Oh George, not the peanut butter.

Find me a person who thinks that the FDA is adequately funded.

There's a couple thousand jobs that could be funded through this stimulus bill that would actually make sense. Or will we wait until we have a much larger death toll?

Question: when you buy a pound of hamburger, how many cows do you think are in that sucker?

Answer: shudder.

Intermittent Picture

Quote of the Day

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Abba Eban

Sleepin' until the crack of noon, midnight howlin' at the moon.

Intermittent Picture

Junior Senator.

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Roland Burris was sworn in Thursday by Vice President Motherfucker as senator of the state of Illinois.

I have nothing against Roland Burris, a man who is qualified to be senator, at least in terms of what the establishment defines as "qualified." This definition, as far as I understand it, means he has gotten far enough in politics to owe people.

Ostensibly, although he is in some sense a product of it, he is relatively untarnished by the governor's corruption, and has served in Illinois government long enough to have learned his craft. In other words, he has the resume to be a senator. It isn't too big of stretch to assume he will be an extremely reliable vote for Obama's agenda for the remainder of the term. I would feel easier about him though if the problems we face today could be solved within two years.

The obvious strategy for Republicans between now and the midterm elections will be to obstruct as much legislation as they possibly can. This is not an ideological thing, this is political strategy.* The reality is that Republicans will win when Democrats fail to do. And it is painfully obvious to me that Congressional Democrats, particularly in the Senate, will fail to perform at a level requisite to the crisis. Regardless of Obama's success in getting his policies enacted into legislation (and I think he will do quite well considering what he has to work with in the Capitol), the national mood towards Congress will as sour as it is at present. This puts all Democrats up for re-election in 2010 at a genuine disadvantage. I think Burris will have a tougher slog than most.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Illinois political landscape, on a level playing field, a serious Republican challenger can defeat a sitting Democratic senator in Illinois. Approximately 8 million people live in the Chicago area, and another 8 million live downstate. Illinois without Chicago is Indiana, and more closely resembles Kentucky the farther south you drive on I-55. It votes almost exclusively Republican outside of the Loop. In other words, a Republican other than Alan Keyes or a man who forces his incredibly hot wife to perform public sex acts in European swingers clubs can overwhelmingly win most of downstate Illinois and suburban Chicago (and I am almost sure that if there had been a videotape, Ryan possibly could have survived the scandal). If Democratic voters' confidence and enthusiasm wanes by 2010, which I think is a certainty, the reduced effectiveness of the Chicago machine could make this a very tight race, and this is without taking into consideration Burris' character.

Which brings me to his unique vulnerabilities. The small amount I currently know about him, I do not like. I think he is in many ways a charming person--he has a certain underdog sense about him, but his personality strikes me as more of a vain and crafty old codger than a serious statesman. This is solely my first impression of him, and if I am in any way representative of downstate Illinois voters, this means even if he were given the benefit of the doubt in regard to gaining the appointment, he is already in a hole. Nobody on either side seriously considers that Burris did anything improper to be appointed. It is clear why he was offered the seat, and why he took it, and that why will be open game. While Republicans might have better trump cards to play, his ego will certainly be an issue in the campaign.

If I could advise Senator Burris, I would tell him that he will have to define himself, and soon, as an elder statesman, and not an egotistic microphone seeker (which, admittedly, is a fine distinction for a senator). He will have to show not only a real grasp of the complexity of the issues we face, but also an approach to handling these issues in a way in which the voters of Illinois can identify. Right now, all I know about him is that he was appointed to his seat by a crook, and has a tacky monument to his political career already erected at his grave site, with enough room left to catalog this latest position. And nothing he has said since his appointment has led me to believe he accepted it except to further his own ambitions.

If he is unable to redefine himself, he will be extremely vulnerable to the inevitable character assassination and guilt by association techniques the Republican candidate will no doubt employ against him.

I am not sure that a man who appears to feel entitled to his seat by virtue of his awesomeness, in a time where we could be experiencing a very tough economy, hamstrung by high gas prices, the unfolding of any of numerous negative scenarios being played out in the Middle East in the wake of the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and an escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan, record deficit spending, and a general disdain for Congress by the public, can hold onto a seat the people of Illinois have never elected him to serve in. If there are any skeletons in his closet, if there is any evidence of corruption or impropriety, he will most certainly lose it.


* It is a cynical strategy, but this does not make it less effective. The willingness of the Republican party to fuck the country over for their own gain, combined with its uncanny ability to get away with it, has been proven by preponderance of fact.

Quote of the Day

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

I have never put my faith in any other but you.

Intermittent Picture

Quote of the Day

The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Robert Frost, The Oven Bird

Love will make you drink and gamble make you stay out all night long

Intermittent Picture

Krugman reads my blog.

Yesterday, in a post giving three very good reasons stimulus spending is better than Obama's aborted tax cut plan, I said,

There is a less than 1:1 ratio for spending and tax breaks dollars, particularly in a stimulus situation. I'd be happy to talk about the long term effects of reduction of restrictive taxes, but the whole reason we're spending money now is to see immediate effects.

I can assume it took 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics laureate Paul Krugman about 3 hours to understand my genius before coming out with a post of his own telling his readers,

Bang for the buck also heightens the contrast between effective and ineffective stimulus policies. Stay with c = 0.5, t = 1/3, and look at the effects of a tax cut; the multiplier is 0.75, half that for public investment, but bang for the buck is 1, only 1/3 that for investment.

You might think it hurts to be this fucking good, but I assure you, dear readers, it only tickles a little bit.

Your side lost more than the election.

No charges will be presented against the so-called 20th hijacker of the 9/11 attacks because he was tortured. He remains in custody at this moment solely because of your illegal policy of indefinite detention.

Also, you fucking dickless wonders,

Since 2002, 61 former detainees have committed or are suspected to have committed attacks after being released from the detention camp [at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba], Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said at a briefing Tuesday.

So let me ask you something, you vile detestable pigs, what exactly have you done to prevent terrorism? Even if you assume these assholes are terrorists, and even if you don't feel obliged to follow the Constitution, you had to have known that the detention of these people would eventually be overturned. You had to have known that these people would be freed. And you mistreated them. You abused them. You tortured them. If any of these people were innocent of the charges you NEVER FILED AGAINST THEM, what did you think would happen when they got out? Wave the goddamn flag?

You engaged in actions that you knew would not be sustainable, that you knew were illegal, and that you knew would possibly lead to more violence against the United States at a later date, and still you did it. You knowingly violated the Constitution of the United States, hurt her image at home and abroad, and left her in more danger than she was at the beginning. And you motherfuckers like to throw around the word "traitor?"

Quote of the Day

The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make the other bastard die for his.

Gen. Patton

I don't know about heaven, but I put in my dollar.

Bullshit.

Intermittent Picture

Vermillion River

Pragmatism.

Bowing to widespread Democratic skepticism, President-elect Barack Obama will drop his bid to include a business tax break he once touted in the economic stimulus bill now taking shape on Capitol Hill, aides said last night.

I dunno about the whole "abuse" angle quoted in the article, mostly because I didn't bother to know the specifics of the tax break, but this is a smart move. Consider me one of those skeptics, except of course that I had absolutely no say in the matter.

There's three simple reasons why this was a bad idea:

1. There is absolutely no guarantee businesses receiving tax breaks will spend that money for the reason it was given to them in the first place. Just like you and me, our priorities will not always match the government's. In fact, only a stupid business would hire more workers to produce more of what people are not buying.

2. There is a less than 1:1 ratio for spending and tax breaks dollars, particularly in a stimulus situation. I'd be happy to talk about the long term effects of reduction of restrictive taxes, but the whole reason we're spending money now is to see immediate effects.

3. The problem at hand is too big, and the resources of the Federal government too small, to waste money on anything less than efforts that will maximize returns on the dollar. The most efficient way to add jobs is to increase demand, namely by buying things. Since the consumer can no longer do so, the government has to.

How You Know It's Bullshit

President Bush sez: "And I readily concede that I chucked aside some of my free market principles when I was told by chief economic advisers that the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression,”

I'm not sure why this isn't clear by now, but free markets are an economic model, a necessarily simplified conceptual environment through which we can develop economic theories. As with all models, their usefulness as tools to anticipate market behavior is at best approximate, and certainly limited, and begin to totally break down as they approach these limits. It's the yin to the controlled economy yang, and about as useful. Its usefulness begins and ends as nothing more than a rhetorical platform for economic politics, and should never be considered a literal goal of economic policy. They do not, they can not, they will not exist in the real world. The idea that a free market can naturally exist outside of the abstract is a ridiculous assumption by stupid people.

Without regulating markets, they WILL shift to the extreme over time into an unsustainable rate of growth (positive or negative). The trick, and the genius of economic policy, is to find the ever-shifting sweet spot of the amount of regulation necessary to prevent unsustainable growth without choking it off, and until we develop better models, we will never know what that amount will be until we come out the other side. To cling to theory despite the facts is about as irrational as you can get.

--

The reason I think the American economy has had so many bubbles over the past two decades is because the collapse of the Soviet Union has taught that controlled economies do not work in the real world, which I think has shifted the Overton window towards deregulation. I do not hope it necessary that we have to collapse yet again into depression to prove the counterpoint.

Depression.

So why are we talking about the next Great Depression?

The US economy, historically, has a natural rate of real growth due to gains in productivity and population increase. Of course, the closer you look at the data, you will see both higher and lower growth rates. The whole reason that the government is involved in the economy is that we recognize the need for policy to moderate both the highs and lows.

The economic growth we have experienced over the last few years, as you know, has been the result of a housing bubble, created by a policy change that allowed financial institutions to make loans that artificially drove up demand for housing, causing housing prices to rise, and development to increase. (This was a response to a flattening of economic growth from the last bubble, but I digress.) The important thing to remember that within any bubble, there are plenty of people and institutions making a lot of money and gaining a lot of power out of vacuum, and is represented in this graph by the yellow shaded area I coin the sonsabitches gap. This is to whom all the bullshit wealth that was created for no logical reason went--and why you see wages stagnant in a growing economy.

As with all bubbles, eventually everybody who was going to buy in, buys in, and there are no more suckers. In the economic equivalent of musical chairs, the music stops. What happens, every goddamn time there is a bubble, is that people who do find a seat, still lose the game.

The scary part of all this is that without sound economic and fiscal policy in the wake of the bubble burst, the economic growth rate crashes through the "floor" of sustainable economic growth, and because of this, the real unemployment rate becomes far higher than the natural unemployment rate would be, and, combined and in collusion with other deflationary pressures which more or less feed on each other, we find ourselves in far worse position than we otherwise would be. There is no way out of this until the economy literally bottoms out. It is therefore critical, then, for the government to staunch the bleeding before the combining effects of unemployment and foreclosure force the bullshit growth rate down into levels in which we're economically under performing at a level in which the US as an economic unit also becomes politically unstable.

And this is what you're seeing right now. What the incoming administration will try to do right now is retard the oscillatory effect of bullshit growth, which is the economic equivalent of performing first aid--if you want a clearer image, of administering a defibrillator, and then only after the economy stabilizes will it attempt to look at ways to heal and rehabilitate it to back to the sustainable growth rate. There is always the danger, though, to continue the medical metaphor, of the economy slipping into a long-term coma.

Quote of the Day

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.

Gore Vidal

That is I think it's not so bad.

Intermittent Picture

Suck. On. This.

Why is he still on TV?

Realization.

A list of nerdy subjects I'm interested in:

1. The Civil War
2. American politics
3. Economics & finance
4. Obscure blues music
5. Chasing tornadoes

A list of nerdy subjects I'm no longer interested in:

1. The technical specifications of stereos, I guess?
2.
3.
4.
5.

True story.

Once, I went to a hair cutting place in which the hair cutter people (stylists?) were for the most part non-native English speakers. I am terrible about never getting my hair cut regularly, I only go when my hair gets so long that I can't comb it properly anymore. This has to frustrate the person who is cutting my hair, as I'm sure it's difficult to determine how I normally have it cut.

"Ok, so what are we doing," my hair cutter person asked.

"Well, I think I'd like to go with a Caesar cut," I replied.

"Ok, well, do you want the caesar all over, or do you want to do the cleeper on the sides?"

Quote of the Day

Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.

Mark Twain

Bailout 1.5

Since the first $350b was spent so well.

Yes, stopping foreclosures would be a good thing. No, that won't happen this time, either.

They know that I will take they women out of town.

Intermittent Picture

Granite Peak, WI

Quote of the Day

He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was a drunk, and now we stand by each other always.

William T Sherman, on US Grant

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

I was willing to support the nomination of Chevy Chase to head the CIA so long as we stop torturing people, but Leon Panetta seems like an OK choice.

Hello.

Since this blog will eventually make me a millionaire, I should probably start with a mission statement:

I propose to blog various current events, shaping their narratives to my preconceived notions about how things work, advance my own conspiracy theories, tell terrible jokes and share personal experiences as if I were that old man who spends his mornings sitting at the table of a small town gas station, sipping coffee.

My only hope is that I can delete whatever false content, misspellings or grammatical errors you may find before Google caches them.