Tuesday Reads

Posted: August 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Global Financial Crisis, Hillary Clinton, Medicaid, Medicare, morning reads, psychology, religious extremists, Republican presidential politics, Social Security, The Great Recession, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 43 Comments

Good Morning!! I’m switching to strong coffee this morning, because I’ve had the sleepies for the past few days. It’s been really damp and humid here, so maybe that’s the reason. All I know is I keep dozing off, and I don’t like it! Anyway, let’s get to the news before I nod out again.

A few days ago, commenter madaha turned me on to an article about a fascinating new book that just came out last week. The book is called A First Rate Madness. The author is Nassir Ghaemi, a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University. From Salon:

Nassir Ghaemi, an author and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, argues that many of history’s most famous and admired figures, from Churchill to FDR to Gandhi, showed signs of mental illness — and became better leaders because of it. Ghaemi bases his argument on historical records and some of the latest experimental studies on depression and mania, arguing that mild symptoms can actually enhance qualities like creativity or empathy.

After reading the piece in Salon, I immediately ordered the book and I’ve been dipping into it over the past couple of days.

So far, I’ve read the chapter on FDR, and I’m going to read about JFK next. According to Ghaemi, both of these men had hyperthymic personalities: basically, they were upbeat, enthusiastic, energetic, and creative, because they tended to be somewhat hypomanic (a milder, less disabling form of the mania experienced by those with bipolar disorder). In addition, both FDR and JFK suffered from serious physical illnesses–FDR from polio and JFK from Addison’s disease. These illnesses and other adversities these two men faced enabled them to develop empathy for the suffering of ordinary people–even though they were both from privileged backgrounds. Ghaemi argues that people with slightly abnormal personalities are better leaders–particularly in times of crisis when great creativity, empathy, and resilience are needed. According to Ghaemi:

Many people who experience traumas [like terrorism or war] don’t develop PTSD or other illnesses. So the question is, what keeps those people from getting sick? What creates resilience? The psychological research suggests that personality is a major factor. Resilience seems to be associated with mild manic symptoms, but you can’t develop resilience unless you’ve already experienced trauma. Many of these leaders faced adversity in their childhood and adulthood, and that seemed to make them better able to handle crises. It’s like a vaccine. You get exposed to a little bit of a bacteria then you can handle major infections and I think trauma and resilience and hyperthymic personality seem to follow a similar path.

Ghaemi does not discuss Obama’s personality in the book, but Salon interviewer Thomas Rogers asked the author whether Obama may be too “sane” to be a successful President in our current time of crisis.

Obama’s persona is that of a very sane, rational person who is good at compromise — which is definitely how he sold himself during the debt ceiling crisis. Do you think Obama’s sanity is hurting his abilities as a leader?

I didn’t discuss Obama and other current leaders in the book, because there are documentation and confidentiality issues, and a lot of speculation would have to happen. That said, Obama has said himself that he thinks he’s very normal. This no-drama-Obama persona is meant to reassure people about his normality, but I think that when you look at his memoir there’s a sense of a much more complex and profound person who may have experienced a great deal of anxiety and maybe some depression growing up, being half-white half-African-American. The [sane] parts of his psychology may hinder his leadership in terms of not being creative, and that may not be as useful in a crisis. But to whatever extent he’s not fully completely average, he’ll have some psychological reservoir to draw on to think more creatively and realistically about the current situation.

I wish I could agree that Obama might learn to deal with the nation’s difficulties, but so far he doesn’t seem to learn anything from experience. Most of the leaders that Ghaemi discusses suffered from mood disorders–depression or bipolar disorder. Obama, on the other hand, appears to have a different kind of disorder–either Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder, or both.

Dakinikat alerted me to an interview with Ghaemi on NPR. I haven’t listened to it yet, but here’s the link.

Getting back to current news, this coming Saturday, Rick Perry plans to announce that he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination.

Rick Perry intends to use a speech in South Carolina on Saturday to make clear that he’s running for president, POLITICO has learned.

According to two sources familiar with the plan, the Texas governor will remove any doubt about his White House intentions during his appearance at a RedState conference in Charleston.

It’s uncertain whether Saturday will mark a formal declaration, but Perry’s decision to disclose his intentions the same day as the Ames straw poll — and then hours later make his first trip to New Hampshire — will send shock waves through the race and upend whatever results come out of the straw poll.

Immediately following his speech in South Carolina, Perry will make his New Hampshire debut at a house party at the Portsmouth-area home of a state representative, Pamela Tucker, the Union Leader reported Monday. Tucker was among the Granite Staters who went to Texas last week to encourage Perry to run.

What can I say? This is ghastly news. Think Progress is reporting that besides being a fundamentalist religious fanatic, Perry shares a similar problem to that of fellow wingnut Michele Bachmann–he has taken lots of Federal money in farm subsidies–$80,000, to be exact.

Verizon workers have gone out on strike–45,000 of them.

More than 45,000 workers from New England to Virginia went on strike just after midnight today at Verizon Communications. Since bargaining began July 22, Verizon has refused to move from a long list of concession demands. As the contract expired, Verizon, a $100 billion company, still was looking for $1 billion in concessions from 45,000 workers and families. That’s about $20,000 in givebacks for every family, nearly 100 concessionary proposals remained on the table.

This despite Verizon’s 2011 annualized revenues of $108 billion and net profits of $6 billion. At the same time, Verizon Wireless just paid its parent company, Vodaphone, a $10 billion dividend. Meanwhile, Verizon’s five top executives received $258 million over the past four years.

The workers, members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the Electrical Workers (IBEW), say they are striking until Verizon “stops its Wisconsin-style tactics and starts bargaining seriously.”

According to Reuters, both sides are accusing each other of bad acts:

The second day of a strike by Verizon workers turned ugly after union representatives accused managers of injuring three workers while driving past picket lines, and the phone giant complained of a spike in network sabotage cases.

[….]

Verizon complained of network sabotage cases in the same statement where it said some picketing workers were unlawfully blocking Verizon managers’ access to work centers.

A spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America, representing 35,000 of the strikers, said the union “does not condone illegal action of any kind.” The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, representing 10,000 strikers, also said members “are expected to obey the law.”

However, the CWA said some picketing workers were hurt by Verizon managers’ cars and that one worker was knocked unconscious when he was clipped by the mirror of a manager’s car that was speeding past a picket line.

Dean Baker had a great piece at Truthout yesterday: The Economic Illiterates Step Up the Attack on Social Security and Medicare

The nonsense with the S&P downgrade is yet another distraction – after four months of haggling over the debt ceiling idiocy – from the real problem facing the country: a downturn that has left 25 million people unemployed, underemployed or out of the labor force altogether. Tens of millions of people are seeing their career hopes and family lives wrecked by the prospect of long-term unemployment.

The incredible part of this story is that the people who are responsible are all doing just fine, and most of them are still making policy. Furthermore, they are using their own incompetence as a weapon to argue that we have to take even more money from the poor and middle class, this time in the form of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

The basic story is that the economy needs demand. The housing bubble generated more than $1.4 trillion in annual demand through the construction and consumption that it spurred. Now that this demand is gone, there is nothing to replace it. President Obama’s stimulus was replaced by some of the lost demand, but it was nowhere near large enough. We tried to fill a $1.4 trillion hole in annual demand with around $300 billion in annual stimulus in 2009 and 2010. In 2011, most of this boost has been exhausted and the economy is coming to a near standstill.

If we had serious people in Washington, they would be talking about jobs programs, about rebuilding the infrastructure, about work sharing, and any other measure that could get people back to work quickly. However, instead of talking about ways to re-employ people, the fixation in Washington is reducing the deficit.

We’ve heard these arguments again and again (especially from our own Dakinikat), but they bear repeating until the ignorant Villagers get the message.

Remember the “rape cops” in New York–the ones who were found not guilty recently? Well, one of them finally got a tiny bit of justice. A judge sentenced Kenneth Moreno to one year in prison for official misconduct. But then another judge freed him.

Disgraced ex-cop Kenneth Moreno didn’t stay in jail for long.

A couple hours after an angry Manhattan judge flat-out called Moreno a liar Monday and dispatched him to Rikers Island to being a year-long prison sentence, an appeals court judge sprung him.

Moreno, acquitted in May of raping a bombed fashion executive while his partner served as lookout, was released on $125,000 bail by Appeals Court Judge Nelson Roman so he can appeal his conviction on official misconduct charges.

It was a startling turnabout for the 43-year-old Moreno, who Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro ordered remanded.

I sure hope he ends up serving at least some jail time.

Dakinikat sent me this article on a report (PDF) called How to Liberate American from Wall Street Rule. Here are the report’s basic recommendations:

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule spells out details of a six-part policy agenda to rebuild a sensible system of community-based and accountable financial services institutions.

1. Break up the mega-banks and implement tax and regulatory policies that favor community financial institutions, with a preference for those organized as cooperatives or as for-profits owned by nonprofit foundations.

2. Establish state-owned partnership banks in each of the 50 states, patterned after the Bank of North Dakota. These would serve as depositories for state financial assets to use in partnership with community financial institutions to fund local farms and businesses.

3. Restructure the Federal Reserve to function under strict standards of transparency and public scrutiny, with General Accounting Office audits and Congressional oversight.

4. Direct all new money created by the Federal Reserve to a Federal Recovery and Reconstruction Bank rather than the current practice of directing it as a subsidy to Wall Street banks. The FRRB would have a mandate to fund essential green infrastructure projects as designated by Congress.

5. Rewrite international trade and investment rules to support national ownership, economic self-reliance, and economic self-determination.

6. Implement appropriate regulatory and fiscal measures to secure the integrity of financial markets and the money/banking system.

Finally, in case you missed it, I want to call your attention to this article that commenter The Rock linked to last night: Hillary Told You So

At a New York political event last week, Republican and Democratic office-holders were all bemoaning President Obama’s handling of the debt-ceiling crisis when someone said, “Hillary would have been a better president.”

“Every single person nodded, including the Republicans,” reported one observer.

At a luncheon in the members’ dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, a 64-year-old African-American from the Bronx was complaining about Obama’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the implacable hostility of congressional Republicans when an 80-year-old lawyer chimed in about the president’s unwillingness to stand up to his opponents. “I want to see blood on the floor,” she said grimly.

A 61-year-old white woman at the table nodded. “He never understood about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’” she said.

Looking as if she were about to cry, an 83-year-old Obama supporter shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in him,” she said. “It’s true: Hillary is tougher.”

Go read the whole thing. That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about? Please share.

Thursday Reads: A Poverty Tour, Confidence Fairies, A-Rod, D.B. Cooper, and Wingnut Censors

Posted: August 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Crime, Democratic Politics, poverty, religion, Republican politics, Surreality, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

Good Morning!! Let me get a sip of my breakfast tea, and then I’ll share what I found in the news today.

After doing his level best to wreck the U.S. economy, President Obama headed to Chicago to celebrate his birthday and rake in some campaign donations.

Taking a brief hometown respite Wednesday night, President Barack Obama used a 50th birthday bash in Uptown to raise re-election money from a friendly crowd as he sought to recharge a presidency showing signs of scars from Washington’s partisan battles.

The president told supporters at the Aragon Entertainment Center that the nation doesn’t have time to “play these partisan games.”

“I hope we can avoid another self-inflicted wound like we saw over the last couple weeks,” Obama said of the recent debt-ceiling gridlock.

Although Obama doesn’t turn 50 until Thursday, his visit symbolized presidentially and politically a need to turn the corner following weeks of bruising debate over raising the nation’s debt ceiling and cutting the country’s deficit.

Awww, poor guy. Screwing the poor, the elderly, baby boomers, and the working- and middle-classes must be really exhausting.

Meanwhile, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are heading up a “poverty tour”

to highlight what they see as deficiencies in the Obama’s administration and to force the president and Congress to pay more attention to poor people who have been hit hardest by the recession.

Smiley called the legislation, signed by the president, “a declaration of war on the poor.”

“I don’t understand how the president could agree to a deal that does not extend unemployment benefits, does not close a single corporate loophole and doesn’t raise the taxes on the rich,” said Smiley. “The poor are being rendered more and more invisible in this country. Nobody, not the president, not the Republicans in Congress, is speaking to the truth of the suffering of everyday people.”

Paul Krugman was on Keith Olbermann’s show last night. I keep forgetting to watch that! Krugman discussed a number of things related to the debt ceiling bill, including Newt Gingrich’s remark that the Obama’s is “the Krugman Presidency.” It is to laugh!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Today, Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney said there won’t be a double-dip recession and the economy is going to grow.

He blamed the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, higher energy prices, default worries in Europe and recently resolved uncertainty over raising America’s borrowing limit. Carney said, “We believe the economy will continue to grow.”

Al-righty then! I guess we have nothing to worry about.

At his blog, Krugman responded that “hope is not a plan.”

Of course there’s a threat. Larry Summers puts the odds at one in three; I might be slightly more optimistic, but the risk is very real. Who, exactly, is at the White House who knows better?

And think about the politics here. For two years the White House has been determinedly cheerful, always declaring that the recovery was on track, that its policies were working fine. And all it did was squander its credibility. Maybe admitting the truth, saying that in fact we hadn’t done nearly enough, would not have helped get useful legislation through Congress. But at least it would have conveyed the message that the WH was living in the same reality as ordinary workers.

Now they’re doing it again. To what purpose? Do they think the markets will be reassured? Do they think consumers will be reassured? At this point, after the “summer of recovery” came and went a whole year ago?

Apparently, that is what they think. Via Digby, Tim Geithner, who seems to be the person Obama listens to most on economic issues, strongly believes in the “confidence fairy.” He must also be the source of Jay Carney’s belief that we won’t have another recession, because that’s what Geithner told George Stepanopoulos a couple of days ago.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: But don’t you think that any deficit reduction now will — will hurt the attempts of the economy to recover?

TIM GEITHNER: You know, I think the — basic reality we live with and, you know, part of governing is recognize we live with — we don’t have unlimited resources, and we inherited and are left with unsustainable deficits long term. And the president understands that for the sake of the economy long-term it’s very important we demonstrate to the American people, to people around the world that we can get our arms around this and start go back to living’ within our means.

Now, we want to do that very carefully so we create room for the economy to grow and we have the resources necessary to invest in things that are going to be very important to the future like education, like infrastructure, like incentives for private investment. And to do that, it is absolutely essential to lock in these long term savings. Now — the president was very strong on this and made sure that we were not going to accept spending cuts that would damage the prospects for near term recovery. Now, with this behind us, and we get this —

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So this won’t cost us jobs?

TIM GEITHNER: No, it will not. Now … if we put this behind us then we can turn back to the important challenge of trying to find ways to make sure that we do everything we can to get more people back to work, strengthen our growth. And we’ll have more ability to do that now with people more confident and we can start to get our arms around the long-term problems.

WTF?! Is this guy for real? As Krugman said, “hope is not a plan,” but they don’t seem to have anything else.

At The Nation, George Zornick asks a very good question: Is it time to downgrade the ratings agencies?

…by almost all accounts inside the beltway, a downgrade in the federal government’s credit rating would be catastrophic. But a closer look at who issues these ratings, how they do it, and the real-world impact of these ratings tells a different story.

The first clue that these ratings might not be highly calibrated, serious indicators of creditworthiness can be found in the 2008 economic collapse. The financial products created by Wall Street that were full of toxic mortgage securities were all blessed with gold-star ratings as safe investments from the country’s three main credit ratings agencies, Moody’s, Fitch and Standard and Poor’s.

These products were so awful as to destroy Lehman Brothers, threaten many other trading firms, and plunge the economy into recession, but the ratings agencies consistently told investors they were safe. As William Greider has noted here, this essentially made the rating agencies “unindicted co-conspirators” in the collapse.

Were these agencies just bad at their jobs? Maybe, but Greider offers another more sinister theory: since the banks pay the rating agencies to examine their financial products, a harmful rating would persuade the banks to just shop elsewhere for a more favorable outcome. “This is an outrageous conflict of interest at the very heart of the financial system,” Greider writes.

Overpaid New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez is in trouble again, this time for illegal gambling. Baseball officials opened an investigation after

Star Magazine reported that Rodriguez “played in an underground, illegal poker game where cocaine was openly used, and even organized his own high-stakes game, which ended with thugs threatening players.”

Under the rules that govern baseball players, Rodriguez will have to truthfully answer baseball’s questions. If he acknowledges that he played in underground games or if officials uncover evidence that he did so, he could face a suspension.

The report Wednesday came a month after Major League Baseball opened its own investigation into Rodriguez’s ties to gambling. The investigation was prompted by a Star Magazine report in June that said Rodriguez had participated in a high-stakes illegal poker game with the actors Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Hmmm…he was playing with Red Sox fans Affleck and Damon. I wonder who talked to Star Mag? I also learned on Google that A-Rod is dating actress Cameron Diaz. Boy is she making a big mistake.

Here’s an update on the D.B Cooper story I wrote about in the Tuesday Reads: My uncle was D.B. Cooper, Oklahoma woman claims It sounds crazy, but apparently the FBI believe this woman’s story.

To Marla Cooper of Oklahoma, her uncle was D.B. Cooper — except she knew him as Uncle L.D. She believes he died in 1999.

“I saw my uncle plotting a scheme,” Cooper told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin of what she said she remembers witnessing as an eight-year-old girl four decades ago.

Cooper said she was with two uncles at her grandma’s house around Thanksgiving time.

“I was with them while they were plotting it. I didn’t really know what was going on,” Cooper said. “Afterwards on Thanksgiving Day, I saw them return and I heard them discussing what they had done with my father. I have very vivid memories of it.”

Her claim might be cause for healthy speculation, especially 40 years after the fact, but two sources close to the investigation have told CNN that Marla Cooper’s tip led to the FBI reviving the case and for the past year the agency has been actively working the lead.

She says her uncle returned home badly injured and was treated at a VA hospital. Then he disappeared and she never saw him again. Her family made her swear she would never talk about what had happened.

Finally, from Think Progress, here’s an update from the annals of wingnut craziness: MO High School Bans ‘SlaughterHouse Five’ From Curriculum, Library Because Its Principles Are Contrary To The Bible

On Monday at the Republic, MO school board meeting, four Republic School Board members reviewed a year-old complaint that three books are inappropriate reading material for high school children. In a 4-0 vote, the members decided to ax two of the three books from the high school curriculum and the library shelves: Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson was spared. The resident who filed the original complaint targeted these three books because “they teach principles contrary to the Bible”

Wesley Scroggins, a Republic resident, challenged the use of the books and lesson plans in Republic schools, arguing they teach principles contrary to the Bible.

“I congratulate them for doing what’s right and removing the two books,” said Scroggins, who didn’t attend the board meeting. “It’s unfortunate they chose to keep the other book.”

Horrors! Contrary to the Bible? We can’t have that! You know, sometimes I’m very grateful to live in a relatively civilized place like Boston. This is one of those times.

On that note, I’m going to get another cup of tea and then check out what you all are reading and blogging about. Please post your links in the comments.

Late Night: The Perfect Candidate to Challenge Obama

Posted: August 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

Lots of liberal groups are calling for Elizabeth Warren to run for the Senate in Massachusetts against Senator Scott Brown. But why not challenge Obama instead? Warren has nothing to lose–Obama already hates her guts and has publicly humiliated her multiple times. What more can he do to her? Running against Obama would give Warren a chance to turn the tables and represent the American people against the top enforcer of the oligarchy.

Today Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism presented a thoughtful, well-argued case for why it would be much better for Warren and for liberals who are disgusted with Obama if she ran for President rather than Senator. It’s a fairly lengthy post and very meaty, so you should read the whole thing.

Yves argues that even though Warren wouldn’t win, she could help elevate the national discourse. If she were running against Obama and debating him, the media would have to cover it, and some of her ideas might make it through the media filter.

And just imagine the debates! Warren would wipe the floor with Obama, exposing his lack of moral values and his pitiful ignorance of basic economics. Obama would be horrified to once again have to compete with a brilliant, competent woman. He might even be forced to sneakily use his middle finger again or pull out his tired sexist remarks. This time more people might notice, now that the koolaid has worn off for so many former Obots.

One quibble I have with Yves is her argument that Warren is “a Reagan-level Great Communicator.” Please. Reagan couldn’t speak off-the-cuff much better than Obama. Did you ever watch one of his press conferences? But Yves is young, and probably grew up under Reagan. I guess I can forgive her for that one. She points out that

unlike Obama, a patrician wannabe who sees Reagan as a role model, she taps into deeply rooted traditional American values, that of a just society. Obama, by contrast, exploited the intense frustration with eight years of misrule by Bush the Second, and his liberal posturing was merely a market positioning exercise, to further differentiate him from Brand Republican.

Her position, which sounds dogmatic leftie to those lacking historical perspective, would have been dead center circa the early to mid 1980s, a Javits/Rockefeller Republican or a pretty tame Democrat of that era.

Hmmm…not quite sure I buy that either, but whatever. She’s right that Warren is no lefty. She’s simply an honest person who has studied what is happening to the American middle class and has the decency to prefer trying to change things to trying to cash in on the greed of bankers.

But here’s the best reason for Warren to run:

Warren also stands for a second set of ideas, that of competence and accountability in government. Not only did she build a major organization in an impressively short period of time, but she understands the importance of what we call in the consulting world “deliverables”, that is, providing tangible evidence of progress. She got various government agencies and banks to agree on a simplified mortgage disclosure form, a “to do” on the banking officialdom’s list that had somehow been too complicated to get done until Warren took it on. And this isn’t just good for consumers, it will also lower costs to banks.

By contrast, not only did Obama make a spectacular set of campaign promises that he failed to honor, he is completely unapologetic about those lies. While there is, sadly, a certain amount of misrepresentation that is considered normal among politicians, Obama’s looks to have set a new standard.

Yes, Warren is competent and efficient–she gets things done. She identifies a problem, and she attacks it doggedly–and she’s tough as nails. She has taken more abuse in the past few years and most people face in a lifetime. And she’s come through unbroken and unbowed.

Yves points out that in comparison to what she might accomplish with a failed primary campaign for President, Warren’s chances of effecting real change in the Senate would be slim to none. As we’ve seen recently, the Senate is utterly dysfunctional and filled with people who are completely out of touch with what is really happening in the country. If Warren tried to actually accomplish something as a freshman Senator, she’d be slapped down in no time flat.

I must say I like this idea. Just to get you thinking about it, here are a couple of videos of Warren making Timmy Geither look like a guilty schoolboy.

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Late Night: We Told You So — Hillary in 2012!

Posted: July 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Hillary Clinton, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, voodoo economics, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Hillary in 2012! Yes, it’s still a pipe dream, but who else is there? Bernie Sanders came out and said it recently–it’s time to primary Obama or run a third party candidate. Again, I know it’s probably a fantasy, but what other choice do we really have?

For myself, I know I can never vote for Obama. At this point it’s really a moral issue for me. I couldn’t vote for him in 2008, and that was before I realize how truly horrible his presidency would be.

I knew he’d be bad, and I knew he was going to go after Social Security and Medicare. I didn’t know that he would completely ignore unemployment and refuse to use the power of government to create jobs.

I suspected he would carry on Bush’s wars. But I never suspected that he would defend torture and rendition or that he would claim the right to imprison or assassinate American citizens without probable cause or trial.

I don’t know how I can bring myself to vote for Romney either. He’s pretty much indistinguishable from Obama anyway. They are both cynical sellouts; neither has a real ideology or moral core.

Bernie Sanders said it straight out not too long ago:

…while appearing on Thom Hartmann’s radio show, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — who, while being an independent, caucuses with the Democrats — said that one way progressives can make sure Obama does not enact huge cuts to major social programs is to run a primary challenger against him. Sanders told a listener who called in to protest a debt ceiling deal that cuts Social Security that such a challenge would be a “good idea”:

SANDERS: Brian, believe me, I wish I had the answer to your question. Let me just suggest this. I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president; who believe that, with regard to Social Security and a number of other issues, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president; who cannot believe how weak he has been, for whatever reason, in negotiating with Republicans and there’s deep disappointment. So my suggestion is, I think one of the reasons the president has been able to move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing. […] So I would say to Ryan [sic] discouragement is not an option. I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.

Am I crazy? Look at what has been going on in Washington for the past few weeks. This debt ceiling fight is utter nonsense, and this President has shown no leadership whatsoever. For a long time, he completely cut Democrats out of the process and “negotiated” with John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Mitch McConnell! He has put every treasured Democratic program on the table to be cut. Again and again, he has lied about the strength and solvency of Social Security and Medicare. Over at Naked Capitalism, liberal economist Michael Hudson documents Obama’s ugly lies:

You know that the debt kerfuffle is as staged as melodramatically as a World Wrestling Federation exhibition when Mr. Obama makes the blatantly empty threat that if Congress does not “tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform,” there won’t be money to pay Social Security checks next month. In his debt speech last night (July 25), he threatened that if “we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills – bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”

This is not remotely true. But it has become the scare theme for over a week now, ever since the President used almost the same words in his interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.

Of course the government will have enough money to pay the monthly Social Security checks. The Social Security administration has its own savings – in Treasury bills. I realize that lawyers (such as Mr. Obama and indeed most American presidents) rarely understand economics. But this is a legal issue. Mr. Obama certainly must know that Social Security is solvent, with liquid securities to pay for many decades to come. Yet Mr. Obama has put Social Security at the very top of his hit list!

The most reasonable explanation for his empty threat is that he is trying to panic the elderly into hoping that somehow the budget deal he seems to have up his sleeve can save them. The reality, of course, is that they are being led to economic slaughter. (And not a word of correction reminding the President of financial reality from Rubinomics Treasury Secretary Geithner, neoliberal Fed Chairman Bernanke or anyone else in the Wall Street Democrat administration, formerly known as the Democratic Leadership Council.)

It is a con. Mr. Obama has come to bury Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not to save them.

Obama has destroyed the Democratic Party and he is in the process of destroying the U.S. economy and sending us into a prolonged depression. He has to go. Frankly, if we can’t replace him with a liberal Democrat, a Mitt Romney might actually be preferable for the same reason many of us reluctantly preferred McCain in 2008: it’s possible Democrats in Congress would put up a fight against a Republican who did the things Obama has done.

Recent polls show that Obama’s blatantly conservative policies are finally having and effect–his liberal base is falling apart. The latest Washington Post-ABC poll found that the President’s approval numbers on the economy are dropping fast.

More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama’s policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The dissatisfaction is fueled by the fact that many Americans continue to see little relief from the pain of a recession that technically ended two years ago. Ninety percent of those surveyed said the economy is not doing well, and four out of five report that jobs are difficult to find. In interviews, several people said that they feel abandoned by both parties, particularly as debates over the debt ceiling gridlock Washington.

To me the most striking finding in this poll is that African American voters are losing faith in Obama’s handling of the economy and jobs.

the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent. The number of African Americans who believe the president’s actions have helped the economy has dropped from 77 percent in October to just over half of those surveyed.

If African Americans are starting to see through Obama, he’s in trouble. How can he possibly win enough Independents to make up for the loss of African American votes? Sure, plenty of AA’s will still vote for him, but how many will end up staying home?

At the Top of the Ticket blog, Andrew Malcolm argues that Obama is trying to reach out to the “center,” and that his ridiculous speech last night was filled with code words to appeal to “independents.”

Using political forensics, notice any clues, perhaps telltale code words that reveal to whom he was really addressing his Monday message? Clearly, it wasn’t congressional Republicans — or Democrats, for that matter.

The nation’s top talker uttered 2,264* words in those remarks. He said “balanced approach” seven times, three times in a single paragraph.

That’s the giveaway. Obviously, David Plouffe and the incumbent’s strategists have been polling phrases for use in this ongoing debt duel, which is more about 2012 now than 2011. “Balanced approach” is no sweet talk for old Bernie or tea sippers on the other side.

Obama is running for the center already, aiming for the independents who played such a crucial role in his victorious coalition in 2008. They were the first to start abandoning the good ship Obama back in 2009 when all the ex-state senator could do was talk about healthcare, when jobs and the economy were the peoples’ priority.

Maybe, except Obama isn’t running to the center, he’s running to the right. In the debt limit “negotiations,” he is the one who put Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on the table. He has consistently pushed for even bigger cuts than the Republicans have. And Obama has done exactly nothing about jobs. He seems to have no interest in the issue at all. So how is he going to win “centrist” votes? Surely these centrists still care about Social Security and Medicare and surely they care about jobs. I just don’t buy that running further to the right is going to help Obama be reelected.

I’m probably going on too long in this post, so I’ll wrap it up. I’ll end with a bit of Glenn Greenwald’s piece in reaction to the recent polls:

approval ratings is only one of many barometers of a President’s standing with his base — and, at least in Obama’s case, almost certainly not the most important one. It’s completely unsurprising that the vast majority of Democrats and even “liberals” — when presented with the dichotomous approve/disapprove choice by a pollster regarding their own party’s President — will choose “approve”; that, in essence, is little more than a proxy for declaring one’s tribal identity (which of the two sides are you on?). But what propelled the Obama campaign in 2008 was not merely the number of people willing to vote for him but, rather, the intensity of his support.

It’s one thing to be willing to go vote for a candidate on Election Day (or, more accurately, against the other candidate); it’s another entirely to be willing to donate scarce money, canvass and evangelize, and infuse the campaign with passion and energy. That many liberals will still be willing to do the former notwithstanding their dissatisfaction does not mean they will do the latter. That level of progressive commitment to Obama’s candidacy was vital to his victory in 2008, and its absence could be crippling in 2012 (a dependency on Wall Street cash even greater than 2008 can only take one so far). Wasn’t that one obvious lesson of 2010: the central role base enthusiasm plays in election outcomes?

So what is to be done? I don’t know, but I do know that there isn’t another potential candidate with the stature of Hillary Clinton. Is it just a pipe dream? What do you think? Is there any chance at all that Hillary might step in as Ted Kennedy did (admittedly unsuccessfully) against Carter in 1980? Are there any other possible candidates that could pull it off?

What is John Boehner Up To Now?

Posted: July 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Democratic Politics, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Bloomberg reports that John Boehner

told Republican lawmakers they need to provide a positive signal on a plan to avert a U.S. default before Asian financial markets open tomorrow, Republican congressional aides said.

Boehner wants at least $3 trillion in spending cuts in a two-step plan to accompany an increase in the U.S. debt limit, one of the aides said. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warned President Barack Obama and congressional leaders during a White House meeting today of a possible reaction by Asian markets, said an official familiar with the meeting.

Did what Geithner said light a fire under Boehner or is he getting pressure from other sources–like Wall Street donors?

The markets could be tumultuous if a plan isn’t negotiated over the weekend, said Christian Cooper, head of U.S. dollar derivatives trading in New York at Jefferies & Co.

“The markets will be under very real pressure at the open because the assumption will be there is really no resolution to this,” Cooper said. “The breakdown in negotiations has crossed the line from the political posturing of the last few weeks to potentially a very real crisis.

“The Tea Party is effectively playing Russian roulette with the bond market and they will, with certainty, lose,” Cooper said. Jefferies is one of 20 primary dealers that trade with the U.S. Federal Reserve.

So suddenly the drop dead day is no longer August 2, but tomorrow?

Derek Thompson of the Atantic wrote today that “Dave Beers, director of the sovereign debt division at S&P” told him that S&P is losing faith in the ability of Washington politicians to agree on anything.

“The debt ceiling is not the central preoccupation that we have,” Beers told me this afternoon. “We put the United States on credit watch because we’re growing less certain that this political debate can be resolved. This was not merely about the debt ceiling.”

What about other AAA-rated sovereigns, like France and Canada, who also have high debt burdens? “They all have a strategy that went through the political process, and we think those strategies are credible,” he said. “The problem with the U.S. is that there is no strategy. There is a debate about what the strategy would be. But there’s nothing close to a consensus. If consensus isn’t possible now, when will that be?”

Basically the kabuki nonsense that has been going on for weeks now between President Obama and House and Senate Republicans has already done serious damage to the U.S. credit rating. These guys look like fools to the rest of the world, and we all know the reason for the continuing game playing is that Obama actually wants massive cuts–especially in social programs. Anyone who is paying attention knows that now, even though Obama is still trying to put the blame on the Republicans, he owns this mess.

There is every sign at this point that Congressional leaders on both sides have decided the President just isn’t going to lead on this, and they have decided to work something out without him.

And, to emphasize responsibility now lies with Congress, Boehner and the congressional held their own meeting at the Capitol Saturday evening.

Pelosi and Reid left the meeting with Boehner and McConnell after less than an hour, retreating to Pelosi’s office across statuary hall in the Capitol. The two Democratic leaders refused to answer repeated questions from reporters. McConnell returned to the Senate side of the Capitol minutes later.

On Friday evening the Speaker announced that he was ending on-again-off-again talks with the White House with only days remaining before the Aug. 2 deadline when the U.S. will exceed its borrowing authority.

After a meeting in the White House with Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, Boehner

told his colleagues that any deal will be a product of congressional leadership – not a compromise struck with the White House, the Republican source said, noting that “strategically not working with the president, but with the Senate could be better for him.”

Boehner was backed up by Democratic leaders Reid and Pelosi, when he said to Obama, “Mr. President, I need to deal with the House and the Senate because we [the White House and Congress] aren’t getting anywhere,” the source said.

Very interesting. It’s also interesting to note that Eric Cantor was not at that meeting this morning. Has Boehner decided to clip Cantor’s wings? We haven’t seen or hear much from him for the past few days.

Sam Stein at Huffpo is reporting that

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is set to call the Democratic Party’s bluff on the debt ceiling. The Ohio Republican, in a briefing with his conference on Saturday, announced that he would press for a short-term deal, with major spending cuts paired with longer-term deficit-reduction strategies, as a way around the current impasse.

That strategy puts the speaker directly at odds with the White House and allied Democrats, who have insisted for weeks that they would not support a short-term extension of the debt ceiling.

Actually, Obama already waffled on that, but other Democratic leaders seem determined that whatever deal they reach will carry through the 2012 election. So how serious can Boehner be if he still plans to play chicken on the short-term/longer-term-deal issue?

There are lots more stories out there tonight speculating about what will happen tomorrow. What kind of “positive sign” does Boehner plan to send to Asian markets? Will it convince the ratings agencies not to downgrade U.S. Credit. Will there be a massive sell-off of U.S. Treasury bonds (Our resident expert, Dakinikat, already dumped hers).

I know it’s late, but I thought I’d put all this out there, since tomorrow could be a big day for news on the debt ceiling kabuki fight. Dakinikat told me that Tim Geithner will be making the rounds of the Sunday shows tomorrow. Maybe we’ll learn something from those shows for a change. Stay tuned….

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