Month: June 2011

Breitbart TMZ

by digby

Old man Drudge must be feeling a little bit put out to pasture. This used to be his beat:

They have to cover the Democratic penis beat because the Republicans force them to. (And so do the Democrats, actually.)

They’ve been making this excuse for decades now but it’s always been bullshit. The right has created a tabloid political media that knows how to get the Village kewl kids’ prurient juices flowing. You can see how stimulated they are when one of these surreal feeding frenzies comes along and the right knows exactly how to hit their sweet spot.

The political press loves Drudge/Breitbart and they don’t really care whether what they says is true or why they doing what they’re doing. It’s sexy and trivial lizard brain junk news and that’s what they love.

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Chart ‘O The Day

by digby

This should be used whenever anyone starts talking about budget projections as if they were handed down from God on Mt Sinai:

h/t to Jared Bernstein

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The Destroy Social Security in Order To Save It Plan

by digby

Ok, this is the non-logic driving the debates about “entitlements” that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Here’s Kay Bailey Hutchinson arguing in favor of her new proposal called the “Defend and Save Social Security Act.”

Hutchison said that if Congress failed to curb Social Security Costs, retirees’ monthly benefits would be cut by nearly 25 percent beginning in 2036.

First of all the shortfall won’t be 25%. But that’s not what makes me want to bang my head against the wall — it’s the fetid logic implicit in this idea. Hutchison is saying that because Social Security is heading for a shortfall in 2038 which would result in a cut in benefits, in order to ensure that doesn’t happen we need to cut the benefits. It’s daft.

I’m not sure how this works. Perhaps they are convinced that if they say Social Security is “broke” or “bankrupt” enough times people will somehow believe that they are “saving” it by cutting it. Or maybe they just figure people are too dumb to realize that they are intentionally ratifying what is now only a projection far into the future. I don’t know. But it is maddening.

Hutchison is retiring so they’ve tasked her with it since she doesn’t have to face actual humans on the stump anymore. But it is a way of keeping this out there so that they can keep the pressure on the President to agree to some kind of cuts over the course of the next few years. (You should note that Hutchison’s plan doesn’t affect anyone under the age of 58 rather than 55 — a clear sign that this is a negotiating position.) They know that this deficit and economic downturn is a once in a generation opportunity to gut the safety net and they aren’t going to waste it.

If only the voters weren’t so stubborn about wanting to keep living after they can no longer work this would be a much easier sell.

Update: This is a good opportunity for the Democrats to brand the Hutchinson’s plan the same way they branded the Ryan plan. Hutchison’s opened the door by making even more people close to retirement suddenly feel vulnerable. The Republicans obviously haven’t learned their lesson.

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Accepting The Obvious

by digby

I guess the fact that the Republicans are basically a regional party is so obvious that they don’t even have to say it anymore:

The annual Republican Leadership Conference — formerly known as the Southern Republican Leadership Conference — kicks off Thursday in New Orleans, with several notable presidential candidates and potential candidates taking part in the annual cattle call.

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Atlas Slumped

by digby

Like all of you I’m sure, I’m deeply concerned about the revelations that emails were exchanged between Anthony Weiner and a porn star and what that all means for the future of the Republic. (Thankfully, she’s finally weighed in on whether or not he should resign for lying about it. I’ll be able to sleep tonight.)

Still, this seems a bit troubling as well:

It’s official: The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip is now worse than the Great Depression.

Prices have fallen some 33 percent since the market began its collapse, greater than the 31 percent fall that began in the late 1920s and culminated in the early 1930s, according to Case-Shiller data.

The news comes as the Federal Reserve considers whether the economy has regained enough strength to stand on its own and as unemployment remains at a still-elevated 9.1 percent, throwing into question whether the recovery is real.

“The sharp fall in house prices in the first quarter provided further confirmation that this housing crash has been larger and faster than the one during the Great Depression,” Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics in Toronto, wrote in research for clients.

According to Case-Shiller, which provides the most closely followed housing industry data, prices dropped 1.9 percent in the first quarter, a move that the firm interpreted as a clear double dip in prices.

Moreover, Dales said prices likely have not completed their downturn.

I suppose that could just be a bump in the road, but it feels more like a huge, gaping sinkhole to me.

Not to worry too much though. Society’s producer heroes are coming to the rescue:

Candy Spelling’s sprawling estate in Holmby Hills, which has bragging rights as the most expensive residential listing in the U.S., reportedly has been sold to a 22-year-old British heiress.

Spelling, widow of legendary TV producer Aaron Spelling, put the 4.7-acre residence up for sale more than two years ago at $150 million, and she held firm to that price despite one of the worst real estate downturns in generations.

Now, Petra Ecclestone, the daughter of British billionaire and Formula One Chief Executive Bernie Ecclestone, is in escrow to buy the property, according to the Wall Street Journal…

The home was completed in 1991 and was built to the Spellings’ specifications. Candy Spelling supervised the construction. The mammoth home boasts a bowling alley, a flower-cutting room, a wine cellar/tasting room, a barbershop and a silver storage room with humidity control, among other spaces.

Outside is a tennis court, a koi pond, gardens, a citrus orchard and a swimming pool with a pool house. The motor court can accommodate 100 vehicles and there are 16 carports. A service wing houses the staff in five maids’ bedrooms and two butlers’ suites. The house is believed to have more than 100 rooms.

Spelling will be moving into a 16,500-square-foot penthouse condo in Century City. She agreed to pay $47 million for the top two floors of a 41-story building in 2008 but subsequently got a price break, closing the deal last year for $35 million.

Maybe the parasites could learn a little something from this and go out there and be creative entrepreneurs. Maybe they too could be 22 year old heiresses some day.

Virtual Thought Crimes

by digby

This is Andrew Sullivan at his literary best (and I agree with what he’s written too!) He’s responding here to Ross Douthat’s maidenly screed against virtual naughtiness:

His view is that cutting online sex out of one’s life entirely is the only way to avoid its temptation. I tend, in contrast, to think that human nature is so flawed that a sane moral life cannot and should not insist on constant perfection/abstinence, but constant attention to morality, to conscience, and to what human beings can reasonably expect to achieve. If your standard is never to commit a venial sin, you will almost certainly fail. And you may set up a destructive pattern of perfection, failure, depression, more failure, more depression, a new commitment to perfection, failure … and so on: rinse and repeat. I think that cycle is horribly destructive and believe that moderation and risk-minimization is a safer guide to avoiding sin than total abstinence. That’s why diets fail; and why the Christianist South has higher rates of divorce and illegitimacy than, say, “barbaric” Massachusetts.

Yes, you can get lost in an online hall of mirrors and addiction and narcissism.

Yes, there is a lack of dignity in what has happened to Weiner – but only because what was meant to be private became public. If videos of all of us taking our Morganscheisse were streamed live, a few of us would lose some dignity as well.

But if a married man jacks off to porn, I don’t think we should consider him an adulterer, let alone on a route to what Ross calls “barbarism”. (And if it is considered adultery, what percentage of American marriages would be intact?) Ditto if someone “kills” real-people-acting-as-avatars on World of Warcraft. That does not convict someone of murder. And if a married man chats online with a paid sex worker, and jacks off on his laptop, is that adultery too? What if he is just playing at wooing or preening with online strangers or fans but with no real intent to, you know, have sexual relations with any of them? In the grand scheme of social ills, these do not rank high on my list. The real-virtual distinction is a meaningful one.

Yes, this is a santorumy slope in many ways, but the element that Ross (and the Vatican) dismisses is that sex need not always be deadly serious. There is a vital part of the human experience that we call “play”. Fighting the need for play gets sex and work out of proportion and can distort our moral lives in ways far worse than the occasional victimless online flirt. And that’s what this technology has really opened up: not the potential for sin, which is always with us, but the potential for play. From Angry Birds to anonymous chat rooms to World of Warcraft to Chatroulette or Grindr or OKCupid, this is a safe zone for unsafe things by virtual people. That’s why we call it play. It is often a balance to work or lack of work. It is not the end of civilization. It is, in fact, the mark of one.

And, by the way, no matter how much you try to eliminate pornography or online “play”, until you manage to lobotomize the entire species, the human imagination will always provide the necessary images for someone to commit “virtual adultery.” If that’s a crime, I think everyone over the age of 14 has committed it.

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Reality bites back

by digby

I sneaked into the Village again:

Did the GOP con the Democrats into buying into deficit fever so they could run against them from the left?

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Who needs customers?

by digby

These guys are crazy, all you need is a rising stock market and it’s all good. The parasites are none of their concern:

For all the talk about competitive threats from the likes of Netflix Inc or Apple Inc, it is rising poverty among households that TV executives say is their biggest source of concern.

Executives from News Corp, Comcast Corp and Time Warner Inc, speaking at the annual Cable Show industry event, made clear the industry needed a stronger housing market and better jobs picture to win new customers and keep existing ones.

“We have to be sensitive in making sure we have a product that consumers can afford,” said Pat Esser, president of privately held Cox Communications, speaking at the industry’s biggest yearly event.

Investors and analysts, with a few exceptions, can often be heard worrying more about how the cable industry will cope with cheaper entertainment packages from rivals such as Netflix, Amazon.com Inc or Google Inc.

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glenn Britt, however, was one of the executives focusing on the hazards of a bad economy.

“There clearly is a growing underclass of people who clearly can’t afford it,” he said. “It would serve us well to worry about that group.”

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Churning the cash

by digby

This is one reason why the conservative movement remains strong through thick and thin — Wingnut Welfare:

In search of donations and influence, the three prominent conservative groups are paying hefty sponsorship fees to the popular talk show hosts. Those fees buy them a variety of promotional tie-ins, as well as regular on-air plugs – praising or sometimes defending the groups, while urging listeners to donate – often woven seamlessly into programming in ways that do not seem like paid advertising.

“The point that people don’t realize,” said Michael Harrison, founder and publisher of the talk media trade publication TALKERS Magazine, “is that (big time political talk show hosts) are radio personalities – they are in the same business that people like Casey Kasem are in – and what they do is no different than people who broadcast from used car lots or restaurants or who endorse the local roofer or gardener.”

The Heritage Foundation pays about $2 million to sponsor Limbaugh’s show and about $1.3 million to do the same with Hannity’s – and considers it money well spent.

“We approach it the way anyone approaches advertising: where is our audience that wants to buy what you sell?” Genevieve Wood, Heritage’s vice president for operations and marketing. “And their audiences obviously fit that model for us. They promote conservative ideas and that’s what we do.”

Right. And it’s also how they get launder their billionaire donor money to Rush and Hannity (and the radio stations that willingly exclude liberal voices in exchange for the big bucks.)They get their message out both in overt and covert ways and support both the organizing and message arms of the movement. It’s a helluva racket.

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Fair exchange

by digby

I seem to be the only person on the planet who is skeptical of the Republicans’ alleged willingness to change their spots on taxation and who finds the prospect of cutting “tax expenditures” in exchange for some mix of entitlement and other social spending cuts to be a likely con. Yes, I think it’s a very good thing that 34 Republicans voted to end ethanol subsidies. And I’ll think it’s a good thing if they end some other subsidies and loopholes. But at the end of the day, I don’t think any of those are worth cutting the safety net or any other cut that adds up to real pain for average people.

The ethanol industry is doing very, very well. So are other big corporations who are sitting on mountains of cash. They shouldn’t be receiving subsidies at a time when the government has debt and they are in profit. They should be eliminated. But cutting them doesn’t add up to “shared sacrifice” if retired people are going to have to give up eating dinner as part of the bargain.

Even worse, the idea seems to be because these subsidies and loopholes are being eliminated, we need to also cut the corporate tax rate! Recall this:

I assume the Republicans are going to be willing to sacrifice a few high profile corporate subsidies in exchange for an across the board lowering of corporate tax rates, “entitlement” cuts and the ending of all the tax expenditures that were put in place over the past 30 years by liberals (the only path allowed for social spending in the last 30 years.) Somehow, I doubt that this is going to end well for the people.

But … I could be completely wrong about this. It’s possible that Republicans truly care about the deficit enough that they will break their no-new-taxes blood oath for the good of the nation. Maybe they’ll even go along with raising the income tax on the wealthy, which would raise a boatload of money. Perhaps both parties will pass strict lobbying law or just say no to corporations with wads of campaign cash in hand coming back a year later and reinstating all these special tax breaks. Anything could happen. But my guess is that “sacrifice” on the part of corporations and the wealthy will last just as long as it takes to pass a budget that tears another huge hole in the safety net.

The way to do this so that the America people don’t get screwed is simple. Let’s do the Grand Bargain in stages. We’ll raise taxes on the wealthy and cut the corporate subsidies and loopholes first and see where the deficit is in a decade or so. At that point, if need be, we’ll come and take a look at the middle class and poverty programs. Let the wealthy and big business take the first step — as a patriotic gesture. I’m sure the people will follow their good example down the road if its necessary.

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