Haley Barbour, Harbinger of Nothing

File this one in the “liberal Democrats advising the Republican Party” pile (colloquially: “the trash can”). Here’s a shock: the liberal Democrat thinks that conservative Republicans are too conservative!

Republicans are being held hostage by their base

By Harold Meyerson, Published: April 26

Republicans have a problem. Their base is killing them.

Volunteering for campaigns, engaging in grass-roots activism, combating media misinformation, engaging the national political discourse, pressuring entrenched politicians, donating money…why would you need any of that when you could have the approval of Harold Meyerson?

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s announcement Monday that he will not seek the presidency is just the latest sign that politically sentient Republicans fear their party’s voters have moved so deeply into la-la land that winning their support in next year’s primaries could render their nominee unelectable in November.

Let’s count the things that are wrong with this sentence:

1)      Haley Barbour, the guy who, through nothing but his own sheer political stupidity and laziness, started a shitstorm by saying that he didn’t remember the Civil Rights Era in Mississippi “being that bad,” is now the paragon of Republican political acumen.

2)      It assumes that Haley Barbour was electable in the first place, which he wasn’t.

3)      It assumes that Haley Barbour was performing adequately in the polls, which he wasn’t.

4)      It assumes that Haley Barbour was dead-set on running, no matter the cost, when it appears he barely had a toe in the water.

5)      It assumes that Haley Barbour is uncomfortable portraying himself as a staunch conservative, which he isn’t.

6)      It assumes that the country recoils in horror against deep conservative principles, which it doesn’t.

7)      It assumes that having moderates in the primary would produce a more moderate primary winner, which it probably wouldn’t. (A topic for another day)

“Friends of Barbour,” reports The Post’s Dan Balz, “said that he had come to the conclusion that Republicans can win only if they are totally focused on serious issues and not distracted by some side issues, such as Obama’s birthplace, that have arisen in the early going.”

This means that Barbour’s decision not to run implies, idiotically, that Barbour would have liked to campaign on entirely non-serious issues like who’s the best American Idol judge. If memory serves, this is precisely the opposite of the point Meyerson was trying to make.

But Republicans are massively distracted by birtherism. A New York Times-CBS News poll last week showed that while 57 percent of Americans believe that President Obama was born in the United States, against 25 percent who didn’t, just 33 percent of Republicans believed him American-born, while 45 percent did not.

Fun facts. Here are some more:

In 2007, 22% of Americans believed that George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened. Compare this against 35% of Democrats and 18% of Independents. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/bush_administration/22_believe_bush_knew_about_9_11_attacks_in_advance

The birther narrative favors Democrats, while the truther narrative favored Republicans. Now take a mental stroll back to 2007 and compare the media coverage. Crickets? Yeah, no one cared in 2007. But now, the media can’t get enough of conspiracy theories. The major difference is in which party it’s embarrassing.

The other difference, of course, was that Bush found the idea of the allegations so intrinsically heinous, that he wanted to hear nothing about it. By contrast, Obama enjoys the birther rantings. They make him look sensible (which be decidedly is not) by comparison.

The Republican level of birtherism was effectively identical to that of self-identified Tea Party supporters, 34 percent of whom thought Obama was U.S.-born, while 45 percent did not.

Let’s take a look at this logical progression:

a)      Members of the Tea Party are the most egregious Right-wing wingnuts.

b)      The Republican Party was not always dominated by wingnuts.

c)      Birtherism is the primary example of wing-nuttery run amok.

d)      The wingnuts have virtually identical measures of sympathy for birther arguments as traditional, moderate conservatives

Conclusion: It takes slightly less mental fortitude than is proffered by a drunk toddler to see that the birther movement has absolutely nothing to do with the Tea Party, and calls into question the validity of point a.

Which is to say that the loopy, enraged divorce from reality of the Tea Potniks has infected the entire party.

Sigh. It’s like they’re beyond helping.

That, indeed, has been the strategic premise of Donald Trump’s campaign, be it pseudo, proto- or provisional,

Pseudo, proto-, and provisional are not related in any discernable way other than starting with the letter p. If this were an SAT question, and you were asked to find the next in the series, the correct answer would be “pterodactyl.”

for the Republican nomination. Nothing in Trump’s background suggests he actually believes the birther snake oil he is peddling

Then again, nothing in his background suggests that he is actually a conservative. We’re not idiots. We know it’s 18 months before the actual election and just under a year before the serious primaries. Trump is a protest vote designed to tell Republican candidates to grow a pair.

with considerable success in GOP ranks. What his background, and foreground,

It’s almost as though he enjoys making little lacerations in written English. Stop peppering commas on your writing to give a conversational tone. You can’t pull it off and it grates.

do make clear is that he is utterly without shame. If stoking his campaign requires affirming the absurd beliefs of rubes whom he would instantly fire on his TV series, well — it’s worked, hasn’t it?

Yes, it’s rather the astute business move to promote his television program by instantly alienating 57% of the American people. Just how they teach it at Wharton.

And it’s not just Trump. “Birther bills,” which require presidential candidates to produce their birth certificates, are moving through a number of Republican-controlled state legislatures.

There are two requirements to qualify to become President of the United States: one must be a citizen born in the United States, and one must be 35 years old. These requirements are so meager it should take a single document to prove. I mean, my God, I had to show more documentation to get a driver’s license than candidates do to run for President. The bar is set so low that these bills are designed to prevent controversies like the current one from ever being an issue again.

In Oklahoma, one such bill is expected to become law. In Arizona, the legislature passed such a bill, only to have Republican Gov. Jan Brewer veto it, calling it “a bridge too far.” Brewer didn’t specify where that bridge was headed, but surely she meant

Oh Jesus. Now he’s not just telling us what to do and what to believe, he’s also telling us what we meant.

that an official Republican crossing-over into birtherism

I’m confident that’s not at all how she interpreted the bill.

would place the party and its nominee on the paranoid fantasy side of the gap between the real and the imagined,

Jan Brewer is a governor that has nowhere to go from here. She will never be seriously considered for the presidency, and has little reason to run for the federal legislature. Given that Arizona is a reliably red state, she has no reason to be interested in the Republican nominee in 2012 other than party solidarity. She’s not even up for re-election in 2012.

while Democrats and independents gaped in amazement from the other side.

How would a law in Arizona affect the presidential election? This whole line of the argument is just so poorly conceived.

Brewer is not alone in her concerns. Karl Rove, still the GOP’s canniest strategist, told Fox News viewers that Trump was “off there in the nutty right”

Rove is at least half right. Trump is quite obviously a nut (or at least being nutty—he may actually be doing all of this under the “any press is good press” philosophy), but he is not a right-winger. Instigating a trade war with China and pushing to seize Middle Eastern oil fields actively flies in the face of conservative principles. He has flip-flopped on virtually all of the social issues. Trump is a nutty populist, whose opinions are guided only by expediency. He is the antithesis of a right-winger.

and a “joke candidate” for pandering to birther conspiracy theories.

No argument here.

The joke, however, may be on Rove and those reality-based Republicans trying to figure out a way to defeat Obama in the next election.

I’m so glad that Harold Meyerson is looking out for us.

If Rove really wanted to stop Trump and the birthers in their tracks, he should have looked Fox News viewers straight in the camera’s eye and told them to change the channel.

Uh…why?

Widely shared paranoid fantasies existed long before Fox News and Rush Limbaugh,

The implication being that both pander to paranoid fantasies, which is simply untrue; both have been generally skeptical of, or at very least unhelpful to the birther movement.

of course, but it’s increasingly clear that the success of news and opinion outlets devoted to counter-factual news in the service of partisan ends has driven a rift between their audience and the rest of the nation.

Says the professional opinion writer, hoping that his dim audience doesn’t realize that he is admitting to plying “counter-factual” information.

If the rift were merely ideological, it wouldn’t pose a problem for the Republicans: Ideological rifts are the very stuff of politics.

You haven’t adequately demonstrated that there is a rift between Republicans. In fact, you have presented statistics to prove that there is not.

Increasingly, though, the rift between the Tea Partyized Republicans and everyone else comes on the question of empiricism.

We’ve already established that there is not a significant ideological divide between the Tea Party and mainstream Republicans. Similarly, as independents continue to be attracted to the Republican party, there’s no discernable gulf between Republicans and moderates/independents, either.

This scares the shit out of Harold Meyerson.

Watch Fox News or listen to right-wing talk radio long and credulously enough, and you’ll end up believing

“You’ll end up believing?” That doesn’t sound very empirical.

that Americans found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,

We did; they were just very old and semi-functional. We also found numerous Scud missiles and other armaments that clearly and directly violate the ceasefires from Desert Storm.

Similarly, conservatives know that the no-WMD-in-Iraq narrative doesn’t discredit the war effort, particularly given the reasons given for starting a war in Libya.

that sharia law is being imposed on Dearborn, Mich.,

The more accurate fear is that sharia law is being imposed on Western Europe, and it is.  Even so, when there were stories about sharia being used in America (and it has been, in limited situations) the contextual information has been quickly disseminated and the hubbub dies down quickly. Compare this to the “Tea Party shouts N-word at Congressman” story. It was completely disproved, yet you still hear the demonstrably false scenerio laid out by those on the left for months.

that climate change is a hoax

The argument, and this is subtle now, is that man caused climate change is a hoax. Much to Meyerson’s chagrin, man-caused climate change is not an empirically provable fact (at least not with currently available data.)

and that Obama fears revealing the truth about his birth (a frequent theme of Fox’s Sean Hannity).

As a frequent listener of Hannity’s radio program, this comes as news to me.

For someone with such a premium on empiricism and deference to the raw truth, these are all very vague and generalized concepts that construct with precision the caricature of talk radio perpetrated by the left wing. Mr. Empiricism is empirically wrong.

The authorities at Fox moved back from the brink a bit when they decided to let Glenn Beck go, but Beck was just one among many right-wing talksters whose cumulative effect has been to render rank-and-file Republicans a receptive audience for nonsense-spouting demagogues such as Trump.

Make up your mind. Is there a rift in the Republican party between the sane Republicans and the Tea Party, or are all Republicans crazy?

If the espousal of birtherism truly becomes a necessity for winning the Republican presidential nomination,

It isn’t, and everyone in the field, including moderately attractive candidates like Barbour, knows it.

the right’s war on empiricism

Let’s look at the left’s war on empiricism:

The left believes that raising tax rates on the rich will increase revenues realized by the federal government, despite no discernable historical correlation between tax rates and tax revenue as a percentage of GDP.

The left ridiculed scorned Republicans for pointing out that Obamacare has death panels. Obamacare has now moved to implement a board that rations health care, which in some cases will cause death. Hence, death panels. No apologies have been issued to Sarah Palin.

The left believed that Barack Obama was qualified to be president, despite his complete lack of executive experience to guide that opinion.

Young leftists get their news primarily from Jon Stewart.

The left refuses to acknowledge that Obama’s anti-oil energy policy has exacerbated high pump prices.

The left has argued that nuclear power is unsafe for Kansas, for fear of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in an area a thousand miles from the nearest tectonic rift.

The left has argued that public sector employees do not earn more total compensation than their private sector counterparts.

will have served not merely to build and mobilize a base, but also to isolate that base from the majority of Americans who still inhabit, at least most of the time, a reality-based universe.

Seriously…is there a schism or not?

Winning the support of crazies, Haley Barbour may have concluded, is no way to win the White House.

Except the entire premise of this article is that it is impossible to win the White House by playing to those on the other side of the sometimes-alleged schism. Either way, it would have been impossible for Haley Barbour because he was a highly flawed candidate with virtually no name recognition.

Still, the ignorance is baffling. The schism that undid the right in 2008 did not occur by moving too far to the right. To the contrary, it happened by moving too far to the center. Staunch conservatives like myself did not donate money, make calls, put up signs, or even vote. I was demoralized that my choice was between two people with whom I strenuously disagreed.

This is going to be the problem for Democrats this election. President Obama has lost independent voters by the truckload. He is going to have to spend so much energy courting the middle, that the energy and enthusiasm of the young, fickle left-wing base will fracture and dissipate his 2008 coalition. The question is not what proportion of the democratic stronghold demographics (Blacks, college educated women, those below the poverty line) he carries, but how many of these demoralized, uninspired constituents actually show up. 

Commerce: A Primer for Nobel Laureates

Conservative challenges to Obamacare, we are told, are silly, fruitless, and petty. Of course the commerce clause of the Constitution covers the individual mandate. Why wouldn’t it? After all, healthcare is commerce. Doctors, nurses, and pharmaceutical companies are providers; patients are consumers. This model follows the rules of all trade.

Patients Are Not Consumers

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Wait what? Patients are not consumers? But you need consumers for commerce! The foundation of the Obamacare defense is that healthcare is commerce (not only commerce, but interstate commerce), and thereby covered by the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

During the healthcare debate, Obama assured us that the individual mandate was not a tax. Now, his lawyers assure us that it is a tax. That little reversal is contemptible, but it pales in comparison to Professor Krugman’s assertion that healthcare isn’t a transactionary commodity, and is thereby not commerce. On its face, this is utterly stupid. Healthcare is a marketplace, therefore it must be commercial. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that it’s also counterproductive. That makes it a two-fer of dumbassery.

Remember, this is the guy that all liberals cite when it comes to the economy.

Earlier this week, The Times reported on Congressional backlash against the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a key part of efforts to rein in health care costs. This backlash was predictable; it is also profoundly irresponsible, as I’ll explain in a minute.

I’m going to hold you to that.

But something else struck me as I looked at Republican arguments against the board,

Enlightenment? Epiphany? The crippling panic that you’re already well along the road to senility?

which hinge on the notion that what we really need to do, as the House budget proposal put it,

Is this really all one sentence? The barrage of commas is making me woozy.

is to “make government health care programs more responsive to consumer choice.”

Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”?

It became both normal and acceptable the moment that patients exchanged money for medical services. Historians place this occurrence somewhere in the range of 50,000BC. (Not really; I’m ballparking to underscore that even cave men know Paul Krugman’s an idiot.) The exchange of goods for medical services is, by even the narrowest definition, commerce. We give this name to business and/or trade that takes place between provider and consumer. There is nothing dirty, sordid, unsavory or uncouth about it. Is this guy really an economist?

The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred.

Liberals look for religion in the strangest places.

Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car —

Here’s my question: Why would something not be commercial if and when money is exchanged?

Sex is often special, sometimes almost sacred. In fact, I've hired a marching band to play lead a parade the next time I get laid. Whereas medicine has the ability to save a life, sex has the ability to create a life. Yet when one pays for sex, it’s undisputably commercial. (And illegal. And probably winds up with you needing to see a doctor for some aloe to rub on the ensuing crotchrot. Sorry, not the point.)

Here’s the difference: while non-prostitutes are willing to give sex away at various points based on emotional involvements, no one is willing to spend four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars at medical school to work long hours at intellectually demanding and stressful jobs for no pay. Even doctors, notorious do-gooders that they are, get tired of things like Doctors Without Borders after a couple years. That’s why they have to constantly guilt each other into patching up bullet wounds in Sierra Leone with butter knives sanitized with a Bic lighter and a handle of cheap rum. It's also why no one is watching ABC’s Off the Map.

Pharmaceutical research is big business. Manufacturers pour time, money, expertise, and uncommon passion into curing diseases that Paul Krugman (and I) can’t even spell. When you take the commerce out of the medical profession, the medical profession dies.

and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.

You’re an economist. The economy is the product of commerce. This is kind of like hearing a tire salesman publicly berating cars in favor of some mechanical biped. (Yes, it’s that ridiculous.)

What has gone wrong with us?

Speaking only of you, I’d say that the problem here is an economist who doesn’t understand the basic nature of commerce.

About that advisory board:

It’s about time.

We have to do something about health care costs,

No.  I have to do something about my own health care costs.

which means that we have to find a way to start saying no.

Let’s follow the train of basic logic for a moment here:

“Saying no” is a euphemism for rationing.

Rationing is the necessary byproduct of the scarcity of a good.

Markets are the most efficient mechanisms for distributing scarce goods.

Paul Krugman advocates against viewing medical patients as consumers

If there are no consumers, there can be no market.

Paul Krugman is advocating medical inefficiency.

QED

In particular, given continuing medical innovation, we can’t maintain a system in which Medicare essentially pays for anything a doctor recommends.

Read: rationing is good.

And that’s especially true when that blank-check approach is combined with a system that gives doctors and hospitals — who aren’t saints —

What happened to the relationship between patient and doctor being sacred?

a strong financial incentive to engage in excessive care.

Define excessive; it sounds suspiciously like you’re saying that it costs too much to keep Grandma alive.

Hence the advisory board, whose creation was mandated by last year’s health reform.

Conservatives euphemized this board as a “death panel.” This is the provision of Obamacare Sarah Palin was talking about. Can we please get a collective “Sarah Palin was right” from the media?

The board, composed of health-care experts,

Read: 15 bureaucrats in a smoke-filled, oak paneled room.

would be given a target rate of growth in Medicare spending.

You’re right. Determining care based on target rates of growth in Medicare spending is much more personal and sacred than the transactional coarseness and commercialistic crudity of a free market for healthcare.

To keep spending at or below this target, the board would submit “fast-track” recommendations for cost control

Read: denials of coverage.

that would go into effect automatically unless overruled by Congress.

Before you start yelling about “rationing” and “death panels,”

Too late.

bear in mind that we’re not talking about limits on what health care you’re allowed to buy with your own (or your insurance company’s) money.

Yet. The prohibition of private healthcare, however, is how every foray into socialized medicine ends.

We’re talking only about what will be paid for with taxpayers’ money.

An excellent distinction. The problem is that expansions in government-sponsored insurance will reduce the number of applicants and threaten the risk-pooling that make the business model for private insurers workable. Employers will stop providing more health care when it is already available through the government. The result is that the only way to get around the rationing imposed by these death panels is to have multiple thousands of dollars to tap into if you need catastrophic care that’s not covered by the government. (I.e. you smoked one cigarette once when you were sixteen and now you need a lung transplant.) Not only does this favor the rich; it makes it so that they're the only one who will be able to survive the holes in government coverage. 

And the last time I looked at it, the Declaration of Independence didn’t declare that we had the right to life, liberty, and the all-expenses-paid pursuit of happiness.

It’s like the twilight zone. First he demands that the government pay for healthcare, then he’s insulted by the comical notion that we would insist that the government pay for the healthcare they forced down our throats. I should write this quote down somewhere, though. This seems like something to throw in his face later.

And the point is that choices must be made; one way or another, government spending on health care must be limited.

Here’s a more important question: why is government in the business of providing health insurance at all?

Now, what House Republicans propose is that the government

Somewhere in the Chicago suburbs, my 6^th grade English teacher just recoiled in horror at this sentence's poor structure and lazy writing.

simply push the problem of rising health care costs on to seniors;

Considering that you have literally just gotten done advocating a set of policies that will inarguably result in the deaths of old people, this is particularly brash.

Oh, the idea that vouchers transfer costs is also completely asinine.

that is, that we replace Medicare with vouchers that can be applied to private insurance,

Seriously, this whole comma thing is out of control.

and that we count on seniors and insurance companies to work it out somehow.

One party wants health care. The other party wants to provide health care. Hold on a minute, I’m going to have to go get my abacus.

This, they claim, would be superior to expert review because it would open health care to the wonders of “consumer choice.”

What’s wrong with this idea

Literally nothing.

(aside from the grossly inadequate value of the proposed vouchers)?

Seriously? In a column about the wonders of rationing, you’re going to be insulted by the low value of the proposed vouchers?

One answer is that it wouldn’t work.

That’s like saying “one answer” to 5+5 is 12. Sure it’s an answer. That doesn’t make it right.

“Consumer-based” medicine has been a bust everywhere it has been tried.

As compared to the socialist utopia of the United Kingdom where people are simply being told to die cheaply:

http://www.biggovhealth.org/stories

To take the most directly relevant example, Medicare Advantage, which was originally called Medicare + Choice, was supposed to save money; it ended up costing substantially more than traditional Medicare.

Boy, that sounds like an awfully good argument for reducing the amount of money the government pays private insurers for Medicare Advantage.

In fact, with a voucher system, unlike with Medicare as is, you can literally guarantee costs. If there are 10M people on Medicare and the annual voucher is $1,000, the annual cost is $10B. This doesn’t exactly require a team of actuaries and accountants. There are no hidden fees. The only opportunity for fraud and abuse is for ineligible people to receive a voucher.

With a pure voucher system—unlike virtually every other program that has been proposed—it is completely, utterly impossible for costs to be unexpectedly high.

America has the most “consumer-driven” health care system in the advanced world.

Fortunately, we still believe in freedom on this side of the pond.

It also has by far the highest costs yet provides a quality of care no better than far cheaper systems in other countries.

Really? Canadians and Brits are waiting in line until they die to see an oncologist. I guess quality is sort of a sliding scale.

But the fact that Republicans are demanding that we literally stake our health, even our lives, on an already failed approach

Keep in mind, he’s saying that letting you decide what healthcare products you pay for is a failed approach, and that it is utterly irresponsible for Republicans to ask you to stake your life on you.

This is the condescension inherent to all statists. They know better than you how to live your life.

is only part of what’s wrong here. As I said earlier, there’s something terribly wrong with the whole notion of patients as “consumers” and health care as simply a financial transaction.

He’s not seeing the stupidity of arguing that healthcare isn’t commerce, is he? Oh well.

Medical care, after all, is an area in which crucial decisions — life and death decisions — must be made.

And so they simply must be made by appointed bureaucrats.

Yet making such decisions intelligently requires a vast amount of specialized knowledge.

Read: you’re too dumb to decide whether to live or die.

Furthermore, those decisions often must be made under conditions in which the patient is incapacitated, under severe stress, or needs action immediately, with no time for discussion, let alone comparison shopping.

I’m neither a doctor or a lawyer, but I’ve seen enough episodes of House to know that this is what Power of Attorney is for.

That’s why we have medical ethics.

Actually, that’s why we have legal guardians and next of kin. We have medical ethics to prevent bureaucrats and scientists from deciding who lives and who dies.

That’s why doctors have traditionally both been viewed as something special and been expected to behave according to higher standards than the average professional.

Much like forklift drivers and rodeo clowns, they’re not allowed to drink on the job.

There’s a reason we have TV series about heroic doctors, while we don’t have TV series about heroic middle managers.

The Office, Outsourced, (Basically anything on NBC Thursday nights.) The Apprentice, (Arguably) Shark Tank, Mr. Sunshine, Mad Men, Fairly Legal (It’s about mediation, so it doesn’t count as a legal show, although if legal shows count, this would get lopsided pretty quickly) and Undercover Boss.

Of course, one could argue that most of the figures in those shows are not pure heroes; the easier case would be that the doctors on House, Gray’s Anatomy, Off the Map, Royal Pains, Private Practice barely qualify as heroes. Plus, medical dramas are just lazy (For the record, I found more business related shows than medical-related shows.)

The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just “providers” selling services to health care “consumers” — is, well, sickening.

How is it that an economist thinks that money and commerce are dirty and tawdry?

And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with our society’s values.

Words fail me. This column was every bit as dumb as I hoped it would be. 

Matt Miller Fantasizing About Murderous Rampages (And Other Things You Wish You Could Unread)

‘The Shining’ — national debt edition

By Matt Miller, Wednesday, April 20, 12:01 PM

Remember that great scene in the 1980 film classic, “The Shining,”

Remember that time when political writers didn’t defer their responsibility to generate a compelling narrative to tenuous analogies? Yeah, neither do I, but then, I was born in 1986. Holla back, old people.

when the wife comes upon the typewriter

Or, as those of us born after 1985 call it: “a prop from the set of Mad Men.”

of the Jack Nicholson character,

Dammit, Miller. You’ve already ruined Nicholson for me once. http://embracethedivide.blogspot.com/2011/03/ruining-jack-nicholson.html

who’s supposed to have been working night and day for months on his novel?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest would be only slightly more appropriate, but I'll accede to your obnoxious choice of references.

To her horror, she finds thousands of pages on which Jack has typed, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” formatted in countless, crazy ways.

I’ve seen The Shining, and I’m still kind of shocked that you can format text on a typewriter. I'm still kind of fixated on those creepy sisters. They kind of remind me of Katrina Vanden Heuvel.

Suddenly his suspected madness becomes all too frighteningly real.

Like any good horror movie, the audience is perpetually annoyed at the characters' blissful ignorance at the incredibly suspicious behavior around them. So we watch in a state of nagging irritation as the miserably oblivious characters stumble in and out of situations created by pure stupidity. OF COURSE MATTMILLER IS BATSHIT CRAZY; HE WROTE AN ENTIRE COLUMN IN THE FORM OF A FICTIONAL GAME SHOW ABOUT WHY WE NEED HIGHER GAS TAXES! LESS THAN A MONTH AGO!

If there’s a way to scream a semicolon, I just pulled it off like a champ.

Well, debt limit mania has driven me to a similar frenzied state.

As in…axe murder in a hedge maze? 

If my wife came across my manuscript it would read, “The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit. The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit.”

Not exactly punchy.

I thought about making this week’s column that one sentence printed over and over 30 times.

I have to give it to him. He actually could have written something dumber than this column.

It would have been the opinion page equivalent of a Dada-esque protest against the inanity of the debate —

The opinion page is not artistic in any way. Neither is Dadaism. The only common link between opinion writers and Dadaists is a stifling morass of self-importance.

and a cry for every news outlet to focus on this simple, clarifying fact.

First, you compare yourself to an axe murderer.

Then you flirt with Dadaism—an artistic movement/philosophy literally based on the ideal of nonsense.

Clarity, you dim-witted miscreant, is an attribute that has never introduced itself to you.

(Close your eyes for a moment

Around a guy fantasizing about being an axe murderer? Fuck no!

and picture such a column — kinda fun, don’t you think?

You need some new ways to have fun. No one give Matt a slinky. He’ll have to spend the next three weeks delighted that it walks down stairs.

And imagine the trend it might have sparked among pundits who found they could do their jobs with more zen-like elegance than ever before.

There’s nothing zen-like or elegant about murderous rampages.

Just distill and hammer home the single thought readers need that week to alter their worldview — more powerful than a haiku;

Things more powerful than a haiku:

The tensile strength of saliva

The lyrics of a Ke$ha song

The fielding acumen of Manny Ramirez

(you get the idea)

less evanescent than a tweet.)

Is that really desirable?

Why bother with evidence, logic, or compelling arguments at all. Just assert. Because the common man doesn’t need proof; all he really needs is the reassurance of being able a script generated by the intelligentsia.

But there’s more to say.

And yet you’ve said absolutely nothing more this entire column (except of course, some very revealing fantasies about wilting into a murderous psychotic).

For the life of me I don’t understand why the press

Note that he regards the press—to which he is inescapably melded—as monolithic. Kind of depressing.

doesn’t shove this fact in front of every Republican who says the debt limit cannot be raised unless serious new spending cuts are put in place.

Ostensibly, this would be a good argument for more extensive spending cuts.

The supposedly “courageous,” “visionary” Paul Ryan plan — which already contains everything Republicans can think of in terms of these spending cuts

Not by a long shot. This is still a political document, after all.

— would add more debt than we’ve ever seen over a 10-year period in American history.

Which, of course, is an asinine factoid for two reaons. 1) it again argues for more aggressive spending cuts (which I support and Matt Miller opposes) and 2) budgeting is done using a baseline. That baseline is calculated off of trended projections. Because of the last two years, the trend has been significantly upwards, which means that the cuts from the baseline are still adding debt.

Yet Ryan and other House GOP leaders continue to make outrageous statements to the contrary.

And then of course there are the proposed alternatives: “The People’s Budget,” so beloved by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, is designed to tax people until there is no more wealth created in the United States. There can be absolutely no doubt that it will not provide the economic benefits that it promises because it refuses to factor in the negative impact of tax increases on economic growth.

The second alternative, which the Ryan plan combats effectively, is the status quo. This is the comparison Republicans are drawing. Without giving too much credit to a man who is clearly off his rocker, Matt Miller understands this.

Without blushing. And without anyone calling them on it.

Seriously now, you’re saying we should cut more? You sure?

“The spending spree is over,”

Note: Spending. Not deficit.

Ryan said the other day, after the House passed his blueprint. “We cannot keep spending money we don’t have.”

This week from Obama: “We can’t spend more than we take in.”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_041911/content/01125111.guest.html

Except that by his own reckoning Ryan is planning to spend $6 trillion we don’t have in the next decade alone.

Considering that the 2010 budget deficit alone is somewhere in the range of $1.3B, this represents an average annual deficit reduction of 43%.

The more you know!

“We have too many people worried about the next election and not worried about the next generation,” Ryan added.

Which is a signal to any reasonable person that the demonstrable benefits of the Ryan plan come years, even decades down the road.

So Ryan is expressing his concern by adding at least $14 trillion to the debt between now and when his plan finally balances the budget sometime in the 2030s (and only then if a number of the plan’s dubious assumptions come to pass).

Compared to, say, the progressive caucus’ “People’s Budget,” which balances the budget only when the rules of economics and the fundamental state of the human condition are rewritten.

“We cannot afford to ignore this coming fiscal train wreck any longer,” Eric Cantor says. “Complacency is not an option.” Well, if $14 trillion in fresh debt and unbalanced budgets until the 2030s do not amount to “complacency,” I’d hate to hear what the GOP definition of “profligacy” is.

Those two words aren’t antonyms.

Yes, I know: The Democrats’ plans are no better on the debt

Great. You're right. Stop here. You’re going to embarrass yourself if you keep going.

(though it must be noted that the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far;

Too late.

it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts).

Also, a giant government program called the Found Money Trust. Basically it hires 50,000 new government employees to sit around and wait to stumble upon a giant pile of money, The budget is more or less dependent on the revenue generation from this program.

But at least Democrats aren’t rattling markets by hypocritically holding the debt limit hostage while planning to add trillions in fresh debt themselves.

Did he even notice that Standard and Poors downgraded the US debt outlook to Negative? That had nothing to do with the debt limit skirmish.

It’s amazing how some memes, once established as conventional wisdom, are almost impossible to dislodge,

For example:

George Bush is a dullard.

Sarah Palin is a dullard.

Michelle Bachmann is a dullard.

Condaleeza Rice is a dullard.

The Tea Party is racist.

The Tea Party screamed racial slurs at a Black Congressman.

Scott Walker hates all Unions

In case it wasn’t patently obvious, all are demonstrably false. We done?

Nope. Let’s try one more:

Barack Obama is eloquent.

however at odds they are with the facts. Griping about this to a Prominent Media Figure

That prominent media figure should know enough about media to tell you that “prominent media figure” is not a proper noun.

the other day, I suggested that maybe if I set myself on fire in Times Square while spouting the truth about Republican debt, the truth would break through.

No, but you would be on fire, you crazy son of a bitch.

“Maybe,” he said. “But then you’d be seen as the radical.”

I hate to break it to you, but you are a radical. Not only do you want an asinine gasoline tax, but you also have presented a highlight reel of inaccurate and out-of-context statements about the budget proposals. That this “prominent media figure”—still not a capital noun, mind you—doesn’t already know this about you buttresses what conservatives have said about prominent media figures for decades.

The classic definition of chutzpah was a kid who kills his parents and then asks for the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.

Good lord, your mind is a twisted, wretched place. I've never read a major political contributor so unnecessarily obsessed with murder, death, and destruction.

The new definition of chutzpah is Republicans who vote for the Ryan plan that adds trillions in debt and who then say the debt limit goes up only over their dead bodies!

Republicans aren’t categorically refusing to raise the debt limit. They are simply demanding something in return. This is, after all, politics.

If I were Barack Obama, my mantra on this week’s debt tour

He’s not doing a debt tour; he’s campaigning. Yes already.

and in the months ahead would be that we should lift the debt limit only by as much debt as is needed to accommodate Paul Ryan’s budget.

Republicans would absolutely agree. In fact, let’s pass the legislation to raise the debt ceiling with the Ryan budget. Let's do it tomorrow.

The president and his team should say this every time they’re asked about the debt limit until people can’t stand hearing it any more.

They would only have to say it once. The Republicans would take them up on it so fast that there’s be a stampede back to the Capitol.

All I know is somebody better start saying this soon or I may be forced to do something desperate.

Your life is desperate. We are all now slightly more pathetic for having shared in your tragic ramblings for a few minutes. 

Progressives Unfamiliar with Meaning of Progress; Party Like It's 1917

Get yourself some Tylenol. This might be a little painful to read.

Obama needs a budget to match his progressive ideals

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Tuesday, April 19, 10:53 AM

For perhaps the first time since being sworn into office, President Obama has articulated, in eloquent terms,

I truly don’t understand the myth of Obama’s eloquence. He says “let me be clear” and follows it up with platitudes and nonsensical contradictions. “Let me be clear: the United States will always stand firm with our NATO allies so long as it’s done third phase of the new moon and so long as we don’t seek input from nations in the general North Atlantic region.”

what it means to be a progressive.

There will never be an eloquent defense of what it means to be a progressive because it’s a manufactured catchall term for a political philosophy of expediency in the furtherance of state-controlled society. Publicly acknowledging and supporting the true nature of progressivism, a euphemism for liberalism, would have ordinary Americans running in horror. This is because at its heart, it always devolves into communism.

In his budget speech last week, he spoke of our obligation to the broader community

So we owe ourselves, basically. Doesn’t this kind of sound like a trophy wife whose friends tell her that she owes it to herself to spend two weeks in an Icelandic spa?

to provide a basic level of security

What’s that old saying? Those who are willing to sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.

and dignity.

No free good in the history of mankind has ever engendered dignity. All it does is create dependency, which is ugly, brutal, and destabilizing.

Speaking of programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, he said what every good progressive believes: “We would not be a great country without those commitments.”

This is too destructive to be snarky about. The idea that America didn’t become great until 1965 is so insulting that it reframes the entire trajectory of American history away from the accumulation of liberty and towards the accumulation of entitlements. It is so antithetical to the American identity that it’s no small wonder that people believe Obama isn’t really an American; he has never actually understood America.

He fused a defense of progressive governance with a scathing critique of Paul Ryan’s cruel budget,

How is raising already confiscatory tax rates on a small portion of the population less cruel than returning spending to 2008 levels?

which all but four Republican House members have now voted for. And he demanded that the rich finally pay their fair share,

Sigh. How many times does it have to be said? The rich already pay most of the taxes. Raising the rates on the rich is simply designed as a mechanism for class warfare, not as a serious attempt to raise revenues. By this point, even a mongoloid chimp understands that lowering tax rates increases the tax base enough to keep revenues roughly level.

vowing to let the Bush tax cuts expire.

Why is that claim taken any more seriously than Republicans’ claims that they would repeal Obamacare? Of course they can’t; they only have one house of congress. Similarly, Obama would personally have to hold about 200 House members’ children hostage to get that tax increase.

It was a powerful speech,

This is getting beyond the point of verbal fellatio.

in many ways reassuring to progressives who have been demoralized by a president who appeared missing in action.

*was* missing in action.

But rhetoric and policy are not the same thing.

And yet you continue to let this jackass skate on rhetoric alone.

And in this case, as in far too many, the policy agenda the president has laid out is not worthy of, in his words, “the America we believe in.”

But not an America that the Standard & Poors’ credit raters believe in. Just saying.

To begin with, the president continues to let Republicans define the playing field in almost every instance. Why is the debate we are having not about whether to cut, but how much to cut?

Is that really a question that you need someone to answer? Because the American people collectively shrieked in horror about three months after electing Obama and scrambled to sweep Republicans back into government en masse about six months ago.

Why isn’t it about the urgency of joblessness instead of the perils of deficits?

The two aren’t connected?

The budget the president proposed is clearly influenced by a discredited conservative economic worldview.

Discredited by whom? Paul Krugman doesn’t count.

It shouldn’t be accepted as the “progressive” alternative in the negotiations soon to come.

The President’s plan may have been influenced by conservatives in the same way that Allied military strategy was influenced by German troop movements in WWII. It is by no means conservative, and it is not accepted by anyone at all.

What’s worse is that, even on this narrow playing field, the president isn’t fighting harder for those who need government’s support the most.

Military families?

He has jettisoned the Keynesian thinking this era demands,

Oh Jesus. She might as well start quoting Marx.

prematurely embracing what might be described an austerity-lite policy, one that all but guarantees mass unemployment as the new normal.

Please elaborate on such an outlandish claim. Seriously. How do tax cuts hurt the economy? It truly baffles me that liberals are somehow allowed to believe (allowed in the sense that they’re not laughed out of every serious economic forum in existence) that adding a quarter of a point to the cost of debt via Fed open market operations can cripple an economy, yet adding about 5% to every tax bracket is completely painless.

In his speech, he spoke eloquently of how there was “nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.”

Small businesses?

Nothing courageous, indeed. And yet it is President Obama who has said that for every $1 in tax increases, we should create $2 in spending cuts.

Which itself is asinine, because you can’t assume that rate changes, which is the only thing the government adjusts when altering income taxes, corresponds to nominal dollar figures. This is because tax rates have a dynamic and sometimes uneven effect on economic growth.

Faced with the choice between new cuts to the social safety net and new taxes for the richest few, it is not just Paul Ryan but President Obama whose acceptance of the way this choice is framed leaves the poor shouldering most of the burden.

The poor don’t shoulder ANY of the burden. They haven’t for years. Put simply, the poor don’t pay income taxes. At all. None. Zero. 0.00%; $0.00.

The most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson

Hilariously, she means this as a compliment.

should be willing to embrace a bolder opening gambit.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this issue didn’t just begin when Paul Ryan proposed a budget. You guys had two years to shove a healthy dose of John Maynard Keynes down our throats. It didn’t work, and the American people have taken notice. Your turn is over.

He should not be so willing to compromise on principle, even when ultimate compromise may be necessary.

No. Just no. He shouldn’t compromise even though he has to compromise? Fuck off, Katrina.

Real leadership might require compromise, but it cannot be defined by compromise.

So…he should play hardball, but with the understanding that he’ll eventually cave?

It must instead be defined by a clear vision for the future,

Despite saying “let me be clear” about three times a speech, President Obama has never shown clarity of thought on any issue of public importance.

and most important, a willingness to defend it. It should be focused not on what is possible, but instead, on the most that is possible; not the path of least resistance, but the path of maximum potential benefit.

Seriously, it’s like the woman is discovering negotiation for the first time. It’ kind of like watching a child’s groping attempts at cursive. (Which, for the record, is a worthless “skill.”)

Failing to do so is what can produce a Tea Party budget, such as the one adopted last week. As Paul Krugman put it in his column this week,

I’m sure the Times appreciates the Post’s support. Also, did I call that she’d cite Krugman or what? Damn I’m good.

the two parties “don’t just live in different moral universes, they also live in different intellectual universes.”

In other words: not only are Republicans terrible people, they’re idiots too! This from the people who lectured us on civility.

Any embrace or acceptance of that Republican universe by the White House is a retreat from the reforms this country desperately needs — and was promised.

What a rallying cry.

“No surrender! Except when you have to surrender! But really, only kind of surrender, because surrendering is necessary but unpleasant! And we really really don’t want to surrender. Until we do.”

Yet the president has again telegraphed his willingness to compromise, admitting in his speech that he did not “expect the details in any final agreement to look exactly like the approach” he laid out. What, then, does he expect it will look like?

Probably something sane.

The further right this process moves

I.e. the further towards the American people this process moves.

—    whether as a result of a political system warped and broken by corporate interests

It was an electoral trouncing in November, but blame corporations if you must.

protecting their privilege,

The privilege is to compete against the other privileged, a group which literally anyone can join. Apparently you’re privileged to squeeze out a profit by busting your ass to do things better, faster, and cheaper than everyone else. That’s how liberals define privilege.

or lobbyists actively gutting reform

Lobbyists spend most of their time actively pushing for reform. That’s why virtually everything passed in the last two years has been a legislative disaster jam-packed with special interest sweetheart deals.

 — the more disheartening the definition of victory becomes. Is merely preventing Republicans from ending Medicare what victory looks like now?

Republicans have proposed a market-based voucher system, not dismantling all spending to Medicare.

Yes, we need a defensive opposition, but while Democrats control the Senate and the White House, they cannot act merely as a minority party.

No worries. It won’t be an issue much longer.

Shouldn’t they be laying out a clear vision of a sustainable and fair economy?

They don’t have one. And what the hell does sustainable mean in this context? It’s as if she views the economy solely as a vehicle to financing non-market programs.

As the extremists take over the GOP, is the Democratic Party really going to be content to define success so modestly?

Look, I get that you’re pissed that conservatives had so much success painting Obama as an extremist. They were helped by that fact that he was actually (and still is) an extremist. That doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. This is a center-right country. Don’t forget it.

There are at least 83 Democratic members of the House who believe that we cannot exclude alternatives that would solve this economic challenge more justly and fairly.

Jesus, you’re so deep in the euphemism you didn’t even say what it is.

They believe we must challenge the limits of our narrowing debate and expand, as President Obama once called it, “our moral imagination.”

It was a nonsensical term then, it’s a nonsensical term now. Moral imagination. Jesus Christ.

They are the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), who last week introduced what they are calling the “People’s Budget,”

Sure. After we get done with that, let’s all pound some vodka, call each other “comrade” and stage a purge of all non-party members. Oh wait. That was the 1910s in Russia. This progressive thing is starting to sound kind of like regression.

an alternative both to President Obama’s proposal and the unconscionable Ryan Budget.

I suppose we are fortunate that we have a president to the right of outright Communism, but that’s kind of like giving thanks that you don’t have a giant metal rod lodged in your chest.

It lays out what a robust progressive agenda should look like. It protects the social safety net,

The status quo.

promotes a progressive tax policy

Also the status quo, but (without reading it) I’m assuming that they want to make American tax policy “more progressive.”

and makes significant cuts to the Pentagon by bringing our troops home from Iraq

Also the status quo. Since before Obama took office.

and Afghanistan.

Would have been the status quo, until Obama screwed things up.

It actually generates a surplus by 2021, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chair of the CPC.

So, by doing nothing but raising taxes on the rich and leaving Afghanstan, they achieve surplus by 2021? I don’t even have to look at this nonsense of a plan to understand that their accounting is pure bullshit.

This is the kind of budget our president should be proposing.

He would literally get laughed out of office, so…be my guest.

This is the kind of budget the progressive community should be rallying around. One that makes millionaires, billionaires and corporations pay their fair share.

Compare that to a budget that just makes millionaires and billionaires.

It’s like they think that their own misguided, childish spite is more important than economic growth.

One that protects the poor and middle class. But it is the kind of budget that establishment Democrats and media elites are inclined to ignore and dismiss.

Yeah. Because it’s both embarrassing and crazy.

We can be, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently put it, a country “of the 1%, for the 1%, by the 1%.”

The 1% that pays for 34% of the government.

Or we can be a country that believes in — and embraces — shared sacrifice.

Which, of course, is a euphemism for shifting the sacrifice to someone else.

A country not defined by the greed of the few but by the needs of the many.

Holy shit. That communism stuff before was kind of tongue-in-cheek. This isn’t. This is flat-out, Stalin-loving, Mao-reading, beorgeois-hating, state-worshipping, gulag-populating, one party-ruling propaganda for communism. From each according to his ability; to each according to his need. Someone please get Katrina a little red star for her hat.

That’s the only kind of America really worth believing in.

America is a nation of free men. It is defined not by the “needs of the many,” but by the capability of the individuals to pursue their own fortune. This means failure and strife and hardship, but it also means wealth, production, and the overwhelming equalizing force of the dollar.

There is nothing to love about deference to need. By shackling America’s productive capacity to needs, it enslaves producers to leeches who would siphon their ability. It encourages the moderately able to instead leech. It debases the human spirit and undermines the basic dignity that America was designed to preserve. It is the purest form of evil, the urge to shame a man into subjugating himself to you and make his prowess yours.

This is more serious than my snarkiness. Katrina Vanden Heuvel has issued a call to arms for communism in the United States in one of the nation’s leading newspapers. This is what the other side looks like: a hammer and sickle swaddled in the stars and stripes.