No, No, No ...

I'm sitting home missing work while waiting for the AC repair technician to tell me how much my pocketbook is going to get hit. So, here is a great ad that sums up what the Republican Party is about today and who their real leader is:


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Thanks, Rachel!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The party of Beavis and Butthead

I just can't help myself ... must ... stop ... piling on ...

Thank you, Paul Krugman:

What should government do? A Jindal meditation

What is the appropriate role of government?

Traditionally, the division between conservatives and liberals has been over the role and size of the welfare state: liberals think that the government should play a large role in sanding off the market economy’s rough edges, conservatives believe that time and chance happen to us all, and that’s that.

But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

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Cannon Fodder

Oh, how I want to blog less about politics, but when the Know Nothing Party gives you so much to work with ...

The reviews for Gov. Bobby Jindal are not good, and as I wrote last night, he said some really stupid stuff.

Here is Matthew Yglesias:

What’s with the attack on “something called ‘volcano monitoring’”? Volcano monitoring is where they monitor volcanos. So as to better understand, better predict, and better prepare for natural disasters. Is that so complicated? Are only hurricanes worth responding to?

And Atrios:

Volcanoes Are Kinda Scary
What struck me about Jindal's complaint about spending money monitoring volcanoes was that it was really the best they can come up with. As he was.

And John Cole at BalloonJuice:

"I’m not sure what is selling lower this morning- Citibank or Jindal 2012 stock, but it really is hard to state accurately just how bad it was...

However, there was something just especially awful this year, and already the comparison to Kenneth from 30 Rock is sweeping across the intertubes...

And speaking of volcanoes, Jindal’s response was just nonsense on wheels...

And for the life of me, I have no idea why Republicans hate replacing the federal fleet of cars with fuel-efficient vehicles or monitoring volcanoes to avoid disasters. It seems to me that the latter, making sure volcanoes do not blow up on your citizenry, would be something that even Ron Paul would think is a government job.

These guys have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, they do have Fred Hiatt’s editorial page, where Michael Gerson does the deed this morning, but other than that, the Republican party is just a pathetic joke."

And here is the real meat of the matter from David Brooks:

LEHRER: Now that, of course, was Gov. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, making the Republican response. David, how well do you think he did?

DAVID BROOKS: Uh, not so well... I oppose the stimulus package because I thought it was poorly drafted but to come up at this moment in history with a stale government is the problem, we can't trust the federal government,' it's just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill. But the idea that we're just going to... That government will have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that in a moment when only the federal government is big enough to actually do stuff- to just ignore all that and just say 'government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,' it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where country is it's not where the future of the country is. ... I think it's insane. I just think it's a disaster for the [Republican] Party. I just think it's unfortunate right now.

As you can imagine, if you saw and heard the speech, the reviews for President Obama are much, much kinder.
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Best line from the President's speech ...

"Dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country -- and this country needs and values the talents of every American."
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Hmmm, why don't we talk to an economist?

You would hope, when we are facing such a dramatic worldwide economic crisis, that our Big Money Media would rise to the challenge. Don't hold your breath.
Why? Why do the news networks continue to book politicians and pundit to talk about the economy and turn their back on the experts, economists?

From Media Matters for America:

A Media Matters review of the Sunday talk shows and 12 cable news programs from January 25 through February 15 found that during 203 hours of programming on Sunday mornings and weekday afternoons and evenings, only 41 of 722 total guest appearances in discussions about the economic recovery legislation and debate in Congress, were made by economists -- a mere 6 percent.

Six percent? As John Stewart said, you guys are hurting America.
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Massive dose of dumb

The Jesus Party, formerly known as the Party of NO, which was formerly known as the GOP, came out with a set of talking-points a couple of weeks ago that used the life of Jesus as a comparative measure for how massive the Stimulus Package was. Their implication was that $700+ billion is a lot of money. Wow, who knew? But when you look at their comparison, and then the cold,hard, numbers of the American economy, you see how absolutely stupid their reasoning (I use that term loosely) is. Via Pandagon.net:

BIGGER THAN JESUS

Apparently, the new Republican line on the stimulus is this:

To give the proposed economic stimulus plan some perspective, “if you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion.”

Now, there’s a bit about this that renders it disingenuous...which is the whole thing. The American economy is massive - $14.28 trillion, in fact. If you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you wouldn’t reach the size of the American economy by the year 10,000. Or 20,000. This is why we don’t measure the size of our economy in Jesus Money, despite the declaration of such in the RNC platform.

To put this in further context - over the course of Jesus’ life, at $1 million a day, and presuming his death at the age of 33 (including leap years), the value of Jesus’ life would have been $12.053 billion.

Microsoft’s yearly revenue last year was $60 billion, meaning they earned five Jesuses in a year.

Circuit City’s yearly revenue in 2006 was $10.4 billion, meaning even a failed company was, less than three years ago, earning nearly a full Jesus.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest everything, earned $404 billion last year, meaning that they earned a whopping thirty-three and a third Jesuses in a single year.

The American economy, incidentally, is nearly 1200 Jesuses strong, which is nearly the size of Chatom, AL...all full of Jesuses.

This teaches us two things: the first is that the American economy is massive, and any effort to stimulate it will require a suitably large amount of money. The second part is that it’s really stupid to measure things by the yardstick of Jesus earning a million dollars a day.

Also, nobody has any idea how many days of Jesus it would take to keep Pajamas Media afloat, but it’s probably more than you’d think.

They have no ideas! And they don't seem to get the concept of "economic stimulus" ... or put it another way, SPENDING!
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What a joke the GOP has become

Gov. Bobby Jindal is proving that the Republican Party has no new ideas, is a regional party, hates reason and science, and doesn't know a damn thing about history or the economy.

For starters, he considers volcano research wasteful pork-barrel spending. Yes, why would we want to study the patterns and behaviors of volcanoes? It's not like our nation has to worry about volcanic eruptions? I mean how much damage could a little old volcano do?

And if we don't need to study volcanoes we probably don't need to study earthquakes, or hurricanes, or any weather at all. And who needs science, like biology, astronomy, engineering, or genetic research? What a waste of good taxpayer money!

And what are these newfangled "magnetic levitation trains" you speak of, mister? More pork, I'm sure.

All of this from a man who participates in exorcisms. No joke.

The Republican Party is out of touch (along with most of the Beltway Villagers) and if they continue to be a know-nothing party -- the pathetic "NO... NOTHING" party -- they will be out of power for a long time. Thank god!


UPDATE: Exorcism!!!!!

UPDATE II: Volcanoes!!!!!
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Wow! A great speech with

Wow! A great speech with some real honesty and ambition ... Yes we can! President Barack rocks!

Gotta see this and have a laugh ...

Things lost in the fires ...

It has been heartbreaking the past couple of weeks reading about the massive wildfires in Australia. The loss of human life due to arson is terribly sad, and there are many stories of heroism, bravery and luck. And the loss of animal life has also been catastrophic. Some estimates are that more than a million animals perished. There are many, many stories about singed and thirsty Koalas. And Kangaroos.

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Happy birthday to Charles Darwin.

Happy birthday to Charles Darwin. He was born 200 years ago. Far too many people misunderstand his grand ideas.

It sucks to be you

I think my personal Jihad this year will be against the press, those in the media who continue to fail at their jobs and end up hurting our nation along the way. This post by DemFromCT over at DailyKos is spot on:

I know a very good journalist who reminded me that most editors think news is something that happened to them. If they got sick while in the hospital, you can bet that there'll be a series on hospital-acquired infections. If they got stuck in horrendous traffic for the umpteenth time, time for a story on commuting and infrastructure. But if things don't change, and it's the same thing this week as last week, well, that's not news.

Well, here's non-change that is news: the blowhards on cable TV, the so-called 'experts' on politics and media, don't know what the hell they're talking about. Still. And they don't speak for the public.

Also.

"Early stumbles by the Obama White House over some high-level appointments caused a firestorm in the Capitol and on cable TV this week, but most Americans dismiss them as just a normal part of staffing a new administration.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Wednesday, those surveyed by nearly 3-1 say their confidence in President Obama's ethical standards and his ability to manage the government and improve the economy has gone up rather than down since his inauguration last month.

"They're willing to cut him some slack," says Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. "It's saying they're more interested in things like the economy and what's going to happen to their jobs and their incomes and their 401(k)s. This other stuff is just a distraction to them. "

As for the stimulus bill:

"The survey also shows that public opinion of the economic stimulus package working its way through Congress has not changed: 52% favor it; 38% oppose it. In late January, the figures were 52% and 37%. "

But Lindsay Graham volunteered to be on cable! And he doesn't like the Democratic stimulus bill! Cover it!

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Fed up with the Know Nothing Party (formerly known as the GOP)

Josh Marshall nails it when he says the Big Money Media is blowing it big time on their reporting of the Stimulus Plan. The Republicans are spewing ignorance all over the airwaves and the pundits either sit there or nod in agreement. When we are facing one of the greatest economic disasters this country has ever seen, I really want our Fourth Estate to report from a reality-based position. And they could start by having Economists on to talk about economic issues and not just politicians and political pundits. More Paul Krugman and less whining from Lindsay Graham please!

Here is a great post at TalkingPointsMemo on how we have to hit back against the bullshit artists in the Republican Party:

A Turning Tide?

This week, out on the broad wastes of cable news drekdom and the uplands of Beltway journalistic drivel, a simple fact has gone almost entirely unreported: virtually everything congressional Republicans are saying about the Stimulus Bill wouldn't cut it in remedial economics. Not that there aren't legitimate policy differences and criticisms to be made of the outline plan before Congress. But to call the Republican complaints 'policy differences' would be to engage in what that old president used to call the soft bigotry of low expectations, as though a political party with as legitimately proud a history as the GOP could not be expected to produce more than economic illiterates.

The ground under our feet might feel firmer if this were just standard order rhetorical abuse. But the truth of it is genuinely frightening, especially since these fellows are planted in Congress rather than on one of the sidewalk corners in Union Square ranting about Socialism and Fluoride or Lyndon LaRouche.

But now there are some flickering signs that the tide may be turning, perhaps in response to just how nonsensical the conversation got earlier this week. For instance, in tomorrow's Post, business columnist Steven Pearlstein devotes an entire column to the fact most of Republicans on Capitol Hill don't even seem to grasp how a Stimulus Bill is supposed to work or even more basic stuff about demand, recession economics or even how jobs come into existence. As in, it's not a Stimulus Bill, it's a spending bill.

Tactfully, Pearlstein doesn't say explicitly for most of the article that it's Republicans he's talking about. You have to infer that from the names of the members he dings. But toward the end of the piece he can't seem to help cutting to the chase ...

"what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient. What really irks so many Republicans, of course, is that all the stimulus money isn't being used to cut individual and business taxes, their cure-all for economic ailments, even though all the credible evidence is that tax cuts are only about half as stimulative as direct government spending."

It really does approach flat earth territory.

When you step back from the immediacy of the moment and consider just what nonsense these guys are spouting and what games they're playing while the country is legitimately in danger, it's breathtaking. All the reporters have fallen down on the job. But maybe we can hope for more tide-turning tomorrow.

Here's another example of the craptastic thinking being pushed forward by Mitch McConnell and the GOP.

F*#ing Morons!
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Remembering Pat Tillman

As I watch the Superbowl today I know I will shed a few tears, perhaps in the joy of victory or ... in the agaony of defeat. But I know I will shed a tear or two for the player who won't be on the field -- Pat Tillman.
Tillman served our nation proudly, and gave his life in Afghanistan. (I won't go into the political BS about the coverup over his death. Another Bush Administration Fuckup)
A lot of sportswriters are remembering Pat this week, and I hope all of you will take a moment to think about his sacrifice.
Rest In Peace Pat "Freakin'" Tillman

• Tillman’s Presence Is Still Strong
• Tillman would have liked these Cards
  
• Tillman deserved to be part of Cards' Super run -- Ex-player, Army Ranger the rare man distinguished by exemplary character
  
• NFL has to honor its American hero Pat Tillman with Hall of Fame induction
• On Super Bowl Sunday, remember Pat Tillman

Cardinals in the Superbowl ... Really!

I remember the first Cardinals game in Sun Devil Stadium after they moved here in 1988(?) and back then we thought the team would definitely make the playoffs and that several Superbowl berths would be in our future. But then Neil Lomax got hurt, ruining that season, and dozens of low, low points followed for this woeful franchise.
But I've remained a Cardinals fan, but just didn't see this coming. What an incredible playoff run!
Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, Adrian Wilson, Darnell Dockett and many other players and a great coaching staff have electrified this state and fans of exciting football throughout the nation.
My prediction is a tough game against a great Steelers defense. But this team has resilience and character and I think they will bounce back again and again. I think the defense will score at least one and possibly two touchdowns (watch Antrel Rolle and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie) and the offense will match that. Add in a field goal or two and I predict a 34-31 Cardinals victory, perhaps in overtime.
GO CARDINALS!!!