uggabugga

2012-01-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

The beginning of the end of the Tea Party:

Serious damage has been done to the Republican party. The Tea Party contingent got brushed aside by the elites and it looks as if they will be faced with with the prospect of voting for a Massachusetts Mormon moderate in the general election. Just think about this:

Nothing that Romney did while holding office was conservative.

And now they going to vote for the guy?

They've been bitching for years that the Republicans didn't put up a "real" conservative. And after all the sound and fury - and electoral success in 2010 (!) - they are being left in the lurch. As a result, many of them will disengage from the Republican party.

2012-01-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

Obama's SOTU speech:

Early on, he said:

Let's remember how we got here. Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores.

So why did he sign three free-trade agreements (Panama, Columbia, South Korea) last year?

But there's good news:

We can't bring back every job that's left our shores. But right now, it's getting more expensive to do business in places like China. Meanwhile, America is more productive. A few weeks ago, the CEO of Master Lock told me that it now makes business sense for him to bring jobs back home. Today, for the first time in fifteen years, Master Lock's unionized plant in Milwaukee is running at full capacity.

Apparently, workers here are now being paid less than those in China. Time to celebrate!

And this is pathetic:

So we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back. But we have to seize it. Tonight, my message to business leaders is simple: Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed.

In other words, no government policy, like tariffs, to be enacted. Just hope and pray that somehow, business will stay here.

2012-01-24T13:16:00.001-08:00

One of the worst debate questions ever:

By Brian Williams at the Florida debate:

Governor Romney, a question you know is coming because of what you have set in motion for tomorrow when you release one year`s tax returns and your estimates for 2011. We know it`s not a matter of producing them. You said during the McCain vetting process you turned over 23 years which you had at the ready because, to quote you, you`re something of a packrat.

So, prior to tomorrow, can you tell us tonight what`s in there that`s going to get people talking? What`s in there that`s going to be controversial? What`s in there that you may find yourself defending?

1) Maybe NBC News can look at the tax returns and find something.

2) Asking a candidate to mention a defect is like asking a potential employee what their shortcoming is. The typical answer is:

Well, my biggest problem is that I work too hard and always put the company's interest ahead of mine!

2012-01-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

Michael Lind in Salon:

Two good essays recently.

1) How conservatives lie about government
excerpt:

... members of the right-wing counterculture are brainwashed — that is the only appropriate term — by the apocalyptic propaganda ground out constantly by the conservative media establishment.

2) Race, liberty and Ron Paul [this is more about libertarianism than Paul]
excerpt:

Some libertarians concede the legitimacy of government coercion in protecting property rights. But in doing so, these libertarians, like Ron Paul, give up any principled objection to government coercion. They simply want government coercion to be used for some purposes—protecting property rights—and not others—enforcing civil rights.

2012-01-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

Here is how an effective propaganda outfit does it:

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.

Newt Gingrich's three marriages mean he might make a strong president -- really

By Dr. Keith Ablow

Published January 20, 2012

I will tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s personal history actually means for those of us who want to right the economy, see our neighbors and friends go back to work, promote freedom here and abroad and defeat the growing threat posed by Iran and other evil regimes.

First, one note on what Mr. Gingrich’s married life, including his history of infidelity does not mean: It does not mean that Mr. Gingrich would be unfaithful to the United States of America or the Constitution of the United States.

You can take any moral position you like about men and women who cheat while married, but there simply is no correlation, whatsoever—from a psychological perspective—between whether they can remain true to their wedding vows and whether they can remain true to the Oath of Office.

I want to be coldly analytical, not moralize, here. I want to tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s behavior could mean for the country, not for the future of his current marriage. So, here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

Conclusion: I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

2012-01-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

Gingrichideas Twitter account:

here

Variable, but some good ones like

Free CIA-provided Wi-Fi.

2012-01-04T03:01:00.000-08:00

After the Iowa Caucus:

Eric Ericson of Red State, who badly wanted Perry to re-emerge as a viable candidate, remarks:

Bachmann must drop out. Frankly, it makes sense for Perry to do so as well except for one issue.

If Rick Perry drops out of the race it will be the ultimate failure of the tea party movement to see the race come down to two or three big government conservatives.

... the tea party has failed because it has surrendered itself into the hands of Romney, Santorum, or Gingrich ...

Considering all the attention given to the Tea Party - especially on right wing radio and the Murdoch presss - it's surprising that it may end up having very little impact in 2012. They don't have a candidate. Santorum is a G. W. Bush-era Republican, Gingrich is pre-Bush. Neither are bona fide Tea Party types.

Real Tea Party politicians are mostly in the House (Ryan, Cantor, and first-termers that were elected in 2010) or holding state-wide office (Walker, Snyder, LePage ). None of national stature. Maybe their time will come, or maybe their time is passing. Hard to say which.

2011-12-29T04:41:00.000-08:00

Only 100 years ago:

Just want to get this post in before the year runs out.

In 1911, Ernest Rutherford proposed a model for the atom - of electrons in the outer region and a small positive nucleus - that still holds today. There have been several refinements since then, with the Bohr, electron cloud, wave, and energy state models that were more accurate, but Rutherford was the first to point in the right direction. Prior to that atoms were thought to be either hard objects with no structure or a diffuse mixture of positive and negative charges.

Of course, since 1911, a lot more was learned - especially in the subsequent 30 years of nuclear physics. Still, it's easy to forget how not too long ago, our understanding of nature was extremely lacking.

2011-12-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

John Walsh of America's Most Wanted speaks out about cuts and taxes:

The man is getting radical. Crooks & Liars reports:

Wow. America's Most Wanted host John Walsh has an earful about cutting the government to spark economic growth this week. He notes letting police and firefighters go is bad for our communities. Flint, MI which laid off two-thirds of its police force, according to Walsh has become a "small city murder capital of the U.S."

But then, Walsh goes full Occupy.

"Who's going to pay for the economic meltdown - the huge debt?" He says, "How about companies? Companies that have made more money than in the whole history of the world and they've done it with less people. Some of the Fortune 500 companies pay no state taxes at all. We all know about GE not paying federal taxes."

And he continues to rail on this conservative cure-all for our economic woes: "It's a quick fix but it's not a good fix. We got to make the corporations pay more money and we can't let these people [police] go. You got to speak up."

2011-12-26T18:37:00.000-08:00

Did you buy a ton of stuff on Mega Monday?

Once again, CBS Evening News has - as their leadoff story - a report about how consumers are expected to spend lots of money purchasing things this Monday. No, there are no hard figures, just projections.

"As many as 100 million shoppers could hit the stores this week."

That is not news.

2011-12-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

A good observation about Christopher Hitchens:

By Michael Lind. Excerpts:

Were the ad hominem diatribes that Hitchens specialized in evidence of his moral integrity and political courage? On the contrary, TV producers and magazine editors love sensational trash talk about media “personalities,” including Jehovah. The philippics of Hitchens were calculated and successful career moves by a gifted publicity hound who spent the last part of his career, appropriately, at Vanity Fair, a magazine best known for models and actors on its covers. (...)

Hitchens was affirming rather than challenging an elite consensus when, on behalf of atheism, he mocked religious believers as not merely mistaken but contemptible and moronic. The religious are despised and dreaded by upscale Americans, and their British court jester could say what they dare not say themselves ...

2011-12-21T03:43:00.001-08:00

CBS Evening News fail:

Here's a story that ran on Tuesday, December 20: (emp add)

LOS ANGELES - Bonnie Ornitz has been out of work for six months.

"All those senses of accomplishment I had from doing my job - they just seem like ancient history now," she told CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy.

Ornitz was laid off by IBM in June, after 30 years in the information technology field.

Ornitz says being out of work is "exponentially more difficult," than she thought it'd be. "Not working is not an option. I come from a family where people worked until they were retired or dead."

Ornitz has applied for 30 jobs near Los Angeles and has had just two interviews. She's collected 24 unemployment checks - $450 each week. She calls the unemployment checks "a godsend."

"It is a lifeline for me and to take that away is going to be devastating," says Ornitz.

Obama to House Republicans: "This is not a game"

If Congress does not extend the unemployment benefits program, Ornitz's checks will stop coming Jan. 7.

House rejects payroll tax cut compromise

Ornitz is frustrated by what she sees in Washington.

"They don't face the things we face. They all want my vote -- but I don't exist to them. They don't want to see it. We're not important to them."

She added: "I don't think they care one bit - on either party."

According to the National Employment Law Project, 1.8 million Americans will lose their federal unemployment benefits in January. As many as six million will lose them during 2012. California would be hardest hit - 714,000 people would be cut off.

"I'm not someone who is looking to take advantage of the system," says Ornitz. "I want to get on with my life and I want to work."

She's now planning to use her life's savings to pay her bills. She may have to sell her house if she can't find work.

Viewers come off with the impression that both parties are uninterested in extending unemployment. The facts are otherwise.

Republicans were never much interested in extending unemployment. This was evident in the negotiations of December 2010 when a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts was traded for continued 99-week unemployment insurance.

But more important is this: The current (Republican) House-passed bill that extends the Social Security cut has a provision that reduces the unemployment from 99 to 79 weeks - and possibly 59 weeks (depending on circumstances).

CBS News will not tell viewers that important aspect of the legislation in their story about the impact of unemployment insurance. CBS News will not let viewers know the House Republican position on this issue.

2011-12-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

This is what control of information results in:

Don't let it happen here.

2011-12-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

The man is utterly bankrupt:

[Britain's Prime Minister David] Cameron calls for return to Christian values as King James Bible turns 400

Christianity provides a 'moral code' to counter riots, expense scandals and Islamist extremism, says the prime minister

2011-12-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

Runner up for Time magazine's Person of the Year:

Paul Ryan. Here's what Time has to say about the guy:

Through a combination of hard work, good timing and possibly suicidal guts, the Wisconsin Republican managed to harness his party to a dramatic plan for dealing with America's rapidly rising public debt.

Then there's this:

The supply-sider from Janesville, Wis., tapped into a deep well of anxiety over trillion-dollar deficits at home and the threat of debt-fueled calamity in Europe.

Two points. First, there was no anxiety over European debt when Ryan came out with his plan in early 2011.

Second point is that this line:

The supply-sider from Janesville ...

should read

The economic crank from Janesville ...

because supply-side is simply wrong. It doesn't do what it claims to accomplish.

FYI, it was David Von Drehle who wrote that crappy article

2011-12-14T13:28:00.001-08:00

Press follies:

Remember when the major news outlets were excitedly reporting that holiday sales were up, up, up!

As usual, they uncritically reported numbers from trade associations, like the National Federation of Retailers. Turns out the real figures for November are an increase of 0.2% from the previous year, which is terrible. The previous year, remember, was considered not-too-good because bad weather hampered shopping. This year there was no bad weather.

This is a small example of how the press has abandoned their work of being real reporters instead of parroting whatever a trade group or political party spews.

2011-12-06T10:33:00.000-08:00

Obama reacts defensively to Gingrich's lies:

On November 30, Gingrich falsely claims that people are using food stamp money to go to Hawaii.

Now we read this:

Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 12/06/2011
Obama administration targeting food stamp fraud as program reaches record highs
By Ed O'Keefe

With more Americans relying on the program, the Obama administration on Tuesday plans to announce new steps to crack down on SNAP fraud amid estimates suggesting as much as $753 million in federal food aid is spent fraudulently each year.

Yes, there is fraud that needs to be looked into. But you don't announce a crack-down in the immediate aftermath of a prominent politician spewing nonsense about the program. Why? Because it will validate him.

2011-12-06T08:53:00.000-08:00

Steve Bell's apt description of the state of affairs:

Over at FrumForum:

For three years, Congress and the President have lived in different realms. Obama clearly has little use for his former colleagues in Congress. Indeed, he is making one of his campaign themes opposition to the “do-nothing Congress.” The fact that he doesn’t differentiate between his own party members in Congress and the GOP stalwarts infuriates his fellow Democrats.

Congress believes that Obama makes good speeches, delivers fanciful budgets, and then heads out of town when the rough work becomes necessary.

Both sides are right.

So now, American sees Washington, D.C., divided almost into tribes. Democratic Senators who want to do something, especially something positive that may help them retain control of the Upper Body next November. Democratic House members who just sit back and watch and hope that Republicans will continue to wander around and confront lower and lower approval ratings. Republican House members, split among those who know what a legislature is supposed to do and those who oppose the very notion of a legislature. And, Republican Senators, also split, between those bound by theological opposition to taxes on billionaires and those who would like to at least give an appearance of governing.

It is this kind of tribal behavior, encouraged by the two party’s caucuses in the House and Senate, and the indifference of the President, that now threaten the nation.

It's a mess, for sure. Hard to see how much can get done in these circumstances.

2011-12-05T22:41:00.000-08:00

Washington Post story:

2011-12-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

Fox Business Channel says the new Muppets movie promotes class warfare:

This is not a joke.

The Murdoch press constantly promotes conspiracy theories. This is no surprise since Murdoch's origins are in the extreme down-market tabloid trash, now elevated in prominence since it's on television.

2011-12-01T20:46:00.000-08:00

Too old?

When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, he was 69 at the time.
When Bob Dole ran for president in 1996, he was 73 at the time.
When John McCain ran for president in 2008, he was 72 at the time.

In each of those instances, the age of the candidate was a topic for discussion.

If Newt Gingrich becomes the Republican candidate in 1012, he will be 69 on election day. Will be there any talk about about him possibly being too old?

2011-12-01T10:03:00.001-08:00

Rod Dreher likes what George Packer has written in Foreign Affairs:

And excerpts big chunks. On the failure of institutions:

The Iraq war was a kind of stress test applied to the American body politic. And every major system and organ failed the test: the executive and legislative branches, the military, the intelligence world, the for-profits, the nonprofits, the media. It turned out that we were not in good shape at all — without even realizing it. Americans just hadn’t tried anything this hard in around half a century. It is easy, and completely justified, to blame certain individuals for the Iraq tragedy. But over the years, I’ve become more concerned with failures that went beyond individuals, and beyond Iraq — concerned with the growing arteriosclerosis of American institutions. Iraq was not an exceptional case. It was a vivid symptom of a long-term trend, one that worsens year by year. The same ailments that led to the disastrous occupation were on full display in Washington this past summer, during the debt-ceiling debacle: ideological rigidity bordering on fanaticism, an indifference to facts, an inability to think beyond the short term, the dissolution of national interest into partisan advantage.

We can upgrade our iPhones, but we can’t fix our roads and bridges. We invented broadband, but we can’t extend it to 35 percent of the public. We can get 300 television channels on the iPad, but in the past decade 20 newspapers closed down all their foreign bureaus. We have touch-screen voting machines, but last year just 40 percent of registered voters turned out, and our political system is more polarized, more choked with its own bile, than at any time since the Civil War. There is nothing today like the personal destruction of the McCarthy era or the street fights of the 1960s. But in those periods, institutional forces still existed in politics, business, and the media that could hold the center together. It used to be called the establishment, and it no longer exists. Solving fundamental problems with a can-do practicality — the very thing the world used to associate with America, and that redeemed us from our vulgarity and arrogance — now seems beyond our reach.

On our economic trajectory:

What was that arrangement? It is sometimes called “the mixed economy”; the term I prefer is “middle-class democracy.” It was an unwritten social contract among labor, business, and government — between the elites and the masses. It guaranteed that the benefits of the economic growth following World War II were distributed more widely, and with more shared prosperity, than at any time in human history. In the 1970s, corporate executives earned 40 times as much as their lowest-paid employees. (By 2007, the ratio was over 400 to 1.) Labor law and government policy kept the balance of power between workers and owners on an even keel, leading to a virtuous circle of higher wages and more economic stimulus. The tax code restricted the amount of wealth that could be accumulated in private hands and passed on from one generation to the next, thereby preventing the formation of an inherited plutocracy. The regulatory agencies were strong enough to prevent the kind of speculative bubbles that now occur every five years or so: between the Great Depression and the Reagan era there was not a single systemwide financial crisis, which is why recessions during those decades were far milder than they have since become. Commercial banking was a stable, boring business. (In movies from the 1940s and 1950s, bankers are dull, solid pillars of the community.) Investment banking, cordoned off by the iron wall of the Glass-Steagall Act, was a closed world of private partnerships in which rich men carefully weighed their risks because they were playing with their own money. Partly as a result of this shared prosperity, political participation reached an all-time high during the postwar years (with the exception of those, such as black Americans in the South, who were still denied access to the ballot box).

At the same time, the country’s elites were playing a role that today is almost unrecognizable. They actually saw themselves as custodians of national institutions and interests. The heads of banks, corporations, universities, law firms, foundations, and media companies were neither more nor less venal, meretricious, and greedy than their counterparts today. But they rose to the top in a culture that put a brake on these traits and certainly did not glorify them.

... that archetypal 1978 couple with the AMC Pacer was not voting to see its share of the economic pie drastically reduced over the next 30 years. They were not fed up with how little of the national income went to the top one percent or how unfairly progressive the tax code was. They did not want to dismantle government programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which had brought economic security to the middle class. They were not voting to weaken government itself, as long as it defended their interests. But for the next three decades, the dominant political faction pursued these goals as though they were what most Americans wanted. Organized money and the conservative movement seized that moment back in 1978 to begin a massive, generation-long transfer of wealth to the richest Americans. The transfer continued in good economic times and bad, under Democratic presidents and Republican, when Democrats controlled Congress and when Republicans did.

Packer's essay - and Dreher's commentary - include harping about the change in manners and morals (1960's alert!) that isn't convincing. And the establishment in the past wasn't all that wonderful. But as to the broad outline of what's happened in the last 40 years, Packer is pretty much on target.

2011-11-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

American Cyber-Stazi CEO Mark Zuckerberg says:

"I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information."

Who could disagree with that?

Of interest, the settlement with the FTC over deceptive practices regarding privacy of users includes a hefty fine of $16,000 should Facebook violate provision of the deal. That'll keep them honest.

2011-11-28T17:49:00.000-08:00

Thank you Barry Ritholtz:

He has this post over on his blog: No, Black Friday Sales Were Not Up 16% (not even 6%)

Excerpt:

If its the Monday after Black Friday, then its national hype the fabricated data day!

Every year around this time, we get a series of loose reports coincident with Black Friday and the holiday weekend. Each year, they are wildly optimistic. And like clockwork, the media idiotically repeats these trade organizations spin like its gospel. When the data finally comes in, we learn that the early reports were pure hokum, put out by trade groups to create shopping hype. (Yes, the Media ALWAYS screws the pooch big time on this one, with the occasional exception).

Let’s start with this whopper from an utterly breathless press release from the National Retail Federation:
“U.S. retail sales during Thanksgiving weekend climbed 16 percent to a record as shoppers flocked to stores earlier and spent more, according to the National Retail Federation.

Sales totaled $52.4 billion, and the average shopper spent $398.62 during the holiday weekend, up from $365.34 a year earlier, the Washington-based trade group said in a statement today, citing a survey conducted by BIGresearch. More than a third of that — an average of $150.53 — was spent online.”
No, retail sales did not climb 16%. Surveys where people forecast their own future spending are, as we have seen repeatedly in the past, pretty much worthless.

We actually have no idea just yet as to whether, and exactly how much, sales climbed. The data simply is not in yet. The most you can accurately say is according to some foot traffic measurements, more people appeared to be in stores on Black Friday 2011 than in 2010.

There's more, including a jaundiced view of the 6.6% sales increase (that came from ShopperTrak).

I remember not too long ago there was a report from one of these outfits that retail sales were up 46% from the year ago. That was so transparently absurd that the major press didn't run with it.

I was in a discount retail store at 8:00 PM on Saturday, and it was completely empty of shoppers. That may have been an aberration, but my guess is that retail sales are up 3% from 2010 and not stellar, considering we still have 9% unemployment.

2011-11-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

Senator Jon Kyle shows you how it's done:

Check out this exchange from yesterday's Fox News Sunday program:

WALLACE: ... economists say there's a real impact if you don't extend payroll tax cuts and employment insurance. And let's put it up on the screen.

They estimate and again both of these run out January 1st, that failure to extend the payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits will cut GDP growth 1 percent to 2 percent next year, and cost more than half million jobs.

You say you question the stimulative affect. But according to these economists, there's a real danger if Congress doesn't extend both of those, put the country back into a recession?

KYL: Chris, I don't know who those economists are. I just read a piece by Art Laffer, who is a respected economist, who say that isn't true.

Laffer is the go-to guy if you need a "scholar" to support your peculiar economic policies. (John Lott does that for gun control. Lord Monckton for global warming.)

2011-11-26T17:12:00.000-08:00

Walmart 3, Macy's 1:

If you are keeping score:

A woman who allegedly fired pepper spray at other customers during a Black Friday sale has surrendered to authorities, Los Angeles police said Saturday. Police Sgt. Jose Valle said the woman who allegedly caused minor injuries to 20 shoppers at a Los Angeles-area Walmart turned herself in Friday night. ...

The incident was among those nationwide in which violence marred the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season.

In the most serious case, a robber shot a shopper who refused to give up his purchases outside a San Leandro, Calif., Walmart store, leaving the victim hospitalized in critical but stable condition. Police in San Leandro, about 15 miles east of San Francisco, said the victim and his family were walking to their car around 1:45 a.m. Friday when they were confronted by a group of men who demanded their shopping items. When the family refused, a fight broke out, and one of the robbers pulled a gun and shot the man, said Sgt. Mike Sobek.

Meanwhile, police in suburban Phoenix came under fire when a video was posted online showing a 54-year-old grandfather on the floor of a Walmart store with a bloody face, after police said he was subdued Thursday night trying to shoplift during a chaotic rush for discounted video games. ...

In Sacramento, Calif., a man was stabbed outside a mall Friday in an apparent gang-related incident as shoppers were hitting the stores. The victim was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. The stabbing stemmed from a fight between two groups around 3 a.m. in front of a Macy's department store at the Arden Fair Mall.

2011-11-24T00:36:00.000-08:00

CNN's garbage reporting:

This is, unfortunately, standard practice:

That is how CNN reports the fact that Romney's campaign took Obama's quoting a McCain staffer and misleadingly presented it as Obama's view. Obama even said "and I quote". But the network is too timid to call foul. Instead, we get treated to the classic "Democrats say", which implies there is no objective judgement to be rendered. (See also Alex Pareene's commentary at Salon.)

Earlier, on the CBS Early Show, they had Jan Crawford report on the Romney ad. She said this:

"as far as conservtives go it's not so controversial, and Romney's courting that vote, and they think it's pretty brilliant"

There was the admission that Obama's words were taken out of context, but that's considered SOP these days, so what's the fuss?

2012 is looking to be a miserable campaign year.

2011-11-23T01:19:00.000-08:00

Shouldn't be out there:

One of the U.C. Davis policemen who pepper sprayed a passive, non-violent bunch of students was John Pike. He's reported to be 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 245 pounds.

That's a Body Mass Index of just over 35, which is Obese Class II (BMI between 35 and 40). Something like 5% of the male population are in that category.

In rare cases, like offensive linemen in football, that kind of BMI means not having the strength and agility to deal with any kind of physical confrontation. And that leads to the casual use of power-substitutes, which is what pepper spray is.

The man should have been behind a desk, not in front of a crowd of protesters. It's as simple as that.

2011-11-23T00:39:00.000-08:00

David Frum has a lot of problems with the present-day Republican party:

Yes, it's David Frum, but he writes a long essay, When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?, with many data points. Over at the New York Magazine. Excerpt:

Conservatives have been driven to these fevered anxieties as much by their own trauma as by external events. In the aughts, Republicans held more power for longer than at any time since the twenties, yet the result was the weakest and least broadly shared economic expansion since World War II, followed by an economic crash and prolonged slump. Along the way, the GOP suffered two severe election defeats in 2006 and 2008. Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.

The Bush years cannot be repudiated, but the memory of them can be discarded to make way for a new and more radical ideology, assembled from bits of the old GOP platform that were once sublimated by the party elites but now roam the land freely: ultralibertarianism, crank monetary theories, populist fury, and paranoid visions of a Democratic Party controlled by ACORN and the New Black Panthers.

"crank monetary theories" are definitely riding high at the moment.

And this:

Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment—and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. ....

But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. (...)

We used to say “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.” Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.

2011-11-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

Best argument for the use of pepper spray against passive people:

A commenter to a Sacramento Bee story about the U.C. Davis event writes:

You have to remember the cops are armed and risk someone jumping on their back, being overpowered by a mob and someone getting their gun; now some one is going to get shot. The same folks who are crying foul about excessive force would be much more outraged if one of the scenarios I mentioned played out.

You see, because the police were armed, they had to use excessive force against unarmed people. Makes total sense.

2011-11-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

Occupy success:

In the wake of the incredibly stupid pepper-spraying of U.C. Davis students, E.D.Kain writes:

I’d really started to grow a little cold on Occupy Wall Street lately. Protests only go so far. Tent cities eventually wear out their welcome. At some point you need to get up, get online, start trying to elect people. At some point, you have to also play the game in order to win.

But it’s hard not to be supportive of people exercising their democratic rights, their right to dissent, who end up suffering violence for it.

Totally agree with that.

2011-11-20T01:33:00.001-08:00

Will Rick Perry get back the Tea Party love?

He sure is trying. Some recent statements he made on O'Reilly's show:

“This president’s traveled around the country making excuses for America, apologizing for America, saying that America is not an exemplary country, and then he gets on TV and talks about that Americans are lazy, that they’ve lost their ambition, that they’ve lost their imagination.”

“I think this is a man who really, if he believed that Americans were hardworking, that they were ready to ignite this economy, then we wouldn’t have the tax policy, wouldn’t have the regulatory policies in place that are killing jobs in this country.”

“I think Barack Obama is a socialist.”

Pretty insane stuff. Obama supports a particular tax policy because he thinks American's aren't hardworking. Right.

2011-11-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

Fox News poll:

It's the one where 30% of prospective Republican primary voters said they'd most trust Newt Gingrich with nuclear weapons. Further down the list there was this question (asked of all people):

Let's imagine the Constitution allowed presidents to serve a third term. For whom would you vote if the candidates were: Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton?
Clinton 58%
Bush 34%
(Don’t know) 3%
(Would not vote) 5%

Here is the breakdown:

2011-11-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

So much for Republicans' fidelity to states' rights:

House passes bill allowing those with concealed weapons permits to cross state lines

WASHINGTON — A state permit to carry a concealed firearm would be valid in almost every other state in the country under legislation the House passed Wednesday.

The first pro-gun bill the House has taken up this year and the first since Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was severely injured in a gun attack in January, it had the National Rifle Association’s backing and passed by a comfortable margin. The vote was 272-154, with only seven Republicans voting against it and 43 Democrats supporting it. ...

Under the House legislation, people with a concealed carry permit in one state could carry a concealed weapon in every other state that gives people the right to carry concealed weapons. While states have various standards for issuing such permits, currently only Illinois and the District of Columbia prohibit the concealed carrying of weapons.

In related Christian news:

Liberty University OKs concealed guns on campus

Liberty University enacted a policy allowing visitors, students and staff who have concealed weapons permits to carry guns on campus.

The policy, approved Friday by the Board of Trustees and announced to students Wednesday, replaces a complete ban of firearms on university grounds. ...

Liberty now has the most lenient firearms policy among local colleges and universities. Lynchburg College, Randolph College and Central Virginia Community College do not permit anyone except law enforcement to carry firearms.

2011-11-14T15:50:00.000-08:00

Occupy Fail:

It brought the issue of economic misery back into the spotlight, but missed out on an opportunity to generate results. The Occupy movement should have had leadership that would (a) set goals, (b) be good spokespeople for those goals, (c) discipline those elements that threaten the movement's public image.

The goals needn't be specific policy items, like restricting drilling in the Gulf (although Matt Taibbi has a list of five to start with). The problem with our politics today are the result of us having a non-representative government (both R & D). To fix that, you have to get out and vote. The lesson of 2010 is that with a 30% falloff in voting, you get nutcases like Allen West into the House of Representatives.

Recently Matt Taibbi wrote of the Occupy movement:n (emp add)

... there were scads of progressive pundits like me who wrung our hands with worry that OWS was playing right into the hands of assholes like Krauthammer. Don't give them any ammunition! we counseled. Stay on message! Be specific! ...

... OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.

People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it's at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned "democracy," tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.

People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes. I think I understand now that this is what the Occupy movement is all about. It's about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a "beloved community" free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow. And if it wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should. It doesn't need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different.

That is not a formula for success in implementing change. You have to engage the governing elements, and the way to do that is to elect people who represent your interests. But we're not hearing anything like that now. Instead, it's getting darker and more chaotic:

On the eve of destruction - Before cops broke up Occupy Oakland, the debate over nonviolence was already unraveling the movement (Salon)

The uncertain future of Occupy Wall Street - Organizers debate how to focus their energies (Salon)

Occupy’s Asshole Problem: Flashbacks from An Old Hippie (Nicole Sandler)

The Occupy movement is drifting towards a resigned fatalism, much like the stoicism that kept the peasants from rising for almost 2,000 years. That is something we do not need, but Occupy is taking us there.

2011-11-12T18:49:00.000-08:00

Finally!

This is the signal we've all been waiting for:

Cain says God persuaded him to run for president

ATLANTA (AP) — Republican Herman Cain said God convinced him to enter the race for president, comparing himself to Moses: "'You've got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?'"

The Georgia business executive played up his faith Saturday after battling sexual harassment allegations for two weeks, trying to shift the conversation to religion, an issue vital to conservative Republicans, especially in the South.

In a speech Saturday to a national meeting of young Republicans, Cain said the Lord persuaded him after much prayer.

"That's when I prayed and prayed and prayed. I'm a man of faith — I had to do a lot of praying for this one, more praying than I've ever done before in my life," Cain said. "And when I finally realized that it was God saying that this is what I needed to do, I was like Moses. 'You've got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?'"

Once he made the decision, Cain said, he did not look back.

Four women have now accused Cain of sexually harassing them when he ... [etc]

Odd that Cain only waited until today to tell us this explosive news.

2011-11-10T09:36:00.000-08:00

Murdoch Mafia update:

James Murdoch went before Parliament today. Here is a primer from New York magazine.

The BBC reports.

Lowlights:

The Sun newspaper may be shut down if a new allegation of hacking is true.
Admitted to spying on lawyers representing hacking victims (and one lawyer's 17 year old daughter).
Mr Murdoch also said revelations that his company had used a private detective to spy on lawyers acting for phone hacking victims in 2010 was "appalling" and "unacceptable" and apologised to committee member Mr Watson, who had also been put under surveillance in the past.
Claimed not to know about various goings-on at the paper. (New York magazine)

2011-11-09T20:38:00.001-08:00

Perry in the GOP debate on Wednesday:

Reaganesque. Relaxed, avuncular, and forgetful.

2011-11-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

Look what this guy is doing now:

Via Atrios, we learn that the right wing is in a tizzy over a Christmas tree tax. The story is being promoted by Drudge and the Fox Nation. Other bloggers are chiming in.

The story originated from the Heritage Foundation in a post written by David S. Addington. (Where it has picked up over 1,000 comments from outraged conservatives.)

Does that name sound familiar? It should. David Addington was chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney. Addington was described by U.S. News & World Report as "the most powerful man you've never heard of".

He was one of the biggest supporters of unbridled executive power:

Addington has consistently advocated that under the Constitution, the President has substantial and expansive powers as commander-in-chief during wartime, if need be. He is the legal force behind over 750 signing statements that President George W. Bush issued when signing bills passed by Congress, expanding the practice relative to other Presidents.

And there are various clams that Addington was a major force behind the authorization of torture.

Now he's blogging about Christmas trees.

2011-11-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

Keeping an eye on the Murdoch empire:

Why there hasn't been more coverage of these stories is a mystery: (emp add)

A private investigator was hired by the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid to perform surveillance on two lawyers representing victims of the Murdoch company phone-hacking scandal. As if that's not grimy enough, the ex-cop investigator says he's snitching now because News International didn't pay him. Derek Webb claims he was hired to follow Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris, along with Lewis's ex-wife and teenage daughter, to uncover information that might stop them from taking on more phone-hacking cases.

"To follow my teenage daughter, my youngest daughter and video her is nothing short of sick," said Lewis. "On another level looking at me, that's not how you litigate, you play the ball you don't play the man … this is Mafia-like."

A spokesperson for the media company said, "News International's enquiries have led the company to believe that Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris were subject to surveillance. While surveillance is not illegal, it was clearly deeply inappropriate in these circumstances. This action was not condoned by any current executive at the company."

The spying is said to have occurred within the last year and a half, while James Murdoch was executive chairman. Murdoch is due in front of Parliament to discuss the phone-hacking matter on Thursday. The questions continue to mount.

2011-11-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

One of the better Fox Nation headlines:

Pelosi Accused of Plastic Surgery

2011-11-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

This doesn't make any sense:

From the NYTimes: (emp add)

Mr. Bowles, speaking for himself and Mr. Simpson, outlined a package that he said could reduce deficits by $2.6 trillion over 10 years. The package includes $800 billion of new revenue, $300 billion in savings from annual appropriations known as discretionary spending, $600 billion from health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid, $300 billion from other entitlement programs and [savings of] $200 billion from use of a less generous formula to calculate cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security and other benefits.

Social Security is not part of the federal budget. It is not going to go into the red in the next 10 years. What's it doing in this package from Simpson and Bowles?

2011-11-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

David Brooks wants you to focus on something else:

From his column:

The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it’s not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the nation’s stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent.

He prefaces that with his own analysis which asserts that there are two types of inequality: big city Blue Inequality and small town Red Inequality. Of course, no numbers are provided in this analysis (except for a lonesome pair that do not make his case).

Dean Baker gets snarky: (emp add)

This is where Brooks lack of access to data is so important. The wage gap between college grads and non-college grads is really a 90s story and even more an 80s story. In the last decade, workers with only a college degree (i.e. no professional or advanced degree) did not share in the benefits of economic growth. The ratio of the wages of those with just college degrees to those without college degrees has not risen much since the early 90s.

Wages of non-college educated workers did suffer badly in the 80s due to policies such as the over-valuation of the dollar that made many U.S. manufactured goods uncompetitive internationally, the deliberate increase in unemployment during the Volcker years which threw millions of non-college educated workers out of work, and anti-union measures (e.g. the firing of the PATCO strikers and an anti-union National Labor Relations Board). However since the 90s, the wages of workers with high school degrees have not departed much from the wages of workers with just college degrees, the vast majority of the economy's gains have gone to the top 1 percent. It is too bad that David Brooks apparently does not have access to this data.

Brooks is becoming more and more transparently a hack. In his column, he tries to re-slice the pie from 1%/99% to a 30%/60% division by lumping college graduates in with the ultra rich. Nice try.

This comment at Baker's blog is apt:

... again and again in his twice-weekly NYT column, Brooks tosses together a pseudo-sociological mishmash straight from Applebee's non-existent salad bar in an attempt to coin phrases that somehow justify conservative selfishness and shortsightness. Thus "Bobos" of the corporate upper class are highly tolerant of others, "cluster liberals" favor maximum unity, "network liberals" favor coalitions, "creedal conservatives" favor transcendent order, and "dispositional conservatives"are Burkean, tempermental types who prize epistomological modesty. Today (gasp), he provides us with two different kinds of inequality: "blue inequality" between the top 1 per cent and the rest in certain big cities, and "red inequality" between those with and without college degrees in certain smaller cities.

And another:

Brooks supports all this Republican regressiveness. His job is to distract with data free false equivalence arguments that sometimes appear "reasonable" to someone who hasn't checked the facts.

CURIOUS POINT: If Brooks wants to go there - the change in inequality during the 1980's - will he denounce Ronald Reagan for enabling that shift? You know the answer to that.

2011-10-31T06:48:00.001-07:00

Crooked Timber on neo-liberalism:

An interesting post:

This comment by Yglesias is on target: “the TNR staff editorial on the subject [of OWS] feels distinctly like an op-ed penned eleven years ago about anti-globalization protestors, put on ice, and then re-animated with a hasty rewrite that fails to consider the actual political and economic circumstances.”

The staff editorial itself is not so important. What’s important is that, once upon a time, there were debates about trade ‘liberalization’ – globalization – that used to divide neoliberals and liberals and progressives. Basically, the neoliberals were gung-ho for trade on the grounds that the alternative was protectionism that amounted to shooting your own foot, and didn’t do any good for the poor in the Third World. And the progressives saw jobs being outsourced, labor unions weakening. Liberals were those caught in the squishy middle, per usual. ...

[Yglesias] considers himself a neoliberal and sees, correctly, I think, that anyone committed to that market-oriented outlook is more or less committed to sympathy for the core grievances expressed by the OWS protesters. Neoliberalism was always in favor of markets as means, not ends. Neoliberalism was never – or was never supposed to be – the view that being in favor of trade liberalizaton means market fundamentalism in everything. Neoliberalism says market liberalization should go hand in hand with progressive taxation and appropriate regulation so the pains that buy the gains are mitigated and borne equitably. Spread the gain, to spread the pain. If liberalization means making the 1% richer and everyone else poorer, you shouldn’t take the deal. Only (some) conservatives and (some) libertarians should be willing to take that deal. ...

About:

"Neoliberalism says market liberalization should go hand in hand with progressive taxation and appropriate regulation so the pains that buy the gains are mitigated and borne equitably."

That never happened. Instead, we got globalization and no relief. This is something neo-liberals still fail to comprehend. What they did do, is orient towards "pity charity" as Freddie deBoer points out: (emp add)

There’s a troubling form of liberalism that is increasingly found in the wonky, think-tank-and-establishment-media blogosphere that is so influential these days. I’ve called it, in the past, globalize/grow/give progressivism. Mike Konczal of Rortybomb has referred to it as pity charity liberalism. ... Whatever you want to call it, this vision of the liberal project defines itself through the social safety net. Its orientation is towards expanding and protecting a redistributive social welfare system. Meanwhile, it is at best uninterested in (and often downright hostile towards) worker organization, unions, regulation, and other attempts to empower workers in relation to capital and poor people in relation to the rich. The idea is that, if you get the economy going well enough, you can redistribute enough money to the poor that they’ll be alright, even while you’ve undermined their ability to collectively bargain, raise the value of their labor, and exercise power. ...

The first problem with pity charity liberalism is that the people advocating it tend to be far more optimistic about getting the social welfare state they want than they should be. I’ve been using the example of health care reform: a decent health care system has to be a part of a minimally fair social welfare system. We had a president with a serious mandate who campaigned explicitly on health care reform, majorities in both houses of congress, a uniquely favorable political moment, and an objective that broad majorities of Americans have supported for years. We just barely got a compromised bill through, and it is under perpetual legal and political threat. If those are the conditions that we’re going to have to defend the welfare state under, I don’t see how anyone can be confident in purely redistributive liberalism.

Contrast that with the history of the American labor movement. Check the record: on every issue of worker rights and protections, workers went first. They didn’t ask politicians to give them safer conditions, cleaner conditions, higher wages, shorter hours, more bargaining power, and a better system to redress their grievances. They demanded those things from the bosses, and they did so with the threat of shutting the whole operation down. Only after they had won those things did they eventually become codified in law. (It’s for this reason that May Day—a joke here, I’m afraid, but celebrated passionately in much of Europe and South America—is specifically a celebration of Haymarket square and American unions.) If we’ve lost those gains since, it’s been because of a very well-funded, coordinated and consistent effort by people in power to undermine unions and refuse to enforce existing labor law.

Even if you could guarantee a certain minimal welfare state, the idea of poor and working people depending on the largesse of the rich and powerful is obscene. Sometimes, people have to live under the charity of others. But nobody wants to in perpetuity, because they then are not in control of their own lives, and because having to do so leaves many feeling robbed of personal dignity. As long as economic security is a gift of those at the top, it can be taken away. And if the last several decades have shown us anything, it’s that for the richest, what they already have will never be enough. No matter how income inequality spirals out of control, no matter how absurd the gap between those on top and everybody else grows, they’ll look to take more. And the more that you make the people on the bottom dependent on charity, the less they’re able to protect their own interests.

Kevin Drum has thoughts along those lines:

The problem is that a system that generates enormous income inequality also generates enormous power inequality — and if corporations and the rich are allowed to amass huge amounts of economic power, they'll always use that power to keep their own tax rates low. It's nearly impossible to create a high-tax/high-service state if your starting point is a near oligarchy where the rich control the levers of political power.

Which is pretty much where we are today.

2011-10-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Who agrees with this sentiment?

From Think Progress:

Bachmann: Uninsured Americans Can Rely On ‘Charitable Organizations’ For Health Care

“We will always have people in this country through hardship, through no fault of their own, who won’t be able to afford health care,” Bachmann said. “That’s just the way it is. But usually what we have are charitable organizations or hospitals who have enough left over so that they can pick up the cost for the indigent who can’t afford it.

“But what we have to do is be a profitable nation that’s growing, so that we can pay for those people who can’t afford it through no fault of their own. Once ‘Obamacare’ is gone, this is what we have to do.“

That sentiment was echoed on NBC's Nightly News this Monday with this:

Boy, 7, raises money for cancer racing go-karts (Bing video)

Seven-year-old Timmy “Mini” Tyrrell learned his friend had cancer, and he decided he could help raise money by racing go-karts. Timmy calls it “Mini’s Mission,” and so far he’s raised $7,000 and counting. NBC’s Anne Thompson has the story.

The day before, CBS ended its evening news with a story about how a single mom was in economic trouble (unemployed, etc.) and how a lady befriended her and helped her out.

There could have been stories about how government aid agencies - and the staff - help people. Instead, we are shown problems being solved by private effort. Both take place, of course, but the bias in reporting is to the "feel good" maudlin story that excludes government programs that we have established and paid for.

2011-10-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

Matthew Yglesias cannot remember what he's read:

Popular blogger Yglesias has a post about labor's declining share of national income. He starts out with:

Peter Orszag has a column about the declining labor share of national income that concludes by saying that “We are effectively missing $500 billion a year in wages, and no one has a credible set of ideas that would bring it back.” ...

And then goes on to argue with another blogger about arcane issues about volatility of the statistics.

But Yglesias really should pay attention to what Orszag wrote. This, for example: (emp add)

The two primary drivers are globalization and technological change. From 1980 to 2005, as the world became more integrated, the effective labor supply available on a global basis expanded by 100 percent to 300 percent (depending on how the estimates are done). That increased competition has pushed labor compensation down in the industrialized economies. ...

In a 2007 paper for the International Monetary Fund, Florence Jaumotte and Irina Tytell tried to parse the various causes of the declining labor share. In the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada, the economists concluded, labor globalization and technological change played roughly equal roles, and crucial ones at that. In European countries and Japan, technological change was more significant than labor globalization. Other factors --including unions and privatization trends -- have been found to be influential, but labor globalization and technological change loom as the dominant forces.

There is something you can do about globalization. De-globalize, by enacting protectionist legislation.

It's simple, has worked before (U.S. in the nineteenth century). But the elites don't like it because they actually prefer to have labor compete against one another.

2011-10-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

The Fox Nation audience:

Here's the headline and story featured at the top of their page:

The website has recently added to the end of each stiry a poll of what readers thought. Here are the results:

Two-thirds have a positive reaction. Even though the vote total isn't particularly large (36), it is representative of the attitude of this crows as any frequent visitor to Fox Nation can attest.

That's part of our politics today. There is a real desire to hurt - really hurt - those in distress or showing concern for same.

2011-10-17T08:06:00.000-07:00

What Occupy Wall Street is doing:

They have no agenda - at least nothing directly targeting legislation pending or proposed. They have no leadership. They are not supporting or challenging particular politicians.

That could change, of course.

So what's Occupy Wall Street all about?

What it, and the other occupy events throughout the country, is doing is filling in a gap. For the last two years the press has largely ignored both the un/underemployed and those with jobs but under siege (foreclosures, health care expenses, college tuition, loans, etc.)

During past downturns, there would be a steady drumbeat of stories about those impacted. There was some of that in late 2008 and early 2009, but not much thereafter. Yet the economy hasn't done a whole lot of recovering, and so there are a lot of people feeling economic pain but feeling invisible.

Occupy Wall Street is something that they hope will change that.

2011-10-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

A bit more about those free trade agreements:

CBS Evening News did a good job of explaining why it is a good thing. Presented to the viewer were cases where exports would grow. A firm that lost to Germany a contract for $100,000 and would have meant three jobs. Increased beef exports. And drilling machinery to Columbia. Those were the examples. To counter, they had Richard Trumka of the AFL/CIO who said he didn't like it and that he disagreed with Obama on the policy.

The vote triggered an essay at Salon by Andrew Leonard. Excerpts: (emp add)

After five years of squabbling, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives finally passed free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama on Wednesday. The Hill described the news as a “win” for President Obama. At first glance, the terminology seems a bit odd. The free trade agreements were originally negotiated by President George Bush, have been a high priority for Republicans ever since, and are considered extremely suspect by many Democrats ...

What’s more, in 2008, Obama campaigned in Ohio and Michigan against free trade agreements like NAFTA, for blatantly political reasons. But now it’s a victory for him to get the biggest free trade deal since NAFTA — the South Korean FTA — through Congress? ...

Whatever one thinks of Korea’s regulatory environment, the deal cut by Obama’s negotiators assuaged the U.S. auto industry’s concerns about the FTA, thus explaining the support from Michigan Democrats. But whether the changes will boost car imports significantly is still highly open to question. A study conducted by U.S. International Trade Council concluded that Korea’s carmakers would end up benefiting more from the deal in the long run than Detroit’s Big 3. ...

... anyone who has ever been to South Korea — or any other East Asian nation — understands immediately that, engine tax or no engine tax, big American cars just don’t make sense in crowded Asian cities where the cost of a gallon of gas is several dollars higher than in the U.S. And there is nothing that a free trade agreement can do to change that basic truth.

So there’s your big win for Obama: a legislative victory that upsets big swaths of his own party, won’t materially improve the fortunes of the domestic auto industry, and is unlikely to make a significant difference in states that are critical to his election.

Of course this will be a loser for those in the bottom half of society, since they will be pitted against even more low-wage workers overseas. Interesting that CBS chose only to present businesses that would gain (including cattle ranchers!) and not any that would lose.

2011-10-12T21:37:00.000-07:00

Evidence of who your politicians work for:

Congress on Wednesday approved three long-stalled free-trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

It sure isn't you.

Of interest, ABC World News had a segment on yesterday called "Made in America" where home builders were shown a list of domestic suppliers (e.g. for nails) and many saying that they'd consider it and also that buying locally made products keeps jobs here. In addition, there have been several reports our recently pointing out that the lower half of American workers have taken it on the chin due to 30 years of globalization, which caused their jobs to disappear or their wages to stagnate.

And in the face of that, Congress is continuing to pursue policies that will not help labor, but will help international businesses.

2011-10-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Republicans say the sorry economy is all the government's fault:

Last night during the Republican debate, Gingrich had this to say:

... the first person to fire is Bernanke, who is a disastrous chairman of the Federal Reserve ...

... let's be clear who put the fix in: The fix was put in by the federal government.

I'm going to say one last thing. I want to repeat this. Bernanke has in secret spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out one group and not bailing out another group. I don't see anybody in the news media demanding the kind of transparency at the Fed that you would demand of every other aspect of the federal government. And I think it is corrupt and it is wrong for one man to have that kind of secret power.

Limbaugh had these post-debate observations:

We are living in a destroyed economy for very learnable reasons -- very discernible reasons, inarguable reasons. It has been years since the evidence was procured. ... Everybody in that town knows what happened. Everybody in that town, including Karen Tumulty, knows what went on. They know it was Fannie and Freddie and they know it was the federal government imposing these rules on the lenders. They know it, and what infuriates me is that they continue with the lie.

And Hannity constantly references the Community Redevelopment Act.

So there you have it. It was the Fed, Fannie and Freddie, and the Community Redevelopment Act that caused the recession. Not the banks.

That will be the message in 2012 (although Romney probably will hedge)

2011-10-08T18:55:00.001-07:00

That Bank of America $5 a month fee for debit card use that's pissing off everybody:

Why didn't they price it at $3 a month?

People probably would have been okay with that.

2011-10-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs passing may be as good a date as any to mark ...

the end of the American Century.

Not to get into Apple fanboi stuff, but Jobs life and tenure parallels what may be the last gasp of economic satisfaction and superiority by the United States. First of all, Jobs grew up at a time when the states (especially California) were supportive of higher education. That brought forth the talent that, in Silicon Valley, got the computer revolution started. And then Jobs was part of the drive (by many others as well) that brought us much of the look and feel of so many electronic products that, for a while, were largely the province of American companies.

But that competitive advantage now appears to be over. Students have to pay much of the freight for a college education, a condition that is never good for a nation. The subsequent jobs risk going away to other parts of the world, which makes one wonder why bother with it at all. The rest of the world is catching up and is very hungry, and with unregulated globalization the competitive forces will be ferocious.

So maybe we can mark October 5, 2011 as an arbitrary - but reasonable - point in time when a distinctive American era ended.

2011-10-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

Arnold King posess the right question for our times:

Over at the libertarianish Library of Economics and Liberty, he asks:

Where are the Servants?

In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don't Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?

I pose this question as a way to think about labor markets and macroeconomics. Some possible answers:

1. It's a supply problem. Nobody wants to be a personal servant. They think that their human capital will depreciate less if they remain unemployed.

2. It's a demand problem. The marginal product of personal servants is very, very low. As Don Boudreaux points out, the impersonal servant of the market delivers us much higher quality goods and services than kings were able to obtain from all of their personal servants.

3. It's a recalculation problem. Gates and Brin cannot figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers. They cannot even find a personal retainer who can figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers.

So why haven't personal servants replaced blue collar manufacturing jobs killed by cheap imports and white collar jobs lost to outsourcing? Clearly, when the economy tanks, people will do most anything for a dollar (pace item 1) and be cheap enough so that the marginal value will be positive (pace item 2).

Which really means that it's a problem of imagination. If it's true that "Gates and Brin cannot figure out what they would do with hundreds of personal retainers" then those billionaires need help! What can we suggest for this duo - and their equally rich friends - do with hundreds of personal retainers? And why limit it to hundreds? Didn't the pharaoh have thousands of people toiling away? How about a Giza-sized pyramid for each billionaire? That would get this economy humming again. Let's do it!

It has the additional benefit of reestablishing clear class distinctions which we have sadly abandoned for about a century. A few extremely rich people. Lots of servants. No middle class. Paradise.

2011-10-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

Brother, can you spare $180/year ?

Story:

U.S. banking giant Citigroup Inc. said this week it would charge $15 per month for checking account holders who kept a balance below $6,000.

The firm's move comes on the heels of Bank of America's announcement this week that it would charge $5 for most debit card holders and sparked at least one desertion, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Cheryl Holt of Burbank, Calif., said she was "on my way out the door right now … off to start a new account at my nearest credit union."

"Should have done it years before," she added.

Holt said she received a letter with an "absurd salutation," that said, "Customers like you have told us that what they want from their banks are simple options and great rewards. We heard you and are writing to let you know that we are making some changes to your EZ Checking Package."

That said, the bank dropped the $180 per year bomb.

This has got to have political repercussions.

2011-10-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

New York Times review of ABC's Pan Am:

excerpt:

... “Pan Am” romanticizes the past, whereas “Mad Men,” on AMC, takes pleasure in slyly mocking antiquated mores ...

“Pan Am” takes place in New York, Paris and London, and practically every scene is shot in lush, golden light. The series is a paean to a more prosperous and confident era; even an airline terminal looks like a movie dream sequence about 1960s heaven. [It really does.]

If only for the costumes and ’60s music, “Pan Am” is amusing to see at least once, but if it has any instructive benefit at all, it’s as a mood indicator for these times, not those. There have been plenty of series set in earlier times — “That ’70s Show” was set in the Carter administration, “M*A*S*H” took place during the Korean War. But usually period shows pick through the past to meditate on the present, whether it’s examining generational rites of passage or critiquing the Vietnam War at a safe remove.

“Pan Am” doesn’t say much of anything about the current state of the nation except that our best days are behind us.

Expect that to be a recurring theme this decade (and beyond?).

Opening music on the pilot episode.

2011-10-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

Tom Friedman says not to worry:

From his Sunday op-ed:

... world is now a challenge to white-collar workers. They have to compete with a bigger pool of cheap geniuses ...

It is also both a huge challenge and opportunity. It has never been harder to find a job and never been easier — for those prepared for this world — to invent a job or find a customer. ...

What is out and what is in anymore?”

Matt Barrie, is the founder of freelancer.com, which today lists 2.8 million freelancers offering every service you can imagine. “The whole world is connecting up now at an incredibly rapid pace,” says Barrie, and many of these people are coming to freelancer.com to offer their talents. Barrie says he describes this rising global army of freelancers the way he describes his own team: “They all have Ph.D.’s. They are poor, hungry and driven: P.H.D.”

Barrie offered me a few examples on his site right now: Someone is looking for a designer to design “a fully functioning dune buggy.” Forty people are now bidding on the job at an average price of $268.

There's your glorious future, according to Tom Friedman. Global non-pooled labor bidding against itself for tiny wages and no healthcare (at least in the U.S.) or retirement security.

2011-10-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Taking David Mamet on:

Scott Galupo of The American Conservative does a good job.

Some conversions in political philosophy are understandable, but others, like Mamet's, are inscrutable. What caused him to make the switch? Not mentioned in the article is that Mamet's conservative rabbi gave him a bunch of books - by conservative hacks - and that material appears to have gotten the playwright to chance his views.

2011-09-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

Christian Apocalypticism and Politics:

Excerpts from the NYTimes article, Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics by Matthew Avery Sutton

While conservatives are in the driver's seat these days, there was a significant Christian progressive movement at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it seems to have faded away. It's puzzling why that happened, although it may be related to the decline of mainline churches (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran).

2011-09-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

Shoes:

Barack Obama in Spartanburg, S.C. on November 3, 2007:

"Understand this. If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain, when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States because Americans deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner."

Barack Obama to the Congressional Black Caucus on September 24, 2011:

"I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying."

2011-09-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

How they do it at the Weekly Standard:

They have a story taking the Obama administration to task, and excerpt an MSNBC article:

Obama Administration Set to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns
3:00 PM, Sep 23, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY

Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:
Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.
The Atlantic's Megan McArdle ...

Here is the next sentence in the MSNBC article: (emp add)

The FDA finalized plans to phase out the products in 2008 and currently only Armstrong Pharmaceutical's Primatene mist is available in the U.S.

This phase out was initiated by the Bush administration, a point the Standard hides from its readers. Typical.

2011-09-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

Burying the lede:

Politico reports: (emp add)

Christie back in spotlight as Perry sags

With the party’s frontrunner sagging, Chris Christie is reconsidering pleas from Republican elites and donors to run for president in 2012, two Republican sources told POLITICO.

The New Jersey governor has indicated he is listening to big-money backers and Republican influence-makers, and will let them know in roughly a week whether he has moved off his threat-of-suicide vow to stay on the sidelines of a presidential race that remains amorphous heading into the fall, the two sources said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s candidacy has failed to clear a basic bar with elites and some donors, and his shoddy debate performance in Orlando has only highlighted the window for someone who Republicans searching for a Mitt Romney alternative can rally around.

Christie’s potential candidacy has been an increasingly fevered fantasy of a certain cadre of some media and business elites — mostly based in New York, with a smattering of California technology and entertainment players — since last summer. That’s when he showed up at a Sun Valley conference hosted by the investment banker Allen and Co. and wowed the crowd, including Rupert Murdoch, with what many in attendance described as a nimble mind and a speaking style that was both articulate and blunt-spoken.

... the conservative elite buzz over a potential Christie candidacy has kicked into overdrive in the past few weeks, including on the pages of the Weekly Standard and Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch controls the Republican party with Fox News which, in addition to its daily propaganda to the faithful, is largely responsible for the Republican Tea Party contingent being what it is today, not to mention the fact that most of the presidential candidates were on the network's payroll.

Earlier this year Christie met with Murdoch's deputy, Rodger Ailes (and Limbaugh!) to talk about the governor's future. That is not the action of a neutral news organization.

Some time ago David Frum said that the Republicans work for Fox News. It would be more appropriate to say that Republicans work for Murdoch, owner of the lawbreaking News of the World, and of News America - the firm that got into legal hot water and paid a competitor half a billion dollars to settle the litigation (nytimes link). About that latter item:

In a statement, the News Corporation’s president and chief operating officer, Chase Carey, said: “It has become evident to our legal advisers from pretrial proceedings over the past couple of weeks that significant risks were developing in presenting this case to a jury. That, coupled with concerns over the venue, led us to believe it was in the best interests of the company and its stockholders to agree to a settlement.”

But wait! There's more:

In a separate case that was settled last year, News America was accused by another competitor, Floorgraphics, of corporate spying. Just as witnesses began testifying in a federal case in New Jersey, News Corporation settled the lawsuit and then days later bought the company outright for an undisclosed sum.

That case centered on the testimony of a former News America Marketing executive who became a whistle-blower. In a court filing, Floorgraphics said that News America had “illegally accessed plaintiff’s computer system and obtained proprietary information from the computer system” and “disseminated false, misleading and malicious information about the plaintiff.”

That's who is running the show with one of the two major political parties in the United States. Don't ever forget it.

2011-09-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Shocked!

David Frum is: (orig emp)

I’m not shocked by much any more, but I am shocked by this: the leaders of one of the great parties in Congress calling on the Federal Reserve to tighten money in the throes of the most prolonged downturn since the Great Depression.

One line in the letter caught my eye as summing up the unreality of the Republican leaders’ position:
We have serious concerns that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the U.S. economy. Such steps may erode the already weakened U.S. dollar or promote more borrowing by overleveraged consumers.
Are they serious? We are living through the most rapid deleveraging of the American consumer since the 1http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif930s. Much of that deleveraging is occurring tragically, through the process of bankruptcy and foreclosure. Some is happening more happily, through the increase in the savings rate from the 0 of the housing boom to about 6% now.

Even if consumers wanted to borrow, credit is just not very available to the typical person right now. Some credit, for example on credit cards, is not cheap. In fact, the average APR on credit cards is scraping a record peak: 14.96%. ...

The markets see deflation and depression, not inflation. Yet ironically this non-existent and much dreaded inflation is exactly the remedy we need to lighten the load of consumer debt.

As is, we’re looking at a continued economic slump, more unemployment, and more deleveraging via continuing catastrophic consumer default on mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and student aid. And now the GOP leadership is urging that the Federal Reserve make the catastrophe worse? To what end?

I know what the detractors will say: to the end of defeating President Obama and replacing him with a Republican president. And if you’ve convinced yourself that Obama is the Second Coming of Malcolm X, Trotsky, and the all-conquering Caliph Omar all in one, then perhaps capsizing the US economy and plunging your fellow-citizens deeper into misery will seem a price worth paying to rid the country of him.

A letter from the Republican leadership of both chambers telling the Fed not to intervene in the economy is the clearest sign that they want to tank the economy for political reasons. Unfortunately, that story will not be told by the press, which is scared of taking a stand.

IN OTHER NEWS: Pat Boone: Obama Birth Certificate a 'Fraud’

Photoshopped, according to Pat.

This country is headed in the right direction, wouldn't you agree?.

2011-09-18T04:49:00.000-07:00

An idea so crazy, it just might work:

Politico reports: (Sep 14)

On jobs bill, White House bets on Boehner's support

President Barack Obama needs House Speaker John Boehner’s help to muscle a jobs bill through Congress, but he’s betting that Boehner needs the win just as badly.

The White House strategy rests on the risky assumption that Obama can sell Boehner on a new political reality: With voters desperate for jobs, neither leader can afford to do nothing.

... the administration’s belief is fueling the White House game plan on jobs, an all-out effort by Obama, Cabinet officials and the Democratic campaign committees to push Republicans into an untenable political position that forces them to act on more than just minor elements of the president’s plan.

The White House expects the Republican rank and file to fight the president’s plan, but it predicts that Boehner will eventually realize that his party would benefit from a bipartisan deal just as much as Democrats.

Or maybe it's just crazy. Boehner might go for some very small packages to avoid the charge of total obstruction, but there is no way he's going to go big on a bipartisan jobs bill.

2011-09-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

Changing the way the Electoral College works:

In the news:

Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania are pushing a scheme that, if GOPers in other states follow their lead, could cause President Barack Obama to lose the 2012 election—not because of the vote count, but because of new rules. ...

[Currently] Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan—which has been endorsed by top Republicans in both houses of the state's legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett—Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. ...

Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for carrying the state.

Looks as if the Republicans are inspired by the British rotten boroughs of old. Those gave the Tories disproportionately more power than a consistent nation-wide formula for representation would have done. The rotten boroughs were eliminated in the Reform Act of 1832, widely considered to have "launched the rise of modern democracy in Britain".

In other words, the Republicans are looking to move away from "modern democracy" - which strives for proportional representation - and towards a kind of "crude democracy". Crude, in that it has the outward form of democracy - people voting - but with a representation formula that advantages one party.

Of interest: The British rotten boroughs were eliminated due to, in part, public pressure. I suspect that in this country, public pressure will be lacking due to the miserable job the press does informing people of what's important. Especially since it involves mathematics, where journalists have shown less understanding than that of a high school algebra student. Plus you have Fox News adding to the confusion with their unique form of "journalism".

The only thing working against a Pennsylvania-type plan is that, if implemented, it would bolster the party's power at the national level but diminish the attention the state would get during a presidential campaign. So competitive states might wish to preserve their valued status in this regard. It's interesting that the Republicans would put attaining federal power above preserving the influence of their cherished states (see Tenth Amendment fanaticism, abolishing the Seventeenth Amendment).

2011-09-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

This does not look like an effective bargaining strategy:

Obama Would Sign Parts Of Jobs Bill, Push For Rest

The Obama White House is revising its initial unwillingness to negotiate on the president's job creation plan, saying now that if individual components of the bill came to the president's desk -- as opposed to the bill in its entirety -- he would sign them into law.

The new approach opens up the administration to charges that it no longer views the American Jobs Act as a take-it-or-leave-it bill. But in a briefing with reporters Tuesday, senior administration officials insisted President Obama wasn't backing off his position that he wants the entire bill passed through Congress.

You can settle for pieces, but putting that out at the beginning doesn't seem smart. As to:

Senior administration officials insisted that they had not hurt their standing at the negotiation table, noting that each component of the president's proposal is popular in its own right.

That may be true as far as the public is concerned, but each component isn't popular with the Republicans in the House, and they are the ones that matter when it comes to passing legislation.

It's too early to say what kind of jobs legislation will emerge, but it's beginning to look like it will be a bunch of small steps with limited affect on the economy. Also, a piecemeal approach may blunt charges that the Republicans aren't cooperating or trying to help the economy.

It's weird. Why not play hardball for a couple of weeks to see if that resonates with the electorate (and pundits). Just last week in the speech to Congress Obama was saying "Pass this bill" (17 times). This new White House stance seems so unnecessary at this early stage. What made it happen? Who called the shots? Something peculiar is going on.

2011-09-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

FDR Fireside Chat #5, Report On Recovery 1934/6/27:

Excerpt:

A few timid people who fear progress have tried to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it fascism. Sometimes communism. ... Sometimes socialism. But in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical, something that is really very simple and very practical. I believe in practical explanations and in practical policies. I believe what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing, a fulfilment of old and tested American ideals.<

(links are to contemporary invocations of each charge)

Related: An interview with Michael Hiltzik, author of "The New Deal: A Modern History". Turns out that FDR and his policies are frequently misrepresented by those on the right and the left.

2011-09-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

Differ with Krugman:

He writes:

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

Back then, when everybody was wondering if we were falling into the abyss, Giuliani would be out there every day saying that 94 trucks were moving debris to a facility, that 203 tons of supplies were being brought in, that 17 search teams were looking for survivors. Stuff like that. It wasn’t particularly complex, but it gave people a sense of order and that something was being done.

That was particularly important because in the first days after the attack, Bush was very passive. At one point there was a nationally televised conference call between Giuliani and the White House. Bush was definitely the subordinate figure in that exchange. It was Giuliani saying “We New Yorkers are hustling and doing what we can to clean up the area and tend to the injured”, and Bush saying “That’s a good job you are doing”. A lot of people forget that.

Giuliani was maybe a bit of a fascist at that time – commanding this and that on limited authority – but sometimes in the immediate wake of a shocking tragedy, that kind of we’re-in-control posture helps calm the populace.

Now it's true that much later after 9/11, Giuliani was something of a hustler and he should be criticized for that. But in the early weeks of the post 9/11 chaos he presented a non-hysterical face of rational government competence. Something Bush was incapable of. On the whole, I'd say Giuliani was a positive figure and not a "false hero"

2011-09-10T05:44:00.000-07:00

"mostly harmless" (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference)

In the Washington Post editorial that says, on balance, the U.S. did the right things after 9/11 - including going to war - we read:

At home, vigilance must be coupled with tolerance and economic growth, so that the nation can remain both welcoming and strong. Altogether that is not an easy strategy for a democracy to sustain, because it is expensive, unproven and guaranteed to encounter setbacks. Given the scope of the challenge, the country should give itself some credit for what it has achieved.

There was in fact no large-scale assault on personal freedoms — no equivalent to the Supreme Court-sanctioned roundup of Japanese Americans, no repeat of the Red Scare infringements on freedom of speech and association. The Patriot Act enabled a modest, mostly court-supervised expansion of law enforcement vigilance.

Hey, your civil liberties are assured under a mostly court-supervised surveillance.

Fell better?

As to that Iraq War thing:

The United States went to war in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence ...

Wow! That faulty intelligence was just sitting there, inert, and yet look at what it was able to do. Got the nation to go to war. No humans were involved in that process.

The editorial is pretty much 100% neocon and wouldn't be out of place in William Kristol's Weekly Standard, or Dick Cheney's book.

2011-09-07T01:49:00.000-07:00

Facing the realities of a changing economy:

E.D. Kain writes about how we should deal with it:

Jobs, Welfare, and the Human Economy

... What we need right now, in the immediate term, is a series of massive public works projects. Kevin Drum wants $1 trillion in infrastructure spending over five years. I suspect we’d need more like $1 trillion per year for the next five years.

There’s an old saying that a job is the best form of welfare. “Teach a man to fish…” and all that. This is true enough for what it’s worth, which is not really all that much. Yes, you can have too much welfare and too much dependency on the state. But in a market economy some form of non-job welfare or state provision of services is simply necessary.

For one thing, in a market economy there will be constant adjustments in industry, and the demand for one skill set will quickly be replaced with demand for another. Entire labor pools can become irrelevant overnight. Jobs disappear through no fault of anyone at all. New demand, new technology, globalism – these are the culprits, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them because we’re all a part of it. Jobs may indeed be the best “welfare”, but if those jobs simply disappear, a lot of people are left without too many options beyond actual assistance. This is especially true during a bad recession.

Jobs are great, but welfare should be used to thwart the inherent economic uncertainty of a capitalistic, global society. People should not lose their insurance just because they’ve lost their job. Universal healthcare would go a long way toward allowing people to be more independent, more entrepreneurial, and less risk-averse in their private ambitions. I think that in the emerging service economy – with more and more people working outside of the normal constraints of office and industry jobs, as freelancers and contractors – this will become even more important. Far from discouraging work, the right kind of welfare can do just the opposite.

2011-09-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

About that debt ceiling business:

Chait:

The debt ceiling hostage crisis was a political catastrophe for both Obama and Congressional Republicans. He came away looking weak. they came away looking crazy. The episode, though, had more than political ramifications. It had economic ramifications. Confidence in the economy -- the number one conservative explanation for economic weakness -- took a real and justified plunge.

The Republicans pursued a strategy that torpedoed the economic recovery, and, indeed, may well bring about a double-dip recession. Voters may punish House republicans at the polls in 2012, but they're at least as likely to punish Obama. That Republicans may gain the White House on the shoulders of a Republican-induced recession offers lessons about the incentive structure of our divided system of government that are frightening to contemplate.

2011-09-06T03:53:00.001-07:00

Billionaire Pete Peterson has won:

LATimes:

California voters are increasingly downcast about the direction of the country, but — like their leaders in Washington — many would rather adhere to party orthodoxy than compromise to address the current economic problems, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll shows.

The findings offer little guidance for President Obama, who will unveil a jobs package this week that he hopes to push through a polarized Congress. Further troubling for the president: The survey results suggest that Republicans, even in deep-blue California, are winning the rhetorical war of words over how to frame the country's economic troubles, and how to get out of them.

Although Obama has previously called for strategic government investments to stimulate the economy, only 37% of California voters said they favor such an approach. Instead, the Republican view — that slashing government spending to restrain the deficit will better lead to prosperity — was preferred by 49% of respondents, according to the survey sponsored by the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and The Times.

2011-09-04T15:40:00.001-07:00

A liberal Republican's lament about contemporary politics:

A great essay by Mike Lofgren.

Longish, but reads quickly. Doesn't hold back at all. I consider it essential reading.

I agree with everything he writes, including economic and demographic observations. Mostly it's about Republicans but Washington Democrats get deserved criticism.

2011-09-01T21:10:00.001-07:00

Consensus developing on Obama's jobs speech:

Dave Weigel tweets:

EXCLUSIVE: Obama's speech isn't going to change anything anyway

Ezra Klein in a less snarky mode:

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. A speech can rally the base, and maybe even temporarily change the topic in the news. But it can’t change the fundamental fact of politics right now, which is that the two parties disagree on the most profound question in Washington. It’s not: How do we fix the economy? It is: Who should win the next election?

So long as Republicans and Democrats disagree on that, there will be no significant cooperation on substantive issues. Boehner simply will not cut off his party’s candidates at the knees, especially its presidential contenders, by handing Obama a major economic accomplishment. Because he controls the House of Representatives, that means Obama -- and, by extension, the U.S. -- is not going to get a major economic accomplishment.

SITE NOTE: Been down with the flu for a week. Who gets the flu in August? Bummer.

2011-08-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

The essence of the modern Republican party:

Marco Rubio says it out loud:

Except for the Reagan Administration, to be quite frank, both Republicans and Democrats established a role for government in America that said yes we will have a free economy, but we will also have a strong government, which through regulations and taxes will control the free economy, and through a series of government programs, will take care of those in our society who are falling behind. That was the vision crafted in the 20th Century by our leaders. ...

These programs weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government's job.

For those who met misfortune, that wasn't our job to take care of them. That was the government's job. And as government crowded out the institutions in our society that did these things traditionally, it weakened our people.

Weak vs Strong. Spartan values. It's Ayn Rand's vision and the Republicans are 100% in favor of it.

If you are in trouble, you'd better have relatives or neighbors to help you out. If you don't have people to help you, tough.

Jonathan Chait and Conor Friedersdorf comment on Rubio's speech.

2011-08-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

On collective-action:

This week Warren Buffett said that he thought taxes should be raised on wealthy people like him. In response, may on Fox News have derided that stance and asked why Buffett doesn't write a check for "his" amount and be done with it.

Mark Kleiman wrote an excellent post on this issue. Here it is reproduced in its entirety:

Why I want to pay higher taxes

by Mark Kleiman

Megan McArdle is extremely smart, but this post is hilariously wrong, both logically and empirically.

Megan claims, if I understand her correctly, that no one wants his or her own taxes raised, only taxes on others, because if you really wanted more money spend on something you’d just make a contribution. She acknowledges the collective-action argument, but somehow seems to think that since the amount of tax paid is a continuous, real-valued variable rather than a binary variable that problem somehow goes away. But it doesn’t.

Take me, for an example. I’d like to see the National Science Foundation budget double, from the current $6 billion to $12 billion. (In the long run, I’d go much higher.) And I’d prefer to pay for that increase entirely out of increased income taxation on people making more than twice the median family income, a group into which I fall. I don’t have the figures handy, but my share of that additional taxation might come to something like $300 per year. ($6B is about $60 per household, but if the increase were financed entirely by taxing high-income households then each high-income household would have to pay considerably more than $60.)

So, says Megan, why don’t I just write a check for $300 to some outfit that finances the same sort of research the NSF does? (There’s no mechanism that would allow me to make a contribution directly to the NSF, as opposed to the General Fund.)

But that question answers itself: it’s easily worth $300 to me to increase spending on basic science by $6 billion, but it isn’t worth $300 to me to increase spending on basic science by $300. So I’m willing to vote for the tax but not to make the contribution.

Collective action problem. End of story.

2011-08-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

One of John Stewart's better moments:

About Warren Buffett and Fox News' relentless campaign to insulate the rich and attack the poor.

part1

part2

link(s) corrected

Though Stewart scores, in the end it's depressing when you consider how much pull Fox News has in shaping our political discourse.

2011-08-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

Poetry corner:

There once was an Obot named Ray,
Firebaggers he'd verbally flay,
and Paul Krugman he hates,
for the truth that he states,
"Hail the Prez" is all you should say.

story

2011-08-16T23:48:00.001-07:00

Shorter Rick Perry:

If that treasonous Ben Bernanke ever shows up in my town, we'll organize a necktie party for the Fed chairman.

2011-08-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

Today is the day!

It's National Relaxation Day.

From holidayinsights.com:

Avoiding stressful activities today is the rule. For example, if golf is your favorite hobby, yet it can cause you stress, then make plans to play golf another day. Spending the day in a hammock is a far more appropriate activity.

Top Ten ideas to enjoy on Relaxation Day:
Do nothing today
Go to a Spa
Go fishing
Play a round of golf(caution: not always relaxing)
Lounge around in a hammock
Take a bubble bath
Spend the day at the beach
Go to the movies
Do a little gardening (no heavy duty work, though)
Have a picnic in the park

2011-08-15T00:15:00.001-07:00

Credit cards:

After about a two year period of getting no credit card offers in the mail, I now find myself receiving about one a week. Many from Chase. I've yet to receive what Kevin got but I'm hoping it shows up! I should have thrown them out, but instead, placed them neatly in a pile. I've just now opened them.

From Chase, 16 offers - some redundant and therefore excluded in the table - for a blue Freedom credit card in the last 9 months:

cash back, teaser 0% APR until, after which

$100, 11/1/11, 11.99%
$100, 01/1/12, 9.99%
$100, 02/1/12, 9.99%
$150, 02/1/12, 11.99%
$150, 03/1/12, 9.99%
$200, 04/1/12, 11.99%
$150, 05/1/12, 9.99&
$150, 06/1/12, 9.99%
$200, 07/1/12, 9.99%
$250, 08/1/12, 12.99%

This is for real, and I've got to say I'm surprised at the trend.

2011-08-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

T-Paw!

There once was a guy named Pawlenty;
thought that Ames was the optimal entry,
for a race to the top,
but it turned out a flop,
now he'll never be head of this country.

2011-08-12T23:33:00.001-07:00

Making sense of the London/English riots:

Probably not too different from the 1992 Los Angeles riots, as explained in the 1994 rap-mocumentary Fear of a Black Hat.

2011-08-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

Poetry corner:

There once was a Texan named Perry,
whose brain was considerably airy.
Thought he'd win in a race,
with a white Christian face.
But he lost, and the country was merry.

2011-08-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

Probably the most effective display of who Michelle Bachmann is:

Nine years ago she was combating curriculum standards that in her view strayed from Christian truth. You can see her in a short film of a presentation she made on that topic. It's xenophobic, Enlightenment-phobic, and contemptuous of any government that's perceived to be operating on secular grounds.

She complains that mathematics would be presented as "arbitrary and man-made, contrary to common sense". She probably believes that Euclidean geometry is the only one possible and that Riemann work's on the zeta function should never be mentioned. Nor Cantor on infinity. There's a lot of mathematics that doesn't comport with common sense and a lot that is "other worldly".

Just like when Fox News strayed into science to declare that the First Law of Thermodynamics proves CO2 can't cause global warming, Bachmann's foray into mathematics exposes the literally insane nature of the person.

2011-08-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

Tom Friedman's worst. column. ever.

Dave Weigel tweets:

Good lord this is horrible.

That's being too kind. Friedman spends the entire column imagining a pre-Grand Bargain cooperative environment which involves two brief speeches from Boehner and Obama.

He has Obama say this:

I have asked Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to revive their deficit commission and to use their recommendations for how to cut spending and raise revenues as the starting point for our negotiations. But it will now be called ‘The National Commission for American Renewal.’ Because in addition to the original Bowles-Simpson members, it will include Senator McConnell, Speaker Boehner, Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi, and its goal will indeed be a comprehensive plan for American renewal.

Wow, just wow.

2011-08-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

Fox Nation headline writing:

2011-08-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

Jeb Bush tells us how to get back on track:

In the WSJ:

Achieving strong growth requires the free flow of capital, goods and ideas. We have world-class products and services to sell to the growing middle class in emerging markets. We must find our voice to resist the rising tide of economic protectionism and recognize the job-creating benefits of our pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

Panama! We can sell tons of stuff to that nation of less than 4 million.

Thanks, Jeb.

2011-08-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

Probably the best example of Fox News Channel putting out complete garbage:

There's a lot of wiggle room in political and economic debates, but not in science. Yet Fox News Channel goes ahead and promotes a complete charlatan on the issue of global warming. This is no surprise coming from the Murdoch cult. And they get away with it because no prominent organizations or individuals call them out.

Fox News Channel viewers must have a sixth-grader's understanding of science, if that.

2011-08-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

Virtually speaking:

This Sunday digby & Avedon Carol talked about Obama and politics for an hour. It was good, and well worth your time (unless you've got better things to do with your time, like taking a vacation).

2011-08-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

Geithner is on message:

CNBC transcript:

JOHN HARWOOD: You said a moment ago that Congress owns the credit rating. John Kerry, Democratic Senator, said today, "This is the Tea Party downgrade." Is that right?

TIM GEITHNER: Well, I wouldn't-- I'm not going to do politics, John. And I think if we've learned anything these last few months it's-- it's time to put the economy ahead of politics. Again, these are challenges facing the country of the United States, not-- not facing one party or the other. We both have some responsibility for coming together to dig our way out of this stuff.

And, again, this was-- you know, it's a big down payment on our fiscal challenges. Very strong bipartisan support for it. Our challenge is to build on that support and try to take the next steps that make some longer term progress. You know, we need to reform our tax system to help the middle class make this a stronger place to invest. Obviously we need to reform entitlement to secure Medicare for the next generation. And we've got to do some additional things to make the economy strong.

Some have argued that Obama shouldn't engage in name calling, but leave that to surrogates like cabinet secretaries. Yet as we see here, even that's not happening.

2011-08-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

Obama's birthday party joke:

From Variety:

Obama got some of his biggest laughs with this line: "It's true that I turn 50 tomorrow, which means that by the time I wake up, I'll have an e-mail from AARP, asking me to call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare."

2011-08-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

The downgrade:

Looks like the Tea Party is getting what it has long desired, a return to the financial situation at the time of the Tea Party in 1773: Poor credit standing by the government(s), a preference for "hard money", hostility to debt of any kind, and economic thinking suitable for small farms and firms operating in villages. It's simple and works fairly well if you have a family-based social services culture, although growth is severely constrained.

Faced with the realities of modern capitalism's atomized and dispersed work force along with occasional disruptions within the system, both Bismark and Keynes advocated for (a) a substantial government-run safety net, and (b) counter-cyclical spending. Both involving debt and taxes. And - most important - it requires a citizenry that agrees to the social contract and does not have callous disregard for those in distress and needing aid (usually people, but can be firms, e.g. General Motors).

Republicans are practicing myopianomics. If they, and their supporters, still have jobs, then that's as far as they care to look. Therefore, it's easy to propose elimination of whatever policies that might help the "other guys". And so they have. And here we are.

2011-08-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

Rick Perry's prayer rally today:

Or more properly, The Response. Here's the schedule:

8:00AM
Doors open and pre-event worship

10:00AM
Opening remarks and direction for the day
Worship
Focus: Personal Repentance
Prayer for personal repentance

11:30AM
Worship
Focus: Corporate Repentance
Prayer: Repentance for the Church’s Idolatry
Rapid Succession Prayer
Small Group Prayer
Prayer: Repentance for the shedding of innocent blood
Rapid Succession Prayer
Focus: Prayer for America
Rapid Succession Prayer
Small Group Prayer
Focus: Prayer for Israel
Rapid Succession Prayer

1:45PM
Worship
Focus: First Commandment
Worship
Rapid Succession Prayer
Small Group Prayer
Focus: Generational Blessing
Small Group Prayer

3:15PM
Worship
Focus: Revival
Worship
Rapid Succession Prayer
Small Group Prayer
Worship

5:00PM
Closing remarks

Lots of interesting stuff at the website. A list of Honorary Co-chairs that's a Who's Who of evangelicals. And in the Why? section, under Historic Precedence for National Prayer, a list that's all 18th Century events (most pre-Constitution) with one exception. That called by President John Tyler, who later ended up siding with the Confederacy (and was a delegate to the Confederate Congress). Weird.

Check out the live-stream webcast.

2011-08-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

Pretty remarkable stuff:

Eric Cantor, Republican House Majority Leader on Medicare: (emp add)

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) on Wednesday suggested that Republicans will continue a push to overhaul programs such as Medicare ...

"What we have to be, I think, focused on is truth in budgeting here," Cantor told The Wall Street Journal'sOpinion Journal. He said "the better way" for Americans is to "get the fiscal house in order" and "come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many." ...

... Republicans could make a new push to cut back on Medicare ...

"When we came out with our budget, we said, look, let's at least put people on notice, but preserve those who are 55 and older," Cantor said, referring to a Republican-written budget plan that would turn Medicare, now a fee-for-service program, into a program that subsidizes private health insurance. "The rest of us have got ample time to try and plan our lives so that we can adjust ...

2011-08-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

How Fox Nation covers Obama's birthday:

Screenshot:

Story

UPDATE: Dave Weigel opines:

There was a DJ ... who spun some hip-hop, but none of the people playing music were hip-hop artists! Look: When I'm promised a "Hip-Hop BBQ" in a headline, I expect nothing but hip-hop stars and enthusiasts eating BBQ. Instead, I learn that a collection of celebrities, some of them black, ate "chicken, ribs, hamburgers, hot dogs, pasta and salad" and then a bunch of pie before listening to Herbie Hancock. Fox Nation could have gone with the "Jazz BBQ Doesn't Create Jobs" hed, I guess, but why not cut to the chase with something like: "Uppity Blacks Eat Soul Food and Laugh While You Hunt for A Job You Can't Get Because of Welfare Queens, Affirmative Action, and Carjackers."

2011-08-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Tale of two demographics:

The rich (NYTimes) Even Marked Up, Luxury Goods Fly Off Shelves

The rest of us (SLATE) When Dollar Stores Are Too Expensive

You know the economy is in bad shape when customers can't afford to shop at dollar stores anymore.

2011-08-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

Get ready for a political explosion:

If the White House continues in this way. Ben Smith of Politico reports: (emp add)

Tense moments at Common Purpose meet

Tensions between the White House and its liberal allies came to a head last night at the weekly Common Purpose meeting, where progressive leaders and National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling had a tense exchange about the debt deal, two Democratic sources said.

The meeting is an off-the-record, regular gathering that some on the left credit both with keeping the White House aware of liberal concern and keeping liberal messaging coordinated with the White House. Critics deride it as a "veal pen" aimed at neutering the left.

Yesterday, Sperling faced a series of questions about the White House's concessions on the debt ceiling fight and its inability to move in the direction of new taxes or revenues. Progressive consultant Mike Lux, the sources said, summed up the liberal concern, producing what a participant described as an "extremely defensive" response from Sperling.

Sperling, a person involved said, pointed his finger at liberal groups, which he said hadn't done enough to highlight what he saw as the positive side of the debt package -- a message that didn't go over well with participants.

2011-08-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

Windows 7 update:

What a pile of shit. Even worse that Vista.

Right now the Task Manager is reporting that in the last 24 hours my laptop has received 18 quintillion bytes. Or 18 billion gigabytes. And it's sent almost the same amount (but is short 400 million bytes).

This is not the first time it's reported figures like this, and no, there was nothing bizarre going on - like a hard power fail. Just some browsing (with a defective Firefox 5, but that's another story) and one or two instances of Word and Excel.

Kudos for the excellent Q/A work at Microsoft.

I guess all you are supposed to do these days is fire up the browser, go to Facebook, and stay there the entire time. Simple! Nothing complicated. No strain on the OS with multiple socket connections and all that other stuff that had been resolved about 10 years ago. But really, who cares about that nowadays, right? Just build your software with wonderful object-oriented tools that allow the programmer to not know or care about the underlying elements, but add "extra value" with baroque custom fetch-receive components that deliver images or content, because it's too much hassle to actually have the servers present most or all of the information in the first transmission.

2011-08-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

This is correct:

Dave Weigel writes:

Blackmail: It Works

Why the GOP's debt-ceiling victory was a generational defeat for liberals.

The precedent-setting nature of this cannot be underestimated. Never before has the White House done anything other than demand a clean debt ceiling hike.