Things you won't see on TV

Why is it only bloggers post context like this? Bob Cesca's Chart of the Day would seem relevant to the discussion in a sane world.

Remember the GOP's great concern about the national debt during the Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations? Me neither.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

GOP: Special Victims Unit

Been a while since I've linked to, or even watched a Jon Stewart segment. This one is especially good:

The Daily Show - GOP - Special Victims Unit
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

In case the video doesn't work in your browser, here's a direct link to the segment. And it being a Sunday, a few more easy links for your amusement.

The Tea Party held a rally in DC the other day to protest Boehner trying to pass a debt ceiling bill. Louie Gohmert addresses the crowd. I'd note that I saw a couple of different TV reports on this rally. None showed the crowd, nor mentioned its size.

This is a amateur video. It's a bit long at 4 minutes, but really well done. I lasted all the way through. You might like it too. "Legend of the Tea Party Patriots"

A couple of great photos. A plane flying in front of a rainbow. And awesome rainbow over the Empire State Building after some sideways rain.

Didn't watch this yet, but trust Hudsonette's RTs completely. Video report on Mongolia's wild horses.

Finally if you're a fan of Edward Hopper's work and I certainly am, you can page through one of Hopper's sketchbooks at the Whitney Museum website.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Details, details

Having trouble engaging my inner optimist today. I mean, cruise any news aggregator and look at the headlines. It's all about the debt ceiling fight. The stenography is excellent. You'll find out in initimate detail who is saying what about the fight. There's a wealth of "expert" speculation about who is most embarrassed, what it means for their power to rule, who gets the most campaign advantage and so forth, ad nauseum.

What you're not seeing, anywhere, is what the actual bills say. Outside of rumors from unnamed inside sources, and by now everyone should realize how unreliable those are, not one detail about what specifically is on the table for cuts. It's all theater from the hallowed halls of Capitol Hill to every newsroom in the nation. Especially the TV newsrooms The average marginally engaged voter knows only what the polticians are saying, but is left clueless about the real world results of the competing proposals. Know I'm stating the obvious, but this does not make for an informed electorate nor does it lead to good governance.

Meanwhile, I watch the big media folks I follow on Twitter sneer at the idea that any of this dysfunction is on their heads. But their coverage belies their denials. The 24/7 news cycle has broken our information chain. The rush to fill white space with unfounded rumors fuels confusion and creates needless mass freakouts. By the time the real story comes out, the majority of the electorate still has no idea what really happened while half-truths and outright lies become accepted "truths" because most people only caught part of the frenzied speculation but missed the barely mentioned corrections in all the chaotic, hit chasing, rhetoric.

Nothing is going to change until the media admits their culpability or we deconsolidate the media conglomerates so they don't have control of the narrative anymorel.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Disgusted and amused

I'm so tired of the kabuki today. Got my serious, try to educate the wrong-headed masses posts at DetNews this morning. But you high denominator readers already know the score, so here's something I just picked up from Lizzie O'Leary on twitter just now, offered up to Congress as their new theme song.



Thought it was the perfect choice. And besides, always did love Gladys.

Screw centrism

Krugman is still scolding the media for their lazy "both sides do it" journalistic malpractice. Worth a read in full, but this graf echoes what I've been tweeting at the media guys I follow:

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

Exactly. It's not like any politician is completely innocent in the breakdown of our political process but they're normalizing extremism by pretending there is some sort of balance. It's not only wrong and lazy, it really is destroying civil society.

Meanwhile, no false equivalency for me. My con "fans" at DetNews have been reduced to nearly constant blithering about Weiner in lieu of any logical response to my flurry of posts.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Zero equivalence

Not often I feel like quoting Joe Klein, but even as he admits he loves himself a good Democrat bashing, he says this:

There is zero equivalence here. The vast majority of Democrats have been more than reasonable, more than willing to accept cuts in some of their most valued programs.


The Republicans have been willing to concede nothing. Their stand means higher interest rates, fewer jobs created and more destroyed, a general weakening of this country’s standing in the world. Osama bin Laden, if he were still alive, could not have come up with a more clever strategy for strangling our nation.

No doubt in my mind. Osama bin Laden is surely laughing uproariously from his watery grave.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Billion Dollar Coins and Exploding Options -- oh my!

By Capt. Fogg

Maybe the President can't simply cite the 14th amendment and raise the debt ceiling, maybe he can -- but does the Constitution provide a paddle? Must he allow the Tea Party to shut down the government as the more mainstream Republicans attempted to do in 1995 during the Clinton administration?

You remember President Clinton, don't you, the guy that the snickering snarkmongers told us would only serve one term, who would destroy capitalism, plunge us into debt and start fake wars simply to allow him to become a dictator. I'm sure the parallels are coincidental. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

But Obama, even if if no Clinton, ( for better or worse) may still have options, says Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School. The Constitution has as many loopholes as the Tea Party has loonies, although some of them are as arcane as something out of the Da Vinci Code. There's the Platinum Coin gambit and the exploding Option Strategy, for instance.

Even so, all may not be lost for 14th amendment solution protagonists, like Bill Clinton and a few others says Balkin.

"If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question for either reason, Section 4 comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances."

Balkin likens this dispute to recent attempts to topple the president over his ability to use the military to protect the national interest or in emergencies.

"If the courts won't intervene in the Libya affair, they probably won't intervene here."

But regardless of your opinion on the best way to beat back the barbarians, (whichever side you think they're on, Balkin's CNN exclusive interview is great reading and gives a glimmer of hope that the Constitution will do what it was designed to do, protect us.

GOPer Joe Walsh: Real 'Murkins skip out on child support

Tea Party freshman, Rep. Joe Walsh shrugs off 117K in unpaid child support. No big deal he says, that's "real America" for you. Apparently in his "real America" it's just fine for deadbeat Dads to fail to support their kids while taking European vacations with their girlfriends and loaning their campaigns 35K here and there.

This is the same guy, who made this viral video about the fake debt crisis in DC:

“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order.

To be fair, the support arrears is in dispute. He claims he only owes about 10K, which of course totally justifies the vacations, the loans and the high priced rent he pays for a new home in a tony neighborhood for his current family. But not so easy to write it off as a domestic dispute given Walsh's history of fiscal irresponsibility.

He lost a 300K condo for failure to pay the mortgage, there are, or were, liens on his property from unpaid bills and a former staffer is suing him for 20K in unpaid salary. This is the guy who is holding the US economy hostage unless he gets to force his vision of "fiscal responsibility" into law. We're so screwed.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Shouting into the wind

This is why progressives can't have nice things. Most of the leading lights of the "professional left" are busy discussing exactly what strategy the idiots on Captiol Hill are going to use to one-up each other on the stupid debt ceiling fight today. Or they're bitching about how Obama is selling us out or mocking the crazy con hypocrisy of the day. But they ignored Rep. Jerrold Nadler's terrific public statement on the need for more spending and higher corporate taxes.



This was posted by Brent Bozel's lunatic wingnut media news center, so I'm not linking to his piece, but the only lefty I've seen even mention it is Steve M who rightly laments that the only ones focusing on proactive arguments for sane policy seem to be old people.

Maybe I'm just cranky today, but it seems young activists prefer to engage in battles that end only in rhetorical victories these days. Sadly, the concept of working to build up good ideas rather than wasting energy on tearing down bad ones appears to have gone out of style.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The Monster Mash

I seem to recall some of us DFHs warning these guys this would happen back when they were throwing money into the campaigns.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent millions of dollars last year helping elect Republicans to Congressional seats, is struggling to convince the House it helped to build that the debt ceiling must be increased.

The chamber and other business groups have pressed with increasing urgency for Congress to raise the maximum amount that the government can borrow. They have cataloged the consequences of default at meetings, parties and dinners and over drinks.

Of course they ignored us because they always do and because they were just so sure they could control the monster. And they waited so long to step forward because before their own, personal, Frankenstein realized its own power, it was doing their bidding.

Mr. Axelrod said business groups were constrained by their desire to win the support of House

freshmen on other issues, including the trade agreements and efforts to roll back regulation.

“I just think that there was, at least on the part of the chamber, a reluctance to tangle with, or pressure, the same group in the House that they’re depending on to gut financial reform and undo environmental regulation and so on,” he said. “But I think the gravity of the situation is now clear.”

As the saying goes, "Payback's a bitch." Sadly, we'll all pay the price but maybe it will be worth it to witness the implosion. Via Greg Sargent, who rounds up the latest in the wacky world of GOP in disarray.

Meanwhile, TPM runs down the players and floats a rumor that the Galtian overlords are about to destroy their monster. Good luck with that. Not sure they have enough firepower.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Both sides do it

Made the mistake of watching the White House press briefing yesterday. I shouldn't do that. I always end up really pissed off at the prima donnas in the front rows. It makes me want to send rude tweets begging someone, anyone, please march over and slap that smug demeanor off Chuck Todd and Ed Henry's pudgy faces.

But the whole disrespectful, self-involved arrogance is beside the point. It wouldn't matter if they were actually informing the public, but they're not. They're just building a false, and somewhat cowardly, narrative that allows them to create an illusion of neutrality. As if their bias isn't revealed by what they choose to ignore.

Both sides don't do it, dammit. Krugman articulates the danger of their indolence well in this post. Read it at the link. But his closer gets to the real root of why our political discourse is so misinformed.

You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.

And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.

I'm so old I can remember when newscasters reported mostly on policy instead of mainly focusing on horserace and gossip. Experts were chosen based on their knowledge rather than their photogenics and ability to deliver "colorful" commentary, regardless of its verity. Of course, in those days, the news programs weren't expected, or required, to deliver profits for the corporation. They were regarded as a public service.

Today, the news delivery has changed, but the audience hasn't. The vast majority of the voters don't have the time or inclination to obsessively search the internets for context. For the most part they don't realize the context is missing. Many, especially the elderly, still believe they're not allowed to lie on TV, so they take the false narratives on faith. They simply don't know their trusted news sources can no longer be trusted.

This is why our system of governance, and indeed civil society itself, is failing. Sadly, I don't see it changing as long as there is such big money to made on "both sides do it" journalism. To paraphrase the old saw, "It's difficult to convince a man he's the problem, when his livelihood depends on believing he's not."

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Taking the 14th

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

14th Amendment, US Constitution
____________

Now, I'm no lawyer, which means that I generally take such statements at face value and have no knowledge of what pretzels they've been twisted into by various courts in various cases, but it seems to me that if congress can't question the validity of our public debt, then congress can't refuse to pay it or more importantly say it's only valid under a certain amount authorized by Congress after they've already deemed it legal. What do you think?

I hate to bring up the constitution at a time when the Tea Bag Patriots are pretending to worship it while claiming that those who would like to actually conform to it are "shredding it" but the situation is getting serious.

Of course this whole controversy is about "taking down" the president we elected by a good margin and replacing him with a Tea Party Republican of their choice hell bent not on reducing the debt, but killing Social Security, Medicare, all forms of welfare and any protection for the public against the health insurance cartel -- and all to make sure people like me can put an extra tank of fuel into the yacht every now and then thus creating jobs in the Bahamas and Taiwan.

After all they raised the debt ceiling every year a Republican was in office since the beginning of the Reagan administration and authorized Bush's massive debt explosion like a well disciplined private army. Remember when "debt doesn't matter" was the slogan? No? Well I do.

"Obama would be impeached if he blocked debt payments"

says Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and he'd also be impeached if he invalidated the debt ceiling based on the 14th amendment, says Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) Talk about a poker player with a 'tell.' Might as well lay the cards on the table.

It's all about impeachment and all about finding some flimsy excuse or forcing the president into a position where they will impeach him if he does and impeach him if he doesn't. No more revolting, I guess than impeaching one for asking his secretary not to tell his wife he was having an affair. Talk about insurrection and rebellion! No sooner did we lose the Cold War gravy train then we embarked on the Cold Secession.

President Clinton of course told us recently that he wouldn't hesitate to use the 14th to raise the debt ceiling and "force the courts to stop me." You'll remember of course the attempts to impeach him on any pretext and how the talk of the "failure of the Clinton Presidency" preceded the Clinton Presidency and how he would certainly be a one term president and how his tax policies would bankrupt the economy. They hope you won't remember, of course because we're hearing the same damned bullshit again.

"I think the Constitution is clear and I think this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.”

said Bill Clinton to The National Memo last week. No wonder slimy things like the Newt are challenging the constitutional basis for even having a Supreme Court.

Meanwhile that 3% extra tax cut I get on anything I earn over $250,000 is going to prompt me to create jobs for those struggling people now paying for the longest, most expensive wars in American history while losing their houses, jobs, medical insurance waiting for the Voodoo to kick in and save us all -- and all will be fine just in time for a Tea Party president. I can feel it in my bones.

We're doomed

Very interesting inside info on the debt ceiling fight from Dennis G at Balloon Juice this morning. Do read the whole post, but here's the relevant dynamic:

Over the weekend I went to a dinner in Washington. There were quite a few folks there from both Parties. And it was not a big surprise to find out that some of them were involved in negotiations about the debt ceilings and other matters. It was an topic of conversation. When I asked what was happening and what might happen, several folks mentioned that the key to understanding debt fight and John Boehner was to understand that he is fighting with Cantor for his political life. [...]

If Boehner survives this manufactured crisis, a new one will begin the moment it is resolved and fresh knives will be sharpened. Orange John walks with an expiration date and a target stamped on his back. Whatever happens, I expect that Boehner will resign to spend more time with his family in the near future.

And then we will have Speaker Cantor and the fun can really begin.

Of course, it's been obvious from day one that Cantor wanted Boehner's job. He's been sharpening that long knife waiting for the opportunity to use it for a long time now. And not to forget, Cantor is ruthless and he doesn't give a damn if we default. He stands to make a killing on a default, having invested in shorting US notes.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Small moments of truth in unexpected places

Didn't expect to find this in Chuckie Todd's newsletter. Refreshingly honest context at MSNBC:

*** But remember: Republicans started this fight: All of this finger-pointing, posturing, and politics -- with the U.S.’s credit rating at stake -- have generated a considerable disgust at Washington, at both Democrats and Republicans. But it is important to note that Republicans started this fight by tying deficit reduction to the debt ceiling (when many of these same Republicans have voted for clean debt-ceiling hikes in the past). The president and his party have indicated their willingness to pay the ransom -- with some concessions -- but Republicans won’t accept it. The irony to all this is that Republicans have won the larger argument they started; they just haven't figured out how to declare victory. What seems to upset many Republicans is how the president (using the bully pulpit) got to the right of them on deficit reduction. Of course, now both parties have a lot on the line, the president doesn't want to look like he can't lead, even a broken Washington, and the Republicans want to prove they can govern.

Not so sure about that last part. Don't think GOPers care about governance, appearance or otherwise. They're writhing in the chaos of their own making at the moment and too panicked to care about anything except how to blame this mess on Obama.

Meanwhile, Obama is pissing off the lefties with all these concessions, but in this short retrospect, getting to the right of the GOPers is beginning to look like a brilliant strategy to me. Particularly since it seems like they're too paralyzed by the infighting to take the deal. They can't figure out how to say yes without letting Obama destroy their whole 2012 campaign narrative. I can't hate that.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Why the GOPers won't deal on the deficit

It's painfully apparent to anyone paying attention that the GOPers don't really want to eliminate the deficit. In fact, as is obvious to everyone but their deluded base, every move they make is calculated to increase it, at the expense of ordinary, working class Americans.

Quote of the day on this is buried at the end of this horserace, Village CW piece on "Obama's gamble."

“The deficit favors Republicans. But if it seems like it’s been solved, then you take away one of the biggest Republican issues and at worst you neutralize it and at best you win it.” ~Jim Kessler, vice president for policy and a co-founder of Third Way

Really. Without the deficit demagoguing, they got nothing to run on.

Cathartic

Apparently the twitter won't allow a hashtag with the dreaded f-word to trend, but other trackers of twitter activity showed the hashtag Jeff Jarvis invented this weekend exploded across the nation and beyond.

You may have noticed I tend to avoid dropping the f-bomb myself as a rule, but I tweeted #fuckyouwashington, and its companion #fuckyouGOP, a whole lot of times myself yesterday. Amazingly cathartic. Released a whole of lot of anger about our stupid political discourse and our "evil or stupid" overlords.

Of course, it didn't end the stupid. But it did make me feel better.

91 dead in Oslo

People have made it very clear to me that Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Murrah Federal building in 1995 was not a Christian, the connection between that vicious, inhuman act and the Waco, Texas incident notwithstanding. He couldn't be, you see, by virtue of the fact that he did such a thing.

It's too bad that Muslims who are horrified by terrorism aren't given the benefit of the same rationale, but I'm still waiting to hear about Anders Behring Breivik. Despite the initial prejudice that had the Oslo bombing and the murders at a Summer camp as the work of al Qaeda, it looks like Breivik, identified by a survivor as the attacker, was a Christian Conservative disturbed by the presence of other cultures, other religions, in Norway. Would he fit in with a spectrum of Americans, from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Tea Party, trying to promote our intentionally secular Republic as a "Christian nation" and perhaps an exclusively Christian nation?

How long can we go on pretending that religious tribalism of any denomination hasn't been and doesn't remain a potentially destructive, oppressive and communicable human vice?

Ex Nehil Nehilo Fit

George Packer writing in the New Yorker about the debt ceiling crisis and the ever more strained fault line running through Washington, reminds us of a quote usually attributed to Vladimir Lenin: "the worse, the better."

I rather think Lenin himself was quoting Georgi Plekhanov, when he wrote his essay Three Crises in 1917, but whatever the source and however Lenin used it, I tend to agree with Mr. Packer that we're looking at a planned destruction of our economy to serve a revolutionary cause that in some ways; in it's ideological blindness to practical consequences, looks so much like the Bolsheviks, it might cause liquid irony to condense into caustic clouds and rain down upon us.

Indeed the worse this manufactured crisis becomes, the more likely it is, at least in the minds of the radical right, to destroy the prospects of Obama and the Democrats as well as our national prospects, leaving the Tea Party, like roaches after a nuclear war, in charge of a withered State sure to become a wildly prosperous unregulated utopia. It seems a fatuous dream of course, to anyone who has read even a little about the aftermath of the 1918 revolution, but if you've read this far I shouldn't have to point it out. Out of a power vacuum, power comes.

Packer quotes Max Weber, writing only only two years later with regard to “the ethic of responsibility” versus “the ethic of ultimate ends” and it seems that little has changed in the course of human events since then -- at least in American events. The distinction

"between those who act from a sense of practical consequence and those who act from higher conviction, regardless of consequences."

describes our current struggle; unser Kampf, if you will.

" These ethics are tragically opposed, but the true calling of politics requires a union of the two."

Is there any doubt about into which group the "tax cuts and deregulation produce prosperity" and "the government is always the problem" people fall? Discussion of practical consequences can't be heard through the roar.

Such a political union is less foreseeable I think, than at any time in American History that I can call to mind and a complete rupture or a complete capitulation of the "ultimate responsibility" forces to the anarchists and nihilists may be the only possible outcome. Ex nihilo, nehil fit: out of nothing, nothing comes, no longer is supported by science, but in the world of governments and power and people, things are different -- and après ça, le déluge, of course.

Posted by Capt. Fogg

We are family

Sorry, I just can't blog today. Having a long overdue family reunion. Spent the day talking about Pokemon instead of politics. Just as complicated but much less evil.

Also, too, lost four straight games of War. You may remember that old card game. Admit, I cheated heavily to lose on the first three, to make it more fun and shorter. But actually lost the last one, fair and square. Tomorrow, Crazy Eights...


[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

West world

By Capt. Fogg

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, many of the ugliest Republicans told us that Democrats were "playing the race card" a mawkish cliché which means, I think, falsely accusing them of the racism they do really espouse. In other words, talking anal cysts like Limbaugh were having their pearls of wisdom denounced by the "politically correct" because you can't criticize a black man these days without being called a racist. It's a cheap dishonorable gambit, but like counterfeit money, it can be passed off on an uncritical populace.

An uncritical, astigmatic, angry and greedy American public seems to have had another bit of counterfeit money passed off it. Allen West, the Republican Congressman from the 22nd Congressional District right here in Florida, land of snakes, lizards, Teaturds, pollution and poisonous toads -- Allen West, one chromosome short of a tape-worm, says in his blog:

"I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool."

Well isn't that special? Indeed it's the one feature of that pretentious Club of Fools that keeps it in business: it allows the mentally under-endowed, cognitively incontinent circus clowns to challenge their betters and to assault us with ideas that don't hold water nearly as well as a worn out douche bag. The giggle gallery in the back of the class, mocking the teacher.

Indeed West, speaking from his teabag-buttressed platform of arrogated biological superiority seems to be of an intellect too limited to have noticed the irony of a black man appealing to the snobbery of the uneducated, ill-informed, probably stupid and definitely angry whites, and offering soothing delusions of genetic superiority in a grotesque parody of white supremacists from Montgomery to Munich. But then, when has any American been too stupid and dishonest to be someones hero?

There is indeed a tide in the affairs of men and there is an armada of those now afloat on that full sea of hate, not only using it for their own purposes but seeking to make it rise further until it drowns the land. Allen West is such a man, a man whom under ordinary circumstances would be a nobody, a flyblown bit of flotsam in a stagnant pool; but because of this tidal wave of fury, he can pretend to be a battleship and his flatus a volley of cannon. He can twist, misuse, misquote and invent, he can put on the white-face and wear a red tie, He can grin like Uncle Tom and mock like a monkey, but while honesty is within reach of all, what he pretends to is not.

Women from Planned Parenthood and the activist group Code Pink "have been neutering American men" he says and making them weak. West tells us this with his genetically based intellect still unaware of Dr. Strangelove and bodily fluids. Perhaps he himself is having problems with his manhood and this talk of virility and gene pools tells a cover story. Perhaps his politics serve as verbal Viagra for the intellectually impotent Representative. But I don't need to postulate such questions, the doctored Obama bumper sticker with the hammer and sickle tell us the whole, sick, sad, disgusting tale. Allan West is a whore. Allen West is Count Dracula's rat-eating Renfield, Allan West is a liar. Allen West, and for reasons probably too disgusting to contemplate, is trying to ruin everything good about the United States of America. So what do I do when I see that sticker? You don't want to find out.

The president, despite all appearances and lack of opposition to corporate abuse and capitalist excess is a "low-level socialist agitator" reciting "Marxist demagogic rhetoric." Is West describing himself again, or is he just grabbing bits from the instruction manual like a tent-meeting preacher with his mouth full of Jesus and a mind full of money? Obama is a Communist to the extent that John D. Rockefeller was a Communist and Bernie Madoff was a capitalist.

No, this high water mark of anti-government anger that produces foul and foetid things like Allen West and the Tea Party has little to do with genetics and everything to do with our national ignorance and our manufactured delusions; both fed and cultivated by the people who reap benefits in their billions and trillions by subverting the values of civilization and setting the dogs on the ever expanding masses. It's an old story, but in our new version, not all the dogs have four legs.

If this be treason, make the most of it!

The post title is a quote from the original Patrick Henry, a Founding Father of our Revolutionary Days. Fittingly, he hated the US Constitution as it was written. Today, his nominal namesake, North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry is also famous for a speech of sorts:

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) gained infamy in May when he went on a childish tirade against Professor Elizabeth Warren, who is currently setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a special adviser to President Obama. McHenry, a former College Republican hack, repeatedly accused Warren of lying about the agreed-upon time for testimony she gave before Congress.

Of course you know Warren is temporary head of the new Consumer Protection agency tasked with investigating the banksters. Looks like our present day "patriot" is cashing in on his little tirade:

According to a ThinkProgress analysis of new campaign finance data released on Friday, McHenry received $63,800 from lobbyists and executives from banks, mortgage companies, payday lenders, pawn shop executives, and other predatory lenders in the last three months alone. Notably, much of the campaign donations from payday lenders came on a single day, April 20, 2011.

As TP says, it appears he had a little fundraising party with these folks. The original Patrick Henry is most famous for uttering the words, "Give me liberty, or give me death." In the present day case, I suppose North Carolina's Patrick McHenry's slogan could be, "Give me money and I'll fight regulations to death."

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

True Grift

I hate to post about Griftzilla again, but I was amused by the reports that Palin's docudrama was a smash hit:

The film's distributor, ARC Entertainment, said the film averaged $5,000 per screen Friday and Saturday night, with sold-out screenings at several locations. ARC Entertainment said in a statement "... with the strong initial showing, the film is going to a wider release footprint later this month."

Somehow 5K per screen didn't sound like that impressive a take to me. It appears I'm not the only one who was amused. TBogg crunched the numbers and figures it works out to an average of 60 people per showing. Looks to me like the promoters don't want to admit it's a dog and, as the saying goes, are going to lose their shirts.

Save the Banksters at all costs

Dr. Krugman takes on the banksters this morning in looking at the proposed government settlement over foreclosure fraud:

Ever since the current economic crisis began, it has seemed that five words sum up the central principle of United States financial policy: go easy on the bankers. [...]

The big drag on the economy now is the overhang of household debt, largely created by the $5.6 trillion in mortgage debt that households took on during the bubble years. Serious mortgage relief could make a dent in that problem; a $30 billion settlement from the banks, even if it proved more effective than the government’s modification program, would not.

So when officials tell you that we must rush to settle with the banks for the sake of the economy, don’t believe them. We should do this right, and hold bankers accountable for their actions.

Read the link for the depressing details. These people should be going to jail, not being let off the hook with a slap on the wrist. It's just sick.

Which reminds me of recent Atrios post:

Save The Banksters, Save The World

If instead of all that free money for banks, we'd given free money to people on the condition they give it to the banks (paying down debts), we could have gotten through this mess.

But bad poor people don't deserve money, only rich banksters who tried to destroy the world.

This is a view I've seen in many quarters, on the left and the right. I don't trust the hardcore right any more than the next guy, but this is one issue on which I wish we could have banded together and taken to the streets with the proverbial torches and pitchforks. Thinking mass protests could have brought accountability in the absence of political will to do the right thing.

The will of the people

The GOPers keep saying they're holding the world economy hostage because everybody wants them to. They claim a mandate from "the people" who elected them. Well, that may be true enough, except according this poll that would be 21 percent of the people. Which is pretty much their lunatic Tea Party base who think letting the debt ceiling expire isn't any big deal. These are the same people who sneer at the experts and all those high falutin' brainiacs with their elite educations who are issuing dire warnings. They only believe Rush Limbaugh and hell, he's not worried.

Meanwhile, I had very little internet time this weekend so I haven't been able to follow the action closely but the Reid/McConnell deal in the Senate looks like a rotten deal to me. I can't believe Obama would sign off on it. From what I gather, it's three short term extensions. The GOPers don't have to vote for it and they made zero concessions on revenue but they got a bunch of odious cuts. All stuff Obama said he would veto.

If he caves on this one, he's toast in 2012.

Palin Documentary a box office bomb

You know I try to avoid talking about Griftzilla, but this is too funny, in a sad way. Palin's documentary debuted in California to an empty house. No really. Not a single person showed up to watch it except a reporter who wanted to interview the, as it turned out non-existent, audience.

Now to be fair, the Harry Potter movie opened that night as well, so maybe all the Palin fans went to that. Though I'm not aware that her "real Murkin base" are Potter fans, witchcraft and all that, maybe their kids begged to go. Or maybe they didn't want to battle the hordes of Potter fans. Still, rather an embarrassing opening night. Makes me wonder what happened in the other cities that were granted the privilege to screen it.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Enabling the Crazy

Sorry. Light posting this week. Traveling again and spending time with family so limited internet time till late next week. But for your morning's reading pleasure, Dr. Krugman tells off The Very Serious Punditrati who are now throwing themselves onto the fainting couch out of shock at how insanely intractable the GOPers have become:

Here’s the point: those within the G.O.P. who had misgivings about the embrace of tax-cut fanaticism might have made a stronger stand if there had been any indication that such fanaticism came with a price, if outsiders had been willing to condemn those who took irresponsible positions.

But there has been no such price. Mr. Bush squandered the surplus of the late Clinton years, yet prominent pundits pretend that the two parties share equal blame for our debt problems. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, proposed a supposed deficit-reduction plan that included huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, then received an award for fiscal responsibility.

So there has been no pressure on the G.O.P. to show any kind of responsibility, or even rationality — and sure enough, it has gone off the deep end. If you’re surprised, that means that you were part of the problem.

Indeed. Every single, "he said, she said" reporter and milquetoast pundit who refused to call out the crazy sooner, owns this debacle, even more so than the GOPers themselves. Not only did they not force the GOPers to pay a price for their mendacity; they rewarded them for it with unlimited and adoring attention. So of course, they kept doing it. Just like any three year old who learns he gets all the candy he wants every time he throws himself on the floor in a red-faced temper tantrum.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

I love Wisconsin - Updated

The TV cameras are long gone, the national media pretty much ignores them because they don't dress up in colonial costumes festooned with tea bags, but Wisconsin activists are rocking the recalls:

Six fake Democratic candidates put up by the Republican Party to buy time for Republican state senators subject to recalls accomplished that job Tuesday, but none of them did the unexpected and knocked off a real Democrat.

Candidates backed by the Democratic Party won all six Senate primary elections, all but one of them by substantial amounts. They'll all go on to face the Republican incumbents on Aug. 9, in an attempt by Democrats to regain control of the state Senate and put the brakes on Gov. Scott Walker's agenda.

GOPers managed to delay some of the elections with their bogus candidates but it's going to be a very busy and interesting August in the land of cheese and beer. Probably won't happen, but it would be really awesome if they won them all.

Update: Republicans cost the Wisconsin taxpayers nearly a half-million dollars by running their six fake Democrats, forcing the additional primaries in order to buy more time for their own fundraisers. Some are suggesting GOPers should reimburse the state for the costs. Would seem only fair.

Also, Greg has previews of the ads that are starting to run now that the real elections have begun in earnest.


[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Mitch McConnell: Elections don't work

Awesome. Republicans can't win a large enough majority to jam through their agenda so Mitch McConnell wants to rewrite the constitution to eliminate the voters' power to choose who's running the show and allow a small group of extremists to hijack majority rule governance. On the Senate floor today he said:

The time has come for a balanced budget amendment that forces Washington to balance its books. If these debt negotiations have convinced us of anything, it’s that we can’t leave it to politicians in Washington to make the difficult decisions that they need to get our fiscal house in order. The balanced budget amendment will do that for them. Now is the moment. No more games. No more gimmicks. The Constitution must be amended to keep the government in check. We’ve tried persuasion. We’ve tried negotiations. We’re tried elections. Nothing has worked.

Think Progress unravels this breathtaking proposition:

It’s worth noting just what McConnell is asking the American people to choke down. Senate Republicans’ so-called “balanced budget amendment” does far more than simply requiring federal spending to equal federal revenues. It makes it functionally impossible to raise taxes by imposing a two-thirds supermajority requirement — a provision closely modeled after the California anti-tax amendment that blew up that state’s finances. It would also require spending cuts so steep that it would have made Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy unconstitutional. Ezra Klein rightfully labeled this plan the “worst idea in Washington.”

Meanwhile, Steve Benen offers an little history lesson for the Minority Leader:

It really wasn’t that long ago — McConnell was in the Senate at the time — that the deficit didn’t exist. When Bill Clinton left office a decade ago, we not only had a large surplus, we were paying off the national debt for the first time in a generation. Those debt clocks we occasionally see? They had to be shut down — no one had ever programmed them to run backwards.

We were on track to eliminate the national debt in its entirety within just 10 years. Republicans of the Bush era — including a guy by the name of Mitch McConnell — reversed course, created huge deficits, and added several trillion dollars to the debt.

Of course, to be fair, Republicans do rewrite textbooks too. McConnell probably forgot about the Clinton surplus because he was referring to the Texas edition of US History.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Minnesota shutdown: Unintended consequences - Updated

I was just thinking last night I hadn't heard any news about this in a while. Looks like the Minnesota shutdown is getting ugly:

Hundreds of bars, restaurants and stores across Minnesota are running out of beer and alcohol and others may soon run out of cigarettes -- a subtle and largely unforeseen consequence of a state government shutdown.

In the days leading up to the shutdown, thousands of outlets scrambled to renew their state-issued liquor purchasing cards. Many of them did not make it.

Now, with no end in sight to the shutdown, they face a summer of fast-dwindling alcohol supplies and a bottom line that looks increasingly bleak.

It's only a few hundred bars right now. The cigarette vendors are likely to totally crash first. Also, too, the state stands to lose millions in tax revenue from the lost sales. GOPers are of course blaming the Governor for their own refusal to negotiate a realistic budget that would reopen the state offices. Cause that's how they roll...

Update: Not rejoicing in anyone's misfortune and feel bad for their workers, but good to see it's not just the little guys who are going to suffer the losses:

The state's government shutdown, now in its 13th day, will soon force MillerCoors to pull its beer from Minnesota liquor stores, bars and restaurants. A state official says the law requires the company to remove products like Coors Light, Miller Lite and Blue Moon imminently. [...]

Neville says MillerCoors must remove the beer because they did not renew their brand label registration with the state before the shutdown began. By law, brewers must renew those registrations -- which show the label on each brand of beer -- every three years.

Maybe now that it's the big Republican supporters losing the big bucks, they'll be able to get the GOPers to negotiate. [Via Atrios]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Pants on fire

By Capt. Fogg

“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

-Article III of the US Constitution-

“There is no Supreme Court in the American Constitution"

-Newt Gingrich-

Really, Newt? Are you really a history professor? Do you really think we're that stupid?

It's getting hard to tolerate the stench coming out of the pre-caucus Republican cesspool; from Presidential candidates getting government funds -- our tax dollars -- to teach people how to pray away the gay and advocating the use of Federal might to stamp out all forms of pornography frowned on by their frowning religion and to legislate and limit and punish our personal relationships -- while griping about too much government interference and too much spending and too much social engineering. It's getting damned hard to tolerate morally, mentally and ethically bankrupt creeps like Newt Gingrich, who is quite happy to feed the malignant idiocy now consuming the remnants of our Republic by telling us that our constitution does not "mention" much less provide for a supreme court, Article III of the Constitution notwithstanding.

"We now have this entire national elite that wants us to believe that any five lawyers are a Constitutional convention. That is profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong.”

lies the moral multimillionaire elitist with the million dollar line of credit at the jewelry store and a string of illicit mistresses and abused ex-wives. That's profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong and profoundly Republican. But of course anyone who thinks the highest court is an extra-legal ad hoc assembly of five self-appointed members foisted on the public by "elitists" and with no constitutional authority can hardly be considered an elitist of any kind unless there's a ranking of candidates according to their ignorance and mendacity and greed. Perhaps Newt just forgot that the Supreme Court Justices are approved by Congress or perhaps he's just a lying tub of septic scum who thinks he's entitled by birth and party affiliation to feast on the corpse of America.

You can fool some of the people all of the time: you can fool a lot of them in fact. They're called Republicans. They're called perverts, they're called liars, thieves, embezzlers and saboteurs.

The GOP's "job creators"

Hmmm. Must need more tax breaks.

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), the largest networking-equipment company, may cut as many as 10,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce, to revive profit growth, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The cuts include as many as 7,000 jobs that would be eliminated by the end of August, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t final. Cisco is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who accepted buyouts, the people said. [...]

Trimming about 5,000 jobs would reduce operating expenses by about $1 billion annually and boost 2012 earnings by about 8 percent, Marshall said.

So how big a bonus do you think the CEO will get for that kind of profit boost?

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Uncertainty

I'm disgusted by this whole debt ceiling debacle, but it's good to remember our President is a winning poker player. Think Obama just threw down his ace in the hole:

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News. [...]

Mr. Obama told Pelley "this is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are veterans checks, these are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out."

Looks like he's convinced the investor class that he's not going to blink this time. Some 470 top business leaders issued a sternly worded open letter basically telling the Village Idiots to quit dicking around and raise the damn thing.

“Now is the time for our political leaders to put aside partisan differences and act in the nation’s best interests,” the letter said. “We believe that our nation’s economic future is reliant upon their actions and urge them to reach an agreement. It is time to pull together rather than pull apart.”

Of course, they don't mention and neither will the media point out, they could just raise the debt ceiling in a clean, one sentence bill in less than hour. As they have routinely, some 74 times before since the Kennedy administration. Then they could still fight out the rest of the issues without risking the entire world economy.

Only the DFH's care to mention that, but nobody listens to them.

[This may be a first. Thanks to Yahoo News for linking in, even if they only refer to me as some liberal.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

President Obama: Do the Right Thing

I caught the end of Obama's speech and the Q&A at today's presser. It was an interesting approach. Obama had something to piss off everybody. Expecting the usual hair tearing about Obama selling out entitlements and embracing right wing framing from the left, and of course the screeching about so-called "massive tax hikes in a recession" has been a standard talking point on the right for a long time.

As usual, I didn't love everything he said. I'm a liberal, I want him to declare the GOP agenda as the slow motion genocide I believe it to be and start grand public works jobs projects by fiat that would give the 14 million unemployed Americans a decent standard of living again. I want him to demand the end of corporate tax breaks, raise taxes on the wealthy to a fair level of contribution and put the Wall St. banksters in jail. I also would dearly love a unicorn and a secluded beachfront home on the Caribbean. Not going to get those either.

Our President has embraced his inner mediator and he's right. Everybody has to give up some territory on the edges to reach a compromise. I know there's a lot of cynicism on the left that once again, the Dems will give up too much and the GOPers too little. Probably they will, but Obama is also right that given the way the news cycle and the public discourse works these days, nothing else is going to get done unless this fight is over.

He's standing his ground on refusing to accept a short term fix. He successfully shifted the focus to Boehner's inability to manage his caucus. He called out the GOP leaders who are misleading their base into thinking a default wouldn't be a disaster. And as for accepting the conservative conflation of the debt and unemployment, I heard it more as an acknowledgement the GOPers have won the rhetorical battle on those points than as an acceptance of it as fact set in stone. I swear a detected a slight note of sarcasm in that response.

But whatever the result, it's a dangerous game that needs to end and Obama just called the GOPers' bluff.

“The leaders in the room at a certain point have to step up and do the right thing regardless of the voices in our parties,” he said. “It’s going to take some work on his [Boehner's] side. But look, it’s also going to take some work on our side to get this done.”

Up to Boehner now to prove he has the balls to stand up to his base.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

As the world burns

Krugman sounds like a broken record these days, along with Atrios and a thousand other economic realists who see the problem and can't seem to break through the noise of the smug pundits to reach the people on the street that aren't grasping how seriously wrong our overlords are and how dangerous it is to follow their advice.

Krugman runs down the depressing list of relentlessly wrongheaded assumptions and failed strategies -- again. Doesn't seem fair that the GOPers and their allies can succeed in planting their lies in the public mind by endlessly repeating their deceitful narratives while the dirty hippies who have solutions that would work can't get their obvious truths into the discourse. We're just too outnumbered to break through the din.

At this point, on the eternal question of stupid or evil, definitely leaning towards evil this week. Nobody could be that stupid.

Back to Obscurity

Well, my Balloon Juice guest stint is done. It was a fun gig. A bit stressful since I was on the road for the most of the week and had almost no time to post and barely enough energy to form coherent sentences when I did have time. Still, it was very cool to be front paged at such a very important blog that I've read and loved for so many years. My only regret is I didn't have time to link to more of my friends with smaller blogs like this little place.

But it's good to be home and it being Sunday, I'm going to start with some easy links I've been accumulating for way too long.

This one is fresh. Great Doonesbury on creationism in the classroom.

Haven't actually looked at this one yet. Not sure I'll even be able to see it because my flash player needs updating and I don't have time to do it, but definitely want to archive Peter Jackson’s Second Hobbit Vlog. If Honey Bear Kelly retweeted it, figure it's got to be really good.

Haven't looked at this one yet either. Not sure if this link is rotted yet, they don't last long at DetNews, but a time-lapse of a mural being painted downtown does sound very cool.

This photo is really old but really worth the click. Dramatic lightning strike during a fast, furious NYC storm.

My favorite geek Mark Knoller provides the big squee. Photo of 3-week-old two-pound cheetah cub at the National Zoo.

Another unseen link I want to check out. AnnieLowrey posts Awesome postcards from France in 1910 about life in the year 2000. I love this kind of stuff.

My tweep Hudsonette has a keen eye for great photos to retweet. The heron looked angelic.

Jamison Foser found these very cool photos. They're stills but they have one element in the frame that's animated.

And finally, also really old, but I bet you missed it and I loved this story. Legoland staff plays a joke on their boss. They replaced his car with a full scale Volvo made of Legos.

Good news for us treehuggers

Doing my first and only cross-post from Balloon Juice. I had no idea this was happening.:

Plunging prices and booming investments are beginning to reshape the energy market, according to a couple of reports that were released this week. A report produced on behalf of Bloomberg says that investments in renewable energy have gone up by roughly a third over the last year, to $211 billion. Led by China's renewable push, the world is now on a trajectory that will see its investments in renewable electricity surpass those in fossil fuels within a year or two. As a result of these investments, the US is now producing more renewable energy than nuclear power. ...

Part of the reason is cost. Although wind turbines are very mature technology now, their cost per MW still fell by 18 percent over the last two years; photovoltaics have dropped a staggering 60 percent in that time. "Further improvements in the levelised cost of energy for solar, wind and other technologies lie ahead, posing a bigger and bigger threat to the dominance of fossil-fuel generation sources in the next few years," according to the report's authors.

This is worldwide. The US is lagging a bit behind but if expenditures on expanded renewable energy capacity stays on the same trajectory, "we'll be investing more in renewables either this year or next," than is being spent on fossil fuel power plants. Also, too, no more justification for building new nuke facilities. Win-win. [Via the Great Orange Satan.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The thin red line

How many ways are there to say, "It's the jobs, stupid?" Krugman posts the chart to illustrate.

And Steve Benen explains what it means:

In case it’s a little hard to see, that red line is the unemployment rate; the blue line is the interest rate on 10-year bonds. I realize the phrase “interest rate on 10-year bonds” probably isn’t one of those phrases that gets bandied about around American dinner tables, but the more serious a problem the deficit becomes, the higher that blue line would appear.

And therein lies the point: the blue keeps going down. Indeed, it hasn’t been this low in many decades. If the deficit were a drag on the economy, and the United States were facing some sort of debt crisis, that blue line would be through the roof. But that’s not even close to what’s happening.

But The Village is apparently color blind. To hear them tell it, the invisible bond vigilantes are in the parking lot beating the confidence fairies to a pulp and they're going to kick that blue line into the stratosphere any minute now. The red line doesn't even register with our very serious and wise overlords.

We are truly ruled by deliberate idiots.


[Big thanks to Michael J.W. Stickings for so kindly linking in at Mike's Blog Roundup.]

Blogging elsewhere

I know I've been neglecting the blog this week. My internet time has been really limited, so I've been posting at Balloon Juice while I have the chance. Happy to report the BJ commenters have been very kind to me. In all the years I've been blogging, and I guest posted at so many blogs I can't remember them all, I've never so many comments on every post. I only wish I had more time to hang out and chat with them.

The irony is, I had a choice of three different weeks when I was invited to do this and with my usual impeccable timing, chose the wrong one. But in any event, the gig will end on Saturday or maybe Sunday, so I'll be back here again soon.

The thing is

By Capt. Fogg

It's not any one thing. It's never one thing. All the things that have led up to my crisis of caring are old things; have been around a long time and I've been aware of all of them all along. Whether things have become so crazy that some trigger point was passed or whether being chronically weak because of a strict diet or a passing virus or whether somehow, the realization that all suffering comes from believing, from having faith that things can ever be all right in the long run, finally seeped through from that repository of things I always say to whatever core of self awareness exists deep down somewhere.

The thing is -- I just don't care. Neither more or less than the last time I said it, but I don't care. Someone apparently got away with murder? What's it to me? My country is making strides toward being neo-feudal, toward a police state, a corporate oligarchy with no collective concern for anything but maximum profit and maximum exploitation by those who can make the most of it? So what? The great accomplishments of science? That's over, unless it's the science of sales and manipulation and the technology that exists only to make people buy it. I don't give a damn. I don't even give a damn that I don't give a damn and I've forgotten why I ever believed in the progress of man and the slow climb up from the insanity of animals toward enlightenment and civilization -- or even decency.

But it's always something.

I got a phone call the other day. It was a recorded voice asking to contribute to the fight against the persecution of Christian parents' rights to raise their families as they saw fit. I have no idea what they meant but I can have some confidence in the assumption that it has to do with interfering with some other group's right to do the same. I pushed the "never call me again" button. I don't care, it's someone else's fight after all, and if they do win, it will take so long they might as well just wait for the next asteroid or gamma ray burst or solar catastrophe.

I got a flier in the mail too. Cover photos of grey haired people smiling like they were drugged under a headline of "happy Seniors." Now I hate like hell to be called a 'senior' and it damned well is a gratuitous pejorative. I'm still a man and no less entitled to be one than when I was an idiot teenager, fulfilling my duty of buying things to be hip. But no, these happy folks were just in Ecstasy because Representative Tom Rooney and his friends Mr. Ryan and Governor "Medicare Fraud" Scott were going to keep Medicare and Social security from being taken over by "unelected bureaucrats" and presumably given over to those entitled by party affiliation to a big Goddamn profit from it. You know, the Republican peerage, the elect. Happy, happy days, but I'm not going to be able to do a damn thing so why worry?

I bought one of these little flat screen portable HDTV's recently. Figured it would be a good thing for hurricane season, but trying it out today, I was was disappointed to find nothing on the air but Jesus and informercials, but I shouldn't be, of course. That's all there really is in this episode of the Truman Show and all there will be allowed to be because all this amazing technology has no other purpose than to sell to those at the bottom of the pond. The people already borrowing at 400% from Wells Fargo payday loan stores to meet the mortgage payment to Wells Fargo Bank and the credit cards they maxed out at Wal-Mart and who just found out they have to die because they have no insurance and can't even get welfare because they can't pass a drug test because they had to take something for the pain and they can't afford a prescription or prescription drugs. Yes, it's gonna be all right after we 'save' Medicare.

Some "Practicing physician" as he continually reminded me had the ultimate cure and preventative for heart disease which "we now know" is only caused by "Toxins" that need to be chelated out of our blood stream with his snake oil pills. " I don't wancha getting a bypass. I don't wancha getting a stent" He just wants to sell pills that will stop the "epidemic of sickness overwhelming all of us." It would take more than a pill to stop the irony, but nothing will stop the two born every minute.

Another channel appeared to be a cooking channel, showing children how to cover apple slices with sugar sprinkles because, as the nice Church lady tells us, "God wants children to eat healthy food" unless of course the fruit contains knowledge of morality. Perhaps that's why so many children are hungry - not enough red and green sprinkles -- or maybe, like me, God doesn't give a shit -- at least not as long as he sells enough air time. And he does sell it. Four stations available on the indoor antenna and three of them have Jesus, or at least so they say. They don't show him, but perhaps he's tied up in the back room while those polyester puffballs strut and parade and chant and solicit money. JEE- Suss! wants you to be rich so buy my prayer towel and my blessing -- call now.

So why feel sorry for myself. I don't need to if I don't care. I don't feel sorry for America either, they're fed all the crap they can chew on and they will die, or at least make sure you do, rather than make anything better. If I feel sorry for anyone it's people like poor old Jesus who not only thought they could, but tried -- only to be defeated, have their history stolen and used to sell product, to support tyranny and exploitation and persecution, the fleecing of the poor, the fearful, the desperate and to stifle knowledge, damn decency and prostitute hope.

But who cares?

Guest posting

Guess I forgot to mention, I'm guest posting at Balloon Juice this week. Couldn't have come at a worse time since I'm traveling but how cool is it that they so kindly invited me to fill in for Doug J while he's away?

Obama's biggest mistake

Frank Rich is one in a long line of pundits I've seen lately suggesting Obama's biggest mistake was and is not cracking down on the Banksters and sending some of these sociopaths to jail.

Can't say I disagree, but as I said way back during the bailout days, it's not clear to me that he can. Meaning, even Bernanke kowtows to them. I also seem to recall the first time Obama starting talking tough about a crackdown, Wall St mysteriously started to crash again.

The Banksters have the power to crash the economy at any time. It doesn't seem impossible to me that they're privately threatening to do so unless their ransom demands are met.

Christie sucker punches Sweeney

NJ Senate President Stephen Sweeney: "He’s a rotten prick."

Quelle surprise. No one could have predicted that the conservatives favorite blowhard governor would screw a Democrat after he sweet talked him into making a deal against his best interests.

Seems Sweeney sold out his constituency on pension and health reforms. To reward him for his bipartisan comity, Christie took out his line item veto pen and slashed funding for every program Democrats support. The list is long, but here's a sample:

He mowed down a series of Democratic add-ons, including $45 million in tax credits for the working poor, $9 million in health care for the working poor, $8 million for women’s health care, another $8 million in AIDS funding and $9 million in mental-health services.

Of course it wasn't all bad. No worries for the GOP's wealthy supporters:

But the governor added $150 million in school aid for the suburbs, including the wealthiest towns in the state. That is enough to restore all the cuts just listed.

As Sweeney says, "He’s just a rotten bastard to do what he did."

The rest of us knew that already Mr. Sweeney.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

He's back!

No time to post here this morning, but good news for the internets. The Heretik is back with a new blog. He's been missing for far too long, so click over and welcome him back -- and check out his new cohorts at the About Us section while you're there. Stellar group.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Minnesota government shuts down

Gov. Mark Dayton tried to prevent it by raising revenues on "only on those earning more than $1 million a year -- an estimated 7,700 Minnesotans, or 0.3 percent of all taxpayers." State GOPers, apparently in control of the legislature said no way they would allow a tiny tax increase on rich people. So as of today Minnesota's government services are almost entire shut down and 23,000 state workers are out of work. Including, ironically the unemployment office workers.

Wonder how all those voters who bought the GOP snake oil feel about their votes now.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Pompous Prick

Well I've been offline all day so I'm late to the party but everybody is talking about Mark Halperin's suspension from MSNBC for calling President Obama a dick. There's already a bunch of commentary which you've probably already seen, so all I'll say is I agree with the general consensus that Halperin is a pompous prick, he's always been a pompous prick and has been wrong about everything forever.

He didn't deserve to be fired for such a ridiculously banal insult. He's been saying the same thing couched in more polite terms for years. The real travesty is that he was ever hired as a "neutral political analyst" in the first place. He's never been neutral and he sucks as an analyst. Which makes him perfect for a spot at Fox. Wouldn't be surprised to learn he already has an offer to move over there and this Freudian slip was contrived as a way to get out of his contract with MSNBC.

The only other thing I'd add to the ongoing commentary is Halperin is just one of many incompetent bloviators who have done nothing but muddy the public discourse with Drudge inspired sludge. He's not the only one that should be banished from the air waves.

By the way, if you somehow missed this story today, in addition to Greg's piece linked at the top, worth reading Alex's take, and the roundup of Halperin's greatest misses at Balloon Juice and Dr. Black's Big Blue Hippie Haven.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]