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"What Midterms? Obama Treats State Of The Union As A Victory Lap," CSM

January 21, 2015, 6:47 am
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President Barack Obama waves before giving his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015 (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Alan: Obama treated last night's State of the Union Address as a victory lap because his administration has been phenomenally successful, and furthermore successful in the face of unprecedented (and unprecedentedly lunatic) political opposition. 

Consider these fact-checkable assertions: 

"At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious; that we would crush jobs and explode deficits. Instead, we’ve seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health care inflation at its lowest rate in fifty years...Wages are finally starting to rise again. We know that more small business owners plan to raise their employees’ pay than at any time since 2007... Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined." 

Obama did not even cite his foundational accomplishment of pulling the U.S. economy (and by extension, the world's economy,) out of the hell-bent nose dive manifest on Bush-Cheney's "watch." 

Make no mistake, Obama's approval rating has returned to 50% and enjoys a steeply upward trajectory. 

The economic ruin that American conservatives predicted -- furthermore, fostered -- and on which their political fortunes depend, is a malicious fiction.

They will pay a heavy political price in 2016

"What Midterms? Obama Treats State Of The Union As A Victory Lap"
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2015/0121/What-midterms-Obama-treats-State-of-the-Union-as-a-victory-lap

Fact Checking Obama's 2015 State Of The Union Address. WAPO's Glenn Kessler
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/fact-checking-obamas-2015-state-of_21.html

Canadian Letter To The Editor: "You Americans Have No Idea How Good Obama Is"

238 Presidential Historians Rank Obama Near The Top: Dubyah Near The Bottom

Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe, A Lockstep Relationship

"The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"


"The Party of Personal Responsibility" Is "The Party Of Personal Irresponsibility"

"Red State Moocher Links"




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Fact Checking Obama's 2015 State Of The Union Address. WAPO's Glenn Kessler

January 21, 2015, 7:08 am
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By Glenn Kessler Washington Post January 21, 2015
A State of the Union address is often difficult to fact-check, no matter who is president. The speech is a product of many hands and is carefully vetted, so major errors of fact are relatively rare. But State of the Union addresses often are very political speeches, an argument for the president’s policies, so context is sometimes missing.
Here is a guide through some of President Obama’s most interesting claims, in the order in which he made them. There are some statements we are still checking and so will publish additional information in the coming days. As is our practice with live events, we do not award Pinocchio rankings, which are reserved for complete columns.

“Over the past five years, our businesses have created more than 11 million new jobs.”          
The low point in jobs was reached in February 2010, and there has indeed been a gain of more than 11 million private-sector jobs since then, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Note that the president carefully referred to “businesses,” as in the same period the number of federal, state and local government jobs has actually declined by more than 500,000. So adding in government jobs slightly reduces the total number of new nonfarm jobs to 10.7 million jobs.
While Obama has touted what he often calls the “longest stretch of uninterrupted private sector job growth” in U.S. history, the average number of jobs created in this period is significantly lower than in under either Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. (When you exclude a single month of decline, in fact, Clinton and Reagan had streaks of 85 and 71 months, respectively.)
Still, the president finally has some bragging rights about the state of the economy.  With the rate of job creation averaging almost 250,000 jobs a month in 2014, this is the first State of the Union address given by Obama in which the number of jobs in the United States is actually higher than when the recession began in December 2007. Even with the massive jobs losses at the start of his presidency, Obama can claim that nearly 6.4 million jobs were added since he took office. At this point in George W. Bush’s presidency, the comparable number was 4.5 million –and for Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, the figure was 18 million and 9.4 million, respectively.

“Thanks to lower gas prices and higher fuel standards, the typical family this year should save $750 at the pump.”
This looks like a big number, but it comes out of the Short-Term Energy Outlook published this month by the Energy Information Administration: “The average household is now expected to spend about $750 less for gasoline in 2015 compared with last year because of lower prices.”
Although that report did not specifically cite Obama’s fuel-efficiency standards, a December EIA report (predicting an annual savings of $550) said “lower fuel expenditures are attributable to a combination of falling retail gasoline prices and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks that reduce the number of gallons used to travel a given distance.”

“Today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. And more Americans finish college than ever before.”
In first his statement on “younger students.” Obama likely is referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ report on fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores.
The Nation’s Report Card, released in 2013, showed improvement in national math and reading tests administered by the federal government every two years. The 2013 reading score was the highest among all previous assessments for students in eighth grade. For fourth graders, the 2013 reading score was the highest out of all previous years except for 2011. Still, the biennial increases in fourth- and eight-grade students’ reading and math scores during Obama’s administration have been incremental.
For high school graduation rates, Obama’s claim is on point. The data on average public high school graduation and dropout rates are collected by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. For the Class of 2011-2012, 81 percent of public high school students graduated. It was the highest percentage of high school graduates since 1995. The geographical breakdown shows 22 states had a graduation rate of 80 percent or higher, and another 22 states had a graduation rate between 70 to 79.9 percent. Seven states had a graduation rate of less than 70 percent. U.S. high school drop-out rates reached record lows, according to the Pew Research Center.
As our colleague Lyndsey Layton pointed out, the high school graduation rate is just one measure of success. Despite the high percent in the report, there were disparities in graduation rates based on socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity.
When it comes to college graduation rates, however, there is some context missing in his statement. Obama said “more Americans finish college than ever before.” Education Department data show a steady increase in graduation rates for first-time, full-time bachelor’s degree-seeking students at four-year colleges, from the Class of 1996 to the Class of 2006.
However, recent studies show an increase in the number of students graduating in six years than four.  Graduating in six years is more expensive for students, and adds to their debt. In addition, the Education Department records do not take into consideration a separate category of students – transfer students. –Michelle Ye Hee Lee

“Forty-three million workers have no paid sick leave–43 million.”
This statistic comes from Labor Department survey released in September, which found that 39 percent of 109 million private sector workers were not given paid sick leave. That adds up to 43 million workers.

“Our deficits cut by two-thirds”
The improvement in the economy, coupled with the spending cuts in the sequester, has yielded a significantly lower deficit than just a few years ago. The deficit for the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30 was $483 billion, a decline of nearly $200 billion from the year before.
For economists, raw numbers mean less than the percentage of the gross domestic product, and here too, there has been an improvement.  As a percentage of the GDP, the deficit in fiscal year 2014 was 2.8 percent, the lowest level since 2007. For fiscal year 2009, when Obama took office, the deficit was 9.8 percent, so that’s a 71 percent reduction.
Interestingly, Obama’s 2010 budget, introduced in 2009 when deficits were soaring, predicted that the deficit in 2014 would be $535 billion and 2.9 percent of GDP–meaning the administration beat its five-year deficit target.

“Thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives. Wages are finally starting to rise again. We know that more small-business owners plan to raise their employees’ pay than at any time since 2007.”
A December 2014 survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses reported the highest Small Business Optimism Index since October 2006. The survey found a seasonally adjusted net 17 percent of businesses planned to raise wages in coming months – a two-percentage-point increase from the previous month. Three percent of businesses reported reductions in worker compensation, compared to 24 percent that reported a boost in compensation. The net 25 percent of businesses reporting higher wages was up 4 percentage points from the previous month.
But it is too early to say that this positive response from small businesses means “wages are finally starting to rise again.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the seasonally adjusted average hourly earnings in December 2014 for all businesses was $24.57 – just 40 cents higher than December 2013. –Michelle Ye Hee Lee 
“Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined.”
Once again, the president relies on a data point from 2010; after all, in 2009, United States was shedding hundreds of thousands a month in the early days of his presidency. He also uses a somewhat unusual phrase—“advanced economies”—because he is relying on an International Monetary Fund listing of “advanced economies” which includes some entities, such as Hong Kong, that are not considered independent countries. But it does not include such fast-growing nations as China.
But under that specific data set, Obama is right. From the first quarter of 2010 through the second quarter of 2014, the United States created 7.5 million new jobs—compared to 7.4 million in the other advanced economies.

“Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs.”
The low point for manufacturing jobs was reached in January 2010, and there has been a gain of 786,000 jobs since then. But Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the number of manufacturing jobs is still more than 300,000 fewer than when Obama took office in the depths of the recession — and 1.5 million fewer than when the recession began in December 2007.

“In Iraq and Syria, American leadership – including our military power – is stopping ISIL’s advance.”
The president can certainly make a case that progress is being made against the Islamic State militants in Iraq, but he goes too far when he lumps Syria into the same sentence. Just last week, the Wall Street Journaldocumented that three months of U.S. airstrikes in Syria had failed to prevent the group from expanding its territory in the country. The article quoted a senior defense office as saying that “certainly ISIS has been able to expand in Syria, but that’s not our main objective.”
Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, told the newspaper that airstrikes weren’t intended to prevent Islamic State fighters from gaining ground in most of Syria. “Gaining territorial control in Syria has never been our mission,” he said. “That wasn’t the objective of our airstrikes.”
U.S. military officials have been more forthright about saying they have made progress against Islamic State in Iraq. “We’re starting to see what they’re doing is they’re trying to protect the areas they are in control of now, which I might add is some 700 square kilometers less than it was about six months ago,” Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters in January. He said he was not able to provide a breakdown as to how much was in Iraq and how much was in Syria. Inanother news briefing, Kirby said that Syria opposition fighters would be trained “to eventually go on the offensive against ISIL inside Syria.” 
“It makes no sense to spend three million dollars per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit.”
In fiscal year 2014, the total cost of the Guantanamo Bay facility was $397 million, according to a Defense Department report. With approximately 155 detainees during the year, that averages out to about $2.6 million per detainee. Over the course of the past decade, the prison has cost a total of $8.2 billion, the report says.

“2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record.  Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does – 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.”
Obama correctly cited research from U.S. government scientists.
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Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than three decades. He would like your help in keeping an eye on public figures. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him, tweeting at him, or sending him a message on Facebook.


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Like Smarmy Platitudinousness? You'll Love Joni Ernst's SOTU Reply

January 21, 2015, 7:24 am
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Post Reagan Republicans: 
Making it up as they go along.

Nullification
Wikipedia

Full Text Of Joni Ernst's State Of The Union Reply

For Joni Ernst, homespun Obama response was full of political calculation

For Republicans, having freshman Sen. Joni Ernst deliver their response to President Obama's State of the Union speech made a lot of sense, and she did a workmanlike job.

By , Staff writer 

WASHINGTON — You can take Joni Ernst out of Iowa, send her to Washington, and give her a big speech to deliver, but you can’t take the Iowa out of Joni Ernst.
And why would Republicans want to?
The freshman senator’s GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was workmanlike and avoided the gaffes that beset previous Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida ("water" gate) and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota ("cameragate").
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What was most conspicuous about Senator Ernst's speech was Iowa. From her rural hometown of Red Oak, to her girlhood growing up with one good pair of shoes, to her service in the Iowa Army National Guard, Ernst’s home-state references hold advantages for the GOP and the senator.
First, think 2016, and Iowa as the launching pad for presidential hopefuls. “Iowa’s a swing state, so it’s strategically important,” says Dianne Bystrom, director of the Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University in Ames. “I think she’s going to have a big role in carrying various campaign events.”That made sense for her – and for the party – for a number of reasons.
In November, Ernst helped turn Iowa from purple to red, giving the state its second GOP senator. Her famous “make ’em squeal” ad about castrating hogs and cutting pork propelled her from a crowded primary field, and she then went on to take a seat that had been held by retiring Democrat Tom Harkin for 30 years.
Ernst is considered a rising star in Republican circles, already being talked about as a potential vice presidential candidate – not this cycle, but eventually. Now, though, she’s got her welcome mat out for possible GOP presidential contenders, many of whom helped with her campaign.
In June, for instance, she’ll hold her first annual barbeque – Joni’s Roast and Ride – a political fundraiser to attract dollars and candidates. Featuring Harley motorcycles and roast pork, her two trademarks, it’s her version of the famous Harkin Steak Fry, which was a must for Democratic hopefuls.
Ernst says she won’t endorse anyone before the Iowa caucuses, but she’s certainly using her star power to further her party, including sending out a fundraising appeal to her federal political action committee on the heels of her response Tuesday.
Her speech’s reliance on the Hawkeye state was also a safe – and useful – rhetorical device, commented Ms. Bystrom. With only two weeks in the Senate under her belt, Ernst talked about what she knew, and it had the added benefit of connecting her, and thus the GOP, with average Americans.
“An ordinary Iowan like me has had some truly extraordinary experiences” because of the sacrifices of her parents and grandparents, said Ernst. In one of the more memorable moments of the speech, Ernst spoke of how her mother used to wrap Ernst's only pair of good shoes in bread bags on rainy days to keep them dry. It taught the young girl frugality. But it also helped her efforts to establish the new GOP Congress as working for Americans who are having trouble keeping up.
Bystrom sees another possible benefit in choosing Ernst – as an Iowan – to give the GOP response. She is the state’s first elected woman to Congress, and that has the potential to motivate other women to run for elected office.
“When a state elects its first woman to Congress or its first woman governor, there tends to be more women running,” she says. It can even have an impact beyond the state, which would be helpful to Republicans, who lag behind Democrats in recruiting female candidates.
“If you want more women in politics, then you need to encourage more Republican women to run, because the Democratic Party has been on the ascent” with women candidates, she says.

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Growing Economic Inequality "Endangers Our Future," Joseph Stiglitz Interview

January 21, 2015, 12:20 pm
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NPR
June 5, 2012
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz grew up in Gary, Ind. — a city that has weathered many economic storms over the past half-century.
Stiglitz went on to study at Amherst College and MIT, where he received a Ph.D. in economics. He later served on and chaired President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and became the chief economist at the World Bank. But even as a child, Stiglitz says, he noticed ways in which the markets weren't working.
"I saw discrimination lead to poverty, I saw episodic high levels of unemployment, I saw business cycles, and I saw all kinds of inequalities," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It was clear that America wasn't quite the dream that was depicted in some textbooks, and I wanted to understand why those textbooks were wrong and I wanted really to make a contribution to do something about it."
The Price of Inequality
In his latest book, The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future, Stiglitz argues that widely unequal societies don't function effectively or have stable economies and that even the rich will pay a steep price if economic inequalities continue to worsen.
In the current system, top income earners who make their money through capital gains and stock dividends pay lower effective tax rates than the average person. Those capital gains tax rates were first lowered during the Clinton administration, when Stiglitz led the Council of Economic Advisers.
"I very strongly opposed [lowering the tax rate]," he says. "I thought it was wrong because it increased inequities in our society and it encouraged speculation, and [I thought] that it would not lead to faster real economic growth. And unfortunately, all three of those concerns came to be true. ... And that has led to a period in which the growth of inequality has been higher than it has ever been and led to the kind of instability that led to the great [economic] crisis."
The past 30 years have been markedly different for the middle class, says Stiglitz. Income levels have dropped, and fewer and fewer people are climbing to new income brackets.
"The nature of our growth today is markedly different than in the decades after World War II," he says. "There, we had shared prosperity. More recently, what we've had is exactly the opposite. ... Right now, most Americans are worse off than they were 15 years ago. There has not been shared prosperity."
Joseph Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University. He received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001.i
Joseph Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University. He received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001.
courtesy of the author

Interview Highlights

On lobbying
"People come from Wall Street and go into government and then leave government and go back into Wall Street. When you have this kind of revolving door, it's not just that their interests are not well-aligned with the public; it's that their mindset is captured by the industry from which they come. They see their interest — the interest of Wall Street — as if it were in the public interest. We call that cognitive capture. But you also see it through campaign contributions which affect both the administration and Congress. It's the interaction of the two which is so strong. Because the administration might say, 'Oh, we think we ought to do it differently, but we won't be able to get it through Congress.' Unfortunately, some parts of the administration are so influenced by the financial sector that they take a more active role and see the world through the eyes of the financial sector. There used to be an expression, 'What's good for General Motors is good for the United States and vice versa.' I think increasingly, given the strength of the financial sector, many thought, 'What was good for the financial sector was good for the economy.' And they're obviously wrong in their judgment."
On President Clinton's decision to lower the capital gains tax rate
"The Republicans controlled Congress, and he wanted, like any president, to show that he was doing something. The view among some of the political advisers was that doing something was better than doing nothing. My view was that doing something that was wrong was worse than doing nothing. And unfortunately that was one of those instances where the political advisers won and I think a wrong decision was made."
On tax policy
"I think most Americans today understand that our system isn't fair. One of the roles of the government is to try to make our system fair. And one part of fairness is that everybody ought to pay a fair share of their income in taxes. A basic premise that I think most Americans believe is that if your income is very, very high, you ought to pay at least the same percentage of your income in taxes as somebody whose income is lower. Most Americans would not agree with the view that speculators ought to be taxed half the rate as those who work for an income."
On the 1 percent
"It's a very small group; it's a very elite group of people whose incomes are very high. This 1 percent gets about 20 percent of all of the nation's income. It consists disproportionately of CEOs, of those in the financial sector — but there's an array of other people — high-paid lawyers who help serve the CEOs and those in the financial sector."
On student loans
"Market forces do play a role in shaping inequality, but market forces are shaped by political processes, by legislation that can either give more scope for inequality or restrict it. So, take student loans. Here, it's understandable why poor people understand that their future prospects depend on education. But we've passed a bankruptcy law that totally distorts the market. It allows derivatives to get priority over any other claimants. At the same time, it says students cannot discharge their debt, even in bankruptcy, even if the school that was purportedly supposed to give them an education actually doesn't deliver on what it promised. They wind up without an education, without prospects of a higher education and yet are saddled for the rest of their lives with these student debts. People are graduating with a huge burden — $25,000 is now the average student debt."

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NPR: "How Food Ads Get In Our Brains," Cornell Professor's Fascinating Analysis

January 21, 2015, 12:27 pm
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How Food Ads Get Into Our Brains, 

And What We Can Do To Avoid Mindless Eating

If you’re one of the many millions of Americans who put some version of “eat better” on your New Years resolutions list, food advertising, as well as the way your home and workplace are designed, may be working against you.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks to Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” and “Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life,” about the myriad ways food ads affect what and how we eat, and what we can do about it.

Guest




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Inequality: Joseph Stiglitz Brilliant Reflection On Obama's State Of The Union Address

January 21, 2015, 12:39 pm
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President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union speech before members of Congress in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol January 20, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union speech before members of Congress in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol January 20, 2015 in Washington, D.C.

Growing Inequality "Endangers Our Future": Joseph Stiglitz Interview

Obama’s Proposal On Inequality: Is It Enough?


As the Washington debate on how to reduce income inequality continues, President Obama laid out his plan in the State of the Union address. He called for universal, free community college, guaranteed paid sick leave and higher tax hikes on the wealthy.
The proposal is unlikely to pass in the new Republican-controlled House and Senate, but the speech set an agenda that both parties must now address.
Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson spoke with economist Joseph Stiglitz for his reaction to the president’s plan and if he thinks it goes too far or not far enough to address the issue of income inequality.

Interview Highlights: Joseph Stiglitz

On the president’s State of the Union remarks
“I think he’s absolutely right that things have been going much better in the United States than they have been, and certainly much better in the United States than, say, in Europe. But when I look at data like what’s happened to incomes, wages of ordinary Americans; when I look at macroeconomic data like the labor force participation rate, which is as low as it’s been in 40 years, I say we are still far from back to what you might call a normal economy.”
On the president’s proposals to combat income inequality
Economist Joseph Stiglitz is pictured at the Here & Now studios in 2012. (Jesse Costa/Here & Now)
Economist Joseph Stiglitz is pictured at the Here & Now studios in 2012. (Jesse Costa/Here & Now)
“I think they’re all moves in the right direction — except for one — but they’re not going far enough. So for instance, he talked about the importance of education: absolutely right. He talked about the importance of getting more women into the labor force, providing child care, maternity leave: again, absolutely right. He talked about a more progressive tax system: again, something absolutely right. But consider the tax reforms that they are talking about. They’re proposing increasing the capital gains tax and eliminating a technical provision that allows the very rich to essentially totally escape taxes on capital gains. He’s only raising the capital gains tax rate to 28 percent. He hasn’t explained to the American people why those who speculate on land and make profits on that speculation should be taxed at a lower rate than those who work for a living. … I think the capital gains should be taxed at exactly the same rate as somebody who works for a living.”
On the one thing he doesn’t like about Obama’s plan: the trade policies
“The president again didn’t really explain why he thought it was good. The usual assumption is that we gain jobs by exporting more. But any trade agreement is going to be a balanced trade agreement. We may export more, but we will also import more. An equilibrium — exports and imports are going to be balanced. But if exports create jobs, imports destroy jobs. And the jobs that we tend to have in our export sector, those sectors tend to be very capital intensive — not with many jobs. And the import sectors, the sectors that we will be hurting, are sectors where — very labor intensive. And we now know from research that in those parts of the country where there has been a surge of imports, wages are lower and jobs are weak.”

Guest



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SOTU: Is It Finally Morning In Obama's America? CNN

January 21, 2015, 2:11 pm
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Story highlights

  • Obama finally declares victory over economic recovery
  • Promises 'smarter' war policy after getting troops home
  • Reminds Republicans he won two elections

Is it finally morning in Obama's America?

Stephen Collinson,CNN
January 21, 2015

Great Video Clips From SOTU
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/politics/state-of-the-union-analysis/
(CNN)It took six grueling years. But finally, Barack Obama took the chance to look the American people in the eye and declare job done.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night -- more a lofty campaign style rallying call than a traditional plodding policy lecture -- Obama declared he had delivered on what voters first elected him to do: conquering a "vicious" economic crisis and ending ground wars in the Middle East.
"Tonight, we turn the page," the president said in his address to a joint session of Congress, trying to make an emphatic break with a turbulent 15-year period when twin shocks from terrorism and financial meltdowns rocked the nation.
Obama's economic proposals in 60 seconds 01:08
PLAY VIDEO
"The shadow of crisis has passed," he said. "The state of the union is strong." For the first time in a State of the Union address it sounded like he meant it.
The loose and combative Obama who Americans saw on Tuesday night was not the graying, crisis-stifled president who last year seemed weary of his job and failed to mount an effective defense of Democrats as the party lost the Senate in November.
    There was no sign of contrition, or even an indication he felt at all bloodied by the disastrous mid-terms, in which Democrats lost control of the Senate.
    Instead, riding a tide of unexpected momentum which has even surprised White House aides, Obama shoved back in the game by wielding executive powers on issues like Cuba and immigration to prove he is still a political force in Washington.
    "I have no more campaigns to run," he said drawing Republican applause, before silencing his foes with a kicker that encapsulates his attitude to an opposition party with which he has feuded for his entire presidency.
    "I know -- because I won them both."
    sot obama pokes fun at gop sotu_00002619
    Obama pokes fun at GOP during State of the Union speech 01:11
    PLAY VIDEO
    "Middle class economics"
    He said the "verdict is clear" that his brand of "middle class economics" works, and promised to wield his veto against any GOP attempt to roll back reforms on health care and the financial industry.
    In exactly two years, Obama will be out of the White House. But he could not resist offering a pointer for a Democrat who wants to succeed him -- presumably Hillary Clinton, pushing new doctrines of "middle class economics" and "smarter" Middle East policy which would keep ISIS at bay and spare American soldiers from foreign quagmires.
    Obama's claim of a new era of prosperity at home and security abroad angered Republicans.
    Potential candidates blast tax proposals
    Mitt Romney, an old Obama foe mulling another shot at the White House accused the president of a lack of leadership.
    "More intent on winning elections than on winning progress, he ignores the fact that the country has elected a Congress that favors smaller government and lower taxes," Romney said on Facebook.
    With fear of homegrown jihadists stalking the West, from Paris to Ottawa and Australia to Belgium, Obama critics say he was in denial over a failing strategy to take on global terrorism.
    Obama did not mention al-Qaeda at all. And he only referred to the attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in passing.
    "We stand united with people around the world who have been targeted by terrorists -- from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris," Obama said, but gave no indication that the sudden eruption of home grown jihadism would change his national security strategy.
    Obama cuts loose during speech
    "Instead of sending large ground forces overseas, we're partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America," he said.
    Focus on economy, not terror
    Potential GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio warned that "saying wars are over isn't enough to keep us safe."
    And even as he declared one era of foreign wars over, the president asked Congress to give him backing to wage another -- albeit the arms length clash using mainly air power -- against ISIS.
    Obama's aides said the president saw his address not as a chance to unveil the usual laundry list of programs -- but to tell a "new story" about a presidency which has unfolded in times of crisis at home and abroad.
    GOP skeptical of Obama's call for unity
    His appearance, six years on from the cold January day in 2009 when he took the oath of office, coincided with a cluster of political turning points.
    For the first time in a State of the Union address Tuesday, Obama, the most liberal president since Lyndon Johnson, stood up in the House of Representatives and stared out at the members of two chambers which are now both controlled by Republicans.
    It was a reminder that despite two crushing presidential victories, Obama's two terms also included two bitter mid-term rebukes from voters.
    Economic milestones
    But with unemployment down to 5.6 percent, with the economy churning out several hundred thousand jobs a month, and with growth accelerating, Obama may have reached a political milestone.
    For years, the president has got little credit for restoring an economy that was shedding 700,000 jobs a month when he took office.
    That's partly because the results of the rebound have been so uneven. While the stock market has soared, many in the Middle Class have been left behind. Wages are stagnant and many of the new jobs created pay less and have fewer benefits than the ones that are gone.
    Still, there is a sense now that the benefits of the recovery are spreading, and low gas prices are restoring a half forgotten sense of well being for many Americans.
    "With a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry and booming energy production -- we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth," Obama said.
    "It's now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next 15 years, and for decades to come."
    A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday showed that 45 percent of Americans were now very or somewhat satisfied with the US economy, and the trend is rising. The percentage of those who believe America is in decline has dropped to its lowest level since the crisis. The country now seems 50-50 split on that issue.
    "This is a president who for whatever reason, woke up and saw the economic numbers and saw he had a pretty strong hand, and he is going to start playing some cards right now," said John Geer, a professor who specializes in the presidency at Vanderbilt University
    Obama's own political fortunes are rising as a result. A Washington Post poll has him at 50 percent, his highest rating for nearly two years. Other surveys confirm the rebound, but place Obama in the high 40s -- still heady territory for a president shellacked in the mid-term elections.
    Confronting new threats
    The sense that Obama is confronting an important political moment also played out as he addressed foreign policy.
    After years of telling Americans that the tide of war is receding, Obama is being forced to confront an alarming new manifestation of violent jihadism in Europe, which many officials fear could soon make its way to the streets of the United States.
    U.S. lawmakers pay tribute to the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks by holding up pencils during President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
    U.S. lawmakers pay tribute to the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks by holding up pencils during President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
    EXPAND IMAGE
    American warplanes are in the skies over Iraq again, following the sudden rise of ISIS. Up to 3,000 troops have been sent back to the country just years after Obama told Americans the war was over. Splintering states in the Middle East including Syria and Yemen are offering new safe havens for terror groups with the United States in their sights.
    Obama made the case for a focused but "smarter" campaign against ISIS, but took time to rebut criticisms by Republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who believe he is too slow to use force abroad.
    "When we make rash decisions, reacting to the headlines instead of using our heads, when the the first response to a challenge is to send in our military -- then we risk getting drawn into unnecessary conflicts," Obama said.
    The back end of a presidency
    The speech also marked a moment of valediction. Barring some great national political crisis, Tuesday's appearance may have been the last time when Obama took the stage as America's most important voice for liberalism.
    When Clinton announces what is seen as her almost certain presidential campaign later this year, she will likely become the go-to voice for progressives on all domestic issues.
    And by the time of the State of the Union address next year, the presidential primary season will be in full swing -- drawing media attention from the lame duck in the White House.
    Robert Lehrman, chief speechwriter for former vice president Al Gore, said that Obama had long term political goals in mind as he knew almost nothing he proposed would get passed.
    "But he is laying the groundwork for whoever it is in 2016 to run against a Republican," said Lehrman, now a professor at American University.
    Apparently sensing his time is short, Obama mounted an extraordinary defense of his own political skills, even referring to the speech in Boston he made as an unknown senatorial candidate at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
    "Over the past six years, the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency hasn't delivered on this vision," Obama said arguing that many people thought he was naive.
    "I know how tempting such cynicism may be. But I still think the cynics are wrong," Obama said, in a plea for a "better politics" that will likely remain unfulfilled, in one of the biggest disappointments of his presidency.
    Obama makes historic 'transgender' reference 01:00
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    Martin Luther King's Vision Got Distorted: His Real Legacy On Militarism & Inequality

    January 21, 2015, 2:14 pm
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    MLK's radical vision got distorted: Here's his <em>real</em> legacy on militarism & inequality

    The Status Of American Blacks 100 Years Before "Selma"

    http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-status-of-american-blacks-100-years.html MLK’s radical vision got distorted: Here’s his real legacy on militarism & inequality

    Dr. King is remembered for a sanitized legacy. Here's what he really fought for -- and why it's so relevant today

    Today, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s federal holiday, many will write of Dr. King’s dream for equality for all people and his heroic leadership that inspired very real progressive change in our country’s laws and culture. Most will politely ignore the more radical currents of Dr. King’s vision, his activism for living wage jobs as a human right and an end to U.S. imperialism abroad, ideas that remain outside mainstream American thought to this day.
    In the latter years of his life, Dr. King, already a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, frequently spoke publicly of the three evils holding back his society: racism, poverty and militarism. In one controversial speech,“Beyond Vietnam,” delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination and almost six years before U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, Dr. King called his government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He argued national investment in the war had already doomed President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ to failure—a claim that the New York Times objected forcefully. In the address, Dr. King implored the necessity for the nation to undergo a “radical revolution of values,” explaining, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
    The speech prompted President Johnson to revoke Dr. King’s standing invitation to the White House. According to Tavis Smiley, it also earned Dr. King denunciations from 168 major newspapers the next day, including the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper. Dr. King continued in his final year, now an unpopular public figure, to support workers around the country—he was in Memphis, where he was assassinated, in support of striking public sanitation employees. He organized a Poor People’s Campaign, often at odds with the Southern Christian Leadership Council that he helped to create, advocating for a Freedom Budget that sought to use the public treasury to extend genuine economic opportunity and material security to all Americans. After peaking at fourth on Gallup’s 1964 list of Most Admired Men, Dr. King had disappeared from the list by 1967. He died with disapproval ratings similar to those enjoyed by George W. Bush upon his exit from office. Yet, in a Gallup poll conducted in 1999 to determine the most admired Americans of the 20th century, Dr. King is listed second. Unpopular in his time for challenging mainstream opinions of U.S. poverty and militarism, Dr. King is sanitized in our cultural memory, stripped of the radical roots of his values. He is now loved in death by the same economic-political establishment he opposed in life.
    In an effort to focus attention in advance of MLK Day on the forgotten radical elements of Dr. King’s message, activists throughout the country disrupted business as usual this past Thursday, Jan. 15, Dr. King’s actual birthday. Operating largely under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement, the activists shared each other’s protest through hashtags like #ReclaimMLK and #MLKStrike. Demonstrations occurred across essentially all large U.S. cities, from teach-ins with University of Illinois faculty in Chicago to civil disobedience blocking streets in Baltimore and Boston. Additionally, the Fast Food Forward campaign, which is funded by the Service Employee’s International Union, commemorated Dr. King’s birthday by picketing with striking airport workers in Boston and Atlanta.
    “Martin Luther King’s legacy has been watered down,” said Imani Henry, an organizer with New York’s People’s Power Assembly, the group that planned the New York actions. “He was marching with workers when he was murdered in Memphis. He was anti-war.”
    In contrast to the official appreciation of Dr. King that occurs every year on his national holiday, which tends to overlook Dr. King’s adversarial posture toward the status quo, the activists sought to emphasize protest as central to the change Dr. King was able to affect.
    “What has happened with the national holiday, the official celebrations are inside events in churches and for politicians,” Henry said. “That is all fine and good, so long as it is with the understanding that we should also be in the streets—where he was. That’s the reclaiming of it. We come from being in the streets marching.”
    In New York, protest spanned the city. Activists leafleted at Jamaica Center in Queens, descended on police precincts in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and staged subway sing-ins throughout Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan. In Manhattan, where a couple of hundred protesters came and went throughout the day, they staged a die-in outside the Staten Island Ferry, marched around the Financial District, stopping to speak at City Hall and the African Burial Ground National Monument, and ended the day in picket lines at Grand Central Station. At one point, the group stopped outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center and chanted “Your Lives Matter” toward the building while inmates could be heard inside banging on the exterior windows.
    Protesters in Manhattan carried a banner reading, “Black Lives Matter,” while another stated, “In the Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jobs With Livable Wages, End Racist Police Terror.” They sang the Peace Poet song, “I Can’t Breathe,” a fixture in the ongoing street protests following the failure to indict the policemen who killed Mike Brown and Eric Garner, and belted now familiar chants like, “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” and “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell.”
    Larry Holmes, an organizer with the New York People’s Power Assembly, addressed the crowd outside the African Burial Ground National Monument, emphasizing the police killings of black and brown youth are merely the most visible element of an American criminal justice system that imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world and extends its reach to over 7 million people, a population that is disproportionately black and brown.
    “For every one of them who have been murdered, there’s hundreds of thousands of us who have been stopped for nothing, harassed, humiliated, swept up in mass incarceration” Holmes said, as he vowed to never forget the history of slavery commemorated by the monument next to which they stood. “We not only want justice for those who have been cut down young in their life, we want an end to this police war against black and brown young people.”
    Holmes, like many of the protesters, believes the NYPD “Broken Windows” policing strategy led directly to the deadly confrontation between the police and Eric Garner.
    “We want an end to things like Broken Windows, which is the reason why Eric Garner was murdered,” he said.
    Holmes expressed empathy for Mayor Bill De Blasio, who publicly criticized the People’s Power Assembly on Wednesday for using offensive language in protests, explaining Mayor de Blasio faces unwarranted criticism from groups like the Policemen’s Benevolent Association, which has suggested Mayor de Blasio’s tepid support of the protests somehow leaves him with blood on his hands for the murders of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
    “The protest movement didn’t kill anybody,” Holmes said. “The protest movement is trying to save lives. We’re not for individual violence against cops. As a matter of fact, we’re not singling out any particular cop. What we’re against is the whole system, which is designed to point cops in the direction of over-policing, and basically putting down, young black and brown people.”
    Holmes argued the police are put in a largely impossible situation by the systematic neglect of large portions of the population. In a climate of governmental social disinvestment, the police are the government’s answer for economically neglected communities.
    “There are sections of the population that the powers that be no longer have any use for because there isn’t enough employment, and they don’t want to spend the money on services,” Holmes said. “Instead, they want to cut back on services, they want to close schools. This is like an excess population—and it’s growing. Instead of providing the social programs that people need, the NYPD becomes the government’s solution for the excess population. It deals with them by keeping them down and making sure these young people have records, which means they can’t get a job, and sometimes, by killing them.”
    This bleak picture for Americans of the lowest socioeconomic classes, which disproportionately include racial minorities, represents the incomplete fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream.
    In “Beyond Vietnam,” Dr. King noted the double impact of war on the poor: War spending is a budgeting priority in competition with social spending, and the American military disproportionately draws its fighting force from the poor. He concluded, “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
    We continue to invest funds and energy today in a war on terror that has no end in sight. Our military budget is as large as those of the next eight countries combined, a number that accounts for more than 20 percent of the federal budget. The military receives over 50 percent of discretionary spending, accounting for $699 billion in 2011, while discretionary spending on health, transportation, income security, and education, training, employment, and social services reached only a combined $341 billion. Meanwhile, the military’s reliance on the poor has only increased since the end of the draft.
    Dr. King also decried the coexistence of extreme wealth and poverty in American society.
    “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar,” he said. “It comes to see that the edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.”
    The current economic-political status quo produces perhaps more American beggars than at any time in our country’s history. The most recent analysis of U.S. wealth inequality finds the top 1 percent of U.S. wealth holders have 39.8 percent of the country’s individual wealth. The top 10 percent have 74.4 percent, which leaves 25.6 percent for the bottom 90 percent. The top .1 percent own 21.5 percent of the national wealth, while the top .01 percent—just over 31,000 people out of a national population of just over 316 million—own 11.1 percent. The U-6 unemployment rate remains over 11 percent, while one in three American children live in poverty. Ten million Americans have seen their homes foreclosed since the start of the 2008 recession. And the wealth gap between whites and other racial and ethnic groups rests near record levels.
    Dr. King’s social critique did not shy away from identifying causes of the economic inequality that underscores racial and social inequality. He called out a military-corporate alliance, arguing, “This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary actions in Guatemala,” and in Indonesia, Cambodia, Venezuela and Peru throughout the 1960s. One day, Dr. King warned, “[We] will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no consideration for the social betterment of the countries and say this is not just.”
    This investment model, one that demands the absence of any national capital restrictions, has since been solidified under neoliberal governance, which has been exported worldwide through U.S. financial power. It continues to move forward with three trade agreements under secret negotiation—the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and the Trade in Services Agreement.
    Yet Dr. King remained hopeful that America could lead the change from thing-oriented societies to person-oriented societies, from a social system that produces for profit rather than human need.
    “America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values,” Dr. King told his audience in Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. “There is nothing except the tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There’s nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”
    Though Dr. King’s dream remains largely unfulfilled, in his example of protest we find a proven model for change. Embracing the adversarial, more radical tenets of his beliefs can perhaps help us move that model forward in our time.
    MORE GEOFF GILBERT.
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    Obama's SOTU Is Filled With Sensible Bipartisan Tax Ideas. Conservatives Will Hate It

    January 21, 2015, 8:47 pm
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    Obama's State of the Union Is Filled With Sensible Bipartisan Tax Ideas. 
    Obviously, Conservatives Will Hate It.
    By 
    In the State of the Union Tuesday night, President Barack Obama will propose a new tax plan that will raise taxes on the rich and use the money to fund his free community college program and new tax breaks for the middle class. Republicans are not pleased. “The tax hike shows little understanding of where to find common ground with Republicans,” wrote Brendan Buck, the communications director for the House Ways and Means Committee. “Surely the White House knows a massive tax increase is not what the American people just sent a newly elected Republican Congress to do.”
    Many Republican legislators echoed Buck’s message. But that message is wrong. While conservatives won’t like the entirety of Obama’s plan, it contains many ideas that they do like and have proposed over the past year. But because Obama proposed it, it’s dead-on-arrival.
    To start, Buck’s reference to Obama’s plan as a “massive tax increase” is an exaggeration. It would raise $320 billion over the next decade, just a small fraction of the $40 trillion the federal government will collect during that span. As Slate’s Jordan Weismann writes, that’s “more than a rounding error, but not much more.” It’s certainly not a massive tax increase.
    Regardless of the revenue, Republicans will reject basically any and all tax increases. Obama’s plan to raise revenue has three parts, the first two of which ought to appeal to conservatives serious about fiscal responsibility.

    Create a new bank tax

    Obama wants to impose a 0.07 percent tax on liabilities of banks with greater than $50 billion in assets. It’s similar to the bank tax that former House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp put forward in his tax reform plan last year. Instead of taxing bank assets, as Camp’s plan does, Obama’s plan would tax bank liabilities. This is a key, important difference. As Felix Salmon explained when Camp’s plan came out, “it’s not size that’s the real problem, it’s leverage, and it’s always good to give banks an incentive to raise more capital and less debt.” Tim Worstall, a conservative writer for Forbes, agreed with Salmon and argues that Obama’s new bank tax is a great idea and just needs a couple slight tweaks.
    A bank tax will receive little support on Capitol Hill, certainly from Republicans but also from Democrats. Wall Street has immense power in both parties. But changing bank incentives to reduce risk—and thus lower the chance of a future bailout—should appeal to both liberals and conservatives.

    Eliminate the “Stepped-Up Basis” loophole

    Obama’s plan would also eliminate a big loophole for rich heirs. The key here is that capital gains tax—the tax people pay on investments—is only paid when the person sells the asset, not when it increases in value. For instance, if a person buys $5 million worth of stock and it appreciates to a value of $10 million in two years, the person pays nothing until they actually sell it. When they sell, they pay the capital gains tax rate of 23.8 percent (20 percent plus 3.8 Medicare tax imposed by Obamacare).
    Many liberals already oppose the preferential treatment of capital gains (more on that in a bit). But there’s a major loophole for people who inherit investments: They only pay taxes on appreciation in the asset since they received it, not since it was purchased. For instance, if your father buys $5 million worth of stock and you inherit it at a value of $10 million, that $5 million in appreciation is never taxed. When you sell the stock, you only pay tax on how much it appreciated from $10 million. This is called “step-up” basis. While conservatives may want to lower the capital gains rate, it’s hard to think of any justification for this loophole.

    Raise the capital gains tax rate

    Finally, Obama proposes raising the capital gains rate from the aforementioned 23.8 percent to 28 percent. Republicans will certainly oppose this change on the grounds that it disincentivizes investment. It’s not really clear that’s true. In 2011, Jared Bernstein, the former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden, compared real business investment over the past 80 years against the capital gains rate. He couldn’t find any correlation. But raising the capital gains rate goes against Republican orthodoxy, so it’s not something they will support.

    Unlike in past years, Obama is not just raising money for deficit reduction. Instead, he wants to put the money towards helping the middle class. In particular, he would use the money to fund three tax cuts targeted at middle class households—all three of which Republicans should support:

    Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

    Under the current EITC program, childless workers receive almost no benefits compared to what working parents receive. Obama’s plan would substantially increase the credit available to childless workers. In addition, at the end of 2017, changes made to the EITC under the stimulus bill will expire. Obama’s new plan would also make those changes permanent.
    Last year, Republicans, including Representative Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, proposed expanding the EITC so childless workers can benefit as well. Republicans and Democrats only disagree about how to pay for that expansion.

    Create a second earner tax credit

    One flaw with the tax code is that the first dollar of a second earner is taxed at the same rate as the last dollar of the first earner. That’s a lot simpler than it sounds. Let’s say you and your boyfriend each earn $20,000 per year. When you file separately, the first $9,075 is taxed at a 10 percent rate and the next $10,925 is taxed at a 15 percent rate. You each pay $2,546 in taxes, a rate of 12.7 percent. If you two get married and file jointly, the first earner’s taxes still face the same tax schedule. But the second earner’s tax schedule starts where the first is left off: his first $16,900 in income is taxed at the 15 percent rate and the next $3,100 is taxed at a 25 percent rate. Combined, the couple pays $5,856 in taxes, a rate of 14.6 percent. That penalizes marriage and disincentivizes the second earner from working.
    To correct this flaw, Obama has proposed a credit of 5 percent of the second earner’s first $10,000 in income—a maximum of $500. It would be fully available to all couples earning less than $120,000 and partially available to couples earning between $120,000 and $210,000. Since it both promotes marriage and work, Republicans should support this. But as with EITC, the disagreement is on how to fund it.

    Expand a tax credit for child care

    Finally, Obama wants to nearly triple the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to $3,000 and allow parents of young children who earn up to $120,000 to collect it. This plan would make it easier for parents to work by making child care more affordable, giving it significant appeal to those on the right. Once again, Republicans and Democrats will disagree on how to fund it.

    Obama’s plan has a few other features as well. It would consolidate a number of tax credit programs into the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which was created in 2009 by the stimulus. The goal is to eliminate confusion about the programs. Obama also wants to require employers with more than 10 workers to automatically enroll their employees on a tax-advantaged IRA program to encourage saving and provide money to small businesses to offset the administrative costs. IRAs would have a hard cap at $3.4 million, so the wealthy couldn’t use questionable tax strategies to amass huge amounts in their IRAs. (Mitt Romney’s IRA had over $100 million in 2012, despite the fact that annual contributions are capped at $5,500 a year.) Finally, the revenue generated from the plan would also offset the cost of Obama’s recently announced plan to offer some students two years of free community college.
    Right now, the conventional wisdom is that the proposal is dead on arrival in Congress. “Do Obama's proposals have any chance of happening?” Vox’s Matt Yglesias rhetorically asked. “No. None whatsoever.” In the end, that will almost certainly be true. But in a normal legislative environment, it wouldn’t be. Instead, Democrats and Republicans would be able to reach a smaller compromise to, for example, expand the EITC in exchange for eliminating the “Stepped-Up Basis” loophole. Instead, Republicans hear the word “tax increase” and shut down any chance of compromise. It’s a sad statement on the legislative process that such a reasonable proposal has no chance to even receive a vote in Congress.


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    Americans Overwhelmingly Want Paid Sick Time, Even If It Lowers Their Wages

    January 21, 2015, 8:54 pm
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    Guess who isn't a fan of paid sick time?

    "Send me a bill that gives every worker in America the opportunity to earn seven days of paid sick leave," Obama said in last night's State of the Union address. "It’s the right thing to do."
    That might not seem like a very controversial statement. As a business owner, you want your employees to stay home when they're ill, so they don't infect the rest of your workers and hurt overall workplace productivity as a result. A lot of conservatives don't see it that way, though. Many are opposed to the idea of a "mandate" -- they aren't comfortable with the government telling employers what to do. And many more think that a sick leave mandate would simply force workers to accept sick time in lieu of higher wages.
    That sentiment is best summed up in the tweet from the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein below -- if you want a fully fleshed out version of the argument, see this piece from the Heritage Foundation's labor policy analyst James Sherk.

    Alan: Mr. Sherk is quick to point out that "there is no such thing as a free lunch, which is the very reason The 5% should provide them. Shared prosperity coincides with periods of rapid economic growth and periods of top-heavy wealth concentration precede economic collapses as happened in the run-up to The Great Depression and The Great Recession,  Robert Reich's "Inequality for All" illuminates this landscape well.

    Review: "Inequality For All" By Robert Reich

    Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe, A Lockstep Relationship

    Inequality: Joseph Stiglitz Brilliant Reflection On Obama's State Of The Union Address

    But as it turns out, there's nothing "forced" about that proposition at all. A2014 survey of 4,507 Americans by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 81 percent support paid sick leave legislation of the type Obama is proposing. The survey found majority support across all demographic and political groups, with even 70 percent of Republicans supporting such a law.
    More to the point, a 2010 survey of 1,461 Americans conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked respondents how they felt about paid sick time, and then presented them with a battery of arguments for and against such legislation.
    The "con" arguments included "If employers are forced to increase costs by providing for paid sick days, they will cut other costs by reducing wages or benefits like health care coverage" and "A one-size-fits-all, paid sick leave mandate from the government would threaten workers' wages and benefits. Government mandated benefits that increase business costs would have to be made up by cuts in wages or benefits."
    But after hearing these arguments, respondents' views on sick leave legislation were unchanged -- 75 percent supported mandatory sick time before hearing the arguments, while 74 percent supported it afterward. Even more telling, respondents rated the appeals about lower wages among the least compelling of the con arguments. 
    So, let's take sick leave's detractors at their word: If it really comes down to a choice between paid sick time and higher wages, Americans overwhelmingly choose the sick time. So why not give them that choice?


    Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.

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    Obama Versus "The 1%." Right Where He Should Be

    January 21, 2015, 9:43 pm
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    "Inside Job"
    Oscar Winning Documentary
    Free online - with Spanish subtitles.
    The first five minutes of this Oscar-winning documentary detail the collapse of the Icelandic economy.

    Review: "Inequality For All" By Robert Reich

    Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe, A Lockstep Relationship

    Inequality: Joseph Stiglitz Brilliant Reflection On Obama's State Of The Union Address

    Leona Helmsley, "The Queen of Mean"
    Felon
    Income Tax Evasion
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley






    Obama vs. the 1 percent

    The president’s tax plan would actually help reduce inequality

    January 22, 2015

    By Mark Whitehouse
    President Barack Obama isn’t kidding when he says the tax proposals he outlined in his State of the Union address would have an effect on inequality in the United States.
    In seeking to pay for measures aimed at helping the middle class, Mr. Obama has focused on reining in two big tax breaks for the top 1 percent.
    The first applies to stock dividends and long-term investment gains, which are taxed at a rate of no more than 20 percent (plus a 3.8 percent surtax for very high earners), compared with as much as 39.6 percent for ordinary income. The second is a loophole that excludes investment gains on property transferred at death, allowing heirs to avoid a big tax bill.
    Taken together, the capital-gains and inheritance-tax breaks were worth more than $200 billion in 2013, the Congressional Budget Office estimated. The benefits accrued almost entirely to the rich: They boosted the after-tax income of the top 1 percent by more than 6 percent and had an almost negligible effect on the lowest-earning 40 percent of U.S. households.
    The wealthy need not rush to call their tax planners. Mr. Obama’s proposals are highly unlikely to become law in today’s political environment. They also wouldn’t come close to eliminating the tax breaks. Mr. Obama would increase the top capital-gains rate only to 28 percent and would require heirs to pay tax only on investment gains exceeding $200,000 per couple.
    That said, with inequality becoming a pressing issue, the idea of changing the way the U.S. taxes capital will undoubtedly resurface.
    In a world in which everyone started with nothing and spent all their savings over their lifetimes, critics of the idea would be right to protest: Taxing wealth would probably inhibit the investment needed for the economy to grow. But in a world like ours, where wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few and incomes are stagnating for the vast majority of workers, taxing the former to ease the burden on the latter makes a lot more sense.
    Mark Whitehouse writes on global economics and finance for Bloomberg View.

    ***

    Alan: Consider the most remarkable thing said by a Founding Father.

    Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris: 

    On Taxes

    25 December, 1783

    "The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law. All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."
    http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html 

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    http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/taibbi-9-billion-whistle-blower-at.html

    "The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"
    http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-rich-arent-just-grabbing-bigger.html

    Major General Smedley Butler: Do Wars Really Defend America’s Freedom?

    G.K. Chesterton: "The Anarchy of The Rich"

    G.K. Chesterton and Warren Buffett's Class War

    "War, Peace And Political Manipulation: Quotations"

    "Pope Francis Links"

    ↧

    Senate Declares Climate Change Real But Cites Bible To Refute Anthropogenicity

    January 22, 2015, 6:11 am
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    A tiny human inside a sperm
    Drawing: N. Hartsoecker, 1695
    (The belief that a tiny human resides in each sperm was an argument against masturbation as a form of murder.)

    Climate change "is not a hoax," according to the U.S. Senate, which voted 98 to 1 in favor of an amendment stating as much Wednesday. Explaining his vote, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said that there was "Biblical evidence" of climate change, but that humans were not responsible for it.

    With this amendment, Democrats had hoped to force Republicans to take a stance on the reality of global warming. They didn't succeed. Two other amendments attributing climate change to human activity failed to achieve the 60 votes needed to advance.

    There are somewhat intellectually respectable positions to take against climate-change legislation -- for example, that the costs of stopping global warming might outweigh the benefits -- but the Senate's is not one of them.

    "In conclusion, the Senate is pretty clearly a hoax,"Brad Plumer wrote.



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    What The Brain Sees Relative To Physical Function

    January 22, 2015, 6:11 am
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    U.S. Counties Where The Most Disasters Have Taken Place

    January 22, 2015, 6:15 am
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    Fires. Floods. Storms. Hurricanes. Volcanoes! The Federal Emergency Management Agency has declared more than 3,000 disasters since 1953, covering the gamut of large-scale calamities ranging from tornadoes to terrorism, and everything in between. Since 1964, they've been tracking these disaster declarations at the county level, which I've mapped below. Click on any county to get a detailed breakdown of each category of disaster for that county.
    First things first: what is a "disaster"? As you might suspect, there are specific rules about when and how a disaster gets declared. For our purposes, it's important that a state governor must first request a federal disaster declaration applying to one or more counties, and then the president must approve it following review. So in some ways a disaster declaration is just as much a political phenomenon as a natural one.
    The politics of disaster declaration may be somewhat reflected in the map above, as you'll notice that some states are more disaster-prone than their neighbors. Wyoming and Georgia stand out as states where disaster declarations are relatively rare -- does this mean that the weather is simply milder here, or that for various political and cultural reasons governors in these states are less likely to request disaster aid than their peers in neighboring states?
    Qualitatively, disasters encompass a range of natural and some man-made phenomena. Severe storms rack up the most disaster declarations, 853 since 1953. Fires and floods aren't far behind. Hurricanes, tornadoes and snowstorms make up a second tier of disasters by frequency. Beyond these are a hodge-podge of categories that haven't broken the 100 mark.
    The lesser categories include typhoons and coastal storms that mostly impact our territories in the Pacific. There have been six disasters declared due to fishing losses, from toxic algae blooms and the 1994 el nino that affected the Pacific salmon industry. There have also been seven toxic substance spills, three dam breaks and 27 disasters classified simply as "other." These include severe hardship in Alaska in the 1950s, a grain elevator explosion in Kansas in 1998, and President Obama's first inauguration in 2009, which George W. Bush declared a state of emergencyto free up funds for.
    It's important to remember that one disaster declaration can impact multiple counties. For a sense of which disasters affect which regions of the country, I've mapped eight of the largest disaster categories below. Click the image for a closer look.
    Severe storms are the most widespread disaster, although they're clustered heavily in the middle of the country. Interestingly, Illinois stands out as an oasis among it's storm-prone neighbors -- this may be due to Illinois governors' relative reluctance to request disaster aid for storms.
    North Dakota counties seem to be the most impacted by flooding -- the Red River is a big culprit here. You can also see a ribbon of higher concentration in the counties along the Mississippi river.
    The Gulf Coast is lit up in the hurricane map, as are Florida and North Carolina. Interestingly, Georgia and South Carolina are spared from much of it. You'll notice several inland states indicating a single disaster declaration here -- when's the last time Nebraska was threatened by a hurricane? In fact, most of these inland declarations are due to evacuations caused by Hurricane Katrina -- disaster declarations in these states allowed local authorities to request federal funds to help deal with the influx of evacuees.
    I also want to point out the map of freeze disaster declarations, which are heavily concentrated in Florida and California -- major agricultural areas. It illustrates how a disaster's impact depends heavily on local conditions -- January temperatures in the 30s and 40s wouldn't cause anyone to bat an eye in, say, Minnesota, but move that same weather down to Florida and you've got a calamity for the citrus industry. It also makes you wonder how hellaciously cold it would have to be to declare a disaster due to cold in Northern Maine.
    Now that we've got a sense of the disaster landscape, we can return to the big map, which I put just above so you don't have to scroll all the way back to the top. This map lets us see which counties have suffered through the most disasters since 1964. The award for most disaster-prone place in the U.S. goes to Los Angeles County, CA, which has experienced 53 disasters in that time period -- on average, a little more than one disaster per year. These include 35 fires, 6 each of storms and floods, 1 hurricane-related (Katrina evacuees), 3 earthquakes, and 2 deep freezes.
    In fact, Southern California counties account for four of the top 5 disaster-prone counties in the U.S., driven primarily by the frequency of fires and floods there. Oklahoma County, OK comes in at number 4, on the strength of its severe storms, fires and ice storms. The full list of top ten counties is below.
    CountyNumber of disaster declarations
    Los Angeles County, CA53
    San Bernardino County, CA45
    Riverside County, CA44
    Oklahoma County, OK39
    San Diego County, CA36
    McClain County, OK35
    Essex County, MA34
    Ventura County, CA34
    Collier County, FL34
    Delaware County, NY33
    Collier County, on Florida's Gulf Coast, comes in at number seven with its 15 hurricane disasters, 7 fires, 5 severe storms, 5 freezes, and a tornado for good measure. But Collier doesn't lead on hurricanes -- that honor goes to Terrebonne and Plaquemines parishes in Louisiana, tied at 18 hurricane disasters each. Of the top ten counties for hurricane declarations, eight are in Louisiana.
    As I mentioned above, the top flood counties are clustered in North Dakota and Western Minnesota along the border of the Red River. 22 of the top 25 counties for flood declarations are in this region. If snow is your thing, you'll want to head to Western New York, where Erie County has been on the receiving end of 10 heavy snow disasters since 1964.
    But the map also shows where disasters aren't being declared. Wyoming hardly has any, although they'll get theirs if the Yellowstone supervolcanoblows its top. Northern Michigan is also relatively disaster-free, as are parts of Idaho, Utah and Nevada.
    So: there you have it. Do you want to live on the edge? Head to Southern California. Or Oklahoma. Prefer to play it safe? Maybe Wyoming is more your speed. And avoid presidential inaugurations when you can.
    Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.
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    Research Suggests Paid Family Leave Helps Everyone

    January 22, 2015, 6:27 am
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    Alan: American conservatives, motivated by religion and political ideology, countenance no policy that hints of a "free lunch," even when such policies are demonstrably profitable. 

    According to the received "wisdom," every individual must be personally responsible for his actions: only then will God bless them and, by extension, the nation.

    At bottom this intransigent demand for Shylockian "justice" derives from the religious belief that the "righteous" (even neo-Pharisees who are "righteous" by technicality) should be rewarded - and all the n'er-do-wells damned. 



    From the conservative vantage -- particularly the retaliatory "Christian" vantage -- it is categorically unacceptable to conceive gratuitous, unearned reward even though the word "gratuitous" derives from the Latin word for "grace" which most Christians consider a "gift" from God.  

    The etymology of "Grace":  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=grace

    Matthew 9:12-13
    12-13 Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”

    "The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"

    "The Party of Personal Responsibility" Is "The Party Of Personal Irresponsibility"

    "Red State Moocher Links"

    Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe, A Lockstep Relationship

    Research suggests paid family leave can help everyone. "Since women who take paid family leaves are more likely to see a wage increase and less likely to go on welfare, such policies may exert a positive effect not only on gender inequality but on economic inequality." The New Yorker.


    Maternity Leave

    ***

    A Map Of Maternity Leave Policies Arond The World
    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/good-job-america-a-map-of-maternity-leave-policies-around-the-world/373117/
    The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that does not require some form of paid time off for new mothers.



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    Gitmo Prisoner Publishes Memoir. Who's The Scum Bucket?

    January 22, 2015, 6:45 am
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    Christianity's Bedrock Commitment To Torture: Remaking Themselves In God's Image

    Americans, Especially Catholics, Approve Of Inquisitorial Torture

    "The Catholic Voice In The Torture Debate," John A. Coleman S.J.

    Inmate's book exposes horrors of Gitmo

    By Florence Davey-Attlee, CNN
    January 22, 2015
    Video: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/americas/guantanamo-bay-prisoner-book/
    London (CNN) Mohamedou Slahi was wearing black-out goggles. A guard dragged him onto a boat and someone forced him to drink seawater.
    "It was so nasty I threw up...They stuffed the air between my clothes and me with ice cubes from my neck to my ankles...every once in a while one of the guards smashed me, most of the time in the face."
    In a new book Guantánamo Diary, Slahi paints a horrifying picture of life at the hands of interrogators in the notorious U.S. military prison in Cuba. The book depicts long days in isolation, sometimes chained to the floor in agonizing positions, held in extreme temperatures, often deprived of food and sleep. On multiple occasions he describes being beaten and humiliated by his questioners. He says he was left "shaking like a Parkinson's patient" and felt one of his interrogators "was literally executing me but in a slow way."
    The 44-year-old electrical engineer, originally from Mauritania, has been held in Guantánamo Bay since 2002. He was accused of being a member of al Qaeda and of recruiting three of the hijackers in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as being involved in other terror plots in Canada and the United States. He's never been charged and his lawyers say there is very little evidence against him.
    Slahi admits to traveling to Afghanistan to fight in the early 1990s, when the U.S. was supporting the mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet Union. He pledged allegiance to al Qaeda in 1991 but claims he broke ties with the group shortly after.
    The U.S. military continues to hold Slahi as an enemy combatant under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force of 2001 informed by the laws of war, according to Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Myles Caggins.
    Guantánamo Diary is the first published account from a serving detainee which is being made available to the public. Slahi hand-wrote the manuscript in his cell in 2005 and it took nearly seven years for Slahi's lawyers to get it approved for release. He describes his first few years of detention in what he calls his "endless world tour" of interrogation from Mauritania, to Jordan, to Afghanistan and finally Cuba.
    Fmr. Prosecutor: 'No good reason for Guantanmo' 04:29
    PLAY VIDEO
    In his early years at Guantánamo, Slahi was exposed to a number of special interrogation techniques that were personally signed off by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, according to reports by the Armed Services Committee and the Department of Justice. That included sensory and sleep deprivation, designed to grind him down, which wreaked havoc on his physical and mental health.
    "I couldn't tell a thing about days going by or time passing; my time consisted of a crazy darkness all the time," Slahi writes. "I was starved for long periods and then given food but not given time to eat... "You have three minutes. Eat!" a guard would yell at me, and then after about half a minute he would grab the plate. "You're done!"".
    Slahi says the brutality reached a peak in late 2003.
    "I thought they were going to execute me," Slahi writes. "Thanks to the beating I wasn't able to stand, so [redacted] and the other guard dragged me out with my toes tracing the way and threw me in the truck, which immediately took off. The beating party would go on for the next three or four hours."
    This period culminated in him being taken on a boat ride during which he was blindfolded and he says beaten for several hours.
    It was during this time that Slahi says he began to make false confessions in order to stop the torture. At one point he says to his interrogator "Just tell me the right answer. Is it good to say yes or to say no?"
    President Barack Obama signed an executive order on January 22, 2009, to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. Nearly six years later, the prison for terrorism suspects remains open. Click through for a look inside the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/11/opinion/warren-guantanamo-bay/index.html&quot;&gt;controversial facility&lt;/a&gt;. Here, President George W. Bush&#39;s official picture is replaced by Obama&#39;s in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo on January 20, 2009, the day the latter was sworn in as president.
    EXPAND GALLERY
    Responding to Slahi's allegations of torture, Caggins, the Pentagon spokesman, pointed to a number of investigations into Guantánamo detainee treatment. Many of Slahi's claims are corroborated by reports published by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee and the Department of Justice in 2008. The boat incident which Slahi describes in detail is mentioned in both reports, although neither provide complete details about what happened during this trip. Caggins also said "Slahi is eligible to appear before a Periodic Review Board to assess whether his continued detention at Guantanamo remains necessary."
    Even in its published form, portions of Slahi's account are redacted. The U.S. Department of Defense says this was necessary to protect U.S. personnel and national security. In some sections of the book, several pages at a time are completely blacked out.
    Slahi's lawyers hope the book will build pressure on the government to finally let him go. In 2010 a district court judge ruled he was being held unlawfully and ordered his immediate release. But the government appealed that decision and the case has been in legal limbo ever since.
    "Unfortunately for the government -- and fortunately for the rest of us -- these secrets are out now," Slahi's lawyer, Nancy Hollander, told CNN. "The United States can't keep secret these things that it does any longer -- and it needs to close Guantanamo. It's as simple as that."
    When U.S. President Barack Obama took office in 2008 he promised to close Guantánamo, but as he enters his seventh year in the White House 122 prisoners remain. At its peak there were more than 700. In Tuesday's State of the Union address Obama said his administration will work to finally "finish the job" and close it down.
    "As Americans, we have a profound commitment to justice - so it makes no sense to spend $3 million per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit," Obama said. "I will not relent in my determination to shut it down. It's not who we are. It's time to close Gitmo."



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    The Cornerstone Of American Idiocracy

    January 22, 2015, 6:49 am
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    An advertisement featured on CNN's website:


    The brain dead leading the brain dead?

    Alan: "Brain-Dead Simple" is reprised in the dunderheaded history of "Airborne,""drug of choice" for Amurricans wishing to avoid communicable disease while flying on commercial airlines. As touted (before a court order blocked the advertisement) "Airborne Is The Only Medicine Created By A School Teacher." Learn more about Airborne's freak show at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_%28dietary_supplement%29 

    Consider... 

    ... and wince.

    Americans who deny global warming, evolution and the need for government coordination of universal healthcare want their medicines designed by school teachers and farmers.

    "The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic

    "People Who Watch Only Fox News 
    Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"

    Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die

    "Are Republicans Insane?"

    "American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"

    "The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"

    "Do Republicans Do Anything But Piss, Moan, Bitch, Whine?"

    "The Party of Personal Responsibility" Is "The Party Of Personal Irresponsibility"

    Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe, A Lockstep Relationship

    How the death of epistemology validates rhetorical vapidity:
    1. The Guardian: "John Oliver's Viral Video Is The Best Climate Change Debate You'll Ever See"
      1. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-guardian-john-olivers-viral-video.html

    "A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"

    "Republicans For Revolution," A Study In Anarchic Apocalypticism

    "Bank On It: The South Is Always Wrong"

    "Why The Bible Belt Is Its Own Worst Enemy"
    1. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-bible-belt-is-christianitys-enemy.html

    Republican Party Is "Full Of Racists," Colin Powell's Chief Of Staff

    George McGovern: "The Case For Liberalism, A Defense Of The Future Against The Past"

    Conservative Norm Ornstein: The Media Ignore Republican Lunacy

    "Let's Just Say It. The Republicans Are The Problem"
    Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann

    "Just How Far Out Is The Republican Fringe?" Norm Ornstein (And Is It The Fringe?)

    "It's Even Worse Than It Looks"
    Conservative Norm Ornstein and Liberal Thomas Mann

    "When Extremism Goes Mainstream"
    Conservative Norm Ornstein

    "The Real Death Panels," Conservative Norm Ornstein

    Major General Smedley Butler: Do Wars Really Defend America’s Freedom?



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    The Single Greatest Thing The U.S. Can Do To Quell Terror Is To Close Gitmo

    January 22, 2015, 7:22 am
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    The Ongoing Battle Between Wisdom And Common Sense

    Alan: With remarkable regularity, "common sense" is an epistemological blunder whereby innately fearful people, overtaken by knee-jerk alarmism, are unable to conceive the realities of paradox, irony and any compromise that is good "on balance" even if not perfect.


    "Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"

    The Cornerstone Of American Idiocracy

    "The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  
    "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

    More Merton Quotes



    Alan: Remember when Congress changed the name of "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries" 
    as prelude to Uncle Sam's "common sense" invasion of Iraq?

    "Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"

    "Terrorism And The Other Religions"

    Uncle Sam's Mercenary Christians Kill 17 Iraqi Civilians. 2 Frenchmen Kill 12 In Paris


    Cheney's Lucid 1994 Rationale For NOT Invading Iraq. Conservatives "Must" See This

    Hans Blix' Fruitless Search For WMD And Bush/Cheney's Rush To War In Iraq

    Sen. Graham: 'It Is Insane to Be Letting These People Out of Gitmo'

    January 15, 2015 - 6:43 AM


    By Susan Jones
    gitmo
    In this March 1, 2002 file photo, a detainee is escorted to interrogation by U.S. military guards at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton, File)
    (CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration on Wednesday released five more Guantanamo Bay detainees, just one week after the Paris terror attacks; and one day after Senate Republicans announced their plan to stop Obama from sending high- and medium-risk enemies to third countries that supposedly will monitor them.
    "The war on terror has reached a lethal phase, and it is insane to be letting these people out of Gitmo to go back to the fight," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren Wednesday night.
    The five latest Gitmo releases are all men from Yemen with links to al-Qaida. They were captured in Pakistan. Four will be sent to Oman and one to Estonia, the Pentagon said.
    "The president of the United States has concluded that the war on terror has reached a point that we can safely release people from Gitmo. The best I can say about him is, he's unfocused," Graham said. "That's delusional thinking. The war on terror has reached a lethal phase, and it is insane to be letting these people out of Gitmo to go back to the fight. Thirty percent of the people released already have gone back to the fight.
    "I believe the war has hit a point where we need to keep these guys in jail, at least for a couple years, until we can get a grip on what's going on throughout the world, particularly Iraq and Syria. Iraq and Syria are great platforms for radical Islamists to attack this county. And the president's going send them some reinforcements by
    letting people out of Gitmo. That makes no sense."
    On Tuesday, Graham and other Republicans joined Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) in introducing legislation that would stop most Gitmo releases.
    The Detaining Terrorists to Protect America Act of 2015 would suspend international transfers of high- and medium-risk detainees, prohibit transfers of Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, extend the current prohibition on transfers to the U.S., and increase transparency regarding risk assessments of the remaining Guantanamo detainees.
    “It’s clear that we need a time out,” Ayotte said at a news conference on Tuesday. "Those that have been released from Guantanamo by not only this administration but the Bush administration as well, if you put those numbers together, we have almost a 30 percent suspected or confirmed cases of re-engagement of terrorism of those who have been released from Guantanamo."
    Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Van Susteren on Tuesday that he supports Ayotte's bill.
    "The problem is that the president has actually been quickening the releases to the point where 15 were released in Decmeber alone. Very little surveillance. Really, there's not a chance or the opportunity to make sure they don't go back into the fight. We now have over 100 who have been confirmed back into the fight against us."
    Barrasso said the topic of the Gitmo releases did not come up when Republicans met with Obama at the white House on Tuesday, although the topic of national security did. He said the Gitmo controversy surely will be raised during upcoming Senate confirmation hearings for Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense.
    "The risk is to the homeland. That's the risk with having this many people go back into the fight," Barrasso concluded.
    An Army Reserve Medical Officer who formerly worked at Guantanamo Bay has written a new book about his experience there. Montgomery Granger told "Fox and Friends" Thursday morning he objects to the Gitmo releases:
    "I think every American needs to ask themselves this question: Do you feel safer with detainees in or out of Gitmo? And if the answer is in, then you need to cry it from the tallest mountaintop; you need to call your representatives and your senators and get them to pass a bill that's in Congress right now to stop the release of detainees."


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    Republicans Scrap An Anti-Abortion Bill. The Rank And File Stay Silent... Or Applaud!

    January 22, 2015, 8:11 am
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    A human zygote in the 8 cell stage.
    Human zygote.
    Alan: It has long been clear that Republicans have no intention of enacting a blanket ban on abortion. 

    If a hundred Republican parents had a 12 year old daughter rape-impregnated by Willie Horton you can safely bet The Eternal Salvation of your bloodline forever (in both directions) that 99% of them would clamor for safe, legal abortion. 

    Here's the kicker...

    Once you draw the line "somewhere," citizens can draw the line "anywhere" their conscience sees fit.

    Compendium Of Pax Posts On Abortion

    Republicans scrap a bill on abortion. "House Republican leaders abruptly dropped plans late Wednesday to vote on an anti-abortion bill amid a revolt by female GOP lawmakers concerned that the legislation's restrictive language would once again spoil the party's chances of broadening its appeal to women and younger voters." Ed O'Keefe in The Washington Post.

    Politically, the retreat was a sensible one. "A renewed effort to curb abortion rights carried severe risk not just for the House GOP Caucus but the party's eventual presidential nominee. Because in a race against Hillary Clinton, the GOP starts at a stark disadvantage among a very specific group of voters it needs to start peeling away from Democrats if it intends to take the White House: white, college-educated women. These are mostly suburban, moderate voters who skew socially moderate but are hardly fiscally progressive; in other words, they're broadly supportive of abortion rights but generally opposed to higher taxes." Alex Roarty in National Journal.

    Human Person?
    (Any room for democratic debate?)


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    Head of Gitmo Bay Navy base fired amid probe

    January 22, 2015, 10:31 am
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    Capt. John Nettleton

    Head of Gitmo Bay Navy base fired amid probe


    The head of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay was removed from command for unspecified misconduct amid a Naval Criminal Investigative Service Investigation.
    Capt. John Nettleton is being investigated in connection with an alleged affair with a woman on the base and the recent death of her husband, federal officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Wednesday.
    Rear Adm. Mary Jackson, head of Navy Region Southeast, fired Nettleton on Wednesday "due to loss of confidence in Nettleton's ability to command," the region said in a press release. Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, operated by a federal joint task force, is located within the naval air station but Nettleton had no role in its operation.
    "Due to an ongoing NCIS investigation, it is not appropriate for the Navy to provide additional details concerning the relief," the statement said.
    Other officials said Nettleton is under investigation in connection with the death of Christopher Tur, who was found dead Jan. 11. The U.S. Coast Guard found Tur, a civilian, dead in Guantanamo Bay waters on the western side of the base.
    USA TODAY
    Inside peek at Gitmo, where War on Terror might end
    His wife, also a civilian, had reported him missing the day before, officials said.
    Mike Andrews, spokesman for Navy Region Southwest, also said he could not comment on the reasons for Nettleton's dismissal while the Navy criminal investigation continues. Jackson removed Nettleton after preliminary findings.
    Officials said the alleged affair between Nettleton and Tur's wife was discovered during the course of the NCIS investigation into Tur's death. Officials did not provide any details on the cause of Tur's death.
    Nettleton began his service as an enlisted Marine infantryman and was commissioned as a helicopter pilot in 1989. He has deployed aboard the carriers Theodore Roosevelt and Saratoga and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm.
    He took command of the controversial naval station in June 2012. Nettleton, who has been temporarily reassigned to Navy Region Southeast in Jacksonville, Fla., did not immediately respond to e-mail seeking comment.
    Tur worked at the Navy Exchange on the base and his wife is the director of the Navy Fleet and Family Services Center, officials said. They arrived on the base in 2011.
    Nettleton is the first Navy commanding officer to be fired in this year. Last year, about two dozen were fired for reasons ranging from striking a channel buoy to remaining holed up for long stretches of an overseas deployment.
    Contributing: The Associated Press

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