Category Archives: Politics: US

The DCCC is having some nice clean fun with this “Rush Limbaugh rules the GOP” thing.

Here's the latest: I'm Sorry Rush apology generator for GOP leaders who dare to criticize the Leader, and then need to write a grovelling apology.

Unfortunately, the options are too limited, and will quickly be used up by Congressional Republicans.

TalkLeft: The Politics Of Crime, Remember The “Gang Of 14?”

So when McCain, Graham, Snowe and Collins promised to only filibuster “under extraordinary circumstances,” they were lying.

Carl Malamud is an early hero of the battle for access to knowledge. He was on the ground floor of the standards wars. He's responsible for EDGAR. He's put more information on line than universities.

And he'd like to be the Public Printer. We should be so lucky.

Support Carl Malamud for Public Printer. Visit Yes We Scan! for more information. Or place your signed endorsement in the comments to this blog posting.

It's difficult to resist using the difference between President Obama's oration and Gov. Jindal's baby-talk sing-song of a presentation as metaphors for the state of the debate between the two parties.

No, I can't resist.

The President's speech was a return to the virtues that served him so well on the campaign trail. It was meaty. It inspired. It contained the outlines – vague outlines, but outlines nonetheless discernible – of a complex program whose goals and motives were explained to an attentive public in sentences with a reading level well in excess of junior high school. There was much to quibble with – the assertion that the US invented the car, the equally dubious claim that Social Security has problems in any way comparable to the other crises addressed to name but two – but there was even more to look forward to.

Contrast the GOP's spokesperson, so-called rising star Gov. Bobby Jindal. He spoke in sentences that clocked in at a grade-school level, the speed of delivery was lugubrious, or perhaps aimed at the part of the audience that processes the occasional polysyllable rather slowly. And the ideas, to the extent there were any (spend less money, government is bad) were rather simplistic too. He insulted our intelligence, or rather, assumed we didn't have any to insult. The contrast to Obama was stark, and unflattering.

After the initial shock wore off – the first returns for Jindal were bad even on Fox – the GOP noise machine swung into action, and revved up the line that Obama's policies were a 'spending fiesta' full of 'pork' that will pass uncountable debt on to our grandchildren (Jindal's soundbite was something like 'things we do not need and cannot afford'). I can understand a party and its propaganda arm betting that voters have never heard of Keynes, or are instinctive believers in the long discredited 'Treasury View' of macroeconomics. But can it also count on voters forgetting where much of current deficit came from (Bush and the GOP)? Or where it went (rich taxpayers' pockets, Haliburton)?

At present there are genuine reasons why an intelligent person might disagree with the President's ambitious, expensive, and (at present) somewhat formless plans for a revolution in energy, health care, and education. But are there any reasons — other than naked self-interest on the part of taxpayers making over $250,000 who might genuinely reason that the GOP will save them money (at least in the short term, before the dollar crashes were their policies to actually be implemented) — why an intelligent person would agree with the party of Jindal, McConnell, and Cantor?

One of the truest political maxims is that you can't beat something with nothing. Until it regroups and finds something to be for, the party of Jindal will learn the power of that maxim.

Not Larry Sabato: Social Media Saves [Virginia State] Senate For Democrats:

Apparently Senator Ralph Northam had agreed with Minority Leader Tommy Norment to vote to give Republicans power sharing in the Virginia Senate today.

Before it was announced on the floor and finalized, RPV Chairman Jeff Frederick tweeted about it.

Majority Leader Dick Saslaw adjourned before it could happen.

The Democrats got into a room and pounded into Northam what would happen if he did this.

Northam backed down. (Now everyone hates him, idiot).

Twitter scares me: I don't need more distractions in my life. But this is an amazing story.

Mark Nickolas' Blog: Obama Press Conference Answers Three Grade-Levels Higher Than Bush's First.

I copied each full transcript into separate Word documents. After doing that, I deleted the introductions by both men (since those are largely or fully scripted) and then deleted all reporter questions from the transcripts. What you have left are simply the answers that each president offered, off-the-cuff and unscripted, to all questions.

Then I ran Word's readability tool.

Guess what?

Bush's answers were spoken at 7th grade level. Obama's at a 10th grade level.

Yes, he speaks very well, and shows a command of the issues.

But no, (some of) those policies do leave something to be desired. Take, for example, this one: Geithner’s Plan: Bail out the Banks, Keep the same people in charge and let them do what they want.