Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

You are here: Home / Archives for 2009

Archives for 2009

Things Change

by | 76 Comments

This post is in: 

Mitt Romney pens an op-ed calling for more tax cuts and closes with the following:

And finally, let’s exercise restraint in the size of the stimulus package. Last year, with the economy already faltering, I proposed a stimulus of $233 billion. The Washington Post said: “Romney’s plan is way too big.” So what critique will the media have for the size of the Obama package?

From January 18th, 2008, the Reuters coverage of Romney’s stimulus package of (SURPRISE!) tax cuts:

Weighing in on a debate about stimulating the slowing U.S. economy, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney is calling for a package of tax breaks expected to cost $250 billion, an aide said on Friday.

The former Massachusetts governor’s package centered on several permanent tax cuts, rather than temporary rebates and spending programs favored by others engaged in the stimulus discussion in Washington and on the campaign trail.

A comparison:

Unemployment Rate in January 2008- 4.9%
Dow Jones on January 18th, 2008- 12,159.94

Unemployment Rate in January 2009: 7.6%
Dow Jones on January 19th, 2009: 8,281.22

Since your stimulus package proposal, Mitt, the DOW has dropped 4k, unemployment has jumped almost three percent, numerous banks and financial institutions have crashed, trillions in market wealth have vaporized, several million people have lost their jobs, and on an on.

In other words, things change. This isn’t the “liberal” Washington Post out to get you.

Things ChangePost + Comments (76)

Reality

by | 119 Comments

This post is in: ,

I wish we’d hear more of this from actual people — as opposed to tv-trons — about the economy (from yet another WaPo chat):

Richmond, Va.: Just to keep it real, I’m a worker with a wife with cancer. I need to keep my job and my medical or lose everything. That’s the reality of the economy and our system and what needs to be addressed. Tax cuts only aren’t going to do it. It didn’t do it over the past 8 years, why they think it would do it now is beyond me.

Michael A. Fletcher: That is the argument Obama is making.

It really pisses me off that the discussion of the stimulus bill has devolved into some kind of a parlor game about who’s got better PR chops, whether it’s right to mess with Rush Limbaugh, and that Nancy Pelosi was wrong to make Republicans feel bad. I have no illusions that it will change things overnight, but I’ve yet to hear a single convincing argument that massive government spending isn’t our best bet right now.

It’s like Iraq all over again. For a long time, I thought that Iraq was about thousands of Americans dead or wounded, tens or hundreds of thousands Iraqis dead or wounded, 3.5 trillion flushed down the toilet, and absolutely no strategic gain of any kind. What I’ve learned is that it’s really about Fred Hiatt’s sense of justice and Peter Beinart’s self-esteem issues. Who knew?

RealityPost + Comments (119)

Stupid Tech Question

by | 79 Comments

This post is in: 

For reasons that are right now a complete mystery, when I try to view links to .pdf documents, the following happens:

I then have to click the “OK” twice, then go back and right click the link to the document, save it to my desktop, and then view it that way. It would be nice if the thing would just open the way it is supposed to and did as recently as a few days ago.

Any suggestions? How do I fix this? And no, I have not installed anything new, and this is the Vista machine.

I will ban anyone who even thinks about turning this thread into an Apple v. PC debate.

Stupid Tech QuestionPost + Comments (79)

Shovel Ready and Short-Sighted?

by | 139 Comments

This post is in: ,

Interesting piece in Popular Mechanics that last night was briefly on Memeorandum and then disappeared into the ether about the value of shovel ready jobs and how they might actually make our current infrastructure problem worse:

The term arrived with all the muscle and blue-collar authority of a bulldozer: “shovel-ready.” As in, infrastructure projects that are ready or almost ready to begin, the antithesis of some dimly imagined earmark or budget-sucking bridge to nowhere. Then-president-elect Obama used the term on a December 7th visit to NBC’s Meet the Press, describing the kinds of projects that would be supported by the upcoming economic stimulus bill. Soon the phrase was being repeated by policy-makers only an almost daily basis. Now the bill is here, with one version passed by the House, and another being debated by the Senate. “Shovel-ready” isn’t language used in the bill, but the House’s version, at least, does have an enforceable short-term focus: Only projects that are able to start construction within 90 days of selection are eligible for funding from the $90 billion set aside for infrastructure.

The programs that would meet the bill’s 90-day restriction are, for the most part, an unappealing mix of projects that were either shelved after being fully designed and engineered, and have since become outmoded or irrelevant, or projects with limited scope and ambition. No one’s building a smart electric grid or revamping a water system on 90 days notice. The best example of a shovel-ready project, and what engineers believe could become the biggest recipient of the transportation-related portion of the bill’s funding, is road resurfacing—important maintenance work, but not a meaningful way to rein in a national infrastructure crisis. “In developing countries, there are roads that are so bad, they create congestion, because drivers are constantly forced to slow down,” says David Levinson, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s civil engineering department. “That’s not the case here. If the road’s a little bit rougher, drivers will feel it, but that’s not going to cause you to go any slower. So the economic benefit of those projects is pretty low.”

Read the whole thing.

One of my complaints about the stimulus bill is that there seems to be very little in it that iswhat I would call a “great public works.” From my ignorant perspective (and I mean that in every sense of the term- I need one of the economists mentioned in the story below, although I am smart enough to know what I don’t know), with the TARP bailout, we sort of just pissed make-believe money away to patch up financial holes. With the stimulus bill, I understand a good bit of money is going to help balance state budgets (If you look at this map, you will see that every state is allocated a sum of money to cover at least 10% of budget shortfalls, which could explain why Republican governors are more supportive of the current bill than the Republicans in congress), to provide unemployment benefits, medical benefits, and so on, but it would be nice that if for 900 billion we get something tangible and lasting. If I knew that the money was going to go to the reconstruction of bridges, high-speed rail, the power grid, or alternative and nuclear energy, I would be far more supportive.

Maybe some of that is in there, but the bill is named the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” and it would be nice if there was some comprehensive plan to provide something that will stimulate the economy in the short run but provide long-term benefits. There are tons of things I can think of above and beyond some road construction here and there. Why is this not happening?

Shovel Ready and Short-Sighted?Post + Comments (139)

Jobs Report Released

by | 27 Comments

This post is in: 

600k jobs lost:

The country moved into its second year of uninterrupted job losses last month, with companies shedding another 598,000 jobs and the unemployment rate moving up to 7.6 percent, the Labor Department reported on Friday.

Economists had forecast a loss of 540,000 jobs and a unemployment rate of 7.5 percent.

Job losses were once again spread across both manufacturing and services industries, reinforcing the picture of an economy that is contracting at its fastest pace in decades.

Employers in the United States have shed jobs every month since January 2008, for an aggregate decline in payroll employment of 3.1 million.

Read the whole thing.

Jobs Report ReleasedPost + Comments (27)

Economic Illiteracy

by | 46 Comments

This post is in: 

Pretty solid piece by Steven Pearlstein in DougJ’s punching bag, the Washington Post:

Actually, what’s striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.

What really irks so many Republicans, of course, is that all the stimulus money isn’t being used to cut individual and business taxes, their cure-all for economic ailments, even though all the credible evidence is that tax cuts are only about half as stimulative as direct government spending.

You really should read the whole thing. By the way, Sen. Coburn is mentioned a couple of times, and of course he is apoplectic about the stimulus bill. As far as I am concerned, though, Coburn gets a pass- he is one of a handful of conservatives who actually was in a froth the past eight years while the Bush team was doubling the national debt.

As a side note, I do agree with the GOP on one thing- I don’t understand the rush. I understand the overall urgency of the situation, but I just don’t think passing it today versus next week or two weeks from now really matters in the grand scheme of things. Just get the bill right.

Economic IlliteracyPost + Comments (46)

Kings of the Stone Age

by | 49 Comments

This post is in: 

This is an interesting explanation of what’s gone on with the stimulus debate:

The outcome is not surprising. Obama had roughly 90 people working at his headquarters on Internet outreach and new technology projects, observes Joe Trippi, a Democratic operative who broke new ground on modern campaigning during Howard Dean’s 2004 Democratic primary bid.

Even with closet-size spaces, the White House can accommodate only about 200 or so people for jobs ranging from national security to health care reform to Internet guru.

The Obama team “built this incredible campaign and now they have these ridiculously primitive tools. The communication tools they mastered don’t exist in the White House. It’s like they are in a cave,” said Trippi.

“Then there are the masters of the Stone Age, and they are doing a good job,” he added.

Certainly, the Republican attack tools here have been crude and old-fashioned — go on talk shows and lie, get the wingnut radio to rant about pork, etc. And, I think to some extent, the media has gone a long with it all because they’re comfortable with this, having come of age in a post-Nixonian political environment dominated by bogus culture wars and mind-numbingly stupid right-wing agitprop. I can imagine Richard Cohen writing column title “Luddites 1, hopey internet gurus 0” or something like that.

But the whole idea that firing up the old wingnut distortion machine still constitutes a useful political strategy is dubious at best. It seems to me that most media assumptions made about politics stem from what I call the Chris Matthews cranky uncle theory of politics, whereby elections are decided by people like Chris Matthews’ angry uncle, who likes Republicans for “cultural reasons” and because he hates “government waste”, but who also may vote Democrat because he thinks they might dole out more money to him when he becomes unemployed and maybe because he used to be in a union.

But McCain won the cranky white bastard demographic handily last time and still got shellacked. Obama won two-thirds of the under 30 vote and two-thirds of the Latino vote. If that keeps happening — and there’s no reason to think it won’t — Republicans will keep losing elections badly. There just aren’t enough cranky white bastards anymore.

Is there anything about the Republican strategy on the stimulus that will help them expand beyond the cranky white bastard demo? I’m not sure. And, no, Twittering their crazy neo-Hooverist rantings isn’t going to change anything.

Speaking of cranky white bastards, Broder is doing a Q&A at noon.

Kings of the Stone AgePost + Comments (49)