Lemkin

Annals of the (Completely) Free Market →

May God bless Our completely Free, Uninhibited, and Unbiased market economy that, for some reason likely tied to his un-Americanism, noted socialist Obama hates so very much:

By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.

Freedom! If we can just keep on keeping Big Guvmint off the backs of these little Mom and Pop operators, just think of all the jobs that will be created when, again, their “financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.” Going to be a big day for us all.

Selective Stenography →

Glenn Greenwald, writing a sort of response to yesterday’s NYT Ombudsman piece (in which he wondered whether NYT journalists should challenge the “facts” they are presented when working stories), really nails the MSM’s ongoing stenography problem. It’s not so much that MSM journalists dutifully and uncritically write down (and then print) what they’ve been told, but that they only do so on behalf of those already in a position of power (be it economic or political):

…there is one important caveat that needs to be added here. This stenographic treatment by journalists — of simply amplifying what someone claims without any skepticism or examination — is not available to everyone. Only those who wield power within America’s political and financial systems are entitled to receive this treatment. For everyone else — those who are viewed as ordinary, marginalized, or scorned by America’s political establishment — the exact opposite rules apply: their statements are subjected to extreme levels of skepticism in those rare instances when they’re heard at all.

[…]

The most damaging sin of this stenographic model isn’t laziness — the failure to subject false statements to critical, investigative scrutiny — although that is part of it. The most damaging sin is that it’s propagandistic: it converts official assertions and claims from the most powerful into Truth, even when those assertions and claims are baseless or false. This stenographic model is the primary means by which media outlets turn themselves into eager spokespeople and servants for the most powerful factions: the very opposite of the function they claim, with increasing absurdity, to perform.

Yep. Read the whole thing.

All of a Piece

I’m not sure how many times the Republicans have to say the same stuff, plainly and in modern English, before it begins to sink in to the minds of those in the media that they, the Republicans in Congress, want Obama to fail in his bid for reelection and to achieve that goal, they need the American economy to fail.

You, as a GOP House mover-and-shaker (aka Tea Klan fanatic), are faced with the newly rising popularity of Obama (e.g. he’s in the 50s for the first time in a while), the first positive news on housing starts in a long, long time (driven more or less entirely by huge demand for apartments, since vanishingly few folks can qualify to buy houses anymore, at least not considered relative to the bubble excess and the fact that home foreclosures are still relatively high), a suddenly more optimistic public attitude re: the economy, and none of your own GOP candidates for the nomination are exactly setting the woods on fire, and may well be instead burning down the house relative to your broader chances both up- and down-ticket come 2012.

All that considered, do you, the rank and file Tea Klan fanatic, feel comfortable handing that same Obama you want to fail a sure-fired way to boost the economy even more as 2012 rolls along? Or do you want to apply the emergency brakes? With this most recent nonsense, I think no sensate being could still deny that we have our answer.
Now, of course, there is some subtlety to their position. They don’t want the extension of this particular tax break because it a) doesn’t help their prime audience in any way (aka the 1%), because those folks either don’t draw traditional paychecks and/or said pay is a relatively tiny fraction of their entire portfolio, so they could care less and won’t notice either way b) it legitimately does help the broader economy and quickly since we’re in an aggregate demand slump and this is cash in the pockets of the 99% who actually create that aggregate demand in, uh, aggregate, and c) is a quick and relatively easy way to sand the gears of the economy, and they think they can sell it to their crazed idiocratic supporters through ever-willing conduits like FOXnews and the Wall Street Journal (The latter of which is already overboard) using such time-honored tools as goalpost moving and poison-pill additions. No one will ever know, and if they do, we can convince them to blame “Democrat leaders in the Senate.” Who, for once, have grown a pair and are doing their part to (rightly) hang this on the GOP. They even have a “Tea Klan tax hike” style meme going. It’s like they’ve finally gotten hip to the way the other side messaged in, oh, 1992.

But frankly this is a pretty simple calculation for the GOP. Braveheart and all the rest are just window dressing that, as usual, the MSM is lapping up. The real story, the one far too shrill to actually report: Anyone or anything getting in the way slowing the economy can kindly go die in the streets. Tax proposals benefiting the 1%: always welcome. Wedge issues that reliably bring this or that fractional percent of old white voters to the polls in November: always welcome. Anything that might actually help the economy and, by extension, Obama: forget about it. And they have.

"She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer."

— Newt Gingrich, disgraced former Speaker and loving husband, describes his first wife in a Katharine Q. Seelye profile. Ladies and gentlemen, your next GOP frontrunner.

(Source: tnr.com)

Upstairs/Downstairs

John Kyl (R, AZ), Saturday:  [tax increases are] the wrong medicine for our ailing economy, [...] [any possibility of a potential future increase only serves to] put a wet blanket over job creation and economic recovery.
John Kyl (R, AZ), Sunday:  The payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We don’t think that is a good way to do it. [Thus we want to raise taxes on every American that currently receives a paycheck]. The best way to hurt economic growth is to impose more taxes on the people who do the hiring. As a result, the Republicans have said, ‘Don’t raise the existing tax rates on those who do the hiring.’ [That is to say, the 1%. Who aren't, uh, actually hiring. But still. Don't raise THEIR taxes. Raise the 99%'s taxes. Only that will get the old economy going again!]
Lemkin:  Again, the MSM will see no dissonance whatsoever in these positions. Of course raising taxes on most everyone in the country to avoid a tiny tax increase on a tiny fraction of the country makes the best economic sense in an aggregate demand-based economic downturn. What other conclusion is even possible given this data? Surely both sides are at fault for low aggregate demand in the 99%; this is only fixable if both sides agree to lower taxes on the 1%. Again: what other conclusion is even possible?

"…this is the way the right goes after everyone who stands in their way: accuse them of everything, no matter how implausible or contradictory the accusations are. Progressives are atheistic socialists who want to impose Sharia law. Class warfare is evil; also, John Kerry is too rich. And so on."

— Paul Krugman, sole member of the mainstream media who seems to understand this simple concept.

"What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage."

— Paul Krugman, hosting another edition of Krugman Explains it All in 200 Words or Less. Shrill.

"I know that admitting that Barack Obama is already the candidate of centrists’ dreams would be awkward, would make it hard to adopt the stance that both sides are equally at fault. But that is the truth."

— Paul Krugman, commenting on the seemingly eternal font of “what we need is a mystical centrist third party to fix everything” pieces from the MSM.
What we have now is a right wing party, the GOP, and a center-right wing party, The Democrat. Obama ran as and is governing as a center-right technocrat… and still can’t get much done in the face of blanket GOP opposition.
Sadly, admitting to or even obliquely referencing this reality is an unforgivable heresy and likely as not to get you run out of Serious Person circles forever.

"The Republicans are serious budget reformers; the lady from Washington, doesn’t do budgets."

— Grover Norquist, primary driver of conservative economic policy in the form of his idiotic anti-tax pledge. In every way that matters, this is who they are.
He’s referring to the second highest-ranking member, male or female, of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Patty Murray. You stay classy, Grover.

You Had Me At "Sump" →

Rising flood waters at doorstep of Nebraska nuclear plant:

“And if the water gets in here, what would be the result?” Mr. Jaczko asked.

“We’ve got a sump pump over here,” said Dan Goodman, the assistant operations manager

Well, then. That settles it. Nothing to see here. I can’t think of one instance of high water causing troubles for a nuclear plant anyway…