Conservatives
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2010Here are some 'interesting' results from a poll conducted by Research 2000:
QUESTION: Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
Yes 63
Not Sure 16
No 21
But that's not the crazy part. There's more:
QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
Yes 24
Not sure 33
No 43
Moving right along....
QUESTION: Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
Yes 21
Not sure 55
No 24
Yes, three-quarters of Republicans are open to the idea that a cash-strapped community group composed of a lot of poor and working class people created millions of illegal votes. But we're still not…
mikethemadbiologist | February 2, 2010Once again, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg makes me wonder what the Obama administration was thinking when they nominated him for Commerce Secretary--they must have really believed that post-partisanship bullshit. Gregg's latest eruption:
Judd Gregg just had a meltdown on MSNBC that came out of nowhere. He's been attacking everything Obama, almost from the minute he turned down a Cabinet post offer from the White House, but his performance today was really weird. The conversation was about spending and, as usual, Gregg was acting like the incredible deficit freak that he is.
Melissa Francis is a…
mikethemadbiologist | January 29, 2010A very quick, nearly Twitter-esque point. Reading this post by Mike Stark about the Bernanke confirmation, it is remarkable (and disturbing) how few senators seem to realize where Bernanke stands on unemployment. What's worse is how far off the radar screen the Fed is for so many of the senators interviewed. If I were a senator, making sure as many of my constituents were employed would be my top priority (not only is it good policy, but it's good politics). The Fed plays a large role in that. The divorce between what affects the political prospects of senators and the lives of their…
mikethemadbiologist | January 2, 2010At this point, no one should be surprised that Dick Cheney, along with other movement conservatives, are spouting ridiculous accusations about the Obama Administration's response to the Underpants Bomber. Rachel Maddow (video below) knocks down each false accusation, demonstrating that the Bush Administration did the same or worse. But the only reason these political sociopaths do this is because they can get away with it. The traditional media, despite its saving grace that it isn't composed of bloggers[/snark], is actually providing misinformation by conveying to its consumers that Obama…
mikethemadbiologist | December 26, 2009Assuming that the House progressives fold, and the healthcare reform legislation resembles the Senate's (and why wouldn't one assumes this), let's not mistake what this is: a victory for conservatives. As I've argued before, this legislation is better than no legislation (probably), and, at this point, we should take what's possible.
But we never should have reached this point. While I agree with Amanda Marcotte about the legislation (pass what you can), I'm far less sanguine about what this means. Amanda (italics mine):
If we want better legislation, we need better politicians. And if…
mikethemadbiologist | December 2, 2009...might just be too stupid to realize it. A reader sent me a story guaranteed to piss me off. And it worked! Senator Ben Nelson, in all his intellectual glory:
In lieu of a "war tax" to pay for a troop increase in Afghanistan, Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (NE) is proposing war bonds.
"We didn't have a war tax in the second World War," Nelson said, and instead the government sold Americans bonds."People invested in their country, in that fashion [and] made a lot of sense back then. I don't know why it might not make sense today, certainly in lieu of jumping to tax."
A sitting senator can't…
mikethemadbiologist | November 20, 2009Seriously. This isn't a problem of the 'fringe' of the party. By way of Oliver Willis, look at what the Layfayette County Republican Central Committee (of Missouri) has erected on a billboard:
This isn't a couple of guys or a crazy businessman--it's an official division of the Republican Party.
"Prepare for war?" Because Obama might raise the amount paid on income above $250,000 by four percentage points? Or pass a healthcare bill that's weaker than a majority of American would like (or realize)? I also like how the sign capitalizes "Beast", when using Grover Norquist's phrase "starve…
mikethemadbiologist | November 19, 2009At TPM, Josh Marshall asks an "obvious" 'framing' question about the ARRA:
Why was the Stimulus Bill called the 'stimulus bill' and not a 'jobs bill'?
To which Atrios responds with a "Pretty Obvious Answer":
Because for whatever reason, economist lingo is what people in the Obama administration are comfortable with.
I actually don't think that has much to do with it at all. I can't be certain, but someone in the Hopey Changey administration must have thought of calling the stimulus bill a "jobs bill" (if nobody did, then these guys are a lot dumber than most people think they are). They…
mikethemadbiologist | November 4, 2009Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah doesn't want Democrats to pass a successful healthcare bill because then people might think Democrats do helpful stuff. Then people would vote for Democrats. Then...TEH SOCIALISMZ!!:
The healthcare reform proposals before Congress threaten the existence of the two-party system, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) alleged Monday morning.
Hatch asserted that the health bills, which he believes represent a "step-by-step approach to socialized medicine," will lead to Americans' dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues.
"And if they get there, of…
mikethemadbiologist | October 27, 2009Not exactly. Remember back when some idiot posted a video in an open contest comparing Bush to Hitler that was held by MoveOn.org? Never mind that the video was removed within thirty minutes, rightwing political operatives and their lapdogs in the traditional media haven't stopped talking about it. I wonder if this picture posted on the Republican National Committee's Facebook site--which has also been removed only after six days--will also be discussed endlessly for weeks (Warning: This is a really offensive picture, which is why it's below the fold. May not be work safe):
(from here;…
mikethemadbiologist | October 20, 2009While I'm hoping to find the time to write about Norman Podhoretz's question "Why Are Jews Liberals?" I don't think, unlike Podhoretz, that the fundamental reason is repulsion towards the Christian theopolitical right. But this statement by two South Carolina County Republican Party chairmen certainly won't help:
After a Democratic state senator wrote in The State that DeMint didn't bring enough money back home, Bamberg County GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin and Orangeburg County GOP Chairman James Ulmer responded that he was just looking after the nation's pennies -- like a Jew would.
"There is…
mikethemadbiologist | October 19, 2009Bill Maher notwithstanding, a recent Pew survey shows that Democrats are far more willing to get a swine flu vaccination than either independents or Republicans:
For every four Democrats willing to get the vaccine, only three Republicans and independents are willing to do so. While I'm tempted to say something snarky, if this political divide holds up, this actually has serious repercussions for the spread of TEH SWINEY FLOO!!.
At both the state and local levels, there are often sharp skews in party affiliation. I've spot checked some county registration data for localities and it's worse…
How Is the Proposed Oklahoma Law to Publicly Post Details of Abortions Online Not a HIPAA Violation?
mikethemadbiologist | October 14, 2009Because nothing says freedom like government shaming regarding a private healthcare decision:
Move over, Hester Prynne:
On Nov. 1, a law in Oklahoma will go into effect that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website. Implementing the measure will "cost $281,285 the first year and $256,285 each subsequent year." Here are the first eight questions that women will have to reveal:
Date of abortion
County in which abortion performed
Age of mother
Marital status of mother
Race of mother
Years of education of…
mikethemadbiologist | October 7, 2009Matt Yglesias writes the following about strict regulation of private health insurers versus a public option (italics mine):
Another thing is that I've been pondering this and I actually think it's wrong, on "a wonk level," to conceive of effective regulation of private insurance as a second-best alternative to passing a public option. Unless you're going to totally marginalize private insurance with a Canadian- or British-style system, the first-best alternative is to effectively regulate private insurance as they do in the Netherlands. Trying to introduce a public option is a second-best…
mikethemadbiologist | October 6, 2009The wackaloons over at Conservapedia have a new project: releasing a new version of the Bible. No, really:
Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:
lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts of Christianity
lack of precision in modern language
translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error…
mikethemadbiologist | September 25, 2009It's still unclear if the murdered census worker with "fed" written on his chest was killed because he was a census worker, but the bashing of the Constitutionally-mandated census by Michelle Bachmann and other conservatives is having an effect--and not a good one (italics mine):
I work in the field for the Census Bureau in western North Carolina, deep in the mountains. There are certainly meth labs and grow ops in the areas where I've worked, but the greatest fear for my team and myself comes from the angry and the ignorant.
The overwhelming anger is directed straight at the President. No…
mikethemadbiologist | September 23, 2009Argh. The post got borked because I'm using a very old computer with weird keystroke habits. The article is from here:
The Oklahoma House of Representatives Education Committee has just approved House Bill 2211. The bill is expected to pass the full House, and then to go to the Senate. Its authors describe it as promoting freedom of religion in the public schools. In fact, it does the opposite.
HB 2211 is identical to bills widely introduced into state legislatures across the nation, where they have met various fates. Texas's Legislature passed it, and Texas is experiencing serious problems…
mikethemadbiologist | September 12, 2009From Think Progress, we learn that Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) group is choosing people for 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year awards by his Business Defense and Advisory Council. One little problem though:
Pink Visual is a porn DVD superstore -- not the type of company you'd expect Gingrich would want stimulating the economy. ThinkProgress contacted Gingrich aide Joe Gaylord, who sent the faxed letter to Vivas, but we didn't receive a response. An ASWF representative reportedly called Pink Visual this morning saying it had "inadvertently" sent the fax to…
mikethemadbiologist | September 11, 2009I've often said on this blog that everything I know about movement conservatives, I learned from watching (and opposing) creationists. One major lesson is that words have no intrinsic meaning: they are simply means to manipulate people for your own goals. Well, Margaret Thatcher, an icon of anti-Communist opposition, admitted:
...the destabilisation of Eastern Europe and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact were also not in the West's interests. She noted the huge changes happening across Eastern Europe, but she insisted that the West would not push for its decommunisation. Nor would it do…
mikethemadbiologist | September 6, 2009
(from driftglass)
You might have heard about the latest successful rightwing hissy-fit: environmentalist and White House advisor Van Jones is being attacked by conservatives for calling Republicans "assholes." But he's saying what many Democrats are thinking. I don't mean that any individual Republican is an asshole (or that there aren't Democrats who are assholes). I'll willing stipulate that they are no less kind to small animals and children. But as a party and as a political movement and organization, they are assholes. Consider:
Invading a country which had nothing to do with the…