ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE FREAK

(h/t Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice)

I barely noticed another creep at the AEI/Heritage Foundation Gong Show Event but Charles Peirce was certainly paying attention:

Edwin Fking Meese?
The man who was breaking the heads of the civilly disobedient in Berkeley forty-one years before the Cal-Davis cops discovered what fun chemical weapons are? Ronald Reagan's devoted porn sleuth? (Elsewhere on The Meese Commission was Father Bruce Ritter, the famous priest who ministered to the runaways in Times Square, and the angry prophet against neon-lit sleaze, who later was discovered to have been sharing his penis, as well as the Lord's grace, with his charges.) The attorney-general who gave the Iran-Contra crooks just enough time to do the shredding? The man who once said that Miranda protects only the guilty, that the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence was a"pro-lesbian" group, and that employers should be able to discriminate against employees with AIDS if the employer decides he's protecting the public health?

I'M A TALK RADIO GEEK SO MANY WON'T KNOW THIS

Some anti-Semitic nut has been calling and getting on talk radio shows since early 2009 and last night I heard him again on The Mark Levin Show.  Inga Barks was the guest host, so Levin himself didn't get a chance to explode but I'm wondering about the perseverance of this caller and why the call screeners haven't wised up.

WILL CAPITALISM DESTROY ITSELF?

I'm referring to the modern American conservatives view of Capitalism as promoting individual freedom and their reliance on the Free Market Fairy to work out the social effects.  Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of the Austrian school, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), predicted that capitalism's emphasis on the individual would lead to the collapse of the social values that make capitalism possible.  This interpretation of the capitalist ethos  makes some defenses of capitalism seem close to defenses of anarchism and Max Stirner (1806-56) was the first to draw the logical conclusions from the emphasis placed on capitalistic individual freedom:

The affinity between Stirner and the anarchist tradition lies in his endorsement of the claim that the state is an illegitimate institution....The cumulative effect of a growing egoistic disrespect for law, he suggests, would be to ‘scuttle’ the ‘ship of state’. (54) Anarchists influenced by Stirner's individualism and his suspicion of the state can be found in several European countries. However, his best-known anarchist admirers were in America, in the circle which formed around Benjamin R. Tucker (1854–1939) and the remarkable journal Liberty (founded in 1881).

MORE ON THE GOOD OLD DAYS...

I've been reading Bertrand Russell's Proposed roads to freedom; socialism, anarchism and syndicalism (1931, originally published in 1918) and he cited a passage from Marx's Das Kapital which I found powerful. I found an English translation online and this quote comes from Volume 1, Ch. 10, Section 3, page 165:

Section 3: Branches of English Industry Without Legal Limits to Exploitation

We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of the working day, the were-wolf’s hunger for surplus labour in a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins31, caused capital at last to be bound by the chains of legal regulations. Now, let us cast a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploitation of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was so yesterday.

Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, “that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilised world .... Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.... We are not surprised that Mr. Mallett, or any other manufacturer, should stand forward and protest against discussion.... The system, as the Rev. Montagu Valpy describes it, is one of unmitigated slavery, socially, physically, morally, and spiritually....

HOW DOES PONNURU GET AWAY WITH THIS?

Back in 2004, he punctured the St. Raygun Myth and now he debunks another wingnut meme: (h/t The Dish)

The Freeloader Myth
Ramesh Ponnuru
November 21, 2011 4:00 A.M.

From the Nov. 28, 2011, issue of NR

The Tax Foundation has calculated the percentage of filers in each state who pay income tax. The ten states with the highest number of non-payers are a strongly Republican bunch: Eight of them went for John McCain in 2008, and nine of them have Republican governors. Keith Hennessey, an economic adviser in George W. Bush’s administration, notes that the historical data suggest that the child credit was the main reason for the increase in the number of non-payers between 1995 and 2007. If the conservative story about falling income-tax rolls is true, then, we should expect to see middle-income parents moving left, compared with the general electorate, during that period. There is no evidence that anything of the sort has happened.

IF YOU ONLY NEED ONE ECONOMIC STATISTIC...

this is the One! (h/t Pat Garofalo at Think Progress)

The Average Bush Tax Cut For The 1 Percent This Year Will Be Greater Than The Average Income Of The Other 99 Percent
...the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

ANOTHER BUMILLER BLUNDER

In this article about the looming cuts to the military-industrial complex, Elizabeth Bumiller shades the story in favor of those like Sen. Kyl who oppose any cuts:

Despite Threat of Cuts, Pentagon Officials Made No Contingency Plans
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: November 22, 2011
NY Times

Other possibilities include cutting the number of aircraft carriers to 10 from 11 — the United States still has more than any other country — as well as increased fees for the military’s generous health care system, changes in military retirement, base closings around the country and delayed maintenance on ships and buildings.

In reality, we greatly exceed the rest of the world (and that includes allies like Britain) in carrier strength:

America has about twice as many aircraft carriers as the rest of humanity combined, and America's aircraft carriers are substantially larger than almost all the other's aircraft carriers. The Navy likes to call the big Nimitz class carriers "4.5 acres of sovereign and mobile American territory" -- all two dozen American carriers of all classes add up to about 70 acres of deck space. Deckspace is probably a good measure of combat power. The rest of the world's carriers have about 15 acres of deck space, one fifth that of America's.

Bumiller has done this before.

THE REAL POLITICAL QUESTION

The Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: I think so, Brain, but how are we going to make pencils that taste like bacon? Or maybe we should make bacon that tastes like pencils. Narf.

KRUGZILLA nailed it:

Paul Krugman: Newt Gingrich Is ‘A Stupid Man’s Idea Of What A Smart Person Sounds Like’

This led to a great POLITICO article:

Is Newt Gingrich as smart as he thinks?

Many conservative intellectuals don't think much of the Mewt:

To the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, Gingrich ... “He strikes me as a guy who thinks of lots of ideas and never runs them through a sanity test before spilling them on a stage,”

"...Nobody thinks of him as someone who has serious positions, white papers, policies on a wide array of issues coming from deep knowledge and experience,” said Roderick Hills Jr., a constitutional law professor at New York University who’s active in the conservative Federalist Society.

Fred Siegel, a scholar at the conservative Manhattan Institute, who scoffed at the idea that the former House speaker has much substance. ... “The intellectual level of debate in the Senate and the House is very low, and it’s in that context that Gingrich comes off as more profound than he really is,” Siegel said. “He is the tallest building in Wichita.”

Charles Fried, a respected conservative Harvard law professor who served as solicitor general under Reagan, has already decided. Is Gingrich as deep and smart as he thinks he is? “I don’t think anybody can be that smart,” Fried said.

ALMOST NOTHING ABOUT PARKER'S COLUMN

Mark "Foamer" Levin is the only big time gasbag who has replied to Kathleen Parker's take down of the Rube Party.  As usual, it was mostly a personal attack.

MARK LEVIN TELLS ANOTHER BIG LIE

I just heard him say that the States would not have ratified the Constitution without the 9th and 10th Amendments.  Here's a little elementary school history:

Each of the original thirteen states in the United States was invited to ratify the Constitution created in Philadelphia in 1787. The Constitution specified that nine ratifications would be sufficient to consider the Constitution accepted.
Some states ratified quickly, others had to hold several conventions to accept the Constitution — though all eventually did. This page lists the votes of each state's conventions.
September 17, 1787: The Constitutional Convention adjourns.
September 28, 1787: The Congress agrees to send the Constitution to the states for debate and ratification.
December 7, 1787: Delaware ratifies. Vote: 30 for, 0 against.
December 12, 1787: Pennsylvania ratifies. Vote: 46 for, 23 against.
December 18, 1787: New Jersey ratifies. Vote: 38 for, 0 against.
January 2, 1788: Georgia ratifies. Vote: 26 for, 0 against.
January 9, 1788: Connecticut ratifies. Vote: 128 for, 40 against.
February 6, 1788: Massachusetts ratifies. Vote: 187 for, 168 against.
March 24, 1788: Rhode Island popular referendum rejects. Vote: 237 for, 2708 against.
April 28, 1788: Maryland ratifies. Vote: 63 for, 11 against.
May 23, 1788: South Carolina ratifies. Vote: 149 for, 73 against.
June 21, 1788: New Hampshire ratifies. Vote: 57 for, 47 against. Minimum requirement for ratification met.

The 9th and 10th Amendments are part of the Bill of Rights, proposed on September 25, 1789 and ratified on Dec 15, 1791.

WHY I CALL IT THE GONG SHOW

The GOP just doesn't have anyone running who should be President.

Rick Perry: Hamas And Hezbollah Working In Mexico

Mitt Romney Flip Flops On His Own Name

Santorum's Fear: Militant Socialists

MEDIAITE TIDBITS

Michele Bachmann IS a "lyin' ass bitch."  Check out her "pants on fire" awards.

OWS isn't an arm of the DNC/Obama/Soros.

Rasmussen is far from the best polling outfit.

WHY WASN'T THIS GUY BOOED MERCILESSLY?

War criminal Paul Wolfowitz was allowed to ask a question at the CNN National Security Debate for the Gong Show.

UPDATE: War criminal & Cheney henchman David Addington also asked a question.

UPDATE II: The Think Progress live-blog nails it:

9:48: Are there any other neocons who led us into the Iraq disaster that would like to ask a question?

LESS THAN ZERO

This really isn't surprising...

Poll: Fox News Viewers Less Informed Than Those Who Read No News
David Taintor November 21, 2011, 5:00 PM
TPM

The poll — which asked New Jerseyans where they find news and information about current events — found that Sunday morning news shows are the most informative, while Fox News actually leads people to be less informed than those who consume no news at all.

The poll focused partly on popular uprisings in Egypt and Syria. Asked whether the people of Egypt successfully topped Hosni Mubarak’s regime, 49 percent of Fox News viewers answered “yes” — the lowest on the scale — while 68 percent of NPR listeners answered in the affirmative, the highest on the scale.

“The (poll’s) results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all,” said Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the poll.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THE TOP 0.1%

They really are capitalist pigs who don't do much for the rest of us:

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains
Robert Lenzner, Forbes Staff
11/20/2011 @ 12:26PM

Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US– and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.

Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation’s earners– rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%– about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million– are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains.

ROMNEY MAY BE ANOTHER BUSH...

as I noted before but Gingrich will be worse - another Cheney.  As Andrew Sullivan notes,

His foreign policy team - breathlessly unveiled by Fred Barnes this morning - puts him in the neocon, pro-torture, "America-is-never-wrong" camp.

Here are some of the creeps Newt has recruited:

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey
David Wurmser, a senior adviser to Vice President Cheney
Stephen Yates, a Cheney adviser on national security

TRUTH ABOUT TAXATION

Paul Krugman posted about a new paper by Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez on taxing the top 1% and notes that "D&S suggest that the optimal tax rate on the highest earners is in the vicinity of 70%."  Kevin Drum shares a graph that even supply-siders can grasp:

BIG PHARMA: FREE MARKET FAIRY VERSION

I've noted many times in the past how Big Pharma has repeatedly let us down (see here, here and here) and now I have another example:

Merck to pay $950 million to settle U.S. Vioxx charge
By Anna Yukhananov

Tue Nov 22, 2011 6:01pm EST

(Reuters) - Merck & Co will pay roughly $950 million to settle criminal and civil charges that it promoted the painkiller Vioxx for an unapproved use, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.

The Justice Department alleged that Merck promoted the drug for treating rheumatoid arthritis before it had been approved for that condition by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

JUST A COINCIDENCE...

From Memeorandum:

IT'S TIME TO BOYCOTT KNST'S ADVERTISERS

KNST in Tucson, AZ, broadcasts the Rush Limbaugh Show and today Limbaugh stepped far outside the bounds of common decency:

Rush Limbaugh Says First Lady Was Booed Partly Because NASCAR Fans Hate Her ‘Uppityism’
Jake Tapper
ABC News
Nov 21, 2011 4:40pm

Tomorrow I will start writing down all the advertisers, local, regional and national.

STARTING THE NEWT COLLAPSE COUNTDOWN

Mr. Genius Historian wasn't paying much attention when Pres. Fredo suggested that we privatize Social Security; FAUX News is turning on him and so are George Will and the NRO's John Derbyshire.

I haven't caught what Fats or the Baby Jesus have said today about Dr. Newt but they may be his last hope.

"THE EYES" AND MAN-ON-DOG AREN'T ALONE

At least two other GOP candidates want to increase suffering in the U.S. for our own good.  Newt thinks we need to return to the 19th Century by repealing child-labor laws and Mittens thinks we should cut health care for the poor instead of the bloated Defense Dept.

YEAH, WE NEED MORE SUFFERING

Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum thinks suffering is good for us despite personally making at least $885,000 in 2010. Michele Bachmann has one way to ensure more suffering: dismantle the Great Society programs.

STOP THE NONSENSE!!!

Tonight Billy Cunningham managed to denigrate Mitt Romney as a RINO and endorse John Huntsman!!! Why didn't his brain explode?