Recent developments in the "debate" over raising the debt ceiling seem to confirm that the Repubs are really struggling with some serious structural problems. I think it's possible that Obama has pulled off an amazing thing, even if all he did was to let the Repubs dance at Center Stage long enough for people to see how crass and cynical they've become.
I doubt any of the Repubs changed their minds about the debt ceiling. In fact, I doubt most Repubs have any real objection to raising the limit at all, even tho' an awful lot of people have to have been worrying about the deficits and the debt for a good long while. If anything's actually changed, it's just that McConnell and Boehner and Cantor have taken such a public beating, they have to put up some bullshit strategy that makes them look a little less stupid and lets them believe for a while that they can get back out in front of their own party before it evaporates. Right now, this looks like nothing less than a complete breakdown. And it's prob'ly because the Repub Leadership got an attitude adjustment from the mega-donors who aren't gonna sit by and let the PseudoCons fuck up what's left of a good thing. (Obama's fund-raising numbers indicate something significant is happening, so maybe he's managed to strip off some of the big money providers - of course we won't find much info on that because the Citizens United thing means most of the money can stay incognito)
So now (for once) Obama doesn't have to beat the Repubs, because the Repubs are beating the Repubs. I think the indicator to watch is Michelle Bachmann's campaign. She's the Queen of the PseudoCons; the leader of the Radical Rowdies. We'll hafta wait and see what DumFux News comes up with, but so far, they've seemed reluctant to promote her in a big way. And it's possible that Fox has to divert too much energy to defending itself because of the whole Rupertgate thing, and so they'll be less of a factor. Dunno, but I'll bet the big donors are slappin' Roger Ailes around now too. It promises to get funner and funner.
Finally, here's a question: Why has the DNC/Obama Campaign quietly released this little commercial now? First, it's always a good idea to hit 'em with the hard sell right after some good news. But mainly, if I'm right in thinking a bunch of the big donors are shifting away from the Repubs, and if the Dems wanna re-assert their brand as "The Party of the Little Guys" in order to keep us from recognizing them as the same kind of Coin-Operated Politicos as anybody else, then they need something to demonstrate that they have "huge numbers of regular folk, sending in their nickels and dimes".
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Michelle And The Debt Ceiling
Michelle Bachmann says she has a titanium spine. Yeah - that and a reinforced concrete skull.
btw: Bill O'Reilly snickers at a Republican populist in this clip. Did anybody else just feel the earth shift on its axis?
btw: Bill O'Reilly snickers at a Republican populist in this clip. Did anybody else just feel the earth shift on its axis?
Isn't It Interesting?
The biggest deal in the last 20 years of Rupert Murdoch's media empire (his attempt to buy BskyB in the UK) is stalled and may be dead because Murdoch has to prop up the share value of News Corp by accelerating his buy-back program - and of course the reason he has a stock price problem is because he had to shut down his single most profitable daily newspaper in his UK operation because of his suddenly revealed trouble concerning illegal wiretapping (and maybe fraud and obstruction and official bribery too) and gosh - not a single word of any of that is to be found anywhere on foxnews.com or Fox Business or Fox Nation; and there's been no ink all in The Wall Street Journal.
A multi-billion dollar deal that may go in the tank, and a major scandal involving one of the biggest media players in the world - and WSJ... uh...what? They missed it? It just slipped by unnoticed?
The good news is that maybe this finally rips the bandaid off and we wake up to what these assholes have been doing to us.
The bad news is that maybe this is how the real collapse starts.
Watch out for what happens in Italy in the next few months. (read this at The Agonist)
A multi-billion dollar deal that may go in the tank, and a major scandal involving one of the biggest media players in the world - and WSJ... uh...what? They missed it? It just slipped by unnoticed?
The good news is that maybe this finally rips the bandaid off and we wake up to what these assholes have been doing to us.
The bad news is that maybe this is how the real collapse starts.
Watch out for what happens in Italy in the next few months. (read this at The Agonist)
Tabloid Politics
Or maybe we could call it Pin-up Politicians; or Political Porn. Whatever it is, it is not a development that I can call serious.
Here's a look at what Newsweek thinks is journalism.
Here's a look at what Newsweek thinks is journalism.
My Dear Mr Boehner
For 2 years, and now especially during the big debate about whether or not to raise the Debt Ceiling, and what the US budget should look like, I've heard John Boehner say that his party just couldn't possibly abide imposing any kind of tax increase on the "job creators" in this country. (I ranted in some detail yesterday on the "tax-cuts-equals-jobs" malarkey)
Question: Exactly who are these job creators? They've gotten practically nothing but tax breaks for the last ten fucking years, and we've seen a net job increase of a little over 17,000 per month for that whole period. Seems to me they've gotten about everything they've wanted - so where's the payoff? What the fuck are they waiting for?
No wait; I keep forgetting that Boehner doesn't say that crap thinking he'll persuade me and change my mind. He says that because when the Rubes hear anything that hints at contradicting what they're being spoon fed by DumFux News, they tend to get a little nervous; so guys like Boehner need to rush around puttin' that big Republican cock back in their mouths to calm 'em down.
Question: Exactly who are these job creators? They've gotten practically nothing but tax breaks for the last ten fucking years, and we've seen a net job increase of a little over 17,000 per month for that whole period. Seems to me they've gotten about everything they've wanted - so where's the payoff? What the fuck are they waiting for?
No wait; I keep forgetting that Boehner doesn't say that crap thinking he'll persuade me and change my mind. He says that because when the Rubes hear anything that hints at contradicting what they're being spoon fed by DumFux News, they tend to get a little nervous; so guys like Boehner need to rush around puttin' that big Republican cock back in their mouths to calm 'em down.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Made In China
(Anticipating the standard response to this revoltin' development): Let's be sure we figure out a way to make "the unions" out to be the bad guys here. We have to remember that no matter what happens; if it's bad and it's something the "Libruls" don't like, then we need to Blame America First. And if it's bad and it's something the PseudoCons don't like, then we Blame Americans.
Whatever it is, we must never be allowed to look past our own biases to see a problem resulting from a policy or a law or a regulation or the lack of regulation that was put in place at least at the behest of a lobbying effort - if not something that was bought and paid for outright as the result of the decisions of some sliver-spoon fuck in the executive suite of some very large and very wealthy corporation.
We must be kept distracted. While we're busy bickering on a level that's really nothing more than Red Team vs Blue Team, these Dons of Corporatopia are free to continue bleeding us dry.
Whatever it is, we must never be allowed to look past our own biases to see a problem resulting from a policy or a law or a regulation or the lack of regulation that was put in place at least at the behest of a lobbying effort - if not something that was bought and paid for outright as the result of the decisions of some sliver-spoon fuck in the executive suite of some very large and very wealthy corporation.
We must be kept distracted. While we're busy bickering on a level that's really nothing more than Red Team vs Blue Team, these Dons of Corporatopia are free to continue bleeding us dry.
Beating A Dead Horse
Sometimes you just have to keep going over the same ground, and revisiting the same arguments ad nauseum just to stay even with the epidemic of ignorance in the American Body Politic.
Repubs in general, and their PseudoCon wing in particular, just refuse to let go of their fairy tales. Especially the one about "Tax Cuts Generate More Tax Revenue By Creating More Tax Payers".
Simply put, this is total bunkum. I know this because while I generally kinda suck at Math, I can manage some basic arithmetic, which is what the TeaBaggers (eg) like to believe is all they need to make their "common sense" judgements on tax policy.
So here it is:
Bush Tax Cuts 2001 - 2011 (remembering that Obama agreed to extend them thru 2012)
Conservative estimates say these cost us about $800,000,000,000.00; or about $80 Billion/Year.
If each job created by the Bush Tax Cuts pays an average of $30k per year, then the Feds collect about $6,000.00 in taxes.
So, if we divide $80 Billion (cost) by $6,000 (revenue), we need to have created more than 13,000,000 jobs per year, which means we needed to have added over 1,000,000 jobs per month in the last 10 years. When was the last time this economy showed a net increase of a million jobs in any month in the last 10 years? When was the last time we showed an increase of a million jobs in any quarter?
But, let's back up a little and say that I'm using wacky numbers and that my calculations are just way off the mark. OK; for grins and giggles, let's say I'm off by huge margins. Let's say the cost is only half of what I'm citing, and that the jobs created are paying 50% better than $30,000 a year.
Now we've got a cost of $40 Billion per year divided by revenues of $9,000, which means we only needed 370,000 new jobs per month over the last 10 years. Again, when was the last time we had a string of jobs reports that said we'd added 370,000 new jobs for any number of months in a row?
Reality: In the 118 months of W Bush and Obama, we've averaged a net increase of 17,144 jobs per month. I don't care how you look at it, a decade of deep tax cuts has failed to produce what the proponents of this policy promised us. We have to find it in ourselves to admit that it's a failure and that it belongs in the dumpster with The Great Society and The Domino Theory and a whole host of others that sounded good, but turned out to be little more than political flim-flam.
Fair warning: From here on out, if you try to float this shit by me, I will not preface my remarks by starting off with, "I'm sorry but..." I will straight-up call you stupid to your face, and I really don't care what else happens.
Repubs in general, and their PseudoCon wing in particular, just refuse to let go of their fairy tales. Especially the one about "Tax Cuts Generate More Tax Revenue By Creating More Tax Payers".
Simply put, this is total bunkum. I know this because while I generally kinda suck at Math, I can manage some basic arithmetic, which is what the TeaBaggers (eg) like to believe is all they need to make their "common sense" judgements on tax policy.
So here it is:
Bush Tax Cuts 2001 - 2011 (remembering that Obama agreed to extend them thru 2012)
Conservative estimates say these cost us about $800,000,000,000.00; or about $80 Billion/Year.
If each job created by the Bush Tax Cuts pays an average of $30k per year, then the Feds collect about $6,000.00 in taxes.
So, if we divide $80 Billion (cost) by $6,000 (revenue), we need to have created more than 13,000,000 jobs per year, which means we needed to have added over 1,000,000 jobs per month in the last 10 years. When was the last time this economy showed a net increase of a million jobs in any month in the last 10 years? When was the last time we showed an increase of a million jobs in any quarter?
But, let's back up a little and say that I'm using wacky numbers and that my calculations are just way off the mark. OK; for grins and giggles, let's say I'm off by huge margins. Let's say the cost is only half of what I'm citing, and that the jobs created are paying 50% better than $30,000 a year.
Now we've got a cost of $40 Billion per year divided by revenues of $9,000, which means we only needed 370,000 new jobs per month over the last 10 years. Again, when was the last time we had a string of jobs reports that said we'd added 370,000 new jobs for any number of months in a row?
Reality: In the 118 months of W Bush and Obama, we've averaged a net increase of 17,144 jobs per month. I don't care how you look at it, a decade of deep tax cuts has failed to produce what the proponents of this policy promised us. We have to find it in ourselves to admit that it's a failure and that it belongs in the dumpster with The Great Society and The Domino Theory and a whole host of others that sounded good, but turned out to be little more than political flim-flam.
Fair warning: From here on out, if you try to float this shit by me, I will not preface my remarks by starting off with, "I'm sorry but..." I will straight-up call you stupid to your face, and I really don't care what else happens.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Grief And The Media
It's been a while since Gil Scott Heron died, and it's been a while since I first saw this video from Jay Smooth. I'm putting it up now because I think I'm kinda starting to get what Jay's talking about when he criticizes some of the affects that all of this new technology is having on our ability to relate to the world and to each other.
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