Weekend

Yes, I'm on a diet.

Friday means nothing in the boarding school world, as I am currently between classes.  Afterwards, I will go coach for three hours in a drafty auditorium (seriously, Unnamed Other School, get a gym).  Then it's home to a nice glass of what my wife informs me is a slew of empty calories known as bourbon.  Wake on Sunday, read in church, sit in a duty office for eight hours, prep for Monday classes.  Somehow I have to slip in the Falcons game.  Weekends famously last from about dinner time on Saturday to lunch on Sunday.

Lunch... The Most Radiant and Scrumptious Wife has decided that she needs to go on the South Beach diet. (Hence the crack about the poor nutritional value of two fingers of Russell's Reserve.)  She cannot eat grains or fruit (not to mention sugars).  How awful.

We have a very talented chef and dining service here.  It has made a wonderful difference in the quality life here, but it has also had a deleterious effect on everyone's waistline.  I have elected simply to go with portion control and more exercise, but as you can tell from the first paragraph, it's tough to find the hour or so to workout.  There is a lot that's healthy about this lifestyle, but during the year it's a real grind.

Tonight I will not be watching the GOP debate, but I am very hopeful that Gingrich goes full Newt-lear meltdown on Mittens.  I think Romney's decision not to release his tax returns is a GREAT line of attack, because it will allow Newt to paint lurid, factually challenged pictures of what might be in there.  Patrimony payments to underaged crack addicts?  Tithing to the Westboro Baptist Church?  Contributions to Planned Parenthood?

I can't bring myself to sit through it, but I look forward to the post-game highlights.

A Thousand Words

I have nothing to say, just wanted to run this picture.

Interesting Question

Indeed, you do.

So, we added 200,000 non seasonal jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 8.5%.  Most economic historians will tell you - if you can get them to put down the sandwich - that public statistics tend to be too optimistic as we enter a recession and too pessimistic as we leave one.  During the collapse of '08-09, the monthly figures were routinely revised downward, whereas the last few months have seen some revision upward.

The question is, what happens if the economy starts to really grow over the next ten months?  There are still some things that could derail the recovery, mostly those dumbasses in Europe who insist on doing everything wrong.  Gas prices could also throttle growth, but I think Saudi Arabia took their boot off our neck in return for letting them crack down on the Bahraini Spring.  We'll see what effect an Iranian oil embargo might have.

But I think it's safe to say Obama wins easily if the unemployment rate is below 8%.  People care more about the direction of the economy when evaluating the President.  There is ample evidence that people really do like him and admire him, but they are pissed that the economy sucks.  Romney has made "It's the economy stupid" his central attack line on Obama.

If we see some real turnaround in the employment picture, then Romney looks more foolish than usual.

UPDATE: Sometimes, I think Jon Chait and I share a brain:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/economy-might-save-obama-after-all.html

And Now Cometh The Crazy Day

It's a flood...

OK, so yesterday was somewhat relaxed.  Today not so much.  Two Comp Gov classes on Marxism under my belt already, about to cover the Gilded Age.  Then lunch, hopefully a nap, a meeting, practice, then Thing One has a wrestling match tonight which I may or may not get to.

Anyway, Marx...

It's always interesting teaching Marx. I think Marx was a good historian and a lousy political theorist.  So I try and present him that way.  The dialectic is interesting.  The surplus value of labor is interesting.  The base and superstructure is interesting.

I point out that the dialectic probably DID work, just not as Marx intended.  In the dialectic, you have a thesis - or status quo - and that is challenged by the anti-thesis.  The result of this struggle is synthesis or new thesis.

Marx posited that industrial capitalism would be challenged by the proletariat and replaced by a communist utopia.  In fact, it seems pretty clear that capitalism was challenged by communist and anarchist intellectuals and was replaced by social democracy or Christian socialism or whatever you want to call it.  Namely the welfare state and some regulation of the market.

Since we have spent the last three decades stripping away the welfare state and the regulation of markets, we have returned to the Gilded Age (see what I did there).  The system no longer works for the benefit of all, it works for the benefit of a few.  Hence, #OWS, and the line from my student's piece: "When people start spouting Marx, it is a good sign that the current system has failed."

The Gilded Age was painful, because industrialization is painful.  It's dirty, dangerous and unfair.  But in the end, you get an industrial economy that is productive and has a higher standard of living.

The New Gilded Age does not, from my vantage point stuck in the middle of it, proffer any long term benefits.  What has the financialization of America's economy done to make America - as a whole - stronger?

Modest redistribution of wealth and certain state-provided benefits, like education, health care and pensions, can smooth out some of the rough spots in market capitalism.  It can muzzle the beast "red in tooth and claw".  It can lead to rising standards of living.

Coincidentally, one of the main stories at TPM this morning is the fact that Mitt Romney won't release his tax returns.  This is because Mitt Romney is precisely the sort of plutocrat that our New Gilded Age policies have created.  He pays a pittance of his real income in taxes because our tax code values wealth over work.

The system is clearly not working.  Will we embrace evolution?  Or be forced to confront revolution?

Fun Day

This crap makes Lincoln's hair stand on end.

So to recap:

1) At about 1AM this morning, Mitt Romney manages to beat by 8 votes a guy whose mostly known as being the world's most famous Google-bomb.

2) Rick Perry seems to be dropping out, but Bachmann is staying in.

3) Bachmann drops out and Perry stays in.

4) John McCain brings his unique political abilities to bear on behalf of Romney.  Bachmann senses her Veep dreams come to fruition.

5) Obama appoints Richard Cordry to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The GOP goes absolutely apeshit over this "power grab" and this example of "Chicago style politics."  All this does, of course, is remind people that the GOP have not confirmed Cordry because they don't WANT a CFPB.  Most everyone else does, but they don't.  Well played GOP.

6) The Newt unleashes the Newt-lear option on Romney and Paul.  Holy crap, I realize that when it comes to mean Newt does not need time to warm up, but his opening blast is just delicious.

So, to recap.  Romney wins, but, eh, not so much.  Obama knee caps the obstructionists in the Senate by appointing a head to the CFPB and the NLRB.  Perry and his millions stay in the race and Newt unleashes both barrels on Romney.

I just had a temporary crown put on today, otherwise, I'd be making popcorn.

The Ghost Of Primaries Past

I looked back at the 2008 GOP primary situation.

Iowa
Huckabee 34%
Romney 25%
McCain 13%
Thompson 13%

Wyoming
Romney 67%
Thompson 25%
Hunter 8%

New Hampshire
McCain 38%
Romney 32%
Huckabee 11%

Michigan
Romney 39%
McCain 30%
Huckabee 16%

Nevada
Romney 51%
McCain 14%
Paul 14%

South Carolina
McCain 33%
Huckabee 30%
Thompson 16%

Florida
McCain 36%
Romney 31%
Giuliani 15%

Maine
Romney 51%
McCain 21%
Paul 18%

These were the pre-Super Tuesday results.  Hard to see a pattern there.  If Gingrich or Santorum wins South Carolina and/or Florida, we're sort of headed in the same fractured direction.

But there is one big difference.  The GOP changed many of their primary rules so that delegates are awarded proportionally rather than winner-take-all.  This will increase the odds that a Gingrich, Paul or Santorum will hang around, especially if Romney struggles to break that 25% ceiling.

Drive That Narrative!

Charlie Pierce, bless his caustic soul, was actually in Iowa these past few days.  His final autopsy report includes this nugget of wisdom.

The American political system is profoundly deformed. It is deformed by the now limitless power of unaccountable corporate money. (I would remind folks that, in 1972, unaccountable corporate money in a Republican campaign safe was what the Watergate scandal ultimately was all about.) Nothing that happened last night in any way changes that. The American political system is also deformed by the nearly limitless power of concocted narrative, reinforced by an elite political media locked into a self-contained, airless universe, and completely incapable of recognizing a luxurious farce even when there right in the middle of it.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rick-santorum-iowa-caucus-results-6632446#ixzz1iUzC90ET


You can see in this two important truths.

First, that Citizens United is the new Dred Scott.  The new Plessy vs Ferguson.  Rather than codify white privilege and racism, it enshrines in law the fact that corporate money is now going to wash over our political system in ever increasing waves of toxic sludge.  Barring a remarkable change in the composition of Congress, we simply won't be able to do anything about it until things break so far down that action has to be taken to forestall civil unrest.  Maybe OWS is that form of civil unrest, but I doubt it.

Second, Romney is the nomney.  Let's cede that.  The race is likely over.  Perry's out, Cain's out, Bachmann is apparently about to drop out.  Some of this will help solidify the not-Romney vote around a single person.

But that person is likely to be Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.  While Romney is an android sent from the future to kill charisma, Gingrich and Santorum are the creatures from the black lagoon that is the GOP id.  One of the pervasive dynamics of the GOP race is that whenever a not-Romney pops up, Romney's PAC crushes them into insignificance.  Santorum has no idea what is about to fall on him.

Having said all that, as Pierce points out the narrative is more important than the reality.  The press need a longish GOP nominating struggle.  Romney won a state he had no business winning.  He's going to cruise in New Hampshire.  He has money and organization that Santorum and Gingrich cannot match.

The press are noting what a blow this is to Romney.  Maybe it is.  Or maybe they're just stoking the fires in order to keep the story warm. Newt Gingrich is now their best friend, as he looks ready to unleash the Wrath of Leroy upon them.

But what will they say when Romney wins New Hampshire with 50% of the vote?

Iowa Down To The Wire

I prefer this from Iowa.

It's neck and neck between Santorum and Romney.  This, of course, is what everyone predicted in October.

Jon Huntsman was running neck and neck with "Other" for awhile but he's pulled into a comfortable lead not only over Other, but also Buddy Roemer and Herman Cain.

Michelle Bachmann is at 5%.  I can't see how she survives this.  Her whole schtick was being from next door in Minnesota.  If she gets more than 2% in New Hampshire, that would be a miracle.  Or a rounding error.

Rick Perry is at about 10%.  He has a ton of money to keep going, but if he can't top 15% in Iowa he's not going to do much better.  I guess South Carolina is still viable for him.

Former front runner Newton Gingrich is at 13%.  I guess a ton of Super PAC attack ads really work,  especially when their target is Newton Gingrich.

Ron Paul is at 21%.  This is pretty disappointing for him, I think.  He actually had a shot at building in New Hampshire, considering the youth vote and the large Libertarian vote presence.  He was doomed in the long run, but he could have made a race of it for a few weeks.

Santorum and Romney are trading leads at 24%.  One will wind up with a few hundred more votes than the other, but the obvious real winner here is Romney.  Santorum won't last very long as the Not-Mitt.  The guy is a joke.

New Hampshire will likely give Romney about 50%.  The next test is really South Carolina.

The Libertarian Trap

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Ron Paul and Louis Farrakhan.  Here.

This is easily the best thing I've read about Paul and why his some of his supporters need to take a deep breath and think for a minute.

There is a reall brouhaha over at Balloon Juice and elsewhere over Glenn Greenwald and some things he said and what did it mean and blah blah blah.

Look, Greenwald is a Libertarian.  He's a left leaning Libertarian, whereas as Paul is a rightist Libertarian, but they are both Libertarians.

Libertarians live in a world untrammeled by actual governance.  They live in a dream world where compromises don't have to be made, where everyone behaves in a certain way that will make the state irrelevant.  And like most Libertarians, they are infused with a certain strain of narcissism that is unique to their subculture.

Greenwald and Paul are both radiant lights, pure and undimmed by the messy realities of governing.  But they also faintly reek of the demagogue.  They exalt high ideals, while not considering the real world applications of those ideals.  They fetishize their ideas with a sort of intellectual OCD that makes them rigid and unbending.  Pure and uncompromising to their acolytes, ideological and fanatical to their enemies.

I thought there were some very good Libertarian critiques of the Bush Administration by Greenwald (and Paul).  But to not recognize the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations is to be more in love with the ideals you fight for than with the nuance of the real world.

And for the most part, Libertarianism is a crankish idea.  I hope those Silicon Valley nutcakes create their offshore Libertarian paradise.  I want the world to see first hand what an unworkable system it is.

Until then, we are stuck with demagogues and ideologues.  We are stuck with Paul and Greenwald.

As Mittens Becomes Inevitable...

Sucks to be a thinking Republican.

Someone will "win" Iowa's caucuses later tonight.  I am ever so hopeful of a Santorum victory, but you never know.

But with Gingrich buried under an avalanche of "negative" ads (I use air quotes, because really a Google search of Gingrich constitutes a negative ad), the way now looks clear for Mittens to win the GOP nomination.

What happens once he wins the nomination is really interesting.  How does he walk back from the crazy assed crap he's been slinging at least since Perry wandered aimlessly into the race?

Jon Chait lays out here why it will be impossible for Romney to move back to the center should he win the election.  George Packer lays out something similar here.  The tricky part will be for the Democrats to convince people that Romney will really govern from the Santorum playbook and not the Eisenhower one.

As Barney Frank put it, the Democrats bumpersticker should be: "We're not perfect, but they're nuts!"

This could be the first presidential election that turns into a referendum on the party out of power.

Har

Charlie Pierce is back at it.

DES MOINES — Precisely how many times are we going to be treated to public expressions of mock horror from Important Conservatives that 40 years of allying themselves with nativist hooligans, anti-intellectual crackpots, Christomaniacs, and the sad detritus of American apartheid finally has produced a field of presidential candidates that these same Important Conservatives find less than adequate? Once again, the whole exercise requires both the writer and the reader to ignore the obvious consequences of four decades of political history and conclude that the Republican party has lost its mind only recently. And it requires both the writer and reader to convince themselves that out there, somewhere, is a superior candidate to the ones presently available, and to ignore the obvious conclusion that titans like Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, and Paul Ryan chose not to run because they suspected they might get beaten like gongs, if not by President Obama, then by the wholly unacceptable Willard Romney.

And Bobby Jindal? Just stop, okay? You're killing me.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mitt-romney-replacements-politico-6632049#ixzz1iQ9NZmXb

My Tom Friedman Moment

This one guy knows everything.  Find him.

The sins of Thomas Friedman can be distilled into two things.  First, he's terrible at research.  He tends to have preconceived ideas and then goes out and finds facts to support those ideas, frequently in the form of some cab driver or street vendor who imparts some pearl of wisdom that happens to gibe exactly with what Friedman wants to say.  His second sin is that he's just a crappy writer.  He trucks in cliches and bad metaphors.

Anyway, here's my Friedman moment.  At the great New Year's Eve bash, we meet up every year with friends and family from all over the country.  One of them, Thing Two's godfather, is a troglodyte conservative who like to be as politically incorrect as possible.  He enjoys tweaking everyone's sensibilities with outlandish statements.

But no statement was more outlandish than when he said he was probably going to vote for Obama.  Most of it is that he's reasonably intelligent and reality based in his decisions making.  He looks at the GOP field and shakes his head in disgust.  He admitted that he didn't even vote for the top line in 2008.  He wanted to vote for McCain, but he couldn't because of Palin's place on the ticket.

If anything, we've seen a "Palinization" of the GOP in the intervening four years.  It's all red meat and jingoistic slogans and thought-free policy.  It's Mitt Romney saying he'd veto the DREAM Act.  It's anything that Ron Paul says.  It's Santorum and Bachmann's entire policy position.  It would be Perry's, too, if he could articulate what it is he stands for.

Now, the plural of anecdote is not data.  One guy's opinion is not a trend.  But that a fairly good ol' boy, SEC fanatic, Southern conservative would even consider voting for Obama over Romney is pretty interesting to me.  It will be interesting as Romney locks up the nomination, what happens to those members of the GOP voting bloc who simply can't abide by him.  Either for the positions he took six years ago, or the positions he took six days ago.

If you're an Eisenhower Republican, what the hell do you do with the modern GOP?

The Point Of This Blog

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/01/02/you-cant-handle-the-truth-4/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html

We have abandoned objectivity entirely in our political discourse.  We are ruled by morons as a result and our political discourse is dominated by fools.

And that's BEFORE Santorum "wins" the Iowa caucus tomorrow.

Home Again

Back in the Bunker.

There is something both comforting and depressing about returning home after our annual New Year's Eve bash down in Georgia.

The weather is colder and grimmer.  The gas prices are significantly higher.  The second half of the school year begins tomorrow.

But home is home.  I just took a nap in my own bed.  Even with Thing One and Thing Two arguing over the new Wii it's quieter than the chaos of the farm.

It was a nice time, Thing One seems to have grown up some using last year as a benchmark.

Still, if we won the Powerball and could buy a bigger house with a suitable man-cave, I wouldn't complain.

Back to usual programming tomorrow.

2011 Top Ten List

Everyone is doing it so....

1) The King Is Dead - The Decemberists
2) The Walking Dead, season 2
3) The Phillies losing in October
4) Justified, season 2
5) Drinking Guiness in Ireland
6) Modern Family, especially the Valentine's Day episode
7) Community, especially the season finale
8) 127 Hours (came out last year, but shut up it's my list)
9) Archer
10) Ashes and Fire - Ryan Adams