Republicans, All Wrong, All the Time, Pt . 26.1 -That Deficit Thang (Redux)

(Part 26 can be found here.)

Constituent Falcon Taylor takes on Rep. Dan Webster (Rethug-FL) re: deficits, spending and taxes.

It's actually quite beautiful to see people finally start to realize what the Rethugs are, what they stand for, and who their real constituents are.  Too bad the Repugnicants had to become so blatant before the scales fell from (at least some) people's eyes.  From TP, via Big Eddie.

TAYLOR: You need to raise taxes on the corporations! [Inaudible] And stop the wars! Just stop all the warring.

WEBSTER: Just a minute. I can hear, everybody in here can hear. So you’re making a choice of whether you want to stay or not.
 
TAYLOR: Answer the question!
[Audience cheers] [Two men walk out in protest]





Here's Falcon Taylor in a post Town Hall interview.




There's nothing more I need to add.
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Republicans, All Wrong, All the Time, Pt . 26 -That Deficit Thang

Via Krugman:

From The Hill, Feb. 5, 2003:

As President Bush sent his budget to Capitol Hill Monday, a split opened among congressional Republicans between those who are still deficit hawks and an increasing number, including top leaders, who no longer see deficits as the touchstone of fiscal probity.

Confronted with projected deficits until fiscal 2007, senior GOP lawmakers are backing away from long-standing rhetoric about the government’s duty to live within its means.

The switch – whether from conviction, circumstance, or both – is bringing charges of hypocrisy from Democrats.

Some lawmakers view the existence of deficits as a useful tool to keep spending down.
“I came to the House as a real deficit hawk, but I am no longer a deficit hawk,” said Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). “I’ll tell you why. I had to spend the surpluses. Deficits make it easier to say no.”

News flash:  Rethugs are unprincipled, lying bastards with no ethical position on any issue.
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Your Life in Graphs

I received these in an email. Origin(s) unknown.*

 On the job.

Driving in Michigan

I've never watched, but its still funny.

What's for dinner?

 

The truth about insomnia.

Somehow  they missed "on the couch, after Thanksgiving dinner, watching the Lions lose."

____________________________________________________
* Now that I've opened my eyes, I see the origin is GraphJam.  Check it out.
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Quote of the Day - With a "Lump of Labor" Moment

What kind of education are we giving our young people?  Recent College grads are going home to live with their parents.  What the hell is the matter with them?  Don't they know that there are an infinite number of jobs out there?

Trust me, you don’t want to be 26 and still living at home with your parents.
--- Recent College Grad Megan Muller.

 ". . . Muller, who, daunted by the expense of college, struggled with whether to finish at all. She currently makes about $25,000 as an assistant editor at Federal Practitioner, a peer-reviewed medical journal."

With our economy in a vibrant recovery, you'd think an educated  person with some ability and ambition would be able to pull down a 6-figure job and not settle for a mere $26K, woodn't ya?

Things should be especially bright, now that the illegals have given up and gone home.

 Instead, we get this:

"A study conducted by Twentysomething Inc., a consultant firm specializing in young adults, reports that 85 percent of this year’s graduating class will be forced to move back home. Meanwhile, 2011 graduates also face historic amounts of student loan debt -- or an average of $27,200 for graduates that borrowed money in order to finish school."

What a bunch of slugs!

H/T to Blended Purple, who probably doesn't care.
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Noah, and Krugman, and Goats . . .

Oh, my!

Well, I've been a bit out of touch, so I missed Noah Smith's half assed hearted attempt to semi-defend Casey Mulligan (for which I will grant him a Mulligan, since, as Krugman put it, "It's nice to be nice.")  Here is an earlier part of the adventure.

Noah more or less recants before it's all over.  Really, he was straining much to hard for too little reward all along anyway.

Krugman get's the last, trivial word.

I’ll repeat myself: Mulligan is critiquing something he heard about Keynesian economics somewhere, maybe in a bar, without bothering to inquire at all whether that’s how it really works. And I stand by my equally well-sourced assertion that Chicago economics relies on goat sacrifices.

IMHO, if you're going to criticize somebody or something, that's fine.  But argue against something on it's merits, or lack thereof.  Don't focus on trivia, engage in straw man arguments, or worse yet, make shit up.  But this is increasingly the kind of distraction you get from the crooks, liars, and dupes who erroneously call themselves "conservatives."

They are reduced to that level, by their own actions and words, because they have nothing  -  NOTHING  -  real or positive to offer.

I am skeptical that there has ever been a valid intellectual basis for 20th century American political conservatism; but now there is close to a total absence of anything even remotely resembling thought, knowledge, or even coherence.
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Pix of the Day - with a moment of Disney

I lifted this off somebody's Facebook page.

Truth might be stranger, but fiction is cuter (for the most part.)

Republicans, All Wrong, All the Time, Pt 25 - Bill Maher Explains the Repugnicants

Evidently this (vide infra) vid was up on You Tube and HBO forced it down due to copyright infringement.

But you can see it on Bill Maher's Facebook page.

What the hell difference does it make which button you click?  Copyright has degenerated into nonsense,  but that is off-topic (sort of.)

Here is the vid on FB, where Maher call out the Rethugs.  It's perfect.

H/T to Beale.
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Quote of the Day, with a Moment of Melody

The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.
   --- Lewis Thomas 

This is a really good band, and they struggled with this arrangement. We payed it with the AMAZING Wayne Bergeron last month. I hope we sounded this good.

H/T to Howeird

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Quote of the Day - With a Sacrificial Goat!

Krugman:

I’ve been asked for reactions to Casey Mulligan’s piece about the failure of New Keynesian economics.The short answer is, he should try reading a bit of Keynesian economics — old or new, it doesn’t matter — before “explaining” what’s wrong with it. For the doctrine he’s attacking bears no resemblance to anything Keynesians are saying.

This is fairly typical of freshwater economists. They know that what the other side is saying is obviously stupid, so there’s need to read it; they picked up enough about it talking to some guy in a bar, or whatever, to criticize it.

PK goes on to demonstrate how Mulligan basically just MAKES SHIT UP and attributes his own idiotic mental construct  to Keynesians.  Same as it ever was.

Here's the conclusion:

If Mulligan wants to argue that point, fine — but he presents as “the New Keynesian position” something that is just what he imagines, on casual reflection (or, again, maybe after talking to some guy in a bar) to be the New Keynesian position.

OK, so from now on I’ll assert that the Chicago position on unemployment is that we can cure it by sacrificing goats. Hey, I heard that somewhere — no need to actually read anything they say, right?

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Quote of the Day, With a Moment of Reality Baiting

Krugman has been a bit self-referential, lately, some of it in response to questions like, "When were you and that dead guy ever for surpluses?"

Here he gets into his prognostication track record:

Update: Oh, wow — I’ve only had time to skim the underlying paper (pdf), but here’s what it says, based on evidence, about what makes a good prognosticator:

Perhaps most importantly, being a good prognosticator seems to be a product of choices, not birth. Anyone can be good; all they need to do is avoid law school and buy into liberalism as an overarching philosophy.

No surprise here.  We all know that reality has a liberal bias.  (5:10 at the vid.)

Fortunately, I also avoided law school (though I did get a damned MBA.)
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Hayek Fail

I haven't had the time to give this (by Delong) the attention it deserves, but will when I can - in a week or so.

But I don't want to lose track of it.  Hence this essentially empty post.
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Quotes of the Day, with a Moment of Political Satire

Deep in my heart, I know the man's on the run, if he's alive at all.

.   .  .

Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not.

.  .  .

I really just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.

. . .

         ----  Dubya

This is from a press conference, approximately 6 months after 9/11.

Republicans won’t believe Osama bin Laden is dead until they see the long form death certificate….  First we had the birthers…now we’ll have the deathers…
     -----  Ed Shultz on Facebook, about 11:30 pm on 5/1/2011

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