Month: November 2011
Drezner Invokes the ‘Mercy Rule’ on Covering Cain
There’s a mercy rule in Little League, and I’m applying it here — unless and until Herman Cain surges back in the polls again, or manages to muster something approaching cogency in his foreign policy statements, there’s no point in blogging about him anymore. I can only pick on an ignoramus so many times before it feels sadistic.
— Daniel Drezner, writing in Foreign Policy, has had enough, following Herman Cain’s bumbling answer on Libya.
The answer in question: “President Obama called for the removal of Gaddafi. Just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say, yes I agree, I know I didn’t agree. I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason — no, that’s a different one. I gotta go back to… Got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Specifically, what are you asking me, did I agree or not disagree with on what?
— Herman Cain, struggling to collect his thoughts in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which was recorded on video.
Congress’ Approval at All-Time Low
13%
Congressional job approval in November ties its all-time Gallup low. Congressional job approval for 2011 is on track to be the lowest annual rating in Gallup’s history.
Real Versus Artificial: Not the Christmas Tree, the Story About the Christmas Tree Tax
As American Christians begin making their annual decision about whether to go with a real Christmas tree (love the pine aroma!) or an artificial one (love the easy clean-up!), there is another real vs. artificial question hanging.
That’s about a story on the Drudge Report claiming the Obama administration is taxing sales of real Christmas trees. The answer is: FAKE.
Ads for fake trees are run by big box retailers like Walmart and Target, leaving Christmas tree farmers outgunned
In the Drudge Report’s world of sensationalist all-caps headlines, it doesn’t get much better than “OBAMA’S NEW ‘CHRISTMAS TREE TAX.'” In five sparse words, the headline captured pretty much everything Drudge and its readers believe about the current administration, in which big-government liberals would figure out a way to tax Christmas during hard economic times.
The only problem? It wasn’t true. The 15-cents-a-tree charge that caused so much commotion earlier in the week was not a tax, and it has little to do with the Obama administration.
But sad experience has taught that things don’t have to be true to be repeated in the rightwing echo chamber and instituted as memes on FOX News, and next thing you know, outraged seniors (who make up the majority of FOX’s viewers) and other low information voters (who make up the rest) are calling their elected representatives demanding change. Which, in this case, is a dumb idea. Read on to find out why.
Gloria Cain Stands by Her Man
I’m thinking he would have to have a split personality to do the things that were said.
— Gloria Cain, quoted by the Washington Post, in her first interview since her husband, Herman Cain, was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women.
Cain: Measure of a Man is His ‘Toppings’
The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is.
— Herman Cain, in a GQ interview.
Census Poverty Figures Show Things are Worse Than We Knew
The American poverty rate is even higher than we knew, according to a new method used by the U.S. Census Bureau. The more realistic calculation puts about 16 percent of Americans at or below poverty level, compared with 15.2 percent under the standard model.
Acting on recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences, the Census Bureau designed the new measure to capture the impact of many forms of non-cash public assistance, such as food stamps, housing subsidies and energy assistance…The alternative calculation also takes into account geographic differences in prices.
Not all groups are affected equally. Those with fewest means to improve their incomes are in the most trouble. I’m talking about your grandparents or parents.
The new measure had a major impact on poverty rates among the elderly, in part because they have large medical expenses. While Social Security keeps many of them just over the poverty line, health care costs can easily pull them under, Short said. Some 15.9% of senior citizens are considered poor, up from 9% under the official rate.
Things would be even worse without the assistance.
Six temporary safety net programs that originated in the 2009 stimulus act helped keep 7 million people out of poverty, said Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, citing the new Census report. These include three new or expanded tax credits, two enhancements of unemployment insurance, and expanded food stamp benefits.
These programs are all facing cuts in the ginned up deficit crisis.
In S.C. Debate, Topic of Torture Divides Republican Candidates, Audience
Ronald Reagan opposed torture. In 1984, he signed an international treaty banning torture that gave any signatory country the right to invade any other signatory country suspected of torturing its citizens and make arrests, if the government itself refused or was unable to stop them.
In 2008, the candidates for both major parties, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, who was tortured by North Vietnamese when he was a prisoner of war, agreed that waterboarding was torture. This position put them in direct opposition to the sitting president, George W. Bush, and his top aides, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, who produced a torture procedures manual in the White House in which waterboarding was an approved technique, which they rebranded in Newspeak as an “enhanced interrogation technique.” Pres. Obama banned waterboarding as one of his first offical acts.
Still, Republicans today are split on whether America should be a torture state. When the subject of torture came up during the CBS News/National Journal debate at Wofford College in South Carolina Saturday night, it produced mixed results among the candidates as well as in the audience:
