Making Editore Blog Main

Source: http://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2011/10/ancient-zombies-for-halloween.html

Robert (Bob) Corker John Cornyn Jim Costa Jerry Francis Costello Joe Courtney

Source: http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/16/constitutional-or-not-obamacare-has-got

Hillary Rodham Clinton James Enos Clyburn Howard Coble Thomas Allen Coburn William Thad Cochran

The Joint Deficit Reduction Committee is facing a Nov. 23 deadline toreduce deficits by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Photoby Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

Time is running out for the bipartisan Congressional supercommittee charged with cutting at least $1.2 trillion from the nation’s deficit over 10 years, and members are trying to avoid automatic spending cuts to military and domestic projects in the absence of a compromise.

According to Robert Pear of the New YorkTimes, they’re looking for yet another way to kick the can down the road:

Until now, the main obstacle to a deal was Republicans’ unwillingness to raise taxes and Democrats’ unwillingness to make significant cuts in the growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without tax increases. To shave deficits by $1.2 trillion without raising revenue or touching entitlement programs could require deep cuts in domestic spending, the military or both.

As the deficit panel enters a final frenetic week of negotiations, Republicans and Democrats said they hoped to give broadly worded instructions to the regular tax-writing committees of Congress — the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee — to come up with a certain amount of revenue after the panel completes its work this month.

The chairmen of the tax-writing committees, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, have said they would welcome such instructions.

The outlook for an agreement doesn’t look good considering the committee’s deadline is Nov. 23 and that any deal must be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which means the committee could have already breached a soft deadline for allowing the CBO to complete its analysis.

Moving the debate over reforming the federal tax code — a massive undertaking — would mean shifting the ongoing debate over fiscal policy into 2012 and avoiding difficult choices in the short term. With Congressional elections approaching, it might also mean punting on real choices about tax rates past November 2012.

The Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery and RosalindHeldermanreport that Sunday saw neither side coming closer to bridging a gap on how much to cut and how much to raise in taxes:

Mathematically, the gap between the two sides on the supercommittee has narrowed. Republicans have offered a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction package that would cut spending by about $750 billion over the next decade while raising about $500 billion in revenue, including about $300 billion in new taxes. Democrats have offered to trim borrowing by $2 trillion, with that sum equally divided between spending cuts and tax increases.

After a long day of talks Sunday, the two sides were no closer to agreement, according to sources in both parties. Significant differences remained about both the size of the tax target and the form of an enforcement mechanism, with Democrats arguing for a trigger that would automatically raise taxes unless Congress acts.

For his part, President Obama is still pushing the committee for abalanced approach that includes tax increases on the wealthy andmodest reforms to entitlements. He addressed the issue during a pressavailability during the APEC conference in Hawaii:

“My hope is that over the next several days, the congressional leadership on the super committee go ahead and bite the bullet and do what needs to be done — because the math won’t change. There’s no magic formula. There are no magic beans that you can toss on the ground and suddenly a bunch of money grows on trees. We got to just go ahead and do the responsible thing. And I’m prepared to sign legislation that is balanced, that solves this problem.”

SURVEYING THE FIELD

It appears that the tumult of last week has taken its toll on Herman Cain and Rick Perry, according to a pair of new surveys.

Despite sitting atop the Politico/George Washington University Battleground Poll released Monday, Cain’s hold on the top spot is less than firm. As James Hohmann explains, Cain’s support dropped sharply last Monday, after the first woman to accuse the Republican contender of inappropriate sexual behavior, Sharon Bialek, came forward publicly.

Among likely Republican voters surveyed Sunday, Nov. 6, Cain led the field with 40 percent. On Monday, he was third with 22 percent. By Wednesday, just 19 percent of those surveyed said they supported Cain for the nomination.

As Cain’s support dropped, Mitt Romney’s surged, with 40 percent of those surveyed last Wednesday saying they backed the former Massachusetts governor. (The full sample had Cain at 27 percent and Romney at 25 percent. Perry and Newt Gingrich each received 14 percent.)

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, meanwhile, went back and interviewed Republican voters who had been polled earlier this month and found that Cain had relinquished his lead to Romney, who received the support of 32 percent of respondents, up from 27 percent. Cain’s support dropped from 28 percent to 27 percent.

Like Romney, Gingrich also saw his standing rise, from 17 percent to 22 percent. The survey, taken after Perry’s debate flub last week, showed the Texas governor’s support falling from 8 percent to 4 percent.

As the Journal’s Jonathan Weisman reports, the rest of the poll numbers don’t look any better for Perry:

Republican primary voters now have more negative feelings about the Texan than positive feelings. A week ago, 38% felt positively toward the governor, while 24% felt negatively. Now 28% feel warmly toward Mr. Perry; 33% said they feel somewhat or very negative about him.

Taken together, the two surveys show some positive developments for Romney, who had been struggling to break past 25 percent in most recent polls. These polls seem to indicate that the GOP front-runner may have yet to hit his ceiling among Republican voters.

The surveys also hint that Gingrich may likely be the next “Romney alternative” to emerge, following Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Perry and Cain, although his staying power will largely depend on whether he’s able to avoid the missteps that almost sunk his campaign earlier this year.

DINING WITH CAIN

Cain, who built his career working in the food industry — and most famously with Godfather’s Pizza — sat down with GQ in mid-October to discuss presidential politics, pizza toppings and ice cream flavors.

You can read the full article here,but we wanted to point you in the direction of two highlights. First,Cain’s perspective on pizza toppings:

Chris Heath: What can you tell about a man by the type of pizza that he likes?

Herman Cain: [repeats the question aloud, then pauses for a long moment] The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is.

Chris Heath: Why is that?

Herman Cain: Because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance. [laughs]

Devin Gordon: Is that purely a meat question?

Herman Cain: A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.

The other excerpt involves Cain’s GOP rivals and ice cream flavors:

Devin Gordon: Let me ask you about your rivals. Recently, in response to a question about you being the new “flavor of the month,” you said you weren’t a flavor of the month, you were Häagen-Dazs black walnut, which “tastes good all the time.” If Mitt Romney was an ice cream flavor, what flavor would he be?

Herman Cain: Oh, just plain vanilla. [laughs] Are you guys really going to print this? I have learned that with my new status in the polls, any- and every thing that I say will show up somewhere. Do you guys really want to do this ice cream analogy?

Devin Gordon: We do. Rick Perry?

Herman Cain: Rick Perry: rocky road.

Devin Gordon: Michele Bachmann?

Herman Cain: Michele Bachmann… I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to say it.

Devin Gordon: Oh, come on!

Herman Cain: Tutti-frutti. I know I’m going to get in trouble!

ON THE TRAIL

All events listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event in Kapolei,Hawaii, at 4:15 p.m.

Vice President Joe Biden is in Washington where this afternoon heswears in John Bryson as Secretary of Commerce.

Newt Gingrich meets with employees of GuideOne Insurance in DesMoines, Iowa, at 12 p.m., holds a meet-and-greet in Jefferson at 5p.m. and hosts a reception and book signing event in Carroll at 7 p.m.

Herman Cain holds a fundraiser in Milwaukee at 12:30 p.m. andattends a tailgate party in Green Bay before the Packers-Vikings game.

Michele Bachmann visits McCarthy & Bailey’s Irish Pub in Sioux City,Iowa, at 1 p.m. and holds a pair of town halls — in Le Mars at 3 p.m.and in Sheldon at 6:30 p.m.

Jon Huntsman discusses his jobs plan at the Brookings Institution inWashington at 2:15 p.m.

Rick Perry speaks at the Scott County GOP Ronald Reagan Dinner inBettendorf, Iowa, at 7:15 p.m.

All future events can be found on our PoliticalCalendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politicspage.

Sign up hereto receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/11/the-morning-line-supercommittee-nears-deadline-with-no-deal-in-sight.html

Mary Fallin Sam Farr Chaka Fattah Russell Dana Feingold Dianne Feinstein

WASHINGTON (MMD Newswire) October 7, 2011 – - The White House – Office of the Press Secretary

Fact Sheet: Safeguarding the U.S. Government’s Classified Information and Networks

Following the unlawful disclosure of classified information by WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010, the National Security Staff formed an interagency committee to review the policies and practices surrounding the handling of classified information, and to recommend government-wide actions to reduce the risk of a future breach. Since then, this effort has been a top priority of the Administration and senior agency officials have been actively engaged in developing policies and oversight mechanisms to enhance our national security through responsible sharing and safeguarding of classified information.

The strategic imperative of our efforts has been to ensure that we provide adequate protections to our classified information while at the same time sharing the information with all who reasonably need it to do their jobs. The guiding principles during the Administration’s review were to:

- Reinforce the importance of responsible information sharing and not undo all of the significant and important progress we’ve made in interagency information sharing since 9/11;

- Ensure that policies, processes, technical security solutions, oversight, and organizational cultures evolve to match our information sharing and safeguarding requirements;

- Emphasize that effective and consistent guidance and implementation must be coordinated across the entire Federal government. We are only as strong as our weakest link and this is a shared risk with shared responsibility; and;

- Continue to respect the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of the American people.

The committee that was established in the wake of WikiLeaks proposed a new oversight structure to orchestrate the development and implementation of policies and standards for the sharing and safeguarding of classified information on computer networks. These structural reforms are reflected in the Executive Order signed today by President Obama.

In accordance with today's Executive Order: - Agencies bear the primary responsibility for sharing and safeguarding classified information, consistent with appropriate protections for privacy and civil liberties. Federal agencies that use classified networks will: - - designate a senior official to oversee classified information sharing and safeguarding for the agency; - - implement an insider threat detection and prevention program; and - - perform self assessments of compliance with policy and standards. - - A Senior Information Sharing and Safeguarding Steering Committee will have overall responsibility for fully coordinating interagency efforts and ensuring that Departments and Agencies are held accountable for implementation of information sharing and safeguarding policy and standards.  - A Classified Information Sharing and Safeguarding Office will be created within the office of the Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment to provide sustained, full-time focus on sharing and safeguarding of classified national security information. The office will also consult partners to ensure the consistency of policies and standards and seek to identify the next potential problem.  - Senior representatives of the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency will jointly act as the Executive Agent for Safeguarding Classified Information on Computer Networks to develop technical safeguarding policies and standards and conduct assessments of compliance.  - An Insider Threat Task Force will develop a government-wide program for insider threat detection and prevention to improve protection and reduce potential vulnerabilities of classified information from exploitation, compromise or other unauthorized disclosure.

We did not, however, wait for today’s Executive Order to begin taking steps. The Senior Information Sharing and Safeguarding Steering Committee formally established today began meeting informally in June to track steps taken across the Federal Government. In addition to those measures identified in today’s Executive Order, significant progress has been made by U.S. Departments and Agencies in five priority areas:

1. Removable media

Departments and Agencies have made significant progress in clarifying and standardizing removable media policies, processes, and technical controls. We have limited the numbers of users with removable media permissions and strengthened accountability for violations.

2. Online Identity Management

The owners and operators of classified systems are accelerating efforts to strengthen the online verification of individuals logging on to classified systems, and to be able to track what information is being accessed by these individuals.

3. Insider Threat Program

As directed in the Executive Order, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence are actively establishing an interagency Insider Threat Task Force. This Task Force will integrate specialized abilities, tools, and techniques to more effectively deter, detect, and disrupt the insider threat.

4. Access control

Departments and Agencies are implementing more robust access control systems to enforce role-based access privileges that serve to ensure that an individual user’s information access is commensurate with his/her assigned role.

5. Enterprise audit

Enhancing auditing capabilities across U.S. Government classified networks is a priority effort, and planning has been initiated to define the policy and develop standards for the collection and sharing of audit and insider threat data.

Source: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/fact-sheet-70844.html

Eni Fa\\\\\\\’Aua\\\\\\\’A Hunkin, Jr. Faleomavaega Mary Fallin Sam Farr Chaka Fattah Russell Dana Feingold

Source: http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/18/the-bipartisan-war-on-liberty

Sam Farr Chaka Fattah Russell Dana Feingold Dianne Feinstein Bob Filner

Listen to the Audio

Herman Cain faced new accusations of sexual harassment on Monday when a Chicago-area woman went before television cameras with graphic details. Judy Woodruff discusses what the fresh allegations mean for Cain’s White House bid with Politico’s Jonathan Martin.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Herman Cain faced new accusations of sexual harassment today. This time, they came from a Chicago-area woman who went before television cameras with graphic details.

Sharon Bialek today became the first woman to come forward publicly and accuse Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. In New York today, Bialek said she met Cain at a National Restaurant Association

conference in 1997, when Cain ran the organization. Soon after, she sought his help in finding a new job after being fired by the trade group.

Bialek recounted a meeting with Cain in July of that year in Washington.

SHARON BIALEK, accuses Herman Cain of sexual harassment: I met Mr. Cain in the lobby of the bar at the Capital Hilton at around 6:30 p.m. We had drinks at the hotel. And he asked how I liked my room, which is kind of normal. And I was very — I said I was very surprised. I said, I can’t believe that I have got this great suite. It’s gorgeous.

Mr. Cain kind of smirked and then said, “I upgraded you.”

He then took me to an Italian restaurant, where we had dinner. During dinner, Mr. Cain looked at me and said, “Why are you here?”

I said, “Actually, Herman, my boyfriend, whom you met, suggested that I meet with you, and cause he thought you could help me, cause I really need a job. I was wondering if there’s anything available at the state association level or perhaps if you could speak to someone at the foundation to try to get my job back, perhaps even in a different department.”

He said, “I will look into that.”

He — while we were driving back to the hotel, he said that he would show me where the National Restaurant Association offices were. He parked the car down the block. I thought that we were going to go into the offices so that he could show me around.

At that time, I had on a black pleated skirt, a suit jacket and a blouse. He had on a suit with his shirt — with his shirt open. But instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals.

He also grabbed my head and brought it towards his crotch. I was very, very surprised and very shocked.

I said: “What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.”

Mr. Cain said, “You want a job, right?”

I asked him to stop, and he did. I asked him to take me back to my hotel, which he did right away. When I returned to New Jersey, where I was staying with my boyfriend that Mr. Cain had been — I told — when I was staying — when I was returned back to New Jersey, where I was staying, I told my boyfriend, Mr. Cain had been very sexually inappropriate with me, and, shortly thereafter, I told another friend of mine, who has been a mentor, the same thing.

I didn’t tell them the details because, quite frankly, I was very embarrassed that Mr. Cain had been sexually inappropriate to me.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Bialek said she came forward after reports surfaced that at least three other women said Cain had sexually harassed them.

SHARON BIALEK: I’m coming forward to give a face and a voice to those women who cannot or, for whatever reasons, do not wish to come forward, and on behalf of all women who are sexually harassed in the workplace, but do not come, out of fear of retaliation or in public humiliation.

I really didn’t want to be here today and wouldn’t have been here if it had not been for the three other women who have alleged sexual harassment against — against Mr. Cain.

I want you, Mr. Cain, to come clean. Just admit what you did. Admit you were inappropriate to people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Cain’s campaign immediately released a statement that said — quote — “All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are completely false.”

The embattled candidate has spent the past eight days trying to quell the controversy, including this on the NewsHour last Monday.

HERMAN CAIN, (R) presidential candidate: I have never sexually harassed anyone.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The allegations and Cain’s shifting responses may be taking their toll, but it’s not clear. A Reuters poll released Sunday showed his favorability rating down nine points in the past week. A USA Today/Gallup survey out today had Cain tied with Mitt Romney for the lead in the Republican field.

For more on these latest allegations and the impact on the presidential campaign, we’re joined by Jonathan Martin, senior political reporter for Politico. He was on the team that broke the original story last week.

Jonathan Martin, thank you for being here.

JONATHAN MARTIN, Politico: Thank you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What more is known about this woman, Sharon Bialek, who brought these charges today?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, we know that she worked for the organization for about a year in Chicago.

How it works is, this is a (INAUDIBLE) based in D.C., but their foundation is actually out in Chicago. And so they have a close tie to that city and they actually have their annual conventions there each May. So, she worked for that wing of the organization for about one year back in the late ’90s.

So this is not somebody that is just sort of appearing out of the ether. This is somebody that the NRA has confirmed to us that did in fact work there for this organization back in the late ’90s. And she’s making what are the first allegations against Mr. Cain that have two things that we have not seen yet. First of all, we have a name and a face. Second of all, we have details, and very explicit ones at that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And she said that — basically, as we just reported, she said had been let go by the organization. She went back to Herman Cain for help and that’s when all this happened.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: She also said, Jonathan Martin, that she saw Herman Cain about a month ago at a…

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What kind of an event?

JONATHAN MARTIN: A Tea Party event. So this is somebody who is a Republican. In fact, at the very onset of today’s press conference, Gloria Allred made very plain that she was in fact a registered Republican.

This lady said that she saw Mr. Cain and that he acted very awkward when he saw her. So there was some kind of recent contact between these two. But, again, I think what is important here are obviously the graphic nature of what she’s saying, but it’s also someone who is putting a name and a face for the very first time with these allegations.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How does this fit, what she’s saying happened, into what is known — and you have done a lot of this reporting — from…

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right. Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: … from the other accusers, who have not come forward?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

Well, as far as the other accusers go, the closest that we have had in our reporting to details about one of them is that, in the late ’90s, this woman also an employee of the NRA, was in a hotel room with Mr. Cain during one of the trade group’s events, and that he made an explicit sexual overture to her, and that she was so angry at that, that she then told a board member of the organization mere hours later what had happened.

So we had — that was the closest thing that we had, was a sexual overture in a hotel room. This obviously is far more detailed than that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, Cain himself, his campaign, flatly denying this, saying this didn’t happen.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So how much credibility can we attach to this woman Sharon Bialek?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, Mr. Cain has from the get-go said that he has not harassed anybody. But he has not yet been confronted by somebody by name with an actual incident at a time and a place, like this manner today.

So, in my conversations today, Judy, with a lot of folks in the GOP, they’re saying, in light of these new allegations, Mr. Cain has to come forward and be transparent and be forceful and say what has happened, what he did and didn’t do, answer these allegations in more detail.

I think that when you had women with no names attached, it was easier for him to sort of bash the media. When you have somebody out there who is lodging these charges at a press conference with her name and her face for all the world to see, it puts him in a much more difficult spot.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But at this point, is it simply she said/he said? Is that all? I mean, is there going to be any more to this?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, I mean, unless — she has the two witnesses.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because there was no one there with her.

JONATHAN MARTIN: There was not witnesses, right.

She said that there were two people that she told contemporaneously. So they could potentially come forward. There’s also the possibility that other women could emerge and tell their side of the story, too. Again, for the last week, we have had women who have been very hesitant to talk, for all the obvious reasons. This could change that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What effect, Jonathan, is this having on the campaign so far, or is it having an effect?

JONATHAN MARTIN: It’s fascinating, because there are, Judy, basically two campaigns are going on at once.

There’s a campaign where President Obama, the incumbent, and Mitt Romney, the top challenger simply ignore this. And they have their own campaign going on. Then there’s the campaign where Herman Cain is leading in almost every state and national poll, and doesn’t seem to be impacted by this.

So it’s sort of interesting. At what point do the two campaigns converge? At what point do the other candidates in the race, be it Obama or Romney or the lower-tier candidates, actually start talking about this? Or does that ever happen at all? It’s been a fascinating spectacle over the course of the last week, a top candidate for president with some explosive charges against him, and his rivals don’t mention it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And yet — and today — well, for the rest of the week, there will be encounters with the media. There’s a debate scheduled later…

JONATHAN MARTIN: There’s a debate Wednesday night in Michigan. So he will face questions there, and then Saturday in South Carolina as well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jonathan Martin with Politico, thanks very much.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Thank you, Judy.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec11/cain_11-07.html

Christopher Samuel (Kit) Bond Jr., Josiah Robins (Jo) Bonner Mary Bono Mack John Boozman Madeleine Bordallo

Source: http://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2011/10/jews-and-halloween.html

J. Randy Forbes Jeff Fortenberry Bill Foster Virginia Ann Foxx Barney Frank

The Joint Deficit Reduction Committee is facing a Nov. 23 deadline toreduce deficits by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Photoby Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

Time is running out for the bipartisan Congressional supercommittee charged with cutting at least $1.2 trillion from the nation’s deficit over 10 years, and members are trying to avoid automatic spending cuts to military and domestic projects in the absence of a compromise.

According to Robert Pear of the New YorkTimes, they’re looking for yet another way to kick the can down the road:

Until now, the main obstacle to a deal was Republicans’ unwillingness to raise taxes and Democrats’ unwillingness to make significant cuts in the growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without tax increases. To shave deficits by $1.2 trillion without raising revenue or touching entitlement programs could require deep cuts in domestic spending, the military or both.

As the deficit panel enters a final frenetic week of negotiations, Republicans and Democrats said they hoped to give broadly worded instructions to the regular tax-writing committees of Congress — the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee — to come up with a certain amount of revenue after the panel completes its work this month.

The chairmen of the tax-writing committees, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, have said they would welcome such instructions.

The outlook for an agreement doesn’t look good considering the committee’s deadline is Nov. 23 and that any deal must be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which means the committee could have already breached a soft deadline for allowing the CBO to complete its analysis.

Moving the debate over reforming the federal tax code — a massive undertaking — would mean shifting the ongoing debate over fiscal policy into 2012 and avoiding difficult choices in the short term. With Congressional elections approaching, it might also mean punting on real choices about tax rates past November 2012.

The Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery and RosalindHeldermanreport that Sunday saw neither side coming closer to bridging a gap on how much to cut and how much to raise in taxes:

Mathematically, the gap between the two sides on the supercommittee has narrowed. Republicans have offered a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction package that would cut spending by about $750 billion over the next decade while raising about $500 billion in revenue, including about $300 billion in new taxes. Democrats have offered to trim borrowing by $2 trillion, with that sum equally divided between spending cuts and tax increases.

After a long day of talks Sunday, the two sides were no closer to agreement, according to sources in both parties. Significant differences remained about both the size of the tax target and the form of an enforcement mechanism, with Democrats arguing for a trigger that would automatically raise taxes unless Congress acts.

For his part, President Obama is still pushing the committee for abalanced approach that includes tax increases on the wealthy andmodest reforms to entitlements. He addressed the issue during a pressavailability during the APEC conference in Hawaii:

“My hope is that over the next several days, the congressional leadership on the super committee go ahead and bite the bullet and do what needs to be done — because the math won’t change. There’s no magic formula. There are no magic beans that you can toss on the ground and suddenly a bunch of money grows on trees. We got to just go ahead and do the responsible thing. And I’m prepared to sign legislation that is balanced, that solves this problem.”

SURVEYING THE FIELD

It appears that the tumult of last week has taken its toll on Herman Cain and Rick Perry, according to a pair of new surveys.

Despite sitting atop the Politico/George Washington University Battleground Poll released Monday, Cain’s hold on the top spot is less than firm. As James Hohmann explains, Cain’s support dropped sharply last Monday, after the first woman to accuse the Republican contender of inappropriate sexual behavior, Sharon Bialek, came forward publicly.

Among likely Republican voters surveyed Sunday, Nov. 6, Cain led the field with 40 percent. On Monday, he was third with 22 percent. By Wednesday, just 19 percent of those surveyed said they supported Cain for the nomination.

As Cain’s support dropped, Mitt Romney’s surged, with 40 percent of those surveyed last Wednesday saying they backed the former Massachusetts governor. (The full sample had Cain at 27 percent and Romney at 25 percent. Perry and Newt Gingrich each received 14 percent.)

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, meanwhile, went back and interviewed Republican voters who had been polled earlier this month and found that Cain had relinquished his lead to Romney, who received the support of 32 percent of respondents, up from 27 percent. Cain’s support dropped from 28 percent to 27 percent.

Like Romney, Gingrich also saw his standing rise, from 17 percent to 22 percent. The survey, taken after Perry’s debate flub last week, showed the Texas governor’s support falling from 8 percent to 4 percent.

As the Journal’s Jonathan Weisman reports, the rest of the poll numbers don’t look any better for Perry:

Republican primary voters now have more negative feelings about the Texan than positive feelings. A week ago, 38% felt positively toward the governor, while 24% felt negatively. Now 28% feel warmly toward Mr. Perry; 33% said they feel somewhat or very negative about him.

Taken together, the two surveys show some positive developments for Romney, who had been struggling to break past 25 percent in most recent polls. These polls seem to indicate that the GOP front-runner may have yet to hit his ceiling among Republican voters.

The surveys also hint that Gingrich may likely be the next “Romney alternative” to emerge, following Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Perry and Cain, although his staying power will largely depend on whether he’s able to avoid the missteps that almost sunk his campaign earlier this year.

DINING WITH CAIN

Cain, who built his career working in the food industry — and most famously with Godfather’s Pizza — sat down with GQ in mid-October to discuss presidential politics, pizza toppings and ice cream flavors.

You can read the full article here,but we wanted to point you in the direction of two highlights. First,Cain’s perspective on pizza toppings:

Chris Heath: What can you tell about a man by the type of pizza that he likes?

Herman Cain: [repeats the question aloud, then pauses for a long moment] The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is.

Chris Heath: Why is that?

Herman Cain: Because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance. [laughs]

Devin Gordon: Is that purely a meat question?

Herman Cain: A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.

The other excerpt involves Cain’s GOP rivals and ice cream flavors:

Devin Gordon: Let me ask you about your rivals. Recently, in response to a question about you being the new “flavor of the month,” you said you weren’t a flavor of the month, you were Häagen-Dazs black walnut, which “tastes good all the time.” If Mitt Romney was an ice cream flavor, what flavor would he be?

Herman Cain: Oh, just plain vanilla. [laughs] Are you guys really going to print this? I have learned that with my new status in the polls, any- and every thing that I say will show up somewhere. Do you guys really want to do this ice cream analogy?

Devin Gordon: We do. Rick Perry?

Herman Cain: Rick Perry: rocky road.

Devin Gordon: Michele Bachmann?

Herman Cain: Michele Bachmann… I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to say it.

Devin Gordon: Oh, come on!

Herman Cain: Tutti-frutti. I know I’m going to get in trouble!

ON THE TRAIL

All events listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event in Kapolei,Hawaii, at 4:15 p.m.

Vice President Joe Biden is in Washington where this afternoon heswears in John Bryson as Secretary of Commerce.

Newt Gingrich meets with employees of GuideOne Insurance in DesMoines, Iowa, at 12 p.m., holds a meet-and-greet in Jefferson at 5p.m. and hosts a reception and book signing event in Carroll at 7 p.m.

Herman Cain holds a fundraiser in Milwaukee at 12:30 p.m. andattends a tailgate party in Green Bay before the Packers-Vikings game.

Michele Bachmann visits McCarthy & Bailey’s Irish Pub in Sioux City,Iowa, at 1 p.m. and holds a pair of town halls — in Le Mars at 3 p.m.and in Sheldon at 6:30 p.m.

Jon Huntsman discusses his jobs plan at the Brookings Institution inWashington at 2:15 p.m.

Rick Perry speaks at the Scott County GOP Ronald Reagan Dinner inBettendorf, Iowa, at 7:15 p.m.

All future events can be found on our PoliticalCalendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politicspage.

Sign up hereto receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/11/the-morning-line-supercommittee-nears-deadline-with-no-deal-in-sight.html

Steve Driehaus John J., Jr. Duncan Richard Joseph Durbin Donna F. Edwards Thomas Chester (Chet) Edwards

October 17, 2011 (MMD Newswire) – - In Spring, the Knesset passed the “Citizenship Revocation Act” which allows the courts to revoke Israeli citizenship of anyone convicted of treason or espionage.

On or before this November 13th, Israeli Nuclear Whistle Blower, Mordechai Vanunu will learn the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision regarding his appeal to cancel his Israeli citizenship, filed on the 5th of May and which can be read in full here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6CZqLjyWQs

The Israeli Supreme Court was to render its decision by August 13th but the Government requested the three-month delay.

Vanunu filed the appeal as a way to escape the state where he has been held against his will under restrictions that have bound him in Israel since he emerged on 21 April 2004, from 18 years in a windowless tomb sized cell because he was convicted of treason in 1986.

From 1976 through 1985, Vanunu was a nuclear plant technician and shift manager in Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility. Because he was an excellent worker he was cross-trained in many areas. When Vanunu realized he was a cog in the making of nuclear weapons, he suffered a crisis of conscience and acting on his own, one night he shot two rolls of film in various top-secret locations after a supervisor carelessly left the keys in a shower room.

A few months later Vanunu quit, left Israel and carried the undeveloped film throughout Europe for nine months until he met Peter Hounam, an investigative journalist while in Sydney, Australia. Twenty-five years ago, Hounam broke the news that Israel had upwards of 200 nuclear warheads for the London Sunday Times, just as the Mossad was kidnapping Vanunu. After a closed door trial Vanunu was sentenced to eighteen years in jail, most all if it in solitary confinement.

Upon release and under restrictions not to speak to foreigners, Vanunu granted hundreds of interviews. Israel brought charges against him in January 2006 and in July 2010, Israel sent Vanunu back to solitary confinement for 78 days in a maximum-security prison.

Eileen Fleming’s third book, “BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker 2005-2010″ documents the whistle blower’s saga that will again make headlines on or before November 13, 2011.

” Mordechai Vanunu is a prisoner of conscience…The restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu arbitrarily limit his rights to freedom of movement, expression and association and are therefore in breach of international law. They should be lifted and he should be allowed to start his life again as a free man.”- Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East Programme, 18 June 2010

About the Author:

Eileen Fleming was writing her first historical novel when she met Vanunu in Jerusalem in June 2005. That meeting began a series of interviews which culminated in her third book and only fund raising vehicle in her run for US House of Representatives 2012, District 5, Florida.

MEDIA CONTACT: Eileen Fleming Email: BeyondNuclear2010@gmail.com Phone: 352-242-1919

Website: http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1969&Itemid=242

REVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE

###

Source: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/israeli-nuclear-whistle-blower-mordechai-vanunu-72280.html

Austan Goolsbee Bill Daley General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Susan Rice Ronald Kirk

BURLINGTON, Vt. (MMD Newswire) September 30, 2011 – - With one month gone since Vermont suffered a major disaster in Tropical Storm Irene and another month left to register for aid, FEMA has approved more than $16 million in assistance to individuals and families.

“As we continue our work with the state and other partners to help Vermonters recover, FEMA urges anyone who has not registered for assistance to do so before the Halloween deadline,” said Federal Coordinating Officer James N. Russo. “We are here for the long haul, but the sooner you are in the system, the easier it will be to ensure that you get all help you are eligible for.”

FEMA’s registration number is: 800-621-FEMA (3362). If you have a speech disability or hearing loss and use a TTY, call 800-462-7585 directly; if you use 711 or Video Relay Service (VRS), call 800-621-3362. Online registration is available at www.DisasterAssistance.gov or at FEMA’s mobile website, m.fema.gov for Smartphone or tablet users.

Online registration helps to reduce the time it takes to apply for aid and allows you to check the progress of your application online. The registration deadline for Individual Assistance grants is Oct. 31. Cities and towns must submit their requests for Public Assistance, which provides reimbursement to repair public infrastructure such as roads and bridges, by October 17.

The approved aid so far includes more than $15.1 million in housing grants to help repair, rebuild or replace housing and for rental assistance, as well as more than $900,000 for assistance with other needs, such as replacement of personal property or medical expenses.

Other numbers:

- 5,882 registrations have been received.

- 2,659 Vermonters have been approved for housing assistance, and 123 have received the maximum Individuals and Households Program award of $30,200. The average housing award is just under $6,000.

- 1,187 Vermonters have been approved for temporary rental assistance.

- There are 8 inspectors in the field and 3,921 property inspections to document damage have been completed. The turnaround time for applicants to receive inspections is just under three days.

- The U.S. Small Business Administration has issued 5,258 loan applications to homeowners and businesses in Vermont. To date a total of 500 have been returned, and 102 applications totaling almost $5 million have been approved.

Source: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/one-month-after-irene-69638.html

Lloyd Alton, Ii Doggett Joe Donnelly Byron Leslie Dorgan Michael F. Doyle David Timothy Dreier

Listen to the Audio

GOP hopeful Herman Cain went before cameras late Tuesday in Scottsdale, Ariz. to deny allegations made by a Chicago-area woman that he made unwanted sexual advances toward her more than a decade ago. Judy Woodruff and Political Editor David Chalian discuss the scandal’s impact on Cain’s bid for the White House.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Herman Cain went before cameras late this afternoon in Phoenix and denied allegations made by a Chicago woman that he made unwanted sexual advances toward her more than a decade ago.

The woman, Sharon Bialek, leveled the accusations yesterday. She was the fourth woman in recent days to allege that Cain had acted inappropriately when he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s.

We begin with some excerpts of today’s news conference.

HERMAN CAIN, (R) presidential candidate: With respect to the most recent accusation, I have never acted inappropriately with anyone, period.

I saw Ms. Allred and her client yesterday in that news conference for the very first time. As I sat in my hotel room with a couple of my staff members, as they got to the microphone, my first response in my mind and reaction was, I don’t even know who this woman is.

Secondly, I didn’t recognize the name at all. The time that she referenced was during the time that I was the CEO and president of the National Restaurant Association. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., where about 150 workers work. And we have about 150 people in Chicago, where she said she worked for our educational foundation.

I tried to remember if I recognized her, and I didn’t. I tried to remember if I remembered that name, and I didn’t. The charges and the accusations, I absolutely reject. They simply didn’t happen. They simply didn’t happen.

We are not going to allow Washington or politics to deny me the opportunity to represent this great nation. And as far as these accusations causing me to back off and maybe withdraw from this presidential primary race, ain’t going to happen, because I’m doing this for the American people and for the children and the grandchildren. And I will not be deterred by false, anonymous, incorrect accusations.

QUESTION: Mr. Cain, now another woman, one of the formerly anonymous women, has come forward who worked with you at the Restaurant Association, Karen Kraushaar. She’s now a spokesperson for the Treasury Department and has come forward publicly.

What do you say to her and — and — or her allegations? This is somebody who is still working in the U.S. government. Are her allegations not true? Is she lying about them?

HERMAN CAIN: Well, to the best of my recollection, since you mentioned that particular name, that is the one that I recall that filed a complaint, but it was found to be baseless.

Let’s separate something. The accusations were made of sexual harassment. They were found baseless. There was no legal settlement.

JUDY WOODRUFF: To help us sort through Cain’s remarks and the impact this story is having on his campaign, we are joined by NewsHour Political Editor David Chalian.

David, so we watched a portion of what Herman Cain said a little while ago. And we are — I do want to ask you about this new — one of the original women who has now become public. She’s gone public with her name, but, first, the Sharon Bialek accusation. She said there were specific things he did wrong. He says it never happened.

Where does it go?

DAVID CHALIAN: Right.

Last night, you remember, we reported on her very specific, detailed accusations. And he says, not only did none of this happen, he claims. He doesn’t even — he says he doesn’t recollect who she is, didn’t recognize her name at all.

So this is a classic he said/she said moment here. And what Herman Cain now has to be very concerned about is that there is no further documentation or evidence or corroboration of Ms. Bialek’s account yesterday. If there is, he’s going to have to be right back before cameras explaining again, because the way he put it today, so completely, that absolutely nothing inappropriate ever happened, opens him up that if something else trickles out, Judy, he’s going to have to answer more questions.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, with this other woman who was one of the original anonymous accusers, she now has given her name, Karen Kraushaar. She works at the Treasury Department.

DAVID CHALIAN: That’s right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In this instance, he is saying he does remember the instance where he said he compared her height to the height of his wife. So there’s something he’s acknowledging there.

DAVID CHALIAN: Right. This is the incident he went into detail with you about this a week ago, when he was on the NewsHour.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That’s right.

DAVID CHALIAN: And this is the formal complaint that was filed at the National Restaurant Association at the time. It did not end in a legal settlement, but it was an arrangement, as Herman Cain calls it. She did get money of some sort when she left the National Restaurant Association.

But he claims that the Restaurant Association looked into all of her charges and determined that it was baseless. What you will see happen now is that more and more people will — reporters will be looking into this. And there will be calls on Herman Cain to ask the Restaurant Association to release the details of that investigation that he says determined that the Ms. Kraushaar’s claims were baseless.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So what effect is all this having on his candidacy?

DAVID CHALIAN: Two big effects that you have to look at. One, it’s blotting out everything else. This is the Republican nomination race right now. Mitt Romney put out a plan today about trying to deal with the Iran nuclear threat. I don’t think anybody is going to cover that, Judy.

This is the entire story. And he can’t, Herman Cain can’t get his way back on message to what he wants to be talking about, no matter how hard he tries.

But, also, we’re starting to see polling numbers come out that his personal favorability is taking a bit of a hit here. In a new Gallup poll, he had the highest positive intensity score of any candidate a couple weeks ago with 34 points. That is dropping. And if — Gallup separated the numbers to see, how much did it drop before the accusations were made and after? It is dropping precipitously after these accusations have come into the public domain.

So his personal favorability is taking a hit, even though, in terms of level of support, he is still remaining competitive, at the front of the pack with Mitt Romney.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we will see where they go after today’s news conference.

DAVID CHALIAN: Exactly.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Chalian, thank you.

DAVID CHALIAN: Sure.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec11/cain_11-08.html

Al Franken Trent Franks Rodney P. Frelinghuysen Marcia L. Fudge Elton W. Gallegly

Listen to the Audio

Should the government help spur or back certain kinds of energy research? Jeffrey Brown discusses the political storm over the government’s backing of the now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra with Eileen Claussen of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and Robert Bryce of The Manhattan Institute.

JEFFREY BROWN: And we turn to a political storm over the government’s backing of a now-bankrupt energy company.

For the first time, Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified before a congressional committee looking into his handling of a loan guarantee to failed solar panel company Solyndra.

From the outset, he defended his actions.

STEVEN CHU, U.S. Energy secretary: The final decisions on Solyndra were mine and I made them with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind. And I want to be clear. Over the course of Solyndra’s loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations.

My decision to guarantee a loan to Solyndra was based on the analysis of experienced professionals.

JEFFREY BROWN: Solyndra had been touted as an example of the country’s green technology future.

Secretary Chu was on hand in September of 2009 as Vice President Joe Biden appeared before company employees via video link, announcing a loan guarantee for Solyndra under the new federal stimulus law. Nine months later, in May of 2010, President Obama toured the company in Fremont, Calif.

In all, Solyndra received more than $500 million in federal aid. But less than two years later, in August of this year, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy.

Today, Secretary Chu blamed the company’s failure on the economics of a global market.

STEVEN CHU: It is extremely unfortunate, what has happened with Solyndra. But when the bottom of a market falls out and the prices of solar decreases by 70 percent in two-and-a-half years, that was totally unexpected.

And so, fundamentally, this company and several others got caught in a very, very bad tsunami if you will.

JEFFREY BROWN: But House Republicans see a very different picture.

Fred Upton of Michigan:

REP. FRED UPTON, R-Mich.: The number of red flags about Solyndra that were raised along the way, many from within DOE, and either ignored or minimized by senior officials is astonishing.

JEFFREY BROWN: Among the warnings, say Republicans, a 2009 email between Energy Department staff suggesting Solyndra was — quote — “likely to face severe cash-flow problems.”

Florida Republican Cliff Stearns chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee that held today’s hearing.

REP. CLIFF STEARNS, R-Fla.: So, the bankruptcy was predicted two years ahead of time. When you signed off on the loan guarantees, were you aware of this, of these emails and of these concerns?

STEVEN CHU: It wasn’t predicting bankruptcy of the company. It was predicting a cash flow issue that upon further analysis did not appear — and in fact it did not appear in reality.

JEFFREY BROWN: Republicans also claimed that both the initial loan guarantee and subsequent decisions were made on a political, not strictly business, basis.

They cited an email released by the committee last week suggesting that George Kaiser, a major Solyndra investor and Obama donor, was asked by the White House to delay news of layoffs until after the 2010 midterm elections.

Texas Republican Joe Barton:

REP. JOE BARTON, R-Texas: You know who George Kaiser is, I’m sure.

STEVEN CHU: Yes, I know now.

REP. JOE BARTON: You know that he was a major investor in a venture capital firm that had a major stake in Solyndra. You knew that?

STEVEN CHU: Not at the time of the valuation of the loan, not at the time of the restructuring. I know now what his connection — what his — his role has been.

REP. JOE BARTON: Everybody and their dog at DOE knew who he was and knew what he was involved in.

JEFFREY BROWN: But Chu insisted throughout the hearing there was no political influence in the department’s decisions.

REP. JOHN SULLIVAN, R-Okla.: Who put the pressure on you or them to delay divulging that knowledge until after the elections?

STEVEN CHU: There was no pressure. I wasn’t part of that decision, and I certainly not — wouldn’t have been in favor of that decision.

JEFFREY BROWN: For their part, Democrats on the committee charged Republicans were playing politics.

Henry Waxman of California:

REP. HENRY WAXMAN, D-Calif.: All of these records show that the decision to award a loan guarantee to Solyndra was based on the merits, not political considerations. It’s time for House Republicans to stop dancing on Solyndra’s grave and start getting serious about energy policy.

JEFFREY BROWN: Chu was also repeatedly pressed on why he approved a restructuring of Solyndra’s loan that allowed two private investors to be paid off before taxpayers.

STEVEN CHU: We had two choices. We either had to stop the loan, which would make Solyndra go into immediate bankruptcy because with a half-empty factory — half-completed factory. Or we could say continue on the contract of the loan, which was to build this factory. Once the factory was complete, there was — Solyndra would have a fighting chance of continuing, or it could offer that factory sale as a whole unit.

JEFFREY BROWN: Throughout today’s hearing, Chu stressed that helping Solyndra was just part of a larger energy strategy.

STEVEN CHU: The stakes could not be higher for our country. When it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice, compete or accept defeat. I believe we can and must compete.  

REP. CLIFF STEARNS: The subcommittee is adjourned.

JEFFREY BROWN: And the energy secretary also said he continues to have the backing of the White House.

The Solyndra story has also prompted some big questions in its wake: Should the government help spur or back certain kinds of energy companies? And can it do well?

We explore that with Eileen Claussen, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, which works to inform energy and environmental policy, and Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future.”

Eileen Claussen, I will start with you.

Critics of what has happened at Solyndra — and we heard it from Republicans today — they say, this is a story that shows that government — government’s inability to know how best, know when to invest and how to do it well in these kinds of technologies.

EILEEN CLAUSSEN, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions: I think, of all of the loan guarantees that were given under this program, which, I should point out, were — the law supporting it was signed by a Republican president, George Bush, and a Republican Congress.

But, that aside, I think it’s important to note that there are two, I think, out of 38 that are in this kind of condition, one of which went bankrupt, and one of which I think is very close to it, not nearly all. So a couple mistakes? Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: You think there’s a case to be made for this kind of investment?

EILEEN CLAUSSEN: I do.

I think this is not the kind of thing that venture capitalists are going to do, because the time frames are very long and because the capital requirements are very large. If we are going to move to a clean energy future, I think there is a real role for government here.

JEFFREY BROWN: Robert Bryce, what lesson do you draw from the Solyndra story so far?

ROBERT BRYCE, Manhattan Institute: Well, I think that it’s — if you look at Solyndra and you look at the loan guarantee program in general, I think that it is clear that there needs to be some reform.

Look at the Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon. It was the subject of a White House memo that was published last year. It was written last year by Larry Summers, Carol Browner talking about the subsidies that were being given to the project developers. One of those project developers — or the main one, rather, is General Electric.

It’s a $2 billion project, about 800 megawatts of wind capacity, and yet the government provided a billion dollar loan guarantee to General Electric, which has a market capitalization of $170 billion, is — and is one of the largest financial services companies in the world.

Further, once the project is completed early next year, GE and its partners, who include Google and Sumitomo, will get a $490 million cash grant. This is not the proper role of government. And I think, in that case, it’s clearly just the worst kind of corporate welfare.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, the lesson you draw is, the government should just not be in this kind of business, whether it’s solar technology, any of the energy sectors?

ROBERT BRYCE: Well, look, if I were energy secretary, I would say let’s have fair field, no favor.

Let’s eliminate all subsidies and let all these different sources compete on their merits. But I think what the problem with the solar business — and the Obama administration is being pilloried now for Solyndra, but in all of this, we have forgotten the issue of scale.

The U.S. gets at least 7,000 times more energy from hydrocarbons as it does from all solar. So I think we’re paying attention largely to the wrong source right now.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, Eileen Claussen, you would say this is precisely the source we should be paying attention to and, therefore, the government should be involved?

EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Exactly.

If you look at the power sector — and I’m sure Robert Bryce has done that — you would know that, over the next 20 or 30 years, we are going to be replacing almost all of the existing fleet. I would like to see it replaced with the most efficient, effective and clean technologies possible.

In order to do that, I think it is wise to invest in different technologies. Look, I know that Mr. Bryce likes natural gas. A lot of the fracking technology actually came out of government research. So government can do more than solar.

I mean, government can do research related to fossil fuels as well, and make things better. Nuclear, there’s a lot of stuff there that could be improved.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, what about that, Mr. Bryce? I mean, isn’t it the case that government is already involved in so many different ways in all kinds of sectors of the energy industry?

ROBERT BRYCE: Well, look, there’s no question about that. And I am adamantly pro-nuclear.

I think if the U.S. is really serious about reducing CO2 emissions, then we should be aggressively moving toward nuclear and, in particular, modular reactors, and, if possible, fueled with thorium.

I think this is tremendously positive. But the reality is, right now, that nuclear is priced out of the market. Why? Because of low-cost natural gas. Exelon last year said they could not build nuclear plants in the U.S. because natural gas — with natural gas prices below $8.

The reality is that the shale revolution that’s now under way for both shale oil and shale gas is the best news in the U.S. energy sector since the discovery of the East Texas field in 1930. And if you talk to the International Energy Agency in Paris, they say the U.S. is now reducing its carbon dioxide emissions faster than is Europe.

And why is that? Because of low-cost natural gas.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Now, that…

ROBERT BRYCE: And Europe has a cap-and-trade system.

JEFFREY BROWN: I’m sorry to interrupt you.

ROBERT BRYCE: Sure.

JEFFREY BROWN: I mean, that — the natural gas, we have debated on this show. So, I want to focus it again on the government’s involvement in all of these things.

ROBERT BRYCE: Fair enough.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, Eileen Claussen, what…

ROBERT BRYCE: Sure.

JEFFREY BROWN: … about what the — what we heard from Secretary Chu at the end there, when he said, “When it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice, compete or accept defeat.”

Now, this is a global market. And I think he’s talking primarily about China, a few other countries, where they’re going down this path.

EILEEN CLAUSSEN: There’s no question about it. And they’re doing it in a very direct way.

I mean, there are subsidies, there’s government policy to really support clean energy. And I’m not saying that we should do what China is doing. But I do think it is a competition. I do think, if we had demand here, we would manufacture here. We have innovation capabilities here second to none. Why wouldn’t we want to compete?

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Bryce, why wouldn’t we, if China is in the game…

ROBERT BRYCE: Sure.

JEFFREY BROWN: … and it’s a global competition, and they get backing from the government?

ROBERT BRYCE: Absolutely.

Well, I will respond. And I respect Ms. Claussen’s position, but what’s the most admired company now in the United States or even around the world? I think it’s clearly Apple. What does Apple do? They design their products here in the United States and they assemble them and manufacture them in China.

Well, where’s the outrage in the green left about the fact that all of these cell phones, all of these computers, all of our iPhones, iPads, all these other technologies are being made in China? What I hear in terms of this clean energy and solar panels and all these other things, that we have to make those here in the United States.

To me, the rhetoric is remarkably similar to what we have heard in the past from the corn ethanol scammers about the evils of foreign oil. I don’t see much difference. Why is it OK for Apple to produce all — or manufacture all their products overseas, and that’s OK, but somehow now we’re supposed to be autonomous or we’re supposed to produce all of our own solar panels?

It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a global market.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, you’re shaking your head, so, clearly, you don’t like this analogy. You don’t see it.

EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Well, no. I actually would like to see much more of it made in the America. I think that’s the way we generate jobs here, and that could be true for Apple products, as well as for clean energy.

I think we really need to build a manufacturing base in this country if we want the economy to grow. And there’s no reason why you should exclude clean energy from that.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, at the same time, briefly, you’re saying that safeguards could be put in for the kinds of — any potential problems that you see when the government is involved?

EILEEN CLAUSSEN: Sure. Absolutely.

And I also think there are a wide number of different technologies that should be looked at. I think it is important. I actually like nuclear also, and I like natural gas also. I think there are improvements that could be done in those areas as well. And I think there is a role for government.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, we will have to leave it there.

Eileen Claussen, Robert Bryce, thank you both very much.

ROBERT BRYCE: Thanks, Jeffrey.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec11/solyndra_11-17.html

John Boozman Madeleine Bordallo Daniel David Boren Leonard L. Boswell Frederick C. Boucher

Source: http://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-wondered-last-night-whether-there.html

Tom Cole Susan Margaret Collins K. Michael Conaway Gerald E. (Gerry) Connolly Kent Conrad

By Heritage Foundation

By Chuck Donovan

Evolution and inevitability are words much in the news lately regarding same-sex marriage. The victory for marriage redefinition advocates in New York has sparked a new round of assertions that Americans can stop thinking about and debating this basic institution of civil society.Vice President Joe Biden sounded a similar theme after the repeal of the military law on homosexual conduct last December. “Inevitability” is a hardy perennial, therefore, but hardly correct. The debate over marriage has entered a new phase, but it is nowhere near an endgame.

First, the redefinition of marriage in New York is not permanent even in the Empire State. It can be reversed by a future legislature or by a legislatively authorized referendum on the issue. The National Organization for Marriage—which was a key player in California’s popular vote to overrule legal approval of homosexual unions—plans a multi-million-dollar campaign in New York to restore traditional marriage via the ballot box. Despite gay activists’ claims of momentum, to date no popular majority in any U.S. jurisdiction has voted to adopt a same-sex marriage law.

Second, the next state-level fights over the definition of marriage are likely to occur in places where traditional marriage champions are very strong: Minnesota, Indiana, New Hampshire, and Iowa. Faced with gubernatorial resistance to their cause in New Jersey, marriage redefinition advocates are turning to the courts again. But most of these efforts have failed, and courts must reckon with the fact that the headwinds against marriage redefinition remain potent in the vast majority of the states.

Finally, the meaning of marriage and its significance to society are getting fresh attention as matters of both economic and social concern. Expunging marriage between a man and a woman from the law does not erase it from reality. Marriage is a pre-political institution whose decline in or absence from a community will define that community’s prospects and shape its ability to thrive.

In this sense, events in Albany may echo events in Boston eight years ago, when one state’s decision to impose same-sex marriage on the eve of an election year launched a national debate with enormous consequences. The stakes are even higher now. Informed elections, not the natural selection of “evolving” views, will play the larger part in determining whether same-sex marriage is inevitable or ephemeral.

Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/is-gay-marriage-really-inevitable

Paul C., Jr. Broun Corrine Brown Henry Edward, Jr. Brown Scott P. Brown Sherrod Brown

A few months ago, Matt Taibbi suggested that gaffes from conservative candidates didn’t hurt them. “When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese,” he wrote, “these people don’t learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you’re a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they’re even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.”

Dave Weigel says events have emphatically debunked this idea:

That’s clearly not true, is it? Bachmann, Cain, and Perry have engendered the exact same reaction to their screw-ups. There’s a wave of media-bashing from the base, collect-a-quotes from Tea Party leaders who say the media is unfair. And then the lights go elsewhere, and there’s a slow, quiet, walk-away from the damaged candidates. In today’s NH Journal poll of the Granite State, all three of the candidates I mentioned are deep, deep underwater on favorability. It’s almost like Republican voters still pay attention to the media.

Hold on a minute, pardner. Let’s roll the tape on this:

• Michele Bachmann was riding high in the polls through June and early July. Then, on July 16, the Des Moines Register asked Rick Perry if he was going to run and he replied that he was “getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do.” Bachmann started plateauing in the polls. On August 8 it was widely reported that Perry would formally announce his candidacy the following weekend, and the next day Bachmann’s poll numbers tanked for good.
• Rick Perry began his meteoric rise at the same time and kept on rising through the first week of September. Then, on September 12, Bachmann laid into him for mandating HPV vaccinations for “innocent little 12-year-old girls.” Perry immediately began sliding in the polls. On September 22 he suggested that if you opposed in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, “I don’t think you have a heart.” Within a week his poll numbers began to plunge.
• Herman Cain was the beneficiary of Perry’s fall, rising in the polls during the entire month of October. On October 30 Politico reported that two former employees had lodged sexual harassment charges against him and received payouts from the National Restaurant Association. After a week of wildly fluctuating explanations, Sharon Bialek held a televised press conference on November 7 to say that Cain groped her in a car and asked, “You want a job, right?” Within days Cain’s poll numbers began falling.

I don’t doubt for a second that erratic debate performances and public gaffes have played a role in damaging all three candidates. But that’s mainly because conservative voters already had something substantive to hang their concerns on. Bachmann fell because Perry entered the race; Perry fell because conservatives didn’t like his Gardasil and immigration policies; and Cain fell because of sexual harassment charges. That’s the main thing that damaged them. Acting like idiots was just the cherry on top.

    

Source: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/11/republicans-and-their-gaffes

Gary F. Locke Eric K. Shinseki Arne Duncan Joseph R. Biden Jacob J. Lew

Source: http://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2011/09/google.html

Alex Castellanos Amy Holmes Donna Brazile Ed Rollins Hilary Rosen

October 4, 2011 (MMD Newswire) – - Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is pointing out the hypocrisy of New Jersey Governor and potential presidential candidate Chris Christie’s support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty for illegal aliens. This while he is bashing others like Texas Governor Rick Perry for supporting licenses and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.

Chris Christie defeated Democratic Governor Corzine after making a top campaign issue of Corzine’s support for licenses and in-state tuition for illegal aliens, both of which are opposed by approximately 80% of all Americans, including majorities of blacks, Democrats, and legal Hispanics according to numerous polls.

Christie’s tough language on illegal immigration issues, and his public apology, led New Jersey voters to forgive him for his comments in 2008 claiming “being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime.”

After using the issue to defeat an incumbent Governor, Chris Christie then proclaimed his support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty and a massive change in existing federal law to accommodate millions of illegal immigrants.

“While bashing Rick Perry for supporting in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, Chris Christie has shown his support for granting them Amnesty and then subsequently licenses and in-state tuition,” said William Gheen of ALIPAC. “If Chris Christie steps into the presidential race, he is going to take the “Perry Plunge” once both his hypocrisy and support for Amnesty for illegal aliens is revealed to GOP voters.”

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is America’s largest and most active political action group advising voters on issues involving the top issue of illegal immigration and border security. Founded on 9/11/2004, ALIPAC has over 40,000 supporters nationwide, is quoted in national and local media each month, and has achieved top tier web traffic and presence.

ALIPAC is placing both Rick Perry and Chris Christie into their 2012 candidate rankings as AMNESTY supporters.

“Mega-wealth election buyers are racing behind the scenes to find a Republican actor such as Rick Perry or Chris Christie who will talk tough on illegal immigration, while supporting Comprehensive and Dream Amnesties that would eventually destroy America,” said William Gheen. “The American public, both Democrats and Republicans, simply want a president who will honor the US Constitution and existing federal laws passed by Congress instead of supporting this globalist Amnesty agenda.”

Several new polls indicate that Texas Governor Rick Perry’s campaign for president is collapsing due to his comments in support of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is the first national organization to accurately predict the “Perry Plunge” in the polls in a national press release issued right after the first Florida GOP debate at 10:03 pm ET on Monday, September 12, 2011.

While the first release received little coverage outside of the Miami Herald, which tried to counter ALIPAC’s prediction, the second release after the second debate titled “Rick Perry Is Finished” (September 23, 2011) received wide national coverage. ALIPAC recently conducted a highly successful protest of Rick Perry in Charlotte, NC, and is planning more protests of Perry to inform voters of his unpopular stances.

New polling data is confirming ALIPAC’s prediction as accurate. ALIPAC is now making a new prediction that Chris Christie will suffer a similar political fate as Rick Perry if elites working behind the scenes push Christie to enter the presidential race.

“The traitors who are responsible for the illegal immigration invasion of America that is costing many Americans their jobs, homes, taxpayer resources, voting rights, and sometimes their very lives, are trying to bring in their asset Chris Christie now that Rick Perry is politically nonviable,” said William Gheen. “We will be ready to expose their next puppet. We are not going back to the days of George W. Bush without one hell of a political fight!”

A large collection of national polls which illustrate American voter opposition to benefits and any form of Comprehensive or Dream Amnesty supported by politicians like Chris Christie, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich, and others can be found at http://www.alipac.us/polls_surveys_opinions.html

To schedule interviews or join ALIPAC’s national network of Americans fighting to stop and reverse illegal immigration please visit www.ALIPAC.us

###

DISCUSS THIS NATIONAL PRESS RELEASE WITH OUR ONLINE ACTIVISTS: http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-1272478.html#1272478

CONTACT: Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), (866) 703-0864 Press@alipac.us

Source: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/americans-for-legal-immigration-pac-alipac-70057.html

Austan Goolsbee Bill Daley General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Susan Rice Ronald Kirk

ALBANY, N.Y. (MMD Newswire) October 7, 2011 – - Disaster Recovery Centers (DRCs) throughout New York state will be open on Columbus Day, October 10, state and federal officials said today. All DRCs in the state are operational daily except Sundays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. until further notice.

The centers are staffed with disaster recovery specialists who can provide information and answer questions about storm-related assistance.

FEMA strongly urges people adversely affected by the recent storms and flooding to register with FEMA before visiting the facilities.

To register by phone, call the FEMA Helpline at 800-621-3362. People with hearing disabilities can use the TTY number, 800-462-7585. Applicants can also register online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov or with any web-enabled mobile device or smartphone at m.fema.gov. Follow the link to “apply online for federal assistance.”

Information to have ready when registering with FEMA includes the address of the damaged property, names of members of the household, a general description of the damage, the Social Security number of any family member living in the home, the extent of insurance coverage and certain other information needed to expedite the process.

Source: http://www.mmdnewswire.com/all-new-york-disaster-recovery-70638.html

John David, Jr. Dingell Charles Djou Christopher John Dodd Lloyd Alton, Ii Doggett Joe Donnelly

Source: http://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/2011/09/remembering-september-11-2001.html

Ander Crenshaw Mark S. Critz Joseph Crowley Henry Cuellar John Culberson

Source: http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/11/the-high-price-of-republican-hypocrisy

Virginia (Ginny) Brown-Waite Vernon G. Buchanan James Paul David Bunning Michael C. Burgess Richard M. Burr

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, was not optimistic of a deal on Tuesday. Photo by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call.

After another day of private meetings and negotiations on Capitol Hill, the 12-member Congressional supercommittee was apparently no closer Tuesday to its mandated $1.2 trillion deficit reduction deal, and all signs point to a process that will remain gridlocked until the Nov. 23 deadline.

The clearest sign of that came from the Republican co-chairman, Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who said during an interview with CNBC on Tuesday evening that Republicans on the committee were sticking to their no new taxes position.

“Any penny of increased static revenue is a step in the wrong direction. We can only balance that with pro-growth reforms, and, frankly, the Democrats have never agreed [to] that, so I don’t know how many times I can tell you that that agreement is not going to happen.”

Watch his full interview below:

This position is at odds with what Democratic supercommittee members like Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen also repeat daily: Any deficit reduction deal must be balanced between cuts and tax increases.

Politico and the Washington Post both have reports that reflect a grim conventional wisdom: The supercommittee is expected to fail.

Anne Kornblut at the Washington Post reports that White House officials are privately pessimistic that a deal will happen, but are putting a positive spin on the situation on the record:

“I don’t think it makes sense to anticipate their failure,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew said Tuesday. “I think it’s important that they succeed. The president made that clear in the calls he made on Friday.”

Politico reports that House and Senate leaders are meeting privately

From Politico’s Jake Sherman and Manu Raju:

Sensing that the end game is approaching, Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met Tuesday to discuss the supercommittee’s outlook. While the leaders downplayed their talks, their direct involvement suggested they’re looking for an escape hatch before the Thanksgiving Eve deadline.

Adding to pressure to the supercommittee are liberals in Congress who fear Democrats may take a huge whack out of cherished entitlement programs — as well as a bipartisan group of lawmakers who will continue to demand Wednesday that the panel “go big” in its deficit goals and take money out of Medicare while raising tax revenues. Any bipartisan deal would split both parties.

Before Republicans make any deals with Democrats, however, they’ll need to make peace in their own party.

“I think what it’s really come down is this: this is such a huge problem and we’re so near crisis if not in the midst of crisis that if this doesn’t get fixed, everybody pays a huge price,” said Sen. Mike Johanns, the Nebraska Republican who has endorsed calls for higher revenue.

But as we saw with the debt ceiling and government shutdown deals earlier this year, Congress tends to make deals happen at the very last second, and there’s still time for a breakthrough.

Rep. Van Hollen explained his outlook to the NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff earlier this week. His description could fit one of many showdowns on Capitol Hill this year:

“It’s really been such a roller-coaster ride, that it’s hard to predict. At one moment, I’m hopeful, and the next moment, I’m frustrated. And then, sometimes, there’s light at the end of the tunnel again. So we’re just going to have to wait and see,” he said.

NEWT-FOUND ATTENTION

Newt Gingrich has seen his stock rise in recent weeks, so it was only a matter of time before his increased standing in the polls invited fresh scrutiny of his record.

Bloomberg News posted a story late Tuesday that reported the former House speaker “made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.”

That total is much larger than the one raised in a question at last week’s debate in Michigan, in which Gingrich was asked what he did for Freddie Mac to earn a payment of $300,000 in 2006.

Gingrich responded: I have never done any lobbying. Every contract was written during the period when I was out of the office, specifically said I would do no lobbying, and I offered advice. And my advice as a historian, when they walked in and said to me, “We are now making loans to people who have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything, but that’s what the government wants us to do,” as I said to them at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible.

Exactly what Gingrich did to earn the money is in dispute, according to the Bloomberg report.

Former Freddie Mac officials familiar with his work in 2006 say Gingrich was asked to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf of the company’s public-private structure that would resonate with conservatives seeking to dismantle it.

He was expected to provide written material that could be circulated among free-market conservatives in Congress and in outside organizations, said two former company executives familiar with Gingrich’s role at the firm. He didn’t produce a white paper or any other document the firm could use on its behalf, they said.

The report puts Gingrich in a tough spot. Even if he told officials at Freddie Mac their lending policies were “insane” — it still leaves many questions left to be answered about Gingrich’s ties to the government-sponsored entity, which he has sharply criticized as a presidential candidate. And with his new-found position as a front-runner in the polls, the glare from the spotlight is likely to only get brighter.

SUPREME COURT TV?

The C-SPAN network is asking the Supreme Court to make an exception to its long-standing refusal to allow live television or radio broadcasts of its proceedings when the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law is argued next spring.

On Monday, the court agreed to hear more than five hours of oral arguments in March on whether it is constitutional to require people to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.

That prompted C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb to write a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts requesting that justices allow the session to be broadcast.

“We believe the public interest is best served by live television coverage of this particular oral argument,” Lamb wrote on Tuesday. “It is a case which will affect every American’s life, our economy and will certainly be an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign.”

The justices have allowed the release of same-day audio recordings for arguments in some major cases in recent years. Last year the court started the practice of posting audio to its website on Fridays of the cases heard that week.

ON THE TRAIL

All events listed in Eastern Time.

President Obama is in Australia.

Vice President Joe Biden is in New York, where he attends a pair of campaign events.

Newt Gingrich attends a fundraiser for Iowa State Senate candidate Jeff Mullen in Urbandale at 8:30 a.m.

Ron Paul delivers remarks on monetary policy and the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., at 9 a.m. and addresses the Congressional Health Care Caucus on Capitol Hill at 12:30 p.m. Paul also attends a fundraiser in Vienna, Va., at 7 p.m.

Rick Santorum campaigns in Iowa, holding a pair of meet-and-greets — in Clinton at 9 a.m. and in DeWitt at 11 a.m. Santorum also visits Scott Community College in Bettendorf at 1:15 p.m. and attends a house party in North Liberty at 7:30 p.m.

Michele Bachmann holds a pair of Iowa town halls — in Storm Lake at 10 a.m. and in Webster City at 1:30 p.m. Bachmann also attends a house party in West Des Moines at 7 p.m.

Rick Perry tours Granite State Manufacturing in Manchester, N.H., at 10:30 a.m. and holds a town hall in Nashua at 2:15 p.m.

Herman Cain attends a rally in West Palm Beach, Fla., at 5 p.m.

Jon Huntsman holds a town hall in Derry, N.H., at 7 p.m.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/11/the-morning-line-20.html

Michael F. Doyle David Timothy Dreier Steve Driehaus John J., Jr. Duncan Richard Joseph Durbin

CHICAGO – If well-known people want to avoid controversy, they should avoid making ugly comments about respected citizens and public officials, particularly in public.
That’s a lesson Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has yet to learn.
Last week, while researching footage of Lewis for [...]

Source: http://biggovernment.com/eagtv/2011/11/19/angry-union-president-spews-insults-then-blames-us-for-backlash/

Carte P. Goodwin Ali Velshi Bill Schneider Candy Crowley David Gergen

By The Young Turks

President Nicolas Sarkozy was attacked by onlooker Hermann Fuster because he was upset over Sarkozy’s stance on Libya. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss.

Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/french-president-sarkozy-attacked

Alex Castellanos Amy Holmes Donna Brazile Ed Rollins Hilary Rosen

Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/11/gibson-guitars-strum-a-lobbying-tune.html

Daniel David Boren Leonard L. Boswell Frederick C. Boucher Charles W. Boustany Barbara Boxer

Listen to the Audio

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks discuss the week’s top political news, including the sexual harassment claims against Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain plus the mood of the American electorate while the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high.

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Mark, what is there to say about today’s jobs report?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, there’s one number that I think is important in understanding this.

They ask the question, pollsters do every month, do you think the country is headed in the right direction or seriously off on the wrong track. Right now, by a margin of 5-1, Americans think the country is off on the wrong track.

JIM LEHRER: And that’s both liberals and conservatives?

MARK SHIELDS: Liberals and conservatives across the board.

JIM LEHRER: Republicans…

MARK SHIELDS: Democrats, yes, old, young.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: And you have to go all the way back to January of 2004 before you found a plurality of Americans thinking the country was headed in the right direction. It was 47-45. And then unemployment was at 5.7 — 94 consecutive months, the psychological condition of the country has been pessimism.

And these numbers aren’t going to change it. These numbers aren’t going to change it.

I mean, these numbers are better than they are worse. They’re more slightly encouraging than they are discouraging, but they aren’t going to change the direction of that psychological environment, emotional environment in which the country finds itself.

JIM LEHRER: You see it in the same terms?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I agree.

I think we’re in for just a long period. There were some little good signs. Catherine Rampell talked about the temporary workers. Productivity was way up. When productivity is way up, they tend to hire later. But it’s just going to be a long haul.

And there’s been a lot of talk recently about the structural problems underneath the cyclical problems. And, so, for example, there’s some theory going around we went through a period decades ago where we really got rid of a lot of industrial workers. Now we could be going through a period where we’re getting rid of lot of mid-level white-collar workers as computers take over some of those managerial type jobs.

I’m sort of haunted by a conversation I had about two weeks ago with a business leader. And I was lamenting the terrible shape of the economy, and he said, we have managed to survive in it. We now know how to work in an economy that is growing 1 percent a year. We get great productivity. We are able to build our profits. We have learned to adapt to this.

And that means no hunger to hire more. And that will come, but it’s just a long time.

JIM LEHRER: Some of the comments that were made in Jeff’s discussion were words like “never,” in terms of getting a lot of these jobs back. Some of these jobs will never come back.

And that’s what you’re saying. People know that. They have figured that out.

MARK SHIELDS: They do know that — and then Ingrid Schroeder from Pew’s statistic that almost one out of three has been unemployed for over a year, I mean, that is…

JIM LEHRER: That’s an extraordinary statistic.

MARK SHIELDS: It really is, because that has a depressant on the person.

When you have been out of work that long, it’s tougher to get up and have your dauber up and be looking again. You become defensive. You become pessimistic. And employers do — David’s right about productivity’s up, but, as a consequence, because it’s very much of a hiring market, pay is down and benefits are down. So they’re getting talented workers for less than they did before.

JIM LEHRER: Now, what are the politics of this now, David?

We had in the news summary, Hari — well, what the president said, hey, there’s some signs we have — but it’s up to the Congress, in other words, it’s up to the Republicans, to do something about it. The Republican leadership, Speaker Boehner, says, no, it’s up to the Democratic Senate.

And it just has a kind of a sameness to it, doesn’t it?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, right now, it’s Charlie Cook’s proposition that there could be a rebellion against both parties. It’s possible, if this continues time and time again.

I guess I’m struck by the fact that Obama is hanging in there reasonably well. If you look at the head-to-head polls, how he’s doing against a generic Republican, slightly behind, how he’s doing against Mitt Romney, pretty much OK, tied. Personal approval rating is about 43.

Considering the condition Mark talked about, the months and months of negative, the country is in the wrong — the country is in decline, he’s actually doing OK. And so there’s a lot — there’s an aura of disappointment around him, but I would say in general it’s just the disgust with everybody, but not so much him personally.

JIM LEHRER: You agree that he’s not getting it as hot as he — as a lot of people would have expected with these kinds of numbers?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think if I told you that by a 5-1 margin people thought the country was headed in the wrong direction, that 9.1 percent unemployment, an economy growing at whatever 1, 1.5 percent, you would say, where’s the president, you would say in the low 30s.

So I think he has deified gravity so far, and I think that’s because there is a — still a residual reservoir of good feeling, people rooting for him to succeed. And — but there is — there is still a sense of — a pervasive sense of disappointment about his presidency, and in part because hopes were so high and so many people invested that hope in him.

JIM LEHRER: Mark has just created a wonderful segue, which I am now going to use.

Speaking of deifying gravity…

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Where are you headed?

JIM LEHRER: … where does the Herman Cain situation stand tonight in your eyes, my friend?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I guess I think it’s a bubble.

(LAUGHTER)

JIM LEHRER: A bubble?

DAVID BROOKS: A bubble.

I don’t think that he will continue to defy gravity. I have never thought that. I thought there’s frames of mind — and we have talked about this in the past.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DAVID BROOKS: In the preseason, you have fun, Herman Cain, fun. But then when you get to choose a president, you choose a president.

And he certainly justified the belief that he’s not ready to be president. This is a job that requires discipline and organization and professionalism. And we can all talk — it’s lovely to have outsiders who are political amateurs. But if you’re actually in the White House or seriously running from it — for it, you need to have these essentially boring qualities.

And he doesn’t have them. And he certainly showed that this week. His response — forget the harassment charges — his response to just the charges, which he was warned about 10 days before they were made public, the fact that he couldn’t…

JIM LEHRER: Who warned him?

DAVID BROOKS: “Politico” magazine, which first broke the story.

JIM LEHRER: “Politico” magazine. The “Politico” magazine told him 10 days ago?

DAVID BROOKS: They were investigating and he knew they were investigating. So he knew it was coming out.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. OK.

DAVID BROOKS: The fact that they didn’t do kindergarten-level preparation for this story is just incredibly damning.

And so he’s charming, people are going to like him, but you have got to practice politics at the kindergarten level.

JIM LEHRER: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: At some level, Herman Cain’s candidacy is a reflection, if not a direct product, of the feverish anti-government flavor, fervor of Republicans, because they really have so little regard, Republican primary voters, for government.

JIM LEHRER: For the pros.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s right, and for government, that it’s a serious business.

JIM LEHRER: … people David was talking about.

MARK SHIELDS: That David was talking about — that a public policy credential, or a public record, or a serious interest in them, or involvement, is, if anything, a disqualification, that they found almost appealing, if is not irresistible, the fact that this is a man who sat with Judy Woodruff on this very set this week and said China, we found out, is seeking nuclear weapons.

China has had nuclear weapons since 1964. But we saw this week in Herman Cain both the limits of his strength and the exposing of his weakness. His strength has always been he’s a straight-talker. Whatever you say about Herman, you get — let Herman be Herman. And, obviously, he kept changing his story, embroidering, coming back with different events, remembering things and so forth.

He violated the first rule of all political scandals, which is get it all out immediately, answer all the questions, get it behind you

Instead of being a one-day or a two-day story, it’s now a five-day story. It’s going in the second weekend.

And his weakness is that he’s never had a campaign. He’s never had a structure. So he didn’t have people who could sit down and woodshed him.

JIM LEHRER: What about the point that people say — and you all have said it — he’s not a normal candidate for president, and people like that?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: And so he’s being judged by a whole different set of standards than the traditional candidates, the very people you were talking about earlier.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

Well, if we’re in a new world and the normal laws of political gravity don’t apply, because people are so disgusted with politics, they’re willing to break all the normal patterns, well, then he will be fine. I don’t believe we’re in that mode. I think people are really disgusted with politics and they sort of like the idea of an outsider.

But I think at the end of the day, they’re going to look at the presidency as a profession, as somebody who has to do a job. And so I think they’re going to revert to more politics as usual.

Mark made the point that it’s a hostility toward government. I think it’s in part just a hostility toward outside — it’s just an outsider mood, more — not just Republicans, but Democrats, too.

One of the things that struck me, the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement have one thing in common — more than one, but one thing in common: no leaders. Neither believe in authority structures.

And there seems to be this hostility to building structures with leaders and organizations, and therefore liking the freelancer out there, like Herman Cain, who is a freelancer. But if you don’t have a structure, a leadership, you’re really in a very fragile situation.

And one of the things that struck me about the Cain response was that he seems to have, if not misled his own staff, not been forthcoming with his own staff. So they couldn’t provide him with the good advice, because he wasn’t being straight with them. And so I — we believe in parties, authorities, structure, leadership. It’s very old-fashioned, but it happens to work for a reason.

JIM LEHRER: What about the charges themselves, Mark, I mean, the sexual harassment…

MARK SHIELDS: Well, we’re now at three, I mean, three different women…

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: … and two significant settlements for the time, a year’s salary. So it starts to take on a plausibility, if not a credibility. And, Jim…

JIM LEHRER: But that goes back to the idea that that is a traditional hit on a traditional candidate, and the suggestion is that the reason he’s still up there in the polls, despite these allegations of sexual harassment, is because he’s immune from it because he’s not a normal candidate.

Do you buy into that at all?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the first reaction was that there is a visceral anti-media impulse in the Republican Party and Republican voters. So I think he had that going: Oh, it’s the press going after him.

Unfortunately, his own candidate — he, himself, has switched his story from it was the press, to it was the left-wing conspiracy, to it was Rick Perry…

JIM LEHRER: Rick Perry.

MARK SHIELDS: … to it was some sort of a high-tech lynching, I think was said.

Yes, he’s — Jim, in an ordinary campaign, what you start with, if Jim Lehrer is going to run for governor, David and I are working with you, we sit down and say, OK, what do we have to know? What is it?

JIM LEHRER: What’s the worst?

MARK SHIELDS: Was there a bankruptcy? Was there…

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: What was there? Why did you leave that school? You know, was that discharge honorable, and all of the rest of it?

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

MARK SHIELDS: And this was obviously never done.

And David put his finger on it. They had 10 days notice. He could have gone over to the National Restaurant Association, sat down with the staff, sat down with the lawyers, gone over everything, so he had an answer.

And I just don’t — I think that we have seen his high water mark. I mean, there’s no doubt about it.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, one quick final thing is that the American public, as they showed with Bill Clinton, is not as upset with scandal as we are. And I personally think that’s kind of a good thing.

JIM LEHRER: We meaning we…

DAVID BROOKS: We pay a lot of attention to these scandals, we in the media, I guess.

JIM LEHRER: We, the press, yes, the media, yes.

DAVID BROOKS: But people will say, well, a lot of people have scandals.

And I think one of the reasons his poll numbers have stayed high, hostility to the media is part of it, but partly people understand there are scandals in people’s lives. And as we have seen with Clinton and we have seen with others, it is possible to survive them, because people are willing to be tolerant, whether properly or not. But I…

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that?

MARK SHIELDS: Clinton was president. Clinton was president, and he was shrewd enough to lie at the outset and to say, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman.”

And then the idea of six months of Bill Clinton later, and his foes emerged and showed themselves to be in an overkill mode, and Clinton started to look reasonable. And I think he wouldn’t have survived as a candidate if this had come out.

JIM LEHRER: And if he had said right at the beginning, yes, I did do it.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I did right…

JIM LEHRER: He would have had to..

MARK SHIELDS: He had to — I think he had to, for his own survival.

DAVID BROOKS: I would just say Gennifer Flowers was right in the heat of the New Hampshire primary.

And I just think people have more of a tolerance — and I think properly. A lot of great leaders would be knocked off if we had the scandal standards we have today. So a lot of people are willing to say, he’s got these strengths, he’s got these weaknesses.

JIM LEHRER: And we have to go. Thank you both.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec11/sandb_11-04.html

Artur Davis Danny K. Davis Geoffrey C. (Geoff) Davis Lincoln Davis Susan A. Davis

A few months ago, Matt Taibbi suggested that gaffes from conservative candidates didn’t hurt them. “When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese,” he wrote, “these people don’t learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you’re a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they’re even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.”

Dave Weigel says events have emphatically debunked this idea:

That’s clearly not true, is it? Bachmann, Cain, and Perry have engendered the exact same reaction to their screw-ups. There’s a wave of media-bashing from the base, collect-a-quotes from Tea Party leaders who say the media is unfair. And then the lights go elsewhere, and there’s a slow, quiet, walk-away from the damaged candidates. In today’s NH Journal poll of the Granite State, all three of the candidates I mentioned are deep, deep underwater on favorability. It’s almost like Republican voters still pay attention to the media.

Hold on a minute, pardner. Let’s roll the tape on this:

• Michele Bachmann was riding high in the polls through June and early July. Then, on July 16, the Des Moines Register asked Rick Perry if he was going to run and he replied that he was “getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do.” Bachmann started plateauing in the polls. On August 8 it was widely reported that Perry would formally announce his candidacy the following weekend, and the next day Bachmann’s poll numbers tanked for good.
• Rick Perry began his meteoric rise at the same time and kept on rising through the first week of September. Then, on September 12, Bachmann laid into him for mandating HPV vaccinations for “innocent little 12-year-old girls.” Perry immediately began sliding in the polls. On September 22 he suggested that if you opposed in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, “I don’t think you have a heart.” Within a week his poll numbers began to plunge.
• Herman Cain was the beneficiary of Perry’s fall, rising in the polls during the entire month of October. On October 30 Politico reported that two former employees had lodged sexual harassment charges against him and received payouts from the National Restaurant Association. After a week of wildly fluctuating explanations, Sharon Bialek held a televised press conference on November 7 to say that Cain groped her in a car and asked, “You want a job, right?” Within days Cain’s poll numbers began falling.

I don’t doubt for a second that erratic debate performances and public gaffes have played a role in damaging all three candidates. But that’s mainly because conservative voters already had something substantive to hang their concerns on. Bachmann fell because Perry entered the race; Perry fell because conservatives didn’t like his Gardasil and immigration policies; and Cain fell because of sexual harassment charges. That’s the main thing that damaged them. Acting like idiots was just the cherry on top.

    

Source: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/11/republicans-and-their-gaffes

Mary Bono Mack John Boozman Madeleine Bordallo Daniel David Boren Leonard L. Boswell

By Mark Berman Opposing Views

A new study out of Harvard University (so you know it’s true!) claims that children who attend Fourth of July parades are more likely to grow up to be Republicans than kids who stay in their backyards.

Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the study found that kids under the age of 18 who attend parades are 2% more likely to become GOP voters. This is mostly because Republicans feel they are more patriotic than Democrats, study authors Harvard professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University professor Andreas Madestam wrote:

According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans.

Overall, parade watchers vote Republican over Democrat by 4%.

There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization.

Regardless of your political leanings, the authors say in order to have the most fun, you just might want to head to a Republican stronghold to celebrate the Fourth, writing:

Republican adults celebrate Fourth of July more intensively in the first place.

Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/july-4-parades-turn-kids-into-republicans

Ronald Kirk Lisa P. Jackson John A. Boccieri John Andrew Boehner Christopher Samuel (Kit) Bond

By davidpakmanshow

• From: www.davidpakman.com | Subscription: www.davidpakman.com/membership | YouTube: www.youtube.com/midweekpolitics

Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/why-facts-don-t-stop-people-from-believing-stupid-stuff

Russell Dana Feingold Dianne Feinstein Bob Filner Jeff Flake John Fleming

Listen to the Audio

Herman Cain faced new accusations of sexual harassment on Monday when a Chicago-area woman went before television cameras with graphic details. Judy Woodruff discusses what the fresh allegations mean for Cain’s White House bid with Politico’s Jonathan Martin.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Herman Cain faced new accusations of sexual harassment today. This time, they came from a Chicago-area woman who went before television cameras with graphic details.

Sharon Bialek today became the first woman to come forward publicly and accuse Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. In New York today, Bialek said she met Cain at a National Restaurant Association

conference in 1997, when Cain ran the organization. Soon after, she sought his help in finding a new job after being fired by the trade group.

Bialek recounted a meeting with Cain in July of that year in Washington.

SHARON BIALEK, accuses Herman Cain of sexual harassment: I met Mr. Cain in the lobby of the bar at the Capital Hilton at around 6:30 p.m. We had drinks at the hotel. And he asked how I liked my room, which is kind of normal. And I was very — I said I was very surprised. I said, I can’t believe that I have got this great suite. It’s gorgeous.

Mr. Cain kind of smirked and then said, “I upgraded you.”

He then took me to an Italian restaurant, where we had dinner. During dinner, Mr. Cain looked at me and said, “Why are you here?”

I said, “Actually, Herman, my boyfriend, whom you met, suggested that I meet with you, and cause he thought you could help me, cause I really need a job. I was wondering if there’s anything available at the state association level or perhaps if you could speak to someone at the foundation to try to get my job back, perhaps even in a different department.”

He said, “I will look into that.”

He — while we were driving back to the hotel, he said that he would show me where the National Restaurant Association offices were. He parked the car down the block. I thought that we were going to go into the offices so that he could show me around.

At that time, I had on a black pleated skirt, a suit jacket and a blouse. He had on a suit with his shirt — with his shirt open. But instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals.

He also grabbed my head and brought it towards his crotch. I was very, very surprised and very shocked.

I said: “What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.”

Mr. Cain said, “You want a job, right?”

I asked him to stop, and he did. I asked him to take me back to my hotel, which he did right away. When I returned to New Jersey, where I was staying with my boyfriend that Mr. Cain had been — I told — when I was staying — when I was returned back to New Jersey, where I was staying, I told my boyfriend, Mr. Cain had been very sexually inappropriate with me, and, shortly thereafter, I told another friend of mine, who has been a mentor, the same thing.

I didn’t tell them the details because, quite frankly, I was very embarrassed that Mr. Cain had been sexually inappropriate to me.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Bialek said she came forward after reports surfaced that at least three other women said Cain had sexually harassed them.

SHARON BIALEK: I’m coming forward to give a face and a voice to those women who cannot or, for whatever reasons, do not wish to come forward, and on behalf of all women who are sexually harassed in the workplace, but do not come, out of fear of retaliation or in public humiliation.

I really didn’t want to be here today and wouldn’t have been here if it had not been for the three other women who have alleged sexual harassment against — against Mr. Cain.

I want you, Mr. Cain, to come clean. Just admit what you did. Admit you were inappropriate to people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Cain’s campaign immediately released a statement that said — quote — “All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are completely false.”

The embattled candidate has spent the past eight days trying to quell the controversy, including this on the NewsHour last Monday.

HERMAN CAIN, (R) presidential candidate: I have never sexually harassed anyone.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The allegations and Cain’s shifting responses may be taking their toll, but it’s not clear. A Reuters poll released Sunday showed his favorability rating down nine points in the past week. A USA Today/Gallup survey out today had Cain tied with Mitt Romney for the lead in the Republican field.

For more on these latest allegations and the impact on the presidential campaign, we’re joined by Jonathan Martin, senior political reporter for Politico. He was on the team that broke the original story last week.

Jonathan Martin, thank you for being here.

JONATHAN MARTIN, Politico: Thank you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What more is known about this woman, Sharon Bialek, who brought these charges today?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, we know that she worked for the organization for about a year in Chicago.

How it works is, this is a (INAUDIBLE) based in D.C., but their foundation is actually out in Chicago. And so they have a close tie to that city and they actually have their annual conventions there each May. So, she worked for that wing of the organization for about one year back in the late ’90s.

So this is not somebody that is just sort of appearing out of the ether. This is somebody that the NRA has confirmed to us that did in fact work there for this organization back in the late ’90s. And she’s making what are the first allegations against Mr. Cain that have two things that we have not seen yet. First of all, we have a name and a face. Second of all, we have details, and very explicit ones at that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And she said that — basically, as we just reported, she said had been let go by the organization. She went back to Herman Cain for help and that’s when all this happened.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: She also said, Jonathan Martin, that she saw Herman Cain about a month ago at a…

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What kind of an event?

JONATHAN MARTIN: A Tea Party event. So this is somebody who is a Republican. In fact, at the very onset of today’s press conference, Gloria Allred made very plain that she was in fact a registered Republican.

This lady said that she saw Mr. Cain and that he acted very awkward when he saw her. So there was some kind of recent contact between these two. But, again, I think what is important here are obviously the graphic nature of what she’s saying, but it’s also someone who is putting a name and a face for the very first time with these allegations.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How does this fit, what she’s saying happened, into what is known — and you have done a lot of this reporting — from…

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right. Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: … from the other accusers, who have not come forward?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

Well, as far as the other accusers go, the closest that we have had in our reporting to details about one of them is that, in the late ’90s, this woman also an employee of the NRA, was in a hotel room with Mr. Cain during one of the trade group’s events, and that he made an explicit sexual overture to her, and that she was so angry at that, that she then told a board member of the organization mere hours later what had happened.

So we had — that was the closest thing that we had, was a sexual overture in a hotel room. This obviously is far more detailed than that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, Cain himself, his campaign, flatly denying this, saying this didn’t happen.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So how much credibility can we attach to this woman Sharon Bialek?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, Mr. Cain has from the get-go said that he has not harassed anybody. But he has not yet been confronted by somebody by name with an actual incident at a time and a place, like this manner today.

So, in my conversations today, Judy, with a lot of folks in the GOP, they’re saying, in light of these new allegations, Mr. Cain has to come forward and be transparent and be forceful and say what has happened, what he did and didn’t do, answer these allegations in more detail.

I think that when you had women with no names attached, it was easier for him to sort of bash the media. When you have somebody out there who is lodging these charges at a press conference with her name and her face for all the world to see, it puts him in a much more difficult spot.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But at this point, is it simply she said/he said? Is that all? I mean, is there going to be any more to this?

JONATHAN MARTIN: Well, I mean, unless — she has the two witnesses.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Because there was no one there with her.

JONATHAN MARTIN: There was not witnesses, right.

She said that there were two people that she told contemporaneously. So they could potentially come forward. There’s also the possibility that other women could emerge and tell their side of the story, too. Again, for the last week, we have had women who have been very hesitant to talk, for all the obvious reasons. This could change that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What effect, Jonathan, is this having on the campaign so far, or is it having an effect?

JONATHAN MARTIN: It’s fascinating, because there are, Judy, basically two campaigns are going on at once.

There’s a campaign where President Obama, the incumbent, and Mitt Romney, the top challenger simply ignore this. And they have their own campaign going on. Then there’s the campaign where Herman Cain is leading in almost every state and national poll, and doesn’t seem to be impacted by this.

So it’s sort of interesting. At what point do the two campaigns converge? At what point do the other candidates in the race, be it Obama or Romney or the lower-tier candidates, actually start talking about this? Or does that ever happen at all? It’s been a fascinating spectacle over the course of the last week, a top candidate for president with some explosive charges against him, and his rivals don’t mention it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And yet — and today — well, for the rest of the week, there will be encounters with the media. There’s a debate scheduled later…

JONATHAN MARTIN: There’s a debate Wednesday night in Michigan. So he will face questions there, and then Saturday in South Carolina as well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jonathan Martin with Politico, thanks very much.

JONATHAN MARTIN: Thank you, Judy.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec11/cain_11-07.html

Keith Ellison Brad Ellsworth Jo Ann Emerson Eliot Lance Engel John Eric Ensign

BigGovernment.com has obtained records of Massachusetts Democrat Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz?s stock portfolios that show almost perfectly timed pharmaceutical stock trades during the Obamacare debate, which fattened their already enormous personal fortune.

//
The documents further support allegations of suspicious trading leveled during Sunday’s 60 Minutes report about [...]

Source: http://biggovernment.com/whall/2011/11/18/exclusive-documents-the-kerrys-curious-stock-trades/

Jo Ann Emerson Eliot Lance Engel John Eric Ensign Michael B. Enzi Anna Georges Eshoo

Listen to the Audio

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks discuss the week’s top political news, including the sexual harassment claims against Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain plus the mood of the American electorate while the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high.

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Mark, what is there to say about today’s jobs report?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, there’s one number that I think is important in understanding this.

They ask the question, pollsters do every month, do you think the country is headed in the right direction or seriously off on the wrong track. Right now, by a margin of 5-1, Americans think the country is off on the wrong track.

JIM LEHRER: And that’s both liberals and conservatives?

MARK SHIELDS: Liberals and conservatives across the board.

JIM LEHRER: Republicans…

MARK SHIELDS: Democrats, yes, old, young.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: And you have to go all the way back to January of 2004 before you found a plurality of Americans thinking the country was headed in the right direction. It was 47-45. And then unemployment was at 5.7 — 94 consecutive months, the psychological condition of the country has been pessimism.

And these numbers aren’t going to change it. These numbers aren’t going to change it.

I mean, these numbers are better than they are worse. They’re more slightly encouraging than they are discouraging, but they aren’t going to change the direction of that psychological environment, emotional environment in which the country finds itself.

JIM LEHRER: You see it in the same terms?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I agree.

I think we’re in for just a long period. There were some little good signs. Catherine Rampell talked about the temporary workers. Productivity was way up. When productivity is way up, they tend to hire later. But it’s just going to be a long haul.

And there’s been a lot of talk recently about the structural problems underneath the cyclical problems. And, so, for example, there’s some theory going around we went through a period decades ago where we really got rid of a lot of industrial workers. Now we could be going through a period where we’re getting rid of lot of mid-level white-collar workers as computers take over some of those managerial type jobs.

I’m sort of haunted by a conversation I had about two weeks ago with a business leader. And I was lamenting the terrible shape of the economy, and he said, we have managed to survive in it. We now know how to work in an economy that is growing 1 percent a year. We get great productivity. We are able to build our profits. We have learned to adapt to this.

And that means no hunger to hire more. And that will come, but it’s just a long time.

JIM LEHRER: Some of the comments that were made in Jeff’s discussion were words like “never,” in terms of getting a lot of these jobs back. Some of these jobs will never come back.

And that’s what you’re saying. People know that. They have figured that out.

MARK SHIELDS: They do know that — and then Ingrid Schroeder from Pew’s statistic that almost one out of three has been unemployed for over a year, I mean, that is…

JIM LEHRER: That’s an extraordinary statistic.

MARK SHIELDS: It really is, because that has a depressant on the person.

When you have been out of work that long, it’s tougher to get up and have your dauber up and be looking again. You become defensive. You become pessimistic. And employers do — David’s right about productivity’s up, but, as a consequence, because it’s very much of a hiring market, pay is down and benefits are down. So they’re getting talented workers for less than they did before.

JIM LEHRER: Now, what are the politics of this now, David?

We had in the news summary, Hari — well, what the president said, hey, there’s some signs we have — but it’s up to the Congress, in other words, it’s up to the Republicans, to do something about it. The Republican leadership, Speaker Boehner, says, no, it’s up to the Democratic Senate.

And it just has a kind of a sameness to it, doesn’t it?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, right now, it’s Charlie Cook’s proposition that there could be a rebellion against both parties. It’s possible, if this continues time and time again.

I guess I’m struck by the fact that Obama is hanging in there reasonably well. If you look at the head-to-head polls, how he’s doing against a generic Republican, slightly behind, how he’s doing against Mitt Romney, pretty much OK, tied. Personal approval rating is about 43.

Considering the condition Mark talked about, the months and months of negative, the country is in the wrong — the country is in decline, he’s actually doing OK. And so there’s a lot — there’s an aura of disappointment around him, but I would say in general it’s just the disgust with everybody, but not so much him personally.

JIM LEHRER: You agree that he’s not getting it as hot as he — as a lot of people would have expected with these kinds of numbers?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think if I told you that by a 5-1 margin people thought the country was headed in the wrong direction, that 9.1 percent unemployment, an economy growing at whatever 1, 1.5 percent, you would say, where’s the president, you would say in the low 30s.

So I think he has deified gravity so far, and I think that’s because there is a — still a residual reservoir of good feeling, people rooting for him to succeed. And — but there is — there is still a sense of — a pervasive sense of disappointment about his presidency, and in part because hopes were so high and so many people invested that hope in him.

JIM LEHRER: Mark has just created a wonderful segue, which I am now going to use.

Speaking of deifying gravity…

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Where are you headed?

JIM LEHRER: … where does the Herman Cain situation stand tonight in your eyes, my friend?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I guess I think it’s a bubble.

(LAUGHTER)

JIM LEHRER: A bubble?

DAVID BROOKS: A bubble.

I don’t think that he will continue to defy gravity. I have never thought that. I thought there’s frames of mind — and we have talked about this in the past.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DAVID BROOKS: In the preseason, you have fun, Herman Cain, fun. But then when you get to choose a president, you choose a president.

And he certainly justified the belief that he’s not ready to be president. This is a job that requires discipline and organization and professionalism. And we can all talk — it’s lovely to have outsiders who are political amateurs. But if you’re actually in the White House or seriously running from it — for it, you need to have these essentially boring qualities.

And he doesn’t have them. And he certainly showed that this week. His response — forget the harassment charges — his response to just the charges, which he was warned about 10 days before they were made public, the fact that he couldn’t…

JIM LEHRER: Who warned him?

DAVID BROOKS: “Politico” magazine, which first broke the story.

JIM LEHRER: “Politico” magazine. The “Politico” magazine told him 10 days ago?

DAVID BROOKS: They were investigating and he knew they were investigating. So he knew it was coming out.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. OK.

DAVID BROOKS: The fact that they didn’t do kindergarten-level preparation for this story is just incredibly damning.

And so he’s charming, people are going to like him, but you have got to practice politics at the kindergarten level.

JIM LEHRER: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: At some level, Herman Cain’s candidacy is a reflection, if not a direct product, of the feverish anti-government flavor, fervor of Republicans, because they really have so little regard, Republican primary voters, for government.

JIM LEHRER: For the pros.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s right, and for government, that it’s a serious business.

JIM LEHRER: … people David was talking about.

MARK SHIELDS: That David was talking about — that a public policy credential, or a public record, or a serious interest in them, or involvement, is, if anything, a disqualification, that they found almost appealing, if is not irresistible, the fact that this is a man who sat with Judy Woodruff on this very set this week and said China, we found out, is seeking nuclear weapons.

China has had nuclear weapons since 1964. But we saw this week in Herman Cain both the limits of his strength and the exposing of his weakness. His strength has always been he’s a straight-talker. Whatever you say about Herman, you get — let Herman be Herman. And, obviously, he kept changing his story, embroidering, coming back with different events, remembering things and so forth.

He violated the first rule of all political scandals, which is get it all out immediately, answer all the questions, get it behind you

Instead of being a one-day or a two-day story, it’s now a five-day story. It’s going in the second weekend.

And his weakness is that he’s never had a campaign. He’s never had a structure. So he didn’t have people who could sit down and woodshed him.

JIM LEHRER: What about the point that people say — and you all have said it — he’s not a normal candidate for president, and people like that?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: And so he’s being judged by a whole different set of standards than the traditional candidates, the very people you were talking about earlier.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

Well, if we’re in a new world and the normal laws of political gravity don’t apply, because people are so disgusted with politics, they’re willing to break all the normal patterns, well, then he will be fine. I don’t believe we’re in that mode. I think people are really disgusted with politics and they sort of like the idea of an outsider.

But I think at the end of the day, they’re going to look at the presidency as a profession, as somebody who has to do a job. And so I think they’re going to revert to more politics as usual.

Mark made the point that it’s a hostility toward government. I think it’s in part just a hostility toward outside — it’s just an outsider mood, more — not just Republicans, but Democrats, too.

One of the things that struck me, the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement have one thing in common — more than one, but one thing in common: no leaders. Neither believe in authority structures.

And there seems to be this hostility to building structures with leaders and organizations, and therefore liking the freelancer out there, like Herman Cain, who is a freelancer. But if you don’t have a structure, a leadership, you’re really in a very fragile situation.

And one of the things that struck me about the Cain response was that he seems to have, if not misled his own staff, not been forthcoming with his own staff. So they couldn’t provide him with the good advice, because he wasn’t being straight with them. And so I — we believe in parties, authorities, structure, leadership. It’s very old-fashioned, but it happens to work for a reason.

JIM LEHRER: What about the charges themselves, Mark, I mean, the sexual harassment…

MARK SHIELDS: Well, we’re now at three, I mean, three different women…

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: … and two significant settlements for the time, a year’s salary. So it starts to take on a plausibility, if not a credibility. And, Jim…

JIM LEHRER: But that goes back to the idea that that is a traditional hit on a traditional candidate, and the suggestion is that the reason he’s still up there in the polls, despite these allegations of sexual harassment, is because he’s immune from it because he’s not a normal candidate.

Do you buy into that at all?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the first reaction was that there is a visceral anti-media impulse in the Republican Party and Republican voters. So I think he had that going: Oh, it’s the press going after him.

Unfortunately, his own candidate — he, himself, has switched his story from it was the press, to it was the left-wing conspiracy, to it was Rick Perry…

JIM LEHRER: Rick Perry.

MARK SHIELDS: … to it was some sort of a high-tech lynching, I think was said.

Yes, he’s — Jim, in an ordinary campaign, what you start with, if Jim Lehrer is going to run for governor, David and I are working with you, we sit down and say, OK, what do we have to know? What is it?

JIM LEHRER: What’s the worst?

MARK SHIELDS: Was there a bankruptcy? Was there…

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: What was there? Why did you leave that school? You know, was that discharge honorable, and all of the rest of it?

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

MARK SHIELDS: And this was obviously never done.

And David put his finger on it. They had 10 days notice. He could have gone over to the National Restaurant Association, sat down with the staff, sat down with the lawyers, gone over everything, so he had an answer.

And I just don’t — I think that we have seen his high water mark. I mean, there’s no doubt about it.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, one quick final thing is that the American public, as they showed with Bill Clinton, is not as upset with scandal as we are. And I personally think that’s kind of a good thing.

JIM LEHRER: We meaning we…

DAVID BROOKS: We pay a lot of attention to these scandals, we in the media, I guess.

JIM LEHRER: We, the press, yes, the media, yes.

DAVID BROOKS: But people will say, well, a lot of people have scandals.

And I think one of the reasons his poll numbers have stayed high, hostility to the media is part of it, but partly people understand there are scandals in people’s lives. And as we have seen with Clinton and we have seen with others, it is possible to survive them, because people are willing to be tolerant, whether properly or not. But I…

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that?

MARK SHIELDS: Clinton was president. Clinton was president, and he was shrewd enough to lie at the outset and to say, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman.”

And then the idea of six months of Bill Clinton later, and his foes emerged and showed themselves to be in an overkill mode, and Clinton started to look reasonable. And I think he wouldn’t have survived as a candidate if this had come out.

JIM LEHRER: And if he had said right at the beginning, yes, I did do it.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I did right…

JIM LEHRER: He would have had to..

MARK SHIELDS: He had to — I think he had to, for his own survival.

DAVID BROOKS: I would just say Gennifer Flowers was right in the heat of the New Hampshire primary.

And I just think people have more of a tolerance — and I think properly. A lot of great leaders would be knocked off if we had the scandal standards we have today. So a lot of people are willing to say, he’s got these strengths, he’s got these weaknesses.

JIM LEHRER: And we have to go. Thank you both.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec11/sandb_11-04.html

Chaka Fattah Russell Dana Feingold Dianne Feinstein Bob Filner Jeff Flake

By Mark Berman Opposing Views

A new study out of Harvard University (so you know it’s true!) claims that children who attend Fourth of July parades are more likely to grow up to be Republicans than kids who stay in their backyards.

Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the study found that kids under the age of 18 who attend parades are 2% more likely to become GOP voters. This is mostly because Republicans feel they are more patriotic than Democrats, study authors Harvard professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University professor Andreas Madestam wrote:

According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans.

Overall, parade watchers vote Republican over Democrat by 4%.

There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization.

Regardless of your political leanings, the authors say in order to have the most fun, you just might want to head to a Republican stronghold to celebrate the Fourth, writing:

Republican adults celebrate Fourth of July more intensively in the first place.

Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/july-4-parades-turn-kids-into-republicans

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