REMEMBER WHEN PRES. OBAMA SAID THAT PRES. REAGAN

was a transformative figure?  I was one of many who didn't like this at all but I stumbled on a chart that does make Pres. Obama's claim seem reasonable (but not the GOP).   You can read more about polarization here.

I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THIS REMARK...

Bill Gross of PIMCO told Reuters that the very low Treasury yields indicate a high probability of another recession.  I then looked at the Yahoo Finance graph of the last 5 years and now I get it:

ACKNOWLEDGING A SOURCE

I've taken to referring to Gov. Rick Perry as Gov. Good Hair Secession and a commentary in McClatchy reminded me that the great Molly Ivins also referred to him as Gov. Goodhair.  Here's a sample of her criticism:

June 24, 2001

First, we Texans would like to salute the only governor we've got, Rick "Goodhair" Perry, the Ken Doll, for vetoing the bill to outlaw executing the mentally retarded.

MORE CRACKS IN WINGNUT WORLD

Michelle Malkin is upset that Sarah Palin spoke well of Sen. Orrin Hatch and Brent Bozell writes that Christine O'Donnell's behavior on CNN's Piers Morgan's show was "downright bizarre."

CHANGING NOTEBOOKS

My old one is just about filled up so I'm transferring info to the new one.  Here are some things I don't think I got a chance to blog about:

- Beck says Pres. Obama will eventually admit he's a Marxist
- Beck says most people in America are Libertarians
- Coast to Coast AM had Dr. Roy Spencer on and he said global warming is all politics
- Beck said Bill Moyers is a "radical Marxist"
- On Billy Cunningham's radio show, Terence Jefferey, the editor of Human Events and CNSNews.com, claimed that "the welfare state is unconstitutional"
- Cunningham had on Dr. Stephen L.  DeFelice, author of "The Attack on the White Male: - and The Weakening of America"
- David Limbaugh also claimed that Pres. Obama is a Marxist
- Cunnigham claimed that New York City runs a $50 Billion a year deficit.  The whole budget for fiscal year  2009 was $63.2 Billion and was at least nominally balanced.
- Beck said Rick Santorum is another Winston Churchill

THIS DIDN'T TAKE LONG

World Nut Daily:

Arizona sheriff promises Obama-eligibility probe

REALITY:

Arpaio clarifies stand on Obama birth certificate
by KTAR.com (August 19th, 2011 @ 12:29pm)

PHOENIX -- Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has denied that he "promised" Tea Party leaders in Arizona to investigate the validity of Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate to determine the president's eligibility for the 2012 election ballot.

Arpaio said he met in his office Thursday with a Tea Party group which presented him with 242 signatures asking for the investigation.

"What I have agreed to do, contrary to some published media reports, is simply look at the evidence these people have assembled and examine whether it is within my jurisdiction to investigate the document's authenticity," Arpaio said in a written statement Friday.

TEXAS MIRACLE?

Not so much, really, if you look at the just released state-by-state unemployment rates from the BLS.  Texas has an 8.4% rate but two liberal bastions, New York (8.0) and Massachusetts (7.6) are doing better.

LATEST BACHMANN SCORES

One minor gaffe, one major gaffe and one delusion.  Rick "Secession" Perry will have to bear down to beat her.

I REMEMBER READING THAT THE BAGGERS WERE...

not very interested in the Fundie issues like abortion but a new study indicates that these early reports are flat-out wrong.   Apparently, the Baggers are pretty much the Fundies.

Crashing the Tea Party
By DAVID E. CAMPBELL and ROBERT D. PUTNAM
Published: August 16, 2011
NY Times

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates.

ANYTHING FOR A FEW BUCKS

Sen. Joe Liberman (I-Israel) has a new book and to promote it, he's willing to appear on gasbag radio shows.   He and Glenda Beck avoided discussing any substantive differences they have with each others politics because for both of them, Israel comes first.  Worse than that, Lieberman appeared on Billy Cunningham's Sunday show and said "God bless you, Bill, you're a great guy."

I'M STARTING TO ENJOY THIS

A couple of months ago I became tired of listening to gasbag radio but now that there seems to be some real divisions in Wingnut World, I think I may start monitoring again in part because some folks at the NRO seem to have given up on the Baggers:

Iowa Debate, Round Two
August 11, 2011 9:54 P.M.
By Kevin D. Williamson

Every candidate said he would oppose a cuts-taxes plan that contained a 10:1 ratio of cuts to taxes. Chalk one up to the crazies. If Congress wanted to get rid of tax exemptions and exclusions amounting to $100 billion in new taxes in exchange for $1 trillion in cuts, and Republicans turned the deal down, I would personally drive down to Washington and pelt them with rotten vegetables, and possibly with rocks. $100 billion in new taxes plus $1 trillion in cuts balances the budget in 2012.

THE SNOW GRIFTER QUITS AGAIN

After an unexplained hiatus, Sarah Palin's idiotic bus tour showed up in Iowa just in time for the all-rube straw poll and just as unexplained, she quit the tour 4 days later.

YOU DON'T SEE THIS VERY OFTEN

A more or less mainstream magazine, New York, calls out Fats Limbaugh and Baby Jesus Hannity for lying about unemployment statistics. MEDIAITE got wind of this and joined in: "The fact is that, by any measure, these claims are grossly inaccurate."   Mediaite's response only received a link from POLITICO and I couldn't find any mention of this on Fats' site.

SORRY ABOUT THE LAST 2 DAYS

I just wasn't able to drag myself anywhere to get online.

MONEY TALKS AND THAT MEANS...

even the Wall Street Journal editorial board has turned against the Baggers:

Mrs. Bachmann has a record of errant statements (see Battle of Lexington and Concord, history of) that are forgiven by Fox Nation but won't be if she makes them as a GOP standard-bearer.

DR. DOOM CHANNELS A FORMER CONSERVATIVE PHILOSOPHER

I wrote previously that I was impressed with the works of John Gray on political economy, especially on the baleful effects on Thatcherism on Britain.  In False Dawn, Gray argues that the Free Market Fairy and the classical welfare state are both outdated and so does Nouriel Roubini:

To enable market-oriented economies to operate as they should and can, we need to return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of laissez-faire and voodoo economics and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Both are broken.

Roubini also channels the recent writings of Paul Krugman:

The right balance today requires creating jobs partly through additional fiscal stimulus aimed at productive infrastructure investment. It also requires more progressive taxation; more short-term fiscal stimulus with medium- and long-term fiscal discipline; lender-of-last-resort support by monetary authorities to prevent ruinous runs on banks; reduction of the debt burden for insolvent households and other distressed economic agents; and stricter supervision and regulation of a financial system run amok; breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and oligopolistic trusts.

YEAH, THIS MAKES SOME SENSE

The British Prime Minister is right to speak out against the riots in England but he leaves out one important group, the Thatcher conservatives:

He said politicians had been unwilling to talk about rights and wrongs, but "moral neutrality" would not "cut it any more" and said "the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations" must be confronted.

He included children without fathers, schools without discipline and communities without control in a list of what he believed has gone wrong in parts of the country and said people were "crying out" for the government to act.

"The broken society is back at the top of my agenda," Mr Cameron said.

According to John Gray, Thatcher's policies reduced the amount of control communities have over their situations:

However, as the sell-off of council houses showed, Thatcher did want to shift resources away from government control. The aim was not only to curb local authorities, always a ruling obsession, but also to promote a kind of moral regeneration in council house tenants. Thatcher believed that markets reward ethical behaviour, and she was strengthened in this prejudice by the ideas current in right-wing circles at the time.

ANOTHER NARRATIVE CONTRADICTION

You may recall that Fats Limbaugh the Nihilist doesn't think much of higher learning but that doesn't apply to the hack professors at Hillsdale College.

PAWLENTY IS GONE...

but why are Cain, Santorum, Gingrich and Huntsman still in the race?

THE MARKET IGNORED THE BAGGER DOWNGRADE

In fact, the interest rate on 10-year Treasury notes declined after the S&P downgraded U.S. debt.

From Yahoo FINANCE:

ON THE TEXAS "MIRACLE"

Gov. Good Hair Secession is going to brag about the great economy in Texas but doesn't this seem like socialism?

Texas bucks national unemployment trend
By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
Updated 7/26/2011 4:07 PM

The state, meantime, has doled out more than $600 million in grants and investments since 2003 to recruit out-of-state companies and help Texas firms expand.

ANOTHER EDITION OF "CONSERVATIVE PUNDITS VS. REALITY"

PUNDIT: (h/t Atrios):

REALITY:

Struggling Pawlenty exits White House race

By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON | Sun Aug 14, 2011 4:46pm EDT
REUTERS

WHY WAR IS EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE

It's not just because of our fancy weapons:

$400 per gallon gas to drive debate over cost of war in Afghanistan
By Roxana Tiron - 10/15/09 08:34 PM ET
THE HILL

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.

I HEARD THIS QUOTE FROM MARK STEYN

According to the Daily Caller, Steyn said this on Huge Ego Hewitt's show Thursday, August 4th.  This is from the transcript:

MS: Yes, and I think when you look at what happened in, say, the United Kingdom between the early 1950s and the late 1990s, that basically the proportion spent on social programs and the proportion spent on Defense inverted and flipped. And that will happen here. I mean, we might as well get used to it. The idea that the United States can have the kind of government on the scale that Obama and Harry Reid foresee, with $15 trillion dollars of debt, adding another $7 trillion dollars of debt, and maintain a military of global reach, is simply incredible. You can have one or…you can have Swedish scale government, or you can have the U.S. military, but you can’t have both. And I think if you look at which way Obama or Harry Reid or Dick Durbin or any of these guys would want to jump, it’s pretty obvious which way they’re going to go.

I'm going to vote "early and often" for a Swedish-style government.