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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The Distressing State of Our National Discourse

The Distressing State of Our National Discourse

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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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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

Health Care Payola - The Daily Beast

Health Care Payola - The Daily Beast

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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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Brainsdead

Well here he is, folks, the Iowa Republican Party's great white hope for recapturing Terrace Hill, Terry Branstad.

Here's what the Web site Iowa Knows Better.com has on Terry's record as governor:

■Branstad raised the sales tax – twice! In his first year in office, Branstad raised the sales tax by 25%.[1] It would not be the last time. He went back to the tax well over and over, increasing the sales tax 67%[2] as Governor.

■Branstad raised the gas tax on Iowa drivers. Branstad wasn't afraid to add to the pain at the pump for Iowans. During his tenure, he raised the gasoline tax by a total of five cents per gallon.[3]

■Terry Branstad even proposed a state income tax on Social Security recipients.[4]

■Branstad kept two sets of books. Branstad was hammered in the press and public for keeping two sets of books for the state[5] and running up a deficit of more than $400 million.[6] These days, voters will not tolerate this type of "creative accounting."

■Branstad's employees had to sue him to get what they had earned. When, during his tenure, Iowa’s budget was in deficit, Branstad decided to balance the budget on the backs of hardworking state employees. They were denied pay they had earned, sued Governor Branstad - and won.[7] Getting Branstad to do right by employees was never an easy task.

■Branstad used to think bonding was fine. Branstad now criticizes the Culver/Judge Administration for stimulating Iowa's economy through the I-JOBS bonding package. Branstad fails to tell Iowans he used the bonding practice for state projects.[8] Throughout his tenure, Branstad embraced bonding, a practice he now conveniently condemns.

Of course Terry's the Iowa Republican establishment's boy. And like all Republicans he's an accomplished liar, see above, but this year Terry will definitely have primary challengers in the form of weaselly-little-asshole Chris Rants, Bible-thumping businessman Bob Vander Plaats, both of Sioux City, and three non-entities. The Sarah Palin-skirt sniffers' money is on two-time gubernatorial primary loser and Mike Huckabee-fluffer Vander Plaats.

Current Democratic Governor Chet Cluver ain't the most popular guy but compared with the pack of lunatics wanting his job...Well, from where I sit he just may win re-election.

Frank Rich: Sarah Palin, The Pit Bull In The China Shop

Congratulations to Frank Rich for being the one US journalist to have the temerity to wade though Sarah Palin's so-called "book."



While we may ridicule Ms Palin for her vacuous celebrity worship, petty family infighting, childish religiosity and willfull ignorance the fact of the matter is that she represents a segment of American society whose values she is but a mere reflection. In a sane society this deluded minority would be treated as a crank fringe dangerous only to themselves.



However, we do not live in a sane society. Here the mainstream media, at the behest of their corporate overlords, present this sliver of Americans who sniff the hem of Sarah Palin's skirt as being at the forefront of political thought. These whiny, petty cases of arrested development, who want all the benefits and comforts of a modern industrial society but without paying for it, are cast in the role "authentic" Americans, thereby making the rest of us somehow foreign, strange, out of touch with these "real" Americans.



As Rich observes, "It’s a politics of victimization and sloganeering with no policy solutions required beyond the conservative mantra of No Taxes." The sad irony is that the more taxes are cut for the benefit of Wall Street and Inside the DC Beltway elites, the more Sarah Palin's skirt sniffers suffer. And they just never get it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Why The U.S. Should Accept Defeat And Start Withdrawing From Afghanistan

Look, the other day after Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from the run-off election slated for this Saturday Secreatry of State Clinton and then the administration declared Hamid Karzi the legitimate winner of the Afghan presidential election. This struck me as analogous to a presidential election in the recent US past, 2000 Bush v. Gore. Karzi's legitimacy rests on a decision of US officials.



This being the case perhaps the Obama administration should declare victory, as Karzi was "officially" elected by the Afghan "people," and get the heck out of Kabul.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

On Political Independents

My longtime working definition of an American political "independent" is a Republican who is too lazy to volunteer to campaign for their favorite GOP candidate and too cheap to donate to their favorite GOP candidate.

Over the years I've added the addendum that, by and large, these same so-called "independents" are suburban, white and professional, or coordinator, middle class, i.e. mid-level corporate managers, doctors, lawyers, small business owners, insurance agents and so on. In short the base of the Glenn Beck "teabagger" movement.

They are motivated by greed. Even though the majority are comfortable economically and have incomes which puts them in the alternative minimum tax, AMT, bracket, they always want more. These are the folks who are always whining at the "tea parties," that "we know how to spend our money better than the government."

And they are motivated by envy. Curiously they envy and begrudge the poorest segments of society. Envious in that "independents" envision the poor living the life of Reilly on food stamps and welfare and begrudging ever one of their tax dollars they imagine going to support that imagined lifestyle.

What American "independents" secretly and really want is to live on The Big Rock Candy Mountain, paying no tax yet still receiving all the services and benefits only government can provide.

To that I add that the reason why establishment Democratic politicians and liberal commentators are blind to the economic class element of Glenn Beck-Ayn Rand acolytes is because they are of the same socio-economic class: white, suburban, professional or coordinator class with a commensurate income and social status. And while not as odious as their fellow Beck-Randites, having a social conscience, they do everything to preserve their social status and income, i.e. tax incentives, deductions, credits etc. Establishment Democrats/liberals too want to continue living on The Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Ahmed Wali Karzai Walks on Water While Marc Emery Goes to Prison: The Double Standards of the War on Drugs and the Historical Pattern of U.S. Complicity in the Global Narcotics Traffic

Ahmed Wali Karzai Walks on Water While Marc Emery Goes to Prison: The Double Standards of the War on Drugs and the Historical Pattern of U.S. Complicity in the Global Narcotics Traffic

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The Cost of Empire

The Cost of Empire

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