Washington shrugs shoulders at poverty report

The Democrats were slightly more interested and mentioned the decline of the middle class but the GOP was well, the GOP. To be fair to the Democrats, the middle class has been declining for decades and they've done too little to correct the situation or seriously discuss it. Even so, the poverty report is alarming and shows just how hard Republican economics has hit the US. The Republicans once again repeated the lie that trickle down economics works. It doesn't.

"We know that a strong middle class leads a strong economy," President Obama told reporters in the Rose Garden on Friday, as he used the new census report, which also showed that middle-class income has dipped slightly over the past decade, to continue making his case for limiting the cuts to family incomes under $250,000.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders in the House and Senate had no reaction to the poverty report. But earlier in the week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took the Senate floor to argue for extending the tax breaks to everyone, saying, "We can't let the people who have been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create jobs to get us out of it" be subject to a tax increase.

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Lady Gaga and SLDN will rally for DADT repeal in Portland, ME - targeting Collins & Snowe

Just posted at AMERICAblog Gay.

This is BIG. Lady Gaga just tweeted:

Lil Monsters, meet me in Portland, ME to help repeal #DADT tomorrow #4the14k http://bit.ly/cO4cY9

Yes, our truly fierce advocate is on her way to my hometown, Portland, Maine, to hold a rally with SLDN to push for the repeal of DADT. The targets are Maine's Republican Senators: Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

The rally, called “For the 14,000”: A Rally for the 14,000+ Discharged" is tomorrow at 4:00 PM Eastern in Deering Oaks Park. For you tweeters, the hashtag is #4the14k.

This is very, very strategic on the part of SLDN and Lady Gaga.

Here's what SLDN's Aubrey Sarvis said, via press release:

The votes to break McCain’s filibuster are not there. We need Sens. Snowe and Collins on board; they’re key to us breaking the filibuster. With the vote less than 48 hours away, we need everyone supporting repeal to call the Senate. We’re bringing gay and straight service members to Portland to help make the case. And we’re proud to have the support of Lady Gaga to bring grassroots attention to repeal at a critical hour. Like Lady Gaga, all New England senators, indeed all 100 senators, Democrats and Republicans, need to engage in a real debate on this issue, and not just posture and spin this week over procedure and Senate rules.

So, that's the situation. It's dire.

As Aubrey notes, right now, we don't have the 60 votes to break the GOP filibuster of the Defense Authorization. Senator Susan Collins already voted for that very bill in the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 27, 2010. Collins is now playing partisan procedural games to rationalize her support for the filibuster. It's gross. Maine's other Senator, Olympia Snowe, should do the right thing, too. She is playing the same game.

The usual lobbying tactics aren't working. So, desperate times call for new and innovative tactics. And, this is one of the most sophisticated lobbying efforts I've seen in a long time.

They're taking the fight right to Collins and Snowe -- in a way that no other issue or group has. This event will be noticed in Maine. It's so much smarter than bringing another celebrity to DC, where political media is so cynical. Again, Gaga has over 6,390,000 followers on twitter. And, she's got over 18,255,000 fans on Facebook. No political organization in DC has anything that compares to that kind of outreach.

The 14,000 gay and lesbian servicemembers who have been discharged under DADT and the 60,000 gay and lesbian servicemembers still serving have been waiting 17 years for this vote. It's not a political or procedural game for them -- it's their lives and they're willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us. And, the time is now.

Lady Gaga has been using her extensive bully pulpit to elevate the DADT repeal issue for the past several weeks. It's been very, very impressive. (Meanwhile, despite the impending vote and the GOP filibuster, President Obama has been largely silent on this issue, which, sadly, is not a surprise.)

This week, the action is in the Senate. Collins and Snowe are the targets. Now, they can't hide. They're going to have a very powerful spotlight on them, thanks to Lady Gaga and SLDN.

Maine is the best chance we have. If Collins and Snowe abandon the gay and lesbian servicemembers, it could be a long time before we get another vote.

I'll have more as events unfold...the next two days are going to be wild. Read the rest of this post...

Bill Maher has more O'Donnell tapes

It looks like there's going to be more beyond O'Donnell's "witchcraft" video. This campaign can only get more interesting.

Maher joked that he's going to show a new clip of O'Donnell every week on his show until she agrees to appear on his show again.

Said Maher: "I'm just saying, Christine, it's like a hostage crisis, every week you don't show up, I'm going to throw another body out."

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Florida church receives $200,000 police security bill after Quran incident

Too funny.

Authorities say security for last weekend's canceled Quran burning at a central Florida church cost around $200,000. City officials say they expect the church to pay.

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About Obama's recent comments

There's a debate going on as to whether President Obama's recent comments at a fundraiser - where he seemed to criticize liberals - are worthy of note, or simply the standard fare for political fundraiser. Here, first, are the President's comments:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get — to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed - oh, well, the public option wasn't there. If you get the financial reform bill passed — then, well, I don't know about this particular derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and — (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.

First, here's Digby's take. She wasn't pleased.

Well, I think at least one thing is clear. Robert Gibbs wasn't freelancing with his similar comments.

It's not that rank and file Democrats are congenitally unable to celebrate all the wonderful accomplishments of the Obama administration. It's that, like Americans everywhere, they are hurting financially and don't have good feelings about the future. The Republicans are fired up and believe that they can take action to change it by voting for teabaggers. But Dems are stuck in a holding pattern waiting for things to hopefully turn around. They have nowhere to focus their angst so they tune out. In those comments, the president is, at best, ignoring their real issue and saying they don't know how good they have it. It's not helpful.

Kevin Drum disagrees:

Come on, folks. It's a campaign fundraiser. It's a place where you rouse whichever troops are in the audience and reel off a list of your accomplishments, not one where you hang your head and talk about your failures. It's a place where you tell a few jokes — like acknowledging the fact that liberals have been devotees of the circular firing squad for as long as liberals have existed. It's lighthearted after-dinner stuff, not an address to the nation.

I appreciate the need to fire up a fundraiser, but you don't do it at your own party's expense. The President could have simply touted his accomplishments. He could have even criticized Republicans. But he didn't. Instead he suggested that his Democratic critics have a genetic disease, and that's why they were so upset that the President caved, from the beginning, on his promise to push for a public option.

And even that wouldn't have been as big a deal had this not been, as Digby notes, part of a larger pattern in which the White House routinely takes jabs at the Democratic base.

But even that isn't the biggest problem with the President's comments. What's most disturbing, I'd submit, is what Suburban Guerrilla notes, albeit a tad more harshly than I'd have done:

I would say that this president’s penchant for sarcastic, not-quite-whiny, “why oh why aren’t they as smart as me” insider riffs is one of his least attractive qualities. Psst, Mr. President? You’re not doing standup — you’re the president of the United States, and the head of the Democratic party. This isn’t the high school lunchroom.

And those of us left living on a wing and prayer thanks to your “half full”, half-assed economic policies just don’t have a sense of humor about our continuing plight. I know it’s been a long time since your mom got food stamps, but you might want to give that empathy thing some thought.

There's an arrogance to the President's comments, and an inability to recognize how much he is a part of the problem. What's increasingly disturbing is that the President just doesn't seem to get why so many Democrats are so disappointed in him. He seems to believe the apologists' standard line that we're all naive purists who simply don't understand politics.

The comments add fuel to a greater, and growing, concern about the President: that he honestly thinks he's been doing a great job, and that he honestly thinks his approach to problem solving and legislating - compromise first, then reach any deal you can - is an appropriate way to run a country. Inside the White House they call this success. Outside, it's perceived by a growing number of Democrats and Independents as weakness. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Good morning.

There's one person you won't be seeing on the Sunday shows today: Teabagger/Anti-Masturbation crusader/Dabbler in witchcraft/Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell. She canceled appearances on CBS and FOX. Yes, even FOX.

There's a lot of foreign policy talk on the shows today. Bill Clinton will be on NBC and CBS talking about the Clinton Global Initiative, which takes place this week. And, ABC is hosting Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Armanpour taking on Ahmadinejad should make for some interesting t.v.

Colin Powell is also a guest on NBC. He should be questioned about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Powell helped create that policy in 1993. Now, he thinks times have changed and the policy has changed. On Tuesday, the Senate will vote to end the filibuster of the Defense Authorization bill, which includes the DADT language. As of now, the votes aren't there to end the filibuster. This is our best shot to get the process moving towards finally ending that law. The White House hasn't said a word. Maybe Powell will. Instead, Lady Gaga has become a fierce advocate for repeal -- and she speaks to a big audience. Fortunately, she's been willing to use her bully pulpit. At least someone has.

Here's the full lineup. Read the rest of this post...

The Beatles, Dear Prudence

One of the positive aspects of autumn is that it means wild mushrooms are in season. I've been on a mission to prepare them more this year and have been making very steady progress. Last night I bought some girolles gris and cooked them up. They're not cheap so we didn't buy much but they were tasty. I'm still waiting for the chanterelle mushrooms from France to show up. I'm only finding the eastern Europe ones now which I won't buy. The after effects of Chernobyl were in them for years and I'm not ready to find out when that has stopped.

Gorgeous day here today so I'll do a ride and then throw my massive pot of daube into the oven. We're having guests from Canada tonight along with a neighbor so lots to squeeze in. Read the rest of this post...

BP Gulf oil well finally appears to be closed

There's obviously a lot of work left to clean up the leaked oil but at least the well is finally shut down.

Engineers were conducting tests Saturday on the cement injected into the bottom of BP's blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico, and an official declaration that the well has been permanently plugged was expected sometime Sunday, officials said.

The pronouncement will be an anticlimactic end to a catastophe that began five months ago - after all, the gusher was capped in July.

This, though, is an important milestone for the still-weary residents of the Gulf Coast: an assurance that not so much as a trickle of oil will ever again seep from the well. The disaster began April 20, when an explosion killed 11 workers, sank a drilling rig and led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

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Gulf bacteria digests gas, not oil

Imagine that. The initial story churned out of a BP-funded lab about oil-eating bacteria may have been misleading. Who could imagine BP might spin the truth?

Bacteria that attacked the plumes of oil and gas resulting from the Deepwater Horizon gusher in the Gulf of Mexico mainly digested natural gas spewing from the wellhead — propane, ethane and butane — rather than oil, according to a study published in the journal Science.

The paper doesn't rule out the possibility that bacteria also are consuming oil from the spill, the authors said. Instead, it suggests that natural gas primed the growth of bacteria that may have gone on to digest "more complex hydrocarbons" — oil — as the spill aged and propane and ethane were depleted.

Still, lead author David L. Valentine, a professor of microbial geochemistry at UC Santa Barbara, said the findings temper hopes that microorganisms detected by scientists in the gulf have eaten up most of the oil there, as other scientists had recently suggested.

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