Comments from Left Field

Obama Is Like Hitler, and U.S. Is Like Nazi Germany, Which Is Like Venezuela Under Chavez

Kathy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:55:30 PDT

That is the premise, apparently, of intellectual giant Jim DeMint’s new book, Saving Freedom:

Last night, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) gave a short talk and Q&A at at the National Press Club about his book “Saving Freedom.” DeMint told a room of around 100 people about a conversation he’d had with an Iranian immigrant who was panicking about the surge of government spending and control under President Obama and the Democrats. Americans should listen to immigrants like her, said DeMint.

They understand socialism. They understand tyrants. But none of us have ever had it here. We don’t even know what it looks like. Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in Iran, and other places in South America, like Chavez is running down in Venezuela. People become more dependent on the government so that they’re easy to manipulate. And they keep voting for more government because that’s where their security is. When our immigrants get here, they’re worried, because they see it happening here.

DeMint worried that it was the “eleventh hour” for freedom, but he disputed a question from a man who wondered if America was ripe for another revolution. “The reason I’m convinced we can do this in a civilized way is that I’ve seen, on a number of issues, that when people get informed and want to change their government, the government will change.”

Ed Kilgore: “It’s probably a mistake to devote more thought to analyzing remarks by Jim DeMint than the senator put into uttering them.”

Matthew Yglesias: “Social Democrats stand for a generous welfare state and active labor market policies. Nazis try to conquer the world and send people to the gas chamber. Jonah Goldberg aside, this is not a subtle distinction.”

Steve Benen: “I’ll just take this opportunity to suggest that while Democratic leaders continue to reach out to Republicans to form ‘bipartisan consensus’ on key issues, perhaps DeMint should be excluded from the discussions.”

Dr. Steven Taylor: “No, no we’re not. Not even close.” [Like Germany before World War II.]

Blue Texan:

It’s important to remember that when Dick Durbin condemned the illegal torture at Gitmo, he was forced into a tearful public apology for “comparing our men and women in uniform to the Nazis.”

Somehow I doubt DeMint — who’s previously publicly agitated for an insurrection — will get the same treatment.

Leon Panetta and GOP Leaders Owe Nancy Pelosi an Apology

Kathy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:04:50 PDT

CIA Director Leon Panetta told the House Intelligence Committee in late June that the CIA consistently misled, misinformed, and in at least one case, outright lied to Congress for eight years, beginning in 2001 and ending on the date of his testimony toward the end of last month:

In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.

In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”

This testimony directly contradicts Panetta’s statement in mid-May, after Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of misleading and lying to her and to other key intelligence committee members about the CIA’s torture program (emphasis mine):

CIA Director Leon Panetta just sent a stern message to his employees defending the agency against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s criticisms.

His message: We didn’t mislead Congress; stay focused on your job.

Panetta’s note was sent to reporters via the CIA press office. Here’s the key graph:

“Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”

Meanwhile, Pres. Obama threatened to veto the intelligence funding authorization bill making its way through Congress right now because of a provision House Democrats inserted to include all intelligence committee members in the House and Senate in briefings on covert intelligence operations. Right now only key members from each party in the House and Senate (the so-called Gang of Eight) are so briefed.

The most transparent administration ever? Yeah. Right.

Lots of commentary here.

Massachusetts Sues Feds on DOMA

Kathy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:05:14 PDT

Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, on the basis that it violates the rights of individual states to legislate on such private matters:

Massachusetts, the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, has become the first to challenge the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, saying Congress intruded into a matter that should be left to individual states.

“Our familes, our communities, and even our economy have seen the many important benefits that have come from recognizing equal marriage rights and, frankly, no downside,” Attorney General Martha Coakley said this afternoon at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. “However, we have also seen how many of our married residents and their families are being hurt by a discriminatory, unprecedented, and, we believe, unconstitutional law.”

The suit filed in US District Court in Boston claims that the Congress, in enacting the DOMA, “overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people.”
[...]
The lawsuit argues that the DOMA, which was enacted in 1996, precludes same-sex spouses in Massachusetts from a wide range of protections, including federal income tax credits, employment and retirement benefits, health insurance coverage, and Social Security payments.

The defendants named in the lawsuit include the US Department of Health and Human Services, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and the United States itself. Charles Miller, a US Justice Department spokesman, said, “We haven’t seen it. Once we are served with it, we’ll review it and make a determination as to how to respond.”

The lawsuit questions the constitutionality of Section 3 of the law, which defines the word “marriage” for the purpose of federal law as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” It does not challenge the constitutionality of Section 2, which provides that states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The suit alleges that the law violates the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which reserves to the states all powers except those granted to the federal government. It also alleges that the law violates Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which limits the power of Congress to attach conditions to the receipt of federal funds.

Another organization — Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) — is preparing its own legal challenge to DOMA, which, Bil Browning tells us, will allege that DOMA violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection.

Pam’s House Blend links to the pdf of the complaint, and plus has further information about the lawsuit, as well as a roundup of reaction from GLBT advocacy organizations (and from Barney Frank).

Oscar Arias to Mediate Talks Between Zelaya and Micheletti

Kathy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:12:35 PDT

Oscar Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for helping to end years of war and political violence between the Central American nations, has agreed to facilitate a U.S.-backed effort to resolve the conflict between the ousted but democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, and the interim government headed by Roberto Micheletti:

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Tuesday accepted a U.S.-backed effort by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to mediate an end to the political crisis in Honduras and said talks with his rivals would begin on Thursday.

“Our first meeting is set for Thursday, in Costa Rica,” Zelaya, told Honduran radio from Washington.

In Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed president by Honduran lawmakers after the June 28 coup, also said he would attend Thursday’s talks under Arias’ mediation.

Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner with experience in solving Central American conflicts, faces mediating between sharply opposed positions.

Zelaya said his reinstatement as president was nonnegotiable.

“What this is is not a negotiation, this is the planning of the exit of the coup leaders,” he said.

But Micheletti maintained his position that Zelaya could not return as president. “We’re not going to negotiate, we’re going to talk,” he said. “We’re going into these talks because we’re interested in having peace and tranquility in Honduras.”

Zelaya, whose ouster was sparked by his efforts to change presidential term limits and by his political shift to the left, spoke after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

She urged him to negotiate rather than try to force his way back into the country.

Here is an interesting article byMiami Herald reporter Frances Robles. Robles interviewed Honduras’s top military attorney about the events of June 28, and got some eye-popping admissions:

The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army’s top lawyer said.

In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador’s elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya — and they circumvented laws when they did it.

It was the first time any participant in Sunday’s overthrow admitted committing an offense and the first time a Honduran authority revealed who made the decision that has been denounced worldwide.

”We know there was a crime there,” said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. “In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.”

Inestroza also told Robles that the military would not take orders from a leftist government. And, despite his own acknowledgment that the forcible removal of Zelaya from office was not lawful, Inestroza, amazingly, said, “… [I]t’s very difficult for someone who has dedicated his whole life to a country and an institution to see, from one day to another, a person who is not normal come and want to change the way of life in the country without following the steps the law indicates.”

House Votes Almost Unanimously to Honor Slave Labor

Kathy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:27:58 PDT

A House resolution to place a plaque in the House Vistors Center honoring the labor of slaves who helped build the U.S. Capitol passed with one No vote. Steve King, Republican from Iowa, voted against the resolution, because, um… well, I don’t really know. I mean, I’ve read his explanation, but it makes no sense to me:

King, a Republican from Kiron, says he voted “no” because the resolution was part of a deal that would get the words “In God We Trust” back in a picture that’s on display in the capitol visitors center.

“The architect of the capitol had gone in — or directed someone to go in — and photoshop and scrub the language, ‘In God We Trust’ that was clearly visible in the picture of the (house) speaker’s chair that’s shown in the capitol visitors center,” King says. “And in order to get them to agree to put the real language back in the picture so the picture was real, we had to agree to pass a resolution to put another monument up to slavery.”

King says slavery was “abhorrent,” but he is tired of those who are trying to erase the country’s Christian heritage, an accusation King lobs at the architect of the capitol.

“The architect of the capitol has been for years trying to eradicate any sign of faith or Christianity from the capitol itself and from the historical documents that flow from it,” King says. “…I’m out of patience with these kind of maneuverings.”

The resolution calling for a monument to honor the slaves who built the capitol passed the House on a 399 to one vote Tuesday night. King says he believes there are others who would have liked to join him in voting no, but didn’t want to take a stand.

“I think it’s simply many of them thought, ‘I don’t want to die on that hill,’” King says. “‘It’s not worth fighting over.’”

But King says he was willing to take the heat and draw a line.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with slavery to speak of,” King says. “It has to do with them trying to amend our history after the fact.”

Maybe someone else can figure out what that means. I can’t.

Don’t Tell Me, ‘Cause It Hurts

Kathy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:44:31 PDT

The Honduran Foreign Minister apologized for calling Barack Obama “a little black man who doesn’t know where Tegucigalpa is located.”

The foreign relations minister in Honduras’ interim government says he has sent a letter to Barack Obama apologizing for a racial comment he made about the U.S. president.

Enrique Ortez says the letter expresses “his most profound apologies” for “an unfortunate comment.”

In a TV interview, Ortez said Obama “is a little black man who doesn’t know where Tegucigalpa is located.”

Ortez says the remark made before he was named to the post was not meant to offend anyone.

Emphasis mine. I still think Rusty DePass’s response to the outrage that greeted his “joke” likening Michelle Obama to a gorilla leaves Ortez in the dust.

Who Sets the Parameters of the Debate?

Kathy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:04:39 PDT

Paul Krugman wants to know why some points of view on big issues are all over the place, while others are ignored:

One of the mysteries of the way issues are covered in much of the news media is how certain views get ruled “out of the mainstream” and just don’t get covered — even when many well-informed people hold those views.

The most notorious example was during the buildup to the Iraq war: skepticism about the case for war was treated as a fringe view, even though the evidence being presented by the hawks was flimsy on its face, and the ranks of the skeptics included a number of people with excellent national-security credentials.

But in a way, the implicit censorship on the stimulus debate is even stranger. During the initial discussion of the stimulus, the debate was framed almost entirely as a debate between Obama and those who said the stimulus was too big; the voices of those saying it was too small were largely frozen out. And they still are — if it weren’t for my position on the Times op-ed page, there would be hardly any major outlet for Keynesian concerns.

And here’s the thing: in this case, there isn’t any hidden evidence — you can’t argue that the CIA knows something the rest of us don’t. And the voices calling for stronger stimulus are, may I say, sorta kinda respectable — several Nobelists in the bunch, plus a large fraction of the prominent economists who predicted the housing crash before it happened.

But somehow, the pro-stimulus people are unpersons. Who makes these decisions?

I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s a good question.

Scary, Scary Glenn

Kathy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:18:26 PDT

At the end of his post about Barack Obama’s post-acquittal detention plan, Glenn Greenwald gives us an update on NPR’s policy of using various euphemisms for the word “torture” in its coverage of the previous administration’s detention and interrogation policies:

Finally, I was on an NPR station yesterday in Seattle to discuss NPR’s ban on the use of the word “torture” to describe Bush administration interrogation tactics. I originally understood that I would be on with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard, but alas, it turns out that she agreed only to be on the show before me, so as not to engage or otherwise interact with me, so I was forced to listen to her for 15 minutes and wait until she hung up before being able to speak. The segment can be heard here, beginning at the 14:00 mark (though the quality of the recording is poor in places).

More on Obama’s Post-Acquittal Indefinite Detention Plans

Kathy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:45:23 PDT

Today, Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the Obama administration’s newly revealed plans to continue holding Guantanamo detainees indefinitely even in the cases of detainees who may be acquitted:

Spencer Ackerman yesterday attended a Senate hearing at which the DOD’s General Counsel, Jeh Johnson, testified. As Ackerman highlighted, Johnson actually said that even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial. About this assertion of “presidential post-acquittal detention power” — an Orwellian term (and a Kafka-esque concept) that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares at all about the most basic liberties — Ackerman wrote, with some understatement, that it “moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective.” Law professor Jonathan Turley was more blunt: ”The Obama Administration continues its retention and expansion of abusive Bush policies — now clearly Obama policies on indefinite detention.”

In June, Robert Gibbs was repeatedly asked by ABC News‘ Jake Tapper whether accused Terrorists who were given a trial and were acquitted would be released as a result of the acquittal, but Gibbs — amazingly — refused to make that commitment. But this is the first time an Obama official has affirmatively stated that they have the “post-acquittal detention” power (and, to my knowledge, the Bush administration never claimed the power to detain someone even if they were acquitted).

All of this underscores what has clearly emerged as the core “principle” of Obama justice when it comes to accused Terrorists — namely, “due process” is pure window dressing with only one goal: to ensure that anyone the President wants to keep imprisoned will remain in prison. …

How Orwellian is this new policy? So Orwellian that even Michael Goldfarb calls it Orwellian:

I understand and respect the president’s decision to disregard his left-wing critics and embrace the same policies of indefinite detention and denial of due process that made the Bush-Cheney administration so effective in preventing another terror attack. I support those policies because as illegal enemy combatants, terrorists have no right to due process. But, as Glenn Greenwald points out, there is something Orwellian about this administration’s attempt to have it both ways — to get the credit for putting detainees on trial only to disregard the outcome if they don’t like the verdict. Obviously the Bush administration would have done the same if they thought for a second that they could get away with it. But even the Bush OLC wouldn’t have dared suggest detaining individuals who had been acquitted on all charges.

So the Bush administration simply detained individuals it deemed a threat to national security. It was unable to resolve this difficult question of how to proceed with detainees who were too dangerous to release but against whom the evidence was, for any number of totally legitimate reasons, not likely to secure a conviction. The Obama administration has worked out a brilliant solution: show trials whose outcomes will not be predetermined even if the sentencing is.

Actually, as Glenn points out in an update, it turns out that Pres. Bush also claimed the “presidential post-acquittal detention power.”

Obama Official Claims Post-Acquittal Right to Detain

Kathy — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:51:24 PDT

I suppose I have to get used to maintaining a nothing-surprises-me attitude toward the Obama administration when it comes to anything related to civil liberties or human rights — just as I had to during the previous administration.

Spencer Ackerman has the latest example of that truth:

Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective. Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, Johnson said that “as a matter of legal authority,” the administration’s powers to detain someone under the law of war don’t expire for a detainee after he’s acquitted in court. “If you have authority under the law of war to detain someone” under the Supreme Court’s Hamdi ruling, “that is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.”

Martinez looked surprised. “So the prosecution is moot?” he asked.

“No, no, not in my judgment,” Johnson said. But the scenario he outlined strongly suggested it is. If an administration review panel “determines this person is a security threat” and “for some reason is not convicted of a lengthy prison sentence, I think we have the authority to continue to detain someone” under “law of war authority” as granted by the September 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, Johnson said. And beyond that source of authority “we have the authority in the first place.” I’m no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like Johnson is claiming inherent presidential authority from the Constitution to detain someone after he’s been acquitted in court if the president believes that person to be a security threat. [Update: I think I'm wrong about that. Johnson is claiming authority from the law-of-war construct for such detentions, and that doesn't stem from any constitutional interpretation of inherent power. Apologies.]

Maybe I’m missing something, but that sounds like a distinction without a difference. What difference does it make if authority to detain someone indefinitely comes from the traditional “law-of-war construct” or the more recent Cheney/Addington claim that the chief executive has an inherent constitutional right of unlimited power, if it works out to the same thing? We’re not talking here about any kind of war that has an end point, like any other war in human history. So what difference does it make if it’s the “law-of-war construct” or the “inherent constitutional right” interpretation?

Via Memeorandum.

The Huffington Post Snaps Up Dan Froomkin

Kathy — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:05:01 PDT

That didn’t take long, did it?

In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive, The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger. Froomkin will oversee a staff of four five reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post’s Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page.

The Ugly American

Kathy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:19:01 PDT

While signing autographs, “Joe” Wurzelbacher told Texas tea partyers today that he favors using government money to deport the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States:

While protesting government spending at Houston’s Independence Day Tea Party, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher stated that American taxpayer dollars would be best spent on the mass deportation of 12 million undocumented immigrants:

WURZELBACHER: I believe in making sure our country is safe first. I believe we need to spend a little more on illegal immigrants. Get them the hell out of our damn country and close the borders down. We can do it. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and you’re telling me we can’t close our borders? — That’s just ridiculous.

Michael Stickings definitely has a reaction.

David Neiwert has more on the kaleidoscopic collection of right-wing lunatic fringe thinkers at this latest round of Tea Parties.

Andy McCarthy…. Ay Yi Yi!

Kathy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:49:14 PDT

Andy McCarthy discovers evidence of Barack Obama’s radical past:

During the campaign, I wrote a piece called “Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.” So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, “Breaking the War Mentality,” that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American “militarism” and its “military-industrial interests,” while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement.

Moreover, while indicating a preference for the political wisdom of reggae singer Peter Tosh over Ronald Reagan or Scoop Jackson, Obama bewailed the “narrow focus” of anti-militarism activists, worrying that they were targeting the “symptoms” rather than the real “disease,” namely, America’s underlying economic and political injustice[.]

Well, I don’t know…. Words like “war mentality,” “economic and political injustice,” “the military-industrial complex” … even “Peter Tosh,” don’t send me diving under the bed — but maybe I just have steelier nerves than Andy.

Pres. Obama Should Have Listened to Paul Krugman

Kathy — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:43:25 PDT

He had it right all along about the size of the stimulus package:

O.K., Thursday’s jobs report settles it. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus. But does the president know that?

Let’s do the math.

Since the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 6 ½ million jobs — and as that grim employment report confirmed, it’s continuing to lose jobs at a rapid pace. Once you take into account the 100,000-plus new jobs that we need each month just to keep up with a growing population, we’re about 8 ½ million jobs in the hole.

And the deeper the hole gets, the harder it will be to dig ourselves out. The job figures weren’t the only bad news in Thursday’s report, which also showed wages stalling and possibly on the verge of outright decline. That’s a recipe for a descent into Japanese-style deflation, which is very difficult to reverse. Lost decade, anyone?

Wait — there’s more bad news: the fiscal crisis of the states. Unlike the federal government, states are required to run balanced budgets. And faced with a sharp drop in revenue, most states are preparing savage budget cuts, many of them at the expense of the most vulnerable. Aside from directly creating a great deal of misery, these cuts will depress the economy even further.

So what do we have to counter this scary prospect? We have the Obama stimulus plan, which aims to create 3 ½ million jobs by late next year. That’s much better than nothing, but it’s not remotely enough. And there doesn’t seem to be much else going on. Do you remember the administration’s plan to sharply reduce the rate of foreclosures, or its plan to get the banks lending again by taking toxic assets off their balance sheets? Neither do I.

All of this is depressingly familiar to anyone who has studied economic policy in the 1930s. Once again a Democratic president has pushed through job-creation policies that will mitigate the slump but aren’t aggressive enough to produce a full recovery. Once again much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level.

So have we failed to learn from history, and are we, therefore, doomed to repeat it? Not necessarily — but it’s up to the president and his economic team to ensure that things are different this time. President Obama and his officials need to ramp up their efforts, starting with a plan to make the stimulus bigger.

Steve Clemons points out that the real unemployment rate is far higher than the 9.5% official figure for June:

Each month, I receive from Leo Hindery an update on “America’s effective unemployment rate” which includes not only the official unemployment figures but other data points showing off-the-books unemployed or underemployed people.

The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data. They matter because various Obama administration officials including the President himself started off calling for huge stimulus packages to help generate “jobs, jobs, jobs!”

Plus, points out Ezra Klein, “We’ve also got about 9 million workers who are part-time because they can’t find full-time work. That’s up from 5 million workers in June.”

MSNBC’s First Read blog has a few details Republicans are forgetting ignoring in their stampede to call the stimulus package a failure.

Here is Paul Krugman again on why a much larger stimulus package back in January would have helped prevent what we’re seeing now:

It has been a rude shock to see so many economists with good reputations recycling old fallacies — like the claim that any rise in government spending automatically displaces an equal amount of private spending, even when there is mass unemployment — and lending their names to grossly exaggerated claims about the evils of short-run budget deficits. (Right now the risks associated with additional debt are much less than the risks associated with failing to give the economy adequate support.)

Also, as in the 1930s, the opponents of action are peddling scare stories about inflation even as deflation looms.

So getting another round of stimulus will be difficult. But it’s essential.

Obama administration economists understand the stakes. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, published an article on the “lessons of 1937” — the year that F.D.R. gave in to the deficit and inflation hawks, with disastrous consequences both for the economy and for his political agenda.

What I don’t know is whether the administration has faced up to the inadequacy of what it has done so far.

One sector of the economy continues to do well:

Meanwhile, Wall Street payouts are not dropping. They are, in fact, expected to exceed last year’s average. According to The Wall Street Journal, Goldman Sachs will be shelling out a whopping $20 billion (or $700,00 per employee) while Morgan Stanley’s payouts are expected to exceed last year’s packages, reaching an average $340,000.
[...]
Goldman Sachs and the other Wall Street elites are thus continuing down the same path of profiting handsomely off the mess they’ve created, and laughing (at the taxpayers) all the way to the, uh, bank.

Happy Birthday To Me (Oh Yes, and to the USA, Too!)

Kathy — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:48:24 PDT

Born on the 4th of July:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Links for 2009-06-15 [Digg]

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The Rise of the Milky Way
The best thing about this video is how clear it is that we live in the disk of a spiral galaxy. Compare what’s in that video to pictures of NGC 4013, NGC 4565 or NGC 891 to see what I mean. We live in a galaxy. That’s a profound statement, and the evidence is literally right there above our heads.

Links for 2009-06-08 [Digg]

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Pastor Drake Prays For Obama's Death
Another sick pro-life Fundie

Links for 2009-04-30 [Digg]

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 PDT

100 Days, 100 Obama T-shirts
On the occasion of Barack Obama's 100th day in office we bring you a list of pictures and links to 100 different Obama t-shirts from around the internet and around the world. Everything from Yes We Can to Barack of Seagulls and even 2 different Baraccoli t-shirts. Which one is your favorite?

Links for 2009-04-27 [Digg]

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 PDT

GOP Calls for Investigation of Previous Administration
A deluge of GOP leaders have come out with a full-throated call to open up wide-ranging investigations into the former administration's abuses of power.

Links for 2009-03-08 [Digg]

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:00:00 PDT

David Brooks: GOP "Spending Freeze" Idea "Insane"
Brooks also chided that the GOP is "too stuck on Reagan".