Feed: The Left Coaster - AggScore: 56

In the last 120 days I’ve diligently practiced what is called the paradox of thrift: by driving my credit card balance to nearly zero and getting my savings way up I’ve screwed myself with tiny reserves of survival while ensuring what could really bring me down, a collapsing economy.

Every consumer has their individual story and scenario, naturally, but obviously enough have taken my path to create a “seismic shift” in 2008 consumer spending habits, along with plain economic pain of simply being broke with unemployment or crushed with healthcare costs. Fear, debt and lack of funds are classic restraints on the absolute lifeblood of the American economy, but there might be two new social variables producers and policy makers should consider when trying to get consumers the hell out of that disastrous paradox and start spending again.

The first is the Simple Living, a movement and philosophy that is impossible to measure in scope but is definitely out there. An outgrowth of classic ancient spiritual practices, simplicity cannot forever erase consumer demand but it can ratchet it significantly down. If a car is absolutely necessary then strip it of all its frivolous additions to get a consumer cheaply and simply to point A from B. Oh yes—no pollution, please. That’s correct, zero.

The Green Movement is seriously out there, no one can deny that, and again although its tenets do not reject materialism they significantly alter its existence. I am due for a new car, all my demographic, equipment and income variables yell at me every month it’s so, but there isn’t a green electric car on the market. I don’t want a hybrid, I want zero emissions all of the time.

I suppose I have small little people dreams, for I never thought I’d be able to train today on a dream bicycle of amazing modern technology and material, to cruise at 18 mph for an hour to iPod music after chasing busses. From whatever miracles of circumstances occurred it really happened, dreams really can become true, and one day I will get into my car, turn the key and be off on my way without a drop of oil. Furthermore, the electricity in my small, simple car will be supplemented 100% by the solar panels on my roof and the small wind turbine on top of the backyard shed.

I am so god-awful tired of knowing I’m not in good with Al Gore when I pollute every day, that easy solutions to screaming problems of urgency just sit there festering because we can’t get it together. Where in the hell is that Chevy Volt, General Motors? Hello? I’m not spending a dime on a car until I can buy a Volt, eat me. Still a hybrid, not even close to the optimum, but at least a plugin. Dreams coming true is way cool, hurry up.

Green is just not an alteration in technology but inevitably a decline in consumption, certain materials and practices simply mean conservation, recycling and spending less. It also creates a seriously competitive branding environment, be green or be nobody.

It all seems to esoteric and abstract in one way, but producers and policy makers are soon to get frantic if Americans don’t start spending again. Money in the pockets of consumers and a solid return of confidence will likely not have the expected effects, American society is changing with simplicity and green. Without those factors in expectations and according policy elements in place our recession/depression could last a lot longer.

It seems that Sarah Palin has a future in national politics because she has big media fans. Oh please, just kill me now.

Your turn.

The political action is in Minnesota today, where many counties have started a hand recount of the ballots. The certified results give Coleman a lead of 215 votes, or just under 0.01%. Recounts tend to favor Democrats because of inexperienced (young) voters not filling out their ballot correctly but still making their vote clear.

I have a spreadsheet which is keeping track of the results as they come in from each county. The results are then extrapolated to the rest of the county. Each candidate's average gain per ballot cast for that candidate is used to extrapolate to those counties with no results. Some rural counties won't even start counting until after Thanksgiving, but we should have a good idea of where things stand as results come in from Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. Below I will have updates of the current margin and spreadsheet projections of the final margin. The projections could be wildly inaccurate initially until we get a better sample of the recounted votes. The county results are available here.

November 19, 3:41 PM CST: Current: Coleman +218 votes Projected: Coleman +291 votes
November 19, 4:35 PM CST: Current: Coleman +212 votes Projected: Franken +3 votes
November 19, 5:59 PM CST (5% recounted): Current: Coleman +224 votes Projected: Coleman +158 votes
November 19, 6:54 PM CST (6% recounted): Current: Coleman +196 votes Projected: Coleman +47 votes
November 19, 9:13 PM CST (18% recounted): Current: Coleman +174 votes Projected: Coleman +21 votes

Greg Sargent at TPM and dday at Hullabaloo think Obama's pick of Tom Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services means our next president will make health care a priority. Isn't that what Obama campaigned on? Signs and portents here.

As expected, Ted Stevens concedes.

At last, Missouri falls to McCain. So much for the bellweather status enjoyed since 1956.

Al Franken wins his lawsuit asking to be given access to information on the absentee ballots rejected to see if they were improperly thrown out. Good for him!

India blows up a Somali pirate ship, days after pirates seized a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million worth of oil.

I don't know about you, but I've been on pins and needles waiting for the verdict: Hugh Jackman - Sexiest Man Alive. I can't say I agree with that one. Just look at the picture at the link. The man has no earlobes.

It was barely noted in the brief roaring imbroglio of bailout debate last summer, but as $750 billion of spending for lying obnoxious crooks was eventually rammed through Congress our intrepid representatives quietly passed the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act, almost for precisely the same amount. The DOD bill, of course, is annual, for all the blood, equipment and tragedy of a nation lost in two disastrously failing wars vast fortunes still flow forth for them virtually unsaid.

This week Congress will stall and obstruct a mere pittance of $25-50 billion for the automotive bailout, Obama will be back in February with more votes if nothing happens this year, but the point is that after the DOD and Treasury bailouts America seems to be short of cash, who would have thought? We’ll borrow all to hell for however we like to try and solve all these problems, I get it, it’s just remarkable that in that very long list of issues for dear USA defense spending and institutionalized violence isn’t on the list.

Need $25-50 billion? Instantly stop the stupid, extremely provocative “missile shield” the monstrous fools in the Bush administration initiated for eastern Europe and Poland. Stop spending on all missile defense, the only rationale for its existence is an arms race and payoff to US defense contractors. Good luck finding this gem on the Obama transition website.

That isn’t a criticism of the Big Man, not in any sense, as stated before the insane level of US defense spending is blithely accepted among all peoples of America as the way it should be and is, change is simply never contemplated or advocated for by any constituent group to stop building tanks when our children are cold and starving this winter. Peace is a frantically lobbied objective by many, of course, but never the base level of militarism spending behind it, no one shouts as a policy goal the DOD should get its funding cut by 30% in 2009.

The Army is due to get 75,000 more soldiers by 2011, a belated acceptance to failure in the current force structure yet even more dismaying in the unspoken acceptance of our Army and armed forces growing ever more hugely, year after year, but somehow, incredibly, this just isn’t seen as a problem.

Just in a fiduciary prism US defense spending is an acute, screaming issue America cannot afford in any way, not in dollars or denial, and if it’s so freaking important to get the current account in shape with less imported oil than moving forward we can damn well invest in equipment that feeds our kids instead of killing Palestinian and Afghan children. Hello? Need $50 billion to save 2-5 million American automotive jobs and all the families dependent on them? Get it from the DOD, plenty of dough to be found there.

Plus there’s that little moral problem of eviscerating children for nothing but lies or continued failure, take your pick, but, well, it’s all about dollars in the USA. Right?

With admirable adroitness to American militarism Barrack took on Afghanistan and Michelle military family welfare. The alternative was John McCain for president, so on a lot of levels I don’t have a problem with it.

On quite a few others, obviously, I have a lot of freaking problems with it. Moving forward I carry with me the soul of Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, her enduring frame of reference is of small teaspoons. Like Jodie Foster in Contact, right, her Dad is helping her with that ham radio: small moves. Forget the violence, the endless borrowing for bombs, the imperialism and hegemony, the sickening tragedy of what we could have been and built with all that DOD money over the decades, just never ever let go of digging with that frigging teaspoon.

Need some money, Detroit? Need some cash, USA? Go to the DOD, they have it. Trust me, by all the atoms of the universe there is a stupendous amount of money being spent on the most insane stupid things, just take a quick look. Start with $50 billion for Detroit, hell, that’s only a one-time hit, annually you would not believe what we could do with that DOD hoard of taxpayer cash.

Just go to the DOD budget for necessary items, a little bit at a time, you know, $50 billion here, $50 billion there, we all know how easy that is. Right? Worry about force structure, deployment schedules and adjusted downward mission scope later, for at least two years a teaspoon to the DOD will yield amazing results.

Need some cash, USA? The Department of Defense has it. Go get it back, a little bit a time.

A president that really cares about our future. What a tremendout relief.

Your turn now.

Here's some good news:

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens loses re-election bid

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has lost his bid for a seventh term. The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by 3,724 votes after Tuesday's count. That's an insurmountable lead with only about 2,500 overseas ballots left to be counted.

Apparently, the state will pay for a recount at a 1500 vote difference, but Stevens would have to pay if the difference is higher. I doubt he'll go for it, but you never know. Whatever plans for another go at national politics Sarah Palin may have had, this result definitely closes a door she can't "plow through," at least not in the near future. That makes me very happy. Go Al Franken!

I am tired and a little discouraged outside of the political realm, so today is really not the best time to hoist the little grey cells into some futile meander while our Senate leadership most likely swords us in the back this morning, playing patty-cake with Joe Lieberman in their little DC love shack.

Discouraging doesn’ t come close to the incredible phenomena of Joe Lieberman, at its base his presence will always be a manifest testimony to a political party that cannot adhere to any principle. Nothing.

Coupled with a disdain and open defiance by politicians to one of their core, most active, most lucrative constituency alliances, The Left, as we’re called, a term no one can really define in DC except in a frame of appalling cowardice.

Today is a good day to eat shit, The Jedi intoned first thing. He knows, as do we all, there really is no silver lining to the continued acceptance of Joe Lieberman, just a massive display of stupidity, callousness, betrayal, and probably the most nauseating episode of Senatorial ass-kissing--such a disgusting rectum lock on that foul creature—that we will ever see in our lifetimes.

It’s a nauseating spectacle, and today is a very bad day for the country.

One thing about having a seemingling endless war, it becomes very hard to pretend there isn't an effect on the health and well-being of the returning soldiers. Rather than having to fight for years for health benefits , today, soldiers know the scientific evidence support their claims.

Your turn now.

I’ve got two separate but equally provocative things to run by you tonight for your comments. First, a week after Hank Paulson changed the original terms of the bailout and decided against buying troubled mortgage-backed securities from banks, Citibank announced today that it would shed 53,000 staff.

53,000.

Even if these two events are not related, exactly how shaky is the foundation upon which Citibank is built?

Second, a friend of mine at work told me today that a family he knows told him something very troubling over the weekend. Each of their three children is a member of the armed forces, and all three have recently completed their active duty commitments. One is in the Army Reserve, one in the Navy Reserve, and one in the Air Force Reserve.

All three of them got call-up orders over this weekend.

Filling in for Rachel Maddow tonight, Arianna Huffington asked Lawrence O’Donnell if the Dems didn't want to make Joe pay for his antics during the campaign season, couldn’t they go after Lieberman for his having done a lousy job at Homeland Security since he’d been in charge.

O’Donnell replied that if effectiveness were a criteria, a lot of chairmen of committees might come under scrutiny.

He said that as if it were a bad thing. Arianna didn't call him on it.

Until that mentality changes, nothing is going to get fixed. Seems elementary.

Would Barack Obama been elected President of the United States had he advocated quick withdrawal for Iraq and Afghanistan? No.

No marketing or political rationale would have ever withstood the completely devastating attack from opposition Republicans that Obama was another Democratic wimp who wouldn’t and couldn’t fight. The American ethos that the President is a badass Commander in Chief killer at the helm of a vast intricate killing machine that will be used on a moment’s notice at whatever planetary American whim arrives is so ingrained in American politics it simply goes unspoken, as it did again in election 2008.

It’s also completely understood American militarism is a vehicle for corporatism, what are all those tank divisions parked in Iraq for, the Bill of Rights? Petrol-imperialism in this case, but the United States has a lifelong history of employing militarism for what it wants, hell, even for bananas. President-elect Obama may indeed restore the reputation of America from the filthy mold of lying, slavering barbarians of shuddering stupid cruelty, we all pray for that, but it will be a long, long time before the United States gets a rep as a harbinger of peace again.

Michelle Obama’s advocacy for military families has to be seen as a political calculation for fealty to American militarism, as Obama’s manly deadly re-enforcement of Afghanistan of course is. Again, if miraculously Afghanistan becomes mission completed is the “stamp out bad guys” mentality then going to be applied to Pakistan? Shit. We’re fighting in Afghanistan for political reasons, not dire strategic or tactical elements, not hardly.

Never any disrespect for Michelle Obama, not at all, I’m very pleased at the political wisdom and attention to a group of Americans who deserve it the most, don’t we all know it.

All this American nationalism is accepted as necessary, what’s one to do, whine for the pure alternative of losing with no power in a political wilderness? That still doesn’t make current American occupation any less of a mistake than the Iraqi one, nor does it stop the death and maiming of our people, the slow long blade of waiting and suffering for their families, the horrify contradiction of the land of the free, “life” in the pursuit of happiness, well, maybe someday, planet Earth, maybe someday, death and violence is our world now.

I will hand it to President-elect Obama, he’s been very good at setting up an exit for all of our Southwestern Asia insanity: the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden. If in fact that can be accomplished in 12 months Obama has perfect domestic political cover to drastically reduce American resources in Afghanistan, they’ll be desperately needed at home and no nation, ever, has ever military succeeded in Afghanistan. The day we all Americans get the hell out of that legendary hellhole of impossibility the better, and that day is coming, one way or another, sooner or later.

But for now acceptance of reality and admiration for adroit political set-ups leaves me no option but to support President-elect Obama in his militarism, it’s the implacable reality we live in, and if it’s my nature to be blunt about it all that doesn’t mean my sincerity for his success is any less. Capture or kill Osama bin Laden and then bug the hell out of Afghanistan, too, that will always be one of my great hopes for President-elect Obama’s first term.

Until then, men and women of the armed forces of Southwest Asia, we are hoping for your safety and return every day. We have not forgotten you, we will not forget, and Democrats and Michelle Obama will make sure no one forgets for a hundred years. We fervently hope that if peace never seems to be in our world than at least may it always be in your minds and souls. Good luck, come home soon.

Just a bit more on the unfortunate passage of Proposition 8.

The General resigns from the LDS Church over the homophobia demonstrated by the support for Proposition 8. He notes that previously he had been unhappy with the church because it had been very reluctant to stand against torture because that topic was too political. Now he wonders about their priorities.

Fred Clark writes that if marriage isn't a right for a minority, then it isn't a right for anyone. As he notes, by definition, rights apply to all people. If there isn't a right to marriage, than marriage is only a privilege granted by the state to some. Perhaps this was not what the proponents expected because it says they also have no right to marriage, only a privilege that could be taken away at anytime based on the whim of the majority.

Your turn now.

Several GOP senators think it would be better for the Big Three automakers to go bankrupt and reorganize, than get help from the government. Two of them, Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and Richard Shelby of Alabama are dead set against any bailouts for the American automakers.

Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona said it would be a mistake to use any of the Wall Street rescue money to prop up the automakers. They said an auto bailout would only postpone the industry's demise.

"Companies fail every day and others take their place. I think this is a road we should not go down," said Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Sure, companies that employ millions of Americans fail every day. Yup, let's let the markets work, huzzah, huzzah. We can't have corporate welfare now, can we? But it's OK to dump $10 billion a month into Iraq.

"They're not building the right products," he said. "They've got good workers but I don't believe they've got good management. They don't innovate. They're a dinosaur in a sense."

Added Kyl, the Senate's second-ranking Republican: "Just giving them $25 billion doesn't change anything. It just puts off for six months or so the day of reckoning."

Too bad neither of them feel that way about shoveling billions into fraudulent contracts in Iraq.

Note that Kyl had no hesitation shoveling $700 billion of taxpayer money to Wall Street for their misuse because he obviously though it would “change” something in their behavior, but now doesn’t want to help prevent the loss of millions of auto-related jobs for a fraction of that amount. At least Shelby is being a little more consistent here. But neither one are being truly honest or smart here. Both see bankruptcy as a way to destroy the United Auto Workers, and yet neither see a danger from foreign investors swooping in to buy up these American assets and gain control of this manufacturing capacity.

And for the record, no matter what Barney Frank cooks up on this, the outgoing Congress should not be rushing to do any bailout of the Big Three until the incoming Obama Administration has the ability to dictate the terms of what is expected of Detroit in order to get any federal help. Obama has already said that any short term and longer term help is contingent upon building the right cars that fit into our energy and environmental future.

Separate from his differences with Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has signaled to the automakers and the unions that his support for short-term aid now, and long-term assistance once he takes office, is contingent on their willingness to agree to transform their industry to make cleaner, more energy-efficient vehicles.

Yet going after the Big Three to force them to do the right thing is only part of it. We also have to go after the other culprit here, and ram a real energy reform bill down Big Oil’s throats as well so that this unholy and destructive marriage between Detroit and Big Oil stops driving our energy, national security, and industrial policies.