Tag: Media

(note: primer on the FJM can be found here)

Proving just how far being born of the right person can go in the insular circle-jerk that is the right-wing media, one of Newt Gingrich's spawn has carved out a neat side career as a commentator of last resort. Jackie Gingrich "focuses on current events and political issues from a mom's perspective" in her weekly musings and is a serial filler guest on Fox News: her bio notes that she has appeared on the Mike Huckabee Show, Geraldo At Large, Fox and Friends, and Fox News (i.e., Fox News, Fox News, Fox News, and Fox News). Since there isn't a conservative columnist intelligent or original enough to do anything except piss and moan about the stimulus bill this week, I was like a kid in a candy store. More accurately, I was like an adult who loves dipshits in Crazy Pete's Dipshit Emporium and Go-Kart Track.

Standing before the sea of detritus, I plunged in a gloved hand and pulled forth the greatest abomination: Gingrich's "The Best-Case Scenario."

Curious to learn about the future? Me too. Let's go.

This week marks the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Lincoln, one of our most revered presidents, was born in rural Kentucky and raised in Illinois. He is often held up as an example of how individual effort determines a person’s course in life.

He also is often held up as an example and mascot by the Republican Party. Let's play along and pretend that Lincoln, if alive today, would associate himself with that trainwreck.

While many people in his time might have viewed the education that he embraced as a waste of time, Lincoln spent every possible minute reading books. There are stories of how he would walk for hours to borrow or return a book.

Historians are unable to pinpoint exactly when this became grounds for exclusion from the GOP. But seriously, I'm sure Lincoln, Lindsey Graham, and James Inhofe would have lots to talk about. They could compare critical readings of the poetry of William Knox or Robert Burns, which was the deceased President's favorite pleasure reading. Abraham Lincoln: Private Life also notes his fondness of Poe, a drug addict who banged his 13 year-old cousin. Come to think of it, Poe would have made a decent Republican State Legislator in the deep south today.

Lincoln worked constantly. His law partner, William H. Herndon, noted in “Life of Lincoln” that “his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.” Sustained individual effort, always working, is a far cry from where we are today.

I hope there's a cloying, oversimplified lesson we can learn from his example.

In his New York Times op-ed column “Failure to Rise,” Paul Krugman writes “America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic challenge in 70 years.” Krugman’s point is that “$800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough.” Krugman wants more government intervention. He calls for more, more, more, from Washington, and concludes with a warning, “There’s still time to turn this around. But Mr. Obama has to be stronger looking forward. Otherwise, the verdict on this crisis might be that no, we can’t.”

I think we started a different column here. Cut-and-paste error, perhaps? In any case, I'm anxious to see how rapidly Mr. Krugman's PhD, 30 years of experience as an economist (including working for Reagan), and Nobel Prize wither under the Down Home, Main Street Wisdom of the Average Mom who just Happens to be related to a wealthy politico.

His approach put responsibility for the economy into the lap of the government. From his perspective, it appears as if the government has total control, and what it does will, in the end, determine what happens.

No, that's not even close to what he's saying. But then again, I never did understand Down Home, Main Street Wisdom! Maybe I need to have some cornbread and banjo music as I read. Something to make my reading environment more…folksy.

If we believed this, all individual effort would stop, we would no longer try to improve ourselves

Wow, we were speeding down Predictable Lane and took a quick right turn on Retarded. Hang on! I know this makes no sense, but hang on.

our nation would suffer from what Dr. Martin Seligman, the Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, calls “learned helplessness.”

Learned Helplessness as a psychological theory doesn't apply here – not even a little – but since Wikipedia doesn't explain it very well I guess this is all we'll get from Jackie.

(David Brooks quote filler omitted) This past week’s conversations have reflected the growing belief among conservatives that the Obama administration’s policies are moving us toward a period of nationalism and government control that at some point will leave us looking like the British did more than three decades ago.

First of all, conservatives came to this conclusion about Obama 12 months ago. In fact, they came to this conclusion 50 years ago and they just update the name. Second of all, "this past week's conversations" lets us know that the best part of Conservative Commentary is about to rear its misshapen head: the Columnist Making Profound Conclusions Based on Some People He/She Talked To.

This past week, I was e-mailed a link to a video clip of Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat from New York.

You know, people who fancy themselves Real Columnists don't admit that their research and ideas come from forwarded chain emails.

“And let me say this to all of the chattering class, that so much focuses on those little, tiny, yes porky amendments, the American People really don’t care,” he said during a debate on the stimulus bill.

Well, that sounds about right. I've already been among the chorus of people who have pointed out that if this works, nobody is going to give a flying shit what was in the bill. The 30 Republicans who will be left in the Senate in that event will be appropriately critical, though.

My son Robert, who was standing by the computer and overheard Schumer, corrected him with “The American people DO care.” If a seven-year-old understands that the American people care, well then there is hope.

When pressed for details, Jackie Gingrich's Fucking Seven Year Old stated that his conclusion is based on a multi-year panel study of a broad sample of American adults aged 18-64. Tune in next week for another column based on the wisdom of a second-grader. Enjoy them while you can, though, because this kid is going to be a highly-paid Republican operative within six months given his preternatural understanding of public opinion and politics. This might explain why the upcoming Palin 2012 campaign will take such a curiously strong stance against Megatron.

The best-case scenario is one in which Americans decide that they do care, that they are optimistic, that they can change their lives, try something different and create their own future.

Make your own future, you lazy bastards. The world is just full of opportunity! If you can't find ways to make money in this economy (home demolition expert? suicide hotline counselor? rogue superhero named Forecloser?) then you deserve your lot in life.

This would require they understand how current policies would affect the future

And anyone who fails this requirement becomes a conservative pundit.

and act to stop them

So, to recap: it is imperative to accept Jackie Gingrich's Expert Opinion of what havoc these policies will cause and then stop them. Well, we've tried it the Democrats' way for about 3 weeks. It is time to stop them and give beleaguered conservatism a shot.

My mother told me yesterday that her ladies investment club members grappled with how to respond to the uncertainty.

Don't tell me you didn't see at least one more relative being quoted in this pile-of-shit column. We had the seven year-old, who took a break from playing with Legos to dissertate on public opinion, and now we have her elderly mother, who for no reason whatsoever I am going to assume shits her pants intermittently, explosively, and without prior warning.

The members were trying to determine whether to continue to make monthly contributions to their investment fund or to stop payments until some time in the future, when the crisis has eased. She recommended they continue.

This is fuckin' fascinating, Jackie. its level of fascinatingness exceeded only by its relevance. If Mother said so that's enough for me. When an expert like the woman Newt Gingrich divorced speaks, you listen.

“Right now,” she told them, “someone who has been laid off of work is in their basement inventing the next big thing. I believe in the American people.”

Good luck with that! Rock-solid investment advice, straight from the top.

My hope is that there are lots of people in their basements inventing, and not on their computers answering offers to help them get their portion of the stimulus package.

Everything good is invented in a basement.
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This is one of the rules governing the universe of Republican Fantasy America from 1951. Norman Rockwell characters everywhere, heading down to the Town Square to have an old-fashioned fountain Coke before heading back to their basement laboratories.

As a side note, people with computers do not invent things.

The cure for the British disease of the 1970’s was Margaret Thatcher. “We want to work with the grain of human nature, helping people to help themselves – and others,” noted the 1979 British Conservative Manifesto.

Well, Maggie's free these days. Maybe we can press her into service again, assuming for a moment that the economic malaise of the 1970s was in any way similar to the current one. I'll give Jackie a pass on the ludicrous assumption that Thatcherism cured anything except Britain's chronically low unemployment rate, which tripled during the Thatcher years.

“This is the way to restore that self reliance and self confidence which are the basis for personal responsibility and national success.”

The 28% of British children who were in poverty (a fivefold increase) when Maggie departed just didn't grasp the idea of personal responsibility, I guess.

If we really want to honor the great presidents of our nation,

I don't! I want to emulate random members of Jackie Gingrich's family.

let’s each of us emulate them by becoming little individual engines that know no rest, working toward personal responsibility and national success.

Good show, Jackie. Good show. Now. After this lecture I'm dying to know; what do you produce, Jackie? What is your contribution to our national success?
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Writing ridiculous shit like this? Or are you just using this as cover while you create the Next Big Thing in your elaborate basement Inventorium? Perhaps Jackie is just one more member of that enormous American "business" class who are so good at telling other people what to do that they don't need to do anything themselves.

It is becoming increasingly common to read the New York Times and wonder in earnest if their "lifestyle" pieces are a recognition of their upper-middle-class clientele, a sincere attempt to cover issues they believe are important, or a quasi-dadaist theater of the absurd. To wit, what exactly runs through the minds of the editors when greenlighting a story like Allen Salkin's "You Try to Live on 500K in This Town?" It explores the impact of the Wall Street pay cap on the bloated plutocracy that piloted banking institutions into the side of a mountain at high speed. And I cannot tell if this story is supposed to inspire sympathy, provoke thought, or simply to act as the guy suspended over the dunk tank at the carnival.

Read that shit and try to imagine the mentality of a "journalist" who would write such a thing without tongue planted firmly in cheek. It is the kind of idea for a story that is easy to concoct, but to act on it requires an almost incomprehensible lack of self-awareness. Could an author, one presumably raised by humans and not by wild bears, begin a serious, non-satirical story like this?

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student. Mortgage: $96,000 a year. Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year. Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are 1/4" into the column and already the premise is irrevocably fucked. It announces its intent to proceed from the idea that $32,000/yr grade schools and a nanny are somehow necessary, nestled snugly between the gas bill and groceries on the ol' family budget.

To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

In other words, their ability to support an extravagant lifestyle behind the subdivision gates is imperiled. If anyone can explain why this matters or why anyone should care there may be some sort of prize involved.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable.”

It's comforting to know that they use the same amount of foresight with their personal finances as with their banks' investments. Perhaps their jobs should be staffed by people who did not graduate from the MC Hammer School of Personal Financial Planning.

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard.

You're right Allen, that was pretty fucking simple.

But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Once again we return to the moral of the story, the fact that $500,000/yr may not be enough to support the lifestyle to which the ultra-wealthy believe they are entitled – perhaps as a deserved award for the excellent job they've done at the bank lately. But after showing us that $500k (or, to put it another way, about ten times the median household income for a family of four) is "only" $269,000 after taxes, Salkin takes a hard right turn at Is He Fucking Serious Street with the following words:

Now move to living expenses.

His living expenses include two $8,000 vacations per year, $75k per year for a chauffeur, $12k per year for a personal trainer, a second home in the Hamptons, and $35,000 annually for ball gowns. OK Allen. OK New York Times. Ball gowns!?!? This is a joke, right? You're just pulling our collective leg to bait an angry reaction from the commoners, right? The ball gown bit was intended to stun readers so they wouldn't notice idiotic things like "spa treatments" and "summer camp" in the subsequent paragraphs, right? It worked. I barely noticed them. The piece ends with this ludicrous burst of pop sociology, unironically quoting the author of Sex and the City:

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?

The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and other books chronicling New York social mores.

“People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”

It's ironic that the author chooses to quote Ms. Bushnell since this article inspired the exact same reaction I had the first time I saw an episode of Sex and the City – I went in expecting mindless distraction and emerged from the experience a hardcore Marxist.

I cannot imagine what constructive purpose this piece was intended to serve. Truly this is a second Gilded Age; we are back to the 1890s when the newspapers were filled with "society" coverage intended to entertain the unwashed masses with the daily doings of the Astors and Rockefellers. The bizarre twist is that now we are now supposed to be sympathetic to their "suffering," to pity the fact that they cannot continue to indulge themselves in all manners of ostentatious consumption. The wealthy decided – conveniently enough, right around 1980 – that they had things right back in the 19th Century. Rather than being responsible to the larger society they would simply divorce themselves from it and create a separate one for themselves, no commoners allowed. When that self-segregation is threatened and they face the horrifying prospect of living like one of the people they lay off, extort, and otherwise rear-end on a daily basis, that is supposed to trouble us. Apparently.

I don't know about you but I anticipate no difficulty sleeping on account of this issue.

(h/t Nate B)

I think Lawrence Kudlow reads ginandtacos. He reads it daily and fancies himself the recipient of an FJMing. That is the only conceivable reason he could write a column entitled "It's Time for Supply Side Tax Cuts." At this point you probably think I am shitting you. Let me be clear and unequivocal: I am not shitting you. The column is entitled "It's Time for Supply Side Tax Cuts." This would make sense if it was 1983. It's not.

The bailout-nation saga continued this week as the little-three carmakers from Detroit drove to Washington to plead for a $34 billion federal package to save themselves from bankruptcy and insolvency.

I feel like the straight man / host of an infomercial – that person paid to say "There's no way that a single Sham-Wow can soak up all that hot, viscous minestrone!" or "The NuWave oven can't cook all that food in under 30 minutes, can it?" My sole purpose is to set up Kudlow's eventual Hayek-approved tomahawk dunk. So be it.

"Gee Lawrence, is there an alternative to the bailout that keeps money away from those Fat Cats in Washington?"

Hot on their heels was a devastating report of 533,000 lost jobs in November. Actually, it's a loss of 732,000 jobs, including downward revisions from the prior two months. Unemployment moved up to 6.7 percent from 6.5 percent, a number that's going to get worse as the volume of discouraged workers continues to rise.

Don't forget to tack "and when the auto industry goes bankrupt like my fellow conservatives want it to" on the end of the last sentence.

So here's the painful choice for both Republicans and Democrats in Congress: Will the political class risk a Detroit-carmaker bankruptcy that might lead to catastrophic liquidation — including, realistically, a couple million car-related jobs — all while the recession deepens and job losses mount (1.2 million in just the past three months)?

That would be one hell of a risk to take in a democratic nation, but fortunately we do not have regular elections. Thus is the "political class" spared from retribution and should do the "right thing."

Wait, we do have regular elections. So we need to shame the political class into having the "guts" to do the "right thing."

It's a tough choice

That does not sound like a tough choice at all. It is not even remotely tough. This is the categorical antithesis of a tough choice. It is as tough as the entrance exam at Arizona State. This choice scores a seven ("Watery, with no solid pieces; entirely liquid") on the Bristol Stool Scale.

I think what you mean, L-Dawg, is that Congress is forced to choose from two bad options. They are both bad. That does not mean that they are equally bad. Let's say that you have two choices for your upcoming weekend. Option #1 involves your hated in-laws, hours of home movies of their trip to Branson, and backbreaking yard work. Yuck! Option #2 is to spend 48 hours being repeatedly raped by a particularly horny and flatulent Michael Clarke Duncan.

Your call, Larry.

especially for Republicans, most of whom want to vote against bailout nation and stop big-government encroachment on our free-market economy.

If any sentence accurately summarizes the way the Republican Party has governed in the last 30 years, this is it.

That's the right theory.

And that's all it is: a theory. Also, no.

But are the economic risks simply too great to employ it?

Yes. That is why it never gets employed, even when your fiscally conservative heroes are in complete control of all three branches of government.

Various polling surveys say bailout nation, and a federal rescue for autos in particular, is very unpopular. At least 60 percent are polling against a bailout. The TARP bailout of banks is increasingly unpopular.

Stunning. Relevant. Stunningly relevant. Who would have thought that financially struggling Americans, most of whom need to have episodes of Who's the Boss? explained to them during the commercial break, would oppose something called a "bailout" involving billions of dollars being redirected to Fat Cats and other stock characters from the populist narrative?

Meanwhile, the pressure for more bailouts grows daily. The Avis rental-car company wants a bailout from TARP. A company called BlueFire Ethanol wants a bailout. The trade association for equipment-leasing companies wants a bailout. There's no end to it. And if we keep going down this path we'll make a mockery of free-market capitalism.

Slippery slope. Learning to say "no" would be a pretty comprehensive solution. Avis can go out of business because Avis is irrelevant to our economy. The entire auto industry isn't.

Coming back to Detroit, there may be a pragmatic solution, one that takes some of the apocalypse-now threat of major economic decline out of play.

My ass tingles with anticipation.

Senator Bob Corker and others have proposed a federal oversight board that would in effect become a bankruptcy court. Strict conditions would be imposed on the carmakers,

Three sentences after he said that most Republicans want to get government out of the economy, this is his example of a good idea: the Soviet model of centrally planned industry.

especially regarding compensation

Read: "Congressionally sponsored Union-busting." That's what the 59-Democrat Senate is going to do, turn things over to Bob Corker to decide what wages should be paid in an industry employing millions.

the single-biggest reason for Detroit's decades-long decline.

I thought the inability (or purposeful unwillingness) to make a $30,000 car that doesn't need three new transmissions before 50,000 miles had something to do with it.

(uninteresting "pampered workers make too much for Detroit to compete" boilerplate omitted)

There still will be considerable job losses for downsized Detroit carmakers. They'll have to cut a huge chunk of their dealer networks. Domestic brands will have to be sharply reduced. But essentially, as would be the case under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the federal government will provide short-term financing while Detroit goes through its radical restructuring. It looks like bankruptcy lite, and it will completely change the direction of the former Big Three.

And who's going to make the judgment calls on how and where cuts will be made? Bob Corker? Lawrence Kudlow? Or the jackassed auto industry executives who ran their companies down the drain in the first place?

Boy, I sure hope you have a better idea than "Congressionally mandated wages and production decisions," Comrade Kudlow.

It's probably too much to ask, but tough federal action under the aegis of oversight-board enforcement also should relieve the CAFE fuel standards that have plagued U.S. automakers.

Read the following in your best Milhouse from The Simpsons voice: "When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory!???!??!"

Jesus H., Larry. Your headline promised something that this pastiche of right-wing bugaboos which kill our economy (unions, the environment, lazy workers, occasional Rodan attacks) is not delivering.

At the very least, worldwide standards should be substituted for domestic ones. Making expensive small green cars is an unprofitable business.

You know what is profitable? Making grotesque land barges! Like when GM made that great decision in 2005 to halt its passenger car development in order to rush the new GMC Yukon / Suburban / Escalade family of armored fighting vehicles to dealerships. Why, it practically rained money thereafter in Detroit.

Ironically, with oil and retail gasoline prices plunging, it's not unreasonable to expect something of an auto-sales recovery. Gas prices have dropped all the way to $1.75 from over $4. This tax cut will help revive the whole economy, along with auto sales.

GET TO THE FUCKING TAX CUTS, LARRY. I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DO NOT SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS IN THE NEXT THREE SENTENCES I AM GOING TO EAT AT P.F. CHANG'S EVERY DAY FOR SIX WEEKS AND SHOW UP AT YOUR FRONT DOOR ASKING TO USE THE BATHROOM.

But if Washington can put this car-bailout business behind it, perhaps Congress can move on to the ultimate solution: restoring economic growth.

*sigh*

Thank you. Was that so hard? We know what "restore economic growth" means in Republican.

President-elect Obama has been cagey about the details of his massive $700 billion infrastructure spending plan and whether he'll raise taxes on successful earners.

I think he's been pretty clear about the latter.

But this new New Deal, including Obama's middle-class tax credits, will not create permanent economic growth incentives. What will?

OMG THIS IS SO EXCITING! I WONDER WHAT HE'S GOING TO SAY?!?!?!11!!!?!ONE!!?

A conservative columnist asking a rhetorical question like this – "What, you ask, will prompt runaway economic growth?" – produces the same mixed feeling of dread, recognition, and boredom as when one of the guests in Fawlty Towers turns to Manuel the waiter (you know, the lovable Spainiard who no-speaky-eeenglish so good) and orders a Screwdriver. Everyone knows exactly what's coming and it'd be funny if it weren't so damn obvious.

A genuine supply-side growth agenda to reduce tax rates across-the-board.

Post-1980 Republicans: "THE ANSWER IS TAX CUTS ACROSS THE BOARD, BUT ESPECIALLY CORPORATE TAXES!!!! Now what was the question?"

If the Republican party wants to put bailout nation to rest it should campaign for lower corporate, individual, and investment tax rates.

As opposed to now or the last 30 years.

Good suggestion, Larry. Republicans have never tried this. They certainly don't bring up tax cuts like their asses are afire and saying the phrase "lower taxes" will bring down torrents of soothing water.

It should make clear that the Democrats are the government-spending party while the Republicans are the tax-cutting party.

To whom is this revoltingly oversimplified binary unfamiliar? I just called the Topeka Home for the Retarded and asked for a random tard who proceeded to correctly connect the phrases "Republican Party" and "cutting taxes." Unconvinced, I empaneled a focus group of people with traumatic brain injuries who were also able to connect those phrases.

Everyone already knows this, Larry. The problem is not recognition – the problem is your ridiculous assumption that cutting taxes is always a good thing or that people are always wildly in favor of it.

Like, when I say "Carrot Top" or "Zamfir" the average person automatically thinks "prop comedy" and "Master of the Pan Flute", respectively. The reason Carrot Top and Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute are unpopular is not that people fail to associate them with the appropriate shtick. The problem is that prop comedy and the pan flute are horrible, horrible things that I wouldn't wish on a Welshman.

We will not bailout our way into prosperity. Nor will we spend our way into prosperity. Somebody has to stand up and yell: It's time to cut tax rates on the supply-side.

I'm sure someone in Congress would do this, taking this heroic stand a la Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, if not for the fact that voters tend to dislike completely retarded thirty year-old ideas that have repeatedly been proven useless. Larry, why must you talk like this has never been tried, like the idea is novel? Unless "income redistribution toward the highest brackets" is the objective, Supply Side tax cuts have been an unqualified failure.

That will reinvigorate growth and infuse new spirit into a demoralized economy.

"Why? Because I say it. I don't have any evidence, but you don't need evidence when you're this fucking right."

Lawrence Kudlow, avid reader of ginandtacos: this was a disappointment of monumental (New Coke) proportions. Sucking us in with an eye-grabbingly stupid headline and then tossing us a few crumbs of discredited economic "wisdom" at the end is….well, Larry, it's just a dick move.

Then again, given how little there is to say in support of your idea, I'd tack it on the end of 10 paragraphs of gibberish too.