Bad idea

Capitulating to the Republicans on spending is a bad idea both economically and politically. Economically, you have the historical record of Hooverism flashing great big red warning lights: spending freeze during recession brings on depression. It's not even hard to understand why: supply can't drive an economy if no one's got any money to create demand. I mean, geez. You really don't even need Econ 101 to know that if nobody's got a job, nobody's spending money; and if nobody's spending money, nobody's selling merchandise; and if nobody's selling merchandise, nobody's hiring. Voila! Cue the soup kitchens.

Since I know this administration knows all that, I have to assume that the proposal to freeze spending comes out of a desire to either satisfy the right wing, deflate some of their rhetoric, bring them on board, or soothe the public's jangled nerves. Well, uh, news flash, Mr. President: there is nothing you can do, up to and including registering as a Republican, to satisfy the right wing. They are dedicated to ruining you.

As for the public's jangled nerves: Your job is to explain why they can relax a little on that front. Job creation will reduce the deficit all by itself, because it will create tax revenues and build demand, which will create jobs and more tax revenues and more demand! The deficit will be reduced! Instead of pandering to public fears, which have been fed by the Republican propaganda machine spewing misinformation, explain it! In short sentences with one-syllable words if necessary, but explain it!

Announcing a spending freeze makes you look weak, emboldens your enemies, and undermines the confidence of the liberal base in your ability to do the right thing. Don't go down this path. It doesn't lead to anywhere the rest of us want to be.

Where to start?

Item I:
On the Brown debacle in Massachusetts: the man was elected through the corrupt shenanigans of the press, which reported polls without context and elevated Coakley's deficits to the level of near-criminality while ignoring Brown's wingnuttery, courting of public violence, and nude (!) Cosmo spread. In fact, I saw in the Huffington Post a poll: is the newest Senator also the hottest? Oh, my sweet God. NO, NO, NO!

Fuck the press. Yes, even you, HuffPo.

Item II:
On the loss of the 60th Democratic Senatorial vote: we never had 60! If we had, we'd have gotten a health care reform package through the Senate in the first week! We never had the magic 60 because even when the god-damned Blue Dogs could be persuaded to act in the country's interest, we had that fucking prima donna Lieberman to contend with. So nothing's changed. Naturally, this doesn't prevent the press from creating a narrative in which the Democrats are BIG, BIG, BIG losers.

Fuck Joe Lieberman. Fuck conservatives - especially the Democratic variety. Fuck the press - again.

Item III:
The collapse of Democratic spines from the Oval Office downwards: yup, they're collapsing, sure enough.

Fuck the Democrats. If you can't find your god-damned balls and take charge, then you ARE losers!

Item IV:
The apparently-imminent death of health care reform due to Items I, II, and III: Why? Because we have to bow to public opinion as demonstrated through the stupidity of Massachusetts voters?

Fuck Massachusetts! Pass the god-damned Senate bill through the House and fix all the budget issues in reconciliation. And while you're at it, freeze out the fucking Republicans!

Item V:
The Supreme Court's handing of ultimate power to corporations: Mother of God, people, what has this court become, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NewsCorp? This is the most corrupt and frankly stupid decision to come down in a long, long time.

Welcome, facism. The Supreme Court likes the way you think.

This court's majority is peopled not by great legal minds but by mental midgets, and in this spirit, I will henceforth refer to them as the cartoon villains they've proven to be: Snarly Thomas, Sleazy Scalia, Smirky Roberts, Dopey Alito, and Farty Kennedy. Fuck you all, you god-damned bastards. (And while we're at it, Sandra Day O'Connor deserves zero respect as a retired denizen of the court. She could have prevented the debacle of the 2000 election and she didn't because she wanted a Republican in office so she could retire. Bitch. Undeserving, partisan, incompetent bitch.)

Also, fuck the Cheney/Bush administration, and the Democratic caucus which should have filibustered Roberts and Alito. And fuck the press, just for good measure.

Maybe we need to put a fork in it

because public radio appears to be done.

On BBC Newshour a few minutes ago, Robin Lustig used his segment to report on President Obama's strongly-worded criticism of intelligence agencies' failure to connect the dots before the Christmas Day failed act of terrorism. The piece culminated in an interview with some craptacular hack from the loathsome Heritage Foundation, who roundly bashed the President, saying, basically, it's all his fault because those poor hard-working agents didn't have any direction from the White House. Did Lustig provide any counterpoint to this bizarre assertion? He did not. Maybe he's beholden to his corporate sponsors. Or he's stupid.

Go to hell, Robin Lustig. You, too, Heritage Foundation. And you, NPR and KPPC.

The whole idea of being a victim

is sinfully seductive to certain people. You know them. When we were kids they were the big babies who were always crying and saying things like, "That's not fair! I'm telling! Mo-om-mm!"

Weird how a.) they never grew out of it, b.) they cluster on the right, and c.) they have their very own political party.

There's actually evidence to back this up. Somebody did a study on the subject a few years back.

Just sayin'.

Ten pipe dreams for 2010

1. Publicly-funded elections finally take the money out of politics.

2. The Pope receives an actual vision from God, leading him to issue a Papal Bull allowing married clergy, birth control, abortion, and gay marriage. (Oh, all right. Even pipe dreams need an anchor in reality, so call it medically-necessary abortion.)

3. The US Congress returns from its Christmas break with a new determination to fix health care, and creates a universal, single-payer health care system -

4. -which it funds by taxing the bejesus out of the top 3% of incomes, estates valued at over $10 million, and bonuses valued at over $50,000.

5. Media ownership rules are reinstated and the media conglomerates are broken up into their composite parts and sold off to new owners. Rupert Murdoch, in a fit of temper, retreats to the outback of Australia and is never heard from again. Oddly, most of the on-air personalities from Fox News accompany him, though a few of them reappear later in the year - Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity return with the smirks wiped off their faces, and Wolf Blitzer shows up with male-pattern baldness.

6. Samuel Alito and John Roberts, in demonstrations of extraordinary conscience, resign their Supreme Court seats after acknowledging that they were dishonest about their partisan intentions during their confirmation hearings before Congress. Their seats are filled by Obama appointees, one an openly gay man who married his long-time partner in Des Moines in 2009, and the other an American Muslim woman. Lou Dobbs and James Dobson are hospitalized for apoplexy.

7. The newly-constituted Supreme Court decides that, in fact, the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to corporations, ushering in a new era of corporate responsibility and restraint. Among the regulations corporations willingly adopt are salary caps, which limit CEO compensation to no more than four times the salary of the next-highest-paid tier of employees. Most of the current crop of CEOs quits in outrage over this loss of income, but nobody cares.

8. Global warming is proved to be a hoax. The glaciers refreeze, dead trees all over the globe sprout new growth, hundreds of formerly extinct animals reappear, and New Orleans and Cedar Rapids are both restored to their pre-flood gloriousness. James Inhofe is hailed as a genius, and graciously retires from public life to write his memoirs. He ultimately fails to find a publisher, but that's for next year's pipe-dream-list.

9. Dick Cheney shuts the fuck up. So does Liz.

10. Karl Rove is frog-marched out of whatever office he spews from these days, is charged with revealing the identity of a CIA operative, and is sent to prison where he shares a cell with George W. Bush and a very large and angry skinhead named Bubba.