14th sign of the apocalypse

This was on FOX Business Channel. FOX! Yes, FOX!

Joe the Plumber?......Bueller?.....Bueller?

everybody watch these, except edgrimly

i was unable to find a video for the arby's "where is everybody, where did everybody go?" one

Best headline of the day

Things about robots are always good.

Silly Flies

Todays PDI (Public Display of Ignorance) from Sarah Palin:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not

The newest "scientific study" to be ridiculed as an example of wasteful earmarks is fruit flies. I know at least one loyal reader would have taken the same high school biology class as me and might remember fruit flies being one of if not the best way to study genetics. Now that bears and planet-ariums have already been used, I wonder what the next scapegoat will be....

Economic Growth

This is a pretty interesting special section about economic growth, and whether or not the are the resources and methods to sustain it indefinitely. When it is the basis upon which we shape the economy is that compatible with the long term inhabitance of this planet?

Woopsie

The first thing McCain has done that made me laugh out loud-his campaign sent a fundraising letter to Russia's UN envoy. Today, we are all Georgians. Tomorrow, we will ask the Russians for a campaign donation. It gets better too. The campaign belonging to one half of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform team not only sends a letter soliciting funds from a foreigner (which is illegal), but also suggests amounts in the letter that are higher than the legal allowable limit. It appears you can see the actual letter here.

One for the sports fans

Wisconsin's late great Senator

Thanks to Michele Bachmann for withdrawing from her race for Congress in Minnesota. She didn't actually withdraw, but made some comments so idiotic that the effect is about the same. She went on at length about how Obama is anti-American, and how she thinks there should be investigations into how many people in Congress hold anti-American views. I think some democrat somewhere must have played a prank and switched her script with one specifically designed to link the GOP congressional incumbent to McCarthy. Of course, she really didn't mean to say all that....It will be explained as a mis-statement, or maybe a gaffe, or better yet, she was tricked into it by the devious genius of Chris Matthews.

Election Fraud

Look here for an interview with Mark Crispin Miller on voter fraud and acorn.

Voter purging and provisional ballots seems a far bigger concern than Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys.

In the last debate McCain tried to tie Obama with acorn who he said was "perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." After making such a serious proclamation, he never mentioned it again. The biggest fraud in history and destroying democracy, yet on ly worth one mention, and that mention was to tie Obama to it and not to argue about what should be done about this greatest fraud in history and the end of democracy. Has this supplanted radical islam as the greatest threat to our democracy? If McCain loses I have no doubt he will say it has.

Transitive property of taxes

Obama says that 98% of small businesses make less than the $250,000 and wouldn't have their taxes raised. McCain says that Obama is going to raise taxes on 50% of small business income. Is one of them distorting the facts or do 2% of small businesses bring in 50% of the country's small business income?

Happy Friday

Some debate observations

Tonight was the third and final debate before the election. A few of my humble observations follow:

-I thought this one was the best one. It gave them the most chance to go back and forth and get down to specifics.

-On every single question McCain was given the last word. This was usually when he got his "zingers" in with no chance for Obama to reply to them.

-In the first few minutes of the debate, McCain blamed the financial crisis on Fannie and Freddie. This claim has been made repeatedly by conservatives. It has also been shown as false many many times. The Community Reinvestment Act has also been blamed a lot. This is also false and has been repeatedly shown to be. These highlight the Republican's tactic of assigning blame to things associated to democrats and poor people, even when they know their claims are false. If you're interested, you can read a few things that show why these claims are false. It should not be up for debate that this crisis is largely attributable to the the complex financial instruments that were unregulated and wildly speculated upon, and unregulated financial institutions that made huge bets on bad lending. A NYT editorial today, this analysis of the debate makes this point too, TIME magazine's economics writer, McClatchy newspapers, and many more if you take the time to look.

-McCain likes to say US business pay the most taxes in the world. That is quite a false claim. He deliberately confuses the nominal tax rate with the amount of taxes the corporations actually pay. Check this from ABC news, which shows that 2/3 of US corprations payed ZERO taxes.

-McCain likes to push Obama about "re-distribution of wealth." It is funny. Republicans like to use taxes as a signature issue. On one hand they talk about how they will lower YOUR taxes, or just lower taxes, and accuse democrats of always raising taxes. In reality, the republican platform and their track record of the past few decades is lowering taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals by huge amounts and giving small token breaks to most people. When democrats make efforts to make the tax burden more fairly shared by lowering average peoples tax rates, they shout 're-distribution.' There is the hypocrisy. I will probably come back to this sometime soon. On a related note, they manage to back democrats into this corner by, as George W has done, by giving away so much tax breaks to their 'base' and bankrupting the country in the process. On the same token they have spent more and more while still making the claims of 'tax and spending' democrats. By destroying the federal budget and drowning the country in deficits and debt, thay have also made it that much harder for the democrats they know were coming into office to actually accomplish any domestic goals.

-When asked if he can balance the budget in his first term, McCain did not hesitate to declare, YES. It is funny to hear him say that when we are at the beginning of what looks like a nasty recession. The idea is silly, that the federal budget can be balanced during a recession. If he does that, guess that he won't use any government spending to try and bring the country out of that recession. He has been giving Obama lots of shit lately about 'raising taxes during bad economic times' like Hoover, and at the same time makes an irresponsible claim to balance the federal budget during a recession.

-Obama congratulated McCain on showing independance from Bush on the issue of torture, referring to McCain's actions before the MIlitary Commissions Act was passed in 06. While true that McCain gave a lot of lip service during the bill's debate to being against torture, the final bill did gave the CIA free riegn to torture. McCain sided with the 'team' and voted for the bill.

-After agreeing that smear politics and Ayers are silly distractions, McCain then goes on at length about Obama's 'connections' to Ayers and ACORN.

-McCain said that "ACORN is perpetrating the greatest voter fraud in history and destropying the fabric of democracy" To bad it's a paranoid fantasy.

-One of McCain's repeated points was that he is going to make a spending freeze in government. When the topic came to energy, he said he wants to build 45 new nuclear (not nucular) plants right away. How he will do this with a spending freeze I have no idea. Nuke plants are heavily subsidized by the gov't. They are hugely expensive to build and if private energy companies don't get subsidized to build them, and also get liability guarantees from the fed for public health liabilities, they would not get built.

-Free trade, and Columbia. Chopper has talked about the dumbing down of society, and here's a great example. McCain accuses Obama of opposing free trade in general and with Columbia specifically because he voted against a free trade bill with them. When Obama responded, he said he supports a free trade agreement with Columbia, but it needs to have enforceable enviromental, labor, and human rights protections. He didn't vote for the bill because it didn't have all of these, mainly because it was mainly a Bush and republican bill and those things are anethema to them. Shouls seem then that they both agree they want free trad eagreement with Columbia. Maybe they disagree on some of the specifics it should include. McCain stuck to his talking point that Obama opposes having a free trade agreement with Columbia.

-Again, how many times do we have to hear about Joe the fucking plumber? McCain likes to call him Joe the plumber to bring up an image of Joe sixpack and insinuate Obama will raise taxes on all you normal people. At least towards the end he spoke the truth: Joe, you're rich. To bad McCain spent the whole debate using Joe the plumber as a proxy for non-rich people.

-McCain loves vouchers. He screamed it over and over. Vouchers Vouchers Vouchers. Voucherss are a good way to takea money out of public schools and give it to private schools, and ensure that the public schools never get better. Maybe the end goal is to end public education and give everybody vouchers to go to private schools. Seems like a much more expensive proposotion than public education. Current voucher programs are only available to a few and make it worst for the rest of the kids that don't get them. One could argue it could also be worse for the ones that do when the schools arent required to meet curriculum standards like puiblic schools are. Little school on the prarie with Doris the churchlady teaching science. Not to mention, with the vouchers you are now giving federal money to religious schools that push religious indoctrination on the kids. But republicans are no opponent of giving federal money to religious purposes. Are you serious about improving the state of the poublic schools in poor areas? Then make schools state funded with equal funding for all schools based on # of students. But good luck getting suburban parents letting some of their tax money go to those inner city black ones. Maybe Chopper has an opinion in this.

who is this clown?

enough about joe the fucking plumber

We must act now, or else we might do something sensible!

There's been a mad rush from both candidates to come up with a rescue plan for the economy. Some government capital investment - aka bailout - is needed to try and avert a disaster, that much seems apparent. I question the prudence of more stimulus and rescue plans though, especially ones that are thrown together in the coming weeks before the election, that will probably include 'sweeteners' like the first bailout bill did to make sure they pass. I wonder why McCain with his signature issue of earmarks and pork didn't say much about those. As everyone knows, there's no better way to change the course of an economic slowdown years in the making that is starting to hit full steam than a hastily designed plan made to appeal to the lowest common denominator right before a presidential election. God forbid that Americans accept that the economy will be slowing down for a fair length of time. We must come up with half-assed quick fixes, pronto! Any economist worth their salt knows that economic cycles are a thing of the past, endless growth is the new way of business. We have heard dire warnings from Paulson that 'economic growth might be slower' gasp! Slow growth! Stock up on your canned goods now!

Last week, after announcing the notion in the debate, McCain announced he wants to have the government buy up distressed mortgages, and do this at their face value instead of the actual market value of the homes. Another flagrant socializing of losses. He called it the McCain American Homeowndership Resurgence Plan. I would call it the McCain Presidential Campaign Resurgence Plan. While it is good to hear their ideas, acting on them would be extremely idiotic since the timing and content are based mostly on scoring political points to win the election.

Now this week he came out a rescue package to turn that economic frown upside down. McCain, displaying his non-maverickey allegiance to the right wing economic philosophy of corporate and wealthy giveaways to the detriment of everyone else and the nation as a whole, has some clearly poorly thought out ideas.

-John McCain Proposes That Withdrawals From Tax-Preferred Accounts - IRAs And 401(k)s - Should Be Taxed At The Lowest Rate - 10 Percent - In 2008 And 2009

Significantly lowering the tax rate on withdrawals from 401-k's and retirement plans. With a lack of capital a main driving force behind the current problems, doing this will make every Tom, Dick, and Hairy take as much money as they can out of these accounts during this temporary low tax period, thus creating a huge outflow of cash from mutual funds and the securities they own. Not to mention encouraging people to empty their retirement accounts and spend-spend-spend like the good little Americans they want you to be. While admittedly that would boost the economy with all that spending going on, it would do so at the expense of the life savings of all those seniors he proclaims he wants to help.

-John McCain Has Called To Suspend The Tax Rules That Force Seniors To Sell Their Stocks In The Midst Of The Most Grave Financial Crisis Of Our Lifetime
Not to bad

-John McCain Will Not Penalize Those Forced To Sell Off In Today's Tough Markets John McCain believes that we should increase the amount of capital losses which can be used in tax years 2008 and 2009 to offset ordinary income from $3,000 to $15,000.

People that are invested heavily in the stock market, and for god gnows what reason decide to sell those stocks, get a big tax break. Not likely to benifit the great majority of 'folks'. A shifting of the tax burden from the investor class to the wage earning class. Classic right wing tax policy.

-John McCain Will Strengthen Incentives To Save, Invest, And Restore The Liquidity Of Markets. John McCain proposes a reduction in the maximum tax rate on long term capital gains to 7.5 percent in 2009 and 2010.

People who in some way will manage to make money from stocks, now have to pay less, one half the regular amount, in taxes on them. See above.

Additionally, the money managers at hedge funds that everyone has come to love to hate in recent weeks, have been exploiting a tax loophole for a long long time that taxes their income, which they make from fees they charge, at said capital gains tax rate instead of the normal income tax rates most people pay. Someone honestly interested in helping out the middle class that gets paid lip service every four years might propose changing this loophole. What better time to do it than with huge public anger towards hedge funds? What was once politically impossible when the public was unintersted and Washington bought off now might be possible even probable. Instead, John McCain makes no mention of this (neither has anyone else in Washington) and is proposing to cut their already immorally low tax rates in half.

-

America's Families Are Bearing A Heavy Burden From Falling Housing Prices, Mortgage Delinquencies, Foreclosures, And A Weak Economy. It is important that those families who have worked hard enough to finance homeownership not have that dream crushed under the weight of the wrong mortgage. The existing debts are too large compared to the value of housing. For those that cannot make payments, mortgages must be re-structured to put losses on the books and put homeowners in manageable mortgages.

This proposal is not unique to McCain. People who made bad decisions or got snookered get some of their debt taken care of by Uncle Sam. People who bought responsibly get nothing, even if their property values have dropped too. While it is a good idea to help people facing foreclosure, this is not the way to do it. Many people have proposed allowing bankruptcy courts to restucture the interest plans of people's primary homes in bankruptcy. It's about the only debt right now that can't get restructured in bankruptcy. In the bankruptcy bill of a few years ago lots of people on the liberal side of things pushed for this. It never stood a chance of making it into that bill. Side note- people can currently do this with second homes while in bankruptcy, to keep their second homes, but not with primary ones.

Seems rash to do this and adjust the principal people owe right away without waiting to see what happens to the market and if prices come back up some amount. Why shift those paper losses inot real losses the government pays for so quickly. People that bought more than they can afford will lose it and should. People that got talked into adjustable rates that are balooning should get some help with better interest terms to stop unwarranted foreclosures. Less foreclosures is less depression of home prices is less negative equity.

More on Milwaukee voter fraud

A piece in the Cap Times on the Milwaukee voter fraud saga

Happy Anniversary

Bogeyman

The bogeyman of the right, George Soros, has a good interview about the financial crisis and the dangers of fundamentalism.

Mother of all ironies

It seemed like graduation day was coming, and George W Bush was going to leave office as a free market hero. Bush and the last half dozen presidents before him have de-regulated nearly everything there was to de-regulate. Capital was king and those who have it make the rules to ensure they kept it. The government was made impotent to oversee or even peer into corporate dealings. The buzzword was "specific market failure", that was used to prevent nearly everything that was proposed to regulate business activites. Everything from accounting rules to greater consolidation to climate change was a non starter without a 'specific market failure' to warrant action. When some of them did rear their heads like Putin likes to do, some superficial knee jerk laws were passed that did little to constrain the advance of unfettered capitalism. Not even the debacle of energy market de-regulation, Enron, and the ensuing accounting scandals could stop the inexorable march towards private control of everything. Medicare was partially privatized with the Plan-D pharmaceutical subsidy. An unsucessful attempt was made to privatize social security but it remained on the wish list and probably still is there. Free market was the mantra and it was pushed to its ideolical extreme. Acedemics like Greenspan who ran the Treasury and the Fed, who were by no means opposed to the free market ideology, were replaced by industry executives Paulson and Bernanke by Bush. In the same manner as he did so many other things, Bush was able to bring the ideology to its extremes and enscone it in the Washington consensus as dogma.

Now, with the implosion of the US financial system, it appears to be forcing the hand of the Bush administration to abandon its plan to act as a repository for the big financial institutions to unload worthless assets on. To try and keep the global economy from all but dying, Paulson is now seriously proposing to give money directly to banks, in exchange for a federal ownership share. Due in large part to the failure of their ideology when taken to extremes, the free market chamion is socializing a huge portion of the country's finance system.

Chomsky on the financial events

My favorite elitist Noam Chomsky weighs in with a short (by his standards) piece on the recent financial happenings.

McCain comes to Milwaukee

He arrived tonight, but apparently wouldn't want to live here.

Red Herrings

You have the GOP and the right wing press spasming over alleged votor fraud, mainly about a non-profit group called ACORN. Now this week the police raided an ACORN office in Nevada. Wisconsin's own AG is suing the state a month before the election to force the state to go through every registered voter since '06.

You have a non-profit group, ACORN, with limited resources trying to get people registered to vote, which I think most people can agree on being a good thing, unless your that blatantly partisan that it bothers you that the people they register tend to vote democratic. You have college kids volunteering to go out and register people or getting paid meager sums to do it. A good number are probably guys just trying to get laid by looking politically active for their girlfriends or something to write on a job or college application. This group has registered 1.3 million people so far for this election. The things I have read about it usually cite something like a few hundred registration cards being duplicate or incorrect, at the most. The Dallas Cowboy's are registering in Nevada. This doesn't seem like widespread fraud to me. It seems like the work of bored kids.

Maybe a few people weren't into it and just went through the motions filled out some fake cards and then went home and banged their idealistic girfriends. Maybe some people registered to vote twice by accident. Maybe someone copied down an address wrong. Who knows for sure, but a few hundred out of 1.3 million seems like chump change. I would like to see any organization anywhere compile lists that big this quickly and not have a few mistakes. It is also worth pointing out that voting fraud and registration fraud are not the same thing, and errors on registration cards does not necessarily equate to registration fraud. So because there are some duplicate registration cards does that mean that person will vote twice? Probably not, and on the off chance someone does try they won't have much luck if the people at the polls are doing their job. Does someone filling out some fake cards to get their quota and go home mean these fake people will come out and vote on election day? Maybe in light of all this fraud we should forget voting and just let the Supreme Court pick the next president.

Wisconsin has the honor of being included in the list of states where this issue is getting the spotlight. A search of the articles from the local rag, here - here - and here, these people are being accused of fraud for some small potatoes stuff. A good number of the workers in trouble are in trouble for 1 or 2 registration cards total. There could very well be a few people out there trying to cheat, most likely there are. Nothing I have seen, except Fox News, make it seem like a big problem. Not one that can have an actual impact on election outcomes. Most of what I see doesn't even look like fraud but more like laziness. Mostly it seems like Republicans hyperventilating about an imaginary voter fraud conspiracy. Mountain out of a molehill. Maybe this raid will turn up more info, but my money is that it doesn't provide any evidence of widespread intentional fraudulent voting.

An update: A post at ThinkProgress looks at this issue some more and has a video compilation too.

Assclown

Never Again

Besides gushing about how they 'both love Israel', Palin made a slight reference to the country when she used the phrase 'Never Again', - historically signifying never to let another Jewish genocide occur- in reference to the financial turmoil we're seeing. Someone at the NYT points this fact out, though I would think it should garner a bit more attention than it has.

Pick a side

Sarah Palin put a lot of emphasis duting the debate tonight on reforming and dealing with corruption and wanting strong oversight. A few minutes later, she ranted about getting government out of the way and letting private industry thrive.

He and McCain are bouth talking the populist reformer talk but I would have a hard hard time believeing they would walk that walk, especially if you actually look at McCain's record and support for Bush and the republican's tax plans.

The twit energy olympics

When Joe Biden and Sarah Palin had a debate tonight the subject turned to energy, and climate change. Sarah Palin said she thinks climate change may be partially due to humans but also natural cycles but she doesn't care or think we should discuss the cause only deal with the 'impacts'. There was a lot of general talk about 'fixing our plant'. She mentioned energy independence and reducing emissions as some ways do do it but mostly she was vaguely talking about fixing our enviroment. She said she thinks we all should come together and work on 'the impacts' of climate change. Then 2 minutes later she pushed drilling in ANWR and offshore drilling. She bragged about a natural gas pipeline through Alaska bringing "clean, green" natural gas to hungry markets. Yes, drilling in those places will make us energy independant and natural gas has no carbon emissions, I also have a bridge to nowhere to sell you. Then clean coal came up, and they both gushed about their support for it. Palin jabbed at Biden quoting him as saying 'there is no such thing as clean coal', whichi he then denied. Now it does sound like something he could have said, and if he didn't say it he should have. There is no such thing as clean coal, it's a fossil fuel and burning it will have emissions, carbon and others. Besides emissions the mining of it could hardly ever be called clean, especially mountaintop removal mining. Now is it better then burning coal with no thought to limiting the pollution and greenhouse emissions? Of course it is, but it is not a 'clean' fuel and never will be. All Biden could think to respond with was yes, yes, yes, yes i support clean coal look at my record i support clean coal. His take on global warming? it is man made, man made is the cause. Oh well lets stop doing man-made then and it will be better. Let's boycott man-made. Who usues man-made anyway. The only semi intelligent energy related thing to come out of either of their mouths was when something Biden said that was so unintersting and standard political boilerplate that I don't even remember it anymore.

I misunderestimated him

I was a bit heartened when the House voted down the Bush-Paulson bailout bill. Now tonight the senate passed their own version of it. the whole things makes me utterly fucking sick. I had thought the days of the Bush administration fear mongering and forcing its way over the cowering democratic minority in Congress were behind us. It was a slow weaning process, but it appeared that after the FISA telco immunity bill was passed there was no more low hanging fruits of fear left to exploit. Even in that case it was a minor struggle to pass, when the Democrats at least feigned opposition for a short while to put out the image of standing up for something. Boy was I wrong. Not only were Bush and Paulson able the pass their request nearly verbatim with minor cosmetic changes designed to be ineffective but placate the masses who wouldn't read the fine print, but actually were able to get the Democrats to champion it for them, allowing the House Republicans to simultaneously stand up to it and vote no on principle, and lament over how the Democrats caused or allowed it to fail and ruined the country. Touche

Time to place your bets

Warren Buffet is putting big money into Goldman Sachs. On a few occasions already, the gov't has saved/bought a few companies by putting in a lot more to them. Buffet is a smart guy, and where he puts that kind of money is significant. What could make him have such confidence in Goldman? Could it be that the federal government is about to give $700 billion to it's former Chair and current Treasury Secretary Paulson to do with as he sees fit? I wonder...

Woe is me

Almost every pundit and politician who has weighed in on the upcoming bailout has made the point that we may recoup the money, or even make some when the govt sells the things they are going to buy, but there is no guarantee. Apparently poor poor Congress is powerless to change that fact. Poor impotent Congress, the body that is WRITING the legislation of the bailout, can't guarantee we will get the money back. The people writing the legislation are powerless to put things in it that everyone would desperately want in, from the way they talk. If only someone who could do so would put in language to require companies or banks that sell bad debt to the govt agree, should they survive and continue making money, to reimburse the govt if the govt loses money when it sells them. If only we could make such guarantees, cry the lawmakers and powerful media figures, but alas we are all powerless to guarantee anything about recouping the money.