False Equivalence, Get Thee Hence!

Meet Norm Ornsein and Thomas Mann.  The former is the last sane guy at the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute and the latter, one of the last sane guys at the more liberal Brookings Institute.  They team up to go Mario and Luigi on the "Both Sides Do It!" false equivalence Village nonsense and actually drop the blame at the feet of the GOP.  How the article got into the Washington Post of all places is beyond me (as the Kaplan Daily is arguably the most egregious example of the Village Temple of the Sensible Centrist), but let's see how far this rabbit hole goes:

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

Oh, those are fightin' words, boys...and yet any objective observer would have to agree that those two clowns are indeed the major reason the GOP has been completely intractable.  (I would have added Limbaugh, Rove, and Cheney myself.)  Granted, Ornstein and Mann have to get their shot in at the Donks:

Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.

The party of Poindexter versus the party of Genghis Khan, indeed.  But if the worst thing they muster about the Dems is that they're acting like normal Dems and that the GOP is off their collective rockers, well, it's only like many of us have been saying since what, 2007 now?

If not longer.  Hope these guys aren't banished from the internet for telling the truth.  Meanwhile, compare that directly with this David Gergen and Michael Zimmerman article at CNN.com.

Sens. Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch -- both stalwarts of the GOP who have committed apostasy by trying to work across party lines -- face primaries this season that imperil their survival: A poll Thursday morning found Lugar down 5 points to a tea party-backed challenger in Indiana, and Hatch failed to secure a 60% supermajority at his party's convention in Utah, sending his race to a primary. Only two years ago in Utah, another stalwart Republican who had worked with Democrats, Bob Bennett, was deposed by an ideologically purer primary challenger.

In the House, meanwhile, the once-robust cadre of "Blue Dog Democrats" -- moderate to conservative members of the liberal party -- has been winnowed out, with two more members (Reps. Jason Altmire and Tim Holden of Pennsylvania) defeated in primaries this past Tuesday by opponents from their left flanks.

As of 2010, there were as many as 54 Blue Dogs, but the midterms knocked their caucus down to 26. With retirements and primaries, that number will probably be well below 20 by next January -- an effect that further turns Democrats into the party of the left.

Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans, both sides do it, literally.  Both sides are equally guilty, and Gergen's stupid, moronic tripe is the Village Mantra.  "It's too bad that we can't have more Democrats who courageously vote exactly like Republicans and Republicans who return the favor and courageously vote exactly like Republicans but don't call Obama names 100% the time.  We need more of these courageous people who will bravely drag the country to the center right."

You know who we need less of in Congress?  Orrin Hatch and Tim Holden.  And good riddance to the both of them.  Hatch co-sponsored the Violence Against Women Act nearly 20 years ago and he voted against it last week.  Bye.

I'll lose no sleep over the loss of "moderates" like that.

Jellybeans Was Behind Assault

The incident unfolded Friday afternoon on the ride home from Forwood Elementary School, according to the 7-year-old's mother, Aisha Williams-Gray.

When the school bus rolled up to her Woodacres apartment, several students carried her crying daughter off the bus, she said."

The kids were all saying that there had been a fight on the bus and that the driver didn't stop it and kept on driving to reach our stop."

The children told Williams-Gray that the fight had been provoked by a fifth-grade girl, who bullied and then attacked her daughter when she wouldn't give up her jelly beans.

The little girl had a concussion from the attack.  Over jellybeans.  The mother is upset that the school doesn't separate the bigger kids, but that isn't the answer.  The answer is dealing with the issue of kids and violence.  The attack is not even a minute long.  It's not fair to say the bus driver didn't respond, it could take well over a minute to find a place and stop the bus.  However, there is zero mention of any response from the bus driver at all.  If that's the case I can see why the school might be in hot water.

Kids mirror what they see.  That may be the most terrifying thing about this.  This is how they perceive us, and in their uncanny no-bullshit kid way, they see right through us.  And this is what they find at the core.

Saturday Morning Goodness: Welcome Home Edition

Yahoo posted this, and made me smile while it broke my heart.  If you have a moment, you should read the article.  We love our pets so much, and it's hard to find anything as pure as the love they have for us.

This dog is happy to see Dad.

Veeps And Creeps

Orange Julius gets in on the Romney Veepstakes handicapping, although I'm not sure why anyone on either side of the aisle would actually want his opinion on that.

House Speaker John Boehner named three Republicans as potential vice presidential picks for Mitt Romney, but said there is a "long list" of qualified candidates.

The top Republican in Congress said Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana fit his criteria that the pick be capable of serving as president.


"There are a lot of people that I like. But this is a personal choice for Gov. Romney, and I'm confident that he'll have a running mate that will be helpful to the ticket," Boehner told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley in an interview set to air Sunday. 

Rubio isn't deadly bland like Portman or Daniels, but with his reasonable stance on immigration, Rubio has zero chance (no matter what Greg Sargent thinks about the GOP backing off on immigration).  But here's the money quote:

"I think the number one quality is, are they capable of being president in the case of an emergency?" Boehner added.

You mean like Sarah Palin?

Paycheck Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

Senate Dems are testing just how far Mitt Romney and the GOP are willing to go on their "new" stance that they are the party that supports women, by bringing up the Paycheck Fairness Act for a vote again this year.  Greg Sargent:

The looming vote could revive a recent controversy that erupted around equal pay issues. On a recent Romney campaign conference call, HuffPo’s Sam Stein asked Romney surrogates whether Romney supports the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which mad e it easier for people to challenge pay discrimination. The campaign at first waffled, but then released a statement confirming that Romney “supports pay equity and is not looking to change current law.” But Romney’s campaign has not said whether he would have signed that law in the first place.

Now Romney’s rhetorical support for pay equity faces another test in the looming Senate vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

This Act would put more pressure on employers to prove that differences in wages are not rooted in gender difference, and would make it easier for employees to divulge information about their salaries, which would in turn facilitate deterring or challenging pay discrimination.

Two years ago Senate Republicans opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which had strong support from Obama, and it’s likely they will do so again. But Romney is on record supporting “pay equity” in principle, so he’d either have to break with that principle, or break with Senate Republicans, at a time when the battle over the female vote is raging in the presidential race. If Romney supports the measure, it could make passage of it more likely.

After Thursday's Violence Against Women Act vote, opposed by 31 male Republican senators while supported by all the women senators in both parties and all the Democrats, another vote on women's issues that will certainly have an outcome almost exactly the same will just prove the Dems' point:  Republicans talk, Democrats do on women's issues.  You don't get much more Grand Old Misogynist party than that.

The ball now goes to Orange Julius and Mitt Romney.  Where will they stand on those issues, and how big of a split will open up for the Dems to take advantage of?

Going to be a heck of a Mother's Day this year.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Strapped to the back of a 747, the space shuttle Enterprise made its final flight to New York City on the way to the National Air and Space Museum.
• The Peruvian government is finishing up a controversial multi-billion dollar gold mine deal with US mining giant Newmont despite violent protests against the partnership.
• Astronomers have discovered giant spiral "lava coils" on volcanoes on Mars, similar to the ones formed on the Hawaiian islands.
• The latest buzzworthy social media aware internet startup in Silicon Valley is bringing tech tricks of the trade to baking bagels.
• Tech manufacturer RuggedCom is working to take out a backdoor password that could leave North America's power grids vulnerable to hackers.

Last Call

The Great Shrill One rises from the depths of reason to infect the Austerians with his beard-tentacles of sanity and common sense and tells a little bedtime story about a fairy (rent asunder by his self-same beard-tentacles, no doubt.)

Critics warned from the beginning that austerity in the face of depression would only make that depression worse. But the “austerians” insisted that the reverse would happen. Why? Confidence! “Confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery,” declared Jean-Claude Trichet, the former president of the European Central Bank — a claim echoed by Republicans in Congress here. Or as I put it way back when, the idea was that the confidence fairy would come in and reward policy makers for their fiscal virtue.

The good news is that many influential people are finally admitting that the confidence fairy was a myth. The bad news is that despite this admission there seems to be little prospect of a near-term course change either in Europe or here in America, where we never fully embraced the doctrine, but have, nonetheless, had de facto austerity in the form of huge spending and employment cuts at the state and local level.

So, about that doctrine: appeals to the wonders of confidence are something Herbert Hoover would have found completely familiar — and faith in the confidence fairy has worked out about as well for modern Europe as it did for Hoover’s America. All around Europe’s periphery, from Spain to Latvia, austerity policies have produced Depression-level slumps and Depression-level unemployment; the confidence fairy is nowhere to be seen, not even in Britain, whose turn to austerity two years ago was greeted with loud hosannas by policy elites on both sides of the Atlantic.

And with Spain and now Britain's Q1 GDP numbers showing big fat recession signs (and a healthy chunk of the Eurozone following suit at this point) the notion that "austerity is the answer because it creates certainty and confidence!" is about as dead now as Sarkozy's chances in France's upcoming elections.  Poor little Confidence Fairy didn't have a chance, you know.  You didn't clap loudly enough, Europe.  (Austerity can only be failed...)

Never forget of course that for the last several years, the "serious" people have been telling us that we had to follow suit or face economic ruin.  US GDP numbers for Q1 came out this morning at 2.2% growth, and while that's down from 4Q 2011's 3.0%, it's still better than what Europe's austerity cultists are feeding upon right now.  Our own zombie-eyed granny starvers (thanks, Chuck) have told us for years now that this was necessary if not vital to our survival, and failure to do so would mean another financial crash.  Meanwhile, the actual application of throttling the spender of last resort in several European countries has -- surprise! -- led to a double-dip recession with no end in sight and even more cuts called for.  We need more of the same stuff that not only isn't working, it's causing more problems.  That never happens with conservatives and economics.

Yet, we face the same exact calls here from Republicans and more than a few Democrats.  They're hoping you don't pay any attention to the fact that what they've said we have to do has been tried and is currently failing miserably in Europe.  Mighty Krugthulhu has of course been saying this for a while now, and all but ignored in the halls of power.  It's looking like that particular era may be coming to an end and none too soon.  Maybe those steely gray beard-tentacles of his can latch on to a few heads and extract the Stupid while he's at it.

What a fairy tale that would make.  Ia! Ia!

Nationally Lampooned Vacations

Conservatives continue to attack Michelle Obama as proxy to her husband, this time over the idea that in a bad economy, the Obama family shouldn't dare go anywhere lest they draw the ire of swing state voters in Republican focus groups.

“They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that struggle and he’s basically doing what they can’t do on their tax dollars,” added the GOP pollster.

He and several other top-tier Republican pollsters, organized by Resurgent Republic, traveled to 11 battleground states to host focus groups of independent and swing voters, mostly Democrats, who voted for President Obama in 2008 but who are now on the fence.

McLaughlin handled blue collar and Catholic voters in Pittsburgh on April 3 and Cleveland on March 20. He found that they are very depressed about the economy and feel that their tax dollars are being sucked up by both the rich and those living on government assistance.

During the focus group discussions about debt and spending cuts, many in his group volunteered criticism of the presidential vacations as something that should be cut. Among the lines McLaughlin wrote down was one from a Democratic woman who said, “Michelle Obama spends $1 million to take the kids to Hawaii,” and another who said, “President Obama was the only president to take so many trips.”

The theme, said McLaughlin, is that the first family “is out of touch” with working class voters.

What the focus groups are really proving is that the FOX News style propaganda attacks on our "uppity" First Family who should "know their place" and not be so "lazy" and "go on vacation so much" are working with the intended target, at least to some extent.  The First Lady in particular has been savaged for spending "millions" on pricey vacations and top-shelf fashions, all supposedly on the taxpayer dime.

There are two things wrong with it.  One, the costs include security for the First Family, and given the unalloyed hatred these assholes have for the Obamas, I'd say that security is pretty necessary, possibly more necessary that with any other residents of the White House before them.  Second of all, President Obama and Michelle Obama have still taken far less vacations than the Bush family preceding them.  Laura Bush took yearly trips to Yosemite National Park with family friends and Secret Service protection.  The total cost of just the White House trips to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas?  Some $20 million for just the plane costs.

President Bush took 149 trips to Camp David, 77 visits to his Crawford ranch, and 11 trips to his father's Kennebunkport mansion. Since Air Force One reportedly cost $56,800 per hour to operate in 2004 (which Bush used to get to Crawford), and the plane can travel up to 630 miles per hour, it cost at least $259,657 to get the 2,880 miles to Crawford and back, each time Bush went, or roughly $20 million dollars just for taking the plane on the Crawford trips alone. Add in the cost of putting up Secret Service and other staff for the ranch trips, as well as the Kennebunkport and Camp David trips, and you get, well, a lot. 

That's okay, because it's not like Bush crashed our economy or anything while he was busy clearing brush.  There's one big difference in Presidential history when it comes to the Obama family, and that's what these Republican pollsters are pushing among working-class Democrats, trying to get them to abandon the President for being too "elitist" and instead vote for the guy worth a quarter-billion dollars with the multiple vacation homes and cars...or not vote at all.

But don't you dare bring the issue of race into it.

Chart Of The Day

From Ezra Klein, who puts the austerity hysteria to rest:





The yellow line is America.  The red line, the UK, has been stagnant since David Cameron's government game to power in 2010 and appears now to be permanently stuck at 2006 levels.  the entire Eurozone too appears to be heading into stagnation if not outright recession.  Both economies said austerity was the answer.  Both economies are now stuck below their January 2008 peaks where the US and its stimulus package has -- surprise!  Gotten us ahead of the curve and now above where we were in 2008. 

If we had listerend to the GOP and cut spending massively like they demand we do, we would be in the same recessionary boat as Europe.  Period.  If they get into power in 2012, they will do to our economy what conservatives in the UK and the Eurozone did to theirs.  As it is, please note that our economy did stagnate in late '10/early '11 for a couple months there as the new GOP House took power and we ended stimulus spending programs rather than continue them (which was politically impossible).  The President then turned to other methods to boost the economy and you see the curve upwards during the end of last year as things resumed improving despite the GOP trying to sink the economy.

Any questions?

This Is Personal

President Obama wrapped up his two-day tour of college campuses today at the University of Iowa, again calling on Congress to extend a low interest program for student loans.

"This is personal," Obama said while discussing the value of a college education. "This is the heart of who we are."

The president, who said he and wife Michelle just paid off their own student loans a mere eight years ago, also told a friendly crowd of students that "we've got to make college more affordable for more people."

Obama is working hard to bring young people on board.  He wants them to know that an education should be attainable, and not just for the top 10% of whatever dividing line that might prevent higher education.  It's not about money, it's about investing time and energy into being better people, and better citizens.  More education leads to better ideas, better worker, enlightened minds that hatch brilliant ideas.

He is also bringing a new generation into politics.  Young adults are impressionable, and by lending a sense of urgency that is relevant to them, Obama is bringing in young people who will likely take more of an interest in their country.  He isn't promising all of our dreams will come true, just that we should be able to access the tools to make them a reality.

And on the other side we have... Mitt Romney.  The rich boy who thinks it's snobbery for Obama to want education accessible to everyone who wants it.  The guy who thinks women are breeders whose medical choices are up for legislation.  The guy who says he's hip to women's needs because his wife says so.

Talk about no contest.

Saving Truman

This is one instance in which sad puppy eyes really come in handy. A four-year-old Golden Retriever, "Truman," was rescued by Los Angeles Sheriff Department's (LASD) volunteer deputies Sunday. The dog was suffering from dehydration and cut paws while hiking Switzer Falls with his owner, according to the station's press release.

The Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station received a call at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday and assigned reserve deputies from the LASD Montrose Search and Rescue Team to the mission.

Rescuers hiked deep into the Angeles National Forest, placed Truman on a gurney and wheeled the poor guy all the way to his owner’s vehicle.

It just made me smile when I read this.  I've gone through incredible lengths (and more than one bribe) to help animals who are in pain.  Though they don't tell just how his paws became injured, whether it was from the terrain or one specific thing, but the response and the caring shows that good folks do good things.

Thanks, guys.  I needed that.

Cleaning Up A Very Old Mess

Spencer Ackerman over at Wired's Danger Room reports on the Pentagon cleaning house on how it trains our armed forces to deal with Islam.  It's no longer the enemy and treating all Muslims as potential terrorists was never going to work.  Some ten years on in our Endless War, we finally get that fact.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday ordered the entire U.S. military to scour its training material to ensure it doesn’t contain anti-Islamic content, Danger Room has learned. The order came after the Pentagon suspended a course for senior officers that was found to contain derogatory material about Islam.

The extraordinary order by General Martin Dempsey, the highest-ranking military officer in the U.S. armed forces, was prompted by content in a course titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism” that was presented as an elective at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. The course instructed captains, commanders, lieutenant colonels and colonels from across all four armed services that “Islam had already declared war on the West,” said Lt. Gen. George Flynn, Dempsey’s deputy for training and education.

“It was inflammatory,” Flynn told Danger Room on Tuesday. “We said, ‘Wait a second, that’s really not what we’re talking about.’ That is not how we view this problem or the challenges we have in the world today.”

The strong response by the Pentagon brass illustrates growing sensitivity around the issue since Danger Room’s investigation of anti-Islam material in the FBI’s counterterrorism training last September. That story sparked strong condemnation of the training material from the U.S. Attorney General on down, and prompted the White House to order a review of U.S. counterterrorism training last October.

Despite that White House order, the “Perspectives” course, taught since 2004, not only evaded review, but had defenders in the Joint Forces Staff College that taught it.

I may not agree with everything Ackerman believes about the Obama administration's domestic policy, but he's been the most solid foreign policy, military, and national security beat reporter out there for some time, so when he delivers an article of this magnitude, it's worth your time to go read the whole thing.

As far as the Pentagon goes?  About damned time.  Reversing a decade of "raghead sunzabitches" as DoD policy always had to be a vital step towards our evolution in dealing with the Middle East.  Good for General Dempsey.  That's a strong message, and one that needs to be reinforced at every opportunity.

Home, Home I'm Deranged, Part 29

The bottom in the housing market has been called for later this year by Zillow.  Don't believe it for a second.

Online real estate marketplace Zillow said home values rose 0.5 percent in March from February, the largest monthly increase since May 2006 when the housing recession began.

Zillow’s report describing the first quarter follows two other reports about the housing market released on Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home-price index showed average home prices tumbled to their lowest level in nearly a decade, after prices dropped in February from January in 16 of the 20 cities it tracks.

A separate report from the Commerce Department indicated new home sales fell last month by the most in more than a year to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 328,000 units.  That followed a 7.3 percent increase in February.

“I think the variety of data points of housing market we’re getting this week all point to a slowly healing housing market,” Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, said. “We think of it as a bottoming process, as opposed to the bottom being a discrete point in time.”

Humphries said the “bottoming process is well under way and is made up of new home sales that have reached bottom and are starting to rebound a bit.”

The Zillow Home Value Forecast shows that national home values will fall 0.4 percent over the next 12 months, suggesting that U.S. home values could reach bottom in late 2012.

Bullshit.

What nobody is factoring in (because it's an election year) is, as I've been saying for three years plus now, that the logjam of foreclosures still has to break before the housing market can hit bottom.  Foreclosure numbers are the only things that matter right now.  And those foreclosures are back on the rise.

Rising foreclosures are weighing on the U.S. housing market, reducing prices and keeping new-home sales weak.

Foreclosed homes are usually sold at steep discounts, thereby lowering average prices. And by expanding the supply of low-priced previously occupied homes, foreclosures tend to limit demand for new homes.

Some economists expect foreclosures to keep prices under pressure this year, even though they think sales of previously occupied homes will rise.

Banks are stepping up foreclosures in about half the states. The increase comes after state officials settled a dispute in February with five of the biggest mortgage lenders over foreclosure abuses.

"Foreclosures, excess supply and weak demand will drive home prices ... down at least another 5 percent," said Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS Global Insight.

Five percent?  More like 10% or 15%.  We still have a long way to go on housing prices, folks.  We'll see prices fall more sharply as those foreclosures stalled from last year's Foreclosuregate mess start to be processed en masse and they're free and clear to do so now that the settlement is done.  Expect the banks to rapidly pick up the pace of foreclosures this summer and fall.  Housing prices?  Look out below!

StupidiNews!

• Half the US Marines contingent in Okinawa, some 9,000 troops and their families, will be transferred to other bases as the Pentagon moves to lower tensions in Japan.
• The office of Texas's Attorney General accidentally turned over millions of Social Security numbers in a voter ID case, drawing sharp criticism from both parties.
• The Senate has renewed the Violence Against Women Act for another five years despite dozens of male Republican senators voting against it, but it faces a far tougher road in the GOP House.
• Amazon beat market estimates with 1st quarter earnings on the strength of Kindle fire sales and e-books.
• The GOP-led House has passed a controversial cybersecurity bill that Democrats and the White House strongly oppose, which could lead to a veto.

Last Call

News Corp. mogul and FOX head honcho Rupert Murdoch is making friends all over the place back home in Blighty as he takes the stand to answer for the company's ugly little phone hacking and bribery scandal.

During a media ethics inquiry on Wednesday, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch described David Cameron’s disabled son as “retarded” while trying to praise the British Prime Minister as a family man.

In the wake of a hacking scandal at News Corp.’s now-defunct News of the World, Lord Justice Brian Leveson asked Murdoch to testify under oath about his bid to take over British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC.

Only a day earlier, documents released by Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch, suggested that a Cameron ally had smoothed the way for News Corp. to take control of the lucrative satellite broadcaster.

Leveson inquiry lawyer Robert Jay asked the older Murdoch on Wednesday if he recalled first meeting Cameron.

“I first met him once, maybe even twice, at family picnics at weekends at my daughter’s house in the grounds of Blenheim Castle (Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire) where he came with his family,” Murdoch explained. “We were overrun with children, there were no politics.”

“But I was extremely impressed at the kindness and feeling he showed to the children, particularly to his retarded son,” the News Corp. chairman added. “And I came away talking about this — what a good family man.”

And if that statement doesn't perfectly encapsulate just how much of a complete and utter douchecanoe Rupert Murdoch is, nothing ever will come close.

I hope they invent new books to throw at him.