It Doesn't Matter

Donald Trump has 91 felony indictments against hm, he constantly lashed out at the prosecutors who have charged him, Jack Smith has felt compelled to request a gaga order placed against Trump to avoid a tainted jury in his cases, and in a recent interview (more of which later), Trump claimed full responsibility for the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Thanks to President Biden's troubles, however, none of that matters.

President Biden is dealing with headwinds of his own, and they're more relevant because he's President and Trump is not - yet.  Despite improving economic statistics, inflation is still making essential goods more expensive for Americans, dragging down Biden's poll numbers on his handling of the economy and his overall job approval.  His failure to address his son Hunter's troubles with his business dealings has led to six out of ten Americans believing the consistent Republican narrative that Biden must be in on his son's crooked deeds.  And with Hunter Biden having been charged with an illegal-gun felony - a charge no one named Biden would likely receive from a prosecutor - it reinforces House Republicans' charges of a corrupt family dynamic among the Bidens while House Democrats, relegated to the minority, can only complain about the real corrupt family dynamic among the Trumps, which includes Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Of course, being the minority, House Democrats can only looked forward to their complaints get drowned out by renewed calls among the far right for Biden's impeachment.       

Even Kevin McCarthy's call for an impeachment inquiry against the President - forced by his right flank, which has had more control over a Republican House Speaker than anyone since Dennis Hastert - hasn't generated much of a rallying around the President by Democrats, at least not yet.  That's likely because an impeachment inquiry is different than an actual impeachment, and an inquiry is only meant to find evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors.  It doesn't matter if Democrats ask what House Republicans want to impeach Biden for despite no evidence of Biden having done anything wrong.  Because such evidence is exactly what an inquiry is meant to seek!  It wouldn't be an inquiry otherwise, would it?

If an inquiry comes up with nothing, as it's likely to, the House will most likely decide not to impeach Biden; they apparently don't have the votes for it anyway.  But that doesn't matter either; an inquiry is still good enough to tarnish an incumbent President. 

All of his spells trouble for the Biden re-election campaign as it lurches toward 2024.  The best the President can hope for is that Americans start feeling the economic improvements he's accomplished, and soon, because ultimately, Americans vote their pocketbooks, not their reproductive or family-planning rights or their mass-transit access. At least not in presidential elections.  But what about our democracy, our civil rights, or our efforts to live up to our ideals as a nation?

As Stephen Stills once sang, it doesn't matter, it's nothing but dreaming anyhow.  

Fit To Be Tied

It's September 2023, and all the polls show the same thing . . . President Biden and Donald Trump are tied in a potential 2024 rematch despite Trump having been indicted four times for money fraud,  mishandling secret documents, interfering in the 2020 Georgia presidential election (Georgia the U.S. state, not Georgia the Transcaucasian country and former Soviet republic), and insurrection.  How on earth can Biden not be so far ahead of Trump that he can win a landslide - apart from the fact that Americans are morons?

There are actually several reasons, all of them quite sobering - and scary enough to encourage me to plan for a future in which the Proud Boys (at least those that haven't been sent to prison already) are deputized into a new secret police.  First, despite the improving economy, not enough people are feeling it thanks to aftereffects of inflationary pressures.  Although inflation is cooling,  food and gas prices are still high and many people are still forced to economize.  That's why two people disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy for every one person that approves.

Another reason is that Trump has a solid, loyal following that Biden never had outside Delaware in his entire political career.  Trump supporters would go through fire to vote for him; Biden supporters aren't that devoted to their candidate.  Biden still doesn't get much respect, if any, from the party's progressive base despite all he's done for him.  Whereas Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, Biden could accidentally spill coffee on someone on Fifth Avenue and he'd be out of the presidential campaign within a week.  

Third, there's the age problem.  Democrats are concerned about Biden being and looking so old at 80 years of age.  Trump, despite being only 3½ years younger than Biden, doesn't have that handicap.  That's because, whatever you say about Trump, he comes across as a feisty, energized, animated fighter ready to take on anyone.  Biden is so low-key, by contrast, that videos of his speeches could put the sleeping-pill industry out of business.  Fair or unfair, Biden looks much older than Trump than he actually is.    

Fourth, Biden is leading an economic comeback based on good jobs at good wages . . . with no Democrats following him.  The corporate wing of the Democratic Party still dominates Washington, a legacy of three decades of trying to please business interests and Wall Street financiers.  Biden has always been a lunchbox Democrat in the tradition of Hubert Humphrey and Tim Ryan, but most Democrats are elitists who spend more time hanging out with movie stars than with factory workers.  Trump has consistently appealed to working-class voters and convinced them that he's the only friend they have when it comes to protecting their interests - which isn't true, of course.  But he did it so well in 2016 that he had blue-collar voters sewn up long before Biden could come around to win them back in 2020.  And  Democratic Party leaders don't seem to care.       

Fifth - Kamala Harris.  She's the one Democrat that is less popular then Joe Biden right now.  Admittedly, that's mainly because she's a black woman who's also part South Asian and whose husband is a Jew - and she prefers Bootsy Collins records to Phil Collins records.  But even leaving all of that aside, she doesn't come across as warm and fuzzy as Biden does, and she seems somewhat strident even when she's in a good mood.  Many people are uncomfortable about her being a heartbeat away from the Presidency when the President is an octogenarian.  There has been talk of another California Democrat - Gavin Newsom, the governor of California - stepping in as the vice presidential candidate in 2024 and the heir apparent in 2028. I guarantee you, that if the Democrats go that route - no matter how logical that sounds, given Newsom's own political gifts - you'll start seeing stickers on car windows that read this:

Because Democrats would rather be politically correct than politically successful, that's how we got Hillary Clinton over Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders.

So what are we left with?  A likely Biden renomination and a rematch against Trump, whose re-election is viewed unfavorably by 69 percent of American voters, according to one poll.  But get this: That same poll shows that 75 percent of voters view Biden's re-election unfavorably.  To say that Biden has a tough fight ahead of him is an understatement, and he just keeps saying, "Watch me."  I have watched his 2024 presidential campaign; so far, it's like watching paint dry.

That said, this is precisely why I'm beginning to view Trump's return to power as inevitable.  I expect that a second Trump administration will last beyond January 20, 2029 because Trump will declare martial law at the first sign of civil unrest, he'll have Democrats bodily removed from Congress, and all of his opponents and enemies - including average citizens, whose IP addresses will be collected by the government - will get one-way train rides to concentration camps in North Dakota, if not sent to the gallows.  

Though some of them may just be taken out to a football field and face a firing squad.

What America Doesn't Care About

President Biden gave a speech yesterday on the right to abortion and the need to keep it legal at a time when James Carville and Bernie Sanders are saying that Democrats should be talking more about the economy.

In a New York Times / Siena poll released on Monday, the economy and inflation were the top concerns among people surveyed, 26 percent an 18 percent, respectively.  Abortion was a top concern of only 5 percent of voters.  And the Republicans have an edge on economic issues.

So Biden is talking about anything but the economy.  I get the impression that this is the reaction most Americans have to Biden's comments on anything not related to the economy:

Don't get me wrong, I think it sucks that women's rights are under assault.  I also think it sucks that contraception, gay marriage, and possibly interracial marriage could be revisited by the Supreme Court.  But when it comes down to the nitty-grity, even the left-of-center suburban women Biden was trying to rally will vote Republican.  Remember that white rap song from 1985 performed by Jim Belushi and Pamela Sue Martin on "Saturday Night Live?"  "I'm liberated, I joined NOW / I voted for Reagan anyhow / Because his tax and budget cuts / Will hurt other people - but not us!"

In the end, Americans by and large don't care about the assault on the rights of this . . . 

. . . or this . . . 

. . . or this.

Okay, maybe a lot of them do.  But the thing Americans will always care about the most is this:

 

That's why, in 2016 (and possibly once again in 2024), they chose (and may again choose) this.

See you 'round the clubs.

Rage Against Trump

My only problem with the House of Representatives impeaching Trump when it did is that it did it soon.

Thanks to Bob Woodward's latest book, "Rage," which comes out on September 15, there's plenty of proof for impeachment and enough to ensure a conviction in the Senate.

Seems Trump know how bad COVID-19 was back in late January and early February but he didn't want to tell anyone how bad it would get because he didn't want to panic anyone and cause the economy - his only strong suit in the 2020 presidential campaign - to crater.  But it did crater, largely in part because Trump tried to downplay the pandemic, which he continues to do today without embarrassment.  Information he had that could have saved lives and even his Presidency was cast aside for political reasons.

Oh yeah, there's more.  Woodward has assembled numerous indictments of Trump's ability to lead - that is, he has none - from people as diverse as Rex Tillerson, James Mattis and Anthony Fauci.  Especially indicting is Woodward's quote from former Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, writing that Coats "continued to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that [Vladimir] Putin had something on Trump. . . ..  How else to explain the president's behavior? Coats could see no other explanation."

And, of course, no one can see another explanation either.

Woodward also reveals that Trump's association with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has gone far beyond détente and blossomed into a full "bromance," with Trump gushing over Kim's abilities as a leader and agreeing with him that Barack Obama is a rhymes-with-glass-pole, Trump telling Woodward that Obama is "overrated" as a leader and laughing at the idea that blacks are victims of systemic racism, a belief that Woodward, a privileged white man like Trump, subscribes to.

As does everyone else with a brain.

I hope the election ends with a Biden victory, and I hope the time between now and November 3 passes soon.  I don't think I can take much more. 

And in the meantime, can we impeach Trump again? 

Biden Turns It Up

Joe Biden still has a lead in the polls after both conventions, and with Labor Day finally here (it falls at the latest day possible this year), he's campaigning on the road and in your face ahead of schedule.

This past Friday, after a visit to Kenosha concerning the Blake incident that outclassed Donald Trump's visit there two days before, Biden spoke again (the picture above is from that speech), this time lambasting Trump for his comments on the military, particularly with regard to his late son Beau's own service in Iraq.  Biden then pivoted to the economy, which, inexplicably, remains Trump's strong suit in the polls.  With more people trusting Trump than Biden on the economy, Trump being a (failed) businessman and all, Biden gave a speech linking the recession to the COVID-19 pandemic and driving the point home that many people on this Labor Day are underemployed out of work entirely, need job training and short-term assistance but can't get either, and have fallen behind in an economy that rewards stock market investors more than the people who work at the companies whose shares are being traded.  Furthermore,  Biden said, the economy is linked to the pandemic and how we handle it, and Trump has handled both badly.

That may be a difficult argument to make at time when the virus seems to be slowing its spread and voters rate the overall economy as the most important issue of the election. Biden's speech was a good start, but he has to keep delivering the message over and over, the way Trump lies over and over.  Meanwhile, Biden plans to go to Michigan - a state that benefited from the economic stimulus program Biden oversaw as Vice President in the Obama administration - and talk up his role in saving the auto industry (Biden is a car enthusiast as well as a passenger-rail supporter), so it looks like he'll be doing just that.      

Biden Nails It Again

Joe Biden has been under pressure to respond to Trump's attacks on him and his depiction of Biden as a radical leftist bent on encouraging violence and seeking the support of extremists while turning a deaf ear to the cornerstone of people worried about the growing chaos and lawlessness in the country.  Yesterday, Biden responded aggressively and forcefully  to Trump's claims that a Biden administration would make America less safe in a twenty-minute speech in Pittsburgh.

"I want a safe America: safe from COVID, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad cops," Biden said, adding, "Let me be crystal clear: safe from four more years of Donald Trump." 

Biden clearly condemned the violence emanating from protests against racial injustice and warned demonstrators that allowing violence to get out of hand destroyed the very communities they were trying to help.

"Rioting is not protesting," Biden said.  "Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple, and those who do it should be prosecuted." He also said, “Violence will not bring change. It will only bring destruction. It’s wrong in every way. It divides instead of unites ... it makes things worse across the board, not better. It’s not what Dr. King or John Lewis taught and it must end."

He also laid into Trump on how he let the COVID-19 pandemic to spiral out of hand, making Americans less safe even without civil unrest, as well as how Trump's handling of  COVID-19 decimated the economy.  He even cited Kellyanne Conway's observation that more violence helps Trump and how Trump supporters incite violence on their candidate's behalf.

Biden then asked voters to answer whether they're safe after four years of Donald Trump.

"Fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames rather than fighting the flames," Biden also stressed.  "But we must not burn. We have to build."

Needless to say, Biden made a few comments that might not sit well with progressives in his efforts to appeal to the center.  He said that most cops are good, decent people, a characterization that progressives might have a problem with.  Biden tried to cast aside Trump's insistence that how would ban fracking, saying that he would not.  Yes, and the left definitely has a problem with that!  (And in spite of his clean-energy program, which, of course, satisfies no one among the far left.)  And he quoted Pope John Paul II in urging people not to be afraid.  (If you're a Democrat and you want to shore up your own base, John Paul II is probably the last pope you want to quote, not just because of his mishandling od the Church sex-abuse scandal but also because of his own cultural conservatism.)

Biden's biggest mistake would not be anything he said yesterday.  His biggest mistake would be thinking that he doesn't have to say any of that again, because Trump lies so much and so often that this speech will hardly be the last word.  Biden has to keep up his rhetoric because Trump will keep up his rhetoric.  For now, though, Biden has more numbers on the scorecard.   

Isolation

Donald Trump promised to build a wall to keep undocumented immigrants out, and he ended up barricading himself in the White House.  Note the eight-foot fence below.

Trump's approval rating is going down more and more amid the twin disaster of the George Floyd killing and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  Foreign leaders want nothing to do with him unless they have no choice - and not even then.  Famous military men are speaking out against his usurpation of power and his authoritarian tendencies.  There's even proof in the polls that evangelical conservatives are beginning to lose faith (no pun intended) in him, and now a couple of Republican senators, such as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah, are turning against him.

A caveat, though: It's only June, and election is in November.  The protests against the Floyd killing will eventually die down.  The economy might recover sufficiently by fall.  And there may even be a COVID-19 vaccine as early as October.  And whatever good things happen between now and November, Donald Trump  will take credit for it.  If anything that could improve his fortunes does happen, we can't let him get away with that.  Remember everything that's already happened up to now when you go and vote in November.      

Disinjectant?

If Joe Biden is elected President this November, history books will record that Trump lost the election the day - April 23 - he made the following suggestion.

Noting the use of disinfectants in killing the coronavirus on surfaces, Trump suggested that perhaps liquid disinfectant formulas like Lysol could be injected into the body of a person with COVID-19 to kill it.

Only one thing wrong with that - disinfectant can not only kill the virus, it can kill the patient!

When Trump suggested this idea, he turned to Dr. Deborah Birx to get a seconding of his proposal, but la Mademoiselle Docteur Birx - she of the cool scarves - just sat there and said more with the horrified expression on her face than mere words could.

I'm only glad she wasn't wearing her scarf as a mask.  

Oh yeah, Trump also suggested finding a way to get ultraviolet light  - another way to kill the virus on surfaces - inside infected human bodies as a cure.

How come no one has invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment yet? 

Needless to say, Democrats, news media personalities and the company that makes Lysol disinfectant all came out and made it clear that no one should deliberately swallow disinfectant at all, to make sure that people wouldn't do something crazy that Trump suggested.  However, people could still do something else crazy at Trump's urging - they could vote for him again.  And if the economy recovers enough by November, enough voters - some of whom probably sniff glue for fun - could do just that and end up giving him a second term.

America has a consumer economy, so every patriotic American should refrain from buying too much stuff between now and Election Day, November 3, so that the economy stays soft enough to hurt Trump.  We should only buy things we need.

Like disinfectant.

But don't drink it.     

In Mammon We Trust

Marie Yovanovitch presented herself as a heroine in defending her tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine in her testimony to the House Intelligence Committee about how she saw that Trump's attempts to have Ukrainian corruption investigated was more about damaging Joe Biden (which some say he's succeeded in doing) than bringing good governance to the former Soviet republic.  Trump's efforts to discredit her on Twitter in real time while she was testifying - he bad-mouthed her entire career despite her impeccable credentials - opened him up to charges of witness tampering during a hearing on his own impeachment.  Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee were left dumbfounded.

Meanwhile, Trump operative Roger Stone was convicted yesterday of trying to stop the House probe into charges of Russian interference in the 2016 election, having been convicted on five felony counts of lying to investigators, one count of obstructing a congressional probe, and one count of witness tampering.

But, if not for the third event that took place yesterday, the first two would actually matter.  The third event was this: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 28,000 points for the first time ever.

The Dow - and the Nasdaq and the S&P as well - all closed at record highs yesterday thanks to news of an impending trade deal with China.  And, the Dow had set a record earlier in the week thanks to the launch of Disney's Disney Plus subscription video on-demand streaming service.  As long as the economy goes well enough for many people - especially regular voters, who are better off than people who don't vote regularly or don't vote at all - Trump is still a favorite for re-election, and if a progressive Democrat (or, in the case of Bernie Sanders, a progressive independent) is his opponent in the presidential election next November, hell, he could be the first President unanimously re-elected by the Electoral College since George Washington on 1792.  He might even carry the District of Columbia, thanks to all of the gentrification hat Washington, D.C. has undergone in recent years.  At the least, Trump could repeat in 2020 James Monroe's success of two hundred years earlier - only losing four electors, three of whom didn't vote and one of whom wrote in John Quincy Adams.   

Because, boys and girls, Americans don't really care about constitutional crises or the rule of law.   They only care about their own economic well-being.   One could argue - I'm surprised more people don't - that Nixon might have survived Watergate if the economy had been a whole lot better, without stagflation or an oil crisis going on.  Donald Trump, who boasts about the Dow ad infinitum, is counting on a booming stock market and admittedly misleading employment statistics to carry him to victory in 2020 by assuming that Americans are just as venal as he is.

And he's probably right.  As the British noted several years ago, we Americans have an uncanny knack for worshiping God and Mammon at the same time.  How else do you explain the motto "In God We Trust" on our currency?

Money . . . it's a hit . . . don't give me that do-goody-good bullsh-- . . .

Why I Think A Recession Is Coming

The Dow is up again, there might be another rate cut from the Federal Reserve, and Donald Trump (below) assures us that there won't be a recession.

But I think that a recession, which is the only thing that could solidly sink Trump's re-election chances, is still coming.  I could write a six-thousand word explanation, but as it's been said that one picture is worth a thousand words, I am instead showing you six pictures, all of which I took myself this year.

This is a 2007 Volkswagen Jetta.

Here's another Volkswagen, a 2002 Passat.

And here's a 2003 Dodge Neon.

Here's a nice, though slightly banged up, 1999 Saturn SL2.

 And how about this sleek 1997 Lincoln Mark VIII?

And - wait for it! - a 1995 Ford Taurus - first-generation model! 

In case you haven't figured it out yet, here's what these six cars have in common.  All of them over over a decade old, a couple of them even more than two decades old.  One of them is even from a brand that no longer exists.

I've been seeing cars ten or more years old on the road almost daily, and many of them have license plates that were issued only recently.  Part of the reason for this may be that many people don't like any of the new sport utility vehicles and crossovers and prefer to keep their old coupes, sedans and hatchbacks, but I suspect that a bigger reason may be that new cars are simply too damn expensive for the average buyer.  Many of the new jobs created in Trump's economy are the same old dead-end jobs that barely helps a beleaguered American middle class make ends meet.  Meanwhile,  automotive journalists have suggested a theory - which I happen to agree with - that the reason cars have become too expensive is because of all the high-tech gadgetry in them that most people don't want or need.  Even entry-level brands such as Chevrolet and Toyota are filling their cars with so many unnecessary high-tech features, you might as well buy a Cadillac or a Lexus.

This all means that people are either holding on to their cars longer or buying used cars that other people held on to for long.  I have a friend who owned a 2006 Volvo that he traded in for another car only recently.  He got a 2016 Volvo in its place, and as an owner of a late-model used car, he's one of the lucky ones!    

The health of the American auto market - not just domestic automakers but of all of them - has long been a barometer for the U.S. economy.  Car sales - sales of all cars, sedans and SUVs alike - are slowing, and the Web site Insider Car News reports that there are still plenty of 2018 models available as the 2019 model year comes to a close.  The Jeep Wrangler Unlimited is the 2018 model with the largest surplus of unsold units, followed by the base Wrangler.  Most of the other 2018 models available in surplus are SUVs as well, despite the fact SUVs account for more than half of new vehicles actually sold.  This news comes on the heels of factory closures and layoffs from General Motors back in late 2018.  You call this a robust economy?

I have been looking at the possibility of getting a new Golf before Volkswagen of America decides not to offer the standard Golf model here anymore, as my own 2012 Golf has stalled repeatedly over the past few months.  But I've also been looking at used Golfs for purchase, because I'm no better off financially than most people.   After yet another repair, I think I may have finally had my stalling problem licked, so I may yet be able to keep my Golf like I've wanted to.  And I have a feeling others will continue to buy or hold onto cars older than mine.  If you hang around a polling place on Election Day 2020, and you see a lot of cars from the 1990s and 2000s - some of which may be from Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and other since-shuttered brands - pull into the parking lot, count on Trump to lose his bid for a second term.  Even if some of those vehicles are Suburbans and Explorers of similar vintage.    

Mr. Trump Goes To Capitol Hill

I listened to Donald Trump's speech to Congress for as long as I could take, and I heard a lot of conciliatory platitudes that had little in common with his mean-spirited inaugural address but had just as much substance.  He invoked Republican President Abraham Lincoln to defend his own isolationist economic views (forgetting that Lincoln had no multilateral or even bilateral relationships to deal with), invoked Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System to promote his infrastructure program (but offered no specifics about what he wanted to build, apart from his great wall along the Mexican border), and again repeated his goal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (again, with no concrete ideas on how to do it).     

He also praised NATO after having dissed it, but thanked NATO members for paying more into the alliance, showing that he still views NATO not as a multilateral union but as a transaction. He tried to strike a positive tone for the future, looking forward to America's quarter-millenial, or 250th, anniversary in 2026 and the wonderful innovations and inventions we could see then.  He cited the great inventions that were displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (a fair from which blacks were mostly absent) and hinted that there could be a similar celebration in 2026 (forget our lousy track record this country has had of late with involvement in world's fairs, and forget also that the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations didn't work out so well).  His speech was easier to swallow than his inaugural address - but then, so is baby aspirin.  It was a kinder, gentler right-wing nationalist manifesto.  And his attempt to capitalize on the botch raid in Yemen by paying tribute to Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL who died in that raid, was revolting.

And a President who's known for hissy tweets on issues of vital unimportance has a lot of damn gall to call for an end to obsession to trivial politics.  

And Steve Beshear delivering the Whig - oops, Democratic - opposition's response?  Well, it was a strong and solid argument for preserving the Affordable Care Act and standing up for working-class and middle-class values.  But there was just one thing wrong - Beshear is the former Democratic governor of Kentucky.  He defended his move to create a health-insurance exchange in the state, a point as moot as he is, given that his Republican successor has moved to dismantle it.  And if the Democrats need to get a former officeholder to defend the party, that should tell you how irrelevant current Democratic officeholders (not that there are that many of them) are.  

Mean, Nasty, and Brutish

It's official: America is a nasty place.

As President Obama toured the country to drum up support for his jobs bill in an attempt to help the economy, the voters of the reliably Democratic congressional district in New York City's outer boroughs formerly represented by Anthony Weiner give Obama a drum beating not unlike Keith Moon's full-frontal drum assaults. The Ninth Congressional District sent a Republican, Bob Turner, to the House of Representatives for the first time since the 1920s. Voter dissatisfaction with Obama over the economy was cited as a primary reason for voting for Turner.

These Turner supporters were seemingly unfazed by the rightward drift in the Republican party, which crested to an all-time high in terms of heartlessness when presidential candidate Ron Paul, debating his Republican presidential nomination opponents in Tampa, suggested that a thirty-year-old man without health insurance who has a horrible accident and goes into a coma should be aware of the risks to life that come with freedom and that the government shouldn't be obliged to guarantee him health insurance. Whether or not Paul meant to suggest that the weaker and poorer among us should be allowed to die is irrelevant; the Tea party audience at the debate interpreted his comment as being an endorsement of such an idea, and that same audience subsequently applauded.

This all happened as a recently census report showed that poverty has risen steadily since 2001. One out of six Americans live in poverty now, and the unofficial (i.e., "real") numbers are likely higher.

My friend Karen Hunter suggested that the Democrats lost the New York congressional seat over local issues such as support for Israel - the ninth Congressional District is 40 percent Jewish - but when local voters cite anger toward Obama as a reason to vote for a Republican, you have to wonder how unpopular Obama is, whatever the locale.

My prediction: A combination of anger toward the Democrats and Tea Party hatred for Obama will bring a huge Republican victory in 2012. Obama will be the last Democratic President. The Democratic party will cease to exist.  New opposition parties will form, but Republicans will disenfranchise enough voters to give themselves a permanent majority. And America will become even more mean, nasty and brutish than it is now.

And then things will get bad.

Luck Of the Irish

Ireland became the latest country in the sixteen-nation zone that uses the euro currency to apply for a bailout, totalling nearly $140 billion, which would come from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The Irish Finance Ministry reported that the money was needed for a credit line for its state-backed banks, which have lost $69 billion as the Irish economy has tanked and its deficit has soared to 32 percent of its gross domestic product - ten times the amount allowed in the Eurozone. The Irish economy - not too long ago the envy of Europe - is strugling in the aftermath of the global recession and the Irish government's own decision to insure its banks against all losses. The Iberian countries - Spain and Portugal - may be next, due to their heavy borrowing costs on bond markets.

In what also amounts to a cosmic joke, several British banks are also lending money to Ireland in an effort to protect their own investments in Irish banks. This amounts to the Irish taking a helping hand from their stepmother country, a country that oppressed the Irish people for nine hundred years. Hmm, I wonder what the interest rates are on a loan like that?

Ireland hopes to get its books in order by 2014 with a program of severe budget cuts and tax increases. The prospect of being at the mercy of bankers from the United Kingdom should give them some incentive to get it done sooner.

Once More Into the D.C. Breach

Having been on the receiving end of attacks by the Republicans for months, Democrats are now fighting back, as evidenced by Democratic senator Barbara Boxer's spirited performance against Republican opponent Carly Fiorina in California and Democratic senator Russ Feingold's similar stand against Republican Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. In Minnesota, Tarryl Clark has noted right-wing gadfly Michele Bachmann running scared so much that Bachmann has put out a new e-mail calling for more help from her supporters to keep her House seat. Could this mean that the Democrats are gaining momentum?
Not a chance.
The economy remains so excruciatingly bad, and Republicans have such an established ability to communicate their message, that it's appearing less likely that the Democrats will even minimize their losses, much less reverse them. Furthermore, because the Republicans have been on the attack for so long, it seems almost like an act of desperation for Democrats to attack in response.

It's also proven to be very effective for the Republicans to divorce themselves from the governing process for so long. At the beginning of the year, many pundits believed that incumbents of both parties would be blamed for the sorry state of the economy, and that Democratic incumbents would naturally bear more of the brunt of voter antipathy simply because there were more of them. Now, however, they're bearing all of it. Republican incumbents, by contrast, are sitting pretty. In Iowa, Charles Grassley - once a likeable moderate but now known as a purveyor of the "death panel" ruse against the health care law - is on his way to winning a sixth term to the U.S. Senate. David Vitter in Louisiana is still a favorite for re-election to the Senate, despite two sex scandals and a reputation for protecting BP. The Democratic challengers in these races, Roxanne Conlin and Charlie Melancon, respectively, are fighting hard but with little wind at their backs. It is very difficult for Democratic challengers to run effectively against Republican incumbents in Iowa and Louisiana when the national party is trying to defend Democratic incumbents in tough races in California and Wisconsin.
To be fair to the Democrats, even if they had counterattacked months ago, they'd still be behind in the polls due to an economy that stubbornly refuses to recover. Nevertheless, for the Democrats to promise a counteroffensive in the midterm campaigns at this point is comparable to the notion of the French planning to invade Nazi Germany after the fall of Belgium. The Democrats still have a chance to hold the Senate, even though the House is probably gone. But if present trends persist - and there's not much time left - the Senate may also fall to the GOP.

President Obama is a cool and reasonable man, and that has hurt him in his inability to connect with voters. But if a Tea Party-dominated Republican party gains control of one or both houses of Congress, that might be the best thing for him.

The Green and the Greatest

I read two interesting stories in this morning's paper regarding Ireland. The country currently suffers from a 12.4 percent unemployment rate - the second-highest unemployment rate among the sixteen countries using the euro, after Spain. This is the result of a rather reckless and speculative period of prosperity in Ireland that came to a crashing halt when the global economy did.

The people of the Irish town of Ennis, anyway, got some good cheer from one of their favorite sons - Muhammad Ali. It has long since been proven that Ali had an Irish great-grandfather, Abe Grady, who emigrated from Ennis, in County Clare, to America just before the Civil War. Ali visited the town recently and received a hero's welcome, the residents happy to claim him as one of their own. A champion of human rights, Ali, I'm sure, expresses interest in and appreciates the nine hundred years of oppression the Irish had to go through. Heck, he's one of us!

Ireland continues to suffer under the weight of its history as well as under its current malaise, and I'm certainly happy that Ali's presence in his great-grandfather's hometown lightened the load and give a glimmer of possibility to the townspeople. Call him the Great Green Hope.

Kelly green, that is. :-)

Un-American Dream

CNN and Money magazine did a special program on the economy hosted by Anderson Cooper and Ali Veshi, and the took a poll through Facebook. One result showed that, despite the economy, 61 percent of people surveyed thought their job was secure.

That high?

But get this: A whopping 44 percent - a plurality - would be ready to leave the country if they knew they could get a job overseas! Those who would definitely move across the country for a certain job totaled 33 percent.

So much for patriotism.

I'd heard anecdotal stories of Americans this intent on moving abroad once George Walker Bush was elected to a second term, as well as those who were ready to quit America at the notion of Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from ultimate power. But I never thought the economy would be bad enough to produce this result.

All Screwed Up

How screwed up is the American economy?

A share of General Motors stock is woth less than a gallon of gas.

A share Citibank is worth less than an ATM fee.

And, a share of Blockbuster is worth less than a video rental.

Draw your own conclusion.

The Dirty Low Dow

The Dow Jones average closed at its lowest level in nearly twelve years yesterday, and today it closed lower still. This should indicate just how shaky the whole financial system has become. President Obama sought to reassure investors by encouraging bargain stock shopping, and he bravely talked down daily fluctuations in the stock market and pay attention to the long term. This is exactly what has some investors worried - long term flatlining in the market is just as possible as an upward climb or, even worse, continued falling. Too much of people's savings and investments are in the stock market, as this country only tends to produce investments and not much else. Since the market is mostly speculative, it makes perfect sense for the government to assume more responsibility for the welfare of its citizenry.

The Miller's Tale

The economic stimulus bill finally passed, and President Obama will sign it possibly as early as Tuesday. I got to thinking that the Republicans will do everything to stop it not because of the cost or the insufficient (for them) number of tax cuts, but for the fact that this bill will take money from some to help someone else.

For example, Republican Representative Candace Miller of Michigan voted against it in part because the bill is helping to finance bullet trains, particularly one to run between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Now why would she object to federal funding for bullet trains - indeed, all public transportation, as she intimated?

Gee, maybe because the preponderance of public transportation would cut into the very profitable business of Michigan's best known product - cars?

Rachel Maddow inexplicably couldn't see the logic of the Congresswoman's vote.

Expect Representative Miller to be very supportive of any future economic stimulus measure specifically aimed at highway spending.

Name Your Price

The economic stimulus bills passed by the House and the senate are only a few billion dollars apart, and at first one would guess that it shouldn't be too hard for them to be reconciled in conference. One who would guess so, though, doesn't know diddly-squat about Washington. Also, President Obama has been weakened somewhat by his failed communications skills and self-admitted screw-ups of the past week. A stimulus bill is likely to pass, but it almost certainly won't pass without acrimony or with much Republican support.

Since Congress now has to negotiate the bill's final price tag, perhaps it's time to call in William Shatner. :-D