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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

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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