This is Fox 11's Gigi Graciette. Gigi doesn't cover Dodger games or the Rose Parade by mentioning the debris discarded by attendees, but apparently that's how she covers a international protest's local chapter: they have trash left behind after they've been arrested en masse. Gross trash, too. Way to inform the public.

No question as to why 292 Angelenos all but volunteered to be arrested last night. No mention of what nonviolent struggle has accomplished in American history (ahem civil rights). No mention of the cruel irony of the protesters getting evicted because they brought homeless people to the steps of City Hall instead of the usual safe distance of two blocks east. No mention of the politics involved and how the City decided to support the protest, then negotiated with them and then suddenly reneged - made apparent by the 1400 LAPD officers in riot helmets on the streets of Los Angeles last night.

But here's the thing that really makes this clip disgusting from a basic journalism perspective: Gigi doesn't know and didn't find out what that mysterious white liquid was in those water bottles before she reported on them. She didn't know and instead of being hesitant to make accusations or start any rumors - she just does it without pause. I saw her there at around 11pm - she was there all night and never asked anyone what it was before she went live?! You're supposed to know MORE than the people on their couches watching you - because you're on the scene! This is hackery at its worse.

The white liquid is more than likely Maalox. They had it on site because it is supposed to neutralize the pain of pepper spray and tear gas. Yes, there's a story - there were hundreds of Angelenos willing to be pepper sprayed for a political statement. They were (their phrase) militantly nonviolent and had been spending days training and planning to be raided by police and THAT is what that mysterious white liquid symbolized - that's what it meant. They were willing, to quote Mario Savio "put their bodies upon the gears."

Since I will always assume the best in people, I will guess it's just laziness. Just not caring about telling a real story about Occupy LA and opting for the easy "look at the stuff on the ground" to fill up airtime. I say laziness and not incompetence or malice. But I'm feeling generous today.

Barack Obama's presidency certainly hasn't been an all-out bust -- repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, taking out Osama bin Laden and getting some form of universal health coverage passed are real achievements -- but he's completely crapped the bed when it comes to jobs. And I'm not just talking about the high unemployment rate, either -- I'm talking about the continued collapse in workers' income. Check out this chart from David Frum:

Workers' share of national income started steadily dropping under Reagan and Bush I, saw a brief rebound during the late '90s tech boom, and then fell off a cliff during the Bush II and Obama administrations.

Of course, not everyone is hurting. As Felix Salmon pointed out earlier this year, the financial services industry has weathered this recession just fine:

There are lots of reasons this has occurred, but broadly speaking this trend started in the 1980s when we collectively decided that rich people were magical wealth leprechauns who must be kept happy at all costs lest they take their pots of gold elsewhere. So we got huge tax cuts for the wealthy, free trade agreements, financial deregulation and a government that turned a blind eye toward businesses that broke the law by employing illegal labor at below the minimum wage.

But sadly, that just isn't enough for our Galtian overlords. See, they don't just want us to change the law for their own benefit anymore. Indeed, they want to flat-out plunder people without facing any sort of legal consequences. "But how the hell can they justify that?" you sanely ask. The answer is, the same way they've justified giant tax cuts: By arguing that they're just Too Special and Important to be held accountable. Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co, starting floating this cute little idea the other week when he declared that Goldman Sachs was too systemically important to face criminal prosecution:

The U.S. Department of Justice, which is reviewing a Senate subcommittee report that alleged Goldman Sachs misled clients before the financial crisis, will avoid jeopardizing the fifth- largest U.S. bank by assets because it’s viewed as “too big to fail,” Hintz wrote in note to clients today.

“If an alleged violation is identified during a Goldman investigation, we expect a reasoned response from the Justice Department,” Hintz wrote. “In a worst case environment, we would expect a ‘too big to fail’ bank such as Goldman to be offered a deferred-prosecution agreement, pay a significant fine and submit to a federal monitor in lieu of a criminal charge.”

And this is what America has become, then: A nation where the rich and powerful can trample the poor and middle class with impunity and face zero repercussions for their crimes. The fact that this trend has not only continued under Barack Obama's watch but has actually accelerated is about as damning an indictment of him and his administration as I can fathom. And it's not just him either, as some of our progressive "heroes" like Barney Frank are still happily allowing Wall Street to organize campaign fundraisers in their names.

There's going to be a breaking point sometime in the future where people will actually vote for a political candidate who refuses to kiss rich peoples' asses as a matter of policy. The question is, how bad will things have to get before people reach this threshold of revelation? Hopefully it'll happen before Paul Ryan starts floating the idea of reviving the poll tax.

Is this just plain incompetence, or is Gov. Soylent Green making yet another one of his wingnutty libertarian points? Whatever the explanation, I'm sure it's just fine. It's not as if there are any sick or elderly people in Florida anyway!

In March, Gov. Rick Scott’s staff said he would accept a $35.7 million “Money Follows the Person” federal health grant.

But the Legislature appears to have decided otherwise. In the 2011-12 budget Scott just signed, lawmakers failed to give the Agency for Health Care Administration budget authority to draw down and spend the money.

Patient advocates were dismayed at the omission, because the money was to have been spent on home- and community-care programs that let disabled and elderly people move out of nursing homes or avoid them in the first place.

The likely reason seems to be that Scott wants to throw a monkey wrench into the implementation of the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act:

Questions sent to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services press office today drew an unusually cryptic response: "We continue working closely with states to ensure the benefits of more affordable, quality health care choices are available to all consumers."

Patient advocates say the grant money would have served the interests of both taxpayers and patients by keeping patients in the community and out of nursing homes – and letting some who are already in nursing homes be released to less-confining, less-expensive residential care.

“You end up spending a ton of money…in long-term care” that could be avoided, said Dave Bruns, communications manager for Florida AARP.

McRay and Bruns said they weren't sure whether the omission was an oversight or a deliberate cut for a program that was re-authorized under the 2010 health law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Florida is leading a multistate challenge of the law in federal court, saying that it's unconstitutional because it requires all Americans to obtain health coverage or pay a penalty.

I know some of the Democrats are a little wacky, but this? These Republicans are just plain nuts. I'd forgotten what it was like to have the inmates in charge of the asylum. Their ability to communicate such deep denial seems to have paid off for them politically, at least for a while:

Rescinding the federal law to overhaul the health care system, the first objective of House Republicans who ascended to power this week, would ratchet up the federal deficit by about $230 billion over the next decade and leave 32 million more Americans uninsured, according to congressional budget analysts. The rough estimate by the Congressional Budget Office also predicts that most Americans would pay more for private health insurance if the law were repealed. The 10-page forecast was delivered to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), installed a day earlier to shepherd the new GOP majority. He immediately dismissed it.

The CBO's assessment, arriving as Republicans have mobilized to make the law's repeal the first major House vote of the new Congress, touches on a sensitive area for the GOP. Republicans are vowing to take tough measures to reduce the deficit, although they already have exempted the health care measure from rules requiring that any spending increases be accompanied by offsetting reductions so that the net effect on the deficit is null.

The CBO's analysis provided an early glimpse of the brute force politics spreading across Capitol Hill and beyond in the new era of divided government. The broad changes to the health care system, pushed through Congress by Democrats who controlled both the House and the Senate until this week, are among President Obama's proudest domestic accomplishments - and now a central target of the GOP. On Thursday, congressional Democrats and their allies seized the budget analysts' prediction as ammunition. "It's plain and simple: We can't afford to increase the deficit by nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, especially with the very first substantive vote of the 112th Congress," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana).

With equal speed, Boehner and other House Republicans repudiated the forecast of the non-partisan CBO, saying that its analysts had relied on flawed assumptions they had been provided by Democrats. "CBO is entitled to their opinion," Boehner declared at his first news conference as speaker.

Specifically, the CBO, in what it called a preliminary analysis, said that the law's repeal would cost $145 billion by 2019 and $230 billion by 2021, then swell after that, because various money-saving and revenue-raising provisions would be undone. The 32 million uninsured Americans refers to the number predicted to gain coverage under the law.

UPDATE: Fresh election thread just below.

Join us below the fold to follow our coverage of tonight's election results with our live blog.

Continue reading »

I actually meant to include this in my previous post, and judging from comments it's just what some of you want - a media contact list. So let me encourage you to tell the media how outrageous you find it that they give so much coverage to ludicrous right-wing talking points and then don't cover the response from the Democratic leadership - or from the majority of Americans.

Posted by Avedon

Kerry's Kids First Act Needs Your Support

via Yellow Dog Blog

John Kerry isn't a man who forgets about the issues he said were important while running for president.

The Senator is the author of the Kids First Act (S.114/H.R. 1668), which will ensure that the 11 million uninsured children in America have health coverage and a healthy childhood – and he needs our help.

Check out the television ad that Kerry's organization is running in key Republican states and districts. While no Republican ever got kicked out of their party for being heartless, it is Senator Kerry's hope that running a public relations campaign targeted at the constituents of Bill Frist and Tom DeLay will put pressure on them to at least feign compassion for children. (Though it is interesting to note that, of the legislation's eight cosponsors, none has an 'R' next to their name.)

Please take a look at the ad, give whatever money you can to help run it and sign Senator Kerry's web site to be a cosponsor of the act yourself.

As a parent fortunate enough to be able to provide care for my son, I can't imagine the heartbreak of having to watch a young child be sick and be unable to get them help.

This is important legislation. Please support it. It'll make you feel good.

Video Clip of the Day

Amy Goodman appears with Chris Matthews on "Hardball"

Video

She talks about the failure of the media in it's coverage of the runup to the Iraq war.

What Gives?

Time and Newsweek both registered massive bounces for Bush during the Republican National Convention. Rasmussen says he would be showing Bush with a five point bounce (and, therefore, a four point lead) except his Saturday sample was terrible for Bush, giving him a slight 1.2 percent lead in the three day moving average. Now Gallup is showing a two point bounce based on a weekend poll that's moved Bush from one point behind to one point ahead (and now we're in the territory where sampling error matters, so it's not entirely clear than anything changed at all). Obviously, something a bit nutty is going on with polls taken on, say, Friday showing dramatically different results from polls taken over the weekend. Is this "faster public opinion" where people love Bush after seeing his speak and then forget all about it after 36 hours of hurricane coverage? As I recall something similarly screwy happened with Kerry -- he got a big bounce on Friday and then by the following Monday it was gone.

It's hard for me to understand the psychology of folks who would let their votes be swung by a speech -- we've had four years to watch Bush and his performance in office seems like an infinitely better guide to what you should do than is a speech -- so from my point of view there's really no telling.