Sarah Palin is Not Running for President

There I said it.  She's doing lots of things that make it seem like she is lately:

1) Moving to Arizona (you can't run for president from Alaska, it takes 13 hours to get anywhere)
2) Going on some bus tour for no reason
3) Hiring staffers
4) [the big thing] releasing in IOWA a documentary about how she is "The Undefeated" or something (newsflash: Obama/Biden won the 2008 election and McCain/Palin lost).

Anyway, that would add up to a normal candidate running. I really just don't think she is.  I have no reason.  Sarah Palin is a weirdo.  But I'll bet any of my 4 readers $5 that she doesn't run.  This is highly technical, scientific reasoning.

If she runs, I think she actually COULD win.  The pathway is there.  I hope she runs!

Honestly, everyone should run for president. If you really think you're qualified, go for it. Huckabee should've run too.

Part two of why not raising taxes is weird

OK let's just ignore the ending of that chart for a second, because that craziness is mostly a result of the Great Recession or whatever we're calling it, and the lines will normalize as the recessions ends.  The whole cause of the deficit is that since roughly the 80s (REAGAN), the red line (government spending) was more than the blue line (government revenue).  For the record, that is the opposite of fiscal conservativism.  Things were getting progressively better in the 90s for the first time in a while - and spending was flatter than it usually is, and revenues increased a lot.  Then things just went to shit in the 00s, with revenues plummeting and spending continuing at increasing levels. That is just bad math.

And it's not complicated either! C'mon.

If you care about the deficit, you really need to support raising some taxes

Like, seriously.  That chart is scary/gross.  You see that the Reagan Administration was the real harbinger of debt - the debt more than doubled under his presidency.  Why? Because he cut taxes without cutting spending.  Then Clinton/Bush I raised taxes and cut spending, and the debt shrunk a little (that blip between 1995-2000), and then Bush cut taxes and INCREASED spending, which just did this:

Ok, gray area is what the debt would be without any of the bad shit that happened under Bush.  It would've gotten smaller! Ugh.

Listen, everyone knows that we have an entitlement spending problem, but that's not what's driving our national debt.  The #1 driver of the debt is that people (i.e., Republicans) keep cutting taxes and INCREASING spending. Taxes are now too low, so the debt is too high.  I mean...can someone explain the competing narrative to me? Entitlements haven't caused our current national debt $14 trillion national debt - these failed policies have.  The numbers don't lie.  Why the heck would we not be open to raising some taxes as part of a deal to also reduce spending?

Jon Huntsman Will Not Be The GOP Nominee

Onto our next profile of GOP candidates for President, Jon Huntsman.  Huntsman is probably the most interesting of all of them, because he is pretty normal seeming. Short bio from what I remember - 2 term governor of Utah (extremely popular). Rich. Mormon, but it's questionable if he's mormon-mormon or just "spiritual." Speaks fluent Mandarin. Two-time ambassador to China (Under George H.W. Bush and Obama).  Dropped out of high school to join a rock band.  Supported civil unions and cap and trade.

Full stop. That last sentence should make you sit back and think one thing: "this person will not be the nominee." The GOP hates cap and trade with a passion (even though it was originally their idea) and the base of the GOP still hates gays because they are "sinners," obviously.  So he's going to lose. But he'd be a great president probably! Anyway, here's a cute little video that Huntsman didn't create about how much of a "progressive" he is.

Politicians are Weird Negotiators

Let's blog.

This is going to be even more stream of consciousness-y than usual, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how atrociously bad politicians are at negotiating.  You may think I'm talking about how the Obama Administration repeatedly "gives away the baby."  For example, Obama wants cap-and-trade to pass, so he just makes a press conference saying "We will now expand domestic oil drilling" - which is something Republicans want and Democrats by and large do not.  The story goes that if Obama was a good negotiator, he would wait until negotiating with Republicans and say "OK, I want cap-and-trade, you want oil drilling. If you vote for my program, I'll give you more oil drilling."  That's pretty bad negotiating.

Psyche! It's actually really not. The thing to understand is twofold. One, Republicans will reflexively oppose almost anything Obama supports, even if it's their own plan (see: ObamaCare/RomneyCare, cap-and-trade (endorsed by Reagan, Bush I/II and McCain/Palin until Obama came to office, etc.). So he knows he's dealing with dishonest negotiators.  That's a problem! But he still needs to do something, which brings me to: Two, the things that Obama "gives away" to Republicans are invariably popular with moderates/independents.  In other words, I think it's safe to say that Obama is (rightfully) negotiating not with the Republican Party but with the American people.  That's ok. The Republican Party is kind of weird right now, and the best way to bring them back to sanity may be for Obama to convince the American people that he is right and the GOP is wrong.

Oops.  That was all just prelude to my real point, which is this: the Republican Party is really bad at negotiating!  Here's why.  Democrats actually REALLY want to compromise with Republicans, for a lot of reasons.  First, Democrats just like compromise.

See? That's pretty compelling!  Second, Republicans want to do two things: cut taxes and cut spending.  The problem is that we have a huge deficit and historically low taxes, so it's pretty doubtful that we will cut them again.  The other problem is that the only spending cuts that will actually decrease the deficit (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, military) are also the spending that Americans really like and refuse to cut.

So Republicans can do two things now. They can propose a plan with cuts to entitlement spending that is engineered to at least be appealing to Democrats. This is very possible. There are about 104 different deficit plans that are out there that make spending cuts in different ways -- some of them would attract real Democratic support.  Obama authored one of those plans. ObamaCare itself actually cut entitlement spending (in Medicare) by $300 billion over the next ten years - he's serious about this shit.  So if they propose cuts this way, even if those cuts prove to be unpopular (they will be), they'll at least have the cover of saying "listen I know I voted to cut Social Security (or whatever), but it was the right thing to do - that's why Democrats voted for it too."  Fiscal crisis over, political life intact.

The other option is to do what they did - propose an incredibly conservative plan that they KNOW will be unpopular in the country.  They did know this. They aren't dumb. They hired pollsters that told them it.  But no Democrats will go along with it because it is so gosh darn conservative.  And let's not even talk about the first thing that the Republican's "budget" does is just straight up repeals ObamaCare. You really think Democrats are EVER going to vote en masse for that? It's just a nonstarter as a negotiating tactic.

So anyway. Long story short, Republicans just lost a House race in upstate NY that Obama himself lost to McCain by 6 points.  They should've won that easily.  They lost because the Democrat pointed out that the Republican wanted to cut Medicare. That would not have happened if the GOP proposed a plan that attracted Democratic support.  So now they both lose on getting their policies passed and lose elections.

THAT IS DUMB. Why did they do this?! I don't really have an answer, but I bet they feel like numskulls.

Who will not be the republican nominee?

This guy! Rick Santorum.  He is pretty horrible. Santorum fills the necessary "so religious that I actually hate most people" slot of the republican candidates. He used to be senator of Pennsylvania but wound up losing by a lot to a not-that-impressive candidate (Casey) because he was such a nutter.  He's obviously pro-life and anti-gay but that's really just the beginning. He's not a big fan of women working either.  You know how lots of weirdos run for president all the time? Santorum is one of them. He has a zero percent chance of winning.

The most interesting thing about Rick Santorum is that he pissed off awesome gay-activist Dan Savage a while back with his anti-gay ramblings. Dan Savage is the same guy behind those really emotional "It Gets Better" ads. Anyway, years back, Dan Savage somehow used the internets to make it so when you search for "santorum" on google, you get this. Pretty good revenge!

And now, two of my favorite things: gay rights and Pixar

Yay Election 2012!

I love elections. They're hilarious and weird and the stakes are huge and most of the people who compete are either interesting or insane.  This time around the Republican field is actually pretty cool, in a weird way.  I'd say there are four categories of candidates:

1. Libertarians - Ron Paul and Gary Johnson. Combined, they have a 0% chance of winning
2. Crazy people - Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Buddy Roemer. I think Michele Bachmann has maybe a 1% chance of winning, and the rest have zero. But they're kind of funny!
3. Semi-sane people who are going to pretend to be crazy to win votes - Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty. Combined, they probably have a...75% chance of winning? I dunno. it
4. Sane people - Mitch Daniels, Jon Huntsman. I guess this means they have a 25% chance of winning. The problem with being sane in the GOP is that the GOP has lately become relatively divorced from reality (see birtherism, climate change denialism, the Ryan plan, individual mandate, whatever).

There's a fifth category, but it is hypothetical:
5. White nights - Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush. These are people who GOP elites are trying to get to run because they think the candidates in categories 1-4 all suck.  Mitch Daniels is technically in this group right now, but I think it's fairly likely that he runs.

Anyway, that's it. We've got a good cross-section of personalities there, as well as an unusually strong crop of sane people who have a real shot at winning.  I may write profiles of some of the cooler cats later.