The vote was nearly 100% party line, Republicans defending billions in subsidies to Big Oil while they talk about eliminating Medicare and cutting $4 trillion from programs that help you every day.
Here's the vote tally. "Yea" is a good vote, but 60 votes were needed because the Republicans were filibustering again.
The 48 Senators that voted against cloture today on S. 940, the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, have received $370,664, on average, in campaign contributions from the employees and political action committees (PACs) of oil and gas companies during their time in Congress, while those who voted to consider the legislation received just $72,145, on average.
Following up on the news that man-of-the-people Newt Gingrich has owed as much as half a million dollars to Tiffany’s, Slate got a photo of Mrs. Gingrich's very nice rings. So I showed the photo of the two rings, one diamond and one pearl, to a gem expert. He told me that the pearl is hard to tell, but the diamond looks to be about 5 carats in a "round brilliant," and if it's from Tiffany's it could easily be $300,000 to $500,000 depending on the quality.
It's good to be Newt.
UPDATE: When it rains it pours. Newt and the current Mrs. got a box of confetti dumped on them today. And it's all on video.
Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, has returned some of her assets to the state, after anti-graft officials ordered her detention.
The former first lady returned a villa in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, and transferred the power of attorney on Monday for authorities to withdraw up to $3.4m held in two of her bank accounts, Egyptian state news agency MENA said.
Gee, now there's a surprise. A conservative activist Web site getting a story wrong. From Sam Stein at Huff Post:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) played no role in the process by which health care waivers were granted to a number of businesses in her district, according to the company that actually requested the waivers on behalf of its clients.
Flex-Plan Services, a third-party benefits administrator based in Bellevue, Wash., made the formal applications for waivers from President Barack Obama's health care law, said it founder, Hilarie Aitken.
"I don’t tend to vote Democratic, but I feel bad for Nancy Pelosi," Aitken told HuffPost. "She’s really being thrown under the bus here. It has nothing to do with her at all. This was just a political power play. The way that they are shaping this -- that the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, [is behind] all these waivers being granted, and how could she do this -- it’s all slanted and wrong".
The admission deals a blow to the accusations made Tuesday morning by the Daily Caller: It claimed Democratic lawmakers were effectively exempting businesses in their districts from the more onerous requirements of the presidential health care law. This was based on the fact that, of the 204 waiver requests that were approved in April, 38 were for restaurants, nightclubs or hotels in Pelosi's district.
As I said, folks are surprised that a conservative Web site got their facts wrong when trying to smear a Democrat.
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This Rachel Maddow report on the Middle East contains valuable information. It's also interestingly structured, presenting a kind of melange of where-we-are in the region:
■ The intro deals with U.S. diplomatic activity. (Note that Obama is speaking to AIPAC over the weekend. I'd watch that one for news of what he says.)
■ The promised (threatened?) Glenn Beck rally in Jerusalem is discussed next. (Teabag God v. Lord of Darkness, a title fight in Jerusalem. Nice touch for a sinking ex-alkie.)
■ The focus then turns to ex-Blackwater mercenary chief (and hard-right Christian badboy) Erik Prince. Here's where I'd like to start paying attention — about 2:45 in the clip.
■ Finally, Jeremy Scahill explains what Prince is really up to.
Watch the intro and Beck material for fun if you like, but the Eric Prince material and Scahill's comments on it are really important.
About the Iran discussion, recall that the Arabian peninsula is mainly Sunni, and Iran is Shi'a.
This is the next phase in privatizing the military. First you bring in the mercs to "supplement" the forces you directly control. Then the mercs outnumber the "conventional" forces. Finally you distribute (diversify) the command-and-control structure so that the mercs are roughly self-directing. (In the computer world, this is called "distributed processing.")
That's the phase I think we're in right now — distributed command-and-control. It's an unheard-of situation for a first-world military, but it mirrors the distributed command-and-control of our political process in this post-Citizens United corporate era. Scahill elsewhere says this is "the most radical privatization in our history [and] we're seeing it full-blown in the war machine."
The "conventional" U.S. military could shut down Prince in a heartbeat (and shut down his heartbeat as well) if it wanted to. You guess whether it wants to.
And a Prince shall lead them. Pay attention to this issue, and to Jeremy Scahill as well. He hangs out at The Nation, which incidentally could use your support.
"He doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works."
-- Rick Santorum, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) arguing that there's no evidence "enhanced interrogation" led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
McCain, of course, was tortured while held prisoner during the Vietnam war.
Former GOP WI governor Tommy Thompson wants Herb Kohl's Senate seat. Unfortunately for Thompson, he's the Republican version of a socialist when it comes to health care and health care reform.
– SUPPORTED THE INDIVIDUAL HEALTH MANDATE: During a symposium in Orlando in September 2008, Thompson said, “Just like people are required to have car insurance, they could be required to have health insurance.” In 2009, he walked back his support saying, “I’m not opposed to it, I just don’t think it’s the most practical way.” [Miami Herald, 3/23/2010; YouTube, 2/03/2009]
– SAID GOP SHOULDN’T PURSUE REPEALING HEALTH LAW: “When it’s all said and done, you’re not going to be able to repeal health carebecause President Obama is not going to sign it,” Thompson said during an appearance on CNBC in 2010. “And they don’t have enough votes to override a veto, so why push a cart uphill when you know it’s not going to be able to get to the top?” [CNBC, 11/02/2010]
– OPPOSES REP. PAUL RYAN’S (R-WI) MEDICARE PLAN: “Simply cutting Medicare isn’t the answer by any means. Instead, let’s focus on the most effective fiscal path forward with the least amount of impact on millions of seniors, their families and our broader economy. In other words, reform Medicare, don’t cut it,” Thompson wrote in April. [Huffington Post, 4/20/2011]
The Teabaggers that run the GOP are never going to permit someone like Thompson to get that seat.
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This is about closing that monster "hedge fund tax loophole" now that we're all so very concerned about the deficit.
Let's start with Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress. First he references the estimable Jim Hightower (my emphasis):
If your job paid $50,000 a year and you stayed at it for 47 years, your tally for a lifetime of work would be $2.4 million. Not bad — but hedge fund hustler John Paulson pulled down that much last year.
Most of us would consider an annual income of $2.4 million to be a windfall, but it didn’t take Paulson a full 12 months of work to pocket his windfall — or one month, a week, or even a day. That’s how much he made an hour. Yes, Paulson could’ve worked one single hour in 2010 and hauled off a paycheck equal to what a typical household gets for a lifetime of work.
Jilani then says:
Hightower goes on to note that not only does Paulson earn such wild compensation, but that he actually pays a lower effective income tax rate — 15 percent — than the average American, whose effective rate in 2007 was 20.4 percent.
Jilani's point — close that hedge-fund tax loophole, the one that taxes capital gains at 15%. He even has a great graph from MoveOn.org to illustrate the point. (Read carefully; white-on-light-blue was maybe not the best color choice for this excellent data.)
By the way, hedge-king John Paulson is the guy we clocked in 2009 as earning $2.3 billion. He's also this guy, the one who got Goldman Sachs to create worthless derivatives packages so he could bet against them.
You can buy a lot of Congressional thank-you for what he earns in a day. And a lot of reluctance-to-prosecute with the change.
Republicans are livid with Newt Gingrich for criticizing GOP House Budget chair Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare. AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field has some amazing video of Gingrich being excoriated by a rank-and-file Republican, on camera - video that was shown on FOX News, no less. And more GOPers are pilling on:
"There's no question there was a misspeak here," Cantor said on WLS radio in Chicago. "Just to sit here while all but three Hosue Republicans voted for the Ryan budget, to somehow portray that as a radical step, I believe, is a tremendous misspeak."
Cantor advised Gingrich to explain his comments and "get back on board with what we're trying to do."
"What he said was absolutely unfortunate," Haley told CNN in a phone interview. "Here you've got Representative Ryan trying to bring common sense to this world of insanity, and Newt absolutely cut him off at the knees."
"When you have a conservative fighting for real change, the last thing we need is a presidential candidate cutting him off at the knees," she added.
Before lapsing into a self defeating orgy of birtherism and buffoonery, Donald Trump was actually enunciating some positions that could have resonated with Republicans, and then with the general public. They might have formed the basis for a successful candidacy. They also provide insight into what someone not steeped in conventional beltway wisdom, but with a P.T. Barumesque feel for what people are actually feeling, comes up with.
On the actual real issues, The Donald was the only one saying some things that need to be said. Things that someone on our side should be saying, but isn't. And frankly, he hit on some things that could have been a winning message:
Economic Nationalism: Trump first made headlines with his attacks on China. The Chinese were playing us for chumps and taking our jobs and he was going to stop it. Later he broadened the attack to include OPEC and others. And we didn't just need jobs, we needed industrial jobs, we needed to make things again. Although simplistic, this message had more truth and much more resonance among the public than the Beltway Villagers realize.
It's not the Deficit, it's Jobs: Trump answered every question about the deficit by saying we needed to fix the economy and get back our jobs. He would absolutely refuse to discuss any other steps on the deficit. To the Villagers, this was of course the ultimate demonstration of his lack of seriousness. Except, as the last two years of Paul Krugman's columns demonstrate -- restarting the economy is the correct answer to the question of what we need to do NOW.
He rejected Paul Ryan's budget, especially cutting Medicare out of hand: Although even Newt Gingrich seems to be realizing what a loser the Ryan Budget's destruction of Medicare is, Trump was the first Republican candidate to say so.
Get Out of Afghanistan: Trump said we needed to pull our troops out and control any resurgence of terrorism with drones. With the Obama administration stuck in a Vietnam Syndrome of "We're there because we're there, because we're there," getting out of Afghanistan is 2012's sleeper issue. If the Republicans realize how unpopular this war is, Obama could be in real trouble. And again (except for Ron Paul) Trump was there first.
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In addition to destroying his state's unions, Scott Walker has a new target: hospitalized gay people.
The Governor won't defend a law that gives hospital visitation rights to same-sex couples. It's probably the least controversial of all LGBT related issues -- and Wisconsin gives its same-sex couples very few protections. The Obama administration changed the visitation regulations to provide protections at any hospital that accepts Medicare and Medicaid (another reason for the GOPers to destroy those programs.) But, in Wisconsin, Walker wants no protections.
An interesting point that has not yet been mentioned much in the US/UK media is that the French are shocked to see Strauss-Kahn being marched around in handcuffs. Showing such images are not done in France because there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. In the minds of many in France, showing a person in handcuffs is practically saying that the person is guilty before the trial has even started.
Another point that has been made is that just days before his arrest he had talked about being smeared in the campaign, knowing that something was going to be done. Was it a setup as some believe or is he just a sick person who was finally caught? The police sound quite convinced but lots of tests still need to be done and there's still a trial ahead. If he is indeed guilty, he should not receive any special treatment because of his political position.
More on the "dirty secret" that the media knew so well. The Guardian:
Less than three weeks ago, Dominique Strauss-Kahn sat down in a Paris restaurant for an off-the-record lunch with two journalists from the daily Libération. The IMF chief outlined the three biggest personal hurdles in his relentless campaign to become president of France: "Money, women and being a Jew."
He started with women. "Yes I like women, so what?" he asked. "For years, there's been talk of photos of a giant orgy, but I've never seen them come out," he added, challenging his opponents to produce long-rumoured pictures of a night at a posh swingers' club dating back decades. He said he had warned President Nicolas Sarkozy (while they stood side by side at the urinals of the gents during a recent international summit) to stop smearing him over his private life. Strauss-Kahn then volunteered to the journalists a hypothetical example of something that could bring him down: "A woman raped in a parking lot who is promised half a million euros to make up her story."
Before Strauss-Kahn's opponents began throwing what one socialist described as "stink bombs" at him, he was keen to present himself as the victim of a potentially ruthless campaign.
This will be a lesson in how to make a bad problem even worse. Merkel played this game before and it cost everyone money and now it looks like she's going to do it again. There's a strange fixation on bashing the Greeks by some in Germany and it's not clear why that is.
On the day that European Union finance ministers approved a 78 billion euros ($110 billon) rescue programme for Portugal, Ms Merkel declared that outright debt restructuring before 2013 – when a permanent bail-out fund is in place – would be “incredibly” damaging to the eurozone as a whole.
“It would raise incredible doubts about our credibility if we simply were to change the rules in the middle of the first programme,” causing a flight of investors in government bonds from the euro zone, she told Berlin students.
More than half the park has still to be checked, but rangers have already confirmed eight tigers. This is not yet enough to be classified as a sustainable population, but park managers are optimistic more animals will be found. "I'm very happy as this is beyond expectations," said Thap Lan's superintendent, Taywin Meesat. "There are areas deeper inside where we haven't placed camera traps yet. Given the results so far, there could be 20 to 50 tigers here."
The conservation group that provided much of the training and equipment for the operation said the results showed a gap in understanding and the need to invest more in research and protection.
Tim Redford of Freeland, a Bangkok-based group that helps rangers in south-east Asia, said: "This place was supposed to be devoid of tigers. But we did a course here and were surprised to find signs of tigers. The more we looked, the more we found. That led me to believe the forest must have tigers throughout and there is a big gap in our knowledge of where they live."
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