While the GOP was more than happy to spend months whining about the Democratic efforts to clean up the ungodly economic mess Bush left behind, it’s now time for them to step up to the plate with their own budget. After having been the party of ‘no’ for so long, as Obama put it, it’s now time for them to put forward their solutions to the problem. The result is super, super funny. From Ezra:
Bush, famously, described his first budget by saying, “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” Indeed it was, and did. This isn’t. There are no numbers. Let me repeat that: The Republican budget proposal does not say how much money they would raise, or spend. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “budget” as “an estimate of income and expenditure for a set period of time.” This is not a budget. It talks about balancing the budget but doesn’t explain how. It advocates tax cuts but doesn’t estimate their costs. It promises to cut programs but doesn’t name them. The threat going around the Capitol is that some impish Democratic chairman will ask the CBO to try and score the Republican proposal.
A cursory look through the budget reveals exactly what Ezra pillories – no actual numbers, aside from generally fictitious numbers about the Democratic budget, and a host of buzzwords like ‘energy independence’ and ‘lower taxes’ and the like. It’s good reading from the perspective of humor, but for this to be the GOP’s long-awaited answer to a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis almost defies belief. The best part, though, is their flow charts. I excised all four of them, but can’t figure out how to upload them, so I’ve stolen the one that Ezra has posted, which is probably the second funniest. In case it’s difficult to figure out, it is supposed to be explaining their approach to health care:
Lolz. What does that mean? In all of their charts they insert Republican Road To Recovery seemingly at random into their amateur-hour-at-the-Apollo flow charts, and it never makes sense. Below is Norah O’Donnell accidentally ethering Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) when she asks him about the projected deficit of the GOP budget. You can’t even write comedy like this. Amazing.
“What you get when you have an across-the-board freeze is everybody is seen as contributing something,” Mr. Grassley said…adding that a three-year freeze would produce a more dramatic effect. “Over a period of time, there’s something predictable about a freeze, and over a period of time it makes a big difference…The multiplier effect of freezing something for three years is very dramatic.”
Very dramatic is certainly one way of putting it – insane is also another way of putting it, as David Brooks already has. This type of economic suicide has become in vogue among Republicans, and judging from their approval ratings it is doing nothing but cementing them as a schizophrenic, enormously fiscally irresponsible party. Which is a good thing if you’re Rush Limbaugh, and you are making a living off of being the schizophrenic, enormously fiscally (and socially) irresponsible voice of the party. But it’s a bad thing if you’re not Rush Limbaugh. And Rush Limbaugh is not part of the GOP, despite their, and his, best efforts.
There’s a certain amount of schadenfreude that comes along with watching the GOP self-destruct like this, but there’s also a great deal of worry that comes along with it as well, because these senators and representatives are pretty important people, and are supporting some pretty vile, insane policies in opposition to an administration that, missteps aside, is trying to do its best to actually right the economy. An economy that, incidentally, the GOP helped destroy. Hurm.
According to the L.A. Times, Israeli army rabbis were essentially calling for an ethnic cleansing campaign during the Gaza assault:
The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel.
“This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness,” a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter. “His message was clear: ‘This is a war against an entire people, not against specific terrorists.’ The whole thing was turned into something very religious and messianic.”
…
In testimony reported by Israeli news media and in interviews with The Times, Gaza veterans said rabbis advised army units to show the enemy no mercy and called for resettlement of the Palestinian enclave by Jews.
“The rabbis were all over, in every unit,” said Yehuda Shaul, a retired army officer whose human rights group, Breaking the Silence, has taken testimony from dozens of Gaza veterans. “It was quite well organized.”
The army, which conscripts almost every Israeli Jew at 18, has been dominated for most of its history by secular officers. But over the last 15 years, as secular Israelis have soured on the occupation of Palestinian territory, religious nationalists have taken over senior positions in elite combat brigades.
Unsurprisingly, this fervent religious nationalism mirrors, and is mirrored by, a similar uptick in support for religious nationalism on the other side of the conflict (the rise of Hamas). And now Israel is moving even further right, with Labor, of all parties (formerly the largest ‘leftist’ party in Israel) voting to join Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. Aside from reasonable concerns about a move such as this providing ‘moderate’ cover for Netanyahu’s coalition, it is also almost certain to doom Labor as a political party. Which is a shame, as it will leave the more right than center Kadima representing the non-existent Israeli political left, but none too surprising. Israel has been shifting rightward for a minute now, and the disintegration of its once dominant moderate leftist party and reports of its army rabbis calling for ethnic cleansing is more of a sign of the times than anything particularly shocking or out of the ordinary.
It certainly does throw an even heavier wet towel on any nascent, fledgling hopes for peace, though. Sigh.
Despite the hoopla surrounding the plight of investment bankers and their ilk – and, surely, they’ve come in for some heavy losses – it would seem that the recession collar bloodbath has a more bluish tinge than a whitish one. This, from Ryan Avent:
As you can see, construction and farming/fishing are coming in for the biggest hits right now (and were the hardest hit last year). Construction makes a lot of sense, though I’m slightly perplexed as to how badly farming/fishing has been hit – I suppose the recession has truly bled out everywhere, and everyone is buying less of everything these days. Here’s another look, by industry:
Living in New York, I am personally most familiar with layoffs in finance and media (including me, a week and a half ago), but it’s clear that there are far more broader cuts going on everywhere. It’s pretty bad out there, and it’s certain to get worse before it gets better.
I imagine the crack industry is booming, though – where’s that info, Bureau of Labor Statistics? You know Avon and Stringer would be making money hand over fist these days…
I am heading home until next Wednesday, and will be taking a brief hiatus until then. I may post sporadically while I’m gone, but more than likely there will be no fresh material until I come back on Wednesday, at which point I hope the economy will still be functioning, and thus my Internet provider. I look forward to it.
Oh, and just finished Watchmen (the book) – awesome. Will be seeing the movie soon.
Posted by matthewmundy 
Posted by matthewmundy 
Posted by matthewmundy 
