Developing: Seven Dead In Shooting At Fort Hood

Fort Hood, located 60 miles from Austin, Texas, is reporting that seven people were killed and 12 others injured in a shooting on the US Army base.

At least seven people are dead and 12 wounded in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, the base's public affairs office told NBC News on Thursday.

The official would not give his name nor additional details. It was unknown whether victims are soldiers or civilians. One gunman was reportedly in custody and another was on the loose, NBC News said.

The base was reportedly on lockdown. Two nearby school districts were also being locked down.

UPDATE:
The incident appears to have occurred at the Soldier Readiness Center on base. All available EMS units in neighboring Killeen are being scrambled to the base.

My thoughts and prayers go out the families and friends of those involved.

UPDATE:
The Fort Hood websites are overwhelmed at the moment, so news from the source is going to take some time to come out.

There were apparently two gunmen involved, one is in custody while a second is on the loose according to MSNBC. No word on whether those involved (either the gunmen or victims) were soldiers or civilians.

UPDATE:
Unconfirmed reports that one gunman is holed up in the 42006 building on the base. Same report notes that gunman has high powered rifle. The local school districts are in various levels of lockdown:

Killeen ISD says all Fort Hood schools are on lockdown.

Temple ISD is on a "soft" lockdown. Parents will be able to pick their children up at the normal times, though they may experience delays.

UPDATE:
MSNBC reports that there might be a third gunman involved. Video updates here.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

UPDATE:
Rep. John Carter was nearing entrance of building where a graduation ceremony was being held when a soldier ran up covered in blood.

Greg Schannep, an aide to U.S. Rep. John Carter, told the Austin American-Statesman that he was on the Army post to attend a graduation service. He said that as he neared the entrance of a building where the service was being held, a soldier with blood on his uniform ran past him and said a man was shooting.

Schannep told the newspaper that the shootings appeared to have occurred in a complex near a theater where the service was scheduled. He was with the injured soldier, who he said appeared to have been struck in the shoulder but did not have life-threatening injuries.

According to unconfirmed reports, one of the shooters was being surrounded by police in the 42006 building on Fort Hood. That source told KCEN the shooter has a high-powered rifle.

UPDATE:
Fox News is reporting at least 20 were injured, and I fear that the toll will increase as more information comes available.

UPDATE:
Fort Hood is a vast facility, and is the largest military base in the world. This incident has all the hallmarks of a planned attack, quite possibly terrorism, but that is speculation at the moment.

UPDATE:
Sources on Fort Hood say only 2 shooters; both have now been taken into custody. 4 SWAT injured in the gunfire.

UPDATE:
AP reports:

The Army says seven people were killed and 20 wounded in a pair of shootings at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas. An Army spokesman at the Pentagon says the shootings began about 1:30 p.m. Thursday at a personnel and medical processing center at Fort Hood.

The spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Banks, says two shooters were apparently involved. There is no word yet on who they were, nor on identities of the dead.

Banks says the second incident took place at a theater on the sprawling base.

They go on to speculate that the incident was the result of someone with PTSD, even though there's no evidence to suggest a motive at this point. The AP also editorializes that the army has been suffering from high suicide rates because of repeat deployments.

UPDATE:
Winds of Change is blogging from on post.

CNN now reports nine dead, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was briefed that there were at least 30 injured.

UPDATE:
At least 11 killed, plus one gunman. The dead gunman has been identified as Major Malik Nadal Hasan. The major opened fire at around 1:30PM local time, 31 soldiers were wounded. Two other individuals are in custody. Gov. Rick Perry was providing a presser, but his information was out of date.

UPDATE:
Hasan's background is starting to emerge. He was a licensed psychiatrist from Silver Spring, Md. There are also reports that he was unhappy about a deployment to Iraq and that he was a recent convert to Islam. However, to focus on his profession, that he was a psychiatrist might jibe with reports mentioning that part of the incident occurred in a traumatic brain injury clinic on base.

UPDATE:
The WSJ reports:

Military officials said that Maj. Hasan was a psychiatrist who had been recently promoted to major and transferred to Fort Hood from Washington's Walter Reed Medical Center. Maj. Hasan's professional specialties included post-traumatic stress disorder, combat stress and other emotional issues common to the troops implicated in earlier incidents of military fratricide.

A defense official said that there "were some signs that this might be an Akbar-type event," a reference to a bloody incident in early 2003 when Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar threw grenades into tents occupied by fellow members of the 101st Airborne Division.

Two officers were killed in the 2003 attack in Kuwait, which wounded 14 others. Military prosecutors said that Sgt. Akbar, who was ultimately sentenced to death, was motivated by anger at the deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. troops.

Other shooting incidents have been linked to combat stress and and emotional problems many soldiers are suffering after long, repeat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. With the military stretched thin by the long wars, many troops have done three and in some cases four tours to the war zones.

There's no word on whether Hasan had actually served overseas. There are also conflicting reports over whether two other people remain in custody.

UPDATE:
Contradictory and conflicting evidence. Hasan was recently promoted, despite the fact that officials were following Hasan's online postings in light of the following:

Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.

The officials say the postings appeared to have been made by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was killed during the shooting incident that left least 11 others dead and 31 wounded. The officials say they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They say an official investigation was not opened.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

One of the Web postings that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.

Why would someone who was under investigation in the manner alleged above be granted a promotion that puts him in line to possibly be called upon to deploy to Iraq? Moreover, why was he promoted if he got a poor performance review? Would not a discharge have been more appropriate than a promotion?

UPDATE:
The other two individuals who were detained by law enforcement were released.

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More Evidence Obama Was Keen On NJ Governor's Race

Now that the election is in the past, the truth is coming out over how much the White House sought to do all it could within its power to keep a Democrat in charge in Trenton.

In an interview, Codey (D-Essex) detailed a series of summer phone calls, meetings and the results of a confidential poll that nearly threw New Jersey’s governor’s race into the type of turmoil last seen when then-Sen. Robert Torricelli dropped his reelection bid in final weeks of the 2002 campaign.

Codey made his comments hours after Corzine conceded defeat in Tuesday’s election. He previously refused to discuss it, saying he did not want to affect the outcome of the race. His account was confirmed by other key players, including Torricelli, who advised Corzine during the campaign.

Corzine’s camp and the White House declined to comment.

Codey said he got a call from the White House a week after Vice President Joe Biden appeared at Corzine’s poorly attended primary night kickoff rally in West Orange in June.

"They wanted to talk about what’s going on with the governor’s race," he said. "They would call me every week, every two weeks."

By July, Codey said there was growing concern from the president’s advisers as Corzine’s polls declined even as he poured money into anti-Christie ads. It grew worse after 44 arrests on July 23 in a corruption and money-laundering case.

Corzine privately mused to the White House he was having second thoughts about continuing his campaign, Codey said.

"He was, mentally, as low as you can get," Codey said of Corzine, even before July 23. "Then this ... hit. It was understandable he was having a moment where he was saying ‘to hell with this.’"

Codey said White House political director Patrick Gaspard called him and expressed "great concern about the governor’s race, (Corzine’s) lack of support amongst Democrats and whether or not he would be able to overcome it. He never criticized Jon personally. But he said he was meeting with Obama and ‘the president wants to know if you might run if, in fact, Mr. Corzine got out.’ Can he tell the president ‘Yes.’"

Codey said Gaspard detailed an internal poll that showed Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone about the same as Corzine, but Codey leading Christie by double digits.

The White House was looking to Richard Codey as a stand in for Corzine who was cratering in the polls, but Codey was coy as to what he would do. Corzine nearly dropped out of the race because his polling was awful over the summer, but he soldiered on by throwing millions of his personal fortune into attack ads against Republican Chris Christie and Corzine convinced President Obama to back him with multiple visits into the state. Corzine ran an ad that largely featured Obama and his ties to Corzine, and later had the President tape a robocall for him in the waning days of the campaign.

The White House clearly didn't want the governorship to fall to the Republicans, and yet it did.

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Democrats Ought To Own Up To Their Own Problems

For all the talk about how the GOP is enduring a schism as a result of losing NY-23 between the conservatives and moderates in the party that enabled Bill Owens to win the district for Democrats for the first time in nearly a century (not counting redistricting), it seems that the Democrats have some serious fence mending of their own.

It seems that New York Democrats are wondering why the White House - and President Obama in particular - didn't do more to help Democrat Bill Thompson in his effort to thwart Mike Bloomberg's third term as Mayor of New York City.

The conventional wisdom heading into election night was that Bloomberg would win comfortably, and the media began calling the election for Bloomberg early in the evening, but the results started showing something most unexpected. Thompson was getting far more votes than anyone expected and the race was far closer than imagined.

It turns out that Thompson was actually a pretty good candidate to run against Bloomberg and his incomparable wealth and lavish spending to win reelection for a third term:

This was a race most Democrats now believe they could have won. Numbering among the co-conspirators in the Democrats’ defeat, in the view of some party leaders and activists, are Democratic grandees, from President Obama — who did not campaign for Mr. Thompson — to the City Council speaker, whose support could not have been softer, to two powerful labor unions that remained studiously neutral.

By the next mayoral election, it will have been 20 years since a Democrat occupied the mayor’s office, and the second guesses were many on Wednesday.

“Bill Thompson was always closer than people thought, and on our side, if people had been behind him more, there would have been more checks, more endorsements, more attention, and that might have made the difference,” said State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman of Manhattan. “It really is disgraceful that a lot of people in the Democratic Party stayed home or kept their checkbooks closed.”

Barbara Fife, a deputy mayor under David N. Dinkins, acknowledged many ills, from an honorable but lackluster candidate to a too-quick willingness of many prominent Democrats to write off Mr. Thompson’s campaign as stillborn.

But she wondered at a Democratic president who could barely bring himself to utter the mayoral candidate’s name, much less to make a swing through New York. “He made people feel this was not winnable; Bill got lumped in with Paterson in many minds,” Ms. Fife said. “Obama had lists he could have given, and support. But he never said boo.”

How indeed. Bear in mind that Democrats outnumber Republicans 5-1 in New York City. It's inexcusable for a sitting Democratic president to not campaign for a Democrat in the City, unless there's more going on behind the scenes.

It is possible that the White House thinks having Bloomberg as mayor may provide some cover on policy prescriptions down the road, particularly on climate change and environmental legislation, or perhaps on health care. In fact, it appears that Bloomberg and Obama may have had a quid pro quo on noninterference in the other's electoral races.

Would it have helped? We don't know. It seems, however, that while Obama and Bloomberg don’t share the same party line, they do share a tacit understanding that they each wield a lot of influence. And given their mutual respect for one another, they won't butt into races where one or the other is competing. Bloomberg didn't weigh in on the presidential race (except for having a cozy breakfast at a New York diner that screamed photo-op, of course).

And he asked Obama not to meddle in the mayoral race. Quid pro quo.

Wary of pressure for Obama to campaign for Thompson, since he was doing the same across the river for Corzine, Bloomberg's aides recruited Geoffrey Canada, chief executive of the Harlem Children's Zone, to call Obama's senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, and ask her to to ask him, more or less, to not choose sides in the mayoral race, according to an amazing Times analysis of the behind the scenes wrangling that propeled Bloomberg to a third term. Bloomberg has personally given $600,000 to the Harlem Children's Zone.

"He didn't pick sides in your race. Don't pick sides in his," a close adviser to the mayor told the Times by way of describing the Bloomberg campaign's pitch to the White House.

Still, to snub a Democrat in the City isn't going to sit will among one of the biggest Democratic party enclaves in the nation.

The White House slapped Rep. Anthony Weiner after he criticized the sorely lackluster White House efforts in backing Thompson, saying that Weiner should have manned up to face Bloomberg himself. Weiner responded by saying the White House should just call him fat; a reference to the failed Corzine attack ads against Chris Christie that threw Christie's weight into the campaign.

Others have come out to criticize Weiner as well for not running against Bloomberg, but the question would remain as to whether Obama would have come out in support of the Democratic party candidate in light of his understanding with Bloomberg. I would posit that it wouldn't have mattered who ran against Bloomberg in the race; Obama is not likely to have come out to campaign for any Democrat knowing the behind the scenes machinations.

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The Yankees Win... The Yankeeess Win!

That's right folks. The evil empire is back and they took out the Philadelphia Phillies to win their 27th World Championship in the process. The Phillies were quite smug coming into the Series, with Jimmie Rollins promising a win and back to back championships. The Phillie fans were even worse.

I guess they'll have to eat their words as the Yanks crushed them 4 games to 2. The series MVP is Hideki Matsui, who had a Godzilla of a Game 6, batting in six of the seven runs scored. Matsui is in the final year of his contract, so if this was his final game in Pinstripes, he made it a memorable one.



The Yanks also managed to win the Series in the first year of their new home, just as they did with the original Stadium in 1923. It's a rather fitting bookmark.

Congrats to the Yanks!

Oh, and the ticker tape parade is Friday in the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan riding up from Battery Park to City Hall Park along Broadway.

UPDATE:
Memo to Jimmy Rollins. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. When your team loses the Series 4-2, you can't hit, you can't pitch, and you are outplayed at every turn, you do not get to claim that your team is better. The Phillies lost. Bigtime.

They lost the series, they didn't win as many games as the Yankees did during the regular season either, so claiming that your team was better is asinine.

Moreover, when you bat .217, you are hardly in a position to claim your team is better despite losing a series in six.

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The Media As Watchdog ... Or Lapdog?

Gawker scores with an in depth investigation into how the media covered the Spitzer mess last year and has been combing through more than 1,000 pages of emails between Spitzer's press secretary Christine Anderson, communications director Errol Cockfield, and journalists covering the expanding scandal. The results aren't pretty:

The e-mails total 1,300 pages, and we're still reading through the stack of paper. Any other interesting finds will be going up in subsequent posts. But what we've seen so far has been surprising: You'd think that, with blood in the water, the traditional coziness that develops between official flacks and the beat reporters who have to talk to them every day would break down into some kind of last-man-standing slugfest. But in the Spitzer case, the opposite happened. The revelations upended the worlds of both reporter and flack alike, and the uncertainty, long hours, and breakneck pace of the scandal actually seemed to throw them together as they worked toward what seems, if you read the e-mail exchanges, like a common goal of getting the news out and behind them.

Which makes sense on a human level. But sometimes good reporting—especially of the government watchdog variety—requires an inhuman suspension of compassion. The infractions documented in these e-mails are misdemeanors, but—in addition to being an unvarnished peek inside the media machinery—they're indicative of the creeping social and professional alliances that inevitably develop between PR handlers and their overworked, easily manipulated charges in the press corps. And they give the lie to the myth of the vigilant watchdog press that keeps the government on its toes. Next time you hear New York Times editor Bill Keller claim that newspapers are uniquely situated to do the "hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work [of] quality journalism," remember that his reporter broke the story of Spitzer's dalliances with prostitutes. But also remember the time his reporter e-mailed Gov. Paterson's flack to request permission to call Paterson's former mistress.

This first installment documents the shocking amount of control that Keller's Times allowed Anderson, a former Good Morning America producer and PR veteran of the Clinton White House, to exercise over his paper's coverage. After bringing Anderson's world down around her head by breaking the story, Times reporters previewed portions of their stories with her before publication, asked for her permission before contacting sources, and let her tell them how to characterize its reporting in the paper.

The next time you hear someone say that the media is a watchdog, remember this.

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This Day In History: Iran Takes Over US Embassy In Tehran

On this day 30 years ago, Iranian students invaded the US embassy and took 53 hostages who would be held for 444 days. It should have been construed as an act of war by Iran against the US, but it wasn't by then President Jimmy Carter.

Iran celebrates the embassy takeover as an official holiday, and tens of thousands showed up in Tehran on Wednesday to hear anti-American speeches.

The anniversary was also an opportunity to reignite the anti-government protests that were sparked in June, following a disputed presidential election, and thousands of anti-government protesters ignored warnings from Iranian authorities to stay home.

One of the leaders of the 1979 hostage-takers says the United States and Iran must not be hostages to history.

"I am not willing to be a hostage of that historical event," Ebrahim Asgharzadeh said on CNN's "Amanpour," in an interview marking the anniversary.

"Neither Iran nor the United States should be hijacked by that historical event," he said from Tehran, where he went on to become a reformist lawmaker and was himself jailed by the Islamic regime.

He said the two sides need to be aware of the past without being imprisoned by it.

"If they do not pay attention to ... history they will have an unstable future, an impermanent future," he said.

Asgharzadeh said he and his fellow students had been offended that Jimmy Carter, then the U.S. president, had let the deposed Shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment -- and said the actions of his compatriots had parallels in the United States.

Carter's failure to decisively deal with the crisis allowed it to fester for more than a year and played a significant role in his defeat in the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.

Carter undertook a failed rescue operation that left 8 US servicemembers dead and four others wounded. The failure of Operation Eagle Claw was exploited by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeni, who saw it as divine providence and strengthened his negotiating position thereafter. A second attempted rescue operation was aborted when the technologies to enable extreme short takeoffs and landing failed in demonstrations stateside.

We live with the repercussions of the inability to deal with the hostage crisis to this day as terrorist groups like al Qaeda point to the Iranian effort and US reluctance to use force to stop Iran as a sign that the US could be pushed around. Iran continues to pursue an anti-US agenda and its current nuclear ambitions are fueled by a belief that they can push around the US and bluster their way to fulfill their religious and theological ambitions.

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Israel Interdicts Iranian Arms Shipments Heading To Hizbullah

Score another one for Israeli intelligence as the Israelis thwarted an Iranian effort to resupply their proxy army in Lebanon.

Israeli naval commandos seized a container ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying more than 60 tons of missiles, rockets and anti-tank weapons from Iran to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

The pre-dawn seizure near Cyprus was a rare interception of a suspected arms shipment by Israel, which has long accused Iran of arming its enemies. Israel offered no evidence to support its claim that the weapons were meant for Hezbollah.

"There were Katyusha (rockets), whose purpose is to hit civilians," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio.

Other weapons found included anti-tank missiles. He did not give any quantities, saying the ship was still being unloaded in Israel. He said the crew was not aware of the cargo's contents.

Antitank weapons cause the greatest concern for Israel, as they were responsible for many of the Israeli casualties in the Hizbullah war in 2006. While the katuysha and other missiles would be terror weapons for use against the civilian populations, the antitank weapons were the weapons that could keep the Israeli army at bay and inflict casualties among the soldiers tasked to rooting out Hizbullah elements.

UPDATE:
A partial breakdown of the weapons captured by Israel on the Antiqua-flagged ship that was stopped near Cyprus:

Ben-Yehuda said that there was regular intelligence indicating that Iran was continuing to support terror groups with large amounts of weapons aimed at being used against Israel. Furthermore, it was likely that additional shipments from Iran would be shipped, he said.

The containers were owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines Group, or IRISL, the military said, adding that aach container contained sacks, filled with 25 kilos of silicon, made by the Natural Petrol Company in Iran.

Upon opening the containers used for smuggling the weapons, only the sacks were visible, but behind the sacks lay weapons.

The weapons included 107-millimeter rockets, 60-millimeter mortars, 7.62-rifle Kalashnikov-ammunition, F-1 grenades and 122-millimeter Katyusha rockets. On the side of some of the cases inside the containers the words "parts of bulldozers" was written.

Ben-Yehuda called the shipment "very advanced weaponry". He added that even though the Iranian containers were loaded at port of Damietta in Egypt, the Egyptians were totally unaware of the ship's contents.

A month ago, Der Spiegel reported that the US Navy had boarded a German cargo ship near the Suez Canal that was carrying ammunition from Iran to Syria or Hizbullah.

YNetnews reports that the weapons captured would have been enough to allow Hizbullah to wage war for a month. The shipment was ten times the size of the shipment stopped by Israel in 2002 aboard the Karin-A.

While the Israelis managed to stop this particular shipment, it is all too likely that others have made their way into Hizbullah hands, courtesy of Iran.

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Convicted Ohio Rapist May Be Serial Killer

A convicted rapist in Ohio may have been far more evil than previously believed. Anthony Sowell spent 15 years in prison after a rape conviction in 1989. He was released from prison in 2005.



It now looks like Sowell is a serial killer, with at least 10 bodies recovered from his home in Cleveland. He has been charged with aggravated murder in five cases thus far, and more charges are pending. Authorities are now examining missing persons records to see if any of the cases are connected to Sowell.

Law enforcement is coming under scrutiny for their actions as well, since Sowell may have raped a woman after he was released from prison, and it took police 37 days to actually pay a visit to Sowell's residence.

Thirty-seven days passed between the time a woman told police Anthony Sowell choked and raped her in his house and when police went to Imperial Avenue to arrest him.

That time gap has raised the question -- among the crowds of neighbors gathered outside Sowell's home, victims' advocates and at least one city councilman -- if more could have been done to track Sowell, whom police charged Tuesday with five counts of aggravated murder for some of the people found dead at his home.

"I'm not going to point fingers but at the end of the day, someone clearly dropped the ball," Councilman Zack Reed said Tuesday.

Then, there's the issue of the stench that emanated from Sowell's residence. Some neighbors thought that the smell was actually from a food processing plant nearby, but it now appears that the smell was from rotting victims found in and around Sowell's property. No one, law enforcement included, thought that the smell was from decomposing victims.

His parole officers have to be questioning themselves as well, since they simply called on him to see if he was still at the residence, and never actually entered the home.

Police are now looking at vacant lots and buildings in the vicinity to see if Sowell disposed of more bodies in the area. Cadaver dogs and the fire department are also being used to search for remains in Sowell's residence.

Sowell is a one man crime spree.

UPDATE:
No bond for Sowell. You think?

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Let the Spin Begin

President Obama and other Democrats are trying to spin the disastrous election night results that found candidates that Obama supported losing to Republican challengers in Virginia and New Jersey. They also have to be wondering if the failure to campaign for another Democrat might have cost Bill Thompson a chance at upsetting incumbent NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

First, let's start with New Jersey, which was the biggest race of the night. Incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine was attached to the hip with President Obama throughout the campaign, and Obama's people were thoroughly involved in his campaign efforts. To argue that the loss in New Jersey doesn't inure to Obama's detriment stands in the face of the statements made by President Obama and Gov. Corzine.

Both pledged that a Corzine win would help both men fulfill their common agenda. That clearly takes a hit now that Corzine was sent packing by New Jerseyeans.

The election in New Jersey wasn't as close as Paul Mulshine wishes it to be. He claims that Chris Christie doesn't have a mandate.

Corzine capitulated very early in the evening and while most experts were expecting the New Jersey results to go down into the wee hours of the morning, the results showed Corzine losing early and often throughout the state. Corzine conceded at about 10:20 pm (according to Christie's speech announcing his win at 11pm, when he said that Corzine called 40 minutes earlier to concede). The size of the vote showed just how much discontent there was and it also showed that Chris Daggett was not a factor in the race. He garnered just about 5% of the vote.

The state is in a pissed off mood about out of control state spending and taxes and Corzine's answer was to increase sales tax and allowing property taxes to continue creeping skywards because there was no interest in tackling the difficult issue of controlling spending. Christie at least represents something other than the tax and spend nature found in Trenton. Corzine was despised by most New Jerseyeans because he was ineffectual and never lived up to the hype of being a financial wizard. Daggett was a distraction candidate at best, and voters saw through that.

For those who wonder how to get New Jersey out of the fiscal mess, it starts in one place - state spending. If the state spends more than it takes in, it requires tax hikes. If you promise benefits that are indexed annually, the costs for those benefits rise as does the government's commitment to fund them; Corzine was actually arguing during the budget negotiations this year that municipalities could skip payments so as to avoid making tough decisions elsewhere in the state budget.

That's just it; all the tough decisions on how to pay for state programs - and whether a state program's continued existence is justified, gets put off because the answer is invariably to increase taxes and fees. That has to end if the state wants to regain a competitive edge and encourage job growth.

Bill Thompson lost a narrow election to Bloomberg. That wasn't how the New York City mayor's race was supposed to unfold. Most pundits were expecting a landslide victory, and yet Thompson lost narrowly in a low-turnout election. One has to wonder whether an appearance by President Obama on Thompson's behalf could have charged up Democrats to get out and vote for Thompson. Get out the vote efforts by Democrats in New York City could have turned the election on its head, and yet Obama only provided a wave and a weak endorsement of Thompson in comparison to the fawning attention Obama paid to Corzine across the river.

Why did Bloomberg win in such a fashion? Could it have been the fact that people resented the fact that he did an about face on term limits and had them overturned? Did people resent that he spent nearly $100 million to get reelected? Perhaps.

A much more likely explanation is that the turnout was so low, that only the die-hard voters showed up at the polls, and due to the sheer number of registered Democrats who vote party line that it guaranteed a close election.

One final race that deserves a look is NY-23, where Democrat Bill Owens overcame efforts by out-of-district conservative Doug Hoffman to win in a largely Republican district after Republican Dede Scozzafava dropped out. This was a special election, where the party bosses chose the candidates, and the outcome there will have limited impact going forward for the national GOP, although quite a few will argue that the Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh wing of the party took a hit because they backed the conservative candidate who forced the Republican "moderate" to drop out and therefore lost the district for the GOP altogether.

It does, however, have serious repercussions in New York as the state GOP needs to address how they chose candidates and needs to work on building up candidates who are fiscal conservatives that will present a message of improving the economic situation upstate by reducing the crushing tax burden faced by New Yorkers and that improving the tax climate will result in an improved business climate, encouraging new businesses and job opportunities. Hoffman never got that far; Scozzafava was a pro-union hack insider whose actions should have raised eyebrows given that her and her husband were toying with the idea of jumping ship and changing party affiliations.

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Election Night 2009

The polls have been closed for an hour in New Jersey and just closed in New York. So far, with 14% of the vote tallied in New Jersey, Chris Christie is ahead, but it's far too early and too few votes tallied to determine the outcome.

New York's polls have just closed, so results are going to be a while.

Stay tuned. It will be a long evening.

UPDATE:
CNN is calling the Virginia governor's race for Republican Bob McDonnell.

UPDATE:
Christie continues leading in New Jersey with 28% of the vote tallied. Local elections in New Jersey are being reported here. Hudson, Bergen, Essex and Passaic Counties have yet to report in significant numbers, so expect Christie's early lead to subside somewhat as Democrat strongholds begin reporting.

UPDATE:
MSNBC says with 36% reporting, Christie remains leading with 52% to 42% for Corzine.

UPDATE:
NBC calls New York City's mayor's race for Mike Bloomberg, as if it was a surprise. Of course, Bloomberg spent nearly $100 million of his own money to buy the election win, and had to overturn New York City's term limits law to do it.

New Jersey continues to be too close to call. Politico's map shows the breakdown by county.

UPDATE:
With 64.3% reporting, Christie remains ahead, 50% to 43.8%. Oddly, they've called four counties, but aren't calling either Monmouth or Ocean Counties for Christie, even though more than 95% of the vote was in and Christie was ahead by more than 30 points.

UPDATE:
AP and Politico have both called New Jersey for Republican Chris Christie.

UPDATE:
Bloomberg looks like he's slipped some and the race is far closer than the early declaration of a win for Bloomberg would have suggested.

Meanwhile, early returns for NY-23 are coming in and so far Owens looks like he's ahead by about 5,000 votes. However, the key will be watching which counties are reporting so far.

UPDATE:
Corzine is giving his concession speech. He says he was privileged to be governor of the state. He's thanking his supporters and those in his administration.

All of his money and support of Presidents Obama and Clinton couldn't overcome the fact that Corzine lacked real achievements to campaign upon. The voters decided that Corzine just wasn't the guy to get the job done of getting the state back on the right track - cutting taxes, lowering spending, and making the state more competitive to build the economy.

UPDATE:
NY-23 looks like it's going to go for Bill Owens, much to the consternation of Hoffman supporters. I'll have to analyze the turnout and county figures to see what happened, but it appears that Owens got his supporters to turn out, while Hoffman didn't, despite all the attention on the race and the out-of-district support.

Going back to New Jersey, Corzine made sure to thank Chris Daggett for participating in the race and the debates. There's just a wee bit of irony there, seeing how Democrats actually proferred a pro-Daggett robocall.

UPDATE:
There's about 10,000 absentee ballots to be counted. Those aren't going to go for Hoffman because they were likely cast well in advance of Scozzafava dropping out, so they would likely split between Owens and Scozzafava. That means that there may not be enough votes to bring Hoffman back to take the seat. With 71% of votes counted, Owens has 49% to 45% for Hoffman.

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Here Come Black Friday Ads

I know that Black Friday is a three weeks away, but the sales are leaking out online and comparison shopping for the best bargains is something I do well in advance to maximize my shopping experience.

Black Friday Ads has some sales up for Sears, Lowes, Toys R Us, and Kmart. More will follow.

BFADS.NET also has listings posted.

Some analysts are warning that retailers' deep discounts will hit the bottom line hard and while they might entice more people to come through the doors, they may end up disappointed.

In the new era of tight budgets, consumers are looking for good value on the items they want and need. But instead, many analysts say retailers seem to be taking a different approach: offering ever-more extreme discounts on items they want to get rid of.

The super-low price method of offloading excess inventory has become so commonplace, even among higher-end retailers, that shoppers are coming to the conclusion that many products are just worth less, said brand analyst Robert Passikoff.

“It isn’t just that you learned that there will be sales — there will always be sales — but what it’s done is it ultimately affects the value perception of the product,” said Passikoff, president of the customer loyalty research firm Brand Keys.

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Reason To Hope For Change In Africa

If a new malaria vaccine gets cleared by regulators as being safe for administration, a scourge of Africa could finally be brought under control and millions of people would no longer have to suffer from the debilitating effects of malaria.

If regulators determine the vaccine is safe, it could be on the market in three to five years - the first vaccine against a human parasite.

Tens of millions of Africans are plagued by malaria every year, and more than a third of the hospital beds in this rural Kenyan region next to Lake Victoria are dedicated to its victims. More than 1 million children die of the disease in Africa annually, a crippling economic drain that prolongs a cycle of disease and poverty throughout the continent.

Malaria is also prevalent in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Central and South America.

This vaccine was developed specifically for Africa, however, and will only prevent the African strain of the disease. Experts say it would be a historic advancement.

"Some may say, '50 percent, that's not great.' And that's true. If you get a measles vaccine, you're not going to get measles again," said Dr. Dave Jones, a U.S. Army colonel and director of a clinic in nearby Kombewa operated by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

A malaria vaccine would be one tool in reducing the incidence of malaria and would allow cash-strapped nations to focus on economic development rather than see a significant portion of their population waste away year after year.

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On My Nightstand: Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World

The latest book to grace my nightstand is Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World, by Douglas Hunter.

The year 2009 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailor, scholar, and storyteller, has written the first book-length history of the 1609 adventure that put New York on the map.

Hudson was commissioned by the mighty Dutch East India Company to find a northeastern passage over Russia to the lucrative ports of China. But the inscrutable Hudson, defying his orders, turned his ship around and instead headed west—far west—to the largely unexplored coastline between Spanish Florida and the Grand Banks.

Once there, Hudson began a seemingly aimless cruise—perhaps to conduct an espionage mission for his native England—but eventually dropped anchor off Coney Island. Hudson and his crew were the first Europeans to visit New York in more than eighty years, and soon went off the map into unexplored waters.

It goes into the intrigue and politics of the decisions that led to Henry Hudson violating his contract with the Dutch East India Company to search for a Northeast Passage to China in the Arctic and instead led to the exploration of the Hudson River Valley in what is now New York.

Thus far, it's a fascinating read on the backstory that all too many people don't learn in school about the European exploration of the New World. What many people don't realize is that the exploration of the New World was a by-product and accidental discovery that got in the way of finding shipping lanes to China.

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Election Day 2009

Today marks another election day and while there are only a handful of important races around the country, the New Jersey governor's race is probably the one that should be most closely watched. President Obama has been to the state three times, making four appearances for incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine and the President even taped a robocall for Corzine. Despite outspending his opponents, most of the polls show Republican Christie ahead.

New Jersey's economy is in shambles and the tax burden in the state is the worst in the nation, no thanks to Corzine. Corzine raised the sales tax to fund property tax relief that materialized for all of one year, before he had to sharply limit the rebate all while taxes continued rising. Now, we've got a higher sales tax, higher property taxes, and a property tax rebate that doesn't address the fundamental issues of why the taxes keep rising - out of control government spending.

If Christie can't win with that background, the GOP has serious issues. While the state's demographics may tend to favor Corzine due to Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans, across the board there is serious dissatisfaction with the way that Corzine has run the state. That dissatisfaction has to translate into votes against Corzine.

Should Christie win, it can and should be seen as a major defeat for President Obama, who has essentially run Corzine's campaign, with multiple appearances and providing personnel to assist and run the campaign.

Whoever wins today will have to deal with: multibillion dollar structural deficits; a state workforce that has to be reduced; pension obligations that must be fully funded; a transportation trust fund that is underfunded and needs long term restructuring; and education funding that is unaffordable and unsustainable without improvement in student performance.

That's a mess that should given anyone pause about what they're about to undertake for the next four years, except that Corzine has already shown himself incapable of dealing with the mess. In fact, Corzine expanded education funding to eliminate court mandated Abbott school funding. The problem is that the state can't afford the funding formula he proposed, and all the extra funding since the court mandated funding for the Abbott districts never translated into improved student performance. It was merely a sop for the unions.

UPDATE:
It's hilarious reading about how Corzine is trying to downplay the national nature of his reelection campaign and the NJ political race. He's only had the President rally for him four times in the state. Corzine's campaign is run by a bunch of Obama people.

So, while most attention will be on NY-23 and the race between Doug Hoffman and Bill Owens, the real bellweather will be NJ. If Christie can pull out the win in the strong blue state, that's a signal that Obama's coattails are in tatters and signals that the GOP isn't in as bad shape as many thought, and GOP positioning for 2010 may be better than expected.

However, if Christie can't win in the NJ political environment where Corzine has such high negatives, the GOP has bigger problems than the situation in NY-23.

UPDATE:
Are NJ Democrats using gangbangers to get out the vote? That's the allegations provided here; one of the sources is a cop who recognized one of the thugs as someone he had previously arrested.

That is what happened Sunday on a quiet street in Morris Township. The officer, who’s name we are with holding, specifically heard the men discussing that he was a police officer and that they now know where he lives. The officer confronted the men and they took off. He contacted the local police who responded and caught up with them and about a dozen other men a few blocks away. According to the police report, the men were known criminals and when asked why they were in the neighborhood they stated they were “campaigning for the Democratic Party.”

I expect to see more of these kinds of claims through the day.

Also, there are concerns that absentee ballots may include fraudulent ballots because Democrats have requested that signature checking procedures be suspended.

UPDATE:
Jim at Parkway Rest Stop has some advice for New Jerseyeans going to the polls. Think about if you think that the state needs real change and if you're happy with the direction that the state is headed under Corzine.

That ties into a message by Mike Flynn at Big Government, who notes that fiscal conservatism needs to make a comeback in a big way, and that part of the reason that Scozzafava found herself kicked to the curb had to do with her support for profligate spending at a time when people are concerned about job creation in the private sector.

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Philly Transit System Shut Down As Union Strikes

The union representing transit workers who are employed by SEPTA went on strike this morning, leaving nearly 1 million commuters stranded trying to figure out how to get to work this morning. At least the union didn't strike as the World Series was underway at Citizens Bank ballpark and allowed the fans to get to the games to see the Yankees take two of three. They waited until the fans got home to strike.

The walkout by Transport Workers Union Local 243, which began at 3 a.m. and caught commuters off guard, also affected Frontier Division buses in Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties.

But Regional Rail, Paratransit and other services outside the city continued to run.

Many riders turned to passenger Regional Rail trains, which were crowded and running about 30 minutes late during the morning rush hour.

With Philadelphia Public School students off today for a teachers' in-service, the city should be spared the full impact of the strike until tomorrow.

Still traffic appeared to be heavier than usual, especially on Broad Street, which was bumper to bumper in North Philadelphia.

As the first glimmer of dawn broke this morning, striking SEPTA workers huddled in small clusters around the Frankford Transportation Center as would-be passengers continued to arrive with no idea that nothing was operating.

Colleen Logan, 45, showed up at 5:20 a.m. to discover that she would not be able to ride the Market-Frankford El to her job as a waitress at Snow White Restaurant in Old City.

So what are the issues that forced the union to strike? Well, they didn't like the last deal on the table, which would have given a 11% salary increase over five years, 11% increase in pension contributions, an no increases in workers' contribution for health care.

Those are figures that quite a few unemployed folks would love to get. In fact, while Pennsylvania has a lower than the national unemployment rate of 8.3%, it has spiked from 5.9% in November 2008. The rate is much higher in Philadelphia, where the rate is 10.7%.

I'm sure that lots of those unemployed would love to have a job where they have benefits that outstrip anything seen in the private sector, and which offers job protections that add to the cost of doing business.

So, what was the union demanding? This:

Union workers, who earn an average $52,000 a year, are seeking an annual 4 percent wage hike and want to keep the current 1 percent contribution they make toward the cost of their health care coverage.

Maloney said SEPTA was offering an 11.5 percent wage increase over 5 years, with no raise in the first year, and increases in workers' pensions.

A 2005 SEPTA strike lasted seven days, while a 1998 transit strike lasted for 40 days.

Frank Brinkman, a union member who does electronic work on an elevated SEPTA train, was out on the picket line early Tuesday. He said he was concerned about pension issues and changes to work rules.

The union shouldn't expect to get much sympathy from commuters or those who are struggling to find jobs, and the timing doesn't help their cause either.

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