The Blindness of Rage

A friend of mine put this quote up as his Facebook status the other day.

“It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.” Lord Acton

This friend of mine is of the right leaning bend and I asked him if he knew anything about Lord Acton, in particular, his letter to General Lee at the end of the Civil War. He did not but just liked the quote because he, like many conservatives/libertarians, get their jollies out of using the government as a punching bag.

Lord Acton was a forefather of the libertarian movement in the 19th century. A British politician, historian and writer, he wrote to Lee after the South surrendered, commenting that Lee was "fighting battles for our liberty, our progress, and our civilization." My friend had no answer to this question. Let's see if any of you do.

Do states rights over a "tyrannical" government trump the actual, physical rights of human beings?

The problem we get into here is that people who think like Lord Acton (see: several of my commenters) think that only the laws they like apply to them. The ones they don't like are a product of "tyranny." This is usually the point where the Constitution comes out as baseball bat to beat people over the head. Kindly ignore the myriad of points in our nation's history where things that weren't in the Constitution (and should've been) were made into laws or put in later because THEY MADE SENSE.

One thing that I have really notice lately is the arrogance of the comments of my libertarian/conservative/whatever readers. Their anaphylactic reaction to someone who humbly suggests "It is in your best interest to _____" is nauseating.

But that's what adolescent power fantasies perpetuated by the the likes of Lord Acton, Ayn Rand, and the Cato Institute will get you...the blindness of rage. Because the simple fact is that everyone wants to govern themselves. Sorry, you don't get to...:(

From Reagan's nine scary words to Palin's death panels, a great number of incredibly moronic people now believe that the gubmint is a comin' to gin 'em...with the actual culprits laughing all the way to the bank.

Two Guys That Know Nothing

There are times when I marvel at the arrogance of my commenters. I don't profess to be an expert on the economy. In fact, I'm not sure anyone is....except the usual cast of characters that comment here...in their minds. For example, when I say that TARP and the stimulus saved the economy, they say I'm an idiot. And a socialist. When I say that it saved jobs, same thing. When I say it helped GDP, same thing. Why? Because I don't think like them...libertarianese, I guess.

More than likely, it's because I don't agree with them which is a mammoth sin when you operate in a world where everyone is never wrong and has to win the argument every single time. I'm certain, however, that I'm in good company.

I guess Mr. Zandi and Mr. Blinder are also idiots. And socialists. And fascists. Let's just ignore the fact that they are both fully qualified economists and focus on the common trait they share with myself: they think that the government can help the economy. They think it DID in this case. And they have the proof to back it up. Further, it helped prevent a worldwide financial collapse.

Zandi and Blinder offer the first comprehensive estimate of our full response to the crisis: Absent the financial rescue and the stimulus, "GDP in 2010 would be about 6 ½ percent lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8 ½ million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation."

Notice the part I bolded. AND THE STIMULUS. More importantly, they (and me) are issuing all of you naysayers a challenge.

Different models do give different answers. That's why we say we welcome others to try and estimate this. But you can't make anything come out that you want. These models are fitted to real data. They're not just made up. They describe how the U.S. economy worked in the past.

Making anything come out that you want...say, if you have the same idea (cut taxes for the rich, cut corporate taxes, deregulate blah blah blah) over and over again on how to fix the economy?

So, by all means, let's see your model, folks. I welcome you to try.

Oh, and don't forget to come up with some solutions going forward as both Zandi and Blinder have.

Blinder: I would do two things, both aimed at jobs. I would do the so-called new jobs tax credit on a much bigger and better scale than the HIRE Act, which was a baby step. The second thing I would do is a WPA-like program of temporary, direct, public hiring. People could work in parks, in maintenance, the many paper-shuffling jobs there are in government. You could save a lot of state and local jobs that would otherwise be terminated.

Zandi: If the unemployment rate was peaking at 7 percent, I'd say no worries, no need for more stimulus. But I'm nervous about 9.5 percent unemployment when you have a zero percent interest rate and a huge deficit. If we're all wrong and we go into recession, we've got no policy response. So I think it's prudent to err on the side of doing too much rather than too little. And we can do that. We're not Greece or Britain or Germany. We have a 3 percent 10-year Treasury yield. We have always solved our fiscal problems, and the world has faith we will solve our future ones. So we have the resources.

I've been saying pretty much the same thing all along. I guess all three of us are idiots, though. Anyone is who thinks the government is the solution, right?

The Report Is In

The military has released its report on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and, as expected, has determined that having gay and lesbians serve openly in the military carries a very low risk. And, as expected, the Republicans in the Senate are against it.

Back in the election of 2008, John McCain was asked if he would support DADT and he said he would "if the generals said it was OK." Of course, this was before the GOP had to lick the boots of the homophobes in their base in order to win elections. Now Senator McCain has backed away from this and is against it....even though his own wife and daughter support the change! WTF??!!

Actually, the answer to this, once again, is THEY WANT HIM TO FAIL. The GOP knows that if President Obama is successful at doing anything, it will energize the base and sway independents back his way which is all he pretty much needs to win in 2012. It doesn't matter that the repeal of DADT has the support of the majority of the country. In fact, that's precisely why the GOP is trying to sabotage it. If it passes, people will be happy with the president and they don't want that.

The truly sad part about all of this is the number of good men and women we have lost over the years, who would help defend our nation, because of this policy. In so many ways, the GOP, who laughingly prides itself on standing firm on the defense of this nation is, is purposefully sabotaging our nation's security with this and the START treaty dithering. Why again?

"The single most important thing we can achieve is for President Obama to be a one term president" ----Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The Annual Argument

At least once I year I go to my father's house for Thanksgiving or Christmas and we have an argument. This year it started when he start crowing proudly about the signs he had put on the highway in front of his house. It was a quote attributed to Barack Obama from 2006, "We are no longer a Christian nation."

Of course, every time my dad says something like this he gets it off the Internet. It turns out that this quote is pulled from a longer speech, and it's the result of Obama making a mistake reading the speech. The original speech read, "We are no longer just a Christian nation." When delivered, Obama misspoke, saying, "We are no longer a Christian nation -- at least, not just." (See FactCheck.org for the details.) The gist of Obama's remarks is that America is no longer a nation of Christians alone, but of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and so on. And there's not just one brand of Christianity: there are Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Evangelicals -- some of whom have more vehement disagreements among themselves than they have with Muslims or Jews.

The reality is that the United States has never been a Christian nation. England is a Christian nation-- the queen is the official head of the Anglican church -- and the Puritans fled Christian England because of religious persecution. The Constitution doesn't mention god at all. The Declaration of Independence speaks of "Laws of Nature and Nature's God" -- which sounds more like some kind of Druidical naturist deity -- and that men are "endowed by their Creator" with inalienable rights.

There is no mention of Christ, and a subsequent amendment forbids the establishment of an official state religion. The founders were deists and many were Christians, to be sure, but the whole point of coming here was to escape the religious tyranny of Europe.

So, not knowing at the time that he was selectively quoting Obama, I took the bait and asked, "Since when do you care about Christianity?"

No one ever talks about it, but from what I understand, when my dad was a teenager he and his mother were in an a sanitarium for a time with tuberculosis. This was before antibiotics were in use. They eventually left and my dad turned out to be fine, but his mother was dying. Ultimately she committed suicide rather than suffer a horrible death. In the standard fashion everyone told him that God had taken her and that she was in a better place, but he had seen first hand what torture she had been through. He was bitter, came to hate God, never attended church and wanted nothing to do with religion. I can sympathize completely.

Fast forward twenty years. A Jehovah's Witness comes to the door of our house, talks to my mom, gets her to study the bible. After a while she starts talking about not celebrating birthdays or Christmas, says that the bible disallows blood transfusions and certain . . . private practices. This is too much for my dad. After a thorough search for the right church (he went down the block from his office) he got biblical arguments from a pastor. My parents had numerous knock-down drag-out arguments about religion right in front of me. In the end my dad won, because of various admonitions in the bible for wives to be submissive to their husbands: he turned my mother's religion against her.

After that my dad went to church sporadically and after a while stopped completely. When one of my sisters was married at the Church he had convinced my mother to join (the one next to his office) he refused to go because my other sister -- the one who had married a Hispanic guy from Texas -- was in attendance. Hence, my question: "Since when do you care about Christianity?"

Acknowledging my point, he says, "I'd rather have Christianity than Muslims. They're a vicious, violent people. In Saudi Arabia they stone adulterers and cut off the hands of thieves. They killed all those people on 9/11. They're animals." And he proceeds to talk about how there are three billion Muslims and what a danger they are. I'm not sure why the number three billion is important -- that would be almost half the world's population, which he is apparently advocating going to war with. (According to various sources, there are about 1.5 billion Muslims and 2.1 billion Christians.)

So I ask him who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, the bombing at the Olympics in Atlanta (he'd forgotten about that one), various abortion clinic bombings in the US, the assassination of American abortion doctors (one in a church!), the IRA bombings in England, the burning, drowning and crushing of witches in Salem and Europe, the Crusades, and so on. He brushes that all off, saying only some Christians do that, and it was a long time ago. When I point out that harsh punishments aren't meted out in most Muslim countries for minor crimes -- Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq (before we invaded), etc., etc. -- he looks puzzled. Apparently this wasn't in the script from the Internet. Turkey doesn't even have the death penalty.

The rant then becomes general, about losing the United States to foreigners, bemoaning the fact that half the kids in California are Mexican. He complains that kids can't even fly the American flag anymore. I'd never heard of this. My brother-in-law explains that a principal in California sent some kids with American flags on their t-shirt home. Looking at the Fox News report on the incident, it appears the principal told the kids to go home on Cinco de Mayo because he suspected their wearing the American flag on their shirts was an attempt to start a fight with Mexican kids by disrespecting their "day." (I think the principal was out of line, but can understand the action: wearing the flag like gang colors is not patriotism, it's thuggery. The kids were not punished and free to wear American flags on other days, according to an NBC affiliate.)

Then he goes into full rant mode. The illegal immigrants should have no rights. They're stealing jobs from Americans. They're destroying our way of life. They have everything given to them. "Filthy jobs like picking tomatoes that Americans won't do because they pay too little?" I ask. "Aren't the people paying the illegals just as guilty as the illegals, if not more so?" But somehow he just shrugs that off.

"In a poll 58% of the American people said they are against illegal immigration," he says. "I'm one of them," I answer. But he doesn't hear me. "This is supposed to be a democracy, and Obama's not doing anything about illegals." In fact, Obama has been doing more about it than Bush ever did -- more arrests, more punishments of employers, etc. But my dad pays no heed to all that.

Then he says, "I think we should shoot them when the cross the border. They're committing a crime." I ask him if really means this, and he says he'd do it himself.

So now we come full circle. Muslims are monstrous animals because they amputate the hands of thieves and stone adulterers. Yet my dad has no problem shooting someone in cold blood who's just trying to find a better life and feed their kids doing grunt field work for almost no pay that no one else in the United States is willing to do.

And it's not just my dad who's demanding death if he doesn't get what he wants. Conservatives threaten civil war if they don't get certain electoral and legislative results. What, you ask? When did they do that? Republicans in both Alaska and Texas have talked about secession over and over. And of course, secession from the Union is simply not possible, and will certainly cause civil war.

Conservatives uniformly favor the death penalty, and expanding the crimes that are covered by it, and rolling back appeals in capital cases. Conservatives like Palin are always bragging about hunting and killing animals. Hunting isn't wrong, and I don't oppose it -- but it's certainly more violent than not hunting. Conservatives are always trying to expand the presence of guns in everyday society. They support laws allowing people to freely shoot trespassers. The conservative answer to violence appears to be the threat of more violence.

And then my brother-in-law chimes in, saying that the only problem with nuking the whole Middle East is that we'd have a hard time getting the oil out. (The same brother-in-law who had to explain his "Obama trap" joke to his mother. You know, the piece of watermelon under a box propped up with a stick.)

And then there are the calls to nuke Iran from Cheney and regime change in North Korea from McCain, and, well, you get the picture.

American conservatives who are constantly advocating violence in all its high and low forms have no moral high ground when they complain about Muslims being a violent people.

So I ask my dad why he thinks Muslims hate us. He has absolutely no idea. It's obvious he's never considered it for even a second. I tell him that bin Laden started his jihad because of the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War.

Just like my dad thinks that Muslims and Mexicans are destroying the American way of life, the Muslim terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia believe we are destroying their very way of life. We are invading their countries -- Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Kuwait -- even more overtly than Mexicans are invading our country by attacking and stationing troops there. We are perverting their culture -- spreading English, Christianity, loose morals, obscene dress, money lending -- just like Mexicans and Muslims are speaking Spanish and Arabic and building mosques in America. Mexicans are stealing American jobs, Americans are stealing Muslim oil.

Conservatives in the Middle East are upset about societal change and foreign influence, and they advocate violence to stop it. Conservatives in the United States are their mirror images, taking the bait that their counterparts in the Middle East are throwing them.

We really need to take into account the sentiments of people in other countries when we interact with them. I'm not saying that we should kowtow to terrorists. But there's very rarely only one solution to any given problem. In retrospect it was obviously a bad idea to leave troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War -- the parallels to the Crusades are just too stark. We wound up taking our troops out of there in 2003 anyway. Important lessons can be learned here with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Radicalized Muslims are intentionally inciting conflict with the United States. They want us to lump all Muslims together and attack Muslims in general so that they can claim they were right all along about the "crusaders" trying to destroy Islam. When American conservatives advocate violence against all Muslims and turn our conflict with a few Muslim terrorists into a broadside against all Islam, the terrorists win.

WTF Has Obama Done?

Have to get back on track with this one...

SIGNED A NEW START TREATY WITH THE RUSSIANS

Of course, it hasn't been ratified yet by the Senate because...why again? Oh yeah, the GOP wants him to fail.

Epic. Success.

I'm quite sad to report to all my libertarian and conservative friends that the government takeover and restructuring of General Motors has been a whopping success. Shares surged in their debut on November 18, 2010. As of today, they are trading at 33.80. This is a much bolder offering than was originally thought possible. In addition, it has allowed GM to trim the government's stake from 61 percent to 26 percent-much faster than expected.

There were many predictions of doom/gloom coupled with the usual boiling pit of sewage rhetoric but none of that has happened. Rest assured, though, I won't be holding my breath that any of my right leaning commenters are going to admit that they were wrong. In the final analysis, it doesn't really matter. What had to be done was done and, like many actions that the Obama administration has taken, success was the result.

See what can be accomplished when one doesn't have anaphylactic reactions to government?

Silly Conservatives

The other day I saw this bumper sticker on a truck right in front of me.

Honestly, I don't get it. Nearly every liberal I know is working 2-3 jobs. There was one that I knew that really did fit the bill of this bumper sticker but he just got a job and a really well paying one at that.

Now I realized that I am not a barometer for the relationship between political affiliation and employment but there are far more unemployed conservatives I know than unemployed liberals. One of them is my uncle who hasn't worked in nearly 20 years. He and his wife (my mom's sister) live with his mom in the house she has owned for over 70 years. Another is a childhood friend I know who has been barely employed for the last 10 years. He also lives with his mom. Both are avid Tea Partiers. In fact, what do people in the Tea Party do for a living that they can afford to go to all these events? Have they become the "professional protester" that they derided just a few short years ago? Yet another hypocrisy.

My neighbor (Obama is the anti-Christ guy) works only in the summer at the amusement park. His wife works full time in an HR department while he...well...loafs and spends his days (like my uncle and childhood chum) listening to Glenn Beck and surfing the right wing blogsphere. Oh, and their only daughter (10 years old) is often left alone while he goes and goofs off at the local hunting supply store with his buddies. Actually, she spends quite a bit of time at our house because, with her mom working and her dad playing with himself whilst looking at right wing blogs, she'd like some attention. Doesn't this sound familiar ? (see: "ghetto" mom on welfare ignores children, collects government check).

So, given reality, the bumper sticker makes no sense. The government that my uncle, friend, and neighbor routinely spit on supplies them with basic benefits so they can enjoy the lives that they lead. The liberals that they laugh about through bumper stickers like this one don't really exist anymore--especially since President Clinton reformed welfare.

The only "silly" people I see are very much to the right of the aisle. And that makes this bumper sticker pretty hilarious indeed.

The Sarah Palin Comment

Next time you are at a party, try this.

Make a negative comment about Sarah Palin (as I did recently) and watch America in 2010 unfold in all its vomitous glory. Several people will chime in agreeing with you and others will go further and make incredibly awful comments. Wherever negative comments about Sarah Palin occur, you can make damn sure that, however bad they are, like water to one of Spielberg's Gremlins, supporters will sprout up everywhere. This is the genius of how the Right operates. They know of this "gremlin" effect well and use it at every turn.

Whatever the truth is doesn't really matter. For someone like me this is an extremely nauseating and highly frustrating extension of discussions regarding George W. Bush or racism. These also sprout gremlins. It doesn't matter that Bush was an awful president who created the majority of problems we have today (which Obama is blamed for, of course) because Bush bashing is like so gauche and awful and stuff! Enough already with it, right? Call someone a racist and you'll get the stock line "Accusing someone of racism destroys the argument and unfairly labels someone to the point of no return" or something like that. Worse, you'll get claims of counter racism and howls of wise Latinas. Gremlins...gremlins everywhere!

Never mind the fact that the person was probably, in fact, a racist. They have built in armor now to protect them against the race mongers. And it's courtesy of the douche bags who continually seek to perpetuate a culture of no responsibility and never, under any circumstances, self actualization. The gremlin assembly line is always live!

Yet, throwing out the Sarah Palin comment is something everyone should do at least once. It's important to do so because it lets you know how far down the drain our country has swirled. People that try to make our country better (Obama, Pelosi, Reid, anyone named Kennedy) want to kill our grandmothers. People who, as Matt Taibbi recently described LeBron James, "are landmarks in self involvement" and "attention craving narcissistic monsters who simultaneously despise and need the slithering insect mortals by the millions to lick their toes" (Sarah Palin) are actually fighting to save our country and restore it to what our founding fathers envisioned. After all, only Palin knows what the Constitution really means, right?

Her competence, intelligence, and intellectual capacity DO NOT MATTER. After all, President Obama is no different in our Alice-in-Wonderland perception of reality, those pesky gremlins insist. There's an argument to made for anything these days in our wonderful Idiocracy.

In looking at the evolution from Bush to Palin, the depths to which we will sink seem never ending. The gremlins grow more and more powerful indeed.

Raise My Taxes!

Well, Warren Buffet has gone and done it again. The Oracle of Omaha has made those right wingers foam at the mouth again with his recent comments about how he should pay more in taxes.

"If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further," Buffett said. "But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."

No shit.

It's what I've been saying all along. Better than they've ever had it...it's a fucking clam bake right now. The folks who lost 20 trillion dollars (and begged the government for a bail out) still have all their money and none, as of yet, have seen any prison time.

And what does Buffet have to say about you supply siders?

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on," Buffett explained.

Some like me are. Several who post here aren't. When will you? It hasn't worked and will never work because people are greedy. As many conservative Christians have assured me, man is naturally sinful. So why do they give a break to the money guys then? I don't get it. Unless they are now, as Jesus so clearly warned, worshiping the false god of money...

Right around now, of course, is when the standard line comes out. "No one is stopping Buffet from paying more in taxes." I'm not sure from where this originated but it is wrong. The IRS is actually stopping him from paying more in taxes. In the first place, you can't overpay your taxes. Anyone who has ever done this on accident knows that you get a refund. In addition, the IRS doesn't take donations. Don't take my word for it. Ask someone you know who is an accountant. I did. My wife has been one for almost 30 years.

While I'm certain that Buffet could figure out a way to donate his money to the government, that really isn't his point. Try for a moment to think outside of the box on this one and realize that the system, as it is currently set up, favors wealthy people. This is not only true of the tax system but of the private sector as well. How many average joes do you know that get a chance at an IPO?

For those of you that post here, are not in the top 2 percent, and support the Right (whether it is the current form of the GOP or libertarian views), kindly rid yourself of the fantasy that some day you will get the chance to be as wealthy as those CEOs you worship. The way the system is currently set up, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. No amount of hard work, financial know how, or wizardry is going to assist you.

The people that are in power right now want to keep it that way. They have spent the last three decades shifting the majority of our nation's wealth to their bank accounts. They spit on the Democrats, like Bill Clinton, who think that the middle class drives this economy. They shit on President Obama who has made at least some effort to change and regulate the system so people like you can get more breaks. Basically that means they spit and shit on YOU.

I'm wondering how much longer you are going to take it.

Giving Thanks

If you are conservative, libertarian, or just plain lean right, happy days are indeed here. Corporations run the world, the government has essentially been neutered in a variety of ways, and our culture is made up of people who think only of themselves...going into anaphylactic shock at the mere mention people working together for the common good. Add in howls of derision at anyone who dare question another's self interest and the age of the rugged individualist (see: Randian adolescent power fantasy) is here.

This, of course, is reality. But in the world of the conservative blogsphere, we are all on a Road To Serfdom.

The Road to Serfdom was book written in the early 1940s by Friedrich von Hayek in which he warned of the coming tyranny of government controlled and centrally planned economies. His ideas have been co-opted today by many on the right in the vain (and sad) attempt to add intellectual shine to a fervent ideology. It's quite pathetic, really, considering how out of date Hayek's ideas are giving our current global and economic framework.

Honestly, his theories were never all that sound to begin with when you consider the clear results of unfettered markets. We've seen it a lot in the last 30 years and we really aren't that far off from Polanyi's chief criticism of Hayek: It's actually Serfdom's ideas that will lead to fascism. In the case of our country, it's the corporate bend of this ideology with a small group of people controlling both our nation's wealth and the government.

Interestingly, the recently defrocked (for not being a pure conservative...whatever that means), David Frum agrees with me. He wrote a column a while back entitled "We're not on a road to serfdom." and I have to say, it's brilliant.

The story of the past 50 years has been that the American economy has become freer and more dynamic.

Think back to 1960. The federal government regulated the price of every airfare. It regulated every rail, truck and shipping route. It regulated the price of natural gas. It regulated stockbrokers' commissions. It regulated the interest rates that could be paid on checking accounts. It told most farmers how much they could grow of what commodity. It regulated what kind of political and religious comment could be expressed on the airwaves. And of course it conscripted millions of young men beginning their careers into the armed forces.

All of that is gone, gone, gone.

It sure is gone and that's why we have all the problems we have today. Of course, Frum would never admit this but that's the narrow tunnel of his ideology entrapping him.

Yet conservatives sell our own accomplishments and principles short when they represent them as so fragile. The fact is: our win-loss ratio is actually pretty good. Free-market ideas have rescued states in much worse trouble than post-Obama America: Mao's China to name one outstanding example.

Of course they do because there always has to be an enemy. Time is always running out and they's always comin' to gin us!

One would think they would be thankful today, on this day of giving thanks, with the current state of affairs...CEOs making ridiculous amounts of money...Wall Street continuing to be up to its old tricks....Warren Buffet being taxed at a rate of half of his secretary...and the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation holding over a third of its wealth...the next four percent making it nearly two thirds. It's just the way they like it, right?

Wrong. They want more.

So who are the fascists again?

Twas the night before Thanksgiving...

....and Mark has a question for all of you.

Would Sarah Palin be as much of a force in politics today if she was 300 pounds and/or ugly?

If the answer is no, what does that tell you about her base? Our culture?

Are the Republicans are Turning Us into China?

For the past two years Republicans have been calling Obama a socialist and a communist, insisting that his policies will destroy the American economy. But if we look at the economies of the world today, who's doing the best?

Without a doubt, it's China. The country run by the Communist Party of Mao has a centralized command economy that has harnessed the capitalist plow horse under the socialist yoke. China has bought hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US Treasury bills, propping up the US economy. China dictates trade policy to the world, coming into their full power during the Bush administration.

So, how is this economic miracle possible? Well, the workers who build all those computers and TVs and iPads get paid dirt, and are treated like dirt. Unions are run by the Communist Party, which also runs management. China has essentially no environmental regulations: remember how they had to shut down all their factories for weeks to host the Olympics? They burn so much coal the skies over Beijing are a perpetual filthy brown. And, finally, American and European companies have turned their backs on their own workers, first shifting production to China and are now sending high-tech design centers to China. Companies like Walmart, with their insistence on constantly-decreased prices (and, incidentally, quality) have forced most of their American suppliers to produce their goods in China.

In other words, China has become what the United States and Britain were in the 1890s: a land where government and big business are one, and workers have no control over their own fates.

The old notions of communism and capitalism no longer make any sense. What matters now is how much control average people have over their own lives, and the quality of life (clean air, clean water, reasonable working hours, decent pay and housing, etc.).

China has reached the point where government has absorbed big business and the two have merged into one. The Republicans and their big business backers are doing the same thing from the other direction: big business is swallowing Republican politicians and therefore government, giving business a free hand to do whatever they please. Big business can spend unlimited amounts of cash to buy elections now; it doesn't always work (ask Meg Whitman), but in a close race it makes all the difference.

And it's not just me saying that this is what Republicans think: remember the heartfelt apology Joe Barton gave BP during the hearings about the Gulf oil spill? All the Republicans were saying the same thing he was, except he that he gushed as much as the oil well in his fawning over BP. And all throughout the election Republicans keep screaming about reducing regulations despite the fact that in the last nine years the lack of regulation and the lack of enforcement of existing regulations has resulted in some of the the largest financial and environmental calamities we've ever seen.

And don't get me wrong. Some Democrats have been co-opted by big business as well. They're too comfortable with Wall Street and Big Energy. But as a party and an ideology, the Democrats clearly want to maintain a healthy separation between government and big business, while the Republicans are running headlong into the government/big business/no regulation singularity.

The Republicans are leading us to the same place that China is today. Just from the other direction.

Helping the Terrorists Win

Recently there's been an uproar over body scanners at airports. People are worried about X-ray dosages and the invasion of privacy. Others are calling for mass protests to opt out of scans and getting a pat-down instead, and many of those same people are then screaming that they don't want to be touched. This will cause massive slowdowns and cost lots of money in delays.

Those people are helping the terrorists win.

The purpose of the 9/11 attacks, the shoe and underwear bombers, and the recent printer toner cartridge bombs is not to inflict maximum carnage. It's to inflict maximum economic distress, to slow down our economy and make us change the way we do business. They want to raise fears in the American public to demand security measures which would then make the cost of doing business so high that it will eventually bankrupt us. They want us to make people fear and hate our government by making our government do things people hate.

The Republicans have aided and abetted the terrorists the whole time. Every time Bush needed a push in the polls in the 2004 election he'd jack up the terror alert level to orange. The Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security (that name still gives me Orwellian chills) and the TSA as sprawling bureaucracies with the mandate to invade our privacy and make us take off our shoes every time we board a plane, tap our phone messages and read our email.

The current scanner brouhaha was started during the Bush administration, which ordered the installation of the machines at airports. So far the whiners are complaining about having their junk touched. But in another few weeks I'm sure we'll be into full-blown nut-case conspiracy mode, where right-wingers insist that Obama's socialist/communist/fascist agenda is behind all this, and Janet Napolitano wants to get pictures of us all naked and let child molesters cop feels.

The terrorists behind the recent package bombing attempts recently published an article about their exploits. They claimed the whole thing only cost them about $4,200 to pull off. Think about it. They only had to spend 4,000 bucks to get us to spend billions of dollars in additional security measures. If terrorism were a business it would have the biggest profit margin ever.

Which really makes you wonder: Bush used the terrorism card to get votes. How many of these guys are using terrorism to get rich? Well, at least one: Michael Chertoff, the former DHS secretary under Bush, has been pushing for full-body scans now for years. It turned out that he also shills for the company that makes the scanners.

To be honest, I'm surprised that the security backlash has taken this long. I've always felt that the reaction to 9/11 was overblown, that we've sold our privacy and our souls and wasted billions of dollars on security measures that do very little, and actually make us feel less safe. I didn't think it would take us nine years to get tired of all this nonsense at airports. We're not as courageous and clear-sighted as I thought we were

And to make matters worse, the scanners are already obsolete. Al Qaeda doesn't bother doing the same thing twice once they've failed. They also take their time plotting their next big thing, often waiting years before the next attempt. The shoe bomb didn't work, and the underwear bomb didn't work. What's next?

Al Qaeda has already attempted an assassination using a bomb hidden in a body cavity. They haven't tried this on a plane yet, but if they do no body scanner will detect it. Another question: are body scanners being used at the foreign airports where the shoe and underwear bombers boarded?

Right now the nexus of terrorism seems to be Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, all ostensible allies. That tells us something very important: anti-Americanism flows from internal dissent. We're in the middle of a domestic squabble. In a way, that's a good thing. Getting out from between two feuding brothers should be easier than toppling a dictatorship or stopping a madman from getting nuclear weapons.

The terrorists are using attacks on America to coerce us into changing our policies toward their countries. And it works: the prima facie reason bin Laden attacked us was because of the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, where they had been stationed since Gulf War. Bush pulled all our troops from that country in 2003, giving bin Laden exactly what he wanted.

Terrorists attack us because they believe the US is occupying their country, American companies are interfering with their lives and prosperity, or the US is propping up an illegitimate regime. We need to seriously examine what we're doing in those countries and ask ourselves whether it's helping or hurting us.

Worth A Million Words

Our culture is very visual these days so I think it's important that we see the difference between the Democrat's tax plans and the GOP tax plans.

Now, I hear a lot of mouth foaming about how the Democrats are all rich too and they bend over backwards (and forwards) for the wealthy just like the GOP does. But I don't really see it here. Why would they make a tax policy that cut into their profits? Why would guys like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and George Soros promote policies that dictate less tax breaks for the wealthy? I guess there's my answer and then there's the unreality of the fact free zone.

Seriously, though, look at the top bracket. How can you not laugh?

Give Me My Damn Government Health Care...Stat!

In what has to be the finest example of hypocrisy I have EVER seen (and I've seen quite a bit every day on here and in the political world), Andy Harris, the newly elected Maryland GOP Congressmen, demanded his government health care a month early.

Apparently, Rep. Harris, who ran on an anti-Obamacare platform, was at an orientation meeting and wondered when his government run health care was available to utilize. Apparently, it doesn't kick in until Feb 1, 2011 which he was not happy with at all. "He stood up and asked the ladies who were answering questions why it took so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care," a congressional staffer related.

Why, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Dr. Harris!

Dr. Harris then wondered if he could buy his insurance early. No, Dr. Harris, you can't. Sorry...we don't have that option with health care. Remember, socialized medicine is a boiling pit of sewage.

Check out this clip of Dr. Harris demonizing government run health care.



What a tool...

Well, Let's Hear It!

I've done it. I have balanced the United States federal budget.

Click here for Mark's results!

I'd like to see how the rest of you would fair. It's easy to reset and do your own so get on with it. I've heard a lot of griping about the government but now YOU are in charge. What cuts will you make? How will you balance the budget?

Cut and paste your link in comments. I expect to hear from all of my regulars.

Lame Ducks (In Every Sense of the Word)

The lame duck Congress reconvenes this week and the Democrats will have their curtain call. Anyone out there think they will do anything worthwhile?

I don't.

In fact, I think they will do their usual pussy dance and cower in fear of the now much further right GOP. They could repeal "Don't ask, don't tell" but they won't because people like John McCain, who said we would repeal the law if the generals gave the OK, has now gone back on that because he wants to stay in good graces with the anti gay crowd on the right. The Democrats will follow suit and, even though 70 percent of the country favors repeal, give in (once again) to the very vocal and VERY bigoted minority. (side rant: This would be a classic example of how the minority wins time and again for those of you who have wondered. It's related to spinal muscular atrophy.) The Democrats could do something on immigration or energy. But they won't. Again, their complete lack of spine will send them cowering in fear in the face of the likes of the Koch brothers. But these issues aren't even the worst transgression. That trophy belongs to the Bush tax cuts.

I think we can all agree that making all the tax cuts (save for the top 2 percent of nation's earners) permanent is a good thing. It is my view that the middle class drives this economy and letting their tax cuts expire in a recession is a monumentally stupid thing.

But the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of this country should expire. Why? First, they aren't going to end up paying those taxes anyway because they will move their money around and pay less due to the simple fact that they can afford teams of lawyers and accountants. Second, the MYTH that the less the rich are taxed the more they invest in the economy has been completely torpedoed. They don't invest in shit except derivatives and hedge funds that simply make them more money. Third, they will make the deficit much worse. Cry all you want about spending but until you show me where you are going to stand up and make cuts, we are going to need more revenue. We'll need it anyway.

Finally, they should pay more because they are wealthy.

Now, I know all of you charity-to-the-wealthy lovers just had an epileptic seizure and began to foam at the mouth about redistribution of wealth/socialism/guns/statism blah blah blah. And I know how offensive it is to ask criminals, who risk our money-not theirs, to part with their ill gotten millions. But one of the men that you tout as being an authority on how markets should be run has said as much. That man's name is Adam Smith.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Mr. Smith, he wrote a masterpiece on free market economics called The Wealth of Nations (1776). The basic gist of his treatise is that there should be as little government interference in the market and "the invisible hand" should be allowed to work its magic. This invisible hand is roughly defined as men acting in their own self interest will unknowingly serve the interests of other, less fortunate members of society.

Setting aside the fact (which many libertarians and right wingers conveniently ignore) that the terms "economics" and "capitalism" weren't in use at the time of his writing, those who tout Smith completely fail to point out this line from the piece.

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

Or this one.

The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Or this one (especially dedicated to those of you who howl at me about your money being taken by the butt of a gun)

Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty. It denotes that he is the subject of government;,indeed but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

In other words, progressive taxes are fair, honest, and what work best. Bear in mind that Smith saw all this from a society that was a dominated by feudalism. I wonder what he would think of out little plutonomy today given the similarities....hmmm....

Anyway, the Democrats, in light of these obvious truths, should draw a line in the sand (like the right always does and invariably succeeds) and tell the minority for the next 6 weeks to pound salt up their ass. Bring a vote to the floor for the middle class tax cuts only and, if the GOP has an eight year old boy temper tantrum, let them try to explain to the American people, upon taking over in January 2011, how they let all the tax cuts expire. In other words, play HARDBALL like the right does all the time. Democrats should send a two word message to the GOP in this lame duck session.

"Fuck" and "Off."

Bill channels Markadelphia

On any normal day, I'm the one that usually channels my inner Maher and riffs off of it. A couple of weeks back, though, I think it was the reverse.

During his final New Rule on November 5, 2010, Maher lamented the Stewart-Colbert rally and, at several points during the commentary, he sounded just like me.

You see, Republicans keep staking out position that is further and further right and then demand that the Democrats meet them in the middle. Which is now not the middle anymore.

Sound familiar? It should because I've been saying it for years now. In a non Bizzaro world, I am center left. In a world that has been consumed by the right wing blogsphere and the likes of pathological ideologues like Thomas Sowell, I am condemned as a communist.

Of course, it's not entirely their fault.

And the biggest mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance's sake; that the left is just as cruel and violent as the right; that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism.

Until more people stand up and call the Right for what it is now, we will continue to have this distorted view of reality. Unfortunately, this is going to either require large quantities of cash or for people not care about cash and actually think. The latter is going to be a tough row to hoe.

The simple fact is that these people have convinced millions of American citizens that donating money to rich people is a good thing. And protecting the wealth of rich people against the Big Bad Wolf (government) is the very definition of freedom. Talk about useful idiots....

Here's the full clip:

Martin Luther King spoke on that mall in the capital, and he didn't say, "Remember, folks, those sheriffs with with the fire hoses and the German Shepherds, they had a point too!" No. He said, "I have a dream. They have a nightmare."

Indeed. Make no mistake about it. It IS a nightmare. Like Bill, I'm through pretending.

The Fact Free Zone

I've been quite amused watching the feud between Sarah Palin and the Wall Street Journal. It's a pretty good indicator as to what her presidency might be like.

Air Force General: Madam President., here are the facts. The F-22 can't land on aircraft carriers. It's land based.

President Palin (winking): Oh...c'mon there now, General. Let's just hook up a couple of static lines and we'll be good to go...you betcha!

It still amazes me that people think she is qualified to be president.

Friday Funnies