Kennedy’s private wealth and starchy New England vowels were bad enough. The ultimate outrage, however, was to their tribal instincts. The President, for example, was a thoughtful man. That sounds harmless, even estimable. But on yesterday’s frontier the man who paused to think didn’t survive; he has to rely on ginger and instinct and attack his problems, not with reason, but with his bare fists. Kennedy… called for diversity, tolerance, nonconformity. For the man who kept faith with yesterday, this was a descration. Pioneer society had demanded total conformity. Everyone had to stick together, wear the same label, and circle the wagons against disaster. It had to be that way; otherwise the Indians would have wiped out the lot.
 

—William Manchester, “The Death of a President,” 1967 

[Read more →]

Kunstler, dead on this week: [Read more →]

Obama reads from teleprompter, this is proof he’s incapable of thinking for himself.

Sarah Palin scribbles notes on her hand - and this is proof of her real Americanness.

Stopped off at the grocery store this morning for milk. No bread, though. Store was curiously empty, parking lot still pretty much a mess.

Lord, if we get another 10-18 inches, as the Weather Channel is saying, it’s going to be a mess beyond comprehension later this week.

The city already is a nightmare. In town yesterday to run some errands, actually encountered two motorists trying to back up on city streets, including one guy on South Duke just past King. Everybody jonesing for a parking space; I think this guy figured he’d be better off in the garage, which is true, but still - dude, you don’t back up on a major city street!

But people/drivers just go slightly crazy with this type of weather. I swear I’m seeing more people quick pull out of alleys right in front of other drivers. And then there are the people who have the cojones - with travel lanes already narrowed - to double park.

Yes, I’m looking at you, driver of the maroon Econoline van in the first block of West Orange Street last night at 5 p.m.

But best/worst of all was out along Columbia Avenue near Wheatland Distributors Saturday afternoon, two guys on an ATV - without helmets, of course - passing cars on the left, in the middle of the packed-down, treacherous road.

One doesn’t like to wish ill on his fellow citizens. But when you court disaster, well… maybe you need to occasionally experience disaster to get wise.

Batten down the hatches. Knew I should have replaced the snowblower when it died two years ago.

Color me shocked.

This morning on Fox News, host Chris Wallace asked Sarah Palin about her public call for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to resign after reports surfaced that he called a group of liberal activists “f—ing retarded.” Palin reiterated her call for Emanuel to “step down” and explained that while she’s not “politically correct” or “one to be a word police,” she was committed to “reaching out and to helping the special needs community.” But when Wallace asked Palin about Rush Limbaugh’s endorsement of the language, Palin said she was fine with Limbaugh’s satirical comments.

Your conservative thought process: It’s OK when Rush is politically incorrect.

Rahm? How dare you.

But we look for consistency where none will ever be found. Which is why, when Palin runs for president and accepts all sorts of special interest money yet continues to hold herself forth as Queen of Teh People, none of those people will question it in the slightest.

Which is why Palin will yammer on about taking Washington back from the special interests, but oppose any additional regulation of Goldman or AIG. Because somehow, they’re not special interests.

What do the tea partiers want? I know what they want. They want their cake - and to eat it, too.

Actually, Sarah Palin says it.

Sarah Palin’s speech to the tea partiers.

“I will live, I will die for the people of America.”

Calm down, Evita.

Sullivan:

These two potent messages - delegitimizing Obama as “the other” and as a weak-kneed traitor to the troops, and casting herself as the avatar of the real America, ready to die for its survival - are political gold. Most politicians in liberal democracies she somewhat from stating them so obviously, because they clearly invoke certain, shall we say, non-democratic forms. Not she.

The media will never demand policy specifics from her; there is a huge constituency out there (rightly) outraged by Washington corruption and she now has the critical mantle of the rogue outsider; she can channel Christianism and fuse it with the slogans of phony “fiscal conservatism”; she will blame every lost job on Obama; and she will accuse him of betraying the troops and befriending America’s enemies. Behind her are the Cheneyites. Above all, she is capable of generating a personality cult - much, much more so than Obama, because she can harness Christianism to her divine destiny. The power of this kind of appeal - of a charismatic, beautiful woman, an icon of the pro-life cause, persecuted by the evil elites, demonized by libruls, and commanding the biggest military on earth - should not be under-estimated.

Media can’t demand policy specifics from her. To merely question Sarah Palin, as every other candidate is questioned, is “proof” of bias against her.

Wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross - and a former beauty queen. How quintessentially American.

Missed the Stewart-O’Reilly interviews this week, though I’ve been reading all about it/watching it online. And what’s been most fascinating, as Sullivan hits on today, is how Fox edited the interviews - “to omit some of the best Stewart zingers, and protect O’Reilly from being fully exposed.”

My favorite bit that didn’t get in is this:

O’REILLY: Do you know any Tea Party people?

STEWART: Yes, I do.

O’REILLY: Really? Down in Greenwich Village there are Tea Party people?

STEWART: Down in Greenwich Village? Let me tell you something, Bill—I’ll give you four blocks of Greenwich Village, and I’ll put that up against four blocks around your house—

O’REILLY: Levittown?

STEWART: No, your house now.

O’REILLY: Oh, Levittown is where I was brought up.

STEWART: Well, you don’t live there any more brother.

This is the lie - because O’Reilly’s from “real America” he remains one in spirit despite the fact that he’s making $10 million per year and does not live in Levittown, either literally or figuratively.

You think O’Reilly is a regular guy, just like you? Dream on.

And By-Tor, too.

Nasty out there. Got to drop off a movie at the Giant “Red Box” on the way in, have no idea whether the store is actually open or not. We will see…

Less regulation means here at home too, you know.

Vid of the week is up.

Not much posting around here these days, been very very busy with the whole Conestoga Log Cabin Leasing/Plain investing story and other things. Other reasons as well, mostly having to do with the economy, and the fact that as Ilargi at The Automatic Earth titled a post the other day, “we’re having the wrong conversations.”

The whole don’t ask-don’t tell business is a case in point; it’s obviously a contentious issue and one that in the past I’ve had some pretty strong opinions on, but now… with all that’s going on economically, really, I can’t think of anything less productive than wasting time arguing whether someone who meets the requirements of military service in every way but happens to be gay is somehow unfit for service. It’s not even worth the five seconds I just spent typing that; this country has so many bigger fish to fry.

The Dow has dropped below 10,000 today and while that in and of itself isn’t necessarily an indicator of the broader economy, well, it matters if you’ve got a 401k. The jobless numbers out today ostensibly show some “good news,” but I just don’t trust these figures anymore. The unemployent rate has supposedly dipped to 9.7 pecent but:

The government now estimates 8.4 million jobs vanished in the Great Recession, and economists think the nation would be lucky to get back 1.5 million of them this year. And they say it will take at least three to four years for the job market to return to anything like normal.

A Labor Department survey of households found that 541,000 more Americans had jobs last month. But most of those gains were attributed to seasonal adjustments to the data. Without those adjustments, which account for reduced hiring during winter, the data show fewer people had jobs last month.

As you know, six people I worked with were recently cut. That happens, and the recession gets personal.

I’m beginning to consider that maybe an economic crisis like this is an organic thing. In a correspondence with a reader a few weeks back I used the analogy of a forest fire. Used to be that forests burned every so often; fire was actually necessary for the long-term health of the forest. But then, for a very long time, the policy was to prevent all fires, resulting in a huge build-up of flammable dead vegetation and plants, meaning that when a fire did occur, it was far more likely to be catastrophic, burning hotter and faster and so much harder to control.

Consider the analogy and it’s hard not to be discomfited. We’ve long believed it possible to smooth out the business cycle - to prevent the forest fire of a depression, so to speak. But what if we’ve been fooling ourselves? What if the economy is healthier in the long term when those fires occur? Creative destruction and all that.

But governments cannot permit this; our government can’t, no government can. Recession/depression causes dislocation, causes pain, causes anger, causes unrest. The first and foremost goal of any government anywhere is self-preservation. And really, there’s a moral imperative at stake here as well. If, though intervention, government can mitigate the tragedy of economic contraction and the pain it inflicts on individuals, on families, on communities - hell, on tax revenues - doesn’t government have a moral obligation to do this?

I mean, I’ve long believed the answer is yes. But I’m coming to consider that maybe can’t change the course of rivers, can’t prevent a historic conflagration after years of permitting that dense undergrowth to accumulate.

There’s a difference, I think, in admitting government, human powerlessness in the face of this and cheering that powerlessness - as the teabaggers do. There’s a difference in believing that government does have a moral obligation but maybe ultimately not the power, and thinking there is no moral obligation, to the nation and its individuals.

Which in the long run is the difference between me and the teabaggers - the difference between uncomfortably watching the flames rise, and chanting burn baby, burn.

The Dow, actually - down nearly 229 points as of this writing, could break through the 10,000 floor if this keeps up.

It ain’t over.

Update: Ends the day down more than 268 points, settles at 10,002.18

Stocks buckled Thursday under the growing belief that the global economy is weaker than many investors expected and is likely to stop the U.S. labor market from rebounding in the coming months.

A flood of bad news, including rising debt levels in European nations and an unexpected jump in the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits, had investors pulling money out of assets like stocks and commodities that are looking increasingly risky.

Demand for safe haven holdings like the dollar and Treasurys jumped as the euro tumbled. The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 250 points, and all the major indexes were down about 2 percent. …

<snip>

The jobless claims numbers chilled expectations that the government’s January jobs report, due Friday, would show that employers added workers in the first month of the year. Analysts currently expect Friday report to show that employers added 5,000 jobs in January. The government is also expected to report that the unemployment rate ticked up to 10.1 percent from 10 percent.

U.S. trading also was affected by European markets, which dropped on concerns about onerous debt levels in countries including Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Karl Denninger provides the canonical list of deeper problems, then concludes with:

Might this selloff that we’re into now be ”a blip”?  Maybe.  But it doesn’t change the trajectory, nor does it change the fact that we didn’t get the sorts of valuations and metrics that come with durable Bear Market bottoms in early 2009.  As such we are vulnerable to not only a dive back down to those levels but materially below them if we do not deal with the underlying problems, and to date, there is no indication that our government or industry will do so.

Keep playing the Pax Americana theme folks. Reality is coming and it’s a clue-by-four aimed straight at your heads.

I like that, a “clue-by-four.” Don’t like what it’s going to do, though.

House Republicans release first draft of a budget. Josh Marshall takes a look:

First, it calls for big cuts in Social Security benefits for everyone currently under 55 years of age. On top of the cuts it also calls for privatizing Social Security.

Basically the exact plan President Bush tried in 2005. Next, it calls for the full privatization and phasing out of Medicare. It’ll be replaced by a system of vouchers in which instead of getting Medicare you get a voucher to buy un-reformed private insurance.

Well, at least we finally have some detailed proposal, retro though they may be.

I wonder how much it trims military spending. Oh wait.

More municipal fiscal apocalypse - right here in the Susquehanna Valley:

Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, will consider Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection along with tax increases and asset sales as options to address $68 million in debt service payments due this year, the chairwoman of a City Council committee said last night.

Every option, including tax and fee increases, bankruptcy and a state takeover through Pennsylvania’s Act 47 municipal oversight program will be considered, said Susan Brown-Wilson, chairwoman of the Budget and Finance Committee, which began a week of hearings last night to consider a 2010 spending plan.

The $68 million in debt service payments that Harrisburg faces in connection with the construction of a waste incinerator this year is four times what the city of 47,000 expects to raise through property taxes, and $4 million more than the city’s entire proposed operating budget.

Depressing.

Ilargi: During his State of the Union address last week, President Obama said this:

“We’re working to lift the value of a family’s single largest investment — their home [..]”

While this statement raises many questions -or should at least-, it’s also very clear in a way: it’s all you need to know about current American politics. This becomes all the more poignant when you realize that no-one lifted even one finger in protest. Given the impact of the policy, not to mention the amount of money involved in executing it, that is amazing. Not in the least because it has the potential to throw the country into a deep dark pit, from which it may not arise for many years to come, if ever. …

<snip>

Home prices are already down by over 32%, according to Case/Shiller. Mortgage debt outstanding will have to catch up with that trend at some point. In other words, that leaves us with multi-trillion dollar upcoming losses in the difference between absorbed losses in homes vs mortgage loans.

These losses are sure to keep growing for a while longer. Remember the 28% price fall Case/Shiller project for 2010. The mortgage debt losses will be divided between borrowers, lenders and purchasers of mortgage-backed securities.

And here we return to Obama’s statement about lifting home values. Why would a government want to get involved in any such thing? Isn’t Fannie and Freddie’s objective, for instance, to make homes affordable for everyone? Why then try to lift the prices, which runs counter to this objective?

Here’s why: the government, make that you, the people, owns a huge chunk of the mortgage debt. Not only do the GSE’s have $5.5 trillion “worth” on their books, the Federal Reserve has bought trillions “worth” of MBS securities over the past 18 months or so. If Washington allows real estate prices to fall back to the trendline they were on little more than a decade ago, a mammoth amount of additional federal losses would become glaringly obvious to the public. We should add to that the potential pressure from China, Japan and other nations, which hold scores of MBS, to minimize their losses.

And then Obama’s statement, and his policies, become much easier to understand. The administration is caught up in a desperate attempt to keep prices at elevated levels, far above trend levels, because it itself has financed much of the movement towards those high prices, and is presently buying anything for sale just so they don’t keep falling.

For other reasons as well.

Elevated home values were the principal source of “wealth” in this country, where median incomes stagnated are are likely to continue do so. People borrowed and spent on the basis of what their homes were worth, treating those homes like an ATM. That consumption kept the economy rolling right along.

So much - so much - depends on reinflating the housing bubble. But can it be reinflated, and should it be reinflated are the questions, it seems, we can’t afford to ask.

Get a load of this:

This is an ad for Goldline from Beck’s site. He shills for this constantly on his radio and TV show; Beck’s long been a paid shill for gold/Goldline, but what kills me about this is the tagline: “Trusted and used by Glenn Beck!”

Well, think millions of Americans - if it’s good enough for Glenn Beck it’s good enough for me!

As with yesterday’s bit about the use of the term “progressive,” this is yet more proof, as if it’s needed, that Glenn Beck does indeed have a pervasive influence on what his acolytes say and do. Would you ever - and I mean ever - see something advertised over on MSNBC with, “Keith Olbermann uses it!”

Never.

Liberals don’t think that way. Conservatives do.

And it is, in a way, the ultimate melding of political ideology and capitalism; ideology is used to sell the product. And it does sell the product.

Ideology obviously sells Fox News itself - which, via one of my right-wing readers, is seeing even bigger gains in ratings:

Fox News had its best January in the history of the network, and was the only cable news network to grow year-to-year.

FNC also had the top 13 programs on cable news in total viewers for the fifth month in a row, and the top 13 programs in the A25-54 demographic for the first time in more than five years.

Fox’s draw is the ideology; the audience is extremely faithful, even to the point of slavishness.

Which - from a business point of view - is just a fantastic thing.

For when your conservative audience is so dedicated, so willing to buy the product, it gives you a competitive leg up. It gives other outlets the idea that they, too, should try and tap into that same market - but that’s a problem for news organizations, because actually being “fair and balanced” won’t cut it - you have to be explicitly partisan conservative, because that’s what this customer base wants.

And if you’re a news organization, this means specifically rejecting objectivity. But if that’s the only way to pay the bills - it will happen. Because it must.

Not a good place to be:

there are now 26 states which have depleted their [unemployment insurance] trust funds, among these are the usual suspects including California, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which now rely exclusively on borrowings from the Federal government to prevent the cessation of insurance payments to recently unemployed workers.

The most bankrupt states are California, with $6.8 billion in borrowings, Michigan ($3.4 billion), New York ($2.4 billion), Pennsylvania ($2.2 billion) and Ohio ($1.9 billion).

Emphasis added. Check out the chart, too.

Notes Tyler Durden, and I think he’s right on this:

If the government is unable to finance its profligate ways, and today’s budget announcement by Obama is just the icing on the cake, look for states to gradually reign in unemployment checks whether they like it or not, which would likely lead to some very interesting demonstrations of the broader population’s lack of solidarity with Mr. Blankfein’s $100 million, or whatever it may end up being, bonus number.

Noticed something with today’s vitriolic voice mail - how dare you impugn Fox News! - and it has to do with word choice.

Been writing columns for the Sunday News since 1996, and over the years the preferred right-wing term of demonology has been liberal. You dirtly liberal. You’re a liberal! Liberal liberal liberal.

But that’s changed in recent years - now the term is “progressive.” You and your progressive buddy Obama. You progressives! Progressives are ruining America! etc.

Funny because it proves the point of how Fox News influences conservative thinking and action - Progressive is obviously Glenn Beck’s term. Fox News does not tell us what to think, you progressive. Right.

But when did that change take place. It was fairly gradual; looking back in our letters to the editor archive, I’ve been called “progressive” more times in 2009 and so far in 2010 than I was in the entire 13 years prior. This seems to have coincided with the move of Beck to Fox News and the bigger stage.

Pretty funny. They think they’ve found a new epithet. Doesn’t hold a candle to “winger,” though.

Taibbi responds to a tea party letter to the editor in - of all places - the York Daily Record:

· We protest against a heavy-fisted form of government that seeks to further regulate private enterprise and hinder future profits (i.e., banking and energy industries…).

via We, the Tea Partiers – The York Daily Record.

The writer goes on to protest cap and trade, which I also think is a bad idea, but not for the same reasons, obviously. But that other line — that is why the Tea Party “movement” is not a movement but a top-down manipulation, a misdirection.

These are people who’ve been gouged for years by the deregulated banking, mortgage lending, and commodities trading business, and when Obama sends down very weak, watered-down regulations to deal with those problems, they howl that he’s against “private enterprise” because that’s what they’ve been told to think by the Glenn Becks of the world.

Did you know that insider trading isn’t even illegal in the commodities trading business? Do you honestly think gas prices were high in 2008 because we weren’t drilling enough in the Gulf of Mexico?

You idiots are being used.

Like toilet paper.

Think for yourselves. If the Fox Network believes it so wholeheartedly, how could it possibly be in your interest? They’ll take your ratings, sure, so they can sell you Charmin and $5 footlongs. I mean, Jesus, how can you not see that? If you had real allies that powerful, don’t you think someone would have taken care of you by now?

But these people fight for the right not to have someone take care of them. And then when they fall through the cracks - when they lose their health insurance, when they find their industry outsourced and jobs gone - then it’s all government’s fault.

And that’s really convenient, isn’t it? But entirely in keeping with the conservatism of “personal responsibility”; if these people get the kind of government they demand and when they and their families and communities wind up impoverished by it - it won’t be their fault! Because it never is.

From a BBC report on this strange aspect of Americanism linked over at Naked Capitalism yesterday:

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

No health care for me! And those kids - let them drink tea! Becuase they’re probably all the children of illegals anyway…

These folks, this mindset is gearing up to kill financial reform itself - as the YDR letter writer herself admits - for the very reason we cited in the video last week - because the big banks = capitalism and capitalism = good and government = bad so any attempt by government to regulate the good and virtuous capitalism must be opposed.

The business of America is credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities.

And if capitalism is the ultimate standard of virtue, of course Fox News - first and foremost a profit-making entity - is the pinnacle of trustworthiness. They would never lie, and even if they do, we can be certain it’s for an ideologically pure purpose; the end will justify the means.

It’s one thing to say, the deficit is too big, government should be scaled back. It’s another to say that the banking industry - an industry whose reckless profit-seeking helped trigger this great crash - must not be further regulated! Free AIG!

These people aren’t merely being used - they’re begging for it. And they’ll get it, good and hard.

And then it will be the government’s fault. Because it always is.

Update: Kunstler channels the same thoughts:

Thus, you get the Tea Bagger movement, and things like it, where the disenfranchised meld legitimate complaints with fantasies and conspiracy theories, and produce an incoherent agenda based on ideas like “keeping the government out of Medicare!” One can easily see a movement like this ramping up into full-bore corn-pone Naziism

Hell, it’s already well along that path - only question is, who’s The Leader - because this is a movement begging to be led by a strong and resolute and charismatic leader who embodies all that is good and virtous about the nation.

All their yammering about Obama being “The One” and a cult of personality? Projection.

Via Sullivan, James Fallows gets a note from a longtime political observer who claims to have personally heard this exchange:

“GOP member: ‘I’d like this in the bill.’

“Dem member response: ‘If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?’

“GOP member:  ‘You know I can’t vote for the bill.’

“Dem member:  ‘Then why should we put it in the bill?’

No additional details offered, so take with large grain of salt, but if true - and I do suspect this is going on - what’s happening is that you’ve got Republican congressmen who personally see the the wisdom, even the necessity of health care reform, even have some ideas about how it might be done right - but are so cowed by the leather-lunged Fox News crowd that they couldn’t even vote for a bill they believe legitimate.

This is indeed a broken system. But consider who’s breaking it.