Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Wow. Just when you thought Palin couldn't get any more ridiculous, she's now endorsing the birther bullshit and saying she thinks the McCain campaign should have gone after it. In an interview with Rusty Humphries, she made those statements. The Worldnutdaily breathlessly reports it, of course.
"Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?" Palin was asked in an interview on the Rusty Humphries national radio show."I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers," she replied.
Humphries asked: "Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?"
"I think it's a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records - all of that is fair game," Palin said. "The McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area."
She then tried to back off those statements on her Facebook page, saying that she only meant that people have a right to ask about the issue. Which is absurd, of course.
And then there's this bizarre claim:
Palin also addressed her campaign's treatment of Obama's radical associates, such as former pastor Jeremiah Wright and unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers."McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area," she said. "We didn't call
out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don't think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we're seeing manifest in the administration."
Apparently Palin has early onset alzheimer's disease and has forgotten that she herself accused Obama literally hundreds of times of "palling around with terrorists."
Politics
Comments
As Andrew Sullivan likes to point out, this is just another lie by the congenital liar, Sarah Palin.
Posted by: SLC | December 7, 2009 9:10 AM
Except that past associations and past voting records are real, whereas the birther conspiracy is a bunch of make-believe nonsense.
But I guess if by "just like" she means "absolutely nothing like", which wouldn't be too far removed from typical religious right speak, she may have a point.
Posted by: Wes | December 7, 2009 9:25 AM
Yes, they should have gone birther ... except, irony of ironies, of the two major candidates, it was John McCain who was not born in the United States. That would have worked just ... swell.
Posted by: Zippy the Pinhead | December 7, 2009 9:32 AM
While the McCain campaign camp did misrepresent Mr. Obama's record during the campaign, there was some discord within the camp that they did not go nearly far enough regarding Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres. I think this is the issue which Ms. Palin is referring to and in that regard, she is correct that such a controversy existed and their were limits put on the campaign more modest than what Ms. Palin preferred.
Certainly Sen. McCain lost credibility with independents and moderates by not strongly speaking out against all the lies being spread by conservatives. Mr. Obama did appear to win on the issue of go/no-go on mudslinging with his 'hands-off' admonition to the Left regarding Palin's family; but unlike the Bush/Rove link to Kerry's swift-boating, the Right mostly carried their polluted water without direct overt or covert support from McCain.
In the end I think McCain's feeble somewhat defective attempts to remain classy gained him no voters while Mr. Obama's consistently held position on both staying classy and focusing on issues was a net victory to Mr. Obama in terms of both partisan turn-out and winning the middle.
What this also indicates is that Ms. Palin's consistently defective judgment is revealed once again. Certainly the common wisdom is that there is some efficacy in slinging mud; however given the conditions on the ground in 2008, those conditions predicated an advantage to the candidate that stuck with the country's interests and issues rather than trashing his opponent.
Ms. Palin grossly misconstrues the passion of a few voters with the support of many voters.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 9:35 AM
Of course there's no mention of how she would have made the McCain/Palin campaign better by offering solutions to the economic problem, the Iraq/Afghanistan war, health care, the job market, or any of the other myriad of problems we face. It's more of the Republican m.o. that "we didn't sling enough mud".
Posted by: MartyM | December 7, 2009 9:39 AM
Then there's that inconvenient little bit about the Alaska Independence Party.
Posted by: Greg W | December 7, 2009 9:55 AM
Excuse me, but the MSM repeatedly brought up Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers during the campaign!
On birth certificates, Palin still has not produced Trig's and that is keeping the "Trig-birther" conspiracy alive.
See http://breepalin.blogspot.com/2009/10/sarah-palins-special-delivery-or-who.html
I also wonder.
Posted by: Rodney | December 7, 2009 9:58 AM
If I recall, the birther movement didn't really get popular until after Obama was elected. But since McCain absolutely refused to go anti-Muslim, there is no chance he would have gone birther either. Kinda makes you think. Would McCain have won if he had embraced every single crazy-ass conspiracy? Or would he have won if he had gone sensible moderate?
Posted by: Brandon | December 7, 2009 10:06 AM
From the language she uses, it sounds like she doesn't fully understand the question. More likely, she doesn't understand the implications of the question. I believe she thinks that the 'controversy' (used as lightly as possible) is over the place of his birth, not over his eligibility. It sounds like she is ignorant of the idea that Obama is ineligible to be president. (idiotic, but the heart of the birther's assertions)
Posted by: nickcan | December 7, 2009 10:35 AM
She doesn't even realize that she, along with wingut nonsense like this, is a major reason that McCain lost in the first place. He should have done much less of this stuff, rather than more. The base would have voted for McCain no matter what, so it would have been counter-productive to cater to them even more. By going on with this birther nonsense, they would have alienated the swing voters even further than they already did with Palin's mudslinging.
Posted by: catgirl | December 7, 2009 10:47 AM
Brandon @ 8:
I don't think he could have won no matter what he did. It was Mr. Obama's (or even Hillary Clinton's) to lose given two realities:
1) Eight years of failures by the Republican party prevented any establishment Republican from winning except for perhaps a successful governor. I thought Romney could be that guy but he took the very route Ms. Palin advcoated, out-crazy even your Republican opponents rather than market yourself as a non-partisan successful executive.
2) The current platforms held most dearly by the Republican party have been proven to both abject failures and in no relevant to the issues we face today. They misconstrue Reagan's presidency as a set of immutable talking points rather than somewhat fluid principles relevant to the times their being applied, i.e., they've rejected Burke.
This last one was on ample display in Sen. McCain's interview on Meet the Press yesterda. When asked if he could have supported some government intervention in the recession he claimed only if it involved tax cuts or making it easier for small businesses to compete.
The empirical results we are experiencing now is that the tax cuts in the stimulus package were abject failures relative to the other stimulus items that have been successful (a ratio of about .5:1 for tax cuts relative to about $1.6:1 for infrastructre spending. These were results discovered by one of McCain's 2008 campaign advisors, economist Mark Zandi of Moody's who was an influential economic voice advocating for stimulus (which illuminates how Republicans have distanced themselves even from their own functional experts).
In addition, all the economists I follow, which represents the entire spectrum of sane economists, agree that we need to raise taxes -they merely dispute how taxes should be applied.
Lastly, a hugely optimal method for helping small businesses would be to support a strong public option for health insurance paid for by citizens, not businesses. This would get health care costs and their administration off the backs of employers. McCain of course stands against such, in fact he wanted to tax employer-funded health insurance.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 10:59 AM
Just when WND had finally moved the birther nonsense off the main page, Palin speaks. Now its back. Damn shame. Of course Taitz was just smacked again by Judge Carter when she tried to get him to reconsider so maybe ORLY would have brought it back to page one regardless of Palin's moronic musings.
Posted by: MikeMa | December 7, 2009 11:13 AM
MikeMa:
Any word from TeamOrly on whether she's talked to Mags Stewart about doin' time in stir? I'm assuming she's still refusing to pay that fine.
Posted by: democommie | December 7, 2009 11:36 AM
If I recall, the birther movement didn't really get popular until after Obama was elected.
This is more or less true. "Birther" wasn't coined until after the election. Orly Taitz didn't appear until after the election. Joseph Farah didn't write his first column about Obama's birth certificate until after the election. And WND's coverage of the entire birth certificate issue was remarkably scarce until mid-October 2008 (an average of like one article every three weeks, few of which actually sided with the denialists). After the election, WND's 'reporting' on Birtherism went up roughly ninefold.
Posted by: Loren | December 7, 2009 11:46 AM
I suspect much of the birtherism stems from their bitterness over Obama's victory. No doubt many of them thought that there was no way Obama could beat McCain and when the unthinkable happened, they latched on to anything that they believed could be the cause. Hence ACORN stealing the election and/or the "elites" conspiring to put a puppet, a usurper, a fifth-columnist into power by duping the ignorant masses. Birtherism gives them something a little more concrete to cling on to than vague accusations of conspiracy in the sense that they believe the answer to Obama's crimes lies in a vault somewhere in Hawaii.
Posted by: tacitus | December 7, 2009 11:55 AM
We're all overinterpreting Palin. She's really just a self-serving bullshitter -- no particular interest in truth, and no deep calculation going on beyond what she thinks might serve her best interest at the moment. It's not meaningful to talk about what she "endorses" with this or that statement -- her statements don't reflect any real positions, aside from general agreeableness to whichever right-wing hack she's talking to at the moment. Her political and social awareness is limited to a general idea that some people are on her side and some aren't, and that it's good to refresh and propagate positive associations among those who she perceives are. There's literally nothing more going on than that.
Posted by: JRQ | December 7, 2009 12:24 PM
Michael Heath: Kudos to you. If the Republican party were made up of conservatives like yourself, America would be a far, far better place.
Posted by: xebecs | December 7, 2009 12:25 PM
democommie @13,
My 'Orly Taitz News Feed' has been sadly silent on her possible jail time for failing to pay the 20 large. My understanding is that the court will collect its fine one way or another and that, short of Taitz firing on the US Attorney assigned by the court to collect, she will pay or have assets seized to cover the costs.
Your reference to Mags Stewart intrigued me and I looked the name up and found an obit for a Maggie Stewart who died in October 2009 and was a paragon of hard work and virtue according to the article in the WCFCourier (link below). Her picture was published in the obit and I was astounded by the resemblance to Taitz. Taitz could almost be a caricature of Stewart. Not sure if this is the Stewart to whom you refer but the picture really threw me. Link
Posted by: MikeMa | December 7, 2009 12:48 PM
If you visit Palin's Facebook page, will you get AIDS? I'm just saying people have a right to ask about the issue. The public wants to know if visiting Palin's Facebook page will give you AIDS, and I think that's something we should pursue.
Posted by: James Sweet | December 7, 2009 1:14 PM
@MikeMa: Wasn't democommie referring to Martha Stewart?
Posted by: pough | December 7, 2009 1:19 PM
Palin is a vindictive bitch. There is also a hint of racism about her. It will be interesting watching her marginalize herself with increasingly strident rhetoric.
Posted by: Chilidog | December 7, 2009 1:22 PM
I don't think that's a distinguishing feature among politicians. In fact, I would consider it a succint definition of the term "politician".
The problem with Palin are:
1) She just isn't any good at bullshitting; and
2) She thinks that's the same as being an honest person.
Posted by: DaveL | December 7, 2009 1:26 PM
James Sweet @20,
No doubt you are correct. I had forgotten completely about Martha. As I said, the image I turned up for Maggie was freaky in its likeness to Taitz.
Posted by: MikeMa | December 7, 2009 1:31 PM
Sorry pough, not James Sweet in my response above. My eyes cross sometimes I guess:)
Posted by: MikeMa | December 7, 2009 1:33 PM
xebecs @ 17:
Thanks for the kind words, but a point of clarification. I've never considered myself a conservative, but instead a moderate small 'r' republican. I think each political movement, as oppossed to parties, represent a relatively narrow set of attributes shared by its adherents. While I respect Burkean conservative thought, I find it in no way correlates to modern day American conservatism. Plus I've always been progressive in both my personal life and public policy advocacy.
I understand why you'd make that claim since conservatives have effectively taken over the party and revised much of its history to falsely portray it as a party solely of conservatives, where moderates were merely less conservative.
My political hero is Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton advocated for progressive policies that were singularly focused on economic growth, not 'tax cuts' like conservatives or 'spreading the wealth' like we occasionally heard from our President. Hamilton wasn't anti-government, he saw government playing a critical and vibrant role in the success of a country's enterprises, using Britain's legacy as a model. My only spin on Hamilton in that regard is that non-brittle economic growth is correlative to a growth in after-tax median personal income. Therefore, we're not successful if we see increasing disparity of income coupled to flat-lining or decreases in median income.
I left the party last year because this sort of quasi-plutocratic, Rockerfellian republicanism is no longer in power or with any influence within the party. Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity now wholly own control of the party's voters, and therefore it's polices, e.g., budgets without numbers, health insurance reform initiatives that would reduce the number covered, Sarah Palin as a leader, etc.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 1:36 PM
Barack Barry Hussein Mohamed Abdullah Soetoro Onyango Obama
-
ILLEGAL ALIEN, mombassa kenya
Posted by: Cae | December 7, 2009 1:38 PM
Good god, she's dumb. That's all there is to say.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | December 7, 2009 1:39 PM
Cae Dumbass Mohammed Abdullah Smith!
Terminally Stupid, Amerika
Posted by: MikeMa | December 7, 2009 1:45 PM
And this is why we love the internet. Every single dumb-as-a-row-of-posts thing Palin says will be pulled out as soon as she tried to run for anything serious again. Look for sites listing "top 500 insane things Sarah Palin said" and the ability to vote for your favorite.
Of course the question really is, as many have said, whether, like Anne Coulter, she's just in it for the money and is just saying whatever will keep her in the media and sell her book / lecture tour or whether she genuinely is as barkingly batshit as she appears. Only her actions after any upcoming crushing political defeat will tell...
Posted by: David Durant | December 7, 2009 1:47 PM
Palin/Bachmann in 2012! I hear their campaign slogan will be ...you can fool some of the people all of the time...
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 7, 2009 1:50 PM
1. Barack Barry Hussein Mohamed Abdullah Soetoro Onyango Obama
2. Zeituni Obama Onyango
(2) Illegal Alien's, mombassa kenya
-
Posted by: Cae | December 7, 2009 1:54 PM
DE@TH to BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA alias BARRY SOETORO |||||||
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Posted by: Cae | December 7, 2009 1:56 PM
Cae, #31:
I see that someone has the hiccups.
Posted by: Chiroptera | December 7, 2009 1:56 PM
For fuck's sake, Cae, is there an actual argument buried deep down there under all the word salad in your head? Could you make an effort and at least give us one complete sentence?
Posted by: DaveL | December 7, 2009 1:57 PM
Cae: anything else you want to say before we forward your gems of win to the Secret Service?
Posted by: Ragng Bee | December 7, 2009 1:59 PM
Does CAE stand for "Clown Ass Excrement?"
Posted by: Chilidog | December 7, 2009 2:00 PM
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S KENYAN BIRTH CERTIFICATE
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http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109113
http://theobamafile.com/_images/SeptBirthCertificateLarge.jpg
-
Posted by: Cae | December 7, 2009 2:01 PM
Quit peeing on the carpet, cae.
Posted by: Chilidog | December 7, 2009 2:03 PM
DEATH to BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA alias BARRY SOETORO |||||||
Posted by: Cae | December 7, 2009 2:04 PM
OK, Who wants to bed she’s going to repeat this claim again? She won’t be able to help herself. She’ll get in front of a couple of rabid birthers and will nod and say “Oh, you Betcha, cae, he’s from Kenya.”
Posted by: Chilidog | December 7, 2009 2:06 PM
Ehhhh...if you read her comments, she is stating that birthers have a right to ask these questions, while carefully not endorsing them.
Way to get the lunatic fringe to dive off the cliff for her.
Posted by: Shay | December 7, 2009 2:17 PM
No, Shay, she says it's a "fair question." that sounds like an endorsement to me.
Posted by: Chilidog | December 7, 2009 2:21 PM
Michael Heath, median incomes have been declining all decade. One of the significant factors is an increase in inequity, with a small group at the top reaping a larger percentage of whatever growth we've achieved than in the past, a percentage disproportionately larger than their contribution to growth. Wouldn't any economic policy that rectifies that problem "spread the wealth," as more of what has been going to top tier instead goes to middle and lower classes?
Posted by: Abby Normal | December 7, 2009 2:22 PM
Michael Heath: Compared to me, you are conservative. But you are also the sort of honest, principled "opposition" that people like me need to keep us from going off the rails. As with Ed, I respect you even when I don't agree with you, and I would be foolish not to listen to your perspective.
Posted by: xebecs | December 7, 2009 2:53 PM
Wait, I thought it was Barack Barry Hussein Mohamed Allahu Akbar Abdullah Soetoro Onyango Obama? There can be only The One!
Posted by: Imrryr | December 7, 2009 2:56 PM
I wonder, does Palin know that it was McCain's birthplace that could have been an issue in the election? Obama agreed not to use the fact that McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone as an election issue.
Of course, Palin may think Panama is really part of the United States.
Posted by: Vicki | December 7, 2009 3:00 PM
It's worse than that. They simply lie about what Reagan did or did not do. There were tax increases in 83,84,86, but good luck getting any Republican to admit it!
The most ridiculous "immutable talking point" of all is grossly misreading what little theoretical justification was given for supply-side economics in the first place. 70% marginal tax rate to 35% marginal tax rate is vaguely believable as moving from the right to the left of the Laffer curve. So, if anything, it's time to raise taxes.
Instead, we simply here the mindless echo of "tax cuts", because that's what Reagan did.
Posted by: william e emba | December 7, 2009 3:28 PM
Abby Normal @ 43:
My point was that Mr. Obama's rhetoric and his initiatives focused on economic fairness when he made those points, not economic growth. I am an advocate for economic growth and am frustrated this isn't made the central point of many policy initiatives by either party.
A good example are policy debates regarding our national debt and future liabilities, e.g., Medicare and Social Security. They almost exclusively focus on either raising taxes or cutting costs. Any successful and seasoned executive will tell you that successful companies grow their way out of debt and past mistakes.
For example, we should be focused like a bitch on recuriting more college students from other countries and investing in green tech for both global competitiveness reasons but also to lower the ever-increasing ratio between retirees and employees paying their benefits. That is one example of growing your way out of a problem, and no, this initiative in itself can't be guaranteed to solve the entitlement funding problem, it's merely providing insight that our focus is so narrow its flawed.
So yeah, my point holds. I understand your point and non-brittle economic growth does result in increases in median personal income. BTW, your observation regarding how median incomes have flatlined/fallen brings up the reality that even the bull years of the Bush tenure were brittle given it was a jobless recovery. Certainly Bush had time to reform this reality, however he mainly inherited it from Clintonian Democrats and the 90's Republicans based on their passing NAFTA while refusing to either invest in job retraining or fund a paradigm-busting inotiative (green energy). This bodes ill for the next recovery. Recoveries from past depressions or deep recessions were helped along by a new competitive paradigm, I seen none in our current pipeline unless we start making massive investments on green tech and the life sciences, fueled with higher taxes - taxes Obama committed to not raising on 95% of us.
I appreciate the political reality that committed Obama to this campaign promise. But it negates his having any perspective on the importance of economic growth. I'd also argue that while he fails my test on this subject, the modern day Republican party fails it far worse than Mr. Obama, which is why I've been voting mostly Dem since 2004, and wished I'd started that voting trend in 2000.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 3:36 PM
Posted by: James Hanley | December 7, 2009 3:39 PM
william e emba,
Perhaps the most active economic advocate that is a Reaganite is Bruce Bartlett, who was the chief researcher and architect for the 1980 Kemp-Roth tax cuts before taking senior positions in both the Reagan and H.W. Bush Executive Branch.
Bartlett makes the very points you and I do in this thread. He even claims supply-side is dead, its having only a few good ideas that have since been incorporated into Monetarism and Keynesiesm.
I follow him here: http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/
This blog site he shares with others usually has him linking to his weekly column for Forbes located here: http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=bruce+and+bartlett&aname=Bruce+Bartlett
His latest Forbes article was the one that noted that the stimulus results so far from what's been spent or cut.
What I've noted about him is that he cares not a whit about ideology but instead results. That was one of the attributes that originally attracted me to the Republicans back in the 1970s/80s. Bartlett's adovcacy shows how far Republicans have distanced themselves from any rational position based on either history or current economic principles. Limbaugh, Palin, and even McCain's head would explode if they were asked to follow his prescriptions as members of the GOP.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 3:49 PM
In all fairness to the Laffer curve and if IIRC (it's been decades since I studied this stuff), it doesn't argue that all tax cuts will result in revenue increases, only when punitively high effective rates are cut. When you get in the effective tax range of arguing about effective top rates between 25% and 28% (which has been the argument the last nine years), it's my understanding the Laffer curve wouldn't predict revenue increases when taking effective rates from 28% to 25% since neither effective rate is considered punitive.
I note "effective" since maringal stated rates can't be compared year to year since deductions and credits change over time. Plus marginal rates are difficult to relate to actual tax liabilities without understanding correlative credits and deductions or the rates income earned in the lesser strata was taxed at.
So Clinton's 39.6% top marginal rate equated to about 28% as an effective rate, compared to Bush and part of Reagan's tenure equating to a little over 25%. The fact Republicans act as if the earth will end when arguing over such differences while also ignoring whether higher rates would increase total economic growth is a trait I find most unbecoming in them.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 3:59 PM
Michael H.,
Didn't you see the tongue in my cheek? ;) I'm not mocking the Laffer Curve, just those conservatives who think we're always on the right side (e.g., the wrong side) of the curve. I'm fairly convinced that if we had a flat tax of 10% they'd still be arguing that tax cuts would increase revenues.
Posted by: James Hanley | December 7, 2009 4:17 PM
I'm fairly convinced that if we had a flat tax of 10% they'd still be arguing that tax cuts would increase revenues.
That's because Republican tax cuts have NOTHING AT ALL to do with economic policy or goals. It's nothing but a nationwide scam: promise tax cuts in order to buy our votes -- with our money. All the econo-blithering is just window-dressing to rationalize the scam.
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 7, 2009 4:26 PM
Raging Bee,
Well, yes, as far as the elected Republicans go, I agree with you. But I was actually thinking of the true believers--the ones who (unlike most of the politicians) really do believe that any level of taxation is too much.
Posted by: James Hanley | December 7, 2009 4:38 PM
James @ 52 - I should have noted that. I got it. I'm writing between weight lifting sets and tried to be pithy, something I seem to fail at consistently. Given there aren't many of us in this forum that study economics, or teach it as you do. I merely thought I'd clarify the fact from the barb you provided which also made me laugh.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 4:39 PM
Careful about what kind of personal information you give us, Michael, or we'll start thinking you're all brawn and no brains. ;)
Posted by: James Hanley | December 7, 2009 4:44 PM
Posted by: FastLane | December 7, 2009 5:11 PM
Since it came up, I wanted to give a big thank you to everyone here that does get into the nitty-gritty of economics, most especially Michael Heath. It’s not a topic that ever had much appeal to me. But you inspired me to take another look and educate myself. I’ve been at it a little over a year now I feel I’ve still barely scratched the surface. Even so, it has paid off, not just in the form of expanded understanding about my world, but directly as well, in the form of a new financial analyst job. I’ve been at it about four months now and it’s been a great fit all around. I never would have had the confidence to go for it or knowledge to convince them I was right for it without the stimulating conversations here. Thank you for inspiring me.
Posted by: Abby Normal | December 7, 2009 5:23 PM
Bro, no one wants to see that.
More seriously, is there an argument to be made that we were ever on the right-hand side of the Laffer curve?
Posted by: Scott Hanley | December 7, 2009 5:29 PM
Crap, hit "post" too soon. I was going to point out that, since we started dabbling in supply-side, we've never had a tax cut that increased revenues enough to pay for itself, yet we began to grow our way out of debt when Clinton raised both taxes and the minimum wage. Since 2001, it's been tax cuts = debt all over again.
Personally, I have to suspect the peak of the Laffer curve would be skewed very far to the right; American tax rates aren't anywhere close to that.
Posted by: Scott Hanley | December 7, 2009 5:33 PM
Who cares what she says. She is perfect if you are looking for the Lowest Common Denominator when it comes to human capital.
Posted by: Preston | December 7, 2009 6:43 PM
Scary thing is, Palin supporters appear to be stupid enough to listen to all of this. I saw this link over at PZ's place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKKgua7wQk
I sincerely hope that the video's creator intentionally picked the dumbest commentaries he could find and strung them together to make them look worse than they are. I honestly sincerely hope that because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
Posted by: dogmeatib | December 7, 2009 7:06 PM
There's a silver-lining to the excess tax-cuts in recent history, that being that the diminishing returns of tax increases has an obvious inverse. The effect of tax-cuts on the incomes of the vast majority of the population is also subject to diminishing returns, so we can expect tax-cuts as the answer to everything to lose popularity.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | December 7, 2009 8:00 PM
Tyler DiPietro "...so we can expect tax-cuts as the answer to everything to lose popularity."
You forgot to add "...except among the plutocrats (who own the media and who, up until recently, controlled a Party and, even if the Moral Conservatives now run the Party will still get their tax cuts anyway)".
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 7, 2009 8:21 PM
dogmeatib - the people writing five star reviews of her book at Amazon and commenting in the reviews in support of Ms. Palin correlate well with the people in the video you linked to @ 62.
These are the common characteristics I noticed:
It'd be interesting finding out the rate of people that show up at these events that actually read her book in its entirety. I'd bet well below 50% given its around 400 pages.
These are the exact people Thomas Franks described in What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives won the heart of America where Franks eloquently describes how conservative populists fall for shticks like Rove foisted on them in spite of their very leaders' supporting policies that harmed their voting constituency. The only difference is that Palin is actually one of them where Bush was a reluctant member and Gingrich has no qualms about not being one of them.
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 7, 2009 8:21 PM
Linky! What's the Matter with Kansas?.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 7, 2009 8:27 PM
And also Franks' The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 7, 2009 8:30 PM
And Altemeyer's The Authoritarians
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 7, 2009 8:32 PM
Ed wrote
re absurd: Ed, in the teacher's vein of "there are no stupid questions" -- people do have a right to ask the question (of Obama's birth or is the earth flat or were humans and dinosaurs co-existant or or or). And they aren't "dumb" questions...the first time.
After maybe two iterations of evidence that answers the question in the negative, the subsequent questions are dumb.
The first birther fellow I ran across was in the summer of 2007, who was born the year before Obama. He compared his Montana birth certificate to that issued to Obama by the state of Hawaii, and was convinced by the lesser detail of the Hawaiian certificate that Obama's was a fraud. Fortunately, he had two friends who were born in Hawaii who were kind enough to show him their certificates...identical in detail to Obama's.
One thing I've never seen explored in the birther / anti-birther literature is the exact method of travel that Obama's mother and father would have had to do, in order to get to Kenya & back.
In 2008, it wasn't that difficult to fly from Honolulu to Kenya -- expensive and time consuming, but not all that difficult to schedule. Was that true in 1961?
In other words: what air travel was available from Honolulu to Africa in 1961? How often scheduled? Would you have to fly to the mainland and then on to Europe and then Africa? Or would you fly west to somewhere in Asia and then to Africa? What kind of air travel was available to Kenya in 1961 anyway?
Posted by: Liz Ditz | December 7, 2009 8:37 PM
"But can she see Panama from her house? =P"
Only if she's in the cellar.
Posted by: democommie | December 7, 2009 8:57 PM
British East Africa was the protectorate's name, not the British Protectorate of Kenya. Fail less.
Posted by: Rutee | December 7, 2009 9:38 PM
Tax cuts ala Rethuglicans are as RagingBee and others noted but I did not notice the base reason as strongly stated. That being simply to starve the government (its programs that really benefit us lowly un-anointed regular working stiffs) and move us closer to some warped fantasy fascist utopia. All other benefits to the ruling class are but sprinkles on their celebration cake.
I was a R or D (whatever worked) like Michael Heath. But if people do not recognize that the current cast of R's are thugs - devoid of any real notion of making this country or the world better is blind. They disgust me. A minority of D's do too - when they show they are them. But overall the D's just make me grit my teeth 50% of the time with their lack of guts, stupidity, and disorganization.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | December 7, 2009 10:46 PM
I've seen little reason this year to alter my mantra of the past ten: Get rid of all of the Republicans and 80% of the Democrats. (Officeholders, that is.)
Posted by: xebecs | December 8, 2009 12:06 AM
Liz Ditz "Fortunately, he had two friends who were born in Hawaii who were kind enough to show him their certificates...identical in detail to Obama's."
They were in on it. Let me say that again. They. Were. In. On. It.
The truth is out there. You just have to open your eyes, man, to see. To see the truth. The truth that's out there. Out there!
Don't do nothing! The Lizardmen are almost here!
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 8, 2009 12:46 AM
Modusoperandi, you must learn to use more random and all caps words to be more compelling.
Posted by: MikeMa | December 8, 2009 6:11 AM
Scott Hanley @59
Probably only with our top marginal rates post WWII. But even those weren't as bad as Britain, which had a top marginal rate of over 90%. And Sweden had such a high marginal rate that Bjorn Borg emigrated to a country with lower tax rates. So it's possible, but I don't think there's any evidence it's ever been the case across the board.Posted by: James Hanley | December 8, 2009 8:47 AM
Abby Normal,
Blog discussions led you to a better job? That's hilarious and wonderful all at once. Have you calculated the added value of your time spent on Dispatches now? Seriously, though, congrats to you. And let me fess up, as one who bitches about those who don't bother to get any economic knowledge, that my understanding of financial matters is near zilch. I always listen carefully to Michael Heath when he talks about taxes, and now I'll be sure to listen carefully to you if you choose to grace us with financial analyst-type knowledge.
Posted by: James Hanley | December 8, 2009 8:51 AM
James Hanley, I know just enough to know that's probably not a good idea. ;-)
But seriously, I'm focused on a very narrow and specific set of goals with this job, which will probably do more to bias me than anything else. For example, the work I've been doing lately has shown that the proposed health care reform bill is bad news for the medical device division of my company. But whether or not the bill is good for the nation as a whole, I have no idea.
Point being, I'm still a long way from being able to say anything clever on the subject of economics. But yea, discussions on this blog got me moving in a direction where I someday might.
Posted by: Abby Normal | December 8, 2009 10:16 AM
MikeMa "Modusoperandi, you must learn to use more random and all caps words to be more compelling."
I'm the mostly rational kind of loon, like Mulder. Did you ever notice that on the X Files he was always right? He'd say near the beginning of an episode "Scully, it's vampire pizza boys." and Scully would be all "Mulder, there has to be a more rational explanation than that." Then he'd be right. It would be vampire pizza boys!
Think about it.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 8, 2009 5:20 PM