I Can Already Hear The Screams of Fake Outrage.

This Saturday, the USA Network is going to show a remastered version of the all-American classic To Kill A Mocking Bird.  President Obama is going to introduce it. Which brave conservative nutbar will be the first to call him a race pimp?

It's Not The Case That Conservatives Are Heartless Morons; Wait, Yes It Is.

It's wrong to glory in or mock the death of another human being; regardless of who he or she was. Ann Coulter's twitter:

@AnnCoulter Ann Coulter

ONE TROY DAVIS FLAME-BROILED, PLEASE - bit.ly/qPQnV7

A Crucial Difference

Why did Obama "cave" when Clinton didn't? From an article getting quite a bit of attention, although not -- apparently -- this paragraph:

THE MOST CRUCIAL difference between Clinton’s debt limit battle and the current crisis is that, in 1996, the Republicans were bluffing. No Republican seriously considered defaulting on the debt to be a viable option. “It was essentially unthinkable,”Alice Rivlin, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Clinton, told me. “There was nobody in the Congress who really contemplated forcing a default.” Larry Haas, communications director for the OMB from 1994 to 1997, agreed. “Everybody in the White House and on Capitol Hill knew that the conflict had to end at some point,” Hass told me. 

Then again, maybe the Tea Partiers were just bluffing.

What Trump Meant

There's a post a with a really powerful video over here concerning what Trump was really saying.

Beneath Contempt

On the floor of the Indian House a crazed maniac ran on to the floor and shouted

I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.

Actually it was  Rep. Eric Turner (R). These loons are beneath contempt.

Leaving town for a day or two posting likely light all ten of you will have to wait for the words of nonsense.

Here in Wisconsin: Delusional Edition

IN this morning's Wisconsin State Journal State Senator Glenn Grothman, further to the right than Walker and -- as we will see -- half as bright, characterizing the protesters thusly:

They are slobs, he said. But I don't hate these people for bing slobs. I don't mind nice slobs.

He claimed that he

really think[s that] five years from now most of these people will have a real job and be voting Republican.

The mind boggles. See also.

Here in Wisconsin

Scott Walker's budget and speech, in case you haven't heard, were written by Charlie Sheen, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin. As such it is a model of honesty, wisdom, and showed a clear way forward.

Food or People are Crazy

Michele Obama ate a dinner that included short ribs and the Conservatives went ballistic because of the hypocrisy of some one who encourages Americans to eat sensible ate sensibly.

First Farce and Then Tragedy

Years ago, Monty Python had a bit in which John Cleese dressed as a man who worked in the City suggested that England "tax all foreigners living abroad." It was highlarryious. Recently, Donald Trump insisted that we tax all foreigners living abroad, it's tragic. He can't even get the order of things right.

Welcome to the 19th Century

Glenn Beck is right about one thing, there is, in fact, a war of Progressives and Neoliberals in this country.  The right wing of the Neoliberal camp wants to turn the clock back to the glory days of pre-TR America where life was nasty, brutish, and short but at least only the most colorful of crooks got the cash.  As evidence, in the great state of Missouri, on Jane Cunningham (R) want to pass a law that

modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. >It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

The damn kids today with all their fingers and an education have it too damn soft, why her great great grandmother died in the Triangle fire when she was only 10. What are these people thinking?

When Nazi Collaborators Aren't Collaborators

Concerning Rich Iott, (R+Tea Party Ohio) Jon Stewart called him a "history nerd." Even, of course, Homer nods, but really, Jon?  Last night, it seem , Iott claimed that northern Europeans who collaborated with the Nazis didn't collaborate because

[t]hey were doing what they thought was right for their country. And they were going out and fighting what they thought was a bigger, you know, a bigger evil."

Got that? Pierre Laval wasn't a collaborator because he thought he was doing what was best for France.  The mind boggles.

Increasing his idiot to speech ratio

Iott also contended that "this particular unit was one that was never charged with war crimes," though Cooper pointed out that one member was recently charged with the murder of 58 Jews. Iott replied: "The war on the eastern front was extremely brutal on both sides. Nobody was lily-white, that's for sure. Horrible things that happened on both sides."

See how that works? No one his group represents did anything really wrong except to the extent that they participated in the Holocaust.

Robert Foster and Newt Gingrich Have Trouble reading

Today one misunderstood the difference between reporting and putting:

Turning to a little political shop talk, I ask Gingrich about many Republicans’ concern that a senior official in the Obama administration may have, as the New York Times puts it, “improperly accessed the tax records of Koch Industries, an oil company whose owners are major conservative donors.” Gingrich says such an action by a White House official would be “very much like the Nixon White House: If you cross these guys, they try to hurt you. They have brought a Chicago-machine mentality to the White House for the first time in American history, and it’s very, very dangerous.”

From his own link to the NY Times:

Leading Republicans are suggesting that a senior official in the Obama administration may have improperly accessed the tax records of Koch Industries, an oil company whose owners are major conservative donors.

See what he did there?  The New York Times, apparently, is identical with "leading Republicans."
Where did the nefarious Obama Administration get the super secret information? It's not exactly new information, they got it from, among others, Koch Industries' Webpage.

As a bonus matter:

House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) slammed Gingrich’s document on Wednesday, calling it a “subliminal message” and an “unfortunate course to go down,” before adding that the government gets “the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance — the biggest bang for the buck.” Gingrich tells NRO that Pelosi “doesn’t understand anything about how free markets, entrepreneurship, and small businesses operate.”
“She thinks that this is all bad luck,” he says. “With regards to her comment that food stamps are actually an effective way to stimulate the economy, well, I don’t know any economist who would agree with that. It shows you how inaccurate they are about the very nature of the American economy.” Gingrich contends that Democrats’ economic policies are worse than those of Herbert Hoover.

Real economists:

The industry research firm Moody's Economy.com tracked the potential impact of each stimulus dollar, looking at tax rebates, tax incentives for business, food stamps and expanding unemployment benefits.
The report found that "some provide a lot of bang for the buck to the economy. Others ... don't," said economist Mark Zandi.
In findings echoed by other economists and studies, he said the study shows the fastest way to infuse money into the economy is through expanding the food-stamp program. For every dollar spent on that program $1.73 is generated throughout the economy, he said.

And so on.

Free Riders

Everybody in the known universe has weighed in on the case of

Gene Cranick, a rurual homeowner in Obion County, Tennessee. Cranick hadn’t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county’s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick’s house burned to the ground.

And, as is often the case, various morons have tried to defend fire departments not putting out fires because of a failure to pay 75 dollars on the grounds of glibertarian nonsense, I'd just like to remind the world, who might think we Americans have lost our minds, that a truly great American once argued that

Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it." What is the transaction that goes on? I don't want $15--I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.

He then went on to win WWII over the objections of right wing nut jobs who hated democracy. Were he alive today and were he confronted with the stupidity of a fire department on the scene refusing to put out a fire and, it seems, allowing dogs and a cat to die, his response is easy to imagine. That anyone anywhere defends the fire department's failure to act is a condemnation of their commitment to real America.

UPDATE:
Read the whole of the link for FDR. It really very good.

Keep Fear Alive, For God's Sake

CF

video via

More of a Fantasist Than a Liar

Fred Clark argues that Christine O'Donnell is making stuff up when she discusses witchcraft because when she said

"I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things,". . . . This is not true. The wholly imaginary form of Satan-worshipping "witchcraft" in which O'Donnell claimed to have dabbled has never actually existed. You can't dabble in things that don't exist.

That Christine O'Donnell would repeat such well-established lies as facts -- embellishing them with additional patently false claims of first-hand experience -- is not surprising. Her entire political career has taken place within the strand of the evangelical Christian anti-abortion movement that is driven and shaped by this very same late-20th Century variant of the medieval blood libel. These imaginary Satanic baby killers form the core of her identity -- they are the Other against whom she has always defined herself. They are the enemy in contrast to whom O'Donnell and her supporters are able to feel good and righteous and special. That these enemies do not, in fact, exist -- that they have never, in fact, existed -- only highlights the desperate insecurity of O'Donnell and her witch-hunting comrades.

His post is well worth reading.

Aha

Via TPM come this is which an outraged Fox newsbot feels the pain of those making over 350,000 per year only hang onto .50 per 1.00 over 350,000, which isn't true but still means that if you get to phenomenally rich and have your garbage picked up.  Plus taxes are socialism and being the first into the trough is merit.

Videos: Two Brilliant, One Tragic.

Which is which?







Take a Poll. For other vote on how angry is Megyn Kelly on a scale of 1-10.

David Brooks Wronger Than I Thought

Via we learn that David Brooks knows as much about literary criticism as anything else, which is to say nothing

Brooks manages to pack nine material misstatements about the book’s plot into a mere 73 words:

There’s almost no religion.(1) There’s very little about the world of work(2) and enterprise.(3) There’s an absence of ethnic heritage(4), military service(5), technical innovation(6), scientific research(7) or anything else potentially lofty and ennobling.
Richard is an artist, but we don’t really see the artist’s commitment to his craft(8). Patty is an athlete, but we don’t really see the team camaraderie(9) that is the best of sport.

Now, what is truly brilliant about the above is that every single one of those things is either a dominant theme or a conspicuous subtext of Freedom (and you can scroll down to see my detailed annotations if you really care.)

Illiterate

According to the Slactavist:

Tea partiers tend to revere the U.S. Constitution in much the same way that many American evangelicals revere the Bible, which is to say they read it without comprehension, looking only for ammunition that can be used against their enemies. And since neither text was written for such a purpose, this so-called reverence is an exercise in illiteracy.

And there you have it.

Jonah Goldberg Still Dumb

In the LA Times, and for all I know elsewhere, Jonah Goldberg argues that news of a civil war in the Republican Party is overblown although

[t]ime will tell which side will lose that debate [on the wisdom of running crazy people for office], but one thing is already clear: The tea parties won

the non-existent civil war, I think he means because the debate isn't yet settled. Furthermore

[i]t takes two to tango, and it takes two to fight a civil war. What seems lost on a remarkably diverse group of observers and political combatants, on the left and the right, is that there are no worthy Republican opponents to the tea parties.

Why is this the case you ask? When Tea Partiers like

Rubio and Toomey chased moderates like Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter clear out of the Republican Party. And now Miller has pretty much done the same with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who in a sad attempt to cling to power announced that she will run as a write-in candidate come November. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, immediately moved to excommunicate Murkowski, stripping her of all her seniority and leadership positions.

In all three cases the "establishment" has said to the moderates, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." And how have they responded to the allegedly barbaric, uncouth, tea-fueled hordes storming the Beltway castle? "Lower the drawbridge!"

See?  It isn't a civil war between crazy people and "moderates" in the Republican Party, the Tea Party domination is really just the last episode in a purge of the Republican Party of rational people by crazy people, which is entirely different.

UPDATE:
As per usual Goldberg is wrong, Murkowski was not stripped of her leadership position.

[link added]