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Republican Response to Libya


© Lalo Alcaraz

Of course there are bad things to say about Libya, but compared to Iraq?

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Out of the Mouths of Children

Quote from a reader of Andrew Sullivan after the Republican debate:

Listening to GOP Presidential candidates talk about science is like listening to children talk about sex: They know it exists, they have strong opinions about what it might mean, but they don’t have a clue what it’s actually about.

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Sysadmin?

Some of you might have noticed that Political Irony has been slow lately, and even been unavailable on and off. Yesterday I found some exploit code that had been hacked into the site and removed it, but it still isn’t behaving well. It has been almost a year since I rebuilt the site from scratch, so it is probably time to do that, but before I do that I have two questions:

I’m currently running Political Irony on a shared hosting service. This blog is really too big for that kind of hosting, but I’ve been reluctant to spend more since I don’t make any money on this site (and don’t really want to). Does anyone know of a hosting service for WordPress blogs that can deal with the traffic and is also relatively cheap? If so, please leave a comment on this post.

Alternatively, is there anyone out there who can host this site and act as sysadmin for it? I’m starting a new job on Monday, and I don’t have much time for the administration duties (updating the software and dealing with spammers and hackers), although I’m happy to keep feeding stories. If anyone is interested please contact “iron” at this domain.

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Dick Cheney, Comedian


© Matt Wuerker

My main question is whether Cheney believes the things he says in his book, or if he just doesn’t know how to tell the truth any more.

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The GOP Cult

Mike Lofgren has a detailed and compelling write-up about what’s wrong with the Republican Party and our political system in general. And he should know, he used to be a GOP operative and a congressional staffer.

If you ever wanted to read a clear description of what happened to the Republican party, this is it. Here are a few short excerpts:

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult.

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn (“Government is the problem,” declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets:
1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors.
2. They worship at the altar of Mars.
3. Give me that old time religion.

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Late Night Political Humor

“Next week, Obama will unveil his new jobs bill. I’m sure that will sail right through.” – David Letterman

“‘The White House agreed to move President Obama’s speech from Wednesday to Thursday because the Republicans have a debate scheduled for Wednesday. So the debate that no one is going to watch holds more weight than the speech no one is going to believe.” – Jay Leno

“After pressure from Republicans, President Obama moved his big jobs speech from Wednesday to Thursday night. Obama gave in when he realized something important: He could just TiVo ‘Jersey Shore.'” – Jimmy Fallon

“Obama caved again when ‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ called and said, ‘Our show is on at that time.'” – Jay Leno

“President Obama’s uncle was arrested for a DUI. His alcohol level was actually higher than Obama’s approval rating.” – David Letterman

“Obama’s approval rating is 38 percent. I’d kill for numbers like that.” – David Letterman

“Dick Cheney’s book is an inside look at what it’s like to be president — uh, vice president.” – Jay Leno

“Dick Cheney’s memoir, ‘Eat, Pray, Waterboard,’ has a lot of revelations. For instance, Dick Cheney was actually born in a hut in Kenya. His first heart attack occurred when he accidentally saw himself naked. He also admits to fathering Beyonce’s baby.” – David Letterman

“President Obama has declared that September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. And if you’re looking for a way to celebrate, I recommend the ‘Mac n’ Cheese Big Daddy Patty’ from Denny’s.” – Jimmy Fallon

“Labor Day is when we celebrate our workforce. Do we still have a workforce?” – David Letterman

“A New Mexico state trooper in full uniform was caught having sex with a woman on the hood of her car. She was so drunk that halfway through she said, “Hey, that’s not a Breathalyzer!” – Jay Leno

“New York City had earthquakes and hurricanes, but that’s the price you pay for living in an island paradise.” – David Letterman

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The Mystery of Liberal Behavior


© Tom Tomorrow

This explains everything!

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Taxes and Regulations Are Not Killing Small Business

Conservatives like to harp on how high corporate taxes and excessive regulations are killing small businesses, and the best way to create jobs is to cut taxes. But as an owner of several small businesses, I’ve always known that was a lie.

It is absolutely silly to think that businesses hire employees when their taxes are cut. Businesses hire employees when demand for their products or services go up, and they need additional employees to meet this demand. When a company’s profits go up (whether from lowered taxes or other reasons) they pass those profits on in the form of bonuses and dividends, as we have seen over and over again, not by hiring new employees.

So it is no surprise that a survey of random small business owners across the nation found the same thing. None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it.

As one owner put it: “Government regulations are not ‘choking’ our business, the hospitality business. In order to do business in today’s environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order.”

Some even pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as precipitating the financial crisis in 2007.

As for taxes, one owner said “I think the rich have to be taxed, sorry.” Many support closing corporate loopholes that would cause their tax bite to go up.

So if it isn’t taxes and regulations, what is hurting small businesses? According to the owner of four small businesses “What is choking my business is insurance. What’s choking all business is insurance. You cannot go into business, any business — small business or large business — unless you can afford insurance.”

UPDATE: An economist explains why the argument that high taxes and burdensome regulations are hurting the economy is pure bullshit.

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If you can’t stand the heat…

One of the things I like about Texas is their sense of humor. So it is only natural that they would be making lots of fun of governor Rick Perry, who is leading in the Republican race for president.

The most common joke I hear is that Perry is the candidate for those people who think Dubya was too intellectual. Indeed, while Dubya went to Yale, Perry attended Texas A&M (an agricultural college) and graduated with a degree in animal sciences with a GPA of 2.4. Both were cheerleaders before they became governor. A classmate of Perry’s remembers “This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke.”

But the ribbing entered a new dimension when the Rice University Marching Owl Band (MOB) did a halftime show where they asked “The next time you go to the polls, ask yourself, ‘Is your candidate smarter than an Aggie?'”

And last, but not least, here is a skit from a school district in North Texas, singing a song for Perry to the tune of the famous Hee-Haw song, but with the chorus “Where, Rick Perry, are you tonight? Why did you leave us here all alone? You promised us funding for all Texas children; then you heard ‘White House’ and — pfft — you were gone.”

UPDATE: Does Perry feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis? Speaking of heat, it turns out that with the worst wildfires in history destroying millions of acres and thousands of homes in Texas, Perry previously severely cut the budget for the state agencies that fight wildfires. So yet another Tea Party candidate who believes that the federal government is the problem, is suddenly looking to federal disaster funds as the answer.

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Is God that Fickle?


© Clay Bennett

Even though Michele Bachmann won the straw poll in Iowa, she has been trailing badly since then, and is struggling now in fourth place behind Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul. Perry is currently the Tea Party flavor of the month, but it will be interesting to see how he does now that he is actually campaigning and has to face the other candidates in a debate this week.

UPDATE: Perry might back out of the debate.

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A rising middle class tide raises all boats

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has an excellent article in the NY Times about the rather direct correlation to how well the middle class is doing to how well the economy does. (Memo to supply-siders: trickle down economics does not work, and has never worked. It is, as George Bush Sr. put it in 1979, “voodoo economics”).

When the gap between rich and poor has gotten larger, the economy has suffered. But when the rich take a smaller cut of national income, the economy does much better. In fact, even the rich do better when they share the wealth — they may get a smaller slice but it is a far larger pie. The extent to which this is true is made evident by the following infographic:

Note in the first graph, productivity has been growing steadily with the exception of a small hiccup in the late 70s (mainly caused by the spike in oil prices). But when we came out of that hiccup, something changed. While productivity resumed its climb, wages and compensation for workers went flat.

The second graph shows that after 1980 (and the advent of trickle-down economics) the top income earners did indeed receive most of the productivity gains, while the poor saw their income go down. But even so, the rich only saw gains of 55%, compared to 99% prior to 1980.

But that’s not the biggest problem. In the third graph we see that when the gap between rich and poor is large, the economy suffers. This happens because the middle class is the driving force of a consumer economy. Spending for the rich is much more discretionary, so when the economy starts to go down, the rich stop spending, which causes the economy to get worse, and so on in a huge downward spiral.

In fact, the only reason our economy was able to keep growing even though middle class wages were flat after 1980 is because of two things: as the fourth graph shows, more women entered the workforce (the number of married women with young children who worked was 12% in the 60s, but soared to 55% by the late 90s); and as shown in the fifth graph, household debt climbed to unsustainable levels, peaking at 132% of annual income in 2007 (when the housing bubble crashed).

Since neither of those can increase much more, spending by the middle class can only go down, starving our economy of the fuel it needs to grow. There is only one solution — we need the rich to transfer some of their wealth to the middle class in order to fuel economic growth. Ironically, this will reward the rich far more than if they selfishly tried to hold onto their money.

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Why I’m Voting Republican

by Art Buck, from the Ashland Daily Tidings

I have been following the election build-up and I’ve made up my mind: I am voting a straight Republican ticket.

The thing that tipped me over the edge was the Republican incandescent light bulb position. They say it is a Democratic police state that is forcing manufacturers to abandon Thomas Edison’s 19th century incandescent bulb and make only more efficient ones, which burn cooler and use less electricity.

I will overlook the fact that this law was passed in 2007 by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Bush. It is clearly a Commie plot devised by Democrats. Can you spell “1984”?

I am also voting Republican because I want lead back in gasoline and paint. Only sissies worry about the health effects; freedom demands that corporations do whatever they want.

Republicans want to end the Environmental Protection Agency. I am for that, too. I remember the good old days of London’s killer fogs and Los Angeles’ smog days when you could not go outside. It may have been slightly annoying, but it was better than the government forcing us to stop polluting.

For that matter, I support the Republican position that the new Consumer Protection Agency is a monster which robs corporations of their constitutional right to do whatever they want to do to consumers, including lie to them about the terms of the loans they are taking out. Corporations are persons, after all — just ask Chief Justice Roberts.

Another plus for Republicans is their taking Jefferson out of the list of presidents because he supported the separation of church and state. It will make history easier to learn if we have fewer presidents.

I support Rick Perry’s and Michelle Bachmann’s drive to make evangelical Christianity the official and only religion of the USA. And how about Creationism? It is a whole lot easier to learn that only 4,000 years ago God made the earth in seven days than to grapple with the science of how life forms on this planet came to be over hundreds of millions of years. (Or to consider that religion and science are not incompatible.)

Ask Perry and Bachmann. They both say there is no evolution, and Texas public schools even teach Creationism. My kind of leaders! Keep It Simple, Stupid. I am not much of a scientific Darwinist, although, like them, I am all for Social Darwinism. I am a little uncomfortable with the racist tendencies of Southern Republicans, but it is a small price to pay for freedom and liberty.

Global warming? The whole Republican pack rejects this squishy liberal idea. If it were true, imagine the hurt it would do to the oil and gas industry! So it cannot be true! And Fox News says it is not true. So let’s skip this science stuff, it only hurts the brain and leads to lower GPAs.

I am also for the Republican goal to kill Social Security and Medicare. Bush tried to “privatize” (kill) Social Security but the citizens put up too much of a fuss. But it is time to try it again, and I know the GOP will. They have said so.

All but four of the 238 House Republicans voted for Paul Ryan’s budget, which included killing Medicare and cutting taxes for the rich even further. Greg Walden voted for Ryan’s budget. Those Senate Democrats stopped it. The nerve! So I know the Republicans won’t let me down if they get majorities in both houses and get the presidency.

You don’t mind paying health insurance companies whatever they demand in your retirement years, do you? It is a small price to pay for freedom. Without those pesky programs, and success finally in their efforts to end unemployment insurance, the Republicans will finally have returned us to the pre-Teddy Roosevelt robber baron days, where it is every man and woman for themselves, without any namby-pamby help.

Someone said, “Republicans claim that government does not work, and when elected they prove it.” I yearn for the Bush years, and this new crop of GOP politicians is Bush on steroids, no holds barred. Let’s go! Prove it!

I like the GOP slogan, “Government is not the answer.” Lately, though, I am nagged by the thought: What was the question that elicited that response? Was it “What is the highest mountain in North America?” Or, “Why is John Boehner’s DNA so close to that of a chimpanzee?”

Anyway, misgivings aside, vote Republican; they always use the words freedom and liberty.

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Late Night Political Humor

“I read Dick Cheney’s book. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody, but in the final chapter he kills Harry Potter. If you want the book, in the bookstore go past the self-help section. It’s in the self-serving section.” – Jay Leno

“Michele Bachmann is publishing her memoir. Why can’t we pray that away?” – David Letterman

“President Obama’s uncle has been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. Remember when the most embarrassing person in the president’s life was Joe Biden?” – Jay Leno

“How sad is it for the uncle? He got thrown in jail and the only relative he could call for bail money is $14 trillion in debt.” – Jay Leno

“In a new interview, President Obama said Ben Franklin is the Founding Father he would most like to meet. Meanwhile, Joe Biden said that Panthro is the ThunderCat he would most like to meet.” – Jimmy Fallon

“The CIA is hoping Moammar Gadhafi’s weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands. Weren’t they already in the wrong hands?” – David Letterman

“The Justice Dept is trying to block the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. It’s only fair because AT&T keeps blocking the mergers between me and the people I try to call.” – Jimmy Fallon

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Washout


© Clay Bennett

Given the high unemployment rate, and the attacks on unions and the labor movement in general, is there much to celebrate on this Labor Day?

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Doing the Jobs Shuffle

A few days ago I reported on the Justice Department filing suit to block the merger of AT&T with T-Mobile, but there is more news about how much AT&T has been lying about the benefits of their proposed merger.

In order to promote the merger, AT&T announced that they would be moving 5,000 call center jobs back to the USA, saying “At a time when many Americans are struggling and our economy faces significant challenges, we’re pleased that the T-Mobile merger allows us to bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States and significantly increase our investment here.”

Of course, this was just a carrot offered to try to sell the merger. According to the Wall Street Journal, as recently as March AT&T was bragging to their investors that the merger would save tens of billions of dollars in the first four years by eliminating redundant job. In fact, around 20,000 T-Mobile’s employees would likely lose their jobs. For those of us that still know how to do simply math, that means that the merger would result in 15,000 people losing their jobs.

And as the WSJ points out, there is no reason AT&T (or T-Mobile or any other company with call center jobs) couldn’t move those jobs back to the US at any time. Why would they need a merger to get them to do right by American workers?

AT&T also tried to sell the merger by saying that they would increase capital spending by $8 billion. But without the merger, the two companies would have spent $18 billion, so again the net result of the merger is a reduction of $10 billion in capital spending.

It just seems like some corporations have such little regard for us that they think they can just say “blah blah blah jobs blah blah” and we will let them do whatever they want to screw us over.

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