Haven’t read all the comments here, but the comments at Jonathan Turley’s piece on Sarah Bailin’ compose a hilarious cavalcade of lamest songs ever. Muskrat Love and Bobby goldsboro’s “honey” are the frontrunners.

have a great day.

BTW, the rabbis used the same type of “fundraisers” ( via Yeshiva school for example) that Jack Abrmoff used. Found it interesting that reports said the case was 10 years old. So much of the criminal practices were identical to Abramoff criminal practices.

Holy shit….
Using an epidemiology perspective, I wondered last week at EW’s whether there might be any connections between Abramoff and this event. Not to claim that there are, but the similar setups is mighty eye-brow raising, eh?

And he’s had some interesting, articulate guests – including Elliott Spitzer who probably has no reason to hold back from being very frank about what went wrong.

(I do wish he’d take a deep breath and slow down some times, but it’s a great show and he seems really interested in helping people better understand what has happened with the underlying economic factors: laws, regulatory problems, bank attitudes, etc.)

The article mentions recruitment of Arab Israelis.

The arrests made here in the US last week involved Sephardic rabbis. (Arab decent/ Syrian-Jewish rabbis)

This all seems quite odd. Would be interested in Juan Cole and Colonel Lang’s take on all of this.

The US role is curious.

I found this interesting. The timing was surprising since Lebanon has been on a huge Israeli spy sweep since May. One of the biggest sweeps happened (40 spies arrested) on the same day as the arrests in NJ and NY of the politicians and rabbis.

BTW, the rabbis used the same type of “fundraisers” ( via Yeshiva school for example) that Jack Abrmoff used. Found it interesting that reports said the case was 10 years old. So much of the criminal practices were identical to Abramoff criminal practices.

I do not recall, have we had him here at FDL as a guest?

“Look, there are not the votes for Democrats to do this just on our side of the aisle,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., the chairman of the budget committee.

Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat and a member of the fiscally conservative “Blue Dogs,” said he doubts the Democratic-controlled House could pass a proposal as it’s drafted now.

Anyone who can count realizes that the democrats have just enough votes to pass anything they want. That means that for every Democrat who breaks ranks we need to get a Republican to break ranks, or we’ll lose.

Now there are two possible responses to this situation. We can water down what we want to woo Republicans, or we can intimidate and punish Democrats who break ranks. Specifically, I suggest taking it to their electorates with both carrot and stick.

So far the strategy has been to appeal to their sense of civic responsibility. But now might be a good time to note that many of these Blue Dog’s states that are getting more than their share of returned revenue. Failure to get good healthcare might impair the nation’s sense of generosity toward those who blocked it.

Here are the data from the Tax Foundation: http://www.taxfoundation.org/f…..071009.pdf

New Mexico $2.03 1
Mississippi $2.02 2
Alaska $1.84 3
Louisiana $1.78 4
West Virginia $1.76 5
North Dakota $1.68 6
Alabama $1.66 7
South Dakota $1.53 8
Kentucky $1.51 9
Virginia $1.51 10
Montana $1.47 11
Hawaii $1.44 12
Maine $1.41 13
Arkansas $1.41 14
Oklahoma $1.36 15
South Carolina $1.35 16
Missouri $1.32 17
Maryland $1.30 18
Tennessee $1.27 19
Idaho $1.21 20
Arizona $1.19 21
Kansas $1.12 22
Wyoming $1.11 23
Iowa $1.10 24
Nebraska $1.10 25
Vermont $1.08 26
North Carolina $1.08 27
Pennsylvania $1.07 28
Utah $1.07 29
Indiana $1.05 30
Ohio $1.05 31
Georgia $1.01 32
Rhode Island $1.00 33
Florida $0.97 34
Texas $0.94 35
Oregon $0.93 36
Michigan $0.92 37
Washington $0.88 38
Wisconsin $0.86 39
Massachusetts $0.82 40
Colorado $0.81 41
New York $0.79 42
California $0.78 43
Delaware $0.77 44
Illinois $0.75 45
Minnesota $0.72 46
New Hampshire $0.71 47
Connecticut $0.69 48
Nevada $0.65 49
New Jersey $0.61 50
District of Columbia $5.55 na
Federal Spending in Each State Per Dollar of Federal Taxes
FY 2005
Source: Tax Foundation, Census Bureau

The original data are much better aligned.