Hangin' In the Clubhouse

The GOP '12 crowd is hanging out at the Values Voters Summit in DC today, where the Republican hopefuls get to kiss the ring of the Dominionist right.  This year's VVS is no exception.

All the big boys from the moral side of things are here: Bill Bennett, Gary Bauer, Liberty University Law Dean Mat Staver (perhaps best known for telling Newsweek just after the 2008 election that President Obama is not the anti-Christ, but he "can see how others might" think he is), Sean Hannity, Phyllis Schlafly, anti-abortion heartthrob Lila Rose, the xenophobic Bryan Fischer and many, many more are scheduled to speak. Of course the star is FRC's president Tony Perkins, the man who keeps hope alive for the moral warriors of the right, batting down any chance that the GOP will shift too far away from it's traditional, religious-moral core.

And despite the tea party's public arm's-length distance from social issues out on the campaign trail, virtually all of it' political stars will be glimmering from the podium, including the newest and brightest star of the week, Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell. She'll be joined by tea party heavyweights Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and wannabe tea party heavyweight Newt Gingrich. Other political contenders scheduled to appear include Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. 

And that's the important part of all this.  This event is to show the Tea Party that they need the Dominionists, and the Dominionists need to show the Tea Party faithful that they are behind them as well.  It's full and complete integration of The Crazy into the Republican Party here, and it will all be on display this weekend.

Should be as depressing as it is hysterical.

Less Than Zero

The new inflation numbers for the month are very interesting.

Consumer prices posted a small rise in August, but outside of a big jump in volatile gasoline prices, inflation was essentially flat.

Consumer prices edged up 0.3 percent in August, matching the July increase, the Labor Department said Friday. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, showed no increase in August.

So, consumer prices are going up due to commodities speculation.  Investors are putting money into basics like corn, wheat, sugar, rice and pork and that is raising the price on food.  At the same time, oil continues to hover between $70 and $80 a barrel so gas prices are still holding around the $2.80-$3 mark,  making things expensive despite the plentiful over-supply of oil products in the pipelines right now.  The flocking to commodities and continued high oil prices are providing inflationary pressures at the basic consumer level.

At the same time, core inflation excluding food and energy is basically in deflation right now due to the housing market's continuing massive depression.  Big ticket items like cars, washers and dryers, new PCs, all of those items are facing steep price pressures and discounting.  That's causing significant deflationary pressures.

Right now, those two forces are in balance, resulting in the near-zero inflationary rate figures for the year.  Economists call this "bi-flation".  It's not a good thing, because one of the two will have to crack and soon, leading to a painfully bad amount of the other.

All evidence points to that cracking being a flight out of the dollar to commodities, which will lead to big time inflation if not hyper-inflation.  The question is when.  In the meantime, there's plenty of opportunity to get trapped in an Ireland-style deflationary spiral, especially if the supports are cut by the Austerity Hysterics.

Neither one is going to be much fun to go through.  I think we're headed for a whipsaw ride from one to the other, and soon.

Irish Eyes Are Crying, Part 2

The whole world cries with you.  Lot of nice, pretty green to be burned here as the Greek Fire spreads to the Emerald Isles. Tyler D has the goods:

And the euro seemed so happy after its recent surge, that it completely forgot it is backed by an insolvent continent. Luckily, here's Ireland to remind us stuff is much, much worse than expected. According to the Irish Independent the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, came very close to suggesting that Ireland is considering defaulting on its debts "when he talked about the Government "negotiating'' with bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank." Additionally, the same newspaper also reported that Ireland is on the verge of calling in the IMF for a bailout, citing "a report from Barclays, one of Europe's largest banks, said Ireland may yet need financial help from the IMF or the EU if conditions got any worse. But a spokesman for Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said last night: "The Government's strategy for dealing with the economic and financial challenges has been commended by the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and many other international experts." In other words, domino #2 has at most a few more days. Net result of all this: Irish-Bund spread explode, and gold hits a new all time high of $1,282.

So, odds are very good that within the week, and very possibly over the weekend, that Ireland will be waving the white flag instead of the green, white, and orange one.

Remember folks, it was Ireland's steep austerity plan that was supposed to prevent any need for a bailout, It was held up as a plan that the Austerity Hysterics here said we needed to follow immediately or that we would drown in a Keynesian catastrophe.  Spending cuts now!

But as I've been saying for months now, Ireland's austerity plan has failed miserably.  They are now trapped in a deflationary spiral along with plummeting real estate values, and the spending cuts have all but locked up the economy like an engine with no oil.  They've been at it for two years now, and it's gotten to the point where they need a major infusion of spending or the Irish economy is going to have a fatal heart attack.

Ireland now is where we would be without the Obama stimulus:  on the verge of needing a major IMF bailout that will dwarf Greece's hundreds of billions of Euros.  Our mistake was we went with half a tank of gas instead of no gas like Ireland and we're coasting on fumes again.  Ireland on the other hand is about to come to a complete halt.

Keep a careful eye on Ireland for the rest of the month.  The bailout is coming, and it's not going to be pretty.

On the other hand, all bets are off on the Irish bailout should Portugal need a bailout first...

By The Time I Get To Arizona, Part 12

Oh, this will end well.  I can feel it.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he is ramping up his fight against illegal immigration and is calling on armed volunteers to do the patrols.

Sheriff Joe is always talking about his department’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration but now he wants to commission a posse whose only job will be to enforce illegal immigration and human smuggling laws.

The sheriff explains, “We have 57 different posses. I want 58.”

Arpaio says posse 58 will be devoted solely to illegal immigration. “I want a little specialized unit. I think it's time to do that.”

Details are sparse but, like the sheriff's other posses, this one will be made up of armed volunteers who will patrol rural areas looking for border crossers and human smugglers.

The sheriff explains, “I want to concentrate more in the desert, maybe that’s where our air posse helicopters can help out because a lot of smugglers are crossing the desert. I like to get to them before they get to Phoenix.”

Latino activist and Arpaio-foe Salvador Reza says Arpaio's announcement is meaningless because the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office already does sweeps and patrols. “He does this to create havoc and also to create fear,” Reza says. He says volunteer posse members who do not have full police training will likely make mistakes. Reza says, “The posse are just a bunch of inept people that are running around in sheriff’s marked cars.”

Because the best way to defuse a high-tension situation like this is to add more civilians with guns to the mix.  That'll help.  Nobody will get hurt here.  And you wonder why this clown is under DoJ investigation. 

Can you imagine what would happen if there were a black sheriff in Kansas or Oklahoma leading armed civilian posses on patrol?  What about a Latino sheriff deputizing folks in Florida or California?  What would America say about a Muslim sheriff doing the same thing in Texas?

I'm all for law enforcement, but I also believe it should be left to trained professionals.  What Arpaio has is goon squads meant to terrify the public.  Period.

There's Some Fight Left In Them Yet

The Dems are finally going on the offensive in the Senate, looking to pass two measures as attachments to the yearly defense appropriations bill.  The first is a repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and the other is the DREAM Act, allowing a path to citizenship through military service.  BooMan runs down the specifics:

As you probably know, the Defense Appropriations Bill is the most must-pass bill in existence. If it doesn't pass our troops are left in the field with nothing but their genitalia in their hands. If you want to pass something that cannot otherwise pass, you attach it to the Defense spending bill. That's also why Harry Reid is including language in this year's bill that will end the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. He's letting the Republicans offer an amendment to strip that language out, but they'd need 60 votes to accomplish that, and there's not a chance in hell that they can pick up 19 Democrats to maintain a homophobic law.

McCain is probably more pissed off about the Democrats giving something important to both the Latino and the LGBT communities on the eve of the midterms than he is about the procedure being used.

Maybe the procedure isn't pretty, but it's payback for the Republicans' unprecedented obstruction. The Democrats will put the DREAM Act in the Defense Appropriations bill and defeat any effort to keep Don't Ask, Don't Tell before they recess for the elections. They will also force the Republicans to vote for or against keeping tax cuts for 97% of Americans, and then for or against keeping tax cuts for our richest three percent. It helps to be able to set the agenda.

Meanwhile, the Republicans will spend much of their time trying to explain their fondness for rape babies and hatred of Social Security, Medicare, and masturbation. 

It's not pretty in the least, but both measures absolutely belong in a defense related bill as they are military personnel issues,  and let's face it:  Republicans have filibustered both measures in the Senate for the last six months.

The question now is whether or not the Democrats are willing to follow through on this plan.  Republicans have vowed not to hand any more legislative victories to Obama and the Democrats, especially six weeks before the election where the Dems can point them out.  The Republicans are going to do everything they can to scuttle a bill that must pass for our troops in the field and then blame the Democrats.

The Democrats have put support from both LGBT and Latino communities on the line here, not to mention military families.  If the Dems fold on this, they are most likely going to get savaged as the base decides "You know what?  These Democrats can't get things done."  (The same goes for the middle-class tax cuts, too.)  It's a gamble.  The Republicans know they can break the Dems' backs if they can force them to drop the DADT and DREAM Act measures.

So, the question then becomes "Will the Dems hold out?"  The Republicans have already shown that they'd rather see the country burn than pass legislation that the Democrats can take credit for that helps the economy.  Will they be willing to kill the defense bill?  The Democrats need to operate with the assumption that they will and have to be prepared to go the mattresses on this.

We'll see.  The election could be on the line over this.

What Are They Up To?

Politico is reporting that the GOP indeed plans to roll out their policy initiatives over the next two weeks.  What do they include?

Nobody's really sure, and the Republicans aren't eager to deal with specifics.

One of the GOP proposals would require bills to have a specific citation of constitutional authority, on the heels of criticism that Democrats breached their constitutional limits in Congress with big-ticket bills like health care reform. If a member questioned whether the House had constitutional authority to pass a bill, that challenge would receive debate and a vote.

The second major initiative would encourage — though not require — members of Congress to read bills before they vote. According to a senior House GOP source, Republicans plan to push for a new rule that would require the House to publish the text of a bill online at least three days before the House votes on it, also giving the public an opportunity to review legislation.

Other bills and initiatives that are likely to be launched alongside the agenda include tax policy proposals, health reform proposals and jobs-related measures, though GOP aides involved declined to release any specifics ahead of the unveiling. 

So another tool for gridlock and obstruction with this additional "Constitutional debate" junk, and we promise to read bills!

Exactly how that's supposed to fix the housing market and spare America from a double-dip recession or help us create the 8 million plus jobs we need to get back to 2007 levels of employment, well we're not too sure.  Here's the best part:

Top GOP aides stressed that the specifics of some of these priorities may not be resolved in the next few weeks.

“If it takes until next Congress to get things done, so be it. But we’re not waiting,” one Republican aide said.

Translation:  we have no idea how to fix anything and we're not going to tell you what we plan to do until after the elections, but you should vote for us anyway!

You know, if the GOP has a plan to fix things, why not tell us what it is?  As a voter I'm more than willing to listen to ideas to help all of us out of this dismal hole we're in.  So let's hear it, guys.

StupidiNews!

• A fierce storm that possibly contained a tornado ripped through Manhattan last night, leaving thousands without power.
• A Pakistani politician has been murdered in London outside his home after years of being a fugitive from his home country.
• The Senate has finally passed a bill to help small businesses with lending and tax breaks over a summer-long Republican filibuster.
• President Obama is expected to officially announce Elizabeth Warren's role as adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• Samsung is planning to bring its Android-based Galaxy tablet to all four major wireless carriers.

Last Call

I'm hoping Marc Ambinder is smoking something, because I really have a problem believing that the state of Ohio is lost to the Dems the way Michigan was to the Republicans in 2008.

With the past few days given over to Democratic triumphalism, the reality is that the big picture remains roughly the same for Democrats. In Ohio, it's getting so bad for Democrats that the Democratic Governors Association, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are actively weighing their level of commitment. 

Public and private polling from the state suggests that Democrats will lose the governor's mansion, currently held by Ted Strickland, the Senate race (for an open seat that was held by a Republican), and at least four House races (OH 01, OH 15, OH 13, OH 16). Strickland's troubles have surprised some Democrats, since he's seemed to defy gravity for much of the year.

If Ambinder's right, then pulling out of the state will probably cost the Dems at least two more additional House races on top of those 4, especially OH 6 and OH 18 on the east side of the state.  It's hard to imagine, but the loss of six House seats for the Dems in Ohio alone would indicate the kind of complete tsunami election that the GOP fantasizes about daily.  It's one thing to see Steve Dreihaus go down here in Cincy, but losing six seats to the GOP at this point would leave only 4 Democrats, and if Ohio loses two congressional districts due to the Census, two of those four Democrats would be wiped out.

Pulling out of Ohio would be devastating news to Democrats in the rest of the country.  I don't see it happening.  Doing so would all but assure Ohio as a red state.

Possibly The Most Awesomely Wrong Piece Of Glibertarian Drivel Ever

CNBC's John Carney should win some sort of award for this column, and the award should involve a truckload of manure and a college economics textbook, as he declares a week after the fatal suburban gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California that there's no good argument for more infrastructure spending.

He lists three reasons as to why not.  Individually any of the three of them would evoke instant facepalm, but taken together they achieve some sort of resonant synthesis that creates a larger, more contextually rich epic failburger.  To whit, Reason The First:  Opportunity Costs.

The opportunity costs of using unemployed labor are not zero. The years spent building government roads and bridges are years in which the laborers are not learning marketable skills or moving to areas with better employment prospects. That is a serious opportunity cost.

One of the reasons unemployment has been so persistent is that the housing boom misdirected so many people into the construction industry, where they spent years acquiring skills the economy did not really need. Continuing this cycle of malinvestment of human capital is unfair to the workers and economically stupid. 

It is better to be unemployed than to be in construction, because if you are working in construction, you aren't in business school or learning a useful trade like "CNBC Talking Head".  In other words, since infrastructure involves teaching people how to build things, we're actually erasing more valuable information from the parts of their brains that hold other more useful skills like "collecting unemployment checks".

Reason The Second:  China.

In the first place, China is involved in its early stage build out of its national infrastructure. Of course this is far more costly than the maintenance costs faced by the U.S. What’s more, China’s infrastructure program has all the markings of a make-work program—building roads and entire cities to nowhere in order to mask serious underlying problems with its economy.

Well, there are 1.3 billion of them or whatever.  They need to do something with all that manpower.  Perish the thought that we could ever use a make-work program facing nearly 10% unemployment.  Unlike China, our economic problems are happily unmasked for the world to see.

Reason The Third is my favorite.  Who needs infrastructure, anyway?

This is probably the most common argument for infrastructure spending. The flaw in the argument is that it assumes that it is rational to maintain 100% of our current infrastructure.

Let’s assume that Frank is correct that 25% of our bridges are obsolete or structurally deficient. This indicates that the bridges should either be closed or repaired soon. The question of whether they should be closed or repaired, however, cannot really be answered because of the government’s involvement in these projects. 

A private firm would make entrepreneurial guesses about whether further investment would earn a high enough return to be justified. 

You know, government needs to be more like a private firm questioning the amount of safety and infrastructure investments along the line of say, BP or Pacific Gas & Electric.  If only government had the goal of profit motive like a private company instead of being concerned about the safety of American citizens like some useless government appendage, why we'd save a bundle of money on infrastructure costs!

Amazing stuff, folks.  Here's a guy actually questioning why the government's chief concern about infrastructure isn't profit motive.  Awesome. awesome stuff.

I can't wait until these guys are in charge of the infrastructure where you live.

Gold Rush, Part 12

Gold hit a new high today and keeps on going.

Gold swept to a record high above $1,275 per ounce on Thursday, as currency market jitters and broader economic uncertainty attracted more investors to the metal's safe-haven credentials.

Strong investment demand pushed spot silver, often seen as a cheap proxy for gold, to $20.75 an ounce -- its highest level since March 2008.

Spot gold was bid at $1,273.75 a troy ounce at 1450 GMT (10:50 a.m. EDT), compared with $1,265.65 an ounce at the close on Wednesday.

Earlier on Thursday it hit a record $1,277.70 an ounce. U.S. December gold futures also rose to a historic high.

"It's an insurance policy at the end of the day," said Robin Bhar, analyst at Credit Agricole. "All the ingredients are still there -- all the uncertainty and fear -- to keep gold underpinned."

You could have done a lot worse betting on gold after 9/11 back when it was $300 an ounce, you know.  A whole lot of people are thinking commodoties are a good place to be right now (but not oil).  Gold up, housing markets down, stocks fluctuating all over the place...look familiar?

It should.  We were here two years ago.

(No) Class Warriors

Double G argues that the populist middle-class impotent rage that Republicans are cynically manipulating into the Tea Party silliness is the root cause of the anti-incumbent wave against the Democrats this year, and he actually has an excellent point.  The Tea Party itself may be a toxic swamp of racism, hatred, scapegoating and fearmongering...but the seed of frustration that gave birth to it cannot be ignored.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion, at least for me, that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, much of the discomfort and disgust triggered by these Tea Party candidates has little to do with their ideology.  After all, are most of them radically different than the right-wing extremists Karl Rove has spent his career promoting and exploiting?  Hardly.  Much of the patronizing derision and scorn heaped on people like Christine O'Donnell have very little to do with their substantive views -- since when did right-wing extremism place one beyond the pale? -- and much more to do with the fact they're so . . . unruly and unwashed.  To members of the establishment and the ruling class (like Rove), these are the kinds of people -- who struggle with tuition bills and have their homes foreclosed -- who belong in Walmarts, community colleges, low-paying jobs, and voting booths on command, not in the august United States Senate. 

You want to know why it's so unusual for a U.S. Senate candidate to have what Rove scorned as "the checkered background" of O'Donnell, by which he means a series of financial troubles?  In his interview with me earlier this week, Sen. Russ Feingold said exactly why.  It's not because those financial difficulties are rare among Americans.  This is why:

It's not a new thing; it's been going on for a couple of decades. If you look even in the Senate, I'm one of the very few people in there who doesn't have a net worth over a million dollars; my net worth is under half a million dollars, after all these years.

And as poor as Russ Feingold is relative to his colleagues in the Senate, he's still a Harvard Law School graduate who owns his own home and has earned in excess of $100,000 as a U.S. Senator for the last 18 years.  People with unpaid Farleigh Dickinson tuition bills and home foreclosures just aren't in the U.S. Senate.  And there are a lot of people -- those who see nothing wrong with the U.S. Senate as a millionaire's club and entitlement of dynastic succession -- who want to keep it that way. 

Americans aren't stupid.  They know the middle class is vanishing and has been for 30 years now.  It has become acute in the last ten.  They see politicians who have been in Congress for those 30 years or more, and they see that those in Congress have reigned over the largest transfer of wealth in human history from the American working class to the super-elite.

Greenwald's real argument is that with the deaths of Senators Byrd and Kennedy, the Democrats have surrendered the mantle of the party of the working class.  He has a point.  Many folks are starting to believe it.  They are getting behind Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle simple because they are not CEOs.

But where that breaks down is in Tea Party candidates like Carl Paladino in NY and Rick Scott in Florida, multi-millionaire businessmen who make no effort to hide their complete and utter contempt for the working class.  If it's really "screw it, the economy sucks and we need to throw everyone out" then the Democrats need to start going after folks like Paladino and Scott for their ideology.

Greenwald is right however that picking on Tea Party candidates for being average folks with average jobs is only going to harden the country against the Democrats.

You And Me And Poverty

As widely expected in this economy, the poverty numbers have made a significant jump in 2009.

The poverty rate jumped to 14.3 percent in 2009, up from 13.2 percent a year earlier and the highest rate since 1994, the Census Bureau said Thursday. Last year, a record 43.6 million people were in poverty, up from 39.8 million in 2008 — the third consecutive increase.

"The number of people in poverty in 2009 is the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates have been published," the Census Bureau said.

I doubt 2010 will be any better.  Or 2011 or 2012 for that matter.  The American middle class is disappearing, and yet we're still arguing over wheter or not to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest among us at a time when taxes the rich are paying are at historic, generational lows.

The good news is the all the bickering by the GOP over the Bush tax cuts is finally, finally beginning to trigger a response from the American people.

If the Republicans win control of Congress in November do you think they will try to return to the economic policies of George W. Bush or won't they try to return to the policies of George W. Bush?

Return to policies of George W. Bush 47

Won't return to George W. Bush policies 36

 There's a reason why Republicans want to bury the Bush tax cuts discussion.  Well, the smarter Republicans anyway.  Orange Julius signaled this over the weekend, but Mitch McConnell cut him off at the knees.  Republicans keep talking about extending the Bush tax cuts, and the public is finally getting the message that the GOP wants to go back to Bush's economic policies.

The Dems need to pounce on this for the next six weeks.

Right Turn Ahead

Digby takes a look at the Ed Kilgore notion that Tea Party wins in the general will cement the crazy for the foreseeable future.

But because of the way the Democrats inevitably react to these hard right turns, the political center of gravity will be moved right once again. Indeed, I believe that one of the conservative movement's greatest strengths is its consistent ability to pull the country rightward even when they are out of power. I think this is because of their willingness to push the envelope and stick with it long enough for the public and the village to get used to it. They never stop pushing and over time, through wins and losses both, their agenda and their worldview is advanced.

You'd have to argue then that the Republicans are never really out of power then, are they? Yes, Obama's accomplished a significant amount. But when only one in four actually trust the government to do the right thing, the Republicans have successfully argued that government being government is in and of itself bad for America.

But this time could actually be worse. In my view, the combination of economic stress, a fully operational grassroots and astroturf movement and a very efficient propaganda machine could bring about a severe lurch rather than a strong pull to the right. These aren't ordinary times. Without the Democrats exerting a steady counter balance, anything could happen.

What's worse is that a number of Democrats in the House and Senate are openly agreeing with the Republicans, and the counterbalance is being thrown under the bus. Republicans fear their base and operate in order to please it. Democrats despise theirs instead and operate in spite of it. As long as that remains true, there is no counterbalance, and there hasn't been for 30 years. All the thrashing the Republican base does only keeps moving things to the right.

Kilgore points out that the Democrats are playing a different game, appealing to moderation and successfully keeping its left flank under wraps. Under normal circumstances that might seem to be the smart move. But I wouldn't be so sanguine about that. In a time of crisis, when one of the parties in a two party system is a radical, destructive force whose main claim to power is that it will stop anything the majority wants to do (thus proving that government can't do anything)being a moderate, non-confrontational alternative may not be enough to fight them off.

And again, as long as the confrontational, activist alternative is drained of power consistently by the party, there is no alternative.

In any case, I agree with Kilgore that we are coming to the destination of the wingnuts' Long March. If they are able to throw off stalwart hit men like Karl Rove, it's hard to imagine they are going to be stopped by a bunch of squishy Democrats trying hard to split the difference. But it looks like we're going to find out.

I'm personally hoping that America is going to snap out of it, realize what having these nutjobs in charge really means, and that they'll vote for the Dems...but that only works if the Dems offer a clear alternative to the Republicans. "We're not insane!" is not a platform when the other side is going to the mattresses (and lighting them on fire, and then loading the flaming mattresses into catapults and chucking them over the walls).

We're long past the time where the Dems need to show some spinal fortitude.

Well, She Lost The Lawful Neutral Vote

The similarities between Christine O'Donnell and George W. Bush are interesting.  Both are reformed, born-again college party kids who found religion after college...

But Christine O'Donnell didn't grow up in a strict religious household. For her, the turning point came in college.

While at Fairleigh Dickinson University, she told the Delaware News Journal in April 2004, she did things she now regrets. As the News Journal put it, those things were "drinking too much and having sex with guys with whom there wasn't a strong emotional connection."

She was a junior, she said in another profile published in 2006, when a friend "asked me if I knew how an abortion was performed ... She showed me the medical journals, and it was frightening."

...and both have this obnoxious binary world view.

"There's only truth and not truth," she said. "You're either very good or evil. I went back to my dorm and asked myself what I was."

O'Donnell decided then to drop her acting ambitions (she was a theater major). She became an evangelical Christian, a departure from her relatively lax Catholic upbringing. She joined the College Republicans and campaigned for the Bush-Quayle ticket. 

Look, it's one thing to reform your life and find religion.  We all deserve the chance to find our own answers to life's many questions.  What I object to is somebody using that as a basis for making laws that govern the other 310 million of us.  If she thinks that, fine.  If she's basing legislation on that, then there's a real problem.  Didn't eight years of Bush's binary world view teach us that?

If It's Thursday...

New jobless claims dropped a smidge to 450k, continuing claims revised upward last week (again) but dropped this week (again) to stay virtually unchanged at 4.49 million (again).

Only one more unemployment report before the election, September's numbers in October.  October's numbers won't be out until three days after the election, so if the numbers go up for October from 9.6%, the Dems will be in additional trouble.