The State Senate just approved the marriage equality legislation by a vote of 33 - 29. Same-sex marriage becomes legal in New York 30 days after Governor Cuomo signs the bill into law.
We've all been on the losing side too many times. Winning is way, way, way more fun.
The trendline is moving in the right direction. This was a huge step forward. HUGE!
Congrats -- and thanks -- to all those who made it happen.
The arc of moral justice is long, but tonight in Albany, it bent a little more towards justice.
UPDATE: The Governor of New York is going to speak about this great victory at 11:15 PM. Watch here The Governor's presser is over, so I removed the embed. He did say that he'd sign the bill tonight, so it takes effect in 30 days.
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For many, the War in Afghanistan (and perpetual U.S. war in general) is the big story of this historical period. The war is growing, the money behind it is growing (and growing its ROI), and the constancy is almost assumed these days. An ugly prospect.
Now that the president has spoken on the subject, our path is known — at least as far as the executive branch is concerned. Rachel Maddow has a great summary of where we now find ourselves. To bring yourself current, you could start with this (the clip begins midway; the entire segment is here).
Perpetual war. Self-justifying, with no end in sight. Our goal (per Obama): "No safe haven for Al Qaeda." Great. That's an awful lot of beds to look under. Note that the interviewee, Prof. Vali Nasr, says that Afghanistan simply doesn't have an economy that can finance what Obama is asking it to do (10:25 in my sub-clip).
One of the best panels at last week's Netroots Nation 2011 was the Afghanistan panel, with a star-studded cast of committed people — Allison McGuire, Darcy Burner, Rep. John Garamendi, Steve Clemons and retired General Paul Eaton, among others. All want the war to end, and most said, when questioned, that it really does "come down to one man's decision," meaning Obama. The assumption, of course, is a neutered Congress.
Here's John Garamendi on the same Maddow show with what's happening in that aforementioned Congress:
Like so much about this brave new post-Bush world (thank you, Mr. Scalia), this really matters. Let's hope Garamendi and his like-minded colleagues prevail.
("Hope" — that reminds me. Didn't Obama make his bones as the one candidate who opposed Iraq? I know, he also said that Afghanistan was the "good war" so to speak. But still. It's ironic that two years later, "hope" is not something we have, but something we're reduced to.)
Folks, it’s with great pleasure that I report more good news from the House of Representatives. I know, it’s hard to imagine the House getting any better, but a few days ago they did something that can only be described as delicious: They stopped the government from getting all mixed up in food safety.
You see, in December, the president signed into law the first significant food safety reforms in over 70 years. But House Republicans are trying to send those laws back to the kitchen (pun!) by cutting the FDA’s implementation budget. That means that while the laws remain on the books, the FDA won’t have the money to execute them.
And our food safety system has never, ever broken down. Ok, so a long, long time ago some foods did make Americans sick. But that was way back in 2010 and 2009 and 2007... That’s like 525,000 minutes ago, people. Check my math, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even born then. And anyway, the tainted foods were pretty exotic. Eggs and spinach. Some kind of mysterious butter made of peanuts.
The war against the corps and their minions (yes, corps, as persons under the law, can have minions) is moving fully into the first phase — guerrilla skirmishes.
Computer experts are trying to determine how an international group of hackers broke into the Arizona Department of Public Safety's computers on Thursday and downloaded and released hundreds of law-enforcement files.
The hacking group LulzSec, which has taken responsibility for breaching the websites of the CIA and the U.S. Senate, said in a bulletin that it targeted the DPS because LulzSec opposes Senate Bill 1070, a law the Arizona Legislature passed that widened law-enforcement officers' ability to apprehend illegal immigrants. The law is largely on hold pending a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The DPS files, posted on LulzSec's website, include personal information about officers and numerous documents ranging from routine alerts from out-of-state police agencies to videos and photos about the hazards of police work and operations of drug gangs. ... In its Web posting, the group said the files were primarily related to U.S. Border Patrol and counterterrorism operations.
The article contains much about what kind of info was grabbed.
And here's the LulzSec release itself, and what they say about their goals (my emphasis):
Hackers of the world are uniting and taking direct action against our common oppressors - the government, corporations, police, and militaries of the world.
This is not to endorse or encourage. This is to document. The corp war has entered the guerrilla phase, in my opinion (reread the LulzSec quote above). And before you cheer (should you trend that way), keep in mind that no war is pretty. The guy who said "war is hell" was being literal.
And count on it — the cops will up their game to match or exceed the perceived threat. It's what they do. This is truly a world-wide battlefield fought with digi-guns in cyberspace.
And also in airport "security" checks (h/t Darcy Burner). I don't even want to imagine the level of intrusion we're in for.
This could be very big news if it is true. With obesity rates skyrocketing in the US, something like this could have an enormous impact both on the health care of people but also the medical costs.
People who have had obesity-related type 2 diabetes for years have been cured, at least temporarily, by keeping to an extreme, low-calorie, diet for two months, scientists report today.
The discovery, reported by scientists at Newcastle University, overturns previous assumptions about type 2 diabetes, which was thought to be a lifelong illness.
In the UK about two and a half million people have been diagnosed with diabetes, the large majority with type 2, and numbers are rising across much of the world. The condition has to be controlled with drugs and eventually insulin injections. It can cause blindness and end in foot amputation, as well as shortening life.
Incredible. Big Pharma's right to advertise drugs to you based on your own private medical records is more important than your right to privacy for your own medical records. Simply astounding.
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Still waiting for the New York Senate to act. Several other issues, including a rent control regulations and property cap, have complicated the end of the session. We've got more at AMERICAblog Gay -- and will be updating throughout the day. The big question is still whether the Senate Majority Leader, Dean Skelos, will bring the marriage bill to the floor. Yeah, we're still not sure we're even going to get a vote, although people are hopeful that it will happen. The GOP Senate conference is meeting at 10 AM to discuss that issue. The Times has an editorial on the religious exemption issue, which has been (needlessly) holding things up.
As often is the case, Jon Stewart captures the essence of Albany:
Paul Ryan's radical Medicare changes are not going over well with the public. The supposedly unpopular Obamacare plan is much more popular, with 51% saying that it should be kept. Bloomberg:
By a margin of 57 percent to 34 percent, poll respondents say they would be worse off if Ryan’s plan to convert Medicare to a system of subsidized private health coverage were adopted. Fifty-eight percent of independents, a critical voting bloc in recent elections, say they would be worse off.
That’s likely to encourage Democrats to bank their success in next year’s presidential and congressional races on tying Republicans to the Medicare plan, which was passed by the Republican-controlled House on April 15.
Ryan’s proposal for the federal health-insurance plan that serves seniors was approved with no Democratic support and all but four Republicans voting in favor. The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected it last month.
You mean someone besides Obama and Wall Street likes him? Go figure.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s standing with the public has slid to its lowest level in almost two years of polling on the issue, even as faith in the Federal Reserve holds up.
Bernanke is viewed favorably by 30 percent of those polled, compared with 26 percent who view him unfavorably; the remainder are unsure. In September of 2009, Bernanke enjoyed 41 percent approval and 22 percent disapproval. The Fed itself is viewed favorably by 42 percent of voters, little changed from previous surveys.
The Bloomberg National Poll, conducted June 17-20, shows that the reputation of Bernanke, who led the central bank through the longest U.S. recession since the Great Depression, has slid lower as the unemployment rate has remained stuck near 9 percent or higher for 26 consecutive months.
Could Ahmadinejad be next? He has fallen out of favor lately among those in control so his days may be numbered. As unpleasant as he is, there's no guarantee that the next person would be any better.
Iran's former deputy foreign minister, Muhammad Sharif Malekzadeh, a close ally of the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been arrested on charges of financial corruption.
Malekzadeh resigned from his post two days ago – only a week after he was appointed – after coming under pressure from the conservative-dominated parliament for his connections to Ahmadinejad's controversial chief of staff and close confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.
In the face of the growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, allies of the president and Mashaei have come under scrutiny for allegedly attempting to undermine clerical power and compromise revolutionary values.
In other words, if approved by the Greek parliament, start your clocks for the next round of panicked discussions about default. This will not fix this very serious problem. It only delays the inevitable.
"I don't see this fiscal plan taking effect whether it gets passed or not," David Lea, European analyst at Control Risks told CNBC.com earlier this week. "Does that push Greece inexorably towards default? I think it probably does."
Fear that Greece may default on its debt reached new heights on Thursday, so much so that anxious investors were willing to pay to lend their money to the safest borrower they could think of—the U.S. government.
European banks, meanwhile, faced higher short-term borrowing costs as investors fretted about their exposure to Greece and other indebted euro zone countries.
Greece on its own is not necessarily the problem. Once you add in Portugal and Ireland and then start thinking about Spain or Italy, that's when you have a very serious problem.
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