WTF?

Fun with Statistics...

More from DeLong - he calls it fun with graphs, but the numbers are fun too...

A few comparative international statistics, attractively presented: Google's Gapminder World 2006, beta.

DeLong beats Kudlow...again

I've not kept track, but I figure the score is something like DeLong 42, Kudlow 0. You'd think at some point somebody would just tell Kudlow to shut the fuck up and go home, because he's hurting his side. For our benefit let's hope he keeps plugging away. Anyway...

May 27, 2006
Will Somebody Please Stop the Insanity!!!!

Over at National Review, Larry Kudlow writes:

Larry Kudlow on Enron, Morals, and Adam Smith on National Review Online: Capitalism in this country has been under assault ever since FDR's New Deal 1930s, a time when a number of alphabet agencies attempted to control America's industrial and farming sectors. The experiment soon proved a dismal failure, with unemployment running 20 to 25 percent up until WWII...

Ummm... The implication that Roosevelt's New Deal pushed the unemployment rate up is, of course, false. The U.S. unemployment rate in the Great Depression peaked at 24.9% in 1933--before any of Roosevelt's policies had time to have any impact--and was below 20% by the end of 1935. By Pearl Harbor day the unemployment rate was 9%--still very disappointingly high, but a far cry from Kudlow's "The [New Deal] experiment... dismal failure... unemployment running 20 to 25 percent up until World War II."

He goes on:

Still, the American welfare state would grow. In the 1960s and 1970s, the murderer's row of economic morons -- LBJ, Nixon, Ford, and Carter -- in allegiance with their liberal Keynesian advisors, concocted a socialist policy mix that ultimately led to wealth-destroying big-government stagflation. Providentially, Ronald Reagan changed all that in the 1980s. The Gipper slashed tax rates, deregulated industries, and rescued the dollar, unleashing the forces of entrepreneurial capitalism...

Real deregulators will tell you that the Reagan administration helped, but that the heavy lifting on deregulation was done under the Carter administration by Alfred Kahn and company. Real international economists will point out that the strong dollar of the early 1980s was driven by Paul Volcker's high interest rate policies, which Kudlow and company strongly condemned. Slashing tax rates and creating big budget deficits, that Reagan did do--with results that weren't that great, for whatever supply-side benefits were generated by lower tax rates were more than offset by the crowding-out drag imposed on investment by the Reagan deficits. Real median hourly wages rose at 2.5% per year on average under the "murderer's row of economic morons" (booming under LBJ and Nixon, and then stagnating under Ford and Carter). They then grew at 0.5% per year under Reagan, 0.2% per year under Bush I, 1.2% per year under Clinton, and now 0.2% per year again under Bush II.

As a result, for the first time since the post-Civil War period (but for the brief Coolidge-Melon period in the 1920s), the American economic system became the envy of the world...

The Reagan years (and the years since) have been great for the overclass. But it was during the period 1942-1973 that the American economy performed best for the rest of us, and was genuinely the envy of the world.

As I've said before, the country is full with lots of excellent, thoughtful right-wing economists who would love to write for National Review. But something goes very wrong--and not just on the right. We do live in a very strange world, in which Gregg Easterbrook is Slate's "Mr. Science."

Posted by Brad DeLong on May 27, 2006 at 02:26 PM in Better Press Corps, Economic History, Economics | Permalink

Cultural ID comments thread

Digby had an interesting post up that spawned a huge comments thread. Within that were a number of subthreads, and I tried to pull one out...

[sidenote:If Republicans are on your side, why do they never do anything that helps you?]

Friday, May 26, 2006

Cultural ID
by digby

Chris Bowers writes about one of my favorite subjects today: American tribal identity.

Over the past year and a half, I have slowly developed an argument that the electorate is, in general, non-ideological, not interested in policy, and generally unmoved by the day-to-day minutia of political events that, within the blogosphere, are treated as cataclysmic events. Sure, most people hold general political beliefs, but in general national voting habits are motivated by something else--something more basic. As we look for ways to motivate voters in November, we need to remember the powerful role that identity plays in political decision-making. As progressives, we shrug off concepts such as the "battle of civilizations," but if you look closely at demographic data, maybe it is a battle of civilizations taking place after all. We may very well be living in an era of identity politics. Who knows, maybe every era of American politics is an era of identity politics.

I think the evidence is overwhelming that it is. He reproduces one of those great maps that break down everybody by something or other and like most of them, it ends up showing the south as being a homogenous region surrounded by a hodgepodge of different things everywhere else. In this case it's religion, but it could be anything, including electoral results or sociological indicators. It's just a fact that the south has a very strong regional identity of its own. And I don't think the rest of the country is quite like it. That divide has been with us since the beginning and it far transcends any mommy/daddy party dichotomy.

I watched the country music awards the other night and saw what looked like a typical bunch of glammed up pop stars like you'd see on any of these awards shows. Lots of cowboy hats, of course, but the haircuts, the clothes, the silicone bodies were not any different from any other Hollywood production. But the songs were not. There are plenty of Saturday night honky tonk fun and straightforward gospel style religious and patriotic tunes. But there is a strain of explicit cultural ID that wends through all of them.

[more]

The threads comments pick up here:

Just remind them who it was that established the following:

-- the 8-hour workday/40-hour work week with time-and-a-half for overtime

-- the minimum wage

-- unemployment insurance

-- worker's compensation for on-the-job injury

-- the right to organize and bargain collectively

-- workplace safety regulations

-- child labor laws

-- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

This body of work constitutes a foundation of security and fairness for ordinary workers and every part of it was put in place by the liberal democrats of their day. Whenever somebody wants to know "what do Democrats stand for?" I reply "well, let's look at the record" and point to the above and how my parents and their parents before them benefitted a great deal from that agenda. It infuriates me to hear Dean, Pelosi and all the others never ever talk about this stuff on Sunday mornings.
jaybee | 05.26.06 - 7:07 pm | #

-----

@jaybee & digby:

that laundry list is spot-on - but riddle me this:

those were the reasons that southerners used to vote Dem - and as a result Dems ruled this nation for years. Well obviously this has ended. Why?
mc | 05.26.06 - 7:58 pm | #

-----

"those were the reasons that southerners used to vote Dem - and as a result Dems ruled this nation for years. Well obviously this has ended. Why?"

Southerns used to vote Dem because the Republicans won the Civil War. When Dems finally put an end to legal racism, Southern Dems all became Republican.

I'd say the country has been basically divided between the north and the south from day 1. That's a bit simplistic, especially since Southern resentment has managed to absorb/corrupt other strands of American thought - anti-urbanism, anti-intellectualism, populism. But the bottom line is that the Northern ideal was always the small farmer, merchant, or artisan, while the Southern ideal was always the plantation owner. The latter is a non-cooperative, winner-takes-all outlook that is obviously very conservative, in the recieved wisdom/authority sense.

(Disclaimer: not all southerners or notherners are bad or good, but basic cultural outlooks can be either good or bad.)
Tom DC/VA | 05.26.06 - 8:26 pm | #

-----

This is one of my favorite topics too.

These kind of seperations go all the way back to the Civil War. If you want to think about identity politics, look at how divided the country was then, and just how those attitudes have formed modern politics as well.

Talk about "you're either with us or against us", it couldn't have been more stark at that juncture.

One need look no further than the divide between a patriarchal Southern system, and an eglitarian North to understand the roots of this sort of mentality. Just look at the ways Kevin Phillips and Patrick Buchanan implemented ways to exploit the cultural differences for political advantage during the Nixon administration. The infamous Southern Strategy was the product. By 1970, they had figured out how to exploit it for political gain.

Take a good look at Southern society circa 1854 and the answer to your questins wind up right in front of your face. While the Industrial Bubble was taking hold in the North, the South had deliberately locked itself into a system that by nature was never meant to change. Why do the work yourself when you can import slaves to do it for you? In the North, doing the work yourself and inventing was part of who you were.

The whole point of cessession was, "Leave Us Alone".

That lead to the Revolution against the Revolution. That was THE message of the Confederacy; We are rebelling against a hostile invader.

All this brings us back to Gretchen Wilson's lyrics. Country folk are always set upon. A Southern caste system naturally lends itself to simple proclamations about God, country, family, and what they stand for. Northern innovation has no grand unifying theme that spans those kinds of boundries, hence a massive lack of some kind of simple slogan or message that we can rally around. It just doesn't exist.

All you need is history to show you the way. It's all rooted in how this country developed, and I often find that the impact of the American Civil War is grossly overlooked.

While we're at it, hasn't this country had enough of presidents that come from Texas? The last three have started wars on their watch, and two of them have gone horribly wrong.

There are no Blue State country songs to had. There's no point for them either.

By the way, the next president of the United States will be George Allen He just enough rocks in his head to carry on the Republican legacy.
FuzzFinger | Homepage | 05.26.06 - 8:54 pm | #

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This reminds me of every time I've been in a bar wherever and some guy plays "Simple Man" by Skynyrd and buzzed dudes tell each other, in effect, "Right on. That's me." My younger brother and my dad are big listeners to the "young country." When I ask why (not in a jerky way), they always say something like, "It's positive," or, "it's simple." This stuff is liked because it rewards you for who you are, tells you nobody can change you (try as they might), sets you up as a person with a little dignity, no matter what some (nonexistent) outsider might tell you. It's self-affirming pap that doesn't ask a lot of you.

Obviously the South is ground zero for this kind of impotent, whining insistence, which still feeds on the old divisions. But this stuff's popular all over. The appeal the Republicans have crafted is great. I don't think it's so much that there's "Red State" music that is a cultural byproduct of ascendant Republicanism. I think that they've just figured out how to appropriate the disconnect people all over are feeling, Thomas Frank, etc. You're a simple man in a hard world who's capable of inordinate suffering? That's your thing? It doesn't, like, transfer to action, or anything? Cool.

Which makes me think we should just spend more time in Ohio and Colorado than try to dip into that inexhaustible well of ossified victimhood so many folks down there are addicted to. We can't compete.
rAD | Homepage | 05.26.06 - 8:58 pm | #

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There's some truth to what gurnBlanston said above -- I work in a blue collar sector and some of the guys (well, the white guys) fit the "southern victim" mold pretty well, one even said something along the lines of "the democrats hate the working man." And this guy was in his early 20s, bright Italian-American, kept up with the news and politics.

Here in New York, these mostly Irish & Italian blue collar guys, living out in the near suburbs, still buy into the Reagan "welfare queen, Democrats only want to take money from working people and give it to loafers" line. What they saw during what I call the decadence of liberalism was the separation of the New Deal Dems from the white working class to top-down social engineering like busing, from wealthy Ivy League types who were completely out of touch with the blue collar guys. This is on top of a long dirty history of the Irish fighting the Blacks here for the scraps at the bottom of the economic ladder. What these guys families saw was a wealthy, out-of-touch Democratic liberal elite foisting their ideas of social justice upon them in ways that would never touch them, the elite, in personal ways unlike those who's Mom's were held up by blacks at the candy store, or who's kids were forced to bus miles away for the sake of some idea of racial equality.

The Republicans took this resentment against elitist top-down liberalism and ran with it, and these Dem liberals, well, had no response to regain the working class. For them, health care, the minimum wage, Iraq, whatever, are simply intellectual exercises.

Of course, racism is at play, too, and these guys feel victimized by the welfare and benefits they imagine the blacks and latinos are soaking up off their hard work. While the Republicans mounted a very well-oiled argument that drip-down economics work (A Rising Tide Lifts ALL Boats!) the "liberal" Dems have never made a simple coherent argument to the contrary.

Frankly, I think we should have left the South to drift off at the time of Civil War, and seriously believe we should now consider separation -- in 1860 they were too economically important, cotton being the major American export, now frankly without Federal subsidies they'll be Mexico with less interesting architecture. The blue states are not that far from European social-democratic states in sensibility -- religion has no place in the public square, government has a role to care for ALL its citizens, keep an even playing field, the idea of the common good whether its environment or urban planning or day care for working moms or whatever.

I lived in Texas for 12 years and believe me, the comments above re a patron/plantation system are spot on. In Texas, the government exists mainly to enrich the already stocked pockets of the few families that run the joint. The term "white trash" is a southern construction (ie, whites who aren't much better than the blacks and hispanics). Frankly, cut 'em loose and let the rest of us move back into the "civilized" world. We can work with our blue collar guys, as in Europe you'll always have the Le Pen segment, but given the bankruptcy of top-down liberalism and the absence of a media (O'Reilly and Co wouldn't work in a divided nation, Murdoch's Post loses millions every year) I think we could win them over.
LeislerNYC | 05.27.06 - 12:10 am | #

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The sense of identity that Digby describes is the exact same sense of identity that the Nazis played upon in their rise to power. It is the identity of the loser, but not just any loser, the deposed rightful heir.

Germans had an overwhelming sense of having been betrayed by the other European powers after WWI. The rightful place of the German people was at the forefront of European society. Germany had produced Beethoven, Wagner, Bismarck. The Nazis came to power by telling the Germans they were right to feel that way. And giving them someone to point a finger at.

In much the same way, there is a sense among white Southerners that if they hadn't been betrayed by their Northern brethren that they would never have lost their position as the rightful rulers of this country. The Republicans try to ride that sense of resentment, but can never be as successful, because the Southern version is regional, not national. But it will be difficult to ever pull the South away from the Republicans as long as whites are the majority their, unless we begin to cater to the victim mentality that holds sway there.

It's pathetic how much our country is beholden to a bunch of racist hicks with an inferiority complex that is only matched by their sense of entitlement.
Singularity | 05.27.06 - 2:12 am | #

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This is a sloppy construct but I think American itself is the tribe the GOP plays to. If one adheres to American excetualism [sic: exceptionalism] in any of it's forms you will vote GOP.

The main form of exceptualism is the one that holds God has a special role for America. This springs mainly from that all American pre millenial dispensationalim so many fundamentalists adhere to. That isn't the only source of course for exceptualism has many faces, like Bush's two year PR blitz about spreading democracy. Spreading 'free markets' fits into it as well. In all cases American is seen as the font of moral goodness. America itself in that light is it's own religion, a civic religion.

The economic and military expansionists embrace the civic kind of exceptualism but love having the religious ones along for the ride.

It should be noted that one common element in this is that the status of The Nation is the primary concern. Americans standing as the most powerfull and richest nation must continue. There is a deep ironies in all this for such is absolutely a product of government and communal effort and identity, having zero to do with individualism.

No politician in America can even hint that they do not believe we are the greatest nation in history and that we should maintain and extend that status. If they do they are not members of the tribe.

Bush is an uber American. He embodies virtually every aspect of American exceptualism. He expresses often both the religious and the secular branches of it and there is zero doubt he belives them to his marrow. Such politician will win every time. There is no fighting it. Liberals play around the edges of rejecting American exceptualism and the lose. The only thing they can do is back away from the edge.

The big thing now is that economicaly America is losing it's dominance. The rise of China and Asia and how they interact with middle east oil resources is going to push back the edges of it economic and military dominance. Simple put American will not and cannot allow any drop in its status. How can we stop it you ask. Simple, blow it up. We are now proceeding on the path to blowing up the rest of the world.

I should mention non whites can't really be of the tribe. As non whites become the majority it is inevitable that representative democracy as we know it will have to be abondoned.
rapier | 05.27.06 - 8:27 am | #

This post doesn't entirely fit in with the subthread, but I thought it was made a great point.

It is not about class, it is about resentment. It is not class identity that the Republican Right has been so successful in appealing to, it is resentment: irrational and perverse anger-hiding-shame-and-envy.

Straightforward Democratic appeals to economic self-interest run into resentment. Democratic attempts to offer a genuine war hero runs into the same obstacle: resentment.

Resentment can focus on blacks, gays, feminists, scientists, limosine liberals; whatever the instance, the issue is always the same: "you" are not being respected. The identity assigned to "you" is merely incidental to the key, which is the resentment. To focus on class and tribal identity, which is just a convenient short-hand in fashioning the thesis that "you" are not being respected, is to completely miss the point.

Resentment is a corrosive force, a perverse force. Resentment is the opposite of admiration, or its shadow, in Jungian terms. Resentment loves a fake; the Republicans have mastered the art of presenting the fake: Nixon actually faked being a fake, but Reagan made a profession out of being a fake, and Bush II: well, he's a born fake.

A genuine war hero has no appeal, where resentment is dominant. The truth is of little concern; and, even self-interest and love of country are subverted.

Resentment is what is being "sold" by the corporate right-wing media, day in and day out. It is the stock in trade of the O'Reilly's.
Bruce Wilder | Homepage | 05.28.06 - 12:59 am | #

And these two posts carry forward the last one, and offer a point-counterpoint:

Half the things the very first poster listed people I know would hate and I’m from the south. It is obvious from the posts here that there is a huge gap between the sides.

People I know vote Republican because the left scares them. They want to take away their guns, give their kids birth control without their consent, and keep them from praying before the Friday night high school football games.

We feel you bastardize the Constitution as bad as Bush does the English language. Its not that we love republicans either, they come with their own set of problems. However, for the most part until now they have stayed out of our personal lives. If the Democrats want to win back those voters they have to stop with the insanity.

Southerners do not want outsiders coming in and saying we know what is best for you. We believe in freedom and we feel that the Left does not. The things you call progress such as minimum wage and other government intrusions are the very things we do not want.

Open the borders and consider it a done deal you will lose. That is not necessarily my world view it is simply how things are in the South.
Frankly, both parties disgust me.
James | Homepage | 05.28.06 - 3:22 am | #

Resentment is about race and race is about class and class is about social status and status is about economics and so around the merry vicious circle. Sorry, James, I'm 55 and as Southern as the day is long, and I'm here to tell you that what white middle American "conservatives" - whether Southerners or "white ethnics" claiming "it's a neighborhood thing" - want is Affirmative Action ended, deunionizing and deregulation so the companies maybe will stay in the South or whatever low-tax Red area, a huge "defense" budget to support the hundreds of Red state bases and many billions of dollars put into Red economies ever since FDR jumpstarted the South and west with massive military spending in WWII, repeal of the Fair Housing Act or at least an end to Clinton-era enforcement of anti-discrimination and anti-redlining laws, media consolidation so that "the message" is all anyone ever hears, school vouchers to end the public school system and so end social mobility while they're still above somebody, cheap gasoline to underwrite the value of exurban houses (see also redlining above), artificial housing booms that benefit the construction trades, (and now that the housing boom is deflating) better wages for currently immigrant-held jobs by deporting immigrants and thus raise wages again (see history of every modern developed country), the truncation of the Bill of Rights to the 2nd Amendment so that minorities are subject to the tyranny of the majority, and de facto revocation of equal protection once whites are finally in the minority but still hold all the power. There's more on the agenda, but that'll do for starters. No one should ever forget that their "God" is centrally a guarantor of wordly success.

Oh, and Jose, I don't know how much they're paying you to post this puerile cant here but however little it is they're not getting their money's worth, though maybe it's just someone's business loss tax write-off.
jlb | 05.28.06 - 9:00 am | #

And finally, I think this would be a cool song:

Listen to the Wind

Check where your sen/rep stands on the progressive scale

Progressive Punch

dailykos post on Greek history not to be repeated

Athenian Idol: Alcibiades and the Sicilian Expedition

by Alexander G Rubio
Thu May 25, 2006 at 04:34:53 PM PDT

Some time ago an army was dispatched over seas under the banner of crusading democracy. Not only would it break the back of tyranny, it would also secure untold riches and resources in the process, the politician in charge promised.

The year was 415 BC, the expeditionary force hailed from Athens, its destination was Syracuse in Sicily, and it was the brainchild of Alcibiades.

Athens was at war with her rival for supremacy in the Greek world, Sparta, in an internecine bloodletting which was to range across the Mediterranean and would rage on for a generation. Men would fight in this war who were not born when it first began. When it ended, both victor and vanquished would have reason to rue its beginning.

[more]

Who is Jesse MacBeth?

Good question. I had never heard of him, and I keep track of too many blogs where he certainly would have popped up. Then comes this diary over at dailykos:

Anatomy of an Anti-Liberal Viral Video

Ever heard of Jesse MacBeth? Up until a few days ago neither had I. And, most likely, neither had you. But, thanks to the right-wing blogsphere, you and I now know who he is and what he is all about. Or do we?

snafu's diary :: ::

You see, according to numerous right-wing blogs, Jesse MacBeth is a hero of the Liberal Left. Michelle Malkin referred to Jesse MacBeth as "the latest cause celebre of the anti-war Left...". Odd considering no one had heard of him until a few days ago. Also, very interesting, since according to other right-wing blogs, Jesse MacBeth is a true blue example of the Hateful Liberal Conspiracy to Imitate Conservatives, Imitate Soldiers, and to Blame the Warrior Soldiers for Everything Bad and Evil in the World.^TM

[snip]

Think about it. A video is offered on the internet. Right-wing propagandists, all versed in defined tactics of hatred for all things not of their liking, make a pointed (and very predictable) stand that the video is a bonifide example of Liberal hatred for the common soldier, is all the rage amongst the Liberal movement when it is clearly not, nor is the fact that the video is a Liberal creation any clearer than whether MacBeth was an Army Ranger. The selctiveness of the right-wing is amazing in this regard. They entirely dismiss the truthfulness and integrity of MacBeth (and by proxy all his statemnts) yet they entirely accept that this obvious piece of propaganda was created with the intent goal of bashing soldiers, rather than the goal of inciting the hatred of the right-wing and / or the suspicion of the left.

Bear in mind, I'm not saying that there is a conspiracy amongst the right-wing blogsphere. What I am saying is that they are being used, their behavior predictable and reliable, to push the "Liberals hate soldiers" meme out into the greater blogsphere and mainstream media. It's what they do and do very well. The rightie blogsphere promotes hatred. It's a cannon for it.

A new take on an old classic

When wingnuts attack

OK, so there's this wingnut email floating around about how some mom got a special paint job on her Hummer (yup) to honor her son's sacrifice in Iraq. Now, I don't have a problem with her doing this - I have a major problem in casting her as a true American mom who really supports the troops because she did this. Well, here's the email:

Step aside Cindy Sheehan. Here's what a true American Mom did for her son.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. ( March 2, 2006)
Karla Comfort received a lot of looks and even some salutes from people when she drove from Benton, Ark., to Camp Pendleton, Calif., in her newly-painted, custom Hummer H3 March 2. The vehicle is adorned with the likeness of her son, 20-year-old Lance Cpl. John M. Holmason, and nine other Marines with F Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division who where all killed by the same improvised explosive device blast in Fallujah, Iraq, in December.

There's more to the email than this, but it's framed as anti-Cindy Sheehan, and closes out with this:

Support America and Support the Troops

Let us NOT forget......


My sister forwarded the email to me, saying how it "brought tears" to her eyes. Well...here's what brings tears to my eyes:





And then there's this:
USA Today: Editorial/Opinion
Posted 12/17/2003 8:47 PM
U.S. soldiers lack best protective gear

Notice the date.

And this:
USA Today: Editorial/Opinion
Posted 1/12/2006 8:53 PM Updated 1/12/2006 9:00 PM
For lack of body armor, troops die. Why the delay?

Again, notice the date.

Or this:
Cuts in veterans’ aid opposed
Cleaver, Moore join effort to block health-care cuts
By LEE HILL KAVANAUGH
The Kansas City Star
Posted on Thu, Apr. 20, 2006

I feel bad that the woman lost her son. But there are 2454 other mothers who have lost sons and daughters, or children who have lost mothers and fathers. And who knows how many tens of thousands physically or psychologically wounded. If you're going to support the troops, it takes more than platitudes like "support the troops", especially when the troops are somewhere they should not be, lacking clean water, food and equipment, coming home to collection agencies and cuts in benefits. True American mom who REALLY supports the troops? I guess you have to decide for yourself.




Personally, I don't think getting a custom paint job on a Hummer (of all vehicles, sheez) counts as supporting anything.

Just wanted to throw this up here...

I will have to get to it later, but I didn't want to let it slip away. This is from booman, a post titled 2006 will be a major disappointment. So will 2008.

But I see NO ONE actually taking a stand. I see NO ONE standing up for DEMOCRATISM.
-----------------------------------

And what would that even look like? I can tell what I think it would look like.

For starters, it would mean shaping our policies around Liberal Rhetoric again. In my diary A Memorial For What We Have Lost, I tried to remind people of the REAL values that American stands for--that are ingraved and tattooed onto its very being:

The Common Good.
Equal Opportunity.
The Right to Privacy.
Accountable Government.
Respect Abroad.

It would mean standing up for single-payer healthcare.

It would mean standing up for a SERIOUS increase in the minimum wage.

It would mean standing up for SERIOUSLY higher taxes on corporations and the extremely wealthy, in order to actually SHRINK the income gap in this country.

It would mean standing up for re-regulating all the corrupt, vampirous industries that were deregulated by Reagan and Bush.

It would mean standing up strongly for the separation of church and state, and heaping scorn on those who would tear it down, rather than running in fear of them.

It would mean standing up for SERIOUSLY higher pensions and funding for our military personnel, and for our veterans.

It would mean doing all these things and much more--AND MAKING SURE THAT JOE SIXPACK KNEW WE MEANT IT.

This seems to sum up Americans' attitudes

If you love your civil liberties, let them go. If they come back, then you can exercise your free speech and peaceably assemble and be secure in your papers and effects. If not, then they were never your rights to begin with.

Max Boot has totally lost his fucking mind. He shouldn't be living in the US, he belonds in the 1950s Soviet Union.

Oh, and read the whole post...hell, read the ones above and below too...

Way to go out on a fucking limb Pat

Pat Robertson: If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms. There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.

Press Release 05-162
Number of Category 4 and 5 Hurricanes Has Doubled Over the Past 35 Years

September 15, 2005
The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, according to a study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The change occurred as global sea-surface temperatures have increased over the same period.

Atmospheric scientist Peter Webster of Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, along with scientists Greg Holland of NCAR and Judith Curry and Hai-Ru Chang of Georgia Tech, studied the number, duration and intensity of hurricanes worldwide from 1970 to 2004.

Results of the research will appear in the Sept. 16 issue of the journal Science.

"Basic physical reasoning and climate model simulations and projections motivated this study," said Jay Fein, director of the National Science Foundaton's (NSF) climate and large-scale dynamics program, which funded the research. "The results will stimulate further research into the complex natural and human-caused processes influencing tropical hurricane trends and characteristics," he said.

"What we found was rather astonishing," said Georgia Tech's Webster. "In the 1970s, there was an average of about 10 Category 4 and 5 hurricanes per year globally. Since 1990, the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled, averaging 18 per year globally."

[more]

EXTENDED RANGE FORECAST OF ATLANTIC SEASONAL HURRICANE ACTIVITY AND U.S. LANDFALL STRIKE PROBABILITY FOR 2006

We continue to foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006. Landfall probabilities for the 2006 hurricane season are well above their long-period averages.

(as of 4 April 2006)

[snip]

PROBABILITIES FOR AT LEAST ONE MAJOR (CATEGORY 3-4-5) HURRICANE LANDFALL ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING COASTAL AREAS:

1) Entire U.S. coastline - 81% (average for last century is 52%)

2) U.S. East Coast Including Peninsula Florida - 64% (average for last century is 31%)

3) Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville - 47% (average for last century is 30%)

4) Above-average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean

Or

2006 Atlantic Hurricane Season Official Outlook (2), January 8th 2006

[snip]

Probability of a Tropical Cyclone making landfall in U.S: 96%
Probability of a Named Storm making landfall in U.S: 95%
Probability of a Hurricane making landfall in U.S: 85%
Probability of a Major Hurricane making landfall in U.S 75%
Probability of a Category 4-5 Hurricane making landfall in U.S: 55%
Probability of a Category 5 Hurricane making landfall in U.S: 30%

[more]

Me? I'm not betting against the house...

Miscellaneous quotes

"The selfish spirit of commerce... knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain." -- Thomas Jefferson to Larkin Smith, 1809. ME 12:272


"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood...It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." -- The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.


"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." -- Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, 149, May 7, 1918

Thank you Janeane!

George Bush and his anti-intellectual douchebag jamboree

Some good links on the estate tax

FOR THEIR NEXT TRICK: ESTATE TAX REPEAL
The Estate Tax: Tough Questions and Honest Answers
The Estate Tax: Myths and Realities

Too bad we don't have leadership

Tidal power - energy from the sea

Read the whole angrybear post

but this section to me was the guts:

Don’t get me wrong – Robert Reich does this debate a great service when he talks about income distribution even if we can hear Robert Novak screaming something about CLASS WARFARE in the background. But he almost concedes Kudlow’s usual argument about faster growth by default even if we know Kudlow is dead wrong. Let me share my initial reaction to the two pieces by Reich that Mark Thoma linked to:

I like Reich - but let's be honest. He's not all that effective in debating this issue. All one needs to do to undermine the Kudlow et al. faster growth argument is to quote a Kudlow statistics - the US economy's average annual growth rate from 1947 to 2000 has been 3.5%. But let's break this down:
1947-1980 (high tax rates): 3.5%
1981-1992 (low tax rates): 3.0%
1993-2000 (high tax rates): 3.7%
Now taking the OMB projections for the rest of this decade, we project the following:
2001-2010 (low tax rates): 2.9%

I know – nothing original nor really all that complicated. But we have been witnessing a flood of free lunch garbage of late – all wrapped in a slew of distortions that Kudlow and his fellow clowns are infamous for bringing to any discussion.

One issue I have, and angrybear did it, is referring to Bush, Gingrich, and the rest as "conservatives" when they clearly are not. That's their framing, and we need to stop it.

Need to get through to *? Play God...

Voice Of God Revealed To Be Cheney On Intercom

December 7, 2005 | Issue 41•49

WASHINGTON, DC—Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God.

[more]

Another reason to love Jodie Foster

Don't be fooled by the title...

Foster Quotes Eminem at Penn Graduation

[snip]

Foster, who graduated from Ivy League rival Yale University in 1985, received an honorary doctor of arts degree.

She earned laughs from the graduates by taking pictures of them from the podium and then by recalling her own years at Yale. But she struck a serious note later, saying the country and world are worse off than they were four years ago, and challenging graduates to change that.

The U.S. "squandered" the goodwill and sympathy other nations offered after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Foster said. She also criticized officials for the "disastrous and shameful" handling of Hurricane Katrina.

[snip]

And one more for the road:

The Family Guy on evolution

The Big Bang

I never realized the level of savings

Stay within posted speed limits. The faster you drive, the more fuel you use. For example, driving at 65 miles per hour (mph), rather than 55 mph, increases fuel consumption by 20 percent. Driving at 75 mph, rather than 65 mph, increases fuel consumption by another 25 percent.

Blog comments for posterity

Comment from Kieran Healy over at a Crooked Timber thread STFU Syndrome:

Son, we live in a world that has blogs, and those blogs have to be guarded by men with computers. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Waring? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Reynolds and you curse the Keyboarders. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Reynolds’ existence, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that blog. You need me on that blog. We use words like “fisk,” “indeed,” “heh” … We use these words as the backbone to a life spent at home defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a woman who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the endlessly self-important invective that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a laptop and start to post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

Woodstock would have been cool to see live...

That's GOTTA hurt!

Poll: Clinton outperformed Bush

Friday, May 12, 2006; Posted: 9:16 p.m. EDT (01:16 GMT)

(CNN) -- In a new poll comparing President Bush's job performance with that of his predecessor, a strong majority of respondents said President Clinton outperformed Bush on a host of issues.

The poll of 1,021 adult Americans was conducted May 5-7 by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Respondents favored Clinton by greater than 2-to-1 margins when asked who did a better job at handling the economy (63 percent Clinton, 26 percent Bush) and solving the problems of ordinary Americans (62 percent Clinton, 25 percent Bush). (Watch whether Americans are getting nostalgic for the Clinton era -- 1:57)

On foreign affairs, the margin was 56 percent to 32 percent in Clinton's favor; on taxes, it was 51 percent to 35 percent for Clinton; and on handling natural disasters, it was 51 percent to 30 percent, also favoring Clinton.

Moreover, 59 percent said Bush has done more to divide the country, while only 27 percent said Clinton had.

When asked which man was more honest as president, poll respondents were more evenly divided, with the numbers -- 46 percent Clinton to 41 percent Bush -- falling within the poll's margin of error. The same was true for a question on handling national security: 46 percent said Clinton performed better; 42 percent picked Bush.

Clinton was impeached in 1998 over testimony he gave in a deposition about an extramarital sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinksy.

Background on oil and gas leases

Who Owns the West?

How much do leases cost?

On auction day or at a time specified by an authorized officer, winning bidders pay an administrative fee of $75 per lease, the first year's rent of $1.50 per acre, and at least $2 per acre of their "bonus bid." (The minimum bid is $2 per acre; the bonus bid is what bidders offer above the minimum.) Winning bidders pay the balance of the bonus bid to BLM within 10 working days of the auction.

In addition to the initial payment, lessees pay rental rates of $1.50 per acre for the first five years for all leases beginning after December 22, 1987. Rates are $2 per acre for any additional year. Other rates may apply for leases that began prior to December 22, 1987. Rates can reach $10 per acre or higher for leases that are terminated and subsequently reinstated.

Lessees generally do not pay rent on land for which they are paying royalties (CFR Leasing Fees 2004).

What production royalties are paid to the government by oil and gas lessees?

Lessees pay a royalty of 12.5 percent to the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service on the amount or value of the oil or gas removed or sold from each lease. Lessees must pay a minimum royalty at the end of each year beginning on or after a discovery of oil or gas in paying quantities (CFR Oil and Gas Royalty 2004).

Pro Life?

Prove it.

Soccer juggling

Amazing