Newest Hacked Climate E-Mails Still Fail to Disprove Global Warming

Newest Hacked Climate E-Mails Still Fail to Disprove Global Warming

The UK Guardian reports today that the deniers are serving 2-year-old leftovers for Thanksgiving:

    Fresh round of hacked climate science emails leaked online

    A file containing 5,000 emails has been made available in an apparent attempt to repeat the impact of 2009's similar release….

    The initial email dump was apparently timed to disrupt the Copenhagen climate talks. It prompted three official inquiries in the UK and two in the US into the working practices of climate scientists. Although these were critical of the scientists’ handling of Freedom of Information Act requests and lack of openness they did not find fault with the climate change science they had produced.

    Norfolk police have said the new set of emails is “of interest” to their investigation to find the perpetrator of the initial email release who has not yet been identified.

Actually nine independent investigations have vindicated climate science and climate scientists on the hacked University of East Anglia emails (as Skeptical Science explains, for those who want the full history).

As one scientist put it to me today:

    “Two years ago, emails were released and the American people were lied to about their content.  Now, we are expected to be gullible enough to believe the original liars a second time.”

Media Matters also has a good post, “Memo To Media: Research First, Then Report On Climate Emails.”

The bad news is that, as Media Matters explains in its latest post, “Media Already Botching Reports On Hacked Climate Emails,” with some awful “reporting” by the Washington Post already (see below).

The good news is that the perpetrators and their fellow deniers apparently think the international climate talks in Durban are actually important enough to try to trick the media once again into prematurely running stories on out-of-context excerpts from private emails from scientists, most of which were written years ago, discussing science that has long since been resolved.

Leftovers, again? One climate scientist calls the email dump, “Two-year-old turkey from Thanksgiving 2009.”

These are the “second string” emails.  The Varsity team couldn’t derail the science so it’s  really hard to see how the Junior Varsity team could. In other words, if multiple independent investigations showed that climate science was unscathed by the original batch of emails — which must have been the ones the deniers thought were the best they had — then what precisely are the chances these even weaker second-stringers are going to beat the climate science team?  After all, the climate science team has gotten considerably stronger in recent years.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded its 2010 review of climate science, saying it is a “settled fact” that “the Earth system is warming.”  As for the cause, last year, Time reported on a comprehensive new review paper of “100 peer-reviewed post-IPCC studies” in an article titled, “Report: The Case for Global Warming Stronger Than Ever”:

    By looking at a wide range of observations from all over the world,  the Met Office study concludes that the fingerprint of human influence on climate is stronger than ever. “We can say with a very high significance level that the effects we see in the climate cannot be attributed to any other forcings [factors that push the climate in one direction or another],” says study co-author Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh.

ironically or maybe just a joke on everyone gullible enough to stumble across their crazy rants a site called Junk Science is using the newest old e-mails as proof there ain't no such thing as global warming. They have no science to back them up. Perhaps they're called Junk Science because that is what they believe in, junk.

This Thanksgiving, Many Who Once Donated To Food Banks Are Asking For Help Themselves

Republicans Claim The Stimulus Did Not Create Jobs and Government Cannot Create Jobs

Republicans Claim The Stimulus Did Not Create Jobs and Government Cannot Create Jobs

I have to admit, I never tire of stories like these.

    …Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) kicked it old school on Thursday by cutting the ribbon on a new road that received millions from the same spending bill he opposed.

    Guinta spoke at the opening ceremony for Raymond Wieczorek Drive, a new access road connecting various towns to the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Later he posted a picture of the event on his official Facebook page. Other attendees included Gov. John Lynch (D) and New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien.

    “It’s going to help us with our tourism, our economy, and it’s going to provide us greater flexibility for our residents, our business commuters, and those visiting our state,” Guinta said at the event. “It’s a real example of how when we put our mind to it we can accomplish anything we want to accomplish.”

These examples are a lot less common now, not because GOP officials have become more responsible, but because Recovery Act funding has just about been exhausted. But when the instances come along, they tend to be doozies.

In this case, Guinta absolutely loathes stimulus spending — his hatred for these public investments was a central part of his 2010 campaign platform — but that didn’t stop him from trying to take credit for the infrastructure project that was financed by stimulus spending. That this new project wouldn’t exist if Guinta had his way didn’t interfere with his smiles at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Now, every time these examples come up, I get some pushback. As the argument goes, these Republican lawmakers who hate stimulus spending and want stimulus spending at the same time aren’t really doing anything wrong, because once the funds are available, members of Congress have a responsibility to look out for their districts’ interests.

There’s certainly some truth to this, and I can fully appreciate the importance of fighting for a slice of a pie. After all, their taxpaying constituents are paying for these investments whether they like it or not.

The problem, though, is the ways in which this practice pokes holes in the larger Republican ideology. GOP lawmakers like Guinta run around telling the public that public investments can’t create jobs and are bad for the economy. GOP lawmakers like Guinta then also tell the public investments can create jobs and are good for the economy.

Look again at those remarks the conservative Republican lawmaker made at the ribbon-cutting ceremony: because Congress agreed to spend this money, over his objections, Guinta’s community will get a larger economic boost. But if that’s true, why has Guinta fought so hard to kill this and related investments? Isn’t boosting the economy a worthwhile goal?

If there’s money on the table, and Republicans want to fight for some of it, fine. But what gets me are the ideological arguments that are as wrong as they are cynical — public spending will undermine the economy, unless it’s in my area, in which case it will be good for the economy.

One way to explain how conservatives look at the world is whatever benefits them is good - there s no real underlying system of beliefs. They're like children who want a piece of candy are are going to stomp their feet and cry until they get. Everything else they say or do is just so much noise. Some conservatives still try to get away with calling themselves the party of Lincoln. That was around the last time the Republican party stood for any principles.

Over The Last Forty Years America Has Often Followed The Path of Conservative Economic Policy - That Path Has Come Back to Haunt The Middle-Class

Over The Last Forty Years America Has Often Followed The Path of Conservative Economic Policy - That Path Has Come Back to Haunt The Middle-Class

A few weeks ago, as the Occupy Wall Street protests were first spreading, something amazing happened: For 10 whole seconds, the local reporter on my TV screen actually talked about the realities of the recession. He even uttered the phrase “economic inequality.”

My guess is that you’ve seen something similar on your local affiliate — and that’s no minor event. When even the most local of television journalists are compelled to acknowledge this crushing emergency in a country whose media aggressively promotes American dream agitprop, it means the Occupy protesters have scored a monumental victory. You can almost imagine a Wall Street CEO turning to an aide and muttering a slightly altered riff off LBJ: “If we’ve lost Ron Burgundy, we’ve lost Middle America.”

In response to this stunning turn of events, conservative politicians are retreating to non sequiturs. They seem to think that if they shout the phrase “class warfare” enough, the nation will go back to not caring about the divide between the rich and poor.

But something has changed.

For most of the post-World War II era, we tolerated relatively high inequality because we envisioned it as a necessary side effect of an exceptional economy that (supposedly) guaranteed opportunities for advancement. As the Wall Street Journal put it, we believed that “it is OK to have ever-greater differences between rich and poor … as long as (our) children have a good chance of grasping the brass ring.”

However, the last three decades have invalidated our standing hypothesis. After the conservatives’ successful assault on the New Deal, America has lived a different reality — one perfectly summarized by a new Federal Reserve study revealing that today’s increasing inequality accompanies comparatively low social mobility.

“U.S. family income mobility has decreased over the 1969-2006 time span, and especially since the 1980s,” notes the Fed paper, adding that “a family’s position at (the) end of (the) 2000s was … more correlated with its start position than was the case 20 years earlier.”

Of course, some class mobility still exists. The trouble is that it’s primarily of the downward kind. As the Pew Charitable Trusts reports, roughly a third of those who grew up in the middle class have now fallen below that station in adulthood.

This is why, for all the right-wing mythology about “Eurosocialism” snuffing out upward mobility, data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that social mobility in uber-capitalist America is actually lower than in most industrialized countries.

This is why almost three-quarters of respondents just told the Hill newspaper’s pollsters that income inequality is a problem.

This is why my local TV news is suddenly airing pieces on economic inequality between sports, weather and all the “you stay classy” small talk.

And this is why, among all the fights over economic policy, the debate about taxes is the most crucial of all.

As the Fed noted in a separate report, the federal tax code — which remains vaguely progressive — has been the one proven way to “mitigate income inequality.” But with congressional Republicans gradually flattening federal income tax rates and with already-regressive state tax rates in GOP bastions like Texas, Wyoming, Tennessee, South Dakota and Mississippi, the tax system has lately been preserving or exacerbating existing inequality.

David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now."

Conservatives have been hyper shrill lately. Claiming that a return of the tax rates of the prosperous Clinton years will be a return to Marxism or even the end of our civilization. You can't reason with people like that, people who have clearly gone off the deep end. They seemed to have taken the zealotry of some religious cults to and applied it to economics. They believe what they believe and they want no part of being rational adults.

Anti-American Fox News Tries to Hide Connection Between Fox and Georgia Based Domestic Terrorists

Anti-American Fox News Tries to Hide Connection Between Fox and Georgia Based Domestic Terrorists

Fox News is now actively concealing a link between an Alabama-based blogger repeatedly featured on the network as an expert and allegations of a domestic terrorist plot.

This morning on America's Newsroom, Fox News ran an extensive report on yesterday's arrest of four Georgia men accused of plotting an attack on federal employees and U.S. citizens using explosives, guns, and the biological toxin ricin. At the end of the segment, correspondent Jonathan Serrie pointed out that one of the defendants "allegedly cited the online novel Absolved, which discusses small groups of citizens attacking U.S. officials," with the defendant allegedly "saying that the attacks would be based on events in that novel."

Charging documents indeed state that accused plotter Frederick Thomas repeatedly cited as an inspiration the novel Absolved, in which underground militia fighters declare war on the federal government over gun control laws and same-sex marriage, leading to a second American revolution. But Fox's report neglected to mention the allegedly inspirational novel's author, who is no stranger to Fox viewers.

Indeed, the author, Mike Vanderboegh, has been mainstreamed by the network, which has repeatedly featured him as an expert on the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious. Fox has identified Vanderboegh as an "online journalist" and an "authority on the Fast and Furious investigation," and has consistently failed to acknowledge his extremist views, actions, and affiliations.

Vanderboegh, a former member of the militia and Minuteman movements and now a leader of the "anti-government extremist group" the Three Percenters, which claims to represent the three percent of gun owners who "who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act" but will instead, "if forced by any would-be oppressor, ... kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution."

The complaint against Thomas details a similar scenario:

    THOMAS described a scenario in which he felt would be the "line in the sand" that would result in the activation of militias. THOMAS believed that soon, during a protest action, a protestor would be shot. It is his opinion the militias would act and respond by openly attacking the police. He then openly discussed having complied what he called the "Bucket List" which is a list of government employees, politicians, corporate leaders and members of the media he feels needed to be "taken out" to make the country right again."

Vanderboegh has stated that "another civil war in this country is the last thing I want,"writing in the introduction to Absolved that the novel is "a cautionary tale for the out-of-control gun cops of the ATF," who "need to know how powerful" the "armed citizenry" "could truly be if they were pushed into a corner."

Fox News has repeatedly presented Vanderboegh as a credible source. Their failure to mention his authorship of a novel that allegedly inspired a terrorist plot is telling.

UPDATE: In a subsequent report, Fox's Serrie said that Absolved was written by "the former leader of an Alabama militia," and briefly flashed an image of the book's cover that showed Vanderboegh's name. Serrie did not note Vanderboegh's connection to Fox News.

As Congressional Republicans do everything they can to stop employment programs and make life harder for the unemployed, the conservative media id trying to hide its ties to radical anti-American Republicans. P.T. Barnum once said there was a sucker born every minute. He might as well have been talking about modern day conservatives who keep falling for the conservative movement hiding its anti-American agenda behind the flag and the Bible.  


Subprime Loans, Foreclosure, and the Credit Crisis. What Happened and Why? - A Primer(pdf)

By 2007, subprime loans accounted for 29% of total home loans. The vast majority of the subprime loans causing today’s massive foreclosures were issued by institutions and independent mortgage brokers not covered by the CRA.

Shady Right-wing Group is Trying to Paint OWS as anti-Semitic

Shady Right-wing Group is Trying to Paint OWS as anti-Semitic

Right-wing pundits and Republican Party figures are continuing their attempt to smear the Occupy Wall Street movement as anti-Semitic, but we now have more evidence that the charge is profoundly dishonest.

To review: the Emergency Committee for Israel (which, it turns out, is funded by Wall Street) released an ad last week claiming that Occupy Wall Street is shot through with anti-Semitism, and demanding that Democrats condemn the protests. That attack has now been picked up by various pundits and GOP officials. The Republican National Committee started using the line against Democrats Wednesday. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin inevitably piled on. Fox News is all over the story.

Exhibit A in the ad (watch it at link) is a sign-bearing man who yells that “Jews control Wall Street!” Now, as I’ve previously reported, Occupy protesters have taken to surrounding the man, who gave his name to me recently as David Smith, with rebuttal signs, including one that reads, “Asshole —>”. Smith has been hanging around Zuccotti Park nearly every day for a couple of weeks.

But as Josh Nathan-Kazis reports at the Forward, Smith started carrying anti-Semitic signs around the financial district long before Occupy Wall Street existed:

    Occupy Wall Street’s most visible anti-Semite was picketing the Financial District long before Zuccotti Park was occupied. …

    During a trip to Zuccotti Park to observe the early stages of the protest on September 19, two days after activists first set up camp there, the Forward’s Nate Lavey and I watched as Smith entered the plaza with his cardboard sign, was confronted by one vocal passerby, and then was chased out of the occupied plaza by a shouting mob of activists. Police eventually intervened to separate him from the crowd.

    Smith is a familiar face to those of us who work downtown. The Forward office is a few blocks from Wall Street, and I saw him at least once earlier this summer, picketing silently near the New York Stock Exchange.

That account matches the widespread hostility I’ve observed among occupiers against Smith. Given that Occupy Wall Street is based in a public space, occupiers simply don’t have the power to permanently kick Smith out. Of course anti-Semitism needs to be confronted when it crops up. And that’s exactly what the true occupiers have been doing.

Smith, according to a recent interview, is homeless and going blind from glaucoma. He previously told me that he made a sign reading “Google: Zionists Control Wall St.” because God told him to. And yet, as Nathan-Kazis notes, Smith has been endlessly written about, photographed and filmed. He now represents Occupy’s “anti-Semitism problem.”

Another man featured in the Emergency Committee for Israel ad is Danny Cline, who appears to be an aspiring YouTube star with no involvement in Occupy Wall Street beyond showing up at the park to film his own rants.

The reality is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is filled with Jews. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently noted its distinctly “Jewish flavor.” Fifteen hundred people attended a Yom Kippur service outside Liberty Plaza earlier this month, in what participants described as one of the most powerful and moving events of Occupy to date.

Still, the “Occupy Wall Street is anti-Semitic” meme — a classic example of a tactic known as “nutpicking” — spreads. Don’t expect the fact that all this is largely based on two or three trolls to stop the right from continuing the attacks.

OccupyWallStreet: Yom Kippur Celebration in Support of Occupy Wall Street 10/7/11

Five Myths About The Economy That Conservatives Keep Repeating

Five Myths About The Economy That Conservatives Keep Repeating

The Top Five

Here are five “conventional wisdom” doses of economic nonsense that we have been fed:

1. Business does everything better than government ?

Corporate conservatives argue that businesses and their one-dollar-one-vote system of decision-making is better and more efficient than We, the People's government and its one-person-one-vote system. They argue that constant competition, placing companies under constant fear of going under and people under constant fear of job-loss, focuses the mind like a pending execution. They say it leads them to do only what they should be doing and no more, in the best possible way, always looking for the best and most “efficient” ways, forcing innovation to occur.

But as we have seen, what actually happens in this kind of dehumanized “Force You” system (as in “F.U.”) is that businesses are forced to cut every corner, cheapen every product, cut out every service, lay people off, cut people’s wages while adding hours, gut benefits … and probably go under anyway because when every business does the same 99 percent of us can’t afford to buy or do things anymore.

The effect on people (human beings – remember them?) is worse. Stress-induced illness is rampant in our fear-based society. People do not get sufficient sleep, skip vacations, work long hours, spend less time with their families, spend very little time in nature, and the rest of the things that make us human.

This idea that people are best when operating under constant fear is similar to the conservative mantra that everyone should carry a gun because then you have “a polite society.” Perhaps constant fear and stress keeps people on their toes and makes them “behave” but in the long run it’s just no way to live.

Another “feature” of this top-down, one-dollar-one-vote, “market” system that the corporate conservatives advocate is that only those at the top levels of the corporate/financial ladder make the decisions for, and receive the benefits of, society. This is great if – and only if – you are in that 1 percent. But one-person-one-vote, democratic government decision-making means all of us have an equal say with equal access and equal opportunity, and society operates for the benefit of all of us.

2. Rich people are “job creators.”?

This is the old “trickle-down” idea -- that if you give enough money to the already-rich eventually some of that money will trickle down to the rest of us. This is also called the “getting peed on” theory of economics.

The basis of this thinking comes from the theories of Ayn Rand, who argued that society consists of “producers” and “parasites.” Rand’s fundamentally anti-democratic ideology says that democracy is a form of “collectivism” in which people who don’t want to work and produce use their numbers to steal from a gifted few who are the “producers” of goods and services. Rand’s followers claim that wealthy people are rich because they “produce.” The rest of us are “parasites” who “take money” from the productive rich, by taxing them. This revenue is “redistributed” to the parasites to pay for our “entitlements.”

They say that if wealthy people have more money they will use that money to start businesses and hire people. But anyone with a real business will tell you that people coming in the door and buying things is what creates jobs. In a real economy, people wanting to buy things – demand – is what causes businesses to form and people to be hired.

History – and a quick look around us today – shows that when all the money goes to a few at the top demand from the rest of us dries up and everything breaks down.  Taxing the people at the top and reinvesting the money into the democratic society is fundamental to keeping things going.

3. Government and taxes take money out of the economy?

Yes, they actually say that government and taxes “take money out of the economy.” They argue that the money government collects is a) pocketed by politicians; or b) stuffed under a giant mattress; or c) is just wasted.

In reality the taxes that government collects are invested in the “public structures” that create the prosperity and lifestyle we enjoy – or at least did before taxes were cut. Tax revenue builds the infrastructure of transportation, courts, schools, universities, research facilities and other institutions that enable our businesses to grow and prosper and the consumer protection, safety inspection, water and sewer, health, parks and arts that help us live and enjoy our lives.

But there is a powerful reason for people to feel the government does seem to be providing value for the money it costs us: so much of the federal budget goes to military and military-related spending. Spending on wars, the "Defense" department (military), intelligence, nuclear weapons, veterans, and related budget items (including interest on money borrowed for past military spending) is a significant portion of the budget, and people instinctively feel that the country is not getting back services that match what they are putting in.

High top tax rates also reduce the incentive to be greedy and destructive, which can overcome many of us and make us do things we shouldn’t. Cutting top tax rates in the '80s forced a change in business models away from long-term planning and building wealth by building sustainable businesses over decades. Instead, since you could take home a fortune overnight, it made more sense to go for the get-rich-quick, sell-the-farm-style schemes so prevalent today.

4. Regulations Kill Jobs?

Corporate conservatives say that “government just gets in the way” and costs money, which leaves less room for hiring. This is a corollary to the “business knows best” argument and to the idea that society consists of a few “producers” who are inherently superior to the masses of people. The thinking is that We, the People don’t know what we are doing, and businesses with their top-down structure will do the right thing more efficiently.

Those engaged in a business do know the business better than outsiders.  But regulations that protect the public, employees and the environment govern how the actions of businesses affect the rest of us.  A business wants to make a profit, and will only care how regulations affect that goal.  It makes sense for government to set up regulations because the rest of us are concerned about the larger world of the rest of us, and therefore understand more clearly how the actions of a business will affect the rest of us.

In may cases regulations keep businesses from doing things that kill jobs – and people.

5. “Protectionism” hurts the economy.

Corporate conservatives argue that “free trade” is always good under all circumstances. They say we get lower prices and our businesses are able to reach more customers. Of course trade can be a wonderful thing, increasing the standard of living on both sides of the trade border.

But the trade deals of recent decades have not been free or fair, and can’t really even be called “trade.” What has happened is countries sell to us but do not buy equally from us, causing huge trade deficits that have drained our economy and our jobs and our wages. Instead of increasing prosperity they have been used to increase exploitation of working people and the environment for the benefit of a wealthy few.

Our prosperity is the fruit of our democracy. 

Conservatives say that it is good that businesses in countries like China are more competitive because they don’t have a lot of regulations to comply with. Countries where the people have little say in things don’t have to spend the money to pay minimum wages, keep the environment clean, keep workers safe and keep products up to standard and they don’t have to worry about lawsuits. They are more “efficient.” So they can charge less.

Conservatives who argue that we should have less regulation, lower wages, fewer benefits, fewer consumer, worker and environmental protections are really arguing that we should abandon democracy. By opening our borders to goods made where people do not have a say we made democracy a competitive disadvantage.

Fed Up With the Nonsense

So as we see all around us today, the economic conventional wisdom nonsense that we were force-fed for decades didn’t work, messed things up, and people finally got fed so much if it that they are fed up. The #occupy crowd got fed up and showed up. They sleep in the park and on sidewalks, marched, and took the batons and pepper spray that seem to always come at us when we protest. They persisted, and awakened the rest of us. Now it has spread to cities across the country.

They shook loose from the shadow-fog of propaganda that shrouds us from morning to night, from radio to TV to newspaper. They didn’t prepare a media strategy with a savvy focus-group-tested message targeting key demographics. They didn’t care how they looked or how they would be seen. They didn’t care what the media would say. They certainly didn’t care what Wall Street would do. They saw clearly where the problem is, and decided to just go ahead and do something.

They said that what is going on is wrong, it is bad, it is hurting people, and that they were not going to put up with that for one more minute. They said it is time to be citizens not consumers.  They are choosing to have some meaning in their lives beyond just being worker bees helping perpetuate a destructive system.

So they decided to “occupy Wall Street” in the name of the 99 percent of us who have been losing out in this economy, and the honesty and clarity of that has caught on.

    “No one is confused about the message. Wall Street got bailed out; Main Street was abandoned. The top 1% rigs the rules and pockets the rewards. And 99% get sent the bill for the party they weren't even invited to.” – Robert Borosage

    Poets, priests and politicians
    Have words to thank for their positions
    Words that scream for your submission
    And no-one's jamming their transmission
    And when their eloquence escapes you
    Their logic ties you up and rapes you

    -“De Do Do Do De Da Da Da,” The Police

When is the last time you heard someone in big corporate media challenge any of these conservative myths. The reason we hear so much news about scandals and missing persons ( stories worthy of coverage, but not the over done exploitative coverage we get) is because those stories take up lots of air time and are easy to cover. The corporate media also tend to act like the most popular kids in school, they don't want to do or say anything that goes against the conventional wisdom because it would put a dent in their popularity.

Why Does Eric Cantor (R-VA) Hate America

Why Does Eric Cantor (R-VA) Hate America

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) voted for over $120 billion to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, funds that were used to construct and repair schools, roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.

Now, Cantor is opposing President Obama’s proposal to spend $30 billion to modernize 35,000 American schools. Reuters has the story:

    U.S. House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Monday he will not support President Barack Obama’s proposal to renovate U.S. schools as part of the administration’s bill to spur job growth.

    He added that Obama should focus instead on cutting federal regulations that he says kill U.S. jobs…

The president’s proposal is a modest effort. The total maintenance and repair backlog at U.S. schools is estimated at $270 billion to $500 billion. While the funding Obama is proposing is fully offset, Cantor voted to build schools in Iraq and Afghanistan with deficit spending.

Construction and building projects generally create about 10,000 jobs per billion spent. At a time of high unemployment, the funding that Cantor opposes would create about 300,000 jobs. Economist Jared Berstein explains that funding to modernize schools is “a smart way to get a lot of people who really need jobs back to work, fix a critical part of our institutional infrastructure, save energy costs, provide kids with a better, healthier learning environment, and do so in way that everyone can see and feel good about each morning when they drop their kids at school.”

Please do not be fooled by their flag waving fake patriotism, conservative Republicans are the rot eating away at he basic values that make America a democratic republic.

Republican Wuss of the Week - Why is House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) Afraid of His Constituents

Republican Wuss of the Week - Why is House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) Afraid of His Constituents

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House GOP plan to phase out Medicare, does not like it when constituents publicly challenge him. In fact, people who disagree with Ryan have a habit of getting arrested for it. A few weeks ago, several of Ryan’s unemployed constituents staged a peaceful sit-in at his Kenosha, Wisconsin office to protest his unpopular decision not to hold any free public town halls during the August recess. These constituents didn’t think they should have to pay to ask their elected representative a question. Instead of meeting with them, Ryan’s staff called the police.

So it should come as no surprise that this week, three people who paid to see Ryan speak were arrested and charged with trespassing for protesting the event. One constituent, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was handcuffed and pushed to the ground by security:

    Video footage taken by an attendee at the event shows that one of them, Tom Nielsen, received particularly harsh treatment — he was pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Nielsen received an additional charge of resisting arrest.

    Ryan was speaking Tuesday afternoon at the Whitnall Park Rotary Club. Protesters gathered both outside his event and inside, standing up and disrupting the congressman’s remarks.

    According to Oak Creek Patch, as many as a dozen protesters were escorted out of the event. Another dozen or so left willingly.

Ryan seemed supremely undisturbed that a senior citizen worried about receiving the Medicare he’s paid into his whole life was treated so brutally. Indeed, Ryan made light of the arrest and quipped to the audience, “I hope he’s taking his blood pressure medication.”

Watch it, courtesy of Wisconsin Jobs Now:

Another woman was shown the door when she challenged Ryan’s claim that the jobs crisis is directly related to the debt crisis. “Our debt is out of control because of the tax cuts you’re giving,” she said. “Our unemployment in 2003 was 6.2% before the tax cuts went through. Now our unemployment rate is 9.1%. What are you doing to create jobs, Congressman?” Another woman was escorted out when she stood up while Ryan was speaking and said, “You won’t talk to us. How can we give our opinions when you refuse to talk to us?”

Ryan has consistently faced angry constituents at his events since his Medicare-killing budget became a top GOP priority. Tired of being publicly embarrassed by constituents who voice their disagreement and say his policies are hurting them, Ryan has resorted to increasingly harsh responses to deal with people who have the audacity to speak up at his events.

I do have a question for the local police. I'm sure you're good folks but why are you acting as strong-arm bullies for this wussball Congress critter. That really is not your job. If one of them tries to physically attack Ryan that is another story. This people are just trying to get straight answers.

Three Economic Charts To Email To Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law

Three Charts To Email To Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law

Problem: Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse. Solution: Here are three "reality-based" charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

Spending
Bush-Obama Spending Chart -3rd chart down



Government spending increased dramatically under Bush. It has not increased much under Obama. Note that this chart does not reflect any spending cuts resulting from deficit-cutting deals.

Deficits
Bush-Obama Deficit Chart -2nd chart down

Notes, this chart includes Clinton's last budget year for comparison.

The numbers in these two charts come from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2012. They are just the amounts that the government spent and borrowed, period, Anyone can go look then up. People who claim that Obama "tripled the deficit" are either misled or are trying to mislead.

The Stimulus and Jobs
Bush-Obama-Jobs-Chart -1st chart at top

In this chart, the RED lines on the left side -- the ones that keep doing DOWN -- show what happened to jobs under the policies of Bush and the Republicans. We were losing lots and lots of jobs every month, and it was getting worse and worse. The BLUE lines -- the ones that just go UP -- show what happened to jobs when the stimulus was in effect. We stopped losing jobs and started gaining jobs, and it was getting better and better. The leveling off on the right side of the chart shows what happened as the stimulus started to wind down: job creation leveled off at too low a level.

It looks a lot like the stimulus reversed what was going on before the stimulus.

Conclusion: THE STIMULUS WORKED BUT WAS NOT ENOUGH!

More False Things

These are just three of the false things that everyone "knows." Some others are (click through): Obama bailed out the banks, businesses will hire if they get tax cuts, health care reform cost $1 trillion, Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme or is "going broke", government spending "takes money out of the economy."

Why This Matters

These things really matter. We all want to fix the terrible problems the country has. But it is so important to know just what the problems are before you decide how to fix them. Otherwise the things you do to try to solve those problems might just make them worse. If you get tricked into thinking that Obama has made things worse and that we should go back to what we were doing before Obama -- tax cuts for the rich, giving giant corporations and Wall Street everything they want -- when those are the things that caused the problems in the first place, then we will be in real trouble.

Why doesn't the mainstream media explain these facts as simply and straight forward as these charts and a few paragraphs. besides leaning conservative, the media gets more eyeballs on the TV screen if they talk about the latest sex scandal or fall fashions. They could care less how informed the public is.

What Caused The Deficit? In Short, Conservatism

What Caused The Deficit? See Chart.

One of the most effective Republican themes of the last two years has been blaming President Obama for the explosive growth in the budget deficit since 2009. The accusation that "Obama's spending binge" has blown up the deficit has discredited any further fiscal stimulus, and helped encourage Republicans to use the debt ceiling as a hostage. The White House fought back with a chart showing that its policy changes contributed only a small fraction to the worsening deficit picture:



Megan McArdle dismissively responds, "The duck starts here." Her rebuttals are extraordinarily weak. McArdle begins:

this graph attributes decisions made by Obama and an all-Democratic Congress--like doubling down in Afghanistan--to Bush, while taking responsibility for basically nothing except the stimulus. When Obama extends the Bush tax cuts for the rich under pressure from Congressional Republicans, that disappears from his side of the ledger, because after all, he didn't want to do it. When Bush enacts Medicare Part D under pressure from Congressional Democrats, the full cost is charged against his presidency. The list of such silliness goes on.

The notion that Bush passed his prescription drug bill "under pressure from Congressional Democrats" is bizarre. Republicans controlled both houses of Congress at the time, and exerted massive pressure to pass the bill. The coalition that squeezed the bill through after the vote was held open for hours consisted of 207 Republicans and 9 Democrats. Some pressure!

McArdle is probably correct that Bush only endorsed the concept of extending Medicare coverage to prescription drugs in order to avoid being outflanked on a popular issue, just as Obama did on middle class tax cuts. But Bush did not have to design the bill so as to maximize profits for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, rather than to maximize value for taxpayers. The Republicans also suspended the pay-as-you-go rules, which, had they remained in place, would have forced them to offset the cost of providing prescription drug coverage. When Democrats won back the House, they reinstated those rules, forcing them to offset the cost of the Affordable Care Act, which as a result was far more painful and less popular than if they had simply put the whole thing on the credit card as Bush's Republicans did.

McArdle ends this passage by asserting, "The list of such silliness goes on," but she does not continue the list. If Medicare prescription drugs is her best example, I suspect the list does not go on at all. Instead, she turns to her next point, which is to point out that budget deficits have in fact been higher under Obama than under Bush:

It's not really very easy to look at these graphs and tell a story where the deficit is 1.6% under George Bush in 2007, and then suddenly balloons to 10% under Obama a few years later--and does so almost entirely as a result of policies initiated under George W. Bush, and only those initiated under George W. Bush. (Not because of say, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.) What changed about Bush policies that made them so much more expensive once Barack Obama took office?
Nor is it exactly obvious to look at the $2.4 trillion in additional debt incurred during Bush's eight-year presidency, and say that he is nonetheless actually responsible for $7 trillion of our current debt load--and then turn to the $3.1 trillion of debt incurred during Barack Obama's three-year presidency, and declare that his policies are actually responsible for only $1.4 trillion.
What changed about the Bush policies that made them more expensive when Obama took office? What changed is that the economy underwent its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. Bush inherited a budget that was structurally balanced, which became a large surplus at the peak of the business cycle. His policies turned it into a budget that was structurally in deficit even at the peak of the business cycle. And then when the economy collapsed, those structural deficits became massive.

McArdle is implying, without quite openly arguing, that presidents should be judged on the deficits that occur under their watch, not on whether their policies increase or decrease the deficit. This ignores the reality that the business cycle plays a huge role in year-to-year deficits. Take George H.W. Bush. His policies significantly reduced the deficit. But the deficit ran at extraordinarily high levels under his presidency, and McArdle's data would suggest he was a massively irresponsible president. In reality, what happened is that he presided over a recession and the necessary bailout from the Savings and Loan crisis, which bloated the deficit despite his (eventually successful) efforts to tame it.

It also ignores the reality that the U.S. political system makes significant policy change hard, and that raising taxes or reducing spending tends to be unpopular. Status quo bias is enormous. It's bizarre and unrealistic to treat the federal budget as a kind of blank slate for which a president bears responsibility once he assumes office. If George W. Bush had not cut taxes, does McArdle think Obama would have set tax rates at the current level? Of course not. But, once established, that policy requires immense political capital to overturn.

Finally, McArdle turns to a theme she's explicated before -- she's tired of hearing excuses about who caused the deficit. She wants Obama to take responsibility and fix it:

Settling whether "Bush policies" or "Obama policies" were the "cause" of the deficit wouldn't tell us a damn thing about what we should do--unless you're the sort of person who thinks that the most important fact about a policy is who was president when that policy was enacted. ...
These seem like more important questions than which items to put in the "Bush" ledger and which items to put on the "Obama" side. And I'm afraid that the White House graphic doesn't offer any answers.

McArdle is insisting here that we shouldn't care who caused the deficit, we should care about fixing it. That is a strange case to make immediately after trying to affix Obama with the blame for the deficit. It seems also to assume that understanding which policies caused the deficit interfered with the task of reducing the deficit. I don't understand the logic of this. It might make sense of Obama were arguing that the fact that he inherited the deficit absolves him of any responsibility to address it, but in fact Obama is arguing the exact opposite of that.

Indeed, Republicans are the the party determined to attach the questions of "who is responsible" and "what should we do." The Republicans have proceeded from the erroneous premise that Obama's spending caused the explosion of the deficit to their syllogistic assertion that "we have a deficit because the government spends too much, not because it taxes too little." Given that they have done so, Obama's effort to recontextualize the cause of the deficit is highly relevant to the solution.

McArdle's item contains a great deal of signalling about her lack of interest in partisan finger-pointing, such as disdaining "the sort of person who thinks that the most important fact about a policy is who was president when that policy was enacted." Obviously, you can care about both long-term fiscal re-balancing and determining which policies led to the deficit. Elected officials often enact policies whose effects, good or will, are felt long after they depart office, complicating the ability of voters to assign responsibility, and giving the officials an incentive to take short-term benefits and long-term costs. Determining which policies led to what outcomes seems like an important function in an electoral democracy.

In so many words McArdle's argument is that conservatives and libertarians are never responsible for anything. If that is true shouldn't it also be the case that if by some miracle they do something good, they should not get credit for that either.

The Media and Propaganda - How Fox is Brainwashing America

The Media and Propaganda - How Fox is Brainwashing America

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and "reality" programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. Not only does mainstream media now tolerate gross misrepresentations of fact and history by public figures (highlighted most recently by Sarah Palin's ludicrous depiction of Paul Revere's ride), but many media actually legitimize these displays. Pause for a moment and ask yourself what it means that the world's largest, most profitable and most popular news channel passes off as fact every whim, impulse and outrageously incompetent analysis of its so-called reporters. How did we get here? Take the enormous amount of misinformation that is taken for truth by Fox audiences: the belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that he was in on 9/11, the belief that climate change isn't real and/or man-made, the belief that Barack Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, the insistence that all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, the inexplicable perceptions that immigrants are both too lazy to work and are about to steal your job. All of these claims are demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have lost our respect for knowledge?

My curiosity about this question compelled me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and other propagandists disguised as media. The techniques I identify here also help to explain the simultaneously powerful identification the Fox media audience has with the network, as well as their ardent, reflexive defenses of it.

The good news is that the more conscious you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work on you. The bad news is that those reading this article are probably the least in need in of it.

1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."

8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.

9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

Dr. Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University, where her areas of expertise include quality of democracy, nonviolent struggle, civil resistance and political communication and media. She is also an affiliated scholar at the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace International Master in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Castellon, Spain.

There are four more propaganda techniques used by Fox and the far Right conservative media in general at the link.