Study: 1 in 3 Africans now part of the middle class

Maybe it's time for the rest of the world to view Africa in a different light. It's still a work in progress, but it certainly looks like progress. The Guardian:

"Hey you know what, the world please wake up, this is a phenomenon in Africa that we've not spent a lot of time thinking about," Ncube said. "There is a middle class that is driven by specific factors such as education and we should change our view and work with this group to create a new Africa and make sure Africa realises its full potential."

Ncube said the study used an absolute definition of middle class, meaning people who spend between $2 and $20 a day, which he believed was appropriate given the cost of living for Africa's nearly 1 billion people.

The study found that, by last year, Africa's middle class had risen to about 34% of the continent's population, or about 313m people – up from around 111m (26%) in 1980 and 196m (27%) in 2000.

Read the rest of this post...

Unfortunate newspaper front pages

Read the rest of this post...

VIDEO: Dog tries to get statue to play fetch with it

Or, President tries to get Republicans to play fair. Your choice.

Check out the stick the dog keeps dropping at the statue's feet. Adorable (when it's not your president.)


(H/t HuffPost Hill) Read the rest of this post...

Bali bomber was arrested in Abbottabad earlier this year

What a strange coincidence.

Counter-terrorism officials are investigating whether a starving and shivering Indonesian al-Qa'ida suspect arrested in Abbottabad earlier this year was trying to make his way to the secret hideout of Osama bin Laden or if it was pure coincidence the two men were both sheltering in this quiet, military town.

This week, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, Indonesia's Defence Minister, said that Umar Patek, one of the men accused of carrying out the 2002 Bali bombings in which more than 200 people were killed, had made his way to this garrison town to meet with the leader of al-Qa'ida.

Another official said that the terror suspect had hoped Bin Laden would give him shelter. "The information we have is that Umar Patek was in Pakistan with his Filipino wife trying to meet Osama bin Laden," Mr Yusgiantoro told reporters.

Read the rest of this post...

Report: Food prices higher due to warmer climate

But wait, climate change doesn't really exist so there must be a mistake.

Global warming has already harmed the world's food production and has driven up food prices by as much as 20% over recent decades, new research has revealed.

The drop in the productivity of crop plants around the world was not caused by changes in rainfall but was because higher temperatures can cause dehydration, prevent pollination and lead to slowed photosynthesis.

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, Washington DC, said the findings indicate a turning point: "Agriculture as it exists today evolved over 11,000 years of reasonably stable climate, but that climate system is no more." Adaptation is difficult because our knowledge of the future is not strong enough to drive new investments, he said, "so we just keep going, hoping for the best."

Read the rest of this post...

Just when you thought the GOP couldn't stoop any lower

A reader writes:

Every time you think they could not stoop any lower.

Now the Republicans are complaining about Obama taking a 'victory lap at ground zero.' This is the same party that moved their party convention to New York City so that they could use Ground Zero as a backdrop. And Bush is the guy who put on a military uniform to prance around on an aircraft carrier and declare "mission accomplished" eight years before Bin Laden was nailed.

The reason Obama went to Ground Zero is simple and obvious: He was reminding the world of what OBL did, that he murdered thousands of civilians.

Waiting till the tenth anniversary of 9/11 would not have had the same effect. Going to the Pentagon would have obscured the message that OBL and his followers murdered civilians.

OBL's death does not mean the end of Al Qaeda, but it could lead to their former allies abandoning them. The main sticking point in the negotiations attempting to end the Afghan war is that the US will not accept any Taleban involvement unless they renounce Al Qaeda.

That is rather easier for them to do now that OBL is dead. I note that many people who know better are talking down Zawahiri's role in Al Qaeda, I suspect that is part of a strategy. The Taleban may even be willing to sell out Al Zawahiri (if they are able to) if that will get the US out of the country.

Remember what I always say: Republicans criticize us for what they do. Which has a number of benefits, including: 1) It deflects attention away from what they're doing; 2) It scares us away from ever doing what they're doing, and reaping the same benefits. Read the rest of this post...

Michael Moore: "Bin Laden was executed." (He’s not against the death, he simply thinks we should admit the plan was to kill OBL)

Update: If you're interested in more of Moore's thoughts, ezpz points us to this May 5 interview with Michael Moore on CNN: Part 1 and Part 2. Ignore that the sound is a little un-synced.
__________

This isn't about bin Laden and whether he should have been killed. Please take that sentence seriously.

It's about us, and whether we can admit the truth to ourselves. Michael Moore, in an interview with The Wrap:

Common sense tells you [bin Laden] was executed. That was the plan all along. Just tell us that and quit treating us like children.

I have a lot of faith in Obama, but we’ve received three different stories in three days. We heard, "There was a firefight." "He used a woman as a shield." Now it turns out none of these things were true. He wasn’t armed.

(About those differing stories, see here.)

Other tidbits from this fascinating interview:

[About whether bin Laden was still a threat] He was put out of business some years ago. Now, we’re dealing with rogue underwear bombers. ...

[About not finding bin Laden in a cave] [T]his man was a multi-millionaire, and if you know these kind of people, they don’t live in caves.

The focus is now on us, and how we're handling what we've done. If we walked into his house planning to shoot the man dead — we should say so, right? After all, isn't that what courage is all about?

When the Lone Ranger shoots the evil rogue sheriff so that all those terrorized townspeople can be safe, he doesn't then say, "A rock fell on his head; I was just standing here." Moore is not against the death (read the interview); he's for the owning up.

It's what us truly exceptional people do. I agree with Moore, that it's time to be truly that.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Who will the Obama re-elect campaign blame if the economy tanks next year?

First the Republicans, rather brilliantly, psyched the President into accepting a smaller stimulus than was needed, thus ensuring that our economic recovery was weak at best, and setting the GOP up to claim that the stimulus was a waste of money (ignoring that the stimulus didn't do its job because the GOP forced it to be too small).

And now the Republicans have convinced the President to accept massive long-term budget cuts, to the tune of $4 trillion - sucking massive demand out of the economy - just as the already weak economic recovery shows signs of sputtering.  And what will the GOP message be next year when the President runs for re-election?  Obama failed to save the economy.  (When in fact, the GOP tricked Obama into damaging our already weak recovery, in order to damage his re-election.)

What's the President going to say in November of 2012 when unemployment is still too high?   The Republicans aren't to blame when the President gladly jumps on their economic bandwagon.  And forget about the election for a second.  As someone who last year made only 1/3 of the income I made the year before the economy crashed, I'm personally interested in knowing how cutting $4 trillion in spending puts me and every other American back on their feet.

Because it doesn't.

The irony is that the Republicans have convinced the American people, and the President, that the deficit is our number one problem.  But once the deficit is "fixed," no one will care come the election if unemployment hasn't dropped and earnings haven't increased.  Worried about putting food on the table?  The deficit is fixed!

Sigh. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: "The recovery may be sputtering"

Not good news, but not unexpected, despite those illusory job numbers. The Professor (my emphases):

From G.D.P. to private-sector payrolls, from business surveys to new claims for unemployment insurance, key economic indicators suggest that the recovery may be sputtering.

And it wasn’t much of a recovery to start with. Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.

It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared.

He notes that the Beltway economic discourse is soaked in the language of fear, but not of anything that's actually happening. There's fear of budget deficits causing a "debt crisis," fear of a "disastrous plunge in the dollar," fear of "runaway inflation." The guy with the 310 million tits (there's an image for an angry septuagenarian) makes the perp list, along with many others.

Do the scare-mongers even believe their own stories? Maybe not. As Jonathan Chait of The New Republic notes, the politicians most given to apocalyptic rhetoric about the deficit are also utterly opposed to any tax increase; they argue that debt is destroying America, but they’d rather let that happen than accept even a dime of higher taxes.

Check this post (and this handy graph) for more on the unemployment picture — it's not at all pretty, though it's pretty to think that it is. Long-term unemployment, especially in young, just-emerging workers, is "a tale of young lives blighted, not just in the short run but perhaps permanently."

So — a sputtering recovery (with "double dip" written all over it) and a generation whose future is permanently stunted by malnutrition shortly after economic birth. That's what the next phase of the crisis looks like.

Take note, those for whom the crisis is the plan.

And take note, those who voted for them. This is your work too.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Cheney: "War criminal"

Andrew Sullivan's The Dish:

[L]et us be very clear. The war criminal Dick Cheney presided over the worst lapse in national security since Pearl Harbor, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 people. This rank incompetent failed to get bin Laden at Tora Bora, and then dragged the US on false pretenses into a war in Iraq, empowering Iran's dictatorship, and killing another 5,000 more Americans on a wild goose chase. He presided over the deaths of more than 8,000 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis during his criminally incompetent years in office.

On the other hand, the man who abolished torture as soon as he took office, Barack Obama, captured and killed Osama bin Laden, and captured a massive trove of intelligence, more than two years later. No Americans died in the operation.

What on earth are we debating?

Read the rest of this post...

Al Qaeda confirms bin Laden’s death

AP:

Al-Qaida on Friday confirmed the killing of Osama bin Laden and warned of retaliation, saying Americans' "happiness will turn to sadness."

The statement suggested that Al Qaeda wasn't aware that the US had prepared the body in the traditional Muslim way. Too bad we didn't release some photos of at least the burial at sea. Read the rest of this post...

244,000 new jobs in April, higher than expected. But UE is still up.

Some positive signs on the jobs front. More jobs than expected were created in April, but the unemployment rate rose to 9.0%. Reuters:

U.S. employment increased more than expected in April as private companies created jobs at the fast pace in five years, pointing to underlying strength in the economy, even though the jobless rate rose to 9.0 percent.

Nonfarm payrolls rose 244,000 last month, the most in 11 months, the Labor Department said on Friday. The private sector accounted for all of the job gains last month, with payrolls rising 268,000, the largest rise since February 2006.

The gain in overall payrolls, above economist' expectations for a 186,000 increase, was supportive of views the economic recovery would regain speed this quarter after stumbling in the first three months of the year on high commodity prices.

The NYT provides a look at the meaning of the rise in the unemployment numbers:

Friday’s numbers offered more than a few cautionary signs that the national economy had a long way to go. Though down from its peak of 10.1 percent in late 2009, April’s unemployment rate reflects only those Americans who are still actively looking for work.

And while any job creation is a positive, last month’s growth was barely enough to absorb people entering the work force in the United States, much less to shrink the unemployment rolls.

Read the rest of this post...

Al-Qaeda had plans for rail bombings

Though much of the news reportedly retrieved from the bin Laden raid is not new, we can probably expect a lot more security on the train system. Homeland Security had already been rounding up families to search them after stepping off of trains and they've set up security in widely traveled train stations in South Florida. How long before it's full body searches before riding the metro or Amtrak? Fun times ahead in the new police state. NBC News:

The information about a possible train plot is the first intelligence revealed from the trove of material found in the attack on bin Laden's compound. Officials said they found what they call "aspirational" items — things al-Qaida operatives were interested in trying to make happen.

A government advisory obtained by NBC News and sent Tuesday to the rail industry said that as far back as February 2010, al-Qaida was contemplating "an operation against trains at an unspecified location in the United States on the 10th anniversary" of the 9/11 attacks.

One option, the advisory said, was trying to tip a train by tampering with the rails so that the train would fall off the track at either a valley or on a bridge. Such an attempt would probably only work once, the material in bin Laden's house said, because tilting or tampering with the rails would be spotted, the advisory said.

Read the rest of this post...

Murdoch's Wall Street Journal launches WikiLeaks competitor

April Fools was just over a month ago, yet it sounds like they're actually serious. Knowing what fine quality the WSJ has delivered since Murdoch bought it, one can only imagine what will come of this. Let's hope phone-hacking liberals isn't part of the plan but anything is possible with that crowd.

Robert Thomson, tech editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Journal, said in a statement on Thursday: "The Wall Street Journal is the world's most trusted source of news, and SafeHouse will enable the collection of information and documents that could be used in the generation of trustworthy news stories."

SafeHouse opened for submissions on Thursday. Whistleblowers can choose whether to send their contact details or to remain anonymous. Users can also request to "become a confidential source" of the paper, though this requires contact details.

However, the site's terms and conditions – which users must agree to before uploading material – could prove controversial. They state that the Journal "reserve[s] the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process [...]".

Read the rest of this post...

Liberal Democrats suffer "bloodbath" in UK elections

The Lib Dems sold their soul to the Conservatives in order to cling to some level of power and yesterday, they paid the price for that decision. It looks like they're going to be irrelevant for another few decades until people forget about this debacle. Labour made numerous gains except in Scotland where they ceded significant ground to the Scottish National Party. Considering the state of the British economy it's no surprise that the Tories struggled and that the Lib Dems did even worse. The Tories did manage to add one seat in England though Labour added many more, as many voters dropped the Lib Dems. The Guardian:

The Liberal Democrats have paid a heavy electoral price for their decision to form a coalition with the Conservatives last year. Party sources have described the results as "fairly disastrous" and "a bloodbath". The party has already lost almost 200 seats, and well over half the English council seats have still to be counted. The BBC is saying that, on the basis of its current estimated national share of the vote (see 4.40am), the Lib Dems would have just 21 seats in the Commons if there were a general election now and people voted as they did yesterday. The same figures suggest Labour would have 340 Commons seats - a narrow majority - and the Conservatives 264.

Read the rest of this post...

House GOP unanimously passes anti-abortion bill that redefines rape & institutes IRS rape audits

After all, that is what the American people voted for last November, rape audits.

In all fairness, it is what they voted for. Anyone who voted Republican, and didn't think they were putting the abortion police into office, is an idiot.

You vote Republican, you're gonna get a lot of legislation about gays, guns, God and abortion, tax cuts for rich people and rich corporations, and increases in defense spending. They have nothing else. Read the rest of this post...