Conservatives
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2010A while ago, I finished reading Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell. While there are far too many inane comparisons between the Late Roman Empire and the U.S., this summary of Goldsworthy's thesis seems appropriate (italics mine):
That is not to say that the latter emperors were more selfish, but simply that they could never be as secure. Many may have had the best of intentions to rule well, but the government of the empire became first and foremost about keeping the emperor in power - and at lower levels, about the individual advantage of bureaucrats and officers.
The Late Roman Empire was…
mikethemadbiologist | November 21, 2010It's not that some Texas Republicans are anti-Semitic, it's just that they need a Christian in charge. A bunch of angry Texan evangelical Republicans are trying to replace House Speaker Joe Strauss, and aren't having much success. So:
And, not surprisingly, the effort has started to take on religious overtones:
[A] handful of outside socially conservative groups are running a fairly deceitful but noisy campaign trying to pressure lawmakers who actually like the speaker's management style to vote against him.
They blame him for the failure of the sonogram bill but the pro-life Texans for…
mikethemadbiologist | November 18, 2010Because it's the sucker's play.
So Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky--a real Democrat, not a Very Serious fiscal 'conservative'--has released her own deficit plan. It's a perfectly good plan: the numbers add up (no magic asterisks, such as 'we will lower Medicare expenses [somehow]'), and as policy, even if one weren't concerned about deficit reduction, it's pretty good.
But, as I've argued before, going along with this deficit reduction mania is a rigged game.
Look, if this whole deficit reduction horseshit doesn't just blow away with the next televised national disaster or missing…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2010Because that's what it seems they're claiming. I'll get to that in a bit. Rolling Stone invited Matt Taibbi, David Gergen, and Gary Hart to discuss political events of the day. The subject of the Tea Party came up, at which point Taibbi said:
To me, the main thing about the Tea Party is that they're just crazy. If somebody is able to bridge the gap with those voters, it seems to me they will have to be a little bit crazy too. That's part of the Tea Party's litmus test: "How far will you go?"
Gergen and Hart both, despite their supposedly being smart people, misinterpreted what Taibbi said…
mikethemadbiologist | November 14, 2010I'll have more to say about the report put out by the chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, but this section, found on page 6, "Our Guiding Principles and Values", indicates the lunacy and moral bankruptcy of the commission*:
Bring spending down to 22% and eventually 21% of GDP.
How is this a principle? It's just a fucking number.
Why can't the Magick Number be 23 percent? Or twenty six percent? Hell, every European country with the exception of Switzerland spends more than thirty percent of its GDP on government functions.
We should spend what we need to…
mikethemadbiologist | November 5, 2010Paul Krugman, in a recent column, asks the following regarding the bogus claim by former Blue Dog Democrat and current corporate lobbyist (nice retirement plan) Evan Bayh that Democrats were too focused on healthcare:
After all, are people who say that Mr. Obama should have focused on the economy saying that he should have pursued a bigger stimulus package? Are they saying that he should have taken a tougher line with the banks? If not, what are they saying? That he should have walked around with furrowed brow muttering, "I'm focused, I'm focused"?
Regarding Bayh and the rest of the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 30, 2010There's been a lot of chortling about Republican Senate candidate and Tea Buggerer Christine O'Donnell's recent misunderstanding of the First Amendment. But it actually reveals a lot about the mindset of movement conservatives (and, remember, everything you need to know about how they operate can be understood by observing creationists). ScienceBlogling Ed Brayton sets the stage:
The debate was actually held at Widener Law School, which probably explains why the audience literally bursts into laughter when she she says:
"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?"
The…
mikethemadbiologist | October 26, 2010But she's probably not a real American, so this is ok:
This is kind of like freedom, except for the physical violence
Real American values apparently involve stomping on women's heads:
As the candidates arrived, a group of [Republican congressional candidate Rand] Paul supporters pulled a female MoveOn member to the ground and held her there as another Paul supporter stomped on the back of her head and neck.
According to the Louisville Courier Journal, "Lauren Valle of MoveOn.org approached Paul and tried to give him an "employee of the month award" from Republicorp...a fake business MoveOn…
mikethemadbiologist | October 24, 2010A dirty secret of charter school 'success' is that they typically transfer their poorly-performing students the students they fail to educate to public schools. Consequently, charter schools are able to claim better test scores than regular public schools (clearly, ethics aren't on the charter school agenda....). It's been a problem in Boston and Bay Area charters in California.
A letter to Diane Ravitch from a Los Angeles school prinicipal documents just how dishonest and harmful this practice is (italics mine):
I received an email from Dr. DeWayne Davis, the principal of Audubon Middle…
mikethemadbiologist | October 19, 2010Terrance at the Republic of T describes what should be obvious about conservative opposition to Social Security, but is not thanks to gormless Democrats and an incompetent political journalist caste (italics original; boldface mine):
Maybe that's why they fought so hard to protect bonuses and compensation for Wall Street banksters. They will likely fight as hard to reduce your paycheck and mine as they did to protect Wall Steet's excesses.
It's not hard to figure out why.
It's not just that conservatives are opposed to minimum wage. It's like with Social Security. It's not that conservatives…
mikethemadbiologist | October 17, 2010Update: Thanks to everyone visiting. I worked really hard on this post too, and it's also kinda important and about kids too, so please stop by that one too.
Dan Savage has exactly the right approach to dealing with the sanctimony of the theopolitical right. In response to an interview Savage gave about the "It Gets Better" campaign to combat anti-gay hatred directed at teenagers, a Christian who describes himself as "someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage" writes to Savage:
If your message is that we should not judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you…
mikethemadbiologist | October 13, 2010Apparently, if Newt Gingrich is to be believed (and why would anyone do that?), he doesn't understand how food stamps stimulate the economy:
Well, you know, I carry around a bumper sticker that says 2 plus 2 equals 4. So I'd be very curious how a dollar given to somebody becomes a $1.79. And I think if we could get that to work with the U.S. Treasuries, so if people gave the Treasury $1,000, it became $1,790, we could pay off the federal debt and never worry about spending or anything. I mean, I -- you know, somehow, I don't understand how liberal math turns $1 into $1.79.
As I've mentioned…
mikethemadbiologist | October 12, 2010Bob Herbert echoes the frustration many have felt with Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie's decision to scuttle the plan to build a much-needed tunnel connecting New Jersey to New York City:
The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It's losing its soul. It's speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.
The railroad tunnel was the kind of infrastructure project that used to get done in the United States almost as a matter of routine. It was a big and expensive project, but the payoff would have been…
mikethemadbiologist | October 11, 2010In Ohio's ninth congressional district, Republican voters have nominated Rich Iott, a wealthy businessman, who has an interesting hobby: he likes to dress up as a member of the Waffen SS, which were Nazi Germany's elite and ideologically motivated shock troops. Here is how Iott's play-date buddies describe the Waffen SS (italics mine):
Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a "New and Free Europe", free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other…
mikethemadbiologist | October 8, 2010Maybe if the Obama administration and the Blue Dog (corporate) Democrats fought for an economic policy that made the middle-class' lives better, we wouldn't be faced with the looming political failure to deal with environmental problems. From Politico:
Most House Republicans envision killing Nancy Pelosi's special global warming committee if they claw their way back into the majority this November.
Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner wants to keep the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming alive so it can investigate climate science and police President Barack Obama's green…
mikethemadbiologist | October 7, 2010Think Progress has recently described the mechanism by which the 'U.S.' Chamber of Commerce is able to circumvent what few campaign finance laws remain and funnel money from foreign corporations to Republicans.
So I have a very simple question: why don't congressional Democrats censure the 'U.S.' Chamber of Commerce?
Well, there is the obvious answer:
Congressional Democrats are dumber than a fucking sack of hammers*.
But, seriously, if the Republicans can successfully censure ACORN--an organization that actually did useful things, then surely the Democrats can return the favor.
I would…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2010Fred Clark, at Slacktivist, fires off a essential rejoinder to deficit reductionists and austerians, with bridge reconstruction as the particular example (italics mine):
Let's consider again the objection of deficit spending. The so-called deficit hawks object to repairing structurally deficient bridges because they say the government cannot afford to borrow money to do so -- even at the low, low rates at which the government can now borrow it. Maintenance on these bridges must therefore, in the name of "fiscal responsibility," be deferred indefinitely. This is nonsense -- a dishonest trick…
mikethemadbiologist | August 26, 2010Marc Ambinder reports that Ken Mehlman has admitted to friends and family that he is gay (did anyone really not know?):
"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I…
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2010Or bigotry. Because union carpenters are the new Muslim. Or something. Here's a refreshing exchange of free speech (italics mine):
...at an anti-Mosque demonstration down in Lower Manhattan, when a black man walking through the crowd was... mistaken for a Muslim by the crowd -- angrily.
The video, shot by amateur YouTube videographer "lefthandedart," opens with chants of "No Mosque Here!" as it traces a black man wearing a white cap walking through the crowd. It's not clear where he's coming from or why the videographer had decided to film him, but the man seems to be trailed by a…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2010Razib, in a link roundup, wrote:
A Grand Unified Theory of Palinisms. Jacob Weisberg, Yale grad and Rhodes Scholar, wonders why Sarah Palin says "stupid and ridiculous things." An easy answer is that she's stupid. But I think the truth is that Sarah Palin is closer to the norm in intelligence and polish than the typical American politician. In fact she's probably somewhat above average in intelligence. The fact that she's a social conservative means that it's easy for Left-leaning elites to mock her, but if you go to a liberal college town in the Berkshires I'm sure you could talk to plenty…