Econ recovery is weakest since Depression

So let's focus on the deficit instead.  Sigh.  It's just what the Republicans want.  They'd like nothing better than to get one of their lifelong dreams - gutting the federal budget - and at the same time sink the economy and send Barack Obama packing in 2012.

AP:

This is one anniversary few feel like celebrating.

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.

Unemployment has never been so high - 9.1 percent - this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.

- The average worker's hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.

- The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession.

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VIDEO: Cat nuzzles up to dolphins - wonderful video

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The Obama DOJ's war on pot

Via Huff Post Hill (which seems to have a special place in its virtual heart for potheads):

OBAMA DOJ RESTARTS POT WAR, CUZ WHY NOT? - Medical marijuana advocates are annoyed by a new Justice Department threat to raid and prosecute medical pot shops even in states where the drug is legal. "The term 'caregiver' as used in [a previous] memorandum meant just that: individuals providing care to individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses, not commercial operations cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana," Deputy Attorney General James Cole writes. So using the product within state laws is okay. Growing it or selling it within state laws is not. "Cancer patients are going to have to grow their own product or buy it on the street somewhere," said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, which represents Big Pot.

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GOP prez hopeful Huntsman’s rich buddy not a fan of Obama’s "special sauce"

I have no idea what she's talking about, but it certainly sounds racist. And just downright weird.

[Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild] said she is still registered as a Democrat, but considers herself independent and won’t support the party as long as Obama is president.

“America needs a president who understands the special sauce of what it is that makes this country great,” she said. “The fact of his personal story of being half black and all that is a wonderful, inspiriting story. But it doesn’t qualify him to be president.”

Half black and all that?

You might recall that her royal smugness got herself into a bit of trouble during the 2008 election when, as a McCain surrogate, she labeled the voters "rednecks."

"The people out, you know, who are the rednecks or whoever, are bitter." - McCain surrogate Her Royal Highness Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, CNN, 9/17/08

Apparently money really doesn't buy you class. Read the rest of this post...

Strauss-Kahn released on his own recognizance, case not dropped

It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

It's official: A New York judge freed Dominique Strauss-Kahn on his own recognizance Friday morning, easing the extraordinary bail conditions that had kept the former IMF chief under 24-hour house arrest.

The judge's ruling came after prosecutors discovered a number of inaccuracies in DSK's accuser's story, and marks an extraordinary reversal of fortunes for the French politician who is accused of sexual assault and attempted rape.

Still, prosecutors stressed that they are not dismissing the case outright.

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Gaddafi threatens attacks on Europe if NATO raids continue

This from the person who already has led attacks in Europe including the Lockerbie bombing. As much as this war sickens me, eliminating Gaddafi from this planet sounds like a pretty good plan right about now.

A defiant Moammar Gadhafi threatened Friday to carry out attacks in Europe against "homes, offices, families," unless NATO halts its campaign of airstrikes against his regime in Libya.

The Libyan leader, sought by the International Criminal Court for a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters, delivered the warning in a telephone message played to thousands of supporters gathered in the main square of the capital Tripoli.

It was one of the largest pro-government rallies in recent months, signaling that Gadhafi can still muster significant support. A green cloth, several hundred meters long and held aloft by supporters, snaked above the crowd filling Tripoli's Green Square. Green is Libya's national color.

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Krugman: "Obama caved in over tax cuts" and Republicans "expect him to cave again"

For his Friday column, Paul Krugman expands on his previous thought that if Obama caves again, his "presidency is over" (my emphasis):

So failure to reach a debt deal would have very bad consequences. But ... Obama must be prepared to face those consequences if he wants his presidency to survive.

Bear in mind that G.O.P. leaders don’t actually care about the level of debt. Instead, they’re using the threat of a debt crisis to impose an ideological agenda. ... So what’s really going on is extortion pure and simple. As Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute puts it, the G.O.P. has, in effect, come around with baseball bats and declared, “Nice economy you have here. A real shame if something happened to it.”

And the reason Republicans are doing this is because they must believe that it will work: Mr. Obama caved in over tax cuts, and they expect him to cave again. ... Republicans believe, in short, that they’ve got Mr. Obama’s number, that he may still live in the White House but that for practical purposes his presidency is already over.

He's pouring on the heat, the Professor, upping the ante from his own little corner of the Times.

From this I read the state of the Krugman as heavily fatalistic, that he thinks the cave cake is already in the oven. Why else would he be pushing so hard?

GP Read the rest of this post...

Foreign flier does NY to LA with expired airline ticket owned by someone else

The TSA is too busy picking on old ladies and toddlers to really bother with someone like this. Just because he had 10 other boarding passes in his bags doesn't mean anything. Who wouldn't want to have their personal rights stripped by the TSA when they're this good? Mission Accomplished!

It wasn't until after the flight took off that attendants realized an extra passenger was on board, officials said. During the flight, crew members asked Noibi for his boarding pass and, after hesitating, he handed over a boarding pass from the day before, KTLA quotes FBI officials as confirming. That boarding pass had another person's name on it.

Noibi allegedly told the crew that the pass was outdated because he had missed that flight a day earlier.

The man whose name was on the boarding pass later told FBI officials that the document had disappeared from his back pocket when he arrived at JFK International Airport on June 23.

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More details emerge in DSK trial

UPDATE: The judge has released Strauss-Kahn.

The NY Times first broke the story last night and the AP has a bit more this morning.

Strauss-Kahn could even have his house arrest eased today in court. As I said before, there seemed to be a delta between the many stories of DSK being a womanizer and DSK the accused rapist. A few days after the arrest, one woman spoke up about an alleged attack involving DSK and I fully expected many more stories to emerge on the heels of that story, if his history was as bad as she said. Those other stories never emerged (as they did during the Weiner story) which made me wonder about how true the rape accusations really were.

Rapists should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Lying about rape should also not be taken lightly. If the reports of lying about rape in her home country to gain access to the US are true, she will be lucky to still be living in the US by the end of the year. DSK may also begin his own legal action against the accuser who was reportedly discussing a payout with a criminal.

This story has been crazy since the beginning and it promises to continue to be crazy.

Prosecutors think she lied about details on her application for asylum in the U.S., including saying she had been raped in her native Guinea, the official told the AP.

"She actually recounted the entire story to prosecutors and later said it was false," the official said. Prosecutors haven't necessarily reached a new conclusion about the allegations themselves and have not decided whether to downgrade the charges, the official said.

A court hearing is set Friday for the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn, who is accused of crimes including attempted rape has been under armed guard in a Manhattan town house after posting a total of $6 million in cash bail and bond. He denies the allegations.

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FBI invited vicious homophobes from Westboro "God hates f-gs" Baptist to train its agents

Tim Beauchamp posted the the story at AMERICAblog Gay. The Phelps clan from Westboro is notorious for protesting with its "GOD HATES FAGS" posters at every opportunity, including the funerals of U.S. servicemenbers.

Tim's question is: WTF?

Exactly.

NOTE FROM JOHN: I'm divided on this one because I'm not convinced the FBI didn't invite these people specifically because the thinks they're crazy. I talked to Joe about this this morning. He says he can understand how it might be helpful for the FBI to meet crazy extremists, but he doesn't think they should be invited on to official government facilities. He fears that gives them credibility that they'll then use for recruiting ("look how seriously the govt is taking us," they'll tell recruits). And fair enough. But I can imagine why the FBI doesn't want to go walking into Camp Phelps, or the KKK headquarters, and have to worry about an ambush.

I get that it's offensive to some. I had the same initial reaction when I saw the headline to the article. Then, on reading the article, something in my gut said "this isn't the whole story." I then found another article that said the following:

Timothy Phelps, Fred's son, told Dina Temple-Raston of NPR that he was told the program was meant to teach agents "how to stay measured when they are speaking with a witness or a suspect with whom they have a strong, visceral disagreement." He contends he didn't realize he was going to be studied as an example of a domestic terrorist. [emphasis added]

And they invited the KKK at one point as well.

I see Joe's point. And maybe there's a less "official" way they could interview radical groups to train their agents. I just feel in my gut that the more FBI agents who are familiar with these kind of wackjobs, the better they can do their job and protect all of us. What do you think? Is the program too offensive, or is it in the end a good thing? Read the rest of this post...

Daley to GOPers: Get over your hurt feelings and help solve debt problem

Seems Mark Halperin was just echoing the sentiment of Republicans yesterday when he called Obama a "dick." The Republicans, who are willing to crash the economy (again), think the President was too mean to them at Wednesday's press conference. Senator John Cornyn, who is renowned for having very thin skin, seemed particularly aggrieved and had a temper tantrum over it. For a group that do nothing but attack, Republicans all pretty thin-skinned and their egos bruise easily. Bill Daley told George Stephanopoulos from ABC News that the GOPers need to toughen up, get beyond their feelings and actually solve some problems for a change:

The White House Chief of Staff refused to issue a veto threat if the debt ceiling compromise doesn't include the president’s demand of tax increases. But Bill Daley did have a strong message for the Republicans: get tough.

Following President Obama’s feisty press conference yesterday Republicans on Capitol Hill didn’t seem any closer to reaching a deal. So I asked Daley if he’s concerned that Obama’s bluntness drove the two sides further apart?

“I find it ironic that at times people who continually attack the president, beat him up on not only on policy, personality, a whole bunch of things, the minute he takes a tone that is a little more direct, and it was not personal, it was direct in that the leaders of Congress in both parties and especially those who are saying that revenue are off the table period in trying to solve this problem, that somehow that’s going to hurt the feelings of people. This is not a time to worry about feelings, this is a time to get results,” Daley told me.

But despite the tough talk Daley would not threaten a veto if Congress doesn’t meet the president’s demand for a balanced package.

Obama should be prepared to veto it.

Republicans are really good at creating crises: the war in Iraq, the finanacial meltdown, the ballooning deficit -- but, they such at solving problems. I'm in the camp that thinks they'll settle for more economic pain in order to defeat Obama. Wondering if the White House is finally cluing in on that reality. Read the rest of this post...

EU E. coli linked to seeds from Egypt

Special note to German ministers: Egypt is not Spain.

Imported fenugreek seeds from Egypt may be the source of highly toxic E. coli outbreaks in Germany and France that have killed at least 48 people, according to initial investigations by European scientists.

More than 4,000 people across Europe and in North America have been infected in the deadliest outbreak of E. coli so far recorded, which started in early May. Almost all of those sickened lived in Germany or had recently travelled there.

The German outbreak and a smaller cluster of E. coli centered around the French city of Bordeaux have both been linked to sprouted seeds.

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US promoting dialogue with Assad to resolve crisis

It's ever so slightly different than the Libyan approach but hey, when there's no oil what do you expect? The Guardian:

The US is pushing the Syrian opposition to maintain dialogue with Bashar al-Assad's regime as details emerge of a controversial "roadmap" for reforms that would leave him in power for now despite demands for his overthrow during the country's bloody three-month uprising.

Syrian opposition sources say US state department officials have been discreetly encouraging discussion of the unpublished draft document, which circulated at an unprecedented opposition conference held on Monday in Damascus. But Washington denies backing it.

Assad would oversee what the roadmap calls "a secure and peaceful transition to civil democracy". It calls for tighter control over the security forces, the disbanding of "shabiha" gangs accused of atrocities, the legal right to peaceful demonstrations, extensive media freedoms, and the appointment of a transitional assembly.

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Berlusconi's cabinet approves austerity plan

Now it moves to parliament for approval. Italy is certainly one of the countries that is keeping some awake at night during this economic crisis. Most of the new plan will kick in after the next Italian elections in 2013. Interesting how that works.

The Italian government has approved an austerity package aimed at shielding the country from the Greek debt crisis and eliminating the budget deficit in 2014.

The package, drafted by Giulio Tremonti, the finance minister, contains $66.7bn of deficit cuts to balance the budget in 2014.

It will trim the budgets of central government ministries and local authorities and reduce tax breaks for companies and families.

However, parliament must approve it within 60 days.

The austerity sweep has heightened tensions within the centre-right coalition of Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, and his restive Northern League ally has warned that the government is at risk until the package is passed.

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