Last Call

Oh for crying out loud.

There are few stranger political bedfellows than conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and liberal blogger Jane Hamsher. But the two joined forces on Wednesday to call for the resignation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, in a letter they penned to Attorney General Eric Holder.

...what the Rumpies said.  I mean honestly.  As much as I'd like to see Rahmbo taken down a notch for his "we're dealin!" mentality, this is soooooo not the answer.

Sure, I'll Play

Betty Cracker and the Instaputz crew have given their Top 5 people who need to simply smeg off in 2010.

I'll go with mine:

1. John McCain.  Nobody gives a damn about what you have to say about Washington except for the people who book MTP.  Flying Spaghetti Monster willing, you'll be primaried out of a job in 2010.
2. Cokie Roberts.  You're an annoying clueless chucklehead on NPR every Monday morning on my drive into work.  Honestly NPR, my donations should be paying for better Washington insider concern trolling.  Fire her ass already.
3. William A. "Col. Mustard" Jacobsen.  This guy's a law professor with a public blog?  Really?  I'd rather take legal advice from Lionel Hutz.  Specious, easily annihilated arguments for the loss.
4. Joe Scarborough  Why does this guy have a show still?  It's like MSNBC has some sort of unwritten rule that Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and KO have to be balanced by this chode.  You have PAT BUCHANAN for that.
5. Rand Paul  Look, Kentucky, if you vote this chowderhead in as Senator, I will have to Do Something.  Mongiardo, Conway, even Trey Greyson I can deal with.  But not this guy.
   

2010 needs some serious smackies administered.

More Useful Idiots Carrying Water For The GOP

Politico's team is reporting that the White House "doesn't expect" the health care reform bill to get to Obama's desk until well after the State of the Union, allowing the White House to make a "hard pivot" to jobs legislation in January in the meantime.

The White House privately anticipates health care talks to slip into February — past President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address — and then plans to make a “very hard pivot” to a new jobs bill, according to senior administration officials.

Obama has been told that disputes over abortion and the tight schedule are highly likely to delay a final deal, a blow to the president, who had hoped to trumpet a health care victory in his big speech to the nation. But he has also been told that House Democratic leaders seem inclined, at least for now, to largely accept the compromise worked out in the Senate, virtually ensuring he will eventually get a deal.

Yet another case where "officials" are telling Mike Allen and company that Obama is being told by Congress what they will allow to happen, and that there's nothing Obama can do about it.  The fact that this is dropping even before the bill is approved is a major clue as to the motivations here to try to raise hopes for more "kill the bill" concern trolling.

House Democrats have been pretty muted in their criticism of the Senate bill to this point.

That changed Wednesday when New York Rep. Louise Slaughter posted an opinion piece on CNN.com blasting the Senate bill because it lacks a public option, a key means to impose more competition on the private insurance industry.

"The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago," Slaughter wrote.

The status quo is still playing the "Even the Liberal..." game here in order to absolutely (if you'll excuse the pun) slaughter Obamacare.  They want this dead, and they want folks unhappy with the lack of public option to try to preserve the status quo and give the Republicans the complete win here.

It's like people haven't even heard of 1994.

Add Rep. Slaughter to the Useful Idiots category.  And the Village is more than happy to give them a platform to help out the insurance companies, the Republicans and the moneyed interests in Washington.  When you need a hole dug to bury something, it's always helpful if you have volunteer gravediggers.

Another House Of Cards Moment

New home sales down sharply last month, an 11.3% drop in November is just another sign that the housing depression will continue through 2010.

Michael Zoller at Moody's Economy.com said the surprisingly weak report negates several months of gains.

"Price discounting eased in November, although the median new home price is notoriously volatile," he said.

Economists were expecting 440k sales, instead the number came in at just 355K. CalcRisk has hit upon the really distressing figure here: the ratio of existing homes being sold to new homes being sold has hit an all-time high.

The ratio of existing to new home sales increased at first because of the flood of distressed sales. This kept existing home sales elevated, and depressed new home sales since builders couldn't compete with the low prices of all the foreclosed properties.

The recent increase in the ratio was partially due to the timing of the first time homebuyer tax credit (before the extension) - and partially because the tax credit spurred existing home sales more than new home sales.

On timing issues: New home sales are counted when the contract is signed, and usually before construction begins. So to close before the original Dec 1st deadline, the contract had to be signed early this Summer. Existing home sales are counted when escrow closes. And the recent surge in existing home sales was primarily due to buyers rushing to beat the tax credit.

What this means is the number of homes available on the market is increasing rapidly, both with a supply of new homes being built that are not being sold, and available homes merely changing hands.  New homeowners are NOT making the jump from renting to ownership, and that means there's too many homes on the market right now, even with the Obama tax credit.

That means supply is too high...and that means home prices are going to start falling sharply again as opposed to stabilizing.

2010 is going to be ugly for the housing market, folks.  Really ugly.  We're hitting now the third wave of home price drops.

Default To Racist Asshole Mode

GOP politicians have these devices that usually moderate their default racism, but when those devices go on the fritz and the truth about how they feel about anyone who's not white comes out, it's both instructive and angering.  Today's contestant is good ol' Lindsey Graham, who used this argument twice, on the Senate floor and again on the Today Show:

"Throughout the nation there are going to be thousands more people enrolled in Medicaid and every state except one is going to have to come up with matching money," Graham remarks. "I have 12 percent unemployment in South Carolina. My state's on its knees. I have 31 percent African-American population in South Carolina."

"We've got it tough," he adds. "We're on our knees. 12 percent of our people are unemployed and 31 percent of our people are black."

Graham later says: "My state, with 30 percent African-American citizens, a lot of low income people in South Carolina is going to cost my state a billion dollars, that's the same old stuff that I object to. That's not change we can believe in. That's sleazy."

Now, there's a couple of problems with these statements, besides the fact that Lindsey here is a racist assclown.  First of all, somebody needs to tell Lindsey that there are more people who are on Medicaid in South Carolina who are white, as Media Matters explains:

DISTRIBUTION OF THE NONELDERLY WITH MEDICAID BY RACE/ETHINICTY (2008)                            
 

And secondly, that if Lindsey there wants to really make this bill about race, the GOP is going to lose this battle terribly.

Now I know that I've said that the real reason the GOP wants to kill this bill is exactly because of race:  that this bill will help minorities is anathema to the teabagger jagoffs who "want to take the country back".  Some, not all, but some of the opposition to this bill is racism, pure and simple.

It's telling how desperate the Repubs are that they are now playing this card as a last resort.  It's also a sign of how much better than the status quo it will be.  Right now the focus is on this being a "big government spending" bill.  But if the GOP wants to make it a "welfare handout to blacks" issue, the center is going to turn on the Republicans again.

Hell, go ahead, guys.  Play the race card as hard and as loudly as you can.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

I don't want to think of Jane Hamsher as being in the "useful idiot to Wingers" category, but Steve M at NMMNB makes the blunt and very compelling case that Jane's being played like a Stradivarius.

Do you think Rupert Murdoch's propaganda operation actually made a mistake? Do you really think this corporate behemoth let its guard down, booking you even though you're so dangerous you can help bring destroy structures Rupe desperately wants to see in place?

Don't be naive. Fox books liberals for two reasons: to be punching bags or to help reinforce messages Murdoch wants to deliver. I watched your clip and you weren't treated like a punching bag -- so that leaves only one choice: you were there to play "Even the liberal..." -- that is, you were there to deliver the message "This bill is so awful even some liberals loathe it."

No one on the right is "uniting" with you on principles. The Fox audience doesn't want to join you to help make a good bill. The Fox audience wants to kill this bill, brutally and mercilessly, and then get every single Democrat out of office. (And if Big Medicine really didn't like the idea of seeing this bill killed, it would tell Fox and the GOP to call off their dogs, and they'd dutifully comply. Big Medicine loves this bill compared to what it could have been, but no bill at all is still the fat cats' preference. Watch this report in its 2 1/2-minute entirety if you doubt that.)

I agree that the bill is rather awful, and I've been vacillating on the question of whether it's worth voting for, so I respect your intentions. But if you think left and right are meeting right now, your vision field is almost as warped as that of the we-love-Hillary-and-Sarah PUMAs. The Fox audience doesn't hate the fat cats -- the Fox audience hates you, Jane, and everything you stand for, and your readers and everything they stand for, and Barack Obama and everything (they think) he stands for. But they'll suspend their contempt when they can use you as a stick to beat Obama with. You know the old saying: "Let's you and him fight!" That's what they're saying to you.

You were used, Jane. If you weren't of use to the right, you wouldn't have been booked.

And frankly, if Hamsher's not smart enough to see that, then she deserves scorn like this.  New, long, long, long overdue tag:  Useful Idiots Are Useful.

[UPDATE 11:37 AM] And Kevin K.'s beaten me to it.  Take his advice and read Matt Bastard's piece, too.

Epic Wingers Fail At Math Fail

I'd almost pay Nate Silver to teach Wingnuts how to read polls correctly.  Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft gleefully declares that Obama now has worse numbers than Bush did when he left office eleven months ago and that the Kenyan Usurper is "more loathed".

Now, what polling outfit would Jimbo there be able to pull that number from?  I'll give you three guesses, and the first five don't count.  Yep, our old ODI friends at Rasmussen had Dubya's "Strong Disapproval" numbers at 43%, while the same question for Rasmussen's "fair and balanced" poll shows Obama at 46% on Tuesday who Strongly Disapprove of the Other in the White House.  This is proof America hates Obama more than Bush to Jim there, and that Obama is the Worst Person on Earth.

Well, before you fire up the pitchforks and chainsaws, note that Bush's Rasmussen number was a whopping -30, still 8 points ahead of Obama's worst day in Rasmussen's deranged Obama landscape, and Obama's average at RCP is still 49.7%  with a +4.8 spread, while Rasmussen has him at negative 10.

When your approval poll is almost a full 15 points off the average, your poll is useless.  Even the more grueling and thorough Pollster.com average finds Obama at 48.0% to 46.7%, a slight positive spread where Rasmussen is off the charts.

The ODI for Tuesday would then be a massive -23.3%, a number so far off the scope of reality as to prove Rasmussen's numbers useless.  Naturally, the Wingers are grasping at generalized pictures of straws miles out of reach to prove their Obama Derangement Syndrome issues...but that's why they EPIC FAIL time and time again.

StupidiNews!

• Three in five Americans back President Obama's Afghanistan plan according to the latest CNN poll.
• The wife of Sen. John Kerry, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is fighting breast cancer.
• The GOP plans to keep the Senate health care bill from ever becoming law by suing over sweetheart deals for individual Senators.
• Stimulus spending is now exceeding bailout money, but the economy is still addicted to government largess.
• Microsoft is being told is must essentially stop selling Word 2010 due to a patent infringement judgment against it.