Nothing to Say

I haven't posted much in the last couple of days because nothing really has happened worth comment. Obama gave a "non-state of the union" speech last night, and the only news out of it was Governor Jindal did himself no favors last night. Having heard sound bites of him before, I thought that perhaps Republicans had found themselves someone who really could carry their message. If last night was any example, no.



I'll be gracious here and say he performed well below his own standard of oratory. But I have heard him speak comfortably. And he's a master of bullshit. I have to work with guys like this, and they're pure bullshit artists, which is to say that the cadence, the manner of speech--there's just something off about it. If you're around people like Jindal long enough, you realize that there's absolutely no way to tell whether or not he's lying, so you just have to assume he's lying all of the time. And his presentation is such that there's no room for catching him midsentence to call him out on his lie.

Here's a normal bullshitter:

Paragraph detailing a series of events, altogether untrue. Lying at length. A cut from broad cloth lie.

Here's an above average bullshitter: Truth. Truth. Bullshit. Truth. Gotta run. An above average bullshitter will tell you things that are true, or turn out to be true, to obfuscate his own lies.

Here's a master bullshitter:

aergaqrbgarvaerhwgWEGAEHGFVAEHBAEFASERBAaervasrvaevaegaegaergaergaergagf.

There are about 20 discordant lies delivered with so much haste that by the time you've realized that the first thing out of his mouth is a lie, he's 4 topics head in the conversation. It's a blitzkrieg of lies; the shock and awe of bullshitting.

Now, his greatness at bullshitting is beyond dispute. He is amazing at it. But the problem with being that good at being so full of shit is that it is not a good long term strategy.

I know Jindal has higher aspirations, and if he wants to be a Senator, he can be a Senator, and if he wants to be a vice president, he can probably do that too. But he had better put those presidential aspirations up on the shelf, next to the dreams of becoming an astronaut, because there is absolutely no way he can have a dialogue with the American people.

So, as a spokesman for the Republican party, fantastic. Delivering criticisms and becoming a face of Republican opposition, sure. But he's not the guy you want to be selling new ideas. He can talk your ear off, but he, like me, has nothing to say.

Change I Can Believe In

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take a harder line with the Senate after a trio of Republican senators forced Congress to trim billions from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

It’s not clear how far Pelosi is willing to go in standing up to the Senate — or, realistically, what effect Hoyer and Pelosi combined could have in the face of the 60-vote hurdle Senate Democrats face.

But after last week’s stimulus votes, Hoyer called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to force Senate Republicans to mount actual filibusters if they want to stand in the way of bills “so that the American people can see who’s undermining action.”

And in a private conversation with Pelosi, aides say Hoyer reminded the speaker that they’d talked previously about tolerating Senate strong-arming on the stimulus and on children’s health insurance — two Democratic priorities — but then holding their own on future legislation.

It is about time you make these motherfuckers put on their their adult diapers and read the dictionary on the Senate floor. You don't have to take the filibuster away, as the Republicans threatened to do, you make them go up there and filibuster health care reform. Quit letting them poison your priorities without having to get on the TV obstructing legislation.

We've got your backs.

Poor Arlen

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who broke with his party to support President Obama's stimulus package last week, said before the final vote Friday that more of his colleagues would have joined were they not afraid of the political consequences.

"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'"

Another casualty of the South rising again, otherwise known as "what hath conservatives wrought."

To sum up, the entire stimulus bill has been junked by Republicans, of whom, Obama has received 0 votes from the House, and presumably 3 votes in the Senate.

Statesmanship, indeed.

Next time, make these motherfuckers filibuster.

John Cole

Hilarious:

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.

Now if only we can get elected Democrats to start ridiculing Republicans like this, we'll get somewhere.

Stimulus vote today?

Presumably, we'll be saddled with an additional $900b debt, of which only a tiny fraction will be able to make up for the decrease in consumer spending, and a still smaller fraction of that going towards the infrastructure development the country will so definitely need to grow out of this.

If I were an advisor to Obama, I'd have him call a joint session of Congress to have two economic teams, conservative and liberal, Hayekian and Keynesian, battle it out. Each side would elect a leader, who would be able to give a 45 minute PowerPoint presentation, replete with graphs and pie charts and other visual aids, to promote their vision of what is the best interest of the United States based on their own doctrinal vision. A theoretical primer, if you will.

After the presentations, packets containing each team's proposals, based on real world figures, would be presented to the Senate to include, exclude, and modify into a real stimulus bill.

THAT is goddamn compromise.

I'm convinced that most of Congress has no fucking idea what's going on. The stimulus is purely political. This is the crux of the problem, thus, why we're spending so much money on things that will not fucking do anything, even in theory, to promote economic growth. They don't know how to do it, because they don't understand economics. They're just throwing money at the problem, to make the bill "big enough," and calling it a day. Political bullshit at its finest, and ultimately, its most countereffectual, which is the same thing.

Don't Have the Votes

Oh for fuck's sake (a phrase which is clearly becoming the number #1 alternative name for this blog).

Democrats do not have the votes in the Senate for cloture on the stimulus bill.

Which means more tax breaks for Paris Hilton.

I actually heard about a pretty good proposal from the Republicans. The focus is on housing, and specifically extending and expanding the current $7,500 tax credit for first time homeowners, as well as moves to help lower interest rates, with a target of 4%. Practical ideas, surely, that I can support.

Obviously it's better than handing out money to ever goddamn government program that Democrats have tacked onto the bill, I guess for new copiers and clerical temps or whatever else that money is supposed to be spent on to "stimulate" the economy. Once you're out of infrastructure ideas, guys, stop spending. I've alluded to this before--not enough spending is worse than spending too much, but you absolutely cannot throw the money away. It will rob you of future economic growth. Free condoms and 26 more weeks of unemployment are good things, I think, but not in a stimulus bill.

Tax "relief" is, again, retarded, and the inability for Republicans to understand this is frustrating. However, providing carrot and stick incentives using tax credits to temporarily (& artificially) floor housing prices is a good way to staunch the bleeding, provided the band-aid sticks.

The proposal cannot stand on its own. It will have to work with a variety of other programs that target other sectors of the economy, that are designed to get people back to work and keep them there. Otherwise you're just attracting more suckers, adding more foreclosures 12 months from now, plus or minus a percentage or two, as more and more suckers lose their jobs. There's a big difference between delaying the inevitable and retooling your economy to become less reliant on the magical ability of housing to make everyone rich.

It's a stimulus bill, not a Christmas list, of which not a penny will be paid from 2009 tax receipts. In other words, Democrats are going to have to grow up, and not support spending on social programs that do not stimulate the economy. Separate bills are needed for that stuff.

I have to say I chafe a little at the idea that initiative for smart spending comes from R's and not D's, but it in no way diminishes my support. It's a good idea.

Great Moments in AM Radio

Idiot A: States like California, Illinois, and Michigan have taxed themselves to death! These liberal states should be Edens if you believe liberals!

Idiot B: California has a Republican governor.

Idiot A: Shhhhwaaaa---A RINO! He's married to a Kennedy!

Oh for Fuck's Sake.

HHS Secretary appointee Tom Daschle is a crooked, sumbitch tax cheat!

I think that maybe having our gonna-have-to-spend-a-whole-lot-more secretaries and other cabinet-level officials cheating on their taxes is pretty disappointing. Maybe that's just me.

There's two things that piss me off:

One, it's the stupidity of accepting a nomination in which you know your tax cheating will be exposed. These are not just failures of personal morality, these are issues of judgment, and I seriously doubt Daschle's.

Two, it's the gall to ask me to not call for his head once his stupidity is exposed. It isn't the tax cheating that gets me, I already assume anyone with any money does it. It's that people who engage in criminal behavior still have a shot at getting confirmed. WTF happened to ethics and statesmanship? How much douchebaggery creates an acceptable level of scandal for that person to resign? It's insulting to me.

Daschle must go not because he's a fucking criminal, I'm not that idealistic. He's gotta go because if health care reform, which is important to me, is a priority of this administration, the HHS secretary is going to have to be the one to sell it to the American people in front of Congress. I'd just assume not have it sold to the public by an idiotic douche bag.

Political Capital Stimulus Spending

The stimulus sucks. I hate the House bill. Maybe the Senate one will do better, and since they both have to be reconciled to each other, maybe we'll be surprised by the political alchemy. I hate the Senate more than I hate the House, so you have no idea how much it chafes me to write this.

The current form of the "stimulus" is a complete waste of money. The tax cuts are just fucking stupid. A lot of the Democratic initiatives in the bill are fucking stupid, too. As far as I can tell, most of the spending is in the form of political caricature. Hundreds of billions going toward idiotic Republican tax cuts, and more hundreds on retarded government programs, with very little stimulative spending, with a large chunk going to states simply to keep them solvent, I suppose.

$42 billion, total, for transportation infrastructure development and expansion, outside of the state funding, which as far as I know does not have any sort of provision that would force states to augment this with their cut. Killing me here. Telecommunication and transportation projects should be half the entire stimulus, and instead we're talking about 5%? The proportion of junk/good stuff should look like the exact opposite of what we're getting from the House. I don't understand the necessity for that.

I'm sniffing a strategy here, and if I'm wrong, I will totally own up to simply being an apologist for Dems. I think that's fair, but I will defend myself by saying I don't agree with the strategy.

Let's say the economy can handle $400 b investment of infrastructure over the next two years. We just passed an $850 b or so bill which accomplishes very little to this end. So, best case scenario, the Senate axes $600 b of the stupid shit, gets a much smaller number, and is publicly prodded to double the stimulus specifically for infrastructure back up to that usable $400 b.

If it goes down like this, Republicans say they blocked the most egregious Democratic spending, Democrats get to say they blocked more Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and both sides get credit for the robust infrastructure money. Republicans win because people think they are a strong opposition party asserting conservative values, Democrats win because people think they are an effective majority party with liberal bona fides, and Obama wins a victory for bipartisanship.

(He'll need all he can get when they eventually have to nationalize the banks in the Swedish model sometime this year. I don't think there's enough job creation out there that will buoy home prices, so I think this nationalization event is inevitable. This will probably be the big story out of this mess, so obviously it deserves treatment later on. )

The problem, as I see it, both in reality and in my pet theory, is that they started out with far too little of the easy win stuff. $42 billion for transportation? Don't get this at all. My only guess is that the $30 b in highway stimulus funding is probably the cap on smart spending in this area, but that seems low. If only there was a very likable Republican as the Transportation Secretary that could sell appropriations committees on the benefits of more investment in rail and other transit. With the construction industry taking such a hard hit, it would make sense to me to spend more money building shit, so I hope we're looking at more than transportation.

I'm almost 90% sure I'm giving all of the players in this too much credit, though it is my hope that I haven't shot too far. It's far too early to tell what the result will be, and I think there will be errors in judgment, but I really do think there's a plan here that will be evident later--Goddamn I hope there is, anyway.

This is here and now, though, and when we get to the other side of this mess, I don't think this bill will be much of a factor in the history of the recovery.