Only a socialist would adjust for inflation

U.S. Congressman* Marsha Blackburn (R-gun moll) pines for her early days, growing up in Mississippi, when moral teenagers were damn glad to make $2.15 an hour, unlike today's lazy no-accounts. But:

Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.

At that time, the minimum wage was $1.60, equivalent to $10.56 in today’s terms. Today’s minimum wage is equivalent to just $1.10 an hour in 1968 dollars, meaning the teenage Blackburn managed to enter the workforce making almost double the wage she now says is keeping teenagers out of the workforce.

Self-refuting Tea Party wingnuts like Blackburn want to return to a fantasy land that exists only in their feverish, foolish imaginations.

They don't know enough about the world to understand inflation, and they don't care to learn.

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* Yes, her Congressional web site calls her a Congressman.

Maybe this is to reassure her Tea Party constituents that she's not one a them libbers. It can't be that she's reserving this one area from Southern Baptist submission to her husband.** Maybe she's just running a sloppy operation. There are two very different district maps on her site, one of which shows a district office way outside her district.

Ding, ding, ding. First theory correct:

As Blackburn worked her way around the room, the constituent motioned for her to come back: “Little lady, if you win this thing, what we gonna call you — congresslady? Congressgirl?”

“Sir, congressman will be just fine,” replied Blackburn.

Can I just say this? Barf!

** Nope, she's Presbyterian.

My hypocrisy knows no bounds

I'm employed, yet I support unemployment benefits.

I'm white, yet I support civil rights for minorities.

I'm a man, yet I support civil rights for women.

I'm not pregnant, yet I support abortion rights.

I'm not hungry, yet I support food stamps.

I'm not retired, yet I support Social Security and Medicare.

I'm not stupid, yet I support education.

I'm an atheist, yet I support freedom of religion.

What a hypocrite!

Seriously?  Conservatives claim Elizabeth Warren is a hypocrite because she has achieved wealth but still advocates for the middle class?!?

“I don’t begrudge her own personal wealth. I begrudge her hypocrisy of trying to play the demagogue against those who have achieved and who have created wealth,” said Rick Manning of the conservative group Americans for Limited Government.

You'd think they would be celebrating her. Instead, they've gone fucking soft in the head and believe they're permitted to redefine words however they choose to score points with their ignoramus base.

They're not so much post-modern as they have all the ethics of the advertising industry and, like it, are paid to repeat lies so long and so often that they start to sound plausible to the weak-minded.

So-called Democrats

The millionaires won again yesterday. Who were the so-called Democrats who joined the Republican filibuster of Obama's jobs bill?

One of them was, of course, Joe Lieberman, who hasn't been a Democrat for...ever.

I hope Barack Obama and Harry Reid regret their failure to send him packing to the Republican caucus when they had the chance in January 2009 - to repay his betrayal with the back of their hand.

The others were Ben Nelson, always reliable voting for a Republican filibuster, and Mark Pryor. I refuse to put a D next to their names.

Meta-question: Why did I have to visit a third site before finding who the turncoats were? Don't journalists find the question who an important question any more?

Wrestling with pigs

Fighting disinformation and propaganda from Fox is a dirty unrewarding job, and the pigs' ratings go up, but someone has to do it now that Keith Olbermann is no longer knocking the big cow chip off Bill O'Reilly's shoulder.

The Democratic Party doesn't seem able fight the right anywhere outside of fundraising emails, so I'm glad at least Media Matters is stepping up to the plate.  This should be leverage to be asked by big media to speak for liberals.

Safe bet

If wingnut commentators are selling it, chances are good that it's borderline fraudulent.

What's their stock in trade? Outrage, fear, and bullshit. Hard to make a rational investment decision in the throes of even one of those...

Principled conservatives

Convictions for sale! We rationalize ideology for money!

No media outlet should ever again accept an opinion piece from the American Conservative Union or David Keene.

But they happily will.

(h/t Atrios)

Illegitimi non carborundum

Mocking mock Latin while mocking the Senate's confirmation follies. Yeah!

Click image for full Matt Wuerker/Politico cartoon.

Limited hang-out

So far, the Bushists and their apologists in the pro-torture, anti-law wing of the conservative movement have tried numerous defenses against their culpability for illegal and unconscionable torture and prisoner abuse:

• The Jackson 5 defense: "The abuses are the work of a few bad apples, and one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl."
• The patent bullshit defense: "The United States doesn't torture."
• The Minitru defense: "We've redefined the word 'torture'. 'Torture' has never included anything less than total organ failure."
  
• The necessity defense, Darth Cheney style: "There's a one percent chance that a time bomb is ticking somewhere in the world."

Now they're trying the Psycho defense: Nancy Pelosi didn't stop me before I [tortured] again.

It's all bullshit.

Mean Nancy hurt their feelings

That mean Nancy Pelosi lauded her caucus for defending Main St. from the predations of Wall St. This made Republicans pout, so they voted against the bailout, says John Boehner. Waaah! You'd think they'd be ashamed to admit what a bunch of children they are (no slur intended against the majority of children, who are much more stalwart).

Already, I have heard colleagues channelling this bullshit, blaming the Democrats for not passing the bill, when 60% of them voted for it and only 30% of Republicans. While angrily blaming the Democrats, they were incensed that the Democrats would care about who got the blame! It's boggling to me how people who let the GOP manipulate them like this fail to notice it.

Was this a good bill? No. In point of fact, it sucked. The only rationale I've read that made it worth passing is Paul Krugman's: It was needed, and it was the best that the perennially irresponsible Republicans would permit.

As just punishment, the Democrats should now put forward a good bill (Krugman beats me to this, though without repeating his definition) and let it be voted on party lines. A good bill would have:

• a lower price tag, doled out in relatively small chunks
  
• real standards for pricing of bad paper
  
• mandated equity stakes for us citizens, the recapitalizers, mixed with temporary socialization of failed financial institutions
  
• punitive, confiscatory, regurgitative taxes on those who profited from this bubble
  

Then let Duhbya veto it.

Update: Barney Frank noticed the bullshit coming from the ever-oily John Boehner.

Update (9/30): For all the people in comments who are incensed with the Democrats, check out how two-faced, irresponsible, and focused only on politics the Republicans are. They were telling the Democrats they had a deal, but they were busy before the so-called deal failed planning to screw the Dems. Republicans, dishonest to the core. (h/t Americablog via Eschaton)

Update: Michelle Bachman defends her fellow Republicans against Boehner's slur on their toughness:

We are not babies, sucking our thumbs," Bachmann said.

No? In any case, they are just plain sucking.

John Sununu, no sainthood - why not?

I've actually seen this ad three times on Red Sox Double Play (5-4 walk-off bunt win after trailing 4-0; maybe these boys are serious about the AL East).

The ad is so over the top that I was waiting for the punch line, but it turned out these bullshit purveyors are serious. You really can't satirize this stuff - it's already too ridiculous.

He's younger, faster, quicker. Inexhaustible, tireless, energetic. A leader. Independent and principled. Great dad, big-hearted, funny, and kind.

He's the youngest member of the Senate, but Time Magazine says, "... that hasn't limited his reach.

New Hampshire's in his blood.

Woman: "I think I'll stick with the future, John Sununu."

"I'm John Sununu, and I approve this message."

I shit you not, that's all of it. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. John's role is to walk purposefully even if he looks older than 41.

The Sununu campaign is saying this to voters: "We think you're idiots and will vote for Sununu based on all these substance-free compliments we've been hired to pay to John."

You'll notice that another 90% supporter of Duhbya has gotten the same word from his pollsters that John McCain has gotten. If a Republican runs on issues in 2008, he loses. Just in case, be sure, be very very sure not even to mumble the word Republican, since it's a dirty word.

Sununu's reaction? Patronize the voters. Yeah, he's a Republican all right.

Why Jerome Corsi has work

Why is Jerome Corsi on your television and in the New York Times? He has been caught writing things under a pseudonym that would normally exclude him from ever showing up on TV again. He's a "reporter" for WorldNetDaily, a wingnut font of heavily aerated liquid bullshit (I wouldn't link to them for hard, cold cash). I don't mean the lies and innuendo against Democrats (John Kerry's a communist, fer chrissakes) - they're always fair game in a way that Republicans are not. I don't mean Muslims, either. He has said hateful things about Catholics.

Yet he's still on Larry King Live.

Corsi is a lunatic, but he knows how to work the media system:

• As they do with all their vicious pets, Republicans will help him out even if he claims not to be one of them. After all, Mary Matalin, mainstream Cheneyite operator who can always be counted on to defend wingnut lies, published this book. If the GOPers have to, they'll drop him like a hot potato - but they'll keep paying him.
  
• There will be no consequences for him personally. Libel is virtually impossible for a public figure to prove since New York Times Co. vs. Sullivan even if his actual malice toward Obama is stated explicitly in his book.
  
• Wingnut interest groups (Richard Mellon Scaife, anyone?) will buy his scurrilous books in bulk and thrust it high on the NYT bestseller list. Who cares if anyone reads it?
• Bulk purchases provide a nice payday so that Corsi can continue the manufacture of sleaze.
  
• More important, they guarantee his presence on the TV screen. The media can't turn down a bestselling author, no matter how odious or dishonest.
  

Why would Simon & Schuster permit their brand to be sullied by association with these lies and all the other lies Matalin has thrust into print? Don't be a dummy! Money, nothing else. They'd ship boxes full of styrofoam peanuts if they could invoice a dozen copies per box of this rotten tripe.

So, why is there nothing like this on the left?

• The right pays better.
• Training by the American Petroleum Institute and the Tobacco Institute hews to the right.
• Democrats still think that politics is about ideas. How stupid is that! (Of course, I keep pretending that, too.)
• The left cares about fairness. Sometimes our caring is vestigial and compromised and incomplete, but that's what motivates us. The right cares about retaining the power to prevent their being called to account for their unfairness.

How Republicans view the working class

Unfortunately, there are Americans of all classes who are still fooled. At this point, you have to say that they want to be fooled.

Click image for full Matt Wuerker/Politico cartoon.

Brainwashed, I tell ya

Scott McClellan now tells us that it was all true:

• He lied to us, though - poor baby - he didn't know it at the time.
  
• Rove and Libby conspired to get their stories straight on Valerie Plame.
• Duhbya's (mal-)administration was a propaganda operation, not a policy operation.
• The Iraq campaign marketed lies to us.
• America would have been better of if we did have a liberal media.
  

One question: When your country needed you, Scotty, where were you?

Update: See Glenn Greenwald.

Update: Wolf Blitzer exhibits his usual bulldog grip on reality. As if.