Asides

Magical Rethug Thinking

The zombie eyed granny starver demonstrates his compassionate conservatism

Having done my share of restaurant dish washing as a teenager living on Maui in the early Seventies, I found myself laughing out loud at this clip of Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan scouring pots and pans that had already been cleaned. (Notice how deftly Ryan, who Charlie Pierce calls “the zombie eyed granny starver”, prevents the camera from seeing the inside of the pans.) The venue for this overly staged PR puff piece was a volunteer soup kitchen, which just might go out of business should Ryan and Mitt Romney win the election.

As shown by a recent analysis of the Joint Committee on Taxation, a bi-partisan Congressional committee equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, the proposed Ryan-Romney tax plan is mathematically impossible to achieve.  The central feature of that plan is an across the board 20% tax cut (which overwhelmingly favors Romney and his fellow uber rich). In order to pay for it, even if the vast majority of the largest tax loopholes and deductions are eliminated, including charitable contributions that makes soup kitchens and other vital community services possible, the revenue raised by eliminating the write-offs  would  total something like 4%.

 Making up the deficit between 4% and 20% is pure faith based, trickle down, voodoo economics, predicated on all kinds of assumptions about “broadening the tax base.”  Which is precisely why the Romney-Ryan campaign refuses to provide specifics of their secret plan to balance the budget. (Shades of Nixon’s campaign promise of a secret plan to end the Vietnam war, which only worsened when he expanded the conflict into Laos and Cambodia.).
Promising to balance the budge by starving the government of desperately needed revenues, while simultaneously increasing the budget of the military industrial complex, is an exercise in magical thinking. Maybe Mitten’s magic underwear has shrunk to the point where it’s cutting off the blood to his brain.

Stay Thirsty My Friends

The most interesting man in the world on one of the least interesting men in the world.

Yeah, that sloshing the water around your teeth every time is so attractive.
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Did that leave a bad taste in your mouth?  K then, here’s your palette cleanser.

Mitt Channels Yogi

Jon Stewart asks Willard about his doublethink proposals: Are you a wizard…or a liar?

“I really didn’t say everything I said. […] Then again, I might have said ’em, but you never know.” – Yogi Berra

“I’m not familiar precisely with what I said, but I’ll stand by what I said, whatever it was.” –Mitt Romney, to Shawn of the Dead Hannity

 

It became obvious long ago that a fundamental component of the Romney campaign strategy is to spend a billion dollars fusing three of the most effective propaganda techniques ever devised by man: repetition, the Big Lie, and doublethink.

George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four provides some background:

“The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.”

[…]

Definition of doublethink: “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed….”

Not only has Merry-Go-Round-Now-Moderate-Mitt flip flopped on a plethora of issues, the latest being his position on abortion as he explained it to the Des Moines Register yesterday, but he lies unreMITTingly, not only about the Obama Administration’s record, but his own as well.

As has been said here and elsewhere many times, Willard will say anything to anyone at any time if he thinks it will move him one step closer to the White House. Last week’s debate is a prime example, with Romney telling a series of lies and propagating over two dozen “myths”  some of which  we documented here.

While the establishment media hasn’t been completely absent in noting some of his more egregious lies and flip flops, their record so far has been anemic, reflected in those polls that ask the public about their knowledge of, or more accurately, their level of confusion about specific issues. (The more common “horse race” polls also reflects this ignorance but to a lesser extant, given that they include subjective issues like a candidate’s “likability.”)

The big post-election question for the media is whether the Fourth Estate will live up to its structural responsibility for separating truth from fiction from downright lies. If it doesn’t, we will have completed the transition from the Walter Cronkite era, characterized by a non-profit, non-partisan approach to news and information; to the Rupert Murdoch era, where “news”– more accurately, “infotainment”– is merely the vehicle for propagating a larger corporatist agenda.

We begun and now end with a Yogi-ism that Willard has internalized to perfection, becoming its very embodiment:

When you come to a  fork in the road, take it.

 

RomBot5000 Severely Moderate 2.0 Download

That was my first thought, too:  “Does that junk work?”   “Does it has an off button?”

WASHINGTON, D.C.— In the face of what looked increasingly like an inevitable blowout by President Obama, Washington beltway wags were ecstatic this week after the nearly powered-off Rombot5000 provided the presidential race with an all-important infusion of high-grade lithium energy.

The surprising up-tick came immediately after an emergency software update just prior to the first presidential debate, dubbed by anonymous programmers as “Severely Moderate 2.0.”  Romney Campaign spokesman, Ben Dover, refused any characterization the update was emergency in nature, saying, “This was a planned incremental update, anticipated by Mr. Romney long before his main operating chip had become inarticulate.”

Dover was also tight-lipped about who actually writes and authorizes the downloads, referring all inquiries to the “Billionaires For Romney Consortium.”

Asked if the Rombot5000 would be performing in the next debate with the same upgrade, Dover said it didn’t really matter. “Our polling indicated we would not only win the first debate, but also that we would easily win all three debates, as well as the November 6 election.”

Pressed on specifically how their polling results were anything more than just the biased opinion of a few hundred Republicans, Dover said he wasn’t going to answer hypothetical questions, but that he did have an unspecified quantity of sodium chloride we could “all go pound.”

 

Tin Foiled Again (Update)

Three GOP Stooges, from left to right, Steve Forbes, Jack Welsh, Allen West, see Signs of an Obama conspiracy emanating from Der Tube

Sasquatch might as well have traipsed across the White House lawn Friday with a lost Warren Commission file on his way to the studio where NASA staged the moon landing. – Yahoo News

In the wake of a laughable GOP convention and an uplifting Democratic one, followed closely by the devastating disclosure of the Romney 47% moocher vid, polls showed Obama opening up a significant lead over Romney in the swing states, with favorable down-ticket results for the Democratic senate candidates as well.

This gave rise to the skewed polls conspiracy in which Wingers howled about a cabal of biased poll takers and librul media-ites working overtime to discourage Republican voters from showing up to vote.  As if their overwhelming hatred of President Blackenstein (h/t Bill Maher) wasn’t motivation enough.

The angry peasant mob hadn’t even made it to the White House Castle gates to vent their latest outrage when they were hit by yet another thunderstorm of cognitive dissonance, the September job numbers.  What the rest of the country welcomed as much needed rain during a long economic drought, the Wingers saw as a devastating flood that swept away one of their major talking points— unemployment over 8% during the entirety of the Obama Administration, proof that that Obama’s 2008 campaign pledge to lower the rate below 8% was as bogus as his current proposals and promises.

Now, there is always a certain amount of fluctuation in the final numbers of most economic metrics, such as GDP, which routinely undergoes two modifications after initial estimates are made. The uncertainty in estimating unemployment numbers is reflected in the divergent numbers provided by the two main data sets used for their calculation—monthly polling by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of some 50,000 households, the Household Data survey; and numbers provided by a list of employers, the Establishment Data survey. The Household Survey showed that for September “Total employment rose by 873,000”; and the Establishment Data showed “Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 114,000.” (Employment Situation News Release, October 5, 2012,  Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The smaller number in the Establishment Data is likely due to the fact that during an economic recovery, new employers are missed in monthly surveys that coincide with accelerations in the rate of recovery.  This was the case in September, which more fully accounted for rises in the July and August numbers.  Similarly, the slowdown in GDP in the second quarter caused a downward revision in the employment numbers for those months.  In general, underestimations are more common in uptrends, overestimations more common in downtrends, because of the inherent time lag factor. All of which creates an unavoidable, structural margin of error that necessitates subsequent revisions.

The spread between last month’s rate of 8.1% and this month’s 7.8% can thus be explained without resorting to wild conspiracy theories.  But in the GOP zeitgeist, the imagined presence of sinister Democratic plots plays into the larger narrative of Winger victimhood. How else to explain that despite their imagined superiority they don’t have total control of the US government?  And why current polls shows them to be the losers that they are?

That September’s unemployment number came in under 8% is proof of a diabolically engineered October Surprise, a deliberate manipulation of BLS data whose minions are acting on the orders of Obama’s re-election machine, identified by former GE Chairman Jack Welch in a tweet as “these Chicago guys.” Asked by Chris Matthews whether he had any proof, Welch admitted he had none, and insisted he wouldn’t change a single word of his tweet.

That didn’t stop other GOPers like former presidential candidate and Welch fellow plutocrat, Steve Forbes, from jumping into Teh Crazy pool. They were joined by right wing whackos like radio squawk host Laura Ingraham; Teabagger inspiration and CNBC reporter Rick Santelli; Michelle Bachmann‘s male counterpart in the House of Representatives,  Allen West, and of course Fux News’ leading conspiracy monger, Eric Bolling and Fux’s chief business host, Stuart Varney. (For a sampling of conspiracy tweets, see Media Matters’ compilation, and TPM’s tevee compilation.)

Prior to the conspiratorialists’ hijacking of the debate, the GOPers explained that the decrease in the unemployment rate is due to a number of factors;  an increase in part-timers (often a preliminary to full time employment); lazy people content to live off “free stuff,” like unemployment insurance;  and people who have simply given up because the economic outlook is perceived as being so dismal. (Never do we hear from the Willardites, or the MSM for that matter, about the 7,600 Baby Boomers who turn 60 every day, the traditional retirement age, but are still counted as individuals no longer looking for work.)

But the tin foil hat crew, aka Job Truthers, has broken new ground.  Conn Carroll, the Washington Examiner’s senior editorial writer, tweeted that while he didn’t think that the BLS cooked the numbers, it was rather the case of  “a bunch of Dems [who] lied about getting jobs.”  The implication being that the Free Stuffers are an integral part of the poll skewing conspiracy, who hope to re-elect Obama by making the employment picture look rosier than it is, just to keep those checks a-comin’.

Now, all this could be passed off as just so much election year craziness, of no consequence after Nov. 6.  But with public trust in government already at a modern low, assailing the reputation of a critical government agency like the BLS, composed of career economists who have a history of serving both Republican and Democratic administrations in an exemplary, non-partisan manner— that is the real danger here.

TPM describes the BLS and its operations as follows:

For starters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t currently run by a political appointee.  For most of Obama’s term, the commissioner was a holdover appointed by President Bush.  The current acting commissioner John Gavin is a career BLS economist, not an Obama appointee.

The underlying data behind the BLS reports is also publicly released and used by analysts across the private sector and academia, meaning a conspiracy would have to survive scrutiny from trained economists of all political stripes.

Nor is there much time to cook the books at the top level if they wanted to.

Even if the Rethugs manage to lose this year’s election through sheer foot-shooting incompetence, they can point to success in their long range goal of undermining the public’s trust in government, as well as their trust in “facts.”  Their previous strategy of obstructionism and polarization is being augmented this election cycle by attacking the credibility of previously unassailable government institutions, as well as vital private and public polling agencies.

Even if they lose, they win.

Or so they think.

UPDATE (10/9):  Wacky Welch out at Reuters and Fortune Magazine.

Sez Fortune:

Welch said he will no longer contribute to Fortune following critical coverage of the former CEO of General Electric, saying he would get better “traction” elsewhere. On Friday, Welch suggested that the Obama administration, calling them “these Chicago guys,” had manipulated the monthly jobs report in order to make the economy look better than it actually is just weeks before the election. Welch has been battered by criticism since making the suggestion on Twitter.

Aw, another poor, picked upon billionaire.

Debate Post-Mortem (Update)

Big Bird responds to Romney’s promise to carve him up for Thanksgiving dinner

As the debate post-mortems flood in, the overwhelming consensus is that Willard Mitt Romney won, at least on style.  Charlie Pierce begins his critique of President Obama’s performance with a boxing analogy:

The thing is, if you’re going to play rope-a-dope, sooner or later, you have to come off the ropes and throw a punch. You bounce off the ropes and land the left and then the right over the top, and then the other guy goes out of the ring in a blanket. Otherwise, it’s just a way to get yourself punched in the stomach a lot. Along about the 48-minute mark of Wednesday night’s debate, it became clear to me that the president simply was not going to do that.

And, because of the president’s unaccountable lassitude — is it possible that the whole angry-black-man kerfuffle ginned up on the right on Monday got into the man’s head a little? — Willard Romney was able to portray himself as a firm, principled national figure of what passes for the rational center. I didn’t think that was possible.

In my view, a better metaphor would be a mixed martial arts match. Obama entered the cage with heavily padded 20 ounce boxing gloves while Romney opted for 4 ounce MMA grapplers that allowed him hit a lot harder and wrestle and pin O to the mat. As for the re-release Monday of a 2007 vid of Senator Obama delivering a public critique of the Bush Administration’s of post-Katrina aid to New Orleans, I do believe it was a deliberate attempt to get inside O’s head, muting his natural instincts to throw some elbows lest he conform to the angry black man racial stereotype that the right is always ready to smear him with.

Style issues aside, Mitt “make up a number” Romney offered nothing of substance. Unless his performance as a substantial liar counts. Big Orange has started to make a list:

Romney lied:

When he claimed that “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” They’re not.
When he said that President Obama had “cut Medicare by $716 billion to pay for Obamacare.” Obama didn’t.
When he denied proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. He did.
When he said President Obama had “added almost as much to the federal debt as all the prior presidents combined.” Not even close.
When he resurrected “death panels.” That was called “one of the biggest whoppers of the night.”
When he stated that half the green energy companies given stimulus funds had failed. Only if three out of nearly three dozen is half.

Stay tuned. These just scratch the surface.

ThinkProgress uses a less confrontational term– “myths.” Some 27 of them delivered in a mere 38 minutes, to be exact. Romney’s biggest whopper remains his promise to balance the budget while raising defense spending by $2 trillion; and by extending the Bush tax cuts and implementing new ones that overwhelmingly favors the uber rich and corporations. Kaching-– add another $5 trillion debt to the US Treasury.

Now, Romney claims that it will all be paid for by cutting costs in discretionary programs (sans defense), and by closing tax loopholes and eliminating exemptions. But he has adamantly refused to identify which loopholes and exemptions he would eliminate. And the only cut out of the discretionary budget that he identified was to end the public subsidy of the Public Broadcast System, which includes among other programs, debate moderator Jim “call me a feckless whimp” Leher‘s Newshour, and Sesame Street.

If Big Bird becomes the main course for the Romney’s Thanksgiving spread, expect the appetizers to include Kermit frog legs, served up by a submissive staff of former educators: Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, and  Mrs. Sparklenose.

 

UPDATE 10/5:  Huffpo quotes Rick Santorum on killing Big Bird:

“I’ve voted to kill Big Bird in the past,” he said when asked about his position on the issue. “So, I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Big Bird. I mean, you can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don’t know.”

Pass the gravy.