Glock pistol sales surge in Arizona after assassination attempt

What a messed up state. Read the rest of this post...

GOP divided over Pete King gun control bill

It should be interesting to watch Republicans, and the NRA, and the Tea Party (which is the same thing as Republicans, just the far right fringe), argue that people SHOULD be allowed to carry guns within 1000 feet of a member of Congress or a judge at an event. More from Huff Post (via Huff Post Hill):

The fragile Republican coalition isn't handling Pete King's gun bill well. The idea that somebody should be barred from knowingly bringing a firearm to within 1,000 feet of an event with a congressperson or judge has the NRA and Tea Party aghast, but it has the backing of the Michael Bloomberg types and some neocon elements who take a tough line on national security. The National Review has a supportive essay from Cliff May, founder of the neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Arkadi Gerney, a top aide to Bloomberg, tells HuffPost Hill he's encouraged by the Republican support so far. "It makes a lot of sense. It would give law enforcement a fighting chance of trying to intercept a shooter before they pull their gun out and pull a trigger," he said. May tells HuffPost Hill the reaction to his NR piece has been swift: "Most of my friends on the right don't think I should be considering such measures." He went on to say all sorts of other radical stuff that will prevent him from coming within 1,000 feet of a Tea Party rally: "Somebody who's considered a danger to his campus shouldn't be welcomed in a gun shop." "There is no right that is completely without restrictions." "I'm not one to stand on orthodoxy."

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Right-wing smear of Tucson memorial service turns out to be... wait for it... a lie

Dishonoring the dead. But they're not extremists, really. From Mediaite:

Among attempts by some conservatives to cast last night’s “Together We Thrive” memorial for victims of the massacre in Tucson in a negative light were suggestions that the White House was involved in designing and distributing t-shirts at the event.

University of Arizona spokesperson Jennifer Fitzenberger told me that the shirts were, indeed, provided by the University. “The University wanted to give people something to remember that symbolized community spirit and continued the event’s positive energy into the future,” she said.

Many have also wondered how the shirts were produced so quickly. According to Fitzenberger, “The UA BookStores made the arrangements to produce the shirts. The BookStores knew a vendor that could turn them around fast.”

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Tuscon Tea Party co-founder thinks Giffords deserves blame for not having security

Classy, as always, from the Tea Party. ThinkProgress:

Tuscon Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries called Giffords’ previous concerns about violent rhetoric “political gamesmenship,” claiming that if Giffords was so concerned, then she is to blame for Saturday’s shootings because she “had no security whatsoever”:

“It’s political gamesmanship. The real case is that she [Giffords] had no security whatsoever at this event. So if she lived under a constant fear of being targeted, if she lived under this constant fear of this rhetoric and hatred that was seething, why would she attend an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever?” he said. “For all the stuff they accuse her [Palin] of, that gun poster has not done a tenth of the damage to the political discourse as what we’re hearing right now.”

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U.S. income distribution (2010 edition)

I'm providing this as an update to an earlier post, "Portrait of the Bush Economy". Perhaps I should call this one "A Portrait of the Obama Economy"; we'll see.

It begins with a fascinating article by Catherine Rampell in a New York Times economics blog which attempts to determine why despite their wealth, the rich feel insecure economically (yes, it's counter-intuitive, I know).

The writer's bottom line is that because the last part of the income curve is so very steep, the closer someone is to the end of it — anywhere above the top 1%, for example — the further away you are from the next richest person.

Here's the writer's graph of that income curve:


The dots from 0 through the 80th percentile mark five-percent increments. From 80 to 99, the dots mark one-percent increments. The last two dots are at 99.5 and 99.9 — in other words, the top .5% and the top .1% in income. (The top .01% and .001% are literally off the chart, at least off this one. But count on it, they exist.)

Paul Krugman discusses this article here and offers Brad DeLong's log-scaled version of the graph.

An interesting analysis, but I'd like to focus elsewhere, on the income table that produced the writer's data.

In my earlier post I generated some magic numbers, easy-to-memorize data points to show the income breaks in the Bush economy. For example, I said the top 20% starts at $100,000 per year, the top 10% at $150,000 per year, and so on. That table included some guess work and averaging, since a single source for a single year was not available.

Now thanks to this article and the data it draws on, we can update that table with solid 2010 numbers.

Note that all of my revisions are upward. Rampell didn't provide data for the top .01%, so I left that number alone. As before, I did some rounding to make this easy to remember. See her spreadsheet for the rounded-to-$100 actuals.

Top 20%   = $100,000 per year
Top 10%   = $150,000 per year (actually $160k)
Top  5%   = $200,000 per year 
Top  2%   = $375,000 per year 
Top  1%   = $500,000 per year
Top  .5%  = $800,000 per year
Top  .1%  = $2 million per year
Top  .01% = $10 million per year (not represented in her data)

And lest we forget, the top income I'm aware of is David Tepper, a hedge fund king, whose 2009 personal take was estimated at $4 billion. Yes, billion. That's not the fund's income; that's the guy's income, for one year.

Offered as something worth remembering, a snapshot of money in today's U. S. of A.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Fed report: Economy very slowly gaining momentum

Wash Post:

The beige book, a compilation of anecdotal reports from businesses across the country, offered further confirmation of trends that have emerged from a range of economic data in recent weeks: The manufacturing, retail and service industries outside of finance appear relatively strong. The job market is gradually improving. And the housing sector remains a significant drag on the economy.

Add it all up, and the picture is an economy very slowly gaining momentum, with some continued pockets of distress but also definite signs of progress as 2011 gets underway. In the all-important labor market, for example, conditions "appear to be firming somewhat," though not enough to push wages upward.

One small anecdote. They're building new condos a few blocks away from me in DC. I haven't seen any new condos built in years. The housing market in DC survived much of the damage felt around the nation, but still, things seem to be picking up here as well. Read the rest of this post...

US foreclosures over 1 million, filings nearly 3 million

There's a lot more excess to work through in the housing market. It still is unfair that the bankers who organized and profited from the excesses are recovering so quickly while everyone else is stuck with the bill. The TARP program that rescued the bankers as well as the banks was a huge mistake and probably has a lot to do with the current public position on the national debt. Sure it's crazy, but Washington only has itself to blame for the poor bailout that nobody quite understands even today. It's asking a lot for struggling families to care when they just watched the bankers get away with their excesses.

Banks seized more than a million U.S. homes in one year for the first time last year, despite a slowdown in the last few months as questions around foreclosure processing arose, a leading firm said Thursday.

Banks foreclosed on 69,847 properties in December, bringing the year's total to 1.05 million, topping the prior record of 918,000 homes seized in 2009, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said.

The number of foreclosure filings, which includes default notices, auctions and repossessions, was a record 2.9 million last year, including 257,747 filings in December.

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NH House lifts 40 year ban on bringing guns on House floor

Because that's what really matters, the week there's an assassination attempt - making sure people can bring guns on the floor of the New Hampshire legislature. It's amazing the chutzpah the gun lobby has - and no one bats an eye. (The part about guns is at the end of the story.) Read the rest of this post...

Republican Louie 'terror babies' Gohmert drafting bill to allow guns on House floor

As Joe said at the beginning of the year, the old time GOP extremists aren't about to cede ground to the incoming Teabaggers. It's an all out race to see who can be the looniest of the bunch. Gohmert is doing an impressive job of jumping out into the lead. His "terror baby" ideas were strange but adding guns to the House floor will set him apart from your run-of-the-mill Republican oddball. Politico:

Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert says his office is drafting a measure to allow members of Congress to carry guns in the District of Columbia, including in the Capitol and on the House floor.

Gohmert says he and his colleagues need to be able to protect themselves, in light of the mass shooting in Arizona.

“It’d be a good thing for members of Congress who want to carry a weapon in the District,” he said. “I know friends that walk home from the Capitol. There’s no security for us,” he said, adding that the measure would deter people from attacking members. “There is some protection in having protection.”

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Another arrest following another threat to US Congressman

Not to worry though because violent threats against politicians happen every day in other industrialized countries. None come to mind but give Fox News some time and they will surely come up with a long list that proves the US doesn't have a sick obsession with violence and guns. NY Times:

A California man was arrested on Wednesday morning for threatening to kill Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington State, as the shootings in Tucson sparked impassioned conversation about Congressional security on Capitol Hill.

Charles Habermann, 32, of Palm Springs, Calif., was arrested for phone calls he made in December to Mr. McDermott’s office in which he threatened to kill Mr. McDermott, as well as the congressman’ss friends and family, and to put the congressman “in the trash.”

The news came as law-enforcement officials briefed members of Congress on precautions they ought to take to ensure the security of their families and staff in the wake of the shootings in Tucson. A spokeswoman for the United States Attorney’s Office in Seattle said that prosecutors’ decision to bring charges, and their timing, did not reflect any policy change in response to the incident.

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Comparing speeches of Obama and Palin: 'It's difficult to imagine a starker contrast'

This morning, Mike Signorile tweeted:

Yesterday: Sarah Palin reminded us of who she is and why she & McCain lost. Barack Obama reminded us of who he is & why he won.

Mike is so right. Yesterday, Palin finally responded to the Arizona massacre. She chose to insert herself on the day of the Tucson memorial service, where the President would be speaking. She set herself up for the inevitable comparisons between the speeches from leading GOPer, as she sees herself, and the leading Democrat, Obama. As the Washington Post noted today:

And after four days of near silence, the timing guaranteed that Palin would be written into the story line of President Obama's visit to comfort grief-stricken Tucson after a massacre there.

Well, she got what she wanted. She's part of the story. But, the results aren't good for her -- not at all, as you can see from the following two articles.

Michael Shear from The New York Times:

Wednesday was bookended by two remarkable — and remarkably different — political performances that demonstrated the vast expanse of America’s political landscape.

The day opened at 5 a.m. with Sarah Palin, whose seven-and-a-half minute video statement captured with precision the bubbling anger and resentment that is an undercurrent of the national conversation about our public discourse.
Sarah Palin issued a forceful denunciation of her critics in a video statement posted to her Facebook page. Sarah Palin issued a forceful denunciation of her critics in a video statement posted to her Facebook page.

It ended with President Obama, whose plea for civility, love and compassion — for us to all be not just better citizens but better people — exposed for the first time the emotions of a leader who has spent two years staying cool and controlled for a nation beset by difficult times.

The tone of the two speeches could not have been more different. The venues were a world apart — the smallness of a rectangular video on a computer screen and the vastness of an echo-filled basketball arena.

Jonathan Martin from Politico:

In the span of a single news cycle, Republicans got a jarring reminder of two forces that could prevent them from retaking the presidency next year.

At sunrise in the east on Wednesday, Sarah Palin demonstrated that she has little interest—or capacity—in moving beyond her brand of grievance-based politics. And at sundown in the west, Barack Obama reminded even his critics of his ability to rally disparate Americans around a message of reconciliation.

Palin was defiant, making the case in a taped speech she posted online why the nation’s heated political debate should continue unabated even after Saturday’s tragedy in Tucson. And, seeming to follow her own advice, she swung back at her opponents, deeming the inflammatory notion that she was in any way responsible for the shootings a “blood libel.”

Obama, speaking at a memorial service at the University of Arizona, summoned the country to honor the victims, and especially nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, by treating one another with more respect. “I want America to be as good as Christina imaged it,” he said.

It’s difficult to imagine a starker contrast.

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Poll: Despite recession, rich still happy

Of course they are. They won and now they have a majority in the House to make life that much easier. Too bad the middle class isn't feeling the same love from Washington.

And this pride had led to happiness among the rich, with 71 percent saying they are happy, up from 40 percent in 2007.

"It's because they didn't know they could survive something this bad," Taylor told the Luxury Marketing Council of New York on Wednesday. "They have got competent, they have gotten close to their family, they have self-esteem from their ability to handle a crisis."

"Happiness is now the abiding object of affluent American life, not success," he said. "They're really happy with their ability to operate under pressure."

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Julian Assange has Rupert Murdoch 'insurance files'

Wouldn't it be interesting to know what is in those files?

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, claimed today he was in possession of "insurance" files on Rupert Murdoch and his global media company, News Corporation.

Assange also claimed that WikiLeaks holds more than 500 confidential US diplomatic cables on one broadcasting organisation.

Speaking to journalist John Pilger for an interview to be published tomorrow in the latest edition of the New Statesman, Assange said: "There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp."

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Davos continues to seek gender equality at Wold Economic Forum

So far, the numbers have been pathetic. But of course, so are the numbers in the ranks of the "strategic partners" who dominate the event. The banking industry was always macho and since the crisis, it now has even fewer women in management. Northern Europe takes the issue seriously but outside of there, few countries (the US included) have made progress.

At Davos, the world's most powerful men (and a few women) broker multimillion-pound deals behind the scenes of the conferences. The forum's black-tie dinners, cocktail parties and other less formal encounters are the ultimate networking events and those present follow the old "contacts lead to contracts" motto.

But so far, relatively few women have benefited from this high-level schmoozing. Women made up only 9-15% of those present between 2001 and 2005. Progress has been made – last year 17% were women – but Zahidi insists they can do much better.

"Closing gender gaps has been an important concern at the World Economic Forum for the last decade," she said.

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