Mittens Gonna' Pump It!

How the mighty have fallen.

Totally brought this to mind!

ZOMG KARL ROVE TRIED TO STEAL TEH ELECTION!!!1! -or- The Left has Loonies Too!

Yes, my fellow lefties, we have loonies in our camp as well.  Not nearly as many as our colleagues on the right, mind you, but we do have our share.  The current incarnation of the left-wing version of "FEMA death camps" is the "Anonymous thwarted Karl Rove from stealing the election."  Yes, that's right.  Sites and people that I respect are actually spreading this tripe far and wide.  It all stems from a video and letter supposedly released by Anonymous claiming to have thwarted the Turd Blossom's minions from changing election results (by magic, I suppose...).

And that, along with a video, represents the sum of the evidence that is being presented to "prove" that Rove and the GOP attempted to perpetrate electoral fraud.  If you believe this, then you're as dumb as the wingnuts who believed in "death panels."  Read the inferences some are making:

The skeptics among us might be quick to dismiss this story, but I say not so fast.  We do know that Anonymous exists, and they have been adept at penetrating servers.  They have revealed gaping security holes, disabled websites in the name of a free and open internet, and even launched cyber attacks against the Pentagon. They stole NYPD surveillance video of OWS protesters. Though unconfirmed, they claim to have stolen one million Apple UDIDs from an FBI laptop.  There is no doubt that Anonymous, however ambiguous or loosely affiliated it may be, is real. And frankly they have proven themselves to be less bullshit prone than our politicians and broadcast media outlets.

I'll bet an advanced civilization from Alpha Centauri could manage the task too.  Why not just attribute it to them?  It's just as possible.  This is a classic example of an Appeal to Probability fallacy.  Just because something could happen means it must happen.

Even Thom Hartman gets in on the act.

Pending further "evidence," this will remain in the loony bucket.

"The Vagina is a Prism..."

Uhhhh, say WHAT?  Apparently, it's one explanation for why Obama won the single woman demographic.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The Electoral College Must Die

The electoral college does nothing but distort electoral outcomes.

Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota have 16 votes for 4.6 million people, and New York State has 20 votes for 19.4 million people. It takes 287,500 people in the aforementioned red states to get one electoral vote, whereas in New York State it takes 668, 965 people to get one electoral vote — that’s more than double the amount of New Yorkers needed for a single vote in the Electoral College.

That's seriously screwed up.  When these tiny western-state tails continue to wag the big-state dog, we're not living in a real democracy*.



*The first person who opines "We don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic" get's punched in the nose.

 

Who's Ready for 2016???

Kill me... Kill me now...

The Schadenfreude Reel!

Brilliant!

God Help Me but I Agree with S.E. Cupp

At about the 5:40 mark, S.E. Cupp, irritating and shrill conservative commentator from MSNBC, makes the very legitimate point that the distance between the Bush foreign policy and the Obama foreign policy is not much and that the left have not held Obama to account for the drone war that's killed thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ep. 266 November 9, 2012 - Overtime

Fox News has a Moment of Clarity

It was remarkable that, on election night, Fox News actually acted like a real news organization.

[O]n Tuesday night, the people in charge of Fox News were confronted with a stark choice after it became clear that Mr. Romney had fallen short: was Fox, first and foremost, a place for advocacy or a place for news? 

In this moment, at least, Fox chose news.

Despite Karl Rove's tantrum, the journalistic instincts of the Fox team broke through the bubble that Fox itself had such a big hand in creating and they reported that, indeed, Ohio had gone to President Obama.

The best journalistic instincts of Fox’s news people kicked in and the hard reality of Mr. Obama’s triumph was allowed to land as it occurred. In doing so, the network avoided marginalizing itself and ended, at least for a night, its war on the president.

So while the GOP goes through it's internal convulsions, perhaps Fox can take a good, hard look at their strategy and help the Republicans break out of their bubble.

 

Twilight of the Romneverse

That fateful night Romney lost...

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked. 

"Fiscally conservative," sighed one aide the next day.

Your Moment of Victory

This victory dance brought to you by Minnesota Marriage Equality!

Ignorance is a Competitive Disadvantage

I believe the phrase you're looking for here is... NO DUH!

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election. 

Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. WorldNetDaily brought you birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka the Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemies in a "Grand Jihad" against America. Seriously? 

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pandered in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they were plausible presidents rather than national jokes who'd lose worse than George McGovern.

The left does this occasionally, but rarely to this degree.  Nobody on the left would mistake ThinkProgress for The New York Times.  But conservatives frequently cite opinion sites like breitbart.com or Hot Air as if they were "news."  They're not.  Until you figure that out, your competitive disadvantage will endure.

The Anthropology of Modern Conservatives

French sociologist Émile Durkheim

Paul Krugman articulates my thoughts about conservative rage better than I can so I'll just outsource it to him.

[W]hat we’ve just seen [in the recent Rage Against the Pollsters] is a peek into the modern right-wing psyche, which is obsessed — more than anything else — with power. Policy is one thing; but equally or even more important is the sense of being with the winners, of being part of the team that will stamp its boots on the faces of the other guys. And while conservatives of that ilk would probably concede if pressed on it that there’s a difference between the perception of being on top and the reality determined in an election, emotionally they can’t separate the two: they perceive anyone suggesting that maybe they aren’t going to smash their opponents as a threat.

Krugman's paraphrase of O'Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four, 

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.  

is entirely appropriate.  The world for modern conservatives is made entirely of winners and losers (makers and takers).  There is nothing better than being a winner and nothing worse than being a loser.  And as the captain of the German bobsled team is rumored to have said,

Second place is just first loser!

There is no compromise, there is only victory.  And that human face under the iron boot?  Well, it's the generic face of all liberals and apostate conservatives (now, apparently, including Chris Christie).

It's all about that fleeting thrill of being a winner... That momentary high of Durkheimian "collective effervescence" that being on the winning team brings to the individual participant is a powerful drug.  But it becomes pathological to the modern conservative.

As Durkeim wrote in his masterwork The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, a Study in Religious Sociology, the transcendent emotions brought forth by the collective feeling (in this case, of winning) are very, very strong especially when you consider the context of that feeling as a religious one.

Feeling himself dominated and carried away by some sort of an external power which makes him think and act differently than in normal times, he naturally has the impression of being himself no longer.  It seems to him that he has become a new being: the decorations  he puts on and the masks that cover his face figure materially in this interior transformation, and to a still greater extent, they aid in determining its nature. And as at the same time all  his companions feel themselves transformed in the same way and express this sentiment by their cries, their gestures and their general attitude, everything is just as though he really were transported into a special world, entirely different from the one where he ordinarily lives, and into an environment filled with exceptionally intense forces that take hold of him and metamorphose him. How could such experiences as these, especially when they are repeated every day for weeks, fail to leave in him the conviction that there really exist two heterogeneous and mutually incomparable worlds? One is that where his daily life drags wearily along; but he cannot penetrate into the other without at once entering into relations with extraordinary powers that excite him to the point of frenzy.  The first is the profane world, the second, that of sacred things.

While all political systems, like religious systems, embody this form to one degree or another, it is particularly strong and overtly pathological in American conservatism these days.  We crave that collective feeling of power, of frenzy and, ultimately for the political conservative, of winning.  Take that away and you've literally taken away a powerful force that their psyche craves.

The Real Winner Last Night?

This guy...  Oh, and statistics...  My dad would be so happy!

Financial Times Economist Martin Wolf goes Full Krugman

Witness the intellectual turnaround:

In sum, we have no reason to regard the performance of the US economy under President Obama as poor, given the conditions he inherited. But this does not mean that recovery could not have been far stronger. Policy was insufficiently supportive of a stronger recovery. That is partly because the administration underestimated the forces for contraction. It is still more because of the opposition of the Republicans to any stimulus. In an economy afflicted by the implosion of a huge credit boom, the forces for contraction were bound to be both strong and enduring. With interest rates at zero, the effectiveness of monetary policy was limited. Given this, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which amounted to an average of a little under 2 per cent of GDP in the years it was effective, was plainly too small.

Binder of Massachusetts Women

While the meme is, to me, hilarious.

The truth behind it is not so funny.  In 2003, Romney dismantled the Massachusetts state Office of Affirmative Action that protected women and minorities during the hiring process for government employment.

Romney signed his executive order, which simultaneously repealed seven orders by previous governors, on June 17 -- Bunker Hill Day, a Suffolk County holiday when state and city offices were closed. Romney's order received little attention at the time, but black and Hispanic leaders say its full impact became clear over the ensuing weeks, in conversations among political activists and elected officials. "In a very quiet and [seemingly] innocuous act, Governor Romney undid through that executive order about 25 years of work," said state Senator Dianne Wilkerson, a Roxbury Democrat and the only black member of the state Senate. "It's much, much more far-reaching than has been acknowledged by the administration. Symbolically, it could be a death blow to affirmative action. The scary thing is that there's never been a conversation about it." 

[...] 

But [Boston City Councilor Chuck] Turner said Romney gutted the previously existing affirmative action initiatives, and replaced them with a vague set of guidelines that could be flouted by state managers with no consequences. The new guidelines, he said, lack teeth. 

Under the old executive orders, if the state's director of affirmative action found an agency manager to be "not in compliance" with hiring and promotion goals, he or she could impose "a hiring freeze on any or all positions of the agency." Romney's order outlines no repercussions for state managers who don't comply with affirmative action rules, Turner said. 

"There are no consequences if they don't comply, and no guidelines to follow," Turner said. "So right now, there are no principles in place to use in terms of implementing it."

Elder Romney Aide Disowns Mitt

A former aide to Mitt Romney's father issued a stern smackdown of Mitt today.

Mr. De Vries said he was annoyed by Mr. Romney’s repeated references recently to his father as inspiration and influence on him. 

“I just don’t see it,” he said. “Where is it? Is it on issues, no? On the way he campaigns? No.” 

Mr. De Vries continued, “George would never have been seen with the likes of Sheldon Adelson or Donald Trump.”

Part of me sincerely believes that Mitt is quite embarrassed at the turn his party has taken since 2001 when the entire Republican party took a dive off The Crazy Cliffs and landed in Lake Lunacy.  But then he's been doubling-down on Republican lunacy since 2008 so it's probably too late to stop now.

Both Sides Can't Do It

Because ‘Americans are philosophical conservatives but operational liberals,' the Romney/Ryan bullshit plays well with the electorate.

Romney/Ryan get a bottomless stack of Get Out Of Budget Nonsense Jail Free Cards because the 2 + 2 = 5 stuff resonates with – feeds into – a certain kind of utopian conservative fantasy. It’s aspirational, rugged individualism stuff. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all just stood on our own two feet! Since saying this sort of stuff amounts to signaling to the base ‘I’m one of you!’, it is easily discounted as rhetoric – because that is, in fact, what it is. This produces a kind of feedback loop. The more you use this stuff just to signal you’ve got the right attitude, the more it becomes noise for any other signaling purpose. You are no longer able to talk about the budget, because talking about the budget is just a proxy way of expressing a personal virtue ethics. By contrast, if Obama were to advocate expansions as radical as the cuts Romney/Ryan are advocating, everyone would take it seriously – literally. And well they should. Democrats would never advocate sweeping expansions unless they wanted them, and meant to try to get them. Because it’s not as though there are significant portions of the electorate who fantasize, vaguely, about the government being vastly vaster – but who would balk at any any attempt actually to do it – who can be pandered to, philosophically. 

Making government bigger, for embiggening’s sake, is no one’s hazy dream of personal virtue; cutting the government, for cutting’s sake, is.

American Politics Inaction In Action

Ezra Klein FTW.

Romney can tell you exactly what he wants to do, but barely a word about how he’ll do it. Obama can’t describe what he wants to achieve, but he can tell you everything about how he’ll get it done. It’s a campaign without real policies against a campaign lacking a clear vision.

Why Mitt Romney and the Modern GOP Should be Barred From Government Forever

Simply because of this and this.  Nobody should have to die because of a "moral hazard."  Ever.

Expansionary Austerity REDUX -or- Contracting Contractionary Contraction

Fucked by the Very Serious People yet again! 

We're all Ned Beatty now.

Back when austerity was all the rage (and for many of our more "intellectually challenged" politicians it still is), there was serious debate about how much damage a policy of austerity could cause to an economy already in recession.  The Very Serious People maintained that it was important to "get our fiscal house in order," and to cut, cut, cut, or... BOND VIGILANTES... and also HYPERINFLATION!!1!!1!

This cutting, in turn, would lead to a new era of growth and prosperity.  Because we all know that cutting taxes increases revenue, right?  So cutting government spending in a recession will cause unlimited GDP growth.

Others, like economist Paul Krugman, argued that the act of cutting government spending during a recession would only make things worse.  "Tut, tut," said the Very Serious People.  "We must tighten our belts."

So how's that workin' out?  Not to fucking well according to the IMF...

With many economies in fiscal consolidation mode, a debate has been raging about the size of fiscal multipliers. The smaller the multipliers, the less costly the fiscal consolidation. At the same time, activity has disappointed in a number of economies undertaking fiscal consolidation. So a natural question is whether the negative short-term effects of fiscal cutbacks have been larger than expected because fiscal multipliers were underestimated.

So what is a fiscal multiplier you ask?  Let's see what Wikipedia has to say.

In economics, the fiscal multiplier is the ratio of a change in national income to the change in government spending that causes it... When this multiplier exceeds one, the enhanced effect on national income is called the multiplier effect. The mechanism that can give rise to a multiplier effect is that an initial incremental amount of spending can lead to increased consumption spending, increasing income further and hence further increasing consumption, etc., resulting in an overall increase in national income greater than the initial incremental amount of spending. In other words, an initial change in aggregate demand may cause a change in aggregate output (and hence the aggregate income that it generates) that is a multiple of the initial change. 

Conversely, the multiplier can operate in the negative.  This happens when the government cuts spending instead of increasing it.  The multiplier amplifies the cut through the economy making a $1 cause potentially more that $1 worth of contraction.  How much more?

The main finding, based on data for 28 economies, is that the multipliers used in generating growth forecasts have been systematically too low since the start of the Great Recession, by 0.4 to 1.2, depending on the forecast source and the specifics of the estimation approach. Informal evidence suggests that the multipliers implicitly used to generate these forecasts are about 0.5. So actual multipliers may be higher, in the range of 0.9 to 1.7.

So that $1 can now cost somewhere between $0.90 and $1.70.  That's a really bad investment.

So cutting government spending is a pathway to growth exactly how?

We should be spending like drunken sailors on shore leave.  Interest rates are 0% and millions are out of work.  What the fuck are we doing???

How's that austerity plan looking now?