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Wednesday, November 09, 2011

The gays rocked in yesterday’s election



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Lots of openly gay candidates won at the state and local level.  From the Victory Fund (that helps elect openly gay candidates):
Openly gay and lesbian candidates endorsed by the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund won election to municipal, judicial and state legislative offices from coast to coast Tuesday night. At least 53 of the group’s 75 endorsees were victorious, with two races still undecided this morning.
A partial list of some of the victories. Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry went blank for 30 seconds during GOP debate



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Credit: Perry photo via Shutterstock
It was bad.  Rick Perry started talking about the three federal agencies he'd shut down, got through two of them, then couldn't come up with the third.  He just kept trying to come up with it, and couldn't.  It was pretty bad.  You can watch the video here.   Ben Smith heard from a prominent Perry supporter, who thinks it's over for Perry.

Here's the transcript:
Harwood>> Governor Perry, you play only home games in texas. Do you give him points for winning on the road?

Perry>> There is a reason that caterpillar moved their high hydraulics and in the state of texas. It does than have anything to do with the republican versus democrat. It had everything to do with creating a climate in our state where the job creators knew that they were going to have the opportunity to keep more of what they work for. That's what americans are looking for. They are looking for a tax plan that basically says you are going to be able to keep more of what you work for. They are looking for a regulatory climate that does not strangle the life out of their businesses and when they want to put those dollars out there to create the wealth. That's what americans are looking for. I think we are getting all tangled up around an issue here about can you work with democrats, c you work with republicans? Yeah, we can all do that. But the fact of the matter is we better have a plan in place that americans can get their hands around and that's a reason my flat tax is the only one of all of the folks these good folks on the stage it balance it is budget in 2020. It does the things though the regulatory climate that has to happen. And I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when i get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the -- what's the third one there? Let's see.

Paul>> Five.

Perry>> Five. Okay. Commerce, education, and the --

Romney>> epa?

Perry>> Epa, there you go.

Harwood>> Seriously -- is epa one you are talking about?

Perry>> No, sir, no, sir. We are talking about the -- agencies of government -- epa needs to be rebuilt.

Harwood>> You can't -- you can't name the third one?

Perry>> The third agency of government I would -- I would do away with education, the --

Romney>> commerce.

Perry>> Commerce and, let's see. I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.
So now it's down to Romney and who?  Gingrich is a nutty as ever.  Herman Cain made a sexist crack about Nancy Pelosi tonight that even the traditional media noticed.  Bachmann makes Gingrich look sane.  Huntsman is just too reasonable to ever win the GOP nomination.  So it's Mitt "If it's Tuesday, I must be pro-life" Romney, by default. Read the rest of this post...

Herman Cain, fighting sexual harassment accusations, calls Nancy Pelosi "Princess Nancy"



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Herman Cain literally just called US House Minority Leader, and former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi "Princess Nancy."  (Video here, courtesy of ThinkProgress.)  Not the smartest thing to do, when you're fighting multiple women who have accused you of sexual harassment, and one of sexual assault, to make a sexist comment about the highest ranked woman

Former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino just tweeted:
Ay yi yi, former Speaker Pelosi called a princess in the debate? Not fair. We may disagree on policy, but she earned the Speaker title.
Read the rest of this post...

2002 document shows Romney supporting Roe v Wade and Medicaid funded abortions



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AMERICAblog Elections has a document showing Mitt Romney professing his support for Roe v Wade and Medicaid-funded abortions in 2002.  Romney is now claiming that he's adamantly pro-life, hates Roe v Wade, and is 100% against Medicaid funded abortions.  And I suppose that is the convenient position of the day, just as Romney's pro-life bona fides will get thrown out the window if and when he becomes the GOP candidate and decides he needs to move to the left again.

Romney reminds me of the time I overheard a certain GOP Senator talking with his staffers as they came out of an elevator in the Senate Hart building back in the early 90s.  I was in another elevator and the doors had just opened - the folks in front of me got out - and I, and another kid, just stood there waiting for the doors to close (I was going one floor up).  Right before our doors closed, this Republican Senator, who had an office near ours, briskly walks by, followed by a coterie of staffers, and one staffer says to him earnestly: "remember Senator, today you're pro-choice."  The kid next to me and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing.

Remember Mitt, today you're pro-life.
Read the rest of this post...

Video: Driving from coast to coast and back in five minutes



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Click the map to go to the video.
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The Italian financial crisis, the Euro, and how it may affect America



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Euro photo via Shutterstock
Watching the slow motion implosion of the Euro is excruciating.

Italy looks like it won't be able to meet the payments on its outstanding government bonds if interest rates on them rise much higher than 7% - and the shakier the government looks, the more people will dump the bonds, and thus the higher the interest rate will go. This is a clear case of a self fulfilling fear/prophecy (i.e., the more paranoid you are, the more afraid you should be that the feared outcome might just happen).

What is excruciating is the knowledge that stopping the run, and saving the Euro zone, would be easy and relatively costless. In fact, the European Central Bank (ECB) could probably make a profit. It may seem too easy, but all the ECB has to do is to say that they stand ready to buy any and all Italian government bonds. Doing this would immediately erase any fear bond holders have of not being paid, and it would stop the run to dump the bonds dead in its tracks because everyone knows the ECB can buy literally infinite amounts of bonds if it wants to.

Paradoxically, simply SAYING they stand ready to buy any and all Italian government bonds means that they likely won't actually have to DO it. If bond holders' fears are calmed then they won't want to sell the bonds and the ECB won't have to buy them .

This is exactly what the Federal Reserve does in the US for our own government bonds. and it is why the Treasury can borrow at extremely low interest rates. People are happy to have our bonds because they know the Fed stands behind them, so the Fed doesn't actually have to hoover them all up to prop up confidence. Why won't the ECB just do the same thing?

The short answer comes in two parts.

First is a misguided fear of inflation. If anybody can find any evidence of any inflation in any data from anywhere please send me a news flash. It just isn't there and won't be so long as we are in a recession. And if inflation ever does get going, we can easily squash it since with interest rates near zero there is plenty of room to raise them. I know, I know, the German bankers have a fear of inflation burned so deeply into their brainstems that they can't help themselves, but really, the 1920's hyperinflation that caused this attitude is almost a century ago by now, and Germany is supposed to be the central core of the Euro zone. So perhaps they can try to adapt just a bit to modern realities.

The second problem is a political one. The German electorate doesn't want to spend a penny to "bail out" what they see as free-spending Italians (or Spaniards or Portuguese for that matter). But their lack of faith is more a CAUSE of the Italians' problems than a reaction to it. If the Germans were WILLING to bail them out, then they wouldn't have to actually do it, as explained above. And if they did go ahead and buy some Italian government bonds to show they meant business, then they would be able to make a profit on them once it became clear that nobody needs to be afraid of a default.

Why should Americans care? Because a major default on Italian bonds will almost inevitably cause major bank failures in Italy. And Italian bank failures are very likely to cascade into generalized failures across Europe, since not only do many banks hold Italian debt, but many of those Italian banks are counterparties to a myriad of other transactions with other banks in Europe. The banking system is extremely interconnected on many levels. And there is no reason to imagine the cascade will stop there. US banks are also exposed to European debt and European banks - the more European banks that fail, the more the effects ripple out in all directions including our own.

Here is a fear from my own reptile brain. Most folks don't remember, but the major bank-runs in the depths of the Great Depression started in Europe, Austria to be exact. Then they spread from there across the globe, culminating here in FDR's Bank Holiday in March of 1933, when all banks were closed for a period and reopened under a Federal Reserve guarantee of unlimited cash to prop them up. (Which turned out not to be needed since people believed the Fed would do it if they had to. Sound familiar?)

Well, our economies are a LOT more interconnected now than they were in the 1930's. Many of our own banks are exposed to European debt and are parties to millions of transactions a day involving Europeans. Unravelling it all would be a nightmare. The Fed would likely have to step in to prop up some of our banks (yet again), and in fact the Fed is already talking about propping up THEIR banks as a first line of defense. Simply calling a halt for a while as FDR did in the 1930's is hard to imagine nowadays, given the penetration of finance into virtually every part of life. The chances that a general meltdown could happen before it could be stopped are large enough for us to want to prevent such a scenario from even starting. So please, European Central Bank, pretty please won't you do it? It would be very easy.

And if the ECB doesnt? If they simply won't provide the central bank functions and monetary policy the Euro zone so desperately needs? Well, then we will see the the zone breakup so that countries like Italy can have their own currency, their own central bank, and their own monetary policy. Whether that can happen without large bank failures is anyone's guess. But what is certain is that we Americans won't be immune from the fallout. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: This is the way the euro ends



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Krugman sees that the end is near:
[W]ith Italian 10-years now well above 7 percent, we’re now in territory where all the vicious circles get into gear — and European leaders seem like deer caught in the headlights. And as Martin Wolf says today, the unthinkable — a euro breakup — has become all too thinkable[.]
Krugman quotes some of what Martin Wolf said. Here's a bit more (my emphasis throughout):
Mr Roubini discusses four options for addressing these stock and flow challenges simultaneously: first, restoration of growth and competitiveness through aggressive monetary easing, a weaker euro and stimulatory policies in the core, while the periphery undertakes austerity and reform; second, a deflationary adjustment in the periphery alone, together with structural reforms, to force down nominal wages; third, permanent financing by the core of an uncompetitive periphery; and, fourth, widespread debt restructuring and partial break-up of the eurozone. ... The second would fail to achieve flow adjustment in time and so is likely to morph into the fourth. ... The fourth would simply be the end.
Only the second and fourth options are on the table. Both lead to the end, according to Roubini.

In the meantime, time is running out. The Financial Times headline as I write:
Market confidence in Italy collapses
Yields on 10-year goverment bonds close to 7.5%
And here's the New York Times on what the ECB will do:
THE escalating debt crisis in Europe has claimed the political career of one prime minister, George A. Papandreou of Greece, and threatened that of another, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. Despite popular resistance, governments are racing to stay ahead of the bond markets by slashing their budgets. The drama of meetings, proposals, counterproposals and popular unrest seems destined to end in tragedy.
The Times is saying what Roubini is saying — austerity-driven disaster is next on the agenda.

Krugman again:
I believe that the ECB rate hike earlier this year will go down in history as a classic example of policy idiocy. We would probably still be in this mess even if the ECB hadn’t raised rates, but the sheer stupidity of obsessing over inflation when the euro was obviously at risk boggles the mind.
You can read this as a morality play, in which hyper-moral lemmings (European elites and the ECB) lead each other over the cliff.

But you know the rich will not pay the price. They'll summer in Cannes till they die.

Which leads to the other reading — as heroic drama in which the elites save each other (by making sure none of the hyper-rich take a loss) at the expense of governments and the "small people."

You know, like inverse Robin Hoods, or totally modern Scarlet Pimpernels — the rich riding to the aid of the rich just ahead of the (unwashed) voting public.

Either way, Krugman puts a fork in it. The euro may survive, in a core-countries kind of way. The Eurozone however, as currently conceived, will not. Euro-elites would have to grow a pair (one set of brains and a cupful of civic-mindedness) for that sad end to be avoided.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Right wing now denies the existence of "sexual harassment"



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Back to the proven playbook. (Why not? The rubes fell for it last time.)

Dahlia Lithwick writing at Slate has this excellent commentary (my emphasis):
Conservatives aren’t just defending Herman Cain. They’re denying the very existence of sexual harassment.

I have no idea what Herman Cain did with the two, or maybe three, or possibly now four women who have raised allegations of improper sexual behavior about him. I don’t know whether any of them will come forward and run the risk of being labeled a slut for their efforts to do their jobs without being treated like pole-dancers. I do know that—as Amanda Marcotte so eloquently explained this week—the very same people who insist that we don’t know what actually happened all those years ago seem to know exactly what happened: nothing.

Sexual harassment is now nothing. Welcome to the era of gender harassment denialism. The harassment skeptics claim that harassment, like racism, used to exist but is now over. ...[G]reat swaths of [Cain defenders] have opted to assert that there could never be a valid sex discrimination claim because the whole thing is just a racket. And they went even further: The same folks criticizing the National Restaurant Association employees who came forward with claims that they were uncomfortable in their workplace are willing to deploy the most archaic and gender-freighted stereotypes to get there. Sexual harassment can’t be “real” because the women who claim it are money-grubbing, hysterical, attention-seeking tramps.

Hope it never happens to one of your daughters, friends. It would suck if someone called her a humorless hooker, even before learning her name.
Lithwick then presents her case; for example, John Derbyshire:
“Is there anyone who thinks sexual harassment is a real thing? Is there anyone who doesn’t know it’s all a lawyers’ ramp, like ‘racial discrimination’? You pay a girl a compliment nowadays, she runs off and gets lawyered up.”
An excellent piece.

Movement Conservatives are so used to winning simply by making assertions, and then making them true simply by re-asserting them, that you could almost guess this would happen. (Remember "racism"? Ask your grandparents about it.)

After all: (1) They're the "say anything" crowd. It's what they do, their bread-and-butter running play.

(2) The billionaire-controlled corporate media is reliably "repeat anything" — so long as billionaire-financed politicians are the ones who are talking.

(3) This is the age of "perception is reality" — can't tell you how many times I've walked past a corp presentation room and found that on one of the overheads. What, nothing exists unless you say it does? This is an entirely corrupt philosophy for an ad-age corrupted era — and an ad-saturated public. (For example: "Manliness," a wholly-owned concept of Miller Lite.)

We have always been at war with Eastasia. Until we weren't.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Gingrich slams 99% as ’grotesque’ euro-socialist



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Whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Since Gingrich was part of the GOP-Clinton agreement to scrap Wall Street regulation, it must be difficult for him to see what a disaster his actions have caused. (Same goes for Bill Clinton, for that matter.) While it's grotesque for America to have become more similar to the countries that the Gingriches of the world like to criticize, the reality is, Gingrich and his type created this problem. Whether he likes it or not, there is an enormous imbalance of wealth today in the US.
“I am for 100 percent,” he said. “I think this idea of 99 percent and 1 percent is grotesque European socialist class warfare baloney.”

And President Obama is playing right along with that class warfare by expressing sympathy for the protesters, he added.

“I repudiate anybody who wants to divide Americans and I think that that there is a fundamental destructive quality to this 99 percent idea,” Gingrich said. “I think that it is shameful the president of the United States would engage in class warfare and pit Americans against each other in way which can only be destructive of the fabric of American society.”
Once again, the only class warfare is the Republican-led class warfare that got us to this point. Read the rest of this post...

Lunch break: Glee’s version of Billy Joel’s "Uptown Girl"



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Pure joy.

Read the rest of this post...

Mitt Romney, who’s worth a quarter of a billion dollars, says public employees make more than him



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This "regular guy" schtick from Romney is getting old, fast.

First he claimed "he was unemployed too," because he's so filthy rich he doesn't have to work another day in his life - that's what he calls "unemployed" (I wonder if that makes the dead, and fetuses, unemployed too, since volition apparently isn't a requirement).  And now Romney is telling steelworkers that "government employees" are making a whole lot more money than "we" are.

Really, Mitt?   Who's "we"?  You're worth a quarter of a billion dollars.  And 15 years ago the Mormon church, of which you are a bishop, had assets of $30 billion.  God only knows how much they have stored away now (and we all know the Mormons aren't shy about using their money to force other Americans to live under their rules).  You are the not the 99% Mitt.  You're the one percent of the one percent.  Quit trying to remake yourself.  It's getting a bit pathetic.

PS And you wonder why it's always Republicans who either blow up (Timothy McVeigh was a registered Republican), or try to blow up, federal buildings and employees.  Maybe if Mitt and his fellow Republicans loved America a bit more, and hated our system of government a bit less, the crazies wouldn't feel nearly as enabled to act on their hate.  For a party that claims to own the patent on loving America, they sure don't seem to like Americans very much. Read the rest of this post...

GOP demands SuperCommittee put govt in more debt in order to cut taxes yet again



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A fascinating admission by Republicans in today's NYT.  If the Democrats push the SuperCommittee to raise taxes in order to cut the deficit, the Republicans will then demand that the SuperCommittee cut taxes by an even larger amount.
The House will not approve a bill that raises tax revenue unless it also reduces tax rates, the aide said, adding, “We put tax revenues on the table, and Democrats don’t know what to do.”

The Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 170 conservative House Republicans, immediately circulated a letter urging the committee not to support any tax increases. “With current levels of taxation already limiting economic growth, we believe that marginal rates must be maintained or lowered and that repeal of any tax credit or deduction be offset with an equal or greater tax cut,” the letter said.
In simpler terms, the GOP is saying that if Democrats want to raise taxes by, let's say, $1.00, then the Republicans will insist that they also cut taxes by $1.01. The result is that we'll be even more in debt once the process is through.

Now, considering how low interest rates are, and how bad the economy still is, the government SHOULD be going more into debt in the near term, borrowing cheap money for infrastructure spending, for example. But the Democrats, sadly, gave up on that battle a long time ago. So now we're simply debating how badly to maim an already injured economy. Read the rest of this post...

Cain campaign manager falsely claims accuser’s son works for Politico



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"We've confirmed that he does indeed work at POLITICO and that's his mother, yes," said [Cain campaign manager Mark] Block.
He doesn't.  Never did.  Some guy with the same last name did work for Politico up until last year, but he says he's not related to the accuser.  Why would Cain's campaign be dumb enough to say that he was, simply based on him having the same last name?  It's not very professional, nor very presidential.  It's quite amateur, in fact.  You confirm stuff like this first, you don't just blurt it out on national TV. Read the rest of this post...

GOP scrooges try to kill the Christmas tree



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The Republicans are very upset that President Obama is trying to save a Christmas tradition, the real Christmas tree.  It's kind of a neat idea the President has, and one the tree growers asked him to do.  From the Miami Herald:
Following an extended debate that pit one region against another, the Agriculture Department on Tuesday gave the green light to a new industry-funded Christmas tree promotion program.

By taxing themselves, growers will raise $2 million a year for ads promoting the merits of real, live trees. Or, at least, trees that once were living, as opposed to the artificial kind that have seized an increasing share of the holiday market.

"As demographics and buying habits have changed we have watched the market for real trees shrink drastically, requiring us to spend much more time and money on promotion," said Don Cameron, past president of the California Christmas Tree Association.
The fee is a whopping 15 cents per tree.

As part of their ongoing effort to label everything a "tax," and every tax a bad thing (since government, to the Republicans, is per se bad, except of course when government is providing GOP members of Congress their own cushy socialist subsidized health care, and absurdly lush retirement benefits even if they spend only a microsecond in Congress), the GOP is simply apoplectic that the White House would try to help American Christmas tree growers in a manner in which the growers themselves asked for.

Yes, God forbid President Obama actually do something that business is asking him to do to save their livelihood. Then again, the GOP opposes every move the President makes to save jobs.  They're invested in torpedoing the economy to help their election chances next November, to hell with what it does to the rest of us.

The real question isn't why President Obama is trying to save an American Christmas tradition dating back to the time of the American Revolution, but rather, why the Republicans aren't trying to save it too? Read the rest of this post...

IMF chief: global economy looking at lost decade



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Only a lost decade? We should be happy if we're out of this hole by 2018.
Christine Lagarde told a financial forum in Beijing that European plans to bolster a rescue package for Greece were a "step in the right direction", but that the outlook for the world economy remained dangerous and uncertain.

"There are clearly clouds on the horizon," Lagarde said. "Clouds on the horizon particularly in the advanced economies and particularly so in the European Union and the United States."

"Our sense is that if we do not act boldly and if we do not act together, the economy around the world runs the risk of downward spiral of uncertainty, financial instability and potential collapse of global demand... we could run the risk of what some commentators are already calling the lost decade."
Read the rest of this post...

Berlusconi to resign following deficit deal



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He already lost his majority, but seeing how often Berlusconi has come in and out of power, don't think that he's gone from politics forever. The Guardian:
Silvio Berlusconi has pledged to resign as Italy's prime minister in a long-delayed move that doomed his third government and appeared to foreshadow the end of the media tycoon's eventful and frequently scandalous 17-year career in politics.

But opposition leaders were swift to warn that Berlusconi could be plotting to re-emerge. "[He] has not disappeared. He has resigned," said Pierluigi Bersani, leader of Italy's biggest opposition group, the Democratic party (PD). Antonio Di Pietro, of the Italy of Principles party, claimed Berlusconi was "taking another month to try to buy a few [parliamentarians]".

The PD called for the head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano, to use his constitutional powers to set up a transitional government. But Berlusconi told one of his three television channels: "It is absolutely unthinkable in a democracy for the parties that lost the election to assume governmental responsibilities."
Read the rest of this post...

Seniors join Occupy Chicago protest



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It will be interesting to see how the two groups can join together, though nobody in Washington is probably thrilled with the idea. Huffington Post:
More than 1,000 senior citizens and their supporters marched from Chicago's Federal Plaza to the intersection of Jackson and Clark Street Monday morning to protest proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). At the intersection, more than 40 protesters, 15 of them seniors affiliated with the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, stood or sat in the street, arms linked, blocking traffic.

Amid chants demanding that the cuts be forestalled -- with suggestions for alternatives, including tax hikes -- 43 demonstrators were escorted from the intersection (see video, above) by police and issued citations for pedestrian failure to "exercise due care," or for blocking traffic. Those cited included four protesters using assisted mobility devices and at least one centenarian.
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GOP Senate candidate to 99%: 'Get off your ass and go get a job'



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Somehow the Republican races always seem to be about who can be the biggest jerk of the bunch. Craig Miller of Florida may soon find himself at the top of the list if he keeps up this kind of ignorance.
Miller on what his advice he would give to those in the Occupy Wall Street movement: "Get off your ass and go get a job."

The lunchtime crowd of about 400 ate up that kind of rhetoric.

"I want somebody to go to the Senate who has a fire in his belly," said Corey Spangler of Lady Lake. "No more compromising."
He's not too far off from this guy, though Miller is actually serious. Read the rest of this post...


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