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The Kid’s Table – A Rabbit Rants

Posted in Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , on Thursday, 17 September 2015| Leave a Comment »

Reposted from Daily Kos 7 August 2015

In order to prepare for my spot today on The After Show for Netroots Radio I had to listen to both of the GOP debates…twice. I could give you insightful, thoughtful analysis especially about Republican economics but, frankly, the League of Sub-Ordinary Crackpots wore me down and I just don’t have that in me today. I’ll get to it, just not today. Instead, on The After Show I had something of a cathartic rant and I thought there might be those who would like to read it so I am posting it here as well.  – Carrots! Arilss Bunny, Netroots Radio Monetary Policy and Financial News Burrow Chief

Keep hopping for my partially exasperated, partially funny take on the candidates you won’t be hearing from for very much longer.

The GOP Kid’s Table debate: where good facts go to die. Carly Fiorina “won” and she did it without having to use a single accurate fact. Politifact verified that. Zip. Zilch. A perfect zero.

Some wunderkinder at the Kids Table thought it was news that China and Russia are using cyberwarfare. GASP Has anyone told the NSA??? I listened for the audience, to see if they had any reaction to this but there were literally only thirty-two people in the seats. “Bueller? Bueller?”

Lindsey Graham made a serious attempt to win at GOP bingo by hitting as many off-topic code words as possible in the shortest amount of time but then he basically dissolved into talking about his sad, sad life and ended up looking like he needed a hug…from John McCain.

The Kids Table Debate was the debate of NO. No on immigration. No on the economy. No on healthcare for anyone but especially no on healthcare for women. No on Dodd-Frank. No on Common Core. In fact, no on the whole Department of Education. No on the EPA. No on preserving Medicare. No on taxing those who can afford to pay taxes. No on entitlements but we’ll make it up by funding defense programs the DoD doesn’t even want.

But, to be fair, there were exceptions. Yes on Keystone XL, yes on “the fence,” and yes on killing women to save fetuses. Yes on tax cuts for everyone except working families. Yes on endangering social security. Yes on forcing China to act only in its own interests. Yes on backing Russia into a corner. Yes on blowing up all our relationships with all of our allies…except Israel. And yes on war with Iran.

These are people who live in a world of magical thinking and I don’t mean ambitious thinking, I mean unicorns are dancing the can-can under a rainbow magical thinking. These are folks who think that racing our economy to the bottom such that we can attract manufacturing jobs back from China is a good idea! I’m thinking, why stop there? Let’s use the Second Amendment to springboard into a hunting and gathering economy. Right! Are you with me?

These are people with minds and hearts so small and so focused on their own personal glory that they plan to repeal every single executive order President Obama has signed since entering the Presidency with no consideration as to what those orders might be. They only need know that they were signed by the black, Kenyan, Muslim, vegan, satan. These are truly six-shooter minds in a fully-automatic world.

These are people who think that political correctness is a problem but the seemingly daily murders of citizens by law enforcement is not.

And in closing – none of them can count. People, they asked you to describe Hillary in two words. Two words, people! TWO WORDS!

Actually, no, I take that back because I do have a question for the candidates and it is this: if you were so easily fooled by a clearly doctored video that purports to show Planned Parenthood employees saying things they did not truly say, how can you represent yourself as someone capable of evaluating conflicting intelligence reports which may or may not directly effect national security…on a daily basis?

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Mint the Coin vs the Debt Ceiling

Posted in Disapproval, Economics, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Tuesday, 8 January 2013| Leave a Comment »

Memes are a strange thing. One never can really predict what will catch on and what will die with a mingy wimper. Still, economist Stephanie Kelton has to be pretty thrilled that #MintTheCoin has gained traction. She, and the entire rest of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) community of economists, have certainly been waiting long enough. #MintTheCoin is Dr. Kelton’s (@deficitowl) current contribution to Twitter and it’s an important one but I’ll bet you don’t know why.

Hint: the answer isn’t “debt ceiling.”

The meme has caught fire and is being promoted by the likes of both Paul Krugman and Salon (…’nuff said) as a solution to the debt ceiling via the hastily lashed together vehicles of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution and Title 31 of the United States Code Subtitle IV, Chapter 51, Subchapter II, Section 5112. I am not going to repeat the basics of the meme because they are splashed all over the web. If you have been dead for the last couple of weeks and somehow missed them you can catch up here, here, and here. There is also, of course, the idiotic GOP response codified, for the moment, in the bill being introduced by Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR) to prevent the President and Secretary of the Treasury from taking the option of the now infamous platinum coin. My favorite part of this legislation is that it tacitly acknowledges that the Secretary of the Treasury really does have the right to mint the coin making any argument to the contrary just that much more difficult. Derp. The part of this legislation that makes me want to put my face through glass is when the Congressman drops his pail down into the my-small-business-can’t-print-money-well to which I respond,

Listen up, Dimwit, the US Federal Government is NOT a business or family and it CAN and SHOULD print money.

Now, I’ll grant you that the world is a big place and some of you thought you had better things to do than to read my post on Modern Monetary Theory vs the Fiscal Cliff (this link is to the Daily Kos cross-post because the discussion thread was excellent there) but if you do not understand the statement above, stop now and read the older post. I’m not kidding. Stop. Now. Thump!

For everyone who did not stop I am going to go forward with the assumption that you fully understand the following things:

  • The budget of the Federal government is in no way, shape or form like that of your family or of any business and likening the Federal budget to the budget of a small business is the same as likening kittens to helicopters. (Ok, both look pretty funny when they are flying through the air but other than that….)
  • The Federal government is not balancing a budget, it is balancing an economy and the delimiters of that balance are unemployment, exchange rates and inflation. Period. End of story.
  • Deficits mean NOTHING. Debt means very, VERY little.
  • The US economy has nothing what-so-ever in common with any country which uses the Euro so comparisons to Spain or Greece or Italy are, again, kittens to helicopters.

Again, if there are any of the above which are unclear to you, go back to the older post. I mean it. *glare*

What has to be thrilling the MMT community to the tips of their pointy little heads is the fact that the platinum coin is breaking into consciousness at all because they have been talking about it for a long time for a whole different reason.

Zeroing Out the US Debt

News Flash: the platinum coin could be used to zero out the entire US debt held by the Fed. Done. Gone. I’m going to nibble on some hay while you think about that. … … … … … … Done? I didn’t think so but no one has ever credited me with patience.

There are, of course, two things to know about this approach and the most important is that it is totally unnecessary because given the current (stronger than you realize) position of the US economy and the fact that we have a fiat currency, debt actually means very, VERY little. It is, essentially, a matter of an internal balance sheet adjustment and if someone wants to make a pretty little coin or two or fifty to make it more real, well isn’t that just precious. What this would do instead is allow the funds which are being spent in service of our current debt to be pumped back into the private sector, in a controlled fashion, until we have reached full employment, at which point the spigot would be reduced to a normal flow.

What’s that? I can hear the anguished screams all the way from here. No, inflation is not a factor. Inflation is caused when demand exceeds supply and our economy is no where close to that margin. There is huge room for growth and capacity utilization rates remain exceedingly low. There, there. *pat, pat* I know. It’s a shock because those GOP bullies have been pushing the Debt-bad/Inflation-nigh meme for so long and you actually had started to believe it. If you need more solace on this issue, go to Bill Mitchell’s Billy Blog, for an excellent explanation.

Snipe Hunting

The real truth is that debt isn’t bad. At least, not at our current levels and in our current financial position. Still, we have listened to the GOP and the Tea-baggers rail on it for so long that it is as if we, as a nation, have been on a snipe hunt and we actually believe there are real snipes out there. Let me do you this favor and smack you upside the head, *SMACK!* Wake up!!!

There are not now and there never were actual snipes and because it does not serve our nation and economy for the private sector (all US individuals and businesses) to be in the red and because we will absolutely have a trade deficit for the foreseeable future (which is the international sector), the laws of accounting (if confused, refer to both my previous post on MMT and my previous *glare*) say that the public sector (the Federal budget) MUST be running a deficit . If we just can’t make ourselves comfortable with that than let’s pretend otherwise by zeroing out the debt with a magical coin. Here’s the bottom line. The debt means NOTHING and the coin means NOTHING and using them to cancel each other out so that we feel better is silly but not necessarily a bad thing. Plus, of course, it frees up all the money necessary to get everyone who wants to work back to work… oh, and to invest in the changes necessary to address climate change, invest in education, rebuild our national infrastructure, solve the long-term healthcare crisis…among a few other little things.

The IMF’s Giant Facepalm

…and then there’s the International Monetary Fund (IMF.) These genius’ have been at the head of the austerity bandwagon for years as they have dutifully strong-armed (and worse) economy after economy into the ground with their iron-clad commitment to austerity. …except they were wrong. Totally and completely, absolutely and irrevocably (in some cases) wrong. Now, it’s one thing for me to say this. What is one rabbit against the all-powerful genius of the IMF? So I had to laugh (and cry a little) when they finally acknowledged that they have been wrong all along. As it turns out, when an economy is struggling and it implements austerity, things get worse. Conversely, when countries, like Germany, Austria and the US (thank you, President Obama), use stimulus, they experience improvement. Why? Because (and here I apologize for repeating myself) a country is not balancing a budget, it is balancing an economy. WHO CARES what a ledger says! What matters is that people are working, the temperature of inflation is cold and the exchange rate is reasonable. Those are the only three things that matter. Everything else is just a snipe no matter what the Tea Party or the GOP or the IMF has to say.

In Closing

The Giant Platinum Coin IS an interesting concept. It IS worth thinking about but it is wasted on an imaginary “problem” like the debt ceiling. Oh, it’s not that it can’t or shouldn’t be used there. It’s just that if we really want to get the GOP to shut the thump up and we really want to change the future of our country and the lives of our citizens, we won’t just stop there. But that is, of course, just one rabbit’s opinion.

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Mary Matalin Eats a Fly – My 2012 Election Wrap-up

Posted in Approval, Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Sunday, 18 November 2012| Leave a Comment »

You should chisel this moment into stone. In fact you should probably sit down because the shock of my admission may just be too much for some of you.

I was wrong.

Oh, I was not wrong about what I said about Mitt Romney, who will now be consigned to the litterbox of history for failing in a manner so cataclysmic that the entire GOP will be forced to take time away from blaming the black guy to blaming each other for not being able to do arithmetic. I was not wrong about what I said, more than two years ago, about John Bohener having an irreconcilable (and hilarious) problem with the ever-widening solar system of a gap between the Tea Party and reality. I was also not wrong about what I said about about the last fiscal cliff as it applies to the coming so-called “fiscal cliff.” (Personally, I agree with David Waldman, KagroX, that the term “fiscal curb” is more correct.) What I was wrong about was thinking that the GOP would wake the hell up once they had gone splat on the windshield of the Democratic party express.

Republican FAIL

Sure, there are a smattering of GOP pundits talking about substantive changes in message but they are being drowned out both by those who have been unable to get past loudly blaming Mitt Romney for being a candidate who daily demonstrated all the backbone of a windsock and the rest who are madly zeroing in on a few surface issues. Have faith, none of them will get to the core of their problem for three BIG and PAINFULLY OBVIOUS reasons which, of course, the entire bubble-based GOP will overlook and into which Dick Morris will likely do another faceplant.

I will summarize here:

1. If you don’t respect differences and people in general, your policy will reflect that and those people will (eventually) notice.

2. They built it, a base of angry, terrified, white, bigoted, evangelicals who aren’t going to change…ever. It’s going to be impossible to work these folks into a “big tent” platform and waiting for them to die will take a while.

3. Citizens United isn’t really a friend of the GOP. Corporations are their own friend, first, last and always. Corporations will spend accordingly. The demo has now made a huge swing in the direction of the Democrats. Corporations have made a note. They won’t be betting exclusively on the GOP to win from here on out.

The GOP did build a “nuclear option” but they aimed it at themselves because these guys really weren’t kidding, they believed their own spin. Karl Rove’s melt down on FOX News, which will live on in infamy, or, my personal favorite, Mary Matalin’s epic FAIL on CNN, wherein she spends the entire time looking like she just swallowed a fly, are both perfect examples of a simple truth. The GOP had no idea that their message was not landing. They have been locked in their own echo chamber for too long (too long, too long, too long…). As it turns out, only eternally pissed-off white men and a narrow majority of married white women think that a platform of “I’m entitled and the rest of you can go screw yourselves,” is an appropriate way to run a country. The rest of the electorate thinks that things like having a strong and well-coordinated FEMA during a major national crisis, as opposed to a few people handing out canned goods here and there, is essential to maintaining a strong and vibrant nation.

Dems Fail

Still, there are things the Dems should be learning from all of this. (Though, given the fact that we have had Karl Rove, the Dark Lord and Master of the first two items noted below, on our ass for multiple elections and still have not managed to learn these lessons, I am somewhat lacking in hope.)

1. Narrative matters. Yes, our kith and ken all worship at the alter of reality-based information but we tell our story terribly – really, really terribly. President Obama had a strong first term and even now almost no one knows that. Hello! Short, simple, glossy, heartwarming narrative. I mean seriously, people, the very best narratives of this election were provided by the other guy including Big Bird, the pre-1917 Navy and, the corker of them all, the 47% video. Y’all have a year and a half to figure this thing out. If you do, we have a shot at taking back the House and then running the tables for two years.

2. Naming Shit Stuff. WOW. We are so very, very bad at this. The “Affordable Care Act”  – really! Who thought of that? The GOP is a superstar at naming stuff. “Pro-life,” “Obamacare” and “Defense of Marriage Act” these are works of art. Can we please hire one damn Mad Man from Madison Avenue to handle this for us? Where is Don Draper when you need him?!?!?!

3. Self Doubt. During the weeks leading up to the election Republicans were sure they were going to win and Democrats were sure they were going to lose. Dems are genuinely bad at knowing when they have the upper paw and then taking advantage of that fact. Dems are also bad at being who they really are. For years the party has been moving to the right while the country, the electorate, has been moving left on issues while still voting right because *facepalm.* Democrats need to be Democrats.

Democrats have allowed the GOP to run away with the individual freedoms narrative but the fact is that individual freedom is exactly what Democrats support and Republicans oppose on almost every level. Democrats also support the strength of community. These things are not mutually exclusive. Republicans want the world to be either this or that. Democrats understand that there can be a balance where both exist together. (Though, I have to say, in a tip of the hat to BlueGal and DriftGlass, there are not two sides to facts and presenting so-called “balance” on matters of fact is when the media needs to be taken out to the Internet Kitty litterbox and firmly rolled in the material therein.)

On election night all the networks showed coverage of the crowds at the Obama and Romney headquarters. The Obama crowd was all ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic groups. It was all of us. The Romney crowd was white and, based upon the outfits seen on the women, sorely in need of fashion advice. I also think that removing the sticks from up their posteriors would be helpful but that’s really a personal decision.

The Last Word(s)

And finally, that moment for which you have all been waiting, the gloating. These are my favorite thoughts on the subject.

• If you are one of those thinking is that God is involved in each and every little thing that happens to us than His choice is pretty obvious – the black, Kenyan, anti-colonialist, Muslim, socialist, communist, WON. Hahahahahahahaha!

• I’m sending a special “thank you” out to those on the Team Romney who designed Orca, their beached-whale-fail of a get out the vote app . I’m glad those bottles of tequila I sent over while you were in the programming stages proved to be effective. You are welcome.

• Speaking of voting, Florida doesn’t get to vote anymore. They must now turn in their electoral college votes and move to the back of the line, behind Wyoming.

• And this compliments of Second City…

 Through election night God himself was hitting refresh on FiveThirtyEight. He just made the universe, (Nate Silver) turned it into a graph. 

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Save Nate Silver’s Ankles

Posted in Approval, Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , on Sunday, 4 November 2012| 1 Comment »

I just sent $538 to the American Red Cross and I’d like to tell you why. This past week has been filled with right-wing nutbar attacks against a man named Nate Silver. For the three people left who have not yet heard of Nate, go here or here. In simple terms, Nate is a rock star at, among other things, something called “polling aggregation” wherein he has created a method, using statistical modeling, which has proven to be so astonishingly accurate that Time Magazine named Nate one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People. Oh, and as I understand it from people who have met him, he is also just a really “nice guy” by which I take to mean he likes rabbits. This is, of course, beside the point but I thought I would mention it.

Lately, Nate has been under fire because the same people who brought you creationism in textbooks (finally defeated, in Texas, in July of 2011) and a complete denial of climate change* are now taking aim at math.

Where have I heard this story before? Let me think…. Perhaps a blueberry on the half shell well help me to recall? (hint.) Thump! (blueberry arrives) That’s better. Oh, Yes!

During the late eighth to the thirteenth centuries the nations of Islam lead the world in scientific development. For every sixteenth or seventeenth century European scientific great, there was an earlier Arabic polymath who contributed in extraordinary ways to science as a whole. The fields of algebra, geometry and trigonometry either began or were greatly expanded by Arabic genius. Quadratic equations became a part of the mathematical language. Advances in human biology, medicine and pharmacology were so long lasting that books written during this time were still in use in Europe hundreds of years later, as were the designs of astonishingly accurate astrolabes and water clocks. Cartography and sociology grew closer as Arab scientists began to understand the earth in terms of the people who populated it. Modern astronomy still owes the Arabs a great debt. Perhaps most important of all, the baseline for the scientific method was drawn featuring empirical and quantitative approaches to scientific inquiry. The Arabs were at their zenith as a society.

And then they weren’t. The loss of leadership in scientific innovation is described well by Arabs themselves. Senator Adnan Badran, who holds a PhD in molecular biology from an American university and has been both the Prime Minister of Jordan and a longtime Senator said, “Science needs stability, democracy, freedom of expression. You must have an environment that’s conducive to free thinking, to inquiry. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to release the mind’s potential. It’s a very bleak story, a very disappointing story, about the state of science and technology in the Arab region.” Speaking of the past richness of Arabic scientific discoveries he goes on,

We were open. Islam was open, a strong belief with dialogue. It was tolerant, mixing with other civilizations. Then we shifted to being dogmatic. Once you’re dogmatic, you are boxed in.

Gamal Soltan, a political scientist in Egypt says of many modern Islamist scientists,

They’re sure about everything, about how the universe was created, who created it, and they just need to control nature rather than interpret it, but the driving force behind any scientific pursuit is that the truth is still out there.

Remind you of anything?

Science is under assault in this country. From Congressional de-funding of basic research, to the shuttering of Fermilab’s Tevatron Particle Accelerator, to the, now lifted, ban on the use of embryos in stem-cell testing, to the cult of global warming denialism, we are turning our backs on science. We are allowing what happened to the Arab world to happen to us and we are doing it with our eyes wide open. If you want to know how it is that Europe, China and India may well be eating our lunch in just a few years, it starts with all of them being clear that the world is more than 6000 years old and that math is not evil-on-a-stick. Right now, the US is still in contention when young scientists are deciding where to work but it is already an ongoing subject of discussion, in scientific circles, that due to the dogmatic influence of the political right on scientific education, funding, legal support and, most importantly, thought, the United States is on the verge of a scientific brain-drain, something which we will share with Arab nations.

Ankle Biters

I’ll admit it, there was a time when I, myself, was an ankle biter. I grew out of that. Now I box ankles which is, of course, much classier. Still, I think I continue to have some insight into ankle biting in general but for why this matters let’s get back to Nate.

When FiveThirtyEight, Nate’s blog, makes a prediction about the election and says that President Obama has more than an eighty percent chance of winning the election, he is not saying that the President will win. He’s saying, sure, go to that family picnic but you might want to consider taking an umbrella because there is a chance of rain. More importantly, FiveThirtyEight is making no comment what-so-ever on the qualitative value of this outcome. For all we know, Nate is voting for Governor Romney. Nate is doing what it is that scientists do. He is following the data and applying a model he designed which has a past record of success. After the election, he will have a LOT more data because he will be able to verify the accuracy of his predictions and that verification data then becomes part of the larger data set.

Meanwhile, Nate’s ankles are in danger because hedgehogs are out to get him. (If you don’t understand the reference, it’s a thing. It’s called, “reading.” The book is The Signal and the Noise. Read it. Learn something new.) Personally, I wouldn’t put it past one of Nate’s hedgehogs. I mean, some of my best friends are hedgehogs but have you ever really spent an afternoon with one? As Nate describes them, hedgehogs go on and on, for hours, on one subject and they take that same prism and apply it to the whole rest of the world. They are a declarative lot and, despite their name, they rarely hedge. Hedgehogs are all about having everything tied up in one little orderly theory. Just like the over-worn cadre of talking heads brought in both by cable and network television to pontificate on anything and everything, hedgehogs don’t like a mess. They want it all to be black and white simple** and they have to be right. If you knew hedgehogs like I know hedgehogs, you would know Nate is right about this. Clearly, he has spent a lot of time with the prickly little guys.

Like most of those who work in empirical fields, Nate would probably say that scientists are, what he calls, “foxes.” Personally, I find the term a bit off-putting but there it is. Certainly, Nate is himself a fox. According to Nate, foxes understand that when they look out their window and there are no clouds, it still might be good to have an umbrella in the car if the chance of rain is around twenty percent. Foxes see that messy isn’t wrong. In fact, they know that attributing qualitative values to quantitative results is an entirely separate process. Foxes are tolerant of uncertainty and complexity. Foxes aren’t afraid of math as the language of probability.

The science of prediction is fickle and those who are successful in the field require a certain degree of humility just as does all science. Science cannot progress without both the acknowledgement of success and the recognition of failure. The comments made about Nate lately have varied from quite vicious to so outlandish as to be funny (Please, someone tell me that Nate had the good humor to dress up for Halloween as Harry Potter or Gandalf.) But listen up folks, if Mitt Romney wins, Nate Silver said that possibility was among the outcomes. THAT is how probability works.

The value in reading the polling aggregation and blog at FiveThirtyEight is in preparedness. If you are a member of the Romney campaign machine, Nate’s giving you data that is not skewed in the same way as your internal polls and has a better track record for accuracy. Use it as you will. Your choice. Attacking Nate only makes you look small and mean. Shooting the messenger doesn’t change the message. If you really do feel the need to give NRA members someone to shoot, give them Donald Trump and Jack Welch ‘cuz those guys sure haven’t been doing you any favors.

Smack Down

Still, the larger topic is the ongoing attack on science. One need look no farther than Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Egypt to recognize that relegating science to the mercy of dogma is a bad idea. For too long scientists have hidden under their own rocks while other scientific fields were being blasted and de-funded. Science, and everyone who believes in the value of empirical knowledge can and must start to speak out together – loudly. Nate Silver is the whipping boy of the moment and maybe he likes that sort of thing (wink) but he is only representative of a much larger problem.

As the so-called Fiscal Cliff approaches, you can bet that the neck of science is already on the GOP chopping block. Hurricane Sandy was predicted by scientists at the National Hurricane Center doing work that could not be more efficiently done at the State level or by the private sector. The job they did allowed millions of people to prepare for disaster. That’s what funding science buys you.

In Nate’s case, FiveThirtyEight is predicting that there is a less than 20% chance that It will rain next Tuesday. Governor Romney will, most likely lose the election dramatically, especially in the Electoral College. Personally, I’m planning a picnic. I also donated $538 to the American Red Cross.

* Dear Governor Christie, How do you like me now? Signed – Global Warming
** Actually, the hedgehogs of which I speak specifically want it to be white, male simple but that’s for another blog post.

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Cow Tipping Republican Style

Posted in Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on Friday, 26 October 2012| Leave a Comment »

You have heard the jokes. Most of them are pretty much the same. They all include one of the fly-over states in the Midwest, one or more idiot rednecks and a cow. The premise is that the aforementioned idiots sneak up on a cow while it is standing, asleep, and tip it over. Which is even more stupid than it sounds because it isn’t true. It isn’t that it can’t be done. It’s not against the laws of physics after all, it’s just that it is highly unlikely in no small part because cows sleep lying down. Oh, and wide awake cows don’t take lightly to the idea of being tipped over. They are, in fact, pretty dead set against it…and they weigh in the neighborhood of a thousand pounds and have hooves. Your opposable thumbs and big brain aren’t all that useful when you are way out in a pasture somewhere with a truly pissed off cow. Just as a side note, rabbits consider watching cow tipping attempts to be the highlight of local entertainment. Tickets are sold. Popcorn is consumed.

Which brings me to the subject of my thoughts for the day. Will there ever come a tipping point for the hard swing to the right taken by the modern Republican Party? There has been a lot of talk and, conservatively, a bizillion blog posts (the highlight of which was mine, of course) on the subject of the inexhaustible efforts by various GOP candidates and holders of office to promote lies. I’m not talking about areas in which the GOP and the Democrats disagree. That is expected, necessary, even important. I would worry if we were all Kum-by-yah all the time. My concern is with actual lies. Lies which exist in direct opposition to facts which are not only proven but which have direct observable verification available for all to see. Is there a point at which the GOP will finally admit that the emperor has no clothes?

I am not worried about the lies as they have impacted the 2012 election. Frankly, I think that ship has already sailed. That cow has been tipped for approximately 48% of Americans. What worries me is all the ways these lies are seeping into so many other aspects of society. Teachers in many states are being required to teach both evolution and creationism. On one hand candidates speak about their love for teachers and the importance of seeing to it that the US return to leadership in math and science so that we will remain competitive and at the same time those teachers are being required to teach actual lies to students. Teachers are required to dishonor the name of science as a matter of curriculum. This isn’t the policy of a nation of leaders. It is an example of Republicans tipping cows at the cost of our student’s education.

Did you notice that during the recent Presidential debates, the subject of climate change never came up? This isn’t because it isn’t one of the most critical threats facing our planet today. It is because moderators (and President Obama) didn’t want to get into yet another round of fact vs. absolute denial of fact. It would have been a waste of precious network time and the short attention span of most Americans. So this threat, which may well be the very end of our society, remains a game of cow tipping for anyone who wants to hold office from the GOP. No amount of showing them facts or photos or the results from scientific missions sponsored by everyone from NASA to the Chinese will satisfy the GOP. The emperor has clothes no matter how much of his junk is just hanging out there for all to see. It would be funny except that it’s not. It’s really not.

It even applies to simple things. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bill Maher as mad as he was this past week when he was directly quoting President Obama’s speech made the day following the attack in Libya. The GOP spinner just sat right there and kept denying that the word terror meant terror. This takes me right back to the audacity of President Clinton when he was trying to assert that it all depended upon the definition of the word “is.” NO IT DOESN’T. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now. President Obama stood in the rose garden of the White House on the day after four Americans were killed and spoke in grave and dark tones about the events of the previous day. No one on the planet without a political agenda doubted that Obama was considering all his options. God only knows what he was actually ordering behind closed doors. This is the President who has steadfastly maintained a terrorist kill list, approved drone strikes and, essentially, authorized an invasion of Pakistan in order to chase down those who pose a direct threat to the United States. Messing around with Barak Obama’s country has proven to be a terminal condition to more terrorists than we will ever know. But guess what, I was wrong before. More than God knows what President Obama has decided to do about Libya. I suspect that as I dictate this there are Deltas and SEALS training to do the will of this President. Which brings me back to the Bill Maher show. This Romney apologist was arguing that the President of the United States was implying in some way that the attack in Libya was not serious. I would argue that the day after an attack is not the time to be parsing the sentence construction of the President unless, of course, he is reading a children’s book to a class of kids and he wants to finish up before bothering to get involved.

Basing policy and action on lies is not just dangerous, it is catastrophic. Lies are why we invaded Iraq. It’s why the southern leg of a pipeline which will carry tar sands bitumen from Canada to US refineries and then on to ships in the Gulf, where the oil will set sail for China, is currently eating its way through expropriated ranch and farm land in Texas and Oklahoma. It’s why people who have been legitimately registered to vote for years will be denied their Constitutionally-given right to vote this November. And it is perhaps most notably one of the biggest conributors to why our economy crashed.

Because facts are facts.

  • Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and our intelligence services knew that.
  • The Keystone XL Pipeline will not appreciably increase the energy independence of the United States.
  • Voter fraud accounts for less than .00007% of votes cast.
  • The regulation of the banking industry which was put in place after the Great Depression, known as Glass-Steagall, did prevent another depression in the intervening years and removing it did not account for ground-true economic growth.

And it’s getting worse. Just 35% of self-identified conservatives report that they have a “great deal of trust in science” according to a study done in 2010 and a paper reporting on it in the April 2012 issue of the American Sociological Review. These are the people who have made The Creation Museum one of the largest tourist draws in the state of Kentucky which, as I may have mentioned before, features dioramas of humans riding dinosaurs. In other words, these are the people who view The Flintstones as a documentary.

So at what point does too far become so far that even those who wanted to go There start to notice that There isn’t all it’s cracked up be? Democrats live in hope that just by presenting facts over and over and by those facts being proven again and again in the real world that eventually Republicans will join the reality parade. But that’s wrong because fear doesn’t work that way, greed doesn’t work that way and the lust for power doesn’t work that way. The GOP has too much invested in its mythos – and by invested I mean billions of dollars. Driving emotion over reason has proven to be an insanely successful tactic even though it is, well, umm…insane.

Which has started me wondering, at the beginning of all this I think that GOP puppet masters knew they were pitching a fable but lately they have really started to sound like even they believe their own crazy. It’s one thing for Karl Rove or the Koch brothers to convince the masses that cows sleep standing up but when I see them confidently striding out across the pasture toward a cow, it gives me more than pause, it gives me a cold chill. The thing about reality is that at some point she will make them her bitch and when she does a pissed off cow will be the least of our worries.

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Romnesia aka Speaking in (Republican) Tongues

Posted in Disapproval, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Sunday, 21 October 2012| 2 Comments »

By now most of you have heard the joke about Romnesia and the punch line about it being a pre-existing condition which is, thankfully, covered by ObamaCare. (If you haven’t, go here to listen to the President of the United States tell it better than this rabbit ever could.) I also like the notion of Ryan-itus as an FTD (Fox Transmitted Disease.) As jokes go, these things make me giggle which I don’t do often and surely haven’t done much during the extremities of this election cycle. Last week, however, I broke my long silence and now I’m on a roll. It’s all because of that second debate. [If I have to be honest, I slept through the first debate and, apparently, I wasn’t the only one…Mr. President.]

I thought the second debate was much more interesting, especially since both candidates showed up, but what has been even more compelling to me are the videos of Governor Romney debating himself as seen here and here. All of which serves to bring me to my point, Romney is speaking in tongues. All the Romney reversals, “misunderstandings” and outright lies are so frequent that they can’t really be accidental, can they? I think they have to be strategic. They are locking the doors of the room, dumping snakes on the floor and then speaking in tongues…and somewhere between 44.8 and 48 percent of the electorate is buying it.

Bring on the lies!

Bring on the snakes!

Surely, I am a believer and I will be spared.

Except, of course, that snakes don’t work that way and eventually poison spreads.

Speaking In Tongues

 Romney’s Economic Plan – The economic plan which Governor Romney still refuses to detail can not possibly work. It can’t. That is a fact proven by every single outside, independent organization which has reviewed it. (The only organization to review it and find it workable is owned, in part, by high ranking GOP operatives.)

Romney’s Jobs Plan – though he seems to give a different number every day and I hear that he and Paul Ryan have even been known to give different numbers on the same day, the Governor is promising to add as many as 23 million jobs, with his imaginary jobs plan, while he is the President. Ummm…no. Times three. No. No. No. The plan isn’t his.” The number isn’t 23 million. The time span given in the plan is ten years.

Romney on Women – No matter what you thought you heard during the debates, Romney opposes abortion of all kinds in all cases and has said he would be “delighted” to sign a law and/or appoint Supreme Court judges who say just that. No matter what you thought you heard at the debate, Romney supports the Blunt amendment, which would make it lawful for any and all employers to refuse to include contraceptive coverage in any company sponsored health plan. And all of this is before I even mention “binders full of women” a subject upon which I have a whole blog entry here.

Romney on Medicare – First of all, the President did not take $716 billion dollars away from Medicare thereby weakening it. The money was moved around from one line item to another in an effort to strengthen Medicare. This bureaucratic change extended the life of Medicare for eight more years. Anything else you might hear from the Governor on that subject is likely a lie and is patently disproven here. Second, the Governor really does believe in eliminating Medicare and replacing it with vouchers. Here is the thing that will always be true, Medicare and government-based systems may not be perfect but they are not in health care to make money. They are invested only in providing care. Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield is rewarded every time they deny care for a customer. It is money they do not have to spend. The Governor wants more of that. He wants you on your back with an insurance company’s fangs on your throat. Listen to a rabbit when I say, “don’t do it! Don’t go into the light!”

Romney on China – Then there is the new story about the Governor and his ownership in the company Sensata that is right in the middle of shipping jobs to China. It isn’t the first time Romney companies have done so and it won’t be the last. Oh, he can tell you his investments are in a “blind trust” but know this, he can see through that blindfold just fine. One of the things I would like to know in Monday’s foreign policy debate:

If Bain Capital was to bring back every job they had sent or caused to be sent to China back to the US, how many jobs would that be?

I’m just guessing but mightn’t those jobs be enough to reverse the negative jobs numbers in Wisconsin or Nevada, two of only six states with jobs numbers which are down from over a year ago? Governor, I suspect that when you speak of taking a tough line with China, you mean something entirely different than what the rest of us mean. You mean things like how many kilowatt hours of grid time will your factories be allotted. Or, how do you keep Chinese factories you don’t own from reverse engineering the products of Chinese factories you do own. In the story of the Garden of Eden, the serpent talks Eve into taking a bite of an apple. When the Governor speaks of China, he does so with a forked tongue and we all know where that leads.

Romney on the World – The Governor thinks he is tough. He certainly likes to talk tough. Americans eat that up after all. We love the image of being the biggest and baddest country in the world. We think it suits us. Well, guess what. News Flash. Twitterstorm. The world has changed. National entities are not the only actors on the international stage and they are only an increasingly small percentage of the conversation. The Governor’s tough talk could severely damage our relationship with allies (see the news coverage of his trip to the UK for reference) and it could easily tip us into war with both Iran and Syria. (Regarding Syria see here and here.) What it will not do is make us any safer. What does make us safer is being perceived as going in the same general direction as the majority of those engaging in the conversation worldwide. Governor, in case no one told you, the thing most likely to change the balance of power in the world today is the cell phone. Brace yourself…and learn to use Twitter.

GOP Facts are Fungible

The GOP has struck upon the manna of “facts as fungible commodities” and they have been worshiping at that alter since the infamous “Contract With On America.” Yes, the Contract was able to hypnotize the electorate but it also was the beginning of the rise of the economic policies which ultimately lead to the W’s Great Economic Collapse. Democrats, meanwhile, have steadfastly, and to our past electoral detriment, continued to rely upon facts, logic, luck and the intellectual stick up our proverbial butts. [Note: none of those three things alone are the way to win an election, guys.]

My Thoughts on 2012 Election Cycle Take-Aways

• Lies (aka Romnesia) will be progressively harder to sell and impossible to maintain as fact checking becomes both common and instant…by everyone. (But this is one of my current favorites.) While the GOP has still been successful, to an extent, in 2012, try it again in 2016 and see where it gets you.

• There are and always will be people who are too afraid of change to be willing to accept any truth which encompasses said change. These people are the GOP base from here on out. The GOP is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism, it is the party of fear.

• Demographics do not favor the GOP – not with women, minorities or the young, none of whom are interested in being in binders any more…ever.

• Technology and social media do not favor the GOP either in the US or around the world…and neither does science (but that last part is another blog post isn’t it.)

• Democrats have to remember to show up and fight – not just our President, all of us.

• OH – and when you are a Mormon, Republican and the Salt Lake Tribune endorses the other guy because you haven’t been truthful enough, well that’s just… … … …. I’m sorry, I can’t seem to stop laughing.

To those of you who follow me, this has not been my usual humorous posting. I apologize. As you can tell, I am especially disapproving these days. Besides, I’m allowing others to carry the awesome burden of humor for me and I have to say that Mr. Eastwood has done a fine job. Thank you, sir, and have a seat.

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