Cycling 'super highways' opening in London

It's an interesting idea but slapping down a bit of blue paint doesn't sound as safe as a hard berm or something else solid to protect cyclists from traffic. In Paris where we do have cement curbs along a number of bike paths, it is still not perfect due to parked cars, motorcycles and pedestrians but it's better than a coat of paint. With a Conservative mayor and the age of austerity paint may be all for now but the idea is nice. They estimate that 550,000 cyclists commute every day in London so improving the bike paths makes sense.

It's one of two new superhighways to open this summer. The other goes between Barking, east London, and Tower Gateway, which is near Tower Bridge. Twelve such routes are planned in all, with details and maps available on the Transport for London website.

Along with a forthcoming city-wide bike hire scheme, a new cycling police unit, 66,000 extra bike parking spaces before 2012 and better strategic planning, the hope of Mayor Boris Johnson is that they will spark what he calls a "cycling revolution".

His transport adviser Kulveer Ranger says: "People think 'cycling revolution' and think of the hire scheme, superhighways... but it's a lot more than that.

"Boris wants to see the culture around cycling evolving - we have to look at the infrastructure, securing bikes, cyclists' safety and embed cycling in transport policy."

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CREW launches 2010 Corrupt Candidates site

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) has launched a new website that attempts to compile "the most corrupt and unethical candidates vying for federal office in 2010 . . . 11 candidates with scandal-littered pasts and histories of questionable ethics."

The site is called Crooked Candidates, and it makes fascinating reading. Some of the juicier toadstools to pop up are these. (This is just a taste, seriously edited; the whole webpage is worth a read.)

Roy Blunt (U.S. Senate, Missouri): In 2003, Rep. Blunt divorced his wife of 31 years to marry Philip Morris (now Altria) lobbyist Abigail Perlman. Before it was known publicly that Rep. Blunt and Ms. Perlman were dating [Blunt, as Majority Whip] tried to secretly insert a provision into Homeland Security legislation that would have benefitted Philip Morris, at the expense of competitors. Philip Morris/Altria and its subsidiaries contributed at least $217,000 [PDF] to campaign committees connected to Rep. Blunt from 1996 to 2006.

J.D. Hayworth (U.S. Senate, Arizona; John McCain's opponent): While in Congress, Rep. Hayworth drew intense criticism for his extensive ties to Jack Abramoff and for employing his wife to run his political action committee (PAC). . . . Between 1999 and 2007, Rep. Hayworth’s wife, Mary, worked as the sole paid employee of TEAM PAC, his leadership PAC.  During that time, Ms. Hayworth was paid over $140,000.

Ed Martin (U.S. House, Missouri): [As Chief of Staff for Governor Matt Blunt] Martin sent emails from his government account to Republican Party activists . . . . [When state lawyer Scott Eckersly] notified Mr. Martin that deleting emails was a violation of state law and the governor’s office’s own policy, Mr. Martin fired him. . . . Mr. Eckersly subsequently brought a wrongful termination and defamation suit against Mr. Martin and other officials in the governor’s office. The State of Missouri ultimately agreed to a $500,000 settlement with Mr. Eckersly and spent an additional $1.3 million on legal fees – all because of Mr. Martin’s inappropriate conduct.

Kendrick Meek (U.S. Senate, Florida): Rep. Meek has been criticized for his relationship with developer Dennis Stackhouse, who is now awaiting trial for grand theft and organizing a scheme to defraud. Rep. Meek earmarked $1,072,750 million for Mr. Stackhouse’s development project and requested an additional $4 million in earmarks for Mr. Stackhouse, which were never awarded. . . . Mr. Stackhouse employed Rep. Meek’s mother [Mr. Meek's predecessor in the U.S. House] as a consultant paying her $90,000.

Dino Rossi (U.S. Senate, Washington): Following his defeat in the 2004 gubernatorial race, Sen. Rossi started the Forward Washington Foundation. Sen. Rossi used the foundation to pay himself $75,000 a year while traveling the state giving speeches but little else. . . . In his run for governor in 2008, Sen. Rossi [a former real estate developer] was supported by the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW). The BIAW spent $6.9 million largely to promote Sen. Rossi and criticize his opponent throughout the race.

And two heavy-weights from Florida:

Charlie Crist (U.S. Senate, Florida, Marco Rubio's opponent): As [state] attorney general, Gov. Crist was criticized for failing to investigate those with whom he had political or financial ties. [He] failed to fully investigate boy-band mogul Lou Pearlman. Mr. Pearlman, who ran a $300 million investment scam, was eventually indicted by federal authorities and pled guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering charges. [Mr. Pearlman] had donated at least $12,000 to Gov. Crist’s campaign.

Marco Rubio (U.S. Senate, Florida, Charlie Crist's opponent): Mr. Rubio is currently implicated in a federal criminal investigation for the misuse of Florida Republican Party credit cards during his time as [Florida House] Speaker. . . . including car repairs, and grocery purchases[,] dinners and a Rubio family trip to a Georgia resort. Mr. Rubio also admitted he double-billed both the Republican Party and state taxpayers for eight flights totaling about $3,000 in 2007. . . .

While preparing to leave his position [as Speaker of the] Florida House of Representatives, he accepted a $69,000 per year, part-time, unadvertised professor position with Florida International University (FIU). [In the Florida House] Mr. Rubio helped steer at least $29 million to the university, leading FIU’s president at the time to say that Mr. Rubio was “worth every penny”.

Again, just a sample of the goods on these people; check out the full webpage for the rest, including four guys I haven't mentioned (yep, all guys).

Your tax dollars at work.

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Devolving America: Tearing down our roads

I recently made a passing reference to our collective "peasant mentality," quoting Matt Taibbi to the effect that:

[A]ctual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea . . . after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. . . . A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. [ellipses mine]

So I'm not surprised by this, from the Wall Street Journal (h/t Digby, my emphasis):

Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement
Asphalt Is Replaced By Cheaper Gravel; 'Back to Stone Age'

SPIRITWOOD, N.D.—A hulking yellow machine inched along Old Highway 10 here recently in a summer scene that seemed as normal as the nearby corn swaying in the breeze. But instead of laying a blanket of steaming blacktop, the machine was grinding the asphalt road into bits. . . .

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. . . .

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel. . . .

But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. . . . "I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood. . . .

Sportsman's Bar owner Hilda Kuntz worries that the classic cars and bikers that roll through town in the summer will stay away.

"It's going to kill my business," she said.

But letting the Bush tax cuts expire is never on the table. When you give money to the rich, they keep it and never give it back. Our betters, and the peasants who love them.

Notice that Baumann, the anti-tax freak in the story, is drinking in the roadside joint whose business his attitude is killing. Talk about confluence. If you're looking for a reason to be pessimistic, this is it. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching the dimmest guy in class slit his own throat — slowly.

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House Dems whack Cheney over oil spill

From The Hill:

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee traded partisan blows Tuesday over whether the Obama administration or the former Bush administration deserves more blame for the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Senior Democrats on the panel — Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — used a hearing on the Interior Department’s role to trace the disaster back to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy policy task force.

Waxman said that task force — which was assembled early in the Bush administration — set the stage for policies that pushed drilling at the expense of tough safety oversight of rigs and review of environmental risks.

“The cop on the beat was off-duty for nearly a decade and this gave rise to a dangerous culture of permissiveness,” Waxman said. “In many ways this history begins with Vice President Cheney’s secretive energy task force.”

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Teabagger racism

From Eugene Robinson at the Wash Post:

Have the rest of the movement's leaders never noticed Williams's rhetoric before now? His most recent obsession, before the NAACP flap, has been a crusade to halt construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero. He has called the proposed structure a place where Muslims would honor the al-Qaeda hijackers and "worship the terrorists' monkey-god." He has called President Obama an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug."

If Williams is now a pariah in Tea Party circles, that's progress. But this episode should prompt the national leadership to look inward and acknowledge -- not just to the rest of us, but also to themselves -- that ugly, racially charged rhetoric has been part of the movement's stock in trade all along. If the Tea Party groundswell is to mature into something important and lasting, it needs to purge itself of this poison.

And if the Republican Party is going to try to harness the Tea Party's passion on behalf of GOP candidates, responsible leaders need to make clear that racism will not be tolerated. Yet Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to talk about the NAACP flap when asked about it Sunday, and Sen. John Cornyn volunteered that accusing the Tea Party of racism is "slanderous."

It's not slander if it's the truth, senator.

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I just took DOD's confidential DADT survey of the troops - three times!

I think we have a problem...

So much for the Defense Department's super secret $4.5 million survey of the troops to ask them how they feel about repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I, an avowed gay activist, just took the survey - three times in fact. Perhaps DOD should reconsider just how good and informative, and accurate, this survey is. (They also might want to get their money back.)

Read the entire story over at AMERICAblog Gay. Read More......

Senate Dems. finally end GOP filibuster of unemployment extension

The GOPers won't have the unemployed to kick around on the Senate floor -- for awhile anyway.

With the help of new WV Senator Carte Goodwin and the two Mainers, Collins and Snowe, the Senate just ended the filibuster of unemployment extension. Ben Nelson voted with the GOP.

The vote was 60 - 40. Read More......

Joe 'I apologize, BP' Barton loses $150,000 in campaign investment money

This guy really knows how to pick a winner. It's good to see karma in action with people like Barton.

Rep. Joe Barton lost more than $154,000 on investments of his campaign funds during the last three months, according to a CQ MoneyLine study of campaign finance reports. The Texas Republican’s campaign fund losses are due in part to drops in energy company stocks, including BP.
Turbulence in the financial markets has taken its toll on several House campaigns, which lost in total more than a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds since March because they invested in the stock market, but Barton’s losses make up the largest chunk of that.

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BP fakes another oil spill photo, this time of 'top kill' exercise

It's starting to look like Capricorn One over at BP. In addition to a photo of the oil spill crisis command center that BP faked on their Web site, an astute reader found yet another photo of the crisis response that has been faked by BP. This one is of the "top kill" effort to stop the spill a month or so ago. Above and below are parts of the photo that show that BP, yet again, inserted a fake screen behind its employees to make them look busier, or something.



Here's the photo in full:



How many other crisis response photos from BP have been faked? Did they fake any videos? Read More......

Alan Grayson on fire talking unemployment and Republicans

Must see:

Grayson is fearless and says what needs to be said. We're big fans of Grayson. He did a live chat with us a couple months ago and we've set up an ActBlue page for him. Help Grayson. Republicans would love to get him out of the House. He speaks the truth and they hate it. Read More......

Democrats up six in Gallup generic poll. GOP enthusiasm at highest level since April

Some good news from Gallup. The Democrats have moved ahead in the generic poll:

In the same week the U.S. Senate passed a major financial reform bill touted as reining in Wall Street, Democrats pulled ahead of Republicans, 49% to 43%, in voters' generic ballot preferences for the 2010 congressional elections.

The Democrats' six-point advantage in Gallup Daily interviewing from July 12-18 represents the first statistically significant lead for that party's candidates since Gallup began weekly tracking of this measure in March.

That's encouraging. The House Democrats, for the most part, have delivered on key elements of the Democratic agenda. And, they're all up for reelection this year.

A number of pundits will gag and choke if they try to spit out this line, "independents are primarily responsible for Democrats' improved positioning." But, I suspect you won't hear that much. It defies the current conventional wisdom.

Now, the not-so-good news. The Republican base is motivated. Really motivated:

Simultaneous with increased support for Democratic congressional candidates, Gallup polling last week found Republican voters expressing significantly more enthusiasm about voting in the 2010 midterms. The 51% of Republicans saying they are "very enthusiastic" about voting this fall is up from 40% the week prior, and is the highest since early April -- shortly after passage of healthcare reform. Democratic enthusiasm is unchanged, at 28%.

Trying to scare the Democratic base with images of Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McConnell isn't enough to motivate the base.

The Democratic leadership in DC needs to rile up its base. Creating jobs and getting the economy moving is most important. But, there are several constituencies, including LGBTs, Latinos and labor, that need some motivation. And, there's still time to motivate them. Read More......

BP claims seepage not from their well and 'naturally occurring'

Because we all know how accurate their information has been so far. Reuters:

Energy giant BP said Monday that seepage near its Gulf of Mexico well was unrelated to the massive oil leak that has at least temporarily been capped.

The U.S. government's pointman for the spill, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, told reporters in a late afternoon briefing that the government will give the company another 24 hours to continue testing the well. He also said that he has asked BP to consider using cement in its current capping operations.

BP shares, which had dropped more than 6 percent after engineers detected seepage on the floor of the Gulf, recovered slightly in late New York trade to close down 3.6 percent, at $35.75 a share.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told Reuters: "Scientists have concluded that the seep was naturally occurring."

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

So, there was Newt Gingrich on my t.v. this morning, answering questions from that ever-so-politically-savvy Matt Lauer. Made me realize that it's going to be a long, long, long presidential campaign with the likes of Newt, Mitt and Sarah getting so much face time.

The President is spending the day with British Prime Minister David Cameron. They'll be meeting, having lunch and doing a press conference. This is Cameron's first visit to the U.S. as P.M.

This afternoon, the Senate will finally vote to extend unemployment benefits. Byrd's replacement, Carte Goodwin, will be sworn in today, giving the Democrats the votes to bust the GOP filibuster. The GOPers have made a sport of trashing the unemployed. It's sick really. GOP policies and the failed leadership of George W. Bush created the economic crisis. Yet, Republicans have done nothing to improve the situation -- since the TARP bailout. If Wall Street is happy, Republicans are happy.

So, let's get it started.... Read More......

Rupert Murdoch's Times loses 90% of readers after adding pay wall

The Murdoch magic touch seems to have slipped ever since he bought MySpace. Nobody has yet figured out the online media revenue puzzle but it doesn't seem to be the Murdoch model.

The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show.

Unregistered users of thetimes.co.uk are now "bounced" to a Times+ membership page where they have to register if they want to view Times content. Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories taht have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have falledn to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory on 15 June.

These figures can then be used to model how this may impact on the number of users hitting the new Times site. Based on the last available ABCe data for Times Online readership (from February 2010), which showed that it had 1.2 million daily unique users, and Hitwise's figures showing it had 15% of UK online newspaper traffic, that means a total of 332,800 daily users trying to visit the Times site.

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David Cameron promotes 'Big Society' for UK

Any by "big" he really means "small." Maybe it makes sense there but from afar is sounds like Reagan's New Federalism or as false as the Bush plan for Compassionate Conservatism. Strip away the spin and it's a program that somehow tries to glorify a budget that has been ripped to shreds by the brutal cost-cutting of the Conservative party. As the British economy falters due to the chopping, this will soon be known as the Big Lie.

Cameron denied his plans were a cover for public-spending cuts. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, before his speech at Liverpool Hope University, he said: "This is not about trying to save money, it is about trying to have a bigger, better society."

The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said that "big society" was about getting more for less. Pickles, who accompanied Cameron to Liverpool, told Radio 4's The World at One: "Even at a time when money is tight it is still possible to find different ways of delivering. It is unashamedly about getting more for less. But it is about passing power down to folks so you can start to mould your own neighbourhood and put something back in."

Ed Miliband, the Labour leadership contender, told the same programme that "big society" heralded a return to Victorian philanthropy, with little role for the state. "This is essentially a 19th-century or US-style view of our welfare state – which is cut back the welfare state and somehow civic society will thrive," he said.

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