Morning roar and a severe case of bed-head

Because not everything is about politics.

This is how I'm greeted each morning. As soon as Sasha thinks she senses I'm awake, she peeks out from under the comforter and I get the double-pawed pounce/plop on my chest, and if the petting doesn't commence quickly, the whining begins...

Oh, so I mentioned that we'll be launching AMERICAblog 3.0 (or possibly 2.5) in about a week or so, if all goes well.  And one of the new things we'll launching is a regular post, perhaps 3 times a week (maybe more), of your pets photos.  We already have the Flickr embed of your pet photos on the side of the site, but this will be a regular feature in which I write a post highlighting one of your pets, including a photo (or two), and a story about your pet.  The story can be whatever you like - funny, sad, touching - just tell me something interesting about your current or former pet and I'll start posting the stories on the blog, in addition to adding them of course to the Flickr box.

Send us your pet's photo, and a paragraph or so about them, to: photos@americablog.com
And put "pet" in the subject line.
Read the rest of this post...

Elizabeth Warren bouncing back in polls

After her fantastic speech last week in Charlotte, one of the best candidates out there is surging in the polls.

Warren is one of the rare candidates that bothers to talk about the seriously dysfunctional and destructive activities of Wall Street. We need more people like her in Washington.

Huffington Post:

Elizabeth Warren is running nearly even with Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in a poll released Monday, her best showing since late July. The poll, from the Republican-leaning firm Kimball Political Consulting, shows 46 percent of likely voters backing Brown and 45 percent supporting Warren, with 9 percent still undecided. In Kimball's last poll, conducted August 21, Brown led by 6 points, 49 to 43.

Read the rest of this post...

Do you really want your pilot talking about September 11 in flight?

I sure as hell don't.

I'm already afraid enough to fly. Call me superstitious, but it was bad enough the day I was watching the news of an aircrash on CNN from an airport gate waiting to get on a plane. But I most certainly don't need the FAA reminding me, in the middle of my flight, of terrorists crashing airplanes.

What are these people thinking?

Newsflash: We all watched 3,000 people plunge to their deaths, live. Then we watched the slow-mo replay another thousand times. While worrying, for weeks on end, that we were all going to die.

I think we get it.  Dare I say, it's not the kind of thing you "forget."

But don't let that stop the FAA, which came up with a new way to remind you that YOU MIGHT JUST DIE AT ANY MOMENT.

To commemorate that day, the FAA's Washington Metroplex Team has named two arrival sequences to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to honor those who died that day and those who have served our country from that day forward. Each arrival sequence is part of our new NextGen descents, which use satellite-based information to make more efficient arrivals and departures at airports. The sequences contain a series of five-letter waypoints – points in the sky through which an aircraft must fly to remain on course – and together, they spell out messages of support and remembrance for 9/11.

Aircraft flying the Freedom route to National from the northwest pass through waypoints named “WEEEE,” “WLLLL,” “NEVVR,” “FORGT” and “SEP11.” Those flying the Troops route from the southwest pass through waypoints named “USAAY,” “WEEDU,” “SUPRT,” “OOURR” and “TRUPS.” Depending on the runway configuration, aircraft might also pass through waypoints named “STAND” and “TOGETHER” or “LETZZ,” “RLLLL,” “VCTRY” and “HEROO."

The men and women of America's airways were also deeply affected by the events of September 11, and airline pilots and crews have responded strongly to these new waypoints. Recently, for example, on a morning flight from Detroit to Reagan National, a Delta Air Lines pilot came over the Public Address system and began sharing the story of the new arrival procedure with his passengers. As the flight crew began their precision descent into the capital area, the pilot read aloud the names of the waypoints they would be passing through prior to arrival: HONNR, BRVRY, COURG; MORLL PLDGE: WEEEE WLLLL NEVER FORGT SEP11, ALWYZ FRDMM.

"As he was reading them," reported one passenger, "the people were all quiet, and we all stopped talking or reading or whatever else we were doing. Everyone just listened. We could hear the pilot starting to get choked up as he talked about how proud he was to read those points off as we entered DC."

Why, as a nation, do we keep doing this to ourselves?

Do we honestly think that people will forget the day they watched 3000 people murdered live on national television?  Seriously?

And why must we perpetuate the fallacy that you're not a patriotic Americans unless, every year on September 11, we find (and participate in) new and creative ways to collectively rip the scab off of the wound again and again and again, never letting people heal, never letting people move on from what was a horrifying traumatic moment for a lot of us?  How does any of this truly benefit us as a nation? How does it truly honor the dead? Read the rest of this post...

Blunt video: "Bye bye Mr. Chair-Talking Guy"

One more Blunt video from the good and funny people at The Political Carnival. It's what they do — your input and their great editing. Citizen commentary, by and for you:

Bye bye Mr. Chair-Talking Guy,
Tried to steer me toward Mitt Romney,
But I just thought he's high...

Indeed.

You too can be Blunt. Click here to add your voice to their great editing. Mr. and Ms. Progressive, your chair awaits.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Larry Flynt offers $1 million for Romney's tax returns

The Huffington Post Reports:

The Hustler founder is offering a $1 million reward for information on Mitt Romney's taxes, AdWeek reports. Flynt, an outspoken critic of Romney, is taking out two full page ads in Sunday's issues of USA Today and The Washington Post to publicize the offer.

The ad offers cash in exchange for "unreleased tax returns and/or details of his offshore assets, bank accounts and business partnerships.”

"What is he hiding?" Flynt said, according to the Hollywood Reporter. "Maybe now we'll find out."

As I reported last week, a group of hackers claim to have stolen the tax returns and are holding them for a $1 million ransom to be paid in the 'Bitcoin' anonymous payments system. Could there be a deal there?

Having worked on electronic payments for twenty years now, I believe the answer is 'possibly but almost certainly not one that involves Bitcoin.'

Anonymous payment systems like Bitcoin are great in theory. The practice is rather different. Transferring payment from the customer to the merchant is only half the problem. The harder part of the problem is how the merchant convinces the customer that they will deliver the goods.

Flynt could send the hackers $1 million in Bitcoin but he has no assurance that they even have the tax returns, let alone if they would deliver them to him if he pays. Romney and his backers face the same problem in reverse. There is nothing to stop the hackers taking the $1 million from Romney (or his Vegas sugar-daddy) and then selling the returns to Flynt for another $1 million.

What the Bitcoin payment scheme lacks is accountability. When both parties in a transaction are fully anonymous, neither are accountable, neither has a reputation at stake. So even if the hackers claim to be willing and able to supply Romney's tax returns in exchange for $1 million and even though Flynt is clearly willing to pay $1 million, the Bitcoin system does not enable them to complete the transaction.

The only thing we can be certain of here is that people are going to be finding a lot of ways to talk about Romney's tax returns between now and election day. Since Romney is already behind, that means less time spent talking about the issues Romney needs to talk about to catch up

Whatever is in those returns must be really damaging to Romney. Read the rest of this post...

Romney campaigner Pat Robertson tells man to beat his wife

Mitt Romney spent Saturday campaigning with religious right extremist Pat Robertson.  Romney was using Robertson to "prove" that he's a "real" Christian.

Which is ironic, since most would question Robertson's claim to speak for Christianity.  (It also makes you wonder what Mitt Romney thinks a real Christian is - if he thinks Pat Robertson is God's messenger.)  Here's Mitt and Pat together at an event this weekend.




Yesterday, fresh off of campaigning with Mitt Romney just 48 hours before, Pat Robertson told a caller to his TV show to beat his wife. Via Right Wing Watch:

For example, today on the 700 Club’s “Bring It On” segment where viewers ask Robertson questions, one man wondered how he should go about repairing his marriage with a wife who “insults” him and once tried to attack him.

“Well, you could become a Muslim and you could beat her,” Robertson responded. “This man’s got to stand up to her and he can’t let her get away with this stuff,” Robertson continued, “I don’t think we condone wife-beating these days but something has got to be done.”

He later said the woman is a “rebellious child” and pondered if she has psychological problems. Robertson told the viewer that since he “can’t divorce her according to the Scripture, so I say: move to Saudi Arabia.”

Robertson's network has now censored the broadcast, but fortunately Right Wing Watch got it first:



It's not clearly if Mitt Romney is just as confused about Christianity as Robertson, or whether he's simply pandering to extremists again, in a desperate effort to save his floundering presidential run.

Either way, it's time for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to issue a statement about wife-beating. Are they for it or against it? Read the rest of this post...

Sen. Whitehouse: Dem Senators may not end Bush Tax Cuts if Obama not "clearly there with us"

There's a nice piece of original reporting over at Digby's site in which David Atkins and his brother Dante interviewed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on filibuster reform, Social Security, the Bush(-Obama) Tax Cuts and Medicare cuts.

Please do read for all four subjects. It's a great short interview with lots of insight.

Here I want to highlight Sen. Whitehouse on those tax cuts, and then add Atkin's remarks. This is quite revealing; note the president's role.

First Whitehouse (my emphasis and paragraphing):

Dante Atkins: If the Senate remains Democratic, do you expect Senate Democrats to hold the line on refusing to extend the Bush tax cuts for the upper income earners?

Senator Whitehouse: I very much hope that we do, and I expect that we will. I think there is a relationship between how and whether we do that, and how and whether the crisis does that.

If the President draws a strong line, I think he'll have the backing of enough Democratic Senators that he won't be able to have a veto overridden.

That puts him in a very strong negotiating position. And I think that he should take advantage of that, and call and ask for our support.

I think if it becomes questionable whether or not the President will stick to his guns, then there are a considerable number of my colleagues, including those who might be up in 2014, who may have to take a more practical and defensive position so they're not out on this, and then undercut by a White House move later on.

So I think that the support is there, but I would just have as my caveat that it has to be really clear from the White House that they're there with us, and they're not going to walk back and leave a lot of Senators exposed on a position they're not willing to hold themselves.

"Practical and defensive" means cave.

Now Atkins:

This is incredibly important, and one of the most overlooked problems with the Administration's near obsession with "compromise" and being the "adult in the room."

Fair or not, the President will always be labeled by the opposition as its most partisan heavyweight. ... No matter how far to the middle Obama hews, the Republicans will always accuse him of being a Communist.

That in turn means whenever the Administration caves and waffles, members of Congress who stood alongside the President prior to the compromised retreat are automatically marginalized as "even more liberal than Obama." Uninformed voters in midterm elections will naturally assume that they're extremists when the attack ads start rolling in.

It may be that tax cuts for the wealthy are so unpopular at this point that a Senator threatened in 2014 could stand on their own two feet on it regardless of the President's position, but it certainly makes it much harder.

Has Barack Obama left Congress high and hanging in the past? That's certainly the word on the wire.

Me? I think he wants those cuts to pass — all of them. And it will take united congressional opposition to stop it.

Please do click over. It's a good fast read on each of those subjects. Nice job by the Atkins brothers.

ACTION OPPORTUNITY: What can we do? Take a cellphone camera to every Obama event you can get into and ask him early and often:

Mr. Obama — Will you swear now to veto any legislation that contains a full extension of the Bush Tax Cuts?

Be that point-blank.

This is a fight he can win anytime he wants to. Inaction is a win. He can let them expire in December, put in a January bill to give the cuts back to anyone he wants, and dare the Republicans to say No. Any time he wants it, he can have that win. If he wants it.

But I don't trust him to want it. He caved in 2010, remember, and I think he's going to design a deal that's complicated enough to sneak the Bush-Obama tax cut extension past you with sweeteners, something like "see, no cuts to Social Security" or some such.

So think of this as a negotiation, you voters out there. You have him at a vulnerable moment. If Obama wants something from you, he can give you something first.

I know he can lie and reneg. But make him make it a bold lie; a world-class 180° lie. Make him pay you with weasel-free words before you tell him he has your vote.

Ask him point-blank:

Mr. Obama — Will you swear now to veto any legislation that contains a full extension of the Bush Tax Cuts?

Then ask again the next time he shows up.

In the booth you can do what you want. But in this negotiation, you're free to tell him sorry, not good enough ... yet.

Mes centimes for whatever that ends up being worth,

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Mitt Romney thinks cancer and AIDS aren't "significant"

We already know that Mitt Romney doesn't think the troops are "important."  Now we know that he doesn't think cancer or AIDS are "significant," either.

Odd that Mitt Romney thinks your cancer isn't "significant," yet he's repeatedly invoked his own wife's multiple sclerosis on the campaign trail.

It all came about when Paul Ryan said this weekend that states should be able to approve the legal use of medical marijuana.  Ryan then backtracked later, and boy oh boy, Mitt Romney wasn't too pleased to discuss the matter:

Ryan noted that the issue “is something that is not a high priority of ours.” A Ryan spokesman later emphasized that he agrees with Mitt Romney that marijuana should never be legalized. In the video embedded below you can see how Romney scoffed at a reporter who dared to ask a question about medical marijuana: “Aren’t there issues of significance that you’d like to talk about?” He went on to call marijuana a “gateway drug to other drug violations.”

Oh, I don't know.  Why don't you ask people with cancer and AIDS whether they think their illness is of any "significance."

Supporters of medical cannabis argue that cannabis does have several well-documented beneficial effects. Among these are: the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, stimulation of hunger in chemotherapy and AIDS patients, lowered intraocular eye pressure (shown to be effective for treating glaucoma), as well as gastrointestinal illness.

This is classic Romney hubris.  When it's his family, health care is the most important issue in the world, as we learned by the inclusion of talk about Mrs. Romney's illness in the official GOP convention program (putatively to show how "caring" Mitt really is).  Note that the Romney campaign has also talked about Mrs. Romney's illness previously to deflect criticism of Mitt's numerous horses and jockeys which we're told are to help Mrs. Romney with her MS.  (Though it's not clear how having a jockey race a horse in the Olympics helps Mrs. Romney's MS, or how the horses are her "medical treatment," a "hobby," and a tax write-off as a "business deduction" all at the same time).

Clearly the campaign is willing to talk about Mrs. Romney's illness.

But when it's your serious illness we're talking about, Mitt clams up.

That's why Romney is planning on ripping health insurance away from over 6 million kids if he's elected president.  And it's why he's threatening to take health insurance away from another 89 million working Americans as well.

We're not talking about a caring, loving man here.  We're talking about someone who seems to care a lot about his family, Mormonism, foreign travel, and expensive vacation homes.  And unless you're one of those four, you're out of luck. Read the rest of this post...

Bush repeatedly warned of "imminent" 9/11 attack, neo-cons told him to ignore it

Seriously? We always knew the neocons were a bunch of frauds but it doesn't say much about the rest of the Bush team who fell for their stupidity. NY Times:

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

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Caribbean coral reefs on verge of collapse

This is definitely not good news. It's bad news for the environment and it's bad news for everyone who depends on the reefs for business. The culprit? It's the usual problem of over fishing, pollution and climate change.

Why are the right wingers unable to see even the economic problems this creates? Just setting aside the environmental issues, the economic aspects are enormous. The Guardian:

Caribbean coral reefs – which make up one of the world's most colourful, vivid and productive ecosystems – are on the verge of collapse, with less than 10% of the reef area showing live coral cover.

With so little growth left, the reefs are in danger of utter devastation unless urgent action is taken, conservationists warned. They said the drastic loss was the result of severe environmental problems, including over-exploitation, pollution from agricultural run-off and other sources, and climate change.

The decline of the reefs has been rapid: in the 1970s, more than 50% showed live coral cover, compared with 8% in the newly completed survey. The scientists who carried it out warned there was no sign of the rate of coral death slowing.

As this recent Harvard Business Review article says, you cannot deny climate change and be pro-business. Read the rest of this post...