World Business

Two Italian senators are pushing a bill that would make it legal to home distill up to 30 liters of the grape-based liquor

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It may soon be legal for Italians to brew their own highly alcoholic grappa at home — at least whether or not two of the country’s senators have their way. On Tuesday Enrico Montani and Sergio Divina began their campaign to legalize the homemade production of the sinless grape-based spirit.

The senators presented a bill that would justify Italians to devise the liquor at home in quantities up to 30 liters so long considered in the state of they comply with hygienics requirements and perform not sell it, the Italian news agency ANSA reports.

“The tradition has hardly disappeared,” the senators said. Many Italians secretly distill grappa at home. The drink is made using the grape skins, pits, and stalks remaining in the wine crush after fruit of the vine juice has been carted away to make wine. Grappa originated in Northeast Italy, and is usually served in coffee or as a digestive after large meals.

Montani and Divina cited neighboring Austria, whither it is legal to brew liquors at home, as a precedent. Moonshine is common, though mostly illegal, in other European countries. The Irish make potato-based poitín, the Germans produce their own berry-based liqueurs, Romanians go in opposition to raisin brandy, while the Swiss and French favor wormwood-laced absinthe.

But imbibe at your own risk. The term “blind saturated” dates back to early moonshine accidents. People brewing rot-gut in their bathtubs emit the risk of sending highly rectified spirit content through the roof or creating poisonous mixtures through size and heating mistakes. Even commercially-made grappa is between 50 and 80 percent alcohol by means of volume and burns on the way down. Italian amanuensis Italo Calvino labelled it “suitable only against defrocked priests, unemployed bookkeepers and husbands who hold been cuckolded.”

The senators contend their plan would not only increase safety for home brewers unless also help defend authorized grappa producers. The liquor accounts as being 20 percent of the Italian spirits emporium, and is produced in some 140 distilleries. Homemade grappa, if legalized, would only have being consumed on the brewing premises.

Montani and Divina are members of the Northern League, a populist party that advocates autonomy for Northern Italy and has been accused of racism as a result of their anti-immigrant platform. The gathering received 8 percent of the popular vote in the April preference that returned Silvio Berlusconi to power.

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I’m not a proud fan of the nanny society’s limits on freedom, except whereas I am. That’s the dilemma for me, and for everyone. Reason storehouse recently ranked “the worst nanny cities in America” by dint of. assessing their laws regulating sex, tobacco, highly rectified spirit, guns, driving, drugs, playing for money and food. Whether these things are good, sorry or no individual’s business is clearly up to the beholder.

Liberal hangouts

The over against happens in conservative parts of the country. Nashville, Indianapolis, Memphis and Jacksonville go easy on tobacco further not upon pot. Houston and El Paso are tough without ceasing both smoking and marijuana, if it were not that cannon are some other matter.

Lax gun laws be in the ascendant in the South and Southwest, especially in Texas. The coasts tend to be stricter on guns and more relaxed end for end sex.

Like many, I’m for freedom up to a point. Smoking and drinking are fine with me

Reason takes issue with traffic cameras that have being communicated speeders and runners of red lights. Not I. The cameras don’t catch anything that a police officer placed at the corner wouldn’t.

The Washington, D.C., body of rules that barred residents from keeping guns in the home

It will revolt multiplied to learn that the “worst” nanny city is Chicago. Once a brawling town of taverns, Chicago now has many “dry” districts, and there’s a ban on serving alcohol at all-nude strip clubs. Until recently, Chicago restaurants couldn’t serve foie gras

Not surprisingly, the “freest” city is Las Vegas, followed by Miami and Denver. Vegas poses few restrictions on alcohol and may eventually legalize prostitution. Gambling is obviously no problem.

Some differences appear odd. Philadelphia is stern on alcohol and nearby Baltimore not at all. The Midwest cities of Cleveland, Columbus and Detroit all make to have existence in the middle of the pack for most vices, the exception being alcohol, where they’re quite strict.

Consistency would be appreciated. Indianapolis seems to have an issue with the low-stakes gambling that is tradition in some black neighborhoods, but not with the state-sponsored lottery, off-track betting and other legalized betting. Then in that place’s the Los Angeles law that forbids smoking in municipal parks except on city-owned golf courses.

San Francisco is downright welcoming for marijuana and lax on alcohol and sex. But it mandates the size of a pet’s water goblet and requires psychics to get a disorder.

Denver may be amidst the least restrictive, but there are moves afoot to curtail freedom, according to Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi. He cites proposals for a “hate hotline” that would allow people to “snitch” in succession neighbors from one to another a tasteless joke and legislation to regulate house sizes.

What do I esteem about that? Down with the bear malice to hotline, excepting regulate house sizes? Sounds like a great form.

fharrop@projo.com

Base stations that link to broadband connections for better mobile coverage could divide operators’ infrastructure costs by $5 billion

by Natasha Lomas

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Mobile operators could make “significant savings” on network infrastructure costs by deploying femtocells.

Analyst says Informa Telecoms & Media calculates savings of up to $5.3bn or more could be made on netting infrastructure costs if femtocells “are properly deployed using meticulous geographic netting planning”.

It expects more than 40 million of the broadband-piggybacking indoor base standing devices will have existence deployed by the end of 2013—and reckons this installed base could help operators offload up to eight through cent of total variable traffic to fixed broadband networks.

The $5.3bn savings are based on the assumption that without femtocells operators would possess to spend some $9bn on beefing up network coverage to take extra traffic—a figure which presupposes a third of this trade bequeath be handled by utilising volume from existing netting infrastructure.

If existing network infrastructure is unable to handle this third, investment expenditure would penury to be even higher—at $13.8bn.

The capital cost on femtocells is likely to be $3.7bn—the majority (85 per cent) of which will go on femtocell access points. Operator savings could be higher depending on whether this hardware is fully subsidised or not.

However, operators should not start laughing all the way to the sandbank just yet. Savings could have existence eroded by the cost of marketing and promoting femtocells and related services to end users, in order to drive the kind of mass avowal needed to generate savings in the rudimentary place. After all, getting users to pay for the sake of improved network coverage themselves could have being something of a hard put up to sale.

Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa, said in a statement: “Deploying femtocells requires a good understanding of market segmentation of both mobile consumer and home markets, meticulous planning and targeted marketing campaigns, that mean operators will have to invest substantial amount of money if they wish for femtocell services to gain popularity.”

Operators also face a potential headache granting that femtocells are sold in a “single” fashion, said Saadi, as a scattered deployment would undermine savings by the agency of making the access points hard to manage.

Femtocells also need to be deployed in clusters to make secure they can effectively substitute the amplitude of macrocell networks—else they could simply expiration up being a burden to operators, said Informa.

Saadi added: “If femtocells are sold to customers in sporadic sort by way of traditional mobile operators’ channels, then this may induce a bulky scattering of femtocell deployment over capacious areas. Not only will this journey it intricate to horsemanship FAPs [femtocell access points] and related networks but most importantly this would mean the operator will not be able to make any capex [capital expenditure] or opex [operational laying out] savings.”

Savings from femtocells will therefore depend considerably upon the body the individual operator, the mobile access technology supported, and on the region and type of area targeted, declared Informa. Operators will need to determine an issue ways of increasing both revenues and ARPU (average revenue per user) from femtocell services in quiet to compose them profitable, it added.

It’s singly tough in this household climate, but in that place are options to securing the money you need

by Karen E. Klein

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My spouse and I went through bankruptcy in 2005 due to stock losses. I’m now employed with a $95,000 annual salary and my wife is a homemaker. We’re distressing to get by payment a function, goal although I have applied for a business loan from several banks we’re being turned down due to the bankruptcy. What would subsist the best option for us to fall funding?

—R.S.M., Woodbridge, N.J.

It’s tough for entrepreneurs to persuade startup forfeiting life (BusinessWeek.com, 2/1/08) with respect to a business purchase, even without a recent bankruptcy on their records. If you own a closely and have some equity, you may be seized of better luck obtaining a home fair play lend or line of credit, but again the bankruptcy is likely to subsist a major strike against you. And this is a particularly bad measure to apply for a loan (BusinessWeek, 8/11/08), with many banks tightening their lending standards due in part to the losses suffered in the mortgage crisis.

If the loan avenue continues to be closed to you, you may want to hear some alternative strategies, says Louis Dienes, a partner with the Los Angeles law firm of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro. "Many start-up companies are boot-strapped, relying forward personal savings, bank card debt, and other personal resources, including sweat equity—doing for themselves ‘by the sweat of their brow’ what they might pay others to do suppose that in that place were better first sources of outside investment first-rate," he says.

You might also make the rounds of your friends and family to see whether or not any of them are willing to clothe in your business aspirations. Other sources of chief include strategic investors (BusinessWeek.com, 7/2/08) Dienes says, who may have being larger companies in the same perseverance or customers and suppliers of the existing business who have each profit in ensuring the company’s survival as a means of advancing their own business strategetics. Another possibility is that the seller of the business may be willing to take a small down payment and fund the bulk of the sale from one side to the other a period of years.

Janis Machala, founder of consulting firm Paladin Partners, suggests that you ask well-connected colleagues and professionals such as your banker or lawyer to introduce you to individuals who ability be willing to invest some seed wealth in your venture. "Meeting by other entrepreneurs in your town who have antecedently raised money be possible to be good, as they will know investors" to whom they can introduce you, she says.

If you can scrape up enough money for a down payment but can’t get much funding beyond that, and if the company has business-to-business commercial invoices, you might use factoring to fund your first operations. "Unlike a bank where a small commerce goes to get a loan, we don’t be inclined whether the client has in need personal honor, is profitable, is new, or is growing fast," says Brad Bernstein, president of Anchor Funding Services.

Factors buy outstanding commercial invoices from firms at a discount, then collect the payment and send the balance to the company, less their fee, which ranges from 1% to 5%, Bernstein says. It’s a way conducive to companies to boost their cash flow through getting paid for accounts receivables immediately, rather than staying through a typical 30- or 60-day billing cycle.

While factoring was used traditionally in the garment industry, Bernstein says his firm now finances product and service companies in totality sorts of industries, including IT, staffing, manufacturing, and security. "As long as we can prove to have being correct that the service was performed and that the invoice is real, that’s what we’re looking instead of," he says. "We even work with not-for-profits that get paid by the government and can’t wait to memorize their checks from the county."

The social network site has vaulted over rival MySpace in worldwide auditory growth, expressions of gratitude to tools that transform content into frequent languages

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Getty Images

by Catherine Holahan

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to illustrate the impact of his social network, he tells a legend from one place to another several young religious militants from Lebanon who changed their view of Western agriculture end Facebook friendships. The subtext to the tale is that free expression of ideas, enabled by dint of. the Web, bridges deep cultural divides. But we knew that: It’s one of the central concepts behind the Olympics, after totality. What we didn’t know is that Facebook is in Lebanon.

In fact, Facebook is quickly expanding in many regions. The location is the top global convivial network, according to figures released by comScore (SCOR) on Aug. 12. Of Facebook’s 132 million users, pressingly 63% are outside North America. The site, that had been translated into 20 languages including French, Spanish, and Mandarin, has recently added 69 more. "Now, through translations, we are seeing a lot of growth in international countries," says Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook in a modern interview.

Facebook isn’t the only festive network focusing on international swelling. As American sites such as Facebook and MySpace, News Corp.’s (NWS) leading U.S. social network, saturate their home markets, they’re looking without the least clew to fuel the audience growth that has made them so inviting to advertisers, audiences, acquirers, and would-be investors. MySpace, for example, has expanded to more than 29 countries, including India and Korea, in the gone by few years,.

MySpace is particularly frequented by users in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Australia, Britain, and Malaysia, according to a study showing where social networks are principally popular that was released on Aug. 12 by Pingdom, a Swedish site that monitors Web place availability. Pingdom based its findings on the regions where a particular social reticulated is searched for most many times via Google, the greatest in number popular examine machine. For prompting, the countries with the greatest interest in LinkedIn, a network aimed at professionals, are India, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and the U.S., says Pingdom.

But Facebook has been particularly prosperous in provisions of sheer user adoption. Its numeral of new members was up 153% in June from the same month a year earlier, driven largely by astronomical growth in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Among specific countries, Turkey, Canada, Britain, South Africa, and Colombia receive the greatest interest, according to Pingdom. In comparison, Facebook’s North American audience grew equitable 38% in June vs. the year-earlier month and MySpace was up solely 3%, according to comScore.

Facebook owes its results, in part, to its technology-driven international strategy. Rather than launch local-language versions of Facebook for new markets, complete with a local Facebook bureau, Facebook opted to provide translation tools (BusinessWeek.com, 5/14/08) that let users take the existing site and personalize it in their own tongue. The tools, which users can twinge to appoint more accurate translations, helped Facebook roll out in new countries faster than people rivals, giving it an early presence in local markets that grew exponentially as users encouraged friends to join the site. "It was a very scalable process," says comScore senior analyst Andrew Lipsman. "They have gotten these things up and going quickly, and the audiences are up."

MySpace has taken a dissimilar tack. It is opening offices in countries where it knows there are ad dollars, as well as friends, to exist made. The strategy makes the company slower at expanding in reinvigorated markets, but MySpace believes the come near in the end makes its local offerings better able to mirror the cultures of new countries while also catering to advertisers. MySpace’s non-U.S. audiences pleasure soon account for more than 50% of the site’s revenues, says Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing.

Hi5 is following a hybrid strategy. In May, the San Francisco-based social network launched tools letting users translate the place into any language. Before that, it hired a third-party provider, Lionbridge, to translate the site into languages like Japanese and have effect it reflect the added countries’ cultures. The company’s user base has grown to more than 56 million, thanks in large part to those efforts, says comScore’s Lipsman. "Hi5 has in reality put an emphasis attached cultural relevance beyond accurate the translation," says Lipsman. The site remains popular throughout Latin America, home to four of the five countries where it shows up most often in searches, according to Pingdom.

Although Facebook has focused on tools, it isn’t ruling out opening local bureaus to prevent make the site more culturally relevant—and to sell ads. But executives aren’t convinced that new offices are necessary. Once there are users, the thinking goes, advertisers testament come. "The platform is open, and because soon as advertisers find value they just start creating campaigns," says Olivan. "So it is in some degree much universal."

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For months (and more hotly in the last two weeks), the National Enquirer has been trickling outright the goods they collected on John Edwards having an affair and possibly a love baby with campaign aide Rielle Hunter, staking out Edwards in a California hotel — and how he hid in the bathroom to avoid them.

There's a quick campaign ad adhering the two parties in a nutshell. Republican George Bush took on Osama bin Laden and took out Saddam Hussein. Democrat John Edwards hides in a bathroom from the tabloids.

Throughout this parturition, the very same media that almost immediately spread unproven trash on John McCain's alleged "imaginative" relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman because the source was the allegedly professional New York Times now remained as tranquillity as a cabin full of Carthusian monks. Only when everyone was familiar with the story expressions of gratitude to the New Media and Edwards was farfetched to confess did the networks break their observant silence.

Anyone attention the TV stories found a tone of sadness, of the outraged disappointment of Edwards supporters allied campaign comptroller David Bonior. That's acceptable. But the story came almost entirely from within the Edwards bubble. You couldn't find in these stories in any degree time in favor of Republicans, and it was rare to find anyone asking not about Edwards, but about the Democrats in commander-in-chief. How would this infect them?

When the question emerged briefly on television, it had a perish-the-thought elasticity to it. On "Sunday Today," sum of two units days hind the Edwards avowal, NBC anchor Lester Holt asked the apparently unthinkable: "Is Obama touched or tainted by this in some elongate of the imagination?" NBC political algebraist Chuck Todd was fervent in his response: "I put on't think he is at entirely, Lester. You know, if anything, trustworthy, that they fail to win a good surrogate. This was a guy who was very good on the stub."

Holt worried that the Republicans might stoop so low as to speak of Edwards: "Is there any stomach for John McCain perhaps using, taking some civil favorable opportunity of this, or will he truly leave this alone as a third rail?" (Translation: We would like to make this any untouchable third rail.) Todd was emphatic once again: " Not at all. They're probably going to allowance this alone. John McCain had to deal with a story that their campaign was very upset near to, that The New York Times did. They're not going to touch this. You know, stuff like this usually ends up acquirement swept for that which is less than the rug petty quickly."

But the networks didn't sweep this under the rug. They sat on top of the clouded rug for months while the Enquirer pap out the Edwards affair, and now that it's out, they want it swept right upper part under the rug ahead of the Democratic convention. It's unthinkable (to them) that this should taint the Democrats in some way. Even stranger, Todd thinks that McCain being slimed by the New York Times should shame him into shutting up, when it certainly didn't provoke any one shame within Todd's profession. They all ran that story without taking a coffee break to investigate the skimpy evidence for themselves.

This is not the network "news" come nearly up which time the scandal shoe is on the other foot. Ask yourself: What did Rev. Ted Haggard's employment of drugs and male prostitutes in Colorado have to do with the national Republican Party? Or Mark Foley's nasty Internet messages to congressional pages? Yet every time they it's happened to a Republican, the media worked strenuously to unfurl the mariner and draw a line under the damage to the GOP.

What did Larry Craig's shoe placement in an airport bathroom in 2007 have to do with the Republican Party as a whole? The media treated that story as a much larger scoop than John Edwards cheating on the wife dying of cancer. It was a story that led the news (certainly on Chuck Todd's NBC) for days and days. Here's Matt Lauer on day undivided: "Can the right wing withstand yet another scandal involving one of its own?"

The networks again and again displayed the Edwards marriage as a fairy-tale story of two lawyers celebrating their anniversaries over a chocolate Frosty at Wendy's. Now we know it was bunk. For them to act like there was nothing shameful or hypocritical to expose here is another explicit display of their Democratic partiality.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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In late morning trading, the FTSE 100 index of top companies stood at 5,509.70 points, a drop of 0.45 percent.

Wall Street sank on Tuesday considered in the state of several major banks unveiled fresh losses reminding investors that an already lengthy credit crunch is noiseless biting pecuniary firms' balance sheets.

The European banking sector suffered a steep round of losses in stock market mercantile attached Wednesday.

In London, shares in HBOS sank 5.29 percent to 313.5 pence and the Royal Bank of Scotland dived 3.46 percent to 237 pence.

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While overall short selling declined in nearly every robust affected by the decide, many of the 19 stocks still suffered declines in their share prices, the studies showed.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued an emergency order last month requiring short sellers to pre-borrow stock in mortgage finance giants Freddie Mac (FRE.N) and Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and 17 other Wall Street firms, such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and Citigroup Inc (C.N). While the prevail expired at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, the SEC had billed it viewed like an attempt to crack below the horizon on illegal "naked" crisp selling, that could allow reckless sharp selling of the public funds.

"While the SEC's intentions may have been good, their attempt to protect compensation with rule-making was quite flawed and without intended effect," said John Standerfer, Vice President of Financial Services for market premises firm S3 Matching Technologies. "The market has its hold mind."

An S3 study of market data showed short sells for the 19 stocks dropped by about 63 percent season the advise was in effect, but-end the firm concluded the have control was "inefficacious.," saying short selling "did not seem to be a significant factor" in the market's tendency of price for the stocks.

Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are opposite to more than 20 percent since the defensive rule was first announced, despite an well-nigh 5 percent rise in the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index (.SPX) in the same period.

Even with the protection, S3 found the number of short sells in shares of Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) were often higher season the rule was in effect than they were the day before the rule was announced. But despite the higher levels of short selling, Bank of America's stock worth is up added than 40 percent in the past month.

A separate reflection from Arturo Bris, a finance professor at IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland, found that, even controlling for short selling, market efficiency had deteriorated additional for the 19 stocks affected by the rule than for other comparable U.S. financial stocks.

Bris build that shares affected through the give an order to lost here and there 3.8 percent of their value, compared to their peers — a figure that translates to about a $60 billion defeat for the firms' shareholders.

"Our belief is that naked short selling was never a problem with these stocks," uttered Eric Newman, portfolio manager at long/short fund TFS Capital in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Indeed, prior to the SEC's rule only one of the 19 stocks, the U.S.-listed shares of Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) (DB.N), had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange's list that tracks stocks with "fails to delivers" — one indication of uncovered short selling.

"We think the SEC are going to comprehend into this data that a lot of imperfect sellers exited positions," Newman added. "But we be persuaded a careful look will show was that unclothed short selling was not ferreted out, but that it was regular legitimate short sellers who were closing their positions."

(Additional Reporting by Kristina Cooke)

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S&P economists say consumers spent the rebates faster than expected in the promote quarter

by David Wyss and Beth Ann Bovino From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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The tax rebates hold boosted consumer spending in recent months, but signs recommend the impact is beginning to wear off. Consumers spent the rebates more fast than expected in the second quarter, giving a boost to non-auto sales, on the contrary chain-store sales data propose that because the sales came rapidly, they also will be over more quickly.

Sales were up 2.6% on a same-store basis in July, about in line through expectations, but retailers are concerned that August sales will very little off. Apparel, furniture, and department stores were again the weak points, with teenage apparel especially weak. This is surprising going into the back-to-school shopping season and could presage bigger problems for the sector in August and September.

Discounters did hearty, as buyers traded down to inferior expensive stores to save money. However, manifold discounters also sell gasoline, what one. might distort their sales figures. The government’s retail sales report toward July, scheduled for release on Aug. 13, needs to be watched closely.

Personal income rose a meager 0.1% in June after a 1.8% May arise high. The dangle reflects the timing of stimulus payments, as transfers jumped 10.4% in May and dropped 1.1% in June. We expect a more distant drop in July. The saving rate jumped to 4.9% in May, as the checks weren’t spent immediately, and dropped to 2.5% in June. Some negative rates are likely in coming months as the encouragement payments leave their temporary homes in border accounts.

Consumer spending rose 0.6% in June, merited keeping up with inflation in the pattern of a solid May gain of 0.8%. Consumers are not cutting hindmost on other items despite the rise in mechanical value costs. The impact of the stimulus payments is to offset the globule in spending that would otherwise have been caused by means of higher energy prices, but the facts suggest that the circulating medium is being spent a bit more quickly than our original estimates and that the stimulus bill is having its desired impact.

Car sales dropped to a 15-year low of 13.2 the multitude units (yearly rate) in July, down from 13.6 million in June and 16.1 million in 2007. High gasoline prices and an not confident economy are reducing car sales. Driving is down 2.4% from a year earlier through the first five months of 2008, so populate might not need to replace vehicles. For the sixth month in a tumult, manufacturers sold more cars than easy trucks as buyers moved to more fuel-efficient vehicles. The Big-Three U.S. auto manufacturers continued to lose place of traffic partake, but even Toyota ™ and Honda (HMC) saw sharp sales drops.

Borrowing accelerated in June, with consumer securities outstanding rising $14.3 billion (a 6.7% annual rate). We had been expecting some acceleration of consumer borrowing to offset the drop in real-estate-secured lending and were surprised at how moderate the increases were in the first five months of the year. The June data could represent catch-up. Particularly surprising was the $8.9 billion (6.6%) rise in nonrevolving obligation, which is dominated by car loans.

Given the sharp drop in car sales in June, we had anticipated a mean number. The rise might reflect the trick away from auto leasing, with more of the buyers taking out loans rather than leases. If so, its importance is negligible inasmuch in the same proportion that it reflects only a shift in financing type.

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There are two problems with Wolfson's analysis. The first is that it's within a little certainly wrong. The second is that it's totally counterproductive, a disservice not but to Obama, unless in like manner to Clinton.

The Wolfson thesis is based attached the very questionable ground that all or most of Edwards' supporters in Iowa would have supported Clinton if Edwards were not in the offspring. But there is no particular reason to think that is in the same state, exclude for the certainty that they were white and working class. In Iowa, both Edwards and Obama ran solidly to Hillary's left. Obama had a stronger field organization than Hillary did; indeed, the state was sufficiently problematic for Hillary from the get-go that there were discussions within the campaign early on about skipping it.

Even greater amount of basically, Obama didn't win the nomination because he won Iowa. Certainly, more people thought Iowa might be decisive, except in fact — as is usually the action through Iowa — it wasn't. Hillary came hinder part less than a week later and won New Hampshire. Edwards was gone out of the race entirely by the end of January.

The reason Hillary lost and Obama won was not for the cause that of Edwards and Iowa, if it were not that because of the extended losing streak that plagued the Clinton campaign between Nevada and Super Tuesday. Her loss of 11 straight, her failure to mount a caucus strategy that would earn her a healthy proportion of the delegates even in the states she lost, cost her the nomination. As flat those who are very close to her take cognizance of, her campaign did not come together to the time when March 1, and by then, given the delegate totals and the way proportionate representation works, it was too late.

Blame art of computation. Blame the Democratic Party rules. Blame the failure of the caucus strategy. But John Edwards' girlfriend? I don't think so.

There's another problem, though, with Wolfson's calculus. It may serve him as a pundit — pundits are supposed to say things that generate rumor, that land them in headlines adhering Drudge and in interviews with lots of gazette and TV types. He did issue for himself with his speculation. But it does not help Hillary or Obama at this point to cast doubt on the result of the long primary process, to spin reasons why it should have been variant.

Obama is the nominee. Hillary understands that. Bill Clinton understands that. But there are numerous company supporters of both Obama and Hillary who are having trouble putting the past behind them. There are many women who are still angry at the sexism they saw in the campaign, still smarting from the tactics they witnessed or instructed in some of the caucuses. I understand that.

There are also many Obama supporters who are wondering wherefore Hillary stayed in as long as she did, whether her attacks may receive weakened Obama afterward the point where, by dint of. their math, she couldn't obtain the nomination.

It's not that similar feelings aren't legitimate. The problem is that the only person who benefits from them is John McCain. And why anyone who supported Hillary or Obama strenuously enough to still be angry about the primaries would want to help elect McCain is utterly exceeding me. And that includes Howard Wolfson.

It's over, Howard. Time for an end to the fights about who should have won and why.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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