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A Note To Andrew Sullivan….

Conservatives HATE what liberals do, and the “socialist” legislation they pass….. Unless it directly benefits them!

When a friends Dad suffered a stroke a number of years ago, the family, though very Conservative and very well-to-do, had no problems using Medicare – D to help keep medical costs down as much as possible, even though a year before, Medicare – D was another horrible entitlement that signaled the doom of the country!

Driving Off A Cliff In Medium Slow Motion.

As expected, in reaction to the S & P downgrade, the stock market is taking a dive this Monday morning. In the midst of all this, I try to find some positive economic news to brighten my mood.

It’s not there.

The only thing I see is stupid piled on top of stupid.

First bit of stupid – Democratic Congress, in order to look less like the big spenders that they are, they calculated that by not passing a budget last year they would not lose so badly in the 2010 elections. Not only did it not work, they lost anyway, but they look like chickens for not doing so.

Next bit of stupid – President Obama. He had a perfectly good jumping-off point to start tackling the debt when the Bowles – Simpson Commission report came out last November. Bowles – Simpson had some good recommendations in tit – tax reform, entitlement reform etc, but, for reasons that I can’t even begin to comprehend, the President dropped it, his own commission, like a ton of hot bricks. It went completely off the radar, allowing the Tea Party Republicans to plan various strategies and ultimately ambush the process.

Finally, a good portion of stupid wrests in the Tea Party camp. On the one hand, yes, you have brought a new seriousness to the table when it comes to cutting spending. But your unthinking inflexibility is your undoing. If it’s cuts you want – Obama and the Democrats DID offer a plan with even more cuts in it, twice as many in fact, yet you turned it down because it had some tax hikes in it. So you end up with yet another Commission that will of course make some good recommendations, but will get completely ignored by everyone.

As for the automatic trigger that’s going to magically make things happen if the Commissions recommendations are not followed?

Uhm, anyone remember Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act of 1985? That was supposed to balance the budget, and it also had automatic triggers in it. What happens when Congress faces a trigger forced budget cut they don’t like???? They ignore it of course! It may be law that something must be cut, but, who’s going to enforce it? There is no police force that can do anything if Congress ignores its own edicts, which is why it is free to do so, and often does!

What I find amazingly stupid about the Tea Party is their insistence on cutting government right at the start of a double dip in the recession, if you believe the recession ended in the first place. And before someone accuses me of being a blind devotee of Keynesian economics… No. I don’t subscribe to any school of economics… Because the economy doesn’t either. They all are relevant, yet, as far as solutions to X or Y based on a single economic model, what works one time will not necessarily work the next. But I can tell you what WON’T work… cutting more government jobs in the middle of an already stagnant jobs market! You may not like government jobs, but the are, never-the-less JOBS! Seeing that the private sector is not doing much in the way of hiring, you’re just going to end up expanding the roles of the unemployed, causing an up-tick in the cost of unemployment benefits (something you hate BTW), and cause the recession to worsen.

Oh, and one last thing – On the tax cuts. I’m sorry, but since “the rich” are not investing in growing businesses and hiring at the moment (I don’t blame them, right now in this stagnant economy that looks like a foolish investment) raising the tax rates from 3.5 to 3,9 is not going to make much of a difference anyway. They will continue to hoard their money or shuffle it off over seas… It’s what I’d do… If I had any money at all.

Why Climate Skepticism Has Merrit.

Haven’t done a climate based post in a while.

YouTube Banter! The Consequences Of Gossiping!

Form this video celebrating the 30th anniversary of MTV’s first broadcast, when a technical glitch wiped out a video of REO Speedwagon performing the song “Take It On The Run“. The fun starts at 3:45 in:

One comment gives the play-by-play of the performance.

Yup, it went something like this:

Heard it from a friend? who, heard it from a friend who, heard you were OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO­OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…­………….

On the third page, another commenter describes his stepfather’s reaction:

ah, I can still remember my stepfather telling me after REO Speedwagon’s video dropped out, “Let that be a lesson? to you-that’s what happens to people who gossip”

A teachable moment!

Wish I could say Happy Birthday to MTV on its 30’th birthday, but it’s still being run by meth addicts or something!

And it’s too bad. Because with good band videos so cheap to produce now, there would be a wealth of material out there of bands just waiting to be exposed to a larger audience. Oh well, we do have YouTube, but it’s not the same as having one or two channels with hundreds of thousands of eyes focused in one musical / video direction

Meme Alert! – “The Adults in the Room”

It’s here.

It’s here.

It’s here.

And it’s here.

Why do I keep hearing my own teen-age voice begging to borrow the car and screaming “I’m an Adult now!”. Look, the more you insist and feel you have to remind everyone you’re “the adult in the room”… It simply shows you are anything but!

Democrats / President Obama… You don’t look like “adults” when you fail to produce a budget for the 2011 Congressional season because anything in the budget could be used against your fellow partisans in the upcoming election, and crow about put together a budget commission, only to completely shelve the thing and pretend it never existed because, well, to implement it would be hard for your base to swallow.

Republicans / Tea Partyers… This is a situation that has been building for 30 years! To think you would be able to cut that much spending in a few years is just silly, and quite frankly, irresponsible, considering cuts of that nature would lead to more job losses – government jobs ARE jobs too – which would lead to more unemployment AND more people collecting unemployment, which you hate. History shows us that when you have a large chunk of of government workers enter the unemployed status, either layoffs of government contractors caused by the end of the Cold War, or the end of a war when soldiers come home from the front – soldiers ARE Government employees too – you pretty much Always fall into recession in those transition years. We really don’t need any more recessionary pressures than we have now, thank you very much!

Have to go to work now, which means I’ll be listening to a bit of talk radio. It’s probably too early to do the “take a shot every time a talking head says the phrase ‘the adults in the room'” game. Plus, I’ll be driving, so that really would be a bad idea… And not something an adult would do.