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Cargo Collective is selling underwear that has a surprise message for TSA airport scanners.
“Now there’s a way to protest those intrusive TSA X-ray scanners without saying a word. 4th Amendment Metallic ink-printed undershirts and underwear. Assert your rights without saying a word.”
Political Wire:
Few Think Republicans Will Budge
A new McClatchy-Marist Poll finds just 28% of voters think the Republicans in Congress will negotiate with President Obama and Democrats. Instead, 64% believe the Republicans will hold fast to their positions and 7% are unsure.
It’s another case of the public being smarter than the politicos.
The Caucus, New York Times:
President Obama and Republican Congressional leaders emerged from a high-profile, post-election meeting on Tuesday with gracious words and pledges of cooperation but no concrete agreements on the fiscal and national security issues that divide them.
From an anonymous commenter over at Digby’s:
Maybe somebody has the dress that Obama was wearing when he gave Boehner a blow job.
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, in a Washington Post op-ed:
[Americans] want both parties to work together on policies that will help create the conditions for private-sector job growth… That’s why we made a pledge to America to cut spending, rein in government, and permanently extend the current tax rates…
All measures that are guaranteed to keep the economy–and the job market–shrinking.
Are they purposely trying to destroy the country?
Firedoglake:
OFA Tries to Get Supporters to Write Letters to the Editor Praising a Federal Worker Pay Freeze
We’ve officially gone around the bend.
OFA, the organizing arm of the DNC, originally began its life as an organization trying to get someone elected on the platform of hope, change, and progressive policies. You had a public option in health care, cap and trade, a more progressive tax system, diplomacy abroad, and a belief in American values of equality and opportunity.
Here’s what OFA is reduced to… [T]he organizing project of the Democratic National Committee wants you to organize in support of freezing public worker salaries.
And don’t worry, later in the email, OFA tells you how the Administration has really been responsible on this issue – they’ve frozen salaries of White House officials and political appointees, froze non-defense discretionary spending, and more.
So go out there and sharpen those pencils and tell everyone how great it is to cut people’s pay!
No joke: http://my.barackobama.com/FiscalResponsibilityLTE
Remember when Obama promised transparency? What a crock THAT was. It takes outsiders to reveal what’s going on inside our government.
The central goal of WikiLeaks is to prevent the world’s most powerful factions — including the sprawling, imperial U.S. Government — from continuing to operate in the dark and without restraints. Most of the institutions which are supposed to perform that function — beginning with the U.S. Congress and the American media — not only fail to do so, but are active participants in maintaining the veil of secrecy. WikiLeaks, for whatever its flaws, is one of the very few entities shining a vitally needed light on all of this. It’s hardly surprising, then, that those factions — and their hordes of spokespeople, followers and enablers — see WikiLeaks as a force for evil. That’s evidence of how much good they are doing…
And Assange, in an interview with Forbes, says that the next leak will target a major U.S. bank.
No more excuses, no more holdups.
Think Progress:
The Pentagon’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Report Finds Majority Of Servicemembers Wouldn’t Oppose Repeal
[Today], in a press conference announcing the results of the Pentagon’s 10-month review of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Working Group co-chairs Defense Department General Counsel Jeh C. Johnson and Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, concluded that “the risk of repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to overall military effectiveness is low.” “We conclude that, while a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will likely, in the short term, bring about some limited and isolated disruption to unit cohesion and retention, we do not believe this disruption will be widespread or long-lasting, and can be adequately addressed by the recommendations we offer,” Ham said in his statement.
Johnson added that resistance to repeal “is driven by misperceptions and stereotypes,” and predicted that lifting the ban would not result in a mass coming out of gay troops. “We believe that most would continue to be private and discreet about their personal lives,” he said.
Dean Baker, thanks to Undernews:
Suppose that school teachers could keep teaching and get regular promotions year after year no matter how badly they performed in the classroom. Suppose also that there was no incentive to teach well. Economic theory predicts that we would get a large number of unmotivated mediocre teachers.
Okay, suppose that the people who design economic policy never need to worry about getting fired no matter how badly their policies turn out. They continue to hold their jobs and get regular promotions. Under such circumstances we should expect that we would get mediocre economists.
If there is no incentive to get things rights, that economists should expect that economic policy will be largely done by people who are not competent.
Ditto political pundits.
Think Progress:
Tea Party Nation President Says It ‘Makes A Lot Of Sense’ To Restrict Voting Only To Property Owners
Every week, the Tea Party Nation hosts a weekly radio program, calling itself a “home for conservatives.” Two weeks ago, Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips hosted the program and discussed changes that he felt should be made to voting rights in the United States. He explained that the founders of the country originally put “certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote.” He continued, “One of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners”.
Perfectionism can wreck your holidays
Regular Walking May Slow Progress of Alzheimer’s
Running is hard on knees, ups osteoarthritis
How much exercise is enough?
Plus lots more.
In his latest bid to chip away at our nation’s trillion-dollar deficit, President Obama announced a new proposal Monday to freeze civilian federal employees’ salaries for the next two years, pointing to the need for all Americans to “sacrifice” for the good of the whole—except on Wall Street, apparently.
I was trying to think of a succinct way to respond to Obama’s plans to freeze federal pay. This expresses my sentiment fairly well:
Freeze Frame: Yep, that’s exactly what we needed: a transparently cynical policy gesture, trivial in scale but misguided in direction, and in effect conceding that your bitter political opponents have the right idea.
Steve Benen aptly notes that the problem with the pay freeze is that ”Obama appears to be getting literally nothing in return” from Republicans, with the only upshot being that “we’ll be left with 2.1 million Americans with less buying power.”
Down With Tyranny (thanks to Susie):
Obama has managed to piss off just about every core constituency that voted for him in 2008. It’s basically why Democrats and left-leaning independents didn’t show up at the polls 3 weeks ago and why the Democrats lost 63 House seats. It’s also why many political observers are certain he’s destined to be a one-term president who will go down in history– aside from being the first African-American president– as the president who followed George W. Bush and was just as awful. Who would have imagined such a thing was possible and that such promise would turn to shit?
My comment:
Those of us who imagined it were cursed and reviled and banned from most so-called progressive blogs.
And we were racists, too.
“A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats,” the New York Times reports.
“They show officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon — and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal.”
Washington Post: “The documents suggest U.S. diplomats were ordered to engage in low-level spying by obtaining foreign diplomats’ personal information, such as frequent-flier and credit card numbers, presumably to better track their movements.”
The Guardian: “They do not contain evidence of assassination plots, CIA bribery or such criminal enterprises as the Iran-Contra scandal.”
American officials in recent days have warned repeatedly that the release of documents by WikiLeaks could put people’s lives in danger.
But despite similar warnings before the previous two releases of classified U.S. intelligence reports by the website, U.S. officials concede that they have no evidence to date that the documents led to anyone’s death.
Marxism failed some time ago. It’s beginning to look as though capitalism will soon fail as well, if it has not done so already.
The cause of capitalism’s downfall is clear: People with a lot of money can purchase politicians and propagandists, and thus will always work to destroy government regulation. Without regulation, the financial system implodes — just as our streets would become too fearsome to navigate if all cops and streetlights disappeared.
What we need are some truly new ideas, not warmed-over 19th century notions. Get thee behind us, Adam Smith and Uncle Karl. Let’s rethink this thing from the ground up.
My comment:
I believe that communism and pure capitalism fail for the same reason–they both refuse to take into account human nature.
Communism, which in its ideal form is pure altruism, doesn’t work because it ignores self-interest and encourages freeloading. Laissez-faire capitalism, which in its essence is pure individual self-interest, doesn’t work because it promotes feelings of guilt in those who accumulate wealth—and even more important, it goes against the self-interest of the many by encouraging a dog-eat-dog world where only the unscrupulous get to the top.
I don’t know what we might want to call it, but regulated capitalism is what works.
Scientists Find Way to Partially Reverse Aging in Mice
Warning: Flu doesn’t take a holiday
Don’t Take a Holiday From Exercise
Revealed: Why Your Workout is Putting You to Sleep
Plus lots more.
Why Are We Getting Fatter? Seeking a Mysterious Culprit
U.S. Dietary Guidelines About to Change—Get Ready for a Serious Food Fight
Researchers: Sugar tempers temper
Low-glycemic-index diet can be confusing
Plus lots more.
Us, that is. Not the British or the Irish.
In the UK, the politicians cut education funding, the high school kids saw their future slipping away and took to the streets. Meanwhile, in the United States, people sit and wait quietly for crumbs to fall from the banquet table of the bankers
Tens of thousands of people took to the Irish streets Saturday to sound off against an IMF-backed austerity plan that would usher in deep spending cuts and higher taxes.
Economist’s View:
Holding Down the Economy for Political Gain?
I have been hesitant to embrace the idea that the GOP is intentionally trying to keep the economy from recovering in order to make political gains. Instead, I have taken the more charitable route of assuming the policies they are pushing arise from honestly held ideological differences. But if members of the GOP are willing to take positions that undermine national defense just to make political gains, why shouldn’t I assume they’d be willing to do something similar to the economy?:
…Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar … has unapologetically backed Obama in support of START… In an attempt to rally bipartisan support for the treaty, the White House has enlisted the kind of GOP foreign policy wise men that Lugar exemplifies — among them former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker. But they have had no success with members of their own party, and it has left them scratching their heads over the source of the GOP opposition.
Dave Johnson:
Tax The Rich: A Deficit Plan That Doesn’t Hit We, The People
Here is MY deficit-reduction plan. This plan does not reflect the views of anyone but myself — and maybe half the population. Unlike deficit plans from the “serious people” in DC, this one doesn’t annihilate the poor and gut Social Security and the middle class while passing even more of the benefits of our society up to a few at the top.
1) Restore pre-Reagan top tax rates. We didn’t have massive deficits until we reduced the top tax rates.
2) Income is income. No more reduced capital gains tax rate…
3) Income is income. Inheritance income should be taxed as income, except there should be a “democracy cap” on how much someone can inherit…
4) Businesses should be taxed or not taxed, but not taxed AND not taxed. They shouldn’t be able to use “double Irish” or “Dutch sandwich” or operate out of PO boxes in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands…
5) If you don’t pay your taxes We, the People won’t pay to provide you with services. We can start by not allowing you to have a driveway that connects to public streets, or water/sewer hookups or mail. Also we won’t enforce any contracts for you, including the one that says you “own” your house(s). And no government-developed Internet for you.
Read the whole thing. It’s a sensible plan.
Here’s my comment:
I met Bill Gates, Sr. at a meeting of nonprofits.
I asked if we could justify a progressive income tax by maintaining that people who own a lot of stock use governmental services such as courts, streets and other infrastructure, police to maintain order, and even education for their companies’ employees, much more than I.
He agreed with me and suggested that instead of calling it a progressive tax, we should call it a PROPORTIONAL tax. Which is what it is.
Bostonboomer at Sky Dancing:
George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen has an article in the Washington Post in which he argues that the TSA’s naked body scans and “enhanced pat down” searches are unconstitutional. Interestingly, he cites a 2006 decision by then circuit court judge Samuel Alito:
…Alito stressed that screening procedures must be both “minimally intrusive” and “effective” – in other words, they must be “well-tailored to protect personal privacy,” and they must deliver on their promise of discovering serious threats. Alito upheld the practices at an airport checkpoint where passengers were first screened with walk-through magnetometers and then, if they set off an alarm, with hand-held wands. He wrote that airport searches are reasonable if they escalate “in invasiveness only after a lower level of screening disclose[s] a reason to conduct a more probing search.”
As currently used in U.S. airports, the new full-body scanners fail all of Alito’s tests
