Kellner on the self-fulfilling prophecy of a landslide.

He has the same take as the numbers I ran: at 38% the Libs start ripping seats in large numbers, and somewhere after 40, are elected outright. He then points to the following poll question:

What is more, far fewer people are deterred by the prospect of a Lib Dem government. We asked people whether they would be delighted or dismayed by different election outcomes – or whether they wouldn’t mind.

Here are the responses:

With a giddy sequence of polls, the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom have risen from distant and small third party, to being in first or second in every major poll. Now it seems likely that after the best week in politics that almost any politician has had since John Major's upset over Kinnock, and before that, perhaps Attlee in 1945, the Liberal Democrats are going to be pounded by both of the other parties, press, and even third parties who are losing share to the Liberal Democratic wave – but it is worth taking a look at what a Liberal Democratic wave election would look like, and to underline how close they are to an historic break out. While down is where they are probably going to go in the short term, it is not beyond possibility that this sprint could happen in the next election, particularly since as the Liberal Democrats rise, the more likely the present election is to yield a weak and short lived government, with the LDs given a second bite at the apple with some time in the national spotlight and seasoning in the front ranks. In otherwords, Clegg is about to take a hit, but could weather it and rise even farther.

I am using the swingometer from UK polling report, but all of the others yield the same results, since all of them are using what the British call the "Uniform National Swing." This gets farther and farther from accurate as the swing changes, but as a rule of thumb, it provides a window on what will happen. The way the British predict their elections is to assume that most people don't move for political reasons, which is basically true in Britain, and that they will vote the same was as last time, and shift the same percentage in each district as the national polls. The somewhat more sophisticated measures include localizing swing in the main regions: Wales, Scotland, England, Cornwall, Ulster/Northern Ireland, and to focus on the ratio between national and marginal swing, since marginals tend to swing slightly less than the country as a whole. But these caveats aside, here is a window on a future election, which might still yet be this election, or later this year.

The most reliable way of not making friends among the far right is to tell a simple truth: the far right of laissez-faire, is predicated on racism. It glorifies as the golden age of capitalism the sequential period of slavery, and then the "scramble for Africa." There's nothing wrong with laissez-faire economics that isn't fixed by having a large continent full of people to exploit that god gives you the right to enslave either de facto, or de jure. The outrage from the Mises Institute's commenter is a case in point. It is impossible to escape Austrianism as racist, for the simple reason that the classical international gold standard is based on the organic linkage between imperial expansion and availability of gold.

A similar problem exists with "small government libertarianism." The purpose of small government libertarianism is precisely to end federal intervention in local affairs, such as whether a neck tie party is a legal way to spend a Friday night. It does not take long at a tea party gathering not tweezed by having a high entry fee to see birther racism, and hear quips about how the "nigger" will have us all on welfare. Tolerance for racism is prevalent now, precisely because the center right cannot hope to attain electoral majorities with out it, and a fair fraction of the upper echelons of the economy are loaded with people who are racists. Racism is profitable, for some.

And one can make a good living as a member of the crypto-racist community. Better than one can make telling people the truth. Let me close then, with a simple economic truth: incentives matter. We pay racists well in America, which means we will get more of them.

If one looks at the data, all of it, on the question of climate change in the present, an overwhelming point becomes obvious: while there are natural cycles to temperature and climate, some quite significant, in the present, human activity is creating climate change through the emissions of green house gases. While everything in science is provisional and should be read with skepticism, the accumulation of evidence on this point is sufficiently large that it should be treated as the default position. So why is it, in the last year, the public consensus for AGW has collapsed? There are three reasons: the first is that the previous decade had not only the long term build up of green house gases, but several more cyclical factors increasing the rate of air temperature rising, while now several are working against air temperature increases. The second is that there is a highly organized anti-climate change lobby, well funded, but also backed by a social network which systematically denies a host of other "evidence based" understandings of reality. The third is that there are localized factors which contribute to the sense, for those who wish to believe it, that the climate crisis has passed. One of these is the way that the climatologists behaves when attacked: it is arrogant, dishonest, vicious, and narrow minded, and this behavior is used as proxy, often by even more narrow minded, vicious, and dishonest people, to disprove the large accumulation of data.

In short, scientific judgments play the cards, and politics plays the people. The cards say the atmosphere is increasing in heat content, and that increase is driven by human activity. The people say that they don't want to pay for something, and are willing to hide in any scrap of doubt. Climatologists are people, and like many people under attack, they circle the wagons. Since, in most areas of human activity, circling the wagons is a sign of dishonesty or failure, this is used to raise doubt. But let's look at the cards, and see why the denialists are stealing the pots.

In the last 24 hours, that golden halo that was over Barack Obama, is over. The Senate is about to gut his version of the stimulus bill, creating a bill that is "all tax cuts, all the time" and far too small to deal with the economic crisis. Obama has been out Reaganed, and America is set to go on a downward spiral because of it. The stimulus gutting of at least 100 billion and perhaps as much as 200 billion in spending to get just three votes: Snowe, Collins, and Ben Nelson, will mean that these Senators will get to control between 33 billion and 70 billion of spending each. 200 billion essentially ends the "spending" part, and leaves us with a bill that will be about 400 billion tax cuts, and 300 billion spending. So much for unity and bi-partisanship.

Today's example by Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane

The legislation represents the first major test for President Obama and an expanded Democratic Congress, both of which have made economic recovery the cornerstone of their new political mandate. The stimulus package has now tripled from its post-election estimate of about $300 billion, and in recent days lawmakers in both parties have grown wary of the swelling cost.

If this were true, the provisions under attack would not be ones that actually pay for themselves - such as contraception funding. If this were true, then the corporate tax breaks would have been slashed. What is going on is a Republican "no money for black people" offensive, with enough help from the blue dog fringe of the Democratic Party.

Auto sales dismal in January.

Wake up and smell the recession. That's why progressives all over America are screaming for tax cuts and entitlement reform, and appointing super-conservatives to the Secretary of Commerce position. Right? Oh yes, and a law that exempts lobbyists from paying taxes. Obama really needs that one passed in a hurry.

The headline numbers for the major manufacturers were almost uniformly dismal:

Chrysler -64% GM -51% Ford -39% Toyota -32%

The internals of these numbers show that the fleet sales are part of the crusher, GM's fleet sales are down 80% year on year.

I couldn't make this stuff up.:

Wells Fargo, once among the nation's top writers of subprime mortgages, has booked 12 nights at the Wynn Las Vegas and its sister hotel, the Encore Las Vegas beginning Friday, said Wynn spokeswoman Michelle Loosbrock. The hotels will host the annual conference for company's top mortgage officers.

The progressive movement is caught. Some are becoming villagized, some work for the inside. Many do not work for the inside, and are being bullied to support everything Obama does no matter how awful it is. The mantra of the DLC is "vote for us, serfs, or it is so much the worse for you." The arrogance of these insiders knows almost no bounds. As far as they are concerned everyone must work, for free, to keep the asses in nice chairs.

Dachle's withdrawal shows the pure stupidity of the insiders position. Obama has been screwing up more or less since he got power. While he has done several little things right, over all his agenda is not a progressive agenda. While he has done several little things right, his big appointments have gone to other centrists - and several have been knocked out because of failures of Obama's own political apparatus. It's up to his people to spin his mistakes, that's their job. For those of us who are not ever going to work for Obama, or get one dime from the Village, it's in our best interest to tell the truth, and make our own living. Having watched more than a dozen people die, or spiral into debt, after fighting for the cause for little or no money, this isn't a matter of nice trustafarians who want to make the world a bit better, and we are not in the boom days of the late 1990's when people could afford to have politics as a hobby. The insiders are demand that people destroy their lives, in support of an agenda which, while better than the agenda McCain would have pursued, is not a particularly good agenda, and does not lead to a better future.

The village loves a politician who can fuck the people. In their view the cycle of the Nixon era is "right ward ratchet, centrist clean up." Nixon is cleaned up by Ford and Carter. Reagan is cleaned up by George Herbert Walker Bush and Clinton. George W. Bush is cleaned up by Obama. They are happy with this, because, while they really might prefer not to have a homophobic and xenophobic America, their theory has always been that power and connections will buy them an exemption from social restrictions, on say, drug use, paying taxes, homosexuality, racial integeration, and contraception - they get the money.

This is why grand fiscal reform aka economic human sacrifice, is such a big deal. Since the 1983 change from Social Security as a pay as you go proposition, taxing inflation and demand spreading paying for it, to Social Security as a regressive tax, to be used for anything at all, and then not repaid later, the great obsession with the inside has been to find a way to cram down Social Security benefits. Privatization would, of course, be best, since that would allow the inside to directly sell snake oil investments, similar to the great rip off which is a 401k plan. However, second best is to spend the money in ways that the inside likes, and then cram down the public in the name of "responsibility." Just so you know, popping out nuclear powered aircraft carriers, losing foreign wars, jet fighters which have no enemy, and endless expansion of subsidies for corporations are "responsible." Doing things which save money and make people's lives better are "irresponsible."

Obama, in their view, could be the perfect Democratic President: spend on term cleaning up Bush's fiscal mess, his foreign policy mess, cram down Democrats on their favorite program, force people to buy health insurance at an enormous profit to insurance companies, and then be washed away by a corporate Republican who goes back to tax cuts for the wealthy.

If the Steelers win:

"They had the weakest road to the superbowl ever: an 8-8 team, a 9-7 team, and a team they beat twice already."

If the Cardinals win:

"It's an abomination, they got to rest their starters all season."

If the Steelers win:

"It's the officials giving it to the popular team."

If the Cardinals win:

"It's the officials giving it to Warner for the endorsements."

If the Steelers win:

"Big Ben. Worst. Superbowl. Quarterback."

If the Cardinals win:

"Arizona. Softest. Schedule. Ever."

If the Steelers win:

"Obviously it's the superbore, the most boring team won."

Right now it is still not possible to get a good version of the superbowl streamed on line. I don't own a television set, I am not going to fight with the awfulness of on air television for the few things I want to watch, and more over, I don't want television I want a video window on my computer, because that is where I am most of the time.

Please get with the program people.

Sometimes it becomes obvious that people pay for stupidity, assuming that intelligence will then provide the reply for free. Suffice it to say that The Washington Post needs to fire it's idiot reporter who gets trade history wrong. American protectionism, and indeed the trade war, did not start with 1930's Smoot-Hawley. Let me take a section from the Department of State, entitled Protectionism in the interwar period:

In the decade after the end of the First World War, the United States continued to embrace the high tariffs that had characterized its trade policy since the Civil War. These were enacted, in part, to appease domestic constituencies, but ultimately they served to hinder international economic cooperation and trade in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Just when you thought the Taxpayer Anal Rape Program could not be made any worse... the Team Obama-nation finds a way to sink to new depths. They are preparing what is billed as a big bang shift in the banks. More like gang bang. Bend over America. This after the President himself stepped into cancel a few hundred million of contraception funding - funding that pays for itself in saved services costs - in the stimulus bill.

Let's go over the nature of an American Republic: it consists of a mandate, a meaning, and a mechanism which operates through the meaning to advance the mandate. What Americans did not understand, is that in 2000 a new Republic was established, with a new mandate to maintain the status quo. Obama does not represent change from this new order of constitutional interpretation, but the process of normalizing it's monetary system. What we are about to see is the equivalent of the formation of the Bank of the United States in the Federalist Republic, the Legal Tender Act for the Union, or the FDIC/Federal Reserve combination of the New Deal. However, this is not a progressive republic, but a reactionary one. It's money is based on military fiat, and as such, cannot long endure. We have entered the era of Barrosian strategy money.

Well, we know where at least some of the giant sucking sounds are coming from:

By Eve Conant

Among the Bush administration’s few undisputed successes was its aggressive fight against the global spread of HIV and AIDS. Liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and scientists didn’t agree on much during the last eight years, but they were unified in their enthusiasm for PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which Congress recently voted to expand into a $48 billion commitment, the largest by any nation, to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis worldwide. So when PEPFAR’s respected director, Dr. Mark Dybul, was swiftly and surprisingly pushed out of his job the day after President Obama’s inauguration, AIDS activists began to worry that the new administration might fumble the one thing the old group got right.

Todd A. Boulanger pleads guilty:

Specifically, according to the plea agreement, Boulanger sought the assistance of a staff member who worked on the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. One of Boulanger’s clients was an equipment rental company, on whose behalf Boulanger and another lobbyist, James Hirni, sought to have two legislative amendments inserted into the Federal Highway Bill in 2003. Boulanger admitted that, with his knowledge and approval, Hirni and another individual provided an all-expenses-paid trip on Oct. 18 and 19, 2003, to game one of the Baseball World Series in New York City to the committee staff member and to Trevor Blackann, a former staff member to a U.S. Senator. On Oct. 22, 2003, Boulanger and Hirni provided information about the amendments they were seeking to the committee staff member and Blackann. Later, after one of the amendments had been inserted into the Senate version of the Federal Highway Bill, Boulanger, Hirni, Blackann, the committee staff member and another individual took steps to protect that amendment .

There could still be revisions, but the numbers themselves show that we are now in the deepest recession since the 1981-1982 recession.

The internals are terrible: consumer spending down again, payrolls cut, business investment shrinking. All in all this is not a "last quarter of GDP contraction" because there is no uptick in any sector to create leadership for growth.

The only good news is that the number was slightly better than expectations. That's not saying very much. Q1 09 is probably going to be another terrible quarter, and the final contraction in GDP may be the largest since the sharp 1975 recession. This recession then has the trifecta of bad: it is broad, deep, and long.

The good news is that with inflation essentially dead, we are unlikely to see a "third dip" in the recession - since this recession had a shallow start, a fake recovery in the middle and a second deeper dip, this is, at least, not the worst news. Done right, we would have room for a recovery, that is, after a two year long slog through job losses and falling wages. But we aren't doing it right.

Update: While the expected figure was 5.4% from Reuters, the present figure is distorted by unsold inventories, this added almost 1.3% to GDP, which means that absent a massive uptick in consumer spending, really what happened was that GDP was borrowed from the future. Since unsold inventories will be carried at their wholesale, not retail, value in GDI, the GDI figure will come in lower. Taking out this distortion, the final number was 5.1%. Basically through out the quarter businesses behave as if the recession were almost over, that the worst was behind us, and that they could hold prices at previous levels, while slashing wages. Strangely this did not work. It is another clear sign of deflationary expectations.

Ft also has something up noting the unsold inventories in an expansion of their coverage this morning. This data is in line with the housing data, which had 660,000 annualized single family housing completions, and only 380,000 annualized new home sales. More or less the decision makers of the economy thought this summer signaled that the down turn was over, and they went all in for the last quarter. So much for "we don't need a large stimulus bill" back last spring. Score another one for "Barack Obama gets economics wrong."

Dear Doctor Krugman

Krugman asks why nothing on health care from Obama. Do we really need to answer this question? Obama's priorities are:

1. Middle class tax cut (check)
2. War in Afghanistan (escalating!)
3. Slash Social Security and Medicare (summit on "entitlement reform" coming soon!)

Obama is what the Village wanted Bush to be, a "compassionate conservative." He's a Republican who doesn't hate gay people any more than is absolutely necessary for political purposes. Thus he can give on things like torture, Gitmo, the global gag rule, that is: money for contraception in other countries, just not in the US. The little things buy liberal love: equal pay, some union gifts. These small things get liberal votes for continuing to dismantle the New Deal.

As you may know new home sales continued their fall, and that means that new home construction is going to remain dead as a door knob for a while. Last month half of all existing home sales were foreclosures. This means that the real price of homes is lower than the cost of building a new one. That will eventually change, when the supply of foreclosed homes dries up, but it will not be for a few months yet, and if we miss the spring window, it will mean that housing will remain in hiring recession for the rest of next year.

When existing home sales came in up in numbers, but down in price, it led to wide cheers from the right wing punditocracy. However, that was a figament of the there Chicago School imaginations. Instead the existing home sales were being whacked straight out of new home sales. In 2008 482,000 new homes were sold. The annualized rate from December was 331,000 . The problem is that in December the annual rate of housing completion for single family homes was 668,000. That is, supply is still well above current demand, which means that prices will have to continue to fall. Right now new home inventory is still over a year. What this means is that for every new home people are buying, builders are still finishing two.

Clearly the memo to shift capital from home building has not reached the economy yet.

The Senate can, and should, make minor improvements to the stimulus bill. Restoring the contraception funding would be one good move, as would upping some of the obvious wins in education funding - for example, grants for nursing and other forms of medical study would improve the supply of doctors, nurses, and medical technologists, right at the time when we admit that we need more of them. However, for all of the many imperfections of this stimulus bill, it has reached "the best deal we are going to get" stage. It's wrong, and therefore, cannot afford to be late. There are better ideas that could be put in place. For example the "middle class tax cut" is a rather poor idea, but it is the President's poor idea. The corporate tax cuts don't generate incremental investment, but there are enough conservative Democrats that it is unlikely to survive without them. Repealing large chunks of the odious bankruptcy law would be helpful, and reducing the incentive of companies to liquidate would be down right smart. But these are also, off the table.

Over the wire services, looking for a link.

first one is here

Blagojevich has been a bleeding sore for some time, re-elected only because of the disarray of the Republican Party in Illinois, a state which seems to make high level corruption a way of life. However, serious moves for his impeachment and removal only began when Fitzgerald released tapes that had the governor conspiring to sell the appointment to the US Senate Seat vacancy. These tapes had expletive laden hard sell in them, and shocked the nation.

The Illinois legislature dithered, allowing Blagojevich to appoint Rolad Burris, and the Senate then capitulated on seating the former state wide elected official.

Marty Feldstein is a conservative economist, and self-identifies as such. So when he came out for a stimlus bill, it was a shock. Now he is trashing the Obama tax cuts in no uncertain terms. He's also unhappy with the speed that infrastructure projects will come on line, and with the grants to states. His preferred solution, as you would expect from a big government conservative, is military spending, on the grounds that it can bulk up fast.

It is entirely possible to ramp up civilian spending at a speed comparable to military spending, indeed, education, a large component of the stimulus bill, does exactly that. More over, education delivers more GDP for less inflationary pressure that military infrastructure.

Students, workers oppose Shark's handling of crisis.

Slightly different response over there to the problem.

The centrists get it. This political fight is between the "centrists" and the people. They want it all, they want it all, and they want it now. Liberals have to get bupkis before Obama gets a single Republican vote. If liberals were smart, they would draw the line here and tell President Obama that if he makes more concessions, they walk, and he gets nothing from them and will have to govern as a Republican from here on in. Last time that happened was NAFTA, and the Democrats are still smarting over how long they were out of power. So it won't happen now. So America, bend over and lube up, because you are about to feel the Unity Pony.

Let's be honest, because right now the blogosphere is packed wall to wall with people who want something, a job, a program passed, influence. I'm not looking for these things, and would not get them even if I was. Instead, since burning down to the numbers, important or small, is what I do, let me do the numbers.

Number of Republican Votes for the Stimulus Bill: 0
Number of Depression Dog defectors: 11

Obama isn't a Democrat giving things up to get Republican votes, he's a conservative mugging liberals for a conservative agenda that includes:

1. War in Afghanistan
2. Paulson's version of TARP where taxpayers buy all bad assets.
3. Slash social security and Medicare
4. Tax Cuts
5. No Comprehensive Health Care, but huge subsidies for Health Insurance companies instead.

Taken as a whole, Obama is offering small concessions to the left, in return for trillions of dollars that are coming directly out of the pockets and veins, of ordinary people. He couldn't even come up with a bit of money to help poor women pay for birth control pills. But he could cave on Pay-Go. Pennies for the people, pounds for the powerful.

Right now, your liberal leadership is selling the country out for little things. Game theory has something to say about this, it is called the stag hunt.

Stimulus bill to pass on partisan lines:

Hours before the House was expected to approve his proposed $825 billion program, largely along partisan lines, Mr. Obama tried to convey his message far beyond the corridors of the Capitol and into boardrooms and living rooms. The future of the American economy rests less in his hands than it does “with American companies and workers,” Mr. Obama said.

Final vote 11 Democrats and all Republicans vote no. Cooper demanded a "fiscal responsibility summit" and then voted no anyway. Can we finally get Barack Obama to realize he can't do business with these people?