Wishing You and Yours a Happy, Healthy and Prospersous 2009!

Happy New Year from The Magnificant Seven!

Simply Vulgar...

This man's pomposity is simply vulgar
George, Abe, Rick & Barack

Idiocy Has Consequences-You Betcha

The soon to be Ex-President and the soon to be Ex-Vice President and several of their minions, have begun an extraordinary attempt at rehabilitating their legacy; Iraq-bad intelligence (much of it from “prior to my arrival in Washington”), the economic meltdown? History will prove that it came from many decisions “that took place over a decade or so, before I arrived". Read Timoth Egan in The New York Times today:

"Down the road, Iraq may fall back into the chaos of sectarian violence, and if that happens, Bush will wash his hands of it. That’s the premise of a new book, “Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America’s Enemies,” by Peter W. Galbraith."

“The pretense that the surge is a success and that therefore the United States is winning the Iraq war,” he writes, “is the opening salvo in a coming blame game as to who lost Iraq.”

The leaders of the (less and less influential) right-wing noise machine, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity began, (absurdly and irresponsibly) , soon after the election to try to pin the recession on Barack Obama: 

Hannity, Limbaugh promote myth of an "Obama recession"

Summary: Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh continue to suggest that President-elect Barack Obama is to blame for the decline in the stock market, referring to the state of the stock market as an "Obama recession." In fact, analysts have refuted the proposition that the market decline has anything to do with anticipation of Obama's presidency.
Their time has come and gone. History will judge the Bush administration harshly. Limbaugh and Hannity are in the process of being banished to a place far, far away. The Republicans got the ball and fumbled it and no amount of spin can change that.

The American people are for the most part intelligent and above all fair. Most of us know the difference between right and wrong and true and false and that is something that reactionaries can never take away from us. But they continue to try.

Listen to the right, led by Limbaugh and Hannity try to blame our current ecomonic mess on Jimmy Carter and The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). According to these bigots the CRA forced banks to make loans to unqualified lenders. These people know full well that the CRA was intended to end the insidious practice known as red-lining. Red-lining (banks actually drew red lines on their maps around certain communities, mostly inner-city) was a system used by banks to not make mortgage loans to minorities. Limbaugh and Hannity flat out lie on this one as the CRA ONLY required that banks apply the same standards to all communities in their lending areas. Nothing more.

Thus, pinning our economic crisis to the sub-prime problem and then tieing that to the CRA is a disgusting form of opaque racisim much harder to discern than the racism behind Limbaugh's disgusting attempt to sanitize the distribution of the disgusting "parody" of Puff The Magic Dragon by a candidate for the charimanship of the Republican Party, the Tennesseean, Chip Saltsman. 

These guys are done, over, kaput, washed up, irrelevent and taking up valuable space on the planet. Their vulgarity has no place in our politics and in our national identity. Good by and good riddence.

From The Economist; Ship of fools

Political parties die from the head down

JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party” now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.

There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000—many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases—by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.

The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head”. He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.

This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves “professionals”. McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring “tacit” intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy” will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans”, with their “volkish” wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g”s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by Beltway journalists from the Weekly Standard and the National Review who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then noisily championed her cause.

Time for reflection

How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses? There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride”. Anonymous McCain aides complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying “whack job”. One of the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship of the Republican Party to John Sununu, a sensible and clever man who has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th).

But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not conservative or populist enough—Mr McCain, after all, was an amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama’s associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

Goodwill Toward Men...

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

Undignified?

It's been kinda fun today; the crackpots are out in force over President-elect Obama's beach picture...undignified for a President or President-elect they say. You know, one picture is worth 1000 words.....lol

Crazy Conspiracy Theorists or Panicked Capitalist's? Paul; I Think You Are Giving Them Too Much Credit....

Crazy conspiracy theorists

Poor Rush, poor Sean, poor Bill-O (he just canceled his radio show, why do you think? Certainly not because it was a successful enterprise!) - they just don’t like America anymore. Their professional survival now depends upon their expressed hatred of what is left of all that is still good about America.

Their audiences are shrinking down to the core anti-intellectual know-nothings and they know it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/media/22radio.html?scp=1&sq=talk%20radio&st=cse

“Through the first three quarters of the year, network radio ad spending declined 3.5 percent from the same time in 2007, according to Nielsen. The radio industry, while still a $20 billion business, has been on a downward trajectory for years as consumers have spent less time listening. But talk still has an edge over other formats, Ms. Mijatovic said, because the listeners are engaged with the hosts “and don’t tune out.”

These clowns are not conservatives, they are reactionaries and even more to the point; they are capitalists. They sell a product and will do whatever they have to do to continue to sell their product just like anyone else with a business.

As their rants become more and more incomprehensible and as they become more and more inconsequential the best thing to do is simply ignore them.

Oh, and by the way Amy, they’ll not be going to Iraq, they’ll join their buddies in Dubai (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/business/12haliburton.html?scp=1&sq=halliburton%20dubai&st=cse)

And heeeeere they come, around the clubhouse turn, down the home stretch....the worst president ever?

The Worst President Ever?

What An Outragesouly Arrogant Disgusting Prick This Man Is. He has not one decent cell in his body...

Dick Cheney, saying that if Biden "wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that's obviously his call."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/21/americas/biden.php

In a democracy Mr. Cheney, power is derived from the the power of the people. Rot in hell next to Nixon DICK.

By the way Dick, how do you like that new condo in Dubai? Go there, stay there.

Bubbles Do Burst, Don't They.....

Many thanks to Alan Greenspan....The King of Bubble Blowers
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/opinion/22krugman.html

America's Best and Brightest. That Sucking Sound You Hear is Your Money Going Into Their Pockets.....

Stuffing YOUR Money Right Into THEIR Own Pockets-America's Best and Brightest Taking You To the Cleaners....They are still living in multi-million dollar homes in Chappaqua and Greenwich, sailing on their yachts and flying in their private jets....WHAT WILL YOU DO? 

Origins of The Economic Crisis - Jeff Frankel's Weblog

"Every two years, Harvard Kennedy School hosts the newly elected Members of Congress for a three-day “briefing” on a wide variety of topics.   We had an excellent turnout this week: 40 of the 50 new congresspeople, from both parties.    I participated in a panel titled “Understanding the Economic Crisis,”  along with Greg Mankiw, Elizabeth Warren and Robert Lawrence  (on video).    

Trying to explain the origins of the financial crisis and recession in ten minutes, even to the extent any of us understands it, was a tall order.    But I tried to cram it all into a single slide."

Really Folks, How Much Of This Are We Going To Take?

The fruit of hypocrisy

"Houses of cards, chickens coming home to roost - pick your cliche. The new low in the financial crisis, which has prompted comparisons with the 1929 Wall Street crash, is the fruit of a pattern of dishonesty on the part of financial institutions, and incompetence on the part of policymakers.

We had become accustomed to the hypocrisy. The banks reject any suggestion they should face regulation, rebuff any move towards anti-trust measures - yet when trouble strikes, all of a sudden they demand state intervention: they must be bailed out; they are too big, too important to be allowed to fail."

And billions of OUR dollars continue to pour into THEIR pockets....

Where Are The People?

Who Wants to Kick a Millionaire?
"What will it take for the American people to say "enough"?

"Last week ABC News asked 16 of the banks that have received handouts from the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program the same two direct questions: How have you used that money, and how much have you spent on bonuses this year? Most refused to answer."

"Banks that were rescued with billions of dollars in public funds have, in most cases, refused to provide specifics about how they have used or intend to use the money."

When will the American people wake up and have a tea party? 

Where Will Dick Retire To? No Extradition, No Way, No How.....

Hey, he's already got friends there.....http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=2943017

R.I.P.

On December 9 Rush Limbaugh, referencing an article posted on ABCnews.com titled “The Most Stolen Cars in the US” made the following absurd claim;

“RUSH: Quick, folks, what are the two most stolen cars in America, according to Forbes.com?  Two most stolen cars in America.  If you said the Escalade, you're right, if you said Hummer, you're right.  SUVs.  Why?  Not because they can strip 'em and ship parts overseas.  It's because those are the cars people want.  They're General Motors products.  Escalade and a Hummer.  That's what people want, but what are we going to make for them?  A bunch of crap!  Well, yeah, crime will go down.  Who's going to want to steal crap?”

To begin with, Hummers and Escalades are NOT the most stolen cars in the US, that honor goes to the 1995 Honda Civic according to State Farm Insurance.  Here’s the complete list:

1.  1995 Honda Civic
2.  1991 Honda Accord
3.  1989 Toyota Camry
4.  1997 Ford F150 Series
5.  1994 Chevrolet C/K 1500 Pickup
6.  1994 Acura Integra
7.  2004 Dodge Ram Pickup
8.  1994 Nissan Sentra
9.  1988 Toyota Pickup
10. 2007 Toyota Corolla

No Rush, “people” don’t want Hummer’s and Escalade’s, thieves do. Limbaugh’s stock-in-trade is spin. He reports only those things that benefit his own political agenda and spins the rest. Lies, half-truths, untruths, misrepresentation, straw-man arguments and innuendo are what’s in his toolbox. 

Hummer’s and Escalade’s are not the “most stolen” cars in the US, they have, according to State Farm, the highest  “theft claim rates”. Read the details; theft claim rates are based upon the cost of the vehicle and the number of them sold.

 According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss
Data Institute, the 2003-05 model Cadillac Escalade EXT and Cadillac Escalade 4dr have theft claim rates seven to eight times the average for all cars.

Highest Theft Claim Frequencies, 2003-05 Model Passenger Vehicles:

1. Cadillac Escalade EXT 4dr 4WD
2. Cadillac Escalade 4dr
3. GMC Savana 1500 cargo
4. Dodge Ram 1500 quad

Which newer cars are stolen the least?

Lowest Theft Claim Frequencies, 2003-05 Model Passenger Vehicles:

1. Ford Taurus
2. Pontiac Vibe 4WD
3. Buick LeSabre
4. Buick Park Avenue 4dr

Back in October one of the nation’s largest Hummer dealers “Towbin Hummer” located in Las Vegas closed its doors due to a huge DECREASE in sales,  and trust me, Vegas is a Hummer kind of town. A Towbin sales person told me yesterday that they still have 13 unsold on their lot. Who wants to buy a dinosaur really cheap?

Towbin Motorcars is one of the most prominent auto dealers in the western US. Towbin sells Bentley’s, Rolls Royce’s, and now, the Mercedes Smart Car. Yes, Towbin has replaced Hummer with Smart. Undoubtedly a smart move.

 

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the rest would have us believe that “The Big Three” US automakers are in trouble because of onerous regulations imposed by the US government. As usual, the “conservative right” manipulates the information to prove their point. No boys, the problem is that GM, Chrysler and to a lesser extent make products that no one wants to buy.  

Something That You Need To Read Today.....

Newly elected members of Congress hear dismal economic forecast at Harvard conference

By JEREMY P. JACOBS, PolitickerMA.com Reporter

Politicker Photo

Newly elected members of Congress listen to panelists discuss the current economic crisis

CAMBRIDGE - Forty newly elected members of Congress gathered Thursday morning to hear some of Massachusetts' finest economists discuss the current crisis and possible remedies.

And one thing became clear very quickly: No one knows a surefire way out of the mess.

The forum took place at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government as part of its four-day conference this week for recently elected members of Congress. It featured panelists with economic expertise from the Kennedy School, Harvard's economics department and Harvard's law school.

Jeffrey Frankel, an economics professor at the Kennedy School and former member of President Bill Clinton's council of economic advisors, summed up the tone of the meeting in his opening remarks.

"No one thoroughly understands the economic crisis," Frankel said.

As the representative-elects listened intently, Frankel discussed what he viewed as the causes for the current crisis, tracing it back to the subprime mortgage crisis that hit in the summer of 2007. On Monday, the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, of which Frankel is a member, announced that the recession began in December of 2007 and has not ended. That makes it longer than the country's previous two recessions.

"Everyone expects the recession to continue at least into the middle of 2009," Frankel said.

Gregory Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard University, said that the current downturn is "one of those areas where economists do not see through a single lens" and that "it is very hard for anyone in your shoes to figure out what is the right thing to do."

Mankiw said the root of the problem was many financial institutions betting that housing prices nationwide would not drop by 20 percent, which they haven't since the 1930s. When those prices did drop 20 percent, it shook the foundation of those institutions investments.

Mankiw said that economists are looking at three areas for ways to fix the current problem: monetary policy, fiscal policy and fixing the financial system. On fiscal policy, which Congress controls, Mankiw said the tension is between cutting taxes and increasing government spending to create jobs and, therefore, increase consumer spending. Most textbooks, Mankiw said, agree that an influx of government spending most effectively accomplishes that goal. But, he added, not all economists agree on that point.

"I don't think the economics community has a very clear answer on that question," he said.

Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School and a member of the newly appointed committee charged with overseeing the Wall Street bailout package, pointed to demographical factors for the economic problems. Fully employed males, she said, make less money now than they did in the 1970s when adjusted for inflation. However, spending on housing, healthcare, child care, transportation and taxes has increased, Warren said, which has lead to more debt and less saving. Warren also prescribed establishing a Consumer Product Safety Commission to monitor financial consumer products.

"Every can of soda, every candy, everything we touch," she said, "is regulated for safety at some level...and yet financial products are not governed by that; they are governed by contracts."

The newly-elected members of Congress listened silently throughout the panelist opened remarks and then posed a few questions before session adjourned.

The new members that are attending the conference include the following, listed alphabetically by state:

Parker Griffith (AL-5, D)

Ann Kirpatrick (AZ-01, D)

Jackie Speier (CA-12, D)

Laura Richardson (CA-37, D)

Jared Polis (CO-02, D)

Mike Coffman (CO-06, R)

Jim Himes (CT-04, D)

Alan Grayson (FL-8, D)

Bill Posey (FL-15, R)

Tom Rooney (FL-16, R)

Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24, D)

Debbie Halvorson (IL-11, D)

Bill Foster (IL-14, D)

Aaron Schock (IL-18, R)

Steve Scalise (LA-01, R)

Niki Tsongas (MA-05, D)

Frank Kratovil (MD-01, D)

Chellie Pingree (ME-01, D)

Mark Schauer (MI-07, D)

Gary Peters (MI-09, D)

Erik Paulsen (MN-03, R)

Larry Kissell (NC-08, D)

John Adler (NJ-03, D)

Leonard Lance (NJ-07, R)

Martin Heinrich (NM-01, D)

Harry Teague (NM-02, D)

Ben Lujan (NM-03, D)

Paul Tonko (NY-21, D)

Dan Maffei (NY-25, D)

Chris Lee (NY-26, R)

Steve Driehaus (OH-1, D)

Marcia Fudge (OH-11, D)

John Boccieri (OH-16, D)

Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-03, D)

Pedro Pierluisi (PR-AL, D)

Jason Chaffetz (UT-03, R)

Glenn Nye (VA-2, D)

Tom Perriello (VA-05, D)

Gerry Connolly (VA-11, D)

Cynthia Lummis (WY-AL, R)

Jeremy P. Jacobs is a PolitickerMA.com Reporter and can be reached via email at jeremy.jacobs@politickerma.com.

America Doesn't Need a Transportation Bill, We Need a Transportation POLICY

There is a thread on National Journal Experts Blog Transportation:

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2008

How To Write The Next Transportation Bill?

Although we don't have a new Transportation secretary yet, we do know that the most important task that person will face will be guiding the reauthorization of the surface transportation law (SAFETEA-LU), which expires Sept. 30, 2009. The nation's transportation needs have changed and expanded dramatically since the Eisenhower administration launched the Interstate System in 1956. At the same time, the fuels tax that has funded the program since its inception can no longer serve as the sole source of revenue as people drive more fuel-efficient vehicles. What do you think the new secretary's top five priorities should be for updating the law to meet the nation's 21st-century transportation needs?

-- Lisa Caruso, NationalJournal.com 

Isn't the formation of a 21st century transportation "policy" really what is called for?

President Obama should elevate the position of Secretary of Transportation to the same level of importance that he says he is raising the Secretary of Commerce to. 

A strong Secretary of Transportation, working in concert with a strong Secretary of Energy to develope policy's needed by us is impaerative if we are to develope the new transportation and energy sources that we so badly need.