The crisis in Europe - in Spain and Greece, the rich get a LOT richer

disaster capitalism continues to run amok...

Who Profits?

Austerity, Greed & the Pain in Spain

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Spanish bank bailout as “voodoo economics” that is certain “to “fail.” New York Times economic analyst Andrew Ross Sorkin agrees: “By now it should be apparent that the bailout has failed—or at least on its way to failing.” And columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman bemoans that Europe (and the U.S.) “are repeating ancient mistakes” and asks, “why does no one learn from them?”

[...]

If you work at a regular job, you are in deep trouble. Spanish unemployment is at 25 percent—much higher in the country’s southern regions—and 50 percent among young people. In one way or other, those figures—albeit not quite as high—are replicated across the Euro Zone, particularly in those countries that have sipped from Circe’s bailout cup: Ireland, Portugal, and Greece.

But if you are Josef Ackermann heading up the Deutsche Bank, you earned an 8 million Euro bonus in 2012, because you successfully manipulated the past four years of economic meltdown to make the bank bigger and more powerful than it was before the 2008 crash. In 2009, when people were losing their jobs, their homes, and their pensions, Deutsche Bank’s profits soared 67 percent, eventually raking in almost 8 billion Euros for 2011. The bank took a hit in 2012, but the Spanish bailout will help recoup Deutsche Bank’s losses from its gambling spree in Spanish real estate.

[...]

All over the world, capital is on the march, with the goal of rolling back the social programs of the post-World War II period and returning to the Gilded Age when the rich did pretty much as they pleased.

 

Weakening unions is central to this, as is privatizing everything capital can get its hands on, and the economic crisis is the perfect cover to try an accomplish this.

[...]

So, the answer to Krugman’s question, “why are they repeating ancient mistakes?”

Because they are making out like bandits.

as in spain, so in greece... the rich make out like bandits while the masses suck hind tit...

Greece: What Can be Done?

Greece faces the unenviable choice between accepting the terms of “the Troika” [the European Union, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund] and facing the continuation and deepening of a socio-economic crises, which includes five years of negative growth, over 23% unemployment, an astronomical rise in poverty (from less than 15% to over 40%) and mounting suicides, or a rejection of the “memorandum”, and a likely cut-off of Eurozone funding and capital markets with virtually few reserves toc over salaries, pensions or public services.

[...]

Greece, during its 30 year membership in the European Union actually saw its meager and backward manufacturing and agricultural base shrink, in the face of cheap and better imports from developed capitalist countries like Germany, France, Holland and elsewhere. Unlike Argentina, Greece received billions of dollars in “transfers,” compensation funds to upgrade its economy and competitiveness and prepare it for full integration (lowering of tariff barriers). However, the “transfers” were not channeled into productive activity either by the two ruling parties or by the ‘capitalists’ and ‘farmers.’ The ruling parties used the transfers to build extensive electoral patronage machines; they squandered funds for overpriced state contracts to provide builders engaged in non-productive building projects (including the multi-billion dollar swindle around the Olympic Games). Tens of thousands of unemployed graduates and party loyalists bloated the national, regional and local bureaucracy, increasing consumption, blocking any meaningful productive activity.

Capitalists designed “productive projects and then transferred EU loans and handouts to local and overseas real estate investments and luxury purchases. The Greek elite transferred loans to London, Swiss and Cypriot bank accounts – while the government signed off as ultimate guarantor.

[...]

Most important, the economic elite – bankers, ship owners, construction-real estate – politicians, speculators skimmed off billions from the EEC transfers in the form of illicit loans to cronies and in the form of fees, management charges for credit dealings and pension funding.

The European bankers, government officials and exporters were acutely aware that the “transfers” were being pillaged – but they went along, for obvious reasons of economic and political gain: lucrative interest payments flowed into their coffers; exporters took over Greek consumer markets; bankers and investment houses found willing pension fund managers ‘open’ to dubious investments. Even tourists enjoyed the sun and imports which reminded them of home: wiener schnitzel, English ale, Dutch feta. Moreover, Greece spent 15% of its budget on the military, serving NATO goals and bases.

[...]

Any road map out of the Greek crises will be difficult, complex, and arduous – given the “scorched earth” economy which a left government (LG) will inherit. The first and most basic concern of a LG is to end the policies and especially the agreements with the “Troika” that demand further mass firings of public employees, the reduction in social services, the cuts in minimum wages and pensions. A new LG needs to impose a series of emergency measures to avoid economic bankruptcy.

It is absolutely clear that European bankers and regimes want to punish Greece for transgressions of their “austerity pact.” If Greece should succeed in renouncing the austerity pact, the Euro bankers fear that other countries – Spain, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus and Ireland might follow suit.

Greece should suspend debt payments, impose tight capital controls and freeze bank deposits to avoid capital flight, in the face of the Troika cut-off of funding. The LG should convoke a series of emergency commissions to (1) secure alternative sources of emergency financing from several reserve funds with Euro holdings. They must seek loans from Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China and other states not beholden to the Troika and (2) make an inventory of available and potential productive enterprises – bankrupt or troubled firms, indebted enterprises – and convert them into state sponsored worker-employee operated co-operatives (3) investigate public debt to determine what can be classified as ‘legitimate’(loans channeled into productive employment) or illegitimate (loans that enriched speculators, corrupt contractors, political leaders) (4) investigate and attach overseas holdings of wealthy Greeks who were engaged in multi-year multi-million tax evasion and who accumulated illicit income via unpaid loans and money laundering. Greek auditors should proceed to demand that Eurozone creditors should collect debt payments from the bank accounts of wealth Greeks who laundered and deposited in London, Zurich, Frankfurt, New York and elsewhere.

The principle of the LG should be “those who borrowed the loans and profited, should pay them.”

[...]

The LG should repudiate illegal debts (the vast majority) and renegotiate and roll-over the rest over an extended time frame, pending an economic recovery.

What should be recognized is that past Greek governments (despite being formally elected) engaged in illegitimate activity which prejudiced the sovereignty, productive capacity, and livelihood of an entire people.

What is not acceptable is to force an entire people to sacrifice their lives because a minority of Greeks borrowed and didn’t invest or pay their debts to overseas creditors. Currently the kleptocratic millionaires are given “cover,” and their illicit multi-billion Euro bank accounts and real-estate holdings are protected by the banks demanding payments from the Greek government. Their current demands are based on a savage demolition of living standards for a whole people.

it will be very, VERY interesting to see the outcome of the greek election tomorrow...

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Krugman cheers on Elizabeth Warren

elizabeth warren's definitely got my attention (see previous post), altho' i must admit, i'd rather see her challenging obama in a primary than running for a massachusetts senate seat... she's gotten paul krugman's attention too, evidently...

Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer who is now running for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, recently made some eloquent remarks to this effect that are, rightly, getting a lot of attention. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she declared, pointing out that the rich can only get rich thanks to the “social contract” that provides a decent, functioning society in which they can prosper.

Which brings us back to those cries of “class warfare.”

Republicans claim to be deeply worried by budget deficits. Indeed, Mr. Ryan [Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan] has called the deficit an “existential threat” to America. Yet they are insisting that the wealthy — who presumably have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation’s future — should not be called upon to play any role in warding off that existential threat.

Well, that amounts to a demand that a small number of very lucky people be exempted from the social contract that applies to everyone else. And that, in case you’re wondering, is what real class warfare looks like.

after musing about the demise of frank rich at the nyt, i've begun wondering just how much longer the super-rich elites will tolerate krugman's voice at the gray lady... i would not be at all surprised by a resignation announcement in the near future...

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The US has fallen firmly into the hands of the elite and the country's social disintegration is breathtaking

it's always very instructive to see your own country through the eyes of others... while i share much of the view of the u.s. that's presented in this spiegel opinion piece, i am nonetheless gap-jawed at the picture that's painted...

This week, the United States nearly allowed itself to succumb to economic disaster. Increasingly, the divided country has more in common with a failed state than a democracy. In the face of America's apparent political insanity, Europe must learn to take care of itself.

The word "West" used to have a meaning. It described common goals and values, the dignity of democracy and justice over tyranny and despotism. Now it seems to be a thing of the past. There is no longer a West, and those who would like to use the word -- along with Europe and the United States in the same sentence -- should just hold their breath. By any definition, America is no longer a Western nation.

The US is a country where the system of government has fallen firmly into the hands of the elite. An unruly and aggressive militarism set in motion two costly wars in the past 10 years. Society is not only divided socially and politically -- in its ideological blindness the nation is moving even farther away from the core of democracy. It is losing its ability to compromise.

America has changed. It has drifted away from the West.

The country's social disintegration is breathtaking. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz recently described the phenomenon. The richest 1 percent of Americans claim one-quarter of the country's total income for themselves -- 25 years ago that figure was 12 percent. It also possesses 40 percent of total wealth, up from 33 percent 25 years ago. Stiglitz claims that in many countries in the so-called Third World, the income gap between the poor and rich has been reduced. In the United States, it has grown.

Economist Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, has written that America's path is leading it down the road to "banana-republic status." The social cynicism and societal indifference once associated primarily with the Third World has now become an American hallmark. This accelerates social decay because the greater the disparity grows, the less likely the rich will be willing to contribute to the common good. When a company like Apple, which with €76 billion in the bank has greater reserves at its disposal than the government in Washington, a European can only shake his head over the Republican resistance to tax increases. We see it as self-destructive.

The same applies to America's broken political culture. The name "United States" seems increasingly less appropriate. Something has become routine in American political culture that has been absent in Germany since Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik policies of rapprochement with East Germany and the Soviet Bloc (in the 1960s and '70s): hate. At the same time, reason has been replaced by delusion. The notion of tax cuts has taken on a cult-like status, and the limited role of the state a leading ideology. In this new American civil war, respect for the country's highest office was sacrificed long ago.

wow...! can you imagine reading an opinion piece like this in ANY traditional u.s. media outlet...? me neither...

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What we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster

krugman...

The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

goddamit, i really hate posting on the same friggin' topic time after time after time after time, but the ugly reality is still smacking us in the face so i guess i'm just going to have to keep on keepin' on...

regarding the last sentence of the above excerpt, i would posit that krugman is sadly deluded if he believes that our super-rich elites have made "catastrophic mistakes"... i feel about that the same way that i believe george w. bush and his cronies were "incompetent"... no way in hell... what's been happening is the result of deliberate efforts on the part of our handlers and their puppets to suck as much of the global collective wealth and power into their own pockets... and there's been no mistakes made, at least not as far as i can see... they're doing one HELL of a good job...

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Paul Krugman and Marcy Wheeler on the continued upward transfer of wealth to the already-rich

i didn't post on either of these subjects yesterday as i found them just too damn depressing...

krugman on the catfood commission proposal...

The Hijacked Commission

[...]

It will take time to crunch the numbers here, but this proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction?

[...]

It’s no mystery what has happened on the deficit commission: as so often happens in modern Washington, a process meant to deal with real problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda. Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old — tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net.

marcy expostulates...

David Axelrod’s Quaint Idea of Middle Class “Security”

There’s a lot to despise about David Axelrod’s announcement of Obama’s capitulation to the oligarchs on tax cuts, not least that he made this announcement on the same day Obama’s Catfood Commission Chairs started the process of stealing from seniors to “fix” our deficit.

Let yesterday be marked as the day when a nominally Democratic President began to dismantle Democrats’ signature policy achievement, social security, so he could shovel $700 billion to the very rich.

[...]

[T] worst thing that could happen to this economy may well be passing legislation that continues to hollow out of the middle class and with it increasing the massive income inequality that continues to subject the American people to the craven demands of a few very rich people. That is, precisely what Axe and Obama have now agreed to do.

These men either don’t know or don’t give a damn about the security of the middle class.

oh, they KNOW, all right... they also KNOW all too well which side their bread is buttered on...

but wait, marcy isn't quite finished...

You know, it is not just that the arrogant and cluelessly detached President Pangloss is steaming toward a one and done Presidency, it is that he is literally destroying the Democratic Party and liberal ideology in the process and leaving them in his wake.

UPDATE: I guess Obama couldn’t even sell crack free trade to Charlie Sheen the Koreans.

see what i mean about too depressing...?

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We all have to be willing to make sacrifices, as long as "we" doesn't include the rich

but we already know this, don't we...?

krugman...

[W]hen the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say: we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

joe bageant has some thoughts on the plight of those "little people" and how callously they're/we're being manipulated...

Economic, political, and social culture in America is staggering under the sheer weight of its white underclass, which now numbers some sixty million. Generally unable to read at a functional level, they are easily manipulated by corporate-political interests to vote against advances in health and education, and even more easily mustered in support of any proposed military conflict, aggressive or otherwise. One-third of their children are born out of wedlock, and are unemployable by any contemporary industrialized-world standard. Even if we were to bring back their jobs from China and elsewhere -- a damned unlikely scenario -- they would be competing at a wage scale that would not meet even their basic needs. Low skilled, and with little understanding of the world beyond either what is presented to them by kitschy and simplistic television, movie, and other media entertainments, or their experience as armed grunts in foreign combat, the future of the white underclass not only looks grim, but permanent.

Meanwhile, the underclass, 'America's flexible labor force' ... are nevertheless politically potent, if sufficiently taunted and fed enough bullshit. Just look at the way we showed up in force during the 2000 elections, hyped up on inchoate anger and ready to be deployed as liberal-ripping pit bulls by America's ultra-conservative political machinery. Snug middle-class liberals were stunned. Could that many people actually be supporting Anne Coulter's call for the jailing of liberals, or Rush Limbaugh's demand for the massive, forced psychiatric detention of Democrats? Or, more recently, could they honestly believe President Obama's proposed public healthcare plan would employ 'death panels' to decide who lives and who dies? Conservatives cackled with glee, and dubbed them the only real Americans.

joe's clear eye for why so many poor saps have been hoodwinked into supporting the very folks who have made our situation so dire is among the better explanations i've read...

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Domestic spending freeze...? Obama's jumped the shark...

when i first read the story about obama maybe, possibly, declaring a spending freeze, i thought it might be just a rumor... this morning's headlines made it official...

Obama to Seek Freeze on Some Spending to Trim Deficits

President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday.

i'm no fan of the ballooning deficit and i'm certainly no fan of an increasingly worthless fiat currency that's leaping off the printing presses so fast it's breathtaking... but, in the midst of a super-rich, elite-created economic storm in which businesses, states, and millions of citizens are suffering through furloughs, layoffs, foreclosures, unemployment and the complete wastage of the middle class, to put a freeze on domestic spending while still allowing free rein to our totally out-of-control defense and war spending is perhaps the most unconscionable thing done yet among the many disturbingly unconscionable things done by this president...

i'm glad to see krugman shares some of my utter dismay...

Obama Liquidates Himself

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

Now, I still cling to a fantasy: maybe, just possibly, Obama is going to tie his spending freeze to something that would actually help the economy, like an employment tax credit. (No, trivial tax breaks don’t count). There has, however, been no hint of anything like that in the reports so far. Right now, this looks like pure disaster.

this is one of the reasons i've slowed way down on blogging... my psyche is evidently too fragile at the moment to be able to regurgitate abominations of this magnitude...

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Lede to Krugman in the NYT: "There’s a growing sense among progressives that they have been duped by President Obama"

duped by obama...? uh, no shit... bait and switch is more like it... torture, indefinite detention, bailouts, toadying to republicans, obsessive dedication to bipartisanship when the opposition party is doing nothing but crapping down your throat... so far, obama is definitely the biggest disappointment in my soon-to-be 61 years...

paul krugman...

According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the “public option” for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives.

Well, I’m shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise.

A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.

[...]

[O]n such fraught questions as torture and indefinite detention, the president has dismayed progressives with his reluctance to challenge or change Bush administration policy.

And then there’s the matter of the banks.

I don’t know if administration officials realize just how much damage they’ve done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing. But I’ve had many conversations with people who voted for Mr. Obama, yet dismiss the stimulus as a total waste of money. When I press them, it turns out that they’re really angry about the bailouts rather than the stimulus — but that’s a distinction lost on most voters.

So there’s a growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank Rich suggests, been punked. And that’s why the mixed signals on the public option created such an uproar.

[...]

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

it's official... i've just checked out of the hope hotel...

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The rich are different from you and me

no kidding... they have a TON more money, like HALF of all of it...

from raw story...

The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now have a larger share of total income than they ever have in records going back nearly a century — an even larger amount than during the Roaring Twenties, the last time the US saw such similar disparities in wealth.

In recent years, the fact that differences between rich and poor are the greatest they’ve been since the Great Depression has become a popular talking point among liberal-leaning economists.

But an updated study (PDF) from University of California-Berkeley economist Emanuel Saez shows that, in 2007, the wealth disparity grew to its highest number on record, based on US tax data going back to 1917.

According to Saez’s study, which Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman drew attention to at his New York Times blog, the top 10 percent of earners in America now receive nearly 50 percent of all the income earned in the United States, a higher percentage than they did during the 1920s.

and ya know what...? the recession hasn't disturbed this trend one tiny bit...

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Krugman: the U.S. is "playing the role usually assigned to third-world economies"

following my "here we go" post of yesterday, krugman weighs in...

Mexico. Brazil. Argentina. Mexico, again. Thailand. Indonesia. Argentina, again.

And now, the United States.

The story has played itself out time and time again over the past 30 years. Global investors, disappointed with the returns they’re getting, search for alternatives. They think they’ve found what they’re looking for in some country or other, and money rushes in.

But eventually it becomes clear that the investment opportunity wasn’t all it seemed to be, and the money rushes out again, with nasty consequences for the former financial favorite. That’s the story of multiple financial crises in Latin America and Asia. And it’s also the story of the U.S. combined housing and credit bubble. These days, we’re playing the role usually assigned to third-world economies.

the news that's already out there about the deepening u.s. financial crisis and the tanking economy is bad enough... given our media's penchant for NOT giving us the full story on anything else, is there any reason to think that things might not be a great deal WORSE than we're hearing...?

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Krugman on Obama: promising "to transcend partisanship in an age when that’s neither possible nor desirable"

more < duh >...

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Neither over-confident nor crazy, merely dogged and determined

from today's wapo roundup of the nation's op-ed pages...

Today's Hot Topic: Is Bush Confident or Crazy?

In the WaPo, Eugene Robinson worries that the leader of the free world has "really, truly lost touch with objective reality." He writes: "It's bad enough that Osama bin Laden is still out there plotting bloody acts of terrorism, convinced that God wants him to slay the infidels. Now we know that the president of the United States believes God has chosen him to bring freedom to the world, that he refuses to acknowledge setbacks in his crusade, and that he flat-out doesn't care what 'the polls' -- meaning the American people -- might think" ... in the NYT, Paul Krugman writes that Bush's continued optimism is "terrifying," and that it "doesn't demonstrate Mr. Bush's strength of character; it shows that he has lost touch with reality." He adds that "Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nation's security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it."

suggesting that bush has lost touch with reality misses the point entirely... the bush administration is on the homestretch of its - so far - quite successful campaign to turn our nation into an authoritarian state... a complete and total disregard for any and all external influences other than those that support that agenda is merely symptomatic...

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If you're gonna smear, do it in a bipartisan spirit

another taste of how the relentless attacks on 2008 presidential candidates are going to shape up... from one of the masters of the art, jonah goldberg...

John Edwards' poor scam

The would-be president and former ambulance chaser wants you to think he's the champion of the underclass.

There's a little hustler in every politician. But sometimes there's a little politician in a hustler. Such is the case with John Edwards.

and that's just the title,the teaser and the opening sentence...

i felt moved to compose a letter to the la times editor...

Dear Sirs:

I can see how the 2008 campaign is going to shape up - hyperventilating huffers and puffers, sitting in their foxholes, tossing out feces-laden grenades, and hoping none either roll back into their holes or get lobbed their way. Ok, if that's the kind of opinion writer you choose to support, so be it. Let me make a small request.

I would feel somewhat better about seeing such vituperation in print if the opinion writer in question, Mr. Goldberg, would opine in a more bipartisan fashion. It seems there are hypocrites and idiots galore in the current field of presidential candidates, both Democrat and Republican. When entire op-ed columns are dedicated to savaging only one party's candidates, serious editorial bias starts to become a little bit obvious, don't you think? Even George Bush occasionally makes the effort to appear bipartisan (I emphasize the word "appear"). Couldn't you encourage Mr. Goldberg to follow suit?

Best regards,

i didn't deliberately didn't offer any examples of idiots and hypocrites from the "other party" because i think they are ridiculously easy to find... how about rudy giuliani, mitt romney, and john mccain for starters...?

from paul krugman (nyt select, subscribers only) via joe at americablog...

Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

so, jonah, whaddaya say...? lessee you take a crack at these idiots as well... it seems to me that you could have yourself a veritable bipartisan vituperation feast (if you want to, that is)...

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The Krug-man: The more un-American the policy, the more the Republican base supports it

i have to confess, when i read about the audience erupting in loud applause and cheers when the trolls passing themselves off as republican presidential candidates came out in support of torture at the repub debate the other night, i was stunned... aren't there any REAL republicans out there...? well, i know of ONE, jim, who comments regularly on this blog, but, i mean, HELLO...!?!?! did they screen the audience at the debate to see who could demonstrate sufficient bloodlust...? was there a testosterone and steriod test at the door...? evidently paul krugman had some thoughts of his own (nyt select, subscription required)...

What we need to realize is that the infamous "Bush bubble," the administration's no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the White House. Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there's a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner, that Bush appointees are doing a heckuva job -- and that news reports contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias.

krugman may be right, but, if so, i'm going to opt for staying in denial... i choose to believe that those in the debate audience were truly NOT representative of the majority of americans who i believe are decent, compassionate, and caring individuals, individuals who hold firmly to our cherished notions of human rights, human dignity, justice, due process, and all of the rights and obligations set forth in the u.s. constitution... if bush can live in his bubble, i can live in mine...

(thanks to raw story...)

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Our president is holding our troops hostage

paul krugman did his country a great service yesterday by calling bush's intransigence for what it is...

Mr. Bush made it clear again on Monday that he would use the second veto of his tenure to kill the legislation, which would set a goal of having most American combat forces out of Iraq within six months of Oct. 1.

no less a favor was done by harry reid in declaring the war as "lost..."

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Holding the troops hostage

i haven't heard it expressed more clearly...

krugman...

There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met.

if the democrats were looking for a frame to put around this nightmarish standoff, they could do no better than to adopt the "hostage" meme...

(thanks to atrios...)

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No, it's not a "funny thing," nor is it in the least bit surprising

while paul krugman is absolutely correct (behind the nyt firewall) in his appraisal, i'm surprised at his surprise...

[A] funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions.

the democratic leadership (including many dems who aren't) is part and parcel of the same military-industrial, super-rich, take the money and run (and the ordinary joes be damned) gang that's been running things in the u.s. for years... there's zero incentive (read: $$) to take the national common good into account, none, and the only reason they're doing it now is to preserve the appearances of being at least minimally responsive to the national mood... the dems have perpetuated the myth of being the "people's party" and it would look more than a little suspicious if they flipped us off entirely... and, if you want to hear how they REALLY feel about being pushed this hard, you only have to turn to their paid lackeys and enablers, folks like james carville and terry mcauliffe, who make no secret of their disdain for what the "average" american thinks and continue to peddle hawkish, out-of-touch drivel...

(thanks to mcjoan at daily kos...)

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