Fred Karger's demon frisbee

An odd, but actually kind of cute, ad from openly gay GOP presidential candidate Fred Karger.

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Senator Schumer proposes "do not ride" list for Amtrak

A stunningly brilliant move for anyone who wants to destroy Amtrak and make train travel as miserable as flying. Everyone gets the story that has been pumped out by the Pentagon concerning al Qaeda and the rail systems, but this is yet another push in the wrong direction. The US desperately needs some level headed thinking instead of the non-stop destruction of our system that too many in Washington think makes sense. ABC News:

With the revelation that al Qaeda was considering targeting U.S. rail lines, transportation officials and experts are concerned that enough is being done to ensure that train travel is safe.

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said today that there should even be a "do not ride" list for Amtrak, similar to the no-fly lists that are part of the airline security effort.

Train bombings overseas, such as occurred in Madrid and London, are eveidence of what terrorists are capable of, but the documents found in the raid last week on Osama bin Laden's compound indicated that the more likely mode of attack would be on the rails themselves, rather than a terrorist trying to get on a train with a bomb.

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How Paul Ryan’s budget may hand a House seat to the Dems

And many more, we hope.  From ThinkProgress:

The embarrassing manner of “Craiglist Congressman” Christopher Lee’s (R-NY) downfall failed to shake the GOP’s confidence in holding onto New York’s 26th congressional district. The overwhelmingly Republican district, which hasn’t been represented by a Democrat since early last decade, led the New York GOP to count “well-liked” state assemblywoman Jane Corwin as a “shoo-in” for the seat. Then, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) dropped a bomb — his budget plan. The plan that essentially eliminates Medicare and forces seniors to pay thousands more for health care is now driving a stake through Corwin’s lead.

With numerous polls noting a majority of Americans oppose cuts to Medicare, democratic opponent Kathy Hoschul has started putting Corwin on the defensive over the contentious plan that is already fracturing House Republicans. Instead of listening to the public, Corwin is “vigorously” defending Ryan’s plan and watching her lead evaporate because of it.

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Osama bin Laden, green burial trendsetter

Apparently it's increasing en vogue to be buried at sea, and quite the "green" way to go. Mother Jones walks us through how it works, and what exactly happens to a body after it's "buried" in the ocean (hint: carnivorous shrimp). Read the rest of this post...

Billions turned down by Florida to be handed out elsewhere

For as many financial problems as the state of Florida has, turning away $2 billion will come back to haunt the state. But the good news is, the more rational states and Amtrak will be receiving that cash. As someone who used to ride the trains in the northeast (and will be doing it again soon) I'm glad to read this news. It's hard not tad eel bad for those in Florida who voted against the Republicans but unfortunately too many in that state are clueless and require a sanity check.

Amtrak and rail projects in 15 states are being awarded the $2 billion that Florida lost after the governor canceled plans for high-speed train service, the Department of Transportation said Monday.

The largest share of the money—nearly $800 million—will be used to upgrade train speeds from 135 mph to 160 mph on critical segments of the heavily traveled Northeast corridor, the department said in a statement.

Another $404 million will go to expand high-speed rail service in the Midwest, including newly constructed segments of 110-mph track between Detroit and Chicago that are expected to save passengers 30 minutes in travel time.

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Public blames high gas prices on oil industry

From Greg Sargent:

With a political war brewing over the effort by Obama and Dems to harnass public anger over gas prices to end subsidies for the oil industry, you’d think these new CNN poll numbers would be somewhat encouraging for Dems.

The CNN poll finds that a sizable majority, 61 percent, think that oil companies deserve a “great deal of blame” for rising gas prices. Twenty seven percent say oil companies deserve “some blame.”

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Krugman: In the U.S and Europe, elites have caused a "top-down disaster"

Paul Krugman is sneaking up on the idea that the west has been hijacked, and that the hijackers are looting the joint. Here's his latest, "The Unwisdom of Elites" — subtitled "anatomy of a top-down disaster" — and good for him for that. He opens:

The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong? ... [T]he claim [is] that it’s mostly the public’s fault ... that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

Voters as welfare queens; nice move. But watch out — some of those people are white. (I'm white, so I can say that.)

But back to Krugman. He thinks, naturally, that this view is "dead wrong," not the least because it is dead wrong. What we're witnessing is actually a "top-down disaster" (my emphasis):

The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious.

And here Krugman starts to show his trademark ... what? deference? This sentence is followed by something about elites "ducking some much-needed reflection." Really? How about elites "heading relentlessly, self-servingly, toward even more money and power"?

I'm serious, by the way, and not just being snarky. This is 100% my main Krugman criticism. He still seems to (pretends to? actually does?) believe that people in power — and those who enable and serve them — respond mainly to ideas. This is either his great Achilles heel, or the way he keeps his column inches at the Times. (If the second, maybe a fair trade.)

In the U.S. Krugman identifies three reasons for the budget problem — the Bush tax cuts, the 911 Wars, and the 2008 Recession. Needless to say, the public clamor for all of those was nil. Of the first, Krugman says:

President George W. Bush cut taxes in the service of his party’s ideology, not in response to a groundswell of popular demand — and the bulk of the cuts went to a small, affluent minority.

I'm sure you noticed my emphasis, and Krugman's Achilles-like attention to the power of ideas, as opposed to the power of ... power.

As in the U.S., so in Europe, he continues, where the crisis was supposedly caused by troubled nations catering "too much to the masses, promising too much to voters." (The Greeks are the stand-in welfare queens here.) The real story, of course, and the boogyman under the bed, is the euro, a one-size-fits-all-crises currency dominated by the Germans and French whose banks poured the money into the Spanish, Irish, Greek, Portuguese, etc., boom economies, and now don't want to pay for the bailout.

Krugman's answer is the obvious one. If we don't correct our understanding, we'll never really get it, this thing that happened; and we'll get that same thing back, from the same people, with interest. In his words:

We need to place the blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, they’ll do even more damage in the years ahead.

Considering the indictment, almost tame. The next question for him, and I'd love to see his answer, is How? How do we place that blame where it belongs? (Of course, this brings us back to power.)

I rag on Krugman for a reason: he's important; he's right most of the time; and the state of his recognition of his Achilles-like flaw (what I call "the state of the Krugman") is a nice stand-in and metric for the ability of front-line intellectuals to see the right-wing cadre revolution as a real revolution, a coup, and not just a struggle of ideas. When Krugman crosses that line (he's done it once before), it will matter.

In the meantime, check out the column; it's worth reading in full.

(The image above, by the way, is Achilles Dying; if you know the story, a tragic, powerful and poignant depiction. Not something I'd wish on a friend.)

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How gay activists may save the Obama re-elect

That's the moral of this story.

Had the President kept to his plan, and not tried to repeal DADT until 2011, he'd have failed. In other words, but-for Dan Choi handcuffing himself to the White House fence, but-for GetEqual interrupting a series of Obama appearances at key Democratic fundraisers, and but-for the gay Netroots driving the news cycle, and the community's increasing ire and angst, I believe the President would have never acted in time on DADT repeal, nor would we have seen the meager action we've gotten on DOMA or UAFA.

So the President owes us a debt of gratitude for saving his re-elect.

I've got a much longer analysis of this topic over at AMERICAblog Gay. Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post: How kids lose their privacy

Washington Post:

When Scott Fitzsimones turned 13, he got an iPhone, set up accounts for Facebook and Pandora and went on an apps downloading spree. At the same time, the new teenager lost many protections over his privacy online.

The games he plays know his location at any given moment through the phone’s GPS technology. He has entered his parents’ credit card number to buy apps, and iTunes has his family’s e-mail address and everyone’s full names. Facebook knows his birth date and the school he attends.

The first time he was asked to share his location on the game Pocket God, the seventh-grader paused for a moment to consider why the company would want to know his whereabouts.

But he feared that if he didn’t agree, his experience on the app would be limited, and Fitzsimones wanted to get started on his cartoon pygmy ad­ven­ture on Oog Island. So he tapped “okay,” feeling comfort in the masses; his friends, after all, were using the app and never complained.

I'm not sure you can knowingly consent to anything when you're 13. Hell, even adults don't know what they're really consenting to. In Europe, so much of this is already illegal - they have real privacy laws protecting people. Here it's the Wild West. Because, we are number one, you know. Read the rest of this post...

Pakistan refusing to let US talk to bin Laden's wives

From Slate:

The latest point of contention between the two nations is over access to three of Bin Laden’s wives. The three women were among 10 or so of the al-Qaida leader’s family members taken into custody by Pakistan after the raid that killed Bin Laden.

The U.S. is asking for the chance to interrogate the women, believing they may be able to provide crucial information about “the comings and goings of people who were aiding [Bin Laden],” the New York Times reported Monday. So far, Pakistan has refused, a move that isn't helping quell speculation in Washington that Bin Laden may have had help from within the Pakistani government.

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Are airfares going to drop along with gas prices?

I doubt it.  Remember when all those extra fees, like the ones we now routinely pay for baggage, were all just temporary responses to the surge in fuel prices?  Well, the prices went back down and the fees remained.  Now prices are up again and airfares have skyrocketed.  But gas, for example, will drop 50 cents by this summer.  Will the airlines, who all, oh so oddly, charge exactly the same prices for exactly the same routes, drop their prices as well? Read the rest of this post...

Poll from The Hill poll ponders how long Obama's "bin Laden bounce" will last

Last week, polls showed that the President got a bounce following his announcement that bin Laden was dead. That was expected. It set off a frenzy of chatter among the pundits about the bounce. Like most pundit/cable news bloviating, it had passed the point of absurdity. Well, it's not over. Today, The Hill released a poll asking the American voters their thoughts on the projected length of the bounce. So, we've had polls on whether the bounce existed. Now, we've got a poll on how long the bounce will last:

Most voters believe the popularity boost President Obama has received following the killing of Osama bin Laden will disappear quickly, according to a new poll conducted for The Hill.

Almost three in five likely voters think the “bin Laden bounce” will vanish within three months, the poll indicates. Only one in four believes that Obama will still be benefitting in six months’ time.

Obama is currently enjoying a major spike in his approval ratings: A New York Times/CBS poll last week showed an 11-point jump in his approval rating compared to two weeks before. Gallup’s daily tracking poll showed Obama’s job-approval number up by about 6 points in the immediate aftermath.

A poll on the bounce. This could set off a whole new round of chatter.

Everyone is a pundit now. Read the rest of this post...

Report: Iran assisting Syria with violent crack down

It has been a bloody yet efficient process so far in Syria. The White House suggested the same earlier though without any proof. A foreign diplomat now has more details. The Guardian:

The diplomat pointed to a "significant" increase in the number of Iranian personnel in Syria since protests began in mid-March. Mass arrests in door-to-door raids, similar to those that helped to crush Iran's "green revolution" in 2009, have been stepped up in the past week.

Human rights groups suggest more than 7,000 people have been detained since the uprising began. More than 800 people are said to have died, up to 50 during last Friday's "day of defiance". Last night two unarmed demonstrators were reportedly killed during a night rally in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor.

"Tehran has upped the level of technical support and personnel support from the Iranian Republican Guard to strengthen Syria's ability to deal with protesters," the diplomat said, adding that the few hundred personnel were not involved in any physical operations. "Since the start of the uprising, the Iranian regime has been worried about losing its most important ally in the Arab world and important conduit for weapons to Hezbollah [in Lebanon]," the diplomat said.

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Bahrain to end emergency rule

It's not clear if this also means the government is going to back off of the extreme charges against protesters though it is still a sign of movement in the right direction. Al Jazeera:

State media in Bahrain sayshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa has ordered an end to the emergency rule imposed in mid-March to quell a wave of anti-government protests in the Gulf Arab country.

Bahrain state TV said the state of emergency will end on June 1 in line with a royal decree issued on Sunday.

The announcement came as 14 out of 21 opposition leaders and political activists were charged with attempting to overthrow the Sunni monarchy in a special security court set up by the emergency rule. The remaining seven are being tried in absentia.

Jamal Fakhro, deputy president of Bahrain's Shura Council, the upper house of the National Assembly, which is directly appointed by the king, welcomed the announcement on lifting emergency rule.

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Another bailout for Greece in the works?

One has to wonder what they were thinking the first time if things could fall apart so quickly. Now everyone is surely wondering about the other bailouts for Ireland and Portugal. The Independent:

Greece may need to be bailed out by its eurozone peers for a second time amid concerns the country might not be able to access the capital markets meet its refinacing obligations.

The worries surfaced this weekend after the euro fell by nearly 1 per cent and the cost of insuring against Greece defaulting on its debts rose to a record high on Friday in the wake of a report that the country was considering pulling out of the eurozone. The Prime Minister, George Papandreou, denied the suggestion, saying: "No such scenario has been discussed."

Yesterday, the Chancellor George Osborne suggested that Greece might need further assistance, although he denied that it would necessarily be forced to resort to defaulting on its debts. "I think it is inevitable that we are going to look at the Greek package and see what they can do to get through the next year, but that might involve additional assistance from, for example, the eurozone," he told the BBC, admitting that the markets were sceptical about the country's refinancing abilities.

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