Austerity hits UK unemployment, again

At what point will the Conservative government admit their strict austerity plan is failing? Unemployment is at a 13 year high and the cuts will only hurt the economy more as the year goes on.

The number of Britons claiming unemployment benefit rose more than forecast last month to the highest level since November 2009, official data showed. Meanwhile Britain's unemployment rate held at a 13-year high of 8.4 percent in the three months to January, and the youth unemployment rate rose to a record high, official data showed on Wednesday. The figures will increase the pressure on finance minister George Osborne to take measures to boost growth and jobs when he presents his 2012/13 budget next week, at a time when the economy is struggling to show sustainable recovery.

Remind me again why the GOP wants austerity for the US?  And why, as John notes, they're trying to break the budget deal to have even more cuts this year? Read the rest of this post...

Video: Tired of playing "ball" five times a day with your dog? This machine is for you.

A friend recently asked me if my dog's ball was my her crack cocaine. He meant, does she want to play ball like a gazillion times a day, every day, non-stop, forever? Sadly, yeah. You see, my dog does five things, repeatedly, all day long: sleep, eat, poop, bark at the neighbors walking by outside, play ball. And if you work at home, at some point the joy of playing fetch with your dog wears off, and you end up feeling like your life is an interminable game of tic-tac-toe with a four year old. They can't get enough of it, you want to slit your wrists.  Now imagine playing tic-tac-toe every day, five or six times day, for the next fifteen years.  Now you get the picture.

So, an engineer came up with this:

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Majority say fire Limbaugh, another station drops his show

Wow.  I'm actually a bit surprised. And remember, any time we have a majority that means Democrats AND Independents are siding with us. And that's interesting.

More than half of those interviewed also say radio host Rush Limbaugh, who called a female law student testifying publicly in favor of birth-control coverage a “slut” and “prostitute,” should be fired based solely on those comments.

And this just in, a third station (this time in CA) has now dropped his show.

Official statement from Charlie and Trish Busch-G.M./Business Mgr.

“I regret to inform the fans of the Rush Limbaugh program that 1140 KVLI will no longer be airing his daily show.

Please believe this had nothing to do with recent events involving Mr. Limbaugh. The decision to cancel the program was made in December of last year for financial reasons only. A 90-day notice, as required by our contract, was given then.


The Rush Limbaugh program was the only daily show we carry that charged us a significant amount of money each month to air. Due to the current economic status in our market, certain operating cuts had to be made. Unfortunately, Rush was among those cuts. Attempts were made with his organization to “clear” the program at no cost, or at a reduced cost, but they were not willing to do so. I hope this sheds light on the situation.

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U.S. e-voting system hacked by U of Mich researchers in less than 48 hrs

Fascinating report. Let's let H-online security news tell the tale (my emphasis; some reparagraphing):

Researchers at the University of Michigan have reported that it took them only a short time to break through the security functions of a pilot project for online voting in Washington, D.C. "Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server", the researchers wrote in a paper [pdf] that has now been released. "We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot."

The hack was only discovered after about two business days – and most likely only because the intruders left a visible trail on purpose.

At least they decided to actually look for problems:

In 2010, the developers of the municipal e-voting system that enables voters living abroad to vote via a web site, invited security experts to conduct tests. The university researchers say that the project was developed in cooperation with the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV) and that other US states have also worked on services similar to Washington's "Digital Vote-by-Mail Service".

They also praise the system's transparency as exemplary but point out that its architecture has fundamental security weaknesses and was not able to withstand a shell injection and other common hacker techniques.

The security experts investigated common vulnerable points such as login fields, the virtual ballots' content and filenames, and session cookies – and found several exploitable weaknesses. Even the Linux kernel used in the project proved to have a well known vulnerability.

More at the story link, of course, and you can download the full PDF report and read for yourself.

The researchers have concluded that we're a fair distance from a secure e-voting system. That means we'll have it soon, right? (No, I don't think I'm just kidding.)

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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House GOP now trying to break original spending deal for more cuts

There are a few problems here. 1. The Republicans are insane . 2. The American people, not so smart all the time. 3. Democrats, lousy salesmen. That adds up to more cuts whether we like it or not, and subsequent harm to the economy.

Now, having said that, the President has been fighting back lately. Not enough for some of you, and point well taken, but he's fighting back a heck of a lot harder than the guy who spent the first two and a half years in that office. If the President plays this right, he can paint the GOP into a corner here.  But it's tough because the President himself bought into the "cut the budget" rhetoric far too early, and hasn't done enough to explain to the American people how damaging too many cuts, too early, could be to an economy that's barely more than parked in neutral at the moment.

More from Greg Sargent:

The original August 2011 deal that resolved the debt ceiling impasse called for a $1 trillion limit on discretionary spending for fiscal 2013. House conservatives want much deeper cuts. House GOP leaders are offering a compromise that would include some cuts, but not enough for the Tea Partyers, and Dems are vowing to reject anything that breaks the original deal.

Get ready for a rerun of a very bad movie. We’re hurtling towards another government shutdown fight, in which the House GOP leadership will be dealing with a Tea Party wing that prioritizes shrinking government above all else — this time, in the leadup to the elections.

In this sense, another government shutdown fight could help Dems sharpen the contrast with the GOP and Romney over the two parties’ values and priorities. A new Bloomberg poll finds that 51 percent say government spending on infrastructure, education and alternative energy is a better way to grow the economy, while only 41 percent favor more spending and tax cuts.

On the other hand, maybe this will all help Romney. After all, more deep spending cuts sought by conservatives could imperil the recovery, which could weaken Obama and help Romney’s case against his reelection. Perverse, perhaps, but very possible.

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How many shooters were involved in the Afghan killing spree?

As you know by now, there was a killing spree in Afghanistan over the weekend in which sixteen Afghan civilians in several villages, including nine children, were murdered in cold blood by at least one U.S. soldier. We covered the story here and here; click for fast background.

Commenter Bubs now points out a discrepancy in reporting the number of shooters involved. Normally these discrepancies mean witnesses see different things (or think they do). This Reuters story, however, paints the situation in an entirely different light.

I call your attention to this (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

There were conflicting reports of how many shooters were involved, with U.S. officials asserting that a lone soldier was responsible, in contrast to witnesses' accounts that several U.S. soldiers were present.

Neighbors and relatives of the dead said they had seen a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at about 2 a.m., enter homes and open fire. An Afghan man who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies. ... Afghan officials also gave varying accounts of the number of shooters involved. Karzai's office released a statement quoting a villager as saying "American soldiers woke my family up and shot them in the face." ...

"They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them," Samad told Reuters at the scene. Neighbors said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk. "They were all drunk and shooting all over the place," said neighbor Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where killings took place. "Their (the victims') bodies were riddled with bullets."

American officials, on the other hand, "rejected witness accounts" and called them "flatly wrong."

Clearly a he said–they said situation, and not to be judged rashly. Nevertheless, it's telling that all of the eyewitnesses agree with each other, and that at least some Afghan officials agree with the eyewitnesses.

The lone defender of the "lone gunman" theory is the U.S. military, whose record in these matters is not encouraging — see the Pat Tillman cover-up and the Jessica Lynch controversy. The google has lots more where that came from.

Still, I'm not saying that the U.S. official position is wrong. I'm saying that it would be wrong to take them at their word without a full and impartial investigation.

Of special interest will be the soldier's confession at trial, if indeed he faces the death penalty. If I were him, an offered Lt. Calley–style slap on the wrist might make me go all quiet on any others involved. But if I'm facing death, I'm not sure what the motivation for lying would be.

So watch this, especially if there's a trial. Will he be given a good defense team? Will his statements be public and transparent, or limited and filtered? Will he be offered reasons to lie, such as lighter sentencing? And most importantly, will Afghan eyewitnesses be given a full opportunity to testify?

Until the evidence is conclusive, the question in the title of this post is open for discussion. How many shooters? We don't know until someone reconciles these discrepancies.

UPDATE: Great discussion in the comments, including this by Bubs. Thanks, all.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Onion: "Could The Use Of Flying Death Robots Be Hurting America's Reputation Worldwide?"

My God this is well done. It's only 2 minutes long and freaking brilliant.  Here's a snippet of the dialogue:

News Anchor: Some experts have suggested making robots that are more visually reassuring... they're now developing a 40 foot robot that actually looks more like an American soldier, and sprays lasers from his eyes.

Expert 1: At least that's a step forward.

Expert 2: As long as it fires missiles and bombs with very little accuracy and zero Americans are at threat, I'm all for it.

Expert 1: They should give it funny floppy arms.

Expert 3: It should spray candy out of its chest before it starts shooting everything.

Anchor: You know Jason, that's actually a really nice gesture for the children who don't get mowed down by the bullets. 

Could The Use Of Flying Death Robots Be Hurting America's Reputation Worldwide? Read the rest of this post...

Under what party did gasoline and oil prices reach their peak? Republican, of course.

Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, not known for his analytical skills, is now claiming that gasoline and oil prices have reached their highest levels in years (if ever) under the Obama presidency.  Perhaps Jindal is too young to remember that, in fact, gas and oil prices were higher under - who? - Republican President George W. Bush.

Politico, quoting Jindal's lie:

“The reality is, gasoline prices have doubled under this president, highest prices for oil and gasoline in a 150 years. People used to think it was because of incompetence from Obama administration on energy – I think it’s because of ideology. They’re pursuing a radical environmental ideology,” Jindal said on “Fox & Friends.”

In fact, the monthly average retail price of gasoline peaked at $4.26 a gallon in inflation-adjusted dollars less than four years ago, in June 2008. It then plummeted to $1.80 a gallon in the next six months during the global financial collapse. Oil isn’t near historic highs either.

Kudos to Politico's MJ Leee for catching the lie.  In other words, gasoline prices reached their peak - wait for it - during the George W. Bush presidency, that would be the Republicans.  Note the chart below, red is gasoline prices under Bush, blue is gas prices under Obama.  Guess who wins?

Click chart for larger version.

And if you look back even further, it appears that George Bush's peak gasoline price was tied for the highest ever (adjusted for inflation, noted as the "real" price in the chart I link to), and Bush's tie wasn't with Obama, it was with Jimmy Carter (in this table, Carter's oil prices were slightly higher than Bush's, which were higher than Obama's) and Woodrow Wilson.

Oil prices were also higher under Bush - again, red is Bush, blue Obama.

Click for larger version.

Keep in mind that Jindal, like Bush, is supposed to be an oil expert because his state, like Texas, produces oil.  Yes, well the one oil expert failed to realize that the other oil expert had some of the highest oil and gasoline prices in all of American history.

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Goldman exec quits, questions moral fiber of company

Let the smear campaign against Greg Smith begin. Everyone who doesn't work on Wall Street knows that he's right but unfortunately Wall Street has too many friends in Washington in both parties. There's a distinct lack of courage among the workers on Wall Street to admit that they're part of a morally bankrupt industry, so it's good to hear this. I may question how moral the company was when he joined, but even so, it's an amazing story. Read the entire essay on the NY Times, because it's worth it.

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it. To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for. It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

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Ron Paul's billionaire—Peter Thiel, founder of nat'l security giant Palantir, also PayPal

It seems that every national candidate has a billionaire daddy (or is had by one). Like sports team ownership, national political ownership is a big-money game these days.

First we learned about Newt Gingrich's billionaire — casino giant Sheldon Adelson. Then we discovered Santorum was similarly possessed — by Foster Freiss, a fan of Gov. Scott Walker and aspirin.

Now comes news of Ron Paul's billionaire. What this says about Dr. Paul is well worth knowing.

Bottom line — Ron Paul's billionaire is a major player from the depths of the public-private national security industry, a very heavy hitter from the Spook-Industrial State.

Mark Ames writing in The Nation (sub may be required; March 19 newsstand copy; my emphases):

So it should come as a shock and disappointment to his followers that Ron Paul’s single largest donor—his Sheldon Adelson, as it were—founded a controversial defense contractor, Palantir Technologies. The company profits from government espionage work for the CIA, the FBI and other agencies, and last year it was caught organizing an illegal spy ring targeting opponents of the US Chamber of Commerce, including journalists, progressive activists and union leaders. (Palantir takes its name from the mystical seeing stones used by characters in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to spy on one another.)

According to recently filed FEC disclosure documents, Ron Paul’s Super PAC, Endorse Liberty, has received nearly all of its money from a single source, billionaire Peter Thiel. So far, Thiel has contributed $2.6 million to the Super PAC, providing 76 percent of the its total intake.

Thiel, a self-described libertarian and opponent of democracy [sic] who made his fortune as the founder of PayPal, launched Palantir in 2004 to profit from what the Wall Street Journal described as “the government spy-services marketplace.” The CIA’s venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, was brought in to back up Thiel as one of Palantir’s first outside investors. Today, Palantir’s valuation is reported to be in the billions.

I wasn't kidding when I characterized Thiel — Palantir is a major player at Spook Central, the public-private conglo that runs the U.S. national security state.

Here's BusinessWeek on Palantir, as quoted by Ames (my reparagraphing):

Depending where you fall on the spectrum between civil liberties absolutism and homeland security lockdown, Palantir’s technology is either creepy or heroic. Judging by the company’s growth, opinion in Washington and elsewhere has veered toward the latter.

Palantir has built a customer list that includes the U.S. Defense Dept., CIA, FBI, Army, Marines, Air Force, the police departments of New York and Los Angeles, and a growing number of financial institutions trying to detect bank fraud. These deals have turned the company into one of the quietest success stories in Silicon Valley—it’s on track to hit $250 million in sales this year—and a candidate for an initial public offering. Palantir has been used to find suspects in a case involving the murder of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, and to uncover bombing networks in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. “It’s like plugging into the Matrix,” says a Special Forces member stationed in Afghanistan who requested anonymity out of security concerns. “The first time I saw it, I was like, ‘Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.’ ”

Do check out the BW article. It's eye-opening.

If the name "Palantir" sounds familiar, it should. Palantir was involved in the early-2011 HBGary 75,000-hacked-emails story. Here's Ames on that:

[T]he technologies and know-how acquired over years of spying on suspected foreign terrorists and threats were turned against US citizens. In what became known last year as “Chamber-gate,” Palantir was outed by Anonymous as the lead outfit in a private espionage consortium, with security technology companies HBGary and Berico; the groups spent months “creating electronic dossiers on political opponents of the Chamber through illicit means.”

For more on that story, our coverage is here. This is Glenn Greenwald with just part of the fascinating detail (the whole piece is well worth your time):

And in another case, on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, they [HBGary] wanted to do the same to progressive groups and activists who are critical of the Chamber of Commerce and that’s what has kind of produced a lot of controversy is that the firms that were involved in these discussions, not just HBGary but also Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and most of all Hunton and Williams the very large and well connected DC law firm that represents both the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America. These are very serious and legitimate players and so to see all of them discussing an email on these kind of odious schemes to basically destroy the credibility of political adversaries is why this has become a news story.

When you think Ron Paul, think Spook Central. Paul is owned by a Spook Central billionaire.

Is Ron Paul really Mr. I'm Against War? Right... (Psst, wanna buy a bridge?)

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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About last night... the GOP primaries in AL and MS

Santorum won both states last night.

Nate Silver in the NYT on Gingrich's losses

Newt Gingrich's spokesman R.C. Hammond called both Alabama and Mississippi "must wins" for his candidate. Mr. Gingrich lost both states to Rick Santorum, instead.

Was Romney punished by southern voters for being a Mormon? More from Nate, noting that Romney underperformed versus earlier polls:

We mentioned earlier that polls are having a rough night in Mississippi. They projected Mitt Romney to win 34 percent of the vote there and several gave him the lead. But with most of the vote counted, he has 30 percent so far instead and is running in third place. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is running significantly ahead of his polls.

As Political Wire notes, it wasn't a great night for Romney, who finished third in both states: rospars:

RT @politicalwire: Romney adviser: "I don't think anybody expected Mitt to win AL or MS." Romney yesterday: "We are going to win tomorrow."

Kombiz adds:

RT @kombiz: If an executive came to me and said lemme spend $100M to be 3rd in GOP primaries, I'd say You're Fired. #BusinessMitt

Kombiz adds:

kombiz: Honestly, Kudos to McCain.. In 2008 he actually had to beat serious contenders for the presidency. Romney can't beat fringe candidates

ABC News' exit polls show that voters were skeptical of Romney's conservative credentials, half branded him "not conservative enough." Duh, he's a northeast liberal. Or at least he was. Now it's not clear if he was even honest about being a liberal.

More concern about Romney's double 3rd place finish from Politico:

Rick Santorum delivered another sharp shock to Mitt Romney’s campaign Tuesday night, claiming victory in the Alabama and Mississippi presidential primaries and reinforcing — yet again — conservative hesitations about the GOP front-runner.

Gingrich says Romney is "not much of a frontrunner."

But before everyone gets giddy over how well Rick Santorum is doing, keep in mind that Americans are more than capable of electing the man president. (Would you really put it past them? These are the people who re-elected George Bush.) So be careful what, or who, you wish for. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Nancy Pelosi's daughter visits Mississippi

Bill Maher showed the video, it's done by Nancy Pelosi's daughter Alexandra. She swears this was a representative sampling of random people she went up to an interviewed. Maher also makes clear that Pelosi told him she didn't put the guy without the teeth in the video on purpose - she had a ton of people who had missing teeth, and most of them she didn't include.

I kind of wish they hadn't put the funny Dixie music in the background, because the video is rather sad than funny. And that man talking about losing the Civil War. I've also witnessed that kind of talk from intelligent normal southern friends. The war was 150 years ago. The fact that people still have a hang up about is just weird. You don't hear Germans lamenting losing their war(s), and they "only" lost half the time ago that the South did.

Republicans, and conservative southerners, like to blame the rest of us for "dividing" the country. I listen to these folks, and I hear more than enough division and derision coming out of them for a lifetime.

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