Last Call

CBS icon and 60 Minutes mainstay Mike Wallace has passed at the age of 93.

Mike Wallace, the long time journalist at CBS News, passed away Sunday morning at the age of 93.

Wallace’s passing was reported by Face the Nation host Bob Scheiffer at the beginning of the program, who said he died in New Haven, Connecticut with his family.

Wallace was apart of 60 Minutes since the inception from 1968 to his semi-retirement in 2006, helping shape the program into a prominent newsmagazine telecast. He was reportedly ill for years before his passing.

Some 60 plus years in the business, the man who put 60 Minutes on the map will be missed.  The AP's wrapup of Wallace's life is here:



Amazing stuff.  There will never be anyone quite like him, and that's unfortunate.

Happy Easter From The GOP, Folks!

This Easter Sunday, the NY Times has this Jason DeParle story on red states shredding welfare safety nets and the people who keep falling through them.

Faced with flat federal financing and rising need, Arizona is one of 16 states that have cut their welfare caseloads further since the start of the recession — in its case, by half. Even as it turned away the needy, Arizona spent most of its federal welfare dollars on other programs, using permissive rules to plug state budget gaps.

The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow.

Esmeralda Murillo, a 21-year-old mother of two, lost her welfare check, landed in a shelter and then returned to a boyfriend whose violent temper had driven her away. “You don’t know who to turn to,” she said.

Maria Thomas, 29, with four daughters, helps friends sell piles of brand-name clothes, taking pains not to ask if they are stolen. “I don’t know where they come from,” she said. “I’m just helping get rid of them.”

To keep her lights on, Rosa Pena, 24, sold the groceries she bought with food stamps and then kept her children fed with school lunches and help from neighbors. Her post-welfare credo is widely shared: “I’ll do what I have to do.”

And as any conservative can tell you, this is working 100% as intended.  If those on welfare turn to crime, then it's clearly permissible to cut welfare even further to stop coddling these criminals, and then of course pass those savings through tax cuts on to the Almighty Job Creators, who will then certainly create more jobs and uplift these broken souls back into society.  Any time now, those jobs will be just pouring out.  Yep.

Of course without that vital last part, it becomes and endless conveyor belt to transfer wealth to the wealthy and drive the poor into other states (preferably blue ones) where they become somebody else's problem.  Meanwhile, red states like Arizona get to claim they've cut welfare rolls and that the rest of America needs to follow their success.

Meanwhile, the expensive private prison conglomerates designed to incarcerate the increasingly desperate among us costing taxpayers far more per person than the welfare did in the first place is beside the point, that money's well spent because we're tough on crime.  Certainly the GOP is licking their chops at the latest iteration of the House GOP budget, turning safety net programs into block grants they can raid for even more tax cuts and wealth transfer.  And if the GOP gets control, guess what's happening to these programs in the future?

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the top House Republican on budget issues, calls the current welfare program “an unprecedented success.” Mitt Romney, who leads the race for the Republican presidential nomination, has said he would place similar restrictions on “all these federal programs.” One of his rivals, Rick Santorum, calls the welfare law a source of spiritual rejuvenation.

“It didn’t just cut the rolls, but it saved lives,” Mr. Santorum said, giving the poor “something dependency doesn’t give: hope.”

As in "hope God chose you to be rich, because otherwise you're screwed."  Happy Easter Hunger Games from the GOP.  Don't worry, when you die, your suffering will be rewarded in the next life.  Oh wait, it won't because you were poor and wasted your life so you obviously sinned, so it's okay if we kick your face in a few more times.

Like I said, working as intended.

Step One: Drill. Step Two: The Gas Face. Step 3: PROFIT!

The Power Line guys go after President Obama for drill baby drill again, because a right wing think tank says so!

So I followed a link from Glenn Reynolds to a piece from the always worthy David Goldman (aka, “Spengler”) on oil prices, namely, that today’s high oil prices are owing to simple supply and demand rather than the Middle Eastern “risk premium” that everyone (including me) supposes:

It’s complete and utter nonsense. Oil is trading in lockstep with expectations for economic growth, as reflected in stock prices. There’s not a shred of evidence that geopolitical uncertainty has added a penny to the oil price. Obama’s $20 to $30 per barrel risk premium is a number pulled out of a hat, without a shred of empirical support. In effect, the President is blaming Israel for high oil prices.

He makes an interesting case, noting the close correlation with the stock market, which may also correlate with a weak dollar and paltry bond returns as much as improving economic prospects. See David’s nifty charts at the link.

Oh it's a great theory,  and since it "proves" that increased domestic production will lower prices, $4 gas is all the Kenyan Socialist's fault.  The problem is fellas is that your little theory here?  It's easily testable thanks to the fact our oil production is now at an eight-year high and growing.  Except for the actual correlation between increased domestic production and gas prices showing that increased production doesn't lower prices, which the AP destroyed last month.

A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.

If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you'd now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you're paying the highest prices ever for March.

Hayward, Instadoofus, and the "Gatestone Institute" here conveniently forget that little point, the one where actually pitting the data against their theory kind of obliterates their theory as complete garbage.

By the way, the Gatestone Institute is a right-wing think tank dedicated to the US turning Iran into a parking lot.  Kinda cool the way they lie about President Obama, who seemingly doesn't want to do that, yes?

An Open Letter To Google

Dear Google,

I know you'll never read this.  However, after our long and tedious years of mutually taking advantage of each other, I want to say I will never leave you.  But there are a few things you can do to make our lives more enjoyable, and justify the shameless harvesting of our personal information.

Give us choices.  I know it's tempting to harvest all the information you can, but by giving users a choice you will win people over to your side without being a complete bully.  Let people opt out of what you want them to do, at the expense of what you know they want most.  It's simple, it works, and the person at least has the choice to control information usage if they care about it.  This would open your market up to all the private folks.  Right now, people who are holding back or won't join or share because of privacy concerns are the only real obstacle you face to dominate the web.  Think it through.

Keep it up with Google+.  You have finally managed to hit Facebook in it's weak spot, the overwhelming amount of crap and spam posts that drive us nuts.  Google+ not only lets us filter those easily, because it's not so damned overpopulated we can enjoy content that is much closer to what we want to see.  Plus, the ability to host meetings and ad hoc group chats is amazing.  Again, there could be more freedom and choices, but this is one case where your clean and narrow design really works.  Please don't screw up a good thing and go to the Mafia Wars side.

Stop messing around already and make a Google Workspace.  With Docs and Sites as two invaluable services, why not make a quick progression and let us have something with all the utilities in easy reach?  The personalized Google page isn't enough, but if you want us to rely on your products giving us a place to live is crucial.  This would rely on heavy customization, but we just had that talk.  Docs has given us so many ways to be productive and share, sites gives us virtual offices to use, but when it comes to purely our view, we are aliens without a home.  Host some built-in IDEs as well and look at your growth explode and stay there.  Python, Java, the basics.

And finally, while I know it's small in your view but important to others, give us some control over what we see.  Your super light and pastel blends are obnoxious.  You have allowed us dark schemes for some apps such as Gmail.  Please take fifteen minutes and give us two or three universal themes that meet the most obvious needs.  Hi-contrast, light on dark, and grayscale would be helpful.  Really, you have a whole staff of coders, this should be a Tuesday afternoon sort of project.

Sincerely,

Bon The Geek

Another One Sees The Light

From ThinkProgress.org: 

The men in the Republican Party may not think they’re fighting a “war on women,” but its female senators certainly do. Yesterday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) joined Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Kay Bailey Hutchison in criticizing the GOP’s push for legislation to restrict access to contraception and other basic health care services:

“It makes no sense to make this attack on women,” she said at a local Chamber of Commerce luncheon. “If you don’t feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters.”

I'm sure several GOP women have felt this way, but one at a time they are saying enough.  Murkowski also expressed regret at voting for the Blunt Amendment.  This implies she was under some mighty strong pressure to show support, because anyone this in tune with women's rights would have surely been disgusted at first sight.


The original article from the town of Homer, Alaska gives additional insight: 

"I think what you're sensing is a fear, a concern that women feel threatened, that a long settled issue might not be settled," Murkowski said.

She cited things like conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh's remarks about a female Georgetown University law student, which Murkowski called "offensive, horribly offensive."

To have those kind of slurs against a woman ... you had candidates who want to be our president not say, 'That's wrong. That's offensive.' They did not condemn the rhetoric," Murkowski said.

On abortion and contraception, Murkowski made her views clear.

"The right to a safe and legal abortion has been affirmed by the courts, and I stand by that," she said. "I will continue to support funding Planned Parenthood."

Well done, madam.  She's right every step of the way.  Women feel betrayed, and that any rights given to them can be taken away at the whim of a self-righteous zealot.  Rush Limbaugh was out of line, but that not a single candidate from the right called him on it is disgusting. It also shows they don't know how to play the game.  Even the most repugnant candidate could have scored major points by being the lone one to show compassion.  Epic fail on all counts.

Bravo.  May others follow her footsteps and begin turning this wreck around.

This Easter, We Turn To The Parable Of The Batman

The Dark Knight indeed returns...to the hospital charity ward.

Lenny Robinson is still getting acclimated to his 15 minutes of fame. When he pulled up to Baltimore's Sinai Hospital in a black Lamborghini decked out head to toe in a custom Batman outfit, he was greeted by a crush of reporters, news photographers and giddy hospital staff armed with smartphones snapping pictures.

Robinson became a viral video sensation last month when police pulled him over in full costume.  The dashboard camera in the Montgomery County, Maryland, police cruiser caught the entire scene, including the officer calling for back up. “You can send me Robin if you wish,” the officer snickered to dispatch before asking the driver, “What’s your name other than Batman?”

“Lenny,” Robinson replied from the driver’s seat in a cape and Batman headdress.

The police pulled over Robinson’s car because instead of a Maryland license plate, he had the Batman logo. He likes his outfit and car to look just right when he visits hospitals across Washington and Maryland to cheer up terminally ill children. Once police heard that and saw that the official license plate was inside the car, Robinson was on his way both to the hospital and Internet stardom. Last week a local paper unmasked the caped crusader with a front-page article detailing the charitable work done by the 48-year-old father of three.

Turns out Lenny here brings a little joy to hospitalized kids, and he does it right. That's an Easter story we can get behind.

Batman is 48. He is a self-made success and has the bank account to prove it. He recently sold, for a pile of cash, a commercial cleaning business that he started as a teenager. He became interested in Batman through his son Brandon, who was obsessed with the caped crusader when he was little. “I used to call him Batman,” he told me. “His obsession became my obsession.”

Batman began visiting Baltimore area hospitals in 2001, sometimes with his now teenage son Brandon playing Robin. Once other hospitals and charities heard about his car and his cape, Batman was put on superhero speed dial for children’s causes around the region. He visits sick kids at least couple times a month, sometimes more often. He visits schools, too, to talk about bullying. He does not do birthday parties.

His superhero work is limited to doing good deeds, part of a maturation process in his own life. In his earlier years, he acknowledges that he sometimes displayed an unsuperhero-like temper and got into occasional trouble with the law for fights and other confrontations. Putting on the Batman uniform changes and steadies him.

“Eventually, it sinks in and you become him,” Batman told me. “It feels like I have a responsibility that’s beyond a normal person. And that responsibility is to be there for the kids, to be strong for them, and to make them smile as much as I can.” He understands that might sound corny, but he doesn’t care. 

Masks.  We all wear them.  And here's a guy who's giving his time back to the community and the people.  Good work, Dark Knight.

No Defense Of The Indefensible, Once Again

Last week, the National Review's Racist Emeritus, John Derbyshire, posted yet another one of his lovely little screeds on why "the blacks" are simply inferior and how to avoid dealing with their infantile grunting posing as language couched in a series of "rules of engagement" written to his sons.  ABL completely demolishes Derbyshire here at ABLC, as does Freddie de Boer here at Balloon Juice, and there's many, many reasons as to why the Derb is full of completely racist garbage.

My problem is with the people defending him.  This is where the real battle lies, apparently.  The Wingers are mounting the Defense Of The Derb in various forms and guises, with various levels of gusto.  Vox Day goes all in, calling out the National Review crew rapidly distancing itself from Derb:

Apparently these various National Review writers want Americans to remain trapped in the same clueless, post-racial, Orwellian delusion they have inhabited for the last fifty years. And yet, John Derbyshire's article that has inspired such rabid ritual denunciation is little more than a calm and perfectly reasonable collection of observable realities of race in America.

Dan Riehl too wonders what the big deal is.  After all, what's the point of getting upset over racism?

It may not be pretty to read, or come close to some ideal, but how much of what Derbyshire wrote is mostly true in a still too significant portion of America's population, black, or white? And why is the left intent on only dealing with it by screaming and freaking out, when only a calmer, more sensible conversation over time is the only positive way in which to deal with it? It's as if the left, not the right, is absolutely determined to ensure that racial division will always exist in America? Why is that?

Robert Stacy McCain also doesn't understand what all the fuss is about, compared to the Trayvon Martin case.

What you might not notice is that this is a skirmish on the fringes of the Trayvon Martin controversy, which has turned into a stalemate, so that now frustrated people are in scalp-taking mode. The NBC producer got taken out by conservatives and now, for some strange reason, NR‘s John Derbyshire just volunteers himself as a target for the Left?

And speaking of Trayvon, Tom Maguire ties himself into knots trying to say Derb was wrong and right at the same time.

Groan.  I consider these race/IQ arguments to be the intellectual equivalent of a World War I battlefield on the Western Front - lots of noise and craters, many bodies piled up, but little intellectual progress in either direction.

Yeah, you see, Derb may be wrong but there's of course the "kernel of truth" there.  It's why Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom just can't see any reason to fire Derb at all.

So. First, let me say this: Derb’s article is “controversial” in the same way Juan Williams’ noting that he gets a bit frightened on a plane when he sees Arabs in the row in front of him tugging at their vests was controversial. Meaning, it was honest — and as such, it was not sufficiently filtered for a media climate where political correctness still provides the parameters for what is and isn’t acceptable.

Goldstein especially goes on to say that in effect anyone who is upset over this doesn't want to engage in a conversation on race, because what Derbyshire said is what wingnuts mean when they say they want to have a conversation about race:  Why are black people such a blight on our white society?

And to varying degrees all of these guys think they're in the right here, because the Left is "shouting this down" and it means they are closed-minded and don't want to address the awful honest truth about "the Blacks".  After all, Derbyshire was simply making an observation and he's entitled to his opinion.  How can anyone be a racist doing that?

Funny thing is, my opinion is that Derbyshire is clearly a racist, as are the people defending him, and the honest truth is that there are plenty of folks who don't want to talk about race because they can only start from the position that pretty much everything in America went wrong once the South lost the Civil War.  If your conversation has to be framed in terms that I am genetically, intellectually, socially or emotionally inferior to you because I'm not white, then no, we're not having a "conversation on race", we're having a conversation on why you're a racist.

Over at the conservative blog RedState, diarist Leon Wolf notes that in a 2003 interview, the National Review’s resident racist John Derbyshire proudly proclaimed his lack of tolerance for African-Americans:

I am not very careful about what I say, having grown up in the era before Political Correctness, and never having internalized the necessary restraints. I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going.

But that's a conversation worth having, actually.  And it's one these assholes don't want to hear.  Certainly Derb's employers don't want to talk about it too much, but Rich Lowry canned him anyway.

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

And yet for years Derb was happy to have these views, and the National Review was glad to employ him.  That's another uncomfortable conversation the right doesn't wish to engage in, why it took this long for Derb to get the axe and why they condoned his racist views up until now as the nation's "premier" conservative publication of ideas.

So yes, the whole Derbtastrophe is actually very illuminating as to why there's not a larger conversation about race in America.  One that the right has been avoiding for a very, very long time.

Painter Of Light No More

Thomas Kinkade died today in California Friday at age 54.  He was both beloved and despised for his style, depending on which side of the fence you were on.  Fans loved his brilliant colors and fearless cheerfulness, critics often pooh-poohed his work as too repetitive (another bridge, really??) or surreal to the point of losing points.  It appears some folks can look at too many charming cottages and thoughtful waterfalls.

As for me, I loved the guy.  I thought his choice in colors were bold and dangerous in the hands of an amateur, and there was a constant theme in his paintings that I saw as a solid foundation, not a security blanket.  To each their own though, that's what makes art so darned neat.

He will certainly be missed, and as for saying he just wanted to make people happy... I think we can all agree he did that very well.

Dear America:

"This President is awful.  I mean really, really, really awful.  If you vote for him in November, it means you're stupid because you've bought his awful argument that Big Oil, Wall Street and Republicans actually have anything to do with how awful the country is right now, and you're not stupid, are you?"

--Jay Cost, Weekly Standard

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

If Obama is reelected with such terrible feelings about the national condition, it will be unprecedented in the history of public opinion polling. Obviously, that would be no little feat, so what this president is doing is a classic case of misdirection. 

The country needs a bad guy to blame for its problems, so day in and day out Obama is providing them with a smorgasbord of villains from which to choose: Wall Street, Big Oil, the Tea Party, Paul Ryan, Rush Limbaugh, the Supreme Court, the Catholic Church, and so on. In fact, virtually everything that comes out of this president’s mouth is about redirecting blame onto some straw man.

Super Bonus Complete Takedown, courtesy of BooMan:

He says these are straw men. But, ask yourself, how have these groups been comporting themselves? Do we have any reasons to be critical of Wall Street? Big Oil? The Tea Party? Paul Ryan? The Supreme Court? The Catholic Church? 

It's telling that BooMan can eradicate Cost's 1500 word tirade with a single paragraph.   Most of all, we need better conservatives.  Just because the entire conservative argument is "No, YOU'RE the ones who are destroying the country!" doesn't make it true.

Cat House... Not What You Think

Continuing the animal news, Japan has enjoyed long-lasting success with "pet houses" where stressed clients come pay to pet cats.

It's no secret that pets reduce stress, but there is so much more benefit than just lowered blood pressure.  Many cannot afford pets or don't want the everyday responsibility and can now enjoy time sharing affection that is both pure and good for the soul.

The house rules include not waking any cat that is sleeping, holding a cat that is clearly unhappy and no flash photography because it irritates their eyes.  The cats are living a good life, and the people who come through leave happier than when they came in.

For a bonus bit of happy, there is the story of Poldi, the cat who was reunited with his former owner... after sixteen years living in the wild.  Thanks to a registry and marking the animals, he is now home with his family.

Take A Michigander At This

Liberal bloggers are still reeling from the very real prospect of the GOP's unconstitutional legislative gains in Michigan.  Rachel Maddow broke the story Thursday night:

In a nutshell, the story is that the Michigan Constitution requires that bills wait until the end of the session -- essentially, the end of the calendar year -- plus 90 days before becoming law. You can, however, put a bill into effect immediately, provided you have a two-thirds majority in both chambers. Republicans have that super-majority in the Senate, but not in the House. Yet they appear to have given nearly every bill since they took over in January 2010 immediate effect.

Michigan Republicans have applied immediate effect even to legislation Democrats have opposed in a block, from taking away domestic partner benefits (pdf) to blocking the expansion of union rights (pdf) to the souped-up emergency manager law (pdf) that lets the state replace elected officials with managers who have unilateral control. As you can see in the clip above, the Republican speaker calls for a rising vote, waits a blink, and then gavels in his party's super-majority.

Michigan Democrats have begun using their numbers to demand a record roll call vote, as a means of trying to make Republicans prove they have the super-majorities they claim to have. They say Republicans are denying them roll call votes, and last week,  they sued the House (and specifically Republican House leadership) over it. On Monday, a county judge ruled for the Democrats. Issuing a temporary injunction, he ordered the House leadership to grant the roll call votes; he also put on hold several recent bills passed improperly.

The reality of this comes into shocking view when you consider that Michigan Republicans want to pass a voter suppression law that would immediately go into effect under this scam in order to try to steal the state for the GOP in November.

These people are lawless cowards.  My good friend Chris Savage, Michigan blogger extraordinaire at the unparalleled Eclectablog, has been all over this story since it broke.

As Rachel Maddow points out, if Public Act 4 had not been passed in this way, it would only have gone into effect in the past few weeks, 90 days after the last legislative session. Think about that for minute. Think about how much has been done to, using Maddow’s phrase, “rout democracy” in our state under that law in the year that it has been on the books. Think about how it could have been different if they hadn’t used immediate effect.

Maddow then went on to show just how illegal this is. It’s something that I pointed out in my piece yesterday titled “Michigan GOP appeals ruling preventing them from violating the state constitution”. It’s the fact that immediate effect can only happen if 2/3 of the members of the House vote for it. But Republicans do not HAVE 2/3 of the House. The entire reason that they have been avoiding using roll call votes is because they did not have the votes to make the laws immediate effect. In other words, over 96% of the laws passed by the Republicans since January 2011 have been illegal in their implementation.

Illegal.  Think about that.  Nearly all of the laws passed in Michigan since 2011 have been done so illegally and in clear violation of the state's Constitution.  It's a crisis and it has to be addressed.  Now.  You'd better believe Chris and the ABLC crew will continue to be all over this.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

This may be the greatest idea in the history of truly horrendous, awful, hideously bad ideas.  Ever.  Of all time.  Charles Johnson:

You know all that rhetoric about “race war” that’s showing up at Breitbart.com and many other right wing sites these days? It’s not just rhetoric. There are some people in Sanford, Florida right now who are taking it very seriously indeed: Armed Neo-Nazis Now Patrolling Sanford, Say They Are ‘Prepared’ for Post-Trayvon Martin Violence.

Oh now what could possibly go awry in this scenario?

The patrols are comprised of between 10 and 20 locals and “volunteers” from across the state, including some from Miami, he added. He couldn’t go into specifics on what kind of firepower, exactly, the patrols had with them.

“In Arizona the guys can walk around with assault weapons and that’s totally legal,” Schoep said, referring to the group’s patrols of the US-Mexico border. “What I can tell you is that any patrols that we are doing now in Florida are totally within the law.”

Asked if the patrols wouldn’t just make things worse — spark a race riot, for instance — Schoep insisted they were simply a “show of solidarity with the white community down there” and “wouldn’t intimidate anybody.”

“Whenever there is one of these racially charged events, Al Sharpton goes wherever blacks need him,” Schoep said. “We do similar things. We are a white civil rights organization.”

They're like the non-violent NAACP.  Only with craploads of firearms, which of course was the main reason my Trayvon died in the first place.  Awesome.

StupidiNews, Easter Weekend Edition!

• A Navy F-18 jet has crashed into a cluster of apartment buildings in Virginia Beach after a critical training flight malfunction.
• Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is claiming that the US has trained an Iranian dissident group in order to destabilize the Iranian regime.
• President Obama compared his record on women's issues to that of the Republicans in a White House forum for women voters on Friday.
• Apple says it's ready to defend its e-book price agreement with publishers in court to oppose the government's accusations of collusion.
• New estimates show as many as half a million Macs may be infected worldwide by the Flashback malware virus.

Last Call

David Brooks inevitably weighs in on Scary Black Man Is Being Mean To Serious Paul Ryan, and writes arguably one of the most rottenly mendacious aggregations of swill he's ever disgorged onto his PC.  Starting off with the title of "The Other Obama" (and you can practically hear the comma after the second word in that) he dives into the abyss with his floaties strapped on:

I suppose it’s to his credit that he’s most inept when he tries to take the low road. He resorts to hoary, brain-dead clichés. He wanders so far from his true nature that he makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Authenticity. 

That’s pretty much what happened this week in Obama’s speech before a group of newspaper editors. Obama’s target in this speech was Representative Paul Ryan’s budget. 

It should be said at the outset that the Ryan budget has some disturbing weaknesses, which Democrats are right to identify. The Ryan budget would cut too deeply into discretionary spending. This could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility. Moreover, the Ryan tax ideas are too regressive. They make tax cuts for the rich explicit while they hide any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors. 

But these legitimate criticisms and Obama’s modest but real deficit-reducing accomplishments got buried under an avalanche of distortion. The Republicans have been embarrassing themselves all primary season. It’s as if Obama wanted to sink to their level in a single hour. 

Needless to say, Chuck Pierce leaves a blackened glass crater where this column went.

It's gotten to the point where, when I hear Serious Pundits talking about "Simpson-Bowles," the room starts smelling of incense and votive candles. There was no Simpson-Bowles plan. There were suggestions put out by Messrs. Simpson and Bowles that couldn't pass their own commission, largely because the Democrats were shocked and the Republicans were nuts. And trickle-down, Trojan horse-bearing social Darwinism was once known as the Reagan Campaign. Hell, at the time he was St. Ronnie's budget director, David Stockman called the whole Reagan economic plan "a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate." And, not for nothing, but Alan Simpson actually is an '80's cliche.

So yes, Brooks admits Obama is correct and then proceeds to try to completely contradict himself, and fails at it.  Badly.  It's like he's his own Tao of Failure.  All he does is end up proving pretty much 100% that the President is right.

So, I guess I should be thanking Brooks for his own ineptness.  Good bad job, Bobo.

The Orange Julius Job

The White House noted yesterday that if Republicans were really serious about job creation, we'd have local and state governments hiring and infrastructure humming.  Since Republicans are serious about creating only jobs with the word "Chief" in the start of the title, that's not going to happen, of course.

Obama has long championed sending more aid to state and local governments and boosting infrastructure spending. These two areas received billions of dollars from his 2009 stimulus act in hopes of reversing the nation's freefalling economy. But Congress has resisted funneling more money to assist these sectors.

Since then, they have continued to lag, even as companies have ramped up their hiring. State and local governments have shed nearly 600,000 jobs since the recovery began in mid-2009, though they have recently stabilized. And the unemployment rate for experienced construction workers remains higher at 13.1% for the fourth quarter of 2011 than the national average of 8.3%.

Now is an especially good time to revamp the nation's infrastructure, which would boost job growth, Obama said. Interest rates are historically low, construction workers are dying to get back on the job, and contractors are competing for projects, coming in on time and under budget.

Seems like a simple prospect to me.  Sadly, since we now live in a totalitarian thugocracy where there is no rule of law if the President is re-elected, the House GOP will of course have to respectfully decline actually doing anything like this until we rid the country of all Democrats and usher them into a permanent supermajority which would be completely nothing like Obama's current crypto-fascist Hunger Games.

Hurry up, Mayans.  I'm getting a headache from the waiting.

Valley Of The Jolly Tech Giants

If you want a big clue as to why the JOBS bill passed so easily in the House, the Senate, and was signed into law in relative record speed, you can look towards Silicon Valley's new lobbyist clout.  Republicans certainly are, and they're making the pitch to multi-billion dollar tech giants like Google and Apple that Silicon Valley could join Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Ag in the DC money game...for the right price.

The software developers and smartphone designers may not agree with their guests on gay marriage or abortion, but they’re anxious to protect their businesses from new taxes and regulations. Republicans say it’s a natural fit: They’re younger than their Democratic counterparts in Congress, and they’re making better use of these companies’ platforms in the political sphere. Best of all, they don’t have to tailor their business message to appeal to Silicon Valley — they oppose new government regulations across the industrial landscape.

“There is a growing realization on the part of the players in Silicon Valley, in the venture [capital] community as well as the startup community, that the Republicans in Congress, and in the House, really do represent the next generation in terms of wanting to move the country forward in innovation,” Cantor told POLITICO in an interview.

In essence, Republicans are packaging themselves as the next great innovation for Silicon Valley: a plugged-in protection force pledged to defend private enterprise. It’s part of a sustained GOP effort to position itself as the party of the future, both for the industry and for the voters who use its products.
“A lot of us came out of a small-business world and are naturally sympathetic to startup companies, to capitalism, to free enterprise, to innovation,” said Walden, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology.

At the same time, the tech companies have been undergoing a political maturation process in which they are, for the first time, looking at Washington as a major battlefront, and stocking D.C. offices with new lobbyists — many of them Republicans — in hopes of staving off taxes and regulations.

Republicans may never turn a traditionally Democratic constituency into a Republican bastion, but there are signs that Silicon Valley is a little less blue today than it was just a couple of years ago.

Considering the billions at stake in the tech industry right now, and the burning issue of small donor funding for startups for Silicon Valley in general, Dems really didn't have too much of a choice in order to keep these guys happy.  Republicans know this, which is why they worked so many deregulation points into the JOBS act.  In return, the Dems and President Obama are leaving the final say of these new rules up to the oversight agencies in the Executive.  Republicans figure that when they get the White House back someday, they'll just eliminate that oversight altogether.

Unfortunately, that's how the game works these days.  President Obama has to play in order to try to win.  I'm certainly not happy about the JOBS act weakening critical small investor oversight, but I'm hoping other options in the Executive branch are available.  And you certainly can't blame Silicon Valley for wanting in on getting the green.

We'll see how it works out.

Remembering The Classics

Of course I love my LolCats.  I'm always making my own captions and even contributing here and there. But while organizing my files and archives, I found The Best One Ever.  This was the one that I had in every office since 2005.

My friends, today I share the saga of Karl.

Happy Caturday!

Science Awesomeness

This was one of those times when I just had to share the awesomeness I stumbled across. This is a caterpillar who will take petals from the flower it is on, and attach it to its back with silk. No matter where it may be, this little guy will be safe, and then come out as a beautiful, pale green wonder.

I love Mental Floss.  They are constantly filling my well of useless information.  This one surprised me, and answered something I had wondered about off and on for my entire life.  I learned that the reason your nose gets stuffy one nostril at a time is because your nostrils switch off and on.  You have a primary and a secondary, and through involuntary muscle regulation, they take turns.

I hope you enjoyed this bite-sized bit of science.  Now get out there and have a good weekend!

At The Chart Of The Matter

Steve Benen kindly presents compelling evidence to squish "the stimulus failed, this President failed" nonsense on jobs and unemployment:

Despite last week's annual revisions, the same metrics still apply: when jobless claims fall below the 400,000 threshold, it's considered evidence of an improving jobs landscape, and when the number drops below 370,000, it suggests jobs are actually being created rather quickly.

And with that, here's the chart -- which reflects the revised, seasonably-adjusted data -- showing weekly, initial unemployment claims going back to the beginning of 2007. (Remember, unlike the monthly jobs chart, a lower number is good news.) For context, I've added an arrow to show the point at which President Obama's Recovery Act began spending money.

Stimulus happens, unemployment claims go down, and they've been decreasing steadily now for 3 years.  The problem is it took Bush roughly one year to cause the damage, and the expectation that President Obama could fix it by any means in that short of a time frame was ridiculous.  But even by November 2010 things were remarkably better by comparison.  Would have been nice if he and the Democrats in Congress who passed the stimulus had gotten a little credit then from the voters.

Would be even better if the voters gave them credit this November, yes?

Well Now Here's Your Problem

President Obama gave a speech this week to assembled Associated Press editors (among other news professionals) and cited obnoxious Both Sides Do It(tm) false equivalence in political media narratives as a contributing factor to the problems in fixing our broken government.  As Tim Murphy of MoJo points out, the inevitable AP fact check of President Obama's speech is rife with...yeah, you see where this is going, right?

President Obama delivered a fiery (as we journalists like to call such things) speech to a gathering of newspapers editors in Washington on Tuesday, chiding Mitt Romney for using words like "marvelous" and knocking GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan as "social darwinism." It was, by most accounts, a sign of what's to come from the campaign over the next seven months. Let's hope this fact-check of the speech from the Associated Press isn't also a harbinger of the future. ("It's not even 10 A.M. and we already have a 'worst of the day' winner," tweets Pema Levy.) The problem with the piece, by the normally solid Calvin Woodward, is that it doesn't really check any facts (inflated jobs figures, spending increases, that kind of thing). Instead, it suffers from a massive glut of false equivalence.

It's like the AP did this on purpose or something.  I give it Five Pinocchios On Fire!

As a candidate, Obama campaigned on a public option. Progressives were devastated when it was nixed from the Affordable Care Act—to the extent that some refused to support the final bill. Instead, Obama went with the market-driven approach favored by the Republican governor of Massachusetts. Why? Well, in part because Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley suggested there would be "broad bi-partisan support" for such a solution. Can you really knock someone for moving to the left when they started off on the left and ended up where the center used to be?

The fact-check goes on to rebuke Obama for accusing Republicans of wanting to toss out lots of economic regulations (something Republicans want to do) by pointing out that Romney himself doesn't want to literally eliminate every federal regulation—only a lot of them, including the Dodd–Frank Wall Street reform package, which was designed to prevent a repeat of the practices that led to the 2008 crash. But Obama didn't actually say Romney wanted to eliminate all federal regulations—only a lot of them.

A sense of nuance is helpful when writing about Washington politics—and nuance, incidentally, is something campaign speeches generally lack. But fact-checks are for objective facts, not subjective arguments about what does and doesn't constitute excessive deregulation. Pieces like this sort of defeat the point.

No, pieces like this have always been the point of "fact-checking".  PolitiFact and the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler do it all the time.  The entire point of stuff like this is to conflate objective fact checking and subjective refereeing and leveraging the credibility of the former to justify making calls on the latter.  Hence, we get "Even PolitiFact says X is wrong about Y!" when X is a subjective judgement call and not an objective fact check.  That is a cottage industry in DC, if not your raison d'être of being a Villager.  PolitiFact and Kessler are far from alone in this respect.

It's how we end up with "Lie of the Year!" and such.  There's danger in conflation like that, as anyone who might, say, want to ever see the tax dollars they paid into the Medicare system again would tell you.