AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

"The Snow Machine Pummeled Through the White-Dusted Plain Like a Jubilant Beaver"

2009-12-05T20:50:00.000-05:00

Slate held a Sarah Palin write-a-like contest. These are the winners.

CNBC was considering hiring Dobbs until Latino groups pushed back

2009-12-05T18:40:00.000-05:00

Afghan surge shows fissures between Hill and White House

2009-12-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

What's interesting about this story from yesterday isn't Afghanistan, it's that we're finally seeing some clear signs of trouble in the relationship between the White House and the Congress. We've already seen strained relations between the White House and various constituencies, including the Netroots, gays, women, and the immigration community, to name a few, but just this past week we saw the Congressional Black Caucus challenge the White House, and now others in Congress on Afghanistan.

To some degree, this is natural. It didn't happen much when George Bush was president, but Bush tended not to allow dissension. And while the Obama White House hasn't hesitated to push back against liberals on the Hill, they've been less likely to pressure conservative Democrats or Republicans. That has started, I think, to push the rest of Democrats to the edge of their tolerance. If you think about, there were some early signs. Rockefeller getting ticked off at the White House and Baucus over their negotiating with Republicans and not Democrats on health care reform. Or the White House not supporting Speaker Pelosi when she tried to take on the Teabaggers last summer (Pelosi didn't respond at the time, but it's hard to believe that she didn't notice the White House publicly undercutting her position.)

Most interesting in the article is this line from an Arizona Democrat: “We want this administration to be successful,” Mr. Grijalva said. “It is important to us and it is important to the country. But the loyalty issue is a two-way street.” I think that sums up a lot of the concern that a lot of Democratic constituencies have had with the administration.

And finally, one part of the article I do not agree with at all:

To a considerable extent, the strain stems from a calculation by Mr. Obama’s aides that it is essential to move early in the term. But there are political calculations as well: Mr. Obama has nearly three years to recover from any damage he suffers by pushing through legislation that divides the public. Members of Congress do not.

“They say you do the tough things early,” said Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York. “Early 2010 is early for the White House, but it is perilously late for members of Congress. I don’t know if it’s a new tension, but it’s certainly something people are talking about on the Hill.”

I'm not convinced the White House moved early at all. If anything, they compromised early on the stimulus and health care reform. But, even if you accept that analysis, it spells trouble for every other issue if the message now is that the White House was being bold this past year, but will be less bold when it comes time to address the other campaign promises, like climate change, Wall Street reform, immigration reform, or gay rights. There's already significant concern that those promises are being watered down. If it gets worse in the coming years, I think the fissure is going to get a lot wider, noisier, and nastier.

Reid blasts Aetna for planning to drop 600,000 health insurance customers to increase profits

2009-12-05T14:22:00.002-05:00

Jed has the transcript as well.

Monkeys can recognize their friends in photos

2009-12-05T11:41:00.000-05:00

Very cool finding, though perhaps not a complete surprise.

In the study, the monkeys looked at four photos, including one of a monkey they knew. They also looked at another four monkey photos, including one of a monkey they didn't know.

"This required monkeys to look at similar-looking faces and use their personal knowledge of group mates to solve the task," lead researcher Jennifer Pokorny, said in a university news release. "They readily performed the task and continued to do well when shown new pictures in color and in grayscale, as well as when presented with individuals they had never before seen in pictures, though with whom they were personally familiar."

According to the researchers, previously, there hasn't been evidence that nonhuman primates can look at two-dimensional images and understand they represent things and animals from real life.

Please watch, and donate to, the Second City that Never Sleeps

2009-12-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

24 hours of non-stop improv for a great cause.

Free video chat by Ustream
From our good buddy Andy Cobb, who has done so many of the humorous political videos we've posted on the blog:

In my spare time I volunteer and teach acting at Hollywood Arts, a homeless services center for 18-25 year old kids in Los Angeles who are too old for foster care but still without a home, family, or support

It's a great bunch of folks, and I'm organizing a benefit this weekend for them at Second City Los Angeles. Myself and some other Second City alums will be improvising for 24 hours straight to raise money for a scholarship fund for Hollywood Arts. We'll have celebrity special guests, musicians, and generally a kickass lineup of entertainment for all 24 hours. Plus, myself and some other alums will be onstage pretty much constantly, slowly losing our health and minds for a great cause.

The show will feature veterans of shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, MTV's Wild N Out, Current Television, Groundlings, Second City, SNL, FrankTV, Reno 911, 30 Rock, Last Comic Standing, The Office, Daily Show, Chocolate News, According To Jim, Heroes, Lie To Me. MAD TV, and Parks And Recreation.

We'll be livestreaming the event here (nothing fancy, a one-camera setup) http://www.ustream.tv/channel/24-hours-of-improv starting at 9:30 PM PST Friday Dec 4, till 9:30 PM Saturday night Dec 5.

People can donate to this effort via PayPal.

More info on Facebook.

Saturday Morning Open Thread

2009-12-05T08:08:00.002-05:00

Good morning.

The Senate is in session debating the health insurance reform legislation this weekend. There should be votes on amendments today and tomorrow. Remember when Obama used to say he wanted a health care bill before the August recess? He was so adamant about it. But, top White House staffers Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina enabled Messina's former boss, Senator Max Baucus, to slow down the progress on this bill. And, the real beneficiaries of that delay have been Republicans and the insurance industry. Well, the spotlight is on Baucus again. He surely added some buzz to the weekend with the news John posted last night about nominating his staffer/girl friend to be a U.S. Attorney.

Carlos and I are heading up to Maine this morning to get Petey. He stayed with my parents and their dog, Riley, after the No on 1 campaign because we were going to South Africa. Apparently, Petey and Riley have had a ball. I can't wait to see him and to get back on our routine.

We have a Winter Weather Advisory here in DC for later today. It's going to snow and this city can't handle even a hint of snow.

It could be an interesting weekend...

And, one more thing. Before I left for South Africa, I didn't know there were penguins there. But, there are -- on False Bay, just south of Cape Town. I could have watched them all day. (It was really windy on the Cape, hence the noise in the video):

A bit of a change in sound this morning

2009-12-05T05:17:00.001-05:00

Our cousin told us about his step-daughter's great success in Sri Lanka's equivalent to The X-Factor called "London Star." "Shanu" is only 11 years old and has made it through the semi-finals of the show. It's quite a different musical sound than we're used to in the west but she has a very sweet voice that anyone can appreciate. I can't even begin to imagine how I might have done at such a young age. Besides being on the TV show, she's also had a few interviews with Sri Lankan TV. Shanuka is singing in Sinhala, which is her mother tongue. She also speaks perfect English.

Should rich countries accept climate change refugees?

2009-12-05T03:48:00.000-05:00

An interesting idea that should at least be included in the discussion. It might make the polluting countries think differently with the way they address this problem. The same could easily apply for quite a few issues above and beyond the environment. The Guardian:

Up to 20 million Bangladeshis may be forced to leave the country in the next 40 years because of climate change, one of the country's most senior politicians has said. Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Bangladesh's finance minister, called on Britain and other wealthy countries to accept millions of displaced people.

In a clear signal to the US and Europe that developing countries are not prepared to accept a weak deal at next week's Copenhagen climate summit, Abdul Muhith said Bangladesh wanted hosts for managed migration as people began to abandon flooded and storm-damaged coastal areas.

"Twenty million people could be displaced [in Bangladesh] by the middle of the century," Abdul Muhith told the Guardian. "We are asking all our development partners to honour the natural right of persons to migrate. We can't accommodate all these people – this is already the densest [populated] country in the world," he said.

Dem Sen. Max Baucus nominated his adulterous girlfriend for US attorney job

2009-12-05T00:13:00.005-05:00

You may recall that Baucus is the Senator who initially led the charge against the public option, while wasting months negotiating with Republicans in an effort to get the most conservative bill he could. All for nought. From Roll Call:

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ office confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was carrying on an affair with his state office director, Melodee Hanes, when he nominated her to be U.S. attorney in Montana.

Der Spiegel: "Giant Penis Sparks Bizarre Media War"

2009-12-04T21:58:00.000-05:00

Only in Europe. And only in a European publication.

It's 10AM on a Wednesday. What's your cat doing?

2009-12-04T20:25:00.000-05:00

I don't know about the cats in this study, but our cats most definitely are sleeping. A lot. Since I work at home with our furry friends I don't need a camera to see that Sushi tends to sleep until around 5PM in the afternoon and Nasdaq until around 2PM, when lunch is served. Then it's back to napping. The evening is when the "action" starts and they both wander around for an hour or two. When Sushi is awake, he does enjoy a bit of what we call "terrace TV" as he sits on the sofa and stares outside. Sometimes there's a bird buzzing about and other times, there's nothing as far as we can tell.

Fifty house cats were given collar cameras that took a photo every 15 minutes. The results put a digital dent in some human theories about catnapping.

Based on the photos, about 22 percent of the cats' time was spent looking out of windows, 12 percent was used to interact with other family pets and 8 percent was spent climbing on chairs or kitty condos. Just 6 percent of their hours were spent sleeping.

Six percent? Where do they find these cats? Certainly not here but it's true that Americans are known for their long work hours.

H1N1 flu mutates in Holland

2009-12-04T18:55:00.000-05:00

The H1N1 flu mutations are getting creepy quickly enough. And now they are expanding.

Harald Wychgel, spokesman for the Dutch Institute for Health and the Environment, told AFP that there had been a "minor change in the virus to make it resistant to Tamiflu," a key treatment for influenza.

"He died not because the virus was resistant but because he was seriously ill and caught the Mexican (swine) flu," Wychgel said.

Internet and phone companies aren't just spying on us, they're making money doing it

2009-12-04T17:28:00.000-05:00

From WIRED:

He found that Cox Communications charges $2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval. It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.

Comcast’s pricing list, which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.

But Verizon and Yahoo took offense at the request.

Doesn't making a profit off of disclosing our private communications to the government put these companies in a conflict of interest, as it pertains to protecting our privacy?

Women underrepresented in Obama administration

2009-12-04T16:15:00.000-05:00

The numbers don't lie. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not what anyone should expect or tolerate. We can do a lot better than this. Doesn't it seem reasonable to expect a 50/50 split? Looking at Obama's senior cabinet posts doesn't help the argument either.

Of the 515 senior-level government jobs tracked by The Washington Post at http://washingtonpost.com/headcount, Obama has named fewer women than Bill Clinton did in his first year in office (no jokes, please), and not all that many more than George W. Bush did in his first year.

Of the 376 people the Obama White House announced, nominated and confirmed in those top-tier administration jobs, only 32 percent have been women. In comparison, 46 percent of Clinton's Senate-confirmed nominees in 1993 were women, as were 26 percent of Bush's first-year nominees, according to a year-end study in 2001 by the Brookings Institution.

(Filtering for only White House officials -- folks who might have their gym shoes or clubs readily at hand, should a call come -- Obama's percentage of women in those top jobs is 37 percent.)

TN mayor posts racist anti-Obama rant, claims the "Muslim" Obama tried to kill Charlie Brown Christmas special

2009-12-04T15:00:00.000-05:00

I wasn't able to confirm whether he's a Republican. But I have a feeling. Here's what the mayor posted on his Facebook page:

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."

In Wiseman's extensive thread that attacked the president, his supporters and Muslims, he stated "...you obama people need to move to a muslim country...oh wait, that's America....pitiful."

At another point he said, "you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........"

AP is covering it now too. It's disturbing that so much of this vitriol comes from rural states.

Aetna to force 600,000 to lose health insurance in order to up their profits

2009-12-04T14:03:00.000-05:00

This should provide more fuel for a robust public option that covers everybody. But it likely won't. At the very least, the health care reform legislation should be amended so that it goes into effect immediately, rather than in four years - that way this kind of abuse can be stopped now. That is, provided that Lieberman, Bayh, Nelson, Snowe, Landrieu, Baucus, the Blue Dogs, and lady who lives on the floor below me don't complain. (She gets very cranky when she doesn't get her way.)

Krugman: New employment numbers will only feed complacency

2009-12-04T13:05:00.000-05:00

It's a good point, if you believe that the drop in the unemployment rate does not signify a change in the prognosis that over the next several years unemployment will remain unacceptably high. By witnessing a "drop," however small, policy makers may now think the problem is solving itself, when Krugman, among others, say that it is not.

Welcome to Pompeii, courtesy of Google street views

2009-12-04T10:09:00.001-05:00

Drag your mouse on the picture to turn 360, then click on the arrows to walk through ancient Pompeii.

View Siti archeologici di Torre Annunziata, Pompei e Boscoreale (NA in a larger map

White House official refuses to endorse needle exchange after President campaigned on it

2009-12-04T12:19:00.003-05:00

This is a bad sign. Generally speaking, if the President campaigned on something, and the White House still supported the commitment, a White House official would not back away from reiterating the commitment. This likely won't sit well with the AIDS community, the gay community, and many others.

When a drop in unemployment isn't all it seems

2009-12-04T11:16:00.001-05:00

As noted below, we learned today that the unemployment rate for November dropped from 10.2% to 10.0%. That sounds like good news. But, Tula Connell at the AFL-CIO's blog looked inside those numbers -- and it's still not looking good for America's working men and women. There are millions still unemployed, including a lot who aren't even counted in today's numbers because they've "dropped out" of the labor market -- and there are millions underemployed:

The nation’s unemployment rate moved from 10.2 percent to 10 percent in November, with 15.4 million American workers unemployed, according to U.S. Department of Labor data released this morning. But when both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are some 26 million people without jobs or full-time work. At the start of the recession in December 2007, there were 7.5 million jobless workers and the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Director Larry Mishel says he would not interpret this decline as the beginning of a ongoing reversal in the unemployment rate. In fact, the jobs situation likely will worsen for up to the next 12 months, he says. One reason: There is a backlog of people who dropped out of labor force who will come back in—up to 3 million jobless workers. And when they start looking for jobs again unemployment will rise.

This is why the focus of the Obama administration and Democrats on the Hill is jobs, jobs, jobs. The economic debacle left from the Bush years is going to slam the Democrats in 2010 if the situation doesn't improve in a real way before the congressional elections next November.

Texas does it again

2009-12-04T09:54:00.000-05:00

Continuing to live up to its reputation where the knuckle-draggers rule. The state executed a convicted murderer despite arguments that he was mentally impaired.

Tests administered to Mr. Woods over the years placed his I.Q. between 68 and 86, prompting a bitter debate between his lawyers and the state over whether he was too impaired to face execution. The state and federal courts repeatedly sided with prosecutors.

The debate reflects the gray area left by the Supreme Court in 2002, when it ruled that the mentally impaired were not eligible for the death penalty but left it up to state courts to interpret which inmates qualified as impaired.

Unemployment dropped to 10.0% in November -- movement in the right direction

2009-12-04T08:44:00.001-05:00

Finally. Some good economic news on the all-important jobs front:

U.S. employers cut a far fewer-than-expected 11,000 jobs in November, the smallest decline since the start of the recession in December 2007, government data showed on Friday, strongly suggesting the deterioration in the labor market was in its final stages.

The Labor Department said the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent from a 26-1/2 year high of 10.2 percent in October. The government revised job losses for September and October to show 159,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

Maybe, just maybe, the recovery is starting to hit Main Street, not just Wall Street. But, we still need a lot more jobs. That 10% represents who are still unemployed represents millions of families without a steady paycheck.

Friday Morning Open Thread

2009-12-04T07:38:00.001-05:00

Good morning.

The President is heading to Allentown, PA today to talk jobs and the economy. That's all the Democrats want to talk about these days. (Perhaps if the Democrats hadn't caved so much on that first stimulus, the job situation might be better. Perhaps.) Anyway, once health care is finished, every thing Congress and the White House does for the next year will be filtered through the prism of job creation. That could inhibit other key items on the agenda, which aren't viewed through that jobs prism.

Last night was graduation night at Language ETC. That's where Carlos and I teach English to immigrants. This semester, we taught the Basic class, which is the very introductory level. I think the most productive (and rewarding) part of my week are the two hours I teach. Carlos has been doing it for years and is an excellent teacher (he also speaks several languages, which helps.) I'm still learning how to teach -- and slowly learning Spanish. The students really make it worth it. And, it's also great to see so many of our former students who are still in the program in more advanced courses -- and to have full conversations with them in English because their proficiency keeps improving.

I still don't care about Tiger Woods or the White House party crashers, although those seem to be the only stories being covered by the TODAY Show and the cable networks.

Let's get threading.

Recent Samoan tsunami was up to 46 feet high

2009-12-04T05:39:00.000-05:00

It's difficult to imagine how anything could have survived such a hit.

The massive waves that struck Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga totally destroyed traditional wooden buildings, many of them singly story, along the coast while reinforced concrete buildings sustained only minor damage, said Stefan Reese, a risk engineer with New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

The waves were up to 46 feet (14 meters) high, Reese told The Associated Press. The scientists measured watermarks on buildings and trees to help confirm the height of the waves.

"In some areas there was virtually nothing left" after the waves reached up to 765 yards (700 meters) inland, Reese said.