Like I said in my previous post, get ready for another debt limit fight. Right on queue Matt Drudge has this up:
But what if Drudge wasn't some partisan hack? Even better, what if Drudge was operating from the left? Then we would maybe see a headline like this:
Yeah - that looks a lot better!
Overnight a new tropical depression got its act together, pulled in tighter and became our next hurricane, Katia. The storm is still way out in the Atlantic, but it’s moving very fast and predicted to become a major hurricane by Sunday, as seen on the 5-day probability cone:
Compare this to the 5-day cone from Irene exactly a week ago:
Irene didn’t reach major status until after it got past Cuba, even though it was predicted to reach that status when passing the Dominion Republic. Hurricane scientology 101 – warmer waters increase hurricanes. That’s important to note considering Katia is expected to reach the major status while it’s still way out and has plenty of extra warm water to travel across before reaching any major land.
It’s still too early to tell how this storm will affect the United States, but so far the projections have it pretty close to the same path as Irene. Should it continue that path, the eastern coast will be in for another pounding and mass destruction. I’m not sure if the people or our economy can really handle that right now.
If the people of this country paid as much attention to the bankers who destroyed this economy or the health insurance companies that drop coverage on people that need it the most, leaving them for dead (children included!) as they did the Casey Anthony trial, maybe we could start fixing things.
People who believe the Republicans want to turn this economy around are sadly mistaken:
The concern arises as numerous top Republicans react coldly to the prospect of temporarily reducing the payroll tax burden on employers and employees -- to juice the economy before federal spending draws down in the years ahead.
Traditionally, and particularly in tough economic times, this and a handful of other stimulative policies have enjoyed bipartisan support. But with the outcome of the 2012 election likely to hinge on the nation's economic trajectory, the GOP is mysteriously rethinking those positions. And Democrats are starting to note of the suspicious timing.
Got that? The Republicans are opposing tax cuts because it might hurt their chances in the elections next year. This is another case of "party before country" and anyone supporting Republicans should be ashamed of that fact.
Of course the Republicans don't deserve all the blame on this. What they are doing is just playing the new system of politics that has been created in this country. Politics has become a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry and by default any politician isn't a good sportsman. They will lie, cheat and steal to come out on top. The biggest failure this highlights is that of the free market, especially when it filters down into our elections.
Finally we get some good news on the job front:
The U.S. economy added 103,000 jobs in the final month of 2010 while the nation’s unemployment rate fell to 9.4%, the lowest level since May 2009, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Payrolls for November and October were also revised higher by 70,000 jobs, the government said. Read the full report.
What’s interesting there is that the job market was better in October and November than first anticipated. I’m sure a lot on the right will try to swing these numbers as being good for the GOP, but October was before the election. You can’t spin time, even though they do try.
This month the state's part-time legislature goes back into session, and the state is starting at potentially a $25 billion deficit on a two-year budget of around $95 billion. That's enormous. And there's not much fat to cut. The whole budget is basically education and healthcare spending. Cutting everything else wouldn't do the trick. And though raising this kind of money would be easy on an economy of $1.2 trillion, the new GOP mega-majority in Congress is firmly against raising any revenue.
So the bi-ennial legislature, which convenes this month, faces some hard cuts. Some in the Texas GDP haveadvocated dropping Medicaid altogether to save money.
And the most important part of the article?
So why haven't we heard more about Texas, one of the most important economy's in America? Well, it's because it doesn't fit the script. It's a pro-business, lean-spending, no-union state. You can't fit it into a nice storyline, so it's ignored.
True dat! This isn’t some blue state like California or Illinois. This is the heart of red state America and God forbid the “liberal” media makes them look bad!
A lot of talk yesterday about the foreclosure scandal sweeping the nation. With calls mounting for Congress to intervene, we are starting to see bigger names in Washington coming out to protect the poor bankers. Here’s Eric Cantor coming to their defense yesterday:
What we’re talking about, Debbie, you have 10 percent, if that, of the population who are now in a foreclosure situation or in a mortgage that they have been unable to meet the obligations… Now, come on, people have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don’t need government intervening in every step of every aspect of this economy.
Yet when the bankers didn’t take the responsibility of properly filing paperwork or even verify that people should be foreclosed on, Cantor didn’t stand up and say they needed to take responsibility.
But even more infuriating is to hear a key White House advisor also come out and more or less defend the bankers:
President Barack Obama's top adviser said Sunday that he wants Congress to address improper foreclosures but indicated that the White House doesn't support calls for a national moratorium.
I really wish our country would make such bold moves:
Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right for every citizen.
From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection.
Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015.
In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law.
The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadband lines that can run at a minimum 1Mbps speed.
And yet where I live (20 miles north of Cincinnati), you can go 1 mile from my house and be in an area that does not have broadband.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until someone listens; unless America embraces the cornerstone of the 21st century economy, our economic future will remain bleak. The problem is that we have to many dinosaurs making our laws and they don’t realize that their inability to adapt is killing us. We really need to follow what the Finns have done and embrace the technology that will continue to mold our future.
Joe Barton apologizing for BP has been the talk of the media and beltway for the past several days, but Barton wasn't alone. He was just saying what a lot of prominent GOPers are thinking, such as Bill Kristol:
Transcript via Think Progress:
WALLACE: Question Bill Kristol, is the President standing up to big business or is he bullying boardrooms?
KRISTOL: I think his own Interior Secretary said something about keeping his foot on the throat of BP, which doesn’t sound like standing up to anyone. It sounds like bullying. I have no sympathy for BP. We have an article in the Weekly Standard this week saying that BP should stand for “Beyond Pathetic.” I think it was the least responsible of the Big Oil companies. It has managed to handle itself pretty poorly even since the disaster let alone before. But it’s not healthy for the country, for the economy as a whole, for the President to bully different companies and different industries and I think it’s not helping us.
Welcome to the new meme, same as the old meme. Republicans view themselves as the "last defenders of big business", and they don't care if it destroys our environment or economy. With the oil leak exposing this dangerous view of the GOP, November should be a little easier on Democrats.
As I’ve said countless times before; our nation is falling way behind in the world of internet communications. The latest international rankings now has the U.S. in 26th place when it comes to internet speed:
When South Koreans tested their wired broadband connections over the past 30 days, they found an average downstream speed of 34.14M bps (bits per second), according to the Net Index, which was introduced on Tuesday by Ookla, the creator of Speedtest. That was several times the worldwide average of 7.67M bps and 100 times as fast as the 340K bps downstream speed in Sudan, the lowest average out of 152 ranked countries.
Latvia (24.29M bps), the Republic of Moldova (21.37M bps), Japan (20.29M bps) and Sweden (19.78M bps) rounded out the top five countries for downstream broadband. The U.S. was ranked 26th in the world, with an average downstream speed of 10.16M bps. Upstream rankings were similar, with South Korea leading at 18.04M bps and the U.S. in 27th place with 2.21M bps. The world average was 2.10M bps.
This also doesn’t count penetration and price. The U.S. has some of the highest cost internet and still has large portions of the country without access to broadband. It’s really hard for us to compete in a 21st century economy with 20th century technology. If we don’t wake up soon, it will be too late and too costly to recover.
There is some mixed news on the jobs front. In April there were 290,000 new jobs created, but unemployment also jumped to 9.9%:
More confident employers stepped up job creation in April, expanding payrolls by 290,000, the most in four years. The jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent as people streamed back into the market looking for work.
The hiring of 66,000 temporary government workers to conduct the census helped overall payroll growth last month. However, private employers - the backbone of the economy - boosted jobs, too. They added a surprisingly strong 231,000 positions last month, also the most since March 2006, the Labor Department reported Friday.
I like how the WaPo is trying to put a nail in a right wing talking point from the get go. They acknowledge the temporary government workers for the census, but also point out that private employers also added the most jobs in 4 years.
But here is what really gets me:
The reports came ahead of the Labor Department's monthly jobs figures, scheduled for release Friday. The April data are expected to show a gain of 187,000 jobs, compared to an increase of 162,000 jobs in March, with the unemployment rate holding at 9.7%.
So we added over 100,000 more jobs than the economists were predicting. I wonder how that will play with Fox News, who put out a breaking news alert yesterday saying the jobs report won’t meet expectations? Sounds like they got that one totally wrong, which isn’t all that uncommon for Fox.
That’s what leading economists are saying (via Cesca):
The recovery is shaping up to be stronger than expected and there is little risk the economy will slip back into a recession, according to USA TODAY's quarterly survey of 46 leading economists.
Yet most still say the rebound will fall short of the sharp, V-shaped upturns that often follow severe slumps, and the 9.7% jobless rate will fall slowly.
As the Fed meets to assess the economy this week, seven in 10 economists say they're more optimistic than they were three months ago.
"I think we've gotten to a point where it's a self-sustaining recovery," says Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss.
Even Joe Scarborough is going on about the economy improving this morning. This kind of news will really help Democrats out this fall, especially if you tie it to the Republicans filibustering financial reform. Then you can also add the countless sound bites of Republicans saying “get rid of the stimulus” and you got a big winning campaign for the Democrats. Now we only need the powers to be to seize on all this news and inform the American people of what is happening.
From Another Black Conservative:
This story, like so many we have all heard before, is just more proof that the big government socialist model is ineffective. Just think, horny incompetents like the ones at the SEC will soon be involved with your health care.
First I really don’t see how this has anything to do with socialism. It sounds like someone needs to meet Mr. Dictionary. But even more interesting is how they are ignoring the elephant in the room. That elephant is named Chris Cox. These incidents happened when he was the head of the SEC, before President Obama took the oath of office. Cox, a former Republican congressman, was appointed by Bush and during his tenure as the chairman of the SEC we saw porn-gate erupt.
So what proof does this story really offer? If I had to pick something, I would say it proves that Republicans can not lead. They let the people under their command do whatever they want, like surf the internet for porn while the economy, which they are supposed to protect, goes over the cliff.
We are finally starting to see some job growth, though unemployment still remains at 9.7%:
The nation's economy posted its largest job gain in three years in March, while the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the third straight month.
The increase is the latest sign that the economic recovery is sustainable and healing in the job market is beginning. Still, the healing is likely to be slow, and most economists don't expect job creation to be fast enough this year to rapidly reduce the unemployment rate.
The Labor Department said employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the most since the recession began but below analysts' expectations of 190,000. The total includes 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S. Census, also fewer than many economists forecast.
