BREWERCARE IN ARIZONA IS GETTING SOME ATTENTION

The NY Times has covered the story of Medicaid patients being condemned to death by the restrictions the Republicans have placed on coverage and one of its columnists has also written about it.  What I found most objectionable is this lie by Gov. Brewer:

The Republican governor has in turn blamed “Obamacare,” meaning the federal health care overhaul, for the transplant cuts even though the Arizona vote came in March, before President Obama signed that bill into law.

For me, this is enough to remove her from office and that can be done by recall in Arizona.

THIS MIGHT BE THE KRAZY POST OF THE YEAR

It's from whoknows999 on this POLITICO thread:

#563
Dec. 4, 2010 - 4:46 PM EST

getalife: Dec. 4, 2010 - 4:42 PM EST

Tax cuts and no regulations for the rich donors collapsed the economy stupid.



You are clinging to a failed ideolgy and voted gop again to lose your only source of income cons

when did we have this no regulations? seriously deluded.

failed ideology? laughable....freedom never fails...capitalism never fails....socialism fails every time...yet you still believe

ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT THE BUSH TAX CUTS

If we use January 2001 as the baseline and December 2007 (the peak of the business cycle) as the end point, we have some measure of how effective the tax cuts were.   Using just the numbers for the private sector in thousands, here are the results for those 2 months:

JAN 2001 111,634
DEC 2007 115,574

The Net Gain is 3,940 - almost 4 million additional private sector jobs over almost 6 years.  That's about 656K jobs per year, about 55 thousand a month.

Let's look at the same time frame during the Clinton years:

JAN 1993 90,824
DEC 1999 109,992

The Net Gain is 19,168 - over 19 million additional private sector jobs. That 3,194,000 per year, about 266 thousand per month.


Data from www.bls.gov

"HE'S JUST LIKE US"

I think a lot of the people who listen to and believe gasbag radio think the hosts are pretty much "regular folks."   They aren't, of course, and Alan Grayson has sent around an e-mail spreading a little reality:

Here is how much the Bush tax cuts benefit – each year – some other folks you may have heard of:

Rush Limbaugh - $2,689,135.
Glenn Beck - $1,512,352
Sean Hannity - $1,006,352
Bill O’Reilly - $914,352
Sarah Palin - $638,352
Newt Gingrich - $247,352

BECK, A CASE STUDY

Glenn Beck has compared present-day America to both the Weimar Republic and the early Roman Empire and even a Bagger should realize that there's almost nothing in common between the Rome before 1 AD and Germany in the 1920s, let alone comparing them both to America in 2010.

GASBAG FATIGUE

I've been listening to right-wing talk radio since 2001 and I'm about ready to stop because I just can't take all the lies and half-truths.   For me the main problem is that the hosts are not held accountable for all the mis- and dis- information they spew 5 days a week. 

JEEZ, MARXISTS ARE EVERYWHERE!!!

Despite all the talk about how Pres. Obama is a Marxist and about the ginormous uncertainty about Federal taxes, corporate profits are doing just fine, thank you.

Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: November 23, 2010
NY Times

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

WHY NOT USE RECONCILIATION?

The House passed a bill that would continue the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and I and others are wondering why they didn't use reconciliation so they would only need 51 votes in the Senate.

DE TOCQUEVILLE AND THE FUNDIES

One of the local religious/Bagger stations regularly plays an ad that uses this text:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

In the ad, this is attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville but according to Jack Pitney, a conservative professor at Claremont, it isn't in ANY of his writings.  Further, in Democracy in America, de Tocqueville explicitly argues against Dobsonism:

If it be easy to see that it is more particularly important in democratic ages that spiritual opinions should prevail, it is not easy to say by what means those who govern democratic nations may make them predominate. I am no believer in the prosperity any more than in the durability of official philosophies; and as to state religions, I have always held that if they be sometimes of momentary service to the interests of political power, they always sooner or later become fatal to the church. Nor do I agree with those who think that, to raise religion in the eyes of the people and to make them do honor to her spiritual doctrines, it is desirable indirectly to give her ministers a political influence which the laws deny them. I am so much alive to the almost inevitable dangers which beset religious belief whenever the clergy take part in public affairs, and I am so convinced that Christianity must be maintained at any cost in the bosom of modern democracies, that I had rather shut up the priesthood within the sanctuary than allow them to step beyond it.

RADIO TIDBITS

Milton Friedman is one of the Saints of the Free Market Fairy Church and he's on record as saying the Federal Reserves tight money policy created the Great Depression.   Today Fats Limbaugh has been criticizing the Fed for its actions to increase the money supply and a caller told him that Bernanke was doing exactly the right thing.   Fats didn't get it and he also showed that he doesn't understand the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy.

Yesterday,  John Gibson used the "E-Word" to describe America's position in the world and this should cause the Baggers some concern because they don't seem too keen on supporting an "American Empire."

I DISAGREE WITH KEVIN & EZRA

Pres. Obama's strategy of making concessions to the GOP without getting anything from them in return has been a failure and he needs to play hardball NOW, not next year.   It is incomprehensible to me that he still says he wants to compromise despite Sen. McConnell's statement that the GOP's #1 priority is to make Obama a one-term President.

I WAS GOING TO QUOTE ORWELL BUT...

this quote from Voltaire is more appropriate:

“As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities”

This is really the problem with Beck.

MAYBE PRES. OBAMA IS OUT OF TOUCH

Over 2 years ago I noted my displeasure at candidate Obama's refusal to pay people to work for his campaign and with the failure of HAMP and the inadequacies of the stimulus bill, I'm starting to wonder if he really doesn't get how important the economy is to almost all of us.

IS MARK LEVIN REALLY THIS IGNORANT?

In his initial screed today, he said that if one invests in the stock market, that provides capital for the businesses one invests in.  This would only be true for an IPO or if one one buying stock that a company is selling. 

OTOH, how many of his listeners know that he's wrong?

LET'S SEE HOW THIS PLAYS OUT

(h/t John Cole and icebergslim)

The dumbasses in Kentucky elected radical glibertarian Rand Paul to the Senate and now they are staring at the end of their unemployment benefits.   I wonder if they can connect the two events?

I ALMOST ALWAYS THINK OF THE RUBES WITH CONTEMPT

but I've heard a couple of them with serious financial problems call up Glenn Beck and ask him what they can do because they just can't find any work.  I feel a real sympathy for people like this and I'd like to tell them that they reached the wrong number.   On the air, Beck never has anything substantive to offer them but he may do something for them privately. 

ANOTHER NARRATIVE CONTRADICTION

Conservatives claim that corporations pass on higher taxes to customers by raising prices, so they really don't pay higher taxes.  OTOH, conservatives are claiming that small businesses will be hurt by increasing the Federal rates on the top 1-2%.  This fracture opens up several lines of attack on conservative economic ideology, starting with the lack of competition between corporations that allows them to easily pass on tax increases.  It also demolishes the myth that individuals can have a lot of say in their economic life.

ANOTHER BECK FAIL

Glenn Beck has been telling his audience that a proposed law strengthening the FDA's ability to keep our food safe is really another attempt to strangle Freedom to death.    He urged them to call their senators but to no avail: the bill passed 73-25.

UPDATE:  Media Matters has compiled a list of the many Beck warnings of complete disaster over the past few years.

SOMEBODY TELL SUSAN ESTRICH TO STFU!

Estrich is almost as bad as Pat Caddell.  In this interview by Megyn Kelly, she asserted that Sean Hannity does great things for the economy with the millions he makes so he shouldn't have his Federal taxes raised.

I LEARN A NEW EUPHEMISM FOR "FUCK UP"

(h/t Lawrence Lewis at DKOs)

McClatchy ran an article about FAIL in Afghan and found this keeper:

Rather than scrap a project that's failing, the government sometimes rewrites the contract to require only the work that's been done and declares the effort a success. The process is called "de-scoping."

Had I known this was a possibility then ALL of the computer programs I've written would have been successes.

TYLER COWEN MISSES THE PAST 30 YEARS

(h/t Kevin Drum)

In a brief review of the current status of health care reform, Cowen makes this observation:

9. The Republicans still don't have a good alternative plan or compromise to offer, should a chance for renegotiation arise.

Having a "good alternative" doesn't matter because all the Republicans need to do is fool the rubes into thinking the GOP has a better plan and we know that fooling the rubes isn't very hard.

ANOTHER WINGER FANTASY FACT

Last night Billy Cunningham told his listeners that Mexican drug gangs had taken over the southernmost 70 miles of Arizona.   This would mean that Tucson itself is now under the control of the gangs, something that we Tucsonans haven't noticed.

MARGARET SANGER AND THE BAGGERS

Sanger is one of the great Progressive Devils for the rubes but it seems that a lot of the attacks upon Sanger are false:

“More children from the fit, less from the unfit —
that is the chief issue in birth control.”
A quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger,
this statement was made by the editors of American
Medicine in a review of an article by Sanger. The
editorial from which this appeared, as well as
Sanger's article, "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in
America?" were reprinted side-by-side in the May
1919 Birth Control Review (Sanger, 1919b).

IS IT TIME FOR A NEW ISOLATIONISM?

Since the break up of the USSR, the need for an intrusive foreign policy has vanished so I'm thinking that we need to re-evaluate our Super Power approach to foreign affairs.  The most important reasons for this change are the simple facts that we don't do country building at all well and we don't have a sufficient grasp of other cultures.   These defects lead to prolonged wars and failed occupations.

Perhaps the latest Wikileaks revelations will hasten this change.