Last Call

Two things about this Sully column:

1) He's right absolutely right when he says the following...

This is the silly season. But this silly story seems to me an indication of something more ominous. The demographics tell the basic story: a black man is president and a large majority of white southerners cannot accept that, even in 2009. They grasp conspiracy theories to wish Obama — and the America he represents — away. Since white southerners comprise an increasing proportion of the 22% of Americans who still describe themselves as Republican, the GOP can neither dismiss the crankery nor move past it. The fringe defines what’s left of the Republican centre.

The chilling implication is that a large number of Americans believe the president has no right to be in office and has fraudulently manoeuvred himself there.

I hope the secret service is on alert. If we thought racial panic had ended with Obama’s election, the resilience of this story in key parts of the country is a helpful wake-up call.

It's what I've been saying for months now: the logical endpoint of the birth fanaticism is that if you honestly believe Barack Obama is illegally the President of the United States and is using that power of that office illegally, then you also have to believe that he must be removed from that office by any means necessary. So, I ask the Birthers, what's your plan for that?

Which brings us to point The Second:

2) It's pretty meaningless that Sully is right because he basically has no credibility left on conspiracy theories after continually insisting for the better part of the last year that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin's son, even as recently as six weeks ago.

What really, really bothers me is that Sullivan can clearly see the problem with the Birther stupidity involving Obama and the real reason behind it, but continually pursues what's basically the same story going after Sarah Palin.

Now, Sister Sarah is no saint, her recent usage of Trig as a campaign prop yet again last Friday has earned her my personal scorn. I wasn't fond of her before, but at least I thought she meant well, deranged as she was I never thought her to be heartless. Now even that shred of human decency is apparently beyond her grasp.

But then again, it's the Birthers who apparently are hypocrites for the same reason Sullivan is: If Obama's birth credentials are questionable, then it's open season on the woman who would have been a heartbeat away from the Presidency, yes? Questions must be asked, right?

And the truth is both instances are ludicrous examples of the media frenzy going too far. The Obama birther issue is in my book several orders of magnitude worse for the reasons Sullivan gave, it's cover for planting the nasty seeds of a race war, but it does not justify dragging Trig Palin into this mess. I humbly offer the erstwhile Mr. Sullivan this advice:

Leave dragging an innocent child into politics to the experts like Sarah Palin.

Follow The Leader

It's got to be depressing these days being a conservative pundit. Every time Sarah Palin says something bugnuts crazy heading into a weekend, the Sunday Show bobbleheads either have to agree with her and look like a whackjob to the reality-based community or you really have to gamble and deny whatever she said, risking the wrath of the base as Steve Benen notes:

Newt Gingrich told a national television audience this morning that Sarah Palin's "death panel" argument is fair and legitimate. I should note, in fairness to other conservatives, that others on the right have not been as kind to the former Alaska governor.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, David Brooks called Palin's attack "crazy," adding that "the crazies are attacking the plan because it will cut off granny. That is simply not true, that simply is not going to happen."

Similarly, Rep. Jack Kingston (R) of Georgia, who no one has ever considered a moderate, told Bill Maher there's nothing to Palin's attack. "It's a scare tactic," Kingston said. "No question about it."

Even some political reporters who shy away from drawing firm conclusions have acknowledged the facts. The Washington Post's Dan Balz said this morning, "It's not the way to debate this bill, and it's another example of Sarah Palin having difficulty figuring out how to enter into a serious debate about issues."

And while Steve goes on to posit that Death Squads For Trig may be the bridge too far for Sarah Palin, I'm convinced the opposite is true. I really don't think there's anything that Sarah Palin can say at this point that tens of millions of people won't go "Yeah, I totally believe her on this issue. She wouldn't lie to us like that."

It's indicative of just how far the conservative brand has fallen. There are folks out there that will believe anything at this point just to keep with coming to grips with Barack Obama as President. Their elected GOP leaders have failed them: McConnell, McCain, Cantor, Boehner. Now the non-beltway types are running the show: Limbaugh, Gingrich, Beck and Palin. They control the narrative of the party. The elected leaders react to them now, not the other way around.

The populist anger has gotten out of control. Sarah Palin has now clinched the GOP position on the Obama health care plan as "killing the weak and infirm". Millions are ready to believe that now, even if it isn't the truth. We're going to see this only get worse.

But then again, that's the point. Sarah Palin's not stupid.

The Obvious Question

News today in the NY Times that the drug companies' industry group PhRMA is going to be running $150 million in pro-health care reform ads should be setting off huge alarms for everyone.

The unusually large scale of the industry’s commitment to the cause helps explain some of a contentious back-and-forth playing out in recent days between the odd-couple allies over a deal that the White House struck with the industry in June to secure its support. The terms of the deal were not fully disclosed. Both sides had announced that the drug industry would contribute $80 billion over 10 years to the cost of the health care overhaul without spelling out the details.

With House Democrats moving to extract more than that just as the drug makers finalized their advertising plans, the industry lobbyists pressed the Obama administration for public reassurances that it had agreed to cap the industry’s additional costs at $80 billion. The White House, meanwhile, has struggled to mollify its most pivotal health industry ally without alienating Congressional Democrats who want to demand far more of the drug makers. White House officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Many Democratic lawmakers have railed for years against what they consider the industry’s excessive profits and pointedly insisted in recent days that they do not feel bound by the White House’s commitments.

Sources briefed on the drug industry’s plans, speaking on condition of anonymity because the details remain confidential, say top officials of the industry’s trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, are scheduled to meet next week to finalize its fall plans. The final budget could be less or more than what was authorized, the sources said.

By comparison, President Obama’s presidential campaign spent about $236 million on television commercials while the campaign of the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, spent about $126 million. Few expect the opponents of the health care overhaul to muster as much advertising muscle as its backers, including sympathetic business groups, labor unions and ideological allies. The drug makers stand to gain millions of new customers from the expansion of health care coverage.

It takes David Fitzpatrick's article a while to get to the catch, but there it is. Millions, if not tens of millions of new customers for drugs and the government subsidies to pay for them for decades. Of course the drug companies will be falling all over themselves for this. It's trillions in guaranteed new revenue streams for them, in addition to the millions of boomers reaching Medicare age over the next decade or so. Positioning themselves now, locking in laws to be the supplier, is a no-brainer.

Necessary evils abound. The drug companies stand to get theirs. Who's going to pay for it? Either way, it'll be the American taxpayer.

Health Care Reform Is Wingnut Existentialism

The corporate shills and talk radio loudmouths that have convinced the wingers that the health care reform fight is really an existential battle for the very fabric of America must be having a great time watching the chaos unfolding over August.

The millions of folks that believe Obama isn't an American citizen,that believe he isn't even legitimately our President, also seemingly believe he is preparing to euthanize the elderly, weak and infirm in a new genocide. The spread of these beliefs have been wildly successful, fueled by Limbaugh, Beck, Savage and Hannity and FOX News, feeding a segment of the populace simply unable to accept a minority President. But the Village columnists have their part to play too, and that bring me to today's screed by Mark Steyn.

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI… No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20th. Under the stimulus bill, there's a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful ("QUESTION AUTHORITY"), you can trade them in for a new "CELEBRATE CONFORMITY" sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you.

"The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!" warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: They've been directed to show up at "thousands of events," told to "organize," "knock on doors" …

No, wait. My mistake. That's the e-mail I got from Mitch Stewart, Director of "Organizing for America" at BarackObama.com. But that's the good kind of "organizing." Obama's a community organizer. We're the community. He organizes us. What part of that don't you get?

When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell. Not that these extremists showing up at town hall meetings are real members of the "community." Have you noticed how tailored they are? Dissent is now the haut est form of coutur ism. Senator Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama's health care proposals as too "well-dressed" to be genuine. Only the Emperor has new clothes. Everyone knows that.

Steyn goes on like this for another several graphs, describing the Obama administration as a comically bad "kinder, gentler" fascist regime, which is apparently very funny if you're Mark Steyn. You see how silly it is to compare dissent to fascism, libs? Not so funny now, is it?

The funny thing is there are plenty of folks out there who believe that America will soon be at this point, and they're not laughing at all. They're deadly serious.

I wasn’t a proponent of street violence then, nor am I now. I abhor it. And, just let any one of the Democrat thugs try to physically attack me or silence me or anyone nearby and they better stand the f*ck by for a real thumping. At 61, I still fit in my Marine Corps uniform, and know well how to defend myself. I’m just one member of a rapidly expanding, reluctant force of ordinary Americans who will. Those who have spent their lives cloistered in ivy and Congress have never met our resistance before, are shocked, and are in for more rueful surprises if they keep on their vile attacks on our democracy, peace and prosperity.

The problem with this level of manipulation is that the logical endpoint of these beliefs is that Barack Obama must be stopped by any means necessary, legal or otherwise, in order to save the country. "The Tree Of Liberty must be refreshed, from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." We've been seeing the justification build for this type of action for quite some time now, but it has especially become prevalent in the last month.

They see themselves as the victims here of a coming fascist regime, where the only possible result of a universal coverage health care plan is Obama's secret police kicking down doors to drag conservatives out into the deep night, never to been heard from again. Where the practical upshot of a public health care option is that Americans over 65 will be put to death en masse. Where the promise of affordable health insurance must lead to the eugenic culling of the sick, weak, and infirm.

Barack Obama is apparently an unthinkable monster for trying to reform health care. And why? What is at the heart of this lunacy? Fear of loss of power, as most of these movements are. Fear that America is no longer a center-right country controlled by white men. Fear that thirty years of Reaganism is coming to an end. Fear of change.

For this, the President is demonized, dehumanized, and designated a target. Worse still, those who have empowered Barack Obama are the real traitors to the cause, those who have put Obama in the White House and the hated, evil Liberals into power need to be dealt with, purged, and removed from society.

Very few of these folks believe Mark Steyn's is being absurdist here. They think he is reporting from the grim near future.

Getting A Holder On The Situation

This morning's LA Times has a report that Attorney General Eric Holder is close to naming a special prosecutor focusing on Bush-era torture...kind of. (emphasis mine:)

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

Current and former CIA and Justice Department officials who have firsthand knowledge of the interrogation files contend that criminal convictions will be difficult to obtain because the quality of evidence is poor and the legal underpinnings have never been tested.

Some cases have not previously been disclosed, including an instance in which a CIA operative brought a gun into an interrogation booth to force a detainee to talk, officials said.

Other potentially criminal abuses have already come to light, including the waterboarding of prisoners in excess of Justice Department guidelines, and the deaths of detainees in CIA custody in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

Opening a criminal investigation is something Holder "has come reluctantly to consider," the Justice Department official said, emphasizing that Holder had not reached a final decision but noting that, "as attorney general, he has the obligation to follow the law."

Others familiar with Holder's thinking say that such an investigation seems all but certain, and that a prosecutor will probably be selected from a short list that Holder asked subordinates to assemble.

In other words, the investigation would largely be a bogus dog and pony show, only worrying about if CIA interrogators went over the line described in memos by John Yoo, Gonzo and John Ashcroft, and that line pretty much allowed everything. What it does not do is even begin to confront the question that the Bush administration's definition of "enhanced interrogation techniques" was actually torture or not.

And once again, the article is full of warnings to Holder, Obama, and to Democrats not to even think about doing this in any way.

"I don't blame them for wanting to look into it," said a former high-ranking Justice Department official familiar with the details of the program. "But if they appoint a special prosecutor, it would ultimately be unsuccessful, and it would go on forever and cause enormous collateral damage on the way to getting that unsuccessful result."

Bracing for the worst, a small number of CIA officials have put off plans to retire or leave the agency so that they can maintain their access to classified files and be in a better position to defend against a Justice investigation.

"Once you're out, it gets a lot harder," said a retired CIA official who said he had spoken recently with former colleagues. The inquiry would probably also target private contractors who worked for the CIA during the interrogations.

Current and former U.S. officials interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy that still surrounds Holder's deliberations and the details of the interrogation files.

President Obama has repeatedly expressed reluctance to launch a criminal investigation of the interrogation program, but has left room for the prosecution of individuals who may have broken the law.

Obama and Holder have both said that they believe waterboarding constitutes torture. But an investigation would pose thorny political problems for the administration, and probably draw criticism over questions of fairness.

"An investigation that focuses only on low-ranking operators would be, I think, worse than doing nothing at all," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

An inquiry also would probably drive a new wedge between the CIA and the Justice Department, agencies with a fractious history that have struggled to work more closely together since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Village cautions that the Bushies don't want them to do it, the CIA doesn't want them to do it, even the Dirty F'ckin Hippies don't want them to do it, so why do it?

Remember, just one day after a Newsweek article warning Holder and Obama that such an investigation would cost the President dearly on his domestic agenda, the Senate revolted against passing a bill before the August recess. That warning was repeated ten days later in the NY Times the day of the president's July 22 press conference. After the second warning, the rhetoric against the President's health care agenda was stepped up again to its current level. The Senate and House kicked the can down the road to September, and now there's a long, brutal month of August recess shenanigans to go through.

A third warning has now been delivered. Should Obama and Holder continue to stay silent and refuse to confirm or deny these rumors of an investigation, will there be another escalation against his health care reform agenda, and what will it be?

There are no coincidences in Washington. Not at this level of the game.

Since those two warnings four weeks ago, Obamacare has been brutalized, savaged, and left for dead. The recess PR war is now on, and the Village has at least noted the conservative astroturf thuggery (while condemning both sides of course). If the pattern holds, Obama officials will be asked about this on the Sunday shows, they will say nothing, and the tenor of the media reports on the Town Hall Blitzes will take a decidedly and almost universally anti-Obama tone for the rest of the recess...unless somebody starts assuring the Wise Men of Washington that Eric Holder will not be appointing a special anything to look into torture.

Watch carefully. I've maintained for a while now that the Holder investigation into torture is the real issue, and that Obamacare is just a proxy fight. We'll see if I'm right very soon.

Last Call

Yet another reason to fight climate change: it poses a national security threat.

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

If you want to know where and why the next world wars will be set off, it will be over resources like potable water and arable land, not oil.

Much of the public and political debate on global warming has focused on finding substitutes for fossil fuels, reducing emissions that contribute to greenhouse gases and furthering negotiations toward an international climate treaty — not potential security challenges.

But a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest. If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.

This argument could prove a fulcrum for debate in the Senate next month when it takes up climate and energy legislation passed in June by the House.

Lawmakers leading the debate before Congress are only now beginning to make the national security argument for approving the legislation.

Making the national security argument for climate change legislation should have been the first practical argument made to both lawmakers and the public. It's something neither side, progressive or conservative, Democrat or Republican, can afford to ignore. Climate change legislation, real legislation that allows the US to truly lead on the issue, is one of the best ways we can prevent the terrorist attacks and wars of tomorrow.

We need to hear more of the climate change argument couched in the language of the interest of worldwide political stability. I'm all for preventing costly and stupid multi-trillion dollar wars in the future while saving the planet, dig?

The Abyss Stares Back At Frum

(Via Yggy) Feeling a tad guilty about witnessing the behavior of his fellow travelers, David Frum discovers logic:

What would it mean to “win” the healthcare fight?

For some, the answer is obvious: beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself.

The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.

Of course, for a large percentage of the Republican Party, conservatives in general and the Pretty Hate Machine, that's all perfectly fine.

The lesson of 1994 is that a small group of hyper-partisan ideologues could hijack the media, the Republican Party, and Washington. Gingrich and others showed the way, and it took another 14 years to break their hold on them. They lost in 2008.

The lesson of 2008 that the Republicans have chosen to draw is that these partisans were not partisan enough. Frum seems shocked that the forces he's thrown his lot in with have doubled down on the crazy, and surprised that they have no interest in improving health care.

It'a always been about power to them.

[UPDATE 6:44 PM] Via BooMan, the inmates are running the asylum now.

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.) questioned the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate and referred to a White House "enemies list" at a meeting in Tulsa.

"This is a scary time in Washington," he said. "It's a very frightening time. I see Barack Obama is creating an enemies list of people who oppose this miserable healthcare plan. I think that's frightening. That's from a guy that can't even show a long-form birth certificate. I think we all ought to be prepared to fight that."

Never mind the fact the "enemies list" is another mutant lie, but how long before somebody takes Rep. Sullivan's offer literally?

For well over a decade the conservative fringe has been out there, fed on hatred and half-truths and outright lies. The Republicans, sensing the coming wilderness, has removed the shackles from this beast of their own creation.

Now it runs free. People like Frum helped create it, helped nurture it, tolerated it, guided it, because it was politically convenient to have such an easily motivated group of die hards. Now that beast is out of control. It has broken away. It is now calling the shots.

And only now does David Frum question the wisdom of betting the conservatives' political future on it. Look on thy works, ye Frummy, and despair.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Another day, another Obama death threat.

The Secret Service may investigate a fax sent to a Democratic lawmaker that depicts President Barack Obama as the Joker and warns of “death to all Marxists.”

The black-and-white fax portrays Obama in makeup similar to that worn by actor Heath Ledger in his portrayal of the Joker in last summer’s “The Dark Knight.”

On Obama’s forehead is a communist hammer-and-sickle insignia, and beneath the image is the text: “Death to All Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!”

Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) received the fax and passed it along to U.S. Capitol Police.

The Secret Service investigates threats made against the president. Ed Donovan, of Secret Service Public Affairs, said that the fax was “potentially an investigative intelligence matter.”

It's almost like the massive increase on threats made on Obama's life are a direct result of all the nasty personal attacks on the President made by our friends in the Pretty Hate Machine.

A machine that the Right is now rapidly losing control over.



How long will it take before somebody really, really gets hurt?

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Steve Benen asks:

It must be challenging to be a political writer trying to parody conservative arguments. Prominent Republicans, who are either stark raving mad or pretending to be, are speaking publicly about "government-encouraged euthanasia" and "death panels." How does a satirist exaggerate for effect when the right-wing has gone mad?

Well, reducing neocon foreign policy to "Send in Giant Dr. Manhattan!" is always good for a laugh.

Having said that, merely sticking with the facts about the Town Hall Blitzers provides a surprising amount of comedy gold these days.

Go figure.

Timmy Wants More

Via Raw Story, Timmy wants more money.

Nope, that really just about sums it up.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally requested that Congress raise the $12.1 trillion statutory debt limit on Friday, saying that it could be breached as early as mid-October.

Congress raised the limit from $9.1 trillion to $10.6 trillion in July 2008 when Fannie and Freddie melted down, which was raised to $11.3 trillion in October 2008 after the bank bailout, and raised to the current $12.1 trillion for the stimulus package.

Now Timmy says we need "more".

As expensive as fixing these mistakes have been, why is Timmy making the same ones? More importantly, why is Obama letting Timmy make the same mistakes? Most importantly, why are we letting Obama to allow Timmy to fail to allow real reform to the financial system?

Goldman Sachs vs. Taibbi?

Over at Taibblog, Matt Taibbi is as surprised as anyone that Goldman Sachs apparently is considering taking their disenchantment with Taibbi's reporting to an entirely new level.

A well-connected source tells us that Goldman Sachs has weighed suing journalist Matt Taibbi because of his recent criticisms of the bank, most notably his lengthy piece in Rolling Stone, “Inside The Great American Bubble Machine.”

via SOURCE: Goldman Discussed Suing Taibbi.

This is via Business Insider. Apparently Goldman has weighed suing me for… well, I’m not exactly sure what the grounds would be. Being annoying? Covering finance without a nice enough tie?

I seriously doubt they would do something like this, but if they actually have considered such a step, that says a lot about their mentality.

Oh it says to me that Taibbi just might actually be one of the few financial journalists out there doing his job, instead of being a paid mouthpiece. If you haven't read Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece on Goldman Sachs, do yourself a favor. You'll see why the company just might be a little miffed at him.

Of course there's this, this, and this too.

And people wonder why I'm so pessimistic about the economy. It will always be run by assholes at the expense of people like you and me.

A Textbook Case Of Disaster

Via Memeorandum, Ahnold's budget axe means California schools may not be able to purchase new textbooks until 2016.

The state budget that closed a $24-billion gap last month dramatically reduced state spending for textbooks. The state Board of Education won't approve new books for kindergarten through eighth grade until January 2016 at the earliest, and districts have postponed approvals of new high school books as well. A state requirement that districts purchase books within two years of adoption has been waived until 2013.

Additionally, state funding previously earmarked solely for textbooks -- nearly $334 million this year -- can now be spent by school districts for other needs over the next four years, providing flexibility that educators say is essential at a time of severe budget reductions.

But the state's top educator fears these moves put students at a competitive disadvantage.

"We need modern, state-of-the-art textbooks, not outdated, antiquated textbooks," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell. "It could be close to a generation before we see new textbooks."

Others say the decision by the state to postpone textbook adoption and by districts to put off purchases is understandable, although far from ideal.

"There is no really good decision," said David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Assn., which represents 340,000 teachers and other school employees.

"For now this is a good thing, to help preserve some programs and certainly preserve some jobs. It's certainly not something we want to continue -- eventually, we have to get new textbooks."

I don't know about an entire generation, but it's very possible that the same textbooks being used in California's eight grade classrooms today will be the same ones kids born this year will be using when they reach that age. There's a cheery thought, yes? Hopefully advanced in digital and internet technology will help fill the gap, but schools still need textbooks to teach. California parents will of course be called on to help supplement information, apparently.

Twenty-year old textbooks will certainly help California attract new businesses, new jobs, and new tax revenue sources through a knowledgeable population, yes?

Then again the way the economy is going, companies looking to relocate or expand will simply need to look for the state with the best sweetheart deal...or increasingly, another country entirely.

Asking The Wrong Question

David Leonhardt at the NY Times wonders if Helicopter Ben and Timmy have turned the economy around.

What if in the end they got it right?

What if, amid all their missteps and all the harsh criticism, the people in charge of battling the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression — Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson and the rest — basically succeeded?

It is clearly too soon to know for sure. But the evidence is now pointing pretty strongly in one direction: history books may conclude that the financial crisis of 2008 turned out to be far less bad than it could have been and that Washington deserved much of the credit.

The Labor Department announced Friday that the economy lost fewer jobs in July than in any month since before Lehman Brothers collapsed last fall. Credit markets no longer look anything like they did after Lehman’s collapse and are in considerably better shape than just a few months ago. Stocks are up almost 50 percent from their March low. “It’s over,” the economists at Barclays Capital declared Friday, referring to the Great Recession.

The news has been good enough that the Obama administration spent Friday trumpeting its record. More telling, however, is the fact that even Nouriel Roubini, the prophetically pessimistic economist who saw the crisis coming (and doesn’t think the recession has yet ended), is now praising policy makers. He recently urged that Mr. Bernanke be reappointed as Federal Reserve chairman, saying he helped avert a “near depression that seemed highly likely after the financial collapse last fall.”

It's the wrong question to be asking, of course. It's not "Did Team Obama Featuring Hank Paulson get it right?" so much as the real question:

"How much time have they bought us before the next crisis?"

Yes, the solution that was arrived at, pumping massive amounts of cash into the system, the banks, and the hedge funds, did prevent a systemic crisis in 2008 and early 2009. But the fundamental issues that created the crisis still exist. It's going to take years for all this to work through the system, and our consumer-driven economy is going to be limping along for a very long time. Housing and commercial real estate will continue to be major problems, and along with it unemployment. The trillions we're on the hook for should things continue to go bad will eventually bust the economy.

Sometime soon, we'll arrive at another point like last September.

The things that could prevent another systemic crisis are not being done. Real reform in the financial sector is not taking place. Instead, the Fed has simply shifted the liability to banks not deemed Too Big To Fail and to the taxpayer. A total of 72 banks have gone under in 7 months in 2009. Many, many more will follow as the fundamental problems that affected larger banks and were swept under the rug spread to commercial real estate and prime mortgage markets, affecting smaller banks that don't have the political clout on Capitol Hill.

Fannie and Freddie are still losing billions of dollars. Our financial system only still exists because it continues to be propped up by dollars created through Helicopter Ben's Magic Printing Press. They did what they had to do in order for America and the world to survive.

But in the end, all they have really done is kick the can down the road. We don't know how far that can has gone, maybe six months, maybe years, but eventually we will be in the same situation we were in back in 2008...only much, much worse.

Banks and hedge funds have gone back to the same three-card monte games they were playing before the crash. Everyone's excited that the stock index numbers are all going up. We're re-inflating the same Bush Boom Bubble from 2003-2007. Everyone is convinced glory is just around the corner.

It's not. This bubble too will burst, and I think it will erupt sooner rather than later. The growth patterns predicted by the Dow and S&P 500 are simply unsustainable given the fact we're still losing hundreds of thousands of jobs. People don't have houses to use as ATMs anymore and consumers are cutting back on spending across the board, trying desperately to get out of debt. That same debt fueled the growth we saw in the first part of this decade. It's used up, gone, kaput. Time to pay the piper.

Jobs will continue to disappear. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic will not create real economic growth. We're heading into multi-year doldrums at best. At worst, the bottom falls out again.

We have been saved from systemic collapse. But at what future cost?

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Ezra Klein asks "Is This Health-Care Reform's Worst Idea Yet?"

The Senate Finance Committee does not want to propose an employer mandate to promote health-care coverage. But it doesn't want to let employers entirely off the hook, either. So it has come up with one of the worst ideas in recent memory: A so-called "free rider" tax. Under the proposal, employers with more than 50 workers would have to pay the subsidy costs for low-income workers who seek coverage in the Health Insurance Exchanges. But they wouldn't have to pay a dime for higher-income workers who did the same.

You can pretty much see where this is going: workers from low-income families become more expensive than workers from high-income families. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explains, "Employers would have strong incentives to tilt hiring toward people who have a spouse with a good income (or have health coverage through a family member), teenagers whose parents make a decent living, and people without children (since the eligibility limit for the subsidies in the new health insurance exchanges will increase with family size). Low-income women with children in one-earner families would be particularly disadvantaged."

I'd have to agree with Ezra.

Not only would large companies have strong incentives to hire single people with no children to avoid having to pay subsidies, I would think that companies would start having to legally have HR policies in place to have hiring managers ask questions like this before hiring someone as a matter of legal policy, particularly publicly traded companies.

You could then make the very strong case that if a large corporation did not have such a hiring policy in place saying if two candidates are otherwise equal, the job must go to the person that would incur the least amount of subsidies under this law, the company shareholders could conceivably file a class-action suit saying the corporation should in fact do that, else they would be negligent in their duties to shareholders.

Needless to say, the profit motive alone would be enough to motivate corporations to do this, not to mention motivate smaller businesses to keep staffs at no more than exactly 49 people to avoid the problem altogether.

Also, if you have to slash headcount in the department you manage and your employees include a single mother with 4 kids, under that provision whose position would you eliminate first? I can think of all kinds of situations where this would become a serious problem.

Having to miss work to take a child to a doctor's appointment in the morning would become a termination offense, especially in right-to-work states where companies can fire workers for any reason and there's no unions.

The more children you have, the less desirable you are as an employee. They would in fact become liabilities to job seekers. What a great country that would be.

It's Just Unfortunate, You Know

NRO's Jim Garaghty has determined that it's just a darn shame that those crazy liberals see racism against the President everywhere.

I can't help but wonder how many Americans voted for Obama thinking that with an African-American president, the nation would put its bimonthly national racial controversies behind it and focus on other matters that transcended the color line. And now we find ourselves in a circumstance where, if not every criticism of the president is automatically denounced as racism, a significant percentage of them are. Keep in mind there's plenty of legitimate criticism to be made of things such as Joker posters or protesters who try to exercise the heckler's veto; but there is a knee-jerk reflex to label anything inconvenient as racially motivated.

For you see, in the world Jim Garaghty inhabits, pointing out efforts by conservatives to use "reverse racism" as a wedge issue against the President and Sonia Sotomayor time and time and time again simply encourages more of these unfortunate attacks.

In other words, if the dirty f'ckin hippies would just stop considering the racist attacks against the President to be racist, why it would magically stop being an issue because there would be no racist attacks against the President, see?

It's only racist if people consider them to be. Conservatives clearly don't, after all. Why are liberals ruining it for them, the bastards?