Last Call

As a good friend of mine said today on the Discovery Channel building hostage mess:

This guy is nuttier than a jar of Planter's peanuts. No doubt the Left will blame him on the Right, because one point is anti-immigration. No doubt the Right will blame him on the Left, because all the other points are pro-environment. In the meantime, he'll just keep wallowing in his thirty seven unique flavors of CRAZY.

I'm hoping that the lesson here is that times are bad enough that trying to use horrible events like this to attack another group's political agenda is benefiting precisely nobody.  Crazy and dangerous is crazy and dangerous, period.

Moose Tracks Of Clay

People don't like it when you reveal their heroes are human.  They like it even less when you reveal those heroes are flawed.

Few aspects of Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential candidacy have been more discussed than the $150,000 worth of clothing and accessories bought by the Republican National Committee’s coordinated campaign fund on behalf of the candidate and her family in 2008. Yet interviews with campaign aides and internal campaign e-mails and documents obtained exclusively by Vanity Fair shed new light on the situation, revealing Palin to have been more innocent at the start of this shopping odyssey than has previously been reported—and more knowing and more calculating as time went on.

Initially, Palin objected to the very idea of clothing being purchased for her to wear at the Republican National Convention. When she was first presented with a $3,500 jacket, an aide recalls, the price tag sent her into shock: “I don’t spend that much money on my clothes in a year,” Palin said. “I will not do this.” Aides decided, in future, to cut off the price tags, so Palin wouldn’t quite know how much was being spent. But eventually, they say, Palin grew accustomed to the privilege of a designer wardrobe—not only for herself but also for her family.

Small town girl captured by the big spotlights aside, while the right is more than happy for Palin to be "Real America's dream girl", they're much less sure about her actually running for President...even in Alaska.

Alaska may be known for its freewheeling individualism and rugged pickup truck conservatism, but a new poll on possible GOP presidential candidates for 2012 shows Alaskans giving the nod to button-down Mitt Romney over Sarah Palin in her own backyard.

The former Massachusetts governor was the choice of 20 percent of 805 Republicans surveyed, according to figures released today by Public Policy Polling. Palin, who resigned as governor of Alaska a year ago, and Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, garnered 17 percent each, with Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the US House, at 16 percent, and Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas, at 10 percent.

Not a good sign for Les Mooserables.  Perhaps Alaskans are a little sore about the last time they voted her into office and she quit to go make Discovery Channel specials instead.

Teach The Young So That They May Follow

Way to go, responsible adults like Newt Gingrich, Pam Geller, and Sarah Palin!  You provide such great examples for America's kids on how Americans should act!

Five teenagers have been arrested for disrupting religious services at a mosque in upstate New York after allegedly driving by the mosque during Ramadan services, honking their horns and firing a shotgun.

The five, who are all 17 and 18, have allegedly driven by the World Sufi Foundation mosque in Carlton, N.Y., during Ramadan services twice over the past week, yelling obscenities.

Last Friday, one of them also fired a shotgun into the ground. No one was hurt. He was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, a felony; the others have only been charged with disrupting religious services, a misdemeanor, but more charges are expected.

Then, on Monday, when the teens drove by screaming and honking their horns, members of the mosque came running outside. One member was swiped by one of their cars and was treated for cuts and bruises. Prosecutors say they are investigating whether the member ran into the car or the driver swerved into him. 

How long do you think it'll take for the right to claim that Obama had his fascist brownshirts arrest these true-blue Islamophobic Real American kids, eh?

Bonus question:  how fast would a nice horde of folks descend on these children and their families if they were Muslim kids harassing a church service?  With a shotgun?

My lord.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

 

Ta-Nehisi Coates wins the Internet today.

More McMath McFail

Megan McArdle takes one look at this chart:



And freaks out.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has made some splashes with this graph. I find this strangely unconvincing as a policy argument for anything.

For starters, the 0.7% of GDP that it covers only matches the shortfall for a brief period, at least according to the Social Security Trustees report. By the middle-to-late twenties, the shortfall is more than twice the amount of the Bush tax cuts on the rich. Even if we hadn't already (hopefully) earmarked this money for something else, this would be at best a stopgap measure; the program would rapidly begin putting more pressure on the budget.

It takes Ezra Klein all of 15 seconds or so to take McMegan apart.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has posted a response that's pretty persuasive, and suggests that McArdle misread one of the underlying CBO documents. So I'm calling this one for CBPP, at least for the moment.


But that leaves us with McArdle's second point: "While it is perhaps true that you could 'pay for' the Social Security shortfall by rescinding the Bush tax cuts on the rich," she writes, "that would leave a gaping budget deficit that would then have to be paid for in some other way." Well, yes. The contention is that there are better ways to pay down the deficit than raising the Social Security retirement age or cutting benefits.

People like to look at Social Security in isolation, and they routinely say there's no way we can possibly afford the program as currently constructed. The point of the comparison to the Bush tax cuts for the rich is that that's simply not true. The same people saying we can't afford Social Security's shortfall are saying we can afford tax cuts of the same size. Both things can't be true.

You know when I first saw that graph yesterday I figured "Well gosh, that's a pretty simple point."  Yes the SS shortfall will get bigger, but hey, so will the shortfall from the reduced tax revenue over the years.  Ezra's point stands pretty firmly clear here:  you can't have it both ways.

Tax cuts = revenue shortfall.  Ask any state or local budget person.  They actually have to balance their numbers.

Birther Of A Nation, Again

It's one thing to be a nutcase like Orly Taitz and make a cottage industry out of suing the President over his "long-form birth certificate" and whatnot, and people like Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin, who chose to face court martial over not believing his Commander-In-Chief was born in Hawaii.

But it's entirely something else to see a retired three-star general like Tom McInerney back the crazy.  Dave Weigel:

How wild is McInerney's statement? This wild:

[I]t is my opinion that LTC Lakin's request for discovery relating to the President's birth records in Hawaii is absolutely essential to determining not merely his guilt or innocence but to reassuring all military personnel once and for all for this President whether his service as Commander in Chief is Constitutionally proper. He is the one single person in the Chain of Command that the Constitution demands proof of natural born citizenship. This determination is fundamental to our Republic, where civilian control over the military is the rule. According to our Constitution, the Commander in Chief must now, in the face of serious-- and widely held-- concerns that he is ineligible, either voluntarily establish his eligibility by authorizing release of his birth records or this court must authorize their discovery. The invasion of his privacy in these records is utterly trivial compared to the issues at stake here. 

And is McInerney a serious person? Yes. He's a West Point graduate who ran the Alaskan air command during the Exxon Valdez disaster. As recently as August 5, he was featured on Fox News and referred to as a network contributor -- he's typically referred to as a network military analyst. He writes and comments fairly frequently about how America could bomb Iran. Point is, he's not some kook, and now he's staking his reputation on... this.

This is now getting beyond crazy deep into dangerous territory on the birther stuff, folks.  Orly Taitz was a harmless annoyance.  Generals doubting Obama is ineligible for command authority over the military is a serious, serious provocation.

It's not a game anymore.

Not All Obama Derangement Syndrome Is Aimed At Barack

It's all about his wife, too.

Tom Tancredo isn't going away. The former congressman and one-time presidential candidate may have upended the Colorado gubernatorial race with his third-party run, but he's still not shy to air his controversial views on national issues. In a phone interview with TPM, Tancredo discussed the gubernatorial race, the Cordoba House project, and what he really fears about Obama. He also referenced a long-standing urban legend about the Obamas' supposed war on Christmas.

"I remember a little thing, like Ms. Obama saying she didn't want any Christian artifacts in the White House during Christmas time," Tancredo said. Another problem, Tancredo said, is "hosting Ramadan events there."

Tancredo's recitation of the urban myth about Michelle Obama disdaining Christmas is just one of several instance of Tancredo ascribing an otherness to the Obamas.

Boy I remember when those mean, nasty liberals completely ripped into Laura Bush for wanting kids to be healthier and for showing knowledge of religions other than Christianity, called her "food police" and "political correctness maven" and all that...

...oh wait, except Laura Bush and the Bush family were out of bounds, unlike Democratic presidents and their families.  Funny how that works.

Beijing Calling...Or Not

As of today, September 1, you need an ID to get a mobile phone in China.

China began requiring identification on Wednesday from anyone purchasing a new mobile phone number in what it says is a bid to stamp out rampant junk messages but that some say gives the government a new tool for monitoring its citizens.

The rules apply to everyone, including foreigners visiting China for a short stay, the China Daily newspaper reported.

The paper said the regulation was "the latest campaign by the government to curb the global scourge of spam, pornographic messages and fraud on cellular phones."

But some say China is looking for a way to track people who might spontaneously join protests. Users could previously buy low-cost mobile phone SIM cards anonymously with cash at convenience stores and newspaper stands and use them right away.

"I think the government has an eye on Iran where protests were fueled by text messages and Twitter and they are doing this for social stability reasons," said Wang Songlian, research coordinator with the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

That's part of the issue of course, but the real problem is China's not the only government cracking down on digital anonymity.  Mobile phones, texting, twitter, the Internet, all of it allows people to communicate on the go and on the fly, and without having to sign your John Hancock to it.

Governments don't like this, including our own here in the states.  Of course, we'd use the excuse "We're cracking down on terrorist communication tools" if legislation like that passed here, which I'm thinking it soon will.

Will The GOP Ground Helicopter Ben?

Count on it, says Stan Collender.

Ben Bernanke may have painted a big bullseye on the Federal Reserve when he spoke last week in Jackson, Wyoming, about the Fed providing additional stimulus if the economy needs it.

Although he wasn’t specific about what it might do and when it might do it, Bernanke clearly indicated that the Fed was ready to use the tools it had at it’s disposal to stimulate the economy given that (1) the recovery was not as robust as he thought it should be and (2) that additional fiscal policy stimulus measures were unlikely to be enacted in the current politics-of-obstruction political environment. As the minutes of its August meeting, which were released today, confirmed, Bernanke was definitely talking for a majority of the board of governors.

 

It’s not at all clear, however, whether Bernanke realizes that the same political pressure that has brought fiscal policy to a standstill in Washington is very likely to be applied to the Fed if it decides to move forward. With Republican policymakers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory this November, there is every reason to expect that the GOP will be equally as opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better, and that Republicans will openly and virulently criticize the Fed for even thinking about it. The criticism is likely to come both before any action is taken to try to stop it from happening and afterwards to make the Fed think twice about doing more.

At this point the worse the economy gets, the more political power the GOP stands to gain in November.  It just so happens that the correlation between the two is a coincidence, of course, and that the Republicans would never try to actively sabotage the economy or anything, right?

Not like they've tried to limit as much of the recovery as they could while ignoring Bush's spending or anything.

The Post-Mortems Begin

Nate Silver asks "How did the Democrats get here?"

We talked this morning about the Democrats’ poor electoral position — already shaky, it is probably now deteriorating further — but we haven’t talked as much about why they’re in this predicament. This is for a good reason: once you get past the premise that the state of the economy plays a large role (something that pretty much everyone would agree with) this is a very difficult question to answer.

The reasons for the Democrats’ decline are, as we say in the business, overdetermined. That is, there are no lack of hypotheses to explain it: lots of causes for this one effect. The economy? Sure. Unpopular legislation like health care? Yep. Some “bad luck” events like the Gulf Oil Spill? Mmm-hmm. The new energy breathed into conservatives by the Tea Party movement? Uh-huh.

And this hardly exhausts the theories. An inexperienced White House which has sometimes been surprisingly inept at coping with the 24/7 media cycle? The poor optics associated with Democrats having had a filibuster-proof majority in theory, but not always in practice? All of the above.

These causes can’t be so easily untangled on the basis of polling evidence; there’s really no basis on which to evaluate the competing hypotheses. This is particularly so given that different types of political events aren’t isolated from one another — health care might have been unpopular, for instance, but the reason for its unpopularity may ultimately have been the economy.

Nate's touching the actual reason, but argues that it's a number of reasons, objectively.  Of course, from the Jane Hamsher/Firebagger perspective, only one thing mattered.

Rather than focus on jobs creation in a country with climbing unemployment rates, Obama spent the better part of a year focused on passing a health care bill that looks like it will play no small part in the Democratic Party’s upcoming electoral woes.

Well, we warned you.

Jane's wrong too in a sense but she too is close.   Steve M. has a good point on this.

But I don't think it's the specifics of the bill that are hurting the Democrats. They didn't have the firepower to defend any bill, and didn't realize they needed firepower.

And I also think it's the failure on jobs that's really killing Democrats. If jobs were coming back, Democrats would hold the House and Senate this fall, health care bill or not.

And again this is close but not the answer.

That of course was the fact that the stimulus was too small to get the economy back on track.  I've been saying that for 18 months now, and all the woes that Obama and the Democrats are going through can be directly traced back to half-assing the stimulus package in order to get something...anything...passed.  The car got halfway up the hill, and now it's sliding back down towards that ditch.  If the stimulus had been larger at the outset, it may have worked.  We'll never know.

Conventional Wisdom says the problem will soon belong back to the Republicans, at any rate.

Piece Talks, Peace Talks

President Obama shifts gears from Iraq to Israel today with Mideast peace talks in Washington today and tomorrow.  Special Envoy George Mitchell is hopeful, at least.

Former Sen. George Mitchell, Obama's special envoy for Middle East Peace, told reporters at a briefing Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are paying close attention to polls in the Mideast which show fear there will be many more years of intense conflict if negotiations over a two-state solution collapse.

"Now, I believe that it is an awareness of these and other realities by the two leaders and their leadership that there is a window of opportunity," said Mitchell. "A moment in time within which there remains the possibility of achieving the two-state solution, which is so essential to comprehensive peace in the region, that -- difficult as it may be for both leaders, and we recognize that difficulty for both of them -- the alternatives for them and the members of their societies pose far greater difficulties and far greater problems in the future."

Several top officials close to the negotiations said it is hard to be optimistic about a peace deal right now, but hope springs eternal because at least the Israelis and Palestinians are meeting again after a year and a half of stalled talks. And Obama is getting more personally invested in the process this week because achieving a deal is one of his administration's top foreign policy goals.

Well, that's nice and all but Netanyahu figures he's going to get a much better deal starting in about, oh, two months and some change from a much more "Israel-friendly" Congress. All he has to do is mouth the words and count on the GOP to cut Obama off at the knees after November.  The reality is this isn't going anywhere.

Hey, at least they're talking again however, right?

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Earl may brush the North Carolina Outer Banks as soon as tomorrow evening.
• Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has conceded in her close battle with Joe Miller in the Republican Senate primary.
• The nation's 50 biggest job-cutting CEOs earned a combined $600 million in 2009 and eliminated over half a million jobs.
• With subsidies ending on Japanese car production, the Toyota Prius may be the biggest loser.
• "Cannibal bacteria" could lead to new treatments and cures for diseases according to scientists.

Last Call

Obama talks about "turning a page" in Iraq.

President Obama declared that "the American combat mission in Iraq has ended" in his prime-time address Tuesday.


"Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country," he said.

Obama said the winding down of the war in Iraq means it's time for citizens to unite and build a better life for all Americans.

"Our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work," he said in his nationwide address from the Oval Office.

"... This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people and my central responsibility as president."

The president said ending the war in Iraq is in the United States' best interest and "it is time to turn the page."

Obama said he has spoken with former President George W. Bush about moving forward on Iraq's future.

Hard to turn the page when they are stuck together due to being soaked in blood, man.  Still, Obama's at least not giving in to the Republican demands to "give Bush credit for winning the war".  Bush only deserved credit for starting this unconscionable mess in the first place.

We'll see.  Now, about that economy...

In Which Zandar Wonders What Yglesias Is Smoking

...because it's clearly some primo product, man.

I’m a firm believer in the link between higher levels of immigration and higher average living standards for native-born people. But I recognize that this remains controversial. Something that certainly shouldn’t be controversial is the fairly obvious point that if we allowed more immigrants to come to the United States this would bolster home price values in a clearer and more sustainable way than any kind of crazy patchwork of tax breaks. Right now we have more houses than households, if we had more immigrants we’d have more households. We’d work off the excess inventory more quickly, and be closer to the day when home construction returns as a viable economic sector.

Umm, Matt, I dunnae have a Ph.D. or anything, but even I've got it pegged that the problem isn't "number of people in the country" but "number of households earning a wage that allows for the purchase of a home on mortgage".

The bar to home ownership is price and wage, not number of people in the market.  Unless this plan is somehow limited to "visas that allow people who are wealthy enough to buy houses outright to encourage them to move, live, and work here" into the country, I'm gonna go with that this is pushing on a string.

What we need is more jobs with better-paying wages, not more people inside the US.

Gold Rush, Part 10

Gold's been kicking around the $1,200 mark now for a couple months, but the latest economic numbers have people heading into the yellow stuff and hoping the elevator reaches $1,500 or more.

Investors are accumulating enough bullion to fill Switzerland’s vaults twice over as gold’s most- accurate forecasters say the longest rally in at least nine decades has further to go no matter what the economy holds.


Analysts raised their 2011 forecasts more than for any other precious metal the past two months, predicting a 10th annual advance, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The most widely held option on gold futures traded in New York is for $1,500 an ounce by December, or 18 percent more than the record $1,266.50 reached June 21. Holdings through bullion-backed exchange-traded products are already at more than 2,075 metric tons, within 0.1 percent of the all-time high.

“Either a swift economic recovery or further dismal economic performance should bring new buyers into the market,” said Eugen Weinberg, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt who was the most accurate forecaster in the first quarter and expects the metal to rise as high as $1,400 next year. “A stronger economy would create more jewelry demand. If the economy stays weak or gets worse, then investors will be looking for a safe haven.” 

Gold today has bounced up towards $1,250.  I do see that June 21 mark of $1,266.50 falling pretty soon, but again like any bubble gold's got to pop some time.

Doesn't mean it will be soon however.   Gold's been ramping up since 9/11 when it was around $300 an ounce.  It could have a long way to go, or not.  It does mean however that people are getting out of stocks, currencies, and bonds, and that's the important thing.

Darn Good Conway

Not sure if this is the best plan of attack for Jack Conway, touting his credentials as an elected official (in this case this ad about his tenure as a strict law and order drug warrior as Kentucky's AG) given the country's anti-incumbent mood right now and Rand Paul's "outsider cred".

On the other hand, Kentucky is a state where Democrats run as relatively sane Reagan Republicans, and Republicans run as completely insane Ron Paul Libertarians.

Democratic nominee Jack Conway has a new ad in the Kentucky Senate race, touting the support of the state Fraternal Order of Police -- and declaring that he's "darn good" at his job as state Attorney General.

"Jack Conway is the chief law enforcement officer for Kentucky and a darn good one," says Calloway County Sheriff Bill Marcum. Notably, the ad also points to Conway's record in a major drug bust in the state, which nabbed 518 people. As the Conway camp's press release says: "Conway's record stands in stark contrast to that of opponent Rand Paul, who has come under fire for saying illegal drugs aren't a 'real pressing issue' in Kentucky."

Still, sticking Rand Paul on the "Let the states deal with meth labs and leave the Feds out of it" seems to actually be working for Conway.  We'll see.

Bully For You

The human capacity for justification is a truly amazing thing.  Seems Focus on the Family is worried that trying to help schools prevent bullies from harassing students over being gay is of course, turning kids gay.  Or something.

Candi Cushman, an education analyst for the James Dobson-founded group, told The Denver Post this weekend that gay rights advocates have inserted their agenda into anti-bullying efforts, at the expense of Christian values.

"We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric to introduce their viewpoints, while the viewpoint of Christian students and parents are increasingly belittled," Cushman told the Post.

In an email to TPM, Cushman expanded her argument. "Listing certain categories creates a system ripe for reverse discrimination, sending the message that certain characteristics are more worthy of protection than others," she said.

Cushman's argument has two levels: first, she says anti-bullying efforts wrongly put the focus on the "characteristics of the victim" instead of the "wrong actions of the bullies." Second, she thinks that gay rights activists are using the whole issue to sneak their agenda into the nation's schools.

She denounced the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

"In many cases, these politicized bullying policies are being used as tools to undermine parental rights," she said, "and censor or marginalize students and parents with differing viewpoints."

Look, it's hard enough being a teenager in this completely screwed up America we live in right now.  It was agonizing being different in the 80's and early 90's when I grew up, but I was just the tuba-playing nerdy fat kid who kept blowing the school test curves in science classes.  I was lucky, the school's AD was a good friend of my grandfather's and the soccer and wrestling coach lived a couple doors down from us, so people left me alone.  It's got to be full-scale war these days for anyone who has to deal with homosexuality on top of it all.

Now people are actually saying "Your campaign to stop bullies is really advocating your deviance"?  Really?  Trying to stop bullies is "undermining parental rights"?

What's the alternative?  Saying "Well son, I understand he beat the crap out of you, but really you're interfering with his right not to be around anyone who's gay.  You're making him uncomfortable" or something?  Really?

The advocation of bigotry is one thing.  Doing so and using school bullies as an excuse, giving the implication that some of the reasons they may have to attack students are justified, is entirely something else.  Or do we forget when school bullying over sexuality turns fatal?

Bridge too far, guys.

Enemies Both Foreign And Domestic (Mostly Domestic)

Our old friends the Minutemen are back in the news and they've got a new battle to fight:  American Muslims!

In an e-mail last week, the Minuteman PAC used an attack on Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) to fundraise against his re-election campaign, referring to Carson as an "Islamist" who is "championing Islam, the Ground Zero Mosque and Sharia law in America!"

The release, sent out by political arm of the more-grassroots Minuteman Movement, also accused Carson of being funded by "terror-linked Islamists," and of having ties to Louis Farrakhan, who the release describes as "an extremist black Muslim who spews vile racial hatred and virulent anti-Semitism whenever he gets the chance!" It requests donations to help Minuteman PAC defeat Carson.

Carson, one of two Muslim representatives currently serving in Congress, has come out strongly in support of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, asking: "Are we a country of laws and principles? Or are we a country who will be moved by the winds of emotion each and every time there are issues that come up to divert us from the true meaning and intent of the founding fathers?"

But the Minuteman PAC has also found a way to tie recent wave of Islamophobia to its raison d'être. One of the "projects" featured on its website is called "Third Jihad Watch," and a post about it describes how "nothing makes the U.S. more vulnerable to another 9-11 attack like open borders."

"The threat of terrorism has no borders," it says. "No one is safeguarded against the deadly threat that terrorism poses around the world."

It's getting tiresome.  I understand the root cause of the unrest in the country is the economy and much of this is misdirected and projected anger coming from those looking for anyone to scapegoat for America's unemployment situation.

But you have to admire the wingers, instead of directing anger at the banks that nearly wrecked out economy playing Big Casino games with trillions is CBOs and derivatives, we're going after Muslims instead.

Now the Minutemen want in on the action and they're going after Andre Carson because, of course, he has to be a terrorist if he's a Muslim.

It's depressing.

Too Little, Too Late

Obama did get around to mentioning another jobs initiative in the coming weeks in his Rose Garden speech yesterday.

"So, as Congress prepares to return to session, my economic team is hard at work in identifying additional measures that could make a difference in both promoting growth and hiring in the short term, and increasing our economy’s competitiveness in the long term. Steps like extending the tax cuts for the middle class that are set to expire this year. Redoubling our investment in clean energy and R&D. Rebuilding more of our infrastructure for the future. Further tax cuts to encourage businesses to put their capital to work creating jobs here in the United States. And I’ll be addressing these proposals in further detail in the days and weeks to come."

I'm sure he'll make a big show of shuffling money around.  He may even be able to scrape up $20 billion or so for some new initiatives before the election.  It's not going to be anywhere near large enough to help.

At this point Obama needs to go for broke with a major brand new stimulus package.  No, it will not get passed.  Let it be on the Republicans for blocking it weeks before an election on the economy.  At this point the House is lost and the Senate is all but gone depending on who you ask.  Exactly what does Obama lose politically by trying to pull out all the stops here?  Conventional wisdom is that he's doomed anyway.

As Booman said, make the election the Obama stimulus package against Republicans doing nothing.  Go down swinging at least.

Limit Break

So how's that massive IMF-backed European bailout of Greece going, anyway?  Surely everything's fine, right?

Back in April, when we discussed the inception of the IMF's then brand new New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) $500 billion credit facility, we asked rhetorically, "If the IMF believes that over half a trillion in short-term funding is needed imminently, is all hell about to break loose." A month later the question was answered, as Greece lay smoldering in the ashes of insolvency, and the developed world was on the hook for almost a trillion bucks to make sure the tattered eurozone remained in one piece (leading to such grotesque abortions as Ireland, whose cost of debt is approaching 6%, funding Greek debt at 5%). Well, if that was the proverbial canary in the coalmine, today the entire flock just keeled over and died: today the IMF announced it "expanded and enhanced its lending tools to help contain the occurrence of financial crises." As a result, the IMF has as of today extended the duration of its existing Flexible Credit Line (FCL) to two years, concurrently removing the borrowing cap on this facility, which previously stood at 1000 percent of a member’s IMF quota, in essence making the FCL a limitless credit facility, to be used to rescue whomever, at the sole discretion of the IMF's overlords. Additionally, as the FCL has some make believe acceptance criteria (and with countries such as Poland, Columbia, and Mexico having had access to it, these must certainly be sky high), the IMF is introducing a brand new credit facility, the Precautionary Credit Line (PCL), which will be geared for members with "sound policies [which just happen to need an unlimited source of rescue funding] who nevertheless may not meet the FCL’s high qualification requirements." In other words everyone. In yet other words, the IMF as of today, has a limitless facility to bail out anyone in the world, without a maximum bound in how much is lendable. One wonders who would be stupid enough to take advantage of the gullibility of IMF's biggest backers (the US), to borrow an infinite amount of money for any reason whatsoever... And just what all this means for the imminent explosion of the amount of money in circulation...Not to mention the brand new Ben Bernanke smokescreen of having a new justification to print a few trillion dollars when Europe unexpectedly collapses yet again.

Oh.  Well then.  That explains it.   Limitless borrowing from the IMF to prevent any sort of sovereign debt crisis, eh?  Gosh, that's not a huge flashing red alert signal about where Europe is heading or anything.