One of the best articles I ever wrote was, I Was a Middle Class Food Stamp Kid. In it, I discussed how my parents owned a 7-11 when I was a kid. There were lots of people who lived near by and they spent food stamps to pay for stuff. That helped them, and that was great. But the truth of the matter is that those food stamps helped everyone — most especially my family. I estimated that 5% of the store’s gross income came from food stamps — probably more than our entire margin. It is a sad thing that people like me tend to look down on poor people who are dependent upon SNAP benefits, even while they help us as much if not more.

On Friday, David Brooks wrote, The Nature of Poverty. As the totally clueless commentator that he is, he thinks he has a big ol’ scoop. You see, silly people like Jon Stewart complain that we aren’t doing enough about poverty in this country. But Brooks has some news for you, “Since 1980 federal antipoverty spending has exploded… in 2013 the federal government spent nearly $14,000 per poor person.” If we just gave that money to poor families, they would be middle class!

It should come as no surprise that Brooks concluded his column, “The world is waiting for a thinker who can describe poverty through the lens of social psychology.” That’s because it isn’t his conclusion. This is his unspoken postulate mascaraing as a conclusion. Where have we heard this sort of thing before, “Individuals are left without the norms that middle-class people take for granted.” Oh, that’s right: the last time David Brooks “tackled” the issue. It’s always about social dysfunction among the poor — the causation never goes the other way. Why would it? The whole point is to tax the rich as little as possible and to tell the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

But as Dean Baker was quick to point out, Brooks’ statistic was nonsense, David Brooks and the Federal Government’s $14,000 Per Year Per Poor Person. A shocking 40% of it is in the form of Medicaid. That is money that doesn’t go to the poor but rather “directly to doctors and other health care providers.” It is true that the poor get medical care, but the cost is so high because doctors make twice in America what they make in the rest of the advanced world.

So this is a situation like mine growing up in a 7-11 store. What we have here is welfare for the well off that people like David Brooks pretends is done for the poor. To him, somehow doctors’ salaries would go down if only poor children did better on the marshmallow challenge. This is just a way for rich people to justify doing nothing while pretending to care.

As for the other 60%, well, it isn’t as Brooks claimed either. That total $14,000 claim is based upon taking all of the money that we spend on programs for lower income people, and then dividing it by the much smaller number of people below the poverty line. So they don’t actually get that much money. As Baker noted, we are a stingy society, “The average family of three on TANF gets less than $500 a month. The average food stamp benefit is $133 per person.”

Paul Krugman later pointed out that the funding for these programs have all basically been flat — except for Medicaid, and it has only been going up because healthcare costs are going up, not the amount of service. He provided this helpful graph:

So people like Jon Stewart are right. And David Brooks is just a jerk.

In general, Judith Miller’s book tour has been really upsetting. It isn’t that I blame her for the Iraq War. But she was at a bare minimum a useful fool of the Bush administration that was determined to go to war with Iraq. Yet here she is with her new book, The Story. And every time I see her, she is making the same reasonable sounding, but wrong, claims that it wasn’t her — it was the flawed intelligence. If pushed, she will admit that, sure, it wasn’t the intelligence as such, but rather the intelligence filtered through the White House that was wrong. But then she will follow it up with something to the effect that all the reporters got it wrong — except Knight Ridder. But even that heads back at her, because eventually even they assumed they were wrong because, well, look at what The New York Times was reporting!

So normally, I wouldn’t have watched Jon Stewart’s interview with her on The Daily Show. But I heard that he really went after her. And he did indeed. But the truth is that Judith Miller is very good at deflecting criticism. And she is just going to sit there, smile, and repeat her mantra, “I was just reporting what I thought was true; all the other reporters were doing it.” It’s just shameful. And Stewart’s conclusion was appropriate:

But the main thing was the total disgust that was on his face. Miller, of course, smiled through it all. She is, after all, not just selling a book; she’s selling herself. But the best that Stewart could manage was a very tight, clearly angry, forced smirk. I was glad to see it. He clearly feels the way I do.

I want to be clear about what this feeling is. I have no wish to see Judith Miller harassed and belittled for the rest of her life. People make mistakes. For some, it is small and maybe all it does it ruin their lives. But some make mistakes on a grand scale. Miller is such a person. Now I fully appreciate that if Cheney and company didn’t have access to her, they would have found someone else. But they did have her, and it isn’t asking so much for her to admit that she did a bad job.

Ultimately, the problem is with the media system itself. Judith Miller has presented herself — and continues to — as a neutral observer. She’s just reporting the facts as she finds them. But as The Daily Show interview shows, this isn’t the case. She actually did have an ax to grind. I don’t doubt that she was unaware of it. But she appears to be so focused on exonerating herself that she is still unaware of her biases. If she were honest and admitted that, yes in fact, she wanted to believe the nonsense that the White House was dishing, then it would all be over. I would accept that she — very much like myself — is imperfect. But the Judith Miller going all over the nation pimping her book? She hasn’t learned a thing.

In Paul Krugman’s column on Monday, he went after those pundits who will never admit to being wrong, Nobody Said That. It is about this tendency for pundits to make predictions, and then, when they are shown to be wrong, to claim that they never made the prediction. Krugman focused on Obamacare. It is now common for people to claim, “Nobody ever said that Obamacare wouldn’t insure more people.” But of course, lots of people did just that — including Speaker of House John Boehner just one year ago.

What’s really going on here is that conservatives are not being honest when they make their arguments in the first place. As I’ve been saying for many years, the real conservative complaint about Obamacare has nothing to do with what they talk about. The law raises taxes on the rich. Conservatives are completely against that on principle. But the optics are terrible. Conservatives can’t go around saying that they hate a law that helps struggling workers just because millionaires can’t ever be taxed. So we got arguments about the tyranny of the individual mandate — an idea conservatives had supported just a few years earlier. And, of course, we got “Socialism!” and “Death Panels!” and all the other hysteria.

This pattern is something that I’m very used to with regards to libertarians. The classic minimum wage discussion with a libertarian goes as follows. The libertarian will say that the minimum wage costs jobs. When you point out that at its current rate it doesn’t cost jobs — or at least that the research on it doesn’t show much to support their claim — they change the argument. Now the libertarian will say that people should have the right to enter into any contract they want. These arguments always go from practical claims that are not supported to theoretical claims about values that cannot be countered with evidence.

The same thing is going on in the fight about Obamacare. Elites who hate the law could not care less about what the law is trying to accomplish. But most people aren’t interested in theoretical arguments. So they start with the practical claims. And the truth is that even the claims that it is “Socialism!” and “Will kill granny!” are practical claims that really can be countered with evidence — and have been! But there is a certain amount of brilliance on the part of conservatives with regard to this.

Critics of Obamacare always acknowledged that if the law got going, it would be impossible to stop. Once people are receiving benefits from a government program, they tend to like them. (This doesn’t stop conservative elites from continuing to try to kill Social Security and Medicare.) So it made sense to make dire predictions about the law that even they knew were rubbish. The same tactic was used to get us into the Iraq War. By the time the truth came out, those who wanted the war had succeeded.

But notice how different this is from the liberal movement, which for all its problems, is very practical. If Obamacare had failed to insure more people, if it had caused prices to go up, if it had tanked the economy, then something would have to be done. This is because the Democratic Party pushed Obamacare for practical reasons. It wasn’t pushed — as many conservatives fatuously claim — just to make government bigger and control more people. The arguments for Obamacare were the actual reasons that supporters had for the law.

What continues to boggle my mind is that so many people vote for the Republican Party when it actually doesn’t talk straight. We have seen the case of Tea Partier James Webb who decided (briefly) to vote for the Democrats because of Obamacare. But I suspect in the end, the conservative movement will be fine because of what our good friend Ambrose Bierce knew a century ago, “Radicalism: the conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today.” Obamacare will become something that the conservative base depends upon (while its elites continue to look for ways to kill it). But the base will continue to vote for tax cuts for the rich in the name of whatever distractions the conservative elites are pimping at that time.

What’s important to remember is that for the conservative pundits, what they were saying over the last few years about Obamacare doesn’t matter. What they meant was that they didn’t like the law because it took money from the rich and gave it to the non-rich. That was always the issue. The practical arguments were just for the prols.

Having just written an article about my confusion regarding whether we should allow bakers to be bigots, I want to talk a little bit about the Supreme Court oral arguments concerning Obergefell v Hodges. The are two questions before the court. The first one is whether same sex marriage should be mandated nationwide. The second, should the court find against the plaintiffs in the first, is whether states that do not allow same sex marriage will be required to recognize same sex marriages in other states — this is called “reciprocity.” From the standpoint of the law, the second question is more important. From the standpoint of civil rights the first question is key.

The reason the second question is more important as a matter of law is because not doing so causes all kinds of legal issues. States must recognize the power of other states to run their affairs. If a same sex couple is married in California, that marriage is now accepted by the federal government. But it isn’t recognized by, for example, the state of Ohio. What happens if that couple has a child and then they move to Ohio? Suddenly the couple isn’t married and the child is the responsibility of… who? There are all kinds of less consequential issues that come up when states do not reciprocate in this matter.

The first question is a matter of civil rights because it involves equal protection. If the court finds for the defendants in the first question and for the plaintiffs in the second, they will be setting up a situation where rich members of the Ohio LGBT community can fly over to New York and get married. But lower income members can’t do that. So in effect, poor LGBT people will not have the same rights. Now one could argue — And I would! — that this kind of discrimination is everywhere in our society. But that’s hardly a justification for allowing it in this case. Same sex marriage in Ohio would be a kind of Animal Farm equality, “All LGBT people are equal, but some LGBT people are more equal than others.”

Having said all this, I tend to think that the Supreme Court is going to worm out of this — splitting the difference by just finding for the plaintiffs in the second question. But maybe not. At BuzzFeed News, Chris Geidner seems to think that Kennedy is going to go for full marriage equality, Supreme Court Appears Ready To Rule In Favor of Marriage Equality. The basis for this claim is something interesting that Kennedy did. The hearing was divided between the two questions. During the hearing for the first, Kennedy was dominant, asking many questions and making many comments. But during the hearing for the second question, all he did was ask if the court could rule differently on the two questions.

I don’t find this particularly heartening. This is because during the first question’s discussion, he asked about the history of marriage being between “one man and one woman.” As Huffington Post summarized it, Supreme Court Mulls How Marriage Equality Will Come About. So there doesn’t seem to be any question that Kennedy thinks that same sex marriage should be made legal nationally. I took his question in the second half of the hearing to mean that he thought that the plaintiffs had the better of the argument, but for the sake of social conservatives, we should go slow and just mandate reciprocity.

I still think this is a good outcome. But it will indicate just how political the Supreme Court really is. On the other hand, if the court decides to not ruffle the feathers of the social conservatives and then finds for the plaintiffs in King v Burwell (the current Obamacare case), it will mean that they are just a bunch of hacks. Let’s hope not.

I’ve been trying to get my head around the issue of wedding cakes and same sex weddings. And part of my problem is that it is all so silly. On the Christian side, it doesn’t make any sense at all. The Bible — the old testament anyway — is kind of down on same sex relations. But it doesn’t actually say anything about marriage. This is just the same old modern Christian nonsense, “This is the literal word of God and I know that because my pastor told me it was!” It is so insulting to religion itself. What incredibly weak theology.

Just the same, why would same sex couples want to do business with such vile people? I understand if there is only one bakery in town. But this most recent case was in Gresham, OR. That’s right next to Portland. There are a lot of bakeries in that area. The only reason I can see a problem here — and it does apply — is because the couple didn’t know that this was a bakery that reserves the right to discriminate against same sex couples. Overall, it is hard for me to get too upset about this. There are total jerks in the world, and a lot of them have always called themselves Christians.

The case in Oregon is very clear as a matter of law. The state has a non-discrimination law. Sweet Cakes by Melissa very clearly broke the law. A same sex couple sued them. The owners lost. Boo hoo. This is what happens when you decide your business should be used for moral grandstanding instead of making money. You lose. Check the law the next time you decide to do something like this. Above all, stop whining. See that picture of Melissa crying to all the true believers at the 2014 Values Voters Summit? This is what happens when you let your husband be a bigot behind the counter.

Of course, the bakery owners — like the Indiana pizza store owners — have seen donations following in from like minded Christians from across the country. But these things are only going to last so long. These are not customers chipping in to keep a well loved store afloat, like we saw with Borderlands Books. The donations will last only as long as Fox News is pimping the story. This is a thing, but it is not going to keep the bigot bakery industry afloat past next Thanksgiving. A better solution needs to be found.

This is where the push for all these “religious liberty” laws are coming from. But even they have a short self life. In a place like Portland, I suspect the problem could be solved simply by letting people like Melissa discriminate but require that she put up a sign that says, “We don’t serve same sex weddings.” I think that would put a pretty quick end of Sweet Cakes by Melissa. But that’s just it. I suspect Melissa and her husband would be upset at having to post such a sign. They would see it as persecution — like the Nazis making the Jews wear arm bands. It wouldn’t be. It would just be truth in advertising. They should be grateful that the sign didn’t read, “Warning: we are bigots.”

So the sign wouldn’t solve the problems in Oregon, much less rural Mississippi. But given that this isn’t a question of basic needs — food and lodging — I would like to find a free market solution to it. Maybe I’m just being naive, but I really don’t think this kind of prejudice is going to survive the cold light of day. I want to watch as places like Sweet Cakes by Melissa get wiped out as only the most hardcore bigots are willing to do business with them. But like I said, I’m still struggling with the issue. But one thing should be clear, “Christians: the end is nigh!”

I want to make one thing clear: I never thought John Kerry was a bad presidential candidate. I was a very early supporter of his. I never much liked Howard Dean. Now, of course, I would have been a supporter of Dick Gephardt or Dennis Kucinich. But then, I really liked Kerry. I even read his stupid campaign biography! And since then, of course, I’ve done my own research. And by my calculations, Bush had a built-in advantage as big as the one that his father had when he ran against Dukakis in 1988. And it was almost as big as the one Clinton had over Dole in 1996 and Obama had over Romney in 2012. Just the same, there is one way that Kerry was a weak candidate — which I will get to in a moment.

But according to Matt Yglesias, a lot of people remember Kerry as a bad candidate, If Hillary Clinton Is the Next John Kerry, That’s Good News for Democrats. It’s an interesting article, but kind of shallow. All it talks about is how Kerry actually did somewhat better than would be expected given the economic fundamentals. I was expecting some information on demographics. I suspect that just the change in the composition of the American electorate would have changed the election. If John Kerry had received just 120,000 more votes in Ohio, he would have become president. (This has made me start to rethink my position on economic fundamentals, which I plan to write about soon.)

Yglesias thinks that there are three reasons why many people think that Kerry was a bad candidate: (1) he lost; (2) people think Bush should have been easy to beat; and (3) most people didn’t like Kerry that much — they picked him as the “electable” candidate. I don’t think those second two make any sense at all. Back then, Karl Rove had this reputation for being some kind of political magician. People may have thought Bush was an idiot — but it was an idiot savant. We might not have thought he could run a country, but we knew he could campaign. As for the second point, it is almost never the case that partisans are really excited by their candidates. The last time that happened was in 1980 with the Republican Party.

I think people remember Kerry as a poor candidate because he lost. And that’s the only reason. What happens is that all the bad things stick out. There was his style of speech, to start with. Had he been a two term president, that style of speech would be remembered today as the very definition of “presidential.” But he didn’t even win one term, so it is remembered as awkward and pompous. There was the sailboarding. That is a clear sign of virility, but because he lost, now people remember it the way Republicans tried to spin it — as something strange. And there were actual mistakes that would be forgotten had he won. For example, there was the strange decision to not mention George W Bush at the convention. I still don’t know what that was about. On the other side of things, people don’t remember his great performance in the first presidential debate.

But there was a way to win that campaign. (Given what happened in 2008, it is probably best the Democrats did not win.) According to Lynn Vavreck’s book, The Message Matters, the only way for the Democratic Party to have won in 2004 was to change the subject from the economy. (I said this same thing about Romney in 2012.) When the economy is improving, the out-party just can’t make the case that the economy would grow even faster if only we “threw the bum out!” If the Democrats had nominated Dean, he could have made the campaign about the Iraq War. And he could have become president. The problem is that Dean really wasn’t a very good candidate. We needed Kerry — but without his vote for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq.

Otherwise, Yglesias is right: Kerry was a strong candidate. I will be happy if Clinton is as good.

I don’t much care what Bruce Jenner does or says. But his recent interview does allow me to discuss something that I care about: why people vote the way they do. To many people, the big thing in the interview was that Jenner is a Republican. At The Fix, Hunter Schwarz wrote, Bruce Jenner Is a Republican. Here’s the Reason That Shouldn’t Surprise You. Most of that article has to do with the fact that most athletes are conservative.

There is sample bias in this claim. Schwarz talks about professional athletes and people at Brown University. So we aren’t talking about just any people who are interested in sports, but people who have chosen to take it to a very high level. But okay, I’ll yield the point. I’m sure there is something to athletes being conservative, but not in the way that Schwarz thinks. He wrote, “[A]thletes inhabit a world of meritocracy and hierarchy.” Yeah, but that correlation probably runs the other way. One thing I’ve been harping on a while is the fact that at the highest levels of sports, there is basically no difference between people. My bet is that the kind of people who find working out to be such a fantastic thing are people with higher than average testosterone levels.

But the real reason that we shouldn’t be surprised that Bruce Jenner is a Republican is much simpler: he’s rich. The rich vote Republican, as I discussed almost three years ago, It’s the Poor, Stupid. So there really isn’t much to deconstruct about this. We should applaud him for doing something that is good for the nation generally and the transgender community specifically. But the fact that he is just another rich conservative who says he’s a Republican because, “I believe in the Constitution”? It’s worth a yawn.

What is more interesting is what I wrote about two years ago, Farewell Gay Liberals. I made a more general argument, but said much the same thing back then. Overall, the gay and lesbian community is richer than the nation overall. And gay rights are very quickly going away as an issue. Is there any question about where this leads?

Jenner’s revelation highlights this. There is little doubt that eventually, LGBT rights will not be a political issue at all. The LGBT community has the advantage that its members are born randomly. So its status as a minority group is likely to be very short indeed, whereas the status of African Americans as a minority group will go on and on and on. What we’ll see going forward with regard to the LGBT community is that those in that group will act politically just like the population as a whole. The poor and smart members of the community will be liberal. The rich and dumb members of the community will be conservative. And most will not show up to vote anyway.