Fire Mickey Kaus

Just When I Thought I Was Out ...

2010-09-21T23:19:00.003-04:00

UNBEFUCKINGLIEVABLE.

In other news, Billy Joel is looking terrible.

Youtube Challenge

2010-06-08T23:55:00.000-04:00

My belated submission for Mickey's video contest here.

Today's The Day!

2010-06-08T09:20:00.002-04:00

Today, California gets its chance to actually fire Mickey Kaus.

I'm so jealous.

Okay Maybe It's Not All Boring

2010-05-12T08:59:00.001-04:00

Mickey for the Non-Union Equivalent of California 2010:

Fred Barnes raises the possibility of a "mad duck" Congress, in which Democrats lose their majorities and their soon-to-be-ex Congressmen reconvene in December to pass all the most controversial parts of the Democratic agenda

Oh, no! Those monsters! What diabolical parts of their agenda will they seek to pass? Mickey suggests the immigration bill -- quelle surprise! -- and ... a value added tax. Huh?

Apparently, the idea of a VAT has become yet another of the right wing noise machine's terror-and-outrage objects, after Paul Volcker (an actual golem created to haunt Larry Summers) idly suggested a VAT was "not as toxic" as it used to be and a handful of Democrats didn't rule out a VAT at some point in the future. The Senate then passed a resolution against the VAT 85-13, which puts its chances for immediate passage somewhere on the level of the Amended Springfield/Pervert Bill. [But Obama said it was "on the table"!!! -- ed. Yes, presumably somewhere between the butter, the napkin holder, and the nuclear strike on Iran].

Honestly, I'm just surprised that Mickey didn't add the revival of the fairness doctrine, the banning of salt, the outlawing of hunting, and the general confiscation of all firearms to his list.

Anyway, nothing ever happens during a lame duck session -- remember 2006, when they sneakily passed every single item on the Republican agenda? -- but nothing's too scary for Mickey when Democrats are in power! They'll use every trick in the book to advance their horrible agenda of sensible financial and environmental regulation!

Alert reader J. suggests "an all-out filibuster" would stop a mad-duck legislating binge. Not if the legislation can be put in the form of "reconciliation" bills--and I would think a VAT would qualify because of its obvious budgetary impact. ...

Except that reconciliation can only be used once a year, has already been used this year, and the new Congressional term begins on January 3rd, 2011 -- information which I acquired at this incredibly obscure research database.

BUT ZOMG WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF 2011??? WHO WILL PROTECT US THEN???

A Democratic-gadfly persona, that's who! Kaus 2010!

Understatement

2010-05-08T14:58:00.004-04:00

Mickey:

I'll be debating unionism today, Friday, May 7, from 3 to 3:30 P.M. on KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

And then again from 3:30 P.M. until Judgment Day.

Apologies for the lack of posting, but following Mickey as he repeats the same four things he's ever said while pretending to be speaking to a completely new audience -- "God, can you believe Eugene Robinson's latest column? It ... it ... reminds me of, uh, why Barbara Boxer needs to go!" -- on a blog that's even more sporadic than Kausfiles is, well, pretty boring.

The only bright spots are Mickey's press releases. Even though it's mostly just him reprinting his blog in quotation marks, the bits where he pretends he's his own communications director and talks about himself in the third person are just classic.

I presume the drafting sessions go something like this:

Mickey Wins The Lou Dobbs Primary

2010-04-18T22:13:00.005-04:00

Holy cow, Mickey finally approves of unions acting in their own self-interest!

... you know, so long as it hurts Mexicans, somehow ...

And then Mickey wonders why he isn't more popular at the California Democratic Convention.

In Which Tom Friedman Becomes His Own Sassy Black Friend

2010-03-27T06:34:00.000-04:00

Tom Friedman's latest ode to America's suspiciously Tom-Friedman-esque "independents and centrists" has been rightly mocked, mostly for lines like this:

That is why I want my own Tea Party. I want a Tea Party of the radical center.

As valid as those criticisms are -- and I mean, here's Tom Friedman wishing aloud for a political movement that simultaneously represented the majority of the American public and also wanted to enact all of Tom's policy preferences, which is just about the saddest bout of narcissism committed to page ... and poor Tom can't even describe his fantasy majority party without being completely incoherent -- I submit that the line is even more spectacular in context:

That is why I want my own Tea Party. I want a Tea Party of the radical center.

Say what?

That's right, Tom Friedman just imagined you, the reader, as an ethnic supporting character on a mid-90's sitcom who was just BLOWN AWAY by the off-the-wall craziness of Friedman's vision.

"What's that, Tom Friedman? A party for extremist moderates? You better chiggity-check yourself before you wreck yourself!"

Doomed To Fail

2010-03-25T14:53:00.001-04:00

Not that I don't agree with the sentiment behind Gawker's Mickey Kaus oppo research project, but I just can't see it going anywhere, for three reasons:

(1) Mickey is the Boring Kind of Weird. Here's a man who has been making literally the same three or four points -- illegal immigrants bad, welfare bad, unions bad, and sometimes health care good -- using the same arguments written the same way in the same forum for what feels like an eternity. That's a different kind of weird than "screwing a member of your staff and then having a creepy fundamentalist organization encourage you to bribe your way out of it"-weird.

(2) Nobody Cares. Oppo research is valuable for finding embarrassing information or proving that someone is a hypocrite. I doubt Mickey is actually capable of embarrassment (how would he write what he writes otherwise?) and in any event he's likely to be too boring to have done anything particularly embarrassing (see #1). As for hypocrisy, Mickey's political leanings are so wildly incoherent that it's pretty much impossible to tar him as a hypocrite. Only one thing would really get to Mickey's reputation: evidence that he knowingly hired illegal immigrants. [What about buying a Chris Bangle BMW? -- ed. Okay, two things.] Everything else is either common knowledge (he's an idiot) or representative of his acknowledged past as an actual liberal. Even if he committed a Kardinal Sin and once *joined a union* [The Harvard Law School Local 402? -- ed. I know, I know, bear with me], he can just claim that doing so helped him see the light and turn into the blog version of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

(3) You Don't Need Oppo Research for a Crackpot. There's a reason why the phrase "Hey, Lehane, what do we have on Dennis Kucinich?" has never been uttered. I mean, look at Mickey's greatest hits:

- Referring to waterboarding as "semi-torture" and believing that the issue was an electoral winner for the GOP.

- Screaming about how health care reform will be incredibly expensive, obliquely referring to death panels and then endorsing health care reform anyway.

- Tinfoil hat speculation involving Obama encouraging a flood of illegal immigration in advance of the 2010 Census.

- His hilariously habit of linking to the kind of websites that are on Southern Poverty Law Center watch lists.

- His fervent desire to drastically cut social security benefits for current recipients. (Remember, he's a Democrat!)

- Displaying foreign policy chops that Tom Friedman would find woefully naive.

- Opposing help for the unemployed in the midst of high unemployment because it represents an nefarious, secret attempt to repeal his precious welfare reform, and citing to wingnut think tanks for proof.

- Having literally no idea how Washington works.

- Having literally no idea how Wall Street works.

- Seriously believing that dire predictions about the housing bubble and its effect on the U.S. economy were just ploys by liberal do-gooders to expand the welfare state, and that the housing bust was "no big deal".

And that's just random stuff I managed to write about when I was bored! His archives are a veritable treasure trove of offensive and wrong.

****************

That's really Mickey's advantage here: if you get one thing wrong, you'll hear about it forever ("And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion", etc.); but if you live wrong, then there's too much to work with -- it'd be like criticizing Christopher Hitchens for making inflammatory statements or Lady GaGa for dressing like a MegaMan boss ... where do you even start?

Good luck, Gawker. You're gonna need it.

Leave The Record Alone Mickey

2010-03-23T23:14:00.006-04:00

Kandidate Kaus, just two short months ago:

Let the record show that, in the crunch, it was the "progressive" left that bailed on health care reform.

Well, I'm going to assume without looking it up that those 34 'nay' votes are all members of the progressive left who have totally bailed on health care reform for the reasons Mickey said. Not even going to look at the roll call. Nope.

And I'm also going to assume that the progressives were the ones who went down to the wire engaging in pointless political theater while the Blue Dogs successfully negotiated key changes to the Senate bill to ensure passage. And that the progressives wanted to scrap the process and start over with a smaller bill while centrist Democrats supported the ultimately successful effort to pass the comprehensive bill establishing universal health care for the first time in America. I mean, there's no way Nancy Pelosi wanted to see this thing pass, right? Must have happened in spite of her, and not because of her ... what with her and her kind being deluded, angry outsiders afraid to pass health care reform because it just might work.

Look, if there's one thing that I've learned from studying at the feet of Mickey Kaus, it's that progressive politicians are always stupid, corrupt, shameless panderers overwhelmed by their emotions and incapable of either political or policy success -- and there's simply no way that recent events could have proven that thesis wrong.

After all, that's the reason why we need people like Mickey in the Senate: to keep progressives from screwing everything up, just like they always do.

... So Long As You Aren't A Money Liberal

2010-03-05T06:09:00.001-05:00

There Is A Man ... A Certain Man ...

2010-03-03T23:06:00.004-05:00

Does Mickey Really Look Like A Guy With A Plan?

2010-03-02T01:43:00.011-05:00

******************************

Mickey's just a dog chasing cars. He wouldn't know what to do with one if he caught it.

Mickey's New Friends

2010-02-28T23:24:00.008-05:00

Apologies for the lack of posting, but February's been pretty rough. [You've just been watching the Olympics, haven't you? -- ed. Only to double check Nate Silver's medal predictions! Snot-nosed little punk always using his "numbers" and his "math" to make predictions ... that's not the Mickey Kaus way!]

Anyway, after spending the week rattling off several "organized labor will ruin America" posts notable only for their redundancy, Mickey decided to finish off a pretty lousy month with a pretty lousy pep talk for Congressional Democrats:

The Real Reason Cynical Dem Pols Should Vote for the Health Care Bill

Good start there. I would have gone with "Listen Up, Jerkwads" for the headline, but that's why Mickey's the pro. The gist of the post is that Republicans might be actually -- gasp! -- lying about the horrible things that health care reform does, and that the best thing for Democrats would be to pass the bill and show the public that the Republicans might have been exaggerating about "socialized medicine" and "death panels" and the like. [Which Republicans, exactly? -- ed. You know, the ones that say things about Obama supporting "a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level" ... you know, those Republicans.]

So Mickey makes this pitch, the most pathetically tepid endorsement of health care reform to date -- "Democrats should pass health care reform because it doesn't suck as much as Republicans say it sucks" -- and his commenters respond with the enlightened discourse that we've come to expect from Mickey's readers:

Request an explanation why you don't seem to give a hoot about what this monstrosity costs.

Annihilate what remains of the public fisc? Or become France? Thanks, no.

How many deaths and needlessly limited and painful lives will the "lack of innovation" cause, which, Mickey cynically hopes will not happen for a few years?

Got that, Mickey? You're cynically supporting the deaths of thousands of people by half-assedly throwing your support behind passage of health care reform. Maybe Bizarro Charles Lane will come to your defense.

In case you haven't gotten the word, socialism never works for anything under any circumstances, anywhere, anytime. But the dreamers keep dreaming for some reason only they understand.

That second sentence is almost a Joni Mitchell lyric.

Note that for the first time in eight solid months, Mickey (a) admits that the Democrats' plans for health care reform won't lead to outright disaster, and (b) acknowledges that the Republican attacks are wildly hyperbolic. For this affront, his audience -- his real audience, not the wide-eyed-liberals-in-need-of-some-hard-truths that he pretends he's addressing -- calls him a communist, and not a soul defends him.

But, uh, well ... hey, aren't unions a bunch of ridiculous jerks? Right? Guys?

No Comment

2010-02-06T11:28:00.002-05:00

Have they finally done it? Enabled comments on Mickey's precious blog? I never thought I'd live to see the day ... mostly because I hoped that he'd be fired first.

Finally, Mickey gets to really see what his readers think -- no doubt they are the kind of discerning neoliberals who understand the basic necessity of government services yet resent the influence that entrenched interests have in shaping the distribution of resources ... you know, the sort of old new leftists who see tension and perhaps hypocrisy in a political philosophy devoted to a just and equal society that is dependent on groups formed around fragmentation and selfishness for its electoral success.

Let us hear their wisdom:

this seems to be a new discuss facility; how secure is the external log in service? are they able to capture my yahoo password?

Hey, look! It's me. Hi, everyone.

Okay, okay, rough start, that's to be expected. Technical difficulties and whatnot.

Mickey, this quote from Obama made me realize what is so jarring about his mode of communicating with the public. He speaks as if he is one of the guys, letting us in on hoiw things really are. It is informal and personal. He says "you can't go blow a lot of money in Vegas" and similar riffs. But more and more of the public know from other news sources that he is distorting and covering up what is actually going on in Washington.

Oh, hey, someone lamely complaining about Obama's wildly successful rhetorical style, and then complaining that NOBAMA LIES. Well, you know, they can't all be gems. How about you, kind sir:

Has anyone ever sat down with this man and told him that if he has to say this, and "Let me be perfectly clear..." and "As I already told you ..." and all the other permutations of those statements that there might be something wrong with his communication style? No. Probably not. Because I think it is one of those verbal tricks used by sales and con men and propagandists to frame whatever follows as something very obvious that the message RECEIVER has (ostensibly) failed to comprehend. The trick is, of course, that in this case, the speaker has often communicated the very opposite, but this statement of certainty raises uncertainty in the RECEIVER's mind. It's therefore the RECEIVER's fault for not 'getting' it.

And then it's right after this he tries to hook you up to an e-meter.

Nobody has yet shared their secrets about where you can meet wealthy men online, but maybe they're just biding their time.

**************************

Official Fire Mickey Kaus prediction for Mickey's comment section: lots and lots of CAPS LOCK.

Bills To Pay The Skills

2010-02-01T20:51:00.005-05:00

In arguing against unspecified attempts to expand the social safety net during a recession -- it's for their own good, you see! -- Mickey links to this piece by Kaus heartthrob Heather MacDonald:

Championing Dependency
The poverty industry renews its attack on welfare reform.

Poverty industry! Even Mickey prefers to insinuate that evil politicians and dumb Money Liberals are profiting off of the very conditions they purport to eradicate -- not actively manufacturing poverty like it's some sort of consumer good. Oh, this is awesome.

(Wealthy Banker: "Shit, what I am doing in finance, when I could be raking in that sweet poverty cash? Poor people have tons of money!")

In that spirit, the author describes her foes thusly:

poverty advocates

I'm sure she meant "anti-poverty advocates" there. It's not like she actually believes that these advocates who have dedicated their lives to low-paying work on behalf of the least fortunate are purposefully working to keep them poor. Oh, wait ...

dependency-promoting bills

The Live Off Welfare Forever Act of 2009 was totally misunderstood.

Albany dependency brigades

Hey, the Albany dependency brigades fought valiantly at Antietam before falling into their current disreputable state.

Here's the article's thesis, in case you couldn't guess:

Powerful political forces are trying to make dependency acceptable again.

If by "powerful political forces" she means banking industry, and by "dependency" she means "depending on the federal government's bailout of AIG, cheap money from the Fed, and an implicit guarantee to step in in the case of failure", she'd make a ton of sense, and actually be speaking truth to power. The reality-- that she's using the phrase to describe anti-poverty advocates in the very same piece where she gamely tries to spin a 26.5% child poverty rate as a success -- is just ugly.

[I do hate to turn every criticism of Mickey & co.'s anti-anti-poverty idiocy into GOLDMAN SACHS GOLDMAN SACHS GOLDMAN SACHS ... but still, any use of the phrase "powerful political forces" that doesn't refer specifically to the banking industry is now, by definition, histrionic.]

The gem of the piece:

[T]he best way for an unskilled worker to enter the workforce is actually to start working, rather than spend years in often fruitless “education and training” programs.

Really? The best way to enter the workforce is to start working? Isn't that the only way?

Even assuming she meant "escape poverty" or "break the cycle of dependency" or some other such blather -- and ignoring that her "just go work" prescription is being offered at a time of 10% unemployment -- why put "education and training" in scare quotes? Are those dependency advocates in the Obama administration sending the unemployed to the University of Phoenix?

Are they going to business school?

Oh, and how precisely are unskilled workers supposed to get skilled without education and training? Mickey and his ilk are always deploying that vaguely insulting term to suggest that those people could have gone out and gotten some skills if they wanted to, and since they didn't they deserve their fate. [Hey, Mickey has a Harvard Law degree, and he's still fucking useless -- ed. Good point!] Yet every damn time someone proposes something that could conceivably skill-ify the downtrodden -- encouraging enrollment in a four-year college, say -- these same anti-anti-poverty-advocacy advocates declare that such efforts are "fruitless" and these slovenly types should just go work at Wal-Mart or something.

It's almost as though they possess a "fundamentally inegalitarian and elitist" belief that only certain people are capable of being skilled workers -- and it just so happens that those with "educational credentials and yuppie resumes" fit the bill ... oh, wait, Mickey's says it's feminists who think like that. My bad!

The Pro-Poverty-and-Dependency Lobby must have gotten to me, too!

*******

Hey, remember that scene in Hoop Dreams when Arthur Agee's mother gets her certification to be a nurse's assistant and weeps openly at the school's graduation ceremony, knowing that she can now provide for her family?

That was when Mickey Kaus left the theater in disgust.

Disqualifying Statements?

2010-01-17T10:48:00.001-05:00

Does this Kausfiles Klassic from September 2006 count?

RT partner "R" emails to give the upshot ... Only 1 of 5 Democrats look to be in any trouble at all, so the magic number for the D's remains 15 or 16 at the worst.

Doesn't sound like a baked cake, does it? ... And if the Dems aren't convincingly ahead in enough of those races now to pick up 15 seats, doesn't it seem like the GOPs have a chance?

That was the mid-term election in 2006. You know, the election when Democrats won thirty-one seats?

In Mickey's universe, a cake is not fully baked until it is fired from a cannon into the sun.

Kausfiles Recycles!

2010-01-15T13:08:00.000-05:00

Note that before there was this, all the Napolitano news was tagged with this.

I'm not sure what precisely this Napolitano business has to do with Mickey's prior wrongness regarding Bill Richardson [They're governors ... in the southwest ... do I need to draw you a picture? -- ed. Yes, and try to work Jim Gibbons in, too -- the next time Mickey mentions him will be the first ...] and I'm still not sure why Napolitano's role in the Anita Hill affair would result in bipartisan protection [Because the Anita Hill hearings roughly coincide with the last time Mickey had any relevance in Washington? - ed. Hey, that's not right ... Mickey *never* had any relevance in Washington ...], but it's clear that when we think of Janet Napolitano, Mickey thinks we should be thinking of whoever the hell it is that Mickey thinks Bill Richardson had sex with.

A normal person would ask "why?" But a normal person does not read Mickey Kaus.

Nobody Could Have Seen This Coming

2010-01-14T13:13:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times article on taxing the banks:

The most likely alternatives would be a tax based on the size and riskiness of an institution’s loans and other financial holdings, or a tax on profits.

Lobbyists for bankers, taken by surprise, immediately objected to any new tax.

Suggested follow-up questions:

- Taken by surprise meaning that you've seen it coming for ages and have been desperately spinning to try to forestall the inevitable ("the housing bubble took us by surprise!")?

- Taken by surprise meaning you totally knew it would happen and you're just trying to act as though it's so inconceivably crass that you never saw it coming ("the furor over bonuses took us by surprise!")?

- Or taken by surprise like you're all bunch of know-nothing, backwards idiots getting high on your own supply ("financial deregulation leading to complete collapse took us by surprise!")?

Then again, when a lobbyist for bankers tells you he's shocked -- shocked! -- by something, I'm sure it's totally genuine.

Gotta Beat Life

2010-01-13T09:09:00.001-05:00

Mickey, in the midst of explaining his inexplicable contrarianism:

[T]he purpose of the health care system is to keep people alive--it's enemy is, in effect, death, which will never be defeated.

You mean we're MORTAL? Oh, man, I'm glad Mickey's around to help us out.

STOP THINKING YOU'RE VAMPIRES, PEOPLE.

Actually, you know the best part of this help-me-help-you-understand-my-ridiculousness post?

He lists as a "contradiction" something that was never a contradiction in the first place (he wants to spend more money on health care and less money on the military; this approach endorsed by a noted neoliberal contrarian here), yet his explanation as to why it's not a contradiction is also wrong. (Who thinks that the rational purpose of a nation's military is not to "keep people alive"? Genghis Khan?).

Mickey then declares failure, and asks for help from his readers:

None of these answers is completely satisfying. Suggestions welcomed.

Suggestion: you're an idiot.

Rending Of Garments

2010-01-12T08:43:00.000-05:00

So, is it Elizabeth Edwards or John Heilemann's source who is completely ripping off Tom Stoppard?

All I Know

2010-01-10T23:02:00.002-05:00

We know three things:

1) Mickey is king of the undernews.

2) Mickey hates Peter Orszag, for attempting to murder Mickey by personally mandating how many hospital beds are available in North Dakota. [No, seriously ... -- ed. No, seriously!]

3) "[T]he fact that Mr. Orszag’s ex — Claire Milonas, a 39-year-old venture capitalist — was pregnant with his daughter was well known among Beltway swells." Link.

So, um, Mickey ... if you can't deliver on #1, even in service of #2, what exactly is your purpose here?

The Theory Goes Right Out The Window

2010-01-08T22:20:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post, showing off their economic chops:

Employers, the theory goes, would put the savings into higher wages.

When this theory is the underpinning of your outlook on life, you should really give up on your theory, and probably give up on life. This theory, my theory goes, is completely idiotic.

Where Every Day Is Opposite Day

2009-12-31T11:19:00.000-05:00

Mickey's take on health care is pretty formulaic at this point, so there really isn't much to examine. The man has literally three concepts that he trots out to explain every new development:

"Kabuki"

Use: Any time a liberal attempts to make anything better.

Why: Liberals are evil, scheming bastards who don't actually want to ever accomplish anything. Also, they once called Mickey a "bald jerk" and he will never, ever forgive them.

"Id"

Use: Any time a politician attempts to kill the useful bits of health care reform, no matter how obviously nonsensical or venal his/her motive.

Why: Mickey can't argue that various centrist democrats have been bought by the industries they purport to regulate -- this would violate his core thesis that liberal democrats (Dick Durbin! Boo! Hiss!) are to blame for all the evil in the world -- so he attributes the centrists' perfidy to the fear that the public simply hates subsidized universal health care. Because ... well, because it's made by liberals! (see "Kabuki")

"Juice"

Use: To explain why health care is still alive, despite its many setbacks (see "Id").

Why: Democrats are evil, scheming bastards who pretend to want to accomplish things only to extract money from interested parties.

*****************

So, in summation, Mickey Kaus has his head so far up his ass that he thinks politicians act in fear of the voting public and treat corporate donors like suckers.

It Was Six Years Ago Today ...

2009-12-29T11:28:00.002-05:00

A Kausfiles Klassic, with Mickey showing off his foreign policy chops:

Two very useful reports on the Iraq timetable (in WaPo, and the Los Angeles Times ) suggest that while we may or may not be moving too quickly to hand over sovereignty, the "artificial timeline" derided by Hillary Clinton has some obvious virtues. The June 30 deadline focuses the minds of the Americans on what they can and can't expect to accomplish before they've outstayed their welcome--do we really need to "cash out" Iraq's food rationing program in accordance with Milton-Friedman's theories before we leave?--and it focuses the mind of Iraqis on what they need to do as well, including what compromises they may need to make.

Wow! If Iraqis minds were that focused in December 2003, imagine how focused they must be now! At this point, they can probably bend spoons with their minds!

With that combination of simplistic analysis, churlish liberal-bashing and outright idiocy, it's actually somewhat puzzling that Mickey hasn't been offered a spot at the Brookings Institute yet. They must be in thrall to the Money Liberals!

p.s. Coming soon to a terrible op-ed page near you: Mickey Kaus and Michael O'Hanlon think a turning point is just six months away!

Kabukkake

2009-12-26T06:06:00.001-05:00

Mickey on the left's awful, awful desire to see the health care bill get better:

What do we want? More Kabuki! Will the angry left's need for cathartic Kabuki kill the promising "Pong" gambit--and maybe kill health care reform entirely (by forcing a House-Senate conference and a conference bill that then never gets re-passed by the Senate)? ... Kausfiles awaits Ezra Klein's denunciation of Howard Dean, Keith Olbermann, Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas for being "willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order" to satisfy an emotional need to 'fight' for a doomed plan.

Can you spot the flaw in Mickey's swipe at Ezra Klein? I'm busy writing letters to Senators Dean, Olbermann, Hamshet and Moulitsas, so just write your answer down and mail it to me at your earliest convenience.

Yes, Mickey, You've Got It Now

2009-12-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

Mickey grapples with Holy Joe Lieberman's attempt to kill the Medicare buy-in (the one Mickey liked, remember?) and figures that the one senator Democrats shouldn't worry about is ... Joe Lieberman.

/deep breath

To recap: Mickey Kaus thinks we shouldn't worry about the ridiculous, nonsensical figure acting out his misguided vendetta against liberals by opposing decent legislation.

Awesome, Mickey.

p.s. I don't particularly want to defend Roland Burris -- the Democrat that Mickey, hilariously, thinks is the one most likely to scuttle health care reform due to some unspecified corrupt motive -- but you get the feeling that if Burris wasn't so ... urban ... Mickey would put on the official Slate contrarian hat and note that there's a difference between buying a vote in the Senate and selling a vote in the Senate. But he's not, so he didn't. So it goes.

Why Mickey Likes Things That Don't Happen

2009-12-14T10:19:00.001-05:00

A paragraph-by-paragraph breakdown of Mickey's prediction that the (apparently dead!) Medicare compromise will result in means-testing:

1) If the buy-in is unsubsidized, younger people will payer higher premiums. Mickey gets an A ... this is basic logic, often a stretch for Mickey.

2) Eventually the 55+ crowd will complain to their congressmen. C ... True, as far as it goes. Of course, this group doesn't actually have any kind of interest group representing them (like the AARP), and those who would buy in are fairly likely to be poorer. So, to the extent that disorganized poor people have a voice in Washington, Mickey's totally right.

3) Congress, to achive parity between the groups, will respond by raising rates on the larger and more politically powerful demographic, just after they all collectively lose any instinct for self-preservation. F ... I'm starting to believe that Mickey attended exactly one Political Science class, and he fell asleep right after the professor introduced himself.

4) Congress will have to subsidize poor people. D+ Sorta like the way this Congress -- the one with 60 Democrats, remember? -- is bending over BACKWARDS to help poor people?

5) More fee hikes for rich old people. D- ... If Congress had the balls to do this, why wouldn't they have done it already? How does having more people participating in Medicare compel Congress to act in accordance with Mickey's fantasy? Aren't we missing Step 2.5: The Reanimation of Daniel Patrick Moynihan? SHOW YOUR WORK, MICKEY!

6) Rich 65+ recipients would finally pay the full cost. A ... Logical, if you accept all the insane bullshit that came before.

7) Therefore, the Medicare buy-in is a backdoor to means-testing! A+++! ... Great job! Now, run, Mickey, go tell all the means-testing advocates in the Senate! Senators like ...

... Joe Lieberman. Damn.

Guess the Kausfiles!

2009-12-02T22:04:00.003-05:00

So, given that a sovereign state is facing impending insolvency and presuming Mickey deigns to address this mildly important bit of news, how do *you* think Mickey will explain the Dubai financial collapse? Let's check the contenders:

Slow-building backlash from the failed Dubai ports deal?

Odds: 5/1 -- Sure, it's hard to see a connection, but that's never been an issue for Mickey, and after Mickey's summer of death panel reporting, it's pretty clear that his love affair with faux-populist House Republicans is as strong as ever.

Illegal immigrants fleeing the US after the failure of amnesty in 2007 went to Dubai and created a housing bubble, and Obama's recent pro-immigration reform statements have caused them to come fleeing back to the US, causing the crash in Dubai?

Odds: 3/1 -- Dubai had a large immigrant population, right? I mean, sure they were legal -- "guest workers"! -- but who the hell else is Mickey gonna blame when there are no liberals or unions?

"Ron Burkle Ron Burkle Ron Burkle"?

Odds: 1/2 -- No way Mickey passes up the bank-shot of (a) yet another cheap shot at Ron Burkle, and (b) easy guilt-by-unexplained-association for Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and/or Barack Obama (e.g., "Did Obama know that Hillary's husband's pal was investing with the fraudulent investment arm of the Dubai government? And how has that influenced Obama's reaction to the crisis? Just askin'!")

A measured explanation of the causes behind the turmoil, and a reasonable evaluation of the options available to policymakers for addressing these problems?

Odds: Ha ha ha.

Rubin vs. Reich, Part II: The Battle For Mickey Kaus

2009-12-01T09:31:00.001-05:00

Did you know that Peter Orszag -- the OMB director/supervillain who has ~~thus far made three attempts on Mickey's life and is currently planning to send a robot back in time to kill Mickey's mother before Mickey can be born~~ made statements supportive of "bending the curve" -- is a protege of Robert Rubin?

The same Robert Rubin who famously clashed with Robert Reich over Clinton's economic policy?

The same Robert Rubin that Mickey has -- somewhat amazingly -- never gone after, even as he slams Robert Reich as a "policy hustler" and "a theatrical, left-cultivating, personal-branding semi-economist"? [A policy hustler? What does that mean? And what does that make Mickey? -- ed. A hustler of poorly-defined sets of ideas coupled with well-defined sets of enemies ...]

(Evidence here, where Mickey calls Rubin a "respected, nonthreatening Democrat" in an amazingly dumb November 2000 "what-if" piece, and here, where he defends Rubin while slamming Reich in the very next post in a February 2002 Kausfiles Klassic)

Mickey has obviously made his choice between the two, but now that Son-of-Rubin is going all death panels and rationing (in Mickey's mind, anyway) in an apparently earnest effort to reduce the deficit, do you wonder if Mickey regrets his choice?

[You do realize that going after Rubin would require Mickey to learn some basic concepts of finance, force Mickey to reevaluate his understanding of how policy is actually influenced (that maybe Wall Street and not, say, advocates for the homeless have a bigger impact on Washington), and demonize someone other than welfare recipients, unions and illegal immigrants, right? -- Ed.]

Nevermind.

It's Only Hypocrisy When You Do It

2009-11-16T22:32:00.003-05:00

Breaking: ample evidence that a New York Times writer suppressed his true assessment of a political figure out of fealty to a party/movement in the critical weeks before the election ... just as Mickey predicted!

We'll be right here, waiting for Mickey's gloating update about those spineless lefty journalists shamelessly pandering to the Money Liberal agenda ...

Contradictinggg Oneself

2009-10-29T06:26:00.000-04:00

So, according to GreGG Easterbrook:

(1) Paternalism is a very bad, no good, horrible thing when applied to health care, and everyone, rich and poor, should pay out-of-pocket (!) for services that are legally required to be standardized (!!) so that they can negotiate for their health services the same way you'd bargain shop for, say, a television (!!!),

(2) Paternalism is a very good, not at all bad, terrific thing when applied to young adults who could easily be plying their trade in the NBA, because Grggggg doesn't like the quality of play in a sport he doesn't care about in the first place. [Isn't this the argument that the erudite and not at all crazy Buzz Bissinger absolutely demolished on the same day that this idiotic Easterbrook article was published? -- ed. True, that op-ed has data and logic ... but it forgot that JaVale McGee does not entertain Gregg the same way a player with a degree in communications does!]

It's pretty simple: the father of a family of four should be totally accountable to market forces in determining whether to get that growth looked at, but LeBron James must be protected from himself.

What's not to love?

Mickey Kaus Turning Into Richard Cohen Watch

2009-10-27T20:17:00.002-04:00

Mickey simply does not care for doctor's waiting rooms:

Shouldn't doctors give patients waiting to see them little hand-held beepers or vibrating devices like those some crowded restaurants give you when you're waiting for a table? That way you could wander around nearby instead of staying in the unventilated waiting room filled with coughing, sneezing people. ...

BONUS: Aren't doctor's waiting rooms one of those few places where everyone is treated equally and people of all classes mingle (like the post office, the DMV, and other "public spheres")? Wouldn't having everyone leave (perhaps to wait in their luxury cars, away from the poors!) destroy Mickey's precious social equality?

Mickey Asks, FMK Answers

2009-10-20T23:23:00.005-04:00

Mickey:

This chart seems to be going in the wrong direction for health care reform, even if you discount the lopsided FOX poll (for Nate Silverish reasons--they only get the big support/oppose question after asking a series of spoiling questions). ...

Huh? This chart? The chart where you can actually discount lopsided Fox polls? Hmm ... I wonder what that chart would look like ...

/click

/click

/click

Right is the wrong direction? Straight sideways is the wrong direction? An uncomplicated rendering of the linear progression of time is the wrong direction?

Does this suggest that the much-derided insurance industry study (suggesting premiums would rise after reform) had an impact?

... Nope.

Glad I could help!

The Far Center

2009-10-14T09:25:00.006-04:00

Christopher Beam, stretching so far that I think he pulled his hamstring:

Swine flu may have an unexpected side effect: political unity. The far left and far right agree that they're sure as heck not getting vaccinated against swine flu.

Wow, the far left hates the swine flu virus? I'm a Radical IslamoMarxist Money Liberal Fascist and I had never really thought about it before ... I better read up before the next drum-in!

For examples of the "far right", Beam cites Alex Jones and Pat Buchanon. No, wait, he cites Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, easily the two most popular members of the conservative media. Swing and a miss.

For examples of the "far left", Beam cites Peter Singer and Amy Goodman. No, wait, he cites Dr. Frank Lipman and Jim Carrey. [*The* Dr. Frank Lipman??? -- ed. In fairness, he also cites Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who at least is a blood relative of somebody that someone might associate with the left.] Swing and a miss.

So, in crafting this pinnacle of a-pox-on-both-your-houses faux-centrist horseshit, he identifies mainstream conservative lunacy as the "far right" and considers the star of Lemony Snicket as emblematic of the "far left."

When the Garmin lady tells Chris Beam to "bear right" or "turn left" does he just run the car into a ditch?

Doubling Down

2009-10-09T08:17:00.000-04:00

Looks like some lowly bloggers have the temerity to question Mickey's slapdash ACORN/Franken analysis. What say you, Mickey? Is it something that condescendingly dismisses their legitimate criticisms of your line of argumentation? It is? Terrific:

Dan Kennedy and Oliver Willis have never heard of absentee ballots (not to mention the fun you can have with same-day registration).

In the original post, Mickey used his ignorance of absentee ballot and same-day registration procedure as circumstantial evidence of a nefarious scheme. [Hey! Questions remain! Questions that Mickey will never bother to find an answer to! -- ed. Obvious questions, even!]

But now Mickey -- who once again seems to operating under the assumption that there was no hard-fought months-long review of the Minnesota election, much less a review that focused almost entirely on absentee ballots -- is actually using the mere existence of absentee ballots and same-day registration in a state where ACORN has an office as per se proof of perfidy.

This defensive leap from wink-wink speculation ("if there were funny business" ... ) to outright citizen-of-the-land-of-make-believe (what, exactly, is "the fun you can have with same-day registration"?) is subtle, but it's the little things that make reading Mickey worthwhile.

That, and the stupid.

The New York Times Is No Longer Trying

2009-10-06T09:31:00.003-04:00

Oh, come on:

I am not unemployable. I have a master’s of fine arts and spent two years in the Peace Corps.

At least *try* to pretend you aren't the paper of record for clueless liberal caricatures ...

Aw, Cute

2009-10-01T21:37:00.004-04:00

Hey, look! A disreputable paper's even more disreputable celebrity news auxiliary lifted a particularly noxious section of idiocy almost verbatim from one of Mickey's worthless posts!

Does Mickey respond with a blend of pride and annoyance?

He does?

Awesome. Here's what Mickey wrote:

Did ACORN chicanery elect Al Franken? That's the import of this tactfully phrased Minneapolis Star Tribune column.** Franken won by 312 votes. ACORN claimed to have registered 48,000 new Minnesota voters. If just 1% were ineligible but cast ballots, or had ballots cast for them illegally, and survived the recount process ... that's 480 votes, almost certainly overwhelmingly cast for Franken.

What do you suppose it was about this vibrant prose that attracted the obviously discerning editors of this prestigious journal?

- The October 2008-style conspiracy theorizing about ACORN and stolen elections?

- Mickey's obvious inability or unwillingness to distinguish between falsified voter registrations and actual voter fraud?

- How he completely ignores the thorough review of ballots and subsequent court fights that lasted for 10 months after this election?

- The way he ridiculously pulled a statistic out of thin air ("just 1%"!) to aid in his "analysis"?

- How one of his sources is an obviously insane marginal figure who has naturally become a folk hero to the please-God-let-there-be-a-military-coup crowd?

- The way Mickey walks right up to saying that Al Franken was illegitimately elected and ... doesn't ... *quite* ... say it ... ?

In any event (and the answer, for the record, is "all of the above, and did you hear that Democrats are Marxists who want to kill your grandmother?"), here's Mickey on the NYP's plagiarism:

kf Tuesday, Page Six today (Doris Kearns Goodwin style!)

You see, Mickey won't come out and angrily accuse the Post of lifting his entire story without even bothering to change Mickey's patently stupid math -- that might offend the death panel enthusiasts and hyperbolic outrage factories that have hilariously become Mickey's peers -- so he makes his accusation in the form of an out-of-the-blue cheap shot at a known liberal. Ha ... ha?

Once upon a time, Mickey had much stronger opinions on the subject:

Plagiarism's supposed to be theft, right? If it is theft, how can it be merely "careless" to cut and paste somebody else's graf into your story?

Oh, but that's when it was the New York Times ... my mistake ...

One Day in the Life of Mickey Kausovich

2009-09-25T08:17:00.001-04:00

Mickey, in admittedly extreme form:

Maybe Landesman should order a viewing of The Lives of Others to underscore to them what (in admittedly extreme form) people who worry about politicizing funding for the arts are worried about.

The Lives of Others was about ... the problem of politicizing funding for the arts?

/deep breath

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Holy shit! What fucking movie did Mickey fucking Kaus fucking watch? Does he think that the actress in the movie was repeatedly sexually assaulted by the high-ranking party official because she was worried about grants for her play? Here, I was thinking it was because she lived in a totalitarian state run by sociopaths with no tolerance for dissent or individual freedom ... when *all along* it was an allegory for the consequences of an unchecked National Endowment for the Arts!

[This is the same Mickey Kaus who mocked "privocrats" fears of data mining, right? ("Do you have an expectation of privacy when you check out a book from ... the government? I don't.") -- ed. Hey, you don't hear him complaining about tapping dissidents' phones and conducting warrantless searches of their homes, do you? "First they came bearing Jazz Masters Fellowships, and I said nothing because I am not a Jazz Master ..." -- ed.]

***********************

The Official Mickey Kaus Totalitarian State Reading List

Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number: The narrator's survival of brutal conditions as a political prisoner is a testament to the fundamental inefficiency of government-run programs.

Darkness at Noon: The protaganist's frustrating attempts at communication with the other prisoners is a convincing argument against subsidies for public radio.

The Gulag Archipelago: The camp massacres are vibrant metaphors for Peter Orszag's death panels.

1984: The poor quality of government-approved gin reveals fundamental problems with free market regulation.

Jesus Christ, Mickey. THE LIVES OF OTHERS?

Kausfiles Minus Kaus, Again

2009-09-22T23:13:00.000-04:00

Wherein I remove whole sentences from context, etc. ...

Mickey (advancing a fairly standard "The hyperbolic and distinctly racist opposition to our black president is not because our black president is black!" argument):

It's that he's a relative newcomer, as Presidents go--an unknown quantity, an enigma, with a short track record and patches of that record left fuzzy. That means opponents can fill in the blanks with ominous possibilities. It makes paranoia more rational, if you will.

It's true! George W. Bush had only been an elected official for 6 years and had never held national office before he was essentially hand-picked by a group of plutocrats to be the nominee of the Republican party! Thus, when a major terrorist attack occurred eight months into his presidency, raising all sorts of ridiculous questions and advancing absurd hypotheses was a completely rational response because the president was a huge question mark.

Mickey Kaus, defender of Truthers. Who knew?

Which Is It?

2009-09-21T06:45:00.000-04:00

Obama Administration Statements On The Public Option

or

A Nervous Boyfriend Trying To Talk His Girlfriend Into Anal Sex

"I’d be happy [if we didn't] do it ... and if there was a way of doing it that [was okay with you], I’m happy to do it that way, as well."

"I'm just kinda talkin' about how it might be okay to do. If you're into that sort of thing."

"No-one is being forced to [do] it."

"I see nothing wrong with having [it] as a choice."

"Whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the [issue]."

"It's certainly not a deal-breaker."

"Only if you're cool with it."

"These are legitimate concerns, but ones, I believe, that can be overcome."

“I just want to figure out what works.”

"No, I'm just kidding! Unless you were serious ..."

Of Kanyes and Carters

2009-09-18T16:03:00.000-04:00

Mickey:

Jimmy Carter cites racism as anti-Obama factor. Instant reaction: Kiss of Death. Gift to the GOPs. Remember the Carter era of smug moralizing? Anyone want to go back to that?

Did you know that, by now, nearly half the American population does not remember the Carter era of smug moralizing? (48% of the population was born after 1977). Ezra Klein sure as hell doesn't remember the Carter era of smug moralizing.

Mickey, again:

I've run into a surprising number of people who don't know that Obama called Kanye West a "jackass." Apparently the press' reluctance to publicize an off-the-record remark has worked to inhibit dissemination of what otherwise would be a juicy little bit of news. (Try to find a mention in the print Washington Post, for example.) But everybody's heard about Jimmy Carter saying that an "overwhelming portion" of animosity to Obama stems from "racism."

(To hell with your fancy polls and lines and numbers, Nate Silver! "A surprising number" of the population of "people who know and still talk to Mickey Kaus" randomly sampled by "running into Mickey recently" can tell us what we need to know!)

Huh. I wonder if the kind of people for whom Jimmy Carter has immediate relevance (not 48% of the population!) are just not the same kind of people who would obsessively follow the aftermath of the Kanye West VMA debacle? And I further wonder if the kind of people who know Mickey aren't more likely to follow the kind of news sources where Jimmy Carter is on heavy rotation (possibly alongside Osama bin Laden ...) as opposed to, say, Bossip? And the disconnect isn't due to some weird MSM plot gone awry, but instead to Mickey's limited worldview and advancing age?

Time for another Arcade Fire review, Mickey! Throw the young 'uns off the scent before they start rationing your end-of-life death panel! Or whatever!

P.S. Does "the press' reluctance to publicize an off-the-record remark" explain why the Downing Street Memo was basically ignored? Silly MSM! I knew there was a reason!

Another Possibility

2009-09-17T16:50:00.000-04:00

Is the only reason that Mickey gives in to the Joe Wilsons and Sarah Palins of the world on health care because deep down Mickey *knows* that he's a complete buffoon who should never ever be taken seriously, and he desperately wants to destroy the only administration official that has ever show signs of listening to him?

And is it telling that this is the kindest possible explanation for the dreary slog that Kausfiles has become?

Hobbesian, Really

2009-09-16T11:47:00.000-04:00

Uh, what?

“Good or bad, moral or immoral, people are going to make markets and trade via computers, and this is a natural area of financial engineers,” says Emanuel Derman, a professor at Columbia University and a former Wall Street quant.

Yup, out here in the jungle -- the perfect state of nature that exists south of Canal Street -- people are just inevitably going to execute complex trades relating to obscure financial products with insane amounts of leverage and without any oversight or regulation ...

It's just natural.

The Nerve!

2009-09-15T23:56:00.001-04:00

Mickey:

Obama Overexposure Tour continues. ... Next: Bloggingheads? Mediaite Office Hours?

I mean, what is it with this guy? Like he's President or something!!!

He Was Expecting Twenty Points, Easily

2009-09-15T14:37:00.001-04:00

Here's Mickey mocking Obama because his primetime address failed to create a functional media in this country that would accurately explain the parameters of the measure instead of engaging in absolute worst kind of he-said-public-option-she-said-death-panels journalism didn't move the overall health care numbers that much.

Naturally, he brings on noted polling and stats expert ~~Nate Silver~~ ~~Mark Blumenthal~~ Jennifer Rubin to assure him that the cherries he picked were totally significant.

And, just as naturally, Nate Silver shows up to point out that Mickey is an idiot.

The circle of life ... goes on.

**********

Also, looking at Mickey's preferred poll you notice things like this:

22. Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

-------- Support -------- --------- Oppose -------- No
NET Strongly Somewhat NET Somewhat Strongly opinion
9/12/09 55 33 22 42 11 31 3
8/17/09 52 33 19 46 11 35 2

So even though Obama's speech was an epic failure, he moved the needle on the public option from 52-46 to 55-42? We'll just have to wait for Mickey to update his post to include this interesting bit of information ...

You Lie!

2009-09-14T20:32:00.003-04:00

You're going to be shocked -- shocked! -- that Mickey approved of Joe Wilson's heckling, and you're going to be dazzled -- dazzled! -- at the reason why.

While an ordinary person might have heard the shout as a perfect example of the kind of vaguely defined outrage available at your local teabagger/town hall protest ("[Obama] [something bad]!") except in second-person instead of third-, Mickey understands that Joe Wilson's nuanced "dissent" was intended to address "whether there is any verification mechanism that will actually stop illegals from getting coverage, whatever the law says."

(Apparently, the original quote was supposed to be "You lie about whether we have appropriate verification mechanisms to stop some migrant worker from getting his fracture set!" Must have been shortened for impact.)

This is of a piece, of course, as Mickey also thought that the random yahoos screaming at town halls were attempting to engage in thoughtful dialogue with the Peter Singers of the world over the relative value of life and our health care system's priorities, and will share with you why this is all Peter Orszag's fault.

I wonder, is there a word for the belief that the great and good American people (except for those nasty Democrats!) deep down share -- or would share -- your precise beliefs but are simply incapable of articulating it as well as you can, and therefore you should be allowed to speak in their stead?

Paternalitism?

Or just "Mickey Kaus"?

The Week That Was

2009-09-04T09:18:00.004-04:00

Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Joining Ultra-Conservative Republicans To Kill A Meaningful Shot At Real Health Care Reform Because The Bill Contains No Guarantees Of Mickey's Immortality Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death Death

Mickey's First Orszagism

2009-08-30T09:07:00.000-04:00

From the Karchive, here's Peter Orszag arguing that we need to cut the benefits of the elderly to pay for important things for the rest of us:

The only problem with this system is we can't afford it ... We should be sticking it to today's recipients ... The alternative to raising taxes is cutting benefits more. As long as we're going to be accused of making large cuts, we might as well actually make large cuts and radically reduce the amount of national income eaten up ...

Oh wait, that was Mickey, arguing for drastic cuts in Social Security, while noted grandmother-killing heartless bastard Peter Orszag was trying to save Social Security.

Huh. It's enough to make you think that Peter Orszag is actually acting in good faith when he's trying to bring the cost of health care down, while Mickey is hyperactively bounding from ill-conceived position to ill-conceived position using any weapon he can ("Social Security is preventing us from having universal health care! Obama's universal health care plan has death panels!") to justify his latest patently tendentious analysis ...

Nah ...

Hear Me Out, People

2009-08-28T12:53:00.001-04:00

Mickey Kaus, political genius, discussing whether we should cut Social Security in 2005:

Maybe we can add those ballooning health care costs on top of the 12.4 percent we're currently taking for Social Security pensions. But will we be able to afford national health care if we let Social Security gobble up even more?

Mickey Kaus, political genius, discussing whether we should cut Social Security in 2006:

Better to let the [current Social Security] system bubble along and make truly radical, means-testing cuts later, when Democrats will be in a position to achieve something big, like national health insurance, in return (and when the addition of a big program like national health insurance will make it clear to everyone that radical cuts are necessary).

Mickey Kaus, political genius, back in June, at the start of this neverending health care saga:

Wouldn't it be more prudent to pay for health care expansion the old fashioned way--through tax increases and sure-thing program cuts, like ... means-testing of Social Security?

a) I'm starting to get the feeling that Mickey wants to means-test Social Security ...

b) I love that Mickey values his little ideas so highly that even when they're patently stupid, he'll keep repeating and repeating and repeating them ...

I mean, has the potential addition of a national health program made it clear to *you*, dear reader, that cuts in Social Security are necessary? Has it made it clear to anyone? Is there any kind of logical connection there?

Does anything at all seem less necessary right now than enacting The New Republic's pet policy prescription of means-testing Social Security -- step aside, FDR! Marty Peretz will take it from here! -- the classic blinkered centrist solution in search of a problem? (Social Security going broke? Means-test! Need money to pay for health care? Means-test! Life got you down? Means-test!)

So, the guy who has literally spent the last three months [Three months? -- ed. Jesus ...] accusing the Democrats of being tone-deaf to public perceptions of their health care bill and deliberately trying to scare the elderly would, in reality, like nothing more than to pay for health care by slashing Social Security benefits?

What say you, cave trolls at a town hall meeting?

My thoughts exactly.

Konstitutional Law

2009-08-26T22:15:00.001-04:00

Did Mickey take a button of peyote and start thumbing through back issues of the Yale Law Journal? Because that might explain this:

Jon Alter's latest column--calling for health care to be treated as a "civil right"--brings up an underdiscussed question: In a single payer plan, would health care be treated as a constitutional entitlement that couldn't be taken away without "due process" under the Warren Court's so-called "New Property" doctrine? My Con Law knowledge is a few decades out of date--but the doctrine covered welfare benefits, guaranteeing a hearing to individuals before they could be denied. Why not health benefits? ...

Good lord! I'm a drunken mess, and even I know that:

1) "The New Property" was a moderately influential article by Charles Reich, not a Supreme Court doctrine.

2) The hearing-before-denial-of-benefits case was Goldberg v. Kelly (1970), which would have been ... the Burger Court. [Are you sure it wasn't the Warren Court? That's the evil one, right? -- ed. Warren Burger, Earl Warren, Earl Weaver, Dream Weaver, Earl of Sandwich ... it's all the same ...]

3) What are the odds that a mid-60s left-liberal academic theory would be treated as settled law today by the Roberts Court? [Hey, he said his con law knowledge was "out of date" -- ed. Is it so out of date that he thinks that William Brennan is still on the court?]

4) Hasn't Mickey been arguing over and over again that anything that even remotely comes close to a kinda-sorta-not-really denial of benefits is a horrifying crime against man and God? So why does he argue later in the post that:

[A] "public option" might help avoid having every "we won't pay for this treatment" decision become a constitutional issue in a way a universal, single-payer entitlement couldn't ...

Shouldn't he want constitutional protections for his health care? When you're trying to stop the Ezra Kleins of the world from pulling the plug on you, shouldn't you want any weapon to hand?

Wait, I think I've figured out that last one. Ladies and gentlemen, the one thing Mickey fears more than death itself:

Any kind of victory for public interest lawyers.

Perish the thought!

Wrongg

2009-08-20T09:07:00.001-04:00

Oh, Gre(g)(g) Easterbrook, is it already football-and-embarrassing-error season again?

The greenhouse gas bill before Congress became so ridiculously long, reaching 1,400 pages, that Democrats hired a speed reader to keep track of what the legislation said.

That link goes to an article, which says that:

"A request to have the entire bill read aloud is a prerogative Republicans have a right to invoke which could be used to frustrate Committee Chairman Henry Waxman's deadline of Memorial Day to get the committee's work on the bill done."

Oh.

So the Democrats hired a speed reader to deal with an antiquated procedural roadblock that they anticipated Republicans using, and not to, say, "keep track of what the legislation said"?

So Gregg's preferred understanding of Congressional activity ("Those clowns in Congress have done it again! What a bunch of clowns.") is completely inaccurate?

So the correct reading (Democrats employ speed reader to frustrate Republicans' desperate attempts to stop any measure whatsoever aimed at the climate change problem that greGGGGG has only recently and grudgingly admitted is real) is not present at all in this column?

Looks like the answer to all of those is "yes" ...

One last question: do the fact-checkers at espn.com show up to work with a cape and a montera, or have they just given up on Gregg entirely?

Centrist Democrats' Attempts for Bipartisanship on Health Care Reform, In Cartoon Form

2009-08-19T11:40:00.001-04:00

"This time ..."

/repeat

One Day, Mickey Kaus Is Going To Die

2009-08-17T22:25:00.005-04:00

Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich -- national punchlines to 71% of the country and heroes to 29% -- are standing united against Obama's health care plan and have apparently started using Mickey's favorite hobbyhorse: the clear and simple fact that Obama is plotting to kill you.

But you can just tell that those two don't really feel it ... and not only because each of them has previously addressed the same end-of-life issues either in the exact same manner or by going even further than Obama. No, it's because they're clearly using "death panels" as a means of scaring old people and using "government takeovers" as a means of riling up the black helicopter crowd ... pretty much the standard right-wing "The Paranoid Style In American Politics"-as-a-playbook maneuvers.

Not Mickey, though. Sure, Mickey is doing the same kind of arguing in bad faith, making the same completely loony logical leaps, and is still presuming that the great and good American public is right behind him ... but there's something more to Mickey's lamentations. The volume of posting, the passionate intensity of his raging lies, the way he's constantly taking on his younger, more accomplished, full-head-of-hair-having blogging rival ... it's as though Mickey is channeling all of his issues with his impending mortality into his blog, with Peter Orszag playing the role of the Grim Reaper. It'd be sad, if it didn't have so many links to Tom Maguire.

So, please allow me to scare the pants off of Mickey [Not the pants! -- ed.]:

“[Health care reforms] don’t address the underlying problem, which is the cost of the last few months of life. We’re often not prolonging the quality of life, we’re just prolonging life. You’re accused of demagogy if you even approach the subject; but if it’s unlikely that you’ll enjoy a decent quality of life, doctors should send patients home and allow them to die what used to be called the ‘old man’s death,’ usually from pneumonia, the way most people used to die in this country.”

Is that Peter Orszag? Ezra Klein? Barack Obama?!? Nope, it's a prominent Republican, high-level McCain advisor, and the man who legally stole billions from the Chinese ... ladies and gentleman, Pete Peterson!

You know what this means? The quest to kill Mickey is totally bipartisan. Sleep with one eye open, Mickey!

Deep Thought (Apologies to Atrios)

2009-08-10T09:04:00.000-04:00

What if we could attribute the rise in health care spending to unions?

Would that make Mickey want to bend the curve?

404: File Not Found

2009-08-07T12:34:00.001-04:00

Now, I've been making fun of Mickey for assuming that the good and great American people must naturally hate the very same things that Mickey hates about the Democrat's health care reform PR without actually providing any evidence to support this sad delusion. But, hey, check out this new post! It might just set me straight!

What did [Mickey's latest bete noire Peter Orszag] do wrong? His insistence on--and insistence on talking about--long-term cost-bending successfully scared off a large segment of the American electorate by raising the issue of rationing. Hearts and minds.

That link actually goes to a FiveThirtyEight post by Nate Silver! Nate Silver, boy genius, actually found data supporting Mickey's thesis that long-term cost-bending rhetoric has scared the American public with fears of rationing?!?

/reads 538 post

Oh ... no. No, that post doesn't say that at all. Not even close. True, it's concerned with how Democrats have failed to effectively market health care reform, but in no way does it address rationing, a frightened public, Peter Orszag, bureaucrats pulling the plug on ~~an unresponsive Mickey Kaus~~ grandma, or any of Mickey's other health care boogeymen. [Hey, it mentions how a focus on cost-cutting hasn't worked! -- ed. Yeah, because the administration's rhetoric on cost-cutting has been *unconvincing*, while Mickey's entire argument depends on the rhetoric being too convincing. You're no fun ... -- ed.]

Here's what baffles me: Mickey has been cruising along here, ignoring evidence of health care waste (we all know Mickey is totally soft on wasteful government spending in literally any other area), making wild assertions about Obamacrats denying your cancer treatment because young Ezra Klein says it's time to die, and attributing both the political deadlock AND flagging popular support to the terrible, no-good cost-bending rhetoric -- all without linking to any kind of proof whatsoever for weeks now.

So why did *this* post need a link so badly that he was willing to cite to something completely unrelated and hope that nobody noticed? Why the hell would he think that he needs (the appearance of) reputable support for his arguments?

I mean, if ceaseless speculation, bad faith arguments, and an aversion to any kind of logic or reason were all good enough to keep Kausfiles in business for ten excruciating years, why even pretend to change?

Is It Possible That I'm Too Handsome?

2009-08-05T22:59:00.006-04:00

So here I was, wondering how Mickey would react to the astroturfers/tea baggers spontaneously reciting Fox News talking points at Dem town halls across the land. Specifically, would he be pro-protesting (just like the sixties!) or anti-protesting (too much like the sixties!)? Let's go to the tale of the tape ...

Pro: They hate the health care plan, just like Mickey said the great and good American people would!

Anti: The protesters don't hate it because Obama has stressed cost-cutting over security or because they are uncomfortable with the Medicare panel; far from it, they seem to be opposing any sort of government action in any field ever, and are specifically denouncing the kind of universal health coverage that Mickey has held to be a central tenet of social equality.

Pro: Tea baggers are so sneer-worthy, it's only a matter of time before somebody sneers at them, and then Mickey can sneeringly disapprove of their sneering!

Anti: But what if the tea baggers unionize?

Pro: These people's heartfelt campaign of intimidation and screaming might make the Democrats look bad!

Anti: These people are lunatics. [And that would stop Mickey from backing them ... why? -- ed. Hey, Mickey's more careful than that -- the kind of guy who writes that "a black president who insists that the state continue bestowing preferential treatment on people because they look like him" can get a link, but he's not about to touch the guy who writes, say, "bumbling jungle monkey." See the difference? Oh, so he's an elitist ... -- ed.]

So what does Mickey ultimately do?

Is it possible that Dem politicians are in for an August of furious town hall feedback so brutal that it all becomes absurd and breeds a grim, amused fatalism that actually steels them to proceed on health care? Just asking. ... If you're going to die, might as well die having enacted universal health care. ...

He declares that the "furious town hall feedback" (conveniently ignoring the fact that these protestors come with more corporate sponsorships than a Nascar team) will be so effective that it actually will become counter-effective when it wounds Democrats so mortally that they stoically pass Obamacare before presumably dying in their saddles ... but only possibly.

Man, it's like we're all playing Horribly Wrong Checkers and Mickey's playing Horribly Wrong Chess, isn't it?

Breaking! Mickey Kaus Figures Out Politics! Must Credit!

2009-07-28T22:46:00.004-04:00

Mickey Kaus, political genius, has just now figured out that the cost-control approach has the collateral benefit of pre-empting the kind of ridiculous budget critics that you would totally expect to oppose health care reform of the exact kind that Mickey Kaus keeps proposing. But!

If all you had to do is appease the Blue Dogs and AARP, the strategy might be sound. The problem is that the IMAC "game changer" scares the daylights out of lots of people, and adds to the ballast of the whole package with the general public.

If you're scoring at home, or even if you're alone: who do you think counts as "lots of people" in that link there? Any guesses?

How about ... David Broder! You know ... David Broder? The "voice of the people"? Or was that a joke? I mean, it's not like Mickey has been using David Broder as a punchline for years now [Wait a minute, that last post is from 2004 and Mickey is making an Austin Powers joke ... shouldn't he be prohibited from making fun of anyone for any reason? -- ed. Groovy, baby! High five! Ka-ching!]. And it's certainly not as though Mickey has been portraying him for years now as a fusty, condescending walking embodiment of the MSM dinosaurs. Heavens, no!

I'd make a snide "any weapon to hand" joke here, but, seriously, if Mickey Kaus is approvingly quoting David Broder in order to defeat a sensible health care reform policy, we've pretty much arrived at the end of days, and it's all shotguns and duct tape from here on in.

Good luck, and watch out for the zombies!

Mickey's Persistent State

2009-07-27T09:51:00.000-04:00

Um, what?

Peggy Noonan is on to something potentially big--the possible alliance between Christian pro-life forces and liberal universal health insurance advocates in favor of broadly available life-saving care ... and the potential fight between that alliance and the cost-saving Orszag end-of-life-rationalizing would-you-please-die-now crowd. ...

Wow, Lady Peggy Noonington actually broke a story about this emerging political alliance? Let's see what Her Majesty wrote:

A good portion of the support for national health care comes from a sort of European Christian Democrat spirit of community, of “We are all in this together.” This spirit potentially unites Democrats, leftists, some Republicans and GOP populists, the politically unaffiliated and those of whatever view with low incomes.

So, Peggy Noonan thinks that a "good portion" -- which, according to the latest advanced statistics, is slightly less than a "heaping helping" and slightly more than a "fair share" -- of public support for health care is from a "spirit" that "potentially" unites Mother Jones Readers and John Hagee Megachurchers, or at least it would have if Democrats hadn't foolishly extended universal health care to cover lady parts.

From that solidly reasoned and totally verifiable set of data points, Mickey boldly predicts that leftists -- craven opportunists that they are -- will reevaluate their sneering-rific position on ... wait for it ... Terri Schiavo.

Prediction: The sneering Dem majority position in the Schiavo case will get a second, skeptical look from at least some liberals.

Really? Terri Schiavo? Hasn't this been settled already? Doesn't everyone agree that the Republicans dramatically miscalculated by taking the hugely unpopular position that the government should intervene to keep alive a seriously brain-damaged person who has been in a vegetative state for fifteen years in order to nakedly pander to an increasingly unhinged religious right desperate to open a new front in the culture war? Who on Earth could argue that the Democrats made a huge mistake there?

Hey, I think they're playing Mickey's theme music ...

[S]houldn't left-wingers be pro-tubists? .... Has their political and moral sense been so twisted by the hard dogma of "abortion rights" (and disdain for fundamentalist Christians) that they don't see this?

Ha, so the alliance of the sneering left and the religious right will lead to ... people admitting that Mickey Kaus was right all along?

Prediction: the "political and moral sense" of Mickey Kaus will be subjected to much, much more sneering.

Not Nearly As Convincing As A String Of Unverified Assertions, Anyway ...

2009-07-24T11:58:00.004-04:00

1. Mickey has qualms about the marketing and potential cost-cutting measures of Obama's health care initiative.

2. Obama's health care initiative, though popular with the public, seems poised to go down to defeat because the Ben Nelsons of the world are vainglorious idiots who seize upon any increase in government spending as a reason to scuttle Democratic policies.

Now, Mickey doesn't have any evidence connecting #1 to #2 -- he must have left it in his other pants -- but that doesn't stop him. Mickey's patented brand of deductive reasoning tells him that health care reform is faltering precisely because ... of the things Mickey doesn't like about it. [Is that narcissistic or solipsistic? I can never remember the difference. -- ed. Narcissistic. A solipsist wouldn't invent a fictitious editor.] Mickey goes on to blame this crazy focus on cost-cutting on -- what else? -- ~~the Democratic centrists described in paragraph 2 above who are using cost as a pretext for selling out to insurance companies~~ a high-brow magazine for coastal elites!

All seemingly on the basis of a single article in the New Yorker that isn't nearly as convincing as it's made out to be.

Those of us who aren't veteran Kausfiles Konnoisseurs would expect a takedown, or even a link to a takedown, of the New Yorker article that basically destroys Mickey's position. But that would be too easy, so Mickey uses the article (on health care, remember) to take a nonsensical swipe at Democrat orthodoxy on education spending, and leaves it at that. What a pro!

I mean, it's not like he's just lazily repeating himself in every post and trying to wish that article (and the evidence against his poorly thought out position) away so that he can continue to attack a sensible liberal health care reform plan by repeating right-wing talking points verbatim and pretending that he's arguing in good faith, right?

Of course not. He'll roll out that great rebuttal any day now.

Any day now.

I Blame The Bling

2009-07-23T23:38:00.004-04:00

Mickey, master of nuance, on the Gates incident:

And at that point Gates has already determined he's been treated unfairly. He's already refusing to answer questions and planning to file a complaint. Again, from his own words it looks like he rushes a bit to the conclusion that a white man in a similar situation would have been treated differently. Is that really true? I'm not saying that Gates wasn't stereotyped in a deeply annoying and disturbing way. Just saying the stereotypes can run boths ways.

See, Mickey's not just saying that the cop didn't stereotype Gates unfairly, he's just saying that Gates might have stereotyped himself as the kind of person that gets treated unfairly, which -- to reiterate -- Mickey's not just saying he wasn't. See?

Huh?

Wronger Faster

2009-07-18T13:16:00.003-04:00

I'm sure that this is all just a big part of the SEIU's evil plan to springboard off the health care debate into getting card check. Now it might look like a bunch of moderate Democrats have dropped the card check provision for the sake of getting a labor law bill passed, and "the possibility of trading some health care provisions for card check in some sort of gruesome grand bargain" was an incredibly stupid bit of punditry by somebody completely unconnected from reality, but you just don't understand Washington kabuki like Mickey.

You see, in addition to pressuring Senators on the public option, the SEIU has also endorsed Sonia Sotomayor, which means they want to use their support for her nomination with the White House to water down the public option on health care in exchange for support from the Money Liberals on the Bring Back Welfare Act of 2009, which, in turn ...

[SUDDEN BURST OF WHITE NOISE]

... powerful Latino lobby and potential use of mind control on Ben Nelson, who ...

[LINE SUDDENLY GOES DEAD]

... that would cause Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln to swap their votes on the cap-and-trade bill for a promise not to attack on the next two turns ...

[SCENE MISSING]

... 4 ... 8 ... 15 ... 16 ...

[AIRPLANE FLIES OVERHEAD]

... until the handle breaks off, and Barbara Mikulski has to go get a doctor to pull it back out again.

Voila! 60 votes for cloture on card check!

It's all so simple.

Say

2009-07-14T22:29:00.001-04:00

Remember when Democrats gunned down Miguel Estrada in front of his family?

That was awful.

Ugh

2009-07-11T16:55:00.002-04:00

Apologies for the long delay, as forces beyond my control [Laziness is beyond your control? -- ed. Man, I am so sick of that guy ... why can't I have Mickey's editor?] have conspired to keep me from blogging.

For your Kausfiles Komedy fix, however, just read and re-read this post from last week where Mickey -- already prone to fever dreams regarding just how the SEIU (pronounced "Iago") plans to trick the Senate into passing card check and wrecking the American economy (er ... more so) -- speculates that the SEIU plans to turn unnamed health care provisions (?) into support for card check (??) from moderate Senate democrats (???) through a process involving annoyance at left-wing grass-roots groups (????) and avoidance of the dreaded Senate kabuki (?????).

I was going originally going to call this pile of flailing idiocy "Mickey's patented brand of paranoid political alchemy", but I realized that comparing Mickey's political strategery to alchemy is kind of an insult to alchemy.

Andrew Young Also Has A Bridge He'd Like To Sell You

2009-07-03T06:18:00.000-04:00

In reviewing a gossip column item about John Edwards' former aide's tell-all book -- you know, media criticism -- Mickey spots something that they seem to have missed:

Rush & Molloy bury the lede--Obama's alleged promise to make Edwards Attorney General. ...

Well, it should be noted that the sources for this alleged promise, aside from Mickey himself, are ... Robert Novak (!), John Edwards, and now John Edwards again, only this time via somebody scummy enough to pass off John Edwards' love child as his own.

I would mock Mickey for relying on chronic fabricators with blatantly obvious agendas, but considering the typical quality of Mickey's sources, this is comparatively rock solid.

[Look, if you can't trust pathetic hacks desperately trying to spin you, how are you supposed to get the all-important undernews? -- ed. Ask around at Cafe Milano?]

Kausfiles Paranoia: Ten Years

2009-07-01T00:16:00.000-04:00

Mickey's got me in the nostalgic spirit, so how about this one from 2003:

Not one, not two, but three plugs in a NYT Arts-front-page "Critic's Notebook" for a semi-obscure band, Galactic, whose guitarist is Howell Raines' son! What I wouldn't have given for this item two weeks ago! ...

This particular post appeared not one, not two, but three years after numerous hippies with terrible taste in music recommended to me the music of Galactic, a kind of String Cheese Incident for a more southern palate.

Mickey, of course, assumed that this coverage was a result of Howell Raines just cold spiking every music and arts story that didn't involve his son. You see, Raines was the most obvious outlet for Mickey's sublimely stupid theory of a dominant liberal MSM (MSM here meaning any source that fails to recognize Mickey's genius and n.b. that by this definition the MSM is roughly 99.9% of the internet) and therefore, despite Raines' efforts to turn the New York Times into a mouthpiece for Bush's Iraq propaganda (a rather inconvenient subject that Mickey has largely avoided except when he can use it to make fun of Floyd Abrams), Mickey considered Raines to be an unreconstructed Charles-Foster-Kane-esque influence-peddling liberal desperate to mold public opinion to his favor ...

... by pimping his son's already-moderately-popular jam band.

Ten years, everyone!

In-Depth Supreme Court Analysis

2009-06-30T00:28:00.003-04:00

Shouldn't Sam Alito have consulted Tom Wolfe before reprinting whole sections on urban politics from "Bonfire of the Vanities" in their entirety and without attribution?

It's Only Been Ten Years?

2009-06-29T06:11:00.002-04:00

Not to rain on Mickey's parade here, but what else am I supposed to do with this, in his "greatest" "hits" "post":

We could have used [an "independent, non-partisan body to temporarily cut payroll taxes"] this winter, no? Spending cuts may eventually deliver more punch, but tax cuts that don't even have to go through Congress would undoubtedly be much quicker.

Hey, I actually like this idea, what with the payroll tax being completely regressive and the stimulative effect of ... wait wait wait, "spending cuts"? In a recession? Against pretty much all available macroeconomic evidence? Maybe Mickey's just trying to avoid sleeping with the camels in his tent, ifyouknowwhatimean, but an endorsement of spending cuts in a recession is straight out of Grover Norquist's fantasyland ...

Unless of course Mickey meant "spending" instead of "spending cuts", but considering that Mickey thinks "The Case Against Editors" is one of his greatest hits, we have to assume it's intentional, right?

Right?

Failure Faster

2009-06-26T11:12:00.001-04:00

So, uh, according to Mickey's self-flattering and obviously elitist theories of information dissemination (essentially, "right-wing nerds R teh awesome", "people who don't compulsively check blogs forever R teh lame", etc.), these sex scandals could be over very quickly (Feiler Faster!) or not over quickly at all (Skurnik's Second Electorate!) ...

Well, it's likely to be one or the other!

This ... this is why we have experts like Mickey around.

Nice Favorability Rating You Have Here ... Wouldn't Want Someone To Misinterpret It, If You Know What I Mean

2009-06-25T14:48:00.000-04:00

Larry Sabato on John Ensign's recent polling:

"That sure says something, that the guy involved in the adultery scandal is the most popular senior elected official in the state," Sabato said. "I don't know what it says, but it says something."

"And," Sabato continued, "if the Senator were to, you know, throw a few bucks my way, I might suddenly figure out what it says ..."

The Answer Certainly Is Instructive ...

2009-06-22T22:55:00.006-04:00

Oh, Mickey. See what happens when you wander out of your bubble?

Why was Pennsylvania relatively unscathed by foreclosures in 2008 while neighboring Ohio was hammered? A friend at a conference I recently attended pointed out the contrast. I don't know the answer, but it might be instructive.

What do you think Mickey was expecting here? Unions? The MSM? A bling-bling culture of dependency that had yet to be killed by Obama?

... Update: Thanks to Tom Maguire, who forwards a newspaper article and a summary of three Fed studies on the topic. Regulatory differences are suspected. ...

"Regulatory differences are suspected." Hmm ... bloodless phrasing there. I wonder if those differences are instructive?

Clicking through Mickey's links, one sees that Pennsylvania's success is due to:

(1) Pennsylvania more effectively regulating its mortgage brokers, while Ohio basically allowed lenders to go wild.

(2) An effort by a Pittsburgh community development group working for "economic justice" (Money Liberals!) to work within the Community Reinvestment Act (Naive Liberal Do-Gooders!) to make bank loans to minorities more scrupulous (Red Alert! All Hands to Kausfiles Battle Stations!).

So, while Mickey runs around blaming immigrants and liberals for the housing mess, it turns out that -- naturally, perfectly -- the way to avoid the crisis was a strong regulatory state and the local equivalent of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

This person at this conference giving you ideas, Mickey? They are no friend to you.

Last Laff

2009-06-19T00:26:00.002-04:00

If I told you that the very first time that Mickey mentioned the Laffer Curve -- the completely absurd economic theory advocated by tax-cuts-and-more-tax-cuts Republicans that basically dominated domestic political debate from 2001-2007 and is still talked about like it's something sane people believe in -- was just this past Tuesday, would you be surprised?

And if I told you that Mickey used the Laffer Curve -- which, mind you, gained popularity after it was embraced by Dick Cheney -- to attack Democrats, would you be even remotely shocked?

If the answer to either of these questions was "yes", then the fact that a tacit embrace of the stupidest of all possible economic theories and the bad faith analogy to end all bad faith analogies were used by Mickey to endorse Obama's healthcare plan would probably be confusing.

It's okay. We're here to help.

Reflexively Hating Me Because I'm Wrong All The Time About Everything Only Makes You Look Petty

2009-06-16T13:03:00.000-04:00

Before Anne Applebaum throws together a column explaining how Mousavi's popularity stems from being a "center-right" "fiscal conservative", I thought I'd share my opinions on her latest blather. Looks like Hitch has a pithy response:

Good ol' Hitch. Way to shoot that one down.

Still, some parts of the idiocy are worth highlighting:

In part because they intuitively disdain anything that President George W. Bush admired, in part because they doubt its efficacy, the Obama administration has quite deliberately stayed away from the whole idea of promoting democracy in general and elections in particular.

(1) A driving force behind Obama's foreign policy is intuitive disdain for Bush? Really? Applebaum knows this ... how? I mean, I know the Obama Administration is basically a bunch of Daily Kos diarists suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome, and the only reason they're not bombing the hell out of North Korea right now is an instinctual hatred for Dick Cheney/Halliburton/AmeriKKKa ...

(2) Hold on, "intuitive"? Isn't disdain for Bush pretty rational at this point? Who's walking around saying, "Boy, there's something about that George W. Bush I don't like, but I just can't put my finger on it ..."?

(3) On that note, isn't the fact that a policy is associated with Bush a *reason* to doubt its efficacy? How many good things came out of that administration again?

It really is remarkable how Applebaum insists that liberals only oppose conservative policies out of anger or spite, while she only obliquely acknowledges the abysmal failures that stem from those policies. Gee, you think that anger might have something to do with those failures?

I mean, remember when she argued that the terrible legacy of the Iraq war is how it discredited all the neoconservative hawks, and now with all that darn liberal disdain for Bush and his preemptive wars nobody was willing to go in and start a war with the people who really truly needed to be bombed?

You know ... the Iranians?

Awesome.

More Fun With The Kausfiles Karchives

2009-06-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

From 2004:

Rep. Billy Tauzin's decision to resign his congressional chairmanship to accept a highly lucrative position as lobbyist for the big drug companies--this just after he helped write the Medicare prescription drug bill--stinks so badly I think he just might be shamed into giving up the job.

So, um, how'd that work out?

Oh, he's still president and chief executive officer of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America?

Well, I'm sure that, any day now, the good and great American people will come, like a cavalry, to oust Billy Tauzin from his position.

And we can all rest assured that the author of this post isn't posing as a wise Washington hand, knowledgeable about the ins and outs of political influence.

Murther Most Foul!

2009-06-13T11:40:00.002-04:00

No, the title is not a reference to Mickey's apparent belief that Ezra Klein is coming to kill him (and what in the hell does a post have to do to get the "paranoia" tag at kausfiles?) ... it's because the issue of health care reform has turned Mickey into Hamlet.

You see, Mickey desperately hates Democrats, but Mickey also supports universal health care -- it's one of the last sad little vestiges of Mickey's leftist past, a rapidly fraying stitch holding the "liberal" to the "neo". If Republicans were to offer a plan for universal health care -- really, any plan even remotely related to health care -- Mickey would gladly clamber aboard, as he did with Bush's Medicare prescription drug debacle. [Hey! Confusing senior citizens and shoveling money to private insurers and the pharmaceutical industry was a small price to pay for prescription drug coverage! -- ed. Billy Tauzin thinks so!]

Unfortunately for Mickey, the Republicans are still the party where Medicare is equated with Stalin ("we'll be telling our children about a time in America, when men and women were free ... to die in hospital waiting rooms"), and those evil Democrats are pushing universal health care. What to do, what to do?

Watch as Mickey flounders by:

- Consistently equating universal health care with government denial of popular and effective treatments -- essentially repeating GOP talking points and in some cases amplifying and elaborately defending them -- all for the purpose of showing Democrats how to *really* sell universal health care. [Democrats are supposed to pitch universal health care by claiming that it will be a massively huge and constantly expanding government program with no attempts at efficiency or even effectiveness? -- ed. Hey, Mickey's got evidence to support the popularity of that pitch ... right ... um ... over ... hmm.]

- Linking copiously to conservative opponents of universal health care, even as he assures everyone that he would totally be for a universal health care plan if only it didn't deny popular and effective treatments -- which, of course, it doesn't -- and if it didn't have Nancy Pelosi's cooties all over it.

- You know that New Yorker piece showing that higher priced medicine clearly did not lead to better health outcomes, and was generally the product of an information gap between patients and physicians -- as opposed to people themselves demanding "fancy new expensive treatments", which makes literally no sense when you consider that obtaining medical care isn't like shopping at Best Buy, but is kinda hilarious when you picture Mickey angrily demanding an echocardiogram while his puzzled internist explains that he has gout -- and that, hey, maybe the larger problem is a model of health care that focuses on profit-maximization rather than patient outcome, and maybe reforming the way doctors are compensated will change that, too?

Yeah, Mickey's ignoring that (and how it demolishes his oft-stated thesis that expensive is better) and focusing on the New Yorker profile of Peter Orszag instead, presumably because Mickey's casting the role of Heartless Bureaucrat for his play-within-a-play. [“You get paid more if the treatment has been shown to be effective and a little less if not”? Scandalous! -- ed. They don't make horrifying bean-counting treatment-denying ogres like they used to.]

You can expect basically the same game plan from Mickey until universal health care is enacted, or until Matthew Yglesias kills him with a poisoned-tipped keyboard.

Alas, poor Mickey ... I knew him ...

He was a tool.

Looks Like We'll Have To Go With "Nothing Else"

2009-06-11T10:03:00.000-04:00

Oh, Anne Applebaum. Several months late to the "fiscal conservatism doesn't fail, it is only failed" party, she trots out Europe (?!?) as a glimmer of hope for laissez faire capitalists everywhere. What's not to love about this article?

- Sarkozy, last seen pushing for a stimulus package, being counted as the sort of fiscal conservative who hates stimulus packages ("a policy more colloquially known as 'massive government spending'")?

- The EP elections, which nobody in Europe cares about and tend to produce extreme results, being used as rock-solid evidence of Europe turning en masse to Joe the Plumber?

- Status quo types in European states with massive welfare-state governments and public expenditures larger than the US by basically any metric being hailed as "fiscal conservatives"?

- Or perhaps this:

But if nothing else, the success of the European center-right during the current crisis proves that there is something to their political formula. They are fiscally conservative. They are, if not socially liberal, then at least socially centrist. They haven't been swayed by the fashion for big spending. They are trying to keep some semblance of budget sanity. And, at least at the moment, they win elections.

Except, uh, you know, in the actual elections that actually occur places other than in Anne Applebaum's head:

Europe's Greens were the only major bloc whose parliamentary proportion increased — from 5.5 percent to 7.1 percent in this election. Far-right groups and anti-EU parties, including the UK Independence Party, also saw big increases in the independent group.

Oh, so the trend isn't so much towards the center-right, as out toward the fringes. Uh, well ... other than that, she nailed it!

Is Will Saletan Just Using Auto-Text Now?

2009-06-10T13:20:00.000-04:00

I mean, really?

"I know you've had your differences, with you being the World's Fattest Man and you being a Boeing 757, but listen to me. Talk to each other. You'll figure out that my plan is right."

Hmm ... where have I seen crack negotiation skills like these before?

Four Decades Of Exile, And Also Basic Human Mortality

2009-06-09T23:52:00.002-04:00

From this Times op-ed, where the author takes Barack Obama to task for not listing every individual wrong perpetrated by Muslims in the course of human history during his recent speech in Cairo:

Mr. Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My mother’s house, my father’s factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own. Take away our things and something in us dies. Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn’t die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.

Four decades?!? That's a long time! Isn't that kind of a superseding cause here?

Barack Obama's stimulus plan killed my grandfather, but he didn't die right away. No, it took a ten thousand foot free fall into a tank full of sharks to finish him off.

We Can All Agree That I'm Awesome

2009-06-04T08:48:00.001-04:00

Will Saletan -- who I will admit wrote one good thing once, and then rode his "if you don't acknowledge the possibility that the world could be flat, you're just a science-hating creationist" bit to eminently predictable disaster -- has apparently found a new shtick:

On medicinal THC: Every feat of re-engineering challenges our moral and legal assumptions. In the case of Sativex, two positions are under attack: the left's lazy tolerance of recreational marijuana in the guise of legalizing medical marijuana and the right's opposition to medical marijuana on the grounds that it's just a pretext. By refining, isolating, and standardizing pot's medicinal effects, pharmaceutical companies are showing us how to separate the two uses. Are you for symptom relief or getting stoned? That used to be a fuzzy question. Now it's concrete: Do you want the reefer or the spray?

To pro-lifers: If you don't accept what [the murderer of George Tiller] did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter. We're looking for ways to prevent abortions—not just a few this month, but millions down the line—without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.

On cigarette vaporizers: Maybe what we need is a convergence of the tobacco debate with the marijuana debate. In each case, vaporization is dissolving the categories and grounds that warranted prohibition. Liberals can see this, but only in the case of pot. Conservatives can see it, but only in the case of tobacco. Go talk to one another. The engineering and re-engineering of drugs will only get more complicated as technology improves. We'd better start thinking rationally about it.

"Go ahead," he says, grinning smugly. "Talk to each other. Only through good faith dialogue will you discover that I've been right all along."

***

First, some questions:

(1) Why is Saletan treating cigarette vaporizers, an unregulated product generally sold in "Akbar and Jeff"-style mall hutches, as equivalent to a peer-reviewed and scientifically tested pharmaceutical product? [But Emily Yoffe casually said it might not be so bad! -- ed. Emily Yoffe, whose primary mission appears to be making Rachel Larimore look sane, also quoted a consultant to the WHO saying that "[i]t stuns me people would so willingly accept the word of manufacturers from an unregulated industry, claiming their product is safe and pure when they won't tell us what's in it and haven't done the most basic studies."]

I guess he was too busy thinking rationally and challenging moral assumptions to notice he was lecturing a group of tweens outside a Hot Topic.

(2) Wait, liberals can see how vaporization of drugs undermines existing rationales, "but only in the case of pot"? You were just saying that the vaporized THC attacked "the left's lazy tolerance of recreational marijuana"! It only took a week for liberals to adopt your position on this? Why wasn't I informed?

(3) And why is my tolerance of recreational marijuana "lazy"? I'd say it's quite robust.

Unless I'm stoned.

***

Anyway, in the spirit of constructive dialogue, FMK now presents "Um, Really?", a play in three acts:

Act I
Pro-Choicer: "Do you consider abortion something less than murder?"
Pro-Lifer: "Sure, but I'm still against legalizing it."
Pro-Choicer: "Oh. So the only common ground here is that we think the death penalty is inappropriate for abortion providers? Great."

Act II
The Right: "Are you for symptom relief or getting stoned?"
The Left: "Both."
The Right: "Oh. Well, nice talking to you."

Act III
Conservatives: "Wait, why am I pro-electronic cigarettes?"
Liberals: "What?"
Conservatives: "Huh?"
Liberals: "Huh?"
Conservatives: "What?"
Will Saletan: "So how are you two doing? Have you withered under the challenges I've laid down to your moral and legal assumptions, and come to the conclusion that my clearly superior logical abilities have divined the only correct answer to these timeless dilemmas?"

[Liberals and Conservatives clasp their hands together, then punch Will Saletan in the face.]

Fin.

If It Were Sgt. Brett Favre, He'd Be Singing A Different Tune

2009-06-03T09:02:00.007-04:00

Peter King, on Monday:

Although I'm told the league really wants the Rams to stay in the Midwest, it wouldn't be a disaster if they moved back home to Los Angeles. This is one franchise that can be moved without upsetting any competitive applecart. The Rams in the NFC West always were a bit of a stretch. But a Seattle-San Francisco-L.A.- Arizona division makes much more sense than leaving the Rams in St. Louis.

Kick in the teeth to some St. Louis Rams fans, but who has time to care about them? An access whore like Peter King wouldn't want to come across as churlish about the sordid business of professional sports -- he might not get any more late night texts from Roger Goodell!

But on to what really, truly matters, from the same article ...

I think you'll all appreciate a long-overdue update about your favorite soldier. Army First Sgt. Mike McGuire ...

Oh, right, Sgt. Mike McGuire. This Sgt. Mike McGuire:

"I love St. Louis," he said. "It's my home, and I'm really into the Rams. Greatest show on turf. Hope I get a chance to see them before I go back the first of October."

... Here's a guy whose biggest thrill is to see the Rams whip up on someone, while he's literally going to be laying his life on the line.

But, you know, it wouldn't be a disaster or anything if they were to move the team 2000 miles away. Hey, there are Goldman Sachs deal fees to consider! Mike's gonna be dismantling IEDs in Iraq for most of the season anyway, right?

Peter King gets mocked a lot, and justifiably, for everything from solipsistic personal updates, lazy and obsequious "access" journalism that wouldn't be out of place in the Washington press corps, and insights so insipid they wouldn't make the final cut of Larry King's column ... but this?

Oblivious corporate whoring for the NFL's latest merger and acquisition turned game of municipal brinksmanship right next to a pious attempt at a hacktacular "there are more important things than just a game" human interest story, the subject of which will be directly affected by the NFL's naked obsession with the bottom line?

To the next twenty years, Peter!

Don't Know

2009-06-02T07:34:00.000-04:00

Mickey, noting that one of the executives in the Opel acquisition talks has been "linked" (WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE) with Bill Clinton:

Will her relationship with Bill hurt her or help her?--ed Don't know. But it's likely to be one or the other!

[Is this a perfect distillation of Mickey's complete brainlessness or an attempt by Mickey to paper over an obviously weak item with slight self-deprecation? -- ed. It's likely to be one or the other!]

Of course, the ideal story for Mickey wouldn't be Magna winning the bid by exploiting personal connections -- for Mickey, crony capitalism is only problematic when unions are the crony -- but Fiat winning the bid. That outcome would, naturally, imply that Hillary killed Magna's bid (and presumably boiled it along with Belinda's pet rabbit while laughing maniacally) because Bill went all homina homina homina on Belinda. Hillary's bitchy and Bill's horny! Get it?

So of course Magna won the bid, leaving a despondent Mickey to take a sad little swipe at Chrysler. Can't win 'em all.

But don't despair, Mickey! Hey, maybe it'll all come out that Bill was *actually* sexing this guy, too!

Here's a hint: ask around at Cafe Milano!

Closure

2009-06-01T20:33:00.002-04:00

Did Obama kill Saturn, on behalf of the UAW, Money Liberals and illegal immigrants???

Story developing!

First You Access The Money ... Then You Access The Power ...

2009-05-30T08:15:00.000-04:00

From a story about a campus "men's professional group" started at the University of Chicago to counterbalance women's groups [A frat? -- ed. A frat with all the obvious benefits of a fraternity removed and all the obvious drawbacks of a frat doubled, yes.]:

Hayward said one of the biggest myths borne of the women's movement was that men like to help each other out.

"We are competing directly for access to women and jobs," he said.

"What you do last weekend, bro?"

"Aw, I got lucky and accessed one of the Delta Phis!"

It's okay, though. They're not treating women like objects, they're treating women like *resources*.

Much better.

The Decline and Fall of the Bling Empire

2009-05-28T22:39:00.006-04:00

Good lord, hasn't Mickey learned his lesson from panicked updates past? Maybe you should just let sleeping embarrassments lie. (I know I do!) Anyway, another timeline:

1) Mickey approvingly links to some absolutely awesome commentary on how Obama will finally destroy the rap music and stop the tattoos and will get all these damn kids off my lawn and no-I'm-not-a-racist-I-hate-all-people-who-like-black-music, etc.

[Mickey doesn't trust Obama to stand up to congressional Democrats, teacher's unions or Money Liberals, but he's supposed to singlehandedly change black culture? -- ed. Clearly, Mickey's just another Obamabot, treating Obama like he's the *Messiah* or something ...]

2) Mickey gets made fun of.

3) Mickey, eleven months later, willfully misinterprets a WSJ story about rappers and the recession (the Wall Street Journal being Black America's paper of record) to mean that bling culture is dying -- and Mickey was right all along!

4) Mickey gets made fun of, again. E.g.:

This is the same Mickey Kaus who argued that Destiny Child's "Pay My Bills" was proof that welfare reform worked.

5) Mickey, eyes swelling, begins swinging wildly:

All we know for sure from the WSJ story is that hip hop artists have less money with which to buy bling. That could be because of the recession, or it could be because of the decline in the music industry in general ("Internet piracy cutting into musicians' record sales") or it could be a change in hip hop fashion--or it could be because hip hop specifically has been falling out of favor and the ascension of Obama is delivering the coup d' grace.

Say you're Lil Wayne -- rapping, shopping, flying hard like geese erection, etc. According to Mickey, the reason you "have less money with which to buy bling" is:

(a) the recession -- as people have less money to spend, they spending less on your product (makes sense); or

(b) the decline in the music industry due to file-sharing -- people are spending less money on your product in general (also okay); or

(c) a change in hip hop fashion -- uh ... don't really see how this ends up with less money in Lil Wayne's pocket, as opposed to the makers of the blingity bling, but maybe Mickey is advancing this as an explanation for why hip-hoppers aren't buying the bling anymore (iffy, possibly irrelevant); or finally

(d) hip-hop has fallen out of favor -- well, that would put a dent in Lil Wayne's pocket, but the evidence for this is ... where exactly? It doesn't seem to be here.

Ah, but there's the rub. We're in Kaus-land, where evidence for his assertion comes from his assertions themselves, so naturally the evidence-free (d) is the correct answer here. And if you've been following, Mickey's narrative has gone from "Obama's election kills bling" to "Obama's election kills hip-hop" to "hip-hop is dying anyway and hey Obama's election would be a fun little data point for our posthumous line graph".

Nobody said that turning a wish into a conclusion into a hypothesis into evidence was easy.

Hey, Look!

2009-05-21T09:37:00.000-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the very first thing Mickey Kaus has written about the U.S. Attorney scandal:

Will Obama rescue John Edwards by replacing the U.S. Attorney who is investigating him? ... If he does, will Josh Marshall kick up a fuss about it? ...

Oh, sure, the U.S. Attorney scandal is only obliquely acknowledged through a jab at Josh Marshall's purely theoretical hypocrisy ... and only by lazily equating it with a yet-to-happen non-story (Obama replacing U.S. Attorneys at the start of his term vs. Karl Rove having incompetent minions fire select U.S. Attorneys for failure to advance a political agenda and then lying about it) ... and even then it's really a minor part of Mickey's hilariously paranoid conspiracy wherein Obama springs John Edwards on behalf of the Mexican labor unions ... but still! Progress!

[Progress? -- ed. Progress!]

"All In Favor Of The Amended Springfield/Pervert Bill?"

2009-05-20T23:15:00.006-04:00

Terrible, terrible news about that awful Democrat Party:

“After using every legislative trick in the book to prevent a vote on gun rights, Democrat leaders are finally crying uncle and clearing the way for Congress to reinstate the Bush policy,” said Representative Doc Hastings of Washington, senior Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee.

It really is terrible, using legislative trickery against Republicans, when all that they did was attach an amendment about guns in national parks to a bill regulating credit cards.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

And Another Thing

2009-05-19T14:26:00.000-04:00

From Mickey, same post:

Does Obama really want to ruthlessly eliminate all major threats to his reelection?

Huntsman was approached by Obama for the appointment. Huntsman thought about it, then accepted the post. This is "ruthless" ... how? Did he hold Huntsman out of a window until he agreed or something? Seems like this whole process had a quite a lot of ruth.

I mean, I agree that "Obama ruthfully eliminates all major threats" doesn't have the same ring to it, but Mickey's holding this appointment out like its Michael Corleone moving against Moe Greene.

It all seems a bit ... I don't know ... excitable, doesn't it?

Off the Floor, Off the Scoreboard, Off the Backboard ...

2009-05-18T23:49:00.003-04:00

Mickey, apparently taking a break from his long-running quiz show "Elizabeth Edwards: Bitch, Shrew or Harpy?", has decided to show us all his prized ability to discern and critique the complicated gamesmanship of politics by dissecting the Huntsman nomination:

You'd think that at some point, in a contentious negotiation with Congressional Democrats, it would be useful for Obama to be able to point out that if Democrats raise taxes too high, for example, he might lose the White House in 2012.

Yes. Yes. This has to be what worries Obama. The Senate rejects a reasonable financial regulation bill every time Evan Bayh furrows his brow, he can't get Republicans to so much as sign a birthday card for the House receptionist, but here's Obama, staying up late worrying about the potential Bolshevik Revolution coming out of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

PELOSI: Let's raise taxes to a 99% marginal rate! So that illegal immigrant welfare cheats can buy gifts for our mandatory gay marriages and make the co-payments for our mandatory gay abortions!

OBAMA: No! I might be vulnerable in three years! You can't!

PELOSI: We all know that's a lie! A black man running for political office in America can't lose! The Reverse Double Bank Shot Bradley-Feiler Effect tells us so! You will do our Marxist bidding whether you like it or not! A sitting president in his first term has absolutely no sources of leverage over Congress unless said president is in serious jeopardy of losing! This is a totally reasonable interpretation of the relationship between the executive and the legislative branches! Mwahahahaha!

OBAMA: Curses! I suppose I will have to agree to your outrageous demands for single-payer health care, cap-and-trade regulation, and an overhaul of the financial services industry.

PELOSI: Dasvidania, Comrade!

/House Democrats chortle, the Russian song from "Hunt for Red October" plays, a single tear runs down Lady Liberty's cheek

p.s. I apologize ahead of time if this is one of Mickey's "jokes". I honestly can't tell anymore.

There's Sweaty, Abject Flailing -- And Then There's This

2009-05-13T22:15:00.003-04:00

A quick timeline:

- Mickey, in the throes of who-put-what-in-which-aging-hippie-when-and-who-knew-about-it passion, tries to connect his tawdry fascination to some actually relevant topic by speculating without any evidence (and *against* Nate Silver, which is dangerous territory for Mickey) that Edwards' presence in the primary hurt Hillary Clinton.

- Using charts and math and stuff, others point out that this is crazily unlikely.

- Mickey then updates:

5/11 Update: Mark Blumenthal's calculation today is pretty thorough. His New Hampshire numbers seem especially devastating to the idea that Hillary would have benefitted from Edwards' absence. But, as Blumenthal notes, you can never respond conclusively to a conjecture that 'the whole dynamic of the race would have changed.' ... You could also speculate that Edwards' N.H. supporters lied to the pollsters Blumenthal cites--i.e. they were really non-black voters of the sort who would never have voted for Obama. (If only there were a name for this "effect.") ... I'd still be interested in what Nate SIlver's model shows--if I remember, it assumed that voters ethnicity (along with other demographic factors) was hugely predictive--suggesting Hillary might have picked up a lot of Edwards' white support in early primaries, no matter what a) "second choice" polls showed or b) what those voters told pollsters later in the race when Edwards finally dropped out. ...

Let's unpack:

(1) Because nobody can ever respond conclusively to conjecture, all counterfactuals are valid.

So, even though there is no evidence to support Mickey's counterfactual, there could never be *conclusive* evidence support *any* counterfactual (absent a DeLorean and a flux capacitor), therefore Mickey's is just as plausible as any other? Works for me!

(2) Mickey's counterfactual is plausible because of ... wait for it ... the Bradley Effect! Which caused people to lie to pollsters about their *second choice*! When they've already said they are voting for the white guy! But they then elevate the black guy over the white woman, so the pollster doesn't think they're racist!

It's a good thing that the Bradley effect hasn't been largely debunked over and over by the very expert cited repeatedly by Mickey in this post. Otherwise, Mickey might look foolish here.

[Say, wouldn't the Reverse Bradley Effect have *further* boosted Obama in Iowa and the other caucus states absent Edwards? Shouldn't that factor into Mickey's calculations? -- ed. If Mickey has calculations beyond "Outdated Assumptions Of White Guilt + Arrow's Theorem = Anything Is Possible!!!", I'll eat a stuffed moose.]

And finally:

(3) Nate Silver also might have kinda maybe said something about ethnicity or demographics or something predicting voting patterns -- who has time to look it up, anyway? -- so whites vote for whites, right?

Except, you know, Silver clearly used his model to interpret polling data rather than to ignore it entirely. So close!

---

But, seriously, the way Elizabeth Edwards avoided admitting mistakes, shamelessly cherry-picked evidence, and spun facts to her advantage was truly ridiculous.

Pure Torture

2009-05-05T10:55:00.000-04:00

As Mickey takes time to tackle the most pressing issue regarding the American use of torture -- ~~the morality~~ ~~the effectiveness~~ ~~the legality~~ ~~the consequences~~ ~~the crippling effect on the rule of law~~ whether Obama made an "embarrassing error" in relying on Andrew Sullivan's account of the British treatment of detainees in WWII -- it's worth remembering the potential political consequences of all this scrutiny:

From today's perspective it certainly looks as if the legalistic particulars of Bush's anti-terror demarche--i.e. making an issue of Democratic resistance on semi-torture, trial rights, surveillance, etc.--might actually help the GOPs, doesn't it? ... Voters could still be reminded that Democrats generally are too ACLU-friendly for their taste.

[Are you cheaply taking an ancient item out of context to make Mickey's analysis look idiotic? National security was a big issue in 2002! -- ed. Try again! ... 2004? -- ed. Nope! Mickey thought that torture was an electoral winner in ... September 2006! (scroll up a little) In fairness, Mickey was also speculating that Bush secretly wanted the Democrats to retake Congress so he could pass Comprehensive Immigration more easily and that Hillary might not run in 2008, so this is really only the third- or fourth-stupidest bit of uninformed musing from that week.]

Mickey's Bizarro-Nate-Silver-routine aside, I wouldn't have thought that the current torture revelations would lead to this: Mickey, backed up by the ridiculous Tom Maguire, engaging in an increasingly arcane slap-fight with Sullivan, himself backed up by the beyond-parody-at-this-point Hitch (which is pretty solid evidence against Sullivan here, right?), about Churchill and British detainee policy. Really, though, what else should I have expected?

I mean, if you can't take stinging insects on a detainee's face and somehow turn it into an opportunity for a cheap shot at a former co-worker with whom you've had a pointless decades-long feud, do you really deserve to be blogging?

Please.

Just Look How Well That Turned Out

2009-04-30T23:38:00.003-04:00

From Christine Todd Whitman:

I worry about the direction this country could go with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Some historians suggest that no president has had such power since 1937, when large Democratic majorities in Congress gave President Franklin Roosevelt tremendous leverage.

Oh no!!!!!!!

If the analogy holds up, Obama would bring the economy out of a depression and defeat fascism!

Some historians suggest that would be *truly* terrible.

Debating Debates Debated

2009-04-29T09:31:00.006-04:00

From the department of shooting redundant fish in a barrel department:

“I’ve always been on the fence about whether waterboarding constituted torture,” Mr. Goldberg of the National Review wrote last week, but if the figures are true, “then I think the threshold has been met.”

He added: “Debating whether it was worth it still seems open to debate, depending on the facts.”

I mean, when Sarah Palin mangles a thought this badly, she's usually speaking extemporaneously and gets lost somewhere between the verb and the object. Given that this is prose, we'll just have to assume that Jonah Goldberg actually meant that there's an open debate, subject to the facts, on whether we should even be debating whether the activity which Jonah Goldberg thinks might be torture was worth it.

Seemingly.

Ugh.

I Think We Dodged A Bullet There

2009-04-24T09:47:00.001-04:00

Another point about this ridiculous Amazon page: don't the terms and phrases in this book sound perilously close to the kind of crap Tom Friedman would make up? Can't you see Mickey, in some alternative universe where he's a rich and famous pundit with a sweet porn-star 'stache of his own, writing things like "We don't need a 'welfare state', we need a 'work ethic state' ..." twice a week for the Times?

"Here in Dubai, eating at McDonald's and staring at a Kinko's, I realized something about teacher's unions ..."

"We don't need 'card check', we need a gut check."

Wow. Maybe this *is* the best of all possible worlds ...

The Real Amazon Controversy

2009-04-22T14:36:00.001-04:00

Check out this horrifying summary here:

In this ambitious, accessible and intellectually nourishing policy treatise, New Republic senior editor Kaus proposes a plan to avoid the "end of equality" that threatens America as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. For equality and capitalism to coexist, Kaus argues, we must create a public life in which money has limited influence. Thus he calls for compulsory national service and universal health care, renovated public spaces and reformed politics. Maintaining equality would become government's goal. While he names his program "Civic Liberalism" and pitches it to Democrats, Kaus is no traditionalist. He reproves "Money Liberals" for pursuing, through tax legislation, chimerical "money equality." To integrate the ghetto "underclass" into society, he recommends a national jobs program that would transform the "welfare state" into the "work ethic state." Kaus believes that if we guarantee jobs to all, while discontinuing welfare compensation for the able-bodied who refuse employment, work will become America's ultimate common denominator. There's something here for everyone to disagree with, but with his crisp, metaphor-rich writing and his command of history and political philosophy, Kaus proves persuasive.

... "intellectually nourishing" ... "command of history" ... "crisp, metaphor-rich writing" ... "persuasive" ...

Is this Mickey Kaus we're talking about? If the North Korean media wrote this about Kim Jong Il, he'd probably ask them to tone it down a little.

Also, you might notice how Mickey's still writing about welfare, the underclass, and Money Liberals ... but the national jobs program, compulsory national service, renovated public spaces, and guaranteeing jobs to all? Not so much.

I mean, it's almost like he's just using a leftier-than-though ideology as a perch from which he can pursue his true ambition of ceaselessly attacking Democrats ...

p.s. Ha!

There's something here for everyone to disagree with

I think that's supposed to say that everyone could disagree with something in the book, but the way it's written it suggests that there's an aspect of the book that everyone on Earth will unite in disagreement with. That'd be quite an accomplishment, but if anyone could do it, it'd be Mickey.

News You Can Use

2009-04-20T23:54:00.000-04:00

Mickey:

Conservatives with money are talking about starting a right wing imitation of Huffington Post.

So they're going to launch a second version of internet punchline Big Hollywood?

Like The Prize In A Box Of Terrible, Consistently Wrong Crackerjacks

2009-04-19T12:12:00.001-04:00

Normally, a giant steaming pile of wingnut blather that gets a link from Mickey is being hailed as a paragon of logical reasoning and/or a brave voice speaking truth to power (in Malkin's case, screaming it). But, every so often, something activates the "liberal" part of his "neoliberal idiocy", and Mickey gets ornery with his erstwhile allies.

This phenomenon -- the biannual-or-so appearance of Bizarro Kaus -- is the best explanation I have for Mickey's reaction to this terrible-but-not-uniquely-terrible column by Robert Samuelson (author seen here doing his Groucho Marx impression). Mickey -- surprise! -- has been almost completely tolerable:

It seems like it would be hard to achieve any desirable form of equality--equality before the law, equality of opportunity, or social equality--simply by aggregating the choices of individuals spending their own money.

Whoa there, comrade. Even after you unpack it all ("social equality" carries with it every Mickey tirade against those highfalootin' Money Liberals; "equality of opportunity" is kind of redundant when you have "social equality", and is probably being used as a rebuttal to noted straw man "equality of outcome", etc.), his rejection of the market as a one-stop solution to everything is still fairly ... Democratic.

Enjoy it while it lasts, everyone.

All The Noticias Fit To Print

2009-04-17T06:47:00.001-04:00

Mickey now declares, of potential illegal immigrants:

they hear the news, perhaps false news, that legalization is or is not in the offing. Why wouldn't they pay more attention than the average American? The news affects them more directly, no?

So, wait, why would it matter what the actual state of comprehensive immigration legislation was, or what Obama said or didn't say about it, if the potential illegal immigrants are getting and believing "false news"? Wouldn't any public attempt to shoot down the possibility of amnesty only really affect illegal immigrants who bother to double check received wisdom by reading the New York Times? How many of those are there?

(And aren't the only people who read the New York Times a bunch of Upper West Side effete leftist cocooning Money Liberals? I remember a guy who kept saying things like that.)

(If you look at Spanish-language papers in the U.S, certainly, you'll notice a rather intense focus on immigration-related developments, especially the possibility of legalization.)

It's been obvious for a while that evidence for Mickey's thesis is pretty thin on the ground, but, man ...

Not an actual analysis of correlation between migration patterns and congressional activity.

Not a rough survey of Spanish-language papers outside the U.S.

No, we get a half-assed anecdotal "analysis" of papers not even found in the immigrant's country of origin (and probably collected from a bench outside Mickey's supermarket).

I mean, we all know Mickey's no Nate Silver, but come on.

***

In unrelated news, did you know that Canadians are becoming increasingly concerned about hurricanes? It's true! I found out by skimming the Miami Herald.

Wherein I Shockingly Find Flaws In Mickey's Logic

2009-04-14T02:23:00.001-04:00

Okay.

/deep breath

Let's pretend that Obama really is acting according to Mickey's Machiavelli-by-way-of-Rube-Goldberg plan to encourage illegal aliens to flood the United States by planting a story in the New York Times -- the migrant worker's paper of record, you see -- about the possibility of taking up immigration reform in the next year and thereby inducing illegal immigrants to enter in hopes of being granted amnesty, *all* in an effort to increase the population in certain areas -- nudge nudge -- for the 2010 census.

/another deep breath

(1) What exactly is keeping these illegal immigrants, surprisingly attuned to the flow of American political news, from going to Texas? Or Arizona? Do the Democrats really want to add congressional districts and electoral votes in those states?

(2) Was there some sort of code word in the Times story -- the first letter of every paragraph spells out 'Go To Santa Monica'! -- that directs them to the appropriate states? [Where do you suppose illegal immigrants get these secret decoder rings? -- ed. From the Money Liberals, naturally.]

(3) All that aside, why would this necessarily help Democrats? It's a zero-sum game, right? How is it better to add a district in California if it's coming out of, say, Pennsylvania?

I have to say, it's pretty astounding that, among all the ignorant bleating and right-wing fearmongering about the evil uses of statistical sampling, Mickey actually came up with a crazier, dumber paranoid fantasy about the 2010 census.

I've changed my mind. Don't ever leave.

Bravo, Sir

2009-04-13T21:12:00.003-04:00

In this post, I accused Mickey of betraying his standards by not giving some tawdry sex gossip the kausfiles 24/7 full court press that he gives to similar undernews, both accurate (John Edwards!) and otherwise (everyone else!).

Mickey's now counter-accused me of missing his little "joke" [Wait, is the joke that you missed the joke or is the joke that his Toobin line is what passes for a joke to Mickey? -- ed. Both. And neither. Is anyone else confused? -- ed.] and rather than parse the whole affair (what was the punchline there anyway?), I'll just man up and admit my glaring error.

Mickey, I promise, I will never again doubt that you really are just that lame.

[You're fired -- ed.]

2009-04-10T20:01:00.000-04:00

How? How did this happen?

How did Mickey -- who flatly declared in March that "there's nothing happening" with Jeffrey Toobin -- miss this? And now this?

Good lord! We're all aware that Mickey is a dramatic failure at logical reasoning, political theory, journalism, blogging, life, etc. At least he has Kausfiles, right?

But here we are with (1) a Kaus enemy (2) involved in a scandal (3) about sex. It's undernews, it's sordid, it's score-settling in a kind of pointless way ... it's the very definition of a kausfiles item! And he misses it! What the hell?

If congress passes a bill allowing illegal aliens to collect welfare if they join a L.A. Times/Center for American Progress joint workers union via card check, will Mickey notice that? Or will he be off blogging about terrorist climate attacks [Wait, what? -- ed. That's just what I was thinking! Spooky!]?

Mickey Kaus is now failing at being Mickey Kaus. For this, Mickey Kaus should fire himself.

Bookmarks Of The Damned

2009-04-07T22:00:00.006-04:00

Hey, remember that horrifying period when Mickey was linking to VDARE articles, like that's something a sane person would ever do?

Well, he's now unabashedly linking to an outfit called Renew America in support of his conspiracy theory regarding something or another. [The New York Times is in cahoots with Obama and ACORN to do ... uh ... something terrible! -- ed. Undernews! It's the new new news!]

Now, I know what you're thinking. Could www.renewamerica.us -- this URL don't run! -- possibly be as awesome as its title suggests, and more?

Boy howdy, is it ever!

From a prominently featured article (honest-to-god-it's-not-a-parody):

Once again, Marxist Muslim Obama lies for the sake of Allah who approves of lying to further Islam World Rule.

Obama is The Terrorist.

Yes. Oh my, yes. Oh, I would definitely consider this a trustworthy source. Yes.

Is there ever a time when insanity sits high upon the throne?

Every day, baby, right here.