It has long been my belief that the media and the Republican Party learned the same lesson from Sarah Palin’s disastrous interview with Katie Couric. And that lesson was that the Republican Party looks really bad when the media get a good, unrehearsed view of their wingnuts (which now make up over half of the party’s successful politicians). It is because the media would prefer not to go through anything as cringingly embarrassing as that interview that Joni Ernst managed to become a United States Senator while not only crazy but utterly unqualified.

This goes way back to at least the 2008 vice-presidential debate. When Biden countered her on the fact that she didn’t answer the first question, Palin replied, “I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.” And that was how the debate went: she just talked about whatever she wanted in her own peculiar way also. I don’t suppose that there was anything that could have been done about that. But afterward, the media reaction was mostly relief that it didn’t result in anything like this:

So when Jodi Ernst was running for the Senate, the media did not push the way they would have pushed a regular candidate — a Democrat, or a Republican who wasn’t crazy, ignorant, and of average intelligence. But now she’s in the Senate and there is no reason to think that the media will push her any harder than they have pushed her before. (Note: other than comedians, the media went very easy on Sarah Palin after the Couric debacle.) And the Republicans know that. So they have decided to use Ernst as a trained seal — or something like that.

She is, after all, attractive. She is a woman. She’s not a terrible speaker. So why not have her give the response to the State of the Union speech? But they decided to do it right. Just as Sarah Palin wasn’t going to answer questions in her debate, Joni Ernst wasn’t going to give a response to the president:

And thus began the nine minute infomercial, “The Republican Party Is Not Scary.” The whole thing was so over-rehearsed that I’m quite sure Ernst did little more than practice for the last week. But the style reminded me of those dreadful animatronic creatures like they had at Disneyland when I was a kid. But perhaps more accurate would be to say that she seemed like one of The Stepford Wives from the 1970s. I was afraid that she might crack during the speech and we would see the electronics inside.

That would be an improvement, however. As it is, I still kind of think that her conservative colleagues are just reptiles inside a human costume. So maybe they are the reptiles and she is just a robot that must be pre-programmed. Clearly, they’ve worked some of the bugs out since the Sarah Palin model. This model sticks to simple sentences and doesn’t launch into open-ended logorrhea. But it is no more convincing.

“I’m Joni Ernst. As a mother, a soldier, and a newly elected senator from the great State of Iowa, I am proud to speak with you tonight. I was just going to give you coffee. As a mother, a soldier, and a newly elected senator from the great State of Iowa, I am proud to speak with you tonight. I’m Joni Ernst. I was just going to give you coffee. As a mother, a soldier, and a newly elected senator from the great State of Iowa, I am proud to speak with you tonight.”

I spent most of the night glued to Fox News. Part of this is just that MSNBC is too predictable. But mostly, I just wanted to know what the conservatives would have to say, given that I knew Obama was going to propose some things that normally would be hugely popular — even among conservatives. And I knew they would hate these proposals. So I thought it might be fun to watch them make their bold stands for the power elite. I wanted to see them explain how they truly cared about the middle class and that is why they were for more tax cuts and subsidies for the rich. Oh: and Juan Williams was there too.

The evening did not start off well. To begin with, there was no SOTU coverage until 9:00. Bill O’Reilly did his usual 8:00 show because, you know, it was only a Democratic president giving the speech — nothing important. Finally, Bret Baier came on and gave his usual biased, but somehow still vanilla introduction. And then came Nina Easton. She’s an editor at Fortune Magazine who is mostly interested in economics, but not last night! She was going on about how Obama was going to ask for approval to attack in Iraq. Fine. But she made it out like it was a big deal and that this was what the headlines would be about tomorrow. In fact, all the discussion before the speech was about ISIS and how important terrorism is and how we should be afraid — very afraid.

This was quite interesting because after the speech, Baier came back on and said that “as predicted” the president spoke little about foreign affairs and instead focusing on domestic issues. I think that was his way of saying, “Since I’m the only halfway reasonable person in this room, I want to make it clear that I always knew that what these other fools were talking about was nonsense.” Of course, in the lead-up to the speech, he didn’t counter any of that nonsense.

At this point, we got to hear from George Will who did nothing but quote a large section of the speech with a mocking tone. He really needs to retire. He is no kind of substitute for Charles Krauthammer — and you know how highly I regard him! After Will, we got Stephen Hayes who scoffed at the president’s attempt to make nice with the Republicans because he had been the most “divisive” president in history. Blah, blah, blah. Somehow, conservatives always forget that Lincoln fought the Civil War. Regardless, Hayes’ examples all came from late in his term — after the Republicans had shunned Obama at every turn. Finally, Nina Easton noted that the TTIP and TPP would grow the economy — something she can’t know because she’s never seen these secret monstrosities.

Fox News went to commercial, so I switched over to MSNBC just in time to see Steve “I’m more conservative every day hoping for a good gig in the 2016 election” Schmidt. He was arguing that ISIS was a far more important issue than public funding of child care. I suspect that’s true — for Steve Schmidt, who probably has a stay-at-home wife, but certainly has enough money to pay for child care. Gratefully, Chris Hayes countered him powerfully, noting that ISIS isn’t some kind of existential threat to the United States. Rachel Maddow, who may be suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s, came to Schmidt’s defense. But the kind of fear mongering that Schmidt was doing should be left to Fox News where it belongs.

The only other thing I saw was back over on Fox News after Joni Ernst. Everyone was respectful. They all agreed that at least she didn’t awkwardly grab a bottle of water and guzzle it in the middle of her talk. But it was clear they were shell-shocked. They understand better than anyone. When you have a political movement that is based upon taking away from the poorer classes and giving it to the rich, you need people like Ernst to convince the people that you aren’t really reptiles in human costumes. But really, I think a close watching of an hour and a half of Fox News will make you think that might just be true.

Oh: and Juan Williams was there too.

I thought that the first half hour of Obama’s State of the Union speech was really good. It was nice to see him so relaxed with an attitude that the Republicans could bite him if they had a problem. In fact, most of the speech seemed very much like the first speech of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign. And I’m fine with that. The president offered a number of good ideas. Of course, we know they will all come to nothing so long as Americans continue to stay home for off year elections.

The speech got a bit much at the end when Obama talked about working with the Republicans. This kind of act might have worked in 2008 and 2009, but that was only because Obama truly was naïve and actually believed it. But that’s not true anymore. Obama knows the score. But I know what he was doing. He was trying to shame the Republicans. This is something that I’ve been complaining about for the last six years. I don’t mind that Republicans disagree with me. In fact, I defended them after the 2012 election when centrists everywhere were claiming that the Republicans had to “moderate.” Republicans should do what their supporters want. But sadly, that isn’t what they do.

Ideas they’ve always been in favor of, they suddenly decide are socialism if a Democrat is in the White House. I understand that Obamacare was more liberal than what they wanted. But they weren’t willing to go with anything at all. In fact, the one idea that was absolutely theirs — the individual mandate — they have totally turned their back on. But much more important, they are against any kind of stimulus. They don’t believe in infrastructure spending. They don’t believe in anything that will help — as long as a Democrat is in the White House. And that’s shameful. But no amount of shaming from Obama is going to change the Republicans. They are far beyond shame.

Mixed in with all the good ideas that Obama talked about, was one terribly wrong idea:

This is a reference to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). These are terrible “trade” agreements. We know this because if they were good, they wouldn’t be negotiated in secret with the help of corporate lobbyists and the White House wouldn’t be requesting “fast track” authority so that no one will be able to really see what is inside it before a vote. It will doubtless be filled with sweet provisions for our corporate overlords. And I suspect that it is just a roundabout way for them to get the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) because they couldn’t get it through democratic means.

There are two ways to look at Obama’s push for this. Either he actually believes in it, which means that the soul of the Democratic Party has been destroyed. Or it is that Obama thinks he has to make public pronouncements about this kind of garbage for the sake of keeping corporate funders happy, which mean that the soul of the Democratic Party has been destroyed. It is just a travesty. These treaties (TTIP and TPP) are probably the only things that would make me quit the Democratic Party. And I don’t think I’m alone. If the party embraced this, it would make a lot of people just give up on partisan politics — not that many of us aren’t already very close as it is. (For the record, I’ve felt from the start that Obama has had this attitude towards people like me of, “Who else are you going to vote for?”)

But overall, it was a good speech. I like the idea of paying for junior college. Childcare, paid sick leave, equal pay, and an increased minimum wage are all good ideas. Unfortunately, they are all good ideas that the Republicans hate. So maybe the politics will look better at the beginning of 2017. Ultimately, that’s what it’s going to take: something like we had in 2009 for a very short period of time. I’m hopeful that we will get such a chance. I just doubt it will be in 2017. In fact, I suspect it will take a very bad period of Republican rule before we get there. But it is nice to know where we are headed.

Martin Luther King Jr was born and raised in Georgia. Yet I’ve never seen anyone wearing a t-shirt with his image as an act of “southern pride.” No. “Southern pride” is always expressed with the Confederate flag, Stonewall Jackson, or Robert E Lee.

I came upon this photo over at Hullabaloo, Now Why Would They Do This? I was stunned when I saw it. It isn’t like I’m not aware that many in the south continue to fetishize Lee and pretend that somehow the Confederacy was the true American cause — the “war of northern aggression” and all that ahistorical garbage. But it boggles my mind that a state would combine a celebration of the civil rights struggle with the celebration of the man who led the war to keep racially defined slavery.

Jamelle Bouie explained the whole thing yesterday at Slate, Happy Robert E Lee Day! In the image above, the state is Arkansas. But Alabama and Mississippi (Of course!) do the same thing. In addition, three other states — Georgia, Florida, and Virginia — also celebrate Lee, but they don’t combine him with Martin Luther King. So there’s that.

In Bouie’s telling of it, this is not really a political statement. It just is the case that Lee and King have birthdays that are close together. “As a concept, it was a poor pairing. As a bureaucratic solution, it worked.” But I think Bouie is being too fair or at least non-judgmental. This is racist pandering. It is a signal to the bigots that the state is just doing the whole Martin Luther King thing for the sake of political correctness and that we all know Lee is what the south really stands for. (In that regard, they might have a point.)

There is something more to this, however. Robert E Lee was a traitor. I discussed this in, No More Confederate General Bases! Lee was specifically given the chance to lead the union army. He declined. He chose instead to not only take up arms against his own country in a war started by the southern states, he chose to lead that army. I don’t really care that he was an honorable man. Erwin Rommel was an honorable man, but we don’t have state holidays for him! And when Rommel turned traitor against his nation, it was in the name of something good. When Lee did, it was in the name of one of the worst things this country ever did.

It’s weird, I think. Conservatives are all about how liberalism coddles minority groups — especially African Americans. That’s not true, of course — we are simply trying to create a fair nation — but that’s what conservatives think. Meanwhile, their political power is based upon coddling southern bigots. But when it comes to the southern bigots, the whole nation gets into the game. That’s why no one rises up in disgust at the south’s continued use of an American traitor as a hero and the continued use of the Confederate flag as though it were a symbol of anything other than treason.

The south will never grow up unless we force it to put away its childish illusions that the Civil War was anything but a treasonous act in defense of one of the vilest of human behaviors. There are a lot of ways that people could show their “southern pride,” if they think it necessary. As I noted a few days ago, they could lionize William Faulkner. But somehow, showing “southern pride” is always about hearkening back to the good ol’ days when blacks knew their place. I’m not keen on the whole idea of regional pride to begin with. But “southern pride” has a special smell of rot. It is a disease that is hobbling our republic.

Is Shepard Smith trying to get fired?! Actually, I doubt it. He’s just a bit of a loose cannon. And let’s just be clear here: he’s gay and he’s liberal — maybe not liberal like I am, but liberal like Hillary Clinton is. He is like this festering boil of humanity and reasonableness on the body of Fox News. And when he oozes some actual truth onto the screen, it is a thing of beauty. But if he ever pops, it will be transcendent.

On Friday’s Shepard Smith Reporting, he did a segment on the Supreme Court taking on same-sex marriage this term. In discussing it, he said, “Not in every case, but in most cases, the same states which were fighting integration, are fight this as well: those states that always seem to be behind the curve for reasons that are explainable and understandable.” Whatcha mean by “explainable and understandable,” Shep? I know that gives the network some wiggle room, but we all know what you mean: the reason these states fought integration before and are fighting same-sex marriage now is because they are controlled by bigots.

And it gets even better. John Bussey notes that there is still disagreement on same-sex marriage and Smith interrupts him and says, “There’s still disagreement on segregation!” You should watch it. Smith seems to know that he has to be very careful. It reminds me of an old article at Gin and Tacos, Fatigue Factor, “I recall distinctly from the years of being a Republican… It was exhausting, frankly, to keep one’s motives hidden.” What he was talking about was the way that Republicans claim they need to enact voter-ID laws before the voter fraud, when it is just a way to stop Democrats from voting. Smith’s in a more difficult position where he can’t even be honest with what policy he’s in favor of. But you can just tell that he’s pleased as punch:

But is Shepard Smith really in danger of losing his job? Probably not. A commenter over at Media Matters, JimWolf359, noted, “I don’t think it’ll happen. He makes good window dressing for Fox. ‘See? We are fair and balanced when we want to be! Just ask our token liberal, Shep if you don’t believe us.'” I hope he’s right. I probably wouldn’t think much of Smith if he were at CNN or MSNBC. But at Fox News, his awkwardness and liberality is charming.

There is one question. Rumor has it that in his recent contract negotiations, he tried to get the okay from the network to him to “come out.” They weren’t willing to do that. Apparently, their target audience (85 year old white men) is still anxious that television screens can transmit The Gay. But if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land, will Fox News allow Smith to get married? Time will tell.

For the last week, I’ve felt as though I ought to write about what has happened in Switzerland, but I haven’t been able to find a hook. It’s still kind of hard to get too excited about Europe generally, and Switzerland in particular, with its economy that is roughly 4% of our own. Just the same, Switzerland’s per capita GDP is roughly $80,000 and the US’s is only $50,000. So I’m not smug about this; it is just that Switzerland is a small country. What’s more, what is wrong with European economic policy seems pretty simple: shared currency, austerity, and German arrogance. It is this last item that provides the hook.

The German government has really been impossible throughout this economic crisis. It has used the rhetoric of moral rectitude to bludgeon the rest of the European Union, “If only you acted like us, you would be doing well!” That’s just not true. As Paul Krugman is fond of saying, “Economics is not a morality play.” Germany wants to continue to keep its exports cheap, thus helping to keep the rest of Europe depressed. It’s typical conservative “shared sacrifice”: you sacrifice everything and I’ll share nothing.

Last week, Switzerland did something that is kind of the opposite. It stopped pegging the Swiss franc to the euro. Up to that point, the franc had been artificially lowered because the Swiss economy is actually doing quite well. This act caused the franc to shoot up in value — as much as 30% at one point. This is good news for the rest of the EU. It means that Swiss exports will be more expensive and Swiss imports will be cheaper. It should also mean that the Swiss economy should take a little hit and unemployment should go up (but unemployment is very low now).

This highlights one of the most exasperating issues I have when talking to people about economics. Pretty much everyone thinks that a strong dollar is a good thing. It sounds good, right? And it is good — for the 1%. If you have a lot of money, then the more that money is worth, the better. But most people don’t have a lot of money, and most people need a job. For these people, a weak dollar is better because it makes our exports more competitive and imports less competitive.

An interesting aspect of this is that most people are upset (or were in 2012 when the media was covering it) that China was artificially holding down the value of its currency. This, everyone understood, made it harder for US businesses to sell to China and made Chinese businesses unfairly competitive selling to us. But the very same people who were upset about this, also wanted a strong dollar. What China is doing is strengthening our dollar! It is inconsistent to say, “I want a strong dollar and I want American exports to be competitive!” If you are for the strong dollar, you are for shipping jobs overseas for the benefit of people who already have too much money.

So what Switzerland did last week is what we’ve wanted China to do for years and years. It’s strange that Paul Krugman thinks it is a bad thing. I think that Dean Baker, as usual, has this one right. In fact, he even related it to Germany:

This is what needs to happen. The shared currency — especially the fact that Germany is part of it — is what is stopping the currency in Greece and other depressed nations from weakening so that their economies can grow. The Swiss National Bank didn’t do this for altruistic reasons. Krugman is probably right that its reasons are bad. But it will have a good effect on the EU.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day, everyone! As you ought to know, today is not his birthday. He was actually born on 15 January 1929. Given that his father lived to be just shy of 85 years old, there is a very good chance that King would be with us today if he had not be assassinated. It’s sad on a personal level, of course. But on a public level, it was a catastrophe; it would have been nice to have had him fighting for us for these last 47 years.

Rather than write something new and brilliant, I’m just going to quote from some of the articles I’ve written about him in the past. This is very long, so I’ve put it all below the fold. Continue reading →