Weekend Open Thread
Welcome to the weekend! Are you having a good one? It’s been another crazy week in politics but I think crazy is the new normal.
Marc Ambinder, the ultimate arbiter of media conventional wisdom, asks if conservatives have gone mad. The answer is yes (simple answers to simple questions).
erious thinkers on the right have finally gotten around to a full and open debate on the epistemic closure problem that’s plaguing the conservative movement. The issue, to put it in terms that even I can understand, because I didn’t study philosophy much in college: has the conservative base gone mad?
This matters to journalists, because I really do want to take Republicans seriously. Mainstream conservative voices are embracing theories that are, to use Julian Sanchez’s phrase, “untethered” to the real world.
Can anyone deny that the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama today comes not from the right but from the left? Rachel Maddow’s grilling of administration economic officials. Keith Olbermann’s hectoring of Democratic leaders on the public option. Glenn Greenwald’s criticisms of Elena Kagan. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn’s keepin’-them-honest perspectives on health care. The civil libertarian left on detainees and Gitmo. The Huffington Post on derivatives.
I want to find Republicans to take seriously, but it is hard. Not because they don’t exist — serious Republicans — but because, as Sanchez and others seem to recognize, they are marginalized, even self-marginalizing, and the base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking.
I guess it’s getting too hard to do the he said, she said when one side screams Nazis! Tyranny! Death Panels! and the other side talks about things that are really happening like recission and pre-existing condition bans.
There’s a lot of evidence that the Sue Lowden (NV-Sen) “chicken care” plan is making her into a national joke. One of Josh Marshall’s readers shares some anecdotal evidence:
I just went to my doctor’s office for a sinus/ear infection. I had never seen this particular physician before and certainly didn’t bring up politics with him, but as I was about to pay my bill, he volunteered, “We take cash, check, credit or debit card. No chickens.” I’m in Indiana, mind you. I think Sue Lowden is in real trouble if even random doctors in Indiana are mocking her to near-total strangers.
A Nevada newspaper describes what’s happening at the Lowden camp:
Now, most mentions of Lowden in national or local media are accompanied by the word “chicken.” Political opponents have produced mocking videos that are going viral on the Internet.
Angry voters have shown up at Lowden’s offices with frozen chickens.
Worse, Democratic volunteers keep showing up at Lowden’s campaign offices with cages of live chickens.
These are campaign donations.
But many voters aren’t impressed.
“We’re being laughed at,” said Will Brown, a Sparks Democrat. “This is absurd.”
…
“I don’t like Harry as the majority leader,” Brown said. “But before I pull the rug out from under him, I’d want to know we’ve got someone who is not an embarrassment to us.”
That’s bad news for Lowden, and I think it probably hurts other Republicans as well. I’d love to see some polling in this race. Markos says that he’s polling Nevada in the next week and plans to ask the approval of Lowden’s chicken plan.
Tags: Open Thread
IT’s the Spending Stupid! (another blue state on the verge of bancruptcy)
New York state could run out of money in June…
The Post-Standard-Syracuse New York ^ | 4/25/10 | By Delen Goldberg
New York state is on track to run out of money in June and will almost certainly end the months of May, June, July and August with a negative balance, according to Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and state budget officials.
That’s unprecedented in New York history, DiNapoli said.
“The state’s finances are very shaky,” DiNapoli said. “Big bills are piling up, and there may not be enough cash to cover them.”
The state ended the 2009-10 fiscal year (which closed March 31) with a general fund balance of $2.3 billion. But that’s only because Gov. David Paterson delayed $2.9 billion in payments to schools and other groups. Those payments will soon come due.
The state is on the hook to pay schools $4 billion June 1, including $2.1 billion that was deferred in March.
“Based on current trends, we anticipate being $1 billion short on that school payment,” state budget Spokesman Matt Anderson said.
What will the state do? Anderson said there are a number of options, but one clear frontrunner.
“The best way to address this is to enact a timely and responsible budget as soon as possible,” he said.
If no budget is in place, the state could be forced to do short-term borrowing or further delay payments to schools.
If a budget is passed, lawmakers should accurately estimate state revenue, which they did not do last year, DiNapoli said.
A review by the comptroller found that general fund receipts came in $1.8 billion below April 2009 projections. Expansion of the bottle bill brought in only $45.5 million despite projections of $115 million, DiNapoli said, while a tax amnesty program produced only $51.8 million of the $250 million anticipated and budgeted.
“Without a responsible spending plan, our cash shortfalls may be much worse than last year,” DiNapoli said…..
Thanks for posting this, P.
“New York state could run out of money in June” , ” being $1 billion short on a school payment.”
Yet New York taxpayers will pay $63.2 billion for Total “Defense” Spending in FY2010.
What New York taxpayer will pay for nuclear weapons alone would more than cover New York’s school funding shortfall
Isn’t it nice to see that Obomba took time to visit with the charlatan Billy Graham and his bigoted son Franklin? He promised Franklin that he would look into his charge “that activists with an agenda were trying to pull all religion out of the military.”
Meanwhile, he does nothing on repeal of DADT.
I never understood how a military chaplain could preach “Thou shalt not kill” .
God I love you, A1…everytime I see the word “Obomba,” I think of you and burn about 50 calories cracking up and get to eat a cookie. I love it!
MM: You’re jealous that A1 got mentioned by Krugman.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/low-information-voters/
Source for A1’s latest silliness:
“Franklin Graham said, ‘He said he would look into it’.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6975352.html
Tell me when Obomba denies that he said it, JM, not that Obomba has any sort of reputation for telling the truth. And then why don’t you explain why Obomba should be visiting the T.V. preacher of the murderous, corrupt and anti-semitic Richard Nixon and his out-spokenly bigoted son?
p.s. The “low information voters” are the ones that still believe that Obomba tells the truth.
John Manifold;
Quoting from your link …
“In 2001, the younger Graham described Islam as evil. More recently, he has said he finds Islam offensive”
So you don’t think Franklin Graham is a bigot. Why not ?
“President denies patting annoying bystander on head.”
Geezer, just a few short weeks ago you claimed that oil drilling off the east coast wasn’t an environmental threat because oil rig leaks only happen because of hurricanes. Maybe you should think again:
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0425/devastating-amount-oil-leaking-rig-louisiana-coast/