Conservatives
mikethemadbiologist | March 4, 2009The nitwits at CPAC are running around, claiming that Obama's, well, everything is sending us down the dark path of socialism (although Henry Paulson and George Bush did pretty well on that score. Got TARP?). But these claims are ridiculous--and to some conservatives' credit, they understand this. Consider what a household that earns $500,000 per year (roughly ten times the median household income) would pay in taxes under the Obama plan:
If Obama's tax plan is approved, a family making $500,000 a year would see its annual tax bill rise to nearly $132,000 from about $120,000, a 10 percent…
mikethemadbiologist | March 4, 2009...for conservative budgetary policy. From Matt Yglesias:
Their other big [conservative] idea is feigned stupidity. Michael Steele pretended not to know what a fish passage barrier removal program is. Turns out that these are programs designed to remove barriers to the passage of fish. So that fish species don't vanish from certain habits and wreck entire ecosystems. Bobby Jindal was inspired to denounce "something called volcano monitoring". Volcano monitoring is when you monitor volcanos to try to understand when they might erupt. And now we get this Tweet from John McCain [image converted…
mikethemadbiologist | March 3, 2009Remember when Obama Commerce Secretary nominee Republican Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) decided not to take the job on account of Gregg's unwillingness to join an administration that was fiscally irresponsible. Well, there might have been something else involved:
Sen. Judd Gregg, President Barack Obama's former nominee for commerce secretary, won taxpayer money for redevelopment of a shuttered Air Force base where he and his brother had invested in commercial property, an Associated Press investigation found.
Gregg, R-N.H., has personally invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in Cyrus Gregg'…
mikethemadbiologist | February 26, 2009In the commentary about LA Governor Bobby Jindal's disastrous response to Obama's speech Tuesday night, we keep hearing how smart he is. So what do we call a supposedly bright person who is a creationist and believes that an exorcism cast out cancer? And this is personal:
Jindal and I both received degrees in biology with honors from Brown in the exact same year. Having gone through that program at the same time, there is no conceivable way that he received his degree not knowing that there is overwhelming evidence from the fossil record for evolution regardless of his focus ("the most…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2009Creationists say my head will explode. OH NOES!!!!
Driftglass bravely dove into the shallow end of the gene pool that is the Conservative Political Action Conference, which he describes perfectly:
For all nine-minutes of bullshit, faux-introspection chin-music that came from the Right about change, future and vision after they got hog-slaughtered in the last two elections, if you want to know what is really at the corrupt, oozy heart of the American Conservative movement (and its filthy little avatar, the Republican Party) look no further than their ideological trade show: the Conservative…
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2009It drives me nuts when Democrats, often anonymously, pontificate in the press about What Democrats Should Do (as opposed to actually doing something). This Washington Times interview almost makes me sympathize with Republicans:
The Republican governor of Utah on Monday said his party is blighted by leaders in Congress whose lack of new ideas renders them so "inconsequential" that he doesn't even bother to talk to them.
"I don't even know the congressional leadership," Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, shrugging off questions about top congressional…
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2009Digby makes a very good point about the real world effects of conservative propaganda:
I'm convinced that one of the mistakes we've made over the years is not telling enough stories of real people who were affected by the conservative movement's deregulation fervor. When they can keep it all abstract and clean it sounds great. It's not so impressive when you see the human results of their "ideology."
With that in mind, consider Senator Orrin Hatch's (R-Wackaloon) claim that Utah doesn't need the stimulus money ("Utah is going to get by fine whether we get that money or not.") in light of what…
mikethemadbiologist | February 21, 2009That's actually true, and pretty funny. Here are some other things liked more than Republicans:
--Opposing stricter gun control laws (40%)--Congress (26-40%)--The war in Iraq (39%)--Decreasing immigration levels (39%)--Privatizing Social Security (36%)--Opposing investigating the Bush administration (34%)--Opposing national, government run health insurance (32%)--Vetoing stem cell research (31%)--The Republican Party (31%)--Dick Cheney (30%)--George W. Bush (24-34%)--Decreasing business regulations (28%)--Rush Limbaugh (28%)--Mitch McConnell (22%)--Preventing the openly gay from serving in…
mikethemadbiologist | February 15, 2009While I'm reasonably happy with the passed version of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, I'm still having deja vu all over again (to steal Yogi Berra's phrase) regarding Obama's attempt at bipartisanship. Virtually every Democrat, regardless if they were liberal or conservative, and a bunch of Democratic-leaning independents that I know, not to mention the entire Democratic-oriented blogosphere (which includes people who are definitely not liberals or leftists) realized what would happen with Obama's call for bipartisanship:
Democrats would negotiate away lots of things, even before the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 12, 2009But he's not willing to let the rest of us know what this vital information is:
So we called Barnes and asked him what he was referring to.
At first, he cited the fact that it's been cold lately.
Perhaps sensing this was less than convincing, Barnes then asserted that there had been a "cooling spell" in recent years. "Haven't you noticed?" he asked.
Asked for firmer evidence of such cooling, Barnes demurred, telling TPMmuckraker he was too busy to track it down.
We pressed Barnes again: surely he could tell us where he had found this vital new information, which could upend the current debate…
mikethemadbiologist | February 10, 2009Describing a recent economics hire by the Council for Foreign Relations, Paul Krugman wonders if the CFR will hire a creationist to run their science policy group (I actually think they'll hire an anti-vaccinationist as a public health person, or a global warming denier before they get to a creationist). It's been fascinating to watch Krugman's evolution (so to speak) on how he responds to the lunatic right, and to see his repeated use of the creationist metaphor.
I think Krugman, far more than most pundits, caught on mcuh earlier than most to the conservative penchant for, well, lying,…
mikethemadbiologist | February 9, 2009These Twitter feeds, captured by Atrios and written by 'moderate' Democrat Claire McCaskill, make it so perfectly clear that many elected officials have no idea how things are funded:
"Proud we cut over 100 billion out of recov bill.Many Ds don't like it, but needed to be done.The silly stuff Rs keep talking about is OUT."
And then:
"Going to Museum of Am History today.Haven't been since it re-opened.Want to check it out.Also grocery store and later a movie date with Joe."
As Atrios notes:
Hopefully she enjoys the museum. Amusingly, she also voted for the Coburn amendment which forbids the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 9, 2009...so why did the Blue Dog Democrats and conservative Republicans cut it? According to the latest about the Recovery and Reinvestment Act (funny how everyone's forgetting about the reinvestment part), the Blue Dogs and 'moderate' Republicans cut in half the proposed funds to supplement state budgets. This defeats the whole purpose of a stimulus.
Hardly a day goes by in any state where there aren't newspaper stories about state and local budget cuts. For the most part, these aren't scaling back future projects, but cuts in ongoing, existing projects, such as education. Yet the Blue Dogs…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2009Via Greg Sargent, we learn that Blue Dog Democrat Senator Ben Nelson is still a repulsive person.
Total Reductions: $80 billion
Eliminations:
Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps
*****************************
Reductions:
Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion
Fucking unbelievable. Intelligent Designer knows that Democrats can be pretty screwed up, but,…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2009'Blue dog' conservative Democratic Senator Nelson's list of proposed cuts from the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act was leaked to Huffington Post (the documents are available at TPM). I've never understood the Blue Dogs. While conservatives are full blown batshit loony (Tax cuts today! Tax cuts tomorrow! Tax cuts fo'evuh!), there is at least some kind of ideology there (albeit twisted). What motivates the Blue Dogs? Do they like the power of being spoilers? Does it make them feel good when they can be the ones to make the deal? Do they not realize that 'stimulus' means spending…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2009In the midst of the Conservative War on Contraception, there's a broader assault by conservatives on public health initiatives. At Salon, Alex Koppelman does a good job rebutting the conservative opposition to vaccination, infection control, and figuring out if someone has AIDS (further fisking is available from IDSA). There's no reason to repeat this fine work, but it really does highlight just how unserious movement conservatives have become.
This mindless backlash reminds me of Michael Fumento, and his opposition to influenza prevention:
In my post, I challenged him to offer alternative…
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2009I think the creationist controversy sheds a lot of light on the conservative movement as a whole. So, in the comments of this post by Brad DeLong that wondered how in the hell anyone still seriously argues on behalf of the Treasury View in economics, I remarked that it reminded me of creationists:
....in biology, for example, the profession itself does not lend credence to creationism. The fundamentals, as opposed to the cutting edge (or arguments about the relative importance of various phenomena), are not in question. These are political controversies, not scientific ones. That is,…
mikethemadbiologist | January 29, 2009Congress, under pressure from Republicans*, cuts $200 million to refurbish the National Mall:
On Tuesday evening the House Rules Committee stripped two provisions from the stimulus package: the family planning money that President Obama personally lobbied Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to remove yesterday, and the $200 million to refurbish the National Mall.
The move was made amidst a torrent of GOP criticism about wasteful or non-stimulative spending in the bill, including those two projects, as the president attemps to woo House GOPers.
The Rules Committee provisions -- "4) strikes funding…
mikethemadbiologist | January 28, 2009Seriously. The political tactics are virtually identical. From The Krugman (italics mine):
As the debate over President Obama's economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan's opponents aren't arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don't want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don't want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.
Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already…
mikethemadbiologist | January 26, 2009And you thought the War on Science was over. Bush appointee Kathie Olsen, who was the deputy director of NSF, and who couldn't give a straight answer to Senator John McCain when asked about human influences on global warming, might have been "burrowed" into the NSF:
How was Olsen permitted to slip inside the NSF bureaucracy after playing such a front-and-center role in the Bush administration's politicization of science? We're looking into whether her case fits the technical definition of "burrowing" -- and what the Obama team can do about it -- but suffice to say that her survival hasn't…