First miner rescued in Chile - he's out

Very cool scene. And a bit surreal. The Chilean government apparently really scripted the entire thing for TV. Still, it was neat watching, being a part of a worldwide audience. Turn on CNN, it's happening now. Read the rest of this post...

Poll: 4 of 10 Obama backers less happy with him now, though his personal approval rating is up

Bloomberg:

Hope has turned to doubt and disenchantment for almost half of President Barack Obama’s supporters.

More than 4 of 10 likely voters who say they once considered themselves Obama backers now are either less supportive or say they no longer support him at all, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 7-10.

Obama’s deteriorating job-approval numbers are balanced by continuing regard for him personally: 53 percent of voters have a positive view of the president in the October poll, up from 49 percent in a July survey.

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US city pension funds seeking nearly $600 billion

Especially in this economy, closing this gap is not going to be easy. The scariest part is that the money will run out in the next few years for at least one major city.

Big US cities could be squeezed by unfunded public pensions as they and counties face a $574 billion funding gap, a study to be released on Tuesday shows.

The gap at the municipal level would be in addition to $3,000 billion in unfunded liabilities already estimated for state-run pensions, according to research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the University of Rochester.

“What is yet to be seen is how this burden will be distributed between state and local governments and whether the federal government will be called upon for bail-outs,” said Joshua Rauh of the Kellogg School.

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The Simpsons 'couch opening' is an eye-opener

The Simpsons producers often give guest directors a crack at their opening credits segment, called the "couch opening" in the Biz. The most recent one is absolutely "startling" according to Ken Levine, who linked to a now-dead YouTube version of it. (But enjoy Ken Levine's blog anyway; he's a hero among comedy writers, one of the minds behind MASH.)

It's so startling, in fact, that Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox, which owns The Simpsons, has been issuing take-down orders right and left.

Thanks to Marshall Y, one of our commenters, however, we found a still-live source. So here it is; enjoy before Murdoch makes soup of this one too. Here's the link; the embed is (hopefully) below.

All you need to know? Rupert Murdoch produces The Simpsons in South Korea, a suspected center of forced labor.



The director is the British graffiti artist Banksy. Welcome to the future, or most of our historical past.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Obama will appeal DOMA, i.e., he will defend anti-gay law he claimed was 'abhorrent' - but that was during the campaign when he supported the public option, opposed offshore drilling...

Brilliant way to motivate the base, only three weeks before a crucial election. Read the rest of this post...

Wall Street pay expected to set record at $144 billion this year

And the White House has been worried about being anti-business? Are you kidding me? The worst part about this is that the White House is again going easy on Wall Street and not pushing them on the foreclosure abuse problem. The theory apparently is that the banks can't be pushed too hard or else it will hurt the economy. No, the problem is that the banks care only about obscene bonus money and that is eating into what little profits are left after the bailout money has been spent.

The business model is unsustainable without more bailouts. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Democrat in the White House who could understand why Americans are so upset and then bother to do something about it? This is offensive, but hey, Wall Street knows that it can trample over the White House and Congress without repercussions. WSJ:

Pay on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year, according to a study conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms.

The data showed that revenue was expected to rise at 29 of the 35 firms surveyed, but at a slower pace than pay. Wall Street revenue is expected to rise 3%, to $448 billion from $433 billion, despite a slowdown in some high-profile activities like stock and bond trading.

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BREAKING: Federal judge orders Obama admin. to stop DADT discharges immediately. Will Obama comply, or side with the bigots?

A huge story.

A federal judge has just ordered the Obama administration to immediately cease all "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" discharges.

Will President Obama obey the rule of law, obey a federal judge, obey his conscience and his own political promises? Will he finally take this opportunity, dropped in his lap like manna from heaven, to end DADT as he promised repeatedly? Or will "lawyer Obama" find some absurdly convoluted, heartless, and esoteric legal reason to oppose the judge, appeal the ruling, to yet again break yet another political promise, and give DADT the chance to live yet another day?

Great presidents rise to the occasion. His decision will tell you what kind of president Barack Obama is.

More on AMERICAblog Gay. Read the rest of this post...

Has Obama been too partisan?

TIME's Mark Halperin attempts to diagnose what ails Obama. He does a good job of summarizing the current perception of Obama (which I think is the truth), but Halperin's own perception is somewhat off-base.

First, the general perception:

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

I think this is spot on, and I think the perception is reality.

But, then there's what Halperin believes. Namely, that Obama has been too partisan.

But Obama has exacerbated his political problems not just by failing to enact policies that would have actually turned the economy around, but also by authorizing a series of tactical moves intended to demonize Republicans and distract from the problems at hand. He has wasted time lambasting his foes when he should have been putting forth his agenda in a clear, optimistic fashion, defending the benefits of his key decisions during the past two years (health care and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for example) and explaining what he would do with a re-elected Democratic majority to spur growth.

If anything, Obama hasn't been partisan enough. Well, not partisan, but tough - he's been unwilling to take on the Republicans directly, and thus their lies become truth. Death panels comes to mind. Or the "Obama is a socialist" meme. Yes, sometimes the President has to stay above the fray, but sometimes above becomes aloof. And it permits lies to stick. Read the rest of this post...

Learn to speak G-d damn English

From PalinGates:

"And –You know- again, we have the media here tonight, and it’s never smart to pick up-I guess- the fight with those who buy ink by the barrelful but what-the-heck. When the Lamestream Media just doesn’t get it and when they don’t believe what-perhaps- your message is, so they want to belittle you and mock you and treat you with much disdain- you know, I think-oh-they can do it to me-that’s fine-because I know truth and I am fine with political shots that they take and what, I have said about this recently at Glenn Beck rally on steps of Lincoln Memorial, I said you know what - You can say whatever you want to about to say about me but I raised a combat vet and you can’t take that away from me."

(The post title is an homage to Avenue Q.) Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post Post publishes anti-gay screed by man who promotes known hate group's anti-gay 'Nazi' science

Well isn't that embarrassing. The Washington Post's Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn just published an "opinion" piece - in its "faith" section, no less - by the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, a man whose anti-gay activist organization has for years been promoting the "Nazi" science (that's what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it) of a known "hate group" that is listed alongside the Klan on the SPLC Web site. The group's Nazi science is about bashing gays. And what did the Post permit the "faith expert" to write about?  Anti-gay bullying.  Seriously.

Much more over at AMERICAblog Gay. Read the rest of this post...

Guardian: 'Turning up the heat on Rupert Murdoch'

There's always much talk about Rupert Murdoch (for example, here, here, and here). But it's hard to get a grasp on what he actually does.

We think of him as a propagandist, but he's so much more. And he's not primarily a propagandist; he's a media monopolist whose market product is propaganda. Here's his business model — he semi-monopolizes media in whatever country he gets into, and then sells propaganda services to government officials and hopefuls in exchange for increased monopoly control after they get elected.

Andrew Cockburn had a good analysis in a 2003 Counterpunch article (h/t Griffon for the link). Quoting a recent Murdoch biography:

Not only has Murdoch sought and received political favours: most of the critical steps in the transmutation of News Limited, his inherited business, into present-day Newscorp were dependent on such things. Nor is there essential change in his operations as the new century gets under way, and he prepares his sons to extend the dynasty.

There's not enough space here to detail the growth of News Corp in the U.K. and the U.S. But every step depended on the hand-shaking noted above — get into a market, sell propaganda favors to politicians (often, but not always, right-wing ones), get those pols elected, then extract further monopoly concessions. Repeat until his insatiable hunger is satisfied.

That's how he grows his empire. He's international, and no one has yet stopped him.

So now the U.K. is at another Murdoch decision point. The Guardian has an article that opens this way (h/t hector); my emphasis throughout):

It is March 2015, a couple of months before the general election. One media company bestrides British politics – spanning television, newspapers and the internet. It is more than twice the size of the BBC, with a turnover of £9bn. Controlled by Rupert Murdoch, it is called News Corporation.

Bound by none of the BBC's tradition of impartiality, the Murdoch family is deciding whether to endorse David Cameron for a second term. They meet in the knowledge that behind them lies the support of a company whose Sun and Times titles account for two-fifths of all newspapers sold in Britain and whose broadcasting operation is larger than the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 combined. This vision of financial and political power has so terrified rivals that they are already ganging up in alarm. From the Daily Telegraph to the Daily Mirror, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, a joint letter has been prepared for the business secretary, Vince Cable. Sent today, the purpose of the memo is simple – to persuade Cable to block News Corp's proposed £8bn bid to take full control of BSkyB. ... What so frightens Britain's newspaper owners today is what would happen when the profits of Sky are aligned to the power of the Sun and the Times, creating a media company whose size and scale is unheard of in British history.

Sky is already larger than the BBC today, with a turnover of £5.9bn, while News International turns over £1.7bn.

And that's the decision before Cameron's government. At present, News Corp owns 39.1% of the company. Murdoch wants to spend £8 billion to buy the rest. Will Cameron's government, which owes Murdoch huge favors for recent election support, block this or not?

It's hard to trim this article to fair-use size, so please do read it through. There's so much there.

As a taste of how Murdoch operates, here's from the Krugman article I discussed a few days ago:

[I]n Britain, a reporter at one of Mr. Murdoch’s papers, News of the World, was caught hacking into the voice mail of prominent citizens, including members of the royal family. But Scotland Yard showed little interest in getting to the bottom of the story. Now the editor who ran the paper when the hacking was taking place is chief of communications for the Conservative government — and that government is talking about slashing the budget of the BBC, which competes with the News Corporation.

Which takes us back to Sky. Note that the BBC is the only real remaining competitor to Sky for satellite TV services in the U.K., the rest having been eliminated. Say goodbye BBC if this plays out as usual.

And so it goes. Murdock is not a propagandist; he's so much worse. He's a megalomaniac, an empire builder of tremendous capability, and a dynasticist — he wants to pass control intact to his children and his children's children. In our new century of crazed corporate beasts, Murdoch is among the worst — soulless, ruthless, relentless, and effective.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Gingrich was for food stamps before he was against them

Make up your mind, Newt. Are you now saying that your previous praise for the program is suddenly wrong now that a Democrat is in the White House or are you wrong now? Think Progress:

If there were a “party of food stamps,” however, it would certainly have bipartisan membership — including Gingrich himself. In 2002, the Bush administration sought to expand the food stamp program to all legal immigrants, who had previously been excluded by Congressional Republicans during the 1996 welfare reforms. The Bush proposal extended food stamps to 363,000 more people. The New York Times reported that the move was likely intended to curry favor with Hispanic voters, and while it wasn’t popular with many conservatives, Bush did find a strong supporter in Newt Gingrich:

In an interview today, Newt Gingrich, the House speaker in 1996, said: “I strongly support the president’s initiative. In a law that has reduced welfare by more than 50 percent, this is one of the provisions that went too far. In retrospect, it was wrong. President Bush’s instincts are exactly right.”

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Three weeks to go.

The President will be at George Washington University tonight. He's doing a “Moving America Forward," which will be livecast. Apparently, he'll be taking questions via Skype and Twitter.

The Veep is heading to Iowa to do an event for Rep. Leonard Boswell. Then, he'll be in Chicago campaigning for Governor Pat Quinn. There's been some positive movement in the race for Governor in Illinois. Polling has tightened up.

The Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove's group are continuing to spend vast sums of money to defeat Congressional Democrats. Undisclosed money. The Chamber tells reporters that it's not using foreign money -- and reporters dutifully regurgitate the Chamber's spin. This feels like the political equivalent of the Bush/Rove lies that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. They said it so reporters dutifully regurgitated the lies. Because, you know, no would lie.... Read the rest of this post...

British Conservatives open the floodgates for university price increases

What's nice about unlimited university fees is that this helps keep out the unwashed masses. You know, the type that Lord Browne would hope to never have to see let alone share a classroom with at school. It's refreshing in this day and age when someone of privilege - with a title no less! - can comfortably proclaim his adoration for the good old days when only the right people could afford to attend the right schools. Who better than Lord Browne could fully understand the dynamics of supporting or not supporting up-and-coming universities?

Some might say that because he was educated at Cambridge and Stanford he is an elitist and has no appreciation for the less fortunate who already struggle to fund their way through higher education. But really, as long as the right people continue to dominate the halls of Oxford and Cambridge, who really cares about the rest? Ahhh, change that feels so right. The Guardian:

Universities should be allowed to decide what they charge students under a radical shake-up of higher education which would see the existing cap on tuition fees lifted.

A new system of financing universities will allow for a 10% increase in student places to meet rising demand for a degree-level education, the Browne review proposes.

Graduates will start repaying the cost of their degrees when they start earning £21,000 a year, up from £15,000 under the current system, the review recommends.

Read the rest of this post...

French unions march against pension reform for third time this month

It's still difficult to tell what the outcome will be on this issue. On the one hand, the unions appear to be splintering, with many not joining the strike today. On the other, voters strongly support the actions against pension reform. If the unions manage to reunite, the strike could turn into an extended action and shut down transportation. BBC:

French unions are staging a national day of strikes and demonstrations in opposition to the government's pension reforms - the third in a month.

Ministers want to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, and the state pension age from 65 to 67.

The civil aviation authority says up to half of flights to and from France have been cancelled because of walkouts.

Meanwhile, public transport and energy sector workers are set to vote on whether to begin open-ended strikes.

The rolling strikes would be organised by serving notice of 24-hour stoppages and renewed each day before they expired. Members of the union would need to be balloted at the end of the strike day on Tuesday.

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Hungary detains head of sludge spill company tied to deaths

Wow, the charges sound quite serious. The environmental impact is significant but it's also an interesting contrast to how BP was treated during the Gulf spill.

Hungarian police have detained the director of the aluminum company responsible for a flood of caustic red sludge that killed eight people when it burst from its reservoir last week, the prime minister said Monday.

Police said they were questioning managing director Zoltan Bakonyi on suspicion of public endangerment causing multiple deaths and environmental damage.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban told parliament that the government wanted to take over MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, because the safe restart of production at the alumina plant was needed to save the jobs of thousands of workers.

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