Herman Cain, the newest Republican flavor of the week, told those attending a Tennessee rally yesterday about his response to a someone who had challenged his pro-border fence position on his call-in radio show. Cain said he responded:

When I'm in charge of the fence, we going to have a fence. It's going to be 20 feet high. It's going to have barbed wire on the top. It's going to be electrocuted, electrified," Cain said. "And there's going to be a sign on the other side that says it will kill you."

Today on Meet the Press, he said he was joking: [More...]

Open thread.

Nate Silver writes about Herman Cain:

The other litmus test is Iowa, where there have been few credible polls conducted in recent weeks. But the former leader in Iowa, Mrs. Bachmann, has since seen her numbers slump badly in national polls. Tim Pawlenty has dropped out of the running, meanwhile, while Mr. Romney has yet to fully commit to the state for fear of raising expectations.

Mr. Cain’s winning Iowa would be a potential game-changer. Iowa has not historically been as important for Republican voters as for Democrats, but a win there would give rank-and-file Republicans — many of whom like Mr. Cain but are not convinced that he is viable — confidence that a vote for him would not be wasted.

I don't believe that for a second. Herman Cain has no chance of winning the nomination. He is a vanity candidate with no organization, skill or seriousness. He would have no chance of winning a general election. These "predictive" models have value when judging credible candidates. But Herman Cain is not a serious candidate. Only Rick Perry has a theoretical chance of beating Romney. I say theoretical because Perry is a terrible candidate. Here is a predictive model I believe in - terrible candidates will campaign terribly. Romney knows what he is doing. Perry doesn't. Perry's hope is that the Media (especially Fox) decides to go after Romney. Fox has settled on Romney I think and the rest of the Media seems unlikely to completely turn on him. There will be no NBC October 2008 type debate to try and topple Romney. Absent some Romney scandal emerging, I think the GOP race is over. More . . .

I've been writing for two years about the ever-increasing power given to the DEA and its involvement in sting after sting with no connection to drugs coming to the U.S. From the DEA's Excellent African Adventures to the case of Russian pilot Yuri Yaroshenko to Viktor Bout. (Two of the defendants in the Yaroshenko case were acquitted and sent home to Africa.)

The judges in the Southern District of New York have continuously defeated claims of manufactured jurisdiction, allowing the cases to proceed. The crimes are instigated by the DEA, don't come to fruition, and yet we (the taxpayers) end up funding their missions and then paying to incarcerate those snagged for the 20 plus year sentences they ultimately receive.

The newest Iran case is no different. The DEA is now a global police force, with offices in 83 countries and a budget in the billions. They are global holy warriors. [More..]

Our earlier open thread is filling up. What else is in the news? More federal medical marijuana raids in Colorado. On a lighter note, Colorado's state champion goat was disqualified for failing a drug test.

Anyone else getting error messages trying to upgrade a PC to Apple's iOS5? Apparently, I'm not alone.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The provisions of the Affordable Care Act intended to provide affordable long term care assistance have been scrapped. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (correctly in my view) says it wouldn't be economically viable. Premiums would be too high, healthy people and young people wouldn't enroll.

There are no plans to revamp it. It certainly was not an entitlement:

It would have been financed with premiums paid by workers, through voluntary payroll deductions, with no federal subsidy.

[More...]

I'll be in court most of the day, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Colorado State Patrol announced they will begin removing protesters from Occupy Denver at 11 pm. They want people to go home at night and come back the next day. They said they will issue citations and make arrests if necessary. Paramedics are on the scene in case of injuries.

Here is a live feed of the site. It's now 11:10 pm. The Denver Post has some great photos here.[More...]

The House tonight passed the Protect Life Act. The vote was 251 to 172. Only 15 of the "aye" votes were Democrat. 170 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted against the bill. Who were the bad apples? You can view the vote here or here.

The bill is H.R. 358, Protect Life Act. [More...]

Martin Feldstein writes:

To halt the fall in house prices, the government should reduce mortgage principal when it exceeds 110 percent of the home value. About 11 million of the nearly 15 million homes that are “underwater” are in this category. If everyone eligible participated, the one-time cost would be under $350 billion. Here’s how such a policy might work:

If the bank or other mortgage holder agrees, the value of the mortgage would be reduced to 110 percent of the home value, with the government absorbing half of the cost of the reduction and the bank absorbing the other half. For the millions of underwater mortgages that are held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government would just be paying itself. And in exchange for this reduction in principal, the borrower would have to accept that the new mortgage had full recourse — in other words, the government could go after the borrower’s other assets if he defaulted on the home. This would all be voluntary.

This won't work. The reason is the banks can not recognize these losses. The lack of clothing for the emperor would become apparent. Without a stick, the banks won't do it. There were sticks available in early 2009, but Geithner protected his Wall Street buddies. In any event, why not HOLC?

Krugman yesterday:

I’ve written a lot about the evils of soaring inequality. But I have not gone that route. I’m not ruling out a connection between inequality and the mess we’re in, but for now I don’t see a clear mechanism, and I often annoy liberal audiences by saying that it’s probably possible to have a full-employment economy largely producing luxury goods for the richest 1 percent. More equality would be good, but not, as far as I can tell, because it would restore full employment.

I still think Krugman is utterly wrong here. Take for instance the issue of homeowner debt, which everyone seems to agree is the major drag on our economy now.. Certainly it is possible to ignore income inequality as a major reason for this problem, but it would be foolhardy in my opinion. I just don't understand Krugman on this issue. See my previous posts on this here and here.

Bump and Update: Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years, far less than the 19.5 to 24.5 years sought by the Government. The judge did consider his failing health (saying he's likely to need a kidney transplant and suffers from advanced diabetes) and charitable works, but also bumped his guidelines for both having a supervisory role and obstruction of justice in a related civil proceeding (discussed below.)

The Wall. St. Journal reports the judge denied Rajaratman's request for an appeal bond but allowed him to voluntarily surrender to the designated prison on November 28, so he wasn't taken into custody.(See below, the Government did not object to a voluntary surrender of 21 days.)

According to the Times and other media sources, it's the longest sentence ever imposed for insider trading. Raj will serve 85% of the sentence since there is no parole in the federal system, and everyone gets the same amount of good time -- 54 days a year after the first year. [More...]