I gave up on PolitiFact a couple of years ago—long before the recent ridiculousness about the claim that House Republicans voted to end Medicare was named their Lie of the Year. The truth is that if you go to PolitiFact (I don’t recommend it, so I won’t provide a link), you will see that in general, the Republicans do worse than the Democrats. But even still, this greatly understates how much more lying goes on amongst conservatives than liberals. The biggest problem has to do with what PolitiFact chooses to fact check. For example, George Will’s constant stream of lies and misinformation about climate change never seem to interest PolitiFact.

Today, PolitiFact checked a number of things in the President’s State of the Union speech. In particular, they found his claim that businesses had created three million jobs in the last 22 months “half true.” Why? What was wrong with that claim? Nothing. So why did they say it was half true? Because PolitiFact had divined that Obama implied that government policy had something to do with it. Hence: half true. Apparently, the people at PolitiFact have never seen Dragnet; Just the facts, Ma’am.

This morning, Paul Krugman wrote about when facts aren’t facts about the half true designation. He was one of many. So PolitiFact, showed, in addition to being useless, they have no backbone; they changed the “half true” into “mostly true.” This did not help matters, because what the President said was in fact true. Krugman wrote again on finding the truth. He wrote

Rachel Maddow provides an excellent summary. And she ends it properly: “You’re fired!” Better late than never, everyone. Welcome to my world!

I present the following video (a catch from Ezra Klein’s Wonkbook) as an illustration of what it is like to be a freelance writer: lots of work for little pay. This young man made a $100 bet with his father than he could do a backflip every day in 2011. Watch it. It is really interesting. Shockingly, it only has a couple hundred views.

This is a lot of work for very little money. But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

I would be worried what people would have to say about this article, but no one reads my political writing. So I will go ahead and pretend to be brave.

I don’t understand all the uproar about Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons program. First, of course, there is the issue that the evidence is pretty poor that they even have one. Second, and more important, is the issue that the uproar just seems racist. Why are European countries allowed nukes, but not Iran? Why are Asian countries allowed nukes, but not Iran? Why is Israel allowed nukes, but not Iran?

I know the standard answer: the Iranians are crazy and they’ll actually use it. But this exact argument was used against the Soviets. Remember what a big deal détente was? The idea that the Nixon administration would treat the communist countries as if they were rational like we were? Shocking! And that’s how I feel about Iran. Would they actually use a nuclear weapon? I just don’t see it. Would they give it to a terrorist group? Give me a break! A millionaire won’t even give a bum a dollar; you think Iran would go to all that trouble just to create a bomb to give it away to some terrorist group that just as well might use it against Iran itself? Preposterous.

The bad side of allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon is that it would likely set off an arms race in the Middle East. But could it really be worse than anything that brought the US to have almost 10,000 warheads and Russia, a similar amount?

We need to stop pretending that countries we don’t like are irrational. They never were and they aren’t now. So can we all just lower the rhetoric before we start another war? Is it so much to ask that we all stay calm and peaceful?

Paul Krugman provided the following graph of total public and private debt, which I altered with red with the presidents at the different times. The only Republican who doesn’t look too bad is George H. W. Bush, who was an old-fashioned conservative. What it shows, as I’ve discussed before, is that modern Republicans are not economically conservative. In general, I don’t care about the budget deficit. But Republicans supposedly do. I’ve come to the conclusion that Republicans are not hypocritical; they are good old-fashioned 1984 styled authoritarians who care about one thing and one thing only: power for its own sake. And as a country, we really need to wake up to this.

As regular readers of this blog know, my background is in climate change science. And recently, I have become very angry about continued global warming denial, because now it sounds so much like evolution denial. I think I may have a way to talk to conservatives about it.

I just heard Fred Thompson talking about Newt Gingrich and he said something like, “I’m a father and a grandfather and therefore…” I suspect that he would have gone on to talk about the economy. It doesn’t matter what Fred Thompson says—ever. But it got me thinking: most conservatives are old and therefore have children and grandchildren. And as ridiculous as their opinions are, they do care about these young people.

Given this, I have a question. Let’s suppose there is only a one percent chance that global warming is actually happening. If it does happen, it is going to have a profound effect[1] on future generations, and certainly for the next five generations, it is going to be worse for the next than it was for the last. If this has only a 1% chance of happening, isn’t it a good idea to be truly conservative and try to stop it from happening, rather than continuing on as we have for the sake of the fossil fuel industry?[2]

[1] People (myself included) have argued that there will be positive changes of global warming. In particular, it is likely that the biodiversity of the earth will increase. There are several reasons for this. First, more CO2 is good for plants. Second, within reason, higher temperatures are good for plants. And third, the temperatures at the equator will change little and the poles lots. But what this all means is that there will probably be more biodiversity in bacteria, plants, and insects. The situation for mammals, for example, looks very bad. And regardless, the rapidness of the heating could cause the whole life-cycle of the planet to go haywire, causing biodiversity to go way down for millions of years. The fact is that we just don’t know.

[2] The case is always made that fighting global warming would hurt the economy. In a booming economy, that is certainly true. But in a depressed economy like we now have and will continue to have? It is not true. Now is the perfect time to get all forms of pollution under control. All more oil drilling does is make more billions of dollars for oil companies. Have you ever wondered why the oil companies are so keen to drill up in Alaska, even though the total amount of oil they will get is a fraction of a percent of what America needs each year? It is because even though the oil means nothing to our country, it means billions of dollars for the oil companies. Don’t be fooled.

Last Thursday on The Daily Show, Jason Jones did a very funny segment about the over-regulation of the Mob via the RICO laws:

I really like this and I think it gets at the heart of what is wrong with the economy: it is largely controlled by thieves. But as usual with The Daily Show, I’m not really sure that they get it. Too often, such segments are only about making the interviewees look stupid. And there was a lot of that in here, although in general, Jason Jones tends to play the fool in his segments. And no one came off looking particularly bad except (maybe) Lou Ferantte, who is just trying to sell his book Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman.

But I still think the middle right of the middle right of the middle right philosophy[1] that dominates at The Daily Show probably sees this feature as an attack on getting rid of all regulation. It is still a highly corporate-friendly philosophy that believes (without knowing it) that regulation must be kept as low as possible so those in power can have as much as they can get away with without having their heads end up on a bunch of pikes.

[1] Most people in the US think that institutions like MSNBC and The Daily Show are liberal because they frequently go after the Republicans. This misses the grand scope of political debate and the profound change that has taken place in America over the last 40 years. President Nixon’s policies were slightly to the right of current “Socialist” Barry Sanders. What used to be center-right in America is now what conservatives call “Socialist!” or “Communist!” or “Nazi!” (Because, as Glenn Beck will tell you, the Nazis were socialists because “Nazi” is just short for “National Socialism.” Of course, for the ignorant Atlas Shrugged quoter, this is true because socialism—collectivism—is any form of government that requires any form of taxation—or much else—from the governed.)

Now I don’t feel so bad about The Revolution Will Be Televised. In that article I had a vision (Fantasy?) about a time when the people would rise up in this country and exact vengeance for what has become a very unjust country. And in particular, I pointed out that many more or less good people would end up being hurt. This was sort of my gentle take on Ward Churchill’s Some People Push Back.

Yesterday, Brad DeLong tweeted the following:

That was my point.

I know it’s hard to tell because of my well-rounded interests, but I’m so far from being in the Hip Hop Loop, I’m not even sure exactly what qualifies as hip hop. The only reason Nicki Minaj blipped on my radar was because of her appearance on Ellen D’s show. And the only reason I saw that was because another little blip from Britain caught Ellen’s eye. Meet Sophia Grace.

Here’s where Nicki Minaj comes in…

Nicki is, as far as I know, a YouTube Cinderella. Good for her. Sophia, as far as I can tell, is an adorable (from a distance) little spaz. Good luck to her parents. My question is, why does any parent allow a precocious child to listen to, much less emulate, a young woman who sings songs like the explicit, “Stupid Hoe“?