What it’s most like is actually 1937, when FDR was persuaded to pull back when he shouldn’t.

But it is true that you could take speeches that Herbert Hoover gave in 1932 and speeches that Barack Obama has given in 2011 and they look awfully similar. It’s very depressing.

Because I want Obama to succeed, I think he’s a good man, but somehow he’s turned into the second coming of Herbert Hoover.

Paul Krugman on What’s Next for the American Economy

The thought occurs, why haven’t we seen this before?  Why haven’t we seen the radical right (or left for that matter) act so irresponsibly as to put the nation’s economic vitality at risk just to score political points?

Part of it maybe what I’ll call a “Reverse Bullworth.”

Remember the 1998 Warren Beatty movie, Bullworth. Come On!  You remember.  Hum along to the Bullworth Obscenity Rap:

Bullworth:
Obscenity? The rich is getting richer and richer and richer while the
middle class is getting more poor/ Making billions and billions and
billions of bucks/ well my friend if you weren’t already rich at the
start well that situation just sucks/cause the riches mother fucker in
five of us is getting ninety fuckin eight percent of it/ and every other
motherfucker in the world is left to wonder where the fuck we went with
it/ Obscenity?/ I’m a Senator/ I gotta raise $10,000 a day every day
I’m in Washington/ I ain’t getting it in South Central/ I’m gettin it in
Beverly Hills/ So I’m votin from them in the Senate the way they want
me too/ and-and-and I’m sending them my bills/ But we got babies in
South Central dying as young as they do in Peru/ We got public schools
that are nightmares/ We got a Congress that ain’t got a clue/We got kids
with submachine guns/ We got militias throwing bombs/ We got Bill just
gettin all weepy/ We got Newt blaming teenage moms/We got factories
closing down/ Where the hell did all the good jobs go? Well, I’ll tell
you where they went/My contributors make more profits makin, makin,
makin, Hirin’ kids in Mexico/ Oh a brother can work in fast food/ If he
can’t invent computer games/ But what we used to call America/ That’s
going down the drains/How’s a young man gonna meet his financial
responsibilities workin and motherfuckin Burger King? He ain’t! And
please don’t even start with that school shit/ There aint no education
going on up in that motherfucker/ Obscenity? We got a million brothers
in prison/ I mean, the walls are really rockin/But you can bet your ass
they’d all be out/If they could pay for Johnny Cochran/ The constitution
is supposed to give them an equal chance/ Well, that ain’t gonna happen
for sure/ Ain’t it time to take a little from the rich motherfucker and
give a little to the poor? I mean, those boys over there on the
monitor/ they want a government smaller and weak/ but the be speakin for
the riches 20 percent when they pretend they’re defendin the meek/ Now,
shit, fuck, cocksuker, that’s the real obscenity/ Black folks livin
with every day/ Trying to believe a mothefuckin word Democrats and
Republicans say/ Obscenity? I’m Jay Billington Bulworth And I’ve come to
say/ The Democratic party’s got some shit to pay/ It’s gonna pay it in
the ghetto/

Yeah, it’s written by that hero of liberal movie aficionados everywhere, Aaron Sorkin of West Wing and American President fame.  Who else?

Over a dozen years later, after enduring the worst Bush/Cheney and a GOP Congress could bring, and things ain’t gotten any better.  Now they’re in the process of doing to us what they couldn’t even get done with that kind of power and influence controlling the entire government, dismantling the social safety net via extortion — something they didn’t have enough balls to try under the Clinton administration. Why?

Why don’t they fear a backlash? Why didn’t they try this before?  To me, the take-away money quote that sums up the whole movie’s message was this:

Angry black woman:
Are you sayin’ the Democratic Party don’t care about the African-American community?

Bullworth:
Isn’t that OBVIOUS? You got half your kids are out of work and the other
half are in jail. Do you see ANY Democrat doing anything about it?
Certainly not me! So what’re you gonna do, vote Republican? Come on!
Come on, you’re not gonna vote Republican! Let’s call a spade a spade!

What’s the reverse of that then? The thing that kept the GOP from complete radicalization for decades (if we only knew then how bad they could truly be when unleashed) was fear of a backlash.  Because unlike minorities who had been purposely vilified and overtly ostracized and insulted by the Republic party for more than a century of fighting civil rights and Jim Crow tactics who would never switch to the other side, the white Republic base could indeed turn their backs on a GOP (and occasionally did) who have always taken pains to spread the fable that “both sides do it” and there’s not a whisper of difference between the two parties.

Now, with their uniting principle the failure and defeat of President Obama, they can afford the take one particular segment of the GOP base for granted.  The modern GOP can afford to act like terrorists, irresponsible children, just plain stubborn asshats and they will never alienate the willfully ignorant, bigoted backbone of the T-Bagger consortium no matter who they hurt in the cross-fire or how bad they make the economy.

Come on, what’re they gonna do? Vote for the black guy? Come on!
Come on, they’re not gonna vote for the black guy? Let’s call a racist a racist.

Thoreau notes that some of our most pessimistic and gloomy bloggers have come back to sit under the awning and complain about the rain.

I guess that means I’ll be in fine company as I fire up the scripts and widgets to get this old jalopy of a blog back in working order.  I probably need to do more than look under the hood, and may take it into the garage for a full tune up, but I think it’s still street legal.

I mean, it’s not like anything’s changed in the year or so I took off from serious blogging.

We’re still screwed.  Just as screwed as we were when PrezO harshed our buzz the night he was elected, saying such nonsense that he was elected to be President of ALL of us.  How’s that working out?

“Obama’s support among Americans who identify themselves as both liberal and Democratic was 83 percent last week, little changed from previous weeks and slightly higher relative to Obama’s overall approval rating than it has been historically,” Gallup said.

“Although President Obama’s job approval rating hit the low point of his administration during the past week and is down among most subgroups, there are no signs yet that he has taken a disproportionate hit among his traditional base of liberals and Democrats. On a relative basis, both of these groups remain as loyal to Obama compared with Americans overall as they have been on average since he took office in January 2009,” Gallup added.

The president’s overall approval rating is at 42 percent, down from 50 percent at the beginning of June.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60471.html#ixzz1TteAFklL

The left still likes him (“love” is too strong a word at this point), but are freaked that not supporting him could lead to President Bachmann. The right can’t fucking stand him. (“Hate” is a mild descriptor, as in “I hate spinach.” They’re way beyond hate and always have been.)

For those who insist that either his policies, his style, or his negotiating (for lack of a better word) “strategy” are all politically motivated, are designed in some nefarious way to increase his chances for reelection are deluded and stupidly buy the spin from his spokestools. The frightening thing is the realization that Barack Obama thinks he’s doing the right thing.

FAIL: REPORT: Debt Ceiling Deal Will Cost 1.8 Million Jobs In 2012

As with most centrists/moderates/sheep he lacks an underlying ideology that can guide him when you can’t see the shit right in front of your eyes because the shit-storm raging all around you has reduced visibility to zero.  It’s not a backbone he lacks, but much like Poppy Bush the Elder, he doesn’t have that “vision thing.” Bureaucratic plutocrats like that are more than satisfied with getting something done instead of getting something they want.

When historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities have presented themselves, like single-payor, a Stimzilla that REALLY invested in our future, or killing the Bush (II) tax cuts, we we told that the half-a-loaf was delicious.  Sorry, but it left a sour taste after seeing how much a minority faction of loons can get out of our system if you DON”T play by the rules and act like a grown up.

Whatever you want to call it, it ain’t democracy.  Not when less than 10% of the country gets 98% of what they want.

So I’m back. Back to writing. Back because I’m angry again. Angry like I was when we went to war over a pack of lies and I started this blogging adventure.  Back because it’s time. Back because 140 characters can no longer contain what’s bubbling up inside of me. Back because the reason I stopped — that I didn’t want to bash the President but could no longer act the cheerleader when he extended the disastrous Bush tax cuts — has come back to bite us all in the ass, because it revealed Barack Obama’s fundamental weakness in negotiating with the GOP instead of breaking their back when they were down.

The GOP/T-Baggers have been crying about the “radical” agenda of the evil Obama/Pelosi Kommunist Kabal, and have been doing everything in their power to stop it, ie. filibustering everything in sight.

The Dems, for their part, have made their frustration with the obstructionist Repubican’ts palpable, yet at the same time boast how much they’ve accomplished.  Truly, by historic terms this current Congress and the first half of the first term of the Obama administration must qualify as “transformational.”  Although we’re still in trouble economically, blame for which has not (yet) stuck to this president, the new direction we are heading cements his place in history.

Health care.  That alone would do the trick.  But we also have a student loan overhaul and a boost to Pell Grants, a flawed but first in a generation restructuring of financial regulation, much needed infrastructure investment, shoring up of Medicare, and a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia that would have had Ronald Reagan fans swooning. 

And tax cuts!  Don’t forget tax cuts.  $288 Billion in tax cuts! For the middle class this time.  The Economic Recovery Act (fondly known in Blogtopistan as Stimzilla) really did have something for everyone – except 99% of the Republicans in Congress even though roughly half of the thing was right in line with their supply-side agenda.

So just what are the Republicans running against this year in the midterms?  (They have yet to articulate anything they are “for” in a coherent manner, but they’ve been bitching up a storm about both the status quo and the what the Dems want – what those commies are “for.”) 

Dems: “Can’t get nothing done cuz those damn Republicans won’t let us – but … but … but … Lookie all the crap we got done! Please send cash and reward our accomplishments even though we can’t get anything done cuz we did so much!”

Reps: “Those damn Democrats are screwing everything up and we can’t stop them – even though we’ve filibustered everything we are … FAIL. Please send cash to reward us for doing nothing except trying to stop the Obama/Pelosi agenda, which we can totally do and completely reverse if we gain more seats in the Senate than are up for grabs and get a supermajority to impeach the President which we totally can’t do!”

Progressives: “You guys totally sold us out!”

T-Baggers: “You guys are total sell-outs!”

Media: “If you look closely, you can totally see that the fuzz in my belly-button is more blue than gray, even though my shirt was mauve and …. Look! Shiny!”

Average voter: “Yawn.”

It’s really not that hard.  Paul and Brad and their assorted brethren try to dumb it down for the masses, but too often eyes glaze over at even the mention of marginal rates and unemployment extensions, austerity versus stimulus, deficits and debt, stocks, bonds, markets and credit-default-swaps.

The basics are always the same, whether you’re a Wall Street baron or contemplating a change in your IRA or 401k.  Buy low, sell high.  That goes for investments in real estate, a stamp collection or baseball cards.

My economics professors tried their damnest to confuse and befuddle me with their charts and graphs and technical jargon bordering on a foreign language, but even a child has an instinctive understanding of the basic principle that scarcity leads to an increase in price.  Sandy Koufax baseball jerseys are a rarity and thus you can expect to auction one off for a mint.  However, he only pitched one perfect game, and if you’re planning on bidding on that unique item – the very uniform he wore on September 9, 1965, plan on outbidding the Sultan of Dubai.

The converse is naturally true.  Surplus equals a lower price. It there’s a glut on the market, like what happens when you can poke a hole any old place in the ground and black gold gushers up to the surface (and you manage to collect it instead of just pouring it into the sea), the price goes down. 

A lot of factors go into deflating prices from surplus.  Competition among sellers tends to bid a price lower.  Cost savings from mass production permits an increase in profit, which can be cut without hurting owners/shareholders in order to gain greater market share. (Okay, this is starting to sound like the jargon I used to hate, but bear with me.) 

Economies of Scale also affect prices, where you can afford to buy in bulk at a reduced wholesale cost, divvy the goods up into smaller portions and sell them for more than it cost you per unit originally.  Wall Mart does this on a mammoth scale, but so does your local pot dealer who buys two pound bricks and sells you a couple of joints for the Bon Jovi concert.

In fact, economies of scale, as well as the notion that a surplus won’t last forever leading to price inflation in the market over time, compels an investor to buy items that can be had at surplus pricing before the market reacts.  Some deals won’t last forever.

Grumbling that that things just won’t stay the way they are, Alan Greenspan misses the point, not surpirsingly since from his pampered ivory tower his self-denial and whacked-out priorities always ignore the actual lives in the balance when he ticks off unemployment statistics.  He’s right, though.  Interest rates will not stay as low as they are, and credit capacity (Wall Street Speak for cash available to loan but sitting in a vault instead) will not be as great as it is forever.  But neither will there be a perpetual labor force glut with one in ten of your neighbors looking for work.  At least I hope not.

Right now we have a unique opportunity, a one of a kind, Sandy Koufax jersey moment when it comes to launching this nation into the future or flushing it all down the toilet — missing a once a generation opportunity.  Despite the massive debt rolled up over the post-Reagan era, our government still – miraculously – has excess money it can borrow cheap. 

We can invest in people.  We can invest in jobs.  We can invest in clean energy and infrastructure.  We have a beat up labor force willing and able to work for less, and we can borrow now to pay them knowing they’ll pay back the debt their employment creates with interests if we put them to work in things that will make this nation more efficient, more competitive, more self-sufficient in the future.

Build the Supertrains, the center lane for I-95 all the way from Maine to Miami, the giant windmill and solar farms, hell, even the nuke plants as long as we spend the gazzillion dollars needed to make ‘em safe.  They promised us flying cars, lets build ‘em, and places to park them too.  Tired of your smart phone cutting out as you travel through dead zones in the net?  We can wire the whole nation for high speed internet access, wirelessly.  It won’t be done unless AT&T can figure out how to do it at a profit, or We The People decide it’s worth the investment.  It’ll never be cheaper to do than right now.

Lincoln built the transcontinental railways during the Civil Frickin’ War people — so don’t talk to me about this not being the right time for thinking big.  It was downright bleak during World War I, but we emerged as an economic powerhouse after massive investments in mining and factories, bringing women and African Americans out of the kitchens and farms and creating a modern workforce. FDR pushed through the Alaska Highway during WWII.  Ike built the Interstate Highway system during the hottest part of the Cold War and we paid for it by borrowing and taxing millionaires 80%.

We made this country great through deficits that invested in infrastructure and people, not hand-outs to corporate moguls who we taxed, taxed, taxed instead.

We are, again, a sleeping giant that has been napping for decades.  We CAN do this.  We can if we get off our fat, pampered asses and get to work, insisting our leaders find something for us to do and pay us decently for doing it, ironically, with our own money.

See, economics is simple.  There’s a lot of people who can do a lot of stuff it would have cost too much to do before Bush wreaked the country and put so many workers on the streets.  Right now, you can be bought cheap, cuz there’s a lot of you who’ll do those jobs Americans didn’t want to do.  We need your government to invest in you while you’re cheap.

Bubba has certainly been in the news a bunch lately between his go-between role in the Sestak non-job offer nonsense and stumping for Blanche Lincoln, insulting her progressive opposition just for sport.

I was reminded of his excuse to the Netroots Nation crowd in Pittsburgh back in ’09 when he was interrupted/heckled by a LGBT activist about DADT:

“You want to talk about ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’?” Clinton said. “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military.”

I know I’m not alone, not by a long shot — but I have to tell you I’m more than a bit weary of Bill Clinton wagging his finger at me as he throws bullshit my way.  We’re trying to make Congress more progressive, just like he suggested.  So why is he working so hard to keep right wing Democrats in power?

As with all politicians, it’s what they do, not what the say that counts.  Here we have Bill working to get one the of most notorious obstacles to health care reform reelected, a woman whose opposition to the public option nearly sank the whole effort. 

That and the Sestak thing.  Admiral Sestak was running against a guy who was a Republican a year ago for Pete’s sake, and Bubba was trying to maneuver him out of the race.  At least Arlen Specter hasn’t decided to pull a Lieberman.

The mind reels thinking about what things would be like — and how far along impeachment proceedings would be by now — had Bill Clinton been living in the White House as First Dude (no matter how extremely competent Hillary was at managing the country).  Of course, if it was John McCain there with Evita Mooselini living down the street in the Naval Observatory I’ve no doubt we’d be in the middle of a full blown civil insurrection caused by a complete meltdown of what was left of the world’s economic systems, living in a diplomatically quarantined United States after officially being deemed a rogue nation by any decent governments left intact.  So fanciful concerns like who Slick Willie would be playing hide-the-cigar with in the Executive Mansion seem quaint by comparison.

The good news is the David Broder/Brooks bipartisan fetishists and some of the other original Clinton Derangement Syndrome victims are finally seeing Bill Clinton’s support among the Democratic base dissolve.  There will be fancy dress parties and celebratory feasts in The Village toasting his political downfall … again … just like the last six times they thought he was through.  What happens if we ever see a real liberal in charge instead of the homogenized centrist who get painted as commie-fascists anyway?

One more point. The disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, already weakened by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact alliance, was inevitable once Russia followed the Baltic States lead and threatened to secede from the union.

Stick that in your teacup.

Krugman:  

[H]ere’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former
speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an
intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform,
“They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered
the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

While the Poorman went to Google to debunk Mitt RomneyCare’s greatest threat beyond the Wassilla Hillbilly, I took a gander at Wikipedia and noted the Democratic Party held on to it’s 60+ super-majority in the Senate well past the Johnson years, right up until 1979. They didn’t lose the majority until 1981, gaining it back in ’87.  The House remained safely Democratic until 1995 when Clinton lost both Houses.  Bush (43) gave them both right back to the Democrats of course in 2007.

So yeah, if by saying, “Johnson shattered
the Democratic Party for 40 years” Gingrich meant the Republicans were able to stall progress and prevent the completion of the Great Society for 40 years by gaining the White House for all but 12 of those years and it taking 30 years after the Civil Rights Act before the GOP won control of both houses of Congress, completely failing to roll-back a single tenant of the Great Society or the New Deal even when they won the White House five years later — then sure Newt, LBJ shattered the Democratic Party. 

What. Ev. Er.

Another shrewd guy is General David Petraeus.  Whether or not you like the guy, ya gotta give him props.

Leaks from a recent top level briefing by General David Petraeus are causing quite a controversy. The general pointed out that, “Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.” Mark Perry reported this on March 13 in Foreign Policy.

At Petraeus’s pay grade, you have to be politically savvy as well as diplomatically aware.  But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude one of the biggest obstacles accomplishing anything, anywhere in the middle east is our cozy relationship with Israel.  The real question is whether the Arab world will buy the kabuki theater where Israel makes such an obvious diplomatic blunder it would leave the US with no choice but to rebuke it’s greatest ally in the region.

And it plays.  It works here at home to allow our administration to show it’s backbone to Arab allies with the support of all but the most die-hard AIPAC and NeoCon malcontents at the Weekly Standard and the assorted Town Hall blogger.  The Village is eating this up.

Nicely done.  The only question left is what will the Obama administration do with its new found (Arab) street cred.  One also wonders how far the Israelis will play this.  The other shoe is due to drop in a couple of weeks at the AIPAC conference when Netahyahu pays a visit.

WALLACE: I know that three years is an eternity in politics. But how hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?

PALIN: It depends on a few things. Say he played — and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day. Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do.

Really Sarah?  Buchanan? War in Iran? Seriously? There are three distinct hooks we can hang our critical hat on in this one simple (for her) answer.

Note the cynical, almost casually callous way she invokes the notion of a war with a nation that has committed zero acts of aggression towards us, never in (modern) history started a war despite its bluster against the West and Israel, a sovereign nation of 74 million people, twice as many as California, and almost as large as Alaska. She thinks this is a political winner? Now?  In the middle of two wars on either side of Iran?  You and whose army Sarah?  Never forget, war is just a game to neocons.

And that brings me to the second point. She has no original ideas, no thoughts of her own.  Small wonder she is the darling of people like Bill Kristol. She’s an empty vessel, much like George W. Bush, so adverse to learning, to understanding how tings really work with no appreciation for history whatsoever that the warmongering cultists at the America Enterprise Institution can easily propagate her brain with tough sounding sloganeering containing little or no substance or foundation in reality.  Turning our foreign policy over to the whims of Israel’s militant wing is the thematic backbone of neocon dogma.  It’s like she’s the long lost third daughter of Dick Cheney.

Last … Pat Buchanan? Really? You’re admitting you crib notes from one of the most notorious xenophobes in American politics? A guy who ran for president more times than Jesse Jackson and lost in such spectacular fashion three cycles in a row?  That Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative Nixonite, culture warrior who, by the way, was one of the lonely few on the right who opposed the invasion of Iraq you incessantly cheer-lead for?  Good strategy that.

This all assumes that Palin herself would advocate a war on Iraq if she were running for office.  Or is she being almost too clever by half?  She ain’t, and never will be a serious candidate.  She’s a flirt, and will milk that to sell her brand, but that’s all.  I’ll take her at her word that she is offering advice to President Obama, advice from someone dedicated to his failure, hoping he’s as stupid as she is and do something guaranteed to cut his term in office short — just like she did to her own stint as a chief executive.