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We’re Not in Kansas, Toto!

I’ve posted a number of stories (here, here, or here) about the conservative experiment going on in Kansas sponsored by the Koch brothers. It involves (in case you can’t guess) massive tax cuts for business (they pay no taxes), and massive cuts in education, roads, and social services.

Ultra-conservative governor Sam Brownback predicted “enormous prosperity” for the state. Instead their economy is going to hell in a handbasket, accompanied by massive deficits, high unemployment, and – perhaps worst of all – being made fun of by The Daily Show.

But there has to be a silver lining, somewhere. And there is, a few states away in Minnesota. In 2010, that state elected billionaire Mark Dayton to be their governor and now they have one of the best economies in the country. Dayton also turned a $6.2 billion deficit into a $1 billion surplus. How did he do it?

He raised taxes on the rich. Minnesota now has the 4th highest tax rate in the US.

He raised the state minimum wage, and passed a law guaranteeing equal pay for women. Minnesota’s median income is now $8,000 more than the national average.

He made education a budget priority. One third of the budget surplus is going to public schools.

That’s right, Dayton did all those things that right-wingers say will kill jobs and make businesses move somewhere else. But the opposite happened. In fact, Forbes recently ranked Minnesota the 9th-best state for business, and the state’s economic growth is one of the highest in the US.

But comparing Minnesota to Kansas is like comparing apples to oranges, right? Well then, how about comparing Minnesota to Minnesota? The previous governor of Minnesota was Tim Pawlenty, a former Republican candidate for president who called himself Minnesota’s first true fiscal conservative in modern history, and prided himself on never raising taxes. Yes, he’s the schmuck who left the state with the $6.2 billion deficit. And employment in the state increased by a measly 6,200 jobs during his eight year tenure as governor.

Under Dayton, in the last four years the state added 172,000 jobs.

But Kansas still believes in trickle-down economics. And if you have an opinion to the contrary, you better keep it to yourself.

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Instant News

Tom Tomorrow
© Tom Tomorrow

One of the things I love about doing a blog is that it gives me the luxury of waiting until the initial internet and 24-hour news hysteria dies down. That way I can do a bit of reading, investigating, and thinking. Of course, my job is to find the irony, hypocrisy, and just plain humor in the situation. I leave actual news to others!

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Agressive Obama?

Speaking of ISIS, according to Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX), the Obama administration is “more aggressive toward Americans, Republicans, conservatives, Christians” than toward ISIS.

First, how many bombing runs has Obama made against ISIS? Around a thousand or so?

How many bombing runs has Obama made against Republicans, conservatives, or Christians?

Second, how many terrorist attacks have been committed by right-wing extremists? Not counting anything prior to the 2001 September 11 attacks (which means we leaving out things like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others), right-wing extremists have committed at least eight lethal terrorist attacks in the US.

How many terrorist attacks has ISIS carried out in the US?

Third, how aggressive was the US government against left-wing groups during the anti-war and civil rights movements? Way more than anything that has ever been done against right-wing groups in this country.

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What ISIS Really Wants

There is a somewhat long, but fascinating article in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood, which explains something that the mainstream media has gotten totally wrong.

What is ISIS (or ISIL, or Islamic State, or whatever the press is calling it this week)? What motivates them? Why are they beheading fellow Muslims? Why are some Muslims flocking to join them and other Muslims condemning them? Or as the article puts it:

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

If you have any interest in understanding what is going on in the Middle East, I urge you to read it. After all, we have no chance of defeating them unless we have at least a passing understanding of them and their motivations.

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Late Night Political Humor

“President Obama spent Monday playing a round of golf in sunny California, and then flew back to Washington on Air Force One. And 10,000 people stranded at Boston’s Logan Airport just became Republicans.” – Jimmy Fallon

“President Obama has appointed a new head of the Secret Service. The new Secret Service director was so excited that he jumped over the White House fence for joy.” – Conan O’Brien

“Yesterday a federal judge suspended President Obama’s executive order on immigration. When asked if he’s mad about being overruled, Obama said, ‘You know I’ve been married for 23 years, right?'” – Jimmy Fallon

“First lady Michelle Obama revealed that she has banned boxed macaroni and cheese from the White House. It’s been tough on Biden because he couldn’t make his wife any jewelry for Valentine’s Day.” – Jimmy Fallon

“A recent poll shows that New Jersey residents feel Hillary Clinton has the ‘right look’ to be president, while Chris Christie does not. Then today, Christie was spotted at JCPenney, trying on pantsuits.” – Seth Meyers

“Last night during a speech, Chris Christie said, ‘There’s only one Chris Christie, and this is it.’ I don’t know. It still looks like at least two.” – Seth Meyers

“Chris Christie addressed recent stories about his change in personality and said, ‘There’s only one Chris Christie.’ He said the only time there are two Chris Christies is when he’s buying seats on a plane.” – Jimmy Fallon

“I spent the past four days in Cuba shooting a special episode of this show. I returned and today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Cuba, which explains why the Cuban government asked America to ‘please stop sending us your ambiguously popular celebrities.'” – Conan O’Brien

“I had an amazing experience in Cuba. People there are fantastic. But I do have to say it’s very nice to be back home in front of all of you capitalist pigs.” – Conan O’Brien

“Congress is considering a law that would allow commuters to bring their dogs and cats on Amtrak trains. It’s all part of their plan to make Amtrak smell better.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Ukrainian officials say that while Vladimir Putin was announcing a ceasefire agreement today, over a hundred Russian military vehicles and weapons crossed into Ukrainian territory. Said Putin, ‘Is not Ukraine. Is My-kraine’.” – Seth Meyers

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Oklahoma Education

Jon Rosenberg
© Jon Rosenberg

It really is true. An Oklahoma legislator is successfully pushing a bill to ban the teaching of an advanced American History course because it is not patriotic enough. He claims that the AP history course focuses on “what is bad about America” and fails to teach “American exceptionalism”. Considering that Oklahoma was the destination of the infamous “Trail of Tears”, rewriting their history to avoid negative things might be a bit difficult.

The bill also includes a long list of documents that would be required to be taught, including several Christian sermons like “A Model of Christian Charity”, and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.

The bill’s sponsor is part of a group that is dedicated to tearing down the “false wall of separation of church and state.” So apparently he isn’t very well acquainted with actual US history.

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Late Night Political Humor

“NBC has suspended Brian Williams for six months without pay. Williams said he’s not worried because soon his veterans benefits will kick in.” – Conan O’Brien

“NBC suspended Brian Williams for six months without pay for misrepresenting a story of something that happened to him 12 years ago in Iraq. I have a solution. They should send him up in a helicopter, fire an RPG at it, and if he makes it down, that’s enough. He’s forgiven.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Brian already has been on a self-imposed leave of absence from NBC, reportedly planning to spend his six months away at home with his wife, Wendy Williams.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“A tell-all book by David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s former strategists, reveals that Obama chose Joe Biden as his VP because of his energy and enthusiasm. You know, the qualities you look for in someone whose main job is traveling to state funerals.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Obama chose Joe Biden as his VP because of his energy and enthusiasm. Wait, those are the same reasons he picked his dog, Bo.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Axelrod also said in his new book that Obama lied to Americans to get votes in 2008 when he said he opposed gay marriage. Of course, Republicans have already turned it into a scandal: BenGayZi. It’s trending right now.” – Jimmy Fallon

“A new report says that last year Colorado collected $44 million in marijuana taxes. Unfortunately, they can’t remember where they put it.” – Conan O’Brien

“A lawmaker in Tennessee is pushing to make the Bible the official state book. It would replace Tennessee’s current state book, the menu at Cracker Barrel.” – Seth Meyers

“Good luck finding a place to park in New York City. And when you do, good luck figuring out the parking signs, restrictions, and prohibitions. It is so complicated. It has gotten so bad, I never park my car without a lawyer.” – David Letterman

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Egyptian Satire

It is one of those situations where the proverbial genie is already out of the bottle. Like we went shopping and dropped the very expensive fragile object and broke it. So now we own it. Is it too late to walk away? Because even if we do, we are still going to be blamed for it (and we probably deserve at least a good part of the blame).

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Deja Vu All Over Again

The election isn’t until November of 2016, over 20 months away, but the rhetoric has already started, and it doesn’t bode well for the future.

For starters, some Republicans haven’t figured out that they are no longer running against Barack Obama.

Take the words of Ted Cruz (on Fox News of course), who called Obama “an apologist for radical Islamic terrorists“. Ted Cruz has a better answer: “The solution is the full force of U.S. military power to destroy the leaders of ISIS.” Didn’t he learn anything from Iraq and Afghanistan?

As if the current crop of presidential hopefuls wasn’t nutso enough, we also got an earful from a former presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani, who said “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

I don’t often play the racism card, but to me this is racism of the worst kind. Giuliani is explicitly saying that Obama is not like you and me. What’s next? Saying that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have the same organs as you and me?

Then Giuliani did something that floored me – he was an apologist for the Crusades. “I’m not sure how wrong the Crusades are. The Crusades were kind of an equal battle between two groups of barbarians. The Muslims and the crusading barbarians.” Except that during the time of the crusades the Muslims were not barbarians, they were in the middle of their Golden Age, with great achievements in science, mathematics, education, philosophy, astronomy, architecture, and the arts.

And then there is Jeb Bush. Jeb has the unenviable task of distinguishing himself from his brother and his father, without being negative about them or what they did. He says “I am my own man”, but is he really? Bush has put together a group of around two dozen people to advise him on foreign policy issues, and they are a rogue’s gallery from his family members’ administrations including secretaries of homeland security and state, CIA directors, and national security advisers. Yes, he is actually taking advice from Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, and George Tenet, who lied us into the Iraq war, and from the person responsible for disastrously mismanaging the occupation of Iraq.

In truth, Jeb Bush actually likes what Dubya did in Iraq. In 2003, he said he concured with what his brother was doing. Ten years later, he said that “history will be kind to my brother [on Iraq] the further out you get from this and the more people compare his tenure to what’s going on now.” He also claimed recently that increased military spending and power encourages peace. He definitely didn’t learn anything from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Expect more of the same.

UPDATE: Most Republicans are (wisely) distancing themselves from Giuliani’s racist comments. For example, Marco Rubio said he has “no doubt” that Obama loves America, and Rand Paul said that while he disagrees with Obama’s policies, it is a “mistake to question people’s motives”. Even Lindsay Graham says that he doesn’t “question [the president’s] patriotism or love for our country.” But Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker didn’t get the memo, and tried to be ambiguous by saying “I don’t really know” whether Obama loves America.

Again, expect more of the same – it is to the Republicans’ advantage to continue the conversation about whether or not Obama loves America. It is one of those things like asking someone when they stopped beating their wife.

What I want to know is, how can these people claim to love America when they hate its duly elected president?

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Home, Sweet Home

Jen Sorensen
© Jen Sorensen

Even animals know better than to crap up their homes! But what do I know, I’m not a scientist.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Never again will Brian Williams mislead this great nation about being shot at in a war we probably wouldn’t have ended up in if the media had applied this level of scrutiny to the actual fucking war.” – Jon Stewart

“Despite the Brian Williams lying scandal, NBC News led in the ratings last week. Although I should note the figures were reported by Brian Williams.” – Conan O’Brien

“There’s a rumor that NBC is going to have Tom Brokaw fill in temporarily as the NBC News anchor. When asked why, a network spokesperson said, ‘Because the only other NBC person we have is Bill Cosby.'” – Conan O’Brien

“Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush has released all of his emails. I’d like to release all of my emails. I’ve got nothing but emails about low-cost funerals and Viagra.” – David Letterman

“Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to make his first official state visit to the U.S. Although I’m worried it’ll be a little awkward when he visits a school and says, ‘This factory is terrible.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Pope Francis is going to go to Washington, D.C., to address Congress. He believes the New England Patriots have been deflating his giant hat.” – David Letterman

“It was revealed that back in 2011 Michael Jordan was signing a poster for Obama’s 50th birthday but spelled the president’s name wrong. The president made sure Jordan’s name was spelled right when he had him audited by the IRS.” – Jimmy Fallon

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Republican Voters Support Gay Marriage

A new set of polls from NBC News and Marist College are even more surprising than expected.

The expected parts are that Republican voters don’t like presidential candidates who support things like Common Core, immigration reform, doing something about climate change, or raising taxes on the wealthy.

The surprise part is that opposition to gay marriage will also alienate Republican voters. In the poll, around half of likely GOP primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina said that opposition to gay marriage is either “mostly” or “totally” unacceptable in a candidate. In Iowa, 47% said opposing gay marriage was unacceptable, while in the other two states 52% (a majority) found it unacceptable.

The days when Republicans could use opposition to gay marriage to attract social conservatives are gone. Today, opposition to gay marriage is more likely to hurt a candidate than help them. These numbers have changed dramatically in just the last year, and are likely to continue to change in favor of candidates who support gay marriage.

The problem is that the current candidates have not kept up. Pretty much every aspiring Republican candidate is on record as opposing gay marriage, including relative Republican moderates like Jeb Bush.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Now people want Brian Williams to resign, but it could have a happy ending. Apparently what he said was such a blatant departure from the truth, today he got an offer from Fox News.” – Bill Maher

“Brian Williams of NBC News has admitted he embellished a story about being in a helicopter that was shot at in Iraq. Williams says the helicopter part was true but it was a coin-operated helicopter outside of a Chuck E. Cheese. It was in a bad part of Connecticut.” – Conan O”Brien

“At today’s National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama and the Dalai Lama avoided a direct meeting. Uh-oh, sounds like there may be some Obama-Lama drama.” – Seth Meyers

“What we don’t know about is Jeb Bush and cocaine. But we do know that he did once gave his brother Florida on a silver platter.” – Bill Maher

“House Speaker John Boehner said the Republican Party will no longer stand in the way of gay marriage. Then Boehner said, ‘Now can I go to Elton John’s Oscar party?'” – Conan O’Brien

“Rand Paul and Chris Christie both said vaccinations should be a choice, not a government mandate. Because when have Republicans ever told people what they could do with their own bodies?” – Bill Maher

“According to a recent survey, 12 percent of Americans say that it’s fine to cheat a little on your taxes. While the other 88 percent know not to talk to a guy with a clipboard asking them if they cheat on their taxes.” – Jimmy Fallon

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Liberals v. Conservatives – It’s Funny

An interesting (and well worth reading) article in The Atlantic dives into some important questions: Why is there no conservative entertainer as funny as Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, or many others? And why is there no liberal talk radio host as successful as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, or many others?

Theorists have been trying to explain humor as far back as Plato. The ancient Greek philosopher said humor got its power from the pleasure people get when they feel superior over others, laughing at their foibles and flaws. Freud saw it as a cathartic release from society’s repressions, thus explaining all our sex and fart jokes. And Hegel saw it as reconciling two normally incongruous spheres of meaning—i.e., showing a football player in a cheerleading outfit or putting a cat in human clothes.

Peter McGraw, an associate professor at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, has argued for what he calls the “benign-violation theory” of humor. McGraw believes that humor results from violating social norms or by violating a particular person or group. But it only becomes funny when it’s placed in a second context that clearly signals the violation is harmless or benign. In other words, if someone falls down the stairs, it will only be really funny if that person doesn’t get hurt.

There may be alternative theories. For example, maybe there aren’t as many conservative satirists because you have to be a bit of an uncaring asshole in order to be an outspoken conservative. And maybe liberals can’t make it on AM talk radio because liberals don’t make very good ditto-heads.

Maybe that is too harsh. But it does make you wonder. And it would explain why an academic study found that a majority of conservatives believe Colbert is really a conservative.

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Trouble?

Ruben Bolling
© Ruben Bolling

It’s true. Why is Brian Williams the only one to get in trouble for rewriting the Iraq war history?

In somewhat related news, on Friday, Iceland actually jailed some bankers and CEOs. In the rest of the world, being rich and powerful still gives you a personal get-out-of-jail-free card.

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