Some days, man...some days I wonder if it's worth the trouble of getting out of bed. Negative waves, bad vibes, perfidy, surliness, ignorance, foolishness, stupidity, and pure evil abound.

Keynesianism: Pro and Con.

Housing is a dead parrot. Having passed on, it rests in peace.

The vampires went on a feeding spree, but that didn't help their victims much.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

But perhaps there is some light to pierce the gloom! There are people who make the case for optimism. (I am not one of those people. What kind of doom-crier would I be otherwise?)
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Posted by: Monty at 05:44 AM | Comments (170)
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FRIDAY!!!!!!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:56 AM | Comments (222)
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Slate Writer: Obama Should Be Playing More Golf

Because presidentin' is hard, and you can't really expect Obama to stay chained to the White House for 8 hours a day.

Every time you see Obama golf, Gingrich wants you get enraged. If things really work out for Republicans, golf will start coming up in David Axelrod's focus groups, and maybe Obama's advisers will have to suggest to the president that he stop playing.

Obama should resist—and, regardless of party, we should all want him to. The presidency is a prison. Your every move is watched and tended by the Secret Service, your opponents, and the media. Even when you're "having fun," you do so in quotation marks.

So back to Gingrich's joke: For it to have potency requires a nutty view of the presidency. First you must think the president's most important job is to be like a castle guard—always in a specific place and constantly on watch. This may seem absurd, but this is the way we think about presidents.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:57 PM | Comments (835)
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Texas House passes voter id bill, following the Senate's lead in January. I think Governor "Adios, Mo-Fo" will sign it.

There's only one reason it's controversial, and one reason only. Unidentified voters (and non-residents, and even dead people) vote for Democrats.

That is really the only. Damned. Reason. It is controversial. Not "disenfranchisement". Not the cost. None of that crap.

There's only one reason.

Incidentally, this issue (well, it was the major one), the Texas Tea-Partiers were really pissed off about it with Speaker of the House Joe Straus from the last legislative session. They campaigned mightily (but unsuccessfully) to have him tossed out of that job, claiming he sabotaged the last attempt.

This one is no longer an issue.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:42 PM | Comments (65)
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The latest in a string of "OMGZ BIGFOOT" videos that all fail to top Patterson's suit has unfortunately begun to go viral:

In case you don't get the reference to the comedic burnout:

Oh, and open thread. ONT should be up in another four hours, the long-rumored Christina Hendricks nude pics were leaked about 20 minutes ago so most of the co-bloggers are occupied.

Posted by: CAC at 05:40 PM | Comments (28)
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GE, they bring good tax strategies to life!

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bespectacled, bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

Via Nathan Wurtzel (a good follow on Twitter, even if he is a Yankee fan) who reminds us that until earlier this year GE owned the pro-tax MSNBC. Well, pro tax for the little people, not them. Big difference.

As for the Obama-GE ties, here you go. Oh and GE CEO Jeff Immelt is head of Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Yes, you can argue the economics of business taxes (corporations don't pay taxes, they collect them and they should definitely be lower) but it's the unmitigated chutzpah of Obama cozening up to a company that's not paying a dime in taxes while getting ready to raise everyone elses.

Added: GE also received help through TARP by using what the Washington Post termed a "loophole".

Posted by: DrewM at 04:54 PM | Comments (114)
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I'm not sure who this Keith Olbermann fellow is but he's got a bright future with Fox News ahead of him.

I think that was posted yesterday. He's pretend news website is a bit unclear on the dates. Still, it's not like things have gotten clearer today.

Obama really is a miracle worker, he manages to do the dumbest thing that pisses pretty much everyone off. Well played, Sir! Well played.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:03 PM | Comments (133)
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Seriously, that's been the progression today, the latter came from White House spokesman Jay Carney in his off camera briefing (the DoD did an on camera briefing but not the White House).

Now it looks like we finally managed to hand this flaming sack of crap off to NATO. Or at least part of it.

Mr Hague proposed a two-tiered structure giving "Nato assets" command and control of military operations, the "arms embargo, no-fly zone and civilian protection", which was approved by the US, Turkey and France.

The second structure, modelled on Nato's International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan, will bring together Nato and non-Alliance countries, including the Arab League and African Union, to "steer" strategy.

According to FNC's Pentagon reporter Jennifer Griffin this is a worthless agreement. NATO takes the No Fly Zone (which is nothing since there's no Libyan Air Force to fight or deter) but the US will still command through Africa Command the attacks on ground troops that are engaging civilians and/or rebels.

(Added) Looks like she is right: Anders Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General:

NATO will fly no-fly zone, but not agreed to do ground attacks. The alliance is still debating as to what it'll do.

The US will still be front and center in the worthless No Fly Zone. The NATO commander is Admiral James Stavridis.

President, er, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will brief shortly. It's really shameless how Obama has hidden from this mess. He's not addressed the nation as Presidents do when they send troops into battle. He's spokesman won't do an on-camera briefing and for the most part the military and not political officials are the face of this.

President Clinton Addresses The Nation From The Oval Office*

The war has support but is the lowest polling military action at the start that Gallup has ever polled. It's like political leadership matters or something.

However they split the baby (basically to keep Turkey happy), this is a mess Obama is simply trying to get out from underneath this. Hell of a way to run a war.

And if you don't think this is a war, please explain what it is when you bomb a country and enforce a naval embargo against it.

Added: General Ham, head of Africa Command which is heading this thing up basically says, "Jane! Get me off this crazy thing!"

My preference would be to hand over to a NATO command - Carter Ham

I really feel bad for the commanders who have been handed a bag of shit and told by the Commander in Chief, "Hey, make this work. I'm going golfing".

(*Clinton image via Slu)

Posted by: DrewM at 02:38 PM | Comments (358)
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There's nothing on the Daily Kos front page about the President bombing a Muslim country without congressional approval but they are outraged!!11!1! that the GOP is trying to kill the families of union members (warning, DKos link).

Apparently, busting unions by stripping workers of collective bargaining rights isn't enough. Now they want to threaten family members of striking workers with starvation. These guys just don't know when to put on the brakes. It would be shocking if it weren't so familiar.

How exactly is the GOP about to starve Americans? By refusing to force working Americans to subsidize strikers with food stamp benefits (caution link to Think Progress).

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no member of a family unit shall participate in the food stamp program at any time that any able bodied work eligible adult member of such household is on strike on strike as defined by the Labor Management Relations Act 1947, because of a labor dispute.

Except as even the raving lefties of TP admit, it doesn't really toss anyone of food stamps because someone in their family is on strike.

The bill also includes a provision that would exempt households from losing eligibility, “if the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike, however, such family unit shall not receive an increased allotment as the result of a decrease in the income of the striking member or members of the household.”

Yet removing entire families from eligibility while a single adult family member is striking would have a chilling effect on workers who are considering going on strike for better wages, benefits, or working conditions — something that is especially alarming in light of the fact that unions are one of the fundamental building blocks of the middle class that allow people to earn wages that keep them off food stamps.

With a record 42 million Americans on food stamps during these poor economic times, it appears that the right is simply looking for more ways to hurt working class Americans.

So you see, it's actually not draconian in the least. If you were eligible before you went on strike, you still are. What the proposal seems to do is say strikers and their family members aren't suddenly poor and eligible able to get public support or an increase in support because a worker decided to give up their income (even temporarily). To say that people are being punished for striking is simply nonsense. No one is denying that individuals in the private sector have a right to strike, they simply don't have the right to have others subsidize the exercise of that right.

I really hope that this provision makes it to the floor and liberals make a stink over it. I don't think in a time of 8.9% unemployment (with the real rate when you factor in discouraged workers much higher) most people are going to be too sympathetic to the idea that strikers should be rewarded for surrendering their income.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:07 PM | Comments (78)
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Wonderful.

They lied about the fight, claiming that the fight was actually between two men, "Arthur and Archie" (um, first thing off the top of your head much?), arguing about football. But the mayor was taped answering the cops' questions, noting his wife, the state rep, had a "chemical imbalance" and admitting she drew a knife on him.

A great deal of effort was expended to suppress the tape but a judge ruled it must be released.

The tape, at the NBC link above, is really something. Mr. Caraway admits without saying directly, that his wife, a woman who has some impact on the lives of everyday Texans, is violently crazy. She pulled a knife on him, it was quite the brouhaha. He sounds like a patient man on the tape, but to the public he has repeatedly lied. Rep. Caraway is on the Homeland Security & Public Safety Committee (yeah) and the Urban Affairs Committee in the state House. Their domestic dispute ended up embroiling major figures in city government. Mayor Caraway still has yet to tell the whole truth about all this. He called his loss in court yesterday, the battle to block the release of the tapes, “another win for the high dollar people.”

I like how the immediate spin is that this is some kind of class/race warfare deal. A "win for high dollar people," as if only high dollar people are curious to know if their state representative is a knife-crazed maniac. And I'm sorta thinking "high dollar people" is polite code for "Whitey."

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (236)
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