Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Bloated Head

by digby

Avedon Carol has written an excellent, passionate essay today about why Republicans are bad for you and me. I know it should be obvious to everyone by now, but it isn’t:

The Republicans always have a lot of “responsible”-sounding reasons why they are better for the economy, but honestly, they are lies. The Republicans don’t want to help “families”, they don’t want to help you avoid moral hazard, they don’t want you to do your best and try to achieve, they don’t care whether their policies hurt you.

Their end game isn’t to make you a harder-working and better person, it’s to avoid having to show you any respect. They don’t respect you and they don’t want to have to pretend they do. They want you to show them deference and they know you won’t do that if you feel like a free person in a free society who doesn’t have to take crap from some petty tyrant who thinks you should feel honored to kiss his ring. Republicans are pissed off because it’s so hard to get good help these days – help that knows they are just the help, that knows their place, that uses the servants’ entrance and calls them “sir” and doesn’t question them. A strong middle-class – that is, a secure workforce – gets bolshy and tells abusive employers to bugger off, and the ruling class doesn’t like that.

[…]

And what the oligarchs never want you to think about is that heavily taxing the rich – especially things like estate taxes – also make the economy richer, improve your opportunities, increase the likelihood of innovation, and all that other good stuff that America is supposed to be especially good at. Because without estate taxes, wealthy families can keep accumulating wealth for their unproductive offspring and keep that money out of the economy, making them stronger and you proportionately weaker, until the vast majority of people are little more than serfs and slaves working for a tiny number of Malefactors of Great Wealth. Money is like blood in the economy’s body, and if it doesn’t circulate – if it all accumulates at the top – the body withers while the head becomes stuffed up and bloated, and neither part functions very well.

[…]

Now, I’m not saying Democrats have been blameless in allowing the Tories to take over – hell, some of them are Tories themselves. But the Republicans have always been “the party of business” – by which they mean big, bloated business, and not family-farm-and-local-shop business. And the more successful they’ve been, the more completely they control anything that could get in the way of big, bloated business taking away what you’ve worked hard for, including your family farm and local shop.

Same as it ever was. There’s much more, with links and everything…

This is one you might want to send to Aunt Millie who’s worried that Obama is going to raise taxes on her social security and put her in the street.

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The Government Is The Problem

by digby

Somebody told Bush he needed to sound confident and decisive and so he’s adopted his hectoring “we WILL disarm Saddam Hussein” tone — and short sellers are apparently the new Fedayeen. (Funny, he didn’t seem to have a problem with such speculation when they were called “hedge fund managers.”)

Short selling is a normal function of the market. In fact, it’s essential. Those who are now crying because the financial sector is imploding and people are betting on its further imploding, have completely lost credibility — and should have it stuffed down their throats if they ever offer even a whisper of the words “free market.” Talk about a bunch of whiners.

Oh, and he also forcefully reminds us that this is no time for partisanship. I’ll be looking to see the congress stand on the steps of the capital later this afternoon and sing “For The Love Of Money.”

Somehow,I have a suspicion that being reminded that this bozo is at the helm isn’t going to calm any waters.

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Three Thoughts

by tristero

1

Stupidest thing anyone’s written in a long time – well, at least since Thomas Friedman’s latest column:

Who could have imagined that different-drummer McCain would emerge as a press-conference-avoiding, media-baiting, fact-fabricating generic Republican?

2

People are strange. I honestly thought that the wheels would come off the McCain/Bush/Palin campaign once the press realized that the reason why Palin forced rape victims to pay for rape kits was because they contained emergency contraception. I have to confess that when I read that I actually gasped with horror and disgust. I couldn’t suppress the thought that if the word “evil” has a meaning, this woman embodies it.

3

Naomi Klein published a brilliant article in Rolling Stone about the surveillance industry in China and the illegal American connections to it. The article also made the point that China was evolving a new governing philosophy, kind of a “Stalinist-capitalism.” As the US seeks to nationalize more and more failing brokers, banks and insurance companies, while also shredding what’s left of the Constitution’s safeguards, it seems as if we’re evolving into a capitalist-Stalinist state.

O, brave new world…

Banana Republicans

by digby

Big Picture:

Here is tonite’s theater of the absurd SEC headline:

SEC intends to temporarily ban short selling, but it’s not clear if the commission has approved the move. Cox is briefing congressional leaders. Separately, the government is seeking congressional authority to buy distressed assets.

This is nothing short of a total panic by people who have no clue what they are doing. And to think, I mocked Russia for being a nation run by market commies.

This is the ultimate bailout attempt, which will have repercussions far far beyond our imaginations:

1) We suffer a loss of Market Integrity; The US is now a Banana Republic

2) Blatant market manipulation: this is nothing more than an attempt to force markets higher;

3) 60 days prior to a presidential election? This is a none-too-subtle attempt to influence the elections — especially coming on top of the Fannie/Freddie bailout;

4) The coming pop will create a huge air pocket, ultimately leading to us crashing much lower;

5) Expect a huge increase in volatility — upwards first, then down;

We Are A Nation of Morons, led by complete Idiots, making us complicit in our own self destruction.

More at the link…

Ian Welsh says:

Getting rid of short selling entirely doesn’t make market meltdowns less likely. It makes them more likely. Just as letting banks use depositor money to shore up investment banking subsidiaries is throwing good money, your money, after bad. Just as allowing banks to book “good will” as regulatory reserves doesn’t actually change how likely they are to be insolvent.

Regulators are making decisions in the grip of stark fear and their critical faculties aren’t working anymore. Desperate to stop a meltdown at all costs they are making one more likely, and by letting banks gamble with depositor money, making it more damaging if it does occur.

Tomorrow should be fun.

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Ghosts Of Nam Redux

by digby

I wondered if this would rear its head in this election. I thought not, since it would likely have to be driven by right wing bottom feeders like Ted Sampley and they seem to be laying out. Lo and behold, it’s being reported by none other than Sydney Schanberg in the The Nation:

Sydney H. Schanberg, the longtime New York Times reporter and editor and Newsday columnist — and author of “The Killing Fields” — has written a 9000-word investigative piece on John McCain and his longstanding efforts to, as Schanberg asserts in his lede, “hide from the public stunning information about the live Vietnam prisoners who, unlike him, didn’t return home.”

Part of the piece has just gone up at The Nation web site (www.thenation.com) and will appear in its Oct. 6 issue. A full version, with graphics, appears at The Nation Institute site. […] Now Schanberg criticizes the press for allowing this whole subject to be swept under the rug for so long.

The new piece details the evidence that hundreds may have been left behind, along with McCain promoting federal prohibitions that keep key evidence classified. Schanberg also reveals that he received a personal briefing in 1992 from high-level CIA officials who said intelligence suggested that many men were not freed — and later executed. He raises several questions about why McCain has acted the way he has but, in any case, strongly believes that McCain owes the voter “some explanations.” He also urges reporters to “dig into” the archives and complete “the historical record.”

This is McCain’s Vietnam shadow story, which had he been a Democrat would have been dragged into the election months ago. It’s dogged him for years and is responsible for some of the most volatile altercations of his political career.

I had been under the impression that this whole thing was debunked and put to bed. But Schanberg is no fool and his massive article is appearing in The Nation. Perhaps there is more to this thing than I thought.

Via Political Carnival

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Evuntheconservative Laura Bush …

by digby

Batocchio writes about the annual Banned Books Week, which is coming up this month:

“Celebrating the Freedom to Read,” Banned Books Week runs September 27th to October 4th this year. Starting on September 27th as well is the eighth annual National Book Festival, taking place on the National Mall. Presented by the Library of Congress and Laura Bush, over 70 authors will be participating, and the website will post podcasts of events. I’ll also promote the wonderful, ongoing Favorite Poem Project yet again.

The American Library Association has a page on Banned Book Events, including a page for events by state (at least one listed event appears to be from 2007 or else there’s a typo, so you may wish to confirm an event before attending). There are official Facebook and MySpace groups for Banned Books Week, and you can also find several “I Read Banned Books” groups. Apparently, there will even be Banned Books Week activities in Second Life (details forthcoming on the website). Children’s author Sam Riddleburger shows how you can use an online motivational poster generator to make your own “Read” posters. (Continuing on the lighter side, The Onion has a piece called “Nation’s Teens Disappointed by Banned Books.”)

I’ll also invite any and all bloggers to a very informal blogswarm on banned books and intellectual freedom. Feel free to link your post(s) in the comments, or shoot me an e-mail, if you’d like

more…

Since we have a purportedly wishful book banner running for Vice President, this seems like a good opportunity to have a little fun.

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The Dog Ate Their Homework

by digby

The more I see of Sarah Palin, the more she reminds me of George W. Bush:

“Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It’s got to flow into our domestic markets first.” — Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin,

Here’s Bush (one of literally thousands of examples):

“Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.” –George W. Bush, explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

Or how about this one:

“Tribal sovereignty means that; it’s sovereign. I mean, you’re a — you’ve been given sovereignty, and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.” —President Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2004

Now that I think about, though, it’s not just them.

Here’s the Secretary of state:

How can you use the name Hitler and the name of the president of the US in the same sentence? Particularly how can a German, given the devotion of the US in the liberation of Germany from Hitler?’

Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are no better:

Rudy Giuliani on whether or not it’s a problem that China owns so much of our federal debt: “the way to balance to books is to sell more overseas — sell energy independence, sell health care.”

John McCain on monetary policy: “I’m glad whenever they cut interest rates, I wish interest rates were zero.”

How about this guy, blathering on about the caliphate?

I do have to say that it’s Palin who has really captured that special Bush style of arrogant ignorance. Just as with Junior, you can almost hear the cogs creaking around in her head as she desperately tried to access some nugget of information that will dig her out of her hole. It’s a weird mental game of chicken.

I suppose that’s why the base of the Republican Party is so crazy about her. They prefer a leader who has no idea what he or she is saying, apparently. They think it makes them empathetic or something. Once again — a feature, not a bug.

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Of Course, He Isn’t A Baron Or King Or Anything

by dday

Just a lifelong Republican Congressman who’s fed up with his party:

Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a maverick Republican from Maryland, endorsed Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president in an interview Wednesday with WYPR, Baltimore’s National Public Radio station.

Gilchrest, who lost a primary campaign and is retiring from Congress, has already endorsed the Democrat running for his seat, Frank Kratovil. Justifying his endorsement of Obama, Gilchrest said that “we can’t use four more years of the same kind of policy that’s somewhat haphazard, which leads to recklessness.”

Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), “have the breadth of experience. I think they’re prudent. They’re knowledgable.”

Granted, there’s no “de” in his name, so this won’t garner any kind of media attention.

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Drill This

by digby

Al Gore is collecting donations to run this ad:

The solution to our climate crisis seems simple.
Repower America with wind and solar.
End our dependence on foreign oil. A stronger economy.
So why are we still stuck with dirty and expensive energy?
Because big oil spends hundreds of millions of dollars to block clean energy.
Lobbyists, ads, even scandals.
All to increase their profits, while America suffers.
Breaking big oil’s lock on our government …
Now that’s change.
We’re the American people and we approve this message.

Go here, if you’d like to see this on 60 Minutes and 20/20. I’d like to, if only to see John Stossel’s moustache go up in smoke…

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Backwater

by digby

Atrios writes:

Yglesias:
Who knew the “Washington Consensus” would die in Washington, DC under a Republican President in a mad fit of bailouts and nationalizations?
And who imagined it that when it would die, its death would be confronted with deafening silence. Oh I miss the good old days when lecturing Latin American countries for their bad economic policies was what all the cool kids did.

I’m sure the rest of the world is quite relieved that the US is no longer in a position to lecture them endlessly on fiscal responsibility. Of course, other nations are no longer impressed with much of anything we do, and for good reason:

Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War. But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices. “One of our great exports used to be constitutional law,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. “We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had.” From 1990 through 2002, for instance, the Canadian Supreme Court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court about a dozen times a year, an analysis by The New York Times found. In the six years since, the annual citation rate has fallen by half, to about six. Australian state supreme courts cited American decisions 208 times in 1995, according to a recent study by Russell Smyth, an Australian economist. By 2005, the number had fallen to 72. The story is similar around the globe, legal experts say, particularly in cases involving human rights. These days, foreign courts in developed democracies often cite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning equality, liberty and prohibitions against cruel treatment, said Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School. In those areas, Dean Koh said, “they tend not to look to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”[…]

The adamant opposition of some Supreme Court justices to the citation of foreign law in their own opinions also plays a role, some foreign judges say. “Most justices of the United States Supreme Court do not cite foreign case law in their judgments,” Aharon Barak, then the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 2002. “They fail to make use of an important source of inspiration, one that enriches legal thinking, makes law more creative, and strengthens the democratic ties and foundations of different legal systems.” Partly as a consequence, Chief Justice Barak wrote, the United States Supreme Court “is losing the central role it once had among courts in modern democracies.” Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said that his court no longer confined itself to considering English, Canadian and American law. “Now we will take information from the Supreme Court of India, or the Court of Appeal of New Zealand, or the Constitutional Court of South Africa,” he said in an interview published in 2001 in The Green Bag, a legal journal. “America” he added, “is in danger of becoming something of a legal backwater.”

Read the whole article. It discusses in some length the know-nothingness of the conservatives on the courts and the extent to which the conservative movement is determined to make the United Sates a pariah nation.

But that’s because we’re so special:

In “ ‘A Shining City on a Hill’: American Exceptionalism and the Supreme Court’s Practice of Relying on Foreign Law,” a 2006 article in the Boston University Law Review, Professor Calabresi concluded that the Supreme Court should be wary of citing foreign law in most constitutional cases precisely because the United States is exceptional. “Like it or not,” he wrote, “Americans really are a special people with a special ideology that sets us apart from all the other peoples.”

We’re special alright. We’re a powerfully rich, militarily dominant nation which is led by a bunch of backwater neanderthals.

If this keeps up, one of these days a bunch of countries are going to get it in their heads that we are a danger to the planet and start thinking about ways to stop us.

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