Hank Williams, Jr. says he was misunderstood when he compared Obama to Hitler

When he said Hitler, he meant Himmler.

Jerk.

And you'll note the gang at Fox & Friends seemed only mildly surprised by the comparison.

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Krugman on the Senate’s threatened sanctions against China for currency manipulation

It looks like the Senate will take up legislation this week threatening sanctions against China for currency manipulation. Here's Business Insider using the scare word "tariff" in their wrap-around of the AP story (my emphasis):

TARIFFS: Washington's Response To Chinese Currency Manipulation

After years of trying, Congress is taking another stab at retaliating against what many see as Chinese manipulation of its currency to make its exports to the United States cheaper and U.S. exports more expensive.

The Senate is expected to take up legislation Monday to impose higher U.S. duties on Chinese products to offset the perceived advantage that critics say China gets by undervaluing its currency. It's a political given here that China's economic policy has damaged American manufacturers and taken away American jobs. ... Moreover, the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, doesn't like the bill, saying quiet diplomacy is a better way to influence Chinese policy and warning that overt sanctions could lead to a destructive trade war.

Note the constant pussy-footing in the AP story itself — "a political given"? It's an economic given — and also the super-scary phrase "trade war," which the Obama administration is quoted as throwing around.

How much of this editorial undercutting has to do with Chinese money and its influence on U.S. politics, both directly and through corporate intermediaries like WalMart? No way to know.

Deeper into the article, we learn the details of the legislation, as well as the extent of the problem:

[New York Democratic Senator Chuck] Schumer and others say that's a major reason that some 2 million U.S. jobs have been lost to Chinese competitors in the last decade and that the U.S. trade deficit with China last year hit a record $273 billion, some 43 percent of the entire U.S. trade gap. ... If the measure does make it through the Senate, it faces an uncertain future in the House.

Note that this is Schumer supporting the legislation.

So in his Monday column, Paul Krugman sets things straight. He thinks the Senate should proceed with the sanctions in order to reduce trade deficits and restore economic health:

To get our trade deficit down, however, we need to make American products more competitive, which in practice means that we need the dollar’s value to fall in terms of other currencies. Yes, some people will shriek about “debasing” the dollar. But sensible policy makers have long known that sometimes a weaker currency means a stronger economy, and have acted on that knowledge. Switzerland, for example, has intervened massively to keep the franc from getting too strong against the euro. Israel has intervened even more forcefully to weaken the shekel.

The United States, given its special global role, can’t and shouldn’t be equally aggressive. But given our economy’s desperate need for more jobs, a weaker dollar is very much in our national interest — and we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued, and thereby standing in the way of a much-needed decline in our trade deficit.

That's been Krugman's argument against the euro all along — if they had their own currencies, countries like Greece and Spain could deflate their drachmas and pesetas and recover through an export boom. Just what he's recommending the U.S. needs to do.

The rest of the column lists the objections and his counter-arguments. A good read.

Back to Schumer and the House for a second. Think this has a prayer?

Consider: (1) China, if it has any brains at all, has huge "investments" in the U.S. political scene. (2) The House is bought and sold by the WalMarts and Kochs of the world. (3) If Schumer is thinking this bill is DAO in the House (or even the Senate), he's bringing it up to trade for something. That "something" could be other Senate legislation, or some PR cred as U.S. jobs tank. Or something else. Any guesses?

Yet Krugman is ever hopeful, and making the case. And yes, the Senate should pull the trigger and do it. I guess we'll find out shortly.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Former Bush official says he'd have approved Solyndra loan too

MarketWatch:

As the Obama administration continues to take heat for an ill-fated $535 million loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, a Bush administration official says he would have done the same thing.

“I am glad I was not in that chair to get that call, because from what I know of the facts right now, I probably would have made the same decision, said Walter Streight Howes, a director in the Department of Energy under President George W. Bush, in an interview with Platts Energy Week.

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Ronald Reagan was a Kenyan muslim socialist? Apparently, yes.

More from ThinkProgress. Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry hearts health care mandates

First it as HPV shots, then praise for Hillary's health care reform (which included a mandate), and now it's Rick Perry's 30 minutes of mandates exercise every day for Texas students.

So the rumors were true, Rick Perry really does like his mandates.

From HuffPost:

Rick Perry is big on exercise. And in 2007, he decided Texas public school students should be, too.

On Aug. 30, 2007, the Texas governor mandated 30 minutes of exercise a day for students, signing a bill that required each student to engage in "moderate or vigorous physical activity ... throughout the school year."

"This legislation will help make children healthier today for a healthier Texas tomorrow," Perry said at the time.

The mandate reflects a more aggressive view of the role of government than Perry has been sounding in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

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Video: Why the media won’t cover the #OccupyWallStreet protests (funny)

A lot of the mainstream media is refusing to give serious coverage to the Wall Street protests.  Second City has figured out why... (This video is brilliant.)

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The muddled Republican presidential primary

Over at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field, I take a look at the ongoing saga that is Chris Christie's speculative candidacy. I also look at the broader question of whether or not there will ever be a resolution between the tensions that have emerged between the Tea Party and the 51% of Republicans who don't identify as part of the Tea Party. No candidate has satisfied both the extreme and hyper-extreme wings of the base as of yet and I doubt Chris Christie will be the one who does it.

Read the post at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field. Read the rest of this post...

Skepticism on 3rd TARP anniversary

Neil Barofsky, former Special Investigator General of TARP, is highly critical of the program on its third anniversary of TARP:

"While successful in helping to prevent financial Armageddon, on TARP's third birthday it is apparent that Treasury has failed to deliver on the other core promises that it made to Congress and the American people - that TARP would 'restore lending' and 'preserve homeownership.' Perhaps even more concerning, the inevitable moral hazard that followed Secretary Paulson and Secretary Geithner's repeated use of TARP funds to back up their pronouncements that they would not let the largest banks fail has not been adequately addressed by regulatory reform. ...

"As a result, the TBTF banks are even larger and more dangerous than ever, and could still hold the taxpayer hostage once again in the next financial crisis. Finally, TARP's most enduring legacy may be the HISTORICAL DISDAIN with which the American people now hold their government, which I believe has been fueled by Treasury administrating TARP with insufficient transparency and with undue deference to the largest financial institutions."

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Arkansas Republican says unions ought to be "eradicated"

Blue Arkansas has the goods.

In a race between Steve Womack (Republican incumbent, AR-03) and Ken Aden (Democrat and progressive), the Pope County GOP chairman, Gene Daughtry, got into an email exchange with Ken Aden's campaign manager.

Here's a taste (my emphasis):

Gene Daughtry[:] As Republicans we may be able to do better (more conservative) but there is not a Democrat that could go to DC and help America right now. Until the progressive framework is dismantled and the federal government is reduced in size and scope by about 40%, Democratic thinking is counter productive. Once all the Wilson, FDR, Carter and “O”’s federal departments, regulations and the new laws are over turned or modified to remove the effect on the states and people then possibly a Democrat could go to DC without further economic and moral destruction.

Any influence from the Koch Bros is 100 times better for America than the influence we have seen from Trumka, Stern and the unions. ...

[Daughtry:] I say that what little the unions did 100 years ago has been completely overshadowed by the damage they have wrought upon American business the last 60 years. Now with union leadership taking a role in politics here and abroad they have infected government and it’s [meaning unionism] a disease that needs to be eradicated soon and regulated to keep it from happening again.

The progressive administration, with the help of unions, have cost our country 1.5 million businesses, not jobs, businesses. Saying unions have helped the middle class is a joke. ...

Jake Burris[:] so your [sic] on record as saying unions should be eradicated? Gene, I’ll give you About 8 minutes to withdraw that statement before I make it famous.

The whole thing is here — scroll down to the indented part to read it in full.

A real troglodyte. They grow them strange down there. Reminds me of the Alabama state senator whose word for blacks is "aborigines."

About the race — I understand from the Aden campaign (email, so no link) that a recent Hendrix University survey has Womack's approval at 44 percent and combined dispparoval/don't know at 56 percent. So despite the recent redness of the district, this is a doable race, and Aden's recently created link at ActBlue getting support as a result of this Blue Arkansas story.

Action Opportunity: The obvious. Contribute if you can, and if you live in Arkansas, consider donating your time.

[UPDATED because I don't know my state abbreviations starting with A; also links fixed.]

GP Read the rest of this post...

Bloomberg: "Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales"

Nice way to start a new work week :)

First we have "improper payments" to win contracts abroad.

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

Then we have them doing business with quite possibly the world's number one terrorist-sponsoring state.

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mismeasuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.

Yes, you heard it right. The Republican party's number one donor and supporter is sneaking around US law in order to help the world's biggest terrorist state enrich itself.

Of course it's not the first time that top Republicans enriched themselves by enriching the world's number on terror state. Dick Cheney's Halliburton did the same thing.

The award for oddest geopolitical couple of 2005 goes to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Houston-based Halliburton.

You might not think that a charter member of President Bush's "axis of evil" could enlist the oil-services firm once run by Vice President Cheney to bolster its bargaining position with an international community intent on curbing its nuclear ambitions.

But that is apparently what happened last month.

What is it with Republicans and their desire to help terrorists states enrich themselves by doing a runaround US anti-terror laws? If the top Democratic party donor, and former VP, did this we'd never hear the end of it (and the VP would have been impeached).

I'm thinking there are going to be some serious Senate hearings about this. There had better. Read the rest of this post...

My analysis on CNN of Obama’s speech to big gay dinner

You can watch the video over on AMERICAblog Gay, if the spirit moves you. Read the rest of this post...