Welcome to your Monday open thread. Yes, it’s Monday. Ugh.

An “Uni-Tea” party rally was held in Philadelphia this weekend to highlight the diversity of the Tea Party. TPM has the story:

Even as just a regular old tea party rally, the event fell flat. Though organizers said the event’s website had been visited more than 2 million times in the days leading up to today’s rally outside Independence Hall, for most of the afternoon there were fewer than 500 in attendance. It was clear from the large numbers of volunteers and the 1,500 bottles the organizers put on ice that they expected a big crowd to turn out. They did not get it by a long shot. They blamed a traffic jam on I-95 for keeping people away (for the record one organizer said that she counted 1,500 on the high end of attendance, but that appeared a bit generous to us).

Among those who did make it, for most of the time the numbers of non-white faces could be counted on two hands, and maybe a foot.

The same can’t be said for the group who went up on the event’s small stage. Organizers promised the most diverse cadre of speakers ever to grace a tea party rally, and they delivered. For the most part their message was the same: tea partiers are not racists and never were — but liberals are.

I’ve seen estimates from 5 to 20 for non-white participants. (I assume this doesn’t include the invited speakers. Yay for diversity! Using the high estimate, that means the Tea Party is 4% non-white. That’s not much different than the Fox News demographic which is 1.5% African-American. It’s funny that everytime the Tea Party tries to prove how non-racist and inclusive they are, they end up showing the opposite.

Paul Krugman talks about unemployment and how we’ve become a heartless, do-nothing nation.

I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.

Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.

…

First, we see Congress sitting on its hands, with Republicans and conservative Democrats refusing to spend anything to create jobs, and unwilling even to mitigate the suffering of the jobless.

We’re told that we can’t afford to help the unemployed — that we must get budget deficits down immediately or the “bond vigilantes” will send U.S. borrowing costs sky-high. Some of us have tried to point out that those bond vigilantes are, as far as anyone can tell, figments of the deficit hawks’ imagination — far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have been buying it eagerly, driving interest rates to historic lows. But the fearmongers are unmoved: fighting deficits, they insist, must take priority over everything else — everything else, that is, except tax cuts for the rich, which must be extended, no matter how much red ink they create.

The point is that a large part of Congress — large enough to block any action on jobs — cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can’t find work.

I feel sick now too. I know it’s a stretch, but could we actually elect politicians that care more about the American people than their jobs or their donors?

Welcome to the weekend! It’s a gorgeous weekend. I spent yesterday chilling on the beach and the weather was amazing. I’m recovering at home today from my sunburn. Be sure to reapply sunblock after going in the water.

Arizona governor Jan Brewer asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for an expedited hearing on SB1070 but was denied.

A U.S. court denied a request for an expedited hearing on Friday and instead set a November date for Arizona’s appeal to a federal court ruling that blocked key parts of a state law cracking down on illegal immigration.

Lawyers for Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer had asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday to lift an injunction blocking the most intrusive parts of the law, known as SB 1070, asking for the appeal to be handled quickly.

But the court denied the state’s request to expedite the appeal and set a hearing for the week of November 1.

Speaking of court decisions, when is the California Prop 8 decision being released?

I think it goes without saying that Obama never gets any credit for the good things he does but apparently the auto bailouts were a huge success.

Yes, there are still partisan critics sniping about bailouts and “Government Motors.” But make no mistake about the Detroit rescue.

The fact that GM and Chrysler are not only alive but modestly profitable in a weak market, after years of losing billions of dollars when car and truck sales were 50% higher, looks like more than just a successful government intervention.

It looks like a flat-out miracle.

…

GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcies as leaner companies, repaid loans and stopped losing money. They are moving to shed their government ownership via stock offerings.

Political opponents, though, can’t concede even a small attaboy for Obama on the auto rescue. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, leaps to denounce GM at every opportunity, as he did last week when GM bought AmeriCredit, and when GM repaid $6.7 billion in loans ahead of schedule in April. Even home-state U.S. Rep. Candice Miller has sniped recently at GM and Chrysler for eliminating dealers.

Sorry, but the auto rescue critics are all wet. This was much more than a handout to weather a slump. Obama’s auto task force totally reshaped a bloated and dysfunctional industry, forcing sacrifices from all, into something that now looks sensible and sustainable.

“This was not just a rebound from a brutal recession, but it is a repositioning of an industry after a decade or more of decline,” said Brian Deese, a member of that task force and now an economic policy assistant to Obama.

Please everyone go back to your regularly scheduled sniping.

Welcome to the Friday edition of your semi-daily open thread. Thanks to everyone who came out to Drinking Liberally last night. We had a great time and it’s always nice to meet new people. I’m spending the day at the beach today so be jealous!

Welcome to your Thursday open thread. Tonight is Drinking Liberally at the Beach! The festivities begin at 7 PM at the Purple Parrot in Rehoboth. Come out and meet your fellow Delaware Liberals (and friends).

Former Reagan Justice Department official Charles Fried makes the case for a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

That’s where Elizabeth Warren comes in. Those who are lobbying hard against her nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Agency are the same people who lobbied against financial reform legislation and lost. They paint her as the enemy of capitalism and free markets. Nothing could be further from the truth: She is the enemy of dishonesty, abuse, and just plain theft.

Many of those who originated the toxic loans now poisoning the financial world were outright fraudsters, and many of those who bundled and purveyed those toxic assets in what amounted to a giant Ponzi scheme were no better than fences of stolen goods. Credit card companies for years have buried surprising fees, penalties, and interest rate increases in print so fine and terms so obscure that the borrowers most likely to be caught by them could not possibly understand them. That’s not capitalism; that’s fraud. To be the scourge of theft and fraud is to be the best friend of well-functioning markets.

The new legislation promises steps toward restoring faith in the honesty of the system of markets and credit. Warren’s critics call her an ideologue and a zealot, as if she were being considered for a position on a federal court. But this is an agency with a mission, and the legislation will be successful only if those writing the rules and enforcing them believe in its mission and are zealous in its pursuit.

…

Warren is smart, determined, and committed to the cause of honest financial services. The president should give her a recess appointment, as Representative Barney Frank has suggested. That will give her a year or so to hire the staff and write the regulations and in that way set the new agency’s course for many years to come. The opposition to her knows this perfectly well; its arguments are in utter bad faith and should fail. The president has the tool to defeat them.

Chris Dodd has already said “no” to a recess appointment but that’s not his decision to make. We should put pressure on the administration to appoint Warren. She’s a true champion for people, and not for the financial industry. That’s exactly what we need right now.

As health care reform starts to take effect, its support is rising:

We’re not yet near the point at which the Affordable Care Act could be characterized as “popular,” but Dems are likely pleased with the recent trend.

Opposition to the landmark health care overhaul declined over the past month, to 35 percent from 41 percent, according to the latest results of a tracking poll, reported Thursday.

Fifty percent of the public held a favorable view of the law, up slightly from 48 percent a month ago, while 14 percent expressed no opinion about the measure, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Since April, the tracking poll has found support for the health care reform law go up four points, while opposition has gone down five points. Less encouraging were results that showed more than a third of seniors still believe made-up “death panels” are real — zombie lies are surprisingly hard to kill — but overall, proponents of the ACA who predicted that blind hatred for reform would fade over time appear to be correct.

In fairness, not every recent poll offers such encouragement. A recent Pew Forum/National Journal survey (pdf) still showed opponents outnumbering supporters by a fairly wide margin.

On the other hand, last month, a national Associated Press-GfK poll found that support for the Affordable Care Act was not only on the rise, but had reached new heights — health care reform’s supporters outnumbered opponents, 45% to 42%. A week later, a Gallup poll found 49% of respondents agreeing that passage of the law is a “good thing,” while 46% think it’s a “bad thing.”

I’m sure it depends on how the question is asked but a whole bunch of people who couldn’t get health care before can now get coverage. Now, if we can get that public option…

Welcome to the Wednesday edition of your open thread. Don’t forget – Drinking Liberally tomorrow in Rehoboth. Mark your calendars!

Do you know who the real victim of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco is? Fox News! It’s so mean for people to call them racist, just because they showed a video meant to ruin a woman’s reputation – because she’s black.

Fox News’ Brit Hume delivered a commentary on Special Report with Bret Baier, where demanded that the media apologize to Fox News for calling them racist. Fox wants an apology from the NAACP, Howard Dean, and Shirley Sherrod. Hume said, “You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies.”

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Hume said, “As victims of unfair media treatment go, Shirley Sherrod got off easy. Within 24 hours or so from her forced resignation from the agriculture department, she’s been apologized to, offered a new job, and later even got a call from the president himself. All of this the result of a truncated Internet videotape that made it appear she had once done less than her best for a white farmer because of his race. It was unfair, and the apologies were deserved, but the initial rush to judge Sherrod was not the only rush to judgment in this affair.”

Hume then went in circles trying to spin away FNC’s responsibility for this, “Consider, Sherrod herself said she was ordered last Monday to resign immediately by a senior Agriculture official who said Sherrod was going to be on Glenn Beck’s Fox program that night. In fact, Beck did not say a word about Sherrod until the next night when he defended her. Bill O’Reilly called for her to step down on Monday, but by her account she had already quit before he spoke, and O’Reilly apologized the next night. Indeed, Shirley Sherrod was not mentioned on Fox News Channel or Foxnews.com either until after the Obama administration had forced her out, and no news as opposed to opinion broadcast on Fox ever accused Sherrod of racism, but she blamed Fox and accused the network of racism, so did numerous others including the NAACP, and former Democratic Chairman Howard Dean on Fox News Sunday though it became clear from Chris Wallace’s question that Dean had no idea what the facts were. You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies. Somehow, I’m not holding my breath.”

By the way, Glenn Beck apologized to Shirley Sherrod by calling her a Marxist

I feel their pain. 🙄

I can’t believe I missed this story. Some county officials in California were paying themselves 6-figure salaries but asking residents to take service cuts.

City Council members in Bell unanimously agreed Monday to give up their controversial $96,000-a-year salaries and instead draw $673 a month — a 90% decrease.

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A Times report revealed that the city’s top officials received some of the highest municipal wages in the nation. City Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo made $787,637 a year, almost twice the salary of President Obama; Police Chief Randy Adams made $457,000, 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck; and Assistant City Manager Spaccia made $376,288, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.

All three resigned last week.

In agreeing to sweep back their salaries, Councilmen Luis Artiga and George Mirabal put themselves on par with Lorenzo Velez, who has been paid $673 a month since he was appointed to the council last summer. Velez said he was unaware his colleagues were making so much.

The scam was that they would supplement their pay by serving on “boards.” California AG Jerry Brown is investigating. I doubt this is the end of this story.