Just When You Thought the Race Had Reached the Bottom
New Rule: If You Thought the Current GOP Field for President Could Not Get Any Lamer, You Haven't Met Rick Perry
CROOKS AND LIARS | JUNE 18, 2011
Bill Maher threw potential GOP presidential candidate and current Governor of Texas Rick Perry under the bus and ran over him a few times during his New Rules segment on Real Time With Bill Maher this week.
MAHER: And finally New Rule, if you think the Republican presidential candidates can't possibly get any lamer, then you haven't met the new Republican flavor of the month, Rick Perry.
If you're not familiar with Rick, he took over as governor of Texas from George W. Bush, who's now referred to as “the smart one.” Rick carries a gun even when he's jogging. He wears cowboy boots with a suit, and the boots say, “come and take it”, which sounds kind of gay to me.
And he threw such a tantrum when Obama won, he actually talked about Texas seceding from the union, because that's what America needs; a President of the United States who's not really sold on the whole “United States” concept. Now, last week, Rick Perry announced that he rented out a
Yes Newt, We Sure Are Special
Finally, some data from the International Monetary Fund that proves, once and for all, that red-white-and-blue-bleeding patriotic conservatives are right: America truly is an exceptional nation. From 2007-2009, the percentage increase in U.S. unemployment was more than double that of most other advanced industrial nations. In a global recession, the abysmal performance of U.S. labor markets reigned supreme.
How it went so wrong in America - Salon.com Mobile
How it went so wrong in America - Salon.com Mobile
Are Americans Smart Enough to Be U.S. Citizens?
Great question, great article. I think this one just about nails several of the biggies.
Enjoy! Howl or weep as you see fit.
How Ignorant Are Americans? - Newsweek
Enjoy! Howl or weep as you see fit.
How Ignorant Are Americans? - Newsweek
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.6
US Near the Bottom in Science
December 5, 2007
The Christian Science Monitor
New report ranks U.S. teens 29th in science worldwide
By Amanda Paulson
Chicago
The United States lags behind most other developed countries when it comes to science education.
Math + test = trouble for US economy
That, at least, is one conclusion of a major report released Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It measures student literacy in science, math, and reading (focusing this year on science) among 15-year-olds, and is an often-cited reference for policymakers sounding the alarm bells about the state of education in the United States and its implications for the ability of Americans to secure jobs in a global economy.
Finland emerged at the top of 57 countries in science, according to the 2006 survey results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The US ranked 29th, behind countries like Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Liechtenstein, and ahead of just nine other OECD countries.
"What once was the gold standard [for international education] is now not even at the OECD average, which shows you how much the world has changed," says Andreas Schleicher, who helped write the report. The US is average in the number of students at the highest levels of scientific literacy, but has a much larger pool – nearly 1 in 4 – at the bottom, Mr. Schleicher notes. "We have stand-alone studies that suggest these kids have grim prospects in the labor market," he says.
The Christian Science Monitor
New report ranks U.S. teens 29th in science worldwide
By Amanda Paulson
Chicago
The United States lags behind most other developed countries when it comes to science education.
Math + test = trouble for US economy
That, at least, is one conclusion of a major report released Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It measures student literacy in science, math, and reading (focusing this year on science) among 15-year-olds, and is an often-cited reference for policymakers sounding the alarm bells about the state of education in the United States and its implications for the ability of Americans to secure jobs in a global economy.
Finland emerged at the top of 57 countries in science, according to the 2006 survey results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The US ranked 29th, behind countries like Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Liechtenstein, and ahead of just nine other OECD countries.
"What once was the gold standard [for international education] is now not even at the OECD average, which shows you how much the world has changed," says Andreas Schleicher, who helped write the report. The US is average in the number of students at the highest levels of scientific literacy, but has a much larger pool – nearly 1 in 4 – at the bottom, Mr. Schleicher notes. "We have stand-alone studies that suggest these kids have grim prospects in the labor market," he says.
KEY WORDS
development,
education,
future,
graphs,
intellectual property,
leadership,
social issues,
trends
Mr. Murdock's Ministry of Propaganda
NY Times
October 3, 2010
Fear and Favor
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.”
True, there have been some changes in the plot. In the original, Kane tried to buy high political office for himself. In the new version, he just puts politicians on his payroll.
I mean that literally. As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy.
[ Read original article ]
October 3, 2010
Fear and Favor
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.”
True, there have been some changes in the plot. In the original, Kane tried to buy high political office for himself. In the new version, he just puts politicians on his payroll.
I mean that literally. As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy.
[ Read original article ]
Good for the Goose, Great for the Gander
NY Times
October 3, 2010
Health Care’s Lost Weekend
By PETER ORSZAG
Doctors, like most people, don’t love to work weekends, and they probably don’t enjoy being evaluated against their peers. But their industry can no longer afford to protect them from the inevitable. Imagine a drugstore open only five days a week, or a television network that didn’t measure its ratings. Improving the quality of health care and reducing its cost will require that doctors make many changes — but working weekends and consenting to quality management are two clear ones.
[ Read original article ]
October 3, 2010
Health Care’s Lost Weekend
By PETER ORSZAG
Doctors, like most people, don’t love to work weekends, and they probably don’t enjoy being evaluated against their peers. But their industry can no longer afford to protect them from the inevitable. Imagine a drugstore open only five days a week, or a television network that didn’t measure its ratings. Improving the quality of health care and reducing its cost will require that doctors make many changes — but working weekends and consenting to quality management are two clear ones.
[ Read original article ]
The Best Congress Corporations Can Buy
NY Times
October 7, 2010
Money Talks Louder Than Ever in Midterms
By MICHAEL LUO
The dominant story line of this year’s midterm elections is increasingly becoming the torrents of money, much of it anonymous, gushing into House and Senate races across the country.
Television spending by outside interest groups has more than doubled what was spent at this point in the 2006 midterms, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.
And skirmishing between Democrats and Republicans over the spending, which has overwhelmingly favored Republicans, reached a fever pitch this week, with charges and countercharges, calls for investigations and calls to block them. Suddenly, complex campaign finance regulations have been elevated to crucial political talking points.
The explanation for how these interest groups have become such powerful players this year includes not just the Supreme Court’s ruling in January in the Citizens United case that struck down restrictions on corporate spending on elections, but also a constellation of other legal developments since 2007 that have gradually loosened strictures governing campaign financing and the regulation of third-party groups.
Add in the competitive political environment, with Republicans ascendant, the Obama administration struggling to break the perception that it is hostile to business, and the resulting stew is potent.
In the end, though, it is the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that remains the touchstone. Interestingly, the legal changes directly wrought by the case have turned out to be quite subtle, according to campaign finance lawyers and political operatives. Instead, they said, the case has been more important for the psychological impact it had on the biggest donors.
“The difference between the law pre- and post-Citizens United is subtle to the expert observer,” said Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and a critic of the ruling. “To the casual observer, what they have heard is the court has gone from a world that prohibited corporate political speech and activity, even though that isn’t actually the case, to suddenly for the first time that it’s allowed. It’s that change in psychology that has made a difference in terms of the amount of money now being spent.”
Even before the decision, corporations had significant latitude to sponsor what appeared to many voters to be political advertisements, as long as they fell under the guise of “issue” ads. Now, they can simply be more direct. But many heads of corporations and superwealthy individual donors who were not even part of the court case have taken away a much more simplified, overarching message, according to lawyers who advise corporations on election law and to political power-players soliciting giant checks.
Money Talks Louder Than Ever in Midterms
By MICHAEL LUO
The dominant story line of this year’s midterm elections is increasingly becoming the torrents of money, much of it anonymous, gushing into House and Senate races across the country.
Television spending by outside interest groups has more than doubled what was spent at this point in the 2006 midterms, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.
And skirmishing between Democrats and Republicans over the spending, which has overwhelmingly favored Republicans, reached a fever pitch this week, with charges and countercharges, calls for investigations and calls to block them. Suddenly, complex campaign finance regulations have been elevated to crucial political talking points.
The explanation for how these interest groups have become such powerful players this year includes not just the Supreme Court’s ruling in January in the Citizens United case that struck down restrictions on corporate spending on elections, but also a constellation of other legal developments since 2007 that have gradually loosened strictures governing campaign financing and the regulation of third-party groups.
Add in the competitive political environment, with Republicans ascendant, the Obama administration struggling to break the perception that it is hostile to business, and the resulting stew is potent.
In the end, though, it is the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that remains the touchstone. Interestingly, the legal changes directly wrought by the case have turned out to be quite subtle, according to campaign finance lawyers and political operatives. Instead, they said, the case has been more important for the psychological impact it had on the biggest donors.
“The difference between the law pre- and post-Citizens United is subtle to the expert observer,” said Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and a critic of the ruling. “To the casual observer, what they have heard is the court has gone from a world that prohibited corporate political speech and activity, even though that isn’t actually the case, to suddenly for the first time that it’s allowed. It’s that change in psychology that has made a difference in terms of the amount of money now being spent.”
Even before the decision, corporations had significant latitude to sponsor what appeared to many voters to be political advertisements, as long as they fell under the guise of “issue” ads. Now, they can simply be more direct. But many heads of corporations and superwealthy individual donors who were not even part of the court case have taken away a much more simplified, overarching message, according to lawyers who advise corporations on election law and to political power-players soliciting giant checks.
Putting Money Where the Motion Is
NY Times
August 31, 2010
Tax Cuts That Make a Difference
By DAVID LEONHARDT
WASHINGTON
It’s time to start talking about a tax cut.
The economy is struggling mightily. Some 15 million people remain unemployed. The Federal Reserve has been slow to act and still is not doing much. The Senate has been unable to find the 60 votes needed to pass anything but minor bills.
The best hope for a short-term economic plan that can win bipartisan support is a tax cut — and not the permanent extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which have been dominating the debate lately. Such an extension is unlikely to win many Democratic votes. Republicans, meanwhile, are unlikely to support more spending, like the national infrastructure project President Obama has been mentioning.
A well-devised tax cut could be different. Cutting taxes has been the heart of the Republican economic program for 30 years, and last year’s stimulus bill showed that Mr. Obama was open to tax cuts.
The question, then, is what kind of cut can put people back to work quickly.
[ Read original article ]
August 31, 2010
Tax Cuts That Make a Difference
By DAVID LEONHARDT
WASHINGTON
It’s time to start talking about a tax cut.
The economy is struggling mightily. Some 15 million people remain unemployed. The Federal Reserve has been slow to act and still is not doing much. The Senate has been unable to find the 60 votes needed to pass anything but minor bills.
The best hope for a short-term economic plan that can win bipartisan support is a tax cut — and not the permanent extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which have been dominating the debate lately. Such an extension is unlikely to win many Democratic votes. Republicans, meanwhile, are unlikely to support more spending, like the national infrastructure project President Obama has been mentioning.
A well-devised tax cut could be different. Cutting taxes has been the heart of the Republican economic program for 30 years, and last year’s stimulus bill showed that Mr. Obama was open to tax cuts.
The question, then, is what kind of cut can put people back to work quickly.
[ Read original article ]
KEY WORDS
budget,
business,
economics,
elections,
graphs,
infrastructure,
leadership,
politics,
tax policy
We Are #1! (....in murders that is)
NyTimes
October 8, 2010
High Cost of Crime
By CHARLES M. BLOW
When times get hard and talk turns to spending and budgets, there is one area that gets short shrift: the cost of crime and our enormous criminal justice system. For instance, how much do you think a single murder costs society? According to researchers at Iowa State University, it is a whopping $17.25 million.
Those researchers analyzed 2003 data from cases in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas and calculated the figure based on “victim costs, criminal justice system costs, lost productivity estimates for both the victim and the criminal, and estimates on the public’s resulting willingness to pay to prevent future violence.” That willingness to prevent future violence includes collateral costs like expenditures for security measures, insurance and government welfare programs. It’s hard to believe that they could calculate the collateral costs with any real degree of accuracy, but I understand the concept.
(They also calculated that each rape costs $448,532, each robbery $335,733, each aggravated assault $145,379 and each burglary $41,288.)
By their estimates, more than 18,000 homicides that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded in 2007 alone will cost us roughly $300 billion. That’s about as much as we’ve spent over nine years fighting the war in Afghanistan. That’s more than the 2010 federal budget for the Departments of Education, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor and Homeland Security combined. Does anyone else see a problem here?
October 8, 2010
High Cost of Crime
By CHARLES M. BLOW
When times get hard and talk turns to spending and budgets, there is one area that gets short shrift: the cost of crime and our enormous criminal justice system. For instance, how much do you think a single murder costs society? According to researchers at Iowa State University, it is a whopping $17.25 million.
Those researchers analyzed 2003 data from cases in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas and calculated the figure based on “victim costs, criminal justice system costs, lost productivity estimates for both the victim and the criminal, and estimates on the public’s resulting willingness to pay to prevent future violence.” That willingness to prevent future violence includes collateral costs like expenditures for security measures, insurance and government welfare programs. It’s hard to believe that they could calculate the collateral costs with any real degree of accuracy, but I understand the concept.
(They also calculated that each rape costs $448,532, each robbery $335,733, each aggravated assault $145,379 and each burglary $41,288.)
By their estimates, more than 18,000 homicides that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded in 2007 alone will cost us roughly $300 billion. That’s about as much as we’ve spent over nine years fighting the war in Afghanistan. That’s more than the 2010 federal budget for the Departments of Education, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor and Homeland Security combined. Does anyone else see a problem here?
Who Laughs Last on This One?
NY Times
October 2, 2010
The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
By FRANK RICH
ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball.
Yet those laughing now may not have the last laugh in November. O’Donnell’s timely ascent in the election season’s final lap may well prove a godsend for the G.O.P.
October 2, 2010
The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
By FRANK RICH
ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball.
Yet those laughing now may not have the last laugh in November. O’Donnell’s timely ascent in the election season’s final lap may well prove a godsend for the G.O.P.
So Many Parties, So Little Leadership
NY Times
October 2, 2010
Third Party Rising
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
A friend in the U.S. military sent me an e-mail last week with a quote from the historian Lewis Mumford’s book, “The Condition of Man,” about the development of civilization. Mumford was describing Rome’s decline: “Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was an inner go. Rome’s life was now an imitation of life: a mere holding on. Security was the watchword — as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks.”
It was one of those history passages that echo so loudly in the present that it sends a shiver down my spine — way, way too close for comfort.
October 2, 2010
Third Party Rising
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
A friend in the U.S. military sent me an e-mail last week with a quote from the historian Lewis Mumford’s book, “The Condition of Man,” about the development of civilization. Mumford was describing Rome’s decline: “Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was an inner go. Rome’s life was now an imitation of life: a mere holding on. Security was the watchword — as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks.”
It was one of those history passages that echo so loudly in the present that it sends a shiver down my spine — way, way too close for comfort.
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