THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Loathsome as Robertson’s views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonised theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable “mystery”, or who see God in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti, or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God “suffering on the cross” in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here.

Where was God in Noah’s flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for “sin”. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock, stock and barrel, as punishment for “sin”.

“Oh but that’s the Old Testament. No one believes those stories literally any more. The New Testament is all about love.” Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated, gentle Christian, you cannot be serious. Your entire religion is founded on an obsession with “sin”, with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the odious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus’s incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the “sins” of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the “sin” of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed?

Yes, I know you hate the word “scapegoat” (with good reason, because it is a barbaric idea) but what other word would you use? The only respect in which “scapegoat” falls short as a perfect epitome of Christian theology is that the Christian atonement is even more unpleasant. The goat of Jewish tradition was merely driven into the wilderness with its cargo of symbolic sin. Jesus was supposedly tortured and executed to atone for sins that, any rational person might protest, he had it in his power simply to forgive, without the agony. Among all the ideas ever to occur to a nasty human mind (Paul’s of course), the Christian “atonement” would win a prize for pointless futility as well as moral depravity.

// posted by montag @ 11:32 PM 0 Comments

And on Monday, Megyn Kelly will begin anchoring a third all-about-America newscast, “America Live.”

But there is no concealing the rise of Ms. Kelly, a 39-year-old lawyer who is becoming a solo anchor for the first time. She seems to be progressing through Fox’s star-making machinery, which has turned news anchors like Shepard Smith into household names.

Ms. Kelly appears weekly on Mr. O’Reilly’s opinion program, often putting her legal background to use. Inside the News Corporation, the owner of Fox, Ms. Kelly has been mentioned as a leading candidate for a prime-time anchor job. Fox’s contract with Greta Van Susteren, the longtime 10 p.m. anchor, is up at the end of the year.

// posted by montag @ 11:11 PM 0 Comments

Bank of America's new chief executive has yet to stop by the Caribou Coffee in the bank's headquarters for a latte named in his honor, but the drink is getting a warm reception from other customers, said the inventor of The Moynihan.

The drink honoring CEO Brian Moynihan features white chocolate, hazelnut and Irish cream and starts at $4.25.

Sarah Stevens, a shift supervisor in training, came up with the idea soon after Moynihan was picked for the job last month. "I wanted to get his attention and draw more business," Stevens says.

// posted by montag @ 1:40 PM 0 Comments

But in recent months, as the Republican Party of Florida has grappled with a leadership vacuum, Bush's political profile has grown as fast as the national deficit.

He headlined a fundraiser for Bill McCollum's gubernatorial campaign, starred in a YouTube video touting Jeff Atwater's campaign for state chief financial officer and helped install state Sen. John Thrasher as the state party's heir apparent -- all the while looming on the sidelines of the fierce Republican Senate primary between Gov. Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio.

The capper came Thursday when, at the top of the 7 o'clock hour, right after Vice President Joe Biden, Bush made a rare network television appearance on NBC's Today Show. The intensely private Bush's interview with the overly familiar Matt Lauer rattled Florida political circles.

Was this the beginning of a Jeb juggernaut that would culminate in a 2012 presidential bid?

``My wife called me immediately and said he looked presidential,'' said Thrasher, who as the former House speaker helped Bush lay down his agenda. ``I said, `Who knows? We'll see.' I'm ready to go to Iowa any time he's ready.''

// posted by montag @ 1:27 PM 0 Comments

Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for sleep deprivation and waterboarding of terrorism suspects exercised poor judgment but will not be referred to authorities for possible sanctions, according to a forthcoming ethics report, a legal source confirmed.

// posted by montag @ 12:53 PM 0 Comments

Actor Elmore "Rip" Torn has been charged with breaking into a Connecticut bank and carrying a loaded handgun while intoxicated.

State police say the 78-year-old Salisbury resident was arrested Friday night after police found him inside the Litchfield Bancorp with a loaded revolver.

// posted by montag @ 12:36 PM 0 Comments

Americans like Obama far more than they like any Congressional leader. They might even like more of his policies if he spelled them out. But none of that matters if no Democrat fears him enough to do any of his bidding and no Republican believes there’s any price to be paid for always saying no.

// posted by montag @ 12:10 AM 0 Comments

The implication is clear. We need to face up to needed structural changes, and place them into law. To do less will simply mean ultimate failure — failure to accept responsibility for learning from the lessons of the past and anticipating the needs of the future.

// posted by montag @ 10:13 PM 0 Comments

Asked to account for the resilience of his country’s banking system, Carney started with the fact that “Canadian bankers are still bankers. They still – through the organisations and up to the top of the organisation – are proficient at managing credit risk and market risk … they have retained a banking culture through[out] the organisation.”

// posted by montag @ 2:12 PM 0 Comments

In a messy drug bust this week, investigators uncovered more than 700 pounds of marijuana stuffed in a septic tank truck full of human waste, Arizona police said Friday.

And the search of the truck was as awful as it sounds.

"Yeah, that really does suck," Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves told CNN. "It's a long way to go to make a bust."

Hidden in the holding tank of the truck were 743 pounds of pot, worth about $409,000 on the street, police said in a news release.

An officer pulled over the septic tank truck Wednesday after a check of the license showed it was invalid, police said. The truck was headed northbound on I-19 and stopped about 35 miles south of Tucson, Arizona. Police patrolling the area tend to be more vigilant, Graves said, because the interstate -- which leads directly to Mexico -- is a major thoroughfare for drug and human trafficking.

After the stop, the officer discovered that the commercial vehicle markings on the truck were also invalid. A subsequent search revealed the bales of marijuana in red and orange packages amid the waste.

// posted by montag @ 1:22 PM 0 Comments

As I was saying, last November, the Justice Department announced that the terror trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be held in Manhattan. Almost everyone in New York rallied around. This was seen as standing up to terrorism.

“It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center, where so many New Yorkers were murdered,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Now everything’s flipped. The politicians are running for the hills, and the issue has been repackaged as standing up to traffic jams...

..It’s all part of a cult of selfishness that decrees it’s fine to throw your body in front of any initiative, no matter how important, if resistance looks more profitable.

The economy has a lot to do with this. So does Washington’s increasing confidence that Barack Obama can be rolled. We’re currently stuck in a place where people no longer feel as though they need to be part of the solution.

// posted by montag @ 1:06 PM 0 Comments

to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington.

But that would be a mistake.

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

// posted by montag @ 12:55 PM 0 Comments

Miami-based Premier American Bank, N.A., a new bank with a national charter set up last week, is buying the deposits and $499.1 million of the assets of Florida Community Bank. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later sale. In addition, the FDIC and Premier American Bank — owned by the investment firm Bond Street Holdings — agreed to share losses on $305.4 million of Florida Community Bank's loans and other assets.

Bond Street Investors has been formed to invest in banking franchises, capitalizing on the opportunities afforded today from the dislocation in the financial markets. Investments in healthy banking institutions, cleansed through the FDIC auction process, will provide much needed lending capital, and are poised to grow and prosper.

The two shuttered banks in Georgia followed 25 bank failures there last year, more than in any other state.

// posted by montag @ 11:57 AM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 4:42 PM 0 Comments

Hatch said Thursday that using reconciliation would be "one of the worst grabs for power in the history of the country" that would permanently impact relations between the two parties.

"It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules," Hatch said. "If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators."

// posted by montag @ 1:58 PM 2 Comments

The new initiative would allow California residents to cultivate up to 25 square feet of pot and possess or transport up to 1 ounce. It would include fines and criminal sanctions for providing marijuana to minors.

The initiative would allow cities to tax pot sales and regulate how much pot can be sold legally. It would permit individual cities to ban local sales but let citizens possess and consume marijuana.

// posted by montag @ 1:16 PM 1 Comments

Deeply disillusioned last week by his party's insufficient response to the recession, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said Thursday he views President Obama's State of the Union as a step in the right direction but urged him to "be much bolder."

"It would be helpful if he could take a page from Franklin Roosevelt," Kucinich told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. "FDR saw the need for broad structural changes in the economy and also the need for government to invest and put America back to work."

"If we can't fix our economic injustices and improve the standard of living for regular people, we could lose our country."

// posted by montag @ 11:41 AM 0 Comments

Carter was injured on the last night of his fraternity’s ski trip at Breckenridge, Colo. He and fellow members of his fraternity, as well as members of the Tri Delta Sorority, had rented a house for the trip.

Carter said that the group drank and got rowdy and that at some point he agreed to allow his fraternity brothers to finish branding the Kappa Sigma letters on his rear end with a hot coat hanger — a brand that was started on a spring break trip more than a year ago.

It was a dumb, drunken decision, Carter said Wednesday.

But his fraternity brothers, Carter said, took things too far. Not only did they complete the brand, they also branded large triangles — the Greek symbol for Tri Delta Sorority — on his other buttock while he was passed out.

"I woke up the next morning and I was in a lot of pain," Carter said. "My whole other butt cheek was destroyed."

// posted by montag @ 10:15 PM 2 Comments

Soldiers in a military convoy shot and killed a local imam as he was sitting in his car with his children here Thursday morning, according to the U.S. military and several Afghans who live near the scene of the shooting.

The nationality of the soldiers was not immediately clear. U.S. officials said only that the convoy was part of the U.S.-led coalition, without specifying the country. Residents said the soldiers were American.

U.S. officials expressed regret for what they called "an unfortunate incident" and said in a statement that soldiers in the convoy "fired on what appeared to be a threatening vehicle." Neighbors said the imam did nothing to provoke the shooting, but was in his car, with three children in the back seat, waiting for a fourth son to get into the vehicle.

"A lot of innocent people have been killed by the Americans," said Shabaz Khan, 20, a high school student who attended the mosque. "How long can they keep doing this? The people will bear it for a day, or two days, or three days. Eventually everyone will stand against them and fight the jihad."

// posted by montag @ 1:10 PM 0 Comments

The Senate agreed Thursday to raise the legal limit on government borrowing to a record $14.3 trillion, a total that would permit the Treasury Department to cover the nation's bills through the end of this year.

The vote fell strictly along party lines, with all 60 Democrats supporting and all 40 Republicans opposing a plan to increase the cap by $1.9 trillion.

// posted by montag @ 1:00 PM 0 Comments

The Obama administration on Wednesday lost its most prominent backer of the plan to try the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks in Lower Manhattan when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the trial should not be held in New York City.

The mayor’s reversal was a political blow to the White House’s efforts to resolve a landmark terror case a few blocks from where Al Qaeda hijackers rammed planes into the World Trade Center, a trial that the president saw as an important demonstration of American justice.

Mr. Bloomberg said that a more secure location, like a military base, would be less disruptive and less costly. His remarks echoed growing opposition from Wall Street executives, the real estate industry and neighborhood groups, who have questioned the burdens that such a trial would bring to a heavily trafficked area of the city.

// posted by montag @ 12:53 PM 0 Comments

Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., proposes increases in eight different military pays:

• Hostile fire pay, now $225 a month, would increase to $600.

• Imminent danger pay, also $225 a month, would increase to $350 a month.

• Family separation allowance, now $250 a month, would increase to $450 a month.

• Continuation pay for special warfare officers, now $5,000 for each year of additional service, would increase to up to $20,000 for each year of additional service.

• Hazardous duty pay, which ranges from $150 to $450 a month, would increase to $200 to $500 a month. Service members could continue to receive up to three separate hazard pays at the same time.

• Hospitalization pay for members medically evacuated from a combat zone, now $430 a month, would increase to $600.

• Special pay for members of weapons of mass destruction civil support teams, now $150 a month, would increase to $300 a month.

• Special pay for psychologists and social workers, now $2,000 to $5,000 a year, would increase to $4,000 to $10,000 a year.

• Special pay for extending an overseas tour, now $80 a month or $2,000 a year if paid in lump sum, would increase to $200 a month or $3,000 in a lump sum.

McNerney calls the package of pay increases the Combat Operations and Medical Benefit Authorization for our Troops Act, or COMBAT Act. Introduced Jan. 13, the bill, HR 4440, was referred to the House Armed Services Committee for consideration as part of the 2011 defense budget.

// posted by montag @ 7:36 PM 0 Comments

Thanks to the release of this document, which AIG had wanted to disclose in December 2008, a month before Geithner left the New York Fed to head the Treasury Department, the public can see that Goldman's $14 billion in assets was really worth just $6 billion. The firm had $8.4 billion in collateral from AIG, noteworthy because more than $2 billion of that came after the government's first bailout of AIG on Sept. 16., according to a Nov. 2008 presentation prepared for the New York Fed that was released this week.

In all, taxpayers indirectly pumped about $8 billion into Goldman Sachs through AIG. Goldman posted a $1.3 billion profit for 2008.

// posted by montag @ 7:06 PM 0 Comments

1. Obama walks to the podium with Joe Lieberman's ragged-necked, bloody, disembodied head and announces that the Connecticut Senator has been kicked out of the Democratic caucus. He tosses the head at Mitch McConnell, who weeps as he fucks Lieberman's grotesque, frozen-in-mid-scream mouth. The President says, "The State of the Union is who's next?"

2. Obama introduces Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright as guests seated behind Michelle Obama, who fist bumps them both. The President says, "Scared now, fuckers?" [more]

// posted by montag @ 6:30 PM 0 Comments

One night 54 years ago, Cliff Crook says, he stared into the face of a Northwest boogeyman. He called it a "woods giant." Today, it's better known as Bigfoot.

"I had a real terrifying encounter," said Crook, now 69. "It's not something that goes away."

Crook appeared on the front page of The News Tribune in 1990 when some mushroom hunters found possible Bigfoot footprints near the Nisqually River. Crook found the prints credible.

He called The News Tribune recently to announce more Bigfoot footprint news, what he called the biggest find in 30 years.

// posted by montag @ 1:08 PM 0 Comments

China has been massively investing in its high speed rail, its science labs, its educational system, its roads, its energy grid an its information super-duper highway. It has been obsessed with job retention and job creation. It has been building a mind-boggling number of every kind of power plant imaginable -- natural gas, high end coal, low end coal. It's investing in next gen renewable energy projects on a scale larger than the United States. It has been subsidizing all of this with a neo-mercantilist currency policy, pumping exports which it finances to consumers not only in the US but all over the world. China flaunts a robust "Buy China" requirement in its government and semi-private industrial procurements and contracting.

Obama's team, content to have bailed out Wall Street, seem to now run the rest of the economy on a cash accounting basis. That's bad, self-defeating policy.

What needs to be run on a cash accounting basis -- that is not -- is the part of the budget Obama seems not to want to reign in.....a huge, runaway bill to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, the cost of America's Iraq engagement will still run more than $150 billion. And add to that $100 billion plus for Afghanistan.

One QUARTER OF A TRILLION DOLLARS is what the US is spending on two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan that together have a COMBINED GDP of just $23 billion.

That is lunacy. Americans have a US President who is going to say tonight -- we cannot afford our future, we cannot afford investment in ourselves, but we can afford to bail out Wall Street financiers, and we can afford to pump $250 billion into two small countries abroad, but we can't afford to do the right things by American working families -- who deserve far better.

// posted by montag @ 11:46 AM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 10:12 PM 1 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:39 PM 0 Comments

What has Obama - this Conan O'Brien of presidents - done wrong in order to produce this devastating outcome? The short answer is: Just about everything imaginable.

// posted by montag @ 6:50 PM 0 Comments

The Senate rejected a proposed bipartisan commission to recommend ways to reduce the U.S. government deficit as a report projected this year’s shortfall will reach $1.35 trillion, the second-biggest since World War II.

The vote was 53-46, falling seven short of the 60 needed for passage. The legislation would have required that the panel’s recommendations be voted on by Congress without being amended. Its chief sponsors, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and ranking Republican Judd Gregg, had said they were short of the votes for approval.

// posted by montag @ 2:13 PM 0 Comments

For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us – or maybe even in us.

Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times.

Davies said the variant life forms – most likely tiny microbes – could still be hanging around "right under or noses – or even in our noses."

// posted by montag @ 1:02 PM 0 Comments

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

// posted by montag @ 12:28 PM 0 Comments

Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it.

// posted by montag @ 12:23 PM 0 Comments

The Cessna 170 was expected to be moved from Hermann Park on Tuesday. The unplanned landing of the single-engine plane happened Monday night on a flight from Lafayette, La.

Veteran pilot Brendon Ford says an apparent gauge problem led him to believe he had more fuel than he actually did. Ford was bound for Columbus, about 70 miles west of Houston, when the engine started sputtering and gave out, at about 2,000 feet.

He spotted two fairways. He says there was just one person on the site he chose, so he flew over the top of him and landed. No one was injured.

// posted by montag @ 11:50 AM 1 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:27 PM 0 Comments

In my mind's eye, a serene setting comes into view. I see a funeral procession driving down some small-town Main Street in Nowheresville, U.S.A. On one side of the street, a collection of sycophants and morons are paying their respects in subliterate, sanctimonious tones. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, I can just make out the faint image of a young boy, his brow furrowed in confusion, clutching the hand of his father. "Who is that man, Daddy?" he asks as the hearse containing my bloated, lifeless body rolls by. "Who is that person they speak of?" The father will then lower his head and say, "There, my son, go the remains of Rush Hudson Limbaugh, the most abominable lump of festering dog shit in the history of American broadcasting. May the likes of him never again soil or tarnish the greatness of our fair country."

// posted by montag @ 6:04 PM 0 Comments

Awarded in 2004 to private firm DynCorp International, the police contract is the largest awarded by the state department.

But Sigir's Stuart Bowen says in his report that weak oversight made the contract vulnerable to waste and fraud.

According to Mr Bowen's report, for years the state department had only one person in Iraq monitoring invoices during the early stages of the DynCorp contract, despite the complexity of the paperwork.

This meant many invoices were not questioned and as a result there is "no confidence in the accuracy of payments of more than $1bn to DynCorp", the report says.

The three people now employed in Iraq to oversee the work done by DynCorp are still too few, the audit concludes.

The report also suggests the state department is ill-equipped to oversee the large sums of money flowing into Afghanistan because of its lack of people and resources to handle big private sector contracts.

// posted by montag @ 4:28 PM 0 Comments

There are other people with the intellectual heft and policy savvy to take on his role: among the possible choices would be my Princeton colleague Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman, and Janet Yellen, the president of the San Francisco Fed.

But — and here comes my defense of a Bernanke reappointment — any good alternative for the position would face a bruising fight in the Senate. And choosing a bad alternative would have truly dire consequences for the economy.

Furthermore, policy decisions at the Fed are made by committee vote. And while Mr. Bernanke seems insufficiently concerned about unemployment and too concerned about inflation, many of his colleagues are worse. Replacing him with someone less established, with less ability to sway the internal discussion, could end up strengthening the hands of the inflation hawks and doing even more damage to job creation.

That’s not a ringing endorsement, but it’s the best I can do.

// posted by montag @ 12:56 PM 0 Comments

The owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the iconic middle-class housing complexes overlooking the East River in Manhattan, have decided to turn over the properties to creditors, officials said Monday morning.

The decision by Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty comes four years after the $5.4 billion purchase of the complexes’ 110 buildings and 11,227 apartments in what was the most expensive real estate deal of its kind in American history.

This month, the partnership headed by Tishman Speyer defaulted on $3 billion in debt on the properties, and in the last few days secondary lenders have been calling to replace the partnership.

// posted by montag @ 12:33 PM 0 Comments

For McConnell, the president's whole problem is that he isn't moderate enough. "The president decided to go hard left," he said. "That's why he doesn't have many of my members. If he chooses to govern in the middle he will have broader support," said McConnell.

// posted by montag @ 11:57 AM 0 Comments

A cannabis festival in Aspen this spring will be the first in the state for approved growers to put their strains in a contest.

The Western Slope Cannabis Crown will have about 50 state-approved medical marijuana growers enter their strains of weed. The marijuana strains will be diagnostically tested for their THC levels. Growers will also be able to sell to medical marijuana patients. The customers would vote on a "people's choice" strain.

The Cannabis Crown organizer, Bobby Scurlock, says about 1,500 tickets have been sold for the two-day event.

// posted by montag @ 11:51 AM 0 Comments

The White House has decided to begin funding private companies to carry NASA astronauts into space, but the proposal faces major political and budget hurdles, according to people familiar with the matter.

The controversial proposal, expected to be included in the Obama administration's next budget, would open a new chapter in the U.S. space program. The goal is to set up a multiyear, multi-billion-dollar initiative allowing private firms, including some start-ups, to compete to build and operate spacecraft capable of ferrying U.S. astronauts into orbit—and eventually deeper into the solar system.

// posted by montag @ 4:38 PM 2 Comments

Friday, Bauer said giving food to needy people means encouraging dependence. It also gives the recipients a license to have children who will also be dependent on public aid, he said.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer told a Greenville-area crowd. "You know why? Because they breed.

"You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

"It amazes me how some Republican politicians claim a monopoly on Christianity and then go out and say and do some of the most un-Christian things imaginable," said Charleston attorney Mullins McLeod, who participated in a candidates forum in Columbia along with Bauer Saturday. "... Bauer's comments are despicable and the total opposite of the Christian values Bauer espouses."

// posted by montag @ 1:13 PM 0 Comments

By all rights, Tom Perriello should have almost no chance to win reelection to Congress. He's a stimulus-backing, health-care-reform-loving, cap-and-trade-supporting liberal Democrat who represents a conservative central Virginia district where antipathy to the president and all things Washington runs high.

Perhaps too high. Perriello's opponents are so divided about who is the best conservative to replace him that they are transforming what should be a gimme for Republicans into a national emblem of GOP strife, potentially setting up a replay of the special election in Upstate New York in November that handed the Democrats a seat in a region they hadn't represented in more than 100 years.

// posted by montag @ 12:45 PM 0 Comments

Worse, the master communicator in the White House has still not delivered a coherent message on his signature policy. He not only refused to signal his health care imperatives early on but even now he, like Congressional Democrats, has failed to explain clearly why and how reform relates to economic recovery — or, for that matter, what he wants the final bill to contain. Sure, a president needs political wiggle room as legislative sausage is made, but Scott Brown could and did drive his truck through the wide, wobbly parameters set by Obama.

Ask yourself this: All these months later, do you yet know what the health care plan means for your family’s bottom line, your taxes, your insurance? It’s this nebulousness, magnified by endless Senate versus House squabbling, that has allowed reform to be caricatured by its foes as an impenetrable Rube Goldberg monstrosity, a parody of deficit-ridden big government. Since most voters are understandably confused about what the bills contain, the opponents have been able to attribute any evil they want to Obamacare, from death panels to the death of Medicare, without fear of contradiction.

// posted by montag @ 12:22 PM 0 Comments

President Barack Obama Saturday endorsed a bipartisan plan to name a special task force charged with coming up with a plan to curb the spiraling budget deficit, though the idea has lots of opposition from both his allies and rivals on Capitol Hill.

The bipartisan 18-member panel backed by Obama would study the issue for much of the year and, if 14 members agree, report a deficit reduction blueprint after the November elections that would be voted on before the new Congress convenes next year. The 14 would have to include at least half of the panel's Republicans – a big obstacle.

// posted by montag @ 12:49 AM 0 Comments

Be sure to crack open a cold one on Jan. 24, the day canned beer celebrates its 75th birthday.

// posted by montag @ 10:52 PM 0 Comments

The question for Democrats is whether there is anything that will wake them up to their obligation to extend a powerful hand to ordinary Americans and help them take the government, including the Supreme Court, back from the big banks, the giant corporations and the myriad other predatory interests that put the value of a dollar high above the value of human beings.

The Democrats still hold the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress. The idea that they are not spending every waking hour trying to fix the broken economic system and put suffering Americans back to work is beyond pathetic. Deficit reduction is now the mantra in Washington, which means that new large-scale investments in infrastructure and other measures to ease the employment crisis and jump-start the most promising industries of the 21st century are highly unlikely.

What we’ll get instead is rhetoric. It’s cheap, so we can expect a lot of it.

The Republican Party has abandoned any serious approach to the nation’s biggest problems, economic or otherwise. It may be resurgent, but it’s not a serious party. That leaves only the Democrats, a party that once championed working people and the poor, but has long since lost its way.

// posted by montag @ 1:29 PM 0 Comments

In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.

// posted by montag @ 1:23 PM 0 Comments

NBER defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.” NBER uses multiple indicators, rather than any single measurement of activity.

Let’s look at some data from the Reagan era as an example. According to NBER researchers, an economic peak occurred in July 1981 — signaling the start of a recession that lasted for 16 months until a November 1982 trough. That’s all there is to it.

Now let’s fast-forward to recent history. Three peaks have occurred since the 1982 trough, in:

* July 1990 (after 92 months of expansion) and the contraction lasted for 8 months;
* March 2001 (after 120 months of expansion) and it too lasted for 8 months;
* December 2007 (after 73 months of expansion). At this writing, we don’t know how long it will last.

What do these three recessions have in common? They all occurred under a Bush, the first under George H.W. and the second and third under George W.

What makes this data worthy of a BushToll nugget is President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s insistence as far back as 2002 that they inherited a recession from Bill Clinton. Not only is this false (Clinton’s eight-year term in office saw uninterrupted economic expansion), it’s become irrelevant in light of the current recession and economic collapse.

// posted by montag @ 12:08 PM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:41 PM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:33 PM 0 Comments

Now, part of Democrats’ problem since Tuesday’s special election has been that they have been waiting in vain for leadership from the White House, where Mr. Obama has conspicuously failed to rise to the occasion.

But members of Congress, who were sent to Washington to serve the public, don’t have the right to hide behind the president’s passivity.

Bear in mind that the horrors of health insurance — outrageous premiums, coverage denied to those who need it most and dropped when you actually get sick — will get only worse if reform fails, and insurance companies know that they’re off the hook. And voters will blame politicians who, when they had a chance to do something, made excuses instead.

Ladies and gentlemen, the nation is waiting. Stop whining, and do what needs to be done.

// posted by montag @ 1:02 PM 0 Comments

against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This term is really their euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C.

// posted by montag @ 12:32 PM 0 Comments

It allows corporations to spend all the money they want to buy and sell elected officials through the campaign process," he said. "It allows them to reward political sellouts, and it allows them to punish elected officials who actually try to do what's right for the people.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 11:52 AM 0 Comments

Several dozen university students occupied a brewery near Gothenburg in western Sweden on Tuesday in their long-standing effort to convince the brewery to build a pipeline to carry beer to the students’ union.

The demonstration was part of a tradition started in 1959 when the Chalmers University student union purchased one share in what was then known as Pripp & Lyckholm, part of the company which operated the brewery until it was purchased by Carlsberg in 2000.

The stock purchase gave the students a seat at the company's annual shareholders meeting, allowing them an opportunity to push the brewery to build a roughly 100 kilometre long pipeline to the university in order to facilitate the supply of beer to the Chalmers’ student union.

// posted by montag @ 10:17 PM 0 Comments

One of the sources said about 40 percent of AIG Financial Products staff in line for the payout due in March of 2010 are former employees.

// posted by montag @ 4:24 PM 0 Comments

Biblical citations inscribed on U.S.-manufactured weapon sights used by New Zealand's troops in Afghanistan will be removed because they are inappropriate and could stoke religious tensions, New Zealand said Thursday.

"The inscriptions ... put us in a difficult situation. We were unaware of it and we're unhappy that the manufacturer didn't give us any indication that these were on there," Dunne said. "We deem them to be inappropriate."

"Now we are in discussions with the company in the United States who will ensure the inscriptions are removed, and we wouldn't want them on future sights," he told reporters.

// posted by montag @ 1:09 PM 0 Comments