This Iraq war vet protected our freedom "over there," so we didn't have to fight them "over here," and survived it only to fall... to his 4-year-old son at home.
Maybe our national "GPS of freedom" is miscalibrated?
June 8, 2013 | FOX 10 News
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Matt Miller: Both parties are bad, m'kay
So says Matt Miller:
A Republican House doesn’t explain why President Obama’s last jobs plan only proposed to put 1 to 2 million Americans back to work when at least ten times more need a full time job. Republican madness can’t explain why Obama artfully slams the GOP on student loan interest rates while touting a plan that would leave tuitions and debts still higher a decade from now. Republican lunacy can’t explain why the White House often brags about having enacted universal health coverage, a goal aides boast has eluded presidents for a century, when Obama has done no such thing — at least 20 to 30 million people will still be uninsured when the dust clears (from a law I support).In short, Republican nihilism and intransigence — huge problems, so please don’t arrest me, false equivalency police! — can’t explain the Democratic ambition gap. In fact, it’s not clear that anything in my depressing inventory above would be meaningfully different if the GOP had vanished or capitulated. Rare instances aside, this means Democrats aren’t offering ideas equal to the magnitude of our problems. Republicans, meanwhile, can’t even see what the problems are.
"False equivalence?" He said it, not me. Methinks the pundit doth protest too much.
Nothing "would be meaningfully different if the GOP had vanished or capitulated?" What is the point of that ridiculous hypothetical sentence?
Democrats need to be more "ambitious?" OK, with that I agree. But such ambition starts at the top, with President Obama. In Congress there are guys like Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, John Conyers, Barbara Lee... and many, many more. Obama has his activist base from 2008 and 2012 that after the election he's promptly forgotten, twice. He has troops to rally but he ignores them.
Instead, Obama would prefer to seek compromise with GOP Congressmen who hate his guts and, thanks to natural migration and unnatural gerrymandering, "The average Republican district is 75 percent white and GOP congressmen overall represent 6.6 million fewer minorities in 2012 than they did in 2010." District by district, state by state, the GOP Congress has no motivation to compromise with our Compromiser-in-chief.
By Matt Miller
June 5, 2013 | Washington Post
Thursday, June 6, 2013
1955 film: The wonderful world of bygone capitalism
(HT: Chief). This great '50s movie with its Rod Serling soundalike narrator cheerleading American pluck and industry gives us many modern issues to consider. Many things are still true today... or they are lost truths, unfortunately, such as the vital role of the federal government in regulating inflation and aggregate demand.
Other things are outdated and proven false; for instance, nowadays nobody thinks industry's job is robotically to "match production to consumption" via distribution and marketing, (with their focus on bigger production to lower marginal costs), and priming consumption with advertising. Today it's all about innovation and delighting customers. Marketing's primary job is to get closer to the customer and listen, perhaps start a dialogue with him, not simply beam "buy this!" messages at him.
Other things are outdated and proven false; for instance, nowadays nobody thinks industry's job is robotically to "match production to consumption" via distribution and marketing, (with their focus on bigger production to lower marginal costs), and priming consumption with advertising. Today it's all about innovation and delighting customers. Marketing's primary job is to get closer to the customer and listen, perhaps start a dialogue with him, not simply beam "buy this!" messages at him.
To me, what's most poignant is the video's optimism about the future -- looking at big demographic trends, seeing big opportunities everywhere, and recognizing government's role in seizing those opportunities. We don't think that way anymore; it smacks too much of socialist central planning. But that's indeed how America used to be run: by ambitious, idealistic, unabashedly big thinkers.
Whereas today we have what is encapsulated in the title of Paul Krugman's textbook on macroeconomics: The Age of Diminished Expectations.
The end of the film about the opportunities presented by increasing leisure time is also poignant. The film predicts: "Both trends, rising productivity and shorter hours, will continue." But with the benefit of future hindsight, we know one of those trends, shorter hours, stopped sometime in the 1970s. Meanwhile, productivity gains have continued -- U.S. workers are still the most productive in the world -- but real U.S. wages have been stagnant for about 30 years.
For those in service industries, today we have a whole new problem: too few hours. Employers and temp agencies have taken the concept of "just in time" production with machines and applied it to human laborers, who are now struggling to get enough regular work hours to take care of themselves and their families. They can forget about bygone-era benefits like paid vacation, health insurance and a company pension.
As we all know now, the marvelous cycle of U.S. mass production and consumption described in this film came crashing down some time in the 1980s when middle managers realized they could get a nice promotion and a raise by cutting costs of production by moving operations overseas, then marketing what used to be U.S.-made products back to U.S. consumers. This worked for a while... until everybody did it. Industry didn't stop to think who would buy their products when nobody had good-paying manufacturing jobs anymore. Thousands of "invisible hands" of business choked middle-income workers' wages and hence America's overall economic prosperity.
My man Chief agrees with all that, but for him the most interesting aspect of the video is that it "reflects what was then a CONSERVATIVE position!" I mean, this video was produced by "American Industry," that's what it says. You don't get any more conservative than that. Continued Chief:
Look at how far rightward the conversation has drifted from 1955 until today... For the longest time, under Alan Greenspan, there was this unbelievable dogmatism surrounding the idea of removing regulatory fetters from the market. And notice, this video doesn't talk at all about growth in the financial sector (where most of the growth has been over the last quarter century). All it talks about is "industry", not stock options or the Dow.... I just find it fascinating that what amounts to Republican, pro-business propaganda in 1955, is left of center in today's economic conversation.
Indeed the good ole' days keep changing, depending on who's doing the reminiscing.
Courtesy of the Prelinger Archive
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Rep. McDermott: GOP won't give guidelines for 501(c)(4) tax exemption
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) nailed it. And the truth obviously hurt because he forced Rep. Paul Ryan to deviate from his prepared accusations, er, statement about the IRS "tempest in a tea party":
The mistake here was that the staff organizing the organizations used the names of the organizations rather than the work they do and asked improper questions to figure that out.It’s clearly wrong. It was inept, stupid, and a whole lot of other things.Let’s not forget, this happened under an IRS commissioner appointed by George Bush and was investigated by a Republican inspector general.I haven’t heard a single word here about what questions you think we ought to be able to ask you about your tax-exempt request. Anything else, like the circus that’s happening in the Oversight Committee or here, is simply political theater.
EXACTLY! Why isn't anybody else in Congress thinking about how to prevent such mistakes in the future, by coming up with clear and rational guidelines for the IRS to follow when evaluating whether an applicant for tax-exempt status really is a non-political "social welfare organization?"
I'll tell you why not. Because Republicans want a big scandal. (Good luck.) And because they want to intimidate IRS staff so thoroughly that they'll completely stop checking conservative political groups altogether, no matter how obviously they are engaging in politics.
As I've said before, this whole 501(c)(4) "social welfare" designation is total bullshit and only political hacks pretend it's real. The GOP is positively giddy about acting all upset at the IRS, like a bunch of teenage boys booing the "bad guys" at a pro wrestling match when they know the whole thing's fake.
By Noah Rothman
June 4, 2013 | Mediaite
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Lib'rul media hawks squawk for war with Syria
Not one but two op-eds today in the "liberal" Washington Post urge the U.S. to get involved militarily in Syria. Wow.
Columnist Richard Cohen's calling liberals against military intervention in Syria "cold-hearted" is like Charles Krauthammer calling conservatives a bunch of "bleeding hearts." That landed below the belt.
Well, now we see once again how the good ole' lib'rul media ain't so liberal when it comes to sending U.S. troops and weapons into Arab-Muslim countries. Then they're all blood & guts, John McCain style.
Let me repeat: Syria is not our country, it is a sovereign state. It hasn't attacked us. There are no UN resolutions allowing us to take military action there, legally. The U.S. Congress has not declared war on Syria. And it's a country filled with nasty people on all sides. Oh, and if we arm the other side, the first thing that will happen is the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists will kill the other "liberal" rebels. Or they'll do so immediately after they (we) topple Assad.
Moreover, Russia really cares about Syria. They have a naval base there. It's their last position of power in the Mideast. They are willing to fight hard to keep Assad in power. Are we? Are we ready for a proxy war with Russia? What's in it for us? Nothing. This is not to mention Turkey, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and other regional countries' interests there. The spillover potential is immense.
Significantly, Israel is taking a cautious approach to Syria in their own back yard. Although Assad is aligned with Iran and Iran-backed Hizballah, many Israelis favor Assad as "the devil we know," and according to Time, "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered government officials to keep mum about Syria." Of course Israel may just be waiting for the U.S. to make up its mind....
Don't let the media wear you down on Assad and Syria like they did with Saddam and Iraq! All this talk by liberal hawks about the U.S. "squandering its leadership" is just that -- talk. This is all France and Britain's fault, high off the toppling of Qaddafi in Libya, they thought they could make the same thing happen in Libya. Now it's their problem. Obama is absolutely right not to make it ours.
And finally, remember the "Pottery Barn rule:" the same chickenhawks typing at their Macs in Washington, DC today that we have no choice but to get involved in a war in Syria will be the same ones typing tomorrow that we have no choice but to take responsibility for Syria's nation-building, peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations after Assad has been "taken out." I guaran-fucking-tee it. We've been there, done that, folks. Forget it!
If we really want to help, we can continue to aid Syrian refugees and send food, medicine and flak jackets to Syrians stuck inside.
By Richard Cohen
June 4, 2013 | Washington Post
By Michael Gerson
June 4, 2013 | Washington Post
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