Indiana Smoking

[Indiana State Wide Smoking Law].

What happened to all of those Get-Government-out-of-my-life Tea-Baggers that Indiana elected last time? I know,... "but we have to breath the second hand smoke". Well, If a power plant or big factory pollutes the air or water you have breath that. If a bunch of rich people blow up the economy, you have breath the stink left from that. What's the difference?

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Perry: US troops could aid Mexico drugs fight

[Perry: US troops could aid Mexico's drug fight]. Perry is an idiot. Spend even more money we don't have, kill more US soldiers, and push Mexico closer to a full scale revolution all to fight a failed drug war that could be resolved with the stroke of a pen. Does anyone really want a guy who thinks like that running this country?

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Links

Our leaders love War: [Lindsey; Dr. Strangelove; Graham; War with Pakistan | Informed Comment]

[Gin And Tacos - Conditioning]. Agreed, Obama is more of a mediator than a leader. Real health care reform might have had a chance if he'd sold the need for it to the public, really fired them up about it. Then set his starting point or requirements at the beginning, sold these to the people, and then kept pressure on congress, directly and indirectly through even more calls to the people. Choose a path and lead us down it. Instead, he calls for reform but allows congress to negotiate everything, with him acting as a mediator between the parties more behind the scenes than out in front. The end result is that we end up with a congress-lobby'd-up mess that's not going to help a whole lot.

Israel,... "The Palestinians are not serious about peace,.....so we'll build more settlements on their land". [Israel set to approve 1,100 more homes on Palestinian land]

An oppressed people will always find a way to fight back. [Drive-by rock attacks]

So the media hid the fact that at least one of the "American" hikers held captive by Iran was Israeli [Fattal's family is Israeli]. More on the Hikers from [Glenn Greenwald]

Evan and Susan Bayh, and the American Elite. [Today's Royalty]

Tuesday Links

I still wouldn't be surprised to see Mitch's name come up at the Republican convention. [Daniels' book does the math on debt | The Journal Gazette | Fort Wayne, IN]

Will "Starving the Beast" create a monster? [Gin and Tacos.com: I'M AFRAID OF AMERICANS]

What do Palestinians and Tea-Baggers have in common? [In Palestinian eyes]

Republican Congressman thinks it's OK to just take land from your neighbor if you want it. [One State]

Rick Perry makes a visit to our leaders ["Perry gets his orders" or, at least, "Perry begs for cash"] of course, now, after a rough start, they own [Obama too].

Our leaders don't have a clue about [Real Americans]

Wednesday Night Links

This is terrorism. [Israeli settlers burn a Mosque].

[Krugman ponders Bitcoin].

The Economist looks at regulation and the economy [Of red tape and recessions]

Ah,... the service economy, where we all just flip burgers for each other? [Calculated Risk - The Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index decreased 0.5 percentage point to 55.6 percent, reflecting growth for the 25th consecutive month, but at a slower rate than in July.]

A job is a job. When you cut the size of government, you cut jobs. When you cut jobs, the economy suffers. [Econospeak: The Shrinking Public Sector]

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Labor Day Links

The Booman Tribune looks back at the accomplishments of the Bush Administration. A good quick read. [Booman Tribune - Real History]

Still arguing about the stimulus. [Everyone said it was mind-bogglingly large], except these people [Not everybody] but they're just economists who study this crap for a living, what the hell do they know. Also there's[No More Mister Nice's Take].

This quote

"The role of money in an economy is like that of blood in a body---it has to circulate to keep the entity that contains it alive. When a tremendous amount pools in one place, other parts suffer. Redistribution of income is vital to the health of American capitalism. Its decline presages a different type of economy on the horizon."

from [Balkinization: Revolt of the Elites] might be something even the Tea-Bag crowd could understand.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to piss-off it's neighbors. [Israel and Lebanon - Border] [Israel and Turkey - Gaza Flotilla]

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Political Terrorism

From [Eric and Irene - NYTimes.com]

Not long ago, a political party seeking to change U.S. policy would try to achieve that goal by building popular support for its ideas, then implementing those ideas through legislation. That, after all, is how our political system was designed to work.

But today’s G.O.P. has decided to bypass all that and go for a quicker route. Never mind getting enough votes to pass legislation; it gets what it wants by threatening to hurt America if its demands aren’t met. That’s what happened with the debt-ceiling fight, and now it’s what’s happening over disaster aid. In effect, Mr. Cantor and his allies are threatening to take hurricane victims hostage, using their suffering as a bargaining chip.

Of course, Mr. Cantor would have you believe that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. But that’s no more than a cover story.

Should disaster aid, as a matter of sound public finance, be offset by immediate cuts in other spending? No. The time-honored principle, backed by economists right and left, is that temporary bursts of spending — which usually arise when there’s a war to fight, but can also arise from other causes, including financial crises and natural disasters — are a good reason to run temporary budget deficits. Rather than imposing sharp cuts in other spending or sharply raising taxes, governments can and should spread the burden over time, borrowing now and repaying gradually via a combination of lower spending and higher taxes.

But can the U.S. government borrow to pay for disaster aid? Isn’t the government broke? Yes, it can, and, no, it isn’t. America has a long-run deficit problem, which should be met with long-run budget measures. But it’s having no problem at all borrowing to pay for current expenses. Moreover, it’s able to borrow funds at extremely low interest rates. Notably, right now the interest rate on the benchmark 10-year U.S. government bond is only slightly more than half what it was in 2004 when Mr. Cantor felt that it wasn’t necessary to pay for disaster relief.

So the claim that fiscal responsibility requires immediate spending cuts to offset the cost of disaster relief is just wrong, in both theory and practice. As I said, it’s just a cover story for the real game being played here.

Shorter Mr. Cantor - "Give me what I want or I'll blow it up"

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Saturday Morning Links

[Stonekettle Station on those crazy Christians]

You know, our christian fundamentalists are just as crazy as those Islamic fundamentalists. They need to be kept as from from the control buttons of this country as possible.


[The Tea Party is the Enemy – Make no Apologies] . 

No I would say the Tea Party is just one small faction of the enemy. The real enemy are the corporate/lobby owned politicians on both sides of the aisle. It's this group who create the policies that favor big money corporate interests over the individual and make it easy for multinational corporations to control our media, markets and elections, ship jobs and technologies overseas, pollute our land, exploit our resources and people, and generally run roughshod over the less powerful all in the name of profits and free markets.

The Tea-Party is just a low-information, angry mob built and encouraged by propaganda from the right-wing of the corporate party and used as a tool to help them in the battle for power. Naming the Tea Party as "the enemy" looks to me like an attempt to build an off-setting, angry-mob tool for the left-wing of the corporate party.

[Gov. Barbour's; Disadvantaged Relative Masterminded $100 Million of Post-Katrina FEMA Fraud | Crooks and Liars]

This sort of corruption is rampant in our government, crony capitalism at its finest.

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Links

Is this the way to run a Government? [Booman Tribune]

More on [Arguing with Stupid]

They've been telling me for thirty five years that Social Security wouldn't be around when I needed it. 35 years later it's still here. I wish they'd stop the bitching. With occasional tweaks, It should last forever. [Perry Calls Social Security a Monstrous Lie]

You can lock them up in the open air prison that is Gaza, build walls to separate them from you, build a giant nuclear-armed war machine including an "Iron Dome" defense system but oppressed people will always find a way to fight back. Palestinian man runs over Israel Border Police with stolen taxi and stabs others outside nightclub]

The Divide

One view of the political divide facing us. The Divide

THE DIVIDE

Truly, as Anne notes, there is such a divide. The world according to Fox (“the wealthy are job creators”; “by far the vast majority” of Bush’s tax cuts went to “people at the bottom end of the economic ladder”) versus the world according to facts (after Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, 23 million jobs were created; since Bush lowered them, few jobs have been created; by far the vast majority of Bush’s tax cuts went to people at the top of the economic ladder).

Here’s how many on the other side see it: a comment on a post that criticized the President for compromising too much. It shows – not that we didn’t already know – how sharply divided the country is.

Steve a 44-y-o from Carmichael, CA: “Typical liberal/socialist nonsense. However, [the post is] right in one aspect...Obama is looking more like Carter every day. But it’s not because he won’t stand up to Republicans, it’s because he is a LIBERAL/SOCIALIST. LIBERAL/SOCIALISTs are always weak because they are always wrong. I have never met a liberal that could objectively defend one of their political positions using reason or logic. You guys still are stuck in broken record mode chanting over and over how the rich don’t pay their fair share. Define rich. Obama would have you think that anyone who has more money than you is rich. Funny how the richest 1% pay about 30-40% of the taxes and the poorest 40% pay about 3% of the taxes. The rich are already paying a lot more than they should be. Big shocker here...it’s their money, they should get to keep it. Funny how you want the people who actually work to just give their hard earned money to people who refuse to work. Do you have any facts at all in that liberal brain of yours? You do realize that half of the people in the country pay ALL of the taxes and half of the people pay none! Guess which half vote for socialist/democrats? That’s right..socialist welfare slugs vote for democrats and hard working patriots vote for conservatives. You are always wrong. When are you gonna figure it out. Liberals think act and reason like little children.”

☞ To many of us, this seems profoundly wrongheaded. Where Steve sees lazy people refusing to work and hedge fund managers sweating to earn every penny of their $100 million – by creating tremendous value – we liberals tend to see the lawn guy working all day for eight bucks an hour while his wife cleans hotel rooms for another eight, struggling to make a good life for their kids. Or we see people desperate for work, lining up in jackets and ties for a five-hour wait in the Atlanta sun for an interview. And we see Wal-Mart heirs on yachts who never worked a single hour for their fortunes. We do NOT begrudge them those fortunes; we just think it would be better if we went back to the kind of taxes on wealth that prevailed under Ronald Reagan (second greatest man ever to walk the Earth). And we agree with Warren Buffett (whose reasoning ability may be beyond that of “little children”) that it’s nuts for him to be in a lower tax bracket than his receptionist

A shorter version might be "You can't argue with stupid"

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Links from the last few days

[Modeled Behavior.com on Welfare]

[Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: Three Economies]

[Eureka Alert: Economic inequality is linked to biased self-perception]

On Taxes: [Bruce Bartlett: The Rich CAN afford to pay more taxes] and [David Cay Johnston: The US IS a tax Haven.]

On Texas:[Its Economy] [Government jobs are big there]

The public may be catching on to the [For-Profit School] scam.

[Gin And Tacos understands that we are ruled by the corporate elite]

That Presidential Look

No More Mister Nice Blog

I always thought of Clinton as the first "Game Show Host" president. He just had that game-show-host-phony appearance to me.

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Where's your Representative?

From [Remarks by the President at Johnson Controls, Inc]

You know, in the aftermath of this whole debt ceiling debacle, and when the market’s going up and down like they are, there’s been a lot of talk in Washington right now that I should call Congress back early. The last thing we need is Congress spending more time arguing in D.C. (Applause.) What I figure is, they need to spend more time out here listening to you and hearing how fed up you are. (Applause.) That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ll be traveling to a lot of communities like this one over the next week. That’s what Congress should be doing -- go back home, listen to people’s frustrations with all the gridlock. Listen to how frustrated folks are with the constant bickering and the unwillingness to compromise and the desire to score points, even if it’s at the expense of our country. And if they’re listening hard enough, maybe they’ll come back to Washington ready to compromise and ready to create jobs and ready to reduce our deficit -- ready to do what you sent them there to do.

Except, a good portion of them aren't in their districts listening to their constituents, they're in Israel listening to their donors. [Washington Post: House Members-travel-to-israel-courtesy-of-aipac-lobby]

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Bi-Polar?

This... [Hullabaloo - Field Position]

reminds me of this...

We threw the Republicans out in 2008, threw the Democrats out in 2010, now leaning towards throwing the Republicans out again,... yet,.. in all cases, corporate-owned politicians remained in power.

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The mess we're in

Brad DeLong on the mess we're in. [How Should Obama Answer the Stock Market's Wake-Up Call? We-Need-Different-Cossacks Department]

[Yves Smith - Why are the big banks getting off scot-free?]. A better title might have been "why big corporations rule our world"

[Economic stupidity in one sentence « Vox Nova]

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Downgrade

It's not the money...

Modeled Behavior on Greenspan on Default:

"..its not the technical ability of the United States to avoid default has come under question. It’s the pratical ability of our politicians to keep their act to together and focus on the things over which they have actual control and to do their duty to ensure that steady march of the Enlightenment does not go down in flames on their watch. To put out the fires when they begin and to above all keep the peace.

They have shown a willingness to shrink this responsibility that is simply beyond the pale.

That is the essence of a nation downgraded and a world a few inches closer to default."

It's our crappy leaders.

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Big money in Politics

[Firm gives $1 million to pro-Romney group, then dissolves]

Everyone connected with any group giving that much money to any politician or political party should have their name plastered all over the media.

How about a C-SPAN like cable channel just scrolling the name, address, amount and recipient of all political donations?

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Budget Cutting

Brought to you by the Indiana division of the Tea-Party.

State police scramble to cover meth cleanup costs - Post-Tribune

When you hire budget-cutters this is what you get. Of course, everyone thinks their federally-funded project is important.

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The Downgrade

I doubt the "One Billion Dollar Armageddon bet" story is true.

[The Downgrade - One Billion Dollar Bet]

The source is supposed to be this [http://moneymorning.com/2011/07/25/the-1-billion-armageddon-trade-placed-against-the-united-states/] but the article is missing.

A google search for the source leads to a lot of financial-black-helicopter-sites. [Google search - one Billion Armageddon bet]

Regardless, the point of the C&L post is that these earth-shaking investment bets need more transparency and I think that is correct. If we're going to keep score with dollars, we should at least know who all the players are.

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Debt Ceiling Deal

Debt Ceiling Deal: The Democrats Take a Dive | Rolling Stone Politics | Taibblog | Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy

The Democrats seem to be willing to throw the people a bone now and then but they are still owned by the banks, big business, and special interests. The people don't matter a whole lot to them either. Our government is "for the corporation"

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