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WTF: GOP House passes bill increasing food stamps 57% over the next 10 years. The media & Dems calls that a cut http://t.co/mkkJlRS8ip

— nickgillespie (@nickgillespie) September 23, 2013

A reader writes:

You can’t have a post about Republicans attempting to gut food stamps without including race in the conversation. To the Tea Party base, “food stamps” is code for “handouts to lazy black people,” and nothing gets the base more riled up than their hatred of any social program that helps “those people.” I think you’d agree that right now the right-wing GOP is much more motivated by placating and energizing its base than by any other factor. That’s what the votes to repeal Obamacare are about, and that’s what the food stamp votes are about. The simple fact is that the members of Congress who voted for the massive cut in food stamps did it so they could go back to their districts and tell the old, white, angry voters who elected them: “See, I’m in Washington, fighting the good fight to keep lazy, undeserving (*wink wink*) people from taking your hard-earned tax dollars.”

Another is on the same page:

I really think that people outside the South have trouble understanding these sorts of things. It isn’t callous at all. It is entirely about race. It really is a long-standing race issue for many Southern whites, especially as you get closer and closer to the lower end of the middle class, but it can be found at most every strata. An example of the poisonous logic goes like this: “Food stamps are a handout to blacks who don’t want to work.” Now, you could point out the obvious, and say, “But needy white people get food stamps too,” but the response would be: “But that is different, and in any case, white people want to work so they aren’t the problem.” It is basically the same meme about welfare in general that has persisted for a generation.

Another has a more nuanced perspective:

While all the commentators you cite certainly provide insights into why Republicans are so determined to cut food stamps, I think everyone is neglecting a major point of contention that grassroots Republicans have with food stamps:

unlike other federal programs, they see it happening, day in and day out. When I talk to conservative friends, many of them very intelligent and educated, they frequently become upset when discussing welfare in general, and food stamps in particular. I think I’ve identified two related factors that make this such a big deal to certain conservatives.

First, everyone has a story about someone they know of, usually a friend or family member, who cheats the welfare/food stamp system. It’s no surprise that people abuse and cheat government programs. The difference is that the conservatives I talk to take this as a personal insult, rather than an unfortunate but basically unavoidable reality. When the program in question is so visible, they place an outsize importance on SNAP, and they tend to exaggerate its size and corruption.

Second, and I think more importantly, many conservatives I talk to see people at the grocery store, supermarket, or corner store using food stamps day in and day out. It’s this daily grind that wears on them, and leads them to obsess over these programs. Again, the issue is more emotional than rational: even if the people I talk to have a fairly decent sense that SNAP and other assorted welfare programs don’t constitute a major part of the government’s expenditures, it just does not matter. Food stamps are real to them in a way that farm subsidies or defense spending or any other government program just are not. Food stamps rub their noses in it.

Food stamps are the most visible, tangible manifestation of a broad range of government actions they despise. Its conservative’s perfect storm: people they feel are undeserving gaming the system, and you have to stand in line and watch them do it.

I think this also explains the divergence between elite conservative and “grassroots” conservative opinion on SNAP and other welfare programs. How many conservative economists, who may dislike social welfare spending but worry more about larger programs, have stood in line at the supermarket after working 12 hours at a job they hate only to watch someone pay for their food with an EBT card? Combine this with a preexisting distrust and dislike of government, mix in a narrative about cheats running the system, and you’ve got a recipe for conservative pressure to cut food stamps while more people than ever need access to them.

Another shifts focus:

Instead of stigmatizing poverty, criminalizing and punishing it, we ought to stigmatize unearned wealth. Why do we think badly of people who need food stamps even though they are working hard? Why not stigmatize the Walton family members? They earn their billions off the labor of minimum wage employees, then they instruct them to apply for government assistance to feed their families. That kind of behavior takes more gall, more ugly nerve than applying for food stamps after a long day’s work in a warehouse.

Maybe we should stigmatize the corporate CEOs who accept large government subsidies and pay little or no taxes, who then give themselves million dollar bonuses. Maybe we should stigmatize the Republican congressmen who vote against hurricane relief aid for the East Coast but demand flood aid for their districts. Maybe we should stigmatize the Republicans who have voted 42 times to defund the Affordable Care Act (calling it socialist when it isn’t), while accepting socialist healthcare from the US government in the form of Medicare and Medicaid.

Update from a reader who takes issue with the second email above:

I don’t believe this person actually knows any conservatives, and is merely surmising how she thinks those “racist right wingers” think. Most conservative I know don’t say food stamps are for black people; they say food stamps are mostly for dirtbags and low-lifes, period. They don’t give a fuck what someone’s color is! None of them would say it is different for white people. None.

Screaming racism at everything is the easiest bullshit that prevents you from having to deal with reality. Call the GOP callous all you want, but this racism thing is such a small part of it for a small amount of them that it is not even worth discussing.

Weigel rounds-up all of the anonymous pro-Clinton quotes in Joe Hagan’s profile of Hillary:

To recap: Clinton is humble, strategic, and learns from her mistakes, and if she loses it’s because people don’t trust her and her husband enough. Great—why was any of this anonymous? Again, no disrespect to Hagan, who is operating under the rules of this beat and coming out with a newsy exclusive story. My pre-emptive peeve is that the Obama administration is looking ready to pass the Democratic baton to a coterie that’s even more ridiculous about controlling the press.

And anyone is surprised by that? John Dickerson ponders Clinton’s press strategy:

Most presidential candidates strain for attention. They rush to Iowa, write books, or take extreme positions on controversial issues. Clinton has to do the opposite, trying to flee from the circus ready to chase her down the grocery store aisle. But she’s in a bind. If she makes too much news this far ahead of the 2016 presidential election, there’s a chance people will tire of her candidacy.

Yes, I feel narcolepsy coming on, and if I have to see another tedious interview with Chelsea Clinton, a coma is imminent. Only the newness of the first woman president can overcome it. But I really wish the first woman president were not the wife of a previous one. John goes on:

If she steps back, though, the unstoppable flow of Clinton stories will come anyway (especially the highly unflattering ones that feature people loosely associated with Clinton world, like the New Republic profile of Doug Band, who once oversaw the Clinton Global Initiative). Not all of these people leave a good impression.

Joan Walsh declares that she also Clinton fatigue. Waldman explains why:

The 2008 Obama candidacy was a romance between him and liberal voters. Romance is all about discovery, the excitement of the new, the thrill of venturing into unknown territory with someone as you begin to know them. Perhaps most importantly, romance also allows you to reimagine yourself as you’re seen through this new person’s eyes. And that was the most important thing about 2008: how it made liberals feel differently about themselves. They weren’t weak and defensive and they weren’t losers. They were brave and strong and smart. They were history’s actors, forging real, meaningful change with every yard sign and phone call and Facebook post. They were the future.

We can’t ever have a romance with Hillary Clinton, because we’re already in a relationship with her, one that’s over two decades old. A successful Clinton candidacy isn’t going to allow liberals to reimagine themselves. She could turn out to be the greatest president in American history, but the beginning of that presidency won’t give liberals the thrill that 2008 gave them.

Chait points out the candidacy’s flaws:

Bill Clinton has surrounded himself with wealthy people and paid barely any attention to the money flowing all around him. Even if nothing incriminating ever comes to light, the atmospheric revelations could form a potent combination with the policy agenda. Liberal complaints with their party’s failure to sufficiently regulate Wall Street have focused on figures like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, but these men are proxies for the president who appointed them. Wall Street will be to 2016 what Iraq was to 2008: both a policy liability and a lever for her opponent to wedge open broader doubts about her character, to paint her as a corrupt and feckless insider. Clinton’s loyalists say she won’t repeat her 2008 errors. But she will have to show she understands just what the analogue is.

And we all know how flexible she is …

(Photo: Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton listens during the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting on September 24, 2013 in New York City. Timed to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly, CGI brings together heads of state, CEOs, philanthropists and others to help find solutions to the world’s major problems. By Ramin Talaie/Getty Images)

Philip Klein is betting against it:

The nation now has more than two and a half years of experience with divided government during the Obama presidency. And each time there has been a major crisis, it’s followed a familiar pattern. The sides are far apart. It looks like the crisis may hit. Then, at the last minute, there’s some sort of deal that’s able to pass the Senate that Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is able to get through the House of Representatives with a lot of help from Democrats.

Cohn mostly agrees:

Most informed observers I know would agree with his assessment and, for the record, I would too. The conflict over financing government operations—and, weeks from now, raising the debt ceiling—is all about Boehner and his lieutenants waiting until the last possible minute, so that he can extract the biggest concessions from Democrats while telling the conservative base he did the best he could. One way or another, the two sides will come together before the government runs out of money and before it taps out its borrowing authority. In fact, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announcing that he won’t support Senator Ted Cruz’s call for a filibuster, the chances of a shutdown just diminished a little more.

But if the chances of either a shutdown or a debt ceiling crisis are modest, they aren’t modest enough. And there’s a chance the confidence all of us feel could actually make a last-minute deal less likely.

Ezra’s view:

Most in Washington and on Wall Street hold to a serene faith that the two parties will figure something out. And that’s probably right. But in interviews with both Democratic and Republican staff from the House and Senate leadership, as well as the White House, I have yet to hear a plausible story for how they figure something out. The tales range from the unlikely — Republicans expect Senate Democrats to force the White House to delay the individual mandate, while Democrats expect Boehner to simply fold and absorb the backlash from his party — to the nonexistent.

“I don’t know the end of this movie,” says Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking member on the House Budget Committee. “I don’t think anybody knows how it ends. And that’s a very dangerous place to be in.”

Stephen Jimenez, author of The Book Of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard (out today), describes what Matthew’s complex story means to him:

An excerpt from the new book is now available at the Daily Beast. Below is a long video that details some of the evidence and sources that back up some of Jimenez’s more provocative claims about Shepard and his murderer, including a sexual relationship:

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Steve’s previous videos in the series are here. Our full interview archive is here.

Anne Applebaum delivers some backhanded praise for the reelected Merkel:

Maybe not the Greeks:

Greece is stuck in its sixth year of recession, but this has not stopped Prime Minister Antonis Samaras from declaring this month that “Greece is turning the page,” when the national statistics agency reported that the Greek economy shrank by “only” 3.8 percent in the second quarter, less than the expected 4.6 percent.

By the term “Un-Thatcher”, I meant the lack of polarizing drama – not a relentless pursuit of fiscal retrenchment. After all, what Merkel has done to Europe in the last few years is largely what Thatcher did to her own country in the early 1980s. But Thatcher was able to use the British parliamentary system to dominate politics in a way that Germany’s coalition-style polity cannot. Catherine Mayer wonders if Merkel will be able to form a stable government on her current course:

Merkel’s options for coalition partners are limited.

The Free Democrats, who served with her during her last term, crashed spectacularly at the election, failing even to achieve the 5% of votes necessary to enter parliament. Merkel governed in her first term in a grand coalition with her largest rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD). They too suffered at the ballot box after their association with Merkel and fear that a return to coalition with her will damage their party in the long term. They may be right. Proximity to Merkel has proved politically fatal to rivals within her own party, including her mentor, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whom she was key to ousting when scandal damaged the CDU’s ratings. Her popularity is also such that her supporter base—which extends far beyond the ranks of traditional CDU voters—tends to attribute every success to her and blame every failing on the government of the day.

(Image thanks to the Internet)

Last month we highlighted a study from Carnegie Mellon and the LES suggesting that cell-phone use doesn’t cause more car crashes. Readers pushed back with other findings. Now Kevin Drum digests a new study (pdf) from the University of Utah:

In general, the authors conclude that hands-free talking isn’t worse than talking on a handset, but neither is it any better: “Taken together, the data demonstrate that conversing on a cell phone impaired driving performance and that the distracting effects of cell-phone conversations were equivalent for hand-held and hands-free devices. Compared to single-task conditions, cell-phone drivers’ brake reaction times were slower and they took longer to recover the speed that was lost following braking.”

The problem with cell phones has never been primarily about taking your eyes off the road to dial, or about the dexterity required to hold a handset to your ear. It’s all about cognitive distraction, and the study’s authors report that drivers who do a lot of talking on cell phones don’t get any better at it: “Real-world experience using a cell phone while driving did not make the so-called experts any better at multitasking than the novices.”

Michael O’Hare’s take on the findings:

The danger is in the conversation itself, and to understand the reason, consider driving while (i) listening to the radio as I was (ii) conversing with an adult passenger (iii) transporting a four-year-old (iv) sharing the front seat with a largish dog. Why are the first two not dangerous, and the last two make you tense up just thinking about them?

The radio is not a person, and you subconsciously know that you may miss something if you attend to something in the road ahead, but also that you won’t insult it if you “listen away,” and it won’t suffer, much less indicate unease. The adult passenger can see out the windshield and also catch very subtle changes in your tone of voice or body language. If you stop talking to attend to the car braking up ahead, the passenger knows why instantly, and accommodates, and because you know this, you aren’t anxious about interrupting the conversation.

The dog and the child, in contrast, are completely unaware of what’s coming up on the road or what you need to pay attention to; the former is happy to jump in your lap if it seems like a good idea at any moment, and the child demands attention on her own schedule and at her will.

Peter Gray details the connection between a decline in playtime and a rise in mental disorders:

It’s not just that we’re seeing disorders that we overlooked before. Clinical questionnaires aimed at assessing anxiety and depression, for example, have been given in unchanged form to normative groups of schoolchildren in the US ever since the 1950s. Analyses of the results reveal a continuous, essentially linear, increase in anxiety and depression in young people over the decades, such that the rates of what today would be diagnosed as generalised anxiety disorder and major depression are five to eight times what they were in the 1950s. Over the same period, the suicide rate for young people aged 15 to 24 has more than doubled, and that for children under age 15 has quadrupled.

The decline in opportunity to play has also been accompanied by a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism, both of which have been assessed since the late 1970s with standard questionnaires given to normative samples of college students. Empathy refers to the ability and tendency to see from another person’s point of view and experience what that person experiences. Narcissism refers to inflated self-regard, coupled with a lack of concern for others and an inability to connect emotionally with others. A decline of empathy and a rise in narcissism are exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little opportunity to play socially. Children can’t learn these social skills and values in school, because school is an authoritarian, not a democratic setting. School fosters competition, not co-operation; and children there are not free to quit when others fail to respect their needs and wishes.