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Limbaugh: Michael Steele Is ‘Off-Message!’

By Faiz Shakir on Oct 12, 2009 at 11:30 am

In an interview with NBC’s Today Show, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh defiantly stated that he is “not the leader of the Republican Party.” “These people think they can discredit the Republican Party by making me the head of it,” he said. “All they’re doing is elevating me. It’s silly for them to talk about how I’m the leader of anything.”

Well, Limbaugh certainly wants to act like he is a leader of the Party. Just a few moments later, NBC’s Jamie Gangel told Limbaugh that he has a propensity to “scare Republican politicians,” particularly RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who backtracked earlier this year after calling Rush an “entertainer.” Limbaugh responded by instructing the GOP chairman on what he should be doing:

GANGEL: GOP Party Chairman Michael Steele, at his peril, he criticized you. He said you were just an entertainer. And he said you were “incendiary” and “divisive.”

LIMBAUGH: That’s right.

GANGEL: You went after him. I’ve never seen anyone apologize quite so quickly.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you’d have to ask him why he apologized. But, the reason I went after him is not because he said those things about me. It’s because he’s off-message! Michael Steele should be out there raising money and planning more ways to get people to vote for Republicans.

Watch it:

Also in the interview, Limbaugh is asked whether he was moved in any way by the election of the first black President. “Yeah, but I got over it pretty quickly,” said Limbaugh, who declared his desire to see Obama “fail” even before he was inaugurated. Limbaugh said he predicted Obama’s election would “exacerbate racial problems — and it has.” Indeed, Rush has done his part to make sure of that.

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Yglesias

The Price is Wrong

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 12, 2009 at 11:28 am

Steve Clemons brings us back to the factoid that gave me serious doubts about the merits of further escalation in Afghanistan—our current annual expenditures are substantially larger than Afghan GDP. Under the circumstances, it doesn’t seem especially plausible to believe that an objective shortfall of resources is the reason our side hasn’t already won.

Like if we’re willing to spend three times Afghanistan’s GDP each and every year, maybe we should be exploring what could be achieved with a pure bribe-based strategy?

Climate Progress

Memo to deniers, delayers, and disinformers: When I propose a sucker bet, the only conclusion you can draw is that I’m looking for suckers.

By Joe Romm on Oct 12, 2009 at 10:59 am

Our story so far:

On September 22, I debunked the global cooling myth for the umpteenth time (see “NYT‘s Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation“).  To see whether the status quo media and the professional Deniers, Delayers, and Disinformers believe the cooling crap they are pushing, I proposed what should be seen as a generous bet (from their unscientific perspective):

that the 2010s will be the hottest decade in the temperature record, more than 0.15°C hotter than the hottest decade so far using the NASA GISS dataset.

Led by Triple D All Star Chip Knappenberger (“Is Joe Romm a ‘Global Lukewarmer’?”) my attempt to call out suckers deniers who insist we are entering a long-term cooling, was somehow turned into a statement of my belief as to what the science says is going to happen on our current emissions path.  What is especially bizarre about that is I have written about 2 million words on the subject, so my views are no mystery at all (see, for instance, “Intro to global warming impacts“).

What is especially laughable is that the deniers, led by Knappenberger, who should know better (well, I guess that’s a contradiction in terms), then ascribe their ignorance of the science to my statement and with an anti-scientific linear extrapolation for what I am supposedly predicting the warming will be this entire century.  That is to say, because I supposedly believe we will only warm 0.15°C next decade (which I don’t), that means I am also asserting we will only warm only on the low-range this century, perhaps only 1.5°C.

That represents such a staggering lack of understanding of the basic science of climate change that it should immediately disqualify anyone who advances it from the debate — including Thomas Fuller, who took my bet!  In fact, as everyone who understands the science knows, the warming is projected to be quite nonlinear, in part because the climate system has feedbacks, and the major ones all appear to be positive (see here).  Also, aerosols (human and volcanic) have “dimmed” or muted the full impact of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases we would have seen so far (to a remarkable degree, see here).

Anyone who bothered to look at the IPCC report, which you would think is the minimum required of someone claiming to be interested in an “intelligent conversation” about the science, would see that.  As the Figure above shows, in the high-end scenarios, like A2, the warming is much slower in the early decades of this century than in the later ones.

Fuller took my bet (see his comment here), but it wasn’t until I saw this inane headline on the Swift Boat smearer’s website (complete with my photo) that I realized just what Fuller did:

Read more

Politics

Lou Dobbs heading to Fox Business?

By Faiz Shakir on Oct 12, 2009 at 10:11 am

dobbsThe New York Times’ Brian Stetler reports that Fox News is relishing its position as the leading voice of partisan opposition to Obama. Fox’s senior vice president for programming, Bill Shine, says of the criticism from the White House, “Every time they do it, our ratings go up.” Stetler reports that Fox is trying to bolster its oppositional forces by adding CNN’s Lou Dobbs to its roster:

Certainly, Fox continues to aggressively bolster its on-air talent, most recently with the hiring of John Stossel, the libertarian investigative journalist from ABC News, for its spin-off channel, Fox Business. The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

Dobbs would of course be a natural fit for the Fox News network. He has given inordinate airtime to the “birther” conspiracies and mused about whether President Obama himself is “undocumented.” CNN might be content to part with Dobbs, given that he has become a “publicity nightmare” for the network.

Update

Rachel Sklar: “Dobbs, for his part, has shown that he has no problem picking fights; it only makes sense for him to find a home at a network where they do, too.”


Update

,On the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog, Stelter adds that a CNN spokesperson refused to comment on whether Dobbs is “seeking to leave CNN.”

Yglesias

A Serious Man

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 12, 2009 at 10:01 am

Went to see A Serious Man yesterday. It’s pretty good. It was also a rare example of a movie that I went into more or less “cold.” I knew it was a Coen Brothers movie, and I wanted to go to the movies. So there I went with no signal as to the topic. And, well, it turned out to be remarkably Jewish. There are, of course, lots of Jewish people working in the movie business. But despite (or perhaps because) of their prevalence, there seems to be a huge reluctance to depict Jews. Even when Jews do show up (normally in conjunction with Nazis) they don’t really do any Jewish stuff—chant funny prayers or whatnot.

This movie is really way out on the other end of the spectrum. I think the goyim in the audience will be lost at points.

Yglesias

And The Fake Nobel Goes To…

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 12, 2009 at 9:55 am

… Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom share the Swedish Central Bank Prize for Economics in Honor of Alfred Nobel. Alex Tabarrok explains Ostrom’s work and Paul Krugman tells you about Williamson. Osrtom is the first woman to win the prize and is also noteworthy for being a political scientist rather than an economist. Robert Shiller tells The New York Times that this is “part of the merging of the social sciences.”

Meanwhile, I would note that the Sveriges Riksbank itself deserves some kind of prize for ability to get people to call its economics prize “the Nobel Prize.” Real Nobel Prizes are prizes awarded according to the endowment that Alfred Nobel set up. There are, of course, lots of other prizes in the world set up by other people. One such prize is this economics prize that the Swedish Central Bank decided to give out. But only the Swedish Central Bank prize has succeeded in convincing people that it should be referred to as a “Nobel Prize” despite having no connection to Alfred Nobel or his prizes. Impressive work and yet another example of the impressively high-performing public sector institutions that make the Swedish social model work.

Politics

Harwood: Anonymous WH adviser says bloggers need to ‘take off the pjs, get dressed,’ and stop criticizing us.

By Amanda Terkel on Oct 12, 2009 at 9:00 am

Yesterday, CNBC’s Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood said that the Obama White House doesn’t view dissatisfaction amongst LGBT advocates — tens of thousands of whom marched in Washington, DC yesterday — as a “serious problem” because officials feel “that if they take care of the big issues — health care, energy, the economy — he’s [Obama] going to be just fine with this group.” As evidence, Harwood cited an anonymous “adviser” who bashed bloggers and dismissed critics as part of the “Internet left fringe”:

HOLT: But in general when you look at the left as a whole, have there been conversations about some things they thought would have been done but haven’t?

HARWOOD: Sure, but if you look at the polling, Barack Obama is doing well with 90 percent or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the “Internet left fringe,” Lester. And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.

Watch it:

On Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner, Obama sent a far different message. “I’m here with a simple message: I’m here with you in that fight,” said the President, candidly adding, “I also appreciate that many of you don’t believe that progress has come fast enough. I want to be honest about that. Because it’s important to be honest amongst friends.”

Update

The White House is disavowing the comment made by the anonymous adviser. Greg Sargent reports, asked for comment, White House deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer emailed:

That sentiment does not reflect White House thinking at all, we’ve held easily a dozen calls with the progressive online community because we believe the online communities can often keep the focus on how policy will affect the American people rather than just the political back-and-forth.

Climate Progress

Byrd rips Massey Energy for refusing to fund a new school so students can move away from coal processing plant.

By Joe Romm on Oct 12, 2009 at 8:34 am

coal-for-dummies.jpgCoal is not healthy for kids. As one U.S. study found, “Closing coal-fired power plants can have a direct, positive impact on children’s cognitive development and health” (See “If you want smarter kids, shut coal plants“). Hence, Coal for Dummies.

Perhaps the only thing worse for kids than living downwind of a major coal plant is living downwind of coal itself.  As the BBC reported in February (see Chinese birth defects “up sharply”), “A senior family planning official in China has noted an alarming rise in the number of babies with birth defects”¦.  The coal-mining heartland of Shanxi province had the biggest problem.”

Do coal companies have any responsibility to directly protect children from the harmful effects of air pollution?  Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) thinks so, but Massey Energy thinks otherwise, as Think Progress explains.

Read more

Yglesias

Good Work, Columbus

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 12, 2009 at 8:28 am

225px-Ridolfo_Ghirlandaio_Columbus

Columbus Day is a sort of weird beast. In New York City and other areas with a significant Italian-American population it’s a significant ethnic holiday. In Washington, DC where federal employees are thick on the ground, it’s normal for large swathes of the politics-related sector to give people the day off. And in the rest of the country—which is to say most of the country—my understanding is that it’s really not a holiday at all; just maybe a day when the mail doesn’t get delivered.

But I work in Washington, DC and this is an official CAP day off so don’t expect too much of blogging from me.

I definitely read some Columbus books when I was a kid, but does anyone have any recommendations for more serious, adult-oriented books on the subject? If not, there’s always the excellent Goodbye, Columbus.

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