NEON GODS

Expect no bold moves from Obama

This post by Digby just makes me even more certain I will not vote to reelect Barack Obama in 2012...even if withholding my vote would throw the election to the Republican candidate.  At least the Republicans ADMIT they are trying to screw the poor and eliminate the middle class.  Obama pretended to be on the side of the average person when he ran in 2008, but in fact he only cares about being reelected, and that means he must suck up to the loony right and keep the wealthy happy.

Our country's infrastructure is crumbling and we have millions who are unemployed and need jobs.  We desperately need a WPA-type program to put the unemployed to work fixing our infrastructure. That's what Franklin Roosevelt did, but this President is too cowardly to take bold steps.  It might piss off the right and he might lose the next election! Well, Earth to Obama, your sucking up to the right once you took office demoralized your base and many stayed home in 2010 and the Democrats lost a BUNCH of crucial elections, smart guy!

--Trakker

Skull of Patron Saint of Genital Disease For Sale

Here's the headline:

Decapitated Head Of St. Vitalis, Patron Saint Of Genital Disease, To Be Sold At Auction

Yes, evidently Catholics have a patron saint for everything.  No doubt there is a person employed in the Vatican whose job it is to keep track of all these weird saints.  I keep telling my son, "NO, you don't have the suckiest job in the universe."  Maybe now he'll listen.  Oh, be sure to read the article, although if I had a choice between that and trimming my toenails with my teeth, I'd be taking off my socks right now.

--Trakker

Still Screwed

Ezra Klein:

But if the Democrats have the better political strategy here, it’s not clear they have the better bargaining strategy. Republicans have committed themselves to a series of ideas that are very far to the right. They have made their position no tax increases, of any type, under any circumstances, at any time. They have voted to privatize Medicare and block-grant Medicaid. At this point, simply cutting deep into entitlements and agreeing to a deal in which there’s $1 of revenue for every $6 of spending cuts would be considered a compromise on their part.

Democrats, conversely, aren’t anchored to any specific proposal, have agreed that there should be many more spending cuts than tax increases, and are concerned that Republicans might actually let the debt ceiling cave in, and so they’re likely to get dragged into a deal that’s much further to the right than anything any of them would’ve imagined a year ago. They may win the election in 2012, but only after they lose the budget in 2011.

So it looks like we're really and truly about to be screwed again, because when the Democrats lose the budget battle, hundreds of thousands of Americans become poorer.  Govrnment spending is the only thing keeping our economy limping along right now.  Manufacturing has fled overseas, the farmers are flooded out of their fields, retail stores aren't selling much 'cause no one has any disposable income, though I suppose beer is selling well...

--Trakker

 

Willing victims, asking for more.

One of the strangest truths I've learned in the last 30 years is that you can screw the American people and they will beg for more!

You can send our jobs overseas, you can declare war against any country and we'll send our kids to fight it, you can tap our phones, lie to us, keep secrets form us, throw our citizens in jail for the most minor infractions, you can tase us, break into our houses - and punish us if we fight back, you can crash our economy, you can destroy our middle class, you can cut our benefits, cut our pensions, reduce seniors to beggars, you can destroy our unions, you can demean our teachers, you can ignore our infrastructure, you can make us pay more for our medical care than anyone else in the world, you can ignore the uninsured and let them die prematurely, you can make our rich richer while the rest of us struggle, you can insist scientists are stupid and God created the earth 6,000 years ago, you can buy our political system, you can grant corporations citizenship and let them buy elections, you can abuse us any way you want and we will not get angry or fight back.  We are victims and many of us want even more abuse: turn the country over to the very wealthy and the corporations and let them make the decisions.  They know what's best for America. God, and St. Ronnie said so, so it must be true.

Am I right?

--Trakker

"What's Left of the Left"? Krugman's frustrating crusade.

Man, I'm so behind in my reading!  I just saw this: "What’s Left of the Left -Paul Krugman’s lonely crusade" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, published a month ago. It is so true - and so fucking depressing!  The article revolves around a meeting President Obama had with six liberal economists last December that didn't go well, thus the author writes:

For a century, liberals have been chasing the same organizing idea: to perfect the welfare state—the soaringly aspirational, deeply flawed apparatus of Social Security, public health insurance, and progressive taxation designed to guarantee a secure middle class—and to extend its protections to every American. A year ago, after Obama’s health-care reforms became law, that project looked closer to completion. Now we are debating the terms of its erosion—with Republican proposals to cut the benefits of Medicare and Medicaid, conservative efforts to repeal protections for labor unions, and an emerging Washington consensus that the costs of a broad welfare state may be beyond what Americans will willingly pay. The White House meeting this past December, viewed in retrospect, seemed to mark the end of the expansive first part of Obama’s administration and the beginning of an austere second phase. Krugman, departing, found himself left in the position that every purist fears, holding blueprints for impossible buildings.

Here's what struck me in this paragraph: "[there's] an emerging Washington consensus that the costs of a broad welfare state may be beyond what Americans will willingly pay." 

As I've written before, the America I grew up in was willing to pay for a broad welfare state because we realized that we all benefit when everyone is safe and secure.  We understood that most people have financial problems at some point in their lives and we understood that there are good people at the bottom who just need a boost to become productive members of society. Any help we give now is usually repaid down the road by a growing middle class that pays taxes and buys goods, which keeps the economy healthy.

Then along came the Republicans who wispered in everyone's ear, "Hey sucker, those niggras in the cities are living well off of your tax dollars, color TVs, Cadillacs, steaks, free medical care.  While you're struggling to pay the bills they're ripping you off!!"  It worked. 

So the Republicans have continued to whisper in those same ears that not only "the blacks," but also union members, illegal immigrants, government workers, and teachers are also ripping them off.

In just 3 decades the Republicans have turned us into a bitter, mean-spirited country that wants to impoverish everyone except themselves (aka "hardworking American patriots"), the military, and the very wealthy (because they "create jobs").  If that isn't bad enough, we brag to anyone who will listen about what a compassionate, generous country we are!

This is a great article.  Read the whole thing if you have time.

--Trakker

Everything the Republicans touch turns to sh*t

Let's visit the deficit again.  Here is a graph of the major factors behind next year's projected deficit (click on graph to enlarge).

Ask any Tea Partier what caused the deficit and they will tell you "Obama's out of control spending!"  They are either stupid or they are liars.  The major reason we have a large deficit is the crash of our economy in 2008, and the recovery measures this administration has taken to ameliorate it.  This explains a full 64% of the deficit alone.  The economy crashed after 7 years of Bush's Presidency and 6 years of the Republicans in charge of Congress. 

Next cause?  Bush's Tax cuts which will add 19% more to the deficit.  Next? Bush's war spending, which he refused to pay for, putting it on our national "credit card" for our kids to off instead!  Together this adds up to 98% of the deficit, and it is a direct result of Republican policies  or neglect. 

The economic downturn (48%) has been devastating to the middle and working classes. Millions are still out of work or underemployed.  It has reduced the combined wealth of our middle class by billions of dollars and it is STILL draining us, but the Republicans are now busily using the deficit - the very deficit THEY created - as an excuse to dismantle Medicare, slash Medicaid, cut government programs at all levels of government, throwing thousands of government employees out of their jobs, and for busting unions.

Okay, that's what Republicans do, right? No big surprise.  Republicans have one goal and only one goal: smash government.

So why are the Democrats letting them do this?  All of the programs being dismantled, cut, smashed, are Democratic programs that were put in place to help people, and protect the poor and the elderly.  They are under attack by the Republicans and what are the Democrats doing?  Wringing their hands and moaning about how the deficits are wrecking America.  NO, GODDAMN IT, unemployment is wrecking America!  Put people back to work in jobs that pay a living wage, and the resulting increase in taxes on their wages will cut the deficit significantly, not only at the federal level but at the state and local level as well.

Sure, cutting spending and cutting safety nets is a lot easier than creating jobs, so the Dems are taking the easy damn way out.  For shame! 

Our nation is falling apart, our infrastructure is decaying.  We're falling behind the rest of the world in so many things. We must create a huge new national program of infrastructure improvements, while start a training program to train the unemployed in construction techniques.  We need to hire people to clean up parks and rehabilitate the inner cities, tutor kids who need help in school, create after school programs in music, art, and physical ed.  There is so much we need in this country and so many unemployed who need work. So I think it's time for the Democrats to rise up and kick the clowns in the Republican Party off the train and get America moving forward again.  And if the Dems won't, we need to form a new party that will.

UPDATE: Here's another example of something the Republicans have been wrong about, and anyone with a brain knew it was bunkum, but "everyone knows the private sector can alway do it cheaper." Right, even though the private sector has to add a huge profit margin to everything they do, they can always do it cheaper. 

PHOENIX — The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates.

--Trakker

It's the unemployment, stupid!

Ezra Klein writes about how the press and Congress are absolutely fixated on the deficit while continuing to ignore unemployment, and yet it's unemployment that is causing much of this large deficit!

The jobs crisis is vastly more pressing than our debt problems, but it’s also, in two mostly unnoticed ways, interconnected. For one thing, a weak labor market means a high deficit. It means tax revenues come in low and social spending needs to be high. It’s very hard to begin deficit reduction in any serious way before unemployment comes down.Which means that the sooner we get unemployment under control, the sooner sustained deficit reduction can really begin.

Really, Ezra?  And this is news?

I tried to post a snarky comment but so far the WaPost comment server is down (the server probably read some of the comments left by the nutty right-wingers that flock to the comments section and crashed itself in disgust). So I'll post the comment here.

Glerg! This is exactly what liberals have been saying all along, but when liberals advocate something it becomes the kiss of death.

Here's the problem:
1) Republicans (aka "wealthy corporatists") have one goal and one goal ONLY: shrink the government to as small as possible. If that means people starve, go jobless, go without shelter or health care, die, so be it. TS!
2) To do this they have successfully convinced a majority of the voters that liberals want to turn the U.S. into a communist/socialist/nazi-like nanny-state that coddles minorities by taxing the hard working, God-fearing, white patriots whose forefathers "built" this country (using slave labor, and the labor of any other ethnic group they could take advantage of at the moment, while exterminating the native Americans. And somehow these patriots are proud of this tradition).

The Republicans as a group (Limbaugh, Beck, Trump, Palin, Bachmann anyone?) are an embarrassment to all sentient beings everywhere, and yet, somehow they always get what they want.  Why is that, Ezra?

Yes, I'm in a pissy mood today.  Rain, rain, more rain...

--Trakker

Don't fixate on the cost of the new retirees, consider what they will be giving back.

Here's a thought I haven't seen explored in the media.  I hear a lot of angst about the baby-boomers who are about to retire.  They will soon begin to be a drain on Social Security and will be requiring Medicare payouts. 

It's true, these retirees are going to begin getting government checks and need medical care that will be paid for by the government  However it's important to note that these retirees have been paying into these funds most of their adult lives. 

Still, it's going to be a drain on the Treasury.  But it would be wrong to focus entirely on the payments.  What will America get in return?  Probably a lot of free service to society.

I'm retired.  Many of my friends and ex-coworkers are retired and the thing that strikes me is how many of us do volunteer work that benefits society.  Retired friends tutor kids in schools, work at homeless shelters, at soup kitchens, run for minor local office, do volunteer work for the police, libraries, etc. 

When the baby-boomes retire we will be getting a huge influx of people used to working, many of them college-educated.  Retirement is nice but most of us, at least for the first ten years when we're still healthy and active, want to be involved in the world.  Some devote themselves to hobbies, and help young people new to the hobby, others see a need in society and volunteer to fill it.  Some start new businesses and eventually hire new workers.

So, yes, money will be flowing out of the Treasury, but in return I think the country will be getting a lot of free service in return.

--Trakker 

Gingrich: Buy my new book...

Personally I don't think Newt Gingrich is seriously running for President. I think he is seriously selling his new book, um, the name of which I can't recall.  I mean, let's face it, the Republican Party's parade of candidates for President in 2012 suggests not a party serious about governing this great county, but of a circus of huge egos demanding attention so they can get rich or richer (Palin, Trump, Bachmann, and the Huckster, who loves his Fox News gig).

Still, for some odd reason the Very Serious People in Washington have always placed Gingrich on a pedistal marked "Intellectual," and I guess I must admit that in the Republican Party, Gingrich probably qualifies, even though in the real world Gingrich is to brilliant as piss is to Champaign. [Sorry, I just had to take a leak.]

Anyway, once he declared as a candidate Gingrich's words became fair game for judging their truthiness.  Seems as though Newt's words didn't impress Glenn Kessler, the WaPost's Fact Checker, who gave him a perfect score of four Pinocchios (not just a lie, but a Whopper!).  In fact his lies were so egregious that WaPost columnist Richard Cohen couldn't resist piling on.  Cohen, on his best days, is a masterful wordsmith and he was certainly on his game today!  Examples:

...so many lies, so little newspaper space — [Kessler] wound up awarding him four Pinocchios. For most politicians this would be a titanic embarrassment, but for Gingrich it is not even a personal best.

...[Gingrich] deals in boogeymen — menacing abstractions such as “left-wing radicals,” the “secular socialist machine” and “gay and secular fascism,” all of which (or some of which) represent “as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” The purplish mixing of homosexuality and fascism is both breathtakingly wrong and breathtakingly tasteless. No one was more anti-gay than the Nazis. They killed ’em.

...[Gingrich] employs the ugly language of demagoguery not because he is oblivious to its history but on account of it. He mimics. He was, however, brilliantly original in explaining to the Christian Broadcasting Network why he had committed adultery. It had to do with “how passionately I felt about this country” — a genuine contribution to the annals of sexual fibbery.

There is more than a little Richard Nixon in Gingrich...the same hallucinatory grievances, the same willingness to lie, exaggerate and smear...

Yup, that's true.  But Nixon was genuinely smart, Gingrich is a pretender.

It's obvious Cohen assumes Gingrich is a serious candidate.  Yeah, right!  Even Republicans hate him.  Sure, given the others in the race so far, Newt will probably rise to the top for a bit - Trump did - but once Bachmann wins in Iowa she will take over until someone sillier comes along.  Face it America, the Republicans get all the press these days, but maybe that's because they've become a party of clowns.

--Trakker

The Republican Party, a party of arrogant adolescents.

I've finally begun to recognize what the current Republican party reminds me of: spoiled adolescents.  Especially the adolescents I remember from my junior high years (are there still jr. high schools left?), and I guess I would include myself in that group. 

About 8th grade we began to get pretty impressed with ourselves and began to bully the teachers and our parents, and adults in general.  We knew just enough about the world to be dangerous.  If we were lucky, the adults we tried to bully pushed back hard and put us in our place.  Woe to those kids who got away with their bullying, because they just got more and more impressed with their stupid ideas and became insufferable to all.  By high school these spoiled brats were more than just annoying, they were getting into trouble and causing people real grief.

I see the same thing in the Republican Party/Tea Party.  They are semi-ignorant people certain they have all the answers.  They are smarter than the experts and the better educated.  What arrogance! They know very little about economics, or how government works, or the role the government plays in the prosperity and stability of a society.  Because they are too dim to recognize what the government does for them behind their curtain of awareness, they not only assume government and taxes are unnecessary, they are also too arrogant to stop and ask themselves why others believe otherwise.  They have never advanced past adolescence and thus are intent on bullying the rest of us to reduce government and taxes to fit their fairy tale freedom and prosperity.

Adolescents can be excused for their arrogance and beligerence, it's a phase we all go through, and most of us get smarter and more humble over the years.  However, the Republican Party is comprised of adults, so they have no excuse for their childish, adolescent behavior, like demanding that the country reduce the deficit entirely by cutting spending while insisting that tax increases must be kept entirely off the table!  That's why it's important for the Democrats to push back hard and put these bullies in their place.  They are so shallow that they can't fathom that they could possibly be wrong about anything.  You cannot find a middle ground with people who don't acknowledge any ground but theirs. 

As long as the press, the President, and the Democratic party treat these adolescents as rational adults, this country is in trouble.

--Trakker