They are this way for a reason

Yesterday Matt Taibbi offered us as plain an explanation as any as to why Democrats just aren't worth electing to office anymore.

The Democrats, despite sitting in the White House, the most awesome repository of political power on the planet, didn't fight at all. They made a show of a tussle for a good long time -- as fixed fights go, you don't see many that last into the 11th and 12th rounds, like this one did -- but at the final hour, they let out a whimper and took a dive.

We probably need to start wondering why this keeps happening. Also, this: if the Democrats suck so bad at political combat, then how come they continue to be rewarded with such massive quantities of campaign contributions? When the final tally comes in for the 2012 presidential race, who among us wouldn't bet that Barack Obama is going to beat his Republican opponent in the fundraising column very handily? At the very least, he won't be out-funded, I can almost guarantee that.

And what does that mean? Who spends hundreds of millions of dollars for what looks, on the outside, like rank incompetence?

It strains the imagination to think that the country's smartest businessmen keep paying top dollar for such lousy performance. Is it possible that by "surrendering" at the 11th hour and signing off on a deal that presages deep cuts in spending for the middle class, but avoids tax increases for the rich, Obama is doing exactly what was expected of him?

None of this comes as any surprise to those of us who have been arguing that the Democratic party has been little more than a corrupt servant of big finance for quite a few decades now, and certainly few will dispute that they really went over that cliff with the nomination of Bill Clinton.

Anyway Taibbi's point is that the difference between Democrats' perceived platform and their actual performance cannot be explained away merely as "timidity" or "weakness" or even lack of aptitude. After all, of the 95 Democrats in the House who voted in favor of authorizing a Super-congressional entity to cut Social Security and Medicare, only one had recently suffered a debilitating brain injury.

Fuck it

At this point, why not just vote no? Given the way this thing looks, it seems to me the best thing a "progressive" legislator could do would be to force a scenario where either the President has to invoke the 14th or everyone has to scramble one more time. Either of those ends might be preferable to this now.

Update: Oh for fuck's sake



Luckily for Obama, the Republicans managed to put together a sufficiently awful deal for him to accept. Oh well.

Who will answer tonight's fire bell?

This is an interesting Digby post about the intractable lunacy that runs like a long thread through the history of the American conservative tribe.

The parties still represent the two tribes that were created out of slavery and the same dynamic prevails today. During the Bush years we were all fascinated by the comparison between the civil war map and the 2004 election. It still represents the political bases of the two parties pretty well, with the ascension of the Randian kook faction recently coming out of the Upper Midwest. It's interesting how this tribal identity spread beyond region, however, a subject which is partially covered in fascinating detail in Kevin Philips 2007 book called American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. he shows how the Southern Baptist convention spread beyond the South to dominate Protestantism in general and it partially explains how this Southern based tribal identity comes to be found in pockets throughout the country. There's also urban white backlash and the dominance of corporate sponsored media aimed at stoking the resentments that animate this particular American identity. This tribe now calls itself the Tea Party or the Conservative Movement and it dominates the Republican coalition.

If President Obama wants to be the Lincoln of his day he needs to recognize that the same dynamics that drove the Southern coalition to total lunacy in 1860 are driving it there today because as John Judis points out, he's had it wrong from the beginning

Go read the whole post for the the Judis reference and more. But the point is what you're watching today is an utterly recalcitrant, immobile, childish, angry faction of legacy confederates preparing to completely wreck the country rather than put off their outlandish extreme agenda until the next budget debate comes around. And it's far from the first time this tribe has reacted this way in a crisis.

Federalism

One wonders if the Tea Party-States Rights crowd would even want the Constitution ratified in the first place.

The centrality of debt holders in our constitutional order isn't a bug, it's a feature. Indeed, the national debt -- created through the federal assumption of state war debts -- was created to do precisely this: get the holders of bonds, necessarily wealthy and powerful people, to have a vested interest in the fixity and stability of the federal government.

A pretty good and accessible recent book to read about this is Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution

William Hogeland's very enjoyable book about the Whiskey Rebellion also treats some of the same material.

Quick debtagaeddon thought of the morning

A lot of the problem here is that after the 2010 elections, Obama decided his path to reelection was through deficit hawkery. Back when Clinton took this tack, he did it through the "Reinventing Government" initiative and welfare reform. Obama wants to do it by allowing cuts to Medicare and raising the retirement age.

But those are actually very unpopular ideas, the fact of which should have discouraged Obama from pursuing them. Instead he decided to let the Republicans appear to twist his arm into doing it. In his mind, he's getting it both ways. On the one hand, his administration is pursuing a draconian austerity program which all the "responsible grown-ups" assure us is what "independent" voters want. On the other hand, he gets to pretend like he's been backed into a corner by crazy Tea Partiers which keeps his sycophants sufficiently "fired up" to shout down his liberal critics.

I'm sure the President thinks he's handling this brilliantly but he's wrong. For one thing, it's a losing electoral strategy. He's planning to sell himself in 2012 as the guy who really wants to cut your Medicare but is too ineffectual to accomplish that against a party of true believers who really want to cut your Medicare and will do whatever it takes to make it happen. Also cutting Medicare is a really shitty idea.

Red Ink Superman

This morning I went ahead and mailed in my credit card payment. It is due tomorrow and I've obviously been putting it off for some time. But, you see, I was pissed off because the bill was so huge. Not exactly unmanageable, but infuriating nonetheless, especially considering why it is owed in the first place. Last month, I incurred an emergency expense when one of Serpas' finest nailed me on St. Charles Avenue at 43 in a 35. Plus the expired brake tag. (If you know anything about the Tercel, this should not surprise.) Plus a seatbelt violation. (For a rear passenger, BTW. Who even knew that was a thing?) Anyway so that ends up being $420 on the tab. I don't like having to pay this exorbitant amount but what are you gonna do? Everyone knows traffic violations in Orleans Parish are strictly non-negotiable.

When this month's bill arrived in the mail, I was understandably pissed off. The sum of the debt and the occasion for which it occurred both greatly offended my sense of moral rectitude. In addition I found myself in the grips of a great frustration with my own inability to do anything other than capitulate to the demands of my creditor. I may see the charge as unwelcome, wasteful, perhaps even unjust but, the bank, frankly, doesn't give a shit about any of that. I'm contracted to pay them. They just want their damn money.

So I did the mature thing. I hid the bill at the bottom of a pile of mail on my dresser and left it there for weeks while kvetching impotently about the awfulness of it all. The nearer I got to the due date, the angrier I became about the crisis implicit in my possibly deciding not to pay my bill, the more I wished for an alternate reality in which I could simply hold my breath long enough to force someone else into, if not paying my bill for me, at least agreeing to stop expending government resources on frivolous pursuits. But, alas, Chief Serpas shows no sign of deviating from his current program.

My bluff was called. Of course, when I finally came to grips with that fact this morning, the crisis was already out of hand due to my childish negligence. I woke early, wrote out a check, addressed the envelope and discovered only then that I was out of stamps. Already late for work and in full panic mode, I rushed to the post office. Once there, due to a recent decision to remove the stamp vending machine, I had to wait twenty minutes in line behind fifteen customers needing to have complicated service issues resolved at two out of six possible open windows. I wish someone would find a way to fund a full postal staff somehow. Maybe if we had let the Bush tax cuts expire....

Anyway I haven't actually done any of the work involved in putting together a Congressional campaign yet. That shouldn't surprise you, of course. As you can deduce from the above story, I'm a pretty lazy and childish little shit. Which is why, if I ever get to Washington, I'm clearly Speaker material.

Once again we cut live to John Boehner's Friday evening press conference

We are so screwed.

Will there be peace in our time?

Democrats Balk at Possible Debt-Limit Deal as Deadline Looms

July 21 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats reacted angrily to reports that the White House is cutting a deal with House Republicans to boost the U.S. debt ceiling and reduce deficits by about $3 trillion over 10 years without immediate revenue increases.

President Barack Obama’s team has told congressional leaders it is pursuing such a deal, according to two officials familiar with the talks, as the White House and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio denied one was at hand.

NFL owners poised to vote on labor deal

Some discord emerged as NFL owners pored over a tentative deal to end the league's labor dispute before an expected vote Thursday.

"I don't see why we wouldn't" vote on the proposed settlement, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay said during a lunch break after more than three hours of discussions. "Like anything else, the morning gets a little ruined by not getting all the things you hoped to get when you hear the whole thing. I'm hopeful that eventually we can get a positive vote."

Meanwhile, City Council continues to squabble over competing redistricting plans. Here's the latest as of this posting.

Johnson says "we didn't have to take this up today" says we can stay till midnight if they wish. #citycouncil

Sorry, I've been momentarily distracted by bullshit

Nothing like following ridiculous Tweeter Tube rumors all morning to snap you out of your malaise. The sugar high never lasts, however, and once the thing has run its course without validation you're just kind of left there grasping for meaning much like you were before it all started. Oh well.

In the meantime try to think about something else. Here's what else has been going on while we've been chasing rainbows:

City Council redistricting is almost finished. Tomorrow they'll be making a decision between two competing maps... or just pulling several other possibilities out of a hat at the last minute.

As with any proposed ordinance, council members are not restricted to an up-or-down vote on either plan and could offer amendments from the floor. That process likely would create headaches, since each new change would have to maintain the rough balance of residents in each district while also complying with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Perhaps most challenging will be satisfying the desires of district council members, whose competing interests in neighborhoods, public amenities and commercial corridors tend to drive the way the map gets carved up.

BP and the Feds are still disputing flow-rate estimates. This will continue to be important as the National Resource Damage Assessment process determines BP's future responsibility to repairing the gulf coast.

Oh shit the lockout is ending!

Oh wait, maybe not.

Ditto that on the Debt Ceiling negotiations

Finally, from the "They're only just now thinking of this?" dept:

LSU to brew and sell its own beer

I think I remember seeing something about SEC schools considering lifting the ban on beer sales in football stadiums. Is this a sign?

Update: Oh good heavens!

Because Varg is being a twat about this.



We have preserved the twitted rumor and placed it here basically for his benefit although we're nearly 100 percent certain it is worthless bullshit.







We hope the universal balance has been restored.

Is that all?

Shut up

‘Republicans in Washington must insist that any bill to increase the debt ceiling include a Balanced Budget Amendment, caps on spending, and real cuts in federal spending,” Mr. Jindal said.

Gonna blow up the whole country

I honestly have been expecting there to be a deal on the debt ceiling one way or the other simply on the grounds that it would be very very crazy not to get one.

The first to fall will be “directly linked” debt. These are bonds that rely on payments from the federal government. Naomi Richman, a managing director in Moody’s Public Finance division, puts it bluntly: “There are certain kinds of municipal bonds that are directly reliant on Treasury paying or some other direct payment,” she says. “If those bonds don't receive their payment, they have no other source of revenue.” So down they go.

Then there’s the “indirectly linked” debt. That’s debt from state government, local governments, hospitals, universities and other institutions that rely, in some way or another, on payments from the federal government. If Medicaid stops paying its bills, all the hospitals that rely on Medicaid’s payments become less creditworthy. If we stop funding Pell grants, then all the universities that enroll students who pay using financial aid become less creditworthy. And since the federal government passes one-fifth of its revenues through to the states, and the states pass those revenues through to cities, if the federal government stops paying its bills, all states and all cities are suddenly in worse financial shape, which will make it harder for them to get loans.

And then there’s everything else. Mortgages. Credit cards. Loans that businesses take out to expand. Much of the debt in the American economy, and in fact globally, is “benchmarked” to Treasury debt. When your bank quotes you a mortgage rate, the calculation begins with the rate on 10-year treasuries and then adds premiums for various types of risk specific to you and your area on top of that. “There’s a whole credit structure,” says Pete Davis, president of Davis Capital Investment Ideas. “Think of it as roads and bridges, but it’s finance, it’s all connected, and it’s all on top of treasuries. Your CD at a bank, your credit card interest rates, your car loans, your mortgages — that’s all built on Treasury rates. So when you shake the basis of it, everything on top of it shakes, too.”

But now I'm starting to wonder if they really are very very crazy.

See how easy that was?

Mitch McConnell calls his own bluff.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) floated a novel way out of default on Tuesday, suggesting that Congress give up its power to raise the debt ceiling, and instead effectively transfer that authority -- and the political pain that comes with it -- to the White House for the remainder of Obama's first term.

Does this mean Obama will be sad that he doesn't get to raise the retirement age?