EU further isolates Iran after attack on UK Embassy

In the wake of the government sponsored attack on the UK embassy, the new EU sanctions are not a surprise.

The attack on the UK embassy was very clearly organized by the Iranian government. The police stood by to allow the authorized assailants to storm the embassy, stood by while the place was ransacked and only intervened to prevent unauthorized rioters from joining in.

Britain has now closed the Iranian embassy in London in response. Many other countries are scaling back their embassies in Iran. Even Russia, whose relationship to Iran is more or less equivalent to the US relationship to Saudi Arabia seems to be concerned.

What nobody (except for the Israel First lobby and Max Boot) seems to be seriously considering is military action. This can hardly be attributed to 'weakness' on the part of David Cameron who led the push for NATO intervention in Libya. UK finances may be in a parlous state but like the US we have always found the money for a war when the government wants to.

It could hardly be more obvious that what the Iranian regime really wants is to have a small war in the hope that it will rally the country behind the discredited regime. Which is precisely why the UK government is not going to give them what they want. Read the rest of this post...

Are we all being too negative about the unemployment numbers?

Chris wrote earlier about the new unemployment numbers showing a drop in unemployment, but a lackluster rise in "jobs added" to the economy.  The disparity comes from, as I explained at the bottom of the post, the government using two different metrics for determining the unemployment rate and how many jobs were added or last in the previous months.  Thus, this time we got both good news and bad news about the same thing.

A reader, Dee, wrote, saying we're all being too negative. Read what she had to say. What do you think?

Once again some of our wonderful friends in the media are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Unemployment in November dropped from 9% to 8.6% and somehow that has been turned into bad news. So it seems that when the unemployment number goes up because more people enter the workforce...that's bad for Obama; but when the unemployment number goes down because more people leave the workforce...that's also bad for Obama. As usual, President Obama can't win for losing!

NEWSFLASH: You can't have it both ways so which is it???

It seems that no matter what happens, the media always seems to find a way to tell us that contrary to popular belief, ANY news is bad news. Some immediately climbed onto the "people dropped out of the workforce" train without even a mention that some of those people actually retired or were given early retirement packages. Also, there was very little mention that the unemployment numbers from September and October were adjusted to better than expected.

FYI...we're not dumb. We know that a little good news for one month is not going to solve everything that's wrong with our country, but dang--can we at least HAVE a little good news for one month instead of you always trying to find the 'rain' in the rainbow!

Is it any wonder why the majority of Americans feel things aren't getting any better? Because even when it looks like we may be climbing out of the massive hole we're in--even just a little bit, we can always count on our wonderful media friends to find a way to knock us right back down in it!

FYI...smile, sometimes good news may actually be good news!

Read the rest of this post...

Women for Cain

If the photo does not tell you all you need to know, TPM has the full story.



A campaign that can't find four reasonably photogenic volunteers to agree to have their photo taken for use on the Web site is probably not going to win a major party Presidential nomination.

UPDATE: Apparently the Cain Campaign had enough of the mockery being made about the photo, so they pulled it. Now their site has a big gaping hole where the women used to be (somehow that seems terribly appropriate). Read the rest of this post...

Friday Dog Blogging

Sasha is the burrow queen.

She did this all by herself while I was in the kitchen.

This is another one she pulled off on her own.

And this is her usual sleeping M.O.  Totally under
the blanket, head or just nose popping out.

Read the rest of this post...

More on former AIG CEO suing government, claiming bailout not generous enough

In any sane legal system this suit would be tossed immediately and the plaintif's lawyers disbarred for wasting the court's time. AIG is the insurer that the US government spent $182 billion bailing out because there was absolutely no way that it could possibly meet its obligations. Bloomberg:

Greenberg’s Starr International Co. sued the government Nov. 21, calling the public assumption of 80 percent of stock in the insurer in 2008 an unconstitutional “taking” of property that requires $25 billion in compensation.

The correct amount of compensation for AIG shareholders was zero. Allowing them to keep 20% of a bankrupt company after the government bailed it out with $182 billion was a farce.

Greenberg's firm is represented by David Boies, a lawyer who has made a career out of losing high profile cases with tenuous legal arguments. He lost Napster, SCO and the Florida recount. He did get a district court to declare Microsoft a monopoly, but only after the judge had shown such a remarkable degree of incompetence and bias that the decision was thrown out by the Appeals court.

Note from John: I'd be remiss not to mention that Boies has done an amazing job fighting the Prop 8 case in court, including this delicious destruction of the head of the hate group Famiky Research Council, Tony Perkins, on Face the Nation a while back. Read the rest of this post...

Maddow on "Winning the Murdoch Primary"

Brilliant. Be sure to watch the setup, then watch the show. This is the Top 0.001% at work. Dukes and the King; who's in and who's out; who's currying favor and who's failing at it.

Very inside baseball (to switch metaphors), but she's spot on. (Voters? Peasants. Here's where the real electoral action is.) Click to open in a new tab.


"The Murdoch Empire wants someone 'who can win'" — right. It's a feature that Frank Rich is the interviewee, but the whole segment is a treat.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Mrs. Herman Cain would like Herman to quit presidential race, he’s to announce decision tomorrow

When's the last time Herman Cain honored his wife's wishes?

Another family friend says Gloria Cain was never a fan of her husband’s “look at me’’ tendencies or his run for office, even though Cain assured her it wouldn’t require much of her physically or emotionally. He was wrong.

“This is a very arrogant man,’’ says the friend. “It probably never occurred to him that all these women would eventually come out. It’s funny to see him talk about the toll on his wife. He never thought of that before.’’

Sources close to the campaign say Gloria Cain wants her husband to leave the race and has no desire to do additional interviews about their marriage or the constant accusations. They describe a woman angry that her life has been turned upside down by her husband’s need for attention and power by any means.

Ouch.
(H/t Political Wire) Read the rest of this post...

Frank Luntz teaches Republican governors how to lie about Occupy Wall Street

Yahoo News reports on a session at the Republican Governor's Association where the GOP spin-meister told the crowd how they should package their ideas to respond to Occupy Wall Street.

The first thing that struck me about the Luntz list is how defensive it is. David Atkins goes through each point giving chapter and verse but just consider the words Luntz does not want Republicans to use: capitalism, taxes, middle class, jobs, compromise. Luntz is running away from the very vocabulary he established as the GOP canon. It polls badly for Republicans today because it reminds people of the last Republicans who used it.

Luntz has made his career out of applying the same techniques of spin and media management that Peter Mandelson used to create New Labour. What he does not seem to be able to grasp is that people in the US have grown as tired of media spin techniques as the British public did. Most people can tell when politicians who try to manipulate them rather than listen to them and they are sick of it.

As Main Street points out, the contempt of the Luntz approach is demonstrated by the following.

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier:

'I get it.' "First off, here are three words for you all: 'I get it.' . . . 'I get that you're angry. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system."

Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

What Luntz does not get, what he will never get, is the fact that one of the main reasons that people distrust politics and politicians is their use of the very techniques Luntz is selling.

How can anyone 'get it' if they don't listen?

The three most important words to say to anyone in politics is 'I am listening'. Luntz does not care what people believe, what they want, what is best for them. All he cares about is working out how to maipulate them into accepting whatever policy or politician he is being paid to promote.

Nobody who follows the advice of Frank Luntz 'gets' what Occupy Wall Street is protesting. Read the rest of this post...

Geeks rise up to fight against "Stop Online Piracy Act"/PIPA

While we already know the Attorney General Holder is busy boot licking for Hollywood and the recording industry, the geeks are another story. Microsoft has backed off of its earlier support for the poorly-named "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA), as have others in the tech industry such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo!. Most in the tech industry are not against stopping illegal abuse of IP, they're against the model used in the current legislation.

The Chamber of Commerce continues to alienate business with their robust support of the legislation that Hollywood wants, thus missing out on support by the faster growing tech industry. It's an interesting business model over there at the Chamber and one you don't usually see. Let's call it "How to piss off your biggest potential customers and alienate everyone else along the way." What fool really wants someone like the Chamber promoting their business when they can't even see the damage that they're causing within what should be one of its largest customers?

Steve Tepp, an intellectual property attorney at the Chamber, has become one of SOPA's most ardent defenders. He's written that SOPA's critics intentionally "mislead and scare people to make their point" and peddle "hyperbole." In a snarky blog post before Halloween, he said that anti-SOPA types are "unpacking all their favorite ghouls and hobgoblins" and making "extreme and absurd claims."

In another post, Tepp said that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "will always stand" on the "side of American businesses"--an odd statement given that the list of businesses opposed to SOPA includes eBay, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, AOL, Zynga, and many other technology companies. (See CNET's FAQ and our previous coverage of security concerns.)

Yahoo recently quit the Chamber to protest its copyright position, while Google and the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents 2,200 companies, are considering following suit, the Washington Post reported. Both the Chamber and Google have confirmed to CNET that the search company remains a member; a new campaign funded in part by MoveOn.org seeks to convince Google to change its mind and leave.

Let's not forget that the US Chamber of Commerce is incredibly anti-gay and anti-trans as well. They've actually gotten gay and trans rights laws repealed. There is no excuse for any American business being a member of any organization that is pro-discrimination. Read the rest of this post...

Jobs number out and very disappointing - UE went "down," but job growth was far too slow

ADP was predicting 206,000 new jobs but the official number today is a mere 120,000 though the unemployment rate did drop. That does show you how bogus some of the numbers are because the jobs increase was well below the "break even" number for the month (i.e., below the number need to make the unemployment rate drop). As we can see from the UK example, harsh austerity isn't the answer, but maintaining the status quo isn't the answer either.

We can't afford the same old, same old but that's what we're stuck with today.

Job creation remained weak in the U.S. during November, with just 120,000 new positions created, though the unemployment rate slid to 8.6 percent, a government report showed Friday.

The rate fell from the previous month's 9.0 percent, a move which in part reflected a drop in those looking for jobs. The participation rate dropped to 64 percent, from 64.2 percent in October, representing 315,000 fewer job-seekers.

The actual employment level increased by 278,000. The total amount of those without a job fell to 13.3 million.

Note from John: The Atlantic's Derek Thompson explains how the unemployment rate could drop when the number of new jobs added wasn't enough to decrease the unemployment rate. The quick answer: They use two different metrics to measure the unemployment rate and the number of new jobs added:

There are about 150 million people with jobs in the U.S., so it's impossible to measure every hiring and firing perfectly. The government relies on two imperfect surveys. To get the jobs-added figure, we count hirings and firings on payrolls. To get the unemployment rate and the employment/population rate, we conduct a survey of U.S. households.

The household survey says we added 300,000 jobs last month. The other survey says the private sector added only 140,000 jobs in November. Half of those jobs came from retail (it's shopping season) and health care (which is always growing). Meanwhile, the government lost 20,000 jobs. The result was a 120,000 net gain.

So the "unemployment rate" is based on the household survey, which says we added 300,000 jobs last month, more than the break-even point (which is, depending who you talk to, somewhere between 200k and 300k jobs added in one month) - thus the unemployment rate went down.

But the official "jobs added" figure is based on the number of hirings and firing on payrolls that month. And the number for last month was an anemic 120,000 new jobs added, not enough to decrease the unemployment rate.  So, as Chris said,  the numbers are a bit bogus. Read the rest of this post...

NYT on Dems outmaneuvering GOP on payroll tax cut

NYT:

"Tonight, Senate Republicans chose to raise taxes on nearly 160 million hard-working Americans because they refused to ask a few hundred thousand millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share," Mr. Obama said in a statement after the first Senate vote.

It was the same message he delivered on Wednesday, in anticipation of the Senate action, both in speeches to a crowd in blue-collar Scranton, Pa., and later to affluent donors in New York. In Scranton, speaking as if to Republicans, he asked, "Are you willing to fight as hard for middle-class families as you do for those who are most fortunate? What's it going to be?"

Mr. Obama, in setting this debate in motion in September, when he introduced his job-creation plan, has tapped into the widespread sense of income inequality - fighting for "the 99 percent" - that gave rise to the Occupy Wall Street movement. But Democrats would not be in their current strong position but for the fact that Republicans, for the first time in memory, contested a tax cut and then insisted that the reductions be paid for.

Mr. Schumer read to reporters from RedState.com, a Web site popular among conservatives, where a blogger, Erick Erickson, wrote, "I never thought I would see the day, but Democrats are outmaneuvering Republicans on a tax cut."

Read the rest of this post...

Dear God, what a photo of Bachmann in the Post

I was going to write about the story, but then saw the photo accompanying the story.  Dear God.  She looks like someone threw water on her and took her broom.  (Or maybe...)

The Post article is quite good on its own. You see, Michele Bachmann recently opined that gay people can already marry in America since they can marry straight people.  Putting aside the question of why Bachmann is such an expert on straight women marrying gay men, the Post's Alexandra Petri has the perfect response - do read it.

PS Of course, Bachmann, as usual, is wrong about her facts.  Gay people can already legally wed in parts of America, including Iowa, where she gave the incorrect answer that only opposite-sex marriages are legal in America. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman on why Europe is headed towards economic disaster, and we’re close behind

It's got to be frustrating to be a Paul Krugman or a Joe Stiglitz.  "Told you so" is only so much fun when the price for being right is the demise of the world economy.  In his latest NYT column, Krugman explains how it was the European Central Bank, and governments' misplaced notion that during a recession you cut back spending, that put Europe in the mess it's in - and we're following on their heels, fast.

I hope, for our sake as well as theirs, that the Europeans will change course before it’s too late. But, to be honest, I don’t believe they will. In fact, what’s much more likely is that we will follow them down the path to ruin.

For in America, as in Europe, the economy is being dragged down by troubled debtors — in our case, mainly homeowners. And here, too, we desperately need expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to support the economy as these debtors struggle back to financial health. Yet, as in Europe, public discourse is dominated by deficit scolds and inflation obsessives.

So the next time you hear someone claiming that if we don’t slash spending we’ll turn into Greece, your answer should be that if we do slash spending while the economy is still in a depression, we’ll turn into Europe. In fact, we’re well on our way.

We're in a bit of a bind, folks. The Republicans have convinced the country that we simply must cut spending or else (and they don't quite enunciate what the "or else" is), while the President and Democrats in Congress gleefully jumped on the GOP budget-cutting bandwagon a good two years ago. And now we're all heading towards a worldwide economic disaster, and few government leaders, in any country, are acknowledging the cause.

Even if the Republicans were right, and they're not, cutting government regulations isn't going to get the economy back on its feet.  A recent analysis by the Associated Press showed that government regulations caused a whopping 0.2% of all layoffs in the past three years.  So the  Republicans are pushing spending cuts, which will depress the economy further, and the repeal of regulations, that will do next to nothing to help the economy, but will probably hurt workers, food safety and the environment.  And all the while, Democrats will be too afraid to tell voters the truth - that we need to create demand, fast. Read the rest of this post...

Hillary met with Suu Kyi to wrap up Myanmar visit

Although there's little reason why anyone should trust the military in Myanmar, opening up that country is still a good idea. (Although even when I visited ten years ago, I did see with my own eyes a US military transport plane at the airport. Hmmm.) The fact that Hillary was allowed to meet with Suu Kyi is an encouraging sign but we should never forget who we're dealing with there.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a final meeting with Suu Kyi as she wrapped up a landmark visit to Myanmar which saw the new civilian government pledge to forge ahead with political reforms and re-engage with the world community.

Clinton and Suu Kyi - the Nobel laureate who has come to symbolize the pro-democracy aspirations of Myanmar's people - held a private dinner on Thursday and met again on Friday at Suu Kyi's lakeside home, effectively her prison until she was released in November last year after years in detention.

"We are happy with the way in which the United States is engaging with us and it is through engagement that we hope to promote a process of democratization," said Suu Kyi, adding that Clinton's visit was a "historical moment" for both countries.

Read the rest of this post...

Sarkozy proposes new EU treaty

He's not wrong to want a smoother political process for the European Union, but Merkel is not wrong either for wanting more centralized budget control within the EU. Eventually both have to happen if it's going to work. "If" being the key word.

While conceding that Europe's debt crisis and the collapse of confidence in the currency meant France had to surrender some of its sovereignty under a new punitive regime of fiscal discipline, Sarkozy's focus appeared to be on a new deal enabling the leaders of the 17 eurozone countries to strike political bargains among themselves.

Eurozone governments would need to forfeit their rights of veto in policy-making, he said, under a new system of eurogroup qualified majority voting.

Sarkozy failed to flesh out his ideas but his initiative appeared to run counter to Berlin's plans for a much more rigorous monetary union in which participating governments would surrender ultimate control of tax and spending policies to a centralised EU body armed with intrusive powers of scrutiny and dealing out automatic penalties to fiscal sinners.

This problem is a major crisis for the EU but there is nothing that suggests key issues such as the eurozone staying in one piece will be resolved in the near term. Read the rest of this post...

UK Top Gear host proposes 'execution in front of their families' for strikers

For a guy who has been cashing in so nicely for being a complete ass, it's not clear why he feels the need to attack middle class Britain other than being a shock-jock is what he does. It's never been clear why anyone likes his staged events or his car talk, because he's the most predictable arrogant jerk I've ever seen on TV. His show is a success in a Rush Limbaugh kind of way. Here's the actual video, if you can stomach this guy.

Obviously the show is growing boring to others or else he wouldn't be to keen to come up with something so ridiculous to shock viewers. Guess who votes Conservative?

The provocative Top Gear presenter sparked a storm of outrage on Twitter after telling viewers of the BBC One programme that he would have striking public sector workers shot.

"I would have them taken outside and executed them in front of their families," he said.

Read the rest of this post...