(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com — click link for full-sized image)
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Now that Senator Elizabeth Warren (I still loving saying that) looks to be joining the Senate Banking Committee, here’s a look back to an interview she did with Charlie Pierce for Esquire before the election:
CHARLES P. PIERCE: How did we get back again to too big to fail? How did that happen?
ELIZABETH WARREN: I think it happened a couple of different ways. One of them was — and I think there was a miscalculation back in 2008, 2009 — a lot of people, at least I subscribed to it, a lot of people thought, Okay, we have 30 years of trying deregulation and to cut taxes and it has brought us to the biggest financial crisis since the great depression. So I thought what would happen over the next 50 years, we’d spend one year rewriting the financial rules and we’d be tough on the banks — as a country, we would be. And then the next 50 years, we’d concentrate on rebuilding America’s working families, creating opportunity and a better middle class, creating these opportunities for kids to rise out of poverty for all of our children to be included, because that’s what we do. I just truly believe that. I looked at that in 2008, 2009 and said, We tried the experiment…. Well, it just seemed so obvious to me! We had tried it, right? Coming out of the Great Depression to basically late ’70s, early 1980s, just almost every piece of legislation that passed through Congress was through the filter of: Does it strengthen the middle class? Does it create more opportunities for working families? And that was the litmus test. That switches in the early ’80s, when the Republican party says the role of government is to protect those who’ve already made it, let them keep more of the money, let them keep more power. And so we tried that for 30 years and ended up with an economy that almost ran over a cliff and crashed into the stone age….
This was not a natural disaster. The crash of 2008 was manmade. And that’s important because it has both halves in it. If we’re not careful, we create more problems,and it also means though it’s within our capacity to prevent this from happening. There were no financial crashes between the 1930s and the late 1980s until the deregulation started again. The relevance of this is what I think is so interesting about this: you know, there was a financial panic. They used to call it “panic,” roughly about every 15 years from the 1790s forward, and it was the insight in the 1930s that we can do better than this. We can put some basic rules of the market: transparency, a level playing field, which were the SEC rules; the FDIC, you know, to make it safe to put money in banks. And we bought 50 years of economic peace. But it’s always the case that the financial institutions, they’re always looking for the chink in the wall. They want everyone else to follow the rules, but, you know: Can they get one little advantage? Can they get one little exception?…
It is also a comfort to me that Nancy Pelosi is still doing her usual fine job of playing Bad Cop for the Obama administration, per Greg Sargent:
It’s a perennial fear among liberals: In the quest for a fiscal cliff deal, the White House and Democrats will ultimately acquiesce to GOP demands to raise the Medicare eligibility age. But one Democrat is drawing a line against this possibility: Nancy Pelosi.
“I am very much against that, and I think most of my members are,” Pelosi said in an interview with me today. “I don’t see any reason why that should be in any agreement.”
The argument against raising the eligibility age is that it would leave hundreds of thousands of seniors without health coverage and wouldn’t raise that much money for deficit reduction, since many of those seniors would go into Medicaid or the Obamacare exchanges, offsetting savings. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that it would save $125 billion over 10 years.
Pelosi echoed this complaint succinctly, saying: “Show me the money.” She also said flatly that she didn’t believe raising the eligibility age would be in the final deal, despite GOP demands: “I don’t anticipate that it will be in it.”…
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What’s on the agenda for another Friday in the post-election, pre-inauguration December doldrums?
JGabriel
We need MORE women in the legislature. That is all.
PeakVT
Teh Googel really loves BJ – the post title is already ranked #2 for the phrase “I Love A Woman Who Knows What’s What.”
TheMightyTrowel
@PeakVT: with your comment it’s now #1
WereBear
We don’t need more Republican women. Did anyone ever find Governor Brewer?
Keith G
I find her objectionable.
PeakVT
@TheMightyTrowel: Our googlebomb-fu must be very strong.
PeakVT
@WereBear: She went to Afghanistan, apparently.
amk
@PeakVT:
As opposed to the fake guns in her own backyard batshit crazy state ?
mai naem
@WereBear: She went to Afghanistan and Kuwait and gave a speech at some oil company event. She had a press gaggle before she left and a reporter asked her if she thought global warming was manmade. It was the last question. Her handler pulled after she BS’d through the question(like she had no clue to what she should say) and then walked to the back of the reporter and kind of tapped/lightly punched him on the arm(shades of finger wagging?) and asked him what that question was for. The beeyotch has some alchohol issues. Apparently her nickname around the State Capitol is Otis after the drunk on the Andy Griffith Show.
She is either the only or the only one of two non college educated governors in the country. FYI her last race was against a Harvard educated lawyer, former Mayor of Phx and son of a former governor. My state is the stoopid but not as stoopid as Floriduh. At least we didn’t vote for a Medicare fraudster.
amk
The survey found that “substantial levels of misinformation were present in the daily consumers of all news sources.” But Fox News viewers were significantly more likely to be misinformed than those who get their news from other sources. And, greater exposure to Fox News increased the degree to which viewers were misinformed.
This is not simply a matter of partisan bias. People who vote Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to be misinformed than those who did not watch it – though by a lesser margin than those who vote Republican. Those who got their news from NPR, CNN, or MSNBC were better informed on most – but not all – of the issues in the survey.
teh survey itself.
JGabriel
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PeakVT:
Whoa, Jan Brewer has a secret Pashtun male mistress?
.
BruceFromOhio
@amk: Clearly that poll is skewed. If I adjust the results to be unskewed, I bet I get a different result.
Today is work, and then the brewing of beer, along with the consumption of yummy foodstuffs and more beer.
NonyNony
@BruceFromOhio:
Actually that’s a poll where the measurements are skewed because the pollsters are using what “economists” actually say as their ground truth for correctness about the economy. And everyone knows that economists are academics and academics are liberals and therefore birth certificate.
If you polled people and used Fox News at the ground truth for correctness, then the poll would unskew the way it should and show that Fox News viewers are better informed than anyone else.
So the numbers need to be adjusted to better reflect this because as we all know, whenever there is a difference of fact the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Elizabelle
David Axelrod looking somewhat peaked.
About to lose his moustache on Morning Joe.
(Simulcast on Today; how tacky.)
jeffreyw
Let’s Remember the Day, folks. Big anniversary of that infamous attack on Pearl by those German Bastards.
1badbaba3
So Afghanistan is the new Appalachian Trail, huh? Never would have thought ‘Ol Bonefinger had it in her.
Oops. That didn’t come out right.
Oo’er, neither did that.
MikeJ
@JGabriel: Hiking the Khyber Pass.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jeffreyw: Good thing we went to war against Mexico in response.
aimai
@amk:
Uh…I’m looking for the emoticon or the graphic design sign for I just bet that Democrats who watch Fox News are misinformed.
BruceFromOhio
@NonyNony:
The funny-sad thing about this statement is, I understand exactly what you mean.
@jeffreyw: We are brewing six different beers tonight, naming them after battleships that were sunk or damaged. I expect many toasts to those who served.
1badbaba3
@Elizabelle: I thought he won that bet.
maryQ
Nothing profound to say here, but on Tuesday I flew from Boston to DC, And before the flight I was washing my hands in the ladies room and I looked over at the hand dryer and who is standing there drying her hands but Senator Elect Elizabeth Warren. I blurted some incoherent “Thank you, I am a big supporter” kind of thing, and she said Thank You to me as well. Then she was on my flight, sitting in coach.
Then I got to my conference and Bobo was the keynote speaker. There must be some kind of metaphore for this experience.
Omnes Omnibus
@maryQ: Chance encounter in airport restroom > Bobo speech. I can believe that.
Citizen_X
@amk:
And therefore, Afghanistan is a polite society, right?
@mai naem:
Oh my, that’s awesome.
Baud
Texas: Where fucking becomes a political statement
Elizabelle
WaPost publishes eye witness account of aftermath of Pearl Harbor today.
The Red Pen
I really encourage people to take a look at the “III Citidel” crap from “The Best HOA Evah” yesterday. It really illustrates how infantile wingnuts really are.
When I was a little kid, we would dream about our perfect private community. It would probably be a lot like Neverland. Now that I’m older, I see the annoying practicalities? How are you going to fund your own private amusement park and exotic animal zoo? I know! We’ll get a rock star… oooooh… he’s a little molest-y… that’s a downside.
At least read this blog post explaining how the residents of Benewah county will greet them as liberators. At the end of the list of benefits to the community:
Assuming the Citidel doubles the population, what kind of business are you going to open in a place with an average population density of 12ppl/mi2 and a median income of $31K? An Apple store?
One of the locals pointed out that this is a place where people shoot at census workers and a developer was run out of town after trying to get permits to build just 25 new homes. They don’t like outsiders. Of course, the wingnuts are like, “We’re just like you!” Small-town people love to hear that shit. A local responds:
Dork
Japan hit by a 7.3 shaker
tokyo ex-pat
@Dork: It wasn’t pleasant. It started out bumping up and down, then did the side shake, and seemed to go on forever. Too reminiscent of the big one on 3/11. It really shook up everyone’s nerves.
Raven
@Elizabelle: Interesting piece wasn’t it?
JPL
@Elizabelle: My father was on the Nevada.
Ann Rynd
7.7%
Patricia Kayden
Just heard on the Bill Press show that the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.7% with 146,000 jobs created last month.
Yay!!
Raven
@JPL: My dad came out of the Y in San Diego and the news flashed. He was on a destroyer and they put to sea 12 hours later with some crew members who had been in the Navy for one day. The escorted a carrier to Pearl, the first day of 4 years in the Pacific War.
Litlebritdifrnt
Good on Nancy. You know it always pisses me off when people talk about raising the eligibility age for social security and medicaid because it makes blanket assumptions just because people are living longer. Its fine if you have had a desk job all your life (like a lawyer for instance) but what about a waitress that has been on her feet for 40 damn years? Or a construction worker? They never seem to take into account that people who do manual labor might want to take a seat on their front porch once they hit 65.
jurassicpork
One of the biggest political pleasures of my life was meeting Elizabeth Warren in my town, Hudson, MA, just four days before the election. She’s genuinely a very warm lady and you just got the sense she wanted to go to Washington to do something and not just to be something.
Meanwhile, on the homefront: Here’s my reaction to getting the first professionally-printed and bound copy of one of my novels in the mail. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected.
RobertDSC-PowerMac 466
The Matriarch of Mayhem is about to do some serious damage. Go Elizabeth!
JPL
@Raven: My brother still has the flag from the Nevada. My father was career Navy and retired after twenty-eight years in the service. My parents had five children, some born in VA, some born in CA. After he retired he didn’t speak much of the war at home, although he enjoyed getting together with friends to talk about it.
Suffern ACE
@Litlebritdifrnt: even people with desk jobs start to have health issues in middle age that start to make them very undesirable hires, especially for self insured employers.
Amir Khalid
@1badbaba3:
Where did you learn to say such wicked things? Can they teach me too?
Raven
@JPL: The “Ensign”. My dad was a plank owner from the Crosby, APD 17, tiny little thing in relation to a BB. He was a mustang, enlisted swabbie in WWII, graduated from Illinois and took a commission and went to Korea. He tried to go back on active duty during the Cuban crisis and they told him he was too old. Ornery cuss that he was, he resigned his commission! We lived in Norfolk, North Chicago where he was the Special Services officer for Great Lakes and then California too.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Am I alone in thinking she has her eye’s on higher office. It’s the new Sarah Palin.
JPL
@Raven: That’s neat. I’m going to find my dad’s note because the Crosby sounds familiar although it might be just from reading so much.
He retired when I was in first grade but he made a list for me on the ships he served on and their locations. Now all I have to do is locate it.
flukebucket
Erick the Red is filling in for Boortz today and it is funny as hell listening to him trying to explain Politics 101 to that 27% audience.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
I don’t know very much about Jan Brewer, but it seems unlikely that she could find the support to run for president.
Raven
@JPL: One interesting thing about the Nevada is that she served as fire support on D-Day. Most of the battlewagons stayed in the Pacific.
Mark S.
@Amir Khalid:
From what I’ve read about her, she seems to make Sarah Palin seem like competent, level-headed governor.
Raven
@JPL: It was a small ship in a big war.
ding dong
@Patricia Kayden: but on the blurb i heard on AP BLS said that its because people have stopped looking not just because of job creation.
JoyfulA
@The Red Pen: I saw it noted somewhere that much of the county and part of the town is in a reservation, which is certainly unlikely to welcome this type of people.
Roger Moore
@BruceFromOhio:
So is “Arizona” going to be pale and bitter?
Schlemizel
@JPL:
My dads brother was standing guard as a US Marine on 12/7. At his funeral a few years back my aunt told us he would get out of bed on December 7th rub his hands together & say “Gee, feels like a little nip in the air today”. He thought that was hilarious.
She also told us that he stood guard after the attack & could hear guys tapping SOS from the sunken ships. I can’t imagine how that would screw with your head to have to hear that & not be able to do anything about it.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
Senator Larry Craig approves this message.
handsmile
Second best news of the day so far (after unemployment rate dropping to 7.7%):
“Report: Washington Post Paywall Likely in 2013”
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/report-washington-post-paywall-likely-in-2013?ref=fpb
For those of us who eagerly wish for the demise of Kaplan Test Prep Daily and its now irredeemably toxic contribution to national political discourse, this is a report to break out the hats and hooters.
Because a business model that suggests that profitability will result from having online readers pay for the swill of Krauthammer/Will/Gerson/Lane/Rubin/Samuelson/Marcus/Cohen/Kagan/Thiessen/Hiatt et al as well as to increase the cost of the daily print newspaper at a time of plummeting sales and subscriptions is an invention of sheer genius to expedite that desired result.
Put this once proud and vital newspaper out of its misery as fast as possible.
Karmus
@Roger Moore:
My keyboard almost got a coffee shower.
Amir Khalid
@handsmile:
On the other hand, Eugene Robinson, Greg Sargent and … well okay, those two, will also wind upbehind the firewall.
The Dangerman
West Coaster here, barely awake…
…but what does C.R.E.A.M. mean?
Schlemizel
@The Dangerman:
https://balloon-juice.com/balloon-juice-lexicon-a-h/#C
...now I try to be amused
@amk:
What about The Daily Show and The Colbert Report? There was a survey years ago that found viewers of those shows to be the best informed of all.
Mr. Longfgorm
I have complete brain lust for Elizabeth Warren. My brain wants to gay-marry her brain and do a thought piece. My brain wants to bring the gray matter that matters. O, be my brain teaser!
piratedan
@PeakVT: good use of our taxpayer dollars there…. and they complain when Obama returns to Hawaii for a vacation… sheesh. Maybe she was looking for a good place to deposit Sheriff Joe, I imagine he would do well in Karzai’s regime.
...now I try to be amused
@maryQ:
I was boarding a DC-to-Minneapolis flight and I saw Senator Paul Wellstone greeting people in coach. I was shy and didn’t introduce myself, alas. That was the year he died.
WaterGirl
@JPL: That was my thought exactly!
The Dangerman
@Schlemizel:
Thanks; I’d completely forgotten to check the Local Lexicon. Barely functioning, so…
…MORE COFFEE, STAT! I may need an IV caffeine drip this morning.
CaseyL
@Roger Moore:
That one’s gotta hurt :)
Warren will be one of the new faces that makes me really look forward to the next congressional session. Fewer Blue Dogs, definitely fewer ‘Thugs.
The President has stated he will not play hostage-taking with the debt ceiling, but has not said what he’ll do instead. He won’t invoke the 14th Amendment, and the trillion-$ coin idea is more stunt than policy (not to mention a truly horrible precedent; imagine if Dubya had pulled something like that). The best guess offered is that he’ll go ahead and shut down most government functions.
In view of what the 113th Congress will be like, I wonder if that is the idea. Let the 112th usher itself out as *the* most destructive, nihilistic Congress since the pre-Civil War era. Let the GOP own that dead horse… and then see what the new Congress is made of.
Schlemizel
@The Dangerman:
I eat the grounds out of the grinder – mainlining! It eliminates the middle man 8-{D
...now I try to be amused
If the administration can arrange to shut down government functions so as to cause disproportionate pain to the districts of the worst Republican offenders, that would be poetic justice.
Schlemizel
@CaseyL:
Hey! If you thought 112 was bad wait until you see what 1-1-3 can screw up!
Not sure if its been mentioned here & I missed it but there is a move active to get Boner tossed out. I forget the group but they claim they have some members of the clown posse that will vote ‘present’ rather than for Boner there by not letting him be Speaker. They have no alternative planned so you know this will go great for them.
They are much not happy with TruConservs(TM) not getting plum assignments
The Red Pen
@JoyfulA:
This was their comment on that:
I’m sure that the native’s experience with crazy white isolationists preaching fairness and honor will make them instant allies. Don’t forget to offer some shiny beads, morons.
Southern Beale
Elizabeth Warren joining the banking committee was one of my weekly good news items. I’m still pinching myself that she got elected to the Senate. This is icing on the cake.
Some other good news from the week is here.
Roger Moore
@The Red Pen:
Self-awareness, they name is not wingnut.
kerFuFFler
@Baud:
So now the Repubs want to restore funding for birth control. I guess they figured out those babies are going to end up voting dem down the line…
JPL
@Raven: My father spoke often about the cook (a black man) on the ship being the bravest man that day. Rescuing many from a fire. I wish I could remember his name.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Baud:
There’s a reason Molly Ivins called the Texas Lege the National Laboratory for Bad Government. If there’s a way to do it wrong, we’ll find it.
Southern Beale
Speaking of women politicians, I found this headline really odd over at ABC News:
They’re talking about Nikki Haley, running for Jim DeMint’s Senate seat.
Hikki Haley is not African American. She’s Indian American. Although according to an old MoJo piece, she considers herself white. But WTF?
OH never mind, I see they are referring to Rep. Tim Scott. Scratch that.
Original Lee
@Litlebritdifrnt: Or nurses or firemen or policemen. One of the pension funds for the nurses around here went belly up when Lehmann Bros. crashed, and many nurses who had been retired had to go back to work to make ends meet. A neighbor who was a surgical nurse told me she thought it wouldn’t be too bad, but at 73 to stand for the length of some of those procedures was very difficult.
YellowJournalism
@Baud:
Gee, who would have thought that?
Litlebritdifrnt
@Original Lee:
Exactly there is a real difference between occupations but the people spouting the “raise the retirement age” never take any of that into account.
Also it has always been a little suspicious to me that every time the life expectancy of black males goes up they somehow magically raise the retirement age to that age. Poor sods end up working all their lives to keep little old white ladies comfy. (And I am a little white lady getting older by the day).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@maryQ:
From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
Roger Moore
@YellowJournalism:
I suspect that this is actually news to the Texas wingnuts. They genuinely believe that poor people are just moochers who could afford X if they weren’t dead set on getting it for free. Discovering that taking something away from them actually makes them go without rather than magically getting the resources to pay for it themselves is genuinely news to them.
handsmile
@Amir Khalid:
The great loss would be access to Dana Priest, the best investigative reporter employed by any newspaper in this country. Also I would miss reading Harold Meyerson, a great and greatly underappreciated columnist who writes almost exclusively about labor and working/middle-class economic issues.
Greg Sargent has become a reliably shrewd and well-sourced political analyst but he may migrate to another publication. Rumors persist that Ezra Klein will depart to host a MSNBC program.
As for Eugene Robinson, frankly I consider him a fickle and shallow advocate of liberal causes and positions. His Kaplan columns strike the right notes, but when given an opportunity to amplify those views to a wider television audience his remarks, both in substance and style, seem tailored to the prevailing opinion in the studio. A very different Eugene Robinson appears among the Sunday morning bobble-heads, the Morning Joe frat crew, or as a comrade of Rachel Maddow.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Slow hanging curveball right over the plate… I am surprised it took this long for some one to take a swing at it.
EconWatcher
@handsmile:
Ezra’s too pretty to stay in print media (and I say this as a straight guy). If he has a passable voice (I’ve never heard him speak), he’ll make out like a bandit in TV.
liberal
@CaseyL:
Nonsense.
First, it’s certainly a radical policy, but one necessitated by a radical faction.
Second, radical does not equal horrible. AFAICT, all that happens is that federal debt held by the fed is replaced by a token. It’s not like the resulting “money” is somehow dumped into circulation. (Not to mention that the relationship of the money supply to “government printed” money empirically appears much more subtle than textbooks would indicate.)
The total amount of federal spending would still be set by Congress anyway, which is a key point in this whole screwup to begin with.
Roger Moore
@liberal:
And so what if it were? It would be absolutely great if we could get drive inflation up from where it is right now. Inflation moderately above the 2% long-term target would be just the thing to help debtors, discourage businesses from sitting on giant cash hoards, and drive down the dollar to make our exports more competitive on the global market.
Schlemizel
@JPL:
There is a story from COrregidore of a handful of ships cooks (so they would have been black though its never mentioned in the stories) that drove an entire company of Japanese Marines off the beach with a bayonet charge.
But you know, them coloreds won’t fight a lick – thats why we can’t have them in combat units
Schlemizel
@Roger Moore:
The problem with driving up inflation right now is that it would devalue wages even more. After 30 years of no gains we would slide backwards even faster.
Normally I would agree that the tiny rate of inflation we have had for 30 years could easily be bumped up. But worers have not gotten a dime of the increased productivity over this period so it would hit us harder
Origuy
@JPL:
Was it Doris “Dorie” Miller? He served briefly on the Nevada, but was on the West Virginia the day of the attack. The first African-American to receive the Navy Cross.
Howlin Wolfe
Why don’t I hear about these things on the Nice Polite Republican news? All I hear about there is what are the teaparty pukes going to do.
El Cid
@liberal: It would also be cool if they made it a really, really big coin.
Ellyn
She’s probably drying out in some high end retreat courtesy of Medicare.
Wolfdaughter
@maryQ:
Easy. “From the sublime to the ridiculous”.