I started a post the other day, and, as is often the case, didn't finish it. Until now, I've sort of reservedly liked Alan Grayson, a D congressman from Florida: he isn't shy about his liberalism and about calling bullshit when he sees it. Despite the fact that he's made it his theme song, referring to himself as "the congressman with guts," I guess I gave him a pass, since on some level it had been refreshing to see a congressional D who isn't a wimp. I'm now embarrassed to say I even gave him fifty bucks once.
"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell
"“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
Plato
"The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant" Robespierre
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Loser
I started a post the other day, and, as is often the case, didn't finish it. Until now, I've sort of reservedly liked Alan Grayson, a D congressman from Florida: he isn't shy about his liberalism and about calling bullshit when he sees it. Despite the fact that he's made it his theme song, referring to himself as "the congressman with guts," I guess I gave him a pass, since on some level it had been refreshing to see a congressional D who isn't a wimp. I'm now embarrassed to say I even gave him fifty bucks once.
No News Is Good News
Pretty dramatic. The meaning, as this article concludes, is exactly what has seemed obvious for a long time:
In other words, Democrats and Independents have changed their viewing habits only slightly while Republicans have flocked to Fox and dropped both CNN and MSNBC in droves. Back in 2000, it turns out, the viewing habits of all three groups were pretty similar. Since then, as Fox has steadily amped up its conservative branding, conservatives have decided that's all they want to hear. The echo chamber must be getting pretty deafening over there.
I've said, because it's true, that a fundamental difference between (today's) liberals and conservatives is that the latter seem to need constant reinforcement of their beliefs, and reject any fact-based threat to them. While not, I suppose, a universal truth, it most certainly applies to people of teabagging mindset. In droves.
There was a time, I admit, when I watched MSNBC religiously, for maybe a year. Then I tired of it. I lost interest in hearing the same people predictably say the same things, superficially, over and over. The loudness disturbed me, as did the uniformity. I realized I wasn't learning anything new. So I turned to the intertubes where the cacophony is deep and broad, but where, between the extremes of both sides there are sites full of thoughtful discussion and insight, by smart people with inquisitive minds.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Economical Stuff
According to numerous articles and economics segments from major media outlets, experts on banks and such have become increasingly concerned over a new extension or rates or a proposal or compromise that could signal fewer investments, and dollars, and so on.
The experts confirmed that the stimulus has played a role...
...The man, who also apparently mentioned the Nasdaq, the Dow, and the Japan one at some point or another, talked for a really long time about credit or reductions or possibly all these figures, which somehow relate to China...
...Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize for something in one of those economics categories, acknowledged in an editorial this week that the SEC must work closely with the stock market, Wall Street, and the New York Stock Exchange to maintain the bulls, bears, and opening bells. Krugman also said something could spur lending or trading or budgetary measures.
Greece was also involved.
You're welcome.
Bartlett Pares
I have occasionally noted that there remain a few sensible Republicans. Within that vanishingly small group is Bruce Bartlett, Reagan's chief economic adviser, to whom I've referred in the past. He keeps pouring the cold water of truth on the hot fire of right-wing rhetoric. Recently, titled "Reagan's Tax Increases," there's this:
It may come as a surprise to some people that once upon a time in the not-too-distant past Republicans actually cared enough about budget deficits that they thought raising taxes was necessary to bring them down. Today, Republicans believe that deficits are nothing more than something to ignore when they are in power and to bludgeon Democrats with when they are out of power.
That followed a statement, illustrated below, that made reference to:
the many tax increases supported and signed into law by Ronald Reagan, which eventually took back half of the 1981 tax cut
Some things in politics are simply so obvious that they ought not need stating. For example: to achieve sustainable fiscal sanity, we'll need a combination of tax hikes and spending reduction. Or this: health care reform will eventually require some form of public option that does not rely on insurance companies, and it will also need to include some sort of prioritizing of spending. Or this: lasting peace in the Middle East will include the relinquishing of some settlements and territory by Israel and the sharing of Jerusalem by the Palestinians.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Challenge
This op-ed in the NYT is a challenge to both parties, and seems a clarion call to America to think seriously about long-held partisan tenets before it slips into irrelevance. Among its assertions, this one is preceded by bemusement at the nomination of Christine O'Donnell:
...the pendulum swings in American politics are a key concern of Wen Jiabao and Naoto Kan, the prime ministers of China and Japan, respectively, who both met with President Obama in New York on Thursday, with the loss of American jobs to Asian competition high on the agenda.The Asian nations’ interest in American politics stems not just from America’s standing as the sole global superpower, but also from a growing belief among Asian leaders that the era of United States hegemony will soon be over, and that the polarization of its politics symbolizes America’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of global capitalism after the financial crisis. (emphasis mine, of course, since it's exactly my point, always, everywhere, all the time.)
At the core of the article is China's monetary policy, a thorn in the side of America's for some time.
With Chinese economic policy now serving as a model for other Asian countries, Japan was faced with a stark choice: back United States criticisms that China is artificially keeping down the value of its currency, the renminbi, or emulate China’s approach. It is a sign of the times that Japan chose to follow China at the cost of irritating America.
Japan’s action suggests that, in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the dominance of free-market thinking in international economic management is over... ...The fact is that the rules of global capitalism have changed irrevocably since Lehman Brothers collapsed two years ago — and if the United States refuses to accept this, it will find its global leadership slipping away. The near collapse of the financial system was an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment of revelation. In this climate, the market fundamentalism now represented by the Tea Party, based on instinctive aversion to government and a faith that “the market is always right,” is a global laughingstock. (mine, of course, again.)
Lest the reader think the writer, the chief economist for a Hong Kong investment firm, is some sort of lefty liberal, he also says this:
In France, Germany, Japan and Sweden, water supplies, highways, airports and even postal services are increasingly run by the private sector. For home mortgages to be backed by government guarantees would be unthinkable anywhere in Asia or Europe. Tax systems, too, are in some ways less redistributionist in Europe and Asia than they are in the United States. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the proportion of income tax raised from the richest tenth of the population is 45 percent in America, compared with only 28 percent in France and 27 percent in Sweden. These countries raise money for public services mainly from middle-class voters, through consumption and energy taxes, not by soaking the rich.
As a result, these nations’ budgets are more stable and their governments have more ability to support their economies in times of crisis... ...In America, by contrast, the tax system’s dependence on revenues from the richest citizens means that the social safety net and long-term goals like energy independence can be achieved only if the rich keep getting richer.
It's not necessary to be an economic scholar to recognize the implication that our polarization and reliance on comfortable sloganeering-as-dialog is killing us, and not all that slowly.
We need to stop electing idiots as lawmakers (which means, sadly -- because it appears impossible -- that we need more people to become thoughtful and informed voters). It's bad enough that we have smart idiots like Harry Reid and ... let's see... who's a smart idiot on the right?... It's worse to have thoroughly dumb ones like John Boner, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Mitch McConnell, Christine O'Donnell, Tom Coburn (yes, there are dumb doctors. Rand Paul is another)... And if there are fewer dumb Democrats (I make a distinction between annoying/disappointing and dumb), the article suggests they, too, need to consider options beyond their usual solutions.
Clearly, whether the NYT writer is right or wrong, these are complex issues, indicating our future is intertwined with that of countries seemingly light-years ahead of us in ability to function in a changing world. And yet the harder it gets the more Americans resort to superficialities. When the going gets tough, we turn to magic. In need of serious, we choose stupid. We make up conspiracy theories, resort to arguing birth certificates and secret Muslims, resurrect zombies.
What do you call such avoidance? Is it some sort of psychological protective mechanism, the weakness of the self-deluded? Is it that poorly educated people awash in falsehoods simply are no longer equipped to face facts? Is it that while we chant "USA, USA, USA," and "We're number one, we're number one" (and "no mosque at ground zero") other countries have been out-studying and out-working and out-thinking us? Have the easy magic of Reaganomics and the cultivating of religious anti-intellectualism, so cynically nurtured by Republicans, finally come back to bite us, fatally? So it seems.
I guess I do I know what to call it:
Suicide.
Worth A Read
There's a great interview of President Obama coming out in Rolling Stone. It contains such gems as this, from our America-hating, foreign, Muslim-in-Chief, speaking of when Bob Dylan played at the White House:
Here's what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you'd expect he would be. He wouldn't come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn't want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn't show up to that. He came in and played "The Times They Are A-Changin'." A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I'm sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don't want him to be all cheesin' and grinnin' with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.
At the end of the interview, the President had this to say:
One closing remark that I want to make: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we've got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.
The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.
Everybody out there has to be thinking about what's at stake in this election and if they want to move forward over the next two years or six years or 10 years on key issues like climate change, key issues like how we restore a sense of equity and optimism to middle-class families who have seen their incomes decline by five percent over the last decade. If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election. And right now, we are getting outspent eight to one by these 527s that the Roberts court says can spend with impunity without disclosing where their money's coming from. In every single one of these congressional districts, you are seeing these independent organizations outspend political parties and the candidates by, as I said, factors of four to one, five to one, eight to one, 10 to one.
We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that's what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we've got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place.
If you're serious, now's exactly the time that people have to step up.
I'm sure the RWS™ will take him to task, finding ways to make everything he said into proof of his Muslim secretness and destroying Americaness. But the whole interview should be read by everyone, especially his detractors. Were they to do so with an open mind, they'd see a deeply thoughtful and intelligent man, trying to make the best among a bunch of complex to the point of impossible choices. And whereas they are certain to suggest he's blaming everything on George Bush, there are certain facts that can't be screamed away: he DID inherit a mess -- more of a mess than any president with the possible exception of FDR. But FDR fixed the economy, in part, by entering a war. BHO came to two wars which were wrecking the economy and which simply couldn't be fixed by wishing them away. Easier to start a war than to end one, although it's evidently not that hard to start one and ignore another.
Just ask George Bush
Make 'Em Laugh
Sarah Palin, to the great guffaws and hoots of the misled, likes to ask, referring to Obama supporters, "How's that hope-y change-y stuff working out for ya?" Funny material. A peak experience for teabaggers, that. Those stupid liberals, wanting to believe things might change.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Adult Toys
Philosophy
Being separated by a thousand miles, my brother and I don't see each other much except, as in the present case, when we gather at my mom's bedside for the latest crisis. (This one seems to be passing, allowing her to return to the ever-ravenous dementia which has eaten most of her past, present, and long-since, her future.)
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Uh Oh
Friday, September 24, 2010
Jon Says It Better
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
Postcards From the Pledge | ||||
www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
|
And this won't get any laughs at all.
Hook, Line, And Sinker
Speaking of bullshit (and I was) there's the latest exercise in deception known as the Republican "Pledge To America." I don't doubt that teabaggers will love it, because it's exactly their thing: lots of hot words with no cold details.
Given the gravity of the debt crisis, this is the most fiscally irresponsible document ever offered by the GOP. It is to the far right of Reagan, who raised taxes and eventually cut defense, and helped reform social security to ensure its longterm viability. It is an act of vandalism against the fiscal balance of the US, and in this global economic climate, a recipe for a double-dip recession and default. It is the opposite of responsible conservatism.
Andrew Sullivan is a reasonable guy. Then there's this, titled "Perhaps The Most Ridiculous Things To Come Out Of Washington Since George McClellan," from one of the more crazy with a capitol "K" RWS™ bloggers:
These 21 pages tell you lots of things, some contradictory things, but mostly this: it is a serious (ed. note: I assume he meant "series") of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama...
...This document proves the GOP is more focused on the acquisition of power than the advocacy of long term sound public policy. All the good stuff in it is stuff we expect them to do. What is not in it is more than a little telling that the House GOP has not learned much of anything from 2006.
It's the same old crap: cut taxes, add military spending, and miraculously balance the budget; ie, Reaganomics, so accurately called by the first George Bush, "voodoo economics." Was then, is now.
What makes the above conservatives so foamy at the mouthy is that it completely avoids spelling out any cuts that would be made to achieve balance, except to end the stimulus money, which is already scheduled to end. As usual, it avoids stating the consequences of their tax policies, or their vision for what government should actually do, and not do. The reason, of course, is that no one would buy it if it were laid out for all to see. More than that: congressional Rs don't actually want to do what they say they do. They've never done it. There's only one president in memory who actually did produce a balanced budget and a healthy economy. Then he blew it. (Well, it wasn't he who did the actual blowing.)
The pledge is as bogus as it is cynical. It's as empty as it is dishonest. It's weak tea.
Which means it'll work like a charm for its intended purpose, which is most certainly NOT to restore fiscal balance: hook the teabaggers, line the pockets of the powers behind the curtain, and sink the rest of the country.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
It's A Natural Fact
An ant mill tea party rally is a phenomenon where a small group of army ants gullible people separated from the main foraging party reality lose the pheromone track their ability to think for themselves and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle. The ants country will eventually die of exhaustion self-inflicted wounds. This has been reproduced in laboratories and the behaviour has also been produced in ant colony simulations.[1] This phenomenon is a side effect of the self-organizing structure of ant colonies continual propagandizing of Fox "news" and other RWS™. Each ant teabagger follows the ant in front of it lead of Glenn Beck, and this will work until something goes wrong and an ant mill forms actual solution is required.[2] An ant mill was first described by William Beebe who observed a mill 1,200 feet (365 m) in circumference. It took each ant 2.5 hours to make one revolution.[3] Similar phenomena have been noted in processionary caterpillars and fish.[4]
[edit]
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Pretty Good
This is a pretty good overview of the new health care law. Fair and balanced, one might say. Since it's in cartoon form, with hardly any big words, maybe even teabaggers could force themselves to watch it. Have an actual basis for their rage, be able to point to specifics and to address counter arguments. Have an actual Beck-free discussion.
Solution
The Bush tax cuts, which have so devastatingly plunged us into debt -- debt, by the way, over which teabaggers and the RWS™ and every R in Congress are apoplectic -- are set, by design, to expire at the end of this year. By design. By law. The way George Bush, guided, as we now know, by God, intended.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Idea Men
These are the guys -- and their ideas -- that teabaggers are rolling back into command. Mitch McConnell proposes a tax plan that will add 3.9 billion dollars to the national debt. Says WaPo:
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently forecast that a similar, slightly more expensive package that includes a full repeal of the estate tax would force the nation to borrow an additional $3.9 trillion over the next decade and increase interest payments on the national debt by $950 billion. That's more than four times the projected deficit impact of President Obama's health-care overhaul and stimulus package combined.
What signs, I wonder, will the teabaggers stick on their kids when this plan is in effect, and this philosophy becomes the guiding principle of our nation? And, unless these baggers are richer than they appear, they'll be falling even further behind when it happens. But they don't care.
...Thus, to balance the budget McConnell would have to slash the rest of the federal government in half. If you are tea partier, that probably sounds pretty good. But let’s look at what that would mean.
The biggest remaining program is, of course, Social Security. It happens that projected Social Security spending in 2020 is almost exactly equal to the $1.2 trillion McConnell would need to balance his budget. But the vast bulk of that money would go to those who are already 60 or older and there are no serious proposals to make substantial reductions in benefits for those retired or close to it. The one change that might—slowing annual cost of living benefit increases —would reduce total payments by only about 4 percent by 2040. So there isn’t going to be much dough there, especially as soon as 2020.
What’s left? Well, McConnell would have to abolish all the rest of government to get to balance by 2020. Everything. No more national parks, no more Small Business Administration loans, no more export subsidies, no more NIH. No more Medicaid (one-third of its budget pays for long-term care for our parents and others with disabilities). No more child health or child nutrition programs. No more highway construction. No more homeland security. Oh, and no more Congress. No more nothin’.
We’re not talking about a temporary 1995-like government shut-down here. We are talking about a government that exists only to fund national defense, provide benefits to the already- or soon-to-be retired, and pay interest to the Chinese and our other lenders.
[...]
As my Tax Policy Center colleagues Rosanne Altshuler, Katie Lim, and Bob Williams have written, balancing the budget by raising taxes on high-income people alone is unrealistic. But as my little exercise shows, it is equally absurd to try to do it by only cutting spending, especially when you try to work within McConnell’s self-imposed constraints.
McConnell himself won’t say how he’d pay for these ongoing tax cuts. He does back a freeze in domestic discretionary spending—an idea that would leave him about 93 percent short of his balanced budget goal. As to the rest, he says he’ll await Obama’s deficit reduction commission that will report, conveniently enough, after the election.
The Message Is Medium (at best)
In the case of health-care reform, the Democrats have pretty clearly failed to communicate what their reforms are. It's frankly amazing that after a year-long health-care debate that dominated the mainstream media and blogosphere, many Americans don't seem to know that the Affordable Care Act bars insurers from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions. But this isn't just a superficial public-relations issue for the Democrats. It's the product of a deeper malady affecting the party. Democrats seem to be unable to craft policies that deliver clear results in a fashion which voters can understand and vote on. That's because the policy-making process that takes place among Democratic legislators is so open to compromise, amendment, interest-group giveaways, and bank-shottery that the party's big programmes end up lacking coherence, not just in their details, but in their basic goals and values.
When voters who want to repeal the Democrats' health-care reforms find out that this would mean insurance companies could refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, half of them don't want to repeal the reforms anymore.
Since I'll never stop saying it until it stops being true, I'll never stop saying it: Congressional Democrats could screw up and complicate saying hello. And it isn't just because they're out-messaged (although gods and goddesses know they are); it's for the reasons above. Their legislation, while hearted in the right place, is full of crap that ought not be there.
In the case of Rs, their legislation has been nearly universally wrong-headed and disastrous to our economy. But they manage to keep focused on their goal: if they want to screw everyone else if it's what it takes to further enrich themselves, they're sharp as assassins at doing it; and, witchcraftily, to achieve public buy-in.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Oh, Crap!
I think I just figured something out. Blogger has made some tweaks to comment controlling, including a worse-than-nothing spam filter. I still get plenty of spam comments which I have to mark as spam. But that's not my point.
Genius
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Just Wondering...
Washington's only Jewish high school was defaced Thursday night by anti-semitic graffiti, including swastikas and references to gas chambers.Members of a congregation that meets at Northwest Yeshiva High School on Mercer Island discovered the vandalism Friday morning, said Rabbi Bernie Fox, head of the school.Fox suspects the vandals were aware that this evening marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement when Jews pray and seek forgiveness for wrongdoings.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Saturday's Child
Recently, I played catch with my brother-in-law. First time in a very long time. Dug out the old glove, held that perfect white ball in my hand, spun it around to the seams, tossed it back and forth for a while. Relishing the snap of leather, the familiar sting, thinking of chasing down the ball when I threw it past my dad. This time, my aim was better, and it felt really good.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Lines In The Sand
Voter malpractice will injure nation When I was in the practice of surgery, had I severely damaged a patient by poor care, the last thing the patient or her family would do when they needed another operation would be to come to me. And yet that logic has escaped those (including, now, the editorial board of The Herald, in its rejection of Rick Larsen) who would return majority power to congressional Republicans and their undeniably failed economic theories.I suppose it can, in part, be explained by the constant bombardment with disinformation from the screamers of the right-wing airwaves. A majority of tea party people, for example, believe the bank bailouts happened on Obama’s watch. Similarly, they’ve been taught to ignore the fact that the vast majority of projected national debt is the result of Bush’s tax cuts and his unpaid-for wars and other spending. But if it’s an explanation, it’s no excuse. Just as proper medical decision-making assumes informed input from patients, democracy demands educated voters. The distractions of birth certificates and mosques, deliberately fomented by the foxy falsifiers to prevent facing facts about what happened to our economy and why, threatens us all. Having spent a long career where the well-being of my patients was paramount, it’s all but unbelievable to me as I observe the carelessness with which people are about to turn our country back over to those whose policies have so grievously harmed it, and who have so selfishly and unanimously refused to help those trying to bind the wounds. Sid Schwab Everett |
Seriously Unserious
The teabagger-endorsed candidate in my congressional district has a real chance of winning, against a pretty mainstream and fairly thoughtful Democrat. In his latest ad, he says he wants to lower taxes and balance the budget. Cool. With a deficit of over a trillion, which would go up with further tax cuts, that's a lot of spending reduction. How would he do it? Doesn't say. Won't say. Can't say.
O'Donnell is a creature of an age in which politics have no meaning beyond performance art. She is the Creature from the Green Room, with no apparent public career beyond being available whenever some teenage booker from the cable shows needed someone to say something reliably stupid. ...
Her résumé is so thin as to be opaque, and a lot of it seems to be a lie. She seems to be something of a deadbeat, and "U.S. Senator" seems to be her idea of an entry-level position. This morning, she stands one step away from the job.
She is what politics produces when you divorce politics from government. She is what you get when you sell to the country that nothing government can do will help, and that the government is an alien thing, and that politics is nothing more than the active public display of impotent grievance.
She is what politics produces when you turn it into a game show and the coverage of it over to a generation of high-technology racetrack touts. She is what you get when political journalism reduces politics to numbers on a scoreboard, divorcing it from the real-world consequences of what are increasingly seen as cute little eccentric decisions.
She is what politics produces when we abandon self-government for self-gratification. And that's the real obvious irony in her victory on Tuesday night, and the only thing about it that truly matters. Christine O'Donnell's campaign is a successful exercise in angry, misfit masturbation, with as little to do with the deadly problems this country faces as some guy wanking in the balcony of a grindhouse has to do with Romeo and Juliet.
We're in the age of politics as aggrievement and accusation, of substituting pouts and provocations for policy. In times that demand seriousness from all parties, one has abandoned it entirely, to the delight of -- at the behest of -- its supporters. (Nor do I have a heck of a lot to say for the weak-kneed congressional dems, afraid, evidently, to do the most obvious -- and, ironically, poll-supported -- of tax hikes. Stupid meets pathetic. Equals screwed.)
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