Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

America No Longer Eligible For Platinum Credit Cards

• Get out the champagne...and then sell it for Euros. America’s national debt just breached $9 trillion for the first time ever. [Reuters]
• The national debt is the sum of all annual budget deficits America has racked up in its 200 year history.
• This year, Bush trumpeted his 2007 $162.8 billion deficit as “the lowest in five years.”
• Only trouble: for the four years before that, from 2003 to 2006, Bush and his rubber stamp congress racked up the largest budget deficits in history. [DPC]
• 2003: $378 billion (2nd largest deficit in U.S. history)
• 2004: $413 billion (largest deficit in U.S. history)
• 2005: $318 billion (3rd largest deficit in U.S. history)
• 2006: $296 billion (4th largest deficit in U.S. history and larger than any deficit prior to the Bush presidency)
• The source of these deficits? Two tax cuts for the rich, a costly Medicare prescription drug benefit, and, oh yeah, a nearly $600 billion war in Iraq.
• When Bush took over in 2001, the last yearly budget was a surplus of $236 billion and the national debt was a shrinking $5.6 trillion.

Heck, let’s go for $10 trillion. What have you got to lose, W?

California To EPA: That’s It, No More Mr. Nice Guy

• Yesterday the State of California sued the Environmental Protection Agency in its quest to actually do something about car emissions standards
• The Issue: California wants to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. The state wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars by 30 percent by 2016. That means requiring cars to get 43.7 mile to gallon for passenger cars. [Detroit News]
• The Stall: The state asked the EPA for a waiver allowing them to enact the new standards, but the EPA has delayed…and delayed…and delayed giving them a decision. [AP]
• Why it’s important: A funny fact about national vehicle emissions laws: Only California can adopt automobile emission standards stricter than the federal standards, and other states must choose to follow either the federal standards or California’s. Federal automobile standards currently do not include greenhouse gas emissions, so states are lining up behind California’s plan. Only problem: the EPA has to approve a waiver for California before other states can follow its lead in curbing greenhouse gas. [AP]
• Fact: The EPA has previously granted 50 full waivers and 40 partial ones. Number they’ve denied? 5. Last time they denied a waiver? 1975.[Detroit News]

• What The Courts Say: The EPA first tried to dodge California by saying, sorry man, it’s not up to us; we don’t have jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse gases. In April, the

  Supreme Court ruled that, yes, the EPA did have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. [NY Times]

• 14 other states will definitely adopt these standards if CA gets the waiver: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. These states represent 40% of the U.S. auto market. [AP]
• The White House got pretty sneaky about trying to stop California’s quest. The Department of Transportation got busted making calls (yes, on official time) to influential state lawmakers, urging them to contact the EPA and oppose California’s standards. [House Government Oversight]
• (Don’t worry; the Mustache of Justice is on it. Calling it “highly inappropriate” behavior “considered by some to be illegal,” Rep. Henry Waxman is investigating whether the Transportation Department broke the law, adding, “It is not an appropriate use of federal resources to lobby members of Congress to oppose state efforts to protect the environment.”) [House Government Oversight]
• What’s next: EPA Administration Stephen Johnson has said he’ll decide on this in December, but then again, he’s said a lot of thing, so watch, wait, and see what happens.

California Greenin’!

Out Of Work Vets Have An Unhappy Veterans Day

• It’s not easy to come home from a war. [Forbes]
• Military reservists are having difficulty returning to the jobs they held before being shipped off to Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Reservists are guaranteed five years leave of absence and a return to employment once their deployment is done (sort of like a long, scary, jury duty).
• But the Department of Labor, who’s supposed to ensure their job security, is letting people slip through the cracks.
• Some numbers from a 2005-2006 survey of returning vets just obtained by the AP:
• 23% of reservists did not return to the jobs they held before shipping out in part because their employer did not give them prompt re-employment (which a reservist is entitled to).
• 44% of reservists are “dissatisfied with how the Labor Department handled their complaint of employment discrimination based on their military status.”
• 29% said they had trouble getting assistance and 77% said they didn’t even try to get assistance because it wouldn’t make a difference.
• The bottom line, according to a 2005 American Bar Association study, the Department of Labor is “not seen as an aggressive advocate for the returning veteran.”
• This difficulty returning to work is exacerbating another growing problem: homeless vets. [ABC]
• Today, one in four homeless Americans is a former veteran. Already, 1,500 veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq have been identified as homeless—an ominous sign of things to come.
• It took a decade after the Vietnam war ended before they started showing up among the homeless. But the rate of Iraq and Afghanistan vets becoming homeless is rising.
• Says Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa, “We’re going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous.”

Unhappy veterans day.

Veto Victory!

The Story

• Congress yesterday flexed its muscle yesterday and >SMACK< sent President Bush the first veto of his presidency. [CBS News] [NY Times] [Washington Post]
• In an overwhelming victory for Congress, lawmakers overturned President Bush’s veto of a $23 billion water resources bill.
• The Water Resources Development Act (say WRDA, like “word-ah,” to sound like a total insider) would authorize hundreds of Army Corps of Engineers projects – dams, sewage plants, beach restoration, anti-flood measures. It would also authorize projects to restore areas of the Gulf still reeling from Hurricane Katrina and work to restore the Florida Everglades.
• What’s not to like, you ask? President Bush thought it was too expensive.
• The Senate override: 79 to 14. The House override: 361-54.
• Even usual Bush BFFs split with him over this. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R., MS) called the measure “one of the few areas where we actually do something constructive” as he voted to override the president.
• This was Bush’s 5th veto (all of which have occurred since the Democrats took power last year.) The other four: Two on stem-cell research, one on Iraq with guidelines on bringing troops home, and one to provide children of the working poor with health insurance. Bush has vetoed fewer bills than any president since James Garfield (who was only in office for seven months.)
• This is only the 107th veto in Congressional history. Lawmakers vetoed 2 of Bill Clinton’s 22 vetoes and 1 of George H.W. Bush’s 44 vetoes.
• And this is only the beginning of the fight. Bush has already promised to veto a $151 billion bill to fund health, education and labor programs because it’s $10 billion over his request.
• (Yet he’s planning to smile and let through the $459.3 billion defense bill, even though it goes over last year by $35.7 billion. Go figure.)

The Audio

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

• Boxer marvels that Bush has “somehow has disassociated himself from the amounts he’s spending overseas.”
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• But notes that “we cannot overlook the needs of our country. We are a generous and decent, and good people. Our people need help as well.”
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• “Let’s just say, it’s time for America.”
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Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD)

• “This override is a clear indication the Congress disagrees with the President on priorities.”
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I think I speak for most of the country when I say, “Booyakasha.”

Your Pilot’s Asleep At The Wheel

• Just in time for Thanksgiving travel: A recent study compiled by NASA shows that “Hundreds of pilots, mechanics and air-traffic controllers reported that fatigue led them to make mistakes on the job, including six cases where pilots fell asleep in midflight.” Fell. Asleep. [USA Today]
• Additionally, The reports show that crews flew to the wrong altitude, botched landings and missed radio calls. In one specific case, a pilot even fell asleep while landing at Dulles Airport near Washington, DC.
• Don’t freak out just yet. The incidents represent only a small percentage of the more than 40 million airline flights during the period studied (2003).
• Okay, freak out: The National Transportation Safety Board has linked pilot fatigue to 10 commercial aviation accidents. The crashes, all since 1993, killed 260 people.
• For years, the NTSB has called on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to tighten restrictions on how many hours pilots can work each day. Airline crews can work up to 16 hours a day, possibly more if a flight is delayed. Research by the NTSB and others shows sharply higher risks of pilot mistakes and accidents after long shifts or periods without normal sleep.
• The FAA has tried several times to revise pilot work rules since the 1990s, but the efforts failed each time under opposition from airlines and pilot unions.
• As it stands now, federal rules require eight hours off each day, but don’t address how much sleep a pilot should receive. A pilot can fly up to 100 hours per month on domestic flights.

We need some venti-no-water-americanos. Stat.

Good News, Bad News

FORGET THE PATCH, GET A SHOT

A new vaccine, administered through a series of five shots, has been shown to “rob smokers of their nicotine buzz.” The drug, called NicVAX, made a smoker twice as likely to quit as smokers who were given a phony shot. [USA Today]

GOOD NEWS

Anything to help folks kick the cancer sticks.

BAD NEWS

Say goodbye to cigarettes and hello to...needles?

Quote Of The Day

“I don’t like Bush because he sends people to be killed.”

— Kelsie Kimberlin, the 8-year-old winner of the Lego’s Creativity Award, throwing a bit of a twist into the whole feel-good corporate publicity stunt award thing. [Washington Post]

Speed Round

MUKASEY IS IN

Senate confirms Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. Let the rubber stamping of torture begin. [NY Times]

HE’S NUMBER ONE!

Grammy…Oscar…Nobel Prize…now Al Gore is #1 in the online reader poll to be the Time Magazine person of the year! [Time Magazine]

$40,000

The amount the University of Florida will pay disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for his first speech after leaving the Department of Justice. His golden parachute is lined with shamelessness. [Legal Times]

DEJA VU

Cheney is “thwarting the release of a long-overdue National Intelligence Estimate on Iran because it doesn’t deliver the casus belli for war.” It’s like Iraq all over again. [Think Progress]

PAKISTAN PRESSURE

Under pressure from the US, Musharraf says he will hold elections in Pakistan in February...whether there will be anyone to run against him who hasn’t been imprisoned, beaten up, or exiled is unclear. [NY Times]

BAD, BAD FEMA

Although 50,000 families are still forced to live in the toxic, formealdehyde-filled FEMA trailers, FEMA has prohibited “its own staff from even briefly stepping inside trailers once residents have moved out” because it’s just too dangerous. [CBS News]

TORTURE

During hearings in the House yesterday, former Navy instructor Malcolm Nance said that, thanks to the U.S. stance on torture, he could “guarantee” other countries now have “a legal standard to subject American soldiers to enhanced interrogations.” [TPM]

WAR IS HELL

According to the latest CNN poll, public support for the Iraq war is at a record low: “Support for the war in Iraq has dropped to 31 percent and the 68 percent who oppose the war is a new record.” [CNN]

2008

“I personal would like the basketball player, Barak Obama to be Premier.” – Borat’s back! [Reuters]

CASH MONEY

Overseas thieves used the Ron Paul on-line fund-raiser to test out stolen credit cards, donating $5 a pop to see if the cards worked. [CBS News]

TRAGEDY

A U.S. helicopter crash in Italy kills five. [USA Today]

FABULOUS

Tuesday, the House approved the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a bill that offers broad protection for gay, lesbian, and bisexuals in the workplace. [NY Times]

THE ECONOMY, STUPID

We’re dreaming of a [dismal retail market] Christmas. [NY Times]

80,000

The number of item unaccounted for missing from the Reagan Library. Somewhere there’s a ‘Welfare Queen in her Cadillac’ driving around with an ornamented Western Regan belt buckle. And that, kids, is justice. [CBS]

SOMEONE NEEDS A NEW LAWYER

Attorney: “State Rep. Bob Allen wasn’t searching for sex when he entered a park bathroom five times in about an hour, he just needed to relieve himself after drinking too much iced tea.”[ORLANDO SENTINEL]