Life In These United States, Donald J. Trump Edition (updates)

So President Big Orange Cheetoh has been in office barely a week, and there are so many horrors and outrages that it’s practically impossible to catalogue them all:

• Issued an executive order to underfund (and ultimately destroy) “Obamacare”? Check.
• Issued an executive order to approve the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines? Check (see above…and by the way, is anyone out there besides me going to be impolite enough to point out that, last I checked, Trump was still an investor in Trans Energy, the company behind DAPL?).
• Pull back $5 million of already-paid-for advertising encouraging people to sign up for health care through the Affordable Care Law by 1/31? Check (here is an update – good!).
• Floated Supreme Court nominees who are almost certain to roll back provisions on worker safety, economic justice, minority rights, environmental protection and women’s reproductive health? Check.
• Supported an alleged plan to rebuild our infrastructure which is nothing but a giveaway to the plutocrats who supported his campaign (here) and now comprise almost his entire gaggle of cabinet position nominees, including this soulless shill? Check.

And oh yeah, he threw a hissy fit about the actual size of the crowd at his inauguration, even asking a Park Service official to find a picture of an allegedly larger crowd (here), gave a political speech at a hallowed location at the CIA which was nothing but an insult to the memories of those who have given their lives in service to our country (here), confused visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May with a porn star (here), lied about alleged shooting victims at Former President Obama’s farewell speech (here), squelched reporting by government agencies funded by our tax dollars (here), told U.S. taxpayers that we’re supposed to go along with paying for that stinking, idiotic wall of his on the Mexican border (here), and NOW (as noted here), he signed an executive order banning Muslims from entering this country. And I know this list of all of his ridiculous antics is incomplete.

And here is my question to anyone who supported this tiny brained, hateful egomaniac – why is this surprising to you in any way whatsoever?

Oh, maybe it’s because you’re FINALLY focusing on “Donald Drumpf” since we’re no longer in a political campaign and that supposedly godawful Hillary Clinton isn’t in the news anymore. Maybe it’s because you’re FINALLY realizing that you’ve been played for a sap by our usual corporate media suspects and you’ve fallen for the “fake news” garbage from Breitbart, Infowars and other purveyors of this utter slime.

You’re also apparently shocked, shocked I tell you that Trump is acting like a thoroughly ignorant, narcissistic, misogynistic clown as president. Again, what the hell else can you expect when he acted like nothing but a thoroughly ignorant, narcissistic, misogynistic clown as a presidential candidate?

Gee, welcome back to reality, huh?

Sucks, doesn’t it?

And by the way, don’t think this means that I’m now head over heels with the toadies in the DNC political/media/industrial complex who do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for us except lose elections. While the marches last weekend and recently in Philadelphia were absolutely awesome, that did not take place at the behest of the clueless knuckleheads I just mentioned, not in any way whatsoever. Instead, team “D” seems to be preoccupied with this ABSOLUTELY INTERMINABLE contest between former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Dem U.S. House Rep Keith Ellison of Minnesota, and (I believe he’s still a candidate) former DNC head and presidential candidate Howard Dean (personally I prefer Keith Ellison) to head the Democratic National Committee.

Note to the Democrats: I stopped giving a shit about this weeks ago. Just name Keith Ellison (or, if not, provide a damn good reason why) and be done with it, OK?

Update 2/19/17: And in a related story, as they say, kudos to Laurence Lewis at Daily Kos for this.

Update 2/22/17: Oh, for God’s sake, ENOUGH ALREADY! (here).

Also, speaking only for myself, I’ve been inundated with requests to contact Sens. Bob Casey and “No Corporate Tax” Pat Toomey (as well as Repug U.S. House Rep Brian “No, I’m Not Really My Brother Mike, But Just Pretend That I Am And It Will Be Fine, Honest” Fitzpatrick) in response to just about every single bilious development concerning the tiny-handed man-child now taking up space in An Oval Office. And I’ll actually act on some of those requests, but don’t expect me to take the bait and spend the majority of my time calling/petitioning/whatever every single time “Fergus Laing” says, does, or tweets anything stupid.

The election is over. And sorry if this sounds self-serving, but it’s not like I didn’t warn you (here).

Update 1 1/28/17: I don’t know about you, but we regularly deal with people who, by all accounts, are good neighbors and friends and people who are really good at their jobs. And oh yeah, they’re Trumpsters too. But when Mrs. Doomsy and I describe these people, we end up having to add the inevitable suffix of “But (he or she) is a good person” or “But (he or she) is a good worker.”

And then I take a look at my phone to see what’s going on, and this is the first thing that pops up (tied to what I linked to above).

You know what? I don’t give a crap about any “P.S.” remarks about these human beings any more, these utterly soulless, craven life forms who, when cornered, retreat to the inevitable fallback of “Oh yeah? Well, liberals this and minorities and welfare cheats that and unwed minority mothers this and Section 8 housing that and Clintons this and Ted Kennedy that, blah blah blah.”

I’m sick of that garbage. The actions of this monstrous fraud in the White House are going to impact this country for generations. And aside from what Sen. Chris Murphy said here (which is entirely correct), it’s also going to hasten the “brain drain” in this country that we can ill afford (and by the way…).

Wingnuts, you “built this.” At least have something like the courage and/or intestinal fortitude to own it yourselves.

Update 2 1/28/17: Uh, yep…

Friday Mashup (3/28/14)

(Image from satiricalpolitical.com…)

So, according to Repug Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, it looks like President Obama is granting “de facto amnesty,” or something, to illegal (undocumented – whatever) immigrants here.

I wonder if that’s why Number 44 is nearing his 2 millionth deportation (here)? And I think this has a typically “inside-out” corporate media headline on the subject that basically tells us that, yes, U.S. House Repugs in particular are being intransigent a-holes on the issue (as with so many other matters of consequence).

Also, I really don’t want to waste a lot of time on this, but for some reason, the otherwise highly sensible Chris Hayes decided to grant a forum to Americans for Prosperity’s (and Koch-ette) Jennifer Stefano here, with predictable results (more of Stefano’s nonsense can be accessed at the fifth bullet from here).

Next, I realize that I should utterly ignore conservative quota hire Jennifer Rubin of the WaPo, but alas, I cannot totally – I give you the following from here…

I’ve got no problem with third-party money or with billionaires giving money directly to campaigns; neither do most Republicans. But it is Democrats who brought up the Koch complaint and who have been impugning the Koch brothers. In 2010 Democrats attacked the nefarious and non-existent “foreign money” from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; now it’s two businessmen.

See how Rubin is trying to morph the dreaded “conventional wisdom” from “Oh, aren’t the Dems a bunch of crybabies for complaining about waay too much untraceable money in our political campaigns” to “Well, guess what? That money never existed anyway.”?

Oh, and by the way, she’s wrong in either case. As Think Progress notes here (from October 2010)…

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has created a large presence in the small, oil-rich country of Bahrain. In 2006, the Chamber created an internal fundraising department called the “U.S.-Bahrain Business Council” (USBBC), an organization to help businesses in Bahrain take advantage of the Chamber’s “network of government and business relationships in the US and worldwide.

…

With each of these foreign board members to the USBBC contributing at least $10,000 annually, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raises well over $100,000 a year in money from foreign businesses through its operation in Bahrain.

…

Like the USBBC, the (U.S. India Business Council) generates well over $200,000 a year in dues for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from foreign businesses.

…

Another foreign chamber, like the Abu Dhabi AmCham, which includes American firms and Esnaad, a subsidiary of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, claims that it is a “dues paying member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and part of the global network of American Chambers of Commerce.”

And in an update to the Think Progress post, we learn the following…

The US Chamber of Commerce has responded to this post in a statement to the Politico’s Ben Smith. The Chamber’s Tita Freeman did not dispute that the Chamber’s 501(c)(6) organization running attack ads receives foreign funds, and simply claimed, “We have a system in place” to prevent foreign funding for the Chamber’s “political activities.”

Uh huh…

As far as I’m concerned, the reality of the foreign funds used by the “U.S.” Chamber of Commerce for election purposes (unaccounted-for foreign funds, inasmuch as it’s impossible to find out just how much was spent for particular races on behalf of particular candidates) utterly puts the lie as far as I’m concerned to claims such as the one made by Mike Fitzpatrick that the Dems outspent him in the 2010 campaign in which he unseated incumbent U.S. House Rep Patrick Murphy. Can someone honestly tell me how much Fitzpatrick received in funding from the “U.S.” Chamber (a figure verified by an independent accounting firm)?

I’ll have something else to say about Mikey the Beloved later, by the way.

Further, did you know that Greg Gutfeld of Fix Noise apparently wrote a book (here)? Why, color me shocked (something called “Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War On You”…as always, Gutfeld and his kind have to invent a conflict with a real or imagined enemy – here)…

Someone named Kyle Smith at Rupert Murdoch’s Vanity Rag tells us the following…

Gutfeld finds that cool warps everything. In 2012, for instance, Zuckerberg’s Facebook not only didn’t pay any net federal income tax but was actually due a refund of about $430 million. Why? Because the company (lawfully) deducted the stock options it issues to Facebook employees, many of them now deliriously wealthy because of those options. If Exxon or Koch Industries had managed that, someone might have noticed.

But because it was Facebook — a company that oozes cool out its pores — it was a one-day story that people forgot about. “If this company were something that actually made something in a factory or a field,” writes Gutfeld, “it would be roundly condemned by every single media hack on the planet.”

Never mind that companies like Exxon and Koch supply the energy without which Facebook wouldn’t work: They’re not cool.

Um…unless Exxon and the Kochs have suddenly made a splash in renewables, then that really isn’t true, is it (here)?

Smith also blames “the left” for a ban of plastic supermarket bags in San Francisco that supposedly caused a 46 percent increase in deaths from foodborne illness – here is a response.

But wait, there’s more…

Now a few groovy artisanal types are sounding the alarm about vaccines, with predictably depressing results.

A year ago, a Florida county saw its first death from whooping cough in decades. The victim, a baby, had parents who decided not to vaccinate.

Vaccines, DDT, genetically modified foods — all these things are unnatural or impure, hence suspect.

“Purity is a big thing with the coolerati,” notes Gutfeld. “But, like cool, it exists separate from the notions of good and evil. Pure sugar is delicious. How about pure cocaine? How about pure horses–t?” That depends: Is it locally sourced?

Isn’t that simply precious?

Yes, unfortunately, there is definitely a bit of anti-vaccine hysteria out there. But blaming us lefties for it is to assign fault in the wrong place.

And that is because it is very unlikely that you will see Jenny McCarthy, a leading anti-vaccine proponent, appearing on MSNBC any time soon (as noted here, just consider “the usual suspects” once again, the people who hate science generally anyway).

It looks like Gutfeld is trying to make a name for himself as the Foxies’ latest attack dog in its increasingly futile efforts to gin up phony outrage over whatever real or alleged controversy happens to spring into the depraved mind of Roger Ailes or other culprits. However, I would argue that it’s really hard to sustain a career even in the wingnutosphere by trying to subsist on table scraps from Glenn Beck and Alex Jones (and probably Rusty and Drudge too).

Also, I came across this item in which Repug U.S. House Rep Lamar Smith, a particularly notorious climate change denier (at least when it comes to whether or not human activity is to blame), decried $700,000 that the National Science Foundation allegedly spent on a global warming musical (and did I mention that Smith is in charge of the House Science Committee?).

Maybe this really happened and maybe it didn’t, but here is what I know…I checked the web site for the National Science Foundation (here), and I’ve spent a few minutes trying to locate this award on their site, and I can’t find it.

And it’s not as if Smith doesn’t already have a history of making incendiary charges, as noted here.

Continuing, I give you the following via Rich Lowry, on the whole Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Wood thing about companies not wanting to provide health care coverage for “conscience” reasons…

Hobby Lobby is trying to fend off the federal government via the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law that Democrats used to support before they realized how inconvenient it would prove to the Obama-era project of running roughshod over moral traditionalists. The act says that government can’t substantially burden someone’s exercise of religion unless there’s a compelling governmental interest at stake and it’s pursued by the least restrictive means.

I don’t have anything particularly brilliant to add here, but I only wanted to point out that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was originally passed and signed into law in 1996, with the following intended purpose…

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to all religions, but is most pertinent to Native American religions that are burdened by increasing expansion of government projects onto sacred land. In Native American religion the land they worship on is very important. Often the particular ceremonies can only take place in certain locations because these locations have special significance.[5] This, along with peyote use are the main parts of Native American religions that are often left unprotected.

So, as a pretext for allowing business to pick and choose health care coverage for their employees based on their moral sensibilities, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood are seeking protection by citing a law that was originally passed to allow Native Americans to use peyote and mescaline during religious ceremonies.

So then, I guess drugs are OK, but for conservatives, protection against the dreaded (in their minds, anyway) “lady parts” isn’t.

Hmmm…

I think this is going to be another ruling that The Supremes slide under the proverbial door as they’re getting ready to leave Washington, D.C. in a couple of months. However, if they end up ruling on the side of faith instead of existing statute (a 50-50 bet as far as I’m concerned), then employers will be able to offer (or not offer) any health insurance that they want. Which will end up hastening the extinction of the whole “employer-based health insurance” model, which was bound to happen anyway.

And, by default, that means that anyone seeking coverage will have no choice but to go to an exchange. Which will probably provide better and more affordable coverage, truth be told.

And 10 years or so from now, the next generation is going to wonder what the fuss was all about. And given that, how many of them will actually vote for Republicans, who are overwhelmingly responsible for the fuss in the first place?

(And by the way, I thought this was some interesting “food for thought” on this subject.)

Finally, I checked into Mikey the Beloved’s U.S. House web page to find out what he’s doing when it comes to Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!, and I found these items…

The bottom link tells us that Mikey apparently appeared at a job fair, which is positive; no word, though, on any discussion he may have had with any of the attendees. And in the job fair story, we learn that Mikey has supported 25 “jobs” bills.

Really?

Since there’s no further information on these “jobs” bills from his web page, I navigated to the Republican Party web site to try and learn more. And this takes us to the party’s “jobs” page.

Which contains no actual links to actual jobs bills, of course.

On the other hand, this tells us of legislative accomplishments by congressional Democrats (and the typical Republican Party obstruction is duly noted).

The only way this nonsense is going to stop is by voting in a Democratic congressional majority once more. And to help get that done, click here.

Friday Mashup (5/24/13)

I get it that this Andrew Marcus character is trying to hawk his “documentary” called “Hating Breitbart” on the site of The Daily Tucker, and he’s pretty much trying to do whatever he can to get people to pay attention to him, but even by wingnut standards (low as they are), I would say that trying to draw some sort of equivalence between John Podesta of the Center for American Progress and H.R. Haldeman, former chief of staff to President Richard Nixon, is pretty lame (here)…

In “Hating Breitbart,” John Podesta emerges as someone who perfectly embodies the left’s penchant for creating an environment of corruption, abuse and personal attacks. As the co-chairman of Obama’s 2008-2009 transition team, Podesta obviously enjoys a very close relationship to this White House. Today he runs the Center for American Progress, a far-left think tank, and exerts a great deal of influence in media circles. The political culture he has helped create is exactly what Andrew Breitbart so passionately resisted and despised.

Let me be clear: I have no evidence that Podesta has been personally involved in any of the scandals that are currently rocking the Obama presidency. But what I do know about Podesta is that his Center for American Progress has been instrumental in dehumanizing Obama’s political opponents. In doing so, he has created fertile ground for these scandals to take root.

As far as “scandals” that are “rocking” the Obama presidency (and, as usual, there’s no actual evidence of wrongdoing on Podesta’s part, just more guilt by association), this tells us that the stuff on the IRS and the Teahadists, the AP and Eric Holder and BENGHAZI!! are pretty much being met with a collective yawn (to the point where even Republican staffers are wondering if the elected officials they support have lost what little is left of their minds here).

And this is just REALLY way too damn funny from Marcus (page 3)…

Ultimately, it’s people like H.R. Haldeman and John Podesta who build the nests and turn the eggs — though Richard Nixon’s crimes pale in comparison to what has been recently alleged of the Obama administration. Congress was never able to establish any broad-based abuse of the IRS against Nixon’s “enemies list,” but even Nixon’s comparatively modest abuses merited an article of impeachment. Obama’s IRS has already admitted to misconduct. Who knows what other scandalous evidence may ultimately emerge?

Let me know if and when John Podesta is convicted of perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice and sentenced to 18 months in the federal pen, OK, as noted here (although this is cause for a bit of concern about CAP, though when it comes to undisclosed foreign donations to the “U.S.” Chamber of Commerce, it’s a speck by comparison – here).

And as far as the “Obama vs. Nixon” stuff goes, here is my answer.

Next, it looks like former Repug Senator and potential Obama Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg has decided to cash in, as noted here…

Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has been named CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), a powerhouse trade group for Wall Street.

The top job at SIFMA was one of the hottest openings on K Street, and it comes with a hefty payday. The group’s last leader, Tim Ryan, earned $2.9 million in compensation in 2010, according to the group’s tax form for that year.

Gregg said he plans to use his new platform to champion the message that Wall Street is good for the economy.

“I suspect what I’m going to be doing is what we have talked about, which is reorient ourselves on the issue of how you communicate the importance of this industry to people on Main Street America and their jobs,” Gregg told reporters on a conference call.

…

SIFMA, which represents financial giants such as Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, lobbies extensively on Capitol Hill and at regulatory agencies, and has been particularly active on the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

(“Particularly active” being Beltway media-code-speak for trying to gut Dodd-Frank every way possible, as noted here, which is what I think this is really all about anyway.)

And as noted here, “Skank” of America was one of the banks that made yet another fortune off fees charged to the city of Detroit while that once-great metropolis restructured its debt (and as noted here, the financial rogue colossus recently asked a judge to throw out a lawsuit over the mortgages Countrywide wrote for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…totally on their own and without any prompting from anyone, BOA took over Countrywide in 2008).

And as far as Morgan Stanley is concerned, this tells us about the toxic CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations) they peddled, which basically were collections of mortgage-backed securities that the investment banking geniuses at M-S knew would blow up, so they sold them to the Chinese…what a cunning plan; antagonize the country holding the single largest volume of our debt among all others. Brilliant!

And these are the people Gregg will be shilling for in his cushy new gig.

…

“Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose…”

Continuing, I’d at first planned to stay away from commenting on the tornado disaster in Moore, Oklahoma earlier this week (and if you are able to assist in any way, please click here), but I really felt like I had to say something in response to this from Seth Borenstein of the AP (here…kind of laughable to me that he’s the “science” writer after reading this)…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Everything had to come together just perfectly to create the killer tornado in Moore, Okla.: wind speed, moisture in the air, temperature and timing. And when they did, the awesome energy released over that city dwarfed the power of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima.

I don’t have any information to contest that claim, but I think, based on this, that any comparison between the Moore tornado and the Hiroshima atomic bomb explosion is ridiculous. And that is because, as deadly as the Moore tornado was, it was only the wind at work, not the combination of wind, blast-furnace heat and radiation that was inflicted on Hiroshima (and I’ve heard many scholarly arguments against dropping the bomb, including that of Oliver Stone in his “Untold History of the United States” here, but sorry – I still believe it was the right thing to do; Stone, for example, argued that the Soviet Union would have assisted the U.S. in an invasion of mainland Japan, but I don’t think his evidence on that is totally credible).

And get a load of this bit of wankery (returning to Borenstein)…

Scientists know the key ingredients that go into a devastating tornado. But they are struggling to figure out why they develop in some big storms and not others. They also are still trying to determine what effects, if any, global warming has on tornadoes.

Really? I guess, as far as Borenstein and his denialist pals are concerned, 97 percent of a consensus on the subject just isn’t good enough, as noted here (h/t Wonkette…think “more extreme weather patterns,” and maybe this too).

Further, I thought I should let you know what at least one of Willard Mitt Romney’s confidants is up to now that we haven’t sworn The Mittster in as our 45th president (thank God), along with Mr.-Puppy-Dog-Eyes-With-The-Shiv as his veep – I’m referring to Glenn “Give It Your Best Shot” Hubbard here…

The United States itself has a larger GDP and higher productivity than 10 years ago, but its long-term growth rate has slowed by half. That’s a reflection of internal imbalance – budget deficits, heavy taxes that hinder incentives to work and innovate, unfunded entitlements and more.

Actually, there’s no freaking demand, you soulless parasite, as noted here (unless he considers that to be part of the “and more,” and the sequester is doing absolutely nothing to help of course, as noted here…and isn’t this encouraging also – not!).

Finally, I’d like to point out the utterly obvious fact that Memorial Day weekend is basically upon us, and it is quite appropriate for us to ponder the sacrifices made by the men and women in our military who have given much (and, in many cases, given all), and say a prayer of two in gratitude, wish good thoughts for them, visit cemeteries to pay our respects, and engage in all manner of solemn events for the occasion to express our gratitude (or assist the VA and/or veterans groups as our means allows).

The heroism we appreciate on this occasion takes place in the name of maintaining our freedom, a thought that occurred to me as I read an otherwise generic (in its wingnuttery, I mean) opinion column from Repug Louisiana Governor Bobby “Don’t Call Me Piyush” Jindal here (and I apologize in advance for conflating notions of honor and courage here with rank political claptrap)…

Look at liberalism across every issue, from healthcare to energy to spending, and one thing is crystal clear: Liberals don’t believe in the dynamic and transformative power of freedom. Bigger government and more power in the hands of a few means the interests of the public will be violated.

With this idiocy in mind, I’d like to offer the following in response from Mike Malloy (here)…

Why do conservatives hate freedom? The question may be startling. After all, don’t conservatives claim they are protecting liberty in America against liberal statism, which they compare to communism or fascism? But the conservative idea of “freedom” is a very peculiar one, which excludes virtually every kind of liberty that ordinary Americans take for granted.

…

In the cases of freedom from racial discrimination and freedom from sexual repression, American conservatives have been solidly on the side of government repression of the powerless and unprivileged. The same is true with respect to workers’ rights, debtors’ rights and criminal rights.

To listen to their Jacksonian rhetoric, American conservatives are the champions of the little guy against the “elites.” But not, it appears, in the workplace or the bank. The American right is opposed to anything — minimum wage laws, unions, workplace regulations — that would increase the bargaining power of workers relative to their bosses.

…

What would America look like, if conservatives had won their battles against American liberty in the last half-century? Formal racial segregation might still exist at the state and local level in the South. In some states, it would be illegal to obtain abortions or even for married couples to use contraception. In much of the United States, gays and lesbians would still be treated as criminals. Government would dictate to Americans with whom and how they can have sex. Unions would have been completely annihilated in the public as well as the private sector. Wages and hours laws would be abolished, so that employers could pay third-world wages to Americans working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, as many did before the New Deal. There would be far more executions and far fewer procedural safeguards to ensure that the lives of innocent Americans are not ended mistakenly by the state.

That is the America that the American right for the last few generations has fought for. Freedom has nothing to do with it.

And with that in mind, please allow me to extend best wishes to one and all for a happy and healthy Memorial Day weekend.

Thursday Mashup (3/21/13)

Last Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision of Gideon v. Wainright in which the High Court ruled unanimously that the Constitution requires the states to provide defense attorneys to criminal defendants charged with serious offenses who cannot afford lawyers themselves (this was the basis for the great TV movie called “Gideon’s Trumpet” starring Henry Fonda – here).

As noted here, though…

The issue is by no means settled. In his recent New York Times editorial “The Right to Counsel: Badly Battered at 50,” Lincoln Caplan contends that “After 50 years, the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright is mocked more of than fulfilled,” at times because of the lack of funding for public defender offices, in other cases due to incompetent counsel. He concludes, “There is no shortage of lawyers to do this work. What stands in the way is an undemocratic, deep-seated lack of political will.”

Indeed – as noted here, Georgia shifted the burden of providing counsel to its 159 counties; this was an issue in particular for capital murder cases involving the death penalty (don’t know if it was an issue here or not) – apparently Georgia is responsible for more executions than any state except Texas (I think that’s what the author meant to say instead of “Houston”). And it’s not much better in the “Sunshine State” (here); New York State has issues also as noted here (lest anyone think I intend to pick on “red” states only).

And from here…

The Supreme Court has carved out other exceptions to the right to counsel after an arrest. It has allowed law enforcement officials to have ex parte contacts with defendants to determine whether the defendant is in fact represented by counsel (sic). It has also allowed ex parte communications that are made with the consent of defendant’s counsel; those made pursuant to discovery procedures, such as subpoenas; communications in the course of a criminal investigation; communications necessary to protect the life or safety of another person; and those made by a represented person, so long as the person has knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived the right to have counsel present. These exceptions apply to all persons, regardless of whether they can afford their own attorney.

And as noted here…

No one wants to pay for more public defenders. Or, better put, few people in political power care enough about the gross injustices being done to poor people to spend more money trying to ensure they receive adequate representation. “Inadequate funding is the primary source of the systemic failure in indigent defense programs nationwide,” concluded Harvard Law School student David A. Simon in a thoughtful law review piece published a few years ago. “Of the more than $146.5 billion spent annually on criminal justice, over half is allocated to support the police officers and prosecutors who investigate and prosecute cases, while only about two to three percent goes toward indigent defense.”

(Criminal justice experts Stephen B. Bright and Sia M. Sanneh) don’t just blame lawmakers. “Many judges tolerate or welcome inadequate representation because it allows them to process many cases in a short time,” they write. And the problem is made worse, they contend, because the “Supreme Court has refused to require competent representation, instead adopting a standard of ‘effective counsel’ that hides and perpetuates deficient representation.” Not only that, Simon adds, but the justices have “neglected to specify which level of government — federal, state or local — must serve as the guarantor” of the right to counsel nor the “method by which states should administer their public defender programs.” No one is responsible, in other words, because everyone is in charge.

Let us hope that this HBO documentary, due to air this summer, helps to shed some more light on this travesty.

Further, I give you the latest from the fake outrage factory here (ZOMG! There goes that Marxist preh-zee-dint of ours again)…

Yesterday during the White House daily press briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked by “just a blogger” if President Obama planned to cut back on his lavish vacations and travel at a time when the country is hurting economically. Carney’s answer wasn’t “no,” but rather a long drawn out “Obama is focused on jobs.”

…

This question came just one week after it was revealed the Obama’s are living at a cost of $1.4 billion per year.

This is an attempt to re-spin the finding here from last year that the Obama White House spent $1.4 billion on vacations, which was totally ridiculous when it was first pronounced for the reasons noted here (actually, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs did an even better job of dispensing with this nonsense here).

Memo to clownhall.com…the purse strings of the federal government rest with the House of Representatives. Neither you nor your wingnut brethren have any right whatsoever to complain about the effects of the sequester, particularly when Obama and the Senate Democrats have been proposing alternatives that don’t totally screw over many more people than necessary in this country and leave the “pay no price, bear no burden” bunch untouched as usual.

Meanwhile, Man Tan Boehner, that sleazy weasel Eric Cantor, Mr.-Puppy-Dog-Eyes-With-The-Shiv and the rest of the Repug “young guns” (with Mikey the Beloved pledging his supine acceptance) are bound and determined to shove austerity down our throats whether we like it or not, all to make Congressional Democrats and Number 44 look as bad as they can.

Next, BoBo of the New York Times is back, as noted from here…

There is a statue outside the Federal Trade Commission of a powerful, rambunctious horse being reined in by an extremely muscular man. This used to be a metaphor for liberalism. The horse was capitalism. The man was government, which was needed sometimes to restrain capitalism’s excesses.

Today, liberalism seems to have changed. Today, many progressives seem to believe that government is the horse, the source of growth, job creation and prosperity. Capitalism is just a feeding trough that government can use to fuel its expansion.

For an example of this new worldview, look at the budget produced by the Congressional Progressive Caucus last week. These Democrats try to boost economic growth with a gigantic $2.1 trillion increase in government spending — including a $450 billion public works initiative, a similar-size infrastructure program and $179 billion so states, too, can hire more government workers.

Oh yes, how dare those baaad, dastardly Dems try to hire more “government workers” (police, fire, teachers – you know, those lazy, gold-bricking swine…snark). And of course, David Brooks won’t tell us that the U.S. House Repugs and their economic warfare on said workers (as part of the austerity I noted earlier) is one of the biggest drags against our economic recovery (here).

Oh, and BoBo also tells us the following about taxes (Brooks is responding to Back to Work, the plan of the Progressive Democratic Caucus, which would indeed raise the top-end rate to 49 percent – for anyone making $1 billion or more – I’ll acknowledge that there could be a “bite” when you calculate state and local taxes with it, but I’m sorry, I don’t see that as a “game changer”; maybe try to factor in a tax credit for these folks when we return to prosperity? Just a thought…)…

Now, of course, there have been times, like, say, the Eisenhower administration, when top tax rates were very high. But the total tax burden was lower since so few people paid the top rate and there were so many ways to avoid it. Government was smaller.

And high earners aren’t avoiding taxes now? Really?

And Brooks also trots out the “higher taxes will cause me to work less” argument, supported by former Bushie Greg Mankiw among others – I think it is important to consider this in response, mainly that such thinking is counter-intuitive to human nature (wouldn’t you want to work more to make up lost earnings?) – also, deferring taxation this way might end up putting more of a burden on your kids if you’re a parent.

As noted here, though, BoBo has been wrong about income inequality for years (and as noted here, Brooks once blamed women for it – nice). And for good measure, he once defended the “one percent” here (Matt Yglesias responds also here – h/t Jay Ackroyd at Eschaton).

In conclusion, I just wanted to note that I did a search for “unemployed” or any variation thereof in Brooks’s column, and I came up empty, which isn’t surprising I know (love to see how Brooks would do having to work one or two “McJobs” in an effort to make up for his cushy pundit paycheck and related perks).

And never to be outdone when it comes to self-righteous indignation, the Murdoch Street Journal whines as follows here (about Medicare Advantage, which, quite rightly, is being targeted for a budget cut)…

The tragedy is that Medicare Advantage architecture is far from perfect and HHS could save money if it wanted to, in particular by targeting the private fee-for-service plans that mimic all of traditional Medicare’s dysfunctions except with an element of private profit. But that approach conflicts with the Administration’s political goal of strangling Medicare Advantage in the crib.

(Conservatives just love to punctuate their literary flourishes with violent imagery, don’t they?)

As noted here…

Medicare Advantage was started under President George W. Bush, and the idea was that competition among the private insurers would reduce costs. But in recent years the plans have actually cost more than traditional Medicare. So the health care law scales back the payments to private insurers.

And as noted here…

Private insurance plans under Medicare Advantage are often able to attract healthier Medicare beneficiaries by offering cheap — but bare-bones — health plans. When those healthier seniors encounter a medical problem that’s too extensive for their private coverage, they switch over to the more generous traditional Medicare program in order to take advantage of its more expansive benefits. That in turn, raises spending in the traditional Medicare pool…

And just go ahead and call me a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, but based on this poll from last December, I would say that most of those people polled want traditional Medicare to be left alone (despite all of its “dysfunctions,” something the Repugs would do well to get through their thick heads in light of this).

Finally, Irrational Spew Online bloviates as follows here…

Elizabeth Warren was slated to be the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Senate Republicans stopped her confirmation, so now she is leading the charge to confirm Richard Cordray to that office.

But nobody should be the head of this monstrous Dodd-Frankenstein by-product. The structure and powers of the CFPB, as created by Congress, put it outside our constitutional system. Most significantly, Congress allotted the bureau an independent source of revenue, guaranteed its insulation from legislative or executive oversight, and gave it the power to define and punish “abusive” practices.

Actually, this tells us that the CFPB can have its rules vetoed by something called the FSOC, and no other regulator is subject to this kind of a check (so much for operating “outside our constitutional system”). Also, this tells us how Warren has called out the Repugs on their BS over Cordray in particular and the CFPB and Dodd-Frank in general.

And as noted here (in the matter of supposed “insulation from legislative or executive oversight”)…

“Since his first confirmation hearing in September 2011, Director Cordray has appeared before this Committee more than any other financial regulator,” said (South Dakota Democratic U.S. Senator Tim) Johnson. “During that time, he has proved to be a strong leader of the CFPB. He has completed many of the rules required by Wall Street Reform, including a well-received final [Qualified Mortgage] rule. He listens, and has crafted strong rules that take into account all sides of an issue. He has laid the groundwork for nonbank regulation. He has brought to light the financial challenges faced by students, elderly Americans, servicemembers and their families. He has taken important enforcement actions against banks that took advantage of customers. So I ask my colleagues, what more can Richard Cordray do to deserve an up-or-down vote? I hope we can finally put aside politics and move forward with Richard Cordray’s confirmation.” – Consumerist, 3/19/13

The Daily Kos post tells us that the U.S. Senate Banking Committee approved the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The vote was 12-10 along party lines. Every Democrat supported him. Every Republican opposed him.

As mad as I get at the Dems at times, I get even madder at people who say they’re the same as Republicans. The latter bunch just wants to keep fleecing us, fighting unending wars for little or no purpose, fouling the environment at will, sitting on their collective hands while austerity tries to wreck our fledgling recovery, allowing weapons of death to continue flooding every school, movie theater, and gathering place of any kind in this country, and continually trying to demonize the opposition party instead of working with them on behalf of the best interests of the majority of the people of this nation (oh, but they’re “pro-life,” aren’t they? Not if you’re actually born, they’re not).

And unless you’re rich, if you know all this and still support these fools, frauds and charlatans (at least on the national level anyway – I’ve encountered precious few good Republicans on the local level, though not recently), then I have no tolerance for your point of view.

Your willful ignorance continues to be the ruin of this country. Heckuva job!

Thursday Mashup (8/2/12)

(Note: I’ve had a bit more time to do this recently than I thought, but this won’t be the case very often, for what it’s worth.)

To begin, I give you some true hilarity from Willard Mitt Romney economic guru (and former Bushie – that applies to a lot of the Romney-ites, by the way) Glenn Hubbard here (here’s the “Cliff Notes” version…cut taxes, Austerity! Austerity! Austerity!, and “entitlement reform”)…

In contrast to the sclerosis and joblessness of the past three years, the Romney plan offers an economic U-turn in ideas and choices. When bolstered by sound trade, education, energy and monetary policy, the Romney reform program is expected by the governor’s economic advisers to increase GDP growth by between 0.5% and 1% per year over the next decade. It should also speed up the current recovery, enabling the private sector to create 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month, or about 12 million new jobs in a Romney first term, and millions more after that due to the plan’s long-run growth effects.

You know what? At a certain point, I actually find myself running out of words for this utter nonsense; just click here to read and/or view something approximating the same degree of reality as that statement. And oh yeah, this post pretty well dismantles the magical thinking when it comes to the stated Romney/Hubbard position on this subject.

(And by the way, nice touch for Hubbard to actually take his disagreement with Obama overseas, as noted here – oh yeah, Dixie Chicks, Dixie Chicks, Dixie Chicks…funny thing, though; they weren’t officially representing our government when they criticized Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History.)

The Romney people simply are not serious. On this or most any other issue. Period – full stop.

Update 8/4/12: And as more evidence of their “unseriousness,” I give you this.

Oh…mah…gawd – it looks like the Obama people were at fault for Solyndra after all (here)…

“Political pressure” by a White House eager to tout its stimulus agenda was largely to blame for fast-tracking the ill-fated $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee, according to findings in a massive new congressional report released Thursday morning.

(And gosh, how many pages were in this “massive” report, I wonder? I mean, all Mikey The Beloved and his pals ever do is complain about the size of the Affordable Care Act legislation – could this be yet another example of the Repugs trying to have it both ways? Perish the thought!)

Oh, and by the way…

The report, by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, caps a nearly yearlong investigation by the panel into why the government allegedly ignored red flags to approve the loan. Solyndra, a solar-panel firm, filed for bankruptcy last year.

Surprised? Oh, and one more thing…

The report, which follows another GOP-authored congressional study earlier this week on the “Fast and Furious” scandal, is sure to fuel an election-year furor over questionable taxpayer investments in private companies.

About “Fast and Furious” (or, as I call it, Operation Wide Receiver 2.0), Crooks and Liars tells us the following from here (namely, if the Repugs’ own committee couldn’t fix blame on the White House, what does that tell you?).

Also, I’ve done the whole “Solyndra!” thing to death, but if anyone still wants to read the reality point of view on this subject, click here.

Finally, I know I really should ignore the idiocy of John Stossel, but I guess some stoo-pid is too obnoxious to brush off (here)…

The Olympics have gone smoothly despite — gasp! — America’s team wearing clothing made in China at the opening ceremony.

“I’m so upset,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “Take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile, and burn them. … We have people in the textile industry who are desperate for jobs.”

Here, Reid demonstrates economic cluelessness. It seems logical that Americans lose if American clothing is made overseas. But that’s nonsense. First, it’s no surprise the uniforms were made in China. Most clothing is. That’s fine. It saves money. We invest the savings in other things, like the machines that Chinese factories buy and the trucks that ship the Olympic uniforms.

The Cato Institute’s Daniel Ikenson’s adds: “We design clothing here. We brand clothing here. We market and retail clothing. … Chinese athletes arrived in London by U.S.-made aircraft, trained on U.S.-designed and -engineered equipment, wear U.S.-designed and -engineered footwear, having perfected their skills using U.S.-created technology.”

That’s free trade. Trade makes us richer.

Anyone making that stupid argument during a period of mass unemployment rivaling the Great Depression should endure the same head slap that Stossel once endured from wrestler David Schultz (and yes, I know I’m not supposed to encourage violence, but I’ll tip-toe over the line for this occasion).

Let’s “set the wayback” for seven years ago, shall we (March 2005 to be exact)..this tells us the following…

SHANGHAI, March 9 – In the first month after the end of all quotas on textiles and apparel around the world, imports to the United States from China jumped about 75 percent, according to trade figures released by the Chinese government.

The statistics bear some of the first evidence that China’s booming textile and apparel trade, unhampered by quotas, could be prepared to dominate the global textile trade and add to trade tensions around the world. The quotas came to an end on Dec. 31 as a result of an international agreement reached in 1993.

In January, the United States imported more than $1.2 billion in textiles and apparel from China, up from about $701 million a year ago. Imports of major apparel products from China jumped 546 percent. Last January, for example, China shipped 941,000 cotton knit shirts, which were limited by quotas; this January, it shipped 18.2 million, a 1,836 percent increase. Imports of cotton knit trousers were up 1,332 percent from a year ago.

These figures may be understated because China ships a large part of its goods through Hong Kong, and those shipments are not included.

Fears that China is going to flood the world market with cheap textile exports have already inflamed tensions between Washington and Beijing because of worries about American manufacturing plants being closed and thousands of jobs being lost.

And sure enough (from here)…

MOUNT AIRY, N.C. — Jane Knudsen was a 19-year-old mother of two when she went to work in a textile mill here in 1973. Jobs were plentiful: “When you started work, you thought you’d be there until you retired,” she says.

She didn’t make it. The mill shut down a few years ago. So she took a job with an auto supplier. Then she lost that one. Now 57, she’s a part-time cook at the Surry County jail.

…

Here, in the place that inspired Mayberry of The Andy Griffith Show and in textile towns just like it across the Southeast, thousands of workers are starting over again, sometimes painfully, at ages when they thought they’d be planning retirement.

Mount Airy (pop. 9,500) has lost 3,180 jobs in textile and apparel plant closings since 1999, the North Carolina Employment Security Commission says. The nation has lost 707,000 textile and apparel jobs since January 2000 and nearly 263,000 since a trade pact phased out quotas on textile imports in January 2005, opening the floodgates to imports.

Those jobs won’t be coming back: The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the three occupations that will lose jobs the fastest (on a percentage basis) from 2008 to 2018 are in textiles. The bureau expects textile and apparel manufacturing jobs will drop 48% to 259,000 from 2008 to 2018.

What a shame Mrs. Knudsen and other hard-working Americans who had the proverbial rugs pulled out from under them by idiot Washington politicians (cheered on by media stooges like Stossel) can’t land cushy jobs as conservative TV pundits instead.

Oh, and March 2005 – now who was taking up space in An Oval Office back then? And who is it that the Repugs are doing their best to hide while they make ready for their coronation of Willard Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate in Tampa?

Heckuva job, Dubya.

Tuesday Mashup Part One (10/5/10)

1) I give you the following recent example of “High Broderism” (here)…

The Democrats were lying in wait for John Boehner when the Republican leader of the House announced that he would address the subject of congressional reform in a speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute.

Before Boehner opened his mouth, Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted him in a statement charging that “Congressional Republicans and Mr. Boehner have stood in the way of Democratic reform efforts in Congress for the last four years, and now they want to take America back to the exact same failed policies of the past that put the corporate special interests ahead of the middle class.”

That is par for the course in this campaign season, and it represents the sort of reflexive partisanship that voters are understandably sick of.

Actually, what it represents is the utterly craven and pointless Republican obstruction that voters are understandably sick of.

And how does The Esteemed Beltway Journalist know what “voters are sick of” anyway? Why, he takes his periodic jaunt to a rib shack in Dubuque or a Rotary Club meeting in Fond du Lac to find some quotes from individuals who perhaps are not as well versed in the art of media spin as he is that reinforce his pre-defined narrative (i.e., Republicans know what’s best, and when they force their agenda, the Dems should respond, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?,” lest there be a breach of “bipartisanship”).

Fortunately, Bob Herbert of the New York Times is a member of the reality-based community, and he wrote the following on The Orange One today (here)…

It’s beyond astonishing to me that John Boehner has a real chance to be speaker of the House of Representatives.

I’ve always thought of Mr. Boehner as one of the especially sleazy figures in a capital seething with sleaze. I remember writing about that day back in the mid-’90s when this slick, chain-smoking, quintessential influence-peddler decided to play Santa Claus by handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Congressional sleazes right on the floor of the House.

It was incredible, even to some Republicans. The House was in session, and here was a congressman actually distributing money on the floor. Other, more serious, representatives were engaged in debates that day on such matters as financing for foreign operations and a proposed amendment to the Constitution to outlaw desecration of the flag. Mr. Boehner was busy desecrating the House itself by doing the bidding of big tobacco.

Embarrassed members of the G.O.P. tried to hush up the matter, but I got a tip and called Mr. Boehner’s office. His chief of staff, Barry Jackson, was hardly contrite. “They were contributions from tobacco P.A.C.’s,” he said.

When I asked why the congressman would hand the money out on the floor of the House, Mr. Jackson’s answer seemed an echo of Willie Sutton’s observation about banks. “The floor,” he said, “is where the members meet with each other.”

…

The Times’s Eric Lipton, in an article last month, noted that Mr. Boehner “maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

“They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.”

The hack who once handed out checks on the House floor is now a coddled, gilded flunky of the nation’s big-time corporate elite.

And let us not forget the following Boehner moment here, in which he said “Know that I have all of you in my trusted hands” to the Consumer Bankers Association, which ended up losing as a result of legislation to reform the student loan scam enacted under the happily-now-long-departed 109th Congress.

Returning to Broder, I give you the following…

What Boehner called “a cycle of gridlock” afflicts both sides of the Capitol, and has been enabled by both parties, depending on who had the majority. As he was honest enough to admit, the abuses did not start when Pelosi took the gavel, and both sides have been guilty of twisting the rules.

Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if Broder were “honest enough to admit” this?

Update 10/12/10: And in case anyone out there thought I was exaggerating, I give you this from one of Broder’s pals (h/t Atrios).

2) Next, I give you the following from former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm (here)…

(Repug U.S. House Rep “Joe” Cao of Louisiana) said he wanted to work for the benefit of his constituents, whatever that took. So when it came time earlier this year to vote on the House floor on President Obama’s massive healthcare bill, the first Republican to hold that district since 1891 became the only Republican in the entire House to vote in favor of the Democratic president’s bill.

His wasn’t the deciding vote. But, yes, that bipartisan decision caused him some grief among GOP colleagues.

Cao hoped the president might reward that bipartisanship by endorsing him in the Nov. 2 midterm election against a Democratic state legislator named Cedric Richmond. Or at least by staying out of the race, one of 435 across the country.

And this gives Malcolm an excuse in his utterly demented quest to demonize every possible thing Obama does (including stuff Malcolm imagines, like this).

As noted here, Cao did vote initially for passage of health care reform, but he voted against the version that emerged from the Senate-House conference, which is a particular problem for him because one-fifth of the residents of his district don’t have health insurance. That has a lot more to do with Cao’s current electoral trouble than anything Obama could have said or done.

As noted here, though, Malcolm has been wrong about health care reform before, and I’m sure will be again; when it comes to his own particular brand of wankery, I’m afraid he is beyond hope of a cure.

3) Finally, yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the death of a Florida man from an anthrax attack; more information is available here (one of others that took place immediately after the 9/11 attacks).

And I would say that that presents a good opportunity to move, at long last (even in a potential lame duck session) on the bill to investigate the attacks sponsored by Dem U.S. House Rep Rush Holt here.

Tuesday Mashup Part One (8/31/10)

1) In response to this story, I would like to ask the following questions:

Where is the U.S. Congressional committee with subpoena power looking into the massive thievery of taxpayer funds designated for the reconstruction of Iraq (a topic that is noticeably missing in this triumphal column on the subject by BoBo today)?

Where is Attorney General Eric Holder and his arrest warrants for those allegedly responsible for this genuine scandal?

And why aren’t the members of our prior ruling cabal being called to account by our media and all of our institutions of government (and why is this story basically being ignored – yes, I know, everyone is focused on the economy, but that really isn’t an excuse, is it?).

And why isn’t this person being called to account first for the insulting stupidity of her remarks on this subject from December 2008, noted by Think Progress?

2) And speaking of investigations, look at what Fix Noise is telling us (here)…

The Veterans Affairs Administration is spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every year to maintain hundreds of buildings – most of them vacant – that have fallen into such a state of disrepair that many of them are considered health hazards, an investigation by FoxNews.com reveals.

Exactly how much it costs to maintain the run-down and abandoned buildings is a matter of dispute. The General Accountability Office estimates that the VA has spent $175 million every year since 2007. But the VA disputes that figure, saying it spent $85 million on the buildings in 2007 and only $37 million last year.

Whatever the figure, the timing couldn’t be worse for the VA, as tens of thousands of American troops, many of whom have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, prepare to return to the U.S. and will require the expensive medical, psychological and support services it provides.

Wow, talk about being “late for the party” – by about three years in this case…

For you see, Fix Noise and their brethren basically ignored the scandal of how the VA was run when it was first reported by Anne Hull and Dana Priest of the WaPo here, including the particularly infamous “Building 18” of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, described as follows…

When (a) wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

And how did Fox and its right-wing brethren react at the time? I think Steve Young captures that pretty well here.

But of course, now that Dubya is long gone (thank God) and we have a Democrat in the White House, Fix Noise is paying attention, as well as concocting propaganda that Obama was pushing a plan to get our vets to pay more for health care (here) and encouraging them to commit suicide (here – particularly despicable even for Fox).

That, however, is very much in keeping with the “M.O.” of this bunch, as noted here.

3) Finally, we have a particularly propagandistic screed from Cal Thomas (here)…

President Obama may have experienced his Walter Cronkite moment over the economy.

Responding to Cronkite’s reporting from Vietnam four decades ago that the only way to end the war was by negotiating with the North Vietnamese, President Lyndon Johnson was reported (though never confirmed) to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Now President Obama appears to have “lost” New York Times liberal economic columnist Paul Krugman. Krugman, who enthusiastically supported the president’s redistributionist and stimulus plans, has bowed to the reality that they are not working. In a recent column titled “This is Not a Recovery,” Krugman took issue with the president and Vice President Joe Biden that we have experienced a summer of economic recovery. “Unfortunately, that’s not true,” he wrote. “This isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policymakers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.”

And of course Thomas then launches into a commercial for the RNC and its supposed economic platform, which of course is a rehash of every bad idea over the last 30 years or so that got us into this mess to begin with.

I realize that only a fool would actually expect Thomas to tell the truth, but it’s particularly galling for him to take Krugman’s statements so thoroughly out of context, given that Krugman also said the following (here)…

In the case of the Obama administration, officials seem loath to admit that the original stimulus was too small. True, it was enough to limit the depth of the slump — a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says unemployment would probably be well into double digits now without the stimulus — but it wasn’t big enough to bring unemployment down significantly.

Now, it’s arguable that even in early 2009, when President Obama was at the peak of his popularity, he couldn’t have gotten a bigger plan through the Senate. And he certainly couldn’t pass a supplemental stimulus now. So officials could, with considerable justification, place the onus for the non-recovery on Republican obstructionism. But they’ve chosen, instead, to draw smiley faces on a grim picture, convincing nobody. And the likely result in November — big gains for the obstructionists — will paralyze policy for years to come.

And besides, given this incorrigible dreck, Thomas really should stay away from any historical references whatsoever.

It’s “Iran-A-Muck Monday” With The Mittster!

In case anyone had forgotten about former Repug presidential hopeful and former Governor “Penumbra Of Angst” (here), a certain Willard Mitt Romney decided to let us know he’s still around (here)…

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Mitt Romney has a message for the Obama administration: Stop talking to Iran. Period.

“The Iranian leadership is the greatest immediate threat to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union, and before that, Nazi Germany,” Romney said in a speech Monday to the pro-Israel group AIPAC at their national summit in San Diego, according to excerpts provided to CNN.

Funny, but I would consider al Qaeda to be “the greatest immediate threat to the world,” but considering that the above analysis came from a guy who said “it’s not worth heaven and earth” to try and capture bin Laden (here), I can’t say that I’m surprised.

And I would say that Romney has no room to criticize anyone on Iran, considering that, as noted here, Romney’s one-time employer and the company he founded has links to recent Iranian business deals…

Romney joined Boston-based Bain & Co., a management consulting firm, in 1978 and worked there until 1984. He was CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm, from 1984 to 1999, despite a two-year return as Bain & Co.’s chief executive officer from 1991 to 1992.

Bain & Co. Italy, described in company literature as “the Italian branch of Bain & Co.,” received a $2.3 million contract from the National Iranian Oil Co., in September 2004. Its task was to develop a master plan so NIOC — the state oil company of Iran — could become one of the world’s top oil companies, according to Iranian and U.S. news accounts of the deal.

Bain Capital, the venture capital firm that Romney started and made him a multimillionaire, teamed up with the Haier Group, a Chinese appliance maker that has a factory in Iran, in an unsuccessful 2005 buyout effort.

Also, this September 2006 story tells us that, when Romney was governor of that liberal Gomorrah Massachusetts (wink), he denied any security from his state to Mohammed Khatami, former Iranian president and a legitimate moderate who was visiting to speak at Harvard.

Now, while I do not cut Iran any slack because it is a run by a regime of criminals, I would say that it still is incumbent upon us to look for ways to initiate some kind of a dialogue with them, however slight the excuse may be; this news story tells us of a terrorist attack on Iran, quite likely originating from Pakistan, something you could definitely consider “chickens coming home to roost” given Iran’s support of Hamas. However, I still think this is an opportunity for us to remind Iran that, even though they sponsor terrorism, they have something to gain from “cleaning up their act,” especially when they face the threat from violence that other countries face.

But of course, Romney has other thoughts, being the good little Repug that he is…

“The notion that Hamas and violent jihadists are motivated by ‘shared interests’ and ‘common goals’ is naïve in the extreme and dangerous to the entire free world,”

If The Mittster really believes that, though, then doesn’t that invalidate his Now And Forever You Godless Commie Lu-bu-ruul And Just Because That Kenyan American-Pretend Pre-zee-dint O’Yours Is In Charge Don’t Think We Ain’t Comin’ Back in 2010 Global War On Terra! Terra! Terra!?

Of course, compared to whatever latest scribblings happen to appear on Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin’s Facebook page on this subject, such sentiments from Romney are positively statesman-like for his party, however wrong they may be (and if that isn’t a pathetic commentary, I don’t know what is).

Thursday Mashup (8/6/09)

From the “We Decide, Then Report” file, John Lott tells us the following from Fix Noise (here, taking an off day from compiling statistics on how much safer we would be if we all had assault rifles, no doubt)…

Only in Washington could a program that is spending money 13 times faster than was planned be labeled a “success.” The “cash-for-clunkers” program ground to a halt last week because in less than a week, a program that was supposed to last until November 1, had spent the entire $1 billion allocated to it. Let’s just hope that the government takeover of the rest of the health care industry doesn’t result in similar “success.”

Meanwhile, in the reality based community (here)…

The Obama administration’s much-maligned “cash-for-clunkers” trade-in system has made an immediate and indisputable impact on the struggling U.S. auto industry, with consumers flocking to dealerships in numbers not seen in years and auto companies posting strong sales they directly attribute to the government program.

Ford announced on Monday that their July U.S. auto sales were up a strong 2.3% over results from one year ago, a result that company executives linked to “cash-for-clunkers.”

And as noted here, the Senate is expected to vote on authorizing $2 billion more of funding for the program today.

Yes, I’ve read that this is expected to create a mini “auto bubble” also (funny – I wish more people noting that had paid attention to the housing and dot.com “bubbles” as well), with a likely dropoff to occur when the program ends, but who knows for sure? And how can it be a bad thing when the auto industry shows signs of life?

As noted here…

If the Senate approves the additional money, it’s likely to lead automakers to increase production and bring back laid-off workers. Many automakers reported low inventories due to increased sales from the program at the end of July. Already Hyundai Motor Co. has added a day of production to its Montgomery, Ala., plant, and Ford is considering increases.

Ford’s chief financial officer, Lewis Booth, said Wednesday night the company would decide this month and make an announcement in early September.

Among states, Michigan has taken most advantage of the program, requesting more than $44 million in vehicle vouchers. California dealers had requested nearly $40 million in vouchers, and Ohio had sought nearly $38 million.

Senate passage would send the legislation to the White House for Obama’s signature and assure consumers there will be no interruption in the program that has led to packed car dealerships nationwide.

The deals are aimed at boosting auto sales, which have been at their lowest levels in two decades.

Which of course means that the program is opposed by the Repugs, including Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a state which, to the best of my knowledge, manufactures no automobiles whatsoever (maybe armored, but that’s it).

As noted here, President Obama is going to visit Bozeman, MT next week to pitch health care reform. As this story tells us, this is the first visit of a sitting president to this area of “big sky country.”

(And gosh, J.D. Mullane of the Bucks County Courier Times actually didn’t trash health care reform today, but wrote about a “missing ape sculpture” instead…insert your snark here).

Maybe while Obama and his entourage are staying over, someone could remind Repug State Rep Michael More that introducing language in a bill that could be potentially interpreted to justify an armed insurrection against this country isn’t a good idea (here).

And the both the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are coming under attack for the following based on this (as if Obama doesn’t have enough to do – he’s been in An Oval Office for how long now? Six months and two weeks?)…

President Obama got lots of attention last month for his drop-in visit to Ghana after the G20 meeting in Italy, where he blasted African leaders for misruling the continent and condemning its people to poverty and backwardness. “Repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty,” said Obama. “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.”

They were fine words. But not much else. Obama didn’t single out any particular leader for criticism, and he gave the speech in Ghana, one of Africa’s handful of functional democracies. In her own trip to Africa this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit bright spots like South Africa, Cape Verde, and Liberia. But she also has a perfect opportunity to name and shame the continent’s worst leaders. There’s only one problem: she’s going to blow it.

See how our corporate media cousins have moved from magnifying perceived misdeeds of the Obama Administration to now forecasting what they will do wrong instead; Newsweek must be in possession of tarot cards, tea leaves, an Ouija board, and maybe even Harry Potter’s wand…amazing!

The article specifically singles out Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria, Mwai Kibaki, of Kenya and Joseph Kabila of the Congo as people who are particularly bad actors. And yes, Hillary Clinton has said here that not having a USAID agency head named by the White House is “frustrating beyond words.”

But I think the following should be considered (from here)…

The Obama administration inherited a foreign aid system starved of civilian experts and burdened by a bewildering array of mandates. USAID’s full-time staff shrank by 40 percent over the past two decades, but the assistance it oversees doubled, to $13.2 billion in 2008. The agency has a skeleton crew of technical experts, with four engineers for the entire world, Clinton noted recently. Increasingly, USAID has become a conduit for money flowing to contractors, who have limited supervision from the agency.

As USAID has weakened, foreign assistance programs have proliferated across government agencies, especially the military, causing duplication and confusion. Meanwhile, aid budgets have been saddled with presidential directives, “buy America” provisions and congressional earmarks that raise the cost of aid and reduce its effectiveness, development specialists say.

“In the USAID budget, every dollar has three purposes: help build an Air Force base, support the University of Mississippi, get some country to vote our way,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of the aid group Bread for the World, describing the plethora of political claims attached to aid. The development program, he said, “is a mess.”

The waste of billions of U.S. reconstruction dollars in Iraq and the growing role of development in the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan have given new urgency to long-running debates about reforming the aid system.

And as noted here (last year)…

…the United States currently provides economic aid and security assistance to such repressive African regimes as Swaziland, Congo, Cameroon, Togo, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Gabon, Egypt, and Tunisia. None of these countries holds free elections, and all have severely suppressed their political opposition.

Among the worst of these African tyrannies has been the regime of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang has been in power even longer than the 28-year reign of (Robert) Mugabe and, according to a recent article in the British newspaper The Independent, makes the Zimbabwean dictator “seem stable and benign” by comparison. Obiang originally seized power in a 1979 coup by murdering his uncle, who had ruled the country since its independence from Spain in 1968. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea nominally allowed the existence of opposition parties as a condition of receiving foreign aid in the early 1990s. But the four leading candidates withdrew from the last presidential election in December 2002 in protest of irregularities in the voting process and violence against their supporters. In that election, Obiang officially received more than 97 percent of the vote (down from 99.5 percent in the previous election.)

Though the U.S. State Department acknowledged that the election was “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation,” the Congress and the administration devoted none of the vehement condemnation that was so evident after the recent, similarly marred election process in Zimbabwe.

One major reason for the difference in response is oil. The development of vast oil reserves over the past decade has made Equatorial Guinea one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita gross domestic product. Virtually all of the oil revenues, however, goes to Obiang and his cronies. The dictator himself is worth an estimated $1 billion, making him the wealthiest leader in Africa; his real estate holdings include two mansions in Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country’s population lives on only a few dollars a day, and nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. The country’s major towns and cities lack basic sanitation and potable water, while conditions in the countryside are even worse.

During his most recent visit to Washington in 2006, Obiang was warmly received by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who praised the dictator as “a good friend” of the United States. Not once during their joint appearance did she mention the words “human rights” or “democracy.” At the same press conference, Obiang praised his regime’s “extremely good relations with the United States” and his expectation that “this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation.” None of the assembled reporters raised any questions about the regime’s notorious human rights record or its lack of democracy, instead using the opportunity to ask Secretary Rice questions about the alleged threat from Iran.

Does Obama have work to do in Africa? Yes. Does our Democratic Congress? Uh huh. And our media? Bueller?

Did Dubya have work to do? Next question.

Now, Newsweek, since we’ve settled all this for now, can you just report stories like grownups again for a change?

And finally, this tells us the following…

After a period of relatively low bankruptcy filings during 2006-07, U.S. consumer bankruptcies rose sharply in 2008 and continue to climb in 2009. Consumer filings reached 126,434 in July, the highest monthly total since the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was implemented in October 2005, and pushed the consumer total for the first seven months of 2009 past 800,000 filings.

Just to refresh our memories, here are the brave souls who opposed this horrible law (all Dems)…

Daniel Akaka
Barbara Boxer
Maria Cantwell
Jon Corzine
Mark Dayton
Christopher Dodd
Byron Dorgan
Dick Durbin
Russ Feingold
Dianne Feinstein
Tom Harkin
Ted Kennedy
John Kerry
Frank Lautenberg
Patrick Leahy
Carl Levin
Joe Lieberman
Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray
Barack Obama
Jack Reed
Jay Rockefeller
Paul Sarbannes
Chuck Schumer
Ron Wyden

And here are the cowards who supported it (Dems are noted)…

Wayne Allard
Lamar Alexander
George Allen
Kay Bailey Hutchison
Max Baucus (d)
Evan Bayh (d)
Bob Bennett
Joe Biden (d)
Jeff Bingaman (d)
Christopher “Kit” Bond
Sam Brownback
Jim Bunning
Conrad Burns
Richard Burr
Robert Byrd (d)
Tom Carper (d)
Lincoln Chaffee
Saxby Chambliss
Tom Coburn
Thad Cochran
Norm Coleman
Susan Collins
John Cornyn
Kent Conrad (d)
Larry Craig
Mike Crapo
Jim DeMint
Mike DeWine
Elizabeth Dole
Pete Domenici
John Ensign
Mike Enzi
Bill Frist
Lindsay Graham
Charles Grassley (he sponsored it)
Judd Gregg
Chuck Hagel
Orrin Hatch
John Isakson
Jim Inhofe
Daniel Inouye (d)
Jim Jeffords (i)
Tim Johnson (d)
Herb Kohl (d)
Jon Kyl
Mary Landrieu (d)
Blanche Lincoln (d)
Trent Lott
Richard Lugar
Mel Martinez
John McCain
Mitch McConnell
Lisa Murkowski
Ben Nelson (d)
Bill Nelson (d)
Mark Pryor (d)
Harry Reid (d)
Pat Roberts
Ken Salazar (d)
Rick Santorum
Jeff Sessions
Richard Shelby
Gordon Smith
Olympia Snowe
Arlen Specter (d?)
Debbie Stabenow (d)
Ted Stevens
John Sununu
Jim Talent
Craig Thomas
John Thune
David Vitter
George Voinovich
John Warner

(And Hillary Clinton voted Present, which I think is questionable also.)

A pox on those “Yes” voters for all time…

“Doughy Pantload” Jonah’s “Out Of Gas” Again

Jonah Goldberg at the NRO plugs a couple of columns on the G.M. bankruptcy here (by David Brooks and someone named Paul Ingrassia).

And in doing so, he tells us the following…

Read either of them and then ask yourself whether the bureaucracy at GM could be even half as bad as most of the bureaucracies in the federal government, which have never — ever — been subjected to real competition and all that entails.

So much stupid, so little time…

I’ll assume that by “competition,” Goldberg means privatization of government under prior presidential administrations.

And under former President Clinton, this tells us that he reduced the federal work force by approximately 230,000, saved $118 billion, and eliminated 16,000 pages of government regulations.

His successor, on the other hand, federalized K-12 education in this country under No Child Left Behind; concocted a Medicare prescription drug benefit that rewarded his benefactors in the health care biz at the expense of seniors; and, ultimately, added $345 billion to the budget in his first term and $287 in his second (all of this is noted here – I definitely don’t agree with the orientation of the writer, I should add, but I think he makes some valid points).

To be fair, though, I should note that, according to here, “Under President George W. Bush, annual spending on contracts rose to $423 billion in 2006 from $208 billion in 2000, according to the Obama budget unveiled this week” (and concerning Iraq, as noted here, the result was predictable).

And by the way, given the sorry financial straits of the newspaper business, it’s beyond hilarious to read BoBo preaching to another industry that it should “heal thyself” while his own suffers from the effects of overly inflated estimates of its assets; an ideological bent in its content that, while pleasing to its owners, is hopelessly out of kilter to its dwindling readership; and a complete and total inability to retool its business model to accommodate the dominance of online readership over its traditional print product (though I’ll admit that the Times has been smarter than most companies in its adjustments, as opposed to the “amateur hour” on display here).