'atta boy, Hank!

Paulson Upbeat on Economy and Markets, but Not Housing

Paulson noted the impact of sagging home prices and soaring energy costs, referring to "difficulties" in an economy that he said remains "structurally sound."

Asked by an audience member whether $100 billion in economic stimulus checks that were mailed this month to 130 million households would wind up paying for more expensive gasoline instead of stimulating the economy, Paulson acknowledged that "we've got some increasing headwinds."

But he insisted that the stimulus package approved by Congress and signed by President Bush will aid in the nation's economic recovery, creating 500,000 jobs.

"I don't mean to sound Pollyannaish," he said, but "I do believe our economy will be growing at a faster pace at the end of the year than it is now."

Here is a video of Paulson's address to the Post 200 Business Forum:



Funny, I never knew he looked so much like Eric Idle

Am I back yet?

I dunno. But I see from the handy-slick new Blogger Archives links that I have now surpassed my entire output for 2007. What can I say, 2007 was a bad year.

But things are calming down. Little Praxxus is 3 now, and in pre-school. Loves it. He's energetic, sweet, stubborn, funny, and absolutely refuses to poop in the potty. His underwear? No problem! The floor? Sure! But the potty? Eff that noise!

Baby Praxxus is 1½ now, and his head is okay so far. We still go see doctors at Riley's in Indianapolis every six months or so, but aside from a little Klingon action on his forehead, he is okay. We want to get him in the toddler room at the preschool this fall, but he's 29 too young for their cutoff date. Argh! Which means he gets signed up for the once-a-week "mothers and infants" class, which is going to bore the holy crap out of him.

I took a long time off from politics and blogging, and am sort of easing my way back into it. The key will be to try and regularly update the blog and still manage to have a productive work and home life. Can I do it?

Do you care?

Who knows?!?!

Jawboning = epic FAIL!!

Output: DENIED!!!

Why am I not surprised? I'm sure he tried reeeeeallllly hard.

RIYADH, May 16 -- Saudi Arabia Friday rejected the idea of increasing oil production to help ease soaring gasoline prices, telling President Bush that the kingdom already is meeting its customers' demand for crude.

The apparent rebuff came as Bush appealed to Saudi King Abdullah to use his country's vast oil reserves -- the world's largest -- to put more oil on the market and reduce the upward pressure on prices. It was the second time this year that Bush has made such a personal appeal to the Saudi monarch.

"What they're saying to us is . . . Saudi Arabia does not have customers that are making requests for oil that they are not able to satisfy," said Stephen J. Hadley, Bush's national security adviser. He told reporters that the Saudis indicated they are willing to put oil on the market in amounts sufficient to meet their customers' demands.

What? They're able to satisfy demands? But I thought it was "supply and demand" that was driving the price up! I'm confused.

Maybe the Saudis just aren't that intimidated by the jawbone of an ass lame duck:

But Youssef M. Ibrahim, a freelance writer and consultant who specializes in oil, said in an interview that the Saudis should be able to do more but don't want to. "They have plenty of money -- there is no reason for them to increase production to get new income," he said. "They don't feel any compelling need to help out. They see Bush as leaving. It's (Bush's) last nine months."

UPDATE:Now it seems the Saudis will be upping their June output by a whopping 300k barrels/day! Hot diggity damn! That's almost 1½% of America's daily consumption! Think we'll see a corresponding 5.8¢ drop in gas prices?

Nah. Me neither

More victims of high gas prices

We already have people squeezed between paying bills and going to work (ooh! irony!), truckers paying out the wazoo for fuel, and rate increases for mass transit. Now we can add mom and pop gas stations to the growing list of people getting directly reamed by the rising gas prices.

Why? The analog pumps that ~8,500 service stations still use today don't have the numbers and gears to go above $3.999/gallon prices. In fact, some of the mom'n'pop joints have already shelled out to upgrade their gear after gas went above $2.999/gallon.

Yes there are digital pumps, but they ain't cheap. The margins on gas are so low, most of these shops have pumps just as a draw to get people to stop in:

"I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't have $30,000 to invest in new pumps, and I'm barely skipping by," said Osborne, who owns the Orlean Market and Restaurant, a store dating from 1892 with horse-country views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and miles of rolling Virginia Piedmont.

Osborne said she doesn't make money on fuel sales, but the pumps are a big draw for the hay farmers and cattlemen who gas up their tractors and take their morning coffee in her store. The next-closest service station is a 40-minute round-trip drive to Warrenton, and in Orlean, Osborne's barbecue sandwiches and Amish-baked cherry pie face no competition.

"If people have to go into town to get gas, they'll say, 'Oh, I'll just go to Burger King,' " Osborne said.

Owners have tried some . . . uh . . . creativity:

Osborne has run afoul of the rules in the past. When gas prices went beyond $2.99 a gallon, she posted a printout of the day's gas prices and divided the per-gallon price on the pump display in half, notifying customers that the cost would be doubled at the cash register. Some of the Latino laborers who work on nearby farms had trouble understanding the system at first, she said, but eventually got used to it.

As you can imagine, the Weights and Measures folks didn't like that idea very much.

There is a company working on conversion kits for these old pumps, but the demand is so high there's a backlog.

For a lot of these stations, if the pumps go, so will the customers that actually come in the store and help them turn a profit. Once those go, the owners will be more victims of the crappy Bush economy.

JoJo the Hypocritical Assclown?

For a couple of months now (not necessarily here) I've been calling Lieberman "JoJo the Turncoat Monkey," for reasons that should be obvious. Based on what has been going on with this whole "Appeaser" flap, maybe it's time to come up with something new.

First let us review what JoJo the Turncoat Monkey said today in response to Preznit Picowatt's "appeaser" remarks in Israel:

“President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that—if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers—they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.”

Unfortunately for Senator JoJo, there is this thing called the Internets, which has vast amounts of data stored in . . . well, I believe it's something to do with tubes . . . but the point is, you can go back in time to see what someone said on, say, the arbitrarily chosen date of December 6, 2005:

. . . What I am suggesting here, as I listen and read the statements made, is that there is broad bipartisan agreement on the goals, on the strategic interest we have in the successful completion of our mission in Iraq; there are disagreements about tactics. Accepting this reality and the urgency of the moment in Iraq calls us, I believe, to remember the famous counsel of Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Republican of Michigan that “Politics must stop at the water’s edge.”

Vandenburg of course, played an instrument role in the post WWII period in building bipartisan support for Presidents Truman’s post WWII, early Cold War foreign policy. The full, actual statement of the imperative that Vandenburg stated, that politics must stop at the water’s edge, is altogether relevant to our current circumstances:

“To me, bipartisan foreign policy means a mutual effort under our indispensable two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water’s edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.”

Oh, JoJo, are there no depths you won't sink to in your never-ending efforts to suck up to the Republicans? What a sad little Turncoat Monkey you've become!

One of these things is not like the other

Let's look at the responses to Preznit Lameduck's remarks about terrorist appeasers from some well known public officials:

Sen. Joe Biden:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”

“He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”

Sen. John Kerry:

Sen. John Kerry said that Bush "is still playing the disgusting and dangerous political game Karl Rove perfected, which is insulting to every American and disrespectful to our ally Israel. George Bush should be making Israel secure, not slandering Barack Obama from the Knesset."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi:

Bush's remarks were "beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation" at the celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary.

Referring to Sen. John McCain, Pelosi said: "I would hope that any serious person that aspires to lead the country, would disassociate themselves from those comments.”

Howard Dean:

“On the same day John McCain is talking about putting partisanship aside, the President launched a cheap political attack while on a state visit honoring the 60th anniversary of Israel, one of America’s greatest allies. Bush’s outrageous comments are an embarrassment to our country, not based in fact and bring us no closer to our goal of ending terrorist attacks against Israel and bringing peace to the region. If John McCain is really serious about being a different kind of Republican, he’ll denounce these remarks in the strongest terms possible.”

Rep. Rahm Emanuel:

The tradition has always been that when a U.S. President is overseas, partisan politics stops at the water's edge. President Bush has now taken that principle and turned it on its head: for this White House, partisan politics now begins at the water's edge, no matter the seriousness and gravity of the occasion. Does the president have no shame?

JoJo the Turncoat Monkey:

“President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that—if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers—they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.”

McCain/Lieberman, anyone?

So, what's the word this evening?

I suppose with her big WV win and media storm, Senator Clinton is going to dominate the media cycle for a while, right?

Oh well, maybe the OR/KY primaries will start getting some attention soon.

Another huge Democratic victory last night

The people of MS-01 were at the polls last night in a special election runoff between Travis Childers(D) and Greg Davis(R) to fill a congressional seat vacated when Roger Wicker got promoted to Trent "Hurricane-proof Hair" Lott's old seat in the senate.

In a district that has been red since '94, and Bush won more that 60% in 2004, Childers beat Davis for the second time in a month¹ to make three of Mississippi's four congressional districts blue now.

This race continues the recent special election trend of Democrats beating Republicans in "safe" red districts, which could be the sign of something really big happening in November. The Republicans fully realized how important this was, and not only fully got behind their man Davis, they used MS-01 as a testing ground for a potential national strategery:

The Republican Party used the election as a key testing ground for a strategy that's expected to be deployed in several districts next fall. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the conservative group Freedom Watch and Davis himself reportedly spent close $1 million airing television commercials that linked Childers to Obama.

<snip>

In the ad, Childers is shown next to Kerry and Obama while the Illinois senator's ranking from the National Journal as the most liberal senator is noted.

In an ad paid for by Davis, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is shown and a narrator chastises Childers for not publicly denouncing the pastor's controversial remarks. That ad also claimed Obama had endorsed Childers.

Here's the ad in question:



And here's the NRCC ad with Kerry, Obama, Liberals, Nancy Pelosi and *gasp* San Francisco!:



This makes the second time this month that Republicans have tried to use Wright and Obama to win a special election . . . and failed.

Recently, Republicans failed to win a Louisiana congressional race by using similar tactics. The GOP ran an ad there linking Democrat Don Cazayoux to Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Cazayoux won the May 3 election by three percentage points. The Baton Rouge-area district hadn't sent a Democrat to Washington since the 1970s.

This to me seems to back up polls that show that people are more concerned about Republicans in general, and Bush specifically, than they are about Obama and Wright. Plus, the recent Rasmussen report indicates that people are trusting Dems more than Repubs on every major issue. John "W" McCain still gets a bit of a "Maverick Bounce" in the polls --he is outpolling generic Republicans on pretty much everything-- but he's had pretty much a free run at things for months now. Time to start tying this rotten Republican albatross around his neck.

¹There was an election held April 22 with other candidates on the ballot. Childers came out ahead with 49% of the vote, but since no one got a majority they had to have a runoff

Gotta love The Onion

Here's this blast from the past, which was actually still on my front page. What can I say, I took some time off!

Ahhhhh, if only . . . .

Hillary Clinton Tries To Woo Voters By Rescinding Candidacy

DES MOINES, IA-"For the first time, she's really speaking to the whole nation," said pundit Chris Matthews about Hillary Clinton's latest bid to appease constituents.

An open letter to John McCain

Dear Senator McCain,

You have gotten a lot of mileage out of your "Maverick" label, which the press just loves to slather on you like oh-so-much butter on a freshly baked brownie¹. I understand your reason for cultivating this image. In a world where "politicians" are a dime a dozen, or at least 13 for $10 million, being identified as somehow "outisde" or "above" the status quo is a huge benefit. However, there are some new reports trickling out that might be in danger of weakening the "Maverick Brand" you have held onto for so long. In the interest of keeping this label alive and well in the American consciousness, I thought it prudent to remind you of the following.

Claiming to be one thing (e.g. a "Straight Talker," opposed to lobbyist influence, etc.) while obviously being something else (e.g., just another Washington influence peddler) doesn't make you a "Maverick." It makes you a hypocritical asshat.

Unfortunately, the world of politics is currently overwrought with hypocritical asshats, so you should likely consult with your lobbyist-infested staff and find another way to "brand" yourself so as to stand out from the crowd. Since you've been neck deep in the D.C. mire so long, expecting any honest change of character from you is perhaps asking too much. Let's focus on a good slogan or soundbite to win over the people, instead. Maybe you could start using, "At least Cheney won't be my Vice President" as a campaign slogan. That would show your sense of humor, and at least draw some sort of distinction between yourself and the current administration.

Okay, that's not terribly catchy, but you get the idea. You'd better put those heads in your Quid Pro Quo Club together pronto, and come up with something!

Best regards,
Praxxus

¹No really, you should try it sometime. Perhaps the unhealthiest snack topping imagineable, but absolutely delicious.

I got "polled" by a Clinton phonebanker

I live in IN, and actually voted yesterday right after the polls opened at 6:00 AM. I'm home watching the kids now, and got a phone call from a Clinton phonebanker asking if I could count on their vote. I told them no, I would not be voting for Hillary Clinton. They asked if I would be voting for McCain. I said, "Oh heavens, no!"

That's when the fun started. Here, as well as I can remember, is a paraphrasing of the conversation. My responses are in italics.

According to Clinton phonebanker that I spoke to, Michigan and Florida are going to be counted.  Howard Dean said so today.  He said so.  So did Politico.  There is going to be a DNC rules committee meeting on May 31, and all the delegates will be seated.

We can't win without Florida and Michigan.

No, Hillary can't win the nomination without all the delegates from Florida and Michigan being counted, and her chances are still slim even then.

If we don't seat Florida and Michigan, we'll lose those votes and McCain will win in November!

Actually, the last I saw Obama was polling ahead of McCain in Michigan.  Granted he's way behind in Florida, and Hillary is trailing slightly.  But Obama was ahead in Michigan

Obama can't win.  Reverend Wright! Reverend Wright!  He's lost the white vote! The male vote! The . . .

No, that's not true.  There was a recent NBC/WSJ poll that showed people are more concerned about McCain's ties to Bush than Obama's ties to either Wright or Ayers. And besides, Hillary can't win the independents.  She's losing the independent vote in most swing states, except Florida. (Thank you, kos!)

But we need Florida and Michigan.  If we don't count those votes McCain will win! They are going to seat the delegates.  Hillary will get 70 from FL and 60 from MI (I'm assuming she meant percentage?).

How can they do that?  Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan

He took his name off . . .

I know he did.  He and everyone besides Hillary had their names removed from the ballot.  How can she claim that's a fair contest?

Would you still vote for Obama if you knew the election wouldn't count?

Yes.

No you wouldn't.

You don't know that!  Stop putting thoughts in my head and words in my mouth!  You can't say that at all!  I'm sorry that facts keep flying in the face of your talking points.  Now the real truth of the matter is that Hillary Clinton signed a pledge agreeing to not count FL and MI.  If she didn't need them to have any chance at all of getting the nomination, she wouldn't give a crap about them.  It wasn't until she realized that she needed them that she became this great crusader against disenfranchisement . . . .

I said more, but realized in a bit she had hung up on me.  I guess the truth hurts.

Goddamn lying fucking sack of shit motherfucking assholes!

Okay, now I feel better.