US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

that's right, magent

joe biden totally looks like a fridge magnate

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l7vi2ush5k1qafzdko1_500.jpg

rolling US politics thread: joe biden fridge magent

reading massive "Real Housewives of New Jersey" vibes off of this

Obama cheerleader Steve Benen at Washington Monthly is excited about the Afghan troop withdrawal plans but he's cynical about the Republican response:

Obama want to “invest in … our people,” but Republicans see “invest” as an ugly code word for “spending” — and “spending” is bad. Obama wants to “unleash innovation,” but the GOP considers this “big government.” Obama wants to “rebuild our infrastructure and find new and clean sources of energy,” and Republicans consider both of these socialistic plots to undermine America.

“We must recapture the common purpose”? I’m afraid that’s impossible for the foreseeable future.

About to read Tabbi's Bachmann piece. Have we talked about this yet?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michele-bachmanns-holy-war-20110622

LOL great opening

Fans of obscure 1970s television may remember a short-lived children's show called Far Out Space Nuts, in which a pair of dimwitted NASA repairmen, one of whom is played by Bob (Gilligan) Denver, accidentally send themselves into space by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" inside a capsule they were fixing at Cape Canaveral. This plot device roughly approximates the political and cultural mechanism that is sending Michele Bachmann hurtling in the direction of the Oval Office.

"Imagine Joe McCarthy dragging Cabinet members into hearings and demanding that they publicly disavow the works of Groucho Marx, and you get a rough idea of the general style of Bachmannian politics." A+

that this may be the sorriest group of presidential hopefuls ever assembled. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty looked like a bunch of rumpled businessmen in a subway car watching an old lady get mugged, each waiting for the other to do something about it

http://www.theawl.com/2011/06/shallow-rolling-stone-hit-piece-is-just-what-michele-bachmann-needed

abe sauer not really feeling the taibbi profile

i didn't feel it either, tbh

this was otm:

It's a screed that warns America that Michele Bachmann is to be taken seriously—right before doing exactly the opposite.

It's entertaining and necessary, I guess, but Taibbi takes her more seriously than the GOP establishment.

writers chomping at the bit to write about The Michelle Bachmann Threat because they can get good copy from it = de-facto Bachmann supporters as far as their effect on her credibility

yup

it's fun to read because, you know, she's nuts, but pieces like this are just the wind beneath her wings, if you ask me

Taibbi himself points this out before falling into his own trap

there are plenty of countries with improving legal and political and physical institutions, instead of deteriorating ones like ours. plus economies growing in the 5% range instead of a tenth of that. maybe some "reverse immigration" is in order?

^^^a more reasonable response imho

Re the RS article on Bachshit

I dunno. The wingnuts may hate us for zinging her but eventually she and Palin will become merely the butt of jokes for the majority and most idiots will go along with the flow.

I heard her the other day on NPR saying that CO2 was 'natural', blah, blah, blah and I just wished I could have agreed with her to her face and then asked if she'd like a tankful the next time she went scuba diving.

soo what do we think about the war speech?

as an ex-russianist taibbi's Don't Underestimate The Insane Hick sense might be a little overcalibrated.

heart him though.

lol

does the troop drawdown affect the budget ceiling discussion at all? in terms of forecasted savings on defense?

you can't save money you're borrowing in the first place

the drawdown is a drop in the bucket

i guess i am supposed to be "happy" that he is not, on the advice of his generals, waiting until 2012 to remove any troops at all?

so hard to be happy about anything eh

btw

http://joebideneatingasandwich.tumblr.com/

Sounds like Obama did his usual re the drawdown--picked a number somewhere in-between what the generals want and what the folks who want everyone out now want

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/90601/the-key-the-debt-ceiling-deal

Gaming out the debt ceiling talks, it seems to me that the most important power dynamic is whether the business community can and will pressure Republicans in Congress to cut a deal. Without business pressure, the GOP has zero incentive to agree. Agreeing means making substantive concessions that enrage the base and potentially end the career of anybody who votes for it. Not agreeing probably means precipitating some kind of financial crisis that harms the economy and thus improves the party's prospects in 2012. Hike taxes or beat Obama? That's a very easy call for Republicans.

The only thing that changes the calculation is if the business lobby, which would sustain enormous collateral damage in the default scenario, intervenes. The extent to which this occurs is far from certain. But we probably need to reach a point where default appears likely before business racts and forces Republicans to bargain. Otherwise, the incentive isn't there.

nervous.jpg

meh

a) the idea that Republicans are gonna be able spin the oodles of debt-ceiling-related damage onto Obama's shoulders seems dubious at best to me
b) don't forget who's originally designed to benefit from all these free-market congame: businesses. I would think it very unlikely that, businesses havin so much to lose, they would allow Republicans to put ideology above looking after their interests (esp considering how ultimately malleable their ideology has proven to be ie the thinly disguised tax increases discussed upthread)

the 'who gets blamed' game would happen at a volume about 100x times less than the 'holy fuck the global economy is grinding to a halt' game

a) the idea that Republicans are gonna be able spin the oodles of debt-ceiling-related damage onto Obama's shoulders seems dubious at best to me

I don't think we live in the same country

Yep. No matter what happens, Republicans will blame Obama and the lamestream media will quote and amplify it. I think Obama still deserves to get blamed-- but in a different manner. Obama's gonna cave to Republican demands for spending cuts only because making a stand for getting rid of tax breaks and for raising taxes on the rich might, in the views of his insular big business-friendly staff, make him look less like a post-partisan fair kind of guy to 'independent' voters. Obama will claim victory by agreeing to a trillion less in cuts than the far-right extremists want.

the 'who gets blamed' game would happen at a volume about 100x times less than the 'holy fuck the global economy is grinding to a halt' game

― ~edgy~ (goole), Thursday, June 23, 2011 3:20 PM (36 minutes ago)

well sure but the 2012 election is still going to happen

so gonna happen

a) the idea that Republicans are gonna be able spin the oodles of debt-ceiling-related damage onto Obama's shoulders seems dubious at best to me

I don't think we live in the same country

― chupacabra - a delicious burrito (DJP), Thursday, June 23, 2011 3:24 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

let me rephrase this: I think that sending the country & world into a massive bottomless poverty spiral will have ramifications of such immensity that there's no way Obama would be able to shoulder all of the blowback. Now whether Tea Partiers are sane enough to perceive this or not is I guess open to debate

are other countries paying attention to this? cause it sounds like this is globally catastrophic..

(I make it sound like O is intentionally taking on the blame for Tea Party's screwups; I don't think that's the case)

are other countries paying attention to this? cause it sounds like this is globally catastrophic..

sorta wonder about this tbh! are embassies going crazy? are other treasury ministers going apeshit? it's not like the european central bank(s) have covered themselves in glory over the past 2 years...

probably they're assuming the old churchill dictum: "they'll do the right thing after trying everything else"

i'm pretty sure that american debt ceiling shenanigans have about 1000 times less relevance to the global economy than what's happening in greece right now

really?

cuz I'm pretty sure our debt is bigger than the entire economy of Greece

i know i'm straying a bit off topic and may also be showing my parochialism but the greek situation - and by extension, the irish, portuguese, spanish situations - is being talked about quite openly as a crisis of the very concept of democratic sovereignty. (of course this exact situation obtained in countless latin american countries over the past 20 years but nobody gave a shit because that was the_global_south.) and the horrible thing is, in greece, every single option is bad. everybody says well, they'll just need to swallow another, further dose of austerity - but i really get the feeling that greeks would actually attempt to kill their leaders if that happened. people like to talk about the global economy being "on the brink" but in greece they're already far beyond it. in contrast this dance in congress over the (self-imposed) debt ceiling and whether moody's will or won't downgrade us bonds (hint: they won't) doesn't seem very important. of course, i'm talking about the Real World and i do realize that it may have vast importance in the beltway.

naw man that does sound p heavy

in a nutshell: does anyone actually think the US will default on its bond obligations? no. greece though? uhhhhh yeah. and the greek economy is a bit larger than lehman brothers.

i think everyone knows the greek people are going to suffer no matter what

really seems to me like 'greek panic' or 'greek blame' is a kind of moral/political inability to realize that northern european publics are going to have to suck it up too. each piece of debt has two parties, the lender banks were just as 'profligate and undisciplined' as those lazy mediterraneans, and no they weren't acting in the best interests of their nations' peoples either.

i mean, a lot of people are probably saying this too. the greek state is not the thing that people are really afraid of collapsing, it's the institutions that are so upside down that a shock will produce too much miserable fallout to locate entirely on someone else... am i not right?

well youll all be excited to know that niall ferguson is pretty sure the ottoman empire is going to return

that was a little garbled:

greece goes down, kind of a big deal in itself, but needn't be 'systemic'
european banks get yanked down the drain with them
then it's the banks begging their governments for rescue directly, not the 'greeks'

what could be masked as a nationalist problem quickly becomes revealed as essentially a class problem

i will admit that when i heard about some of the benefits of being greek i was like damn

6 weeks paid vacation, retirement at 53!!!!

6 weeks vacation is pretty normal in Europe. the average Greek retirement age is higher than Germany's.

isn't that par for the course throughout Europe?

xpost