Josh Barro made an excellent point a week and a half ago, How Conservatives Are Helping Obamacare. It isn’t the focus of the article, however. He noted that the Republicans are managing expectations about the implementation of the new healthcare law. So if next year comes without riots and a syphilis pandemic, people will likely be relieved.

This is interesting. You may remember back to the debates of the 2012 presidential election. Normally, each side tries to keep expectations low. “I’m just hoping my candidate can get through the debate without urinating on himself.” In fact, this is so expected that it is the major focus of discussions by the pundits in the lead up to debates. But this last year it was different. The Republicans set expectations high for Romney. It all worked out for him in the first debate, not so much because he was strong, but because Obama was so weak. I wondered at the time why this was, but that was about it.

Now with Republicans setting expectations for Obamacare so low, I have a thought. The Republican Party is more and more a closed system. It has its own media sources and interacts as little as possible with normal, middle of the road, media, which they consider to be liberal and biased. As a result, they convince themselves not only that they are right but that the other side is so obviously wrong that conservatives needn’t even worry about it. This was certainly seen in the last presidential election where a lot of conservatives thought Obama was such a weak candidate that they thought of course he would lose.

Another result of this kind of thinking is the extreme politics. Conservatives are not worried about working with the Democratic Party because they think that soon the Democratic Party will die off as we see riots in the street, inflation at 200% per week, and of course the coming syphilis pandemic. So why compromise when total control of the government is only one election cycle away.

Regarding Obamacare, they don’t think it will be a disaster, they know it. And so they don’t even play the expectations game. In fact, they think that it will be so bad that they could hardly overstate the catastrophe that is to come. This is a major error of judgement, of course. The facts indicate something else. Jonathan Cohn wrote a good article about this. The biggest issue is that the vast majority of people will see no change in their healthcare at all—they won’t even notice the Obamacare implementation. The people most affected will be those who don’t currently have health insurance and will get it. So they are likely to be pretty happy. Regardless, these are mostly poor people who vote Democrat anyway.

But facts really do not matter when everyone in your circle just knows that hyperinflation is right around the corner. The next step is for the conservatives to turn to conspiracy theories. Many conservatives even now argue that there really is hyperinflation and that the government is just hiding it. This kind of thinking is also at work with the “voter fraud” obsession on the right. They knew that Obama couldn’t win in 2012, and in fact he didn’t, because of voter fraud.

The irony is that thinking liberalism is in its death throes is causing the Republican Party to become less and less relevant. Eventually, it must create a critical imbalance in the party that causes it to go back to its roots as a conservative rather than revolutionary party. I look forward to that, because a real conservative party is needed—not just for the health of the Republicans but for the Democrats as well.

This morning, Greg Sargent returned us to the glory of the 1990s when we were treated to the delights of mainstream media sources seriously discussing allegations that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster killed. What is particularly tragic is that Foster killed himself, largely as the result of all the vicious attacks on him by the conservative movement. Of course Foster suffered from depression, but I suspect that had he never been part of Clinton White House, he would be alive today. So exactly the people who hasten his death, then used his death to attack the Clinton White House, most especially Hillary Clinton.

Sargent argued that those days are back. In particular, he argued that a new Karl Rove video is intended to bring back the “angry Hillary” meme. And that’s to be expected. Last year, the focus of the Benghazi hysteria was all on Obama, because they were trying to defeat him. Now they are focused on Clinton, because she is the front runner for 2016. I don’t think it as much shameless as it is pathetic. Conservatives really do not have any issues to deal with, so they trump up the most ridiculous “scandals” and beat them until finally the mainstream media start to cover them.

Check out this short video:

The argument is that Clinton was briefed by Greg Hicks, the ambassador’s aide, who told her it “was in fact terrorism.” Then, Clinton made a public statement contradicting that. But here’s the thing: one man’s opinion does not make Truth. During the lead-up to the Iraq War, Cheney and his minions combed through the intelligence, pulling out everything that made the case for war and ignoring everything that didn’t. There are always conflicting data. Clinton was no doubt briefed by many people and got conflicting information from many sources. All this video really says is that Clinton didn’t use the data from one source.

The video goes on to say that someone in the administration told him not to go to the press. There are questions about this anyway, but even if strictly true, it doesn’t mean much. I imagine a conversation like this:

Hicks: Clinton contradicted me!
WH: So? She got information from a number of sources.
Hicks: I’m going to the press!
WH: Don’t do that! This situation is already difficult enough.

But the Karl Rove attack is not about finding the true. It is about labeling Clinton as a woman who is capable of anything. Who knows, maybe she really did kill Vince Foster. Maybe she planned the Benghazi attack! Remember: Watergate was bad, but at least no one died!

On this day back in 1838, problem brother and assassin John Wilkes Booth was born. Movie composer Max Steiner was born in 1888. Fred Astaire was born in 1899. Film producer David O. Selznick was born in 1902. Electronic composer Milton Babbitt was born in 1916. Nancy Walker was born in 1922. And Sid Vicious was born in 1957—exactly one year before Rick Santorum. Coincidence?

Italian director Ettore Scola is 82 today. Comedy director Jim Abrahams is 69. Bono is 53. And science fiction writer John Scalzi is 44.

But the day belongs to Donovan? He’s 67 today. I kind of like him. He was really good in Don’t Look Back.

So happy birthday? Yes! Donovan!

According to Glenn Greenward, the ACLU was interested in what the White House policy was on intercepting “private” test messages. So they filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. And what you see on the left is the top of what they got back: 15 pages entirely blacked out (pdf). More and more I think electing Obama was a big mistake. I don’t mean that we would have been better off with McCain or Romney. (Although I have to say: I’m not certain if McCain wouldn’t have been better.) I just mean, in many ways, Clinton was a lot better and maybe his wife would have been too.

As I reported on Tuesday, the Obama administration is keeping up its fight against Plan B birth control. When the administration was against it last year, all the apologists said that it was just a political move. But it can’t be a political move now. It must just be that Obama really believes in limiting birth control.

This is the same thing I’ve been arguing for months about the Social Security and Medicare cuts: they aren’t compromises. They are policies that Obama really, truly, in his heart of hearts, wants. As I wrote a month and a half ago: Obama’s Just Not That Into You.

Is it time to admit that he never was?

Afterword

This is exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time: the rich are crazy to not pay attention to income inequality. They need to give a little to the poorer classes or it will create instability. And the rich have far more to lose than anyone. But they just don’t see it.

One of the more interesting action sequences of Iron Man 3 involves the superhero’s catching of 13 people who have been blown off of Air Force One. He flies around and manages to get 12 of them. He can’t hold on to them all, so he has them hold on to each other, creating a giant chain. He hasn’t gotten the last guy. His computer announces that there are but 400 feet to go before they hit the earth. So he speeds up, grabs the last guy, and slows just in time to miss the surface of the ocean. The crowd goes wild!

The Iron Man films really bug me when it comes to physics. Of all the superhero films, I think they are the worst. And it is all the same problem: acceleration! It doesn’t matter if you are in a bunch of padding or an iron suit, if you decelerate too quickly, you will die. And this happens again and again and again in the Iron Man movies. I know: I’m being a pedant. What’s more, this is far from the only physics related problem in the films. But it is the one thing I just can’t suspend disbelief on. Classical mechanics is the one subject in graduate school that I studied far beyond what was required—because I loved it so much.

So let’s look at our little sky dive sequence. I’m going to keep this really simple because I figure it will be bad enough for those who are not freaks about this stuff like I am. Iron Man is at 400 feet. The man he needs to catch is further down, but I’m not even going to worry about that. We’ll just assume that Iron Man catches him at that point. Now the man is falling at terminal velocity which is roughly 120 mph. That’s 55 m/s at a height of 120 m. But iron man can’t be moving at that speed; if he were, he would never catch the guy. So I’m going to assume he is moving at twice that speed: 110 m/s.

Thus, if he keeps at that speed for one second, they crash. So there isn’t much time. Over the course of 120 m (d), Iron Man must decelerate from 110 m/s (v0) to 0 m/s (vf). And we want to know what the average acceleration (a) is for these 13 people. Luckily, there is a handy equation that people learn in the first week or two of physics that helps us out:

The answer is that the average acceleration is 46 m/s/s or a tad less than 5 gs. This is about the level at which people lose consciousness. But there is a bigger problem here. I call it the Eraser factor.

I learned about this from my friend Mikhail. In Eraser, Arnold Schwarzenegger falls out of a plane and moves through the sky. He is looking for a parachute that also fell out of the plane. He grabs it and then fights to put it on, buckles it up, and pulls the rip cord. I asked Mikhail if this was possible. But I only mentioned the getting to the parachute part because frankly that was the impressive part for me. He told me it was, but that there was a problem. After locating the pack, you would have to “fight to put it on and buckle in.” Why? Because no one is strong enough to hold on to the parachute when it opens.

So think of our Air Force One survivors. Imagine a 150 pound man hanging from a pull-up bar. Now imagine what would happen if you suddenly attached 750 pounds of weight to him. He’d lose his grip and fall. As they all would. And this would happen at the beginning of Iron Man’s deceleration. So they would likely hit the ocean at a lot faster a speed than if Iron Man had never caught them in the first place. This reminds me of the film Hancock, where all of that superhero’s efforts to help people caused bigger problems. But the makers of Iron Man 3 just didn’t realize it.

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!