A Dunkin Donuts has decided to stop accepting pennies

Other than sentimental value, it's not clear why we continue to use them. It's true, you can't buy a thing with them. Read the rest of this post...

Crazy Jean Schmidt talks abortion with six-year-old 1st graders

How does this woman keep getting elected?

“She defined abortion as the taking of a child's life in the mother's womb,” Teller wrote in the letter. "She indicated that abortion involves the killing of a child before it is born."

"She received a follow-up question, which she answered consistent with Catholic teaching," her spokesman Bruce Pfaff told Cinncinati.com.

When students kept asking about abortion, Pfaff says Schmidt told them to talk to their parents.

Read the rest of this post...

Kuttner on Obama and the elections tomorrow

Robert Kuttner at Huffington Post:

[L]iberals are dismayed with Obama not because this or that initiative was insufficiently lefty. They are mad at Obama for blowing what had to be a Roosevelt moment, and thereby ushering in a totally needless period of far-right resurgence, dominated by a lunatic right that makes Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove look like moderates.

Obama did not decide to be bold in his first two years in office. He decided to be timid and conciliatory. People on his own economics team, such as Christina Romer, were telling him that the stimulus was far too small, and that it was too tilted to tax cuts.

Even more important than the scale of the recovery program was Obama's failure to be bold enough when it came to reorganizing failing banks. But his economic team, led by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, opted for propping them up and disguising the big holes in their balance sheets rather than cleaning the banks out.

This approach, about as bold as Hank Paulson, had huge political and economic costs. Politically, it fed right wing populism by putting Obama in bed with Wall Street. Economically, it led to the Japan scenario that we are now suffering, in which even zero interest rates can't pull the economy out of the ditch.

And this is not Monday morning quarterbacking either. Several of America's best economists--Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, Nouriel Roubini--were making these criticisms at the time. So was the Congressional Oversight Panel ably led by Elizabeth Warren, which explains why Tim Geithner keeps trying to do her in.

The downside is that Obama and his orthodox economic team have ceded a moment of populist rage to a right wing that is not interested in governing or in problem solving, but only in tearing institutions down.

Obama will save his presidency and the economy by belatedly deciding to practice the boldness mistakenly ascribed to him--by putting forth a genuine recovery program, fighting for it, and exposing Republican obstructionism.

Read the rest of this post...

Here we go with the bogus spin about how Dems lost (if they lose)

Hotline On Call:

When polls close Tuesday, Republicans are overwhelmingly expected to win enough seats to take back the House. Just two years ago, the GOP was all but left for dead. How did Democrats squander the major electoral gains they achieved and snatch defeat out of the jaws of long-term victory?

The answer, both Democratic and Republican pollsters agree, is two-fold: Democrats over-promised on their first major initiative, then overreached on their most defining legislative effort. That combination has doomed Democrats to a disastrous election as voters take out a mix of frustration and anger on the party in charge.

He means they over-promised on the stimulus, and over-reached on health care reform.

No, and no. In fact, Democrats wimped out on both, and that's why they're in trouble tomorrow.

It all comes down to backbone and messaging. The President told the public the truth about how much a good stimulus bill could lower unemployment, he didn't over-promise at all. The only problem, the President didn't ask for a good stimulus bill. He asked for half of what we needed, then gave another 35% of what remained to the Republicans in the form of stimulus-useless tax cuts. So it's not surprise the bill didn't sufficiently lower unemployment. Few outside of the White House thought it would.

And if the President didn't think he could get a costlier bill, he should have gone to the public and embarrassed those members of Congress who opposed him, and opposed the nation's recovery. Speaking of recovery, whose brilliant idea was it to rename the stimulus bill the national recovery act, blah blah blah. I don't even know the law's new name. There was a sign recently in my neighborhood, near some construction work, touting some national recovery act blah blah. I think it was the stimulus. I had to take a picture and send it to a friend to be sure. That's seriously bad messaging.

And that brings us to the second part of the problem: messaging. The Republicans, from the beginning, claimed that we had no economic crisis, that the stimulus was unnecessary, and that it wouldn't produce results. The administration (and Congress) didn't fight back nearly hard enough on any of that messaging, and the GOP lies stuck. It's as simple as that. Even when CBO concluded that the stimulus saved or created millions of jobs, the public didn't believe it because, by that point, the GOP controlled the message. And in fact, who could blame the public? Unemployment is at 9.2% and expected to stay high for years.  That sure makes it sound like the "cure" didn't work.

Then there's health care reform. Same problems. The President refused to get engaged, and fight for what he promised, and the Democratic messaging was abominable. How else could Sarah Palin get away with her "death panel" garbage? Had a Democrat tried that kind of a lie on the Bush administration, he'd have been strung up alive. But Palin, and her Teabagger minions, were given a pass.

And tomorrow it all comes back to bite the Democrats in the ass.

No one over-promised, and no one over-reached. The President and the Democrats in Congress lacked spine and an ability to message. They ticked off the base, left the economy in more shambles than it needed to be, and permitted the GOP to lie with impunity. And that's the stuff of losing elections. Read the rest of this post...

Oil hits six month high of $83.45

Not what a less than robust recovery needs. Read the rest of this post...

How important is this election compared to other elections?

Yglesias:

The 2008 elections led, after all, to a very important piece of health care legislation that’s not going to be repealed during the 112th congress. In other words, even after the soon-to-come revival of conservative political fortunes the health policy status quo is going to settle well to the left of where it was before the election. And it seems overwhelmingly likely to me that had Kay Hagan and Al Franken not won their close elections in North Carolina and Minnesota that the Affordable Care Act never would have passed. So as far as elections go, that’s a pretty big deal.

By contrast, looking ahead even if the Democrats defy expectations and eke out a narrow House majority they’re not going to turn around and pass a cap-and-trade bill. And if Republicans defy expectations and pick up 65 House seats instead of 55 House seats, that’s not going to conjure up the votes to scrap the minimum wage. In any remotely plausible range of outcomes, we’ll be looking at an era where either nothing happens or else compromises are reached between the party leaders.

Or the 2008 elections were the chance of a lifetime for Democrats and they blew it, on health care (where they might have gotten much more had they simply tried) and on everything else. Even the stimulus was botched (asking for half of what was needed, then giving away another 35% in near-useless tax cuts) - thus the 9.6% 9.2% unemployment rate that's dooming Democratic control of Congress. And, if you're gay, an enviro, an immigration advocate/Latino, a civil libertarian, an AIDS activist, or a union member, to name a few categories of the Democratic base, the results of the 2008 election weren't nearly so laudable, since most of the big biggest promises made to you were broken, and now are toast. Read the rest of this post...

Stewart/Colbert rally attendees not up on their own local congressional races

I've been following a back and forth between progressive leaders about whether Jon Stewart should have made his march more election-focused, even urging people to vote, let alone for Democrats. The response from some has been that Stewart's voters, especially in the DC area, already know who to vote for.

Not necessarily.

This new video by New Left Media interviews a sampling of people attending this weekend's rally. And while most are more coherent and sane than you'd find at a Glenn Beck rally, what's troubling is what happens at 8 minutes 42 seconds into the video. Chase asks a number of the most outspoken attendees about their own local congressional races back home. Not a one had any idea who was running.

Read the rest of this post...

Top Republicans are trying to figure out how to stop Palin

Politico:

Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as the elections are over: Stop Sarah Palin.

Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns.

Palin responds, in her own version of the English language:

Shortly after the article was posted, Palin went on Fox News, where she is a paid commentator, to criticize POLITICO and any unnamed critics.

"[T]hese are the brave people who want to lead the nation and run the world. And but they're not brave enough to put their name in an article," she told Greta Van Susteren. "I learned back in the day that who, what, when, where, why of journalism. You report that facts; you let other people decide what their opinion is going to be. So having unnamed sources in an article like this is very, very, disappointing, you know. And it doesn't do anybody any good. It doesn't educate anybody. … I'm getting used to it though."

That would be the same Greta Van Susteren who has a huge conflict of interest ever interviewing Sarah Palin, but this is FOX after all. Read the rest of this post...

NYT: Young voters feeling awfully disaffected

This could be any Democratic constituency. From the NYT:

Others, though, said the administration or Organizing for America, the group that grew from the Obama campaign, could have done more. Why didn’t Mr. Obama, who appeared on “The Daily Show” this week for the first time since taking office, go there more often, they asked? Why did he seem to refocus on young people only in the last few months, with campus rallies? The health care debate seems to have been where the momentum was lost. Even though Organizing for America held campus “teach-ins” with experts to explain the legislation, all the talk about Medicare led many young people to feel alienated and ignored by the president.

Younger voters said older ones seemed to become the priority. “He made young people feel important, then he got into office and there was no one talking to us,” Ms. Kirsner said.

Then there's this.

“People were infatuated in 2008,” said Maddy Joseph, 20, a member of the group. “The reality has set in, and that’s frustrating for a lot of people.”

No, it's not the reality. It didn't have to be the reality. The President, and Democrats in Congress, chose not to push the agenda they promised, and they chose not to fight back when the Republicans repeatedly lied about the weak-tea agenda the Dems were in fact pushing. You bet that's dispiriting. But was it inevitable? Only to the extent that today's Democratic leaders have no backbone, yes. But it's not inevitable in the sense that our leaders couldn't have fought back harder. Yes, they could have. They simply chose not to. Read the rest of this post...

Next Senate unlikely to include black members

Funny that the Republican wave doesn't include blacks. Read the rest of this post...

Who are 'the American people'?

A short video montage and commentary I put together about the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally:

Read the rest of this post...

Beltway predictions become more dire as Election Day approaches and Rachel gives her take

Just so you know what the inside-the-beltway pundits are thinking, Howard Fineman talked to some Democratic consultants -- and it doesn't look good:

Publicly, Democratic campaign officials are putting a brave face on predictions of House losses, with House Campaign Chairman Chris Van Hollen claiming that the party might hold the chamber, meaning that they would lose fewer than a net of 39 seats. Other officials are pegging the expected losses at 50-55 seats, in line with consensus independent public forecasts, such as those of Charlie Cook and Nate Silver.

But within the last 12 hours I've spoken to two top Democratic consultants -- very active on the battlefield this fall and with 60 years of on-the-ground experience between them -- who told me some shocking news.

Separately, and privately, they each told me that they thought the Democrats could lose 70 seats on Tuesday. That would be a blowout of historic proportions.

So, there you have it. Howard Fineman and two "top Democratic consultants" think we're doomed. I think Democratic consultants, who are a big part of the professional Democratic class, are as much to blame as anyone else. They tend to preach moderation and timidity to candidates. And, most of their ads just suck.

UPDATE: Rachel Maddow offered some perspective from outside the Beltway:

And yet the latest polls also show that Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans, in general, by a small yet clear margin. The only way to clear those mixed signals up is by voting and then tallying it all up.

Rachel Maddow on the special Sunday election show:

The distance between Democrats winning versus Democrats losing on Tuesday is the distance between your tuchus on the couch if you're going to vote for Democrats and your tuchus actually making it to the voting booth on Tuesday if you're going to vote for Democrats. That's the distance. Common wisdom, schmommon-wisdom.

Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's November. And, we all know what that means. Tomorrow is Election Day. I was just thinking about past elections. In 2006 and 2008, most of us were ecstatic. When November rolled around in 2006, we knew that Democrats be taking back the House and possibly Senate in 2006. We knew for sure that right-wing creeps, like Rick Santorum, were going to lose. In 2008, we had strong sense that Obama would win the Presidency. Ah, good memories. Now, not so much.

The punditry over the next few days will be particularly painful. But, we've still got to see what happens. Make sure you vote. It matters.

The President has nothing on his public schedule. No events. No appearances.

Biden is going to be campaigning in Vermont for the Democratic candidate for Governor, Peter Shumlin. Then, he's heading home to Delaware to rally for the Democratic ticket. There's been a lot of focus on the Senate race, which Chris Coons will win, thankfully. But, there's an open seat currently held by a Republican. The Democratic candidate, John Carney, is looking good. This is one of the few seats that could be a pick-up for the Dems.

One more day...then the real fun begins. Read the rest of this post...

Yemen arrests two related to bomb threat

NY Times:

The powerful bombs concealed inside cargo packages and destined for the United States were expertly constructed and unusually sophisticated, American officials said Saturday, further evidence that Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is steadily improving its abilities to strike on American soil.

As investigators on three continents conducted forensic analyses of two bombs shipped from Yemen and intercepted Friday in Britain and Dubai, American officials said evidence was mounting that the top leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was behind the attempted attacks.

Yemeni officials on Saturday announced the arrest of a young woman and her mother in connection with the plot, which also may have involved two language schools in Yemen. The two women were not identified, but a defense lawyer who has been in contact with the family, Abdul Rahman Barham, said the daughter was a 22 year-old engineering student at Sana University.

Read the rest of this post...