Monday, June 06, 2011
Mr. Speaker, Where Are The Jobs?
Dear Mr. Boener,
You've been in charge for six months now.
You've allowed hundreds of bills to come to the floor of Congress, a hundred or more to restrict the rights of a woman to have an abortion alone.
Where are our jobs, sir? This weekend, you sent out an email proudly touting how a job creation bill would be introduced.
Finally.
Six months later? Really? People are starting to starve out here in the greatest, richest and most powerful nation in history, and you've been dicking around with same-sex marriage bans and Presidential "czars" and "English as the official language of the US"
WHERE ARE THE FUCKING JOBS, SIR????
If people can't feed their families, if they are forced to choose between walking away from their homes and filing bankruptcy, then you, sir, have failed the American people.
And clearly, you have. Go cry over that, biatch.
Why Does John Boener Hate America?
Seriously. He opposes bailing out GM and Chrysler
Now, to the extent that he highlights Ford as a model of how an auto company should have been run ahead of the greatest economic collapse in American history, he has a point. Ford managed to skirt the troubles of GM and Chrysler. But Ford also benefits from the concessions GM and Chrysler negotiate with suppliers and unions, as they can rightly ask those same groups for the same deals. So to say Ford had no benefit from bailouts is childish and silly.
The government's job should not be to prevent failure, but it surely should be to protect individuals from falling too hard, too fast, in too great a number. When there's as many as a million jobs on the line, the government has a duty to respond.
And Boener himself ought to be looking into why there are only three large American auto makers, and how much have Republican tax cuts allowed the situation to get to such an extreme oligopoly.
What's The Spread?
Santorum "in it to win it."
I hope he has a good industrial strength Google scrubbot...
It does raise a question, however: has the Republican party ever been so weak that there are not less than a dozen candidates/flirters for a nomination that is destined to lose the election? It makes you wonder who they'll run in 2016 when they stand a chance of electing someone.
Hobson's Choice
This has been a tough Spring in the heartland, to be sure: massive tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri, and floods from Maine to Louisiana to Arizona.
Comes today's story of tragedy: the Army Corps of Engineers may have to purposely breach some levies along the Missouri River in order to save other towns from catastrophic floods.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is flooding Pierre, Fort Pierre, Dakota Dunes and other spots along the Missouri River in South Dakota because the corps is doing the job Congress has required.Those responsibilities, set in federal laws, include flood control storage; supporting navigation; hydro-electricity generation; water supply for communities and industry; irrigation; recreation; and protection of threatened and endangered species.
The corps is being widely faulted these days for its handling of the Missouri River last fall and winter and this spring. The common accusation is the corps should have been releasing more water from the Missouri River reservoirs in the months past.
Sounds good, but here are the facts.
Records show the corps released much more water last fall than in almost any other year since the dam system was strung together in the 1950s and ’60s.
Right now, the floods are way back up in the headwaters of the river and the tributaries that feed into it: melting snowpack and early Spring rains have swollen brooks and srpings which in turn swell streams which in turn...well, you get the drift. Normally, not so much an issue. Floodplains are designed to be flooded. The problem is those floodplains are also flat, fertile, arable land and now farmers and farming communities have sprung up to use that land.
Farther down the Missouri River lie cities and towns like Sioux City, IA, and both Kansas Cities. And the Missouri meets the already-flooded Mississippi just north of St. Louis.
Even if the ACE had wanted to release a torrent of water from the Mizzou, it would only have created a bigger problem down in New Orleans, which was saved only by opening a floodway for the first time in 40 years. That opening was only about 25%. A larger opening would have inundated thousands of Louisiana residents and wreaked economic havoc of the kind the BP spill created.
Not a pretty sight, in other words. The ACE was really only left with one choice: take it or leave it. Let everything collapse on nature's schedule or try to slowly drain what it could, where it could and hope for the best.
The second half of that gamble is now underway.
"Dick" Shelby
You know, in the time of the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression...and one that is in danger of actually collapsing even further than that one...you'd think we'd want the best and the brightest minds overseeing our recovery.
Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama (Republican, natch) does not.
In April 2010, President Obama nominated me to be one of the seven governors of the Fed. He renominated me in September, and again in January, after Senate Republicans blocked a floor vote on my confirmation. When the Senate Banking Committee took up my nomination in July and again in November, three Republican senators voted for me each time. But the third time around, the Republicans on the committee voted in lockstep against my appointment, making it extremely unlikely that the opposition to a full Senate vote can be overcome. It is time for me to withdraw, as I plan to inform the White House.
The leading opponent to my appointment, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, has questioned the relevance of my expertise. “Does Dr. Diamond have any experience in conducting monetary policy? No,” he said in March. “His academic work has been on pensions and labor market theory.”
But understanding the labor market — and the process by which workers and jobs come together and separate — is critical to devising an effective monetary policy. The financial crisis has led to continuing high unemployment. The Fed has to properly assess the nature of that unemployment to be able to lower it as much as possible while avoiding inflation. If much of the unemployment is related to the business cycle — caused by a lack of adequate demand — the Fed can act to reduce it without touching off inflation. If instead the unemployment is primarily structural — caused by mismatches between the skills that companies need and the skills that workers have — aggressive Fed action to reduce it could be misguided.
So I'm thinking, "Hmmmmmmmm, here's a guy who would bring a fresh perspective to the Federal Reserve Board. Someone who wasn't a bankster. Someone who had a grip on what it's like to actually be a tax-paying worker bee in the Great Transfer Of Wealth that is the American capitalist system.
But Dick thinks differently, you see. Dick believes that someone who can actually bring to the Board a fresh perspective might somehow damage his dry cleaning empire (not a joke). Or that somehow stopping a Fed nomination would force the White House to pony up for a couple of pork barrel projects for his district, like an unneeded refueling aircraft or an FBI counterterrorism center located in that bustling hive of terror targets, Alabama (except maybe Huntsville, which is military anyway, and not in need of much protection).
No, Dick believes in the antiBenthamian credo of the needs of the few override the needs of everyone. I'm not suggesting that Dr. Diamond is the nation's economic salvation, no, but he certainly could help the Fed break out of the morass of bureacratic concrete thinking that it's currently invested in, and let a little fresh air into the Board room.
Dick would rather game theory our lives.
Andrew Malcom: Moron
All the evidence you need is this article...
And this quote:
[Revere] who warned the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringin' those bells and, um, makin' sure as he's ridin' his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we're gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. And we we're gonna be armed.
There is, however, a scary aspect to this story, and one that should give all Americans pause before voting for a Teabagger: Her minions are scrubbing Paul Revere's Wiki page to conform with her lunacy.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Jim Hoft, Dick
The Gateway "Pundit" has decided to suddenly wake up, ten years into the security state established by his own party, and discover to his SHOCK that people are routinely harassed by the TSA.
Welcome to the party, pal!
Nobody Asked Me, But...
1) I wonder if he committed suicide?
2) Y'know, I sort of feel sad for John Edwards: he really had it all, almost. A devoted wife, a nice family, fame, fortune...and then I remember how many people he conned. I don't feel so sad.
3) More coming out about the Weinerhacker: he intended to slightly smear the Congressman by sending the penis photo to a porn star, not a college student. I'm still waiting for the en masse condemnation of Andrew Breitbart from the Republicans, in the manner of how Eric Cantor has taken potshots at Weiner. Given that Cantor's own closet* is not dust-free...
* not intended as a factual statement
4) Reason number 850,678,324 for banning guns: courts are better for handling divorces.
5) Wudy is wunning. Again. Not the brightest bulb in the *9/11!* box, huh?
6) The May jobs report is staggeringly awful. Corporate America is sitting on some $2 trillion in cash reserves. You do the math.
7) Sony Networks hacked. This is not a repeat from last week. Or the week before. Or a month before that.
8) Your moment of Zen.
9) Your moment to PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!
10) Finally, Dear Sony, Not all hacks are evil.
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Weiner Is Safe
It turns out that @PatriotUSA76 is toast
Hey, Dan? Next time, check the kerning, motherfucker!
I have a feeling "Dan Wolfe" may have bitten off more than he can chew. His soon-to-be-ex-wife is suing his ass big time, and she is in cahoots with an ex-girlfriend of his to take him down a notch. He owns a business that apparently has fallen on hard times, and has never even spoken to Breitbart personally.
This may actually work to the benefit of people who really would like to see Breitbart disgraced once and for all.
Creepy
On the heels of the news about Gary Carter this week comes this story: seven players from the 1980 World series between the Phillies and Kansas City Royals have died of brain cancer.
Today's Panic Moment
Worms from HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, I say! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
Pity The Mitt
He has this day all picked out to open his campaign and he gets upstaged in his home frikkin' state by the Snowbilly!
Now, if she's...and I'm PRAYING she is...if she's doing this to eliminate the opposition and have the nomination handed to her, oh yes, by all means.
But Governess? If you're not, shut the hell up already.
Ok, Then!
This is a little weird. According to the rules of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association, each softball team is limited to two heterosexual men in order to qualify for the Gay Softball World Series.
Um, not for nothing, but why even allow two? I've played enough softball to know that sexual preference has nothing to do with ability to play the damned game. Goodness knows, if being gay would have made me a better hitter, criminy, I would have been the gayest man on the planet.
It seems pretty simple: the rule's idiotic unless you're running a social league, in which case, trash it anyway and let the teams be who they are. Hell, if a team comprised of entirely heterosexual men decided to join, that would be a) their choice and b) a great way to promote tolerance and understanding on both sides.
*facepalm*
Tony, Tony, Tony...
No moral judgements from me, but you have to know that this looks bad.
You're a young-ish man. I know there are photos of me floating around that I would not enjoy having published for the world to see, but at the least, I would acknowledge they were mine. I wouldn't spend days poo-pooing a story like Weinergate. I'd be furious they got out. This, what you believed to be a sidelight, ends up now becoming the story.
You could have said "This was a private photo," and left it at that, then refocused the entire investigation on who hacked your account. Instead, you let the other guys control the dialogue over the photo itself.
The implication being, there's worse out there to come. Daily News columnist Michael Daly sums it up nicely: " How can a guy be so sure about big, complicated, issues such as national debt if he can't be certain whether that's a photo of his crotch?...Maybe the owner of that bulge is not just a liar, he's also embarrassed."
Which is precisely how they have you by the balls.
Err, no pun intended.
Swing away, dude. Call in the cops. Call in the FBI. Let's protect the next human being who might arouse (again, no pun intended) their ire.
Admitting A Truth
I'm sure this won't happen, at least in the US, anytime in the near future, but you have to admit there's an awful lot of sense here:
The Global Commission on Drug Policy report calls for the legalisation of some drugs and an end to the criminalisation of drug users.
The panel includes former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former leaders of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, and the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.
The US and Mexican governments have rejected the findings as misguided.
The Global Commission's 24-page report argues that anti-drug policy has failed by fuelling organised crime, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and causing thousands of deaths.
It cites UN estimates that opiate use increased 35% worldwide from 1998 to 2008, cocaine by 27%, and cannabis by 8.5%.
No doubts the jump in usage is coincident to the increase in worldwide wealth gained from American companies outsourcing American jobs to countries that pay less than American wages, thus bringing to those countries the uniquely American problem of work-related stress disorders.
I'm very much on the fence about this. Some drugs, opiates in particular, have a track record that is, well, less than ideal for introduction into society legally. Most are on prescription as having medical uses, and it seems to me that this might be the way to go for these classes of drugs: expand the prescriptive framework. Allow doctors to prescribe them more often for uses that people are already abusing them for, but with strict monitoring and follow up. Hell, we administer Prozac and Ritalin as if they were candy to any yahoo who can persuade a psychologist that his boredom or sheer idiocy is symptomatic of some disorder that sees sixteen squirrels running around his brain.
To coin a scenario.
Yes, there will be blindspots and oversights and people will slip thru the cracks but it almost certainly has to be better than having near-100% illegality. The current situation is untenable. Too, it creates shortages of medications that people actually need (try getting a box of Sudafed someday.)
On the other hand lie drugs that are clearly over-protected, that have a more benign history, that rightly could and maybe should take their places alongside such mood-altering substances as alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and sugar.
Indeed, that last may be triggering an awful lot of excuses people have for medicating. Overmedicating with sugar leads to obesity, depression, and sleep disorders, among other effects.
If all these are going to be basically un- and at least under-regulated, then other substances like marijuana deserve "a day in court": serious study for legalization, and if not, then full decriminalization.
Too, from an economic standpoint, lifting the war on drugs would improve Third World economies enormously, not least from simply avoiding destruction of valuable farmland and the price that crime and criminals take out of a native population. Imagine Mexican farmers growing pot without worrying which drug cartel is in charge and what happens if another muscles in. Or perhaps the price of marijuana will drop enough that they plant a food crop instead.
It sure as hell would make our borders more secure, too.
Wars on nebulosities, like poverty or drugs or terrorism, inevitably butt up against a simple truth: where is the finish line?
In the case of poverty, the finish line was arbitrarily drawn by the haters at five years, and you'd better have your act together by then. That maybe the only war that we can control, because people in poverty don't want to be in poverty and will work with us to beat their own poverty back if given the opportunity.
People who supply drugs or terror are antithetical to the goals of those "wars": they want the war to lose. And if they can make us spend the energy and resources to beat them, even if we succeed, another crop will rise up to take its place. It is neverending war, by definition.
In the case of terror, the answer is simple. As Peter Gabriel once famously observed, you only achieve true security and peace by respecting the rights of others. There will still be terror attacks, true. For a while. Until the strength of a peaceful nation shows not in retaliation but in resilience. Once terrorists realize they can't do enough harm to topple us, they'll leave it be.
The case of the war on drugs, I think, is best won by admitting there really wasn't a war to begin with, that it was a marketing plan cooked up by people who were shocked that other people were having fun. Once we get over that hurdle and start to look into the causes of the use of drugs, we will have taken a large step in the direction of civilization.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Hmmmmmmmmmm...
The Wicked Witch Of The West is in my city and now we're under a tornado watch.
Coincidence? I don't THINK so!
The Huntsman's Pack
I got a solution, Ambassador
I admire Congressman Paul Ryan's honest attempt to save Medicare. Those who disagree with his approach incur a moral responsibility to propose reforms that would ensure Medicare's ability to meet its responsibilities to retirees without imposing an unaffordable tax burden on future generations of Americans.
OK, you've laid the gauntlet down. Here's my solution. It will guarantee the solvency of Medicare in perpetuity and will actually lower medical costs for everyone.
I'll go slowly, so even a yahoo like yourself can keep up with me, K?
Expand. It. To. Cover. E.V.E.R.Y.B.O.D.Y!
You like apples? How do you like those apples?
Seriously, these half-hearted efforts to reform health insurance are both ludicrous and leave us the laughingstock of the civilized world. Let's get to single-payer insurance, lift the ban on Medicare's ability to negotiate costs, and make the insurance companies compete in a free market.
That's all, John. You may resume your demagoguery.
The Flag As Advertising
Interesting point Martin Bashir makes here:
But what is not true is that the flag of the United States can be used to promote a product, which clearly leaves the consumer with the impression that the product is endorsed by the Federal government. Some morons on the right seem to skate right past this rather important fact on their way to bashing Bashir for a double standard.
Palin has not announced her candidacy, but has invited the press along on her tour. She has a movie coming out in the next few weeks. She is a, and I'll use the term loosely, "popular" author who can reasonably expect a bump in book sales from the goobers and yahoos that she will encounter in her flag-draped "coffin on wheels."
I coin that, because as she displays her flag, she dishonors and disrespects the men and women who so valiantly died for her to be able to write her books and whine her little whines and allows asshats like Fitzsimmons to waste perfectly good tube socks fapping to photos of her in tight leather pants. If she's going to disrespect dead soldiers on Memorial Day no less, then she ought to be called on it, as Bashir did.
So I suggest l'il Alex pick up a gun, stand a post, and then tell me how much he likes seeing Sarah Palin disrespecting his comrades in arms who died next to him.
Tsk, Tsk, Governor!
You've been whining about budget crises left and right, while refusing Federal subsidies to help your constituents get around your overcrowded and underserviced state for months now.
And now we find out why you've been so unsympathetic to their plight: you use the state helicopters to airlift your fat ass around!
Even wealthy financier Jon Corzine had enough "man of the people" in him to risk riding in the car the state provides you!
Winter In America
I was neglectful yesterday not to make note of the passing of Gil Scott-Heron. He was only 62, and to my mind, the finest poet of the mid-20th century, rivaled only perhaps by Langston Hughes and Robert Frost.
From the Indians who welcomed the pilgramsto the buffalo who once ruled the plains;
like the vultures circling beneath the dark clouds
looking for the rain/looking for the rain.From the cities that stagger on the coast lines
in a nation that just can't take much more/
like the forest buried beneath the highwaysnever had a chance to grow/never had a chance
to grow.It's winter, winter in america
and all of the healers have been killed or forced
away.
It's winter, winter in america
and ain't nobody fighting 'cause nobody knows
what to save.
The con-stitution was a noble piece of paper;
with Free Society they struggled but they died in
vain/
and now Democracy is ragtime on the corner
hoping that it rains/hoping that it rains.And I've seen the robins perched in barren
treetops
watching last ditch racists marching across the
floor
and like the peace signs that melted in our
dreams
never had a chance to grow/never had a
chance to grow.
It's winter, winter in america
and all of the healers done been killed or put in
jail
it's winter, winter in america
and ain't nobody fighting 'cause nobody knows
what to save.
Karma Is A Bitch
And while Sarah Palin could be a big bitch, she's not bigger than karma
There will come a time, Failed Governess, when you'll be begging for coverage, and you will be crucified and not a thing in the world Greta Van Susteren can do for you.
A Spanking In The Works
You have to know that Obama will put his best professorial touches to this:
Too, the GOP has not exactly played their cards close to the vest, while Obama has. In fact, Boener has doubled down on teh stoopid in many cases, holding a symbolic vote last night rejecting an increase in the debt ceiling without spending cuts.
Which would actually have meaning if in fact, Obama hadn't already signaled that he'd be open to spending cuts in areas that really require it, like defense.
You don't bluff a poker player who's already signaled he's holding two aces in the hole by going all in, in other words. Obama doesn't strike me as being a big idiot like the last Resident (evil).
The basic flaw in Boener's argument, of course, and the one I expect Obama will lecture him on at great length, is job creation in America is a function of small businesses, which have already seen their taxes cut by Obama and have produced few jobs to show for it, through no fault of their own. If banks aren't lending money to them, they aren't building businesses.
More important, they would not benefit from the tax cuts the GOP have proposed (including extending the Bush tax cuts) and would in fact be mostly harmed by the spending cuts the Republicans have proposed. The banks have and would, however. And you'll note the divorce from reality here: tax cuts are benefitting folks who have not lent a hand to improving the American job picture.
Too, these job-creatin' folks are the front-line beneficiaries of health care reform, something the GOP has targeted as a main culprit of spending, despite the fact the fucker hasn't even taken effect yet.
We should probably start linking John Boehner's name with Herbert Hoover. That ought to make the connections crystal clear for even the stupidest yahoo on the right.
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