GM to add thousands of jobs across eight states

This is definitely good news for everyone.

Just two years after being bailed out by the US government, General Motors is announcing today that it will spend $2 billion to add approximately 4,200 jobs at 18 plants in eight states.

This follows a horrific decade of closing dozens of plants and slashing hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The investment is a welcome shot in the arm for US manufacturing. But this is about more than just adding jobs. It's about re-tooling to make GM more competitive.

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Florida doctors to be fined if they ask about guns in the house

When people use the word "Floridiot" they're talking about people who make stupid laws like this. It's going to be a painful period for Floridians who were on the losing side of recent elections. This is just nuts.

The Florida state legislahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifture has passed a bill that would make it illegal for pediatricians and other physicians to ask patients or their parents whether they have guns in their home.

Pediatricians often ask the question at initial well-child visits as a platform to discuss how to safely store guns in the home in order to prevent accidental shootings.

But under the law -- expected to be signed soon by Florida's governor -- doctors would face a $500 fine for inquiring about gun ownership and recording it in a patient's medical record. That fine would increase if a physician asked about guns at more than one visit.

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Claire McCaskill’s spending caps are a "Medicare kill switch" (Action alert)

And now it's the Dems. Sometime-Obama-surrogate Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) is proposing automatic spending caps on the federal budget. We spotted her here expressing her budget hawkery (shades of Amy Winehouse).

Now she's full on it, a back-door Paul Ryan in the Senate, with her new best friend Bob Corker (R-Tenn). The Hill (my emphasis):

The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org is pressing Congress not to entertain Medicare cuts, including cuts the group says would be inevitable under a cap on total government spending.

MoveOn.org released a letter Monday in which 75 economists say spending caps, like the one proposed by Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), would "amount to nothing less than a Medicare kill switch."

The letter cites a report [pdf] from the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities that said "enormous" cuts in Medicare and Medicaid would be inevitable under the type of overall spending cap McCaskill and Corker have proposed. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) referenced the same study when he said last week that the proposal would be worse for Medicaid than House Republicans' plan to convert federal funding for the program into block grants to the states.

Actions:

(1) MoveOn suggests you call Senator Charles Schumer (202-224-6542) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (202-224-4451) and tell them "you're counting on them to oppose spending caps that contain a Medicare kill switch." I make the same suggestion.

You can call others, such as your own senators, or even McCaskill herself (202-224-6154). As always, be polite but clear.

(2) I think it's time we lose McCaskill, regardless of the price. Not only is she working hard against against progressive interests, but she seems to be speaking for the White House, just as she did during the campaign (that last link called her a "close Obama advisor").

In 2006 she beat Jim Talent 49%–47%. She's up for re-election in 2012. If there's a move afoot to primary her Blue Dog soul, please post the information in the comments.

Working hard against her (and winning!) would achieve two goals — it would drop a key opponent from a position of power, and it would send the man she sometimes closely advises a little message. I'm for both of those things.

GP Read the rest of this post...

ACLU: Obama DOJ equates gay servicemembers with drug addicts, alcoholics and those who are threat to nat’l security

Unbelievable. Read the rest of this post...

Arianna: If "America can do whatever we set our mind to," how come our leaders won't set their minds on jobs?

Arianna Huffington:

"We do big things," President Obama said during his State of the Union speech in January. And, in fact, we do. Sometimes. Finding and dispatching Osama bin Laden certainly qualifies. "We are once again reminded," the president said after announcing the terrorist's death, "that America can do whatever we set our mind to." But if that's true, why are our leaders so accepting of a stagnant economy? If they really focused on the havoc it is wreaking on the lives of tens of millions of Americans, they would, in the memorable words of Richard Clarke, be running around with their hair on fire. But they're not. Instead, we're being asked to accept years of underemployment, low growth and draconian cuts to America's social safety nets as the "new normal."

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GOP to hike taxes on 44 million Americans

Hey, I'm just using their own methodology.  After all, as John Boehner taught us today, a subsidy decrease is a tax increase. From AP:

The House Republican budget would leave up to 44 million more low-income people uninsured as the federal government cuts states' Medicaid funding by about one-third over the next 10 years, nonpartisan groups said in a report issued Tuesday.

Cutting subsidies for Medicaid sure sounds like a tax hike to me. Read the rest of this post...

Physicist Stephen Hawking on universal health care

NYT:

Q. Though you avoid stating your own political beliefs too openly, you entered into the health care debate here in the United States last year. Why did you do that?

A. I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error.

I am British, I live in Cambridge, England, and the National Health Service has taken great care of me for over 40 years. I have received excellent medical attention in Britain, and I felt it was important to set the record straight. I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so.

It was the crazies at Investor's Business Daily who made the outlandish claim about Hawking. Read the rest of this post...

Why was Boehner in favor of taxing our troops?

I'm confused about something.

GOP House speaker John Boehner now is claiming that "ending a subsidy" is actually "raising taxes."  For example, if we cut the monstrous subsidies that Bil Oil has been receiving for far too long, that's actually "hiking taxes" on Big Oil.

Really?  So welfare reform was really a huge tax hike on the poorest of the poor?

And that also means that the Republicans proposed a huge tax hike right before Christmas when they tried to cut off unemployment benefits to hundreds of thousands of Americans, and cut off a pay raise to 4m active duty and reserve troops.  Remember, to cut off a subsidy is to raise taxes.  So the GOP was proposing to tax our troops, and tax the unemployed, right before Christmas no less.

If Boehner wants to play this game, let's play it.  A lot of listen to great radio and television thanks to a subsidy to the CPB.  Boehner wants to cut that subsidy, so I guess he's proposing a tax hike for public broadcasting.  And a tax hike for Planned Parenthood.

See how easy it is? Read the rest of this post...

Obama attempts killing of an American citizen, misses, kills several others instead

There's really no other way to tell the story without lying about the facts.

President Obama unilaterally ordered the assassination of an American citizen. The weapon was a predator drone. The drone failed to kill the intended victim. The drone did kill several others.

The rest is just framing. Let me guess how they'll spin it:

■ The president is the hero who gave us the head of Osama BL on the point of a spear. Osama needed killing, but he's the exception.

■ The American was Muslim. He was a talk show host who said bad things about us on the Internet. Worse yet, he said those things in English so people would understand them. He carried kittens on the point of a spear as he walked around the house. He needed killing too. But there's only four Americans who need killing like he does. These four are the exception.

■ The guys actually killed were possibly bad. They might have needed killing too. But even if they were children, Collateral Damage. They're always the exception.

■ This will never happen to you, because you're not bad. Or standing next to someone who is. Or collateral.

Let's check to see if I got that framing right. Here's the New York Times on the story:

A missile strike from an American military drone in a remote region of Yemen on Thursday was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric believed to be hiding in the country, American officials said Friday.

The attack does not appear to have killed Mr. Awlaki, the officials said, but may have killed operatives of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

It was the first American strike in Yemen using a remotely piloted drone since 2002, when the C.I.A. struck a car carrying a group of suspected militants, including an American citizen, who were believed to have Qaeda ties. And the attack came just three days after American commandos invaded a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda.

Muslim, check. Radical, check. Death of unknown others who may have been operatives, check. Hero-killer of Osama bin Laden, check. Kittens ... the jury's still out, but JSOC has pictures.

Glenn Greenwald has exactly the right take. Please read it through. But note this:

There are certain civil liberties debates where, even though I hold strong opinions, I can at least understand the reasoning and impulses of those who disagree; the killing of bin Laden was one such instance. But the notion that the President has the power to order American citizens assassinated without an iota of due process -- far from any battlefield, not during combat -- is an idea so utterly foreign to me, so far beyond the bounds of what is reasonable, that it's hard to convey in words or treat with civility.

Did you note that Bush last tried this in 2002? Obama has revived the practice. Makes that little "predator drone" joke he made last year a little grisly, doesn't it. Or telling.

But hey, where else you gonna go? The Republicans are far worse. And besides, he's got this head on the point of his spear.

GP

[Updated to add back some phrases that fell out of the first draft.] Read the rest of this post...

Support for Trump presidential run collapses in PPP poll

PPP:

Donald Trump has had one of the quickest rises and falls in the history of Presidential politics. Last month we found him leading the Republican field with 26%. In the space of just four weeks he's dropped all the way down to 8%, putting him in a tie for fifth place with Ron Paul.

Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are at the top of the GOP race with 19% and 18% respectively. Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are further back at 13% and 12%, followed by Trump and Paul at 8%, Michele Bachmann at 7%, and Tim Pawlenty at 5%.

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CATO: How Bush lost bin Laden

Malou Innocent at CATO:

Whatever one thinks about Musharraf, my problem lies primarily with Bush. The article explains:

A few months after Tora Bora, as part of the preparation for war in Iraq, the Bush administration pulled out many of the Special Operations and CIA forces that had been searching for bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to several U.S. officials who served at the time.

Even the drones that U.S. forces depended on to track movements of suspicious characters in the Afghan mountain passes were redeployed to be available for the Iraq war, Lt. Gen. John Vines told The Washington Post in 2006. Once, when Vines’s troops believed they were within half an hour of catching up to bin Laden, the general asked for drones to cover three possible escape routes. But only one drone was available — others had been moved to Iraq. The target got away.

That’s right folks! The Bush White House lost whatever opportunity it had to get bin Laden by diverting scarce resources to Iraq. Of course, it should go without saying that even if America hadn’t gone into Iraq, it would’ve been difficult for Bush to have captured or killed bin Laden. But what really “grinds my gears” is to hear members of the Bush team claim credit for bin Laden’s recent demise—torture was “critically important”—while simultaneously ignoring their culpability for not helping to capture bin Laden when they had the chance.

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Boehner contradicts self on debt limit, criticizes Bush Treasury secretary

Not only did GOP House speaker John Boehner contradict himself about raising the debt limit yesterday, but he also tried to de-Republicanize criticism he received from Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

First, Boehner says he will block the debt increase if the cuts aren't great enough.

Although the speaker assured the audience that he would not trifle with the nation’s finances, he made clear that without “significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase.

But then Boehner said this:

After his speech, Boehner fielded questions from Jane Hartley, CEO of Observatory Group, and Peter G. Peterson, former Commerce secretary under President Richard Nixon. Hartley asked Boehner if he would support a temporary increase in the debt ceiling, should budget negotiations break down. “Not increasing the debt ceiling would be irresponsible,” Boehner reaffirmed.

So which one is it? How can Boehner threaten to not increase the debt ceiling when he just admitted that his own threat was irresponsible?

Then there's Boehner's effort to make people forget that Paul O'Neill is a Republican:

As Boehner broached the debt limit, he took aim at former Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill: “One prominent figure even went so far as to say ‘the people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of Al-Qaeda terrorists.’ With all due respect, this is the arrogance of power — and the American people won’t stand for it.”

Arrogance of power? Boehner just agreed with the man that it would be irresponsible to propose what he's proposing, but note how Boehner refuses to let the audience know who it is who's criticizing him. It's a fellow Republican, and a senior one at that. But Boehner wants you to think that maybe, just maybe, is a Democrat. And arrogance of power? Who gave him the power? George Bush and John Boehner. Not to mention, the man is out of office, he's not in power any longer. Amazing. Read the rest of this post...

Report: Pakistan approved unilateral raids by US for bin Laden hunt

Not only did Pakistan approve it once with the old military government, but it was renewed again in 2008. Musharraf and the others who are publicly criticizing the assault have glossed over their own words and agreements. The Guardian:

The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in late 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.

Under its terms, Pakistan would allow US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaida No3. Afterwards, both sides agreed, Pakistan would vociferously protest the incursion.

"There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him," said a former senior US official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations. "The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn't stop us."

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UK to allow richest students to buy way into any university

Going New World, are they? In the US, we call that the Ivy League George Bush rule.

Teenagers from the wealthiest families would be able to pay for extra places at the most competitive universities under government proposals that could allow institutions to charge some British students the same high fees as overseas undergraduates.

Candidates who take up the extra places would not be eligible for publicly funded loans to pay tuition fees or living costs, limiting this option to all but the most privileged households who could pay fees up front.

Under the plans, the extra students may be charged as much as international undergraduates. At the most competitive universities, these students face fees ranging from £12,000 a year for arts subjects to £18,000 for sciences and more than £28,000 for medicine. Applicants would be required to meet the course entry requirements.

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Syria sends in tanks to Homs to shut down protests

Syria has been effective in shutting down communication and making people disappear. Unfortunately, due to a lack of oil, few in western politics are that interested. Without many financial links, the options are extremhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifely limited.

Syria's regime intensified its chokehold on protesters calling for the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad on Monday, combining brutal force with a communications clampdown that some activists said threatened to snuff out the revolt that has spread throughout the country.

Hundreds more were arrested in Homs and Banias and gunfire and troops were reported in suburbs of Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 400 people had been rounded up in the coastal town of Banias since Saturday, adding to an estimated 7,000 already in detention across the country.

A human rights campaigner in Homs said snipers were deployed in several residential neighbourhoods. "Hundreds have fled from three villages just to the southwest of Homs where tanks had deployed," the campaigner told Reuters.

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