Last Thursday, The Hill reported that the House Republicans are putting together some kind of DREAM Act like bill. It is coming directly from Eric Cantor’s office, although his spokeswoman says it is in the early stages of development. There are a few things to say about this—none of them good. First, it probably is just a ruse—nothing but a panicked effort to push back on all the bad press the Republican Party is getting for killing the immigration bill. Second, it is very weak tea—an attempt to do as little as the party possibly can. But I think there is a third option that is far more likely: bait and oppose.

Not surprisingly, The Hill is treating it like it is a real and important proposal. How long can the Republicans continue to be dishonest brokers in Congress before everyone admits what is obvious? The article itself is highly respectful of Cantor’s rhetoric about reaching out to the immigrant community. What’s more, further down in the article, much is made of all the Republicans who discussed the need for something like the DREAM Act during last week’s closed door meeting. What’s more, it reported that there is a “growing recognition” that something needs to be done to deal with the issue.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are treating this reporting like it is the weak tea option:

That’s pretty clear. It isn’t even a proposal. It is just leaked information that indicates that the Republicans have just started working on a proposal. So to say that it is not enough is an enormous understatement.

What I think is really going on is another bait and oppose. We saw this with the years of discussion about healthcare reform. The Democrats wanted real reform (some kind of single payer system) and the Republicans countered with their supposed free market plan. When the Democrats accepted the “free market” plan, the Republicans dropped it like a hot skillet. The same thing is going on here. The Republicans are offering a terrible alternative to comprehensive immigration reform. And if the Democrats are stupid enough to accept the deal, the Republicans will drop it like—Oh, I don’t know: a hot skillet?—and claim that it is, “Amnesty! Amnesty, I tell you!”

Will the Democrats fall for this again? Maybe. After all, despite the cries of socialism providing ten years of Republican gerrymandered success, the Democrats got their “free market” healthcare reform. They might be able to get their DREAM Act too. Of course, if they do, it will go along with militarizing the boarder and other nasty additions—all to get Republicans votes that won’t materialize. It won’t be what the people want, but that’s democracy. Am I right?!

Let’s take a moment to consider that great species of political animal the independent. The independent is such a strange creature that I had long thought it mythical. Every independent I’ve ever met has been either a liberal or a conservative and not a moderate as you might assume. In fact, many independents that I’ve met self-identified in this way because they thought the Republican Party was too liberal. So I still think that the vast majority of independents are really just Democrats or Republicans who don’t want to come right out and admit it.

I got a good look at an independent on this morning’s episode of Up with Steve Kornacki. Michelle Bernard is that person. “As someone who firmly finds herself in the quote-unquote independent camp,” she said before completing an uninteresting thought about reactions to Rand Paul showing what no one (even those on Up) would say: he’s a bigot. What I thought was interesting was how she seemed to swell with pride that she was in the “independent camp.” (That strikes me as an oxymoron. What do they do at camp? Bind together and decide which way the independent vote will go this year?!)

This is a big problem with independents and I think it is the only reason they exist. When Bernard said that, I got the feeling she was saying, “I’m not like you ideologues! I’m open minded! I vote for the best person, not for whatever my party has on offer!” There are a couple of problems with this thinking. First, the assumption is that the middle is not an ideological position. This is simply not true. Second, most liberals don’t vote for Democrats because they are Democrats; we vote for them because even though they generally suck, they are far better than what the Republicans have on offer.

Michelle Bernard is both a woman and an African-American. Does she ever think that the Republican Party is going to do right about voting rights or reproductive choice? The economy generally does worse under Republicans. Is that what she wants? Does she want the Supreme Court filled with more Samuel Alito type judges? What exactly is the Republican Party offering America or Bernard herself that makes it a toss-up before an election starts?

Of course, I’m kidding. I know what it’s all about: it is about the appearance of being open minded. But I wonder how history will think of independent voters like Bernard. I don’t think it will vilify them. Rather, it will wonder about them. How was it that these people couldn’t see that one of the major American political parties had moved well to the right while the other moved near the edge of the map into fascist territory? It certainly won’t look back and think, “That was very open minded, just splitting the difference between the two major American political parties. It must have taken a great mind to come up with that!”

The great mathematician and mystic John Dee was born on this day in 1527. The poet John Clare was born in 1793. On the one hand, he was a typical Romantic idiot. On the other, he really was a pretty good poet. One of the pioneers of ethnography, Stewart Culin was born in 1858. He was very interested in the games that different cultures play and how they connect different peoples. Fascinating stuff! Co-founder of the London School of Economics, Sidney Webb was born in 1859. Contrary to what you are probably thinking, Webb was a socialist and a historian of trade unionism. Actor Bob Crane was born in 1928. My big question about him is why anyone would want to make Auto Focus. Oh, you say that Paul Schrader made it? Well, that explains it! And finally, Jack Kemp was born in 1935. Again, I don’t usually do politicians. But in this case, I wanted to see if Kemp rethought his embrace of supply-side economics at the end of his life. Apparently not. He did, however, embrace a kind of neoconservative hysteria after 9/11, which doesn’t exactly help. But as much as I hate to admit it, he seems to have been a truly great football player. The fact that I hate football doesn’t take away from that fact. (But really: football is an extremely boring game.)

Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is 78 today. Yes, he’s that Danish cartoonist. (Why else would I be mentioning a Danish cartoonist?) To be honest, I’m not sure what the controversy is. It seems the Muslims have always felt that non-Muslims were not part of the whole “rules and regulations” part of their religion. That was something I always liked about them. Next we have three decent actors turning 71, 72, and 73: Harrison Ford, Robert Forster, and Patrick Stewart. Sterwart’s performance as Macbeth is really great:

Comedian Cheech Marin is 67. It really bugs me that I can’t seem to get hold of old Cheech & Chong albums. I don’t much like the movies, but I remember the albums very fondly. And writer and director Cameron Crowe is 56.

The day, however, belongs to economist Dean Baker who is 55 today. I know: I’ve already written about him time and time again. This is because I have learned more about economics from him than from anyone else. Probably the guy I’ve learned the second most from is Ha-Joon Chang, and I just learned that Chang is also part of Baker’s Center for Economic and Policy Research. Previously, I’ve recommended reading Baker’s blog, Beat the Press. But you should really get the whole CEPR RSS feed. You’ll learn a lot, and not just about economics.

What many of you may not know is that Dean Baker is a very funny guy. You can see that at his blog where the sarcasm comes fast and furious. But it is even more apparent in his public speaking. He has that wonderful confident, cocky attitude of one who knows what’s going on but doesn’t sweat the fact that most of the world is crazy. Here’s a great example of him openly mocking Rick Santelli:

Happy Birthday Dean Baker!

Afterword

Note in that video that not only is Santelli wrong, but so is the host. When she asked what Barney Frank thought of the housing bubble, she was implying the old conservative canard that the economic collapse was the result of the Democrats forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give out loans to poor people. Also the exploding deficit she’s so concerned about is suddenly not happening. I don’t know where she stands on these matters today. But I’m sure that Santelli is still doing his Howard Beale impression about the coming doom if we don’t do whatever it is the power elite want today.

Paul Krugman has posted a couple of articles on his blog defending France. You see, “people” say that France’s unemployment rate is high. “They” say that Fance is on the verge of becoming another Greece—or at least Portugal. “They” say that the French are just all screwed up.

The truth is that none of this is actually true. It turns out that the employment situation is actually better in France than in the United States. There is less labor force participation among the young and old, but that is because France doesn’t require students to work and encourages early retirement. What’s more, France has no trouble borrowing, and actually borrows at a rate below that of Germany.

So why do “they” beat up so much on France? Krugman gets it mostly right except in his caution, “[I]t’s hard to avoid the suspicion that it’s ultimately political: with their generous welfare state the French are supposed to be collapsing, so people assume that they are.” The problem is that “people” assume France is a socialism and therefore believe that it much be failing. Socialism is bad, right? And France even has a socialist president: Francois Hollande.

But it isn’t just that everyone assumes that France is doing badly. It is the press—especially the financial press, who tend to be far more economically conservative than the country as a whole. This, of course, is our “objective” press. And note how this objectivity works. It isn’t that the press will come right out and lie about France. They would never, for example, report that labor force participation in France for prime age workers is well below that of the United States. That would be false—it is exactly the opposite. So they simply don’t report that. Instead, they report that labor force participation in France for the young is well below that of the United States. That’s true, but highly misleading. Objectivity!

Of course, I don’t think that journalists are trying to be misleading. It is just that there is a natural tendency to assume that things must suck in France. So when some conservative writes an article about the scourge of youth unemployment in France, the mainstream press pick it up in the big way. When a liberal writes an article that shows that this isn’t the case, the mainstream press just ignore it. It can’t be important because everyone knows it sucks in socialist France.

It can’t be said enough: these unacknowledged biases poison our information flow. This happens in a variety of ways. It changes what stories are written. (You can especially see this in the conservative media where important stories simply aren’t mentioned and bizarre—often made up—stories get blanket coverage. If you want an eye-opener, listen to conservative radio some time.) It changes the focus of stories to the point where they are highly biased. It severely limits the Overton window of acceptable opinion. (This is done most notably by limiting those who are listened to. For example, in the buildup to war, the cable news stations talked almost exclusively to administration officials and former military officers.)

For a long time, I’ve thought that explicitly biased news sources were best. For example, every Friday I listen to FAIR’s weekly radio show Counter Spin. It has a leftist and anti-authoritarian bias. I mostly agree with that bias. Just the same, I can detect during every show things that are biased and not quite correct, even though they try very hard to be accurate and honest. The same can be said on the right, but the truth is that given the huge amounts of money that have been pumped into conservative media, it is damned hard to find an honest broker on the right. The libertarians do a reasonable job. I think Leonard Peikoff does a decent job of being accurate while grinding his ideological ax.

The biggest problem with the mainstream media is that (on economic and international issues, anyway) they are conservative. But they don’t admit this. They claim they are just staking out the reasonable center. And the conservative media use this to convince their audience that they are providing the truth and nothing but the truth. Thus we have the ridiculous “fair and balanced” and “no spin zone” out of Fox News. So bias is a bad thing when it pretends to be objectivity. But bias is a fact and we must embrace it. Otherwise, it will destroy us.

Afterword

In doing research for this article, I was once again confronted with the fact that you just can’t do internet searches on some things. Media bias is one of those things. There was article after article talking about “liberal media bias” saying essentially the same thing: reporters are liberal, therefore the reporting is liberal! In terms of social issues, I more or less agree. But the truth is that on economic issues, it just isn’t true. Nor is it true when it comes to international affairs, where Glenn Greenwald’s observation is dead on, “The overwhelming, driving bias of the US media is subservience to power, whoever happens to be wielding it.”

On this day in 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born. He seems like he was an all right kind of guy: against slavery, and all. But that’s always struck me as kind of an easy issue to be on the right side of. At least it was if you didn’t have any economic interest in it. Thoreau did not. Mostly, he’s always struck me as just a kind of Romantic period idiot. His thinking was very typical of the time. Regardless, I have a soft spot for people who die of tuberculosis. And by the way, that is by far the most romantic disease to die from.

The great French marine painter Eugene Boudin was born in 1824. Revolutionary philosopher Nikolay Chernyshevsky was born in 1828. With a name like Chernyshevsky, he’s got to be good. The inventor of roll film, George Eastman was born in 1854. Russian Romantic composer Anton Arensky was born in 1861. Here is a performance of some of his variations on a theme by Tchaikovsky. (Look, I’m not that fond of him. He isn’t bad. But I’m trying to teach you knuckleheads something!)

A really intense and interesting artist, Bruno Schulz was born in 1892. Not a favorite of mine, but a great lyricist nonetheless, Oscar Hammerstein II was born in 1895. Exceptional poet Pablo Neruda was born in 1904. Big dicked comedian Milton Berle was born in 1908. The great American painter Andrew Wyeth was born in 1917.

And Mark Hatfield, was born in 1922. Normally, I don’t list politicians here. But Hatfield was something special. He was a Republican and an Evangelical Christian. Yet he was against school prayer. He was for gay rights back when the vast majority of Democrats were against it. And most of all, he was anti-war. He stood for things that were real, as opposed to most Republicans now who either only believe in power or believe in vague concepts like “freedom” that they don’t seem to know much about. But the real reason I’m mentioning Hatfield today is that he retired from the Senate almost 15 years before he died. He didn’t have to; he was popular in Oregon. But he let others move on and went back to teaching. It bothers me when old politicians die in office. Look, I liked Robert Byrd. But did he really think he should have been a Senator at 92? It is the height of narcissism. Hatfield had class and dignity.

Bill Cosby is 76 today. When I was younger, I thought he was rather funny. Now I just know him as this old curmudgeon. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Here he is doing his thing, that I know I once would have found funny, but now I find tired and even offensive:

The great journalist Robert Fisk is 67. Fitness trainer Richard Simmons is 65, and I do hope I won’t be seeing any more of him—not because I don’t like him, just because I don’t want to see him anymore. And yet another of my crushes, actor Tamsin Greig is 47.

The day, and this one is not even close, belongs to one of my favorite painters Amedeo Modigliani, who was born on this day in 1884. It isn’t that I necessarily think his technique is great. The truth is that I don’t really know. But I love his style and I love what he does with it. Unlike, say, Paul Klee (who I also greatly admire), I never get bored with it. Of course, the fact that he was pretty much exclusively a figurative artist helps. I don’t know why (maybe because I’m a human), I just like pictures of humans. Also, he died very young; with more time, he might have run out of ideas. Anyway, here is a portrait of another unique artist, Chaim Soutine:

Happy birthday Amedeo Modigliani!

There is another one of those “Should we kill mentally retarded murders?” cases. Now it is Warren Lee Hill Jr, who the state of Georgia wants to kill. I’m against the death penalty regardless. However, it has never been made clear to me how intelligence matters in these cases. I understand with kids. But it seems to me that if a mentally retarded person is less culpable for a murder, why isn’t a genius more culpable. (This is the kind of thinking that causes people like Rocco Pendola to say I’m idiotic.) But I hope that Hill doesn’t get killed by the state—just not because he’s isn’t bright.

Democracy Now! reports that Hill will be killed with an injection of pentobarbital. This is good news because finally at least some government killing programs are being reasonable about how they murder people. In the past, it has been the ridiculous drug cocktail where first they knock you out, then they paralyze you, then they induce a heart attack. The problem was always that this is potentially a very painful thing. For example, that first drug might not put the victim to sleep. And just the thought that you might have to die that way is a form of torture—much less the experience itself.

All along, I’ve wondered why these killers didn’t just give their victims massive doses of barbiturates. That works really well. Just ask Marilyn Monroe. She died primarily from an overdose of barbiturates—specifically, pentobarbital, the drug that the state of Georgia is itching to give to Hill. It is said that he has an IQ of 70. To me, that doesn’t seem like mentally retarded, just slow. Regardless, that is smart enough to know what is going on and to worry about how they plan to kill you.

The use of barbiturates for lethal injection is not just good news for those who the state decides to put to death; it is good news for everyone. I understand the arguments for the death penalty. I might even accept them if we had anything close to an equitable justice system. But I can see why people are attached to the idea of a death penalty. I cannot, however, see why anyone would think that it was proper to make these people suffer while their lives are ended. Death by barbiturates is a good way to go. I hope I die so painlessly.

You probably remember Back to the Future Part II—certainly the weakest of the franchise. But the end was good: a Western Union messenger shows up to give Marty the 70 year old letter from Doc that tells him what has happened and sets up the last movie. Well, that courier was played by a personal favorite of mine, Joe Flaherty from SCTV. We don’t see him around that much in movies. I have my theories as to why that is, but the main thing is that he’s brilliant.

Anyway, last night, I noticed that the last thing watched on my Netflix account was Family Guy—probably because my niece was using the account. So I put it on, because I find the show amusing and I was being lazy/depressed. And on came the episode “The Big Bang Theory.” In it, Stewie uses his time machine to embarrass Brian. The two of them get into a fight that flings them outside the space-time continuum. They manage to get back by being the original Big Bang that started the universe. That’s a nice bit of existential paradox that I quite liked.

Further on in the show, Stewie’s rival Bertram goes back in time to kill Leonardo da Vinci, who Stewie is descended from. He manages to do so, and Stewie is forced to hang around in the 15th century to fix the problem. Meanwhile, he sends Brian back to, well (sorry), the future. Once there, a Vatican messenger shows up and gives him a letter from Leonardo da Vinci (Stewie) explaining what to do next. Very Back to the Future, right?

So the voice of the messenger was performed by… Joe Fleherty. And yes, I know: only freaks notice this kind of very inside joke. And only extreme freaks proudly write articles about it. But it is very cool. And as I said, Fleherty doesn’t get that much work, so that’s all the better.

Afterword

All of us are a lot more like alligators than we think: stimulus-response. I know that I am very much this way. My friend Will is too. I could call him up right now and mention that I had watched Family Guy, and he would immediately tell me how inappropriate it is for children. He mistakenly watched it with his kids once. Now he will tell me this, despite the fact that I have repeated told him that Family Guy is not for children. We are back to the days when many cartoons are meant for adults. In the case of Family Guy, the violence disturbs me. So I probably wouldn’t let my kids (if I had any) watch it, although I think Will doesn’t like the inappropriate behavior that his children mimic. This is the same reason most parents don’t like their children exposed to me! But I digress. I think it is fine to let children watch it, as long as you understand that it isn’t for them.

Megan McArdle decides to start this morning by arguing in favor of keeping the filibuster just the way it is. It’s really keen, you see. She likes “its broad use against as many laws as the minority likes.” And she would. She’s a conservative. In theory (that is, while liberals are in the White House), conservatives believe in doing as little as possible. What she doesn’t like is what “the Republicans are doing with it against presidential nominees.” But she follows it immediately with a stunning bit of apologetics, “Democrats arguably started it.” And then she drops the issue altogether. The problem is that the only change to the filibuster that the Democrats are set to make is to fix the one problem that she sees. But she says it is too small a problem to risk further erosion of the filibuster.

She next throws out some numbers that as far as I can tell have been ripped straight out of her ass. There is a 0% chance that the Democrats will take back the House in 2014. While the number is certainly not that low, I take the point. But I don’t understand what it has to do with the Senate forbidding the filibuster on executive branch nominees. No one is talking about a full repeal of the filibuster. So who cares? But McArdle is just getting warmed up. She tells us that there is a 70% chance Republicans will control the White House, Senate, and House as of 2017. I don’t even know where she gets that number. The only way you can get that high a chance is if you assume that the Republicans have a 90% chance of winning the White House, Senate, and House. McArdle, of course, doesn’t link to any source for her claim. All I can assume is that it comes from Dick Morris.

She’s using this 70% number to say, “Be afraid Democrats!” The problem is, as I’ve argued just about every time I’ve discussed the filibuster, is that the Republicans will destroy the entire filibuster the moment they have this situation. McArdle, trying to sound like a wise sage says, “Republicans could go nuclear themselves in 2017, you may say. And that’s certainly a risk. But in fact, I think they will be as skittish about it as the Democrats have so far proven.” Well then, there’s nothing to worry about! Megan McArdle, based upon her intimate knowledge of federal level Republicans thinks that they wouldn’t do such a thing. I feel so much better.

Or I did, until I remembered that in 2005, the Republicans were going to limit the filibuster substantially more than the Democrats are now proposing. And the only reason they didn’t was the Gang of 14 made a deal that turned out to mean, “As long as the Democrats never filibuster judicial nominees, the filibuster stays.” And doncha know, as soon as the Republicans were in the minority, the filibuster was being used more than ever but the Gang of 14 quietly disbanded. Funny that!

So McArdle wants us to think that the 2017 Republicans Senate will be less radical than the 2005 Republican Senate. I don’t think that she would be arguing this if things were reversed. I’m not saying that she would necessarily be arguing for filibuster reform. But in 2005, I can’t find her taking a stand on the issue. But it is hard to say, all her archives at The Atlantic seem to have been removed.

McArdle’s main argument is that the “small” advantage the Democrats get from this minor reform of the filibuster is not worth the “large” danger that the Republicans will reform it themselves in retaliation when they are in the position to do so. I’ve already pointed out that it is a near certainty that the Republicans will reform, if not abolish, the filibuster regardless of what the Democrats do now. But the other half of her argument is equally flawed. Given the Republican House, the only way that Obama gets anything done these next three and a half years is through direct executive action and that means he needs this. This small change would have big benefits. And the danger is basically zero.

But how can we take any of McArdle’s argument seriously when she seems to believe that the Republicans are overwhelmingly favored to hold the White House, Senate, and House in 2017? That’s the kind of thing you say when your argument is more based on panic than analysis.

Update (12 July 2013 10:25 am)

McArdle has another article where she defends her 70% estimate. Basically, she argues that she thinks this because she thinks this. She rightly points out the the House and White House are not independent variables (she doesn’t put it that way, of course). But she thinks the Republicans have a 75% chance to win the White House because Hillary Clinton is old. But even under the best of assumptions, that would put the chance of them winning all three at much less than 70%. I’m always intrigued to see how otherwise smart people deal with statistics. They seem to think it is like alchemy and they can do anything they want. My advice to McArdle: in the future stay away from statistics; you don’t get it.