The opening to the movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide, not as good as the BBC version, imo, but then this movie version had a bigger budget. It turns out** that's not always a good thing in entertainment.
**Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt: “Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression ‘it turns out’ to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It’s great. It’s hugely better than its predecessors ‘I read somewhere that...’ or the craven ‘they say that...’ because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it’s research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight.”
An interesting pattern has been emerging in the Republican Party's handling of foreign policy: Individual GOP officials are now making a regular point of not only formulating an alternative foreign policy, to be presented to the American people and debated in Congress -- they're acting on it too, and undermining the official White House policies at multiple turns.
• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is visiting Honduras in order to support the recent military coup against a leftist president, which has been opposed by the Obama administration and all the surrounding countries in the region. (Late Update: DeMint's office says he is not taking sides during his visit to the current Honduran leadership, denying the New York Times reports that this was his intention.)
• Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be going to the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen, bringing a "Truth Squad" to tell foreign officials there that the American government will not take any action: "Now, I want to make sure that those attending the Copenhagen conference know what is really happening in the United States Senate."
• House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) traveled to Israel, where he spoke out against President Obama's opposition to expanded settlements. He also defended Israel on the eviction of two Arab families from a house in east Jerusalem, which had been criticized by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
• Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) boasted in June that he told Chinese officials not to trust America's budget numbers. "One of the messages I had -- because we need to build trust and confidence in our number one creditor," said Kirk, "is that the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed." Since then, he has declared his candidacy for U.S. Senate.
Anyone remember this statement by Trent Lott when some Democratic Congressmen dared to visit Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion?
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, who is one of three House members visiting Iraq to urge Iraqi officials to avert war by allowing U.N. weapons inspectors back in, has acted irresponsibly, Lott said.
"For him to be in Baghdad, the center of one of the most dangerous dictators in the world, with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, to be questioning the veracity of our own American president, is the height of irresponsible," said Lott, R-Mississippi. "He needs to come home and keep his mouth shut."
Alan Grayson has been a big Blue America fave ever since we first met up with him in January, 2008. He was our first endorsement that year and one of our most celebrated victories, having beaten an entrenched, useless incumbent in a traditionally Republican district in central Florida. Since being elected, Alan has been a progressive leader, primarily in financial regulations through his committee position on House Financial Services. But he also was one of 32 Democrats in the House who stood up to demands from the Obama Administration that a supplemental war budget be approved last June.
It was a ballsy move, especially for Democrats in Republican-leaning districts, like Alan, Eric Massa and Carol Shea-Porter. I doubt Alan ever wavered from his commitment to the voters in his district to not approve any more supplemental budgets. But you can ask him yourself when he joins us for a live blogging session here at C&L, 3pm PT (6pm back East). Alan will be helping us launch a new Blue America Initiative to help draw attention to the situation in Afghanistan and figure out what progressives can do to effect change.
Alan is prepared to work even harder this year to head off an escalation of war in the 8th year of occupation of the country. "We are using a 19th century strategy to fight a 14th century opponent, " he told me yesterday. "Does anyone seriously believe that the best way to defend our borders is to send a quarter of a million Americans 10,000 miles beyond them?" He also told me he thinks we can change Obama's mind and turn this thing around. "He's too smart," said the congressman, "to let someone else's war ruin his presidency."
And with Republican Tim Johnson of Illinois promising to introduce legislation to withdraw American troops, an idea that some other Republicans, like Walter Jones (R-NC) and Ron Paul (R-TX) seem to be embracing, Alan is ready to work across the aisle -- as he has been doing with his crusade to force an audit on the Federal Reserve -- and help focus more Democrats and more Republicans on what he calls "the senselessness of war without end."
If you haven't visited it yet, today is launch-day for Blue America's new ActBlue page, No Means No!. We're asking anyone who can afford to, to contribute-- even if it's just a few dollars-- to the Democrats who have already shown their willingness to draw a line in the sand and not break their pledge. Today, everyone who donates-- regardless of how much-- will have their name put in a hat and 6 random winners will get the new book by New York Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini, The Audacity of Greed. Jonathan donated the books for this event and he autographed each one.
Meanwhile, please take a look at the first segment in the BraveNewFilms movie, Rethink Afghanistan, something that every member of Congress needs to see-- at least as much as the briefings from the Pentagon and spy agencies.
A new PPIC Poll in California shows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) job approval rating dropped to a new low of 28%.
The last time a California governor's approval rating was that low was in 2003 when then-Gov. Gray Davis faced a recall election and was in a budget standoff with the Legislature.
A record-low 14% of Californians believe the state is headed in the right direction.
Can we find out who the 14% are that believe CA is headed in the right direction.
Atrios reminds us about the media obbsession over Arnold.
It's important to remember just how large a role our Village media had in promoting Arnold back in the day.
Among other places, I write at Calitics, the progressive site covering California politics. This is often a punishing experience. Since 1978, Proposition 13 has tilted the very structure of government in an unassailably conservative direction - 2/3 votes are needed to raise taxes, but only a simple majority to cut. As a result, politicians invariably take the path of least resistance, and as the Norquistian right rose to prominence in the state GOP, they learned that they could simply hijack the budget process for their own ends. State leaders compensated with borrowing and various gimmicks to put off the costs until after they left office. Servicing the debt became a bigger and bigger slice of the budget pie. Stakeholders who couldn't rely on the state used the ridiculously easy initiative process to pass unfunded spending mandates for themselves and all sorts of ballot-box budgeting. In good times, this uneasy balance worked... sort of. In even the most mild recessions, it would collapse.
That sets the stage for yesterday's horrendous budget deal, which closes a $26 billion dollar deficit with almost no new revenue, making steep cuts that amount to a reinvention of government's promises to its people, along with the usual gimmickry and a harsh, counter-productive set of raids on local government resources.
A local government official made a comment Monday afternoon, a few hours before the $25 billion deficit deal was reached, that seems to encapsulate everyone's feelings.
"As this budget hits the street today and people look at it," said San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon, "I think Californians are going to say, 'How did we get in this mess?'"
It relies on about $15.5 billion in cuts and $11 billion in, well, other stuff (more on that in a moment).
Almost two-thirds of the cuts are in K-12 education, colleges, and universities (though it also includes a one-time supplemental payment to K-12 and community colleges of $11.2 billion). Other sizeable cuts are in corrections ($1.2 billion), state worker salaries ($1.3 billion in the current furloughs) and Medi-Cal services ($1.3 billion). Welfare assistance, health care for low-income kids, and in-home support services (IHSS) would also see cuts.
Also cut: funding for state parks, though nowhere near the level Governor Schwarzenegger proposed in May. Legislative staffers say a few parks would close, and the ones in question will be picked by the
administration.
It has been truly depressing to watch the Twitter feeds of John Myers and Scott Lay tonight, as the mood shifted from guardedly hopeful to despairing. The Senate keeps voting on things and not coming up with any solutions. They tried to pass the stop-gap solution again, and came up short of the votes needed. They passed the majority-vote budget with some fee increases, and the Governor vetoed them. Let's all please remember that. With a stroke of the pen, the Governor could have ended this.
If SB 64 and SB 80 (the stop-gap) don't pass by midnight (and actually, in an hour or so, because it takes a couple hours to prepare the necessary paperwork), the state will forfeit $3 billion in cuts to the 2008-09 budget year, which they will have to find in the following year, and a total of around $7 billion in total costs, when you add in the costs of additional borrowing, etc... read on
Keep reading if you want to get depressed. This is a great state and in Arnold's hands, it's going down the tubes and fast.
Consortiumblog: Tying Obama to Bush's budget mess. Republicans blame President Obama for an ocean of red ink, but a study shows most came from President Bush
From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer April 2, 2009. John Boehner is suddenly now concerned about fiscal responsibility with his criticism of the Democratic budget. Never mind the debt that was run up under the Bush administration for things like invading other countries that weren't a threat to us and war profiteering. Never mind tax cuts that never trickle down and enrich those at the top. Now that the spending is needed to keep our country out of a depression, Boehner is concerned about the debt being left to future generations. His talk about bi-partisanship after the way he and his fellow Republicans ran the House of Representatives is also laughable.
KWAME HOLMAN: Leader Boehner, thank you for joining us.
Leader Boehner, you and other Republicans on both sides of the Capitol have looked at this budget that the Democrats are moving today in the House, that is a reflection of what President Obama has called for, and railed against it. What's wrong with what they're proposing?
REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-Ohio, House minority leader: Well, I don't know where I should begin.
The first problem is it spends too much. When you look at the level of spending in this budget, it will make President Bush look like a piker. And I and other Republicans felt like we spent too much during the Bush years. But this budget, at some $3.6 trillion for next year, will be the largest expansion of our government in our history.
Secondly, it taxes too much. There are some $2 trillion worth of taxes in this proposal that will tax every American. Not only do we have higher taxes for capital gains and the top rate and bringing the death tax back in full force, but we have this national energy tax.
You know, they like to call it cap-and-trade. But what it does is that it taxes energy. And so, if you drive a car or turn on a light switch, or you have byproducts that use a lot of energy, everybody's going to pay this tax.
But it's not just the tax that's so onerous. It's the millions of American jobs that I believe will be at risk because our competitors around the world don't have such a policy. And so you'll see products coming in from China and India and elsewhere that will make our products made here more expensive relative to theirs.
And so you've got higher spending. You've got higher taxes. And then you get to the real whammy, and that's the national debt.
President Obama's budget will double the national debt in the next five years. It will triple the national debt in the next 10 years, given their projections.
This is unacceptable. I think it will imprison our kids and grandkids. It will slow our economy. It will slow job growth in America. It's just not, in my opinion, not the way to proceed.
Rob Nabors, Deputy Director for Management and Budget, gives his no-nonsense take on the so-called Republican alternative budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
DNC leader Tim Kaine was just as dismissive yesterday.
"The House GOP budget would be just an April Fool’s day joke if it didn’t actually reflect the true priorities of House Republicans and what they would do if they had the votes in Congress to pass their own plan. Their budget relies on the failed economic policies that drove the U.S. economy into its deepest spiral in decades," he said in a statement.
"If House Republicans had their way and the budget they outlined today were adopted, President Obama’s economic recovery program, which is already saving and creating jobs throughout the country, would be gutted, Medicare as we know it would all but be all but eliminated, Social Security checks would be slashed and a proposed spending freeze on discretionary programs would cut essential services – from health care and support for veterans to education to job training - that Americans most depend on when the economy is in crisis."
The Wall Street Journal gave the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee high visibility to feature their nonsense yesterday, an April Fool's joke.
John McCain has a budget proposal of his own. He admits that he doesn't have the votes for it, but that's not going to stop him from proposing it. I wonder what the Republican members of the Budget Committee think of this? And as John said, "didn't McCain lose the election?".
It may be April Fool's Day 2009, but the Republican Party is playing the same joke on the American people. After brushing off last week's calamitous Republican "road to recovery" blueprint as a "marketing document," Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled the GOP's alternative budget in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. In it, Ryan offers the same snake oil his party has been selling since the days of Reagan and Bush. The cure for what ails the U.S. economy, it turns out, is a massive tax windfall for the wealthiest Americans who need it least.
The new Republican budget doubles down on the wildly regressive Bush/McCain tax cutting binge American voters rejected at the polls in November. Making the budget-busting Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 permanent, the GOP also proposes an alternative "highly simplified system that fits on a post card, with few deductions and two rates." Taxpayers making over $100,000 would see their rate drop to 25% from its current high of 35%. (Below that level, the rate drops to 10%.) Corporate taxes would also drop to 25%. While the capital gains tax rate would be frozen at its post-2003 level of 15%, the estate tax would be eliminated altogether.
The predictable result is yet another massive redistribution of the tax burden away from the richest Americans even as it produced a torrent of red ink. While the Center for American Progress concluded the Boehner-Ryan giveaway would hand an annual tax bonanza of $1.5 million to the average CEO, a preliminary analysis from the Center for Tax Justice last week concluded that by 2011, the GOP scheme would drain the Treasury to the tune of $300 billion more than the Obama plan. And as is par for the course for the Republicans, the usual upper-income suspects benefit the most:
Over a fourth of taxpayers, mostly low-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the President's plan.
The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $100,000 less, on average, under the House GOP plan than they would under the President's plan.
From The Cafferty File March 23, 2009. I would like to know when Jack ever asked this about George Bush?
President Obama’s budget could bankrupt the U.S.; so says Republican Judd Gregg. The New Hampshire senator, who was almost a cabinet member, says if we maintain the proposals in the budget over a 10 year period, the country will go bankrupt.
“People will not buy our debt, our dollar will become devalued. It is a very severe situation,” said Gregg, who’s known as one of the top fiscal minds on Capitol Hill, calls the planned spending “almost unconscionable.”
A report by the Congressional Budget Office shows President Obama’s budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade. That’s more than four times the deficits of President Bush; and it’s $2.3 trillion worse than what the Obama administration had predicted.
And Gregg’s not the only one — Republican Senator Susan Collins, who was one of the few in her party to work with Democrats on the stimulus bill, says the planned deficit spending “poses a threat to the basic health of our economy.” And Democratic Senator Kent Conrad calls the projected deficits “a stunning amount of money,” and says the administration will need to make some adjustments.
But the head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, is not backing down from the budget proposals — saying the estimates by the Congressional Budget Office may not be accurate.
Here’s my question to you: Will President Obama’s budget bankrupt the country?
President Obama ditched his bipartisan budget sales pitch Tuesday and went on the offense against his Republican critics. The move comes after the president felt substantial pushback from lawmakers in both parties who sharply attacked key elements in his $3.55 trillion proposal.
Sensing the lack of support, Obama has changed strategies and challenged members of Congress who have blasted his plan to come up with “constructive alternative solutions.” While the president said that he and Democrats are committed to a budget resolution that will put the nation on a path to prosperity, he decried opponents who have turned to “political tactics” and “point scoring” instead of “problem solving.”
[...] This time around, Obama appears to be employing a more partisan strategy. Obama’s top budget aide, Peter Orszag, went further in dismissing Republican critiques on Tuesday, saying that most reflected a viewpoint that “just empirically doesn’t work.”
Orszag, the Office of Management and Budget director, said some lawmakers’ suggestions during congressional hearings have been helpful, but input elsewhere hasn’t been.
“The chatter that fills the cable news networks I don’t think is intended to be constructive,” Orszag said at a lunch with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.
[...] In response to GOP attacks, Obama and his allies are shifting into campaign mode. Obama is scheduled to push his budget plan during a rare sit-down interview Thursday on “The Tonight Show.” His presidential campaign manager, David Plouffe, sent an e-mail to his backers last weekend asking them to support the budget plan. And MoveOn.org, which galvanized liberals online to oppose President Bush’s agenda, has been asking its members to get behind Obama’s proposal.
From Fox News Sunday March 15, 2009. I think the only interests Chris Wallace may have in mind during this line of questioning are his own as he hammers Austan Goolsbee about a line in the introduction of the President's budget.
Wallace: Finally I want to get into a little bit of the Obama budget with you. 3.6 trillion dollars which calls for major tax increases on the wealthy. And I want to read you something from...the President's budget. "While middle-class families have been playing by the rule, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."
Mr. Goolsbee, it's a blanket statement from the Administration. People who make money have not played by the rules?
Goolsbee: I think you're stretching a little bit the blanket statement. It's not saying that it's been illegal. It's saying the rules of the game that the American economy has followed for decades is that the core strength of the economy is middle class workers. Over the last eight years before this President came into office we saw an unbelievable squeeze on the middle class like nothing we have seen in decades.
We go through the first boom in recorded economic history of the country where the median family income falls by $2000 while corporate profits and overall GDP rise dramatically.
Wallace: But, but...
Goolsbee: The President is saying in his budget that he is carrying out the recovery package and in the budget giving a tax cut to 95% of working people and that people who make more than $250,000 a year will go back to the rates that they were at the end of the nineties. That they pay a bit more. That isn't going to bring the economy down. And that style of thinking that it's going to trickle down and we should just keep cutting taxes at the top got us where we are today. It didn't solve the problem.
Wallace: But Mr. Goolsbee, again I'm quoting directly from the President's budget here, this is page five of the President's budget. Again he's saying those at the commanding heights of our economy, I assume that means people who are more than middle class have not played by the rules and then again let's go to this statement from page five "There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in favor of so few."
And again I guess what I'm asking is there seems to be a moral argument here that somehow people who have made money have done something wrong and need to pay for it and what you're saying, you say "there's something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted". The argument seems to be there's something wrong when the government allows people, rich people to keep their own money.
Goolsbee: Well we cut taxes by trillions of dollars for people making more than a quarter million dollars a year over the last eight years. That wasn't a magic elixir for growth. It was a very week recovery and we stumbled into the worst economic crisis in multiple generations.
Wallace: Why make the..I understand the economic argument. Why make that a moral argument? Something wrong. People at the commanding heights of the economy have not played by the rules. Why the moral argument?
Goolsbee: Well look you're taking a line from the introduction that sets the stage for the discussion which is we need to go back to an issue of balance. So in the nineties we had a more balanced view. We've gotten out of balance. People at the commanding heights of the economy with incomes over $250,000 a year have been receiving trillions of dollars of tax cuts while the middle class has been squeezed like never before. That squeeze on the middle class is what got us into this crisis. It's why the President is committed to renewable clean energy that makes us secure from foreign energy dependence. For reforming the education system. For health care. All of those things are about relieving the squeeze on the middle class so we don't get into this again.
Wallace: Simple question. Do you think maybe this is over-written?
Goolsbee: I think it's very well written.
Wallace: Did you write it?
Goolsbee: No.
As long as Wallace plays the good water carrier for the haves and have mores I'm sure his anchor chair is safe at Fox News.
