The Austerity Bomb

Citizens of Milan react to austerity measures enforced by the EU and IMF 

In his NY Times blog Wednesday, Paul Krugman suggests replacing the misleading moniker “fiscal cliff” used to describe the US government’s fiscal situation, with the more accurate term “austerity bomb”:

Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo seems to have been the first to use the phrase “austerity bomb” for what’s scheduled to happen at the end of the year. It’s a much better term than “fiscal cliff”. The cliff stuff makes people imagine that it’s a problem of excessive deficits when it’s actually about the risk that the deficit will be too small; also and relatedly, the fiscal cliff stuff enables a bait and switch in which people say “so, this means that we need to enact Bowles-Simpson and raise the retirement age!” which have nothing at all to do with it.

And it can’t be emphasized enough that everyone who shrieks about the dangers of the austerity bomb is in effect acknowledging that the Keynesians were right all along, that slashing spending and raising taxes on ordinary workers is destructive in a depressed economy, and that we should actually be doing the opposite.

Meanwhile, in Europe, which has had much more austerity in aggregate than we have, grim new industrial production numbers and a worsening unemployment crisis…

About Europe. Z Communications provides a roundup of this week’s mass protests:

Europe’s Mediterranean rim trembled on Wednesday as violent clashes broke out following the largest coordinated multinational strike in Europe ever. In the hope to stave off decades of austerity, precarity and unemployment, European labor unions united for the first time since the start of the European debt crisis to organize strikes and protests in a total of 23 EU member states, with millions of workers walking off their jobs and marching on parliament buildings across the continent. Bloody street battles ensued across Spain, Portugal and Italy.

In Italy, over 300,000 protested in over 100 cities as workers observed a 4-hour stoppage in solidarity with Greek, Spanish and Portuguese workers. In Milan and Rome, scenes of street “guerriglia” were witnessed as thousands of students clashed with riot police, bringing traffic to a standstill and leading to dozens of injuries. In Sardinia, industry minister Corrado Passera and Fabrizio Barca, minister of territorial cohesion, had to be evacuated by helicopter after angry protesters besieged a meeting and started burning cars all around them.

In Naples and Brescia, thousands of students occupied railway tracks; in Genoa, the entrance to the ferry port was blocked; in Florence, Venice, Trieste and Palermo, banks were smeared with eggs and banners unfurled from monuments; in Padua clashes broke out between students and police; in Bologna 10.000 students took to the streets and attempted to march straight through a line of riot police; and in Pisa protesters occupied the leaning tower, unfurling a banner that read “Rise Up! We are not paying for your Euro crisis!”

Deficit hawks in the US, including the Bowles-Simpson Catfood Commission and former investment bank manager Pete Peterson‘s Peter G. Peterson Foundation (Peterson’s personal worth is estimated at $3 billion), will be in for a rude awakening if they succeed in enforcing an austerity regime on US citizens (who, unlike their European counterparts,  are armed to the teeth and remember  Network‘s Howard Beale.) Besides being unnecessarily cruel in its effects on the poor and middle class, it also make zero economic sense in the short and medium run, as Krugman never tires of explaining. Something to keep in mind every time your hear self-dealing fiscal scolds piss and moan about the debt that they created but want others to pay for.

Z Com concludes:

And so Southern Europe continues to tremble on its very foundations. As smoke rises from the streets of Madrid, Lisbon, Rome and Athens, one thing is becoming ever more clear: the question is no longer if but when the social explosion will hit. The outrage is building up, and with unemployment rising, austerity deepening, and a generation of Europeans increasingly disillusioned by state intransigence and outraged by police violence, such an outburst of popular rebellion seems ever more inevitable. All it will take is a spark.

Coming to a continent near you.

McCain Displays Advanced Obama Derangement Syndrome

McCain’s revenge.

Obama’s Rape Camps


Fux News continues to provide a platform for Teh Crazy

Less than three days following the GOP’s thrashing at the polls, Obama Derangement Syndrome is reaching new heights, signaling a psychotic break among reality denying Wingnuts.  Of all the lame excuses for their loss, this one takes the prize— thus far.

Buzzfeed reports:

Michael Graham, a radio host appearing on Fox News today said the Obama campaign wanted to convince voters if you were a female and vote for Romney you would be put in “rape camps.”

The only thing crazier than that would be for Karl Rove to claim the reason Romney lost was because Obama suppressed the vote.

Oh, wait—

Karl Rove explained his view of why President Obama won, on Fox News, via Dylan Byers:

Rove argued that Obama won with a smaller popular vote and a smaller margin of victory than in the 2008 election against Sen. John McCain. Instead of expanding voters, Rove argued, Obama “suppressed the vote” by demonizing former Gov. Mitt Romney and encouraging people not to vote.

“President Obama has become the first president in history to win a second term with a smaller percentage of the vote than he did in the first term,” Rove said.

“But he won Karl, he won!” Fox News host Megyn Kelly interjected…

Sorry, Megyn, Karl is irretrievably trapped in his own personal Phantom Zone of self-delusion. He’s so used to demonizing his opponents and stealing elections that the shock of suddenly being thrust into the reality based community he scorned has left him with nothing but soulless projection.

Big FAIL.

But life will become a burden of existence unless you learn how to fail gracefully. There is an art in defeat which noble souls always acquire; you must know how to lose cheerfully; you must be less of disappointment. Never hesitate to admit failure. Make no attempt to hide failure under deceptive smiles and beaming optimism. It sounds well always to claim success, but the end results are appalling. Such a technique leads directly to the creation of a world of unreality and to the inevitable crash of ultimate disillusionment. 

—The Urantia Book

 

Karl Rove’s Math Problems (Update,2)

May the pork be with you: Stephen Colbert’presents Karl Rove with an honorific bust 

Of all the satisfying results from last night’s amazing election, I count Rethug Svengali Karl Rove’s humiliation as one of the best.

A little background first. In the run-up to the 2006 mid-term elections,  Rove said this to NPR about the pre-election polls, which showed the Rethugs losing:

“You may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math. I’m entitled to the math…[which adds] up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House.“

History proved him wrong, of course, with the Dems taking control of both the Senate and the House that year.

In search of schadenfreude, after hearing CNN and MSNBC call the election for Obama, I tuned into Fux News to check out their reaction. Lo and behold there was Karl, making a fool of himself once again. He was strongly objecting  to the network’s confirmation of Obama’s victory, causing Megyn Kelly to leave her anchor chair and rush down stairs to check with Michael Barone and the rest of Fux’s number crunchers (barely getting back into her chair after the commercial break ended).

The LA Times reports:

All the networks, CNN, the Associated Press and Fox News had called the presidential race for President Obama. But one man with a big megaphone thought it was all too premature.

Fox News analyst Karl Rove threw up a spirited rebuttal argument Tuesday night as the conservative cable channel said that Republican Mitt Romney’s bid for president had failed.

Fox then proceeded with the unusual spectacle of bringing its chief data analyst on camera to discuss with Rove why the outlet said Ohio, and thus the presidency, would remain in Democratic hands…

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly joked that there would be a “cage match” between Rove and the head of Fox’s election analysis team. But the Fox analysts explained that their call was simply about the numbers.

One can only hope that Rove offered his donors, anonymous and otherwise, a money-back guarantee on the $300 million plus bucks they gave him to defeat Obama and to take back the Senate.

Say g’night, Karl.

UPDATE 2 (11/8 9:50am)  Jon Stewart’‘s take on Rove’s math in which he suggests a new motto for Fux News:   ‘Math You Do As A Republican To Make Yourself Feel Better.’

 

UPDATE (11/7 4:22 PM) The Atlantic has a collection of clips from Fux News documenting the Rove instigated network meltdown.

It should be noted that Fux is employing as an “analyst”the prime operative of the GOP, who also happens to be its largest fund raiser. Not like he doesn’t have skin in the game.

Maybe the reason why Karl was so upset is that calling the election for Obama interfered with a contingency plan to steal the Ohio vote at the last minute. Recall that vote totals and projections from a number of states were still outstanding, and that it was Ohio that put Obama over the top.

Would anybody believe that stealing an election is alien to Rove’s modus operandi?

 

Hurricane Willard: No Apologies

The roar of ignorant applause merges seamlessly into the roaring winds of Hurricane Sandy in this iconic anti-Romney mash up from ClimateScience.org  

According to the Rethugs, climate change is:

1. A hoax

2. A joke

It’s been obvious for a long time that their standard bearer, one Willard Mitt Romney, is a man who believes that the end justifies the means. The end in this case is the US presidency, and the means his willingness to say anything to any audience to capture it. If for nothing else, his campaign will be remembered for having set a new standard in micro-targeting deception.

An early supporter of a market based cap and trade approach to mitigate global warming, Romney capitulated to the fossil fuel industry funded, anti-science wing of his party in order to secure their support. Nowhere is that more apparent than in his lame attempt to ridicule President Obama’s (mostly muted) concern about climate change during his acceptance speech last August to the the Republican National Convention.

When political scientists and media pundits look back at the 2012 election and analyze the quality and the unprecedented amount of its political advertising, I hope they give the above commercial from ClimateScience.org it’s due. It’s brutal juxtaposition of Romney’s vacuous words and nature’s merciless deeds is a fitting coda to a campaign born of selfish ambition, and run on lies and deceptions unprecedented in modern political history.

One might suppose that Romney wished he could take back that bit of cheap pandering to the RNC crowd, but that would assume a fact not in evidence: a man of critical self-reflection with the ability to admit mistakes. I suppose he could always blame his speech writers– oh, wait. Didn’t he dismiss three professionals before, at the last minute, deciding to co-author the speech with his top aide, Stuart Stevens? Surprising that someone who believes himself to be a business genius doesn’t know that ya get what ya pay for.

Hubris has a penchant for giving way to irony, and often tragedy. Beyond Mitt’s personal tragedy of being exposed as a lying corporate raider with no clothes (magic underwear exempted), the real tragedy is what his campaign has done to the character of the American politics. The 2012 election has been a perfect storm that, thanks to the US Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, saw unlimited amounts of often anonymous cash fuel the ruthless, grandiose ambitions of a secretive plutocrat whose sense of entitlement comes from both the circumstances of his birth and his religion’s religious tradition, Mormonism’s so-called White Horse Prophecy. As Ann Romney told Barbara Walters about their prospects for occupying the White House: “It’s our turn…”

Win or lose, Hurricane Willard will have left mountains of trash in its path. For which, to borrow from the title of his autobiography, there will be No Apology.

Devil Made Me Do It Demographic

GOP messaging to the demonically possessed: We believe in you

Firedoglake’s Lisa Derrick checks out a recent PPP poll and has some questions:

Why wasn’t demonic possession addressed in the Presidential debates?! Demons are obviously as important an issue as low/no taxes, denying reproductive and LGBT rights, and keeping semi-automatic rifles in the hands of God (and demon) fearing Americans, since according to a  poll conducted by Public Policy Polling, 68% of registered Republican voters believe in demonic possession. And it’s not just the GOP– 49% of Democratic voters also believe that demons can possess us.

Granted, one could argue that “demons” are negative impulses, psychological aberrations, mental illness etc., but in theology demons are disincarnate entities which occupy people and places and cause all kind of havoc. However, demons can be controlled and mastered, but this should only be done by individuals with proper training, not by anyone hanging out their shingle as an exorcist-or by depressed metal heads who have played Black Sabbath records backwards one too many times.

Nutbags are all too ready to blame anything and everything they dislike, fear or can’t explain on demons, witchcraft, voodoo, curses, and related supernatural concepts…Usually there are simple, mundane explanations for stuff.

Some major questions that should be explored regarding demonic possession: How many politicians do believers feel are possessed? Is outsourcing of jobs caused by demonic possession? Can Wall Street be exorcised? And what strange malignant force, what ancient unnamed evil controls Dick Cheney?

By Tuesday we should know whether the Rethugs’ 19 point advantage over Dems among the critical devil made me do it demographic holds up.

In related news, former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson sez:

A MAN’S STRUGGLE WITH HOMOSEXUAL ‘OBSESSION’ MAY BE ‘RELATED TO DEMONIC POSSESSION’

 

It’s enough to make your head spin.

For the GOP,  possession is 6.8/10 of the law

From The Urantia Book:

It is no mere figure of speech when the record states: “And they brought to Him all sorts of sick peoples, those who were possessed by devils and those who were lunatics.” Jesus knew and recognized the difference between insanity and demoniacal possession, although these states were greatly confused in the minds of those who lived in his day and generation.

Even prior to Pentecost no rebel spirit could dominate a normal human mind, and since that day even the weak minds of inferior mortals are free from such possibilities. The supposed casting out of devils since the arrival of the Spirit of Truth has been a matter of confounding a belief in demoniacal possession with hysteria, insanity, and feeble-mindedness…

Romney/Burns: Dickensian Dicks

The LA Times reports:

Mr. Burns, owner of Springfield’s nuclear power plant, titan of corporate capitalism and honcho in the Springfield Republican Party, has come out with his own backhanded endorsement of the Republican nominee. Backhanded in the sense that C. Montgomery Burns is positively Dickensian in his baseness.

Figgers Romney would have a dog named ShameUs…