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Adastros Visits the Electoral College and Calls West Virginia for Obama

10-11-08

Check out his thinking, and a very optimistic EV map that we hope will be blazing across TV screens on the evening of Nov 4th. But we have lots to do before then.

Reuters via IHT: The current financial crisis is only the beginning

10-10-08

Excerpt (read rest at link): The core of the issue isn't even solvency. It's the way in which the debt causing the banking insolvency distorted, distended and hollowed out economies around the world. It caused a huge misallocation in the English-speaking economies into real estate, and into consumption that could only seem to make sense to people drunk on the appreciation of property prices. It caused a less huge but still significant misallocation elsewhere; I think we will see that a lot of what was being produced by Europe and Asia's vibrant export industries were products that the United States and Britain will find they can do without, or with much less of.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Can this be pro-life?

10-10-08

Kristoff at the IHT (the international version of the NY Times) on how this summer's decision by the Bush administration to name birth control pills as a form of abortion is playing out in Africa. Remember that US help in third world countries for abortion is against the law. So the extra mouths to feed that could lead to backroom abortions and other dangerous situations cannot even be prevented. You have to ask why the religious right feels a need to overpopulate the world so that more living children will die. Are they hoping for more wars which would need more soldiers with which to fight them?

Garrison Keillor: One bomb after another

10-10-08

NYT: No Friends of the Whales on the Court.

10-09-08

Maureen Dowd: Mud Pies for ‘That One’

10-09-08

Excerpt: John McCain has long been torn between wanting to succeed and serving a higher cause. Right now, the drive to succeed is trumping any loftier aspirations. He cynically picked a running mate with less care than theater directors give to picking a leading actor’s understudy. And he has been running a seamy campaign originally designed by the bad seed of conservative politics, Lee Atwater. Atwater relished teaching rich, white Republicans to feign a connection to the common man so they could get in office and economically undermine the common man.

'Tis the Season of Election Dirty Tricks: Scaring Student Voters

10-08-08

Annenburg's FactCheck.Org: Fact C hecking Presidential Debate #2

10-08-08

FactCheck.org: McCain-Palin ad distorts Obama's remark on Afghanistan and support for troop-funding bills.

10-08-08

Paul Krugman: Health Care Destruction

10-08-08

Excerpt: So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured. Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative. Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.

Roger Cohen: Kiplin’ vs. Palin

10-08-08

NYT: Hey, Senator. The Real "Mavericks" Want Their Name Back

10-08-08

There is really a Maverick family. No they don't live off Dixie Queens. Well not according to this report. Nor do they ramble through smaltzy exclamations of how much you know I'm suffering, which claiming you'll go to Hell to get bin Laden or promise a mortgage relief program you have no intention of really creating. But they were known as rebels, progressive ones, from fighting for the rights of the indentured to protecting draft resisters. And one of them did refuse to brand his cattle, making their family name synonymous with being unbranded. Excerpt: Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.” “It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

Bob Herbert: Palin’s Alternate Universe

10-06-08

Nicholas D. Kristof: Racism Without Racists

10-06-08

Kristof says that people aren't necessarily racist, but tend to favor their own kind without knowing it. I hope he's wrong. This article was based on information that he acquired from a poll at Stanford University. It seems to me that the good news would be that a person who doesn't know he or she is a bit racist doesn't have to lie to pollsters about it right? So that 'nonracism' should be already factored in, and in fact some of Kristof's words seem to indicate that to be true.

Maureen Dowd: Sarah’s Pompom Palaver

10-06-08

Excerpt: She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.” Poppy Bush dropped personal pronouns and launched straight into verbs because he was minding his mother’s admonition against “the big I.” Palin, by contrast, uses a heck of a lot of language to praise herself as a fresh face with new ideas who has “joined this team that is a team of mavericks.” True mavericks don’t brand themselves.

Frank Rich: Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain

10-06-08

Would the Republican Right convince a John McCain to step aside for the testosterone flush Sarah Palin for the good of the part (er) country? Frank Rich has succeeded in frightening me again. Unfortunately Rich usually does know what he's writing about. Read it and see if you don't feel in your gut that the scenario is possible.

NYT: Dick Cheney, Role Model

10-05-08

Sarah Palin really really likes the kind of power Dick Cheney has. Thinks it's constitutional.

Lew Rockwell -- Eric Margolis: Iraq: They Make It a Desert and Call It Peace

10-05-08

Excerpt: Those Wall Street financial alchemists who turned garbage into gold must have helped John McCain prepare for his debate with Barack Obama last Friday. Senator McCain’s insistent claims that the US is winning the war in Iraq thanks to his "surge" strategy are the military-political equivalent of the junk securities that Wall Street’s shady financiers have been selling around the globe.

McClatchy: Since 2001 Big Players in Financial Crisis Paid Out $64m to Washington Politicians and Parties. Received Lax Supervision in Return

10-05-08

Oh yeah, you could see whenever you checked donations for any candidate, some of the top donors would be from and/or Merrill Lynch nearly 100% of the time and the rest of the top 8 banks would usually be some where in the top 20.

The Cagle Post -- Froma Harrop: Law For Poor Didn't Cause Meltdown

10-05-08

Excrpt: Accomplished Googlers can probably find the original talking points off which dozens of conservatives made essentially the same case: The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the financial crisis. For example, a Wall Street Journal editorial lumped CRA together with far more plausible causes of the meltdown. This liberal-inspired law, it complained, "compels banks to make loans to poor borrowers who often cannot repay them." In fact, the CRA had about zero to do with today's problems. Its accusers are "know-nothings," Aaron Pressman writes on BusinessWeek.com. He says the law "was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began."

Cartoon: There You Go Again, Joe. Lookin' Back 'Stead of Forward

10-05-08

Ms. Palin rightly dismisses looking back since the Bush/Cheney administration looks a bit too much like a prelude to a McCain/Palin administration.

Cartoon -- Oliphant: Wall Street and Congress and Their Traveling Act

10-04-08

Don't Mess With Oliphant. There are toonists, there are good toonists, and then there's Oliphant. I even have to admit he's good when I don't agree with him.

Centerface: Exploring The Bailout Bill From An Ignoramus' Perspective

10-04-08

Pretty good explanation gets goings right after the exposition on the New Jersey Insurance plan bailout (which may be necessar for some.

Pennlive.com: Pennsylvania Statehouse: Obama widens Pa. lead

10-03-08

Excerpt: Obama made big gains after his first debate with McCain, according to the new Quinnipiac University poll. In a survey after the debate, Obama leads McCain, 54 percent to 39 percent. He led McCain 49 percent to 43 percent in a survey before the debate. "Obama clearly won the debate, voters say," said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Polls indicate that voters believe Obama would be the best candidate to handle economic issues. The post-debate survey included 832 likely voters from Sept. 27-29. The pre-debate poll surveyed 1,138 likely voters from Sept. 22-26. Both polls had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

Nicholas Kristoff: Save the Fat Cats

10-02-08

He has a compelling case. I've been loathed to link and cite all the pro bailout stuff that is flooding the news papers, since they get so much of their advertising from banks and expensive property developers. But Kristoff has a good argument here.

LA Times: McCain opposes regulation -- until he supports it

10-02-08

Excerpt: ...these two sides of McCain make it hard to discern how the politician who boasts of delivering "straight talk" would govern from the Oval Office. It is unclear if a McCain administration would be led by the small-government crusader who claims President Reagan as his touchstone, or the energetic regulator who once advocated a new federal agency to license professional prizefighters.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Impulsive, Impetuous, Impatient

09-30-08

Excerpt: Although he is frantically trying to distance himself from President Bush, Mr. McCain, by his own accounting, would be more Bushian in foreign policy than even Mr. Bush is now. While Mr. Bush has been forced to accept more sensible policies in his second term, Mr. McCain has become steadily more of a neocon in the cowboy role that Mr. Bush played in his first term, prone to solving problems with stealth bombers rather than United Nations resolutions.

Bob Herbert: When Madmen Reign

09-30-08

Steve Lopez: In Alaska, community organizers have real responsibilities

09-30-08

Excerpt: "[Community Organizer]Bonny changed the way Anchorage thinks and plays in such a positive way," a city official said when Sosa died in August at age 50, just a few days after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Only a few weeks after her death, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, ridiculed Sen. Barack Obama for his days as a community organizer. She and other GOP operatives belittled the very idea of such work...

LA Times: Olmert says Israel must withdraw from West Bank for peace

09-30-08

Personally, I'm beginning to like lame duck leaders. They tend to become more reasonable. Excerpt: Israel will have to give up "almost all" of the West Bank areas it occupies and accept the division of Jerusalem in order to take advantage of a rapidly closing window of opportunity for peace with the Arabs, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published Monday.

Paul Krugman: The 3 A.M. Call

09-30-08

Excerpt: Then there’s the frightening Mr. McCain — more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago. We’ve known for a long time, of course, that Mr. McCain doesn’t know much about economics — he’s said so himself, although he’s also denied having said it. That wouldn’t matter too much if he had good taste in advisers — but he doesn’t.

LA Times -- James Rainey: Some on the right are joining a chorus of criticism over Sarah Palin

09-29-08

Excerpt: [George] Will mocked the Republican standard-bearer as a veritable Queen of Hearts (a la "Alice in Wonderland") for demanding the head of Christopher Cox, a former Republican congressman who is chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist argued that such impulsiveness sows doubts about McCain's ability to apply "calm reflection and clear principles" to important decisions. He ended his broadside by all but declaring McCain unfit for the Oval Office.

United Technologies Corp Makes a Big Bid for Diebold

« H E » Elections :: Nation :: email

posted 03-02-08

Bloomberg reports in "United Technologies Offers $2.63 Billion for Diebold (Update2) ":

United Technologies Corp., the maker of Otis elevators and Chubb security systems, said today it offered to buy Diebold Inc. for $2.63 billion, taking its bid public after the automated-teller machine maker's board declined to discuss a combination for two years.

United Technologies is offering $40 a share, a 66 percent premium to Diebold's $24.12 price on Feb. 29, the company said in a statement. The Diebold board last refused to discuss a buyout on Feb. 21, letters from United Technologies show.

United Technologies may boost Diebold's performance by targeting commercial building customers by installing equipment and selling service contracts like it does for Otis, said James Geisler, vice president of finance at the company. Margins would widen using United Technologies' productivity program and more efficient sales to markets such as China and India, he said.

The company says this deal would be very good for Diebold shareholders.

The NY Times article "United Technologies Makes Bid for Diebold " makes a good case for why Diebold would be very very good for UTC as well as vice versa:

In Diebold, United Technologies sees a chance to expand its electronic security business with one of the field’s largest players. Last year, United Technologies bought Initial Electronic Security Systems for about $1.2 billion.

“This transaction creates significant and immediate value for Diebold shareholders with no operational risk, while creating long-term value for U.T.C. shareholders,” George David, United Technologies’ chairman and chief executive, said in a statement Sunday.

The Times reports that Diebold has had inquiries by the SEC and the Justice Department over "the way it recognized certain kinds of revenue".

Checking the board of UTC we see that the most prominent names, politically, balance each other:

Former EPA head for the Bush administration Christine Todd Whitman contrasts with Jamie Gorelick and the rest of the board are mostly the usual suspects, you know CEOs of other companies. Richard Myers, former chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff is the only other name to stand out on the board for me.

Whoa. What is that I smell? Is that fresh air?

tags: diebold voting machines

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