The unforgiving minute: To future students cramming for their history finals

Today, the only thing anyone remembers (if they remember anything at all) about 13th century Scholastic theology is that people apparently spent a lot of time wrestling with this question:

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

In the future, the only thing that anyone will remember about early 21st century American politics is that people apparently spent a lot of time wrestling with this question:

Which is worse: If they're really that intellectually dishonest, or if they're really just that dumb?

Minute's up.

Reading: The dog that didn't bark in the night on health care

Bob Somerby notes the two questions that even pretty-good health care reporting invariably fails to ask:

Why is William Mann paid so little? Why does his health care cost so much?

Somerby's post is going on the Readings column in the sidebar.

Reading: Billmon on disinformation

Yesterday I mentioned that Republican Eric Cantor's complaint that he, too, was a victim of the same sort of political violence (or threats thereof) directed toward Democratic members of Congress in recent days would be welcomed by the mainstream news media as permission to fit the story into the "both sides are to blame" narrative structure that they're most comfortable with.

In a reply to a comment from Chuck Butcher, who pointed out follow-up reports documenting that there was absolutely no basis in--for want of a better term--fact for Cantor's claim, I added this:

[T]he point is, this is apt to become a Zombie Lie that will continue to walk the earth even though it's been disproved multiple times, simply because its importance to the required narrative ["see? both sides are guilty!"] trumps the niggling fact that it isn't true.

Billmon, in a welcome return at DailyKos, has a really strong diary entry about the inner rhetorical workings of this strategy in Republican hands. Here's a taste:

The basic objective of all this, as I wrote way back when, is very simple:

The goal is to confront the public with two sides hurling identical charges at each other -- the better to convince them that it's just another partisan mudfight and who the hell knows . . . anyway.

Go read the whole thing. Don't get caught up about the title--he's kidding. But his point is dead serious. And dead right.

Proof? Billmon notes this headline from today's NYTimes:

Accusations Fly Between Parties Over Threats and Vandalism

Why bother distinguishing the facts of the matter when storylines like this are so much simpler?

Billmon's diary is going on the much-neglected Reading list in the sidebar.

GOP discovers they work for FOX, not the other way around

Interesting times.

Who'd have thought David "I Coined 'Axis of Evil'" Frum would get back-to-back appearances here at p3? Not me, that's for sure.

But it occurred to me that I've never actually seen a man actively campaign to get tarred and feathered by the base of his own party before, so this is kind of fascinating to watch:

Gallup polling reports that favorable reactions to the HCR bill have a 9% edge over unfavorable, and Kos is predicting that, far from making repeal the centerpiece of their November campaign, Republicans will start looking for ways to change the subject.

(Although he doesn't specify whether he means the Republicans in the GOP or their masters in the right-wing media.)

Interesting times.

Ordinary political calculations simply do not apply anymore

David Frum, March 21, 2010:

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage?

Rep. Steve King (R - Iowa), March 22, 2010:

Mr. KING of Iowa introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on _______________.

A BILL

To repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
3 SECTION 1. REPEAL OF PPACA.
4 Effective as of the enactment of the Patient Protec-
5 tion and Affordable Care Act, such Act is repealed, and
6 the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act
7 are restored or revived as if such Act had not been en-
8 acted.

And it only took 24 hours.

Frum's party no longer accepts the legitimacy of a two-party state, if one of them is the Democratic Party. Arguably, this has been the case since 1992.

Frum needs to decide if he's in or out, because the people running the GOP are clearly not listening to him. "I invented the phrase 'Axis of Evil'" won't even get him a bus ride home from the next Tea Party rally.

Quote of the day: the GOP's frozen moment

Here's Vanity Fair's James Wolcott's utterly apt characterization of the post-HCR passage conservative blogosphere:

Unhappy with the naked lunch at the end of their forks . . .

Good to know, I suppose

Here's the opening of a TNR thumbsucker from yesterday by Jonathan Cohn:

In the last week and a half, Obama has rediscovered his voice on health care--telling audiences he is determined to achieve comprehensive reform, not some piecemeal version, and that he is willing to fight for it. And, administration officials say, the sentiments are genuine.

I'm not sure what it is about that final sentence that depresses me more:

That administration officials felt the need to say it? Or that Cohn was able to repeat it without any apparent irony?

Sunday morning toons: Special "Forgot to Subtitle It" edition

[Update: Missing Betty Boop is back!]

Is it a new rule that Obama gets heckled every time he speaks to Congress? Are Americans starting to notice congressional GOP intransigence? Is there anything left that corporations don't own? Will Sarah Palin end up giving her $100K speech to an empty auditorium where the national Tea Party convention was originally scheduled?

And what's the one development here in America this week that seems to be shaking the world?

The answers are here, starting with this week's Daryl Cagle's toon round-up.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, R. J. Matson, R. J. Matson, Larry Wright, Milt Priggee, Pat Bagley, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: John Trevor.

p3 "Exporting Democracy" Award: Jimmy Margulies.

p3 "Money Changes Everything" Award: Steve Sack.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Adam Zyglis.

Meanwhile, see if you can detect the subtle pattern in this week's p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Paresh Nath (India), Martyn Turner, (Ireland) and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes suspects that some soapboxes are more equal than others.


Mark Fiore describes the State of the Union Address he'd like to see. I particularly like the idea of National Irony Day.


Can Supreme Court Justices still utter the phrase "framers' intent" without giggling? The answer, says Chan Lowe, could blow you away.


Ever find yourself wondering why "The Family Circus" just isn't very interesting? The Comics Curmudgeon has a thought: You could be reading it out of sequence.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman notes that what you learned in your high school civics book may be void where prohibited.

Laughs: It comes somewhere between Giggles and Hysterics: "Ha! Ha! Ha!" is a 1934 Betty Boop toon directed by Dave Fleischer that paired her with another popular Fleischer Studios character, Koko the Clown (whose popularity didn't endure like our Betty's). There are several claims online that the film was at some point banned--the plot involves a trip to the dentist where everyone's overcome by laughing gas--although it's hard to picture that as a ban-worthy offense, then or now, and I haven't been able to document anything of the sort. (Given that a Popeye cartoon from 1946, "Rodeo Romeo," showing Popeye and Bluto bombed out of their gourds on "locoweed," got regular TV play up into the 1960s, laughing gas seems like it deserves a ticket at most, not the death penalty. And of course there the whole Betty and cocaine thing.) The fumes soon spread over the city, resulting in a hallucinatory mix of animation and live-action footage--the typewriter and mailboxes seem like they're straight out of David Cronenberg.

p3 Bonus Toon: Following the pulling-away victories of Measures 66 and 67 this week, Jesse Springer sends along this message of appreciation, "from the 97% of us who won't be affected by the tax increase to the other 3%:"




Remember to bookmark:

Slate's political cartoon for the day.

And Time's cartoons of the week.

When even dreams are dreams

In an unfortunate bit of timing, the DCCC's latest fundraising ask, invoking the name and memory of Ted Kennedy, arrived in email inboxes this morning. It was written before yesterday's Massachusetts Senate vote but milks the prospect of it just the same, beginning with its subject line--"The Dream Lives On"--and starting off in the body with this:

"The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on."

Those were the words of the late Senator Ted Kennedy during the campaign of 2008.

It's a little cheeky of the DCCC to introduce that quote (from a speech given one year to the day before his death at the end of the August of No Return for health care reform), especially considering that both his Senate seat and his dream of universal health care for America have been surrendered into unloving Republican hands.

But my favorite moment from this fundraiser email is this fever-dream image, near the end:

The Tea Partiers are revved up and hoping to swift-boat their way into bringing back the Bush-Cheney economic Stone Age for America.

In a single string of mixed memes, they seem to be swinging wildly at bogeymen from 2009, 2004, 2000, and 1968.

Do they even know which election they're fighting? Wake up, folks.

(Hat-tip to Doctor Beyond.)

Readings: Pierce: A Christmas Carol in which the three ghosts are waste, fraud, and abuse

At Altercation yesterday, Charles Pierce shared a holiday tale for everyone counting heavily on any problems with the now-likely-to-be-passed health care bill getting fixed "later." His rationale:

I post it again to make the following point--just because an entitlement exists, and because it is largely doing what it is supposed to do, it is not immune from the uniquely lethal modern combination of idiot politics and bad journalism.

He links to an Esquire piece he wrote in the final days of another Democratic administration. Unlike the current administration, saddled with a huge deficit that has magically produced a unending stream of deficit hawks like doves from a magician's top hat, that earlier Democratic administration left office with a record federal surplus.

Didn't help much in the story Pierce tells. In fact, if anything, the headlong pursuit of that surplus made the story worse.

Like "A Christmas Carol," Pierce's April 2000 story begins with a warning:

"[A]s the Scripture warns, the poor--or, more accurately, the impoverished--will be with us always, but who they are and what they represent changes with every generation. They are a burden and then an obligation, and then a burden and an obligation again. A Square Deal follows a Gilded Age, a Depression follows the Roaring Twenties, and a New Deal follows that. Clintonism follows Reaganism."

The story also has its Tiny Tim character, but although several people labor heroically on his behalf no reformed Ebenezer is on hand this time to be as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

Unfortunately, not only will the poor always be with us, it appears the same can be said for resentful small-town bureaucrats, lazy celebrity journalists, and opportunistic politicians. Always remember that, as supporters contemplate improving this winter's health care bill "down the road."

Just sayin'.

Pierce's 2000 article is going on the Readings list in the sidebar.

In case you were wondering about whether "the news" has anything to do with the news anymore

Short answer: No.

Somewhat longer answer (from this morning's Media Bistro news feed):

ABC's World News With Diane Sawyer Debuts (TVNewser) Diane Sawyer made her debut as the anchor of ABC's World News yesterday evening. Sawyer has filled-in on the newscast in the past, but this was her first night with her name in the program's title. The program had a new appearance -- with its first new graphics look in five years -- and a new announcer. AP: ABC plans to make use of Sawyer's conversational style, which was on display during on-air Q-and-A's with Jonathan Karl and George Stephanopoulos on health care reform. NYT: There were no high-tech frills or showy experiments in Diane Sawyer's brisk first night as anchor. Instead the network draped its star in utter seriousness, writes Alessandra Stanley. WaPo: Opening-night jitters and the obsession with keeping Sawyer front, center and everywhere else tended to hobble and mute the first edition, writes Tom Shales. Daily Beast: Rebecca Dana on how Diane Sawyer's lunar cool plays against Katie Couric's sunny warmth.

So let's review the important issues: the program's title, new graphics, a new announcer, Sawyer's conversational style, the presence or absence of high-tech frills and showy experiments, Sawyer's briskness and utter seriousness, and her lunar cool.

(Also, apparently there was some discussion of health care reform with the new host of a morning talk show.)

Sunday morning toons: Special "Health care reform end-game" edition

(Updated below.)

Afghanistan? Copenhagen? Stockholm? So last week, dahlinks! This week, the health care reform end-game is the new black. Let's start with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, R. J. Matson, Larry Wright, Bob Englehart, John Trever, Jimmy Margulies, Michael Ramirez, Jerry Holbert, Henry Payne, Bill Day, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: John Darkow.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Pat Bagley and Eric Allie.

p3 "You Can't Beat Home Sweet Home" Award: Steve Breen.

p3 Croix de Guerre/Croix de la Paix Medal: Ed Stein.

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Martyn Turner (Ireland), Werner Wejp-Olsen (Denmark), Jiho (France). and Jainping Fan (China).


Ann Telnaes brings a carol for the holidays (be sure to stick around for the ending).


Science stupid! Science lies! Back after an extended absence from the p3 Sunday Morning Toons, Mark Fiore exposes the shocking 400-year history of fake science.


And it only took 22 years: In 1987, televangelist Oral Roberts sealed himself in the prayer tower at Oral Roberts University, claiming that God would "call him home" unless supporters contributed $8 million to support one of his debt-ridden projects. After some finagling, involving a divine deadline extension and $1.3 million from a dog track owner, he hit his fundraising mark and left the tower. This week, Steve Benson captured the moment when the Almighty figured He called in his marker.


Oh, the futility! Ever consider the down-side of all this "green" nonsense? Joel Pett sure has. (H/t Carla)


Update: Once again, Barry Blitt quietly upstages Frank Rich's Sunday essay on defining greatness downward. (If I would simply read the Sunday NYTimes on Saturday when it comes out online, I suppose I wouldn't have to keep including Blitt as an update.)


RIP Roy E. Disney: Nephew of Walt Disney, Roy rescued Disney's animation division from the abyss of "The Aristocats" and "Robin Hood" by championing such blockbusters as “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King.”

Mr. Disney was a big fan of referring to the past to define the future. He told a biographer: “The goal is to look over our shoulder and see Snow White and Pinocchio and Dumbo standing there saying, ‘Be this good.’ We shouldn’t be intimidated by them; they’re an arrow pointing someplace.”

He died this week at 87. Roy, this one's for you.

No p3 Bonus Toon this week: It's Jesse Springer's December hiatus.


But meanwhile, that leaves extra time to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day.

Packing a lot of chewy conservative goodness into 16 words

This morning, the Crooks and Liars blog page has an ad for a front group called Generation Hope:


Two things struck me about this ad. First, it describes the USPS as run by "Government Bureaucrats;" second, by implication it invites the reader to agree that anything run by "Government Bureaucrats" is by definition a bad thing.

Taking those in reverse order, are Americans really unhappy with the USPS? There's the civic ritual of bitching about postage price bumps every couple of years, but other than that, I think the worst you could say is that most Americans enjoy the luxury of taking it for granted.

(If Americans really cared that much about the price of a stamp, first class rates could come way down if by instituting a small number of standard dimensions for envelopes, rather than insisting on our god-given right to put a stamp on a coconut if we damn well feel like it. Standardized dimensions for first class mail is one of the reasons that mail costs less to send in Japan. But if someone tried to tell Americans that they can't wrap a claw-hammer with a cut-up grocery bag and drop it in the corner mailbox, you'd have FOX's weeping madman calling it a Stalinist takeover plot by that evening.)

The second striking thing about the ad, though, is that the USPS isn't run by "Government Bureaucrats." Hasn't been for almost four decades.

The USPS created during Nixon's first term, in 1970, as an independent agency. It hasn't been funded by tax dollars since the early 1980s. The law creating the USPS specifically declares it to be an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States,"

So, comes the question: Who are these Generation Hope people, anyway, who manage to work a doubtful assumption and a large error of fact into a single 16-word ad?

Hm. "Doubtful assumptions?" "Large errors of fact?" The question almost answers itself, doesn't it?

I followed the links, so you don't have to. According to its home page, Generation Hope "engages, informs and empowers young Americans with facts on the hot topics and political issues impacting 'Generation Y'." It's an offshoot of the League of American Voters, a conservative advocacy group describing itself as "Leading the Fight to Stop Obama Care."

(The ad was placed at C&L by Google Ads, which places ads according to keywords found at the site. Google Ads can be comically indifferent to what's being said about the content, leading to oddities like this.)

Generation Y is the loosey-goosey demographic category including those Americans born between the late 1970s and late 1990s.

This ad's target--Generation Y'ers--is a cohort that never knew the US Post Office when it was a cabinet-level part of the government. For them, it's always been an independent entity (albeit one with a state-granted monopoly on delivering first-class mail). So the Operation Hope attempt to use the USPS as the boogie man isn't likely to spook them much. In truth, Americans of all ages have probably long-since forgotten whether the USPS is independent or government-run.

In fact, if you really put the question to them that way--do you want your health care run like the post office?--I imagine a lot of people would like to see health care work like the mail: You buy stamps for a fixed price and use them when you want, you leave your mail outside your door or at any of several drop points in your neighborhood, and it magically disappears and winds up at its destination a few days later. You don't need an appointment. You won't get billed later. You won't have to call customer service to find out why it never arrived or was mis-routed. It all works seamlessly, and almost invisibly. And you can never lose your right to use the mail.

Hell, I'd love to have my health care work like the mail. Where do I sign up?

I've written before about the inability of modern conservatives to understand how the world looks to anyone but themselves. This ad's another example, I think. It's a half-expressed assumption that all conservatives currently agree with, wrapped in a falsehood that only a conservative would care enough to concoct, sent out to motivate an audience that is unlikely to get it.

The unforgiving minute

What Katha Pollitt said:

Hey, Peter [Beinart], Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?

For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.

Minute's up.

The unforgiving minute

A brief history of the wall of separation:

John F. Kennedy, 1960: The separation of church and state is absolute. My church will not dictate my policy decisions.

Mitt Romney 2008: The separation of church and state is relative. My church will dictate my policy decisions, but only to the extent that I will discriminate against the same people Christian conservatives would already be discriminating against anyway.

Rep. Bart Stupack 2009; The separation of church and state is a fairy tale. My church will show up at the Capitol steps in a limo to dictate policy.

Minute's up.

The unforgiving minute

Good news! Health care reform won't prevent women from access to legal abortions<sup>*

*</sup>If you happen to be Meghan McCain or one of the Bush twins.

Otherwise, barring a miracle, no, not really.

Minute's up.

The unforgiving minute

Today's topic: Units of measurement:

Liebersecond (sec_L): 1.0 Liebersecond is defined as the interval of time separating the announcement of a possible legislative victory for Congressional Democrats and the moment when Sen. Joe Lieberman steps in front of the cameras to simultaneously sell out the caucus and grab for publicity by threatening to derail it.

The Dems were smart to let him keep his rank and committee gavel, since he only disagrees with them about the war.

Minute's up.

A pleasant surprise

I have to say, while there are still a number of hoops to be jumped through (most of which could not be said to be large, or low-to-the-ground, or not on fire), I'm actually sort of amazed to see health care reform even made it this far:

(Nice remarks by Reid about "moderate Republicans" at about the 8:30 mark.)

First-out-of-the-gate comments and analysis by Sen. Jeff Merkley on Huffington Post, Josh Marshall at TPM, TJ at Loaded Orygun, Jane Hamsher at FDL.

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and gamely tackled by Thom Hartmann (sitting in for Carl Wolfson and Christine Alexander) and Paul Pimentel on the KPOJ 620AM Morning Show, are posted at LO.

Thom seemed a little baffled at first by the whole limerick thing, but got through it like the trouper he is.

In the process, though, p3's Literary R & D department overbudgeted, producing an extra limerick that didn't make it on the air. So here's your chance once again to play along at home. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news, about something that shouldn't be happening in Oregon:

If your job situation is naught-ery,
Your options might be diddly-squat-ery.
Break your leg? Catch the flu?
Then the best you can do
Might be hope for health care through a ______________.

(The answer can be found in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State at Loaded Orygun.)

Sunday morning toons: Special "Toon Market Report by the Exchange Telegraph" edition

Toon trading was crisp at the end of the week, with some brisk business on the floor. Health care was queasy. Afghanistan dug in and Windows 7 crashed. Abstinence rose dramatically during the week but faded by Friday at happy hour. Balloon Boy sank after an early gain. Fox News was rampant, while Rush Limbaugh remained flaccid. (Half-hearted apologies--I mean, honestly, after 40 years, they must have seen this sort of thing coming--to Monty Python.)

Let's kick it off, as always, with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson, John Trever, Monte Wolverton, Adam Zyglis, John Cole, Jeff Stahler, Ed Stein, Nate Beeler, Cameron Cardow, and Joe Heller.

p3 Best of Show: Bill Day.

p3 Legion of Merit: John Darkow,

p3 "Old Joke, New Context" Citation: Mike Keefe.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), and Stephane Peray (Thailand).


Ann Telnaes looks at some signs of the times.

(And here's a little lagniappe.)


Feeling a little run-down? Tom Tomorrow just might know the reason why.


Democracy in Afghanistan? Portland homeboy Jack Ohman has his doubts.


Relinquish me, you foul, gibbering feline, you! Last week, in our run-up to Halloween, we presented "Claws for Alarm," the second of the Chuck Jones horror-themed Porky and Sylvester trilogy. ("Scaredy Cat" was the first.) This week we finish up our tribute with the third, and probably best-known--and definitely the funniest--of the set: "Jumpin' Jupiter," from 1955. No sinister glinty-eyed mice in this one!

p3 Bonus Toon: Always remember Jesse Springer's First Rule: It can always get worse.

And remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for today.