Today's Must-Read: Conservative Economics vs. Reality

From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

This month, Washington Monthly looked at a libertarian economist Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. Tabarrok went looking for the effects of federal regulation on "economic dynamism" expecting to find support for the conservative dogma that government regulation harms the economy. He found none. What is remarkable is he published the paper anyway.

He goes on. His comments on conservative ideas of how to control health-care costs are particularly revealing.

The bottom line is that conservatives don't understand economics -- but those of us who actually thought about it have known that since Reagan and his "trickle-down" economics. As I observed to a friend at the time, the real driving force behind that idea is that they -- those in control of the wealth -- can stop the trickle whenever they want to.

Which leads inevitably to the conclusion that conservatives -- especially the libertarian branch -- are ideologically opposed to the American system.

Sidebar: This ties in to my conviction that morality -- real morality, not the tribal taboos espoused by the "religious" right -- is part and parcel of our psychological make-up as social animals: we take care of each other because it benefits the group and us as individuals. Which is why I've been known to classify libertarianism as morally bankrupt. (See Paul Ryan.)

Welcome to the Twighlight Zone

This is from a couple of days ago, but I had to share it. I could never make something like this up, but someone has a vivid imagination.

Staunch pro-Trump vloggers Diamond & Silk made an appearance on Fox & Friends to talk about, in part, how awful and evil Hillary Clinton is. What was most alarming about this particular diatribe from the duo, however, was their completely false claim that the former secretary of state sold a bunch of uranium of Russia and now the country has nuclear weapons.

“I think and we think that Hillary Clinton reminds us of a nasty sore that’s rotten to the core that really won’t go away,” Diamond said, as Silk said “That’s right” to punctuate her every point.

“And listen, I think it’s time for her to go somewhere and be quiet,” Diamond continued. “If she’s going to be on the national platform, or on her little platform, she needs to talk about her dirty deeds. How she paid for that fake dossier to try to undermine President Trump during the election. How she sold 20 percent of the uranium to Russia and now Russia have nuclear weapons. And you know that uranium is bomb-making material.”

The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons in 1949. Hillary Clinton was about three years old at that point.

And no, she didn't sell "20% of the uranium" to Russia.

But then, this is Fox News, the second largest purveyor of fake news.

There's video at the link, if you can stand it.

And, just to show that a good conspiracy theory never dies, there's Roseanne Barr, who is using her new-found popularity to go right over the edge:



Also known at "Pizzagate Redux" -- you remember the child sex-trafficking ring Hillary was running out of the basement of a pizza parlor in D.C. -- that didn't have a basement.

Reports are that Barr has always been a disgusting person; this is just the latest manifestation.

There's more detail at the link.

Today in Disgusting People

Take your pick:

Donald Trump:



With thanks to commenter fuzzybits at Joe.My.God.

That post quotes from this article about our second candidate, Greg Gutfeld:

“Society is changing. You have to teach them how to respond,” he said, before referring to kids as “soft targets.”

“You have to be rational about it, which means hardening soft targets through drills and training,” he said. “Learning combat. Learning hand-to-hand combat. This works, by the way, for terror, if there’s a terror attack, and it works for school shootings.”

Gutfeld asked “How do you improve upon this rationally? Well, you train them. That simple.”

What an absolutely insane idea. Can you see a first-grader aiming a karate punch and some guy with an assault rifle? In this context, I think "You have to be rational about it" makes a good laugh line.

Next up is Kentucky Governor Matt Blevin:

In the wake of a shooting that left at least 17 dead on Wednesday in a high school outside Boca Raton, Florida, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (R) focused on violent video games as part of a "culture of death that is being celebrated" and leading to these kinds of incidents.

"There are video games that, yes, are listed for mature audiences, but kids play them and everybody knows it, and there's nothing to prevent the child from playing them," Bevin said in an interview on WHAS' Leland Conway show Thursday morning. "They celebrate the slaughtering of people. There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside of schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who's lying there begging for their life."

"These are quote-unquote video games, and they're forced down our throats under the guise of protected speech," Conway continued, seemingly referring to a 2011 Supreme Court decision that prevents content-based restrictions on games. "It's garbage. It's the same as pornography. They have desensitized people to the value of human life, to the dignity of women, to the dignity of human decency. We're reaping what we've sown here."

That's just the tip of the iceberg. But he's not alone -- he's just the one who popped up in my surfing this morning. As it happens, the link between video games and violence is somewhat tenuous:

International comparisons of per capita spending on violent games and gun-related murders show a negative correlation between the two. And meta-analyses of video game violence studies have found no real link between imaginary on-screen violence and actual aggressive behavior.

Again, via Joe.My.God.

And last (for the time being) but certainly not least, the ever reprehensible Bryan Fischer:

I know a man who was living in a neighborhood when a salesman came door to door selling home security systems. He told the salesman he already had one. “What’s your security system?” he asked. The man replied, “God and a loaded gun.”

It wasn’t a matter of either/or but both/and. I suggest we have mass school shootings because we don’t have enough God on our campuses and we don’t have enough guns.

When tragic school shootings happen, like the one in Florida, everyone sends their “thoughts and prayers” to the families of the victims. But why don’t we pray before these shootings happen instead of waiting until somebody’s dead? Everyone understands that prayer in school is appropriate in the wake of a tragedy like this. But if it’s appropriate after, there’s no reason it’s not appropriate before.

As might be expected, he turns it into an argument in favor of prayer in schools -- and more guns.

And, yes, via Joe.My.God.

The appalling thing is, this is all from three of the first four posts I saw at the first site I visited this morning. I'm sure there are more, but enough is enough. For right now, at least.

Can We Talk About Tax Returns?

The man has no self-awareness at all:

The president also questioned why certain states were refusing to cooperate fully with the commission’s requests for voter information, hinting that those states might be hiding something. “If any state does not want to share the information, one has to wonder what they’re worried about,” Trump said. “What are they worried about? There’s something, there always is.”

Do I really need to comment?

Idiots in Charge

Remember Ben Carson? Who is now secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and displays all the acumen he showed while running for president. NYT, via Joe.My.God.:

Ben Carson does not like the creature comforts, at least not for low-income Americans reliant on the government for a helping hand. As he toured facilities for the poor in Ohio last week, Mr. Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-housing secretary, joked that a relatively well-appointed apartment complex for veterans lacked “only pool tables.” He inquired at one stop whether animals were allowed.

At yet another, he nodded, plainly happy, as officials explained how they had stacked dozens of bunk beds inside a homeless shelter and purposefully did not provide televisions. Compassion, Mr. Carson explained in an interview, means not giving people “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’”

Like the rest of the Trump regime, Carson has an adversarial relationship with reality. As one commenter pointed out, if someone on public assistance manages to get a job, it's likely going to be minimum wage, and even at full time, it won't be enough to make ends meet -- plus they lose things like Medicaid and their housing and a few other things, like food stamps.

But simple solutions seem to appeal to simple minds.

There's also one other aspect of this that seems to be common among contemporary Republicans. Commenter fuzzybits nailed it:

A devotee of the Paul Ryan school of compassion.

Today's Must-Read: A Twofer

There. I'm being very up front about it this time.

Two posts in my morning reading started building links between themselves. (Well, OK, I did it, but it's just the way my mind works: it's right-brain thinking, in which your mind makes connections that are not obvious to rational -- i.e., left-brain -- thinking. It's the way an artist thinks.)

At any rate, the first is Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo on the "Deep State," President Bannon's chief bugaboo:

The deep state is the latest "fifth column" narrative of betrayal from within. Conservative radio host Mark Levin alleges Obama and the Democrats have “squirreled their appointees into the bureaucracy” to engage in a "silent coup" against Trump. But for the Trump administration the narrative functions rather neatly as a preemptive explanation for his administration's own failures. Andrew Sullivan sees Trump's unsupported accusations of wiretapping against President Obama and attacks against the press as "designed to erode the very notion of an empirical reality, independent of his own ideology and power." Peter Beinart believes that deep state rumors are a diversion that will allow Trump to dismiss as partisan hackery any findings by the Justice Department that his administration has ties to the Russian government.

(Emphasis added.)

The portion I emphasized ties in very neatly to this article by David Roberts at Vox, via Digby, which, in spite of the headline is not about climate change denial:

Indeed, the climate fight has long since moved past the stage when it was about the facts.

Allow me an analogy. Imagine you’re playing a basketball game. A member of the other team travels. The referee calls the travel, but the opposing player just shrugs and says, “I don’t care.” He refuses to surrender the ball and just keeps going. Then his team starts putting extra players on the court, fouling at will, and pelting your team with refuse. The referee continues calling violations, but the other team simply disregards him. They start appealing to their own referees, friends of theirs in the stands. “Bob says there was no foul.”

At that point, the dispute is no longer about what happened in this play or that play. The facts are not at issue. The dispute is over the authority of the referee. The question is whether both teams will honor the referee’s calls, and if not, how the game can be played at all and what “winning” means under the circumstances.

If it’s not obvious, the referee in this analogy is science.

Roberts does us the favor of extending that analogy:

But in a sense, climate denial is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

Trumpism is just the flowering of a process that has been underway for a couple of generations, and which we're seeing in all sorts of contexts -- climate change denial, "fake news," "alternative facts," "Christians" rejecting the authority of the law, the press' "both sides do it" mantra, and on and on. Ascribing it to emerging fascism is almost too trite -- it's the erosion of the very foundations of civilization.

And we can thank "conservatism" when it all comes tumbling down.

Footnote: This is a prime example of the tactics conservatives use:

Aiming to erode public trust in the Congressional Budget Office ahead of its report this week expected to show that the GOP's Obamacare repeal bill will cause millions of people to lose their health insurance, Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials are rewriting the history of the CBO's analysis of the Affordable Care Act.

"They were way, way off last time in every aspect of how they scored and projected Obamacare," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. "If you look at the number of people they projected would be on Obamacare, they were off by millions.

"

Insight

This story offers a good insight into the thinking, in some quarters at least, on immigrants:

West Frankfort, Illinois, overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump last fall, but now some residents are upset after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and detained a beloved local Mexican restaurant owner. . . .

While residents in the town said that they were still supportive of the president’s moves to deport undocumented immigrants, they told the Times that the president should make more exceptions for people like Pacheco, who have not only been exemplary local businessmen, but also pillars of the community who take part in local charity events.

The comments by residents in the town are illuminating: "Our immigrant is different."

I wonder if any of these people stop to think about the fact that the overwhelming majority of immigrants, legal or not, are hard-working, law-abiding people who just want a decent life and would like to fit in.

You get what you vote for

Today in Disgusting People

Any Christian supremacist would qualify, but Richard Land is particularly odious. His latest:

The Southern Evangelical Seminary’s Richard Land, who spent the last eight years relentlessly attacking the Obama administration and vowing to defy the president, is now voicing his deep concerns about those who dare to oppose President Trump’s agenda.

While appearing on TheDove TV’s “Focus Today” program yesterday, Land said that opposition to Trump amounts to “insurrection” and that the Trump administration is leading a “counter-revolution” aimed at defeating a “second American revolution” that he claims was fomented by the likes of former-President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

“What does concern me is that there is a new poll out showing that 35 percent of Americans are pure resistance; they are not going to accept Donald Trump whatever he does, they have made up their mind that he is not a legitimate president and they are going to resist him at all costs,” Land said. “Now, there is a name for that, it’s called insurrection.”

OK -- the hypocrisy's a given -- people like Land and his ilk know that their audience has the attention span of a gnat, so they figure they can get away with it.

The part about "making this country ungovernable": excuse me, wasn't that Steven Bannon? An avowed Leninist who wants to destroy the whole government?

I'd love to know what this "second American revolution" is; considering how the first one turned out, wouldn't that be a good thing?

Sorry, but the man's an ass, and a pompous one at that.

Via Joe.My.God., who has more on Land.

"Gun!" (Update)

Via WaPo:

 

Follow

Jacob Rascon ✔ @Jacobnbc

USSS statement/Trump incident: "Immediately in front of the stage, an unidentified individual shouted "gun." ... no weapon was found."

10:12 PM - 5 Nov 2016

• 37 37 Retweets
• 18

As it turns out:

In fact, it quickly began to seem there hadn't been any apparent threat to Trump at all.

After the rally, multiple reporters interviewed the man who had been led away, Austin Crytes. He was not a Democrat, but rather a Republican who opposed Trump and supported Clinton.

Of course, Hairpiece Junior and other members of the entourage are calling it an "assassination attempt" and milking it for all it's worth.

I'm really sort of surprised that Trump hasn't staged an assassination attempt himself, to pick up the sympathy vote. But don't tell anyone I mentioned it -- there's still two days left before it's all over.

Update: Josh Marshall has what seems to be a good summary of what actually happened. And this:

By the end of the evening, Trump was fine. Crites was released little more than an hour after the incident - another clear sign that he had never been any threat to Trump. But core Trump supporters, immune from accounts of what had happened, been reported and verified, were off and running with a new fable about how Trump survived an attempted assassination. As I saw David Frum note in passing this morning, it is amazing the degree to which abusers are able to transmute their abuse into victimization, creating a grievance perpetual production machine. This is what the Trump campaign is.

Birds of a Feather

I've finally figured it out: Katrina Pierson is just as disconnected from reality as her boss is:

Specifically, Pierson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that Capt. Humayun Khan “probably” died because Obama and Clinton crippled our military’s ability to fight by changing the rules of engagement.

“But surely you can understand the confusion, considering how Donald Trump never voted for the Iraq War, Hillary Clinton did,” Pierson said. “Then she didn’t support the troops to have what they need. It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagements that probably cost his life! So I don’t understand why it’s so hard to understand why Donald Trump was confused.”

There is a very obvious problem with this, of course: Khan was killed by a car bomb all the way back in 2004. During that time, Clinton was a senator for New York and Obama wasn’t even a senator yet.

The reaction has been swift and merciless:

Joker-Joker-Deuce ‏@CombatCavScout

 

Obama decided that too many lifeboats would offend radical Islamic terrorists abord the Titanic. #KatrinaPiersonHistory @KatrinaPierson

• Retweets 101
• Likes 313
• 

4:31 PM - 2 Aug 2016

101 retweets 313 likes

That's just the beginning. Click through -- it gets very rich and strange.

"Religious Freedom"

For some. This article by Eric Ethington on Utah's "breakthrough" gay-inclusive civil rights legislation lays the whole strategy out very clearly:

That's why, when just a few weeks ago Oaks held a press conference to announce that he and the Mormon church were ready to endorse a statewide nondiscrimination law for LGBTQ people if only the leaders of the local LGBTQ community would sit down and negotiate a “compromise,” many were suspicious.

Oaks was up front about what he was looking for. He and other leaders of the Mormon church enumerated the religious exemptions they wanted included with a nondiscrimination law, including a right for government and health care workers to deny service to LGBTQ people.

SB296, the bill that resulted from those negotiations, was hailed by equality groups and the Mormon church as a “historic compromise” of nondiscrimination and religious freedom. The bill does indeed ban workplace and housing discrimination against LGBTQ people in Utah. But buried underneath those important protections, is a small clause guaranteeing the right of individuals to express faith-based anti-LGBTQ views at work.

This is similar to bills passed in other states, which include similar provisions, although not as explicit, allowing "people of faith" to avoid obeying laws they don't like -- specifically, ant-discrimination laws.

Maggie Gallagher's on board with this, among others. In a laughable attempt to establish that sexual orientation is a choice, she inserted this little nugget:

The place to rest our case for equal treatment of traditional believers is that actions are choices, choices which in a free society must be subject to moral reflections, not policed as if they were skin color, something over which the individual has no control.

(Emphasis added.)

That gives the whole game away, although Gallagher, still trying to present herself as the "reasonable" face of anti-gay bigotry, is doing her part to reinforce the "Christian martyr" mantra.

Ethington's essay is a "must read." Gallagher's is garbage.

Looking Back at 2014

I know, the president says we must look forward, to which I reply, "Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." Or words to that effect. The Torture Report bears me out. I'm going to cop out, though, and leave the retrospective to Roy Edroso, than whom none can do better. Here are his ten worst moment of conservative excess, with notes on my favorites:

The Year in Bullshit, Part I. Since I adore (ahem) Vladimir Putin, this resonated:

Conservatives fall in love with Vladimir Putin. When Putin muscled Ukraine in March, very few conservatives called for the U.S. to intervene militarily. Nonetheless they blamed the Commander in Chief because, in the words of Rand Paul, he “hasn't projected enough strength and hasn't shown a priority to the national defense” — that is, he hadn’t rattled a saber that no one expected or wanted him to unsheathe.

How odd that the right doesn't want to go to war with someone -- oh, wait: he's not brown. And of course, the "family values" crowd thinks he's the cat's pajamas, because he uses "traditional values" as a mask to hide his consolidation of power. (Of course, I doubt any of them would describe it that way -- too close to home.)

The Year in Bullshit, Part II.

Impeachment for the hell of it. Conservatives have been threatening to impeach Obama since 2009. You’d think the schtick would have gotten tiresome even to them by now, particularly when their favorite impeachable offenses, like #Benghazi, keep going belly-up in their own Congressional committees.

I don't think I need to expand on this, but it seems to be part of the right-wing playbook. If you don't like the president, impeach him. For something. Anything.

The Year in Bullshit, Part III.

Torture as an American value. I’m not sure how old you have to be to remember when torturing prisoners was something the United States simply didn’t do. As a lad I, like many Americans, was shocked to learn about the My Lai massacre; if I had been then told that Lt. William Calley also waterboarded and hung from chains his Vietnamese victims, whether they were Viet Cong or not, I’m sure I would have been even more shocked. Maybe Dirty Harry did that shit, but not John Wayne.

I am old and jaded now, but I must admit, when after the Senate released the torture report in December a number of Americans, including a former Vice-President of the United States, told us that torture was great and it was actually the citizens who balked at it that were anti-American, I was still a little shocked.

I guess I was a little shocked, too. Not at the torture program -- we knew it was going on, we just didn't know how bad it was. But the fact that a majority of Americans were OK with it was more than a bit appalling. (Footnote: atheists and humanists had the lowest percentage of those who approved the program; evangelical Christians had the highest percentage. You do the math.)

The Year in Bullshit, Part IV.

Both items deserve mention:

When CDC declined to seal America’s borders, citing the best science, conservatives declared this was part of Obama’s one-world agenda to unite the globe in disease and misery. (Heather Mac Donald of City Journal actually claimed the “public-health establishment” wouldn’t quarantine other countries because it was “awash in social-justice ideology” and “influenced as much by belief in America’s responsibility for the postcolonial oppression of Africa, and suspicion of American border enforcement, as it is by a commitment to public-health principles of containment and control.”) They ramped up their own custom science: Rand Paul told us you could get Ebola from being in the same room as an Ebola person. Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, whose degree is not in medicine, wondered aloud “if this strain of Ebola is easier to catch than we think.”

You know, what with one thing or another, I've spent a lot of time with doctors. They tend to know what they're talking about. Rand Paul, not so much. (Oh, by the way -- my doctors are not self-certified.) My own take is that Benghazi!!1! had gotten stale, and IRS!!1! wasn't gaining the traction they wanted.

And last but certainly not least: Cons, cops, and the end of the “libertarian moment."

There's a lot in this one, but the Cliven Bundy part is good:

This theme reached a sort of climax in April at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, where an old white rancher refused to pay his legally-owed user fees and, surrounded by armed supporters, defied federal authorities’ right to collect his property in restitution. Bundy was celebrated not just by survivalist nuts, but also by elected officials such as Rick Perry and Ted Cruz, and by mainstream pundits such as National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson, who wrote, in an essay called “The Case for a Little Sedition,” “Of course the law is against Cliven Bundy. How could it be otherwise? The law was against Mohandas Gandhi, too, when he was tried for sedition…” Lest his neckless readers accuse him of siding with a half-naked fakir, Williamson also compared Bundy to the Founding Fathers, not to mention the architects of the previous year’s government shutdown, in which “every one of the veterans and cheesed-off citizens who disregarded President Obama’s political theater and pushed aside his barricades was a law-breaker, too — and bless them for being that.” Moving barricades, pointing rifles at federal agents — same diff!

You know, one thing that struck me pretty much instantly that no one else seems to have mentioned: Cliven Bundy is nothing more than a thief -- not quite at the level of Wall Street, but look at it this way: it's not his land, it's not "government land," it's our land. He agreed to pay rent to use it for feeding his cattle, and now he's reneging. It's pretty simple, really. So simple that even Ted Cruz can't figure it out.

There. That's it. 2014 is officially over.

Drive-Bys

I don't know if I will make this a department here, but this morning I'm running into a bunch of things that deserve note, even if I don't have any real commentary to go with them.

First, the Tony Perkins Award for bald-face lies goes to Megyn Kelly at Fox News. Here's Rachel Maddow with the story:

Yep -- they just made it up.

(Digby also has some comments on the right-wing "voter fraud" hysteria.

And there's always something on the "traditional values" front. Here's a nice little story about traditional family values. The punch line, after the parents threw their son out:

This kid has no car because he sold it to help out his parents a few months back when they needed money. Ah, gotta love the ones with 'real' family values. Mom and Dad, you can go back to watching Fox now. Your work is done.

He should demand his money back.

And more nonsense from the "traditional values" crowd. I think this one deserves a Through the Looking Glass Award for the "history lesson."

A former aide to President Ronald Reagan is calling for southern states to secede from the union and form a new conservative nation called "Reagan" where citizens wouldn't be forced to compromise on "traditional values" like marriage.

I wonder if anyone's ever pointed out to this jerk that democracies work on compromise.

And finally, a story with an upside: Family Circle, the venerable "woman's magazine," published a story on two gay dads and their daughters. Given the readership, while there was a lot of positive response, the conservative backlash was tremendous. To the magazine's credit, they weren't having it.

Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Linda Fears has also responded to backlash saying: 'We are certainly not the first magazine or media brand to share the story of gay parents. But we will also publish stories on single parents, multi-racial couples, and unmarried couples with kids. People may not like those either, but they are all representative of American family life today.'

Here's the original Family Circle story, with reader comments.

Had enough? Well, I have.

Today In Government Censorship

Granted, its' a sneaky, back-door censorship, but we're talking about "conservatives" here.

The South Carolina House refused Monday to back down from plans to punish two public colleges in the budget for assigning freshmen to read books dealing with homosexuality.

The House rejected multiple attempts to restore $52,000 cut from the College of Charleston in the state budget, and $17,142 cut from the University of South Carolina Upstate. Those are the amounts the universities spent on books assigned to their incoming freshmen last summer. The efforts failed by votes of 69-41, 70-43, 71-40 and 71-38.

Opponents argued the cuts, which reduce what the colleges can spend from their own revenue sources, censor and micromanage college decisions.

When it comes to public colleges, legislators should be debating funding and building construction, not "pushing our own moral agenda on these institutions of higher learning," said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg.

The rationales offered are what might be expected:

Rep. Garry Smith, whose subcommittee made the reductions, said he wanted to make a point after college officials declined to give students an option to read something else. He said he wouldn't oppose the books if they were part of an elective course. He called it promotion of a lifestyle.

"Freedom comes with responsibility. These universities did not act responsibly," said Smith, R-Simpsonville.

He made a point, alright, but it had nothing to do with responsibility. As if he knows what the word means. And I'd like to ask Rep. Smith, responsibility by what standard. Seems to me the universities were doing their job, which is to educate students. That necessarily involves exposing them to new ideas and new viewpoints. That's what education is, after all.

This one's choice:

Rep. Wendy Nanney, R-Greenville, said opponents of the cuts argue for a diversity of ideas but don't want to consider conservatives' viewpoint.

Um -- who is it who's trying to censor the curriculum? I think Rep. Nanney's viewpoint is coming through loud and clear.

It always astonishes me that a group that touts being "real Americans" consistently comes up with attempts to subvert the entire American system.

Via Towleroad.

Trade-Offs

The teabaggers want to cut food stamps in a major way -- like taking away $4 billion a year. Since the teabagger caucus is, by definition, operating at less than full capacity (remember, their poster boy is Rand Paul (R-Atlas Shrugged)), it makes sense that they would think that there will be no consequences.

Well, that's not the case.

The health and financial risks of hunger have not played a major role in the debate. But the medical community says cutting food aid could backfire through higher Medicaid and Medicare costs.

"If you're interested in saving health care costs, the dumbest thing you can do is cut nutrition," said Dr. Deborah Frank of Boston Medical Center, who founded the Children's HealthWatch pediatric research institute.

"People don't make the hunger-health connection."

A study published this week helps illustrate that link. Food banks report longer lines at the end of the month as families exhaust their grocery budgets, and California researchers found that more poor people with a dangerous diabetes complication are hospitalized then, too.

And that's just diabetes. Want to bet there's also a spike in other chronic illnesses at the end of the month among the poor -- who are more likely to have chronic conditions anyway, due to poor childhood nutrition. And of course, there's the here-and-now effects.

Other research shows children from food-insecure families are 30 percent more likely to have been hospitalized for a range of illnesses. But after a temporary boost in benefits from the 2009 economic stimulus, children whose families used food stamps were significantly more likely to be well than kids in low-income families that didn't participate, Children's HealthWatch found. About half of food stamp recipients are children, and 10 percent are elderly.

But don't worry -- Republicans are looking out for us -- really, truly:

The bill will also likely add some money for food banks and test new work requirements for recipients in a few states, a priority for many Republicans.

"While this program is an important part of our safety net, our overriding goal should be to help our citizens with the education and skills they need to get back on their feet so that they can provide for themselves and their families," said Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., when the farm bill was on the House floor last summer.

So, Mr. Cantor, where's your jobs bill? Where's the support for public education?

I'm waiting.

How Low Can You Sink?

One of Mark Zmuda's former students conducted a 45-minute interview with him, of which the first minute or so has been released. Here's part of it from the news report:

What's not included here is some of the background:

A few days ago we brought you the news story of Mark Zmuda, a Catholic high school vice principal who was fired for marrying his husband and the backlash from students and faculty that resulted. The school maintained the position that it was a mutually-reached decision that Zmuda end his employment with Eastside Catholic High School, but an interview between Zmuda and a former student reveals otherwise. Caterina Crittenden conducted a 45-minute interview with her former vice principal about his employment and termination, and her family has released the first minute of it online, with the rest to follow in the coming days. In the interview, Zmuda revealed that he broke no contract with the school, that his termination was in no way related to his performance, and that he was given an offer that would never have been given to a straight couple: he could keep his job if he dissolved his marriage.

Sure -- get divorced (which is also against Catholic teaching) and we'll let you keep your job. For an institution that spends so much time nattering about morality, one would think the Church might take a few minutes to learn what it's about.

When All Else Fails, Whine (updated)

Looks like the bad PR on the Sochi games is starting to have an effect:

The head of the Sochi Olympics asked the IOC on Sunday to help “stop this campaign and this speculation” related to the anti-gay law recently passed in Russia.

IOC President Jacques Rogge said the Olympic body will remind athletes to refrain from any protests or political gestures during the Feb. 7-23 games. The IOC’s top marketing official said sponsors are worried about possible demonstrations, which could “ruin a lot for all of us.”

Sochi organizing chief Dmitry Chernyshenko was asked at the IOC general assembly about the possible impact of the legislation that bans gay “propaganda.”

He said the Russian government had made clear the law would not affect the games, and he urged the IOC to convey the message to “those who are still trying to speculate on this very transparent and very clear topic.”

“It’s very important to have your support to stop this campaign and this speculation regarding this issue,” Chernyshenko said.

Considering the mixed signals coming from the Russian government and the Duma on this, I find Chernyshenko's characterization as "very transparent and very clear" to be laughable. My own speculation -- and it is speculation, filtered through quite a bit of cynicism -- is that the mixed signals are intentional and happening with Putin's approval. It's called "muddying the waters." Given the tenor of the various conflicting statements, the Russians have a free hand to do whatever they want, and anyone who doesn't think that's the case is dreaming.

The IOC's response is, regrettably, not surprising. Has there been a time in modern Olympic history when the Games have been free of politics? With national teams? And what I find especially telling is the comment -- from the marketing guy -- about how this could "ruin a lot for all of us." I have news for you: you've already ruined it.

Get this:

Chernyshenko reiterated that the law doesn’t ban homosexuality in any way and “doesn’t contradict any element of the Olympic Charter.”

He noted that President Vladimir Putin has assured that the Russian constitution “guarantees the equality of rights and freedom for everybody” in the country, including guests, visitors, athletes, fans and the Olympic family.

“We are absolutely confident that there will be no conflicts in that regards,” he said. “It will not stop (Sochi) 2014 from proudly upholding the Olympic values, I promise you.”

Rogge said the IOC is satisfied with Russia’s explanations of the law so far.

“The constitution of the Russian federations allows for homosexuality,” he said. “And we have received strong reassurances that this law will not affect participants in the Sochi Games.”

No, the law doesn't ban homosexuality. How can a law ban something that's innate? It just bans anyone being open about their orientation -- if it's "non-traditional."

And "Olympic values" at this point means nothing more than allowing the creme de la creme to continue their untroubled existence inside their little bubble. Let's face it -- who makes up the IOC? It's not working stiffs.

And Rogge would be satisfied if Putin told him that anyone suspected of being gay at the Games would be jailed, as long as they were jailed politely.

What no one seems to be commenting on is the groups of nationalist thugs who have been kidnapping and torturing young gay men -- with videos. The police response has been zero. What does anyone think is going to happen if they set their sights on athletes or attendees at the Games? Nothing. Rogge will declare it an unfortunate incident, but not his responsibility. There will, possibly, be a sham investigation. Maybe.

It's probably a good thing that there will be no Pride House at Sochi. That would make too tempting a target, a la Munich.

Update: Keith Olbermann has a similar take:

Looking back over this post, I realize that Olbermann's point has been around the periphery of my comments: it's about the money. Of course.

They Just Don't Get It, Part ???

Among a wealth of recent stories about disgusting people saying disgusting things, this one, I think, illustrates something very revealing. San Antonio councilwoman Elisa Chan, on the reaction to her comments about gays being "disgusting."

"I know that many people find the comments made in the meeting offensive. But again, it was a confidential meeting said in the privacy of my office where none of us are supposed to worry about what we say."

If you're in politics, you should always worry about what you say.

She's hauled out the "out of context" defense, the "First Amendment" defense, the "personal beliefs" defense, but I guess they're not working very well.

And she, like so many, has no sense of irony. From the recorded remarks:

“This is my philosophy, guys,” she says. “Whatever you want to do in your bedroom is none of my business, but do not impose your view on other people, especially becoming policy. . . .

Do I really need to comment on that?

Sunday Grab Bag

Low energy week, but I thought I'd do a little catch-up on things that caught my eye.

First off, this morning, via Joe.My.God., this item -- the headline says it all:

Study: Belief in an angry God associated with variety of mental illnesses

Please note, however, that the researcher stresses that the study is examining correlation, not causation.

Speaking of correlations, check out this segment of Bill Maher's Real Time. I can't find the embed code for the video, so watch it at the link.

Maher remarked that it’s amazing how people think they can get away with anything when there is such a wide array of surveillance, and remarked that the reason the Boston bombers did not kill themselves is probably because they “don’t have the balls” of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. Maher asked if the U.S. needs to be more like Israel in its response to terrorism, by just dealing with it effectively and then moving on as if nothing happened.

Maher also threw out this observation.

“Isn’t the takeaway here that there are many bad things that can happen in the world, for many bad reasons, but the winner and still champ is religion?”

Holmes pointed to Newtown as not being religiously-motivated, pointing to a warped psychology as a more important motivator of people who seek to terrorize and kill others. She found it odd that one of the bombers, after living in America for ten years, didn’t have a single American friend.

(Emphasis added.)

I didn't post about Boston because it was just too difficult to figure out what was actually happening -- news outlets reporting random tweets like they had some validity? Please -- and by the time I could figure out what was happening, it was over.

The usual suspects were out in full force on that one, too. This is sort of typical, a retweet by Gay Patriot, via Joe.My.God.:

Charles Johnson has a good sampling of Pamela Geller's bile at Little Green Footballs. That woman is really sick.

On the other hand, the President:

"When a tragedy like this happens … it's important that we do this right. That's why we have investigations. That's why we relentlessly gather the facts. That's why we have courts," he said. "That's why we take care not to rush to judgment -- not about motivations of individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people."

And Tony Perkins is trying desperately to remain relevant:

In the aftermath of horrible tragedies like Newtown, the government desperately wants to do something–even if that something is the wrong thing. There seems to be this notion, at least among liberals, that more laws will protect us–but as we all witnessed in Boston, that isn’t necessarily the case. The government can’t make us safer until it recognizes that the problem isn’t the instruments of violence–but the environment of it. Stronger background checks wouldn’t have prevented the deaths of three people at the finish line on Monday, any more than it would have stopped Floyd Corkins from walking into our lobby and shooting Leo Johnson.

If Congress wants to stop these tragedies, then it has to address the government’s own hostility to the institution of the family and organizations that can address the real problem: the human heart. As I’ve said before, America doesn’t need gun control, it needs self-control. And a Congress that actively discourages it–through abortion, family breakdown, sexual liberalism, or religious hostility–is only compounding the problem.

Anyone who thinks Perkins gives a damn about the human heart is living in a fantasy world. However, we may be getting a glimpse of his next target, now that the gay-bashing gig is bottoming out:

Of course, some will say–and I agree–that transforming the culture is the church’s job. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place at the table for Christians in the gun debate. Not only did Jesus tolerate weapons, he instructed His disciples to buy them! In Luke 22:36, we read, “He said to them… if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” Jesus did rebuke Peter for being too quick on the draw (John 18:11), recognizing that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal-but spiritual.

Why do I think that there's a substantial overlap between Second Amendment freaks and white supremacists (and don't forget, that's how Perkins got his start in politics)?

Speaking of gun control, how about our shining examples of leadership in the Senate? John Stewart has a very good analysis:

And John Oliver picks up the thread in this segment:

The comedy in this one comes from Van Cleave trying to make a coherent argument -- the man's a moron.

And how typical would it be for Perkins to jump from one losing cause to another?

That's enough for this morning -- at the rate I'm discovering insanity in the news, this post could go on forever, but I'll give you a break. But let's leave on a bright note: Rio de Janeiro has become the tenth Brazilian state to recognize same-sex marriages.

Looks like a nice place for a wedding.

(And note:  I figured out how to resize photos!  Yay!)

Period of Adjustment

It's been a weird couple of months, and I'm still adjusting to new routines. Plus, I got a cold, which puts my brain into sleep mode. There's been a lot to be outraged about, and I may try to catch up on some of it, but this one just hit me today. The story's around, but this report, via Balloon Juice, caught my attention. From the LA Times report:

Strategic Allied Consulting was hired to do voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada, and had been planning get-out-the-vote drives in Ohio and Wisconsin, according to Sproul.

Sproul owns another company, Lincoln Strategy Group, that was paid about $70,000 by the Mitt Romney campaign during the primaries to gather signatures. He said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the request of the Republican National Committee because of the bad publicity stemming from the past allegations. In 2004, there were allegations in states such as Nevada and Oregon that employees of his firm -- which had a similar contract with the RNC -- registered Democratic voters and then destroyed their forms. (Sproul noted that no criminal charges were ever filed.)

Strategic Allied was set up at an address in Glen Allen, Va., and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.

“In order to be able to do the job that the state parties were hiring us to do, the [RNC] asked us to do it with a different company’s name, so as to not be a distraction from the false information put out in the Internet,” Sproul said.

(Emphasis mine.)

Two things about this: You'll note that the RNC and the state party organizations did not decline to do business with Sproul because of past allegations of fraud and other improprieties -- they just asked him to change his name, which is pretty revealing: they have no problem doing business with shady characters if it gets the results they want, and they haven't figured out that this is the Information Age -- you can't hide shit like this.

Also, too, the stress on the fact that no criminal charges were ever brought: It's a sad statement on the degree of cynicism in this country about our justice system that this carries no weight whatsoever. Perhaps I'm more cynical than most, but my first question was, "Were the state Attorneys General, or the DAs in charge of the investigations, Republicans?" If they were Democrats, then maybe there's no fire, in spite of the smoke. If they were, big whip.

And "distraction"? Yeah, I guess if you're going back to the same shady character and it's public information, it might be a distraction -- that is, it would distract from your own distractions about "voter fraud."

The mindset here is staggering.

Now that I'm feeling better, maybe I'll go after the Catholic bishops -- they've been in rare form lately.