Last Call

The postmortems on how Obama has already lost everything are getting annoying.

“He cannot save 2010,” the big-time Democrat is saying of Barack Obama. “It is gone. He must now concentrate on saving 2012. But the biggest fear of some of those close to him is that he might not really want to go on in 2012, that he might not really care.”

In my experience, the big-time Democrat has hardly ever been wrong. He does not dislike President Obama. On the contrary, like most big-time Democrats, he worked hard for his election in 2008 and would much rather see Democrats hold onto Congress this Nov. 2 than lose.

He just doesn’t think it’s going to happen. A few months ago, he told me Democrats could win the House in a squeaker and also retain the Senate. We talked again a few days ago, and things had changed.

“There is going to be a total wipeout, and it is totally going to be in Obama’s lap,” he said. “He should drop plans for Congress and plan for Nov. 3 and what he does next.”

And of course those plans for what Obama should do next are simple: completely capitulate to the GOP and roll back the last 75 years of social programs, civil rights, and declare war on Islam by bombing Iran. Right?

Because anything short of that will lead to impeachment hearings pretty damn quickly under a GOP Congress.

I know it's hard for Roger Simon and the Village to function under any other assumption that Republicans are always right 100% of the time and Democrats are nothing more than a curious, anachronistic relic of democracy kept around as court jesters to whisper "memento mori" at the GOP elite whenever they foul up the country as bad as Bush did.

Apparently the Tea Party is now in charge of that whole "reminding Republicans they too are mortal" thing, and so really the only political parties are A) Republicans and B) Tea Party Republicans, and they forget the rest.

It seems to me that any "big-time Democrat" who is willing to throw in the towel at this point was a Republican to begin with.

Hey, at what point do the Hillary Clinton PUMAs start turning out in droves for the GOP in November to force such a blowout in 2010 that she has to run in 2012?

Won't that be great?

There Are Nooooooo Cats In America

And the streets are paved with cheese!



Also, there are no racists in the Tea Party movement...



...and the streets are paved by magic!

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

ACORN has been defunct for over half a year now, yet 20% of Americans believe ACORN still will "steal the election" for Democrats.  Best part?

Perhaps the most interesting thing about all this is that only 40% of voters definitively say they think ACORN will not steal the election with another 40% saying they're not sure. I guess a lot of folks are just waiting to see if ACORN's really gone away or if it's just hiding in the bushes waiting for people to get complacent before it makes its move.

Sixty percent...3 out of 5 Americans...think there's at least some chance ACORN can steal the election for the Democrats.

Let's go over that again.

A majority of Americans think there's a chance that a defunct organization that has been completely disbanded will still be able to affect the election.  The Republican media campaign to discredit the Democrats as illegitimate has been so successful that most of us now believe in ghosts.

I am increasingly convinced that as a people, we deserve an overwhelmingly powerful Republican Congress that will dismantle everything since the New Deal and return us to Gilded Age serfdom.

Gold Rush, Part 11

Gold hitting yet another record high today...

Gold hit record highs Tuesday to settle above $1,271 an ounce, as the U.S. dollar declined broadly after upbeat data failed to convince investors to shift into risk-linked assets.

Gold is now on course for a 15 percent gain in 2010, fueled largely by investor nervousness stemming from the fallout of the euro zone debt crisis and from economic data that has suggested global economic growth may be losing momentum.  

"May" be losing momentum?  Nice.  People are starting to hedge their bets big time.  Gold jumped almost $30 an ounce today on an idle Tuesday.  The next Fed meeting is next week.  If the Fed is going to announce it will start buying securities in earnest then, all bets are off.

At this point we're just waiting for the trigger that will plunge us right back into September 2008.

The Tyrrany Of The Majority Continues

A new Qunnipiac University poll finds more Americans want to end 14th Amendment citizenship provisions for children of undocumented immigrants.

American voters say 48 – 45 percent that the United States should end the practice of granting citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Voters also say 68 – 24 percent that immigration policy should emphasize stricter enforcement rather than integrating illegal immigrants into U.S. society, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University survey finds.

Democrats favor granting citizenship to children of illegal immigrants 62 – 31 percent. Republicans, by 67 – 27 percent, and independent voters, by 51 – 42 percent, say these children should be denied citizenship. Women split 46 – 46 percent while men oppose this automatic citizenship 51 – 43 percent.

There's also some interesting numbers on Islam in America.

Only 38 percent of American voters have a favorable opinion of Islam, while 40 percent have an unfavorable opinion. But voters say 50 - 27 percent that mainstream Islam is a peaceful religion, rather than a religion which encourages violence to non-Muslims.

The Muslim group has the right to build a mosque and cultural center near Ground Zero, American voters say 70 - 25 percent. But voters say 63 - 28 percent that it is wrong to do so. There is no sub-group which says it is "appropriate" to build the mosque near Ground Zero.

Once again, if you say the Park51 people have the right to build their community center but are not free to exercise that right, then they do not have the right. You cannot have this position without being a complete hypocrite.

Period. And yes, this means I'm calling tens of millions of Americans hypocrites. So be it.

The tyranny of the majority continues. When is it appropriate to exercise your Constitutional rights? Only when the majority says so. That's how America works now. When are you an American? Only when the majority says so.

The Constitution is now secondary to the Court of Public Opinion.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Shorter The Village:

"You know if you damn Liberals went back to your powerless days of 1994, the Republicans would completely stop being insane.  Why can't you Dirty F'cking Hippies just do what the Tea Party wants you to do and shut up already?"

Stick This In Your Pipeline And Smoke It

It's not a question of if another San Bruno gas pipeline disaster will happen in America, but where and how soon.

The tragic explosion of a gas pipeline in a San Francisco suburb has shed light on a problem usually kept underground: Communities have expanded over pipes built decades earlier when no one lived there.

Utilities have been under pressure for years to better inspect and replace aging gas pipes — many of them laid years before sprawling communities were erected around them — that now are at risk of leaking or erupting.

But the effort has fallen short. Critics say the regulatory system is ripe for problems because the government largely leaves it up to the companies to do inspections, and utilities are reluctant to spend the money necessary to properly fix and replace decrepit pipelines.

"If this was the FAA and air travel we were talking about, I wouldn't get on a plane," said Rick Kessler, a former congressional staffer specializing in pipeline safety issues who now works for the Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash.

Investigators are still trying to figure out how the pipeline in San Bruno ruptured and ignited a gigantic fireball that torched one home after another in the neighborhood, killing at least four people. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the pipeline's owner, said Monday it has set aside up to $100 million to help residents recover.

One has to wonder if PG&E would have rather spent that $100 million on inspecting the gas lines before rather than cleaning up the mess later.  The fact is inspection and replacement of buried gas mains like that is expensive and messy.  50 year old pipes in the middle of older neighborhoods where homes and businesses are built up can be a real pain to get to, especially in densely populated urban centers.

But the simple fact of the matter is utility companies are profit based, not safety based.  Skipping on inspections means the company saves money, not to mention laying off safety personnel (you don't need as many.)   It's a short-term gamble most companies are increasingly willing to take, and these companies want the government to back off and mandate fewer inspections.

At some point, government infrastructure investment becomes mandatory.  San Bruno was the result of why.  Infrastructure requires someone to pay for it and to direct it.  If companies aren't going to do it, who will?

Big Dog Versus Rachel

Hey look, Politico's trying to start a fight.  Imagine that.

Bill Clinton flashed irritation at MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and other liberals Monday for failing to appreciate the successes of his presidency.

“One of the leading television commentators on one of our liberal cable channels said I was the best Republican president the country ever produced, which would come [as] quite a surprise to the Republicans, half of whom still think I’m a closet communist,” Clinton said during an appearance with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Clinton didn’t mention Maddow by name, but she made that comment on her March 31 show.

“What she meant by that was I didn’t necessarily follow their ‘conventional wisdom,’” he said. “I said, ‘What do you mean?!’”

Clinton said he accomplished more for the poor and middle class than traditional, New Deal-era liberalism ever could have. He touted his welfare-to-work program, which he said cut the rolls by 60 percent.

“We had 100 times as many people move out of poverty during those eight years [I was president] than the previous 12 years because we had an earned income tax credit, not because we had another traditional anti-poverty program hiring people,” he said.

Big Dog has a point. The man did balance the Federal budget and he did so in a fair manner. It doesn't mean however he didn't pull a few Republican-style things, especially the end of Glass-Steagall.  That was all Clinton and Phil Gramm, and that on Clinton's way out created the bubbles that wrecked our economy over the last ten years, from dot-com madness to the housing bubble to the current meltdown.  All of that came from banks being able to play Big Casino games starting in 2000.

The results from all that (plus Bush's additional spending, plus the spending Obama has started to try to pull us out of the mess) is a massive deficit hole and a national debt approaching $14 trillion now.

None of that would have been possible without Clinton's last year in office.

StupidiNews!

• Embattled Harlem Democrat Charlie Rangel faces multiple primary opponents today in New York.
• A new Pew media study shows that the biggest long-term threats to FOX News's dominance in politics is...Stewart and Colbert.
• California Dem Jerry Brown is apologizing to Bill Clinton over Brown's remarks over the weekend involving Monica Lewinsky.
• Veterans Affairs had a deal with Prudential over lump-sum life insurance payments for over six million soldiers.
• Nintendo's console-defining smash Super Mario Bros. has a super 25th birthday this week.

Last Call

From the Department of Duh:

Hand the wealthiest Americans a tax cut and history suggests they will save the money rather than spend it.

Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich, according to data from Moody’s Analytics Inc. When taxes were raised under Bill Clinton, the saving rate fell.

The findings may weaken arguments by Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who say allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to lapse will prompt them to reduce their spending, harming the economy. President Barack Obama wants to extend the cuts for individuals earning less than $200,000 and couples earning less than $250,000 while ending them for those who earn more.

“I would tend to wonder how much the tax cut actually influences spending behavior,” said Chris Cornell, an economist who mined government reports back to 1989 for West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Moody’s Analytics. “Spending by the top 5 percent of households seems much more closely tied to business- cycle issues than it does to tax-cut issues.”

Shocking, I know. Tax cuts for folks making more than a quarter million a year don't get spent but saved. Great for banks and investment firms, bad for anyone else.

Two things: one, let's not forget that under Obama's plan, everybody still gets the current low tax rates on that first $250,000. Marginal tax rate hikes are just that. Second, the paradox of thrift means that upper bracket tax break gets saved, not put into new capital or new hiring or expansion of business.

Let's also not forget that marginal tax rates historically have been much, much higher than 39.6%. If the wealthiest among us were in a millionaires tax bracket of 50% or more only on income above that million a year, they'd still be paying less taxes than just thirty years ago. From a historical perspective, taxes are the lowest overall in generations.

The Tea Party would have crucified Eisenhower or Nixon. Food for thought.

The Supersonic Stock Market

The stock markets have gone supersonic, literally, as in above the range of hearing:  high frequency, low volume.  The details are really grim:

The latest Abel/Noser analysis has been released and according to the data analytics firm just 112 stocks now account for half of the day's volume, the top 20 stocks account for 26% of all domestic volumes, and the first 1,029 stocks are responsible for 90% of all volume, meaning the remaining 17,349 account for just 10% of all dollar traded. These are also the stocks where HFT will never tread, so if anyone wishes to avoid the HFT marauders, just stay away from the top names. And since the last time we did an update, there have been some notable changes in the top 10 most traded names: in June, courtesy of the GOM catastrophe, BP and Exxon were solidly in the most traded stocks. Since then they have fallen way down in the listing, having been replaced with two other M&A candidates, HP and Potash, in 7th and 10th place, respectively. Intel has also done a great job of getting raped daily by HFTs, moving up from 19th place, to 8th. Yet not surprisingly, as the total volume of shares has fallen off a cliff since June, the 16th most active stock, Google, just barely makes the $1 billion in principal traded day cutoff at 16th place, while in June, all of the top 20 names were trading above $1.2 billion notional daily. And once again, just like every other month, the most actively traded security continues to be the SPY. As ever more of the volume is concentrated among fewer and fewer stocks, it is certain that one day, when a top 10 name crashes, will crash the the entire market, which continues to trade near record-high implied correlations.

And a lot of that is coming from the fact that only the Big Casino investors are left.  Everyone else has gotten out of the market, particularly hedge funds.  Outflows from the stock market are reaching critical levels.  The Fed is inflating the balloon as fast as it can, because at this point any sort of real downtick to the market is going to be a 400 point drop.   We're approaching maximum melt-up territory here.  Treasury keeps dumping in action to keep the Dow going up and the few folks who are left are following along.  Everyone else is off the roller coaster or worse, playing buy and hold.

The Fed's got to keep the markets going until Election Day.  Then again it was just about this point two years ago that John McCain lost the election so who knows.  If things get out of hand and the market breaks, well, all bets are off.

It's only a question of when the hammer falls.

Nate Reads The Tea Leaves

Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight still has the GOP winning the House back by a small but significant margin, but the GOP runs into real trouble taking the Senate back depending on how tomorrow's primaries shake out in Delaware and New Hampshire.

The primaries in Delaware and New Hampshire have implications far beyond their borders. The forecast model that we ran last week gave Republicans a 26 percent chance of taking over the Senate – and enough states are tossups that they would be well within reach of doing so if the elections were held today. But this forecast was based on a weighted average likelihood of various candidates winning their primaries – for example, we had estimated that Ms. O’Donnell had a 25 percent chance of prevailing in Delaware, and Mr. Lamontange a 30 percent chance of doing so in New Hampshire – leaving Mr. Castle and Ms. Ayotte as the favorites.

If Ms. O’Donnell and Mr. Lamontange were both to win their primaries, however, the Republican chances of a Senate takeover would fall to just 16 percent, according to the model. Conversely, if Mr. Castle and Ms. Ayotte were to win, Republicans chances would rise to 30 percent. Thus, Republican prospects of claiming the Senate could be nearly halved if both the insurgent candidates were to prevail. They would still have a chance of doing so — but it might require them to expand the playing field further, like to West Virginia or Connecticut, where the Democratic candidates are clear favorites but not prohibitive ones – or to perform a quick makeover on a candidate like Ms. O’Donnell, who is unlikely to make a good first impression with moderate and independent voters.

The question is will the Hoffman Effect put the Senate out of reach for the GOP?   It may not matter too much in the end.  The GOP can still filibuster legislation with 41 votes, or it can do so with 47 or 48, the outcome to Obama's agenda is the same.  And if the GOP does take back the House, then from a legislative position, the paralyzing gridlock and endless investigations will preclude anything getting through as legislation anyway.

In the end, it may not matter much at all.  But it could.  Every vote counts.  The Tea Party insurgents definitely come up losers in the general, and we're going to see more and more of that, especially in the Senate this year.  How many remains to be seen.

Mitch Pitches A Fit(ch)

GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is throwing a screaming hissy fit at the notion that Orange Julius is caving on tax cuts for the rich, and he's having none of it.

I have no idea what the strategy will be from the Democratic leadership, but it doesn't appear especially complicated. Step 1: bring a bill to the floor that would permanently lower the rates for families making $250,000 or less. Step 2: dare Republicans to kill it.

It's a rather classic game of chicken. Republicans think they have the advantage, because they're in a position to block lower rates for the middle-class unless Dems go along with breaks for the wealthy. Democrats think they have the advantage because their plan is more popular, and because they'll blame Republicans for blocking middle-class tax cuts during an election season.

Republicans will say, "Give us everything we demand or tax rates will go up on everyone." Democrats will say, "Um, voters? The other guys are holding Obama's middle-class tax breaks hostage because they're worried about millionaires and billionaires."

The fact that McConnell's spokesperson "declined to say whether all 41 Republicans would support a filibuster" was interesting. It may be because the Minority Leader's office hasn't taken the caucus' temperature on this yet, and just can't say for sure.

But it sets up an interesting showdown -- are Republicans really prepared to filibuster middle-class tax breaks shortly before voters head to the polls? I know plenty of congressional Dems are afraid of this fight, but they should be approaching the debate with more confidence than trepidation.

Retiring Ohio Sen. George Voinovich is the Republican going along on Obama's jobs measures.  It would be nice if he stayed for the tax cut fun too.   Still, this can't be sitting well with the Tea Party folks much, either.  Orange Julius is playing smart, but Mitch hasn't changed his tune at all.  Who's going to be right?

Drilling For Derangement

And the NY Post's Joe Mason has hit a gusher of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

The president and many in Congress are using this year's catastrophe in the Gulf to push for sweeping, unrelated measures that would punish not only the US oil and gas industry but the American economy as a whole.

Just last week, President Obama explicitly targeted the industry for two massive tax hikes. First, he'd ban oil and gas companies from using the "Section 199" tax credit, a measure for domestic manufacturers enacted in 2004 to boost US employment. (The Senate is set to vote this week on its version of the ban.) Second, he wants to end "dual capacity" protection for US energy firms.

Without this shield against double taxation on foreign revenues, American companies would be competing on an uneven global playing field. Again, Obama aims directly and specifically at the US oil and gas industry.

Yet, by the federal government's own economic model, these tax hikes would lead to huge, immediate job losses. I ran the numbers through the Commerce Department's RIMS II model; it shows, under the proposed changes to Section 199 and dual capacity, Americans would almost immediately lose more than 150,000 stable, private-sector jobs.

Wow, an immediate loss of 150,000 jobs from passing the oil drilling safety bill!  It's chaos!  Worst President ever!  Just like he cost the Gulf Coast hundreds of thousands of jobs with his drilling moratorium...

Oh wait.  Except that didn't happen.

When the Obama administration called a halt to virtually all deepwater drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout and fire in April, oil executives, economists and local officials complained that the six-month moratorium would cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Oil supply firms went to court to have the moratorium overturned, calling it illegal and warning that it would exacerbate the nation’s economic woes, lead to oil shortages and cause an exodus of drilling rigs from the gulf to other fields around the world. Two federal courts agreed.

Yet the worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields. 

So ending the tax credit these oil companies are getting at the expense of you and me will immediately cost 150,000 American jobs?  Really?  One of those most profitable industries on Earth is complaining that they'll have to cut jobs if they can't make money?  Exxon Mobil made $7.5 billion profit just in the second quarter. We're supposed to buy that line of crap that the industry will cut 150,000 jobs if they lose their sweetheart deal on tax breaks?

Right.  They think you're stupid.

I Don't Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

Delaware Tea Party Senate hopeful Christine O'Donnell apparently isn't aware of the definition of the word "appeal".

Christine O'Donnell says she has an election strategy -- and it includes appealing to those die-hard PUMAs who wanted to see Hillary Clinton elected president in 2008.

"I do want to point out that we have broad based support, we've got a lot of Hillary Democrats working behind us -- with us -- because they're frustrated with what this administration is doing," O'Donnell (R-DE) said this morning on Fox News.

O'Donnell, now just slightly ahead of Rep. Mike Castle in a poll of Republican primary voters who will decide a nominee for Senate tomorrow, complained that national Republicans and the Delaware GOP aren't giving her a fair chance. She said that when voters and party officials get to know her they will see she can win the general election by reaching out to independents. And, presumably, those Clinton voters.

She didn't say if she's gotten those Democrats to actually switch parties, since the primary tomorrow is closed and you must be a Republican to take part.

Apparently, her definition of appeal means "Convince Hillary Clinton voters to jump parties and become a Republican just to nominate an anti-feminist, anti-sex, gay-bashing, liberal-hating Christian Dominionist nutjob to the Senate."



Last time I checked, that was actually the definition of the word "delusional". But hey, as the Rumpies point out, what happens when delusional meets "completely wrong about everything"? Something has to give...