links for 2009-06-01

The Schwarzenegger administration's revised 2009-10 budget assumes that unemployment, now 11 percent, will climb to 12 percent in the months ahead.

Or, as the Legislature's budget analyst, Mac Taylor, put it, "The economic forecasts underlying the May revision's estimates assume that California has several more months of rough waters before the beginning of the recovery."

Taylor is slightly more pessimistic about recovery, which is why he's ratcheting up the estimate of the 2009-10 deficit from $21.3 billion to $24.3 billion.

It is entirely possible, however, that as gloomy as those numbers sound, they could still be too rosy.

Some economists, most notably those at the University of California, Santa Barbara, see the recession continuing well into 2010, with unemployment approaching 14 percent.

Evan Montvel-Cohen, a Guam media executive who co-founded the liberal national radio network Air America, pleaded no contest in Circuit Court yesterday to a charge of first-degree theft….His no-contest plea was part of a bargain with prosecutors who agreed to dismiss other charges of credit card fraud, forgery, money laundering and second-degree theft…..

World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned policy makers that fiscal-stimulus plans are insufficient to turn around the “real economy” and rising joblessness threatens to set off political unrest across the globe.

“While the stimulus has given an impulse, it’s like a sugar high unless you eventually get the credit system working,” Zoellick said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” “When unemployment increases, that’s probably the most political combustible issue.”

Since the introduction last week of Sonia Sotomayor, Republican senators wary of attacking the first Latino Supreme Court nominee have criticized fellow conservatives who have branded her a "racist" and even predicted a smooth confirmation.

But several of those same GOP senators, now reluctant to criticize conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich for their racially tinged critiques of Sotomayor, signaled today that they too are ready to make race a key focus of the nomination battle as they settle on a touchy question: Can a woman who says her views are shaped by her gender and ethnicity make fair decisions when it comes to white men?

Last night, Keith Olbermann said that radio host Eric "Mancow" Muller did not fake his waterboarding stunt last week, in response to allegations that it was all a hoax.

Mancow, a right-leaning torture supporter, took Olbermann's challenge to get waterboarded for charity, and days later, he appeared on the show to say that waterboarding was definitely torture.

So after questions surfaced on Thursday as to whether it was real, Olbermann slammed Gawker and their "bizarre conspiracy theory."

It's not the first time Olbermann's taken shots at Gawker, and of course it's easy to pick apart a site that regularly traffics in celebrity scandal and gossip.

Tensions between Washington and Jerusalem are growing after the U.S. administration's demand that Israel completely freeze construction in all West Bank settlements. Israeli political officials expressed disappointment after Tuesday's round of meetings in London with George Mitchell, U.S. President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East.

"We're disappointed," said one senior official. "All of the understandings reached during the [George W.] Bush administration are worth nothing." Another official said the U.S. administration is refusing every Israeli attempt to reach new agreements on settlement construction. "The United States is taking a line of granting concessions to the Palestinians that is not fair toward Israel," he said.

General Motors Corp. plans to name Al Koch as the automaker’s chief restructuring officer tomorrow when GM is expected to file for bankruptcy protection at 8 a.m. New York time, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Koch, a turnaround specialist and managing director at the advisory company AlixPartners LLP, will be the highest-ranking executive at GM from outside the company, the newspaper said. He will oversee approximately 60 Alix workers employed by GM and will report to GM Chief Executive Officer Frederick Henderson and the automaker’s board.

The 67-year-old Koch was interim chief financial officer of Kmart Corp. when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002, the Journal said. Koch also spearheaded a turnaround of Champion Enterprises Inc. that allowed the manufactured-home builder to avoid bankruptcy, the Journal reported.

Anti-abortion leaders voiced concern Sunday that the Obama administration and other Democrats may try to capitalize on the murder of Dr. George Tiller to defuse the abortion issue in upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Many anti-abortion groups condemned the killing of Tiller, a prominent abortion provider who was shot dead at his church in Wichita, Kan. But they expressed concern that abortion-rights activists would use the occasion to brand the entire anti-abortion movement as extremist.

They also worried that there would now be an effort to stifle anti-abortion viewpoints during questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Her exact views on abortion aren't known, but conservatives fear she supports abortion rights.

The abortionist, George Tiller, was shot to death … in a Wichita church this morning. It was the culmination of a campaign of domestic terrorism against him:

Christianist terrorism is no more defensible than Islamist terrorism. And there is a Bill O'Reilly connection:
+++++++
Oh yeah right Andrew Sullivan it is all Bill O's fault.

Stupid association/inference from Sully as usual

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5107 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.
Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993. Tiller was wounded in both arms, and Shannon remains in prison for the shooting.

The clinic was bombed in June 1986, and was severely vandalized earlier this month