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Arianna: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity
of Governing

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 03 November 2009 12:31:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

Arianna Huffington:

I often found myself wondering what Candidate Obama would think of President Obama. Would he look at what the White House is doing and say, "that's what I and my supporters worked so hard for?"

How did the candidate who got into the race because he'd decided that "the core leadership had turned rotten" and that "the people were getting hosed" become the president who has decided that the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow?

How did the candidate who told a stadium of supporters in Denver that "the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result" become the president who has surrounded himself with the same old players trying the same old politics, expecting a different result?

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/O4GkZa3h69o/arianna-audacity-of-win
ning-vs-timidity.html

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Obama Stays Away from Maine

post from Taylor Marsh on 03 November 2009 12:30:32 PM. © Taylor Marsh

The whole country is watching Maine. Except Obama for America, at least not in the way that matters. From John Aravosis: Joe wrote last night about how the DNC’s “Organizing for America” organization (formerly known as “Obama for[...]

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http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/11/03/obama-stays-away-from-maine/

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One Year Ago, One Year From Now

post from Open Left - Front Page on 03 November 2009 12:30:00 PM. © Open Left - Front Page

This is the one year anniversary of Barack Obama's historic and incredibly exciting election as[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/yflkxwckhVc/one-year-ago-one
-year-from-now

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2009 Elections Preview: CA-10

post from FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right on 03 November 2009 12:30:00 PM. © FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right

California 10th Congressional District -- Special Election to replace Ellen Tauscher.

The Candidates: California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, Democrat
David Harmer, Republican
Various minor party candidates

The Polling: The only poll of the race, from SurveyUSA, shows Garamendi with a 50-40 lead.

Analysis: The ballyhooed race in New York's 23rd Congressional District is not the only special election today; voters will also go to the polls to select a successor to Ellen Tauscher in California's 10th Congressional District in Northern California's inland East Bay. Actually, they've already been going to the polls, or at least to their driveways, since a majority of the voters in the district are expected to use California's vote-by-mail option.

On paper, this race ought not to be close. Against Republican opponents in 2004, 2006 and 2008, Tauscher was re-elected with margins ranging from 65.2 to 66.5 percent of the ballots. In the special "jungle" primary in September, five Democratic candidates earned a collective 64.4 percent of the vote (closely matching Tauscher's historical figure), with Garamendi taking the fairly narrow plurality at 25.7 percent. The district went for Barack Obama nearly 2:1 last November. Garamendi, being the state's Lieutenant Governor, is quite well known, and had previously been considering a gubernatorial bid.

Still, the Republicans have made it a somewhat competitive campaign, with Harmer collecting a respectable $670,000 toward the race, not that far behind Garamendi's $942,000. The SurveyUSA poll shows them within 10 points. The district did vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger by an 18-point margin in 2006. And Garamendi has one major liability: he is associated with S-a-c-r-a-m-e-n-t-o, that horrible place where budgets and incumbents go to die. Could Harmer actually pull off the upset?

It's not very likely. The most immediate problem is that 51 percent of the district has already voted, according to SurveyUSA, with those votes going to Garamendi by 10 points. Now, to be clear, these aren't "hard" numbers -- this is still just a poll, with all the usual inexactitudes owing to sampling error and the like. But the fact that voting is easy in California because of mail balloting out to hedge against the possibility of hugely lopsided turnout in this heavily Democratic district. Meanwhile, independents who are dissatisfied with Garamendi will have the option of voting for the Peace and Freedom or Green Party candidates, which may hold down Garamendi's margin but also take potential votes off the table from Harmer.

A final point: I'm not a huge fan of this inference-by-absence stuff, but the fact that the NRCC is not putting much effort into the race suggests that they don't think it's winnable. If Harmer had some internal polling showing himself within striking distance, don't you think they'd have thrown a few hundred thousand in?

The Odds: I might take about a 15-1 flier on Harmer -- and if Republicans do win here, or perhaps even pull close enough that the outcome will be uncertain for several days as California finishes counting mail ballots, they'll really have something to crow about. With that said, I suspect that Garamendi will more likely than not win by larger than the 10-point margin that SurveyUSA projects. By the way, this race is not without upside to the Democrats, as Garamendi should be significantly more liberal than Tauscher, who is one of the more conservative Democrats relative to her district and has not always been a reliable vote for her party on issues like national security.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/2009-elections-preview-ca-10.html

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Prominent And Politically Connected Florida
Attorney Accused In $100M Fraud Scheme

post from TPMMuckraker on 03 November 2009 12:29:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

In a case already being compared to the Bernie Madoff affair, a lawsuit filed Monday in Broward County accuses south Florida "super attorney" Scott Rothstein of bilking investors in a scheme run out of the powerful firm Rothstein, Rosenfeldt and Adler, which now says it can't make payroll.

An attorney for one investor told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the amount of money missing could be over $100 million, though it's not clear where it went.

Rothstein and his wife are jet-setters who live in a 6-plus million dollar Fort Lauderdale home and were known for driving a veritable fleet of expensive sports cars and showering their favorite charities with big donations. A flamboyant character who was once pictured on billboards with Miami Dolphins great Dan Marino, Rothstein grew up in a lower-middle class family in the Bronx. He's now out of town and possibly out of the country -- no one knows where exactly -- and the Feds have reportedly shown up at his law firm offices.

He has not been charged with a crime.

In keeping with his luxury lifestyle, Rothstein was a generous contributor to politicians of both parties, especially Republicans. He gave $200,000 to the state Democratic party in the past three years and $525,000 to the state Republican party, the Sun Sentinel reports. And Rothstein is a personal friend of Governor -- and US Senate candidate -- Charlie Crist, who reportedly attended the attorney's wedding at the Versace mansion.

Referring to a "a seismic blast" that devastated the firm and citing assertions by investors, an attorney for the firm said in a filing in Broward circuit court that Rothstein "allegedly orchestrated a substantial misappropriation of funds from investor trust accounts."

While all of the specifics of the the alleged fraud are not known, CBS 4 reports it may have involved both taking from client trust funds and setting up a side company to sell investments in structured settlements. Those are arrangements in which payments are made over time rather than all at once, reaping tax benefits for the payee and allowing the payer to avoid having to come up with the lump sum upfront.

At the point a settlement was agreed to, Rothstein's side business would woo investors with promises of eye-popping payoffs. Investors would pay a fraction of the lump sum, and would be promised a huge return on their investment -- a minimum of 20% guaranteed -- in between 3 months and a year, according to the Sun Sentinel.

The problem? Some of the settlements Rothstein sold didn't actually exist, according to the lawsuit.

And that's not at all. Confidential offerings obtained by the Sun Sentinel show that Rothstein specialized in a particular type of sordid case:

Those documents say that Rothstein's firm sought out sexual discrimination and whistle-blower cases and used former cops to dig up incriminating evidence.
Sakowitz, the potential investor, said Rothstein boasted of having sophisticated eavesdropping equipment and that former cops would sift through potential defendants' garbage.
With compromising evidence in hand, the firm urged the targets of the claims to pay a settlement without a public lawsuit.

The accused parties in the cases would naturally want such charges kept under wraps, so they had an incentive to settle without any lawsuits or dealings in court.

Now, the people who invested in those settlements are in a state of panic. CBS 4 reports on the dramatic scene outside the courtroom Monday, where lawyers for creditors and investors "packed the hallway":

Shortly after the hearing got started, a man pleaded with sheriff's deputies to let him enter the packed courtroom, saying he had rented a private jet to fly down from New York and that he was afraid Rothstein had stolen millions from him.

Rothstein's partners at the firm are in a state of shock. Co-founder Stuart Rosenfeldt told the Sun Sentinel: "The only reason that I am not crying is I took a Xanax. I've been crying nonstop since Friday."

Rothstein brought on former elected officials to work for him as he built the firm from the ground up into a legal powerhouse in the past seven or so years. But since the news about the alleged fraud started to leak out, multiple attorneys have resigned, including the everyone in the firm's branch in Caracas, Venezuela.

The firm has asked a judge to appoint a receiver to help sift through its finances.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TPMmuckraker/~3/89qy-a7hLlk/prominent_politically_
connected_florida_attorney_accused_rothstein_in_fraud_scheme.php

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Election prediction contest

post from Daily Kos on 03 November 2009 12:26:02 PM. © Daily Kos

Winner gets bragging rights. Here are my predictions:

New Jersey Governor

Jon Corzine (D) +2, but no call tonight. Requires counting of absentee ballots, which leads the GOP to a MN-Sen-style freakout and lawsuits.

Virginia Governor

Bob McDonnell (R) +11. Gets called seconds after the polls close.

Maine Gay Marriage

Flip a coin. I'll be optimistic and say the good guys win by +2.

NY-23

Doug Hoffman (R) by +5. Republicans hold the seat, but Democrats have their best performance in the district since, well, pretty much ever (70 elections in a row).

I've been wrong before.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/rySPEYt_4OA/-Election-prediction-c
ontest

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My Friends Deserve the Public Option

post from Everyday Citizen on 03 November 2009 12:22:32 PM. © Everyday Citizen

I mentioned in a previous post that I was trying to rehab a knee injury. Little did I know it was a[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/11/my_friends_deserve_the_public.html

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My friends deserve the Public Option

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Banks Biggest Buyers of U.S. Treasury Securities:
Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC)

Bloomberg.com: “U.S. banks are buying Treasuries at the fastest pace since just after the last recession, helping shore up demand now that the Federal Reserve…

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http://jutiagroup.com/2009/11/03/banks-biggest-buyers-of-u-s-treasury-securities-
bank-of-america-nyse-bac-jpmorgan-chase-nyse-jpm-citigroup-nyse-c-wells-fargo-nyse-wfc/

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Centrists In The Wild

The centrist is an elusive and unpredictable species. It is prone to darting out of press conferences before the Q&A starts. When backed into a corner by reporters, the centrist is known to give vague, uncomfortable answers, eye flitting about looking[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/VW9HAmrBZ90/centrists_in_th
e_wild.php

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