Obama to GOP governors: No train, no federal funds

Excellent. While there may be valid criticism of a 79 mph train in this day and age, the idea of a train in Ohio still makes sense. As someone who lived in the Buckeye state and who has used the Amtrak trains in the northeast plus the European rail system, I'm a big supporter of using trains. It's amusing to see the Republicans have the nerve to still ask for the money even though they do little besides complain about federal spending.

The Obama administration has a message for Republican governors who campaigned against the president's high-speed rail program: Build the trains or give back the money.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Tuesday rejected a request from Gov.-elect John Kasich in Ohio to use the $400 million in federal funds pledged to that state's train project on other projects like road construction or freight lines.

"I would like high-speed rail to be part of Ohio's future," LaHood wrote. But if the state won't go forward, it's necessary "to wind down Ohio's involvement in the project so that we do not waste taxpayers' money," he said.

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Pentagon study shows 'minimal risk' from ending DADT

Breaking news tonight on the DADT study from the Washington Post. There's been another leak about the contents of the study -- and it's actually helpful:

A Pentagon study group has concluded that the military can lift the ban on gays serving openly in uniform with only minimal and isolated incidents of risk to the current war efforts, according to two people familiar with a draft of the report, which is due to President Obama on Dec. 1.

More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, said two sources familiar with the document. The survey results led the report's authors to conclude that objections to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them.

One source, who has read the report in full, summarized its findings in a series of conversations this week. The source declined to state his position on whether or not to lift the ban, insisting it did not matter. He said he felt compelled to share the information out of concern that groups opposed to ending the ban would mischaracterize the findings. The long, detailed and nuanced report will almost certainly be used by opponents and supporters of repeal legislation to bolster their positions in what is likely to be a heated and partisan congressional debate.

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Two commercial pilot unions, flight attendant union speaking out against TSA security

Besides the pilots, there are quite a few people who need to travel often who may be exposed to significant and unnecessary levels of radiation over years. And as we keep hearing, for those who opt out of the radiation method are often subjected to invasive "patdowns." Also speaking out is one of the flight attendant unions. There's a new video online today from someone who was upset about his wheelchair-bound mother who was aggressively frisked in Portland. Sure, the story needs to be validated but it doesn't sound far off from other reports. More here for the pilot unions pushing back. Read More......

Food/consumer safety activist sent to prison in China

There's the worlds trading partner that we all know and love.

A Chinese man who organized a support group for parents of children sickened in one of the country's worst food safety scandals was found guilty of inciting social disorder and sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison, his lawyer said.

Zhao Lianhai had pushed for greater official accountability and compensation for victims and their families after the 2008 scandal that shocked China. His sentence appeared particularly severe because the case related to a public safety incident that the embarrassed leadership had pledged to tackle in a bid to restore consumer confidence.

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TSA meeting more resistance against 'security theater'

Is the choice between radiation and groping really a choice? Does privacy mean nothing anymore? For all of the big talk in the US about freedom and human rights, maybe it's time we actually start moving beyond talk and see some action. The current TSA options are hardly options and there's still little proof that they even do anything to help protect anyone from terrorism. (On this side of the pond, there isn't even an option if you have the misfortune to make it into the radiation line.) Instead of instilling more fear and throwing money at unproven solutions, perhaps it's time to have a more serious debate about security.

The Republicans, as always, want to show that they can kick ass and are tough so they are hardly complaining about the procedures. The Democrats, as always, are fearful of their own shadow and are afraid of being called weak, which they are. How spineless are they when they can't even stand up to having an honest discussion about security? Nobody really believes that taking a photo of someone's penis is helping defeat terror. It's all about beating the public into submission to accept anything, privacy be damned.

Much like the health care debate, it would make sense to let Congress live with the same treatment as the rest of the country. Let's see how many of them enjoy having a photo of their penis on record (if not distributed) or being groped by the TSA.

Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic is writing a lot on the subject and has some great conclusions.

I draw three lessons from this week's experience: The pat-down, while more effective than previous pat-downs, will not stop dedicated and clever terrorists from smuggling on board small weapons or explosives. When I served as a military policeman in an Israeli army prison, many of the prisoners "bangled" contraband up their asses. I know this not because I checked, but because eventually they told me this when I asked.

The second lesson is that the effectiveness of pat-downs does not matter very much, because the obvious goal of the TSA is to make the pat-down embarrassing enough for the average passenger that the vast majority of people will choose high-tech humiliation over the low-tech ball check.

The third lesson remains constant: By the time terrorist plotters make it to the airport, it is, generally speaking, too late to stop them. Plots must be broken up long before the plotters reach the target. If they are smart enough to make it to the airport without arrest, it is almost axiomatically true that they will be smart enough to figure out a way to bring weapons aboard a plane.

The ACLU has a list of other journalists who have written about their TSA gropings. Also, the ACLU has added a link to their website where travelers can report abuse during this process. Read More......

Touch screen vote flipping 'an isolated incident' in Ohio

Of course it is. And apparently it's isolated in a number of others states as well. Read More......

Report: Bush told Brits he'd have endorsed Obama in 2008 had Obama asked him

This is just weird. From the Financial Times via PoliticalWire:

"The venue was the Oval Office. A group of British dignitaries, including Gordon Brown, were paying a visit. It was at the height of the 2008 presidential election campaign, not long after Bush publicly endorsed John McCain as his successor... Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain's campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate... 'I probably won't even vote for the guy,' Bush told the group, according to two people present. 'I had to endorse him. But I'd have endorsed Obama if they'd asked me.'"

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Obama's Deficit Commission wants lower taxes, later retirement - per leaked draft

Thanks to Paul Krugman for pointing us to this article in the New York Times, which details the Deficit Commission proposal. There's enough confusion sewn into the proposal (oh look, bright shiny cuts to the military budget!) to make your head spin.

The obfuscation about Social Security follows the rest of the proposal. I'm including the entire Social Security proposal below, but only the bolded sentence matters. The rest is distraction-candy for the rubes:

The plan would reduce Social Security benefits to most future retirees — low-income people would get a higher benefit — and it would subject higher levels of income to payroll taxes to ensure Social Security’s solvency for at least the next 75 years.

You could do the whole thing by subjecting "higher levels of income to payroll taxes," but our Betters have better plans for your money — their own pockets.

The meat of the plan — and all you need to know — is below (my emphasis):

The proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under the plan, individual income tax rates would decline to ... 23 percent on the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would also be reduced, to as low as 26 percent.

"From your pocket to mine, sucker." Say that five times fast. Now repeat why you vote Democratic. (Hint: It's because the Republicans would do bad things ... sucker.)

The source is a leaked or pre-released "draft proposal." Color that official. Krugman is disgusted:

OK, let’s say goodbye to the deficit commission. If you’re sincerely worried about the US fiscal future — and there’s good reason to be — you don’t propose a plan that involves large cuts in income taxes. Even if those cuts are offset by supposed elimination of tax breaks elsewhere, balancing the budget is hard enough without giving out a lot of goodies [that] would go largely to the very affluent. ... Oh, and they’re talking about raising the retirement age, because people live longer — except that the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren’t living much longer. So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.

Let the Lame Duck quacking begin. And then let's see who gets elected in 2012. Color me ready. Sucker.

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Video: Keith Olbermann's return to TV

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NYT to GOP: 'Eliminating government programs that do not exist does not save money'

One of biggest GOP proposed budget cuts is to a program that's already over. From the NYT:

Of the few specific cuts that Congressional Republicans have proposed in their promised assault on annual budget deficits, one of the biggest by far would save $25 billion over 10 years, they claim, by ending an emergency welfare fund.... seriously, the fund expired Sept. 30.

House Republicans have calculated the fund’s annual cost, $2.5 billion, and multiplied by 10 years, which is the common period for projecting budget costs and savings. The product: savings of $25 billion.

The actual math is simpler: 10 x 0 = 0.

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The gays are pissed

Reprinted from AMERICAblog Gay:

From our comments section.

Nkocal writes:

And because Gays could not be patient they just let the Republicans gain in the house and senate, where DADT has to be repealed, guaranteeing at least another couple of years being treated as second class citizens. An executive order can be easily overturned by another executive order. Not fighting the appeal leaves it open to be re-litigated under another president. Only congress can change this law and you chose not to vote because it wasn't happening fast enough.

jpjones responds:

Couldn't be patient???

Look, asshole, when people of my generation were beginning to discover our sexuality, Anita Bryant was telling America that we are all sexual predators looking to indoctrinate innocent victims. And when I reached adulthood and began the process of coming out, Reagan's cabinet was telling America that AIDS was God's retribution for our "unnatural lifestyle" and William Buckley wrote that we should all be tattooed so people would know not to touch us. When I was in my mid-twenties Sam Nunn was telling America that we couldn't serve on submarines because of our inability to keep our hands off of straight people. And finally, when I'm old enough to think I'm too smart and experienced to be charmed by a con artist, along comes The Fierce Advocate, with Rick Warren in tow, comparing me to a pedophile.

I'm now 45 and I'm GODDAMNED SICK AND TIRED of being "patient." I'm an American citizen and all I want are the same rights that straight people take for granted from the day they are born. And until the Democrats demonstrate through actions that they believe all that sanctimonious bullshit they always spout during election season, I don't care whether they win or not. When I get equality, they can have my vote again.

In the meantime, I suggest you fucking learn to be patient with a Republican government.

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Kathleen Parker: Palin is dangerous

Conservative Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:

Although Tea Party members tend to be over-45 white men - no implication intended regarding Palin's popularity, but infer at will - there is considerable overlap with the demographic formerly known as the GOP base, a.k.a. white Southerners and social conservatives, libertarian streak notwithstanding.

Watching Palin drop foreign policy and economic nuggets into the twitterverse confirms that the real agenda for Palin is President Palin, and therein lies fresh terror for Republicans. She's too powerful to ignore, and too (fill-in-the-blank) to take seriously.

She is - in a word yet again whispered rather than uttered - "Dangerous."

Not only would Palin the presidential candidate drive away other Republican candidates, but she would most certainly lose a national election. Thus, the GOP finds itself in a pickle: How to shed itself of this attractive nuisance?

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Wall Street cashing in on taxpayer money for billions more, again

Isn't it interesting to see how bad financial engineering has worked out for everyone besides Wall Street? To them, there's no such thing as a win-win. Why is this legal and who keeps allowing this to happen? Once again Wall Street proves that they believe in wealth re-distribution as long as it's a one way street, to their own pockets. If nobody is going to fight back and stand up for the rest of the country, it's not realistic to expect different results. It's pathetic to see that neither party shows any interest in real reform. The Republicans are cashing in on the Wall Street money and the Democrats are afraid that they will be labeled socialists.

Oh the profiles in courage that are our defenders of democracy.

For more than a decade, banks and insurance companies convinced governments and nonprofits that financial engineering would lower interest rates on bonds sold for public projects such as roads, bridges and schools. That failed promise has cost more than $4 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as hundreds of borrowers from the Bay Area Toll Authority in Oakland, California, to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, quietly paid Wall Street to end agreements since 2008.

California’s water resources department this year spent $305 million unwinding interest-rate bets that backfired, handing over the money to banks led by New York-based Morgan Stanley. North Carolina paid $59.8 million in August, enough to cover the annual salaries of about 1,400 full-time state employees. Reading, Pennsylvania, which sought protection in the state’s fiscally distressed communities program, got caught on the wrong end of the deals, costing it $21 million, equal to more than a year’s worth of real-estate taxes.

“It was brilliant, and it all blew up on me,” said Brian Mayhew, chief financial officer of the Bay Area Toll Authority, the state agency that gave Ambac Financial Group Inc., the New York-based bond insurer that filed for bankruptcy this week, $105 million to end $1.1 billion of interest-rate agreements. The payments equal more than two months of revenue on seven bridges the authority oversees around San Francisco.

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What's the GOP plan for the 59 million Americans who didn't have health insurance?

Or is it unfair to ask for details since their only goal is to destroy? Somehow the GOP views people in need as a cost or a problem as opposed to Americans. There is a complete lack of compassion in the GOP, not to mention spirit of community, but that's what the public voted for and will receive. For now, at least.

Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.

They said 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first part of 2010 than during the same time in 2008.

"Both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is in Seoul today. He had to cut out of Indonesia early because of the volcano. While he's there, Obama will attend a G-20 summit. At the last G-20 summit in June, Obama said:

For some reason people keep on being surprised when I do what I said I was going to do. So I say I’m going to reform our health care system and people think, well, gosh, that’s not smart politics, maybe we should hold off. Or I say, we’re going to move forward on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and somehow people say, well, why are you doing that, I’m not sure that’s good politics.

Not good politics?

We keep hearing that repealing DADT is "controversial." But, that's only true here in DC and among the right-wing homophobes. Ending the ban has very broad public support. Christ, even Dick and Liz Cheney are on our side. Yet, in DC, anything related to "the gay" is deemed controversial. It's blatant homophobia for most GOPers. It's political homophobia for many Democcrats. And, too many traditional media types dutifully report that DADT is controversial without asking why and for whom.

Want to know what isn't good politics? Not repealing DADT. As John said yesterday on MSNBC:

This is going to be a disaster for the President. The gay community is not gonna take this anymore.

I think the White House is seriously underestimating how disillusioned the LGBT community is. When I expressed the disappointment and disillusionment that exists, the President told me:

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think that the disillusionment is justified.

Obama doesn't get to decide if we're disillusioned. But, if DADT doesn't end this year, as promised, we'll be beyond disillusioned. Read More......

EU demanding equal access with China

For starters, this once again raises the issue of protectionism. As much as China (and quite a few other countries) complained during the US stimulus discussion, nearly every country plays the same game. Not that it stops them from accusing others of protectionism though. There is a time and a place for everything and it's not always wrong.

In this situation though, foreign companies are never given a chance so now is the time for China to step up and provide proper access. Good job by the EU for pushing this, but why do their conservatives also prefer an unfair, one-sided relationship with China?

The European Commission will formally table the "reciprocity mechanism" later this winter and Mr de Gucht insisted that the measure was necessary because companies in Europe were increasingly frustrated by obstacles to investment in China.

Beijing's policy of requiring its authorities to buy only Chinese goods and services has increasingly angered European businesses as investors from China make inroads into public procurement across Europe.

"The only way to react to that is that we say, 'Look, this cannot be done by a country, or a company from country where there is no reciprocity in this respect," said Mr de Gucht.

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British says Bush's 'torture saved lives in UK' is nonsense

Much like other ridiculous claims that Bush has made, this one also appears to be fiction. Add it to WMD and 9/11 was linked to Saddam stories that were garbage. Bush and his crowd are serial liars, but we knew that already.

British officials said today there was no evidence to support claims by George Bush, the former US president, that information extracted by "waterboarding" saved British lives by foiling attacks on Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf. In his memoirs, Bush said the practice – condemned by Downing Street as torture – was used in CIA interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US.

He said Mohammed, below, was one of three al-Qaida suspects subjected to waterboarding. "Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport, and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States," he wrote.

It is not the first time information extracted from Mohammed has been claimed as helping to prevent al-Qaida attacks on British targets. Mohammed cited attacks on Heathrow, Big Ben and Canary Wharf in a list of 31 plots he described at Guantánamo Bay after he was subjected to waterboarding 183 times following his capture in Pakistan in March 2003. The Heathrow alert in fact happened a month before his arrest, with army tanks parked around the airport, in what was widely regarded as an overreaction.

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