It's the RepubliCONs and Wall Street vs. Main Street

UPDATE II:  "Huzzah! Hang the celebratory banners! Unleash the confetti! Happy days are here again. The Dow Jones industrial average closed yesterday [March 5, 2013] at 14,253.77! . .

But since the initial Obama stimulus has tapered off, and the banks strengthened, the throw-it-all-at-the-wall strategy has given way to a world where Congress sits on its hands and avoids anything that gives off a whiff of being 'stimulus' (even Democrats avoid the term). And the Fed has been the only game in town, trying to spur growth through a series of unconventional steps."

Read the Washington Post, The stock market is back, but the economy isn’t. Blame Congress. 

UPDATE:  It's been "a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India. . .

Corporate earnings have risen at an annualized rate of 20.1 percent since the end of 2008, he said, but disposable income inched ahead by 1.4 percent annually over the same period, after adjusting for inflation."

Read The New York Times, Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs.

"Here are two things that are true about the economy today.

(1) The Dow Jones industrial average is poised to set a new record as corporate profits stretch to all-time highs.

(2) There are still fewer working Americans today than there were before the start of the Great Recession.

The fact that these two things can be true at the same time might outrage you. But it shouldn't surprise you. In the last 30 years, there has been a great divergence between growth and workers' incomes, as the New York Times reminds us today. Corporate profits have soared, in the last decade especially, particularly because of three things: Globalization has pushed down the cost of labor available to multinational corporations; technology has allowed companies to make more with fewer workers, in general; and Big Finance has gobbled up the economy, as the banks' share of total corporate profits has tripled to about one-third since the middle of the last century."

Read The Atlantic, Corporate Profits Are Eating the Economy, which includes these graphs:

(Remember that bailout, Wall Street say thanks suckers!)

Now do you understand the unholy alliance of the Republi-cons and their corporate overlords
in their war on the middle class?

The Sequester Was the Republi-CON Ransom Payment

UPDATE:  After the 2012 election, "many Republicans interpreted the loss as a message that the GOP’s monomaniacal focus on government spending wasn’t helping the party. But while that might be a convincing political diagnosis, the reality is that the members of the House Republican Conference remain monomaniacally focused on spending cuts, and they’re forcing the GOP even further to the right on the issue."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s moving even further right on spending.

And you thought those Republi-cons were crazy before.

The sequester "was created by the Budget Control Act of 2011, the ransom Republican leaders received for agreeing to let the U.S. government pay its bills.

Traditionally, the debt ceiling had been a symbolic cap, an opportunity for members of Congress in the minority party (including a certain Illinois Senator Barack Obama back in 2006) to grandstand about the fiscal irresponsibility of the majority party before the limit was increased. (In Obama’s semi-defense, the irresponsibility of tax-cutting, big-spending Republicans in the Bush era was truly breathtaking.) After their big congressional wins in the 2010 midterms, though, GOP leaders declared that the debt was out of control, so they would not raise the debt limit without an equivalent amount of spending cuts. They threatened to force the U.S. government into default—essentially, to crash the global economy—unless Obama accepted a massive rollback of the welfare state. . .

Incredibly, Republicans (who overwhelmingly voted for the sequester) are now calling it the 'Obamaquester,' like kidnappers claiming the ransom was their victim’s idea because he came up with the method of payment. If they really hate the sequester as much as they claim, they could always just cancel it—but of course, they don’t want to do that."

Read Time, The Sequester Is a Republican-Inflicted Wound.  

This Isn't Funny, It Is Scary

"Guantanamo Bay hosts a one-of-a-kind military tribunal, which is being spied on and controlled by unidentified forces."  Watch the Colbert Report,Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Trial at Gitmo as he takes a critical look at our "endless borderless war against an emotional state," and its constitutional travesty, the military tribunals "designed by President Bush, implemented by President Obama and inspired by President Kafka":

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Also watch the former Acting Solicitor General talk  about the U.S. justice system, courtroom bugging and the future of Guantanamo Bay, where he condemns the torture testimony and secret proceedings while Colbert notes that the U.S. is "nothing like the old Soviet Union, we do not have gulags in Siberia, we have gulags in Estonia."

Government for the Corporation

You can "ignore all the talk about too much government spending and too much aid to moochers who don’t deserve it. As long as the spending ends up lining the right pockets, and the undeserving beneficiaries of public largess are politically connected corporations, conservatives with actual power seem to like Big Government just fine."

Read The New York Times, Mooching Off Medicaid. 

How's That Republi-CON Alternate Reality Workin Out For Ya

UPDATE:  Even The Great Lecherer has been forced to admit, "conservatives in general got in the habit of talking to themselves. . . they in a sense got isolated into their own little world. . . we believed that the other side was kidding themselves, it turned out in fact in the real world – this is a part of what makes politics so fascinating – it turned out in the real world we were kidding ourselves."  

Read Salon, "In the real world we were kidding ourselves". 

"Here it seems to me is the core problem: the big winners under the American fiscal system are the elderly, the rural, and the affluent—Republican constituencies. It's not easy to balance the budget or shrink government spending to any significant degree in ways that don't pinch Republican voters much harder than they pinch Democratic voters.

To escape that reality, some conservative thought leaders have constructed an alternative reality. In this alternative reality, 'welfare' not Medicare is the number one social spending cost.

In this alternative reality, government employment has not fallen by more than 500,000 since 2008.

In this alternative reality, half the country is deemed not to pay any tax—because this alternative reality refuses to count payroll taxes, excise taxes, and state and local taxes as taxes.

In this alternative reality, Medicare is counted as a program that is 'paid for' by its beneficiaries contributions while unemployment insurance is not—even though the latter statement would be much closer to true.

In this alternative reality, we are in imminent danger of losing our freedom—even though, as a matter of daily experience, more Americans of all races and both sexes face fewer legal constraints upon their ability to live as they please than ever before in the nation's history.

Inside this alternative reality, conservative thought leaders have substituted culture war for normal politics. They have succeeded only in isolating themselves from the country in which they live. Conservative politics and the Republican Party are on the wrong track."

Read Claremont Institute, Upon Further Review, A CRB discussion of Political Extremism.

"[I]t’s foolishness that the Republican Party has yoked itself to, and that requires it to make heroically absurd policy assumptions. Even Ryan’s budget can’t credibly argue that Medicare and Social Security spending won’t grow as a percentage of the economy. Both increase under the path he’s laid out. And so he instead argues that Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will fall by half in the coming decades, which is not possible unless we are going to throw many millions of people out of those programs. Even less likely than that, he says that everything that isn’t health-care spending or Social Security will fall by about 75 percent. These aren’t reasonable assumptions, of course, but they’re also not popular ones. In order to protect seniors, he’s gutted everything else in the budget."

Read the Washington Post, How the aging of America is hurting the Republican Party. 

That Good Ol' Republi-CON 'Lame Stream Media' Myth

You hear it all the time from Republi-cons.

"If only the media were doing its job and accurately reporting on the White House we all would be as disenchanted with the administration as they are. If that argument seems familiar to you, it should. We've been hearing it from conservatives for a long, long time. . .

When Northern press turned its attention to the civil rights movement, the stories and photos they published helped shape the national debate about Jim Crow and arguably hastened its end.

The reaction of Southern conservatives to these news reports, however, was a little different. The problem, they said, isn't segregation, it's the way a Northern press infected with integrationist sympathies reports it. Of course, that was hogwash. Segregation was exposed and, eventually, ended. But in the embers of an ideological defeat, conservatives found a handy bit of linguistic Jujitsu. If the facts prove inconvenient, don't argue them. Instead, shift the focus and question the integrity of the fact-finder. If you're successful, then in one broad stroke you may be able to disqualify the facts without ever having to argue them on the merits.

Impugning the motives of those we've entrusted with separating fiction from fact has proven an effective strategy for the right. Don't agree with a judicial decision? Blame the 'activist' judge. Think an academic paper might be damaging to your cause? No worries. Academia is 'liberal' and 'elitist.' Worried that global warming might prove nettlesome? It's the product of scientists harboring a 'hidden agenda.' . .

Well, one might ask in return, have you taken a look at the ideas conservatives have championed over the years? Segregation is the way to go. Women shouldn't work. The government is filled with hidden communists. People on the lower end of the economic spectrum are there because they are lazy. Cutting taxes for the rich is the best economic program for everyone. America is one step removed from becoming a totalitarian state.  Etc.

In other words, my conservative friends, it may finally be time to come to terms with the following: Its your ideas that leave something to be desired, not the media's coverage of them."

Read U.S. News and World Report, Skepticism of Conservative Ideas Requires No Bias. 

Republi-CON Civil Rights Hypocrisy

Republi-cons may love one civil right, but disdain most others.

Locally, our Santa Rosa County Sheriff Wendell Hall supports the 2nd Amendment and endorses the right to bear arms to protect our freedoms. Read the Pensacola New Journal, Milton rally supports right to bear arms, Local leaders gather to show support for gun ownership in Saturday’s paper.

Coincidentally, several weeks ago a local law firm sent out an email highlighting a settlement on a high profile lawsuit against the Sheriff regarding another civil rights. The email noted:

“The case arose out of a nighttime confrontation between the Sheriffs' deputies and homeowners, shortly after Hurricane Ivan made landfall, in 2004. A private home, damaged by the storm and temporally abandoned by its owners, was apparently being broken into. Neighbors saw flashlights inside the upstairs of the house. The side door of the house was kicked in, and muddy boot prints were discovered on the door and leading up the stairway.

Neighbors confronted the two intruders with flashlights by asking them to get out of the house. The light-wielding individuals responded by yelling back inappropriate and threatening expletives. Convinced that the home was being looted, one of the neighbors fired a warning shot into the ground, a few feet in front of him, to alert others around, and to defend his neighborhood.

The prowlers brandishing flashlights turned out to be two sheriff's deputies-one from Santa Rosa County, and the other from Pinellas County. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff's office gave conflicting accounts as to why they were inside the house, or even if they were in the house at all. The two deputies abandoned the house and flanked some of the neighbors outside their homes.

The deputies ran at the neighbors in the street, and began to swear, yell and threaten them with their weapons drawn. The deputies did not identify themselves until just a few feet before they reached the homeowners. Once the deputies identified themselves, the homeowners quickly surrendered.

After the two homeowners surrendered by lying flat on the ground with their hands out, the officer from Pinellas County then brutally attacked one of them-a retired New York City Police Captain. The captain's wife reacted to the brutal attacks, and was herself fiercely tackled and permanently injured.

The responding police officers called to the scene attempted to cover up the misconduct and went as far as threatening the witnesses. When the homeowners refused to cooperate with the coverup, the Police Captain and the neighbor who fired the warning shot, a retired Air Force Colonel, were arrested and charged with attempted murder.

Despite formal protests from the Sheriff, all charges were quickly dropped by the State's Attorney's office. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff doggedly refused to even look into whether his deputies had engaged in misconduct that evening. When the two involved homeowners insisted, the Santa Rosa Sheriff retaliated by trying to bring new criminal charges against them.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations opened a case after the homeowners complained that the Sheriff was retaliating against them for filing a legitimate grievance. One Santa Rosa deputy resigned and the Pinellas County deputy went to federal prison for a year for violating the civil rights of the retired NYPD Police Captain.”

The citizens of Santa Rosa County might need those guns to protect themselves from assault, battery, threats, false arrest, fabricated charges, and retaliation by the Sheriff, who apparently has less regard for the 4th Amendment and little respect for the right to be free from unreasonable searches and unlawful arrests.

Budget Deficits Are To Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction As Republi-CON Obsession Is To Republi-CON What?

This is an analogies test,  Here is a hint:

"We’re just a few weeks away from a milestone I suspect most of Washington would like to forget: the start of the Iraq war. What I remember from that time is the utter impenetrability of the elite prowar consensus. If you tried to point out that the Bush administration was obviously cooking up a bogus case for war, one that didn’t bear even casual scrutiny; if you pointed out that the risks and likely costs of war were huge; well, you were dismissed as ignorant and irresponsible.

It didn’t seem to matter what evidence critics of the rush to war presented: Anyone who opposed the war was, by definition, a foolish hippie. Remarkably, that judgment didn’t change even after everything the war’s critics predicted came true. Those who cheered on this disastrous venture continued to be regarded as 'credible' on national security (why is John McCain still a fixture of the Sunday talk shows?), while those who opposed it remained suspect.

And, even more remarkably, a very similar story has played out over the past three years, this time about economic policy. Back then, all the important people decided that an unrelated war was an appropriate response to a terrorist attack; three years ago, they all decided that fiscal austerity was the appropriate response to an economic crisis caused by runaway bankers, with the supposedly imminent danger from budget deficits playing the role once played by Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction."

Read The New York Times, Ben Bernanke, Hippie. 

See the comments for the answer.

Republi-CON Judcial Activism Hypocrisy

 “THIS IS NOT the kind of a question you can leave to Congress,” Justice Antonin Scalia pronounced during a Supreme Court argument Wednesday.

The subject was the Voting Rights Act, one of the most successful pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history, and in particular its Section 5. That provision requires nine states and assorted jurisdictions in seven others to win Justice Department approval before changing their voting laws. The burden is on these 'covered' jurisdictions, unlike the rest of the country, to prove that such changes won’t adversely affect the right of African Americans and other minorities to vote. Shelby County, Ala., was in court Wednesday arguing that this pre-clearance requirement is an unfair infringement on Alabama’s sovereignty.

Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and has reauthorized it four times since, most recently in 2006. Each time it has extended Section 5 on the grounds that some jurisdictions, mostly but not only in the South, have particularly egregious records of interfering with blacks voting. Originally such interference took the form of 'literacy tests' and other blatant blocks to voter registration; these days it can involve more subtle ways of limiting minority turnout, such as moving polling stations. The reauthorization in 2006 was based on a voluminous record — thousands of pages of evidence — showing that the covered jurisdictions have a propensity toward discriminatory rules. The Senate agreed by a vote of 98 to 0; the House, 390 to 33."

Read the Washington Post, Justice Scalia’s contempt of Congress.

Which proves the point that it's only so-called judicial activism and judicial legislation when the other side does it.

Republi-CON McCarthyism is Alive and Well

"Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as secretary of defense ended as it began — with a smear. . .

It was one of many moments from the past few weeks that Joe McCarthy would have admired."

Read the Washington Post, A filibuster fit for McCarthy. 

If you forgot, "McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means 'the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.'"

It was a technique used by the Republi-cons to attack critics of the Iraq war. 

So it should be no surprise to you that McCarthy was a Republican Senator. 

Is This the End of Our 'Free Lunch' Fantasy?

UPDATEV:  "If only the president’s $3 billion initiative to map human brain activity had been completed by now, we might have the tools to make sense of the carnival that pre-sequester Washington has become. Alas, since the science won’t be in for years, we can only hypothesize about what corner of the neocortex is driving our leaders’ behavior as this latest fiscal precipice draws near.

The first critical but virtually undiscussed question is what portion of the president’s brain (or brain trust) led him to extend 82 percent of the Bush tax cuts on Jan. 1. Recall that even as the sequester was kicked down the road then, President Obama could have let all the Bush tax cuts expire before coming back with big-sounding tax cuts of his own – tax cuts that would have involved far smaller revenue losses over time than had Bush’s. . .

The GOP’s confusion and denial are, if anything, more profound. Even as their attacks on government in the abstract remain as shrill as ever, big-name Republican governors are admitting that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion (while imperfect) promises too much health security for too many of their struggling constituents to be spurned out of ideological pique. Again, purely as a matter of science, it would be great to know how Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s brains manage to order their mouths to rail against the feds while instructing their hands to pocket the cash.

The more comical GOP brain burp can be seen in the overdue effort by conservative thinkers to craft an agenda that might help average Americans improve their lives. The president is usually the one mocked as remote and Spock-like, but it’s Republican politicians now who seem mysteriously robotic and disengaged. “Hmmm,” Republican officials seem to be saying, as their policy wonks serve up relevant new ideas, “these humans apparently crave opportunity and security. Most interesting...”

Read the Washington Post, This is your brain on sequester.

UPDATE IV:  It is déjà Republi-cons all over again, they are trying once again "to escape responsibility for the adverse impact of automatic spending cuts'.

"Republicans didn’t want the president to raise the debt ceiling on his own because it would usurp their constitutional power of the purse, but they would like him to do sequester cuts on his own? Color me confused."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s recycled sequester gambit.  

UPDATE III:  "Congressional Republicans are considering a proposal that would give the Obama administration authority to choose what gets the axe under the automatic spending cuts required by sequestration"  Read The Examiner, Republicans considering bill to give Obama flexibility on sequester cuts.

But Senate Republicans are "against giving away congressional power in order to escape responsibility for the adverse impact of automatic spending cuts expected to go into effect Friday."  Read Politico, Senate GOP debates sequester plan.

I'm bettin that Obama doesn't fall for this Republi-CON.

UPDATE II:  "The Republicans have a remarkably incoherent position on the sequester: It is a terrible policy that must be replaced with a cuts-only solution, they say, but there is no actual GOP plan that fits this description. Republicans seem to be hoping that President Obama will negotiate with himself until they are satisfied.

But he has wisely called their bluff. After all, while spending cuts may poll well in the abstract, the implementation of these cuts will prove unpopular – and the public is prepared to blame the GOP. The Republicans deserve that blame: Regardless of the provenance of the sequestration scheme, only President Obama has been serious about defusing it. The Republican 'all-cuts' position is not a compromise or even a fleshed-out policy proposal; it’s an intransigent statement of a rejected ideology."

Read the Washington Post,  Republicans have only themselves to blame for the sequester.

UPDATE:  Do Republi-cons even know what they want?

"As I understand it, the GOP has five basic goals in the budget talks:

1) Cut the deficit.

2) Cut entitlement spending.

3) Protect defense spending, and possibly even increase it.

4) Simplify the tax code by cleaning out deductions and loopholes.

5) Lower tax rates.

The White House is willing to cut a deal with Republicans that will accomplish 1, 2, 3 and 4. But Republicans don’t want that deal. They’d prefer the sequester to that deal. That means they will get less on 1, basically nothing 2, 4, and 5, and they will actively hurt themselves on 3. So, rather than accomplishing four of their five goals, they’re accomplishing part of one. Some trade.

I’ve asked some Republicans sources to explain their thinking to me. But none of the answers quite seems to add up."

Read the Washington Post, I don’t understand the Republican position on the sequester. 

After years of tax cuts and spending increases, will sequestration be the crisis that focuses our attention?

"While there is widespread support for trimming federal spending, when it comes to the specifics of what should be cut, clarity disappears. In not one of the 19 (!) specific areas did a majority of the sample express support for a diminishing of federal spending. (The closest was the 48 percent who favored cutting 'aid to the world’s needy.' So, that happened.) Somewhat amazingly, of the 19 areas Pew asked people about cutting, Americans favored increasing spending over decreasing spending in 16 of them.

What those numbers make clear is that most people live in a fantasy world where overall federal spending decreases even as spending on virtually every federal program increases. Given that 'reality', it’s uniquely possible that only through crisis — manufactured or not — will people come to grips with the fundamental paradox at the center of their thinking of what the federal government should or shouldn’t do."

Read the Washington Post, Why we need the sequester. 

About Those So-Called CONspiracies

"You see it all over. If you’ve been watching the series 'House of Cards' on Netflix, it’s all about the myth of scheming. Things happen because the Rep. Frank Underwood has planned for them to happen. And when they don’t happen, it’s because someone has counterplanned against him.

This is the most pervasive of of all Washington legends: that politicians in Washington are ceaselessly, ruthlessly, effectively scheming. That everything that happens fits into somebody’s plan. It doesn’t. Maybe it started out with a scheme, but soon enough everyone is, at best, reacting, and at worst, failing to react, and always, always they’re doing it with less information than they need.

That’s been a key lesson I’ve learned working as a reporter and political observer in Washington: No one can carry out complicated plans. All parties and groups are fractious and bumbling. But everyone always thinks everyone else is efficiently and ruthlessly implementing long-term schemes. . .

Human beings like to think otherwise, but we’re not very good planners, at least not when matched up against reality."

Read the Washington Post, What China’s hackers get wrong about Washington. 

As I've said before in response to alleged government conspiracies, they're just not that smart.

It's Republi-CON Déjà Vu All Over Again

UPDATE II:  The "G.O.P. reply [to the SOTU speech], delivered by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, was both interesting and revelatory. And I mean that in the worst way. For Mr. Rubio is a rising star, to such an extent that Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him 'The Republican Savior.' What we learned Tuesday, however, was that zombie economic ideas have eaten his brain."

Read The New York Times, Rubio and the Zombies.

UPDATE:  "The media consensus seems to be that Marco Rubio’s Big Gulp distracted from the message of his rebuttal, a circumstance that’s being broadly portrayed as a negative turn of events for him. But Brian Beutler speculates that perhaps this was a better outcome for the Florida Senator, because it distracted the public from the vacuousness [editorial note: means "lack of ideas or intelligence : stupid, inane"] of his message.

Beutler runs through the speech’s substance, such as it was. There was a wink at climate change denial; a fusillade of the same old anti-government bromindes; a nod towards the Fannie and Freddie theory of the financial crisis; and a rehash of the idea that lowering the top marginal tax rate will uncork a rush of growth. He concludes the public would have seen through the ruse if not for the Big Gulp . . .

[T]his seems like a truly epic gamble when you think about it. After all, the priorities laid out in both the Inaugural Address and in yesterday’s SOTU speech are very explicitly about intensifying the bond between the core constituencies that reelected Obama — minorities; young voters; college educated whites, especially women; and to some degree non-college white women — and the Democratic Party. The second term agenda Obama laid out in both those speeches is also explicitly designed to deepen GOP estrangement from these constituencies — which also happen to be growing as a share of the national vote. Is the GOP response to this really to do … nothing? . .


[But Republicans are betting that Obama's policies will fail and "current demographic trends won’t be quite as bad for them as they look now," that is angery old white guys are the future.]

In this context, the decision to change nothing suddenly makes sense. If these policies are bound to fail, simply continuing to argue against them, as Republicans are now doing, could conceivably be enough. Republicans would later be able to say: We told you so. We told you Obama’s Big Government policies would fail. Time to try the limited government approach we’ve been arguing for all along. Buying in to Obama’s policies by compromising would muddy these waters."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s epic gamble. 

Marco 'I've Got a Drinking Problem' Rubio's Republi-con response to the SOTU speech was nothing but "[t]he same old rhetorical tricks and tropes . . . paired with the same old policies. Despite being the frontman for the GOP on immigration reform, he barely mentioned the issue, and when he did, he emphasized border security. He called for more energy exploration on federal lands and tax reform. He wants less debt and less spending, but the only actual spending cuts he mentioned were the sequester’s cuts to defense — and he opposed those. . .

He’s trying to position himself as the future of the Republican Party. But his big speech evoked nothing but the past."

Read the Washington Post, Where were Marco Rubio’s new ideas?

But Marco 'I've Got a Drinking Problem' Rubio did try to reprise an old but popular Republi-con myth by blaming the housing crisis on “reckless government policies.”

“[T]his argument is very popular on the right, but there’s precious little to back it up. . .

1. Private markets, rather than the GSEs, created the subprime mortgage boom. . .

2. The Community Reinvestment Act and the GSE’s affordability mission didn’t cause the crisis. . .

3. There’s a lot of research to back this up and little against it. . .

4. Conservatives arguments tend to blur the definition of subprime. . .

5. The government policy that likely made an impact were deregulatory actions. . . “

Read the Washington Post, No, Marco Rubio, government did not cause the housing crisis.

Don't Be CON'ed by Republi-CON Deficiet and Debt Myths

UPDATE:  "Deficit talk is a rhetorical ploy -- a decoy justification for the unpopular-but-necessary component of both parties' larger political agendas.

How do we know? Ask any Republican leader what they think about the deficit. "Simply immoral," said Mitt Romney, the party's defeated presidential nominee. "The transcendent issue of our time," said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. Senator Marco Rubio, who delivered the Republican response to Obama's State of the Union address, called it "our nation's greatest challenge."

Then ask them how this uber-challenge should be addressed. Not by tax revenue, as House Speaker John Boehner has said. And not by cutting the defense spending that accounts for two-thirds of all federal consumption and investment, as Senator John McCain has demanded. Republicans are so concerned about the deficit that they're prepared to offer not a single major policy concession to address it.

Democrats aren't much better. . .

Here's what's really going on: a schizophrenic conversation about the proper size and role of government. It's really easy to win political support for lower taxes or for particular government spending. It's really hard, by contrast, to win support for the concomitant part of the Republican or Democratic agendas:  big cuts to specific federal programs or increases in average tax rates on the middle class.

Read Bloomberg, Almost Nobody in Washington Cares About the Deficit.

"David Leonhardt’s 'Here’s the Deal' is one of the calmest, clearest looks you’ll find at the deficit — both what it is and how to fix it. . .

Here are" several highlights, including:

"2. 'Eventually, the country will have to confront the deficit we have, rather than the deficit we imagine. The one we imagine is a deficit caused by waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil-industry subsidies and vague out-of-control spending. The one we have is caused by the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), a Social Security program built when most people died by age 70—and, to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades. . .

10. 'Perhaps the best news in the entire messy deficit debate is that the kind of tax increases needed to make a real difference are not very scary. Making changes so that the tax code would raise, say, an additional 2 percentage points of GDP over the next 25 years would be entirely in keeping with the direction of American history. The evidence strongly suggests that it would not derail economic growth. And a disproportionate share of the increase could come from a segment of society that has done very, very well.'"

Read the Washington Post, 10 great points from David Leonhardt’s 'Here’s the Deal'. 

Buy Properties, Build Houses and Hotels, Collect Rent, Repeat As Necessary Until Everyone Else Is Bankrupt

"Monopoly is America’s defining board game. . .

Where else will grandma grind down the grandkids until they make the land she wants? Or a spouse read deep into the rules to ensure the tax treatment of mortgaged property? It is raw capitalism, in boardgame form.

So maybe there’s something to learn about the evolution of economy in the decision to cast out the iron from the collection of official game tokens and add a kitty cat."

Read the Washington Post, What that new Monopoly piece tells us about the economy. 

Hasta La Vista, Baby

"The news that Fox News Channel has decided against renewing Sarah Palin’s contract means that the former Alaska governor’s time in the national spotlight is, at least for the moment, over. . .

The Palin story is, in the end, one of tremendous talent misused. Like any number of playground greats who never make the NBA or, when they do, wind up disappointing, Palin had as much natural ability as anyone this side of Barack Obama or John Edwards but was unable to translate that talent into results once the bright lights came on. That she never made good on her remarkable natural talents is a sign of how the political process can chew up and spit out those who aren’t ready for it."

Read the Washington Post, What Sarah Palin meant. 

Punnies

From an email:

Those who jump off Paris bridges are in Seine.

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

Practice safe eating - always use condiments.

Shotgun wedding - A case of wife or death.

A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.

A hangover is: The wrath of grapes.

Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

When two egotists meet, it's an 'I' for an 'I'.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead give away.)

In democracy Your vote counts. In feudalism Your count votes.

She was engaged to a boy with a wooden leg but broke it off.

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

If you don't pay your exorcist will you get repossessed?

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress..

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is now fully recovered.

You feel stuck with your debt, if you can't budge it.

Local Area Network In Australia –The LAN down under.

Every calendar's days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted - taint yours and taint mine.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory that was never developed.

A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

What Happens If You Are Caught Laundering Money For Dictatorships, Terrorist, and Drug Dealer?

If you were a person, you'd go to jail, but if you are a bankster, you pay a small fine. Watch the Colbert Report, HSBC Laundering Charges:

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How Dare He Try To Prevent Another Massacre of Little Children

"Responding to reports that President Obama is considering signing as many as nineteen executive orders on gun control, Republicans in Congress unleashed a blistering attack on him today, accusing Mr. Obama of 'cynically and systematically using his position as President to lead the country.'

Spearheading the offensive was Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), who charged the President with the 'wanton exploitation of powers that are legally granted to him under the U.S. Constitution.'"

Read The New Yorker, Republicans Accuse Obama of Using Position as President to Lead Country.

Then read the Washington Post, Reagan’s solicitor general dismisses right’s fantasy about Obama “tyranny”.

Will It Be Over The Cliff or/and Into the Ceiling

UPDATE XIII:  As noted below, don't be CON'ed by Republi-cons claims to the CONtrary, there has been "the emergence of an influential but unofficial group that could be called the Vote No/Hope Yes Caucus. 

These are the small but significant number of Republican representatives who, on the recent legislation to head off the broad tax increases and spending cuts mandated by the so-called fiscal cliff, voted no while privately hoping — and at times even lobbying — in favor of the bill’s passage, given the potential harmful economic consequences otherwise."

Read The New York Times,  Republicans May Offer Short-Term Extension of Borrowing Limit. 

UPDATE XII:  "The news of the morning is that House Republicans, at their retreat, are seriously weighing whether to agree to a short term debt limit increase. The idea appears to be that this would defer default and let Republicans stage another battle to get the spending cuts they want in a couple of months, when the deadline for the sequester looms.

At that point, the threat of default would again loom and again enter into the discussions somehow. But make no mistake: this is a major cave. It is further indication that the GOP simply isn’t willing to allow default. It reveals yet again that this whole debt ceiling hostage taking strategy is proving a major failure: After all, if you’re not willing to default, then you’re admitting the debt ceiling doesn’t give you any leverage. So why threaten to use it to get what you want in a couple of months? How will things be any different then?

As Jonathan Chait puts it: 'You have to ask yourself what the point is. If Republicans can’t threaten to shoot the hostage, what do they gain by holding new debt ceiling votes every few months? It’s either leverage or it isn’t.' The willingness to adopt a short term increase confirms that it isn’t.

Either Republicans are demanding deep spending cuts to popular programs in exchange for not destroying the economy, or they aren’t. They have fudged on this point, because they know they can’t be seen doing the former; but if they confirm the latter, the jig is up."

Read the Washington Post, No more games. Just release the hostage.

UPDATE XI:  "[T]here might be enough sane Republicans that the party will blink and stop making destructive threats.

Unless this last possibility materializes, however, it’s the president’s duty to do whatever it takes, no matter how offbeat or silly it may sound, to defuse this hostage situation. Mint that coin!"

Read The New York Times, Coins Against Crazies.

UPDATE X:  Watch as Colbert explains how "[m]inting trillion dollar platinum coins to pay off America's debt is legal in that it is not technically illegal."  Watch The Colbert Report, The Platinum Debt Ceiling Solution, in which he suggest a "bald eagle breathing fire while making love to the American flag" for the back of the coin, and for the front of the coin, the "Charmin bears, because when you pull an idea like this out of your ass, you're going to need something soft."

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UPDATE IX:  "When the Treasury runs out of tricks it can deploy to avoid the debt ceiling next month, the president is in a bind: Congress has ordered him to spend more money than it has ordered him to tax. It has ordered him not to issue Treasury debt in excess of the $16.4 trillion cap. And 200 years of history, the 14th amendment, and good sense argue against the U.S. government simply not making good on its debts.

All of which is why people have turned to the platinum coin option as a way out of those constraints, should Congress not pass an increase to the debt ceiling. It relies on legislation designed to govern the issuance of commemorative coins, which allows the Treasury secretary to mint platinum coins in any denomination. $1 trillion, or $100 billion, or whatever giant number you may choose is, it might be noted, any denomination. . .

The best reason to oppose the platinum coin idea is this: It is not the way we do business here in the United States. It is the kind of insane, seemingly extra-constitutional gambit one expects of banana republics, not the wealthiest and most powerful nation to ever stride the earth. It is demeaning to all of us. . .

The platinum coin gambit could be terrible for the U.S. government’s long-term standing as a premier destination for global capital. This is a moment for Republicans to take responsibility for governing and to accept the fact that their leverage is limited with control of only one house of Congress. But if the alternative truly is default, a crazy coin option may indeed be less bad than the alternatives."

Read the Washington Post, The platinum coin idea is idiotic. That is the point.

UPDATE VIII:  If Republi-cons try to default the country by failing to raise the debt ceiling, could Obama "mint a one trillion dollar platinum coin and use it to pay the government's bills" and thereby save the world economy?  Read Gawker, Your Guide to the Trillion-Dollar Platinum Coin That Obama Can Mint to Save the World and Bloomberg, Why Platinum Coin Opponents Are All Wrong.

But even if he could legally mint the coin, should he?  The winner of the 2008 the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Paul Krugman, an economist and professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, says:

"Yes, absolutely. He will, after all, be faced with a choice between two alternatives: one that’s silly but benign, the other that’s equally silly but both vile and disastrous. The decision should be obvious. . .

It’s easy to make sententious remarks to the effect that we shouldn’t look for gimmicks, we should sit down like serious people and deal with our problems realistically. That may sound reasonable — if you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years.Given the realities of our political situation, and in particular the mixture of ruthlessness and craziness that now characterizes House Republicans, it’s just ridiculous — far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.

So if the 14th amendment solution — simply declaring that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional — isn’t workable, go with the coin.

This still leaves the question of whose face goes on the coin — but that’s easy: John Boehner. Because without him and his colleagues, this wouldn’t be necessary."

Read The New York Times, Be Ready To Mint That Coin.

UPDATE VII:  And don't be CON'ed by Republi-cons claims to the CONtrary, "House Republicans supported the passage of the fiscal cliff deal. That’s why they let Boehner bring it to the floor. He offered them a chance to amend it, but warned that if the House altered the deal, it was unlikely the Senate would take up the new measure and House Republicans would be blamed for pushing the country over the fiscal cliff. His members blinked. They endorsed his plan to bring the final deal to the floor knowing that once it got to the floor, the Democrats would provide enough votes to ensure it would pass."  Read the Washington Post, Yes, House Republicans supported the fiscal cliff deal.  

UPDATE VI:  Next up, the debt ceiling.  "Are Republicans really prepared to let the country go into default and take the blame for crashing the economy? Sure, maybe some Tea Party Republicans are, but if GOP leaders aren’t, and the next compromise can be passed through the House with mostly Democratic votes, then all of a sudden the GOP position doesn’t look so strong, after all."

As the article notes,  even the Wall Street Journal has warned the Republi-cons, "You can’t take a hostage you aren’t prepared to shoot." And even has said "that a debt ceiling fight is a 'loser' for them."

Read the Washington Post, The debt ceiling isn’t Obama’s problem. It’s the GOP’s problem.

And since "[t]he use of hostage-taking imagery to describe the coming debt ceiling crisis is now so ubiquitous that [a writer asked] a veteran police hostage negotiator what he thinks of the looming standoff."  Read the Washington Post, A veteran hostage negotiator’s advice on handling the GOP.

As you can see, some Republi-cons enablers are concerned by the comparison. 

UPDATE V:  The so-called fiscal cliff deal failed in three ways, it did nothing about the terrible unemployment problem and big deficits, while ignoring "the advantage of the insanely cheap money the United States has access to right now."  Read the Washington Post, The December jobs report proves the fiscal cliff deal a farce. 

UPDATE IV:  "[T]he deal doesn’t solve any of the major issues haunting the economy: In the short run, it offers no large-scale stimulus to try to get the economy back to full employment. It offers no longer-run strategy to reduce the budget deficit to sustainable levels. And it leaves a situation in which policy uncertainty will hang over the economy, starting with the next fight, over raising the debt ceiling in about two months."  Read the Washington Post, Get used to more fiscal cliffs.

And also from the Washington Post, The fiscal cliff negotiations, in one chart, the final tally of offers and counteroffers:

UPDATE III:  From the Washington Post, All the fiscal cliff offers and counteroffers:

 

UPDATE II:  "Why won’t the Republicans get specific [about cuts to government programs]? Because they don’t know how. The truth is that, when it comes to spending, they’ve been faking it all along — not just in this election, but for decades. Which brings me to the nature of the current G.O.P. crisis.

Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?"

Read The New York Times, The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis. 

UPDATE:  From the Washington Post, How the ‘fiscal cliff’ will affect your taxes, in one chart:

"Amid all the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, it’s easy to lose sight of the actual impact that various tax proposals will have on Americans.

The graph [below] summarizes the differences between various proposals on offer":

In case you were wondering, from the Washington Post, Where things really stand in the fiscal cliff negotiations:

"For the White House, the key to any deal is tax revenues — delivered at least partly through higher rates — and a long-term solution to the debt ceiling. Additionally, any big deal will have to include some stimulus, including an extension of unemployment insurance and either an extension of — or more likely, a replacement for — the payroll tax cut.

For Republicans, the key is some give on tax rates, as well as a few high-profile entitlement cuts, namely an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and chained-CPI.

It’s by no means certain the two sides will come to a 'grand bargain' before the end of the month. But if they do, the bargain will likely include either those policies outright, or instructions for Congress to work on those policies over the coming months."

But complicating the negotiations, also read the Washington Post, The GOP’s dangerous debt-ceiling gamble:

The debt ceiling, however, is proving a key sticking point, both in terms of politics and policy.

The political problem is that many Hill Republicans have convinced themselves that they’ll have the upper hand if they let the country topple fully or mostly over the cliff and then restart negotiations with a debt default looming in the background. They figure that although Obama really is willing to let the country go over the cliff, he’s not willing to let the country default and spark a global financial crisis. They are willing to do that, or they believe they can more credibly say they are, and that gives them leverage.

This increasingly influential theory is weakening Boehner’s hand, as it’s giving House Republicans who don’t want to cut a deal a way to argue that they just need to stand firm now and they’ll get a better deal later. Increasingly, there’s concern among Democrats that Boehner will cut a deal that he can’t deliver the votes for. Or that, at the last minute, he’ll back off of a deal because he won’t have the votes. That happened in 2011, when, the White House feels, Boehner cut off the negotiations over the debt ceiling after finding he didn’t have the votes to pass the deal.

Whatever House Republicans might think, the White House is all steel when it comes to the debt ceiling. Their position is simple, and it’s typically delivered in the tone of voice that Bruce Willis reserves for talking to terrorists: They’re happy to raise the debt ceiling on their own, as would be the case under their proposal to take authority for the debt ceiling away from Congress. But if Congress rejects that offer, then the debt ceiling is Congress’s problem, and the White House will not help.