I talk with Middle East expert Brian Katulis from the Center for American Progress. We discuss Clinton’s recent Middle East trip, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, Afghanistan and the multiple issues with Pakistan. This is an information discussion. Enjoy.
Special Edition of the Errington Thompson Show - Middle East [ 27:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadI wish I had something brilliant to say about the Republicans but I really don’t. There was a time five or ten years ago when Republicans covered their tracks. They sounded as if they were interested in the average American. Now, not so much. John McCain, Senator Shelby, Congressman Cantor, John Boehner and others have been clear that they aren’t interested in helping the average American family.
Watch Rachel Maddow’s video:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
I’m not sure how, but Justin Timberlake keeps his name on the forefront of pop music. He is everywhere.
Artist: T.I.
Tune: Dead and Gone
Catchy Tune.
Artist: Flo Rida (Really? That’s his name? Maybe he is going to tour with Lou I Anna.)
Tune: Right Round
Now this is fun. I’m out of town, so I’m recording the show at the Rational Radio studios just north of downtown Dallas. David Clifton and Sean Compton of Rational Radio were extremely helpful in getting my show on the air this morning. Back at the mother ship, Aaron helped mix and edit everything so that it would sound great. Thanks to everyone for your help.
I start the show with the new labor stats. It isn’t good. There are over 650,000 new unemployed and it looks pretty bad. I discuss the flow of more money to AIG and the stupidity of Credit Default Swaps. This should have been regulated. I’m not sure why it wasn’t, except that Democrats and Republicans drank from the Free Market fountain. Al Franken had a good week this week.
My special guest is Scott Horton. Scott has been on the show before. We discuss these new John Yoo memos. We discuss Karl Rove and former governor of Alabama Don Seigelman, whose case was set back yesterday. This is a great discussion. Scott is very informative.
Enjoy.
President Barack Obama discusses the awful jobs numbers that came out this week.
From EPI:
The jobless rolls swelled by 851,000 in February, and there are now 12.5 million unemployed workers in this country—5 million more than at the start of the recession in December 2007, and the largest number of unemployed workers in the 61-year history of the series.
The employment-to-population ratio—simply the percent of the population that is employed—declined to 60.3% in February, for a total decline of 3.1 percentage points since its pre-recession peak of 63.4% in December 2006. The decline in the employment-to-population ratio this recession now exceeds the total decline of 3.0 percentage points experienced during the deep downturn of the 1980s.
The underemployment rate (technically known as the U-6 measure of labor underutilization) is a more-comprehensive measure of labor market slack than unemployment because it includes people working part time who want full-time jobs. This measure jumped up dramatically from 13.9% in January to 14.8% in February. As a result, more than one in seven workers in this country—an estimated 23.1 million people—was either unemployed or underemployed in February. Since the start of the recession, the number of involuntary part-time workers has increased by 4 million, from 4.6 million to 8.6 million. (more… )
Okay, here’s my problem. President Barack Obama is moving too fast. He has this proposal to help homeowners… I haven’t even had a chance to read that proposal and Obama has released his budget. Slow down. I can read everything.
Obama is trying to get troops out of Iraq.
My guests: Greg Mitchell and Bill Scher.
Greg and I discuss his new book, How Obama Won. This is a great book that really reveals that Barack Obama was not the Liberal choice two years ago. Barack Obama didn’t even have the black vote two years ago. Yet Obama slowly but surely kept pushing forward, using modern technology and an outstanding ground organization to overwhelm his competition.
It is just enjoyable to sit back and listen to Bill Scher. He has a great body of knowledge. This is fun and informative.
Enjoy.
Great Show. President Barack Obama went to Canada. He got a big reception. I was going to chat with Christian Dorsey from the Economic Policy Institute. Unfortunately, I was in operating room. I didn’t get a chance to spoke with Christian. Hopefully, I will be able to have him on the show some day soon.
I play the clip of the week. Every week there is a clip which dominates the news. This week it was Rick Santelli of CNBC. I dismantle Rick’s rant and nothing but pro-business garbage that it is. For reasons, that aren’t clear I flow from Rick to pro-business community of the Marianas Islands. This is a pro-business paradise which is a labor nightmare.
I spend a good deal of time talking about Thomas Frank’s new book – The Wrecking Crew.
Again, I have some great questions from my audience. This is a good show. Enjoy.
I’m behind again in posting. I’ll try and catch up today.
I have an open mic today and there are some great calls from thoughtful callers. The show starts with the fact that we are being nickled-and-dimed to death. Whether it is cell phones or the price of gas, we are asked to understand market fluctuations when I don’t think this is to be blamed on market forces at all. Companies are simply taking more and more of our money and we are getting less and less.
I spent a great deal of time discussing the new unemployment numbers. 598,000 Americans out of work; 1.5 million Americans laid off since November. While these numbers are awful, I think that they will get worse. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are singing that old Simon and Garfunkel tune – Feeling Groovy. They want us to slow down.
This is a great show. Enjoy.
Rachel Maddow has a great segment on this. Watch the video:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
The House Judiciary Committee has released a statement that they have secured with the White House and former President George Bush for Harriet Miers and Karl Rove to testify on the US Attorney firings. I don’t know what will really happen. I doubt that we will see Rove being open and candid.
Rachel Maddow has a great segment on this. She interviews Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who may have been wrongly imprisoned. Watch the video:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Jon Stewart exposes Santelli and the rest of these money guys as full of sh!t.
I have a problem with some criminals. Others, not so much. If you rip off Halliburton or KBR for a couple of million, I’m probably going to throw you a party. On the other hand, when you rip off the elderly and take their savings, there isn’t a punishment bad enough. Under the jailhouse? Nope. Electrocution at one volt per day? Too easy. Bernie Madoff is in this category (of course he is innocent until proven guilty).
60 Minutes did a great story on the Whistle Blower, Harry Markopolos, and Bernie Madoff this week. Watch the video:
Watch CBS Videos Online
From AP:
Bernard Madoff has agreed to give up the rights to his disgraced investment business and his company’s prized artwork and entertainment tickets, as an official for an organization providing relief to investors said Tuesday that some checks may be in the mail this month.
The trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff’s business said the former money manager was surrendering ownership rights to his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, along with the company’s artwork and entertainment tickets. The trustee, Irving Picard, did not specify the value of the property or say what kinds of tickets and artwork Madoff possessed.
The ultimate goal is to put some of Madoff’s remaining assets in the hands of investors who lost their life savings amid the scandal, and there are growing signs that some of them could see relief in coming weeks. (more… )
I’m sitting at the Asheville Airport, waiting for my 9:45 am flight to leave. Currently the time is 11:15 am. My gripe isn’t that snow has caused air traffic on the East Coast to grind to a halt. Instead, my problem is the lack of information. I tried most of the night to reschedule my Delta flight but they don’t answer email in a timely fashion. All of their phone lines were busy, including their international line (yep, I tried that too). In order to avoid this mess, I started called Confusion Airlines (in this case Delta) Sunday night at 9 pm. I called multiple times… 9:00, 9:30, 10:00 and 10:30 pm. I woke up at two in the morning and called again at four. I called at 6:30 am, 7 am and again before leaving the house around 8 am. Busy signal every time.
So, with little information, I went to the airport, only to be met by a mob at the ticket counter. There is no real line… just a mob and no one has any information. Two earlier flights have been canceled. The flight after mine has also been canceled. Folks are upset. The only thing that people need is a little information and I don’t think you can get today. “All passengers for flight xyz line up over here… ” Something. It’d just be crazy.
This is why we need government regulation. We need someone to set standards.
Update: I’m now safely in Dallas. Getting through the maze of confusion and obstruction in Atlanta was almost more difficult than getting through medical school. In medical school, the terrain was rough but the path was clear. Getting from Atlanta, where I had missed my flight because we left Asheville three hours late, to Dallas was anything but clear. As soon as we landed there were multiple options presented by the flight attendant. My first question was, as we live in 2009, why doesn’t she, the flight attendant, have all of the updated information? If she starts with “My information is two hours old,” then I don’t need to hear anything that she has to say. Most people checked their flight information on a PDA/cellphone/laptop just prior to boarding. Her information is an hour older than mine. Why?
We land in Atlanta and the airport is packed. It looks like the week before Christmas. All of the restaurants are filled to, or beyond, capacity. The stores are packed. Every official airline agent has a line of 10-15 passengers in front of him/her and everyone is talking at once (because no one is getting decent answers). In this chaos, we are supposed to either go to the gate where the next flight for Dallas-Fort Worth is taking off or go to the nearest ticket counter and ask for help. Now I know that airline travel has had a rough time since 9-11. I thought that customer service would be something that the airlines would be stressing. Why wasn’t there a fleet of airline folks with a laptop on some type of rolling stand waiting for these passengers? Then everyone could get up-to-date information in a short period of time. Sending passengers on some type of wild goose chase is simply wrong.
So we trek through the Atlanta airport until we get to one of these ticket counters. A woman takes my ticket for the flight that I have just missed and passes it under a scanner. A new voucher pops out of the ticket thingy. Sweet. My next flight leaves tomorrow at 4:30 pm. What? My wife’s ticket gets scanned and she is on the same 4:30 pm flight but 20 rows behind where I’m sitting. What? Come on. It is 1 pm EST in Atlanta and I have just been handed a voucher for a flight 27 hours from now. I’m traveling from Atlanta to Dallas. There are tons of flights per day. What am I (we) supposed to do with this? The woman representing Confusion Airlines comforts me and my wife by telling us at least we have a flight. What the feezy (slang word used in some circles represent a four letter word that starts with F)? This is where I want to have superpowers. I want to turn into the Hulk and start smashing things. I didn’t turn into a green monster, nor did I tell the lady that she was not being that comforting. In times past, airlines used to bend over backwards to help you. They worked hard to find a flight and would EVEN CALL other airlines for you. Not now. Dude, you are on your own. I was told that I could get a voucher for a hotel that wasn’t the Ritz and a voucher for a meal that wasn’t at Atlanta’s famed City Grill.
Now I get to stand in line, again, to talk to an agent. These poor agents have been dealing with unhappy travelers for hours. No one who comes to see them is happy. The agent was humorless (or maybe my jokes were awful) but she was able to put me and my wife on a flight leaving in an hour. We were flying standby but it looked very promising.
I type all of this to say THIS is what we need government for: to make our lives a little easier. I don’t think that the government needs to tell industry how to fly airplanes but government should say that this isn’t any way to treat a paying customer.
A few suggestions:
To expand on an item that I mentioned last night: These new memos are truly remarkable. In the post-9/11 confusion, John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Special Counsel, and Robert Delahunty, a special counsel, wrote extraordinary memos. Basically, as they saw it, the president had the power to do anything and ignore everyone. They saw a “legal” way to do anything. There is much, much more to this story. Keith talked about it last night. Watch:
From NYT:
“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force.
The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”
Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty said that in addition, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the military from domestic law enforcement operations, would pose no obstacle to the use of troops in a domestic fight against terrorism suspects. They reasoned that the troops would be acting in a national security function, not as law enforcers.
In another of the opinions, Mr. Yoo argued in a memorandum dated Sept. 25, 2001, that judicial precedents approving deadly force in self-defense could be extended to allow for eavesdropping without warrants. (more… )
We got just a little snow here in Asheville. I think this is the most snow I’ve seen since I moved here.
There was a time in this country when a snowstorm didn’t throw airline travel into a tailspin for two or three days. The Atlanta airport was just crazy… more on this later.
President Barack Obama has submitted his 2009 budget.
Watch the vid:
Excerpt from Obama’s speech:
I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:
So am I.
The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people. I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I’ll be fighting for in the weeks ahead – change that will grow our economy, expand our middle-class, and keep the American Dream alive for all those men and women who have believed in this journey from the day it began.
This last paragraph is extremely powerful. Barack Obama says that he is the president and he is ready to work for the American people. He is telling us that this budget will not be easy but that he is ready to fight the powerful and well-connected on behalf of the American people. This is what I’m talking about.
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
