Unbelievable.
Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican had tried this?
Top aides to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called a last-minute, pre-emptive strike on Wednesday with a group of prominent Democratic lobbyists, warning them to advise their clients not to attend a meeting with Senate Republicans set for Thursday. (more…)
Noting that people “criticize me for harping on the obvious,” Calvin Coolidge justified that practice by saying, “If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.” Consider what individual Americans know they ought to do, and what their government should know not to do.
WSJ:
While the price of gasoline has risen 50% in the past five months, Democrats in Congress nevertheless seem determined to make our energy situation even worse. Case in point: Legislation sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey to establish a cap-and-trade system that will sharply limit carbon-dioxide emissions and increase energy prices. (more…)
June 10 (Bloomberg) – Edward E. Whitacre Jr. built AT&T Inc. into the biggest U.S. provider of telephone service over a 43-year-career. By his own admission, he becomes chairman of General Motors Corp. knowing nothing about the auto industry.
The 6-foot-4-inch Texan nicknamed “Big Ed” said steering the nation’s largest automaker after bankruptcy is “a public service.” People who know him say he can meet GM’s need for the type of transformation he orchestrated at Dallas-based AT&T.
“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor once described herself as “a product of affirmative action” who was admitted to two Ivy League schools despite scoring lower on standardized tests than many classmates, which she attributed to “cultural biases” that are “built into testing.”
AFP:
Over five years, researchers saw a remarkable link between tropical storms and “slow” earthquakes, a seismic beast first identified three decades ago.
Slow quakes entail a slippage in the fault that unfolds progressively over hours or days, rather than a sudden, violent release of the kind that destroys buildings and lives.
The sensors noted 20 such slow earthquakes, 11 of which coincided with typhoons, during the study period.
The 11 quakes were all stronger and characterised by more complex seismic waveforms than other “slow” events.
“These data are unequivocal in identifying typhoons as triggers of these slow quakes. The probability that they coincide by chance is vanishingly small,” said co-author Alan Linde of the Carnegie Institution for Science in the United States.
France’s highest court has inflicted an embarrassing blow to President Sarkozy by cutting the heart out of a law that was supposed to put France in the forefront of the fight against piracy on the internet.
The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy’s law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.
The strongly-worded decision means that Mr Sarkozy’s scheme has backfired and inadvertently boosted those who defend the free-for-all culture of the web.
Mr Sarkozy and Christine Albanel, his Culture Minister, forced the law through parliament despite misgivings from many of the President’s centre-right MPs. It was rejected in its first passage through Parliament.
“The Government is effectively saying to us, ‘Ignore other crime types’,” Australian Federal Police Association chief Jim Torr said.
The group had been trying for months, without success, to discuss the issue with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, he said.
Interpol has warned the carbon market will be irresistible to criminal gangs because of the vast amounts of cash to be made. Possible rorts include under-reporting of carbon emissions by firms and bogus carbon offset schemes.
“If someone is rorting it by even 1 per cent a year, we’re talking about many, many millions of dollars,” Mr Torr said.
FT:
Todd Stern, President Barack Obama’s special envoy on climate change, tried to sound optimistic when the US delegation ended its China visit but could hardly conceal that little had been achieved. Mr Stern, who before leaving for China had said, “Let’s get this damn thing started [between the US and China]“, did his best to paper over the lack of progress. “In our meetings, we deepened our dialogue with our Chinese counterparts through a candid discussion of the challenges we must overcome and the opportunities we must seize if we and the world are to reach an international climate agreement,” the US delegation said in a leaving statement. (more…)
AP:
Net worth represents total assets such as homes and checking accounts, minus liabilities like mortgages and credit card debt.
The damage to wealth in the first quarter came from the sinking stock market. The value of Americans’ stock holdings dropped 5.8 percent from the final quarter of last year.
Another hit came from falling house prices. The value of household real-estate holdings fell 2.4 percent. Collectively, homeowners had 41.4 percent equity in their homes in the first quarter. That was down from 42.9 percent in the fourth quarter.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Thursday spurned an offer from the United States to participate closely in its planned European anti-missile system, instead urging Washington to drop its proposals and start afresh.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday he was hopeful Moscow might consider hosting either radars or a data exchange center as it recognized the growing threat from Iran.
Creigh Deeds — fresh off his runaway victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for governor of Virginia — has moved out to a slight lead over Republican Bob McDonnell, his opponent in the Nov. 3 general election.
A Rasmussen Reports poll taken Wednesday had Deeds at 47 percent and McDonnell, a former state Attorney General, at 41 percent. The survey was conducted as Deeds, a state senator, was basking in the media spotlight after easily defeating primary foes Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, and former state Rep. Brian Moran.
WSJ:
Recent drafts can’t provide a definitive answer because most picks haven’t yet reached the major leagues. Earlier drafts generally indicate that teams with early picks get more value from college players. Writing for ESPN in 2004, Keith Scherercompared high-school and college players drafted between 1982 and 1994. He paired players of roughly the same age, so he was matching one year’s college draft class with the high-school class from three years earlier. Scherer concluded, “In almost every category, the collegians are the better bet.” (more…)
WSJ:
“Somebody needs to tell Denzel, Jack and the boys in Hollywood to put their brooms away,” Mike Bianchi exults in the Orlando Sentinel. “The Lakers aren’t sweeping; they’re sweating. The Magic have closed to within 2-1 and they’re actually within a missed alley-oop of being up 2-1. This series is far from over.”
Something makes Orlando an easy team to embrace. “The Magic is like a small-college team with a rumpled coach and an antiquated arena, and I mean that in the best way possible,” John Romano writes in the St. Petersburg Times.
ABC:
Letterman responded last night by saying that the joke was aimed at 18-year-old Bristol Palin, not Willow: “We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman said. (more…)
Business groups are daring President Barack Obama to impose pay caps on labor union bosses in light of indications the White House will limit how much corporate executives can be paid.
President Obama has argued “corporate greed” has contributed to the economic crisis and appointed a “compensation czar” to review executive pay for several companies receiving taxpayer bailout money Wednesday. Now White House officials have told the press legislation should be enacted to limit executive pay in private companies through nonbinding shareholders votes.
THR:
Conan O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” reversed its ratings decline and showed growth for the first time Wednesday night. Also, new ratings for O’Brien’s first week behind the “Tonight” desk give NBC a record-setting lead over CBS’ “Late Show” among adults 18-49.
After seven nights of drops, NBC’s “Tonight” may have found its bottom. The talk show rebounded 10% from Monday’s performance, climbing to a 3.2 last night in the household ratings.
AP:
Gene Sperling, a top counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, conceded to a congressional committee that imposing compensation caps on companies could lead to a flight of talent.
“I can say with certainty that nobody in the Obama administration is proposing such a thing,” he said.
Yet, at the same time, he and officials with the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission laid out a case for how payment structures rewarded short-term gains at the expense of long-term performance and contributed to the nation’s financial crisis.
The administration plans to seek legislation that would try to rein in compensation at publicly traded companies through nonbinding shareholder votes and by decreasing management influence on pay decisions.
AP:
GENEVA (AP) - The World Health Organization says the spread of swine flu has created the first globalflu epidemic in 41 years.
The announcement by WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan came Thursday as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere to near 30,000 cases.
Chan said she decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, meaning that a global outbreak of swine flu has begun, after an emergency meeting on swine flu with top experts.
All politics is local, former House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill famously said.
National GOP strategists whose job it is to recapture the House of Representatives may be about to learn that lesson again — the hard way.
That’s because Monday’s New York state Senate coup may lead to a new Democrat being sworn into Congress just in time for Labor Day.
The reason: the interests of New York Republicans don’t necessarily coincide with national GOP concerns.
President Barack Obama’s plan for a government health insurance programhas touched off an increasingly fierce Democratic civil war on Capitol Hill, as liberals fearful about squandering the chance to achieve that goal are taking aggressive steps to keep moderates in line.
When Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) called the public plan a deal breaker, a progressive group co-founded by Joe Trippi launched a campaign in Nebraska accusing the senator of being a “sellout” for special interests.
NRO:
The hottest political growth stock these last six months has been that of “independents.” A recent Pew Research Center study found that “the percentage of self-described political independents has steadily climbed, on a monthly basis, from 30 percent last December to 39 percent in April.” That, Pew adds, is a 70-year high. (more…)
This is good news. From the New York Times:
As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system.
The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors’ group on Monday in Chicago, could be a major hurdle for advocates of a public insurance plan. The A.M.A., with about 250,000 members, is America’s largest physician organization.
Wednesday’s new Quinnipiac poll showed what we continue to know - Marco Rubio has an uphill battle for the Republican Senate nomination in Florida. He trails Gov. Charlie Crist, 54-23.
Fact is, Rubio needs some big help. Enter: the Club for Growth.
The Club interviewed Rubio on Monday, and Executive Director David Keating said it was “impressed.”
Donors have to be skeptical of Rubio’s chances, and a Club endorsement would provide him both money and legitimacy.
“We are very concerned about the two major tax increases Charlie Crist recently signed and believe there’s no excuse for his active support of the Obama big-government ’stimulus’ spending bill,” Keating said. “We are actively considering the race, but have made no decision yet.”
Delaware Republican Rep. Michael N. Castle’s decision to forego consideration for a top-ranking position on a key committee is the latest sign he’s seriously considering retirement or a run for the Senate in lieu of seeking re-election to the House.
Castle was interested in becoming the ranking Republican on the Education and Labor Committee — a post that California Republican Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon is vacating to become the top-ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. But Castle said in a statement that he couldn’t commit to Republican leaders that he will run for a tenth term next year in his state’s at-large congressional district.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is fiercely lobbying fellow anti-war Democrats, crossing off the names of converts from a whip list as she seeks to build support for a troubled supplemental war-spending bill.
Even with her leverage - and there is no doubt the Speaker is the heavy in the party leadership - the veteran California Democrat’s task is tough.
The bill (HR 2346) is hamstrung by the inclusion of $5 billion to support lending by the International Monetary Fund.
“She’s working it, and she usually gets her way,” said Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John P. Murtha , D-Pa. “She’s the most important asset that [President] Obama has.”
Republicans are threatening to oppose the bill en bloc to protest the inclusion of the IMF money - a possibility Democrats are taking seriously even if it may not be carried out.
