Is the earth warming? Is it cooling? We may never know. However, this new work by Jeane Dixon may give us some fresh perspective on the vigorous debate.

Nuts. I got the link wrong. Try this.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I wish this thing had a preview.

My great-uncle had to change his name from Fiedorwicz to Fiedor when he became an executive at Ford ... you'd think we were past that bullshit by now.

Anything to add?

Yes, I'd like to add that Joe Lieberman can go fuck himself.

No kidding about the Politico piece. There was no way to comment on it either. I guess they are not interested in the ways that Bush totally ignored the country as opposed to Obama who can walk and chew gum at the same time.

In May, a new credit card law stopped banks from arbitrarily raising interest rates. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is taking the next step, proposing "freezing interest rates and fees on existing credit card balances until a new law took effect."

The horse left the barn months ago on this issue. Anyone with credit card debt is now paying 27-29.99% interest on their debt. Those are Tony Soprano kinds of rates.

Anything short of reinstating usury laws is a joke at this point.

Credit Card Insanity:

Around the 12th of October, I get a letter announcing a promo rate on my card: 1.99% on all kinds of holiday-targeted goods (electronics, etc). The rate was to be effective Oct 15-Dec 31.

On Oct 17, I get a letter saying my promotional rate had been revoked due to a late payment. Instead, my rate would be going up to 19%.

Now, I hadn't missed a payment between Oct 15 and Oct 17 (or even Oct 12 and Oct 17), so there was no way I could have known I was going to lose my promotional rate - I didn't even know I had one.

That's just annoying, but here's the really absurd part: there is a number you can call by Dec 16 to "reject" this cancellation of the promo rate, in which case it does not go to 19% (although they are quick to add that with another late payment they can still move my rate to 25%).

In short, the letter is just a CYA with no meaning except for the masses of people who don't notice the ability to negate the letter with a call, who never open the letter which looks like junk mail, or who are too lazy or busy to call. On those folks, the card issuer will make quite likely literally millions of dollars.

"This Politico piece is easily the most annoying thing you'll read all week."

Ok, I won't read it.

Randall Terry
He's so scary
His wife should shave
'cause she's too hairy.

"This Politico piece is easily the most annoying thing you'll read all week."

Nope, it's not. I refuse to read Politico anymore.

zeitgeist (@5:49), I share your pain. I had an AmEx card for years, never a late payment, balance usually at zero, never exceeded the credit limit. Because of the winter storms we got here last year, we didn't have mail delivery for over a week, and a payment was late. Percentage went up immediately, even though the balance was zero.

Dropped the card, and don't regret it at all.

I did a search in Google to see if I could find anything on the accomplishments of President Obama during his brief term. A vast majority of the hits discussed his having done nothing at all.

Since this is an open thread I would like to find out if anyone has found anything positive. A few of the sites mentioned some laundry lists of some rather esoteric accomplishments and a couple acknowledged the progress of health insurance reform. Somehow I don't think this is really the only tangible achievement.

Perhaps management could start a thread that addresses this issue? Accomplishments don't necessarily have to be positive to make the list but they shouldn't exclude the good side, either.

I'd like to look forward to a "robust" discussion of the President's accomplishments. Thank you.

Matthew Hoh, on his resignation today over our Afghanistan policy:

"I believe that the people we are fighting there are fighting us because we are occupying them. Not for any ideological reasons, not because of any links to al-Qaeda, not because of any fundamental hatred toward the West, the only reason they're fighting us is because we are occupying them."

Quite.

You know, it's a genuine pity that Republicans aren't smart, have a problem telling the truth and are prone to fits of temper - and in a few cases (cough, John Boehner, cough), hysterical weeping.

Because they sure are better at getting things done - or stopping things from getting done - that the other party, even when they're significantly outnumbered.

Instead of trying to push the Democrats to act like they're the party in power, maybe it would make more sense to start capturing Republicans, confining them and brainwashing them to love their country and stop lying so much. Either that, or drain them of their essence and start injecting experimental doses (so as not to overdo it) into Harry Reid.

I'd like to look forward to a "robust" discussion of the President's accomplishments.

Shadou - Here's a list Benen came up with in late September:
"the stimulus bill that prevented an economic collapse, the most progressive budget bill in a generation, banning torture, getting a Supreme Court nominee confirmed, lifting the ban on stem-cell research, expanding S-CHIP, passing a national service bill, passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, passing new regulations of the credit card industry, passing new regulation of the tobacco industry, and achieving some key counter-terrorism successes...
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/020154.php

(Sorry for the non-clickable link, but I'm feeling lazy today.)

Because they (Republicans) sure are better at getting things done - or stopping things from getting done - that the other party, even when they're significantly outnumbered.

Of course. And that's why they were so successful at privatizing Social Security, reforming Medicare, and destroying Welfare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and all those other social programs they detest. And I remember how they destroyed the Department of Education (a longtime political goal) as well as permanently gutting the SEC, FDA, and other regulatory agencies they hate by rewriting the laws that created them. Wow, those guys really accomplished a lot.

Oh, wait. None of that stuff happened. The reality is that all the real damage was done with the Executive Branch, because the Republican Congress couldn't get anything done. While they have Tax Cuts, Patriot Act, and the Iraq War on their side; they also expanded government powers using No Child Left Behind, and even gave Medicare a drug plan; in betrayal of their ideology. And the rest of their time was spent on pointless political grandstanding and other useless activities which hurt them at the polls.

Jesus people, we spent YEARS talking about how do-nothing the Republican Congresses were, and now I keep reading revisionist history about how good they were at getting things done, while we sit on our hands doing nothing. Hell, we've gotten MUCH MUCH further at reforming healthcare than they ever got to reforming Social Security.

Yes, legislation is difficult, messy, and frustrating, but all the same, Dems are much better at it than Republicans are. And Obama has definitely accomplished a lot more in his first nine months of office than Bush did (unless, of course, you count 9/11 as an "accomplishment".)

Doctor Biobrain,
To that excellent list we can add, defeating John McCain last November. The Rs still haven't gotten over it.

Dan

Snowe's prepared to support the GOP filibuster.

this is worded as if its some act of bravery on the part of snowe when in reality, for snowe its the coward's way. It should read:

'snowe will heal when ordered to vote against health care reform by the obstructionist party.'

or, how about:

'snowe vows to vote against a large majority of Americans in order to protect insurance company profits'

or:

'snowe plans to side with plutocrats against the American people.'

(How come progressives don't know how to word things?)

No doubt you're correct, Doc, and I'm attributing success at ramming through controversial decisions to the Republican Congress, rather than the Republican Executive, where it rightfully belongs. The point I was trying to make is that the Republicans don't act like a minority when they are, and the Democrats do. I lost count of the things Bush jammed down their throats; making that walrus-faced asshat John Bolton U.S. Representative to the U.N., for example. Everybody was all, like, noooooooooo, that'll never pass, and Bush was, like, yah-hahhhh, and before you know it, it was a done deal. I know he did that through a recess appointment, and the Dems had nothing to say about it, but that administration just seemed to be able to make things happen even when everybody was sure it couldn't. How about the retroactive immunity for the telephone companies that turned over records to Bush's law enforcement agencies? Everybody said that would never happen, but it did.

I guess that's the linchpin of my argument - the Dems always act like they're in the minority, and have to negotiate to the point of giving away the store to get anything done. The Republicans always act like they're the majority, and don't have to kiss up to anyone. the republicans are chronically arrogant, but the Dems are chronically timid. I'd like to see them start steamrolling the Republicans the way it was done to them.

El Nino

You can read the forecasts in the earlier reports (through August), but with this September report they stopped posting the forecasts, possibly because the forecasted El Nino never happened. The Standardized Southern Oscillation Index near the bottom has changed from slightly negative (forecasting slight or no El Nino) to slightly positive (forecasting slight or no La Nina). As it stands now, the measures of El Nino do not forecast an increase in temperature for 2010.

I disagree with Marrer above: I think that we'll know sometime between 5 and 10 years from now which of the diverse climate models is the most accurate. Lately the CO2 models have had a run of bad luck, needing frequent rescue, whereas the solar theory models have had a few good scores.

Wow Steve,
Just saw you on TV. Nice Job.

i concur with CU on the nice job, but Rachel sure loves to tease you about those books, doesn't she? :)

And right-wing activist Randall Terry "has launched a contest to encourage people to make videos burning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in effigy." Seriously.

I wanted to hang Randall Terry 20 years ago, only not in effigy. Too bad his mother didn't have the abortion she was considering when she found out she was pregnant with him.

The Republicans always act like they're the majority, and don't have to kiss up to anyone. the republicans are chronically arrogant, but the Dems are chronically timid.

Mark - I've read enough conservative blogs that I can assure you: They feel the exact same way about us. The grass always feels shakier on your side of the fence.

Read enough RedState and you'll hear endlessly about how powerful Dems are and how Republicans need to learn how Democrats did it. Yeah, I know. It's a bizarro world, but that's what they think.

"[I]n a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency. 'I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan,' he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel."

Well eff diddly fucking duh.

On a related note, NYT is reporting that Karzai's brother is a drug kingpin on the CIA payroll.

Next thing we can expect to hear is that the WH has a secret plan to end the war.

Time to hit the streets again, kids. Obama ain't gonna get out of VietNam 'til we force his fiddling ass to.

And if we don't know in 5 to 10 years, then we'll know in another 5 to 10 years after that. Or another 5 to 10 years after that. In fact, I'll be dead before I have to take any action. Meanwhile, I've got a giant, gas-guzzling truck that needs my attention at the wheel.

Piece of advice: If a POLITICO piece is annoying or worthless, don't link to it. Attention is what they want. This is a principle that liberal bloggers should start to learn -- the value of strategic ignoring.

I've been waiting for an open thread...Can you guys help get the ball rolling on E-2 Visa reform?

http://theworldofhowey.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/e2-immigration-reform/