I am constantly amazed that politicians will say anything to anyone without regard to facts and the interests of our country.
Here is one audaciously stupid thing:
Jon Stewart’s satire is spot-on about the anti-Islam fervor in this country spewed by those — like the Governor of Tennessee — who have the nerve to say in the same paragraph that freedom of religion is a cornerstone of our nation’s laws. According to the Governor, unencumbered as he is by facts or knowledge, Islam is a culture. [Note to self: wonder about the education systems in our country.]
Stop. Think. Vomit.
Now let’s move on to the audaciously hypocritical. I have TWO things that rile me.
Gingrich:
Jon Stewart is also spot-on about the outrageous things politicians will say just to sully an opponent’s record. For example, Jon Stewart highlighted Newt Gringrich’s decrying Obama-Reid-Pelosi socialism in the same sentence that he touts zero capital gains tax in Communist China.
Remember, Newt Gingrich famously shut down the ENTIRE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT because — his own words — he didn’t like that he was put in the back of Air Force One when a delegation of US leaders went to the funeral of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.
Remember, too, that Newt Gingrich famously carried on an affair with a staffer while pushing the impeachment of then-President Clinton over lying about extra-marital sex.
Stop. Think. Worry that people will believe him.
Bush Tax Cuts:
I think any responsible economist (and even those in the Bush Administration) would agree that tax cuts “don’t pay for themselves” and that tax cuts should only be effectuated in connection with reduced federal spending. The Bush tax cuts were in fact followed by outrageous over-spending. This is something that should have shocked the fiscal conservatives such as Sens. McCain, McConnell and DeMint, and Reps. Boehner and others, but apparently, not so much. They voted on those spending bills. Now we are supposed to trust them that they should be in charge?
Letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans lapse could reduce the deficit by $300 billion. Do the wealthiest Americans really need help in this economic climate? As one of least wealthy of the wealthiest Americans, going back to the Clinton Era tax structure will not make a material difference in my family’s life. I imagine that those wealthier than I are not counting on the tax cut either to make ends meet or go on vacation or send their kids to school or whatever.
But, listen to the GOP leaders — they want to keep those cuts. They are trying to fashion it as a tax “increase” for political gain. Another step toward socialism, they suggest.
BUT IT COULD REDUCE THE CRIPPLING DEFICIT BY ONE THIRD OF A TRILLION DOLLARS.
Stop. Think. Worry even more that people will believe these clowns.
Are you wondering where the audacity of stupidity and the audacity of hypocrisy meet, join forces and become a near-nuclear threat? Drum roll . . .
Benjamin Franklin, a rock star of his generation, said, when signing the Declaration of Independence, “United we stand, divided we fall.” Our founding fathers and the colonies, united, defeated a great and mighty empire.
Throughout our brief yet notable history, the cities of our nation were known for the dog-eat-dog way that fellow citizens treated their neighbors, eschewing the cornerstone of religious faith, all the while claiming to be part of the most upright of Christian nations. But, outside the cities (or so I would like to think), neighbors helped each other and generations of families lived together, all working to keep everyone afloat. Maybe it is the romantic myth of the heartland. But, I am buying it, lock, stock and barrel.
Today, we live in a society where people are more worried about their morning lattes than they are about ending our two wars, reducing our crushing debt and the stopping all politicking, all of which threaten to bankrupt out nation.
There is no silver bullet cure for our woes.
I heard today that people say that the Congress should not have saved the 300,000 teacher and firefighter jobs because their unions are too strong and teachers earn too much for doing too little. Ok, so, make the unions feel some pain, but does that justify keeping the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? The illogic is frightening and delusional.
So the great experiment started in 1776 is rounding the drain because of greed and me-first-middle-and-last mind think.
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I will forgo my Bush tax cut that I never wanted and didn’t need to pay for health care and to start reducing the deficit.
How about this: we make giving up the tax cuts voluntary. Just like the optional $1.00 gift to Wildlife Preservation (or is it public campaign finance?) on our tax forms. Just put a line item on the 2010 tax return that says, “This is how much more you would pay if the Bush tax cuts lapsed. Do you want to pay this amount (a) to reduce the deficit, (b) to pay for health care for the uninsured or (c) 50% to each?” and publish the list of people who contribute to these funds.
Maybe neighbors will embarrass neighbors into paying the money (because if you’re not on the list, either you’re selfish or you don’t make enough) or we have a pledge drive and use positive peer pressure.
Either way, Mr. President, I am with you for letting lapse the tax cut I never wanted and our nation couldn’t afford.
I recently ranted (what else is new) about the movie, “The Kids Are All Right,” the first film about a lesbian family to come out of a major movie producer (http://40andoverblog.com/?p=2559).
Apparently, for the under-30 crowd (and maybe my own age-group), the lesbian sex scene is not so bizarre.
Ok. I get it, in every marriage, sometimes you need to change things up to keep it interesting, but I still stand by my lament: for the first major motion picture about lesbians and their kids, there couldn’t be a little romance? It IS Hollywood, after all. And it isn’t like the movie didn’t push the outer edge of the believability envelope in other ways.
How about throwing a bone to the hopeless romantics in the crowd who still love and adore their spouses?
by Paul B. Farrell Market Watch
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline
“How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.”
Get it? Not “destroying.” The GOP has already “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse.”
Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats’ Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider — someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology — says about America, helps all of us better understand how America’s toxic partisan-politics “holy war” is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.
But why focus on Stockman’s message? It’s already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?
We’ve arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.
Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:
Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy
Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt … will soon reach $18 trillion.” It screams “out for austerity and sacrifice.” But instead, the GOP insists “that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.”
In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: “Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.”
No more. Today there’s a “new catechism” that’s “little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes” making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in “serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.” Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.
Stockman’s indictment warns that the Republican party’s “new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:”
Richard Nixon’s gold policies get Stockman’s first assault, for defaulting “on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world.” So for the past 40 years, America’s been living “beyond our means as a nation” on “borrowed prosperity on an epic scale … an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves.”
Remember Friedman: “Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.” Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately “once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.”
And without discipline America was also encouraging “global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.” Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist’s advice.
Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering
Stockman says “the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970.” Who’s to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but “from the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.”
Back “in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts,” but Stockman makes clear, they had to be “matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.”
OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman’s indictment of how his Republican party has “destroyed the U.S. economy,” you’re probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it’s having huge negative consequences.
Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says “the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.”
When Fed chief Paul Volcker “crushed inflation” in the ’80s we got a “solid economic rebound.” But then “the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.” By 2009, they “reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product,” lowest since the 1940s. Still today they’re irrationally demanding an extension of those “unaffordable Bush tax cuts [that] would amount to a bankruptcy filing.”
Recently Bush made matters far worse by “rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures.” Bush also gave in “on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.” Takes two to tango.
Stockman continues pounding away: “The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector.” He warns that “Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation.” Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.
They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street’s too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming “American Apocalypse.”
Stockman refers to Wall Street’s surviving banks as “wards of the state.” Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its “unproductive” trading is “extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives.” Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and “virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.”
Stage 4. New American Revolution class warfare coming soon
Finally, thanks to Republican policies that let us “live beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore,” while at home “high-value jobs in goods production … trade, transportation, information technology and the professions shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million.”
As the apocalypse draws near, Stockman sees a class-rebellion, a new revolution, a war against greed and the wealthy. Soon. The trigger will be the growing gap between economic classes: No wonder “that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1% of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90% — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.”
Get it? The decaying fruit of the GOP’s bad economic policies is destroying our economy.
Warning: This black swan won’t be pretty, will shock, soon
His bottom line: “The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing … it’s a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.”
Wrong: There are far bigger things to “pity.”
First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it’s just another TV reality show.
Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are so deep-in-the-pockets of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.
And third, there’s a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle … until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.
So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect.
As usual, SOB (sister of blogger), HOSOB (husband of blogger), DOB (dad of blogger), COB (cousin of blogger), POB (partner of blogger), Blogger and our son have dinner together at our house on Sunday nights. Our son calls the crowd, the “Regulars” (as in, “[Blogger], are the Regulars coming over this weekend?”). Often, after a funny story told by one of the assembled family, our son sometimes says to me, “[Blogger], why don’t you blog about that?” (Put that under the category of “Kids Say the Darndest Things”.)
Fresh Direct was scheduled to deliver groceries between 4pm and 6pm. DOB came at 4pm; Fresh Direct came at 6pm. In fact, as DOB ages, he is coming earlier and earlier. I think that is why restaurants offer early bird specials — the elderly set factor in so much time to get where they are going that, even though they intend to eat dinner at 6:30pm, they arrive at the restaurant at 4:30pm. So, if my rough calculations are correct, in just five short years, when DOB is 95, he will be showing up at brunch time. So we will have to have new menu options by then. Fair warning.
As I said, the Fresh Direct delivery came at 6pm. In our house, we play FDF (Fresh Direct football), which means that I throw non-glass groceries to our son, who runs it into the kitchen where POB puts them away. Sometimes, I follow in pursuit for a two-hand touch tackle. For glass (and milk), I do a pass off and our son runs it in. Less yardage but the quarterback can’t always pass. Sometimes, the vegetables look a little mangled and bruised if the pass is incomplete, but it still tastes fine. POB is unconvinced but keeps her opinions in the “if looks could kill” category. That works because I just look away.
SOB and HOSOB were at the house while we were playing FDF and SOB was a guest quarterback for a few clutch plays. I could tell she was a bit overwhelmed by the number of boxes and volume of foodstuffs that required cooking and preparing. SOB and HOSOB have been married for only a few years and, before that, SOB mostly lived alone and out of prepared food cartons. Even now, their refrigerator is a little post-apocalyptic (see http://40andoverblog.com/?p=2355 for pictures).
The expression on her face as she looked at the Fresh Direct boxes suggested that she found this somewhat foreign cultural activity charming and said to HOSOB pointing to the now empty boxes, “Groceries. [pause.] Groceries. We should have groceries, too!” (Dear SOB, most people buy groceries.)
HOSOB, looking a little scared, said “What would we do with them?” Oh, sweet, HOSOB, you and SOB can do nothing with groceries. You need to stick with what works — take-out.
I accept (but disagree) with President Obama’s view that marriage should be between a man and a woman, as a matter of personal religious belief or doctrine. But I do not accept that view from him in his capacity of head of state.
As to the legal issues, if one reads the opinion striking down Proposition 8, it clearly sets out the correct legal premise that the state gives the marriage license and that it need not be consecrated in a religious ceremony. Celebrants of the various religious faiths need not perform same-sex marriages, but it is irrelevant to the actions of the state. The USDA certifies pork and pork products, but many religions prohibit the eating of pork. http://40andoverblog.com/?p=2124
What is the real legal issue? Equal protection under the laws.
As to the social issues, I don’t want anyone’s tolerance. I refuse to rely on someone else’s good graces and “open” mind in order to live my life.
In an appearance on Fox News Wednesday night, Palin essentially said Obama is not up to the task of holding the nation’s highest office.
“I think he’s quite complacent,” the former Republican vice presidential hopeful said. “And I think he’s in over his head. And I think he has poor advisers around him. And I think he’s really in flux kind of when it comes to what his governing philosophy actually is. Some of this though is a result of he not having much experience and then a complicit media and maybe some voters who chose to not to allow him to be vetted very closely.”
Let’s start with those who are afflicted with criminalstupidity or arrogance. Like the guy whose wedding pictures are on Facebook. Except that his wifewasn’t the bride. (see below the jump.)
So, this guy who was born here and pushes our civilization further down the drain (can you hear the flushing noises) is a citizen of the United States of America as a “birthright“.
By MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press Writer Meghan Barr, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 43 mins ago
CLEVELAND – Dread of the unknown hung in the air as Lynn France typed two words into the search box on Facebook: the name of the woman with whom she believed her husband was having an affair.
Click. And there it was, the stuff of nightmares for any spouse, cuckolded or not. Wedding photos. At Walt Disney World, no less, featuring her husband literally dressed as Prince Charming. His new wife, a pretty blonde, was a glowing Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by footmen.
“I was numb with shock, to tell you the truth,” says France, an occupational therapist from Westlake, a Cleveland suburb. “There was like an album of 200 pictures on there. Their whole wedding.”
The husband claimed Thursday that his marriage to Lynn France was never valid. He said she knew earlier about the other marriage and was making the Facebook claim as a publicity ploy.
According to CNN, 1 in 4 polled STILL believe that President Obama was not born in this country and therefore not the legitimate head of state. Here is the published birth certificate, certified by the Republican governor of Hawaii.
“Washington (CNN) – It’s surely not what the leader of the free world wants for his birthday. But, for a stubborn group of Americans, conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birthplace are the gifts that keep on giving.
The president celebrates his 49th birthday Wednesday. On the same day, a new national poll indicates some Americans continue to doubt the president was born in the United States. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, more than a quarter of the public have doubts about Obama’s citizenship, with 11 percent saying Obama was definitely not born in the United States and another 16 percent saying the president was probably not born in the country.”
the most recent face of resident evil since Dick Cheney left office, wants to have hearings on the meaning of “born” in the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Ok, my head is spinning. Here’s a guy who says he thinks that the Constitution is sacrosanct. Now he thinks we ought to INTERPRET this document? Ahhh, it is sacrosanct . . . . until it’s not.
WAIT, I get it. The Constitution is crystal clear about an individual’s right to bear arms (see the muddy Second Amendment)
“Amendment II — A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Um, wait, doesn’t the Second Amendment mean that you can bear arms as part of a well regulated militia (i.e., sanctioned by a governmental entity)?
BUT Resident Evil finds it very confusing when it comes to the meaning of “born“:
“Amendment 14 Section 1: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Hmmm. What is the plain meaning of this? If you are born here, you are a citizen whose rights of citizenship may not be infringed upon.
Ok, this Amendment was not written by our Founding Fathers. It was written in the aftermath of Civil War as a nation needed to heal and learn to be citizens of one nation for the common good and to protect the children of newly emancipated slaves.
So, we have to have hearings on what “born in the United States” means. If McConnell and his ilk weren’t talking about people’s lives and the very meaning of a free and open society, it would almost be a humorous riff on Bill Clinton’s “depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”.
