October, 2010 archive
Tea Party Etiquette (Updated) 0
How To Treat Different Opinions, authored by Rand Paul Supporters, now at your bookstall:
I know, it’s all over the place.
Everyone needs to see it.
There are also reports of a Conway supporter’s stepping on the foot of a Paul supporter, with no indication whether or not it was intentional. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to rise to the level of mob assault, as this appears to.
Via TPM.
Addendum:
There are lots of addenda out there, but this is the best I have seen:
Bob Cesca points out that these are manly men.
Afterthought:
These folks feed on and propagate hate. They must be discouraged where it counts. At the ballot box.
Conventional Wisdom May Be Conventional, but It Is Seldom Wisdom 0
Eight false facts lies accepted as facts by Very Serious People, via Tom. Note how many of them form part of the basis of teabaggery.
2. President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy. Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.
3. President Obama bailed out the banks. Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.
4. The stimulus didn’t work. Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.
5. Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts. Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.
6. Health care reform costs $1 trillion. Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.
7. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc. Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.
8. Government spending takes money out of the economy. Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.
Non Sequitur of the Week 0
More about the Oregon election here.
Spill Here, Spill Now, Whine Later 0
Buccaneer Petroleum’s new CEO, Bob Dudley, has taken to complaining that BP got a bad rap for bespoiling the waters of the Gulf of Mexico (and, likely, any place ultimately touched by the Gulf Stream). At MarketWatch, Jim Jelter pops his bubble (emphasis added). A nugget:
As for the “leak,” it turned out to be the biggest offshore oil spill ever in U.S. waters, gushing 185 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico over nearly three months. That’s 17 times more oil than the Exxon Valdez dumped into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.
Cheesephake 0
If you see a “cheesesteak” on a menu more than 35 miles from Philadelphia, you can be certain it’s not a true cheesesteak sandwich.
If the menu says, “Philly Cheese Steak,” you can be certain that it’s an abomination that would warrant a kneecapping at 2nd and South.
This is from the menu at one of the nicer restaurants around here:
French Baguette? Pat Oliveri would be insulted. Does “Oliveri” sound French to you?
Bell peppers? They had better not try that at Broad and Passyunk.
(Given the track record of this restaurant, it’s probably quite palatable, but it is not a “Philly Cheesesteak”–maybe a Virginia Beach Frenchie Steak.)
There’s another dive in these parts that actually puts mayonnaise on some vile concoction that they refer to as a “Philly Cheesesteak.” (I worked up the nerve to try that one. I shouldn’t have.)
Words fail me.
Bubblicious 0
At MarketWatch, David Weidner argues that Wall Street needs Mr. Bubble to be anything more than a dull place of business earning reasonable returns from good business practices (emphasis added).
That assessment would be wrong, however. The financial industry did what it could. Hey, if Goldman can’t turn in a big quarter with all of its influence, real or imagined, something must be amiss.
Something’s amiss. Without a bubble, Wall Street is a lackluster industry. Profitable? Yes. But its ability to turn in the kind of performance it regularly turned out in the 2000s, without hollow capital being created out of dead-on-arrival Internet start-ups or straight-to-default mortgages, is questionable at best.
Oh, horrors. They might have to work for those country club memberships.
The Internet Connection Is a Public Place 0
A Firefox extension called “Firesheep” automates hacking your wi-fi connection if you are using public wi-fi.
Here’s a demo:
QOTD 0
Henry Steele Commager, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
We should not be surprised that the Founding Fathers didn’t foresee everything, when we see that the current Fathers hardly ever foresee anything.
“You Said You Wanted a Revolution, Well, You Know . . .” 0
Gary Younge comments in the Guardian on those folks who thought that one election would change the world (emphasis added):
It is not unrealistic to believe that a country as wealthy as the US should be able to provide healthcare for all, a dignified life for its elderly, an infant mortality rate better than Cuba’s, a life expectancy higher than Bosnia’s, a foreign policy that does not hinge on military aggression, and an economy where fewer than one in seven live in poverty. What is unrealistic is to believe that any of those things can be achieved, or even seriously tackled, with just a single vote.
Their mistake was to believe that transformational change was something you could impart to a higher power – the president – and then witness on CNN. The problem was not that many set their hopes too high but that rather than claim those hopes as their own they invested them in a single person – Obama – and in an utterly corrupted political culture. For the narrow ideological and organisational confines within which American electoral politics operates do not leave much room for real change.
A lot of my leftie buddies could do to read the whole thing and remind themselves that Obama was elected president, not wizard.
Voting Is Not a Right. It Is a Duty. 0
Nothing proves that more than efforts by the Republican Party and its fellow travelers to suppress the vote. One must wonder why Republicans fear voters.
Well, not really wonder. It is because their policies are inimical to the polity.
Dick Polman considers some of those efforts over the years. A nugget:
(snip)
Meanwhile, in states where Republican officials run the election process (Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, to cite only two), it’s amazing how often the minority precincts report shortages of voting machines, and an unusually large number of lost or discarded ballots. Currently, the Justice Department is investigating reports that “poll watchers” with ties to a Texas tea party group have intimidated early voters in the Houston area; all the affected polling places are in Latino and black neighborhoods.
TPM discusses the voter fraud fraud:
(snip)
“Poll watchers are good. You have to separate the fact that it’s good for campaigns, it’s good for the body politic to have people there that are watching, I think that’s important,” Orr told TPMMuckraker on Friday. “The only problem comes if people abuse that, and we’ve certainly seen that in the past. We saw it in the last presidential election, we saw it in Michigan.”
“What some people have done — particularly Republicans in the past few years — is challenge people because of their race or ethnicity, and that is clearly illegal,” Orr added.
No Magic Left in This Juan 0
On the Media looks at the Juan Williams kerfuffle.
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to it (so much outrage, so little time), but this seems to be one of the more level-headed analyses I’ve heard.
This capsule description from the website is not quite accurate:
Left out is that Satetan thought that NPR might have been fully justified in letting Williams go for other reasons, but that they chose was wrong one, for the full transcript shows Williams’s statements to be more nuanced and tolerant than the edited clip that led to his moving to Fox full-time.
Follow the link above to listen or to read the transcript, due to be posted this afternoon, or listen here.
UnMini Me 0
Invalid syllogisms in Italy, via the BBC:
That means a tough new dress code which would effectively outlaw everything from miniskirts to low-cut jeans when people walk around Castellammare di Stabia, our correspondent adds.
Mr Bobbio, from the centre-right People of Freedom party, says he wants to target people who are “rowdy, unruly or simply badly behaved”.
There will also be a ban on sunbathing, playing football in public places, and blasphemy, if the proposals are approved at a council meeting on Monday.
The Sixth Freedom 0
According to Andy Borowitz:
The alarming thing is that O’Donnell’s reading of the Constitution is typical of that of the teabaggers. They are the Humpty-Dumpties of historical interpretation–they make it mean what they want it to mean, one thing today, another tomorrow.
She is just the most incoherent at expressing it.
Spill Here, Spill Now, Pay Later 0
The persistent awesomeness of Buccaneer Petroleum continues to persist. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
The discovery, which comes as millions of birds begin moving toward the region in the fall migration, gave ammunition to groups that have insisted the government has overstated clean-up progress, and could force reclosure of key fishing areas only recently reopened.
Read the full story. Not while you are eating.
Via Bob Cesca.
“Mushroom People” 0
At Psychology Today, Christine Louise Hohlbaum asks
(snip)
In response to a private conversation my PR colleagues and I were having about this topic (yes, via email!) , Herdon, VA-based PR professional Diane Johnson said, “We’re cultivating a culture of mushroom people who want to sit in front of their computer or on their PDAs and believe using their fingers (while keeping them off each other) counts as human interaction.”
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