Tag: ek Politics

Attentive readers know I don’t much respect it.  To pretend to have a standard and yet not hold yourself or people you support to the same is a flat out LIE!

I don’t mince words either.

See yourself in this mirror?  Stop being an asshole then.

The evil of indefinite detention and those wanting to de-prioritze it

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Sunday, Jan 8, 2012 6:18 AM Eastern Standard Time

As we head into Election Year, there is an increasingly common, bizarre and self-evidently repellent tactic being employed by some Democratic partisans against those of us who insist that issues like indefinite detention (along with ongoing killing of civilians in the Muslim world) merit high priority. The argument is that to place emphasis on such issues is to harm President Obama (because he’s responsible for indefinite detention, substantial civilian deaths, and war-risking aggression) while helping competing candidates (such as Gary Johnson or Ron Paul) who vehemently oppose such policies. Thus, so goes this reasoning, to demand that issues like indefinite detention and civilian deaths be prioritized in assessing the presidential race is to subordinate the importance of other issues such as abortion, gay equality, and domestic civil rights enforcement on which Obama and the Democrats are better. Many of these commentators strongly imply, or now even outright state, that only white males are willing to argue for such a prioritization scheme because the de-prioritized issues do not affect them. See here (Megan Carpentier), here (Katha Pollitt) and here (Dylan Matthews) as three of many examples of this grotesque accusatory innuendo.

There are numerous glaring flaws with this divisive tactic. For one, it relies on a full-scale, deliberate distortion of the argument being made; demanding that issues like indefinite detention, civilian deaths and aggressive war be given high priority in the presidential race does not remotely advocate the de-prioritization of any other issues. For another, many women and ethnic and racial minorities – as well as gay Americans – are making similar arguments about the need for these issues to receive substantial attention in the election.

More important, it’s irrational in the extreme to argue that self-interest or “privilege” would cause someone to want to prioritize issues like indefinite detention and civilian causalities given that the civil liberties and anti-war advocates being so accused are extremely unlikely themselves to be affected by the abuses they protest. For the most part, it isn’t white males being indefinitely detained, rendered, and having their houses and cars exploded with drones – the victims of those policies are people like Boumediene, or Gulet Mohamed, or Jose Padilla, or Awal Gul, or Sami al-Haj, or Binyam Mohamed, or Afghan villagers, or Pakistani families, or Yemeni teenagers.

Put another way, when you spend the vast bulk of your time working against the injustices imposed almost exclusively on minorities and the marginalized – as anyone who works on these war and civil liberties issues by definition does – it’s reprehensible for someone to deploy these sorts of accusatory tactics, all in service of the shallow goal of partisan loyalty enforcement. Those who were actually driven primarily by privileged self-interest would want to de-prioritize these issues in a presidential campaign, not insist on their vital importance.

And that is this real point here: what’s so warped about those who employ this tactic for partisan ends is how easily it could be used against them, rather than by them. All of the authors of the three accusatory examples linked above (Carpentier, Pollitt, and Matthews) – as well as most of those Democrats who have now sunk to explicitly arguing that such matters are unimportant – are white and non-Muslim.

…

I don’t employ or endorse that wretched reasoning, but those who do – such as the authors of the above-linked accusations – should have it applied to them and their own political priorities; they deserve to reap what they are sowing.

Via Felix Salmon there is this story about how Economists are upset that restaurant reservations might not be commanding Maximum Market Value!

My feeling is that the restaurant is the smart one, while the economists are being naive.

For one thing, real people don’t think in terms of opportunity cost – especially not when they’re the lucky winners of a restaurant-reservations lottery. Dan Ariely did research on this at Duke University: he found that once Duke students won the lottery giving them the opportunity to buy sought-after tickets to the university’s basketball game, they valued those tickets at ten times more than the students who lost the lottery.

What’s really going on here, I think, is that the vast majority of people who get tickets hold on to them, go to the restaurant, and eat a wonderful meal for which they paid a reasonable sum. And then there’s a tiny number of people who get tickets, and either discover they can’t use them for some reason, or decide that they’re going to try to flip them for profit.

…

The most important thing in being a restaurateur of a high-end establishment is exceeding expectations; if you auction off tickets, then the price of tickets will naturally gravitate to and possibly past the point at which you can’t do that any longer. That’s why Next is right to worry about “our sense of value for the meal” – because the chances are that their sense is going to be your sense too. If they think a meal isn’t worth more than say $200, and they start selling tickets to that meal at $400 apiece, then they’re setting their customers up for disappointment; I can’t imagine Achatz would ever want that.

Do the handful of people who currently buy tickets for $500 or $3,000 walk away disappointed? Maybe not: there’s a good chance those people aren’t particularly price-sensitive. But when you move away from those people and use the market to set prices for all your customers, big dangers lurk. As Alan Vanneman says, markets are largely foreign to the human imagination. And since restaurant-goers are human, we don’t want to upset them with market mechanisms if doing so is unnecessary.

The U.S. Constitution.

WØRD.

Washington is a one party town.

The party of the Aristocrats.  The Elite.  The Nepotists.

For the .1%, by the .01%–

“This beautiful capital,” President Clinton said in his first inaugural address, “is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.” With that, the new president sent a clear challenge to an already suspicious Washington Establishment.

And now, five years later, here was Clinton’s trusted adviser Rahm Emanuel, finishing up a speech at a fund-raiser to fight spina bifida before a gathering that could only be described as Establishment Washington.

“There are a lot of people in America who look at what we do here in Washington with nothing but cynicism,” said Emanuel. “Heck, there are a lot of people in Washington who look at us with nothing but cynicism.” But, he went on, “there are good people here. Decent people on both sides of the political aisle and on both sides of the reporter’s notebook.”

Emanuel, unlike the president, had become part of the Washington Establishment. “This is one of those extraordinary moments,” he said at the fund-raiser, “when we come together as a community here in Washington — setting aside personal, political and professional differences.”

Actually, it wasn’t extraordinary. When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

On this evening, the roster included Cabinet members Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala, Republicans Sen. John McCain and Rep. Bob Livingston, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, PBS’s Jim Lehrer and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, all behaving like the pals that they are. On display was a side of Washington that most people in this country never see. For all their apparent public differences, the people in the room that night were coming together with genuine affection and emotion to support their friends — the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt and his wife, CNN’s Judy Woodruff, whose son Jeffrey has spina bifida.

But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their “town.”

1. THIS IS THEIR HOME.
2. THE LYING OFFENDS THEM.
3. ESTABLISHMENT WASHINGTON REVERES THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY.
4. THEY UNDERSTAND THE CONSEQUENCES.

(h/t digby)

Too much unintentional truth for you?  I didn’t write it.

I do say this-

There is nothing more inflamatory or controversial you can do than point out that the essential structure of the elites is to perpetuate their own power through monopolies enforced by the power of the state.

I sense a disturbance…

The Confines of US Elections & the Scorn a Person Can Face for Challenging Them

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Thursday January 5, 2012 8:43 pm

Various “progressive voices” that agree or sympathize with GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul’s positions on wars, foreign policy and civil liberties have spoken in favor of the possible impact Paul could have on debate in this country during the 2012 Election. Those individuals have been quickly met with fervent disapproval from liberals who have reflexively suggested that any comments that could be considered supportive of Paul essentially mean one is “endorsing” Paul, urging people to support someone who opposes reproductive rights for women, arguing there are only marginal differences between Paul and President Barack Obama and that Paul just might be their secret political hero.

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First, let’s establish the following: (1) I am not a supporter of Ron Paul’s campaign and I have no intention of donating money to the campaign (2) I sympathize with many of the positions that have compelled “progressive voices” to value his presence in the 2012 Election (3) I respect Paul’s right to run in the election and do consider him to be a serious candidate and (4) I fully expect liberals to reflexively point to Paul’s ultra-conservative positions, which lead him to support policies that particularly hurt women, minorities and even gays and doing so will only reinforce the points that I am making here.

C’thulhu fhtagn

Reason magazine frames the dilemma progressives are confronted with best: “What to say about a presidential candidate who wants to end foreign and domestic wars and protect civil liberties against the imperial presidency?”

For many progressives, this was what they were dedicated to as activists when President George W. Bush was president. They engaged in activism against the Iraq and Afghanistan War. They were opposed to more wars in countries like Pakistan or Iran and fought hard especially in 2006 to show that the Bush Administration might be going to war with Iran. They protested Bush’s use of torture and called for Guantanamo Bay to be shut down. They opposed Bush’s use of warrantless wiretapping and the expansion of surveillance state in America. They were opposed to the imperial presidency of Bush and were even moved to call for the impeachment of Cheney and Bush for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I am certain many progressives hoped Obama would clearly be on the other side of many of these issues. But, as his campaign for re-election kicks into high gear, this is the reality, a part of the “new normal” as ACLU referred to it. President Barack Obama has shielded officials who committed crimes during the Bush administration from accountability for engaging in warrantless wiretapping, torture, or rendition; invoked state secrets to prevent transparency; denied detainees habeas corpus and signed a National Defense Authorization Act that grants the military extraordinary powers to detain US citizens indefinitely without trial; continued to hold detainees at prisons like Guantanamo and Bagram in Afghanistan (in addition to black prison sites that likely still exist); employed navy ships to hold prisoners that can no longer be sent to Guantanamo because there will be public outrage; asserted an authority to target and kill US civilians and bypass due process; and forced detainees into military commissions or “kangaroo courts” that are essentially Kafkaesque proceedings where it is nearly impossible to not be found guilty.

Obama has gone after whistleblowers and stalled efforts to make government more transparent. He has expanded the use of drone warfare and used it in a way that has had a destabilizing impact in Pakistan. He has gone along with President George W. Bush’s plans for the Iraq War and had there not been a cable released by WikiLeaks that upset the Iraqi government because it detailed a massacre of Iraqi civilians carried out by US soldiers, which the US government had refused to investigate, the US might not have said it would withdraw all its soldiers by the end of 2011.

…

Imagine having to debate Paul on wars, on possible war with Iran, on drone warfare, on the expansion of the surveillance state and the PATRIOT Act, on the war on drugs, on transparency, whistleblowing and WikiLeaks, etc. Then, imagine President Obama having to find a way to neutralize and marginalize Paul’s positions. In the general election, there would inevitably be a wide space opened up for debate on foreign policy and civil liberties that would not be unlike the space for debate that Occupy Wall Street has opened up on economic inequality and injustice in America.

Additionally, Paul’s progressive critics, who are righteous in their opposition to him, would be able to watch President Obama challenge Paul on the very issues that lead them to chastise progressives who say anything that could be construed as supportive of Paul. President Obama could challenge him on reproductive rights, government regulation, marriage equality, health care, taxes and the role of the federal government in providing welfare to citizens.

This may all sound like a fairy tale that will never happen, but the point is not whether it is realistic or not. The point is that if Obama’s had to run against Paul he would have to answer questions on some very important issues, which he has had a dismal record on in his first term as president.

Hmmm…  Imagine that.

Democratic Party priorities

Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Thursday, Jan 5, 2012 5:50 AM Eastern Standard Time

For those who are extremely dissatisfied with the status quo in American political life and are seeking ways to change it, supporting one of the two major-party candidates in the 2012 presidential campaign as the principal form of activism offers no solution. That’s not an endorsement for resignation, apathy, non-voting, voting for a third party, or anything else. It’s just a simple statement of fact: on many issues that progressives themselves have long claimed are of critical, overarching importance (not all, but many), there will be virtually no debate in the election because there are virtually no differences between the two candidates and the two parties on those questions. In the face of that fact, there are two choices: (1) simply accept it (and thus bolster it) on the basis that the only political priority that matters is keeping the Democratic Party and Barack Obama empowered; or (2) searching for ways to change the terms of the debate so that critical views that are now excluded by bipartisan consensus instead end up being heard.

…

(L)abeling people “crazy” as a means of dismissing their views – basically depicting political disagreement as a mental illness – is one of the oldest and stalest means of discrediting people who dissent; it’s basically the prime weapon used to enforce mainstream orthodoxy and punish dissidents. Taken to its most extreme and odious conclusion, the Soviet Union institutionalized anyone challenging Communist orthodoxy in mental hospitals, and China now does the same. Charles Krauthammer continuously abused his psychiatric license to diagnose Bush critics as suffering from mental illnesses and to delegitimize (progressive) criticisms of Bush as a form of insanity; to accomplish this, he even purported to identify a new disease, Bush Derangement Syndrome, which is the exact phrase (with “Obama” symbolically replacing “Bush”) that has now seamlessly been adopted and applied to critics of the current President by some of the most rabid Obama defenders.

…

If you don’t really care about these issues – war, empire, the denial of due process, suffocating secrecy, ongoing killing of foreign civilians, oligarchical manipulation of the Fed and other government policies, militarized foreign policy and police practices, etc. –  then it’s easy to blithely dismiss the need to find some way to challenge the bipartisan consensus on those issues.

…

(D)espite vocally feigning grave concern about these issues during the Bush years, they are not a priority for many progressives precisely because they no longer provide any means of obtaining partisan advantage. How can you pretend to vehemently oppose the slaughter of foreign civilians, the deprivation of due process, a posture of Endless War, radical secrecy, etc., when the President behind whom you’re faithfully marching is an aggressive advocate and implementer of those very policies? It’s certainly possible – based on lesser-of-two-evils rationale – to vote for a President who does these things while simultaneously opposing those policies. But for those who insist that all political salvation lies exclusively within the Democratic Party: the only course of action to reconcile these conflicts is to de-prioritize them, to decide they no longer really matter, and thus remain content with a President and a Party who does these things with such abandon.

I actually don’t believe that the progressive reaction to this discussion is about Ron Paul. The same anger would be provoked by favorably comparing any political figure outside of the Democratic Party to President Obama on important issues, especially in an election year (I can guarantee that the same reaction would be triggered by pointing to the benefits of, say, Gary Johnson, who just scored the highest on the ACLU’s Civil Liberties report card). That, as I suggested in my first article, is viewed as the supreme sin, the one that must trigger oceans of denunciation and attack in order to deter similar acts of heresy.

…

The point is not to delegitimize the viewing of at Ron Paul’s candidacy as providing an important antidote to some of President Obama’s grave moral and political failings. The real point is to delegitimze any effort to turn elsewhere away from President Obama or to do anything to point out that he suffers grave moral and political failings at all (here is the scorn Drum heaped on the Democratic presidential candidates in 2008 who challenged many of these same policies). The mission here is to enforce partisan loyalty: criticize all you want, but stay loyally in the fold. Even as a means to expand and improve the range of debate, suggesting that someone may be comparatively superior to President Obama on vital issues – especially when that someone is not a loyal member of the Democratic Party – is the real sin.

Purity.

Bond Exotica Gains Favor in Era of Low Rates

By Sarah Mulholland, Bloomberg News

Jan 4, 2012 5:33 AM ET

So-called esoteric asset-backed securities issuance may soar 12.9 percent to $35 billion, compared with debt linked to more traditional collateral such as auto and credit-card loans, which will grow 8.75 percent to $87 billion, according to a forecast from Credit Suisse Group AG.

…

Esoteric bonds make up 16 percent of the $620 billion market for asset-backed securities outstanding, with debt tied to credit card, student and auto loans accounting for the rest, according to data from Wells Fargo.

…

Wells Fargo’s recommendations for 2012 include debt backed by timeshare payments and fleets of rental cars, according to a Dec. 6 report from analysts led by John McElravey in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A disadvantage of esoteric bonds for investors is that they can be hard to sell because they don’t trade frequently. As a result, investors require the additional yield, said Barclays Capital’s Wishengrad.

Double digit returns on investment are guaranteed neither by the Constitution nor the Bible and even Freshwater Shamen don’t contend they are risk free.

How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?

By CHARLES McGRATH, The New York Times Magazine

Published: January 4, 2012

The new Colbert has crossed the line that separates a TV stunt from reality and a parody from what is being parodied. In June, after petitioning the Federal Election Commission, he started his own super PAC – a real one, with real money. He has run TV ads, endorsed (sort of) the presidential candidacy of Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, and almost succeeded in hijacking and renaming the Republican primary in South Carolina. “Basically, the F.E.C. gave me the license to create a killer robot,” Colbert said to me in October, and there are times now when the robot seems to be running the television show instead of the other way around.

…

A voice-over at the end announced that the commercial had been paid for by an organization called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which is the name of Colbert’s super PAC, an entity that, like any other super PAC, is entitled to raise and spend unlimited amounts of soft money in support of candidates as long as it doesn’t “coordinate” with them, whatever that means. Of such super-PAC efforts, Colbert said, “This is 100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.”

Just as baffling as the Iowa corn ads – at least to the uninitiated – were some commercials Colbert produced taking the side of the owners during the recent N.B.A. lockout. These were also sponsored by Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, but they were “made possible,” according to the voice-over, by Colbert Super PAC SHH Institute. Super PAC SHH (as in “hush”) is Colbert’s 501(c)(4). He has one of those too – an organization that can accept unlimited amounts of money from corporations without disclosing their names and can then give that money to a regular PAC, which would otherwise be required to report corporate donations. “What’s the difference between that and money laundering?” Colbert said to me delightedly.

In the case of Colbert’s N.B.A. ads, the secret sugar daddy might, or might not, have been Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who has appeared on the show and whom the ads call a “hero.” We’ll never know, and that of course is the point. Referring to the Supreme Court ruling that money is speech, and therefore corporations can contribute large sums to political campaigns, Colbert said, “Citizens United said that transparency would be the disinfectant, but (c)(4)’s are warm, wet, moist incubators. There is no disinfectant.”

…

“Aren’t lawyers allowed to have fun?” Potter asked me a few weeks ago, adding that he knew what he was signing up for by appearing on the show. He also said he thought that Colbert was serving a useful function. “I’m very careful not to ascribe motive to him – he can speak for himself,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. He can find the laws ironic or funny or absurd. But he’s illustrating how the system works by using it. By starting a super PAC, creating a (c)4, filing with the F.E.C., he can bring the audience inside the system. He can show them how it works and then leave them to conclude whether this is how it ought to work.”

Sponsored by Americans for a Better New York Times Magazine Next Week, Today.

Green Shoots.

And read the URL, not the Headline.

For 2012, Signs Point to Tepid Consumer Spending

By MOTOKO RICH and STEPHANIE CLIFFORD, The New York Times

Published: January 2, 2012

Even the seemingly robust holiday shopping season is raising concern. After a strong start on Thanksgiving weekend, a pronounced lull followed, causing retailers to mark down products heavily in the week before Christmas. While final numbers for the season are not in, analysts say they are worried that retailers had to eat into profits to generate high revenues.

…

Even some growth areas in the economy can be explained by tapped-out consumers. Take auto sales, which rose about 10 percent nationwide in 2011 from a year earlier.

“People can only hold onto their cars for so long,” said Romolo Debottis, new-car sales manager at Mike Bass Ford in Sheffield Village, a suburb of Cleveland. He said sales at the dealership should increase this year to 2007 levels, the prerecession peak. “A lot of them have done that above and beyond what they normally would, and they’re just ready to spend money and buy a new vehicle.”

Chrysler, Ford and General Motors report December vehicle sales

by CalculatedRisk

1/04/2012 10:25:00 AM

The key number for the economy is the seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR) compared to the last few months, not the year-over-year comparison provided by the automakers. Once all the reports are released, I’ll post a graph of the estimated total December light vehicle sales (SAAR) – usually around 4 PM ET.

…

The consensus is for sales to be unchanged from November at around 13.6 million SAAR.

I don’t know about you but I’m plenty tired of horseshitrace politics for the moment.

Well, since you insist.

Paul did not do as well as I expected last night, but still about 150% better than last cycle.  Twitter rumors reported by desperate and stupid MSNBC Teleprompter Readers that Johnson was dropping his Libertarian Party candidacy (leaving it available for a Paul Third Party run) were a HOAX!

Way to go “professionals”.

Santorum “won” by a whole 8 votes which means it’s time to start Google bombing again.  Romney didn’t disqualify, picking up that all important “Crash” McCain endorsement.

Losers– Bachman, hard to see how she can stay with no money and no votes.  Perry, outspent Romney by 3:1, now returning to Houston to “re-evaluate” despite strong polling in South Carolina.  Gingrich, may stay in out of pure spite and meanness, but almost sure to lose his South Carolina standing.

Now, about entropy and the heat death of the Universe.

I TOLD YOU SO!

Ohio Earthquake Linked To Fracking Injection Wells

Think Progress Newsflash

1/4/12

On New Year’s Eve, a magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck northeastern Ohio, the second quake to strike the region in a week. Saturday’s earthquake, which occurred in an area not typically known for this type of natural disaster, is being traced back to fluid injection wells at a Youngstown fracking site. According to the Akron Beacon Journal, “the quake was the 11th over the last eight months in Mahoning County, all within two miles of the injection wells.” They also point out that injection wells have been linked to earthquakes in other states as well, including Arkansas, West Virginia, Colorado and Texas. Two of the Ohio injection wells in question are now being shut down.

Fracking Linked to Earthquakes in Ohio; Wells Indefinitely Shut Down

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Monday January 2, 2012 9:00 am

This is not the first time that fracking has been linked to earthquakes. Earlier this year, unusual earthquakes in Oklahoma were seen by many as helped along by fracking. The scientific consensus on that incident was that fracking can cause small tremors, but nothing of the scale as seen in Oklahoma, which did follow a natural fault line.

But Ohio doesn’t have as much history with earthquakes, though there are faults in the region. The frequency of the quakes is definitely unusual; there have been 11 in the past eight months within two miles of the wells. And the correlation between increased oil and gas exploration and increased seismic activity is becoming more widespread. It’s not that fracking releases so much energy underground into the faults, it’s that they place just enough pressure to trigger stronger quakes than we would otherwise see. Plus, scientists and not just state officials in Ohio participated in the shutdown of the fracking wells, seeking more information.

Expert Believes Wastewater Fracking Wells Causing Earthquakes in Ohio

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Tuesday January 3, 2012 9:35 am

(O)ne expert has narrowed down the cause of the earthquakes, and he points to a wastewater well.

…

Both are wells used in the fracking process. One gets used for drilling and the other for injecting wastewater, but they are at root fracking wells (they dispose of wastewater for oil wells as well, but fracking uses a much larger quantity of fluids). If there were no fracking, there would be no wastewater and thus no wastewater wells. And according to John Armbruster, no earthquakes.

The earthquakes have been small and haven’t yet caused massive property damage. But according to Armbruster they will continue for at least a year. And causing pressure to a fault line gives the impression of needlessly stirring up a hornet’s nest. And of course, this is not nearly the only environmental problem associated with fracking. The quality of drinking water and air around well sites also draws much concern.

Ohio quakes could incite fracking policy shift

By JULIE CARR SMYTH, Associated Press

Tue Jan 3, 5:33 pm ET

(Ohio Governor John) Kasich told reporters over the weekend that he doesn’t believe the energy industry should be blamed for issues arising from disposal of their byproducts. That would be like blaming the auto industry for improper disposal of old tires, the first-term Republican said.

Scientists have known for decades that drilling or injecting water into areas where a fault exists can cause earthquakes, said Paul Hsieh, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

“That’s widely documented and accepted within the science community,” he said. “It’s seen all over the world.”

…

Oklahoma’s sharpest earthquake on record, of magnitude 5.8 on Nov. 5, was centered on a county that has 181 such wells, according to Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees oil and gas production in the state and intrastate transportation pipelines.

Now many may disagree with me (including TheMomCat and we have discussed this lots of times) but I think the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary serve a valuable role by forcing the .01% political elite to slum amongst us 99.99% rabble and kiss ass for votes instead of simply holding an auction.

Each one tests a different aspect of a candidate’s campaign.  In Iowa the test is organization, getting your votes to the poll and keeping them yours.  In New Hampshire it’s a test of campaigning, developing a message of broad appeal and delivering it.  Not so easy in a State with no big cities, no dominant newspapers (the Union Leader is a mere pretender) and only 1 TV Station.  It’s also a test of finances since you have to shop in Massachusetts where the prices are much higher, not because of taxes but because the market is bigger.

That said I thought no one could care less about the results of the Republican Caucuses than me.  I am proven wrong by Rick Perlstein–

(Y)ou probably couldn’t find a political junky in America less interested to the supposedly hotly contested race for the Republican nomination. I called it for Willard “Mitt” Romney well over three years ago-the day he finished second to John McCain in 2008. That made him “next in line;” and our modern Republican Party pretty much always nominates the next in line, or at the very least The Logical Choice Of The Party Establishment. In 1968, it was Nixon, the former vice president. In ’76 it was the accidental president, Gerald Ford. The guy who came in second in ’76, Ronald Reagan, was nominated in 1980; Vice President Bush, the man who finished second in ’80, in ’88. Old Man Dole in ’96. Son of Bush in 2000. Mighty McCain in 2008.

Matt Taibbi’s critique is a bit more far reaching and less petty-

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.

In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

…

The auctioned election process is designed to reduce the field to two candidates who will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from the same pool of donors. Just take a look at the lists of top donors for Obama and McCain from the last election in 2008.

…

Obama’s list included all the major banks and bailout recipients, plus a smattering of high-dollar defense lawyers from firms like WilmerHale and Skadden Arps who make their money representing those same banks. McCain’s list included exactly the same banks and a similar list of law firms, the minor difference being that it was Gibson Dunn instead of WilmerHale, etc.

…

Those numbers tell us that both parties rely upon the same core of major donors among the top law firms, the Wall Street companies, and business leaders – basically, the 1%. Those one-percenters always give generously to both parties and both presidential candidates, although they sometimes will hedge their bets significantly when they think one side or the other has a lopsided chance at victory. That’s clearly what happened in 2008, when Wall Street correctly called Obama as a 2-1 (or maybe a 7-3) favorite to beat McCain.

The 1% donors are remarkably tolerant. They’ll give to just about anyone who polls well, provided they fall within certain parameters. What they won’t do is give to anyone who is even a remote threat to make significant structural changes, i.e. a Dennis Kucinich, an Elizabeth Warren, or a Ron Paul (hell will freeze over before Wall Street gives heavily to a candidate in favor of abolishing their piggy bank, the Fed). So basically what that means is that voters are free to choose anyone they want, provided it isn’t Dennis Kucinich, or Ron Paul, or some other such unacceptable personage.

If the voters insist on supporting such a person in defiance of these donors – this might even happen tonight, with a Paul win in Iowa – what you inevitably end up seeing is a monstrous amount of money quickly dumped into the cause of derailing that candidate.

…

The reason 2012 feels so empty now is that voters on both sides of the aisle are not just tired of this state of affairs, they are disgusted by it. They want a chance to choose their own leaders and they want full control over policy, not just a partial say. There are a few challenges to this state of affairs within the electoral process – as much as I disagree with Paul about many things, I do think his campaign is a real outlet for these complaints – but everyone knows that in the end, once the primaries are finished, we’re going to be left with one 1%-approved stooge taking on another.

…

The only place we can be absolutely sure this battle will not be found is in any national presidential race between Barack Obama and someone like Mitt Romney.

The campaign is still a gigantic ritual and it will still be attended by all the usual pomp and spectacle, but it’s empty. In fact, because it’s really a contest between 1%-approved candidates, it’s worse than empty – it’s obnoxious.

It was always annoying when these two parties and the slavish media that follows their champions around for 18 months pretended that this was a colossal clash of opposites. But now, with the economy in the shape that it’s in thanks in large part to the people financing these elections, that pretense is more than annoying, it’s offensive.

And I imagine that the more they try to play up the drama of these familiar-but-empty campaign rituals, the more irritating to the public it will all become. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if, before the season is out, the campaign itself will become a hated symbol of the 1% — with the conventions and the networks’ broadcast tents outside the inevitable “free speech zones” attracting protests the same way the offices of Chase and Bank of America did this fall.

Speaking of Matt Taibbi, Rajiv Sethi has an interesting piece up over at Yves place speculating on a Goldman-style ‘Pump and Dump’ in the Intrade prediction market driving the Santorum Surge (minds out of the gutter folks) and Romney’s enhanced chances of victory.

Public Policy Polling which has proven remarkably accurate recently predicts a Photo Finish with Ron Paul at 20%, Mitt Romney at 19%, and Rick Santorum at 18%; and as if you haven’t had enough Horse Race metaphors, John Aravosis points out this interesting graphic at Slate.

Jon Walker likes gambling on Poker better-

The Wild Card Factors

Probably the two biggest wild cards are turnout and whether Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry are able to hold their support. It is possible some of their socially conservative supporters might at the last minute move strategically to Santorum, because they see his momentum making him the strongest anti-Romney.

Similarly it is possible the Paul campaign could bring in a significant number of new, unlikely caucus voters tipping the balance for him. It is possible a large number of anti-war and/or anti-drug war independents will choose to show up at the caucus, change their registration to GOP, and vote for Paul. With overall turnout likely to be about only 130,000, as little as a few hundred votes could make a difference.

Now you can find a live blog almost anywhere except here.  Not only am I uninterested in any of the above (call me Uncommitted though some think I should be), I am also still visiting my TVless friend and if I want to watch the results at all I’ll have to do it through CurrentTV’s livestream and sadly my laptop lacks to horsepower to stream and blog at the same time.

However if you have any observations you’d care to share please do so below.

It is, after all, an Open Thread.

The key problem in Academic Economics at the moment is that it’s been replaced by tortoise shell shaking Shamen muttering mystical protestations of faith in the cult worship of Mammon by fairy believing fools.

The Misinformation Around Debt

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Monday January 2, 2012 10:15 am

(T)he key problem for US debt at the moment is that there won’t be enough of it to meet current demand. Choppy waters elsewhere have made US Treasuries, the same ones supposedly downgraded by Standard and Poor’s, perceived as the safest financial instrument in the world. Treasuries sold at a higher pace than anytime since 1995. Government could finance at a negative long-term interest rate. The markets want the government to borrow more so they can get their hands on more Treasuries. This will also likely increase economic performance, improving yields across the board.

Nobody Understands Debt

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 1, 2012

It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.

…

Washington isn’t just confused about the short run; it’s also confused about the long run. For while debt can be a problem, the way our politicians and pundits think about debt is all wrong, and exaggerates the problem’s size.

…

(W)hen people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about – and the people who talk the most understand the least.

Perhaps most obviously, the economic “experts” on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly, utterly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits. People who get their economic analysis from the likes of the Heritage Foundation have been waiting ever since President Obama took office for budget deficits to send interest rates soaring. Any day now!

And while they’ve been waiting, those rates have dropped to historical lows. You might think that this would make politicians question their choice of experts – that is, you might think that if you didn’t know anything about our postmodern, fact-free politics.

Clap louder.  LOUDER!!!

What is it about loud that you don’t understand?