Month: April 2011

Tackling a segment on The Takeway, TNC debunks the myth that blacks fought for the Confederacy. Why the belief endures: 

That black people are participants in the spread of this myth doesn't mean much to me. I'm sure somewhere there are Jews who deny the Holocaust. All this says to me is that it is extremely painful–for blacks and whites–to face up to the fact that Civil War was about the right of white people to pilfer the labor of blacks. We really need to believe that our ancestors were better than this. But they weren't. And, as proven by our inability to accept the truth, neither are we.

Amy Davidson nods. Coates follows up here. Shaun Mullen is in related territory:

The great difference between the Civil War and every other war in American history is that it is still being fought, in this case by a rag bag of organizations like the League of the South that are made up of Lost Causers, delusionists who many generations on remain so willfully wrong about the role that slavery played in the destruction of their precious South.

But the beards were awesome.

Here's a classic piece of essentially dishonesty:

There is a lot of blaming Bush in this speech. Quick perspective: Using numbers from the U.S. Treasury, we see that the debt during Bush’s eight years in office increased from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion, or $4.9 trillion over eight years. That’s bad; that’s basically $610 billion per year. But in the less than three years Obama has been in office, the debt has increased from $10.6 trillion to $14.2 trillion, a $3.6 trillion increase in about 27 months.  In other words, Obama is increasing the debt by $1.6 trillion per year, three times as fast as Bush.

I'm not doubting the facts here. But as any fool knows, Obama inherited an imploding economy with massive effects on revenue and spending that he had no choice but to respond to. If he had done what the GOP says they would have (ha!), and enacted no stimulus, the GOP would be screaming about even official unemployment being over 10 percent, the end of the US automobile industry and the total collapse of the banking sector. Bush added a two unfunded wars, one massive unfunded entitlement, and hefty increases in federal spending, during years of economic growth. And the GOP told us not to worry. The second they lose the White House, everything is Obama's fault.

I guess they'll persuade some. But others have memories.

Mark Blumenthal gives hope to GOP candidates polling in the single digits:

The Republican presidential campaign of 2012 will probably have more in common with Democratic contests in 2004, 1992, 1988 and 1976 — all of which lacked strong, early frontrunners. Some of those races finished with victories by candidates whose national polling started in the low-single digits, including Presidents Jimmy Carter (3.5 percent on the Gallup poll in February 1975) and Bill Clinton (3.0 percent in February 1991) and 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern (6 percent in August 1971). In 2004, John Kerry started stronger, but fell to just 7 percent in December 2003. All four turned successes in early caucus and primary states into broader recognition and support that enabled their nominations. 

It seems pretty obvious that the lawsuit pursued by Antony Tasini against the HuffPo is going nowhere. As Matt Welch notes, no one forced anyone to contribute blog posts to the site for free and the market for "reporting-free bloviation" is, to put it mildly, glutted.

And, as Arianna claims,

Free content — shared by people who want to connect, share their passions, and have their opinions heard — fuels much of what appears on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Yelp, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, Flickr, and YouTube. As John Hrvatska, a commenter on the New York Times, wrote of the Tasini suit, "So, does this mean when YouTube was sold to Google that all the people who posted videos on YouTube should have been compensated?" (And Mr. Hrvatska no doubt contributed that original and well-reasoned thought without any expectation he'd be paid for it. He just wanted to weigh in.)

But there's a reason, isn't there, that some HuffPo bloggers – the more high-profile and high-trafficked ones – felt aggrieved when Arianna made off with $300 million from AOL? I think they contributed more to the HuffPo than an occasional uploader does to YouTube. She had every right to do what she did, and her marketing skills that made the HuffPo what it became, but it understandably leaves a little sour taste in the mouth for those who helped give the site readership and cachet and an identity, for nothing. There is a smidgeon of unfairness here, no? Even if it has no legal standing. They were kind of had in their pursuit of a spotlight.

That's all I can really glean from this hysterical WSJ editorial. They claim that the Ryan plan is not "some radical departure from American norms." But severing public responsibility for seniors' healthcare with a lump sum to buy private insurance (that is designed not to keep pace with healthcare inflation) surely is a radical departure from the post-1965 norm. It may be necessary but it sure is a radical reframing of the post-'65 social compact. Yes, they're right that Obama essentially sets up a rationing board of experts to dictate what you can and cannot get under Medicare; but that's because he is trying to work within the current system, rather than abolishing it, and cutting healthcare costs rather than simply transferring them. This is a weaker point:

Mr. Obama sought more tax-hike cover under his deficit commission, seeming to embrace its proposal to limit tax deductions and other loopholes. But the commission wanted to do so in order to lower rates for a more efficient and competitive code with a broader base. Mr. Obama wants to pocket the tax increase and devote the revenues to deficit reduction and therefore more spending. So that's three significant tax increases—via higher top brackets, the tax hikes in ObamaCare and fewer tax deductions.

Note the sleight of hand: "deficit reduction and therefore more spending." That's an ideological reach. Finding a way to raise revenues by reforming the tax code is easily the least painful way of raising revenues. Devoting more of this to debt reduction than lower taxes does not inherently mean more spending. This Krauthammer outburst reveals the GOP's nervousness that they may have overplayed their hand:

“I thought it was a disgrace. I rarely heard a speech by a president so shallow, so hyper-partisan and so intellectually dishonest, outside the last couple of weeks of a presidential election where you are allowed to call your opponent anything short of a traitor."

But did he expect a Democratic president to treat the effective abolition of Medicare and Medicaid as if it were just a debating point? What Obama did was what any Democratic president would do: contrast the continuation and intensification of huge cuts in taxes for the haves with newly stringent limits on healthcare for the have-nots. If Republicans were in the same position, they'd be claiming imminent death for every senior in America. And telling us it's all part of a "robust" (Cheney's favorite word) debate.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 9 am

A reader downplays these findings:

Sure, it's depressing that over half of the respondents of all ages fail to see the immorality of torture in all circumstances. But have you ever listened to the moral reasoning of 12 and 13 year olds? (Youth was defined as kids ages 12-17.) I don't think this tells us much at all about our future being in the hands of sadistic wack jobs. Frankly, I'm excited that four out of ten at that age saw torture as unacceptable.

Another:

While I'm no fan of torture, I think you might be a bit off-base in your analysis. 

Children and adolescents have a less developed sense of right and wrong than adults – that's why we sentence youth offenders differently and why civilized countries don't execute them. I imagine if you asked my seven year old the same question, he'd come down on the pro-torture/killing of captives side of things. But it's not because he's been warped by Bush and his minions; it's because he's all Id. Age and maturity explain the discrepancy far better than any long-term effects of Bush policy.

Now, if the pre-9/11 numbers for youths were lower than they are now, you might have a point. However, it seems unlikely anyone thought to ask the question, which is in itself an indictment of the Bush policy.

Another:

This past weekend I judged a high school moot court competition. The kids were arguing a case about Gitmo. At one point during the day one of the groups of kids stated that the Army Field Manual permits waterboarding. I stopped them and asked them specifically if the Army Field Manual permits waterboarding and they said yes. When the opposing counsel argued, I asked the same question. These people were arguing for Hassan and I expected them to set the record straight. Instead they also said yes.

I set the record straight when I had an opportunity to make comments later, but the experience has bothered me all week. I blame movies. Any kids brought up on a diet of your typical anti-terror movie and "24" would think that not only is torture permitted, but that it is frequently used and effective.

How can they possibly have come up with a proposal that only really cuts a few hundred million dollars, when they touted $38 billion and really wanted $100 billion? NRO gets queasy:

As they push a bargain that is still not fully understood, Boehner and the leadership have put their members in an awful fix with another deadline to keep the government open fast approaching. We’d vote “no,” even if we understand the impulse to move on to more important matters and to avoid a leap into the dark that might include a politically damaging shutdown. At the very least, freshmen and other conservatives should be frank about the deal’s shortcomings, refusing to exaggerate its merits as their leadership often has. The episode is strike one against the speakership of John Boehner.

Obama keeps his recovery going, and deepens the divides within the GOP caucus. Not bad for crisis management.

Adam Serwer summarizes a study on prison costs:

The Pew Center on the States, which has done a lot of groundbreaking research on criminal justice policy, has a new report out showing that corrections represent the fastest growing costs to state budgets second only to Medicaid. The prison population has grown by more than 700 percent since 1973, while costs over the last twenty years alone have grown more than 300 percent. According to Pew, about 40 percent of ex-offenders return to prison within three years–cutting that rate by ten percent would save 645 million dollars.

The Daily What asks:

Have you noticed that characters in movies rarely say “goodbye” before hanging up?