Author: lutton

just saw this post on Future Majority:

CIRCLE: Definitive Youth Turnout and Demographic Stats from 2000, 2004, and 2008

today, CIRCLE also released a fact sheet providing the definitive data on youth turnout in 2000 and 2004, and youth demographic data for 2008. The page also links to an interactive flash map that breaks the youth vote turnout data down on a state by state basis.

some basic data:

please click through for a much more detailed look at youth voting in the prior races, but first, a question:  What do you think will happen with turnout this year and why?
I haven’t put much time or discussion into it yet, but my first guess is that youth turnout will be up across the board, but with a net gain on the Dem side.  Thirty and older will be stable, but a further look will show the younger end of the thirty-plus group up again with a net gain on the Dem side, while the older end of the group will be down, with a net loss on the GOP side.

This is what it’s like to be in a position of healthy finances and a strong party identity:  screwing with the other side regarding their intra-party battles.

Democrats are stirring it up in the raging family feud of a GOP primary in South Jersey’s Third Congressional District.

The state Democratic Committee financed a brochure, which began arriving in Republican households in Burlington County yesterday. It attacks candidate Chris Myers of Medford, sending a signal that Democrats are picking a preferred opponent for the fall – Ocean County Freeholder Jack Kelly.

Rather than sitting back in our foxholes, patiently waiting for the inevitable attacks to be lobbed our way, we’re able to take the fight and the PR battle to them.
Yes, indeed, more like this, please:

While Democrats readily took credit for the attack piece, spokesman Rich McGrath said Myers “has such a failed record, we acted to communicate just some of those facts with the voters because they have a right to know.“

Happy to be here…just wanna help the team.

Democrats are playing hard for this seat. Their candidate, state Sen. John Adler (D., Camden), has raised over $1 million for his race and has no primary opponent in the contest to succeed retiring Congressman Jim Saxton, a Republican.

Adler took the early support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which believes that the demographics have changed enough in this traditionally Republican district that Adler can win.

As Republicans have been wrangling, Adler has been quietly trying to build up himself among voters. The district includes his home of Cherry Hill and runs through Burlington and Ocean Counties.

Yes, that’s right Rich.  “The voters…have a right to know” these guys are battling over who can hate brown people harder, too:

So far in this race, Myers and Kelly agree on most issues and have attacked each other’s character.

On the one issue they do disagree on – building a fence between the United States and Mexico – Kelly found a way to attack Myers’ character.

Kelly wants to build the fence. Myers says because illegal immigrants will find a way under or around the fence, there should be a high-tech monitoring system to keep an eye on the border.

Kelly says Myers is really trying to favor his employer, Lockheed Martin, which developed a monitoring system. Myers flatly denied that and adds that Boeing Co. – and not Lockheed Martin – got the monitoring system contract.

To push the immigration issue even further, Kelly announced yesterday that his hard line on illegal immigration earned him the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, founder of the sometimes controversial civilian border patrol group called the Minuteman Project.

Sounds like it’s already time for another mailer!

from http://ny13.blogspot.com/ :

http://www.vinofossella.com/
um, family values does not mean more families, more values!

more denial from the global warming and evolution denying crowd:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn’t even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested.

Isn’t it sad how the right wingers have to throw people out of political rallies and even movie screenings to protect their message?  You’d think they’d have the courage of their convictions.

I complied.

I’m still laughing though. You don’t know how hilarious this is. Not only is it the extreme hypocrisy of being expelled from their Expelled movie, but there’s another layer of amusement. Deep, belly laugh funny. Yeah, I’d be rolling around on the floor right now, if I weren’t so dang dignified.

You see … well, have you ever heard of a sabot? It’s a kind of sleeve or lightweight carrier used to surround a piece of munition fired from a gun. It isn’t the actually load intended to strike the target, but may even be discarded as it leaves the barrel.

I’m a kind of sabot right now.

They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn’t notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn’t recognize him. My guest was …

Richard Dawkins.

He’s in the theater right now, watching their movie.

Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?

[also at Lutton Square]

Because we’ve been so successful up to this point…

The US intends to supply Mexico with a $1bn aid package to help combat an increasingly costly and violent war against drugs, according to a top Mexican diplomat.

The agreement, which some experts have dubbed ”Plan Mexico” after the controversial multi-billion-dollar anti-narcotics package the US established with Colombia in 2000, would be spread out over two years and include the supply of intelligence, training and equipment such as helicopters and boats.

Of course, some Republican-friendly companies will likely be tapped to supply ‘training and equipment’ therefore continuing the revenue generating drug-war industry.

The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian
Make tonight a wonderful thing
[say it again]

The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian
Make tonight a wonderful thing

TPM covers the White House presser, but the questions still linger: why, especially if the surge is working and/or so much other ‘progress’ is being made, are US Goverment Agencies – such as the State Department – utilizing private security like Blackwater instead of our own military and security forces?
Even more curious, the NYT article detailing the Iraqi version of the incident in Nisour Square seems to indicate that a Blackwater convoy was responding to the carbombing, not just sidetracked by it. Why on earth would Blackwater be detailed to respond to such an event, rather than or even in addition to American or Iraqi military, security and law enforcement?

Why send mercenaries who operate outside of any internal or external accountability? And if no one sent them, is Blackwater responding to events on its own orders?

Numerous blog posts — from Attytood to dkos — have questioned the validity of right wing talking points claiming the surge is lowering violence and US casualties in Iraq and that we should allow additional time for ‘the plan’ to work.

Few comments have mentioned that according to statistics available through icasualty.org casualty rates in Iraq have always dropped in the winter.

I recall this point being made when the idea of a surge was first proposed, and the thought that the surge might have been proposed to take advantage of such a decrease in violence and casualties, both from tactical and public relations stand points.
A graph with only forty-eight data points isn’t going to be the smoothest curve, but if you’ll looks at these two representations of US deaths and US wounded in Iraq, you’ll see the downward trend every November through March:

http://icasualties.org/oif/US_chart.aspx
http://icasualties.org/oif/woundedchart.aspx

So an important qualifier of the effectiveness of the surge would have to include the relationship of how much violence and casualties have dropped the previous three winters as compared to this winter.

A quick glance shows that US fatalities remain consistant, if not slightly higher this winter.  US wounded numbers may not be complete, as the February number seems abnormally low.  (If that number is correct, if would indictate a vast improvement, which would be good news indeed.)

also at Lutton Square

(h/t to various TPM Muckraker commenters)

The prosecutor purge scandal seems to gravitate around some very interesting machinations involving the candidates for United States Attorney for the District of Utah.

When the position opened up in early 2006, two candidates–one from the executive branch and one from the legislative–surfaced. A former White House staffer and then Chief of Staff for the Attorney General, Kyle Sampson, was favored by White House and Department of Justice officials, while influential Utah Senator and former Senate Judiciary Chair Orrin Hatch preferred former Utah federal prosecutor and Judiciary staffer Brett Tolman.
President Bush finally nominated Tolman for the position in June, 2006, after the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act in early March.   According to then Senate Judiciary Chair Arlen Specter, Tolman arranged for the Patriot Act renewal to include–via Senator Specter’s chief counsel, Michael O’Neill–the now infamous clause allowing the president to appoint US Attorneys indefinitely while bypassing the Senate confirmation process.

With two candidates, one a White House pick and the other a Senators’ pick, the White House gets new power to indefinitely appoint future US Attorneys, while the Senators’ get their guy the post in Utah.

Quid pro quo? You decide…

commercial radio on kids schoolbuses

BusRadio is a new Massachusetts-based company created to force children to listen to commercial radio broadcasts on school buses around the country.

BusRadio boasts that it will “take targeted student marketing to the next level” and provide companies with a “captive audience” who, unlike listeners to commercial radio, are unable to change the station during ads.

See, the real issue here isn’t the radio being forced on kids, it’s that the school district probably gets revenue for deploying such a system.

When is America going to wake up and start putting things together:  Government cuts funding of schools (to fight wars, fund tax cuts, etc, etc), so the school district doesn’t have the money to provide the services one would expect.  So they seek alternative funding: soda machines, radio on buses, naming rights, etc.  
Now obviously the bottom line must still be good for companies that offer such things, even if they do pay the school district for the rights to place them in the school/bus.  Otherwise they wouldn’t be in business.

So we’ve cut the personal taxes of employees, executives, officers and directors of the company (but tilted towards the more well-off), cut the corporate taxes of the company, cut the dividend taxes of the shareholders (again, vastly held by other companies, executives, officers and directors), and we’ve cut the estate taxes so that those who are the most well off can keep that money soley within their families.

So now an institution that serves the public interest needs to be subsidised by the private sector to pay for the tax cuts which benefit the private sector.

It’s why Jefferson University Hospital  tried to sell precious artwork to a Walmart heir.  It’s why states like NJ and PA are considering selling rights to turnpikes and parkways (they call it ‘leasing’, but they give up toll revenue over a mutil-decade span for a big lump sum upfront).  Hell, Mayor Street tried to lease off the Free Library of Philadelphia a few years ago, but the uproar killed that deal.

Soon the private sector will own, lease or have rights to nearly everything outside our homes (and a good bunch inside the homes, too!).  And all the money flows upward towards the uber-rich.  And don’t even get me started on the privacy issues when the private sector knows where you drive, what you spend, where your kids are, what your health issues are, etc.

After everything is sold off, where do we turn to get the next round of funds we’ll need?

Cross posted at Lutton Square

-a gross clinic indeed

So a highly regarding teaching institution is forced to contemplate the sale of a seminal piece of its own history in order to fund its mission of medical education and health care. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital cannot educate the doctors, nurses and other medical professionals of the 21st century without an influx of money to build out its facilities. So an historical piece of artwork – Thomas Eakins’ masterpiece The Gross Clinic, irrevocably identified with Philadelphia and the University where it was painted – has been optioned to the National Gallery and an Arkansas museum funded by Wal-Mart heirs. The sale will fetch $68 million if it goes through, although there is a 45 day window to allow the Philadelphia fine arts community to attempt to match the offer.
One party to the purchase is the heiress of an American empire, an empire which continues to benefit from low wages here at home, cheap labor in far off contries, union busting tactics, state funded medical benefits for workers, tax advantages on both corporate and personal levels, etc, etc. As corporate empires replace smaller, family-run ‘main street’-type businesses and regional companies, the private wealth those latter business would have created and kept in the area is concentrated into a much smaller subset of owners.

Tax policy that benefits American empires while draining public treasuries across the country creates this horrendous situation. States are forced to spend tax payer money on primary care medical benefits for workers, and therefore don’t have money to fund the education and training of the next generation of American medical professionals. Instead billions of dollars are offloaded into private hands, hands which then contemplate trading some of that money in exchange for precious possessions. American history is sold into private hands to finance the systems which care for the entire population–systems which rightfully should be financed by our governments for the benefit of all Americans.

It is a moral failure that the future of American medicine is subservient to the needs of American heirs and heiresses.