USA — RIP
Filed Under Bullshit, Economy, Politics | Leave a Comment
“It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(Illustration found here).
Early Sunday and deep, wet fog here on California’s north coast, but unlike a lot of other shit going on right now, my natural environment will get better, much better: The fog will burn off in a couple of hours revealing a sunshine-bright environment — even our Alaska-bred wind, usually twirling up cold and sharp in the afternoon, has been the last few days most agreeable, friendly and warm.
A nice, possibly-good day coming.
Not so for a whole-lot of other stuff.
Especially for this most-ridiculous, but yet apparently most-Titanic-the-ship situation in US financial history, the debt ceiling.
Despite what’s been considered a near-mundane point of economic government — this same item done some 78 times since 1960 (49 times under Republican presidents), President Obama himself has already raised the debt ceiling three times, the last in February 2010, and absolutely no nasty shit-storm about none of it.
This time, however, there’s the insanely-strong influence off people-full-of shit — the so-called Tea Party.
From The Australian posted online down yonder, where right now it’s already tomorrow:
With Barack Obama facing the greatest crisis of his presidency, the Republican Party torn asunder and the US on the verge of its first default, a small group of novice congressmen was celebrating a stunning political coup at the weekend.
…
What most of the world sees as a deadlock and a crisis, the Tea Party sees as victory, its members having done exactly what they had said they would do when they were voted in at the mid-term elections.
“Last November I told my constituents (in Minnesota) that I’m a numbers guy,” explained Republican congressman Chip Cravaack, after voting against his own party’s bill on Friday night.
“I gave them my promise that if the numbers don’t add up, I’m not voting for it.”
…
Since then, they have become increasingly unco-operative, leading some to refer to them as the “Tea Party Taliban”. Over the past few days they have left the leadership of both parties reeling at their readiness to play brinkmanship with the country’s credit rating.
“There’s an old JFK line: those who ride the back of the tiger often end up inside it,” said veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum.
“What we’re seeing is one-fifth of the House of Representatives trying to run the country.
It’s a constitutional coup d’etat.”
Mark Meckler, national co-ordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, hailed their action as a success. “The Tea Party is already victorious,” Meckler said.
“What we were looking to do was change the terms of national debate and we’ve completely changed it.”
Yeah right.
Along with all that bullshit, stir in the long-time creep, conservative strategist Grover Norquist and his half-crazed tax pledges, and you’ve got a recipe of pure disaster not yet seen by US peoples, who are in for a bad-ass, shit-kicking, slap-in-the-face.
One thing for sure: We as a peoples are wading around in a living, breathing train wreck.
A poll from CNN last week found that not only do 84 percent of Americans feel the economy is bad, a majority 59 percent are gloomy about the country’s economic future: “That’s a very significant, and very discouraging change in public attitudes toward the economy,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. “It’s unclear what caused this newfound pessimism. The length of the current economic downturn and concerns over the chances that the debt ceiling will go unresolved are probably contributing factors.”
And since then, the whole DC/economic scenario has gotten worse.
Just on Friday, a report the US is not only not gaining any recovery traction, the whole ‘Great Recession‘ shebang was/is more severe that first thought: To adopt the president’s favorite metaphor of the ditch and the driver: The ditch was a 33 percent deeper than we thought. And we’re driving 33 percent slower than we hoped.
Sweet.
Paul Krugman waxing on the terrible ‘no light at the end of this tunnel‘ routine this morning on ABC News (via Raw Story):
“From the perspective of a rational person, we shouldn’t even be talking about spending cuts at all now,” Krugman told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour.
“We have nine percent unemployment.
These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment… If you have a situation in which you are permanently going to raise the unemployment rate — which is what this is going to do — that’s actually going to reduce future revenues.”
“These spending cuts are even going to hurt the long-run fiscal position, let alone cause lots of misery. Then on top of that, we’ve got these budget cuts, which are entirely — basically the Republicans [saying], ‘We’ll blow up the world economy unless you give us exactly what you want’ and the president said, ‘Okay.’ That’s what happened.”
“We used to talk about the Japanese and their lost decade.
We’re going to look to them as a role model.
They did better than we’re doing,” he added.
“There is no light at the end of this tunnel.
We’re having a debate in Washington which is all about, ‘Gee, we’re going to make this economy worse, but are we going to make it worse on 90 percent the Republicans’ terms or 100 percent the Republicans’ terms?’ The answer is 100 percent.”
And real reality of this debt ceiling drama is it created an open showcase for US peoples to witness the screwed-up mess of government as it strangles itself and dies.
Truss the Trust
Filed Under Bullshit, Double Standard, Politics | Leave a Comment
As the financial clock ticks away on this Friday morn, the political platoons playing pitter-pat in DC and losing the hope of US peoples in our current form of government — if you want to call what’s happening now as government.
Why and how were these assholes elected?
(Illustration found here).
As John ‘The Boner” Boehner’s great and daring debt ceiling plan collapsed late Thursday, the whole process stinks of pure stupid — even upchucking, clueless mush-faced Mitch McConnell blubbering and whinning that “Democrats are playing with fire here. It’s hard to conclude that they’re doing it for any other reason than politics,” he said.
Talk about a double dose of double-standard bullshit — a butt-hole calling the ass an asshole!
From Time magazine’s Joe Klein:
Let us not put too fine a point on it: Thursday’s House vote on Speaker John Boehner’s debt ceiling proposal is a joke.
If it passes the House, Harry Reid has said it is dead on arrival in the Senate.
If it somehow passes the Senate, which it won’t, President Obama will veto it.
It is, therefore, a symbolic act that is wasting precious time.
It follows last week’s Republican theatrics, the passage of the Cut and Demolish Act (or whatever they called it), which also was a waste of time.
These are the actions of a party that has completely lost track of reality — and of a leader, John Boehner, who has lost the support of his party.
Reality pretty-much in a nutshell.
And US peoples are also pretty-much fed up with all this.
After President Obama asked for citizens to call Congress earlier this week, they responded: A spokesman for the office of the chief administrative officer said that at the peak, House offices received a combined 40,000 calls in an hour — twice the typical volume. Some callers got a busy signal, but the number was not significant, spokesman Dan Weiser said.
The entire situation is a shame — and no matter what the outcome this self-created crisis will vibrate the stock market, overseas economies and the average Joe on a US street way on down the financial road of ruin.
This debt limit showcase has been around since 1917 and has had its share of political fights over the years, but nothing like this go-around.
President Dwight Eisenhower was the first to encounter trouble with the ceiling — in July 1953, Ike asked the Republican-controlled Congress to raise the debt limit from $275 billion to $290 billion, but it took a year and the bottom line was lower than Eisenhower asked.
In 1995, a big blow-out let the government shut down, but time moved on.
However, there’s nothing like this particular episode:
Yet in one sense the latest showdown is different from all the others.
The gulf between the White House and Congress is wider than ever — not only because of a huge ideological chasm but also because the nation’s debt is growing so dangerously fast.
It’s now set to top $14.3 trillion.
“I’d say this is the worst debt-ceiling crisis in U.S. history because it is linked to the most serious fiscal crisis since the Civil War, and the debt ceiling is, of course, a 20th-century concoction,” said economist historian Robert Wright of Augustana College in South Dakota.
Trust in government is about shot.
And it’s this economics of trust that keeps the US afloat and operating, though, and this debt ceiling madness doesn’t really help the public gain this trust at all.
A study of trust, however, reveals there’s self-centered greed involved.
From Wired magazine:
Instead, I think the current breakdown in Washington highlights the fragility of a human capability we’ve long taken for granted: trust.
While economists have begun focusing on trust as a crucial factor in economic development — a country without trust can’t build the institutions that make growth possible — trust is also an essential component of effective politics.
Democracies, after all, depend on compromise. And compromise requires trust.
…
The moral is that trust is ultimately about the expectation of rewards.
We see trust as such a noble trait, but it’s ultimately rooted in a greedy calculation, emanating from our primal dopaminergic circuitry.
In other words, we don’t trust people because they seem nice or virtuous or trustworthy, whatever those adjectives mean.
We trust them because they get us the good stuff, delivering what Montague refers to as the “social juice” of reciprocity.
When we say we trust someone, what we’re really saying is that they’re a reliable source of what we want. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.
And this returns us to the present dysfunction in Washington.
If trust is about the distribution of rewards — about learning to expect bonuses from others — then it’s going to be a lot harder to share those rewards in an age of scarcity and deficits.
For the first time in decades, congresspeople aren’t trading pork barrel projects and tax breaks — they’re negotiating steep budget cuts.
Those cuts might be necessary, but they’re aren’t going to excite the caudate or generate that requisite burst of “social juice.”
The traditional means of developing trust among Congresspeople have disappeared.
And how this effects the future (and the 2012 elections) will have to be seen, but I can tell you, I wouldn’t trust The Boner as far as I could throw him, which ain’t far.
Trust is for puppies.
Insane Becomes Sane — Rule of the Full-of-Shit
Filed Under Bullshit, Media, War & Politics | 1 Comment
A peep-hole into the soul of government can be witnessed during this mad-cap debt ceiling bullshit — one can see just how far a small, small portion of the population can near-about bring down a country.
The crying, finger-pointing, wailing — i.e., John ‘The Boner‘ Boehner telling his beloved own to “get your ass in line” — comes from the complete horror-disarray caused by those ignorant Tea Baggers, who apparently rule the GOP nowadays.
To the anguish of all US peoples.
(Illustration found here).
One could single out Jackboot John McCain for allowing the Tea Party to emerge — when he appointed Sarah Palin as his VP choice in 2008, the move allowed dumb-ass stupid to become part of the national political discourse.
Stupid touched a deep chord with the stupid, who most times has a much bigger mouth than the norm.
And why would the words “death panels” cause so much trouble during the health care debate?
A little stupid goes a long, long way.
From Science Blog:
Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.
…
“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas.
It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer.
“Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”
As an example, the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a similar process, according to Szymanski. “In those countries, dictators who were in power for decades were suddenly overthrown in just a few weeks.”
…
An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working.
In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.
So we can see it doesn’t take much to make a lie a truth.
And the Tea Party can just ruin a good get-together.
Matt Taibbi, most-likely near-about the best in covering US political bullshit, posted the ultimate view of the Tea Party last September: Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it’s going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit. All of them.
And in the debt ceiling pout match, even the GOP is tied to the nasty Tea Baggers as The Boner right now has his mitts full of trying to keep the whole shebang from blowing up in his cry-baby face.
From TPM: That’s because the GOP is teetering on the brink of a debt-based civil war. More traditional Republicans and big business types are desperate to avoid a recovery-crushing default. But their Tea Party colleagues are leading a rebellion of epic – perhaps even galactic – proportions.
Thus it is.
From Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics via The Big Picture:
“The Speaker is in office, but not in power, because the Tea Partiers do not respect party discipline. They argue that they are standing up for principle, but the principle they have chosen to defend is the idea that the only thing that matters is rapidly and substantially shrinking the government.
This, we respectfully submit, is nuts.
According to polls, it’s not even what most Republican voters want, never mind the country as a whole. Moreover, the first thing you learn from studying the aftermath of financial crises is that premature fiscal tightening is extremely dangerous.”
So tighten-up the old seatbelt, the bullshit could run the fuel-starved truck of state right off the cliff , then only thing to do is SCREAM.
Recession Depression
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Economy, Everything | Leave a Comment
One small glance at just about everything around us creates an Amy-Winehouse-induced sense of the blues, even while living in supposedly the greatest country on earth.
As Miss Amy reveals, wealth, fame and all the things in between won’t bring happy to your front door — and as the twits in DC dance around each other as the debt ceiling deadline looms less than a week away, people who seem to have everything are some of the most depressed people around.
Strange, however, is that the better off a person, the more likely they’re going to end up being all sad-sack about it — maybe it’s more-then-enough leading to wanting even more and not getting it.
(Illustration found here).
A new study released last week has revealed that indeed the better off you are, the higher chance of depression.
From the abstract off the BioMedical Central research (full study PDF):
The average lifetime and 12-month prevalence estimates of DSM-IV MDE (major depressive episodes) were 14.6 percent and 5.5 percent in the 10 high income and 11.1 percent and 5.9 percent in the 8 low-middle income countries.
The average age of onset ascertained retrospectively was 25.7 in high and 24.0 in low-middle income countries.
Functional impairment was associated with recency of MDE.
The female:male ratio was about 2:1.
In high income countries, younger age was associated with higher 12-month prevalence; in several low-middle income countries, in comparison, older age was associated with greater likelihood of MDE.
The strongest demographic correlate in high income countries was being separated and in low-middle income countries was being divorced or widowed.
MDE is a significant public health problem across all regions of the world and is strongly linked to social conditions.
Future research is needed to investigate the combination of demographic risk factors that are most strongly associated with MDE in the specific countries included in the WMH.
ABC News reacts:
“We were struck by the difference among high-income and low-income countries,” says lead author on the study Dr. Evelyn Bromet, a professor of psychiatry at State University of New York at Stony Brook.
“Why this may be the case is the $64,000 question. We don’t know for sure.”
…
“Wealthier nations … are industrialized nations where individuals rely less on family support for everything from childcare to marital advice. There is a well known link between social support being a protective factor against depression,” says Dr. Sudeepta Varma, assistant professor of Psychiatry, NYU Langone Medical Center.
“I also believe that poorer nations may look to religious/spiritual beliefs for comfort, also a protective factor.”
On the other hand, it could have to do with expectations for success and wealth, says Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center.
“There’s a greater disparity of wealth in higher income nations, so part of what happens is that your expectations are greater.
In a sense, you have farther to fall than one might have in a lower-income country,” he says.
And if one is feeling too depressed here in the US, do a geographical change and move to China: The French are the most disturbed (21 percent), followed by US peoples (19 percent), while China (6.5 percent) and Mexico (8 percent) had the lowest.
WTF!
Nothing, however, hurts more than income disparity, and in the US this makes for one depressed, hurtful place.
From an interactive display at the Economic Policy Institute: Between 1998 and 2008 average incomes in the US fell by $459, the average income of the riches 10 percent grew, while for the bottom 90 percent average income declined.
See the picture — if you do, you’re most likely about to suffer a major episode of DSM-IV MDE.
Jobs in an ‘Acute Talent Shortage’
Filed Under Economy, Finance, Jobs, Politics | Leave a Comment
As John ‘The Boner’ Boehner blubbered last night about not “going mano-a-mano with the President of the United States” after trying to refute President Obama on the debt ceiling shit-storm, the mass of US peoples are hurting for work.
The Boner and his GOP suck buddies haven’t a clue (or if they do, don’t give a shit) how cruel this current financial nightmare is for folks seeking jobs even as everyone knows the cry baby hasn’t anywhere the balls to stand man-to-man with Obama — the US suffers while these assholes play.
One the biggest screw-ups the past three years is the lack of any kind of heavy-duty employment program to work out the kinks on the pipeline for the millions of jobless to regain some kind of work history.
(Illustration found here).
And the employment trouble in real time is horrible.
From CNN on Monday:
Has anyone in Washington noticed that 20 percent of American men are not working?
That’s right.
One out of five men in this country are collecting unemployment, in prison, on disability, operating in the underground economy, or getting by on the paychecks of wives or girlfriends or parents.
The equivalent number in 1970, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, was 7 percent.
…
This is a conversation that goes beyond a stubbornly high 9.2 percent unemployment rate and last week’s unnerving news that company layoffs are ticking up again.
While we all know there is a job shortage, employers are increasingly talking about a “talent shortage” — they can’t find qualified workers even for the jobs that are available.
“We found that 30 percent of companies surveyed had openings for six months or longer, and can’t find the right person,” says Susan Lund, research director for the McKinsey Global Institute
…
The longer a worker is unemployed, the farther he or she falls behind in sellable skills in a fast-paced global economy.
But there is an even more fundamental question behind the rise in long-term employed rates: Are our public policies contributing to the rise of millions of Americans who lose the habit of work?
Whether you believe (as some economists do) that unemployment insurance discourages immediate job searching — or not — it’s worth asking whether the American “unemployment” system should more closely follow a program like Germany’s “re-employment” system, which cut stubborn long-term unemployment rates in that country.
And then there is federal disability insurance, where the percent of American adults collecting checks has doubled since 1989 — even though the American population isn’t any less healthy, or more mentally disabled (the fastest growing disability claim).
“It is difficult to overstate the role that the [disability program] plays in discouraging…the ongoing employment of non-elderly adults,” concludes a study by MIT’s David H. Autor and the University of Maryland’s Mark Duggan.
And like a lot of other shit, the employment situation in the US needs an overhaul.
Or get The Boner out on the street looking for a job, maybe then he can go mano-a-mano with a yard broom.