THIS MODERN WORLD

Josh Marshall is right when he says that John McCain’s economic plan is hilarious. Apparently Maverick thinks he can balance the budget with all the savings we’ll reap from winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here’s a sneak peek at his economic advisors coming up with their budget plan :

Seriously though, there’s a few problems with McCain’s miraculous budget plan. First, it doesn’t contain any numbers, just wishful thinking. I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that you’re going to need to do some math at some point.

Second, we can’t afford the wars now. Paying for the occupation of two countries full of people who hate us is actually causing a lot of the budget problems that McCain is claiming to solve. If things get remarkably better under a McCain administration, we’d still going to be spiraling even deeper into debt to finance his grand plans for a North Korea-style permanent military presence. Besides, even if he were to end the war and pull all of our troops out of both countries, there’s a big difference between promising to stop digging a hole and actually having a plan to fill it back in.

Finally, if John McCain’s plan to win the wars is related to the Bush policy he’s spent the last year and a half cheerleading, then it’ll just make our budget problems worse. We’re in a “surge”, remember? All those extra troops cost a lot of money, so if John McCain’s bluster about the surge working can be taken at face value, then the only way to win the war is send more troops or, to convert this into the McCain budget plan, the only way for us to save money is to spend a lot more of it.

I highly recommend David Sirota’s new book The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. Many progressive political books, and just about all conservative political books, are crap and not worth the paper they’re printed on. That’s because politics is as simple as tic tac toe, and there’s never anything new to say about it. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adam in 1813,

To me then it appears that there have been differences of opinion, and party differences, from the establishment of governments to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our country, that these will continue through all future times…everyone takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few…nothing new can be added by you or me to what has been said by others, and will be said in every age.

But what can be done is serious, high quality reporting on what exactly is happening in the times we’re living in. Almost no one ever tries this because it’s hard work. But Sirota does in The Uprising—it’s full of useful and encouraging information about what regular people are doing all over the country to deal with the extremely serious problems we face.

This week Sirota is at TPM Cafe to talk about it. Check it out.

The wisdom of Glenn Beck, here.

This was a surprise?

Bryan Carisone, a heating and air-conditioning contractor in Raritan, N.J., “absolutely loves” his new GMC Denali XL, an extra-large sport utility vehicle with televisions built into the leather seats. But in June, one week after he bought it, he pulled into a station on a near-empty tank and watched the total climb higher and higher — to $109.

“It just about killed me,” Mr. Carisone said.

At the beginning of June, oil was selling for $138 a barrel. Yet at some point during that month, Mr. Carisone bought an “extra large” SUV, and was then shocked to discover how much it cost to fill the tank.

Wow. Just, wow.

… my wife points out that the name of the SUV is an anagram for “denial”…

On the field before the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball plans to assemble the largest gathering of Hall of Fame players in baseball history. And as fans salute their heroes, the former players will join the crowd in saluting the American flag — one that is roughly 75 feet by 150 feet, as long as a 15-story building is tall, spread horizontally over the Yankee Stadium turf.

Hundreds of volunteers are needed to unfurl and hold an enormous flag. Handlers often shake their arms, creating a ripple effect.

That is a relatively small flag by big-event standards in American sports these days. But it will signal the latest can’t-miss blend of sports and patriotism, a combination increasingly presenting itself through gigantic American flags, unfurled by dozens or hundreds of people in an attempt to elicit a sense of awe and nationalism in the surrounding crowd.

* * *

“People go ape when they see it,” said Jim Alexander, a retired Coast Guard commander who runs Superflag, the company that basically invented the industry and once held the world record for the largest flag, which temporarily hung on the Hoover Dam. It was 255 by 505 feet and has been surpassed by a flag in Israel that measures 2,165 by 330 feet. “It’s a feeling. It’s a feeling that takes over a whole stadium. If anyone in the stands opened their mouth and objected, there would be hell to pay.”

Story.