Monthly Archives: December 2012

Quotes of the Day

Our elected officials seem more inclined to cast stones than votes:

Sen. Harry Reid — “John Boehner seems to care more about keeping his speakership than keeping the nation on a firm financial footing.”

Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel — “Sen. Reid should talk less and legislate more.”

Silly me, I thought we sent representatives to Washington to solve problems, not create them; to help our economy grow, not make it contract.  We’re inevitably going to have horrible stuff happen, like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, but to manufacture a crisis like this cliff is really disgusting.

This is their idea of patriotism?  Looks more like treason to me.

 

Alphonse and Gaston Going Off the Cliff

So, all the GOP House leaders had this big conference call today, and they decided…to tell the Senate they have to act first!

Real profiles in courage, these guys.

It’s a shame we can’t turn this over to a group of first graders.  The federal government might find itself with a large candy budget, but other than that, I think they’d work it out quickly and fairly.

 

Fiscal Cliff Update

The Prez is coming back from Hawaii tonight.

The Senate will convene on Thursday.

The House?  Well, House GOP leaders are having a conference call today.  They’ve promised their members 48-hours notice to return, so the earliest we’ll see the House is Friday.

Not that I’m all that anxious to see the House.  I don’t think Boehner is either…

Some are looking to Mitch McConnell to save the day.  But McConnell is looking to his re-election in 2014, and the threat of a primary from the right.

A Very Strong Housing Report

The latest S & P/ Case Schiller property values index shows a very strong 4.3% rise in home values between October 2011 and October 2012.  This was more than economists had expected.

The housing sector finally is helping the overall economy, rather than draining it.

The increase reflects record-low mortgage rates; low inventory; increased consumer confidence that the economy is improving; and a growing  population, many of whom would have bought in the last few years if we’d had a decent economy.

 

A Little Holiday Cheer Courtesy of Andy Borowitz

From “A Holiday Letter from John Boehner,” Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker:

Dear American People:

It’s Speaker Boehner here, writing my first and last ever holiday letter to you.  Why am I doing this after all of these years, you might ask?  Well, I won’t mince words.  I’ve started drinking a little early this Christmas.

You see, this will be my last Christmas as Speaker of the House, all because a cabal of Tea Party miscreants in the House of Representatives doesn’t think I’m a ginormous enough asshole for their taste.  Who’s more to their liking?  Virginia’s own Eric Cantor.  As a waiter might say at an all-you-can-eat shit buffet, “Excellent choice.”

What will life be like under Speaker of the House Eric Cantor?  Well, he’s the guy who recommended cuts in disaster funding just hours after tornadoes hit Joplin, Missouri.  Nice.  And it was his “never met a dick-measuring contest I didn’t like” pathology that helped create last year’s debt-ceiling crisis.  You can’t put a price tag on a performance like that.  Well, actually you can:  it cost the country nineteen billion dollars.  Starting to miss me already, aren’t you?  Fuck you.

So have a very Eric Cantor Christmas, America, and as that smug four-eyed sociopath drives the entire nation off the cliff, don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Now leave me alone, God damn you.  Damn you all to hell.

Happy Holidays,

Speaker Boehner

The Dangerous Cult of Dumb Economists

From “When Prophecy Fails,” Paul Krugman, NYT:

“Back in the 1950s three social psychologists joined a cult that was predicting the imminent end of the world. Their purpose was to observe the cultists’ response when the world did not, in fact, end on schedule. What they discovered, and described in their classic book, ‘When Prophecy Fails,’ is that the irrefutable failure of a prophecy does not cause true believers — people who have committed themselves to a belief both emotionally and by their life choices — to reconsider. On the contrary, they become even more fervent, and proselytize even harder.

“This insight seems highly relevant as 2012 draws to a close. After all, a lot of people came to believe that we were on the brink of catastrophe — and these views were given extraordinary reach by the mass media. As it turned out, of course, the predicted catastrophe failed to materialize. But we can be sure that the cultists won’t admit to having been wrong. No, the people who told us that a fiscal crisis was imminent will just keep at it, more convinced than ever.

“Oh, wait a second — did you think I was talking about the Mayan calendar thing?

“Seriously, at every stage of our ongoing economic crisis — and in particular, every time anyone has suggested actually trying to do something about mass unemployment — a chorus of voices has warned that unless we bring down budget deficits now now now, financial markets will turn on America, driving interest rates sky-high. And these prophecies of doom have had a powerful effect on our economic discourse.

“Regular readers know that I and other economists argued from the beginning that these dire warnings of fiscal catastrophe were all wrong, that budget deficits won’t cause soaring interest rates as long as the economy is depressed — and that the biggest risk to the economy is that we might try to slash the deficit too soon.  And surely that point of view has been strongly validated by events.

“The key thing we need to understand, however, is that the prophets of fiscal disaster, no matter how respectable they may seem, are at this point effectively members of a doomsday cult.  They are emotionally and professionally committed to the belief that fiscal crisis lurks just around the corner, and they will hold to their belief no matter how many corners we turn without encountering that crisis.

“So we cannot and will not persuade these people to reconsider their views in the light of the evidence.  All we can do is stop paying attention.  It’s going to be difficult, because many members of the deficit cult seem highly respectable.  But they’ve been hugely, absurdly wrong for years on end, and it’s time to stop taking them seriously.”  Emphasis added.

The Lament of a Major GOP Player

From “All I Want for Christmas Is a New GOP,” Mark McKinnon, The Daily Beast:

“What I want for Christmas is a new Republican Party.

“All sanity seems to have left the ranks of those in charge of the GOP—or, more accurately, those who want to be in charge. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) demonstrated in a jaw-dropping performance Thursday on Morning Joe the depth of the problem and why we are bound to go over the fiscal cliff.  He made it clear he won’t vote for a tax increase on anyone, no matter how much they make. So, by his logic, we will end up going over the cliff, and raise taxes on everybody, because he and too many others like him in the party are unwilling to raise taxes on anyone. This intransigence will also make a core Republican tenet of broader tax reform more difficult to pursue because the new Congress will then be fixated on smaller bore issues like fixing the rates.

“And so voters look at the ‘negotiations’ and see on one side the president—the guy who just won the election by a substantial margin—willing to compromise by lowering his revenue target from $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion and moving the goalpost for tax-rate increases from $250,000 a year to $400,000 a year. And on the other side, they see Republicans like Huelskamp responding with a one-finger salute to everything.”

The GOP really has already gone over the cliff — the crazy cliff — and now they’re trying to take all of us with them.