The GOP's Future Demographic Doom

It's not exactly a novel observation that the GOP is increasingly becoming a rump minority party dominated by whites, Christians, Southerners, and bigots. And don't forget the stupid vote either - they rely on the bull shit they feed daily through Fox News to brainwash the low information types, GOP-leaning "independents,"  or people who otherwise are easily misled and can't be bothered to sift through the noise to find the truth. 

But this is just going to absolutely savage their future electoral prospects: 

The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and they are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by immigration and intermarriage.

One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the Pew Research Center. Multiracial and multiethnic Americans (usually grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups. And experts expect the racial results of the 2010 census, which will start to be released next month, to show the trend continuing or accelerating.

Yeah, an entire generation of scary, non-white, mixed race degenerates are coming to take the country away from all the Jebus loving real murkins. The totally-not-racist-whatsoever tea baggers already want their country back, so I don't know where they will go from here when this group enters the polling booths, the workplace, corporations, and government. And I am sure that this same generation isn't the least bit disillusioned with the constant race baiting of the GOP and the way in which they have gone after President Obama almost daily for not loving America enough, not seeming presidential enough, or for not being born here. You know, because he is black and has a Muslim sounding middle name.

This also proves that Marvel and the Spider-Man writers are clearly out of step with mainstream America and evil liberals that just made the new hero a mixed race individual out of a deep seated hatred for white America. Or they "affirmative actioned" Spidey. Or something.

The only unfortunate thing is that we're years away from these individuals truly integrating into voting blocs and society writ large. In the meantime, we will be stuck with Fox News and the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of this world completely losing their shit, spewing hate speech as they watch their precious grip on America continue to unravel as a new generation rises up and rejects their ignorant worldview.

Onward Christian Soldiers

NPR has a good piece up about the militant wing of Christianity with which Perry "pals around." They are a special bunch, let me tell you:

For the past several years, she says, the NAR [New Apostolic Reformation] has run a campaign to reclaim what it calls the "seven mountains of culture" from demonic influence. The "mountains" are arts and entertainment; business; family; government; media; religion; and education. 

"They teach quite literally that these 'mountains' have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society," says Tabachnick. "And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. ... The apostles teach what's called 'strategic level spiritual warfare' [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we're accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they're doing that's quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups."

This fits very well into the overall GOP mantra of "if you're not with us, you're against us." Only in this case, if you're not with them, you're a demon. But don't worry, they are just doing god's work:

One of Engle's previous rallies took place in Uganda in May 2010, shortly after an anti-homosexuality bill had been proposed. 

"Various people got on the stage [at his rally] and promoted the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda, which is a very draconian bill that would allow for executions for certain offenses, and would also allow for people who don't report homosexual history to be jailed," she says. "The apostles have had a long history in Uganda, and some of them have had close relationships with both political and religious leaders there. In fact, an apostle in Uganda takes credit for promoting the anti-homosexuality bill and was recognized by the parliament in Uganda when the bill was introduced."

I am sure if you dig deep enough, you can find the underlying premise in that law of "love the sinner, hate the sin," or "love others as Christ loved us."

These people are wildly out of touch with the values of the vast majority of mainstream America. They are virulently homophobic, anti-abortion, seek to coddle Israel at every turn, and think it's a good idea to actively attempt to usher in what they call the 'end times.' You know, because bringing about the wholesale destruction of the earth is just so fucking cool. And at the heart of all these batshit ideas is their belief in what they call dominionism, that is, that they are ordained by god to have dominion over everything - government, the media, society at large - and enact their perverse agenda on us all cleanse us of our demons.

And all this while the various tea bagger state legislatures are foaming at the mouth in absolute terror of the non-existent threat of Sharia law infiltrating our nation. Meanwhile, we have a legitimate group of lunatics seeking to establish a theocracy of their liking in every echelon of government both state and federal. I realize that it's because they want to establish their theocracy and that of another, but it's still ironic nonetheless.

And all the while this is more or less entirely permissible because it's Jebus based, and who doesn't love Jebus? And we are a Christian nation and center right and all that. Oh and the practitioners of this particular brand of lunacy happen to be overwhelmingly white and thus non-threatening, scary, or other, so bonus points for that too.

Moral Hazard and All That

Congress made an unintentional funny with the title of a new mortgage relief bill: the Helping Responsible Homeowners Act.

Remember, responsibility, accountability, justice - those high-minded ideals are just for the common folk but do not apply to our elites. If you're a bankster, a high-ranking politician, or a corporation, you get to do whatever the fuck you want. And in the case of the banksters, when you blow up the global economy, you are rewarded with piles of capital wrested from the public coffers without a single proviso or stipulation. And as we are now finding out, those freebies for the good old boys were way larger than previously known:

The Federal Reserve lent Wall Street firms a staggering $1.2 trillion in a previously unrevealed bank bailout that dwarfs the size of TARP, reports Bloomberg News. 

The $1.2 trillion — which Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lent to banks and other firms to prevent the economy from collapsing is roughly equivalent to the amount that U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million underwater mortgages, Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg News received the information through Freedom of Information Act requests, litigation and an act of Congress. The $1.2 trillion figure is the compilation of the balance for seven programs instituted by the Fed.

I'll be interested to see if this bill manages to pass and make its way to Obama's desk, because I would love to hear another vomit-inducing signing speech from him about how we aren't throwing good money after bad and that we're not helping out unscrupulous folks that borrowed more than they could afford.

I know this is crazy, but you would see a much more sustained and profound stimulative effect from just helping out homeowner's and average citizens wind down their enormous levels of household debt, or principal reductions for underwater mortgages. Refinances are nice, but all they will accomplish is scrape a few hundred bucks off people's mortgage payments while still leaving them shackled to an "asset" that isn't worth shit, can't be sold, and will never again be worth what it was valued at during the manic housing casino days of the 2000s. 

But giving direct help to the freeloading masses would be socialism and stuff, and we have to worry about moral hazard. Don't want those goddamn moochers taking advantage of the system. That's their game. We'll just wait for the magic of the free market and the confidence fairy to return and restore these housing values to their former glory.

What was it again that Einstein said about doing the same stupid shit over and over and expecting different results?

If It Ain't Broke

Imagine that - Republicans are planning on using the deficit as a political tool to prevent Democrats from passing anything that might have even the remotest chance of improving unemployment or the economy. And the chances are remote. With Congress firmly gridlocked and with Dems loving nothing more than to negotiate with themselves, the litany of shitty half measures that will be served up will do little to make significant gains in the months ahead. But that is a feature, not a bug. Remember, we won't slide back into recession, and there's a light at the end of the tunnel in 2013. Because Obama's economist-free Council on Economic Affairs said so, that's why.

But in general, this should surprise no one. The GOP spent the first two years of Obama's presidency crying wolf about the deficit to impede legislative progress. Even when the Democrats tied themselves in knots to make bills deficit neutral, the Republicans found other reasons to oppose them anyway. And they were rewarded handsomely in 2010 by an ignorant electorate that collectively scratched its ass and grunted out "spending bad" and voted for the people in power who sounded most like them. So they are just going back to the same dogeared page in their playbook. It worked so well for them once, why would they try anything different this time around?

Sigh

Same shit, different day:

Senate Democrats, who are desperate to stimulate the economy but don’t have the money to pass traditional stimulus legislation, will turn to cutting business taxes when they return to Washington this fall.  

In doing so, they will try to drive a wedge between business interests and the GOP leadership, who has tried to block almost every element of the Democratic agenda, by pushing a round of corporate tax breaks, say Senate Democratic aides.  

[...] 

Their first tax proposal is to make the corporate research and development tax credit permanent. The second is to pass an Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit. This would create a 30 percent tax credit for companies that manufacture new clean-energy technologies, which Democratic aides say would help create thousands of new jobs around the country. 

A third idea is to extend the payroll tax cut Congress enacted in December and expand it to employers, reducing the cost of labor. And a fourth option is to give employers tax breaks for hiring new employees, an idea Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee panned in 2009 but now seems more attractive. 

Excellent idea - let's give even more tax breaks to businesses that are already sitting on Scrooge McDuck Money Bin sized piles of cash so they can hire people to keep up with the demand that isn't there from all the customers that they don't have. But this is all we can do, because true stimulative economic policies aren't "politically feasible" and our political overlords are a bunch of lazy pussies that only want to try what they can pass even if what can pass is useless shit, rather than fight for something that might have a better chance of dragging us out of the quagmire. 

I like the neat little rhetorical flair at the beginning of this article too: Senate Democrats "don't have the money to pass traditional stimulus legislation." Right. Because tax cuts are always free!

Now let's just get some patent reform bills going, and then the epic pivot to jobs will be complete.

This Is Why I Read TBogg

On Obama's view of his much maligned liberal base:

But it is a sad fact of life that there are some many within the Obama White House who see the liberal base as someone you call up every four years for a quickie fuck and then don’t return their calls or respond to their texts for another four years.

On the next election:

I’ll still vote for him for no better reason than the fact that the alternatives range from abominable to “are you fucking kidding?” 

So all I can do is hope that he can change.

I haven't even started to think of what a second Obama term might look like, in large part due to the fact that it will be determined in large part by what happens in the Congressional elections next year. But I don't see it being much different from the first. It's guaranteed to be another four year shit show of GOP obstructionism and gridlock while Congress nibbles around the edges at with weak policies that nibble around the edges at the significant issues that ail the nation.

Or if you want the GOP version of the above, the next four years will look like OH MY GOD ARMAGEDDON WE ARE ALL GONNA FUCKING DIE FROM THE TYRANNY OF A SECOND TERM OF THE LIBERAL MARXIST KENYAN THAT IS PLANNING TO THROTTLE US ALL IN OUR SLEEP WITH EPA REGULATIONS AND TAXES!!!

I'll let you be the judge of which of those two scenarios is based in reality.

Your Liberal Media

Via Digby:

Mitchell: at the same time Bachmann did she show some real problems being able to handle the economic questions. She really doubled down on the default of being against the debt ceiling raising and default isn't that big an issue we could have handled it. Let's see for a second the way she handled it with Lester Holt on the "Today" show. 

Bachmann: You cannot turn the economy around if you give Barack Obama a blank check for $2.4 trillion in exchange for $21 billion in cuts. 

Holt: This raising the debt ceiling was for bills that have been agreed to, not new spending 

Bachman: Actually that's not true. This money will go not just to bills that have already been spent, this will be for future money as well. That's a false statement. 

Mitchell: So here she's saying to Lester Holt that raising the debt ceiling is to take care of future money not past money, which is not factual. 

Cook: It's not true, but on the other hand she's not saying anything that a lot of Republican caucus attendees or primary voters would disagree with. 

Mitchell: So, politically it's fine. 

Cook: Yeah, politically I think it's fine ...

In other words, Bachmann is full of shit and spewing outright lies, but Republicans in general are also full of shit, and their dumb voters like that. So, I think it's okay that they're lying. Not my place to call them on it. Meh!

"God's Man For President"

I spent some time reading a lengthy piece in the Texas Observer this morning about recently announced GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. It's a well written and thorough article, the kind of reporting that makes me feel like the Observer might become the next Anchorage Daily News of sorts as it serves up informative local reporting on a wingnut governor while the national media swoons.

Thus far, the GOP presidential field is pretty uninspiring. Some are taken more seriously than others, but in general I don't think anyone (their base included), expects any of the current crop of candidates to mount a realistic challenge to President Obama's reelection prospects. For that same reason, none of the current candidates really scare me. President Bachmann or President Palin would be categorically awful, but the chances of that ever happening are so incredibly remote that it's not really worth fretting over. 

I don't think you can say the same for Perry. I would still place his chances of beating Obama as something of an uphill climb at this point, but the thing he has that the other candidates do not are those certain unique qualities that make him "serious" and leave the national media waxing poetic to the point of breathlessness.  He talks in a folksy, southern drawl, he has deeply held religious beliefs, he straps on a laser sighted gun when he jogs, etc. The media eats that shit up. That and we are a profoundly stupid country, and just because we elected a know-nothing, Bible-thumping, dumb fuck Texan once doesn't mean that we won't do it again. His potential electability, coupled with the fact that the media at large will largely paper over or ignore his extremist religion and just what that would mean were he elected, are what scares me. He's the first candidate of the field about which I can make that statement. 

That being said, let's have a look at Perry's unique brand of the love of Jebus:

Schlueter, Long and other prayer warriors in a little-known but increasingly influential movement at the periphery of American Christianity seem to think so. The movement is called the New Apostolic Reformation. Believers fashion themselves modern-day prophets and apostles. They have taken Pentecostalism, with its emphasis on ecstatic worship and the supernatural, and given it an adrenaline shot. 

The movement’s top prophets and apostles believe they have a direct line to God. Through them, they say, He communicates specific instructions and warnings. When mankind fails to heed the prophecies, the results can be catastrophic: earthquakes in Japan, terrorist attacks in New York, and economic collapse. On the other hand, they believe their God-given decrees have ended mad cow disease in Germany and produced rain in drought-stricken Texas.
Their beliefs can tend toward the bizarre. Some consider Freemasonry a “demonic stronghold” tantamount to witchcraft. The Democratic Party, one prominent member believes, is controlled by Jezebel and three lesser demons. Some prophets even claim to have seen demons at public meetings. They’ve taken biblical literalism to an extreme. In Texas, they engage in elaborate ceremonies involving branding irons, plumb lines and stakes inscribed with biblical passages driven into the earth of every Texas county. 

If they simply professed unusual beliefs, movement leaders wouldn’t be remarkable. But what makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government. The new prophets and apostles believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they’re intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an “army of God” to commandeer civilian government. 

In Rick Perry, they may have found their vessel. And the interest appears to be mutual.

Umm, yeah. If that doesn't frighten you, it should. Perry finds himself at the head of an enormous shadow group formed for the sole purpose of subtly establishing a permanent theocracy in America. And these lunatics believe ancient demons control the Democratic party, which more or less already fits in with the standard GOP position. I've written here many times about how Obama cares little for liberals or true progressive policies, simply because they will always come home to roost and vote for him. And in the face of zealots like these, that's certainly true. But it also works on the other side of the aisle as well. They've spent so much time propping up Obama as the most evil Satanic Hitler since the original Hitler that it doesn't matter how your average conservative voter feels about Perry's extremist religion or affiliations, they're going to pull the lever for him anyway because the alternative is Satanic Hitler.

Lucky for us in these savage times, they have a unique solution to all that ails the country:

“With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis and people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God's help,” Perry says in a video message on The Response website. “That's why I'm calling on Americans to pray and fast like Jesus did and as God called the Israelites to do in the Book of Joel.” 

The reference to Joel likely wasn’t lost on Perry’s target audience. Prominent movement leaders strike the same note. Lou Engle, who runs TheCall, told a Dallas-area Assemblies of God congregation in April that “His answer in times of crisis is Joel 2.” 

[...] 

The Book of Joel describes a crippling drought and economic crisis—sound familiar?—in the land of Judah. The calamities, in Joel’s time and ours, are “sent by God to cause a wicked, oppressive, and rebellious nation to repent,” Bickle told his students. 

To secure God's blessing, Joel commands the people to gather in “sacred assembly” to pray, fast, and repent.

As Perry showed recently in the face of a historic drought in Texas, one of his preferred solutions to unprecedented crises is...prayer. Because that is definitely what our country needs now. Sadly, in a way, it may not be that different from what's already going on - send confidence boner signals to the market, and otherwise sit on our hands and just hope and wait for the worst economy in decades to pull itself up by its bootstraps. 

These people are sick, and Perry is their golden boy. A standard bearer to carry their dogma and champion their cause all the way to the highest echelons of the halls of power in America. Their perverse brand of religion includes standard brain washing operating procedures - prey on peoples hopes and fears in the midst of pervasive national instability, predict catastrophe and doom if their tenets are not strictly observed, and finally, sell themselves as the only solution to prosperity and righteousness in an increasingly evil world.

Call me an unhinged dirty hippie, but these people scare me far more than Islamic extremists:

The New Apostles talk about taking dominion over American society in pastoral terms. They refer to the “Seven Mountains” of society: family, religion, arts and entertainment, media, government, education, and business. These are the nerve centers of society that God (or his people) must control. 

Asked about the meaning of the Seven Mountains, Schlueter says, “God's kingdom just can’t be expressed on Sunday morning for two hours. God’s kingdom has to be expressed in media and government and education. It’s not like our goal is to have a Bible on every child’s desk. That’s not the goal. The goal is to hopefully have everyone acknowledge that God’s in charge of us regardless.” 

[...] 

“We’re going to influence it,” Schlueter told his congregation. “We’re going to infiltrate it, not run from it. I know why God’s doing what he’s doing...He’s just simply saying, ‘Tom I’ve given you authority in a governmental authority, and I need you to infiltrate the governmental mountain. Just do it, it’s no big deal.’ I was talking with [a member of the congregation] the other day. She’s going to start infiltrating. A very simple process. She’s going to join the Republican Party, start going to all their meetings. Some [members] are already doing that.

Isn't that cute? They don't want Bibles on every desk in America (yet). They just want us to, you know, be lovers of Christ. I'm sure.

In any other country in the developed world, a Perry candidacy would be laughed off the national stage. But here in America, it is heralded and embraced, you know, because we are a center right nation and the Founding Fathers were huge Bible thumpers and Jebus lovers and all that. I think the GOP field is going to come down to a pitched battle between Romney and Perry, but in my opinion, Perry stands a much better chance to become the nominee. Unlike the Democrats, the Republican brand cares very little for the center of the electorate or the political whims of independents. The only sort of outreach they do to these demographics is their endless vomit cyclone of misinformation and propaganda on the off chance that they can convince a few centrist morons that their policies aren't as ludicrous and misguided in theory as they are in practice. Outside of that, their primary goal is to roil their base into a feverish and energized froth and to maintain that pitch through Election Day by means of a persistent stream of red meat and hyper polarized media. And a Perry candidacy is the perfect foil for just that. Perry's brand of religious extremism and Texan macho real murkin swagger will crystallize the Republican base and tea baggers alike, as if these two things were mutually exclusive to begin with. Perry's special love of Jebus will coalesce the anti-gay/anti-Muslim/anti-anything-not-white-and-Christian/pro-life social conservatives, while his deregulatory, free-market-knows-best, low-tax love of plutocracy will almost certainly deliver the mouth breathing tea bagger vote. That's a feature, not a bug. They don't want or need independents when they have a firebrand candidate around which their most ignorant and staunchest supporters can rally, emboldened by their efforts at the state level to disenfranchise or otherwise bar reliably Democratic constituents from ever making it to the polls. 

And he must never be allowed to take the White House. If flagging Dems needed a rallying cause for 2012, it has just arrived. 

iOS/Android Gaming Goes Om Nom Nom Nom

And now for something completely apolitical. 

I thought this article was very interesting and quite the paradigm shift for Nintendo, were it ever to come to pass:

The rift highlights the dilemma President Satoru Iwata faces as consumers shun Nintendo devices to play games on iPhones, iPads and Facebook Inc.’s website. The flop of the 3DS debut prompted the company to cut prices 40 percent in Japan and 32 percent in the U.S., the first time the games developer has resorted to such a move within six months of a product’s debut.
Iwata, who’s said Nintendo will only make titles for its own products as long as he’s in charge, should scrap that strategy to avoid further alienating investors who’ve driven the stock to six-year lows, fund manager Masamitsu Ohki said. 

[...] 

Lower-than-expected demand for the 3DS, which Iwata blamed on the lack of hit titles, prompted Nintendo on July 28 to slash its profit forecast 82 percent, driving down the shares by as much as 21 percent the following day. They fell 0.2 percent to 11,430 yen, at the 3:10 p.m. close in Osaka trading, the lowest level since August 2005.
By comparison, profits at Cupertino, California-based Apple are climbing to records, helped by downloads of games such as Rovio Mobile Oy’s “Angry Birds” on the more than 200 million iPhones, iPads and iPods sold to date. Research firm Gartner Inc. said in January it expects global sales of mobile applications to almost triple to $15.1 billion this year.

This is another prime example of a prominent, soon to be former titan-of-industry refusing to innovate in the face of a rapidly changing marketplace and technology. I'd say this rivals cable and satellite companies refusing to offer a la carte programming as their customers flee in droves to services like Netflix and Hulu. At this point, refusing to develop content for iOS or Android devices is akin to saying you don't like or want free money. There's an enormous market out there that grows exponentially by the day, and Nintendo is short sighted, hard headed, and just plain stupid to not vie for a slice of that pie. No one's even suggesting they have to exit the hardware business entirely, just bring the beloved Nintendo franchises of Mario, Metroid, and Zelda to our phones. Although as this comic shows, doing so might create something of an issue with their pricing:

Yes, $40 is a little much for a crappy handheld game, especially when developers are churning out games in droves that provide just as much entertainment value. And many of these same games boast literally millions of downloads. Sure, there are some limitations for developing games for a smartphone, but they are a surprisingly good platform for gaming.  And they're not all about "matching cakes" either. Just look at Infinity Blade, which looks good enough to be on Xbox 360 or PS3, and which also reached $10 million in revenue in only 6-7 months after its launch. But Nintendo doesn't even need to limit itself to the $0.99 price point. I would happily pay $5.00 for a decent Nintendo game on my iPhone. Hell, I'd even pay $5.00 for old SNES/N64/GameCube games that I've already played and beaten multiple times (and we all know how much Nintendo loves to rehash old content). $5.00 is also more money than the grand total of $0.00 that I have been giving them for the last four years. Also, for Nintendo's love of motion gaming, the gyroscopes embedded in every smartphone provide unique opportunities for integration of Wii-like controls. 

Everyone needs a phone. Not everyone needs (or even wants) a Nintendo handheld gaming device or console. Smartphone ownership is only going to increase as they continue to saturate the market and become more and more available and affordable to the average consumer (remember when getting a camera phone was fancy and expensive?). It's just doesn't make any damned sense for Nintendo not to get on board with this. They are single handedly volunteering to firewall themselves off from a significant source of revenue and millions of customers, and they will pay for their stubbornness through the continued marginalization of their company.

(via 9 to 5 Mac)

Cash for New Hires

Quick - someone give these people free money for hiring people, because they really need it. That'll move the chains!

Also too, patent reform.

Please Stop

By my count today, I’ve seen not less than three to five pieces at various news outlets with the basic message of “Obama must get tough with Republicans.” Spoiler alert: It’s not going to fucking happen. This horse has been beaten to death since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. It’s simply not how he operates, and it’s not going to happen. Yes, there are an infinite amount of arguments why it ostensibly should or ought to happen, but it won’t. You’ve got the wrong guy. He doesn’t want to put the gloves on and take the fight to the Republicans, he wants to break bread with them and cut deals and calmly draw a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the GOP spittle off his face while turning the other cheek.

So please – stop writing these banal pieces about how Obama needs to transform into the Incredible Hulk. The man has doubled down time and again on his pious brand of post-partisanship, and his handlers fancy him as some sort of genius chess player playing a game that the rest of us are too stupid to understand. He’s had an innumerate amount of opportunities to drive a true populist message against the Republicans, and he chooses not to, preferring instead to let the GOP set the message and tone and the terms of the eventual deal that he “reluctantly” cuts.

Thank you and good night. 

Not to Be Trusted

Oh look, more sound economic analysis and advice from a savvy, intelligent, and successful expert.

But meh, what does he know? Besides, the recovery is just around the corner. Just wait a little longer. It'll happen on its own, and then when it does, we'll be super glad we didn't waste a bunch of time and money trying to precipitate its arrival. And the Democrats had their chance.

And Then They Promised Ponies For Every Man, Woman, and Child Too!

There are few things more painful to read than a column or book written by Thomas Friedman. They're full of hyperbole, kitschy exaggerations and doomsday scenarios that are going to happen RIGHT NOW if we don't act, folksy analogies and contrived expressions that he gleefully spews as if he's incapable of just calling a certain phenomenon or proper noun by their given name. I would say it's the literary equivalent of having a permanent ice cream headache while getting kicked repeatedly in the balls. 

Now that I have that off of my chest, John Cole links to the following Friedman abomination that is well worth mocking:

“My fellow Americans,” the Ohio Republican began. “We have just concluded a meeting with the president, prompted by this moment of extraordinary economic peril. Our party, as you know, is convinced that the main reason for our economic decline is that we have too much debt, that government has grown too big and that taxes and regulations are choking our dynamism. But I have to acknowledge that, over the years, our party has contributed to this debt burden and government spending binge. We are not innocent, and, therefore, we owe the country a strategy for governing and for fixing a problem that we helped to create — instead of just blocking the president. The G.O.P. is better than that and has more to offer the nation. Therefore, we have informed the president that our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’ to address all these debt issues once and for all and that everything will be on the table from our side — including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases. To those who voted for us, rest assured that we will bring our conservative values to these negotiations and an emphasis on markets and meritocracies, but also a spirit of compromise and a recognition that both sides will have to bend if we are going to get the kind of comprehensive budget agreement the country needs. 

[...] 

At that point, all five leaders shook hands and retreated into the Oval Office. It was exactly 9:29 a.m. One minute later, the New York Stock Exchange opened. The Dow was up 1,223 points at the open — an all-time record.

Yes, sadly dreck like this has earned him a Pulitzer and millions of dollars in book sales. And he writes for the goddamn NY Times. I would say this classic post by Tbogg sums up how I feel about this Friedman column:

Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar. 

You don’t live there. 

Grow the fuck up.

Granted that's a commentary on elections, but you get the point.

You Had Your Chance

One of Ezra's co-bloggers (not really sure who they are, they just started showing up in my RSS feed) has a bit in the WaPo this week about the gridlock in Congress on the economy and notes the following about GOP intransigence:

“Everyone’s got their spin on it — there’s no consensus,” says former congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.). “The parties are very dug in.” 

For instance, even if everyone agreed that the United States desperately needed help to revive its economy in the short term, it would simply reinforce the GOP’s line against the Democrats, Davis asserts. Most Democratic proposals for short-term help have centered on injecting immediate spending into the economy, the underlying argument being that the stimulus dropped off too early and didn’t go far enough. For Republicans, however, “the narrative is: ‘We tried your way, we’re worse off. Now you’re going to waste more and draw up the deficit more?’ ” Davis says.

Every time a Republican utters that talking point, Jebus kills a kitten. This is obviously their marching orders, and I would say its effective politically because it cleverly draws a contrast between the two parties, implies the opposition's policies failed, and it makes good use of the fact that most people are too ill informed to know any better.

But it's also a deeply cynical and ignorant line. By my watch, we tried it the Republican way for the better part of the last decade. They got their three trillion dollars in tax cuts that were heavily weighted towards the wealthy with grand promises of money and jobs raining from the skies, compliments of our plutocrat overlords. And we were told further that these same monstrous tax cuts would actually create more revenue! Because you know, when you unchain the hands of the plutocrats and free them from the heavy burden of the already lowest tax rates in the developed world, they give free money and jobs to poor people and don't just keep it for themselves.

Needless to say, none of that happened. The Bush tax cuts have become the single largest contributor to the OMGdeficit that Republicans have spent the last two years screeching about, and in some cases, holding the country hostage until it is reduced through draconian spending cuts. Job creation was so dismal that even the hyper conservative WSJ dubbed it the "worst track record on record."

Fast forward to 2009. Barack Obama is elected president and immediately calls for a significant spending bill to prop up a rapidly deteriorating economy. The Republicans immediately bitch and moan about deficit spending, how government can't create jobs, and demand a bunch of useless tax cuts (again) in exchange for the vague promise of their support for the bill. The final bill that passes both chambers of Congress  contains over 40% of non-stimulative tax cuts, and by the conclusions of numerous prominent economists, is far too small in its scope to properly deal with the magnitude of the recession that faces the country. Oh, and it is passed with zero Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate, despite their empty promises for votes in exchange for the fact that almost half of it is comprised of tax cuts. 

The stimulus bill didn't singlehandedly return the country to full unemployment and 5% GDP growth, but that was never going to happen. It was essentially hamstrung by the lack of political will within the Obama White House to push for a larger bill, and the ridiculous amount of tax cuts it contained. And despite those shortcomings, it provided a backstop to a faltering economy and prevented things from getting much worse than they would have in its absence.

So after all the promises of the capitalist utopia to be ushered in by Bush economic policies and ball pits full of $100 bills for us to swim in and the complete and total lack thereof, the Republican answer is to tell Democrats "you had your chance" after they enact a single piece of Keynesian legislation in the face of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

Epic hypocrisy notwithstanding, that's some balls if you ask me.

GOP Presidential Debate Tonight

I hear a bunch of dumb people are gathering in Iowa to compete against one another to see who hates gays and Muslims the most, who can fellate rich people and corporations better than the other, who can invoke the name of Jebus the most times in one sentence, with the honorable mention going to the person who can make up the most shit and outright lies about how Obama is a Marxist socialist Kenyan n-word who has royally fucked over the country more than Hitler did.

The end. You're welcome. I just saved you a couple hours of your life that you would otherwise never get back.

Is That a Raging Signal of Confidence in Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Digby links to the following conversation from MSNBC's Morning Joe:

JON CORZINE: First of all, we ought to send out signals of confidence. It's easy to sit on the sidelines when you're not governing. I would love to see the President call the leaders of Congress back to Washington in the next week, walk out together and say we're going to do the Grand Bargain.  

JOE SCARBOROUGH: What a great signal that would send.  

CORZINE: It would send an enormous confidence setting tone for the market. 

What the fuck is it with these people and the boners they get for sending "signals" and "confidence"? It's just stupid. They actually believe we ought to enact some certain set of policies (ostensibly ones that fuck the poor and middle class, 'cause markets just love that shit) just to send warm fuzzies to the free market Jebus. That's what's at the crux of their statements - governance by DJIA. 

And let's look at their track record. We were harangued for months by the pearl clutchers in the media as they damn near fainted telling us how badly we needed to tie a deficit reduction package to the debt ceiling vote. Because you know, confidence and stuff! Well, we did that, and what did it get us? A credit rating downgrade, the Dow has its worst day since the financial crisis in 2008, and everyone flocks to Treasury securities because people are waking up to just how shitty the global economy has become. 

I know this may sound crazy, but perhaps we might send confidence boners if we actually pursued policies that resulted in GDP growth beyond 1% or meaningful job creation, none of these bullshit half measures like patent reform or tax credits for new hires. Or if one of our political parties wasn't barking mad and didn't actively oppose any measure that might actually improve the economy. 

I Would Do...Nothing

Kevin Drum:

Shorter Fed: The economy sucks really badly, but we're not going to do anything about it. Have a nice day! 

Shorter Republicans: Pain is good for you, so we're not going to do anything either. Or allow anyone else to do anything. See you next November! 

Shorter Democrats: We'd like to do something but there's nothing we can do. Sorry, folks! 

Shorter Obama: Prosperity is just around the corner. This time for sure. Clap louder!

I'll add further that all of the above players are gainfully employed with generous salaries, ample health benefits, never have to worry about retirement, and have little concern at the thought of losing their jobs since it would just mean an even more profitable gig on the media, bankster, or K Street circuit. And I am sure that these factors are not at all related to their complete reticence to do fucking anything and the lazy indifference in which they regard the bleak economic conditions that are absolutely savaging millions of Americans.

Teabaggers - Not the Sharpest Tools

Real murkins don't need no dat gum fedrul gubmint:

All that evil government spending that they love to demonize? The very livelihoods of their home states depend on it.

Morans. 

Shorter WSJ Op-Ed

The fastest way to regain our AAA bond rating is to proper fuck the poor and middle class. And hard. Also, the President should be less black and more like Jesus Ronald Reagan.

I wish I were kidding.

Foreign Aid - the "Good" Kind

Pundits have endlessly been comparing recent legislative battles to those of their counterparts in the 90s, both in terms of similarity and because that was the last time we had a Democratic administration and a Republican House. Here’s another unfortunate similarity:

The Horn of Africa region has been parched by the worst drought in 60 years and the United Nations now estimates that 12.4 million people are facing severe food shortages and are in desperate need of aid. 

But while the U.N. says $2.5 billion is needed to alleviate the suffering only a little over $1 billion has so far been committed by donor nations. On Monday the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, called on the international community to do more. 

“A little less than two weeks ago, we declared a famine in two regions of Somalia,” said Amos, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. 

“Unless we see a massive increase in the response, the famine will spread to five or six more regions. Tens of thousands of Somalis have already died, and hundreds of thousands face starvation,” she told a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Somalia doesn't look much different now from when we attempted to intervene in a similar situation 19 years ago. Ending foreign aid consistently polls well with the public as a means of reducing the deficit and government spending, even though it accounts for an infinitesimally small portion of the federal budget. And I get it – why should we spend money abroad when we can’t even fix our own problems at home? But crises like endemic famine in Somalia are the very types of things that we ought to be seeking to end with these funds (see this New York Times story for an idea of just how far the country has deteriorated). Pissing $3 billion a year down a hole so that Israel - a nation with a flourishing economy and universal healthcare no less - can buy freedom bombs and tanks and Apaches from US defense contractors? Not so much.

The Pivot to Jobs and WTF

Now that the debt ceiling debacle is over, I know the rest of us are supremely relieved to know that the Obama administration, having defanged and removed the deficit as a political tool for Republicans (can you pick up my sarcasm? Because I'm laying it on pretty thick), will begin its much heralded pivot to jobs and Winning the Future (WTF) and all that good stuff. So what could that possibly look like?

Here's a couple predictions - a few high-minded speeches, lots of talk of wholly weak policy, and not a lot of Congressional votes or other results. There are mentions of of this new pivot and WTF, some good and some incredibly stupid, but it is all but guaranteed that it will go no where. And a number of the policies that are being floated are completely inadequate and worse, ineffective on their face. Tax credits for hiring people? Really? Businesses have no fucking customers. Tax credits for would-be employers aren't going to do a damn thing when nobody has any money.

On the WTF front, we now have top administration officials endorsing cuts to Medicare and Social Security in order to liquefy those programs into fuel to ensure that the military industrial complex grinds on unvarnished in its current bloated state. That's an odd definition of a victorious future from a Democratic administration - a generation of Americans growing up with an even more frail version of our already pathetic safety net so that we can enjoy the Total Safety afforded by a shitload of tanks and jets and bombs that we don't fucking need. 

One of the primary reasons why the much anticipated pivot to jobs/WTF will be little more empty speeches and unkept promises lies in how the Obama administration has once again voluntarily bound its hands politically. In the debt ceiling deal, the parties agreed to create the altogether ridiculous congressional Justice League of sorts to gather 12 members of the non-Justice League congress (3 members per each party, from each chamber) to come together on future deficit reductions. This was part of the Obama administration's olive branch to liberals as he traded trillions of dollars in draconian budget cuts for the promise to once again talk sternly with Republicans about taxes at a future date. Our congressional caped crusaders will have until November to come together on additional deficit reduction measures otherwise a 'trigger' kicks in that will absolutely savage the Pentagon's budget, Medicare payments to healthcare providers, and other unspecified cuts. The idea is to entice Democrats to compromise by threatening general budget cuts, and to get Republicans to compromise by threatening the Pentagon. Yeah...there's just a few problems with this:

Republicans, for their part, are unlikely to appoint anyone who’s publicly supported including revenue as part of a debt deal, namely in the form of tax increases. That would eliminate even fiscal hawks such as Sen. Tom Coburn, who’s made new enemies on the right by saying revenue should be on the table. Many Hill watchers expect the GOP to appoint Rep. Paul Ryan, whose original 2012 budget plan set the hard-line tone for the incoming House Republicans. 

Other likely contenders include Sen. Jon Kyl, the minority whip who’s part of the Senate GOP leadership and is retiring in 2012, and Rep. Dave Camp, the staunch conservative chairman of the House Ways and Means committee....“No one from the Senate Gang of Six, who proposed tax increases, need apply,” the Wall Street Journal opined. “The GOP choices should start with Arizona Senator Jon Kyl and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, adding four others who will follow their lead.” 

On the Democratic side, fiscal hawks and centrists will probably back Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a member of Vice President Biden’s working group. Along with his Democratic colleagues in the Biden group, Baucus was willing to discuss painful spending cuts to Medicaid and food stamps while raising concerns about the impact of such changes to seniors and low-income Americans, according to sources close to the talks.

Weird - Republicans intend to appoint staunch anti-tax mouth breathing zealots, and the Democrats plan on appointing mealy mouthed centrists that value compromise regardless of the cost. And with the administration publicly opposing against any form of measurable defense cuts, what do you think the odds are of our Democratic members of the super congress Justice League pandering hand and foot to the no-new-taxes demands of the intransigent Republicans?

But beyond the fact that the modern Democratic party is filled with a bunch of rudderless pussies, what about the timing of all of this? The super committee is supposed to have its recommendations sent for a vote by November, otherwise the automatic budget cut trigger takes effect. Expect the next three months to be filled with wall-to-wall wrangling and media coverage over the Holy Shit Debt Deal Trigger Armageddon as both parties wring their hands and gnash their teeth and fail to reach agreement up until the very last minute when Democrats inevitably cave in order to avert disaster to the defense budget, because we can never be Completely Safe unless we drop a cool trillion on bombs and stuff. Aw shucks guys, we'll get them on taxes next time, you'll see. This should all sound mind numbingly familiar at this point. 

This now takes us to November with less than a year until the 2012 election and the economy still very much hemorrhaging just about any and every sign of positivity or hope, which is a feature of all of this, not a bug. As I have said numerous times before, the Republicans have been using manufactured crises to prevent any real action from being taken on the economy, and the Democrats have happily obliged them by playing along with their infantile antics. So what then? Well lucky for us, the Obama administration feels strongly that the economy will be all rosy and and super awesome come 2013. Why? Just because! By then the confidence fairy will have had a few extra months to sprinkle her magic dust on the free market to get it moving again. This is why the administration feels comfortable with what is very likely to be a very weak pivot to jobs - they have already bought into the ludicrous notion that everything will be booming again come 2013, despite the reams of economic theory and historical precedent that scream the opposite. Economic recoveries following financial crises are painful, slow, and long lasting, even more so when the government sits on the sidelines. It'll be just like the "summer of recovery" leading up to the midterms. And given the circumstances, and the stakes of next year, this seems like an odd time to be thinning the ranks of economists in the White House:

Heading into Obama’s reelection campaign, his group of economic advisers is taking on a shape far different from the earliest days of his presidency, when Obama surrounded himself with some of the best economic and financial minds — experts on economic crises and severe downturns.
Now he has far more people on his team who are steeped in the ways of Washington budget negotiations and debates over spending and taxes...Administration officials say the president has brought in members of the new team — such as Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council — skilled at passing economic policy in difficult economic environments. The officials pointed out that many other economists remain, including Jason Furman, a Harvard-trained economist who is Sperling’s top deputy.

In other words, the President has heard everything he needs to hear from prominent economic minds. The recovery is coming, we just need to wait for it, and in the meantime we've got a lot of people that are really savvy in the ways of cutting ridiculously one-sided deals with Republican hostage takers. 

Twelve months is an eternity in politics, and anything could feasibly happen between now and then. But for now, I'd say that 2012 is an enormous, terrifying wild card. The American electorate is overwhelmingly stupid and uninformed, and I fear the same voters that gave us the 2010 "shellacking" will be going for a repeat performance in 15 months. The President's advisers have calculated that independents want the government to spend less, but that interpretation is a misguided fallacy. Independents and voters of all stripes want results and economic security, and our current path of head-in-the-sand politics and embrace of austerity are not going to get us there. And when that happens, it's the party in power that bears the voter's anger at the ballot box. 

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

This is the level to which we've sunk:

Neener neener Obama! Palin did it first you big poopiehead!

I know a sitting president planning a bus tour in an election year is so similar to an aimless grifter/TV personality wandering aimlessly around with the media in tow, breathlessly awaiting her to do anything/something of importance.

Fear Monger Like It's 2004

Fuck this guy:

LIEBERMAN: I want to indicate today to my colleagues that Senator Coburn and I are working again on a bipartisan proposal to secure Social Security over the long term, we hope to have that done in time. To also forward to the special committee for their consideration. So, bottom line, we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world while we’re at war with Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11 and will be for a long time to come.

I guess he has a point - what use is a safety net if we're all DEAD from 9/11 times a thousand?! We won't have a future if we don't fight to protect its very existence through spending a trillion dollars annually on defense!

Sometimes the stupid gives me migraines.


UPDATE: Greenwald notes that our stalwart new defense secretary (confirmed by unanimous Senate vote), also thinks that we should fuck over our citizenry to finance more freedom bombs and our ridiculous bloated military complex:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade.
Senior Pentagon officials have launched an offensive over the past two days to convince lawmakers that further reductions in Pentagon spending would imperil the country’s security. Instead of slashing defense, Panetta said, the bipartisan panel should rely on tax increases andcuts to nondiscretionary spending, such as Medicare and Social Security, to provide the necessary savings.

We are just screwed.

Debt Deal Debacle

I'm altogether sick of hearing and reading about the completely predictable outcome of our latest manufactured fiscal crisis du jour, so I'll add a few points and be done with it.

If you haven't noticed yet, we're now deep into a rutted pattern of GOP manufactured legislative and fiscal crises. The most notable ones of recent memory were the extension of the Bush tax cuts at the end of last year, the ridiculous gridlock that ran us to the brink of a government shutdown earlier this spring, and now the recent summer showdown over the debt ceiling. In all three of these instances, the administration wholeheartedly and enthusiastically capitulated to congressional Republican demands, deigning to extract any significant concessions or even attempting to champion progressive policies. The short term extension of the Bush tax cuts added another $860 billion to the deficit at a time when the Republicans spent the prior 24 months bitching and screaming about the deficit and demanding that all legislation be deficit neutral. In return, the administration got an extension of unemployment benefits, something that should more or less be considered automatic at a time of unprecedented financial hardship and record unemployment.

The deal that averted a government shutdown in April, while much smaller than today's deal, was also constructed almost wholly on Republican terms. Again, it came down to all cuts to spending, with the day-to-day operations of the federal government held as a hostage. After the deal was cut, Obama himself championed it as an enormous success, while seemingly contradicting himself by admitting that some people were going to have to sack up and deal without support from certain programs (don't worry, none of those programs affect banksters or plutocrats). 

And that brings us to the debt ceiling debacle. Once again, the administration has accepted a deal torn straight from the pages of the GOP playbook - over $2 trillion in cuts, no new revenues. Additionally, we are now treated to the presence of some ludicrous super congressional committee that can ostensibly do nothing and bicker just like the real congress about how best to gut government spending in the face of anemic economic growth while ensuring the banksters and super wealthy never have to pay higher taxes. And we also have the added benefit of the fact that the administration voluntarily allowed the GOP to take the debt ceiling hostage despite numerous congressional Republicans admitting that they would never allow the government to exceed the debt limit, and that up until this point, the debt ceiling has always been a routine, albeit unpopular, legislative act with no strings attached (or hostages taken).

I'm not going to rehash the dead horse that is the "Obama is a shitty negotiator" meme. But at this point, it's apparent to me that these crises end the way they do because it's the result that Obama more or less wants. That's not a new observation either, but one that bears repeating in the wake of his typical "Aw shucks guys, I really tried" statements that inevitably follow these shit shows as he tries to smooth it over with the liberal base for which he clearly cares very little. Maybe it's easier to avoid disappointment in situations like these if you go into them with the realization that the President will just end up giving the Republicans 90% of what they demand.

And now that the latest hostage crisis has concluded and the issue of taxes once again postponed, the President assures us that he will fight for new revenues in the future. Mmm-hmm. I wonder how that will go? You know, given his already exemplary track record of tangling with congressional Republicans. And expect to see the same tactics employed by the Republicans. They keep getting exactly what they want, so why would ever they try anything else or act any differently?