Sunday, May 10, 2009
I believe America is a right of center nation. I believe the Republican Party is a right of center party. – John McCain
The Republicans aren't a party, they're a cult. – Bill Schneider, moderately conservative CNN commentator http://www.samefacts.com/archives/politics_and_leadership_/2009/05/bill_schneider_on_the_republican_party_and_pragmatism.php
Clean(?) Coal: China Forges Ahead While environmentalists assert that truly clean coal is not possible, the non-environmentalists announce that there is a ‘clean coal gap.’
China’s frenetic construction of coal-fired power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, making it the world’s largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet.
But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost.
While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant that uses extremely hot steam, China has begun building such plants at a rate of one a month.
Construction has stalled in the United States on a new generation of low-pollution power plants that turn coal into a gas before burning it, although Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that the Obama administration might revive one power plant of this type. But China has already approved equipment purchases for just such a power plant, to be assembled soon in a muddy field here in Tianjin. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11coal.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
Health Care Industry: ‘Keep the System; We’ll make it more efficient’:
Volunteering to "do our part" to tackle runaway health costs, leading groups in the health-care industry have offered to squeeze $2 trillion in savings from projected increases over the next decade, White House officials said yesterday.
The pledge comes amid a debate over how, or whether, to overhaul the nation's health-care system, and Obama administration officials predicted that it will significantly increase momentum for passing such changes this year.
The groups aim to achieve the proposed savings by using new efficiencies to trim the rise in health-care costs by 1.5 percent a year, the officials said. That would carry huge implications both for the national economy and the federal budget, both of which are significantly affected by health-care expenses.
Representatives from half a dozen health industry trade groups are scheduled to make a formal offer today in a White House meeting with President Obama.
"I don't think there can be a more significant step to help struggling families and the federal budget," a senior administration official said in a conference call with reporters. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the offer remains tentative.
The White House projects that the savings after five years under the proposal would mean about $2,500 a year in lower health-care bills for a family of four. Within 10 years, the savings would "virtually eliminate" the nation's budget deficit.
Despite such heady predictions, many aspects of the plan remain unclear. The groups did not spell out yesterday how they plan to reach such a target, and in a letter to Obama they offer only a broad pledge, not an outright commitment. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051002222_pf.html
Unemployment: Its growth is slowing, so as some observe, it no longer feels like an ‘economic abyss’ but rather a ‘steep but orderly decline.’ It’s becoming more common that major media are noting that the official unemployment rate is only a bit more than the actual rate, i.e. adding the ‘discouraged’ workers who have given up looking, which now approaches 16%.
he pace of job losses slowed considerably during the month of April, adding to hopes that the nation's steep economic downturn may be nearing a bottom.
Employers cut 539,000 jobs last month, the fewest in six months and significantly fewer than the 699,000 jobs that had been lost the previous month, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday.
Still, the job market for Americans is difficult and getting worse. The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 8.9% in April, the highest since 1983 and up from 8.5% the previous month.
"We pulled the cord and the parachute was packed. We're still falling, but we're not in free fall anymore," said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Chicago-based Mesirow Financial. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fi-unemployment9-2009may09,0,937298,print.story
Empathy and the Supreme Court The Conservatives have grabbed onto Obama’s mentioning his preference for a judge with the capacity for “empathy.” The conservative Talking Point has been that this is code for “activist judge” which is code for “pro-abortion.”
Eric Altermann:
In right-wing mythology, the “activist judge” is often a “codeword” for a baby-killing and gay-marriage loving closet Commie that liberals invite to the bench to mock our founders’ intentions. In fact, it’s Opposite Day yet again in conservative world, should anyone bother to examine the actual evidence.
In Why We’re Liberals, I sought to examine the “activist judge” charge and examined the careful work of two sets of studies, each deploying different but entirely credible—and sensible—sets of criteria to scrutinize the history of judicial decision-making. Paul Gewirtz and Chad Golder of Yale Law School measured “activism” by calculating the number of decisions taken that deliberately declared congressionally sanctioned legislation as unconstitutional. They discovered that, beginning in 1994, Republican-appointed justices struck down considerably more laws than their Democratic-appointed counterparts. Meanwhile, Thomas Miles and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School looked at the frequency with which appointed justices chose to strike down acts of the executive branch. They found that, between 1989 and 2005, “the most liberal members of the Court were the most likely to vote to uphold the decisions of the executive branch. The most conservative members of the Court were the least likely to vote to uphold those decisions.”
Perhaps the great Ronald Reagan put it best when he explained, “Facts are stupid things….” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/05/ta050709.html/print.html
Pelosi (cont.) Greg Sargent thinks it’s not conclusive that Pelosi knew all:
But a letter that accompanied these documents, written by the head of the CIA, appears to clearly concede that the information in the docs about who was briefed and when may not be accurate or reliable.
Republicans are pointing to the documents — which were produced by the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence, and sent to select members of Congress — to charge that Pelosi and other Dems have been lying about what they knew about waterboarding and when.
But the docs were accompanied by a letter from CIA chief Leon Panetta that appears to suggest the CIA can’t promise that the info is right. The letter was sent along with the documents to GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra, a leading critic of Dems on torture, and Dem Rep Silvestre Reyes, the chairman of the intelligence committee.
…I’ve just learned that this same letter was also sent to GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra, a leading proponent of the claim that Dems knew the full scope of the torture program early on. I’ve edited the above to reflect this.
I’ve obtained the letter to Hoekstra…What this means is that the Republican who has lodged the highest-profile attacks on Dems over what they knew and when has been directly informed by the CIA that the info on the briefings may not be reliable. http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/cia-admits-that-info-about-torture-briefings-for-dems-may-not-be-accurate/?ref=fp3
…though this Wall Street Journal article argues she was briefed more than once on CIA torture:
These days, Speaker Pelosi insists she heard and saw no evil. "We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used," she told reporters late last month. "What they did tell us is that they had . . . the Office of Legal Counsel opinions [and] that they could be used, but not that they would."
That doesn't square with the memory of Mr. Goss, who has noted that "we were briefed, and we certainly understood what the CIA was doing," adding that "Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough."
Ms. Pelosi's denials are also difficult to square with a chronology of 40 CIA briefings to Congressional Members compiled by the CIA and released this week by Director Leon Panetta. For the September 4, 2002 meeting, the CIA's summary of the discussion reads: "Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed." We emphasize the verb tense to underscore the contradiction with Ms. Pelosi's categorical denials of last month.
Ms. Pelosi was replaced by Jane Harman as the Committee's ranking member, but the bipartisan briefings continued. On February 4, 2003, Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were given a briefing in which "EITs [were] 'described in considerable detail,' including 'how the water board was used.' The process by which the techniques were approved by DoJ was also raised." The document also adds that Mr. Rockefeller, the Committee's ranking Democrat, was later given an "individual briefing." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124182533815302417.html#
Chocolate: High quality, boutique, healthy Within the unappealing article came the good news:
The little wrapped chocolates were passed around the Upper West Side living room on a silver tray, plucked one at a time by the manicured hands of the guests perched on sofas and kitchen chairs.
“Probiotic,” the hostess of the tasting, Patricia Watt, a theater producer, told a group seemingly culled from the front page, gossip sheets and back copies of Playbill. They chewed and nodded with approval, among them a prominent 9/11 widow, a bankruptcy lawyer, an Argentinean investor and avid polo player, a Pace University student, and a former sister-in-law of the last president.
Ms. Watt said a few words about the chocolate, pitched as being so rich in antioxidants that, if eaten three times a day, it provides some nutritional benefits on the order of a pound of spinach. Then she said a few more, about a new way to make some money in a shaky economy. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/nyregion/10chocolate.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
My next 100 days will be so successful I will complete them in 72 days. And, on the 73rd day, I will rest. – Obama, White House Correspondents Dinner
-R
