Beautiful Theories Destroyed by Ugly Facts

The 2008 Primary Map. Take THAT, David Plouffe!

Edward Luce at The Financial Times wrote a piece called America: The Fearsome Foursome and it’s all about how everything in the WH is run by a small evil group to which no one we know belongs.  Yep, everything bad that has ever happened in the past year is the fault of Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod. It’s all because this Gang of Four are in campaign mode, a *brilliant*, scintillatingly genius, never-before-seen-by-the-likes-of-man campaign mode where they came from behind and fought the party establishment and conventional wisdom and the vicious media to overcome all odds and triumph to make their way to the highest office of the land.  It brings a tear to my eye, I tells ya’.  It’s like Mike Eruzione leading the US Hockey team to victory against the Russkis at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980.  A Miracle! A Miracle!

Can we just cut the crap, please?

If the White House is in campaign mode, then Barack Obama is the campaign manager.  That’s how his campaign worked, according to David Plouffe in his book from just a few months ago, The Audacity to Win.  By the way, Amazon’s review of the book is full of delightful details like:

Plouffe’s prose, alas, doesn’t much sweeten the deal. It’s filled with business-speak (“takeaway” used repeatedly as a noun, as in, “It certainly was not the chief takeaway from the debate”; gratuitous, macho-posturing profanity (“they picked Sarah goddamn Palin,” “let’s go win this [expletive] thing”); and a surfeit of baseball metaphors (“brushback pitch,” “unforced errors,” “[expletive] home run”).

If you’re looking for clues as to why this White House is screwed up, look no further than business jargon, that collection of “power words” that function as secret code words that identify the club members to each other but upon further investigation mean absolutely nothing.  Corporate culture is full of them.  When we hear our new CEOs say them during “Town Hall” meetings  and hear his sycophants dutifully repeating them in endless slide presentations, we start getting our affairs in order because the mergers and pink slips aren’t far behind.

Oh, yes, Obama is in charge all right.  His White House is painfully similar to a corporate executive department.

But let’s talk about the message that the FT piece sends.  In a nutshell, it sounds like Rahm Emannuel is ruining everything and that he’s not so good with 11th Dimensional Chess after all.

Well, there’s your problem right there.  According to most cosmic physicists, the human mind is incapable of understanding more than, oh, three dimensions on a good day.  Four is really pushing it for even the smartest among us.  Even Rahm.  11 is just beyond human comprehension.  It’s like, the geeks turn out these beautiful equations with some weird constant to the 11th power and they say, “Wow! That’s totally mind blowing.  WTF does it mean?  Hey, let’s go to Chuck’s for some wings for lunch.”  Those are the guys who can think to the 6th dimension.  (Or chemistry students who see that little “^” thingy in quantum chemistry and just apply it without really truly understanding what the f^*& that thing is and then burn the book after the final.)  That’s because, when you get into the REAL world, theories only get you so far after you graduate.  That’s when you have to apply your powers of observation and experience and refer to theory.

It’s cool to know some really great theoreticians and understand their work but when it comes right down to doing the day-to-day work, you read a lot of papers based on actual practice.  If the theory can’t be reduced to practice and the results replicated, it isn’t any damn good.

So, here we have a White House run by a corporate biz-speak accolyte, whose entire reduction to practice experience in applying the 11th dimensional chess game theory totals 142 days in the Senate. He has virtually no legislative experience to speak of.  I imagine his real skills are that he has mastered a certain attitude that is suave and debonnair (pronounced swave and de-boner for the uninitiated).  He looks like he swings a big dick.  He can use baseball metaphors with aplomb.  To get ahead, he’s charming to his colleagues (at first) and gets them to help him understand what they’re doing.  He gets them to share their secrets with him.  Then, as soon as he gets what he needs, he goes running to the guy two levels above him and has a chat.  Makes it looks like he figured all this stuff out by himself.  Says, “Her?  She’s good but she doesn’t really understand blah like you and I do.”  Pretty soon, the old chap is eating out of his hands.

And now his Fearsome Foursome is standing guard.  Ready to take a bullet for the guy, the one who is now in charge and is running everything, having gotten the confidence of the old guys.  They’re a slick bunch, that foursome.  They’ve got people actually believing that it’s not Obama’s fault that the country is the way it is and he can’t do anything about it.  He inherited this mess.  He didn’t make it messy.  It was BUUUUUSHH!

Yeah, like we didn’t see that coming.  It’s the reason why we didn’t want Obama in the first place.  We preferred the lady engineer who at least knew which mechanisms of government to push to get things done and looked like she read the papers and did her homework.

And it’s not Obama’s fault?  Please.  This is the job he wanted.  We all knew before he ran that the country was going to be a train wreck.  The Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton back in December of 2009 because they knew it was going to be a train wreck.  He inherited a train wreck and he knew it going in.  If he didn’t think he could do the job, he shouldn’t have run.  And Democrats who had been accurately predicting disaster for years during the Bush administration should have known better and not voted for him or promoted him and CERTAINLY shouldn’t be making excuses for him now.  It is a recipe for failure.

This is the real world in 4 dimensions with real people’s lives at stake.  It is not a game.

Wednesday Wake-up

From Day-by-Day by Chris Muir

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White House mocks Sarah Palin from podium

Even the White House’s top spokesman is getting in on the act of mocking former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin for looking to talking points written on her palm during a speech to “tea party” activists.

Robert Gibbs showed the words “hope” and “change” on his hand as he started his daily briefing with reporters on Tuesday.

Many in the room, where President Barack Obama had spoken just moments before about the need for bipartisanship, groaned at the political shot.

(Aren’t you glad the grown-ups are in charge?)

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Iran begins enriching higher-grade uranium, says state TV
Iran began enrichment of higher grade uranium today, state TV said, ignoring the threat of further UN sanctions by the US and its allies.

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Inside Toyota’s epic safety breakdown
Auto giant failed to heed warnings in December, U.S. regulators charge

(I drive a Camry)
.

Honda airbag recall grows to 822,000 vehicles
Safety device could overinflate and possibly injure or kill the driver

(“Buy American” suddenly sounds better than it did last week”)

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Obama Says He’ll Meet GOP ‘Halfway’ on Health
The president tries to change the dynamic, indicating he could settle for less in order to move ahead.

(I love the smell of desperation in the morning)
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Boehner to White House: “Why Are We Going to Talk About a Bill That Can’t Pass?”
Representative John BoehnerTop congressional Republicans, emerging from a 90-minute meeting with President Obama that side-stepped health care reform, said they may boycott Feb. 25 talks on health care reform.

(Whatever happened to that post-partisan Unity Pony?)

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New Wind Farms in the U.S. Do Not Bring Jobs
Millions Have Been Invested in Wind Farms, but That Hasn’t Brought Jobs

(Are wind farms where bloviating gasbags come from?)

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Coroner releases new details about Michael Jackson’s death
With Dr. Conrad Murray officially charged in Michael Jackson’s death, the Los Angeles coroner has released the autopsy report that said it was a homicide.

The 51-page report gives vivid detail supporting last August’s conclusion that Jackson died from “acute propofol intoxication.”

Murray told investigators he gave Jackson propofol, a powerful anesthetic, to help him sleep.
[...]
Jackson weighed 136 pounds and was 69 inches tall, according to measurements taken during the autopsy the morning after his death.

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Carville: Saints win, Landrieu election bringing NOLA together
Underdogs and comebacks are hailed in American culture; perhaps this is why there will be so much said and written about our New Orleans Saints’ 31-17 victory in Super Bowl XLIV and what it means to a once-water-logged city and its tenacious residents.

[...]

For as challenging a decade as the 2000s were for New Orleans, the 2010s may prove to be the brightest time in the city’s nearly 300-year history. The confluence of the Saints’ win and the historic mayoral election, which Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu won in a landside across racial lines, line up for the city’s best two days since the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

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Climb to top of Half Dome will require a permit
Climbers who want to make the final spine-tingling scramble 400 feet up the summit cables to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park will have to get permits before they make the climb this summer.

Four deaths in the past four years convinced Yosemite officials that something had to be done about the weekend gridlock on the final ascent to the top of the world-famous peak.

(Anyone who falls off will receive a refund of their permit fee)

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NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission
NASA officials announced today the successful launch of the new shuttle Moonage Daydream, marking the beginning of a long-anticipated two-week conceptual mission inspired by British rock star David Bowie.

(Would The Onion lie to you?)

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I wrote this before going to bed. Feel free to add more stories and updates in the comments.

Where does the Buck Stop?

True leadership is a difficult thing to define. It tends to be one of those things that you recognize when you see it.  Many people mistake

Is Tim Kaine the reason why Obama can't lead?

charisma for leadership.  Leadership is characterized by personal qualities.  This includes the ability to draw people to you.  But it’s deeper than that.  It’s the ability to attract those people and to inspire them to take action towards a unified goal.  When somebody that has been perceived as having leadership stumbles when it comes time to complete the goals, the disappointed followers can sure find a lot of excuses.  No where has this been more obvious than with the Koolaide Kult and their lightbringer.

One year after his inauguration, we’re hearing all kinds of excuses for Obama. We’ve heard the stumbles are due to the incredible difficult situation left to us by the Bush Adminstration.  It’s due to the Republicans who are unwilling to find any kind of middle ground.  It’s racism.  We’ve even heard that America and Americans are unmanageable.  Here’s a new one for that list. Doug Wilder is now blaming the people all around the President.  These are the ones that brought him to the party but now are failing him. He just needs a staff shake up now.  That’s what Wilder writes at Politico. At the top of his shake-up list is DNC chair Tim Kaine.

The need is becoming more obvious by the day: He must overhaul his own team, replacing the admittedly brilliant advisers who helped elect him with others more capable of helping him govern. Getting elected and getting things done for the people are two different jobs.

I am an admirer of Tim Kaine, whom I backed in his current position as one of my successors as Virginia governor and even recommended for the vice presidency. But a spate of recent losses in races that Democrats should have won underscores what has been obvious to me for a long time: The chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee is the wrong job for him.

The changes must go much deeper. Obama’s West Wing is filled with people who are in their jobs because of their Chicago connections or because they signed on with Obama early during his presidential campaign.

One problem is that they do not have sufficient experience at governing at the executive branch level. The deeper problem is that they are not listening to the people. 

How much progressive blogging has been spent blaming the Clintons, old Clinton advisors, old Bush advisors and saying it’s as good as it could be given the state of the economy, the leftover Bush issues,  and let’s see, the alignment of the stars?  This is just another it attempt to blame it on every thing in the world but the lack of leadership skills demonstrated by President Obama.   So, Wilder is blaming Tim Kaine among others for misleading the leader of the free world. I’m sure there’s others implied in his piece, but Kaine earns most of the cyberink.

This part really disturbed me.  Let’s see what you think about it.

The president was the one elected to lead, not the people around him. He was elected to be in front, to take charge. Leadership is a tautology; it defines itself.

Obama’s job approval ratings are sliding, but we Democrats are told not to worry. We are told that he remains personally popular with the American people.

It would be a grave mistake for the president and those around him to misread the current polls and analyses. They suggest that 1) the American people do not like the direction in which the country is heading; 2) they do not believe that either Democrats or Republicans are showing that they get the message and are doing the business of the people; 3) they hold Congress in very low regard; but 4) they really like the president. Yet, they keep going to the polls to rebuke him resoundingly every chance it is presented.

Unless changes are made at the top, by the top, when the time comes for voters to show how they really feel about Obama, his policies and the messages he sends directly or through the people around him, the president will discover that Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were not just temporary aberrations but, rather, timely expressions of voters who always show that they are ahead of the politicians.

The president should keep uppermost in his mind the biblical admonition as to what happens to those trees that do not bear “good fruit”: The ax is already at the tree.

To me, Wilder can’t see the forest for that tree.

Remember When We Believed In a Place Called Hope?

Remember when Donna Brazile told us all that the Democratic Party was forming a New Coalition that was “…more urban, as well as suburban…” and that the party didn’t need gays, Hispanics, blue collar voters (more commonly known as Jacksonians) and us bitter, clingy feminists anymore? Donna was either flying high that night, or she was serious. We can safely assume she was serious, particularly after she wrote this gem in response to an innocent young voter’s (ie: me) inquiries about seating the delegates in Florida and Michigan.

As of today, I am not going to respond to any more anti American, Anti Democratic emails. Have a nice day.
I am sorry because you are sincere, but the Hillary forces are uncivil, repugnant and vile. When you come up for air and would like to email a person who cares about America and not just a personality, I will respond.
Thanks for your time and your interest.
Donna

This afternoon, in between being uncivil, repungant and vile and also hating America (and also toting a gun and being raycist), I came across this article on FB, which explains why the conventional wisdom about Obama’s current joke of a Presidency is, as usual, wrong:

The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama’s decline in the polls represents a new, unexpected turn against him. But an examination of the results of the recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts suggests that what we might really be seeing is a return to the skepticism that significant portions of the electorate have showed about Obama from the beginning of his national career.

For six months during the 2008 primaries, Obama and Hillary Clinton crisscrossed the country wooing voters. Obama consistently failed to win over important parts of the Democratic base, even after it became clear that he was going to be his party’s nominee.

On February 5—Super Tuesday— Obama did poorly in both New Jersey and Massachusetts, losing to Clinton by 10 and 15 points, respectively. The exit polls were in line with Obama’s performance throughout the primary race: He did very well with blacks, wealthy voters, highly educated voters, and very young voters. He did poorly with working-class whites and older voters. In New Jersey, Obama was +20 among voters under the age of 29, but about -26 among voters over 50. In Massachusetts, he ran even with young voters, and -31 among those over 65. As for education, Obama was -41 among voters with only a high school degree, but ran even, or just ahead, among voters possessing postgraduate degrees. And then there was gender and race. In New Jersey, Obama was -19 among white men; in Massachusetts he was +1.

[...]

The question, then, is how these various coalition groups—the white ethnic enclaves, the Jacksonians, the suburban and industrial town voters—have reacted to Democrats since Obama took office. And the answer is: Without enthusiasm.

(Note: only cool young people like me and Regency voted for Hillary, but you all ready know that.) There’s usually no point in Nostalgia. But remember when the Democratic party was the party of the “Big Tent?” Remember when it was supposed to represent the interests of those who were “invisible,” as our Shero used to say? Remember the party that could overcome the labels and name calling defined by the Village and the Right Wing Noise Machine in service of things like Health Care for children, job creation, the environment and tax cuts for the Middle Class? I’m having a hard time, because it’s been a long time since the Big Dawg was President, and I was only an (adorable) little tot back then, but I digress.

The point is, the Democratic Party we once loved and belonged to bit the dust on May 31st at the RBC meeting, but we all know that. Its just that its only now, too late, that the rest of the world is realizing we were right all along about our beloved leader and the “New Coalition.” It is extremely enjoyable to relish in Donna and the rest of the DNC’s Karma, and it is at times satisfying to watch President Obama crash and burn, not because we wanted that to happen–Obama’s failure isn’t just dragging down his poll numbers, its also dragging down this country and all of the unemployed people who are struggling to make ends meet while Wall Street Bankers point and laugh at them from on high atop of their giant mounds of bailout money–but because it is only small consolation after having our vaginas compared to grilled cheese sandwiches (well, my vagina wasn’t compared to a grilled cheese sandwich, but I was still mad about the reference in general) and being basically kicked out of the party a lot of us remained loyal to our entire lives, despite it being such a hot mess.

However, vindictiveness gets us nowhere. The PUMA brand appears to have been usurped by disturbed lunatics such as the Hillbuzz boys, who now spend their days photoshopping pictures of Senator Claire McCaskill in pajamas and campaigning for conservatives like Sarah Palin, Scott Brown and Michelle Bachmann, and the Teabaggers Tea party is a front for the Right Wing.

Many have suggested forming a third party, but as Joseph Cannon explained third parties have been shown to be unsuccessful and their candidates are spoilers. Like it or not, we have a two party system and its going to stay that way. So what do we do?

The right wing nutsos — the Friedmanites, the libertarians — did not say: “We’re not getting what we want from the Republicans, so let’s form a new party.”

Actually, I tell a lie. Before the great takeover occurred, and during the days of Nixon, some right-wing ultras did go down the third party route. A Libertarian party was formed, and the American Independent Party did well in the ‘68 and ‘72 elections, under George Wallace and John Schmitz.

George is the one who made that remark about there not being a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties. John is the one who said “If you’re out of Schmitz, you’re out of gear. And if someone doesn’t get that kid get to shut up, I’ll do it myself.”

Apologies for that digression. (If you weren’t alive at that time, you may be confused by the references.)

The reactionary element within this country achieved much greater success when it decided to take over the Republican party. They have now commandeered it to such a degree that John Schmitz’ son Joseph has a comfy place in it. (Joseph used to help run Blackwater and he was the DOD IG under W.) The fanatics not only took over the party, they also commandeered the national debate. They set the limits of permissible thought.

It’s time to take the party back from the “New Coalition.” Its time we gave Donna a fork and made her eat her words. Its time real liberals–and by real I don’t mean fauxgressives of the former Neocon variety such as Arianna and Morkos– I mean real liberals, took the party back from so called “Blue Dogs” and Howard Dean and his crappy “Fifty State Strategy.” Its time we got our party back. Because deep down, we know it still always belonged to us. One needs only to take one look at the flailing Obots on the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos to see that. I miss our “Big Tent.” Lets call it up and tell it to please come home.

I remember being a little kid and knowing I was a Democrat, because I thought that no matter what, I would never feel invisible if there was a “D” after my name. That was what I loved about the Democratic Party. Now so many Americans feel more invisible than ever. Even Wanda Sykes.

I miss my Clinton panties too.

Clinton isn’t out there preaching that only certain types of love are acceptable. He isn’t bemoaning what is wrong with our nation, but constantly emphasizing what is right with it. Clinton is not a gloom and doom kind of guy waiting for an imaginary apocalypse to free us from this evil world. Clinton prefers to see the good in people rather than the worst. The President is an almost idealized concept of an optimist who believes that as long as we are here, we might as well try to make it the best world that we can.

Most of us appreciate that. Because in the end, we, too, would like to believe that we are people who-though we are often flawed and all too human- struggle each day to make the world a little better than how we found it.

Clinton just seems more like one of us. He actually has facial expressions. He plays the sax. He eats at fast food restaurants and struggles with weight gain as a result. He gets all red in the face as he jogs around the block. He even makes bad choices when it comes to picking out which tie to wear for the cameras.

I don’t think anyone would call him a saint. And that is the number one reason that the Republicans hate him so very much. He isn’t a saint at all. Neither are we.

As Andy points out in the song, “He made too many enemies… Of the people who would keep us on our knees..”

And all the while that the Christian Coalition driven lemmings in our government have been harping on the fact that only a saint can run this country effectively, Bill Clinton has been proving them wrong.

And the Righteous Republicans really, really hate that.

Do you still believe in a place called hope? I think I do.

Tuesday Morning Coffee and Links

'Good Morning Latte' Original oil painting by Melanie Banayat

Good Morning Conflucians!!

There’s another snow storm moving towards our east coast!  Hope our east coast Conflucians keep their electricity and get their warm on!  It’s a chilly day here in New Orleans.  But still, it’s good enough for a Mardi Gras and Super Bowl Celebration and lots of parades. But, first, let’s look at some of the headlines that grabbed my attention.

Is the Health Care Bill going no where and why is the President acting like he needs more Republican input and bi-partisan support when the Health Care Reform–according to Ezra Klein at WaPo–already includes Six Republican ideas.

At this point, I don’t think it’s well understood how many of the GOP’s central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP’s “Solutions for America” homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them — yes, you read that right — are in the Senate health-care bill.

These include things like “Let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines”, “Allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do”, and “End junk lawsuits.”  What is the Republican’s problem and why does Obama always feel like he needs to include more of their ideas when they just say no any way?

CNN Political Ticker has coverage of Meghan McCain’s criticism of the tea partiers.   Ms McCain appears to be a new more moderate voice in the Republican party and more power to her if she can continue the dialogue and take the heat that will surely follow.  She sounds more reasonable than Stupak and Nelson. (BTW, Nelson just needs to switch parties.  Read about his latest posturing here.) How long will she make it in a Republican party wedded to the radical religious right and xenophobes?

“People were saying that this is the new movement in the Republican Party,” McCain said during an appearance on ‘The View.’ “I did not want to go [to last week's convention]. I have (a) very much different, ideological differences with them.”

And she described Tancredo’s comments as “innate racism.”

“And I think it’s why young people are turned off by this movement. And I’m sorry [but] revolutions start with young people. Not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can’t say the word ‘vote’ in English. It’s ridiculous.”

Meghan McCain also decried the divisiveness and partisanship in American politics and the growing populist rage that has powered the Tea Party movement.

“Maya Angelou says we have more in common than we do apart,” she said. “We need to use this message in politics more.”

Meghan McCain added, “This rhetoric will continue to turn off young voters and anybody that says different is smoking something. Period.”

Erick Erikson’s (of the blog Red State and a CNN contributor)Republican party is obviously not on the same page.  Here’s two of

his misogynistic tweets from Super Bowl Sunday. Images come from Media Matters.

Oh, and as for “too ugly to get a date” remark, I’ll just refer you to his picture and let you be the judge.  He’s not exactly Prince Charming or even Prince Average Looks.  I’ve see less chubby and grim-looking catfish pulled out of the Mississippi River that have more date potential than this dude. He makes Rush Limbaugh look doable.  Blech!  I’d recommend he spend some time on Biggest Losers and try some Rush-style plastic surgery before he starts judging beauty pageants.  At this point, he’d have to have some pretty hefty ad revenues to attract something more than lady mosquitoes in my book.

Central Banker’s are meeting in Austrailia in a supposedly ’secret’ summit. There’s speculation that Bernanke might even attend.  They should have a lot on their agenda at this rather unusual event.  Concerns over Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Dubai will probably top the agenda.  Sovereign Wealth Funds have recently been big contributors and lenders to many economic growth projects around the world.  Financial problems with many of these funds are worrying the group.  I’m going to be watching this carefully since the ASEAN group is a central part of my research right now and many of the central players come from the big Asian economies.

Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports.

Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies.

Speculation that the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Dr Ben Bernanke, would make an appearance could not be confirmed last night.

The event will be dominated by Asian delegations and is expected to include governors of the Peoples Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the Reserve Bank of India.

Edward Harrison of the Finance Blog Credit Writedowns has a guest post you may want to check out on Naked Capitalism.  Harrison follows up on the continually deteriorating mortgage markets and says a second wave of defaults is coming.  This time it could take out the FHA.  He believes that–despite the White Houses program and hype–mortgage services have no incentives to refinance existing mortgages.  You should be able to figure out who the players are, but just in case you may not know, here’s the list.

What was clear then is that mortgage servicers were not incentivized to modify existing mortgages.  The incentive for servicers is to service an existing mortgage for as long as they can in order to collect the fees associated with that servicing. The big four commercial banks are by far the largest servicers of loans. Here is the breakdown from an October post linked just below.

• Bank of America: $2.1 trillion, up from $530 billion a year earlier (via its acquisition of Countrywide – this is WHY bank of America bought Countrywide)
• Wells Fargo: $1.8 trillion, up from $1.5 trillion a year earlier
• JPMorgan Chase: $1.5 trillion, up from $795 billion a year ago (thanks in large part to its acquisition of Washington Mutual)
• CitiMortgage (a division of Citigroup): $792 billion, down from $799 billion a year earlier. Citi is hurting i everywhere)
• ResCap: $391 billion, down from $449 billion in the first quarter of 2008.

If you wonder where our tax money’s going, here’s the bottom line from Dean Baker at the American Prospect.

The NYT and every one else keeps saying that Social Security is one of the three most rapidly growing items in the budget. This is not true. Defense spending grew more rapidly over the last decade. We spent $655.8 billion on defense in 2009 more than double the $306.1 billion spent in 2001. $By comparison, Social Security spending rose by just over 50 percent during these years from $429.4 billion in 2001 to $677.7 billion last year. If we’re looking forward, interest spending is projected to grow more rapidly. So it is simply inaccurate to list Social Security among the areas of most rapid spending growth in the budget.

But don’t worry, right wing whacko Michelle Bachmann is out there protecting your interests.  She even wants to borrow a few ideas from Glenn Beck. Who needs economists when you can just make things up that fit your world view and still get a public office and platform? Be prepared to be thrown out of the social security system of Bachmann has her way.  This is from Think Progress.

BACHMANN: Is the country too big to fail? No, the country can fail. We can, we’re not invincible. And we’re so close now to being at that point because the thing is, as Glenn Beck said last night, it is true. The $107 trillion that he put on the board. We’re $14 trillion in debt, but that doesn’t include the unfunded massive liabilities. That’s $107 trillion, and that’s for Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. You add up all those unfunded net liabilities, and all the traps that could go wrong we’re on the hook for, and what it means is what we have to do is a reorganization of all of that, Social Security and all. We have to do it simply because we can’t let the contract remain as they are because the older people are going to lose. So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don’t have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off. And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can’t do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.

Okay, I really tried to find some good news and failed.  I did find some interesting news at National Geographic.  This is a ‘true color Dinosaur Picture”. If I can’t find good news, I can at least revert back to my childhood interests and my favorite childhood magazine.  This thing gives a bit of new meaning to the idea of a funky chicken.

The only good news is the local news for a change!  We have a great new Mayor on Deck:  Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu and don’t forget it’s Mardi Gras Time!

I have to admit to being a big supporter of Mitch for his last two runs because there are two things I know about him personally.  Instead of play games during Hurricane Katrina, he got in the boats with the Fish and Wildlife people and pulled folks from their flooded homes.  He wasn’t preening before the cameras or hid up in a penthouse hotel afraid to come out.  He was out in the city every day with his sleeves rolled up helping people.  The other thing is this program mentioned by the NY Times yesterday.

Mr. Landrieu drew praise in 2007, when, in just 45 days, his office helped direct $9.6 million in federal aid to owners of 283 historic buildings that were damaged by the storm and ensuing flood. Local officials at the time contrasted the speed of the payment to the notoriously slow pace of the much larger Road Home program, which was for owners of severely damaged homes.

My home was one of those 283 historic buildings that got a grant and it was fast, easy, and the effective.  I never used the Road Home program as a result and my funds came in before most of my friends whose homes were completely flattened by Katrina.  I’m a big fan of Mitch’s and I’m glad to see the city get some one who cares about it instead of their political career.  I’m hoping that between the Saints and the Landrieu win, we get some unity on the ground.  We almost all drowned together.  We should rebuild together and realize that our strength and character lay in our great diversity.

You’ll see odd birds of all colors down here now!  If you want to see a little bit of everything watch the Saints’ Super Bowl Win Celebration Parade tomorrow.  The Grand Marshall floats from each of the parade krewes will be a colorful part of the party.  Here’s the details at Nola.com. My guess is the throws will be highly collectible. I may actually walk up there and see if I can grab a few!   The price on my collectibles always seems to go up faster than the return on my 403(b) these days anyway.

Have a great day and be sure to celebrate with the Who Dat Nation!

Stupid Trolls

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Sometimes you read a troll dropping that makes you wonder if the person could really be that clueless. I was over at Tennessee Guerilla Women where Egalia had a post about the Super Bowl Snickers commercial starring Betty White you see above. One of Egalia’s regular trolls named “Lance Thruster” posted this comment:

Betty White rocks!

Is TGW OK with her Sue Anne Nivens/Happy Homemaker charicature from the MTM Show (cuz you know she pretended to be a bit of a “strumpet”)?

Lance’s Crayola computer obviously doesn’t have spell check but what he really needs is an intelligence upgrade. Betty White’s character “Sue Ann Nivens” pretended to be the sweet “Happy Homemaker” but in reality she was a very different person, rude, sarcastic and sex-obsessed.

The role was groundbreaking because Betty White portrayed one of the first women on television that was not only openly sexual but sexually aggressive. The humorous aspect of the Sue Ann role was shock factor in that she was a middle-aged woman (Betty was 51 in 1973) who behaved very differently from the stereotypical “grandmother” role and from her well-established public persona. I have no idea what the real Betty White is like in private life but I bet she’s not two-dimensional.

White satirically fulfilled both of the two traditional roles for women under the patriarchy. Satire is often used to bring attention to social and/or political issues that our culture finds difficult to face directly. Most of the socially-conscious commentary in movies in television during the sixties and seventies appeared in comedies rather than drama.

It is ironic that the single and sexually active Sue Ann appeared in the Mary Tyler Moore show because just a few years earlier Mary and her television spouse Dick Van Dyke had to sleep in separate beds.

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RIP, John Murtha

Associated Press:

Tribune-Democrat:

U.S. Rep. John Murtha, the powerful Democrat who represented this area since 1974, died this afternoon in a Virginia hospital.

The congressman’s office released a brief statement saying Murtha “passed away peacefully” at 1:18 p.m. His family was at his bedside, spokesman Matt Mazonkey said.

[...]

On Saturday, he became the longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania history.

McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the first Vietnam veteran elected to the House of Representatives and an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, died Monday of complications of gallbladder surgery, a spokesman for the lawmaker said.

He was 77. He died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., spokesman Matthew Mazonkey told the AP.

From Murtha’s official bio:

U.S. Representative John P. Murtha has dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. He had a long and distinguished 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990.

He has been serving the people of Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District since 1974. Currently serving his 19th term, Congressman Murtha is the eighth most senior member of the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives. Of the nearly 10,600 men and women who have served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1789, only 79 have served longer than he has.

NY Times Caucus blog:

A former Marine, Mr. Murtha, his office noted, was the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to Congress. Throughout his years, Mr. Murtha paid particular attention to defense spending and to the Pentagon and the military.

When he called for bringing the troops home from Iraq in 2005, after having voted for the war, his proposal stunned many in Congress and added a powerful voice to the growing forces demanding immediate drawdowns and or deadlines.

Murtha was not perfect, but I will remember him for speaking up when few in Congress had the courage to do so. He gave voice to millions of Americans who felt no one was listening.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. Rest in peace, John Murtha.

Monday Morning News and Views

Good Morning Conflucians! And congratulations to the New Orleans Saints, their fans, and the City of New Orleans! The Saints are the winners of Super Bowl XLIV!

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune: The New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl

They beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 here at Sun Life Stadium in South Florida.

Saints quarterback Drew Brees was 32-of-39 for 288 yards and two touchdowns.

But it was the big 75-yard interception return for a touchdown by cornerback Tracy Porter that sealed the deal.

“I studied and knew their tendencies,” Porter said. “I just jumped around and the ball went right into my hands.”

Porter grew up in Louisiana and graduated from Indiana University. Too bad the Colts didn’t grab him.

“I have been watching him since my time in Indiana,” Porter said of Manning. “I watched him put up points on the scoreboard. To come back home to Louisiana and bring a trophy back home, nothing is better.”

Porter, in his second season, is as responsible for the Saints’ Super Bowl triumph as any other Saint. He was one of the Saints’ heroes in the NFC Championship Game, when he intercepted a Brett Favre pass across the middle with 19 seconds left in regulation to stop the Vikings with the score tied at 28 before the Saints won in overtime on a field goal.

Yesterday, Porter intercepted one of the smartest quarterbacks in the history of the game. And he did it by studying just as hard as Manning does before games.

Maybe Dakinikat can tell us what the celebration was like on the ground in New Orleans.

New Orleans also elected a new mayor over the weekend.

NEW ORLEANS — In an event-packed weekend here that included the New Orleans Saints’ first-ever trip to the Super Bowl and seven Mardi Gras parades, Mitch Landrieu, the state’s lieutenant governor and scion of a well-known Louisiana political family, captured enough attention to become the city’s 61st mayor.
Landrieu received 66% of votes at the polls Saturday, avoiding a runoff. His landslide victory over 10 opponents brings to a close the tumultuous eight years of Ray Nagin, who has been the public face of New Orleans since the floods following Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. Nagin had served the maximum number of terms allowed by law.

In more sobering news, at least for us in New England, a massive explosion at the Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown, Connecticut (a suburb of Hartford) destroyed the largest building at a giant power plant, which would have been the largest in the region. Five workers are confirmed dead, and twelve are known to be injured, but officials are not yet releasing names.

Workers were running tests yesterday in anticipation of the gas powered plant going on-line soon. No one knows for sure yet what caused the explosion except that a gas line somehow ignited. At a news conference yesterday, Middletown Mayor Sebastian N. Giuliano said that up to 300 workers could have been at the plant, but probably only around 50 were in or near the building that exploded and then burned intensely for about an hour before firefighters could put out the blaze. This morning Governor M. Jodi Rell said that there were probably 100 people at the plant yesterday and most are accounted for. It’s hard to know what to believe, because news accounts are still very vague. The only thing I know for sure is that some workers are still missing.

Hartford Courant: Middletown Power Plant Explosion: Workers Unaccounted For, Search Called Off

MIDDLETOWN — – UPDATE (7:18 a.m.): Crews are returning to the Kleen Energy plant this morning to determine when rescuers can resume their search through the rubble for workers who remain unaccounted for.

The search was suspended at about 2:30 a.m. because the debris is unstable, said Middletown Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano.

Lights were brought in and dogs were assisting rescuers, he said. But all were called out when it was determined that the rubble may be dangerous.

He said experts will determine when, and under what circumstances, the search can resume.

Middletown Power Plant Was To Be Among Biggest In Region

The Kleen Energy Systems power plant that was rocked by a deadly explosion Sunday sits on a moonscape of rock and cliff at a former feldspar mine overlooking the Connecticut River.

Proposed in 2001, and funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from one of the largest private energy investment firms in the country, the plant was to be among the biggest new electricity projects in New England, costing nearly $1 billion.

Construction workers had to move 1.6 million yards of rock and earth to claw out a 137-acre site for the plant on land owned by Middletown trash czar Phil Armetta. Armetta is a former partner in the project who withdrew after he was convicted in a federal crackdown on the trash industry.

William Corvo, a former Middletown councilman who is a principal partner in the project, said from the chaotic scene Sunday that the plant was 96 percent complete.

Just about a year ago, there was another power plant explosion in Connecticut–at the Yale’s Central Power Plant:

…Connecticut was suffering through some of the chilliest weather in recent memory, with overnight lows reaching into the single digits. As part of an agreement with Southern Connecticut Gas, the power plant — which runs on natural gas — switches to backup fuel to relieve the strain on SCG’s gas network when it is at high capacity, such as in the case of especially cold temperatures.

As a result, the plant switched off its natural gas lines two weeks ago and began powering its three massive turbines using reserves of diesel fuel held in tanks at the plant, according to power plant officials.

Then something went wrong. At about 2:15 a.m., a violent explosion ripped through the second of the plant’s three turbines, apparently the result of a fuel leak. The explosion was so intense that it blew out several of the doors on the turbine’s metal enclosure, witnesses said.

If any workers had been in the vicinity at the time, they likely would have been seriously injured, if not worse, Starr said.

Luckily no one was hurt in that explosion, but it has to make you wonder about these natural gas plants.

Interestingly, the Kleen Energy plant that exploded yesterday was “underwritten by Goldman Sachs” and was named the “The Deal of the Year” in 2008 by ProjectFinance magazine. The deal was for a “fixed price certain contract,” meaning that, according to this seemingly knowledgeable dailykos commenter, if the focus of investors was on short-term profits, shortcuts could have been taken in order to stay within the fixed cost estimate.

See, here’s the thing I’ve seen in the world of contracts: the people who run a rather large percentage of these companies look only at the short-term profits from the deal, and not the long-term structural needs of the underlying project. They make a bid based on a bunch of BS markups on the fungible labor costs, with a token amount tossed in to make it look like the underlying item will be tested and maintained, usually based on a near-best-case scenario, then outsource as much of the labor as possible to the lowest bidding sub-contractor, pocketing the remainder as profits.

In other news:

President Obama is asking Republicans to join him in another “summit meeting” about health care.

President Barack Obama, seeking to give new momentum to his languishing health-care legislation, said he would sit down with Republican and Democratic lawmakers to exchange ideas on an issue that has deeply divided the parties.

With the GOP united against the Democratic bill, Mr. Obama said Sunday he would ask Republicans “to put their ideas on the table.” The half-day meeting will be Feb. 25 and broadcast live, the White House said.

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” the president told CBS in an interview broadcast Sunday.

{Sigh…} This obsession Obama has with bipartisan agreement on everything is starting to look like it could be a sign of a serious psychological disorder. What is his problem? Democrats are asking him to take a leadership role and just say straight out what he wants, but he simply refuses to do that–or maybe he just doesn’t know what he wants.

President Barack Obama has left Democrats as confused as ever about how the White House plans to deliver a health care reform bill this year, after two weeks of inconsistent statements, negligible hands-on involvement and a sudden shift to a jobs-first message.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and beyond say they have no clear understanding of the White House strategy — or even whether there is one — and are growing impatient with Obama’s reluctance to guide them toward a legislative solution.

At a White House meeting Thursday with Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed frustration with the slow pace of the negotiations and the president’s decision not to weigh in publicly on a path forward, according to a Democratic source familiar with the meeting.

And some Democrats feel that every time they look to White House for clarity, they hear something different, as though the strategy is whatever the president or his top advisers said that day.

Gee, what a surprise. But no one could have seen this coming, right? Except a few bitter knitters like us.

Obama is also trying to pretend that things are getting better because the unemployment rate dropped in January–even though total jobs lost increased.

The trouble with understanding the U.S. labor situation is that these two key economic indicators are compiled using multiple sources. “Total jobs lost” comes from surveys of businesses that pay payroll taxes and are required to report their monthly personnel gains and losses. The unemployment rate, by contrast, comes from door-to-door surveys of American households where people self-report their employment situation. On average, about 50,000 households are surveyed a month.

Both are imprecise measures, and as evidenced today, jobs lost numbers are frequently revised as new data comes in.

Many experts dismissed the improving numbers as statistical illusions. “There was an inexplicable decline in unemployment in January,” said economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit Washington-based think tank. While the lower unemployment number is a welcome sign, the drop is “largely attributed to the higher volatility of the … household survey,” she said.

Marc Lieberman dismissed the improved unemployment rate outright. “In a situation like we have now, where the job market actually worsened, the unemployment rate is going down because people are giving up looking for work.” Lieberman, Clinical Professor of Economics at NYU, and an expert in labor economics, also noted that the number of people who want a job, but have not looked in the last 12 months, is rising, a fact unaccounted for in the unemployment numbers.

And from Politico: Jobs Bill Gets Snowed Under

Senate Democrats will miss their self-imposed deadline for bringing a jobs bill to the floor Monday, and they’re hoping that the weekend’s epic snowstorm will give them some cover.

Senate votes scheduled for Monday evening have been pushed back to Tuesday on account of the storm, but it seems unlikely that Democrats would have been ready to proceed Monday, anyway.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last week that he believed “very emphatically” that the Senate would hold a vote on the first of a series of jobs bills Monday.

But there was no agreement on a bill late Sunday afternoon, and aides to senators involved in the discussions cautioned against expecting much progress by Monday.

That’s it for me. What are you reading this morning?

HAVE A MARVELOUS MONDAY!!!!

I’m just posting this because I really like it. I love trains, and I’ve always wanted to take the train to New Orleans. Willie’s version first and then Arlo’s

ONEpeat! (Super Bowl Night Open thread)

Unbelievable!! The Saints finally won a Super Bowl.

What will we do with our paper bags?

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) holds his son Baylen after the NFL Super Bowl XLIV football game against the Indianapolis Colts in Miami, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010. The Saints won 31-17. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Super Bowl XLIV Live Blog

These guys:

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are playing these guys:

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here:

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The Hoosiers are 5 point favorites over the Who Dats and the over/under is 57 points.

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In other news, this guy:

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was selected for the NFL Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

Unfortunately, he spent most of his awesome 20-year career dressed like this:

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