links for 2009-12-18

California's death row has swollen to 697 inmates, with 29 new death sentences in the state this year, despite a nationwide trend that in 2009 saw the fewest execution verdicts since capital punishment was reinstated in the state in 1976.

Los Angeles County alone sent more people to death row than the entire state of Texas, with 13 capital sentences from the nation's most populous county.

A year-end report released today by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center counted 106 death sentences handed down nationwide through mid-December, a number that could go up slightly by the end of the month. In 2008, there were 111 such verdicts, and some years in the 1990s had more than 300.
The number of capital sentences in California grew from 20 last year to 29 so far in 2009, despite the state’s lethal injection chamber having been idled by legal challenges for four years and any resumption of executions still at least a year off.

The table below compares the White House's February 2009 projection of the number of jobs that would be created by the 2009 stimulus law (through the end of 2010) with the actual change in state payroll employment through November 2009 (the latest figures available). According to the data, 49 States have lost jobs since the stimulus was enacted as unemployment has skyrocketed to 10 percent. Only North Dakota and the District of Columbia have seen net job creation following the February 2009 stimulus (though both fall short of seeing the promised level of job creation). While President Obama claimed the result of his stimulus bill would be the creation of 3.5 million jobs, the Nation has already lost over 2.6 million – a difference of 6.1 million jobs.

Minorities don't seem to have much doubt about their investment in this debate. In November's Kaiser Family Foundation health care tracking poll, two-thirds of non-white Americans said that their family would be better off if health care reform passes. Though the evidence suggests that non-college whites could also receive a disproportionate share of the bill's spending (since they constitute more of the uninsured), they are dubious: just one-third of them believe they would be better off, a reflection of the mounting skepticism about government such blue-collar whites are expressing across the board. Yet the most skeptical group is the college-educated whites, the same constituency that has the most access to health insurance today: only about one-fourth of them expect to be better off under reform.
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And, why American oppose Obamacare because it is social and racial redistribution = socialism.

"Our House Editor, David Wasserman, estimates, based on what we know today, that Republicans will make a 20-30 seat net gain in the House. A month or so ago, he judged that it would be a 15-25 seat pickup for the GOP. To hit a 41-seat net gain, which would flip control of the House, would necessitate more Democratic retirements in tough districts. There would need to be perhaps seven to ten more members like John Tanner and Bart Gordon of Tennessee, Dennis Moore of Kansas and Brian Baird of Washington."

"Our Senate/Governor Editor, Jennifer Duffy, currently estimates that the range of outcomes in the Senate could run from a wash, with neither party gaining a net seat on the other, up to a three seat gain for Republicans. In the gubernatorial races, she sees the same likely outcome, a wash to a GOP gain of three seats."

"We've done what we can here," a senior White House official in Copenhagen, Denmark, tells ABC News. "The Chinese are dug in on transparency and are refusing to let people know they're living up to their end of the agreement."

After landing in Denmark early this morning, President Obama met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during a bilateral at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to press the case that China needs to allow for transparency.

A visibly angry Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet at China and other developing nations Friday, declaring that the time has come "not to talk but to act" on climate change.

Emerging from a multinational meeting boycotted by Chinese Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Obama warned delegates that U.S. offers of funding for poor nations would remain on the table “if and only if” developing nations, including China, agreed to international monitoring of their greenhouse gas emissions.

"I have to be honest, as the world watches us… I think our ability to take collective action is doubt and it hangs in the balance,” Obama told the COP-15 plenary session as hope for anything more than a vague political in agreement faded.
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Hell, Obama cannot manage the American economy and now this? Get real, Mr. President