Last Call

President Obama decided to take his case to the American people tonight addressing the nation in prime time.  First however, a much-needed dose of perspective from BooMan:

I'd like every liberal who has carped about the president's approach to the debt ceiling negotiations to pause now and consider the fact that the Republicans have now revealed their bottom line. They made an offer. Their offer is nothing. We get nothing. Not one thing that we want. Nada. And that has always been their position. This was their position from the very beginning. Absolutely nothing, not bad polls, not the advice of bankers or the Chamber of Commerce or conservative economists, or the disapproval of their biggest donors, nor even ridiculous concessions, nor even offering everything they ostensibly want could change their bottom line. The president gets nothing and we get nothing.

Now, this thing is still not over, and the president is going to speak to the nation at 9pm tonight. I expect he will be extremely pissed off. I also expect the Republicans not to give a shit. They think he's bluffing. I think he's not bluffing. But my point for the purposes of this thread is the following. Since there was never any way to win any concessions, wasn't the game here to make sure people see you as having been reasonable? And the other side as the economic terrorists that they are? 

Hey, BooMan understands exactly what's going on.  President Obama again called for a deal and again looked like the adult in the room:

In his seventh prime time televised address, Obama sought to increase pressure for congressional leaders to reach a deal that would allow the government to continue borrowing money pay its debts after August 2.

The president singled out House Republicans for intransigence and said the political showdown is "no way to run the greatest country on Earth."

"The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn't vote for a dysfunctional government," Obama said. "So I'm asking you all to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know. If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message."

Compare that to John Boehner's response:

The sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today. That is just not going to happen.

You see, there is no stalemate in Congress. The House has passed a bill to raise the debt limit with bipartisan support. And this week, while the Senate is struggling to pass a bill filled with phony accounting and Washington gimmicks, we will pass another bill – one that was developed with the support of the bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Senate.

Obviously, I expect that bill can and will pass the Senate, and be sent to the President for his signature. If the President signs it, the ‘crisis’ atmosphere he has created will simply disappear. The debt limit will be raised. Spending will be cut by more than one trillion dollars, and a serious, bipartisan committee of the Congress will begin the hard but necessary work of dealing with the tough challenges our nation faces.

There's no crisis as long as President Obama gives us everything we demanded, see?  The economy doesn't have to get thrown into a depression if Obama just does exactly what the GOP wants.  Anything less, well, sorry America.  You're screwed.

Full transcripts here.

Beyond All Conception Of The Law

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has signed into law the lesser of the many abortion laws the GOP are trying to pass, this one bans all abortions after 20 weeks and does not make an exception for rape or incest.

Ohio joins 39 other states with limits on late-term abortions. The bill requires physicians who perform abortions to submit reports to the Ohio Department of Health within 15 days after the woman is discharged and allows for an abortion in cases of medical emergencies.

The bill does not permit abortions in cases of rape or incest and was supported by anti-abortion groups.

"Life is a gift from God and one way that we express our ongoing gratitude for it is by respecting it," Kasich said in a statement. "This bill does that in a very fundamental way, and I'm proud to have signed it into law."

Meanwhile, Kasich cares so much about kids he cut education funding, children's health programs, Head Start, and Medicaid for kids in Ohio.  Once you're out of the womb, you're on your own.  Meanwhile the much worse "heartbeat bill" which would ban virtually all abortions in Ohio is awaiting Gov. Kasich's signature.

But you voted the GOP in across state after state, America.

The Badger Awakens, Part 11

Scott Walker continues his crusade to destroy Democrats in Wisconsin by disenfranchising thousands.  Not only has the state passed a Voter ID law requiring driver's licenses or state issued IDs in order to vote, Walker has now directed the DMV to close 10 of its offices...all in urban, Democratic districts and extend hours in Republican ones.

Gov. Scott Walker's administration is working on finalizing a plan to close as many as 10 offices where people can obtain driver's licenses in order to expand hours elsewhere and come into compliance with new requirements that voters show photo IDs at the polls.

One Democratic lawmaker said Friday it appeared the decisions were based on politics, with the department targeting offices for closure in Democratic areas and expanding hours for those in Republican districts.

A high-ranking DOT official rejected that claim, saying the changes were based on economics, not politics.

Rep. Andy Jorgensen, D-Fort Atkinson, called on the state Department of Transportation to reconsider its plants to close the Fort Atkinson DMV center. The department plans to expand by four hours a week the hours of a center about 30 minutes away in Watertown.

Jorgensen said he was concerned doing that would discourage people from Fort Atkinson from participating in elections.

"What the heck is going on here?" Jorgensen said. "Is politics at play here?"

Transportation Department executive assistant Reggie Newson denied that politics was behind the office closure plan, saying the decisions were being made based on what made the most economic sense.

"This has nothing to do with politics," he said. "We're trying to make sure that we can provide service in each county statewide efficiently."

Right.  More IDs are needed, so in order to meet the demand the state closes DMV offices in primaritly Democratic districts and makes up for it by extending hours in Republican ones.  Even better, Wisconsin's law says these offices only have to be open 20 hours a week, meaning if you want a Voter ID in Wisconsin, you'll have to take time off from work to drive further away.

You don't get much more scumbag than that, folks.  This is how Republicans play ball:  take your right to vote away from you and use the power they get from the people to make it harder, more difficult, more time-consuming and more expensive to have the right to vote at all, just to keep the numbers down and in their favor.

It will never end until they control everything.

Denial Really Is A River In Egypt, Part 9

With Egypt still having major problems and tourist still avoiding the country, things are coming to another head in Cairo as the Arab Spring becomes the Bloody Summer.

Egyptian tourism officials say the country had lost more than $2.6 billion by the end of June because of the upheaval surrounding former President Hosni Mubarak's resignation and ongoing protests against the interim military government.

The Tourism Ministry says a lack of security and reports of violence topped the reasons that tourists canceled trips to Egypt this year or chose other countries in which to spend their holidays.

Hotel and tour operators say it isn't just Americans and Europeans who are forgoing trips to Egypt. The capital, Cairo, known as "sin city" to Persian Gulf Arabs, isn't swarming with oil-rich visitors for the first time since 1997, when an attack by Islamist militants on a busload of tourists who were visiting the ancient southern city of Luxor left 58 foreigners dead and caused a sharp decline in tourism.

"This summer season, which is considered a high season for Arab tourism, is totally destroyed," said Ghada Abdel Khalek, the marketing director at the Marriott Cairo Hotel, a favorite among well-heeled tourists.

Tourists "have other options, countries that are politically stable and they view as safer than Egypt," he said. "Our branches in Turkey, London and Paris are fully booked."

I don't see anything improving in Egypt anytime soon, either.  We'll see.

Food For Thought

Wired recently ran an article about seven creepy experiments that would answer so much... if only science ethics would allow the risks and procedures.  The article carefully explains why each experiment is ethically improper, but would answer some history-changing questions.

I thought the most interesting was mapping a developing embryo with a visible alteration and watching the cells develop and separate.  It would make leaps of progress into understanding how a single cell becomes a fully developed human being.  The article doesn't mention that it would take a second run to provide complete results, but they explain the (totally obvious!) flaws with performing such an experiment.

Some are silly, some are worthy of a Robin Cook novel, but this was interesting and creative.

A Cool Twist To A Sad Business

It's rare that something as sad as a widow visiting her husband's grave can be cool, but stick with me:

"I go and talk with him," said Faye Garneau, who admits she isn't so sure she likes that her own name is already inscribed there, too.

That wasn't all: Several months later, the monument maker added a high-tech innovation — a small, square image known as a quick response or QR code, affixed alongside the big letters spelling out Garneau.

The monument maker — a friend — was working on the code before Garneau died of cancer at age 78.

When you scan the code, you are taken to a website that tells about Edouard Garneau.  There is some statistical information as well as accomplishments and hobbies.  For a mere $65 this code can be added to existing gravestones.  But that's not all.  The codes are being used for advertising, links to downloads or on a tourist trail it can pull up information relevant to the location.


This is the stuff I just love to see.  We have a way finally to record ourselves, define our time and who we are, in a way that is so scattered and backed up that it would be difficult to lose that information.  This is a wonder of the modern world, on par with the Royal Library of Alexandria, with our past archived and our future recorded live.  It's also great to see technology in the hands of everyday people, in such a simple and profound way.  

Unlocking The Future

CNN/SI is reporting that the NFL players and owners have reached a deal to end the lockout.

The NFL Players Association and the league have reached an agreement on a new labor deal, NFL.com reported Monday.

The deal is not set in stone: the 32 player representatives and all NFL players must approve the new deal. But NFL.com reports "at this point it appears a formality."

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King (@SI_PeterKing) reported the representatives will have a conference call at 11 a.m. ET.

Negotiators reached the agreement in the very early hours of Monday morning, the report said. If accepted, the deal would end the lockout that started in March.

And before anyone starts taking sides here, let's keep in mind this labor dispute is basically over divvying up $9 billion in yearly revenue the league takes in between the millionaire players and the billionaire owners.  Either way, I'm not impressed in the least by this deal given the state of our economy right now.

It's almost as depressing as Congress.

No Dealing On The Debt Ceiling, Part 45

Still no deal at this point.  Heck, right now the parties are going in two separate directions.  Taegan Goddard:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "were preparing separate backup plans to raise the nation's debt ceiling on Sunday, after the leaders were unable to end an increasingly grim standoff over the federal budget," the New York Times reports.

"The contours of Mr. Boehner's backup plan were far from clear, but it seemed likely to take the form of a two-step process, with a short-term increase in the debt limit along with about $1 trillion in cuts, an amount the Republicans said was sufficient to clear the way for a debt limit increase through year's end."

Reid is calling this plan a non-starter and is offering instead a larger plan.

"In an effort to reach a bipartisan compromise, we are putting together a $2.7 trillion deficit reduction package that meets Republicans' two major criteria: it will include enough spending cuts to meet or exceed the amount of a debt ceiling raise through the end of 2012, and it will not include revenues. We hope Speaker Boehner will abandon his 'my way or the highway' approach, and join us in forging a bipartisan compromise along these lines."

Remains to be seen what the details are on that little plan.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, the right's projection machine is in full swing as over at Newt's place, President Obama's Friday press conference was apparently proof that he's "arrogant", "mad", "angry", "crazy", "off the rails", "delusional", the "architect of the New Depression", having a "nervous breakdown", and "needs to be controlled and neutralized".

Glad to see Obama Derangement Syndrome is the constant that never changes.

Hacked Off In The UK, Part 7

News that the level of police corruption and cover-up in the phone hacking scandal may be much larger than previously thought is London's big story today.

Police faced new allegations Sunday that officers leaked details about terror attack victims and a murdered schoolgirl to journalists at Rupert Murdoch's felled News of the World tabloid.

The claims deepen the scandal surrounding phone-hacking at the paper, which has shaken Murdoch's global media empire, claimed the jobs of two of Britain's top police officers and dragged in Prime Minister David Cameron.

The Observer newspaper said survivors of the July 7, 2005 London bombings had asked lawyers to probe their belief that the capital's Metropolitan Police had sold or passed on a confidential contact list of victims.

Beverli Rhodes, chair of the Survivors Foundation Coalition, said journalists from the paper approached survivors with false stories about how they got their details.

"Scotland Yard had the full list of survivor contact details. I am pretty sure that is how the News of the World got my home address," she told the Observer.

Four suicide bombers blew themselves up on three underground trains and a bus in the worst terror attacks on British soil, killing 52 people.

More and more allegations keep surfacing that Rupert Murdoch's boys had police all over Britain on the payroll to not only feed his news organization critical and confidential data, but to cover up the nonsense too...and this went on for years, folks.

This story's getting huge and there will have to be a reckoning and soon for the Murdochs.

StupidiNews!

• A Texas man shot and killed his estranged wife and four of her relatives before turning the gun on himself at his son's birthday party gathering at a roller rink.
• Some 70% of Japanese citizens approve of Prime Minister Naoto Kan's plan to end nuclear power plants in the country, but 66% of citizens want Kan to resign.
• Business lobbyists are threatening dire political consequences for President Obama's re-election should the EPA go ahead with tighter smog restrictions.
• After Indian government officials recommended relaxing restrictions, retail giant Wal-Mart may open dozens of new stores in the country.
• The Linux kernel turns 20 this year and version 3.0 of the software will be released in celebration.

Last Call

Sen. Rand Paul has apparently been satisfied with the concerns he had over extending the term of FBI Director Robert Mueller another two years and has withdrawn his block on the vote.

Following a private, one-on-one meeting with FBI director Robert Mueller, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Thursday he will no longer block an extension of the agency director's term.


Paul had vowed to stall the agency head's two-year extension of his term until Mueller answered questions on how two Iraqi nationals — one with a history of terrorism — gained refugee status and lived for several years in Bowling Green, Ky. The move might have meant Mueller would have had to step down temporarily in anticipation of his term ending just before Labor Day.

Paul described his private session with Mueller as "very constructive" and came away assuaged that the FBI has worked to put improve the vetting process of thousands of Iraqi nationals who've come to the United States under refugee status.

"I came away that the FBI is going to be looking at those being admitted, and the ones coming in will be screened more thoroughly than before," Paul said in an interview with the Herald-Leader.

So that's one less thing Republicans are blocking pointlessly.  Just another hundred thousand more to wade through.

Marry-ment In The Big Apple

One piece of good news today:  same-sex marriage in New York became officially legal as of midnight, and couples were ready to tie the knot across the state.

Clerks in New York City and about a dozen other cities statewide opened their doors Sunday to cater to same-sex couples. In New York City, judges waived a mandatory 24-hour waiting period that allowed couples to exchange vows moments after receiving their licenses.

Initially, New York City officials had projected that about 2,500 couples might show up at the city clerk's offices hoping to get married on Sunday, but by the time a 48-hour lottery had drawn to a close on Thursday, 823 couples had signed up — 59 more than the city had planned to accommodate. The city will perform ceremonies for all 823.

The first couples got married at the stroke of midnight Sunday in every corner of the state, from Niagara Falls to the capital in Albany to Long Island.

Gay-rights activists Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd were legally married the very first moment they could be during a midnight ceremony at Niagara Falls.

With a rainbow-lit Niagara Falls as a backdrop, Lambert, 54, and Rudd, 53, were among the first gay couples to tie the knot with the blessing of the state. Lambert and Rudd, who have 12 grandchildren between them, have been together for more than a decade and had long been fighting for the right to marry.

The couple, both from Buffalo, smiled broadly as they exchanged traditional marriage vows, promising to love and cherish each other in sickness and in health. A crowd of several hundred people cheered as they were pronounced married and shared their first kiss.

"What an incredible night this was," said Lambert, who wore an electric blue satin gown with a sequined train for the midnight ceremony and carried a bouquet of blue hydrangeas. "This was an amazing night. Everything was absolutely perfect."

Reports are sketchy, but I'm fairly sure that heterosexual marriages in the state have not immediately gone up in flames and New York has not in fact crashed into the yawning abyss.  (That happens Monday when Wall Street opens.  Thanks, GOP!)

Teleporting To Conclusions On The Norway Attacks, Part 2

After railing Friday that the Norway attacks had to have been Muslim extremists, Jennifer Rubin now says she was both wrong and that Muslim extremists are still responsible, which is the equivalent of apologizing by saying "I'm sorry you're dumb enough to believe Muslims are anything other than terrorists."

Early suspicion that the attacks might have been linked to a jihadist bombing plot in Oslo last year or the recent Norwegian prosecution of an Iraqi terrorist did not bear up. Right Turn specifically quoted Thomas Joscelyn of the Weekly Standard for the proposition that we “ [didn]’t know [emphasis added]” at the time if al-Qaeda was responsible, although there was plenty of concern in Norway about jihadist terror plots that have increased in Scandinavia. As Joscelyn did, at the time I believed the best working theory, given Norway’s recent experiences, was that it was jihadist-related. It nevertheless is a good reminder to all of us including myself that early reports are often wrong. (Indeed, late today there were new questions as to whether the suspect acted alone.)

Rubin blames the Weekly Standard for her own stupidity and argues that any thinking person would have come to the conclusion that it had to have been Islamist terrorists.  You know, except for all the truly thinking people who said "There have been enough terrorist attacks in the world that have not been committed by Islamic extremists to say that we should perhaps wait for details, especially those of us writing columns for major national newspapers."

But no, Rubin has an agenda to push and she immediately goes right back to it:

As to the horror in Norway, once again we are reminded how vulnerable free and open societies are. We are reminded that the best security system is not airtight. And, we are reminded that the first obligation of government is to protect its citizenry.

That the suspect here is a blond Norwegian does not support the proposition that we can rest easy with regard to the panoply of threats we face or that homeland security, intelligence and traditional military can be pruned back. To the contrary, the world remains very dangerous because very bad people will do horrendous things. There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West.

Translation:  terrorist attacks by Muslims are the only ones that count.  Terrorist attacks by non-Muslims are simply aberrations committed by lone wolf actors that only reinforce my point that Muslims are an existential threat to America.  The lessons of a right-wing Christian who has now confessed to killing nearly 100 people in Norway are that you should be afraid America and that Muslim are our enemies.

Brilliant.  Rubin cannot be fired fast enough from the Washington Post at this point.

Here Come The Brides

Sealing their wedding vows with a kiss shortly after 9 a.m., Chelsea residents Phyllis Siegal, 76, and Connie Kopelov, 84, seen above, became the first same-sex couple to be legally married by the city clerk in his Lower Manhattan office.

Siegal and Kopelov have been a couple for 23 years, but today is the first day that New York State has allowed the two women to get married.

It's about time, and once the holiness of marriage doesn't burn before our eyes, surely there is more to come.  The next thing you know, DOMA and DADT will just be "can you believe it was ever this way" tales we tell our children.  Or so I hope. 

Take Your Medicine, Son

PHOENIX (AP) — Lawyers for the suspect in the Tucson shooting rampage say prison officials have resumed forcibly medicating their client with a psychotropic drug.

Jared Lee Loughner's attorneys in filings Thursday questioned whether the forced medication violates an earlier order by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that forbid them from involuntarily medicating Loughner as the court mulls an appeal on his behalf.

The filings say officials at the federal prison facility in Missouri resumed the forced medication on an emergency basis because Loughner had become an immediate threat to himself.

This is a slippery slope, and should not be taken lightly.  The right to refuse medication is an important right that we all hold precious.  It gives us control over our bodies, as well as protection to choose our treatment.  At what point do we declare someone so far gone that we should make that choice for them?  In Loughner's case it does make sense.  What is scary is the idea that it could be forced on others in lieu of real treatment.  I agree he should be treated even if it is against his will due to the scope and nature of his issues, but I am glad to see that it didn't come easy.  That's how it should be.