Perhaps some movement on Don't Ask Don't Tell, or perhaps not

Some anonymous sources outside the administration say that the President may have told the Pentagon what he's "prefer" that they do on DADT. It's a step forward, but it's hardly worthy of a celebration. I have a lengthy analysis of what this all means on AMERICAblog Gay. Read the rest of this post...

JPMorgan CEO 'tired' of criticism for high bonus payouts

Yes, because the American public is thrilled with having to rescue the entire industry during the credit crisis. While other banks may have been worse offenders during the credit bubble, JPMorgan could have easily been swept up and into the garbage bin when the industry was faltering. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool and Jamie Dimon is not a fool. Maybe he's just trying to rally the troops but his shtick is getting old. Deal with it and understand that JPMorgan employees are in the top 1% in terms of pay in America so things could be worse than a bit of bad press. The other 99% of America doesn't quite understand what all of the whinging is about from Wall Street.

Jamie Dimon needs to move on from this subject though preferably not to the Obama administration, as is often rumored.

"We do not have change-of-control agreements, special executive retirement plans, golden parachutes, special severance packages or merger bonuses," he told a JP Morgan healthcare conference, adding that many of company's employees are in client-facing jobs and work hard with small and mid-size businesses.

"I am a little tired of the constant vilification of these people," he said.

Read the rest of this post...

Harold Ford was pro-choice. Then two years ago he became pro-life. Now he's pro-choice again. Yeah right.

Slimy, slimy, slimy. And he wants to be the next "Democratic" Senator from New York? Slimy, slimy, slimy.

NARAL has a slick video hitting him in the... And Media Matters has more as well.

Read the rest of this post...

Google considering pulling out of China after 'someone' tries to hack gmail accounts of human rights activists, will stop censoring Google.cn

Wow. Atta boy. And wow again. Google doesn't say it outright, but it's pretty clear to me they're blamely the cyber attack on the Chinese govt. And Google is not amused. (Emphasis added)

[W]e have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers....

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Google basically just told China to go f itself. Read the rest of this post...

Harper's Index is now online and searchable

Cool.

Here are their results on:

Obama
George Bush (both of em)
Sex (oh come on, you'd have thought of it too)
God
Santa Claus

And here are some particularly odd ones:

1/85 Percentage of Russian soldiers God will kill at the end of the world, according to Jerry Falwell: 83

3/87 Percentage of Americans who say that AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality: 24

12/93 Chances that a Jewish-American child believes in Santa Claus: 1 in 4

4/90 Percentage of men who say they would not have sex with Madonna if she asked: 60

12/03Percentage of U.S. Muslims who said in 2000 that they would vote for George Bush: 40

Percentage who say this today: 2

5/84 Cans of soda Pepsi must sell to recoup production costs of its Michael Jackson commercial: 875,000,000

Read the rest of this post...

7.3 quake hits Haiti

That's HUGE. Here's the CNN clip. And the Wash Post coverage. (Surprisingly, 7.3 is not even close to the top quakes of the past century.) Read the rest of this post...

Karzai disses US efforts in Afghanistan

The man is fluent in English, he knew exactly what he was saying. Perhaps this is for the benefit of a domestic audience. From ABC News:

"Blank checks we never had, actually. We really never had a blank check," the Afghan president told Sawyer. "But we're grateful even for the little money that's come to Afghanistan, even for the little help that's come to Afghanistan."

He added, "We have no right over the American people to pay for us or to help us. This is our country. We must protect it ourselves and provide for it ourselves. So help from America is welcome. And even a penny is worth billions for us. In terms of gratitude, we are grateful for the help that we have received."

Since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. has spent $171 billion to keep the Taliban at bay and billions more for development. In addition, about 900 U.S. soldiers have died fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Even a penny. Or in the case of the amount the US has spent on Afghanistan, even 17 trillion pennies. Read the rest of this post...

Memo to Dem donors warns that Massachusetts Senate race is 'very tight' and 'urgent'

That's what both Joe and I had been hearing. It's why Joe warned about this yesterday. And it's why we still can't figure out why the President is refusing to campaign for the Democratic candidate, since we're at risk of losing our 60th seat in the Senate. Please donate via ActBlue to Martha Coakley's campaign. Read the rest of this post...

A personal take on the Prop 8 lawsuit taking place in California today

From Liz Newcomb, our new writer over on AMERICAblog Gay:

When my wife Lynne and I were deciding whether to get married here in California, Prop 8 loomed in our consciousness. Lynne thought Prop 8 would fail and wanted to hold off on our wedding until spring when we could properly plan it. I was not so confident, and wanted to make sure we married before the election. I thought that if Prop 8 did pass, there was a very slim chance that our marriage might be grandfathered in.

So I persuaded Lynne to do a small ceremony with a handful of people to make it official, and then a larger one with friends and family in the spring. I’m not sure if she agreed with my prudence, was just humoring me, or liked the idea of having two weddings. But that is what we did. We married in September ’08 on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Then we had another, much larger wedding in March ’09 in Topanga Canyon near Malibu....

The current situation in California is unique. The Supreme Court reiterated post-Prop 8 in Strauss v. Horton that same-sex couples are entitled to enjoy all the rights the state can confer that opposite-sex couples enjoy, except for the right to call their unions marriages, and except for the exception to the exception, that same-sex couples who were married during the window would still be permitted to be married. To describe the situation is to highlight the absurdity of it.

Read the rest of this post...

Non-profits give White House 'A' for transparency after reneging on promise to air health care negotiations on C-Span

Many of the openness initiatives should be lauded, for sure. But you don't get an A when one of your biggest campaign promises has been broken.

Under fire for backing away from a campaign promise to open up health care negotiations to C-SPAN cameras, the White House on Monday highlighted a report from a coalition of watchdog groups awarding the Obama administration an “A” for its openness.

The report — released by the nonprofit groups Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and U.S. PIRG — gave the administration high marks across the board for its various initiatives to increase transparency and reduce the power of lobbyists, both of which were key elements in candidate Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to change the way Washington works.

The report praised the administration for rules limiting lobbyists from seeking stimulus funds and for putting the White House visitor logs and other documents online, among other reforms.

But representatives of other groups advocating for transparency said the “A” grade for open government was either inflated or premature, singling out the C-SPAN pledge, the administration’s use of the state’s secrets provision and the incomplete nature of its transparency initiatives.

It sounds like Common Cause, Democracy 21, LWV and US PIRG have joined the other liberal non-profits in Kool-Aid land. No one has the balls to hold Democrats responsible for their promises. And we wonder why, therefore, Democrats keep refusing to keep their promises. The White House did a lot of good on transparency - so they get a B, maybe a B+, but not an A until they keep all their promises. That's what an A is about. Read the rest of this post...

Press will be banned from Sarah Palin's teabagger speech

It's amazing how people who use words like "communist" and 'fascist" so often end up acting like them. Read the rest of this post...

Lead gays in the military group says it's time for Obama to act

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is urging the President to show some leadership and follow through on his promise to lift the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military. SLDN notes that the President's budget is being submitted to Congress in only a few weeks. The repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell needs to be in there.

Of course, SLDN's move belies a much larger problem. The Obama administration has been saying, sotto voce, for a while now that "it has a plan" on how it's going to follow through on its promise to repeal DADT. But it's now clear that SLDN isn't familiar with any plan, or they wouldn't be launching a campaign urging the President to do something. So either the White House has a plan, and isn't telling the lead gay civil rights group that's been fighting the gay ban for 17 years (to the point that the group is now forced to publicly challenge the White House), or the White House has no plan at all. Either way, bad news. Read the rest of this post...

Labor leaders not happy with Obama's tax on health care benefits

This is not good. Labor leaders met with Obama yesterday to discuss the health care bill. As we reported last week, Obama is siding with the Senate's plan to tax benefits that are on the more expensive side. That is not sitting well with labor because the tax would directly impact many union members who often forsake higher wages for better benefits. And, this issue could impact the 2010 elections:

The president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, warned that Democrats risk catastrophic election defeats similar to 1994 if they fail to come up with a health bill labor likes.

"A bad bill could have that kind of effect — a place where people sit at home" — as happened in 1994, when Democrats lost 54 House seats and eight in the Senate, costing them control of Congress, Trumka told reporters.

NPR had a story this morning on the same subject. (The transcript hasn't been posted, but the audio is here.) In that piece, both Trumka and Steve Rosenthal, a savvy DC political pundit, invoked the disastrous elections of 1994.

Now, as I understand how the White House operates, one of Rahm Emanuel's primary missions was supposed to make sure this presidency didn't suffer the same fate as Bill Clinton's did in those first two years. Rahm was there in 93-94, so he knew what went wrong back then -- and was going to prevent it. That's one reason why there hasn't been any progress on the LGBT agenda.

Yet, almost every day, we hear more and more people predicting that the 2010 elections will be similar to 1994. In Rahm's quest to prevent 1994, he's potentially recreating it. The White House, with the help of the Senate, is aggravating key Democratic constituencies who need to not only turn out, but help get out the vote.

There's time to fix it, but that would require the President to lead -- and to keep his campaign promises. Read the rest of this post...

Big banks to learn about bank fees

There's a wave of anger at Wall Street and the big banks, which are doling out huge bonuses while the rest of the country is still suffering. That is giving the White House the fortitude to finally take on the banks by imposing fees worth tens of billions to cover TARP costs. We should see the plan over the next couple weeks -- and it will be included in the President's budget, which is due by February 1st. It's a wise move:

The general idea is to devise a levy that would help reduce the budget deficit, which is now at a level not seen since World War II, and would also discourage the kinds of excessive risk-taking among financial institutions that led to a near collapse of Wall Street in 2008, the officials said.

But the president also has a political purpose — to respond to the anger building across the country as big banks, having been rescued by the taxpayers, report record profits and begin paying out huge bonuses while millions of Americans remain out of work.

The administration previously rejected two ideas that have received much attention in recent months: a transaction tax on financial trades and a special tax on executives’ bonuses.

Whatever the policy considerations are, finally taking on the big banks is a smart political strategy.

Last month, the leaders of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup blew off a meeting with the President because they couldn't make it all the way from New York City to Washington DC. Such hubris. Maybe they should have made the effort after all. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is heading to Delaware this morning to attend the funeral for Vice President Biden's mother, who died over the weekend.

The House convenes today at noon. Later this week, the House Democratic caucus will be going on its annual "Issues Conference." The President will be attending that meeting with the hopes of wrapping up the health care bill. That should be interesting. Every House member is facing an election in 2010. Obama isn't. And, the House candidates need an energized base.

The Prop. 8 trial continues in San Francisco today. Per Justice Kennedy's order, we still won't have video today. The full U.S. Supreme Court should rule on that tomorrow. The full Supreme Court will probably be hearing this Prop. 8 case in a couple years.

Let's start threading the news. Read the rest of this post...

Federal Reserve earned $45 billion

A respectable amount though let's see how this number compares to the Wall Street bonuses that are being handed out. Also, remember that the US government invested trillions to keep this industry afloat so in that context, it's not as impressive as when one thinks the investment was "only" $700 billion. We still don't know how much the losses will be for AIG but it will almost certainly turn out to be a loss. The release of this number is probably someone's attempt to distract the public from the soon-arriving bonuses figures that will not be well received. Impressive, but...

Wall Street firms aren't the only banks that had a banner year. The Federal Reserve made record profits in 2009, as its unconventional efforts to prop up the economy created a windfall for the government.

The Fed will return about $45 billion to the U.S. Treasury for 2009, according to calculations by The Washington Post based on public documents. That reflects the highest earnings in the 96-year history of the central bank. The Fed, unlike most government agencies, funds itself from its own operations and returns its profits to the Treasury.

Read the rest of this post...

Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank, dies at 100

The world is a better place for having people like Gies. It's hard to imagine how difficult it must have been to sacrifice already limited food and supplies, not to mention the personal danger during the war. The Guardian:

The office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands to help hide Anne Frank and her family for two years has died, the Anne Frank Museum announced today.

Miep Gies, who was 100, saved the teenager's diary. Her website reported that she died on Monday after a brief illness. Maatje Mostar, an Anne Frank museum spokeswoman, confirmed the report but gave no further details.

Gies was the last survivor of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and company at the secret annexe, above an Amsterdam canal warehouse, where Anne, her parents, her sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during the second world war.

Read the rest of this post...