The other side said no.
They said no to laws that we passed to stop insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. They said no to requiring women to get equal pay for equal work. They said no to extended unemployment insurance for folks who desperately needed help. They said no to holding oil companies accountable when they bring on catastrophe.

Barack Obama, speaking in Vegas.
This is all well and good, and I’m glad to (finally) hear it. But The Democrat needs to be out there, every day in front of every microphone that is switched on repeating this sort of mantra over and over again, day after day, week after week, year after year. Then and only then it might start to seep in.
They choose not to. They choose to ignore the glaring truth that the facts do not matter. They think they have the high ground of those facts which do not matter. They do not. The facts do not matter, and often don’t even enter into the calculus. This is why they fail.

GOP Reaps No Outrage

jonathan-cunningham:

Let me see if I have this straight: in the last few days members of the GOP have savagely screwed the unemployed, protected the bankstas, trashed Thurgood Marshall, implied rape and incest is part of God’s plan, defended BP, threatened to either end social security or screw over 20 million plus people who have paid into the system for at least 20 years by making them wait until age 70 to see their benefits, and screwed homeless veterans with children. That about it, or is there more?

You can rest assured that there’s more, it’s just not what you may have been expecting. The real outrage? That The Democrat has made an issue of no part of any of this. Not even slightly. Instead, they’ve acceded to the demands of the minority. Over and over and on every issue listed there. And, in so doing, directly contribute to the seeds of their own electoral destruction.

Oh how we’ve all grown tired of hearing the same rhyming statements that defenestrate the GOP on any one of these issues every time a microphone has been switched on. Right? Oh how we’ve grown tired of the GOP repeatedly being forced to vote against jobs, or bank reform, or Wall Street reform, or BP reform, or the notion that rape isn’t part of God’s plans, or any of the rest of it. Right?

This is why we fail. Every time.

GOP Reaps No Outrage

On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection

Barack Obama… in 1996

Team NoKo

Kevin Drum makes a point I’ve wondered after:

[China’s] unwillingness to put serious pressure on North Korea mostly seems to come down to a combination of inertia and a fear of massive refugee flows across the border if North Korea collapses.

But why? There are 23.8 million people in all of North Korea. Even if every living human North Korean crossed the border, you’d be dealing with a rounding error in terms of China’s overall population. That and, as Kevin notes, you’d likely have broad international support once said refugee crisis began to unfold, so it’s not as though China would be alone in dealing with that rounding error.

Like so much surrounding this crap-fest, it makes no sense at all. Well except for the manifold parts that make it clearly bad news for The Democrat.

A little dab’ll do ya

OpenLeft notes just a short list of the things that Rand Paul (and his supporters) think it should be legal for the owner of a private company to fire you for:

Not being the same religion as the boss
Not having sex with the boss
Having children, or not having them
Not liking the same sports teams as the boss
Not voting for different political candidates than the boss
Not eating the same food than the boss
Not liking different colors than the boss.

Basically, any reason at all.

This is exactly right, and yet is sadly underappreciated by the general public, or at the very least in the MSM’s depiction of said public. Turns out dread Big Guvmint is responsible for some hugely popular things. Who knew?

And, in another edition of This is Why, it also goes a long way towards explaining The Democat’s current fecklessness. You see, it’s all about inoculation. We know right now that the glibertarians and their friends in the Tea Klan hold a set of wildly unpopular beliefs. Put simply, they think you should Go Die in the Streets. Are you a child whose parents have no money for food? Go die in the streets. Sick? Go die in the streets. And so forth. Turns out most Americans prefer not being relegated to death in the streets.

So you blow them the fuck up with it. Repeatedly. To the extent that Rand Paul and his ilk answer honestly (see: Brown vs. the Board of Education was wrongly decided), they will instantly and permanently alienate vast swathes of Americans, including many or even most “Conservatives.”
To the extent that Rand Paul and his ilk shuck and jive and dissemble about street death relegation, they will alienate that fraction of America that constitutes their primary support (pun definitely intended)…they come off as “just another meely mouthed politician” and/or end up with the most dreaded tag of all: RINO. Either way, it’s a strategy that puts more Democrats in office unless and until the GOP gets a clue. Which, let’s face it, is a long way off into Our Glorious Socialist Future.

Top 12

John Cole runs it down for us re: just what qualifications are required to be a serious person seeking a judicial appointment:

Titillating David Brooks- no boring career oriented types need apply. Try to squeeze in some college era hijinks to liven up that vita- maybe a possession bust as an undergrad, some racy Facebook pictures, or a term paper supportive of Mao.
Ed Whelan demands a valid driver’s license and there will be a proficiency test to demonstrate “mastery” of the subject.
Paul Campos would like a dissertation on the history of curriculum theory (no slouching and skipping out on the role of hermeneutics and critical theory), a treatise on best pedagogical practices, a complete review of the collected works of John Dewey, and a positive evaluation from every lazy student you may have ever had.
Andrew Sullivan would like proof one way or another of your sexual orientation. I suppose pictures will do, but the apparent gold standards are the assurances of Jeffrey Toobin and Eliot Spitzer.
Somewhat related to #4, K-LO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] has decided that four out of over one hundred justices have been women, and this poses a grave threat to the white male, so no more va-jay-jays- women need not apply.
David Bernstein is tired of Ivy Leaguers, so come on down, Heritage Law students!
Republicans are requiring a history of judicial experience, which could be daunting, considering they will most likely block your appointment to the bench.
Ed Whelan is also requiring that future justices not be residents (current or former) of New York City.
Michael Steele is demanding that you not question the Constitutional Right to practice of slavery.
Lynn Sweet would like a decent batting stance. And no, I’m not kidding. According to recent debates, proof of a good baseball stance could also serve as verification of your sexual status, as required by Sullivan in point number four.
[Andrew] Sullivan is now demanding a record of taking risks and failing to prove a record of life experience.
And Howard Kurtz requires a spouse and children

Center-right radical socialism

“ My fellow Americans, in the past weeks we have witnessed a string of avoidable tragedies caused by the excesses of corporations and their executives. Millions of innocent people have suffered economic losses and dozens have lost their lives. The heedless rapacity of BP will cause suffering to the fishing industry, damage to the Gulf’s fragile ecology and new economic losses to a region that is only beginning to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

“The mining disaster is another reason why we cannot rely on corporations to act in the public interest. Unless government vigorously policies mine safety, more miners will lose their lives, more wives will lose husbands and more children will lose fathers. But better enforcement of oil and coal safety will never solve the entire problem. We as a nation must do what BP cynically professed it was doing. We must move beyond petroleum and beyond carbon.

"And the mother of all economic catastrophes, the financial collapse, is further proof that markets must not be left to their own devices. We need the toughest possible regulation of Wall Street so that the rest of the economy can recover.

—Robert Kuttner, saying what Obama won’t.
Kuttner goes on:

Gentle reader, presidents on occasion have actually made speeches like this. Roosevelt did. Lyndon Johnson did during the civil rights era. You could look it up. They used events to move public opinion. They built popular support for progressive interventions.

To which I add: yep.

Oil’s Darkside

It was not a mistake. The response to Katrina was not a mistake, and neither was the lack of an acoustic switch on the wellhead that could have shut down the flow when the platform was lost:

Cheney’s energy task force – the secretive one that he wouldn’t say much about publicly – that decided that the [acoustic] switches, which cost $500,000, were too much a burden on the industry

$500,000 was “too much of a burden” on an industry receiving $36.5 BILLION in government subsidies over and above any historic profits they just might be reaping. BILLION. With a “B”. Versus $500 THOUSAND. I’m willing to bet that Halliburton’s compensation committee gives bonuses in excess of the cost of said acoustic switch that wasn’t there to stop the oil spill that occured when they fucked up the bore cementing job they were down there doing. Poorly, in all likelihood.
In 2009, Halliburton’s CEO received $12.4M, a stunning reduction of 20%. One wonders how he gets by. The no-doubt struggling compensation committee awarded him, him, as in just him ALONE, a bonus of $8.1M. By my count, that’s 16.2 acoustic switches without even touching his regular pay. This, however, is an unsustainable burden on the oil industry, which Halliburton isn’t even directly involved with (in terms of directing exploration, drilling, and refining).
Worth noting that there are, as of April 2010 56 licensed and operating oil platforms that the US has purview over. FIFTY SIX. It would cost $2.8M to outfit THEM ALL. $36.5 BILLION in direct government subsidies to the oil industry before any profits are even estimated, but, according to Dick Cheney, $2.8M is too great a price to pay.

By all means, blame it on Obama. His fault all the way.

Four Things

The way I see it, this graph boils down to four things:

Perceived level of understanding is a dangerous thing. But then, we knew this.
Self-identifying independents of 1993 were largely moderates. Today, they are (apparently) the far right that finds the GOP not-quite-lunatic-enough and (probably) some fraction of former GOPers who are horrified by that party today. A “voted-X in last election” cross-tab would’ve helped here. A lot.
The epistemic loop seems entirely responsible for the shift in initial wrong-ness, and misperception among Democrats that also has to be corrected through painstakingly slow re-education and gradual convincing. Lots of Democrats were buying into the Death Panels horse-shit too, after all, they heard it on the news, so the news-givers must be making at least a casual effort at factual correctness instead of merely reporting what various “sides” said. Right? Right? It is a mortal lock that these Democrats are older, and came of age with Walter Cronkite. They implicitly trust what they hear on TV, even if it’s on FOXnews. You can (eventually) convince them otherwise, but only with a lot of work; and research shows they still marginally believe the wrong fact if it comes first, even when said people realize the initial fact is misinformation. This is why primacy in the race to inoculation in the messaging war matters so goddamned much, and yet the Democrat categorically refuses to use it.
Nearly 80% of Republicans self-identifying as “not knowing much” about healthcare reform knew that there were going to be Death Panels. More than 80% who “knew a lot” thought that as well. This is FOXnews, Rush, Beck, and Drudge (aka the MSM’s assignment editor). No other explanation for it.
The Facts Do Not Matter

Full report (PDF link) here.

Oilbama

Krugman makes predictions on just how it is that Obama will be blamed for the oil platform explosion and subsequent mess:

Will it be claims that liberals and/or scientific conspirators sabotaged the rig, to undermine good Americans who want to drillheredrillnow? (Michael Crichton already wrote that novel).

Will it be that oil workers, demoralized by the march of socialism, fell into despair and let the accident happen?

Will it be claims that since this didn’t happen under Bush, it obviously shows that Obamanomics is responsible?

Apparently Rush has already started in on choice #1.

I think my vote is more along the lines of

“…and I think it’s clear that this accident only happened because we aren’t drilling enough. These poor companies are over-working what they have because they can’t make a walkable ring of oil platforms that encircles Florida. This sort of lunatic under-drilling leads directly to the sort of accidents we’ve seen off the coast of Louisiana, Wolf. That, and I might just mention that Biden used the F-word.”

Which, by the way, I’m for installing. So there’s that. Thank me later, Florida.

Wolf’s answer to that statement, you ask?