If they are not tired, why all the lying around?

Reps. Joe Barton, Marsha Blackburn and Michael Burgess argue that the "ban," which really isn't a ban, on the sturdy and patriotic incandescent light bulb has led to the loss of some 200 jobs. The job loss results, they assert, because the more energy efficient compact florescent light bulbs "can't be produced cheaply enough in America so we’ve turned to China" from whence come virtually all of the compact bulbs. This is further evidence, as if any was needed, of the dangers of government interference in the great free market.

This and some other American-based manufactures of compact bulbs might tend to disagree about the impossibly high cost of making the bulb in these United States. And sensible people might suggest that the 200 jobs are just the latest casualty in capitalism's long war on everybody as its acolytes pursue the goal of profit maximization.

Pearls of Wisdom or the Perils of Perdiction

Charlie Cook writes that

House Minority Leader John Boehner was smart to dodge the tax cut fight by saying that while he preferred to extend all of the tax cuts, he would not vote against one for the 98 percent making less than $250,000 just because it didn't have one for the highest 2 percent. The last thing the GOP needs to be doing is giving Democrats ammunition for their "Republicans only care about the rich" attacks.

He is a very serious person writing for other very serious people, who stroke their chins and wonder what is to be done about Hmer Simpson.  The article came on September 14th. On September 15th Boehner said

TPM REPORTER QUESTION: But if it's your only option, as you said Sunday, would you vote for...

BOEHNER: I want to extend all of the current tax rates. I want the speaker to allow a fair and open debate on our two-point plan, because if we extend the current tax rates and we're able to cut spending, we'll reduce some of the uncertainty coming out of Washington, D.C., and employers will then have the ability to continue to create jobs in America.

And the other Republicans all chimed in about their unity in the face of the possibility of the rich paying a slightly hirer tax, which -- presumably -- means that they would vote against the extension of just the middle-class tax cuts.  This, in turn means, that Cook made the elemental mistake of thinking that the Republicans aren't dumb.  They are.

Defeat Through Victory

The various Tea Party Patriot victories this evening mark the end of our long national nightmare.  For far too long crazy people have stood on street corners and shouted crazy things crazily.  Now, however, they have been reintegrated into society and will now try to convince the vast majority of non-crazy Americans to entrust their future into the hands of a bunch of crazies.  Fortunately, the percentage of crazies in any given society has been shown to be 27.  Therefore, no Democratic rout in November. What is more, the Conservatives are already trying to distance themselves from the crazies.  Some of them not so much.

Sometimes what appears to be the top of the world is really a fireball of failure and madness.



UPDATE:
According to Sarah Palin and others Karl Rove is fat. But don't let this fool you into thinking that the Republican Party  has fallen into disarray because of internal warfare between crazy people and "moderate" Republicans.

Jonah Goldberg is Getting Dumber

Today Jonah Goldberg "argues" that 

 There’s a powerful upside to the downside of higher education: conservative students tend to come out of universities sharper, more self-confident and more ready to rumble in ideological debates because as members of a disfavored minority, conservative students have their preconceived notions tested every day.

Obviously, there’s no shortage of sharp liberal students on college campuses, but even the sharpest ones get a lot more of their education passively, because they largely agree with what their professors and textbooks say. Their prejudices and convictions are more likely confirmed, not tested. They can go with the flow never questioning the received wisdom because the received wisdom is what they brought to the classroom in the first place.

Meanwhile, conservatives — and right-leaning libertarians — must swim upstream. Some can’t handle it. Others simply avoid courses where their philosophical views might create headaches. But the righties who stick it out, graduate with four years of Socratic learning under their belts.

 Those unfavored minority conservatives have their beliefs tested, liken global warming, but they emerge stronger because they have to fight continually to prove that global warming is figment of your imagination and, besides, you shouldn't try and do something about it because of sun spots. Or they learn how to prove over and over again that Obama is too a socialist, fascist,  baby-eating, secret Muslim, who is probably gay.

Meanwhile those liberals are all ready surfeited with knowledge about global warming and so they just nod their heads to what they already know and never get the gumption to even consider that Liberalism and Fascism are the same thing.  Sheeple.

What, exactly, do Conservatives think goes on in a university classroom?  Herr Professor Doktor Stalin Lenin  von und zu Marx stands in front of his willing acolytes and leadenly intoning the tenets of Marxist Leninism, except when its Maoism.  Furthermore, is Goldberg's demonstrable inability to think critically about nearly[1] anything evidence that he went through an educational system run by Conservatives?

UPDATE:
Goldberg prints a long response from an allegedly Conservative, Evangelical professor that is a marvel of nonsense. For example:

Conservatives, by contrast, don’t think, “[Evil laugh.] How can we keep the [discrete and insular minority] down for a few more decades?” but rather, “I’m not sure it CAN be fixed, and we sure as heck need to think about unintended consequences and our own limited resources before we throw taxpayer money at it.”  The better among us follow that thought up with, “What can I personally do to change things for the better?  If I am the change I seek, why do we need the government as middleman?”

See what he or she did there?  If you ignore the progress the Civil Rights Act and related Federal legislation accomplished, you can argue that social problems can't be tackled through legislation but one can hope that Nice Guy Eddies will stop being racist pigs. The problem, he seems to think, is the insularity of a group not the legal structures that limited their full entrance into citizenship.  Plus and also, notice how legislation making it illegal to discriminate amounts to throwing money at a problem.  Here is a perfect example of a Conservative not sharpening his or her arguments because he or she faced continued intellectual assault as a undergraduate and graduate student.


[1] He's not especially good at it but his writing on movies, tv, and popular culture more generally is better than his seriously serious stuff on everything else.

Oy

Dinesh D'Souza in Forbes on Obama:

Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

 via

Obama's dad's essay on African Socialism is available here.

UPDATE:
 Ramesh Ponnuru:

I think that it is a mistake to imagine that Obama is a deeply mysterious figure, as opposed to a conventional liberal. He is no stranger than contemporary liberalism is.

Of course, he is something of a flying monkey himself.

UPDATE:
Or maybe Ponnuru thinks that "contemporary liberalism" really does want to destroy America and there is not reason sound like a deranged mad man, when you can just point out that Liberalism wants to destroy America, which doesn't sound crazy at all.

UPDATE:
An erudite rejoinder to D'Souza from The Economist.

The Right Explained

John Derbyshire, a man who has rather perverse taste in women, today explains the current state of Conservative politics:

I made the same point on NRO a while ago:

“The sustained exercise of thought” is not entirely “unknown to me.” The number of times I have experienced it, though, is so small I believe I can remember every one of them. I think there have been around six. They ranged in length from one to about five hours — say a lifetime total of twenty hours. The rest of the time, I have been pretty much on cruise control, or asleep, or having, like Sir Edmund [Gosse], small, unconnected, inconsequential thoughts about “little palpable things.”

People’s claims to have arrived at some conclusion or other by sustained, connected thinking should always be received with skepticism.

The you have it.  His thought process: I am mortal, I am incapable of sustained thought; everyone else is mortal, therefore everyone else is incapable of sustained thought.  Except, of course by his own admission he can't, or in any event doesn't, think. So, I guess, his thought process would be more like this:

Not only does this method explain trickle down but it also explains Sarah Palin's selection.

David Brooks is Not a Serious Person

In his column today Brooks identifies a shift in cultural attitudes as the cause of the decline of America's industrial might. Before he does this, however, he proves he is a serious person by reducing a complex historical moment to a ridiculously simplified version of events.  In this case it is Britain's rapid rise to hegomonic status in the 19th century and relative economic decline in the 20th century.  He argues that this rise and fall resulted from a change in elite attitudes toward work, the first change good the second bad and kinda of sissylike.  He then identifies a similar change in elite attitudes in America towards work with the sissylike version and, hey presto!!, America's decline is the fault of Americans who would rather be do-gooders or make a fortune in finance.

Britain's relative economic decline, in Brooks' telling, had nothing to do with two expensive wars -- the first of which was pointless and cost more than Britain could afford and the second of which certainly wasn't pointless but it still cost more than Britain could afford, the rise of other industrial powers -- say Germany or America, decolonization with its loss of captive markets  -- like India, and other related whatnotery, like -- say -- the Great Depression or an ill-advised return to the Gold Standard at pre-WWI rates or Thatcher's industrial policy.  Nope not a bit of it.

Because if he did include these aspects of 20th century history, America's "decline" would be the result of ill-advised invasions and industries' drive for profit maximization, which means moving from here to countries with few or no labor and environmental laws, which-- in turn -- means that elites and others who might maybe want jobs in industry can't get them because those jobs no longer exist here.  Or China's rapid and successful industrialization.  And this would place the blame pretty squarely on the backs of the folks who made those decisions not some assumed changes in attitude of everyday and elite Americans toward work

In other words, when seeking to explain the reason there are so few jobs in industry in, say, Buffalo, Brooks concludes that it's the fault of people who don't want to work at the jobs that are no longer there because they've all lost their work ethic and now just want to lazy about as social workers or something.

UPDATE:
Brooks writes:

As the historian Correlli Barnett chronicled, the great-great-grandchildren of the empire builders withdrew from commerce, tried to rise above practical knowledge and had more genteel attitudes about how to live.

Barnett writes that

in this seminal period of 1870-1914 — the widespread lack of appetite of British employers, themselves often ill-educated "practical men," for recruits with formal technical qualifications, and their preference for people "trained" on the job by the traditional method of "sitting next to Nellie." Here was an abiding double bind: the British system proportionately turned out far fewer technically qualified personnel than, say, America or Germany, and yet more than British industry wanted.[quoted cited here]

See what Brooks did there?  He got the argument wrong; they wallowed so much in practicality, which was in fact a code for Palinesque "Common Sense," that they turned their backs on technocrats.  I can't find any hard copies at the moment but Barnett seems to argue that the "over-strained structure of British power swiftly collapsed" because of the "shock" of WWII. Dintenfass wrote a nice summing up of the debate of Britain's decline, which is -- go figure -- much more complicated than Brooks lets on.

Brooks also insists that

sometime around 1800, economic growth took off — in Britain first, then elsewhere. How did this growth start? In his book “The Enlightened Economy,” Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University argues that the crucial change happened in people’s minds. Because of a series of cultural shifts, technicians started taking scientific knowledge and putting it to practical use. For example, entrepreneurs applied geological research to the businesses of mining and transportation.

 The implication here is that the "crucial change" occurred around 1800.  Mokyr, in fact, links it to the Enlightenment's Scientific Revolution, beginning with Bacon,  the Republic of Letters, legal innovations -- like patents,  and important technological developments all in the 18th century or earlier. Like most historians, what Mokyr does is discusses the Industrial Revolution as a series of stages that ought most properly be understood as a first and second revolution, the second enjoying the success of the first and finally able to move forward armed with great piles of scientific knowledge, and he seeks to privilege the importance of the first, which includes changed attitudes of mind, new institutions and legal regimes,  and technology plus the destruction of "mercantilism" as the dominant economic paradigm.  See it's more complicated then Brooks lets on.

More on For-Profit Higher Ed

Previously, I mentioned that for-profit higher education was a bad idea and that the WaPo was in it up to its neck and was lobbying against reining in the worst aspects of the tawdry Wackford Squeersesqueness of the whole industry. If you're interested you might want to read this which exposes more skullduggery.

If They Aren't Tired, Why All the Lying?

Rober Costa, full time flying monkey, claims that

From Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, congressional leaders have found a way to work with presidents on policy, even if they were ideological opposites.

And seriously, serious, flying monkey Paul Ryan (R-WI) whimpers

"these days, it seems like every time you reach your hand out, you get burned . . . from what I can tell, President Obama has little interest in trying to triangulate like Bill Clinton or Dick Morris.” The president’s ideology, he laments, often gets in the way of negotiations. “Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan,” Ryan says. “At the expense of the American idea, he has doubled down on Chicago-style politics and class warfare, pitting one group against the other.”

It's all true, if you consider the Newt era impeachment and government shut down working with a president to first end his career and second end the government, although it seems unlikely that Clinton was interested in either goal.  And that Obama with his endless public meetings with Republicans on health care and his leaving out the public option, demonization of Sarah Palin for pallin' around with terrorists who hate real America, and his accusations that John McCain was both a Manchurian Candidate and a baby eater, really did divide the country. Oh wait.

In any event, Ryan is clear that as soon as Obama agrees to transform himself into Paul Ryan, he can count on Paul Ryan's support to enact Paul Ryan's policies. Well, some of them.

I Find This Hard to Believe

The big rumor right now is that the BLM is posting signs on some highway in AZ telling people Mexican drug lords and other evil south of the border types are in control of the area.  This is, I predict, bs.  Why would the BLM, which primarily interested in land use enforcement put up signs like that?  Particularly when county sheriff Paul Babeu is already on the case?  This story is not true.

UPDATE:
Then again maybe not, although it seems slightly different than the fraught nature originally reported.

Jonah Goldberg is Dumb.

He now argues that Park51 is all about the Benjamins and that's why he opposes it. He

understand[s] that the Muslim angle — for want of a better phrase — has a lot to do with all of this [irrational and Islamophobic] opposition, but it’s important to keep in mind that part of the reason why the Park51 project is offensive is that it’s an attempt to leech off the memory of 9/11 for a political (and financial) agenda.[sic]

That’s one of the reasons I don’t like the term “ground zero mosque” — because it makes it sound like the primary objection is to the freedom of worship near ground zero. If this was just a mosque, with no larger agenda than to provide prayer-space for local Muslims, I truly would not care. But Park51 is intended to be some kind of 13 story Islamic Epcot Center. That’s what has always offended me about it. Imam Rauf has a much bigger agenda than merely giving local Muslim cab drivers, store owners and stock brokers a convenient prayer room.  And letting him pursue that agenda so close to ground zero is simply in poor taste (it is not “surrender” to Islam or anything like that).

Honest to goodness.

They Call Them Nation-States for a Reason

Some are suggesting that things are looking up in Iraq, what with happier Iraqis, improved economy,  the stronger state of the State and the increased oil production. Indeed this same some insist that nation building works.  Others, which is to say me, ask if your life sucks 10 on scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most sucky and your rating changes to 7 your life still sucks.  I'm not much good at math but I think that if your economy lay in ruins with a growth rate or, let's say, negative 20 and it went up to negative 10 that's a big improvement but still pretty sucky.  And can a state really be called strong if it passes "impressive laws" but is unable to implement them?  Also, too does it matter to whom the profits of the oil development go?

When the Nation-State developed over the course of the late 18th and most of the 19th centuries it consisted of two aspects: the Nation and the State.  The Nation consists of those who see them selves or who can be convinced to see themselves as united by something.  The State is the administrative arm of the government, which, ideally, reflects the interests and desires of the Nation, aka citizens. Because he conflates the two halves, Brooks can elide damaging structural weakness in one by pointing to temporary improvements in the other.

Even with this weak argumentative structure, when stripped of the high gloss, Brooks admits the State is too weak to fend for itself, barely capable of fulfilling its responsibilities, lacking necessary human capital, and generally speaking fragile.  When discussing the Nation, he admits that the civil truce between Shia and Sunni is equally fragile.  He has, in other words, defined success in a very odd way.

Finally, he leads off by claiming that the US spent 53 billion on this attempted nation building, when in fact the total cost of the war to date is 709 billion.[1] He might maybe want to argue that 656 billion he fails to mention doesn't count  but he ought to explain why.

Why is that when serious people think seriously about serious matters and make such serious errors in  analysis, one wonders how they receive and maintain reputations for seriousness.

 [1] A quick note to Conservatives and others trumpeting that fact the the invasion cost less than the stimulus: you're being silly and, I suspect, you know it.

Historically Iliterate

Dennis Prager, all around dolt and flying monkey, argues that

There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the Left, which had been morally confused about Communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I.

That can't be right. The Left was essentially pacifist after WWI if you don't count the Spanish Civil War and support for WWII. It is also possible to argue that arguing against interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, South America, Iran, etc isn't pacifism but rather sane foreign policy.

He goes on to show that Liberals or Leftists, which are the same thing even if they disagree about everything, now fail to refudiate terrorism because of their hideous moral relativism. Leaving aside all those Liberals who have done just that, he's right as rain.

Prager concludes by excusing Dr. Laura, after the ad, and noting  "[t]hose who don’t fight real evils fight imaginary ones."  He lacks, it seems to me, self-awareness.

Historical Causation or the Logic of Private Belief.

It seems that Conservatives are going to go all in on Glenn Beck's latest dog and pony show. Why?  I have no idea. I am, no doubt, biased but there seems to me that there is no way that that little man's moment in the sun ends in something other than a real tragedy.  Over at NRO one of the flying monkeys, Abigail Thernstrom by name, argues, or perhaps more accurately asserts,

Chris Wallace spoke as if the Poor People’s Campaign was the logical culmination of King’s entire life. And he declared that “the civil rights movement was always about an economic agenda.” Chris, no.

You see, Thernstrom later clarifies, although the "Poor People's Campaign  was consistent with" King's "long-held private belief in some vague form of democratic socialism," it was the case that

in the earlier years, King argued in the public arena for a color-blind society, and it is that commitment for which we honor him. The socialist elements in his private thinking are a separate story.

Got that?  He argued for a color blind society not because of some private belief but because of, well it's not really clear what.  Maybe a commitment to Conservative values?  Let's take Thernstrom's point about King's later positions not being the "logical culmination" of his earlier private belief.  This is a really bad argument, or assertion, when directed at something that actually happened. It might be the case that later King wasn't the logical culmination of younger King's private beliefs, then again it might be that later King developed logically from early King's private beliefs.

As an example, Reagan's Conservativism and his violation of the constitution were not the logic culmination of his early Liberalism because lots of Liberals didn't become economically illiterate, war mongers. Q.E.D.  The problem here is that the fact of the matter is that Reagan did become what he became and so did King. So if the later Reagan was not the "logical culmination" of his private beliefs, we ought be able to point to something, Red's Under the Beds -- as a suggestion, to show what altered those beliefs.   Consequently, when considering the intellectual, moral, and political developments of anyone we need to look to their "private belief" and see if, when, or how it changed in order to determine if "private belief" held early  was the, or in any event a, determining factor in public utterances later uttered.  If you see what I mean.

Let's say that as an ordained minister, King's private beliefs arose from his long-term engagement with the Gospel and, as an Christian, he looked to Christ for guidance when developing his private views prior to taking those views public.  Let's go further and say that King was influenced by Christ's social teaching as it related to equality and justice. Let's finally say that it is  logically consistent for King, who began with a commitment to justice and equality as it related to race and racism, to move from his initial and more "narrow" focus to the broader focus of justice and equality for all men and women, i.e, the Poor People's movement.

Does Thernstrom think that public utterance isn't motivated by private belief and that changes in public utterance aren't the result of thinking through broader implications of private beliefs? It seems to me that she can't think that, because if it is the case the question arise of what, exactly are public utterances the result.  Things, i.e., an end to white supremacy, she now endorses? And if someone says something they can't possibly believe then what are we to make of them as critics?  Right now the answer for Conservative, or many of them, is that it is flying monkeys all the way down.

[Edited for clarity and charity]

This is nice

Yesterday Daniel Foster, an NRO flying monkey and all around dolt, published a bit on how poor NJ lost 400 million in Federal money, asking, rhetorically one assumes, How Vindictive Is This Administration.  The story is that NJ failed to hand in one slip of paper in a ninetybillion and eleventytwelve page long document and, consequently, they didn't get the dough.  Included in the post is video of NJ Gov. Chris Christie repeatedly bemoaning his fate as unfair.  He even said the Obama admin could have called or gone to intertubes and found the information.

First point, where's the how Conservatives and Republicans but especially conservative Republicans take responsibility so seriously automatically deploying thingamabob.  I've filled out some complicated grant applications and watched while colleagues completed dossiers of staggering length and complexity.  You make a mistake and, well, you made the mistake.

What happened in this case is revealing:

Christie publicly said Schundler had tried to give the correct information to a bungled question during the presentation, but video from the U.S. Department of Education released Thursday proved that did not happen.

Then Schundler, the individual responsible for the error, is fired per his own request. Foster calls this a

very unfortunate turn of events. Schundler was a dedicated reformer and an intellectual light in the administration. He was also as worthy an adversary of the teachers unions as the governor he served.

 However, as with all dark clouds there is a silver lining because

this story . . . reconfirms what we already knew, that Chris Christie is decisive, and a believer in accountability.

Got that?  Big deal Conservative/Republican governor and leading candidate for 2012, right behind Palin, complains that the Obama admin has the temerity to hold his admin responsible for an error, which -- according to a flying monkey -- is proof of the Obama's vindictiveness. When it turns out that Christie was in error that proves that Christie holds accountability sacred.  The Obama admin, presumably, continues to be as vindictive as ever; what with its forcing everyone to follow the rules attitude. I mean really are these the kind of guys and gals you want screaming at the guy or gal trying to drive the bus of state through obstacle course of history?

UPDATE:
I found out the stuff about Christie being wrong from another Weblog; I thought it was Think Progress but cannot find the webpage now.  I did want, however, to be clear on getting the information from somewhere and if I find it later will post it.

UPDATE:
From

Former New Jersey Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, who was fired today by Gov. Chris Christie (R) amid accusations that he'd lied to the governor about an error in the state's application for federal Race to the Top money, is now saying that he did not mislead the governor at all.