"Even a stopped clock" etc. etc.

Uber-conservative "Red State" blogger Erik Erickson spills the beans on his party:

 "I’m just not sure what the Republican Party really stands for any more other than telling Obama no and telling our own corporate interests yes. That’s not much of a platform."

"All Science Is Wrong, Concludes Esteemed Fox News Panel"

Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine exposes the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of "conservatism's" foremost alleged "intellectuals."  "Conservative intellectual" has truly become an oxymoron:

There is no issue where educated ignorance is on more perfect display than Post columnists, and Fox News All-Star panelists. They numbered among the select conservative intellectuals chosen to dine with newly elected president Barack Obama in 2009.

watching the conservative movement confront scientific evidence of climate change. Educated ignorance is not the same thing as the regular kind of ignorance. It takes real talent to master. George F. Will and Charles Krauthammer are two of the intellectual giants of the right, former winners of the Bradley Foundation’s $250,000 annual prize, Washington

On their Fox News All-Star Panel appearance this week, both men discussed the U.S. National Climate Assessment, which they dismissed with various irritable mental gestures. Their evasions and misstatements, clothed in faux-erudition, offer a useful entrance point to study the current state of the right-wing mind.

Liberal Facts and "Conservative" Crazy

Krugman @ NYTs on The Crazy:

“The facts have a well-known liberal bias,” declared Rob Corddry way back in 2004 — and experience keeps vindicating his joke. But why?

Not long ago Ezra Klein cited research showing that both liberals and

conservatives are subject to strong tribal bias — presented with evidence, they see what they want to see. I then wrote that this poses a puzzle, because in practice liberals don’t engage in the kind of mass rejections of evidence that conservatives do. The inevitable response was a torrent of angry responses and claims that liberals do too reject facts — but none of the claims measured up.

Just to be clear: Yes, you can find examples where *some* liberals got off on a hobbyhorse of one kind or another, or where the liberal conventional wisdom turned out wrong. But you don’t see the kind of lockstep rejection of evidence that we see over and over again on the right. Where is the liberal equivalent of the near-uniform conservative rejection of climate science, or the refusal to admit that Obamacare is in fact reaching a lot of previously uninsured Americans?

"Inner city men not even thinking about working" has no racial connotations in Paul Ryan World?

Raw Story:

Paul Ryan attempted to walk back Wednesday’s comment in which he described

a “culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working, and just generations of men not even thinking about working and learning the value and culture of work.”…

“This isn’t a race based comment it’s a breakdown of families, it’s rural poverty in rural areas, and talking about where poverty exists — there are no jobs and we have a breakdown of the family. This has nothing to do with race,” he insisted.

Paul Ryan can't be totally stupid. Which leaves the obvious conclusion that he's disingenuous to the point of total cynicism. The problem with his racial dog-whistling is that he doesn't have the courage to stand by it and ends up assuming we're as stupid as he wants us to believe he must be to see no racial connotation in his "generations of lazy inner city men" discourse.

Record low of unemployed Americans recieiving benefits

Huffington Post:

A record-low 25 percent of unemployed Americans will receive benefits now that Congress has allowed the federal program to expire, according to data from the Department of Labor compiled by House Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee.

The number is the lowest since the Department of Labor began keeping records in 1946. Before Congress let the federal unemployment benefit-assistance plan expire on Dec. 28, 38 percent of unemployed Americans who paid unemployment taxes were receiving unemployment insurance either through their state or the federal government...

"The GOP's Great Depression agenda"

Ryan Cooper at WaPo "Plum Line":

Paul Ryan has set everyone’s socks ablaze with a new comment suggesting he wants to shake down the country again over the debt limit. This inevitably inspired a lot of amateur psychoanalysis attempting to figure out whether he was serious or just pandering to the base. Whether that is true is an important thing to figure out, but the deeper subtext here is that the Republican Party continues to organize itself around the kind of austerity agenda that, should they obtain enough power to implement it, would cause another recession immediately, possibly a very bad one.

"GOP Alternatives to Obamacare"

Tom Tomorrow:

John Stewart takes down Obamacare's critics - must see!

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

The cruelty of cutting food stamps

Dorothy Samuels @ NYTs:

Even as negotiations proceed in Congress over a new farm bill likely to contain a

large cut in food stamps, needy Americans who rely on the program are confronting an immediate drop in benefits.

As of today, the boost to the federal food stamps program included in the 2009 Economic Recovery Act expires, abruptly slashing benefit levels that were already inadequate for millions of poor children and their families, as well as impoverished disabled and elderly people, who will now find it significantly harder to afford adequate food.

"Republicans are delusional about US spending and deficits"

Dean Baker @ The Guardian:

It is understandable that the public is disgusted with Washington; they have every right to be. At a time when the country continues to suffer from the worst patch of unemployment since the Great Depression, the government is shut down over concerns about the budget deficit.

There is no doubt that the Republicans deserve the blame for the shutdown and the risk of debt default. They decided that it was worth shutting down the government and risking default in order stop Obamacare. That is what they said as loudly and as clearly as possible in the days and weeks leading up to the shutdown. In fact, this is what Senator Ted Cruz said for 21 straight hours on the floor of the US Senate.

Going to the wall for something that is incredibly important is a reasonable tactic. However, the public apparently did not agree with the Republicans. Polls show that they overwhelmingly oppose their tactic of shutting down the government and risking default over Obamacare. As a result, the Republicans are now claiming that the dispute is actually over spending.

Anywhere outside of Washington DC and totalitarian states, you don't get to rewrite history. However, given the national media's concept of impartiality, they now feel an obligation to accept that the Republicans' claim that this is a dispute over spending levels.

But that is only the beginning of the reason that people should detest budget reporters. The more important reason is that they have spread incredible nonsense about the deficit and spending problems facing the country, causing most of the public to be completely confused on these issues. If budget reporters were held to the same standards as school teachers, with the expectation that they would be able to convey information, they would all be fired in a minute.

Contrary to the widely repeated stories of out-of-control deficits and spending, deficits have plunged in the last four years falling from 10.1% of GDP in 2009 to just 4% of GDP in 2013. The Congressional Budget Office projects the deficit to be just 3.4% of GDP in 2014. The latest projections show the debt-to-GDP ratio falling for the rest of the decade.

Everything you need to know about the rationale behind the GOP's government shutdown...

Via Politicalwire: Extra Bonus Quote of the Day

"We're not going to be disrespected, We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

-- Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), quoted by the Washington Examiner, on the government shutdown.

"How a Debt-Ceiling Crisis Could Become a Financial Crisis"

Annie Lowrey @ NYTs Economix:

Come mid-October, the United States will have only $30 billion of cash on hand. On any given day, its net payments can reach as high as $60 billion. That means that unless Congress raises the debt ceiling, allowing the Treasury to issue new debt, the United States may find itself unable to make all of its payments — stiffing government contractors, or state and local governments, or even its bondholders.

Economists widely agree that such an unprecedented event would have profound effects for the markets, likely precipitating a stock-market sell-off and setting off a round of global financial turbulence. But it has always been a little unclear just how it may play out. The Treasury might announce it would be forced to delay some payments, promising to do what it could to make sure bondholders were made whole. But then what?

Reagan, the Republicans and Chemical Weapons

Never forget...never again...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obamacare is still driving Republicans crazy

 Professor Krugman @ NYTs:

Leading Republicans appear to be nerving themselves up for another round of attempted fiscal blackmail. With the end of the fiscal year looming, they aren’t offering the kinds of compromises that might produce a deal and avoid a government shutdown; instead, they’re drafting extremist legislation — bills that would, for example, cut clean-water grants by 83 percent — that has no chance of becoming law. Furthermore, they’re threatening, once again, to block any rise in the debt ceiling, a move that would damage the U.S. economy and possibly provoke a world financial crisis.

Yet even as Republican politicians seem ready to go on the offensive, there’s a palpable sense of anxiety, even despair, among conservative pundits and analysts. Better-informed people on the right seem, finally, to be facing up to a horrible truth: Health care reform, President Obama’s signature policy achievement, is probably going to work. 

And the good news about Obamacare is, I’d argue, what’s driving the Republican Party’s

intensified extremism. Successful health reform wouldn’t just be a victory for a president conservatives loathe, it would be an object demonstration of the falseness of right-wing ideology. So Republicans are being driven into a last, desperate effort to head this thing off at the pass.

Some background: Although you’d never know it from all the fulminations, with prominent Republicans routinely comparing Obamacare to slavery, the Affordable Care Act is based on three simple ideas. First, all Americans should have access to affordable insurance, even if they have pre-existing medical problems. Second, people should be induced or required to buy insurance even if they’re currently healthy, so that the risk pool remains reasonably favorable. Third, to prevent the insurance “mandate” from being too onerous, there should be subsidies to hold premiums down as a share of income. 

On the lack of serious discussion or an honest opposition

Professor Krugman channels the outrage at alleged GOP "policy wonks" who are little more than ethically-challenged propagandists:

I fairly often receive mail pleading with me to take a more even tone, to have a respectful discussion with people on the other side rather than calling them fools and knaves. And you know, I do when I can. But the truth is that on most of the big issues confronting us, there just isn’t anyone to have a serious discussion with. Ezra Klein offers a nice illustration of this point today, in his takedown of Avik Roy on Obamacare in California.

The thing you want to bear in mind is that Roy is widely considered a good example of a reformist conservative, not to mention a health policy wonk. So what does this reform-minded wonk have to say about Obamacare?

Klein tries really hard to keep his temper even; too hard, I think, because I wonder how many readers will stay with him all the way through. But to cut to the chase, Roy claims that Obamacare will cause soaring insurance rates, using a comparison that is completely fraudulent — and I say fraudulent, not wrong, because he is indeed enough of a policy wonk here to know that he is pulling a fast one.

Thought for Memorial Day on The Hate-America Right

This can't be said too often - contemporary "conservatism" isn't conservative, it's extremist.  The GOP is batshit crazy and totally dysfunctional.  Denizens of this far Right zoo hate the America that actually exists. Ryan Cooper @ Political Animal:

The problem with the conservative movement isn’t that mainstream Republican policies are all insane (they are), it’s that the party has completely lost it. It is “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Taking the debt ceiling hostage, for example, is not the action of a conservative party. It’s the action of an extremist party, willing to risk economic Armageddon for trivial policy changes.

Honestly, to a large degree the problem is today’s Republicans don’t believe in the American system. They’re unpatriotic.

This is, I think, due to the conservative media ecosystem and the perverse incentives of minority parties in the US constitutional system. Conservative media is ruled by liars, con men and charlatans who actively profit from having Democrats in power, and who whipped the Republican base into a seething frenzy after the election of Obama.

Matters of policy have dissolved almost completely into the froth of tribal resentment and Obama hatred, which produced a huge class of new Republican house members who were slavering to attack the president with whatever tool was closest.

Ideology over Empiricism among "conservatives", aka "The Crazy"

Steve Benen @ Maddow Blog on the GOP's reality issue:

For the Republican Party establishment, the only meaningful lesson to be learned from 2012 is rhetorical. Sure, polls show Americans rejecting the GOP line on every major issue, but, the argument goes, that's only because the party has failed to come up with persuasive sales pitches. Republicans believe they have a rhetorical problem, not a policy problem.

But just outside the establishment, there's a fair amount of discussion among Republican pundits, strategists, and thinkers about their party's systemic challenges and what the GOP should do about them. It's led to some thoughtful critiques from the likes of Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathleen Parker, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner about how to "save" the Republican Party.

But it was this item from Bloomberg's Josh Barro, a self-identified "reluctant" Republican, that really got me thinking.

I don't want a Republican Party that's just like the Democratic Party, even though some people on both the right and the left see that as the upshot of Republican critiques like mine.

Political parties should differ on normative questions. They ought to strive for agreement on positive questions -- questions such as, what policies cause gross domestic product and median incomes to rise, how unemployment insurance affects the unemployment rate, or how global temperatures are changing. Currently, Republicans make a lot more errors on these kinds of questions than Democrats.

Correcting errors on positive questions should cause conservatives to revisit some of their top policies....  Conservatives say tight money and lower top tax rates would enrich middle-class families. But that's wrong, and if they figured that out, they might stop supporting tight money and lower top tax rates.

And that, right there, that very last sentence, helps shine a light on what I believe plagues the Republican Party more than anything else: they've abandoned empiricism, leading to a governing philosophy that puts ideological goals over pragmatic ones.

Dr. Krugman v. GOP Starlet Rubio

The Professor @ New York Times:

"Marco Rubio Has Learned Nothing"

Because his party has learned nothing.

Kool-Aid?

OK, back up: this morning the papers and the web are full of nuance-sniffing, as people try to find omens in the SOTU and the GOP response. I don’t think I can add anything useful to all that. But there was one important point in Marco Rubio’s remarks that I don’t think has been highlighted. It’s true, as Andy Rosenthal says, that Rubio mainly reminded us that Republicans don’t like government or taxes; surprise! But he also reminded us that Republicans don’t like reality.

Here’s the passage:

This idea – that our problems were caused by a government that was too small – it’s just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.

OK, leave on one side the caricature of Obama, with the usual mirror-image fallacy (we want smaller government, therefore liberals just want bigger government, never mind what it does); there we go with the “Barney Frank did it” story. Deregulation, the explosive growth of virtually unregulated shadow banking, lax lending standards by loan originators who sold their loans off as soon as they were made, had nothing to do with it — it was all the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie, and Freddie.

Look, this is one of the most thoroughly researched topics out there, and every piece of the government-did-it thesis has been refuted; see Mike Konczal for a summary. No, the CRA wasn’t responsible for the epidemic of bad lending; no, Fannie and Freddie didn’t cause the housing bubble; no, the “high-risk” loans of the GSEs weren’t remotely as risky as subprime.

"The Great Gerrymander..."

Sam Wang @ NYTs:

HAVING the first modern democracy comes with bugs. Normally we would expect more seats in Congress to go to the political party that receives more votes, but the last election confounded expectations. Democrats received 1.4 million more votes for the House of Representatives, yet Republicans won control of the House by a 234 to 201 margin. This is only the second such reversal since World War II. 

Using statistical tools that are common in fields like my own, neuroscience, I have found strong evidence that this historic aberration arises from partisan disenfranchisement. Although gerrymandering is usually thought of as a bipartisan offense, the rather asymmetrical results may surprise you. 

Through artful drawing of district boundaries, it is possible to put large groups of voters on the losing side of every election. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington-based political group dedicated to electing state officeholders, recently issued a progress report on Redmap, its multiyear plan to influence redistricting. The $30 million strategy consists of two steps for tilting the playing field: take over state legislatures before the decennial Census, then redraw state and Congressional districts to lock in partisan advantages. The plan was highly successful.

"Fakers..."

Paul Krugman @ NYTs:

(P)rominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.

Consider, as a case in point, how a widely reported recent speech by Bobby Jindal the governor of Louisiana, compares with his actual policies.

Read the rest HERE.