4.09.2010

Election 2010/2012 in graphs: housing prices, economy, GDP, jobs

Ezra Klein has an excellent piece about the 2010 election with graphs charting topics of concern.

Something I found interesting was a graph of housing prices dating back to 1988 and the end of the Reagan Administration. I took Ezra's graph and overlayed the various administrations for some context.

What is so incredibly striking to me is the trends in prices so closely follow the change in administrations. Prices tanked almost immediately after Bush 41 took office in January of 1989, rose and then plateaued towards the end of his 4 years. They kept a pretty steady, if not dramatic, upward climb under Clinton. The immediately trended downward under Bush 43, and then were impacted by 9/11 (you can see the bump), diving before becoming erratic, following the trends in Iraq.

Notice two things - the trend sharply downward following the 2004 election and the trend sharply upward almost immediately after Obama took office.

I'm not Nate Silver but my admittedly-basic analysis shows me that there is some correlation between prices and the practices of and perceptions of an administration.

The other graphs are telling as well, but focus almost solely on President Obama's performance.

JOB GROWTH SINCE JANUARY 2008




Right-wing violence: IRS agents getting death threats in response to Newt's lies

In response to Newt Gingrich's wildly inaccurate, willingly deceptive and outragously, purposely false comment about 16,000 new IRS agents being hired to enforce health care:
Fox News via Media Matters

The federal government is investigating dozens of death threats to IRS employees that have been posted online since the House passed the health care bill, FoxNews.com has learned.

The health care law has sparked protests on radical anti-tax and anti-government Web sites and within their private, password-protected e-mail lists and message boards. Some writers have labeled March 21 -- the day the House passed the bill – "Bloody Sunday," and they see it as a call to violent action against IRS workers.

In the days following the House vote, animosity toward the IRS intensified, and many heated online protests included specific discussions about the best way to go about killing tax agents.

Hundreds of comments were posted in response to an incendiary story on infowars.com, the radical far-right Web site owned by radio host Alex Jones. The story, entitled, "The Cost Of Defying Obamacare: $2,250 a Month And IRS Goons Pointing Guns At Your Family," focused on the “increasing militarization of the IRS” and its expansion of powers under the new health care law.

One commenter wrote: "If they actually try to do this, there is going to be a whole lot of thugs start vanishing. This is the last line in the sand. Those fools have just signed their death warrants!!!"

"theres gonna be alot of IRS agents needing healthcare if they try to terrorize us Americans," another comment read. Yet another wrote, "Come and take them…….they will have to hire so many IRS agents because…well when 10 a day get killed….you do the math."


4.07.2010

Endorsement of GOP candidate: "You’ve got the black one with the reading thing"

Stay classy, Republicans.
Dave Weigel

Via Jonathan Chait, we see Vietnam War hero Bud Day — known these days for his support of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his habit of constantly wearing his Medal of Honor around his neck — giving Charlie Crist an endorsement he might regret.

“You know, we just got through (electing) a politician who can run his mouth at Mach 1, a black one, and now we have a Hispanic who can run his mouth at Mach 1,” Day said. “You look at their track records and they’re both pretty gritty. Charlie has not got a gritty track record.”

Day confirmed he was speaking of Obama and Rubio.

“You’ve got the black one with the reading thing. He can go as fast as the speed of light and has no idea what he’s saying,” Day said. “I put Rubio in that same category, except I don’t know if he’s using one of those readers.”

Jon Stewart on Florida dick doc who won't treat Obama patients

Jon Stewart takes on the Florida urologist who refuses to treat anyone who admits they voted for Obama.

If you think about, he's a urologist. By only treating Republicans, he's playing to his own interests. His practice is all about dicks.


By the way, Dr. Crankypants also admitted to Alan Colmes that he doesn't even know what's in the bill:
DailyKos

COLMES: Do you really think the government wants people dead?

CASSELL: Well I think that they’re cutting all supportive care, like nursing homes, ambulance services –

COLMES: What do you mean they’re cutting nursing homes?

CASSELL: They’re cutting nursing home reimbursements.

COLMES: Isn’t what they’re cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.

CASSELL: Well you know, I can’t tell you exactly what the deal is.

COLMES: If you can’t tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?

CASSELL: I’m not the guy who wrote the plan.

COLMES: But if you don’t know what the deal is why are you speaking out against something you don’t know what the deal is?

CASSELL: What I get online, just like any other American. What I’m supposed to understand about the bill should be available to me.

COLMES: It is; it’s been online for a long time; it’s also been all over the media.

Fox News take on nuclear treaty is a fair and balanced mushroom cloud

This is nuts. Seriously nuts. How can this possibly be balanced journalism?

TPM

Update to CNN's Erickson's threats to shoot census workers

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has responded to CNN's Erick Erickson's threat to shoot census workers who might come to his house:
Huff Post

Tuesday, Gibbs described that statement as "remarkable crazy remarks of somebody that would threaten somebody simply trying to ensure that they're adequately represented in this country."

"These days, it never ceases to amaze you," he continued. "And usually it's only trumped by what somebody will knowingly say tomorrow about where -- I think Lincoln who said better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

Ed Shultz has some choice thoughts for CNN and Erickson:


Incidentally, CNN has scolded their own reporter, Bill Press, who asked Gibbs the question.
Interestingly, Bill Press, who asked Gibbs about Erickson, tweets that CNN management did not appreciate his raising the question at the White House.

"CNN brass emailed me after I asked Gibbs about Erickson, saying I MADE UP the quotes and was out of line. Bullshit - I quoted DIRECTLY," he said.

Maddow takes down Fox-promoted, misleadingly-edited California ACORN tapes

Media Matters



Previous ACORN pieces

4.06.2010

Fox News Code Pink/Teabagger hypocrisy

First, let me state that I'm not a fan of groups of nutsos no matter what side they're on. That includes Code Pink. There are more effective ways of getting your point across than being an asshole.

That having been said, it's interesting to see what Fox considers rude behavior.
Media Matters

The Fox News crew broke out the smelling salts when some anti-war protesters from Code Pink recently heckled Karl Rove at a California stop on his book tour. Appalled by Code Pink's actions, Fox News condemned the rude behavior.

"Who are you to silence his voice," Fox News' Megyn Kelly demanded to know, while interviewing Code Pink's Jodie Evans, who had confronted Rove at the California event, demanding answers about how the administration, in her words, lied the nation into war.
Yet when the teabaggers formed their mobs and shouted down anyone disagreeing with their position at last summer's town hall fiascoes, they were treated like heroes.

Why the double standard Fox? Why the hypocrisy Megyn?

Did U.S. troops in Iraq murder innocent civilians?

I've been sitting on this for a bit, because I needed to process it.
Dan Froomkin

Calling it a case of "collateral murder," the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver -- and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.

None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon's initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.

Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.

In the video, which Reuters has been asking to see since 2007, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.

"Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards," says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.

A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: "Come on, let us shoot!"

Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: "Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle."

The helicopter crew, which was patrolling an area that had been the scene of fierce fighting that morning, said they spotted weapons on members of the first group -- although the video shows one gun, at most. The crew also mistook a telephoto lens for a rocket-propelled grenade.
What's worse, the cavalier video game-like attitude, the pleas to kill an unarmed rescue party, the collateral damage, the coverup, or the fact that we're in Iraq illegally?

I don't know.
Oliver Willis via Cesca
In the case of the Wikileaks video, Greenwald characterizes it as “the plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety”. Except in the mindset of the soldiers shown, this wasn’t just some guy, but part of a group of insurgents. While it’s very clear that the military coverup of the activities was wrong, and possibly a crime, it galls me that it becomes so simple for people “over here” to Monday morning quarterback the decisions soldiers make in the field when they feel their lives and the lives of others are on the line.
What continues to trouble me is the cavalier manner in which they approached what should be the most deadly serious part of their jobs.

This was Gears of War for them. It was treated as XBox when it was human lives they were ending. If they can be so cavalier and, at times, excited to kill, well that leads to not taking the appropriate care to make sure that they're in fact targeting terrorists and not murdering civilians.

The attitude displayed is what really upsets me. I would think that taking a human life would be a little more serious and a lot less fun and funny.

Over at Andrew Sullivan, a reader writes:
I was a member of a unit that killed one and wounded two Americans during Operation Desert Storm. Nothing has awakened the feelings I had that night in 1991 ever, until I watched that video of the Apache attack on the journalists. I had forgotten how sick one can feel at knowing you participated in the death of innocents, and I am deeply saddened today.

I have two things to say: First, and most importantly, is that none of us is qualified to judge what that helicopter crew did that day. I want to judge them. But I don’t know what happened an hour before that, or six hours before, or six days before or six months. We have no idea how close those men have come to dying in an ambush, or being unable to help someone who was. The context of that aircrew matters as much as anything that happened on the ground that day.

But second, and what leads me to want to judge that aircraft crew so unfavorably, is that the ground targets are clearly uninterested in the presence of the aircraft.
The real lasting legacy of this is that this is another loss of the moral high ground for the U.S.. it's another reason for them to hate us.

Apparently, gun possession should be punished by immediate execution

The Weekly Standard advocates the immediate killing of anyone caught in possession of a gun. Or maybe it only counts if you have brown skin and a name that doesn't sound like Steve. Why are the rules different in different parts of our empire?

Stay classy CNN

Three weeks ago I wrote about new CNN hire Erick Erickson's penchant for extreme attacks on the left, such as calling Justice David Souter a "goat fucking child molester."

Two weeks after his "that was a mistake" mea culpa on air, Erickson is back, this time threatening to shoot census workers.
Media Matters

ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I'm not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They're not going on my property. They can't do that. They don't have the legal right, and yet they're trying.
You know you're off the reservation when you can get the Presidential Pres Secretary to call your comments "Remarkably crazy."