43 YEARS AGO TODAY

The Kent State Shootings...

NIALL FERGUSON REACHES A NEW LOW

He attacks Keynesian economics for being derived from Keyne's homosexuality because homosexuals don't think about the long run because they don't have children.  He never mentions that Schumpeter thought Capitalism itself was anti-Family.

Harvard has one more person to atone for.

CRICKETT RIFLES GOES INTO HIDING

(h/t DKos)

The company that made the rifle that the 5-year old killed the 2-year old with has gone web-silent.  I wonder what kind of PR it will come out with?

VERY GOOD NEWS

Clear Channel, the corporation most responsible for Fats Limbaugh, announced another year of losses:

Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2012: CC Clear Channel …reported a loss of $203 million, versus a year-ago loss of $143.6 million. (The Limbaugh boycotts began last year in the first quarter) Revenue fell 1.3% to $1.34 billion. Revenue from media and entertainment, the company’s largest segment, was down 2.2%, Operating expenses dropped 3.5%.

Clear Channel Media, is the vehicle used by private-equity firms Bain Capital LLC.

SEN. CRUZ TAKES ANOTHER HIT FROM A CONSERVATIVE

Jennifer Rubin is not alone! In the WSJ, Kimberly Strassel extends Bobby Jindal's "stupid party" remarks to Cruz and other conservative extremists.

Strassel: About Those Conservative 'Squishes'
The GOP is split between those who insist on making a point, and those who want to make some progress.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Updated May 2, 2013, 7:00 p.m. ET
WALL STREET JOURNAL

...Mr. Cruz went on to divide the Republican caucus between those who have "principles" and those who are "a bunch of squishes."

This is one way to divvy up the GOP caucus, though it is a largely false (and self-serving) construction. The real divisions in today's Republican Party are not so much over ideology as they are over strategy. The GOP is split between those who insist on making a point, and those who want to make some progress.

These groups are sincere in their belief that only by standing on principle can the party draw a sharp distinction with Mr. Obama. Yet it is, after all, possible to be both principled and . . . smart!

A VERY BRIEF GUIDE TO CONSERVATIVE VALUES

OK: Giving a 5-year old a .22 caliber rifle
Not OK: Letting a 15-year old girl take Plan B

TALK RADIO RATINGS IN TUCSON

David Hatfield comes through once again with ratio ratings for Tucson.  KNST, the major wingnut station, has declined compared to a year ago and KQTH has improved.

I'M NOT A FAN

but I can think of a lot of other print media people who should have been fired long before Howard Kurtz was, such as Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Jennifer Rubin, and Charles Krauthammer.

MICHAEL SAVAGE ISN'T IN THE "NO NAMES" CLUB

(h/t Mediaite)

He called out The Baby Jesus on Monday night by name and Hannity only talked about some "talk show host" in response.

On his Monday evening show, Savage took to bashing Hannity for what he believes is the cable news host’s desire to go to war with Syria.
“Some of the so-called conservatives are in favor of American men dying,” Savage began. “For example… Sean Hannity — who is known to be one of the, let us say, most shallow men in the America media, who gives conservatism its reputation of being shallow — back in 2012, called for war in Syria.”

MORE EVIDENCE

Police ID man killed outside Tucson Walmart

Kimberly Matas Arizona Daily Star

Tucson police have released the name of the 25-year-old man shot and killed at a midtown grocery store today.
Ricky Lomax was shot just before 4 a.m. in the parking lot of the Northgate Shopping Center on the northeast corner of East Grant Road and North Alvernon Way. Lomax was able to walk into a 24-hour Walmart Neighborhood Market before he collapsed and died, Sgt. Chris Widmer, spokesman for the Tucson Police Department, said.
Lomax, who was unarmed, had a confrontation with several men outside the store entrance and at least one of the men shot the victim multiple times, Widmer said.
Police are looking for a white four-door car that was seen leaving the parking lot immediately after the shooting, heading north on Alvernon.
In addition to homicide detectives, members of TPD’s gang unit were called in to investigate, Widmer said.

The investigation is ongoing.

I SHOULD HAVE READ THIS IN HIGH SCHOOL

I thought about it but at that time I was looking for a substitute for the Roman Catholic Church, so I never did read William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale.  Just going by the original Preface, Buckley seems to have laid the groundwork for the unholy alliance between Republicans and Christian Fundamentalists:

I had always been taught, and experience had fortified the teachings, that an active faith in God and a rigid adherence to Christian principles are the most powerful influences toward the good life. I also believed, with only a scanty knowledge of economics, that free enterprise and limited government had served this country well and would probably continue to do so in the future.
[snip]
I contended that the trustees of Yale, along with the vast majority of the alumni, are committed to the desirability of fostering both a belief in God and a recognition of the merits of our economic system.
[snip]
I propose, simply, to expose what I regard as an extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that, under the protective label “academic freedom,” has produced one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of these supporters to be atheistic socialists.
[snip]
I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.

I'M STILL WAITING FOR "CRITICAL MASS"

Back in 2009, John Derbyshire wrote a nice smackdown of Limbaugh, Hannity, Mark Levin and other talk radio gasbags by name and I was hoping this would start a popular revolt against these asshats but no such luck.  Back in March, Conor Friedersdorf noted that both John Podhoretz and Jonah Goldberg wrote, without giving names, that the conservative gasbags are hurting the conservative movement but that didn't catch on either. :-(

UPDATE: I didn't mean to imply that the folks at Flush Rush, Stop Rush and similar groups haven't done a great job.

LUNTZ UPDATE & MORE

As far as I know, neither Limbaugh nor Mark Levin have openly responded to Frank Luntz's remarks, so I was wrong.  In related news, War Whore Jennifer Rubin calls out Sen. Ted "Don't Call Me Joe" Cruz for being a jerk.  I would expect Mark Levin to attack Rubin for writing that.

THE RADIO GRIFTERS ARE GETTING DESPERATE

I noted before that they switched from exclusively pushing gold to mixing in silver.  Now, they've added tungsten & graphite.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER REALLY IS NO BETTER THAN ALEX JONES

Bats Left/Throws Right saves me some time by reviewing this piece of crap and quoting this horrible sentence:

The dilemma in Afghanistan was what to do after the brilliant, nine-week victory.

At best, Krauthammer seems to have forgotten the debacle at Tora Bora which some, like Peter Bergen, consider to have been a terrible mistake:

I am convinced that Tora Bora constitutes one of the greatest military blunders in recent U.S. history.

THE NATIONAL REVIEW PUBLISHES AN INSTANT CLASSIC

(h/t DougJ at Balloon Juice)

Charles "The Reformed" Johnson caught this REAL cover of the National Review:

I guess they would call this is a picture of Disney World:

NATIONAL DEBT & ECONOMIC HEALTH

According to Steve Roth at Angry Bear,  to judge by history, there won't be some economic bliss IF the U.S. paid off all its national debt:

I ask because over four centuries and two centuries respectively (six hundred years combined), the U.K. and the U.S. governments have paid off their debts exactly once: the U.S. in 1836.
This happy event was followed, in 1837, by one of the most catastrophic depressions in either country’s centuries-long history. Likewise, the one other time that the U.S. got close to paying off its debt (the U.K. never has), in 1893, a disastrous depression followed immediately thereon.

I GUESS "SOUL" MEANS "AD REVENUE"

(h/t Media Matters)

After Glenn Beck publicly accused Pres. Obama of being a racist, he not only lost a lot of advertisers, the rate charged for a spot on his show fell dramatically, even for wingnut favorite Goldline:

DOUBLE PLUS GOOD

First, a guy in Boston calls out one of Alex Jones' "reporters" for being an "asshole" and a conservative blogger approves.

I LOVE THIS KIND OF STUFF

Almost any time wingnuts fight in public, it's good for America

Pushback of the day, Fox News edition
By DYLAN BYERS |
4/29/13 10:10 AM EDT
POLITICO

Glenn Beck, ex-Fox News host turned media entrepreneur, said Friday that he left the conservative cable channel in order to save his soul: “If you stay in it too long, you become Norma Desmond,” Beck said in an interview at New York University. “I remember feeling, ‘If you do not leave now, you won’t leave with your soul intact.’”
A Fox News spokesperson emails POLITICO's Mike Allen:

Glenn Beck wasn't trying to save his soul, he was trying to save his ass. Advertisers fled his show and even Glenn knows what that means in our industry. Yet, we still tried to give him a soft landing. Guess no good deed goes unpunished.

MORE HAYEK ON THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES

This is an excerpt from his paper "Why I am not a Conservative" in The Constitution of Liberty (1961):

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it—or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs. I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called “mechanistic” explanations of the phenomena of life simply because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irreverent or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position. 

Hayek had other objections, one of which I posted here.

WORTH SIGNING...

SIGN HERE: Tell Clear Channel & Limbaugh Sponsors - We Will Not Buy Products That Support Misogyny, Racism and Hate Speech

AEI "SCHOLAR" ADMITS IT...

The National Debt is no longer a problem, states John Makin in his post, Austerity Undone:

Despite periodic slowdowns, the US economy is on a sustainable fiscal path. The deficit is projected to drop below 2.5 percent of GDP by 2017, below its 30-year average, helped partially by the sequestration budget cuts.

American fiscal austerity has been moderate and probably, at the current pace of deficit reduction of about $300 billion per year over the next half decade, has proceeded far enough for now.