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

economically I am the most ignorant dude who ever lived but this is the sort of thing when I hear it that makes me think - wait - there's just no way - that's gotta be unsustainable - at some point the whole machine's gotta break, if 150,000 jobs have to be created every month to break even

those 150,000 jobs that have to get created each month traditionally provided a triple benefit to the system: workers to produce stuff, who now have paychecks with which to buy other stuff, and who will stay off the government benefit system.

we've reached a funny place with all this i think. in the classic marxist critique of capitalism, after a certain point capitalists accumulate and concentrate enough assets that a panic sets in about what to do with it all. in c20 the answer to this for awhile was "make more stuff", with a concomitant obligation to persuade people to buy it. people's needs were mainly satisfied already so new needs had to be created. hence, mad men. but eventually people didn't have enough money to keep buying the ever-expanding universe of stuff they were supposed to be buying, so when the rising tide stopped lifting all boats in the 1970s and wages stagnated, mass debt and financialization became the only way to keep the machine running. and developing countries just aren't developing fast enough to buy our shit (besides, their own countries seem to be making lots of what they need, anyway). and now that's crashed. but there's no other solution. i can't help thinking that the debt bubble simply has to be inflated again because otherwise, who will buy the snowglobes of yesteryear, gathering dust in a maquiladora warehouse?

(fwiw half of this is just poorly remembered chapters from "the affluent society")

anyway if we're now living in a world where massive debt is no longer the driver of our economy, the entire concept of excess capital and overproduction has to be rethought

After reading that, I've now decided that, economically, I am the most ignorant dude who ever lived. (Where do the Pet Shop Boys fit into all of this?)

after a certain point capitalists accumulate and concentrate enough assets that a panic sets in about what to do with it all

At which point, we start buying people. Duh.

they're shopping xpost

hah Eric i sort of wonder if it's not the opposite, that without the ability to pile up massive debts the-American-people-as-workers-and-consumers have become irrelevant. who'd want to buy them?

http://minnesotaindependent.com/83979/bachmann-signs-pledge-to-ban-all-pornography-as-president

― ephendophile (Eric H.), Friday, July 8, 2011 2:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yall realize that even in crazy evangelical, which i speak, that's not what "point 9" of this pledge is saying?

and elmo, "human protection" is a typo--it's "humane protection" in the document.

not that i am defending these batshit fux in any way

Was gonna say...

Ugh, hate it so much when right wing batshittery is needlessly distorted, as if plainly reporting the contents of that pledge wouldn't be wacky enough.

I didn't write the URL. I'm way more interested in the part of the pledge that vows homosexuality is a choice.

yeah i saw this last night and was already thinking "ok libernet can we skip to the part where we all acknowledge that A) this doesn't actually say she wants to ban porn B) it kinda looks like it does, which is a totally untenable position for someone calling herself a "constitutional conservative," which means whichever staffer ok'd signing off on this probably didn't even read the whole thing, which is where the real lol is

bachmann is batshit, but she's a way, way better politician than palin and would know better than to sign off on something that so clearly violates her own principles

and yeah eric obviously this whole thing is crazy and indefensible for any number of reasons, i just hate the outrage cycle

never counter-outrage, I get it

the point i'm making is that the coverage i've seen and the coverage i expect to see will focus on the porn aspect, and that aspect isn't real. there are better things to focus on, as you're pointing out.

I just opened up the PDF of the pledge. #1: "Personal fidelity to my spouse." That rules out, what, a third to a half of office-holders in both parties?

why is "personal" in that phrase

I think it was Towleroad noted that it was an interesting (if bald) rhetorical move to tie homophobia (which seems to have waning influence as a conservative platform) up in this document with Sharia law, since urrybody's still scared of Muslims, et al.

either way, of course, this is all to scare the libs angry with Obama into giving him the keys to the Oval Office for another four years...

Don't let it happen, people. We must continue to focus on not voting for Obama in 2012.

it's an interesting document, yes. i wouldn't worry about 'strategy' stuff regarding it too much. it's an artifact.

The angry left on this thread can speak for themselves, but I would have thought by now that they'd already made up their mind to a) grin and bear it with Obama, b) sit 2012 out, or c) vote third-party. Do things like the Bachmann story make any difference at all?

The Family Leader, run by Bob Vander Plaats, has positioned itself as one of the most powerful Republican groups in the run up to the Iowa caucuses.

this is the guy who got the iowa supreme court bounced after the gay marriage decision

(Except for d) Morbius, who's planning something much more far-reaching...some grand plan on the order of Dr. Evil.)

clemenza, you've implied several times an equivalence between the "angry left" and the angry right, as if both were stains on civilized discourse. This is a serious misreading of American political history. The left hasn't held anything approaching influence since the mid sixties, so, yeah, there's a lot to be angry about. There's simply no equivalence between the right wing noise you hear every day on cable news and talk radio and one Rachel Maddow or Glenn Greenwald.

and part of my frustration is you've refused to explain your own political convictions.

Agreed! It's not a judgemental tag at all, just descriptive: there are people on the left-most spectrum of the Democratic Party who are very angry with Obama. That's all.

I doubt I'll bother voting for Obama cuz he's pretty much a lock to carry California. I expect this will be one of those Presidential election cycles where my vote essentially doesn't matter.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/obama%E2%80%99s-original-sin/

barry ritholtz's take on the frank rich piece

I'm on my way out to see that New York Times documentary, but my political convictions, such as they are, basically amount to a) I always vote Liberal in my own elections, b) I'd always vote Democratic if I were American, because the other side's worse (today, anyway--go back a few decades, and I might have been more flexible), and c) as 49-year-old elementary school teacher in Canada who's got almost zero percent chance of ever losing his job, I obviously feel more detached personally from American politics than most of the people who post on this board. Which doesn't mean I don't take a great interest in American politics, which is why I post (and why I wrote a few thousand words on my own site as the 2008 election unfolded).

Yeah, the Vander Plaats connection is what got my attention too. Fuck that guy for realz.

Tracer hand otm. While we're in the thick of this shit, it looks like a continued sequence of crises related to specific sectors or issues - arguing over spending levels, housing, lack of stimulus, gas prices, etc. But taking a step back, I think we're experiencing early death pangs of a system based on the impossible goal of never-ending exponential growth on a finite planet, and one that values the accumulation of GNP over the improvement of quality of life. People can't see the forest for the trees because this is the system that we've spent our entire lives embedded within. And it has "worked" to an extent. The problem is, it works until it doesn't, and the collapse of complex systems often take place suddenly, at the "height" of the system, at maximum complexity.

with Sharia law, since urrybody's still scared of Muslims, et al.

Where does this come from, anyway? I'm not a big fan of Sharia either but what are the chances it will be implemented anywhere in the US?

-481

Michael where have you been IT'S ALREADY HAPPENED

But taking a step back, I think we're experiencing early death pangs of a system based on the impossible goal of never-ending exponential growth on a finite planet, and one that values the accumulation of GNP over the improvement of quality of life.

ZS i don't think i agree. our problems are "structural" in one sense (medicare, etc), but that's still politics. our problems are political. why are plenty of other countries around the world having high growth rates? the european and american "crises" are all financial, the solutions are all pretty simple, just "impossible"

maybe we don't disagree, i don't know. you seem to be arguing that our politics/economics are going to shit because we're hitting some kind of malthusian limit or something. i don't think that's true.

If what we're reading today is correct and the President promises to trim SS and Medicare, it won't be just the angry left that's angry.

our economics are going to shit because all that stuff people said about "late capitalism" has actually turned out to be true

Reading your posts make sense and coincide with (my grad school) my reading of Marx, but we've been through this end-of-capitalism epoch several times in the last forty years, no?

every day is the end of time

by the way, I'm not sure if anyone will agree with what I'm about to post: if the Congress passes and the President signs into law reductions in SS and Medicare benefits, the President will have made the repeal of DADT and the Affordable Health Care Act negligible achievements.

I'm always dubious of phrases/nomenclature that involve "late" or "post-" anything, as if whatever state we're currently in now is the end of history. but this is strictly a semantic thing

xp

People are always convinced this is the end times but capitalism has so far always found a way. Of course, in finding a way it has dug itself deeper and deeper into holes (extending credit in lieu of proper wage increases in this case) and you've got to wonder how many more 'outs' there can possibly be without a drastic upheaval of the system. It feels to me that this is some sort of Major Crisis of Capitalism but I'm aware that people have thought that before, so I'm not going to start shouting from a church tower that the end is nigh.

xxp

if the Congress passes and the President signs into law reductions in SS and Medicare benefits, the President will have made the repeal of DADT and the Affordable Health Care Act negligible achievements

insofar as the American political memory is only a couple months long, this seems perfectly reasonable to me

xp

If there's trimming going on, that's one thing, but again, I'm not sure adjusting the inflation index for SS = trimming.

What are the chances that Obama figures the country will go apeshit if the choice can be posited between reducing SS benefits and repealing the Bush tax cuts?

There's no need to touch a penny of a fund that will remain solvent until 2034, and will still pay 75% in coverage at that point.

What are the chances that Obama figures the country will go apeshit if the choice can be posited between reducing SS benefits and repealing the Bush tax cuts?

No chance at all because he's never believed in repealing those tax cuts (and didn't).

1) repeal of DADT is a major achievement, though it is one that heteros may not appreciate as such.
2) AHCA's acceptance by lotsa Dems/liberals was on the premise that its dubious features could be made better at some future point. SS/Medicare reductions will make this belief seem naive at best in retrospect.
3) again, devil will be in the details ... but the weight of SS/Medicare benefit cuts will probably fall on future beneficiaries (so unless something else is in the works, the "angry geezers" won't get pissed.) as well as being substantively bad, it will demoralize many of Obama's former supporters (including all of the fresh young things that voted for him in 2008, to the extent that they're paying attention). we'll probably hear some shit about "we can restore these benefits at some future point" from certain Dem lackeys, but see 2) above re AHCA.

xps, well, what is the world we're in now?

1. finance capital, after decades of being let off its leash, had a huge failure, and economies capsized overnight

2. the world's democratic political systems decided to try to put humpty dumpty back together again

3. it's really expensive to do that, but not doing so was a huge unknown too. alternatives were not considered and international cooperation was nonexistent. there was no plan beyond "stop it!"

4. the beneficiaries of that extraordinary emergency protection are heavily engaged in a) controlling the story of their mistakes, b) misdirecting public anger, and c) preventing/reducing further government expense that is directed toward anyone else.

b) and c) are basically ongoing parts of "normal" politics at all times anyway. what's remarkable about this to me is how normal it all is, really? you don't need hardt/negri or anybody to figure this out at all. i don't think it's "late" anything.

I mean what if Obama's narrative is "I had to because the Republicans were so intransigent and irrational even in the face of the debt ceiling crisis. Now re-elect me and give me a Dem majority and we'll undo the damage."

thx hoos for the clarification.

still... am i a monster for thinking "the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” sounds... really delicious??