The Truth About Jobs

The Article: Truth About Jobs by Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

The Text: If anyone had doubts about the madness that has spread through a large part of the American political spectrum, the reaction to Friday’s better-than expected report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics should have settled the issue. For the immediate response of many on the right — and we’re not just talking fringe figures — was to cry conspiracy.

Leading the charge of what were quickly dubbed the “B.L.S. truthers” was none other than Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, who posted an assertion on Twitter that the books had been cooked to help President Obama’s re-election campaign. His claim was quickly picked up by right-wing pundits and media personalities.

It was nonsense, of course. Job numbers are prepared by professional civil servants, at an agency that currently has no political appointees. But then maybe Mr. Welch — under whose leadership G.E. reported remarkably smooth earnings growth, with none of the short-term fluctuations you might have expected (fluctuations that reappeared under his successor) — doesn’t know how hard it would be to cook the jobs data.

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The Antonin Scalia Bot Strikes Again

The Article: Scalia says outlawing “homosexual sodomy” is a no-brainer by Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon.

The Text: Antonin Scalia isn’t sweating it. At a book reading and lecture at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute this week, the 76-year-old associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and self-described “textualist” entertained the crowd by rattling off a litany of his top judicial no-brainers.

“The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion,” he said. “Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.” And then he went to bed that night and slept like a baby.

Scalia’s breathtaking nonchalance doesn’t come as any huge surprise to anyone familiar with the Roe v. Wade–opposing, affirmative action–blocking, death penalty–loving Reagan appointee’s strict interpretation of the Constitution as an immutable template of American justice. In the past, he’s argued that “the risk of assessing evolving standards is that it is all too easy to believe that evolution has culminated in one’s own views.” He affirmed that belief at the Enterprise Institute Event, contrasting his style with those justices who would believe “‘the Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean.’ No kidding.” And he reiterated that citizens who believe in change on such issues as abortion or the death penalty should take it up with their elected officials — or go ahead and try to change the Constitution, adding darkly, “It is very difficult to adopt a constitutional amendment.” Surprisingly, he didn’t finish this statement with a sinister BWAHAHA flourish, but it was implied.

It takes a special kind of man to shrug off challenges to death penalty and abortion restrictions with nary a care in the world about how his interpretations of text might affect real human lives, and to use the phrase “homosexual sodomy” in 2012. Give him this, though: He’s consistent, down to his language. In 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down Texas sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, paving the way for a more widespread dissolution of similar statutes in other states, Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion. At the time, he argued that “nowhere does the Court’s opinion declare that homosexual sodomy is a ‘fundamental right,’” adding, “It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed. Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”

I’m not a Supreme Court justice, but sorry, who here was taking sides in a culture war? Who here thought “evolution has culminated in one’s own views”? Because I’m seeing a pot that couldn’t begin to fathom how black he was. Still can’t. And nine years ago, Scalia crowed in his dissent that “we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage,” so one may wonder if today, underneath his swagger, he’s just a teensy bit fearful about those homosexuals and their homosexual sodomy getting homosexual married all over the place. Oh, the times, they are evolving.

Scalia may be a relic, not merely ferociously determined to refuse to modernize but equally committed to making it look easy. But you’ve got to hand it to a man whose devotion to what he perceives as our country’s founding values is so rock solid that he’s content to be living fully in the 18th century.

2012: Free Versus Slave States, Not Red Versus Blue

The Article: Forget Red vs. Blue — It’s Slave States vs. Free States in 2012 by Michael Lind in AlterNet.

The Text: Every now and then someone highlights the overlap between today’s Republican states and the slave states of the former Confederacy. As clichéd as the point may be, it remains indispensable to understanding what is happening in American politics today.

The core of today’s Democratic party consists of the states of New England and the Great Lakes/Midatlantic region that were the heart of the Union effort during the Civil War. The core of today’s Republican party consists of the states that seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America.Don’t be misled by the contemporary red state-blue state map which makes the mostly-red Prairie/Mountain states look as important in the Republican coalition as the South.

As the cartogram shows, in terms of population and votes the South vastly outweighs the thinly-populated Prairie/Mountain states, even though the latter get disproportionate representation in the U.S. Senate and the electoral college. The cartogram provides a pretty good reflection of the situation perceived by conservative white Southerners, by depicting a besieged South encircled and on the verge of being crushed by multiracial, polyglot, immigrant-friendly, secular humanist, progressive Blue America.

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Do The Math On The Deficit

The Article: Repeat After Me: Obama Cut the Deficit and Slowed Spending to Lowest Level in 50 Years by Bob Cesca in The Huffington Post.

The Text: llustrative of his contempt for the truth, Mitt Romney’s campaign website continues to host the following statement: “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.”

On Friday, we discovered yet another reason why this is a super-colossal lie.

With the end of fiscal year 2012, the Congressional Budget Office announced the 2012 federal budget deficit: $1.1 trillion. Taken purely at face value, this number is enormous. Yet every Democrat, and especially the Obama campaign, ought to be telling anyone who will listen: Not only has the president cut the deficit by $312 billion during his first term (so far), but he’s cut the deficit by $200 billion in the past year alone. And the CBO projected that the 2013 Obama budget, if enacted as is, would shrink the deficit to $977 billion — a four year total of nearly $500 billion in deficit reduction.

Okay, yeah, I get it. It’s risky to mention the deficit, but not when you couch it in math and the facts.

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America’s Hierarchy Of Human Life

The Article: The tragic consulate killings in Libya and America’s hierarchy of human life by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian.

The Text: Protesters attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Tuesday night and killed four Americans, including the US ambassador, Chris Stevens. The attacks were triggered by rage over an amateurish and deeply hateful film about Islam that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as, among other things, a child molester advocate, a bloodthirsty goon, a bumbling idiot, and a promiscuous, philandering leech. A 13-minute trailer was uploaded to YouTube and then quickly circulated in the Muslim world, sparking widespread anger (the US embassy in Cairo was also attacked).

The anti-Islam film was originally reported by the Associated Press news agency to have been written, directed and produced by an Israeli real estate developer living in California, Sam Bacile. Later the news agency issued a fresh story having investigated further and traces the genesis of the film to a Coptic Christian, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, living in California. [see footnote] Its purpose, as described by the Israeli newspaper, was to show that “Islam is a cancer” and to provide a “provocative political statement condemning the religion”. It’s hard to believe that the film – which is barely at the level of a poorly rehearsed high-school play – required $5m to make, but the intent seems clear: to provoke Muslims into exactly the sort of violent rage that we are now witnessing.

Events like this one are difficult to write about when they first happen because the raw emotion they produce often makes rational discussion impossible. A script quickly emerges from which All Decent People must recite, and any deviations are quickly detected and denounced. But given the magnitude of this event and the important points it raises, it is nonetheless worthwhile to examine it:

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