A few dumb things

Mitt vs. McCain

As Mitt Romney's losses mount, the McCain backlash from conservatives is growing. Bob Novak describes it in his latest column. There are a whole slew of issues that I disagree with McCain, I voted for him in the last two primaries (2000 and 2008). So I don't mind when McCain has his positions scrutinized. What I don't like is that it is from those who support Romney. He was the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. One doesn't get that position by being a hard right winger. Romney had more liberal views on gay rights and abortion rights than most conservatives, yet he escapes this scrutiny.







Bill the Jet Setter

The New York Times has reported that in 2005, Bill Clinton flew on a private jet to the home of Borat. He was flown there by a Canadian businessman, and Bill used his charms on Khazakhstan's dictator and helped his friend land a sweet mining deal.

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda
coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s
bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports
democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign
policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among
others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton of New York.
Within two days, corporate records show that
Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements
giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by
Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

What did Clinton get in return?

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s
charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from
Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The
gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the
William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a
place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs
in which friendship with the former president has its
privileges.

Quite a few liberals are not amused, one diarist at Daily Kos labelled it "Borat-Gate"

The Iraq Recession?????

From the perspective of much of the left, if something bad happens, it must be Bush's fault. The latest example of this can be found in the leftwing blogosphere's latest attempt at dishonest spin to tie in a slumping economy to the Iraq War. I googled "Iraq Recession" and here are the top six results:

Open Left

From MoveOn.Org

Mother Jones

The It List (basically a rehash of the above)

Think Progress

MYDD


Many of the above stories reference economic predictions from 2002 and 2003 saying the Iraq war will cause recession. A few of them stated that the slow down would happen pretty quickly.
From the Mother Jones website:

hink Progress reminds us that before the Iraq War, economists were
predicting that a prolonged occupation could lead to a recession here at home
and around the world. Witness:

"A war against Iraq could cost the United
States hundreds of billions of dollars, play havoc with an already depressed
domestic economy and tip the world into recession because of the adverse effect
on oil prices, inflation and interest rates, an academic study [by William
Nordhaus, Sterling professor of economics at Yale University] has warned."
[Independent, 11/16/02]

"If war with Iraq drags on longer than the few weeks
or months most are predicting, corporate revenues will be flat for the coming
year and will put the U.S. economy at risk of recession, according to a poll of
chief financial officers." [CBS MarketWatch, 3/20/03]

"If the conflict wears
on or, worse, spreads, the economic consequences become very serious. Late last
year, George Perry at the Brookings Institution ran some simulations and found
that after taking into account a reasonable use of oil reserves, a cut in world
oil production of just 6.5 percent a year would send the United States and the
world into recession." [Robert Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce in the
Clinton administration, 10/2/02]

I must have slept through the Great Recession of 2004. It is now January 2008, and it is far from clear that we are even yet in a recession. The web site Carp Diem has a chart showing Jan 08 unemployment claims and constrasts them to prior recession starts. Jobless claims actually fell in January 08 compared to December 07. Of course, with all things economic, things can change quickly.

But even if the country falls in recession, the left wing has gotten their marching orders from MoveOn to tie it to the Iraq War. From Open Left's Matt Stoller:

I wanted to test out the 'Iraq Recession' frame, which Moveon put out in an email a few
days ago when discussing the stimulus.

But what does an economist think? Not a right winger, not even a moderate or one that could be labelled as a DLCer. Instead, I picked one just about universally praised by those on the left, Paul Krugman. On his blog:

An Iraq recession?
One thing I get asked fairly often is whether the
Iraq war is responsible for our economic difficulties. The answer (with slight
qualifications) is no.

So according to Krugman, this whole Iraq Recession talking point is a fraud. Many of these blogs like to claim that they are the bearers of truth, for those who are smart and brave enough to hear it. But they spin the facts just like the same politicians they denounce. Krugman even sets aside another constant falsehood of the left, that the high oil prices are the fault of the two oilmen in the White House.

There is one caveat: high oil prices are a drag on the economy, and the war
has some — but probably not too much — responsibility for pricey oil. Mainly
high-priced oil is the result of rising demand from China and other emerging
economies, colliding with sluggish supply as the world gradually runs out of the
stuff. But Iraq would be exporting more oil now if we hadn’t invaded — a million
barrels a day? — and that would have kept prices down somewhat.

While he does place some of the rise in oil on Iraq, he correctly points out the much larger causes. I read a few more of his blog entries and came across another interesting one. He takes out another common bit of spin from many on the left, that bad things in the economy are Bush's fault:

But while I yield to nobody in my Bush-bashing, I can’t actually see the
channels through which Bush admin policy has caused all the the bad things going
on. So I’m looking a bit at other factors, outside the administration’s control,
that may have caused the economy to perform worse in the Naughties than it did
in the Nineties.
And one thing that immediately comes to mind is that the
international environment was a lot more favorable in the 90s.

Another left wing talking point (lie) destroyed by the left's favorite economist.

Backlash against Crazy Feminists

Quite a few feminists have complained that the male dominated media and conservatives have so demonized feminism, that many women don't want to be associated with the movement, even though they agree with large portions of the cause. Or at a minimum, would benefit from some of feminism's policy goals.

It was far more easy for women's groups to blame the patriarchy than to look at themselves and question whether there are other reasons for a lot of women ignoring or working against feminism. A few liberal female bloggers have pointed out that the overheated rhetoric, nastiness, and belligerence. A Daily Kos diarist responds to the silly complaining by New York State NOW's President with the following

This sophomoric whine is Exhibit #1 in the ineffectiveness of
chip-on-the-shoulder identity politics. And when polls
show that while a vast majority of women believe the women’s movement has
been of benefit to themselves and this country -- and yet fewer than a quarter
are willing to identify themselves as "feminists" -- something’s gone terribly
wrong with the public face of the movement. This press release shows why. I
don’t want to be associated with the authors either.

In the comment section, another poster agrees that the radical elements of the movement has pushed women away from groups like NOW.

There were plenty of men in my chapter in 1975, too, but by 1979 the shrill
voices had taken over, the men and the married women were pretty much gone,
driven out by openly hostile hyper-feminists, the agenda was radically altered,
and most of the us straight single women walked down the street to join Women
Employed.
I want to live in the future, not in the past.
by Involuntary Exile on Tue Jan
29, 2008 at 09:47:30 AM PST
[ Parent

Complaints about NOW's radicalism were discussed by Clinton toady, Taylor Marsh.

As for NOW alone, I recall when I was nineteen, about to be twenty, and I
was at the Miss America Pageant. Coming out of my hotel one day I was confronted
by a NOW spokeswoman and dozens of cameras and media. This was at the height of
feminism when the revolt against traditional things women did was at a frenzy.
The NOW girl got in my face to scream, "How can you demean yourself like this?
You should be ashamed." To which I simply replied, "Do you want to pay for my
college tuition?" Then off I walked to my limo, which then whisked me away to a
pageant rehearsal. The truth is that without pageant scholarships I couldn't
have gone to college; they begat other aid, on which I was completely dependent.

The complaints of some of the feminists is similar to those of some liberals who claim the right wing and the media have done the same job on the term "liberal".

Interesting admission about progressives

I was reading a feminist blog in reaction to the crazy rantings of New York State's NOW President who felt that Sen. Kennedy betrayed women. The blogger is not pleased with her comrade's anger and idiocy, she even uses tag lines like "assholes" and "stupidity", but she doesn't totally sell out the cause.

**I should also be clear that I think she has a legitimate point about how
coverage of the candidates is unbalanced. I do think that media sources —
including progressive sources — are much harder on Sen. Clinton. I think it’s
too bad that point was obscured by all the other stuff she wrote.

Her ending note is interesting for a couple reasons. One is that quite a few liberals love to act superior and pretend like they are without prejudice, yet the feminist blogger hints at sexism in the progressive media. The second point is the nature of the media. Liberal critics of the mainstream media have used past harsh media treatment of the Clintons as evidence of a conservative media. It is more likely that the media was harsh on the Clintons because they deserved that kind of treatment and the Clinton White House was fairly hostile towards the press. Bill's recent bad behavior has gotten him slammed in the media by the right and left (except for Clinton suckasses like Media Matters and Craig Crawford)

The left blogosphere has been buzzing with disgust over the Clintons, very often echoing many of the right wings complaints about the Clintons' lack of honesty, willingness to do anything to win an election, and their corruption. Jonathan Chait wrote an opinion piece on liberals turning on the Clintons.

Something strange happened the other day. All these different people --
friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept
saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary
Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an
irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.

The media had a much closer view of the Clinton's in the 90's than the rest of the people, maybe it just took longer for certain liberals to realize the nature of their character.

Myth of the first black President

Author Toni Morrison' s recent endorsement of Barack Obama has caused a re-examination of her previous claim that Bill Clinton was the first black President. One commentator wants the repetition of this claim to end.

Once we stop rehashing this term out of context, we can stop accepting as a
given that African-Americans have already had their black president, and focus
instead on this actual African-American candidate we have before us, Barack
Obama

A Princeton assistant Professor of political and African-American studies goes ever farther. She claims that a lot of credit President Clinton receives from Black Americans is undeserved and the perception differs greatly from the reality of the nineties.

By the time Clinton left office, many African-Americans incorrectly
believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. In the '80s,
barely 5 percent of blacks believed blacks were economically better off than
whites. By 2000, nearly 30 percent of African-American respondents believed that
blacks were doing better economically than whites. This belief is simply wrong.

She also states that those who had a stronger affection for Clinton were more likely to believe the falsehood that blacks were doing better than whites. Also pointed out in this article is that the poorest of blacks did not fare very well during the era of prosparity during the 90's.

As Clinton performed blackness, real black people got poorer. The poorest
African-Americans experienced an absolute decline in income, and they also
became poorer relative to the poorest whites. The richest African-Americans saw
an increase in income, but even the highest-earning blacks still considerably
lagged their white counterparts. Furthermore, the '90s witnessed the continued
growth of the significant gap between black and white median wealth.

While I have always thought that most of the factors driving inequality are outside the control of the President, this is not a belief held by many liberals and economic populists.

How sick of health care are Americans?

Mike Moore's Sicko was widely promoted last summer and some, including Moore, thought it would pave the way towards a single payer system in the United States. Proponents of such a system must be disappointed with the plans put forth by the leading Presidential candidates, because none are promoted such a large scale reform.







One reason reform has not be enacted is because the overwhelming majority of people are happy with the quality of their own health care. From an ABC, USA Today poll:

According to the survey, 44% of adults said they were satisfied with the
quality of health care in the U.S. and 89% said they were satisfied with the
quality of their own health care.

The striking part about these numbers is that there are large amounts of people who are happy with their own health care, but assume that most are getting crappy care. If 89% are satisfied, it is more difficult to convince them to change. Even making small changes has proven difficult. In Oregon, a proposal was put on the ballot in the fall of 2007 to make changes in health care for children and the cost would be placed upon smokers. Sounds like something that would pass according to those on the left. The United States has supposedly moved towards the left recently and this proposal was in a Blue State. It was narrow in focus, only dealing with children, and taxed those damn dirty smokers. It lost 60-40%.



The argument could be raised that the evil cigarette companies bought that election. That is a point that might float somewhere else, like in North Carolina or Tennessee, but not in a sophisticated Blue State like Oregon. Democrats have the governorship in that state and both Senators. Since when are that many Democratic voters moved by the words of Big Tobacco, especiallly when children's health is on the line? Also, just because money is spent opposing a ballot proposal, doesn't mean it will be defeated. Those opposed to Michigan's ban on affirmative action outspent those who wanted to stop AA, and Michigan voters still strongly supported the ban, 58-42%.

Populism pays well

As John Edwards campaign appears to be reaching its end, its relevance has been debated. Some think that his run has pushed the centrist candidates towards his line of populism. Blame the greedy corporatists for the failings of the middle class. Sen. Clinton recently described her cure, though in rather vague terms, to build up the middle class. As noted in the interview:

She said that economic excesses — including executive-pay packages she
characterized as often “offensive” and “wrong” and a tax code that had become
“so far out of whack” in favoring the wealthy — were holding down middle-class
living standards.

While reading the Wall Street Journal online, there was a story of yet another outrageous executive-pay package that might be labelled as offensive and wrong.

Former President Clinton stands to reap around $20 million -- and will
sever a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai -- by ending his
high-profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire
friend Ron Burkle.

For some perspective, compare that to average CEO pay in 2006.

The average CEO of a large U.S. company made roughly $10.8 million last
year, or 364 times that of U.S. full-time and part-time workers, who made an
average of $29,544, according to a joint analysis released Wednesday by the
liberal Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

So Bill stands to make almost twice as much as the average CEO. Would that mean he is twice as greedy as the average corporatist?

But Sen. Clinton's husband's hobnobbing with billionaires and wealthy foreigners aside, what about the substance of her argument. She complains about Bush era policies that have led to these imbalances between bosses and workers. If Clinton has been honest, then the numbers should show that CEO/worker pay ratio would be much higher under Bush than under the Clinton/Clinton administration.

That gap is down from 411 times in 2005 and well-below the record high of
525 times recorded in 2000

So the rich did better under Clinton. Looks like Hill should reverse the policies of Bill instead of Bush. While the average CEO did better under Clinton, in comparison to the average worker, there is one business man who is doing better under Bush. Bill Clinton only made $200,000 in 2000, he now stands to pull in a quick $20 million.

The upside of recession

An interesting article in the Washington Post describes 5 myths about recessions. The number 4 myth was the most interesting:

4. Recessions are bad for your health.
David Mamet once told an interviewer that he got the inspiration
for his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross" from an account
of a salesman's fatal heart attack, caused by a recession "so vicious the
competition was for jobs and sales, especially among older men." However, for
most Americans, the story is quite the opposite. Americans get healthier as the
economy gets worse. Unemployment tends to increase during recessions, but
economist Christopher J. Ruhm of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has found that a
temporary one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 0.5
to 0.6 percent reduction in the mortality rate, or about 14,000 fewer deaths per
year.
Why the health benefits? With more free time and less money on their
hands, people tend to consume less tobacco, exercise more, prepare healthier
meals and lose weight. In addition, they are much less likely to have car and
other accidents, and to catch communicable and sometimes fatal diseases such as
influenza. Among the top 10 causes of death in the United States, only suicide
rates show a substantial unemployment-driven increase. Even deaths caused by
heart disease fall substantially.

I wonder how this would play out during an extreme downturn. It would seem like someone who is unemployed and hasn't given up on his outlook would cut back on bad behaviors because of temporary money issues and more time on his hands might lead to more exercise. But if the layoff goes on and on, the person has a high risk of becoming poor and the poor have more health problems and lower lifespans.

Barack "Reagan" Obama

A month ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton received the endorsement of former Senator Bob Kerrey. During Kerrey's endorsement speech, he made mention of Clinton's opponent, Sen. Barack Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama". Dropping the H bomb is no big deal in the Clinton camp (unless a Republican uses it), but it was questioned by some in the press and even more harshly by others in the blogosphere :

Kerrey said that, then he made the "Hussein"/"Muslim" remark. Message:
Ahem, 95%
white Iowa and 96% white New Hampshire, Barack Obama is black in the way
those shiftless black teenagers who haunt your nightmares are black. And he's a
camel jockey named Hussein as well.

Fast forward a month, and Sen. Obama made a statement that made a general comparison of his movement to that of Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1980. No where in that statement did Obama praise policies of Reagan, rather, he made a nuanced point (by nuanced, I mean the kind of point only liberals claim to understand) about a politician's place in a certain point in American history and a general shift in a nation's point of view. Obama pointed to the growth of government and the resulting backlash. The backlash wasn't a product of Reagan, instead, Reagan was a product of that backlash.

As an example, deregulation of business preceded the election of Ronald Reagan. President Carter deregulated the airline industry in 1978 and followed it with more legislation to lessen the role of government. However Ronald Reagan capitalized on the frustration with large government just as he did with the anti-tax sentiment that preceded his election, evidenced by the passage of Proposition 13 in California during 1978.


Obama's statements were met with criticism by John Edwards and Clinton, which is pretty understandable, yet hypocritical. Edwards's wife once compared him to the very conservative Sen. Jesse Helms , while Sen. Clinton has a story on her website that states she places Reagan among her favorite Presidents:

But no president can do it alone. She must break recent tradition, cast
cronyism aside and fill her cabinet with the best people, not only the best
Democrats, but the best Republicans as well.. We’re confident she will do that.
Her list of favorite presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both
Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan - demonstrates how she thinks.
As expected, Bill Clinton was also included on the aforementioned list.

Obama caught quite a bit of crap from the "you are with us or against us" extreme partisan hacks who feel that Republicans should only be brought up in the most negative of terms. Both Reagan and Gingrich were allowed to speak in glowing terms of Franklin Roosevelt without such backlash and demands for conformity, yet they are in the party that is supposed to be narrowminded and authoritarian

No controversy would be complete without some words of wisdom from Pres. Bill Clinton, who said :

"Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the
good ideas," Clinton told a crowd in Pahrump this morning. "It goes along with
their plan to ask Republicans to become Democrats for a day and caucus with you
tomorrow, and then go back and become Republicans so they can participate in the
Republican primary. I'm not making this up, folks."

Except Clinton is making it up. I am not a Democrat, so I can't call Bill Clinton a liar without being called a hater, dittohead or accused of mindlessly stating right wing talking points. So I will let a lefty call Bill Clinton out as a liar at the following link. Kos even calls out Edwards for being dishonest:

A nicely crafted straw man argument, if I've ever seen one. Bravo, John,
for being an ass and dishonestly distorting what Obama said!

The weirdest thing about having Bill Clinton run this kind of attack is that he is the man who neatly summed up the discontent at government that Obama referenced, when Clinton said it loud and said it proud: "The era of big government is over". Pres. Clinton pushed through a series of acts that were to the right of what Reagan accomplished: welfare reform, media deregulation, banking deregulation, and capital gain tax cuts.