Gas, Past Tense, Made Facially

What the price of gas has done over the last 12 months (top green line there):

What FOX News makes out of the green line:

“Man, Mr. Murdoch’s third period math class is effin’ hard.  But just leave out the uninteresting data points AND BLAME PRESIDENT MELANIN MCDARKGUY LOL HOMEWORK’S DONE.  I bet I get a B plus for this one.”

▲

Showing up

Nothing is as powerful as showing up:

RICHMOND, Va. — Hundreds of women stood mute, arm-in-arm, forming a human cordon through which legislators walked before Monday’s House and Senate sessions to protest a wave of anti-abortion legislation coursing through Virginia’s General Assembly.
Capitol and state police officers, there to ensure order, estimated the crowd to be at least 1,000, perhaps 1,500 at the noon peak of the protest. The silent demonstration was over bills that would define embryos as humans and criminalize their destruction, require “transvaginal” ultrasounds of women seeking abortions, and cut state aid to poor women seeking abortions.
“So there’s opposition to this measure. So what’s new about that?” said Marshall, the sponsor of the “personhood” legislation that could outlaw all abortions and, critics claim, some forms of contraception in Virginia if the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion is reversed. The bill passed the House on a vote of 66-32 and is pending before the Senate Education and Health Committee.
Both chambers have passed legislation that requires women to have a transvaginal ultrasound before undergoing abortions.
Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, a socially conservative Roman Catholic, has said he will sign the ultrasound bill, but has taken no position on Marshall’s personhood bill, a spokesman said last week.

I’ve read and thought a lot on the personhood bills, and in my opinion no one really has any idea what will happen if one of these is made law. I think the impact would be (potentially) absolutely huge:

1.The life of each human being begins at conception.

2. Unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being.

3. The natural parents of unborn children have protectable interests in the life, health, and well-being of their unborn child.

4. The laws of this Commonwealth shall be interpreted and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage of development all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this Commonwealth, subject only to the Constitution of the United States and decisional interpretations thereof by the United States Supreme Court and specific provisions to the contrary in the statutes and constitution of this Commonwealth.

5. As used in this section, the term “unborn children” or “unborn child” shall include any unborn child or children or the offspring of human beings from the moment of conception until birth at every stage of biological development.

6. Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as creating a cause of action against a woman for indirectly harming her unborn child by failing to properly care for herself or by failing to follow any particular program of prenatal care.

7. Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as affecting lawful assisted conception.

I’ve tried to take it down to the practical level, and if I think it through redefining “person” is breathtaking in scope. In my state, Ohio, I think the newly defined “person” would have the same set of rights that a child has, because surely the newly defined person isn’t an adult, so I start there. I suppose a state legislature could attempt to narrow the rights of the “person” (remember: at conception):

and specific provisions to the contrary in the statutes and constitution of this Commonwealth.

but I think they’d then end up with two classes of juvenile “persons”, post-conception and post-birth, and that interpretation would then be challenged and also, frankly, unworkable as a practical matter.

If I just mentally tick off the state law that applies to children and apply that “at conception” I’m really down the rabbit hole and into a new world.

My overall feeling regarding the personhood amendments is that “serious conservatives” know that these laws would be absolutely revolutionary, potentially applicable to everything from child support to abuse, neglect and dependency actions, so there’s almost a wink and nod approach to them: allow the radical pro-lifers to go forward, and hope sanity prevails. I am no longer confident sanity will prevail.

I cannot imagine a juvenile court (which is where it would end up in my state, I think, I don’t know where else it would go) determining the “best interests” of a “person” at conception, as against the rights of the parents and the state’s interest.

It is difficult enough to get this right now, and we work with children that are separate and apart from another (adult) person, and the truth is we often don’t get it right. It’s difficult. We fail all the time.

▲

Marry, Marry, Why Ya Buggin’?

The NY Times has a very interesting article this morning on the socioeconomics of women and child-bearing.  It states that evidence (that goes along with women having children later in life now) points to women under the age of 30 who do have children are now more likely to have them outside of marriage rather than in one.

It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.

One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.

“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Now this has some proclaiming that Charles Murray’s latest screed on the decline of White America is now “vindicated” along with conservative scolding of women in general, but it seems to me that the actual theory one can take away from this is anything but.

Having children as a single parent is tough on both the parent and the child.  There’s plenty of evidence that there is a definite socioeconomic effect here.  But please note that Republicans are running on removing the most obvious options societies can use in order to prevent that from becoming more widespread.

Republicans are increasingly against birth control.  Republicans are increasingly against same-sex marriage.  They are against adoption by same-sex couples.  They are against changing laws that would give the legal and economic benefits of marriage to same-sex couples and civil unions.  They are against changing deportation laws that would break up families.  They are against strengthening domestic violence and abuse laws.  They are against the notion that the government should ensure men and women are paid the same for the same job.  Oh, and yes, Republicans aren’t real fans of abortion, either.

So you tell me, which party actually wants to do something about the income inequality that’s caused by this?  All the evidence I see is that Republicans want to perpetuate this mess, if not completely reverse what progress has been made.

▲

I Can’t Quite Put My Finger On It, But…

MoJo’s Nick Baumann again does us an invaluable service by pointing out the obvious fact that President Obama’s “unprecedented assault on America’s religious freedoms” by requiring church-related hospitals and universities to cover contraception at the federal level has actually been on the books for, oh, about 12 years now.

In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn’t provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don’t offer prescription coverage or don’t offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC’s interpretation of the law, you can’t offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.

“It was, we thought at the time, a fairly straightforward application of Title VII principles,” a top former EEOC official who was involved in the decision told Mother Jones. “All of these plans covered Viagra immediately, without thinking, and they were still declining to cover prescription contraceptives. It’s a little bit jaw-dropping to see what is going on now…There was some press at the time but we issued guidances that were far, far more controversial.”

After the EEOC opinion was approved in 2000, reproductive rights groups and employees who wanted birth control access sued employers that refused to comply. The next year, in Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., a federal court agreed with the EEOC’s reasoning. Reproductive rights groups and others used that decision as leverage to force other companies to settle lawsuits and agree to change their insurance plans to include birth control. Some subsequent court decisions echoed Erickson, and some went the other way, but the rule (absent a Supreme Court decision) remained, and over the following decade, the percentage of employer-based plans offering contraceptive coverage tripled to 90 percent.

This fight has been long settled based on Title VII law.  Clinton put it on the books on the way out without controversy, and it was on the books for every single day of the Bush 43 administration without controversy.  It was on the books for three years under the Obama administration, without controversy.  Nine out of ten businesses in the country, including religiously affiliated hospitals, schools, and charities, provided contraception coverage.  27 states went on to put similar provisions on their books without incident.

It wasn’t an issue at all until an African-American Democrat in the White House decided during an election year that “Hey, this is a good idea, let’s put this on the books for all 50 states” just after getting yet another monthly unemployment report that showed that his policies were starting to bring the jobs numbers back around, and that his prospects for re-election were improving along with that uptick on what basically everyone agreed up until that millisecond was the most important issue of the day, the economy itself.

Then, the existing rules of the game for the last dozen years changed literally overnight to fit the theory that the President was “declaring war on Americans’ religious freedoms.”  Then the rules immediately changed to create “a firestorm of controversy”.  Then the rules changed so that people questioned why Catholics in the Obama administration, including the Vice-President and the Secretary of Defense, hadn’t resigned in protest yet.

It wasn’t an issue until the GOP started openly asking if they were going to lose big in November and Newt Gingrich had melted into babbling radioactive slag and Rick Santorum became the latest Anti-Romney, revealing the fatal weakness of “the frontrunner”.

Only now do the god-botherers and the institutional misogynists and the bigots and the pinheads and the weasels have an issue.

Only now.  They are this desperate to defeat President Obama.

▲

High In The Middle And Round At Both Ends

So if you want to know what LEROOOOOOY NNNNNEWTON! was doing while he was drowning in flop sweat and Santorum last night, he was too busy playing for Ohio by attacking the President (and Mitt Romney) here in heavily Catholic Cincinnati yesterday.

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich today brought his talk of family, jobs and God straight to where he hoped it would resonate – Cincinnati’s West Side.

And it did. The popular Price Hill Chili was packed with 200 people who cheered and clapped as Gingrich promised he’d put people on unemployment into job training and cut corporate taxes. “Large-scale” change is needed, he said, and he’s the man to bring it.

“It is fundamentally wrong to give people 99 weeks of money for doing nothing,” he said, prompting the crowd to yell, “Newt! Newt!”

He must hate anyone who’s on Social Security for more than two years then.  Oh wait, he pretty much does.

He drew his biggest cheers when he talked about oil and said, “No American president will ever again bow to a Saudi king.”

He said he doesn’t want to run just a Republican campaign, but one that unleashes “the American people so they can go out and rebuild the America we love.” A woman shouted, “Yes! Yes!”

When someone in the crowd yelled, “Lead us back to the Bible, Newt!” he didn’t miss a beat: “What I want is to lead you back to the Declaration of Independence… The fact is, in America, we believe that power comes from God to each of you personally” and you loan it back to the government.”

Newt went on to attack Obama’s War On People Who Were Never Going To Vote For Him In The First Place, and the crowd ate it up.

Jim Ferneding of Montgomery wanted the chance to shake Gingrich’s hand, and he got it. He told him: “You’re the one with the strength. Just concentrate on condemning Obama and you will win.”

Because in the end, that’s all that matters to a hell of a lot of folks around here.  They don’t want someone to beat Obama, they want him so thoroughly and utterly destroyed that nobody “like him” dares to run for President again in their lifetimes.  He must be broken.

Don’t forget that little goal even for a second.

 

▲

Chart Of Darkness: Belaboring The Point

Following up on Saturday’s post on the latest wingnut meme that Kenyan Soshulist Maths are hiding the truth that the reeeeeeeal unemployment rate among scared, crazy self-piddling conservatives is 157 gazillion percent, we see FOX and Friends is happily joining in the silliness.

“Are they playing around with the numbers?” fill-in host Eric Bolling asked. “Look, it’s the Bureau of Labor of Statistics. It’s suppose to be non-partisan, but that’s the Department of Labor, Hilda Solis. Hilda Solis works directly for Obama.”

“Are you saying they’re cooking the books,” regular co-host Steve Doocy inquired.

“I’m saying, there’s room for error,” Bolling replied. “But when you’re talking about four million people, how do you know?”

It is, of course, irresponsible not to speculate how President Notlikeus McTakeyourmoney is using his unholy control of Bistromathics to destroy working-class melanin-challenged America.  Since we all know there’s no way his dark policies could actually be improving the economy and adding jobs since there are still Americans on FOOD STAMPS, it’s clearly a deadly, deadly trap.

Later in the segment, Doocy declared war on numbers, science, engineering, calculus, statistical analysis and pi.  Because only “they” use numbers.  Real Americans don’t need facts to know the truth about THE REDISTRIBUTION OF OUR NUBILE YOUNG DAUGHTER-VIRGINS.  The only possible explanation for this is YOU LIE.

Really, they should just send the White House the bill for Bolling peeing on the studio carpet in abject fear.  Abject fear…of numbers.

Snark aside, with the more unstable among us about three steps away from burning the President in effigy over birth control and Republicans trying to criminalize having cabinet departments, it really won’t be long before we’re having another “free speech right to do horrible, horrible things flashpoint” in this country.  We’re just waiting to try to contain the damage when it happens if it’s this insane 9 months out before the election.

Seriously, we’re to the point that actually having the Labor Department is now the equivalent of The Ministry Of Truth And Silly Walks.  How long before we get to the point where Tea Party shenanigans become so exponentially insane that Our Serious And Knowledgeable Betters tell us that the President should just resign now “for the good of the country” rather than risk his “divisive and polarizing” re-election to a second term?

Five gets you seven that column is already on Bobo’s hard drive.

[UPDATE]  This line of attack is now official, as Rush Limbaugh accused the President of “monkeying with the numbers” today.   Monkey.  Mmm-hmm.

▲

Chart Of Darkness

The problem with this Zero Hedge “implied unemployment rate” chart that the wingers are screaming about as proof of a massive “Democrat Party scam” is the fact that Tyler Durden ran the numbers back for 30 years and it exists all the way back to the Reagan era, and it shows that the “real” unemployment rate under President Bill Clinton was actually under two percent by the time he left office. Slick Willie was such a monster that he lowballed his numbers every month for both of his two terms and spotted himself a higher 4.0% plus unemployment rate instead, and then George W. Bush came along and quadrupled it from 2 percent to 8 percent.  (Why Bush the Elder didn’t learn from his boss, I dunno.)

Not only that, but the implied rate under St. Ronaldus (nearly 14%) was far worse than anything currently under the Obama administration (falling from 12%), meaning that if we’re measuring who the worst President in history is by the implied unemployment rate and by how far the numbers are “lying” then that particular crown goes to Jellybean. His guys basically shaved 3.5 points off the unemployment rate for the entirety of his first term and still got him re-elected overwhelmingly in 1984 as a result.  Of course, since that’s the benchmark, it doesn’t count.   President Obama took a far worse collapse and is handling far better than Reagan did with his recession, so of course everyone has to ignore 95% of the chart.

You know, because President Obama is judged by a different standard for reasons that nobody on the right can seem to articulate…

▲

Something’s Wrong, Something’s Amiss

Gosh, I can’t quite put my finger on what’s bothering me about this analysis of Romney’s performance in Florida from CNN’s Juan Carlos Lopez here, but it’s just not right.

How Romney won Florida’s Latino vote

Huhwha?  Did I miss something?

As Mitt Romney dominated the Florida Republican primary Tuesday night, he also captured the bulk of the votes from Latinos in the state, with 54% of their ballots. But how did he pull that off?

His victory could be seen as somewhat surprising for a candidate with a tough stance on immigration, who promised that if he were president, he’d veto the Dream Act that would legalize young undocumented adults who came to the United States as children if they attend college, join the armed forces or meet other requirements.

But Romney’s methodology for winning their votes reveals a more focused, calculated approach to securing the fastest-growing voter demographic in the state and the country, and could prove to be a hurdle for President Obama in the general election.

Oh, that’s it.  Florida’s Republican primary is closed, so the only Latino votes the Marquis de Mittens captured were in fact 54% of registered Republicans.  Please, somebody tell me how Mitt getting, say, 54% of the African-American vote in a closed GOP primary means he could prove to be a hurdle for President Obama in the general election.  I’m eagerly awaiting that explanation.

But it’s the independents there who voted for him in 2008—and the 400,000 in Florida who list no party affiliation—who are at real risk of being lured to the Republican side in 2012. They will be the prize in the November election, and where Obama—who starts with a 60% lead among all Latinos in state polls—may end up battling Romney over the growing Latino vote.

So a 60% lead among the total Latino voting population in the polls makes President Obama vulnerable to a battle with Mitt Romney among Latino voters in Florida.  Got it.  If we’re expanding the definition of “battle” to include Wellington and the Prussians smooshing Napoleon all over the Belgian countryside at Waterloo, then Lopez is spot on.  Good call, CNN.

▲

Substitute your lies for fact

I find this argument bracing:

Every single House Republican votes against the Peters Amendment to insert factual findings about how the Bush Tax Cuts added over $2 trillion to the deficit.

Washington, D.C. – Today every single House Republican voted against an amendment by U.S. Rep. Gary Peters to insert factual findings about the Bush Tax Cuts into a Republican budget bill (H.R. 3582). The Peters Amendment was defeated by a vote of 174 to 244 with every Republican voting no.

[....]

(3) The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 have added over $2 trillion to budget deficits from 2002-2011.

But hey, they’re the daddy party of fiscal responsibility. And, if not, both sides do it, if the Republicans are cut-cut-cut with taxes, the Democrats are spend-spend-spend. Fred Hiatt told me so.

▲

Fire Walker Chronicles: Don’t Take The Money And Run

Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker sure is endearing himself to voters this week as the recall effort has obtained nearly twice the signatures it needed to trigger an election.  His latest antics?  Becoming the latest GOP governor to turn down a federal grant to create a state health insurance exchange, all but assuring that the feds will have to step in and do it in 2014…if Walker’s still in office, that is.

Wisconsin will turn down $37 million from the federal government that had been awarded to help implement health care exchanges under President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday.

Walker announced in December that Wisconsin would not pursue implementing the exchange until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the law.

But he did not say whether the state would take the money. On Wednesday Walker said he was notifying the federal government that Wisconsin was turning down the Early Innovator Grant, saying it didn’t make sense to commit to reforms that could have a devastating economic impact.

“Stopping the encroachment of ObamaCare in our state, which has the potential to have a devastating impact on Wisconsin’s economy, is a top priority. Wisconsin has been a leader and innovator in health care reform for two decades, and we have achieved a high level of health insuranEce coverage without federal mandates,” Walker said in a statement.

The American Cancer Society called the Republican governor’s action a move backward.

“A robust, consumer-friendly health exchange designed specifically for Wisconsin would greatly expand access to care to those who need it most, while preserving what already works. It’s unfortunate the (Walker) administration is deciding to ignore this reality,” said Allison Miller, Wisconsin government relations director for the American Cancer Society.

Walker and his Koch Brothers masters don’t want to expand access to care to Wisconsin’s poor.  There’s no massive profit in keeping poor people alive through health care, you know.  The funny part is while Walker is screaming about a GUBMINT TAKEOVER, that’s effectively what will happen if the exchange isn’t created:  federal law means that Washington will step in and create and run the state exchanges if the states refuse to do it.  I guess Walker is counting on Republicans taking complete control in 2012 and repealing everything back to 1867, or at the very least defunding the PPACA along with most of the rest of the federal government.

Wisconsin would join Kansas and Oklahoma in that respect if Walker goes through with it.  Somehow I’m thinking he won’t be around too much longer to make decisions like these.

▲

If You Have To Legislatively Force Your Theory To Be Taught As Science, You’ve Lost

PZ Myers flags this legislation under consideration in the Missouri House.  It seems HB1227 would not only redefine “intelligent design creationism” as actual science, it would then require that textbooks and classes in Missouri schools be forced to teach it as acceptable science along with “scientific theory” evolution.

It’s bad enough that the bill attempts to redefine not just intelligent design but the process of science itself through legislation, but then the bill happily forces teachers to treat intelligent design and evolution as equals by radically re-categorizing what science actually means, which is a bit like saying every time you order your favorite meal at a restaurant, you must also be punched in the crotch, because both of them are equally satisfying according to the definition of “satisfying” placed in legislation by Republicans.  The practical upshot:  under this bill Missouri’s kids will eat their intelligent design and they will like it.  (Also, the bill specifically says teachers can’t call out either “theory” as crap, but must teach them as actual accepted science.)

And before you say “Well that’s going to make it hard to get into college when you graduate with a background in basic science that has built-in air quotes”, the law applies to universities and colleges in Missouri too, defined as “any introductory science course taught at any public institution of higher education in this state” having to meet criteria like this:

“If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught. Other scientific theory or theories of origin may be taught. If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’s biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course.”

In other words, college professors and instructors in biology have to teach intelligent design as serious science, and they have to like it. Full stop.  I’m thinking this bill will most likely die a slow and ignominious death in committee, but then again, anything involving Republicans and science always seems to end very badly for the country as a whole.  We’ll do your critical thinking for you, thanks.  You went to college to play football and drink anyway.

This makes me want to become a legislator, slap the definition of “douchebag” in a bill, then require that all Republicans be referred to as such in any official state capacity.  The bill may or may not involve crotch-punching.  I haven’t decided yet.

▲

You Can’t Handle The Truth

During that 60 Minutes interview with the impressively slimy Eric Cantor, there is one moment that stood out. As Steve Benen notes, when Cantor’s press secretary from off camera yelled that it simply was not true that Reagan raised taxes, Stahl went on to show a clip of Reagan announcing a tax cut and uttering the dreaded “compromise” word. As Benen notes, contrary to the current myth that Republicans push that Reagan never raised taxes, Reagan is actually one of the greatest tax increasers of the modern era.

It would be nice if we could just dismiss these guys as liars, but the truth is even worse. Many of them don’t even know they are lying, they are living so safely inside the cocoon they have created for themselves. They are operating inside a constructed alternate reality, and have been for quite some time. Inside the bubble, vaccines cause cancer, the death penalty is never implemented when it shouldn’t be, Jesus rode on the back of dinosaurs, a semi-meiotic glob of cells is a person, and if you just keep cutting taxes and regulations, the growth fairy will leave increased federal revenues under the pillow.

It’s insane.

▲

Department of Predictions

From this morning’s Toledo Blade:

Investment from resurgent American automakers made big news in 2011, with General Motors and Chrysler announcing multiple large projects in Toledo and northwest Ohio that together total nearly $1 billion and should create or help preserve almost 3,400 jobs.
Promise for the future of manufacturing in northwest Ohio was one of the brights spots in a year that saw many changes to the business landscape in the region.
The big bucks in manufacturing are coming from Chrysler Group LLC. The automaker last year committed $500 million to its Toledo Assembly complex. That investment, which will go toward updating the line that ultimately will build Jeep’s new sport utility vehicle in 2013, will add a second shift to the plant, and lead to more than 1,100 jobs. Chrysler also said it planned to invest $72 million in its Toledo Machining Plant.
General Motors Co. announced plans for two investments totaling $343 million in its Toledo Transmission plant for upgrades and a new line for an upcoming eight-speed transmission. It also plans to pump $47 million into its Defiance Powertrain plant.
“We’re seeing a tremendous amount of capital investment in our traditional manufacturing sector around the automotive industry,” said Ford Weber, president and chief executive officer of the Lucas County Improvement Corporation.
In addition to the automakers and other large-scale manufacturers, Mr. Weber noted suppliers are investing in facilities here, and that’s likely to continue, especially with emphasis on just-in-time delivery.

Because it can’t be repeated often enough, here are a conservative and a libertarian boldly planning political strategy, in 2009:

“The pattern here is pretty clear,” House Minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday. “Every time the president makes a so-called tough decision, it’s the American middle class that gets hit the hardest.”
Obama defends his administration as a reluctant and stern savior of an industry that’s vital to the American economy.
Republicans see in GM a chance for their party to come out with a unified message — a confidence grounded in the conservative belief that government involvement in private industry always spells disaster. And GM’s long history of financial problems — even in more prosperous times — also makes Republicans see the company as a big albatross around Obama’s neck.
“This is somewhere in between Baghdad and fixing the flood in Louisiana,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said, comparing the GM decision to major stumbles by former President George W. Bush. Obama “has decided to take this over. He now owns it.”

I’ll just repeat this part, because it’s absolutely key to understanding the (alleged) Conservative Soul:

a confidence grounded in the conservative belief that government involvement in private industry always spells disaster

Not facts or numbers, not a basic working knowledge of the NW Ohio manufacturing scene or the US auto industry or a discussion of the relative merits of several possible extraordinary measures we might have taken after a massive implosion of the economy, but belief.

They may as well have told us they were praying for us, that we were “in their thoughts” during this “difficult time”.

▲

All apologies

Joe Nocera will soon apologize for writing this, presmuably:

You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.

You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.

Thus has Peter Wallison, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis. His partner in crime is another A.E.I. scholar, Edward Pinto, who a very long time ago was Fannie’s chief credit officer. Pinto claims that as of June 2008, 27 million “risky” mortgages had been issued — “and a lion’s share was on Fannie and Freddie’s books,” as Wallison wrote recently. Never mind that his definition of “risky” is so all-encompassing that it includes mortgages with extremely low default rates as well as those with default rates nearing 30 percent. These latter mortgages were the ones created by the unholy alliance between subprime lenders and Wall Street. Pinto’s numbers are the Big Lie’s primary data point.

Very shrill, I’m sure PolitiFox would not approve. Early contender for 2012 lie of the year?

▲

But they never told you the price you would pay

I completely agree with Steve M. that Romney will pay no price for his outright lies and wingnut craziness in the general election. After all, even the liberal Politifact agrees that Democrats tell worse lies.

My favorite Romney story, because it’s just the kind of thing Establishment media savaged Al Gore for supposedly telling, is this one:

A day after being labelled “out of touch” for casually offering a $10,000 bet to a rival candidate, Mr Romney told supporters he had experienced austerity as a missionary in France, using a bucket for a lavatory and a hose for a shower. “You’re not living high on the hog at that kind of level,” he said.

But the Republican presidential hopeful spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion described by fellow American missionaries to The Daily Telegraph as “palace”. It featured stained glass windows, chandeliers, and an extensive art collection. It was staffed by two servants – a Spanish chef and a houseboy.

Although he spent time in other French cities, for most of 1968, Mr Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. “It was a house built by and for rich people,” said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Mr Romney’s stay. “I would describe it as a palace”.

None of this will hurt Romney at all, because like it or not, you hippies, the man has the requisite Hayekian modesty to be president.

What will hurt Romney in the general is all the bullshit about the moat on the border patrolled by sharks with frickin’ laser beams. I almost wonder if the complacency of the librul media has lulled Republicans into a false sense of security, that it made them they believe they can get by with brown-baiting in the primaries the same way they get by with the rest of the lies and craziness. But I don’t think they can.

▲