America won’t go bankrupt just because Barack Obama got re-elected...

... and if it does, it’ll be the consequence of very bipartisan efforts.

Here’s a little reality check for all the hysteria out there I’ve seen.

Democrats will continue to control the presidency and the US Senate.

Republicans will continue to control the US House, almost 60% of the governorships and, quite significantly, almost 65% of the state legislative chambers.

We’re not suddenly lurching toward a Democratic Party dictatorship. The two corporate controlled parties have a pretty good split on power amongst themselves. 

(And if you believe Republicans and Democrats are two different social issues-based factions of the same corporate-controlled party, then it’s been that way since Clinton’s reign. Obama’s re-election changes this in no way.)

To all the people who didn’t care about the debt/deficit during Bush’s reign and suddenly got all worked up once a Democrat entered the White House, here’s a little reminder of 8^th grade social studies.

All federal spending bills originate in the House of Representatives.

The president can submit a budget but it’s nothing more than a suggestion. No budgets get passed without the approval of the House. The House will remain comfortably controlled by... Republicans.

The national debt increased from nothing to a little under $5 trillion in the 220 or so years leading up to 1995. Though it started increasing consistently during the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

Since 1995, the national debt has increased by $12 trillion in a mere 18 years.

The Republicans have controlled the House for 14 of those 18 years. The Democrats have controlled the presidency for 10 of those 18 years.

So if you think the debt is a problem, it’s a problem that resulted out of that most sainted of actions: bipartisanship.

If the nation goes bankrupt, which it wouldn’t if we had rational military spending (another sensible idea blocked by bipartisanship), it won’t be because Pres. Obama and the Democrats did it by themselves.

Bits and pieces

DEATH THREATS IN THE NAME OF ‘LAW AND ORDER’
Albany (NY) County’s district attorney David Soares has admitted that he and his office has received death threats in response to his refusal to prosecute participants of the Occupy Albany movement for non-violent activities like violating curfew. From the infamous pepper spray police thug in Davis, CA to the violent crackdown against peaceful Occupy movements in places like Oakland and Denver to the above death threats, you’ve seen remarkably little violence from those protesting in the name of democracy with most of the violence being committed by people doing so in the name of ‘respect for law and order.’ Quite a different reality to the one intoned by the yapping heads.

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WHAT’S THE STRANGE COMBINATION OF LETTERS ON THAT STREET SIGN (B-I-K-E L-A-N-E) SIGNIFY?
Bravo to the Burlington, mayored by a Progressive Party mayor not coincidentally, for lowering the speed limiton the Vermont city’s streets. The Burlington Free Press reports that it was done to enhance the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians. Yet another reason Burlington is probably the coolest city in the northeastern US.

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YES, EVEN REFS ARE HUMAN TOO
Recent stories in the soccer world a very troubling, from the attempted suicide of two referees, to the apparent suicide of Wales national team manager Gary Speed to the suicide not that long ago of German goalkeeper Robert Enke. It should serve as a wake-up call reminding soccer fans that a little re-humanization is long past due. There is so much vitriol and nastiness in soccer fandom that it’s easy to forget that the targets are all human beings, with families and emotions. Passion should never be used as an excuse to act like barbarians.

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IN DISTRACTION WE TRUST
Economic inequality, unemployment, massive corporate welfare, institutionalized anti-democracy... the country is facing so many problems and what is the latest meaninglessness that Theocrats want us to freak out about? The president’s failure to mention God in his Thanksgiving address (only the spoken one; he did include it in the written one). You can just call it The Great Distraction.

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THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED... JUST NOT HERE
I saw this great graphic on Facebook, which showed the covers of TIME magazines editions for other parts of the world compared to its US edition. Gives you an insight into the editorial judgment [sic] of their vaunted professional editors.

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THE PROBLEM WITH COLLEGE STUDENTS: THEY HAVE TOO *LITTLE* DEBT
I was gobsmacked to read a newspaper article with this headline: "The other student loan problem: too little debt." Only a bank-obsessed culture would look at this issue and wonder if the problem is students with too *little* debt rather than taking a hard look at whether a university education, whether the cost of a fancy piece of paper is massively overpriced. Investigative journalism at its finest.

From the wisdom(s) of Twitter

Debt increase by presidents: Reagan 186%, Bush 54% Clinton 41% Bush II 72% Obama 23%. Source CBO. -@paulfreid

Unemployment is 8.2% in TX, 5.5% in Socialist Republic of VT. -@dankennedy_nu

Republicans are holding the economy hostage and thumbing their nose at the Constitution

I'm not a Democrat or a supporter of President Obama, but the Republicans' actions with regard to raising the debt ceiling is completely disgraceful, although that's probably an understatement.

To recap...

-Congressional Republicans are refusing to raise the debt ceiling to pay for expenditures Congress has already authorized as part of the regular budget. Given that 'Tea Partiers' yammer on incessantly about strict fidelity to the Constitution, perhaps they can explain how their demand that spending be approved by Congress twice squares with the 14th Amendment.

-The current federal fiscal year ends on September 30. This means that Republicans and their 'Tea Party' fringe are holding the economy hostage to their probably unconstitutional ideological posturing rather than waiting two months for budget negotiations, where such grandstanding belongs.

A piece from last year in The Washington Post sheds some more light on the widening inequality in the US.

From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income generated by the private economy. But since then, according to Saez and Piketty, virtually all of the benefits of economic growth have gone to households that, in today's terms, earn more than $110,000 a year.

Even within that top "decile," the distribution is remarkably skewed. By 2007, the top 1 percent of households took home 23 percent of the national income after a 15-year run in which they captured more than half - yes, you read that right, more than half - of the country's economic growth. As Tim Noah noted recently in a wonderful series of articles in Slate, that's the kind of income distribution you'd associate with a banana republic or a sub-Saharan kleptocracy, not the world's oldest democracy and wealthiest market economy.

It's worth noting that not only Republicans but Democrats, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have been complicit in crafting policies to this effect.