Augmented reality tattoos

It's a bit weird.



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Sarah Palin says birthers have a right to be a part of tea-party movement

More power to them. The more fringe nuts that the Teabaggers collect, the better.

Sarah Palin said Tuesday that the so-called birthers who question President Barack Obama's citizenship deserve a seat in the tea-party movement.

Appearing on the O'Reilly Factor, the former Alaska governor was pressed by Bill O'Reilly on whether the tea-partiers could be negatively characterized by the birthers.

O'Reilly asked, "Do you think the birther people deserve a place at the table?"
Palin responded, "There is always going to be an element of those who want to be part of a movement who have their own ideas of where the country should go or what's going on with the country."

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Beck cites CBO to show stimulus was more expensive than first thought, leaves out fact that CBO said stimulus created/saved 2m jobs

I'm watching a new video of FOX News' Glenn Beck that's going around, and as usual he acts like a bit of a nut. But what's so disturbing is that this video is a perfect example of how Beck, and FOX generally, lie to their audience. Let me walk you through it.

1. Beck cites CBO (the Congressional Budget Office, an independent non-partisan congressional agency that is not tainted by politics) numbers to show that the stimulus cost more than the President Obama thought it would. On the order of 800 and some billion instead of 780 billion or so. Okay, fair enough.

2. Beck goes on to mock the President for mentioning examples of jobs saved by the stimulus. Beck clearly implies that the stimulus has helped, at most, a handful of people, but otherwise it's been pretty useless.

Beck's proof? A recent CBS poll showing that only 6% of Americans believe that the stimulus created any jobs. Beck goes on to compare this to the number of people who think Elvis is alive, or that we never really landed on the moon.

Now, note what Beck did. He took a survey showing that people didn't BELIEVE the stimulus created jobs, and used that as proof that the stimulus actually did NOT create any jobs. In fact, 6% of the American people may not believe the stimulus created any jobs because they're not away of the truth. It's possible. And in fact, if you look at the independent studies of the stimulus, done by folks like CBO - the folks Glenn Beck quotes a responsible source - you'll find that the stimulus has done wonders for employment over the past year. In fact:

Among people who know what they're talking about, the fact that the stimulus has been successful isn't even controversial anymore. The leading economic research firms -- IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers, and Moody's Economy.com -- estimate that the effort has already created as many as 1.8 million jobs, and will create about 2.5 million jobs when all is said and done. As far as the independent Congressional Budget Office is concerned, those are conservative estimates -- the CBO believes the stimulus is already responsible for as many as 2.4 million jobs.

Or just check out the Wall Street Journal, they reported on the CBO study too.

Watch the video. Beck is certainly a great entertainer. But he's also one hell of a liar. He clearly suggests that the fact that the American people don't realize the stimulus has worked means that is has NOT worked. And now we know, from the very people Glenn Beck cites as his money experts, that this is a flat out lie. The man just lies, so long as it permits him to take a cheap shot at Democrats. Do your own research on the topic. He lied.

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So I went to the White House today...

I was invited to a progressive media get together at the White House today. It's freezing in DC, nice and windy, and the snow is still everywhere, except now it's turning black and nasty. There were guys with forced water machines trying to blow the remnants of snow off the White House driveway.

Nine of us were invited, this time, including Yglesias, Atrios, Oliver Willis, Thom Hartmann, Chris Hayes, Jonathan Singer, Tim Fernholz, and Erin Kotecki Vest. These get togethers started a few months ago, and basically they invite different members of the progressive media each time. While waiting in the driveway, right next to where the nightly TV news do their White House shots, one of my fellow invitees who I've known for a long time said to me, "hey, you're here." I said, yeah, why? Well, he said to me, we were trying to figure out who wouldn't be invited and we all said "Aravosis!" Um, I'll take that as a compliment, I asked? Yes.



Instead of the Roosevelt Room, where we were supposed to have our meeting - which would have been neat, as it's right across from the Oval Office, and steeped in history - we were shepherded into a small conference room in the basement that reminded me of the dining room of a nuclear submarine I got to pilot once, for a grand total of five minutes, about 180 feet under the Altantic when I was a Hill staffer (those photos will likely never see the light of day). This room was quite small, nautically themed, with paneled walls, and one of those clock/barometer round things, and, of course, a picture of a sub on the wall!

Our meeting was with Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to VP Biden. Berstein started with some background on the stimulus, and the usual data about how many jobs it's created etc. Honestly, it's not worth giving you the details - we've done numerous posts on the jobs saved and created by the stimulus, including Joe's post this morning, and we'll have a few more tonight.

I guess what struck me as most interesting about the meeting were two things. First, when Bernstein noted that, in trying to solve the country's economic problems, the administration faces "budget constraints and political constraints." By that, I took Bernstein to mean that the stimulus could only be so large last time, and we can only spend so much more money this time, because we're facing a huge deficit, so there's not much money to spend, and because the Hill and public opinion won't let us spend more.

That struck me as GOP talking points winning the day, and I said so (Professor Kyle wrote about this very notion the other day on the blog). The only reason we're facing a budget constraint is because we gave in on the political constraint. We permitted Republicans to spin the first stimulus as an abysmal failure, when in fact it created or saved up to 2m jobs. Since Democrats didn't adequately defend the stimulus, and didn't sufficiently paint the deficit as the Republicans' doing, we now are not "politically" permitted to have a larger stimulus because the fiscal constraint has become more important than economic recovery.

And whose fault is that?

Apparently ours.

Bernstein said that the progressive blogs (perhaps he said progressive media in general) haven't done enough over the past year to tell the positive side of the stimulus.

Hmm... Didn't sound quite right to me, so I checked our archives. On AMERICAblog, we've written at least 44 posts about the stimulus over the past year. That's almost one a week. We also wrote 186 posts that mention the stimulus. But the larger issue is that the blogs have not been recalcitrant in promoting the President's agenda. We're the biggest rah-rah team he's got on the economy, other than the fact that most of us believe that the stimulus was too small. But I doubt any of us in that room question, or have ever questioned, the stimulus' effectiveness. And we've made that view known publicly, repeatedly.

The problem with the stimulus messaging is, well, the stimulus messaging itself. The problem is the White House messaging operation. It kind of sucks. And while Joe and I were living in Democratic exile over the past year for being the Cassandra's who saw all of this coming early on, nowadays it's pretty much accepted around town that the WH has been losing the messaging war with the GOP on a lot of issues. The stimulus isn't the problem, it's the symptom. We had the same issue come up with health care reform, a wildly popular idea that somehow the White House just couldn't sell.

I'm not going to write a graduate thesis here on marketing. But at times it feels as though the White House messaging folks - and I'm talking Axelrod's shop - don't think they even need try to sell what the President peddles. It's as if they think they're all so smart, and what they have to offer so obviously good for America, that the President's agenda will magically sell itself to both the Hill and the American people.

It won't.

Democrats suck at marketing while governing. And while Obama was (generally) great at it during the campaign, so was Jimmy Carter. Read More......

Rep. Jason Chaffetz agrees with 9/11 truther: 'I know there’s still a lot to learn'

Wow.

We're most familiar with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) because of his obsession with gay issues. He's leading the effort to block D.C.'s new same-sex marriage law.

But, Think Progress reports an even more disturbing fact about Chaffetz. He's in cahoots with the 9/11 truthers:

Recently, a truther organization called “We Are The Change” spoke to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) — a friend of Beck and a frequent guest on his show — about reopening an investigation into 9/11. Chaffetz agreed with the activist, and even noted that he had spoken to professor Steven Jones, leading 9/11 truther, who Chaffetz said had done “interesting work”:

Q: A reopening into the investigation of 9/11?

CHAFFETZ: Well there’s a lot we still need to learn. Of course we want to look into that issue, look at every aspect of it. [...] Who was the BYU professor? [...] Steve Jones, yeah I’ve met with him. He’s done some interesting work.

Q: Have you given much thought to the possibility it was a falsified terrorist attack on 9/11?

CHAFFETZ: Well I know there’s still a lot to learn about what happened and what didn’t happen, we should be vigilant and continue to investigate that, absolutely.

Q: Appreciate that. We at We Are The Change believe it was a falsified terrorist attack, that the buildings came down with internally placed demolition.

This is pretty extreme. Just about everyone on both sides of the political spectrum, including Glenn Beck, has disavowed the 9/11 conspiracy crowd.

Okay, now we know: One of the leading homophobes in the House is a conspiracy nut. We'll never let him forget it. Read More......

Bank lobbying of Congress increasing

As if it wasn't bad enough before. Now Wall Street wants to spend even more money to avoid proper regulation. The GOP is doing its best to connect with the lobbyists though Obama has also made his own push to win over the hearts and minds of people who ruined the economy. Great options for voters, huh?

Even as the financial industry has sought to keep a low public profile, some of the country's largest banks have ramped up their spending on lobbying to fight off some of the stiffest regulatory proposals pending in Congress.

Lobbying expenditures jumped 12% from 2008 to $29.8 million last year among the eight banks and private equity firms that spent the most to influence legislation, according to data compiled from disclosure forms filed with Congress.

The biggest spender was JPMorgan Chase & Co., whose lobbying budget rose 12% to $6.2 million, enough for the firm to have more than 30 lobbyists working for it. Among other banks, spending on lobbying rose 27% at Wells Fargo & Co. and 16% at Morgan Stanley.

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DADT expert warns repeal is in 'grave danger.' Says Obama must get involved. HRC must challenge Obama to deliver.

Nathaniel Frank, the author of "Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America and a Senior Fellow at the Palm Center, says the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell "is in grave peril." We've linked to his powerful new essay about the current situation on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" over at AMERICAblog Gay. It's a must read for everyone who supports repeal of the law.

Frank is one of the nation's leading experts on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The Palm Center is one of the three lead groups, along with SLDN and Servicemembers United, working on the repeal of the military's gay ban.

In very clear language, Frank wants Obama and HRC to step up their efforts, arguing that the repeal of DADT is now on "life support." (Frank's piece is titled, "Life Support for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": Are Democrats the Problem?")

To say the least, this is not good. Frank's post confirms a lot of what John and I have been hearing and saying. On this legislation, the President plays a key role. As Frank notes, "Yes, Congress has to pass repeal to get this law off the books, but that process should begin with Obama telling the Pentagon to put repeal in the Authorization bill." The President has to be pushed -- and the leading LGBT lobbying organization, the Human Rights Campaign, has to use its access to lead the effort. That's why we launched the blog swarm yesterday.

Right now, it looks like repeal of DADT is the only one of Obama's key LGBT promises with a chance of passing this year. So, it better. Read More......

PPP analysis: Opposition to health care reform, and the repeal of DADT, is from people who will never vote for a Democrat, ever

From PPP, the polling folks Joe prefers:

The vast majority of opposition to health care and allowing gays to serve openly in the military is coming from people who already say there's no chance they'll vote Democratic this fall. That's an indication of minimal fallout for Congressional Democrats by acting on these issues.

37% of Americans say they will definitely not vote Democratic for Congress this year. 34% say they definitely will and that leaves roughly 30% of the country up for grabs.

Right now 50% of voters say they oppose President Obama's health care plan to just 39% in support. Digging a little deeper on those numbers though 64% of respondents planning or open to voting Democratic this fall support it with only 22% opposed. The overall numbers are negative only because of 94/1 opposition among folks who have said there is no way they'll vote Democratic this fall.

Isn't that the problem all along. Giving away 40% of the stimulus bill in tax cuts in order to woo 3 Republicans votes. We wooed them, they didn't vote for us anyway. Letting Max Baucus take the lead of health care reform, to make the bill more conservative, letting him waste months negotiating with Chuck Grassley, only to find that not even Olympia Snowe would end up supporting our efforts. Or letting the teabaggers shut down the health care reform meetings in August, and actually believing that they represented anyone other than themselves? They represent Republicans who have been brainwashed by Glenn Beck and who will never vote for a Democrat.

At some point Democrats need to come to terms with the fact that they run on a platform, and then get elected on that platform. People like their platform, regardless of the histrionics from the GOP and their false grassroots brigades. Glenn Beck, FOX News, the the Teabaggers will always be 20% of the country, angry, and a little bit crazy. Ignore them. They had their 14 years in the Congress and eight years in the White House. Now it's someone else's turn.

PPP notes the same problem with the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell:

It's a similar story when it comes to the prospect of repealing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' Over 54% of voters support it with 37% opposed. But among the voters Democrats need to make happy- the ones planning to or considering voting for them this year- there is 72/24 support for letting gays and lesbians serve openly in the military. The total numbers are brought down only because of 59/25 opposition with folks who will never vote for them anyway.

Congressional Democrats really need to decide if they're going to let their agenda be dictated by voters who won't support them no matter what they do. These numbers provide pretty clear evidence that most of the voters opposed to health care and repeal of DADT will not consider voting Democratic even if the party decides not to move on those issues.

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Glenn Beck to "scar[ed]" caller on disability asking if Obama's heading toward eugenics: "He'd claim no, but ... yes"

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The road to recovery is fraught with good intentions

The DNCs's OFA is sending around this chart, above, to demonstrate how the Obama administration has turned around the employment situation since taking office. And the chart rightly shows how the number of jobs lost each month increased under the last year of Bush, and decreased under Obama. But something seemed wrong, so I asked our resident economist, Professor Steven Kyle of Cornell, to take a look at this chart. Here's what he said:

It is a good illustration of exactly what many of us economists have been saying - the stimulus was big enough to stop the job loss, but not big enough to put all those unemployed people back to work again. So, if we switch to "deficit reduction mode," as the President has said, and start cutting spending, there is a very real danger of slipping back into a recessionary dynamic (i.e., downward momentum could get reestablished - at the moment we are sort of just staggering along, neither here nor there).

What I find puzzling is that the Administration apparently seems to think that cutting spending is a bigger political winner than getting people jobs. No reading of the data I have ever seen would support that. And to the extent that some people DO like cutting deficits, it is irrelevant, because those types aren't going to vote for a Democrat anyway.

I guess infrastructure just isn't sexy enough. Who gets excited about repairing bridges? (Apart from the guys who get jobs to do it, that is.)

Steve's point: This isn't an unemployment graph, it's a "job loss" graph. So even though we're back to zero, we're still at 9.7% unemployment. So we've stopped the hemorrhaging, for now, but we haven't fixed the problem. A larger stimulus would have saved/created more jobs. And cutting spending could very well put us back into a recession, cutting even more jobs. Read More......

Next No. 2 for Taliban could be former Guantánamo detainee released by Bush

Via Newsweek:

The capture last week of Mullah Baradar Akhund, the Taliban's No. 2 leader, is expected to spark a leadership reshuffle within the organization's Afghan branch. One jihadist who could step up to take Baradar's place: Mullah Abdul Qayam Zakir, a ruthless former Guantánamo detainee released back to Afghanistan by the Bush administration.

Okay, now imagine the uproar if the last two words of that paragraph were "Obama administration." Read More......

Independent evaluators concur: Democrats in Congress passed a stimulus bill that really worked

As Republicans continue their hypocrisy over the stimulus, the facts are becoming clear. It worked. It really worked:

Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

Let’s say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let’s also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs — employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.

If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?

Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren’t hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill.

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

I still think it should have been bigger with fewer tax cuts. But, the important thing is that the stimulus bill both saved and created jobs. This country was teetering on the brink thanks to Bush and the GOP. Obama and the Democratic Congress saved it. And, they're not getting enough credit.

Examples of GOP stimulus hypocrisy are on display at DailyKos via the Wall Street Journal, Think Progress via, amazingly enough, FOX News and here thanks to Rachel. Read More......

Wall Street elders united in calls for reform and more regulation

What's interesting here is that this is a group of people who made a comfortable living from a robust Wall Street. Their Wall Street had more regulations yet they still managed to do quite well. For some others, that wasn't enough so they stripped out the regulation that served the country well for decades, hoping for an even larger payout. We know the story of what really happened and yes, the select few did receive even larger payouts. If only it wasn't on the backs of the rest of the country. Privatized profits and socialized losses, as they say. NY Times:

Put aside for a moment the populist pressure to regulate banking and trading. Ask the elder statesmen of these industries — giants like George Soros, Nicholas F. Brady, John S. Reed, William H. Donaldson and John C. Bogle — where they stand on regulation, and they will bowl you over with their populism.

They certainly don’t think of themselves as angry Main Streeters. They grew quite wealthy in finance, typically making their fortunes in the ’70s and ’80s when banks and securities firms were considerably more regulated. And now, parting company with the current chieftains, they want more rules.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President has a busy day.

First, Obama will mark the one-year anniversary of signing the stimulus bill into law. That legislation helped save jobs that would have been lost. And, it probably prevented us from sliding into a depression. We'll have more on this later today.

Then, he's holding a meeting with his top national security advisers to discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan. All the big players will be there including Secretary Clinton, Secretary Gates, CIA Director Panetta and Admiral Mullen. U.S. forces have been undertaking a massive operation to secure Marja.

So, basically, Obama is spending his day focused on the huge domestic and foreign policy messes left by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Stunning that anyone still listens to Cheney after what his crew did to the country.

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

China, rest of world back off of US debt

So who will buy America's debt next? China already has a substantial investment and from their perspective, it makes much more sense to diversify. The end result for the US could very well be selling debt at a much more expensive rate. Sooner or later this problem will have to be addressed and it probably means higher taxes.

The Treasury Department reported that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, surpassing the previous record of a $44.5 billion drop in April 2009.

The big drop in China's holdings meant that it lost the top spot in terms of foreign ownership of U.S. Treasuries, dropping to second place behind Japan.

Japan also reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries, cutting them by $11.5 billion to $768.8 billion in December, but that amount was still more than China's December total of $755.4 billion.

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Malawi launches anti-gay operation

The American religious right has caused so many problems across the African continent. Whether it's their dangerous plan to promote abstinence over condoms or supporting anti-gay programs, it's time for them to be sent back home. They look at Africa as a test lab or their creepy ideas and when anything goes wrong, they fail to take responsibility for the problem. They ought to stick to their own community for guinea pigs and leave everyone else alone. Go away.

Dave Chingwalu, a spokesman for police in Malawi, said a 60-year-old man was arrested yesterday and charged with sodomy. Chingwalu said he received a complaint from a young man that he had been asked to undress by the older man and was then sodomised. Police investigations had uncovered a network of high-profile people involved homosexual acts, investigations were under way "and we will arrest them all", Chingwalu said.

Malawi has been criticised by international groups for the prosecution of Steven Monjeza, 26, and 20-year-old Tiwonge Chimbalanga, jailed in December for holding a wedding ceremony. The men were charged with unnatural acts and gross indecency and could be imprisoned for up to 14 years if found guilty.

A 21-year-old man was recently sentenced to two months' community service for putting up pro-gay rights posters, and a senior minister expelled a woman from her town even after a court acquitted her on charges of having sex with two girls.

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Qwest CEO: 'A 100 meg is just a dream'

Uh huh, unless you live in France, Japan, South Korea or numerous other countries outside of North America where it's existed for years. There's something seriously wrong when this is the response that a CEO provides when asked about internet speed comparable to what many other countries already offer. It's pathetic that lazy CEOs like this have accepted such antiquated technology for the US. The GOP did a great job destroying competition in American business and sorry excuses for leaders like this are precisely why the US is falling behind. Even in France - yes, socialist France - it's easy to locate a number of options for high speed internet. And of course, it's going to be cheaper than the backwards offerings that corporate America is happy to offer.

What ever happened to robust competition and giving the best to American consumers? The FCC is right to force corporate America to get off its collective duff and deliver. It's also no wonder why customers are dumping Qwest. How much can you really expect from a blockhead CEO like they have?

Genachowski offered few details on the plan and how the FCC would get providers to reach the minimum speeds.

One, Qwest Communications International Inc, said the goal was unrealistic.

"A 100 meg is just a dream," Qwest Chief Executive Edward Mueller told Reuters. "First, we don't think the customer wants that. Secondly, if (Google has) invented some technology, we'd love to partner with them."

The United States ranked 19th in broadband speed, lagging being Japan, Korea and France, according to a 2008 study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

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