There Is Always More To Lose

If you do not vote for Obama for president, Republicans will win and the consequences will be horrible.

If you do not vote for Obama in the primary, Republicans will win and the consequences will be horrible.

If you criticize Obama in office, Republican congressmen will win policy battles and the consequences will be horrible.

If you criticize prosecution of whistleblowers and lack of prosecution of the financial elite, Democrats will lose to Republicans and the poor and middle class will suffer.

If you criticize prosecution of whistleblowers, the continuation of torture and illegal wars, and lack of prosecution of people who engage in torture and illegal wars when they are committed by Democrats, Democrats will lose to Republicans and prosecution of whistleblowers, torture and illegal wars will continue.

If you point out that Obama said he will cut Social Security and Medicare, Democrats will lose to Republicans and Romney will cut Social Security and Medicare.

If you point out that Obama withheld Plan B from rape and incest victims, Obama will lose to Republicans and Romney will nominate Supreme Court justices who will prevent rape and incest victims from getting abortions.

There is no end to these capitulation---none.  People will accept any horror until they are so desperate that they finally feel they have no choice but to fight back.

What else are people willing to give up? What if Obama does not nominate a pro-choice Supreme Court justice? Will people accept that? After all, we still need unemployment insurance.  We’re willing to let foreign brown women die to preserve Roe v. Wade; surely we’re willing to let American white women die to preserve unemployment insurance.

There is always more to lose.

The problem is not that we are voting for the lesser of two evils. The problem is that once you start voting for the lesser of two evils you will never, ever get what you want, what you are ostensibly voting for. We have been conditioned to support atrocities because our owners toss us a few crumbs every so often and we are so badly off that we need those crumbs to stay alive. But the only reason we are so badly off is because we won't risk losing those crumbs. The tea partiers genuinely believe that Obama will hand over the country to Islam while handing over their money to the blahs but they ignored their party leaders and voted in tea party candidates. They won because they were willing to risk something to win. They used their power. They’re still crazy, but now they are crazies a with little more power.

Maybe it’s stupid to want anything more. Maybe we are now so powerless that we should just shut up and take what we can get. Let the rich tell us we are scum and should work for crumbs and be grateful that they let us have that.

But the first lesson of abusive behavior is this: if you let abusers get away with abusing you, the only lesson they learn is that they can abuse you and you will let them get away with it.

 

And one more lesson as a bonus: Now that we know that most Democrats favor personal gain over morality, it is very stupid for liberal bloggers to work for free. Digby should be paid buckets of money by the Democratic Party, as should driftglass and all the other excellent bloggers who work for donations. They should stop blogging at once and put their energies into getting paid for all the free labor they are providing instead. When you aren’t even getting crumbs from your betters you might want to rethink your business plan.

The Naked Truth

Be still my heart!

Project S.H.A.M.E.: Megan McArdle, a Covert Republican Party Activist Trained by the Billionaire Koch Brothers

We are delighted to post the latest offering of Project S.H.A.M.E., a media transparency initiative led by Yasha Levine and Mark Ames.

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/project-s-h-a-m-e-on-megan-mcardle-portrait-of-a-taxpayer-subsidized-libertarian.html#RCLp1a516A77cXko.99

Go, read! Then read it again!

Little Bootstraps

Everyone is saying that Romney's 47% speech is the real Romney but that's not entirely true. He was playing to his audience and attempting to manipulate them as well.  All of the speech's quotes are from David Corn's article on the event.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

People who lie, cheat and steal must find a way of living with their acts. They use denial and projection to alleviate any guilt they might feel. Just as Megan McArdle carefully told us that she just happened to meet a (Black) man who told her* that he didn't have a problem with with wealthy whites buying up the homes in her formerly African-American neighborhood because "they weren't doing anything with it anyway," Romney soft-soaps the very rich by telling them that the poor are poor because they are lazy and greedy.

Nobody is more filled with entitlement than the rich. For instance, take Romney.

Contending that he is a self-made millionaire who earned his own fortune, Romney insisted, "I have inherited nothing." He remarked, "There is a perception, 'Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.' Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America."

Nothing could be more untrue. He was the son of a wealthy governor, went to expensive schools, and was able to avoid service in Vietnam. These schools and privliges enabled him to attend Harvard, paid for by family money. But these facts do not flatter his ego, so Romney chooses to lie to himself and others instead.

When one attendee asked how this group could help Romney sell himself to others, he answered, "Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars." He added, "The fact that I'm either tied or close to the president…that's very interesting."

It takes a multi-millionaire to jerk around multi-millionaires. Such people are only interested in winners; Sheldon Adelson dropped Newt like a stone when it became obvious he was a loser.

What [Obama's] going to do, by the way, is try and vilify me as someone who's been successful, or who's, you know, closed businesses or laid people off, and is an evil bad guy. And that may work.

Obama, who rescused the banking industry, also had his eye on his constituents, who wanted to be told that Obama would fight the financial industries on their behalf. Obama told them what they wanted to hear but this irritated the Entitled Elite. They expect to be praised, not villified. Romney stroked their egos and reminded them that the left saw them as villains.

I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn't realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I'd tell them to you, but I'd have to shoot you.

Guns for hire don't care whom they shoot. There's no difference between one country or another, one political race or another, for the global elite. They have little allegiance to their own country except in the abstract.

They'll probably be looking at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I'm going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a "Taxageddon," as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can't work together, it's—it really is frightening.

Romney is trying to straddle a delicate line here, by trying to play on the rich's fears while telling them that they inspire such admiration and confidence that they will heal the economy just by showing up. The stock market and banking system have recovered quite well from the disaster they caused, thanks to the taxpayers' bank bailouts, and they all know it. Their economy is global, and they all know that too. The American consumer, the source of 70% of the economy, are not doing nearly as well and Romney's election will do nothing to improve their lot. Republican Congressmen never had any intention of "working together." They all know this, and all ignore it.

But Romney knows what they--and he--want to hear, and he delivers it to them. The rest of us, as we always knew, do not count, and if we suffer and die it is our own fault for not working hard and smart enough, like Willard "Little Bootstraps"** Romney.


*or so she claims

**

The 47%

Senior citizens.

Kiss your Social Security good-bye, Grandpa!

Children.

Medicaid just breeds independence. Unhook those tubes at once so he can breathe the air of economic freedom!

The military.

Why don't they pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

The Heartland.

Too bad all those family farms were replaced by subsidized industrial farming, by the way.

The South.

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton the bottom ranking for every socio-economic category...!

Just as Mitt Romney says, we need to forget about all those people who don't pay income taxes. They'll never get him elected so they don't count. And when the election is over, the 99% won't put money in Willard's pocket and they won't count either.

This is what the lesser of two evils gets us: A man who is so determined to fit in with the elite that he out-conservatives them, and a man so pickled in privilege that he doesn't think anyone outside of his tax bracket even exists, for all intents and purposes.

Cleaning Up The Mess

Shorter David Brooks: Four years ago Barack Obama promised to fix all of the messes our government has somehow fallen into, yet we still have problems. Obama should immediately institute big programs. I will not mention the facts that the Repubublicans created the problems, left the problems for others to clean up, will do everything humanly possible to prevent the problems from being fixed, and will spend the entire time that Obama is cleaning up the mess telling the country that Obama is destroying the world.


Brooks will also not tell us that the creative destruction worked; that the middle class is now poorer, the very rich is now very richer, the decent jobs have gone overseas and left behind clerking jobs, and that after that wholesale theft, Obama handed the banks more of our money and refused to prosecute any of the thieves. 

A very long time ago I said that the rich were working actively to steal your money, eliminate Social Security and Medicare, and force you to work for third world wages, while eliminating their own taxes and offloading all their liabilities on the taxpayer. They are well on their way to accomplishing this goal because they have all the money and power and we have none. If we cannot stop the theft of a way of life, torture, persecution, lawlessness, and loss of privacy, we are powerless.

That is the bigger picture. The smaller picture is that the Republicans are effing crazy and you can't let Crazy loose or they'll kill the chickens and scare the horses. So yes, we vote and fight and mock, whatever we do best. Vote for Obama if you must, and elect councilmen and representatives and mayors who will hopefully help the poor instead of the rich.

But the rich see the big picture. They paint it, stroke by stroke, and their works will last long after they are dead.  They spent millions putting Obama in office because they knew he would hand over taxpayer money to the banks. Don't tell people to shut up or go away because they're just too precious to live in our cold cruel world when they try to tell the truth.

We like to joke that facts have a liberal bias but they don't. They are constant and inexorable and they will not go away no matter how much we may wish to ignore them. The only way we are ever going to regain our power is to tell the truth. Truth has more power than any political party, nation, or class.

The Hero Of Janesville, The Man They Call Ayn

For all my fellow Joss Whedon fans.

 

 

Ayn!

 

The Man they call Ayn!

He robbed for the rich and he stole from the poor,

He stood up for The Man and he'd give him much more

Our love for him now, aint hard to explain,

The hero of Janesville, the man they call Ayn!

 

 

Our Ayn saw Wall Streeters' backs breakin'

He saw the lawyers' lament

And he saw the lice and scum takin'

Every dollar and leavin' five cents

So he said, "You can't do that to my people"

"You can't crush them under your heel"

Ayn strapped on his lies

And before the ink dries

Steals everything the Boomers had to steal

 

 

He robbed for the rich and he stole from the poor,

He stood up for The Man and he'd give him much more

Our love for him now, aint hard to explain,

The hero of Janesville, the man they call Ayn!

 

 

Now here is what separates producers

From moochers like you and I

The man they call Ayn

He turned 'round his train

And let all his lies hit sky

He dropped lies onto conventions

He dropped lies into tv sets

And the man they call Ayn

He just rode that damned train

'Til he became a GOP star

 

He robbed for the rich and he stole from the poor,

He stood up for The Man and he'd give him much more

Our love for him now, aint hard to explain,

The hero of Janesville, the man they call Ayn!

Attention Must Be Paid

Wow. What did Willard Romney ever do (or not do) to David Brooks?

After his mission, he attended Harvard, studying business, law, classics and philosophy, though intellectually his first love was always tax avoidance. After Harvard, he took his jawline to Bain Consulting, a firm with very smart people with excessive personal hygiene. While at Bain, he helped rescue many outstanding companies, like Pan Am, Eastern Airlines, Atari and DeLorean.

And that's just a tiny sample. When the world's biggest authoritarian ass-kisser mocks the right's biggest authority, you know that nobody except for some tea-baggers and Ann Romney expect Romney to win. When you add on Maureen Dowd's evisceration, it's clear that Team Romney has neglected a very important aspect of political life: flattering the egos of the Villagers. He had better start holding press picnics and handing out free booze immediately or he's going to find himself in the same boat as the Clintons.

Added: And his arrogance is pissing off the tea-baggers and Ron Paul followers as well. Well done, Mr. Romney! He could not make it more clear that the only people he cares about are the 1%.

CouponCare

Great. The Republicans want seniors to have voucher-based medical care.

Paul Krugman:

So there it is: the draft Republican platform says of Medicare and Medicaid,

The first step is to move the two programs away from their current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model.

That means that instead of Medicare as we know it, which pays your medical bills, you’d get a lump sum which you can apply to private insurance — they’ll yell when we call it a voucher, but that’s what it is....

Bear in mind that health expenses will still have to be mainly paid for by some kind of insurance; that’s in the nature of medical care, with its high but unpredictable cost. So what we’re doing here is replacing government insurance with a program that gives people money to buy private insurance — that is, adding an extra layer of middlemen. Why would this save money? I guess the answer is supposed to be the magic of the marketplace — but we have the experience of Medicare Advantage, plus studies of Medicaid versus private insurance, plus the raw fact that America relies more on private insurance than any other nation and also has by far the highest costs. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the record suggests that this will do anything other than make health care less efficient.

We are assured that any seniors who vote for Richie Rich/Ayn Rand this time won't lose his or her Medicare, just the rest of us. Of course some seniors have wives young enough to lose out on this deal, but they must be poor if they need Medicare so they don't count.

You'll Thank Me Later

There are two types of mighty soldiers who man the Vagina Watch, that perpetual duty to preserve and protect the nation's Fetus-Americans by policing vaginas. The first type is genuinely religious, and is fully embodied by Miss Kathryn Jean Lopez, who believes that abortion is evil and must be stopped because only God can take a life. As we can see by this post, Miss Lopez sees pregnancy from rape as a blessing, and her anti-abortion beliefs are consistent in this narrow instance.

Miss Lopez also believes that there should be no separation between church and state, no premarital sex, no birth control, and that the role of women is to serve God and men by bearing their children and taking care of their home, and live through men by supporting their endeavors. She is as nutty as a Megan McArdle nut cake, but she lives her beliefs.

The second type is the opportunist, who demands that everyone else live by his beliefs while holding different standards for himself. He is the leader while the Miss Lopezes are the followers, in his own eyes if nobody else's. Ross Douthat believes that pregnancies from rape are "exceptional circumstances" that produce "unique agony" and anyway forcing women to carry their rapist's baby to term is probably a "political impossibility." Despite his own political compromises, Douthat goes on to criticize Obama's, calling Obama an extremist for supporting his own party's platform.

Douthat's entire post is a work of art, as he attempts to convince Democrats that capitalizing on the Republicans' extremism is a terrible political mistake. He does not discuss the constitutional right to privacy, which is hard and boring and the only thing that counts. He tries to sway his audience emotionally, which is a mistake because not many people can empathize with an emotionally stunted misanthrope. Watching Douthat at work is like watching Monk, as Douthat tries to convince everyone else to live with his own personal quirks, foibles and compulsions. Just because Douthat wants to live in a narrow little world of arbitrary rules doesn't mean that we do.

Especially when those arbitrary rules are designed to preserve Douthat's personal power and career and their consequences are designed to affect only women.

The Rats are In The Corn

Reading about Willard "Mitt" Romney's little birther joke and the lack of respect he and his followers show towards women and minorities, I have to wonder why anyone on the left calls him anything but Willard. (Preferably while humming "Ben," the theme music to the movie "Willard."* There's no reason why we shouldn't try to enjoy this potential sexually repressed plutocratic nightmare a little.)

Remember, the Villagers and their minions want to be cool more than anything else on Earth. They have money and power but they can't buy what they want most of all--self esteem. Obviously the only way they could be cool is if they created their own reality in which they are cool, forcing everyone else to live in that fantasy as well. Destroy the fantasy and you destroy the authority.

Willard dresses up as an authority, plays leader and cop and bishop. While he was play acting, real men were being shipped off to war. Willard mugs for the camera, he does not lead. He can live in a fantasy world in which he is cool but nobody else has to play along.

From wonkette:

from The Raw Story:

There is something slightly creepy about Willard. It's not important compared to what he wants to do to the country but it affects his electability and makes him very uncool.


*See Correction in comments

Authoritarian Worship And Manliness

Oh, my. The Republicans are falling all over each other to prove that their entire self-image is based on living vicariously through their leaders. From The Corner's Kevin Williamson, via what will soon be everyone on the internet:

Elections are not about public policy. They aren’t even about the economy. Elections are tribal, and tribes are — Occupy types, cover your delicate ears — ruthlessly hierarchical. Somebody has to be the top dog.

Authoritarians are very happy to think about how rich their leaders are, how much power they have over their women conquests, the size of their property, their bank account, their car collections, their physical attributes. They think that worshipping another man makes them more manly, that watching another man consume makes them richer, that hearing about another man's exercise habits make them more virtuous. Let's take a little look at Mr. Williamson.

This is not the face of a man who will ever be top dog. This is the face of a man who depended on the wide and welcoming arm of the Kochtopus to make a living. A man who first worked for a conservative paper that folded, then conducted college seminars on journalism for the Koches' Institute for Humane Studies, the same illustrious organization that incubated Megan McArdle, transforming her from failed Wall Street consultant to elite journalist. Finally Williamson came to rest at National Review, capping a career as conservative propaganda-fed veal, gavage courtesy of those super-rich, super-endowed, super-superior Ubermenschen that he is now so eager to praise.

Reassuring arch-patriarch — maybe one with enough sons and grandsons to form a pillaging band of marauders? Hillary Rodham Clinton told us that it takes a village, and Mitt Romney showed us how to populate a village with thriving offspring. Newsweek, which as of this writing is still in business, recently ran a cover photo of Romney with the headline: “The Wimp Factor: Is He Just Too Insecure to Be President?” Look at his fat stacks. Look at that mess of sons and grandchildren. Look at a picture of Ann Romney on her wedding day and that cocky smirk on his face. What exactly has Mitt Romney got to be insecure about? That he’s not as prodigious a patriarch as Ramses II or as rich as >Lakshmi Mittal? I bet he sleeps at night and never worries about that. He has done everything right in life, and he should own it. And by own it, I mean put it on the black card and stow it in the G6 — or at least in first class, for Pete’s sake.

Yes, Mr. Williamson is telling Romney to throw his money and power in the faces of the shrinking middle class and flaunt his large Mormon family, which should be polygamous because Romney's just that fabulous. But, to be fair, this terrible advice would work just fine if all the other authoritarians are just as blindly worshipful of Mittens' masculinity as Mr. Williamson.

In a manly way, of course. He's a Republican!

The Smartest Girl In The Dorm

Poor Megan McArdle tries to pull her "Smartest Girl In The Dorm" act but flops miserably. And her "Wide-Eyed Innocent" act isn't working anymore either.

Bless her heart.

From the comments on a post at Outside The Beltway:

Megan McArdle says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 15:17

I think the attempt to draw a distinction between “legitimate rape” and illegitimate rape is loony, but IIRC, there was a study a few years ago that showed lower-than-expected conceptions from rape, indicating that women’s bodies might have some mechanism for shutting down unwanted conceptions. HOWEVER, even if I’m remembering right, it was one study, and it certainly didn’t show that no woman ever conceived after rape–just that they conceived at somewhat lower rates than you’d expect.

By offering "facts" that appear to support Todd Akin's stupidity, McArdle is supporting Todd Akin's stupidity. She does not seem to realize this; McArdle seems to think she is being an intellectual leader and is just correcting those silly liberals' criticisms of Akin. It's leadership like this that brought her to the attention of that bastion of excellence we call Newsweek.

Doug Mataconis says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 15:28

@Megan McArdle:
There may be any number of reasons for that, including the possibility that the perpetrator doesn’t necessarily, umm, finish the job. A friend who is an MD saw this today and told me there’s simple no medical evidence to support what he said notwithstanding the statistical oddity.
And, then there’s the question of what the heck he means by “legitimate rape”

rudderpedals says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 15:52

@Megan McArdle:

IIRC, there was a study

Link please or I’m calling shenanigans on the study.

McArdle's reputation precedes her.

Rick Almeida says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 16:04

@Megan McArdle:
Megan McArdle – on hiatus, but still making things up.

Kathy Kattenburg says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 16:30

And another face palm for Megan McArdle!

DRS says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 16:36

Please tell me this isn’t the “real” Atlantic Monthly Megan McArdle. That one is bad enough but she can’t be this bad, surely?

Oh ye of little faith.

Commonist says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 16:52

@Megan McArdle:
HOW CAN YOUR BODY NOT REJECT YOUR SOUL THE WAY IT REJECTS FOREIGN OBJECTS.

Heh.

A discussion ensues in which a commenter states that (s)he doesn't understand the animus against McArdle. "Are we liberals supposed to run away from science if it shows things that might require an extra sentence or two of explanation when we have an argument?" he or she wonders, the better to help his or her fellow liberals overcome their ideological biases and embrace science, which we all know is factual and therefore liberal, even when it is, um, hypothetical. Mr. Mataconis steps in to call the commenters to order, the commenters ask why Mr. Mataconis seems to have Megan-Only rules for internet conduct, and a good time is had by all except Mr. Mataconis. And the commentariat remains unconvinced.

Commonist says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 17:41

@Tano:
Because absolutely every single thing McMegan has ever written signals an absolutely fascinating contempt for facts, coupled with an unfailing disdain for the weak and admiration of the exploiters of the weak that is impressive even for a libertarian? She’s the urtype of the sort of bourgeois, self-compassionate, politically uncommitted yet consistently biased “commentator” that manages to be even worse than the republicans they refuse to call out for what they are. She is a nullity.
Whatever you do, don’t assume she is showing good faith or actually have read up on what she’s talking about.

Of course, when one is discussing a McFact one should always check that fact first.

MM says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 18:50

Megan McArdle is wrong. In fact it is more likely that a woman will get pregnant from a rape than from consensual sex.
Linky
Linky

legion says:

Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 18:56

Well, when I go to all the trouble of typing “rapist pregnancy study” into the finely-honed journalistic tool known as “The Google”, the first result is now about Akin, but the very next result is a 1996 study on rape-related pregnancies, which ends with this:

CONCLUSIONS:
Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization.

rather directly contradicting Akin’s disgraceful idiocy. Although I suspect Megan is thinking specifically of a study I too recall from maybe a year ago (which I have had more trouble searching for) that specifically studied rapists and found that some significant percentage of them, when actually engaging in “the act” became physically unable to continue to orgasm; hypothetically because the reality of the rape was rather less satisfying than the fantasy in the rapist’s head. However, this has exactly nothing to do with the victim’s desires in the matter of rape and/or pregnancy…

Does she still feel smarter than both liberals and conservatives now?

Little Lord Bootstraps

Let's see what Little Lord Bootstraps, the man who managed to give birth to himself, educate himself, and rise to power purely on courage and pluck without any help whatsoever, is up to.

Paul Krugman:

Ryanomics is and always has been a con game, although to be fair, it has become even more of a con since Mr. [Paul] Ryan joined the ticket.

...

...[I]f we add up Mr. Ryan’s specific proposals, we have $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, partially offset by around $1.7 trillion in spending cuts — with the tax cuts, surprise, disproportionately benefiting the top 1 percent, while the spending cuts would primarily come at the expense of low-income families. Over all, the effect would be to increase the deficit by around two and a half trillion dollars.  

Yet Mr. Ryan claims to be a deficit hawk. What’s the basis for that claim?

      

Well, he says that he would offset his tax cuts by “base broadening,” eliminating enough tax deductions to make up the lost revenue. Which deductions would he eliminate? He refuses to say — and realistically, revenue gain on the scale he claims would be virtually impossible.         

At the same time, he asserts that he would make huge further cuts in spending. What would he cut? He refuses to say.

      

What Mr. Ryan actually offers, then, are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.

      

If this sounds like a joke, that’s because it is.

Lyin' Ryan is like every other libertarian, long on theory and lies about the wonder of removing government assistance to the lower classes while increasing government assistance to the upper classes. It's their world and we just live in it. Why should the little people get something for free when the rich have worked so long and hard for everything they have?

For instance, we all know how young Paul Ryan worked at menial jobs to support himself after his father died suddenly. This is admirable, of course, but Ryan's entire professional career has been political, concentrating on fantasy-based supply-side economics and developing close ties with the Koches and their allies.

Betty Ryan reportedly urged her son to accept a congressional position as a staff economist attached to Kasten's office, which he did after graduating in 1992.^[26][39] In his early years working on Capitol Hill, Ryan supplemented his income by working as a waiter, as a fitness trainer and at various other side jobs.^[16][28]

A few months after Kasten was defeated by Democrat Russ Feingold in the 1992 election, Ryan became a speechwriter for Empower America (now FreedomWorks), a conservative advocacy group founded by Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and William Bennett.^[16][40][41]

And that was the end of menial jobs for Ryan. He worked for Kemp and Sam Brownback, and when those jobs ended he fell back on his large and successful family for assistance, who gave him a job in marketing. In 1992 1998 he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time. While there he developed "close ties" with libertarians and the Koches.

When Mr. Romney announced that Mr. Ryan would be his running mate, his campaign emphasized the congressman’s detailed knowledge of the federal budget and his chemistry with Mr. Romney. Less well-known are Mr. Ryan’s close ties to the donors and activists who have channeled Tea Party anger into a $400 million political machine, financed by a network of conservative and libertarian donors that now rivals, and occasionally challenges, the Republican establishment behind Mr. Romney.
      

Mr. Ryan is one of a very few elected officials who have attended the Kochs’ biannual conferences, where wealthy donors sit in on seminars on runaway government spending and the myths of climate change.

      

He is on first-name terms with prominent libertarians in the financial world, including hedge fund billionaires like Cliff Asness and Paul Singer, and spent his formative years immersed in the Republican Party’s supply-side wing, working for lawmakers and conservative policy advocates like Jack Kemp.

      

He has appeared for years at rallies, town hall meetings, and donor briefings for groups like the Club for Growth, which spends millions to defeat Republicans deemed squishy on taxes and spending, and Americans for Prosperity, a grass-roots group focused on economic and budget issues that is now trying to channel Tea Party energy into a permanent electoral force. Its fourth chapter was founded in Mr. Ryan’s home state, Wisconsin.

Now Mr. Ryan could provide Mr. Romney with a critical political and intellectual bridge to the rising conservative counterestablishment represented by the Kochs and their allies, who are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and deploy thousands of volunteers to defeat Mr. Obama. Should Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan win in November, a constituency that has for years fulminated against the failure of Republicans to live up to their own principles could soon have a close — and powerful — friend in the White House.

No wonder Megan McArdle favors Ryan. They both support obscenely wealthy libertarian sugar daddies who try to eliminate government regulation and taxes by lying about economics.

Libertarian Rex

Image from here.

ABC tells us:

After repeated denials, Paul Ryan has admitted he requested stimulus cash even after sharply criticizing the program.

[Ryan] “Regardless, it’s clear that the Obama stimulus did nothing to stimulate the economy, and now the President is asking to do it all over again.”

What does that remind me of...?

This is all technically true, and collectively nonsense. [re Matt Taibbi's article on Goldman, Sachs]
...

Or perhaps a better way to say it is that the facts are right, but the mini narratives are ludicrously wrong, which makes the meta narrative suspect.

Paul Ryan and Megan McArdle: sisters under the skin. Both so deep in denial to protect their fantasy world in which they are leaders and intellectuals that reality and truth don't even make them pause, and both seeming to expect everyone else to join along willingly.

But the right needs a a comforting Daddy-figure in these dangerous and impoverished times, not the political equivalent of Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute in The Oval Office.


ADDED: From the Washington Post:

Mitt Romney’s advisers are orchestrating a four-day Republican National Convention that is not so much designed to make Americans fall in love with the nominee, but rather to fall in like with the idea of him as the nation’s leader and a uniquely qualified businessman who can fix the economy.

The decision to focus heavily on Romney’s career background and economic policies is a departure from most conventions, which tend to mainly try to build a personal connection between the candidate and voters, especially for first-time nominees. It is also a tacit acknowledgment that Romney cannot win over enough swing voters by highlighting his personality and telling his life story alone.

Republicans are  going to demand that everyone obey their authorities and vote for the Mormon stiff and the Catholic brown-noser. Their followers will do it but their pain will be amusing palpable.

You Have To Be Kidding Me

You can try to stay away from Megan McArdle, for your own mental health if nothing else, but fate conspires against you constantly. She is absolutely incredible. She has utterly no sense of self-awareness and no shame.

Paul Ryan and Megan McArdle: Separated At Birth?

After much research and deep, deep philosophical thinking on the Republicans' new vice-presidential candidate, I have finally come to a conclusion about the contradiction that is Paul Ryan.

Mitt Romney just chose Megan McArdle to be his running mate.

Let's break this down a bit.

A person who is so ideologically blinkered that s(he) opposes the very policies that enabled his/her success, working feverishly to deny anyone else that assistance and vehemently denying that the assistance is beneficial.

A person who publicly denies allegiance to that ideology while basing his/her entire self-image on that ideology.

A person whose actions are and always have been coolly calculated for personal benefit and self-glorification while claiming to work for the public good.

A career greased by constant brown-nosing, a calculating, emotionally manipulative, and callous view of other people as something that exists only to be used for one's own advancement.

Ryan is a pretend economist, just as McArdle is a pretend journalist. They are both adept at disguising personal benefit and irrational ideology with numbers and charts and simply do not care about the effect of their actions on others when pursing their own course. 

But Mitt Romney is a pretend presidential candidate as well; he is pretending to be an authority--a fake leader at prep school who persecutes the vulnerable, a fake cop who can arbitrarily force others to do his will, a fake civic and business leader who guts businesses, a fake patriot who hides income abroad, a fake bishop who demonstrates a hollow ethical core. He does not engage with people because they are the audience, and their role is to pay their entrance fee, show up, and applaud. And Ryan is more of the same, a fake leader, fake businessman, and fake intellect.

We might be entering the Age of Libertarians, in which the DC blogging set finally reaches their inevitable seats of power and commence destroying everything they touch. But they are all emotional need, delicate nerves, and thinly-veiled hysteria, and it should be easy to take them down.  Nothing they do can bear close inspection, it is all patter and no substance. Yet they continue to gain power and control over the rest of us.

Future generations will find this utterly inexplicable. They will probably decide that we self-immolated because of something in the water, like the Romans' lead pipes.

The Unparalled Snark Of David Weigel

To ease myself back into blogging, let's look at a comedy piece by that sly wit David Weigel, who does a dead-pan mocking of Dinesh D'Souza's fuckumentary 2016: Obama’s America.

Twenty minutes into a new conservative documentary about Barack Obama, there’s a moment that’ll break a birther’s heart. Dinesh D’Souza, the star and narrator of 2016: Obama’s America, is telling the brief, encyclopedia-entry version of the president’s life. The camera zooms over a map like one of the travel scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark—Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii.

“On August 4, 1961,” says D’Souza, “Barack Obama II is born in the Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu. His birth is recorded in two local newspapers.”

When I hear that line, my head instinctively swivels to my right, where WorldNetDaily Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah is sitting. His website has run hundreds of stories about Barack Obama’s citizenship and birth documents. WND books published Where’s the Birth Certificate?, which unfortunately was published right after the president released the long-form version of the record. You can still buy “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?” merch at the WND store. And now here’s a movie with a $2.5 million budget that’s made more than $80,000 in a four-theater run that tosses all the birther theories aside. 

Farah abides. He doesn’t walk out.

He's quite the brave little toaster. Or he's a cynical exploiter who plays on spite and racism to con his marks out of "donations." It may seem that Weigel is giving Farah his due, even comparing him to the unflappable Dude that Abides, but sarcasm is an elusive thing.

The movie is really too good to get pedantic about.

See? That actually seems sincere, which it cannot be. Now, watch this set up:

There are no conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth, religion, Social Security number, passport, or college transcript. Instead, there is a deep dive into Barack Obama’s known Communist associates, his late father’s avowed socialism, and his mother’s radicalism.

Ha! Weigel is saying that D'Souza's rejection of a conspiracy theory is proof that D'Souza's conspiracy theory is right. He's so funny.

The first and last stories are backed up with quotes from Dreams From My Father. “That’s Dinesh,” says co-producer Doug Sain. “He walks on solid ground.”

Let’s go with “mostly solid.” D’Souza’s documentary is based largely on his book The Roots of Obama’s Rage, which itself grew out of D’Souza’s Forbes cover story, one of the most influential of the decade. Obama, according to D’Souza, was an anti-colonialist. “He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder,” wrote D’Souza. “Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America.” Newt Gingrich recommended the theory to reporters—technically speaking, to Robert Costa and me. David Koch repeated it to a sympathetic Matthew Continetti.

The theory was Swiss-cheesed with logic holes. D’Souza found great significance in how Obama “demonizes his predecessor and his opponent,” as if only anti-colonialists did this. D’Souza insisted that Obama using the Gulf oil spill crisis to call BP “British Petroleum” is Anglophobia, revealed! But Obama didn’t call BP “British Petroleum.”

Yes, Mr. Weigel,  D'Souza sure does sound illogical. D'Souza's theory is that Obama hates America, more or less. D'Souza takes every politically-motivated critical utterance as proof and, McArdle-like, ignores any evidence that directly disproves his theory. For instance, D'Souza declares in Forbes that Obama does not not believe in American exceptionalism, when Obama has said the exact opposite. Here is the question and answer from the press conference:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. In the context of all the multilateral activity that's been going on this week -- the G20, here at NATO -- and your evident enthusiasm for multilateral frameworks, to work through multilateral frameworks, could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy? And if so, would you be able to elaborate on it?  

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don't think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.  

And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.  

Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we've got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we're not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.  

And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.

Obviously D'Souza is so ridiculously (and renumeratively)  biased that he chooses to ignore the truth, twisting it into a self-serving (and profitable) lie. Weigel is not a babe in the woods; he has undoubtedly heard of that press conference, if he has not read it himself--which he probably has. He is being sarcastic by appearing to agree with D'Souza. He certainly is not so stupid and self-deluded that he believes D'Souza's easily disproved lies.

None of this makes it into 2016. We’re taught the controversy, with a montage of D’Souza defending his thesis in front of hostile interviewers.

See?

(There’s a sort of George Romero irony to these scenes, as D’Souza is filleted on shows like Countdown and Parker/Spitzer. They’re gone. He’s still here.)

Here Weigel appears to sympathize with poor, abused D'Souza, to thow those righties off the track. Hehehe, Weigel mutters under his breath. That'll fool them.

We’re shown just how deeply D’Souza researched this—shot of him thumbing through Dreams before boarding an Indonesian scooter, learning to hula in Hawaii, delivering three goats to buy an interview with Obama’s paternal grandmother Sarah. She turns him down. There is no Michael Moore-style waiting in the weeds to ambush a source.

Hahaha! Can't you just picture D'Souza putting on a fedora and assuming a Harrison Ford-ish expression as he pretends to scour Obama's bio for the accidentally revealed truth, earnestly running his finger over the text line by line, so as to not miss one misstep? And I might actually watch the movie if I get to see D'Souza hop around in an attempt to understand how the hula undermines Americanism and riding a scooter makes you a commie. I''d also like to see D'Souza tell Sarah Palin that growing up off the mainland makes you less American.

And I suspect Grandma Sarah thought D'Souza was offering marriage in exchange for goats, took one look at the gentleman in question, gently let him down by telling him to come back with more goats, and slipped out the back before he returned.




Indian Jones III

But there’s plenty of the Moore style. D’Souza is sold to us as a smart, patriotic innocent abroad, who just wants to piece a mystery together. Almost every clue fits the puzzle. An old associate of Obama Sr. says the son and the father are basically the same.

Stop it, Dave! It's too funny.

(Dad dreamed of 100 percent taxation; Junior dreams of a top marginal rate of 39.6 percent.)

Oh, no! Don't tell D'Souza about Nixon's 70% top marginal rate! He'll have a stroke!

D’Souza asks one of Ann Dunham’s professors if Obama’s mother had taught the son to idolize his father. “I hadn’t thought of that!” she says. “I think you’re right.”

I know just as much about Stanley Ann Dunham's relationship with Obama's father as the professor (nothing) yet I find her epiphany a little unconvincing. Weigel's a sly fox, isn't he?

D’Souza walks the grounds of Obama’s high school, where they teach “oppression studies, if you will.”

They also require students to attend chapel once a week, which must mean, by D'Souza logic, that they are all atheists.

You don’t travel that far without scoring some points. D’Souza gives considerable screen time to Paul Kengor, a (recent) scholar of Obama’s teenage mentor Frank Marshall Davis. Kengor’s bang-on right: Davis was an avowed Communist, and the media of 2008 didn’t care.  

Still, the Davis story is complicated. Becoming a Soviet dupe, as Davis did, meant something for midcentury African-Americans that it doesn’t mean today. Obama never pretended not to know Davis, or pretended that he was some Rockefeller Republican, or turned him into a composite character. He appears in Dreams as “Frank,” a “dashiki-wearing” friend talking “black power.” This is a movie, sure, and you can’t lard it up with every little detail, but D’Souza’s question-begging and omissions lead him to oversell what he’s got.

Weigel lists more of D'Souza's claims, stating that most of them (actually, all of them over here in Realityville) are wrong. This, Weigel says, proves D'Souza's good faith. Heh! And I thought I was good at sarcasm.

Give D’Souza some credit: He lets the audience see when he’s caught up short. There’s none of that teeth-grinding, aren’t-I-smart-didn’t-I-getcha interviewing that you catch in a doc like Inside Job.

Bravo, Dave! That is a pitch-perfect imitation of right-wing petulence when faced with liberal-biased reality.

D’Souza’s biggest journalistic coup is an interview with George Hussein Obama, one of the president’s Kenyan cousins, momentarily famous in 2008 when it was revealed that he lived in poverty. The Other Obama, it turns out, thinks that colonialists should have stayed in Kenya longer than they did.

Now, there's damning with faint praise. The "biggest coup" is a cousin who seems to favor financial redistribution, as long as he is the recipient.

“Do you really believe that?” asks D’Souza. “It’s true,” says George Obama. “They would have developed us. Instead, we were fighting over nothing!”

I think I found McArdle's bus rider.

Alas, D’Souza wants George Obama to be angry over how his famous cousin has treated him.  

He hasn’t been his brother’s keeper, has he?  

“Go ask him,” says George Obama. “He’s got other issues to deal with.”  

“He’s too busy helping the world?” asked D’Souza.  

“Yeah,” says the cousin, not really interested in badmouthing the president. “He’s taking care of me. I’m part of the world.”  

That’s it for cousin George. On to a re-enactment of the young Obama kneeling and bawling in front of his father’s grave. If you’re serious about re-arranging facts, hire a few actors.

Kudos to Mr. Weigel for appearing to support Mr. D'Souza while exposing the latter's bad faith, ineffectiveness, and just plain stupidity. I couldn't have done it any better myself. What could be more ridiculous than supporting the viewpoint of a person whom you have just proven wrong?

The Traditional Family

The Biblical definition of the family unit:

A man, his wives, his concubines, and his female slaves.

Accidental Vacation--Not Dead Yet

I did not mean to be gone so long; I had a lot of work to catch up on but, oddly, once I was caught up I became accustomed to getting work done and did not want to stop to blog. But all work and no play makes a frustrated blogger so I will try to do both.

I hear there were random shootings and Syrian violence, spending is slowing, and the boys are once again deciding if the girls belong in their club or not. So nothing has changed!

A Tiny Note On An Old Friend

It would be a crying shame to ignore Megan McArdle's reaction to the successful upholding of her bete noir, "Obamacare." Since her new little blog is up and running, let's take a peek.

McArdle states that the ruling didn't make much sense and didn't matter much anyway. Life goes on, tra la la. Her attitude is very different from her earlier views, in which Obamacare meant the death of millions and the end of the nation as we know it.

I'm not super surprised that they voted to uphold--though I suspect that Justice Roberts has ducked outrage from liberals only to now get just as much outrage from his own side. This is the political environment we now live in. The age when liberal academics could comfortably expect to see their dominance of the academy translate into a broad progressive consensus on the court are over. We'll be battling over the composition of the court for a long time—and if a liberal or conservative justice is forced to retire while the other party holds the presidency, I expect to see things get vicious indeed.

In McArdleland, the Supreme Court does not reliably side with corporations; it is progressive and, for some reason that McArdle does not share with the little people, a liberal academia directly leads to a liberal Supreme Court. McArdle is still bitter that academia cannot entirely be overtaken by conservatives and provide her friends and family with (magically lucrative) jobs. But she does find a silver lining in the Obamanation.

Some people, maybe including me, will be helped by the bill. Even if you think that this bill will, on net, make more people worse off, you should still be glad for the people who are being helped.

Odd. McArdle told us earlier that she wanted Obamacare gone even if she would suffer for it, as she has a pre-existing condition. Her job change (and therefore health insurance change) must have made her reconsider her earlier position. It's amazing how reality can turn a frown upside down. Other conservatives might disagree. They think people like McArdle should simply suffer and die if she can't buy insurance. True, Mr. Cowen was just thinking about the poor, not about a real person who actually counts like McArdle, but the general principle still holds--some die so the rich can be richer.

McArdle, however, chooses to make lemons into lemonade. McArdle now thinks the conservatives can crow about Obama's "tax increase" because evidently it never occurred to conservatives to claim that liberals want to raise taxes. My goodness, liberals sure will be sorry that they dangled that bait before conservatives. Republicans might not have thought of it otherwise.