position to sign a deal when Fatah doesn't speak for all of the Palestinians and doesn't exert control over Gaza at all. Hamas runs Gaza with an iron fist and its war against Israel is not going to end until either Hamas or Israel is destroyed; Hamas sees the conflict in religious and theological terms - jihad. They aren't alone either as Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, and other terrorist spinoffs all seek to destroy Israel and use Gaza as a launching pad for their ongoing war against Israel.
The USS New York, an amphibious transport dock ship (LPD-21) is being commissioned this morning on the West Side of Manhattan at the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum just a few short miles from Ground Zero. Seven and a half tons of steel from the Twin Towers were used to fabricate a portion of the ship's bow. The commissioning at the Intrepid is fitting because it was there that the announcement was made to use steel from the Twin Towers to fabricate a portion of the ship's bow.
This is the sixth ship in the US Navy to bear the name New York.
The New York's motto is "Strength forged through sacrifice. Never forget."
The Orlando Sentinel reported that four of the eight people wounded were in trauma condition. Two people have died, according to WFTV, Orlando's ABC affiliate.
The shooter hasn't been taken into custody. Local news outlets reported the armed man is wearing a light blue polo shirt with jeans.
The Sentinel reported that bodies were found on the 12th and 8th of the building, which has 16 floors.
The shooting occurred at a building called Legions Place, which is near Interstate 4 and Lake Ivanhoe, on the northern edge of downtown.
Interstate 4 eastbound was shut down.
Bodies found on two separate floors might indicate a personal nature of the attacks - against specific individuals or a specific business within the building. That might be a disgruntled employee, but at this point it is too early to tell.
UPDATE: The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that a witness claims that it was an ex-employee who came into the building and opened fire.
Office workers are still inside. They have barricaded themselves inside and have received little information from authorities on whether it's safe to leave. One woman inside the building said they have been told the shooting possibly took place on the fourth or eighth floor.
"We've got everybody in one office, with the door barricaded with a chest of drawers. There are about 20 of us in here. We're scared," said one woman who is inside the building. She asked her name and that of her business not be used because she fears for her life.
"We're watching TV, trying to see what is going on, but we really don't know. We're scared. We're safe right now, but we're scared," she said.
Officers with assault rifles are looking for a suspect with blue shirt and blue jeans. Many have their weapons pointed at the parking garage.
There is a heavy police presence near Lake Ivanhoe and traffic is being diverted.
Orlando police and orange county sheriffs deputies have blocked roads near the Orlando Chamber of Commerce and the Radisson hotel. All of the businesses between Marks Road south to Colonial Drive are evacuated.
A witness has told WFTV that a man who previously worked in the building walked inside and opened fire.
UPDATE: Law enforcement is searching for 40 year old Jason Rodriguez, who was driving a 2002 silver Nissan SUV. No confirmed deaths at this point, so earlier reports may be inaccurate. Gunfire erupted on the 4th, 8th, and 12th floors of the building. He was a former employee at Reynolds Smith & Hill [ed: corrected 11/10/2009, after receiving email from Jennifer Wislocki, 2nd Vice President, Communications & Sponsorships at Travelers.]
President Obama signed a homeowner assistance tax credit extender into law today after the House passed the bill yesterday with overwhelming support from Congress. the legislation also extends unemployment insurance benefits and the net operating loss carryback for small businesses.
Now, not only will the first time homeowners get the credit of up to $8,000 extended until April, but existing homeowners can take advantage of a $6,500 credit to buy another primary residence. It also expands the income caps to $125,000 for individuals and $225,000 for couples. The net operating loss carryback for small businesses was also extended.
The main problem I have with this bill is that it continues the distortion of the real estate market by allowing everyone to treat real estate as being worth $8,000 more than it really is. That means that property values can remain inflated as the intention of the bill is to resuscitate the real estate market to encourage sales. Never mind that the reason that we suffered the credit market meltdown was because people who should never have been extended credit to purchase homes were given such enticing loans without any care to repayment. A real estate market correction is underway, and as prices drop, it makes the homes more affordable. Instead of allowing the prices to continue to drop - making them still more affordable, this legislation continues a worrisome trend of trying to control prices to further a political agenda, rather than allowing the market to dictate affordable and reasonable prices within various communities.
The flip side to this, and an argument for the credit, is that those selling homes may be able to get out a little easier because the credit can ease the price drop seen in many parts of the country. Still, the problem is that so many homes are underwater that it would take a far larger credit to help many sellers recover their investment (which is something government shouldn't be doing since the risk of loss was on the buyer and the bank that extended the loans, not on taxpayers).
Are the Iranians working on a sophisticate nuclear warhead design that would allow the regime to place nuclear warheads on its missile systems? That's the implication of a report in the Guardian.
The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.
The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.
Documentation referring to experiments testing a two-point detonation design are part of the evidence of nuclear weaponisation gathered by the IAEA and presented to Iran for its response.
The designs are used in advanced nuclear weapons, permitting smaller weapons that can fit on warheads. They are officially a state secret in the US, although the fundamental knowledge that goes into them are widely available.
That's why preventing access to weapons grade uranium is so critical. Once a nation has weapons grade uranium, obtaining a nuclear weapon is a matter of putting widely available technological components together. It takes a significant amount of energy and time to enrich uranium; thousands of centrifuges spinning furious for months at a time to get enough to make sufficient U235 for a nuclear weapon.
The IAEA doesn't know for sure if those Iranian tests occurred, and has no way of verifying either. Iran continues to obfuscate and thwart any efforts to contain its nuclear ambitions, all while continuing to threaten Israel and saber rattle against any attempts to make Iran conform to the NPT.
Also, revelations about these tests once again confirms the need to engage in missile defense research and the deployment of operational systems to prevent Iran from launching attacks against our allies in the region and Europe - all within range of Iran's missile systems.
The lame duck Governor of New Jersey, Jon Corzine may have finally done something fiscally responsible for a change. He's called for a freeze in $400 million in spending that the state simply doesn't have. I guess we should be thankful for token measures and ignore the fact that the state budget passed for FY2009-2010 should never have included that spending in the first place, and that last year's budget (FY2008-2009) should have been vastly scaled back because of all the warning signs about the slowdown in the economy.The latest round of cuts would not have been necessary, or could have been scaled back had the state budget been much more realistic in the first place.
Governor Corzine is preparing $400 million in budget cuts and wants legislators to shelve any new spending measures during their upcoming lame duck session, all to offset revenue losses blamed on the poor economy.
A hiring freeze and travel restrictions will also remain in place as revenue collections continue to come in below original budget projections, the governor said Thursday.
"My administration will continue to live up to our responsibility to maintain a fiscally balanced budget during the next two months," said Corzine, who lost Tuesday’s election to Republican Chris Christie. "These cuts will be tough but necessary choices that need to be addressed now."
Last month, state Treasurer David Rousseau said revenue collections for the first three months of the budget year that began in July 2009 were off by $190 million, or about 3 percent.
Corzine, in response, said workforce reductions, a new employee pharmacy benefits program and debt refinancing were already generating savings during the first quarter. But he also asked department heads to identify $200 million in possible cuts that could be enacted on Dec. 1.
The governor said revenue collections in October were also off, and he called for up to $400 million in cuts to be ready by Dec. 1.
Meanwhile, the NY Times is operating as the excuse factory for Corzine's loss in the election, claiming that Corzine was aloof and unlucky. Sorry, but the Times can't make excuses for Corzine proffering a tax and spend plan that raised sales taxes to cover a property tax rebate only to sharply curtail the rebate limiting its effect on hundreds of thousands of homeowners throughout the state (and Corzine actually called for the elimination of the rebate during the budget negotiations). No, luck has nothing to do with Corzine's situation. Corzine failed to bring the state's spending in line with revenues. He did nothing to reduce state spending, and instead oversaw an increase in state spending at both the state level and watched as local municipalities continued to raise property taxes through loopholes he allowed in the property tax scheme he proffered. The state regularly rubber stamped increases above and beyond the 4% "cap" he put in place, making the cap a symbolic gesture. A hard cap would have forced municipalities to make hard decisions that they've refused to make for years; just as surely as the state had refused to make hard decisions on funding of programs that were unjustified or didn't work to achieve the goals anticipated. The stimulus funding granted the state papered over the inability of the state to control its spending.
Taxpayers saw through all this when they sent Corzine packing.
Now, Republican Chris Christie will have to do more than talk to get the state out of this fiscal black hole. He's going to have to put teeth into property tax reform and control profligate state spending.
After seeing how the 2009 elections shook out, Gov. David Paterson isn't going to wait on the White House or anyone else to decide his fate for him. Never mind that he's been ineffectual and presided over a massive increase in state spending despite all evidence suggesting that New York reduce its spending because of massive structural deficits that would occur as Wall Street and other revenues dropped off a cliff.
Paterson, whose popularity currently hovers in the 20 percent range, was seriously wounded when Obama let it be known he didn't want Paterson to run because Republicans like Rudy Giuliani consistently beat him in the polls. But Obama's recent lack of success in backing local candidates, including New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, has empowered Paterson.
"The President went to New Jersey five times for Corzine and wasn't able to turn that around, so I think here in New York, New Yorkers know everything is local," said Lynch.
But that's not all Paterson is doing. He's bringing on board campaign powerhouse Harold Ickes, who was former President Bill Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff.
Will all this help the popularity-challenged governor? At least one lawmaker thinks so.
"I think he's a viable candidate already. He's the governor. Anybody that's the governor is a viable candidate to begin with. I think it can only help make him more viable," said Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan).
Paterson's political future is hanging in the balance. If the ads are successful they could make popular state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo think twice about a primary challenge. If they're not, it could force him to re-assess his candidacy.
Cuomo is a serious challenger and one that would likely get star power support across the board from big Democrats at all levels; he's popular and has a record on which he could run. If there's going to be a primary battle, that's the one that would send Paterson packing. Paterson can only hope that he can turn around his high negatives, but I doubt it.
Amid all the confusion and contradictory reports about yesterday's carnage and savage deaths of 13 US soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, some facts are finally coming to the forefront. Army psychiatrist Major Malik Nadal Hasan is believed to be the shooter. He is still alive after being shot four times.
The gunman, who was still alive after being shot four times, was identified by law enforcement authorities as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who had been in the service since 1995. Major Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas.
Clad in a military uniform and firing an automatic pistol and another weapon, Major Hasan, a balding, chubby-faced man with heavy eyebrows, sprayed bullets inside a crowded medical processing center for soldiers returning from or about to be sent overseas, military officials said.
The victims, nearly all military personnel but including two civilians, were cut down in clusters, the officials said. Witnesses told military investigators that medics working at the center tore open the clothing of the dead and wounded to get at the wounds and administer first aid.
As the shooting unfolded, military police and civilian officers of the Department of the Army responded and returned the gunman’s fire, officials said, adding that Major Hasan was shot by a first-responder, who was herself wounded in the exchange.
In the confusion of a day of wild and misleading reports, the major and the officer who shot him were both reported killed in the gun battle, but both reports were erroneous.
Eight hours after the shootings, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, a base spokesmen, said Major Hasan, whom he described as the sole gunman, had been shot four times, but was hospitalized off the base, under around-the-clock guard, in stable condition and was not in imminent danger of dying.
There were apparently no others involved in the shooting, although there were two people who were taken into custody and released several hours later.
MSNBC reports Hasan was "mortified" about a deployment overseas. He began having doubts about his military service beginning a few years ago. So he went and murdered 13 soldiers and wounded 31 others? If he was having doubts, why accept the promotion and not separate from service through an honorable discharge after completing the terms of his service?
Then, there are several online postings attributed to him that suggest that he was going down the path of a jihadi:
There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best. [emphasis added]
Video footage shows Hasan the morning of the attack at a convenience store wearing a Muslim cap and robe, which runs counter to Army records which say that he had no religious preference.
A co-worker at Walter Reed said Hasan would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers, which became an issue during Christmas season when employees often took group photos. Co-workers would find a solo photo of Hasan and post it on the bulletin board without his permission.
Lee told Fox News that Hasan "was hoping that President Obama would pull troops out. . . . When things weren't going that way, he became more agitated, more frustrated with the conflicts over there. . . . He made his views well known about how he felt about the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan."
And when he talked about fighting "the aggressor," he said that his fellow soldiers "should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan," Lee said.
It appears that he did have a preference for being a devout Muslim but didn't want the Army to know, although his actions showed something quite different?
Moreover he had once been disciplined for proselytizing, and a report this morning says that he shouted Allahu Akbar as he began his shooting rampage. If that's confirmed, this was not some weird case of post traumatic stress disorder (which could be remotely possible based on his close contact with soldiers who were relating their war experiences to him in the course of their treatment and Hasan couldn't deal with it), but rather another instance of an individual Muslim engaging in jihad.
The NY Post reports that Hasan had hired an attorney to help him get out of a deployment.
In recent years, he expressed his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had become angry that President Obama hadn't withdrawn troops from the region.
"He would make comments to other individuals about how we should not be in the war in the first place," Lee told Fox.
He said Hasan would often make "outlandish" comments.
"He said maybe Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor," Lee said.
"At first, we thought he meant help the armed forces, but apparently, that wasn't the case."
Nader Hasan told Fox his cousin, a disaster and trauma specialist, had hired a military lawyer to help him get out of deployment.
There is something seriously amiss here as the various disjointed facts come together as to how Hasan was promoted in May despite concerns about his Internet postings, and the fact he was placed in close proximity to soldiers ready to embark to one of the theaters of operation - Iraq and Afghanistan, where Hasan thought they were going to kill Muslims. Did the Army fail to heed the warning signs here? Did he fall through the cracks.
UPDATE: What is going on with the Los Angeles Times? Patterico notes that the LAT is suppressing any mention of Hasan's religious views, actions, and statements alleged to have been made by him that would contradict the meme that Hasan was a PTSD victim despite never having been in combat. The LAT also is in the habit of simply overlaying reports on each other using the same URL, rather than providing separate reports to show updates. Earlier reports simply go down the memory hole.
UPDATE: Based on the video showing Hasan wearing traditional garb, and a report that Hasan sold off his possessions in the past few weeks, I wonder whether Hasan underwent wudu (ritual purification) ahead of the attack yesterday. It definitely seems that he had prepared himself for some action. There's also an update on the number injured and no confirmation as yet to whether Hasan had indeed said Allahu Akbar:
Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said officials had not yet confirmed that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment before the rampage Thursday. Hasan was among 30 people wounded in the shooting spree and remained hospitalized on a ventilator.
All but two of the injured were still hospitalized, and all were in stable condition.
UPDATE: The FBI has seized Hasan's computer and are continuing their investigation in to Hasan's motives.
UPDATE: According to this NPR report, Hasan was giving off all kinds of warning signs to his coworkers at Walter Reed, which is where he was based before heading to Fort Hood, which again makes me wonder why he was promoted in light of his behavior/attitude.
Instapundit has more on the NPR segment, and how the story is being edited and adjusted as the day goes on. However, the takeaway paragraphs are as follows:
He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.
He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’
In other words, his coworkers and associates were wondering if this guy was a ticking time bomb, and yet it didn't raise flags come promotion time? It would appear that someone may have dropped the ball here, and perhaps someone may not have wanted to come forward to address this issue because of the religious issues involved?
This further adds to my thesis that this wasn't a sudden inspiration to kill, but a premeditated act. I am awaiting to see if the reports indicate whether Hasan picked the time and place for the attack so as to maximize casualties - in conjunction with the intake for soldiers as well as the graduation ceremony, etc. all in the hall?
At least seven people are dead and 12 wounded in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, the base's public affairs office told NBC News on Thursday.
The official would not give his name nor additional details. It was unknown whether victims are soldiers or civilians. One gunman was reportedly in custody and another was on the loose, NBC News said.
The base was reportedly on lockdown. Two nearby school districts were also being locked down.
My thoughts and prayers go out the families and friends of those involved.
UPDATE: The Fort Hood websites are overwhelmed at the moment, so news from the source is going to take some time to come out.
There were apparently two gunmen involved, one is in custody while a second is on the loose according to MSNBC. No word on whether those involved (either the gunmen or victims) were soldiers or civilians.
UPDATE: Unconfirmed reports that one gunman is holed up in the 42006 building on the base. Same report notes that gunman has high powered rifle. The local school districts are in various levels of lockdown:
Killeen ISD says all Fort Hood schools are on lockdown.
Temple ISD is on a "soft" lockdown. Parents will be able to pick their children up at the normal times, though they may experience delays.
UPDATE: MSNBC reports that there might be a third gunman involved. Video updates here.
UPDATE: Rep. John Carter was nearing entrance of building where a graduation ceremony was being held when a soldier ran up covered in blood.
Greg Schannep, an aide to U.S. Rep. John Carter, told the Austin American-Statesman that he was on the Army post to attend a graduation service. He said that as he neared the entrance of a building where the service was being held, a soldier with blood on his uniform ran past him and said a man was shooting.
Schannep told the newspaper that the shootings appeared to have occurred in a complex near a theater where the service was scheduled. He was with the injured soldier, who he said appeared to have been struck in the shoulder but did not have life-threatening injuries.
According to unconfirmed reports, one of the shooters was being surrounded by police in the 42006 building on Fort Hood. That source told KCEN the shooter has a high-powered rifle.
UPDATE: Fox News is reporting at least 20 were injured, and I fear that the toll will increase as more information comes available.
UPDATE: Fort Hood is a vast facility, and is the largest military base in the world. This incident has all the hallmarks of a planned attack, quite possibly terrorism, but that is speculation at the moment.
UPDATE: Sources on Fort Hood say only 2 shooters; both have now been taken into custody. 4 SWAT injured in the gunfire.
The Army says seven people were killed and 20 wounded in a pair of shootings at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas. An Army spokesman at the Pentagon says the shootings began about 1:30 p.m. Thursday at a personnel and medical processing center at Fort Hood.
The spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Banks, says two shooters were apparently involved. There is no word yet on who they were, nor on identities of the dead.
Banks says the second incident took place at a theater on the sprawling base.
They go on to speculate that the incident was the result of someone with PTSD, even though there's no evidence to suggest a motive at this point. The AP also editorializes that the army has been suffering from high suicide rates because of repeat deployments.
CNN now reports nine dead, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was briefed that there were at least 30 injured.
UPDATE: At least 11 killed, plus one gunman. The dead gunman has been identified as Major Malik Nadal Hasan. The major opened fire at around 1:30PM local time, 31 soldiers were wounded. Two other individuals are in custody. Gov. Rick Perry was providing a presser, but his information was out of date.
UPDATE: Hasan's background is starting to emerge. He was a licensed psychiatrist from Silver Spring, Md. There are also reports that he was unhappy about a deployment to Iraq and that he was a recent convert to Islam. However, to focus on his profession, that he was a psychiatrist might jibe with reports mentioning that part of the incident occurred in a traumatic brain injury clinic on base.
UPDATE: The WSJ reports:
Military officials said that Maj. Hasan was a psychiatrist who had been recently promoted to major and transferred to Fort Hood from Washington's Walter Reed Medical Center. Maj. Hasan's professional specialties included post-traumatic stress disorder, combat stress and other emotional issues common to the troops implicated in earlier incidents of military fratricide.
A defense official said that there "were some signs that this might be an Akbar-type event," a reference to a bloody incident in early 2003 when Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar threw grenades into tents occupied by fellow members of the 101st Airborne Division.
Two officers were killed in the 2003 attack in Kuwait, which wounded 14 others. Military prosecutors said that Sgt. Akbar, who was ultimately sentenced to death, was motivated by anger at the deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. troops.
Other shooting incidents have been linked to combat stress and and emotional problems many soldiers are suffering after long, repeat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. With the military stretched thin by the long wars, many troops have done three and in some cases four tours to the war zones.
There's no word on whether Hasan had actually served overseas. There are also conflicting reports over whether two other people remain in custody.
UPDATE: Contradictory and conflicting evidence. Hasan was recently promoted, despite the fact that officials were following Hasan's online postings in light of the following:
Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.
The officials say the postings appeared to have been made by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was killed during the shooting incident that left least 11 others dead and 31 wounded. The officials say they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They say an official investigation was not opened.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the Web postings that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.
Why would someone who was under investigation in the manner alleged above be granted a promotion that puts him in line to possibly be called upon to deploy to Iraq? Moreover, why was he promoted if he got a poor performance review? Would not a discharge have been more appropriate than a promotion?
UPDATE: The other two individuals who were detained by law enforcement were released.
Now that the election is in the past, the truth is coming out over how much the White House sought to do all it could within its power to keep a Democrat in charge in Trenton.
In an interview, Codey (D-Essex) detailed a series of summer phone calls, meetings and the results of a confidential poll that nearly threw New Jersey’s governor’s race into the type of turmoil last seen when then-Sen. Robert Torricelli dropped his reelection bid in final weeks of the 2002 campaign.
Codey made his comments hours after Corzine conceded defeat in Tuesday’s election. He previously refused to discuss it, saying he did not want to affect the outcome of the race. His account was confirmed by other key players, including Torricelli, who advised Corzine during the campaign.
Corzine’s camp and the White House declined to comment.
Codey said he got a call from the White House a week after Vice President Joe Biden appeared at Corzine’s poorly attended primary night kickoff rally in West Orange in June.
"They wanted to talk about what’s going on with the governor’s race," he said. "They would call me every week, every two weeks."
By July, Codey said there was growing concern from the president’s advisers as Corzine’s polls declined even as he poured money into anti-Christie ads. It grew worse after 44 arrests on July 23 in a corruption and money-laundering case.
Corzine privately mused to the White House he was having second thoughts about continuing his campaign, Codey said.
"He was, mentally, as low as you can get," Codey said of Corzine, even before July 23. "Then this ... hit. It was understandable he was having a moment where he was saying ‘to hell with this.’"
Codey said White House political director Patrick Gaspard called him and expressed "great concern about the governor’s race, (Corzine’s) lack of support amongst Democrats and whether or not he would be able to overcome it. He never criticized Jon personally. But he said he was meeting with Obama and ‘the president wants to know if you might run if, in fact, Mr. Corzine got out.’ Can he tell the president ‘Yes.’"
Codey said Gaspard detailed an internal poll that showed Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone about the same as Corzine, but Codey leading Christie by double digits.
The White House was looking to Richard Codey as a stand in for Corzine who was cratering in the polls, but Codey was coy as to what he would do. Corzine nearly dropped out of the race because his polling was awful over the summer, but he soldiered on by throwing millions of his personal fortune into attack ads against Republican Chris Christie and Corzine convinced President Obama to back him with multiple visits into the state. Corzine ran an ad that largely featured Obama and his ties to Corzine, and later had the President tape a robocall for him in the waning days of the campaign.
The White House clearly didn't want the governorship to fall to the Republicans, and yet it did.
For all the talk about how the GOP is enduring a schism as a result of losing NY-23 between the conservatives and moderates in the party that enabled Bill Owens to win the district for Democrats for the first time in nearly a century (not counting redistricting), it seems that the Democrats have some serious fence mending of their own.
The conventional wisdom heading into election night was that Bloomberg would win comfortably, and the media began calling the election for Bloomberg early in the evening, but the results started showing something most unexpected. Thompson was getting far more votes than anyone expected and the race was far closer than imagined.
It turns out that Thompson was actually a pretty good candidate to run against Bloomberg and his incomparable wealth and lavish spending to win reelection for a third term:
This was a race most Democrats now believe they could have won. Numbering among the co-conspirators in the Democrats’ defeat, in the view of some party leaders and activists, are Democratic grandees, from President Obama — who did not campaign for Mr. Thompson — to the City Council speaker, whose support could not have been softer, to two powerful labor unions that remained studiously neutral.
By the next mayoral election, it will have been 20 years since a Democrat occupied the mayor’s office, and the second guesses were many on Wednesday.
“Bill Thompson was always closer than people thought, and on our side, if people had been behind him more, there would have been more checks, more endorsements, more attention, and that might have made the difference,” said State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman of Manhattan. “It really is disgraceful that a lot of people in the Democratic Party stayed home or kept their checkbooks closed.”
Barbara Fife, a deputy mayor under David N. Dinkins, acknowledged many ills, from an honorable but lackluster candidate to a too-quick willingness of many prominent Democrats to write off Mr. Thompson’s campaign as stillborn.
But she wondered at a Democratic president who could barely bring himself to utter the mayoral candidate’s name, much less to make a swing through New York. “He made people feel this was not winnable; Bill got lumped in with Paterson in many minds,” Ms. Fife said. “Obama had lists he could have given, and support. But he never said boo.”
How indeed. Bear in mind that Democrats outnumber Republicans 5-1 in New York City. It's inexcusable for a sitting Democratic president to not campaign for a Democrat in the City, unless there's more going on behind the scenes.
It is possible that the White House thinks having Bloomberg as mayor may provide some cover on policy prescriptions down the road, particularly on climate change and environmental legislation, or perhaps on health care. In fact, it appears that Bloomberg and Obama may have had a quid pro quo on noninterference in the other's electoral races.
Would it have helped? We don't know. It seems, however, that while Obama and Bloomberg don’t share the same party line, they do share a tacit understanding that they each wield a lot of influence. And given their mutual respect for one another, they won't butt into races where one or the other is competing. Bloomberg didn't weigh in on the presidential race (except for having a cozy breakfast at a New York diner that screamed photo-op, of course).
And he asked Obama not to meddle in the mayoral race. Quid pro quo.
Wary of pressure for Obama to campaign for Thompson, since he was doing the same across the river for Corzine, Bloomberg's aides recruited Geoffrey Canada, chief executive of the Harlem Children's Zone, to call Obama's senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, and ask her to to ask him, more or less, to not choose sides in the mayoral race, according to an amazing Times analysis of the behind the scenes wrangling that propeled Bloomberg to a third term. Bloomberg has personally given $600,000 to the Harlem Children's Zone.
"He didn't pick sides in your race. Don't pick sides in his," a close adviser to the mayor told the Times by way of describing the Bloomberg campaign's pitch to the White House.
Still, to snub a Democrat in the City isn't going to sit will among one of the biggest Democratic party enclaves in the nation.
The White House slapped Rep. Anthony Weiner after he criticized the sorely lackluster White House efforts in backing Thompson, saying that Weiner should have manned up to face Bloomberg himself. Weiner responded by saying the White House should just call him fat; a reference to the failed Corzine attack ads against Chris Christie that threw Christie's weight into the campaign.
Others have come out to criticize Weiner as well for not running against Bloomberg, but the question would remain as to whether Obama would have come out in support of the Democratic party candidate in light of his understanding with Bloomberg. I would posit that it wouldn't have mattered who ran against Bloomberg in the race; Obama is not likely to have come out to campaign for any Democrat knowing the behind the scenes machinations.
That's right folks. The evil empire is back and they took out the Philadelphia Phillies to win their 27th World Championship in the process. The Phillies were quite smug coming into the Series, with Jimmie Rollins promising a win and back to back championships. The Phillie fans were even worse.
I guess they'll have to eat their words as the Yanks crushed them 4 games to 2. The series MVP is Hideki Matsui, who had a Godzilla of a Game 6, batting in six of the seven runs scored. Matsui is in the final year of his contract, so if this was his final game in Pinstripes, he made it a memorable one.
The Yanks also managed to win the Series in the first year of their new home, just as they did with the original Stadium in 1923. It's a rather fitting bookmark.
Congrats to the Yanks!
Oh, and the ticker tape parade is Friday in the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan riding up from Battery Park to City Hall Park along Broadway.
UPDATE: Memo to Jimmy Rollins. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. When your team loses the Series 4-2, you can't hit, you can't pitch, and you are outplayed at every turn, you do not get to claim that your team is better. The Phillies lost. Bigtime.
They lost the series, they didn't win as many games as the Yankees did during the regular season either, so claiming that your team was better is asinine.
Moreover, when you bat .217, you are hardly in a position to claim your team is better despite losing a series in six.
Gawker scores with an in depth investigation into how the media covered the Spitzer mess last year and has been combing through more than 1,000 pages of emails between Spitzer's press secretary Christine Anderson, communications director Errol Cockfield, and journalists covering the expanding scandal. The results aren't pretty:
The e-mails total 1,300 pages, and we're still reading through the stack of paper. Any other interesting finds will be going up in subsequent posts. But what we've seen so far has been surprising: You'd think that, with blood in the water, the traditional coziness that develops between official flacks and the beat reporters who have to talk to them every day would break down into some kind of last-man-standing slugfest. But in the Spitzer case, the opposite happened. The revelations upended the worlds of both reporter and flack alike, and the uncertainty, long hours, and breakneck pace of the scandal actually seemed to throw them together as they worked toward what seems, if you read the e-mail exchanges, like a common goal of getting the news out and behind them.
Which makes sense on a human level. But sometimes good reporting—especially of the government watchdog variety—requires an inhuman suspension of compassion. The infractions documented in these e-mails are misdemeanors, but—in addition to being an unvarnished peek inside the media machinery—they're indicative of the creeping social and professional alliances that inevitably develop between PR handlers and their overworked, easily manipulated charges in the press corps. And they give the lie to the myth of the vigilant watchdog press that keeps the government on its toes. Next time you hear New York Times editor Bill Keller claim that newspapers are uniquely situated to do the "hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work [of] quality journalism," remember that his reporter broke the story of Spitzer's dalliances with prostitutes. But also remember the time his reporter e-mailed Gov. Paterson's flack to request permission to call Paterson's former mistress.
This first installment documents the shocking amount of control that Keller's Times allowed Anderson, a former Good Morning America producer and PR veteran of the Clinton White House, to exercise over his paper's coverage. After bringing Anderson's world down around her head by breaking the story, Times reporters previewed portions of their stories with her before publication, asked for her permission before contacting sources, and let her tell them how to characterize its reporting in the paper.
The next time you hear someone say that the media is a watchdog, remember this.
Iran celebrates the embassy takeover as an official holiday, and tens of thousands showed up in Tehran on Wednesday to hear anti-American speeches.
The anniversary was also an opportunity to reignite the anti-government protests that were sparked in June, following a disputed presidential election, and thousands of anti-government protesters ignored warnings from Iranian authorities to stay home.
One of the leaders of the 1979 hostage-takers says the United States and Iran must not be hostages to history.
"I am not willing to be a hostage of that historical event," Ebrahim Asgharzadeh said on CNN's "Amanpour," in an interview marking the anniversary.
"Neither Iran nor the United States should be hijacked by that historical event," he said from Tehran, where he went on to become a reformist lawmaker and was himself jailed by the Islamic regime.
He said the two sides need to be aware of the past without being imprisoned by it.
"If they do not pay attention to ... history they will have an unstable future, an impermanent future," he said.
Asgharzadeh said he and his fellow students had been offended that Jimmy Carter, then the U.S. president, had let the deposed Shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment -- and said the actions of his compatriots had parallels in the United States.
Carter's failure to decisively deal with the crisis allowed it to fester for more than a year and played a significant role in his defeat in the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.
Carter undertook a failed rescue operation that left 8 US servicemembers dead and four others wounded. The failure of Operation Eagle Claw was exploited by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeni, who saw it as divine providence and strengthened his negotiating position thereafter. A second attempted rescue operation was aborted when the technologies to enable extreme short takeoffs and landing failed in demonstrations stateside.
We live with the repercussions of the inability to deal with the hostage crisis to this day as terrorist groups like al Qaeda point to the Iranian effort and US reluctance to use force to stop Iran as a sign that the US could be pushed around. Iran continues to pursue an anti-US agenda and its current nuclear ambitions are fueled by a belief that they can push around the US and bluster their way to fulfill their religious and theological ambitions.
Israeli naval commandos seized a container ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying more than 60 tons of missiles, rockets and anti-tank weapons from Iran to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
The pre-dawn seizure near Cyprus was a rare interception of a suspected arms shipment by Israel, which has long accused Iran of arming its enemies. Israel offered no evidence to support its claim that the weapons were meant for Hezbollah.
"There were Katyusha (rockets), whose purpose is to hit civilians," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio.
Other weapons found included anti-tank missiles. He did not give any quantities, saying the ship was still being unloaded in Israel. He said the crew was not aware of the cargo's contents.
Antitank weapons cause the greatest concern for Israel, as they were responsible for many of the Israeli casualties in the Hizbullah war in 2006. While the katuysha and other missiles would be terror weapons for use against the civilian populations, the antitank weapons were the weapons that could keep the Israeli army at bay and inflict casualties among the soldiers tasked to rooting out Hizbullah elements.
Ben-Yehuda said that there was regular intelligence indicating that Iran was continuing to support terror groups with large amounts of weapons aimed at being used against Israel. Furthermore, it was likely that additional shipments from Iran would be shipped, he said.
The containers were owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines Group, or IRISL, the military said, adding that aach container contained sacks, filled with 25 kilos of silicon, made by the Natural Petrol Company in Iran.
Upon opening the containers used for smuggling the weapons, only the sacks were visible, but behind the sacks lay weapons.
The weapons included 107-millimeter rockets, 60-millimeter mortars, 7.62-rifle Kalashnikov-ammunition, F-1 grenades and 122-millimeter Katyusha rockets. On the side of some of the cases inside the containers the words "parts of bulldozers" was written.
Ben-Yehuda called the shipment "very advanced weaponry". He added that even though the Iranian containers were loaded at port of Damietta in Egypt, the Egyptians were totally unaware of the ship's contents.
A month ago, Der Spiegel reported that the US Navy had boarded a German cargo ship near the Suez Canal that was carrying ammunition from Iran to Syria or Hizbullah.
YNetnews reports that the weapons captured would have been enough to allow Hizbullah to wage war for a month. The shipment was ten times the size of the shipment stopped by Israel in 2002 aboard the Karin-A.
While the Israelis managed to stop this particular shipment, it is all too likely that others have made their way into Hizbullah hands, courtesy of Iran.
A convicted rapist in Ohio may have been far more evil than previously believed. Anthony Sowell spent 15 years in prison after a rape conviction in 1989. He was released from prison in 2005.
Thirty-seven days passed between the time a woman told police Anthony Sowell choked and raped her in his house and when police went to Imperial Avenue to arrest him.
That time gap has raised the question -- among the crowds of neighbors gathered outside Sowell's home, victims' advocates and at least one city councilman -- if more could have been done to track Sowell, whom police charged Tuesday with five counts of aggravated murder for some of the people found dead at his home.
"I'm not going to point fingers but at the end of the day, someone clearly dropped the ball," Councilman Zack Reed said Tuesday.
Then, there's the issue of the stench that emanated from Sowell's residence. Some neighbors thought that the smell was actually from a food processing plant nearby, but it now appears that the smell was from rotting victims found in and around Sowell's property. No one, law enforcement included, thought that the smell was from decomposing victims.
His parole officers have to be questioning themselves as well, since they simply called on him to see if he was still at the residence, and never actually entered the home.
Police are now looking at vacant lots and buildings in the vicinity to see if Sowell disposed of more bodies in the area. Cadaver dogs and the fire department are also being used to search for remains in Sowell's residence.
Both pledged that a Corzine win would help both men fulfill their common agenda. That clearly takes a hit now that Corzine was sent packing by New Jerseyeans.
The election in New Jersey wasn't as close as Paul Mulshine wishes it to be. He claims that Chris Christie doesn't have a mandate.
Corzine capitulated very early in the evening and while most experts were expecting the New Jersey results to go down into the wee hours of the morning, the results showed Corzine losing early and often throughout the state. Corzine conceded at about 10:20 pm (according to Christie's speech announcing his win at 11pm, when he said that Corzine called 40 minutes earlier to concede). The size of the vote showed just how much discontent there was and it also showed that Chris Daggett was not a factor in the race. He garnered just about 5% of the vote.
The state is in a pissed off mood about out of control state spending and taxes and Corzine's answer was to increase sales tax and allowing property taxes to continue creeping skywards because there was no interest in tackling the difficult issue of controlling spending. Christie at least represents something other than the tax and spend nature found in Trenton. Corzine was despised by most New Jerseyeans because he was ineffectual and never lived up to the hype of being a financial wizard. Daggett was a distraction candidate at best, and voters saw through that.
For those who wonder how to get New Jersey out of the fiscal mess, it starts in one place - state spending. If the state spends more than it takes in, it requires tax hikes. If you promise benefits that are indexed annually, the costs for those benefits rise as does the government's commitment to fund them; Corzine was actually arguing during the budget negotiations this year that municipalities could skip payments so as to avoid making tough decisions elsewhere in the state budget.
That's just it; all the tough decisions on how to pay for state programs - and whether a state program's continued existence is justified, gets put off because the answer is invariably to increase taxes and fees. That has to end if the state wants to regain a competitive edge and encourage job growth.
Bill Thompson lost a narrow election to Bloomberg. That wasn't how the New York City mayor's race was supposed to unfold. Most pundits were expecting a landslide victory, and yet Thompson lost narrowly in a low-turnout election. One has to wonder whether an appearance by President Obama on Thompson's behalf could have charged up Democrats to get out and vote for Thompson. Get out the vote efforts by Democrats in New York City could have turned the election on its head, and yet Obama only provided a wave and a weak endorsement of Thompson in comparison to the fawning attention Obama paid to Corzine across the river.
Why did Bloomberg win in such a fashion? Could it have been the fact that people resented the fact that he did an about face on term limits and had them overturned? Did people resent that he spent nearly $100 million to get reelected? Perhaps.
A much more likely explanation is that the turnout was so low, that only the die-hard voters showed up at the polls, and due to the sheer number of registered Democrats who vote party line that it guaranteed a close election.
One final race that deserves a look is NY-23, where Democrat Bill Owens overcame efforts by out-of-district conservative Doug Hoffman to win in a largely Republican district after Republican Dede Scozzafava dropped out. This was a special election, where the party bosses chose the candidates, and the outcome there will have limited impact going forward for the national GOP, although quite a few will argue that the Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh wing of the party took a hit because they backed the conservative candidate who forced the Republican "moderate" to drop out and therefore lost the district for the GOP altogether.
It does, however, have serious repercussions in New York as the state GOP needs to address how they chose candidates and needs to work on building up candidates who are fiscal conservatives that will present a message of improving the economic situation upstate by reducing the crushing tax burden faced by New Yorkers and that improving the tax climate will result in an improved business climate, encouraging new businesses and job opportunities. Hoffman never got that far; Scozzafava was a pro-union hack insider whose actions should have raised eyebrows given that her and her husband were toying with the idea of jumping ship and changing party affiliations.
The polls have been closed for an hour in New Jersey and just closed in New York. So far, with 14% of the vote tallied in New Jersey, Chris Christie is ahead, but it's far too early and too few votes tallied to determine the outcome.
New York's polls have just closed, so results are going to be a while.
Stay tuned. It will be a long evening.
UPDATE: CNN is calling the Virginia governor's race for Republican Bob McDonnell.
UPDATE: Christie continues leading in New Jersey with 28% of the vote tallied. Local elections in New Jersey are being reported here. Hudson, Bergen, Essex and Passaic Counties have yet to report in significant numbers, so expect Christie's early lead to subside somewhat as Democrat strongholds begin reporting.
UPDATE: MSNBC says with 36% reporting, Christie remains leading with 52% to 42% for Corzine.
UPDATE: NBC calls New York City's mayor's race for Mike Bloomberg, as if it was a surprise. Of course, Bloomberg spent nearly $100 million of his own money to buy the election win, and had to overturn New York City's term limits law to do it.
New Jersey continues to be too close to call. Politico's map shows the breakdown by county.
UPDATE: With 64.3% reporting, Christie remains ahead, 50% to 43.8%. Oddly, they've called four counties, but aren't calling either Monmouth or Ocean Counties for Christie, even though more than 95% of the vote was in and Christie was ahead by more than 30 points.
UPDATE: AP and Politico have both called New Jersey for Republican Chris Christie.
UPDATE: Bloomberg looks like he's slipped some and the race is far closer than the early declaration of a win for Bloomberg would have suggested.
UPDATE: Corzine is giving his concession speech. He says he was privileged to be governor of the state. He's thanking his supporters and those in his administration.
All of his money and support of Presidents Obama and Clinton couldn't overcome the fact that Corzine lacked real achievements to campaign upon. The voters decided that Corzine just wasn't the guy to get the job done of getting the state back on the right track - cutting taxes, lowering spending, and making the state more competitive to build the economy.
UPDATE: NY-23 looks like it's going to go for Bill Owens, much to the consternation of Hoffman supporters. I'll have to analyze the turnout and county figures to see what happened, but it appears that Owens got his supporters to turn out, while Hoffman didn't, despite all the attention on the race and the out-of-district support.
Going back to New Jersey, Corzine made sure to thank Chris Daggett for participating in the race and the debates. There's just a wee bit of irony there, seeing how Democrats actually proferred a pro-Daggett robocall.
UPDATE: There's about 10,000 absentee ballots to be counted. Those aren't going to go for Hoffman because they were likely cast well in advance of Scozzafava dropping out, so they would likely split between Owens and Scozzafava. That means that there may not be enough votes to bring Hoffman back to take the seat. With 71% of votes counted, Owens has 49% to 45% for Hoffman.
I know that Black Friday is a three weeks away, but the sales are leaking out online and comparison shopping for the best bargains is something I do well in advance to maximize my shopping experience. Black Friday Ads has some sales up for Sears, Lowes, Toys R Us, and Kmart. More will follow.
Some analysts are warning that retailers' deep discounts will hit the bottom line hard and while they might entice more people to come through the doors, they may end up disappointed.
In the new era of tight budgets, consumers are looking for good value on the items they want and need. But instead, many analysts say retailers seem to be taking a different approach: offering ever-more extreme discounts on items they want to get rid of.
The super-low price method of offloading excess inventory has become so commonplace, even among higher-end retailers, that shoppers are coming to the conclusion that many products are just worth less, said brand analyst Robert Passikoff.
“It isn’t just that you learned that there will be sales — there will always be sales — but what it’s done is it ultimately affects the value perception of the product,” said Passikoff, president of the customer loyalty research firm Brand Keys.
If regulators determine the vaccine is safe, it could be on the market in three to five years - the first vaccine against a human parasite.
Tens of millions of Africans are plagued by malaria every year, and more than a third of the hospital beds in this rural Kenyan region next to Lake Victoria are dedicated to its victims. More than 1 million children die of the disease in Africa annually, a crippling economic drain that prolongs a cycle of disease and poverty throughout the continent.
Malaria is also prevalent in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Central and South America.
This vaccine was developed specifically for Africa, however, and will only prevent the African strain of the disease. Experts say it would be a historic advancement.
"Some may say, '50 percent, that's not great.' And that's true. If you get a measles vaccine, you're not going to get measles again," said Dr. Dave Jones, a U.S. Army colonel and director of a clinic in nearby Kombewa operated by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.
A malaria vaccine would be one tool in reducing the incidence of malaria and would allow cash-strapped nations to focus on economic development rather than see a significant portion of their population waste away year after year.
The year 2009 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailor, scholar, and storyteller, has written the first book-length history of the 1609 adventure that put New York on the map.
Hudson was commissioned by the mighty Dutch East India Company to find a northeastern passage over Russia to the lucrative ports of China. But the inscrutable Hudson, defying his orders, turned his ship around and instead headed west—far west—to the largely unexplored coastline between Spanish Florida and the Grand Banks.
Once there, Hudson began a seemingly aimless cruise—perhaps to conduct an espionage mission for his native England—but eventually dropped anchor off Coney Island. Hudson and his crew were the first Europeans to visit New York in more than eighty years, and soon went off the map into unexplored waters.
It goes into the intrigue and politics of the decisions that led to Henry Hudson violating his contract with the Dutch East India Company to search for a Northeast Passage to China in the Arctic and instead led to the exploration of the Hudson River Valley in what is now New York.
Thus far, it's a fascinating read on the backstory that all too many people don't learn in school about the European exploration of the New World. What many people don't realize is that the exploration of the New World was a by-product and accidental discovery that got in the way of finding shipping lanes to China.
Today marks another election day and while there are only a handful of important races around the country, the New Jersey governor's race is probably the one that should be most closely watched. President Obama has been to the state three times, making four appearances for incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine and the President even taped a robocall for Corzine. Despite outspending his opponents, most of the polls show Republican Christie ahead.
New Jersey's economy is in shambles and the tax burden in the state is the worst in the nation, no thanks to Corzine. Corzine raised the sales tax to fund property tax relief that materialized for all of one year, before he had to sharply limit the rebate all while taxes continued rising. Now, we've got a higher sales tax, higher property taxes, and a property tax rebate that doesn't address the fundamental issues of why the taxes keep rising - out of control government spending.
If Christie can't win with that background, the GOP has serious issues. While the state's demographics may tend to favor Corzine due to Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans, across the board there is serious dissatisfaction with the way that Corzine has run the state. That dissatisfaction has to translate into votes against Corzine.
Should Christie win, it can and should be seen as a major defeat for President Obama, who has essentially run Corzine's campaign, with multiple appearances and providing personnel to assist and run the campaign.
Whoever wins today will have to deal with: multibillion dollar structural deficits; a state workforce that has to be reduced; pension obligations that must be fully funded; a transportation trust fund that is underfunded and needs long term restructuring; and education funding that is unaffordable and unsustainable without improvement in student performance.
That's a mess that should given anyone pause about what they're about to undertake for the next four years, except that Corzine has already shown himself incapable of dealing with the mess. In fact, Corzine expanded education funding to eliminate court mandated Abbott school funding. The problem is that the state can't afford the funding formula he proposed, and all the extra funding since the court mandated funding for the Abbott districts never translated into improved student performance. It was merely a sop for the unions.
So, while most attention will be on NY-23 and the race between Doug Hoffman and Bill Owens, the real bellweather will be NJ. If Christie can pull out the win in the strong blue state, that's a signal that Obama's coattails are in tatters and signals that the GOP isn't in as bad shape as many thought, and GOP positioning for 2010 may be better than expected.
However, if Christie can't win in the NJ political environment where Corzine has such high negatives, the GOP has bigger problems than the situation in NY-23.
UPDATE: Are NJ Democrats using gangbangers to get out the vote? That's the allegations provided here; one of the sources is a cop who recognized one of the thugs as someone he had previously arrested.
That is what happened Sunday on a quiet street in Morris Township. The officer, who’s name we are with holding, specifically heard the men discussing that he was a police officer and that they now know where he lives. The officer confronted the men and they took off. He contacted the local police who responded and caught up with them and about a dozen other men a few blocks away. According to the police report, the men were known criminals and when asked why they were in the neighborhood they stated they were “campaigning for the Democratic Party.”
I expect to see more of these kinds of claims through the day.
UPDATE: Jim at Parkway Rest Stop has some advice for New Jerseyeans going to the polls. Think about if you think that the state needs real change and if you're happy with the direction that the state is headed under Corzine.
That ties into a message by Mike Flynn at Big Government, who notes that fiscal conservatism needs to make a comeback in a big way, and that part of the reason that Scozzafava found herself kicked to the curb had to do with her support for profligate spending at a time when people are concerned about job creation in the private sector.
The union representing transit workers who are employed by SEPTA went on strike this morning, leaving nearly 1 million commuters stranded trying to figure out how to get to work this morning. At least the union didn't strike as the World Series was underway at Citizens Bank ballpark and allowed the fans to get to the games to see the Yankees take two of three. They waited until the fans got home to strike.
The walkout by Transport Workers Union Local 243, which began at 3 a.m. and caught commuters off guard, also affected Frontier Division buses in Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties.
But Regional Rail, Paratransit and other services outside the city continued to run.
Many riders turned to passenger Regional Rail trains, which were crowded and running about 30 minutes late during the morning rush hour.
With Philadelphia Public School students off today for a teachers' in-service, the city should be spared the full impact of the strike until tomorrow.
Still traffic appeared to be heavier than usual, especially on Broad Street, which was bumper to bumper in North Philadelphia.
As the first glimmer of dawn broke this morning, striking SEPTA workers huddled in small clusters around the Frankford Transportation Center as would-be passengers continued to arrive with no idea that nothing was operating.
Colleen Logan, 45, showed up at 5:20 a.m. to discover that she would not be able to ride the Market-Frankford El to her job as a waitress at Snow White Restaurant in Old City.
So what are the issues that forced the union to strike? Well, they didn't like the last deal on the table, which would have given a 11% salary increase over five years, 11% increase in pension contributions, an no increases in workers' contribution for health care.
Those are figures that quite a few unemployed folks would love to get. In fact, while Pennsylvania has a lower than the national unemployment rate of 8.3%, it has spiked from 5.9% in November 2008. The rate is much higher in Philadelphia, where the rate is 10.7%.
I'm sure that lots of those unemployed would love to have a job where they have benefits that outstrip anything seen in the private sector, and which offers job protections that add to the cost of doing business.
Union workers, who earn an average $52,000 a year, are seeking an annual 4 percent wage hike and want to keep the current 1 percent contribution they make toward the cost of their health care coverage.
Maloney said SEPTA was offering an 11.5 percent wage increase over 5 years, with no raise in the first year, and increases in workers' pensions.
A 2005 SEPTA strike lasted seven days, while a 1998 transit strike lasted for 40 days.
Frank Brinkman, a union member who does electronic work on an elevated SEPTA train, was out on the picket line early Tuesday. He said he was concerned about pension issues and changes to work rules.
The union shouldn't expect to get much sympathy from commuters or those who are struggling to find jobs, and the timing doesn't help their cause either.
Monty Python is upset that Republican Chris Christie appears to have used one of their skits in one of his advertisements. They are contemplating suing.
The offending advertisement featured Palin in a vintage Monty Python's Flying Circus piece as a television presenter asking viewers if they had ever suffered from déjà vu and then repeating the question several times. Mr Christie's commercial, which was aired on numerous occasions, drew parallels with his rival's repeated attempts to impose higher motorway tariffs.
Palin told the Huffington Post website: "I'm surprised that a former US attorney isn't aware of his copyright infringement when he uses our material without permission. He's clearly made a terrible mistake. It was the endorsement of Sarah Palin he was after - not that of Michael Palin."
Jones said that the Pythons was strongly considering suing for his copyright infringement, saying it was "totally outrageous" that an experienced lawyer "thinks he can rip off people".
The Telegraph also notes that many Hollywood types have issues with Republicans using their materials in their campaigns, which makes sense given that many entertainers are far to the left of the Republicans and wouldn't be willing to see their material used by people they dislike.
However, what the Telegraph misrepresents is that President Obama hasn't just made a last ditch effort to help Corzine, but has been in New Jersey on three separate occasions over the past several months and has pretty much taken over Corzine's campaign to try and get him reelected despite high negatives.
HT: Mrs. Lawhawk
UPDATE: Democrats admit to funding a robocall that supports Chris Daggett. Lovely stuff. Meanwhile, President Obama recorded a robocall for Corzine, as though that wasn't expected? Obama pretty much owns the Corzine campaign, so if Corzine loses, that's not going to look good for Obama.
Residents of the Venezuelan capital face cuts in water service for as much as 48 hours per week, after the government imposed rationing to stem a 25 percent shortfall in the city's supply, officials said Monday.
Officials said cuts in water service were to be staggered throughout Caracas through the duration of the current dry season, which is not expected to end until May 2010.
Weather forecasters blame the "El Nino" weather phenomenon, saying the periodic weather system has markedly reduced rainfall and created drought conditions.
Others blame the shortage on poor government management of the country's water resources, while President Hugo Chavez faulted the excesses of capitalism.
"What will the rich fill their swimming pools with?" the country's leftist leader asked recently.
Chavez is quick to blame the rich for the woes, but the government's inability to provide sufficient water should be a warning about Chavez's policies on other areas of the Venezuelan economy.
Instead of planning for the possibility of shortages, his government has sought to ration water and limit usage.
Drudge reports that President Obama has lost quite a bit of weight.
Eyebrows raised over the weekend as President Obama walked out of the gym at Fort McNair -- appearing thin as a rail!
Rigorous workouts and high-stress basketball games are said to be behind the dramatic weight loss.
"No, he's not chain smoking," claims an insider. "He's working non-stop for the country... yes, he does occasionally skip meals."
The stress of being the President of the US is a huge weight on the shoulders of anyone who has taken the oath of office. All Presidents age tremendously under the strain in short time. It is little wonder that President Obama is losing weight under the strain. I also suspect he's quite a bit greyer than when he first took office too.
If President Obama is smoking, that isn't going to help matters any either. Playing basketball to deal with the strain is a healthier outlet.
Presidents Clinton and Bush both came into office relatively young and aged visibly and considerably in a short time; President Bush looked like he aged a decade practically overnight following the 9/11 attacks because of the nation's failures to defend its citizens from terror attacks. Keeping the nation safe means lots of sleepless nights knowing that there are evil plans afoot to cause the nation harm and that each morning's briefings can bring momentous news in some far flung part of the world that bodes ill for the US.
