James McMurtry:

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Thanks for the memories!
Tens of thousands of homeowners with home equity lines of credit are getting a rude surprise: They’ve been told by their lender that they can no longer take money out on their credit lines because sinking home prices have put them “upside down” on their mortgages.
Countrywide Financial Corp. sent letters to [...]

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That’s the last Hershey bar I’ll ever eat.

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On Bill Moyers Journal tonight:

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Eric Alterman on Edwards:
The Edwards campaign was a surreal experience that should inspire a doctoral dissertation or two. He was both the most progressive candidate on issues and the most electable on paper, and yet he did not get the support of most progressives or most professionals. This despite the fact that he actually ran [...]

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Great article in L.A. Weekly about Edwards.

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And it’s all we can expect until we have full public financing for elections:
Most of the thousands of lobbyists work across the city, in and around K Street. In the past decade, 18 lobbying firms, corporations and labor unions have purchased town houses or leased office space near the Capitol, joining more than a dozen [...]

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Over at TPM, a video retrospective on how John and Elizabeth Edwards took on the right-wing media and set the standard for the other candidates.

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Bill Clinton, kissing a dictator’s ass to broker a deal for a big contributor? I’ll wait to see what other parts of the story come out (considering this is the same NY Times who got Whitewater so wrong), but if it’s true, well, now we know what he learned hanging around with Bush Sr.

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Don’t know if this had anything to do with his show being cancelled, but it wouldn’t surprise me:

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This Kos diary made me cry, because that’s how I feel this morning:
John Edwards found his voice and his mission this time around, going for his own heartfelt vision. He gave me a little hope that maybe I could finally have a voice and a vote that counts. But I’m poor, like most of the [...]

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Posted at Democratic Underground:
I just hung up from a conference call with supporters of the Edwards campaign. Both John and Elizabeth spoke.
Some of my notes:
Elizabeth Edwards introduced John:
“…I felt in 2004 that we left the campaign without leaving a mark… not this time… a lot of the policies on the table are the result of [...]

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David Neiwert and Sara Robinson do such amazing work over at Orcinus, tracking and documenting the activities of dangerous right-wing hate groups.
But Dave really, really sucks at fundraising. He stuck out the tip jar but didn’t give it much of a rattle, so I thought I’d do a plug for him.
Run, don’t walk over [...]

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Went direct about two hours ago. It’s been retrograde since November - expect things that have been stuck to suddenly pick up speed.

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Reported in the Akhbar Alkhaleej newspaper today:
An Iraqi MP preferred to remain anonymous told the newspaper that highly confidential negotiations took place by representatives from American oil companies, offering $5 million to each MP who votes in favor of the Oil and Gas law.
The amount that could be paid to pass the votes do not [...]

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Not that I ever believed them anyway:
In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in “surreptitious” communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission’s 20-month investigation into the 9/11 [...]

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Ted Rall on how the media froze out a threat to corporate owners.

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Even shittier:
NEW YORK (AP) — Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services is considering slashing its rating on more than $500 billion of investments tied to bad mortgage loans, the ratings agency said Wednesday.
The massive downgrade would threaten a broad swath of the world’s finance industry, S&P said, ranging from Wall Street’s trading desks to regional banks [...]

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The Beatles’ last live performance:

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Short version: Big Oil has been screwing Indian tribes out of BILLIONS of dollars in leasing fees for drilling on Indian lands. The U.S. government was supposed to oversee the leases and return the money to the tribes, but it just wasn’t happening. Tom DeLay played keep-away with the accounting funds, because the GOP and [...]

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I’ll be posting tributes to John and Elizabeth Edwards as I find them. (Feel free to forward any you stumble across.)
We’ll start with this one.
And from the New Republic (just this once, I’ll link to them): “Why John Edwards Won.”

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Talk about locking the barn door after the Big Shitpile is out:
Troubles at U.S. bond insurers are forcing industry regulators to rethink a decade-old legal loophole that allowed insurers to venture into the obscure world of derivatives.
The housing downturn is threatening to cripple some bond insurers that wrote billions of dollars of guarantees in [...]

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Edwards pulling out.
UPDATE: I just watched the press conference. He said he has received assurances from both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that ending poverty will be a major focus of their campaigns - and since he didn’t throw his delegates to either candidate, I suspect he’ll use them later if necessary.
Edwards said Clinton and [...]

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I read the Washington Post so you don’t have to. Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter, writes:
Proposals such as No Child Left Behind, the AIDS and malaria initiatives, and the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare would simply not have come from a traditional conservative politician. They became the agenda of a Republican administration [...]

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Clear Channel put all their chips on a free-market Utopia, and the economy crashed as a result.
My heart bleeds.

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Just got a little bit bigger:
ZURICH — UBS AG, one of Europe’s worst-hit banks by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, Wednesday warned it will post a record loss for 2007 due to higher-than-expected write-downs linked to risky subprime-debt holdings.
The world’s largest wealth manager said it expects a full-year net loss of about 4.4 billion [...]

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It makes me so angry when I think of all the good the United States could do with that $1B a week we’re spending in Iraq:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It was lunchtime in one of Haiti’s worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate [...]

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Matt Taibbi on Hillary Clinton:
What people forget about Clinton is that she is basically a Republican at heart. She campaigned for Barry Goldwater once upon a time and even canvassed poor neighborhoods in Chicago looking for “vote fraud” by Democrats. She was president of the College Republicans at Wellesley. In 1968, at the height of [...]

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No matter who the nominee is, no matter how I feel about Democratic inaction, I have to weigh my vote in the moral balance against the makeup of this Supreme Court.
As this article points out, this SCOTUS has been markedly indifferent or even hostile to the rights of ordinary people. They’re much more interested in [...]

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We can lay this at the feet of Feinstein and Schumer, who gave this guy their blessing:
WASHINGTON — The government agency that enforces one of the principal laws aimed at keeping politics out of the civil service has accused the Justice Department of blocking its investigation into alleged politicizing of the department under former Attorney [...]

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