On Thursday in the Washington Post, Matt Miller reminded us that “Ronald Reagan ran the federal government at 22 percent of GDP when the country’s population was much younger, and health care consumed about 11 percent of GDP.” In fact, he reminded us three times! His point is simple: Paul Ryan’s budget is a joke because it runs the federal government at 19 percent of GDP when the country’s population is much older, and healthcare consumed about 18 percent of GDP. I highly recommend reading the article!

In it, he also includes part of an interview he did with Paul Ryan a year and a half ago. He brings up the Reagan comparison time and again and Ryan keeps avoiding the question. His best response is that Reagan was taking so much in taxes so that we could win the cold war. (Note: Reagan’s military buildup did not cause the communist systems to fall.) But the truth is that military spending at that time was only about one percentage point of GDP higher then. So this difference is not even mostly about military spending.

Miller claims that we shouldn’t get into the weeds regarding Ryan’s budget. On the macro level, it just doesn’t make sense. Ryan is saying that we should be taking in 3% of GDP less in taxes when the needs of the government are quite a lot greater than they used to be. Of course, Ryan isn’t fooling anyone who sees things at all clearly. As Miller wrote, “[H]e’s disingenuously trying to use the aging of America to force a severe cutback in the non-elderly, non-defense portion of government, which is already headed toward historic lows as a share of GDP.”

He goes on to paint a picture of the nation that Paul Ryan envisions:

Yep: that’s the Republican vision for our future!

Afterword

Disconcertingly, Matt Miller ended the article by asking:

Two things stand out here. First, when Jon Huntsman had the opportunity to be the “adult in the room” he demurred. It was only after his campaign was over that he admitted that he wouldn’t accept 10-to-1 spending cuts to revenue increases in order to balance the budget. (As if that deal is responsible in any universe!) Second, it is only because Paul Ryan’s budgets have been sloppy, vague, and most of all, cruel that he was elevated to the status of budget wunderkind. I explained this last week in, Paul Ryan Loses His “Seriousness.” I’m surprised that Miller doesn’t understand this.

I’m sure you’ve heard that MSNBC is moving Ed Schultz to weekends and moving in Chris Hayes to do his old time slot. In one way, I’m thrilled about this. Chris Hayes is a good, solid, and articulate liberal. He is the best thing that MSNBC has. I look forward to watching his show while I cook dinner each night. (I get the east coast feed.) But I’m kind of sad about what this says for the network and perhaps liberalism more generally.

MSNBC is a good example of how corporations are never liberal. Even when they are pushing liberal news, they still approach the whole thing in a way that goes against both the best impulses of liberals and conservatives. It is clear what the network is doing. They are trying to appeal to a younger (Hipper!) demographic. To put it bluntly: they are going after me.

I’ve always had my problems with Ed Schultz. He’s kind of a blowhard. He doesn’t signal that deep down he’s an intellectual (because he’s not). He is far too partisan. And yet: he is the best that liberalism is. He is the New Deal and the Great Society. He is the defender of labor unions and workers’ rights. He is a living symbol that every woman and man is best served by the Democratic Party that existed before it ran away from liberalism with its tail between its legs.

This isn’t to say the new generation isn’t strong and proud. Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes are hopefully the future of liberalism. Maybe they are a sign that the years Schultz worked through the Democratic Dark Ages will finally pay off. We need to hold up Ed Schultz as an ideal, not shove him into the weekend wilderness. But he will not be forgotten, because I will seek him out there. I’m sure I will be in good company.

Afterword

According to Peter Weber, a big part of Schultz’s departure is due to the demographics of his audience. He has very good ratings, but they skew too old. Clearly, MSNBC is going after this younger demographic—especially with Sean Hannity at 51 and Bill O’Reilly at 63. (Not to mention their audiences skewing even older.) Rachel Maddow is 39 and Chris Hayes, 34.

Why should we beware the ides of March? Certainly we should be concerned about the Romans who counted days in as logical a way as they counted numbers: that is very illogically. Take the ides for example. They are on the 13th of the month. But not in March. In March, they are on the 15th. Why? Because the Romans are nasty people that way. I know what you’re thinking, “Oh, there must be some system like the ides is on the 15th for months with 31 days!” Oh, Grasshopper! Your ignorance is so charming! But it is still ignorance.

Let’s begin with the number of days. Why do some months have 30 days and others have 31 except for February which has less? (There is an easy way to remember which.) The reason we have such a screwy system is thanks to—Wait for it!—the Romans! What did the Romans ever do for us? They gave as a really stupid calendar!

There are better ideas for calendars. My favorite is that we make every month 30 days. That gives us 5 (or 6) left over at the end. That we call the new year celebration where everyone stays drunk or otherwise pleasantly intoxicated. And on the last day, we hang all the bankers who’ve pissed us off that year.

Now back to those ides. The ides were on the 15th in March, May, July, and October. While it is true that those months have 31 days, what the hell happened to January, August, and December?

According to Shakespeare, “A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.” According to Wikipedia, an actual soothsayer told him that something bad would happen to him by the ides of March. (Ingrown toenail?) If said soothsayer really existed, he was probably as confused about the dates as we are. So who knows? “A hard rain’s a gonna fall!” Anyway, Julius Caesar fully deserved to be killed, although it would have been best if he had been allowed to live a little while to let the people see what an asshole he had become. (Of course, looking at American, maybe they never would have noticed.) Regardless, it is pretty clear that the republic was over. On to the zany years of the emperors!

But at least, we’ll always have the play!

John Sides has a great article in Salon, Romney Likely Loser, Even Without Famous Video. It puts some numbers behind what I’ve long been saying: the 47% video didn’t change the election. My argument is based upon how people think. If the video showed Romney sneaking out of his campaign bus to give cash out to the homeless, it wouldn’t have gone viral; no one really thought that Romney was the kind of guy to do that. The 47% video, on the other hand, was a big deal because it seemed to show Romney in an unguarded moment being exactly what everyone already thought he was: a plutocrat who thinks he is above everyone else.

Sides (along with his colleague Lynn Vavreck) look at this question from the standpoint of the polling data. What it shows it that for a short period of time, a number of Romney supporters (about 5 percentage points or 10% of his total support) became “undecided.” But as soon as the first debate was over, they came back to the fold.

This basic dynamic happened to Obama after the first debate. Some of Obama’s supporters started claiming they were undecided. They all came back after the second debate. And Romney’s gains after the first debate? They were just people who claimed to be undecided but were always going to vote for Romney. In the end, the main reason Obama won re-election was not his campaign; it was his get out the vote machine.

We make a big mistake when we overstate how important the minutia of campaigns are. Of course it’s exciting and fun for us political junkies. And given that the stakes really are high, it is easy to forget that it is mostly just a bunch of people like us who are even paying attention. But look back at the poll aggregators. Nate Silver, for example, never had Romney ahead once the general election had started. There were no wild swings. And the minor swings there were were based on supporters of one candidate getting mad and claiming to be undecided when they really weren’t.

The only member of the Grateful Dead who I respect, Phil Lesh, is 73 today. The shockingly great Sly Stone is 70. And Ry Cooder is 66. Lightnin’ Hopkins would have been 101 today, but he didn’t even come close. A damned good day for musicians.

It is also Judd Hirsch‘s 78th birthday. I’m not much of a fan, but I enjoyed Taxi when I was a kid. The once great and still very good David Cronenberg is 70. The great comedy writer Madelyn Pugh would have been 92, but she stopped functioning at 90.

A big happy birthday goes out to the only liberal member of the Supreme Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She is 80 years old today. The sad thing is that she will probably not be on the court much longer. I suspect she will step down in the next couple of years to make sure that a Democrat will get to replace her. Even still, like all Supreme Court replacements for the last 30 years (except, of course, Ginsburg herself): the replacement will be more conservative than the justice he or she replaces.

I like having Ginsburg on the court. It reminds me of the days before America was a plutocracy. Here is Lightnin Hopkins performing “Baby Please Dont Go” just for her:

Bernie Sanders offered up the following amendment to the new Senate budget: “This amendment would establish a deficit reduction reserve fund that would seek to ensure that large profitable corporations cannot use loopholes to entirely avoid income tax, and direct savings recovered from closing such loopholes to deficit reduction.”

This is to stop companies that make billions each year from managing to pay nothing in taxes. You know: companies like Exxon. But luckily for companies like Exxon, they have a whole political party looking out for their interests. Not a single Republican on the Budget Committee voted for this amendment. You know what they say: every Exxon penny is sacred; every Exxon penny is great; if an Exxon penny is taxed; God gets quite irate!

I keep being asked (Even by conservatives!) why the Republicans are doing this. “Surely they aren’t trying to assure that Exxon pays less in taxes than any worker anywhere in the country!” I don’t have a good answer. In general, I think it is as simple as this: the Republicans are just protecting their most important constituency. They protect their second most important constituency (religious fundamentalists) by appointing 12th century judges to the bench. This is one reason that Republicans in Congress are at sixes and sevens whenever there is a Democrat in the White House: half of their constituency goes un-served and thus they must be hyper-protective of their primary constituency.

Anyway, if you have any questions about Republican desire to compromise, you have it in this vote. Even small amounts of money taken from Exxon to go directly to deficit reduction is unacceptable.