Earlier this year the American Institute for Economic Research reviewed Federal Reserve statistics and determined that 73% of American households have one or more general use credit cards and that 58% of households carry a monthly balance. Here is a brief summary of the Institute’s study.

So, what’s up, and down, with credit cards in the nine months between passage and implementation of the CARD Act?

UP: Interest rates. Credit card companies have taken advantage of the lag time to raise initial interest rates, ongoing interest rates and penalty interest rates on delinquent accounts. The CARD Act places no limit on maximum interest rates.

DOWN: Credit limits both on existing cards and new issues have been decreased. Not limited to the adjustment time in the Act, 58 million cardholders have had their credit card limits cut in the past 18 months.

DOWN: Future credit availability. Oppenheimer & Co. predicts that over the next 18 months credit card companies will remove an additional $2.1 trillion, 45%, of consumer credit card availability.

UP: Fees. Cards without annual fees will have fees added, and those cards with annual fees can be expected to increase. And new fees are on the way. Monthly processing fees for paper statements are in the works. Balance transfer fees are being increased. Reinstatement fees, where the company won’t allow use of bonus points until the account is “reinstated” for a fee after a late payment, are taking shape. Then there’s the “inactivity fee” where card companies charge a fee for not using their card. Citibank has already sent notice to some cardholders that minimum card activity of $200 a month is necessary to avoid an inactivity fee.

DOWN: Rewards. Credit card companies will reduce expenses by devaluing rewards programs associated with their cards. American Express has already reduced the cash back rewards on some cards from 1.5% to 1.25% (a 16.7% reduction in cash back rewards). But, the good news that really isn’t good news is that some credit card companies are considering a new rewards program…for carrying a month over month balance, thereby discouraging card users from paying off balances.

If you’d like a quick refresher on what the CARD Act does look at the bottom of this article in the Palm Beach Post for a quick summation.

I called back. Again.

This time I got an answer. I told the man who answered that the voice mail was full. He said that he was not surprised. I said that I was calling to argue that Barrow should sign on to the health care bill. He said he’d be happy to pass that along, and asked where was I calling from.

Milledgeville.

He asked is there anything else he could do for me today. I said he should take down my name. He could have asked to know my name. He could have wondered on what basis I was supporting the bill. You might even think Barrow might have extra staff around since, as the man said, it’s not surprising that there would be calls today.

So I called the local number. The first time I got hung up on. The second time no answer. The third time, “The mailbox for [Barrow voice] Congressman John Barrow [/Barrow voice] is full. Please try again later.”

A wholly unsatisfying experience.

John Barrow will vote no.* “We can do better” my arse! John Barrow has no interest in what a local constituent might want. He has no interest, even, in recording the yeas and nays. His eyes are on a bigger prize:

The talk in Georgia is that John wants to run for the Senate in 2014 and that he thinks a NO vote on HCR will be smart positioning for that race. He seems to be making the bet that a NO vote on HCR will be forgotten by then. Hell, he seems to be making a bet that Democrats will forget his betrayal by the fall and support him with DCCC money, fundraisers, grass roots support and ground troops for his re-election. He seems to feel that even if he votes to kills HCR that Democrats will still rally to support him in November and that they will support him again in 2012 and then get behind him when he runs for the Senate in 2014.

I’ve sat with John Barrow in the local coffee shop. My partner was raised as his neighbor. I defended him when he was gerrymandered out of his lifelong home, and when Democrats targeted him (along with neighboring Blue Dog Jim Marshall). I remember, too, that Obama cut an ad for his campaign:

OBAMA: He’s already standing up to the lobbyists and the Republicans who go right down the line with George Bush. Now we need him in Congress to help reduce gasoline prices, provide access to affordable health care for every American. … John’s not afraid to take a tough stand to do what’s right.

Not afraid? He won’t even record constituent calls! And that ad is no longer on youtube. Shocker, that.

I’m telling you, here, now, today, that if John Barrow votes no I will vote for the Republican next time, come what may. Hear me clearly, that’s a promise. I already live in the red, red rump of the most reactionary element in the Republican party. They are on the wrong side of history. And John Barrow is right there with them.

* Bishop, the other Georgia fence-sitter, will vote yes.

Just the kickoff for a foaming-at-the-mouth festival in Murdochland as Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal applauds Brett Baier’s sassing of the President on Fox News, while disclosing that “Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns this newspaper, so one should probably take pains to demonstrate that one is attempting to speak with disinterest and impartiality, in pursuit of which let me note that Glenn Beck has long appeared to be insane.”

Her column accompanies another Journal piece titled “Whether or Not Congress ‘Deems,’ Public Is Steamed” asserting that “brawling” on health care “has fed a public unhappiness with the institution of Congress that now borders on disgust.”

How strongly their master, the former Australian Rupert Murdoch, feels about fomenting revolution here is reflected in the fact that, although he recently starting charging readers for such gems online, both links were available free at the time of this writing.

The start of the decisive health care weekend promises to be a test for First Amendment purists as well, as Fox News et al pull out all the stops in what used to be called advocacy journalism but has morphed into anarchic attacks on a president and his party.

Read the rest of this entry.

The meat of the story – that being the alleged contents of the memo – isn’t the part in question here. It’s no secret that Congress will put in the so called “doc fix” later on, just as they have done in the past. This will drive up the costs well past any alleged “savings” in the current bill and turn it into yet another budget buster. The Democrats had to torture this bill in a way that would have made Torquemada blush to come up with something that looked like a net deficit reducer.

No, the real question here is where the memo came from and if the media – both new and old – should have run with the story without some deeper source checking. Copies of the damning document apparently came from John Boehner’s communications shop, in the person of Michael Steel. (No, not that Michael Steele.) Conservatives felt that the document had an original, authentic look and feel to it, but Marc Ambinder points out why the sourcing on the story was simply not up to snuff.

I do not believe that Mr. Steel or a member of his staff created the memo. You may ask why I believe this, and my reasons won’t satisfy many of you, but here goes: I’ve know Steel for years. He is a stand-up guy and isn’t dishonest; in trickier situations, he’s told me the truth. Here he may have been overzealous, and I fell for it on a slow Friday afternoon.

I asked Mr. Steel where he got the memo; he would not reveal his source. I asked him whether he believed that the memo was an official leadership, White House or DNC document, and here is his response: “Will the Democrats do the “doc fix”? If they will, they are low-balling the cost of health care by hundreds of billions of dollars.”

That’s the Dan Rather Excuse — can’t say for sure that the memo is real, but it surely brings up real points. That’s satisfactory, I guess, for the Republicans, but it shouldn’t be. It isn’t satisfactory to me, or to my readers.

Marc hits it on the head here. Plenty of my conservative friends still enjoy bringing up the Dan Rather story to this day, and “fake but accurate” has become a common talking point when discussing alleged stories about documents which later fall through. And for this story as well, fake but accurate isn’t going to cut it. If Steel didn’t want the name of his source revealed in public, he could still have told Ambinder who could have then verified it to his satisfaction and let us know that he found a Democratic source, leaving it up to us to determine how much we trusted his journalistic integrity. Steel’s answer just casts more doubt on the story and leaves it unfit for print.

Should the conservative bloggers have known better? That one is a tougher call. Plenty of folks ran the story, including my friend Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. When the challenges to the document’s authenticity arose, he updated with this:

When Politico went live with this article, I had confirmed with two people I know on the Hill that they had seen this being passed around. Did it come from Democrats, or from Republicans? I can’t answer that, but I did confirm with two sources that it exists.

Let’s face it… that’s a lot more checking than many bloggers would (or could) do, and this isn’t one of those totally unsourced, unchecked stories that ruin a blog’s reputation, such as what happened to Radar Online after the John Roberts resignation hoax. But still, I think we have to hold Politico to a bit of a higher standard. Ed at least checked with “two people on the hill” but we don’t know who they are. Were they Democrats from Hoyer’s office? If so, that would pretty much put the issue to rest. But I somehow doubt Steny’s staff would be all that eager to chat with Ed about things damaging to the Democrats.

Plenty of authors confirmed that somebody had “seen the thing” and that it “existed.” Of that I have no doubt. Back in my Navy days I had a roommate who, for reasons I never figured out, had a framed picture of Whistler’s Mother on his wall. I saw it myself and can absolutely confirm that it existed. I can also absolutely confirm that it was a poster on shiny paper and not an original oil painting from the 1870’s. The real question here isn’t whether anyone actually had the memo. The question is it’s origin, as Marc Ambinder pointed out.

Again, should we have known better? Hindsight is always 20-20, so looking back, some bits of this really did look like they fell into the “too good to be true” category. The language was just a bit too overt in the tone of, “For God’s Sakes, let’s be sure to deceive the public and not talk about our not-very-secret plan to jack up the costs later!” I would hope that none of our regular TMV readers are wearing rose colored glasses leading them to think that our congressional leaders don’t regularly spin things and play fast and loose with the particulars to make their own side look good and their opponents look bad. But by this time, most of the people still drawing a paycheck on the hill should know better than to publish anything putting it so blatantly.

Let’s say you were reading an alleged document about Democrats worrying over the effect of health care reform on the mid-term elections. It might say, “we need to remain aware of poll numbers showing unfavorables regarding this bill which could negatively impact some contested races this fall.” Or, it might pull a quote directly from Mel Brookes’ classic, Blazing Saddles, and say, “Gentlemen! We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs!”

Which one would you rather believe? I’d like the second one because it makes for much better headlines and a lot more fun. But I’d be more inclined to think the first one was real.

In the end, I suspect that this memo is going to fall into the Dan Rather, “fake but accurate” mold. The facts about the “doc fix” are almost certainly “accurate” but the “fake” part just eats up the story entirely.

THE TRIBE
Akimel Au-Authm, “river people” in their native tongue, lived in what is now the Phoenix Valley. Known more commonly now as the Pima Indians, in the early 1800’s they were a friendly, agrarian people who believed themselves to be the descendants of the Hohokam (“those who have gone”) who had lived in Arizona dating back to 300 B.C. Today the Akimel Au-Authm are part of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. More here.

The whites, as they moved west and discovered the Phoenix Valley, came upon the Akimel Au-Authm, and the natives had something the white man wanted. Water. As the Akimel Au-Authm were forced onto reservation land, their water was diverted to run along the western border of the reservation, but all on the white man’s side. It’s called “the ditch”. Cotton was planted, but only on the white man’s side. As the Akimel Au-Authm had perfected for hundreds of years, the water made the desert bloom, but only for the cash crops on the white man’s side, while the “Pima” struggled to sustain themselves with meager crops and little water.

THE MAN
Ira Hayes was born a full blooded “Pima” on January 12, 1923 in Sacaton, Arizona on the Gila River Indian Reservation. He died drunk and defeated on January 24, 1955. Most say his body was found lying in his own blood and vomit in the mud next to “the ditch”, though there are varying accounts. He is buried in Section 34 of Arlington National Cemetery.

You see, between his impoverished birth and ignominious death 32 years later, Ira Hayes became a Marine. Corporal Hayes completed Marine paratrooper training shortly before the Marines ended their paratrooper program. He earned the nickname Chief Falling Cloud. As a member of the Marines 2nd Battalion in World War II, he fought at the Battle of Vella Gulf, fought in the Bougainville Campaign and fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima. His citations include the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal (with four stars), the Navy Commendation Medal (with “V”), the Presidential Unit Citation (with one star) and the World War II Victory Medal. Of his company of 250 at Iwo Jima, only 27 escaped death or injury. Ira Hayes was one and found unwanted fame after the well known photo depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima Hill. The photo was staged.

Recalled from the Pacific, Ira Hayes was assigned to tour the United States with the Marine Band selling war bonds. His downfall followed as he was toasted and treated to drink after drink along the tour. By war’s end, Ira Hayes was a full blown alcoholic, arrested no fewer than 42 times on drunk and disorderly charges before his death.

But he had one more act of heroism and sobriety left. In 1951, Ira Hamilton Hayes sobered up and travelled to Washington D. C. where he asked government officials “Please set the Pima Indian free.” He was politely received…and promptly ignored.

It is said, though there is no official record, that Ira Hayes was offered a battlefield commission during the Pacific campaign which he declined, telling his commanding officer that he would rather die himself than order others to their deaths.

Call him drunken Ira Hayes; He won’t answer anymore; Not the whiskey drinkin’ Indian; Nor the Marine that went to war.
“The Ballad of Ira Hayes”

THE SONGWRITER
You probably never heard of him; few people have. Artist, poet and songwriter Peter LaFarge was the adopted son of a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. In his early days he worked as a rodeo rider and singer, eventually migrating to New York’s Greenwich Village in the late 1950’s. There he joined an emerging, and radical, folk music crowd that included Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and, later, a young Bob Dylan. LaFarge claimed Native American ancestry from the Narragansett Tribe, but his claim is widely disputed. He probably was informally “adopted” by the Tewa Tribe of New Mexico as an adolescent.

Whatever his actual ancestry, LaFarge was devoted to Native American causes. His Folkways albums were replete with Native American themes, with some blues, cowboy and love songs sprinkled in. It is no surprise then that he would be familiar with the story of Ira Hayes and would, in the early sixties, write the too honest and, because of its blunt honesty, controversial Ballad of Ira Hayes.

LaFarge was found dead at the height of his success in his New York City apartment on October 27, 1965 at the age of 34. The official cause of death was a stroke, though rumors persist that Peter LaFarge committed suicide by slitting his wrists in the shower. To his death, LaFarge refused to follow the folk culture into bands and electric instrumentation and insisted on maintaining his monotone vocals accompanied by a lone acoustic guitar.

Down the ditches for a thousand years ; The water grew Ira’s people’s crops; ‘Till the white man stole the water rights; And the sparklin’ water stopped.

Now Ira’s folks were hungry; And their land grew crops of weeds; When war came, Ira volunteered; And forgot the white man’s greed

THE TROUBADOR
Well regarded as a country western singer by the early sixties, Johnny Cash met Peter LaFarge in Nashville shortly after LaFarge had written The Ballad of Ira Hayes. Though a solid figure in the country genre, Cash, long interested in Native American right’s issues, took on the controversial song. The decision was not without pain. Many country DJ’s refused to air The Ballad of Ira Hayes because of its provocative and left leaning political message. The song reached number 3 on the charts anyway.

But Cash’s commitment was even stronger than the recording of Ira Hayes. As a secure country star, in the early sixties he took the professional risk of releasing his “Bitter Tears” album devoted to the cause of the Native American and containing six radical Peter LaFarge songs.

In 1971, Cash was invited to perform at the White House. The Nixon social office contacted him to request that he sing two conservative favorites of the president, Okie from Muskogee and Welfare Cadillac. Cash declined and instead inserted three left leaning political pieces (including The Ballad of Ira Hayes) into his performance. Cash claimed he didn’t know the songs the president wanted him to sing.

Then Ira started drinkin’ hard; Jail was often his home; They’d let him raise the flag and lower it; Like you’d throw a dog a bone! He died drunk one mornin’; Alone in the land he fought to save; Two inches of water in a lonely ditch; Was a grave for Ira Hayes”

Here is Johnny Cash’s version and another by Townes van Zandt that is less stylized and more in the tradition of Peter LaFarge.

WHY OLD STORIES MATTER

Some things change, and some things never do.

In the more than 300 years since the European tribe landed, the white man has taken the land and resources once enjoyed and nurtured by the native tribes of North America. We have diminished and often destroyed their cultures. We have abducted and raped their women, stolen their water, then sold them water back to the arid reservations where we confined them. We call them by anglicized names because we cannot make the effort to pronounce their tongue; they are “Pima” now, no longer Akimel Au-Authm. “Pima”, meaning “no”, is a grammatical misconstruction by a 19th century Christian missionary. When tribal reservations were found to have value, we moved them to new and more desolate land that we might mine the ore for ourselves. We deforested their sacred lands, destroying the habitat of the game upon which they fed.

Yes, old stories matter. Old-old stories that survive in the native lore of a forgotten tongue and new-old stories like that of Hayes and LaFarge and Cash. More than half a century has passed since Ira Hayes went to Washington to plead for his people, more than forty five years since The Ballad of Ira Hayes was written by Peter LaFarge and sung by Johnny Cash.

DID YOU KNOW
• Native American tribes are still considered “dependent nations”. That’s a throwback to British colonial rule, a separate nation but subservient to the laws of a superior nation.
• Native American status is the equivalent of being wards of the government. For example, the federal government can take control of Native American litigation, including dismissing claims against States that the Native Americans were prosecuting. The most recent such case was during the Bush II administration.
• Treaty provisions with Native American tribes can be abrogated by a simple act of Congress without the consent of the tribe.
• Congress has the authority, by simple legislation, to “terminate” tribes.
• Most reservation land is not titled to the tribal nation; it is titled to the federal government.
• States and local governments continue to try to deny Native Americans the right to vote. More than 70 voting rights cases for Native Americans have been filed since passage of the Voting Rights Act.
• In the western states, which distribute water by the appropriation method, Native American water rights are deemed to have arisen after that of white settlers, giving whites first priority. The illogic of the legal reasoning is that natives used the water, but never “appropriated” specific flows or amounts.

Some good news: In August of 2008, 149 years after being pressed into reservation status, and after a 34 year court battle that began in 1974, the “Pima” finally got water rights, though only about forty percent of what they sought. In the meantime, having been forced to abandon their traditional agrarian lifestyle and to eat white man’s food, they developed one of the highest diabetes rates in the world, more than 50% of all adults. They responded by volunteering for medical/scientific studies to help find a cure for all those with Type 2 Diabetes.

Ira Hayes and Peter LaFarge and Johnny Cash are all dead now. The Ballad of Ira Hayes still gets played from time to time on the oldies stations. The Akimel Au-Authm, river people, still live on the reservation, more affluent now, in Anglo terms, from the proceeds of their casinos and land leased to developers.

And, the cotton still grows, but now, finally, on the River People’s side of the ditch.

Polman gives several reasons why he believes it’s now in the tea leaves cards that health care reform will pass. The first is the Congressional Budget Office’s verdict. The second is “theanti-abortion House Democratic faction – the so-called Bart Stupak bloc – has splintered. The third is that the closer the issue comes to the vote, the fewer fence sitters there are and the few Democrats there are who want to be blamed for sinking health care reform for possibly a generation.

Then he gives us our Quote of the Day:

And perhaps the best indicator of likely Democratic success is the increasingly unhinged tone of the opposition. The Freak Out Award (so far, anyway) is hereby shared by Iowa Republican congressman Steve King and the inimitable Glenn Beck. Yesterday, on Beck’s radio show, they thundered that the House Democrats, by scheduling the big vote on a Sunday, are dissing the Lord Himself (or Herself). King said, “They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God.” To which Beck replied, “You couldn’t have said it better. Here is a group of people that have so perverted our faith and our hope and our charity, that is a – this is an affront to God…something our founders would have never, ever, ever done. Out of respect for God.”

It is “never, ever, ever done?” There has “never, ever, ever” been a vote on a Sunday? It’s fascinating how the unhinged know so little about history, even when it’s recent. As I well recall, the Senate Republicans voted in 2005 to allow the federal courts to intervene in the medical case of Terri Schiavo, during an emergency session that the GOP leadership staged…on a Sunday. In fact, it was Palm Sunday.

As we have noted often on this site, this is not unusual in American partisan political politics in the 21st century, where partisans will become outraged over something the other side is doing and either not mention they themselves did it or try to make defense lawyer like arguments to downplay it if it comes out that they did it, too. Increasingly in politics, it seems to be felt that if you can’t whip up the rage you can’t reach a political goal.

Consistency conshmistency what does it matter if it gives us an argument we can use?

However on Friday I was listening to a radio show while driving to the office and someone did raise an interesting point regarding the details of the mandate as contained in the current bill.

As I’ve said, a mandate is fine, but for me it should be very simple, requiring that you have coverage but leaving the decision of what plan to get in the your hands.

If you want to spend a lot on premiums to get a lower deductible and co pay, then pay the higher premiums. If you’d prefer a lower premium at the expense of a higher deductible and co pays, that is your choice.

This is where I have a concern with the current bill, which seems to require a level of coverage well above that of a basic plan.

To be fair, the caller to the radio show was an opponent of HCR but he made some good points. His son is a self employed businessman in his 30’s who makes a decent but far from lavish living. The caller didn’t want to get too specific but made it clear that his son’s income was under $ 50,000 a year. For the sake of debate we’ll call him Bob.

Even for a single person that is a relatively modest income, especially if you consider that 25-35% probably goes out in various taxes (income, SS, Medicare, etc). That is a net income in the low to mid 30’s. Again, nice but hardly rich.

Bob had a basic plan but was concerned about the proposed costs he’d have to pay under the HCR mandate. According to caller the projected cost for a single person was somewhere around $ 5,000 a year and that seems to match what the CBO has put out. The son said he was currently paying less than half of that for his basic plan.

I did some checking on the net to see how accurate that was and it does seem to work out. If the link doesn’t work I assumed a Sacramento CA zip code and an age of 35 (since Bob was in his 30’s).

I got quotes as low as $ 70 per month with plenty of plans in the $ 100 to $ 200 per month range. Obviously these plans have higher co pays and deductibles but many were fairly low (all under $ 5k, some as low as $ 1k).

So for $ 150 a month he’s paying $ 1,800 or so a year.

If the numbers from CBO were correct for him, he would see his premiums nearly triple under the plan.

Since he’s single and middle class he might not qualify for much assistance.

Now of course it is entirely possible that the CBO numbers wouldn’t apply to him. Obviously they are an average and include older or less healthy individuals.

But if I were a member of Congress I’d sure want to have some assurances that people like Bob do not get stuck with such hikes. Requiring coverage for all is an acceptable idea, requiring that they buy a specific level of coverage or a specific type of plan seems to go too far.

Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Hamas leaders are seeking to escalate Palestinian unrest over the supposed Israeli threat to Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. In addition to reflecting the movement’s ideological goals, this effort makes good political sense.

Hamas seeks to supplant the West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad. It knows that by returning the focus of the conflict to the explosive issue of Islamic pride and outrage over the loss of holy places, it can present itself as the natural leader of the Palestinians, and its opponents as irrelevancies or, worse, collaborators.

For this reason, Hamas spokesmen and leaders in the West Bank, Gaza and beyond have been busily fanning the flames of Arab and Muslim anger since the “Day of Rage” in Jerusalem on Tuesday. The main focus, notably, is the supposed threat to the Aksa Mosque represented by the rebuilding of the Hurva Synagogue, rather than that of construction in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood or broader Palestinian grievances.

Speaking at a conference organized by the Hamas authorities in Gaza City on Wednesday, Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told his audience that “what is happening now exposes the reality of Jerusalem’s future and the Jews’ plans.”

He urged Palestinians not to fear a “religious or nonreligious war” and declared that Jerusalem will “always remain Islamic.”

Haniyeh went on to call for an emergency session of the Islamic Conference Organization countries to support Palestinian protests in Jerusalem. He castigated the PA for preventing protesters from “defending their lands and holy sites.”

This basic message was repeated in statements by other senior Palestinian officials in the last days. In Damascus, Hamas Political Bureau head Khaled Mashaal announced the launching of an “open-ended campaign for Jerusalem and the Islamic and Christian holy sites in Palestine.”

Mashaal praised the role of ‘1948′ Palestinians (that is, Arab citizens of Israel) in the protests so far. He said that Israel was “playing with fire” and risked triggering a region-wide war.

The movement’s ambassador in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, told the Al-Jazeera satellite channel that the opening of the Hurva Synagogue formed part of a larger Israeli attempt to “invent” a Jewish history for Jerusalem. Hamdan asserted that no landmarks unambiguously indicating an ancient Jewish presence in the city had been found, so Israel had instead chosen to focus on the Hurva, built at the time of the Ottomans.

Izzadin Kassam, the armed wing of Hamas, said in a statement on its Web site that the latest events in Jerusalem would lead to “dire explosions.”

Abu Obaida, spokesman for Izzadin Kassam, predicted that the opening of the Hurva (ruin) Synagogue would itself lead to Israel’s ruin, and that any tampering with al-Aksa would mean Israel’s demise.

The flood of rhetoric from Hamas leaders and spokesmen in the last days derives from a concerted attempt to regain the political initiative on the Palestinian side. With the split in the Palestinian movement showing no signs of being healed any time soon, Hamas is seeking to foment a new uprising, based on Islamic fury, in which it can wave the banner of the Aksa Mosque. Since Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Hamas has been mainly engaged in rebuilding and reconsolidating its power in the Strip. Its failure to secure the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners in a deal for the return of St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit represented a significant setback.

The rival PA in the West Bank has been making the running in the last months. Its tactics of diplomatic agitation and isolation of Israel appear to be delivering results. Hamas would like to switch the focus, back to the area in which it is able to excel – namely, the use of religious symbols to foment political violence.

The nervous response of the PA – with some spokesmen supporting the protests and others warning against a renewed intifada – indicates that it is aware of the challenge. Some in Fatah would like to try and turn the protests to their own advantage. But the more shrewd among them are aware that renewed open confrontation will benefit Hamas, not the PA.

Will Hamas succeed?

The mobilizing of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish opinion on the basis of an imaginary threat to the Aksa Mosque has a long history in this conflict. The most recent example was the decision to trigger the second intifada in 2000 after Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. But as far back as 1929, agitators used arrangements for prayers at the Western Wall to incite country-wide attacks on Jews.

The results have been middling this time around – so far. Burning tires and rock-throwing youths offer attractive front page images for media outlets. But observers of the events in Jerusalem noted the relatively small number of participants in the current protests, and a heavy preponderance of activists of Islamist organizations. Much will depend in the coming days on whether the Israeli security forces can contain the unrest without providing Hamas with new martyrs around whom it can mobilize.

But whether or not the next months see heightened unrest, the fact that the “moral high ground” in Palestinian politics can still be achieved by furious opposition to the reopening of a synagogue in the heart of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City offers a sobering lesson as to the true nature of the forces driving the conflict.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Herzliya, Israel. This Guest Voice is cross posted from GLORIA’s website.

RJ Matson, Roll Call

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

As a materials and manufacturing engineer with decades of experience with failure analysis of manufactured products, and as an owner of a Toyota vehicle, I am saddened by the lack of expertise and insight shared with Congress and the public about the sudden acceleration problem.

When products fail due to a systemic design, materials or manufacturing flaw, large and statistically significant levels of problems emerge fairly rapidly. This is definitely not the case with the Toyota problem. With many millions of Toyota models on which even more millions of miles have been driven, if there had been an inherent materials or manufacturing design defect, then we would have seen untold thousands of cases of sudden acceleration. It literally would have been virtually a daily event happening all over the country in many Toyota models. But, in fact, little more than 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported since 2001 that their vehicles suddenly accelerated on their own. This is a tiny, minuscule percentage of Toyotas.

This infrequent runaway car problem is not analogous to a serious case of bacterial contamination of a major food product causing many thousands of cases of food poisoning in a relatively short period. It is even more difficult to find the cause of.

Understanding this nature of defects also means that the so-called solutions of replacing floor mats and gas pedals are sheer nonsense. Indeed, it did not surprise me to read today that there have already been cases of sudden acceleration in cars that had received fixes by Toyota. More than 60 Toyota owners have complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about cars already repaired under the two major Toyota recalls, saying they aren’t fixed and their throttles can still race out of control.

While recognizing the agony and suffering of sudden acceleration accidents and deaths it is also necessary to appreciate the statistically rare occurrences of this problem. Only by doing so is it possible to understand that the ultimate explanation – and solution – to the sudden acceleration problem will be a non-systemic flaw or defect in a critical component. In other words, either a random defect in a material or some unusual and infrequent deviation in a manufacturing process of some critical component. Only such a situation can logically explain so few sudden acceleration problems in so many millions of cars being operated for many more millions of hours and miles.

In my professional opinion, the likely scenario is a defect in a semiconductor chip used in the electronic control system. A defect that was caused by some infrequent flaw in a raw material or manufacturing process that would not show up in routine quality control testing of raw materials or components. That so many different Toyota models over many years have been found defective signifies the likelihood of a particular problem component made in a specific factory that has been used for quite a while. Moreover, the defect obviously does not ordinarily impair vehicle performance but only manifests itself under some infrequent conditions, as yet undetermined.

Rita Taylor of Fort Worth, Texas experienced runaway acceleration, took her car to a Toyota dealer, and had the floor mats removed. A few months later she had another frightening runaway episode. Ditto for Eric Weiss in California, who also had a second episode months after the first one and after removing the mats. Others who have not died and kept using their Toyotas have also had repeat events. Thus, perfectly normal vehicle performance is possible between runaway events.

Make no mistake, the precise cause of such a sporadic event is incredibly difficult to pin down and even more difficult to remedy. An extremely intense and costly investigation is necessary. It is the classic needle-in-the-haystack problem.

If my thinking is correct, then it is sheer folly to believe that replacing floor mats or gas pedals can solve the sudden acceleration problem. However, there is one aspect to the sudden acceleration problem that also is crystal clear and, in some ways, even more aggravating than the acceleration problem. This is the absence of an override system that absolutely prevents fuel being fed to the engine when brakes are employed while a car is accelerating. It is gratifying that the federal government is seriously considering requiring such an override system in all vehicles. An effective override system might, in the long run, be a faster and more cost-effective solution than chasing-the-defect strategy, especially for retrofitting many millions of vehicles.

Alternatively, finding the cause of the sudden acceleration problem requires a standard failure analysis methodology, namely to obtain absolutely every Toyota vehicle that has experienced sudden acceleration. Then meticulously examine through microscopic and other types of analysis and testing all critical components of the electronic system (called by Toyota the Electronic Throttle Control System with intelligence). Think of it like an autopsy.

This does not appear to have been done. To the contrary, the firm hired by Toyota tested several ordinary vehicles and components. One of the primary authors of the Exponent report said they did not examine any vehicles or components that had the unintended accelerations. This makes no sense whatsoever if the defect is rare and, therefore, its finding that there was nothing wrong was meaningless. Worse, it was a deception and distraction.

The author has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a consultant for many corporations, such as IBM, Texas Instruments, Polaroid, and RayOVac, and has served as an expert witness in many legal proceedings. He was a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of several nonfiction books and hundreds of articles.

This guest cartoon is by Sarjex, who describes herself as “a lonely little wingnut in the crazy liberal mecca of San Francisco.”

Many anti-smoking ads in the past are rather gruesome with rotten body parts that terrified people. Those messages are straight forward in showing the final consequences if continue to smoke. Now these ads have gone into a different approach where they are creative and inspiring to look at. In your opinion, which is a more effective method?

Click through for the lot of them. Above, a smoking gun, a personal favorite. Below, smoking lips, best Mad Men fit. Mad Men season 3 encores begin Sunday. Here’s the AMC interview with Mathew Weiner posted prior to the Season 3 premiere.

Rep. Scott Murphy, D-N.Y., on Friday declared he would vote for the administration’s $940 billion overhaul of the nation’s health care system, saying it would shift the balance of power from insurance companies to patients and does a better job of reining in medical costs.

In an interview with the Albany Times Union, Murphy said the final health care package is “much more fiscally conservative” than the broader House-passed bill he opposed last November and would do a better job of reducing the explosive growth in medical costs that “our families and small businesses are facing,” while still expanding insurance coverage to roughly 32 million people.

“This bill is fundamentally different than the bill we voted on last November,” Murphy said, adding that while the measure “is not perfect,” he feels “much better” about it.

Murphy’s decision ends days of intense speculation about how he would handle the issue, which is a signature piece of President Obama’s domestic agenda and is a top priority for congressional Democrats.

Markos Moulitsas, via Twitter, makes a point about counting votes:

All whip counts ignore [the] fact that all key votes will decide in the last 2 minutes depending on what the count needs to be[.]

Linked from TheCalifornian.com, via Jeffrey Lebowski at Twitter:

ProPublica has produced a side-by-side comparison of the health care reform bill currently before Congress, looking at the bill approved by the Senate in December and the House’s recommended changes.

Wanna see a screen shot from the House Rules Committee’s records, from the 108th Congress, showing the almost two dozen instances in which Republicans used deem-and-pass? Matthew Yglesias has it. “Demon Pass,” indeed.

Ezra Klein sees the smack-down of  the GOP’s attempt to make the use of deem-and-pass illegal as “very strong evidence” that health care reform is going to pass.

And when it does, it will be very much despite lies like this one about federal money being used to pay for abortions — lies which are uncritically “reported” by credulous press stenographers posing as journalists.

Oh, ye of little faith on CBO scores: go here.

Salon’s Mike Madden lists 10 things you should know about the health care reform bill.

March 10 Kaiser poll on health care, via FiveThirtyEight.com on Twitter.

Matthew Yglesias wonders if Bart Stupak is going to make nasty comments about the National Catholic Reporter, too, now that they’ve come out for health care reform.

The National Catholic Reporter is joining American nuns and the Catholic Health Association in breaking with the Bishops and endorsing the health reform bill, offering the observation that “the bishops have to be clear that some of their talking points might lead honest observers to question their competence — or worse.”

I suppose it make sense on some level

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/03/19/teague-a-no-pelosi-would-have-to-run-the-table-without-stupak-bloc/

Of course to a degree the vote is more symbolic that anything else

Many of the provisions won’t take effect until 2014 or later

And with states ready to file lawsuits, it’s likely the rest will wait a year or two.

Since the global economic crisis began to ease, the U.S. has renewed its pleas to Beijing to allow the value of its currency, the yuan or remnimbi – to float freely, i.e.: to rise, which would make U.S. exports cheaper for Chinese consumers and reduce America’s annual trade deficit with China.

But Christiane von Hardenberg of the Financial Times Deutschland warns Americans to be careful what they wish for, since this will hurt American consumers, who will have to pay more for Chinese imports.

For the Financial Times Deutschland, Christiane von Hardenberg reflects European concerns of worsening U.S.-China ties when she writes in part:

The time for soothing silence is over. For a few months, the endless whining by U.S. officials that China should at long last let the value of its currency float freely had died down. That was in the spring of 2009, when the global economic crisis had struck with full force. At the time, fears were circulating that everyone would retrench and a wave of protectionism would drag the world into a deep recession. U.S. delegates kept quiet.

But now China’s economy is again going strong. At the same time, unemployment in the United States is still climbing, most recently to 9.7 percent. So now the whining has begun again. According to observers, Washington may soon formally accuse China of currency manipulation – an accusation that could further strain an already tense relationship between the Americans and Chinese.

The Americans would be better advised to keep quiet. As long as Beijing feels like its being pushed into a corner, it cannot be expected to give way. Besides, the reason it continues to vehemently oppose a revaluation is obvious: a stronger currency is no silver bullet. In order to bring a sustained boost to domestic demand, China’s social system must be completely turned inside-out. Retirement and health care planning must provide enough security so that rather than saving their money – Chinese spend it.

In addition, a stronger renminbi is no panacea for America’s economic problems. The jobs are gone and they aren’t coming back. U.S. companies no longer make many of China’s top-selling exports – furniture, toys and sneakers. If the value of the renminbi rises, it will be U.S. consumers that have to pay the difference. Instead of getting bogged down in disputes with China, Americans should use this time to build a more competitive export industry.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

The excuse given by the Legislature’s record-keeping officers were for “security” reasons even though the trips were already taken.

The Associated Press, which has been on a crusade lately with a multi-pronged Freedom Of Information campaign, said the California elected officers ran up a $2 million travel tab in the last two years and one-half years which is peanuts compared to the $20 billion budget deficit they face this July.

The North County Times, based in Escondido, ran the entire story Friday.

The report said $1.5 million was for travel from members home districts to the state capital in Sacramento, $400,000 for other in-state travel and $55,000 for out of state travel.

The news agency said the Legislature would not provide original documentation of lawmakers’ air travel, meaning there is no way to independently determine where they flew or for what purpose. According to the report:

“Providing past schedules for air travel related to legislative business that occurs even just once a year can reveal a pattern regarding future events that would continue to pose a potential threat to the security of each Assembly Member,” Jon Waldie, chief executive of the Assembly Rules Committee, wrote in response to a letter seeking the information.
His counterpart, Senate Secretary Gregory Schmidt, provided a letter that contained nearly identical wording.
The California Legislature is not subject to the same public records law as most other state agencies. The California Legislative Open Records Act provides the Legislature with broad discretion about the types of information about its own activities it can keep from the public.

“Why would it be a security problem for travel that’s already completed? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles and a former general counsel for the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the state’s watchdog agency. “We’re talking about taxpayers’ money. It seems to me we should know more rather than less.”

State Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, defended keeping specific travel information out of the public realm. “I think the concern is legitimate. People don’t want to establish patterns,” she said. “Having your lives be as public as ours are is awkward enough.”

The California Highway Patrol, which is responsible for the security of state lawmakers, said legislators receive threats but would not say how frequently.

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EPILOGUE

In some respects, this is making a mountain out of a molehill. On the other hand, simply complying with the complete information after the fact eliminates the conspiracy theorists who believe all politicians are crooks. Who knows? Perhaps AP was looking for dirt as was learned in South Carolina in which Gov. Mark Sanford was caught abusing the airfare rules. If Sen. Ducheny thinks public life is “awkward enough,” then don’t seek public office. Meanwhile, with an assassin lurking behind every corner and a conspiracy junkie ready to spring, little wonder the quality of our politicians are far from the best and the brightest.