Sunday, September 9, 2012

Last Call

Paul Krugman vs. Rand Paul, folks.  On live teevee.


PAUL: The thing I don’t understand is that your arguing that the government sector is struggling. Are you arguing that there are fewer government employees under Obama than there were under Bush?
KRUGMAN: Of course. That’s a fact. That’s a tremendous fact.
PAUL: No, the size of growth of government is enormous under president Obama.
KRUGMAN: If government employment had grown as fast under Obama as it did under Bush, we’d have a million and a half more people employed right now — directly.
PAUL: Are there less people employed or more people employed now by government?

Well, Rand...umm...about that, yeah...

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/gov_employ_obama_bush-e1347207776160.png


About half a million less or so, Rand.  That Census spike there?  Totally temporary, and since then, government employment has in fact dropped like Rand's IQ.

My Senator is a moron, folks.  Don't blame me, I voted for Jack Conway.

Podcast Versus The Stupid!

This week Bon and I tackle the Barack and Big Dog show at the DNC, Mitt Romney being arguably the worst campaigner in history, and Larry Flynt offering a million bucks for Mitt's tax returns.

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Here We Go Again

A Springfield City Council member is drafting language that would ban over-the-counter sales of a key methamphetamine ingredient.
Zone 1 Councilman Jeff Seifried said he intends to “start a discussion” on the topic and asked city legal staff to work on language for a bill that would likely require a prescription for the purchase of a popular cold and allergy tablet, pseudoephedrine.
These measures are failing all over the place, and for good reason.  Thousands of families aren't able to afford a co-pay or a day off to see the doctor for cold medicine.  Nor should they have to.  The drugs are safe for normal consumption, and the failure on the part of law enforcement should not result in a burden on people who are already struggling to make ends meet.  Those same people can't afford sick days, and may be going without something else just to get the medicine.

One proposed solution has been a database where you are forced to provide your driver's license to purchase "dangerous" OTC medicine.  No, that's not unnerving at all.  Meanwhile, delivery trucks are moving it to criminals by the case, and citizens are forced to sign and pay for the expense of having their right to privacy squashed.

Fight the battle a different way.  This will just send people over city or county lines, idiots.


Your Insanity Is Exquisite, Sir

John Hinderaker's clean break with political reality is so snowflake-intricate, so crystalline perfect in its construction, that part of me feels bad stomping all over the thing like a drunken brontosaurus with a restless leg syndrome having a panic attack during an earthquake.  I mean, it takes serious and sustained, considerable effort to build a Fortress of Denial like this, each brick lovingly collected from the fetid swamps of internet bullshit that he resides in, much like Yoda's Dagobah home (only without all the personable rustic charm) and held in the hefty walls by the mortar of utter cluelessness.

And yet inside this seemingly impervious shell of manufactured nonsense, the tiniest cracks are beginning to appear...for our brave Hindrocket is facing the first gnawing echoes of doubt that Romney might...might actually lose.  Madness is seeping in the edges of Johnny's vision, things he can't explain, vexatious ideas that he thought were long buried have come bubbling slowly up to the surface like a gigantic fart in a tar pit.

And so, steeling himself like the Neanderthals of old, he stands beneath the open sky, looks up into the face of the heavens, and asks "Why?"

But it now appears that the election will be very close after all, and that Obama might even win it. It will require a few more days to assess the effects (if any) of the parties’ two conventions, but for now it looks as though the Democrats emerged with at least a draw, despite a convention that was in some ways a fiasco. In today’s Rasmussen survey, Obama has regained a two point lead over Romney, 46%-44%. Scott Rasmussen writes:
The president is enjoying a convention bounce that has been evident in the last two nights of tracking data. He led by two just before the Republican convention, so he has already erased the modest bounce Romney received from his party’s celebration in Tampa. Perhaps more significantly, Democratic interest in the campaign has soared. For the first time, those in the president’s party are following the campaign as closely as GOP voters.
So the Democrats’ red meat, over-the-top attacks on Republicans apparently worked at least as well as the Republicans’ more positive, low-key approach

Do you see now why I feel pangs of guilt about destroying this sweet, sweet marzipan castle of utter derpness?  One plows through the spider's web in between those bushes on the front lawn near the mailbox in the dew-kissed morning stumble to check for your junk mail all the time, but the spider built that himself dammit, and you are destroying something real even if it was ephemeral and obnoxious in the grand scheme of things.  It was very real to the spider, at least.

Meanwhile, John has his answer as to why.

On paper, given Obama’s record, this election should be a cakewalk for the Republicans. Why isn’t it? I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money. I fear that time may have come.

And so the exquisite Castle Derp is now a tomb, replete with catacombs worming through the earth, ready to receive the shattered corpse of the America That Only Exists In John Hinderaker's Head, as it comes home to rest quietly along with the ghosts of empires past.  Already the cables and tubes of the Gubment Matrix Machines are snaking their way in, ready to turn the people in John's mind into batteries for the infinite Agent Obamas that will consume us all!  Mammon rises!  Mammon rises!  Give witness and despair!

Or, you know, a much easier explanation that Romney is losing other than that we're all simulacra existing inside the fever dreams of a failed think tank stooge is the notion that America has kind of figured out that the GOP really did spend the last four years opposing everything the President and Democrats tried in order to sabotage the economy in order to try to win.

President Obama and the Democrats have succeeded at convincing voters that Republicans are trying to delay economic recovery, according to a series of recent polls.

The new data suggests that about half the country, including a majority of self-identified independents, believe that congressional Republicans are using their political power to thwart Obama’s efforts to reduce unemployment, presenting Democrats an opportunity to make this argument more explicitly as the 2012 campaign moves forward — to undercut Republicans’ claims that Obama and the Dems bear full responsibility for the economy, and to make their pattern of obstruction a real liability for them.

So there's that.  But...shh...don't tell John.  It'll ruin his beautiful nightmare.

Saving Ryan's Cuts To Privates

I wonder if Paul Ryan knows that Mitt Romney just threw him under the bus.

Mitt Romney said his fellow Republicans were wrong to agree to a deal last summer that included a series or automatic cuts to defense spending in exchange for an agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

The Republican presidential nominee said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that GOP lawmakers made a "big mistake" in signing off on the deal, which prevented a U.S. default on its borrowing obligations.

"I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it.  I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it," Romney said.

That deal included a series of automatic cuts, including $55 billion in cuts to defense spending, set to take place automatically in January. The automatic cuts, known as the "sequester," were designed to be so politically distasteful so that lawmakers would have an incentive to reach some alternative compromise. But they reached no deal, and the sequester looms just a few months on the horizon.

Umm...Mitt?  You are aware who the numbers guy for the Republican side on this deal was, right?  The chair of the House Budget Committee? Your pick for Vice-President?  Paul Ryan?  Is that ringing any bells with you, man?

Republicans are trying as hard as they can to get out of these defense cuts, but Obama has them over a barrel and they know it.  He's outsmarted them AGAIN and they're simply counting on the media saving them.  A real journalist would have immediately asked if this means Romney was disagreeing with the votes of his own veep pick, but of course, David Gregory.

But guess what?  This time, if nothing is done, the GOP loses.  Big time.

Have fun with that, guys.