Children's rally in DC tomorrow for health care

From the Children's Defense Fund:

It is astonishing that we are still begging to make sure children are better off, not worse off, after health reform.

What: Champions for Children’s Health Stroller Brigade, a “stroll” to ensure that children are better off after health reform
When: Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Time: 10:00 a.m
Where: West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol (Constitution Ave. and 1st Street, NW)

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Arizona Republican National Committeeman tells Dem to "ask the brown people" about crime

The brown people? Read More......

Boehner misquotes FactCheck.org on health care reform, refuses to correct it

Don't mess with the independent analysts at FactCheck.org. Be sure to check out the last line of FactCheck.org's statement on the matter:

Last week House Republican Leader John Boehner’s office issued a "Leader Alert" titled "10 Facts Every American Should Know About Speaker Pelosi’s 1,990-Page Gov’t Takeover of Health Care."

It’s a partisan document containing misleading characterizations of the bill. But the bullet point that bothers us most is #2, which reads:

MASSIVE CUTS TO MEDICARE BENEFITS FOR SENIORS. Despite grave warnings from CBO, FactCheck.org, and the independent Lewin Group that cuts to Medicare of the magnitude included in Speaker Pelosi’s bill would have a negative impact on seniors’ benefits and choices, Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill stays the course and cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars.

We never have said that seniors would suffer "massive cuts to Medicare benefits" under the pending House or Senate overhaul bills, and in fact have done our best to debunk claims to that effect....

We asked Boehner’s office to take our name out of the document, but spokesman Michael Steel said: "I’m not inclined to do so," and invited us to send an e-mail further making our case. We are doing so.

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DNC's OFA emails Mainers about tomorrow's election, conveniently forgets to mention the anti-gay ballot initiative

I'm sure it's just an oversight that the Democratic National Committee's organization, "Organizing for America," sent a "get out and vote message" to Mainers a short while ago, and forgot to mention the number one issue in the state right now, the effort to repeal the right of gay couples to marry in the state.

No mention of "No on 1," the campaign to save marriage equality. No mention of how to vote. Nothing.

And the Democratic party wonders why it has a problem with the gay community. Joe has written a long post about this over on AMERICAblog Gay.

Another White House cocktail party can't be far behind. Read More......

640,329

640,329. That's how many jobs the White House claims were created by the stimulus package. You can find it on their Web site Recovery.gov. And the number is almost certainly wrong, but not for the reasons you will hear from John Boehner or any of the other knee-jerk naysayers.

Numbers like these are the result of the White House telling people lower down: "We need numbers and we need them now. We are getting pressure to show results, and you need to tell us how many jobs were created or saved by stimulus money. Do it and do it now." Well, I dont know about you, but when MY boss tells me something like that I get back to him with a number within the hour. It may not be the most exact number, but what what the hell, its a number.

But there are bigger problems with this number. First is the fact that directly created or saved jobs aren't all, or even most, of the story. If that were all we got, slightly over half a million jobs, we wouldnt have much of a case for a stimulus at all. What we were counting on when we passed the stimulus was that people who got a job would turn around and spend their paychecks on things like groceries, movies, mortgages, etc. The stimulus has a second, third, and fourth round of effects that we really have no way to quantify. But just because it's fuzzy doesn't mean it doesn't happen - it does and it counts for a lot.

The second problem with the number is that we can't prove a negative, no matter how hard we try. The stimulus prevented jobs from being lost that would otherwise have gone away. The strip mall that is barely hanging on would have gone belly up without it. That third grade teacher newly hired at your local school would have been back looking for work. None of these jobs necessarily count as a job created, but saving them instead of losing them matters a lot to the economy.

So, 640,329? Naaah. The very precision of that number makes me laugh. But let's all remember that a year ago we were running around worrying about Great Depression, Take Two. We aren't doing that now, and the stimulus package is one of the reasons why. Read More......

Rep. Virginia Foxx is very afraid of health insurance reform, even more than terrorism

Is there a contest in the GOP to see who is the craziest? Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the Congresswoman who slandered Matthew Shepard, thinks health insurance reform is a bigger danger than terrorism -- and we know how much Republicans fear terrorism. I know it doesn't make sense. Foxx is Bachmann-like in her extremism. From Faiz Shakir at Think Progress:
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FOX gives Limbaugh half an hour to trash Obama

But seriously, FOX is just like MSNBC. MSNBC has liberals on for three hours a night. FOX has conservatives on for three hours a night. MSNBC has balanced content all afternoon. FOX has conservative content all afternoon. MSNBC has conservative on for three hours a morning. FOX has conservatives on for three hours a morning.

What's wrong with this picture? Could it be that FOX doesn't even have any liberal hosts? Could it be that MSNBC balances it 3 hours of liberals in the evening with 3 hours of conservatives in the morning, while FOX is all conservatives all the time?

No difference there. Read More......

Top McCain campaign adviser running out of insurance, has pre-existing condition

Amazing story. And not that different from a lot of people. America is changing. More and more people are working on their own, freelancing, consulting. None of us have access to reasonable health care - at least not reasonable once you're "of a certain age." From the Washington Post:

If history had taken a different course, Doug Holtz-Eakin would be inside the McCain White House driving the Republican president's domestic agenda, including health-care reform. But now, one year after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lost the presidential election, the man who was by McCain's side as the campaign's top health-care guru remains unemployed -- and his COBRA health coverage is running out.

Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky "preexisting conditions" that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage.

"A right renal autotransplant," he said, pointing to his abdomen as he described the 1990 transplant surgery he went through after one of his kidneys was damaged in an accident. "They got rid of the artery, moved my kidney and rebuilt me for the 21st century. If you look at my file, any insurance company would go, 'Hmm . . .' "

Good luck.

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Ford reports third quarter profit of $1 billion

Wow! This is very welcome news for most people though I suppose Limbaugh and the America-haters won't like it. After all, it might damage their talking points about Obama and the Democrats doing everything wrong.

Ford Motor Co. earned $1 billion in the third quarter, fueled by U.S. market share gains, cost cuts and the government's Cash for Clunkers rebates.

The Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker on Monday reported net income of $997 million, or 29 cents per share. Ford says it now expects to be "solidly profitable" in 2011. Previously the automaker said it would be break-even or better.

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NYT: Secret Obama health care strategy of doing nothing wins the day

Robert Pear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg just wrote a piece in the New York Times that could have been (and probably was) written by Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina. Pear and Stolberg reveal that Obama's secret strategy of not getting involved in the health care debate, and then actively undercutting those of us who were trying to fulfill Obama's campaign promises without him, is what actually saved health care reform.

Right.

Conveniently, they didn't quote anyone who disagreed with Obama's masterful non-stroke, other than a weak quote from John Podesta about how he was worried earlier.

Let's revisit the history of health care reform.

1. Obama does nothing for months.

2. This summer, Obama finally says public option must be in legislation.

3. Obama throws his weight behind Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley, neither of whom likes the public option.

4. Teabaggers organize protests across the US in August, making Dems from the White House to the Congress wet their pants.

5. Obama caves on public option, says it's the best way to save money and create competition, but other than that Mrs. Lincoln, it's really not an important part of the bill and isn't worth fighting for.

6. Around September or so Obama suddenly realizes that Grassley is a Republican and has no desire to pass health care reform.

7. Democrats around the country go nuts over fact that Obama has dropped his number one campaign promise on health care reform.

8. Polls on the public option, that have always been good, get even better.

9. Obama, seeing the better poll numbers and Democratic anger about his broken promise, ignores Democrats and tries to write a bill that Republican Olympia Snowe would like.

10. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi decide to go it alone - attempt to craft bill that includes public option.

11. White House, still wedded to Olympia Snowe, undercuts Reid and Pelosi, while not lifting a finger to help them.

12. Reid and Pelosi manage to include a weaker/weak version of the public option in their bills, in spite of Obama's efforts to undermine them.

Got news for you, Mr. Pear and Ms. Stolberg, that is not a story of how Obama's cool, no-drama approach saved the day. We, the Democratic base, saved the day by beating the crap out of this White House when they refused, as usual, to fight for anything they believe in.

The same thing happened during the campaign. Obama was losing until the grassroots beat the crap out of him and forced him to start fighting back against McCain, and, conveniently, the economy imploded and McCain made a really dumb statement about the fundamentals being strong. I suppose that was all part of Obama's brilliant sit back and do nothing strategy as well. (Damn he's good.)

I especially got a charge out of this paragraph at the end of the story:

Yet White House officials have shown little interest in Republicans, with the exception of Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, whom they have wooed assiduously, and one or two others. Mr. Obama did meet with some Republicans early on, when his aides still believed it was possible to get the support of Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee.

If by "little interest in Republicans," you mean letting Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus (a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry) run the show until they let the Teabaggers run the show until they let Olympia Snowe run the show. Other than that, the White House showed little interest in Republicans.

Seriously. Why do reporters - good reporters like these two - permit themselves to be rolled by the White House? Yes, this was all part of Obama's plan all along: To do nothing, then to undercut the public option, all because he knew he'd so piss us off that we'd force Congress to do their job, ignore the president, and override Obama in order to get a weaker public option than we could have had, had the president actually weighed in and done something.

Hell of a strategy.

Anyone for a game of ten dimensional chess? Read More......

Karzai declared victor in Afghanistan

The lesson from the election in Afghanistan is that massive fraud pays off. Karzai was officially declared the winner today:

Afghan election officials canceled a presidential runoff and proclaimed the reelection of President Hamid Karzai on Monday, a day after Karzai's top challenger declared he would not take part in a second round of voting scheduled for Saturday because of a persistent risk of fraud.

"The Independent Election Commission declares the esteemed Hamid Karzai as the president . . . because he was the winner of the first round and the only candidate in the second round," commission's chairman Azizullah Lodin told a news conference.

Now, we're waiting for our President to come up with a strategy to deal with Afghanistan -- an exit strategy. Read More......

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

One more day til Election Day.

AMERICAblog is reporting from Maine where marriage equality is on the ballot. Nate Silver did a final analysis of the polling, which I posted here. There are also key races in Washington State (Approve Referendum 71), Kalamazoo (Yes on Ordinance 1856), Virginia (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General and Legislature) and New Jersey (Governor and Legislature.)

Your President has a lot of meetings on his schedule today with a heavy focus on the economy. The National Economic Council, which includes all the big players in the administration, is convening at 2 PM to discuss the "overall state of the economy." It does seem like the government programs have been the thing propping up this economy. And, we need more jobs. Also, Obama is meeting with Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

Let's get threading...I have to take Petey out. He's having a ball up here in Maine hanging out with Riley, my parents dog. Read More......

Corporate CEO's aren't the only ones with bloated salaries

Not that it was good, but this made slightly more sense during the credit bubble years since money was falling from the sky. Today as college tuition is being hit with double digit increases, it's going to be much more hard to stomach. There's nothing wrong with making lots of money and teachers have historically been undervalued but college presidents sound too much like corporate CEOs. It didn't pass the smell test before and during these economic times, it really stinks. Pay consultants strike again.

A record 23 presidents received more than $1 million in total compensation in fiscal 2008, according to an analysis of the most recently available data published Monday by the Chronicle of Higher Education. A record one in four in the study of 419 colleges' mandatory IRS filings made at least $500,000.

Topping the list is Shirley Ann Jackson at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., whose total compensation the Chronicle pegged at nearly $1.6 million. She was followed by David Sargent at Suffolk University in Boston, who made $1.5 million. However, one-third of his compensation had been reported as deferred compensation last year and counted as salary this year — an example of the difficulty of making straightforward compensation comparisons.

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EU pushes UK on internet privacy in court

It's about time someone called them out. If only someone would start to chip away at the even worse privacy violations such as the constant monitoring of citizens.

The legal action is being brought over the use of controversial behavioural advertising services which were tested on BT's internet customers without their consent to gather commercial information about their web-shopping habits.

Under the programme, the UK-listed company Phorm has developed technology that allows internet service providers (ISPs) to track what their users are doing online. ISPs can then sell that information to media companies and advertisers, who can use it to place more relevant advertisements on websites the user subsequently visits. The EU has accused Britain of turning a blind eye to the growth in this kind of internet marketing.

Ministers were warned by the EU in April that if the Government failed to combat internet data snooping it would face charges before the European Court of Justice.

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AP: Future of GOP and moderate Republicans uncertain

What's most interesting about this article is that it's being written at all. If AP is saying that the future of moderates in the GOP is uncertain, then that theme has struck a chord in the media, and will only make them more likely to write such stories in the future. Read More......