Always liked him for his acting, has to be one of my favorites, but now another reason to like him. Though I still am a huge fan of Vincent D’Onofrio (Goren from L&O:CI)

This is a genius political gambit, and a sign of the disaster that is the Dean reign at the DNC. Anyone who has spent much times around campaigns know that voter files, especially “padded” voter files that include demogrpahic/issues/voting information can help a campaign target resources extremely effectively and can yield victories from defeat. They won’t swing an election twenty-points but five isn’t so out of the question.

Here

10:54 - DeLay with 21/216 precincts is up by 6,000-odd votes
Ciro Rodriguez (lib) is up against conservative D, Cuellar, by 4,000 votes with 159/256 precinct in BUT 0/30 precincts counted in Webb County, Cuellar’s base

11:07 -
Cuellar Morales Rodriguez
7939 1544 12495 21978
36.12% 7.03% 56.85%

DeLay Cambell Baig Fjetland
10005 4049 591 918 15563
64.29% 26.02% 3.80% 5.90%

11:12 -
Cuellar Morales Rodriguez
8127 1596 13216 22939
35.43% 6.96% 57.61%

DeLay Cambell Baig Fjetland
10005 4049 591 918 15563
64.29% 26.02% 3.80% 5.90%

Still no precincts from Webb reporting, I am going to see how many votes usually come out of there. Keep in mind there are runoffs in Texas so to avoid elimination a candidate need only keep the front runner under 50%. Though from my understanding of the Cuellar race most of the Morales votes would break to Rodriguez so to win he likely needs to do it tonight.

11:17 - Analysis in 2004, nearly 48,000 votes were cast in the Cuellar-Rodriguez race so there are still a lot of votes to be cast.

2004 Webb Co Results
U. S. Representative District 28
Henry Cuellar DEM 12,894 84.13%
Ciro D. Rodriguez DEM 2,431 15.86%
———–
Race Total 15,325

Nearly 14,000 votes likely to come out of Webb breaking heavily for Cuellar means that likely this race will go long into the night.

11:22
Cuellar Morales Rodriguez
8542 1685 14557 24784
34.47% 6.80% 58.74%

DeLay Cambell Baig Fjetland
11323 4456 638 971 17388
65.12% 25.63% 3.67% 5.58%

About half the votes are likely processed in the Cuellar race.

Bexar Co 2004
U. S. Representative District 28
Henry Cuellar DEM 2,737 20.18%
Ciro D. Rodriguez DEM 10,824 79.81%
———–
Race Total 13,561

Bexar Co 2006
U. S. Representative District 28
Henry Cuellar - Incumbent 1,395 20.85% 2,742 20.29%
Victor Morales 385 5.75% 706 5.22%
Ciro D. Rodriguez 4,910 73.39% 10,065 74.48%
———– ———–
Total Votes Cast 6,690 13,513
Precincts Reported 96 of 102 Precincts 94.12%
Its interesting to note the turnout is only barely higher in Bexar Co in 2006 as opposed to 2004 and Cuellar is actually doing a tenth of a point better. This means that Webb Co if it holds to its path of 2004 will yield a likely Cuellar victory but its going to be a squeaker

11:49 - Daily Kos, one of the lead orgs for Ciro are reporting things are begining to look bleak for Ciro. A Kossack did a 2004 v 2006 breakdown of what has been reported so far and shows that Cuellar is either doing the same or better in ‘06 as in ‘04 pretty much across the board. Good news for us not in looney lefty land, but I can say from my campaign expierence even if you know you have a lot of votes out still its always nerveracking to be down in the vote counts.

11:54 - Early vote returns in for Webb County and Cuellar is recieving 86.8% of the vote. If this number holds across the board in Webb then this election is over.

11:58 -
Cuellar Morales Rodriguez
16705 2145 15408 34258
48.76% 6.26% 44.98%

DeLay Cambell Baig Fjetland
12707 5118 1031 971 19827
64.09% 25.81% 5.20% 4.90%

12:08 - Daily Kos & Red State have more or less both called this race for Cuellar, I am not that ready to jump the gun but it does look good. What is Kos now? Like 0-1000? LoL

12:52 -
Cuellar Morales Rodriguez
17142 2232 15986 35360
48.48% 6.31% 45.21%

Cuellar will win this round but he needs to pick up 1.5% to get over 50% to avoid a runoff.

1:20AM - Going to bed, but with 84% of the vote Cuellar has 48.2% of the vote, hard to know if he’ll pick up the votes he needs to get to 50%+1, also the voting anomalies in Webb County will probably be quite contentious. I expect there will be a runoff, hard to tell who will win such a runoff though. My gut is on Cuellar but never know.

Barbra Lerner, writing for NRO has come out strongly against the proposed acquisition of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company by Dubai Ports World. Why? Well in her own words:

Not to worry, proponents of the deal tell us: the UAE is a friendly country, and besides, in today’s global economy, this is a perfectly ordinary commercial transaction — a business deal, not a political one. As Daniel Henninger put it: “Presumably they are in the port management business for the money.”

It would be comforting if either of these claims were true. Alas, available evidence raises serious doubts about both. Let’s start with the friendliness claim. Proponents of the deal insist that, whatever hostilities may have existed in the past, the UAE rallied to our side after September 11, 2001. If so, the people living there didn’t seem to get the message. Zogby International pollsters asked a representative sampling of citizens of the UAE if their overall impression of the U.S. was favorable or unfavorable in 2002, after 9/11 had demonstrated our vulnerability to the world. Only 11 percent responded that their impression was favorable; 87 percent responded that it was unfavorable.

What the hell is she talking about? So what if the Arabs hate us? The French and the Germans hate us with an equal passion, should we not then do business with DHL which handles logistics all across America? Does it matter what the individual citizens of a nation think about us when it comes to business deals? We could outsource the running of these terminals to the Taliban and it terms of security it wouldn’t matter (for the record I am not suggesting this).

All the UAE and Dubai Ports World will be doing is collecting a check and sending a few managers (probably white Americans) to reorganize the current British company they have bought. So why would it matter what their citizens think of us personally?

Here is her next argument for why this deal should be scuttled:

We should reject the Dubai Ports deal, not just because it is risky to have a hostile country managing critical parts of our infrastructure, but because the claim that the UAE’s desire to do so is “just business” presents us with a mystery. At the very least, those who make this claim need to explain why the UAE agreed to pay P&O a 70-percent premium over existing share prices to buy the company. If P&O is really worth $6.8 billion, why didn’t any other international shipping company offer anything remotely like that (see also)? Apologists for the deal say the problem is that few privately-owned companies have pockets deep enough to pay that much. Maybe, but DPW is hardly the only deep-pocketed, government-owned international shipping giant, and none of the others made any attempt to outbid DPW either. Apparently, no one else thought they could pay that kind of money to manage our ports and still make a profit. Perhaps DPW knows something no other shipping company does. Then again, it may be that DPW has some other motives for wanting to take over the management of key American ports.

This makes zero sense, in fact just reading it gives me a headache. Ms. Lerner doesn’t come out and say it, but she hints that this is some elaborate scheme by the government of Dubai to infiltrate our port system at a cost of $6.8 billion. That is simply ludicrous thinking. Let’s pretend that the government of the UAE really does want to assist Al-Qaeda in their plot to topple the “Great Satan”, then let’s further pretend that the UAE is going to do so through DPW. Doing so would immediately “out” DPW as a terrorist organization and the UAE as a terrorist country. Not only would DPW lose all of its assets and investments around the world, the UAE would swiftly and easily be invaded. Does this make sense to anyone other than people who don’t have any conception of how international business is done? Why throw away $6.8 billion, plus DPW, plus your entire country when you could infiltrate the ports so much more cheaply and easily?

It is not unheard of to pay a 70% premium for a stock during an M&A deal, to suggest this in and of itself means some nefarious activity is taking place is nonsense. In addition, the fact that no other major ports company wanted to buy the contracts on our terminals doesn’t surprise me, the unions and litigation have deeply cut into their profitability. But bad business decisions (if this is in fact a bad decision, it won’t be known for years) don’t mean that terrorists are running the UAE and by extension DPW.

There is no indication that the UAE is anything but a progressive Arab nation that is investing its massive oil wealth abroad. If the US Navy trusts our fleet in their ports, if the US Coast Guard doesn’t see any dangers in transferring overall ownership of British company to Dubai, then why do so many conservatives oppose this deal? And why do they do it with such idiotic arguments?

The Republican Study Committee in the House (home to conservative heroes such as Mike Pence and the recent Majority Leader candidate, John Shadegg) has been hard at work working on a budget that embodies core Republican values as espoused in the Contract With America in 1994. Rather than just submit to the will of President Bush, whose prior fiscal promises have been poor by any Conservative measurement if even enacted, the Conservative Republicans are finally taking a huge and very significant stand.

So how big of a stand is being taken? The proposed budget, to be released tomorrow, will trim more than $650 billion (look at that number again) from the federal budget in 5 years, eliminate the deficit, and (drum roll) drastically reorganize (read: downsize) the Education (finally!), Commerce, and Energy departments. The “reorganization” will save $300 billion, and the other $350 billion in savings would come from shrinking government nanny-state entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and others). A full story can be found via the New York Times [sic] here.

The prospects of this budget making it to Bush’s desk and being signed as it is, or even the chances of this version of the budget receiving Executive consideration after escaping from Congress, are unfortunately slim considering the drunken sailor attitude Washington has towards spending these days. Movement conservatives, through John Shadegg’s race-altering candidacy for Majority Leader, helped elect John Boehner over Roy Blunt for that position - and now the RSC will certainly go to Boehner to collect on its help in the race.

In his handling of this proposed budget, Boehner will show his true colors - will he follow through on his promise to change the “business as usual” trend of the House, and embrace truly Republican reform that would not only benefit the federal government fiscally, but also in reducing its size and power, or will he bolt from the RSC’s position and get cozy with Bush and the Dems?

This will be the most important legislative fight in the lead-up to the midterm elections. While the fight for Majority Leader was crucial in the direction of the Republican Caucus, this fight actually deals with tangible effects of that race. Now is the time to turn back on 12 years of misguided direction and return to fiscally sane principles as demonstrated in the Contract.

While I am hopeful and inspired by the RSC putting out this alternative budget, I am also wary of the cautious, fiscally liberal bent of many Republicans in Congress. Forget the Democrats, their opposition to this is to be acknowledged and set aside. The real fight will be within our own party to determine who will decide our nation’s fiscal policy: those who truly care about Constitutionally limited government and responsible monetary policies, or those whose only concerns are vote-buying and sending pork back to the constituents at home.

If you recall, the fight to get even $40 billion cut from the budget just a few months ago was like force feeding a child who refuses to swallow his food. The (measly) cuts were finally passed, but it certainly wasn’t a sunshine-filled victory. It was a disgusting reminder of how stubborn Washington is in refusing to spend our money responsibly and how willing Congress can be to shirk the dictates of our Founding Fathers.

Hat Tip to Captain’s Quarters.

Update: I just realized that force-feeding a child who refuses to swallow his food, according to some Gitmo protestors, constitutes torture. I apologize if I caused pain and anguish to any toddlers so brutally tortured by their parents. Who needs food anyways?

I, along with Jim Geraghty at TKS on NRO, am disturbed by the rise of this pseudo-conservative concept known as being a Crunchy Con, mostly because I detect liberal undertones within its “solutions” for modern society.

This post at the Crunchy Con Blog at NRO is incredibly annoying and . . . I am actually at a loss to describe so read for yourself:

As we’re moving on from consumerism, I’d like to make a pitch for policy. Last week a reader asked: What can be done to reduce the corrosive effects of the market? I propose a tax on short-term stock transactions.

This would reduce the obsession with quarterly financial results that leaves business managers little breathing room to manage for the long-term health of the ALL business stakeholders, and our culture, by “doing the right thing”—such as NOT issuing that pornographic gangsta rap video that would be a huge seller, or NOT choosing the advertising campaign that appeals to extreme selfishness, or NOT bringing a drug to market with too many outstanding questions about side-effects.

Short-term-ism has other bad effects. One of the silliest statements made by conservative pundits about Enron, Worldcom, and other corporate scandals was that it was just a matter of “bad apples.” No, the problem was a culture of easy money based on options-driven stock speculation during the Dot.com bubble. I was a consultant to several companies during this period, and witnessed many otherwise decent—even religious— people fall under the spell of a greedy, get-rich-quick mentality.

This is not the entirety of the post, which I encourage you to read. Here are some follow-up posts on the topic: K-LO responds to some email and a response by Angelo Matera (the original author).

My father is a financial trader that has lived off of the “day trade” for his whole career. He has made literally tens of millions of dollars (both for himself and companies) in real money doing so. Angelo Matera has no true conception what capitalism is if he thinks this vital practice should be discouraged with taxes. He is definitely a liberal at heart and I get the impression he might be a communist.

He blames Enron and WorldCom on the “environment”. He describes how greed corrupted “otherwise decent men” into stealing from their shareholders. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? These guys were themselves flawed, just like the rest of humanity. It is fundamentally liberal to not recognize this. NRO is jumping the shark with this nutty blog. In fact, from now on I will call these guys Nutty Cons.

UPDATE:

Irreverant parody blog of NRO’s Crunchy Blog. Tagline: Standing athwart crunchy conservatism, yelling “Nutrasweet!”

Hat-tip: K-LO