Round the Horn and Funky Days are Here Again

They may not have arrived at your present location; if not, please stay on the line and be assured that funky days are coming your way.

Natalie Davis' All Facts and Opinions (who I need to rename over in the blogroll) has a really nice review of some of the events around the world of the day, and also a look at the next Harry Potter Book.

archy has some info on the ubiquitous cat-blogging and what is being done about it.

Ubiquitous Cat-blogging would be a good name for a band.

blogg has a story on the possibility of a draft coming to a youngster near you. Worth checking out. It's worth noting that if there is a time when President Bush can institute a draft with a minimum of political backlash, now is that time. That said, I don't know if he actually will.

Echidne of the Snakes provides a very good rundown of the Bankruptcy Bill that just passed. Say, is it any wonder that the word bankruptcy kind of has the word rupture right in it?

Corrente has a nice round up of the weak for President Bush. Yeah, I noticed it too, but I meant to say weak, cause that's what this President is.

Musing's musings reviews a recent withdrawal of the United States from an international treaty; one that has long range consequences.

Pen-Elyane on the Web has a stumper of a philosophical question.

rubber hose has a nice coda to the whole Gannon Guckert mess.

Also for those of you who need a quick rundown on the Presidents Cement-headed plan to "reform" Social Security, check out this post by edwardpig.

And that's it. We now return you to the Funky Days, already in progress.

A tearful goodbye

Yes, my readers, I'm afraid that all good things must come to an end. I've really enjoyed running this website over the last two years, but recent events have forced me to reevaluate my commitment to this website.

The straw that broke the camels back is this article by Ann Coulter in which she lays out that we liberals are in full retreat.

So now, the entire country is ignoring liberals. I'm the canary in the coal mine. Twenty-six congressmen have signed a letter denouncing me for a column I wrote two weeks ago; for the past two weeks, I've been attacked on MSNBC and CNN, in the Detroit Free-Press and on every known liberal blog and radio show. (I especially want to thank Pacifica Radio in this regard.) I personally have shouted their complaints from the rooftops. Liberals had fallen into my trap!

But there was no point in responding because no one had heard about the liberal denunciations in the first place.

Of course Ann Coulter is referring to a racist slur against Helen Thomas she dropped into her column two weeks ago.

So I guess if nobody is paying attention to liberals, there's little purpose in me carrying on. So once again, I'd like to thank all of you who have stuck with this website through the hard times and through . . . Wait a moment, someone just handed me something.

According to this, Ann Coulter is full of crap! I guess I won't shut down this website after all. I guess I should have realized it, considering I've been mocking her for two and a half years now. But even failing that, her description of the Democratic Party as "the party that supports murder, adultery, lying about adultery, coveting other people's money, stealing other people's money, mass-producing human embryos for spare parts like an automotive chop shop and banning God." Yeah, describing the Democratic Party as supporting Murder might just barely be out of the realm of reasonable discourse.

So anyway I guess we won't be shutting down. At least not today.

OK I think I Has the Solution

Blogger seems to have cooled down and we will resume our regular blogging schedule. After lunch. I'm having a blonde chili with sour cream and cheese.

Jumping Through Hoops

Ross Mackenzie writes a very deceptive article today on that subject of subjects - Social Security.

In 1998, President Clinton, noting, This fiscal crisis in Social Security affects every generation, said famously: Save Social Security first! Three years later the revered Democratic Sen. Patrick Moynihan of New York endorsed as a partial Social Security solution small personal "add-on" accounts for which public enthusiasm would grow as the size of the accounts increased.

As President Bush picked up the Social Security cudgel, Democratic sentiment to fix it began running fast the other way. Maybe the Democrats grew faint at the very idea of Republican repair of the most hallowed Democratic program. Maybe they began blanching at even the suggestion of working with Republicans and the despised Bush. Or maybe they went to their cupboard of ideas and found it bare.

Let me explain this very slowly, Mr. McKenzie. The current debate is not over how to save Social Security. It's over whether or not to save Social Security. The President has made his intentions clear. He wants to replace Social Security with a program that is not Social Security. Others on the right would like to see the Government get out of the retirement business altogether. To pretend like the President's plan is an honest attempt to save social security is to shoot ourselves in the foot.

More to the point we do have plans on how to save Social Security - and you and everybody knows them. For one thing we should stop pretending that the Social Security Trust Fund is a fiction. For another thing, we could raise or eliminate the cap on Payroll Taxes. So to pretend that liberals don't have any thing to offer is flat out disingenuous.

Finally why should Liberals be the first to put out their plan? I mean President Bush has yet to put out his plan (although elements of the likely plan have already emerged). Why? In part because no plan that includes the elements he wants is likely to fly right now. And in part because then that would give Democrats something more concrete to challenge. Why shouldn't liberals follow the same pattern? You know what sorts of things we want.

Where America's At!

Go check out this post at The Liberal Oasis for a portrait of where we are, and why you shouldn't count the Democrats out just yet.

MoveOn and the Center

Interesting article over at Rolling Stone, on MoveOn. It's very critical of the organization, arguing that they have failed to meet any of their goals (The war in Iraq went on as planned, for example, and President Bush got a second term). It then discusses why it's presumed power in the Democratic Power is a potential doubled edged sword.

So who is MoveOn? Consider this: Howard Dean finished first in the MoveOn primary. Number Two wasn't John Kerry or John Edwards -- it was Dennis Kucinich. Listing the issues that resonate most with their membership, Boyd and Blades cite the environment, the Iraq War, campaign-finance reform, media reform, voting reform and corporate reform. Somewhere after freedom, opportunity and responsibility comes "the overlay of security concerns that everybody shares." Terrorism as a specific concern is notably absent. As are jobs. As is health care. As is education.

There's nothing inherently good or bad in any of this. It's just that MoveOn's values aren't middle-American values. They're the values of an educated, steadily employed middle and upper-middle class with time to dedicate to politics -- and disposable income to leverage when they're agitated. That's fine, as long as the group sticks to mobilizing fellow travelers on the left. But the risks are greater when it presumes to speak for the entire party.

I do think accepting MoveOn as the leader of the Democratic Party would probably not be the best idea. That said, they aren't the leader of the party. They are a voice; a voice that was shut through most of the nineties. I think they should have a place at the table.

Unfunded Liability

Well there's a wrinkle in the Social Security Debate. According to Tony Blankley, the Unfunded Liability is $3.7 Trillion. That's a lot of money. I wonder how one gets that $3.7 Trillion Number. Just think if we want to solve the Social Security crisis, we would need to raise taxes by $3.7 Trillion. Think of that drain on the economy. $3.7 Trillion gone in a flash. As Mr. Blankley puts it, "That would be the largest tax increase since … well, since tax increases were invented by the pharaohs at the dawn of civilization. And we wouldn't even have a bunch of pointy buildings to show for it, because such a tax increase would slam the breaks on a growing economy, including the construction industry."

So I guess the only logical solution is to enact a program that will cost at least $3 trillion (according to Vice President Cheney), Private Accounts. Oh and don't question that $3.7 Trillion number.

Actually there are a few things I would like to know. Is Mr. Blankley carrying it out to infinity to get that $3.7 trillion? Does he assume that the Social Security Trust Fund does not exist? It's hard to know. But on a completely unrelated note, I have discovered that implementing President Bush's account will cost more than $300 trillion. I arrived at this figure through the tried and tested method of "making stuff up."

So you see if you follow the President's plan we will be in the hole almost a hundred times more than if we do nothing! If you believe my numbers. Which, frankly, I wouldn't. But then I wouldn't believe Mr. Blankley's numbers either.

Krugman has it right - again!

His latest article concerns the new Bankruptcy law, designed to make it harder to go into bankruptcy, and easier for those who find themselves in debt to stay in debt.

The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from debts. The facts say otherwise.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

True story. I get a lot of calls from credit card companies offering me credit cards (all of which I turn down, as I already have a credit card, and my life is hard enough). Once, in a mood of playful frustration, I told the guy on the phone "Look, I'll take the card, but I have to tell you I will run up bills and then not pay them off." He still seemed pretty comfortable giving me the card, but I ended up saying no.

The Credit Card companies have followed a policy of issuing a card to anything with a pulse, and now they are upset that these policies aren't paying off as much as they would like. A few fishes are escaping the net through bankruptcies. As Krugman puts it;

Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to turn into a "sharecroppers' society" than an "ownership society." But I think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system, prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won't get us back to those bad old days all by itself, but it's a significant step in that direction.

And any senator who votes for the bill should be ashamed.

Damning with Faint Praise

Joel Mowbray takes on the problem of Social Security today, in a way that makes me think that even many conservatives realize that it is likely dead in the water. In particularly he points out a significant gap between how the President and his surrogates are trying to sell the plan and how it will actually work.

The widest gulf between rhetoric and reality, though, was on Bush's best selling point: "In addition, you'll be able to pass along the money that accumulates in your personal account, if you wish, to your children and/or grandchildren. And best of all, the money in the account is yours, and the government can never take it away."

But if you read the fine print, the government can - and will - take it away.

Depending on a number of factors, between 60 - 80% of the money accrued in someone's personal retirement account will be gobbled up by the government. Sure, the person will get it back, but only in the form of an annuity, a fixed monthly payment that lasts until death.

In the technical sense that you still receive your money, then yes, it's yours. But in the sense of property that we all know and love in America, ownership is about choice and control. Forced annuitization leaves you with neither. It also strips away your ability to leave a sizable nest egg to your children or grandchildren.

Now Mowbray is very careful to remind us of how groundbreaking President Bush's plan is. Over and over again. No President in the history of mankind has been willing to give so much to the financial industry. But this is a sticking point.

Mowbray justifies this annuity, sort of, on the grounds that it is a legislative move designed to pick up Senate Democrats, but you can tell that even he doesn't really believe this theory.

Robots

I finally got the first three movies (Episodse IV-VI, to be clear (and isn't that a pain in the tuckus)) in the Star Wars DVD collection this weekend. Got up to the third movie (Return of the Jedi) and have a question for those who know more about robots or droids than I do. Is taking hot metal and pressing it against a droids feet really more effective than, say, simply reprogramming the robot?

Those kids today!

Apparently a big public radio station in Washington D.C. has switched away from Classical Music, and apparently more and more classical music stations are changing formats or going off the air, according to an article written by Diana West. What's interesting about the article is how it goes against the grain of much conservative thought, which is not to praise NPR (even inoffensive classical music), but to bury it. She also laments the loss of Musical education, although she pretends it has been cut to make room for recycling.

Anyway, it is an interesting article.

Postcard From the Monster

Well here's the new postcard. Those of you with tender feelings may not want to read it.

ARGHH ARGHH ARGHHH ARRGHENSNOFFON

Those be monster words of lamentation. For I the monster have been rejected. My female monster friend has rejected me. She say I try to giv her chickens or cows p but I just give her gazelles that Bryant finally gave me. Good gazelles. And Bryant, being thoughtful despite what me say earlier, even cut the off all the bones and fur and just gave chunks of delicious gazelle.

But Female Monster say it no taste like Gazelle but like Chicken.

And she say Monster too small for scarying people. That be not true. Monster normal size not too big, but monster can change size. Like in photo above, when I was at Spartenburg in South Carolina in 1908. Look at how big monster be. You know laugh if you see a monster like that walking down the street.

Monster say he was tired of girl monster anyway. Plenty of Monster Fish in the Sea!

Monster say he sick of looking at you people. Monster say goodbye.

Anyway I . . . well obviously I am shocked at what happened with that Gazelle Meat I sent the monster. We'll have to hope the monster can pull it together enough to appear in next weeks logo.

New Quote

I have a new letter from the monster, but that will have to wait until later. Kind of some bad news, so brace yourselves.