The Newt King of Comedy

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Wednesday May 18, 2011 · 5:55 AM PDT

2011/05/18 · 05:55

TPM is chock-full of Newt Gingrinch stories this morning, and they're all hilarious. Gingrich's attempts to salvage his rapidly-sinking campaign are just opening the floodgates of unintentional comedy.

sullivanst

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Friday April 29, 2011 · 10:57 AM PDT

2011/04/29 · 10:57

Building on an earlier piece of his about "epistemic closure" among Chicago school / "freshwater" economists, Paul Krugman last month wrote a piece about how not only do neoclassical economists have no understanding or even knowledge of the Keynesian theories preferred in saltwater schools, they don't even understand their own models as well as Keynesians do.

Krugman was talking about stimulative spending at the time - Chicago schoolers deny there's any such thing, he was using their own model to prove that there is.

While reading David Swanson's rec-listed diary today (wherein Alan Simpson exhibits a stubborn refusal to consider facts even he knows) I remembered a thought which first occurred to me while reading Krugman's piece last month: the Ricardian equivalence preached by Chicago schools wouldn't just mean permanent government spending was unstimulative - it would just as surely mean that tax cuts while the government is in deficit can never be stimulative.

Poll

6 votes Show Results

Freshwater economists:

6 votes Vote Now!

Freshwater economists:

Idiots

1 vote

Liars

2 votes

Pie-eaters

3 votes

Huckabee, in a hole, keeps digging

sullivanst

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Thursday March 03, 2011 · 9:00 AM PST

2011/03/03 · 09:00

Mike Huckabee stuck his foot in it when appearing on a minor right-wing talk radio show, when he talked about Obama growing up in Kenya and how his views on the Mau Mau rebellion might differ from mainstream America's (for one thing, he might actually have views on something that I doubt a very high percentage of Americans have ever heard of).

His attempted walkback was laughable, given the Mau Mau reference, since it's quite obvious he couldn't possibly have really meant Indonesia as claimed.

Now he's continued his excuse tour with a visit to Bryan Fischer and his SPLC-designated hate group, the American Family Association. While he's making excuses for himself, he's still got the knives out for the President, of course. TPM provides the details.

Poll

76 votes Show Results

Have they no decency?

76 votes Vote Now!

Have they no decency?

4 votes

Oh hell no!

19 votes

They wouldn't know decency if it hit them in the face with a cream pie

53 votes

House Democrats keep up the fight against H.R.3

sullivanst

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Thursday February 03, 2011 · 12:52 PM PST

2011/02/03 · 12:52

Republicans may have cowered in fear of Jon Stewart again, abandoning their quest to tell women that they weren't really raped unless they have bruises to show for it, but H.R. 3 is still the boldest move since the Hyde amendment to push back women's rights. To borrow from last night's Daily Show, this isn't "warish" on women, it's war on women.

Even as amended, the bill seeks to use financial restrictions to greatly curtail access to abortion throughout the nation. In addition to banning direct funding, it would disallow any insurance plan which includes abortion coverage from receiving any kind of favorable tax treatment - which would instantly guarantee that no employer-sponsored insurance would offer abortion coverage. What's more, premiums for an individual plan would not be deductible on your tax return. Nor would payment for the actual procedure, which under HR3 you'd almost certainly have to pay for in full yourself - and if you had an FSA or HSA, you couldn't use that either (without paying a penalty).

Fortunately at least some House Democrats are taking the removal of the word "forcible" as a sign of momentum to press on against the whole bill, not a token victory to excuse ending the fight (as was the fear from past capitulations).

sullivanst

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Tuesday February 01, 2011 · 1:30 PM PST

2011/02/01 · 13:30

A couple of stories over at TPM tie into each other quite well. Both Ann Coulter and Republican South Dakota State Representative Hal Wick (among others) are arguing that if the health insurance mandate is constitutional, so must be requiring every citizen to own a gun. Wick even went so far as to introduce a bill to the SD legislature requiring everyone to own a gun.

This is an epic fail on their part, especially on Wick's part - the Commerce Clause in the Federal Constitution quite obviously only applies to the Federal government, so whether or not the South Dakota state constitution would permit his bill is entirely irrelevant to whether or not the Federal Constitution permits PPACA.

But there's more levels of fail, even considering solely the Federal issue.

sullivanst

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Friday October 29, 2010 · 8:46 AM PDT

2010/10/29 · 08:46

Already diaried overnight by Trobone, tip him kindly for getting there first, but this deserves more exposure.

Via Talking Points Memo, the AP is reporting that the Pentagon's troops survey is now complete. In a big shocker to nobody in the reality-based community, the troops' attitudes are just like the rest of the country's: most of them are just fine with DADT repeal.

sullivanst

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Thursday May 20, 2010 · 1:16 PM PDT

2010/05/20 · 13:16

According to Greg Smith, via TPM, Rand Paul's campaign has now issued a statement that he supports the Civil Rights Act (I suppose in follow-up to Paul's own statement that he wouldn't seek its repeal while leaving open the question of whether he disagrees with it):

Civil Rights legislation that has been affirmed by our courts gives the Federal government the right to insure that private businesses don't discriminate based on race. Dr. Paul supports those powers.

- Jesse Benton, Rand Paul spokesman.

That was a quick turnaround! Ben Smith has a couple of interesting additions, which I'll get to over the fold.

sullivanst

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Friday December 11, 2009 · 10:15 AM PST

2009/12/11 · 10:15

I like to keep a weather eye on what the progress of the health care bill in the Senate. It doesn't normally take long since the process is so dragged out, but something caught my eye today.

Debate is ongoing about Sen. Dorgan's prescription drug re-importation amendment. Presumably this means that Dorgan's not on board with the drug manufacturer deal. I was going to check the record of that debate, but in trying to find it, I caught a great little nugget from Sen. Baucus on a different matter: the "gut Social Security and Medicare" commission that Sens. Conrad and Gregg are demanding or they'll refuse to raise the debt ceiling and force a government shut-down.

Quote over the page.

sullivanst

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Monday November 16, 2009 · 9:06 AM PST

2009/11/16 · 09:06

Jim Cooper said there were many ways to define a public option, and a few different versions of it have appeared in various drafts in the current reform proposals. That seems to have led to some confusion, even here where people are by-and-large well informed.

The bill text is available on Thomas, the version to look at is the one "Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House".

So what is the exact form of the public option in HR.3962, as passed by the House? The short answer seems to be: it's better than you probably thought.

sullivanst

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Wednesday October 21, 2009 · 4:53 PM PDT

2009/10/21 · 16:53

Today, Alan Grayson launched a website that wasn't entirely well thought out. The concept was great: let's put some names to the tens of thousands who die from lack of health insurance every year, so it's more than just an incomprehensible number.

Sadly, the initial iteration put up allowed users to list names on the front page with no moderation. Oops - if you allow punking on the internet, punking on the internet will happen.

He reacted well, though. For now, the site's just taking names, not showing them, while it's decided how to deal with fakers. But I'd like to share his reactions to TPM over the fold, because they're priceless.

sullivanst

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Friday October 09, 2009 · 12:38 PM PDT

2009/10/09 · 12:38

The Yes-on-8 and Yes-on-1 campaigns, and the likes of Rick Warren, have always tried to claim that they don't hate teh Gays, they just want to "preserve the sanctity of marriage" or somesuch BS. They claim that it's not about two people loving each other in the privacy of their own homes, it's about the definition of a word that has religious significance.

Well, we never believed them. It never made sense, religious marriage is not the same thing as legal marriage, and everyone knows that.

I'm not from Washington State, so I had no idea about what's going on over there until I opened my email a couple of minutes ago to find a screed from EQCA. Follow me over the fold to see how the homophobes have blown their cover...

sullivanst

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Wednesday September 30, 2009 · 10:55 AM PDT

2009/09/30 · 10:55

I was rather surprised to stumble across an article on the BBC today, given it seems to me to be a big deal but I hadn't heard a whisper about it.

For years, the rest of the world has been grumbling about the fact that the US has retained close control over ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which assigns top-level domains and IP address blocks. This has allowed the US to retain control over the very core of the internet.

Apparently, no longer!

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The Newt King of Comedy

Rhapsody on a theme of Paul Krugman

Huckabee, in a hole, keeps digging

House Democrats keep up the fight against H.R.3

RW nonsense: if PPACA is constitutional, so is forcing everyone to buy a gun

Pentagon Survey: Troops OK with repeal

About Face! Rand Paul Reverses

Wherein Max Baucus Says Something Good (Shocker!)

Picking Apart the House Public Option

Another Classic Line from Rep. Grayson

Anti-Gay Animus in Full View in Washington State

Obama relaxes US' grip on Internet