Congress, WH pursuing only least popular deficit cutting options

Per HuffPost Hill:

The current deficit reduction framework being discussed includes a bipartisan mix of proposals, from the Democratic-favored increase in revenues from wealthier Americans to Republican-favored cuts in programs that prevent old people from being eaten alive by wolves, or what not. However a new survey from Bloomberg finds that the most popular deficit reduction measures aren't being discussed by lawmakers in Washington. Mike McAuliff: "The survey, released Thursday and Friday, found that the most popular options for reducing the deficit was cutting Social Security benefits for high-income earners, with 64 percent favoring that idea. The third and fourth most popular ideas were raising the amount of salary subject to Social Security tax beyond the current $107,000 a year (52 percent) and gradually raising retirement age to 69 (49 percent)...On the congressional side, House Republicans have repeatedly declared that raising taxes is a non-starter -- a stance House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reaffirmed in a Thursday speech. Yet, the Bloomberg survey found that repealing the Bush-era tax cuts on households earning more than $250,000 is the second most favored idea, at 54 percent. What that leaves on the table are deficit-trimming plans that few people like, such as cutting Medicaid and Medicare by targeting providers, cutting back on the military or trimming cost-of-living increases in Social Security."

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Video: Jedi Kittens strike back!

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Poll: Obama at new low, Perry leads GOP

Obama's approval ratings are at an all time low - independents are key:

As concerns about the struggling U.S. economy grow, a new CBS News/New York poll finds that President Obama's overall approval rating has dropped to 43 percent, the lowest so far of his presidency in CBS News polling. In addition, his disapproval rating has reached an all-time high of 50 percent.

Views of the president's job performance are marked by a striking degree of polarization along party lines -- the vast majority of Democrats approve (78 percent), while even more Republicans disapprove (89 percent) of how he's handling his job. But only 37 percent of independents approve, with 54 percent disapproving.

Also, from the numbers above it's clear that Dem approval is lagging behind Republican disapproval. Though, the pollsters make a good point:

With just over a year before Mr. Obama faces voters again for re-election, it should be noted that Mr. Obama's overall approval rating is similar to that of Bill Clinton's (43 percent) and Ronald Reagan's (46 percent) about a year before their presidential elections when they won re-election. Conversely, George H.W. Bush had a 70 percent approval rating about a year before the presidential election but then lost his bid for re-election.

In another CBS story we learn that Perry leads the GOP pack:

Among voters who intend to vote in a Republican primary or caucus, Perry leads the pack of candidates nationally with 23 percent, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 16 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann tie for third with 7 percent, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul (5 percent) and business executive Herman Cain (5 percent). Former Ambassador and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and former Sen. Rick Santorum each receive 1 percent.

And there's an 18 point enthusiasm gap between Rs and Ds.

But there is an 18 point partisan enthusiasm gap that currently favors Republicans: 44 percent of Republican voters are more enthusiastic about voting in 2012, while just 26 percent of Democrats are. This is a reversal compared to October, 2007, when twice as many Democrats as Republicans expressed more enthusiasm about voting.

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Are public figures supposed to remain celibate, or only the gay ones?

A local California city councilman is in the local papers for using an online dating site to meet men (and, egads, possibly even sleep with them). I think two things are going on. First, a wee bit of homophobia (it's so salacious that it's about gay sex!), and second, Internet-phobia (it's so salacious that people date online!). What the paper doesn't understand, and what I wrote about at length over at AMERICAblog Gay, is that there's a reason gays were early adopters to online dating - it's called survival:

Imagine what it's like being a gay man and wanting to make a pass at a cute guy at the office, at the bus stop, at church. I'd be damn careful about doing any of those unless I knew, or strongly suspected, the other guy was gay. Straight guys don't have that problem, worrying about getting the sh*t kicked out of them if they make a friendly pass at a woman who happens to be a lesbian.

There's a reason gay people were early adopters of online dating. Other than a few bars (and the Whole Foods), there's nowhere else we can safely assume the other person is actually gay. And I mean safely.

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Obama has cut more taxes than Bush

I'm not entirely sure that this is something to crow about, but it is an interesting metric, especially with the election coming up. From CAP:

All told, the Recovery Act included $243 billion worth of tax cuts through 2012.

Nearly two years after signing his first big tax cut bill into law, President Obama completely outdid himself by signing the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, commonly known as the December 2010 tax deal. The biggest element of the December deal was the extension, for two additional years, of all the Bush tax cuts and alternative minimum tax relief, at a two-year combined cost of more than $400 billion.

In addition, the deal extended a variety of business tax cuts and incentives, which reduced revenues by some $150 billion, and it cut the estate tax—a tax paid by only a very few super-wealthy, massive estates—by $65 billion. The December tax bill also cut the payroll tax paid by employees by 2 percentage points, delivering more than $110 billion in tax cuts to working Americans.

Put it all together, and in one fell swoop, President Obama cut taxes by $654 billion in 2011 and 2012 alone. In other words, with this bill President Obama cut taxes by more, in raw dollar amounts, in just half of his term than George W. Bush did over his full first term.

With the huge Recovery Act tax cuts and the enormous December 2010 tax cuts combined, President Obama has already signed into law tax cuts amounting to more than $900 billion from 2009 through 2012. Even after accounting for legislation that the president signed that increased revenue during that period, President Obama has cut taxes by more than $850 billion in his first term, or approximately 1.5 percent of GDP.

Just recently, President Obama proposed another $250 billion in tax cuts designed to spur job creation, mostly in the form of additional cuts to the payroll tax. In fact, as the Citizens for Tax Justice noted, President Obama’s proposed payroll tax cuts are essentially equal in size to the total cost of the extended Bush tax cuts for 2012. If Congress passes this next set of Obama tax cuts, his total will rise to well more than $1.1 trillion, or nearly 2 percent of GDP—close to double the size of the tax cuts in President Bush’s first term.

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WI GOP turns on Tommy Thompson. He’s no longer a "real" Republican in party taken over by right-wing nuts.

From AP we learn that Tommy Thompson, former Bush HHS secretary, and former governor of Wisconsin, is no longer conservative enough for today's GOP. He's considering a run for Herb Kohl's Senate seat, against Tammy Baldwin (she's the only declared Dem candidate so far), but the far-right Republicans running the state and national GOP no longer consider Thompson a "real" Republican.

This story is far more than just Tommy Thompson and Wisconsin.  It's about how the GOP let itself be taken over by religious zealots and political anarchists, neither of whom exists for any purpose other than dismantling government and banning abortion (and the gay).

For more than a decade, Tommy Thompson was the face of the Republican Party in Wisconsin. He was elected governor four times. Word that he was considering a political comeback seemed to offer the GOP the prospect of a high-profile contender for a Democratic-held Senate seat and a better shot at winning control of the chamber in 2012.

But as Thompson weighs a possible bid, Republicans here find themselves with surprisingly mixed feelings about their most famous living politician and where he fits into the party these days.

Some Republicans clearly want more candidates who will continue to press a hard ideological line. Conservative groups like Club for Growth are already working against Thompson. In August the group aired a statewide television ad attacking him. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative kingmaker, recently took a thinly veiled swipe at Thompson, claiming he supported President Barack Obama's health care plan - a charge Thompson denies.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign, which courted Thompson as a candidate in 2010, isn't calling this time.

A number of other Republicans are considering making the race. One is Jeff Fitzgerald, who said he respects the former governor but thinks the party has moved on.

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UBS trader arrested for billions in losses. Where are the Wall Street indictments?

Apparently a UBS trader lost $2 billion in unauthorized trades and lost a ton of money for the Swiss bank. When UBS found out, they sought to have him arrested and brought to justice.

UBS uncovered the trading losses on Wednesday and called the London police and financial regulators at 1 a.m. on Thursday. Mr. Adoboli was arrested at 3:30 a.m. on suspicion of fraud by abuse of position. Mr. Adoboli retained the law firm Kingsley & Apley to represent him, but a spokeswoman declined to comment on the case.

Hold on while I do the math. OK, I think I got it. It took London police two and a half hours to arrest someone for defrauding the big bank. By contrast, three years after the financial collapse, not a single bank executive has been sent to jail for defrauding homeowners and institutional investors. It's almost enough to make one think that there are two tiers of justice regarding the banks and fraud.

NOTE FROM CHRIS: As much as this trader should be held and investigated for allegedly losing $2 billion, why is nobody being held for losing trillions of dollars from the first phase of the economic crisis? Is there a particular reason why a trader gets arrested yet the big banks who were at the center of much greater losses are handed wads of cash and meetings with political leaders from both parties? As James Carville said, indict the bankers. Read the rest of this post...

Consumer sentiment slightly up, outlook remains low

It's difficult for consumers to feel optimistic when they're worried about jobs. Cutting interest rates or keeping them low makes almost no difference, despite what the Federal Reserve thinks. People need jobs, not bickering by the political class. Corporate America is not going to deliver jobs because consumers aren't driving enough demand. They can't because they're broke and wondering if they will have a job next month. Until the federal government gets its act together and delivers another stimulus that creates jobs, expect a lot more consumer sentiment reports like this.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment edged up to 57.8 from 55.7 the month before, which had been the lowest level since November 2008. It topped the median forecast of 56.5 among economists polled by Reuters.

"Overall, the data indicate that a renewed downturn in consumer spending is as likely as not in the year ahead," survey director Richard Curtin said in a statement.

"Even without a downturn, consumer spending will not be strong enough to enable the rapid job growth that is needed to offset reduced long-term expectations."

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Hating on Bill Daley

Politico has a big story with lots of anonymous Washington bigwigs, from the White House to the Congress, hating on White House chief of staff Bill Daley.

As if things were better when Rahm was there.

In the end, while it's possible that Daley is a bad manager, the buck stops at the President's desk.  I learned long ago, while working in the Senate, that the staff in this town is often a reflection of the boss.  After nearly three years into this presidency, perhaps it's time we stopped blaming the staff. Read the rest of this post...

National GOP worried that PA GOP’s plan to steal 2012 presidential election may hurt House candidates

I wrote earlier about how Pennsylvania Republicans have a plan to change the way the state's electoral votes are counted in the presidential election, going from a winner take all environment to one in which each candidate can win delegates from each congressional district he or she wins:

Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan—which has been endorsed by top Republicans in both houses of the state's legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett—Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. (Two electoral votes—one for each of the state's two senators—would go to the statewide winner.)

Seems they were too smart by half, per the WSJ:

The problem: Since statewide vote totals would no longer matter, Republicans worry Democrats will move campaign efforts out of safe Democratic districts in urban population centers and into the more moderate suburbs. That could put extra heat on GOP House candidates.

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Looks like the Super Committee won’t go beyond its $1.5 trillion mandate

As if it's now good news that they're "only" going to cut $1.5 trillion when the economy still is not back on its feet and won't be for years and years to come. HuffPost via HuffPost Hill:

The deficit panel tasked with cutting $1.5 trillion in federal spending won't "go big." No, it's not like Jim Clyburn, Patty Murray and Jeb Hensarling were thinking about renting a stretch Hummer, hightailing it to Mexico where they would disappear for five days as they binged on cheap prescription medicine and Sol in the back room of a Mexicali veterinarian office/agrarian supply store ... so far as we know. No, a bipartisan group of 36 senators urged the panel to "go big" today and propose cuts upwards of $4 trillion. Later, Joe Lieberman, who was one of the 36 senators, tweeted "Maybe we 36 began a 'Washington Spring' today." Of course, there is a BIG difference between young people staring down the security forces of a ruthlessly dictatorial regime clinging to power and a bunch of old white farts who want to limit the medicine your grandmother has accessibility to. But maybe there isn't, and maybe children will one day sing songs of the brave Mr. Lieberman who dared to stand in front of the tank of social welfare. Yesterday, a member of the panel, who asked not to be named, told Alexander Bolton that it is unlikely that the 12-member panel will be able to forge a consensus that contains more than the bare minimum of $1.5 trillion, much less $3 or $4 trillion.

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Video: Super Mario in salt (way cooler than it sounds)

Though this sounded a bit lame. Then watched the video. It's pretty cool. A nice way to begin the day.

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Poll: Unemployment top concern

It shouldn't be a surprise that Americans' top concern is unemployment, but of course in political circles it somehow will be surprising.  Get a clue, Washington.

Gallup asks people every month what they think is the most important problem facing the country, and offers several choices, including "the economy in general," and unemployment/jobs." In reality, of course, the two are closely connected. Unemployment won't significantly decline until the economy itself gets moving again -- and that won't happen until demand picks up. Still, the question helps get at what's on people's minds, and what the specific focus of their concern is.

This month, with the official jobless rate at 9.1 percent, 39 percent of respondents said unemployment, up from 28 percent last month. Meanwhile, the share who said the economy in general declined from 31 to 28.

In the 95 months since the start of 2004, this is just the seventh time that the number of people naming unemployment has exceeded the number naming the economy in general. And the 11-point gap is the largest in favor of unemployment since then.

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