GOP Lies and Lies

Update: See Bruce Murphy's piece that argues GOP is desperate against Doyle, mocking the silly notion that Doyle is doomed.

But lying is the Republican way.

Faced with the hollowed-out economy executed by the Bush-Cheney administration, 47 states this year face ballooning budget deficits, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

State legislatures and governors from California to Maine are fighting to clean up the fiscal carnage.

So the over-heated GOP shills in Wisconsin snipe and gripe, screaming about the state budget addressing the $6 billion deficit: The worst ever, sure to draw the wrath of the people.

Yes, the state budget not yet approved is the cause of economic misery and generates outrage across the state. Right.

And Jim Doyle is sure to feel this wrath and outrage. Milwaukee talk radio and GOP shills are never wrong.

Where were these fiscal Republican geniuses the last eights years that saw the Bush administration applaud and actually brag about economic progress as 1,000,000s of jobs were outsourced? Smirking no doubt.

Where were these geniuses the last eight years that saw in 2001 the projected elimination of all public debt [and states arguing about what to do with their surpluses] morph into Bush bequeathing $10 trillion debt to the new administration and the 50 states in fiscal crises? That's easy, they were applauding King George's leadership and courage.

Remember the "deficits don't matter" assurance infamously voiced by our intrepid former vice-president.

As the GOP scolds, do yourself a favor and don't buy their snake oil.

Their public record and commitment to honest commentary ain't the best as the omission of inconvenient facts make clear.

If we could get a honest policy discussion from Republicans, our country and our fellow states would not be in this mess.

Obama Bashes Bush

Update: Can America Handle a Brilliant President? Barack Obama Shines During His First Prime Time News Conference, Even if He Punted a Few Answers. Hey, He Called on Helen Thomas! Happy Days are Here Again.

Promising a clean break from George W. Bush, Obama sets the stage for cleaning the GOP's political clocks.

See "I won't return to the failed theories of the last eight years. "In his first press conference, the president dismisses his opponents on the stimulus package as out of touch.

Obama: Now

Update: On stimulus, Senate Dems ready to go it alone

President Obama called for action today in a Washington Post op-ed piece implicitly reminding obstructionist Republicans that their policy views are what got us here in the first place and are precisely what was rejected by voters the last election.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long.

Obama significantly did not single out Republicans but rather castigated "Washington," though this looks like the first major strike in a PR war for/against the stimulus bill that Obama has well positioned the doctrinaire Republicans to lose.

Shambles

Update: From the National Journal's Congressional Insiders' Poll of 40 Democrats (by Richard E. Cohen and Peter Bell): "Roughly how much longer do you expect the recession to continue?"

6 months or less - 3 percent
7 to 12 months - 15 percent
13 to 23 months - 63 percent
24 months or longer - 20 percent
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The results of Bush's industrial policy, wars and crony capitalism, are plain to see in this morning's news.

"The United States economy shrank at its fastest pace in a quarter century from October through December, the government reported on Friday, in the broadest accounting yet of the toll of the credit crisis. Consumer spending and business investment all but disappeared, and economists said the painful contraction was likely to continue at an alarming pace well into the summer," reads the lede in the New York Times.

Other economists are much more pessimistic, and those shorting the Dow and watching for the moment when it drops below 6,000 are making the best out of what author Dave Lindorff explains is an economy that will not endure:

Over the last 20 years, America has degenerated into a nation of consumers, with 72 percent of Gross Domestic Product (sic) now being accounted for by consumer spending--most of it going for things that are produced overseas and shipped here.

That is not an economic model that is sustainable, and it is a model that has just suffered what is certainly a mortal blow.

Bottom line: Nothing Obama proposes is too much in his stimulus package to clean up this mess. And Republicans complaining about any spending on any earmark resemble someone yelling about a piece of litter left in the yard as a tornado approaches.

Someone to go to the well with

President Lyndon Baines Johnson nationalized the old Texas sentiment of confidence and respect: "He’s someone to go to the well with."

As we approach the end of the Bush-Cheney administration and the promise of President-elect Obama, we are presented with the consequences of eight years of nihilistic politics, greed-and-crony finance, and feeding of hatreds and division among our brothers and sisters.

That catastrophic bequest is the lack of confidence and uncertain liquidity in our financial system that threatens to squander our life savings, and kill innovation and the common effort.

Hard work and innovation with a common effort deserve the kind of respect that led LBJ to recognize that the civil rights movement in more ways than one restored the promise of America for all Americans.

The legacy of Bush-Cheney is the loss of that confidence and respect, the belief that we’re all in this together with men and women who are people we would go the well with.

That's what electing Obama means for us. The guy actually believes that our government should serve us; that the loss of much of our life savings can be recouped, that education is not for the few.

So as the GOP smirks at voting rights today, as the GOP warns Obama to go slow, let's look to the bleak near future of the economy with the same commitment and guidance that the civil rights movement offered all of us: We're in this together and we respect and value our fellow citizens.

And with a common effort, nothing can stop us as we go to the well together.

Roubini: Dismal Outlook for the US and Global Economy

Warnings that President-elect Obama err on the side of doing too much as Americans watch their retirement savings dissipate are words from the wise.

From Nouriel Roubini's The Dismal Outlook for the US and Global Economy and the Financial Markets:

- The U.S. will experience its most severe recession since WWII, much worse and longer and deeper than even the 1974-75 and 1980-82 recessions

- Obama will inherit and economic and financial mess worse than anything the U.S. has faced in decades

- The world economy will experience a severe recession ...

Someone to go to the well with

President Lyndon Baines Johnson nationalized the old Texas sentiment of confidence and respect: He’s someone to go to the well with.

As we approach the end of the Bush-Cheney administration, we are presented with the consequences of eight years of nihilistic politics, greed-and-crony finance, and feeding of hatreds and division among our brothers and sisters.

That catastrophic bequest is the lack of confidence and fading liquidity in our financial system that threatens to squander our life savings, and kill innovation and the common effort.

The legacy of Bush-Cheney is the loss of confidence and respect, the belief that we’re all in this together with men and women who are people we would go the well with.
- 30 -
-via mal contends

Hitting McCain Hard Now

"What we've seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed" - from Salon.

That's our man.

Bush on the Economy

From Slate's Jacob Weisberg who collects Bushisms:

"The economy is growing, productivity is high, trade is up, people are working. It's not as good as we'd like, but—and to the extent that we find weakness, we'll move."—Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008

Click here to see video of Bush's comments. The Bushism is at 7:55.

Kevin Phillips on the Economic Numbers Racket

Update II: Americans are doing considerably worse than the usual economic measures let on.

Update: Debt Rattle, Fire and Iceland; Central Banks Signal Deepening Concern at Outlook as G-7 Meets

via MAL Contends

In the Harper's May issue (not available online yet), Kevin Phillips has a vital piece discussing why the American economy is in worse shape than is acknowledged by bipartisan elites who have been participating not in some "grand conspiracy, just accumulating opportunisms."

Phillips cites John Williams, a California-based economic analyst and statistician, who dubs this predilection over the last several decades to paint an overly-rosy picture of the economy and Americans' financial health: "Pollyanna Creep."

Myself, I call it, lying.

Although Phillips does not write it, like in most dysfunctions of government, the Bush administration is the worst.

Americans know perfectly well that American elites have functioned as a collective Squealer—the character who is a pig in George Orwell's Animal Farm, who contra reality on the farm incessantly squeals how well everyone is doing and how blessed is the state of Animal Farm in all respects.

One does not need to be a reader of CounterPunch, or for that matter a reader of John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, to know that this taboo analysis is instructive to American families and impolitic towards the squealers.

Writes Phillips:

We might ponder as well who profits from a low-growth U.S. economy hidden under statistical camouflage. Might it be Washington politicos and affluent elites, anxious to mislead voters, coddle the financial markets, and tamp down expensive cost-of-living increases for wages and pensions?

I think we indeed might ponder these points and consider them in the next election, and especially the white working class demographic which seems to focus on gays and their own god deemed vengeful and unloving towards other tribes, especially around election time.
Concludes Phillips:

The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope. ... The credit markets are fearful, and the financial markets are nervous. If gloom continues, our humbugged nation may truly regret losing sight of history, risk, and common sense.

Unless we enforce a reversal of the major economic and political trends in our society, no manner of preventing gays from marrying or asking for god's wrath is going to help our fellow citizens in this grand American experiment.

Daily Kos Headlines

Good stuff at Kos:

- Ashcroft: "History will not judge this kindly" (Update w/Video)

- "Mr. Barammobama going to win it all!"

- Getting ready for the third wave of financial panic

- Why Elizabeth Edwards is Wrong

- [Update][w/Video] IN-06 Dem. Candidate Barry Welsh Punched in the Face

- Inflation Is Getting Worse

- Levittown Lovin’ Obama – Seriously (Photos!)

- Colin Powell praises Obama

Wall Street Looks with Concern, Fed Action Called "Emergency'

- Breaking Financial News - New York Times -

Update: Fed Cuts Key Interest Rate 3/4% - The Fed's cut in the federal funds rate is the "most dramatic signal it can send that it is concerned about a potential recession in the United States. It marked the biggest one-day move by the central bank in recent memory," reads the Times in a breaking story.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

The Fed decision was taken during an emergency telephone conference with Fed officials on Monday night. Those discussions occurred after global financial markets had plunged Monday as investors grew more concerned about the possibility that the United States, the world's largest economy, could be headed into a recession.

A disastrous, imperial foreign policy, a historically bad fiscal policy, a devastating blow to civil rights, and now a looming recession and downturn in the stock market.

Makes me wonder what god was thinking when, as Bush has attested, god chose Bush to be president.

From AmericaBlog:

Asian and Australian markets fell hard for the second straight day including a 5.6% drop in Tokyo, 7% in Australia, China 7.2% and Hong Kong a brutal 8.7%. The Hong Kong market has lost over 21% in 2008.

European markets collapsed on Monday, though at midday, are slightly down.

Wall Street is pointing in the direction of a painful day with futures down 4%.

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