Way Smart

From Juan Cole.

Capitalism, Kinda

The closing rant by Bill Maher on Friday's show bordered on brilliant.

The Arab World

In a post the other day, I predicted a certain bit of crowing about Jr Bush and NeoCon policy because of the revolts that are happening in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen and even Jordan.  This was not a hard thing to figure out, so don't give me any credit for my amazing foresight - I was definitely not alone.

But, here's one of the aforementioned 'told-ya-so' articles by none other than Elliot Abrams (one of the pricks who should still be in prison because of Iran Contra).

So how long did it take?  A coupla days?

Now let's see how long it takes 'em to pretzel all this 'wisdom' when it becomes clear that the old autocratic secular regimes in these countries are going to be replaced with new  autocratic sectarian regimes.  That's right - we've destabilized the region; we've taken ourselves out of the game by chasing phantoms in desert shit-holes; we've crippled our military; and we've left the doors wide open for the Islamists to waltz in and take over the joint.  Yay, Bush.

The Arab World

Tunisia, and then Egypt, and then Yemen.  The Arab street is finally rising up to throw off their oppressive regimes.  It's interesting and unsettling and impressive.

It's also NOT cut and dried.  It's not clear what anybody's really after.  And it's not at all clear that we'll see anything remotely resembling democracy pop up in any of those countries.

But how long will it take DumFux News to decide about praising Jr Bush and their own cheerleading for the Iraq invasion for starting this glorious march to freedom?  It might be a tough call for them.  They've been hedging on Bush since they started pandering to the Tea Partiers, so they'll have to figure out how to put some nuance into their pronouncements, which suddenly makes it all a lot messier than their audience likes it to be.

SOTU

My basic reaction: Obama just lost the 2012 election.

He said a lot of the things we needed to hear; he wants us to do the things we really need to do; but he's trying to lead us in a direction that's always been seen as a threat by practically all of the big money interests.

Just by pushing for Clean Energy and an end to Corporate Welfare, Obama set himself up to get slammed.  Large piles of cash are sitting in the coffers of Big Business and PACs and Trade Groups, and the execs at those places will not sit idly by waiting for somebody to pinch off the flow of tax dollars out of our pockets into theirs.  They have huge amounts to spend and no limits on how they can spend it.  We're about to see the real effects of the Citizens United decision.

Ya heard it here.

Budget Woes

Politicians like to talk about cutting spending, and doing more with less, etc.  We've heard it all forever.  Now we're forced to do something real or we'll go broke for real.  But nobody's talking any specifics about what exactly they're going to cut.

Case in point: this bit from TPM:

"We've got to learn how to prioritize and do more with less in all areas of government," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor at his weekly press conference today. "It just is what it is. In the terms of transportation, we've got to figure out ways how to leverage dollars, how to come up with innovative ways to address the nation's ailing transportation infrastructure."

So this is nothing new at all.  The only thing that's changed is that we have a new bunch of nephews and brothers-in-law who will suddenly discover their passions for Road Paving or Childhood Development or any number of business interests they can get into quickly once the Repubs start killing off federal agencies and funneling the dollars out to their private sector cronies.

These guys WILL NOT spend significantly less for any length of time.  They'll still spend the money, but they'll spend it outside the government, and then they'll claim they're keeping their promises.  I saw a story the other day saying they're going to reduce the FBI and DEA by some thousands of agents - how much are you willing to bet those jobs won't actually be taken over by private security contractors?

So here's the kicker: they'll use the high-sounding rhetoric of "Cutting the Budget" to hack away at the Democratic constituencies in the fed gov't, and bolster their own constituencies in the private sector.  Any bets?

Bullying The Seniors

From Bob Herbert via NYT:

The demagogues would have the public believe that Social Security is unsustainable, that it is some kind of giant contributor to the federal budget deficits. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, Social Security “is emphatically not the cause of the federal government’s long-term deficits, since it is prohibited from borrowing and must pay all benefits out of dedicated tax revenues and savings in its trust funds.”

Social Security is good at least thru the mid-2030s. And once the giant bulge known as The Boomers moves thru the system, it should get a whole lot easier to finance the thing.

One From TED

I especially like the part where she ties it all into problem-solving.

Kinda Interesting

This is what a political statement looks like when you take out the content, and you only see the stagecraft.

I don't quite get the bleep at the end, but what really stands out is something that looks suspiciously like a teleprompter reflected in her glasses.

Tunisia

It occurs to me that we could file this one under The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword.

With all the sound and fury here in the US over "2nd Amendment Remedies", and "If ballots don't work, bullets will" - with all the potential for bellicose rhetoric to turn into real bloodshed, it's strangely reassuring to look at events in Iran and now Tunisia, and draw the conclusion: The revolution will not only be televised, but will actually be fought with cell phones and video cameras.

Disarming your citizens can have the unintended consequence of effectively neutering your government's authority to use force.  If you shoot an unarmed protestor, you aren't defending some lofty sounding governing principle.  You're just an asshole.

I don't know a lot about what's going on in Tunisia.  I only know that Ben Ali's government has been tagged as repressive for years, but now there's video on the web that shows unarmed citizens being gunned down in the streets.



And here's a write-up from Foreign Policy.