He's Got Nothin'

Morton's Fork

Morton's Fork: [English; More-tonnes Four-ck] A choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives (alt., a dilemma), or two lines of reasoning leading to the same unpleasant conclusion. Examples in common colloquialisms are "between a rock and a hard place," [American English] or "Between a cross and a sword" [Spanish and Portuguese].

In our current political situation, for American voters it's more a case of Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual (Those who can choose, suffer). I don't care who you are or what political party you feel 'aligned' with or maligned by -- they all seem either insane, or incompetent. There Are Almost No Adults In The Room.

The New York Times continues to report that the President continues to look at Doing Nothing as the method of solving America's bad situation.

Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have much economic impact. These include free trade agreements and improved patent protections for inventors.

Calculated Risk noted in response, Tax incentives are the "bigger idea"? It sounds like the debate is between doing nothing and doing very little. If I arrived on the scene today - with a 9.1% unemployment rate and about 4.6 million homes with seriously delinquent mortgages or REO - I'd be arguing for an aggressive policy response.

Dude -- if "free trade agreements" and "improved patent protections for inventors" is the best you've got, then do all 320 million of us a favor and Quit Now.

Obligatory Photo Of Britney Spears' Abdominal Fat In Middle
Of Moderate Blog Rant (Cookies: The Fabled Hydrox ©)

Leave the key under the mat, tell Vice-President Biden he has a new job, and go back to Chicago. You followed the Worst President in American history into the office, but you're well on your way to becoming the third worst, after (sadly) Herbert Hoover.

And the Rethugs are worse. The best they've got is New Austerity and Grover Norquist's bathtub, and Batshit crazy evangelicals. All of which is arguably worse.

Which brings us to the dilemma, our Morton's Fork as liberals and Democrats: President Obama cannot or will not lead, and cannot or will not do the right thing by the People of the United States. He does very well by perhaps five per cent of them, but not All The People.

If we vote for him in 2012, we get another term of the same -- caving in to the Rethugs; protecting the wealthy; and doing nothing to alleviate the crushing economic crisis we face.



If we withold our vote out of protest... we may end up with a Republican figurehead, who will promote the most rapacious, the worst, base and vile instincts humanity has to offer, just as "Lil' Boots" did in his decade of power.

And the chances are good that we would end up with an evangelical, an incompetent babbler; "dumber than a bag of hammers", who believes Submission To and Domination By their interpretation of belief is the absolute, guiding theme of human life.

They are, in fact, no better than the Taliban; they're just able to afford a better class of pickup truck.

Mein Gott; this is bad. But I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

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Crazy Lady Wins Ames, Iowa Straw Poll

Grand TurtleBear Michele: Queen Of America


Will Persecution By Xtian Dominionists Be This Funny? No.

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Ecce Homo

Yet Another Candidate From A Failed State

(Photo: Mark Almond, Birmingham News; New York Times, via AP)

Pastor Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has declared himself in the running as a candidate for the Republican party's nomination for President.

His eventual nomination will complete the transformation of the GOP from a secular political party to a Megachurch congregation, demanding the nation be more godly, or go away, or else.

Perry has a large number of very wealthy backers, and can outspend just about every other GOP candidate, except Mittens -- and Perry can claim he is too a really true christian, whereas Romney is a Mormon (and Perry can make a few sly asides to remind his Xtian followers that Mormons aren't really true christians like you and me).

However, there have been persistent rumors since around 2004 that my use of the term Ecce Homo with the Governor may be an intended pun.

They spread for two months, were posted on various websites and were vetted by many national outlets, all of which turned up nothing. But Team Perry, asked about how it's prepared to handle them when they emerge if he runs, said it remains "false and misleading."

"As you may know, Rick and Anita Perry first met in grade school, went on their first date together in 1966, have been lovingly married since 1982 and are parents to two grown children," said top Perry strategist Dave Carney. "This kind of nameless, faceless smear campaign is run against the Perry family in seemingly every campaign, with no basis, truth or success."

"Texas politics is a full contact support, live hand grenades and all; unfortunately there are always going to be some people who feel the need to spread false and misleading rumors to advance their own political agenda," he said.

Let's be clear: I don't care if the person who is President is LGBT or not. I don't consider their sexuality when I review their stand on job creation, Federal Reserve policy, or who they want to nominate for the Supreme Court.

Evangelicals and social conservatives, on the other hand, would care if Perry were to be Outed during a Presidential campaign, even if Foxy Truthy Ol' Digger Newsy Corp gave him free cable teevee time, twenty-four hours a day.

Well; we'll see. Perry reminds me of someone whom Foxy-Truthy gave lots of teevee time to, a while ago. Same swagger and twang as Perry; same evangelical buzz-words and gobbledegook.

I just can't remember. Probably blocking it.

---

Mehr: Perry promised he would make the actions of government in The Village On The Potomac "inconsequential" to the lives of Americans.

A commenter at TPM noted that This guy makes W look like a rocket scientist. I mean it; he's dumber than a bag of hammers.

Well; then, he's a perfect carnival barker front man for the Right and those interests the Right in America serves... just as "Lil' Boots" was.

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Speaking Truth To Stupid

What Dylan Said

Dylan Ratigan

Barbara Tuchman's 1966 book, The Proud Tower, is a history primarily of Europe in the two decades before the First World War; Chapter 6 is entitled, "Neroism Is In The Air" -- a comment by the French pacifist and critic, Romain Rolland, about what he perceived as Europe's then-cultural preoccupation with violence and unease, coupled with complacency, and which he saw as a recipe for destruction, strongman rule, and disaster.

In art and politics, culture and commonplace belief, Europe in the last years of peace before August, 1914, was speeding towards... something. No one knew what it was, but people felt it, like a wind that picks up ahead of a thunderstorm: You can see a peculiar light, the darkened and clotted sky, and smell the dust and the ozone. Even the deaf and the blind can tell something is coming.

Europe in these days is full of signs and portends, too. So is the Middle East. So is our own country. The so-called 'Arab Spring' (gone in the media, now, when the images of masses of people in the streets become tiring to Western eyes)' the mass riots across the UK over the past two weeks; the fact that one (and as of tomorrow, two) self-declared evangelical christians are declared candidates for the Republican presidential nomination; the bizarre shadow-play of the fake debt ceiling crisis manufactured by Rightist Tea Partei bullies which led to S&P's downgrading of U.S. sovereign debt and a $1.5 Trillion dollar loss in the U.S. stock markets in the past five days.

I don't know what you're feeling, but you don't have to be a Dog to see the clouds in the sky, and smell the ozone; Neroism is in the air. But few people are paying any attention, even though everyone knows something is desperately wrong. That common wisdom screams to be heard that things are incredibly out of balance; that jobs are what people need, not forced Austerity; and we must have cooperation rather than the vicious, tribal idiocy that has poisoned our national discourse for almost twenty-five years.

More polarization and division will lead to... Civil War? A Rightist-christianist coup d'etat? No one knows. But we can sense it will not be pretty, and it will in all likelihood end very badly.

From just his position as an economic reporter for CNBC / MSNBC, Dylan Ratigan has often said that America's current economic path is unsustainable and (as Barry Ritholtz on The Big Picture noted), "In a conversation with a [teevee] panel about the country’s debt and credit downgrade... Ratigan passionately calls both the Democratic and Republican economic plans, reckless, irresponsible and stupid" (Though Ritholtz has it embedded in his site, a link to video of Ratigan's comments on is here on the MSNBC site).

Ratigan also has a post at The Big Picture, where he expands in more detail about his on-air comments. I don't like posting people's material in full, and have seldom done it -- but, no one reads this blog, anyway; here are the high points (some paragraphing added for emphasis):

I’m Mad As Hell. How About You?
By Dylan Ratigan - August 11, 2011 8:00PM

Yesterday, on TV, I exploded. I spent two minutes giving a primal yell at our political system, demanding the extraction of our money and dignity end. It was my most heartfelt and emotional moment on television, ever.

And the emails poured in. I hit a chord, because it’s something we all feel...

With the markets in turmoil and the global financial architecture groaning under the weight of fraud and corruption, it’s a good time to think about what leadership would look like. Believe it or not, we have had good leadership, purpose, integrity, and aligned interests in this country.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy faced a dilemma — how could he direct our intense competitive passion with the Soviet Union in a direction other than war? The answer was his call for America to beat the Soviets to the moon. Kennedy understood power; if he did not lead us towards peaceful productive competition, that same animus would have turned violent (see this key memo on the real rationale for the space race). So he took the passion and focus of our society, the technology of war and missiles, and turned it into a great mission to explore space. He gave us a shared goal.

But that’s not the full story. Kennedy also demanded we use the finest scientists and engineers to design the rockets, and made sure that the path to the moon was based on the best possible solution to get there. For large rocket boosters, he was open to chemical, nuclear, liquid fuels, or any combination.

He did not put a commission of astrologers in charge, and he did not put political cronies with no scientific background in charge of designing the rockets.

We had a shared goal, and we had a problem-solving process with integrity and aligned interests. Kennedy was the leader of this initiative, but Americans at that time, possibly because of a shared experience in World War II, had a shared purpose. They believed in prosperity as a goal, and they had a shared set of problem solving values to get there...

Today, we face the same demons as decades past. We have passion, and focus, and we want to compete. What we lack is a set of shared prosperity goals, and a shared problem solving values to get there... We still trust the same corrupted economic establishment, an establishment with no ethos of the importance of problem solving. Astrologers (like S&P) are in charge of job creation.

So now we are locked in a war of ideas and mechanics in a battle for power. But power to what end? The political solutions proposed by DC today are the opposite of Kennedy’s moonshot... there’s no mutual consent to a set of shared goals, integrity on how to achieve them, or aligned interests.

Even where there are policy discussions... [it's] the opinions of discredited ratings agencies that seem to matter. So our choices are organized around austerity measures that we know will not cut debt loads. Again, it’s using astrology to get to the moon.

...We need, as citizens, a shared purpose. And we need a commitment to integrity of process, and aligned interests so the incentives exist for all of us to contribute. You can talk to billionaires — and I have — who are scared for their children, for their country, and for the world. And if billionaires can’t create the changes we need in the machine, if Congress can’t, if the President can’t, then we must look to ourselves.

When Kennedy called for the country to go to the moon, he said that “no single space project will be more impressive to mankind… and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish”... This is shared purpose — Americans paid taxes, worked on rockets, trained as astronauts, cleaned NASA buildings, or did whatever they could do — to get each one of us to the moon using shared values to solve problems that got us closer to our objective...

This is the spirit we need today. We need to fight against the great ideological machine that lacks purpose, lacks integrity, and lacks aligned interests. The first step is to recognize our own place in it.

If we believe that our problems are all due to the Tea Party, or Obama, or corporate power brokers, or liberals, then we’re lacking the integrity necessary to reach any goal. The reality is, by boxing ourselves into a tribal two-party state, we are all part of the machine. And so, in order to change it, we must simply change our own minds. We must reorient our own ways of thinking, to a leadership driven model of citizenship.

It isn’t enough, or even necessarily important, to care about which politician is in charge. We must seek within our own lives and our own politics, food, culture, families, and schools, values. We must share a set of prosperity goals — full employment, clean energy, patient driven health care, high-quality universal education — and push our leaders and ourselves to achieve them.

...

And so we must figure out how to stop giving our consent and legitimacy to an unthinking mechanical beast that runs our lives, a beast which enslaves us to accounting mechanisms like debt ceilings instead of the shared prosperity we seek as a culture and society. We must figure out how to restore the integrity necessary to actually solve our problems and we must understand how to align all of our interests so we each have the incentives to solve them. That way, we can ensure our bridges don’t fall down and our job creation initiatives actually create jobs.

I have no doubt that by rededicating ourselves, another moonshot is inevitable. That’s just what happens when problem-solving people dedicate themselves to prosperity as a goal, make sure that integrity is the keystone of how they achieve it, and align their interests so it is doable.

Yeah; what Dylan said.

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Grand TurtleBear Bachmann Graces Cover Of Newsweek; DJI Plummets Over 600 Points, $1 Trillion Lost

Love Jesus Or You Won't Know What Hit You

Bringing Love And Light. And Brotherhood. And Homophobia, And
An Abiding Hatred Of Science And The Wondrous Feeling You Get
From Condemning Others And Demanding They Believe As You Do,
Or Else (Photo: Newsweek ©, A Classy™ Publication)

There's not much to say about Little Michele Bachmann, Grand TurtleBear of the Church Of I Kill You, beyond the observation that every time she opens her mouth, she becomes classier and classier in every way; a true Poster Girl.

Ray Lizza, writing in The New Yorker, recently reported that the Grand TurtleBear likes to read, too -- and if you accept that what a person chooses to read reflects their interests, and assumptions about the world, this should be interesting to all of us.

(I came to Lizza's piece via an article in TPM by Benjy Sarlin, who quotes Lizza below.)

...Bachmann traces her conversion to evangelical Christianity to a series of films by theologian Frances Schaeffer entitled "How Should We Then Live?" condemning everything from the Italian Renaissance to modern day government conspiracies.

[Ray Lizza writes] The iconic image from the early episodes is Schaeffer standing on a raised platform next to Michelangelo's "David" and explaining why, for all its beauty, Renaissance art represented a dangerous turn away from a God-centered world and toward a blasphemous, human-centered world. But the film shifts in the second half.

In the sixth episode, a mysterious man in a fake mustache drives around in a white van and furtively pours chemicals into a city's water supply, while Schaeffer speculates about the possibility that the U.S. government is controlling its citizens by means of psychotropic drugs.

Bachmann also highlighted Schaeffer follower Nancy Pearce's recent book, "Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity," as a "wonderful" read. Per Lizza, the book urges readers to be skeptical of any non-Christian ideas, because even though they may be right some of the time "the overall systems of thought constructed by nonbelievers will be false" unless built on "Biblical truth."

I can't wait for the Grand TurtleBear to be appointed Queen of America; can you? We'd have the kind of fun few Western cultures [principally, in Europe and Russia] have experienced since the 1930's and 40's. Though Cambodia and Rwanda and the Sudan have come close.

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A Deep Breath Before The Dive

Guns Of August: Another Long Howl

Far I hear a steady drummer,
drumming like a noise in dreams...
--A. E. Houseman (1896)

As the Asian stock markets begin to open on Monday, August 8th, people will have some sense of how institutional and private investors are gauging the downgrade of America's Treasury bonds by the ratings agency, Standard & Poors, from the highest tier of safety (AAA) to one step below (AA-plus).

Paul Brodsky, an investment advisor in QB Partners in New York, issued this warning to its clients about the S&P move (via The Big Picture):

Although S&P is careful to point out that a downgrade of government obligations does not imply risk among all [American businesses and corporations], we believe this sovereign credit downgrade does imply increasing risk for all US dollar-denominated financial assets.

Implicit in S&P’s downgrade is the growing likelihood that the Fed will have to manufacture sufficient base money with which systemic debt can be repaid. (Currently the ratio of [U.S. Treasury Bonds to U.S. currency in circulation] is 26:1.)

Thus, the downgrade is effectively a currency downgrade, which seems very reasonable, overdue and, in real terms, insufficient. We would argue that in real terms, US Treasury obligations are non investment-grade... [they are] today and always will be money-good, but principal and interest [on purchase of Treasury securities] will be repaid with bad money.

What Brodsky means is that the money used to repay our creditors may be tied to an economy which might fail if not fixed -- that the U.S. dollar may not be stable.

The general expectation seems to be that when the American Markets open tomorrow morning, the sell-off could be immediate and brutal. The Markets have built-in 'Halt' triggers -- when the DJIA declines 10% at any time before 11:00AM PDST, the market will cease operations for an hour and then resume. If it declines 20% at any time before 10:00AM PDST, the markets will stop for thirty minutes, then restart. If the DJIA drops Thirty Per Cent at any time, trading is suspended for the remainder of the day.

Just so you know.

The NYT reports that members of the global financial community conducted dial-in meetings yesterday, and continued them today to find "a way to respond to market tensions that seemed to be growing too powerful for any one economic superpower to cope with alone."

“They just can’t allow the Italian economy to go down the tubes. It would be a Lehman-type situation,” Uri Dadush, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Sunday... referring to the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, which touched off the global financial crisis.

Mr. Dadush put the cost of a bailout of Italy at $1.4 trillion, with Spain requiring another $700 billion. Those amounts would be a challenge even for the most solvent European countries, foremost among them Germany... Finance ministers of the Group of 7 and Group of 20 nations were conferring Sunday, Reuters reported...

“I don’t know if there is a policy response that makes sense, except support the banks,” Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y., said Sunday. He said the European Central Bank, which has already expanded its cheap loans to banks, should make even greater sums available so institutions could survive a decline in the value of their holdings of Spanish and Italian debt.

Down here, to people the street, a drop of nearly 2,000 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) over the past few weeks is... well, it's just not real news. Even the Standard & Poors downgrade of United States sovereign debt (bonds) from Triple-A to AA+ -- so; what? And the European thing; hey, what's that mean to me?

Quite a bit. This is a very simplistic set of explanations:

• The Economies Of The G-7 and G-20 Nations Are Interconnected By Debt.
  Banks and financial centers always do business with each other, and the host governments in the countries where they're based -- the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Japan; etc. Even in 'Good Times', problems with the banks in one country can upset an interconnected global financial structure -- but in times of relative stability, there's more flexibility in that structure if a single bank goes under.
  
  Since 1998 in America, banks have been allowed to trade and sell securities in addition to their traditional function as issuers of loans to consumers -- and during the "Go-Go", "Lil' Boots" Bush years, America's banks and trading firms produced financial instruments, revolving around the worldwide Real Estate Bubble
  
  Most of these obligations are interconnected -- Mortgage loans issued to borrowers by banks; pools of mortgages creating securities (Colateralized Debt Obligations), sold to individual investors, but primarily to institutions (such as Pension Funds, or Hedge Funds); and, Credit-Default Swaps, a sophisticated way of betting on the success or failure of those CDO's, or specific investment portfolios.


• The Debt Was Based In Real Estate Lending.
  All this was a model born in the U.S. (most spectacularly by Countrywide Financial, the Enron of mortgage lenders). Home loans were almost given away -- the terms were absurd; no-down; interest-only payments; adjustable rates that the new homeowners couldn't afford after they reset.
  
  The financial system encouraged this this activity, which was nothing more than speculation. It helped that our own Central Bank -- the Federal Reserve -- was chaired by Alan Greenspan, who touted these new CDO financial instruments and encouraged speculative lending. The U.S. Treasury (through its Secretary, former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson) lowered interest rates on government lending to banks, at a time when the Treasury was losing revenue due to the Lil' Boots Bush Forever Tax Cuts. The idea of risk, of 'moral hazard', was discarded and kicked to the curb.
  
  Everyone on the gravy train -- the mortgage lenders; the banks and investment houses; salespeople and executives, wanted people to believe that the Casino would never close and there would be a happy ending and a Magic Pony for everyone -- because we were Americans, and special. History and the laws of economics were for losers, or foreigners.
  
  Homes were being purchased and quickly refinanced for cash to support "Good Times" lifestyles -- people bought cars, appliances, vacations, clothes and technology. The economy expanded to support all that -- but it was all based on debt. Property values increased; so did the price of property and the sizes of the loans people applied for and received. Additional properties were being purchased for investment by people who couldn't really afford to repay the loans on their primary residences.
  
  In just six years, between 2001 and 2007, our banks and securities firms became incredibly successful... on paper. And, with the "Lil' Boots" Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest, while salaries and wages remained flat for everyone else, those with cash to invest and play were doing the best of all. And the rest of us who weren't getting raises? Hell; we'll just refinance the home-place! Now we can live just like the rich! Good Times.


• The Interconnected Debt From The Bubble Of Speculation Is Worldwide.
  This Made-In-USA Kool-aid was drunk in much of the EU (though Germany seems not to have been infected with Teh Stupid, so much; Gott Sei Dank), but in Ireland, in Spain, in Britain... they couldn't build new homes and sell them fast enough. And the banks in America did business with banks in Europe, of course. It was a worldwide, shark-tank feeding frenzy, and nearly every major bank and financial house around the globe was involved. Everyone wanted their Magic Pony.
  
  No official estimate of all this debt, worldwide, has been released, but I have seen someone's figure recently (and can't now find the reference to link it to; sorry) of approximately $130 Trillion US -- an ocean of debt, held back by a dam made of paper, and magic ponies; 'champagne wishes, and caviar dreams'.


• The Response Of Governments To The 2008 Collapse Was To Give Money To The Banks.
  The executives and managers of these companies, and their shareholders, were kept safe from loss. This also kept investors big and small around the globe from a panic selling of every stock they held and having another series of days like October 29, 1929. So they handed money to Goldman-Sachs and BankAmerica and AIG and the rest of them -- all of whom had helped to create the crisis.
  
  It was, at least in my opinion, like handing money to a bunch of rapists while their victim was still on the ground, and the Boyz were zipping up their pants. They took the money, and smiled; We'll take it -- and, we're not goin' to jail for this; capiche?
  
  While this kept the global financial system afloat, it meant that private businesses were bailed out by governments. You can describe this as turning private debt into public debt, but the most simplistic explanation is that the losses of a majority of financial institutions in the EU and America will now be paid by the citizens in those countries. You, me; the Greeks; the Irish; the Italians and the British; etc.
  
  The only ones who received A Magic Pony and a Get Out Of Jail Free card were the Banks. The rest of us... well, you know about that.


• The Countries Who Gave Public Money To Save Their Banksters Are Now Themselves In Trouble.
  This is where it gets sticky.
  
  The mortgage loans (used to create 'pools' that could be invested in through CDO securities) weren't worth what banks, or businesses like Countrywide, which issued them said they were. And in the aftermath of the Crash of 2008, financial firms had gobbled up the bad loans of their other, failed brothers through acquisition, and now owned the bad loans, and the overvalued CDO securities, of the companies they'd absorbed.
  
  But if the banks and investment houses admitted the value of what they held was a sham, they would lose more money. Their publicly-traded shares would lose value, and they might eventually fail themselves.
  
  They didn't bother to tell the governments who were giving them money any of this, though the politicians surely knew; there were analysts on both sides of the ocean and investment strategists who had known it, and warned about the dangers in the Speculation Bubble, for years.
  
  What the Banks didn't say, can't say, is that there isn't enough money in the U.S. Treasury to cover all the debt they have on their books. And the same is true for most governments in the EU.

This story is being played out around the world. EU governments have no choice but to try and loan more and more money to governments, who are failing because they've poured out billions of Euros to 'save' their banks. Meanwhile, their economies have shrunk -- meaning unemployment and loss of tax revenue, and those governments continue to run deficits against their national budgets just to meet their internal obligations.

And, they have to be able to make payments on the loans they've already received from the ECB. Eventually, they will have to pay holders of their government's treasury bonds when they mature. And Greek bonds are trading at interest rates of over 15 per cent; Irish bonds at 11%; Spanish bonds at over 5%, and the list goes on.

In the quote from the NYT at the top of this post, economist Weinberg spoke for many in the financial community when he said, “I don’t know if there is a policy response that makes sense, except support the banks.” The Wise Ones who are supposed to keep a worldwide financial system from imploding feel they have no choice but to keep propping up financial institutions who made bad decisions and can't cover the black hole of debt on their books. This is all that the governments, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve, have in their toolkits, support for Zombie Banks -- and Austerity for their citizens.

The only way the affected governments can survive (they believe) is to cut their spending -- to curb or eliminate social programs (such as Social Security or Medicare here in the U.S.), institute voluntary Austerity; even the sale of "national assets".

All of which will directly affect the standard of living of their citizens, who are angry at being told they have to live with less because the banks were greedy and rapacious, and their governments made the bank's debt their responsibility to pay back. It's effectively the end of a middle class in may countries around the world, including our own.

It's a Robber Barons' dream come true, a penalty-free chance to rig the markets with a Ponzi scheme and risk their shareholders' investments; run the global economy onto the rocks; then get paid by their governments to stay in business, and come out of it all amazingly rich. Meanwhile, others...

I'd say it's a recipe for revolution, in some countries; but I'm only a Dog and no one listens to me. The political ramifications of all this have yet to be felt, and none of it will be pretty. In fact, it will be (to paraphrase Paul Krugman) the worst aspects of the Depression and the McCarthy Era; "unimaginably ugly".

Now, the United States has been put on debt suicide watch by a ratings agency -- "Tough Love". If enough 'animal spirits' build up in the global Markets, they could plummet in panic selling. Within months, businesses would lay off more employees; demand for products and services would sink; unemployment would rise above 9 or even 10%. We all end up living in Yurts and watching our children play with broken iPods and toys made of animal dung.

All except for the wealthy, aber natürlich. They'll be selling us the broken iPods and animal-dung toys.

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Random Barking

As a nation, we've taken so much given the world so many things -- but most recently, we've provided a business model for real estate speculation and investment that has effectively pushed most industrialized nations into near-bankruptcy and forced their governments to lower the standards of living for their citizens.

We've also engaged in a foreign policy of intervention and warfare -- actually, since the end of the Second World War; but most recently since 2002 -- and support for various governments who have tortured and brutalized and impoverished their citizens or others in those countries. For almost half a century. (Other countries do this too, but on a much smaller and less technologically-adept scale).

But -- hey; we have the Flag, and LCD teevees, and big trucks and Hooters and beer and Jesus, and we love our Daddy even though he beat us every night. Don't ever forget that. Love the Flag. Love Jesus. Love Daddy.

And if a good number of people in the world are so deeply enraged with the behavior of our government -- which we don't seem to take very seriously -- that they either can't wait to see our economy implode, or can't wait to see some other murderous terrorist dickheads start attacking America... well, they're all just not right with god need Jesus and beer, a-and they're all just foreigners, anyway.

Just sayin'.

---

Future

Tin Foil Hats May Not Be Required

A Cartoon By Mr Fish (Image: Fish)

Want to know how much God loves the 'Bible Belt' and what all these evangelicals are preaching? Just look at the change in weather patterns over the South -- and Texas now has over one hundred days a year, with temperatures at or over 100 degrees? He loves them so much He's going to bake them first. Good eatin' that way.

-- El Rog The Magnificent

Governor Rick Perry of the independent nation state of Texas held a rally in Houston's Astrodome today; temperature inside the covered sports arena was approximately 70 degrees, and outside a partly cloudy 97. The New York Times reported that in the arena (capacity 71,500) approximately 20,000 people appeared for the Prayvagaza:

Mr. Perry came up with the idea for the event in December but did not make an announcement about it until June. In letters to his fellow governors and in other statements, Mr. Perry used Bible verses to describe the rally’s purpose: He wanted to humbly ask God to intervene on behalf of the troubled nation, to provide spiritual solutions to the country’s problems and to bless and transform the lives of Americans. The governor repeatedly stressed that the gathering would be apolitical and “open to any member of the public who wants to join with us in prayer,” as his letter to Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama stated.

The rally was promoted and entitled "The Response" -- to what, exactly, wasn't said. Perry and the organizers of the event -- all evangelical christian leaders, some with their own money-making megachurches in the South and Midwest -- claimed it was for "people of all faiths" to attend.

But Christianity dominated the tone of the prayer service and the religious affiliations of the crowd. The event is shaping up to be one of the biggest tests of Mr. Perry’s political career, coming on the cusp of his decision about whether to seek the Republican nomination for president...

In addition to Mr. Perry, several influential Christian conservatives were scheduled to either lead prayers or read from the Bible, including Dr. James C. Dobson, a psychologist who founded Focus on the Family; Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council in Washington; and Dr. Richard Land, the conservative president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Preach It: Jesus Loves The Tea Partei (Julian Beck In Poltergeist II)

It's just one Dog's opinion, but since the intrusion of christian evangelism in American politics (beginning in the early 1980's with the so-called Moral Majority that became the 'Christian Coalition'), the push by these groups to eliminate any lines between church and state have increased.

The goals of these groups are no different from any other revolutionary organization in a quest for political domination of a society. It doesn't matter whether it's Marx, Lenin, Jesus, Mohammed, or some invented psycho-social theory -- each group demands their beliefs should shape, control and drive the world and the lives of individuals.

Personally, I believe in a multiplicity of views and opinions, beliefs and their free expression -- so long as no others are harmed in any way in the process. It's called "Democracy". I believe in observable facts, in the truth of data, and in scientific methodology.

I do not know what the Universe is. I do not know where it came from. I do not know what happens to us when we die. I do not know whether "God" as two of the three major religions of the world (i.e., Christianity; Islam; Buddhism) define that, exists or not.

The one thing I do know is that no other human being knows the answer to any of these questions, either. The ones who claim they do know, that faith and belief are superior to skepticism or doubt, are not being honest with themselves or anyone else. Case in point.

But the Robertsons, the Reeds, Fallwells, Swaggarts and Warrens, the Dobsons and Perkins and the Terrys, do claim to know. They know what is best for the United States and every person in it -- because, they claim, god has told them. They have faith and a structure of belief which, if everyone would just live from it and in it, all the Bad would go away -- and the Bad is Sin, which can only be removed by believing as they do.

Of course, along the way, these white men become wealthy. Churches are tax-exempt. They become powerful within the christian community -- only, now these groups are politically organized, and they want policy and political decisions to reflect their, uh, values. They want one belief leading the nation and all its people -- and because they believe a deity speaks through them, they will make the decisions for all.

Jonestown, Guyana; November 1978 (Photo: TIME.com)

This, incidentally, is not Democracy. It's Theocracy.

I don't know if these people will ever-- as Margaret Atwood saw in her 1984 novel, The Handmaid's Tale -- see the United States as so awash in sin, so 'in rebellion against god' that they will believe god (somebody's god, anyway) has directed them to overthrow the government in some fashion and purge the sin and the Bad from the country. In order to save it, and lead it in righteousness.

And in the process, the evil, personified in specific groups and individuals, must be purged and punished. And in human history, any truly radical shift from one social order to another is always, always, backed up by the threat of imprisonment or execution.

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Sbrenicia, Serbia, 2007 (Photo: Dalje.com)

I don't know. But with the increasingly fractured and stalled nature of our two-and-a-half political-party process, the continuing deterioration of the global economy as Trillions of dollars in CDO and Credit-Default-Swap debt can no longer be swept under the carpet, the future looks more and more unstable. It's why I keep saying it could look more like the 1930's than we realize.

There have been ideas of coup d'etat in Ameica before -- during the Civil War, when Lincoln was looked upon as a virtual dictator; in 1933 and 34, when a group of our wealthiest citizens decided Franklin D. Roosevelt was destroying the country through New Deal economic policies that would lead to communism. There is some opinion that JFK's assassination (and later, RFK's) changed the political direction of America, abruptly.

There was a phrase people used to use in the 1930's, when discussing the rise of Fascism in Italy, then Germany, and Japan: It Can't Happen Here, the title of a book by Sinclair Lewis about an America where a Fascist ideology and leader does appear -- except, Lewis' novel was about politics.

He didn't envision the possibility that the deeply conservative, babbling-in-tongues, tent-revival religious leaders of Lewis' day could become the slick, well-dressed and organized religious leaders of air-conditioned megachurches -- or that they would begin to hunger after political power to lead all people toward god (well, somebody's god, anyway) -- whether they might want to or not.

'Dangerous' Not To Believe? (Screencapture: CNN online)

Lewis didn't see these same clever men of faith (someone's faith, anyway) might receive serious financial contributions from wealthy, non-religious conservatives, at the same time they raked in the donations of the faithful: Harold Camping's Oakland, California-based organization pulled in over $80 Million with the claim that god Camping had predicted the christian 'Rapture' and end of the world. Politics, now -- like so much else -- is about money, and 'christian' evangelical leaders are awash in it.

Can "It Happen Here"? I don't know. It depends upon how desperate our times become; on how delusional some people may be. It really depends upon how much we take for granted the freedom to act as wish under law, and to think and believe as we will; how much we cherish our individual selves and respect the same rights for others. This is the America I live in, and believe in.

Ultimately, Rick Perry's little roadshow probably says more about his "redefining his brand", about keeping his political viability alive among extremely conservative and evangelical christians. Texas -- or Oklahoma, or other parts of the American South -- is not the United States, and people like Perry or the other so-called christian leaders he invited to join him this morning are not a majority in this country.

My point is that we don't know what the future holds -- and history is full of difficult times, in which a very focused and organized minority has often taken political control of a society in turmoil.

The Tea Partei very much see themselves in the role of outsiders, bringing America back to fiscal sanity, to 'Greatness'; and it's most visible spokespeople are Little Sarah Palin, and Grand Turtlebear Michele Bachmann, both of whom are very open about leading America to -- somebody's god, anyway.

For our own good; of course.

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News Items

Nation Of Ex-Junkie Losers Begins Its Weekend

Yeah; by the way, Standard & Poors (the same bunch of assclowns who said the Too Big To Fail banks were "A-OK!", and that Countrywide Financial was super-duper for the nation, and that AIG was, too) has declared United States in the same category as ex-junkies who need to call their sponsors and social case workers and parole officers on a regular basis until they can prove they aren't, you know, going to lose it and shoot up a Dairy Queen or anything.

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

And the Commie Chinese are saying we'd better watch it and get our financial house in order and not see their massive cyber penetrations into the U.S. government or corporations, and their continuing to purchase access to the world's strategic raw materials -- or they'll cut off our supply of The Great Helmsman brand Moo Goo Gai Pan plum sauce, dump a bunch of Treasury bonds and invade the West Coast. Or something.

China, the largest foreign holder of United States debt, said Saturday that Washington needed to “cure its addiction to debts” and “live within its means,” just hours after the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s long-term debt.

The harshly worded commentary, which was released by China’s official Xinhua news agency, was Beijing’s latest effort to express its displeasure with Washington.

In Washington, Tea Partei leaders said the statement by the Chinese government was "fulla shit", and that America "is strong and has Jesus", and foreign government criticism that the debt crisis they and the GOP created affects the world financial community are "just a buncha shit".

Well, perhaps they didn't say those things. But they were thinking them.

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Quote Of The Day

Wherein The TPTB Appear Manifestly Full Of Shit

Kevin Drumm in Mother Jones:

I opened up my LA Times this morning and here's what I read (the headline is from the print edition):

Stocks Sink As Market Fears Mount

Two years after the last recession ended, Wall Street is showing rising fear that the U.S. economy could be headed for a new downturn...

"Investors are looking past the budget situation and realizing this is an austerity plan," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. "We have an economy that's struggling to stay afloat and we don't have the ammunition to keep prodding it forward."

Oh really? Now you tell us?

There are really only two options here. (1) The Times is wrong. (2) The Times is right and America has the stupidest goddamn investors on the planet. For months they sat around cheering on the tea partiers and declaring solemnly that the federal budget was just like a household budget and we needed "real action" on the debt in order to build confidence in the economy.

Then, suddenly, when they got it, they realized that what they really wanted wasn't dumb slogans but actual policies that would help spur the recovery. And that means looser monetary policy and fiscal stimulus.

So which is it? Has Wall Street really been sitting idly by during the whole debt ceiling debacle and has only now realized what it really means? Can they really be so steeped in the Fox News fantasyland that it never occurred to them until now that cutting federal spending during an economic downturn wasn't really a great idea? Seriously?

Sadly, I believe so. Not that Our Owners will actually do anything, of course. Pas du Tout.

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