Friday Kitten Blogging

Hai, mah peeps!

Dadby gawt hesseff a noo bideo camra, so I thought I wud plai wif et.

Diss es me, waten foah hem to coem hoem.

Friday Music Blogging

Steely Dan - Black Friday

OK, obvious choice, but Walter Becker was graduated from my alma mater.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) She deserved this. She deserved a lot more. Somehow, I think karma is about to prove to Lori Drew that it's the bigger bitch.

2) In a phrase: Not Good.

3) Were you at WalMart at 5 AM? Kohls at 4? Then you helped write this article.

4) It seems as if Europe might be immune to this recession. But that's because they've had actual leadership during it all.

5) I haven't heard the entire album yet, but maybe Axl should not have rushed it to the stores...you know, take a little more time, overproduce it a little bit more, stuff a few more guitar solos in it, maybe include a free puppy with every purchase...

6) In other Chinese Democracy news...

7) Question: Why not Bill? He's going to have an awful lot of time on his hands the next four years...

8) They take mugshots for loitering in LA????

9) And let's not forget the latest terror group: nudists. "I swear officer, I really WAS just happy to see her!"

10) In California, this would be illegal.

For Thanksgiving

We're often asked to reflect on this day, set apart to acknowledge whatever bounty we've gotten in the past year's harvest, and give thanks for our blessings.

This year, it's been pretty tough to come up with much.

First, let's thank America for waking up to what's happened to this nation in the past eight years and having the guts and determination to do something about it. And so long as we're thanking America, let's thank her for not tumbling into the abyss in the past eight years. Despite our loss of freedoms and respect, she has managed to provide us a bulwark from tyranny beyond that which Bush & Co. have managed to steal.

After all, we aren't forced to keep our two-way televisions on 24 hours a day. There's something to be thankful for there.

We should be thankful that America isn't going thru what is happening in Mumbai and if that means some petty minded bigot of low expectations wants to grab the credit for Bush, so be it. I disagree, of course: Bush has only inflamed a situation, and the only reason we haven't been attacked has been logistical. They *want* to attack us and want to, badly.

It has just been dumb luck they haven't bothered to try very hard. As I said, we should be thankful that George Bush didn't buck history and become the first President to have TWO Al Qaeda attacks on his watch, but it seems small beer to be lowering the bar that far.

So long as we're thanking Bush, I want to thank him for the past eight years, which have served as a reminder to the American people that we aren't that far evolved from the muck and mire that most nations have to live under. We aren't that superior, because our system only works really well when we put smart people in places of power. I'll have a post in January that details this more.

When we put venal, petty, partisan, short-fingered vulgarians in charge, we suddenly turn into a banana republic without the umbrella drinks.

We must thank Barack Obama, for making us see the possible again. Politics has been called "the art of the possible," so now let us pray that President-designate Obama (the electoral college doesn't meet for a few weeks) is a true artist.

Too, let us thank Hillary Clinton for pushing thru the glass ceiling that made Obama's candidacy and election less likely. 18 million cracks later, and we see a black man and a white woman standing as examples to our children that say "Yes, you can".

I want to thank John McCain, too, but I'm not sure for what. For selecting Sarah Palin and in one step rendering the Republican party irrelevant for decades? Possibly, but I think it's important to have two strong parties. Just look at the past eight years to see what happens when one party can dominate the other.

I guess, finally, we thank everyone in our lives who has helped us get to this day, alive and able.

And from me, thank you for reading this drivel on a daily basis.

Namaste

As a New Yorker, my thoughts and prayers are with my brothers and sisters in Mumbai tonight.

It shouldn't happen to anyone, and when the dust settles, I hope the bastards are bought to justice. For now, heal.

के रूप में एक नई यॉर्कर, मेरे विचार और प्रार्थना मेरे भाई और मुंबई आज रात में बहनों के साथ कर रहे हैं.

यह किसी को भी, और नहीं होना चाहिए जब धूल, सुलझेगी मैं
इस कमीनों न्याय करने के लिए खरीदा जाता है उम्मीद है. अभी के लिए, चंगा.

A Tale Told By Idiots

[I]t is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. - Macbeth, Act 5, Sc. 5

 

So, the latest desperate attempt by the anti-Obama forces focuses its depleting energy on....Hillary Clinton:

If President-elect Barack Obama nominates Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state, many legal scholars believe it would be the former law professor's first violation of the Constitution as president.

Why? Because the Constitution forbids the appointment of members of Congress to administration jobs if the salary of the job they'd take was raised while they were in Congress. (Article I, Section 6: "No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office ... the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time."  Emoluments meaning salaries and benefits.)

True enough, the language is clear. And yet, this is one of those clauses of the Constitution that seems quaint, antiquated, and woefully out of touch like, say, the Second Amendment. Indeed, as Pete Williams points out, this clause has been violated repeatedly over the past century. William Howard Taft named Sen. Philander Knox, Nixon named Sen. William Saxbe, Carter named Sen. Edmund Muskie, and Clinton named Sen. Lloyd Bentsen.

 

The solution was to roll back the pay hikes in order to fulfill the spirit of the clause.

 

Now, we're not talking about a massive raise here. It was a cost of living adjustment and one could make the case that, indeed, emoluments were not raised at all, merely restored to their 1990s level. However, a case could be made that any Senator who sat in this past Congress would forever be barred from serving as Secretary of State or any other Cabinet post.

 

It seems pretty clear this clause was designed to prevent a quid pro quo situation.

 

But, noooooooooooooooooooooo, that's not how the insane wing of America wants to play this! An example:

"Is Hillary Clinton Unconstitutional?" In a word, Yes -- or, to be more precise, a Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be unconstitutional.

Torture? Constitutional.

 

Patriot Act? Constitutional.

 

Abandoning habeas corpus? Constitutional (until the SCOTUS overrules it).

 

A Senator taking a personal paycut (given that Hillary would have to seriously cut back on her speaking commitments and Bill would have to stop advising foreign governments)? UNconstitutional.

 

Idiots.

Feeding The Hydra

In mythology, of course, the Hydra of Lerna was a many-headed beast who devoured cattle and killed men with its poison breath. If one lopped off one of its head, two grew back in its place. It took Hercules and his cousin to kill the monster.

 

In politics, the Hydra is comprised of that faction of Progressive Blogtopia (© Skippy The Bush Kangaroo) that simply cannot stand the Clintons.

 

Exhibit A is presented courtesy of Taylor Marsh. This particular head's name? Arianna Huffington:

But given the palace intrigue that always accompanies the Clintons, James may be too genteel. Consider: in the two Times stories examining the "Clinton-Obama détente," we hear from "confidants of Mrs. Clinton," "former Clinton administration officials...who admire Mrs. Clinton," "a longtime friend," "a former aide," "two advisors to Mrs. Clinton," "a longtime friend of the Clintons who broke with them," "one Clinton advisor," "lawyers on both sides," "people close to the vetting," "close aides to Mrs. Clinton," "her confidants, who insisted on anonymity," "a close associate of Mrs. Clinton," and "one Democrat who is close to both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton."

So by taking in Hillary, Obama is getting more than just Hillary -- and more than just Hillary and Bill -- he's getting the entire Royal Court of the House of Clinton, complete with chancellors, chamberlains, and a court-jester or two.

The "royal court" construct is particularly juice coming from a woman of means whose political career began and ended by being the "beard" of a Republican senatorial candidate. Presumably, this gives her a certain leg up in experiencing the royal court, but a careful analysis of her history suggests she has deep and mixed feelings about the Clintons, despite her conversion to progressivism.

 

In short, she hates Bill and Hillary, but she's worked hard to supress those feelings.

 

Unfortunately, as Marsh points out, Arianna can't hide them completely.

There is no evidence, you know, the kind that comes with an actual name, to prove Hillary Clinton and her closest circle, which at this point is rather small, has added to the drama the media covering her has spun out of control.

It's not surprising that people are buying into the soap opera construct. It's just disappointing when there's no proof that any of this is coming from HRC's side or Obama's either.

There is no doubt that the most qualified person who ran for President in 2008 was Hillary Clinton. Who has been closer to the Oval Office than a First Lady? Who has seen first hand the inner workings of policy?

 

Did the Clinton's establish a court? Of course they did. Will Obama establish a court? Of course he will.

 

But, as Peter Beinart (via Marsh) points out, this is a good thing, to mix a little of the Clintons into the Obamas:

For the first time in four decades, a Democratic administration is going to hit the ground running rather than fall on its face because it will be staffed by people who know how the federal government works. That's change all right—the kind we can believe in.

Moreover, as Time Magazine notes, Obama doesn't have much time to get on-the-job training:

But not since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in the midst of the Depression has a new President faced a set of challenges quite as formidable as those that await Obama. That's why Obama has been quicker off the blocks in setting up his government than any of his recent predecessors were, particularly Bill Clinton, who did not announce a single major appointment until mid-December. As the President-elect put it in his first radio address, "We don't have a moment to lose."

So it's not only that he's availing himself of a fairly professional, talented crew of people who are experienced in precisely how to run a White House, he's also not got the luxury of vetting a million people who might be equally qualified, who might benearly as adept, but who might run into trouble in the confirmation process.

 

You may not realize it, but there are 300 posts in the White House that must be confirmed by the Senate. Granted, Obama has a friendly Senate awaiting him in January, but the confirmation process demands bipartisan participation (amen to that) which means Republicans will be lying in wait for anything, and I do mean anything, they can take a pound of flesh from Obama's hide.

 

Remember the Clinton Attorney General appointment? It was nearly "three strikes and you're out," what with Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. Could you imagine the uproar if Obama gets hit on such a vital appointment, twice?

 

The Bush administration touted that "the adults are taking over," even if they quickly whined about missing W keys on the computers (which should have been our first clue). Obama does not intend to make that mistake again. It's nice to see the adults truly are  taking over. Hopefully, Obama can kill the Hydra as well. Or at least make it grow the hell up.

An Interesting Test

It should be interesting to see the market reactions today to this:

An economic stimulus package that President-elect Barack Obama is expected to announce Monday will not likely have a major impact on manufacturing until the end of 2009 or later, an analyst said Monday.

Obama is rolling out a plan that will require congressional cooperation even before he is inaugurated Jan. 20. His plan is likely to exceed the $175 billion he proposed during the campaign and would include an infusion of money for infrastructure projects, new environmental technologies and tax cuts for low- and middle-income taxpayers. It will not call for tax hikes for the wealthy.

Analyst Ann Duignan of JPMorgan said in a note to investors that machinery companies such as Caterpillar Inc., CNH Global, Deere & Co. and other manufacturers would not begin to feel an impact from federal spending until 2010.

(emphasis added)

 

Given that the market has basically spit up the Bush recovery scheme like a cat with a poisoned furball, Obama's plan should see some welcome positive reaction in the market place. Which I'm sort of hoping for because I started buying stock again on Friday. It will be hard to segregate the reaction to Obama's plan from the reaction to the Citigroup bailout, but my suspicion is stocks will reach pretty high, other things being equal.

 

Curious thing about Citigroup: they are the largest bank in the United States (at least, they were before all this merging started in the wake of the Bear Stearns debacle), and had just received a $6 billion capital infusion from the House of Saud, and, indirectly, the bin Laden family. They seemed poised for a commanding position in the banking community.

 

And now we're finding out they were already $300 billion in the tank in subprime mortgages alone, which we have agreed to guaranty.

 

Looking back now, the market mechanisms made this situation nearly unavoidable: subprime mortgages were making money hand over fist, and the repackaging of mortgages into derivative securities (sorry for the jargon, folks) made it a double-dip scoop of ice cream on top of the slice of pie.

 

The first Ponzis in were earning money hand over fist each quarter: Countrywide, Ditech, all those guys who advertised relentlessly on the TV, were making earnings that dazzled even the most suspicious bankers, who are generally thought to be sober fellows. Realistic bankers who wanted to sit on the sidelines, and make money the old fashioned way (ripping off widows and orphans), felt enormous pressure from the shareholders and market analysts to jump in with both feet into what was clearly a lucrative business.

 

It became a self-feeding cycle: banks would lend money, people would mortgage their homes, banks would then scrape for even more money to lend to borrowers who were slightly less credit worthy and the erosion of the credit markets began. This was all fine so long as the historical axiom that housing prices always rose, long term, was in effect.

 

Here's the problem: the way loans were structured, it was in the homeowner's best interest to move every five years or so. The mortgage models were based on thirty year ownership. Over the long term, yes, homes were a really good investment. But not so much in the short term.

 

You'd borrow on an adjustable rate mortgage with a teaser intro rate AND interest-only payments for the first five years. Before the end of five years, you'd sell this home, buy a new one on a brand spanking new five year adjustable mortgage with a teaser rate and interest-only payments and use the proceeds to pay off your old mortgage.

 

Once housing prices peaked and began to slide, now people were being asked to pony up significant amounts of principal to pay off the shortfall in the sales proceeds, thus taking dramatic amounts of money out of both the mortgage market as well as the consumer market.

 

Citibank is heavily involved in both markets. I suppose $6 billion was just a bandaid on an amputation.

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

Imagine for a moment, a five year old boy. He is terribly skinny, has blonde hair cut short. He is in his first grade class. His teacher, Miss McCaffery, is a tall, willowy woman, fragile to even look at.

The class has just returned from lunch and is beginning preparation for art class. The ceilings are high in his room, which is in a schoolbuilding built just about thirty years earlier, in a time when education was considered holy, and schools looked like cathedrals. A place of training for a world about to change dramatically.

The boy puts on his apron, carefully tying the laces behind him since he still really hasn't mastered shoelaces even. The apron is blue, flecked with dots of tempra paints, the paint of choice for schools worldwide. One by one, in rows, the class is called to the back of the room to get a tray of paints and paintbrushes.

In another universe, on another earth, the boy will paint a masterpiece that will begin a long career in art.

In this universe, the PA system clicks on as the boy returns to his desk along the aisle by the coat rack.

"Teachers, students...we've just learned that President John Kennedy has been shot today in Dallas. We have called your parents and are making arrangements to have them come pick you up, boys and girls. For those who's parents we cannot reach, we will remain open until 3."

The benumbed boy, the budding artist, drops his tray. His masterpiece lies on the floor in its component splatters.

Next, the principal places the mic near the radio (or TV) to broadcast Walter Cronkite's voice to the school, describing what is happening.

The rest of the afternoon is a blur. He remembers finding his sister in the schoolyard. They come together and she hugs him, even if he is too young to fully comprehend what is happening. He remembers walking home past Sloan's Supermarket, his mom holding his hand for the first time since his daily trips to the skating rink in kindergarten. His sister's sobs still ring in his ears to this day. She never cried!

He spent that weekend and that Monday glued to the television set.

Little did I know how that event would twine and intersect my life in so many ways, but that's a different post.

I saw Oswald shot, live. But the most harrowing image of the weekend for me was the symbolic horse, Black Jack, the soldier's boots placed backwards in the stirrups.

Black Jack represented the fallen commander. There was a moment in the funeral procession when Black Jack bridled and in that moment, an electric horse could summon the feelings of a nation. His reluctance to move forward with the procession echoed our own disbelief that someone so young and vital could be cut down so summarily.

It was then, that moment, that I truly began to understand what was happening. And it terrified me.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) I've followed hockey most of my life. I like to think of myself as fairly knowledgable about both the sport and the business. I can name the backup goaltender for the Calgary Flames (McElhinney), and I try to keep up with trends in hockey. I never, ever, got wind of the fact that Hockey Night In Canada has a simulcast in Punjabi.

2) Of course, I wish Michael Mukasey all the best, even if he's one of them.

3) Al Franken seems to be closing on Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate race, but I suspect this one lands in the courts before Franken takes a seat.

4) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Bush Legacy.

BONUS SCHADENFREUDE:

5) Y'know, I'd be all for letting the automakers fail, but for the fact that one of the few remaining viable unions is the UAW, and the thing we need more of, not fewer, is unions. A bankruptcy would void the latest contract and allow the automakers to walk away from pension and health care obligations. People worked their entire lives for the promise of a comfortable and healthy retirement.

6) Remember how the right wing went nuts when a few intrepid folks investigated Joe The Plumber? Wonder how loud they'll be this time...

7) How sad is the state of health care in America when this is legitimized? Nothing against either India or its doctors, but come on!

8) I have to wonder about how panicked people are when Citibank, who hasn't asked for a dime of bailout money...yet...and has deep pocketed investors in Saudi Arabia has to sink to this level to raise its stock price.

9) Oh Canada!?!?!?!?! Sorry, I disagree with this. Take two, buy two, and maybe the national insurance should pick up the second one if it's disability-related.

10) Where there's ice, there's water, and where there's water, there's life.

11) NOTE: NOT for the faint of heart. Ignore Palin. Watch the background about a minute in:

Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers To The Right

I've been noticing a disturbing trend arising on the left, practically ever since Barack Obama received the nomination of the Democratic party:

Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.

The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.

"Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.

To quote Captain Jack Sparrow when accused of cheating, "Pirate."

"Politician."

What makes this whinging particularly annoying are a few facts:

1) No one is really giving a good goddamn about the war anymore. It has become so little of an issue that the right wing warhawks, the guys who really want this war, are unilaterally declaring it is over.

Not that it matters much, of course, what a bunch of Cheeto-stained cowards who couldn't get up off their asses and pick up a gun and fight say, but the sentiment is appreciated by those of us who thought long ago the invasion was a horrible idea.

2) It's the economy, stupid.

And I'm not talking about just the stock market tanking or the housing meltdown or the impending depression that's sitting on top of Christmas like a fat bully.

Barack Obama sees what I see, and let me tell you, it's terrifying me.

I see 600 million angry young single Chinese men who don't have brides because of China's ill-conceived (pun intended) population control policies. I see 600 million angry young single Chinese men out of work for long stretches of time.

I see a half-billion starving people on the subcontinent of India and Pakistan, ripe fodder for Al Qaeda.

I see hundreds of millions of starving and angry Africans.

I see interest rates in Argentina of 30-50%.

In short, I see a lot of suffering and a lot of anger. Even change we can believe in only goes so far.

I'm not suggesting. I'm not hinting. I won't be as coy with this as I was with my stagflation predictions: we will be at war within the decade. History insists, and we are doomed to fail if we do not take this lesson to heart.

And since Barack Obama stands a very good chance of being President when that occurs, he needs to have a check on his ego around. He needs people around who are going to stand up and give him prudent counsel when war-like situations arise and help him determine which fights are worth going after and which we can avoid.

No one wants war, except a true warmonger. To call Hillary Clinton or Bob Gates, who has been surprisingly vocal in his assessments of the mess in Iraq, "warmongers" is hardly fair or accurate.

This is the hand we are dealt. The only alternative is to fold, and if we fold on this issue, Democrats may as well fold on everything else, because Republicans will run the show for millennia.

Remembrances

This weekend will be filled with memories and rememberances, and it all started this morning.

New York City's Triborough Bridge will officially be renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge in a dedication ceremony Wednesday.

 

The New York senator was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.

 

Speakers at the morning ceremony are expected to include former President Bill Clinton, Governor David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Kennedy's widow, Ethel, is also expected to attend.

 

The bridge will be the first major public work dedicated to Robert Kennedy in the state he represented from 1965-1968 in the U.S. Senate.

 

The ceremony is being held a day before what would have been Robert Kennedy's 83rd birthday.

 I was a bit too young to really have known the John Kennedy era, apart from sensing the excitement of people around me that this young vital war hero was our President and that things were about to change.

 

Who could have known?

 

When Robert Kennedy ran in 1968, I was a bit more aware of the world around me, being the bright little boy that I was. I knew that LBJ, as courageous a man as ever sat in the White House for what he did when he saw the world around him treating human beings like second class citizens, had serious problems in this war he had entangled the nation in.

 

RFK seemed to be the embodiment of everything his brother's legacy would destine him to be: young, powerful, opinionated, intelligent, and dedicated to making the world a better place. His signature quotation, taken from George Bernard Shaw was, "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

 

It is RFK that I have to thank for being as world-aware and as politically-motivated as I am. If all he had done for me was to spark my intellectual curiousity and gotten a ten year old to go out and campaign for the Democratic ticket that year, it would have been enough.

 

My family owes a far greater debt to Robert Kennedy, one that he earned posthumously. You see, in his family's spirit of giving back to the community, a family affected by the tragedy of what was then called "mental retardation," RFK's legacy was to help those in need get a leg up in life.

 

His foundation helped my brother, handicapped by a bout of meningitis in his early childhood, find a job, a job he has kept these thirty-odd years and will retire from shortly.

 

I often think of that day that my mother got the call from his employer, offering the job. I think of it particularly when I engage some conservative about welfare or some right-winger about personal responsibility. I think of the alternative, of how my brother could easily have sat around the house collecting Social Security for the rest of his life, a burden to society and to my family.

 

Instead, RFK in his wisdom found a way to reach beyond his years to present an opportunity to him. RFK would have done the same in his public life had he lived, I have no doubt.

 

And I have no doubt that happy moment has shaped how I perceive the world and what society owes to the least among us: a chance. As a progressive, I want all people to have that chance to grow and be something, to do something, to have something.

 

I don't mouth platitudes of "ownership society" and then ram a mortgage down someone's throat like it was a gift. Instead, I see government's role as one that seeks opportunities and seeks people in need and marries them to each other. If that means that government has to take responsibility until that opportunity presents itself, so be it.

 

It's the Christian thing to do.

 

It has been said of RFK, "Bobby, we hardly knew ye," and that is true, but for what little knowing we've had, we are a better people.

Goldberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg!

No, not the cute-as-a-button goaltender from the Mighty Ducks movies or the ultraboring automatonic wrestler of the mid-90s, but the effluent afterbirth discharge from the thighs of Lucianne "Linda Tripp's Lover" Goldberg.

 

I speak, of course, about Fudgie the Whale, Jonah Goldberg.

 

In today's episode of the Adventures of Goldberrrrrrrrrrrg, we find wrong-thinking Jonah turning history on its neck again:

On Sunday night, President-elect Barack Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be a model of sorts for him. "What you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence, and a willingness to try things. And experiment in order to get people working again."

 

This is a problematic standard. What do you want in a surgeon? One who "gets it right" or who projects "a sense of confidence?" Ditto accountants, defense lawyers, mechanics and bomb-disposal technicians: Cocky and self-assured, or gets it right?

 

Uh, hm, Jonah? FDR got it right: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," AND fixing the damned planet! That's not a bad model to emulate ahead of what is likely to be an even worse depression than that great one that FDR fixed-- with the help of a world war, of course, an action we hope Obama can avoid.

 

What should have been looked at with a wary eye as a game run by men with a "sense of confidence" (emphasis on the "con") were the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. Indeed, the so-called and appropriately named "Laffer Curve" was a load of bollocks that its main salesman, David Stockman, later disavowed as having little relation to reality.

 

In point of fact, Bush's triple-whammy tax cuts in 2001 through 2003 took that long to show even the slightest upward tick in gross domestic product. Worse, wages and wealth declined during the first Bush administration and only in 2005 did they return to levels seen in the late 1990s.

 

You know, under that real economist, Bill Clinton.

 

Growth during the Bush administration...well, it would be polite to call it "anemic," and "pathetic" would be more accurate.

  

Which leads one to suspect that, in point of fact, if there is any validity to the Laffer Curve, it's likely that tax rates are TOO low now. Empirical evidence suggests that the Reagan and Bush tax cuts together created more harm to the economic stability of the nation, and to the long-term economic prospects of its citizenry, than the Clinton tax hike.

 

Presumably, a restoration by Barack Obama of the Clintonian level of tax rates could restore some of the balance in the economy. Even Stockman, back in 1981, pointed out that it is the imbalances between spending and receipts that wreaked all sorts of havoc in the 1980s and the same Republican greed in the 2000s has us on the brink of the greatest economic emergency in world history, worse even than the Black Death or Great Depression combined.

 

Period.

 

By raising tax rates (and possibly sacrificing some easy money on the part of the uberwealthy, but hey, Lucianne can afford a couple fewer virgins to suck the blood of), Obama restores at least a little bit of the "pay as you go" philosophy that a nation should and must operate on. For too long, the rich among us have treated the US Treasury as a credit card that our kids will pay off, but nature has a funny habit of balancing the books at inconvenient times, like now.

 

Argue if you must about the current administration's Keystone Kops attitude towards the sudden Congressional generosity, fostered in the spirit of trying to save a few homes. That's a fair debate to have, that Paulson should stick to his lasts, or he shouldn't, but he should make a decision.

 

But don't try to preempt an Obama administration plan to, once again, as FDR did, as JFK did, as William Jefferson Clinton did and as Barack Hussein Obama must, clean up after a Republican abortion of an economic program.

Hill's To Climb

The scuttlebutt over the weekend was that Hilalry Clinton has been offered and accepted the nomination for Secretary of State:

If President-elect Barack Obama selects Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, she will oversee many of the U.S. government's foreign aid programs, potentially turning the couple into an overwhelming force in global aid, say some leaders in the philanthropic community.

"It boosts her stature, it boosts the work of the Clinton Global Initiative, it boosts the whole concept of American partnerships making a real difference on the global level," said Steve Gunderson, president of the Council on Foundations and a former Republican congressman.

[...]The choice of Clinton would present other potential problems for Obama. He would be investing his fortunes not only with his former rival for the presidency but also in an outsize figure on the global scene who has been conducting a kind of privately financed foreign policy all his own since leaving office. Obama and the former president have also continued to share a somewhat strained relationship since the end of the Democratic nominating contest.

The vetting has apparently begun with a request for the Clintons' financial disclosure for the past five years.

 

It's an interesting strategy for reasons that the WaPo only began to scratch into. Yes, the Clinton name carries enormous weight overseas, possibly more weight than a President-elect or even first term President Obama could carry. And Bill Clinton, "Greatest. President. Ever." is a larger-than-life figure, especially in the wake of the small-minded petty tinplated dictator with delusions of grandeur currently occupying the Oval Office.

 

This is both a boon and a detriment to Obama's foreign policy, unless Obama has de facto decided that Clinton's course was the best of his choices, as spare as those choices must be. Indeed, that the other name bandied about seriously on the short list was Bill Richardson seems to indicate Obama's mindset is to turn the clock back nine years on foreign policy.

 

Amen, this blogger says. And it would shut Bill up for the next eight years, even tho he had been reluctant to criticize the Bush policies out of an old boy's network sense.

 

But there are political advantages to Obama's choice of Hillary. For one thing, should things go poorly in the first Obama administration, it would be a little hard for her to run in a challenge in 2012, a la Ted Kennedy in 1980, thus weakening an Obama re-election campaign before it ever got off the ground. She'd be part of the process that came to the decisions that Obama makes, thus negating her ability to challenge as an outsider.

 

Hillary's extensive bipartisan efforts in the Senate would also serve as a conduit for foreign policy initiatives that will be vital in an Obama administration, since this economic meltdown will undoubtedly require an international effort to solve, which means it will require diplomatic efforts to secure peace in order to implement it and that means the Senate will be involved.

 

There's a far larger, and admittedly, more disturbing political aspect to this suggestion: choosing Hillary would give Obama political cover to remain in Iraq for far longer than his sixteen month time frame. I'm not suggesting that he will do that, but merely pointing out that if the situation is more dire than he had suggested during the campaign (or if the current uneasy peace blows up in his face), having Hillary around as a "I told you so" outlet would give him a forecful and credible voice to hang a hat on. Obama would avoid some of the mud thrown at him for sticking it out.

 

Stick around, this could be an interesting winter.

*AHEM*

Nominations begin November 3rd.

I don't expect to win, but I wouldn't mind making it to the finals to defend my title. Please click the link below and nominate me and then go check out the other categories and see who you can name.

Suggested nominating categories:

- Best Blog
- Best Political Blog
- Best Liberal Blog
- Best Blog 5000-7501 (no, I haven't grown much in the past year).

Oh, and I'd consider it a personal favor if you named Miss Cellania in the humour and best blog categories.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Someone explain to me why this mother is on TV, instead of in jail for child neglect? 

 

2) We call this "beating a dead President to death." Oswald. Gun. Window. Nuff said.

 

3) Remind me, who was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, again?

 

4) NEWSFLASH: Conservative talk radio exploits fear. And terror. No wait, they're THREE chief weapons are...

 

5) Want to visit anciet Rome? Google it.

 

6) I may have to start attending church again.

 

7) This week's episode of Rednecks Gone Wild!

 

8) Why is Bush holding this summit? I mean, the summit needs to be held, but why can't the President be there instead?

 

9) Ground control to Major Dick.

 

10) Man kills wife...from beyond the grave!

 

11) How big is the shitpile? This big.

So How Bad Will It Get?

This item caught my attention this morning and made me do a little thinking:

The Chancellor [Alistair Darling, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer] signalled that Britain will suffer a short, sharp recession, claiming that it would bounce back into growth in 2010.

OK, make the jokes now. I'll wait....

 

I've been asked a lot lately what would I do with spare cash I might have lying around or investments I might want to swap out of stocks. Needless to say, none of this should be construed as professional investment advice, as your mileage may vary and your levels of acceptable risk may differ from mine.

 

For now, I tell friends, if you have time, then buy a CD. Don't even think about putting your money in anything until one of two things happens:

1.  The market bottoms out.
2.  January 21, 2009.

I believe the market bottom is approaching. My personal target is somewhere between 7,500 and 7,000. That's when I will begin buying stocks again, broad-based recession resistant stocks, like say food or healthcare, and probably index fund shares. I think it will bottom out next month.

 

OK, moving on, back to the article. I agree with Chancellor Darling and disagree. I believe things will be very tough into next year, and possibly beyond, but that by 2010, things will begin an uptick.

 

The nature of that uptick is in doubt, however, and here is where the chancellor and I disagree. Well, likely. Keep in mind that he is forced to operate in an environment that I am not. He speaks for a government, and has to base his statements on the available evidence. I'm free to make allowances that things will be different.

 

For example, I'm convinced that some form of stagflation will occur: stagflation is a moment in time when prices go up, but GDP fizzles for whatever reason.

 

We suffered stagflation in the late 70s because of the oil crunches. There, OPEC kept the screws on oil supply tightly, thus draining our economy of money. This meant that inflation went through the roof, but also, there was less money available here to lend which forced interest rates higher, which meant little economic activity for the increase in prices.

 

The question becomes, how bad will it be? New York City will be ground zero for the Bush Depression. That's two calamities he's been directly responsible for in eight years. You begin to think he doesn't like us very much.

 

Yesterday, in New York City, Monster.com held a job fair. On a Wednesday in the middle of the day, two thousand lined up to interview with two dozen companies. Each had an average of two jobs available. Most had only one. You have better odds reading the want ads.

 

The New Jersey Nets are offering free tickets to the unemployed. Just send in your resume. Maybe you'll get a job.

 

Landmark restaurants, open for decades, close without warning in Harlem.

 

And as I mentioned yesterday, the state and city have both announced harsh cutbacks in services in anticipation of the twin blows of a busted stock market and bonuses being withheld for brokers and other securities company employees.

 

As New York City goes, in this crisis, so goes the nation, since this crisis is based in the very industry that makes New York the money capital of the country, if not the world. The ripples will spread far and wide, up and down the coasts and eventually into the heartland.

 

And even into other nations that depends on us.

 

It will be harsh, make no mistake about it. And with the current administration diddling their dicks over how best to bail us out in the short time left to them (miracles do happen, but I won't hold my breath), it will clearly be left to the Obama administration to clean things up. They can stop the bleeding.

 

My worry is, that may be the easy part.

A More Direct Challenge

You may recall, if you followed politics at all in the 1990s, there was a move afoot on the part of the Gingrich revolters to reform how government worked.

What happened up to that point was that the Federal government would distribute funds to states targetted for very specific goals. These were called "categorical grants". Gingrich and his orc minions proposed to change this to a "block grant" system, whereby a state would be given a chunk of money and directed to spend it as it saw fit. In a perfect world, there would have been substantially no difference between the two methods. Ideally, they would solve the same problems and be the same amount of money, with the state having a bit more discretion in how it could target money it received.

But, well...politicians, money...you can see where this headed.

There's an interesting dynamic afoot here, and I want to study it from the ground up with you for a moment.

Little noticed outside of New York City (and even then, amidst the Obamathon, only among wonks here) was the release of an emergency budget proposal by Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Much of the hoopla over this budget stemmed from the loss of an entire graduating class at the police academy, cutting back on night-time fire coverage, as well as the suspension of a property tax rebate, an increase in property tax rates, and a 5¢ surcharge on all plastic bags.

All to close a $4 billion budget gap to $1.3 billion. Presumably, smoke and mirrors would take care of the rest. Actually, I know what will take care of the rest, but that's a different post.

Little noticed in the budget proposal, which will have to go to the city council for approval, was an item that would eliminate a program that has been around for over 100 years: public child dentistry.

Remember when you had to present a note from your dentist, once a year, certifying that you had been seen and were under his care? Some kids couldn't afford private dentists, and since these notes were mandatory, the city stepped in and established dental clinics around town for indigent (and sometimes, just lazy) kids to be checked up.

Even in the depths of near-bankruptcy thirty years ago, this program was considered sacrosanct. We could close down firehouses, reduce police presence, cut back on garbage pickup (which used to be daily), find myriad ways of saving a buck or two, but childrens' teeth were deemed essential.

This is a good thing, by the way.

Now, not so much. I pondered this rather curious earmark in the budget proposal. One day it hit me: with a President Obama, children's health insurance would be mandatory, meaning that these dentists would essentially be working for the Federal government now. He was kicking the ball upstairs.

I filed this away: city councils are notoriously slow, partly around Christmas time and PARTICULARLY ahead of an election year, to start mucking around with unions.

Comes today, this item:

ALBANY - Faced with a worsening economy, Gov. Paterson wants to slash school aid, shrink health care funding and hike public college tuition, the Daily News has learned.

The governor, who will propose $2 billion in budget cuts Wednesday, also wants public employees to go without raises for at least a year, sources said.

About $1.4 billion of the cuts to this fiscal year's budget would come from education and health care.

"Aha," says I. That cut in children's health aid, roughly a half billion dollars, would mean severe cuts in the Federally mandated children's health care program, Child Health Plus.

CH+ is funded by Medicaid, as part of those block grants I told you about earlier. You might recall the ruckus in Congress last year over renewing S-CHIP. This is that program.

Essentially, Patterson is setting up to kick Bloomberg's ball one step further up the ladder, to the Federal Government, to the Obama administration.

See, neither of these draconian budget adjustments will take effect, should they even be passed, until next summer, 2009.

Plenty of time for Obama to write, introduce, and pass his version of national healthcare. Plenty of time for the Federal government to pick up the ball.

My suspicion is we'll be seeing this same scenario repeated across the nation, as mayors and governors collaborate to kick their mandated spending programs back up the ladder to the Federal government.

For policy wonks like me, these are salad days indeed!

Thank You

I pray that President Obama will learn the lessons of his predecessors and never EVER send our children into harm's way without a goddamned good reason, one that involves our national security and the preservation of America.

The Most Annoying Column This Week

Y'know, I get tired of idjits like this columnist. Talk more on the flip side:

For several years, I've been writing about Bushenfreude, the phenomenon of angry yuppies who've hugely benefited from President Bush's tax cuts funding angry, populist Democratic campaigns. I've theorized that people who work in financial services and related fields have become so outraged and alienated by the incompetence, crass social conservatism, and repeated insults to the nation's intelligence of the Bush-era Republican Party that they're voting with their hearts and heads instead of their wallets.

Last week's election was perhaps Bushenfreude's grandest day. As the campaign entered its final weeks, Barack Obama, who pledged to unite the country, singled out one group of people for ridicule: those making more than $250,000. At his rallies, he would ask for a show of hands of those making less than one-quarter of $1 million per year. Then he'd look around, laugh, and note that those in the virtuous majority would get their taxes cut, while the rich among them would be hit with a tax increase. And yet the exit polls show, the rich—and yes, if you make $250,000 or more you're rich—went for Obama by bigger margins than did the merely well-off. If the exit polls are to be believed, those making $200,000 or more (6 percent of the electorate) voted for Obama 52-46, while McCain won the merely well-off ($100,000 to $150,000 by a 51-48 margin and $150,000 to $200,000 by a 50-48 margin).

OK, so why is this annoying me?

Two reasons:

1) The title of the column is "Why the rich voted for Obama against their own economic interest," which the moron never gets into except to make vague references to taxes and ethnicities and trust fund babies...um, no. But I'll get back to this.

2) The deeper issue I have is, why is this such a big topic of discussion this year, but when Reagan Democrats en masse supported Bush (or Dole or Bush the Elder, or Reagan for that matter), no one bothered to ask the why the little people were voting for their bosses?

OK, let's tackle these one at a time. So why did the uberrich go for Obama in such large numbers?

First of all, it's not like people are a distinct bloc. Take Greenwich, CT, for example. In 2004, the town went for Bush 53-47. That still means close to half the people there voted for Kerry. In 2008, the numbers were pretty much reversed, 54-46 Obama. So that means seven people out of a hundred changed their party line in this vote. That's not like it's a major upheaval in a region that is seeing housing prices drop pretty significantly, has watched as the stock markets have tanked and gotten very very nervous, and is facing the looming crisis of companies that have been the backbone of this community, brokerage houses, banks and hedge funds, swing down the drain.

Those factors alone could easily swing seven votes, but I'm more interested in the underlying thesis that, somehow, the other forty five percent or so must be economic morons to vote against their self-interests.

I'm going to reframe the question: why is it so unusual to vote for issues apart from pocketbook? This sector of the rich didn't vote for Carter, for example, because they thought his economic stimulus package was better than Ford's (subsequent events put the lie to that, anyway).

No, they voted for Carter for more prosaic reasons, just as they voted for Clinton: they liked him, thought he'd do the best job of sheparding this nation, and they were tired of Republican rule and corruption.

Or is this jackass proposing that voters of a certain class (myself included, altho I am a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat) should ignore any other issue on the table, any incumbent's peccadilloes and peculiarities, and focus only on how much richer this man or woman can make them?

Which now leads me to the obverse of this idiotic column and why this disappointing piece of fluff really burns my belly.

Why do the POOR even bother voting for Republicans? As Harry Truman said, "If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic." So why cut your nose to spite your face?

Security reasons, we're usually told. More trustworthy. A guy we can have a beer with.

I don't know about you, but I would rather have a beer with John McCain, who strikes me as someone who can discuss the last football game better than Barack Obama (and it now appears Senator McCain will have a better opportunity to do just that).

But here's the thing: anybody with a lick of sense would walk up to the beer-chugging President and ask, "What are you doing here, wasting time, when there's a country to run?"

How condescending is it to claim that it's so wrong for the rich to vote against their interests, when the poor do it, and we don't bat an eye?

The answer to both questions is very simple: when the strengths of a party's message exceed the strengths of the other party's message, that's who usually wins. That encompasses not only the message itself, but how its delivered and more important, who is delivering it. Also, of course, how easily the other party can rebut or dismantle the argument.

McCain lost this election back in the conventions, I'm afraid. Goerge Bush had made the environment so toxic for any Republican that McCain was lucky to make as strong a showing as he did.

Even then, McCain and particularly Sarah Palin bungled some issues so severely that they should have been punished more forcefully at the polls.

The better question is not why the rich voted for Obama, but why people voted for McCain at all?