Walker, Ryan, Johnson and GOP Hold Americans in Scorn

The racist John Birch Society's neofascist idealizations appeared near-extinguished with the death of Joe McCarthy, the rise of the Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson consensus on social insurance and public investments in infrastructure, jobs and public education, amid the victories of the American Civil Rights Movement for jobs and justice.

Like Lazarus, fascism is back, brought to life by five Republicans on the US Supreme Court, and the realization among a handful of rightwing political strategists that Americans remain sufficiently disengaged and despondent about their ability to secure the blessings of liberty for their families (United States Constitution) that rightist Republicans can create legal, non-biological entities and endow them with rights and power exceeding the American people with a 50/50 shot of people not knowing what happened.

In a typically insightful column this week, Nobel-Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, notes other derangements of the GOP-Koch mob in Congress and the GOP presidential clown car: A clueless and out-of-touch attitude that translates neatly into policy, (supplied by the corporate-funded, rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)). (Center for Media and Democracy)

Krugman, commenting on the Federal Reserve's new study of the financial well-being of American households, (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, May 27, 2015 Press Release and Study), writes, "I am not, or not only, talking about right-wing contempt for the poor, although the dominance of compassionless conservatism is a sight to behold. ... But leave self-declared conservatives and their contempt for the poor on one side. What’s really striking is the disconnect between centrist conventional wisdom and the reality of life — and death — for much of the nation."

The Koch brothers-Ayn Rand strain of modern-day Birchism that Krugman references as tolerated and abetted in Washington is embodied in Wisconsin by Republicans led by Scott Walker, Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson.

Scott Walker is defined more completely by his malice, as his sociopathic contempt masks a ignorance combined with corruption, and an anti-intellectual bent that makes for a dangerous public officeholder who never faces presidential-level turnouts at the ballot box.

Though Krugman does not mention Wisconsin's trio of modern-day John Birchers in his latest column this weekend, Krugman has eviscerated Paul Ryan numerous times and repeated what is obvious: Ryan is a liar, and the GOP effort to attack Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is cowardly and dishonestly presented.

What the Fed study makes clear is that about one half of American families are living on the edge.

This is obvious to most Americans, remote to centrist conventional wisdom in D.C. , and a good thing to Scott Walker and Koch brothers holding malice the likes of which Wisconsin has never seen, or even contemplated.

Fear Awaits Signal GOP Is as Crazy as Many Believe

Update: 'Fear Index' (VIX) (CBOE Volatility Index) stays mellow, as every policy maker and his mother mouth feel-good platitudes. "Make no mistake about it, the VIX is moving with direct correlation as to whether or not the government is making progress on reopening and addressing the debt ceiling," says Seeking Alpha (SA).  SA says an agreement on a debt ceiling is imminent.

Here's a somewhat contrary view: "Last week Todd Salamone said, 'If the VIX closes above the 18 area, it is quite possible that a move to the 22-24 region would happen quickly. This area marks double the 2013 low and the most recent August low. A close above 18 would suggest negative sentiment is building instead of decreasing, pressuring stocks and heightening volatility expectations in the process.' Todd was dead-on, as the VIX soared above 18 and peaked just beneath 22 before imploding later in the week." VIX is trading at 17 at 12:48 Eastern P.M.
---
Now here is one fascinating interplay, the potential death throes of an American political party (John Judis), mass racism, and the possibility of the meltdown of the world economy.

The base, the popular base of the Republican Party or suicide caucus, doesn't fear an economic meltdown, much less the government shutdown they engineered.

After all, God is watching and a global economic crisis may enable the succession of the Republican Homeland free of ZOG and the United States federal government. Don't think for a moment the lunatics don't hold sway in the Republican Party, in case you were not already convinced.

Fear itself is something to fear. And so is lunacy.

The U.S. federal government., this is the entity helping to deliver healthcare to the brown and black still intent on passing themselves off as decent Americans to the chagrin of the Republican homeland.

Yet, Wall Street does not seem to buy this as a compelling argument to crash the global economy.

As soon as the 'Fear' indices suddenly rise, watch out. This is not happening right now.

"Major equity indexes surged again at the end of last week with optimism that Washington's budget stalemate will be broken, pushing the CBOE Volatility Index back below the 16 level," reports Chris McKhann, echoing a widespread estimation that markets have already priced in a political deal on the government shutdown and impending default.

This holds no comfort for the vast majority of Americans. Nor should it.

"I've gone up to a 25-percent chance" of a government shutdown, said Potomac Research chief political strategist Greg Valliere. "Last month, I was at 10 percent. I think (House Speaker John) Boehner and most of the leadership know this could blow up on them in the 2014 election, and they're leery about doing anything that radical," reports Patti Domm, CNBC Executive News Editor. Valliere's statement was reported on September 18, 2013.

Tea Baggers Wave Confederate Flag at
Weekend Rally at White House Protesting
Gov Shutdown That Tea Party Demanded

Radical and crazy is the GOP order of the day.

Press coverage is trying to chill out the American populace, that segment not significantly composed of God-fearing whacks who believe in magic and white power.

See Bill Moyers' Let's Call The Shutdown What It Is: Secession by Another Means and Debt limit defeat turns conservatives into neo-Confederate fantasists.

Hopes for sanity and rumors of a solution to the GOP-created crisis abound today, I'll believe it when I see it.

Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, rallying Tea Baggers, remain optimistic about something.

Paul Krugman Is Tired of Trying to Reason with You People

Read Paul Krugman for a dose of sanity during a crazy period of American history.

Krugman, a Nobel-prize winning economist, is the author of The Return of Depression Economics (W.W. Norton and Company; 2000) and a large body of work that is most frequently ignored by President Obama's economic team.

From Krugman on Plutocrats and Occupy Wall Street:

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

New Gallup Poll: Dems Up, Tea Party Down

Not really high on the Gallup poll gauging public opinion.

But in light of the Tea Party and GOP openly declaring war on the working class, the latest right-leaning poll is instructive.

Here is Wisconsin, the nine recalls elections will go five-to-four Democratic. In the nation, after the attempted arson committed against the people's economy, public opinion is turning against the crazies.

From The Democratic Strategist.

The latest Gallup Poll conducted Aug 4-7, after the S&P credit rating downgrade, affirms a favorable trend for Democratic House candidates, as well as recent polls indicating a big downer for tea party Republicans. According to Lydia Saad's Gallup post,

Gallup's first measure of the 2012 congressional elections shows Democrats leading Republicans, 51% to 44%, in registered voters' preferences for which party's candidate they would support in their district "if the elections for Congress were being held today."

Saad notes that the Dem advantage is not quite as large as in '06 and '08, when Democrats enjoyed double digit leads in Gallup polls leading up to the election. But the trend line nonetheless appears favorable for Dems.

The poll also brings some unwelcome news for Republicans who have linked their election hopes to the tea party:

Gallup also asked registered voters how a Tea Party endorsement would affect their likelihood of voting for a congressional candidate. The effect is nearly 2-to-1 negative, with 42% saying they would be less likely to vote for such a candidate versus 23% saying they would be more likely. About a third say it would make no difference or are unsure.

Among registered voters, most Republicans say a Tea Party endorsement would either make them more likely to vote for a candidate (44%) or make no difference (42%), while most Democrats say it would make them less likely to vote for a candidate (66%). Independents' reactions are similar to the national average, with 25% more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by the Tea Party and 38% less likely...These results echo those of a separate question in the new survey showing that, by 20% to 14%, more Americans strongly oppose the Tea Party movement than strongly support it.

Evidently, 'tea party downgrade' applies to electoral politics, along with America's credit rating. Maybe a good bumper sticker for Dems in the months ahead should say "Had Enough Tea?...Vote Democratic."

The X Economy - It's Bad at Best

Update: Christian Menegatti in RGE Monitor: "The United States is in the 20th month of a recession that has been by far the longest and most severe of the post-war period." See also The Next Big Bad Thing? and Next Shock Coming: Commercial Real Estate.

"The American economy has gone away. It is not coming back until free trade myths are buried six feet under."

The quote above is from Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch (Feb. 24, 2009), an impolitic newsletter and political site that regularly tells the world hard truths about the economy and public policy.

Roberts has been warning about the dangers of hollowing out our economy through outsourcing (offshoring), big finance capturing the regulatory bodies, and the legislative branches becoming a sick joke, for years.

Roberts is now conventional wisdom.

From Robert Reich's candid piece in Talking Points Memo, dismissing the optimistic talk about a U-shaped recession, Reich writes that the global economic crisis is an X file:

The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't 'recover' because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin.

How about ditching the empire, peace instead of war, dismantling prisons and replacing them with schools, sustainability initiatives in energy, environmentally-friendly everything, legalizing most drugs; you know what the left has been advocating for the last several decades.

As for President Obama: Don't tell the world to go shopping and watch your neighborhood for terrorists as Bush did. We need an acknowledgement of the scale of the crisis and a declaration that only real change change can save the economy.

Perhaps heeding the advice of Seymour Melman, Ralph Nader, Jeffrey St. Clair, deep ecologists, radical economists ... hell, anyone who was under FBI surveillance in the 1960s-70s would help. As Noam Chomsky says: Hegemony or Survival.

It's D-Day, Shiller, Roubini, Stiglitz, Kuttner and Krugman Sound Alarm

Just saying.

- Roubini's Pissed-Off and Stiglitz Goes Ballistic

- Robert Shiller: Depression Lurks Unless There’s More Stimulus

- Krugman: Green Shoots and Glimmers

- Kuttner: Will Obama's Economic Team Lead Him Off a Cliff?

Politically, it's time for a for-us or against-us ultimatum to the GOP while people still recognize that Bush and his GOP brought us to this mess. The TEA Party was a joke, for now.

But the idea that we have to try the recovery program now and then try something else, more comprehensive, in the Fall ain't going to work while the economy continues its slide and the GOP continues trring to appropriate unfocused frustration and aggression.

Be bold and great forces of the American people will come to your aid. "Choo-choos," as some the Tea Set derogated the labor-intensive high-speed rail project should be just the beginning of a massive public works program. [I know we have some begun now.]

And everyone knows that the fare of Robert Gibbs' “you will see in a systematic and coordinated way the transparency of determining and showing to all involved some of the results of these stress tests” didn't play and appears emblematic of opacity.

This recovery needs to be framed as Obama against Newt, Rush, Sarah Palin and the GOP.

Spook them [the GOP] , scare them [the public], shake the markets.

I know this more confrontational political strategy is being considered; well now it's D-Day, and Gen. Patton-Obama ought to lead the landing this time and all operations thereafter.

A Vision for High Speed Rail

Krugman Draws a Picture

From today's Krugman blog on the return of depression economics:

"I was alerted to this Media Matters post, revealing that people still don’t get why the current slump is different from the early 1980s, and why fiscal policy is necessary this time. Yes, I know, it’s Joe Scarborough; but still …"

"Anyway, it’s the zero lower bound, stupid. And here’s the picture to make the point": [See above.]