E Pluribus Unum

I think I told you about one of my favorite political cartoons from Tom Toles. It's somewhat dated, but only in the sense that the chickens have already come home to roost:

First panel: India, where people are sitting in cubicles designing software
Second panel: China, where people are in a factory manufacturing cars
Third panel: US, where a really fat guy is sitting before a bank loan officer saying, "I want refinance my mortgage so I can buy more stuff."

Now this:

The Iraq war, says economist Joseph Stiglitz, is “the first U.S. war financed entirely on credit.” When the war started, the Bush administration said it would cost no more than $60 billion. But the U.S. budget was already in deficit, so the administration had to borrow money to finance the invasion. About 40 percent of the money was borrowed from China and other international investors—the first time since the Revolutionary War that foreigners financed a U.S. war.

At the same time, the administration and Congress lowered taxes instead of raising them, as is customary in wartime The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low, which encouraged middle-class Americans to go on a consumption binge financed by credit cards and home-equity loans. Today, say Stiglitz and other economists, the bills for the country’s spending spree are starting to come due, in the form of higher prices, a weakened dollar, and lower living standards. “There’s no such thing as a free war,” Stiglitz said. “The U.S.—and the world—will be paying the price for decades to come.”

I've often said that the entire Republican orthodoxy has led us to a point in time where they want to reduce taxes to zero and borrow the entire cost of running the government -- from China. If we can hire private contractors to do it (e.g., Newt's proposal to hand it over to Fedex) so much the better -- then shareholders (the elites of The Ownership Society) will finally call all the shots. Never mind "one person, one vote." In The Ownership Society, it's "ten thousand dollars, ten thouand votes.

That's what I think this election should be about.

• Last night's results illustrate exactly why I find it not advisable to make predictions about margins of victory. The CW was that Hillary would win big in Indiana and win (or lose) a squeaker in North Carolina. So much for that.
• Winners and losers: Kos recaps the various polls and pollsters' projections.
• Bill from Portland Maine nails it: "The race is over. For the sake of unity, Hillary and Barack will be co-presidents. Blueprints for a second White House will be revealed shortly and we'll need another Air Force One plus a backup. Cheney insists he'll remain vice president because he now transcends the reach of the United States government."
• Speaking of right-wing nutjobs, was Rush Limbaugh the one person most responsible for Hillary's victory in Indiana?
• And speaking of Hillary, she has loaned her campaign over $11 million so far. That equals the sum total of all her royalties from the books she has written. And is it true that (as a condition of her dropping out) she is negotiating with Obama's campaign to pay off that debt?

UPDATE: Sorry -- couldn't resist one last sod:

• Ana Marie: [O]n this morning's HRC conference call, Geoff Garin had this spin regarding the campaign's North Carolina 14 point loss: "We lost the white electorate in Virginia, started even in North Carolina among the white electorate just two weeks ago, and ended [with] a very significant win of 24 points among those voters." He called this shift -- you know, the white people deciding to vote for the white person -- "progress." Right. Now, if only there was a way to make white votes count for more than the black ones...

Ouch.