StupidiNews!

• The New York Post is taking heavy criticism from yesterday's front page picture of a fatally injured man trapped on the tracks in the path of an oncoming subway train.
• With a Republican supermajority in place for 2013, Indiana GOP lawmakers plan on introducing legislation to force public schools to teach creationism and intelligent design.
• The US is moving towards considering the Syrian rebel group Nusra Front as a terrorist organization due to its Al Qaeda links.
• UK grocery chain Tesco is considering pulling the plug on its US division, Fresh & Easy stores, as the California-based chain is deep in the red.
• Disney has cut a distribution deal with Netflix for exclusive rights to new films starting in 2016.

Last Call

And David Brooks loves him some middle class suffering, because he's basically evil and it builds character, or something.

So Republicans have to realize that they are going to cave on tax rates. The only question is what they get in return. What they should demand is this: That the year 2013 will be spent putting together a pro-growth tax and entitlement reform package that will put this country on a sound financial footing through 2040. 

Republicans should go to the White House and say they are willing to see top tax rates go up to 36 percent or 37 percent and they are willing to forgo a debt-ceiling fight for this year. 

This is a big political concession, but it’s not much of an economic one. President Obama needs rate increases to show the liberals he has won a “victory,” but the fact is that raising revenue by raising rates is not that much worse for the economy than raising revenue by closing loopholes, which Republicans have already conceded. 

In return, Republicans should also ask for some medium-size entitlement cuts as part of the fiscal cliff down payment. These could fit within the framework Speaker John Boehner sketched out Monday afternoon: chaining Social Security cost-of-living increases to price inflation and increasing the Medicare Part B premium to 35 percent of costs. 

But the big demand would be this: That on March 15, 2013, both parties would introduce leader-endorsed tax and entitlement reform bills in Congress that would bring the debt down to 60 percent of G.D.P. by 2024 and 40 percent by 2037, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Those bills would work their way through the normal legislative process, as the Constitution intended. If a Grand Bargain is not reached by Dec. 15, 2013, then there would be automatic defense and entitlement cuts and automatic tax increases. 

In other words, Bobo wants to make sure the middle class in America is destroyed, long after he's dead, and that it never rises again.

To get debt down to the levels we're not talking about trillions in spending cuts, we're talking about tens of trillions in spending cuts.  40 percent of GDP would be $6 trillion, from the $16 trillion we're at now, and it require not just balancing the budget and eliminating deficits, it means running up a surplus big enough to pay off the debt through either massive tax increases or massive spending cuts, or both.  At the very least, it would mean balanced budgets until at such time the GDP magically grew large enough so that $16 trillion WAS 40% of the GDP in 25 years.  Raise your hand if you think America's GDP is going to triple or so in 25 years with huge cuts on the menu in basic education and infrastructure.

Sure it will.  Laffer Curve!  

Bobo's just evil, and it sure doesn't matter to him if the middle class burns.  He's a rich snothead with a cushy columnist job.

Malcolm In The Middle (Of A Health Crisis)

Frankie Muniz, known to most of us as Malcolm from Fox's Malcolm In The Middle, has suffered a mini-stroke.  Doctors don't have any reasons yet, but friends did the right thing and took him in when he had a hard time speaking and understanding what was spoken to him.  We may well find that saved his life, because like a heart attack, failure to understand the symptoms and denial play a huge part in survival.

Muniz is very young, only twenty-six.  His band was scheduled to tour starting this week, that's clearly going to be put off indefinitely while Muniz is under observation.

On a side note, it's nice to be back.  I was going to drop in this week anyway, but when you get a headline opportunity like that, you take it.

Nipping McConnell In The Judd

Actress and Democratic party activist Ashley Judd is at least considering taking a crack at Old Age Mutant Nimrod Turtle's Senate seat in 2014...at least, that's what Politico seems to believe.  Take that with an entire planet made of salt.

The Hollywood movie star and eighth-generation Kentuckian is seriously exploring a 2014 run for the Senate to take on the powerful Republican leader, four people familiar with the matter tell POLITICO. In recent weeks, Judd has spoken with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) about the possibility of a run, has discussed a potential bid with a Democratic pollster and has begun to conduct opposition research on herself to see where she’s most vulnerable in the Bluegrass State, sources say.

Whether Judd jumps into the race remains far from certain. She’s reportedly also weighing whether to wait until 2016 to instead take on freshman Sen. Rand Paul, sources say.

But if Judd does become a candidate, she would be the biggest celebrity to run for the Senate since Al Franken’s successful 2008 bid for the Minnesota seat. And her entrance would add a level of star power to a race that was already poised to be the highest-profile in the country with the Senate Republican leader up for a sixth term in 2014.

“She is doing all the things that a serious candidate exploring a race should do,” Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) told POLITICO after speaking with her. “I think there are a lot of people, and I was one of them, who wanted to let her know that her candidacy would be an exciting prospect for us. That’s what I wanted her to know. A lot of the labor unions, they were telling me that too.”

Considering getting rid of Mitch (or Rand Paul!) is pretty much my top local activism priority right now, and that Judd is light-years more progressive than any of the current Kentucky Dems being mentioned as being sacrificed to McConnell, I figure the publicity would at least give her a shot of winning.
We'll see how serious Judd is about this prospect, but I have to say it's not like she could do any worse than the Turtle.  She's no slouch, either, possessing a degree in public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  That makes her more than qualified in my book for the office.
Go for it, Ashley.  This blogger has your back...but her pro-environment stance on coal and mining makes me think she's going to have a very, very difficult road ahead.

We'll see.

StupidiNews

• Israel remains defiant against European critics over its vastly expanded plans in the West Bank in retaliation for the UN's recent Palestinian observer state vote.
• Space probe Voyager's 35-year journey has brought it to a "magnetic highway" of particles on the very edge of our solar system.
• President Obama has asked current DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to stay on in light of her "excellent work" running the Democratic fundraising machine.
• House Republicans have made a fiscal cliff slope counteroffer with deep cuts to Medicare and Social Security and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
• The map wars continue as Google releases its latest developer tools API to Android application makers.

Last Call

What's this?  The Teabagger Glibertarians at Commentary Magazine believe Rand Paul is not conservative enough?  Oh do go on, boys.

Last week we noted that if Rand Paul wanted to be a serious presidential contender as opposed to a libertarian gadfly he was going to have to distance himself from his father’s extreme anti-Israel views. No one should be holding their breath waiting for the Kentucky senator to speak a word against Ron Paul, but there’s no question he is preparing to cast himself as a different kind of candidate in 2016. To that end, not only did he take the trouble to engage in an exchange with COMMENTARY about his views on Israel, but as Business Insider reported last week, he is also planning a trip to the Jewish state next month.

Trips to Israel by senators and members of Congress are so common that they are hardly newsworthy. But for a devoted opponent of military aid to the Jewish state to be journeying there for the first time is a clear sign that Rand Paul wants to be seen as someone whose views on foreign policy are not the sort of grab bag of libertarian cant and isolationism that characterizes his father’s stance. Even more telling is that Paul will be accompanied on his trip by a group of evangelical leaders. The signal being given here is that the senator wants to be seen by the Republican base as a mainstream conservative and not a libertarian outlier.


Given his opposition to military assistance and his worldview that calls for a weaker U.S. presence in the world, that won’t be easy. But the trip to Israel and Jordan is a start. But the outreach here isn’t to AIPAC and its donors, who rightly regard the younger Paul as just a more presentable version of a father who remains an implacable foe of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Rand Paul doesn't want to blow up enough Palestinians, and this is why he has zero chance in 2016.  "Why should we give foreign aid to Israel or anybody?" may play well in Bracken County, Kentucky, but it sure as hell is going to be a major problem in states like battleground states like Florida and Virginia, and his "cut military spending" rhetoric sure as hell won't play in deep red states.

But it's his anti-Israel stuff that guarantees he'll be sunk in the primaries long before the other guys.  The big donors will turn their backs on him, and he'll be drowned in negative ads just like his dad.  Hell, it might be bad enough to cost him his Senate seat.

A guy can hope, right?

Peace Through Superior Building Power, Part 3

Apparently we're now at the "good cop, bad cop" part of the routine where the US and EU deal with Israel's latest infrastructure retaliations against Palestinians in the West bank.  Today, the role of bad cop will be played by France.

Israel's decision to approve 3,000 new homes on occupied territory drew sharp condemnation from European allies on Monday, with at least three governments summoning ambassadors to express their disapproval of an action they say undermines an already troubled peace process.

The Israeli envoy to Paris was called to a meeting late Monday morning, according to a statement from the French foreign ministry spokesman, Philippe Lalliot. France, which was the first major European country to announce support for the Palestinian effort to win recognition at the U.N., also sent a letter to the Israeli government, calling the settlement decision "a considerable obstacle to the two-state solution."

Britain and Sweden also summoned the Israeli ambassadors, and Germany said the decision would hurt Israel's ability to negotiate a long-term peace agreement.

None of the European governments openly threatened any concrete measures to punish Israel.

Well of course not, but now the chessboard is set for the US to make a few moves and give Israel some concessions of some sort and look like the good guy.  If you think Israel can freely ignore the Obama administration (which they do), they openly mock Hollande and France (which they will.)

The only question is how much Israel will get in exchange for putting these building plans on hold for a while.  Considering the UN vote, it may take quite a bit to soothe Netanyahu this time around.  It's very likely that Israel will get some serious concessions or some new toys from the Pentagon, or both...but President Obama is going to have to open up the vault in a big way.

For example, I wonder how much of the $120 million in tax revenue the Israelis are holding for the PA they will be allowed to simply keep?

All I know is that Israel will get something nice this holiday season, and the Palestinians will get the back of Netanyahu's hand.

The Kroog Versus The Next Two Years

I happen to absolutely agree with Paul Krugman's assessment of the current fiscal cliff slope talks.

Oh, boy. This isn’t going to end, even when or if a deal is reached on defusing the austerity bomb; John Boehner has just declared that he’s going to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage every time we hit the debt limit. Nor will it be a case of holding the nation at gunpoint until it meets GOP demands; Republicans are signaling that they don’t intend to make any specific proposals, they’re just going to yell and stamp their feet until Obama soothes them somehow.

And November proved that the vast majority of Republicans in the House are in blood-red districts designed to make sure 95% keep their jobs no matter what they do.  They feel perfectly justified in going right back to the monthly hostage-taking on everything they can just to wreck Obama's legacy, and they feel strongly that voters will blame Obama and punish Democrats with another 2010 style low-turnout backlash election that will give the GOP control of the Senate and set up, you guessed it, the mother of all impeachment battles.

And one thing to think about: if the next two years are, as they seem likely to be, one long Republican tantrum, the 2014 election is not going to be a normal midterm. It will instead be a referendum on GOP obstructionism, which may attract a lot more attention — and much higher turnout — than normal.

That's certainly the hope.  It's going to take a hell of a lot of work on the part of the Dems to get the kind of turnout they'll need to get the House back and keep the Senate, however.

No rest for the wicked, for the wicked aren't taking the next two years off.

StupidiNews!

• US intelligence reports show rising concern that Syria's al-Assad regime may be preparing to use chemical weapons against rebel forces.
• Israel continues to retaliate against the Palestinians for last week's UN observer status vote by withholding $120 million in tax revenues collected for the Palestinian Authority.
• Police continue to investigate the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher, who killed his girlfriend Kassandra Perkins, then shot himself in front of team officials.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated Germany may be willing to accept a write-off of Greek debt as Greece works towards a buyback program to pay off bonds.
• Microsoft internal documents indicate the Xbox 720 could be on the way as early as Fall 2013.

Last Call

Orange Julius on the debt ceiling:

Congress is never going to give up this power. I've made it clear to the president that every time we get to the debt limit, we need cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit. It's the only way to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would if left alone.

And Boehner says: hostage taking then, hostage taking now, hostage taking forever!

If only President Obama and the Democrats had done the right thing and all resigned from office, right?

Peace Through Superior Building Power, Part 2

If you're wondering what's so awful about Israel's "retaliatory strike" of building more settlements, as Emily L. Hauser explains, it's where the settlements are that matters.  As with any real estate issue, it's location, location, location. (emphasis mine:)

Yet if we’re to be brutally frank, bluster and threats are entirely unnecessary. Israel doesn’t need to convince the world of its position or to take extreme measures to make sure that Palestine’s nascent statehood dies in the cradle. All Israel needs to do is stay its decades-long course and keep sending out bulldozers.

Witness the report that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s morning-after response to the statehood vote is 3000 new housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as expedited work in the E-1 “envelope,” a development project intended to geographically join Jerusalem to the settlement of Maaleh Adumim and thus cut the West Bank in half. And thus destroy territorial contiguity for any Palestinian state. And thus drive a final nail in the coffin of the notion of two-state peace.

Though impressive in scope, there is, in fact, nothing new in these plans—indeed, even though Netanyahu committed to President Obama upon taking office that he would not build in E-1, that piece of it can’t be considered a breach with the past either. After all, Israel is forever promising the U.S. one thing and then doing quite another, in particular with regard to the settlements.

So yes, the reaction of the Israelis to the Palestinian recognition vote is very much an act of war.  Building a settlement corridor that would cut the West Bank in two is pretty despicable.  And yet, most Americans will shrug and say "Well how could that be bad?  Why are those awful Arab terrorists complaining about that?"

Now you know.

Existential Polling, You're Doing It Wrong

Nate Silver is rather brutal with his assessment of the Romney campaign's complicit effects in wrecking a number of key firms through their ludicrously incorrect internal polls.

Campaigns should foster organizational cultures in which their pollsters are enabled to provide the most value.

Campaigns might consider how pollsters are compensated; they could tie some of the pollster’s compensation to the accuracy of its final polls, for instance.

Some campaigns have had success with hiring more than one pollster and having them work relatively autonomously from one another. This can serve as a check against groupthink — and may increase the likelihood the different assumptions that the pollsters might introduce will be thought over and debated.

But most important, campaigns would be wise not to have their pollsters serve as public spokesmen or spin doctors for the campaign. Campaigns have other personnel who specialize in those tasks.

The role of the pollster should be just the opposite of this, in fact: to provide a reality check such that the campaign does not begin to believe its own spin.

Ouch.  And yes, he's talking to you, Gallup.

Suboptimal Subsidies For Suckers

As American corporations continue to collect record profits, let's remember that it's coming at the expense of schools, roads, infrastructure, highways, bridges, and social programs.  In many cases, that's direct loss:  the business world now expects cities, counties and states to give corporations massive tax incentives or they simply walk.  The problem is that taxpayers are now giving $80 billion yearly to corporations in what it in effect massive bribes, as the NY Times investigates.

The Times analyzed more than 150,000 awards and created a database of incentive spending, which is searchable on the newspaper’s Web site. The survey was supplemented by interviews with more than 100 officials in government and business organizations as well as corporate executives and consultants. 

A portrait arises of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs, outmatched by multinational corporations and short on tools to fact-check what companies tell them. Many of the officials said they feared that companies would move jobs overseas if they did not get subsidies in the United States. 

Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors. 

While some jobs have certainly migrated overseas, many companies receiving incentives were not considering leaving the country, according to interviews and incentive data.

And almost a quarter of that comes from one state:  Texas.

The Times analysis shows that Texas awards more incentives, over $19 billion a year, than any other state. Alaska, West Virginia and Nebraska give up the most per resident. 

For many communities, the payouts add up to a substantial chunk of their overall spending, the analysis found. Oklahoma and West Virginia give up amounts equal to about one-third of their budgets, and Maine allocates nearly a fifth. 

In a few states, the cost of incentives is not significant. But several of them have low business taxes — or none at all — which can save companies even more money than tax credits. 

Far and away the most incentive money is spent on manufacturing, about $25.5 billion a year, followed by agriculture. The oil, gas and mining industries come in third, and the film business fourth. Technology is not far behind, as companies like Twitter and Facebook increasingly seek tax breaks and many localities bet on the industry’s long-term viability.

This is what should be the final, paradigm-shattering and myth-shattering moment of the ridiculous notion of the "job creator class".  it should end the myths of the "makers versus takers" too, because every industry sector gets billions a year directly from taxpayers.  It's organized extortion on a national scale.

The next time Rick Perry says Texas can't afford to expand Medicaid for Texas's poor, ask him why his state is giving nearly $20 billion to businesses in taxpayer money every year. 

This is why we can't have nice things:  American corporations are some of the biggest takers on the planent.

The View From The Top Of The Slope

Time for a substantial round of "I told you so's" about the debt ceiling deal that has put us on top of the "fiscal cliff slope".  Pay attention, because I've got a lot to say.

First of all, it's not like I didn't call this a year ago or anything, right?

The size of the debt hike -- easily getting the country through 2012 without having to bring it up during the election -- and the timing seems to indicate to me that A) this was done on purpose, B) it was done to pants the GOP, and C) most importantly the Obama administration understands full well that raising the debt ceiling was going to be portrayed by the GOP as an impeachable offense no matter what the President actually did about it.   So the White House is looking to get this out of the way.

Pretty sure this was the plan all along, and the GOP is now facing having to blow their vacation or miss their big chance at portraying the President as the most vile of all villains when of course previous Presidents jacked up the debt limit all the time, including Dubya's seven times and Reagan's 18 times.   Your move, Republicans.  You already lost that fight once.

You mad, bro?  If you ask me, President Obama's got them by the short hairs.  Again. 

All that still applies.  That deal led directly to where we are right now.  Remember that last spring, the Village declared the deal an utter disaster for the President that would cost him reelection:

But interviews with most of the central players in those talks — some of whom were granted anonymity to speak about the secret negotiations — as well as a review of meeting notes, e-mails and the negotiating proposals that changed hands, offer a more complicated picture of the collapse. Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own Democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult for Boehner — already facing long odds — to sell it to his party. Eventually, the president tried to put the original framework back in play, but by then it was too late. The moment of making history had passed.

The actions of Obama and his staff during that period in the summer reflect the grand ambitions and the shortcomings of the president’s first term.

The emoprog Villagers too proclaimed the President was done.  Jon Chait accused President Obama of selling out liberalism.

Chait argues that President Obama wanting a deal -- any deal, mind you -- led him to treat the GOP as good faith partners when they were clearly not.  Republicans, he goes on to say, were going to screw POTUS and the country no matter what Obama did.  This is where Chait's argument turns into purist whining:  There was nothing President Obama could have done that would have changed the outcome of the GOP screwing us over (indeed, the GOP is now signaling that it will simply ignore the debt deal), and at the same time he didn't do enough to change the outcome.  It's just meaningless stupidity, brought about by the "liberal" Washington Post unloading this hit piece on the President, and Chait absolutely takes the bait, re-fighting the same arguments we had in 2010 and 2011 about "but if Obama had done THIS and LISTENED TO HOW SMART I AM..." five minutes after saying there was nothing he could have done.

There's nothing productive about this civil war re-enactment other than Chait scratching his own "Tell Obama what to do" itch that so many of our professional pundit class seem to suffer from.  But generating that itch was the entire point of the Kaplan piece.  Chait performed admirably, attacking the President from the left.  After all, attacks from the right aren't working too well, since the wingers keep putting most of their ammo into their own feet.  Whenever the left is winning, we have to be demoralized into our own worst enemies, and we're damn good at it.

And yet despite the best efforts of folks like Chait, President Obama continues to have outfoxed all of his critics and put the GOP in a massive bind, again.  Because all of them underestimated President Obama.  Again.  And now they look very foolish.

Again.

You would think people would stop betting against the President on things.  But some people never learn.

Now the right is scrambling to find any way out of this mess.  Increasingly they are pointing out that the same Simpson-Bowles plan they hated before would at least have the added benefit of making liberals miserable as well, so that they should push that plan:

Best case scenario: Republicans catch Democrats off-guard, and (much or most of) the plan is adopted.  At the very least, GOP negotiators would gain major leverage in fashioning a less horrific final compromise.  Worst case scenario: Democrats firmly reject the plan, further talks stall, and the we go over the cliff.  But even under this scenario, Republicans would have very prominently done their part to try to avoid the impasse, and the public's assignment of blame would be rendered far more complex than simply, "the Republicans did it."  Bottom line: I'm not completely convinced that this is the best course of action, but given the dismal alternatives, it's at least putting out there for consideration.

Simpson-Bowles as the GOP's starting point?  That's a complete Obama win.  And that's the view from the top of the fiscal slope, where President Obama is in control of the long game and always, always has been for the last 4 years.

Once again.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• As World AIDS Day marks another sober milestone, China may now be the HIV pandemic's largest victim.
• Economic conditions and lack of a national immigration solution have combined to rank 2011 as the lowest yearly birth rate since 1920 in the US.
• Midwestern lawmakers are asking President Obama to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to keep the Mississippi River clear as drought has dangerously lowered the water level.
• A former GM engineer and her husband have been convicted in federal court in Detroit for stealing trade secrets from the automaker and trying to sell them to Chinese competitors.
• The US Supreme Court will take on a challenge to the practice of patenting human genetic material for testing for and treating diseases like cancer.