Thursday, February 19, 2009

Back to Morning Joe

Praise the lord and pass the Fleischman's Bagels, maybe with a little cream cheese, just a light schmeer, you don't want to get all schleferdik  this early.

I don't know who the woman was they just had on but she understood the economy, she understood the difference between fiscal and monetary policy in the long and short term, and she could explain her views on past and future mistakes and triumphs.

It didn't seem like she was hocking a book or show.... Pat Buchanan the grand wizard of the Du Dousche Dan spoke to her with respect. This does not portend well.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

If You're Here, That Means....Uh-Oh

The Federal Reserve is about as federal as Federal Express. They perform several services that should be the perview of the federal government, but they are contracted to perform these services, printing money, but not minting money, being among them. But still a private company whose origin is the result of federal charter but whose power comes from being the clearinghouse for all member banks for which they are the source of currency.

The treasury department's primary purpose is to recieve and account for debts, taxes and fees owed to and owed by the government of the united states.

For the past thirty years the head of the federal reserve has been an academic economist, typically of some conservative flair, but not without standing or credibilityor a "civil servant" who has worked in NGO's, regulartory agencies or quasi governmental agencies. During this same period the head of the treasury has been a banker, money manager or finacier....

Doesn't it seem like this should be reversed? Why is Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sach running the treasury, presumably directing the method by which goverment revenue should best be collected and accounted for and Greenspan, the Objectivist pure intellectual is the head of the banking system?

Minion...I asked you a question. Why?

Friday, February 13, 2009

BTW....

I'm aware that I have already called William Kristol the white rider of revelations on the Projective Caste blog, so don't bother pointing that out. Maybe Kristol is the rider and Friedman is the horse?

We'll work on it.

An Open Letter to the Inteligencia

February 12, 2009


Dear Pundettes, Coumnists, Talking Heads and Partisan Spew Monkeys,

You may have misspoken when you said "... that's what you have to do to get the super majority needed to pass things in the Senate." It would have been more accurately put to say "... that's what you have to do to END DEBATE in the Senate."

Either as a meme strategically crafted by political actors with nefarious intent or as casual intelligencia shorthand this micro-narrative has become ubiquitous. It is at best misleading and at worst deceitful. This suggestion reinforces the idea that the Democrats are powerless in this situation and without ANY more options. They can make the Republicans filibuster in the traditional sense. Below is my post script, of which, all points you are already aware.

Otherwise thanks for the great work,

E. Mickey Peavler

Post Script

1) The senate needs 51 votes to pass a bill; they need 60 votes to end debate. The endless repetition of this misstatement is starting to make me believe the Democrats would rather loose a policy battle than win after a filibuster.

2) The nuclear option is nuclear, but it is an option.

3) The problem with Republicans is Democrats. Harry Reid is the bad actor in this scenario and we should not blame Republicans for acting like Republicans.

4) I've seen and heard it reported that the Senate of the 110th congress broke the record for filibusters, but not one of them did Harry Read force to the floor. They were "technical filibusters" which gave the Republicans all the benefits of obstructionism with none of the downside of the optics of obstruction.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

A is for Apple.

Milton Friedman. Not pictured here: his white horse, bow or crown.

Deconstructionism is want to eschew binary arugmentation. As a deacon in the church of DeCon, I am reflexively opposed compartmentalized conceptual categorization, but I find myself more and more often slipping into the easy peezy lemon squeezy technique of dialectic in an eternally clamant holy quest of introspective paradigmatic alignment.

An open secret in post-post-modern-deconstructionist circles, is that while reason, in either inductive or new minty fresh deductive flavors are insufficient foundations for dualist theoretical constructions to support paradigmatic watersheds within Greenbergian/Tafurian artificially circumscribed cultural consensi, reason can be used to identify flaws in otherwise sound logical strings.

Political actors are fond of the binary because a polarized populace is more easily led...Insert Goebbels quote here for cheap appeal to minion's fascism gag reflex. This week I heard someone say that compromise is difficult when one of the parties is patently insane. Another pundette said compromise in Washington has become like a conversation about where to have dinner, where party one says "I feel like Italian" and party two says " I feel like arsenic and broken glass".

I have recently been struck by the abject indifference to accuracy in sausage making and reporting this week and I am hoping that my most recent shift in deliverables will not further alienate my minion. Subjects I'd like to cover soon:

1) tax cuts create jobs. we know this to be false, but I'd like to go into specifics, including asking your boss which tax cut occassioned him to hire you in the first place, why it was a tax cut and not an increace in demand that caused him to hire you, and if it was altruism or a head injury that lead him to hire you without an increase in demand but only because he had loose capital resulting from a tax cut.

2)the fucking fillabuster. If one more Senator says we need 60 votes to PASS A BILL I'm going to pull out my freaking hair. I'm becoming convinced that the democrats are more concerned about winning after a fillabuster than they are loosing withouth. Everyday I'm a little less sure that Harry Reid is not either a grifter of messianic levels or the greatest coward since Charles Kuralt.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

A Holding Penalty in the Bottom of the 5th Inning.

Bud Selig: Commissioner of Baseball and the cause of the Iraq War


The particularly prodigal dissection of the gordian rhizome that is the Crawfordian psyche is uniquely ubiquitous in this space. Alas, despite the persistent delivery of acute insight the immodest proposal that Bud Selig is the cause of the Iraq war is, no doubt, want to illicit incredulity even in my minion.


Hear my yalp, minion, there is no Iraq war if Bush is not president. Twenty maniacs changed the world forever September 12, 2001, among them Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz... the list goes on... for at least 16 more people, like I just said.

But these recitivists get no closer to power than K Street without ample useful coat tails to hold and wakes in which to swim. No Bush, no Cheney. No Cheney no PNAC confluence with Cheney's energy task force. No collapse of corporate interest into the singularity of jingoist ferver and tribalist bloodlust, no invassion of Iraq.

So why Bud Selig? Ask yourself what W. was doing before he becoming appointed president by the supreme court. Governor of Texas. In 1996, as part of the republican Newt Gingrish revolution he defeated one of the most popular governors in Texas history. Keep in mind the governor of Texas is a figure head with less power than the monarch of Great Brittain.

What about before this? One of the owners of the Texas Rangers. He loved it. He was bad at it. He's a born failure. He traded Alex Rodriguez. Forget Arbusto. Forget going AWAL. Mofo traded Alex Rodriguez. But he was a glad handing millionaire dousche, who liked to glad hand with other millionaire dousches and hang out with players who are also millionaire dousches.

But Bud Selig got there first. He was comissioner during the season lost to strike. He's been commissioner during the ENTIRE steroid era, and the consistent reduction in baseball's ratings. Bud Selig should be out of a job. He probably never should have got the job, and on several occaions he should have been fired.

If George Bush becomes commisioner of baseball, he never becomes governor. If he never becomes governor he never runs for president. No campaign, no supreme court appointment. No appointment no bastardization of justice by Cheney.

Bud Selig caused the Iraq war.