In honor of Jesse Helms passing away, my father published the following letter in the local paper down south, The Palm Beach Post.  I loved it, and apparently he's been asked to speak at some convention after a liberal group came upon it, so I thought I'd toss it up for your enjoyment:

Helms' disservices to U.S. outnumber his services

Palm Beach Post Letters to the Editor

Friday, July 18, 2008

The column by Republican operative Marc Thiessen ("The Jesse Helms to remember," July 9, Opinion), extolling the virtues of former Sen. Jesse Helms, should not go without comment.

Sen. Helms was, after all, the archetypal Republican politician of his era. And few, if any, politicians did more than Sen. Helms to obstruct America's progress on a host of important issues ranging from race relations to national security.

Jesse Helms was, first and foremost, a vicious race-baiter who used hateful speech to demonize black Americans in order to further his political career. His television ad showing the hand of a white man crumpling a job rejection letter while an announcer intoned, "You needed that job but they had to give it to a minority," was a masterpiece of racist propaganda.

Sen. Helms also was an enthusiastic supporter of the apartheid government of South Africa, and he opposed every significant civil rights bill that passed through the Senate during his tenure. He went so far as to denounce the 1964 Civil Rights Act as "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress." And his bigotry was not limited to race alone. Sen. Helms referred to homosexuals as "weak, morally sick wretches" and opposed all early efforts to address the AIDS epidemic, claiming that "There is not one case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."

Despite being fined and reprimanded by the Federal Election Commission for illegal campaign contributions, Sen. Helms' fund-raising efforts helped bankroll the rise of religious fundamentalism in American politics and facilitated its takeover of the modern Republican Party. Sen. Helms consistently opposed foreign aid except when it came to financing right-wing death squads in Latin America, whom he supported unequivocally. He once referred to Salvadoran terrorist Roberto D'Aubuisson as "a free-enterprise man and deeply religious."

Sen. Helms was also an infamous slumlord whom Raleigh building inspectors repeatedly summoned to remedy the deplorable conditions in his rental units. No man is wholly good or wholly bad. But when legitimate historians (rather than partisan hacks like Marc Thiessen) evaluate the effects of Jesse Helms on America and the American political landscape, they undoubtedly will conclude that the negative far outweighs the positive. Goodbye, Jesse Helms. And good riddance.

JOHN ANDREW JONES

Palm Beach Gardens

Several months ago, I was left unsurprised by the reaction in the press and among others in the DC chattering class when Barack Obama had the audacity to suggest that talking with the leaders of countries "we" (whoever that is) don't like might prove to not be the worst idea in human history, rather than (say) randomly attacking countries which have not attacked us, as the Very Serious People^TM advocated in Iraq.  The press and other candidates pounced, calling it "naive" and "irresponsible".  Now a "shocker" today from ABC News: Jimmy Carter's visit with Hamas has proved to not be the exercise in freedom-hating we've been led to believe it was stateside:

Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas -- the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel -- is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to "live as a neighbor next door in peace."

But Carter warned that there would not be peace if Israel and the U.S. continue to shut out Hamas and its main backer, Syria.

The brief article goes on to quote Carter as saying Hamas would be willing to accept a Palestinian state based upon the 1967 corders if it were accepted by the Palestinian people, capped by Hamas accepting Israel's right to exist peacefully as Palestine's neighbor.

Now it's undoubtedly the case that this will change nothing, since we're ruled by idiots.  The debate will obviously center on whether Jimmy Carter merely hates America more than Jeremiah Wright, or more than Louis Farrakhan.  But I just thought I'd toss it out there.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=4692873

Update: Exit polls show Clinton win. Clinton up 50-48.

Update #2: NBC News calls it for Clinton. Scores as of now:

(1) Clinton - 50.18%

(2) Obama - 45.16%

(3) Edwards - 4.39%

South Carolina GOP later.

Update #2: BlackBoxVoting

We are finding in New Hampshire: the best of the best in MOST situations, but considerable naivete and in some areas, and an alarming and wilfull negligence.

Among the "best of the best" of New Hampshire situations:

(1) Beautiful, community oriented hand counted paper ballots in more than one hundred jurisdictions.

(2) Very democratic and participatory township structure of government, combined with very high level of representation of local areas in the state legislature

(3) Amazing level of responsiveness of public officials. Secretary of State Bill Gardner, for example, answers questions personally and tirelessly from just about everyone. Many, many high level officials perfectly willing to talk with and answer all questions from the public.

(4) Beautiful, participatory 100% hand counted recounts.

(5) Very good public records laws. If they have it in their possession, they let you see it THAT DAY. Along those lines, Paddy Shaffer did a hand written records request today which elicited some very good information. The dream team here is in the process of editing another request as I write this.

On the almost schizophrenically BAD side:

(1) A reliance on a sole source private contractor that is fully idiotic in nature. Not particularly bothered that the company has private chain of custody during critical points, no policy or even apparent concern with having convicted felons involved in the voting system.

(2) Use of a system with known defects without even taking any mitigation steps

(3) NO REQUIREMENT to even save the memory cards. The explanation is that they get a disk with the "program" on it. VotersUnite attorney Jon Bonifaz questioned the assistant attorney general on this closely today, because federal law requires records retention of 22 months on electronic media. New Hampshire has a truly idiotic policy of allowing the memory cards to be kept, or not, with a chain of custody, or not, shipping back to LHS, or not, and it's perfectly okay with New Hampshire if the memory cards are erased altogether. They profess to believe that they are okay, because the DoJ allows them to, if they just have LHS ship them a disk containing the purported program -- BEFORE the election, when there aren't even any votes registered on the card. No one could even tell us if this is the memory card program, or the GEMS database file, or the optical scan chip. They seem to have no idea what they are doing with this and I would call this wilfull ignorance, not naivete.

(4) Lack of documentation and lack of diligence on keeping documentation or written procedures in key areas

(5) Ballot chain of custody procedures with major holes and a few very creepy areas that will be the subject of a future article.

The upshot will be that New Hampshire could be the role model for the nation, but not until they purge themselves of a limited number of very significant problems.

The problem with chain of custody: You can have a strong, beautiful, stainless steel chain but if one link is broken, the rest doesn't matter.

Update: Word from Bev Harris at BBV is that the chain of custody on the ballots has apparently been privatized. Meaning, the recount is very likely to produce the same result, even if fraud has taken place. Words fail me....

Note: Mig and I haven't yet completed our model and analysis, but others are putting studies out.

The effect is bigger than initially thought.  More regression analysis is pouring out on the New Hampshire primary, and it's not pretty.  While newly-arrived ET'er Continuation initially found Diebold voting machines lending Hillary Clinton about five points of her over 39% share last Tuesday, new analysis by Chris Chatham of Developing Intelligence and Black Box Voting shows a pretty consistent 5.2 increase to Clinton, and 4.2% drop for Obama, attributable to the AccuVote counting method:

So I got a copy of the vote counts, and thanks to Brian London at BlackBoxVoting, the demographic information from each town (most notably, the % holding bachelor's degrees, the median household income, and the total town population). Now, Mark at BlackBoxVoting has provided estimates of the mileage for each district, allowing for the calculation of population density.

To my complete (and continuing) amazement, the "diebold effect" on Hillary's votes remains after controlling for any and all of those demographic variables, with a p-value of <.001: that is, there are less than 1:1000 odds for this difference occurring through chance alone, and that's after adjusting for variability in Hillary's votes due to education, income, total population, and population density.

An economics professor at Dartmouth finds similar results.

Even controlling for "urban-ness," median income, education, and other demographic and socioeconomic factors, the Diebold Effect remains.  And it remains strong enough to, not only swing the election back to Obama, but provide a margin of victory to Obama perfectly in line with the combination of polling data and the tight race among late-breakers that Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post noted in the exit polls on MSNBC.

That is to say, it is perfectly conceivable -- perhaps even likely -- that female voters helped to boost Clinton.  That is consistent comparing pre-primary polling and the raw exit poll data.  But it is also true that the evidence is mounting against those machines.

Stay tuned. I'll use this diary in the coming days to add new findings and add amendments to what is here.

Update #2: Romney Wins Michigan Update #2 As of 3.03PM this afternoon, Kucinich has paid the necessary fee to begin the recount tomorrow morning at 9.30AM at the state Archives and Records Management Building at 71 S Fruit Street, Concord, NH. (So, know that we have had a lot of people flooding the website on the possible New Hampshire fraud, if anybody near Concord is reading, you can help by monitoring!) So, if fraud occurred, let's hope the ballots were secure and tracks were not covered. Now what part of "Don't vote for Ron Paul" do the filthy proles not understand?

This comes from a guy who was first to vote in his precinct today:

Voter #1 Genoa Township, Michigan Precinct 3. Voting problems?

Posted January 15th, 2008

First observation...
-Diebold

I was the first voter, I circled in Ron Paul and put my ballot into the machine. Spit it right back out and said INVALID BALLOT.

Second guy gives it a shot. INVALID BALLOT.

I begin argueing with the lady running the precinct about computer voting and people voting. This lady actually says in a room full of people that Computers are better at counting ballots than people, cause people make mistakes. who makes computers?

So to finish it up, she calls the township. she says I can keep my ballot in a secret compartment and they will put it through later once its fixed.

So they call her back. She gets off the phone. She says the manufacturer says there is a problem with a memory card. Someone from the manufacturer will be there with a new memory card soon.

Holy hell, it doesn't help that I just watched a damn documentary about DIEBOLD and MEMORY CARDS.

I immediately left and drive to the township office to voice my complaints.

This is fucking bullshit, and it needs to stop right now.  More reason to not trust a God-damned thing these machines tell us.

Something very strange is going on in American politics at the moment.

A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was riding high on a twenty-point lead over Barack Obama and John Edwards.  Edwards has stagnated, as I feared he would.  But Obama has jumped by about ten points in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.  He attracted 20,000 supporters at a rally in Austin, Texas, a week or two ago -- 20,000, nearly two years before the election.  I've been hunting around Wikipedia and many sites trying to find the last example of a candidate accomplishing this.  Not even Dean was playing to crowds that big.

(Source: The Polling Report)

The Republican side is looking even more bizarre.  Many people, myself among them, thought Rudy Mussolini's candidacy to be something of a joke.  In the same poll, he has gone from running roughly equal to St. McCain to now besting The Last Honest Man^TM by over twenty points.  Rudy, the pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate, with enough marital baggage to sink at least half of Lower Manhattan, looks like he may well be on his way to not only competing, but winning the nomination of the Republican Party.

Did I wake up on another planet?

Atrios linked to one of his old posts from back duringa trip to Iowa in 2005:

The Crazy Guy At The Bar

Certainly not actually crazy. Honor, fighting for country, paying the price so freedom is free. On leave. From where? Hawaii, is the first response. From 14 months in Iraq is the real one. There with brother, friends, his second day being legally allowed to drink. Honor, love of country, willing to die. Honor. Fighting. 25 kills, officially. Captured. Tortured. Friend cruises by. Have a beer, tag some pussy. Not tears, but almost tears. Says, in fact, almost in tears. No one understands. Brothers. Fight for country. Honor. No one understands. Fighting for country. 25 kills. Women. Children. Children carrying ammunition. No one understands. Fighting for country. A bit drunk. A lot drunk. On leave, just one week. Where is brother, friends? Women. Children. Freedom isn't free. 21 just yesterday. Was once religious, no longer believe. God wouldn't allow such pain. The war is against religion, must stop it to defend the country. Almost in tears. Knee blown out. Chest. Scar. Fighting for brothers. Fighting with brothers. No one understands. honor. repeat. honor. Fighting for country. Captured. Razor. No air support when needed. Politics. Will fight for country. Children. Killed. Honor. Freedom. Fighting for country. No one understands. 14 months. Honor. Brothers. Dude, have a beer. Tag some pussy. Children. Backpacks. Ammunition. Fought for country, for freedom. Will end up in hell.

how many like him?

Just thought I'd toss it up in honor of Tony Blair apparently getting religion on Iraq tonight.

A day late and a dollar short, Prime Minister.

Not sure why I'm using movie titles for diaries lately....

At the request of my dear friend (and fellow smokers' advocate), Jerome, a diary on why I'm leaving Europe.

It's heart-breaking, to be sure.  I had high hopes -- perhaps too high -- of falling in love with England, and never wanting to leave.  But it is nonetheless the case that, as I mentioned in tonight's Open Thread, I simply miss being in America.  That is not to take away anything from Europe.  Quite the contrary, living here has been wonderful.  And, along the way, in addition to having the privilege of meeting Miguel, Barbara and (ET's) Helen, I had the privilege of meeting two people -- Helen Oginsky and Richard Smith (thus completing the shout out, as the blackfolk say) -- who are, without question, two of the greatest one could hope for.

But, also as I said, while I deeply regret all of the things I didn't do and didn't say, it's time to move on.  I'm going to (hopefully) be starting a business that will provide me with a ton of material to write on -- not about the business, in particular, but about a few concepts I've come to recognize over the last four years, as we've watched firsthand the revolution that has taken place in our communications, cultures and politics.  (I wouldn't be a proper cheerleader if I didn't plug Joe Trippi's book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet & the Overthrow of Everything, here.)  It's exciting stuff, especially as an economist.  And, as any economist can tell you, we're not the most excitable group on Earth.  And I'm going to be moving to Atlanta to work in the meantime.

And, with all that said, adieu Europa.

Yesterday Mark Thoma's Economist's Voice included a diary on NHS doctors and trusts debating whether to treat smokers -- a question that I find absolutely horrifying, not because I'm a smoker, but because of the absolutely disgusting degree to which smokers have become targets in this day and age.  The argument is fairly straightforward: Smoking increases costs.  Smokers are more likely to suffer complications, such as failure of tissue to heal quickly and infection.  Thus, argue proponents, finite resources should be concentrated on those who are least likely to suffer such complications.

It is, as one of the opponents points out, the accepted norm to preach discrimination against smokers in western societies.  Smokers in Nottingham fork over £5.40 for a twenty-pack of Marlboros -- fully three times the cost of the same pack in Atlanta.  (And, yes, you can pay less if you want to smoke the stale European garbage, but even that will run you £4.25.)  In San Francisco, last I heard, smokers were banned from lighting up in the streets.  Across America and Europe, smoking is being banned from bars and restaurants.  And now, finally, we have discrimination in the world of medicine.

But, as is always the case, no such discrimination exists against (say) the morbidly obese, who enjoy greater influence due to their larger numbers -- and who, I'll bet, cost society far more than smokers could ever dream.  Presumably these are not life or death surgeries, but, if we are to begin discriminating based upon cost considerations, then socialized medicine in Britain has rendered itself no more a moral beacon than its privatized counterpart in America.  And it is made worse by the fact that smokers in Britain are already paying taxes for the NHS, in addition to the insane "sin taxes" they pay at the supermarket.  It is, in other words, organized theft.

So Saddam was hanged about an hour and a half ago.  Junior got his man.  Let it be known, Oh Cat-Eyed World: Thou shalt not try to kill the head of the House of Bush.

Can we get the fuck out of that hellhole now?  I'm so God-damned sick of this....

Wrote this in a response to an old friend and (brief) bandmate of mine, Jessica, who accuses our new, super-hot Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi of wanting to "cut-and-run" from Iraq, tax and spend, not enforce our immigration laws, and "usher in a return to feminist milestones" (which is, I guess, a bad thing in the Wingnut-o-sphere).  You're, obviously meant to sing the title of this diary to the tune of Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride"....

Poor Jessica.  Her political party was, as we all know, slaughtered seventeen days ago.  (Winds of history and all that.)  And now she feels the need to bash Speaker-elect Pelosi.  Time for another round of Drew Debunks Republican Horseshit, I suppose.

One would think that after five years of the press drooling over that incomptent little shit in the White House, Republican voters would get the hint that the "liberal media" their leaders out in Wingnuttia always talk about is nothing more than a bogeyman.  Totalitarians always need bogeymen, whether they be Stalinist-era Communist Party members in the Soviet Union talking of infiltration by capitalist sympathizers.  Or National Socialists -- better known, of course, as Nazis -- blaming Germany's WWI loss on liberals and Jews.  Or Mao's disastrous fight against "counterrevolutionaries" back in the mid-20th Century.

The lot of us are well aware of the all-out war going on in European politics over the alleged inflexible labor market that -- again, allegedly -- plagues the Continent.  In the editorials of The Wall Street Journal and, albeit to a far lesser extent, The Financial Times, we have the view that Europe must radically restructure its economy, slashing welfare and taking away job security.  On the Left we have the view that this is merely a play by big business and the wealthy, in an age of economic uncertainty (not helped by recent experience in the United States), to shift a larger share of national income into their pocketbooks.  What is frustrating to me, both as an economist and as an American liberal, is the view which, as I said in the Breakfast thread, states that flexibility and security are mutually exclusive in this case.

I call bullshit.

The truth is that both flexibility and security have their strong and weak points -- another of many examples of the world not being not so easily painted in black and white.  But, as anyone who has ever spent more than five minutes in a logic course can tell you, it does not follow that taking one necessitates giving up the other.  (Not only does it not follow, it doesn't even hang out with....)  They are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, depending, of course, on what we mean when we use each word, they are (or should be) complements.  As everyone who has ever read my diaries on economics knows, I am a rather militant Keynesian -- a follower of a set of theories on business cycle management that has been, for the last seventy years, the pillar on which my argument rests.  Here's why.

So Atrios has taken to naming periods of time after politicians' and pundits' opinions of how much longer we have to get it right in Iraq.  For example:

1 Thomas Friedman ("a Friedman") = 6 months,
1 John McCain = 7 months (or approx. 1.17 Friedmans),
and so on.

My classmate, Helen, has suggested that we must succeed in 5 years, 163 days, 17 hours, and 28.5 minutes, or pull out.  She was rather nasty with me on the subject when we discussed it on poker night, so I thought, being the ass that I am, I would write this.  Her view works out to be approximately 10.9 Friedmans, at a rough guess (because I'm too fucking lazy to do the math).

I thus nominate her to the Blogger Time-Unit List:

1 Helen = 10.9 Friedmans

That is all.  Take the poll.

Note: I actually, thanks to Stormy's failure to correct me in time, wrote that the math worked out to 10.4 Friedmans initially. So, now that I've shown myself to be completely incapable of doing the basic mathematics necessary for my field, I shall hereby drop out of economics and begin my career as a garbage collector. Workers of the world, unite, and all that....

Last month The Economist published a story on the minimum wage in the UK, which, on October 1st, reached £5.35 per hour, or, at the time, $10.08.  (The dollar figure has probably risen since then, given sterling's small gains since the Bank raised rates to 5% last week, as well as the fact that the UK is now nearly doubling America on GDP growth, but I haven't checked the exchange rates in a few days.)  As an American, this is, of course, a stunning figure to me, even more so given Britain's moderate, albeit rising, unemployment rate.

The staff at the magazine are now worried about the potential impact of the floor, which has risen 49% since 1999, next to average wage rises of 32%.  The recent increase marked a 6% jump, compared with the still-quite-respectable 4.4% growth in average wages.  So the question is obvious: Should we be worried?

For bruno-ken and Miguel....

There are really only four major figures worth speaking of in my field: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman.  The first three are long gone -- the youngest of them having died in 1946.  Three days ago, Friedman finally passed, and, as I said in yesterday's open thread, with his death the era of giants in economics comes to a close.  Most people are familiar with his libertarian political views, but I thought I'd throw a diary together on his contributions to economic theory.

Friedman was, of course, the founder and leader of the Chicago School of thought, perhaps better known as Monetarism.  More than anyone, Friedman resurrected the idea of real variables -- as opposed to nominal variables -- only changing permanently because of changes in other real variables, thus helping to lay the foundation for modern Neoclassicalist economic thought.  Perhaps his greatest achievement, in particular, came in the form of his brilliant dismantling of what is known as the Phillips Curve.  And that is where I will begin.

A summary and a few admittedly unoriginal thoughts....

Not to toot my own horn, -- and, yes, I was wrong about Missouri deciding the election (my bad) -- but, depending on the final result out of Virginia, did I call this, or what?  Last night, as dvx rightly pointed out, the Democrats smashed the Republicans into the ground, walking away with a margin of victory above 13%.  Even if the Senate ends in a split, which is not likely, this was an election that pundits will be referencing for years to come.

So what happened?  For the last four decades, starting with Barry Goldwater's failed presidential bid in '64, America has been going through an enormous realignment, as the once-solidly-Democratic South became solidly Republican, along with most of the rural areas of the US.  (Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? is required reading for some of the understanding.)  Traditionally economic liberals, -- or dare I use the dreaded "s"-word? -- many Americans who would naturally find themselves aligned with the Democrats on bread-and-butter issues found themselves supporting Republicans on the basis of, among other things, Roe v. Wade, homosexuality and the Civil Rights Act.  The appeal to Americans' libertarian tendencies in rhetoric, regardless of the truly corporatist nature of actual policies, also helped.

Promoted from the diaries. Also check out Captain Future's analysis. --poemless

It's been incredibly busy around here.  I still haven't put my damned futon together.  But I thought I'd "pop by" to give a quick update on the election.  We seem to have reached a stalemate -- little progress for either side -- in recent weeks.  But a few polls released in recent days suggest that the Dems may finally be seeing some gains in the Senate races as undecideds begin to break.  (Traditionally, the later a person decides on his/her candidate, the less likely he/she is to vote for the incumbent.  Kerry, for instance, took "late-breakers" overwhelmingly in 2004 -- about 65-70% of them, if I'm not mistaken, perhaps even more.)  Should see a lot of movement in the coming days as Americans make up their minds.

By Saturday, we should have a fairly strong idea of what will happen a week from today.

Again, the deciders in the Senate are Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia -- all of which currently show their respective Democrats with a statistically insignificant lead.  A Democratic internal released yesterday has Ford beating Corker, 48-43%.  Both the Democratic poll (43-38%) and a new Rasmussen poll (51-46%) show Webb beating Allen, and, before you say that the Democratic internal cannot be trusted, bear in mind that the Rasmussen one actually shows a result more favorable to Democrats, as Webb finally tops 50% in it.

The House looks like it will go Blue, with Dems seeing the possibility of picking up seats in places like Idaho.  Current projections at Electoral-Vote.com show Dems taking a majority of 226, while the MyDD.com projections have gains of 24 to 29 seats.  Charlie Cook, of the Cook Political Report, -- a must-read, by the way, if you're interested in American elections -- says that there still appears to be a Democratic wave headed for the states, with Dems gaining at least 20 seats and perhaps more than 35, depending on how high the numbers on turnout are for Independents.

Oh, and I'll make my predictions on Monday.

My father sent me this in an email this morning.  Thought you all would get a kick out of it.

(Jerome links to the original source, Bob Johnson over at dKos, in the comments.)

Miguel gets his Impeachment Majority.

Massive polling out today: Democrats have the magic 218 seats outside of the margin of error.  Forty-eight districts were polled, and the Dems are currently projected to pick up at least nineteen seats.  The current breakdown is 224 to 205 with these polls, which obviously exclude six seats rated as toss-ups.  Seven additional seats currently held by the GOP that are very competitive were not polled.

Another poll out today shows that voters in the Deep South have turned against the war.  Dixie now matches the national figures.  Further, Gallup has discovered that "Frequent Churchgoers" are now evenly split between the Dems and Reps -- more evidence of what may be an enormous collapse finally arriving in the once-seemingly-indestructible Republican base.

Update: Claire McCaskill is now up, 51-42%, in Missouri. If the Dems hold Tennessee, the Senate is going to flip.

Quickly: Helen commented a while back that it might be preferable to simply meet at the Beer Festival.  I'm fine with this, but if anybody is afraid of running into trouble getting around, please let me know.  Obviously, I'll be more than happy, as I said, to meet you at the train station.

Anything else?