Domestic terrorists threaten gay bars in Seattle

This is why it worries us when Obama puts people like Rick Warren on a pedestal, people who tell the entire country that gays and lesbians are akin to pedophiles and incest. People are not born to hate. They learn hate, then act on it. And Rick Warren and his evangelical ilk are some of the nation's best prominent teachers. Read More......

State unemployment filing systems crashing

Sounds like a few states need to hire some additional IT workers and hardware to fix their capacity problems. The problems will only get worse in 2009, so fix them now.

Electronic unemployment filing systems have crashed in at least three states in recent days amid an unprecedented crush of thousands of newly jobless Americans seeking benefits, and other states were adjusting their systems to avoid being next.

About 4.5 million Americans are collecting jobless benefits, a 26-year high, so the Web sites and phone systems now commonly used to file for benefits are being tested like never before.

Even those that are holding up under the strain are in many cases leaving filers on the line for hours, or kissing them off with an "all circuits are busy" message. Agencies have been scrambling to hire hundreds more workers to handle the calls.

Systems in New York, North Carolina and Ohio were shut down completely by technical glitches and heavy volume, and labor officials in several other states are reporting higher-than-normal use.

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Apple to end music restrictions

"Apple Inc has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software." - BBC

I've always been divided about sharing music with friends. I get the intellectual and legal arguments about the music belonging to the musicians (or their music companies), but at the same time I still have a hard time feeling like it's stealing unless someone is actually selling the MP3s they're giving their friends. A bit like my photography. I certainly don't want someone else selling it without my permission, but if you copy one of my photos and use it on your desktop, should that be illegal? What if you then share it with a friend, again for free? And is music inherently different, so that the comparison isn't valid? Read More......

Rick Warren's friends are liars

Though this shouldn't surprise anyone. I've found that far-right bigots have a rather difficult time with the commandment concerning "bearing false witness." Well, in an effort to keep the controversy over Obama's selection of an anti-gay bigot to give the invocation at his swearing, Rick Warren's friends are not only accusing civil rights advocates of "intolerance" (because they refuse to tolerate intolerance - get it?), but, as usual, their entire defense of Warren is one big lie. Per Warren's buddies, the reason everyone is so upset with Rick Warren coming to the inauguration is that he doesn't support gay marriage. That's a flat out lie. The reason people have a problem with Rick Warren is because the far-right bigot equated gays and lesbians with pedophiles and practitioners of incest. But to acknowledge that - to actually tell people the real reason Rick Warren has people so incensed - might jeopardize the religious right's ongoing mission to deceive the majority of Americans into embracing their hate-filled extremist agenda. Read More......

Nothing is better after eight years of Bush

NBC's First Read did a "Then and Now" comparison of ten areas to see how things have fared after eight years of Bush and Cheney. Not good, as you can imagine (especially for Bush and Cheney themselves.)

Try these three for starters:

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
Then: 4.2% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2001)
Now: 6.7% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2008)

And:

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE (1985=100)
Then: 115.7 (Conference Board, January 2001)
Now: 38.0, which is an all-time low (Conference Board, December 2008)

And:

U.S. BUDGET
Then: +236.2 billion (2000, Congressional Budget Office)
Now: -$1.2 trillion (projected figure for 2009, Congressional Budget Office)

It's going to take a long, long time to dig out of this hole. And, we better start digging out soon.

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Fed throws cold water on economy

The Fed has consistently understated the economic crisis, always reaching for some small ray or sunshine so this new forecast surprising, though maybe more realistic than previous statements and forecasts.

The U.S. economy is likely to deteriorate further this year and unemployment will rise into 2010, according to the latest forecasts from the staff of the Federal Reserve.

This bleak forecast was presented to Fed policymakers when they met last month and lowered interest rates to near zero. Low interest rates are one key tool the central bank uses to try to spur economic activity.

According to the minutes from that meeting, the central bank is now predicting that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, will fall in 2009.

"I think that the Fed is really very scared right now -- like everybody else -- and they want to pull out all the stops," said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's.

The Fed indicated that most members at its meeting expected a slow recovery to begin in the second half of the year, but that unemployment would still rise "significantly" into 2010.

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Look in the mirror: G.M. is us

The NYT's Thomas Friedman brings up a point I've been making for a while. People like to talk about America being "number one" all the while our country sinks far behind in terms of our infrastructure.

If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours....

In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

This is just a small excerpt. Read the entire column, it's good. Read More......

Bob Barr supports repeal of DOMA

Bob Barr authored the Defense of Marriage Act. Now he supports its repeal. And if you read closely between the lines, Barr appears to be saying that he has no problem with individual states deciding that they want to legalize marriage for gay couples. Very interesting. Initially, I was one who thought that Obama and the Congress should take it slow on gay issues for at least the first six months of the new administration, in order to avoid the Bill Clinton "gays in the military" problem (i.e., addressing gay issues right out of the box, getting slammed for it, and then having an aversion to addressing gay issues for the rest of the term). I no longer think we should wait. After the Rick Warren fiasco, and watching the pandering that's going on to woo Republicans (and to a lesser degree Latinos) - and no one else - it's not clear to me when, if ever, we'll see any movement on any legislation important to our community.

Think about it:

1. We'll be told that Obama and the new Congress can't touch gay issues in the first six months of this year because they have to be seen focusing on the economic crisis, rather than pandering to divisive "special interests."

2. It's possible we'll be permitted to focus on gay rights during the second half of 2009, but as Congress usually goes out of session by November, and they're on vacation in August, that gives us September and October - two months - to get anything done to advance the rights of gay and lesbian Americans.

3. Next year, 2010, will be a non-starter because that will be an election year - the entire House, and a third of the Senate, is up for election every two years. No one will want to touch gay rights in an election year - just wait a little while longer, we'll be told.

4. That brings us to year 3 of the Obama administration, 2011. Only problem? January of 2011 starts the presidential election season, which now begins two years before the election (Nov. 2012). So the last two years of Obama's administration we'll be told that they can't touch gay rights, lest it make them look too fringe and liberal.

5. Finally, there's 2012. That will be a presidential election year and a congressional election year. No way we're touching gay rights that year.

So, we really only have a window of September and October of this year, 2009, to advance the civil rights of gays and lesbians before someone convinces the Congress and Obama that our rights must be shelved for the greater good. Tick tock. Read More......

Roland Burris won't be seated as the Illinois Senator -- yet

The drama continues.

Not too long ago, the Associated Press reported that Roland Burris would be seated as the next Senator from Illinois. Not quite.

TPM Election Central got word from Senator Reid's office that the AP report was "wrong."

Majority Leader Harry Reid and Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin just did a press conference after their meeting with Burris -- and AP was wrong. They're waiting for the Illinois Supreme Court to rule on whether the Secretary of State must sign the certification of the appointment. The Illinois Supreme Court is expected to rule on that matter shortly. Also, Burris is testifying tomorrow at the Blagojevich impeachment at the Illinois State House. So, for now, the Democratic leaders are waiting to see how things play out. Both Reid and Durbin wanted it known that Burris said this issue wasn't about race.

Obama is staying out of it. Obama wanted the Senate leaders to accept Burris after all:

The apparent decision to seat Roland Burris came after aides to President-elect Barack Obama contacted senior Senate Democrats and suggested that they reverse course and accept Gov. Rod Blagojevich's controversial appointment, according to a senior Dem congressional aide.

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US banks may need to raise cash again in 2009

Here we go again. It remains unthinkable that Wall Street even considered giving themselves executive bonuses (they did pay out healthy bonuses to employees, even if they were 50% less than the year before) when they have to know that the future remains delicate for their industry.

U.S. banks will have to raise fresh capital in 2009, and a sharp increase in credit-rating downgrades on mortgage-related securities will lead to further stresses on the companies' capital, according to prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney.

"From July 2007 to date, over $5 trillion worth of securities have been downgraded, but our concern here is that the pace of downgrades has only accelerated through 2008," the Oppenheimer analyst wrote in a research note dated Jan. 6.

"Capital ratios will be meaningfully lower in the fourth quarter (of 2008) versus post TARP pro forma levels," she said.

Since the summer of 2007, Wall Street has been hammered by a sharp pullback in debt markets, which began with mortgage woes and escalated into a credit crisis, slowing economic activity around the world.

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Palestinian woman stands up to Israeli troops

I'm always very divided about issues surrounding Israel. I think many Americans on the right have a knee-jerk support of Israel (either for strategic reasons, or because they're evangelicals who believe Israel will bring about the Second Coming, and who then believe that 2/3 of the world's Jews will be killed in the Rapture because they haven't embraced Christianity - funny, but I don't call that "support"), while many on the left have a knee-jerk support of the Palestinians as the "underdog," without recognizing that Israel and Jews have just as much a right to that claim.

In any case, this video below is transfixing. About a minute and 15 seconds into the video you'll see a young American woman walking up to an Israel soldier and pushing his gun away, while trying to logically talk him out of firing on Palestinian rock throwers. It's absolutely fascinating to watch, regardless of your views on the issue. And I think this woman, and the troops in the video, all showed exceptional restraint. Watch it. (Hat tip, Juan Cole.)

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ADP: 693,000 job losses in December

Much worse than expected and even higher than the horrible November losses.

Private employers shed 693,000 jobs in December, up sharply from the revised 476,000 jobs lost in November and far more than economists estimated, separate reports showed Wednesday.

ADP released its forecast using new methodology that the firm said would more closely reflect the nation's economic picture. The company's numbers had been consistently missing the mark, underestimating job losses as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Another report, from outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, showed that planned layoffs at U.S. firms eased in December from the previous month's seven-year high but they were up an astounding 275 percent annually as the year-old recession cut a huge swathe of destruction through job market.

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Krugman on the day Sanjay Gupta mugged Michael Moore

Krugman points out that CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the man Obama is considering for Surgeon General, conducted an on-the-air mugging of Michael Moore that turned out to be absolutely false.



From Krugman:

I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.

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Credit Crisis claims another elite investor

This latest suicide related to the credit crisis reminded me of the general belief that in 1929, many stockbrokers jumped out of windows as they heard about their loses. As an econ professor friend recently told me, Galbraith had analyzed the suicide rates before and after the Crash and there was no noticeable change. There were some suicides around the US though stories of window jumping were mostly false. It's what many people wanted to hear but the facts were not there to support the common story. During this crisis, the Madoff scandal has claimed one investor and now the fifth wealthiest German, billionaire businessman and investor Adolf Merckle.

He seemed to be the epitome of the respectable German industrialist: a modest family man who strove to avoid publicity. But behind the scenes, the billionaire entrepreneur Adolf Merckle speculated and gambled away his fortune. On Monday, his body was pulled from under a train.

The 74-year-old pillar of Germany's business community and the country's fifth richest man committed suicide after losing millions in a high-risk stockmarket venture that backfired. Yesterday, his family blamed the credit crunch for his death.

His body was found on tracks 300 yards from his family's villa in Blaubeuren, near Ulm in south Germany. Police said he left a suicide note.

Mr Merckle became one of the most prominent victims of the financial crisis. In a statement, his family said he was broken by the struggle to salvage their business empire. The world's 94th-richest person in 2008, according to Forbes magazine, Mr Merckle spent his life building a business conglomerate with 100,000 employees.

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