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I have been trying to not talk about the republican primaries, mostly because everytime I predict Romneys demise his competition self destructs, but Herman Cain just had a great idea to create jobs. He wants to build an electrified fence along the entire Mexican US border. This would probably be one of the biggest public works projects in US history.

Given that immigration from Mexico has slowed down anyway due to the lack of jobs in the U.S and the fence would probably short out in every rainstorm thanks to the Haliburton engineers that will design it, I see no reason not to build it.

Matthew Yglesias looks at the middle class and concludes

It’s not like households in the second quintile of the distribution don’t have refrigerators or chairs. They just have cheaper stuff. It’s perfectly possible for people in the top three quintiles to downshift their spending on these household durables without plunging into some kind of universe of inconceivable material deprivation. Individual households find themselves being downwardly mobile all the time. A second lost decade would just be a
society-wide spat of downward mobility. Households in the top quintile
spend an average of $5,000 a year on net vehicle purchases. At the median
it’s only $2,320. And yet the median American household is equipped with
functioning automobiles. Overall spending could plummet and people would
still be able to get around

If some people have to make do with a cheaper automobile it’s not a tragedy, the problem is for the bottom quintile they will experience significant hardship especially if we cut back on public transportation and create less walkable cities. I think we spend too much time worrying about the top two quarters of our country and not enough worrying about the bottom two.

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Part of me thinks this is a good idea and part of me thinks that we don’t need to encourage health nazi’s. Basically the Clevelend clinic is trying to encourage/require it’s workers to behave in a healthy manner. They don’t allow employees to smoke anywhere on the campus, and they are going to great lengths to get people to eat better and exercise.

I get why they are doing this but the intrusion on personal freedom and the potential for discrimination against unhealthy people seems to extreme for me.

For some reason I am fascinated with morons courting republicans because it seems like such a mismatch, but it looks like they are about to bed down with Mitt. My guess is that hilarity will ensue but then again he is getting close to being the next president which would be no laughing matter.

Digby Has a great post up about the conservative need to turn everything into a judgement on peoples character. . Most people realize conservatism makes things harder for the low-income people, what they don’t seem to understand is that for conservatives that’s part of, if not the only goal, is to punish people for being poor, or less fortunate. Once people start to understand that “compassionate” conservatism becomes much less compassionate.

I guess Florida has. Strw poll poll today. My guess is that Rick Perry will win this pretty easily, even though a lot of smart people keep saying that he looked like a buffoon in the most recent debate I really don’t think he is bearable at this point and in the republican primary buffoonery may be an asset.

This Kind of echoes what I said about last weeks republican debate. Romney came out for social security, and many if not most republicans don’t like social security. My guess, is that most republicans really think non-whites somehow come out ahead with the program. I am somewhat surprised Romney didn’t get this before he doubled down on social security and “saving” it.

My guess is he gave the nomination to Perry at that moment, and as much as the money people in the republican party want to stop it, they are going to have Rick Perry as their nominee. It’s also worth mentioning that even without Romney’s error on social security their is no way the evangelicals in then republican part base would nominate a Mormon.

I wonder how long before aspiring Mormon candidates start to realize that they have a better chance running as democrats, after all it works for Harry Reid, probably because democrats are less bigoted towards Mormons than republicans.

I spent most the day driving across Utah and Colorado which means I get to listen to political analysis of the republican debate. On one hand people are saying Romney won because he talked about preserving social security and other people are saying Perry won because he came out swinging and gave a lot of red meat to the conservative base. From my perspective I think Perry won simply because people are talking about Perry and Romney and no one else and I don’t think Romney has ever had a chance in the primaries. Romney has a couple of insurmountable problems, first, he passed Romneycare, which seems a lot like Obamacare, and the tea-baggers

will never forgive him for that. Second, he is Mormon, and th
evangelicals that drive a lot of the republican primaries are never going
To let that go or trust him.

In other words it’s Rick Perry

After a three year recession kristof asks if we dropped the ball on unemployment ya think. As near as I can tell from his column, he just noticed that white people can’t find jobs. Maybe it’s time to accept that our elites here in the U.S are idiots.

The NFL is supposed to be a multiple-billion dollar industry but they need taxpayer funding to help build a stadium?. If the NFL can’t make it without subsidies maybe it’s time to let it go the way of the buggy whip.

I have always wondered why Huntsman got into the presidential race, he has almost no name recognition, and in the current climate he has no chance of winning,But he might have a plan after all.. He seems to be staking out a position as the sane republican, which won’t get him very far in 2012, but may go along way towards a run in 2016.

So we have a debt crisis? I am starting to think that market volitility is a perk not a bug of the current debate. What better way to get people to sell their stocks cheaply than to engineer a crisis. Our galtian overlords are good at seperating people from their money.

Update. Rand Paul seems to agree with me. Maybe I am wrong or perhaps the broken clock applies to Rand today.

I guess don’t like being called fiscal terrorists. Maybe they should stop acting like them if they don’t like being compared to them.

Of course the republican party and the conservative movement is built on hatred of the other so of course they have no problem taking hostages and shooting the hostage if needed, and I don’t think liberals have any group they hate, or even dislike. I know if Caveat bettor were here he would try to argue democrats hate the rich or something to that effect but most democrats in leadership positions are in fact part of the rich. They just can’t hate the the way republicans can.

I don’t get all the details of the debt ceiling deal, but I do know it will be served with a side of Bush tax cuts expiring in 2012, if that doesn’t happen it’s just a shit sandwich.

The debt ceiling crisis has gotten out of control and the fiscal terrorists AKA republicans have shown they can’t be resonedWith, they can’t be bargained with and they will not stop until all brown people and most white people are living in tent cities, without running water or sewer systems.

It’s time to default and end the leverage that republicans think they have. Until now republicans have been free to act as crazy as they want
because democrats have saved them from themselves and wound up looking
pretty bad doing it. This time let the crazies have their way and
default, yeah, it will suck but at least it will be the end of the weekly
temeper tantrum that have become the bread and butter of the republicans.

Update. Looks like some other people are starting to ak how much the hostage bleed

Kevin Drum asks what republicans want from their debt ceiling tantrum and and realizes they just want to have a tantrum.

This post from Matthew YglesiasMakes an interesting point, while discussing the merits of taxing the wealthy he points out that while Americans have a lot of stuff we are not really living that well.

I’m all for that, but I really do think it’s an unduly limited view of political life. Even with several decades of median wage stagnation, the fact of the matter is that the median American household has quite a lot of money compared to the median household of almost every other country. And yet, I think there are a lot of other respects in which quality of life in the United States falls short. We spend a lot of time in traffic jams. We have both a frighteningly high murder rate and a frighteningly high level of incarceration. Our health care system is very inefficient. Americans work very long hours and have unusually little vacation time. It’s not clear to me that any of these issues can be usefully tackled primarily by focusing on higher taxation of the very wealthy.

A lot of companies won’t even interview people that are Unemployed. The article in the link does a nice job explaining the stated reasons companies don’t want to hire the unemployed, but I think misses the big point. Many people in these companies HATE the unemployed, I recently had a conversation with man on facebook who claims top be a captain of industry, he defined people as either “producers” or “moochers” moochers to him were anyone that received government assistance, in his mind this was anyone that had ever worked for the government as well.

In other words the unemployed are now becoming a permanent underclass that many people feel it is ok to heap scorn on, the sad thing is the list of people that are “moochers” is growing every minute, and eventually it will include all of us.

Part of the reason Matthew Yglesias has been annoying lately Is that he may understand washington too well. And I think his prediction may be about right:
— Debt ceiling hiked by $2 trillion and paired with $2 trillion in spending cuts.
— House passes full extension of the Bush tax cuts.
— Harry Reid tries to bring extension of the middle class Bush tax cuts to the floor, but GOP filibusters.
— Bush tax cuts expire in 2012.
— Obama and GOP nominee fight it out

Just a reminder that there is no debt ceiling crisis. There’s a fake crisis started by Republicans and then embraced by the White House so that everyone gets to use the fake crisis to try to do unpopular things in such a way that nobody, in theory, actually gets the blame.

A few people need to show up in Congress in the middle of the night, cast a voice vote, and we can move on to the next fake crisis. atrios is a smart guy

Lately, it seems Mattew Yglesias may be a bit out of touch, This post is a good example. He is is arguing that homes are bad investment therefore people should be forced to put more money in 401k’s. The problem is 401k’s are mostly a device to put dumb money on the table that can be turned into profits for traders and mutual fund managers, most people have neither the time or the expertise to manage their own 401k and it shows in the average returns people get on them.

A better alternative would be to put more money into social security but it appears Mr. Yglesias is drinking the free market cool aid like many “liberals” he may as well start calling himself a conservative that supports abortion rights.

Even though Mitt Romney is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination, he might have himself a Mormon problem. It’s interesting to me that the Mormon church has spent a good deal of time and money trying to ingratiate themselves to conservative Christians but I have a feeling it’s a one way relationship. Michelle Bachman and her pray the gay away husband may be the next the republican nominees.

Looks like micheal Vick is about to do something good

Eagles quarterback Michael Vick is expected to appear before Congress today to support a bill that would make it a crime to attend a dogfighting or cockfighting event, according to reports.

The Wall Street Journal and the Morning Call of Allentown, reported that Vick, who was convicted of dogfighting charges in 2007, will join Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, to endorse the bill.

According to the Morning Call, the bill, titled H.R. 2492, was introduced by U.S. Reps. Tom Marino and Betty Sutton. It is designed to penalize those who finance or attend dogfights and cockfights and imposes additional penalties on those who bring children to such events.

The U.S seems to be moving in a good direction when it comes to animal welfare, i

At least one person is not real optimistic that the is not too optimistic about the debt ceiling getting raised bu the August deadline:

In the meantime, there’s at least a possibility that literally no solution can assemble 218 votes in the House — there are simply too many right-wing Republicans in the chamber with an allergy to reason — in which case, we’re all royally screwed.

I am starting to believe something will get done just because too many powerful interests want it to happen and corporate welfare payments need to be made, but Steve Bennen is right that many people in congress right now do seem allergic to reason.

I don’t think people really believed republicans were crazy enough to bankrupt the country, but as the deadline approaches that may change. people always seem amazed when their conservative friends live up to their insane statements. But they shouldn’t be, the tea baggers are every bit as racist and idiotic as they claim to be.

I don’t exactly get all the details but it sounds like republicans have given Obama the authority to raise the debt ceiling as long as they can whine about it.

Gotta love the manly men of the republican party.

Looks like the debt ceiling compromise may be falling apart. Which is not too surprising, no self respecting tea bagger will ever vote to raise the debt ceiling, and will probably primary any republican that does vote for it. Smart people would allow a clean bill and a voice vote, and hat is probably the only way to avert the likely crisis that will come from not raising the debt ceiling.

Something new on the debt ceiling:

I don’t know what to make of this, but I am starting to think Isreal may be going off the deep end