Friday Reads

Posted: June 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Economy, Federal Budget, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, GLBT Rights, morning reads, We are so F'd | 19 Comments

Good Morning!!!

Washington continues to be puzzled about why the economy is so bad. I watched Ben Bernanke’s presser and nothing he said sounded the least  bit surprising to me.  The Fed’s basically ending it’s QE program.  It’s keeping the discount rate low.  It also has lowered its economic outlook and believes that unemployment will stay higher than previously thought and the economy will slow down.  In answering some questions, Bernanke mentioned that austerity budgets in the states was one of the reasons the economy is doing poorly.  He also mentioned things that will likely be short-lived like supply line problems resulting from Japan’s catastrophes and bad weather.  In short, monetary policy has reached its ability to do something.  It’s up to our politicians.  May all the wisdom beings help us!

On national television today, the Federal Reserve chairman painted a picture of a recovery that, two years after it began, remains “frustratingly slow” and too weak to make a meaningful dent in joblessness anytime soon. Even if the current slowdown proves temporary, as the Fed expects, its forecast pace of growth won’t bring unemployment back down below 7 percent until after 2013.

Much more troubling is the country’s lack of a backup plan if things get worse. The economy’s weakness leaves it vulnerable to shocks of the kind that Europe’s festering sovereign-debt crisis could easily deliver. But neither the Federal Reserve nor the U.S. government is in a good position to provide more life support should it become necessary.

Having already spent some $2.3 trillion on two bond-buying programs aimed at lowering interest rates and boosting growth, Bernanke recognizes that the costs of a third round of so-called quantitative easing may outweigh the benefits.

The above Bloomberg op-ed calls for more stimulus because that’s what stops this.  We know that from a lot of data, experience, and theory.  Too bad we’d rather have the equivalents of high school graduates remove our national appendix and argue our death penalty case before the Supreme Court.  None of these folks appear to have one clue let alone the knowledge to get things done.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have left the budget talks because returning taxes to responsible levels is too politically unpalatable for them.  They’d rather rely on tanking the economy and blaming it on Obama.  The Senate Republicans are hoping that John Boehner will take the bullet for them.  We’re all going to need lessons on surviving our politicians destroying our economy.  In that sense, we could be Greece who was brought low by Wall Street Bankers who convinced them they really could fund a grandiose project like The Olympics and everything else.  We’ve spent about 10 years adding grandiose wars and feeding our Wall Street Bankers.  Of course, the people that will suffer from this will not be those bankers, or defense contractors or the politicians who are bringing us low.

Intra-caucus dynamics on the GOP side seem to be dooming the debt limit talks. Eric Cantor’s preference is for John Boehner to sign a deal he can grumble about, so that when the GOP loses seats in 2012 he can challenge Boehner for the leadership. Boehner, meanwhile, doesn’t want to sign a deal that Cantor won’t sign. Consequently, we can’t get a deal.

This, then, returns us to the subject of tactical modalities available if the country runs up to the debt ceiling. The key issue at this point becomes the fact that hitting the debt ceiling doesn’t force an automatic default or a government shutdown. Revenue continues to come in to the federal government. There’s simply a gap between how much comes in and how much the government is supposed to spend. The first step to sound policy in this case is to make sure we keep paying interest on the debt. Thus default and immediate catastrophe is avoided. Second, what you want to do is minimize the impact on government activities. That means that in the first instance you want to try to stiff people to whom the government owes money but who will probably keep working even if you don’t pay them. Take defense contractors, for example. If Robert Gates tells a bullet-making company that he can’t pay the Pentagon’s bills this month because Eric Cantor is being obstinate, but please keep sending bullets anyway, the bullet-makers aren’t going to leave our troops bullet-less. We just need to tell them to keep sending the invoices coming, and promise that all bills will be paid once Cantor relents. Hospitals, doctors, and other Medicare providers are the other low-hanging fruit here. Patients will continue to be treated, doctors will keep filing paperwork, and Kathleen Sebelius will keep reassuring people that they’ll be paid when the congressional gridlock is resolved.

Over time, of course, these tactics tend to run into limits. We may need to start paying people less than their full Social Security checks, mailing a partial benefit plus a note explaining that back benefits will be paid once congress lifts the debt ceiling.

Meanwhile, President Obama pulls a present vote while addressing a GLBT fundraiser for him last night in New York City.  He pulled the traditional republican cop-out position.  Leave the issue to the states.  Guess that means Rick Warren will be doing more prayer appearances for him this election cycle.

OBAMA: Part of the reason that DOMA doesn’t make sense is that traditionally marriage has been decided by the states and right now, I understand there is a little debate going on here in New York about whether to join five other states and DC in allowing civil marriage for gay couples. And I want to say that under the leadership of Governor Cuomo, with the support of Democrats and Republicans, New York is doing exactly what democracies are supposed to to do. There is a debate, there is a deliberation about what it means here in New York to treat people fairly in the eyes of the law and that is — look, that’s the power of our democratic system.

No, we won’t but maybe the states will.

Appearing at a “Gala with the Gay Community” fundraiser in Manhattan Thursday, President Obama said he believes “gay couples deserve the same legal rights as any other couple in this country.” But he stopped short of backing same-sex marriage, even as attendees yelled out for him to do so.

Mr. Obama, who was greeted with a standing ovation by the roughly 600 attendees — who paid between $1,250 and $35,800 to attend — said he always believed discrimination was wrong, joking that “I had no choice. I was born that way.” After a beat, amid laughter from the crowd, he added, “in Hawaii.” He went on to say that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity “runs counter to who we are as a people.”

I guess discrimination is okay if you hide behind religion. Oh, wait, isn’t that what the confederates said about slavery. Let’s see, I seem to remember reading arguments about state rights and that it’s okay to own other people’s because it’s right there in the bible.

The TSA is finally listening to some of the complaints about it’s aggressive pat-down procedures and at least changing the rules for children.  It will no longer trigger automatic pat-downs for any one under the age of 12.

“As part of our ongoing effort to get smarter about security, Administrator Pistole has made a policy decision to give security officers more options for resolving screening anomalies with young children and we are working to operationalize his decision in airports,” TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball said in a written statement. “This decision will ultimately reduce – though not eliminate – pat downs of children.”

Already widely criticized for the controversial airport security technique, the TSA has come under increased fire after reports surfaced that its officers patted down a 6-year-old girl and an 8-month-old.

There’s an interesting scandal brewing in New York that may take down Mayor Bloomberg.  You can watch more about this at Democracy Now.

Prosecutors have unsealed indictments against the company TechnoDyne and its founders in the CityTime payroll scandal in New York City, which was first exposed by Democracy Now!’s co-host Juan Gonzalez in his column for the New York Daily News. TechnoDyne executives face charges of paying millions in kickbacks to get CityTime work, and money laundering. Meanwhile, the founders of the company, Reddy Allen and his wife Padma, are now fugitives after fleeing to India. Prosecutors described CityTime as “one of the largest and most brazen frauds ever committed against the city.” Following the indictments, Gonzalez says the question remains whether top officials in the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will also be charged.

Kansas may wind up being the first state where women cannot access abortion services.  Kansas is trying to shut down its three abortion clinics. It’s doing this by imposing immediate changes to the clinic’s physical plant.

Back in April, the state legislature passed a law directing the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to author new facility standards for abortion clinics, which the staunchly anti-abortion GOP governor, Sam Brownback, signed into law on May 16. The law also requires the health department to issue new licenses each year, and it grants additional authority to health department inspectors to conduct unannounced inspections, and to fine or shut down clinics.

The department wasted no time in drafting the new rules, issuing the final version on June 17 and informing clinics that they would have to comply with the rules by July 1, as the Associated Press reported Wednesday. Peter Brownlie, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, told the AP that inspectors were expected at their clinic in Overland Park, Kansas, on Wednesday. There are only three clinics left in the state: Planned Parenthood’s, a clinic in Overland Park, and the Aid for Women clinic in Kansas City.

The new requirements require facilities to add extra bathrooms, drastically expand waiting and recovery areas, and even add larger janitor’s closets, as one clinic employee told me—changes that clinics will have a heck of a time pulling off by the deadline. Under the new rule, clinics must also aquire state certification to admit patients, a process that takes 90 to 120 days, the staffer explained. Which makes it impossible for clinics to comply. And clinics that don’t comply with the rules will face fines or possible closure.

It’s increasingly clear that the U.S. is becoming a hostile place for nearly any one that doesn’t want to comply with the narrow definitions of what’s right to a handful of Republican activists.  What’s worse is that Democrats act powerless to stop them and the Judiciary appears to be completely dysfunctional at the moment.  We’re losing more rights day by day.  There seems to be a play book and none of us are included.

What’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?

Thursday Reads: Endless War, Quitterella, Fact-Checking Taibbi, and True Crime News

Posted: June 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Afghanistan, Crime, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

Good Morning!!

Well, last night, President Obama announced his plans to pull troops out of Afghanistan. Here’s the text of his speech. It was very short, less than 15 minutes. There wasn’t much to it. And get this, according to Think Progress: Obama ‘Withdrawal’ Plan Would Leave More Troops In Afghanistan Than When He Began His Presidency

…the troop reduction would not put us much closer to actually ending the war by the end of 2012. Rather this would simply scale back the second surge of 30,000 troops that President Obama announced in December 2009. It would also maintain the first surge of 17,000 troops Obama ordered upon entering office. This comes at a time when a record number of Americans want to end the war in Afghanistan and the costs of which are putting the United States deeper into debt.

They even have graph to demonstrate these findings. Basically this was just another campaign speech for Obama. He had to fudge up something, because Americans are fed up with the wars:

A new survey from the Pew Research Center finds a record number of Americans now want to bring the troops home from Afghanistan, confirming the trends of other recent polls showing majorities now opposed to the nearly decade-long war.

For the first time since Pew Research began asking the question in 2008, a majority (56 percent) now say they want the U.S. to remove American troops from Afghanistan “as soon as possible,” while 39 percent say they they want to leave troops “until the situation has stabilized.” That result represents a reversal since last year, when leaving the troops in place was preferred by a majority of 53 percent to 40 percent.

Not only has Quitterella cancelled her cross country bus tour, but also her trip to Sudan. She says she’s not going to Sudan because of “scheduling reasons,” but it sounds like it had more to do with security concerns, i.e., fear.

She was planning to travel with Franklin Graham, the son of evangelical leader Billy Graham, as well as Fox News personality Greta Van Susteren, to the July 9 independence ceremony of South Sudan, the sources said. Van Susteren also canceled her trip. Graham said on Wednesday that he still plans to go.

[….]

One U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of Palin’s potential political aspirations, said the former governor had gotten so far in the planning process as to secure permission from the government of South Sudan to attend the independence ceremony.

The official said one challenge of the trip was security. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is also tentatively scheduled to attend the ceremony, may not make the trip because of safety concerns in one of the world’s most war-torn countries.

[….]

“There is a genocide taking place,” said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), a longtime advocate for greater U.S. involvement in Sudan. “The more people [who travel to Sudan] from the West, from the United States, the better. I’ve been urging different people to go. We have a museum on the mall, the Holocaust Museum. It says, ‘Never again.’ What doesn’t the West understand about this? If this was taking place in the south of France, do you think we’d let it go on?”

Matt Taibbi has a new screed on Rolling Stone. It’s about how dangerous Michele Bachmann is. I definitely agree with him that her candidacy is no laughing matter; because as ridiculous as we think she is, Bachmann is a hard worker, a true believer, and a fantastic fund raiser.

Unfortunately Taibbi made a big error in his article. He writes:

Young Michele found Jesus at age 16, not long before she went away to Winona State University and met a doltish, like-minded believer named Marcus Bachmann. After finishing college, the two committed young Christians moved to Oklahoma, where Michele entered one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979.

Originally a division of Oral Roberts University, this august academy, dedicated to the teaching of “the law from a biblical worldview,” has gone through no fewer than three names — including the Christian Broadcasting Network School of Law. Those familiar with the darker chapters in George W. Bush’s presidency might recognize the school’s current name, the Regent University School of Law. Yes, this was the tiny educational outhouse that, despite being the 136th-ranked law school in the country, where 60 percent of graduates flunked the bar, produced a flood of entrants into the Bush Justice Department.

Regent was unabashed in its desire that its graduates enter government and become “change agents” who would help bring the law more in line with “eternal principles of justice,” i.e., biblical morality. To that end, Bachmann was mentored by a crackpot Christian extremist professor named John Eidsmoe, a frequent contributor to John Birch Society publications who once opined that he could imagine Jesus carrying an M16 and who spent considerable space in one of his books musing about the feasibility of criminalizing blasphemy.

Um…Matt? Regent University School of Law is in Virginia. Bachmann never studied there. Bachman did attend Coburn School of Law, which is in Oklahoma.

Oral Roberts University (ORU) established the O. W. Coburn School of Law in 1979. The school was founded to educate Christian lawyers. Initially, there was some question whether the American Bar Association would accredit the school because of its emphasis on Christian values, but accreditation was granted. In 1986 ORU discontinued the law school and gave its law library to CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) University (now Regent University) at Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Giving their law library to an already establish college isn’t the same as *becoming* that college. BTW, CBS is Pat Roberts’ operation, not Oral Roberts’. I realize it’s difficult for yuppies like to to keep the right-wing preachers straight, but don’t they have fact-checkers at Rolling Stone to sort things out for you? Bachmann also attended William & Mary School of Law, and Taibbi doesn’t mention that. I’m not defending Bachmann or Christian law schools, but Taibbi is supposedly telling us not to underestimate Bachmann, while at the same time getting her history wrong. There are more problems with Taibbi’s article, but I won’t bore you any further.

I hope I didn’t put you to sleep with that silly rant. Matt Taibbi tends to get on my nerves.

Shades of the 1960s, the government has been spying on NYT reporter James Risen.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen has been subjected to government surveillance and harassment that began under the Bush administration, according to a 22-page affidavit he filed Tuesday.

“I believe that the efforts to target me have continued under the Obama administration, which has been aggressively investigating whistleblowers and reporters in a way that will have a chilling effect on freedom of the press in the United States,” Risen said.

Early this year, authorities arrested former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling and charged him with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail fraud, unauthorized conveyance of government property and obstructing justice.

The U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed Risen in May to testify at the criminal trial of Sterling, who was allegedly cited in Risen’s 2006 book.

The Justice Deparment claimed that Risen should be compelled to provide information “like any other citizen” and that he was not “being harassed in order to disrupt his relationship with confidential news sources.”

Ain’t it great having a Democrat in the White House? Oh wait—-

CNN has a couple of crime stories that are well worth reading. The first is a piece on human trafficking in the U.S.: Sex trafficking victim testifies, then vanishes

Among the strung out addicts with zombie eyes and the beaten down prostitutes loitering by neon-lit entrances to adult video stores, Kelsey Emily Collins would have stuck out.

She was from out of town and too young to be where she was.

As she would later testify to a federal grand jury, a man 20 years older than her drove Kelsey 170 miles down Interstate 5 from Seattle to Portland’s 82nd Ave.

There amidst the strip’s seedy motels and lingerie stores where customers can buy backroom lap dances and more, the plan was simple: sell her to as many men as possible.

After that first night in January 2008 when she made about $1,000, all of which she later told investigators went to her pimp, Kelsey went right back to work as a prostitute.

Kelsey was only 16. Later she was approached by Sgt. Doug Justice, a vice squad officer who wanted her to testify against her pimp. Gradually he got Kelsey to talk to him about what had happened to her. Finally she agreed to testify before the Grand Jury. She did testify, and the pimp was later convicted. Afterward Kelsey’s mother wasn’t able to get her the help she needed to recover. She didn’t have money and there was no program that would take Kelsey. Law enforcement basically used her and threw her away. A month after she testified, Kelsey left home with a new “boyfriend,” and disappeared. Justus believes she was murdered because of her testimony. If you have time, please read the article. These are the kinds of women who are targets for predators and serial killers. It’s heartbreaking.

The second article is quite a serious discussion of whether Casey Anthony should testify in her own defense. Here’s just a short excerpt:

George Parnham, best known for defending Andrea Yates, the mentally ill woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub in 2001, says that opening statement “boxed the defense in.” He says Anthony has to tell her story.

“She needs to get up there and defend herself,” he said. “The jury is going to want to hear from her.”

Anthony, 25, is accused of murder, aggravated child abuse, misleading authorities and other offenses. If convicted of murder, she faces the death penalty. In Florida, only seven jurors have to agree on a death sentence.

Parnham, who successfully used an insanity defense for Yates but did not put her on the stand, said he usually decides in favor of letting a jury get to know his client in death penalty cases. “If you humanize her, that may save her life. You’ve got a woman who, if she is convicted, her life is going to be in jeopardy. She’s going to be on death row.”

I know this is tabloid stuff, but there are actually a lot of interesting issues involved in this case–child abuse, teen pregnancy, the death penalty–plus fascinating new forensic techniques.

Anyway, I agree with Parnham. I think the only chance Anthony has to save her life is to get up there and tell the truth. The only problem is that I’m not sure she is capable of being sincere. I think she should try though. It’s entirely possible that she was sexually abused as a child, and it’s obvious that her mother is incredibly narcissistic and manipulative. That doesn’t justify what she did, of course; but it might convince the jury to not to give her the death penalty.

That’s it for me for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Tuesday Reads: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, a “Moderate Republican,” Buyer’s Remorse, and Sellouts

Posted: June 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 44 Comments

Coffee and Morning News, by Tim Nyberg

Good Morning!

Yesterday, Newsweek published a list of job-creating strategies by former President Bill Clinton. The headline is “It’s Still the Economy, Stupid.” I’m not going to excerpt from the article, you can read it at the link above.

But I’ll share part of the bad review Dean Baker gave Clinton’s suggestions, some of which seemed credible to to me. Dean Baker really has a bug up his a$$ about Bill Clinton. He makes a case that we began losing manufacturing jobs under Clinton and Bush simply continued was Clinton’s policies. I’d be interested to hear people’s responses this critique.

I don’t watch the Sunday shows anymore, but I learned from Steve Benen that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked about jobs and unemployment on Face the Nation this week.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday, host Bob Schieffer asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) yesterday, “Do Republicans have any plans to do anything on the unemployment front or are you just going to let things take their course?” It seemed like a good question.

McConnell replied, “No, I — I think — what — what we’re doing is encouraging the president to — to quit doing what he’s doing.”

Clearly McConnell isn’t even worried enough about the current unemployment crisis to have even thought about a response to what should be an obvious question.

From Jay Bookman, I learned that McConnell’s primary concern is “overregulation.”

McCONNELL: If you talk to business people and Bill Daley, the present chief of staff did recently, you find out their biggest complaint is overregulation. You know, the federal government with that stimulus money hired a quarter of a million new employees. These people are busily at work trying to regulate every aspect of American life in– in health care, financial services, through the Environmental Protection Agency, really sort of bureaucrats on steroids that are freezing up– the private– private sector and making it very difficult, Bob, for them to grow and expand. You know, you’re seen the reports that they’ve two trillion in cash. The reason they’re not investing that in hiring more people is the government has made it very expensive to expand employment.

His recommendations for Obama:

Quit overspending. And we’re hoping with the debt ceiling discussions we can begin to address deficit and debt. And second, they need to quit over-regulating the American economy. This is something they can do on their own. They don’t have to come to us for permission to rein in these regulators who are really at work across the American economy making it very, very difficult for businesses to function.

What about the Democrats? Benen links to this piece at Politico: Democrats eye new jobs agenda.

Senate Democrats are beginning to fear that the country’s increasingly dim economic outlook will cost them their seats in 2012 and are trying to craft a new agenda aimed at spurring job creation.

Wow! The Dems in the Senate have finally figured out that they might be in trouble with the electorate. Someone go find the President on the golf course or the basketball court or whereever he’s hanging out today and tell him the breaking news.

Fearing the economy may be getting worse, Democrats plan to soon unveil what they’ll call a “Jobs First” agenda — and the stakes are high. A bleak economic outlook, like the May jobs report, could cost Democrats their thin Senate majority and even the White House if they can’t make a strong case to an anxious electorate that their policies will create jobs.

“Jobs First?” Isn’t it a little late for that? It has already been “Wall Street First” for three years. Maybe “Jobs Second” would be a little more accurate, although I doubt if this latest project will amount to anything.

Everyone is talking about the NYT Sunday Magazine profile of Jon Huntsman, who is spouting the usual Republican economic insanity: Jon Huntsman Supports Radical Balanced Budget Amendment

In a private conference call with a handful of university students across the country, GOP Presidential hopeful — and President Obama’s former Ambassador to China — Jon Huntsman argued in support of one of the most far-reaching, controversial elements of the conservative political agenda.

As first reported in a broader piece by the Huffington Post, Huntsman argued in favor of a constitutional amendment requiring the federal government to maintain a balanced budget — an innocuous-sounding, but radical plan pushed by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and numerous other congressional conservatives.

“We’re going to have to fight for a balanced budget amendment,” Huntsman said. “Every governor in this country has a balanced budget amendment. It keeps everybody honest. It’s the best safeguard imaginable.”

At its core, a balanced-budget amendment would make it unconstitutional for the government to spend more than it collects in revenue — a requirement that, without safeguards, would make stimulus and emergency spending impossible.

Ezra Klein adds:

I’ve noted previously that Jon Huntsman’s campaign strategy appears to be to match a moderate, conciliatory tone with an orthodox conservative policy platform. And sure enough, he’s endorsing a balanced-budget amendment. It’s not clear if the specific balanced-budget amendment he’s endorsing is The Worst Idea in Washington — in which case, Huntsman will have to explain how he’ll handle the fact that Paul Ryan’s budget, which he has also endorsed, will be unconstitutional — or just a relative of it. Either way, it’s not moderate in the least. Which isn’t to say it’s not good politics.

From Andrew Leonard at Salon: The imaginary GOP “moderate” candidate

Reporter Matt Bai manages to deliver more than 6000 words on Huntsman without providing a single practical reason why anyone, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, might possibly consider voting for him. Whether this is because Bai simply isn’t interested in actual positions on the issues or because Huntsman just doesn’t have a platform to campaign on — or some evil toxic combination of both — is hard to say. But the result is just plain baffling. Bai quotes Huntsman as saying “I think what’s going to drive this election, really, are two things — authenticity and the economy” — and then proceeds to write a profile that doesn’t contain a single iota of insight into Huntsman’s views on any economic policy issue.

6000 words — and not a single one of them is “jobs” or “taxes” or “budget” or “deficit” or “Wall Street.” This amounts to political reporting malpractice. If Huntsman isn’t interested in delineating a stance on these issues, then why is Bai bothering to cover him? And if Bai isn’t interested in trying to discern what Huntsman’s stance is, why is the New York Times publishing him?

LOL! That’s pretty funny. Have I ever told you how much I hate Matt Bai?

It’s hard to believe it at this point, but some bloggers are just now figuring out that Obama isn’t “The One.” At Shakesville, Melissa McEwan reacts to a quote from Russ Feingold in which he says Jeffrey Immelt is “not the right guy…”

“It’s not just campaigns and contributions,” Feingold noted. “We have to say to the president, ‘Mr. President, Jeff Immelt is not the right guy – the CEO of GE is not the right guy to be running your Jobs & Competitiveness Council, not when your company doubled its profits, increased his compensation, and asked its workers to take huge pay and benefits cuts.'”

McEwan writes:

But as I read Feingold’s words—not the right guy—a not fully formed thought that has been hanging around the edges of my consciousness suddenly came sharply into focus: Obama is not the right guy.

It’s not (just) that his policies are insufficiently progressive, or even insufficiently Democratic, and it’s not (just) the arrogance, the hippie-punching, the bipartisan blah blah, the 12-dimensional chess, and it’s not (just) his tepid, half-assed, pusillanimous governance and his catastrophic ally fail. All of these things are just symptoms of this basic truth: Obama’s not up to the job.

I don’t mean he’s not up the job of being president; I mean he’s not up to the job of being president right now. I’m sure he’d have made a fine president some other time, some decade of relative peace and prosperity, where the biggest demand on his capacity was “don’t fuck it up.”

Check the date on that post. It’s June 17, 2011. She is just figuring all that out in 2011. How come I could already see it in 2007? And you should see the fawning comments on that post!

Here’s another buyer’s remorse post, and it’s very well thought out and well written. Janet Rhodes has clearly been angry with Obama for quite some time. But she still worked for his Campaign and voted for him. Why? Because he gave inspiring speeches!

Still her rant is worth reading. Fawning comments follow, naturally. Where were all these people back in 2008 when we had a choice? OK, I know I’m beating a dead horse, but still….

Finally, Kathryn Graham’s surviving relatives prove they couldn’t care less about news or the newspaper she valued so highly.

Washington Post Co. Chairman Don Graham sold off about $10 million in company stock days after successfully lobbying to loosen regulations on the for-profit higher education firm that is its most lucrative business.

A spokeswoman for the Washington Post Co. said the sale was on behalf of a trust for one of Graham’s siblings, not for Graham himself, and the company last week amended its filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission to clarify that Graham’s family, rather than he personally, was benefiting from the sale….

The disclosure indicates that the family that owns the paper profited from the bump in its stock price after the regulations became public and drove stock prices up across the for-profit education industry. Washington Post Company stock jumped 9% on reports of the new regulations; it has settled a bit since, but it still trading higher than before the news broke.

Let’s face it, newspapers are dead. Decent reporters should head to the internet.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Monday Reads

Posted: June 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , | 15 Comments

Good Morning!

Floods in Missouri!  Drought so bad in Florida that some cities may run out of water!  Terrible fires in Arizona and New Mexico!  Wow!  You would think it was 2012 or something!

Hundreds of firefighters fought to control several dangerous blazes in Arizona, fighting to make progress even as expanded evacuations and power outages signaled that the battle was far from over.

The Monument fire — which U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell has deemed the nation’s “number one priority,” putting it first in line for any air, ground or other resources — jumped Highway 92 late Sunday afternoon at Carr Canyon heading east, according to the Cochise County website.

“We’ve had a hard day today, with things that we didn’t want to happen,” fire spokesman Bill Paxton told CNN on Sunday night. “The bull came out of the pen.”

Thanks to dry, windy conditions, the fire broke through four different contingency lines, including going over to the other side of the highway, said Paxton, part of the national Interagency Incident Management Team.

“Everything aligned for a massive push,” he said. “It’s really hard on the community here.”

The county sheriff’s office broadened the evacuation zone soon thereafter east to the San Pedro River, reports InciWeb, an online interagency database that tracks fires, floods and other disasters.

On Sunday evening, that website noted that the fire had burned at least 20,956 acres and was 27% contained. More than 1,000 personnel — as well as 100 engines and nine helicopters — were battling that blaze, which had burned 44 homes and 18 other structures from its start June 12 through Sunday.

The UN is holding closed door talks on the Fukishima Nuclear plant failures. I wonder what’s so bad they don’t want us to know anything?

The crisis, which involved three reactor meltdowns, has been dogged by complaints that the plant operator and safety watchdogs haven’t been transparent enough. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to shield the inquiry in Vienna from public view may backfire, analysts and scientists said.

The handpicked participants include scientists, diplomats and people from the industry who will have a chance to question Japanese authorities about what went wrong in the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. Journalists are excluded.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano called the ministerial meeting to learn lessons from the March 11 Fukushima accident and plot strategies to improve nuclear safety. While the agency, which operates under the slogan “Atoms for Peace,” will give public access to delegates’ opening statements, it’s locking down panel discussions on Tokyo Electric Power Co’s response to the accident and how nuclear safety can be improved after Fukushima.

State legislatures have not only passed laws attacking unions and women, they have also passed voter ID laws in record numbers.  These types of laws were widely used during the Jim Crow period to deny black voters the ability to vote.

Buoyed by big Republican gains in the 2010 elections, six states have enacted photo ID laws since January — Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee and Wisconsin. Bills New Hampshire and North Carolina await gubernatorial action.

The measures, all passed by GOP-controlled legislatures, could bring to 17 the number of states with photo ID requirements and come nearly 18 months before elections for Congress and the White House. Other states, including Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia, have reduced the period for early voting.

In Florida, a key battleground state, the new law signed last month by Republican Gov. Rick Scott also restricts efforts to register new voters by groups such as the League of Women Voters.

“It’s remarkable,” Jennie Bowser, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said of the proliferation of new laws. In all, 33 states have considered new voter ID laws this year. “I very rarely see one single issue come up in so many state legislatures in a single session,” she said. “This issue has historically fallen along stark partisan lines. Democrats tend to oppose voter ID, and Republicans tend to favor it. This year, there are a lot of new Republican majorities in legislatures.”

Republicans now control both legislative chambers in 26 states, up from 14 in 2010.

David Axelrod, a top strategist in President Obama‘s re-election campaign, called the wave of new legislation a “calculated strategy” by Republicans to “hold down voter turnout.”

“I find it ironic at a time when all over the world people are struggling, marching, even dying, for the right to vote and cast meaningful votes that anybody in this country would be working to limit the franchise,” Axelrod told USA TODAY.

He said the campaign would “organize vigorously” to make voters aware of the new requirements.

“This is the most significant assault on voting rights that we have seen in a long time,” said Wendy Weiser of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, which opposes the new rules.

The Right Wing version of  Net Roots was the center of a flash-mob style protest by Muslim women who were protesting an earlier incident that smacked of racism and misogyny.

A group of around ten women in Muslim headscarves crashed the RightOnline conference for about ten minutes Saturday, protesting what they said was an incident targeting Muslim women Thursday night.

The event was the latest spark kicked up by the proximity of Netroots Nation and RightOnline. The two conferences are blocks apart — RightOnline is being held in a hotel many Netrootsers are staying in — and interaction between the progressives at Netroots and the conservatives at RightOnline has been inevitable.

A spokesperson for the group of women told TPM they weren’t sure of the identity of the man responsible for the Thursday incident — when two hijab-wearing women were followed by a man with a cell phone camera who reportedly asked them why they were dressed the way they were “in America” — but rumors that the incident involved an employee of conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart were rampant at Netroots.

It was partially a confrontation over those rumors that caused the Breitbart kerfuffle at Netroots Friday.

The women who arrived at RightOnline were Netroots attendees, and were accompanied by blogger Joe Aravosis and gay rights advocate/provocateur Dan Choi.

The spokesperson for the “flash mob,” Allison Nevitt, told TPM that there was a larger message to their protest beyond the Thursday incident, which Nevitt said had been reported to Minneapolis police.

“The point was mostly that Muslim women are an equal part of this nation, and that we have an equal right to exist here,” Nevitt said.

So, that’s a few odds and ends to start up a conversation!  What’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?

 

Saturday: Strictly Hillary

Posted: June 18, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton, morning reads | 34 Comments

h/t Still4Hill

Morning, news junkies. My link dump this weekend is almost all Hillary. Enjoy.

I’ll start you off with this op-ed Hillary penned in the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat yesterday–it’s called “There Is No Going Back in Syria”:

The Syrian people will not cease their demands for dignity and a future free from intimidation and fear. They deserve a government that respects its people, works to build a more stable and prosperous country, and doesn’t have to rely on repression at home and antagonism abroad to maintain its grip on power. They deserve a nation that is unified, democratic and a force for stability and progress. That would be good for Syria, good for the region and good for the world.

Also from Reuters… Clinton and Lavrov discuss Syria U.N. resolution.

What Did Hillary Whisper? (Insert your caption here!)

Next up, a nice and frothy link… “What Hillary Whispered“ — this is a fun Hillary-themed tumblr that’s been making the rounds (see The Atlantic, NY Mag, and Glittarazzi….Team Glittarazzi calls What Hillary Whispered their new favorite work distraction.)

Now for a series of more weighty links… if you missed it this past Sunday, here’s NPR’s take on Hillary’s trip to Africa: “Clinton’s Africa Tour Underscores The Power Of Women.” For more info, see:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks to Julia Dolly Joiner, Commissioner, Political Affairs, African Union Commission, at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, June 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Hillary also made a speech at the African Union where she talked about empowering the women of Africa:

And finally, when it comes to economic opportunity and development, we must empower the continent’s women. The women of Africa are the hardest working women in the world. And so often – (applause) – so often what they do is not included in the formal economy, it is not measured in the GDP. And yet, if all the women in Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, decided they would stop working for a week, the economies of Africa would collapse. (Applause.)

So let’s include half the population. Let’s treat them with dignity. Let’s give them the right and responsibility to make a contribution to the 21st century of African growth and progress. And the United States will be your partner, because we have seen what a difference it makes when women are educated, when they have access to health care, when they can start businesses, when they can get credit, when they can help support their families. So let us make sure that that remains front and center in the work we do together.

My $0.02: Unfortuntately, the US model is coming undone since women’s access to health care (and economic security) are under attack. See:

An op-ed, unsurprisingly published in the NY Post, criticized Hillary for not visiting the Congo and not delivering on a special envoy yet. Hillary did bring up the Congo in her remarks to the African Union though:

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we remain concerned about the continued violence against women and girls and the activities of armed groups in the eastern region of the country. Every effort by the AU and UN will be necessary to help the DRC respond to these continuing security crises.

My $0.02: True, it’s words and not actions per se, but to act as if Hillary has forgotten the Congo just because she visited other areas this time is a stretch. I’m sure she’ll never forget the Congolese survivors she has met after all the outreach she has done. Not to mention the fact that Hillary’s Africa trip was cut short by all that volcanic ash this time anyway, so it’s not like she even got to say and do all that she was planning on anyway.

At least the cover art looks like Hillary.

Getting back to the power of women, but in more political terms… The UK Telegraph: “Hillary Clinton must be on the rise – she’s got her own comic.”

My $0.02: Tim Martin’s art blogging at the link isn’t really about Hillary per se, though it does give some interesting background on the maker of the Hillary comic and about socio-political cartoons in general. Nice to see Martin mention the graphic novel Persepolis. I have to say, from the glimpses I’ve gotten of Bluewater’s Hillary comic book so far, I’m not terribly impressed. Still, I take Martin’s point that “if the grinning, policy-spouting simulacra in Female Force and Political Power point even one reader in the direction of these inspiring and adventurous pieces of contemporary writing, their efforts won’t have been in vain.”

Another one about the comic — ABC News reports that the book portrays Hillary and O as friends before the primaries:

The unauthorized, full-color comic book, released last week, describes how in 2003, then-New York Sen. Clinton sat on a tarmac in a private plane, waiting impatiently for a thunderstorm to pass before taking off for Chicago, where she hoped to attend a fundraiser for Illinois state senator and Senate-hopeful Obama. After eventually making it to Chicago, she was blown away by the young politician, according to the book.

“He’s young, brainy, African-American and a terrific speaker,” the book shows Clinton telling an aide. “Just the kind of candidate that we need more of, that Bill and I have spent our lives promoting. There’s a superstar in Chicago.”

“At one point,” Maida writes, “Obama gave her a gift: a photograph of him, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Sasha and Malia. From then until she left the Senate in 2009 … even during their rivalry amid the contentious 2008 campaign … Hillary displayed it prominently in her office.”

My $0.02: Funny how that kind of material made the cut and the three pages where the Bill Clinton caricature got to express his point of view on South Carolina, etc. did not.

On a similar note… Did anyone else catch Mr. Fish lumping Hillary together with every Tom and Dick in DC?

My $0.02: It’s one thing to argue as Taylor Marsh has, that women leaders have not proven to be less hawkish than men, which is a conversation worth having, but it takes a real dick–figurative, literal, whatever–to make the Weiner scandal about Hillary needing to be afraid of people running her out of power, as Mr. Fish’s comic does.

The Clintons in Bermuda, summer of 2009. I'd say this is as good a glimpse as we've gotten of "Hillary's future."

On the neverending DC parlor game called “Hillary’s future”…. More Hillary-should-replace-Biden noise, this time on Huffpo. That is one persistent internet urban legend, Lol. And, over at wowowow, Liz Smith asks this question about Hillary: “Would she do the ‘unthinkable’ and challenge her own party’s sitting president, the man who elevated her to the position of Secretary of State?”

My $0.02: As I asked of Jonathan Alter’s profile on Hillary in the June issue of Vanity Fair, what part of Beaches and Speeches do people not understand? 1600 PA Avenue just isn’t big enough for Hillary anymore.

Incidentally, Stacy at SecyClintonBlog recently spotlighted a Guardian piece from the beginning of this year that I guess popped up again last weekend–it’s called “Clinton is proving that a feminist foreign policy is possible – and works.”

My $0.02: Hillary’s feminist foreign policy is precisely why she’s transcended the White House and has much bigger horizons ahead of her. (Be sure to click over to Stacy’s post–she chose two great photos to go along with the piece.)

Excerpt from the Guardian link:

Back in the heady days of 1970s feminism there was an argument that once women achieved political power, there would be no more war. Margaret Thatcher and her Falklands war exploded that myth, and along with it any residual notion that women might do foreign policy differently from men. Indeed, it became a credibility requirement for any women with a senior foreign or defence brief to give a wide berth to anything with a whiff of being a woman’s issue. Women had to work extra hard to look tough on the world stage. Meanwhile, women’s issues were parked in the softer brief of international development.

It is these unspoken rules that Hillary Clinton has been dismantling since becoming US secretary of state two years ago. She is the most powerful politician to advance an explicitly feminist agenda. Even in that most delicate and crucial relationship with China – on which the world’s attention will be fixed this week for the Chinese president’s visit to the US – Clinton has gone out of her way to press feminist issues. In China’s case, she has highlighted the country’s growing gender imbalance caused by the high abortion rate of female foetuses.

My extra $0.02: I’m glad the author of the article drew attention to this. Even though I was born and raised in the US, I grew up acutely aware of the Indian practice of sex selective abortions–it has always been just as important an angle of the abortion debate to me as a woman’s right to choose. That’s one of the reasons why Hillary earned my support. Her pro-choice view is grounded in a complex understanding of gender politics and iniquity around the world.

In other human rights developments on the global stage…

Yes she did...and she keeps on!

Ever the Fierce Advocate her current boss will never be, yesterday Madam Secretary put out a statement on “the first ever UN resolution on the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.” From the link:

This resolution will commission the first ever UN report on the challenges that LGBT persons face around the globe and will open a broader international discussion on how to best promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.

All over the world, people face human rights abuses and violations because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, including torture, rape, criminal sanctions, and killing. Today’s landmark resolution affirms that human rights are universal. People cannot be excluded from protection simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The United States will continue to stand up for human rights wherever there is inequality and we will seek more commitments from countries to join this important resolution.

My $0.02: It would help if America’s domestic leaders would stand up for the human rights of people here at home, too. Just sayin’.

Also from the fact sheet the State Department put out on “U.S. Accomplishments at the UN Human Rights Council’s 17th Session,” (the session concluded Friday):

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

The United States continues to join UN members to call attention to violence against women and girls around the world and improve international efforts to eliminate and prevent that violence. The United States strongly supported a Canadian-led resolution addressing Violence Against Women, took part in annual day discussion on addressing sexual violence against women in conflict, and responded to the report of Violence Against Women Special Rapporteur Rashida Manjoo on the United States.

My $0.02: The fact sheet also has bullet points on the LGBT resolution, internet freedom, business and human rights, and country-specific resolutions. As usual Saudi Arabia is absent from the list.

We’re about halfway-through, so if you’re not bored yet, click to read the rest: Read the rest of this entry »

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