David Frum has written two articles in as many days about what he calls “doomsday conservatism.” Both relate to a column by conservative nutjob and Pillsbury Doughboy standin Marc Thiessen. He is the part of the Republican Party who think of themselves as The Little Party That Could. If they are just true and strong then that big meanie President Obama will wave the white flag.

Really, this guy is delusional. This is the opening of his Washington Post column, “When the 1st Marine Regiment was encircled by communist forces at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Marine Col. Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller was said to have declared: ‘We’re surrounded. Good! Now we can fire in any direction.'” He should have quoted General Douglas MacArthur, “I shall return.” Because let’s face it, the best the Republicans can hope for is to survive to fight another day.

But no, Thiessen won’t have it! He claims that the Republicans have two options: stand and fight or surrender. As you can probably tell, this is not a guy who knows much about military tactics except for the anecdotes he learned during his trust fund education and well-paid lobbying jobs. But he wouldn’t even need to have served in the military to know better. Anyone with a little experience getting kicked in the teeth by life could have told him there are more than just two options. But this is the Republican Party all over. Remember John Boehner’s comment that he got 98% of what he wanted—and then turned it down? It seems that this is a world in which you can’t have it all and more and more it looks like that means Republicans are going to take nothing.

Thiessen has a three step plan:

1. Don’t raises taxes! And when they are raised automatically in January… Forget step one, go on to step two!
2. Come up with a new plan to—Wait for it!—lower taxes!
3. Pass your plan and if Obama doesn’t like it, destroy the economy!

This really is his plan. And Frum takes him to task for it. Mostly, he notes that there are no existing plans so somehow the Republicans would have to work all of this legislative magic with their backs to the wall and with the threat of creating the worst economic crisis in the United States since 1861.

But more important, as I noted above, there are not only two options. Unfortunately, all the blood seems to have left Thiessen’s brain and pooled in his dick. Frum explains:

In the end, I think that the Republicans will be more reasonable than this, because Thiessen is not proposing a plan to win these budget negotiations; he’s proposing a plan to destroy the Republican Party.

Recently, there have been a lot of articles about people who pleaded guilty to this or that crime. This came as a bit of a shock to me, because I’m a careful reader, and I just assumed that they pled guilty. You know me: the practical pedant. And this issue is very clear. Either of these constructions are okay.

How do I know? Well, as always, I checked Fowler. He thinks “pled” is an American thing. He appears to be wrong, but the fact that he doesn’t make a big deal out of the issue should tell you something; Fowler had no problem making a fuss when he thought it was right. So I checked my favorite grammar sources, The Grammar Bible and Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences. They don’t even mention the issue. And the Merriam-Webster dictionary? They not only mention “pled,” they offer “plead” as well!

Let me go further: why are we still using “pleaded”? The only words that are much like it are “lead” and “read.” And both conjugate the same way. There is no reason to hang on to this archaic usage. So “pleaded” is on notice around here. You won’t be seeing it. Except, of course, here:

Like all people who refuse to grow up, I love the Marx Brothers. But I fully admit that their movies are a mixed bag. There is total insanity followed by total boredom. I am not talking about Margaret Dumont here. She is brilliant and I don’t think Groucho is ever funnier than when he’s interacting with her. The problem is that the films are filled with standard stories with anemic characters who no one cares about.

Take Animal Crackers for example. I love this film. I often put it on to cheer myself up. But what is the plot? It is rather clever, to be honest, but I doubt that one out of a hundred viewers notice it. A painting is being unveiled at the party. The romatic couple decide to replace the painting with one that he did to illustrate what a great painter he is so that they can get married. The paintings switched, some social rivals of Margaret Dumont switch his excellent copy with a terrible copy. In the end, everything is righted, the young man is proclaimed a genius, and the couple can marry.

The problem is that almost nothing is done to make this main plot interesting. Add to this the extreme heights of brilliance whenever the Marx Brothers are on screen and you end up with a film that is half great and half boring. I think this is why most people hold Duck Soup in such high regard: it is pretty much all Marx Brothers all the time. And I agree. But I think it suffered at the time of its release because it was ahead of the times. It is just gag after gag without much in terms of a plot. Just to give it some cohesion, it brings back the Sylvanian ambassador multiple times to remind everyone that this is all about the country going to war.

I think the Marx Brothers really manage to bring it all together in their first MGM film, A Night at the Opera. I just watched this film again and I was very impressed with how it manages to integrate the brothers into the story. In a fundamental way, the story is no different than Animal Crackers: the romantic couple want to marry but they can’t until he gets a chance to show everyone what a great singer he is. But in this case, Chico is his manager who makes a contract with Groucho who kind of represents the opera. Actually, this is my favorite scene (unfortunately a very bad copy):

I think there is a reason that there hasn’t been a lot of just dumping Marx Brothers bits together. It can be kind of hard to take. They are at their best when they are integrated into a story. I also appreciate that they are a little more likable in A Night at the Opera. Even though Duck Soup is funnier, I think that A Night at the Opera works better as a film.

Yesterday, I responded to the Fed’s decision to tie interest rates to unemployment. Although I think this is good, it is the least they could do, and they are doing it much too late. My biggest problem was that the Fed’s new unemployment target is 6.5%, which is nowhere near full employment. I noted that they were continuing to do the heavy lifting of the rich. And note: high unemployment (and 6.5% unemployment is very high) is great for business owners because it gives them the pick of the best employees for the lowest prices.

Robert Reich responded to the policy change this morning, Why the Fed’s Jobs Program Will Fail. His analysis is different than mine. In fact, it is even more depressing. He says that this is good policy, and I agree for the most part: it is at least better policy. But the real problem is that the low interest loans will not be used in a productive way for our economy:

What he’s getting at here—although he doesn’t say it—is that the American economy is not capital constrained. The truth is that companies are sitting on huge sums of cash. If they want to invest in infrastructure, they can. But they don’t, because there isn’t a demand for their products. This is kind of a game of anti-chicken with the economy. Everyone is waiting until someone else starts to spend.

It is interesting to look back at how Milton Hershey dealt with the Depression. Instead of sitting on his huge piles of money, he assumed that the depression would eventually be over. So he invested in his infrastructure and when things got better, he was in a great position to capitalize on it. Of course, there were other reasons why he did so well. For one thing, it is a hell of a lot easier to get people to splurge on a nickle candy bar than on a thousand dollar Buick. But still, Hershey was farsighted in a way that most businessmen can’t even imagine.

Reich says, rightly, that what we really need is to invest in the middle class. But instead, we are tearing down the middle class. The Michigan right-to-work fiasco is a good example. But it is bigger than that. We have Republicans who think that if only the rich get richer, all will be fine. Well, let’s look at how that’s going:

This graph illustrates what Ed was saying over at Gin and Tacos yesterday. Basically, we are told that prosperity is just around the corner. All we have to do is take another pay cut or another benefit cut, and then all will be well. But as you can see in the graphs above, this isn’t the case.

Of course, I tend to think that the issue isn’t particularly the Republicans. We know that they are out to get us. But so is much of the Democratic Party. President Obama seems eager to “reform” Medicare. He, like many Democrats, seems more interested in seeming reasonable than in doing what’s right. Unfortunately, the Democrats are all we’ve got. And to their credit, they are at least trying to make the economy better for all of us. (But better still for the rich!)

And now we are in a situation where we cannot depend upon the Fed to save us. Instead, we must depend upon the crazy and evil Republicans and the morally uncertain Democrats. Reich sums up:

But there is good news. If the government doesn’t do anything really bad, the economy will eventually heal itself. And I feel very confident that the Democrats will not do that much harm. This is why they are infinitely superior to the Republicans. This is why I voted for Obama.

I don’t know if you have noticed, but I’ve been feeling really down the last few days. But I just noticed something that really improved my mood: Avik Roy tweeted my last rant about him:

A lefty blogger: “I want to rip off your scrotum and suffocate you with it. Cock sucking plutocrat bastard!” franklycurious.com/index.php?item… #avikroy

— Avik S. A. Roy (@aviksaroy) December 10, 2012

When I wrote those words, I knew they had a certain poetic charm. Like Crow T. Robot’s six pages of “no” in Earth Vs. Soup, I wanted to get across the raw terror I must feel as a giant bowl of California Cornucopia Vegetable Jubilee slithers towards me on all fours. I mean: my raw anger at Avik Roy’s public disinformation campaign. I’m glad they didn’t go to waste on a bunch of people who agree with me!

And now my opinion of Avik Roy has gone way up for two reasons. First, he tweeted my link out which resulted it quite a lot of traffic. Second, that picture of him with the open collar makes him look kind of cool. Or like some lounge singer. Not that I take back a thing. He really is a cock sucking plutocrat bastard. Maybe I’ll take back the exclamation point.

There has been a lot of reporting on the fact that there isn’t anything to report about the Fiscal Cliff negotiations. John Stanton makes a big deal of this in his almost fun article for BuzzFeed, The Fiscal Cliff Is Boring Washington To Death. Everyone seems to agree that the lack of leaks indicates that the negotiations are at least going fairly well. I have a different theory.

The two sides have decided that they can’t get anything done until next year. The Republicans just can’t allow a vote on supposedly raising taxes. And it’s even worse than that. If they struck a deal on the income tax rates, they would either have to give on the extension of the payroll tax holiday, or they would also be in effect raising payroll taxes. So everything gets a lot easier for Boehner & Co. in 2013.

But there is a wrinkle. The staffs of Obama and Boehner really are meeting all the time. What could they be doing? They could be working on a deal that they will make on January 2nd or 3rd. I really don’t know. What I do know is that Obama gets a better deal in 2013. And I know that Boehner will have a much easier time selling a deal to the Republicans in 2013. (I would be embarrassed if I were a Republican and I had to take a worse deal just to satisfy the idiots in power in my party.)

So I’m still inclined to think that we are going over the Fiscal Cliff. Or maybe I’m just optimistic. Or drunk.

Ah, justice! The London bomb plotters are in jail, but the English court system isn’t done yet; they have thought crimes to punish! Ruksana Begum is the sister of one of the plotters. She downloaded a copy of Inspire, al-Qaida magazine in order to understand what was going on with her angry brother. I’m not just saying this. This is what the judge in this case says. Unfortunately, like all the Nazis at Nuremberg, he must “follow orders” and so was left with no choice but to put her in a cage for a year.

In one way, this makes me feel good. It isn’t just the United States that is a horror show of injustice and cruelty. But in a more fundamental sense, it makes me despair: humans are just a horrible species. It reminds me of the cannibalistic chimpanzees from Planet Earth.[1] The truth is, I don’t really understand the justice system. We should perhaps rename it the “law system,” because it is about enforcing laws not meting out justice. If we cannot have justice, at least we can stop claiming that we do.

[1] Here is a clip. “Enjoy”:

Earlier today, I was surprised that people were surprised that reality TV was staged. This is different. Then it was surprising that people didn’t already know what was obvious. This time, it is surprising that we have had our expectations lowered so much that we are surprised when the Federal Reserve does something that is marginally good. This morning, the Fed announced that they were going to keep interest rates low until certain well defined economic conditions are met. This is good news. But not that good.

The Fed says that it will not raise interest rates until unemployment gets below 6.5%. This is the first half of the problem. An unemployment rate of 6.5% is nowhere near full employment. To have full employment, we would have to get to a rate less than 5%—perhaps quite a bit less. This has long been the recommendation of Robert Reich. So the Fed is still carrying the water of the rentier class. All they’re saying they will end their policy of not caring at all about unemployment and start caring a little.

But it is worse than this. The big problem with the Fed is its inflation target. When Reagan was president, the inflation target was 4%; now it is 2%. This is just ridiculous. The reason our economy is depressed is that the middle classes are in debt (or at least feel that way) and so aren’t spending money. The easiest way to get an economy out of debt is to allow a little inflation. By effectively keeping inflation at zero, the Fed is giving debtors almost no help in paying off their loans. As I said, this is all about keep the wealthy as rich as possible.

Now the Fed says that if unemployment stays high, they may even be willing to allow inflation to go all the way up to 2.5%—briefly. Are they not magnanimous? Taking upwards of a half percentage point away from the wealthy for—What?!—a couple of months?! I’m sure we’ll be screaming to recovery!

The terrible thing is that this really is big news. This really will help the economy. We could use a lot more. And we could have used this four years ago. But still, better late and weak than never and nothing.

Over at Slate, L.V. Anderson tells me, You’re Doing It Wrong: Latkes. First things first: no I’m not!

The truth is that Anderson and I agree on the nature of the perfect latkes. She explains that people who claim that latkes should be nothing other than potatoes and salt are apparently mistaking them for hash browns. But even apart from this, people often get very opinionated about the amount of flour that should go into a latke. As I try to stress: the amount of flour is a very personal thing. If, like me, you really squeeze your grated potatoes and get most of the water out of them, you really don’t need that much. But you do need some. Experiment! And the great thing is that you can experiment as you go along. Try a little flour, and then try a little more.

Anderson suggests a really interesting idea: use instant mashed potatoes instead of flour for part of the recipe. I’ve never done this but it sounds like it would make latkes even more delicious (if that’s possible). Otherwise, she offers nothing new. She suggests adding baking powder. Oh! Where did you learn that? The Joy of Cooking, first published in 1931? She also suggests using olive oil, which seems to me a very bad idea. But over all, I’ll bet her latkes are wonderful—perhaps as good as mine.

As much as libertarians drive me crazy, there are some who are smart and serious. You will get the best thinking on libertarianism from Reason Magazine, which I once subscribed to. Still, it is mostly all the usual theoretical, trapped in our own minds kind of nonsense that is libertarianism. But sometimes, they make me smile. Like today.

J.D. Tuccille writes, When Right-To-Work Is Wrong and Un-Libertarian. He basically says what I said on Monday. Of course, he is much more respectful because he’s part of a Fantasy Politics team. But it is encouraging to read. In particular, he makes the argument that there is a difference between “free markets” and “pro-business.” This is an excellent distinction because as a rule businesses are not in favor of a free market.

Unfortunately, the idiots who read the magazine are not even as enlightened as Tuccille. The first comment to the article is simple, “I want to work. I don’t ever want to join a union.” What that has to do with the subject, I can’t say. But this one is more typical, “The business is coerced into its contract with, and association with, the union, under our current labor laws.” Ah! So businesses can organize themselves anyway they want. Business laws don’t, for example, coerce workers to have to work for corporations. But laws that allow workers to do what one would think would be a right—things like organizing with coworkers and refusing to work—those are coercive. I think I understand. Business goood! Worker baaad!

I’ve got to stop reading the rantings of libertarians; it is just too upsetting. Even when they are shown what rights really mean, they can’t accept it. They just know that private contracts between people are bad when they don’t like the people making those contracts. Reality goood! Libertarians stuuupid!