Category Archives: Wingnuts Being Wingnuts
New Spin: The 99 Percent Are Elitists
Charles Pierce has a delicious takedown of Bobo’s latest, in which the amazing keyboarding cabbage tells us that the discontent in the peasant class is really about (a) Harvard grads jealous because they are not gaining in prestige as rapidly as some of their classmates; or (b) the lesser educated, who don’t appreciate the virtues of chastity and hard work.
Seriously. If Marie Antoinette had been a New York Times columnist, she might have written this.
Elsewhere — perhaps concerned that the New York Post‘s accounts of orgies and STDs in Zuccotti Park aren’t doing the job, the latest smear of OWS is that the protesters are mostly spoiled rich white kids. The Daily Caller and David Brooks must have gotten the same memo.
Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States.
As Steve M points out, $305,000 actually is below the median home price in the New York metropolitan area. Here’s a home for sale for $305,000 in Queens. [Update: The link isn’t displaying the photo, so I’m adding it here.]
In Manhattan, $305,000 can get you a co-op in Washington Heights (see Washington Heights).
“The median monthly rent for those living in apartments whose information is readily available is $1,850.” Again, that’s way below the median. I did a bit more searching and found what looked liked habitable studio and 1 bedroom apartments at $1,800 in Manhattan, but we’re not talking luxury. The young folks tend to squeeze three or four roommates into little apartments like that and split the rent.
Will Cain Be Cancelled?
Yesterday John Cole asked an interesting question:
While Cain’s bizarre and shifting responses to the sexual harassment charges are interesting, I think the weirdest thing about this whole incident is what provoked it. Who fed this to the Politico, because we know for a fact they weren’t doing due diligence on Cain and just stumbled across it. They don’t do journalism, they do rumor and innuendo and fluff pieces, mixed in with planted trial balloons and horse race analysis and he said she said crap from anonymous sources and unnamed officials.
So who fed them this? Rove? The Romney team?
The allegations against Cain really do have Karl Rove’s modus operandi written all over them. Steve Kornacki walks us through the Scandal Thus Far, and while there’s a heck of a lot of smoke, the actual fire seen so far doesn’t seem to amount to that much.
I’ve been holding back talking about the allegations, partly because part of me would like to see Cain continue to challenge Romney for the GOP nomination. (I’ve been looking at Cain’s policy proposals on his campaign website and much of it is in Ron Paul territory. In other words, he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the general election.) So far, the sex scandal has been dismissed by righties as an evil libruhl plot, even as they slaver over New York Post stories about sex among the OWSers at Zuccotti Park.
There’s also been an attempt to smear Cain with the background of his cigarette-smoking campaign manager, but frankly I don’t see that getting any traction, either.
Several rightie bloggers have picked up on an interview of Cain by Judy Woodruff, in which he says he is concerned that China might get nuclear weapons in the future. WTF? It’s possible he just misspoke, as Gerald Ford did in 1976 when he said “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” That possibly cost Ford the election.
But that was 1976. Right now the isolationists seem to be shouting out the neocons over in Wingnut World, and baggers would be challenged to find China on a map, never mind have a clue about its nuclear capabilities. So I don’t know if that little flub is going to hurt him, either. We’ll see. If a Democrat were to have said something like that, that’s all we’d hear about from now to election day. And if Karl really is the one behind the sex scandal stories, this is the sort of thing he would seize upon to club Cain. However, he’s going to have to find a proxy somewhere to do the actual clubbing.
Update: “The Fringe Frontrunner.”
Here’s Your Wealth Redistribution
Eric Cantor found the courage to speak at the University of Michigan to an audience limited to 250. And he boldly spoke out in favor of being fair to his owners the rich.
“Social justice is about fairness. Fairness is making sure that we afford opportunities for everyone to pursue their happiness,†Cantor said. “There are several folks that have stood up to say tax the rich. That that’s somehow fair.â€
“That all we have to do is redistribute the wealth and we can create the American dream for more.†he continued. “That doesn’t work… wealth distribution doesn’t work.â€
Interesting if he really said “wealth distribution” instead of “redistribution,” and James Fallows shows us that wingnuts are no slackers when it comes to wealth distribution.
Making It Up
Via Krugman — the Columbia Journalism Review analyzes a post at the American Enterprise Union on why income inequality is a myth. The remarkable thing about the post is that the author doesn’t even try to manipulate data; he just flat-out lies about it. He cites studies revealing income inequality and claims they say just the opposite.
See also Charles Pierce, “Everybody Is the 99 Percent,” and while you are there, see “The Republican Addiction to Attack Politics Has Backfired.”
The Empty Shell of Movement Conservatism
George Will writes a floundering column about what a shame it is that Romney is the most “electable” GOP candidate running for office. “Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?” Will wails.
Alexander Burns clarifies at Politico,
Even as Republicans come around to the idea that Romney may be their strongest opponent for President Obama, many are still convinced that a Romney presidency would represent a historic missed opportunity for the right.
At a moment in history when the Democratic incumbent in the White House ought to be extremely vulnerable, not to mention a Republican majority in both houses of Congress easily within reach, the Republican presidential field looks like a collection of rejects from the Island of Misfit Toys. And the one candidate who might possibly win the general election is, in some ways, the biggest “misfit” of all — someone movement conservatism considers to be an outsider.
How did this happen? How is it that such a dominant movement does not have a “deep bench,” so to speak, of respectable candidates that the establishment could market to the masses?
Part of the answer, IMO, is that “movement conservatism” has long been an empty shell of a movement. Beneath the facade of long-discredited ideas and deceptive talking points are nothing but resentment, bigotry, greed, and a deep sense of privileged entitlement.
Plus, the several factions within it don’t seem interested in going in the same direction. The neocons these days seem well outnumbered by isolationist social conservatives, for example, although the neocons still have a pretty big media megaphone.
On top of that, years of “politicking” with nothing but lies and dog whistles have left Republicans with a base that is utterly out of touch with majority public opinion, not to mention reality. Any candidate who might clean up well enough to have a shot at the general election couldn’t possible pass muster with the base.
I’m not saying that movement conservatism is about to dissolve away into the political ether. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy still has the money and the media. And between gerrymandering and voter suppression laws, they are as much as glued into federal and state legislatures. I expect them to continue to hold power way out of proportion to their actual support among voters for many years to come.
No, I’m just explaining to George Will how movement conservatism came to this.
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right …
Laugh or cry? A group of protesters — not all from Occupy DC — tried to push past security to enter the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. They wanted to protest the use of unmanned drones in overseas war.
Here’s the part to laugh at — one of the protesters was an infiltrator from the Right, the wingnut editor of the far-Right American Spectator. This loser claims he was the only one to make it into the museum, in fact. He simultaneously derides the danger and lawlessness of the group while calling them cowardly for stopping short of violence.
The loser also was much taken with the number of attractive 20-year-old girls among the protesters. Charles Johnson:
Just imagine the reaction from the right wing if a left wing protester infiltrated a Tea Party demonstration as an agent provocateur.
Of course, there are no “attractive 20-year old girls†at Tea Party demonstrations, so there isn’t the same motivation.
Heh. However …
This is exactly the kind of crap that prevents the Left from building any kind of effective movement to accomplish anything. Since several of you don’t seem to understand what I’m complaining about, let’s go back to September 2005.
There were huge antiwar rallies September 24 in Washington and other cities. I went to the Washington DC march around the White House. It was one of the better ones, really big, with people of all ages and ethnicities joining in.
As usual, Code Pink tried to steal the show by holding a separate rally and march a few blocks away. I remember reading that some of them were arrested. In any event, none of the pinksters came anywhere close to the advertised rally and march.
Also meanwhile, as most people marched around the White House, International A.N.S.W.E.R. — one of the sponsors — held its own event on the Ellipse, covered by CSPAN. After the march I got back to my hotel, logged on the Web, and read Steve Gilliard’s review —
You know, it’s time for the campus radicals to go home and take ANSWER with them.
I watched an hour or so of the rally and I wanted to smash my screen.
Why can’t they have adults who can speak in words, not slogans.
Here’s a hint, Palestine is really unpopular in the US, even among liberals. You do not gain support for the Palestinians by having some campus clown talk about the injustices of the Palestinian people. You know, why not have a real Palestinian from Palestine who doesn’t speak in slogans. You know, but a human face on it. And leave the support of terrorists like FARC at home, after all, you can’t call Israelis terrorists when you’re praising drug dealing terrorists.
This is serious shit and I had to listen to someone say he was a communist. Now what in the fuck does that have to do with Iraq? Too many people on the left glom on to any protest and use it as their hobby horse. You know, the only people I wanted to express solidarity with were the families of the soldiers, the soldiers and the people of Iraq suffering from US occupation. It may be cute to have diversity, but it takes away from the seriousness. You have a rally where only soldiers and their families speak, with a few pols, and even Bush couldn’t ignore that.
One of the most effective protests of the Vietnam War was the Winter Soldier Hearings in Detroit. They talked about the war and their role in it. That is something people need to see more than once a week on FX.
As long as you prattle on about anti-imperialism and other college campus radical causes, you don’t get taken seriously. ANSWER in their own way is as bad as the Chickenhawks. Both are amazingly selfish. The chickenhawks refuse to serve, the ANSWER crowd uses people like Cindy Sheehan to promote their own agenda. Mumia’s ass is in jail, and you couldn’t more than 10 minutes on black radio about him. And that’s a cause?
I just want to see a protest where there is only one topic, Iraq, the only speakers are talking about Iraq and all the signs are about Iraq. That anyone who mentions some nonsense like the “Popular Front” is shoved off the stage with a flying tackle. Talk about Iraq. But leave the other causes at home. I don’t really care about what a Israeli refusenik has to say if the topic isn’t Iraq.
Some of A.N.S.W.E.R.’s long list of speakers were from antiwar organizations, but they also had speakers from groups like the Women’s Anti-Imperialist League and the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico.
The A.N.S.W.E.R. program got more publicity than the march. I had no idea this was even going on until I got back to my hotel, and I can’t tell you how disgusted I was. It was the last demonstration I bothered to attend. There are less expensive ways to waste time.
There had been a number of demonstrations on the East Coast co-sponsored by United for Peace and Justice and International A.N.S.W.E.R. I have nothing bad to say about UfPJ, but it let IA push it around to get their sponsorship money, and those compromises reduced the effectiveness of the rallies. After this one I believe UfPJ had nothing more to do with IA, finally, but there were no more really big rallies on the East Coast after that. Smaller ones, yes. I wasn’t the only one who decided to sit the rest of them out.
A lot of us, including me, beginning in 2003 wrote many warnings about not allowing International A.N.S.W.E.R. to be the face of the antiwar movement, and I caught a lot of grief for it. But I was right.
Now, the Occupy Wall Street activists are on the edge of building a movement centered on economic populist issues that polls say most Americans support. And the slogan “we are the 99 percent” could be very effective IF most Americans come to understand it in the context of kitchen-table economic issues.
A broad swatch of Americans feel Washington pays no attention to their problems and caters instead to the rich and Wall Street. Big nationwide marches filled with middle-class, working people could actually get the attention of politicians in Washington. This would be a good thing.
But most of that broad swatch will not join in if they whiff a bunch of leftish issues they are not ready to embrace, and I suspect unmanned drones on foreign soil is one of those issues. And if the “movement” never goes beyond the usual vocational protesters, it’s pissing in the wind.
Update: See also “The Inkblot Protests”
This Is Brilliant
You must read this commentary by Charles Pierce. You will laugh. You will cry. You will blow coffee out your nose.
Not necessarily the best bit, but what I want to comment on —
A Republican may well get elected president next year. But, whoever that is, first has to answer, constantly, to the voices in the party’s head. It’s exhausting work. It’s already eaten Bachmann alive, and Herman Cain is next on the menu. Which is probably why so much energy seems to be going into the promotion of candidates who are not running. Right now, the non-candidate du jour is Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who replaced Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who replaced Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who made the capital mistake of actually running, and who already has flummoxed and disappointed Bill Kristol, maker of public men and truly unnecessary wars.
Pierce goes on to say that “If Bill Kristol went to the track, he’d bet on the fucking starting gate.” I want that on a needlepoint pillow cover.
Anyway — Pierce goes on to say that both Mittens and Yosemite Sam Perry blew it with wingnut voters because of what they did that was effective.
In the debate on Thursday night, both he [Perry] and Romney fell afoul of having done, during their terms as governor of their respective states, something reasonably decent for the citizens therein. In Romney’s case, of course, he passed a law that has resulted in 95 percent of the people in Massachusetts being covered by health insurance. In Perry’s case, he allowed the children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition to the state universities in Texas.
And from what I’ve read, that’s the pathetic truth. The base turned on these guys not because of the lies and the corruption and the phoniness or anything else they’ve done in their sorry-ass careers, but because of things they did that were sensible and beneficial.
But apparently the GOP establishment hasn’t noticed that Christie has already jumped that shark. He appointed a Muslim judge and belittled the hysteria over sharia law; and he agrees with climate change science. The base may have fallen in love with him awhile back for the many Youtube videos showing him denigrating public school teachers, but I’d say the bloom already is off that rose. If Christie does run, the base will eat him alive.
Jeb? You there?
Fudging Facts to Fit the Fallacies
You know the pattern. A news story comes out that makes conservative ideology look bad. Then, like a swarm of angry bees, rightie bloggers go to work on the story, knock out the most damaging parts and fudge the rest, then post the revised version on their blogs with the conclusion “Democrats [or the poor, or liberals, or anybody else they don’t like] are stupid [or corrupt, or just evil].”
Example, the original story: A 24-year-old man in Cincinnati has an infected wisdom tooth. A dentist tells him the tooth needs to be pulled, but the man has no insurance and cannot afford it. The dentist gives him a prescription for an antibiotic and a painkiller. The young man decides he can’t afford both, and he just gets the painkiller. The infection spreads to his brain, and he dies from a treatable tooth infection. The moral is that if he had had health insurance he almost certainly would not have died.
Granted, deciding to fill the pain killer prescription but not the antibiotic, instead of the other way around, was not smart, but it’s not unusual these days for people to not realize that infections really can kill you. Young men in particular tend to think they are invincible.
As for the tooth, the article doesn’t say what the dentist planned to charge to extract the tooth, but a bit of googling revealed that the cost of extracting one impacted wisdom tooth (the tooth was almost certainly impacted if it was infected) runs between $350 -$650, depending on how badly the tooth is impacted, and that does not include the cost of anesthesia, x-rays, or post-operative care, which is sometimes needed.
The cost of antibiotics range widely from almost free to “holy bleep,” and the type of antibiotic prescribed depends on the type and severity of the infection. The cheap ones don’t always work on whatever infection you might have. So without more information we don’t know what the guy might have had to spend on the antibiotic, but it could have been anywhere from $20 (possibly less) to more than $100.
And probably any dentist will tell you that even if that infection had been brought under control the guy would still need the surgery to keep it from returning.
Example, wingnut version: According to Donald Douglas (to whom I do not link, after past experience with DD’s relentless and aggressive hostility to whomever disagrees with him), the infected wisdom tooth could have been pulled for a mere $80. He knows this because the original story also mentioned a 12-year-old Maryland boy who died for want of a tooth extraction that would have cost $80. But that would not have been a wisdom tooth, which cost a lot more to extract. Scared Monkeys repeats the misinformation about the tooth extraction cost.
Then, they all decide the guy could have gotten a $4 antibiotic from Wal-Mart. Again, maybe, maybe not. It depends on what antibiotic was prescribed, and we don’t know that. The doctor might have thought the common and cheap ones like amoxicillin wouldn’t have done the job. This is possible, since the antibiotic was prescribed by an emergency room doctor who saw the young man after his face had swollen and he was getting headaches.
[Update: Add James Joyner to the list of bloggers who assume the young man could have gotten a $4 supply of pills at Wal-Mart.]
Having decided that the young man died because he was too cheap to fork over $84, or ask his family for the money, the bloggers go on to attack his character for wanting government handouts. Well, enough of that.
Back to the example of the boy who might have been saved by a $80 tooth extraction — the original story said,
The Maryland boy underwent two operations and six weeks of hospital care, totaling $250,000. Doctors said a routine $80 tooth extraction could have saved his life. His family was uninsured and had recently lost its Medicaid benefits, keeping Deamonte from having dental surgery.
The family may well have faced a choice of either paying for the tooth extraction or for groceries, and they chose groceries. But the larger point is that the $250,000 no doubt was paid by taxpayers, or else the hospital padded other patients’ bills to cover the loss. It would have been more cost effective for all of us to have paid for the $80 extraction. If righties actually care about the cost of health care and federal budget deficits and such, they might want to ponder that.
How Crazy Are They?
Republicans yammered about a balanced budget amendment through most of the 1990s, shutting up only when the Clinton Administration balanced the budget without one. They continued to keep their mouths shut while George W. Bush borrowed and spent trillions of dollars and ran up the Deficit That Could Eat Cleveland. And now they are pinning that deficit on the guy who inherited it and are demanding another balanced budget amendment.
Any respectable economist, meaning any economist not on the payroll of a right-wing think tank, will tell you that a balanced budget amendment would permanently cripple the U.S. economy. David Leonhardt provides a basic explanation why this is so. See also Stephen Foley, explaining our little pickle to British readers of the Telegraph:
[A] balanced budget amendment is terrible economics. It effectively means an end to counter-cyclical fiscal policy: when a recession strikes, the federal government would not be able to stimulate the economy by spending more. Instead, it must cut back at the same time householders and businesses are doing the same, making the recession worse. It could condemn the US to a perpetual recession, a depression even.
Wiser heads tend to regard any balanced budget amendment proposal as a gimmick Republicans periodically use to bash Democrats. “As it is such terrible economics, the tendency has been to assume it cannot pass,” Foley writes. The problem is that after years of such demagoguery, enough ideological zealots have been elected to Congress to possibly make it real, and the American public is brainwashed enough to support it.
Grassroots organisations have been lined up to agitate in support of the plan; Republican governors, including at least two potential presidential candidates, have written in support in the past few days. It could easily become a touchstone issue for next year’s elections, with moderate Democrats not wanting to be seen as weak on cutting the deficit.
Leading to:
After all the drama of last week, Republicans had the chutzpah (or, in Minnesota, “choot-spa,” possibly from Old Norwegian “sjøsltsbÃ¥t,” the act of sniffing reindeer glue) to trot out another hard-right proposal over the weekend that is absolutely devoid of compromise and which is nothing but another Dem-bashing tool. “Cut, Cap, and Balance” was praised as a “common sense” proposal, which in Republicanese means it’s wearing a tin foil propeller beanie and crazypants.
It begins with the McConnell plan, in which the debt ceiling is raised three times between now and November, and each time, Republicans are able to offer a resolution of disapproval. Then it adds in $1.5 trillion in spending cuts harvested from the Biden talks. Then it creates a committee of 12 lawmakers charged with sending a deficit-reduction plan to Congress by the end of the year. Whatever they decide on would be protected from the filibuster and immune to amendments.
Ezra doesn’t mention a balanced budget amendment, but they’ve thrown that in as well.
The only bright spot in this mess is that opposition to this proposal can be found across the political spectrum. The teabaggers don’t like it because it gives too much away to Obama. Face it; any raising of the debt ceiling will be seen as a failure and betrayal by the wingnuts, which makes me think the Republicans should just do it and get it over with and think of something else to stir up the mob going into the campaign season.
And, of course, anyone sane enough to not believe pixies are hiding behind the light socket plates is nervous about this, also.
Amy Fried writes that Republicans, as always, justify whatever lunatic thing they are pushing by claiming it’s what the American people want, even when polls say the American people want something else entirely. But, in Republicanese, “the American people” means “large donors to the Heritage Foundation.” If you understand that much, then the rest of it starts to make sense. Sort of.