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I'm getting really tired of hearing Republicans complain about the debt, especially certain senators named after the President of the Confederacy.

Does anyone remember Jefferson Sessions filibustering or even voting against a single spending bill or budget when the national debt doubled under George W. Bush?

Anyone?

Also, if the debt is truly is the Gravest Threat to Our Future Evah, then tax increases of all kinds, shapes and sizes would be on the table. So let's just return tax rates to Eisenhower-era levels, or hell, even Nixon-era levels and go from there.

Can't have it both ways, Jefferson.

Robert Reich is right: No one ever mentions this on the teevee. (Instead, we have people like Mrs. Alan Greenspan and Mika Brzezinski giving us stern lectures about tightening our belts.) In real dollars, adjusted for inflation, people are actually making less than they made thirty years ago. This is a massive systemic problem and it will require a major course correction to fix (and no, I don't mean cutting unemployment benefits):

Missing from almost all discussion of America’s dizzying rate of unemployment is the brute fact that hourly wages of people with jobs have been dropping, adjusted for inflation. Average weekly earnings rose a bit this spring only because the typical worker put in more hours, but June’s decline in average hours pushed weekly paychecks down at an annualized rate of 4.5 percent.

In other words, Americans are keeping their jobs or finding new ones only by accepting lower wages.

Meanwhile, a much smaller group of Americans’ earnings are back in the stratosphere: Wall Street traders and executives, hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers, and top corporate executives. As hiring has picked up on the Street, fat salaries are reappearing. Richard Stein, president of Global Sage, an executive search firm, tells the New York Times corporate clients have offered compensation packages of more than $1 million annually to a dozen candidates in just the last few weeks.

We’re back to the same ominous trend as before the Great Recession: a larger and larger share of total income going to the very top while the vast middle class continues to lose ground.

And as long as this trend continues, we can’t get out of the shadow of the Great Recession. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don’t have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

America’s median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades. Between 2000 and 2007 it actually dropped. Under these circumstances the only way the middle class could boost its purchasing power was to borrow, as it did with gusto. As housing prices rose, Americans turned their homes into ATMs. But such borrowing has its limits. When the debt bubble finally burst, vast numbers of people couldn’t pay their bills, and banks couldn’t collect.

***
A second parallel links 1929 with 2008: when earnings accumulate at the top, people at the top invest their wealth in whatever assets seem most likely to attract other big investors. This causes the prices of certain assets—commodities, stocks, dot-coms or real estate—to become wildly inflated. Such speculative bubbles eventually burst, leaving behind mountains of near-worthless collateral.

The crash of 2008 didn’t turn into another Great Depression because the government learned the importance of flooding the market with cash, thereby temporarily rescuing some stranded consumers and most big bankers. But the financial rescue didn’t change the economy’s underlying structure — median wages dropping while those at the top are raking in the lion’s share of income.

That’s why America’s middle class still doesn’t have the purchasing power it needs to reboot the economy, and why the so-called recovery will be so tepid—maybe even leading to a double dip. It’s also why America will be vulnerable to even larger speculative booms and deeper busts in the years to come.

Watch this video and tell me what Joan Walsh did to elicit an over the top, bizarro-world reaction from the right-wing blogosphere. Are they so desperate for anything that they'll eat the scraps off a toilet bowl?

I met Mika and Joe at a book signing in LA and they were very friendly. Joe said that he appreciated the fact that CrooksandLiars has been very fair to him over the years, unlike a lot of other sites, but that being said ... why was Mika mocking Joan Walsh in such a childish fashion?

JOE SCARBOROUGH: ...I think it helps us all to say there are extreme voices on the left, there are extreme voices on the right, and it's our responsibility to call out people, I believe, on our side.

JOAN WALSH: Who would you have me call out? I mean who would you say on the left is comparable to Rush and...

SCARBOROUGH: Don't do it.

MIKA BREZEZINSKI: Mmm-mmm! No thanks, Joan. We're good. We're good.

SCARBOROUGH: Can we talk about the Chinese now?

MIKA: I think it's all very obvious.

WALSH: Is it obvious? Who on the left is comparable to Rush and Glenn on the right?

MIKA: Okay, Joan, if it's not obvious to you I'll talk to you off-set. I mean, my God! Alright so let's read from the Washington Post...

SCARBOROUGH: We'll talk off-set.

WALSH: Okay...

MIKA: Seriously, it's like BLIP... BLIP... BLIP... right in front of you and you're like [imitates willfully clueless Walsh] "I'm sorry, I don't see it!"

Joe plays the Republican game of false equivalency when he says that we need to call out the extremists on both sides. Joe isn't a dumb man. He knows that there's nothing on the left that even approaches the hate filled extremist nuts that have been polluting the tea party crowd alone. Couple that with FOX News, Limbaugh and the rest of his wannabe imitators and there's more hate than can be measured on the Richter scale being piped into our airwaves all day long. There isn't anyone on the left that acts like Rush or Beck and Mika and Morning Joe know it.

It appeared that Mika might be referencing Joan as some sort of left wing extremist in the mold of Beck, but that's pretty ridiculous since she's very grounded in her media appearances. Or were they referencing Keith Olbermann and just too chicken to say his name?

Well, if I had the chance to debate the likes of the sleaze known as Dick Armey, I wouldn't have the same composure she showed.

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Walsh: But this is serious business. The economy is a wreck, (Armey laughs) it's been wrecked by the Bush White House and by Republicans in Congress with a lot of help Democratic help, with (Armey makes more noises and sighs) --

Armey: Oh, give it a rest.

Walsh: President Obama -- Please stop saying 'give it a rest.' Do you have any anything else to say? -- President Obama has a mandate for change. (Armey laughs again) Your people have stood in his way. They are standing in his way in Capitol Hill right now and Rush Limbaugh is making ridiculous statements and Republicans are crawling to him and groveling. That's the state of our economy and our world right now Rep. Armey and it's sad.

Armey: I'm so glad that you could never be my wife because I surely wouldn't have to listen to that prattle from you every day.

Walsh: Well, wow that makes two of us sir, that was really an outstanding comment...

Armey: Look ma'am, you're talking like a paid political hack making your political points.

Poor lost wingnuts. They get their kicks out of a minute and a half know-nothing exchange.

For a Politico feature asking TV hosts who their favorite guests were, one might expect to hear big dogs like Bill Clinton or George HW Bush (Greta Van Susteren's favorite), or Jon Stewart (Howie Kurtz's) or even a little starstruck eye candy like Angelina Jolie (Wolf Blitzer's). But Mika Brzezinski's answer scares me most of all:

Brzezinski jumps at the chance to name Pat Buchanan “because he says what we are all thinking.” But as her father is former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, she has to pause: “Should I say my dad?”

Oh holy FSM. Buchanan says what we're all thinking? Does that mean that we're all a bunch of misogynistic, isolationist , Hitler-apologizing bigots, or can we just limit that to Uncle Pat and Mika?

We all think like Pat Buchanan? As David Weigel says, I don't think that's true.

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(h/t Shoq Value)

This incident is a perfect illustration of how the right's noise machine is fooling the American people all over again, using easily debunked lies and misinformation, and how this very kind of irresponsible broadcasting—which they so often pretend is "journalism"—is empowering them to do it.

We came thisclose from having an honest discussion of health care reform this morning on Morning Joe. Not surprisingly, the "journalists" at the table dropped the ball, instead allowing two Republican congresspeople free airtime to lie to the American people once again. Hey GOP, where's your alternative plan again?

Republican Representatives Tom Price (MD--he's a doctor, you should listen to him!) and Dave Camp--having no constructive things to do to address Americans' health care concerns--appear on the Morning Joe show to field concern trolling, er...questions from no less than four "journalists" on health care. And Mike Barnicle gets the closest to actually digging for the truth when Rep. Price drops the name of The Lewin Group and Barnicle asks who funds The Lewin Group. Price deflects it with a mealy-mouthed answer about their foundation, but since he's a Republican and he's moving his lips, you gotta know he's a big fat liar:

The political battle over health-care reform is waged largely with numbers, and few number-crunchers have shaped the debate as much as the Lewin Group, a consulting firm whose research has been widely cited by opponents of a public insurance option.

To Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, it is "the nonpartisan Lewin Group." To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an "independent research firm." To Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is "well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country."

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers.

More specifically, the Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association, a physician's group, of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied its parent company and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the "usual and customary" doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-network care.[..]

Lewin's clients include the government and private groups with a variety of perspectives, including the Commonwealth Fund and the Heritage Foundation. A February report contained information that could be used to argue for a single-payer system, the approach most threatening to private insurers, Sheils noted.

But not all of the firm's reports see the light of day. For example, a study for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association was never released, Sheils said.

"Let's just say, sometimes studies come out that don't show exactly what the client wants to see. And in those instances, they have [the] option to bury the study -- to not release it, rather," Sheils said.

Well, they might not be partisan, but they sure as hell ARE biased--they are paid by the LARGEST health insurer in the nation (remember when Elizabeth Edwards said that $1 out of every $700 spent in healthcare went in the pocket of United Health's CEO?) and bury reports that are unfavorable? Where's that report on single payer? Why aren't the Republicans quoting that one?

Price also spews out another patented Luntz-crafted lie about the House bill, claiming that the bill states that in five years, all insurance will have to look the same, claiming this is proof of government intervention into your well-being. Price isn't the only one to give this zombie lie:

(G)reat message discipline! That's always been their forte. But it makes a tiresome chore to smack down all the odd lies they come up with, again and again, just like in the old zombie movies. You give it both barrels of a 10-gauge, but it shambles forward mindlessly. "Braaaiinssss..."

The one I have seem pop up most recently is the odd lie that the House Tri-Com bill (HR 3200) will "outlaw individual private coverage."

Huh? I thought that's what the National Insurance Exchange was for?! Where did that come from?

I remembered that I had seen some crazy rant from Rep Michelle Bachmann (R-Loon) along these lines:

It’s over 1,000 pages long. On the 16th page, it says whatever health care you have now, it’s going to be gone within five years. So your current health care plan, you’re not going to have in five years. What you’re going to have is a government plan and a federal bureau is going to decide what you get or if you get anything at all.

And some commenters on Kevin's blog linked to this unsigned opinion piece from Investors.com:

It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

How odd that they both cite "page 16" in their rants, both of which were published on the same day. It's almost as if this were somehow coordinated... Nah. I must be getting paranoid.

The provision they are referring to, by the way, is this [..]

So what does this mean in the real world?

1. Individual health insurance policies already in effect may continue but may not be altered.
2. Employer-sponsored plans have five years to get in compliance with the new regulations.
3. New individual health insurance policies will only be available through the National Insurance Exchange (NIE).

Remember, the NIE is where the private insurers will be competing against one another as well as against a possible public plan, if it survives. It is not synonymous with a "government plan," though I hope that consumers will have the choice of a government-sponsored insurance policy. The new regulations referred to are simply those I've outlined many times before -- community rating, guaranteed issue, and a minimum benefits floor.

Ezra Klein has more on the disingenuousness of the Republican talking points.

DKos:

It's a fact: Media conglomerates' labor practices are harming the quality of TV and radio news.

A CBS television newswriter says: "We take a lot of stuff from 'Entertainment Tonight.' We watch it at 6:30 and decide what to use."

Most Americans still get their news from "old media" like newspapers, TV and radio. There's concern about how Rupert Murdoch will gut the Wall St. Journal when he gets his hands on it. MSNBC Anchor Mika Brzezinski recently tried to burn a script on air in frustration over being asked to lead the day's news with a story about Paris Hilton rather than Richard Lugar's declaration that Bush's Iraq strategy is failing. Who can we trust to tell us what's really going on? Now, a new study of broadcast journalists from the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) gives an inside look at how the media conglomerates are destroying broadcast news quality with the same tactics other big companies are using against their workers.

The AFL-CIO has more...including a copy of the WGAE report. Take the time to read it; it confirms what we've been saying for years about the decline of journalism.