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Welch Conspiracy Theory on Jobs Data Not Tied to Reality

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Hans Nichols, Lorraine Woellert - Oct. 07 (News Analysis) - A good conspiracy theory is irrefutable. A bad one usually collapses when confronted by reality. The claim by some supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney that President Barack Obama’s Chicago-based campaign doctored September’s unemployment figures for political gain fall into the second category, according to members of both parties who have served in the government’s economic data system.

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Why you vote the way you do

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Jonathan Haidt - May. 25 (Opinion) - Here's a simple definition of ideology: "a set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved." And here's the most basic of all ideological questions: Should we preserve the present order or change it? Political theorists long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the workers want to change things. But that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left), and so do the poor (rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left). So for most of the late 20th century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents.

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Memeorandum Colors 2012: Visualizing Bias on Political Blogs

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Andy Baio - Apr. 18 (Special Report) - I don’t watch sports, but every four years, I lose myself in the horse race of the U.S. presidential elections. That competition kicked off in earnest Monday, as Gallup started its daily tracking polls for the general election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. In 2008, I was hooked on one drug for my daily fix: Memeorandum, a completely automated aggregator that surfaces popular stories from political news sites, often within minutes.

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Party Line

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:13:52 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Charlotte Allen - Aug. 12 (Review) - Those liberal leanings distort the news in subtle but telling ways. Groseclose dissects a 2006 story in the Los Angeles Times that linked a record low number of black freshmen at UCLA to the passage 10 years earlier of Proposition 209, a ballot initiative that forbids public institutions from considering race in admissions and hiring. The reporter, Rebecca Trounson, had quoted six sources, not for factual information but for their opinions. Five of those sources expressed conventional left-of-center views, complaining, for example, that the campus was insufficiently “diverse” and accusing UCLA of practicing racism. Only one source, former University of California regent Ward Connerly, architect of Proposition 209, suggested that fewer black high school graduates might be academically competitive, or that some blacks might have chosen to attend historically black colleges instead of UCLA. Not only did Trounson not examine the tortuous routes that UCLA’s admissions committee (on which Groseclose served at the time) followed to get around Proposition 209 so as to maximize black enrollment, but she failed to report a record number of black transfer students to UCLA that fall so that the black student population actually increased slightly. She also failed to notice what might have been the real story: the huge increases in Asian enrollments at UCLA, to the point that white people, once the overwhelming majority, now constituted only about a third of the overall student population.

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The Great Recession, Part II

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Joseph E. Stiglitz - Jul. 07 (Opinion) - Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backward: They believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government's fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity's advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion.

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A grand old cult

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Richard Cohen - Jul. 05 (Opinion) - Someone ought to study the Republican Party. I am not referring to yet another political scientist but to a mental health professional, preferably a specialist in the power of fixations, obsessions and the like. The GOP needs an intervention. It has become a cult.

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Bachmann’s No Joke

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Mark McKinnon - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - She’s not my kind of candidate. And no one I know supports her. But I know enough to know I shouldn’t judge American voters and candidates by my own distorted circle. She is a rock star with the Tea Party set and social conservatives. And I also know enough to know that Michele Bachmann has been underestimated and treated unfairly by the mainstream press.

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If I Take Down Fox, Is All Forgiven?

Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine - By Jason Zengerle - May. 23 (Special Report) - David Brock has spent the last decade apologizing to liberals for his role in creating the vast right-wing conspiracy. Now he’s trying something more ambitious and hoping it gains him the respect he craves from the White House.

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Why the right hates Common

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Mary Elizabeth Williams - May. 13 (Opinion) - On Wednesday, the White House honored arts education with a Celebration of American Poetry. There was a poetry workshop for children during the day, and in the evening, performances by the likes of Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Kenneth Goldsmith. This being the administration that can turn Jay-Z references into campaign rallying cries -- and campaign rallying cries into hit videos -- there were also musical artists on the bill, including Aimee Mann and Jill Scott. And, this being the administration that never fails to provoke the outrage of that holy trinity of right-wing attention gluttons -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin – there was controversy.

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How Perpetual War Became U.S. Ideology

Wed, 11 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Joyner - May. 11 (Opinion) - The United States has found itself in a seemingly endless series of wars over the past two decades. Despite frequent opposition by the party not controlling the presidency and often that of the American public, the foreign policy elite operates on a consensus that routinely leads to the use of military power to solve international crises.

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GOP Budget Would Leave Up To 44 Million More Low-Income Americans Uninsured: Report

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ricardo Alonso Zaldivar - May. 10 (News Report) - The House Republican budget would leave up to 44 million more low-income people uninsured as the federal government cuts states' Medicaid funding by about one-third over the next 10 years, nonpartisan groups said in a report issued Tuesday. The analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute concluded that Medicaid's role as the nation's safety net health care program would be "significantly compromised ... with no obvious alternative to take its place," if the GOP budget is adopted.

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The DeVos Family: Meet the Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Rachel Tabachnick - May. 10 (Investigative Report) - By now you've surely heard of the Kochs. Meanwhile, the powerful, wealthy DeVos family has remained largely under the radar, while leading a stealth assault on America's schools.

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The Tragedy of Sarah Palin

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Joshua Green - May. 10 (Opinion) - From the moment Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech electrified the Republican convention, she was seen as an unbending, hard-charging, red-meat ideologue—to which soon was added “thin-skinned” and “vindictive.” But a look at what Palin did while in office in Alaska—the only record she has—shows a very different politician: one who worked with Democrats to tame Big Oil and solve the great problem at the heart of the state’s politics. That Sarah Palin might have set the nation on a different course. What went wrong?

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Years Ago, Sarah Palin Was Recruited As A Moderate

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - By Martin Kaste - May. 01 (News Report) - Whether Sarah Palin will enter the 2012 presidential race is the political junkie's favorite guessing game — and Palin hasn't said much to end the speculation. But how Palin entered politics in the first place may surprise you. It turns out, Palin was recruited into politics to help the cause of bigger government. "We were looking for a moderate who was interested in community development, basically," says John Stein, one of those who recruited her.

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In U.S., Negative Views of the Tea Party Rise to New High

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Gallup - By Frank Newport - Apr. 29 (Poll) - About half of Americans, 47%, now have an unfavorable image of the Tea Party movement, the highest since it emerged on the national scene.

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Evidence Aside, State Lawmakers Debate ‘Birther’ Bills

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Kirk Johnson - Apr. 22 (News Report) - Investigations have concluded that President Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii in 1961, as he has always said... But the so-called birther controversy stubbornly refuses to go away.

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Barack Obama faces problem on left, not right

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Roger Simon - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - I don’t think Barack Obama will have a hard time defeating his Republican opponent in 2012, barring a financial meltdown or a major foreign crisis. It’s a Democratic opponent he should worry about.

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War on the Weak

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Jonathan Chait - Apr. 11 (Opinion) - The class tinge of Ryan’s Path to Prosperity is striking. The poorest Americans would suffer immediate, explicit budget cuts. Middle-class Americans would face distant, uncertain reductions in benefits. And the richest Americans would enjoy an immediate windfall. Santelli, in his original rant, demanded that we “reward people [who can] carry the water instead of drink the water.” Ryan won’t say so, but that’s exactly what he’s doing.

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Koch’s web of influence

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Center for Public Integrity - By John Aloysius Farrell - Apr. 06 (Special Report) - At an EPA hearing last summer, representatives from Koch Industries argued that moderate levels of the toxic chemical dioxin should not be designated as a cancer risk for humans.

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Tea Time

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Pajamas Media - By Roger Kimball - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - Domestic issues are still front and center. But the embarrassing spectacle of the Obama administration lurching from paralysis to spasmodic incoherence and back on the Middle East and North Africa suggests that foreign policy will also loom large on the tea party’s agenda.

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The End of Compassion

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Jonathan Cohn - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - House Republicans want to cut funding for health programs abroad and for community clinics here at home. And although the projected savings are small, at least relative to the size of the federal budget, the philosophical shift they signal is big. This is the end of compassionate conservatism.

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"Ten Commandments Judge" Roy Moore to run for president

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - By Brian Montopoli - Mar. 29 (News) - Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who lost his job after erecting a monument of the Ten Commandments outside the state's courthouse, plans to announce in mid-April that he is setting up a presidential exploratory committee, an aide told CBS News.

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Indiana Prosecutor Encouraged 'False Flag' Assault On Walker To Discredit Wisconsin Unions

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Eric Kleefeld - Mar. 25 (News Report) - A deputy prosector in Johnson County, Indiana, has resigned his job after it was revealed that in February, during the large protests in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker's anti-public employee union bill, he e-mailed Walker's office and recommended that they conduct a "false flag operation" -- to fake an assault or assassination attempt on Walker in order to discredit the unions and protesters.

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Glenn Beck Contemplates Starting Own Channel

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Brian Stelter - Mar. 23 (News Analysis) - The possibility that Glenn Beck will exit the Fox News Channel at the end of the year has prompted a big question in media circles: if he leaves, how will he bring his considerable audience with him?

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Conservatives: We Are Being Outworked And Out-Organized In Wisconsin Recall Campaigns

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein - Mar. 17 (News Report) - Both national and Wisconsin-based Republican operatives tell the Huffington Post the party is being dramatically outworked and out-organized by Democrats in the recall campaigns being launched against state Senators.

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