George Will apparently doesn't think that those receiving unemployment benefits spend their checks because he claims that another extension would not stimulate the economy. Another typical mean spirited Republican basically telling unemployed Americans "let them eat cake". I'm sure George thinks that once you cut those benefits off all of those lazy unemployed people will finally have to get off of their butts and magically find those non-existent jobs out there that they weren't looking for before instead of living high off the hog from the riches they were receiving with those massive unemployment checks. Heaven forbid we can't have anyone sucking off of that government teat when we've got those tax cuts for the rich we've got to keep in place and those wars to pay for.

I assume George won't have to worry about actually being around any of those tiresome whiners from his perch at his $1.9 million mansion in Chevy Chase, Md. since they probably keep that type of riff-raff out of his neighborhood.

And Rajiv Chandrasekaran nonsense about who's playing politics with this is almost as bad. Other than Ben Nelson it's not the Democrats blocking unemployment benefits. If the Republicans get whacked with this in November, they deserve it.

SANGER: And the president's also in the position in Canada of saying, don't do as I do, do as I say. I mean, just the day before he left, Congress could not come to an agreement on a very small extension of unemployment benefits, the most basic stimulus effort that the president tried to push.

TAPPER: 1.2 million Americans are going to lose their unemployment benefit extensions -- or unemployment benefits this week.

SANGER: That's right. So there's a fundamental stimulus action and the president had to go up and tell the Europeans they weren't doing enough for stimulus.

TAPPER: George, why can't they pass this unemployment extension? I don't understand. The Republicans say spending cuts should pay for this, the Democrats know it's emergency spending. It seems like this is something where there could be a compromise.

WILL: Well, partly because they believe that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. And we're subsidizing unemployment, that is the long-term unemployment, those unemployed more than six months, is it at an all-time high and they do not think it's stimulative because what stimulates is the consumer and savers' sense of permanent income. And everyone knows that unemployment benefits are not permanent income.

TAPPER: Rajiv, I'm going to let you have the last word, we only have a minute left.

CHANDRASEKARAN: Both sides in this town have an incentive to let this drag out longer. The Republicans certainly playing to their base don't want to be seen as adding to the debt issues in a midterm election year. The Democrats I think are trying to sort of push the Republicans and trying to make them look like the party that's denying 1.2 million people an extension of these benefits.

Transcript via ABC News.

You really can't blame them for not listening. After all, the U.S. is caught up in deficit fever, too - a cyclical illness that occurs only when we have a Democratic president or Democratic control of the House. The only thing that worries the Villagers is when the government spends money on the people who gave it to them:

TORONTO -- President Obama warned Sunday that the world economic recovery remains "fragile" and urged continued spending to support growth, an expansionist call at the end of a summit marked by an agreement among developed nations to halve their annual deficits within three years.

The president's remarks tempered the Group of 20's headline achievement at the summit, a deficit-reduction target that had been pushed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the host of the meeting and a fiscal conservative. Although there is broad agreement that government debt in the developed world needs to be reduced, there is concern that cutting too fast and too deeply will slow growth and possibly spark a new recession.

In a news conference at the meeting's conclusion, Obama said that the world's largest economic powers had agreed on the need for "continued growth in the short term and fiscal sustainability in the medium term."

"A number of our European partners are making difficult decisions," Obama said. "But we must recognize that our fiscal health tomorrow will rest in no small measure on our ability to create jobs and growth today."

The group's closing statement included the specific deficit-reduction target, but it was couched in caveats -- that deficit reduction needed to be "calibrated" to avoid harming growth, paced differently in each country and paired with other reforms to strengthen the economy.

Obama and European leaders, in particular, came to the meeting with sharply different views of the strength of the global economic recovery, with the U.S. president more pessimistic. The declaration, in the works for weeks, gave each side what it wanted, although the specific deadlines went further than the Obama administration had preferred before the meeting.

(The Paris Economic Conference of June 1947 - an endless drone of hammering things out)

Not one of the more exciting days in history, but nevertheless one where things happened as was reported on this installment of the NBC Radio series "World News Roundup". On the domestic front, June 28th 1947 was looking at threatened strikes and work stoppages from Steel workers and Coal Miners. The Mississippi River was flooding and was the highest in over 100 years. Overseas, the Paris Economic conference was underway and a cautious eye was kept on the civil war in Greece and tensions in China while the former allies were busy parceling off the remainder of the Japanese Navy.

And to top it all off, a report was issued that indicated Americans were in fact, getting a little stupider over the years.

One can only imagine what that report would say now.

And so went June 28th.

MSNBC's Chris Jansing talks to the NRA's Wayne LaPierre about the decision by the Supreme Court today that the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states".

Justices extend gun owner rights nationwide:

The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, advancing a recent trend by the John Roberts-led bench to embrace gun rights.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but signaled that some limitations on the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" could survive legal challenges.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said that the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states."

The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and four liberals opposed. Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority.

...The ruling seemed unlikely to resolve questions and ongoing legal challenges about precisely what sort of gun control laws are permissible.

...Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said his politically powerful group "will continue to work at every level to insure that defiant city councils and cynical politicians do not transform this constitutional victory into a practical defeat through Byzantine regulations and restrictions."

Of course LaPierre doesn't want any restrictions on gun ownership at all and compared anyone who does to someone wanting to restrict "the individual right of religion, or speech or the right to vote, or any other great fundamental core freedom we have as American citizens." I hate to break it to LaPierre but there are restrictions on our other Constitutional rights, but heaven forbid that might get in the way of his demagoguery.

Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina from Meghann Millard on Vimeo.

You may ask yourself, why aren't lefties rioting in the streets because of the economy just like what we're seeing at the G20?

Digby has the answer: The Miami Model.

People keep asking where "the left" is and why they don't take to the streets in light of these neo-liberal policies wreaking havoc on working people everywhere. Where is the populist uprising from the left and why there isn't more direct confrontation of the corporatist mindset. It's a good question, but you have to wonder why we never cite these regular protests and why we don't bother to comment on the tactics that are used against them. Are we on the American left really not part of this? Do we philosophically disagree with the critique, even now, after everything that's been revealed during this economic crisis? Are these people wrong?

Now, I understand that these folks have gotten the reputation for being thuggish and destructive, largely based on the Seattle protests over a decade ago. But it's quite clear by now that this is a phony image, conjured up by the authorities to justify their police state tactics against the protesters:

They call it the Miami Model...read on

I'm going to do another post on this soon, but the shorter version is that beating the crap out of people after tasering them and then arresting them does put a damper on things.

Protesters were beaten with tear gas, sticks, rubber bullets . . . You can watch police stun cowering protesters with Tasers on YouTube. Last year, the city agreed it had trampled citizens’ right to free speech by forcing marchers back from planned protests and settled out of court with Amnesty International.

The above video shows protesters singing 'Oh, Canada,' and for no reason at all the police open fire and viciously attack them. It's safe to say that they have been emailed the Miami model and are implementing it quite nicely. Now they can add "singing" to their long list of actions that are forbidden by law enforcement when they encounter protesters.

From Democracy Now Naomi Klein talks to Amy Goodman about the deficit hawks at the G20's plans to destroy what's left of the social safety nets for our society.

Naomi Klein: The Real Crime Scene Was Inside the G20 Summit:

AMY GOODMAN: As thousands protested in the streets of Toronto, inside the G20 summit world leaders agreed to a controversial goal of cutting government deficits in half by 2013. Economists say such a move could usher in sizable tax increases and massive cuts in government programs, including benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile, world leaders at the G8/G20 failed to come to an agreement on setting new global rules for big banks or imposing a new across-the-board global bank tax.

Journalist Naomi Klein joins us now from her home in Toronto. Her most recent book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She has an op-ed in the Toronto Globe and Mail today called "Sticking the Public with the Bill for the Bankers’ Crisis."

Naomi, welcome to Democracy Now! You were out on the streets throughout the weekend. Describe what Toronto looks like and what the G20 decisions—their significance are.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, Toronto has pretty much returned to normal. They cleaned up the broken glass, and the leaders have gone home. And I was near the Convention Center last night and saw some sweeping up. And, you know, all weekend the media here has been in hysterics over the broken glass and the burning police cars and saying, you know, nothing like this has ever happened before in Canada, which, first of all, is just not true. We have some pretty intense hockey riots, where in one case sixteen police cars were burned. So it isn’t true that we’ve never seen property destruction like this.

But my feeling, when I went by the Convention Center after all the leaders had gone home, was that this was the real crime scene, not those shattered storefronts, but what actually happened at the summit on Sunday night, when the world leaders issued their final communiqué. And what that communiqué said was that there wouldn’t even be a measly tax on banks to help pay for the global crisis that they created and also prevent future crises. There wouldn’t be a financial transaction tax, which could create a fund for social programs and for action on climate change. There wouldn’t be a real action to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuel companies that have also created so many social and environmental costs around the world, as we see with the BP disaster.

But what there would be was very decisive action on deficit reductions. These leaders announced that they would halve their deficits by 2013, which is shocking and brutal cut. You know, I don’t believe—maybe some of the leaders intend on keeping—making good on this promise, but, on the other hand, they can hide behind this promise as the excuse to do what a lot of them want to do anyway, and say, you know, "We have no choice; we made this commitment." But so, just to put this in perspective, if the US were to cut its deficit, its projected 2010 deficit, in half by 2013, that would be a cut of $780 billion, you know, if there were no tax increases in that period.

So, you know, that’s why I wrote the piece that came out this morning in Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail, that what actually happened at the summit is that the global elites just stuck the bill for their drunken binge with the world’s poor, with the people who are most vulnerable, because that is really who’s going to pay, when they balance their budgets on the backs of healthcare programs, pension programs, unemployment programs. And also, the other thing that they did at this G8 summit, that preceded the G20 summit, is admit that they were not meeting their commitments to doubling aid to Africa, once again, because of the debt that was created by saving the banks. Read on...

Jeff Sessions is terribly concerned about Elena Kagan's "liberal leanings", claims that "she has the least experience of any nominee, at least in the last fifty years" and says that "if things come out that indicate she’s so far outside the mainstream--it’s conceivable a filibuster might occur."

Here he is with CBS's Bob Schieffer:

SCHIEFFER: Well, how far are you going to go with this? I mean, could a filibuster-- the option of-- of Republicans filibustering this nomination. Is that still on the table? Is that still possible?

SESSIONS: I think the first thing we need to decide is, is she committed to the rule of law even if she may not like the law? Will she as a judge subordinate herself to the constitution and keep her political views at bay? And then, secondly, if things come out that indicate she’s so far outside the mainstream--it’s conceivable a filibuster might occur. The Senate rule that our Democrats led us to establish was that you shouldn’t filibuster except in extraordinary circumstances. I think that’s a legitimate rule and that will be what I would judge as to whether a filibuster is necessary.

Of course there's no one I'd rather hear from about someone's qualifications to be nominated to any court than Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III who Rachel Maddow laid bare in this segment for his racist past. From Sessions' Wiki page:

In 1986, Reagan nominated Sessions to be a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. Sessions was actively backed by Alabama Senator Jeremiah Denton, a Republican. The nomination of Sessions was first sent to the Senate for confirmation on October 23, 1985, and was resubmitted on January 29, 1986. A substantial majority of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which rates nominees to the federal bench, rated Sessions "qualified," with a minority voting that Sessions was "not qualified." [5]

At Sessions' confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four Department of Justice lawyers who had worked with Sessions testified that he had made several racist statements. One of those lawyers, J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" because they "forced civil rights down the throats of people."[6] Hebert said that Sessions had a tendency to "pop off" on such topics frequently and had once called a white civil rights lawyer who dealt with voting rights suits a "disgrace to his race."[7]

Thomas Figures, a black Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified that Sessions said he thought the Klan was "OK until I found out they smoked pot."[8] Figures also testified that on one occasion, when the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division sent the office instructions to investigate a case that Sessions had tried to close, Figures and Sessions "had a very spirited discussion regarding how the Hodge case should then be handled; in the course of that argument, Mr. Sessions threw the file on a table, and remarked, 'I wish I could decline on all of them,'" by which Figures said Sessions meant civil rights cases generally. After becoming Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, Sessions was asked in an interview about his civil rights record as a U.S Attorney. He denied that he had not sufficiently pursued civil rights cases, saying that "when I was [a U.S. Attorney], I signed 10 pleadings attacking segregation or the remnants of segregation, where we as part of the Department of Justice, we sought desegregation remedies."[9]

Figures also said that Sessions had called him "boy." He also testified that "Mr. Sessions admonished me to 'be careful what you say to white folks.'"[10]

Sessions responded to the testimony by denying the allegations, saying his remarks were taken out of context or meant in jest, and also stating that groups could be considered un-American when "they involve themselves in un-American positions" in foreign policy. Sessions said during testimony that he considered the Klan to be "a force for hatred and bigotry." In regards to the marijuana quote, Sessions said the comment was a joke but apologized.[11]

The Republicans must be so proud to have this guy as their point man on judicial nominations. In the world of the Jeff Sessions out there, having even an inkling of liberal leanings is a mortal sin to maybe bring this extremely right wing court back to the center. Apparently for the GOP, putting out someone with Sessions background to question her qualifications isn't a problem, but her lack of experience as a judge is.

Quite frankly I'll take someone with Kagan's experience rather than the likes of a Jeff Sessions to be nominated to a high court any day of the week even though I'd prefer someone way to the left of Kagan. Anyone I'd be really happy with would probably never make it past a Republican filibuster.

It's too bad our media doesn't remind the public of what this man's background is when they bring him on for commentary such as this. If that were the case maybe Republicans would think twice before allowing racist hacks like Sessions to be nominated as their ranking member on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate.

Transcript via CBS below the fold.

Continue reading »

[Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina from Meghann Millard on Vimeo.]

There's been a lot of crying about "thugs and anarchists" in Toronto. I live about 4 blocks from where some of the vandalism occurred, though I wasn't there at the time.

As best I can tell, what happened is that for about an hour, the Black Bloc protesters clearly and visibly prepared for action, with both the police and other, non-violent protesters able to see they were doing so. The number of Black Bloc vandals seems to have been between 50 to 100, certainly not more than 200. (The police had 20,000 men.)

The police actually withdrew, leaving behind police cars for the Black Block to torch. Which they then did. The Black Bloc then proceeded up Yonge street (the main north/south street in downtown Toronto), vandalizing as they went, and eventually many headed over to Queen's Park, the Provincial capital. Two hours after the first violence, the police finally take action, ensuring that there are plenty of videos of police cars burning and vandalism that would not have occurred if they had taken action earlier.

According to the police, rather than confront a maximum of 200 protesters, they withdrew behind the barrier around the G20 meetings and let them vandalize downtown Toronto for 2 hours.

At the end of the day the people who matter never even saw any protests and the 1 billion dollar police presence and suspension of civil liberties was "justified" by vandalism and burning police cars.

Simply put, the police decided that they couldn't spare, say, 2,000 out of their 20,000 men to stop 200 vandals. This was a deliberate decision to allow downtown to be vandalized.

I leave it as an exercise for readers to decide if this was a matter of incompetence, or if it was a deliberate strategy. And if it was deliberate strategy, just what they were trying to accomplish with their strategy.

Of course, along the way Canadian Civil Liberties observers were arrested as well, and protesters were not allowed to see lawyers.

I am ashamed to be Canadian today, and I am ashamed of my governments, at all levels.

Via Raw Story, some horrible news if true - since an Israeli attack on Iran means they're seen in the Middle East as our surrogate. The Associated Press is still trying to confirm:

As unconfirmed reports of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities pick up steam in the Middle Eastern media, a US-based strategic intelligence company has released a chart showing US naval carriers massing near Iranian waters.

The chart, published by Stratfor and obtained by the Zero Hedge financial blog, shows that over the last few weeks a naval carrier -- the USS Harry S Truman -- has been positioned in the north Indian Ocean, not far from the Strait of Hormuz, which leads into the Persian Gulf. The carrier joins the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was already located in the area. The chart is dated June 23, 2010.

Reports of mass movements of Israeli and US naval warships have been circulating through the media for weeks. On June 19, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that 12 US and Israeli warships were seen moving through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.

Are you ready for a flame-thrower? The Washington Post gives Over The Cliff a quick hit and review:

Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane

By John Amato and David Neiwert

PoliPoint. 284 pp. Paperback, $16.95

The gist: In November 2008, the right wing lost its mind and has yet to recover: Extremists prowl the land, fill the airwaves, preaching that America is doomed under Barack Obama.

In its own words: "The American Right's descent into madness, embodied in its takeover by right-wing populists, was more than a problem just for serious conservatives who understood that it would ultimately prove to be their destruction. The very nature of the insanity that was being unleashed posed a larger problem for the nation at large -- namely, the implicit threat of violence and extremist unrest, represented most vividly by the revival of the militia movement.

After we wrote our book there were many other violent outbursts that we obviously didn't cover. You know, like a pesky Mosque bombing or the father and son act of Jerry and Joe Kane. There are many more issues we take up in the book, but at least he got some of it right.

We're selling this book mostly through the prism of our online brothers and sisters. So far it's going very well. David and I didn't write this book because we hoped to cash in on it. Seriously, that was the last thing we thought about and it won't happen; but we thought it was important to document what we have all just witnessed and have a public record all gathered in one place.

We were interviewed last week by Mike Panantonio of Ring Of Fire, and he marveled that when he read everything in the book -- some of which he knew, some of which he did not -- it brought a new appreciation to the severity of the problem and what has unfolded before our eyes and he thanked us.

Please support your liberal authors. You can grab a copy here.

You can find it in other formats and book stores here.