Female traveler strips down for TSA grope - may be NSFW

My TSA Stripdown: Nov 21 at Seatac from Furry Girl's Feminisnt.com on Vimeo.

Most of the incident occurs within the first two minutes and the rest includes your standard internal chaos that one expects from such an organization. (I recall something similar with my bags during a check at LAX years ago, where nobody had any idea what was going on.) This has to be the first time I ever heard security to tell someone to put their jacket back on before going through the metal detector. As far as I could tell they did not ask her to put her pants back on so she walked through in her underwear. Read the rest of this post...

Another Canadian take on the TSA porno-scanners

If only the similarity was strictly limited to this issue. Good one by the Ottawa Citizen. Read the rest of this post...

Night Music Open Thread

The Bella edition.

Jason Miles, Chiara Civello - I Want You

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Krugman: 'There will be blood'

The state of the Krugman is dark. Very very dark.

He starts with Alan Simpson's eagerness for the "bloodbath" that will come when Republicans oppose raising the Federal debt ceiling this spring, unless Obama comes through with concessions formed in their dreams. (Of course, the Fierce Advocate of the People will resist.)

But Simpson is eager, not regretful, and that's the problem. (You remember Alan Simpson — Mr. "Kill the Cow with 310-Million Tits."  Mr. Deficit Commission.  Mr. Sensitive.) Thus the Professor (my emphasis throughout):

So here’s what the very serious Mr. Simpson said on Friday: “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April. ... When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ’em a piece of meat, real meat,’ ” meaning spending cuts. “And boy, the blood bath will be extraordinary,” he continued.

Think of Mr. Simpson’s blood lust as one more piece of evidence that our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize.

Krugman then lists the many "country last" initiatives of the GOP — intimidating the Fed into not following one of its two statutory mandates (reduce high unemployment); busting a hole in the budget with the Bush tax cut extension; at the same time, blocking extension of unemployment benefits ("From your pocket to mine, sucker"); and blocking aid for small businesses (real ones this time).

Shockingly, the GOP even wants to block extension of the START treaty, which helps secure loose Russian nukes:

These days, national security experts are tearing their hair out over the decision of Senate Republicans to block a desperately needed new strategic arms treaty. And everyone knows that these Republicans oppose the treaty, not because of legitimate objections, but simply because it’s an Obama administration initiative; if sabotaging the president endangers the nation, so be it.

Party first: "the GOP is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern."

Krugman's point: this is not a game. They're playing chicken with the nation's future — all of it.

How does this end? ... It’s hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of some kind. Mr. Simpson may or may not get the blood bath he craves this April, but there will be blood sooner or later. And we can only hope that the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize.

Think that last one through. In each of America's last three crises, we've had the luck to find, and choose, a great leader — Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt. That makes us three-for-three. If we went three-for-four, we'd still have a great batting average, but we'd lose horribly.

"There will be blood." The state of the Krugman is dark indeed.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Levin: Hearings on DADT report 'will be a boost' to passage of Def. bill with DADT language

Another update on DADT. There are lots of moving pieces.

The Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee is glad to have the Pentagon's DADT report a day earlier. Senator Levin will be holding hearings on the report in the week after the Thanksgiving holiday (you know, when Senators come back to work after their 11-day vacation). Levin thinks the hearings will be helpful:

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, welcomed Defense Secretary Robert Gates's decision to speed up the public release of the yearlong Pentagon study to allow for congressional hearings to take place.

Levin's committee included in the defense authorization bill it wrote earlier this year a provision to repeal the Clinton-era law, which bans openly gay people from serving in the military.

"I believe our hearings on the report will be a boost to the goal of passing a National Defense Authorization Act, including provisions related to repeal of 'don’t ask, don’t tell,' " Levin said in a statement on Monday. "Passage of the Defense Authorization Act is essential to our troops and their families and to our national defense.”

That last line is true. How the GOPers have gotten away with filibustering legislation that "is essential to our troops and their families and to our national defense" is beyond me. But, so far, they have. Be helpful if Obama, Robert Gates and Robert Gibbs would echo that message from Levin.

Greg Sargent adds this intel on why the report hearings are key:

So here's what to watch: A senior leadership aide tells me the final decision on whether to hold that cloture vote and open debate will likely be made later next week. That's because Senator Carl Levin, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, has said he will hold hearings later next week on the released Pentagon report. The Senate Dem leadership intends to watch closely how the moderate GOP Senators publicly react to the Pentagon report in those hearings. If they seem to be softening, the prospect of getting 60 votes for repeal increases -- this is a real possibility, as far-fetched as it may seem -- which would ratchet up the pressure on Senate Dems to allow the cloture vote and agree to the protracted floor debate.

So that's where we are. Repeal isn't quite dead yet. But if it's going to happen, it will only be because the Senate leadership tries to make it happen.

Leadership, as we know, has been in short supply on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Read the rest of this post...

TSA workers uncomfortable with new groping procedure

Of course there is a morale crisis within the ranks. What American (outside of the glorious halls of Congress and the White House) could really imagine that such intrusions are the American way? Workers are probably already bracing themselves for the cavity checks that have to be next, since that's the obvious next hiding place. And yes, the TSA management has consistently been one step (at least) behind the bad guys as they plan to solve the last problem. TSA workers are just doing their jobs but those making these decisions really need to wake up and find a better plan that works for everyone. Read the rest of this post...

US banks reportedly short $100-$150 billion reserves

Despite the outrageously high pay that suggest otherwise, the US banking industry is still in deep financial trouble. Anyone really interested in helping them out this time? (My emphasis below.) Financial Times:

The top 35 US banks will be short of between $100 billion and $150 billion in equity capital after the new Basel III global bank regulations are imposed, with 90 percent of the shortfall concentrated in the biggest six banks, according to Barclays Capital.

The BarCap study assumes the banks will need to hold top quality capital equal to 8 percent of their total assets, adjusted for risk.

This 8 percent tier one capital ratio, a key measure of bank strength, provides a one point cushion against falling below the effective global minimum of 7 percent set in September by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

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Eleanor Clift: 'Part of Obama’s problem is that there’s too much hero worship around him'

And the problem isn't just the hero worship of those surrounding Obama, there's been a concerted effort to shun anyone who is progressive.  One glaring example: Stiglitz and Krugman, who just so happened to be right about the need for a larger stimulus. The hero worship is more conservative worship, and anyone who isn't a conservative Dem, or Republican, need not apply to the Obama court.

From Eleanor Clift at Newsweek:

Part of Obama’s problem is that there’s too much hero worship around him, and that translates into a reluctance to fault him for anything, except maybe that he didn’t make a good enough case for all the wonderful things he’s done. He has done good things, but the voters don’t give you credit for saving them from a depression; they reward you for making their lives better, and that hasn’t happened. The bankers on Wall Street are doing fine, but the other 80 percent of the country is hurting, and that’s not supposed to happen when a Democrat is in the White House.

In his post-election press conference, Obama said there must be easier ways to learn the hard lessons of politics than getting the shellacking he and the Democrats got. There are, and if his aides weren’t so in love with him and wrapped up in the idea of him as a transformational president, they might have seen this coming.

Though he’s portrayed as a liberal, it’s not clear what he’ll fight for, and he keeps that deliberately vague, perhaps hoping to deliver on the post-partisan promise his election represented. The fight over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts is a perfect example. The White House needs to settle on a strategy and then execute it, whatever it is. Hope is not a strategy, and the extent to which Obama seems to weigh the political considerations of whatever decision he makes reinforces the voters’ disillusionment that rather than leading, he has instead become part of the government—an implicit admission of his failure to bring about the change he ran on.

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How would private security change the porno-scan or grope problem?

Leave it to Republicans to move this discussion into a new way to enrich their campaign contributors. The problem is the violation of rights, not the government. There's nothing that suggests private contractors will do a better job of protecting privacy and if anything, they will probably be worse since they will answer to a different boss who cares more about shareholders than procedures. It's completely annoying that the Democrats are so afraid of this issue, but that's why they're considered weak in the first place. They are.

For Republican Rep. John Mica of Florida, the way to make travelers feel more comfortable would be to kick TSA employees out of their posts at the ends of the snaking security lines. This month, he wrote letters to nation's 100 busiest airports asking that they request private security guards instead.

"I think we could use half the personnel and streamline the system," Mica said Wednesday, calling the TSA a bloated bureaucracy.

Mica is the ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Once the new Congress convenes in January, the lawmaker is expected lead the committee.

Companies that could gain business if airports heed Mica's call have helped fill his campaign coffers. In the past 13 years, Mica has received almost $81,000 in campaign donations from political action committees and executives connected to some of the private contractors already at 16 U.S. airports.

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On Mrs. Kennedy's Secret Service detail...

NYT:

I was just feet away when I heard and felt the effects of a third shot. It hit the president in the upper right rear of his head, and blood was everywhere. Once in the back seat, I threw myself on top of the president and first lady so that if another shot came, it would hit me instead.

The detail went into action. We didn’t stop to think about what happened; our every move and thought went into rushing the president and Mrs. Kennedy to the nearest hospital.

I stayed by Mrs. Kennedy’s side for the next four days. The woman who just a few days before had been so happy and exuberant about this trip to Texas was in deep shock. Her eyes reflected the sorrow of the nation and the world — a sorrow we still feel today.

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Olympia Snowe supports lawsuit against health care reform law

Well, all that time wooing Olympia Snowe really paid off for Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina. Not only did Snowe end up supporting the GOP filibuster and voting against the bill, she's now supporting a lawsuit against the new law, as is Susan Collins:

Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are co-signing an amicus, or friend of the court, brief to be submitted to the federal court in Florida that will hear a constitutional challenge of the federal health care reform law.

The brief was initiated by U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and boasts signatures of 30 Senate Republicans. The lawsuit was brought by the attorneys general for several states and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a small-business trade organization.

At issue is a requirement that U.S. citizens purchase health insurance beginning in 2014 or face a fine -- known as the "individual mandate."

Snowe and Collins usually do what Mitch McConnell tells them to do.

And, don't forget, Maine's Republican Party has been taken over by teabaggers and Olympia is on the ballot in 2012. She's desperately trying to burnish her right-wing cred. As if they'll buy it. Read the rest of this post...

If Obama wants to be a one-termer, he should definitely listen to Sen. Durbin

He's my Senator from back home, but damn he can be a wuss sometimes. From the LA Times:

"It's clear our base feels very strongly about the president taking a firm stand," Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said in an interview. "Meanwhile, the American people are saying, 'Come up with a solution.' He's torn between competing interests in the body politic."

With all due respect, this is some of the most idiotic advice I've ever heard. And it is advice. Durbin isn't just presenting two sides. He's giving the President his advice - made clear by his "liberals say... but the American people say..." straw man, as though liberals are somehow out of touch with the American people.

Yeah, that 70% approval rating on the public option was pretty wacky of those liberals. So was the overwhelmingly popular withdrawal from Iraq. And the 70% to 80% who agree that DADT should be repealed are clearly just the fringe, even though they're a super-majority of the public, including conservative churchgoers.

Back to Durbin. Obama came up with some solutions during the campaign. Then he chickened out. That's when things started going back. Yes, the public wants the President to come up with solutions. But they'd also like to him to actually fight for those solutions, rather than throwing them out the window at the first sign of a Republican looking at him the wrong way.

This guy seems to get it:

Christopher Edley, a former Obama campaign advisor who worked in the Clinton administration, said he was troubled that the White House appeared ready to compromise in the tax fight even before serious negotiations had started.

"You can't build bipartisanship on preemptive concessions," Edley said in an interview. "These are bullies who can't be appeased."

Edley, who also served on Obama's transition team advisory board, added: "Too much time was squandered pursuing bipartisanship — far beyond the point of a good-faith effort. Repeating the same hopeful approach would be tragic. They need to be open to bipartisanship, but there needs to be a demonstrated interest from the other side."

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Fox has donated $40 million in air time to GOP presidential candidates

As always, fair and balanced for the Republican side. More from Media Matters:

Between January 1 and October 31 of this year, five potential Republican presidential candidates -- Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, John Bolton, and Rick Santorum -- who also serve as Fox News contributors or hosts have appeared on the network for a combined total of nearly 66 hours. Media Matters for America estimates this time to be worth at least $40 million in advertising costs.

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Monday morning open thread

Good morning.

The President has no public events on his schedule today. The Bidens are hosting a Thanksgiving dinner wounded servicemembers who are being treated at the local military hospitals and their families.

UPDATED: The Senate is NOT in session today. (I looked at the Senate schedule and saw a vote scheduled for Monday, but it's next Monday, Nov. 29 not today. So, the Senate will take up the food safety bill next Monday.) There's a ton of work to do in the Senate, but they've gone home. They should stay have stayed in this week and should work non-stop til Christmas or even New Years. The House is not in session.

As you can from the post below, AMERICAblog joined a blogswarm sending good wishes to our friend, Pam Spaulding, who is having surgery today. Pam is beloved -- and we're fortunate to call her a good friend. Get better, Pam. Read the rest of this post...

A blogswarm sending love and good wishes to Pam Spaulding

Pam Spaulding, the blogmistress at Pam's House Blend and a very good friend of AMERICAblog, is having surgery today. John, me and all of us at AMERICAblog are wishing Pam the best. We're joining a blogswarm to send her love and good wishes. Pam blogged and vlogged about her surgery here.

This is another one of my favorite photos of Pam. It was taken at Portland Head Light when Pam and her wife, Kate, were in Maine to help celebrate my 50th birthday party.
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Ireland finalizing €90 billion loan plus new austerity plan

Everyone is fortunate that for now, Greece and Ireland are small countries. Even Portugal (should they follow, as many expect) will be a relatively small bailout compared to the worst case scenario Spain. If the problem spreads to Italy and France, brace yourself, but we're not there yet. The economic crisis is not over.

"Ministers concur with the (European) Commission and the European Central Bank that providing assistance to Ireland is warranted to safeguard financial ability in the EU and in the euro area," the EU statement said.

The central bank's governing council likewise embraced the request, saying in a statement that a loan deal "will contribute to ensuring the stability of the Irish banking system and permit it to perform its role in the functioning of the economy." And IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said, in a press release, that the international finance institution "stands ready to join this effort, including through a multi-year loan."

In addition to EU and IMF assistance, Cowen said the United Kingdom and Sweden have agreed to consider giving their own loans to Ireland.

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2 million mile air traveler says TSA pat downs are 'blatant sexual harassment'

Isn't it surprising that she doesn't want to sacrifice her privacy so someone who never flies can have the illusion of air safety? As someone who has flown to fifty countries and six continents, I'm with her.

"This past weekend I was in Phoenix, the weekend before I was in Las Vegas, the weekend before I was in Vancouver," she said. "I do not fly for pleasure at all, pleasure is staying home."

Briles has two double knee implants, so she always "rings" at the metal detector. After a few recent trips, the TSA, she feels, is intimately familiar with her. She has been checked several times recently by the TSA, and one of those times was a private session.

"I really don't know who marked the box and said, 'Yes, now let's really touch them.' Let's turn from feeling where they would go on the back of their hand and going down - now they're doing full frontal, where they run their hands over your breasts, they will cup your breast, they're going inside your collar," Briles said. "If anyone pulled what TSA is doing, they would be sued and fired for just blatant sexual harassment."

And credit should be also given to Republican Senator George LeMieux who said he would never want his wife to be touched the way the TSA is touching people. It's about time everyone in Congress and the White House (including the Cabinet) goes through both procedures. Read the rest of this post...