Today, as it has for many many years, The New York Times today slams the sweet deal given to the American sugar industry:

[S]ugar supports cost American consumers — who pay double the average world price — more than $1.5 billion a year. The system also bars farmers in some of the poorest countries of the world from selling their sugar here.

The North American Free Trade Agreement is about to topple this cozy arrangement. Next year, Mexican sugar will be allowed to enter the United States free of any quotas or duties, threatening a flood of imports. Rather than taking the opportunity to untangle the sugar program in this year’s farm bill, Congress has decided to bolster the old system.

Big Sugar is not the only beneficiary of this corporate welfare. The farm bill is larded with subsidies and other rewards for agricultural producers. The eagerness of members of Congress to please their sugar daddies is not surprising. Campaign donations from the sugar industry have topped $3 million in each of the last four political cycles. American consumers and taxpayers, as well as poor farmers overseas, shouldn’t have to pay the price.

This is of course all true, but the sugar industry is not the only egregious manipulator of our political system. But I want to concentrate on a different point, of personal interest to me. It is the fact that this system does not protect industries and jobs - it protects fat wallets. The small Florida town I grew up in lost hundreds of jobs - the excuse?

I think I've stumbled on to Sully's problem with Hillary:

I think I've stumbled onto something that might explain why [Hillary] doesn't have more support from [some] Democrats, and it is actually somewhat disturbing. I work with a mid 20something [man] who is definitely on the way left of most issues, and he is not [Hillary] supporter . . . . Much of h[is] lack of support for [Hillary] seems to boil down to one major point: [H]e doesn't believe this country is ready to elect a [woman.]

This exercise is merely to demonstrate how easy it is to ignore the criticisms made against Obama OR Hillary and accuse critics of racism or sexism.

Coming from Mr. Bell Curve himself, the irony drips. He is incapable of addressing the arguments made, attacks on those who disagree with him is all he knows. I do not mind the attacks so much, I can dish it myself, but it would be nice if an answer to the actual criticisms made were also offered. But it would be foolish to expect that from Mr. Fifth Column (I got a million of em for Sully.)

I've been waiting to write about Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo's retirement announcement until my post went up at 5280. It's there now, as is Jason Bane's about who may succeed him.

My take (and yes, it's a pretty gracious one for me, considering how off-the-wall I think he is on immigration):

It sounds like he’s tired and needs to regroup and refocus. It’s understandable. He’s been running on a shoe-string budget. He doesn’t fly on chartered jets and he doesn’t stay in luxury hotels like his competitor, Rudy Giuliani.

I may not agree with his politics but it’s hard not to credit the passion and stamina he’s shown to date. All in all, I think he’s made a wise decision for him and for Colorado.

I'm actually kind of sad we won't have him to kick around any more.

As long as we're criticizing Barack Obama today, check out the Daily Howler which takes him to task for his "new" strategy of being more aggressive in his campaign against Hillary.

First off, he's attacking her character, not just her position on issues. Bad move.

Worse, he's pretending she has not taken a stand on social security. That's false. She has taken her stand and her stand is, as it should be, There Is No Crisis.

It’s astounding to see a Major Dem pimping Social Security as a big, troubling issue. It’s astounding to see one Dem attacking another because she won’t go along with that plutocrat claim—especially when he’s been reciting the old chestnut about college kids. This claim has been the tool of plutocrats over the course of the past twenty-five years. Now, we see a Major Dem pimping this line—and criticizing Clinton’s troubling “character” because she won’t go there with him.

By the way, tell us again: Which of these two is the “liberal?”

Update: Obama and Hillary are now in an ad war over social security. Here's Hillary latest salvo, to run in Iowa and New Hampshire, detailing what she has done on behalf of seniors.

More....

Dodd says:

Mr. Mukasey's position that the President does not have to heed the law disqualifies him from being the chief attorney for the United States. We have seen for too long, and at great expense to our national security, an Administration that has systematically attacked the rule of law and turned our Justice Department into a political wing of the White House. I'm afraid that Mr. Mukasey as Attorney General would be more of the same.

Obama gets his just desserts:

Surprise, surprise, surprise. Obama's anti-gay religious right activist used the opportunity Obama gave him last night to preach his hate to thousands of African-Americans. That's just great. And the white preacher who Obama picked to help explain to the audience that gays aren't minions of Satan? CNN reports that he said nothing at all - just a short little prayer, then he left. As for Obama, he did a taped introduction in which he praised McClurkin, the religious right activist, as one of his favorites. That's nice, because the way to help combat homophobia in the black community is to make sure the gay-basher is first endorsed by someone as high-ranking as Obama, who then chooses to say nothing about the gay-bashing.

The San Francisco Chronicle today features the sad story of Kurdish-American auto mechanic Hamid Sayadi. It's an example of what happens when reason gets left behind in our post-9/11 world.

A witty and eloquent Kurdish-American in his 50s, Sayadi waved the flag of his adopted country and cheered its military for three decades — all to end up stripped to his underwear one day, in the boiler room of his workplace, he says, a ragged and sobbing husk of his former self.

The workplace was New United Motor Manufacturing, called NUMMI. It's the largest auto manufacturer in Fremont, Calif, building both GM and Toyota vehicles.

He was a passionate supporter of the US military when it invaded Iraq -- but to his co-workers at the plant, he says, he was just "Ali Baba" and a potential terrorist. The harassment got worse and worse until one day he snapped.

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James Carroll in the Boston Globe provides a decimating assessment of Rudy Giuliani. The theme:

Where the world once looked toward all that Giuliani embodied with admiring compassion, today it flinches.

Why? Here are some choice quotes:

COULD THE United States actually elect as president a Yankee fan who has been rooting for the Red Sox? A father whose own children would boycott his inauguration? A husband whose first wife was his cousin and whose current wife can't remember how many times she married? Could the United States, for that matter, elect a cross-dresser? The Rudy Giuliani surge would be comic if its broader implications were not so grave.

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The New Eagles album, Long Road Out of Eden, releases tomorrow. Only at Wal-Mart. Why Wal-Mart? Keep reading, I'll explain in a bit.

It's their first album of new songs in 28 years. Some of the themes sound familiar. Instead of "Life in the Fast Lane" there's "Fast Company." Henley and Frey wrote it for their daughters. It's about peer pressure.

More...

In a report released today, the American Bar Association is calling for a moratorium on executions in the U.S.

The ABA studied the death penalties in 8 states. It found:

• Spotty collection and preservation of DNA evidence, which has been used to exonerate more than 200 inmates;
• Misidentification by eyewitnesses;
• False confessions from defendants; and
• Persistent racial disparities that make death sentences more likely when victims are white.

It's conclusion:

"After carefully studying the way states across the spectrum handle executions, it has become crystal clear that the process is deeply flawed," said Stephen F. Hanlon, chairman of the ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. "The death penalty system is rife with irregularity."

I'll update with a link to the report when it's available.

How do you stay enthusiastic after three big losses in a row? I can't. What do I conclude? The Red Sox play better baseball.

It's hard to call the Rockies 21 game winning streak a fluke. Maybe they just choked with the national attention and hoopla over their getting to the series at all. Woody Paige in the Denver Post writes:

What are you going to do? The rest of the country is amused. We must laugh, too....And the really good news: We still live in Colorado.

The game is only in the 5th inning and the Rockies could win tonight. But that might just prolong the agony. On the other hand, there's something to be said for positive thinking.

Go Rockies!

So Barack Obama is going to go after Hillary Clinton now. Umm, what took him so long? Anyway, this part bothered me:

[Obama] accused [Clinton] of “straddling between the Giuliani, Romney side of the foreign policy equation and the Barack Obama side of the equation.” He said that she was trying to “sound or vote” like a Republican on national security issues and that that was “bad for the country and ultimately bad for Democrats.”

Very true. But what about trying to sound like a Republican on social issues? What about all that appealing to "values voters" that Obama does? We all know about Obama's willingness to attack Democrats in front of "values voters" and this statement is ominous:

Mr. Obama suggested that she was too divisive to win a general election and that if she won, she would be unable to bring together competing factions in Washington to accomplish anything. “There is a legacy that is both an enormous advantage to her in a Democratic primary, but also a disadvantage to her in a general election,” he said. “I don’t think anybody would claim that Senator Clinton is going to inspire a horde of new voters,” he said. “I don’t think it’s realistic that she is going to get a whole bunch of Republicans to think differently about her.”

But they are going to like the way Obama panders to the "values voters?" Excuse me Senator Obama, it will be good to see you draw sharp distinctions with Senator Clinton on certain issues. But how about you drawing some distinctions with Republicans on other issues? Your Joe Lieberman imitation on "values" is a serious problem.