It’s 3AM, Hillary will answer the phone

LBJ’s Daisy Ad

From 1964.  The ad only ran once.

Mondale’s Red Phone Commercial

From 1984 (no, not the book)

Virtual Border Fence hits delay

From The Washington Post:

The Bush administration has scaled back plans to quickly build a “virtual fence” along the U.S.-Mexico border, delaying completion of the first phase of the project by at least three years and shifting away from a network of tower-mounted sensors and surveillance gear, federal officials said yesterday.

Why? Technical problems. But, a three year delay?

Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.

Though the department took over that initial stretch Friday from Boeing, authorities confirmed that Project 28, the initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Rove: Don’t “Hussein” Obama

Thanks to Mark Ambinder at the Atlantic for this one…

No less an authority figure than Karl Rove has warned Republican operatives from demagoguing Barack Obama’s middle name.

At a closed door meeting of GOP state executive directors in late January, Rove said the safest way to refer to Obama would be to use his honorific, “Sen. Obama.”

“The context was, you’re not going to stimatize this guy. You shouldn’t underestimate him,” one of the executive directors said. Rove said that the use of “Barack Hussein Obama” would perpetuate the notion that Republicans were bigoted and would hurt the party.

Rove also said that Republicans should refer to Hillary Clinton as “Sen. Clinton,” rather than “Hillary.”

Right wing figures are set to ignore Rove’s advice. Rush Limbaugh used Obama’s middle name more than a year ago, and Ann Coulter regularly uses the middle name, once calling him “President Hussein.” So does Michael Savage, who once asked whether Obama was a “so-called friendly Muslim” or one more “radical.”

Read Mark’s Blog here.

I couldn’t agree more. By using Obama’s middle name of Hussein several people are trying to make cheap political points. Be scared of Obama they warn. Cincinnati talk show host Bill Cunningham tried it and McCain had to apologize. Obama’s wife Michelle says dropping the Hussein is “the fear bomb.”

Polls: Obama slim lead in Texas, gains in Ohio

Barack Obama holds a slight lead on Hillary Clinton in Texas and has almost pulled even in Ohio before contests that could decide their Democratic presidential battle, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Houston Chronicle poll released on Friday.

Obama, an Illinois senator, has a 6-point edge on Clinton in Texas, 48 percent to 42 percent. He trails Clinton 44 percent to 42 percent in Ohio — well within the poll’s margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.

Keep in mind, just two weeks ago, Clinton has commanding leads in both states. Ohio and Texas are pivotal to her campaign.

The Clinton campaign raised $35 million in February. That is a huge number. But, what is even bigger is Obama’s February fund raising total. His campaign raised $50 million. Sorry, Hillary. This just isn’t your year.

Employers Sanctions Law is still alive

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to allow an emergency injunction to block the law. The court also denied an expedited schedule for the law. Instead, briefs will be due in the spring with the case being tried in the summer. That will be followed by a ruling.

In a previous agreement, the county attorneys said they wouldn’t prosecute a business until March 1st at the earliest.

The lawsuit is being brought by several Arizona businesses who formed together to form the group, Wake Up Arizona!. They are joined by Chambers of Commerce in both Arizona and the U.S. as well as a number of Hispanic groups.

Forbes: Four wrong reasons for pessimism

President Bush’s unpopularity . George W. Bush is stuck with a 30% approval rating. It’s nearly impossible to see what might lift Bush’s rating during the 11 months remaining in his presidency. Seventy percent disapprove of the Bush presidency (or are undecided) and, amazingly enough, that’s the same percentage as those who say America is on the wrong economic track. Does that too tight correlation make you suspicious? It should. When asked about their own individual economic prospects, half of Americans say they feel positive about the future. About their lives, 84% say they are satisfied. So which numbers should you believe–the 70% who say the whole country is on the wrong track, the 50% who are rosy about their own economic futures or the 84% who report themselves satisfied?

I think the 50% and 84% are more telling figures. The 70% who say the country is on the wrong economic track are merely expressing their Bush fatigue.

Presidential election year. This is the most compelling presidential primary season in memory. By far the superior drama is the Democratic race … and it is going down to the wire. The press coverage is huge. Both Democratic candidates describe the U.S. economy as in terrible shape.

If you belong to the out party–this year, the Democrats–your gambit is always to say the economy is in bad shape. You need a justification for change. In 1992 Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan was: It’s the economy, stupid. In 1980 Ronald Reagan asked Americans if they were better off than they had been four years earlier. The out party will always justify its challenge on the basis of a weak economy.

This year the out party, the Democrats, is giving us more drama, which gets more attention in the press. Thus, their negative economic outlook gets more attention.

Business press incompetence and fear. Want to know the truth about business journalists? Most of us are failed sportswriters. There are exceptions, and a good many are found between these pages and at Forbes.com. Think about what it takes to be a first-rate business journalist. One must be facile with numbers and financial statements and have the confidence to talk to CEOs, high-level executives, board members, analysts and so forth. One must delve deeply into the industry one writes about–what is the competitive landscape, what are the technological disruptions on the road ahead? It is also critical that one have a coherent global economic view to be able to put a story into context. And one must be a good storyteller.

Now, if one possesses all of these talents, what are the chances one goes into the low-paying field of journalism? Not great. One instead becomes a Wall Street analyst, a Booz Allen consultant or just goes into business, perhaps to raise money and start a company. Low-paying journalism can’t compete for pick of the litter. (Unless it’s Forbes, where journalists flock to a higher moral purpose!)

The thin talent pool in business journalism combines with two other forces: Journalism is populated by left-of-center people, many of whom are hostile to business; and traditional journalism itself faces threats of disruption from the Internet, leaving business journalists in a fearful mood, which gets projected into their stories.

Trouble with numbers. When reading about any business problem or challenge, how often do you see the problem stated in relative terms? For example, what dampens spirits today? The subprime mortgage mess. How big a problem is this? No one really knows, but so far banks have written off about $150 billion in bad loans. Now, $150 billion sounds huge. But it is only 1% of America’s annual GDP. It is also less than 1% of the market capitalization of U.S. stocks. In any typically volatile trading day U.S. stocks gain or lose $150 billion every hour. How often does one hear that?

“Surely that $150 billion will grow,” you say. No doubt. Let’s say the amount of bad paper doubles or triples. Would that finally bring the U.S. economy to its knees? I don’t think so. The nearest historical comparison we have is the savings-and-loan crisis of 1986–95. On a constant dollar basis–so we can compare apples with apples–the S&L crisis saw $700 billion in bad loans. Nearly five times as much as we’ve seen in the subprime mess so far.

The S&L crisis caused some damage, to be sure. But during the 1986–95 period the U.S. economy grew and stocks went up. We survived stock shocks in 1987 and 1989 and a mild recession in 1990. The country did not collapse into a 1930s-like depression.

The financier George Soros calls today’s credit crunch the worst global financial crisis since World War II. He’s wrong. See the second reason for the explanation.

Read the rest here.

USA Today: Credit Card Spending Up

From the USA Today:

Rising living costs, along with cheap and plentiful credit, have led consumers to rely more on plastic to pay for necessities they can’t live without — and luxuries they don’t want to do without. But as the economy weakens, consumers are starting to spend less on discretionary items, such as furniture and electronics, and more on such necessities as groceries and gas, according to government data. Such items increasingly are showing up on credit card bills.

“Everything’s going up — dairy, gas, home taxes,” says Christie Carlson, 34, a single mother of five children, ages 5 to 14, in Tomah, Wis., who enrolled in a debt-management program after racking up $20,000 in card debt. “I’m trying to pay more for everything in cash, but it’s just impossible. It’s not feasible right now to stop spending on the credit card.”

During the past year, credit card debt has ballooned most rapidly in parts of the nation where the economy is particularly weak, including California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada, says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com.

At least our state made the article.