Greece, Ireland, Portugal, (maybe) Spain...and now Italy? Contagion. The hope on the part of the EU and ECB was to contain the contagion by throwing money at it, but every time they fill one sink-hole with Euros another one opens up. It's been obvious for a long time that the Eurozone was simply a bad idea, and this crisis has exposed the rotten underpinnings for all to see. Europe wanted to have a currency union just like the United States, but they are finding out the hard way that a monetary union without a fiscal-policy union just won't work. European countries are not like US states -- they have different langauges, different work rules, different governing philosophies...different cultures. The big question in everyone's mind is...now what? Some countries must default, and a default will probably require leaving the Euro and going back to the sovereign currency. But no one knows exactly how this will work, or what the consequences will be.

Some people are floating the idea of a Euro-Bond, but I find that a little nonsensical absent any fiscal-policy union backing it. But of course this may be the point to the enterprise: to "force" Europeans into a closer union without having to go through the messy (and time-consuming) processes of holding a vote. The EU project has never really been a democratic enterprise from the very first -- the Eurozone was implemented without the say-so (even over the protests of) its citizens. If I Eurobond is floated, I expect it to be another example of droit de Seigneur on the part of the Eurozone elite. (And it probably won't work, and will piss away a lot more good money after bad, but none of that has stopped them so far.)

President Obama runs a bluff, and House Speaker Boehner calls the bluff. What you're seeing here is a fundamental and bedrock difference between the two parties: the Democrats want higher taxes, less Defense spending, and a status quo maintenance of the welfare-state apparatus; the Republicans want cuts to the welfare-state, status quo on Defense spending, and fewer (and lower) taxes. No one's going to get everything they want -- we'll know a compromise has been reached when everybody comes out of it pissed off and thinking they got fleeced.

"Why We Don't Recover", by Nicole Gelinas at the City Journal. The losses exist and must be recognized sooner or later. We can't keep them off the books forever.

Minnesota moves into week two of the state government shutdown. I haven't noticed much difference, but then again I'm not a heavy user of state services. Note the numbers involved: Minnesota will in any event spend more this year than last; it's just that Governor Dayton wants to spend $1.4B more than the GOP does. This isn't a "small government vs. big government" fight. This is an argument over how much bigger to make the government.

The first sentence in this story tells you all you need to know about why we're doomed: "An extraordinary amount of personal income is coming directly from the government." What flabbergasts me is that more people don't understand what a huge problem this is, and why it is unsustainable even over the short-term.

Via Insty: Economic rebound "not happening" in 2011. Yeah, I think we all understand that by now.

UPDATE 1: Signs of the times. Pawnshops and payday lenders are hot.

UPDATE 2: The disappearing black middle class. The near-unanimous penchant for black Americans to vote Democrat has always mystified me, given the destruction Democrat policies have wreaked on black families over the decades. But hopefully the rise of conservative black politicians like Rep. Allen West (and Latinos like Marco Rubio) portend a conservative shift in traditionally-Democrat constituencies.

UPDATE 3: The scariest jobs chart ever.

UPDATE 4: "Turbo Tax" Timmah: "[I]t's going to feel very hard, harder than anything they've experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come." Ah-heh-heh-heh-heh. "Hard".
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Posted by: Monty at 05:03 AM | Comments (63)
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Free Slurpees today at 7/11. They're the perfect summertime refreshment for people who know that putting the car in "D" just gets you deeper into the ditch.

Posted by: andy at 02:27 AM | Comments (110)
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Hopefully tonight goes a little better than last night.

As you read this, Space Shuttle Atlantis is orbiting the earth on her last voyage. It's gonna suck having to rely on the Russkies to get to and from the space station for the foreseeable future. According to PopSci magazine, here are your Top 10 Tech Designed For The Space Shuttle We Can Enjoy.

The next time you get in a horrific car crash and have to be cut out of it, you can add NASA to the list of things to thank for making it out alive. Rescue squads often use a particular hand-held cutter to get victims out of wrecks, and as it turns out, that cutter is essentially a miniature version of the one used to, as NASA says, "separate the shuttle from the solid rocket boosters after launch." It's ideal for rescue situations because as it uses controlled explosive charges rather than spinning blades, it needs no auxiliary power or "cumbersome hoses," and it's actually 70% cheaper than competing equipment.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:21 PM | Comments (790)
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The WSJ opinion page lays the game out in the open: Taxes Upon Taxes Upon . . . Obama wants $1 trillion in taxes on top of what he's already signed.

We think this was the President's spend-and-tax plan from the very first. Run up spending and debt in the name of stimulus and health-care reform, then count on Wall Street bond holders and the political establishment to browbeat Republicans into paying for it all. He apparently didn't figure on the rise of the tea party, or 1.9% GDP growth and 9.2% unemployment two years after the recession ended.

Bingo!

Even the biggest GOP squish (lookin' at you, Senator Brown) should agree that this is a hill worth dying on.

Posted by: andy at 04:04 PM | Comments (187)
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That's a kidney.

Ask yourself a question. What exactly was this large covert operation intended to accomplish? To find bad people, purchasing firearms, and transporting them to Mexico?

Really?

...

Oh well, darned good idea! You can't get enough of following bad guys around with guns. Because after they commit their crimes, you know, like, where they got their guns.

Also Brit Hume is a racist.

UPDATE: Oliver North just emailed me to ask "WTF, OVER? WE'RE SUPPOSED TO ARM FRIENDLIES, NOT TANGOS"

I don't know what a tango is. That's military radio talk right there.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 01:21 PM | Comments (272)
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Little follow-up on the ugly stats coming out of Pennsylvania from PPP and other pollsters, where Obama is performing worse here than in Ohio. Western Pennsylvania has trended red for some time now, with nearly the entire Pittsburgh metro area going for McCain in 2008. Obama of course beat him by over 10 points, but that was thanks to a massive, massive rack up not in Philly (where he only added another 30,000 votes over Kerry in the grand scheme of things), but the Philly suburbs.

Here is a pretty straightforward visual on how you win PA, either narrowly or comfortably:

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Posted by: CAC at 12:34 PM | Comments (94)
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A Mediaite twofer.

First, a guy in a banana suit attacked a guy in a gorilla suit. I saw this on Special Report a couple of days ago. In the video, people were wondering about the reasons for the attack, but if you Google the terms, guys in gorilla suits and guys in banana suits have been going at it for a long time. It's somewhat of an internet meme. The difference is that this one wasn't staged.

Video below the fold. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 11:24 AM | Comments (72)
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Thinking outside the box for a change!

Senate Democrats have drafted a sweeping debt-reduction plan that would slice $4 trillion from projected borrowing over the next decade without touching the expensive health and retirement programs targeted by President Obama.

Instead, Senate Democrats are proposing to stabilize borrowing through sharp cuts at the Pentagon and other government agencies, as well as $2 trillion in new taxes, primarily on families earning more than $1 million year, according to a copy of the plan obtained by The Washington Post.

With debt-reduction talks under way between Obama and congressional leaders, Senate Democrats are unlikely to adopt the blueprint. However, it has gained broad support among those eager to chart a path to solving the nationÂ’s budget problems without making politically painful cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

“The very strong feeling was we needed to get this into the conversation, because it provides an alternative view,” said a Senate Democrat familiar with the blueprint, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it has not been publicly released. “What’s striking is how modest the changes need to be to get us back on track.”

No editorializing here from the WaPo reporter -- the plan is "sweeping" in its benefits, it seems, and yet perfectly "modest" in its actual changes. Wow! Sounds awesome!

...

“If they’re calling for $2 trillion in tax hikes in the middle of a jobs crisis, it’s little wonder that it’s been 800 days since Senate Democrats passed a budget,” said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart.

By the way, the WaPo's headline is very misleading -- only later in the article does the reporter admit the Democrats will never actually propose or vote for this plan -- it only has the support of about half the caucus.

But the article is headlined, and written in the early going, to suggest the Democrats have finally proposed a budget.

They have not.

An actual budget would make clear that they either want to punish the middle class with steep tax increases or simply permit the United States economy to implode by weight of forbidding debt.

The actual WaPo editorial board actually has a different take.

When it comes to Social Security, the no-benefit-cuts caucus argues that the program is not the major driver of current deficits. This is correct but irrelevant. The program is on a course to run out of enough money to pay promised benefits in 2036. The longer policymakers wait to make adjustments the more painful these adjustments will be — and the more risk they pose to the most vulnerable beneficiaries that Democrats assert they want to protect. Fixing Social Security is important for its own sake; it is going to have to happen sooner or later. If the debt ceiling debate presents a sensible occasion for getting that done, at least in part, so much the better.

...
Insisting on no change to scheduled benefits for any retiree, no matter how affluent, ignores the twin imperatives of protecting less affluent seniors and ensuring that society retains enough resources for programs for the non-elderly. It is not a responsible position — nor, at bottom, a progressive one.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (120)
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Representative Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) formally announced his White House bid last week. Yesterday, in an interview with John Roberts on Fox News, he took aim at Romney, slamming the "Obama-Romney economy."

"Unemployment rising, people struggling in the Obama-Romney economy," McCotter tweeted Friday.

The congressman expanded on that critique during a Saturday interview with Fox News. "We have Obama as the champion of big government, we see Romney as champion of bail out banks in Wall Street bailout. They are less rivals than they are running mates," he said.

Representative McCotter defended his support of auto bailouts, "saying he's [in] favor of keeping Americans working instead of losing those jobs to overseas manufacturers," according to FoxNews.com.

Video below the fold. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:07 AM | Comments (63)
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Oops.

Rep. Michele Bachmann had been the first GOP hopeful to sign “The Marriage Vow,” which included in the introduction a section that lamented that “the Institution of Marriage in America is in great crisis.”

One piece of evidence it offered was the claim that a black person born into slavery “was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.”

...“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued,” said Julie Summa, a spokeswoman for the Family Leader. “We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”

The primary goal of the document was to affirm “that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man,” the statement said.

Ah, the sorry if we offended you apology. How about an apology for writing something so deeply stupid? Meh, that's the standard today I guess. In a better world when people screw up, they should just admit they screwed up. We do not however live in a better world, we live in this one.

Now that we've disposed with a group no one ever heard of before...what the hell were Bachmann and Rick Santorum thinking in signing this thing? Seriously, if you're argument even in part relies on a positive comparison with life during slavery in America, you really, really need to take a minute and reevaluate your position.

Clearly there's a strong and politically compelling argument that liberal policies have done great damage not to just the black family but American families in general. There are plenty of ways to make that case effectively without this kind of strange and ultimately self-defeating talking point.

I guess it's good that this group (again, who the hell are they?) listened to "wise insight and input from valued colleagues" but why weren't two candidates for the GOP nomination among those people saying to the group...'Really? That's a comparison you want to make?" Shouldn't candidates for the highest office offer "wise insight" to their political supporters when they go awry?

According to the article, it's the Bachmann camp distributing the statement retracting the slavery comparison. Clearly they want to distance themselves from that part of the pledge but that's meaningless. She and Santorum signed when that was part of it, they own the fact they didn't object or object enough to take a pass.

Whatever credit Family Leader gets for exercising good judgement for retracting that part of their pledge doesn't redound to either candidate. Their judgement on this issue is still very much in question.

Added: Every post could include a screed about media bias and this one is no different. The reason I even posted it is because it generate some discussion last night in a budget thread. It seemed fair to note that the contentious statement had been retracted.

The bias angle is, this will get played up by the MFM to hurt Bachmann. As you can see, I think it's a fair hit on her judgement. That said, the MFM never promotes controversial pledges by a liberal like Obama. Remember this video where he basically promised to disarm the US?

It got big play in conservative circles but I don't remember a peep in the MFM.

It's like they pick sides or something.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:48 AM | Comments (351)
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