Fact-esque

Simplicism and the Religious Right

sim'-pli-cis-m: (n) The belief that the answers to all problems, no matter how complex they may seem, are easy to understand and uncomplicated by nuance or ambiguity.

It has become part of the left-wing's conventional wisdom that Tea Partiers are crushingly stoopid (TBogg calls them "Teatards"). While this viewpoint is not, on the surface, without its merits, I don't believe it's that easy to explain. I don't think most of the people in the video below are so much dumb as ignorant and, in true American tradition, intellectually lazy.

The difference between "stupid" and "ignorant" is one of ability and will. The stupid cannot understand no matter how much information they have, the ignorant can but only if they have enough information for a reasonable analysis, and that requires both the will to search out the pieces and an intellectual work ethic of sufficient strength to connect the dots once the info is in hand.

Not that it would take that much intellectual strength. In most cases an amount of intellectual energy equal to that put out by an 8th-grader writing a short report on a subject about which she cares not a whit would be all that was necessary. Given that the information required to solve our worst problems ought to be a good deal more important to the average citizen than a report on Ecuadorian flax production, one would think most of us would be willing to spend the small amount of time it would take.

One would be wrong.

It's the End of the World As We Know It and I Feel Fine

I've been putting off writing this because it's simply too depressing once you put it into words, but somebody has to say it and it seems to be my role. Everybody, especially economists like Krugman and Baker, have been dancing around this for weeks, unable to bring themselves to state baldly and simply the conclusion that all their recent analysis inevitably leads to. So I will.

The American economy is never - repeat NEVER - coming back.

How the Democrats Will Arrange to Lose Despite Widespread Hatred of GOP: Help Corpo's Outsource More Jobs

Even as we speak, Democrat leaders are most likely meeting in emergency session to try to figure out what to do about the latest bad news: everybody hates the Pubs and their policies.

Voters' opinions of the Republican Party are now at an all-time low. According to a new WSJ/NBC poll (PDF), Americans' esteem for the Republican Party is at the lowest level ever found in the 21 years they have asked the question. When asked to rate their feelings about the Republican Party the results were:

WSJ/NBC (PDF) (8/5-9)
Opinion about Republican Party
Very Positive 6
Somewhat Positive 18
Neutral 28
Somewhat Negative 24
Very Negative 22

The American people have a significantly lower opinion of the Republican Party now than they did at the height of the the 2006 or 2008 elections in which Democrats made large gains. Fortunately for Democrats, while popular opinion about the party has taken a beating, voters still view it more positively than they do the Republican Party. The Democratic Party rated total positive 33 percent to total negative 44 percent, while the Republican Party had total positive 24 percent to total negative 46 percent.

This sort of thing is, of course, extremely worrying to Obama, Axelrod, Rahm, Reid, Pelosi, et al. It suggests that they can't lose, despite all their best efforts to make the doom-and-gloom, pro-Pug prognostications of the corporate media come true. They've continued Bush's most unpopular policies, both his unpopular wars, and given the store away to Wall Street. Jeez, what's a party gotta do to give away an election these days?

The Real Victim of the Confederate GOP

Let's start with James Kunstler at Clusterfuck Nation . (Via Mark)

The greatest loss of the last decade was not in 401-Ks or manufacturing jobs or foreclosed houses, but the rule of law. Without genuine rule of law, anything goes and nothing matters. As a consequence of that, finally, everything goes. The rule of law is what kept foreigners buying our debt all these years (the fumes we've been running on). They kept buying because they believed, when all was said and done, that Americans would enforce contracts and regulate behavior in the direction of fair dealing - not for its own sake but because it made things work better. But when the rule of law goes here, the rest of the world will notice its absence. They'll stop believing in our money and our future. They'll cash out and we'll wash out. Then, as human tribes are wont, they may just turn around and kick our ass because we're down.

I think it goes even deeper than that, and I think, given the totality of the post (a post you should definitely find time to read), Kunstler would probably go along. As horrifying as the destruction of law is, what allows it - along with the destruction of the economy, the destruction of the social contract, and the destruction of representative democracy itself - is the wholesale assault on reality by what Mark has been calling "the Confederate Right".

Defending Bush: The Unlawing of the Law

Apparently the Right has decided that it isn't enough to attack any judicial decision they don't like on the basis of the fact that a judge made it, as per the recent charges over the California same sex decision. No, it is now necessary, from their point of view, to disconnect the law from the social structure altogether and make it, if possible, illegal.

Bare-Knuckle Barry: More Guns, Less Butter

There has been a feeling in some quarters (not mine, of course) that President Obama has been holding back. If that was true, it is true no longer, I'd say. In the last couple of days we've seen two pretty bold moves on his part, not that he expected anybody to notice.

Our Magic Media

In the Old Days before the WaPo decided to become an upscale Washington Times and Rupert Murdoch single-handedly LCD'd the MSM, there were major oil spills, too. They caused lots of trouble and cost lots of money to clean up and many homes and businesses were ruined because the press didn't use its powers correctly.

The Plutonomy Score: Wall Street 1, Main Street -1

Two articles this week demonstrate between them how our new plutonomy works, and you'll notice that in neither case does any actual product have to be made or sold. Nodody has to build anything so it doesn't have to be quality-controlled and no laborer has to be paid to put it together. In fact one of them requires that you stop paying a certain number of your employees. (Via eRobin by email. Remember her?) Viz:

Dem Sen Jim Webb Defends Reverse Racism Myth and Nobody Notices

Just how fucking right-wing is the New Democrat/Blue Dog party? So fucking far right-wing that Rahm Emanuel protege Jim Webb, Sen from Virginia and an undeniable star in the ND/BD firmament, could actually write a WSJ Op-Ed against diversity and affirmative action policies using the same exact argument for ending them that we've heard from right-wing GOoPer kooks like Tom Tancredo and Jim DeMint, and which King Conservative Bigot Pat Buchanan had no difficulty defending. Viz: that diversity and affirmative action programs are reverse racism and just aren't fair because they hurt white people.

Third Parties and the Nader Derangement Syndrome

Even the WSJ has noticed. (Via Roy Edroso)

At the largest progressive gathering ahead of the 2010 elections, liberal activists huddled Friday in a session to plot strategy to protect Social Security from renewed Republican efforts to privatize the program. A woman stood up and asked: "Why is it with a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, and a Democrat in the White House do we need to be worried about this?"

Why, indeed? Well, we've been over all that and we know why. The New Democrat party is nothing but another corporate captive, panting after the moneybags. That isn't the question we need to be asking. The question we need to be asking is why, with every poll against their policies by wide margins, is the New Democrat party so unconcerned about its base that it's going out of its way to pander to right-wing meatballs like Andrew "Scumface" Breitbart?

Ralph Nader, that's why.