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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

White House Releases Turkey Pardon Spoof Then Does The Real Thing
Posted by Daniel Kessler, TreeHugger on November 25, 2009 at 6:33 PM.

You've got to wonder if this is what we want our tax dollars going to? Anyway, the White House put out a spoof yesterday morning of the traditional presidential pardon of a turkey for Thanksgiving. The video follows a path through the White House, right into the Oval Office.

New Info Shows the Stimulus Is Working, Time for Conservatives to Thank Obama
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 25, 2009 at 3:58 PM.

The New York Times had a terrific report the other day, explaining that the stimulus package is "working," polls and Republican talking points notwithstanding.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com and an occasional adviser to lawmakers from both parties, said, "[T]he stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do -- it is contributing to ending the recession." Zandi added that without the recovery bill, the "G.D.P. would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent. And there are a little over 1.1 million more jobs out there as of October than would have been out there without the stimulus."

What I didn't realize is that the piece included some very helpful charts, featuring projections of key economic indicators from three companies that specialize in macroeconomic forecasting. (via Matt Yglesias). You'll notice, of course, the black line and the gray line -- the black representing progress with the recovery plan, the gray representing what would have happened without it.

There are several angles to keep in mind here. First, opponents of the stimulus would have us believe the recovery plan has failed. Those are, oddly enough, the same people who got us into this economic mess in the first place. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now.

Second, as Brad DeLong explained, the people providing the data for the NYT charts are economists "who sell their forecasts to paying clients." In other words, these aren't political players who have an incentive to skew the data -- to stay in business, they have to get these trends right. And when it comes to the stimulus, they're unanimous in their beliefs that the Recovery Act helped the economy considerably, and will continue to do so next year.

Third, my only complaint about the charts is that there isn't a third line -- one for the economy with the stimulus, one for the economy with no intervention, and one with what we would have seen if we'd taken the Republicans' advice. It was, after all, 95% of congressional Republicans who, at the height of the crisis, voted for a truly insane five-year spending freeze.

How they feel justified complaining now, rather than thanking president for preventing an economic catastrophe, is a point of ongoing concern.

There's no mystery here. The debate is over. The economy is obviously still struggling, but the stimulus did what it was supposed to do, and has made a real, positive difference.

Conservatives were wrong about Reagan's tax increases. They were wrong about Clinton's tax increases. They were wrong about Bush's tax cuts. And they're wrong again now.

That Republicans still manage to talk about economic policy at all demonstrates a remarkable amount of chutzpah.

Say Goodbye to Common Sense: RedState Compares Health Care Reform to Attack on Pearl Harbor
Posted by Brooke Obie, Media Matters for America on November 25, 2009 at 2:19 PM.

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Damn Good Recipe for Stuffing Right Here
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 25, 2009 at 1:15 PM.

This is magic -- a classic Italian stuffing/dressing with a Southern accent. I've made a dozen variations on this, and every one has been a huge hit.

Whip up a big ole' pan of cornbread today. A pre-mix is fine. You're going to want to eat some when it comes out all hot and fresh, so make extra or else you'll just end up doing a second batch. I guess you'll need about 6-8 cups to make a enough stuffing for maybe 6 people, with leftovers for hangover sandwiches. Adjust from there.

Let it cool, crumble into teaspoon-size chunks and leave in a large bowl, uncovered, to get dry and crusty overnight. (Alternative: shred a big loaf of crusty peasant bread and let it dry out overnight -- this is the classic Italian version.)

I think making your own chicken stock is worth it, but a good store-bought organic deal -- the reduced sodium stuff -- will do. You'll need up to a quart, maybe even more depending on how dry your bread is.

Then, tomorrow ...

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Dana Perino Claims No Terrorist Attacks on U.S. During Bush Presidency
Posted by Jed Lewison, Daily Kos on November 25, 2009 at 12:18 PM.

This wonder of evolution was actually the Bush Administration's top spokesperson:
 

PERINO: Well, I...there is one thing that I would say about Ft. Hood that I feel strongly about, which is, and I don't say this to be political, I think it matters what we call it. And we had a terrorist attack on our country. And we should call it what it is because we need to face up to it so we can prevent it from happening again.

HANNITY: I agree with you, and why won't they say what you so simply just said.

PERINO: You know, they want to do all their investigations...I don't know their thinking that goes into it. But, you know, we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term. I hope they're not looking at this politically. I do think that we owe it to the American people to call it what it is.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. After all this is the same Dana Perino who is so embarrassingly ignorant that she didn't know what the Bay of Pigs was. (Even worse, she's so mind-numbingly stupid that she admitted it.)

This is the same Dana Perino who represented an administration who responded to the 9/11 attacks (which apparently didn't happen) by invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and justified the invasion (and thousands of American war deaths) on the basis of a threat posed by weapons of mass destruction that turned out to not exist.

And now she goes on teevee and says none of it ever happened, while attacking President Obama for not going nuclear over Ft. Hood. Presumably, Perino wants us to attack Yemen or something like that in response.

Well, actually, probably not. Dana Perino is too much of a moron to even know that Yemen is a country, much less to know how to find it on a map. It is an absolute and utter disgrace that we had someone with this little intellectual horsepower as our nation's top spokesperson.

No wonder the Bush years were such a complete disaster for America and the world. We had nitwits like this running the show. Anytime you see an organization where Karl Rove is the smartest person in the room, you know you're in trouble.

They spent eight years screwing things up. Now they should have the good sense and humility to crawl back in their holes and shut up while the next Administration goes about cleaning up their mess. But no. Instead we they go on their broadcast channel and spew nonsense like this.

There is one bright spot to all this. It's a reminder that George W. Bush truly was:

The. Worst. President. Ever.

Predatory Capitalism Alert: Watch Out for These Credit Card Scams
Posted by DaveJ , Open Left on November 25, 2009 at 10:55 AM.

The other day Digby wrote about a scam by Bank of America, where they switched the monthly bill's envelope to look like junk mail, so people threw it away, and they collect million upon millions in late fees.

The plain brown envelope looked like it was one of those car dealership "checks" that were all the rage before the credit crisis hit. And because I didn't realize the first month that I hadn't gotten my bill, it created a black mark on my credit for a late payment which resulted in a cascade of raised rates on several cards.

It was clearly a sneaky trick. ... And that's what people are dealing with all the time as consumers, with their health insurance, their credit cards, their mortgages, their pensions -- overwhelming complexity designed to trip them up and cost them money or deny them benefits to which they believed in good faith they were entitled. And its all perfectly legal -- or at least there's no visible accountability for it.

Me, too!  Chase ran a scam on me but I didn't realize it was just a scam until I was talking with someone else and found out exactly the same thing happened to her.  I had automatic payments set up so any balance was paid out of my checking account.  (I never, ever, ever, ever carry a balance on credits cards.  And you should never, ever, ever do that either.)  

They stopped the automatic payments, and charged me late fees.

 I fought it, and filed a complaint with the Fed, and when I got them to reverse the late fee, they applied a fee reversal fee!  That card is long gone.

So how many of you got socked by AOL, where you couldn't get them to stop charging your card?  How many have been hit by other scams?  How about cell phone scams, like Verizon's various scams -- VCast when you didn't want it, or the deal where they put the key for "Get It Now" or "Mobile Web" where you accidentally hit it all the time, and they charge you each time?

Predatory capitalism is the name of the game, and it is the game of the country.

But it's a year after the election and still nothing is getting done about any of this big-corporate corruption!  Democrats have a huge opportunity to demonstrate that they are on the side of regular people -- but just enough corrupt Democrats in the Senate are joining with the totally-corrupt Republicans to keep anything from getting done.

Digby writes,

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Palin Suggests Reforming Canada's Universal Health Care System: 'Let The Private Sector Take Over'
Posted by Igor Volsky, Think Progress on November 25, 2009 at 9:52 AM.

Canadian comedian Mary Walsh (playing the character of Marg Delahunty) attended a Sarah Palin book signing in the United States last week and asked the "thrilla from Wasilla, the Alaskan Aphrodite" if she had "any words of encouragement for the Canadian conservatives who have worked so hard to try to diminish that kind of socialized medicine we have up there."

"Keep the faith and that common-sense conservatism," Palin said to Walsh, who was being pushed out of the store by bodyguards. "It needs to be plugged into Canadian policies too. Keep the faith!" Palin cried out.

After the event, Walsh waited in the loading dock of the Borders bookstore "close to where Palin’s bus was parked." Palin came over and energetically encouraged Walsh to "keep the faith" again and suggested that Canada needs to reform its health care system to "let the private sector take over":

WALSH: Ms. Palin, I tried to ask you a question inside, but I didn't hear your answer! The Canadians! Ms. Palin!

PALIN: Well, my answer was too keep the faith. My answer was to keep the faith. Cause that common sense conservatism can be plugged-in there in Canada too. In fact Canada needs to reform its health care system and let the private sector take over some of what the government has absorbed. So thank you, keep the faith.

Watch it:

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Japan Fines 'Fat' People, Companies Must Measure Waist Lines of Employees
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 25, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

The U.S. usually steals the headlines when it comes to stories about being overweight. Obesity in the U.S. is no joke for sure. As I wrote a few months ago, 60 percent of adults and 16 percent of children are obese. But today, the news is all about Japan. Japan?!

A CNN news story (watch below) is reporting that Japan has issued new guidelines. "Companies and local governments must now measure waist lines of all employees and family members over the age of 40," they reported. Apparently if you don't make the cut, your company can be fined massively and will get increased health premiums. The company the reporter profiled, NEC, is facing 19 million dollars in penalties if employees don't slim down.

And what's overweight by Japanese standards? Men with waists over 33.5 inches and women over 35.5 inches. I can't even imagine issuing fines for Americans under those guidelines!

While the story didn't go into a great deal of depth, the reporter blamed recent weight gain in Japan on U.S. foods. Standing outside a McDonald's, she compared the typical Japanese meal (vegetables, miso soup, and fish) at 600 calories to the MickeyD's burger, fries, and coke, which comes in at 1300 calories. Woops, sorry guys. I guess it wasn't enough to screw up the health of everyone in our own country. Yeah for globalization.

It would seem to me that there is both a good and a bad side to this.

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Meet the RNC's New, Racist Adviser
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on November 25, 2009 at 6:02 AM.

Evidently Michael Steele has been miffed that he didn't get enough credit for the GOPs sweeping takeover of American politics in the November elections (well, except for the congressional seats which all went to Democrats)so he forced out the RNC spokesman for some reason. But the spokesman has been replaced by a heavyweight:

The Republican National Committee has hired Alex Castellanos, a long-time political strategist and GOP consultant, as an adviser.

Castellanos has been described (according to his National Media biography) as the "father of the attack ad." He's best known for a racially-charged ad he made in 1990 for racist former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). The ad, called "Hands," featured a pair of white hands crumbling a job-rejection while the narrator said, "You needed that job. You were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority, because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?" More recently, Castellanos has taken the lead in crafting an anti-health care reform message for congressional Republicans.

But that doesn't really do him justice. He's had so more "successes." I'm sure you'll recall this one:

During the heated 2000 U.S. presidential campaign season, Castellanos produced an ad for the Republican National Committee attempting to discredit the prescription drug plan policy offered by U.S. Democratic Party presidential nominee and then-Vice President Al Gore.[4] Alongside images of Gore, the ad showed the word "RATS" for a split second, before the complete word "bureaucrats" appeared on-screen.

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The Stupak Speech Senate Dems (and Stupak Himself) Need to Hear
Posted by Rebecca Sive, RH Reality Check on November 25, 2009 at 4:36 AM.

No one reading this has forgotten that, a couple Saturday nights ago, the House of Representatives passed a healthcare "reform" bill that included your so-called Stupak Amendment.

In doing this, the House codified an American healthcare system, what an oxymoron that is, in which women’s very lives are subject to the whims of weak-kneed, sexist, soulless, woman-hating politicians--led by you--who don’t believe the Supreme Court really meant it, when it said there is a right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution that guarantees the right to obtain an abortion. 

For, after all, this is the true intent of your bill: to make legal abortion unattainable.

Clearly, you, along with your Republican and Democratic pals, don’t care whether American women live or die.  

Now that your nefarious deed is done, and the nation’s attention turns to the Senate this Saturday night, you, your pals, the nation, and the Senate need to hear the speech presented below. I hope someone will give it. And I hope, fervently, that you will listen, very, very carefully: Listen and learn. Take-in what you have wrought, and then think again. 

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After Conceding, Then Unconceding, Then Conceding, Then Unconceding, NY Conservative Concedes
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on November 24, 2009 at 4:40 PM.

On Nov. 16, ThinkProgress reported that failed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman told Glenn Beck that he was unconceding the NY-23 special election, even though the winner, Democrat Bill Owens, was already in office. Shortly thereafter, however, Hoffman’s spokesman said that they weren’t unconceding the race. But then on Nov. 19, Hoffman posted a statement on his website, this time making clear that he was actually unconceding the race, citing concerns about voter fraud at the hands of ACORN and labor unions. Today, Hoffman has put out another statement, this time saying that he is conceding:

Yesterday, the remaining ballots were counted in the 23rd Congressional District special election. The results re-affirm the fact that Bill Owens won.

Since, the morning of November 4th, many of my supporters have asked me to challenge the outcome of this race. Their concerns centered on the veracity of the new voting machines used, for the first time, in the majority of the eleven counties that make up the Congressional District. Over the past three weeks, we nearly cut Bill Owens’ lead in half. Sadly, that is not enough.

China on Reducing Its Carbon Footprint: Why Should We Have to?
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation on November 24, 2009 at 3:29 PM.

BEIJING -- Ambassador Yu Qingtai is China's point man on global warming. As special representative to the climate change talks for China's ministry of foreign affairs, Yu is a forceful advocate for China's view that while his country will do its part, the primary responsibility for fixing the problem rests squarely on the shoulders of the United States and other industrialized countries. And he bristles when reminded that many US experts put on the onus on China's rapidly growing economy and industrial might.

"There were those who came to China years ago and described us as a kingdom of bicycles," he says, when I mention some of that criticism. We're sitting in a conference room at the foreign ministry, where Yu has come to be questioned by a small group of journalists invited to Beijing by the Chinese People's Institute for Foreign Affairs. As China modernizes, he says, every Chinese citizen has the right to all of the modern industrial and transportation options enjoyed by, say, Americans – including the right to own a car. "We should not be expected to stay forever as a kingdom of bicycles!" he says.

He has a point.

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Supremes to Decide if Idle Rich's Scenic Ocean Views More Important than Public Beaches, the Environment
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 24, 2009 at 2:15 PM.

Here's a story about a fascinating legal question being driven to the highest court in the land by selfish and short-sighted Florida real estate scumbags developers looking to cash in on the bloated snow-bird second-homers who come to crisp themselves alive on the coasts of the Sunshine State (and real estate developers, as everyone knows, don't come greedier or sleazier than the Florida variety):

The sugar-white sand that stretches from Slade and Nancy Lindsay's deck to the clear, green waters of the Gulf of Mexico is some of the finest in the world. Tiny, uniformly shaped quartz crystals make the beach that stretches along the Florida Panhandle unique, experts say.

So what could be wrong with creating more of it?

That is what Florida's beach restoration and renourishment program has been doing statewide for years, pumping in wide new strips of sand to save eroding shorelines.

But the Lindsays and other homeowners challenged the program because it comes with a catch: The new strips of beach belong to the public, not the property owners. They feared their waterfront view of bleached sand and sea oats would include throngs of strangers toting umbrellas and coolers.

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Will Joe Lieberman Be the Only Dem to Sabotage Health Reform?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 24, 2009 at 1:15 PM.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT JOE.... Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), refusing to allow a vote on any health care bill that subjects private insurers to any competition at all, told the WSJ yesterday, "I'm going to be stubborn on this."

Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a "public option," or government-run health-insurance plan, as the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won't vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included.

Probe for a catch or caveat in that opposition, and none is visible. Can he support a public option if states could opt out of the plan, as the current bill provides? "The answer is no," he says in an interview from his Senate office. "I feel very strongly about this." How about a trigger, a mechanism for including a public option along with a provision saying it won't be used unless private insurance plans aren't spreading coverage far and fast enough? No again.

So any version of a public option will compel Mr. Lieberman to vote against bringing a bill to a final vote? "Correct," he says.

This isn't exactly new ground, but I think this was Lieberman's most explicit declaration in opposition to public-option "triggers." The bottom line is straightforward enough: if even one consumer is given a choice between a private plan and a public plan, Joe Lieberman will work with Republicans to kill health care reform, no matter the consequences for the millions who are counting on this bill to pass.

There's no reason to believe Lieberman is playing some kind of leverage game; all evidence suggests he's entirely sincere. The senator is so offended by the notion of public-private competition, he'll betray anyone and everyone to prevent it -- even if Lieberman doesn't seem to understand the basics of the policy he's so vehemently against.

With that in mind, should the "trigger" compromise become the focus of negotiations with the center-right, it suggests the road to 60 votes will go through Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) office, not Joe Lieberman's. Indeed, if Lieberman isn't willing to listen to reason, evidence, or pleas for compromise, it may very well be time to shift the nature of the talks -- I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Senate Dems simply stopped engaging Lieberman, and went back to figuring out how to make Snowe happy again. When the votes are cast, 60 is 60; whether the final vote comes from Snowe or Lieberman doesn't matter. (Maybe if Lieberman's phone stopped ringing, and he no longer felt important, he'd be more willing to engage in good-faith talks.)

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Everyone's Talking About Stupak, But What About the Health Care Bill's More Insidious Features?
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on November 24, 2009 at 10:41 AM.

The Stupak amendment isn’t the only troubling intrusion into reproductive rights in the House version of the health care reform bill -- low-income women are also facing attempts at fertility control from the federal government. The bill requires that Medicaid recipients who are having their first baby or who have a child under the age of two be visited at home by nurses in order to advance certain reproductive and family goals. Sounds like a good thing, right? New parents could use some help, and a nurse should be able to give them decent tips. These kinds of visits happen all the time in countries like France and England. I’m pretty sure a similar visit was recordered in Michael Moore’s Sicko. It’s about time that we gave new parents the support that they need.

Except this program isn’t about support. It’s about the same old social engineering wherein a particular class of people is deemed unfit to reproduce, and the folks in charge go to great lengths to either force or coerce the less powerful class out of making babies. The goals of this program include "increasing birth intervals between pregnancies," "reducing maternal and child involvement in the criminal justice system," "increasing economic self-sufficiency," and "reducing dependence on public assistance."

I will just let Dorothy Roberts and Gwendolyn Mink explain why this is a problem:

These goals of the home visitation program have nothing to do with providing health care. Instead, they are based on the false premise that poor mothers’ childbearing is to blame for social problems. The proposed visitation program is eugenicist, deceptive, discriminatory against low-income women, and utterly inappropriate to the medical work of nurses.

Under the program envisioned in the House bill, government-sponsored medical professionals are charged with exhorting fertility control among poor women, based on the mistaken premise that reproduction among the poor leads to crime, neglect, low educational attainment, and dependency. Yet according to the government’s own statistics, families receiving welfare have, on average, only 1.8 children; half the families receiving welfare have only one child, and only one in ten have more than three children.

Although the data show that poverty is not correlated with family size — and that childbearing does not cause poverty — the U.S. House of Representatives seeks to tell low-income women who receive medical assistance how many children to have and when to have them.

If you read the actual language of the bill, it’s not all bad — but there was obviously some tinkering to pull in the lines about the criminal justice system and public assistance. I would have no problem with this bill if it were about helping women and offering resources. Parenthood is hard, and there’s an unreasonable expectation that women naturally know what to do without any sort of community support. Offering that support -- including information about childhood nutrition, reproductive health, age-appropriate punishment, intimate partner violence and school preparation -- would be wonderful. I would love to see it offered in the health care bill.

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What Does it Mean to Take Sarah Palin and the Tea-Bagger Set "Seriously"?
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 24, 2009 at 10:40 AM.

Reviewing Sarah Palin's book on the front yesterday, Matt Taibbi joined a thousand voices warning progressives not to take her, or the fuzzily articulated but potent outrage of the tea-party set she's come to represent, lightly.

Obviously, being Taibbi, he rendered the caution better than most:

Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming’s sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book’s significance, because in some ways it’s really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature.

Palin -- and there’s just no way to deny this -- is a supremely gifted politician. She has staked out, as her own personal political turf, the entire landscape of incoherent white American resentment. In this area she leaves even Rush Limbaugh in the dust.

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Dems Have No Excuse for Failing on Health Care
Posted by Mike Lux, Open Left on November 24, 2009 at 9:45 AM.

The single biggest complaint I hear by non-DC insiders is the sheer dysfunction of Washington. Whether it's Jon Stewart's very funny interview with Joe Biden the other day, or bloggers attacking Harry Reid for not just wrapping the health care issue up by going to reconciliation, people not involved in the day to day DC maneuvering and negotiating don't understand why all this is so hard and takes so long. Insiders get very grumpy about this attitude, because they have to deal every day with the complications of the Senate procedural rules, the egos and turf battles of the powerful committee chairs, and the traditions and clubbiness of the Senate.

I have a lot of sympathy for people on both sides of the divide. Having served in the White House, and been in DC for 17 years now, I know how hard it is to get things done in this town. And having read my share of history books, I know how hard it is to get big things done in general - it just doesn't happen very often, and it is never ever easy or painless. But I also know this: if Democrats don't deliver now, there will be no excuses. They have to find a way to deliver the goods. History, the media, activists, and voters will offer them no mercy if they can't get health reform done this time around.

So if failure is not an option, and there are four holdout Democrats in the Senate blocking the way to getting a reform bill the rest of the Democratic Party can live with, what is to be done?

A lot of people, including me, have been saying for a while that those four Senators would probably eventually force Reid to use the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes, and in the end they still might because there might be no other option. But a lot of the more liberal Democrats in the Senate (including Harkin, Rockefeller, and Schumer) have started arguing against that option. Their reasons include that the bill would have to be dramatically scaled back to fit within the reconciliation rule, the process would likely be slowed down making pending legislation tougher to pass, and that the bill would have to be referred to Kent Conrad's rather conservative budget committee where all kinds of bad things might happen to it. There are also an undetermined number of otherwise more progressive Senators such as Robert Byrd and Russ Feingold who believe putting health care in reconciliation violates the spirit of reconciliation rules, and would vote against the bill on principle.

These are pretty compelling arguments, so my view is that progressives should not be demanding that Harry Reid put this bill through the reconciliation process. In the end, he may have no other choice, but to demand that before he has had the chance to pursue every other option makes no sense to me. To say Harry Reid - or the President or anyone else - can just force the bill through no matter what is simply not true. The American government, just doesn't work that way. Not even LBJ, the greatest leg-breaker the Senate and Presidency have ever seen, could government by fiat - even with huge Democratic majorities he had to compromise on a range of issues to get things done.

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Fox News' Fuzzy Math: 193 Percent of the Public Support Palin, Romney and Huckabee (Video)
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on November 24, 2009 at 8:39 AM.

Reporting on the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll last night on Fox News’ local Chicago affiliate, anchor Byron Harlan employed some funny math in asserting that Sarah Palin is leading the pack for the GOP nomination in 2012:

HARLAN: It looks as if the rogue route is helping Sarah Palin. Her book tour has meant new support. A new Opinion Dynamics poll for 2012 shows her on top when it comes to landing the nomination. Palin is at 70 percent, about a third higher than this past July. Mike Huckabee stands at 63 percent. Mitt Romney’s 60.

Those figures add up to 193 percent. An accompanying graphic tried to squeeze the numbers into one pie chart:

In fact, the poll Harlan referred to did not ask Republican respondents to pick their favorite candidate. The numbers he cited merely represent favorable ratings among Republicans surveyed for each individual. Watch Harlan’s report:

Video: Utah Senator: "I Don't Want The Gays Stuffin' It Down My Throat"
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 24, 2009 at 7:21 AM.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Utah State Senator Chris Buttars, who supported the passage of an amendment to the state constitution that defines marriage as being between "one man and one woman," stunned former allies last week when he declared that he might support a statewide anti-discrimination measure that would protect LGBT people in housing and employment. But there are limits to the extent of his support, Buttars told Max Roth, a reporter for the Salt Lake City FOX affiliate. He doesn't think anti-discrimination protection should extend to those who "act out," he said.

"I don't mind gays, but I don't want 'em stuffin' it down my throat all the time," Buttars told Roth, "and certainly in my kids' face."

And this was just after Buttars told the reporter, "I meet with the gays here and there; they were at my house two weeks ago."

Here and there. In my house. Down my throat.

Just sayin'.

Buttars' new gay-friendly attitude, if one may call it that, likely stems from the surprise support of the the Church of Latter Day Saints -- that's Mormon to you -- for a similar anti-discrimination measure passed by the city council of Salt Lake City earlier this month. Buttars opposed the Salt Lake City measure until the Mormon leadership, perhaps looking for a more tolerant image, signed on.

The church has been at the forefront of ballot-measure fights against same-sex marriage in Utah and California, where it led the fight for Proposition 8, the measure that overturned the state Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.

VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT AFTER THE JUMP

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Obama Will Announce the Specifics of a Troop Increase in Afghanistan by Next Week
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 24, 2009 at 7:14 AM.

AFGHAN ANNOUNCEMENT A WEEK FROM TODAY.... After a lengthy review process, President Obama reportedly has all the information he needs to craft a new U.S. policy towards Afghanistan. We'll hear all about it in a televised address to the nation a week from tonight.

For two hours on Monday evening, Mr. Obama held his ninth meeting in the Situation Room with his war council.... The president's military and national security advisers came back to the president with answers he had requested during previous meetings, most of which focusing on these questions: Where are the off-ramps for the military? And what is the exit strategy?

The conversation settled around sending about 30,000 more American troops, two officials said, the first of whom would deploy early next year to be in place in southern or eastern Afghanistan by the spring. The troop reinforcements would likely be sent in waves, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss war strategy. [...]

While the president is expected by several of his advisers to announce sending more than 20,000 new troops - perhaps closer to the 40,000, as recommended by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal - the White House is working to make the announcement more than simply a number of troops. It will include an outline of an exit strategy, officials said.

That last part is obviously key. The decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan will not be popular with many of the president's own supporters, many of whom believe the longest war in American history should come to an end. But if the White House has not only decided on the size of an escalation, but also a larger, revamped strategy that features a light at the end of the tunnel, the administration's new policy may address at least one underlying concern.

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Hurricane Katrina Even More of a Man-Made Disaster Than We Thought
Posted by Laura Flanders, TheNation.com on November 24, 2009 at 5:00 AM.

Hurricane Katrina is often called a natural disaster, as if it was all nature's fault, not man's. The reality, of course, is that federal, state and local governments ignored warnings from scientists for years, both that climate change would lead to increased storm activity, and that destruction of wetlands outside of New Orleans had hurt the city's natural defenses against a storm surge. Calls for fixing levees and infrastructure investments went unheeded while the doctrine of markets and profits held sway.

This week, a federal district judge finally ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers was indeed responsible for part of the devastation in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and parts of St. Bernard Parish.

The failure of the Corps to recognize the hazards wetland destruction had created was "clearly negligent on the part of the Corps," said U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. "Furthermore, the Corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988 [the threats to human life] and yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Lou Dobbs On Whether He's Thought About Running For President: "Yes Is The Answer"
Posted by Matt Corley, Think Progress on November 24, 2009 at 4:30 AM.

Last week, rumors spread that former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs might challenge Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in 2012. But in an interview on Fred Thompson's radio show today, Dobbs said that he is actually considering a run for the White House:

THOMPSON: Lou, one way to have a voice -- you've already had a big one, but another way to have a voice is in public service. Have you given any thought to perhaps running for president?

DOBBS: I'm talking -- yes is the answer. And I'm going to be talking some more with some folks who want me to listen to them in the next few weeks. You know, I, so I just don't even what to tell you in terms of where I'm leaning because right now I'm fortunate to have a number of wonderful options. I do know this, I'm going to have the best advice. I may make a terrible decision, but I'm going to have great advice.

Listen here:

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Conservative Bishop Denies Kennedy His Holy Cracker*
Posted by Joshua Holland on November 23, 2009 at 4:30 PM.

Boston Globe:

The war of words between the Catholic bishop of Rhode Island and US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy escalated yesterday when Bishop Thomas J. Tobin criticized him for disclosing a confidential request the prelate made in 2007 to stop receiving Holy Communion because of his stand on moral issues.

Tobin said he was disappointed the congressman had told a newspaper that he had been forbidden from receiving communion in Rhode Island because of Kennedy’s support of abortion rights. The bishop also accused the son of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of prolonging their public feud.

[...]

Tobin and Kennedy have been exchanging testy words for weeks. Earlier this month, the bishop, who was installed in 2005, disputed Kennedy’s contention that disagreeing with church hierarchy on matters like abortion rights makes him no less of a Catholic.

“Well in fact, congressman, in a way it does,’’ the bishop wrote in a commentary in the Rhode Island Catholic newspaper. “Your position is unacceptable to the church and scandalous to many of our members.’’

One of the bloggers over at Truthdig sounds the requisite note:

Hey, it’s their clubhouse and rules are rules—just as long as the church also denies communion to politicians who support the death penalty, cut poverty programs and covet thy neighbors’ wives.

Forgot to mention those who are gung-ho for perma-war!

* Kudos to Truthdig's blog for the headline "Give Kennedy His Cracker," presumably a reference to PZ Myers' "Cracker-gate" scandal.

Christians Rap About Not Having Sex: 'Gimme That Christian Side Hug!'
Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet on November 23, 2009 at 4:00 PM.

Abstinence is hard, even when you really love Jesus. That's why seemingly foolproof methods for preserving the virginity of young, unmarried Christians -- like magic purity rings, or having them go on creepy dates with their dads -- seem to make teens have even more premarital sex: a 2009 study found that rates of teen pregnancy are much higher in religious communities, even when lower rates of abortion were accounted for.

But maybe that's just because most efforts to promote abstinence have one fatal flaw: none have a mechanism for ensuring that the genitals of unmarried Christians never align. Fortunately, some rapping youth pastors are on it.

"AWWWW YEAH! Y'all ready to party all up in here?!" yell the mostly white, Christian rappers in a YouTube clip of a live performance. "Gimme that Christian side hug! Gimme that Christian side hug!" they demand, pumping their fists in the air and bouncing a lot, in a very convincing approximation of what black, secular rappers do.

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The Most Racist Sheriff in America's Worst Nightmare: Meet Salvador Reza (Video)
Posted by Laura Flanders, GRITtv on November 23, 2009 at 3:21 PM.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a household name for all the wrong reasons. Known for accusations of racial profiling and immigration raids in Maricopa County, Arizona, Arpaio is held up as a hero by anti-immigrant groups but has created a climate of fear in his state, where the Latino community is afraid to call the police for common complaints for fear of deportation. Recently stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests, Arpaio continues to conduct raids and appears not to fear repercussions.

Salvador Reza, U.S. Air Force veteran, community organizer and renowned immigrants rights activist, joins Laura for an exclusive interview on Arpaio’s ongoing mistreatment of his community. Reza notes that the Obama administration, specifically Homeland Security secretary and former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, have mostly made symbolic moves to control Arpaio, but in practice allow him to do whatever he wants. Going forward toward immigration reform, Reza calls for nationwide action.

Thanks to Dennis Gilman for the video footage in this segment.

Sarah Palin Celebrates Her Humble Roots by Eating at a Restaurant That Serves a $25,000 Dessert
Posted by Byard Duncan, AlterNet on November 23, 2009 at 1:30 PM.

Sarah Palin, ever the faux-populist, has finally committed an act of absurdity that perfectly allegorizes her own political M.O.

Last week, while in New York City, Palin dined at Serendipity 3, a restaurant in one of Manhattan’s swankier sections. Serendipity 3 is known for hosting celebrities (others have included Zac Efron and Bill Clinton), but it’s not famous for that. It’s famous for the "Frrozen Haute Chocolate," a sundae composed of edible gold and 28 different cocoas from across the globe. This treat, which costs $25,000, holds the Guinness world record for most expensive dessert. It is eaten with a diamond-studded gold spoon and served with a side of $2,600 per-pound chocolate. At the base of the sundae’s goblet (it is served, by the way, in a goblet) is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds.

One can only assume that the banana leaves to be fanned with are sold separately.

So how does Palin’s stop at Serendipity compromise her everywoman persona? Let me count the ways. Not only was she in one of the more expensive corners of the Big Apple (a city she promised ‘true’ Americans she would not visit during her book tour, on account of its elites); she was dining at a restaurant where just one item costs more than what many of her supporters will make in a year. Maybe more than twice what some of them will make.

Of course, this sort of gleaming, gold-plated contradiction is nothing new for Palin. Even the most baby-witted of observers know that her two main recipients of polito-pandering (working class Americans, the corporations that routinely screw them over) don’t quite line up right. No, the beauty here is the symbolism of it all -- the sweet, flagrant absurdity: Underdog (dare we say it? "Rogue") politician, preparing to set out across America in a grassroots neo-conquest of a book tour, must first stop to fuel up for the harrowing journey. What better place to do so than at a restaurant whose finest dessert costs as much as a year of college?

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Gun Lobby's Absurd New Claim: Healthcare Reform Will Take Away Your Guns
Posted by , Think Progress on November 23, 2009 at 12:30 PM.

On Friday, Gun Owners of America sent out an action alert to its 300,000 members warning that the Senate health care bill "would mandate that doctors provide 'gun-related health data' to 'a government database,' including information on mental-health issues detected in patients, which could jeopardize their ability to obtain a firearms license." The alert also warned its membership that the "wellness and prevention" provisions in the health care bill would allow the Obama administration to issue a "no guns" decree:

Finally, as we have mentioned several times in the past, the mandates in the legislation will most likely dump your gun-related health data into a government database that was created in section 13001 of the stimulus bill. This includes any firearms-related information your doctor has gleaned ... or any determination of PTSD, or something similar, that can preclude you from owning firearms.

And, the special "wellness and prevention" programs (inserted by Section 1001 of the bill as part of a new Section 2717 in the Public Health Services Act) would allow the government to offer lower premiums to employers who bribe their employees to live healthier lifestyles -- and nothing within the bill would prohibit rabidly anti-gun HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from decreeing that "no guns" is somehow healthier.

The so-called "gun-related health data" is actually anonymous statistical information to help researchers develop health programs and initiatives that serve specific population groups or further the study of various conditions and medical needs. Section 2705 of the Senate health bill permits employers to vary insurance premiums by as much as 30 percent for employee participation in certain health promotion and disease prevention programs, but stipulates that the employer wellness program must be "based on an individual satisfying a standard that is related to a health status factor.” Gun ownership does not fall into this category.

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Is a Desperate Desire For Leadership Behind the Droves Of Americans Waiting to Meet Sarah Palin?
Posted by Gary Younge, Comment Is Free on November 23, 2009 at 11:30 AM.

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Obama Is Playing Politics With Gitmo
Posted by Nick Baumann, Mother Jones Online on November 23, 2009 at 10:30 AM.

Liberals have not done enough public wrestling with Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf's Time article on the ouster of White House counsel Gregory Craig. Perhaps that's because they don't want to deal with the article's troubling implications. As Kevin explains, Craig was "the White House lawyer tasked with dismantling Bush-era interrogation and detention policies. At first, Obama was on board with Craig's plans.  Then, reality set in."

By "reality," Kevin presumably means "political reality." Time says that as soon as Obama's positions on Bush era torture -- releasing the torture photos, for example -- became politically difficult, the president jettisoned them. He did this despite the fact that he had been "prepared to accept -- and had even okayed" those same positions "just weeks earlier":

First to go was the release of the pictures of detainee abuse. Days later, Obama sided against Craig again, ending the suspension of Bush's extrajudicial military commissions. The following week, Obama pre-empted an ongoing debate among his national-security team and embraced one of the most controversial of Bush's positions: the holding of detainees without charges or trial, something he had promised during the campaign to reject.

But perhaps the most damning part of the Time piece is this sentence, near the beginning, that summarizes exactly what has happened in Obama's White House:

[Obama] quietly shifted responsibility for the legal framework for counterterrorism from Craig to political advisers overseen by Emanuel, who was more inclined to strike a balance between left and right.

Take a minute to think about how the left would respond to this if Obama was a Republican president. Obama delegated the responsibility for determining what to do about detainees to his political advisers. If George W. Bush had charged his political advisers, including Karl Rove, with crafting such policy, the entire blogosphere would have melted down from outrage overload.

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Word "Canadian" So "Reviled in Some Places" that Visiting Canucks Say They're Americans
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 23, 2009 at 9:30 AM.

I'll confess that I own a backpack with a prominent Canadian maple leaf that I've lugged around Europe once or twice since the invasion of Iraq. Not as some kind of self-conscious act of political protest, mind you,  just to avoid the kind of casual sneers that were fairly common for U.S. travelers during the Bush years.

Perhaps that's why this story, from The Toronto Star, jumped out at me:

Canadian mining companies are facing allegations of abuse and assault on local citizens in dozens of developing nations.

[...]

The word "Canada" is so reviled in some places that traveling Canadians mask their citizenship by wearing American flags on their caps and backpacks.

Who'd have thunk it?

The allegations are severe: From Ecuador comes a lawsuit, filed in Ontario, alleging that in 2006 a Canadian company's armed security forces attacked unarmed locals with pepper spray first, then fired guns to dampen protest near a proposed mining site.

In El Salvador, allegations of violent attacks against anti-mining activists. In Mexico, allegations of human rights and environmental abuse that led a Mexican court to close a Canadian-owned mine.

[...]

The allegations of human rights abuses come from at least 30 of the world's poorest countries and have named companies of all sizes, from giant corporations to junior mining companies.

Thanks to reader Larry C. for flagging the article,which features some truly beautiful corporate propaganda.

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Credit Card Companies Are Using Dirty Tricks to Force Us to Pay Late Fees: Why Won't Congress Do Something?
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on November 23, 2009 at 8:30 AM.

I honestly believe that this is the kind of thing that affects people every day and is leading to a populist backlash. People not only blame those who do these things, they blame those who have the authority and power for failing to step in and stop it:

Three years ago, the Haggler's credit card bill seemed to stop showing up in the mail. Another month went by -- no bill. The month after that, still nothing. Each month, the Haggler would call the issuer, Bank of America, and pay over the phone, then ask the same question: "Why did you stop sending me a bill?"

We're still sending you a bill, came the company's reply each time.

Guess what? The company was right. It just was sending the bill in a restyled envelope, with no trace of "Bank of America." In other words, it looked like junk mail, and the Haggler kept throwing it away.

Now, the Hagglers can't prove it, but this seemed like a brilliant, low-cost way to pocket a fortune in late fees.

"We are not trying to fool people, and we don't change our envelopes on a regular basis," said Anne Pace, a company spokeswoman. She explained that the change in envelope design was prompted by the 2006 acquisition of several credit card companies, after which the envelopes of all customers were left blank "for the sake of consistency."

Consistency? It would be consistent, as far as B. of A. customers are concerned, to leave the envelope unchanged, no?

Seriously, the person who dreamed up the envelope switcheroo must wake up laughing. Ever since, the Haggler has held a grudging, vaguely appalled respect for credit card companies.

The same thing happened to me. The plain brown envelope looked like it was one of those car dealership "checks" that were all the rage before the credit crisis hit. And because I didn't realize the first month that I hadn't gotten my bill, it created a black mark on my credit for a late payment which resulted in a cascade of raised rates on several cards.

It was clearly a sneaky trick. Yes, it's my responsibility to know when my bills are due, but I had been in the habit of putting the bill into the "to pay" file and paying it on the following Monday. It didn't occur to me that the bill would suddenly come in an envelope with no return address or label on it that didn't look like a bill and so I tossed it into a junk pile and didn't look at it right away.

And that's what people are dealing with all the time as consumers, with their health insurance, their credit cards, their mortgages, their pensions -- overwhelming complexity designed to trip them up and cost them money or deny them benefits to which they believed in good faith they were entitled. And its all perfectly legal -- or at least there's no visible accountability for it.

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How Congress May Keep Bloggers Out of Jail
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on November 23, 2009 at 7:30 AM.

It's hard out here for a blogger.

And hard for online journalists, unemployed new media producers, and just about anyone else dabbling in journalism without professional backing.

Beyond the basic financial challenges, there is scant legal help for members of the new media, even though they face the same complex, pricey legal threats as traditional media. Plus extra threats -- like government attempts to out anonymous bloggers, which can cost a lot to fight in court.

On Thursday, however, it just got a little easier out here for a blogger. (h/t Jon Stewart.) The smart folks at Harvard's Citizen Media Law Project are launching a program of free legal services for online and citizen media. And I'm taking the liberty of substituting the word "free" for pro bono in their announcement -- us lawyers have trouble kicking the Latin:

We are [launching the] Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new [free] initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide qualifying online publishers with [free] and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.

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Is Taxing Plastic Surgery Sexist?
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on November 23, 2009 at 6:30 AM.

Part of the funding for the Senate's health care bill will come from a 5% tax on cosmetic surgery. The tax would generate $5 billion over ten years, and would only tax procedures where surgery "is not necessary to ameliorate a deformity arising from, or directly related to, a congenital abnormality, a personal injury resulting from an accident or trauma, or disfiguring disease."

It sounds fine and good on its face to tax unnecessary procedures -- especially those that are primarily accessed by the upper middle class. I couldn't find statistics on the average income of people who get cosmetic surgery, and certainly there are low and lower-middle income people who seek out cosmetic procedures, but by definition it seems like plastic surgery would be accessed most often by upper-middle and upper-class people (it is at least accessed disproportionately by white people). But 91 percent of cosmetic procedures are performed on women. While they're generally cast as simple vanity procedures, the fact is that women are under extreme pressure to maintain a particular physical appearance -- to look young, thin and attractive. Men certainly don't escape that pressure either, but women face it to a much higher degree. It seems a little unfair that women are inundated with messages that we need to constantly improve our physical appearance, and then taxed when we take steps to do just that. As Lindsay Beyerstein said on a feminist listserve I’m on, “It’s one of those classic sexist double binds: Society tells you that you have to look perfect and then sticks you with a ’sin’ tax when you do what’s expected of you. Boob jobs would titillate men AND subsidize their health care.”

On the other hand, I don't have much of a problem taxing luxury goods, so why not also tax luxury surgeries? And I know a lot of Feministe readers disagree with me on this one, but I’m also a proponent of taxing things like soda and cigarettes, which offer zero benefits but many health costs.

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Lieberman's Latest B.S. Excuse for Opposing Health Reform
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 23, 2009 at 5:31 AM.

That Joe Lieberman would rather kill health care reform than let some consumer choose between competing public and private plans isn't exactly new. I continue to find it fascinating, though, to see his evolving explanations.

In June, Lieberman said, "I don't favor a public option because I think there's plenty of competition in the private insurance market." That didn't make sense, and it was quickly dropped from his talking points.

In July, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because "the public is going to end up paying for it." No one could figure out exactly what that meant, and the senator moved onto other arguments.

In August, he said we'd have to wait "until the economy's out of recession," which is incoherent, since a public option, even if passed this year, still wouldn't kick in for quite a while.

In September, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because "the public doesn't support it." A wide variety of credible polling proved otherwise.

In October, Lieberman said the public option would mean "trouble ... for the national debt," by creating "a whole new government entitlement program." Soon after, Jon Chait explained that this "literally makes no sense whatsoever."

Well, it's November. And guess what? We're onto the sixth rationale in six months. I actually like the new one.

"This is a radical departure from the way we've responded to the market in America in the past," Lieberman said Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." "We rely first on competition in our market economy. When the competition fails then what do we do? We regulate or we litigate.... We have never before said, in a given business, we don't trust the companies in it, so we're going to have the government go into that business.."

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Glenn Beck Has a 'Plan' to Sell Books With March On Washington on the Anniversary of MLK Speech
Posted by Matt Corley, Think Progress on November 23, 2009 at 4:21 AM.

Yesterday, while promoting his latest book at “a festive campaign-style rally” in The Villages in Florida, Fox News host Glenn Beck announced that he was crafting “a 100 year plan” that will be “radical” and will “restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting.” In his speech, which Media Matters captured on video, Beck told his followers, “we need to start thinking like the Chinese“:

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Hard-liners Peddle Zombie Lies About Immigrants and Crime
Posted by Walter Ewing, Immigration Impact on November 22, 2009 at 6:26 AM.

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue, attempts to overturn a century’s worth of research which has demonstrated repeatedly that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to commit violent crimes or end up behind bars. The CIS report focuses much of its attention on questioning the accuracy of the 2000 Census data used in two particular studies, one from the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) and another from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)—both of which dispel the myth of immigrant criminality. However, CIS ignores not only the many other sources of data in these two studies, but also the myriad studies from other researchers which have reached the same conclusion.

The real agenda behind the CIS report seems to be the promotion of the 287(g) and Secure Communities programs, in which local law-enforcement agencies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collaborate for the ostensible purpose of identifying and capturing “criminal aliens.” However, both programs actually end up snaring many individuals who are neither criminals nor immigrants. CIS relies heavily on data generated by these programs, even though this data is of dubious quality and is not representative of the United States as a whole. For instance, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified in March 2009 that the 287(g) program is poorly managed and yields inconsistent data. Secure Communities is an even smaller program with a similarly questionable data and reporting system.

Putting aside the technical and highly debatable claims CIS makes about the accuracy of 2000 Census data, the fact remains that the evidence demonstrating relatively low rates of criminality and incarceration among immigrants comes from far more sources than just the decennial census. It also comes from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA) survey, the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), and in-depth community-based studies in cities such as El Paso, Chicago, San Diego, and Miami.

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Senate Votes to Move Forward on Health-Care Bill: McCain Accuses Reid of Criminal Scheme
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 21, 2009 at 4:50 PM.

Health-care reform legislation cleared a significant hurdle in the Senate on Saturday evening, as Democrats defeated a Republican-led effort to prevent the Patient Protection and Affordability Act, unveiled this week by Majority Leader Harry Reid, from moving to the Senate floor for debate. The vote split along party lines, 60-39. (The bill will almost certainly face a similar procedural fight after debate has concluded before a final vote is taken.)

As it became apparent that Democrats would be able to move the bill forward, Republicans used the debate over the procedure as a forum for tantrums and fear-mongering over details of the bill itself.

Most hysterical was Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who referred to the bill’s accounting -- signed off on by a very conservative Congressional Budget Office -- as a criminal Ponzi scheme.

“I think Bernie Madoff went to jail for this kind of behavior,” McCain said. Was he suggesting that CBO Douglas Elmendorf should be sent to the slammer? Or Harry Reid.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who, earlier this week, promised a “holy war” over the bill, today embarked on his jihad, which sounded a lot like the talking points advanced at Tea Party rallies by the astroturfing groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.

“I hope they’re not trying to take us to socialism,” Hatch said.

Debate began yesterday under a cloud of uncertainty regarding whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would be able to rally every single member of the Democratic caucus to yield the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster. Then, mid-day today, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, the last hold-out in the caucus, announced that she would vote to allow the bill to move forward.

Lincoln, who is up for re-election in 2010, has been targeted by progressive organizations for home-state pressure. Progressive groups, such as FDL Action, have run ads in Arkansas prodding Lincoln, a very conservative Democrat, to vote for health-care reform, and FDL Action's Jane Hamsher dangled the prospect of a primary challenge at Lincoln should she prove to be an obstacle to health-care reform.

While announcing, from the Senate floor, her willingness to vote for the procedural motion known as cloture -- the mechanism by which a filibuster is broken -- Lincoln complained of the pressure under which she finds herself. (C-SPAN has the video here.)

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ACORN: Another Super Villain with Super Powers
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on November 21, 2009 at 3:22 PM.

We all know that right-wingers think Guantanamo terrorists are terrifying supervillains who'll put every American's life in danger if they're allowed to set foot on U.S. soil, even manacled and under extraordinarily heavy security. As it turns out, they're not the only people to whom right-wing bedwetters ascribe superhuman powers:

The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election -- instead, ACORN stole it.

... The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?"

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Tiny Michigan Town Tells Liz Cheney to Take her Fearmongering Elsewhere
Posted by BarbinMD, Daily Kos on November 21, 2009 at 11:10 AM.

Standish, Michigan, tells Liz Cheney to sell it up the street:

Officials in a small Michigan town featured in a new video about Guantanamo by Liz Cheney’s national security group want her to know that they’re not falling for her “fearmongering” — and tell us they want Gitmo detainees in their town.

Cheney’s group, Keep America Safe, has released a short documentary starring several residents of little Standish, Michigan, slamming the Obama administration over a proposal to transfer some Guantanamo detainees to the town’s maximum security facility, one of several facilities being discussed.  [...]

Cheney is “certainly not representing the views of our community,” the City Manager, Michael Moran, told our reporter, Amanda Erickson.

While some local residents do appear to have expressed mixed feelings or opposition to the plan, Moran says that they’re an isolated minority that Ms. Cheney’s video elevates out of proportion in a way that’s “off base.”

The teabagger way -- pretend that the voice of extremism is speaking for everyone.

What Sarah Palin's "Jewish people will be flocking to Israel" prediction really means
Posted by Bruce Wilson, AlterNet on November 21, 2009 at 7:24 AM.

There's some acceptance that statements such as Sarah Palin's prediction that Jews will soon be "flocking to Israel" may indicate Palin holds apocalyptic beliefs. What's not understood is that she's closely associated with a religious tendency whose leaders promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, including one most commonly used by the Third Reich, in the 1930's and 1940's, to whip up anti-Semitic hatreds: the claim that a worldwide cabal of Jewish bankers manipulates the world economy and preys on working classes.

Stumping for her new autobiography, Sarah Palin has made a round of interviews with high profile media figures such as Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. In the Walters interview Palin justified her support for expansion of Jewish settler enclaves on Israel's West Bank with a strange prediction. Walters asked, "Now let's talk about some issues - the Middle East. The Obama Administration does not want Israel to build any more settlements on what they consider Palestinian territory. What is your view on this ?" Palin responded, "I disagree with the Obama Administration on that. I believe that, um, the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead."

Why might Palin's prediction come to pass ?

In the 1920's and 1930's, rising anti-Semitism was propelled, in part, by conspiracy theories alleging that Jewish bankers such as the Rothschild banking family controlled both the German and world economies through the manipulation of global money markets. Leaders in Sarah Palin's religious tendency have for years been promoting extremely similar conspiracy theories. Some of these allege that the Rothschild banking family heads an international conspiracy that dominates much of the world economy and controls the U.S.economy through the Federal Reserve.

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Considering a Faux Turkey for the Holidays? Better Read This First
Posted by Tara Lohan on November 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM.

Thank Lou Bendrick for doing the dirty work for you. Bendrick enlisted a team of taste testers to try out four different faux turkeys. The hilarious write up was featured in Grist. The rationale behind it: "Any moral high ground gained by having a plant-based Thanksgiving may become absolutely meaningless if you screw up a happy, festive experience with a protein centerpiece that looks gross, or worse yet, has a flavor capable of sending guests, carnivorous and non, in search of a Butterball."

I've never quite recovered from my first and only Tofurky experience about 8 years ago and I even like a lot of veggie meat. Here's what the tasters (and some of them are kids, if that explains any of the comments) had to say about the Tofurky:

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Tea-Parties so Diverse, They Had to Use the Same Black Guy in 5 Different Scenes of Tea-Bagger Movie
Posted by Oliver Willis, Oliver Willis.com on November 20, 2009 at 5:26 PM.

So there’s this ludicrous trailer for a ridiculous movie about the Tea Party people that came out today, and when I watched it I noticed that it kept showing the same black guy. Now, I knew the Teabaggers weren’t the most diverse crowd, but it’s kind of hilarious that they used the same dude in five shots in their trailer.

00:42

00:59

1:03

1:09

1:14

We Can Fix a Broken Immigration System... Here's How
Posted by Rachel LaBruyere, Standing Firm on November 20, 2009 at 5:00 PM.

On Wednesday night, 60,000 people joined what was an incredible call to action on overhauling our nation’s broken immigration laws.

Today, we’re releasing a new video that features Congressman Luis Gutierrez unveiling his principles for reform in October, and which calls on all of us to help build the movement for real immigration reform:

We all know our immigration system needs fixing.

Immigration has been used as a wedge to obstruct progress on everything from the Stimulus to health care reform— even the 2010 Census. There are many skeptics out there who believe Congress doesn’t have what it takes to pass reform in 2010 – or that even if they have what it takes, they don’t have the nerve to do it.

But just last week, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano reinforced the administration’s commitment to reform, laying out the details for why this push is different, and why we need to get it done.

What’s more, the national movement for real immigration reform is growing—and we are only getting bigger.

On Wednesday night, there were over 1,000 house parties in 45 states, with supporters gathered together anxiously to hear what they could do to help make reform a reality. All across the country, people are primed and ready to do whatever it takes to win this battle, and if you are not one of those people, now is the time to join the fight.

Watch our new video, sign up for the text message network, and help spread the word today.

In 2007, opponents of immigration reform took credit for stopping legislation in its tracks, overwhelming Congressional offices with a flood of angry phone calls and faxes. They took control of the debate and scared the pants off of vulnerable members of Congress.

This time around will be different, but it will take all of us to make real immigration reform a reality.

Americans Lack Economic Literacy; Some Hold "Insane" Views on Stimulus Spending
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 20, 2009 at 3:37 PM.

OK, so most Americans have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the deficit. How are they when it comes to understanding stimulus efforts? Arguably, on this, they're even worse.

Rasmussen has a new poll showing a 51% majority believes canceling the economic recovery efforts would "create more jobs." Derek Thompson, flabbergasted, characterized these beliefs as "insane."

It's one thing to say that canceling the rest of the stimulus money would help our deficit. That's arguable, even if I think it's dead wrong, since the best way to help our deficit is to put people back to work when demand is nonexistent so that they (1) receive taxable income and (2) spend that taxable income on products to help other people's taxable income. [...]

The idea that canceling the stimulus would create more jobs implies that passing the stimulus has actually killed more jobs than it's created, which is bonkers. Let's say you don't want to consider infrastructure spending or green technology spending or a single job that might have been created in the private sector. If nothing else, the tens of billions we've sent to state budgets have, without question, saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, like teachers, that are supported by state taxes. It's just a very basic fact.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/us/31stimulus.html

So this is a crazy statistic, but I think it's important to ask why Americans think the stimulus is actually hurting job-creation.

It's a good question, and your guess is as good as mine. Chances are, it's not just one thing. Part of the confusion is likely the result of an electorate that doesn't quite understand the basics, and is therefore easily misled by the same people who got us in this mess. Part of it comes from a media that hasn't made much of an effort to explain the basics. And part of the problem has to be politicians -- one party believes Hoover was right about the Great Depression, and the other party is afraid to talk about how government spending and intervention prevented a wholesale economic collapse.

Regardless of the cause, the consequences of widespread confusion and ignorance can be, and may turn out to be, devastating. If most Americans believe government spending undermines job creation, and are convinced that short-term deficit reduction is more important than economic growth, they're more likely to vote for arsonists to put out the fire.

The surest way to make things even worse is to reward those who created the problem in the first place.

Utah Lawmaker: I Don't Mind "the Gays," but "I Don’t Want ‘Em Stuffing it Down My Throat all the Time"
Posted by Zaid Jilani, Think Progress on November 20, 2009 at 2:32 PM.

Earlier this month, the Church of Latter Day Saints made headlines when it threw its support behind a measure in Salt Lake City that barred “landlords and employers from discriminating based on sexuality,” making it the first city in Utah to adopt the gay rights measure. Now, the Mormon Church is backing a similar statewide bill, enlisting the help of a variety of lawmakers to help get it passed. One such lawmaker is Sen. Chris Buttars (R), who, despite his adamant support for an earlier proposition that banned same-sex marriage, does believe that sexual orientation deserves protection from employer and landlord abuse. However, while explaining his opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, he told the press that while he doesn’t “mind” gays, he doesn’t want them “stuffing it down [his] throat all the time“:

BUTTARS: I meet with the gays here and there. They were in my house two weeks ago. I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time. Certainly not in my kid’s face.

Watch it:

In the past, Buttars has said that gay men and women are “the greatest threat to America going down.” “I believe they will destroy the foundation of the American society,” he said in February. “In my mind, it’s the beginning of the end. … Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide.” Last year, the NAACP called for his resignation because of his comments about a controversial bill: “This baby is black, I’ll tell you,” said Buttars. “This is a dark and ugly thing.”

Krauthammer Commits Terrorist Act on the Opinion Pages of the Washington Post
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 20, 2009 at 1:41 PM.

Perhaps we should be concerned about Charles Krauthammer. He's been awfully stressed-out since the last election, and this week's decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York has him in a bit of a state ...

For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the "propaganda of the deed." And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 -- not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life -- and KSM, a second act: "9/11, The Director's Cut," narration by KSM.

Smell a bit of jealousy here? Krauthammer and Mohammed share a similar interest: instilling a profound dread of Islamic fundamentalism in the hearts of the American public -- the world public. Krauthammer's owned 9/11 for 8 years, and he'll have the final cut, not the damn director!

September 11, 2001 had to speak for itself ...

Right, the Bush bunch and all those right-wing bloggers never spoke on that day's behalf.

A decade later, the deed will be given voice. KSM has gratuitously been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable -- a civilian trial in the media capital of the world -- from which to proclaim the glory of jihad and the criminality of infidel America.

We've seen terror trials. Judges have been pretty about not allowing the defendants to use them as a megaphone to promote their worldviews.

But setting aside reality for a moment -- and you have to in order to really soak in a good Krauthammer column -- I'm going to ask you to forget about politics and consider just what in the world might KSM say at that trial that has right-wingers cowering under their beds? Do you think he could -- gasp! -- accuse the U.S. of being craven imperialists? Of supporting Israeli "genocide" against the Palestinians? Might he dare suggest that we're waging a war on Islam? That we're trying to impose our decadent values on the rest of the world? My God, do you think he could accuse us of having some sort of interest in Middle East oil?!?

If KSM were permitted to utter these shocking allegations, would they come as a surprise to anyone? Is the danger here that nobody in the Muslim world has ever heard of such outlandish ideas before? Will ordinary Muslim men and women, hearing Mohammed's suggestion that America might be the Great Satan for the first time on some Al Jazeera broadcast suddenly drop whatever they're doing and strike out against the infidels?

I mean, seriously? If you're not already predisposed to al Qaeda's message (which one assumes is widely available), would you really give what Mohammed says during testimony a lot of credence (again, in the unlikely case they let him ramble)? Is he that articulate? Are we trying the scruffy dude who says he chopped off Daniel Pearl's head or Noam Chomsky here?

Whatever the risk, for Krauthammer it's just not worth it...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Will the Tea-Baggers Come After McCain? Will Palin Ride to His Rescue?!?
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on November 20, 2009 at 12:08 PM.

I don't put much stock in the wingnut-skewed Rasmussen polls, but there's one out now that says John McCain might be at risk of a teabag purge -- according to the poll, McCain is barely ahead of talk-radio host and ex-congressman J.D. Hayworth, 45%-43%, in a potential primary matchup. (Hayworth isn't a declared candidate.)

In response to this, Bill Kristol writes:

Still, who could help McCain beat back a populist conservative challenger? Sarah Palin. I predict that Palin will come to Arizona next summer to campaign for McCain, will make an impassioned case for him, and will help him win. She will thereby repay McCain for his confidence in picking her last year, help keep McCain as a crucial voice in the Senate for a strong foreign policy, and get credit for being a different kind of populist conservative -- a Reaganite, not a Buchananite, populist -- than the immigration-obsessed, voter-alienating (he was ousted in 2006 in a Republican district) Hayworth.

Really? And risk damaging Brand Palin, which stands for the rescue of America from both Marxist Kenyan fascism and the RINOism of which all teabaggers believe John McCain to be the living embodiment?

Nahhh -- there's no way she's going to endorse someone against a candidate who is (or might be) identified with the teabag Cause. And as we can tell from her memoir, she's certainly not going to do anything for McCain out of gratitude for his decision to make her a star. So no, Bill -- you're wrong again.

Video: Progressive Change Campaign Committee Robocalls For the Public Option
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on November 20, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Last month, as Majority Leader Harry Reid considered whether to include a public health-insurance plan in the bill he would put before the Senate, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee ran as him hard, pressuring the leader with television ads in his home state of Nevada, where Reid is expected to face a difficult re-election campaign for his Senate seat.

Now, having won that battle -- Reid indeed included a public option in the Senate bill -- PCCC is marshaling support for Reid as he shepherds the bill though the legislative process, making robocalls recorded by Lee Slaughter, the Nevada nurse who appeared in the ad that was used to pressure Reid. People receiving the call are given a keypad option that allows them to sign up for PCCC's public option campaign. (The online sign-up page is here.)

Below find a video that features Slaughter's robocall as its audio.

VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

More Republicans Think Obama Stole an Election than Democrats Believe Bush Did
Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left on November 20, 2009 at 9:53 AM.

A new survey from PPP (PDF) shows that 26% of Americans, most of whom are Republicans, think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama.

For the sake of comparison, a Gallup poll immediately following Gore's concession in the 2000 election showed that 18% of the county, a significant percentage of whom were African-American, believed that Bush stole the election.

In 2004, the numbers for Bush were even lower.  Back then, in the wake of Kerry's concession, a Gallup poll showed only 13% of the country believed that Bush stole the election.  (FWIW, I was among the 5% or so that shifted from 2000 to 2004.)

This is simultaneously a demonstration that hard-core conservatives live in an entirely different reality than the rest of the country, and that the hardcore conservative base is as much as twice as large as the hardcore progressive base. 

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Out-of-Control Rick Perry Overrides Rare Clemency Vote, Executes Man Who Killed No One
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on November 20, 2009 at 8:37 AM.

This post originally appeared in PEEK.

Rick Perry is out of control.

Even as the controversy over his execution of an innocent man goes unresolved, last night the Texas Governor rejected a rare clemency recommendation from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles for a man facing execution for a murder he did not commit.

Robert Lee Thompson was an accomplice in a violent convenience store robbery in Houston in 1996, when his co-conspirator fatally shot the sales clerk, a man named Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed. Thompson himself fired shots that wounded Mohammed, but it was his partner, Sammy Butler, who pulled the trigger that would leave him dead. Butler was tried and sentenced to life. A different jury found Thompson guilty and sentenced him to death.

Thompson was sentenced under Texas's Law of Parties, a cynical legal statute that allows multiple parties to be found guilty of the same crime, even if they did not directly participate in it. Similar to other felony murder statutes, Texas's law states that "if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it."

Under the Law of Parties, defendants can be held responsible for "failing to anticipate" that the "conspiracy" would lead to a murder.

Numerous defendants who did not kill anyone have been executed under the Law of Parties; that Perry wouldn't hesitate to sign off on Thompson's execution should comes as no surprise. But yesterday Thompson was granted a recommendation for clemency by the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles -- an extremely rare move. The Board, whose members are political appointments, has only recommended clemency two other times in recent memory.

One of these was two years ago in the case of Kenneth Foster, Jr., who also faced execution under the Law of Parties. In his case, the murder took place while he was in a car, 18 feet away. A grassroots campaign rose up to stop Foster's execution and in August 2007, Perry took the Board's recommendation and spared his life.

Yesterday, the Board voted 5 to 2 to spare Robert Lee Thompson, a "highly unusual" move in the words of the Houston Chronicle, and one described by Thompson's lawyer, as "hugely significant."

"I'm thrilled," he said, upon hearing news of the Board vote.

But in Texas, the Governor has the final say in clemency decisions. Despite the rare recommendation, Perry, who faces a close primary election next year against Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, was unmoved. Hours after the Board's vote, he released a statement saying that he saw "no reason" to spare Thompson's life.

Thompson was executed on schedule, at 6pm Texas time. According to AP reporter Michael Graczyk, "his mother cried uncontrollably, stomped her feet and finally demanded to be taken from the witness area before her son was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m."

Statements were released by the Texas Moratorium Network on behalf of family members of death row prisoners also sentenced under the Law of Parties, including one from Terri Been, whose brother, Jeff Wood, came close to being executed in August 2008 for a murder he did not commit.

"I must say that I was surprised to hear that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles grew a conscious and voted in favor of clemency for Robert Thompson, since they unanimously voted for the execution of my brother, Jeff Wood, who was also convicted under the law of parties despite the fact that he is factually innocent of murder," said Been. "However, I was not surprised to hear Perry didn't jump on board the clemency train as the man has no sense of true justice."  

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Mom Lets Cops Taze 10 Year-Old Daughter Who Refused to Take a Shower
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on November 20, 2009 at 7:50 AM.

This story should put the annoying "bad mommy" confessional genre out of its misery. Nothing can top this. Bad mommies have officially jumped the shark:

An Arkansas mom allegedly allowed a police office to taze (link fixed) her 10-year-old daughter because the girl was having a tantrum. The girl will face disorderly conduct charges. The head of the Arkansas State Police says he isn't sure if the officer made a mistake when he shocked an unarmed child who wouldn't take a shower.

Any Afghan 'Surge' Is a Snare and a Delusion
Posted by Meteor Blades, Daily Kos on November 20, 2009 at 5:00 AM.

Given the record of Goldman Sachs (as detailed in McClatchy's five-part series), AIG, Halliburton and other supposedly upright U.S. corporations, it's a tad arrogant to complain about the corruption of other countries. Endemic or not, the wink-wink, nod-nod deals of much of the Third World amount to peanuts when compared with the rip-offs visited on taxpayers, investors and consumers here at home. So, while the U.S. ranks 19th on the Transparency Index's corruption scale, and Afghanistan ranks 179th, one step off the bottom, there's a little more to the picture than can be addressed by such metrics.

Be that as it may, corruption is viewed as one of the key obstacles in dealing with the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. That corruption, as the "leaked cables" sent to the White House by U.S. Ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry pointed out, may make the sending of more troops foolish if President Karzai, newly sworn in after a tainted election, cannot be made to root it out. As Tom Engelhardt explains, however, rooting it out is like asking Karzai either to commit suicide or "drink the sea":

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

New Right-Wing Craze Prays That Obama's 'Days Be Few'
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on November 20, 2009 at 4:00 AM.

The newest far-right craze is an anti-Obama slogan that is making its way onto t-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, and even teddy bears: “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8,” which reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” The meme is also taking off on Twitter, with conservatives calling it “hilarious.” Commentators have noted that it’s unclear whether the intent is to hope for an end to Obama’s time in office — or an end to his life. But a look at the lines in the rest of the psalm hint at the latter:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

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Health Care: Reid Promises Bill With or Without Republicans, Harkin Talks to AlterNet, Schumer Lays an Egg
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 19, 2009 at 5:21 PM.

Standing before an audience of union members, former Obama campaign volunteers and media in a cramped room in the Capitol Visitors Center, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke in historical terms of the health-care bill he melded out of the bills crafted by two Senate committees. Reading from a letter to Congress written by President Harry Truman 64 years ago to the day, Reid called upon the Senate to get behind his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

"He knew that the health of the American people is linked to the health of the American economy," Reid said of Truman. He then noted that a person who was one year old at the time Truman penned the letter would, this very day, become eligible for Medicare. (C-SPAN has video here.)

Reid stood surrounded by Democratic senators from the Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, as well as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., his assistant majority leader. In their triumphant mood, each of the Democrats seemed to assume their individual personae quite fully.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., invoked the spirit of the late Ted Kennedy, whose reins of the HELP Committee Dodd took while crafting the bill during the last days of Kennedy's illness. The affably pugilistic Durbin played true to form, noting that the largest criticism he heard from the Republican side was that the bill was 2,000 pages long.

"I might remind the Republican side of the aisle that when it comes to the size of legislation, it was that bank-bailout bill that the last president proposed that was only three pages long," Durbin said. "Now, there's a work of wisdom."

Durbin also projected a raft of legal challenges from insurance companies after the bill is passed. "[Y]ou better make sure you have a lot of pages there to cover the law suits they're going to file to try to stop us," he said.

Chuck Schumer of New York, standing in for Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (who was in his home state of Montana tending to his sick mother), exceeded expectations of persona-fulfillment with a very bad joke about breakfast foods. Referring to "that impresario, that great chef, Harry Reid," Schumer said, "I have this tie on here: it has eggs and cheese and pork. So, it's a great omelet. Harry made a great omelet. You sometimes have to break a few eggs to make a great omelet, but he did...We have great cheese from the Finance Committee and great pork from the HELP Committee. I couldn't say we had great pork from the Finance Committee or I'd be in trouble."

At one point during Schumer's McMuffin speech, Dodd leaned over to whisper in Harry Reid's ear. Would that we could know what he said.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

How to Achieve Real, Populist Reform
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on November 19, 2009 at 5:00 PM.

This is a must read profile of Dr Elizabeth Warren, a genuine great American populist reformer (who happens to teach at Harvard -- I know, shocking.)

In Elizabeth Warren’s world, credit card contracts would be so simple a teenager could read and understand them in four minutes. Loans would be as easy to compare as toasters, and online credit scores would be free.

“We need a new model: If you can’t explain it, you can’t sell it,” said Warren, 60, a Harvard University law professor who is head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in an interview.

The 1966 high school debate champion of Oklahoma may get what she wants. The House of Representatives will vote in December on her idea. She suggested a Financial Product Safety Commission in a 2007 article in the magazine Democracy. President Barack Obama proposed it to Congress in June as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

I urge you to read the whole thing. Her mind is so lively and so finely tuned to the real economic environment that I wish I could lock every Democrat in Washington in a room with her for as long as it takes to get them to hear what she is saying and learn how to think along these lines. She's one of the very few who articulates the kind of reform populism that makes sense to average citizens and which might keep the know-nothing Palinite freakshow from looking good to increasingly desperate, working people in this country.

Update: Here's some neat post partisan populism: The Ron Paul, Alan Grayson bill to audit the fed just passed through the committee. Baby steps, folks.

The Best Paragraph Written About Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue"
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 19, 2009 at 4:48 PM.

I'm giving the nod to va, at Whiskey Fire:

The most unbelievable thing about Going Rogue, by the author-function "Sarah Palin," is that it's supposed to be self-serving. The problem a self-serving narrative about Sarah Palin confronts is that it's about Sarah Palin, whose entire life, it appears, consists of worse and worse attempts to create self-serving narratives explaining away bigger and bigger fuck-ups. Going Rogue's burden is that it must claim to be the definitive, encyclopedic explanation, the final excuse, for a long history of failure begat by failure; it's an epic of failure, if you will, and if the goal here is some kind of ultimate vindication, well, it is monumentally unsuccessful. Going Rogue is, at bottom, the story of every one of Sarah Palin's projects ending in grotesque catastrophe; it is only self-serving in the sense that these catastrophes either prove benign or turn out to be some other schlub's fault. If everything I knew about Sarah Palin came from this book (and basically it does), I would say her life has been like a play in which a deus-ex-machina descends at the end of every act to bestow peace and harmony, except the deus forgot to put on pants and everyone's just standing around going "uhhhh..." and then the lights go out and the scene changes.

Paragraphs 2 through 5 offer some fine and fun writing as well, so I urge you to read the whole thing.

Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love the Senate Health Care Bill
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 19, 2009 at 3:33 PM.

BENDING THE PROVERBIAL CURVE.... For some conservatives, including some center-right Democrats, the very point of tackling health care reform is to get health care costs under control. Ezra Klein has a great item today, explaining how the Senate reform bill does just that.

If this piece of the bill was passed on its own, it would be the most important cost control bill ever considered by the United States Congress. But you could never have passed it on its own. You needed the coverage to make the grand bargain work. Republicans like to call this bill a trillion-dollar experiment to expand the health-care system, and in some ways, it is. But it's also a multitrillion-dollar experiment to cut costs in the health-care system, and it deserves credit for that, and support from fiscal conservatives. It's easy to talk about cutting costs, but this is the chance for people to actually do it.

The "grand bargain" is an important concept that often goes overlooked in the debate. For the left, which has been clamoring for health care reform for several generations now, the point of fixing the system is the moral outrage of allowing tens of millions of Americans to go without coverage. The uninsured are one serious illness away from bankruptcy, or one layoff away from family peril, and progressives have long demanded a remedy.

For the right, the principal reason to even entertain the possibility of reform is fiscal -- conservatives are worried about spiraling costs and massive deficits.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Economy Is Going to Get Much Worse
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune on November 19, 2009 at 2:02 PM.

I think the economy is pretty darn awful, but with record profits on Wall Street and all the happy talk about a recovery from the recession (albeit a jobless recovery) it's confusing for many people as to what our economic future really holds. Well, here's relevant statistic that sums it up nicely, one that shows the so-called recovery is mostly a smoke and mirrors vaudeville magician's routine by the same people who either got us into this fine mess in the first place, or enabled the ones who did. Take a peek at this excerpt from Inner Workings David Goldman's blog at Asia Times:

This morning’s news that housing starts “unexpectedly” dropped by 11 percent month on month is consistent with my grim view of the American economy. The crystal-meth monetary policy at the Fed makes everyone feel better, until they don’t. The nonstop rise in the price of dollar hedges tells us that it can’t last forever. Large balance sheets attached to the Fed’s money pump can show profits, and the price of spread assets (as PIMCO’s Bill Gross keeps emphasizing) is stupid rich. But at the capillary level, through, the economy is dying and gangrene is setting in.

Here’s year on year growth in commercial and industrial loans from weekly reporting banks in the US:

[Attached chart shows 20% decline in commercial and industrial loans in the 12 months]

A TWENTY PERCENT decline in commercial and industrial loans? That's not a recovery, it's a fricking catastrophic collapse in the fundamental underpinnings of our economy. It's Wall Street sucking Main Street and Government dry, grabbing all the cash while they can. Not surprisingly they are using that cash pump from the Federal Reserve to drive up commodities prices. What does that tell you? It tells me things are about to get much, much worse, and no one in Washington has a clue what to do. It's, and let's be honest, the worst economic performance since the Great Depression. Jobs that created the foundation of our economic growth in the 20th Century have flat disappeared, as Nouriel Roubini (you know, the economist whose predictions were right all along while the Friedman disciples like Alan Greenspan fiddled as the US economy burned to the ground) makes clear.

While America's official unemployment rate is already 10.2 per cent, the figure jumps to a whopping 17.5 per cent when discouraged workers and partially employed workers are included. And, while data from firms suggest that job losses in the past three months were about 600,000, household surveys, which include self-employed workers and small entrepreneurs, suggest a number above two million.

Moreover, the total effect on labour income – the product of jobs times hours worked times average hourly wages – has been more severe than that implied by the job losses alone, because many firms are cutting their workers' hours, placing them on furlough or lowering their wages as a way to share the pain.

Many of the lost jobs – in construction, finance, and outsourced manufacturing and services – are gone forever, and recent studies suggest that a quarter of U.S. jobs can be fully outsourced over time to other countries. Thus, a growing proportion of the work force – often below the radar screen of official statistics – is losing hope of finding gainful employment, while the unemployment rate (especially for poor, unskilled workers) will remain high for a much longer period of time than in previous recessions. [...]

[T]he credit crunch for non-investment-grade firms and smaller firms, which rely mostly on access to bank loans rather than capital markets, is still severe. Or consider bankruptcies and defaults by households and firms. Larger firms – even those with large debt problems – can refinance their excessive liabilities in or out of court, but an unprecedented number of small businesses are going bankrupt. The same holds for households, with millions of weaker and poorer borrowers defaulting on mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans and other consumer credit.

Consider also what is happening to private consumption and retail sales. Recent monthly figures suggest a rise in retail sales. But, because the official statistics capture mostly sales by larger retailers and exclude the fall by hundreds of thousands of smaller stores and businesses that have failed, consumption looks better than it really is. [...]

Moreover, income and wealth inequality is rising again. Poorer households are at greater risk of unemployment, falling wages or reductions in hours worked, all leading to lower labour income, whereas on Wall Street, outrageous bonuses have returned with a vengeance. With the stock market rising and home prices still falling, the wealthy are becoming richer, while the middle class and the poor – whose main wealth is a house rather than equities – are becoming poorer and being saddled with an unsustainable debt burden.

So, while the United States may technically be close to the end of a severe recession, most of America is facing a near-depression. Little wonder, then, that few Americans believe that what walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is actually the phoenix of recovery.

The Tea Baggers and their talk of a tax revolt and railing against the mythical socialist takeover of America by the Obama administration isn't the problem.

The problem is that we've been scammed by Wall Street financial firms (the megalithic survivors) into juicing their balance sheets while getting less than zero in return for our billions of dollars of bailout expenditures by the Fed and Congress and trillions more for Federal guarantees of Wall Street's toxic junk financial derivatives.

In short, our investment of tax dollars in an essentially opaque, unregulated, subsidized and protected financial sector is proving to be a very, very bad bet for the future of any real economic recovery for the vast majority of Americans who don't work for Goldman Sachs and their ilk. This isn't a rational free market by anyone's definition. It's a con game, one that Obama's economic team has been more than willing to ignore in the interest of helping their friends, even if that means unacceptably high unemployment and lower investment in the real drivers of our economy -- small businesses, workers and manufacturing.

And unless we see a sea change in the economic strategies being pursued by the Obama administration, any talk of a fundamental political realignment in which Democrats benefit from a generational shift in political power is as much a pipe dream as Karl Rove's plan for a one party Republican state. Indeed, if Democrats in the Executive Branch and in Congress continue to ignore the fundamental changes in economic policy necessary to reverse our present course, the likelihood of something far sinister, a fascist or neo-fascist movement or a coup by a right wing military junta is not out of the question. Because when democratic civil governments becomes unable or unwilling to address fundamental issues of economic security they can lose their legitimacy literally overnight.

Just look at the history of the Weimar Republic, or Italy after WWI, if you want an object lesson in democratic governments that failed because their political leaders, operating within a weak, corrupted and gridlocked systems, were more concerned about their political careers and futures than addressing the critical economic issues that had spread misery and despair among millions of their constituents.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Rep. Virginia Foxx Credits GOP for Civil Rights Legislation
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 19, 2009 at 1:00 PM.

FOXX'S NOTION OF 'REVISIONIST HISTORY'.... On the House floor today, Rep. Virginia Foxx, a right-wing Republican from North Carolina, boasted of her party's alleged progressive history on civil rights.

"Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the '60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle," said Fox. "They love to engage in revisionist history."

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), stunned, tried to set Foxx straight, pointing to the role of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations of the 1960s. "John Lewis, a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed," Cardoza reminded Foxx. "Tell John Lewis that he wasn't part of getting that legislation passed."

Matt Corley added, "To support the claim that Republicans were actually the architects of civil rights, conservatives often point out that a 'higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill.' But this ignores the 'distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians' on the issue."

This comes up from time to time, and since some confused people like Virginia Foxx have trouble remembering the details, it's worth the occasional refresher.

The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to competing constituencies -- southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and white progressives and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled, ultimately siding with an inclusive, liberal agenda.

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Fox Issues On-Air Apology for Misleading Footage of Palin Crowds
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on November 19, 2009 at 12:00 PM.

Following ThinkProgress’ report yesterday that Fox News had recycled old file footage of Sarah Palin rallies to assert that she is currently getting huge turnouts on her book tour, the network issued an on-air apology this afternoon. Fox’s Happening Now co-host Jane Skinner said it was mistake, but didn’t explain how it happened:

In the tease before the segment — the tease to commercial — we told you how those people were already lining up to meet Palin. The problem is, we didn’t actually show you the video we were referencing. Instead, we mistakenly aired what’s called file tape of Sarah Palin. We didn’t mean to mislead anybody in that tease. It was a mistake. And for that, we apologize.

Watch it:

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We Pay Sen. McCaskill $174,000 a Year for This Kind of Whining?
Posted by Natasha Chart, Open Left on November 19, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

Sen. McCaskill explains why the Senate can't be bothered to do anything about the climate bill:

Some senators are skeptical lawmakers will be ready to tackle another huge issue after finishing health care. "After you do one really, really big, really, really hard thing that makes everybody mad, I don't think anybody's excited about doing another really, really big thing that's really, really hard that makes everybody mad," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said. "Climate fits that category."

This is a grownup Senator talking?

Well, dagnabbit, I wish I'd thought of that when discussing future goals with ex-managers during performance reviews. 'No, no, I don't need to move on to any next project, I already did one really, really hard thing this year. And hold my calls, would you? They interrupt my Mahjong Titans time.'

But look, I've seen some of the Senate's other really, really hard work this year, and it sucked. Also, it was clearly written mostly by lobbyists anyway. Which is not only sleazier than having your Mom do your homework, it's lazier. It means these Senators didn't so much as have to supervise the staff manager that told the policy writers to stop screwing around and get that subparagraph on their desk, ASAP. That's like having your Mom's secretary do your homework.

This is some Subgenius level slacking going on up there in the Senate. If these Senators were on the government dime, why, someone might get angry about this. If we were paying for ... oh, right.

In closing, I can only sputter at this point. So I'm turning you over to the immortal inspirational speaking of George W. Bush. Here, in a 2004 debate with John Kerry, our former president laid out a nobler vision of a public service work ethic that, sadly, may deeply disturb Sen. Claire McCaskill:

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Hoffman Manages to Blame ACORN for His Loss
Posted by BarbinMD, Daily Kos on November 19, 2009 at 10:02 AM.

Proving once and for all that he really was the only true Republican in the race, the loser in the election to represent New York's 23rd District is now sobbing that ACORN cost him the election. And apparently they pelted the teabagger candidate with nuts until he was "forced to concede."

With his prospect of winning the 23rd Congressional District race now almost zero, Conservative Party candidate Douglas L. Hoffman suggested Wednesday in a letter that “ACORN, the unions and the Democratic Party” “tampered” with results to deny him victory.

Mr. Hoffman provided no evidence to support his claims, but asked fellow conservatives to send donations his way to “ensure every vote is counted.”

Jerry O. Eaton, Jefferson County Republican elections commissioner, called Mr. Hoffman's assertion “absolutely false.”

Outraged teabaggers can go to Hoffman's website and see no evidence surface -- although the URL is pretty convincing.

Give it up, Mr. Hoffman. Swallow your loss and move on.

GOP Lawmakers Accuse Holder of Being a Terrorist Sympathizer
Posted by Steve Benen on November 19, 2009 at 9:00 AM.

ENOUGH TO MAKE AN ATTORNEY GENERAL LAUGH.... Attorney General Eric Holder talked to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, primarily about the decision to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators in federal court. It didn't go especially well -- Republicans on the panel didn't seem persuaded -- but Dahlia Lithwick highlighted the most troubling aspect of the Q&A.

Specifically, some GOP senators are concerned that some Justice Department officials, including the attorney general himself, may actually be terrorist sympathizers.

[Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa] demanded that Holder explain the presence in the solicitor general's office of Neal Katyal, who represented Osama Bin Laden's driver at the Supreme Court. Grassley used a smear from the New York Post (penned by the writer who ridiculously claimed Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh believed "Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts") to demand that Holder account for Jennifer Daskal as counsel in its National Security Division, who allegedly wants terrorists to have more time to write poetry. Grassley demanded that Holder produce a list of DoJ appointees who have ever acted as lawyers for terror detainees.

 

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No Stupak Language in Senate Bill; Boxer "Couldn't Be Happier," Hatch Promises "Holy War"
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 19, 2009 at 6:46 AM.

At Majority Leader Harry Reid's announcement yesterday about the health-care bill he seeks to introduce on the Senate floor, the elephant in the room was women's reproductive rights, which were not addressed from the podium.

But ever since the House passed its health-care bill with the egregious Stupak amendment attached -- which bars virtually all abortion coverage from being offered in the exchanges through which most individual policies will be purchased -- battles over reproductive rights have taken center stage as the Senate hammered out its version of the legislation, titled the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 

The Washington Post reports that the bill does not go the Stupak route, and instead establishes a "firewall" between federally-funded subsidies for insurance premiums and private funds that could be used to pay for plans that contain abortion coverage. ""I couldn't be happier," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told the Post. "For those who want to keep abortion out of this bill, Senator Reid did it the right way." Boxer is regarded as the Senate's foremost pro-choice advocate.

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News Flash: Christians Still Not Victimized by Hate Crimes Legislation
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune on November 19, 2009 at 6:38 AM.

There is a group which has seen a 25% rise in hate crimes against them in Florida, 17% which involve violent physical assaults. This might surprise some of my counterparts on the Right, but the group which is incurring these vicious attacks is not the one they would suspect.

That's right, violent hate crimes against white Christians are not increasing despite the election of that Kenyan Born Muslim loving Barack Husein Obama. I know it's hard to believe considering all the angst expressed on right wing talk shows about how Christians are under attack and are being victimized and terrorized by Obama, Atheists, Secularists, Democrats and Gays, but its true, nonetheless.

Let me ask all those concerned Republicans and Conservative Christians who are so afraid/whiny/have their undies in a twist over their alleged claim that that the recent hate crimes legislation protecting gays was directed against them (despite the fact that all people of religious faith have been a protected class under hate crime legislation since the first such laws were written years ago.

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Oklahoma Lawmaker Considering Bill To Opt Out Of Hate Crimes Act
Posted by Alex Seitz-Wald, Think Progress on November 19, 2009 at 3:12 AM.

A common right-wing objection to federal health care legislation is that it's unconstitutional. So-called "tenthers" argue that the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution never explicitly gives the federal government the right to regulate health care, leaving that power exclusively in the hands of the states. To that end, officials in various states have raised the possibility of passing legislation to exempt their residents from federal health care reform if it passes.

Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell (R) is proposing to use the same argument and tactic to try to exempt his state from the recently-passed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act — which extends hate crimes protections to gays and lesbians — because he claims it infringes on freedom of speech:

Russell said because the government has decided to intervene on issues of morality, he is worried that religious leaders who speak out against any lifestyle could be imprisoned for their speech.

"The law is very vague to begin with," Russell said. "Sexual orientation is a very vague word that could be extended to extremes like necrophilia." [...]

Russell said Oklahoma can opt out of the law on the basis of the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"The bill gives the federal government power that was not given to them in the Constitution," Russell said. "I am aware of the supremacy of the federal government over state governments, but the federal requirements are vague enough for us to make actions. We just have to be very careful on how we proceed."

Hate crime protections have been on the books since 1969, but Russell seems to object to only those which protect gays and lesbians. Moreover, Russell and the other tenthers have flimsly legal basis for their claims. The Constitution gives Congress broad power to "provide for the common defense and general welfare," but as Ian Millhiser noted, tenthers "insist that these words don't actually mean what they say." The right-wing fringe believes landmark federal programs such as Medicare, Social Security, the federal highway system, and rules regulating airplane safety are unconstitutional.

Other right wingers have echoed Russell's concern about the new hate crimes bill: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said on the House floor that the measure would lead to Nazism and the legalization of pedophilia and necrophilia. But as Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said, "Nothing in this legislation diminishes an American's freedom of religion, freedom of speech or press or the freedom to assemble," because the law "targets acts, not speech." These acts need to be targeted. In 2007 — the most recent year for which data is available — 16.6 percent of all hate crimes reported reported to the FBI "resulted from sexual-orientation bias."