Health Care Reform has extended life of Medicare

Froomkin:

The new health care law has significantly improved the prognosis for Medicare, extending the life of its trust fund by 12 years until 2029, and thereby delaying any need for dramatic changes in benefits or revenues, according to a new report. The annual check-up from government actuaries overseeing the nation's two central safety-net programs also found that Social Security continues to be much less of a problem than Medicare, and will remain in strong financial shape at least through 2037.'The financial outlook for the Medicare program is substantially improved as a result of the far-reaching changes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,' concludes the Medicare report -- although the trustees warned that the improvements depend on the successful implementation of the law.

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Best counter-protests of the anti-gays ever

More here. Read the rest of this post...

When right-wing trackers FAIL (and end up looking foolish on video)

This is classic. Some goof ball decides to hang out in front of Media Matters building to ask about George Soros. But, Media Matters, which knows how to play the game, decided to track the tracker.
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Wiesenthal center opposes building mosque near Ground Zero because 'it's a cemetery,' but ok with Jewish museum on top of Muslim cemetery

I'm neither Jewish nor Arab. And if anything, I've often tilted towards Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But this debate over the mosque near Ground Zero sickens me. And what sickens me even more is civil rights groups siding with the likes of Newt Gingrich. Not only has the ADL come out against the mosque, because allegedly it might make people uncomfortable, but now the Wiesenthal Center is opposing the mosque too.

In a move one might call supremely ironic, the Wiesenthal Center opposes building the mosque near Ground Zero because, it now claims, the former site of the World Trade Center "is a cemetery." The irony comes from the fact that the Wiesenthal Center is currently building a new "Museum of Tolerance" in Jerusalem on top of an old Muslim cemetery, in spite of the complaints of Muslims who have family members buried there.

[F]ifteen of the oldest families in Jerusalem filed a case before the United Nations in Geneva and held news conferences there, also in Los Angeles and Jerusalem. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University has members of his family buried there and calls it further desecration of a cemetry that they have been nibbling away at for over three decades, despite many protests. "the fact that it was desecrated in the ’60s doesn’t mean that it’s right to desecrate it further. What happened in the 1960s was that part of the cemetery was paved over for this parking lot. What they have now done is to dig down and disinter four layers, according to the chief archaeologist for the Israeli Archaeological Authority, four layers of graves."

Yes, a Jewish tolerance museum built on top of dead Muslims. Think that makes anyone uncomfortable?

Oh, and it's not like the museum is about promoting tolerance between Jews and Muslims. It's about promoting tolerance between Jews.

So, to summarize. Mosque near cemetery, bad. Jewish museum on top of cemetery, good.

Entire story, sick. Read the rest of this post...

Sam Seder on the BS about the Mosque in Lower Manhattan

Reporting from the location where the Muslim Community Center will be built, Sam Seder cuts through the BS:
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At Salazar's request, judge allows Alaskan oil testing to proceed

The hits just keep on coming. In other oil news, the judge who stopped drilling off Alaska's Arctic shore says that non-drilling activities, such as seismic testing, can proceed (my emphasis):

A federal judge has clarified his ruling that stopped companies from drilling oil and gas wells off Alaska's coast, saying the ruling shouldn't prevent approved scientific work such as seismic surveying.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline, responding to a motion filed by Shell Gulf of Mexico Inc., said his order last month that blocked drilling doesn't prevent the seismic studies by Shell that had been approved by the federal government or that were pending approval and planned for this summer. Seismic surveying involves blasting sound waves into the sea floor and reading the echoes off rock formations deep underground in an effort to identify where oil and natural gas might be trapped. Seismic work occurs in advance of drilling.

But wait. Didn't the Obama administration Just Say No to Arctic oil drilling? Well, there's those pesky lost corporate profits to consider:

The Obama administration is among those seeking clarification from Beistline, a rare recent case of the administration siding with the oil industry. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked the court to narrow the ruling so that another company, Statoil, which owns 16 Chukchi leases, could start seismic testing roughly 100 miles from the coast. Government attorneys told the judge that Statoil, a global oil company partly owned by the Norwegian government, would likely face "significant economic losses" if it couldn't proceed with seismic surveying.

And boom go all the fishies:

Environmental groups said they were stunned by the administration move . . . marine mammals such as whales and walruses can be harmed by the testing. The impact of such tests on marine life was one of the issues the court said the federal government failed to consider adequately before issuing the Arctic drilling leases.

But look at these bright shiny jobs, bro:

"The public interest is in preventing the hardship Alaskans will suffer from lost jobs and economic growth if the injunction remains in place," [Alaska Gov. Sean] Parnell said.

That's Norwegian corporate profits, if you're reading closely.

But don't worry, progressives — the earth still spins on its axis. If Team Change gets a House subpoena after the 2010 elections, it will still be your fault.

GP Read the rest of this post...

The DNC is reaching out to LGBT voters, but that job got a lot tougher this week

The Washington Blade's Chris Johnson wrote an article about the DNC's outreach to the LGBT community, noting the speech from the DNC's Executive Director Jennifer O'Malley Dillon to Stonewall Democrats last weekend.

But, there's a big hurdle: Barack Obama. With the exception of the usual apologists, lobbyists and job-seekers, the statements from the White House in the wake of the Prop. 8 decision won't make the DNC's job any easier. Obama's opposition to marriage equality is going to be a HUGE obstacle in the LGBT community. The reelection campaign (which may be run by Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina) probably does not care about that right now, but they will. It's going to be tough to sell "separate, but equal" to people who are demanding nothing less than full equality.

Joe has much more on this over at AMERICAblog Gay. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Rep. Paul Ryan: the 'FlimFlam man'

For the second time in two weeks, Paul Krugman dismantles Paul Ryan for having his head where no one who can add should ever go. The "audacity of dopes" he calls it:

One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past experience, that D.C. insiders would be on their guard against conservatives with grandiose plans. But no: as long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic.

Which brings me to the innovative thinker du jour: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. . . . He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

But it’s the audacity of dopes.

What's so bad about Mr. Ryan's proposals? Paul Krugman again (my emphasis):

The Tax Policy Center finds that the Ryan plan would cut taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population in half, giving them 117 percent of the plan’s total tax cuts. That’s not a misprint. Even as it slashed taxes at the top, the plan would raise taxes for 95 percent of the population.

Then Krugman, who never surprises with his surprise, asks why in God's sweet earth does everyone listen to smart-seeming idiots like the representative from Wisconsin's cheese country? (Ryan's district includes the south part of Milwaukee, Racine, and farm country west to Janesville; but he must be smart because that's just north of Illinois.)

So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam?

Two words, Mr. Krugman: Movement Conservatives. The oh-so-collegial economists you don't understand; the face-lift news-blondes you can't wrap your mind around; the faux-lib bureaucrats who just don't get it, even though this time your patient explanations made even more sense than before.

It's a war, Professor. They brought rifles and civilian uniforms; you brought a picnic basket and lecture notes.

And Paul Ryan? He's on the Obama–Peterson Catfood Commission, of course. Chris Van Hollen:

It speaks volumes about the GOP agenda for America that the three House Republican members named to the Deficit Commission strongly support privatizing Social Security and all voted last year to dismantle Medicare as we know it.

Nancy Pelosi has guaranteed a House vote on the Commission's recommendations. It's gonna happen; thanks, Nancy, for doing your part.

It makes you wonder — at what point do our betters just not need us any more? (There's actually an answer, folks; people have been working on that one. Stay tuned.)

GP Read the rest of this post...

Rand Paul never graduated college, which begs the question of how he got into med school without a college degree

From Huff Post:

"Rand Paul, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee in Kentucky, holds a medical degree from Duke University but never received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University, contrary to several media reports in recent months. Baylor officials confirmed this week that Paul was a student there from fall 1981 to summer 1984 but never obtained a degree. Instead, he left early when Duke accepted him in its School of Medicine...Other media organizations that have reported Paul graduated from Baylor include The Associated Press, The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Time and U.S. News & World Report." Lexington Herald-Ledger

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Mixner: 'If there was anyone that should sit down and read this opinion it would be this son of an interracial couple'

For any who might not know, David Mixner is an old friend of Bill Clinton who stood up Clinton, and even got himself arrested outside the White House, over DADT. David has put a lot on the line for the movement, and as he noted the other day, he never did get that invite to Chelsea's wedding (point being: David sacrificed a friendship with one of the most powerful men in the world for our rights).

David is a powerful speaker, and writer. If you ever get the chance to see him speak in person, do. Here's what David has to say about the Prop 8 decision and our current president:

After the Proposition 8 historic decision came down on Wednesday, my email box was flooded with people from every walk of life issuing press releases praising the victory. The Republican Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't be more excited for the LGBT community in our victory. Justice and equality was having a good day and everyone was basking in it.

Well, not quite everyone. Our President, our fierce advocate, continued with a game of giving us begrudgingly congratulations in a tepid unemotional and uninspired statement while sending his minions out to make sure the entire country knew that he was against marriage equality. If there was anyone that should sit down and read this opinion it would be this son of an interracial couple who had to go to Supreme Court to obtain marriage equality.

Unfortunately, he didn't even mention the court case in his two line statement. However, David Axelrod found plenty of time to go on national television to make sure the country knew that Obama was against marriage equality. Then there was the cowardly "nameless source" who said the President would only deal with those actions at the federal level such as benefits and things.

This game has to stop. The President is either with us or against us. If he is neutral, so be it but then stop hurting us by saying over and over how marriage equality is between a man and a women.

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Alan Grayson, liberal hero, appears to have sided with Net Neutrality foes

Huff Post:

Rep. Alan Grayson shocked his passionate followers in the progressive online community this week when he aligned himself with the telecom industry and pressured the Federal Communications Commission not to write regulations protecting the principle of net neutrality. Conservative bloggers immediately embraced Grayson, with Andrew Breitbart's Big Government mockingly offering him a "very warm welcome to the party," while reminding readers that he "is about as rabid a Leftist partisan as there is in Congress." Both Big Government and RedState.com gleefully noted that Grayson employs Matt Stoller, a former prominent blogger and leading net neutrality advocate. On Monday, Google is expected to announce a deal with Verizon that would end net neutrality and allow telecom companies to slow down particular websites and charge fees similar to cable for access to certain sites on mobile devices. (There is increasingly little difference between mobile and stationary devices.) Verizon, under the agreement being negotiated, could crush blogs, companies or political candidates by slowing down their sites.

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White House economic adviser, Romer, to leave

Christina Romer, chairwoman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, is leaving. Which is ironic, since she was the only one in the White House who seemed to understand, at the time, that we needed a larger stimulus than the one the President asked for. From Krugman:

For me, the really interesting [of Ryan Lizza's article] passage was this one:

The most important question facing Obama that day was how large the stimulus should be. Since the election, as the economy continued to worsen, the consensus among economists kept rising. A hundred-billion-dollar stimulus had seemed prudent earlier in the year. Congress now appeared receptive to something on the order of five hundred billion. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate, was calling for a trillion. Romer had run simulations of the effects of stimulus packages of varying sizes: six hundred billion dollars, eight hundred billion dollars, and $1.2 trillion. The best estimate for the output gap was some two trillion dollars over 2009 and 2010. Because of the multiplier effect, filling that gap didn’t require two trillion dollars of government spending, but Romer’s analysis, deeply informed by her work on the Depression, suggested that the package should probably be more than $1.2 trillion. The memo to Obama, however, detailed only two packages: a five-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar stimulus and an eight-hundred-and-ninety-billion-dollar stimulus. Summers did not include Romer’s $1.2-trillion projection. The memo argued that the stimulus should not be used to fill the entire output gap; rather, it was “an insurance package against catastrophic failure.” At the meeting, according to one participant, “there was no serious discussion to going above a trillion dollars.”

So Christy Romer’s math looked similar to mine: even given what we knew last December, the straight economics said that we should have a stimulus much bigger than the Obama administration’s initial proposal. And given what happened to that proposal in the Senate — we actually ended up with only about $600 billion of actual stimulus — what we eventually got was half of what seemed appropriate in December.

Once, again, before folks at the White House say "$800bn (really $600bn, as Krugman points out), is all we could get politically," let me remind you - $500bn was Congress' opening offer in the negotiation. You don't just cave at the beginning of the negotiation because the other guy says "no." You especially don't cave when the life and death of the entire country's economy is in the balance. You tell the other guy, "if you won't do what's necessary to save the country from going into a second Great Depression, we'll go to the American people and tell them."

But the White House didn't do that. They caved. At the beginning of the negotiation. Then they caved again, giving 35% of the remaining stimulus to near useless tax cuts. And now we have 10% unemployment, the public disapproves of the President, and we're in danger of losing the House in the fall elections. This isn't an academic point that we all need to 'get over.' Rather, the White House screwed up, and we're all in deep shit as a result. And now the only person in the White House who seems to have understood what was needed, is leaving. And the people who got us into this mess, are staying.

That's why we keep bitching. Because history is going to keep repeating itself until the White House learns how to play the game, Read the rest of this post...

July unemployment stayed at 9.5%. 131,000 jobs lost.

Not exactly great news about jobs. Overall, there was a job loss, but private employers added 71,000 jobs:

Employment fell for a second straight month in July as more temporary census jobs ended while private hiring rose less than expected, pointing to an anemic economic recovery.

Non-farm payrolls fell 131,000 the Labor Department said on Friday as temporary jobs to conduct the decennial census dropped by 143,000.

Private employment, considered a better gauge of labor market health, rose 71,000 after increasing 31,000 in June. In addition, the government revised payrolls for May and June to show 97,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

Earlier this week, Tim Geithner said we're in a recovery.

Here's one analysis, via MSNBC:

“The good news here is we are not falling off a cliff; were getting job growth,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, told CNBC. “But obviously this is not enough. If we don’t see better job growth later this year and next the recovery is in jeopardy.”

It really is about jobs, jobs, jobs.

Atrios says:

Maybe somebody should do something.

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Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

What a week, huh?

Congratulations to Elana Kagan, the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. It seems like her life's mission was to secure that job. Now, she needs to use all of her intellectual abilities to fight the Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito bloc. The President will be hosting a reception for Kagan today at the White House.

This morning, Obama will be doing an event on small business at a company here in DC called Gelberg Signs.

The Senate wrapped up yesterday and won't reconvene until September 13th. Senators have a lot of work to do when they come back. One question is whether the Senate will take up the Defense Authorization bill in September. That's what Armed Services Committee Chairman Levin wants. But, John McCain had a meltdown over that yesterday. It was vintage McCain. Video is here. The compromise DADT repeal language is included in the Defense bill -- and that's what set McCain off. The GOPers are going to wage a fierce battle to kill repeal. We're going to need our advocates to be equally as fierce -- and that includes the President.

Let's get it started... Read the rest of this post...

A new use for old Coliseums

This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but don't be surprised if your next trip to Rome finds you in front of the Staples Roman Coliseum, brought to you by Coke, the soft drink that loves you, and GladRags, for soaking up all that gladiatorial goo.

Chris Hayes and Kent Jones on The Rachel Maddow Show:



What do you call it when everything's for sale? Mission accomplished, of course.

GP Read the rest of this post...

The Jock’s Guide to Getting Arrested

Consider this your laugh for the night. Matt Taibbi, who writes hard stuff for Rolling Stone, also writes jock stuff for Men's Journal. He's just published his article "The Jock’s Guide to Getting Arrested." From the intro:

For most American men, this time of year means the kickoff of NFL training camp — the start of the New Year on the couch-potato sports calendar. But for me it’s a sad time. It’s the end of Arrest Season.

In terms of jock crime sprees, no other stretch rivals late June and July. . . . this is the only time of the year when rookies and veterans from three of America’s four major professional sports leagues are free to really relax and enjoy life — the last chance they’re going to have to get double-Tasered in fights with nightclub security guards or buy alcohol for pairs of under-17 girls in the sleazy hotels of Covington, Kentucky, or ride around on a three-wheeled motorcycle with a pistol in a pant leg and a shotgun in a guitar case.

Taibbi offers six "rules" to getting arrested the "right" way. Here's the first one: Make sure you don't suck.

Before you go out and start committing crimes, it’s important to first make sure you’re at least slightly better than the 30 or 40 guys the team’s assistant GM could instantly pull off some practice squad to replace you. Otherwise you will become fodder for the team’s zero-tolerance discipline policy. . . . Take defensive back Willie Andrews, a seventh-round Patriots pick who barely played and sucked when he did. Two days after the disastrous 2008 Super Bowl loss to the Giants that he did absolutely nothing to prevent, he was caught driving around in an unregistered Crown Vic with a half-pound of weed. Four months after that, right smack in the middle of Arrest Season, he got pinched for allegedly waving a gun at his girlfriend’s head. Unamused, Bill Belichick sent a strong zero-tolerance message by cutting Andrews the very next day. Meanwhile, ultra-awesome Pats cornerback Ty Law was arrested twice — once for muling some E across the Canadian border (he skated on that) and once for a bizarre 2004 traffic incident in Miami that culminated in the ultimate arrest-related shame for an NFL skill-position player: getting caught in a foot chase by a policeman. Despite all this, Law was kept on the roster for another year — perhaps because he was the only guy on the team who could cover Marvin Harrison.

For fans of jock adventures, the piece is a hoot on skates. All six rules are fun, but be sure to catch Rule 2: Don't commit weird crimes.

Nice reading for a warm summer night.

GP Read the rest of this post...