How Dare the Left Take Money!

Another breathtaking WaPo editorial.

I wonder if next week they'll opine about the billion dollars spent on the The Washington Times since its inception, the $40 million or so lost by the New York Post every year, the huge amounts of money spent, not just by Scaife, but by theocracy-loving billionaire Howard Ahmanson on a myriad of conservative causes and think thanks.

No I don't.


...Just a thought. I'd need to go back and check to be sure, but I think I've noticed a pattern over at the Post. Some of their nuttier and nastier anti-Dem editorials seem to run on Saturdays. My bet is that's when it's old Chuckles Krauthammer's turn to write them.

Hatchocritical

In the WaPo:

In the recent marathon debate on judicial nominations, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch earnestly expressed the view that the Democrats' filibuster against several of President Bush's nominations was unprecedented and even unconstitutional. This led me to dig up some old Congressional Records from April 1980, when Senate Republicans mounted a filibuster against President Carter's nominee for general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board -- a man who had served as a career attorney at the board for 27 years.

The senator leading the filibuster said it was his "unfortunate duty to challenge the nomination" because, although he "personally liked" the nominee, he was "too pro-labor" and other qualified nominees would be "acceptable to business." After five days of floor debate, the filibuster was broken on the second cloture vote, and the nominee was confirmed for a four-year term.

The reason I remember this episode so well is that the nominee was William A. Lubbers, my father, and the senator leading the filibuster was Orrin G. Hatch.

JEFFREY S. LUBBERS

Fiscal Insanity

This graph from the Economist really lays it out:


The solid line is the baseline projection - it's what happens if all of the tax cuts magically expire on schedule, there's no alternative minimum tax reform, there's no Medicare drug benefit, and discretionary spending growth is limited to 2.7% per year. The most realistic scenario is, frankly, that the tax cuts are made "permanent," there is AMT tax reform, there is a Medicare benefit, and discretionary spending grows much faster than 2.7% to keep up with population growth and to fund the latest war against whoever we're at war with.

Intelligence

Interesting bit from this Newsmax article.

Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a “soldier’s general,” Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.’s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11.

Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden.

They must have figured it all out pretty quickly.

Stop the GOP From Privatizing Medicare

That's the email I just got from the DNC. Look, guys, YOU stop the GOP from passing this Medicare bill. Get your members in line and filibuster the damn thing.

Fiscal Sanity

Brad DeLong responds:

Well, I expect a return to fiscal discipline after 2004. There's a good chance Bush will lose--and that his loss will drag down enough other candidates that the Democrats will have at least one house of congress as well. And even if Bush doesn't lose the 2004 election, there's a good chance that the normal vicious infighting of White House politics will throw up a different group of hands to operate the sock puppet.

Not even eternally optimistic me believes that the Democrats have a reasonable chance of taking back the House or obtaining more than a razor-thin majority in the Senate. I think there's a much greater chance of winning the presidency than getting back either the House or Senate. Under that scenario, the legislative branch is still effectively run by Tom DeLay. DeLay would rather kill his own mother and french kiss Michael Jackson on national television than raise taxes, except possibly some hideously regressive stuff. The problem with the kind of fiscal hole that we're getting into is that you a hit a point at which the remedies are too painful to be politically palatable. In better economic times, the required solution is easy. But if we wait too long, the fiscal mess causes an economic mess, and solving the former requires measures which aren't exactly what you want to do in the middle of a recession. The DeLay solution will, of course, be to cut taxes - it's the solution for every problem.

AARP Push Polling

Here's a description of the poll results Novelli was using to claim that 75% of members supported the legislation:

A look at the AARP survey itself (available in a PDF file) reveals that AARP misrepresented the results in its article. Of the 494 members surveyed in what was touted as a “nationally representative sample, with a margin of error plus or minus 4.4 percentage points,” it becomes clear, contrary to AARP’s claims, that those members surveyed did not conclude and could not have concluded that the new Medicare package would in any way help low-income elderly and those with high prescription drug costs.

The survey simply shows that AARP and its pollster worded the question in such a way that it creates the illusion of support. It brings to mind Karl Rove and his Rovian methodology.

First of all, the members polled could not have concluded that the Bill does in fact “help low-income elderly” because 62% of those polled said they were either completely unfamiliar with the Medicare Bill or were not very familiar with the specifics of the Bill. Only 2% felt they were very familiar with the Bill and 35% reported they were merely “somewhat familiar” and 1% refused to answer the question!

In order to ask a question of a group of people who are overwhelmingly ignorant of the subject, the pollsters had to educate the polled members—in other words, the pollster hand fed the answers they wanted to hear.

So the pollsters proceeded to remind those being polled that Medicare does not presently cover prescription drugs. Then the pollster boiled the complex bill down to three sentences. They tossed in another four sentences describing the benefits to the poor and those with high drug costs. Thus the pollsters created the “knowledge-base” for 97% of those who were polled.

Then the pollster asked the following question:


“Even if this plan won’t affect you personally either way, do you think it should be passed so that people with low-incomes or people with high drug costs can be helped?”

Seventy-five percent answered “Yes.”

AARP Flooded

A reader spent over 4 hours trying to get through to AARP to cancel her membership yesterday, and never managed to get a person on the phone.

Down the Memory Hole

AARP has deleted an article criticzing "Harry and Louise" style issue ads from its website. Here's the Google cache.

Collusion

I really don't understand how the three top supermarket chains in CA can get away with this.

More Krugman

As Lambert notes, I bumped into him there. Krugman mostly gave his standard talk which you would have seen on C-Span, and answered questions.

One interesting point he made has to do with why the markets have yet to go into panic mode. He said he gets various letters from hedge funds, etc..., and all of them contain some version of the line "we expect a return to fiscal discipline after the '04 elections." As Krugman rightly noted, this is just crazy. The Bushies claim that the deficit will be cut in half by 2008 - but even this rosy scenario can happen only if none of what they are continuing to propose to do - namely making all of the various expiring tax cuts "permament." The odds of a return to fiscal discipline - either with a 2nd Bush term, or with a President Democrat and House Majority Leader DeLay are pretty close to 0.

I do wonder what these people are thinking. The baby boomers start hitting retirement age at 2011. Nothing's going to stop them from voting for huge transfers from working age folks for SS, Medicare, and all kinds of yummy new programs. They may be playing the "starve the beast" game to cause a government fiscal crisis - but the real result will be a full economic crisis. Grover may be trying to drown the government, but he'll only succeed if he drowns the country.

Sanity Prevails

Good on the Senate for killing, for the moment, the Energy Bill. I'm surprised more Righties aren't praising the Dems for it. No one should like that stupid Bill, except for the recipients of its riches. Big government intervention at its worst - expensive and pointless.

Wolfowitz Flashback

Copyright 1991 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian (London)

March 28, 1991

LENGTH: 1101 words

HEADLINE: US fights shy of joining in Iraq civil war: Despite the scenes of horror, the appeals from the Kurdish and Shi'ite rebels will still fall on deaf ears

'No one can read about what's going on there without feeling a great sense of sympathy for what's going on. But that doesn't mean it is in our power to straighten it out. It's a mess that, to be a little harsh about it, is to some extent of their creation, and they are going to have to come up with a solution', the Under-secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, said yesterday.

Gourmet PB&J

Cute:

George W. Bush has allegedly offended Queen Elizabeth II by bringing no fewer than five of his personal chefs to Buckingham Palace.

"Her Majesty greeted the news that Bush was coming with his own chefs in absolute silence," a snitch tells London's Daily Telegraph.

"That's her general way of expressing disapproval. She's not thought to be [thrilled] about the whole visit anyway, but when you consider that she has excellent cooks herself, you can see why this would be taken as a bit of an insult."

The Face of Evil

I just went to see Paul "Vissarionovich" Krugman outline his plans for the neo-Stalinist economic revolution.

Harry and Louise Novelli

AARP President William Novelli is the founder of Porter Novelli.

Harry and Louise

Challenge
Threatened with a measure that would severly impact their industry - what seemed like certain passage of President Clinton's health care proposal in 1994, HIAA hired GCPN to so something notoriously difficult: get the attention of elected officials when there was no election in sight.

Insights
Positioning "Harry and Louise," an average American couple, to speak "for" not "to" the American people, we created a campaign that highlighted the public's concerns about the Clinton plan.

Ideas
Managing the key components of the campaign -- paid media, earned media, grassroots outreach and coalition building -- GCPN worked closely with representatives from HIAA staff and member companies to ensure that the campaign's lobbying effort and media execution were coordinated, complementary and in tune with the campaign's overall plan.

Impact
"Harry and Louise" prompted 500,000 calls to our 800 number, turned 50,000 of those callers into activists and resulted in one-quarter million contacts with members of Congress. The campaign is widely credited as being a key factor in defeating the Clinton plan.

More Gratitude Please

The latest by Reynolds is just lovely. I think it took a lot longer to get to this point during Vietnam.
(edited to say what I actually meant to say)

BC

The BC comic has been a reliable purveyor of religious bigotry over the years. First was his attack on Judaism. Now there's his not very subtle attack on Islam.

The author claims it was just bathroom humor.

uh-huh.

Not a Chickenhawk

Story.

Hail to the Thief

If they hadn't already figured it out from the CD title....