Daily Archives: September 19, 2008

The Word of the Week is Obedience

Let’s start with wikipedia:

 

Obedience, in human behavior, is the quality of being obedient, which describes the act of carrying out commands, or being actuated.[1] Obedience differs from compliance, which is behavior influenced by peers, and from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority.

Humans have been shown to be surprisingly obedient in the presence of perceived legitimateauthority figures, as demonstrated by the Milgram experiment in the 1960s, which was carried out by Stanley Milgram to discover how the Nazis managed to get ordinary people to take part in the mass murders of the Holocaust. The experiment showed that obedience to authority was the norm, not the exception. A similar conclusion was reached in the Stanford prison experiment.

I was struck this week by how meekly obedient the Republicans who comment here are.  While their most cherished economic philosophies literally collapse around them, they still fall into line and parrot the party line.  There is no “hey the Emperor has no clothes!” moment.  The empty-headed chants of “Democrats fault” and “the economy is good” actually get stronger and more the truth is revealed and the more ”Chicago School”  economic theories are demonstrated to be pure snake oil.  

I did not read a single admission of reality from the right all week. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot.  Does anyone doubt that liberals would not clamor to agree in unison “we fucked up?”  Does anyone doubt that liberals would pillory their party leaders if they had been so wrong for so long?  Of course we would, and indeed we have pilloried our leaders for being much less wrong over issues of much less importance.  (see Bill Clinton/blow job/Impeachment).

Not Republicans though. They are hanging tough.  Lockstep obedience is now, as it always has been, the Republican party’s bedrock strength and it is a wonder to behold.

Duffy reminds us that Democrats “controlled” Congress for 18 months so they must be responsible for the meltdown.  Rick Jensen chimed in that the economy is actually great  and Mike W contends that socialism is good, provided Bush says so.   I’m sure our DL wingnuts are not exceptional.   Rather, this country is infested with people who would adopt (have adopted) the most horrendously anti-American beliefs in a flash if someone in authority tells them to do so.

The veneer of the rugged individual American Republican is less than a micron thin around here, but how could that be?  I mean think about it; over the past eight years, a handful of bankers and lawyers went into a Casio with our credit card and blew billions of dollars at the craps table.  Now our Republicans commenters are falling all over themselves to give them another shot at striking it rich while steadfastly refusing to deal out even the most feeble half-hearted rebuke.  Why?

Certainly they don’t get anything tangible out of being so obsequious.  Hube, Mike W, even Dave Burris make no where near enough money to be an actual beneficiary of the Republican system.  These middle class Republicans are unreconstructed dupes and suckers. 

It is perhaps too facile to say that they view politics through an absurdly reductive lens that reduces everything to teams.  While they do seem to derive their identity from their GOP team affiliation,  I have to think that there is something deep and darker going on.  As I read comments on this blog, I feel the chill of a shriveled and shrunken morality on the right which is as old as humanity itself.  

It is a sick and twisted morality that makes it okay to raise billions of dollars overnight in order to help the richest of the rich avoid some discomfort, but complains bitterly when exposed to the lowly and truly needy.

It is a morality that we were tricked into let out of its cage because Ronald Reagan had a winning smile, and it is a morality that we will be very lucky to get it back in its cage in our lifetime.

.

Profound disgust

Sickening disdain

Consequence is not a word

Words are bendable objects

I manipulate you

Consciousnous is relative

Santa Claus doesn’t exist

Puppets

Disposable tools

This matters

This doesn’t

We have to do this or else

Free

Just a word

Up in smoke

Numb

Pressure treated wood

Do as I say

 

 

Leadership

Obama is talking about addressing the issues (with his financial team in attendance) and urging some bipartisanship, while McCain is whining and contributing to his epic flail.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfeesYmx1Y&eurl=http://www.jedreport.com/[/youtube]

This is a brilliant side-by-side comparison (by The Jed report) of these two candidates addressing the current troubles.  And, frankly, McCain comes across much like his compatriots here — ill-informed, partisan, overly focused on Obama and not at all focused on resolution of anything other than his own entitlement issues.  Apparently.

Ocktoberfest!

Screw this crappy economy.  Come out tonight to the Ocktoberfest in Newark.  Good food, good beer, good music (if you like German folk music) and lots and lots of politicians.

Bailout Nation, Part What?

I’m losing track now.

GM wants in on the action now.

This is a company that can’t sell cars that consumers want, has leadership that thinks Climate Change is a crock and:

Since GM CEO Rick Wagoner believes the oil spike was an act of God, however, it’s no wonder that GM and Ford were left flat-footed when oil prices rose to record highs.

Yes. Well. Perhaps GM failing because it can’t build and sell cars that consumers want, might be God sending a very serious message to Mr. Wagoner — Old Testament-style.

And the unfortunate thing is that Wagoner will likely get his wish — neither Presidential candidate or this current administration will deny a car company whatever tax dollars they want.

The

I’m just posting this entry from Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture in its entirety, because it is that good. From Mr. Ritholtz:

“I am having a hard time keeping up with all of the bailouts and special facilities created for dealing with this crisis. Am I missing any?

– Bear Stearns
– Economic Stimulus progam
– Housing Bailout Program
– Fannie & Freddie
– AIG
– No Short selling rules
– Fed liquidity programs (Term Lending facility, Term Auction facility)
– Money Market fund insurance program
– Special Loans for GM & Ford
– New RTC type program

If you are a fan of irony, consider this: The conservative movement has utterly hated FDR, and his New Deal programs like Medicaid, Social Security, FDIC, Fannie Mae (1938), and the SEC for nearly 80 years. And for the past 8 years, a conservative was in the White House, with a very conservative agenda. For something like 16 of the past 18 years, the conservative dominated GOP has controlled Congress. Those are the facts.

We now see that the grand experiment of deregulation has ended, and ended badly. The deregulation movement is now an historical footnote, just another interest group, and once in power they turned into socialists. Indeed, judging by the actions of the conservatives in power, and not the empty rhetoric that comes out of think tanks, the conservative movement has effectively turned the United States into a massive Socialist state, an appendage of Communist Russia, China and Venezuela.

To paraphrase Floyd Norris, we have become Marxists, but of the Groucho, not Karl, variety . . . “

The Great Depression is Here.

Let’s be clear, without this massive bailout, the economic system of the United States would collapse into a depression worse than the Great Depression.  The system would “meltdown.”   The Dollar would be worth nothing.  Senator Christopher Dodd said that is what lawmakers were told last night.  

My God. 

You fucking Republicans are all to blame.   Your advocacy of deregulation for the last 30 years is responsible.   The greed that underlies your policies and that invades your supporters was your motivation.    You put yourselves and your wallets first, and our country last.    You should all be round up and shot.  Seriously.  

This massive bailout will require massive tax increases on everyone.    And I am talking about returning to 70% tax rates on the rich, like before Reagan.    The thirty years of fun are over.  

UPDATE: I just made a horrible comment in anger, about rounding up Republicans and shooting them. This was wrong, and I apologize.

Massive Bailout

There really is no other way to describe it.  The US Government will essentially buy the bad mortgages that are sitting on the books of the US banks and will repackage them and assign a fair value to them and sell them back to the banks.  Essentially we, you and I, will buy a bunch of loans for $100M, do the analysis on the loans that the banks are afraid to do, and then resell them to the banks fo $10M.

Privatizing loss, socializing gain.