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« Liberal Outrage: December 2013 | Main | Liberal Outrage: February 2014 » Liberal OutrageGood luck with that Yglesias tries to remind the Obama administration how negotiation works. This will be a good test of the new & feistier Obama that debuted in the SOTU address. By fnord12 | January 31, 2014, 10:34 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link The news that Obama is going to try to do more by executive action sparked predictable outrage, but both TPM and Yglesias look at the pushback so far and declare it particularly lame. First of all, Obama has some catching up to do if he even wants to match George W. Bush's number of executive orders. Second, the guy both TPM and Yglesias look at compares Obama unfavorably to Lincoln and FDR, who only used their executive powers for such minor things as freeing the slaves and taking us off the gold standard. I have to admit that raising the minimum wage for Federal contractors to $10 does look pretty tyrannical in comparison. Update: Ok, the guy TPM and Yglesias were focusing on has admitted he goofed. By fnord12 | January 30, 2014, 1:27 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link About a year ago i panned Scientific American for trying to say that liberals were just as anti-science (or moreso) than conservatives by citing anti-vaccination and anti-GMO sentiment. Kevin Drum links to an American Prospect report showing a study that anti-vaccination sentiment, at least, is not really concentrated amongst liberals and is actually slightly higher amongst conservatives (and especially Michele Bachmann!). As Kevin Drum says, that just leaves GMO, and some of that sentiment is less anti-science per se and more distrust of corporations, and especially their business practices (e.g. contamination of non-GMO farmers' fields, suing farmers for using their seed "technology"), and a desire for more testing and regulation. Maybe you think that's a distinction without a difference. But as i mentioned in my post from a year ago, the scale of the resistance is something else entirely; it's not lot like you have Democrats in Congress opposing GMOs the way you have Republicans opposing measures to combat global warming. By fnord12 | January 29, 2014, 1:34 PM | Liberal Outrage
& Science | Link Interesting insight from Maggie Gallagher at the right wing National Review: Reading the comments there is a whole different experience. In just one exchange you have the full gambit of opinion on this subject on the right, from the near-worshipful... ...to the very libertarian: I quote the above for the perspectives, not to mock. By fnord12 | January 29, 2014, 1:24 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link A welcome and long overdue change of strategy is being kicked off today for the Obama administration, beginning with an executive order raising the minimum wage of Federal contractors. Among the points raised in that article: Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer outlined the lessons learned in a three-page memo that Obama discussed with his Cabinet in recent weeks, according to several administration officials who have read the document. Among its conclusions is that Obama, a former state legislator and U.S. senator, too often governed more like a prime minister than a president. In a parliamentary system, a prime minister is elected by lawmakers and thus beholden to them in ways a president is not. According to the above article, it seems thinking about Obama's legacy is also partly what prompted this. Here's Greg Sargent's take: Resorting to executive authority is also about resetting the prism through which the American people evaluate the president's performance and his engagement with them -- by conveying a sense that he has a plan to move the country forward, and he's acting on it. Sargent follows up with poll numbers showing support for Obama using more executive authority. The truth is most people think the president is a lot more powerful than he really is, but weirdly the message from the Obama administration up until now is that he's actually a lot less powerful than he really is, as you can infer from my final quote, this time from Digby: Wait. The last I heard from all the analysts was that the presidency was little more than a ceremonial position, sort of like the Queen of England, and there's no point in expecting anything at all from it. Indeed, I had been given to understand that it's foolhardy to even think about what a president could accomplish with his one branch of government that oversees all federal agencies, the military and the entire regulatory state as long as a rump faction of the GOP held sway in the House of Representatives. Who knew he could actually do things and say things that might make a difference? By fnord12 | January 28, 2014, 1:19 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link So the Republican National Committee has come out and denounced the NSA spying. Call it opportunism, but hell, i'd take it. Here's how the MSNBC article characterizes the shift: The problem is that first part. Let's just say i was so singlemindedly opposed to the spying regardless of other issues that, using the massive influence of this blog, i ensured that Republicans had a major sweep in 2016. As soon as Republicans got back in power, they'd no longer be worried about Democrats controlling the NSA, and aside from their (fringe) libertarian wing, they'd go back to supporting it. But probably the Democrats would then go back to opposing it, as they did when the Bush administration was running it. So i can only get support from a political party while they are in the opposition. I guess when i put it that way, this is actually a no-brainer. The Republicans are much better as an opposition party than the Democrats were under Bush. So i guess i should just be happy with the RNC's change and wait for them to start shutting down the government or whatever until they get their way on this. By fnord12 | January 27, 2014, 1:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Friend Bob won't release his similar, but not personally tragic, story, but at least we have this. (I want the world to know that i am linking to the Keven Drum re-blogging of this instead the original article because the original article automatically starts playing a video, because people that run news websites are morons.) By fnord12 | January 21, 2014, 12:27 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link FAIR used to republish their 1995 The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV every year. I don't think they republished it this year but it's still relevant and available. There is also this blog post, which includes this very clear quote: "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis." I bring this up only because of Sarah Palin quoting the "content of their character" line and then telling Obama to not play the race card this Martin Luther King Day. Sarah Palin is of course an idiot, but the basic sentiment that racism is basically over and King wouldn't have wanted us to still be talking about race or having policies based on race is more widespread than her, and i agree with FAIR that it's in part due to the fact that King's message has been significantly watered down. Put it in the same category as people being shocked, shocked to learn that Nelson Mandela associated with Socialists while he was fighting apartheid. We haven't reached the end of racism, people are still trying to prevent blacks from voting, there is racial inequality in this country that can't just be explained by class problems, etc.. Today of all days (and really, i'm ok with all days), it's ok for Obama to "play the race card". (This is all regardless of the fact that our very cautious president is unlikey to actually do so.) By fnord12 | January 20, 2014, 4:11 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link David Atkins at Digby's site, quoting the Economist, is on my beat about how the workers should share in productivity gains. By fnord12 | January 17, 2014, 1:17 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Yahoo news (via Digby) notes that Obama's big speech today defending NSA spying happens to be on the anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex. By fnord12 | January 17, 2014, 1:15 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link If you want to see the economic takedown of David Brook's latest article blaming teenage moms and pot smokers for economic inequality, see Dean Baker and Paul Krugman and also the "Top Picks" on the comments section of Brook's column. But on top of all the factual inaccuracies, there's also the strategic distraction that comes out of this kind of "reasonable conservative" schtick. Brooks writes: Democrats often see low wages as both a human capital problem and a problem caused by unequal economic power. Republicans are more likely to see them just as a human capital problem. If we're going to pass bipartisan legislation, we're going to have to start with the human capital piece, where there is some agreement, not the class conflict piece, where there is none. ...If we're going to mobilize a policy revolution, we should focus on the real concrete issues: bad schools, no jobs for young men, broken families, neighborhoods without mediating institutions. We should not be focusing on a secondary issue and a statistical byproduct. Sure, ok, i'm on board with that for starters. Please name 40 Republican Senators and 118 Republican Congressman that will vote for a bill that funds schools, infrastructure spending, and social workers to address "bad schools, no jobs for young men, and broken families and neighborhoods without mediating institutions". But of course that's not possible. Republicans wouldn't even agree that those are the solutions to those problems, and addressing those issues aren't Republican priorities in any event. So suggesting that Democrats try to find some sort of bipartisan compromise is nothing more than a stalling tactic. So we'll keep pushing for a minimum wage increase and other measures to reduce income inequality. Thanks for the concern trolling. Update: Yglesias covers my concern. By fnord12 | January 17, 2014, 11:34 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link A report that we sleep more than we say we do, which follows up on a report that says we work less than we say we do. As Catherine Rampell says, there may be discrepancies between the reports that measure this stuff. I mean, i may surf the internet or stare into space and pray that a meteor will land on me, but i still consider that "working" in the sense that i am chained to my desk. But those of you who are inflating your industriousness, quit it! You're just setting new standards that the rest of us now have to lie to match, and then next year you'll have to inflate it further. You're not doing anyone any favors, including yourself. By fnord12 | January 16, 2014, 4:01 PM | Liberal Outrage
& My stupid life
& Science | Link See Drum's post for the non-ellipsed version and a link to an article covering the court decision. The new Obama era FCC chairman is opposed to "regulating the internet" which isn't good news. As if changing the classification in the first place and then putting in the half-assed neutrality rules wasn't already regulation. By fnord12 | January 14, 2014, 12:49 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Yglesias takes Catherine Rampell's observation that all of December's job gains went to women (and notably, not in high paying positions) and further breaks down the recent "recovery" to show that young men especially are not getting their jobs back. In the days of the Roman empire or something this might have been a good time to implement a draft and go invade some other country, but what are we going to do about it? By fnord12 | January 13, 2014, 3:35 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link TPM: By fnord12 | January 10, 2014, 9:41 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1)| Link Oy. Link The 61-year-old made the comments while talking about his newly released reality series, Steven Seagal - Lawman: Maricopa County. Seagal teamed up with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for the show, which was shot in Arizona and airs on cable TV's Reelz Channel. By min | January 5, 2014, 10:46 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link « Liberal Outrage: December 2013 | Main | Liberal Outrage: February 2014 » |