"...this is not leadership"- the "perfect combination"

From Robert Reich to the Editors at The Guardian, people notice.

Meanwhile what to think of the latest Hot Deal in DC?

Atrios:

... Some details aren't clear to me yet, but seems like they've hit on the perfect combination of stupid and evil for the debt ceiling "deal."

The Eyes have it!

domino effect

If the global economic warfare resulting from a United States government default continues to be mismanaged by the Tea Party zealots led by the criminal Grover Norquist, it's only a matter of time until the global economic warfare turns into a shooting war.

Which is precisely what the same group of idiots want.

saving the forest by removing the trees

typical

its own excuse

Krugman has it right again as far as he goes, but the real issue and dirty little unspoken secret is people on both "sides" want this default, including the Great Compromiser.

Otherwise he'd issue a Presidential Order and do something.

He's exactly as helpless as he wants to be.

what's to lose?

The IMF sez to the Laureate, "either get your ducks in a row, or we'll soak ya."

But what is this "impasse" they all keep speaking of? The Feds default, the bank$ters get to charge even more usurious interest rates, while taxes stay on the floor.

The pols all keep getting their payola, too, even if they don't get their Federal paycheck. I mean really, even though it's reported income, it's probably not the actual income of any of them. As long as their gunslingers private security firms responsible for National Security get paid, who cares if all the okies are living in tents on Company land?

Just Another Space-Time Twister

...but the first one MIT's thought worthy of posting about.



If it's really what it says it is, think of the applications.

The Compromised One speaks

"It's all the fault of those Democrats and Republicans", sez the Laureate.

I am sure, if like the Great Compromiser, if no one had any real principles it would be much easier to save the economy.

Oh, wait. This is Congress, where everyone wants to Serve Man.

keeping the Endless War endless

How can you have a good insurgency to fight if they can't keep the lights on?



All off budget, and bankrolled by private contractors, to please the Hon. Rep. Cantor.

"...it's a disaster"

Bernie and Cenk talk about what you are about to lose.

who ya gonna trust?

Trust anyone, madam, as far as you can throw 'em.

Any other attitude is sheer delusion.

it's not Terrorism unless Muslims do it

Glen Greenwald hits it again.

...Al Qaeda is always to blame, even when it isn't, even when it's allegedly the work of a Nordic, Muslim-hating, right-wing European nationalist...

And obviously everything from the Reichstag fire to the Oklahoma City bombing was done to mimic Al Qaeda. They're 4-D tricksters, those Islamists.

true color

Glen speaks, you listen:

...it is now beyond dispute that President Obama not only favours, but is the leading force in Washington pushing for, serious benefit cuts to both social security and Medicare.

This week, even as GOP leaders offered schemes to raise the debt ceiling with no cuts, the White House expressed support for the Senate's so-called "gang of six" plan that includes substantial cuts in those programmes.

The same Democratic president who supported the transfer of $700bn to bail out Wall Street banks, who earlier this year signed an extension of Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and who has escalated America's bankruptcy-inducing posture of Endless War, is now trying to reduce the debt by cutting benefits for America's most vulnerable – at the exact time that economic insecurity and income inequality are at all-time highs.

Where is the "epic shitstorm" from the left which Black predicted? With a few exceptions – the liberal blog FiredogLake has assembled 50,000 Obama supporters vowing to withhold re-election support if he follows through, and a few other groups have begun organising as well – it's nowhere to be found.

Therein lies one of the most enduring attributes of Obama's legacy: in many crucial areas, he has done more to subvert and weaken the left's political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party's leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe...

no problem for the Austerity

This must have nothing to do with the deficit, it says so on the label:

...The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the government's first-ever audit of the central bank...

So we can basically print- or create in cyberspace- as much money as it takes to keep the bank$ters happy. But we have to end science and let endangered species go extinct because it costs money. Besides, the money to pay for Halliburton's air conditioning bill in Afghanistan has to come from somewhere.

when the technology police run things

the meringue is the message

...but baby, Murdoch's Tiger ate yours.

The main$tream loves itself some theater, and is willing to forget that Rupert and his hot mama are responsible for a big chunk of what's wrong with the world today.

And if the main$treamers wring hands over his scandals? It's because they wish they were King of his Mountain, hot dragon lady and all. They could really care less about the damage he's done. They would do the same oligarchy song and dance routine themselves if they could.

Faux Knew

A friend of mine said to me yesterday, "you must be enjoying all this Murdoch business".

Well, sure.

NewsCorp was entirely aware of things that Bu$hie is supposed to have ignored. If this guy's minions hacked into the phones of 9/11 victim's families, who's to know exactly when they did it. And if other major corps knew about 9/11 coming down ahead of time, it would certainly explain all those mysterious put options and insurance policies being taken out on the days ahead.

And concerning the death of a certain whistleblower let's just say it wouldn't be the first one.

"...not thought to be suspicious"

Why on earth would anyone think that?

A former News of the World journalist who made phone-hacking allegations against the paper has been found dead.

Sean Hoare had told the New York Times the practice was far more extensive than the paper acknowledged when police first investigated hacking claims.

Hertfordshire Police said the body of a man was found at a property in Langley Road, Watford, on Monday morning.

A police spokesman said the death was currently being treated as unexplained, but was not thought to be suspicious...

Of course not. Whistleblowers who tie the national security state to their owners suggesting all this eavesdropping might be for private gain tend to just spontaneously drop dead all on their own. Which, of course explains what Bradley Manning is all about.

There's just no telling what kinds of damage these people might do to themselves if they were running around talking freely.

the new Dick, Head of the lack of Consumer Protection Agency

Richard Cordray over Elizabeth Warren

Because, you know, they don't foreclose in Ohio any more.

Just like they're no secret prisons any more.

Just like the Laureate would never try to manipulate the press the way the Republicans did.

Just like oh, never mind. When you play 11-dimensional chess with the Old Ones the means begin to justify the Eternal, but the world you save is not likely to be your own when the stars finally move into the right position.

if they lie to themselves, can they be truthful to you?

No, silly:

A recently approved herbicide called Imprelis, widely used by landscapers because it was thought to be environmentally friendly, has emerged as the leading suspect in the deaths of thousands of Norway spruces, eastern white pines and other trees on lawns and golf courses across the country.

Manufactured by DuPont and conditionally approved for sale last October by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Imprelis is used for killing broadleaf weeds like dandelion and clover and is sold to lawn care professionals only. Reports of dying trees started surfacing around Memorial Day, prompting an inquiry by DuPont scientists.

“We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms,” said Kate Childress, a spokeswoman for DuPont. “Until this investigation is complete, it’s difficult to say what variables contributed to the symptoms...”

Difficult for some, but not impossible for anyone who's used it apparently.

...“It’s been devastating,” said Matt Coats, service manager for Underwood Nursery in Adrian, Mich. “We’ve made 1,000 applications and had 350 complaints of dead trees, and it’s climbing. I’ve done nothing for the last three weeks but deal with angry customers.”

“We’re seeing some trees doing O.K., with just the tips getting brown, and others are completely dead and it looks like someone took a flamethrower to them,” he said.

So far, the herbicide seems to affect trees with shallow root systems, including willows, poplars and conifers, he said...

You know, just about everything.

...The chemical name of the product is aminocyclopyrachlor, one of a new class of herbicides that has been viewed as safer than earlier weed killers.

DuPont, landscapers and others had high hopes for the product. It has low toxicity to mammals, works at low concentrations and can kill weeds that other herbicides have trouble vanquishing, like ground ivy, henbit and wild violets. It works on the weeds’ roots as well as their leaves...

Ah yes, the horror of wild violets .

The wildness, can't have that. Yet nobody stopped to think about this horror . Literally, as of July 14, I can't easily find a single publication about it's mammalian toxicology, just it's effect on weeds and analytical quantitation.

Sanity would not suggest you promote a poison for widespread use around homes nobody's seriously studied before. Just given that structure and a drug metabolism course I took 30 years ago, I can vouch that chemical is at the very least a hepatotoxin. Much less what it's doing to your conifers.

not even skin deep

Tiabbi agrees with Krugman.

...The blindness of the DLC-era "Third Way" Democratic Party continues to be an astounding thing. For more than a decade now they have been clinging to the idea that the path to electoral success is social liberalism plus laissez-faire economics – in other words, get Wall Street and corporate America to fund your campaigns, and get minorities, pro-choice and gay marriage activists (who will always frightened into loyalty by the Tea Party/Christian loonies on the other side) to march at your rallies and vote every November. They've abandoned the unions-and-jobs platform that was the party's anchor since Roosevelt, and the latest innovations all involve peeling back their own policy legacies from the 20th century. Obama's new plan, for instance, might involve slashing Medicare and Social Security under "pressure" from the Republicans.

I simply don't believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc. That they won't do these things because they're afraid of public criticism, and "responding to pressure," is an increasingly transparent lie. This "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me into dat dere briar patch" deal isn't going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that they want to go into that briar patch.

It's because like the Republicans, the Democrats, and all the corporate sources of information are owned by the people who want to own you, too.

party lyin'

Or is it Company lyin'?

Either way the DINOcrats have come full circle:

Newly appointed US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told American troops in Baghdad on Monday that 9/11 was the reason they were in Iraq, before he was quickly corrected by his spokesman.

"The reason you guys are here is because of 9/11. The US got attacked and 3,000 human beings got killed because of Al-Qaeda," Panetta told about 150 soldiers at the Camp Victory US base.

"We've been fighting as a result of that," he said...

Which, of course, is why we must gut Social Security to beat the deficit, because of Saddam's Al Qaeda fighters.

Also, because the Laureate is owned by the same people who owned Big Time Dick and Commander Bunnypants.

Meanwhile, the ex-CIA chief, now Secretary of Defense, has also started to beat other Cheneyburton drums that aren't so easy to disprove.

...Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Sunday that weapons supplied by Iran had become a “tremendous concern” for the United States in recent weeks in Iraq, where more American troops died in June in combat-related episodes than in any month since June 2008...

Damn' straight, because the very last thing we want the folks at home, getting ready to lose their Social Security and bite the Austerity bullet for the Gipper, to wonder if they really need the Endless War and wonder exactly how much it's actually cost them to fight an enemy that's only there because we make them.

good-bye to all that

because, really, how else are we going to afford air-conditioning for all the private contractors in the War on Terra?



and, of course, the beat goes on while the Laureate sells off the FDR national monument.

there is a statue of a man, his dog, and a wall.



if you look up what his memorial says, Google will tell you it says, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

but it also says something that electrifies far more. quoth:

"They seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers, call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order."

no, Sir, it wasn't, it isn't, and it never will be, but the Old Ones will always seek to establish it.

writing it on the sidewalk for him

"...do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country."-

Nancy Pelosi

Nance, Nance, you talk good, but the Laureate is so, you know, 11-dimensional. He considers by, you know, not considering. It all depends on what the meaning of "is", is, as his House-broken Big Dog would say.

...also, who's putting the most money into His campaign account today?

chicago colors

Krugman writes it on the sidewalk for the Faithful: the Laureate is the first black right-wing President.

...I don’t believe that it’s all political calculation. Watching Mr. Obama and listening to his recent statements, it’s hard not to get the impression that he is now turning for advice to people who really believe that the deficit, not unemployment, is the top issue facing America right now, and who also believe that the great bulk of deficit reduction should come from spending cuts. It’s worth noting that even Republicans weren’t suggesting cuts to Social Security; this is something Mr. Obama and those he listens to apparently want for its own sake.

Which raises the big question: If a debt deal does emerge, and it overwhelmingly reflects conservative priorities and ideology, should Democrats in Congress vote for it?

It seems some remain cognizant of the political suicide inherent in talking about it.

The Laureate with the wrong motivation is on the wrong side of the calculation.

Or is it as Naomi Klein saw in June 2008, the wrong programing and a garbage-in, garbage-out situation?

LIHOP

I think the best thing you can say about the Laureate and the DINOcrats is the same thing we used to say about preznit Bunnypants.

That is: he let it happen on purpose.

The worst thing you could say? Well, far be it from me to indulge in conspiracy theories. However, accusations of racketeering are a different thing entirely.

"...it's a hit,"

Avedon speaks of money.

So instead of letting the government create the money those who would rule us have dictated it must borrow it, letting the banks create the money instead. And charge interest, a portion of which falls into the hands of those who would rule us.

Perfect scam, isn't it?

Money exists to tie we who are ruled to the realm of the rulers. In a universe of infinite boundaries, where all energy derives from the relentless sun, those who would rule have a heavy investment to protect, and a strong interest in maintaining the need for austerity.

they just can't break down doors at 3AM on their own

The new Iraqi secret police state hearts us.

But don't you worry, we aren't going anywhere no matter what the Laureate tells His civilian fan base.

hilarious yet terrifying

Looks like once again the bank$ters screw over the help with no consequences escept troubles for the one who was raped and complained:

...The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself...

No surprises there.

On other fronts in the War on Terra, the DINOcrats show that once again their voters can be placated by preoccupation with their humping while their world is fracked outside their bedrooms- even so far as the water they drink.

No surprises there, either.