Political News Bits of the Day

[Doug]

DOUG
U.S. job loss for December was 85,000 (84,000 on one report):

WASHINGTON -- U.S. job losses were higher than expected in December of last year and the unemployment rate remained at a lofty 10%, a sign the labor market has still some way to recover.

Although the November 2009 data was revised to show the U.S. economy added jobs for the first time since the recession began two years earlier, the December payroll number was worse than forecast.
See here.

But Obama is still doing better than Bush:
Worst year of job creation during the Bush Administration: 2008 (111 thousand jobs lost per month on average)
Democratic Underground

Obama is helping:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) [01/06/10] -- In some welcome news on the job front, the pace of U.S. job losses eased in December, according to two reports released Wednesday.

Automatic Data Processing (ADP, Fortune 500), a payroll-processing firm, said private-sector employers cut 84,000 jobs in December, the fewest since March 2008.

It was the ninth straight month that job losses narrowed from the previous month. The number of cuts in November was revised down to 145,000 from the previously reported 169,000.
Here.

[Doug]

HUNTSVILLE, AL - "I believe the Bible is true," Republican gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne said here Wednesday. "Every word of it."

Byrne's testimony came as he tried to clarify an earlier statement seized on by his opponents for the GOP nomination.

Byrne had been quoted in the Mobile Press-Register in November as saying, "I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not."

That quote has followed him, including to his appearance at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in New Hope, where Byrne came to announce his first big endorsement this year, from the Alabama Retail Association.

When notice of the press conference was posted on al.com Wednesday morning, several posters said things similar to this:

"Just got a call from a person at my Church letting me know about this," said uafan1198. "My family will not be shopping at Ragland Piggly Wiggly stores anymore or anything else they own.... I don't shop at places that think it is OK to stand next to people who don't believe the Bible is all true."

Byrne said at Piggly Wiggly that he had been misquoted. The report has been used by his opponents in anonymous attacks since November, Byrne added.

See here for the rest.

[Betsy]

Sarah Palin has signed on to be a contributor to FOX "news" - she won't have her own regular show, but will be on a regular basis.

here

how long do you think before she makes a total fool of herself? Oh, wait, she already has.

[Doug]

Sarah Palin has signed on to be a contributor to FOX "news"

DOUG
I'm sure the people of Alaska are thrilled that their governor quit her job so she can do this.

Actually, I expected her to show up as a regular on the Cartoon Network...

[kwlyon]

Actually, I expected her to show up as a regular on the Cartoon Network...

Yeah...she's not that funny actually....I quite laughing at "fruit fly research"....

[Dardedar]

Doomsday clock gets moved back. Thanks Obama!

“This hopeful state of world affairs leads the boards of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — which include 19 Nobel laureates — to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock back from five to six minutes to midnight. By shifting the hand back from midnight by only one additional minute, we emphasize how much needs to be accomplished, while at the same time recognizing signs of collaboration among the United States, Russia, the European Union, India, China, Brazil, and others on nuclear security and on climate stabilization.”

“A key to the new era of cooperation is a change in the U.S. government’s orientation toward international affairs brought about in part by the election of Obama. With a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach, not only has Obama initiated new arms reduction talks with Russia, he has started negotiations with Iran to close its nuclear enrichment program, and directed the U.S. government to lead a global effort to secure loose fissile material in four years. He also presided over the U.N. Security Council last September where he supported a fissile material cutoff treaty and encouraged all countries to live up to their disarmament and nonproliferation obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty …”

Link

[Dardedar]

Obama wins more spending cuts than Bush

"President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years.

..."The Congress has approved more than 60 percent of the president's proposals, and that's a high mark, that's a strong beginning."

By comparison, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Mr. Bush won 40 percent of his spending cuts in fiscal 2006 and won less than 15 percent of his proposed cuts for 2007 and 2008...

President George H.W. Bush in 1992 proposed eliminating 246 small programs, but succeeded in getting only eight of them chopped."

Moonie Times

Oh and...

90 Accomplishments of Pres. Obama

[Dardedar]

A new CBS News poll finds that a large majority of Americans say they do not want former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to run for president.

Specifically, 71 percent say they do not want the former Republican vice presidential nominee to run for president, while 21 percent say they do want her to run.

When the results are split out by party, 56 percent of Republicans say they do not want her to seek the office and 30 percent do. Meanwhile, 88 percent of Democrats do not want her to run. Among independents, 65 percent do not want her to run and 25 percent do.

Now, 26 percent of people view Palin favorably, compared with 23 percent in November and July of last year. Forty-one percent now view her unfavorably..."

CBS

[Savonarola]

A new CBS News poll finds that a large majority of Americans say they do not want former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to run for president.

I'd love for her to run... and win the Republican nomination. It would assure Democratic victory.

[Dardedar]

John Edwards Now Most Unpopular Figure Anywhere, Anytime: Pollster

The North Carolina Democrat is viewed positively by only 15 percent of voters in his home state,... despite his new image as a philanderer men have a more unfavorable opinion of him (75%) than women (68%).

The numbers are what one would expect when polling the popularity of a politician who cheated on his cancer-stricken wife while possibly fathering a child out of wedlock, all while running for the presidency of the United States.

Other philanderers like Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) now have respectable approval ratings, Jensen relayed, in part because their political party was willing to stomach their transgressions.

"What we find is that Republicans will forgive you for cheating on your wife as long as you are a Republican," said Jensen. "Democrats are not forgiving Edwards."

Huff Po

[Scott Galt]

WOW- Ted Kennedy- the killer, the swimmer- goes down- Go Scott Brown- The Regressives lose the first of many- Bye-Bye Blanche...

[Doug]

WOW- Ted Kennedy- the killer, the swimmer- goes down- Go Scott Brown- The Regressives lose the first of many- Bye-Bye Blanche...

DOUG
Yes, it is a terrible thing for the health care reform bill that a Republican was elected to the Senate.

But it was not a defeat for Ted Kennedy. He was not in the race. While he WAS running, he kept winning term after term. He didn't go down. He died.

Oh, and the "Regressives" are the conservatives--by definition.

[Dardedar]

As one person put it:

"Just one year after Bush, Massachusetts is ready to elect an affable Republican frat boy with a pickup truck who thinks government is incapable of solving our problems? We're too stupid to have a democracy."

[Betsy]

it's not as big a blow to health care reform as the talking heads are hyping it up to be - after all, democrats still have a healthy majority in the senate.....

as an aside, isn't it interesting that the same people who are complaining about all the aid being sent to Haiti, using the argument "we should take care of our people in America first" are the ones who are opposed to health care reform?

[Doug]

We're too stupid to have a democracy."

DOUG
No shit. Plato saw that 2,300 years ago...

[Dardedar]

A nice debunk of the entirely idiotic notion that Obama is running a "far left" show.

Nate Silver on:

Obama's... relatively centrist agenda.

Excerpt:

"It's not just on health care -- but let's talk about health care for a moment. The bill that the Senate Democrats passed did not substantially restructure the system of private insurance, nor the health care delivery system. It did not include a public option. It did, rather, about the minimum that you could do if you want to prevent people with pre-existing conditions from being denied health care. You can't require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions unless you're willing to put a mandate into place (otherwise, everyone's premiums would rise substantially). And you can't put a mandate into place without having some reasonably generous subsidies (otherwise, a lot of folks would go broke.) The Senate's bill was about the least radical way to achieve something approaching universal coverage that can be imagined. It is nevertheless a bill that would do a tremendous amount of good for a tremendous number of people, and so I've advocated for its passage. But with the possible exception of Wyden-Bennett (which not identifiably left or right although much more radical than what the Congress is considering), virtually any attempt to achieve universal coverage would be further to the left of this bill.

The stimulus? The pricetag was much less than what most economists were advocating for. And about half of it was tax cuts -- although you'd never know it from the White House's poor messaging on the subject.

Cap-and-trade? It's a market-based solution, and one that includes significantly less ambitious emissions targets than have been adopted by virtually any other Westernized country. The version of the climate bill that the Senate would consider would in all likelihood have included offshore drilling and an expansion of nuclear energy, making it almost literally identical to the one that John McCain advocated on the campaign trail.

The War in Afghanistan was escalated. Robert Gates is still the defense secretary. Obama's foreign policy has been prudent, but hardly dovish.

The bailout? It was a continuation of a policy adopted under the Bush Administration -- an exceptionally unpopular one, but not one that's identifiably liberal or conservative.

Obama has adopted a few progressive social policies, like the hate crimes bill and the fair pay act, which he perhaps does not get enough credit for. They also happen to be things which are supported by an overwhelming majority of the population. He hasn't pushed on ending Don't Ask Don't Tell (even though that too polls well) or repealing the Defense of Marriage Act. His position on same sex-marriage -- civil unions, but not marriage itself -- is the centrist, plurality position. His Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was a good one, but not one of the more liberal nominees that he might have considered.

Financial reform? The House's bill was fairly watered down, and the Senate's bill will be more so. Nevertheless, Republicans opposed it uniformly, even though polls show the public overwhelmingly favors stricter regulation of Wall Street.

A jobs bill? The House's version is quite centrist, consisting of about $50 billion apiece in infrastructure projects, tax breaks, and aid to state and local governments. But not a single Republican voted for it.

What's more alarming still is that some of the policies which have become unpopular -- like the health care bill and arguably the stimulus (although the polling is more equivocal there) -- did not start out that way. With the exception of the bailouts -- a policy which the White House certainly wasn't pursing for political expediency -- virtually every policy that the Democrats have advanced polled reasonably well when it was first proposed. It did not always end up that way after it had been through the legislative meat grinder. The reflexive Republican opposition to virtually any policy that the Democrats advanced -- they've overwhelmingly opposed policies as benign as delaying the digital TV changeover date! -- has in retrospect been exceptionally effective."

Five-Thirty Eight.

[Dardedar]

"Meet Kiki, Boy Wonder, alive and well after eight days under the rubble of earthquake-blitzed Port au Prince."

Link

[L.Wood]

.
Latest tea party target: Its own convention

Thu Jan 21, 2:26 pm ET

The convention is being held at a fancy resort, features $550 ticket prices, a steak and lobster dinner and a guest speaker with a $100,000 speaking fee. It’s sponsored by a for-profit company with a mysterious wealthy benefactor, and its organizers, who have been accused of secrecy and corruption, have threatened lawsuits against dissenters and clamped down on news coverage.

Sounds like just the kind of thing that tea party activists, whose populist outrage is directed at the Washington and Wall Street establishments, would be up in arms over.

Except it’s a tea party convention.

....
Red State blogger Erick Erickson made it clear recently what he thinks of the coming event — pronouncing that it “smells scammy” and is inconsistent with the grass-roots energy behind the tea party movement.

“I’m hoping for the best, but I’m prepared for the worst — that it descends into infighting and that the passionate activists who attend end up leaving disenchanted,” he told POLITICO.
....
It was the brainchild of Judson Phillips, a Tennessee lawyer who — as first reported by POLITICO — is running the event through a for-profit Tennessee corporation he controls called Tea Party Nation. Most political conventions are conducted by nonprofits. Yet Phillips originally intended to turn a profit from the endeavor, with the cash going to fund a so-called 527 group that would air ads praising conservative candidates or criticizing their opponents.
....
POLITICO has learned that Phillips obtained a $50,000 loan to pay a deposit towards the $100,000 fee Washington Speakers Bureau charged to secure Palin as the keynote speaker at the convention. Much of the loan came from Bill Hemrick, a baseball card tycoon whose loan contract didn’t call for interest but did set a deadline last week for repayment, which Phillips missed.

American Majority, a leading training outfit for tea party organizers, canceled two planned sessions at the convention and withdrew its sponsorship after learning about the convention’s for-profit structure and the criticisms of Phillips

(I found this rich in typical rwing profiteering and mismanagement LW)

entire report is here.

.

[Dardedar]

'Live Free Or Die': Beck brings Goldberg on to promote his 'Liberal Fascism'-based 'documentary'

Glenn Beck has a special "documentary" he's going to show his audience today on Fox News titled "Live Free Or Die," and what's evident is that the entire show is going to be predicated on expanding on Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent thesis in his bestselling book, Liberal Fascism, namely, that fascism is "properly understood" as "a phenomenon of the left."

What's apparent is that Beck intends to leap from this fraudulent beginning to the bizarre conclusion that the progressive movement has always produced genocide -- mostly by equating fascists with communists with progressives, which is part of the underlying illogic of Goldberg's thesis. It seems he will be promoting the conclusion that President Obama is leading America on a path to genocide as well.

Indeed, anyone who's been watching Beck's show the past year is aware that his continually building thesis about Obama -- that he is secretly a black radical Marxist/fascist/socialist/whateverist intent on creating a totalitarian regime in America -- is largely built on Liberal Fascism and its thesis...

Academic historians, in fact, have tended to shy away from tackling Goldberg's book, precisely because it is such an obvious work of propagandistic polemics, and his methodology so shabby, that they haven't considered the work (such as it is) contained therein to be worthy of academic consideration.

But because Goldberg's fraudulent thesis has now become conventional wisdom on the American Right -- and particularly among the Tea Party set, where signs equating liberals to fascists and Obama to Hitler have become commonplace -- many historians, especially those who have specialized in the serious study of fascism, have come to the realization that calling out Goldberg for his fraud is long overdue.

To that end, I began organizing last fall a series of essays from academic historians and political scientists critiquing Liberal Fascism. The essays are now ready, and this Monday, Jan. 25, they will be presented at History News Network.

In addition to my introductory essay, there will be essays by four widely acknowledged experts on fascism:

-- Robert O. Paxton, professor emeritus at Columbia University and the author of The Anatomy of Fascism.

-- Roger Griffin, professor of political science at Oxford Brookes and the author of The Nature of Fascism.

-- Matthew Feldman, professor of history at University of Northampton, and a co-editor of several academic texts on fascism.

-- Chip Berlet, senior researcher at Political Research Associates and the co-author (with Stephen Lyons) of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.

LINK

[L.Wood]

.

"Live Free Or Die,"

While finding Glen Beck a bad joke I cannot but wonder how much rolling over in their graves our Founding Fathers would
be doing over the Robert's court ruling that corporations are now people and have the unlimited right to campaign donations
hence shaping who and what will guide our national destiny.

The Republic is over Glen. Everybody lost save for Murdock and his numerous corporations each of which can now give unlimited
money to candidates willing to set the rules in Murdock's favor.

.