A World Cup Update & Waiting for Default

As we wait for the United States to default on its debt for the first time in its history in an incredible display of arrogance, extremism, and dysfunction, here's an update on an area of international interest to keep our mind off the coming debacle.  I'm talking, of course, about the 2014 World Cup qualifiers.  The first rounds in all regions are now complete and twenty one sides have qualified.  The remaining eleven slots will be filled in a series of home-and-home playoffs. 

Here are the teams that have already qualified for the 2014 World Cup Tournament:

- Graphic is from FIFA website

The remaining tournament teams will be selected by November 19 after a series of home and home playoffs. This is what it looks like:

Intercontinental playoff (SA-Asia): Uruguay vs. Jordan

Intercontinental playoff (NA,CA, Caribbean - Oceania): Mexico vs. New Zealand

Africa has completed Round 1 of its qualifiers.  The following 10 African teams are vying for the 5 slots allotted to the continent: Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Tunisia, Algeria, Ethiopia, Senegal and Egypt.

Europe has completed Round 1 of its qualifiers. Nine teams have qualified. The eight best second-place teams from Round 1 will compete for the remaining 4 tournament slots: Greece, Portugal, Ukraine, Sweden, Romania, Iceland, Croatia, and France.

Default

Hopefully, the USA will come off looking better in the tournament than we do in the coming default.  The Party of Tea is an embarrassment to this nation and the effects of their actions, should the default occur, will affect other countries as well as our own.  A New York Times article from today describes the consternation of the rest of the world well: A common question crossing continents remains quite simple: The Americans aren’t really that unreasonable and self-destructive, are they?   'It just goes to show that it’s not only Greece that has irresponsible and shortsighted politicians,” said Ioanna Kalavryti, 34, a teacher in Athens. 'We’ve been held hostage by our reckless politicians, and the interests they serve, for more than three years now. I guess our American friends are getting a taste of the same medicine.'

Alternate Reality Show

Super Tuesday in this election cycle is a lot less super than in previous years.  By the time the March 6 votes are counted, only about a third of the delegates to the Republican nominating convention will have been determined.  That unfortunately means that we will have to endure several more months of the Republican alternate reality show that their Presidential primary has become.  We'll have to listen to more misinformation about Obama and his policies, more attacks against him, and more pandering to the right wing nutters that have taken over the party.  The only good thing is that their backers will be pouring a lot more money into the remaining primaries and theoretically that should take something away from what they have to spend on the general election.  I say theoretically because Citizens United has unleashed a huge amount of corporate and  SuperPac cash. 

Of the various egregious comments made by the contenders (and former and wannabe contenders), perhaps the two most absurd were by Rick Santorum.  The first was at a Tea Party rally in Columbus Ohio.  Santorum said the “president’s agenda” is “not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job...It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology.  Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.”  Obama deputy press secretary Ben LaBolt rightly referred to the comments as the “latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness, searing pessimism and negativity." 

If Rick Santorum would read his Bible more carefully, he'd see that concern for the poor is present in both the Old and New Testament.  The Reverend Jim Wallis tells a story about some theology students who snipped out all sections of the Bible that dealt with the poor and social justice. The result looked like a large pile of thinly-sliced Swiss cheese. Health care, living wages, the environment, and eradication of poverty are religious as well as political issues.  I'm not sure Santorum would get the same result if he cut out the passages dealing with contraception.

The next came when he criticized Obama's apology for the burning of the Quran at the American base north of Kabul, saying that it "showed weakness."  Santorum evidently thought that since the burning may not have been deliberate, no apology was necessary.  Oh, and when you accidentally destroy something of value, you have no need to apologize?  Santorum has a profound insensitivity and misunderstanding of the impact of these actions.  But then again. former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey had then Senator Santorum pegged when Santorum first came to the Senate.  "Santorum, that's Latin for asshole," Kerrey quipped. 

In both instances, Santorum's comments played to the Tea Party wing whose members show up in force in the Republican primaries.  This small fraction being almost uniformly old and white, they are not in any way indicative of the general population of the United States.  Timothy Egan said it well in a February 16 New York Times Op-Ed piece.  "...we know an election of great significance is happening on the Republican side. But it’s occurring in a different place, guided by talk-radio extremists and religious zealots, with only a vague resemblance to the states where it has taken place. From this small world have emerged a host of nutty, retrograde positions, unpopular with the vast American majority."  Amen.

The Year Nothing Got Done

The first full year of the 112th Congress was epically dysfunctional, thanks to the ideological intransigence of the Republicans in both houses.  This poor performance has scholars going back to pre Civil War times to find such incompetence and gridlock.  Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute says that in modern history, "there have been battles, delays, brinksmanship - but nothing quite like this."  At a time when bold action was needed to help the country recover from the Great Recession and create jobs, very little useful legislation was passed.  The blame is squarely on the Republicans, whose primary goal since Obama's election has been to deny him a second term. 

The Tea Party extremists may have overplayed their hand by fighting the payroll tax cut compromise until the eleventh hour.  Even other Republicans told them to get with the program and stop being so stupid.  This was a tax break, for goodness' sake.  Republicans may be hoping that by the time of the 2012 elections, voters will have forgotten what caused the mess in the first place (after all the Recession was already in full swing in 2008 after the deregulation fiasco, the unjustified wars, and the Bush tax cuts) and who stood in the way of providing the necessary stimulus to create jobs and recover from the recession.  Combined with the far-reaching Republican disenfranchisement efforts and the notable lack of enthusiasm among young voters, Obama may just be a one-term President as fervently wished by Republicans. 

While Obama holds a significant advantage over Romney among the "millenials", the all-important voter turnout depends primarily on enthusiasm.  It's hard to be enthusiastic when you are loaded with student debt and out of work.  But it would be a mistake for young voters and the OWS people to stay away from the polls this November.  If you think the situation is bad now, just think what it would be like with Republicans in control of all three branches of government.  So for a New Year's resolution, let's all go out and vote.  Throw the Republicans out of Congress and hold onto the Presidency.  Who knows?  A President with some balls, to use Matt Damon's phrase, and a Congress that actually could accomplish something might make for a good 2013. 

In the meantime, Happy New Year and hang in there in 2012.  It may not be much better than 2011 but it cannot be much worse.

The Tea Party Recession

How to create a double-dip recession:

1.  Manufacture a totally false and unnecessary crisis by threatening to default on the US debt unless your demands are met.  This will create instability and uncertainty in global markets, threatening retirement funds, pension plans, and 401k accounts as well as large stock-holders.
2.  As part of the solution, demand that the government take money out of the economy while unemployment is at high levels.  This will ensure that job creation will be minimal, the recession will continue, and recovery will be slow.  Without jobs, there is no increase in consumer demand and thus no recovery.
3. As part of the solution, demand that no new taxes be raised even on the wealthiest individuals and the most profitable of corporations.  This will ensure that no possible solution to the deficit will ever exist since cuts alone cannot solve it.
4.  Blame it on President Obama.  Keep lying about the cause of this recession until people forget that it was your blackmailing and discredited policies that led to the current mess.

It's especially important that you succeed with item 4.  You can count on about 30% of the American public to be ideologically blind enough, willfully ignorant, fearful, hateful, or racist enough to believe you without any question.  And if you can suppress the vote enough in the 2012 elections, you can control Congress and the Presidency in 2013.

Was this economic chaos the Tea-Party plan all along?  After all, the aim of the extremist ideologues that dominate current Republican Party "thinking" is, in the words of Grover Norquist, "to reduce [government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."  Threatening to default on  the country's debt, getting its credit rating reduced, and hamstringing its ability to deal with the jobs crisis go a long, long way to accomplish this.