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Month: December 2012

Going Galt *all* the way

Going Galt all the way

by digby

Patriots understand that an epic storm is coming to America.

Economic collapse is imminent. Disruptions of Just-in-Time supply lines will lead America into chaos. Violence along racial, ethnic, religious and economic class lines will bring forth famine, disease and a fundamental reset of life in America.

A group of Patriots have decided to build a community off the most likely lines of peril, a bastion of Jefferson’s Rightful Liberty where we may remain safe, warm, healthy and comfortable while American society suffers the inevitable destruction that must accompany the decades of degenerating morality of our Countrymen.

The cornerstone of the Citadel is III Arms Company, an industry to support the first wave of Patriots who will become modern American Pioneers. We will build Fighting Arms and ammunition for Patriots and around us a town will begin to grow. Other revenue streams are already in the works. Our intent is to purchase at least one thousand acres, and construct a walled town of at least one square mile to withstand any potential violence from hungry, diseased Souls. Obviously the Citadel is not being built to defy any laws of the United States or the State of Idaho, or to withstand any .gov or .mil attack. Our fortifications are merely defensive for a SHTF world.

The Citadel will have between 3,500 and 5,000 households within the walls, with a single gate permitting access. The Citadel is not to be a closed society, instead a refuge for genuine Patriots who wish to live without neighbors who are Liberals and Establishment political ideologues, open for tourists who will be welcomed into our town to visit our planned Firearms Museum, shop in our Town Center, stay in a B&B or hotel while vacationing and exploring the wonderful skiing, hunting and fishing opportunities in the area, and many other attractions we will offer.

If you are a patriotic American who believes in Jefferson’s Rightful Liberty, who believes in the Constitution as written, who believes in the Declaration of Independence, and who wishes to live in a beautiful, secure mountain town that bans Liberals from living among us, consider exploring the Citadel as we evolve and build. If you need to escape your suburban life and the vulnerabilities your family faces, consider the Citadel.

Ours is a community of Riflemen and Patriots. Living in a house, townhome or condo within the Citadel requires residents to voluntarily assume responsibilities for the common defense. Our community is not for everyone. But if you think you and your family would like to live among real Patriots and to be prepared for an America when the SHTF, consider the Citadel.

If you are looking for a fresh start, a place to open your dream business in a community where Free Enterprise reigns, a home in a place that will be safe when the rest of America begins to suffer from the long train of abuses endured for several generations, consider the Citadel.

There have been lots of citadels in history, used for all kinds of purposes. I wonder if they know that it doesn’t always work out quite they way they think it will.

h/t to JS

These zealots can find a controversy *anywhere*

These zealots can find a controversy anywhere


by digby

In case you were wondering who are the biggest jackasses in the Senate, here’s a handy list:

Alexander (R-TN)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lee (R-UT)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)
Paul (R-KY)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

They all voted against the UN Convention on Persons with Disabilities. And it came up three short because of it.

Why? Well, I’m guessing it’s mostly because they are empty, soulless people who care nothing for those who are vulnerable and relish the opportunity to punish sick and disabled people whenever possible. But the ostensible reason was because the treaty calls for access to reproductive health for disabled people and this lunatic fringe equates “reproductive health” with abortion. (That’s what kooky Ricky was going on about yesterday.)

What was that I heard about the right being neutered after the last election? I keep forgetting.

I must say that I’m particularly impressed that Kay Bailey Hutchison, the only woman in the group, managed to explicitly slap disabled women across the face in one of her last acts as a Senator. That’s quite legacy you have there, Kay. You must be so proud.

Here’s more on the treaty from UN dispatch.

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Heckling by homeboys

Heckling by homeboys

Heh:

Buzzfeed:

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) was shouted down by a large group of demonstrators Tuesday, temporarily preventing him from delivering an address at a “Campaign to Fix the Debt” roundtable in Washington, D.C.

BuzzFeed reports that Portman had prepared a speech about the importance of following Republican-backed plans to reform the tax code in order to bring about a longer-term solution to prevent deficit reduction measures, such as the fiscal cliff, from becoming commonplace. As he stood before the crowd however, four protesters took turns touting the importance of Medicare and Social Security and arguing against steps to slash the programs.

As additional hecklers stood up to tell their stories, authorities reportedly came forward to remove the dissenters from the event, which spurred a mass exodus among demonstrators chanting,”We want to grow, not slow, the economy!”

This is the good part:

After they vacated the hall, Portman reportedly resumed his speech. According to BuzzFeed, Portman was later seen meeting with four of the protesters, all Ohio constituents who spoke with the senator for nearly 20 minutes.

That’s getting them where they hurt. They really don’t like being heckled by their own constituents. Congratulations to the organizers.

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QOTD: Gene Sperling

QOTD: Sperling

By digby

We certainly have just seen that there is no shortage of passion on this issue, and it is a reminder that for all of the metrics we will discuss today, that go into this or that as a percentage of GDP, the ultimate metric, the ultimate end, the ultimate test for all we do in economic policy is whether it meets the fundamental values that make this country great — which are (1) are we nation in which the accident of your birth does not overly determine the outcome of your life, where everyone has an opportunity to rise; (2) are we a nation where the economic growth strengthens the middle class and creates more room for the poor and others who want to work their way up; and (3) are we creating an economy where those who work hard and take responsibility can raise their children with dignity, work with dignity, retire with dignity. That’s the ultimate test; that’s the ultimate metric for all we do.

That was from his speech today to “Fix the Debt.” I like it.

Aside from the use of counter-productive framing a rhetoric, the rest was pretty good too:

I believe there is no reason we should not be able to find common ground for a balanced, fair and pro-jobs and pro-growth budget agreement. No one – on any side – should ever aspire to go over the cliff or in any other way to do harm to our economy as a budget tactic or political strategy. Those of us in positions of responsibility have an obligation to work together to find common ground – or at least painful but acceptable compromise – that moves our nation forward.

If we can pass the type of balanced agreement the President has advocated, we can beat the low expectations for those of us in Washington that exist for us and provide a spark of confidence to growth, investment and jobs. That type of agreement means balance between high-income revenues and mandatory spending; balance in terms of protecting the poor and the vulnerable, strengthening the middle class and asking the most from those who can contribute the most; and balance in terms of finding the fiscal sweet spot where we both create long-term confidence from showing we are bringing down and stabilizing our debt as a percentage of our economy, but also by including measures like infrastructure and emergency unemployment insurance to ensure we are giving our recovery and working families the strength and momentum they need in the immediate term. All of those are important components of balance, and I am happy that so many of the fiscal commissions, and I heard the reference from Senator Portman, understand that a strong agreement has to make sure that we strengthen the recovery, not contract the recovery in the short term. We don’t need to do that. We can design an intelligent long-term deficit reduction package that gives momentum and strength to jobs in the immediate term as we create more confidence that we will get our debt and deficits under control in the long term.

Make no mistake about it: no budget agreement – however robust – will provide the economic certainty and confidence we aspire to if job creators, investors and working families believe that, after we reach that agreement, just months down the road, we will start the next round of debt limit debacles. As both economist and business leaders have told us, only the greatest national tragedies have competed with the debt limit debacle of 2011 in terms of damaging consumer confidence. So let’s be clear: if we want to see the economic benefit of a bipartisan budget agreement we need to agree that the era of threatening the default of the United States as a budget tactic is over. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is something we should cherish and never use as a bargaining tool by any side. This should be beyond question at this moment.

Second, to the contrary to the claims of some, President Obama has put forward specific and detailed mandatory savings on the table and is deeply committed to leading on passing a balanced plan that includes tough, but smart, entitlement reform. Those of you, and there are many of you who are budget experts, will back be up on the following: it is only the President’s budget – not the House Republican budget – that has specific, detailed, and scorable savings in the first 10 years on Medicare. Those measures include not only provider savings designed to increase value for health services, but increases on high-income premiums in Medicare, and Medigap reform for new beneficiaries that is designed to discourage excess utilization. And I could go on and on. The President has specific proposals for indirect payment for farmers, federal workforce retirement savings, among many others. We understand that others, including people on these panels, will have other ideas – but so far we are still waiting to hear a clear and detailed definition of how those who disagree with us would propose do things differently.

Third, it is important that all those who care about our country reaching a balanced and robust deficit reduction agreement understand that it cannot come together without rates going up on income over $250K. As my colleague Jason Furman and I recently wrote, while the headline number that can technically be reached through simply limiting deduction on high income earners might seem in the ball park, such estimates quickly fall apart with the most minimal scrutiny. To take one proposal, the one to limit deductions to $25,000, it is often described as raising over $1 trillion. Yet, that estimate relies on tax increases on 17 million taxpayers making under $250K. If you remove the tax on those middle class families – and have a proper phase in, which we would all agree you should – the savings number comes down to $650 billion. But even at this point there is a fundamental flaw because the$25K deduction cap means that the charitable deduction for all high income people will essentially be eliminated. It is hard to design a better way to unite the most-well off Americans and those representing the poorest Americans, non-profits, churches, universities and hospitals against a single idea than proposing to completely eliminate the charitable deduction. If you then decide to make an exception for charitable deductions, your savings go down to anywhere from $350 billion to $450 billion.

That means if the President were to take the position that rates could not go up and he then found that so called high-income deduction savings max out at around $400 billion, then to get a robust and balanced deficit agreement, the President would have to be willing to agree to over $1 trillion in revenues through taxes that fall mostly on the middle class – something he definitively will not do. Even worse, such a plan would be asking these middle class Americans to face higher taxes simply to afford lower taxes on the most well-off.

That is why the President has made clear he cannot sign, and will not sign, any bill that does not raise rates or one that seeks to extend the Bush high income tax cuts at their current levels. Of course, tax reform on high income deductions should be part of the package. The President himself has, in his budget proposal for more than one year, has a 28 percent cap on tax expenditure for high income Americans. So the President has not only shown willingness to support that type of reform on tax expenditure reductions, he has led on the issue and put forward as specific and detailed of a proposal to raise over $500 billion as any as I’ve seen.

That is why the letter that came to the President from the House Republican leadership yesterday was so disappointing. It not only failed to recognize the necessity of raising rates; it actually called for lowering rates for the highest earners, which inevitably means a worse deal for the middle class. This is very unfortunate because recognition that we must raise rates on the highest income Americans stands today as the critical key to unlocking the door to a bipartisan budget agreement.

The letter also was disappointing because it failed to acknowledge what virtually every business leader today recognizes: that we must, for the sake of economic confidence and certainty, end the self-inflicted economic wound of sporadic debt fights that threaten default and tarnish the full faith and credit of the United States.

Again, there is no reason for us to approach — no less go over — the cliff. If our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will work in good faith with us, I am confident that we can reach a balanced, fair, pro-growth and pro-jobs agreement in the spirit of good faith and compromise. Thank you, and I’m sure everyone is looking forward to the discussion from the very impressive group of experts, Maya, that you have gathered today. So thank you.

I doubt that Grover Norquist, Pete Peterson or Paul Ryan much cared for that. I would imagine Cokie Roberts would be disappointed that it didn’t prescribe the necessary pain for the old and sick. (And needless to say I think we need to be vigilant about all this “balance” talk.) But that was a principled statement that didn’t give away the future security of average Americans. I’m mildly optimistic.

Update: Also too, this:

When the well-being of millions of Americans is at stake — as it is with major changes in Medicare and Medicaid — that shouldn’t be acceptable. If policymakers want to propose $600 billion in health care entitlement savings, as they have every right to do, they should show us the specific changes they would make to get there. Until they do, such proposals shouldn’t receive much credibility.
(Some news accounts report the House Republican leaders would raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67 and increase Medicare premiums for more affluent beneficiaries, although those items are not mentioned anywhere in the new offer. But if so, those measures would raise only about one quarter of the $600 billion and raise questions as to whether House Republicans have an answer for what would happen to many 65 and 66 year olds in states that turn down the health reform law’s Medicaid expansion or whether they are willing to turn back the clock nearly 50 years and let ours be the only Western democracy where significant numbers of poor elderly people can go uninsured.)

President Obama’s budget has over $300 billion in specific health entitlement savings. BowlesSimpson detailed its specific health entitlement savings as well. Only with specific proposals can we assess what level of cuts is reasonable and what is not.

For example, analysis shows that, although this wasn’t Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson’s intention, several of their specific health care cut proposals would likely harm vulnerable low-income elderly and disabled people. In response to such analysis, Bowles has expressed openness to modifying some of his proposals.

Other parts of the Republican offer — its $300 billion in cuts in non-health mandatory programs and its $300 billion in additional cuts in discretionary programs — have the same problem: no specifics. The proposal is an exercise in “look Ma, no hands” budgeting.

Take non-health mandatory programs. In the negotiations that Vice President Biden chaired in the spring of 2011 and the subsequent negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that summer, the two parties tentatively agreed on $240 billion to $250 billion in nonhealth mandatory savings. But though a sizeable share of those savings has since been enacted, the new Republican offer calls for $300 billion in savings here. Where would the tens of billions of dollars in additional savings come from? The offer doesn’t say. Consequently, we can’t assess this part of the proposal, either.

We can assess the proposal for $300 billion in additional cuts in discretionary programs. It likely would pose significant risks to investments in areas from education to scientific research to food safety to border security to children’s programs such as child care, WIC, and Head Start. Consider the following.

 The discretionary funding caps set by last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA) will cut
discretionary spending of $1.5 trillion over the next ten years [see this CBPP paper], compared to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) baseline at the end of 2010 — when Bowles and Simpson issued their report.
 And, the existing BCA caps are so austere that, by 2017, non-defense discretionary
spending will be at its lowest level on record as a share of the economy, with data going back to 1962.
 Making the squeeze tighter, some essential non-defense discretionary programs will
require large increases in the years ahead. As an analysis that we will issue shortly shows, spending for veterans’ health care will need to rise by several hundred billion dollars over the coming decade, as more Vietnam veterans reach old age (when health care costs climb) and the number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans grows. To meet these costs for our veterans, which we will surely do, policymakers will have to cut other nondefense discretionary programs even more deeply to remain within the tough BCA caps.

Adding large further cuts on top of the steep cuts that the BCA requires would be most unwise, as former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former CBO
and Office of Management and Budget director Alice Rivlin have warned.

The Republican offer poses these problems for one main reason: its revenues are inadequate. At $800 billion, they don’t even offset the cost of extending President Bush’s tax cuts for the most affluent 2 percent of Americans and extending the current extravagant estate-tax break for the heirs of the richest 0.3 percent of Americans — as the Republican plan apparently does.

In short, people with low incomes or serious disabilities, and elderly people of modest means, would face substantial cuts — but people at the top would get to keep a significant share of their munificent tax cuts.

I have an idea. Why don’t we just tax the rich, stimulate the economy and then come back and reassess in a few years? Bueller? Anybody?

h/t to Dan Froomkin
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The economy needs stimulus, not deficit obsession, by @DavidOAtkins

The economy needs stimulus, not deficit obsession

by David Atkins

Rachel Maddow, national treasure, tells it like it is:

The key part starts about three minutes into the video. That this is so obvious to reasonable people outside the bubble but not to the Village elites bespeaks an extraordinary level of either greed or stupidity on their part. In all likelihood, some of both. I have no doubt that Cokie Roberts and friends actually believe we have a deficit crisis. I’ve seen very well educated, well-meaning people in politics at the local level insist the exact same thing. It’s partly cultural, in fact: to be neoliberal and obsessed with deficits is to prove that one has graduated from the petty partisan politics of lesser mortals and into the realm of the truly educated few who see the big picture and have a concern for macroeconomics. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but such things stand out as an aspirational cultural badge of merit.

Cultic hysteria and groupthink affect everyone, no matter how smart they believe they are. Doubly so when said groupthink is convenient for the pocketbooks of those in question, and triply so when it becomes a unifying cultural symbol of the “in” crowd.

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“Cliff” notes 12/3

“Cliff” notes 12/3

by digby

In case you were wondering about what’s in the “Bowles Plan” (as opposed to the Simpson-Bowles proposal) Talking Points Memo lays it out:

Bowles called for $800 billion in new revenue, without resorting to using “dynamic scoring,” but not specifically from raising tax rates. He proposed raising the Medicare eligibility age, and changing government tax and spending formulas to use so-called chained CPI, reducing benefits in programs like Social Security and raising tax revenues over time by hastening workers ascent into higher tax brackets as they climb the income ladder. He proposed $300 billion in further cuts to discretionary spending, $600 billion in cuts to health care programs, and $300 billion in other mandatory spending programs, but did not spell out entirely how the cuts should be designed.

The GOP’s offer provides no further specificity about those cuts either. It is silent on how to raise $800 billion in revenue, other than to call for closing loopholes and lowering marginal rates. It says nothing about when the higher taxes would kick in.

“This is by no means an adequate long-term solution, as resolving our long-term fiscal crisis will require fundamental entitlement reform,” the letter reads. “Indeed, the Bowles plan is exactly the kind of imperfect, but fair middle ground that allows us to avert the fiscal cliff without hurting our economy and destroying jobs. We believe it warrants immediate consideration.”

This comes from a congressional hearing in the fall of 2011 in which Bowles testified that he thought the above was a “balanced approach.” At the time the Republicans scoffed at the idea they would ever agree to raise taxes any way, any how, but they’ve cleverly evoked Bowles’ name (a name that’s repeatedly been floated to replace Geithner as Treasury Secretary )as cover for their proposal to cut the living crap out of well … everything.

It’s true that Bowles proposed this — he was among a whole bunch of Very Serious Democrats (including the president) who put these cuts on the table repeatedly in 2011. But he disavowed his proposal today, saying circumstances have changed. (I’m hopeful he’s talking about the circumstances of Democrats winning the election, but who knows?)

He explained at the time that cutting Medicare was logical since we now have Obamacare. A lot of people seem to think this makes good sense, but I honestly cannot believe that anyone would talk about raising the age for Medicare eligibility because an untried, untested, hugely controversial new program will supposedly make it all ok. That’s just daft in my opinion. And from what we’re seeing with states rejecting Medicaid dollars and refusing to create the exchanges, it should be unequivocally off the table for the foreseeable future. It’s not as if it will ever be easy to lower the age again and even that would come on the heels of a hell of a lot of suffering among people who worked their whole lives in anticipation of having their medical care covered once they got old and sick. It’s appalling that anyone would play and experiment with them before anyone has the vaguest idea if Obamacare is going to work. You simply cannot take health care away from people, particularly at this age, without knowing that the replacement will be adequate. And we do not know if it will be adequate.

The White House responded to the GOP offer with this:

“The Republican letter released today does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve. Independent analysts who have looked at plans like this one have concluded that middle class taxes will have to go up to pay for lower rates for millionaires and billionaires. While the President is willing to compromise to get a significant, balanced deal and believes that compromise is readily available to Congress, he is not willing to compromise on the principles of fairness and balance that include asking the wealthiest to pay higher rates. President Obama believes – and the American people agree – that the economy works best when it is grown from the middle out, not from the top down. Until the Republicans in Congress are willing to get serious about asking the wealthiest to pay slightly higher tax rates, we won’t be able to achieve a significant, balanced approach to reduce our deficit our nation needs.”

So the public kabuki is still all about the taxes. Let’s hope there’s more discussion behind the scenes because as dday pointed out, it is about a lot more than that. He quoted this from Jonathan Karl about the so-called Republican Doomsday Secnario:

It’s quite simple: House Republicans would allow a vote on extending the Bush middle class tax cuts (the bill passed in August by the Senate) and offer the president nothing more – no extension of the debt ceiling, nothing on unemployment, nothing on closing loopholes. Congress would recess for the holidays and the president would face a big battle early in the year over the debt ceiling.

Dday adds:

Karl says that the sequester could get delayed for a year as part of the House GOP doomsday scenario. But either way, this would put Democrats in a tough spot. They would lose the tax leverage after having won that battle. They would see an economic slowdown from the end of extended unemployment benefits, the payroll tax cut and possibly the sequester. And they would have to battle over a debt limit increase without the tax rate discussion to fall back on.

This actually shows some recognition that the fiscal slope is not solely a tax discussion. Even if you solve the tax puzzle, there are lots of other moving parts. Republicans learned that the debt limit gives them real leverage as long as the President doesn’t resort to the Constitutional option, using the 14th Amendment to essentially render the debt limit moot. I’d almost guarantee articles of impeachment in the House in that event.

If the President doesn’t go that route, and he doesn’t direct his Treasury Secretary to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin, then you have a situation where House Republicans have the power to control events, and Democrats have serious needs – a debt limit increase, restoration of extended unemployment benefits, etc. The Republican position may be unpopular, but if they’re willing to press the issue, they can force through many of their priorities. The increase in top marginal rates will soon turn into a hollow victory on partisan grounds.

Yeah well, I’ve been screaming about that hollow victory for a couple of years now and I’m highly suspicious that there are people on the Democratic side who would be perfectly willing to be backed into this corner. They’ve demagogued the deficit into a crisis worthy of an invasion from a foreign planet at this point so whether the cuts come as a result of a Grand Bargain or a series of “showdowns” doesn’t really matter. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to gut “entitlements” from a whole bunch of center and center right elites to do it. The biggest challenge for the White House would be how to frame this as a part of their vaunted “balanced approach” and I’m not sure it would be that easy. I’d be very interested to see if the Republicans are willing to give them that.

Anyway, grain of salt on all of this. They’re posturing in public and dealing in private and we really can’t know what’s up from these reports. I continue to believe that the baseline for negotiations is the 2011 debt ceiling agreements, with the major hang up being the tax rates.  I still suspect that everything we’re seeing is in service of making that happen in a way that the Republicans can stomach. Seriously hoping I’m wrong.

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Let this sentence be enrished in memory, by @DavidOAtkins

Let this sentence be enshrined in memory

by David Atkins

The Republican counteroffer:

Rejecting President Obama’s call to raise tax rates for the wealthy, House Republicans unveiled a counteroffer that would cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other federal programs while raising new revenue by overhauling the tax code.

Just turn that into an ad and repeat it over and over again. The President needn’t make any counter-counteroffer to that. Just let the GOP march right over that insanely unpopular and cold-hearted cliff. Mr. Potters, every one of them.

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Black helicopter child killers

Black helicopter child killers

by digby

I hate to break the news but they’re just as looney as they ever were:

In keeping with the WND tradition of promoting various fringe conspiracies, Santorum’s debut column claimed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has an objective of “ceding our sovereignty to the United Nations.”

Santorum warned that a United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities treaty adopted in 2006 “has much darker and more troubling implications” than to simply improve the treatment of disabled people in other countries.

The staunchly anti-abortion Republican worried that the treaty would “put the government, acting under U.N. authority, in the position to determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them.”

And taking that thought to its absurd conclusion, Santorum suggested that the U.N. treaty would have meant the death of his daughter, who has a rare genetic disorder.

“In the case of our 4-year-old daughter, Bella, who has Trisomy 18, a condition that the medical literature says is ‘incompatible with life,’ would her ‘best interest’ be that she be allowed to die?” he asked.

“Some would undoubtedly say so.”

Yes, “some” would, I’m sure: psychopaths who dwell in prisons and a few philosopher types who think in abstractions. But until they take over the world I’m guessing Santorum can relax about this. And then maybe he can find the time to worry about all the disabled kids all over the world who have little medical care and nothing to eat — you know, the kind of thing to which the UN has been devoting itself for the past 50 years.

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Douthat, Freaky by tristero

Douthat, Freaky 

by tristero

Douthat is one weird white dude:

In 1990, 65 percent of Americans told Pew that children were “very important” to a successful marriage; in 2007, just before the current baby bust, only 41 percent agreed. (That trend goes a long way toward explaining why gay marriage, which formally severs wedlock from sex differences and procreation, has gone from a nonstarter to a no-brainer for so many people.)

I’m sure this reasoning makes logical sense to someone, somewhere. But I’m not seeing the causation in the correlation.

I would suspect that the reason why same-sex marriage has become a “no-brainer for so many people” is not because children are now seen as less important for a successful marriage. Instead it’s probably because once “so many people” started to think about gay marriage for, I dunno, like five seconds, they realized there was no earthly reason why two people who love each other should be prohibited from marrying – and also, by the way, from raising children if they wanted to.

As for Douthat’s comments on decadence and cultural exhaustion, I’ll refrain from comment… Okay, you twisted my arm,  I’ll say something:

Unless you’re talking about really good chocolate cakes,  “decadence”is just a feelgood word with no real meaning. It just makes the person bruiting it about feel oh-so-morally-superior.

And if anything could be said to be decadent, it’s that smug, obnoxious, attitude.

“It may be about to get worse”

“It may be about to get worse”

by digby

This seems to me that this should be an important story:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“For many states that had to resort to truly deep cuts and blunt instruments to balance their budgets over the last few years, it may be about to get worse.”

No, America isn’t Greece and neither is Mississippi. But we do have these distinct government entities which are locked into austerity and they are a drag on the country as a whole so the situation isn’t completely different from Europe. And that’s another very good reason why the federal government should be stimulating not cutting (and why it shouldn’t be selling off the future security of its citizens for appearances sake either.) I’m sorry that everyone is irrational about budget cutting (thanks to bipartisan propaganda that implies it will be good for an ailing economy — the leeches theory.) But that doesn’t change the fact that we do not need austerity right now at the federal level, largely because many of our states are dying from it already. Just in case everyone’s forgotten what’s been happening in Europe due to our endlessly exciting cheerleading for tax hikes on rich people, here’s a reminder from Krugman from just a couple of months ago:

Just a few days ago, the conventional wisdom was that Europe finally had things under control. The European Central Bank, by promising to buy the bonds of troubled governments if necessary, had soothed markets. All that debtor nations had to do, the story went, was agree to more and deeper austerity — the condition for central bank loans — and all would be well. 

But the purveyors of conventional wisdom forgot that people were involved. Suddenly, Spain and Greece are being racked by strikes and huge demonstrations. The public in these countries is, in effect, saying that it has reached its limit: With unemployment at Great Depression levels and with erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far. And this means that there may not be a deal after all. 

Much commentary suggests that the citizens of Spain and Greece are just delaying the inevitable, protesting against sacrifices that must, in fact, be made. But the truth is that the protesters are right. More austerity serves no useful purpose; the truly irrational players here are the allegedly serious politicians and officials demanding ever more pain. Consider Spain’s woes. What is the real economic problem? Basically, Spain is suffering the hangover from a huge housing bubble, which caused both an economic boom and a period of inflation that left Spanish industry uncompetitive with the rest of Europe. When the bubble burst, Spain was left with the difficult problem of regaining competitiveness, a painful process that will take years. Unless Spain leaves the euro — a step nobody wants to take — it is condemned to years of high unemployment. But this arguably inevitable suffering is being greatly magnified by harsh spending cuts; and these spending cuts are a case of inflicting pain for the sake of inflicting pain.  

First of all, Spain didn’t get into trouble because its government was profligate. On the contrary, on the eve of the crisis, Spain actually had a budget surplus and low debt. Large deficits emerged when the economy tanked, taking revenues with it, but, even so, Spain doesn’t appear to have all that high a debt burden. It’s true that Spain is now having trouble borrowing to finance its deficits. That trouble is, however, mainly because of fears about the nation’s broader difficulties — not least the fear of political turmoil in the face of very high unemployment. And shaving a few points off the budget deficit won’t resolve those fears. In fact, research by the International Monetary Fund suggests that spending cuts in deeply depressed economies may actually reduce investor confidence because they accelerate the pace of economic decline.

Again, I’m emphatically not saying that Europe’s woes are exactly like ours. But logic says that if you have austerity in one part of the union, any union, it’s going to be a drag on the rest. Ignoring that isn’t going to change it.

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