American Realistan

For all of the past bragging the Bush Administration of its economic policies over the last six years, one would think those boasts alone would be a sign of prosperity. And yet, if one bothers to look about, there is no evidence to support their specious claims.

For instance, housing construction is way down, as measured by both construction starts and building permit applications. Even with lower sales prices and interest rates being offered, there remain near-record sales cancellations, exacerbating an already-high unsold housing inventory.

In addition, rising foreclosures are inhibiting any corrections the industry might exercise to limit their exposure to the buffeting economic winds. The worst example of this is Ohio, where one in ten high-risk mortgages are in default, and Cleveland alone has a two-year supply of unsold homes.

This surfeit of American Dream castles in Ohio is attributed to the large number of high-wage manufacturing jobs lost there. Similar conditions exist in the 37 other states reporting housing slumps.

Is it any wonder that retailers are already expressing worries of a poor holiday sales season by slashing prices - and profits?

Some prosperity!

(more…)

One of my readers wasn’t too pleased with my comments concerning the Democrats and their initial difficulties getting organized. She chose to write me directly, so I will quote her email with my responses to her below the fold.
(more…)

It took me longer than I liked to get back to posting here due to several reasons. But the time was useful for me in providing a delay period for all of the hoopla over the Democratic rout of the GOP to settle down, and allow more rational thought and observation to emerge in the world’s media. The initial impression of Democratic control of the legislative branch I’m getting from their reports is far from encouraging.

Nancy Pelosi’s support of John Murtha (despite his open ethics sores) over Steny Hoyer (who likely has some of his own) is just the beginning. The nice-nice lunches held at the White House for Democratic leaders after the results were in aren’t helping either, as they demonstrate to me that the Rovian Intelligence Agency is busy scoping out the weaknesses of their new “partners” in governance - and finding things.

The Good Orange County (CA) Republicans I work with are already celebrating the return to power of the GOP in 2008, saying things like “Now the Democrats are going to discover how hard it is to rule, and they will screw it up!”

I wish I could say they were wrong.

(more…)

A “repudiation” of Republicans and conservativism??? King George knocked off his high horse???

Not so fast!

It’s a nice thing (but not for the troglodytes who lost) that Democrats now make up the majority of the nation’s state governors and improved their numbers in the state legislatures. Hooray for the Democrats who took control of the House. But so what if we won’t have to wrestle with Denny Hastert anymore?

The war between the hued political states continues unabated.

(more…)

At last!

The one party rule of George W. Bush is ended, and just in the nick of time. With the Democrats taking at least 29 seats for sure as of the moment I write this, and with three Senate seats still undecided with the Democratic candidate leading, the extremist policies of the right-wingers who sought to turn America into a corporatocracy have been soundly rejected by the voters.

But what lesson to draw from this tremendous turn of events?

(more…)

If The War Against Terrah (TWAT), Iraq edition, was going as it was intended, we would be seeing and hearing all sorts of verifiable evidence to support those claims. But it’s not. Not even close.

Instead, any independent assessment of the situation in Iraq has been shut down, most recently the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. This committee, chaired by Republican lawyer Stuart Bowen, “is widely respected by Democrats and Republicans for the quality of its investigations and reports.”

We can’t have the public really know
what is really going on in Iraq,
now can we?

That’s why the staff of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, inserted an operations deadline into a huge military authorization bill to limit the damage to that already revealed.

With the midterm election upon us, there isn’t time to do much about using Iraq as the reason voters should return a Republican Congress for more of the same except to attempt to turn the voter’s attention to the “booming” economy. Bush himself is exhorting us to notice “The tax cuts have led to a strong and growing economy” while Congressional Republicans campaigning for re-election make wild claims about a Democratic victory “jeopardizing prosperity”.

But this strategy is doomed to failure because
This Time, It’s Not the Economy.

(more…)

For some reason unknown to me, I get emails from Ted Baiamonte letting me know just how smart he thinks he is. The latest one reveals that:

“All we have to do is get together with 15 or so of our biggest military allies, go to the “Dear Leader” [Kim Jong Il] and tell him to hand over the nukes or prepare to die because we won’t have insanely churilish [sic] genocidal maniacs threatening the world with WMD or starving millions of people to death.”

There’s only one major problem with this proposal, and it isn’t the one that Mr. Baiamonte goes on in his post to reveal. Baiamonte thus ignores the one man who the world feels is a much bigger problem than Kim Jong Il, the one man who is demonstrably an “insanely churilish [sic] genocidal maniac threatening the world with WMD”.

That man is none other then George W. Bush.

(more…)