Man trapped on ice flow, saved by the Internet

Not exactly the kind of story you hear about every day. Fortunately it worked out well for the photographer.

A woman admiring the sunset on a tourist webcam in northern Germany spotted a man who was lost on the frozen North Sea and probably saved his life by alerting authorities, police said Wednesday.

The man had climbed over pack ice off the coast to photograph a sunset near the town of St. Peter-Ording, then became disoriented on the ice, Husum police spokeswoman Kristin Stielow said.

Unable to locate the beach, the man began using his camera to flash for help. That got the attention of a woman hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in southern Germany who was watching the sunset over the sea on her computer.

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Bad taste yes, but demolition?

The farmer may have been deceitful during the process and the "castle" may not be the most attractive design but ordering demolition sounds extreme. If others were within close proximity and had to look at it, maybe, but it sounds isolated enough. Also, the neighbors haven't complained. Local planning officials everywhere seem to be a tricky bunch who rarely are even handed with rulings. This bunch sounds a bit too full of themselves, as they often do. Too much or proper justice?

A man's home is his castle — but not if British authorities say it has to be destroyed.

That's the situation faced by Robert Fidler, a farmer who lost a High Court bid Wednesday to protect the once-secret castle he built 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of London and kept hidden from planning authorities.

The adverse decision means Fidler's roof must come down. He has one year to comply unless an appeal is successful.

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WH reportedly getting behind House passage of Senate bill with reconciliation fix

I suppose this is good, though I'm still rather sickened by the Senate bill:

Obama and the White House have not publicly stated a preference on how they’d like Congressional Dems to proceed. But White House aides have privately made it clear to the Dem leadership that they support the approach many Dems are coalescing behind: The House passing the Senate bill, with fixes made by the Senate via reconciliation, the sources say.

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A modest compromise on 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'

Advocates want Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed this year, while military leaders say they need time to determine how best to implement the repeal. We can address both wishes by passing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell this year, and delaying its implementation until next January. This meets the desires of repeal advocates to rescind the legislation in a timely manner, and the needs of the Pentagon to do it right.

Read the rest of my proposal on AMERICAblog Gay. Read More......

Potential GOP Senate candidate Tommy Thompson joins hedge fund

Even at this relatively late date, there's still some uncertainty about some Senate races.

Taegan Goddard reports on a development in Wisconsin where Tommy Thompson, who served as Governor of Wisconsin and a cabinet secretary under George W. Bush, was rumored to be considering a challenge to incumbent Russ Feingold. Thompson has joined a hedge fund, which Taegan notes:

It would seem Thomson is no longer weighing a challenge to Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) -- even though he was leading in the most recent poll.

He's probably right. But, in the warped world of the GOP, being the candidate of hedge funds and big banks, is considered an asset. And, the financial services industry gave heavily to Scott Brown:

In a six-day span just before the US Senate election, Republican Scott Brown collected nearly $450,000 from donors who work at financial companies, a sign the industry is prepared to spend heavily in the upcoming midterm elections to beat back new controls and taxes President Obama wants to impose.

In 2010, I wouldn't rule anything out. This may be Tommy Thompson's effort to burnish his cred with the financial sector donors. Read More......

Brown will become a Senator tomorrow

The GOP takes control of the Senate tomorrow:

Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R), the successor to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), will be sworn in to office Thursday afternoon, giving Republicans 41 seats in the upper chamber.

"Once we get his certificate, we expect to swear him in tomorrow afternoon as early as 5 o'clock, which is earlier than he suggested," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), in an interview Wednesday.

Brown's entry into the Senate marks the formal end of the Democrats' filibuster-proof Senate majority.

And, they used that power so well, didn't they? It will suck that the Democrats only have an 18-seat majority. Read More......

When are we going to treat Pakistan as a real war?

Noah Shachtman of WIRED:

[T]oday, three U.S. soldiers were killed and two more were wounded by an improvised bomb in Pakistan. The area was known “as a Taliban stronghold,” the New York Times notes. But the “Pakistani military had declared cleared of the militants.”

It’s another sign that America’s once-small, once-secret war in Pakistan is growing bigger, more conventional, and busting out into the open. The U.S. Air Force now conducts flights over Pakistani soil. U.S. security contractors operate in the country. U.S. strikes are growing larger, more frequent, and more deadly; the latest attack reportedly involved 17 missiles and killed as many as 29 people. Billions of dollars in U.S. aid goes to Islamabad. And now, U.S. forces are dying in Pakistan.

Which begs the question: When are we going to start treating this conflict in Pakistan as a real war — with real oversight and real disclosure about what the hell our people are really doing there? Maybe at one point, this conflict could’ve been swept under the rug as some classified CIA op. But that was billions of dollars and hundreds of Pakistani and American lives ago.

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BofA trader bonuses on par with 2006 - before the crash

In case there were any doubts, Wall Street is reasserting themselves and putting on their crown, again. And to think Senator Dodd thinks the Volker plan is too aggressive. Huh.

The payout is about 19 percent of the $23 billion in revenue the company made from its investment banking and capital markets divisions, according to the Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Each banker and trader will collect an average $300,000 to $500,000 for 2009, a figure close to what Bank of America paid in 2006, its peak year for such payouts, the report said.

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BREAKING: Colin Powell now favors repeal of DADT

Huge. Read More......

Obama ignores China, will meet Dalai Lama

Good. There's no reason why China should dictate US foreign policy.

"The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters traveling with Obama to New Hampshire.

"We expect that our relationship with China is mature enough where we can work on areas of mutual concern such as climate, the global economy and non-proliferation and discuss frankly and candidly those areas where we disagree."

NOTE FROM JOHN: Wow. Okay I'm impressed. But China can get might bitchy about these sort of things. It will be interesting to see if Obama can avoid his instinct to make nice. Read More......

Cillizza: Is the Senate majority now in play?

If you're a Democratic constituency still waiting for your "change," you may have ten months to go before it's too late. And even more people are talking about the House majority being in peril. Read More......

Obama's 'new' strategy is to reach out to Republicans

The New York Times examines Obama's "new" strategy of outreach to Republicans. The geniuses at the White House seem to think if Obama offers a hand to the GOPers, and the GOPers reject it, that the American people will see how awful the GOPers are. Or something like that:

The president has invited members of Congress from both parties for a meeting at the White House next Tuesday, the first of the bipartisan brainstorming sessions that Mr. Obama proposed during the State of the Union address. Republicans will also be invited to the White House this weekend to watch the Super Bowl, as well as to Camp David and other venues for social visits.

The outreach represents a marked shift in both strategy and substance by Mr. Obama and his allies at a time when Democrats are adapting to the loss of their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and the president has been losing support among independent voters.

Marked shift? Here's the thing: Obama started off his presideency with an outreach strategy to Republicans. Lest we forget, that was part of his plan for the stimulus bill. He compromised with himself to get a lot of GOP voters, but didn't get any in the House and only got three in the Senate. And, for over half of 2009, the Democrats didn't have that "60-vote supermajority." Arlen Specter was a Republican until April 28, 2009. Al Franken wasn't sworn in until July 7, 2009.

From my perspective, Obama reached out too hard to the Republicans. Does anyone at the White House remember the "Gang of Six" debacle? That's when Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina enabled Senator Max Baucus to delay the health care debate for months while searching for a bipartisan compromise that was never going to happen. Look where that got them.

Here's the essence of the "new" strategy:

The White House’s goal is to show voters that Mr. Obama is willing to engage Republicans rather than govern in a partisan manner while forcing Republicans to make substantive compromises or be portrayed as obstructionist given their renewed power to block almost all legislation in the Senate.

While the strategy addresses some of Mr. Obama’s short-term political problems, it is not clear that it will help him with the more fundamental issue facing him as the leader of the party in power, which is showing voters results before Election Day, especially with unemployment in double digits and the health bill stalled.

Here's an idea for the White House. Yesterday, Obama was in New Hampshire. Make the next trip to Maine. Obama's got a high approval rating in the state. Tell the people of Maine what their Senators are doing to block progress. People in Maine think Snowe and Collins are moderates, but in DC, they side with Mitch McConnell, Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint. Obama has to fight for what he believes in -- and play hard ball.

I don't think Super Bowl parties are going to change anything. Read More......

Consumer protection for finance appears to be falling apart

Just because Wall Street has bounced back (via government handouts that became near record bonuses) doesn't mean the victims of their practices have. This is a classic example of time (and easy money) killing a deal. Wall Street rallied the troops - also known as lobbyists with deep pockets - and now the reform that would benefit everyone outside of Wall Street is on life support. Does anyone really trust the financial industry to do the right thing more than government regulators?

President Obama's focus, we're now told, is on jobs, jobs, jobs. That's nifty, but it doesn't bode well for other big-ticket policy goals, such as creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to safeguard us from abusive bank practices.

That idea, which Obama championed and leading Democratic lawmakers embraced, is now expected to be a long shot thanks to ferocious opposition by the banking industry, which says no additional regulatory oversight is needed.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Yesterday was quite a day with the Senate hearing on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I'm still struck by the very powerful words of Admiral Mullen. It's so rare these days to see a person in power speak with such conviction, especially when it wasn't the easy thing to do. We just don't expect our leaders to do the right thing anymore, which is pretty sad. Now, Obama and the Democrats should seize the momentum and include the DADT repeal language in the Defense authorization bill. Delay, as we saw with health care, only empowers the opposition.

The President is taking questions from Senate Democrats at their issues conference today. It's open to the press and I suspect it will be televised. There are only 59 Democrats in the caucus now, so it's really hard for them to get anything done. Poor things.

Let's get it started.. Read More......

Dodd & GOP argue against Volcker reforms

There's a reason why Dodd is unpopular and this helps highlight part of the problem. He believes the reforms are too aggressive and that it will cause the entire reform - the watered down, easy going reform that nobody really likes - might collapse. Wall Street has complained about it but they complain if they don't get mega bonuses too. Tough. The GOP is less of a surprise since backing the bankers is what they do. This is the system that they spent years picking apart until we had the Great Recession. This failed system is what they want. The only person in the room yesterday that has credibility (beyond lobbyists) was Volker.

Mr. Volcker, who led the Fed from 1979 to 1987, used a vivid metaphor in calling for the establishment of a “resolution authority,” an idea that has attracted widespread bipartisan support.

“The idea is that, with procedural safeguards, a designated agency be provided authority to intervene and take control of a major financial institution on the brink of failure,” he testified.

“The mandate is to arrange an orderly liquidation or merger — in other words, euthanasia, not a rescue.”

But the bulk of his testimony focused on the proposed ban on proprietary trading — what President Obama has called the Volcker rule.

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AIG to hand out $100 million in bonuses today

They'd like everyone to be impressed that they reduced the bonus number by $20 million. Impressed? Senator Grassley is sort of right with his criticism, though for some strange reason he forgot to include Bush and Paulson, who deserve as much or possibly a bit more than Obama. There's plenty of blame to go around and Congress could include themselves in the blame as well just as voters do.

The American International Group has agreed to cut employee bonuses by $20 million and will distribute about $100 million on Wednesday, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations.

But the reductions may not be enough to appease the company’s critics, who do not accept the company’s argument that it has to honor contracts established before its government bailout.

“A.I.G. has taxpayers over a barrel,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, in a statement on Tuesday night. “The Obama administration has been outmaneuvered. And the closed-door negotiations just add to the skepticism that the taxpayers will ever get the upper hand.”

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Bad economic talk

An Econ 101 student could tell you that this is flat out wrong, and rather dangerous, talk. The government should not cut spending during an economic downturn, or the economic downturn will turn even worse.

At a town hall meeting there today President Obama tried to hammer home his message that the federal government needs to rein in its spending in tough economic times, just as Americans shouldn't gamble their money away in Las Vegas.

"Responsible families don't do their budgets the way the federal government does," he said. "When times are tough, you -- you tighten your belts."

"You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same."

Clearly, the President is trying to promote an image of populism. I get that. But his message is wrong, and it's dangerous for the economy. And I'm betting he knows that. Worse yet, it's the exact message the Republicans used to fight the stimulus, claiming that when things get tough every family knows you tighten your belt - heck, it's their exact words.

I think we cede an important part of the debate to the GOP when we start using their talking points. First, the points are simply wrong. Second, they imply that we screwed up. That we didn't tighten out belt. When in fact, if anything, Obama didn't spend as much as he should have to help get the economy out of its current rut. And he knows that, now. Why not just explain it to people, over and over again until it sticks? It's what the Republicans do.

If we don't learn HOW to message, it won't help us to simply change our message. (Especially when our message is wrong.) It's like constantly trying to improve sales by improving your product, when the product is already fine - it's always been fine - but your marketing sucks. Read More......

ABC: Obama Administration secured help of Abdulmuttalab's family to get him to share intelligence

I thought only torture, and sacrificing all of our beliefs, got these guys to talk:

The family of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab, played a pivotal role in getting their son to start cooperating with federal authorities in sharing information about Al Qaeda, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening.

Abdulmuttalab has been cooperating with authorities and sharing intelligence since last Thursday, another administration official told ABC News.

The family was “instrumental in gaining Mr. Abdulmuttalab’s cooperation," said the senior administration official. The information Abdulmuttalab is sharing has been described by other officials as fresh and actionable.

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