Dead Presidents

Posted: February 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Surreality, the blogosphere, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance | Tags: , | 19 Comments

Comic Book Reagan

It’s only fitting that some one who completely mangles American history, world geography, and the English language gets to deliver yet another eulogy on Reagan.  We come not to bury Caesar, but to completely reinvent the guy into something we want him to be because we have no better narrative.  Many liberal sites are rightly pointing out that we knew Ronald Reagan and he was not the Ronald Reagan we’re hearing about now.  Here’s a good list of  ‘10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want you to now about Ronald Reagan’.  I’ll hit the top four because,well, I’m an economist and these four things resonate with me the most.

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

So, in the real world, Ronald Reagan was the archetype for the Republican much hated “tax and spend Keynesian”  if there ever was one.  Reagan’s former Budget Director David Stockman has said as much. His former economic adviser Bruce Bartlett has changed his tiger stripes too.    Now, compare that to this tripe in a speech completely missing the facts and the history. Oh, and it’s kind’ve stolen from the Gipper yet heavily revised to meet today’s modern propaganda needs.

“He saw our nation at a critical turning point. We could choose one direction or the other. Socialism or freedom and free markets. Collectivism or individualism. In his words, we can choose ‘the swamp’ or ‘the stars.'”

Take a quick look at the source of the cribbed statement and notice the difference.  It seems that not one of our political spokesmodels can originate thoughts these days.  We have a rip-it-off-then-mangle-it pol culture these days.

“We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening,” Reagan said.

The most dangerous enemy we have ever faced is ignorance.  The face of ignorance is the modern day Know Nothing Wing of the Republican Party.  The old Known Nothing party was rooted in nativism and anti-Catholicism.  This one is rooted in similar phobias and bigotry.  Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote:  “All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography”.

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More Insanity and Lies from US Christian Extremists

Posted: February 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Reproductive Rights, Surreality, The Media SUCKS, We are so F'd, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , | 18 Comments

The new year seems to have instilled a new level of craziness in our homegrown Christian Extremists.  Think that all that stuff you see over in under-developed nations couldn’t be brought over here?  Think it’s only radical Islam that wants to stick women in an Iron Age world?  Well, think again. Watch the video and be appalled.

Anti-Choice Fanatic Lila Rose says that  ‘Abortions Should Be Done in the Public Square’.

We’ll get back to Lila in La La Land in a bit.

First,some people have nothing better to do than to biblecheck the President’s knowledge on the “The Bible.” If it wasn’t embarrassing enough to have to watch the President of the world’s oldest pluralistic society make a speech so he can prove he’s not a “Muslim”, Fox Nation has to choose which version of the Bible he’s supposed to use to pledge allegiance.  Evidently, the only true Bible for Fox Nation is the King James version which has been shown to have severe translation and other problems.

Obama was  quoting from the New International Version, while Fox Nation was pointing to the King James Version to “debunk” him.

This would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

Most likely, they won’t bother to correct their story, and their goal will be accomplished: the readers that trust them will remember the time Obama “misquoted” the Bible, some more people will question the authenticity of Obama’s faith, and the smear machine will move on.

Exactly what is the point of having the President of our entire nation disenfranchise many of us through a “national prayer breakfast” any way?

While the president thankfully steers clear of “Christian nation” rhetoric there was simply too much of Obama the Christian yesterday.

Come to think of it, the National Prayer Breakfast often has this effect on politicians. Senator Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, sprinkled so many references to the gospels at the 48th National Prayer Breakfast in 2000 that he made George W. Bush look like a desk officer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Obama may earnestly believe that Republican Senator Tom Coburn is his “brother in Christ.” But such a sentiment sounds odd coming from a president who once reminded his Turkish hosts that ours is not “a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation,” but “a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

Such a nation, one would hope, would be led by a person who understands that this type of rhetoric can be deeply troubling to those who don’t believe in Christ. Just as it may offend those Christians who believe that Christ’s teachings tend to become distorted when they are mouthed by the worldly powers that be.

This comes after learning the politically significant and influential “Family” has caused Uganda to create laws that murder its GLBT citizens. David Kato was forced to return to a country that is leading a reign of terror on its GLBT minorities in a manner directly traceable to the narrow beliefs and traditions of extremist Christians in the US.  The Family makes the Muslim Brotherhood look tame by comparison.

In early 2010, as policy adviser to the UK’s all-party group on HIV and AIDS, I organised Mugisha’s visit to the Westminster parliament to meet the then foreign office minister and openly gay legislator, Chris Bryant. It was, for Mugisha, a vision of what politics could be like.

“At this moment [in Uganda] it would be political suicide for a [member of parliament] to come out and support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” he marvelled.

Six months later, back in Uganda, the national newspaper, Rolling Stone (unrelated to the US magazine of the same name), splashed a story across its front page, outing Uganda’s “top one hundred homos”. The piece gave names and addresses of gay men – amongst them Mugisha and Kato, whose faces were pictured in the paper. On the front page a banner read, “Hang them!”

The lives of both men were in danger but instead of hiding, they fought back. Kato successfully took the newspaper to court winning the paltry sum of 1.5 million Ugandan shillings (650 US dollars) for invasion of privacy and a permanent injunction preventing Rolling Stone from running a similar story again.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for Uganda to swiftly investigate the murder of  Kato.  This call was reiterated just recently by President Obama.  The Senate should investigate the role of US religious extremists in the murder.

“The Family”–also known as “the Fellowship”– is a powerful and covert sect of American Christian evangelical politicians and ministers who seek a decidedly anti-gay extreme Christian agenda both at home and abroad, and through its words put this hammer in the hands of all potentially intolerant Ugandans.

Enabled by President Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Musevani and his wife Janet Kataha, Ugandan parlimentarian David Bahati, (who in 2009 said, “Homosexuality it is not a human right,”) last year introduced a “kill the gays” bill which remains under active consideration. All are believed to be members of Ugandas’ Christian right wing “Family,” according to Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, a tour de force exposé of “The Fellowship,” published in 2008.

Sharlet has appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, as well as on National Public Radio to discuss the shadowy “Family” sect that has included well-known evangelical minister Rick Warren, who delivered the invocational prayer at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, much to the chagrin of LGBT activists.

Sharlet has authored a second book on the Family, entitled C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, considered a deeper exploration of related sex scandals of Family-backed Republican politicians in Washington, D.C. It provides additional revelations about The Family’s role in the Ugandan government’s anti-gay reactions, which have brought rebukes from the Ugandan Supreme Court, but have also elicited a refusal by Rick Warren to condemn the Ugandan ”kill the gays” proposed legislation, along with a dubious claim that Warren had “nothing to do” with the anti-gay bill.

New York Times best-selling author Frank Schaeffer writes in “Evangelicals Implicated When Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Was Beaten to Death,” that the ”story of the Ugandan legislation to kill gays for being gay was intertwined with the Family and also with representatives of the wider “respectable” American Evangelical community. According to many pressreports, the genesis of the antihomosexual Ugandan bill may be traced to a three-day seminar in Kampala in March 2009 called “Exposing the Truth Behind Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda.” This seminar was led by Evangelical leader and hero to the Religious Right Scott Lively. He is best known for his Holocaust revisionist book  The Pink Swastika, which claims homosexuals founded the Nazi party and were responsible for death camp atrocities.”

“According to sources who attended the conference (and who were later widely quoted in the press), Lively told his Kampala audience, “I know more about this [homosexuality] than almost anyone in the world. The gay movement is an evil institution. The goal of the gay movement is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.” The results of the seminar were dramatic. “The community has become very hostile now,” Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, said in an interview. “We have to watch our backs very much more than before because the community thinks if the Ugandan government is not passing the law, they will deal with [gay] people on their own.”

They’re busy here too.  Some Iowans are on a crusade against GLBT families. Just when you think it’s safe to be a human in a developed nation, religious extremists bring out their burning crosses and witch hunts all over again.

Fox News via Bill Reilly has also been pushing Lila Rose’s heavily edited and misleading film showing that Planned Parenthood “provides advice to sex traffickers of minority youth”.  This is the latest right wing attempt to ensnare nonprofits serving the poor with lies and heavily edited video tape.   This tape is unbelievably being shown on FOX News as a credible source. New Jersey Governor Christie has promised to veto funding for Planned Parenthood now based on this highly edited and misleading document.

When the anti-abortion rights propagandists at Live Action began releasing their Planned Parenthood smear videos earlier this week, we explained that their claim that Planned Parenthood was covering-up “child sex trafficking” was clearly a lie.

That’s because way back on January 18, Planned Parenthood’s president wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder about the incidents and requested an FBI investigation into the possibility that “an individual or individuals are engaged in activities that violate several federal criminal statutes relating to sex trafficking involving minors.”

So Planned Parenthood obviously wasn’t covering up anything; they were fulfilling their obligation to keep children safe.

We also warned that media should be skeptical about the heavily edited video footage released by Live Action.

As it turns out, we were right to raise concerns.

Yesterday, Live Action released a video that it claimed showed a Richmond, Virginia, Planned Parenthood’s supposed “willingness to aid and abet sexual exploitation of minors.”

This comes on top of the attempt by Speaker of the House John Boehner and  U.S. House of Representatives to redefine rape to further remove access to abortions by poor and disabled women. Here’s that and some more news on Men with Minds stuck in the Middle Ages from young women’s website The Frisky.

  • Leave it to Kristen Schaal at “The Daily Show” to give the best assessment of Republicans’ attempts to redefine rape in the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. “Rape with benefits” and “rape-ish” are sooo becoming part of my vocabulary. Thankfully, the phrase “forcible rape” has been cut from the bill. [The Daily What via The Daily Show, Washington Post]
  • Former Oklahoma State Senator Herb Rozell suggested a pregnant woman who was nominated to the State Board of Education would be “worthless” because she would give birth during the legislative session and be totally obsessed with diapers or something. Rozell has been condemned by OK’s Governor Mary Fallin and other lawmakers, including two who said, “In this day and age, to have that type of attitude about a woman’s ability to serve is offensive, discriminatory and just wrong.” [Tulsa Beacon]

Here’s some interesting analysis on HR#3 and how the language got dropped by the CSM.  Thankfully, the GOP backed down.  Here’s some of the remaining horrors of the bill that our Democratic President shouldn’t sign if passed.

“I would caution against saying this is a victory, because the other provisions in H.R. 3 are so bad,” says Ted Miller, communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

In addition to banning federal funding for abortion, the bill would eliminate tax breaks for health insurance premiums on policies that cover abortion-related expenses. It would also prevent women from paying for an abortion out of a health savings account.

A separate piece of legislation, H.R. 358 – the Protect Life Act, sponsored by Rep. Joe Pitts (R) of Pennsylvania – also seeks to bar use of federal funds for abortion under the new health-care law but is less far-reaching than Congressman Smith’s bill. Still, abortion-rights advocates are equally concerned about its provisions. On Wednesday, NARAL Pro-Choice America highlighted a new version of Congressman Pitts’ bill that they said would allow hospitals to refuse to provide an abortion to a pregnant woman even if her life was in danger.

In the last Congress, Pitts and former Rep. Bart Stupak (D) of Michigan succeeded in inserting a ban on federal funding for abortion in the House version of health reform legislation, but it was not included in the final version signed by President Obama. The day after the bill-signing, Mr. Obama signed an executive order aimed at ensuring the new law would maintain a ban on federal funding of abortions.

However, there are Democratic co-sponsors of that bill.  Micheal Whitney at FDL has a good run down of which Dems we should work actively against.  The DCCC invested $3.3 million dollars getting these jerks re-elected.

A look at the DCCC’s contributions to and on behalf of the 10 Democratic co-sponsors of HR3 show the committee spent a whopping $3,379,322.85 to keep these members in office – in 2010 alone. The list includes: Dan Boren [OK-2], Jerry Costello [IL-12], Mark Critz [PA-12], Joe Donnelly [IN-2], Daniel Lipinski [IL-3], Collin Peterson [MN-7], Nick Rahall [WV-3], Mike Ross [AR-4], and Heath Shuler [NC-11]. And God knows how many Blue Dogs that lost in 2010 and who were supported by the DCCC would have co-sponsored this bill.

Madamab has a Feminist Friday post up called ‘Feminist Friday: “Jekyll” and Hyde’ that thoroughly covers the depths of horror displayed in this bill.   Then, try this one on for size from an article from our neighbors to the north.  The “culture of life” clearly does not extend to living breathing children in many extremist sects.

Water torture of babies is one way some members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day instil fear of authority, a former member testified Wednesday.

“It’s quite common,” Carolyn Blackmore Jessop told the constitutional reference case to determine whether Canada’s polygamy law is valid.

“They spank the baby and when it cries, they hold the baby face up under the tap with running water. When they stop crying, they spank it again and the cycle is repeated until they are exhausted.”

It’s typically done by fathers and it’s called “breaking in.”

Jessop, who is from Arizona, testified about the practice during her testimony in B.C. Supreme Court.

Outside the courthouse, Jessop said water torture is common enough that there doesn’t seem any shame attached to the practice.

In her cousin’s baby book, there’s a handwritten note by her mother noting that when her daughter was 18 months old, she was becoming quite a handful and, as a result, was being held under the tap on a regular basis.

In court, Jessop said water torture was one of the reasons that she gave for gaining sole custody of her children after she left the group in 2003. She said her ex-husband, Merril Jessop, used it on “a lot” of his 54 children including her own.

“Merril was very abusive,” she said.

Think Europe is safer?  Well, try this cute one from LGF: Catholic Church Issues Guide on How to Convert Witches from the UK.

According to a new booklet from the Catholic Truth Society — the U.K. publishers for the Holy See — the faithful can convert Wiccans by following a few simple steps. The pamphlet, titled “Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers,” suggests that Catholics spark up conversations with these unbelievers about shared concerns such as the environment, The Telegraph reports.

And if you bump into a witch in a bar or coffee shop, the book adds, it’s important to recognize that “Wiccans are on a genuine spiritual quest,” providing “the starting point for dialog that may lead to their conversion.”

Why we continue to worry about religious extremists abroad when there are serious threats to our freedoms from religious extremists here in our own country continues to amaze me.   One bomb can only kill so many people.  Removal of religious freedoms and promotion of severe propaganda as fact by the media is a for more clear and present danger.  Why are we worried about Egyptian politics when we clearly have people in our own country who want to defy the U.S. Constitution and place us in an extremist Christian theocracy?

Gambling with Hunger

Posted: February 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Human Rights, hunger | Tags: , , , , , | 28 Comments

During the wind down of the financial crisis several years ago, a few people that read my more wonky threads asked me where I thought the next speculative bubble would develop.  I answered food more from intuition than any hard core evidence that I had at the time.  Now there is plenty of hard core evidence that validates my intuition.

Farm land and Ag. prices have been fairly stable since the 80s and represented some of the few markets that proved relatively resistant to the Global Financial Crisis.  However, there was a period of time–2007 through 2008– when some speculative practices influenced food markets.  That is why I thought it was likely to recur.   Food is, of course, a necessity so that always gives a market a degree of persistence during downturns. It does not make it safe from speculation.  The deal is that speculators made a lot of money from their counterbets to the mortgage bubbles and that money had to go some where.  I thought it likely they would head for the commodities markets since they did that before with oil, cooper, and food.  Since these investors are by nature speculators, they have similar investment behaviors and profiles.  The movement of a large number of large dollar investors from one specific clientele into any market is going to have an impact.  Speculators moved to commodities and they moved on food. You could see the momentum build and you could trace momentum riders as they entered the market.

Before I get started on the main thrust of this post, I’d like to mention that I know a lot about Shari’a compliant finance and banking because my major professor is one of its leading authorities.  Because this discussion is going to include countries where Islam is a major religion, I would like to say a few things about how Shari’a is applied to stock markets, banks, and ‘financial engineering’ in countries where populations may be pushing for these kinds of laws.  I’d also like to say that Islamic economists share my concerns even though those concerns are rooted in different philosophies.

It is important to point out that Islamic banks and investment funds were found to be resistant to the global recession compared to their conventional counterparts.  This is because gambling and speculation is outlawed in Islamic texts and therefor not allowed in Shari’a compliant institutions.  The current U.S. and European corporate form is problematic under Shari’a.   The Qu’ran is very specific about the nature of doing business.  Most of this is based on the old testament prohibition against usury but the haddith and Q’uran go further.  However, the shared old testament roots makes a lot of Islamic financial institutions similar to the ones you find in New York  with special banks run by the Orthodox Jewish communities there. We already have religious financial institutions that follow Old Testament prescriptions. I’ve had Jewish students from Orthodox congregations provide me similar information that’s rooted in the Talmud. (Yes, I’m an atheist which makes me extra suspicious of  any religious text.)

The Qur’an also promotes shared partnership/ownership and responsibility within a business as a moral imperative between all owners of that business.  It does not promote any governmental ownership.  It is considered immoral to operate a business with a never-ending, always changing ownership pool like that present in the business form of  a public corporation. Preferred stock is strictly prohibited.  All owners must have a shared responsibility for the business.  That includes the concept of ‘negative’ profits and any negative results.  If the business does something immoral or wrong, all of the owners and decisions makers owe the societal retribution and share in the shame and negative profits. No one owner can walk away from illegal activities.

Contracts that are compliant to the Shari’a are written clearly and monitored against gharar (disception) so that gambling and speculation cannot occur and so that any thing bad the business does comes back on all the owners/investors in a business.  They all hang or thrive together over long periods of time.   That is because a business and trade are supposed to bring good results for the entire community. It’s like the idea of karma.  If you do good, every thing thrives.  If you do harm, the poison spreads and you are held to account.  The contracts are enforceable in courts.  In this case, an Islamic jurist and an angry sky god will hold you to account.  You’ve undoubtedly read exactly how old testament angry that punishment can be be in the version of Shari’a practiced by the extreme Shia Islam of Iran.  Fortunately, most adherents to Islam–like the majority of adherents to Christianity and Judaism–do not adhere to literal interpretations of Old Testament prohibitions and punishments.  They hold to the underlying moral view and practices.

Shari’a compliance means no corporate form like we use here with its limited liability financiers and assumed perpetuity. This is probably why you’ve got so many people calling Islam ‘anti-capitalist’ now.  It’s not anti-capitalist at all.  In fact, it exhorts people to share and run businesses as a moral activity.  It’s the speculation and the ability to walk away from liability that is prohibited.  It is not about government takeover of private property.  It is about holding private property owners to account for the damage they may do to society and preventing that when possible.  Of course, the plutocracy hates this.

I want to explain what this means because it’s not a Marxist form or a planned market form like you saw in the Soviet Union.  This is not a ‘communist under the bed’ situation.  Derivatives and financial engineering are being vigorously discussed by Islamic economists and financiers right now.  They are separating out the forbidden, speculative activities.  This means that many hedge funds would not be able to get into projects where the owners follow Shari’a because speculation is strictly prohibited.  All investments must be matched to “real” assets. Assets cannot be created out of thin air.  So, in this situation, forward contracts or futures contracts are allowed.  Some of the synthetic deals that characterized the pre-crisis time cannot be used by firms providing investment fund opportunities to people concerned their monies be placed in Shari’a compliant ways.  Additionally, the Q’uran has a strict prohibition on hording money.  The rich must keep their funds active in the economy to please God.  Another edict is that all activities must put aside a portion for charitable activities that support widows and orphans.  I hope this gives you enough understand to place this next discussion in context and why some people may find this appealing.

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So, maybe you can understand why gambling with food assets is a big concern on many levels for developing nations.  First, you have an incredible amount  of hungry people.  There are tales of hungry people in Africa watching boats be loaded with food they grew being shipped to rich, developed countries.  Then, you have a number of regions where gambling is basically seen as doing harm to people and is prohibited by God.  I would like to remind you that most fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jewish Congregations believe this too.  It’s clearly part of the old testament prohibitions.  So, modern finance is running headlong into development economics as well as people with literal old testament-based religions.  Again, Orthodox Jewish congregants have a separate banking system in New York that would be considered Shari’a compliant.  I cannot emphasize this enough.

So with this in mind, there is increasing evidence that ‘Rampant Speculation Inflated Food Price Bubble”. You can see what excessive speculation is now doing to food markets.

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Friday Reads

Posted: February 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Feminists, Festivities, fetus fetishists, Food, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning and Happy Lunar New Year

The Egyptian revolution continues to be the top story around the world. We will continue to run live blog updates to give you the latest reliable news sources on the subject.  There’s a few stories on the economy that I’d like to share this morning beyond that topic.

First, Happy Lunar New Year!!

2011 is the Year of the Metal Rabbit.

Chinese astrologer Alvin Ang of Bazi Destiny foresees “the global situation may be affected by serious political change and global calamities.”

Hong Kong-based feng shui master Joseph Wong gives a different take. “This coming year everything will be better than last year,” he told CNN’s Pauline Chiou. “They will see business go upwards mostly, but take care with the shares and stocks. There will be some fluctuations in August and September.”

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday that indicated continuing concern about the ability of the current recovery to sustain any reasonable decrease in the unemployment rate.  He also indicated the need for a long term plan to deal with the Federal deficit.  There were a few mentions of the continuing need for QE and statements that the monetary policy to date had worked given the recovery of the equity markets.  He did sound a bit more upbeat than the last time we heard from him and while he acted like the recovery was slower than any one would wish, he did state that he felt it was becoming ‘self-sustaining’.

Here’s some analysis on our unemployment vis a vis the Bernanke Statements from The Economist.

The Fed’s forecast range for the unemployment rate in 2012 is 7.7% to 8.2%, and the Congressional Budget Office  forecasts an unemployment rate of 8.4% (this forecast dates to after the announcement of QE2, but isn’t meaningfully different from its forecasts from the summer of 2010). This would suggest that with QE2 in place, American unemployment is likely to be between 6% and 7% in 2012. That’s not full employment, but it’s pretty close. You can argue that more needs to be done (indeed, I think the Fed itself could do more). But it is worth noting that the Fed has put the American economy on a substantially better recovery path than it faced before (Scott Sumner would say it has returned the economy to the path off which it previously led it).A big risk is that the Fed will back away from its policy too quickly, thinking all is going well and worrying premptively about inflation. As Karl Smith says, today’s speech is somewhat reassuring on that front.

The NYT had an op ed up on Trade indicating that Republicans are trying to remove some provisions that now help workers retrain should they lose their jobs to overseas locations.  It’s worth reading just to see how truly Dickensian the Republicans seem to be these days.

Most Republican lawmakers claim they are pro-trade. Their principled position is evidently no match for parochialism and politics. Last month, a conflict over imported sleeping bags between a company in Alabama and a rival in Kentucky led Senate Republicans to block the extension of the Generalized System of Preferences, or G.S.P., which has granted preferential access to some $20 billion worth of imports from developing countries.

Now Senator Jon Kyl and his colleagues in the Finance Committee are threatening to block the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides income and training for American workers whose employers can’t compete with rising imports. It is due to expire on Feb. 12, and Mr. Kyl and company are refusing to extend it unless the White House promises to advance the long-pending trade deal with Colombia.

Speaking of Dickensian Republican policy, the GOP dropped the ‘forcible rape’ language from HR3.  The Hyde Amendment has long entertained the idiocy of letting one loud and obnoxious group of zealots deny Federal  funding of their personal pet peeve while the rest of us continue to fund all kinds of abominable projects. Tops on my opt out list  are renditions for torture and bail outs of Investment banks.  But, American Fetus Fetishists get special treatment.  At least this attempt at narrowing rape definitions is gone now.

House Republicans plan to sidestep a charged debate over the distinction between “forcible rape” and “rape” by altering the language of a bill banning taxpayer subsidies for abortions.

The provision in question, written as an exemption from the ban for women who become pregnant as a result of “forcible rape,” touched off a firestorm of criticism from women’s groups, and it gained enough attention to become the subject of a satirical segment on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

But a spokesman for the bill’s author, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), says the modifier “forcible” will be dropped so that the exemption covers all forms of rape, as well as cases of incest and the endangerment of the life of the mother.“The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment,” Smith spokesman Jeff Sagnip told POLITICO, referring to the long-standing ban on direct use of taxpayer dollars for abortion services.

A real Democratic congress and president would’ve gotten rid of this stupid provision by now. However, here is something that if true will make me do the Snoopy dance.

The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.

Such a requirement could remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health. But it is likely to reignite debate over the federal role in health care, especially reproductive health, at a time when Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the law or dismantle it piece by piece. It is also raising objections from the Roman Catholic Church and is expected to generate a robust debate about privacy.

The law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.

Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics.

Many obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians and public health experts have called for coverage of family planning services, including contraceptives, without co-payments, deductibles or other cost-sharing requirements.

Will the Cult of the Angry Sky God get the ultimate veto on this too?

Well, back to the exercise equipment folks!  Bloomberg.com says ‘American Waistlines Expand Fastest Among Rich Nations’,

Americans grew fatter at a faster pace than residents of any other wealthy nation since 1980, during a period when obesity worldwide nearly doubled, researchers found.

Almost 10 percent of the world’s population was obese in 2008, according to studies published today by the medical journal The Lancet. The percentage of people with uncontrolled hypertension, or high blood pressure, fell, with high-income countries showing a larger drop. Cholesterol levels declined in North America, Australia and Europe, but increased in East and Southeast Asia as well as the Pacific region, researchers said.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Happy New Year!!!

BREAKING: US Negotiating Resignation of Mubarak

Posted: February 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News, Diplomacy Nightmares, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, John Birch Society in Charge, Middle East, right wing hate grouups, Surreality, Team Obama, the internet, U.S. Politics, Violence against women | Tags: , , , , , | 29 Comments

Latest: White House, Egypt Discuss Plan for Mubarak’s Exit

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is discussing with Egyptian officials a proposal for President Hosni Mubarak to resign immediately, turning over power to a transitional government headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military, administration officials and Arab diplomats said Thursday.

President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and State Department spokesman PJ Crowly all took time on TV today to express American concern for use of overt use of violence, suppression, and intimidation of reporters, legitimate protest, and human rights groups.  Reporters have been beaten and ‘disappeared’.  Green Vans belonging to the State Police were caught speeding up, then running over protesters on their way to the Square. (WARNING: Video below shows this.)There is increasing evidence that the pro-Mubarak protesters are themselves state police and paid thugs.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday that the violence was carried out by “elements close to the government or ruling party.”

“I don’t think we have a sense of how far up the chain it went,” he noted.

There are no images coming out of journalists in Egypt.  Nile TV–the government propaganda channel–has been blaming foreign forces for the protests which is leading to attacks on nonEgyptians all over Egypt.  Nile TV journalist Shahira Amin has quit.  She’s joined the protesters.

There are increasing calls from the International Community to the Government of Egypt for restraint.  Here’s a link to an article from, of all places, China.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday condemned the violence, saying attacks on peaceful demonstrators are unacceptable and must stop.

“We call upon the government of Egypt to take steps to ensure that its citizens are free to demonstrate safely,” Rudd said in a statement.

“The disturbing events in Tahrir Square underline the urgent need for a negotiated and peaceful solution to this political crisis.”

UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who was on a visit to Britain, Wednesday urged all sides to show restraint during the unprecedented nine-day-old movement.

“I am deeply concerned by the continuing violence in Egypt. I once again urge restraint to all the sides,” Ban said after a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Ban also said that any attack on peaceful demonstrators in Egypt was unacceptable and that he strongly condemns it.

In Athens, Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas called on Egyptians to exercise restraint.

Egyptian protesters continue to pour onto the streets.  Friday protests are being characterized as a “final” Friday indicating the hope that  Friday will be the day Mubarak will quit.

One man, a 30-year-old lawyer named Tareq Hussein Ali, whose sweatshirt was so bloodied it looked like a red-brown bib, ventured his analysis. “Egypt will never be as it used to be,” he said.

…

“Last night showed that the government is at the last of their options,” Ali said Thursday afternoon, sitting on a grass patch in the middle of Tahrir – which means “liberation” – where dozens of protesters were resting under anti-government banners.

Tahrir on Thursday resembled a bustling open-air triage center. With businesses locked up long ago, young women in head scarves served water to demonstrators from inside a Hardee’s while weary-looking men sporting bandages dozed on the doorsteps of travel agencies, too many to count.

At every entrance to the square, protesters had set up security cordons backed up by neatly arranged lines of stones, in case of another attack. As in previous days, the Egyptian army presence was thin, just a few dozen soldiers looking on, and no uniformed police were in sight.

In a back alley, volunteers set up an emergency medical clinic, where doctors in dirtied white coats re-dressed wounds from the previous night. Hussein Dawood, a physician, said that more than 3,000 people had been injured, a figure that far exceeded the government’s count.

“We want the whole world to know that the Egyptian president organized an operation against his own people,” Ali said, “as if he was in a war.”

When Ali left his Cairo home Jan. 25 to join the first day of the protests, he told his parents: “I will come home victorious, or you will receive my dead body.” Late Wednesday night, after nearly 10 hours of running battles in and around the square, he was on the front lines near the museum alongside scores of young male demonstrators.

After days of watching the coverage I think I can safely say that there are very few people left standing that support Mubarak with the exception of Fox News, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich and others representing the extremely right wing element in the US.  It’s pretty obvious that instead of looking for communists under the bed that we are now to look for stylized, extremist  ‘Islamists’.  In fact, we’re now seeing some weirdish melting of Islam, Shari’a, socialism, leftists and communism.  How desperately deluded to you have to be to push that one?

“Any honest assessment on 9/11 this year, ten years after the attack, I think will have to conclude that we’re slowly losing the war,” Gingrich said. “We’re losing the war because there are madrassahs around the planet teaching hatred. We’re losing the war because the network of terrorists is bigger, not smaller.”

Gingrich pointed to the unrest in Egypt as posing a potential new threat to American security.

“There’s a real possibility in a few weeks, if we’re unfortunate, that Egypt will join Iran, and join Lebanon, and join Gaza, and join the things that are happening that are extraordinarily dangerous to us,” Gingrich said.

The right wing buzz word of the day is “Muslim Brotherhood” which is now seen to have tentacles that reach–according to professional wacko Glenn Beck–to some unknown place in US Democratic Circles. Here is an example from right wing extremist Frank Gaffney on Sean Hannity, professional bully.

The Muslim Brotherhood is often a target of right-wing pundits like anti-sharia crusader Frank Gaffney, who last month claimed the group had infiltrated CPAC. And as the single largest organized opposition group in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as a target for the right as the protests continue.

On Hannity last night, Gaffney argued that “the Obama Administration’s policies are being viewed through, and actually articulated and implemented through influence operations that the Muslim Brotherhood itself is running in our own country.”

“You cannot possibly get your strategy right, you cannot execute it effectively if you don’t know that the enemy is actually giving you advice on how to proceed,” he said.

I mentioned this earlier, but I’m personally having to de-friend people on Facebook from people perpetuating this obvious right wing paranoia and hatred.  I’m not sure how any one could be following the coverage these last days and not realize that Mubarak’s behavior is unacceptable and that these are legitimate calls for democratic change from widespread and mainstream elements in Egypt.  I have to admit that most of these people have also been serious Sarah Palin apologists also.  We had removed blogs links from these people earlier this month for some of that behavior.  I’ve had to completely remove contact with them after the posting of some really hateful right wing posts to FaceBook.

There are legitimate concerns about the treatment of women by all fundamentalist religions.  However, it is becoming increasingly clear to most of us that these groups have jumped the shark and are motivated by ignorance and bigotry.  The complaints and shout outs I have seen recently for the Beck idea that some “caliphate” takeover is happening is clearly rooted in racism and extremist views of Islam.  Many of these are aimed not only at Egyptians but the President of the United States.  This does not reflect well for the values traditionally held by this country.  I personally find it deeply disturbing and frightening that these people are supporting a military dictatorship that is disappearing and brutalizing US journalists (more than 70), human rights activists, diplomats,  and–as BB pointed out today–US academics.

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