David Stockman's Call for Cuts in Defense Spending Falls on Deaf Ears

David Stockman says that drastic cuts in defense spending are needed, but clearly, no one is listening. He is just another voice of reason crying in the political wilderness.  Even though a majority of the American people - yeah, the ones the Republicans always say they are listening to when they never are - support cutting defense spending, and the bipartisan debt commission says deep cuts are necessary.

The sad fact is that there is a fundamental disconnect between what the people of this country want (like taxing the rich instead of cutting SS benefits) and what the politicians do, because they aren't listening to the people, they are listening to - and doing the bidding - of the lobbyists and political action committees that fund their perpetual campaigns and line their coffers.

Unless and until we amend the Constitution to provide for public financing of political campaigns, which won't happen because the vast majority of Americans just don't care, we are going to have government of the rich and corporations, by the rich and corporations, and for the rich and corporations.

Can anyone say plutocracy?

Representative Ryan's SOTU Response: Lies, Lies and Damned Lies

Why am I not surprised that most of Ryan's assertions are "bullpucky," as Rachel Maddow likes to call bulls@#t? Since when don't facts matter? I guess, to answer my own question, when the 20% of the American people that you are talking to don't live in a fact-based world. Fact-checking his official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address must have been a very fun assignment. His remarks had more holes than Swiss cheese! For the gory details, click  here.

Rubicon is a stylish spy tale

AMC's new show "Rubicon," is a worthy addition to a lineup that already includes three-time Emmy winner, "Mad Men," and "Breaking Bad," with three-time Emmy winner, Brian Cranston. An interesting window, however fictional, into the intelligence community, which, as a series in the Washington Post recently noted, is largely hidden from public view (duh), private (of course; see, e.g., Blackwater a/k/a Xe), and exponentially bigger, more redundant, and vastly more expensive post-9/11. A generous dose of the good ol' boy, Yale/Harvard, Fisher's Island, Hamptons CIA former Newsweek editor (and Harvard classmate), Evan Thomas, wrote about (and which was the subject of a pretty good spy movie, "The Good Shepherd" with Chris Cooper and Matt Damon). The show features some very good acting, particularly from the main character, Will, played by James Badge Dale, who was excellent as James Leckie in HBO's "The Pacific."

I love the New York setting. I was born in Manhattan, and worked in at 42nd and Lex for six years in the first half of the "Greed is Good" 80's, so all of the scenes of the City are a nice bonus. Will's boss, and his boss's boss, are both slimey but smart. I love the intrigue. Annie Parise (who was wonderful in "The Pacific" and must love NY from her stint on Law and Order) was good last week as Will's love interest. There is a lot of evil lurking just below the surface (can't wait to find out what the four leaf clover really means), which adds to the dramatic tension. The rest of the cast is good too. Love the woman playing Tanya: strung out, edgy, into partying. Wonder what she is going to be like when she returns to the stress of API after getting out of rehab. Hopefully, she'll do better than Lindsay Lohan!

Operation Iraqi Freedom Now Over

The last combat brigade has now crossed the border into Kuwait. The gate to the border has closed. A historic moment. Only time will tell how historic.

Mixed Emotions As the Last U.S. Combat Brigade Leaves Iraq

Watching MSNBC as Richard Engel, our generation's Ernie Pyle, leaves Iraq for Kuwait embedded with the last American combat brigade. Very mixed emotions: elated that our combat mission has (cross my fingers) ended, but still and forever ang...ry that America was led under false pretenses into an unbelievably expensive war (both in terms of American and Iraqi lives and American treasure) by the lies of G.W. Bush. Let us now find a way to get out of Afghanistan so we can concentrate on the enormous problems our nation faces here at home and rebuild OUR nation, instead of trying to engage in nation-building around the globe.

Chelsea Starts EPL Season Where They Left Off Last - With a 6-0 Route of West Brom

Chelsea starts the EPL season where they left off last season: with a 6-0 thrashing of newly promoted and thoroughly outclassed West Bromwich Albion at the Bridge. A hat trick from Didier Drogba, two from Florent Malouda and an easy goal from Frank Lampard. Petr Cech was never tested. It doesn't come much easier than this. Time to bank goal differential, as far sterner tests than the Baggies will come soon enough.

Obama Is The Solution, Republicans Are The Problem

Totally absent from Bob Hebert's August 13, 2010 op-ed cataloging the problems our country faces - especially on the jobs front -  and lamenting Obama's alleged failure to take bold action to correct them is the recognition of where the blame should lay.  While  I agree that Obama has been timid and has failed to use the bully pulpit nearly as effectively as he could, what Hebert fails to mention is that the Party of No has effectively blocked - or watered down all of Obama's attempts to jump start the economy and spend the money on education and infrastructure this country needs if it is to avoid becoming, in the space of less of a generation, a second class economic power.

You have to hand it to the R's. Their clear willingness to put their desire for power ahead of the needs of the country (in the process putting a lie to and making a joke of John McCain's 2008 campaign slogan, "Country First") has been a brilliant political strategy to which Obama, whether out of political timidity, or a lack of faith in his own policies, has failed to effectively counter. 

Republican obstructionism, ably aided and abetted by Obama's misguided effort at bipartisanship, so watered down the stimulus bill that it was doomed to failure before the ink was even dry on his signature. The original bill was about 200 million dollars bigger (most economists, we need to remember, said $1 trillion was needed to really stimulate the economy), and included hundreds of millions more for infrastructure repair and green energy and more aid to states to keep police on the streets, fireman on their jobs and teachers in their classrooms. In the end Obama weighted the stimulus towards tax cuts in the vain hope that he could achieve the kind of bipartisanship which the Republicans had made it very clear they were prepared to deny him in order to maximize the chances that the economy would NOT rebound and hand them the mid-terms on a silver platter. 

Economists agree tax cuts are among the least stimulative and least job-producing of all the kinds of measures that government can take. With the economy in shambles, with the banks not lending money to small businesses, with corporations hoarding cash, and with the Republicans strategy of seeing the country fail largely succeeding, the Republicans see blood in the water and are going in for the kill, broadening their attacks to now include voting against anything that might help relieve the economic suffering in our nation, such as help for the 99'ers and credit for small businesses, in the hopes of finishing Obama off.

Jettisoning the bipartisan support that the extension of unemployment insurance benefits had historically enjoyed in the Congress, Republicans now attack unemployment insurance compensation as a welfare program (it isn't) and villify the long-term unemployed as "lazy" (they aren't).  They argue against emergency aid to states to prevent the layoff of hundreds of thousands of teachers as a payoff to the country's public school teachers, who they now characterize, pejoratively, as a "special interest" group.

They argue, against all economic evidence, that expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 or 2 percent of the country will somehow not only be a "job killer" that will hurt small businesses, but, at the same time, won't add to the very deficit they decry, and which, all available evidence has shown, were exacerbated by those same tax cuts.  They know that they are lying and are playing a shell game (Exhibit A: John  "I got my tan by spending 500+ hours on expensive golf courses" Boehner doing a masterful job on last week's MTP not answering David Gregory's question as to whether he agreed that keeping those tax cuts would add to the deficit). Talk about magical thinking!

The fact is that unemployment benefits - not for people who are too lazy to work but for people who have fallen victim to corporations who continue to outsource jobs to Mexico and China, and who are hoarding cash rather than investing it in hiring new workers - along with food stamps (which the Republicans were successful in cutting) are the best at stimulating the economy and tax cuts are the worst.

So, the long of the short of it is, that, yes, Obama has not pushed back hard enough, consistently enough, and clearly not effectively enough, and not creatively enough, to get the economy back on track, but for Hebert to suggest that it is all his fault? That I cannot and will not buy.