Month: August 2010

Teachable Moments

Steve Benen plucks out another Angle clanger amongst a NYT interview:

Q. Did Keynesian economics, the stimulus spending, work in the Depression of the ‘30s?

A. No. And I think history has really proven that to be true. Most economists agree that the thing that really worked, which is a sad commentary, is the war.

Benen notes the foolishness of this, but dances by the real point (as I see it, anyway). Where was this series of follow-up questions:

Q. So, then, if we accept that WWII was solely responsible for the nation’s economic recovery, what exactly was it about the war that spurred the recovery?

Q. I see. So, where did that money come from. By which I mean: who was buying all the arms and so forth?

Q. So what you’re saying is that massive government stimulus, in this case, a government stimulus that happened to be directed at the construction and production of war materiel is what stimulated the economy and resulted in essentially full employment and a large scale recovery?

Q. Well then, I guess you can explain how this is in any way different from what you decry as Keynesian intervention, but simply on a more massive scale? And how you square that with your previous statements re: the New Deal did nothing?

But we don’t get this. Ever. Instead, the next question is this probing and incisive fastball:

Q. In Washington, you hear various Republican committees talk about trying to remake you or change you. How do you react to that?

I’d rate that right up there with

Q. Mr. Burns, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?

Reporters are never prepared, or, alternatively, are prepared but too beholden to power and access to ever ask the appropriate follow-up. Even when getting an answer would mean making real news out of an otherwise milquetoast interview that maybe twelve people will look at. And it’s killing the country. Day by day, week by week, we’re tapping away on the flag way up in the rigging while the ship sinks below us.

CNN and Free Speech

Lemon: Don’t you think it’s a bit different considering what happened on 9/11? And the people have said there’s a need for it in Lower Manhattan, so that’s why it’s being built there. What about 10, 20 blocks . . . Midtown Manhattan, considering the circumstances behind this? That’s not understandable?
Patel: In America, we don’t tell people based on their race or religion or ethnicity that they are free in this place, but not in that place —
Lemon: [interrupting] I understand that, but there’s always context, Mr. Patel . . . this is an extraordinary circumstance. You understand that this is very heated. Many people lost their loved ones on 9/11 —
Patel: Including Muslim Americans who lost their loved ones. . . .
Lemon: Consider the context here. That’s what I’m talking about.
Patel: I have to tell you that this seems a little like telling black people 50 years ago: you can sit anywhere on the bus you like – just not in the front.
Lemon: I think that’s apples and oranges – I don’t think that black people were behind a Terrorist plot to kill people and drive planes into a building. That’s a completely different circumstance.
Patel: And American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot either.

If the purpose of this mosque, as we are lead to believe, is to create this tolerant environment, to avoid anything like a 9/11 ever repeating, you have to ask why didn’t one of those 100 [existing] mosques already accomplish such a thing.

Sarah Palin politico (via brooklynmutt, liberalsarecool, robot-heart-politics)
You know which country has a lot of churches and cathedrals? Germany. If the supposed purpose of all those structures is spreading the word of this supposed Jesus who supposedly is all about loving thy neighbor and whatnot, then why did those churches fail to prevent the rise of Hitler and this Holocaust thing that never actually happened anyway? Why!?!? I ask you WHY?!?!?!

(via squashed)

Because there is a difference between what you can do, and what you should do. For instance, you can build a Catholic Church next to a playground. Should you? Or am I alone in thinking it’s a little too soon for that?

John Oliver, the Daily Show.

High Cost of Free Parking

If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.

The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free.

High Cost of Free Parking

I’ve got a little list

From digby:

  • Tea Party’ers are not more likely to have racist tendencies than other conservatives.
    (Except they are.)

  • Democrats are scheming to hit 94 percent of small business owners with tax increases.
    (Except they aren’t.)

  • Bloody violence is out of control along the Mexican border, and illegal immigrants are streaming into America at record levels.
    (Except it’s not and they’re not.)

  • Obamacare will send Medicare spiraling out of control.
    (Except it won’t.)

  • Marriage is a religious union that’s all about procreation.
    (Except it isn’t.)

  • Voters say cutting the deficit is more important than creating jobs.
    (Except they don’t.)

  • Social Security is going broke, it adds to the deficit, and we have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
    (Except it’s not, it doesn’t and we don’t.)

  • The earth is getting cooler.
    (Except it’s really really not.)

Small enough to print, laminate, and keep in your pocket, David Gregory (et al.). Go and do likewise.

It’s up to Republicans to decide if they agree with this strategy. Do they want an issue or do they want us to get it done quickly?

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Statements like this boggle the mind. Welcome back from Mars, Jim, how has the weather been on The Red Planet? Much rain since your arrival there in the early-70s?