“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, December 10, 1964
“The controlling nature of the Obama White House, and its determination to take credit for every good thing that happened while giving none to the people in the cabinet departments — in the trenches — who had actually done the work, offended Hillary Clinton as much as it did me.”
Former defense secretary Robert Gates, in his new memoir Duty
Every president takes credit for the good stuff, this was nothing new or unusual. Presidents have to get re-elected, cabinet members don’t, and when we look back on successes (or failures), they are always linked, both in our memories and the history books, with who was president at the time.
John Adams comparing Boston and Philadelphia:
“Phyladelphia, with all its trade and wealth and regularity, is not Boston. The morals of our people are much better; their manners are more polite and agreeable… Our language is better, our taste is better, our persons are handsomer; our spirit is greater, our laws are wiser, our religion is better, our education is better. We exceed them in every thing, but in a market.”
Glenn Beck is planning to build a $2 billion Libertarian residential community in Texas called Independence Park. It will produce its own food and energy and do TV and film production.
Also, fake historian David Barton will create a “national archive” where children can be “deprogrammed.”
I think we know how this ends — a long line of folks waiting for their cup of Kool-Aid.
Can you imagine what it’s like to be inside Glenn Beck’s head?
From “Fighting Fiscal Phantoms,” Paul Krugman, NYT:
“But we’re not Greece, and it’s almost impossible to see how this [a run on Treasuries, a spike in interest rates and a return to recession] could actually happen to a country in our situation.
“For we have our own currency — and almost all of our debt, both private and public, is denominated in dollars. So our government, unlike the Greek government, literally can’t run out of money. After all, it can print the stuff.
“But if the U. S. government prints money to pay its bills, won’t that lead to inflation? No, not if the economy is still depressed.
“Still, haven’t crises like the one envisioned by deficit scolds happened in the past? Actually, no. As far as I can tell, every example supposedly illustrating the dangers of debt involves either a country that, like Greece today, lacked its own currency, or a country that, like Asian economies in the 1990s, had large debts in foreign currencies.
“For years, deficit scolds have held Washington in thrall with warnings of an imminent debt crisis, even though investors, who continue to buy U. S. bonds, clearly believe that such a crisis won’t happen; economic analysis says that such a crisis can’t happen; and the historical record shows no examples bearing any resemblance to our current situation in which such a crisis actually did happen.”
The chattering classes all along the political spectrum have been saying that the GOP is in an identity crisis, that they know they want to run from Bush 43, but haven’t yet figured out exactly what they’re running to.
The chattering classes are wrong — the GOP has definitively chosen a new identity: they may give lip service to Ronald Reagan, but they’re really kissing the behind of another dead person — Ayn Rand. They are all Randians now.
Nixon famously said we are all Keynesians now, and that was true. The Dems had a leftist take on Keynes, and the GOP had a rightist take on him, but everybody believed that when the economy was bad, as during a garden-variety recession let alone a Great Recession, the government should spend to make up for the lack of private sector demand. The difference was that when things were good and humming along, the Dems wanted more government spending than the GOP did. It was a difference of degree, not of fundamental ideology.
Ayn Rand is a different ideology. This is not the GOP of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, either Bush, or McCain.
Republicans, Independents, and the teeny, tiny sliver of Dems who are voting for Mitt need to think long and hard about this — are they really Randians? Is this what they believe? It’s not just that this isn’t your father’s GOP, this isn’t even the GOP of 2008. Reagan famously said that he didn’t leave the Democratic party, it left him. Well, now the Republican party has left him as well. Everyone who is voting for Mitt should stop and reflect if the party has left them as well.
Mitt himself isn’t really a Randian, he’s an empty vessel, but he picked Paul Ryan because Mitt recognizes that Rand has filled the vacuum Bush left, and Ryan is her deaf, dumb, blind disciple — Paul “Tommy” Ryan.
The “Other” threatening our country isn’t a fictional Kenyan Muslim Socialist, it’s a Russian atheist who wrote fiction.
Evangelical minister and conservative/Tea Party activist David Barton is also a pseudo-historian who writes awful books that make real historians laugh hysterically and cry helplessly. Glenn Beck is a huge fan of his, which probably tells you all you need to know about the degree of truth in Barton’s ouevre.
Anyway, Barton’s latest piece of crap, The Jefferson Lies, is so full of Barton Lies that his publisher, Thomas Nelson, has recalled the thing.
A small victory for truth and justice today.
From “The Great Abdication,” Paul Krugman, NYT:
“Ben Bernanke…has warned in particular about the damage being done to America by the unprecedented level of long-term unemployment.
“So what does the Fed propose doing about the situation? Almost nothing. True, last week the Fed announced some actions that would supposedly boost the economy. But I think it’s fair to say that everyone at all familiar with the situation regards these actions as pathetically inadequate — the bare minimum the Fed could do to deflect accusations that it is doing nothing at all.
“Why won’t the Fed act? My guess is that it’s intimidated by those Congressional Republicans, that it’s afraid to do anything that might be seen as providing political aid to President Obama, that is, anything that might help the economy.
“None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity — and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good if those who possess them refuse to use them.
“And that’s what seems to be happening. The fundamentals of the world economy aren’t, in themselves, all that scary; it’s the universal abdication of responsibility that fills me, and many other economists, with a growing sense of dread.” Emphasis added.
From “Conspiracy Theories Fly As Europe Struggles,” Floyd Norris, NYT:
“Imagine for a moment that two decades ago, a newly unified Germany set out to take over the European Continent, as the previous unified Germany had tried and failed to do half a century earlier. This time it would use money, not guns, to accomplish the goal.
“There is, let me hasten to note, no evidence of any such conspiracy. But if there had been, things might have played out more or less as they have.
“Conceivably, Germany learned three things from the 1992 experience [when Germany’s raising of interest rates forced other European countries to do the same, hurting their economies], and mapped out a course with those lessons in mind. First, absent fixed exchange rates, its export-oriented companies faced the risk of periodic competitive devaluations from the rest of Europe.
“Second, a currency union could help German exports if the euro’s value were held down by less competitive economies.
“Finally, if Germany adopted a low-interest-rate policy, and superlow rates arrived in European nations accustomed to high rates, banks could open the credit spigot and create a debt-financed boom in much of Europe. That would invite a mushrooming of imbalances. Ultimately, deeply indebted countries would face a crisis, one that they could solve only if they acquiesced to German policies and surrendered a large part of national sovereignty.
“The endgame may be approaching. Troubled countries are facing an increasingly clear choice. They can stay in the euro zone, and face years of endless recession. They can abandon the euro, perhaps bringing catastrophe but giving them the freedom to devalue their new currencies. Or they can accept the German offer: Surrender sovereignty. Accept German leadership and domination of a unified Europe. Then we will bail you out.” Emphasis added.
From “Two Worlds Cracking Up,” Thomas Friedman, NYT:
“In Europe, the supranational project did not work, and now, to a degree, Europe is falling back into individual states. In the Arab world, the national project did not work, so some of the Arab states are falling back onto sects, tribes, regions and clans.
“In Europe, the supranational project did not work because the European states were never ready to cede control over their budgets to a central authority that would ensure a common fiscal policy to back up a common currency.
“In the Arab world, the national project did not work — in many, but not all cases — because the tribes, sects, clans and regional groups that make up these Arab states, whose borders were drawn up by colonial powers, were unwilling or unable to meld genuine national communities.” Italics in original.
And all timed to determine the outcome of America’s presidential election!
Embattled Farmers 