On this day back in 1800, abolitionist John Brown was born. And Mike Wallace was born in 1918.

Wastership Down author Richard Adams is 93 today. Two of my favorite actors Albert Finney and Glenda Jackson are 77. Candice Bergen is 67. And Billy Joel (meh) is 64.

But the day belongs to the great writer/director (and more) James L. Brooks who is 73 today. He got his start as a TV writer, eventually creating The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But I most know him from films like Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as it Gets. He was also a major force behind The Simpsons.

Happy birthday James L. Brooks!

Afterword

I have a busy day today so there won’t be any more posts until much later.

On this day back in 1884, the only person to ever drop a nuclear bomb on a group of humans, Harry S. Truman was born. He did it twice, because that was all the bombs he had at the time. Anti-communist who conservatives still worship even though there aren’t any more communists, Friedrich Hayek was born in 1899. The great director Roberto Rossellini was born in 1906. And hugely successful writer who was in no way better than I am, Peter Benchley was born in 1940.

David Attenborough and Don Rickles are both 87 today. Now that’s an odd couple! Poet Gary Snyder is 83. Toni Tennille, who love has kept together with Daryl “The Captain” Dragon all these years, is 73. Speaking of pianists, the great Keith Jarrett is 68. Chris Frantz of Talking Heads is 62. Melissa Gilbert is 49. And hugely successful writer who is in distinct ways much better than I am, Naomi Klein is 43.

But some days are not even close, regardless of how much I admire Naomi Klein. The day belongs to the great Mississippi blues man Robert Johnson who was born on this day back in 1911. Other than the music, there is almost nothing that we know about the man. A big part of the problem is that Johnson was so influential during his brief career that there were more or less Robert Johnson Impersonators: people who would use his name and do his songs. So the widely believed date of his death (16 August 1938) may have been the death of one of their impersonators.

Regardless, we have a very good collection of songs (more than for most of the artists of that time). Here’s one of my favorites, “Come Home in My Kitchen”:

But you may prefer “Cross Road Blues,” which just about every rock musician worth his salt has covered:

Happy birthday Robert Johnson!

Jonathan Bernstein is curious about what Kevin Drum calls the “Hack Gap.” In an article yesterday, he looked at Obamacare. Every time an insurance company announces a rate hike, conservative economists come out of the woodwork to proclaim that it is all the fault of Obamacare and just wait until next year when everyone will die of syphilis. But when a new study comes out that finds that healthcare cost increases are slowing by more than would be predicted by the recession, there are not any liberal economists making the rounds proclaiming that Obamacare is our savior.

This behavior is not limited to Obamacare. On just about any economic policy issue, this is what we see. Bernstein doesn’t really offer any answers to his question, but there were a few good comments. (There were also two conservative commenters who think that Krugman is a hack because he isn’t nice. And they posted again and again, because as far as I can tell, conservatives on the internet don’t have jobs.) They all revolved around the idea of policing. When a conservative economist comes along with an outlandish idea (for example, Reinhart & Rogoff), the conservative media universe completely accepts it; there is no push back. But if the same bad science came from a liberal economist, there would be major push back.

As an anonymous poster put it:

I think there is something deeper going on here, however. The truth is that there is no comparable divide in foreign policy or even social policy. There are a lot of supposed expert hacks when it comes to this. (But I will admit there is a lot more hackery on the conservative side.) Why is it we just don’t see this in economics? I think it is that the left lost its economic moorings in the 1970s and 1980s. The political success of economic conservatism caused them to focus on data. This in turn caused liberal economics to move substantially to the right. Given that conservative economics was moored to an ideology, it naturally moved to the right as well. And this ended with conservative economists turning into apologists for the ideology.

I know this sounds harsh, but I am quite certain about it. The Reinhart & Rogoff episode was telling. Normally, academics appreciate outside attention, but they are very leery of non-professionals overstating their work. In the case of Rogoff, it was just the opposite; he went out of his way to push an un-nuanced understanding of their work. That isn’t the behavior of a serious scientist; it is the behavior of an ideological hack. And Kenneth Rogoff isn’t some minor player; he is (or was) a highly respected economist.

This all comes back to my often stated problem with American economic policy: it’s come off the rails. Now the “liberal” side is basically what the science of economics would dictate. The conservative side is an ideological travesty. That’s not the way it is supposed to work. The middle is supposed to be what reality is. Then the two sides are supposed to fight over changes to that. For example, a liberal might argue that slightly higher taxes is not best for the economy, but it will limit suffering. A conservative might argue that slightly lower taxes will cause wages to go up. But this isn’t what we see. Conservative economics is no longer moored to reality.

This is via Reddit user valeriepieris via Matt Yglesias. I think it speaks for itself:

Sometimes I am so proud of my culture. A good example was on display this morning in District Court. Judge Edward Korman came down hard on the Obama administration’s cowardly limitation of Plan B emergency birth control. The administration’s actions show that despite what Democrats like to think, Obama really is a lot more conservative than he claims to be. I can see this policy while he was facing re-election. It was still cowardly and cynical, but understandable. What’s going on now? The truth is we don’t know. Other than Obama claiming that he would have a problem with his own daughters having access to the drug, the administration has never given any rationale for requiring a photo ID to purchase it.

Judge Korman is no liberal. In fact, he’s a Republican. But apparently, he’s an old fashioned Republican—the kind that actual believes in things like the law and freedom. Because he is very angry and it doesn’t seem partisan. He has very good reasons for his anger.

He especially went after the administration for thinking that young women should have to present ID to get what all tests indicate is a safe drug. He said it was hypocritical to argue this when the administration also argues against voter ID laws. The administration then tried to argue that it is all a process: first they start with the ID law and gradually they would liberalize things. It said that this is how the public interest is best served. Korman interrupted, “Tell me about the public interest. Is there a public interest in unplanned pregnancies? Some of which end in abortions?”

Ouch!

But the truth of the matter is that the administration seems on autopilot with regards to this matter. It doesn’t seemed to have worked out why it is supporting its current policy. It’s all maddening. And what’s more, it lays bare just what a collection of political hacks this administration is. It sure ain’t hope and change. And in the case of this policy, it is exactly what the Bush administration was.

But it makes me happy to see the judicial branch of the government calling the executive to task on this matter. Forget all the bullshit about individual rights. That’s more propaganda than anything. If the government wants to shut you down or shut you up, it will. But this kind of antagonism between the branches of government is a good thing and the only thing that stops this country from completely going on tilt.

Today over at The Plum Line, Jamelle Bouie discussed an issue that is close to my heart, Don’t Expect the GOP to Change on Gay Rights Anytime Soon. I think all this talk of the Republican Party moderating itself is nonsense. It is all a kind of mass pundit delusion. Moderates especially really want to think that the Republicans will be reasonable. And by that, they mean more liberal on the social issues that moderates care about.

Remember when Bobby Jindal created a stir about how Republicans had to stop being the “stupid party”? And what did he do to prove he wasn’t stupid? He almost destroyed his political career by proposing an end to the state income tax to be replaced by a regressive sales tax. Republican claims at reform are nothing by a desire that the electorate won’t notice all the terrible things they are trying to do.

Bouie noted that the Republicans are not going to moderate on same sex marriage even though a plurality of Republicans favors it. The problem is that the most consistent voters, the old, white, bigoted evangelicals really hate same sex marriage. And so the Republican Party is trying to appeal to them. But I wonder. Does that really explain it?

After all, the conservative base doesn’t vote so consistently because they love the Republican Party. You see that in polls. About 30% of the electorate think of themselves as Republican. But often, the party only gets an approval of about 20%. The difference isn’t people who are tending toward the Democrats; they just think the Republicans are being too liberal. These people are still going to go to the polls and vote Republican, even if they think the party has turned communist.

So why doesn’t the GOP change? The only reasonable argument is that the base wouldn’t show up to the polls. But we know this isn’t the case. Look at the Democratic Party. It is more than happy to snub its base in order to gain more moderate voters. In the Democrat’s case, I’m not sure it works. But in the Republican case, there is much more to gain. A lot of people have a visceral dislike of the party beyond any policies. There are a lot of upper middle class urbanites who would find the Republican Party’s economic conservatism very appealing if it weren’t for their constant “Kill the gays!” and “Oppress the women!” rhetoric.

The problem, I think, is that the people who run the Republican Party are members of the base. They really do think that homosexuality and abortion are abominations. Part of this is just because since the time of Reagan, the state level party organizations have been overrun with evangelicals. But a good part of the problem is that after a while, you begin to believe your own propaganda. Republicans have been putting out so much fear and hatred over the years that they themselves are the final casualties. It’s going to take some time to fix their systemic problems.

On this day back in 1711, the great philosopher David Hume was born. Poet Robert Browning was born in 1812. German composer Johannes Brahms was born in 1833. And Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in 1840. Gary Cooper was born in 1901. Night Stalker actor Darren McGavin was born in 1922. And Anne Baxter was born in 1923.

The only person I noticed having a birthday today is Traci Lords, the young woman who threw the porn industry into chaos when it was found that she had made 100 film while less than 18. She argues that this scandal actually made the porn industry much richer because of all the media attention it created. I tend to think she’s right. I’m not much interested in porn, but I know who she is. She’s 47 today and doing very well, I assume. She has a net worth of $7 million.

But the day belongs to a great talent, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who was born on this day in 1927. I am not saying that she is greater than Hume or Brahms. But she died last month and I didn’t notice it. Most people know her as the screenwriter of most of the Merchant-Ivory films like Remains of the Day and A Room with a View. But she was also a great novelist. She would have been 86 today.

Happy birthday, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala!

Afterword

This is from Jhabvala:

This is really interesting. Harry Reid wanted to take the budget the Senate passed and go to conference with the House. It doesn’t much matter; the House will be against any reasonable budget. But Ted Cruz objected. He says he will only allow it if they agree that whatever comes out of the conference includes no tax increases and no raising of the debt ceiling. Harry Reid was clearly angry. He said that the Republicans had their chance with the budget. They lost. And now Cruz wants to put the very limits on the budget that the Republicans wanted but were unable to add in the normal legislative process.

Part of me wants to just tell Harry Reid to go fuck himself. If he had displayed any balls, he could have gotten rid of the filibuster and their wouldn’t be these problems. “Oh, you object? Let’s have a vote. Your objection is overruled, you fuckwad.” Just the same, Harry Reid is right: this kind of behavior is unacceptable. We shouldn’t have to have concrete rules about everything. But that’s the biggest defining feature of a revolutionary movement: it doesn’t accept norms. And the Republican Party (most of all including Ted Cruz) is a revolutionary group.

The best part of this 5 minute video is when Reid likens Cruz to a schoolyard bully. Cruz then responds, a little hurt I think, “I wasn’t aware we were in a schoolyard.” Reid interrupts and coldly says, “There’s either and objection or no objection.” And Cruz extends his arms and says, “Mr. President, I object.” He might have added, “Because I am a bully who wants to stop all legislative work if I can’t get everything that I want.” Reid is right: Cruz is a schoolyard bully. He’s also a dick.