The Republican family way

(David Horsey)

The new McCarthyism in America

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"We've tried pelting Muslims with metal crosses while they pray. Or, engaging them in reasoned discussion." Heh, heh. Yeah, how stupid is that?

But not, as it turns out, nearly as stupid as what comes next. No, whenever you think these lunatics have hit rock-bottom, inevitably they sink even lower.

And it's not just a mob of dim bulbs on a street corner. No, we've actually got a new McCarthyism in the U.S. House of Representatives, courtesy of Rep. Peter King. Jeebus, didn't we learn enough from the first McCarthy era?

(Peter King's support for IRA terrorists is just icing on the cake. Yeah, of course he's a hypocrite. All of these people are. But his McCarthyism would be shameful even without that. Every American should feel deeply embarrassed by his antics.)

(David Fitzsimmons)

But ignorance, fear, and bigotry never go out of style, I guess. And although unions make a great GOP scapegoat, I suppose they just aren't scary enough for effective fear-mongering.

And maybe it's a matter of nostalgia, too. I know the right-wing has really missed the Commie menace. No doubt it feels comforting to have someone new to hate and fear.

As an atheist, I hardly admire Islam. But that's not the point. The point is freedom - freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association. The point is understanding that we're a diverse nation and accepting that not everyone has to think and believe and look exactly as I do.

Seeing these Christian lunatics makes me even prouder to be an atheist. I'm reminded of Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great:

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head.

Weak Republican contenders

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Indecision 2012 - Indecision Edition - Reagan OS 911
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This is the follow-up to Jon's opening segment about weak Republican contenders to the 2012 presidential contest. But "weak" is hardly strong enough. Yeah, George W. Bush was a light-weight, but we really hadn't seen anything yet.

At any rate, I thought the birther conundrum here was a good one. But I guess I sympathize with Reagan OS 911. The whole existence of "birthers" tends to blow my mind.

Keeping them honest

(The Far Left Side)

QOTD: The contribution scam

Quote of the Day:

David Cay Johnston has a terrific piece up about the nonsense of comparing government workers to private-sector counterparts by claiming that the government pays for more of their benefits. As he says,

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

How can that be? Because the “contributions” consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services. ...

The labor agreements show that the pension plan money is part of the total negotiated compensation. The key phrase, in those agreements I read, is: “The Employer shall contribute on behalf of the employee.” This shows that this is just divvying up the total compensation package, so much for cash wages, so much for paid vacations, so much for retirement, etc.

So the right question — the only question — is whether government workers are getting an overall good deal compared with private-sector workers. Why, then, are we hearing so much about the meaningless contribution comparison?

The answer is simple: it’s because doing the comparison right doesn’t yield the desired answer. The new report by the Times gets the same answer as other studies: low-paid government workers do a bit better than their private-sector counterparts, but others if anything do worse.

Luo and Cooper report this as a “mixed answer” — but in terms of the political debate, it’s a body blow to the union-bashers, whose whole position is that public-sector workers are welfare queens in Cadillacs. They need to show outrageous overpayment, not rough equivalence at best.

And so they turn to a meaningless comparison that, to the unwary, sounds as if it supports their case.

Yes, some public-sector workers are overpaid. So are some private-sector workers. Doesn’t anyone read Dilbert? But the whole idea that union excesses are at the core of state and local fiscal problems is false, and only deliberate obfuscation keeps that from being obvious. - Paul Krugman

Seduced by the Templeton Prize

(Jesus & Mo)

We wouldn't want class warfare, would we?

(David Horsey)

QOTD: Women, it's all your fault

Quote of the Day:

Several readers have noticed that lately we've had a plague of whiny, entitled, childish Men's Rights Activists in the comments. They're usually clueless and petty and annoying…and now I've found out why. And the source of my information is unimpeachable: it's Whirled Nut Daily.

According to Kay Hymowitz, whose new book, "Manning Up," was featured prominently in the Wall Street Journal in February, "legions of frustrated young women" are dealing with a new crisis in America: modern men refuse to grow up.

It appears the 21st-century male is living a kind of extended adolescence. In the past, it was assumed men would receive a high-school diploma or college degree, then get married and settle down to the responsibilities of work and family life. Today, young men "hang out in a novel sort of limbo," keeping adulthood at a distance as they enjoy a lifestyle that demands few, if any, obligations.

Exactly! Well, not all men…but the spoiled ones who demand that everyone respect their privileges and pay attention to their problems, which are the only problems of any importance, certainly are infantile. And they're always turning around and blaming their shortcomings on someone else, especially the women.

Of course, since it is WND, you know exactly where it is going.

The question is why — and how — did this happen? And the answer is simple: feminism.

Why have some men turned into whiny bitches who blame women for everything? Easy. Blame the women. - PZ Myers

Television needs more warnings like this

(Savage Chickens)

The very scary Mike Huckabee

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Huckabee didn't misspeak. He knew he was lying. But when only 28% of Republicans are smart enough to accept that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii - and that Hawaii is actually an American state - he knows what kind of "misstatements" will do him the most good.

Well, Huckabee grew up in Arkansas - and far longer than just four years as a young child, too - so he clearly doesn't have the same worldview as you and I. Apparently, in Arkansas, lying is OK if it helps to advance your religious beliefs or political ambition. And if you're lying about a black man, so much the better!

Hmm,... I wonder what Huckabee thinks our view of the Mau Mau Revolution should be. Yeah, as Colbert points out, our view is probably "What is the Mau Mau Revolution"? But if you do know about it, how does your view differ significantly from Kenya's? Or even from Great Britain's, these days?

After all, what about all these Tea Partiers celebrating our own revolt from the English crown? Is Huckabee implying that was wrong, too? Or is it different for white people?

Yes, the Mau Mau Revolution was viciously brutal, with truly disgusting behavior on both sides. For the most part, America's Revolution was probably spared such excesses. But why does Huckabee think we Americans would - or should - automatically take Britain's side in a war for independence? (Obviously, Huckabee is telling the GOP base what they want to hear, that we white people need to stick together.)

Re. Natalie Portman, I doubt if she needs my defense. And although I could point out that she's engaged to be married, I really don't understand how any of that is Huckabee's business. Like most of these religious nuts, he needs to worry about running his own life, not everyone else's.

You know, Huckabee scares me more than most Republicans - and they all scare me. He's just as loony as the rest of them, but he's also personable. He can sound reasonable when he wants to. Obviously, he wanted to sound reasonable when he was a guest of Stephen Colbert. But it's equally obvious that he can be just as batshit crazy as it takes to appeal to the GOP base.

As president, all of these Republican candidates would be equally bad, I suspect. That's because they'd have to keep the GOP base happy, no matter what. (And any Republican would have to abandon sane positions, if he actually had any, just to get nominated in the first place.) But Huckabee would probably find it easier than most to pretend reasonableness.

He seems to be very good at pretending. Well, I suppose, as a preacher as well as a politician, he's had a lot of experience telling people what they want to hear.

Searching for the Wisconsin 14

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Funny, huh? Check out the tape residue crisis, too, which contains the latest example of politically-motivated "journalism" from Fox "News." Incompetence or mendacity? You decide.

Molly Lewis serenades Stephen Fry

QOTD: Utterly at odds with reality

Quote of the Day:

House Republicans have been describing their $61 billion in cuts to the domestic discretionary budget a down payment, merely a start, and so on. But then you see that they've cut even programs like border security, which they see as utterly vital:

For instance, the bill would cut at least $272 million in border security and immigration enforcement, including fencing and surveillance technology. A Democratic analysis shows this would scale back the number of agents patrolling the Mexican border from 21,370 to 20,500.

A couple points here. First, Republicans almost surely made cuts like this (and others to things like cancer research) in the assumption they wouldn't come to pass. Democrats control the Senate and White House, there will be negotiations, so Republicans can make cuts they don't want to actually take place and still retain support from their base.

But second, this shows again how utterly at odds with reality the conservative view of the budget is. There just is not a lot of waste to be found. Republicans like to say they've just made a first step, but if the first step means weakening the government function they've been demanding to strengthen, then you have to wonder how many other steps there could be.

Most of what government does is either necessary, popular, or both. Now, people don't understand that -- they think there are huge savings in foreign aid, welfare, and useless bureaucracy. Republicans can win power by appealing to popular misunderstandings of the budget, but actually implementing a program on the basis of a misunderstanding of reality is quite hard. - Jonathan Chait

Public enemy #1

(Jim Morin)

(Tony Auth)

(John de Rosier)

(Stuart Carlson)

QOTD: Small is beautiful

Quote of the Day:

Dean Baker points us to Feyrer and Sacerdote, who use cross-state variation in stimulus spending per capita to estimate the employment effects of the stimulus. They find a clear positive effect: states that got more money per person did better on jobs. And as Baker points out, the national effects must have been larger, since some money spent in New Jersey presumably creates jobs in New York and vice versa.

One thing I might point out, by the way, is that this is something of a “Well, duh” result. Of course more federal spending in a given state or county creates more jobs. And the burden of proof should always have been on stimulus critics to explain why this doesn’t mean that stimulus spending creates jobs at the national level too. In normal times you can argue that the positive job effect of higher spending is washed out by higher interest rates — that fiscal expansion will be offset by contraction on the part of the Fed. But with interest rates up against the zero lower bound, that argument doesn’t apply.

Anyway, there’s something else that’s interesting about the Feyrer-Sacerdote paper. In doing their analysis, they looked for “instruments” on stimulus spending. Instrumental variables is a statistical technique that you use to avoid having your results contaminated by reverse causation — say, if stimulus funds were directed to states with especially severe unemployment problems, you might find a spurious negative correlation between stimulus and unemployment. What you need to get around this is some variable that is correlated with stimulus but not affected by the job changes; in effect, you use this other variable to create a predicted stimulus level, then look at how employment is affected by the predicted level, not the actual level. If I’ve just lost you, never mind.

The point is that the best instrument Feyrer-Sacerdote found was population: low population states got a lot more stimulus per capita. As they say, this could be because they have a lot of roads per capita, or it could be because they’re rotten boroughs, with two senators even if they have no people. ...

And this has an interesting implication. If Feyrer and Sacerdote are right, people in the Dakotas, Nebraska and so on are congratulating themselves on their good employment performance, a result of their rock-ribbed self-reliance — when what actually happened is that they got themselves an outsized share of the very stimulus they denounce. - Paul Krugman

A threat to America's supply

(Mike Thompson)

Some of these post-it notes are from the 1970s. Yes, we've known what was going to happen for at least that long. But we haven't been smart enough to actually do anything about it.

And as far as I can tell, we're still not that smart. In fact, we seem to be getting dumber by the day.

Obama's approval rating higher in Nebraska?

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting post about Barack Obama's approval ratings - particularly interesting for me, living here in Nebraska.

Nebraska is a very red state, and Obama received less than 42% of the vote here in 2008. (But note that he did win one of our three electoral college votes. Since then, Republicans have been working hard to change us into a "winner take all" state.)

Now, however, according to a Gallup poll, Obama's approval rating in Nebraska is almost 45% - slightly more than 3% higher than his percentage of the vote two years ago.

And keep in mind that 2008 was an election where, after the disastrous Bush years, Republicans were discouraged and Democrats enthusiastic - which definitely helped Obama in the presidential vote, even in a state like Nebraska.

Of course, Obama isn't going to win Nebraska in 2012. We're a very Republican state. But I still think this is interesting. According to that poll, Obama's approval rating has increased in Nebraska more than in any other state except Mississippi.

On the one hand, I'd expect this, since fearful white voters should become more comfortable with a black president once they get used to him. And it certainly should be obvious by now that Obama isn't the leftist his opponents tried to make him out to be. Indeed, he's very much a moderate.

But on the other hand, as the evidence has consistently demonstrated his middle-of-the-road approach, the right-wing has just become more and more hysterical. Among Republicans, those laughably ridiculous beliefs that Obama is a Muslim and that he wasn't born in America have actually increased.

So how can we explain this? Well, it might be that, as the GOP has become more and more extreme, more... sane conservatives have decided to become Independents. They're still likely to vote Republican in the general election, no doubt, but they may not be counted as Republicans in polls.

That's one possibility. But I really don't know. It's interesting, though, don't you think?

PS. One big problem with these polls is that they don't indicate why people don't approve of a political figure. I know that a lot of Democrats are unhappy with Obama because he's been too conservative for them. Ironically, they probably bought into Republican claims about how liberal Obama was, which just wasn't - and isn't - the truth.

For myself, I'm unhappy with Obama primarily for political reasons. He's done a lot of good things, but all too often, he's adopted Republican rhetoric (even when it's demonstrably wrong). And he's bent over backward to "compromise" - often unilaterally, which is why I use the quotes - with the GOP, while reserving his harshest criticisms for his own supporters!

For the past two years, Obama has had the best bully pulpit in the world, but he hasn't used it to communicate our side of things. I'm certainly not against compromise, but to do that effectively - rather than just surrendering everything to your opponents - you have to start with a strong argument for your own position. You need to compromise from a position of strength, not weakness.

For a guy who seemed to be such a skilled politician in 2008, someone who raised the enthusiasm level in the Democratic Party to such heights, he's proved to be a terrible politician once in office. He's done many good things as president, but while doing them, he's left Democrats discouraged and disheartened.

In a policy sense, Barack Obama has been fine - only mildly disappointing, at most. But in a political sense, he's been a disaster. Only two years after the worst presidential administration in U.S. history, which ended in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression - and with pundits questioning whether the GOP could even survive as a major political party in America - Republicans are riding high again.

And in those same two years, with the stock market booming, after a Democratic president skillfully halted an economic collapse that looked to have no bottom when he took office, Democrats have gone from wild enthusiasm to gloom and despair. It's just incredible, isn't it? If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't have believed it.

Yes, unemployment is still sky-high. But Obama's leadership kept us from another Great Depression. When he took office, we were seriously worried about the complete collapse of the U.S. economy. After that kind of success, he should be the most popular president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. But this great candidate turned into a terrible politician once in office.

At any rate, when you look at Barack Obama's approval ratings, you've got to realize that some of that disapproval comes from the left, not the right. I don't know how much of it,... but if he were a better politician, a better communicator, his ratings wouldn't have dropped at all.

After all, by any objective measure, he took office in one of the worst situations in history for a new president (and one of the most dangerous situations for America). Now, just two years later, we're in far better shape than we were then. I wouldn't have believed, back in 2008, that candidate Barack Obama wouldn't be able to take a winning position like that and capitalize on it.

QOTD: Romney death watch

Quote of the Day:

John Podhoretz agrees with me:

The one-term Massachusetts governor is speaking at CPAC right now. He’s offering lots of good applause lines. Sounding very right-wing. Mitt Romney cannot be the Republican nominee for president and he cannot be president. He is the author, in his Massachusetts health-care program, of the individual mandate that is the heart and soul of ObamaCare.

If he runs, and he will, his origination of this policy will give his opponents in the primaries a stick so large to beat him with that no amount of clever one-liners purchased from high-paid freelance political speechwriters and joke writers will be able to mitigate the damage. And that’s to say nothing of Obama talking throughout 2012 about how he doesn’t understand what the Republicans are complaining about — one of their lead candidates agrees with him!

I know Romney thinks he can get away with saying there’s a difference between an individual mandate at the state level and one at the federal level, and that might technically be true, but it’s not true when it comes to the conceptual origins of the policy. Plus, it’s sophistry.

To be completely honest, I can’t understand why on earth he is even bothering to run. This isn’t an albatross. It’s a two-ton weight chained to his torso, and he’s not Houdini.

Obviously I agree. However -- I wish Podhoretz would think through the implications of what he's saying. What I think is that Romney will lose because the Republican Party is insane. Romney pushed through a perfectly sensible and successful moderate reform policy as governor. He had essentially zero problems with conservatives on account of this policy in 2008. National Review endorsed him. Conservatives liked him, and to the extent they had questions, they concerned social issues.

Now, however, the GOP has decided that Romney's health care plan is not only not fine, it's the End of Freedom and an unconstitutional assault on the core of American freedom. If you believe that the GOP will reject him for this reason, as Podhoretz and I do, then what's your explanation for what happened between the 2008 campaign and now? Did the entire Republican Party simply overlook the massive freedom-destroying properties of a mandate-subsidize-regulate health care reform that were being smuggled into their midst without objection? I'd like to see Podhoretz explain what he thinks happened here. - Jonathan Chait

Freedom of idiocy

(John Cole)

Yes, this is indeed a no-brainer. But please keep in mind that, although we have the freedom to be idiotic, that doesn't mean we must be idiotic in order to be free.

(Jim Morin)

Hitler finds out about prank call to Walker

Funny, huh? But I don't know if it will stay on YouTube for long, since I believe that all these Hitler parodies get removed for copyright infringement.

It's stupid, frankly, because this sort of thing doesn't harm anyone's property rights. If anything, it just gives the movie more publicity. But corporations rarely have a sense of humor.

Enjoy this while you can.