Today the spotlight is on the big Wisconsin recall election. And hopefully that type of bright light will get rid of the cockroaches. You have Governor Scott Walker to thank for these recall elections. Seriously, you should thank him. It’s the only thing he ever did that deserves thanks. If Scott Walker had been patient enough to slowly poison democracy like the rest of the Republican officials are doing, he wouldn’t be in this mess. But no, the poison didn’t act quickly enough for Scott Walker. He had to try and use a blunt force instrument. Walker divided the people of Wisconsin. Now we have to hope there are more people on the side of that divide that opposes Scott Walker.
HOUR TWO GUEST: John Nichols of The Nation live from Wisconsin.
You know, for a credit ratings agency, Standard & Poor's isn’t very good at credit rating. Past S&P ratings have been a terrible indicator of the likelihood of default for any particular country. If you took the opposite of S&P’s advice over the past few years, you actually would have come out ahead. So it would be wrong to say that the S&P ratings are useless. Savvy investors can still use the S&P rankings to make smart decisions—by deciding to do what they tell you not to. We need some kind of system to give ratings to credit ratings agencies. And if we want to treat them the same way they treat others, we’ll rate them very arbitrarily with faulty information.
At least the S&P downgrade highlighted the problem in Washington with Republican refusal to compromise. And then Eric Cantor came along to helpfully demonstrate the same problem. Cantor said “Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that (the Standard & Poor’s) analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong.” And Eric Cantor is here to prove that they are right when they point out that inability! Let nobody question Eric Cantor’s inability! Amazing—the downgrade shows the danger of small-minded, pig-headed partisan thinking, and Eric Cantor immediately declares that we can’t let the downgrade stand in the way of small-minded, pig-headed thinking. It’s like S&P said “here’s what you’re doing wrong…” and Eric Cantor responded by saying “Gotcha. We’ll certainly keep it up!” I’ll give Eric Cantor this much—he certainly can take criticism. In fact, he takes it for praise!
Today’s Homework | Discuss
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Randi Rhodes; Badger Blowback
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