Where wrong is right and false is true: The inverted moral world of the American Right
April 27, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Digby, commenting on Rick Perlstein’s marvelous piece in Mother Jones on the rise of our current “mendocracy” and the legitimation of lying by the modern media, added this : This history provides an important foundation for my ongoing quest to understand the right’s ability to operate without the constraints of hypocrisy or consistency in an environment of epistemic relativism so extreme that we end up believing that wrong is right. It’s literally mind-boggling. There are a couple of mechanisms by which this is occurring. An example of the first kind was this truly mind-boggling exchange between Monica Crowley and Stuart Varney the other day on Fox News, wherein Crowley leapt upon the recent releases of intelligence from Guantanamo via WikiLeaks to declare that they established once and for all that, by golly, torture really did work! VARNEY: I want your judgment. Do you think President Obama would order it done? CROWLEY: I think if there were an imminent threat, the commander in chief, regardless of who it was, would order it done, yes. VARNEY: And you think it should be done. CROWLEY: I absolutely think it should be done. Listen, the commander-in-chief has one job, and that’s to protect American lives. You need to do what’s necessary when faced with an imminent threat to do it. Nevermind that Crowley’s evidence that torture works is dubious at best. But it’s breathtaking how quickly Crowley and Varney leap over the question: If torture works, should you do it? What seems not to cross either Crowley’s or Varney’s minds is the notion that the president might have a higher calling to the nation than simply keeping Americans alive — that preserving the Constitution and, concomitantly, both our long-term security and our standing in the world as a moral beacon, might be such a higher purpose. The president has an obligation not to make America into a nation of torturers, too. (Of course, it’s worth observing that the previous president — an object of ardent admiration by both these pundits — not only had a disastrous record on this latter obligation, he was also an abject failure in terms of preserving American lives, too.) This really is a simple and clear moral issue: Does America torture or not? It is not just a cliche but a great truth that “the torturer is the enemy of all mankind”. Which side are we on? But in the inverted moral world of conservatives, that is not even an issue. All that is at stake for them is criticizing any liberal politician or policy and ardently defending any conservative or Republican. That’s their moral compass. This same imperative is what drives the second mechanism by which the Right’s world is turned inside out. And that is a simple and uncomplicated refusal to accepts facts as realities and to embrace lies in their place — if those lies burnish the emotional narratives upon which the Right ultimately relies for its appeal. This is manifest particularly in the case of the Birthers, who are singularly immune to fact, logic, reason, or rationality, and ultimately reality. Instead, they’ve built their little bubble world and nothing, NOTHING will draw them out. Here’s Michelangelo Signorile dealing with a Birther on his radio show the other day, which provides a classic example of this: Click here to view this media This is why President Obama’s release this morning of his long-form birth certificate will not be the air-clearing catharsis he hopes it will be — it’s just the beginning of the next phase in the Birthers’ conspiracism. Because the overriding narrative in all this is what matters to these folks — namely, that Barack Obama is not a legitimate president. They absolutely need to believe this, you see, because these folks are all right-wing authoritarians . As I’ve explained previously : Right-wing populism is always fueled and populated by right-wing authoritarians — people who believe that the nation/state needs strong rulers and that it’s the duty of citizens to obey them assiduously. This why they suffer so much cognitive dissonance when the nation’s top authority is a Democrat/liberal/socialist/Marxist/fascist — and why their first impulse, in such situations, is to embark on a vicious campaign of delegitimization (see, e.g., Bill Clinton). It’s why they basically go insane. And it’s true not merely of the Tea Partiers, but of Beltway Village Establishment conservatives too : Nothing Obama does will ever satisfy the likes of Liz Cheney. Right-wing authoritarians believe above all in bowing and adhering to those in authority — and the thought of bowing to a Democratic president, liberal or otherwise, as a legitimate president is too much cognitive dissonance for them to handle. So they turn the world upside down: Torture is hunky-dory, truth is falsehood, facts are fiction. It’s the only way they can continue to cling to a worldview that constantly runs aground on the hard shoals of reality.
Continue reading …The Washington Post Sunday Outlook section had an article from the President of American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks , making the conservative case for why wealthy people shouldn’t be taxed very much, and why it was so nasty for President Obama to make arguments about fairness in his criticisms of the Ryan budget, which radically lowers taxes for the richest 10 percent of Americans while raising taxes on everyone else , ends the guarantee of health care and nursing home care for seniors and those with disabilities, forces the average senior citizen to pay more than $6,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses, and cuts money for food stamps, health care for children, Pell Grants, and education funding by at least a third . Brooks’ argument boils down to the idea that if you are rich, it is probably because you earned the money by working harder and being smarter than most other people, and that this kind of merit doesn’t deserve higher taxes; that in fact we should reward merit. He goes on to say the kind of redistribution us lefties support “for the sake of fairness, it weakens free enterprise, lowers opportunity and impoverishes us in many ways.” It is an interesting, if very familiar (conservatives in America have been making it for about 230 years), argument, and it is important to discuss because it goes to the heart of what conservatives in this country believe. Brooks does a good job of including some nuance in his argument, acknowledging for example that luck might have something to do with becoming wealthy, and that government had some modest role to play in a modern society, but essentially, he is very open about what conservatives believe: if you are wealthy, it is almost always because you deserve to be; if you are poor or working class, that is probably what you deserve as well. I want to first make the case why the argument itself is wrong, and then move to a broader discussion of how this basic argument exposes how modern conservatism has gone so deeply off the rails. The meritocracy argument is most flawed in its basic conception: as Joan Williams points out in another WP Outlook article, only 18 percent of the income of the wealthy comes from actual work, and class mobility in this country is actually quite a bit lower than in other industrialized nations. Much of the wealth in this country is inherited, and even a great many people who go on to make money on their own do it because of the great schools, great connections, and early investments their wealthy parents were able to provide them. Beyond that, though, is the ugly but undeniable fact that a great deal of the wealth earned in 21st Century America’s economy comes not from inventing great new gadgets, or having the gumption to build and sell products many people want to buy, but is derived from speculative financial trades done by insiders: finance is now about 40 percent of our economy, and six banks control assets equal to 64 percent of our GDP. Some of the other big sources of wealth in our country come from big oil companies who get heavily subsidized by the government; military and other kinds of government contractors taking advantage of sweetheart deals and no-bid contracts; health insurance giants with near-monopolies in many of the states they do business in; and agribusiness giants heavily subsidized by the government. This is not meritocracy: it is crony capitalism, special interests making money off the rest of us. In fact, rather than contributing to society, these people and companies are leeching off it. To say they shouldn’t have to pay a reasonable share of taxes because of their merit, hard work, and entrepreneurial spirit is a pretty outrageous argument. But even for those outstanding companies and businesspeople making their money in a way that really does contribute to society, they also do owe something back. The technology companies and engineers making great new products we all like, the manufacturers and construction companies building things that add to our country’s infrastructure and economic health, the solar and wind power companies and the retrofitters and recyclers helping us create wealth and a greener society, the hard working small businesspeople who make every community in America a better place to live: these kinds of businesses are admirable, and they help our economy grow. But they get a great many things from the public sector, and have a responsibility to contribute a reasonable share back into it. Public roads and bridges get their goods to market; public schools give them educated employees; police and firefighters make the communities they operate in safer and more secure; government oversight keeps their competitors from cheating and stealing, making the marketplace more fair. Many businesspeople got student loans from the government, or start-up money from the SBA, or benefit from the internet that was created by government research. They don’t have to worry as much about their parents and grandparents because of Social Security and Medicare, and their workers are more productive because their disabled children are getting some help from government. To whom much is given, much is required, and these successful Americans have been given a great deal by their country, and they do owe something back. Here’s what conservatives don’t want to acknowledge: the point of progressive taxation isn’t redistribution of wealth, it is simply that we should all pay our fair share of taxes for this country we need to nourish, for all the things government needs to do to make a decent and secure society, and we should pay more if we can afford to. That is what progressives mean by fairness. It is a pretty basic concept, but selfishness and greed sometimes do make it hard to understand. Which leads me to my broader point about the nature of modern conservatism: The strident and angry complaints, repeated endlessly, about Obama’s fairness argument against a budget like Ryan’s show how completely devoid of balance Republican politicians and the conservative movement are. Expressing shock and outrage that Democrats would complain about the end of Medicare and Medicaid’s historic guarantees of coverage, and the decimation of programs like food stamps and Pell Grants, in order to fund tax breaks for the top 10 percent — because remember, this budget doesn’t actually do that much to reduce the deficit — is more than a little disingenuous. Because they don’t want to have an honest debate over whether programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Pell Grants should actually exist, they fall back on the same arguments against progressive taxation they have been using since time immemorial: we want class warfare, redistributionism, blah, blah, blah. Conservatives have always believed in the free market and small government, and they have always opposed progressive taxation, but these policy arguments have become a kind of fundamentalist religion. The free market is always right, government is always wrong, and any tax on anyone wealthy is always socialism. If there was any intellectual honesty here at all, they would just admit what their budget does — end Medicare and Medicaid, radically slash all money for student loans, etc. — rather than going away the country saying they are trying to “strengthen and preserve” these programs. These are big issues, and we should have the argument.
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media Radio personality and C&L friend Nicole Sandler attended Allen West’s town hall today and was led away in handcuffs. Palm Beach Post : Inside the meeting, West was less than a minute into his remarks tonight when two or three men began shouting from the audience. “How about our Medicare that you’re stealing?” shouted one. “How about allowing questions from the audience?” shouted another man, apparently dissatisfied with West’s decision to answer written questions submitted by audience members before the meeting. At West’s previous town halls, members of the public lined up to ask him questions in person, sometimes waiting 30 minutes or more to do so. “What you have seen happen previously is you get such a line of people and a lot of folks want to come up and proseletyze for six or seven minutes and you’re really not getting to the questions that people want to have answered,” West said after the meeting. West, who has gone back and forth with critics at his previous meetings, said the written format was not an effort to avoid tough questions. “I don’t duck,” West said. During the meeting, West had responded to a question about Medicare when Nicole Sandler of Coral Springs, a former radio host on the liberal Air America network, began shouting from the audience. Other audience members began shouting at her and a police officer led her out. “This is supposed to be a town hall meeting. That means back-and-forth,” Sandler said as she exited. Sandler argued with a Fort Lauderdale police officer in the lobby who told her to leave the building. After she yelled at the officer for placing his hand on her, she was arrested for “trespassing after warning” and led away in handcuffs. Funny. I don’t recall the 2009 town hall meetings as having the heavy police presence at every single one, or people being arrested for asking questions. And I certainly don’t view Nicole Sandler as someone who is threatening in the least, but evidently those policemen did. Nicole Sandler lives in Allen West’s district. She is entitled to receive answers to her questions even if he doesn’t like her politics. She is entitled to attend town hall meetings and ask those questions. She’s even entitled to record those meetings. Having her arrested for insisting on answers to her questions is just another indication of the totalitarian state people like Allen West, wingnut loony man, think of when they think of “liberty.” (ps – If you want a taste of what conservatives in Sandler’s district want our country to look like, read the comments on that Palm Beach Post article) Here’s the video of her being ejected:
Continue reading …
Credit Suisse Trashes Peter Schiff’s Idiotic Assertion That The US Is Broke GGN- News Bulletin :: April 21, 2011 Part 2/4 City corporate event at Laithwaites Credit Suisse Net Drops 45% on Investment Bank, Debt Charge | Hot … April 27, 2011, 1:56 AM EDT By Elena Logutenkova (Adds earnings by division in seventh paragraph.) April 27 (Bloomberg) — Credit Suisse Group AG, the second- biggest Swiss bank, reported a 45 percent drop in first-quarter profit, … Credit Suisse reports 45 percent drop in Q1 profit | The … Credit Suisse Group says its first-quarter net profit fell 45 percent to 1.14 billion Swiss francs ($1.3 billion). Last year, the Zurich-based bank reported a profit of 2.06 billion francs for the same period. Credit Suisse said … RPT-UPDATE 2- Credit Suisse investment bank reports robust Q1 … Repeats to additional subscribers with no changes to text) Topic : Credit Suisse net off 45%; underlying net off 17% | AFF Post MarketWatch’s Latest Tweets Johnson & Johnson, Synthes announce $21.3 billion merger http://on.mktw.net/gzOEOY12:36 a.m. EDT, April. Golden Gate and Infor set to buy-out Lawson Software for $2bn … Golden Gate and Infor already have fully committed debt financing from Credit Suisse , Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada and Deutsche Bank. Lawson’s stock price began to rise last May after activist … vmagzs says: [CNA] Credit Suisse sees first quarter profit drop – http://bit.ly/fDoei2
Continue reading …David Sanger, NYT’s Anti-Bush Foreign Policy Voice, Doubts O on Libya: ‘Is This Any Way to Fight a War?’
April 27, 2011 No Comment
The front of the New York Times Sunday Week in Review features a think-piece by the paper’s foreign policy maven David Sanger, “ Halfway In With Obama .” The subhead: “In Libya, America lets others command. By letting allies pick up the burden, is its credibility on the line?” Sanger was a harsh critic of Bush’s foreign policy philosophy, mocking the
Continue reading …Wingnut Presidential Candidate Herman Cain: Privatize Social Security Like Chile
April 26, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Well, Haley Barbour might have bowed out of the GOP presidential primary, but we’ve still got wingnut Herman Cain in the running, who went on the air with Fox’s Shannon Bream and recommended we privatize Social Security like they did in Chile under Pinochet, but don’t dare call it privatization. BREAM: Alright, will part of the tough solutions and will the strong medicine include entitlement reform? And how do you sell that to the American public? CAIN: We have to go from an entitlement society, to an empowerment society. And what I mean by that, all programs need to be restructured. You can’t just continue to raise taxes on these programs and decrease the benefits. And Representative Ryan’s proposed budget is a great start in that direction. We can’t just continue to do the same things we’ve done before. For example, relative to Social Security. I think that we put the idea of personal retirement accounts back on the table and do what Chile did thirty years ago. They don’t have the problem we have today. Now it got demagogued last time as privatization. That absolutely is not the case. We need to take that route, restructure Social Security so we can achieve solvency, or the problems we’re encountering, the crisis that we now have, they’re only going to get worse. Someone needs to tell this clown that Social Security is solvent . And if he thinks the GOP ought to run on privatizing it, whether he wants to call it that or not, more power to him. That didn’t work out so well for George Bush, but apparently he’s got a short memory. We can fix any shortfalls with our system by simply raising the cap on payroll taxes, or better yet, lift the cap and make it less regressive while we’re at it. And if he wants us to follow Chile’s model, maybe someone could direct him to this article — Chile’s Retirees Find Shortfall in Private Plan . This guy Cain may not be a serious candidate for president, but he’s got every one of the GOP talking points down pat. He sounds like a broken record like the rest of them. Lower taxes on the rich. China is going to eat our lunch, but no mention of our trade inbalances being a problem with them. We need to slash and burn the budget, but don’t dare say we’re going to do it at the expense of the elderly and the poor. And repeat endlessly that President Obama is not leading and say the words “the American people” as often as humanly possible during an interview. And of course Megyn Kelly’s fill-in Shannon Bream had to get in there that somehow a person who understands how to run a business can take that experience and be capable of governing. I’ve found that to be generally untrue because for the most part, and if you’re a Republican or a Blue Dog Democrat, your idea of governing “like you’d run a business” means seeing how many of our tax dollars you can turn over to one of your campaign donors’ profit driven enterprises that has no regard to what those taxpayers are getting in return for their money. I was listening to Thom Hartmann this week and he was talking to a caller about how the Republicans just love privatizing everything and what that really means for workers in the United States far too often. I don’t remember if it was just a friend of Thom’s or someone in his family, but he was discussing how they were working for the government and they decided to contract out the work they were doing to a private company and they lost their job. And once that company took over the work the government was doing, his friend got hired by the private contractor that picked up the work to do the exact same job, and for a whole lot less money and with no benefits. The kicker is they weren’t saving the government or the taxpayers any money with the cost of their contract. Basically they were just taking the money that used to go to that person’s salary and benefits that used to work as a government employee, and funneling it to that company and their stock holders instead. That’s the America these guys have in store for us that want to “run government like a business.” That’s nothing but code for a race to the bottom on wages, scrap benefits and the social safety nets, kill every union contract you have in place and you workers left to deal with it, pull yourself up by your non-existent boot straps after we ask you to compete with slave wages in China. And in the mean time, oh don’t dare to suggest raising taxes on the rich, or that’s “class warfare.” Heaven forbid we point out that they really just want nothing but the rich and the poor in America so they don’t have to outsource that cheap labor. They’ll have it here at home and sadly, we’re well on our way there now. I’m not sure what it’s going to take to change that, but I hope the public being fed up finally starts getting some response from Washington if enough of us get out there and make our voices heard. We’ve got a lot to make up for when wingnuts like this Cain are given national air time and treated as credible by a channel with millions of viewers.
Continue reading …
Ronald Reagan 100 – Major League Baseball Tribute Ella Jane Fitzgerald swing in Shepherd blues cover Ella Fitzgerald “You’ve changed” Cover by :Le Swing D’Ella Is Donald Trump the new Ronald Reagan ? Trump would like you to … The team helping to fuel Donald Trump’s run for president is working to brand the real estate mogul as the new Ronald Reagan , a notion. What Ronald Reagan Did For America | Breaking News Today Reaganomics (the economic style of government Ronald Reagan input while in office) created an unexpected period of economic prosperity, were. The RSS Ronald Reagan : Rich Lowery on America's Declining Prestige The RSS Ronald Reagan . This is a blog dedicated to the history and political philosophy (i.e., conservatism) of the 40th President of the United States and one of the world’s great leaders. … MSNBC's Ed Show: There's a Vast Right Wing Network Spreading … ANDY KROLL, MOTHER JONES: They have a network, a web of think tanks that are devoted to free market principles that were inspired by none other than Ronald Reagan himself, spread throughout the country. … Reagan vs. Trump? Not even close. | The Conservative Diva Yes, it’s true that Ronald Reagan was once an FDR-supporting Democrat, but it is also true that as early as the 1940s he began to devote his life to fighting the anti-freedom, communist forces in Hollywood — a long-standing effort that … ExpressKelly says: We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone” Ronald Reagan @ExpressTyler
Continue reading …Michael Steele Exposes Chris Matthews’ Hypocrisy On GOP Presidential Candidates
April 26, 2011 No Comment
For weeks MSNBC's Chris Matthews has been complaining about the lack of declared GOP presidential candidates. On Tuesday's “Hardball,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele exposed Matthews' hypocrisy concerning this matter marvelously demonstrating that once any of the possible candidates formally enters the race, the avowed liberal commentator is just going to trash him or her (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: This is the strangest thing in the world. The Reagan library debate was supposed to be,. like, now. That`s gone until next September. MICHAEL STEELE, FORMER RNC CHAIRMAN: Right. MATTHEWS: The Fox thing is supposed to be in, what is it, South Carolina? It`s supposed to be — STEELE: May 4th, right. MATTHEWS: — in a week or two. STEELE: Right. MATTHEWS: There`s no real front-running group of candidates like we`ve always had before. Why are these big names pulling out, first of all? STEELE: Well, I — MATTHEWS: Why`d Barbour pull out yesterday? STEELE: Well, I — MATTHEWS: Why`s Pence thinking about something else? STEELE: Well, I — MATTHEWS: Thune everybody thought would be the dark horse. Your thoughts. The above came early in the lengthy opening segment of Tuesday's “Hardball” with the following coming a few minutes later: MATTHEWS: Well, Steve, the big difference between — that`s a fair comparison except for one thing. Back when Bill Clinton was smart to run early, running in `92 and winning, George Herbert Walker Bush was about 91 percent in the polls. He had just won the Iraq war. He looked like Winston Churchill — though he ended up getting beaten in `45. He couldn`t be beaten. This president is running, when he bounces to the top of his bounce, around 50. Sometimes he gets above it. This is a winnable race, depending on conditions. Why do you think, as an analyst watching the Republican side, these guys are all Chicken Littles? They`re all bopping across — yes, they can`t — it`s not my year, I don`t know, I don`t think I got the ID. When`s going on here? For the most part, this is what Matthews has been saying for months. Minutes later, Steele attempted to address Matthews' concerns: STEELE: Look, you`ve got a very strong conservative base that`s active in the GOP nominating process, and I think that a number of those who are announced already, like a Tim Pawlenty and certainly a Newt Gingrich, can galvanize that base — MATTHEWS: Oh, geez! STEELE: — around a set of ideas. (LAUGHTER) STEELE: Look — no, you — MATTHEWS: You think Newt Gingrich is fit to be president of United States? STEELE: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. See, you`re assuming — MATTHEWS: Give me a break! STEELE: You are assuming — MATTHEWS: Newt Gingrich president of the United States? STEELE: Wait a minute. This is not about your personal peeve with Newt Gingrich — MATTHEWS: No, it`s not about my peeve. STEELE: — or your views about Newt Gingrich. MATTHEWS: Look at the rap sheet — STEELE: This is about — MATTHEWS: — on the guy. STEELE: Wait a minute. Hold up. This is about a Republican nominating process. Now, if you want to talk about a general election campaign or strategy, that`s something else. MATTHEWS: OK. STEELE: But you`re talking about a Republican — you asked me about a Republican nominating process, and I`m giving you the square deal here. Plainly evident, Steele was beginning to see the hypocrisy. Matthews was expressing what is obviously a bogus concern about why more Republicans haven't tossed their names into the presidential ring because he's trashing those that either have or appear destined to do so. This became even clearer moments later: MATTHEWS: Michael, do you think America`s in peacetime right now? (LAUGHTER) MATTHEWS: Are we in peace? Just an objective — we`re all objective people here now. Are we in peacetime right now? When you look around the world — STEELE: No, no. No, Chris. MATTHEWS: OK. STEELE: To answer the question — MATTHEWS: I know somebody who believes — STEELE: — we are not in peacetime. MATTHEWS: — that we`re in peacetime. He wrote an op-ed, which you re-edit a couple of times and (INAUDIBLE) people help you with them and you get them right. But after a lot of deliberation and editing, here`s what Mitt Romney wrote in an op-ed in “The Manchester Union-Leader” up in New Hampshire. Quote, “Barack Obama`s facing a financial emergency on a grander scale, yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history.” And when questioned on the use of the word “peacetime,” his spokeswoman said he meant to say — well, he didn`t say it, it was written down — since World War II. Is this up there with Jerry Ford and Poland has been liberated? I mean, is this one of those delusional statements that really disqualifies a guy from even thinking about running the country? STEELE: No, it does — no, no, it does not. And you know, Mitt Romney is one of those serious individuals who`s looking to run for the nomination — MATTHEWS: Well, explain. STEELE: — who I think will put on a good race and you cannot — you cannot hold him — you cannot hold him to that. I mean, that`s just an editorial mishap and you move on. MATTHEWS: So if he were president of the United States and he said, We`re enjoying peacetime in his inaugural address, you wouldn`t take that as a problem. STEELE: Pardon me? MATTHEWS: If he said this during his inaugural address or his acceptance speech, would it be a problem then? At what point does missing the reality of our time — we`re on four war fronts right now. We`re fighting in Pakistan. We`re fighting in Libya — (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: Everybody knows this. We`re fighting in — we got 100,000 troops fighting in Afghanistan. STEELE: Chris, it has — MATTHEWS: We got half that many fighting in Iraq, and this guy thinks we`re living in peacetime. That`s a problem. STEELE: Right. And President Obama thinks there are 57 states. What`s your point? MATTHEWS: Oh, OK. (LAUGHTER) STEVE MCMAHON, DEMOCRAT STRATEGIST: Listen, this is just — STEELE: What`s your point? (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: One is a misstatement. The other one — STEELE: OK, so give me a break. MATTHEWS: — is a misreality. Go back to Steve McMahon — STEELE: Oh, yes. Oh, I — oh, is that how this works, one`s a misstatement and the other`s a misreality? MATTHEWS: I just think one guy — (CROSSTALK) MCMAHON: Please. So, moments after bashing Gingrich, Matthews went after the GOP candidate many believe to be the presumptive favorite. With this in mind, when Matthews presented some candidates that he thinks would be viable, Steele was having none of it: MATTHEWS: OK, let me run through a couple of names just to run this because I don`t — think there`s a point here. And my point is that people that could be president aren`t running. I think in a different year, Jeb Bush could have a great run for president. I don`t think this is his year, necessarily. I think Chris Christie`s got something. I think he`s a hotshot. I think he`s verbal. He knows how to talk like East Coast guy, quick and smart, and he`s interesting. STEELE: Right. MATTHEWS: And that separates him from Pawlenty — STEELE: Right. MATTHEWS: — and it separates him from Romney. He`s interesting. Thune I think has the look of a rangy Westerner. STEELE: Yes. MATTHEWS: He`s got sort of the cowboy manner, and he`s clean as a whistle and he`s the new kid on the block and he might just knock the president off. Pence — STEELE: Oh, yes. MATTHEWS: — is not exactly the happiest guy I ever met in my life, but he seems to approving — he seems to fit with the sensibility of the party, which is not having a good time anyway. The guys who are not running look like good candidates, Michael. I tell you this — STEELE: Of course they do, Chris — MATTHEWS: — New Gingrich is never going to — STEELE: — because they`re not running! MATTHEWS: — be president of the United States. These guys you have on your list — Tim Pawlenty`s not going to be president. I don`t think Mitt Romney`s going to be president. STEELE: OK. MATTHEWS: Do you? MCMAHON: I like — I like the field. I like the field that they`re running right now. STEELE: I — I — look, I — MATTHEWS: Michael, do you think any of these guys running — STEELE: Yes. MATTHEWS: You said when we started tonight — STEELE: Yes. MATTHEWS: — when your IQ was popping about 10 minutes ago before you got beaten down by me, you had a smart thought. Somebody`s going to come in this race like Bill Clinton came into the Democratic side — STEELE: I do. I believe that. MATTHEWS: — back in `92. So who do you think`s going to be your Wendell Wilkie, the guy that comes in and wows you? STEELE: I don`t — I don`t — I don`t know who that person — in all honesty, I don`t know who that person is just yet, but I do believe that that is something that`s very true. I was saying going back to my days as chairman that I think the dynamics of this time and this race will allow someone to come in that will surprise people. At one time, I thought it was Mitch Daniels. It still may be. We`ll see if he gets in. I don`t know. But this is the point. You guys are sitting there in your comfort zone with this race right now and because of the people who aren`t running you think should be running. I guarantee you that if any on that list were running, you`d be eating them alive — MATTHEWS: OK — STEELE: — just like you`re going after Tim Pawlenty and Gingrich now. MATTHEWS: Well, Michael — STEELE: So let`s — let`s call it what it is, all right? Bingo. All this carping and whining by folks like Matthews about why more Republicans haven't entered the race is total nonsense for the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln could appear tomorrow and everyone on MSNBC as well as the rest of the liberal media would attack him just as they are Bachmann, Gingrich, Palin, Pawlenty, Romney, and Trump. So, let's do call it what it is: getting Barack Obama reelected.
Continue reading …Oh, my mistake. I inadvertently placed this two-year-old video of Sen. John McCain and his Republican buddies (Senators Joseph Lieberman, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham) going to stroke Qadaffi’s – ah, ego – to get him to purchase US military systems for his country. I really like the little bow that McCain gives to Qadaffi. He must have had a stroke and forgotten this visit when he
Continue reading …
This just in: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is a raging hypocrite. You'll be shocked to find out, I'm sure. In the ongoing debate over entitlement reform, one relatively modest proposal for saving a bit of money is to raise the retirement age by two or three years. But in a recent blog post , Krugman dismissed the proposal, saying it “shows how disconnected [its proponents] are from the way the other half lives (and dies).” It's only the plutocrats, “the judges – and the politicians, who are similar – who think it's a great idea to raise the retirement age.” Yes, the only people who think it's a good idea are judges or politicians…or Paul Krugman, as it turns out. Back in 1996, Krugman lauded the policy as a “sensible” way to pre-empt what he then described as the looming entitlement crisis. As quoted by Michelle Malkin , who dug up Krugman's 1996 review of a pair of books, one by Peter G. Peterson and the other by Charles R. Morris, Krugman wrote: Both Mr. Morris and Mr. Peterson offer plans to avert the crisis ahead. The details differ, and Mr. Peterson’s proposal is more completely fleshed out, but the general thrust is clear: slow the growth in benefit levels, gradually raise the retirement age, impose limits on expensive terminal medical care that prolongs life for only weeks or days and — last but not least — raise taxes moderately now, rather than massively later. We need not dwell on their sensible proposals, however, because there is not the slightest prospect that they will be put into effect — or indeed that we will do anything serious about the looming crisis until it is almost upon us. Click here for the rest of Krugman's review. As Malkin noted, his discussion of the looming fiscal crisis brought on by entitlement spending sounds like “Paul Ryan circa 2011.” But this is all true to form for Krugman. He routinely changes his position on major economic issues in order to maximize the rhetorical benefit for his political allies. In fact, one peer-reviewed study found that Krugman often – more than any other economist measured – changed his position on deficit spending depending on the president's political party. So as one might expect, it's not too difficult to find examples of Krugman contradicting himself for purely political reasons. “What Democrats believe,” Krugman wrote last March , “is what textbook economics says.” But that's not how Republicans see it. Here's what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning's position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” That position, Krugman claimed, is contrary to textbook economics. And he would know – he has written economics textbooks. In fact, scanning through “Macroeconomics” by Paul Krugman, one might find this passage : Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect… In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker's incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries. So do unemployment benefits keep people from finding work, or not? Well, that depends: does extending those benefits comport with Krugman's political agenda? And of course the hypocrisy extends to the wisdom of deficit spending generally. Here's Paul Krugman in 2004: Well, basically we have a world-class budget deficit not just as in absolute terms of course – it’s the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world – but it’s a budget deficit that as a share of GDP is right up there. It’s comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country. It’s biggest than Argentina in 2001. Which is not cyclical, there’s only a little bit that’s because the economy is depressed. Mostly it’s because, fundamentally, the Government isn’t taking in enough money to pay for the programs and we have no strategy of dealing with it. So, if you take a look, the only thing that sustains the US right now is the fact that people say, ‘Well America’s a mature, advanced country and mature, advanced countries always, you know, get their financial house in order,’ but there’s not a hint that that’s on the political horizon, so I think we’re looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future. Got that? The federal budget deficit, at the time about 3.5 percent of GDP, represented a potential catastrophe. In 2010, the deficit was about 9 percent of GDP. Here's Krugman last summer : Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession. And here in Germany, a few scholars see parallels to the policies of Heinrich Br
Continue reading …