I've wondered about Rodin's famous sculpture. Is he engaged in deep thought or sitting around wasting time? And why isn't he wearing pants? I ask the same of myself. Here we comment on well, mostly politics. Or we may just sit! If you like it, tell a friend. If not, tell us, but please read the GROUND RULES before you do.
The much anticipated House Republican “alternative budget” was rolled out today. It had a nice blue cover and an official looking logo, which House minority leader John Boehner kept waving around like, well, Neville Chamberlain. All 19 pages of it. AND NO NUMBERS.
Things got dodgy when Boehner was asked, to paraphrase an oldie but goodie: “Where’s the BEEF?” After much harrumph-ing Boehner and his cohorts had to concede that “details are forthcoming.”
Even the Obama Administration’s Mr. Nice Guy himself, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs got in on the fun:
"I think the party of 'NO' has become the party of 'NO NEW IDEAS.' The rhetoric inside the budget seems to be a road map for the failed policies that got us into this mess ... The administration's glad that the Republicans heard the president's call to submit an alternative. We just hope that next time it will contain actual numbers so somebody can evaluate what it means."
And then he said, with a sly grin: "There's one more picture of a windmill than there are charts of numbers. And there's exactly one picture of a windmill."
OUCH! When good guy Robert Gibbs rips you a new one without even breaking a sweat, House Repugs, you’ve reached a NEW LEVEL OF LOW. As Jonathan Alter said, “the first rule of holes is to STOP DIGGING.” Keep digging, Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Gingrich, Steele, Cheney, Palin, Jindhal, Ashcroft ...
STIMULUS, REPUBLICAN-STYLE: THE PARTY OF "NO" IS ALSO THE SHOVEL-READY PARTY!
Chicago has experienced a rash of teen shootings this year, in most cases the intended and unintended carnage of gang conflicts. One reader of the Chicago Tribune came up with a BRILLIANT solution. Bernice Arndt of Elmhurst, Illinois, gave us this gem:
There are far too many high school students being killed. Let the 10 Commandments be placed in every classroom. These are the words of God and a good reminder to all.
What a great idea! Why didn't I think of that! And as a side benefit, it would also remind the kids to stop carving and worshipping idols and having other gods before Yahweh. Sounds like a win-win to me. Bernice, enjoy the convention.
Thanks to Carlos for keeping things rolling. I am BURIED in a book deadline (and as Carlos could tell you, it will be a real page turner!) and have been nonstop workthink for the last couple weeks. I promise to return to my juvenile annoying self soon.
Why haven't you enlisted the PEOPLE'S ECONOMIST, Paul Krugman, to take a prominent position in your team of minor economic luminaries?
-- Is it that Lawrence Summers and "Slim" Tim Geithner are such insiders -- Geithner under Summers with Clinton, who signed the Republican banking deregulation that got us into this mess in the first place -- that only those so contaminated by the crisis know how to get us out of it? Does anyone get this perverse logic? Perhaps you'll explain it to us tomorrow night, Mr. President, that is, if those sheep in the WH Press corps will ask the question.
-- Is it a Harvard-Princeton thing? Stupid Ivy League turf jealousies (Summers was a Harvard president) like the jerks who feel entitled to office by virtue of membership in the sexist, fascist, juvenile Yale Skull and Bones fraternity where GWB learned the virtues of alcoholism and prankish irresponsible behavior of the type that got us into the Iraq war? What happened to all that scripture stuff about "childish things" being over?
-- Or is Paul Krugman overqualified by dint of his Nobel Prize in economics?
Or maybe it's plain spiteful pettiness because Professor Krugman continues to RIPGeithner's economic schemes. Any administration with Rham Emanuel in a position of prominence could get a lot of that.
President Obama just got his first full lesson in the Byzantine ways of Washington DC politics from the toxic storm over the outrageous AIG bonuses. Not surprisingly, the President is in California, as far away from our nation’s capital as he can be, outside of his native Hawaii and Palin’s Alaska. The question is: was he student or was he teacher?
The AIG recipients of $165 million of taxpayers’ largesse, er … protection pay for not driving our economy entirely to its knees – a million here, a billion there, and a trillion everywhere, after a while it’s real money – have inflamed the torch-and-pitchfork brigades to the boiling point with a little help from Stephen Colbert (below) and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley.
Apparently a student of the art of Japanese ritual suicide, Seppuku, the usually dull Senator Grassley was unusually entertaining with this colorful language:
"I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, 'I'm sorry,' and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."
Followed by this:
“It’s irresponsible for coporations to give bonuses at this time when they’re still sucking the tit of the taxpayer.”
The deceptively bland Senator Grassley, who once got into a shoving match with John McCain, may be a walking advertisement for campaign finance reform or one-term senators. He did not retract his words, rather, dismissed them as “rhetoric.” Way to go, Chuck!
If, as the President said, “Slim” Tim Geithner has “made all the right moves with a difficult hand,” then Slim’s cards are held very close to his vest. Lavishing praise on his embattled Treasury Secretary, President Obama noted that he’s had more challenges than any Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton. Perhaps, and yet … based on current performance, chances are not good that Geithner will get his face on a U.S. bill; that is, unless all the money being printed now turns into worthless “funny” money.
On the flip side, “Slim” Tim can be fairly confident that Vice President Biden, mercurial though he may be, will not challenge him to a duel. Whew …
Treasury’s reluctance to come clean on AIG’s bailout is understandable. It was, after all, triggered by a letter from the French finance minister to Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson, warning that European banks were so invested with AIG that they’d collapse in a domino downfall of the European financial system should AIG go down.
The FRENCH! Oh the Humanity!
Time was when the French were good friends and allies. Lafayette was like a son to Gen. Washington. Jefferson and Franklin succumbed to the charms of Paris. Wily old Ben had his way with many a female courtesan, and Jefferson fell in love in that idyllic city. But for today’s modern-day Tories -- the Republicans -- France represents everything our country shouldn’t be: effete, promiscuous, unclean, and socialist. O.M.G.!
Here’s the cold, hard reality:
The French finance minister was correct. Owing to its global tentacles, AIG is too big to fail, all populism, demagoguery, and hypocrisy aside. The results for our economy would be catastrophic.
Seizing upon understandable popular outrage over the AIG bonuses, suddenly “populist” Republicans have cynically set their sights on two targets: Tim Geithner and Democratic Senator Chris Dodd. First, because the not-so-hidden agenda of know nothing Republicans, bereft of ideas and alternatives, is to follow GOP Party Boss Rush Limbaugh’s prescription: “I hope he (President Obama) fails.” What better way to do this than to try to take down the popular president’s point man on the economy?
Second, Senator Dodd, who is facing a tough reelection campaign in 2010 as chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, is a prime target for Republicans. Fortunately for the Democratic Party, the RNC is in the grasping hands of a bumbling idiot named Michael Steele. And so the RNC this week issued a talking points memo trying to pin the AIG bonus debacle on Sen. Dodd because he acceded to administration requests to remove language from the stimulus bill that would have taxed bonuses from corporations receiving bailout funds, effectively preventing the AIG bonus debacle.
In retrospect, it would appear as if the Obama economic team’s insistence on this exception was politically tone-deaf, to say the least. Their policy, not political, arguments were cogent and, wouldn’t you know it, grown-up: Taxing corporate contracts in this way could be unconstitutional, with lawsuits that could cost taxpayers more, and, more importantly, threaten the legality of the entire stimulus bill. The Rush Limbaugh Republicans would like nothing more than to derail the President’s stimulus package by tying it up in the courts.
Senator Dodd, fortunately for us, is a grown-up. Given these concerns expressed by the President’s top economic advisers, he pulled the language from the bill and is taking his medicine, with bad publicity and charges of flip-flopping, that I predict he will overcome.
In the meantime, the very same amendment, which had been introduced by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Olympia Snowe, and passed with Senator Dodd’s approval, is being reintroduced as a standalone bill in the Senate. Senator Wyden beamed at this fortuitous development with his best all’s well that ends well TV face.
A similar measure just passed the House with a Republican vote split down the middle. Will anyone hazard a guess as to how many Republicans will vote for the Wyden-Snowe bill, the very same measure they are fist-pounding hysterically about now? Checkmate.
Somewhere Machiavelli must be smiling. Somewhere Rham Emanuel is smiling. And President Obama, well sir, as you swing through California, you’ve outdone the best legislative manipulator of all. Somewhere, President Lyndon Baines Johnson must be smiling too, and nodding his approval.
The paper formerly known as the Chicago Tribune gave us this gem from future Nobel Prize winner, Curt P. Schaller of Northbrook:
The Tribune, in part, supported President Obama's expansion of embryonic stem-cell research with the argument that unused fertility clinic embryos are usually destroyed—so why not use them for research. With this reasoning you could justify harvesting the organs of irreversibly comatose individuals. They will never recover; why let their organs waste away?
Just curious Curt--let's take those comatose patients you mention. How many of them will be incinerated unless implanted in a uterus? While you try to figure that one out:
I am assuming that since your title is "Law Department" that you must actually employ or retain "lawyers" who went to "law school." Given that assumption, I am writing about your company's statements that they are "legally obligated" to pay outrageous amounts used for hookers, greens fees, love nest hideaway apartments, whites-only club memberships, spa getaways and other boondoggles "retention bonuses."
I am also a "lawyer" who went to "law school." Like most "lawyers" who went to "law school," I took a first-year "law class" called "Contracts." Did you? If so, did you learn in said class that there are several colorable (albeit not necessarily successful) arguments that the company could make with regard to these agreements? Either in Contracts, or in a "law class" called "Remedies?" If so, you would learned that in such cases that money damages are the only remedy? After the greedy bastards claimants have carried the burden of proof as to both enforceability and damages?
In closing, esteemed colleagues, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY THESE BONUSES. Make the greedy bastards valued employees sue you for it. It may make them angry, and cost some legal money, but you look better and if you lose the nitwits who drove your bus off the cliff your loss is?
Note to a large portion of America, pictured below:
Do not give your baby girls cute names. No more Caylees. No more Haleighs. No more marrying your 17-year old "girlfriends" while "grieving." I am of course disturbed by how these freaks abuse and kill their children, but sadly..it is not news. Go away.
You mentioned the subject of merit pay for teachers. Did I happen to miss the development of a metric that can accurately and comparatively evaluate teachers? If I didn't miss anything, then you're talking NCLB II and the disastrous folly of teaching to the test..after test..after test.
Mr. President, children are not widgets, and education is not a commodity. Education is a cumulative, cooperative and socially dynamic process that cannot be defined, assessed or quantified by a scantron sheet. Sir, there are many things we can do to improve education, and I applaud you for your interest in an area where your predecessor only wanted to privatize and theocratize education. I'm sure you have many good ideas on the subject. This, however, isn't one of them.
It pisses me off that over 8 years have been wasted, literally wasted, because a foolish adminstration cared mored about frozen blastocytes that were to be discarded anyway than living, breathing and suffering children and adults. Finally, the Village Idiot is back home and sanity abides back in DC. I'm hope it isn't too late for everybody that was screwed by the fool.
If you're out and about on Chicago's north side (Belmont near Racine), stop in for a bite and a brew at Joey's Brickhouse restaurant (link in the sidebar). Good family-owned place, great friends to progressive causes and makers of a mean pizza. They are also getting screwed over by a recently bailed-out bank who loves playing hardball with small businesses. So if you're headed to the theater or out to a show at the Vic, or just to watch the games, stop in and see Joey and Greg.
This is one of those rare moments in our nation’s history in which panic about our economic survival, let alone short-term viability, is beginning to set in, driving the markets' slow death spiral. Wall Street reflects the growing anxiety felt on Main Street where credit remains frozen and every day looks like Christmas Day in March -- without the gifts.
President Obama has governed with a steady hand and his quiet confidence has won over the American people. As a student of history, he knows that in times of crisis the nation rallies to the leaders who have remained calm and steady in the midst of dark, swirling storms of uncertainty and fear. Men such as Lincoln, who led us through civil war and saved the union, and FDR, who brought the country back from the brink of Depression and dictatorship with unlimited faith in his “laughing revolution” facing down fear.
And yet, even as the stimulus money slowly makes its way into a moribund economy, there is apparent indecision within the Obama Administration about how to restore our financial system, and what to do with those so-called “toxic assets,” driving the markets’ freefall. Treasury Secretary Geithner has not inspired confidence in the markets with vague ever-changing plans, trial balloons, and a seeming lack of urgency. To make matters worse, the post of Undersecretary remains unfilled at Treasury, as well as other key positions, prompting some in the media to say Geithner is “home alone.”
Our faith in the President remains strong, but there is some unease that while he moves aggressively on the long-term future fronts of health care, energy, and green jobs, he is neglecting the short-term crisis of confidence in our markets that Tim Geithner, fairly or not, has the right prescription to rescue the financial system. In Britain, the government is moving swiftly to nationalize its banks, the latest being a 77% stake in the once venerable Lloyds of London. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman warns that if the Obama Administration doesn’t follow a similar strategy of temporary nationalization of the banks, and soon, our economy may sputter along not for months, or years, but for an entire decade or more, much like Japan’s “lost decade” of the 90s.
Short of outright Depression, this would be the worst possible outcome for our nation. President Obama faces unprecendented challenges not seen since the Great Depression: aside from our teetering economy, three wars sap our blood and treasure and there is the looming threat of a failed state on our southern border, as Mexico’s President Calderon wages a losing “existential war” against the drug cartels. This little publicized threat has already invaded our territory: Phoenix, Arizona, one of the cartels’ major drug conduits, hosts heavily armed paramilitary thugs roaming its streets and claims the unenviable distinction of being the kidnapping capital of the United States.
It’s always darkest before the dawn, so goes the song. In this can-do nation of eternal optimists our hopes rest heavily with a visionary president who looks to the future with confidence to lead us through the darkness of fear and despair into the first glimmers of a new day.
it would be difficult to imagine a more frightening haircut than the one I had yesterday.
I am not hesitant to spend money on high-end food, but on things like clothes and hair--I dress like a flood victim and go to discount hair salons. Yesterday I was greeted by a "stylist" I had not seen before. To re-use a comparison, it was like an encounter with a giant squid. You have heard they exist but they are rarely encountered in their natural habitat.
Making small talk, I note my rapidly graying hair and casually mention the story about how the prez is going gray only a few weeks into his term. She abruptly says, "I have no comment on that." OKAY. Then she asks what kind of work I do, and I should have made something up. Rodeo clown perhaps. I think gay porn star would have been less irritating to her than the combo of lawyer, writer and teacher. Because after all, and I quote, "the liberals won't let the schools use the kind of history books that teach the kids about God's plan for America."
Great, I thought. I'm hitting here 1/3 of the way into a haircut by a crazy woman armed with sharp objects. I'm dying to go Five Easy Pieces on her ("I'm listening to some cracker asshole who lives in a trailer park..."), but again, I remember that 1) right now, with one side of my hair cut, I look like an escaped mental patient and 2) as per above, crazy woman armed with sharp objects.
I made my feelings known to her, the salon manager and corporate (not to mention any names, but its initials are Great Clips.) Who thinks to rant like that to a total stranger? That is good for business how?
And see below about the proper uses for the stupid.
The great satirist Jonathon Swift proposed with tongue ever-so-firmly in cheek that the Irish could solve its hunger and poverty problems by selling their children for food (I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled...)
In the spirit of Mr. Swift, I have a similar, blindingly obvious, proposal. Let us use the stupid for fuel.
Think about it. It is an abundant and ever-renewable resource. The conversion of the stupid into fuel will both free us from the tyranny of dependence on foreign oil and greatly improve the quality of the gene pool. Stupidoleum will be available in three grades like gasoline. You will be able to purchase idiot (Michelle Bachmann), imbecile (Bill O'Reilly) or moron (Sean Hannity). Just think, soon stupid stations will be springing all across America, and we can all feel better about powering our cars and heating our homes with 100% American stupid.
I have a good candidate for enough stupid to run your mower all summer long. I give you Tom Sheridan of Mount Prospect, Illinois, who authored this gem in this morning's Chicago Tribune:
To those who voted for Barack Obama, please consider this. When Obama was elected, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9,625. When he was sworn into office, it closed at 7,949, and this week it closed at 6,763. This represents a 30 percent reduction in the value of U.S. companies and investor wealth, over half of it while he was in office. As you are standing in the unemployment line, waiting for your "change," I "hope" you'll remember who continues to bring you a new misery every day. You had better "believe" it.
I'm a historian by training. I look back to FDR and the nightmare he inherited from his predecessor. What did FDR do? He tried all kinds of things. Some worked, some didn't. He scrapped what didn't and tried something else.
Will President Obama's plan work? Hell if I know. Do I support him against personal interest? Yes, given that we as a couple (not me mind you) are the dreaded "rich" (barely) who will see their mortage interest deduction cut, etc. But what we know is that a decade of Republican Hooverism has wrecked this train, that the tax cut mantra doesn't work and can't ever work.
So the senior senator from Vermont wants a truth commission to examine the myriad misdeeds of the Bush years. A commission is an affront to the law and to conscience if it is done with broad grants of immunity. Prosecutions MUST remain on the table and be vigorously pursued, or the "truth" will be as whitewashed as Tom Sawyer's fence.
The senator recognized that there are many congressional committees that have or will look into various aspects of Bush criminality, but he called for a "super committee," pictured below, with wide-ranging authority and jurisdiction.
