Last Call

The first casualty of any Arab Spring war is truth.  The second casualty is apparently reliable internet service, as Syria's civil war moves into its final phases with the capital of Damascus now under rebel attack.

A blog post on Renesys, a U.S. company which tracks Internet traffic worldwide, said that at 12:26 p.m. in Damascus, Syria's international Internet connectivity shut down completely.

Syria's minister of information said "terrorists" were responsible, a pro-government TV station said.

The past two weeks have seen rebels overrunning army bases across Syria, exposing Assad's loss of control in northern and eastern regions despite the devastating air power that he has used to bombard opposition strongholds.

Rebels and activists said the fighting along the road to Damascus airport, southeast of the capital, was heavier in that area than at any other time in the conflict.

"No one can come in or out of the airport," said Abu Omar.

Airport and internet down?  Yeah, the al-Assad regime is not long for this earth, I believe.   Whichever side knocked out the net in Syria, it was a smart move tactically and strategically...which goes to show you just how important the internet is as part of a nation's infrastructure.

Something we should consider investing in more ourselves.

Blowing It Up At The Austerity Bomb Range

Oh, this isn’t going to go over well with the usual suspects, but it’s going to be everywhere anyhow today.

Listen to top Democrats and Republicans talk on camera, and it sounds like they could not be further apart on a year-end tax-and-spending deal – a down payment on a $4 trillion grand bargain. 

But behind the scenes, top officials who have been involved in the talks for many months say the contours of a deal – including the size of tax hikes and spending cuts it will likely contain — are starting to take shape.

Cut through the fog, and here’s what to expect: Taxes will go up just shy of $1.2 trillion — the middle ground of what President Barack Obama wants and what Republicans say they could stomach. Entitlement programs, mainly Medicare, will be cut by no less than $400 billion – and perhaps a lot more, to get Republicans to swallow those tax hikes. There will be at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and “war savings.” And any final deal will come not by a group effort but in a private deal between two men: Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The two men had what one insider described as a short, curt conversation Wednesday night — but the private lines of communications remain very much open.

The tax hikes on the rich are immediate.  The Medicare stuff is 10-20 years away, as far as Politico can tell.  That right there should tell you who’s winning this fight (and that’s if you believe this particular crew of Village Idiots, which is dubious at best) but I’m sure there’s going to be a holiday rush on scourges and flensing knives for the folks on the left anyhow.

So before you reach for that HE SOLD US OUT special, remember it’s Politico, in the Billiards Room, trying to Win The Morning™, and try to keep the blood off the floor.

Hoosier Daddies, Indiana?

Add Indiana to the list of states where Republicans now have a supermajority in the state legislature and a Republican governor, in this case Mike Pence.  They can pass whatever they want, and Democrats are 100% irrelevant in the state, but for now State House Speaker Brian Bosma is invoking the legacy of his father Charles in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, which ought to last until January 7th when Indiana goes full Tea Party whacko.

House Speaker Brian Bosma used the ceremonial opening of Indiana’s legislative session Tuesday to call for bipartisanship, even though Republicans now enjoy a supermajority that largely allows them to circumvent Democrats to push through their agenda.

The GOP speaker cited his father, Charles Bosma, working across the aisle with Democratic U.S. Rep. Andre Carson’s grandmother, Julia Carson, and delivering services for the disabled when they served together in the state Senate in the late 1970s and 1980s. Those two were known as the “odd couple,” and Bosma said he’d like to see that concept revived in the current session.


He then ticked off a list of priorities, including funding early childhood education, approving performance-based pay for teachers and schools, and training more science and math teachers.


“Where is the odd couple in this room that will set political differences aside, and concentrate on giving Hoosier families that want early childhood education but can’t afford it, the opportunity that most of us in this room enjoy?” he asked the group.


Lawmakers took care of some official business during the informal opening known as “organization day,” although the major work won’t begin until they return on Jan. 7. The Legislature must draw up a new biennial budget, ponder options with the federal health care law, adjust to a new governor for the first time in eight years and balance all other issues ranging from education to gay marriage.

The notion that Indiana Republicans aren't completely bonkers is ignoring the state's history and that of lunatic Mike Pence, particularly his War on Women.  Pence is responsible for starting the national GOP push to destroy Planned Parenthood. With Pence now Governor and the GOP in total control, you can kiss women's rights goodbye in the state.  He's already declined health insurance exchanges as well as Medicaid expansion, assuring Indiana's working poor will get zero help from the party of You're On Your Own, and both Bosma and Pence are cooking up dramatic tax cuts for the rich, planning to slash corporate, inheritance, and property tax rates in the state, as well as wanting to cut income taxes leaving the state even more dependent on a regressive 7% sales tax, one of highest state rates in the country.

Bosma may talk a cute game about bipartisan cooperation, but I assure you Gov. Pence will make sure nothing of the sort will happen.

StupidiNews

• The final recount in the last outstanding House race has gone to NC Democratic Rep. Mike McIntyre as he survives redistricting, meaning Democrats gained 8 House seats in 2012.
• President Obama says America needs a fiscal cliff slope deal before Christmas as White House officials will visit Capitol Hill for more talks.
• South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley is now taking responsibility for the cyber security failures that led to a massive state computer data breach.
• The latest Bloomberg poll of economists finds the global financial picture in the best overall shape in 18 months.
• Internet radio company Pandora is finding that Congress is more interested in raising radio royalties for artists, not lowering them as Pandora is pushing for.

Last Call

Republicans have now fully declared war on Susan Rice's nomination as Secretary of State.  But it's not about Rice, Benghazi, or even President Obama...it's about John Kerry.

In just two quick meetings on Capitol Hill, Susan Rice may have blown up any goodwill she had with the very senators she’ll need for confirmation if she’s ever tapped as the next secretary of state.

Over the past two days, four key Republican senators have emerged from private meetings to blast the United Nations ambassador’s explanation about what happened during and after the deadly attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

It’s not clear what Rice said behind closed doors to anger all these senators, but it’s obvious the meetings went badly and this was hardly a nominee-in-waiting charm offensive.

Even Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, just the type of moderate Republican who might help break a filibuster on a nomination, said there were still too many questions about why Rice incorrectly characterized the Sept. 11 assault in five Sunday talk show interviews as the result of spontaneous protests at the same time the Libyan president was calling it a terrorist attack.

“I don’t understand why she would not at least qualify her response to that question,” Collins told reporters after emerging from a 75-minute, closed-door meeting with Rice.

At this point, a number of GOP Senators are all but promising to block Rice's nomination permanently.  But Senator Collins gave away the game today:

Collins and other Republicans have made the case that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, would be more qualified than Rice to be secretary of state.

But Obama may be reluctant to tap the Massachusetts Democrat since it would create a vacancy in the Senate — and an opportunity for defeated GOP Sen. Scott Brown to return to the chamber. Kerry has also been floated as a potential nominee for defense secretary.

 “I think John Kerry would be an excellent appointment and would be easily confirmed by his colleagues,” Collins said. 

The game is clear.  The 2014 Senate elections are now underway.   Republicans feel they'll have a better chance in 2014 of taking the Senate if they can get Scott Brown back into the Senate through a low turnout special election, plus with Kerry out of the Senate picture, that's one less vote for Democratic legislation in the upper chamber.

Kerry's seat was the most likely target of the assault on Rice's character and obvious qualifications, but Collins made it official this afternoon.

We'll see how the President reacts.  I'm betting he calls the GOP's bluff, and he should.

Mitt's Naked Lunch

After President Obama took Mitt Romney's lunch money, President Obama and unemployed guy Mitt Romney are going to have lunch.

President Barack Obama and his former rival Mitt Romney will meet Thursday for their first get-together since the November 6 election, according to a statement from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

"On Thursday, Governor Romney will have a private lunch at the White House with President Obama in the Private Dining Room," Carney wrote. "It will be the first opportunity they have had to visit since the election. There will be no press coverage of the meeting."

White House chefs have a recipe for crow and humble pie?  Mitt could use a seven-course meal of that.  However, it is rather gracious of the President to do so.  I can't remember the last time another losing candidate got lunch at the White House.

Then again, Mitt does have an awful lot of time on his hands these days.  Bon Appetit!

The Natural Habitat Of The Nevada Honey Badger

Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid looks to be getting his full "don't care" on in the next Senate session as he tees up the filibuster to get fili-busted.  Greg Sargent gets the plan of attack:

So here’s what is likely to happen, according to a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide. Dems will likely pass reforms that include ending the filibuster on the motion to proceed and on on motions to move to conference; and forcing “talking filibusters,” which would require a much more public role for filibustering.

Dems may not change the rules on the first day of the session. Rather, the aide says, they are likely to do a rules change, almost certainly in January, via what’s known as overruling the chair. Democrats ask the chair for a ruling on whether it is within the rules to, say, filibuster the motion to proceed. When the chair says Yes, Dems overrule it by a simple majority vote. And so on with the other provisions.

It will be very hard to determine whether these reforms will be effective without seeing their final language. But in the end, the minority will still be able to filibuster on the move to end debate — which is to say the Senate will remain a supermajority institution. Will the reforms discourage filibustering? That we’ll have to find out.

It’s still possible that the simple majority rules change may not come to pass — if Republicans agree to a compromise package of filibuster reforms. But aides say that as of now, no negotiating is taking place.

Either way, what happened today is that Reid, in effect, put his finger on the nuke button. It’s hard to see how he pulls back now.

Republicans are almost certainly going to try to cut a deal now.  We'll see what happens, but it's clear at this point Reid has the 51 votes to go ahead in January if the GOP won't play ball.  My money's on Reid having to go that route, because any deal the GOP makes will almost certainly involve something stupid.

But Honey Badger don't give a you know what.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama will meet with business leaders today in an effort to sell his plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
• Former Kansas senator and GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole has been hospitalized, but is expected to recover.
• Republican senators still say they have issues with UN Ambassador Susan Rice's nomination for Secretary of State after meeting privately with her this week.
• New Zealand is eagerly awaiting their own dragon's hoard of treasure from the premiere of the first film in The Hobbit move trilogy.
• The guy responsible for Apple's now infamously flawed Maps app will need directions to a new job, as the company gave Richard Williamson his pink slip this week.

Last Call

Been saying for years now that GOP voter ID laws are all about suppressing the vote among Democrats, particularly poor and minority voters, the elderly, and college students.  Former Florida Republicans Jim Greer and Charlie Crist confirmed this to reporters this week in what would be a bombshell story to anyone who has had their head encased in cement for the last two years.  You know, your average FOX News viewer.

Jim Greer, the former head of the Florida Republican Party, told The Palm Beach Post that a new law shortening the early voting period in the state was intended to prevent Democrats from voting. Greer said that since at least 2009, GOP staff and consultants had discussed limiting early voting hours, which they believed helped Democratic candidates. He described current talk of eliminating voter fraud as a “marketing ploy.”

Former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida confirmed that GOP officials had sought to limit early voting in an effort to suppress Democrat turnout. He told the Post that the effort seemed to be aimed at ethnic minorities, a key demographic for Democrats.

“The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the party but the real prevailing thought is that they don’t think minorities will ever vote Republican,” Greer said. “It’s not really a broad-based racist issue. It’s simply that the Republican Party gave up a long time ago ever believing that anything they did would get minorities to vote for them.”

The racism is a feature, not a bug, people.  If you think anyone in the Republican party truly gives a damn about anyone who isn't white, you deserve your fate with these idiots.  Hell, if you're white and make less than six figures, the same applies.

“I am appalled but sadly not surprised by these officials’ admissions that their goal was purely to suppress the African American vote,” Elder Lee Harris, the pastor of Mt. Olive Primitive Baptist Church in Jacksonville, said in a statement. “Even while cloaked in the dubious language of ‘voter fraud,’ the real reason for these measures was always clear. African Americans in Florida knew that, and we fought back – by voting.”

Damn right we will.

Once again, if your stated goal is to reduce the number of people who are allowed to vote in a representative democracy, you are perverting the most basic freedom in our country.  If it's the only way you feel you can win, through systematic disenfranchisement of tens of millions of citizens, then your party deserves to be cast into the black hole of history.

A Canadian Ford Recall

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who can generously be called "controversial" given the country's own growing Tea Party style backlash against social programs and health care (yet another instance where I feel the need to apologize to our northern neighbors) has run into a bit of a problem:  Canada actually gives a damn about things like conflict of interest, and it's cost Ford his job.

A court ordered the mayor of Toronto, Canada’s largest city, to be removed from office for violating conflict of interest rules when soliciting donations for his football charity.

Mayor Rob Ford got into legal trouble when he spoke out at a city council vote in February against a $3,150 fine he was ordered to pay over the ethics breach.

A Toronto resident took him to court for violating the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, which at trial Ford said he had not read.

Ford said he will appeal the ruling, and if he fails to have the decision overturned will run again for mayor in a by-election.

“I will fight tooth and nail to hold onto my job,” he told reporters, blaming “leftwing politics” for the court action that led to the ruling.

Compare Ford to say, Mike Bloomberg in New York City.  If Bloomberg was held to the same legal standard as Ford, he'd have been out on his ass within a year instead of on his third term as Mayor (itself in violation of the city's laws until he changed them.)  Ford vows to be back however, and he's counting on winning his appeal and running again for Mayor on the "Evil liberals stole my job" ticket.

How Ford ended up mayor of Toronto in the first place?  Well, I've got no room to complain considering Michele Bachmann still has a job in Congress that doesn't involve emptying trash cans.

Benghazi Been-Gotcha

FOX News should really just stop talking to actual journalists and experts, because whenever they try to force their propaganda past sane people, stuff like this invariably happens.

Thomas E. Ricks, the veteran defense reporter and author, said he expected his Monday morning appearance on Fox News to last about three minutes. It ended, in fact, after 90 seconds — his last sentence was a description of the network as “a wing of the Republican Party.”

After the interview, a Fox News staffer told Mr. Ricks that he had been rude.

The strange and unusually short interview segment quickly gained the attention of media critics, because criticism of Fox News is rarely aired on Fox News. Mr. Ricks said in an e-mail message afterward that he did not think he was being rude. “I thought I was being honest,” he said. “They asked my opinion, and I gave it.”

The topic was the attack on the United States’s diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Before being thanked and sent on his way, Mr. Ricks said he thought the controversy around the attack was “hyped, by this network especially.”

So, Tom Ricks won't be back on FOX ever again.  Which is sad, because tens of millions of FOX viewers desperately need to see the view outside the network's anti-Obama propaganda bubble.  That won't happen anytime soon either.

StupidiNews!

• NATO military officials are working with Turkey to possibly deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries along that country's border with Syria.
• The US Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling blocking an Illinois law that would have made recording police officers a crime.
• Lawmakers stand ready to back any "fiscal cliff slope" deal but budget cuts are making all sides nervous.
• A deal with Greece and its creditor nations has finally been reached as the EU turns to deal with growing problems in Cyprus and Spain.
• Nintendo of America says the new Wii U console has sold 400,000 units, well behind the first week sales of the original Wii, but ahead of PS3 and Xbox 360.

Last Call

What a surprise!  Adam Davidson's article on the so-called "skills gap", that employers are unable to find enough people to fill highly skilled manufacturing positions, has found a very definite reason behind it:  near minimum-wage pay rates.

Eric Isbister, the C.E.O. of GenMet, a metal-fabricating manufacturer outside Milwaukee, told me that he would hire as many skilled workers as show up at his door. Last year, he received 1,051 applications and found only 25 people who were qualified. He hired all of them, but soon had to fire 15. Part of Isbister’s pickiness, he says, comes from an avoidance of workers with experience in a “union-type job.” Isbister, after all, doesn’t abide by strict work rules and $30-an-hour salaries. At GenMet, the starting pay is $10 an hour. Those with an associate degree can make $15, which can rise to $18 an hour after several years of good performance. From what I understand, a new shift manager at a nearby McDonald’s can earn around $14 an hour. 

The secret behind this skills gap is that it’s not a skills gap at all. I spoke to several other factory managers who also confessed that they had a hard time recruiting in-demand workers for $10-an-hour jobs. “It’s hard not to break out laughing,” says Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, referring to manufacturers complaining about the shortage of skilled workers. “If there’s a skill shortage, there has to be rises in wages,” he says. “It’s basic economics.” After all, according to supply and demand, a shortage of workers with valuable skills should push wages up. Yet according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of skilled jobs has fallen and so have their wages. 

To recap, manufacturing jobs in 2012 consist of people with engineering and computer programming skills with 2-year college degrees who end up making about thirty, thirty-five grand a year.  McDonald's pays more and you don't need a degree.  Think about that.

Now tell yourself the problem is unions and that manufacturing jobs pay too much, and if only those awful unions were gone, America could be more "competitive" by paying workers even less.  And indeed, as a result, wages for manufacturing jobs are going down, not up.

College or trade school educated workers are making $15 an hour, and that's too much money in 2012.  But let's cut taxes on the rich.  That'll solve the problem, right?

One Barak Who Won't Be Back

Former Israeli PM and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak is calling it quits, saying he won't seek another ministerial position after January's elections.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced his resignation Monday, saying he will quit politics in January to spend more time with his family.

His resignation comes at a highly delicate time for Israel, which is observing a fragile cease-fire with the militant Palestinian group Hamas after an eight-day conflict that killed more than 160 people -- the overwhelming majority of them Palestinians in Gaza.

The Palestinians are not exactly sad to see the guy go, either.  And speculation that Barak would try to revive the center-left Kadima coalition, well that's right out too.

Some Israeli political commentators had speculated ahead of the announcement that Barak was planning to quit the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new center-left party.

But Barak told reporters that new faces in leadership roles would benefit Israel.

"I feel it is important that other people should take leading positions in Israel. Changes in the position of power are a good thing. There are many ways to contribute to the society and the country, and not necessarily through politics," he said.

Barak served as defense minister under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert between 2007 and 2009, and retained the post under Netanyahu from 2009 until the present. He also held the title of deputy prime minister for both administrations.

I'm thinking anyone who ends up in the post after Barak at this point is most likely not going to be less militant or less "blow up Palestinians every couple of years to make a point".  We'll see where this goes.  Barak will stay on through January, but he's out after that.  Considering we're back into "Iran is only months away from a nuke" mode, whoever does replace him will have a pretty full plate, especially if Netanyahu retains his office as I expect he will.

The Exchange Of Makers And Takers

When the conversation next turns to "makers versus takers" again, keep track of the states who have simply refused to implement health insurance exchanges, keeping their own citizens uninsured longer and forcing the federal government to set up the exchanges for them at federal taxpayer expense.

Since different states have different insurance markets and different eligibility requirements for Medicaid, Obama’s Health and Human Services Department can’t simply take a system off the shelf as a one-size-fits all failsafe.

"You can't simply deploy one federal exchange across the board," said Jennifer Tolbert, director of state health reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"Each state is different — their eligibility systems are different, their insurance markets are different. [HHS is] going to have to build these exchanges to fit into the context of each state."

Every state must have an exchange by Jan. 1, 2014, meaning HHS doesn’t have a lot of time to do a massive amount of work. The department could quickly run through a $1 billion fund designated for implementing the exchanges.

Experts have predicted that the department will soon have to tap budgets from its other programs to cover exchange costs. Other have said it might charge fees on the insurance purchased in its exchanges once they are launched. 

So yes, Republican governors (and even a couple Democrats, looking at you, Missouri's Jay Nixon) are trying to do everything they can to break the system.  The same people saying "Give us control of Medicaid because states can do things more efficiently" are trying to make state insurance exchanges as inefficient as possible in order to harm as many people as possible, believing they will then rise up and demand an end to Obamacare.

Sure worked for Mitt Romney, huh guys.  And let's not forget there are actual lives at stake here, too.  It doesn't seem to bother these governors much, either...and with blue states where federal taxpayers foot the bill like California, New York, and Illinois, it's interesting to note that it's the poorer red states who are expecting federal handouts here to build their exchanges for them.

Which side has a problem with "takers" now?