Last week, God tweeted out the following:

Thus far, it has almost 10,000 retweets. Clearly, this is an example of retweet trolling. God knows how arrogant most atheists are. I am not, however. My mother used to say, “Don’t tempt the gods.” I think it’s good advice, even if I don’t happen to believe in any gods. Anyway, my ideas about the nature of reality are that even if this isn’t a universe in which you die and go to the heaven of the God of Abraham, such a universe must exist at some point somewhere. Or not. Regardless, I’m hedging my bets.

This morning, God tweeted another very smart thing (he’s God after all):

That explains everything! Millions live without healthcare so that Dick Cheney can get a new heart (regular or artificial) whenever he needs one. Thanks God!

Steven Dennis over at Roll Call goes after Rand Paul’s use of old talking points. Paul is going around saying, “We are now borrowing $40,000 a second. We are borrowing $4 billion a day.” Oh. My. God! Did he say “$4 billion a day”?! That’s a Very Large Number! And as normal with these kinds of pronouncements, there is no context at all.

Dennis reported that these numbers are no longer valid. With the huge decrease in the deficit, we are now borrowing half as much. But Rand Paul has not changed his talking points. I don’t know what Dennis is expecting. So the government is borrowing only $2 billion a day? The amount does not matter. It could be $2 million a day. What Paul is really saying is, “We are borrowing mumble mumble a day! Are you not outraged!”

Also note that Paul tweeted, “We borrow from China just to run the ordinary functions of government.” That’s technically true. But it is deceptive. The Chinese portion of government borrowing is 8%. The point is that Rand Paul has no interest in the budget or government borrowing. He just wants to scare everyone. “Look: big number!” It doesn’t matter whether the number is right or not. He’s deceiving people whatever the numbers are.

A similar thing happened last year. Rand Paul was on a talk show with Paul Krugman. Paul said that government spending was up; Krugman corrected him. Afterwords, Paul found out the truth: while Federal spending was up, total government spending was down. He then proceeded to dismiss this because apparently, only federal government spending counts. Rand Paul never lets the facts get in the way of his talking points.

Like most conservative zealots, Rand Paul is in a constant state of outrage about the government. Since he is ideologically committed to the idea that the government is by definition bad, he never looks at what the government does to figure out if any given part of it is good or bad. He just knows that it is all bad. And thus we get the comments like, “Do you know how much the government is borrowing?!” It’s all context free. Rand Paul adds nothing to the policy debate, even when he’s right about a particular policy.

This is a remarkable video. It is beautiful. And it is proof that God is not good!

H/T: Brad Plumer

Yesterday, Ed Kilgore wrote, Please Listen Up, Political Reporters: What Ted Cruz Means When He Says He Mistrusts Both Parties. In it, he took on Ted Cruz and his habit of claiming that he doesn’t trust either political party. As Kilgore noted, “Does it mean, as political reporters often blandly repeat, that ‘Tea Party’ pols like Cruz are hardy independents who care about principle rather than about the GOP, and represent a constituency that is up in the air?” He provided two answers: “No” and “Hell no!”

This is an issue that I’ve been hammering on for a while. The only difference between the Tea Party and the Republican Party is that the Tea Party is only made up of the stronger Republicans. So it makes no sense to even have a different name for the Tea Party; they are just the base of the Republican Party. What’s interesting is that the Democratic Party has a progressive base too but no one labels it as a separate party. And that’s strange when you consider that the this base is far more likely to abandon its party than the Tea Party is.

As you all know, I am constantly disappointed in the Democratic Party. Yet when someone asks me, I tell them I am a Democrat. I think it is disingenuous to say otherwise. This comes from my many conversations with conservatives who claim to be “independent.” (This doesn’t tend to happen with liberals; the independents who tend toward the Democrats really are in the muddled middle.) You aren’t an independent if you agree with everything the Republicans say but think they aren’t quite pure enough. And that is exactly what Ted Cruz is all about.

What the Tea Party movement was about from the beginning was the Republican base upset that it lost big in 2008. It was the outgrowth of the widely held opinion that the 2008 crisis and the presidency of George W. Bush were caused by not being conservative enough. There was also all that racial insecurity. “I’m losing control of my country!” I won’t go as far as Bobcat Goldthwait who says they are just racists, “Obama’s a… a… a Socialist! What’s a Socialist? I don’t know, but they like fried chicken.” But there is a lot of that. The whole birther movement is not because Obama is black but because he is “other.”

Whenever talking about the modern Republican Party, all roads lead back to Life of Brian. The only ones the People’s Front of Judea hate more than the Romans are the Judean People’s Front. So it is madness to suggest that the Tea Party is somehow independent of the parties. That makes it sound as if its members disagree equally with the two parties. But the fact is that they always (By definition!) disagree with the Democratic Party. And they always agree with the Republican Party. Except, of course, they shout louder. But what they shout is same thing.

The great French landscape painter Hubert Robert was born on this day 1733. Inventor of the electromagnet and electric motor William Sturgeon was born 1783. Composer Richard Wagner were born in 1813. Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859.

The great Laurence Olivier was born in 1907. Most Americans probably remember him as the evil Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man. Or for older people (or just lovers of old films), Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. And I most remember him in Sleuth. (Never, never, never watch the remake of Sleuth.) But Olivier is probably most important for his work in first bringing Shakespeare to the screen in a compelling way. I’m not that fond of his films, actually. I think Welles (who was widely criticized relative to Olivier at the time) is better and more cinematic. But there is no doubt that the man can act. Here he is doing that scene from Hamlet:

Phil Tucker was born in 1927. He was the director of a delightfully silly, but ultimately terrible film, Robot Monster. That’s the film where the villain is a guy in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet. It’s easy to laugh at, but Tucker got it produced and the film made a lot of money. Here is the trailer:

And Harvey Milk was born in 1930. He was one of the most important gay rights advocates ever. In San Francisco he is a legend. And he would likely be alive today if it weren’t for the unstable Dan White.

Bernie Taupin is 63 today.

The day, however, belongs to the great American impressionist Mary Cassatt who was bore in 1844. I don’t have a lot to say about her. Look:

Happy birthday Mary Cassatt!

Update (23 May 2013 12:52 am)

I just watched Robot Monster again. I take back “terrible.” It is actually an amazing little film. It has pretty much all of the problems of low budget films of that time, but it has a few positives. The acting isn’t bad. And it is truly bizarre in a delightful way. It is also filled with lots of unintentional gems like the whole marriage ceremony. I always love how movies of that time were filled with scientists who were very serious about their Christianity. Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.

Matt Yglesias is very insightful about the Federal Reserve. Last year, he asked an incredibly important question, “If the unemployment and inflation rates were reversed, would the Fed do something about it?” The point is that the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate to keep both inflation and unemployment low. Yet all the Fed seems to care about is inflation. At the time he said that, inflation was 2% and unemployment was 8%. If it were the other ways around, the Fed would be working hard to cool the economy down. But they are perfectly happy with the way things were (and are).

There is some talk among conservatives that the Fed should have a single mandate: keep inflation low. The idea is that the Fed shouldn’t worry about employment at all. Note that this is an idea that is designed to help the rich. Inflation hurts people who have a lot of money. Unemployment hurts people who have to work for a living. By saying that the Fed should only worry about inflation, the conservatives are telling us everything we need to know about them: they are policy hacks for the rich.

But today, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar asked the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke how the Fed would act differently if it did have the single mandate. Yglesias rightly noted that after much bobbing and weaving, the Fed chair said that he wouldn’t do anything differently. And that’s important, if not surprising. We have long known that the Fed didn’t seem to think that 8% unemployment was anything to worry about. After all, none of the members of the Fed even know anyone who is out of a job.

Even Bernanke notes that he currently thinks that inflation is too low. Well, his primary tool regarding raising inflation is gone: he can’t lower interest rates anymore. So the only way to raise interest rates is to convince the finance community that inflation is coming. And the only way to do that is to convince them that the economy is improving. So if Bernanke wants to bring inflation up, he should work on bringing unemployment down. But he’s not very interested in that subject.

I suspect that he thinks that the power elite (the only people who matter) will never attack him for keeping inflation too low. But I’m not sure that’s true. In the next 20 years (while Bernanke is still alive), important people may well look back and say, “That guy just allowed the crisis to go on and on, ruining the lives of millions of people. All because he was afraid of angering the bankers. What an awful person and central banker.” Regardless, I doubt it is as simple as he thinks. And future generations will look back at him as a failed Fed chair. Sometimes caution is a bad thing. We don’t want cautious fire fighters. We don’t want cautious central bankers in the wake of a terrible financial crisis.

“You gotta thank the Lord, right?!” Am I right?! Really! The Lord! You gotta thank him?! Right?! Right?!

As the tornado was bearing down on Moore, Oklahoma, Rebecca Vitsmun and her infant son were waiting it all out in their bathtub. But as Vitsmun watched the coverage on her laptop computer, she became convinced that the storm was coming right toward them. So she put her son in the car and drove off in the opposite direction. And they survived! But when they got back, the house was destroyed.

That’s when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer showed up. He interviewed the young mother and asked what any objective journalist would, “You gotta thank the Lord! Do you thank the Lord? For that split-second decision?” Vitsmun seemed a bit uncomfortable. “I’m, I’m, I’m…” she stuttered. And then, giving him a big smile said, “I’m actually an atheist.”

So I guess that split-second decision had more to do with watching the news and making a rational decision rather than, say, getting telepathic advice from Odin.

Here’s the clip. It is a lot of fun for two reasons. First, of course, is the very awkward Wolf Blitzer. Second, is the wonderfully bright and happy atheist

In a broader context, this is a horrifying instance of journalistic malfeasance. Blitzer is hectoring this poor woman. In fact, he first says, “You gotta thank the Lord!” Vitsmun says in a very meek voice, “Yeah.” It is only when he pushes her that she decides to make an issue of it. And good for her! This is one of the few times that a journalist is completely nailed for his cultural prejudices. It’s great to see.

It might have been interesting if Blitzer had asked the song, “You gotta thank mom, right?!” Damned right!

Netflix kept pushing a documentary named Heckler on me. So I finally watched it. I’m curious about the phenomenon. It is very strange to me that people go out to see a comedian and then decide to interfere with the show. I understand they are usually drunk, but I still don’t get it. So I was quite interested in what people had to say on the subject. And the 15 minutes of this film that is about hecklers is quite interesting. The rest of the film is an attack on “critics” and a plea for understanding that performers have feelings too.

I write about performance art a lot. And I always try to approach a work on its own terms. It is stupid, for example, to complain that Without a Clue is silly, as some critics have. Yes, it is silly! That’s what it is. Complaining that a work is not what you wanted it to be is not criticism. And that is sadly what most of what we call “criticism” is. But in the case of Heckler, I feel the filmmakers tricked me. They claimed to make a film about hecklers when it was really about criticism.

Having said that, it isn’t as though I’m against watching a film about criticism. I think the state of film criticism is deplorable. And Heckler does a reasonable job of this. It doesn’t talk about what I think are some of the worst aspects of criticism. And it implies that a critic savaging an independent filmmaker who is just getting by is no worse than savaging George Lucas. But okay: the film works well enough.

I do not, however, think that Heckler succeeds in making its argument. In fact, the filmmakers even seem to know this. The film follows Jamie Kennedy (who is also a co-producer) as he confronts a number of online critics who have savaged him films in the past. At first, I felt sorry for the guy. But after a while, it was clear who the real bully was. The people who were attacking him were minor critics, some of them not even professional. Kennedy, on the other hand, has a net worth of $6 million. And he seemed particularly upset that people had panned Son of the Mask—a film with an $87 million budget. I have no opinion of the film since I haven’t seen it. But I’m not terribly sympathetic to a millionaire who worked on a big budget film and got bad reviews.

At the end of the film, Kennedy takes all of his reviews over the years and throws them on the ground. Then he has two obese women in bikinis set them on fire and the three of them walk away, wrapped around each other. When I saw that I almost lost it. Really?! That’s the final point of the film? Luckily, that was not the end of the film, although I have a hunch it was originally. After this scene, Internet film critic Devin Faraci comes on and says, “Well, I guess it’s really nice that people who make a lot of money for fucking around in front of a camera get an opportunity to really complain about the people who have to sit through the stuff that they make. And, of course, it’s always nice to have big, fat ladies at the end of your movies. Burning your reviews—congratulations. I guess that there’s some kind of real catharsis going on there. Hopefully, that’ll carry through to Malibu’s Most Wanted 2.”

Of course, maybe I’m wrong about what the filmmakers thought. Right after Faraci’s comment, the music started with the lyrics, “Hate is all around…” But Faraci’s take is my own. Kennedy is a whiny man who deserves very little sympathy. And in general, the complaints about critics were that they were too harsh and too absolute in their judgments. That’s pretty funny coming mostly from stand-up comedians whose stock and trade are absolute and extreme opinions about the world. Critics often work in hyperbole for the same reasons: they are trying to entertain.

Most of the other stars interviewed were substantially better than Kennedy. Arsenio Hall really stood out as someone who had a good perspective. So too did Louie Anderson, Patton Oswalt, Bill Maher, and Paul Rodriguez. But there was nonetheless, far too much whining. There was also a bizarre section of the film regarding Uwe Boll’s boxing matches with critics. The whole thing did little more than strengthen stereotypes of Germans as brutes. What’s more, it reminded me of an SNL skit where a caveman learns the secret of fire. Everyone says he’s smart. The alpha male kills him and then says, “Now I smart!” I’ve never seen any of Boll’s films, but his boxing skills don’t make me wish to see them.

The biggest problem with critics is the power they have over small independent films. They have little impact on big budget Hollywood films like Son of the Mask. And I think that the real power that critics have should be challenged and they should be held accountable. One bad review of a small film in the New York Times can destroy the film’s chances for a decent distribution. Given these very real stakes, the minor complaint that stars get their feelings hurt seems like a waste of the opportunity to make a film.