Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

A heartfelt apology to conservatives on the subject of climate change

by David Atkins

Dear conservatives,

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize deeply on behalf of climate science.

I’m sorry that your worldview is deeply inconvenienced by the harsh realities involved. You’re right: if climate change is real and man-made–which it certainly is–then the libertarian ideology you conservatives hew to so steadfastly requires rethinking. I know Ayn Rand’s ghost would blanche at the thought, but take heart: she didn’t believe in an afterlife, anyway.

As you know, conservatism is inherently reactive rather than proactive about any problem that doesn’t involve killing foreigners, controlling women or preventing undesirables from voting. For all other matters of importance, conservatism requires standing athwart the history of human progress and yelling “stop!” to all of us altruistic, proactive bleeding hearts and do-gooders.

For instance, libertarian economics requires that instead of proactively regulating corporate activity that might hurt people, consumers punish a company reactively after it has done something wrong, and after consumers notice that said company has done so. But if companies and consumers are doing something wrong that nobody really notices until it’s far, far too late to do anything about, that’s a real fly in the ointment. I apologize for that. It’s quite inconvenient to you, I know.

But then, life does have a habit of taking wrong and immoral assumptions about the world, and demonstrating just how wrong and immoral they are. Sadly, that also includes libertarian economics. Most of us learn this lesson about life while growing up sometime in our teens, but I understand that it may take time for those of us who never overcame our adolescent fascination with Atlas Shrugged to pick up a novel by an actual writer like Dickens or Steinbeck, instead. It’s tough.

Finally, I apologize that reality cannot be made to conform to your pet worldviews and objectivist utopian fantasies. As you know, life is a scary place with deluded, grasping parasites lurking around every corner. Someday you may even learn not to be ones. In the meantime, please accept this apology on behalf of reality and science everywhere.

Sincerely yours,
David Atkins

Does Rape Prevent Pregnancy? Views Differ!

by tristero

Disgusting. You may have read this article as a thorough debunking of extreme religious nuttiness. But you would be oh-so-wrong.

There’s a hoary rightwing strategy called “Teach the Controversy” that’s been a genuine pain in the neck to deal with for those interested in teaching evolution in science classes rather than lies. It’s the same con being worked here.

Willke and that Harvard egghead – hey, they’re both doctors, so who’s to say who’s right, huh? Let’s keep an open mind, shall we?

But, you might ask, what about that thorough drubbing Wilke got? Well…

Who cares what the article says or the context? No one will remember in a week. But Harvard! The New York Times! What associations for Willke! This screwball’s status as a national spokesman just increased dramatically. These mainstream guys take Willke seriously enough to engage his arguments. He’s been waiting his entire career for this moment. Mission accomplished.

Here’s the problem: Every moment spent engaging the “Teach the Controversy” scam by pretending there actually is a controversy – be it Ryan’s nutty budget, a creationist’s lies, or a misogynist’s rape fantasies – is a moment not spent addressing our badly depressed economy, expanding our real knowledge of evolution, or grappling with the real horror and consequences of rape.

This country doesn’t have the time to take the far right’s crackpot notions seriously.  You simply don’t give the Willke’s of the world the satisfaction of soliciting a reaction from prominent physicians. Everyone has better things to do.

Disgusting.

UPDATE: I hope it’s clear that I’m not suggesting that people ignore the extreme right. We know where that’s got us, namely here. But we can’t react to the right, either.

The physicists have a phrase: “It’s not even wrong.” That’s about right. We need to make it very clear that these ideas don’t have so much as a toe-hold in serious discourse. Not ban them, of course. Not ignore them. Not engage them. But pump the discourse so full of good ideas, real ideas, important ideas and genuine controversies that there is little space left for nuts like Akin and Willke and Ryan and Romney.

UPDATE: Akin clarifies further. A far more sensible article than the Times story. (I’m not being sarcastic.)

Family Values in the sea of Galilee

by digby

My eyes!

House Republican leaders reprimanded 30 lawmakers last August for antics including drinking and skinny-dipping during a fact-finding trip to Israel, according to published reports.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) scolded the lawmakers — many of them freshmen — and senior GOP staffers for a late-night swim in the Sea of Galilee. At least one of the lawmakers swam nude, according to a report published Sunday night by Politico. The FBI later inquired about the incident to determine whether there was any impropriety, the report said.

According to the report, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) took off his clothes and jumped into the sea, joining a number of partially-clothed members, some spouses and family members and the staffers, “more than a dozen sources, including eyewitnesses” told Politico.
[…]
Yoder said that he and his wife joined colleagues for dinner at the Sea of Galilee. “After dinner I followed some Members of Congress in a spontaneous and very brief dive into the sea and regrettably I jumped into the water without a swimsuit,” Yoder said in the statement. “It is my greatest honor to represent the people of Kansas in Congress and [for] any embarrassment I have caused for my colleagues and constituents, I apologize.”

Yoder, elected in 2010, represents the 3rd Congressional District of Kansas, which encompasses an area west of Kansas City.

The report said that other lawmakers involved in the late-night swim included Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) and his daughter; Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and his wife; and Reps. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Denham (R-Calif.).

In an e-mail, Reed spokesman Tim Kolpien said that the lawmaker and his wife swam with the group “appropriately clothed” and that “there was no impropriety, and he is unaware of any investigation.” Spokesmen for the other members did not return requests for comment.

Imagine what these people are going to get up to in Tampa next week?

Update: Spinster aunts Romney and Ryan had this to say:

“I think it’s reprehensible,” Romney said. “I think it’s another terrible mistake by individuals.”

“This is unbecoming of a member of Congress,” Ryan said. “It’s behavior that shouldn’t be tolerated. I think they know that.”

They’re running for President and Vice President for Pete’s sake!

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Where do these crackpots get their crackpot ideas?

by digby

In case you were wondering where Todd Akin’s loony ideas about pregnancy and rape come from, here’s a possible source — Christian Life Resources:

Let’s look, using the figure of 200,000 rapes each year.

Of the 200,000 women who were forcibly raped, one-third were either too old or too young to get pregnant. That leaves 133,000 at risk for pregnancy.

A woman is capable of being fertilized only 3 days (perhaps 5) out of a 30-day month. Multiply our figure of 133,000 by three tenths. Three days out of 30 is one out of ten, divide 133 by ten and we have 13,300 women remaining. If we use five days out of 30 it is one out of six. Divide one hundred and thirty three thousand by six and we have 22,166 remaining.

One-fourth of all women in the United States of childbearing age have been sterilized, so the remaining three-fourths come out to 10,000 (or 15,000).

Only half of assailants penetrate her body and/or deposit sperm in her vagina,1 so let’s cut the remaining figures in half. This gives us numbers of 5,000 (or 7,500).

Fifteen percent of men are sterile, that drops that figure to 4,250 (or 6,375).

Fifteen percent of non-surgically sterilized women are naturally sterile. That reduces the number to 3,600 (or 5,400).

Another fifteen percent are on the pill and/or already pregnant. That reduces the number to 3,070 (or 4,600).

Now factor in the fact that it takes 5-10 months for the average couple to achieve a pregnancy. Use the smaller figure of 5 months to be conservative and divide the avove figures by 5. The number drops to 600 (or 920).

In an average population, the miscarriage rate is about 15 percent. In this case we have incredible emotional trauma. Her body is upset. Even if she conceives, the miscarriage rate will be higher than in a more normal pregnancy. If 20 percent of raped women miscarry, the figure drops to 450 (or 740).

Finally, factor in what is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that’s physical trauma. Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle. To get and stay pregnant a woman’s body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There’s no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy. So what further percentage reduction in pregnancy will this cause? No one knows, but this factor certainly cuts this last figure by at least 50 percent and probably more. If we use the 50 percent figure, we have a final figure of 225 (or 370) women pregnant each year. These numbers closely match the 200 that have been documented in clinical studies.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the problems with this “statistical analysis.” But I can see where cretinous throwbacks like Todd Akin would find it convincing. It has numbers and everything.

If you want to know the real statistics, there have been real studies done and as you might imagine, they paint a very different picture.

h/t to DK

If it’s murder, who is the murderer?

by digby

I posted this some time back, but it’s worth watching again. Here you have some pro-life activists being cornered on the question of why women shouldn’t be prosecuted if abortion is murder. It’s very interesting:

The way the smarter people deal with this is by saying that women are like children who don’t know what they’re doing and can’t be held responsible. But it doesn’t scan very well, does it?

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Akin puts the Romney campaign in further peril

by David Atkins

Whatever effect Akin’s reinforcement of the real GOP position on women and abortion might have in Missouri, the spillover has already moved far beyond the Show Me State. It is now doing damage to the Romney campaign in two significant ways.

First, the Romney campaign has avowed its support for the right to an abortion in cases of rape or incest. It might be tempting to view this as an advantage for Romney–an opportunity to “Sistah Souljah” the more ardent elements of the social conservative wing to make himself look better by contrast.

But the problem is that as I and others have noted before, the electorate is fairly static, with few undecideds left. Whatever gains Romney might make from people who are uncomfortable with social conservatism but would be placated by a “rape/incest only” provision would be quite small. But the damage from his base would be substantial. Certainly 98% of conservative voters will still vote for Romney over Obama, anyway. But this election will likely be won or lost at the margins in many states, and the True Believer crowd does make a difference at the margins.

The True Believers actually think that we are in a pre-Tribulation period, where demonic forces of darkness operate to corrupt governments worldwide, and only the True Believers will be spared the wrath of God. These are people for whom climate change doesn’t matter because they believe the world won’t be around that much longer, anyway. For them, unless they can be convinced that a person who shares their values will help “purify” the land to save more souls, they don’t care. Policy preferences on taxes are largely irrelevant to these people. If many of these people stay home rather than vote for Romney, that could seriously sway the election in some swing states.

But there’s also a second problem for the Romney camp: the official abortion position also highlights further divides between Romney and Paul Ryan:

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan say they disagree with Missouri Representative Todd Akin’s opposition to abortions for rape victims, but Akin’s reference Sunday to “legitimate rape” recalled the “forcible rape” language contained in a bill Ryan co-sponsored last year…

Last year, Ryan joined Akin as one of 227 co-sponsors of a bill that narrowed an exemption to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions. The Hyde Amendment allows federal dollars to be used for abortions in cases of rape and incest, but the proposed bill — authored by New Jersey Representative Christopher H. Smith — would have limited the incest exemption to minors and covered only victims of “forcible rape.”

House Republicans never defined what constituted “forcible rape” and what did not, but critics of the bill suggested the term could exclude women who are drugged and raped, mentally handicapped women who are coerced, and victims of statutory rape.

The “forcible” qualifier was eventually removed before the bill passed in the House last May. The Democrat-controlled Senate did not vote on the measure.

Ultimately, the problem with constantly lying to the public about one’s real views and depending on an out-of-control extremist base is that it’s hard to keep all the lies straight and the extremism under wraps.

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Balanced approach redux

by digby

This ad came out at the beginning of the month before the Ryan announcement. I was hopeful that they would drop this line since the best play is to give a simple, muscular defense of the social safety net as Joe Biden did last week with social security.

Unfortunately, he said it again today:

Still, the biggest thing Congress could do for the economy is to reach a deal on “a sensible approach” to reducing the deficit, he said. Obama specifically urged congressional leaders to revisit the revenues and spending cuts that were on the table during last year’s negotiations on the debt.

“I continue to be open to seeing Congress approach this with a balanced plan that has tough spending cuts, building on the $1 trillion worth of spending cuts we’ve already made, but also asks for additional revenue from folks like me, folks in the top 1 or 2 percent.”

That would give more “certainty” to families and small businesses.

I don’t have a clue how to stop this train. Having the zombie eyed granny starver on the ticket hasn’t changed their view that the Grand Bargain to slash 4 trillion in government programs in the middle of an epic slump is still great policy and even better politics. But don’t worry. They’ll ask millionaires to “pay a little more” so it’s all good. I’m feeling more “confident” already.

Basically we have a choice between the Republican dystopian hellscape or the Democrats’ long slow jobless recovery with even more insecurity for the poor and middle class. Or actually, it’s more likely to be a “compromise” between the two. After all, these are the opening bids.

Pray for gridlock.

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No means no — exceptions

by digby

What’s really important about the Todd Akin controversy isn’t his moronic belief that women who get raped can’t get pregnant. It’s so stupid that even the wingnuts are disavowing him. And the “legitimate” rape comment (or “honest rape” as Ron Paul called it) is horrible, but it doesn’t get to the underlying principle. The real problem is that his “no exceptions” belief has become mainstream in the Republican party. Recall:

[T]he big news to come out of the forum was the rightward shift in Rick Perry’s already very conservative position. In the past, Perry has been committed to banning abortion with very narrow exceptions. But last night, he said he’d changed his mind, and now doesn’t support any exceptions at all. “This is something that is relatively new,” he said, citing a meeting with Rebecca Kiessling, a spokeswoman for Personhood USA who was adopted after her mother, a rape victim, tried and failed to abort her. “Looking in her eyes, I couldn’t come up with an answer to defend the exemptions for rape and incest,” he said. “And over the course of the last few weeks, the Christmas holidays and reflecting on that…all I can say is that God was working on my heart.”

That’s bad enough, but as David Frum says in his piece, the anti-abortion belief that life begins at conception makes that morally logical, even though they have not admitted that until recently. What is even more worrying to me is the fact that they are starting to push the idea of no exception to spare the life of the mother, which presents a much different moral question.

As for life of the mother, Akin explained his view on that issue well: he urged doctors to “optimize” life, ie, sometimes to choose the mother, but sometimes to choose the child when the child’s life seems more optimal.

Perhaps they can take a vote in the operating room to decide which life seems more “optimal.”

What Krugman Says

by tristero

Complete with sly Coen brothers reference in the title, Krugman makes much the same point I’ve been making, that contrary to all the rejoicing amongst the punditocracy that finally we’ll have a Real Debate about the future of this country, Ryan’s nomination to the vice presidency is, at best, a… well, let’s let Dr. Krugman tell it:

What Mr. Ryan actually offers, then, are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.
If this sounds like a joke, that’s because it is. 

But tell us what you really think:

So will the choice of Mr. Ryan mean a serious campaign? No, because Mr. Ryan isn’t a serious man — he just plays one on TV. 

Exactly.

Running from Ryan (but not far)

by David Atkins

I’ve mentioned before that one of the biggest and most overlooked consequences of the Paul Ryan pick is the ease with which Democrats will now be able to nationalize Congressional races. Republicans across the country are being forced to run from the Ryan plan, but not far enough to annoy their conservative base.

One example of this phenomenon is right in my backyard in Ventura County, where progressive Assemblymember Julia Brownley is doing battle with ardent anti-tax tea partier Tony Strickland for a newly redistricted open Congressional seat. This seat would be a pickup for Democrats if Julia were to win it.

Tony Strickland knows that the Ryan pick is bad for him. Indeed, Ms. Brownley was able to make significant hay of potential votes on the Ryan budget during the primary against “independent.” Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star says it right out loud:

With Parks having been eliminated in the primary, Democrats will now turn their attacks on the Ryan budget and seek to use them against GOP candidate Tony Strickland. Unlike incumbent Republican House members, Strickland does not have a record of voting for the Ryan budget, but in an interview with me this spring he expressed strong support for what the Ryan plan seeks to accomplish.

“I give a lot of credit to Paul Ryan for coming up with ways to reform Medicare,” Strickland told me. “There’s no question that actuarially it’s not sound. If we do nothing right now. Medicare and Social Security will be 100 percent of the budget.”

Democrat Julia Brownley lost little time in seeking to tie Ryan and his budget plans to Strickland. Within hours of the announcement of the Ryan pick Saturday morning, the campaign issued this statement from Brownley: “The Ryan budget puts millionaires and billionaires ahead of seniors, women and the middle class by turning Medicare into a voucher system, raising the age of eligibility to 67, and making devastating cuts for women’s health and education. This would be a disastrous plan for Ventura County and the nation, and it’s clear that Tony Strickland would be another rubber-stamp vote in Congress for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan agenda.”

The end result may be that voters in Ventura County this fall will get a chance to hear a full debate about the future of Medicare — both the question of whether cutting costs and/or raising revenues is a national imperative and whether the cuts proposed by Ryan and House Republicans go too far. That will mean that the 26th CD campaign will be nationalized to a level that it probably wouldn’t have been had Romney chosen some other VP nominee.

Precisely. And that will be happening in every single competitive district in the country, if the campaigns have an ounce of competence to them.

So what is Tony Strickland’s response? To “reject” the Ryan plan to voucherize Medicare for everyone under 55 by…voucherizing it for everyone under 50 instead. No, that’s not a joke. Timm Herdt follows up:

As I noted in that post, in a pre-primary, April 5 interview, Strickland told me that he gave “a lot credit” to Ryan for attempting to address the longterm solvency of Medicare. He said at the time that he did not believe Medicare rules should be changed for those approaching retirement, but that changes need to be made for “people my age” — folks in their 20s, 30s and 40s (Strickland is 42).

We did not discuss a specific age where a potential cutoff for any future changes would be. And that, Strickland told me this morning, is where he has a serious disagreement with the Ryan plan. It envisions making an insurance-voucher system (rather than automatic enrollment in the government-run plan) optional for those under 55. Strickland says no changes should be considered for anyone 50 or older.

“Those folks paid into the system for years and planned their future,” he said. “You cannot take the rug out from underneath them. I personally oppose any effort to take anything from people 50 and older.”

Karoli at Crooks and Liars was actually on the scene at a Strickland event a few days ago and has the details:

The purpose of this particular event, beyond the obvious fundraising and opportunity for some good old fashioned Republican lies, was for Strickland to sign his “Social Security & Medicare Protection Pledge” with great aplomb and faux sincerity. Here it is, signed by the man himself before the grannies and grampies off to the side in their wheelchairs and the young bucks sitting in front of him.

RL Miller was also there, putting it succinctly enough.

Sure enough, here’s Strickland claiming that he would have voted no on the Ryan budget because – and this is a true profile in courage, or something – the Ryan plan would give vouchers in lieu of Medicare for those 55 and younger, while Strickland’s cutoff is age 50. In other words, while Ryan’s plan is a huge, neon-orange, screaming

if you’re under 55, FUCK OFF, YOU DON’T MATTER

Strickland’s version is

if you’re under 50, FUCK OFF, YOU DON’T MATTER

Voters aren’t going to buy this little dance. Even if seniors were to be persuaded that ending Medicare for people under 55 (or 50) wouldn’t hurt them, these people also have adult children in their 30s and 40s. They surely want Medicare to be around for them, also.

All of which leads back to the same question: why did Romney pick this guy, again?