I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
There is another nice graph in the current edition of the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/
finance...tory_id=2227506
And a nice article about the no-lobbyist-left-behind bill in the print edition.
Dear American News Media-
The British press is in the process of doing to you what the Japanese did to Detroit.
Start reporting the news like your job depended on it.
love
56k
Repukelicans give not one wit what the graph looks like as long as they individually are doing fine and geeting all the benefit and advantage that they think is their birth right.
geeting = getting
Libero-fasci-islamo-anticonservative Economist!
No campaign contributor left behind, either:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...-
2003Nov21.html
It's interesting that this administration may manage to do to the US what we did to the USSR through the arms race--bankrupt ourselves. It is entirely possible that the loss of decent jobs will further erode our tax base (beyond Bush's cuts) to the point where we can't sustain being the World's Biggest Pigs--I mean the World's Policeman any longer. And this won't have come to pass because of all our leftist activism, but because the GOP destroyed our economy and blew the budget to smithereens. The Law of Unintended Consequences. Until then, though, it ain't pretty--and even after...
After 1980 to 1992 and now 2000 onward, clear that the Repubs are the party of fiscal irresponsibliity. And its not that they don't know how to run government responsibly -- they believe it's perfectly OK to screw it up.
One big difference now from the prior deficit regime under Reagan -- Repubs have also greatly increased the rate of spending (although careful to shower most of it in Repub districts) -- much more so than any Democrat. I guess if you are willing to wreck the governemnt, you might as well also loot it before it goes bust.
Bush has adopted the Enron strategy for fiscal management.
So the absolute best case scenario is that if we have a dozen years of Republican "leadership", and everything goes just exactly right, we'll be almost back to where Clinton had us financially. Great job, GOP!
Maybe somewhere along that line leading to 2013, the average American will wake up from the screwing they've been happily taking since 1980, rise up and...
I'm sorry. Give them pretty cars. Make funny commercials they can talk about at work. Whip them into a cynical patriotic fever every ten years or so. They'll continue to doze.
Fear not, Jesus is coming before the bills come due.
Let's party like it's 69 A.D.!
Word, T.Wolfe. It's gotten to the point that I'm having a hard time having a conversation with anybody in the office. Britney frenching Madonna? Worthy of discussion. The fact that our country's going to hell? Too much of a downer.
I've turned into the person at the party who wants to talk about Srebenica when everybody else just wants to dance.
A.
It's interesting that this administration may manage to do to the US what we did to the USSR through the arms race--bankrupt ourselves.
Indeed, there is a deep connection between the two phenomena. The fall of the Soviet Union has been erroneously trumpeted as The Triumph of Capitalism, which was then then further distorted into the Triumph of Radical Social-Darwinism.
Given that belief, what else could the power elite do but try to do the same thing to the biggest most free social-democratic mixed economy the world has ever known?
why doesn't the media care about Republican looting of the treasury? Mebbe this is why:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=ge
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=twx
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=ccu
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=nyt
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=wpo
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=dj
The fact that our country's going to hell? Too much of a downer.
Yeah, and actually, could you please not even bring up the fact that it's a downer? That's like such a meta-downer.
"The fact that our country's going to hell? Too much of a downer."
Athenae,
I know all too well the "here he goes again" eye roll when i try to discuss the current state of the country. If you were in power you couldn't invent a drug that would get into more homes and deaden more minds than TV.
But who am I to talk? I'll be watching Michigan and Ohio State this afternoon. I hope the Army debuts a new commercial.
Yeah, you're talking to a girl whose supreme idea of happiness is two Tivo'd seasons of Buffy and Babylon 5.
I just don't understand people who choose, in addition to these sublime pleasures, nothing. If you can appreciate with great geeky enthusiasm a good John Sheridan rant, why can't you read the editorial page of the New York Times?
It's not the medium entirely, though that has a lot to do with it. Mental obesity has other causes. Our shitty education system, for one. A recent election in which a candidate was derided, over and over, for being "too smart."
A.
Athenae,
Agreed. And if the public education system is kept this shitty, there should be no shortage of people whose only option is the military or rotten jobs at the bottom of the service industry chain.
Athenae,
That doesn't say anything about the candidates intelligence. Dubya has been derided too as being "too smart.". No really!
Go to http://www.rotten.com/library/bi.../george-w-bush/
and scroll down to "The Brainiac"
It's gotten to the point that I'm having a hard time having a conversation with anybody in the office. Britney frenching Madonna? Worthy of discussion. The fact that our country's going to hell? Too much of a downer.
When I try to tell my mom about the latest Repug outrage, her reply is usually "I don't want to hear it". I on the other hand think the worst think we can do is bury our heads in the sand and "get a life", totally ignoring the outrageous actions of our politicians.
Please back up your "education system kept this shitty" premise. If you are talking about inequality and how lousy rural and inner-city schools generally are, then OK. But the whole system? There are many very good public schools all over the country, we just have to make more like them.
No, I am not a teacher, this is just an old tired meme usually perpetuated by populists.
If it takes a financial meltdown to wake the ostrich-sheep,then so be it.My heart goes out to those who voted for Gore.
I don't understand the graph. This is a baseline of what? Total tax revenues?
deficits
Also I'm not sure about anti-intellectualism being a recent phenom. in American Politics. People who know more about this than I do will, uh, know more about this, but I know that Adlai Stevenson was trashed as an intellectual.
How'd Reagan run for governor of CA? I'm sure he didn't play up his haha intellect.
Absolutely right, Karl. Fear and loathing of both education and independent thought is a deep and powerful undercurrent in American society. It's based on jealousy and resentment, and it goes a very long way towards explaining the entire Right.
Karl, read the excellent study: "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" by Hoffstaeder for a Pulitzer-winning history of the phenom of which you speak.
Another big difference from the Reagan years is that back then the supply siders at least had a consistent story about how their policies were supposed to help the economy. Sure the Laffer Curve was a crock, but at least it was an argument (if an extremely poor one), leaving open the possibility that the people conducting the policy were simply very stupid, as opposed to greedy and malicious.
Now they don't even bother. The Bush economic policy is just a series of bald-faced lies to cover a massive theft of our national wealth.
And who says progressives don't believe in evil?
Stuart Stark, why read Hoffstaeder when a short glimpse in "The Devil's Dictionary" under "i" like "idiot" adequately explains the phenomenon.
IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence
in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The
Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought
or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the
last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets
the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of
speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.
Again, yet again, why do we have to go OFFSHORE for news like this?
BenA, Krugman made the same point in one of his book tour lectures on C-SPAN. Said he missed Reagan because he had a theory behind his tax cuts, even if it was a crackpot theory (the Laffer curse oops curve) unlike Bush. K. also said he missed Nixon, because Nixon actually enforced laws even if he didn't like them (the EPA, NLRB) rather then hiring anti-regulation lobbyists to run the regulatory agencies into the ground.
He could have added that BushI actually had some sense when it came to foreign policy. BushII is worse than the worst last 3 Republican presidents combined.
I don't think that W. is evil, or that he even has the capacity to make mistakes ('error is a demonstration of competence; you can't make a bad move in chess if you don't understand what moves the pieces can make'-David Stove). GW doesn't even have the brains to understand policy beyond its implications for re-election.
He's just pure stupid covering for pure greed.
yeah-- well I STILL don't believe that if Bush gets back in office that they won't increase taxes (or let the cuts expire) in order to work down the deficit. I think after Bush is re-installed and the parties are over for the GOP, they have to get to the real dirty business of governing. Somebody will sit Junior down and tell him he has to start cutting things (which nobody will want to do) or raise taxes. I just can't see Bush as the president who detroys Social security and medicare. My take is the Bush tax cuts are basically payments to his supporters for helping him get elected in '04, and to stimulate the economy, and then taxes will go up once Bush is in his second term. They will avoid all talk of raising taxes during the next year of course, and our lovely media will blithely follow along.
Don't despair, friends. One of my Pakistani friends, a businessman who has been in this country for at least 25 years, has always been a staunch Republican and a big fundraiser for Republican candidates in the local Pakistani/Muslim community. I warned him about Bush, but he voted for him and has regretted it for the last several years. He says Bush will be lucky if he can get even 5% of the vote in that community. I asked him the other day who he was going to vote for and he said "well we don't know who it will be yet" meaning "whoever the Democrats nominate." Then he added that he really likes Howard Dean and is hoping he'll win - remember this is coming from a fiscally and socially conservative Muslim living in the south. Bush has pissed off so many people who voted for him in 2000 - and he didn't get the majority then. I think we can win this thing - even in parts of the South - even if we don't turn out new voters. But as far as I'm concerned, a close win isn't good enough. We need a crushing defeat to underline the point. Drive a wooden stake into the heart of the beast, as it were. To that end, I registered 10 new voters today, African Americans between the ages of 18 - 28. If everyone in the country who is desperate to get rid of Bush would register only one new voter and make sure to get them to the polls, we could bring about the most humiliating defeat in American political history. Precious, isn't it? Just think, with only an hour of your time you could help throw the electoral pie in the boy king's face.
"Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up! Go back to bed America, here's American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it."
RIP Mr. Hicks
I think after Bush is re-installed and the parties are over for the GOP, they have to get to the real dirty business of governing.
Hey, kid, ya wanna buy a bridge?
Karl-right-but to an extent anti-intellectualism is not just a historical tradition (the Puritans, Van Buren vs. Log Cabin imagery, Railroad Lawyer Lincoln claiming he was jus fo'ks, etc) but a natural tendency growing out of logistical considerations. Consider the following Karl Rove quotes (from strategic memos): "Attack, attack, attack!" and "As soon as you're explaining, you're losing." A truly rational, properly debated campaign would be little more than explanation and analysis-which is boring. In any era, saying "My opponent fathers children by Negroes!" or "My opponent is Soft on Democracy/Anarchism/Trade Unionism/Communism/Race Mixing/The Soviets/The Central American Red Menace/Terrorism!!!!" is clearly on a different level, specifically, on a lower level, than puretty mathed New Yorkers with thick eye-glasses ta'kin' puretty.
The real American press is Dollars and Sense (economic analysis), Cursor.org, www.unknownnews.net, fark, Fair/Extra, Democracy Now and whatever blog/news private sites you'd care to add. Other than these, we should boycott the wipesheets and see if they notice. It wouldn't take a coup, just an infusion of not-totally-corrupt blood to add fairness and balance. I'm a news junkie who, denied anything else in a restricted corner of LAX, will stare at the editorial cartoons in a discarded Korean rag (hmm, somehow without more than a few Korean phrases not likely to appear in a newspaper I still get the meaning of the cartoon, which you can bet money involves our military bases there) but with the internet none of us is stuck with the newstand.
Brits rule!
Also consider translated French sites, Le Monde Diplomatique is like a kick-ass newspaper I see praised a lot by non-French obverseas all the time. The "homepage" below lists numerous mainstream international news sources, almost all of which are better than American mainstream sources, many with translated versions.
if RR had had a retardican congress, it would have made him look as bad as the chimperor looks now. and we can finally drive a bloody stake through the heart of supply sider voodoo economists for good.
Well, I think it's worse reading about Spanish Empire economy in the 16th and 17th centuries. They had Big Fun with chronical bankruptcies.
Fear not, Jesus is coming before the bills come due.
Let's party like it's 69 A.D.!
Davis X. Machina
It's scary, but that is the real reason most people aren't up in arms: a vague notion among a mass of Christians who have never read the Bible thinking that no matter how bad things get, God is going to press the reset button soon.
4 Steps to Fascism in our Lifetimes
1) spend the government deeply into debt, pursuing an absurd neo-con idea about 'starving the beast'. Baby boomers begin to retire, causing a looming fiscal crisis with Social Security. Government is unwilling to raise taxes, unwilling to significantly and deeply cut other spending, and politically unable to cut benefits (since seniors are more likely to vote in elections, and at that time there will be quite a few of them)
Facing policy paralysis, government resorts to path of least resistance: yet more borrowing.
2) foreign purchasers of US government debt become alarmed at continuing fiscal irresponsibility and begin to lose confidence in the dollar. They begin seeking an alternative 'safe' currency in which to preserve and increase their wealth, most likely the euro.
3) US Treasury is forced to raise interest rates in order to entice buyers to purchase US debt. Interest payments on the debt begin to spiral. Interest rate rises cause weak economy to tip into recession, then Depression. Government is unable and/or unwilling to increase spending in order to prop up the economy and cushion the blow to working people. Jobs dry up as business cuts back on spending. Massive bankruptcies and homelessness. Civil unrest.
4) In a crisis, government declares martial law and 'temporary' suspension of civil rights.
I foresee something like this happening in the next 10 to 20 years if we continue down the path we are on. Admittedly it is a worst-case scenario but it is hardly improbably.
You can move up these events to within the next 10 years should there be another major, 9/11-scale terrorist attack on US soil.
Also, a grave economic crisis could be brought on if crude oil markets are significantly disrupted due to war or terrorist attacks on Middle Eastern oil producing infrastructure.
Any way you cut it, this shaky world economy is a house of cards, built on a foundation of sand, insert your favorite metaphor here. The jackasses running the show are making so many wrong decisions, you gotta wonder whether they are simply vastly incompetent, or doing it all on purpose.
Clearly, they would take advantage of a grave (or not-so-grave) crisis to "temporarily" suspend the Constitution, just as they took advantage of 9/11 to launch a war on Iraq.
What's the point? I have been arguing this issue for the past three years. People still roll their eyes when I start talking. They come back with - "would you rather Saddam still be in power?" or "if you give people more money, they will invest more of it". Our country is done. Kaput. Bush and his Republican cohorts have made us into the worlds biggest banana republic. They've bankrupted our government - which will seriously disrupt our deconomy for years to come. There is no fighing it. Welcome to Argentina.
What the Bush supporters in the middle class don't yet realize is that EVERY major Amrican war is followed by 3 things - a recession, a tax increase, and inflation.There is achance their sons will be drafted starting '05 (Kids born in '84, '85. That means you, don't think for a moment Bush won't do it.) The Bush backers (the real ones, not the masses) are set they can't lose. They make more money on the war itself, own the assets that will be appreciating, and are set to pay low or no taxes. What a scam.
I was glad to see the reference to Hoffstaedter's book, which I think is an excellent but slightly overstated study. While I recognize and abhor anti-intellectualism in my own country (the U.S.), it's good to keep in mind that we were able to build the A-bomb because we had the sense to take in a bunch of intellectuals (many of them Jewish) whom the European fascist states didn't want. Talk about self-defeating anti-intellectualism.
And it was more than antisemitism that chased them out. Hitler's obsession with "entartete Kunst" -- degenerate art -- was partly about stuff that you couldn't "get" right away, stuff that requires of the viewer some exposure to other art before it will resonate.
As for the Rove quote about "when we're explaining, we're losing," there was some Nazi functionary campaigning before Hitler actually took power who said, "We don't want higher bread prices, we don't want lower bread prices -- we want National Socialist bread prices." Don't think -- vote for us.
And to the extent that post-war Europe has been less anti-intellectual than us, I think in part that's been the result of a kind of deference to the ruling elites that we've had less of here. As that deference started to break down in the 80s and 90s, you saw an increase in votes for parties of bigotry and even an increase in anti-intellectual posturing among the mainstream parties.
Still, as events leading to the Iraq war demonstrate, these days we've got "old Europe" whipped on this anti-intellectualism thing.
renato: 1) spend the government deeply into debt...
2) foreign purchasers of US government debt... begin to lose confidence in the dollar...
3) US Treasury is forced to raise interest rates in order to entice buyers to purchase US debt. Interest payments on the debt begin to spiral. ..
Personally, because of that latter effect, I'd actually expect the Fed to loosen to the point of allowing inflation again (essentially printing money to pay the debt).
Not exactly a doomsday scenario, but still not exactly a place we'd want to be.
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