Fear of Clowns

According to my math, the FED just spent about $5000 per taxpayer on a gambit to save our asses in exchange for 80% of a company whose worth nobody knows. If you pray, pray now that this is the first crisis Bush/Cheney, Inc. gets right for the whole country. That said, the damage done may be beyond divine intervention.

I don't want my promised tally to be a running tally, so I'm indefinitely postponing it as events unfold.

ADDENDUM:

[AIG's] management will be replaced, though Fed staffers did not name the new executives.

Who has Sarah Palin's number?!?!?!?!

PRIVATIZE THE PROFITS
SOCIALIZE THE RISK

Labels: 2008 elections, Bush White House, conservatism, economy, free markets, republican wreking crew, Republicans, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 9/16/2008 06:55:00 PM
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It appears possible that God may still answer right-wing conservatives' prayer for rain, but at a time and place of His choosing.

Labels: 2008 elections, conservatism, McCain, religion, Republicans, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 8/29/2008 11:47:00 PM
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Krugman,

[I]n the world we actually live in, pro-corporate, inequality-increasing Republicans argue that you should vote for them because they're regular guys you'd like to have a beer with, while Democrats who want to raise taxes on top earners, expand health care and raise the minimum wage are snooty elitists.

If there's anything else we need to understand about the economics of the 2004 elections, I don't know what it would be. The queer phenomenon of down-and-out social conservatives gathering at the gated communities of their corporate overlords pitchforks and torches in hand, bellowing, "We are here to lower your taxes!!" is described in detail by Thomas Frank in his phenomenal book What's the Matter with Kansas.

Labels: 2008 elections, Bush White House, conservatism, free markets, income inequality, liberalism, McCain, obama, Republicans, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 8/25/2008 07:41:00 PM
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Steve Sauerberg,

Dick Durbin has become the most divisive and liberal Senator in the entire Senate.

Or John McCain,

Democratic Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma said Tuesday Barack Obama is "the most liberal senator" in Congress and he has no intention of endorsing him for the White House.

Both Senators from Illinois are the most liberal in the entire Senate.

Labels: 2008 elections, conservatism, imaginary liberal, liberalism, obama, Republicans, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 7/12/2008 12:58:00 AM
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It's no wonder that an anti-government party's legacy would be failure at obtaining their stated policy goals following their most ascendant point.

Labels: conservatism, Republicans, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 7/10/2008 11:38:00 PM
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We hear it in Republican rhetoric so often it easily slips by, but the entire Republican brand centers on the claim that Republicans love their country and Democrats do not. In a Bush fundraising email I just received, it's first claimed that Republicans will retain the WH and take back the Senate and House. Then the explanation,

The reason that I am confident about Republican success is because when the American people look at our ideals versus the ideals of the Democrats, the people are with us.

Our ideas and values are those embraced by the American people. They may not be the ones who the pundits listen to, but they are the ones who are out working every single day to make America a great and hopeful place.

That this type of Real Americans are with Us appeal has worked well for Republicans is a testament to the fact their base is an emotionally pliable shallow group easily motivated and angered by buzzwords. It's the same thing every election: flag flying vs flag burning, your kids vs your kids being converted to homosexuals, you opening up a storefront in your retirement years vs being sent to a labor camp by communistic Democrats ...

Labels: 2008 elections, conservatism, Republicans, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 7/09/2008 09:24:00 AM
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In his wide-ranging essay The Fall of Conservatism: Have the Republicans run out of ideas?, George Packer observes,

In its final year, the Bush Administration is seen by many conservatives (along with seventy per cent of Americans) to be a failure. Among true believers, there are two explanations of why this happened and what it portends. One is the purist version: Bush expanded the size of government and created huge deficits; allowed Republicans in Congress to fatten lobbyists and stuff budgets full of earmarks; tried to foist democracy on a Muslim country; failed to secure the border; and thus won the justified wrath of the American people. This account - shared by Pat Buchanan, the columnist George F. Will, and many Republicans in Congress - has the appeal of asking relatively little of conservatives. They need only to repent of their sins, rid themselves of the neoconservatives who had agitated for the Iraq invasion, and return to first principles. Buchanan said, "The conservatives need to, in Maoist terms, go back to Yenan."

The second version - call it reformist - is more painful, because it's based on the recognition that, though Bush's fatal incompetence and Rove's shortsighted tactics hastened the conservative movement's demise, they didn't cause it. In this view, conservatism has a more serious problem than self-betrayal: a doctrinaire failure to adapt to new circumstances, new problems. Instead of heading back to Yenan to regroup, conservatives will have to spend some years or even decades wandering across a bleak political landscape of losing campaigns and rebranding efforts and earnest policy retreats, much as liberals did after 1968, before they can hope to reëstablish dominance.

The whole article is good. It lays out that movement conservatives have been replaying the 1972 election ever since and their anti-government views have necessarily made them ineffective at their elected responsibility: to govern.

Labels: 2008 elections, conservatism, McCain, Republicans, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 5/25/2008 02:23:00 AM
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Senator Vitter humbles himself by comparing his patronization of high priced prostitutes to Gov. Spitzer's more recent patronization,

"Anybody who looks at the two cases will see there is an enormous difference between the two of them. The people that are trying to draw comparisons to the two cases are people who've never agreed with me on important issues like immigration and other things."

Immigration, certainly - probably taxes and the Republican deficit too. Plus, of course, huge, huge differences between Vitter's sexual indiscretions and those of the liberals who brought Katrina to New Orleans. You know, the anti-family values contingent. He's not one of them, so there has to be some sort of enormous difference somewhere. Doesn't there?

Labels: conservatism, right wingers

// posted by Erik @ 3/17/2008 09:37:00 PM
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Beth sends me this:

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W ...

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

In other words, one of the reasons conservatives have such difficulty understanding the nuanced issues that affect our world is that they're still struggling with the alphabet while their liberal peers are prepared for college.

Labels: conservatism, liberalism

// posted by Erik @ 10/08/2007 03:09:00 PM
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John Boehner of the Party Who Supports the Troops,

If 3,800 American lives and half a trillion dollars is a "small price", I shudder to think what we would be in for if Boehner was willing to make a modest investment.

Via Greg Sargent

Labels: conservatism, iraq, Republicans, terrorism, war

// posted by Erik @ 9/12/2007 07:55:00 PM
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Beth ends as agrily as she starts,

Okay, something else that bugs me. When scientists come up with a theory, it's like gospel truth for some people, but if other scientists who come up with opposing theories they are wrong. Why can't people accept that the opposing view could be the accurate one?

I've not a definate grasp on who exactly Beth means by "some people", but am confident she means "liberals".

Scientists don't ever "come up with a theory", they come up with hypotheses. Theories are hypotheses which have stood up to repeated scrutiny and best fit the observations.

Right-wingers such as Beth base their outrage, as we have seen, on imaginary people who hold imaginary opinions, although there may indeed be at least some people holding at once all the opinions they find foul. But in order to view themselves as the silent majority as they do, the imaginary segment becomes in their minds a monolithic force in which all of their grievances are encapsulated as one.

Here, I can imagine that Beth is thinking of scientists who believe Man's activities influence the increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and that evolution can produce divergent species no longer able to produce fertile offspring. But that is just a guess. But I really can't argue with her as the only certain assertion she makes is that she's pissed off.

Being pissed off that scientists can confidently say Man attributes to climate change is maybe something Beth could understand if she tried a bit, but it sadly seems that everything Beth sees as wrong with the world can be remedied by voting Republican. She knows that Republicans are angry with liberals, and and that's enough for her. Even if the next Democratic presidential candidate didn't fake a Purple Heart, she still has resons to vote for the opposition.

Labels: conservatism, right wingers, science

// posted by Erik @ 9/01/2007 11:34:00 PM
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Beth was on a tear,

Well, it didn't take me long to think of another frustrating idea. Some on both the left and right want to give amnesty to illegal immigrants, citing that these people just want to make a living for themselves. Yet, they deny the right to unborn children to make a living EVER. So, just because these illegal people are HERE in this country, they should just automatically be granted citizenship, but a child in the womb of an American woman is HERE (and always has been) in this country but is not a citizen until born.

It wasn't hard for her to "think of another frustrating idea" as her only guiding principal was to get pissed off.

First, she thought of immigrants and their supporters - not the west-bound Ellis Island or Plymoth Rock type of immigrants who made us great, but those who ooze northward, unbalancing the westward perfection.

Then she thinks of baby-killers and instead of acting to stop the perceived genocide, she thinks about the liberals who both support legal abortion and allowing undocumented immigrants with jobs to stay at their jobs.

See, it's easy to be a right-winger. You can just sit there and imagine being really pissed off - you don't have to think of solutions to your complaints as you already know it's all the fault of liberals.

Labels: abortion, conservatism, imaginary liberal, immigration

// posted by Erik @ 9/01/2007 09:25:00 PM
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Beth continues to pontificate from the suburbs,

Further illogical ideas: the liberals who denounce free market capitalism. They say how dare the Wal Mart heirs get money for doing nothing but sitting on their butts. Nevermind the fact that they get said money from you and I paying for items at Wal Mart which we consume. But the lefties have no problem giving welfare money to people sitting on their butts doing nothing, where you and I give our money in taxes and get NOTHING in return for that money we gave. Meanwhile the lefties ignore the fact that the Walton family has a foundation, and that Wal Mart has programs that also give back to the community.

I frequently cite the WalMart heirs as an example when someone tries to claim we live in a meritocracy or that excessive wealth is OK because those with it perform excessively valuable work. So, that's probably me she's thinking of, an actual person.

She goes of the track of reality rather quickly though. I don't typically shop at WalMart. Around the year 2000 I bough a spatula at a WalMart because my car broke down near one and I needed coin to make a call. The plastic part separated from the wooden handle the first time I used it. Last summer, I moved to within 1/4 mile of a WalMart: Since that time, I've bought 2 aquarium air-stones there. I recall on that visit I picked up a bag of cookies or chips.

Yet Beth is angry because I allegedly contribute to the enrichment of people I use as examples of the excesses of our free market.

She also fits in a welfare queen complaint even though those receiving welfare have been required to work for over a decade now. It's easy to be a pissed off right-winger when you allow yourself to create the reality you're pissed off about.

Labels: conservatism, free-markets, imaginary liberal, walmart

// posted by Erik @ 8/26/2007 09:42:00 AM
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On a roll, Beth then reveals her lack of study of the Constitution while at the same time referring to it as if was divinely revealed,

What is the role of government anyway? Is it not meant to provide for the common defense? Then why is the world would we wish to reduce the budget at the Pentagon, without at least looking first to all the other budgets that have no Constitutional basis? But the backward thinking of the average lefty is to slash that defense budget first and foremost, but do keep that federal money pumping into the public broadcast system! We'd have no TV shows otherwise!

Of course, the Founders very intentionally left out the authority to support a permanent federal army, "those large and permanent military establishments which are forbidden by the principles of our free government" in the words of James Madison.

That Beth sees in the Founders' words an actual endorsement of our current war machinations reveals not only an ignorance of the actual text of the document, but also story of our nations founding - Minutemen vs. King George's Standing Army of redcoats. The complaint in the Declaration of Independence of King George "[keeping] among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures."

Labels: conservatism, consitution

// posted by Erik @ 8/25/2007 09:08:00 PM
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A very real right-winger circlejerks on a Sunday morn ... Beth congratulates "Uno",

This is the low-intelligence and lower-curiosity right-winger confabulation of all things liberal - liberal being a concept defined as is whatever is needed to infuriate the red horde enough to look away from real-world issues like our petroleum dependence or national debt.

Here, liberal means someone who donates to PETA, believes ending a pregnancy before term is morally acceptable, and who digs up graves in search of precious metals and stones. These liberals are determined to destroy long-cherished and common sense values such as not murdering babies and leaving graves intact. At least until we need a strip-mall more than a full cemetery.

The fiction of the Imaginary Liberal is so central to the world-view of individuals such as Beth who have invested in a lifetime subscription that it doesn't occur to them to check to see if Robert Byrd voted for or against the "Partial Birth Abortion" bill. In fact, he voted for it, meaning he voted against "dismembering of an unborn child in his mother's womb."

Labels: abortion, conservatism, imaginary liberal, robert byrd

// posted by Erik @ 8/25/2007 08:27:00 PM
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These signs were protesting Pawlenty's 2005 veto of the 2005 transportation bill because it copntained what would have been the first state gas tax increase in 20 years. The tax is levied as a number of cents per gallon, not a percentage.

In 1988 - when Minnesota last raised the gas tax from 17¢/gallon to ¢20/gallon - the price of a gallon of unleaded regular was about $0.95, in 2005 it was about $2.30.

Minnesota's transportation budget falls short by $1.8 billion a year. Opposing a gas tax increase can only be interpreted as opposing transportation or supporting a deficit in its funding. Or wing-nut excessive greed for accumulating a few more pennies for each gallon of gas spent.

Labels: conservatism, I-35 bridge, Minneapolis bridge, pawlenty, transportation

// posted by Erik @ 8/08/2007 12:03:00 PM
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I have vetoed and am returning House File 946, Chapter 84, the Omnibus Transportation Finance Bill.

With more than $5 billion in tax and fee increases, this bill would impose and unnecessary and onerous financial burden on Minnesota citizens and would weaken our state's economy.

Labels: conservatism, I-35 bridge, Minneapolis bridge, pawlenty

// posted by Erik @ 8/08/2007 11:25:00 AM
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The Reagan conservative movement has been tremendously successful in spreading disdain for taxes and governmental spending on everything unrelated to war. One result in Minnesota has been a perennial $1.8 billion shortfall in transportation funding.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty followed through on his "won't raise taxes" promise each time a transportation bill including a tax increase came before him.

Minnesotans obviously didn't take the initiative to spend their tax relief wisely.

The bridge was known to need structural maintenance, but the MN Department of Transportation needed to do things on the cheap,

More than a year before the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed, a consulting firm advised the state of Minnesota that the aging bridge should be reinforced with steel plating.

Instead of following that advice, state officials asked the firm to come up with other options.

Six months later, the URS Corp. did just that.

It repeated its recommendation for steel plates, but offered an alternative described as "most cost efficient" -- the state could inspect the 40-year-old bridge for cracks and repair any it found.

The day it happened, emergency vehicles started passing me as I turned off I-35 on to 46th St. to pick up a friend on the way to the Twins game. Forty-sixth is about three miles south of the bridge. We didn't know exactly what had happened until we left the game - I had guessed there had been an industrial fire at the paint plant by the bridge as we saw helicopters and black smoke when approaching the Metrodome, just blocks from the bridge. Creepy to think had I not been going to the game, I wouldn't have written two personal letters after work and that may have put me in a bad window of space-time.

But I can be thankful the collapse will only add 10 or so miles to my commute and that my state taxes haven't gone up recently.

Labels: conservatism, I-35 bridge, Minneapolis bridge, pawlenty, taxes, transportation

// posted by Erik @ 8/04/2007 06:12:00 PM
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