Bad news on diet (more stuff that will kill us)

Men who drink sugar-sweetened beverages, including sodas and non-carbonated fruit drinks, may have a higher risk of heart attack, a new study shows.

Harvard researchers found that men who drank one sugar-sweetened beverage per day had a 20 percent increased risk of heart attack compared to those who eschewed the sugary drinks, according to the study published in the journal Circulation.

And the risk rose with increasing consumption: Two sugary drinks a day was linked to a 42 percent increase in risk, while three was associated with a 69 percent increase.

The researchers also found that sugary drinks were associated with higher levels of inflammatory factors, such as CRP, that are thought to be involved in the development of heart disease.

Read he rest here.

And...

It is far from a shocking revelation that red meat is not health food. But a new study from the highly respected researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health offers some of the best and most detailed evidence yet that a daily serving of meat can increase risk of heart disease or cancer.

The Harvard scientists followed almost 84,000 women and 38,000 men in the Nurse’s Health Study and Health Professional’s Follow-Up Study for 28 years. It found those eating a daily serving of red meat were 13 percent more likely to die in the study period, and approximately 14 percent more likely to develop heart disease or cancer. Those numbers go up to 20 percent more deaths and an estimated 18 percent more heart problems and cancer for those who reported eating a daily serving of processed meats such as hot dogs, salami and bacon.

Read the rest here.

They say there is nothing quite so annoying as the preachings of a reformed drunk or ex-smoker, so I won't berate the point.  But I can confirm from personal experience that this stuff is really not good for you.  Late last year I started noticing things that were rather alarming like the fact that I could not climb the stairs to my room without getting winded and was suffering from poor circulation in my limbs.  I don't want to say that I was fat or out of shape.  So I will instead say that I was in (a) shape, and it resembled a dirigible.

Anyways right after the New Year (coincidence only, I'm not a News Years resolution guy) I swore off the three really bad things that pretty much doom any battle of the bulge before the campaign begins.  Those being soda, junk food and fast food.  And I started walking again.  I've been doing six miles a day, weather permitting, since the end of January.  It took me a few weeks to work up to that distance.  And yes I do feel MUCH better.

Thus endeth the sermon.

A Conspiracy of One (or the confessions of an ex-conspiracy nut)

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I generally have little use for the endless parade of conspiracy theories on all manner of topics, from 9-11 to Obama's birth certificate to Pearl Harbor revisionism.  So it may come as a bit of a shock for some to discover that yours truly was a card carrying conspiracy theorist on the subject of Jack Kennedy's assassination long before Oliver Stone brainwashed much of the world with what may be the most factually false film of any consequence produced in the last half century.

By time I graduated from High School I'd read a half dozen books and was quite convinced that Jack Kennedy had been killed by at least two gunmen.  I knew about the famous snap back of the president's head after the fatal shot which conclusively established he was shot from the front right.  I knew that Jack Ruby was all mobbed up.  And I was fairly sure that Oswald had been swimming in the deep end of the pool with the CIA.  What I didn't know, is that I was wrong. (See this video.)

I was committing a cardinal error by ignoring contrary evidence.  But seriously, who cared?  The Warren Commission was a whitewash.  Right?  No need to actually read any of it.  People like Mark Lane and David Lifton had explained in great detail how the Warren Commission and the FBI/CIA had lied through their teeth to the American people and the commission was just a smokescreen.

So in a magnificent piece of irony it is Oliver Stone who should probably get credit for lifting the scales of conspiracy mania from my eyes.  I saw his movie when it came out, and while I readily concede it was (and is) very entertaining, I was also deeply shaken by it.  The problem is that I knew a great deal about the Kennedy assassination, probably (not bragging here but being honest) much more than the average person on the street.  And I knew that factually his film was from start to finish a load of pure 100% gold plated bullshit.

It didn't take a social scientist to figure out that this movie was going to shape the public's view of the Kennedy murder on a scale and in ways that probably would never be correctable.  And if we were relying on something as dubious as Stone's movie to advance the cause proving a conspiracy, then I felt we (conspiracy theorists) had crossed a dangerous ethical line.  If Stone could make things up out of whole cloth how could we know others in the movement hadn't been doing the same thing?

The seeds of doubt had been planted.

Sometime within a year or so after that I secured a copy of the Warren Commission Report and became the only pro-conspiracy person I have met to actually read it.  Wasn't it dry?  No gin could ever touch it.  If the government did nothing else it had come up with a sure fire cure for insomnia.  But it was also fascinating and it was absolutely packed with facts not generally addressed by the advocates of conspiracy.  There was the substantial body of eye witnesses who saw Oswald shooting from the sixth floor window.  And others who saw him up close when he shot Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippet. The guns were all positively linked by ballistics to the two killings.  His fingerprints were on them both as well as the boxes in the snipers nest. Much of this I had already known but it is usually glossed over or ignored by advocates of conspiracy.  The WC laid it out in a manner that could not be ignored.

Were there errors and inaccuracies as many conspiracy advocates claim?  Yes.  But generally none that I could not dismiss as minor and the likely result of rushed editing.  The Warren Commission had not converted me.  But it had made it clear that I had been wrong to be taking all of my information from one side of a debate.  And more importantly it convinced me that Oswald had definitely been involved.  The evidence was too overwhelming.

I began going out of my way to read whatever I could find that was supportive of the lone gunman theory.  And at the time those pickings were thin.  One thing many people don't realize is that until about twenty years ago there was virtually no serious scholarship or works critical of the conspiracy theorists except the Warren Commission.  Even so my position was shifting.

I was coming to a conclusion which has colored my prejudice against the modern fetish with conspiracy to this day.  And that quite simply is believability.  There is an old saying, often attributed to Ben Franklin that three men can keep a secret only if two of them are dead.  To believe that Jack Kennedy was killed as a result of a broad conspiracy necessitates believing that a coverup occurred that would have had to extend through all of the highest levels of the government, and then down to more minor functionaries and law enforcement agents.  The number of people who would have had to be involved, AND KEPT THEIR MOUTHS SHUT, would had to have been quite large.  That was something I just could not buy into.  It is inconceivable to me that so many people would be involved in a vast coverup and not one would crack with so much as a death bed confession.  The same reasons made me doubt that most of the usual suspects (i,e. the mob or CIA) were involved.  People who think the mob was that disciplined don't really know much about them.  Someone would have talked.

Then there was the actual evidence. Time does not permit me to discuss each piece of allegedly pro-conspiracy evidence (I strongly recommend watching the linked video and the subsequent nine parts) but while still keeping an open mind; my opinion was shifting against conspiracy.  More and more the "evidence" I had relied on to prove a conspiracy was being shown to be misunderstood, or just plain wrong.  I was also discovering that at least some of the advocates of conspiracy, like Oliver Stone, were not above omitting, misstating or outright inventing facts when it served their purposes.

By the time Gerald Posner came out with his bombshell book "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993)," the first book to really discredit the conspiracy movement, I was already leaning in that direction.  Posner pretty much pushed me over the edge.  His book was not without some faults.  But in general it laid out a damning case against Oswald and refuted most of the more common arguments employed by the pro-conspiracy crowd.  Any residual doubts were utterly eradicated in 2007.

That was the year Vincent Bugliosi (the prosecutor of Charles Manson) published “Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

Bugliosi's book is heavy reading, literally at 1600+ pages (using smaller than normal type font), don't drop it on your toes and remember to lift with your arms not your back.  It is the product of twenty years of research, about twice as long as the Warren Commission and infinitely more exhaustive.  In addition to the 1600+ pages are more than 1000(!) pages of end notes and citations that are mercifully on a CD.  Some of the end notes run several pages in their own right.

The book is divided into a number of different sections but begins with one of the more readable minute by minute narratives of what actually happened on that incredibly sad November weekend in 1963.  At a little over 300 pages that is a good sized book by itself.  Then you are treated to something almost totally ignored by historians of the Kennedy assassination from both sides of the conspiracy argument, a monumentally detailed biography of Lee Harvey Oswald.  How detailed?  Bugliosi provides street addresses and detailed descriptions of every rundown apartment or boarding house he ever lived in from childhood onwards.  And they were legion.  The author presents what is certainly the first real biography of a young man from a broken home, with above average intelligence who grows up determined to become "someone."  Oswald's discovery of Marxism at age 16 and how it turned a desperately lonely and impressionable young man into a political fanatic along with his entire sad and pathetic life is covered in such agonizing detail one is left feeling like some kind of sleazy voyeur.

Much of the rest of the book is dedicated to an equally detailed analysis of the evidence and then the  really hard part for me.  His absolutely brutal and relentless attack on the purveyors of conspiracy theories where he does not shrink from naming names.

Bugliosi doesn't want to just knock down the conspiracy theorists.  He wants to destroy them. He wants to hold them up for public ridicule and leave everyone laughing at them.  And for the most part he succeeds. This book doesn't settle with debunking them. It incinerates them in a nuclear fireball of facts coupled with irresistible logic and reason. 

Does this book have any weaknesses?  Yes, a rather big one.  The sheer size and exhaustive nature of the work all but guarantees that few will actually read it.  It took me a good six months to plow through the book and I have yet to meet anyone else who has read it.  Nor can I blame them. You would have to have a near obsession with the topic to attempt the work, that or perhaps be under an especially severe penance.

With that admitted caveat I will summarize the work and the conclusions I have reached on this subject after studying it for most of my life.

The idea that someone as important and consequential in the world as John F Kennedy could be cut down in broad daylight, in front of scores of witnesses, while surrounded by armed police and Secret Service guards, by a life long loser with a $20.00 mail order rifle and no help is incredibly hard to accept.  Even today I really don't want to believe it.  But the evidence indicates that such is exactly what happened.  Lee Harvey Oswald, a complete zero twisted by radical left wing politics who desperately wanted to get his name in the history books shot and killed the President of the United States. And he did it alone.

Is a conspiracy impossible?  No.  But in all frankness it must be said that there is not now, nor has there ever been, any credible evidence indicating one.  And the weight of evidence against conspiracy is so overwhelming that I believe the idea no longer bears serious discussion.

Quote of the day...

There are certain things history has shown that one should never do: Invade Russia, reason with a zealot, or try to shout down New Jersey Governor Chris "Two Stones" Christie.

-The Orthodox Caveman (from here)

Catholic Priest who refused communion to practicing lesbian is suspended

News posted over at Rorate Caeli.  This is scandalous.  The Roman Church has gone certifiably mad.

US Serviceman allegedly guns down 16 Afghan civilians

KABUL — An American soldier wandered outside his base in a remote southern Afghan village shortly before dawn Sunday and allegedly opened fire on civilians inside homes, killing at least 16, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

The attack marked perhaps the grisliest act by a U.S. soldier in the decade-long Afghan war and seemed all but certain to stoke anti-American anger in a crucial battleground as foreign troops start to thin out in the south. Afghan officials said women and children were among those killed in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban movement.

Read the rest here.

What a horrific crime!  The radical right is reacting predictably, blaming everyone but the killer, or even questioning whether it actually happened.  A comment (not atypical) from the main thread over at Free Republic reads...

Time to pull out of both Iraq and Trashcanistan. Take back everything that we can and blow up everything we cant. If these pigs want to wallow in their own filth,let them. They dont deserve our brave service men and women.  Most Muslims are little more than the apes the Left say we descendant from. 

Caution: FR is an extreme right wing website. Forewarned should you follow the link.

Santorum wins Kansas

WICHITA, Kan. — Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has won the Kansas Republican caucuses, the Associated Press projects, giving his campaign a boost as he seeks to make the case for a one-on-one contest against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination.

With 76 percent of precincts reporting, Santorum was taking 53 percent in this rural Midwestern state that in many ways is tailor-made for him. The former senator has made his conservative views on social issues a focal point in his bid to win the GOP nod.

Romney was running second with 17 percent; former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was in third place with 16 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who like Santorum had been campaigning hard in the state in recent days, was in fourth place with 13 percent.

Read the rest here.

Abortion...

It's the eighth sacrament of the Episcopal Organization and the political left.

The Economy: Good news; but...

The nation’s economic picture brightened in February, as employers added more than 200,000 jobs for the third month in a row and more people were encouraged enough by the growing economy to start looking for work again.

But the good news came with a technical caveat: The monthly unemployment rate -- a crucial number closely watched by both economists and politicians -- remained stuck in neutral at 8.3 percent. Though analysts welcomed Friday’s report as another step in the right direction for the recovery, the jobless rate has become a political flashpoint in Washington and on the campaign trail.

Read the rest here.

In secular Britain, a clash over public prayer

Bideford, England — Perhaps the locals should have anticipated sparks on a town council stocked not only with a practicing pagan, a staunch atheist and an agnostic former stripper but also two evangelical Christians and a Methodist church organist. But few could have predicted that one small town’s fight over the abolition of Christian prayers at public meetings would escalate into Britain’s own culture wars.

Even as the Republican primaries highlight America’s divide over the separation of church and state, Britain finds itself locked in a debate over religion that is entangling not just the British government but even Queen Elizabeth II. The move to ban public prayers in tiny Bideford — and potentially across all of England and Wales — has erupted into a national proxy fight over the question of whether Christianity should still hold a privileged place in a modern, diverse and now highly secular society.

The match that lit the fires was struck in this quaint town, site of the last witch trials in Britain. Local lawmaker Clive Bone, an atheist, was backed by four of his peers in challenging the long-standing tradition of opening public meetings with blessings by Christian clergy. After losing two council votes on the prayer ban, Bone took the town to court — winning a ruling last month that appeared to set a legal precedent by saying government had no authority to compel citizens to hear prayer.

The Conservative-led British government has quickly attempted to counteract the ban and defend the official status of Christianity — more specifically, the Church of England. At a time when half of Britons claim no religious affiliation, however, the Conservatives are also going one step further — blaming a loss of “traditional values” for such social ills as binge drinking and last year’s riots in London.

In a nation where the Labor Party spin-doctor Alastair Campbell once said, “We don’t do God,” the Conservatives in power have unleashed a number of moves seen by opponents as an attempt to claw back lost ground for Christian traditions — including a vow by the national education minister to send a King James Bible to every school in England.

Even normally behind-the-scenes Queen Elizabeth is dusting off the monarch’s historic role as “defender of the faith” and supreme governor of the Church of England, suggesting in recent weeks that by targeting public prayer, secular society has gone too far.

Read the rest here.

Alabama and Mississippi may be last good chance to stop Romney

For Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, the Deep South primaries in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday will be a race for conservative primacy in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination. Unless one of them decisively puts the other away, however, Mitt Romney could be the big winner no matter where he finishes.

While Romney, the establishment front-runner, is counting on a growing sense of inevitability that he will be the nominee, Alabama and Mississippi are two of the last, best chances for Santorum and Gingrich to make their case against each other.

In temperament and tone, Ging­rich has an easier sell in the South: He can “talk Southern” in a way that Santorum can’t. But his personal baggage — a history of marital infidelity and two failed marriages — could be a significant stumbling block among the conservative, family-values voters who make up a large part of the two states’ electorates.

This is particularly true when that record is held up against Santorum’s personal story as a devoted husband and father of seven.

Gingrich has tried to cast Santorum as a bit player in the 1990s Republican revolution that Gingrich led, and in a region where unions are deeply unpopular, the Gingrich campaign has tried to cast Santorum as a pawn of big labor.

Read the rest here.

Police shoot boy's dog six times

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (WSVN) -- The family of a dog shot by police is glad their pet survived, but the father is concerned after officers opened fire so close to his son.

The Jones' family dog "Baxter" is recovering but can barely move after being shot several times.

Friday night, Pembroke Pines Police were called out to the Jones' house along Southwest 171st Terrace after reports that Baxter was on the loose.

Thirteen-year-old Cameron Jones witnessed everything as police arrived. "When I got outside they said, 'Get your dog or we are going to shoot him,'" said Cameron. "They gave me two seconds and shot him six times."

The family immediately rushed Baxter to an animal hospital. "It just felt like a movie, I was so traumatized. It didn't feel right that they shot him six times," said Cameron.

Read the rest here.

A Look Back: NBC discovers "Spring Break" in 1962

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Something worth pondering. Most of the "kids" in this news special would now be in their 70's. I wonder if any of the people shown have seen this?

Pat Robertson Says Marijuana Use Should be Legal

Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader — including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing — his newest guise may perhaps surprise his followers the most: marijuana legalization advocate.

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

Read the rest here.

Further evidence that even a stoppled clock is right twice a day.

This year's California state budget could be bizarre exercise

Political machinations over the state budget dominate every legislative session, but this year's version of the annual budget game may be particularly bizarre due to a confluence of unusual factors, to wit:

• Not only is it an election year, but incumbents and aspirants will be running in districts that have been altered, sometimes hugely, by the state's new redistricting commission.

• This is also the first year for a new election system in which the top two finishers in the June primary, regardless of party, will face each other in November.

• Legislators briefly lost their salaries last year when they failed to produce a balanced budget by the June 15 constitutional deadline, thanks to a 2010 ballot measure that also gave Democrats hegemony over the budget by eliminating the two-thirds budget vote requirement.

• The 2011-12 budget that Democrats eventually enacted was based on the miraculous assumption of an extra $4 billion in revenue. But most of the miracle money hasn't shown up, and spending is running billions of dollars over expectations, so the budget is already way out of balance.

• Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature's budget analyst are billions of dollars apart on revenue estimates for the rest of the 2011-12 fiscal year and all of 2012-13.

• Democrats are unwilling to deal with the deficit now, due both to election year jitters over spending cuts that would affect major constituent groups, and to the revenue uncertainty.

• Brown has proposed major policy changes in his new budget, including landmark overhauls of school finance, child care and welfare, that have generated angst among constituent groups.

• Brown bases his 2012-13 budget on voter approval of increases in sales and income taxes in November, but proposes spending cut "triggers," mostly on schools, to be pulled should the taxes be rejected.

Majority Democrats should be acting now to narrow the looming deficit, but will delay big decisions at least until late May, when spending and revenue estimates will be revised. And they'll probably wait until after the June 5 primary, so as to shield incumbents from casting budget votes that could backfire among primary voters.

The primary, however, is just 10 days before the June 15 constitutional deadline for a budget, and if the Democrats generate another pie-in-the-sky budget that doesn't pass the smell test, as they did last year, they could again run afoul of the constitutional restriction on their salaries.

Controller John Chiang dropped the salary hammer on lawmakers after Brown vetoed the Legislature's first budget as being imbalanced.

Legislative leaders are now suing Chiang, contending that he lacks the power to cut off salaries and that only the Legislature itself can determine whether it has met the deadline.

Source.

Some observations on the state of the GOP race

First a quick caveat.  As I write Ohio has just been called for Romney and Alaska's  polls have only just closed.  I don't expect to wait up for that race to be called.

Right now Romney has taken Virginia, Vermont, Massachusetts, Ohio, Idaho and Wyoming.  (Wyoming hasn't been called by the media but its going for Romney.  They have been really slow tonight in calling some obvious races.) Santorum has taken Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota.  Gingrich took his native state of Georgia.  The delegate math is starting to really pile up to Romney's  advantage.

Now for a quick breakdown of the primary race by candidate. In alphabetical order...

•  Newt Gingrich: His campaign is now on life support.  In my opinion he has zero chance of capturing the nomination and absent another massive infusion of cash from his wealthy political sponsors via his Super PAC he will be forced out of the race.  Tonight he took only his home state and could not break 50% there.  His showing in virtually all of the other states was abysmal.  Many neo-conservatives are starting to note that the votes for Gingrich, though insignificant by themselves have been more than the margin of victory for Romney in several key races including Michigan and tonight in Ohio.  In short Gingrich is Romney's biggest ally right now because he is splitting the neo-con anti-Romney vote.  Look for calls to start coming in, privately at first and then publicly if needed, for Gingrich to take one for the team (or face electoral reality) and drop out of the race. This will allow the neo-cons to concentrate their votes for the first time in their anyone but Romney campaign.  From this point forward a vote for Gingrich is a vote for Romney.
• Ron Paul: "Always the bride's maid, never the bride."  Ya ya I know... Alaska is still counting votes.   Ron Paul made some impressive 2nd place showings tonight.  In fact he had a better night than any so far in the campaign.  But he has yet to put up a state in the "win" column.  Of course no one beyond the delusional thinks Dr. Paul has any chance at winning the nomination.  His ambition is to accomplish three things.  First advance the libertarian cause and lay the groundwork for an ideological revolution that will profoundly reshape the GOP. Like Moses he knows he is unlikely to live to see the promised land.  But he has lead the faithful to it.  This is a battle that will be waged over many elections.  The next generation is much more libertarian and they will be the future of the Republican Party if Ron Paul is successful.  Secondly, in the near term he wants a voice in the platform committee and a speaking slot at the convention.  If he has enough delegates he could reasonably expect that.  And lastly if there is a brokered convention (still unlikely but not beyond the realm of possibility) he may play a role in naming the GOP nominee.
• Mitt Romney:  He's still the odds on favorite to win the nomination.  But his support is incredibly weak.  He is winning through a combination of excellent staff work and enormous money advantages.  Yet almost everywhere his support remains profoundly anemic.  The only states he has really won by large margins are his home state of Massachusetts and those with large Mormon populations.  Take Virginia, a state where the party establishment pretty much rigged the election for Romney by making it as hard as possible for candidates to get on the ballot, and then prohibited write in candidates, and then topped it off by requiring a loyalty oath from all voters that they would support the nominee of the party in the general election.  Romney was only running against Ron Paul and yet Paul took over 40% of the vote!  Additionally Romney has yet to win in really conservative states absent large Mormon support. Still Romney knows how to run a numbers game and he is doing it well.  The mathematical wall he is building is starting to look impressive.  As noted above, he has been enormously aided by the inability of his mainly neo-con opposition to rally behind a single candidate.  His greatest strength right now is money and organization.  His greatest fear is that Gingrich will drop out of the race leaving him to face a unified opposition falling in line behind Santorum.  If he can get through the next big round of primaries with his opposition divided, he may finally be able to close the deal and claim the mantle of the inevitable nominee.  But hostility  among neo-cons to Romney is almost visceral.  Even if he wins the nomination he is gong to have a lot of damage control to work on within the party going into the general election.
• Rick Santorum: I can't stand the man's politics, but one cannot help but admire his unflagging perseverance.  He has waged a campaign that is not just come from behind, but really come from dead last and risen to become the only viable opponent to Mitt Romney's eventual coronation in Tampa.  And he has done it all with virtually no campaign staff or organization and a shoestring budget.  Romney has outspent him by 6:1, and still here he is.  Santorum must be feeling deeply frustrated tonight.  He has had two really huge opportunities to rock Romney back on his heels, first in Michigan and tonight in Ohio, and he came up just short in both cases.  If even a small percentage of Newt Gingrich's voters had instead backed him, Romney would be in serious trouble tonight.  Santorum's greatest strength and weakness are pretty much the same thing, his obvious and deeply felt conviction on social issues.  He is rallying the neo and social cons with his blistering culture war rhetoric but also alienating moderates.  This tends to play well in primary season when you are trying to fire up the right wing of the party.  In a general election though much of what he has said would come back to hurt him.  More than a few people have opined (and I concur) that nominating Santorum would probably set the GOP up for an epic electoral shellacking not seen since 1964.  And for the record the Democrats made the same mistake, nominating an ideologue, back in 1972.  To win the nomination though, Santorum needs to stick to populist economic themes and by hook or by crook get Gingrich out of the race.  If Gingrich drops out he has a shot at stopping Romney.  But time and the math are not on his side.

Greece threatens to default on debt

Greece on Tuesday threatened to default on payments to any bond investor that doesn’t participate in a debt restructuring that is central to international plans for a rescue of the ailing country.

Greece is asking banks, pension companies, hedge funds and others that hold about $260 billion in Greek bonds to trade them for new notes worth less than half the face value and carrying low-interest terms meant to make the country’s situation sustainable.

Read the rest here.

Wow! Didn't see that one coming!

Nicolas Sarkozy says there are "too many immigrants in France"

Nicolas Sarkozy pinned his dwindling hopes of re-election on Tuesday night on wooing the far-Right electorate, saying there are "too many immigrants in France" and that their integration is increasingly failing.

With support for the incumbent conservative ebbing and the victory of Socialist candidate François Hollande looking surer by the day, Mr Sarkozy made a series of proposals aimed at wooing back National Front sympathisers who voted for him en masse in 2007 but have since become disillusioned.

"Our system of integration is working more and more badly, because we have too many foreigners on our territory and we can no longer manage to find them accommodation, a job, a school," Mr Sarkozy said.

Read the rest here.

Super Tuesday polls start closing

Early results...
Gingrich takes Georgia (no surprise)... Romney leads in Virginia and Vermont.

Update I (1628 PST): Romney takes the phony election in Virginia. Vermont still too close to call.

Update II (1642 PST): Romney will take Vermont. Ohio too close to call. While Virginia has been called for Romney, it should be noted that Ron Paul is taking around 44% of the vote. That's a very bad sign for Romney.

Update III (1704 PST): Romney wins Massachusetts and Santorum is leading in Oklahoma. Ohio remains too close to call.

Update IV (1733 PST): Santorum takes Tennessee continues to lead in Oklahoma. Ohio still too close to call. Ron Paul posts strong 2nd place showings in Virginia and Vermont hoping to take Alaska.

Update V (1805 PST): Santorum takes Oklahoma.  Ohio still too close to call

Update VI (1858 PST): I am not sure why the MSM is so slow calling North Dakota.  With roughly 70% of the vote in Santorum is winning by 10 points with 38% of the vote.  I guess I will scoop the AP and MSNBC... Ad Orientem is calling North Dakota for Rick Santorum.

Update VII (2005 PST): It looks increasingly likely that Romney will pick up two more states shortly.  Idaho is going for Romney by  a landslide.  No real surprise with its large Mormon population. And Romney also holds about a 20 pt lead in Wyoming with roughly 60% of the vote in.  That strikes me as an insurmountable lead.  Alaska has not closed their polls yet and Ohio remains a nail biter.

Congrats

To Louise White, 81, of Newport, R.I, whose "golden years" just got a little more gold. She has been verified as the sole winner of last month's $336.4 million (over 30 years) Powerball lottery. She opted (very intelligently) for the "cash value," which after Federal and State taxes will leave her with something in the neighborhood of $143 million. I hope she gives some to charity and spreads a little around to the kids... and then catches the next plane to Rio :-)

Jury convicts Stanford in $7 billion Ponzi scheme

HOUSTON — A Houston jury Tuesday convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford on all but one of the charges he faced for allegedly bilking investors out of more than $7 billion in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

The federal jurors found Stanford guilty on 13 of 14 counts he faced. They found Stanford not guilty on one count of wire fraud.

The 61-year-old Stanford, whose net worth was once estimated at more than $2 billion, looked down when the verdict was read.

He faces up to 20 years in prison for the most serious charges but could be imprisoned for much longer if a judge orders his sentences be served consecutively.

Prosecutors say Stanford orchestrated a 20-year scheme that took billions through the sale of certificates of deposit from his Caribbean bank.

Stanford's attorneys blamed his ex-chief financial officer.

Read the rest here.