Zakaria vs Beck

Oh, Fareed. You sexy, sexy man.



Well done.

8 Things People Shouldn't Know

This is awesome. I'm simply quoting in full:

There are a number things the public "knows" as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.

Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and beganbefore the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn't work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.

This stuff really matters.

If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.

If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn't work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.

If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.

Data Points on the Muslim Thing

A man walked into a mosque with a wine bottle in hand, shouted some lovely racial slurs, and pissed on the prayer rugs.

What fun this is.  Thank you, Republicans.

"Are You A Muslim?" If Yes, Get Stabbed.

These are the wages of the divisive hatred that the professional right continually spews.

According to Detective Marc Nell, at 6:12 pm last night, the driver picked up Michael Enright, 21, of Brewster, NY, at the intersection of 24th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. The cab proceeded to drive north, and Enright asked the driver, who Nell identified as a 43-year-old Asian male, if he was Muslim. After the driver responded that he was, Enright allegedly stabbed him repeatedly with a Leatherman tool, according to police.

"[Enright] stabbed the driver in the throat, right arm, left forearm, right thumb and upper lip," Nell said.

From TPM:

Our reporter Eric Lach just spoke to the NYPD. They confirmed the key details of the story and said the attack will be charged as 2nd degree attempted murder and a hate crime. The suspect in the case is Michael Enright, 21. Full report soon.

"But we don't support violence!  We just think that Muslims aren't real Americans, that all Muslims are Jihadists, and that they want to dominate America with their Sharia Law!"


In fact, this crime reminds me of this near assault by the Tea Partiers:

Right Wing Terrorists, part 26

There was another right wing terrorist arrested this week after a shootout with the cops. He had loaded a mini arsenal into a pickup truck, and was heading to the ACLU and the Tides Foundation to "start a revolution."  Where have you heard of the Tides Foundation, you ask? Well, Hannity has mentioned it twice, but the only other person in the media to have mentioned it is Glenn Beck, who flogs it constantly.

Here's Dana Milbank, doing good work:

Beck has at times spoken against violence, but he more often forecasts it, warning that "it is only a matter of time before an actual crazy person really does something stupid." Most every broadcast has some violent imagery: "The clock is ticking. . . . The war is just beginning. . . . Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government. . . . You have to be prepared to take rocks to the head. . . . The other side is attacking. . . . There is a coup going on. . . . Grab a torch! . . . Drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers. . . . They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered. . . . They are putting a gun to America's head. . . . Hold these people responsible."

Beck has prophesied darkly to his millions of followers that we are reaching "a point where the people will have exhausted all their options. When that happens, look out." One night on Fox, discussing the case of a man who killed 10 people, Beck suggested such things were inevitable. "If you're a conservative, you are called a racist, you want to starve children," he said. "And every time they do speak out, they are shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?"

Here's one idea: Stop encouraging them.

Those quotes are shocking. Of course, when someone does exactly what he constantly advocates, he throws his hands up and says he had nothing to do with it.

Glenn Beck and Goldline, Visualized

The good people over at Ritholtz.com have produced this beauty:

It is, as you can see, quite huge.  Click on it to get the full version.  It's both informative and funny.

Rep Inglis(R) Is Now Free To Speak

Republican Representative Bob Inglis has been making a splash lately.  He lost his GOP primary because he had the gall to try to lead his constituents away from the fever swamps by telling them to "Turn turn the television off when Glenn Beck comes on."  Remember, Inglis was a 1994 Republican Revolutionary, and no moderate.  Of course, Rep. Inglis lost to his Tea Partying opponent.  There is no room in the Republican Party for anything but the most hard core conservatives.

Luckily for us, now that he's not beholden to his crazy-ass voters he's giving "straight-talk" to the AP:

Inglis, 50, who calls himself a Jack Kemp disciple because he has emphasized outreach to minorities as the late Republican congressman did, thinks racism is a part of the vitriol directed at President Barack Obama.

"I love the South. I'm a Southerner. But I can feel it," he said.

Racism. It's the Teapartiers, my friends.  When your spiritual leader is someone that's convinced Obama is ruining the economy on purpose in order to give him the chance to make reparations to the blacks for slavery, then Racism is par for the course.

"There were no death panels in the bill ... and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It's not leadership. It's demagoguery," said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.

Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you're "preying on their fears" and turn away.

Ahhh, honesty. Refreshing.

"I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading," he said. "What it takes to lead is to say, 'You know, that's just not right.'"

Inglis said the rhetoric also distracts from the real problems that politicians should be trying to resolve, such as budget deficits and energy security.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

Very nice, Rep Inglis. Way to Lead.  Better late than never.

Boortz Call - Oil Leak Rebuttals

Neal just loves leaving out relevant facts.  Here I am adding some of those back into the discussion on the BP Oil Leak:



Specifically, he's been making flagrantly wrong accusations about the Jones Act and the US refusing help from other countries because they don't meet the EPA regulations.  It's just wrong.  (Of course, I flubbed the Jones Act regulation - I meant "inside 3 miles" instead of "outside 3 miles")

While I was at it, I threw in some information on the underutilization of National Guard troops.

He sure does love burning through my time with nonsense interruptions, doesn't he?

Boortz Call - Israeli Flotilla

Here I am calling in and giving Neal Boortz the business over the Flotilla incident.  I think I did well.  I even had enough time to set up the audience and deal with his attempts to burn through my airtime.

(I barely avoided badmouthing Florida's diving... they've got enough to deal with without someone on national radio talking down their tourist draws.)

More Right Wing Terrorists

Here's video of the middle aged white guy carrying his can of gasoline and his pipe bomb, right before he used those things to destroy a Mosque in Florida:



Tally another one for the hate-motivated, talk radio right, eh?

This happened 10 days ago... imagine if it had been a middle aged Islamic Guy, attacking a Catholic Church. Something tells me we would have heard about it.

Limbaugh's On To Us!

I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig.... Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist whackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they're sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they're sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing here.

Yup. He's got us!  There's nothing environmentalists love like causing an oil spill that could be many times as large as the Exxon Valdez.  Right.  Cuz that's good for the environment... in the long run, obviously.  The short run is a series of horrors, granted, but you can't make an omelet without dousing a few million water fowl in sweet crude, eh?

Beck and Violence

Glenn Beck, who absolutely does not advocate for violence:

Gun sales are going up through the roof.

And let me tell you something, I really truly believe the reason why -- a lot of Americans aren't paying attention to this -- is because they...does anybody remember the poem, you know, first they came for the Jews and I didn't stand up because I wasn't a Jew? Do you know that -- from Germany?

In the end, I think this is the problem. First, they came for the banks. I wasn't a banker. I didn't really care. I didn't stand up and say anything.

Then they came for the AIG executives. Then they came for the car companies -- and I didn't say anything.

Until it gets down to you -- most people don't see they are coming for you at some point. You're on the list. Everybody's on the list.

The Nazi Democrats are coming for you, so gun sales are going through the roof!

Redirecting the TeaBaggers

Hey, Teabaggers... want to do something useful? Look through this nifty map of the Federal Budget and tell us what to cut!

Aside: isn't it funny that the Tax Protesters were nowhere to be found during the Bush Presidency?  And they main thing they're protesting - the "socialist" bailouts - were began under Bush!  Remember, you never heard that Bush was anything but a Conservative Lion until late 2006, when it was clear the Republicans were going to get obliterated in the midterm elections because of their lockstep ties to the former President.  What this says about the real motivation behind the protests is not pretty.

Beck the Secessionist

Beck, in his own words:

You can’t convince me that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and if a state says: ‘I don’t want to go there, because that’s suicide, they have a right to back out. They have a right — people have a right to not commit economic suicide...

...Texas says go to hell, Washington, which by the way has been said before. I believe it was Davey Crocket...it’s about time that somebody says that again."

I think that this issue might be considered settled after the little thing called the Civil War.

Beck Loves Vampires and Militias... and McVeigh?

If you've been watching Glenn Beck, then you know he's obsessed with Vampires sucking the blood of the innocent, by which he means the horrible atrocity that is a Government financed by tax revenue.  It's violent commentary - literally blood soaked.  If you think he's just weird enough to make it all up on his own, you can be forgiven, but it turns out to have a more storied pedigree:

There you see Operation Vampire Killer, where this rhetoric got it start.  It's proudly displayed next to the Militiaman's Handbook at a militia convention.  See if this sounds familiar:

We in America, Officers and private citizens alike, are fortunate that at this moment in our history we can still LAWFULLY EXTERMINATE these parasitic Global Blood Suckers by placing numerous "STAKES" made of words, paper, pen, and hard work through their hardened hearts.

[…]

Very soon, if we do not stop these world government proponents, and install in places of leadership honorable men and women, all military, national guardsmen and officers of the law will be used as the "enforcement arm" to guarantee a full complement of "volunteers" for these imperialists' "peaceful" socialist global society.

Beck talks about driving stakes through the hearts of the government vampires all the time.

This dovetails nicely with the reading McVeigh did before committing his heinous act of terrorism:

Mr. McVeigh's reading, which he pressed on his sister, Jennifer, among others, also included Spotlight, the newsletter of the anti-semitic Liberty Lobby, Patriot Report, a far-right Christian identity newsletter that would later declare the Oklahoma bombing a plot by "the real hate groups," namely the F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to crack down on armed paramilitary groups, and a strange document titled "Operation Vampire Killer 2000."

Written by Jack McLamb, a former Phoenix police sergeant, it seeks to enlist police and military personnel against "the ongoing, elitist covert operation which has been installed in the American system with great stealth and cunning." It continues, "They, the globalists, have stated that the date of termination of the American way of life is the year 2000."

When the nuts amongst their followers take this rhetoric to its unavoidable conclusion, people like Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and O'Reilly will scream bloody murder at the merest hint that they have some blame in the matter.  But clearly, they have created the climate for this violence.  They must take some responsibility.

RedState Thinks Armed Forces Command Themselves?

Obama gave the order for violent escalation last Friday, and today everything was in place for the operation to go forward.

A senior US official tells me that President Barack Obama approved a recommendation by Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen to dispatch special forces to the US scene on Friday.

These special forces were authorized to take action "in extremis" against the Somali pirates holding Maersk Captain Richard Phillips, 53, hostage on a motorized lifeboat off the coast of Somalia.

A senior official tells me that when the fourth Somali pirate was on the Bainbridge ship, Phillips moved to side of the lifeboat to relieve himself.

At that point, U.S. special forces saw their opportunity and took other three pirates out.

Captain Phillips is now safe aboard a U.S. vessel.

It's "going to make a great movie," a U.S. official adds.

RedState is having none of it:

In the end, Captain Phillips wasn’t saved by the President, but by his own courageous plunge and the deadly professionalism of our men with guns. The President, you see, was saved by the Captain.

They spin a story of the President paralyzed with fear, unable to contemplate that most horrible option of using force.  Then, when the deed is done all they can muster is "Obama doesn't deserve credit!"  

Once again, this is an utter failure of expectations management by the GOP.  They have to learn that Obama is playing long ball here, and that by trying to react with maximum indignation within every newscycle they end up looking like craven, waffling idiots, unable to craft any sort of coherent message and clearly uninterested in the task of governing.

Will this sort of frantic attack on every front eventually result in Obama's approval ratings falling, or will it serve to help keep the GOP isolated to the Talk Radio extremes?  We'll see.

American Exceptionalism

Sigh. Obama is the man.

This is the sane view of American Exceptionalism: that America holds a special place in history as the first great Democracy, and further for fighting for people's freedoms across the world.  Finally, as an American, I think it's particularly great.  This view is in stark contrast to Rush Limbaugh's definition, which I am not making up: that America is the exception!  That the rules that apply to other countries to not apply to us!  Anything less is blaming America first!

What astounding arrogance in these Talk-Radio Republicans.

Obama's Successful Presidency

As a followup to the NASDAQ post, we now have the DOW above where Obama took office.  So therefore he's a successful President, and Wall Street approves of his policies.

I think that's what I've learned from Fox News and Talk Radio.

Can't Give the Queen what She Wants?

I just don't understand what gives the Fox/Talk Radio crowd the vapors these days.  They're hyperventilating now about the fact that the Obamas gave the Queen a video IPod, and the horrible breach of etiquette this represents.  It's funny, cuz I remember these same Republicans being appalled by this:

Wait, was it "appalled," or "never mentioned?" I can't remember.

Of course, this is made doubly ridiculous by the fact that the Queen requested the Video IPod. She had a previous generation IPod already, but she wanted the neat toy that could play video.  She should have gone for the Touch.

Update: DKos put together a video of the outrage, and a British spokesperson's succinct rebuttal.

Europe doesn't hate Obama?

I thought I had heard that Europe thinks Obama is taking America "to hell" with his stimulus plans and regulatory ideas?  Well, apparently not.  But I thought I heard that over and over again on talk radio and Fox News.  Do you think they didn't check their sources?  They wouldn't run with a story that wasn less than the truth just to make Obama look bad, would they?

Reporting from Los Angeles and London -- The G-20 leaders will pour at least $1 trillion into the global economy in an effort to stimulate recovery from a worldwide downturn and will push for greater regulation of the financial industry, officials said this morning.

In a televised news conference from London, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the key elements of the plan, including an additional $500 billion for the International Monetary Fund, $250 billion in IMF Special Drawing Rights and $250 billion to boost trade.

The leaders of the major economies also pledged to work on such regulatory issues as pay and bonuses for executives and bringing financial instruments such as hedge funds into tighter government control. Many blame the new investment instruments, including derivatives and credit swaps, for the economic contraction around the world.

"This is the day that the world came together to fight back against the global recession," Brown told reporters.

"Our message today is clear and certain. We believe that in this new global age, our prosperity is indivisible,' he said. "We believe that growth, to be sustained, must be shared, and that trade must once again become an engine of growth. The old Washington consensus is over; today we have reached a new consensus."

"There are no quick fixes. But with the six pledges that we make today, we can shorten the recession and save jobs."

The six pledges may not have been everything Obama said he wanted, but it is excellent nonetheless.  And when you're dealing with someone like Obama, a cautious poker player, it's difficult to say that his "Ask" wasn't merely a strategic opening, leading to the outcome he originally desired.  A trillion dollars is no slouch, and the work to strengthen regulations is key to establishing a healthy period of real economic growth.

The Republicans really need to learn how to set expectations.  They've turned this trip from an impending disaster, where the EU rebukes Obama harshly, into a remarkable accomplishment, with Obama brokering deals and closing the breach between American and the rest of the world.