Spluttering Vitriol A Sign Of Loserdom

William Kristol on the collapse of the left ("F*ck Tea" is all they have now).

It begins:

The left has collapsed.

Its political support has collapsed. Public opinion polls point to a historic repudiation of the president and the Democratic party this fall—something on the order of a 60-seat Republican gain in the House. The GOP has an outside shot at taking the Senate as well.

Its claim to intellectual integrity has collapsed. Paul Krugman—Ivy League professor, New York Times columnist, and Nobel laureate (the holy trinity of the liberal establishment)—has humiliated himself with a startlingly dishonest attack on Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. Krugman, called out by Ryan, rebuked by honest analysts, and unwilling to concede his errors, has retreated into uncharacteristic abashed silence.

Its Leninist discipline has collapsed. Last week, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs complained about the craziness of the “professional left” in the punditocracy. “Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs explained. “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality. .  .  . They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.” Members of the professional left hit back at Gibbs, dubbing the Obama White House the “amateur left.”

Its democratic credibility has collapsed. In recent weeks, the left has the arbitrary rulings and sophistic arguments of federal judges who have overturned an immigration statute that mirrors federal law passed by the state legislature in Arizona, and a constitutional amendment, defining marriage as it has been defined for all of American history, enacted by the citizens of California. The left has also heaped praise on New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, as he, having bought his way to a narrow reelection, showered disdain and contempt on the majority of his fellow New Yorkers who object to a mosque next to Ground Zero.

And its good humor (such as it was) has collapsed. As Politico’s Ben Smith reported last week,

the Agenda Project, a new, progressive group with roots in New York’s fundraising scene and a goal of strengthening the progressive movement, has launched the “F*ck Tea” project, which is aimed, the group’s founder Erica Payne wrote in an e-mail this morning, “to dismiss the Tea Party and promote the progressive cause.”

“We will be launching new products in the next several months to help people all over the country F*ck Tea,” Payne told Politico.

Is Erica Payne a loony nobody? No, she’s a lefty somebody—a former Democratic National Committee official, a veteran of many progressive groups, and one of the founders of the Democracy Alliance, the group of big donors who have spent over $100 million to fund “progressive” organizations like the Center for American Progress.

Payne says she launched her effort to push back against “the rhetoric over results paradigm that is holding our country hostage.” She wasn’t being ironic. As the estimable Allahpundit commented, “Because, you see, if there’s any movement that’s about results over rhetoric, it’s clearly the f*ck tea movement.”

An Obvious Point Gently Made, And Instantly Illustrated By The First Two Commenters

A Christian wonders whether discrimination against Christians in academia is something that should be measured, and his first couple of commenters helpfully provide some new data points.

Militant atheists, it seems, have zero sense of irony.

Contra Dawkins In The NYT

Good piece arguing the (what should be) obvious point that Dawkins has not really even entered the arena in terms of arguing for the non-existence of God.

If I Can't Trust The Fool On Something Entirely Simple Like Basic Politics, Why In The World Would I Trust Him On Esoteric Science?

P.Z. Myers is such a tool:

It's the patriotic thing to do

2 September will be Burn the Confederate Flag Day.

Burn the Confederate Flag Day is a protest against the right's exploitation of racial prejudice for political gain. We urge you to burn the Confederate flag, a long-time symbol of racial hatred, on Sept 12, the date when the racially-divisive Tea Party holds its annual hate fest.

Now I just have to figure out where to get a cheap traitor's flag in Minnesota. Hmm…it sounds like the kind of thing a truck stop might sell.

If you are thick enough to believe that the Tea Pary is a racist movement, you're thick enough to believe anything. Like Darwinism, I suppose.

What this piece is doing on a Science! blog is anyone's guess.

Pension Tsunami

Great Mish post containing excerpts from the mail he has received from readers concerning the public pension fiasco.

Neutrality

Lengthy Ace of Spades post examines MFM neutrality.

The 18th Century English Aristocracy Would Be So Proud

So stupid, they don't see a problem with trashing a founding symbol of the nation, assuming they know what that is at all. What can you expect from royalists?

Link

Race Card Is Maxed Out

The Daily Show skewers the tired tactic. Quite amusing.

Analogy

Denninger:

Barack Obama and Congress simply do not get it. They think they, along with The Fed, can "prime the pump" with "stimulus", just as the meth-head thinks he can "stimulate" recovery with "just one more hit."

He's wrong, as is Congress, Barack and The Fed.

The excess capacity in the economy cannot be sustained. It simply doesn't matter whether policymakers like this or not. An economy that can only run at its former rate when mainlining speedballs cannot continue to operate in this fashion without killing the host. Detoxification and a slowing of the economic metabolism to sustainable levels is the only way you survive.

Along the path to perdition we allowed a tapeworm to take up residence in the bowels of our economy: "financial innovation". It was not that long ago - indeed, within my lifetime and experience - during which bankers earned $50,000 a year and bank stocks returned 7% dividends - and no capital appreciation at all. Banks made loans and held them to maturity, consuming the ~2% spread they needed to survive and paying out the entirety of the rest of it to shareholders in the form of dividends. They were stodgy, old-school businesses that performed a vital intermediation function - and consumed ~5% of the economy in doing so.

Now financial innovation has gone from 5% of the economy to 20%. But as the tapeworm grows larger, it consumes more and more of the fuel that the body takes in. Soon the tapeworm not only consumes enough of the fuel to cause you to starve even though you're eating like a horse, it in addition gets so large that it blocks the intestines - and can produce life-threatening stoppages and infections.

There is no way to reason with such a tapeworm. It, like all organisms, will seek to survive, grow and reproduce - and it doesn't care if you like it or not. Your only choices are to kill it - or, if you don't - die.

We as a nation must eradicate the tapeworm. We must relegate the financial system to its former status as an intermediator - the old stodgy bank - and dismantle the complex and intertwined institutions that are sucking the economy dry. We have refused for two decades to do this, believing in the Alan Greedscam and Turbo Tax Timmy mantra that a strong and diverse financial system is inherently necessary to a strong economy.

These statements are lies. That they're lies is trivially proved: financial innovation in all of its forms is inherently parasitic - that is, it produces nothing in the economy. In it's role of distributing risk it inherently must siphon off some portion of actual production to itself.

That means that the productive portions of the economy must produce more to feed the beast within. But the beast inexorably grows - it reached 25% of the "earnings" in the S&P during the bubble years.

But that 25% wasn't the bank's earning power - it belonged to other actors in the economy and was stolen from them as a form of "tax", just as the tapeworm steals your nutrition.

This in turn goaded CEOs to take on more and more leverage so they could "make their numbers" with that inherent 25% siphoned off. And that, in turn, resulted in the market and economy as a whole levering to unsustainable levels.

Our error in 2007 and 2008, as I have repeatedly said, is that we refused to force these firms to face the music for their actions. Actions that, in many cases, were outright fraudulent - and where they weren't, they were unsound and unsustainable.

New York City has grown addicted to the tax and business revenue from these firms, but that doesn't mean the rest of the nation can sustain New York City, any more than the rest of the nation can sustain California's insistence on giving sanctuary to the 4% of our population that are illegal immigrants - who give birth to 8% of our babies, and who pay 0% of their hospital bills.

This is the result:

[chart]

We've blown 14% of GDP in new debt to maintain the tapeworm, attempting to mainline speedballs into the arm of the economy. It's not working. The reason is that the tapeworm is consuming nutrition faster than the economy can take it in, and as a consequence we are now in economic death spiral, exactly as I noted in 2007.

One way or another that parasite will be removed. We either do it ourselves and suffer the pain required to heal or the market will do it for us with horrific and destructive results.

Those are the only two options folks.

The Fed cannot fix this. Nor can Congress so long as the debate is focused on taxes. We are running structural deficits of fourteen percent of GDP - nearly half of the federal budget is being borrowed. This is akin to someone who is bringing home $2,500 a week but spending $3,800 - there is no reasonable way to increase one's earnings by that amount - they must instead stop spending or they will go bankrupt.

I know that the government at all levels has made promises to people. We don't have the money. It doesn't matter if we want to keep the promises or not when we are physically unable to do so, and the tapeworm is continuing to eat more and more of the nutrition that flows past it.

...

Being Paralyzed Means Never Having To Take Out The Trash

MSM reasoning.

"We've Now Found The End Of The Rope - And It's 20 Stories Up From Street Level."

Great Denninger post.

Glorious Number One Truth Explosion

By way of Taiwan.

That's Because You're A Racist, Harry

Harry Reid: "I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican."

Link

Begging For Mercy From His Own Bill

First-class schmuck.

Vanderleun

Highlights a comment to a WaPo piece:

And then this, today, in response to the craven Matt Yglesias’ evil and overwhelmingly dense "Welcome to the summer of fear" [article available without registration here].

Pure and utter drivel, Sir.

Let me see if I get this straight: If I disagree IN ANY WAY with the Obama administration, I am either a racist (courtesy of the black caucus), a xenaphobe. (According to Mayor Bloomberg and the other reptilious NY politicians), simply too stupid to understand the complexity of the issue (repeat that again, Reid or Joe Biden?).

This is absolutely hilarious and speaks of a "high schooly" clique of "group think."

Let us come up with a new word that will be in much use come Novemember 2, 2010: OBLITERATION,

We will look back at that once vaunted political party inappropriately named "Democrat" and tsk-tsk while shaking our heads in wonder at the sheer buffoonery of a man with the spine of a ham sandwich for a president; a senate majority leader who single handedly bankrupted his own state of jobs, evicted a huge swath of his constituents with his rubberstamping of an agenda of failed fiscal policies and socialist ideals the country rejected; a speaker of the house so universally loathed that her approval ratings seldom make it out of the teens, a woman who spends taxpayer money like water on libations, flights, bon bons and God knows what else for her friends and family; a congress that acts like pompous sniveling pantywaists worthy of the court at Versailles. Add to them a media with yearlings such as Klein who can't be more than a score and 5 years old; Krugman who is so rabid that only the most lack-wit lemmings put any credence into his overly inflated tripe, and the estimable Dionne, who can be depended on to toss out the race card on, at the very least, a weekly basis.

We will point out a wax doll in a museum of the species titled "Democrat", chuckle to our children, and say, "Child, THIS is what happens to those who underestimate the American people. Should you grow up and try such folly, you too, will one day be an oddity, to be pointed at, mocked, and thoroughly despised as well."

DEAREST Matt, I recall your name on the JOURNOLIST. Please do get back to your partners in crime at the new, but not improved CABALIST, and relay our fondest wishes and the unfortunate news that the gig is up. One has that most fabulous invention called the Internet, where we can do the most amazing trick. We can go from blog to blog, or to this site called Real Clear politics, where we can read 20 articles from different papers AND see the JOURNOLIST talking points in each one, and who the constant repeat offenders are.

Tick tock, simpleton -- only three short ,short months to go.

"Include The G*ddamned Number"

Good quick Reason magazine post highlighting a perennial form of journalistic maplpractice/laziness/ignorance (take your pick).

Place The Blame On Whom It Belongs

I've never understood why private sector unions consider themselves to be allies with public sector unions, given that public sector unions are doing all in their power to destroy the private sector.

But there's also reason to wonder why public sector union workers have any respect for public sector union bosses:

• Unfunded pension liabilities are approximately $2.5 trillion, compared to the reported amount of $493 billion. 

• Unfunded liabilities for health and other benefits are $558 billion, compared to the reported $537 billion. 

• Thus, total unfunded liabilities for all benefit plans are an estimated $3.1 trillion — nearly three times higher than the plans report.

If you need this translated, it's very simple:

You're not going to get the money you think you were promised.

If you're a government employee and are counting on some sort of pension plan, get over it.

The money does not exist.

It cannot be acquired.

If you scream about "But the state constitution says we're protected!" I will simply remind you that it is easier to change a State Constitution than it is make money that doesn't exist magically appear.

To put this into context, the shortfall is double the annual Federal Budget deficit - at today's bloated amounts. It is five times the average federal budget deficit during Bush's administration.

Again: You're not going to get the money, and most of it isn't, as is commonly believed, in the form of medical benefits - it's in direct cash pension compensation.

You were lied to by the plan administrators.

They (intentionally) used ridiculously-rosy projections of "gains" in their portfolios.

Their "projections" are outrageously unsound, as is their accounting.

Your public-sector unions lied to you too. They led you to believe that you could have the equivalent of a free lunch and that these plans could be funded and would pay. You can't and they can't.

Now you can get angry at "the people" all you want. The fact of the matter is that the people who BS'd you aren't the public - they're your so-called "union representatives" and the so-called "pension managers", all of whom you hired and who report to you, not to the taxpayer.

If This Sort Of Jackassery Takes Place And Wins Electoral Approval, The U.S. Deserves To Go Down

I hope it is only a rumor.

A Good Sign

Overwhelmingly rejected in a real poll.

To Infinity And Beyond

When in the course of human events...