The Young Turks note how wrote Fox News commentator Dick Morris has been thus far in the Presidential race. It is really good:
Sorry that I haven’t been around much recently. I’ve been on vacation, and since getting back, I’ve been working on other things. I will be posting more soon.
George Will annoys me more than most conservative pundits. Most commentators on the right can be dismissed as ignorant dittoheads, but Will has a reputation—largely undeserved—as intelligent, knowledgeable, and even thoughtful. Worst of all, he has developed a great capacity to sound reasonable while he distracts and deceives.
This was on display, as always, on this morning’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.
The discussion was about what deductions Romney would eliminate to offset his $5 trillion in tax cuts that heavily favor the wealthy. The Tax Policy Center has shown that there is no way that he can do this without making the middle class pay higher taxes. This is, as they say, an inconvenient truth. What is a movement conservative like George Will to do?
Using a well practiced trick, he simply obscures the debate with an irrelevant, but very reasonable sounding observation. He notes that most of the money to be gained through ending tax deductions must come from the middle class because it is such a large part of the economy. In the context of the argument, this only makes Romney’s plan look worse: of course he must pay for tax cuts for the rich with tax increases for the middle class! But Will manages to keep this conclusion at bay.
Instead, he uses the observation as rhetorical slight of hand (with the added benefit of being able to get in a quick attack on FDR). His argument is thus that we must raise taxes on the middle class because that’s where the money is. And if we fall for this presto-chango, and I dare say most people do, it is clear that we must raises taxes on the middle class. This wouldn’t be true even if the only way to raise revenue was to close tax deductions. We might, for example, close the tax deductions that primarily benefit the wealthy without simultaneously slashing their tax rates.
But this wasn’t even what the discussion was about. Can Romney close tax deductions of the rich to offset his tax cuts for the rich? No. But George Will doesn’t want us to know this, so he distracts us into thinking about where most of the tax deductions are in the current law. I would say that Ricky Jay ought to worry about George Will stealing his act, but there is a difference between conjuring and chicanery.
Ladies and gentlemen: “principled” conservative pundit George Will.
The whole discussion is worth watching. In particular, it is interesting that Senator Rand Paul did not know that government employment has gone down under Obama. Note how self satisfied he is in slipping this supposed fact into the debate. He is quite certain he has Krugman cold. The key lines are here:
Paul Krugman: Of course. That’s a fact.
But that doesn’t stop Rand Paul. He follows with, “No, the size of growth of government is enormous under president Obama.” If he weren’t a Republican, it would be hard to believe. Here’s the whole video:
I spent the whole of yesterday at the Getty Center. Truly, I was none too keen on it, given my general opinion of J. Paul Getty—one of the great third basers who we are all supposed to bow down to. The fact that he was a miser doesn’t help matters. He loaned his son money to pay for the kidnap ransom of his grandson. But he is perhaps best known for providing a payphone for his house guests to use. But the great thing about misers is that they die—leaving their money to go to cool things like, well, the Getty Center.
The museum has a limited collection in some ways. It is heavy on neoclassical art. And it was very limit on modern and medieval (and older) works. Nonetheless, it had some exquisite pieces. For example, the image on the left is Frantisek Kupka’s pastel drawing Girl Shading Her Eyes. It was one of many pieces that I was not allowed to photograph. They are tyrants. But I was able to take photos and video of a number of other things that I will post later. In particular, they have the best single Impressionist exhibit that I’ve seen—20+ paintings.
They also had a very moving collection of illuminated manuscripts from roughly 1200 to 1500. Next to it was a collection of stained glass from the same period. I am rarely as moved by anything as I am religious art from this time. I find this very strange, because most modern religious art (western anyway) leaves me cold.
When I get back home, I plan to cut together a video with all the stuff I saw, along with my observations—for what they’re worth. One thing worth mentioning right now is that Renoir painted very much like Pissarro in their early years, but they went in very different directions. Anyway, that’s all for now.
Radio Lab produced an exceptional short program called Unraveling Bolero. It tells the story of the Anne Adams, a PhD cell biologist turned artist. Her change from science to art was the result of the early stages of a brain disease called frontotemporal dementia. The disease causes the language portion of the brain (left frontal lobe) to die. In the process, it opens up the mind to great creativity that the constant chatter of the left lobe tends to suppress.
This is apparently the same thing that happened to Maurice Ravel. I’ve always hated his Bolero (although I’m rethinking it now), even as I’ve liked his other work, which is much like Claude Debussy. The speculation is that Ravel suffered from the same brain disease. Anyway, Adams had a good run of 14 years, during which she produced an astounding amount of really compelling work.
I’m on vacation, so I don’t have time to talk about this stuff much. But here is some of her work that I really like.
Migraine:
International House:
Pebbles:
Okay, I know it comes as no surprise that Chuck Norris and his wife are freaks. But really, this is over the top:
I think it will be really bad for our country—and perhaps the world—if Mitt Romney becomes President. But I don’t think it will be apocalyptic. I don’t think it will lead to “1,000 years of darkness.” I know a lot of Republicans would like to limit the right to vote. Ann Coulter thinks 21 should be the voting age. (Why? Because they tend to vote Democratic!) But really, can the most naive and ignorant voter really compare to the Norrises?
I don’t think so.
Will sent me this today. I assume there is a red cup for Romney (but they may be waiting for him come back from the vacation he started after the RNC). But who cares? This is great:
We have been good enough that we really do deserve better than Obama, but we haven’t been anywhere near bad enough to deserve Romeny. Obama-Biden 2012!
I watched last Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher. As regular readers know, I’m not that keen on Maher—he’s a bit too much the arrogant libertarian (and a kind of atheist that might amuse me sometimes, but is mostly annoying). On this episode, I was very much in sync with Maher. Also on the show was Soledad O’Brien, who has been acting like a real journalist over on CNN. (She can’t last long!) Jason Alexander was there with his new “semi-permanent” rug; he looked good, but he was typical of actors on the show: not that interesting. But what really struck me was Ron Christie, the gentle conservative with the harsh ideas.
I’ve put together a little video where I show the Ron Christie clips and discuss them. People who have followed my first small steps into the field of videography will note that this one doesn’t look too bad—except for the reflection on my glasses, but I like that in some ways: it makes me look like a cartoon nerd (which is what I am). Anyway, take a look at it and then I’ll have a few things to add:
I finally figured out what Christie was saying about Paul Ryan taking the money out of Medicare and putting it back in. He claims (I don’t think this is true) that Ryan’s plan takes these savings of Obama and then puts that money back into providing more Medicare. What is most remarkable about what he says is that this is what Obama has done: saved money for the Medicare plan. As a result of it, the program’s under-funding has been cut by almost 70%. The ACA makes Medicare viable for longer. But Ron Christie calls it savings when it is a Republican and cuts when it is a Democrat.
The bit Christie says about the Ryan plan not affecting anyone older than 55 is pure Republican talking point. But what exactly is the larger point? Paul Ryan is putting more money into Medicare so that he can reduce the number of people who get it? It is just madness. And, of course, there is this:
What I most hate about Ron Christie is exactly how “nice” he seems. He is just the same as Arthur Laffer. They, and many more like them, spew this conservative nonsense and when they are called on it, they just smile and say, “Ah, shucks!” They never admit to being wrong. Their whole approach is just to get out as much disinformation as they can.
This reminds me of the movie Flock of Dodos about the “Intelligent Design” movement. It was run by all these really nice old people. They were all so friendly! But they are also all committed to destroying our culture. That goes for the “reasonable” Republicans too.
This via Crooks & Liars. Governor Brown challenges New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to a three mile race:
I think there may also be a jab at Paul Ryan who recently claimed to have run a 3 hour marathon. For those of you that don’t know, that would be a really fast marathon. In fact, 100 years ago, that was the world record. Today, we are pushing the two hour marathon. Regardless, if I committed the rest of my life to marathon running, I would never be able to run a 3 hour marathon. However, Ryan has run a marathon in something over 4 hours which is still really impressive. Why did he feel he had to exaggerate? Does he have delusions of John Galt?
Regardless: California is better than New Jersey, because our governor can run faster. Also, our governor isn’t a self-serving fucktard who gets his jollies from yelling at people with little power.
I hate the show The Big Bang Theory. It is a stupid person’s idea of what smart people are like. But this kind of thing is hardly new. For years, I’ve been bugged by Star Trek. For example, there was an episode in The Next Generation where the surface temperature of some planet (or something) was minus 290 degrees Celsius. Or something. Regardless, it was some number of degrees below absolute zero. You would think these shows would have science advisers who would catch this kind of thing. And you would be half right: they have science advisers but they don’t catch this kind of thing.
By far the most annoying Star Trek science problem is Mr. Spock’s hyper-precision. He can’t say the temperature is 30 degrees; he has to say that it is “approximately” 32.14 degrees. This is okay when discussing something that can be stated that accurately, although adding that “approximately” really roils. But check out this scene from the episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”:
1,771,561! It is way too precise a number given his calculation, given that his calculation is just 11 to the 6th power. He explains this.
But then he goes on to add in calculations that he most definitely didn’t do. He did not allow for the amount of grain consumed nor the volume of the storage containers. So again, we have TV writers who don’t understand this kind of thing. They figure, sciencey kind of people act and talk like this. The problem is, a real life scientist would most likely say something like this, “Over a million, most likely.”
I really like Melissa Harris-Perry. But I haven’t paid much attention to her MSNBC show. She’s clearly thrilled to have the show, and I’ve thought that after she calmed down, the show would be worth watching. For the time, she was just too damned chipper.
Well, perhaps it is time to take another look at the Melissa Harris-Perry Show. This is a catch of Crooks & Liars. There is a panel discussion about the racist stigma of the word “welfare.”
Much of the segment is what you would expect. Throughout, fucktard not-a-blond-bimbo-conservative-only-because-she’s-not-blond Monica Mehta plays the foil to the other liberal guests. But at about the 8:00 mark, things get very exciting. So exciting, I lost my breath. It was thrilling.
Mehta drags out the standard conservative canard that class mobility comes from “taking risks.” At this point, Harris-Perry loses it and says:
Really. Watch this. It is great:
What am I doing? I am doing a half-programming, half-data entry job involving spam. Up until now, I thought that I was working for lawyers who were also spammers. This is all very cloak & dagger stuff. They don’t tell me nothin’.
But today, I can’t see this as anything other than this unnamed law firm gearing up for a class action lawsuit against spammers.
Which makes me feel almost proud. And that’s nice, because this work is not fun.
And what I am working on today? [Redacted] of course!
You’re welcome!
Update
Or maybe not.
I’m busy doing busy guy stuff. But yesterday, The Big Empty posted this great photograph:
Yes, they did!