Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Obama's Afghan War Plan: Nine Key Points


War may not be good for children or other living things but it is a godsend for anyone making a career of the military.



War is particularly good for officers. Rank and pay grade during war is on a constant upward arc for those who survive combat. And there is always a cushy managerial position in the civilian world, with full retirement, at the end of a successful career.



Sadly there is no disincentive for the current All Volunteer Force to stop waging little wars. Nor is there any incentive for our politicians, especially those who regularly get re-elected by grandstanding over flag-draped coffins, to end little wars in countries with no strategic importance to the security of the United States.



Those of us opposed to these little wars can protest all we want. It will do no good. Not enough Americans have invested loved ones in these little wars. And anyway the brainwashed professionals of the AVF like to say the reason they are killing people over there is so we have the "freedom" to protest over here. The anti-war activists' plea to "bring the boys, and girls, home safely," is only hear by its own choir, the members of the AVF are stone deaf to it.



The only thing that may end this national madness is a total economic collapse, and I can not foresee that happening any time soon.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Monday, November 30, 2009

What After All Do Americans Mean When They Say They Love "Liberty"?

What After All Do Americans Mean When They Say They Love "Liberty"?

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Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Distressing State of Our National Discourse

The Distressing State of Our National Discourse

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Friday, November 27, 2009

Jonathan Narcisse, Democrat. Since when?

Ready for a "WTF???" moment?
Des Moines Democrat says “someone” should run against Culver

Yeah, well, that's not too surprising in itself seeing how Chet has alienated the coalition that got him elected. The surprising thing is the "Democrat" doing the "saying."

On Monday, Jonathan Narcisse told The Des Moines Register that Culver has been a “reckless and irresponsible” governor and “any Democrat who loves the state must call on someone to run against Culver.”
RadioIowa.com

Imagine that, Jonathan Narcisse a Democrat. I think Narcisse is a Democrat in the mold of Joe Lieberman. However, Narcisse's open-letter to Doug Vander Plaats is insightful and correct, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

Actually, from the overall tenor of Narcisse's missive to Vander Plaats and he's past record I think it's safe to say he is working for Terry Bransted's election next year.

Why does Karl Rove hate the USA?

Well, George Dubya Bush's favorite turd blossom is still collecting a check. This time from the Wall Street Journal, the tabloid bible of the Investor class.

Today we find Rove cheer leading for the United States' economic collapse as he raises the specter of the "scary" federal budget deficit.

After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously. So this week the White House announced that it is considering creating a commission to figure how to fix the budget mess.

Anger over deficits was picked up in a late October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which asked voters if they'd rather boost "the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits" or keep the "budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover." Only 31% chose boosting the economy; 62% wanted to keep the deficit down.

Ominously for Democrats, concerns over spending have recently helped to flip the Gallup generic ballot to now favor Republicans by four points (48% to 44%). Last year, Democrats held a 12-point generic ballot advantage. The change has been driven by independents, who now favor Republicans by 22 points. By comparison, in the run-up to the 1994 congressional elections, Republicans first eclipsed Democrats in March of that year, when they gained a one-point advantage, before falling behind Democrats until the fall.

Mr. Obama's spending choices are dragging congressional Democrats into ugly electoral territory where many are likely to meet a brutal fate next fall.
WSJ.com

Now Rove may be right when he pens The change has been driven by independents, who now favor Republicans by 22 points. So-called political "independents" in the United States are a fickle lot who always put person comfort and income before the good of the country. The most extreme of these crybabies are the so-called "teabaggers," the Sarah Palin-skirt sniffers who have had more than their fair share of TV face time.

Now if Karl had been paying any attention at all to balancing federal budgets he might have typed in "balanced budget dangerous for economy" in his Google search bar, he might have stumbled on this Business Week op-ed by Robert Kuttner from 1996:

A balanced budget requirement, especially one locked into the Constitution, would deepen recessions. Federal spending now provides countercyclical elastic to buffer business cycles automatically. In recessions, state and local revenues fall, and the demand for public expenditure rises. Increased federal outlays operate as automatic stabilizers, rising as state income falls. A constitutional amendment mandating budget balance would throw that process into reverse.

In recessions, the federal government, like the states, would have to reduce its own spending to match reduced revenues. Federal fiscal policy would become pro-cyclical instead of countercyclical.

A balanced budget requirement, especially one locked into the Constitution, would deepen recessions. Federal spending now provides countercyclical elastic to buffer business cycles automatically. In recessions, state and local revenues fall, and the demand for public expenditure rises. Increased federal outlays operate as automatic stabilizers, rising as state income falls. A constitutional amendment mandating budget balance would throw that process into reverse.

In recessions, the federal government, like the states, would have to reduce its own spending to match reduced revenues. Federal fiscal policy would become pro-cyclical instead of countercyclical.

Public discourse about the deficit is now out of sync with fiscal reality. With Congress and the White House moving toward balancing the budget via the appropriations process, the great deficit crisis is ending. It was a product of the fiscal imbalance of the '80s and early '90s. That, in turn, was a monument to the failure of supply-side economics. But thanks to the deficit reduction of the Clinton years, the budget is now on a sustainable path. We are nearly back to where government can again use fiscal as well as monetary policy as tools of economic management.

So there you have it. As cogent reason for continuing deficit spending until the current financial and economic crisis has passed.

Yet for a short-term political advantage, Republican control of both houses of the federal Congress, Rove and the entire wing nut universe is willing to risk the total economic collapse of the nation and the economic ruin of the very class of Americans who subscribe to this simplistic economic point of view.

A Special Message to Joe Lieberman from His Roommate at Yale

A Special Message to Joe Lieberman from His Roommate at Yale

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Obama To Copenhagen For Climate Talks (BREAKING)


This wouldn't be news if the American people had re-elected Jimmy Carter in 1980.



By this time, if Carter had won a second term, at least 20 or more percent of our electricity would be wind generated. Yet today a paltry 1 .3 % of our electricity is wind generated.



So who do we blame for this development?



If you are a Boomer or a GenXer look in the mirror. It was us who wanted the SUVs and the "shining city on the hill" and to continue living on The Big Rock Candy Mountain we had grown up on.



Our Fifties and Sixties lifestyle was paid for by WWII-era tax rates on the rich and industry, but since we Boomers and GenXers were just kids we had no idea where all the money for our great public schools, public swimming pools, Interstate highways and rockets to the Moon came from. It was all there, always and seemingly free.



So we voted for Ronald Reagan and lower taxes, from which the middle class benefited little, and began the long, slow decline into the Third World.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Brainsdead 2


Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Health Care Payola - The Daily Beast

Health Care Payola - The Daily Beast

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Monday, November 23, 2009

US Debt A 'Phantom Menace,' Krugman Argues


The hyperventilating over the budget "deficit," is a calculated strategy by forces on Wall Street, certain wealthy right wing upper one percent families and individuals (Rupert Murdoch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Charles G. Koch among others) and their dupes to push the United States into the final stages of what I call "free market" feudalism; i.e. an economic state in which the only legitimate function left for government is the police, the courts and the military, all other services now provided by government will be in the hands of "private" industry or nonexistent.



Krugman is right, the only solution to pull the US out of the current economic doldrum is a large dose of deficit spending. But since the Nineteen Eighties Republicans for the most part and so-called "deficit hawk" Democrats have increasingly tied any administration's hands from providing that remedy with so-called "balanced budget" legislation. The states are in worse financial shape as GOP dominated legislatures have pushed through "balanced budget" amendments.



One of the surest-fire methods to restore health and prosperity to the economy, besides a complete overhaul of the federal tax code, current skewed for the benefit of the wealthiest upper one per cent of the trust fund baby crowd, is a federal jobs program modeled after FDR's Civilian conservation Corps and the Works Projects Administration. It is far better, as John Maynard Kayne's said, for "The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up."
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How to Get Out of Afghanistan

How to Get Out of Afghanistan

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