Month: January 2014

Ted Cruz goes all Jimmy Cagney on President Obama

by digby

All he was missing was the grapefruit.

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The real lucky duckies

by digby

…. have already maxed out on their SS contributions for the year.  I’m sure they’ll be followed by quite a few more in the next month or so:

While almost all working Americans will pay into Social Security through their paychecks throughout the year, the 900 wealthiest people in the country won’t. That’s because the highest-earning 0.0001 percent of the U.S. — many of them corporate CEOs — made $117,000 in the first two days of the year, which is the maximum annual income that is subject to Social Security taxes under federal law.

It’s tough to say for certain who will be a part of this group in 2014, since the most recent available data on Americans’ earnings is from 2012. In that year, 894 individuals nationwide made enough to qualify for membership in this club, according to the Los Angeles Times. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci came up with the calculation, and points out that Forbes data on top earners enables analysts and the public to see some of the members of this group. There were nearly 70 corporate CEOs who made enough to qualify in 2012, including the top officers at companies like Philip Morris, NewsCorp, Starbucks, ComCast, and Pfizer.

They get to live the year free from Social Security taxes because the law says that only the first $117,000 earned in a year can be taxed to fund the retirement program that kept more than 15 million people out of poverty in 2011. Democrats have pushed to raise the cap in recent years from $106,800 in 2009 to the current level. Eliminating the cap entirely could make the program solvent for the next 75 years without cutting a dime from anyone’s benefits — and doing so wouldn’t touch the earnings of 94.2 percent of all American workers.

There is no real danger of Social Security being unable to pay its recipients, of course. Ever. It’s just a matter of the government making the decision to write the checks. (They don’t have to go down to Fort Knox and redeem the IOUs, honestly.) But considering that our understanding of how this whole thing works is so distorted by politics and an inability to recognize that the government does not make spending choices based upon family accounting logic that I think raising the cap is one of the very best ways to “solve” the crisis. The wealthy should be paying more in taxes for a variety of reasons anyway and this is an excellent way for them to “contribute” to the greater good. After all, if these so-called job creators were creating more jobs and paying people more perhaps they could save more money in their earning years. But seeing as these same people are perfectly content with allowing the Masters of the Universe to use virtually every investment vehicle for normal people like their own personal slot machines, we need to change the deal: everyone, the rich included, must pay exactly the same percentage of their wages toward Social Security and Medicare. That’s called fairness. And it’s as American as jazz and trans-fats.

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Pushing on the Overton window: A study in contrasts

by digby

Republicans want to roll back labor laws to the 19th century:

Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R) is attempting to roll back one of the state’s progressive labor laws, arguing that workers should be allowed to work without a day off if they so choose.

“Right now in Wisconsin, you’re not supposed to work seven days in a row, which is a little ridiculous because all sorts of people want to work seven days a week,” he told The Huffington Post in an interview.

Wisconsin is one of the few states in the nation where businesses “must provide employees with at least one period consisting of 24 consecutive hours of rest in each calendar week.” This doesn’t mean that workers get to take off once every seven days; an employee could work for up to 12 consecutive days “if the days of rest fall on the first and last days of the 2 week period.”

Grothman said he finds this law “a little goofy,” and he argued that rolling it back is a matter of “freedom.”

Harry Reid would just like to go back to the 20th:

It’s a bit surprising this didn’t get more attention. But the other day, Harry Reid told a Nevada newspaper that he’d like to expand the unemployment insurance program, not just extend it.

This would go significantly farther than the current proposal in the Senate to extend unemployment insurance by a mere three months:
The three-month unemployment insurance extension the Senate plans to vote on next week won’t make any changes to the current eligibility structure for federally backed emergency benefits.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is thinking about pushing to change how eligibility for emergency unemployment benefits is determined, making it easier for the long-term unemployed to access benefits as the economy improves.
Reid told the Las Vegas Sun during an interview Monday that he’d like to lower the per-tier unemployment rate threshold that determines when jobless workers in hardest-hit states can claim the maximum weeks of benefits. “Hopefully, we can bring that number down,” Reid said during a telephone interview.

The short version of this is that under the current proposal to extend the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, the overall program would extended three months. But that doesn’t mean all people on unemployment insurance get three months more; their duration is dictated by how much they’ve already received, and how long the duration of those in their tier are supposed to last. Each tier — there are four of them — is dictated by the unemployment rate in their states.

What Reid is proposing is to change the structure of the program, so that those in states with a high unemployment rate – but one that’s not high enough to qualify for the maximum of 73 weeks, the top tier – would get the maximum length. In other words, the duration of benefits would last longer for more people.

Reid told the Las Vegas Sun that he won’t push for this restructuring of the program until the three month extension is secured (which may or may not happen). And obviously, this is going to be a huge lift, given that even the temporary extension’s passage is in doubt.

But the broader point is that this is another reminder of just how far to the right the debate on these matters has drifted. A mere three month extension of unemployment benefits is thought to be politically extremely difficult, even though it may be unprecedented for Congress to let UI lapse with the long term unemployment rate this high.

I think it’s great that Reid will be pushing for a restructuring. It’s long overdue and Lord knows his Nevada constituents need it. But under current political restraints that is indeed going to be a heavy lift. Still, you have to start somewhere and these Dems finally recognizing that they only get right wing policies when they fail to participate in setting the terms of the debate is a long time coming.

But in order to properly offset GOP lunacy, we should probably have some Democrats in the states at least proposing a guaranteed minimum income or something. After all, that’s a completely nutty idea last espoused by that hippie communist Richard Nixon.

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Even Senators have to wonder


by digby

Senator Bernie Sanders asks NSA Director General Keith Alexander a very interesting question:

“Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?”

In case you are wondering why Sanders would inquire about such a matter, recall these documents that were finally released by the government just two and a half months ago:

The National Security Agency eavesdropped on civil rights icon Martin Luther King and heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali as well as other leading critics of the Vietnam War in a secret program later deemed “disreputable,” declassified documents revealed Wednesday.

The six-year spying program, dubbed “Minaret,” had been exposed in the 1970s but the targets of the surveillance had been kept secret until now.

The documents showed the NSA tracked King and his colleague Whitney Young, boxing star Ali, journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post, and two members of Congress, Senator Frank Church of Idaho and Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee.

The declassified NSA historical account of the episode called the spying “disreputable if not outright illegal.”

The documents were published after the government panel overseeing classification ruled in favor of researchers at George Washington University who had long sought the release of the secret papers.

You can certainly understand why a Senator would ask such a thing in the current circumstances.

Whether a high ranking official will simply lie to his face about it is another matter.

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Update: The NSA does not deny it simply says Senator Sanders has the same protections as the rest of us.  Well ok than.

“Abandon Reagan, all of him, and save your party.”

by digby

Charlie Piece has a little piece of advice for the GOP handwringers struggling to “rebrand” their party as something other that certifiably looney tunes:

Who was it that nailed the Laffer Curve to the doors of the cathedral? It was Ronald Reagan — and, elsewhere, Maggie Thatcher — and I don’t recall any great howls of Papist outrage from Sullivan back then, when everything the pope condemns today was just winding into its political strength.

The primary problem for any Republican who genuinely wants to reform his party is to disenthrall it from the mythology that has metastasized within the conservative movement that has been the only real energy in the party since its primary power centers moved south and west. One of the founding myths is the notion of what the pope called out, by name, as “trickle-down economics.” It does not work but, most important of all, it never has worked. It didn’t work for Reagan any better than it worked for younger Bush, whose eventual unthinking rise to power the Reaganauts made inevitable every time they covered for the dim old cowboy in charge and the fairy tales he used to get elected. Sooner or later, if we followed their path, we were going to get a know-nothing president who also was a political maladroit. Abandon Reagan, all of him, and save your party. Cling to the myth, and we’re going to see impotent appeals for party reform every three or four years for the three or four decades.

I’m afraid that very good advice is going to fall on deaf ears. It won’t just be the pitchfork carrying rubes who refuse to budge on the sacred memory of St. Ronnie and Margaret the Divine, the howls of protest from the “intellectuals” and right wing cognoscenti will be deafening. Conservatives love them some heroes. I don’t think they can do without ’em. And who else do they have? Ted Cruz?

Read Pierce’s whole post to bathe yourself in the extremely enjoyable prose.

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Cracking down on the scourge of puppet terrorism

by digby

This is where witch hunts take you:

The Egyptian government’s crackdown on suspected Islamists has come to this: a terrorism probe focused on a puppet.

Abla Fahita — a Muppet-style character who regularly appears on Egyptian television — went on the air Wednesday night to deny allegations that her lines in a recent commercial were coded messages to the recently banned Muslim Brotherhood organization.

“I am a comedic character,” Fahita, who plays a gossipy widow, said in an interview with Egypt’s CBC network.

The investigation of the puppet is an extreme sign of a climate of fear and paranoia in Egypt that has intensified in recent weeks.

Since a coup ousted President Mohamed Morsi in July, the military-backed government has arrested thousands of people believed to be tied to the Islamist group he was associated with, the Muslim Brotherhood. Lately, even more repressive security measures have been adopted following a spate of deadly bombings blamed on Islamist militants.

Authorities have arrested people — including a young schoolboy — simply for displaying pro-Brotherhood signs or paraphernalia. And this week, secret police detained four journalists with the Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera English, alleging the reporters – including one Australian – had joined the Brotherhood and helped incite riots. The network denied the charges.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on the Egyptian political situation, but it sounds as if it’s going into full blown paranoia. That can happen. Even here, under the right circumstances.

After all, these are among the faces of American leadership the Egyptians have seen in the last year:

Tea party-backed Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) on Saturday held a press conference in Egypt to thank the country’s military for overthrowing the elected government, and at one point even seemed to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood had been behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

The Daily Show’s take on this was predictably sharp although they left out some of the dumbest stuff in that press conference.

These three just went back to the Middle East a couple of weeks ago.

On Tuesday, Congress will begin their first session of the new year. East Texas Representative Louie Gohmert is ready to see some changes when it comes to United States foreign relations. Just weeks ago, Congressman Gohmert embarked on a trip to seek the truth in the Middle East.

As 2013 came to a close, Congressman Louie Gohmert, Michelle Bachmann and Steve King headed to Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine to meet with their country’s leaders.

“We have to be traveling. We have to be finding what the truth is because we’re not finding it from the administration,” says Gohmert.

It was Gohmert’s second trip to Egypt in 2013. Egypt is now a place where he says he became well known for supporting their uprising over the summer.

“It’s interesting. In Egypt, I keep having leaders in Egypt tell me I’m one of the most popular people in Egypt,” explains Gohmert.

The representatives were also on a quest for the truth surrounding the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate.

“We’re still not getting the answers. I know the intelligence committee has had some testimony, but I’ve heard some things from them I personally knew were not accurate,” says Gohmert.

Gohmert says he wants to see the United States stand behind their word when it comes to foreign relations, particularly U.S. relations with Israel.

“It was very cordial meeting, but [Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahuhe,] is in a very difficult situation. We have people in this administration who keep telling them behind the scenes that they cannot defend themselves against Iran and assuring them we will defend you. Well, we have not defended them,” explains Gohmert.

Gohmert says he hopes to stop, as he calls it, “the nuclear proliferation” of most Middle Eastern countries.

“So, I hope and pray we can stop this insane deal from being worked out with Iran and stop the nuclear proliferation of all of these nations in the Middle East having nukes. It would be a disaster,” says Gohmert.

Gohmert, Bachmann and King’s trips were funded by tax payers though the 2013 congressional budget. He adds, that over the last three years, the United States House of Representatives has cut their budget by 20 percent.

My God.

They have a right to do this. Congressional representatives travel around the world all the time on “fact-finding” missions. And some of them aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. But this trio is beyond ridiculous. In fact, they are just plain nuts.

Unfortunately, there are many people there — and here — who see them as normal Americans and believe what they say. And that is how governments end up investigating puppet shows for terrorism.

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The reemergence of the Democratic Left (started some time ago)

by digby

E.J. Dionne makes an interesting argument today designed specifically for the Village.  I don’t know how it’s going to go over — there remains an irrational fear of hippies among its denizens, even among those who were born long after the 60s lefties turned to worrying about their rheumatism. But it’s good to see him making the argument:

The reemergence of a Democratic left will be one of the major stories of 2014. Moderates, don’t be alarmed. The return of a viable, vocal left will actually be good news for the political center.

For a long time, the American conversation has been terribly distorted because an active, uncompromising political right has not had to face a comparably influential left. As a result, our entire debate has been dragged in a conservative direction, meaning that the center has been pulled that way, too.
[…]
More generally, the Democratic left is animated by the battle against growing inequality and declining social mobility — the idea, as Warren has said repeatedly, that “the system is rigged for powerful interests and against working families.” She and her allies are not anti-capitalist. Their goal is to reform the system so it spreads its benefits more widely. Warren has argued that everything she’s done on behalf of financial reform has, in fact, been designed to make markets work better.

The resurgent progressives are battling a double standard. They are asking why it is that “populism” is a good thing when it’s invoked by the tea party against “liberal elites” but suddenly a bad thing when it describes efforts to raise the minimum wage and take other steps toward a fairer system of economic rewards.

And here’s why moderates should be cheering them on: When politicians can ignore the questions posed by the left and are pushed to focus almost exclusively on the right’s concerns about “big government” and its unquestioning faith in deregulated markets, the result is immoderate and ultimately impractical policy. To create a real center, you need a real left.

I suppose I like this formulation because it sounds so much like what I’ve been writing about on this blog for the last decade:

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Liberal Ballast

by digby

The next time somebody asks you about what the blogosphere really means to politics, pull this out:

The great benefit of the blogosphere is that it isn’t really an “interest group”; it’s more like an old-style membership organization (or a series of such organizations) whose existence used to do something to check what’s now become the out-of-control influence of business groups over the policy process.

That’s from Matt Yglesias. He’s responding to a post from Noam Schieber examining whether the blogosphere is a good thing, on balance, as its influence starts to crowd out the influence of liberal interest groups. Yglesias nicely analyzes that notion and I tend to agree with what he says, although I think the Republican coalition offers some lessons in how interest groups and a strong partisan identity can work fairly comfortably together.

Scheiber’s post suggests that the problem with the netroots is that we are going to make the party more liberal and that means we will lose elections. That would be the conventional diagnosis of what is wrong with the Democrats generally and it’s been the conventional wisdom as long as I can remember, at least since 1968. Yet, somehow, the society itself has become much more liberal. It’s true that the politics of the day seem extremely conservative, but if you look back at the way people really thought and spoke 40 years ago, you’ll see that this country was unrecognizably intolerant and that while the unions were much more powerful and the middle class was still growing, the workplace was inhospitable to at least half the population (also known as women and racial minorities.)

Yglesias explains it this way, and I think it’s very astute:

I generally doubt that systemic social change will radically alter election outcomes since I tend to believe that the parties will more or less alternate in power — the important issue is the terms of debate between the two parties, and I think that insofar as the netroots become more influential (which I think is a fairly open question) the aggregate impact will be positive.

This is where the modern conservative movement has had its great impact: the terms of the debate. Progress marches on — or, at least, it has so far. Despite the most conservative political era in a century (maybe ever) the basic idea of extending rights to all, of opening the work force to all comers, to liberalizing society in general has continued, at least in fits and starts. But as an example of the terms of the political debate changing, where once it was considered natural to tax the rich more for the common good, the conservatives have managed to convince a good number of people that the common good is served by rich people keeping as much money as possible so they can “create jobs.”

Democrats have spent the last two decades trying to adapt to that change in the debate, sometimes out of a sincere desire to experiment with new ways of doing things, which is a liberal trait. But it was often a failure of imagination and fundamental commitment, as well. And in the end the DLC experiment failed liberalism. Trying to solely use capitalistic methods and modern business techniques to supplant government functions to solve problems has resulted in corrupt politics, inefficient government and huge income inequality. (And let’s not pretend that the plan wasn’t terribly tempting because of the vast sums of money that would flow from tapping into business and industry.) As Yglesias points out, the Netroots may just provide a needed counter weight to that system by challenging some of the plainly illiberal policies that have become so ingrained in the establishment that politicians today seem stunned that their constituents are objecting. (The bankruptcy bill comes to mind.)

But there is more to it, I think, than just counterweight against the influence of business, although I think that’s vastly important. I have described this current political stalemate before as a tug of war rather than a pendulum. Liberals let go of the rope for a while and failed to pull their weight in the debate. Without them — us — being there, helping to shape the debate (which sometimes means we are here to be triangulated against, btw) politics and society become out of wack as they clearly are now.

Conservatives benefit from their appeals to fear. It’s actually the very essence of conservatism — fear of change. And that is their weakness because in a democratic, capitalistic society optimism and a willingness and ability to risk are necessary for the society to thrive. Liberals’ job is to articulate that optimism, that belief that problems can be solved, that democratic government of the people is a positive force that provides the necessary structure for individuals and businesses to thrive and grow. It is that general sense of liberalism that the netroots, as a loosly affiliated organization of activists, thinkers, businesspeople, gadflys and interested observers might also bring back into the public debate.

We could potentially provide the ballast to the conservative political machine that has pulled the debate too far over to its side and created this nauseating sense of political instability. I think the country would welcome a little equilibrium (and by that I don’t mean a continuation of the 50/50 political stalemate.) We function better when society and politics are more in synch than they are now. And since progress is marching on as always, liberal politics are what’s necessary to end the cognitive dissonance.

Just saying. 😉

And, by the way, I would be remiss in not acknowledging that Dionne hasn’t just come to this conclusion today. He wrote about this way back when as well, noting the emergence of the netroots as a counterpoint to the GOP’s noise machine. He has always tried very patiently to explain to the Villagers why it’s important that this country has a vital left wing.  They just haven’t been able to hear him.

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Remember when Peter King was the “moderate” during the budget battle?

by David Atkins

Peter King (R-Joker):

“Edward Snowden is either a traitor, or a defector, or both, and The New York Times is an accomplice,” King said in an appearance on Fox News. “They’re a disgrace. Their editors are a disgrace, and I wish they cared more about America than they did about the rights of terrorists’ appeasers.”

Remember that this is the man who was championed as a “moderate” during budget negotiations.

I know that the press needs to believe that compromise is possible and that both sides can be reasonable, because otherwise they would be forced to dramatically take sides and call out the modern conservative movement for the political cancer it is.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some Democrats who are terrible on this or that issue. But it’s time for more serious people to admit that if you’re an elected official with an (R) by your name, you’re not a “moderate” anymore. There is no such thing as a “moderate” Republican in Congress, or even increasingly in any state legislature. There are only variations on the crazy.

*Name corrected
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The Republican evolution revolution


by digby

This article in the Atlantic tries to figure out why members of the GOP’s belief in evolution has slipped so precipitously in just the last few years. Take a look at the numbers:

Fairly creepy, I’d say. The article speculates about the various possibilities that might have led to this but it leaves out the one I think really explains it — leadership.  This old post illustrates why. (The TNR link doesn’t exist anymore …)

Thursday, July 07, 2005

 
Intellectual Compost

This is fascinating. Ben Adler asked a bunch of leading conservative intellectuals whether they believed in evolution. As far as I can tell only about half of them have any intellectual integrity whatsoever, and only one is definitively honest in my opinion: Charles Krauthamer, if you can believe that. Richard Brookheiser and William F Buckley get honorable mentions.

Remember, these are highly educated people. The problem is not that they may believe in God or have a religious view of the origins of the universe. That is quite easily explained. It’s the weaselly, mushy way they try to divert the question elsewhere or explain what they know is a ridiculous position. It’s as if they are all terribly afraid that James Dobson might read TNR and berate them for not having a religiously correct fundamentalist view. William Kristol, as always, is the slickest guy around.

William Kristol, The Weekly Standard

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I don’t discuss personal opinions. … I’m familiar with what’s obviously true about it as well as what’s problematic. … I’m not a scientist. … It’s like me asking you whether you believe in the Big Bang.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks.”

Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I’ve never understood how an eye evolves.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “Put me down for the intelligent design people.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “The real problem here is that you shouldn’t have government-run schools. … Given that we have to spend all our time crushing the capital gains tax I don’t have much time for this issue.”

David Frum, American Enterprise Institute and National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I do believe in evolution.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “If intelligent design means that evolution occurs under some divine guidance, I believe that.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. … Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public. … I don’t believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle.”

Stephen Moore, Free Enterprise Fund

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe in parts of it but I think there are holes in the evolutionary theory.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I generally agree with said critique.”

Whether intelligent design or a similar critique should be taught in public schools: “I think people should be taught … that there are various theories about how man was created.”

Whether schools should leave open the possibility that man was created by God in his present form: “Of course, yes, definitely.”

Jonah Goldberg, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Sure.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I think it’s interesting. … I think it’s wrong. I think it’s God-in-the-gaps theorizing. But I’m not hostile to it the way other people are because I don’t, while I think evolution is real, I don’t think any specific–there are a lot of unknowns left in evolution theory and criticizing evolution from different areas doesn’t really bother me, just as long as you’re not going to say the world was created in six days or something.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t think you should teach religious conclusions as science and I don’t think you should teach science as religion. … I see nothing [wrong] with having teachers pay some attention to the sensitivities of other people in the room. I think if that means you’re more careful about some issues than others that’s fine. People are careful about race and gender; I don’t see why all of a sudden we can’t be diplomatic on these issues when it comes to religion.”

Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Of course.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “At most, interesting.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “The idea that [intelligent design] should be taught as a competing theory to evolution is ridiculous. … The entire structure of modern biology, and every branch of it [is] built around evolution and to teach anything but evolution would be a tremendous disservice to scientific education. If you wanna have one lecture at the end of your year on evolutionary biology, on intelligent design as a way to understand evolution, that’s fine. But the idea that there are these two competing scientific schools is ridiculous.”

William Buckley, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I’d have to write that down. … I’d have to say something more carefully than I can over the telephone. I’m a Christian.”

Whether schools should raise the possibility that the original genetic code was written by an intelligent designer: “Well, surely, yeah, absolutely.”

Whether schools should raise the possibility–but not in biology classes–that man was created by God in his present form? : “Yes, sure, absolutely.”

Which classes that should be discussed in: “History, etymology.”

John Tierney, The New York Times (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe that the theory of evolution has great explanatory powers.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I haven’t really studied the arguments for intelligent design, so I’m loath to say much about it except that I’m skeptical.”

James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I could not speak fluently on the subject but I know what the basic argument is.”

Whether schools should teach intelligent design or similar critiques of evolution in biology classes: “I guess I would say they probably shouldn’t be taught in biology classes; they probably should be taught in philosophy classes if there is such a thing. It seems to me, and again I don’t speak with any authority on this, that the hypothesis … that the universe is somehow inherently intelligent is not a scientific hypothesis. Because how do you prove it or disprove it? And really the question is how do you disprove it, because a scientific hypothesis has to be capable of being falsified. So while there may be holes in Darwinian theory, while there’s obviously a lot we don’t know, and perhaps Darwinian theory could be wrong altogether, I think whether or not the universe is designed is just a question outside the realm of science.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “It probably should be taught, if it’s going to be taught, in a more thoroughgoing way, a more rigorous way that explains what a scientific theory is. … You know, my general impression is that high school instruction in general is not all that rigorous. … I think one possible way of solving this problem is by–if you can’t teach it in a rigorous way, if the schools aren’t up to that, and if it’s going to be a political hot potato in the way it is, and we have schools that are politically run, one possible solution might be just take it out of the curriculum altogether. I’m not necessarily advocating that, but I think it’s something that policy makers might think about. I’d rather see it taught in a rigorous and serious way, but as a realistic matter that may be expecting too much of our government schools.”

Norman Podhoretz, Commentary (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “It’s impossible to answer that question with a simple yes or no.”

Richard Brookhiser, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “It doesn’t seem like good science to me.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “No.”

Pat Buchanan, The American Conservative

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Do I believe in absolute evolution? No. I don’t believe that evolution can explain the creation of matter. … Do I believe in Darwinian evolution? The answer is no.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “Do I believe in a Darwinian evolutionary process which can be inspired by a creator? Yeah, that’s a real possibility. I don’t believe evolution can explain the creation of matter. I don’t believe it can explain the intelligent design in the universe. I just don’t believe it can explain the tremendous complexity of the human being when you get down to DNA and you get down to atomic particles, and molecules, atomic particles, subatomic particles, which we’re only beginning to understand right now. I think to say it all happened by accident or by chance or simply evolved, I just don’t believe it.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “Evolution [has] been so powerful a theory in Western history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and often a malevolent force–it’s been used by non-Christians and anti-Christians to justify polices which have been horrendous. I do believe that every American student should be introduced to the idea and its effects on society. But I don’t think it ought to be taught as fact. It ought to be taught as theory. … How do you answer a kid who says, ‘Where did we all come from?’ Do you say, ‘We all evolved’? I think that’s a theory. … Now the biblical story of creation should be taught to children, not as dogma but every child should know first of all the famous biblical stories because they have had a tremendous influence as well. … I don’t think it should be taught as religion to kids who don’t wanna learn it. … I think in biology that honest teachers gotta say, ‘Look the universe exhibits, betrays the idea that there is a first mover, that there is intelligent design.’ … You should leave the teaching of religion to a voluntary classes in my judgment and only those who wish to attend.”

Tucker Carlson, MSNBC

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I think God’s responsible for the existence of the universe and everything in it. … I think God is probably clever enough to think up evolution. … It’s plausible to me that God designed evolution; I don’t know why that’s outside the realm. It’s not in my view.”

On the possibility that God created man in his present form: “I don’t know if He created man in his present form. … I don’t discount it at all. I don’t know the answer. I would put it this way: The one thing I feel confident saying I’m certain of is that God created everything there is.”

On the possibility that man evolved from a common ancestor with apes: “I don’t know. It wouldn’t rock my world if it were true. It doesn’t sound proved to me. But, yeah I’m willing to believe it, sure.”

How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I don’t have a problem with public schools or any schools teaching evolution. I guess I would have a problem if a school or a science teacher asserted that we know how life began, because we don’t so far as I know, do we? … If science teachers are teaching that we know things that in fact we don’t know, then I’m against that. That’s a lie. But if they are merely describing the state of knowledge in 2005 then I don’t have problem with that. If they are saying, ‘Most scientists believe this,’ and most scientists believe it, then it’s an accurate statement. What bothers me is the suggestion that we know things we don’t know. That’s just another form of religion it seems to me.”

Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “Yes.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “To the extent that I am familiar with it, and that’s not very much, I guess what I think is this: The intelligent designers are correct insofar as they are reacting against a view of evolution which holds that it can’t have been guided by God in any way–can’t even have sort of been set in motion by God to achieve particular results and that no step in the process is guided by God. But they seem to give too little attention to the possibility that God could have set up an evolutionary process.”

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: “I guess my own inclination would be to teach evolution in the public schools. I don’t think that you ought to make a federal case out of it though.”

David Brooks, The New York Times (via email)

Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I believe in the theory of evolution.”

What he thinks of intelligent design: “I’ve never really studied the issue or learned much about ID, so I’m afraid I couldn’t add anything intelligent to the discussion.”

And these are the people who  against campus political correctness.

What do you suppose it’s like to be intellectually held hostage by people who you know for a fact are dead wrong on something? It must be excruciating.

Clearly, even elite conservatives who still have one foot in reality have no choice but to hem and haw and make excuses for fundamentalist nonsense. Naturally the rest of the Republicans figure it’s something to which they’d better at least pay lip service as well.

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The Village offers Ted Cruz another chance to join the club

by digby

Oh sure, everyone knows he’s a radical, anti-establishment throwback but that’s no reason not to welcome into the inner circle of power with the rest of the good old boys. He’s quite famous, after all:

The trick at the annual Gridiron Dinner is to singe without burning, and Washington’s political and media establishment will soon find out whether Sen. Ted Cruz is up to the task. Today, the venerable club, whose sole purpose is to host an annual white tie shindig, announced that Texas’ junior senator has agreed to serve as the Republican speaker.
[…]
It can be a tough assignment to share a spotlight with the president. But as Gridiron members note, plenty of speakers have gone on to win their party’s nomination for president.

Cruz is the second big name Texan in two years to serve as a guest speaker. Gov. Rick Perry was fresh off his epically flawed 2012 presidential bid when he got tapped, and his killer delivery helped him rebuild his reputation among the Washington elite he purported to scorn. He called that campaign “the three most exhilarating hours of my life,” and lamented that this was the “weakest Republican field in history and they kicked my butt.”

“But look,” Perry said, “I like Mitt Romney as much as one really good-looking man can like another really good-looking man under Texas law.

For Cruz, the dinner provides an opportunity to soften his edges. Self-promoters bomb at these sorts of events. Self-deprecators find their reputations enhanced.

Sadly, I really think that’s all it takes.

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