Last night on Colbert Report, there was Reihan Salam explaining how the Republicans are going to win the hearts of the working class. And he had the book he wrote with Ross Douthat, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. Ah yes, the Grand New Party. The book is described as, “Two of the Right’s rising young thinkers call upon the GOP to focus on the interests and needs of working-class voters.” The basic idea is simple: the Republican Party should reinvent itself as the party of the working class and focus on making the base of the party the married heterosexual couple.

There is a fundamental problem here: this is already what the party claims to stand for. All Salam and Douthat are calling for is a continuation of the same except that Republicans should stop getting us into wars all the time. While I admit that this would be an improvement, I doubt that it would do much to make the Republican Party more appealing to working class Americans. This comes back to the issue I talk about over and over again: it’s the poor, stupid. The problem with the Republicans is not cosmetic nor is it focus. The American people didn’t vote for Obama while thinking, “You know, if it weren’t for Romney’s hateful rhetoric and terrible foreign policy, I’d vote for him!” The Republican economic policies are toxic.

But this doesn’t stop the mainstream media from going all gaga over young Republicans offering up a vision of a Republican Party that doesn’t seem quite so horrible. At The Daily Beast, Michael Moynihan writes about, The New Populism of the Right. In it, he offers up tired observations as though they were cutting edge:

Notice: the new generation doesn’t want to fight over whether they should lower the top tax rate. But somehow they do not want to consider whether they should raise it, even though the Republicans will be forced to do exactly that. But most of all, they want to learn how to talk to the lowlife moochers who can’t be convinced to take responsibility for their own lives. And what would this talking entail?

As cynical as I am, I have a hard time believing that these young Republicans don’t know that working class voters aren’t already well aware that the system is stacked against them. The Republicans don’t need to explain this. If they really want to get votes, they need to do something about it. As bad as the Democrats are, they are infinitely better than the Republicans. And this gets to the core interests of the Republican Party: if they want to win the working class vote, they need to change their allegiance to the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. And if they did that, how exactly would they be any different from the modern Democratic Party?

What I find most interesting is that there is all this buzz about these young Republicans. Salam and Douthat did not just write Grand New Party. It was published in 2009, in response to Obama’s first win. And what effect did it have on the party generally? That was the year that the Grand Old Party because the Grand Older Party with the mobilization of the Tea Party: those social conservatives masquerading as economic conservatives. I’m sure over the coming years, we will see a similar trend in the GOP—regardless of what journalist at The Daily Beast think is cutting edge.

For a long time, my position on the filibuster is that we should do it to them before they do it to us. The main liberal argument against filibuster reform is that at some point (likely soon) the Democrats will be in the minority and thus will rue the day when they limited the use of it. This is typical liberal nonsense. It shows a complete lack of understanding about who exactly the Republicans are. Consider this:

If Romney had won and the Republicans had taken control of the Senate, on the first day of Congress, the Republicans would have completely eliminated the filibuster.

And as soon as it is to their political advantage, the Republicans will get rid of the filibuster. So Democrats gets nothing from leaving this damnable process in place. What’s more, I think that Harry Reid is making a big mistake by only reforming the filibuster. There are three primary reasons for this:

1. The reforms won’t do that much to solve the problem of filibuster abuse.
2. The Republicans are behaving exactly the same over these minor reforms as they would have over the elimination of the filibuster.
3. The Republicans will use these reforms to justify eliminating the filibuster once it is to their political advantage to do so (even though they would have done it anyway).

Yesterday, Ezra Klein wrote an article, What Mitch McConnell Fears, where he provides three reasons that the Senate Republican leader is against these minor reforms. These three reasons come from “Senate staff,” so we know they are largely bullshit. All three of the reasons are that the reforms will make it a lot harder for the minority party to stop legislation. Instead of just dictating that all the work of the Senate must stop, the minority will actually have to work to stop legislation. I think this is correct: the reforms will do some good and will certainly stop McConnell from blocking every judicial nominee who comes along. But I don’t accept that this is really what’s behind the Republican freak out regarding filibuster reform.

McConnell and company are against filibuster reform for the same reason that they have abused the filibuster so much in the first place: they are against anything that the Democrats propose. And, as I have argued in the past, the reason is that the modern Republican Party does not have an ideology as we normally think of it. They are an authoritarian group which exists only to perpetuate itself. Their core belief is that they should have power. (Note that this is one of the main reasons they are so incompetent at governing: they have no interest in it; to them it is about getting to govern, not the actual governing.)

I think it is a big mistake to assume that Republicans at the federal level are interested in anything other than the next election. Regardless of how successful Reid’s minor filibuster reforms are, they will demonstrate that the Democrats in the Senate are not impotent. They can and do make changes that improve the government. This is bad for a party that depends upon voters thinking that the government is useless.

Afterword

The idea that the Senate needs the filibuster so that the minority will have rights is ridiculous. Because of gerrymandering, even that most democratic of institutions, the House, is undemocratic. Without the filibuster, the Senate is not only hugely tilted toward the minority, it is tilted toward the conservative minority because of the way that bright red low population states get equal representation to blue high population states. We really could use a bit more democracy in our democracy.

Stop the goddamn presses! Angus T. Jones of Two and a Half Men: My show is “filth”

Please people! Cut the kid a break. Remember the stupid shit you believed and shared out loud when you were 19? Youthful exuberance aside, Angus is new to self-righteous Christian zealotry. Hopefully he’ll grow out of it before he becomes a total dogmatic douche.

I have to admit though, I do agree with him — although for very different reasons — that television is generally bad for you. It’s like Happy Meals: you won’t starve eating them all the time, but those empty calories will kill you in the end.

Taylor Swift is amazing. She’s a tall, slender blonde with a face that can sell beauty products. She is also — if aggressive marketing is to be believed — a gifted singer, a profound songwriter, and an intermediate guitar player. At the tender age of twenty-one, she is more than just fair game for men who haven’t utterly surrendered to their inner pedophile; Taylor is also smart. This astonishingly astute observation says it all:

If only God had blessed me with such a wondrous child, oh the conversations we could have had!

That Mitchell and Webb Look is a favorite of mine. I don’t think there has ever been better sketch comedy. What’s more, their social satire is very incisive.

I noticed this last night when I happened upon their version of the Abraham and Isaac story from Genesis. What I think I missed the first time I saw it is how it spoofs what is one of the most sophisticated apologia for Christianity. In the skit, God says, “You would say… If you thought I was asking you to do something that was, you know, wrong.” To which Abraham replies, “If I thought it was wrong? Like I’d know! Like I have any chance of forming an independent basis of right and wrong outside the instructions of some supervisory being.”

This is a straight lampoon of the standard theodicy: we don’t have to explain the existence of evil because anything that God does is by definition good. This is just a more involved version of, “God works in mysterious ways.” The reasonable rebuttal to this is that if God’s ways are so inscrutable, why is he worth worshiping. Indeed, this gets to the contraction of Christian faith: we should worship God because he is the only basis for morality but then we don’t hold him to any moral standard that we can understand.

Of course, aside from the question of evil, this skit is funny as hell:

This is via The Rachel Maddow Show: the very white male House Republican leadership.

Longtime reader and author James McCollough sent me to an amazing article at AlterNet by Laura Gottesdiener, A Year in Jail for Not Believing in God? How Kentucky Is Persecuting Atheists. I don’t think of myself as an atheist especially; although I do self-identify as one, I think it gives an entirely incorrect idea of where I stand on matters spiritual. But this article is an outrage and shows one reason why I have no respect for the conservative Christian movement in this country.

The Kentucky law states that their Homeland Security building must have plaques in front of it claiming how we are only really secure thanks to God. The plaques read in part, “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.” And if some bureaucrat doesn’t install these plaques, he faces up to a year in jail. This law was taken to the Kentucky state Supreme Court, which upheld it.

This law seems clearly unconstitutional. But frankly, I’m not at all sure that the current US Supreme Court would agree. At this point, we seem to have 4 political hacks on the court who might as well have been elected by the Tea Party. One thing is for sure: if this case does go to the US Supreme Court, some of the justices will vote to uphold. And that is a sad testament to the state of our “justice” system.

What I’m most interested in here is the triviality of the conception of the people who are behind this law. The idea here is of a God as some supreme being. Yet even the most trivial understanding of theology indicates that God can’t be just another thing. If that were the case then it wouldn’t be a god at all, but rather just a being more powerful than we are. An example would be the way we relate to ants: we have almost unlimited power over ants, but we certainly aren’t the reason that ants exist.

I understand that for many people, that last bit was pretty theoretical and metaphysical, so let me take a big step back into reality. The idea of a “personal god” is not only stupid, it is repellent. What it says is people always deserve their suffering. The poor deserve to be poor. The rich deserve to be rich. To state the same thing in a way that relates to our recent elections: rape victims deserve the babies of their rapists.

Consider earthquakes. Few people die as a result of them in the United States, but in 2010, over 300,000 Haitians died as a result of just one. (The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California was the same size and killed 63 people—most from the collapse of a single road: the Cypress Structure.) If God took a personal interest in the lives of humans, how could he possibly allow this? Is it that Americans are just more moral than Haitians? Or is it more likely that in the United States we have wealth and building codes that protect us? The Kentucky Homeland Security building exists as a kind of tribute to the more than 3,000 people who died on 11 September 2001. Surely many of those people were righteous. God did not save them because God, regardless of what it is, does not do that kind of thing.

So you can take your pick of reasons to be appalled by the Kentucky entire government: executive, legislative, and judicial. But it all comes down to the same thing: Kentucky is embarrassing the rest of the nation. They are also embarrassing believers and spiritual seekers in general. And all for what? To make a statement against atheists? And this is in response to an attack by a group very much like themselves: ignorant true believers in the God of their fathers? Each day I despair more for our nation.

This morning Paul Krugman posted an article, The Stiffs and the Players. This is a reference to a speech by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. In it, he explains to Bud what they are working for. He says that Bud doesn’t want to be some Well Street working stiff making $400,000 per year and flying first class. Bud should want to be rich enough to own his own jet—to be rich enough to not waste time.

Krugman mentions this in reference to the idea by Nate Silver and Josh Marshall that what the Republicans are trying to do in the budget negotiations is to protect the very wealthy at the expense of the “simply” wealthy. In other words: protect the jet owners at the expense of the first class travelers. And he presents a graph that demonstrates this.

On one level, I don’t particularly care: I’m not shedding any tears for any of these people. On another level, this is just wrong. But it is nothing new. For a long time, I’ve been talking about the fact that with our tax system we fuck the “simply” wealthy compared to the very wealthy. Someone who makes about a half million dollars per year probably pays around 30% in federal income taxes. But someone who makes $20 million pays only 15%.

You would think that this would create a class war between these two groups, but for whatever reason it doesn’t. I think a lot of it is that the rich are just as ignorant as anyone else. The caller to Sam Seder’s show is a good example. I suspect that this kind of guy votes reliably Republican, even while the party consistently puts his interests aside for the interests of the really wealthy.

As I’ve said before, I currently think it would be good to create two more marginal tax rates. For the rate above $250k up to $500k: 40%. For $500k up to $1m: 45%. And for income over $1 million: 50%. And as usual, bring the Social Security tax cap way up: $250k or higher. And finally, raise the capital gains rate up to the “work for a living” rate, or at least implement something like the Buffett Rule or a new AMT.

This is not only good for our economy and our society, it is much more fair to the “simply” rich. True: it does require that they pay more in taxes. But this is about shared sacrifice—what these kinds of people are always calling for. Well, this is what true shared sacrifice looks like. Shared sacrifice is not the rich (who’ve gained 93% of the economic gains of the recovery) paying for half of the budget shortfall. This is only shared sacrifice in the entitled minds of the wealthy. The poor and middle class who have seen almost no gains during the last 30 years of productivity gains have already paid enough. It is time for the rich to pay their fair share. And that necessarily means that the very wealthy much pay a lot more.

Tonight on The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell made the case that the reason that Obama won the election was that he was an outstanding candidate. Karen Finney and David Corn backed him up. I like all of these pundits, but they are wrong. Obama was certainly a very good candidate. But it’s the turnout, stupid.

The reason that Obama won is that far more Democrats came out to vote than Republicans. Obama won because the policies of the Democratic Party appeal to the poor and middle class. It’s simple demographics. The question is, how do we get these people to come out and vote in 2014?

All we have to remember is this: if there’s high turnout, we win. We don’t need great candidates, except in as far as they goose turnout.

I think of myself as kind of public nuance rather than a stalker. And no one really seems to care. For example, Brad DeLong continues to ignore my helpful suggestion on cleaning up his very ugly blog. And Corey Robin (who is more than willing to correspond with me about history and politics) is silent on the important issue of font color contrast and it relevance to computer accessibility.

The case of Reed Richardson is an interesting one. He has been exceptionally good natured about my pestering. (What do you expect? Just look at his picture!) As best as I can tell, he was once an intern working with Eric Alterman at The Nation. Alterman is the writer of smart and learned liberal books that start with the letter “W” (which is “M” depending upon how you look at it). Thus far, he’s used four:

• Who Speaks for America?
• What Liberal Media?
• When Presidents Lie
• Why We’re Liberals

His last book was The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. I was sad that he didn’t call it Where We’ve Come From: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Then he would have had a matched set!

I’ve been reading Eric Alterman for years. And like it is with anyone you read a lot, I’ve gotten kind of used to what his take is on any given subject. That doesn’t mean he isn’t interesting to read, but I don’t look forward to his articles every week the way I used to. But luckily, Alterman has a special weapon: his former intern Reed F. Richardson.

Each week (but not last week, to my great disappointment), Eric Alterman ends his blog post with, “And now here’s Reed.” Normally, they work together so that they discuss different aspects of the same issue. This adds a great deal to the coverage—especially given that Richardson has a distinct take on these things. Plus, he isn’t quite so gloomy as Alterman.

Anyway, over the last few months I’ve bugged both of these guys. Most recently, I requested that they put in an anchor link to Richardson’s articles, because I find myself more often linking to them than to Alterman’s articles. Eventually, the link was set up, even though it is often broken due to The Nation’s clumsy advertising code. But the one thing I never got, was a picture of Richardson that I could use in articles. So I created an image of a yellow smiley face with the caption, “Reed F. Richardson: Artist’s Rendering.” In fact, the number one result on Google is this exact image.

Last week, Richardson finally set up a Twitter account. Of course, there was no image. It was the usual twitter egg image. So I tweeted:

I figured that subtlety wasn’t working, so I’d just request the image. And he obliged. But I have to say, it is a grainy, low resolution image. But I guess it is better than the smiley face. Barely. (Admit it though: he does have a big smile. That artist’s rendering wasn’t bad. Although he isn’t quite so yellow.)

This is amazing. I can’t say that I blame them, but Fox News quickly got rid of Thomas Ricks after he blasted the network over its Benghazi coverage. Jon Scott interviewed Ricks. He is what Fox News claims is a “straight news reporters.” I’ve always felt that these were the most dangerous people on the network because they deceive the audience in much more subtle ways—in particular, by skewing what they choose to cover. This is clear in the topic of this segment: who else is covering the supposed Benghazi scandal? And now that there is little to report since John McCain has realized that he’s only embarrassing himself, Fox is covering the fact that there isn’t anything to cover.

Ricks was on for less than one minute. In that time, he does manage to provide answers to two questions, but it is all about the same thing: why are McCain and the others cooling off on what Fox News has trumped up to be a bigger scandal than Watergate? Ricks replies:

Scott asks how Ricks can call the deaths of four government personnel “hype.” Rick responds with the question, “How many security contractors died in Iraq, do you know?” Scott responds that he does not know, which was kind of nice when you consider how O’Reilly or Hannity would have responded. Ricks continues:

I’ve always felt that Thomas Ricks was a fairly conservative guy. I still think so. But he certainly isn’t a Republican Party hack. As a result, such a criticism of Fox News has a lot more weight. But Ricks wasn’t on screen for long enough for anyone to notice other than the host and some executive producer who was probably screening in Scott’s ear, “Get him off!”

Anyway, watch it. It is a thing to behold.

I just had oral surgery, so even though I have much on my mind that I’d like to write about, I probably won’t until tonight at least.

In the mean time, here is a picture of a happy lamb courtesy of Cute Overload: