Pimpin' for Paul

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A visit to a legalised brothel in Nevada underlines how the Republican coalition is unravelling

I wnder if The Guardian reporter was on an expense account...

[...] They have even been offering two-for-one specials to clients who go onto their computer, access Paul's website and donate money.

How about an 'early bird special' for us ol' geezers?

The Bunny Ranch's owner, Dennis Hof, has - to the embarrassment of Ron Paul - been touting his support for the congressman for a few months now. Above the lounge fireplace is a sign (photographed above): "We pound for Paul". Just inside the entrance is another pithy banner: "Pimpin' for Paul".

On Saturday, South Carolina and Nevada both vote. They are as culturally distinct as, say, Amsterdam and rural Poland.

Of course, Dennis Hof and his "girls" aren't representative of Nevada as a whole; but there is widespread tolerance for institutions such as Hof's, and there is widespread distaste for in-your-face morals politics of the sort that has come to define much of the Republican Party in recent years. South Carolina, by contrast, is solidly evangelical, the conservative edge of its politics laced with the legacy of segregation, the "morals" issues of abortion, pornography, gay marriage and so on always high up in voters' concerns.

Squaring this particular circle, winning Nevada as well as the South, might just prove one trick too hard for the Republican candidates to pull off.

Heh. He said 'trick' and 'pull off'...

There's an awful lot of Ron Paul campaign signs in front of people's houses in Northern Nevada, which is right next door to me. I think I understand the Wild West Libertarian views in a state with 24-hour saloons, gambling, and floozie parlors, but if they think Paul's the one, they're all as batshit crazy as I've always thought they were. Of course, the fundies are crazy too, but far less benign. Nevadans want government to leave them alone. The religious nutters want government to leave us alone after converting us by law.

There's never going to be very much less government than there is now, and even though we would all like there to be less, ain't gonna happen. The best we can hope for is a break from the Repugs for a while. A good long while.

This is America. If folks want to throw their votes away on a sideshow geek like Paul, let 'em, and if they do it from a cathouse it's a fitting and ironic statement about the state of American politics.

My only excuse for posting this silly shit is I'm still getting over truck lag from yesterday.

Heh . . .

How 'bout my Jints?

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Whoda thunk it?

Ain't just the po' folks ...

Seems everybody thought they'd get rich quick:

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The bad news is they've had to cut their price to $563,000 – $226,000 below their original asking price and $140,000 less than what they paid for the three-bedroom ranch house.

...

Laguna Hills resident Paul Beyer has a different story, but a similar result. After trying for 1 ½ years to sell his Mediterranean-style house beside a bridle path in Nellie Gail, he's cut his $2.09 million price by $600,000, and still hasn't had a single written offer.

...

Sometimes, the Mrs. and I watch Flip This House just to see what others get themselves into. Since we have a good deal of experience with planning, contracting, and doing the work of major home improvements, it's more of a comedy show than anything serious to us. Their grandiose plans at the beginning of the project generally have no basis in reality, neither do the real estate agents' appraisals of it after the job is done.

The impression I get from the show is that most people who were looking to make a killing in real estate bought anything they could get their hands on, believing they could make a minimal investment and get high returns. Unfortunately, with the availability of easy credit, many folks fell into the trap.

The 'housing bubble', just like the 'dotcom bubble', was an artificial construction, brought into existence by an unregulated credit industry. Just as any internet company could get capital financing at the height of the frenzy, so could unqualified borrowers suddenly afford far more than their budgets would allow:

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They put $70,000 down – all that remained from their $180,000 profit from the Las Flores house after taxes and paying off debts. They were able to afford the home by using two interest-only loans. Their house payment was $3,300 a month, but would reset to more than $5,000 after three years – more than they could afford.

...

What people should have learned from the 'dotcom bubble' was that such artificial constructions (brought about by investment firms looking for a new angle with which to peddle their wares) do not last and consequences (how many 'day traders' lost their shirts?) are difficult (if not impossible) to predict 3 years out. This crash was coming. Many people (including yours truly) predicted it years ago, when all the folks who were supposed to know better did nothing but say how great things are.

The subprime mess won't get fixed by a 'stimulus package' from Washington. Things are too far gone for an $800 check to fix. I'd wager most folks will use it to pay bills that are, or are pretty close to, delinquent. Nothing good will come of the economy until the price of daily living comes down.

Until the price of gas and heating oil comes down, until the vast federal expenditure on the occupation of Iraq is put to rest, and until they figure out who is going to get hurt most by the mortgage mess (most likely the middle class taxpayer), nothing will stimulate the economy. Easy credit has been the stimulus for the past five years, people spending the equity in their homes on cars and big screen TVs, the most daring getting into the real estate investment game. That well has dried up and a one-time payment of a few hundred dollars won't replace it.

We're in for tough times ahead. While you're voting for your candidates this year, make sure your choice is qualified to fix this economic mess that's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. By the time Election Day rolls around, you can bet the economy will be the number one issue concerning the electorate.

Great thanks to Mr. Philadelphia for the link.

One can dream ...

Athenae:

... I happened to look up at my Bush Countdown Calendar and realize we're a year away from the official end of our long national nightmare. I don't know about you guys, but I plan to be so blind drunk 366 days from now that when I wake up (naked, in a tree, with a string of pearls around my waist and only a fur pelt for cover) not only will I not remember Bush's helicopter boarding moment, I won't remember BUSH ...

I'm there ...

Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead

Me 'n Mrs. G are on our way out to the Bayarreah to meet a young Springer Spaniel (yes, we'll change her name!) who is being fostered by one of the nice folks of Golden Gate Springer Rescue. If all goes well, we'll have a new family member by this afternoon.

Before we go, I thought I'd put up this reasonably cheery column by Daddy Frank wherein he assesses various Repug candidates and their chances at being p-resident:

CONTEMPLATING the Clinton-Obama racial war, some Republicans were so excited you’d have thought Ronald Reagan had risen from the dead to slap around a welfare deadbeat.

Never mind that the G.O.P. is running on empty, with no ideas beyond the incessant repetition of Reagan’s name. [...]

Thanks in part to the Giuliani campaign’s one triumph — turning 9/11 fearmongering into a running late-night talk-show gag — the usual national-security card is no longer so easy for Republicans to play. Conservatives not in denial see the crackup ahead. “All the usual indicators are dismal for Republicans,” wrote George Will last week, concluding that “Nov. 4 could be their most disagreeable day since Nov. 3, 1964,” when Barry Goldwater lost 44 states.

But might some Republican still win, especially if the Democrats are ultimately divided by race, or by the Clintons, or by their own inane new debate about Reagan? Conceivably, but only if someone besides Ron Paul is brave enough to break out of the monochromatic pack.

This, too, is laughably out of touch with reality as practiced in most American living rooms. Imagine if Mr. McCain’s Straight Talk Express stopped taking detours around the one figure who unites 60-plus percent of the populace in ire. Imagine if he started talking straight about how he’d clean up the White House mess. That might at least break the ice with the vast majority of voters who look at the G.O.P. presidential field and don’t see Ronald Reagan so much as also-rans for “The Bucket List.”

Enjoy the rest. Later.

What about John Edwards?

This is a hoot! I got it from Edwards08. Take note of who's doing the "live reaction". Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The Nation Trembles

Do yourself a favor and go read Mark Morford:

Who's more terrifying to red states, smart Hillary or savvy Barack?

It's a stunning thing to watch. Right now, the various spurts of venom aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from conservative pundits and politicos are, at best, scattershot and convulsive, with only MSNBC's Chris Matthews proving himself to be a consistent blowhard jackass in his relentless slamming of Hillary by claiming that she only made it this far due to adultery-survivor sympathy. Hey, Chris? 2001 called. It wants its puerile, sexist analysis back. Thank you.

Just go...

Nationalists Stirring in Iraq

The Nation

On January 13 an emerging Sunni-Shiite nationalist bloc in Iraq signed a groundbreaking agreement aimed at ending Iraq's civil war, blocking the privatization of Iraq's oil industry and checkmating the breakaway Kurdish state. It's a big step forward, and it could change the face of Iraqi politics in 2008.

My highlighted phrase is why Bush will vehemently oppose these Iraqis from charting their own destiny.

So far, the United States has continued to prop up Maliki's shaky regime, despite its growing unpopularity. US officials fear that if Maliki were to fall, the results would be unpredictable--especially in an election year. Besides, the nationalists would be far less likely than Maliki to sign the proposed long-term extension of the American presence in Iraq that Maliki and President Bush intend to ink by July.

I hope Maliki falls or is co-opted before then. Bush too, but that's even less likely.

[...] Even without US interference, it might still take a miracle for a stable Iraqi coalition to take root.

I think that's the understatement of the year, but they'll never know if they don't try. Bush's imperialistic delusions have failed miserably, and the U.S. should get out of their way and let the Iraqis give it their best shot. It's their country, after all, and one way or another their destiny is ultimately up to them. The sooner the better.

The problem with all this, of course, is that Bush will not leave Iraq without what he went there for. OIL. This is liable to get a lot uglier than it is now.

"The answer, my friend..."*

Reuters

U.S. wind power grew 45 percent in 2007

Look for wind power to grow exponentially in '08. It's an election year, and what with the candidates and the pundits getting up to speed, hang onto something. I suggest a pair of these as well.

*Apologies to Bobby-poo Dylly-doo, as Mrs. G calls him.

"...the next year or two could be quite unpleasant"

Paul krugman on the economic recession we're being treated to by our financial whizzes and their Repug lapdogs. A 'must read'.

Mexico. Brazil. Argentina. Mexico, again. Thailand. Indonesia. Argentina, again.

And now, the United States.

The story has played itself out time and time again over the past 30 years. Global investors, disappointed with the returns they're getting, search for alternatives. They think they've found what they're looking for in some country or other, and money rushes in.

But eventually it becomes clear that the investment opportunity wasn't all it seemed to be, and the money rushes out again, with nasty consequences for the former financial favorite. That's the story of multiple financial crises in Latin America and Asia. And it's also the story of the U.S. combined housing and credit bubble. These days, we're playing the role usually assigned to third-world economies.

Oh swell...I get a visual of Laura as Evita...

The result, said Mr. Bernanke, was a "global saving glut": lots of money, all dressed up with nowhere to go.

In the end, most of that money went to the United States. Why? Because, said Mr. Bernanke, of the "depth and sophistication of the country's financial markets."

All of this was right, except for one thing: U.S. financial markets, it turns out, were characterized less by sophistication than by sophistry, which my dictionary defines as "a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone." E.g., "Repackaging dubious loans into collateralized debt obligations creates a lot of perfectly safe, AAA assets that will never go bad."

In other words, the United States was not, in fact, uniquely well-suited to make use of the world's surplus funds. It was, instead, a place where large sums could be and were invested very badly. Directly or indirectly, capital flowing into America from global investors ended up financing a housing-and-credit bubble that has now burst, with painful consequences.

The real sin, both of the Fed and of the Bush administration, was the failure to exercise adult supervision over markets running wild.

It wasn't just Alan Greenspan's unwillingness to admit that there was anything more than a bit of "froth" in housing markets, or his refusal to do anything about subprime abuses. The fact is that as America's financial system has grown ever more complex, it has also outgrown the framework of banking regulations that used to protect us — yet instead of an attempt to update that framework, all we got were paeans to the wonders of free markets.

Right now, Mr. Bernanke is in crisis-management mode, trying to deal with the mess his predecessor left behind. I don't have any problems with his testimony yesterday, although I suspect that it's already too late to prevent a recession.

But let's hope that when the dust settles a bit, Mr. Bernanke takes the lead in talking about what needs to be done to fix a financial system gone very, very wrong.

When they get all done 'talking about' it and actually figure out how to fix unbridled greed, stupidity, and Repuglicant enablers, let me know.

Saturday whorage

Another chapter of Thirty Days at Zeta is up at The Practical Press.

Leave your own links in comments.

Question of the Day

Krugman:

... Would you buy a used economic policy from these men?

Pot, meet Kettle ...

Ha-ha.

Pauly's had it ...

And I don't think I can blame him. It looks like our dear friend, Jim Yeager (a.k.a Mimus Pauly) has decided to pack it in after close to four years (He opened up the Medley about the same time we did here). I hope it's not the case but we wish him all the best in whatever he decides to do. Good luck, pal.

The Hucktard and 'Christian Dominionism'

Go read Joe Conason on Huckabee:

Behind the happy, healthy, guitar-strumming campaign style that has so besotted the national press corps, Mike Huckabee looks like something considerably less charming -- a zealous proponent of the "biblical" reformation of every aspect of American society.

He later denied that he meant to suggest that God wants him in the White House. But his deliberate reference this week to conforming the law to "God's standards" sounds uncomfortably like the ideology sometimes known as "Christian dominionism" or "Christian reconstructionism," which declares that America, indeed every nation on earth, is meant to be governed by biblical law.

The looniest dominionists publicly insist that a pious government would inflict Old Testament punishments, including death, on blasphemers, pornographers, homosexuals, adulterers and even disobedient children. They constantly talk about their duty to institute biblical rule in the United States.

As a Southern Baptist preacher, does Huckabee accept that bizarre interpretation of Christian ethics? The answer is that he probably doesn't (or is too shrewd to say so if he does). But the clues to Huckabee's affinity for religious extremism have been lying in plain sight for a long time.

When columnist Robert Novak mentioned the event, he described Hotze as a leader of the "highly conservative Christian reconstructionist movement," a description that aptly encapsulates the ignorance of many mainstream journalists (and the aversion to unpleasant realities of many right-wing journalists). There is, of course, nothing "conservative" about reconstructionism, which demands a radical repression of liberty and the imposition of biblical law by "godly men."

'Godly men', huh? Sounds more like 'men who think they're God'. And want to make damn sure you think they are as well.

No fuckin' way.

Does Huckabee still believe that his narrow version of Christianity must dominate every detail of human existence in this country? He doesn't like to answer hard questions about the intersection of his faith and his politics, but it is long past time that somebody demanded a straight answer.

A straight answer from a Repug politician? Be easier to get a transfusion from a turnip.

Vegas Strippers Seek Right to Caucus at Their Workplace

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"After all, we get a lotta pole-sters in here, and caucus dances will only run you 20 bucks a pop."

...

"Now that's a caucus I can really support!" - Bill Clinton

Thanks, Don

Waffle-stompin' Hil

Yahoo!News

Intentionally or not, Hillary Clinton's campaign has found its most aggressive attack dog. His name is Bill.

You can go read it if you want, but I just wanted to make this point:

I never heard of a guy steppin' on his wife's weenie before, but the Big Dog's doin' a good job of it! Always breakin' new ground, that guy!

I got a sneakin' hunch that Hil might send Bill someplace different to campaign for her. Like Africa.

Adios, scumbag

Star-Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)

PIERRE, S.D. -- Former state Rep. Ted Klaudt has been sentenced to 44 years in prison for raping two foster daughters by touching their breasts and genitals in phony examinations he said would help them sell their reproductive eggs.

Good. The main reason I even brought this up is because I had to do a google to find out the sleazeball's a Repuglican, you know, the party of christian, moral, and family values. For some reason, the newspaper didn't print his party affiliation even though inquiring minds want to know. Maybe they just assumed we'd know. Child molestation's kinda a Repug thing, after all.

Yuck-a! Yuck-a! Yuck-a!

Cleveland Leader

Was Yucca Mountain the Real Reason Kucinich Was Silenced by GE?

So why does this matter? Congressman Dennis Kucinich is the only Presidential contender to have voted against using the proposed site and General Electric, which owns NBC and MSNBC who ran the debate yesterday, didn't want his take on the whole mess that the United States Government is brewing.

So, was Kucinich not allowed to debate because he was a "fringe candidate" or was GE just afraid that he would dare speak the truth that will bring in major amounts of money for the corporation and, at the same time, risk the health of millions in the biggest growing metro area in the United States for years to come when the facility starts storing nuclear waste?

It's probably not the only reason, but it's certainly something to consider.

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This is only a matter of local interest in southern Nevada until you understand this nuclear waste shit is a) coming to a town near you, and b) going to be stored right near an increasingly large city on the edge of an earthquake-prone, volcano-heavy tectonic plate. Not to mention its proximity to Area 51 where space aliens could get aholt of it!

The only upside that I can see will be self-lighting hookers. Whee! They'll barely have to change the sign - to Lampshady Lady!

There's not much we can do about a), but I think it would be wiser to move the proposed site north and east, farther from the city and the seismically and vulcanologeously active zone. There's places out there where the birds fly upside-down because there's nothin' worth shittin' on.

He's a WAR CRIMINAL dammit!

After Downing Street has a really good summation of Bush&Cheney's High Crimes and Misdemeanors in the wake of McGovern calling for his Impeachment.

Are there grounds for impeachment under existing laws and treaties? Here is what Senator McGovern says about that: “Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' to use the constitutional standard.”

Senator McGovern is correct. It would take a legion of international lawyers particularly adept in the art of twisting plain English to conclude otherwise.

It would help if we take that oily crew of sycophant corrupt brown-nosed so-called lawyers at the White House out and hang 'em before we start.

Thus, under the UN Charter, the United States is legally bound to respect the rules of war and peace that all states who are signatories to the treaty accept. These rules are unambiguous on these points: 1)aggression is always wrong; 2)aggression is a crime against international peace; 3)aggression gives rise to international responsibility; 4)nothing – political, economic, military or otherwise – can be a justification for aggression; 5) territorial acquisition or special advantage resulting from aggression is always unlawful

Of course, many Americans reject the authority of the United Nations despite the fact that the United States a) signed the treaty on June 26, 1945 and later ratified it; b) it has been in force since October 24, 1945, and the United States has never abrogated the treaty or withdrawn from the organization, which is headquartered in New York City. Still, die-hards will say (wrongly) that we cannot impeach a president on the basis of a treaty.

Question: Can President Bush be impeached under existing U.S. laws?

Answer: Yes. Under the War Crimes Act of 1996, US Code, Title 18, paragraph 2441, for one:

Many others as well.

The body of laws that define a war crime are the Geneva Conventions, a broader and older area of laws referred to as the Laws and Customs of War, and, in the case of the former Yugoslavia, the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague (ICTY). Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Wil[l]ful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including... wil[l]fully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or wil[l]fully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly." This, international lawyers say, is the basic definition of war crimes.

In sum, Senator McGovern's call for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney is entirely consistent with the United States Constitution, and with the treaties and law currently in force. Liberal democracies are measured above all by respect for constitutional norms and the rule of law. Laws are either enforced or they are mocked. To make a mockery of the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land is to jeopardize everything generations of Americans built – and fought and died for. There is no greater threat to our “homeland security” than a president who does not respect the Constitution he swore to uphold.

And every bit as important, maybe more so, a vice-president too.

It is so blatantly obvious that these criminals should be in jail, or under it, that I think Congress has abrogated its duties, as legislators and citizens both, by not locking them up.