Chrysler to add 1100 jobs in Detroit factory

Good news has been limited in Michigan and the auto industry, but this is definitely good news.

Chrysler Group will add a third shift of 1,100 jobs at a Detroit plant where it will begin producing a diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV, the company said on Thursday. The Jefferson North plant in Detroit is the first Chrysler plant to add a third shift, and it was the first plant to expand to a second shift after the automaker's 2009 restructuring and bankruptcy.

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Video: Very cool special effects only using lights

There's no way to to adequately title this video. Watch it. Watch especially the second part of the video that starts around 2 minutes in And, keep in mind, the guy is NOT sitting in a room with a fireplace. Keep watching, you'll see what I mean.

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US Navy rescues 13 Iranians from pirates

This is likely to cause some red faces in Tehran [BBC]:

The US Navy has rescued 13 Iranian hostages being held by pirates in the Arabian Sea, the Pentagon says.

The 13 were rescued after a distress call was received from an Iranian fishing vessel which had been boarded by pirates over a month ago.

Fifteen suspected pirates were detained and are being held by the US Navy.

Seems the Iranian navy can't protect its shipping against pirates in their own backyard but the US navy can. Read the rest of this post...

Santorum became a millionaire since leaving the Senate

Like most politicians, Santorum has found a way to cash in on so-called public service. Lining your pockets seems to be the American way when you're in politics and he's no exception. Of course, Bill Clinton has been doing the same thing for years. When he claims he's from limited means, he's white-washing his story. Bloomberg:

Since his 2006 re-election defeat, the former Pennsylvania lawmaker has gone from being one of the poorer members of the U.S. Senate to earning $1.3 million between January 2010 and August 2011. In 2007, he spent $2 million to buy a 5,000-square foot home in Great Falls, Virginia, according to property records. Santorum’s financial rise was powered by consulting contracts with fuel producer Consol Energy Inc. (CNX), faith advocacy group Clapham Group and American Continental Group, a Washington consultancy, as well as media engagements. “If he’s claiming he’s not an insider, this is the thing that insiders do -- after public office they cash in,” said Kent Cooper, a campaign finance expert and former Federal Elections Commission assistant staff director.

One of these days we're going to end the revolving door between Washington political elite - including staff - and business. It's an abuse of the system but when so many do it from both parties, chances of reform are limited. Read the rest of this post...

Romney tax plan slashes taxes for rich, increases for the poor

Was Mitt thinking about his own wallet with this plan? It's all about even more giveaways for the rich, peanuts for the middle class and clobbering the poor. Is it not possible for the political class to think about anyone other than the rich these days? Now would be the time for the Democrats to rip this to shreds, but will they?

Republican Mitt Romney's tax plan would increase taxes on low-income families while cutting taxes for the middle-class and the rich, according to an independent study released Thursday. On average, households making less than $20,000 would see their taxes increase by more than 60 percent, said the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group that studied the Romney plan. Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 would get small tax cuts, averaging 2.2 percent, or about $250, the study said. People making more than $1 million would get tax cuts averaging 15 percent, or about $146,000.

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Obama administration pushes back on liberal criticism of NDAA's "Indefinite Detention"

Of course; you knew that was coming. The base is restless (here's our clue that this is true). The admin needs a song to sooth the troubled base.

Here's the news part (my emphasis):

The Obama administration thinks many in the liberal blogosphere are mistaken in their belief that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by the president on New Year’s Eve authorizes the indefinite detention of citizens captured on U.S. soil.

Many progressive and libertarians have argued that the NDAA codifies the president’s ability to detain a U.S. citizen captured on American soil until the war on terrorism is declared over. The administration believes that the NDAA doesn’t specifically allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens, but concedes that it doesn’t specifically ban the practice either.

A senior administration official maintained in an interview with TPM that the NDAA “changes nothing” about the legal question of whether the government could allow for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens captured in the United States. ... “Whether you can pick up a U.S. citizen inside the United States and place them in military detention — which was done in the Padilla case but was never resolved up to the Supreme Court — we would argue still sort of an open legal question[.] ... The administration official said their interpretation was that the NDAA “wouldn’t allow you to detain anybody you couldn’t have detained before the bill passed.”

In other words (paraphrasing) — "We already do it in practice; the NDAA doesn't ban it; the NDAA is vague (because we made sure that amendments banning the practice were defeated); therefore indefinite detention isn't fully allowed (since we haven't completed the process of making it fully legal via judicial confirmation)."

Got that?

All you need to know:

▪ Nothing about this announcement responds to the "liberal criticism" summarized here.

▪ The administration is arguing that Padilla was a case of "indefinite detention" in the past and "nothing has changed."

▪ Remember: Dems and Repubs both accumulate executive power; but only Repubs take full advantage of it (though Obama I is going toe-to-toe with the Bush II legacy in the international sphere).

▪ Vagueness isn't a defense of the current law; it's one of its features, allowing the courts to put the final stamp on it with nobody's fingerprints fully on it. (Again, read this summary, and click through for the full detail.)

In other words, this is a denial that answers nothing and confirms all.

As I've said before:

Obama is systematically crossing Dem lines of conscience, Dem after Dem after Dem.

At some point, there simply won't be enough Dems who can, in conscience, vote for him, no matter what drek the other side spits up.

He must be feeling bullet-proof, ballot-wise. For a whole lot of people, this is really beyond the pale.

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Herman Cain apparently isn’t going away

The poor deluded man may actually think he has a chance of coming back and saving the GOP.  What is this new video about?  And what's with the weird ending where they just focus on Cain's face and hang there?  Oh, and the comments below the video are fabulous. Read the rest of this post...

Did Romney 'win' Iowa through GOP election fraud?

It is starting to look like a possibility. The facts are: (1) Santorum was leading Romney for much of the night. (2) Edward True, who claims to have been a vote counter, says that at his count Romney received 2 votes but this was recorded as 22. (3) The state GOP claims the vote counter is not authorized to speak about the matter.

From KCCI.com:

Caucus night was chaotic in many places, with hundreds of voters, candidates showing up and the throngs of media who followed. The world's eyes were on Iowa. But in the quiet town of Moulton, Appanoose County, a caucus of 53 people may just blow up the results.

Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn't.

"When Mitt Romney won Iowa by eight votes and I've got a 20-vote discrepancy here, that right there says Rick Santorum won Iowa," True said. "Not Mitt Romney."

These facts might have a perfectly reasonable explanation. But considered in the light of recent GOP electoral frauds, it is not beyond possibility that the party rigged their own primary and the results from Moulton are only one example of a larger scheme.

The Iowa results have not yet been certified but will any correction come before the NH primary? The results might be different there if the voters knew that Santorum (or Paul) was the real winner in Iowa. Another of those election 'mistakes' that always seem to benefit a certain group that controls the GOP.

Update: The group to watch is the Ron Paul camp. If they decide to bolt the GOP and pursue a third party campaign, a claim of electoral fraud would make a convenient pretext. Read the rest of this post...

Santorum said 'blah' people, not 'black' people when discussing welfare

You can't make this stuff up. Watch the original and decide for yourself what he said. Even if he said "blah" people, it's clear what his intention was with that remark. Read the rest of this post...

Unemployment dropped to 8.5%

Definitely positive news including 200,000 new jobs last month.

The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 8.5 percent last month as job creation was more robust than expected, providing continued signs that the nation's labor market is improving gradually. Growth in manufacturing jobs helped offset loss in government positions, while wages edged higher and the length of the work week also lengthened a bit.

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Major pension fund blacklists Walmart

Lila Shapiro at HuffPost:

A major pension fund and longtime investor in Walmart has blacklisted the retailing behemoth, citing poor labor practices and the company's anti-union stance as the driving force behind its rejection.

Walmart typically shrugs off criticism of its labor practices as union-driven propaganda and insists that its employees are happy and well-managed, but investing experts say that when one of the largest pension funds in the world divests, the company would be wise to listen to the message. It's the same message the American labor movement has been pushing for decades.

On Tuesday, the Netherlands' biggest pension fund, Algemeen Burgerlijk Pensioenfonds, with more than $300 billion in assets, announced that it was blacklisting the largest retailer in the world for noncompliance with the United Nations' Global Compact principles. The Global Compact presents a set of core values relating to human rights, labor standards, the environment and anti-corruption efforts. Sixteen other companies were blacklisted along with Walmart, nearly all of them excluded for producing chemical or nuclear weapons that violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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Wash Post on "Obama’s justifiable power grab"

The President made recess appointments to the NLRB and CFPB, and the Republicans are vewy vewy angwy. This Washington Post editorial agrees with the President.

Republicans may well be correct that Mr. Obama is playing politics with these appointments. He announced the Cordray appointment during a stump speech in swing-state Ohio, where he railed against Republican obstructionism. His supporters in organized labor will no doubt be pleased that he filled the slots on the NLRB.

But so what? Both the consumer bureau and the labor relations board are agencies of the U.S. government, created by Congress, and it is inexcusable that congressional obstructionism would leave them unable to function. If Republicans don’t like the structure or purpose of either agency, they should try to alter them through legislation. Meanwhile their filibustering against qualified nominees to make political points or extort concessions from the White House cripples government and discourages good people from serving. That is the real poisonous practice, in which both parties have engaged. Until there is a de-escalation, the country will continue to pay a high price.

The Republicans stopped playing the civil society game years ago. Like Ayn Rand's Atlas, the GOP simply shrugged and stopped playing the game called civility. They decided to pretty much shut down Democratic judicial appointments, and lots of other appointments, because they could. The idea being that they'd tie up Democrats' hands until a Republican takes over. Well, President Obama finally shrugged back. Read the rest of this post...

EU reviewing land raids to combat pirates

Something needs to be done to stop the problem, though this is a significant escalation. Taking the battle to the beaches might easily become ugly though, unless there's a clear idea about who is on the beaches. Despite all of the talk about pinpoint accuracy with the modern military, the reality is that a lot of innocent civilians are still being killed. If this new policy starts, civilian deaths are certain to be part of the future. Just because the future dead civilians are likely to be poor Africans, doesn't make it any less of a problem. The western military doesn't see it that way, but the political leadership should. Al Jazeera:

Germany's foreign ministry has said that the European Union is considering giving its anti-piracy forces the go-ahead to attack Somali pirate bases on the ground. Anti-piracy operations currently take place in the Indian Ocean, but in future the forces could be allowed to attack pirates' arms dumps, boats and bases. Andreas Peschke, German foreign ministry spokesman, said on Friday that the "limited destruction of piracy logistics on the beach" is under discussion but "no deployment on land".

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Euro tumbles to 16 month low against dollar

We're still far from a 1 to 1 ratio but the drop has still been significant. After testing the $1.30 number last month, it broke through. Analysts say the next test will be at $1.26 which isn't far away. Now that the euro is weakening, the price of gas could also start to become even more painful in the eurozone. This is not going to be an easy year for Europe.

The euro hovered near a 16-month low against the dollar and an 11-year low versus the Japanese yen on Friday, with further declines seen in store for the embattled single currency. As worries about the euro zone debt crisis remain unabated, the single currency looked set to end the first week of 2012 near a record low against the Australian dollar and a 16-month trough versus sterling. Market players said little relief was in sight for the euro, with next week's Italian and Spanish government bond sales likely to keep the market on edge and the euro under pressure.

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As poverty deepens, achieving American dream more difficult

The problem has been around for years, but the big difference today is the Republicans are finally admitting there's a problem. They still haven't managed to make the jump over to doing anything about it, but at least they're talking about it. The hero worship for corporate "leaders" who are more about themselves then the good of all of their employees hasn't helped. Failing to modernize the tax code - which is at the core of the growth of the obscenely rich 0.01% - will only make the problem worse. The Republicans still throw around silly lines about wealth distribution, ignoring the fact that we have had wealth distribution, but it's been passed exclusively to the ultra-rich. We can either continue down our current path where income distribution is worse than many Third World countries or we can admit there's a problem and do something about it. NY Times:

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.” One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling. At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.

For the time being, Canada and parts of Europe remain much more fluid, where people can actually pick themselves up by their bootstraps and move into the middle class. It's a major failure of the political class that we are where we are. As long as we keep voting for the same bunch of incompetent clowns (and no, I wouldn't limit that to just one party) there's no reason to expect any change. Read the rest of this post...