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On Monday, Jeb Bush's Wall Street Journal op-ed raised conservative hopes that the former Florida Governor would jump in and grab the wheel of the clown car that is the 2012 GOP presidential field. But if Republicans were disappointed when Jeb squelched the nascent "Draft Jeb" movement, the American people should be relieved. After all, the American social mobility that Jeb touted in "Capitalism and the Right to Rise" is at modern lows after the decade of economic devastation presided over by his brother. And despite Jeb's mythmaking about taxes, regulations and so much else, the record shows that more Americans can climb the economic ladder when a Democrat sits in the White House.

What Upward Mobility? Whose Right to Rise?

To be sure, conservatives are praising Jeb Bush's ahistorical and data-free endorsement of the call to arms Congressman Paul Ryan issued at the Heritage Foundation:

Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: "The right to rise."

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn't seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

Unfortunately for Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan, the supposed "right to rise" is now in tatters after the very years in which their ideology reigned supreme. As Fareed Zakaria pointed out in "The Downward Path of Upward Mobility":

Some believe we're still doing fine. In his address to the Heritage Foundation last month, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) declared, "Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile society with a lot of movement between income groups." Ryan contrasted social mobility in the United States with that in Europe, where "top-heavy welfare states have replaced the traditional aristocracies, and masses of the long-term unemployed are locked into the new lower class."

In fact, over the past decade, growing evidence shows pretty conclusively that social mobility has stalled in this country. Last week, Time magazine's cover asked, "Can You Still Move Up in America?" The answer, citing a series of academic studies was, no; not as much as you could in the past and -- most devastatingly -- not as much as you can in Europe.

As Zakaria noted, according to the OECD, upward mobility from the bottom was "was significantly lower in the United States than in most major European countries, including Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark." And as TPM reported, an analysis by the Economic Mobility Project suggested that Jeb and George Bush could be the poster children for the limits of social mobility in the United States:

"Most studies find that, in America, about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income are passed on to the next generation," their report concludes. "This means that one of the biggest predictors of an American child's future economic success -- the identity and characteristics of his or her parents -- is predetermined and outside that child's control. To be sure, the apple can fall far from the tree and often does in individual cases, but relative to other factors, the tree dominates the picture. These findings are more striking when put in comparative context. There is little available evidence that the United States has more relative mobility than other advanced nations. If anything, the data seem to suggest the opposite."

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Officials in Broward County, Florida were confronted by the annoying truth that their voting machines do in deed count votes, but they count them in the negative direction. In a story broken by the Palm Beach Post, election officials sheepishly revealed today that the software used in their county and others can handle only 32,000 votes. After that, the system continues to count votes - but in reverse!
As of today, stunned Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman was still trying to learn why a voting system would even be designed to count backward.
The problem originally cropped up in 2002. Lieberman said that ES&S told her it had sent software upgrades to Florida Secretary of State, but the office, for unexplained reasons, kept rejecting the software.
This election, the glitch affected 97,434 ballots in Broward County alone, according to Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, a Jeb Bush appointee with ties to the White House.

The same software is used in Martin and Miami-Dade counties.
Secretary of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said all counties had been told that such problems would indeed occur if the votes got above the 32,000 mark.
Lieberman replied adamantly, "No election employee has come to the canvassing board and made the statements that Jenny Nash said occurred."
Late Tuesday night, ES&S issued a statement changing it's tune. It now claims that it found out about the problems in 2002 and said the software upgrades would be submitted to Secretary of State Hood's office next year. The company released the following statement: "While the county bears the ultimate responsibility for programming the ballot and structuring the precincts, we regret any confusion the discrepancy in early vote totals has caused."

Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software initially refused to return any calls, but as pressure mounted late Thursday, an ES&S spokeswoman sheepishly admitted she did not know whether ES&S contacted the Secretary of State two years ago or whether the software is designed to count backwards.

Crack Palm Beach Post reporter Eliot Kleinberg who broke this story locally, found that while the problem surfaced two years ago, current Broward County Elections Supervisor Snipes claimed it was under another supervisor and a different secretary of state and hence, she could not be held accountable.

In the pre-election issue of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, an expose on Snipes revealed, " Snipes calls herself a Democrat, but Jeb Bush and local Republican power brokers like William Scherer pull the strings."
The New Times article goes on to state: "You might remember Scherer - a co-chair for the governor's campaign and a fundraising Ranger for the president's campaign. He's the charming fellow who started yelling on live television during the 2000 recount and had to be removed from the Broward County Courthouse."
"Scherer works closely with lobbyist Jim Blosser, who is perhaps the most influential Republican power broker in South Florida," explains New Times.
Snipes a black Democrat, chose Dorsey Miller to emcee her appointment ceremony, "Miller an opportunistic and oft -investigated black Republican was tapped by Jeb {Bush} to engineer Snipes' ascension." explains New Times.
More later.

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You know, I'm not sure that Chris Matthews inhabits the same planet that we do. His is so devoid of history, context or consequences that he's a little like the Drew Barrymore's character in 50 First Dates: a completely blank slate, unable to remember anything that's happened.

Tweety is convinced that the reception of George W. Bush's memoirs, scheduled to be published on November 9, 2010, immediately following the midterms, will be so well-received that the nostalgia will help push little brother Jeb into the Republican presidential candidacy in 2012.

I'm sorry, but WTF?

First, what's with the assumption that there will be this huge wave of nostalgia for GWB due to his book? I think the safer assumption is that waste of trees will be full of rationalizations, lies and spin for what historians have already assessed as one of the worst presidencies in history of the country. Seriously, does anyone doubt that the financial collapse, the huge unemployment rate, the record number of foreclosures, the spiraling debt, two unwinnable wars and the contempt of the rest of the world should be placed squarely upon the shoulders of George Walker Bush? What exactly are we--the bungled and the botched--to wax nostalgic about?

And secondly, how exactly does one make the rather large leap--other than in the fevered mind of Tweety--from feeling all warm and fuzzy about the Shrub to deciding that we MUST have Jeb as the Republican nominee? Even as Andrea Mitchell titters on how Bar's favorite was considered bettered suited for the presidency than his under-achieving big brother (a fact she conveniently omitted for ten years), no one on the panel can quite see how the publication of GWB's book will launch another Bush into the White House.

Thank the FSM that some inside the Beltway bubble have greater sense than Chris Matthews.

Newshoggers: Meet the new COIN boss, same as the old COIN boss.

Balloon Juice: Their own made-up, fictional universe.

Gin and Tacos: Marchel Duchamp versus Harry Reid, and the war on the poor.

Brad DeLong: How have we lost the argument?

Rumproast: Jeb Bush and his brother Fredo.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

Jeb Bush: Hurricane Dennis Could Be Fault of Michael Schiavo

via Swift Report: Florida Governor Jeb Bush has asked a state prosecutor to investigate possible links between Hurricane Dennis and Michael Schiavo. Governor Bush said that he connected Mr. Schiavo with the category 3 storm after realizing that Dennis spelled backwards is actually 'sinned.' read on

This is a pretty funny satire from Deanna Swift.

Kingdom Come Empire Burlesque

 
",0]);D(["ce"]);D(["ms","3730"]);//-->Jeb Bush Strikes Moral Tone at Georgia Convention.

And oh yes, he's a despicable hypocrite:
DCF Sought to Let Abused Girl Die

DCF is the Jebworld agency that led the fight to "save" Teri Schiavo, the brain-dead white woman, while actively trying to kill an abused, abandoned black girl. Read this horror story -- and get acquainted with your next president.

Jon Stewart reports on Jeb's "shoot first and don't ask questions later" law

The Daily Show lampoons Sen. George Voinovich's statements today regarding John Bolton.

Download | play -WMP

Download | play -QT

Then he gets busy with Jeb Bush and the Wild, Wild West law, or the Deadwood Justice rule.

. Powerline: The Great Unraveling

Powerline :A Sad Day

"What I don't understand is why this tragic case should be an occasion for the partisan hatred which currently bedevils our public life.

" I don't know how to account for it, unless one concludes that for some liberals, politics is about hate, period."

A picture of right wing zealots calling for Jeb Bush's head, yet it's liberals who hate.

Powerline again:

Why? Maybe they have "fallen half in love with death," as Noonan suggests? Or maybe they are just frustrated by losing elections, seeing the tide turn in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East (must Terri die for Bush's "sins"?), etc. Whatever the case, it makes for a sad and sorry spectacle.

A Christian conservative judge (with a price on his head) backed by the Conservative lead Supreme Court is ruling on this case, yet it's Bush hating liberals that are some how calling the shots. They should take a look in the mirror to find where the real hate is coming from.

I think my irony meter just redlined:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) remains something of a powerhouse in Republican circles, so it seemed noteworthy that he doesn't seem to have much respect for a certain former half-term governor of Alaska.

In a recent interview with Newsmax, Bush was asked whether he thought Palin was a viable candidate for president. Though he had some nice things to say about her "charisma," it was clear that Bush thinks Palin doesn't have the intellectual heft to occupy the oval office. He said that Palin's success depends on her willingness to add a "depth of understanding of the complexity of life we're living in today" to her rhetoric.

"That's up to her," he said. "I mean, I don't know what her deal is, but my belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity."

Seriously? The need for "intellectual curiosity" wasn't necessary in 2000 or 2004, was it, Jeb? The mind boggles.

This USAToday piece leaves out an important piece of the puzzle here. The company who sold the pumps was closely tied to the Bush family, at one time even employing Jeb Bush:

WASHINGTON — Huge flood-control pumps installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina don't protect the city adequately and the Army Corps of Engineers could have saved $430 million in replacement costs by buying proven equipment, a federal investigation finds.

The investigation by the federal Office of Special Counsel finds there was "little logical justification" for the corps' decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the "untested" hydraulic pumps, which are meant to empty millions of gallons of water from the below-sea-level city during storm-related floods.

Nope, no "logical" justification. Just political! From March 2007:

Meanwhile, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., asked the Government Accountability Office on Thursday to investigate the Corps and the contract it entered into with Moving Water Industries Corp.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps.

But wait, it gets even worse:

In 2002, the U.S. Justice Department amended its suit against Eller, alleging that he twice flew suitcases of cash to offshore tax havens to hide his assets, the St. Petersburg Times reported. The DOJ also claimed that MWI improperly used more than a third of a $74.3-million U.S. loan to pay a Nigerian agent for the company. In turn, that agent and other company officials paid Nigerian government officials involved in buying MWI's pumps, the lawsuit alleges. MWI denies the charges.

According to the paper:

Between 1985 and 1993, the government says, Eller flew on his company plane to the Bahamas and to Grand Cayman, once with a "large suitcase filled with currency" and once with a "large duffel bag or suitcase filled with currency." At both places, a chauffeured limousine whisked him and the money away. Eller told his pilot he was "moving his assets out of the United States," the lawsuit contends, calling it an effort to shield the money from creditors.

Eller's lawyer, William Scherer, said the flights never occurred and neither Eller nor MWI has accounts in either country.

The lawsuit by the George W. Bush Justice Department suggests no wrongdoing by Jeb Bush, who from 1988 to 1994 worked with Eller marketing MWI pumps to foreign countries, including Nigeria.

Indeed, the amended complaint omits allegations of influence-peddling by MWI -- including Eller's bringing Jeb Bush into the pump business -- leveled in the whistle-blower's recently unsealed lawsuit. That lawsuit prompted the federal investigation.

This begs a couple of questions: Why was a company under DOJ investigation for such serious charges given a major federal contract for New Orleans reconstruction in the first place? And why is the DOJ suit against MWI still unresolved after so many years?