Le Devin du Village

“Teachers” — 88 tracks that inspired Daft...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:19:00 -0400

“Teachers” — 88 tracks that inspired Daft Punk’s Homework: From Brian Wilson to Boo Williams, George Clinton to George Duke, DJ Sneak to Dr. Dre, and Armand van Helden to Big Daddy Kane. Cashmere, Kraftwerk, Prince, and Ween, plus an a ‘83 obscurity by Daniel Vangarde, father of Thomas Bangalter. (Expanded version of 2011 Bodytonic podcast)

In Animal Kingdom, Voting Of A Different Sort Reigns by JON...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:48:41 -0400

In Animal Kingdom, Voting Of A Different Sort Reigns

by JON HAMILTON, All Things Considered

Voters could learn some things about choosing a leader from a fish. Or a chimp. Or an elephant.

That’s because the animal kingdom, despite its name, tends to operate more like a democracy, says Iain Couzin, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University.

“One common property we see in animal groups from schooling fish to flocking birds to primate groups is that they effectively vote to decide where to go and what to do,” Couzin says.

When one fish heads toward a potential source of food, the other fish vote with their fins on whether to follow, he says. And this highly democratic process helps animals make decisions as a group that are better than those of any single member.

Successful animal leaders know they can’t get too far ahead of their constituents, Couzin says.

“They seem to simply reconcile their own goal-oriented behavior with this tendency to align with others,” he says. “Because if you don’t tend to be influenced by others, you then leave the group behind, and you may get eaten by predators, or you lose the benefits of group living.”

Findings like this are relevant to humans because we carry a lot of evolutionary baggage with us into the voting booth, Couzin says. And when it comes to leadership, he says, we are most like animals that live in groups and depend on cooperation to survive. And these groups tend to pick cooperative leaders.

So what about the idea that it’s just the biggest or strongest animal in a group that calls the shots?

It’s rarely that simple, says Mark van Vugt, an evolutionary psychologist from the VU University in Amsterdam. Take chimps, for example, he says.

“In chimpanzees, it’s not necessarily the physically strongest individual who seizes the control over the group,” van Vugt says. “It’s usually the more cunning individual, someone who forms his coalitions well.”

Animal leadership also demonstrates how groups choose different leaders for different situations, he says. Among elephants, for example, the de facto leader is usually the oldest female. But that can change, van Vugt says.

“When the group is attacked, it might be one of the dominant male members who takes control,” he says. “But when it comes to knowledge problems and particularly where to find water, they then turn to the oldest female.”

Some animal leaders have traits that voters might wish all human leaders had — like unfailing honesty, van Vugt says.

Honeybees are a good example, he says. Their scouts lead by finding a food source and then communicating the location to other bees through something called a waggle dance.

“The interesting thing about it is in the signaling of the scout bees, there is no deception whatsoever,” van Vugt says. “They want to do what is best for the hive. And I think that is a little bit dissimilar to humans.”

Or chimps, whose leaders are often accomplished liars.

One way animals and people are clearly alike is that both are capable of choosing a bad leader, says Couzin.

“It’s not necessarily the most talented or intelligent individual that ends up in a leadership position,” Couzin says. Unqualified animals sometimes rise to power, he says, but most of the time they don’t last long.

And animals don’t wait for the next election to find a replacement, Couzin says.

Disturbed Man Gets Past Convention Security, Gives Keynote...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:41:08 -0400

Disturbed Man Gets Past Convention Security, Gives Keynote Address : The New Yorker

http://theeuropean-magazine.com/385-unger-roberto/386-the-future-of-the-left

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 12:21:38 -0400

http://theeuropean-magazine.com/385-unger-roberto/386-the-future-of-the-left

Anyone Who Thinks Debt Deal Is A Victory For U.S. Understands Neither Economics Nor Politics

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:30:00 -0400

Anyone Who Thinks Debt Deal Is A Victory For U.S. Understands Neither Economics Nor Politics:

ROBERT REICH - Anyone who characterizes the deal between the President and Republican leaders as a victory for the American people over partisanship understands neither economics nor politics.

The deal does not raise taxes on America’s wealthy and most fortunate — who are now taking home a larger share of total income and wealth, and whose tax rates are already lower than they have been in eighty years. Yet it puts the nation’s most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block.

It also hobbles the capacity of the government to respond to the jobs and growth crisis. Added to the cuts already underway by state and local governments, the deal’s spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip recession. And the deal strengthens the political hand of the radical right.

Yes, the deal is preferable to the unfolding economic catastrophe of a default on the debt of the U.S. government. The outrage and the shame is that it has come to this choice. […]

Many months ago, when Republicans first demanded spending cuts and no tax increases as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, the President could have blown their cover — showing the American people why this demand had nothing to do with deficit reduction but everything to do with the GOP’s ideological fixation on shrinking the size of the government. […] But he did not.

And through it all the President could have explained to Americans that the biggest economic challenge we face is restoring jobs and wages and economic growth, that spending cuts in the next few years will slow the economy even further, and therefore that the Republicans’ demands threaten us all. Again, he did not.

The radical right has now won a huge tactical and strategic victory. Democrats and the White House have proven they have little by way of tactics or strategy. […]

By embracing deficit reduction as their apparent goal – claiming only that they’d seek it differently than the GOP – Democrats and the White House now seemingly agree with the GOP that the budget deficit is the biggest obstacle to the nation’s future prosperity.

The budget deficit is not the biggest obstacle to our prosperity. Lack of jobs and growth is. And the largest threat to our democracy is the emergence of a radical right capable of getting most of the ransom it demands.

Wake up GOP: Smashing system doesn't fix it

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:22:00 -0400

Wake up GOP: Smashing system doesn't fix it:

DAVID FRUM - I’m a Republican. Always have been. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation and limited government. But as I look back at the weeks of rancor leading up to Sunday night’s last-minute budget deal, I see some things I don’t believe in:

Forcing the United States to the verge of default.

Shrugging off the needs and concerns of millions of unemployed.

Protecting every single loophole, giveaway and boondoggle in the tax code as a matter of fundamental conservative principle.

Massive government budget cuts in the midst of the worst recession since World War II.

I am not alone. Only about one-third of Republicans agree that cutting government spending should be the country’s top priority. Only about one-quarter of Republicans insist the budget be balanced without any tax increases.

Yet that one-third and that one-quarter have come to dominate my party. That one-third and that one-quarter forced a debt standoff that could have ended in default and a second Great Recession. That one-third and that one-quarter have effectively written the “no new taxes pledge” into national law.

There was another way. There still is. Give me a hammer and a church-house door, and I’d post these theses for modern Republicans:

1) Unemployment is a more urgent problem than debt.

[…] More than 14 million Americans are out of work, more than 6 million for longer than six months. The United States has not seen so many people out of work for so long since the 1930s.

2) The deficit is a symptom of America’s economic problems, not a cause.

When the economy slumps, government revenues decline and government spending surges. Federal revenues have collapsed since 2007, down from more than 18% of national income to a little more than 14%. To put that in perspective: That’s the equivalent of losing enough revenue to support the entire defense budget. Federal spending has jumped to pay for unemployment insurance, food stamps and Medicaid benefits.

Fix the economy first, and the deficit will improve on its own. Cut the deficit first, and the economy will get even sicker.

3) The time to cut is after the economy recovers.

Businesses are hoarding cash. Consumers are repaying debt. State and local governments are slashing jobs. (Since 2009, the number of Americans working for government has shrunk by half a million, the biggest reduction in civilian government employment since the Great Depression.) Right now, there’s only one big customer out there: the federal government. How does it help anybody if the feds suddenly stop buying things and paying people?

[…]

Let’s hope that as America steps back from the brink, Republicans remember that it’s their job to protect the system, not to smash the system in hopes of building something better from the ruins. That’s how student radicals think — not conservatives.

The GOP Gets Its Way, The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky Let’s cut right through it: In a phrase,...

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:24:00 -0400

The GOP Gets Its Way, The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky

Let’s cut right through it: In a phrase, President Obama appears to have cut a deal with the Republicans, on their terms, or about 98 percent of them. […] It’s a bleak day for this presidency, and really in American history, as we’ve now embarked on a path that’s very likely to lead to huge cuts in entitlement programs, the domestic budget, and more or less everything every Democrat in Washington (except, apparently, one) wakes up to fight for every day. […] McConnell knew he could get away with it, because […] he predicted, apparently accurately, that this president would roll over. And so the GOP will have won, and won big. Obama can call this victory if he likes, and insofar as default will be avoided, sure. But if he thinks this is what his voters sent him to the White House to do, he needs a serious reality check.

GOP ready to declare victory in debt fight, The Hill, Julian Pecquet

Republicans on Sunday framed an emerging debt-ceiling agreement as largely giving them what they wanted in a debt deal. “I don’t think we’ve been hurt at all,” McConnell said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “The American people wanted us to do something about out-of-control spending and the debt ceiling [deal] is going to produce what many people would believe is a complete change in the trajectory of the federal government.”

Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) acknowledged that conservative Republicans were able to get their way in the talks. “Democrats have shown throughout this debate a willingness to compromise,” he said on Face the Nation.

A “complete change,” sadly, yes. But a change for the worse. And as for the America people demanding it, the polls say otherwise (see below). Schumer, meanwhile, is spot-on in pointing to Democrats’ willingness to accept unreasonable Republican demands.

Debt Ceiling ‘Compromise’ A Total Capitulation to GOP, HuffPo, Mitchell Bard

It’s easy to take shots at the Tea Party-controlled Republican leadership for holding the American economy hostage to fulfill their extreme-right, not-supported-by-the-American-people obsession with cutting spending, and how their alleged concern over debt is really a smokescreen to fundamentally change American society [or as Mitch McConnell might put it, create “a complete change in the trajectory of the federal government”], returning the country back to the 1920s when corporations and the wealthy were allowed to run amok and there was no social safety net for everyone else (leading, of course, to the greatest depression of the 20th century). […]

But what has me so angry right now is the news of Harry Reid signing off on a compromise to the debt-ceiling clash that is, in essence, a complete capitulation to the Tea Party position. […]

I have one simple question: Where are the Democrats?

Isn’t the Democratic party supposed to be the institution in place to oppose the Republicans when they offer bad policy, especially when polls show that a majority of Americans don’t share the GOP obsession with spending cuts? (Not only did polls from CBS News and Gallup show that Americans favored revenue increases along with spending cuts to settle the debt ceiling impasse, but another Gallup poll on July 20 revealed that only 16 percent of Americans thought the deficit was “the most important problem facing the country today,” while 27 percent listed unemployment and 31 percent said the economy in general.)

After all, you can’t blame the Republicans for advancing their agenda. […] No, it’s on the Democrats, who, not incidentally, control two of the three institutions necessary to make a deal, to stand up to what Steve Benen called “extortion politics.” […]

It’s the job of the Democrats to make the case that while fiscal responsibility is an important long-term goal […], with the economy struggling and unemployment high, slashing spending now will only make things worse for most (that is, those not in the top one percent of wealth) Americans. […]

But what did the Democrats do? They accepted the Tea Party premise that it was vital right now to address [read: cut] spending instead of unemployment and the economy. […] They never pressed the case that by not raising the debt ceiling, Republicans would be taking the unbelievably un-American step of forcing the country to renege on its already agreed-to obligations. They didn’t make a clear case to the American people that the GOP was holding the American economy hostage to fulfill their political motives. (For example, John Boehner admitted that many in his caucus wanted to let the debt ceiling deadline pass and “create chaos” in order to force through their far-right fiscal policies [Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine,” anyone?] […] .) They failed to make the case to the American people that the cuts being thrown around by Republicans would negatively impact their day-to-day lives, far more than deficits would this year. They never held firm on insisting on the wealthiest Americans, who profited most from the last decade of fiscal irresponsibility, pay their share toward the fiscal solution with rollbacks of the Bush tax cuts. […]

In short, the Democrats did more than just cave. They actually adopted the Republican position, and then engaged in a debate on how extreme that Republican position would be (offering far-right crazy in opposition to the Tea Party’s all-out, society-changing crazy).

Paul Krugman on ABC’s This Week completely agreed regarding both capitulation and the counter-productive nature of this “compromise” within the context of our already-fragile economy:

We shouldn’t even be talking about spending cuts right at all now. We have 9% unemployment. These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment. It’s even going to hurt the long run fiscal picture, because we have a situation in which more and more people are becoming permanent long term unemployed, and if you have a situation in which you are going to permanently raise the unemployment rate, which is what this is going to do that’s actually going to reduce future revenue, so these spending cuts are ever going to hurt the long run fiscal position let alone cause lots of misery, and then on top of we’ve got these budget cuts which are entirely, basically the Republicans we’ll blow up the world economy unless you give us exactly what we want, and the president said, ok. That’s what happened. […]

We used to talk about the Japanese and their lost decade. We’re going to look to them as a role model. They did better than we’re doing. This is going to go on. I have nobody I know who thinks the unemployment rate is going to be below 8% at the end of next year. With these spending cuts, it might well be above 9% at the end of next year. There is no light at the end of this tunnel, and the revenue debate in Washington, which is all about “Gee, we’re going to make this economy worse. But are we going to make it worse on 90% of the Republicans’ terms, or 100% the Republicans’ terms? And the answer is 100%.”

Jason Easley at PoliticsUSA distills it down:

Recessionary economies don’t improve with spending cuts only. Cuts without addition revenue strangles the system even more, and makes things worse. Democrats have completely lost sight of the fact that Republicans aren’t trying to rationally or logically solve the problem. The people on the other side of the aisle are governing strictly by ideology. What matters to them isn’t the outcome, but the implementation of their belief system about the economy. The most frustrating thing about this debate is how, not just Obama, but all Democrats have been willing to discuss the debt ceiling on Republican terms. Spending cuts should have never factored in to raising the debt ceiling.

It seems at least some Democratic lawmakers agree.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement that progressive lawmakers and working families “were thrown under the bus” by a deal that “trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals.” The result, he said, is as bad for the Democratic Party as it is for the country [calling it a “cure as bad as the disease”].

“We have given much and received nothing in return,” Grijalva said. “The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want.” […]

Grijalva excoriated the White House for abandoning too much ground to the GOP, notably by excluding revenue raisers from the first phase of deficit reduction. “We have made our bottom line clear for months: a final deal must strike a balance between cuts and revenue, and must not put all the burden on the working people of this country,” he said. “This deal fails those tests and many more.” […]

Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said it was both bad economics and immoral in a blistering statement. “The Republicans have been absolutely determined to make certain that the rich and large corporations not contribute one penny for deficit reduction, and that all of the sacrifice comes from the middle class and working families. […] I cannot support legislation like the Reid proposal which balances the budget on the backs of struggling Americans while not requiring one penny of sacrifice from the wealthiest people in our country. That is not only grotesquely immoral, it is bad economic policy.” [More Saunders in video]

Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities writes at On The Economy about The Depressing Impact of a Spending-Only Trigger : “I and others have written from the beginning of this debacle, absent new revenues, we’ll end up with spending cuts carrying too much of the load. And that looks to be where we’re headed.”

But his colleague Robert Greenstein, President of CBPP, describes the Republican’s demands in even more severe terms: “The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history. This may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. Both the mathematics and the politics are clear.”

Like the current “compromise” plan, the earlier Boehner plan envisioned…

…No tax increases, with its entire $1.8 trillion in additional deficit reduction coming from budget cuts. Speaker Boehner gave documents to House Republican caucus members stating that […] the plan “includes no tax hikes.” In addition, Speaker Boehner told radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh that Republicans appointed to the special committee that will craft the $1.8 trillion in savings won’t support tax increases and, in the unlikely event that that committee proposed a plan with tax increases, House Republicans would vote it down anyway. A House GOP aide told National Review more bluntly: “We appoint members to the committee, and we’re not appointing any Republicans who will vote for tax hikes.”

To feasibly secure such savings without the aid of additional new revenue would therefore…

…require draconian policy changes. Policymakers would essentially have three choices: 1) cut Social Security and Medicare benefits heavily for current retirees, something that all budget plans from both parties (including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan) have ruled out; 2) repeal the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions while retaining its measures that cut Medicare payments and raise tax revenues, even though Republicans seek to repeal many of those measures as well; or 3) eviscerate the safety net for low-income children, parents, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. There is no other plausible way to get $1.5 trillion in entitlement cuts in the next ten years.

“Eviscerate the safety net?” That’s a frightening proposition. Most economist agree that cutting government programs to such an extent will only exacerbate our current economist woes. [See CNN Money’s “Spending Cuts to Whack Economy?”] Even the Chamber of Commerce “has warned against major spending cuts as part of a debt limit deal, asking lawmakers on Friday to be careful.”

“The recovery is clearly on a lower trajectory, and it will likely be some time before the economy rebounds to the point it will create much in terms of job growth,” Martin Regalia, the group’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Similarly, the Bowles-Simpson commission advised against spending cuts for at least a year to protect the economic rebound.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) agrees the economy is too weak for major spending cuts, saying “Their fear, and the fear that I share, is that if we make spending cuts at this point, it will not help economic recovery.”

In a floor speech on Sunday, he mused that “symbolically, that agreement is moving us to the point where we are having the final internment of John Maynard Keynes. He normally died in 1946 but it appears we are going to put him to his final rest with this agreement.”

Miles Mogulescu at HuffPo echoes Durbin’s elegiac sentiments, proclaiming…

“Barack Obama and Harry Reid have unconditionally surrendered the values and policies that Democrats have stood for since 1932 to the Republicans and the Tea Party. […] July 31, 2011 will likely go down in history as the day that the liberal Democratic project—the hope that corporate power could be balanced by sensible regulation, Keynesian economics, and a measure of economic security for American citizens—died, or rather committed mass suicide.”

It’s ironic that Senate Democrats are signalling the death knell of Keynes, and others lamenting the Dem’s failure to push for higher taxes on the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations, at the very same moment that conservative commentator Ben Stein has acknowledged the utter failure of so-called “trickle down” Voodoo Reaganomics.

Between him and the Chamber, the only other sources of criticism more entertaining were the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which declared, “A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons. It requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly. [emphasis in original],” and China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, which “slammed” Washington over its “dangerously irresponsible” political brinksmanship, calling its handling of the crisis “immoral.”

Speaking of China and of cuts to social services and government programs, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development announced the most recent results of its Programme for International Student Assessment, measuring “how well a nation’s education system has been preparing its students for the global knowledge economy.” USA #1? Not quite.

Nations such as South Korea, Finland, and Singapore have traditionally topped the rankings, but, apparently, even they are no match for Shanghai, which shoved the others into lower positions in its very first year of participation in the programme. […] Twenty-six percent of Shanghai 15 year-olds could demonstrate advanced problem-solving skills, whereas the OECD average is 3 percent.

So how did Shanghai create the world’s best education system?

First, the Shanghai municipal government believes that the most effective way to raise the human capital it needs for the global knowledge economy is by focusing on raising the overall quality of its education system rather than investing in elite schools. ‘Students of privilege will do well wherever they are, and more resources directed at them won’t improve them that much,’ Schleicher explained. ‘But more attention and investment will greatly improve disadvantaged students.’

A tidy analogy for how our economic system, overall, should be structured, instead of tax policies which favor the wealthy to the clear disadvantage of the poor, whose government assistance programs will soon face dramatic cutbacks.

[Andreas Schleicher of OECD] is quite upbeat about Shanghai’s global economic prospects. Today, the United States may be the leader in creativity and innovation, but that’s because it made university education universally available 40 years ago, Schleicher argued. Now that the United States is failing to invest properly in public education, its prospects are dim. Shanghai is in the reverse position. […] Shanghai has the world’s best education system because Shanghainese, more than anyone else in China, take education seriously. […] The Shanghai municipal government will invest 22.4 billion yuan annually on its schools, whereas the Chinese national government will invest 299.2 billion yuan for all of China.

And what about the U.S.?

The top Democratic lawmaker on the House Education and Workforce Committee said he had received almost no input from state education departments and local school districts about the looming spending cuts. He said reductions contained in the debt ceiling legislation are “going to make life much more difficult for” for public schools. […]

Barry Toiv, the vice president of public affairs for the Association of American Universities, said continuing to take money out of education would slowly and steadily degrade the quality of the nation’s universities and affect America’s ability to produce the next generation of leaders.

“It’s like termites in the wall, gradually eating away at the underpinnings of our innovation,” he said. “If you do that over a long period of time, at some point you’re no longer leading the world. And eventually, like with termites in the wall, you’re not really going to have a house anymore.”

Photo

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:22:55 -0400

A follow-up to the recently-posted article about religious faith...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:54:46 -0400

A follow-up to the recently-posted article about religious faith outweighing verifiable statistical evidence regarding Sex Education in Texas:

Teaching Evolution Up For Debate Again in Texas

Surprise.

I’m unable to watch Rick Perry without seeing/hearing...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:47:00 -0400

I’m unable to watch Rick Perry without seeing/hearing former President Bush. It’s as if the current Governor is directly channeling the former, and it goes well beyond their folksy Texas drawl. From his frustratingly short (and short-sighted) answers to complex questions, to his quietly chuckling to himself at 0:47 before relying upon personal life experience to support/defend policy decisions…

Of course, that’s to say nothing of how poor those policy decision truly are:

Texas lawmakers cut sex ed from two six-month courses to a single unit of “abstinence only” education. But early indications showed that the program wasn’t working. In fact, teens in almost all high school grades were having more sex after undergoing the abstinence only program. By 2007, Texas had the highest teen birth rate in the nation. […]

Instead of providing fact-based information, the programs use fear and Jesus — over-emphasizing the risks of sexually transmitted diseases leading to cervical cancer, radical hysterectomy and death, together with Christian morality.

One Texas public school district’s sex ed handout is entitled “Things to Look for in a Mate:”

I. How they relate to God
A. Is Jesus their first love?
B. Trying to impress people or serve God?

Another public school district uses this:

Question: “What does the Bible say about sex before marriage/premarital sex?”

Answer: Along with all other kinds of sexual immorality, sex before marriage/premarital sex is repeatedly condemned in Scripture (Acts 15:20; Romans 1:29; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:13,18; 7:2; 10:8; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Jude 7).

Yet another example of belief trumping measurable fact, reason, and Science. We all remember Dubya’s claiming on multiple occasions that God spoke to him, but Perry might be taking it to a whole other level. (Leading The Onion, as always, to be on-point.)

And I thought Michelle Bachmann was bad.

It’s forecast to be 103 degrees in DC tomorrow, with a heat index of 116. (Whew!) But hot-head...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:16:00 -0400

It’s forecast to be 103 degrees in DC tomorrow, with a heat index of 116. (Whew!) But hot-head Rush sees a conspiracy in everything…

They’re playing games with us on this heat wave, again. Even Drudge. Drudge getting sucked in here. Going to be 116 in Washington. No, it’s not. It’s gonna be like 100, maybe 99. A heat index, manufactured by the government to tell you what it feels like when you add the humidity in there.

Telling me what to feel like?! Nobody tells me what to feel like! I’ll feel however I want, you darn… manufacturers! Sneaky, maniacal meteorologists at NOAA… with your numbers, and humidity… and formulas. But it’s okay — Rush knows how to fix things:

If we want to cool things off, please, Al Gore, schedule a global warming conference, wherever, in Washington! Go there. You want that 103, 116 to get normal? It will, within an hour of Gore announcing that he’s going! Another ten degrees off when he shows up. Plus hail, and rain, and maybe some high winds to really cool people off! That’s all that has to happen.

Exactly! Because Gore and his shadow army of Green-shirts and climato-fascists will then reveal their super-secret Weather Control Machine! (muah-ha-ha! Wait, haven’t we seen this movie before? Like, a hundred times already?) I guess the heat must be getting to him…

Reagan Didn't Leave the Republican Party; The Republican Party Left Him.

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 04:41:00 -0400

“Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.”

— President Ronald Reagan in a Radio Address, Sept. 26th, 1987

“This country now possesses the strongest credit in the world. The full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of a default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the costs, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation [increasing the limit on the public debt] before the Congress adjourns.”

— President Ronald Reagan to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, Nov. 16th, 1983

While Reagan nostalgia endures, a number of Republicans have begun to admit the obvious: The Gipper would no longer be welcome on the GOP team. […] This spring, Mike Huckabee judged that “Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere,” pointing out that Reagan “raised taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.”

— Dana Milbank, “The New Party of Reagan”

He made deals with Democrats? Compromised? Blasphemy!

Debating the Debate

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 02:51:00 -0400

First off, let us acknowledge that “the chances of a default on the United States debt are still fairly small.” Financial markets indicate “just a 0.05 percent chance, or 1-in-2,000, of a default occurring within the next year.”

Congress still has ample time to prevent one by raising the debt ceiling, and the Treasury Department may use any and all means to stave off a default for as long as possible even if Congress fails to act. […] Far more likely than an actual default are situations where we stop short of one but nevertheless have significant consequences for the American economy because of downgrades to the United States’ credit rating, severe reductions in government spending and significant anxiety in the market.

So the more pressing question becomes, “What happens to American politics if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by Aug. 2 and the economy suffers as a result?”

Well, there appears to be competing schools of thought on the matter:

GW political scientist John Sides sticks with the standard “it’s the economy, stupid” perspective, relying on past precedent as a model for the current debate, and foresees 3 likely scenarios.

Scenario #1: Assume there is no deal and then assume […] there are serious consequences for the economy when the debt ceiling isn’t raised. This will hurt Obama. And it will hurt him more than it will hurt the Republican Party. Presidents suffer the consequences of a bad economy. Divided government does not change this. Beware pundits who see silver linings for Obama in this scenario.

Scenario #2: There is a deal, but it hurts the economy. Maybe not as bad as it would be if the debt ceiling weren’t raised, but still: worse. If so, Obama will suffer. End of story. It does not matter that the deficit will (in theory) go down. Election-year changes in the size of the national debt do not affect election outcomes. And it does not matter that a deal could make Obama appear “bipartisan.” Independent voters do not put political process ahead of the most tangible outcome: the economy. See also Matt Yglesias.

Scenario 3a: [A deal is made, but…] The economy is still weak throughout 2012, as some forecasts suggest. Obama will suffer. See Scenario #2. He may win, depending on the GOP nominee and the campaign itself, but it will not be easy. All the GOP has to do is hammer him on jobs, jobs, jobs and no one will remember his masterful bargaining over the debt ceiling, or what the debt ceiling is in the first place.

Scenario 3b: [A deal is made, and… ] The economy does improve—somehow, someway. Now Obama has the edge, and the economy is what he should campaign on. Maybe it’s not morning in America, but election-year economic growth is a powerful elixir to myopic voters.

But Johnathan Chait of The New Republic thinks Sides ”is over-relying on the data,” citing Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:

I spoke to some (very) conservative investment bankers yesterday on some deals we are handling and asked about the debt ceiling as an aside. They were very concerned about the ceiling and seemed very favorable to McConnell’s offer. Europe is really, really spooking the investment community. Thus, they would like to tamp down the uncertainty here in the hopes that some sense of normalization here will help the sanity over there and otherwise across the board.
They said it was common knowledge that McConnell was taking very serious back-channel heat from Wall Street because the conclusion was that there was no reliable leadership in the House with Boehner unable to control his caucus and Cantor making his leadership play now. They view Boehner as out. In other words, McConnell is Wall Street’s only viable player and so he is taking all the calls. And those calls are not saying to insist upon cuts only come hell or high water. They are saying raise the F-Ing ceiling NOW.

Chait concludes that “yes, historically, voters blame the president for a bad economy, even if divided government has blocked the president’s agenda. But how many historical examples can we find of the opposition party engaging in high profile acts of economic destruction?”

It seems highly plausible to imagine that, if the Republicans block a debt ceiling increase, that the public will turn on them. The business elite will decide that the Republicans are dangerous and must be stopped. Obama will use his bully pulpit to explain to the public that the Republicans have forced withholding of entitlement payments and the closing of vital government services. Quite possibly, this effect could overwhelm any actual economic ramifications. I know the models say the economy will be all that counts. That could be right. But the models have never seen anything like this before.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein agrees, saying:

I don’t think the aftermath would read to voters as “a bad economy.” I think this would look more like calculated economic sabotage on the part of the Republicans. Wall Street would turn on them. The business community would turn on them. The media has already turned on them. And as Social Security checks stop going out and doctors stop taking Medicare because the federal government isn’t paying its bills, the public would turn on them, too.

These predictions echo the fears of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

[W]e knew shutting down the government in 1995 was not going to work for us. It helped Bill Clinton get reelected. I refuse to help Barack Obama get reelected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy. It didn’t work in 1995. What will happen is the administration will send out notices to 80 million Social Security recipients and to military families and they will all start attacking members of Congress. That is not a useful place to take us. And the president will have the bully pulpit to blame Republicans for all this disruption.

If we go into default he will say Republicans are making the economy worse. And all of a sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy. That is a very bad position going into an election. My first choice was to do something important for the country. But my second obligation is to my party and my conference to prevent them from being sucked into a horrible position politically that would allow the president, probably, to get reelected because we didn’t handle this difficult situation correctly.

However, John Sides challenges that Bill Clinton’s popularity actually decreased during the 1995 shutdown. “This fact seemingly cannot penetrate the conventional wisdom.”

Yes, the polls also weren’t kind to Gingrich and the GOP, but it is hard to claim that Clinton benefited in the eyes of voters. There is certainly no evidence that I know of that the shutdown helped re-elect Bill Clinton. It’s interesting that McConnell thinks that, if only because it appears to guide his actions now. But I don’t think it’s true. […] Though this fight over the debt ceiling is unusual, I have a hard time imagining that Obama is going to emerge unscathed if the ceiling isn’t lifted and the economy suffers. After all, incumbent politicians are punished by voters for a thousand trivial things, even losses in college football games. I am hardpressed to imagine that voters will suddenly exonerate Obama from possible economic disruptions and simply blame the GOP. To be clear, I don’t think either party would come out of a debt ceiling meltdown smelling like roses. But let’s not pretend that Obama will somehow avoid that. Or put it this way: what if the meltdown led to, say, 1-2 months of bond rating markdowns, stock market convulsions, disruptions of key government services, and wall-to-wall media coverage of the same? What happens to Obama’s approval rating in that time? My bet is that, just as with Clinton in 1995, it goes down.

Well, what does the American public say?

A recent CBS-News poll showed that 48% of Americans disapproved of how the President was handling the debt negotiations, compared with only 43% approval. However, Congressional Republicans received by far the most blame, with 71% disapproval.

This corresponds with an earlier Quinnipiac poll alleging that “voters will blame Republicans over Obama 48-34 percent if the debt limit is not raised,” and that “67-25 percent [believe] an agreement to raise the debt ceiling should include tax hikes for the wealthy and corporations, not just spending cuts,” reflecting President Obama’s policy position.

Sides, however, again notes that these poll numbers would be more meaningful if an earlier CBS poll had not indicated that 69% of respondents opposed raising the debt limit to begin with. So what’s with the conflicting numbers? Perhaps it reflects the public’s limited understanding of the complicated issues at hand.

A Pew poll conducted earlier this month found that nearly half of Americans report not understanding ”what would happen if the government does not raise the federal debt limit.”

That same Pew Research survey found that “75 percent of Americans say they are very or somewhat concerned that ‘not raising the debt limit would force the government into default and hurt the nation’s economy.’ And those concerns have increased from 63 percent of people who were very concerned or somewhat concerned in May. […] A slightly larger number (78 percent) continue to be very or somewhat concerned that ‘raising the debt limit would lead to higher government spending and make the national debt bigger.’

When pressed, more Americans are now divided, with slightly more (47 percent) saying they are more concerned about the consequences of raising the debt limit than about the impact of not raising the debt limit (42 percent). However, worry about not raising the limit has jumped by seven percentage points (from 35 to 42 percent) since May. The underlying conflict of opinion — the roughly one quarter of Americans who express concern about both raising the debt ceiling and not raising it — is what makes polling on this question volatile and difficult to interpret. [HuffPo]

Even The Daily Show made light of the muddled and seemingly contradictory polling this evening.

It’s no wonder, then, that Sides remains unconvinced, choosing to rely, instead, on the more conventional election models.

But Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight claims, “the models suffer from profound theoretical flaws owing to the infrequency of presidential elections.”

A cynical view is that the models are really just anecdotal arguments in quantitative dress: if a model has trouble explaining a particular election, you invent a new variable to excuse it. A fairer view, perhaps, is that the models do a good job with the “normal” cases — clearly the economy matters quite a bit to a president’s re-election chances — but fumble on the more difficult ones. Whatever else the 2012 election would be if the debt limit is not raised in a timely fashion, it would not be a normal case. There’s no especially appropriate precedent for the economy tanking by such an immediate and direct result of action (or inaction) in Washington.

Political Scientist Brendan Nyhan responds:

It’s certainly true that the current standoff seems relatively unprecedented, but as Jonathan Bernstein (another political scientist) notes, “There’s always going to be some slightly new twist to almost any political phenomenon, and in most cases the new twists are a lot less important than the similarities.” Over the years, people have come up with lots of stories about why the president won’t get credit for a good economy or why the opposition will be blamed for a bad economy, but things rarely work out that way.

In this case, it’s worth thinking through the mechanics of how Republicans would be blamed instead of Obama. As Silver notes, the economy is incredibly complex. Even if there were a debt default, the process by which it would affect the economy would be difficult for people to understand. Both sides would no doubt blame each other for the outcome and create elaborate stories about why the other side is to blame, which would then be reinforced and amplified in the press. Then more than a year would elapse before November 2012, and both sides would continue to blame each other for failing to adequately address the consequences of the default. In the meantime, many people will forget the details of what happened, but will know that Obama is the president and the economy is in bad shape. Under those conditions, how likely is it that people who would normally blame Obama for the poor economy will instead blame the GOP when they show up at the polls? Presidential forecasting and approval models aren’t perfect, but I think the burden of proof is on their critics to explain why we should expect a deviation from the normal pattern of economic voting.

The founder of the conservative Red State and tea-party darling Erick Erickson seems to agree in this frightening post that Slate claims is being passed around the GOP House caucus:

Should the United States lose its bond rating, it will be called the “Obama Depression”. Congress does not get pinned with this stuff. […] Do not believe the doom and gloom. […] When Ben Bernanke brings the Grim Reaper in on August 1st to tell you we are all going to die, you must mock death and choose life — not bipartisan compromises that will keep growing government and ever more rapidly turn this nation into a third class banana republic. In short, you must hold the freaking line! Now, some of you, if you have read this far, are saying, “But in 1995, the Republicans got blamed for shutting down the government.” They did. But that’s because Americans detest losers. And Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole threw in the towel instead of fighting.

Erickson instead advises Houses Republicans to “fight” and not succumb to the “pundits and chattering class in Washington” who seek compromise.

[They] have a bias far greater than their liberal one — it is a good government bias. They believe Republicans and Democrats should come together and do grand bargains. Evil and stupid come together and do something evil and stupid. The press heralds it as bipartisanship at its finest, damn the results.

Amidst all this bickering and disagreement, it may be instructive to take a view from the outside, say, from across the pond?

Andrew Sullivan: From this side of the Atlantic, the great game of chicken now being played by the American political class with the debt ceiling is regarded as a sign that America - or rather, America’s Republicans - has gone completely insane. Everyone in Europe is desperately trying to stave off default - and here is the most powerful economy on earth actually hoping for it! When I explain the details of Obama’s last Grand Bargain - a debt reduction built on a ration of 3:1 spending cuts and tax increases - most Brits see it as a Cameron-conservative-style austerity measure. They simply cannot understand why the GOP doesn’t take what would for any sane conservative in any civilized country be a no-brainer. I’m reduced to trying to explain what passes for “conservatism” in America is nothing of the kind - just know-nothing, fundamentalist, Manichean pseudo-conservatism. From this distance, the GOP seems even loonier, crazier and more reckless than they do stateside.

If you listen to Erick Erickson they certainly do. The real question is, how many House Republicans agree with him and, it seems, Boehner over McConnell? If the current state of the debt negotiations are any indicator, it’s frighteningly too many, and we can only hope that Americans come away with the same perspective and opinions as the Brits once the repercussions of these talks finally come to pass.

Sesame Street Spreads Secret Political Messages, Insiders Admit

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 08:06:59 -0400

Sesame Street Spreads Secret Political Messages, Insiders Admit:

You wish it were The Onion.

In his new book Primetime Propaganda, conservative writer and columnist Ben Shapiro called the seemingly innocuous show Sesame Street a vehicle for spreading left-wing propaganda, according to the Daily Mail. Shapiro apparently interviewed “hundreds of industry insiders,” some of whom actually admitted using their shows to “spread secret political messages.”

“I was shocked by the openness of the Hollywood crowd when it came to admitting anti-conservative discrimination inside the industry,” Shapiro told The Independent. “They weren’t ashamed of it. In fact, some were actually proud of it.” […]

Shapiro quotes Mike Dann, one of the [Sesame Street’s] founding executives, saying it “was not made for the sophisticated or the middle class.” Early episodes featured the character Grover breaking bread with a hippie. Oscar, who lived in a rubbish bin, was supposed to address “conflicts arising from racial and ethnic diversity.” Dann also told Shapiro he used the program in the wake of 9/11 to highlight how there were peaceful alternatives to war. Shameful! Criminal, even! In fairness to Shapiro, however, Sesame Street was criticized in the past for having an anti-right agenda in 2009, when it mockingly referred to America’s Fox News channel as “Pox News.”

“Sesame Street tried to tackle divorce, tackled ‘peaceful conflict resolution’ in the aftermath of 9/11, and had [gay actor] Neil Patrick Harris on the show playing the subtly-named ‘fairy shoeperson’,” writes Shapiro. And since 95 percent of Americans have watched the show by the time they’re three years old, well, the levels of brainwashing must be astronomical!

“Television isn’t just about entertainment,” said Shapiro. “It’s an attempt to convince Americans that the social, economic, and foreign policy shaped by leftism is morally righteous.” And, he added to the Independent, “It’s not paranoid to speak the truth.”

[Might I also add that “Pinko Puppets Brainwash Kids” is a great headline.]

While on the subject of commendable young people who are...

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 07:55:49 -0400

While on the subject of commendable young people who are politically informed and taking a stand, may I say…

Cajones.

This girl has ‘em.

21-year-old Senate page Brigette DePape walked out on the Senate floor on Friday, just meters away from the Canadian Prime Minister, Governor General, and the Supreme Court Justices to quietly protest what she calls the “disastrous” policies of the Harper government.

“Harper’s agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation,” [DePape proclaimed in a prepared statement released after the event by a friend.] “We have to stop him from wasting billions on fighter jets, military bases, and corporate tax cuts while cutting social programs and destroying the climate. Most people in this country know what we need are green jobs, better medicare, and a healthy environment for future generations. […] This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring, a flowering of popular movements that demonstrate that real power to change things lies not with Harper but in the hands of the people.”

Fittingly, Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella responded by warning that this “incident raises serious security concerns which the Senate will fully investigate.”

Mike Duffy, a Conservative senator, said “stunts” such as the one DePape pulled Friday hurt democracy, rather than further it.

“These things are unfortunate because every time there’s some kind of event like this it means security gets tightened.”

Clearly. Because this young lady (who had worked as a Senate page for a year and was set to leave the position later this month) posed quite the security threat. The Senate Security service, meanwhile, chose not to press any charges.

Louisiana Law Opens Door to Creationism in the Classroom

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 07:30:00 -0400

Louisiana Law Opens Door to Creationism in the Classroom:

The Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows supplemental materials be introduced into the standard Science curriculum in matters “including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning,” survived a challenge in the Senate Education Committee last Thursday, by a vote of 5-to-1.

As a former Science teacher in Louisiana, I am appalled.

With the law intact, Louisiana is the state that has gone the furthest in approving legislation that opens the door to allowing alternatives to science taught in its schools.

Similar laws have been considered (and defeated, thankfully) in a handful of other states, including my old Kentucky home. Cooler heads were able to see through the stale and hokey argument of “teaching the controversy,” or the even more ill-headed “teach both sides.”

“We assert you should be able to critically present that evidence and quit choosing sides when it comes to teaching students this controversial subject matter,” [says Gene Mills, president of the conservative non-profit Louisiana Family Forum] “I don’t understand, when it comes to the teaching of critical thinking in an academic environment, why censorship would ever be encouraged.”

Hypocrisy aside (as I’m sure one could easily drum up 3 dozen different ideas or topics off the top of one’s head that would quickly lead Mr. Mills to reconsider his rather libertine stance on classroom “censorship”), the more pressing point is: what sides? Of what “sides” do you speak? The side of overwhelming scientific consensus, backed up by years of research and evidence published in peer-reviewed journals by trained professionals, experts in their fields, represented by the 40-plus Nobel-laureates who sent you letters encouraging that this thoroughly non-scientific bill to be repealed? You mean that side? The one that’s endorsed by all major scientific organizations the world over, as opposed to the other “side” consisting of a small but vocal minority who supposedly know better, or at least enough to contradict the textbooks and established curriculum by introducing whatever additional outside materials they’d like?

I’m reminded of a quote I read recently, attributed (almost certainly incorrectly) to Samuel Adams:

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

If you’ve heard it before, it may be because some in the Tea Party have adopted it as a unofficial slogan. That’s right. Read it once more and then consider what that really says about the Tea Party. (Not to conflate all Tea Party “patriots” with anti-science Creationists, but no doubt there’s a significant overlap.) Point being, don’t think for one second these folks don’t know what they’re doing.

Even some public school students are hip to their game, and are fortunately speaking out. And even though the city of New Orleans thankfully kept their wits about them (passing a resolution supporting the repeal of the law), it all appears too little too late as the evolution “supplement” will be allowed for yet another school year (its fourth).

Rand Paul Calls for Imprisoning Himself

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:30:35 -0400

Rand Paul Calls for Imprisoning Himself:

Kentucky’s esteemed Junior Senator, Dr. Rand Paul, on the Sean Hannity radio show last Friday:

I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

But as the lovely & lefty Barefoot and Progressive blog points out…

That’s certainly an interesting point of view by Rand.

Made all the more interesting by the fact that Rand Paul attended, even spoke at, a rally where militia members holding assault rifles advocated the violent overthrow of the government and execution of liberal journalists. You know, the same militia that is good buddies with the Hutaree out of Michigan that were arrested for plotting just that.

Said at the rally:

The question is: do we have the courage and the spirit of our forefathers? Our people do. Today we want to tell the Marxist control freaks out there, don’t dare cross that bridge. But we know they will. We the militia, and hopefully with your support, stand ready with no apologies, cause what we have forced upon us is not from a legitimate government…

The Declaration of Independence says that when a government is no longer beneficial or responsive to the people, it is our right and duty to change it. Now some citizens are holding out hope that the upcoming elections will better things, and you know we’ll wait and see. Lots of us believe that maybe that’s not reliable, considering the fact that the Fabian progressive socialists have been chipping away at our foundations. Regardless, the founders made sure we had plan B (holds up his gun). You know what that is.

The treasonous left wing socialist politicians, and their lapdogs in the press, have gotten a wedgie here recently in their underpants over the tea parties. And a little broken glass (wink, wink). I sure hope they’re out there today. If they read history, they should know and fear what came after those events over 200 years ago. This latest forced health care bill, which is really about people control, the same thing as gun control, is the modern day equivalent of the 1765 Stamp Act, its only more disastrous to our freedom living way of life, etc…

History it seems is ready to repeat itself. After a long and costly civil war that is eminent, and sure to be forced upon us, we are taking note of those who are responsible for the treason, and they will be held accountable. I advise the press to start getting it right from this moment on, and stop aiding and abetting un-American activities. Like the Tories of old, the worst shall be hung, most will be exiled, and I’m a contractor so I have a little bit of tar and feathers for those who are only partially guilty.

In closing, let me implore you to keep the torch of freedom burning bright, god bless the republic, death to the New World Order. We shall prevail.

IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears End

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:29:27 -0400

IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears End:

A nice compliment to the previously posted Foreign Policy article, further illustrating our misguided policies & misplaced priorities.

“Whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.” The forecasted date for when China is set to surpass us has moved up - 5 years.

The Y Article | FP

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:14:52 -0400

The Y Article | FP

[via Media Matters] Possibly one of The. Most. Insulting. things...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:21:00 -0400

[via Media Matters]

Possibly one of The. Most. Insulting. things I’ve heard in a long time (and for a FOX News program, that’s saying a lot).

“[The Teacher’s Unions] are churning out dummies […] and they’re doing it on purpose because dumb people are easier to lead. I really wonder if it’s not a concerted effort to keep our kids stupid.”

Before I even attempt to address the ignorance in this statement let me first acknowledge, thankfully, that it came from some former morning-zoo shock jock — “Mancow Muller” — while presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee (still not a fan) and his guests did the sensible thing and tried to reel the guy back in from his “way out there” comments. (The question remains, however, what business did Mr. “Mancow” have being on Mr. Huckabee’s program, or his so-called “news network,” to begin with?)

Regardless, I have never known a teacher, be they good or bad, who didn’t sincerely want their kids to succeed. I’ve witnessed some ineffective teachers, sure. But even they did what they could to try and educate their students the best that they could. The reality is — and this doesn’t even need arguing because it’s such basic, common sense — no one becomes a teacher in order to indoctrinate their students to some particular paternalistic political ideology, much less to actually act out this grand conspiracy on their own, forcibly manufacturing great unwashed hoardes of ignorant, pliable proles. Teachers want what’s best for their kids, period. (Some might take issue if data were to indicate that what’s best may be finding a new teacher, but for every one failing educator there are scores more who are passionate about improving the lives and minds of young people and who so very often prioritize their success far above themselves.)

All this doesn’t even take into account the internal lunacy of this man’s twisted logic. If Democrats were set on keeping the population dependent on government handouts then why would our programs be designed to lift people from poverty? Why would we seek to lower their tax burden by transplanting some of it to more wealthy individuals and corporate entities who can more easily afford it, and still stay well above the average and median incomes in this country? Not to mention that studies show more highly educated individuals tend to vote more liberal. True, the numbers have changed over time, and true, there are a large number of poorly-educated urban Democrats, but take the most recent presidential election, for instance; White voters without college degrees favored McCain by 17%, while votes with degrees favored Obama by 9%. Trust me, we don’t want to keep people ignorant, and thereby susceptible to demagogic pundits and politicians and faux news sources such as this. Now, I’ve given Mr. “Mancow” much more time and breath than his arguments deserve.