More Dreck From Beck

Glenn Beck responded, on his radio program, to the Donald Duck remix posted below by raising the question of....well....

"If I'm not mistaken," Beck said, "some of these remix videos, it's very interesting, I believe, get federal funding."

That's almost as funny as the video. Anyway, the above video is a response to Beck's innuendo.

This Should Scare the Shit Out of You....And Motivate You....

Steve Benen, one of my favorite bloggers and who you should definitely be reading, conceived of this and his friend Bill Simmon put it together.

Brilliant

Via Henry at Crooked Timber.

Letting a Commenter Do My Work For Me

There's a slow motion back and forth going on between my regular commenter MoonDragon and teabagger extraordinaire psumba  on the comment thread of this post. I highly recommend giving it  a read. MoonDragon has far more patience than I do when it comes to arguing with our paranoid defender of all things Palin and he/she is  doing a very good job of of it. Here's a taste,

Everyone getting the same shot you had is problematic, considering disparaties of the original circumstances from which people start (I, myself, was very lucky - caring parents, choosing a major that didn't become obsolete before graduation, remaining relatively healthy.) Government can help remediate some circumstances, particularly of institutional, disadvantage. Support of such policies is one of the family values I inherited from caring parents.

I hope your students learned about unions in their studies, that may be the only way to a better life than that of their parents. The decline of the middleclass parallels the decline of union membership.

The biggest boosts to the "ruling elite" over the last few years have been in the tax code that has fed the growing gap between the top 2% and the bottom 98%, especially the recinding of the "death tax" is particularly amusing, as it is creating a defacto aristocracy. Just watch an episode of BRAVO's NYC Prep.

It's the railing against unions and taxes on the top 2% by the Tea Party, two things that will help people get back in the game, amuses me.

Why do I call psumba paranoid, you may ask?  Well, consider these remarks. This is from his first response to my post about him from over a month ago.

You must really have some "juice" to have the CDT take down the Palin article & comments that the above remarks were posted against ...

This one is from three days ago.

What was represented as my original posting was really my fifth posting in a long thread. Hence my compliment to Veblen about getting the original article taken down ... destroying the context of the original remarks.

Of course, I had nothing to do with the vanishing comment thread. The CDT puts most of their articles behind a paywall after two weeks and the comment thread for an article vanishes when the article goes behind the paywall. But psumba's first instinct was  to accuse me of conspiring  with the powers at the CDT to victimize him and  more than a month latter he still thinks that he's the victim of a conspiracy to make him look bad....did I mention that psumba is huge Glenn Beck fan, too?

Elsewhere In Academia

The Texas A&M system is about to introduce a radically new way to rank professors.

A several-inches thick document in the possession of A&M System officials contains three key pieces of information for every single faculty member in the 11-university system: their salary, how much external research funding they received and how much money they generated from teaching.

The information will allow officials to add the funds generated by a faculty member for teaching and research and subtract that sum from the faculty member's salary. When the document -- essentially a profit-loss statement for faculty members -- is complete, officials hope it will become an effective, lasting tool to help with informed decision-making.

"If you look at what people are saying out there -- first of all, they want accountability," [Frank] Ashley [,the vice chancellor for academic affairs for the A&M System,] said. "It's something that we're really not used to in higher education: For someone questioning whether we're working hard, whether our students are learning. That accountability is going to be with us from now on."

This does not begin to measure if students are learning, in fact, it should result in a system in which students are guaranteed to learn less.

Does anyone think that hiring a shitload of contingent faculty, paying them a pittance and putting them in front of several hundred students is the best way to teach students? Because that obviously dumb approach would undoubtedly lead to  a very favorable outcome on this metric and therefore is one likely end  result of the use of this metric, particularly in the humanities where the opportunities for large outside grants is severely limited. 

In the sciences and engineering, one might expect that faculty will be encouraged to seek out industry funding which may do little if anything to push back the frontiers of knowledge. This could be particularly problematic in the medical school, where conflict of interest arising out of pharma research is a growing national problem. This metric induces the wrong incentives all around.

This is not the first boneheaded idea introduced at the Texas A&M system recently.

[A]wards of between $2,500 and $10,000 to faculty members based on
anonymous student evaluations... was implemented at Texas
A&M University [in the fall of 2008] and has been expanded to all
A&M System campuses.

Can you say grade inflation?

This is Texas, which has been screwing up education for year through the Texas State Board of Education's textbook standards, so there should be no surprise that the dumb is seeping into the Texas higher ed community. By the way, both of these ideas come from a list of seven proposal introduced by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, which shares a board member with the Texas A&M board regents, Phil Adams who is also a major contributor to the Governor Rick Perry's reelection campaign. The good news is, that unlike the situation with the textbooks  which impact textbooks nationwide because of the size of the Texas market forces textbook publishers to write their books to accomodate Texas, there is no natural mechanism for this to spread outside of the Lone Star state. Nonetheless, there may be pressure from the rightwing business community for other state's to adopt these ideas. Hence vigilance is required.

Stupid On Parade

It's like they rounded up everyone's dumb relatives and bused them off to DC last week.

By the way, doesn't the guy with the binoculars look and sound  like Leon Panetta's fatter, dumber brother?  Or, just  maybe, it was Leon doing some undercover surveillance of the rally...think about it, binoculars?...better get out the chalkboard, Glenn.

The video comes via  TBogg, who noted that

Someone once said:

If the terrorists are smart, they will give up on trying to attack us and just sit back and wait, because eventually our entire country is going to be so stupid that people will start sticking their tongues in wall sockets just to see what electricity tastes like.

We are way past that now.

That someone was very wise.

GT:National Security Demands That We Assure That the Next Generation of the Koch Family Has the Assets to Continue the Fight on the Middle Class

GT spoke last night at Penn State on national security which he interpreted very broadly. Let's compare and contrast a couple of his statements.

First up:

"What my generation is providing you, unfortunately, is a legacy of debt," he said. "It's just not American.

He said the Obama administration needs to present -- and Congress needs to enact -- a responsible budget.

Next:

Meanwhile, Thompson said, if steep estate taxes are reinstated next year, a family passing a farm from one generation to the next may be forced to pay a 45 percent levy. That threatens to take still more farms out of business, a trend that could force more reliance on imported food over which the U.S. has little control, Thompson said.

To sum up, GT wants to deal with the national debt by adding $1.3 trillion dollars over the next ten years to the national debt by stopping a reinstatement of the estate tax. To be fair, perhaps GT just wants the tax to go back to last year's level, then the cost to the US Treasury over the same time span would be $609 billion. He justifies adding this huge burden to the national debt, which he himself says is "not American," by suggesting that the tax will impact family farms.

But it is  estimated that that in 2011 the estate tax, if reinstated at 2009 levels,  would only effected 110  family farms and small businesses and these estates on average would pay a rate of  11.3%. (The 45% number that Thompson uses for the tax rate only applies to the portion of the estate in excess of $3.5 million and of the portion above the threshold much of it can be shielded from taxes.)  Further, there is absolutely no evidence that farms would have to liquidated to pay for the estate tax. In 2001, the American Farm Bureau Federation could not cite a single example of a farm being sold off to pay the estate tax and the CBO  has estimated that under the 2009 conditions only a handful of family farms would not have sufficient liquidity to pay the tax, but it said that it likely overestimated this number since the it couldn't include certain assets held in trust.

The take away is that  GT thinks that it is in our national security interest to help  the Koch brothers pass on their wealth to their heirs so that those heirs can continue the family war against ordinary Americans.

watertiger has....

....a way with words.

This country has contracted a nasty STD after being fucked by the Bush
Administration. Beck and Palin and their ilk are the aggressive,
inflamed genital warts that will never respond to treatment.

Here, here! Hear, Hear!

GT "Respecting the Pain and Suffering" of 9/11 Emergency Responders

As I noted earlier this month, GT joined 158 of his Republican colleagues to defeat a bill which created a fund for the 9/11 emergency responders who have health problems due to the toxic environment created by the collapse of the World Trade Center.  At the time, GT hadn't explained his vote and I wondered which Clown Caucus approved talking point GT would point to if he was asked to justify his vote. This week at a townhall meeting in Philipsburg  we got an answer to that question.

Thompson said he understands what first responders experience in a situation, as he is a licensed Emergency Medical Technician and a volunteer firefighter.
He said he understands the emotional and physical trauma experienced but also said that the bill was not well crafted and he was concerned about where the money was going and what it paid for, which was not clear to him in the bill.

That's pretty fucking vague. And it looks like GT didn't do his homework on this one, since his excuse  is not on the the  list of Clown Caucus approved talking points (PDF). The closest item on that approved list of reasons not to vote for the bill is item #3. It must be tough remembering all those rationales for voting no.

The fact is that the bill is very clear on both where the money is going and what it pays for. Both geographic and temporal eligibility requirement for receiving the money from the fund are clearly spelled out and a detailed list of health conditions which are covered by the fund are given. The one open area is cancer which takes a longtime to develop. Hence at this time there is no epidemiological evidence to tie 9/11 to cancer risks.  You can learn more from this CBO report on the bill and the bill itself.

By the way,

...Thompson also briefly talked about the controversial mosque and community center proposed to be build in New York City near ground zero. He said that it is a local decision of the city and the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction over it. However, he also said that he didn't think those involved were respecting the pain and suffering that is still occurring there and that should have been taken into consideration.

GT has a funny way of respecting the pain and suffering of those 9/11 emergency responders.

What Do Teabaggers Want?

Steve Benen, one of my favorite bloggers, has a must read piece on today's rally at the Lincoln Memorial.  Here's a sample.

For a year and a half, we've seen rallies and town-hall shouting and attack ads and Fox News special reports. But I still haven't the foggiest idea what these folks actually want, other than to see like-minded Republicans winning elections. To be sure, I admire their passion, and I applaud their willingness to get involved in public affairs. If more Americans chose to take a more active role in the political process, the country would be better off and our democracy would be more vibrant.

But that doesn't actually tell us what these throngs of Americans are fighting for, exactly. I'm not oblivious to their cries; I'm at a loss to appreciate those cries on anything more than a superficial level.
[...]

This is about giving Americans who work hard and play by the rules more opportunities.

I'm all for that, too. But would these opportunities include the chance for hard-working Americans to bring their kids to the doctor if they get sick, even if the family can't afford insurance? No, we're told, not those kinds of opportunities.

This is about the values of the Founding Fathers.

I'm a big fan of the framers' generation, who created an extraordinary nation. But if we're honoring their values, would this include their steadfast commitment to the separation of church and state? No, we're told, not those values.

This is about patriotic Americans willing to make sacrifices for the good of their country.

That sounds reasonable; sacrifices can be honorable. But if we're talking about patriots willing to sacrifice, does that mean millionaires and billionaires can go back to paying '90s-era tax rates (you know, when the economy was strong)? No, we're told, not those kinds of sacrifice.
[..]
Movements -- real movements that make a difference and stand the test of
time -- are about more than buzz words, television personalities, and
self-aggrandizement. Change -- transformational change that sets nations
on new courses -- is more than vague, shallow promises about "freedom."
[..]
The folks who gathered in D.C. today were awfully excited about
something. The fact that it's not altogether obvious what that might be
probably isn't a good sign.

As they say, go read the whole thing.

Phds Aren't All Brilliant and Teabaggers Aren't All Teetotalers

About a month ago, I had a post highlighting the CDT's most teabagelicious commeter, psumba, who showed up in comments here  to defend himself.  He wrote, in part,

Let's see ... I'm charged with:

- anti-intellectualism - as a student, I was considered to be quite intellectual. In fact, I did earn two simultaneous undergraduate diplomas from Penn State in four years ... in two demanding fields from different Penn State colleges. What happened ...

To which one of my regular commenters, MoonDragon, wrote,

I will take your word for it that you have the degrees you claim. Earning a college degree is an achievement in and of itself, however it  isn't proof of intellect. Your statement may be evidence of being highly trained, but isn' t proof of either education or intellectual capacity. Pardon the anecdote, but I know more than a few Phds who are dumber  than dirt.

Today we no longer have to depend on MoonDragon's anecdotal evidence concerning dumber than dirt Phds. From Kevin Drum comes this Quote of the Day, from the man behind the Teabagging curtain,

...Dick Armey, PhD University of Oklahoma, former economics professor at the University of North Texas, and former Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives:

One of the things that we see as we look at Glenn Beck's work that's been fascinating to me, is we see a more true and accurate history of the United States, and we see it documented at levels of rigor that, in fact, one would expect out of Ph.D. dissertations — it is serious, scholarly work....[Liberal critics] don’t have to argue with Glenn Beck. They have to argue with his documentation and they can’t match that level of rigor.

Somebody just shoot me now.

Digby adds,

It has often been rumored that Dick Armey is a falling down drunk and his behavior on TV certainly suggests that he's on something. I'm guessing it's acid...

What is it with Teabaggers and alcohol? Here's psumba

You should have taken me up on my offer last Fall to have a drink together the last time that I was in State College.

Sorting Out the Convoluted Web....

...well, not so much.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
News Corp. Gives Money to Republicans
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Technorati Tags: The Daily Show, Glenn Beck, Fox News, GOP

The Media Finally Reports on a GT No Vote and Gets a Quote From Him

Last week House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R-CA) called the House back into a rare August session to vote on an emergency funding bill for Medicaid and education. The bill passed, despite GOP opposition, and Obama signed it into law.

In Pennsylvania, its passage staved off a financial catastrophe.

The Pennsylvania Legislature approved a budget for 2010-11 based on the hope of receiving $850 million in Medicaid funding.
Gov. Ed Rendell, who once predicted as many as 12,000 layoffs if no additional Medicaid money were received, has said that, with $600 million, some layoffs are still possible next month. The governor and legislative leaders are expected to meet to decide how to close that gap.

But GT voted against the bill, and thanks to WENY-TV in Elmira, New York, we know, for once, what GT says about the reason he voted the way that he did.

Northern Tier Congressman Glenn Thompson voted against it, saying it's spending more money at a time when the country can't afford it. “This is about the fact that we're experiencing challenging times fiscally.” Thompson says, “and when you experience challenging times, everybody has to tighten the belt.”

However the Congressional Budget Office says while the bill does add to the deficit over five years, in ten years, it would break even and actually reduce the overall deficit

Well, there you have it, we, in the Centre Region, have to rely on an out-of-state TV station to get GT's bullshitting on record.

Technorati Tags: Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA5), emergency medicaid education bill

Xtians Are Weird

Here's a thought provoking report from yesterday's CDT (This link will die in about two weeks, after that you  can go to News Bank, which is free online at Schlow and Pattee,  if you really want to read the whole article.).

When Dannah Gresh tries to convince 8-to 12-year-old girls about the importance of sexual purity, modesty and not blindly following peer pressure, she’ll have some new partners.

They’re animated. They’re anthropomorphic. They’re vegetables.

Gresh’s “Secret Keeper Girl Live: The Pajama Party Tour,” which will debut in State College on Tuesday, will include characters from VeggieTales, a Christian-themed animated video series that mixes pop culture references with moral themes. The video series has spawned a television series, books, CDs and two movies.

“We’re just honored out of our minds,” said Gresh, a State College resident, relationship coach and author who founded the nonprofit Pure Freedom with her husband, Bob.

VeggieTales officials approached Gresh several months ago, while she was doing a show in Nashville. The two main VeggieTales characters are Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, and their stories have included a retelling of the biblical story of Joseph (who had a gift for understanding dreams) that’s set in the Wild West, parodies “Bonanza” and focuses on the importance of overcoming hardship

A new VeggieTales character, Sweetpea Beauty, will focus on teaching girls about the importance of inner beauty, Gresh said.

The hell with Sweetpea Beauty, I'm really curious how Larry the Cucumber fits in with the promotion of sexual purity in girls and I wonder if  Larry has anything to do with the secrets which are kept.

Technorati Tags: Humor, Dannah Gresh, Bob Gresh, Secret Keepers

For GT Legislatin' is Like Paintin' by Numbers

Last week GT joined 158 of his Republican colleagues to defeat a bill which would have created a fund for  9/11 emergency responders who have health problems due to the toxic environment created by the collapse of the World Trade Center.

As with his no vote on extending emergency  unemployment insurance, GT has not  seen fit to issue a press release explaining  why he has voted the way he has on this. He hasn't  even a twitter twatted, his favorite form of keeping constituents abreast of the depths of his mind. I'm guessing he isn't too proud of the vote and hopes than no one in the local  press notices it. A pretty good bet around these parts.

You can find the background on the bill here and what other wingers in the House have said about their no votes here  The reaction of both Democrats and Republicans are  here and a  Democrat responded in detail here. Then you can try to guess which Clown Caucus approved talking points (PDF) GT would check off as his reason for voting no, if forced to explain his "reasoning."
(Cartoon via watertiger at Dependable Renegade ,a very funny blog which I highly recommended.)

Technorati Tags: 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA5)

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I Personally Know...

....is a phrase which should be avoided in arguments unless you are willing to provide specific information which will allow others to judge the reliability of your personal knowledge.  Hence anonymous commenters should never use this phrase, but it is, none the less, one of the favorite means of argument amongst the ignoratti at the CDT. Here's the CDT regular Fred on unemployment benefits extensions this morning.

...Unemployment benefits are becoming the newest welfare program extended for no other reason then to persuade more voters in November to vote dem. I personally know of several unemployed folks who will not begin to look for another job until their unemployment benefits expire.

This is pretty typical stuff over there. They love their anecdotes about lazy acquaintances

The connection of welfare to unemployment benefits, as I discussed the other day, suggests that he doesn't want his  money helping out brown folks, while the anecdotes about lazy folks leads me to believe neither does he want his money helping out some guys down at the bar that he doesn't like...so screw everyone, as far as Fred is concerned.

As an antidote to these anecdotes about the indolent, I suggest reading the The Breadline Blog written by by a former reporter for a small western Pennsylvania newspaper who was laid off from his job and is now in the ranks of the long term unemployed. The blog was featured earlier this summer in the Wall Street Journal.  The Breadline Blog will put a much different face on our current economic problems than the 'baggers want you to see.

Technorati Tags: Tebaggers, wingnuts, unemployment benefits, welfare

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Teaching a Pig to Sing

I'm sorry I was side tracked over at the CDT again this evening trying to educate a Teabagger, or it might have been a garden variety wingnut.... political cladistics is tough.  I really didn't want to. I  left a snarky reply earlier today to the said dimwit, I think that covers most conservative subtypes these days, since reasonable conservatives are all but extinct,  with no intention of  engaging them. But then I just couldn't help myself...I had to take them to school. As you might expect, the pig still sings off key.

In the future, I'm going to try to focus my energies here and ignore the ignoratti. For now,  you can go over to the sty and see if you can get LessIsMore to hit high C.

Technorati Tags: Teabagger, wingnut

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Outback at the Forefront of a GOP Meme?

Yesterday, the Senate overcame the Republican filibuster of the legislation to extend emergency unemployment benefits and Mitch McConnell tried to divert attention of the Republican's unprecedented  opposition of the extension by linking the long term unemployed to Obama's policy, in the process calling these individuals "chronically unemployed."  Kevin Drum wondered today if there might be something more to  McConnell's choice of words.

...talking about "chronic" joblessness is also a way of suggesting that some of the unemployed are shiftless and lazy. Someone who's "chronically unemployed" isn't your unlucky next door neighbor, it's those guys in the ghetto or down in the hollow who just hang around all day and have never held an honest job in their lives for more than a few weeks at a time. Are these the kind of people you want to run up the national debt for?

I didn't think so. But guess what? Democrats do!

Well, it's hard to say with certainty if this is the game McConnell is playing, but , it just so happens, I was engaged in a back and forth over the past couple of days at the CDT (Hence my absence here.) with one of their regular's, outback, who helps to make the comment threads there  a  fever swamp, which makes Kevin's speculation very plausible to me.

GT's Hamlet: To 'Bag or Not to "Bag: That is the Question

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

GT might find himself in a bit of a bind over Michele Bachmann's (R-Loony Tunes) Teabagger Caucus thing. Isn't that right, GT. If you join many of your better informed, and I might add more rational, constituents might think you're bit of a loon. On the other hand, if you don't join your Teabagger supporters, or as you once called them liberty-loving patriots, might think that you really aren't one of them. I say, go ahead  join and don't worry about us better informed constituents, we already think you're bit of a loon.

(H/T FeliciaK from Newsy.com for the heads up on the video)

Technorati Tags: Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA5), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Teabagger Caucus

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This Should Be Fun

Think Progress reported this morning that  yesterday,  Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Crazytown)

.... filed paperwork to start a House Tea Party Caucus in the current 111th Congress. Possibly taking a cue from Kentucky Senate GOP hopeful and fellow Tea Partier Rand Paul, who recently said he might start a similar caucus in the Senate if he were elected, Bachmann sent a letter to the Committee on House Administration in an effort to “formaliz[e] the [Tea Party] movement within the federal government.” The letter read:

I would like to register the House Tea Party Caucus as a Congressional Member Organization for the 111th Congress. The House Tea Party Caucus will serve as an informal group of Members dedicated to promote American’s call for fiscal responsibility, adherence to the Constitution, and limited government. Presently, I will serve as the chair of the House Tea Party Caucus.

I'm curious if GT, who already serves in the Clown Caucus alongside Michele, will be joining her new  Teabagger Caucus. GT if you are planning on joining you better hurry, the first ten to sign up get a complimentary lawn chair.

Technorati Tags: Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA5), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Tea Party Caucus, Teabaggers, wingnuts

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