The Krugman

I don't like feeling I'm becoming kinda captured by a slanted narrative (just sayin' that one straight out), but I'll try to contain my discomfort (for a while anyway) because Paul Krugman seems always to be trying to talk some sense into us.

And he keeps coming up with real info about real events that we need to weigh against all the fantastic predictions of doom coming from the Austerity Freaks.

But what about the brief but nasty slump in 1927? That wasn’t caused by spiking interest rates; it was, instead, caused by fiscal austerity, by the measures taken to stabilize the franc.

So even when we look at the closest thing I can find to the scenario the deficit scolds want us to fear, it doesn’t play out at all as described.

It’s quite remarkable: our policy discourse remains largely dominated by fears of an event that the fear-mongers can’t explain in theory, and for which they can offer no historical examples in practice.

Music In Advertising

Banishment

This one - from Rod Dreher at The American Conservative - is really fun.  And it's easily the most honest of what I've read since the Great GOP Meltdown.

(Fun Fact:  Laura Ingraham was heard recently saying she's convinced the GOP, in its current wingnut configuration - and in spite of being pretty well drubbed - is still a major-league thing because "conservative radio" is still so very popular.  Hang by a thread much, Laura?)

Anyway, Dreher starts with slamming Dick Morris:

Got that? Dick Morris believed it was his “duty” to go on TV and say that Romney was going to win this thing, because everybody on Team Romney at the time was depressed. It’s hard to know whether Morris really believed what he was saying, as he claims to, but there can be no doubt that he saw his role as cheerleading for the Republican candidate, not offering straightforward analysis.

Dick Morris is a conservative figure who really ought to never be heard from again. He’s a hack. I say give him a Dubya Award for Meritorious Service To The Conservative Movement, and push him off the stage. (“Meritorious” in the sense that, say, a boss who is firing an employee for screwing up makes an insincere but face-saving statement about how much the company has benefited from the employee’s service, and wishes him the best of luck in his future endeavors).

...then Dreher asks his readers to suggest others who should just fade away, and that's when it really starts to roll.

EarlyBird says:

It’s been a while since she’s really been on the public stage – perhaps she actually has the capacity for shame – but Sarah Palin needs to go far, far away and never come back, never “write” another book.

She is not stupid, she’s something worse: proudly ignorant. There has probably never been as vapid, empty of a “conservative” as Palin who’s gone as far in her career as she has.

She doesn’t know the first thing about governance, and her record as governor of Alaska shows she has no interest in actually implementing ideas and policies and doing the hard work of governing, but she instinctively knows how to throw red meat out to the base, rallying the worst instincts among the right with crypto-racist and fully reactionary nonsense about “real Americans.”

These are the people that make the electorate think, “the Republicans aren’t able to govern.”

She’s a disgrace to American politics, and an indictment of how off the rails the GOP has become in recent years. That she was such a darling for so long is jaw dropping.

But there's a good dose of the same ol' shit too:

Louis says:

The only ignorant people are the ones who overlook the damage done by Republicans in Washington, D.C. What was Sarah Palin’s big crime? There isn’t one. I would prefer her as president to any of the Bushes any day of the week.

The Tax Thing

I've seen and heard some whining going on about what a bitch it'll be for hard-working white-collar Dems who'll have to pony up on the tax raise because they're busy making money north of the magic $250k level, living in a not-very-fancy neighborhood with a coupla kids etc - and now they have to get ready to pay up on Obama's promise to hike taxes, and it's so unfair because gee, $250k just doesn't buy what it used to buy blah blah blah.

Please - get a fuckin' grip.  You're supposed to be the "smart ones", remember?

Obama's basic plan is to boost the tax rate on income OVER $250k, which means you'll pay exactly the same rate on the FIRST $250k; paying the higher rate only on the amount you earn after $250K.

You sit down and do just a tiny bit of arithmetic, and wow - look at that - if you're pullin' down $300k, your total rate goes up by about 3/4 of 1%.  Think you can handle that one, Mr Super-Genius?

What (prob'ly) Won't Happen

This is a list of some of the things that aren't going to happen - at least not at the Federal level - because enough of us found the good sense to vote for Obama.

(from Ol' Doc Maddow, via Addicting Info)

(1) “We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe vs. Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.”
(2) “We’re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody’s going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation — or any other generation — fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance. We’re not going to do that.”
(3) “We’re not going to give the 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires, and expect [cutting] programs like food stamps and kids’ health insurance to cover that tax cut.”
(4) “We’re not going to make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control with the insurance plan that you’re on.”
(5) “We are not going to redefine rape.”
(6) “We are not going to amend the constitution to stop gay people from getting married.”
(7) We’re not going to double down on Guantanamo.
(8) “We’re not eliminating the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, or Housing at the Federal level.”
(9) “We are not going to spend two trillion dollars on the military, that the military does not want.”
(10) “We are not scaling back on student loans because the country’s NEW plan is that you should borrow money from your parents.”
(11) “We are not vetoing the Dream Act, we are not ‘self-deporting.’”
(12) “We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.”
(13) “We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.”
(14) “We are not going to have — as a president — a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help. (And there was NO apology, not EVER.)”
(15) “We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not going to bring Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq war, we are not going to do it … We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country, and we said no, last night, loudly.”

Thankful

For home.


For love and family.


For dreams of better things to come.

Turkey And Football Day

Today's Pix

Pushing Forward

The point is that The Market works, and when properly guided and regulated, it can do nearly exactly what we need it to do.  It's when we leave it completely alone or (more to the obvious) exclusively in the hands of "the elite" that we start to get real problems.



It seems we may be seeing more of a positive shift.  Where before, the Big User/Abuser could force us into thinking we only had 2 choices: feeding our families or starving to death while saving a few "insignificant plants and animals".

It's becoming clearer even for the rubes who hear nothing but what's on DumFux News that we have to ensure the overall health of our surroundings if we expect to have any jobs at all; and in fact, we can build an economy (that's almost outsourcing-proof) based on the principles of sustainability that all those "mush-brained hippies" have been trying to get us to understand for a very long time now.

I like thinking we're finally getting to where we can make some of the connections we need to make to change the way we do things - eg: understanding the moral imperative of not making it impossible for somebody else to feed his family while pursuing the means to feed my own.

Rubio's Dodge

Marco Rubio's interview in GQ Magazine:

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?

Marco Rubio: I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Horse shit.

Knowing something solid about science - geology, biology, astronomy - has everything to do with how our economy grows.  Where do you think the inventions and innovations come from, Marco?

Without a real underpinning in evolutionary science, guys like Salk and Sabin never learn what it takes to kill Polio; we don't get 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation antibiotics, and we don't get anywhere near the gene-based solutions that are coming over the horizon for Alzheimer's or Cancer or Parkinson's or or or.

If we don't put aside this childish wish-think of magic and superstition, we don't figure out the movement of the planets, which means we don't discover anything about gravity, which means we don't put satellites into high-Earth orbit, which means we just sit on our thumbs waiting for the next monster hurricane to wipe out 10-15% of...wait for it...our economy.  You lying pandering sack of coprolites.

I've honestly been watching for somebody - anybody - wearing the GOP label to stand up and let me get behind him.  We've been told for a coupla years now that Rubio's one of those guys.  Not now.  Not any more.  And not any time in the near future.  Turns out Rubio's a fuckin' punchline just like practically all the others.

God, I'm sick o' this shit.

New Music

Jon Gomm - Ain't Nobody (Chaka Khan)



(hat tip = Little Green Footballs)

I can't recommend him for his singing voice, but the guy plays the fuck outa that git-fiddle.

Little Red State Fundy

A golden oldie from driftglass.

I'm not overly fond of the Scary Scenario.  Repubs use it all the time to spook people - trying to talk us into believing they've got answers to questions they're usually just yankin' outa their asses.  But I guess the difference here is that you can look at something like driftglass's Little Red State Fundy and see some real historical foundations for it.

So there's an element of "both-sides-do-it" - no denying that.  I just think it's important to remember always to test for False Equivalence.

Today's Cartoon

How We Do Things

Have you watched "the Sunday shows" lately?  Meet The Press and Face The Nation et al?   Does anybody watch that junk anymore?  I mean anybody who doesn't live and work in DC, or anybody who has any kind of actual life outside of politicking and/or keeping an eye out for the general douchebaggery that politiciking almost always leads to.

I was just wondering because of a piece by Charles Pierce:

But, as they say around the cool kidz table, people like Ms. Dowd set the agenda, and because the whole Susan Rice episode involves intimately the sacramentalized oozing of The Sunday Shows, there was a whole lot of Benghazi-ing goin' on, beginning on Face The Nation where former Prince Henry The Navigator foreign-correspondent Bob Schieffer somehow managed to pry the reclusive Senator McCain out of hiding to appear on the program. McCain promptly proved he is as shallow and muddleheaded as Maureen Dowd.

That little snippet makes it seem to me that David Gregory and Bob Schieffer are somehow considered important not so much as journalist watchdogs, but almost as another forum within government;  or maybe it's just that The Sunday Shows have become the Public Information Office for Capitol Hill.

I don't watch these shows anymore - haven't for quite a while now.  Partly because it's always the same people saying the same things, but mostly it got to where I tho't I was listening to a conversation that had nothing to do with me.  Like I'm just the guy serving the coffee at the Hangover-Recovery Brunch the morning after the usual Hearty Party for all these High Holy Pashas.

But what really cemented it for me was the advertising.

Boeing
General Dynamics
Lockheed Martin

Really?  How am I the target demographic for the F-22?  Am I supposed to rush right over to my local Amphibious Landing Craft dealer for...what exactly?  A test invasion across the neighbor's farm pond?  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over.

I think there's gotta be something else going on.  I guess it could be as simple as Power Talking To Power in a closed feedback loop that's so self-reinforcing that's it's almost impossible to break into it - or out of it - all I know is that it feels like I might as well be listening to Baghdad Bob.

Today's Time Suck

Wonderfully Worthless Websites (hat tip = JG)

Cat Bounce

Bury Me With My Money

Ringing Telephone

Giant Bat Farts

The Last Page