Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

This blog will pay for itself.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The lights are all blinking red.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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Strange Rasmussen polls

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Over the past few weeks, the media has flogged the living hell out of a series of Rasmussen polls which purport to show that the support for stimulus pacakge has gone from +11 (meaning 11 percent more Americans support the package than oppose it) to minus 6 (meaning 6 percent more oppose it than support it). On the other hand, Gallup polls show that support hasn’t changed much at all, and that the public still supports the stimulus package:

The differences in the polls can probably be attributed to different wordings in the questions (I won’t bore you with this but you can see it by following the links I provided).

Now, Rasmussen has an excellent track record with polling political races, certainly stronger than Gallup’s. But Scott Rasmussen also has a history of conservative activism, having consulted with the RNC In 2003-2004, self-published a book about privatizing Social Security, and been involved in a law suit opposing same sex unions (you can see all of this here).

There are other examples where Rasmussen public opinion polls are out of whack with other polls — for example, his polls on global warming have 44% of Americans saying they believe it’s caused by “planetary trends” while the percentage who say they believe this (with slightly different wording) in other polls is typically closer to 20% (here; here). Moreover, his article on the global warming polls begins:

Al Gore’s side may be coming to power in Washington, but they appear to be losing the battle on the idea that humans are to blame for global warming.

An analysis of the debate over the stimulus package at times has a similarly partisan bent:

It remains a mystery why the president was not more involved in selling the rescue package from the beginning. Letting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid take the lead early on gave the Republican opposition time to emphasize the large amount of new government spending Democrats have packed into the legislation.

[….]

The big unknown is how congressional Democrats will play out their hand. It is possible that their positioning on the topic of more government spending could cancel out any benefits from Obama’s sales effort.

This is not meant to sound all OMG RASMUSSEN IS TEH BIASED. And I still believe that Rasmussen election polls are excellent. But it’s pretty clear to me that Scott Rasmussen opposes the stimulus package and the notion that human activities cause global warming, and that he’s rigged polls to make it look like most Americans have the same position. Reporters ought to take his findings on these topics with a big grain of salt.

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It’s an isolated Village

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John wrote earlier about the fact that a Gallup poll shows the public overwhelmingly siding with Democrats over the stimulus bill. Democracy Corps (an important Democratic polling firm) has a poll on the possible effect of the stimulus debate in contested House races:

Voters in the 40 of the most competitive Democratic-held congressional districts favor the economic stimulus legislation passed by the House this week, according to a new Democratic poll.

Democracy Corps sampled 1,200 people combined in those districts, dividing them into two groups: the 20 most competitive districts in the first tier and the next 20 in a second tier.

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who conducted the poll, reported that 62 percent of voters in the 20 most competitive districts favor the $819 billion stimulus plan, while 66 percent in the next tier favored the legislation.

“I think that this bill and its conference … will be the defining vote of this Congress,” Greenberg said Friday morning at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. Greenberg said lawmakers’ votes for the stimulus package were akin in importance to members’ votes for the economic package proposed by President Clinton early in his administration, in terms of their impact on congressional midterm elections.

The idea that opposition to the stimulus bill seems to exist primarily among cable news pundits is catching on. Here’s Josh Marshall:

What’s most striking about these numbers is the continuing disconnect between the mood of the capital and that of the country. For me, a lot of that is a product of how Washington continues to be wired for Republican control. A president, and particularly one like Obama, is the one person who is in a position to cut through that.

And here’s some comments from the Obama team:

Gibbs: I think it’s illuminating because it may not necessarily be where cable television is on all of this. But, you know, we’re sort of used to that. We lost on cable television virtually every day last year. So, you know, there’s a conventional wisdom to what’s going on in America via Washington, and there’s the reality of what’s happening in America.

Axelrod: If I had listened to the conversation in Washington during the campaign for president, I would have jumped off a building about a year and a half ago.

This hearkens back to my favorite political quote of the last campaign:

If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters.

I *still* don’t really understand the Villager love for stupid Republican talking points or Villagers’ failure to come to grips with the fact the Republican party is now a regional party. It infects new members of the Village almost immediately — see Scherer, Michael and Ambinder, Marc. It goes much deeper than Cokie and Broder. And I really don’t know why.

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Open Thread

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Apparently some guy is talking about something in a little. I don’t know, but people in the comments seem to think it is more important than the Backyard Brawl, which is currently in progress. I beg to differ. At any rate, here is a place for you to talk about it.

Also, a little bird emailed me this link to the Corner, where they are listing the top #25 conservative movies of all time. #22 is Brazil:

Brazil (1985): Vividly depicting the miserable results of elitist utopian schemes, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil portrays a darkly comic dystopia of malfunctioning high-tech equipment and the dreary living conditions common to all totalitarian regimes. Everything in the society is built to serve government plans rather than people. The film is visually arresting and inventive, with especially evocative use of shots that put the audience in a subservient position, just like the people in the film. Terrorist bombings, national-security scares, universal police surveillance, bureaucratic arrogance, a callous elite, perversion of science, and government use of torture evoke the worst aspects of the modern megastate.

No wonder they love it.

Finally, one of our commenters is adopting a kitty, and it has no name:

A shame to go through life without a name. Please help.

*** Update ***

That didn’t take long. I just got an email informing me that said kitty has already been named and has made herself at home:

Say hello to “Momo.”

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Forty Year Old Virgins

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Yglesias (awesome title, btw, Matt) has this exactly right:

Can I say that as someone who doesn’t really follow baseball, I’ve been pretty surprised at all the gnashing of teeth over the revelation that Alex Rodriguez was using steroids back during the period when Major League Baseball had no real testing and sanctions policy for steroids. Haven’t we reached the point where we should just assume that back then all the players were using something? After all, what kind of big-time baseball star would willingly eschew a performance-enhancing substance whose use was widespread among his teammates and competitors and which there was no serious policy in place to prevent? It would have to be someone who wasn’t taking his baseball skills all that seriously.

If there is a whinier group of people than the so-called baseball “purists” who want to run around throwing asterisks up next to every record in the game, I don’t know who it is. Everyone knew. The fans, the players, the owners, the officials. Everyone. Now, all of a sudden, people are shocked. Here is a series of numbers for you:

1988- 2
1989- 4
1990- 3
1991- 2
1992- 21
1993- 13
1994- 12
1995- 16
1996 – 50
1997- 18
1998- 18
1999- 24
2000- 19
2001- 8
2002- 1

Now, if you just so happen to think that player all of a sudden found his swing in 1996, it is probably pointless to argue with you. You might, however, be qualified to work as a baseball writer.

Everyone knew this was going on, and here is the worst part- the guys doing the juice that everyone is shitting on now probably saved the game of baseball in the late 90’s. People seem to forget how hurting the game was after the strike in the 90’s.

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It Isn’t the Spending

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Via Sullivan, this David Weigel post:

I’m not surprised by this: I think Republicans have acted (and prematurely popped open champagne) on two assumptions that aren’t true right now.

The first is that voters rejected them in 2006 and 2008 because they spent too much money; the subtext is that voters oppose big government spending, and reward the party that cuts it down. This seems like a tautological argument that’s not backed up by history — how much did former President Ronald Reagan cut spending, after all?

I know this will distress some people to learn that the American public for the most part doesn’t care about spending, but this isn’t really news. If runaway spending really was a concern, more people would know about Gramm/Rudman/Hollings and it might actually be followed and include “off budget” spending, we wouldn’t have to have signs in Times Square counting the national debt, and the Concord Coalition would be more than the topic of a trivia question. Weigel’s observation is spot on, but it isn’t actually news, and one of my favorite bloggers, Daniel Larison, has been pointing this very fact out for, well, months, if not years. Here is a snippet from September, when he was merely irritated at the GOP silliness:

I can’t give an exact date, but at least as far as domestic policy is concerned I believe it must have been in March or April 2007, or at least no more than a few weeks after McCain’s announcement of his candidacy. By the fall of 2007 one of his favorite shots at the Democrats was his line (”I was tied up at the time”) about the earmark for a museum in Woodstock that Clinton had supported. Throughout the primaries McCain’s main line of criticism against the GOP was that it had engaged in too much wasteful spending, by which he meant spending earmarked for various pork projects, and for most of 2008 the issue for McCain, as well as the House minority leadership and many Republican pundits, has been reforming earmarks. One reason for this preoccupation has been the utterly mistaken impression that the 2006 midterms were a punishment for the GOP’s excessive use of earmarks. (To his credit, the head of the NRCC, Tom Cole, has acknowledged that earmarks had nothing to do with the defeat in ’06.) Naturally, having made this practically the centerpiece of his domestic agenda (before drilling became the obsession), he chose a soul running mate reputed for her acceptance of earmarks that McCain himself considered wasteful. Of course, it is a testament to the establishment nature of the GOP leadership and of McCain himself that something as insiderish and obscure to most voters as earmarks has acquired such centrality in the Republican presidential campaign. Nothing says that the GOP has been in power too long better than its insistence that its main failing was attaching too many pork projects to its legislation.

In October, a shift in tone fro irritated to disgusted:

This is one reason why I find the Republican and mainstream conservative turn in the last month or so to little more than excuse-making to be rather troubling, because it repeats the same errors that were made before and after the 2006 election. The GOP lesson from the ‘06 defeat was apparently nothing more than this: we really need to get a handle on earmarks! After the election this time we are likely to hear about how the right should have combated voter fraud more assiduously.

A few weeks ago, he moved from disgusted to fatalistic and bemused:

There is something else about the stimulus business that annoys me. The newfound zeal for fiscal responsibility, such as it is, reveals one of the fundamental problems of the GOP leadership, which is its completely unfounded notion that the GOP is now on the skids because of wasteful spending (and earmarks!). This sounds nice, but there seems to be no reason to think this has any merit as a matter of electoral politics. The anti-earmark mania that dominated the presidential campaign and which seems to control the minds of House leaders has prevailed yet again, suggesting that once again Republican leaders have learned absolutely nothing about why they have suffered two major electoral drubbings. The leadership’s flailing, much like McCain’s during the early days of the financial crisis, sends the message that the GOP has nothing to say to the public that cannot be summed up by the phrase wasteful spending. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t oppose wasteful spending, of course, but when they have absolutely nothing else to talk about (except, God help us, the return of the Fairness Doctrine) it is more than a little frustrating to watch.

And while we are all having a chuckle at the absurdity of the Republicans, Democrats would be wise to go back to review Larison’s criticisms leveled at Obama, in which he makes the case that Obama’s chief flaw is that he is too establishment and mainstream (Bacevich fans will note the agreement between Bacevich and Larison regarding Obama and the national security apparatus and foreign policy). Regardless, back to Weigel’s point- of course the Republicans are misreading things, but this is neither a new or shocking development.

*** Update ***

And Larison writes about this again, today:

Suppose for a moment that all observers of the debate agreed that the House Republicans were right that the stimulus bill isn’t fast or effective enough and that it is larded down with all sorts of unnecessary spending, and let’s go one step beyond that and grant for the sake of argument that, say, a payroll tax cut alternative is far superior to what is being offered. Voting against the stimulus bill would still make no sense politically unless you believe two things: 1) the public is hostile to vast increases in spending; 2) the public judges these matters based on a high degree of wonkish detail. The first assumption is appealing to those of us who are hostile to vast increases in spending, but we make up a small portion of the electorate and are unrepresentative of the rest of the country. For that matter, such people make up a small portion of the GOP itself, which is why the sudden return of the GOP’s anti-spending enthusiasm seems so bizarre to me. Of all the times to acquire zeal for austerity, which is rarely popular in the best of times and risky even for popular majority parties, they have chosen the middle of a recession after having taken two huge electoral drubbings. This is something like discovering antiwar scruples only in the middle of an invasion. The second assumption about how the public judges the debate is simply fantastic. At most, these measures are judged by the parties’ stated priorities and their rhetoric.

Go read it.

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A Question

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At what point did the normally sane people at Hit and Run turn into the libertarian version of the Rush Limbaugh show? If I had to guess, I would have assumed they would think a bill of $400 billion in tax cuts and $400 or so billion in spending would at least be considered half good, but instead the reaction over there the past few weeks has made Malkin look restrained by comparison.

You would think Obama and the Democrats were making possession of dope and porn punishable by death. Or worse still, they were bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.

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The Republican Frame

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Call it the Audacity of Nope:

Leading Republicans warned Sunday that the Obama administration’s $800 billion-plus economic stimulus effort will lead to what one called a “financial disaster.”

The country will “pay dearly” if it executes the president’s stimulus plans, Sen. Richard Shelby says.

“Everybody on the street in America understands that,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. “This is not the right road to go. We’ll pay dearly.”

Shelby, of Alabama, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the package and efforts to shore up the struggling banking system will put the United States on “a road to financial disaster.”

***

“We need to spend money on infrastructure and on other programs that will immediately put people to work. But this is not it,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, last year’s GOP presidential nominee.

Senators reached a tentative agreement Friday on a compromise bill largely negotiated by a handful of moderate Republicans whose votes are needed to prevent a filibuster. But McCain told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the package should have been about half the size of the one now before senators, and should be balanced between tax cuts and spending.

Even I am taken aback by this. Put aside the fact that Richard Shelby spent the last three months openly cheerleading the failure of the American auto industry, which would lead to hundreds of thousands if not millions of lost jobs, but would deal a blow to those dastardly unions. Put aside the fact that the Republicans are the ones who stripped the bulk of the spending OUT of this package in favor of pointless tax cuts, after, I might add, a week or two of running around screaming that this isn’t a stimulus bill, but a spending bill. Put that and other things aside.

What is breathtaking is the Shelby gambit- he is honest to goodness staking the claim not that the stimulus bill is useless, but that in 2010 and 2012 the Republicans can run on the assertion that the stimulus bill CAUSED the current economic crisis. Apparently he thinks we are not currently in an economic crisis (or hopes you are too stupid to notice), and that the stimulus package will lead us to financial disaster.

Every time I think I have become cynical enough to deal with the current GOP, they raise their game. I just can’t keep up.

Just so we are clear, the essence of Shelby’s statement is tantamount to someone in 1944 saying “If we invade Normandy, surely it will lead to war with Germany.” You can decide on your own if he is that brazen or that stupid.

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