Call me a pessimist, but... (On Sustainable Development)

The idea of "sustainable development" is not radical, crazy or hard to understand. Most anybody would have a hard time arguing against it, in theory. It just means economic development today that doesn't happen at the expense of future economic growth. Some people have called unsustainable development a "tax on the future" because it's indeed stealing prosperity from the young and generations that haven't been born yet. 

The obstacle to sustainable development is not a lack of know-how or technology. By and large, we know what to do. But it does require trade-offs and sacrifices; and the pain won't be equally distributed. And that's the rub. 

The obstacle to sustainable development is politics -- to be more precise, power. Those with power don't like it. (As an aside: I posit that those in power, among them some very "smart" and "visionary" thinkers, rarely think seriously about the future, alas.) 

The people seriously concerned with sustainable development are by and large powerless: scientists, professionals in the "biz," activists, mid-level bureaucrats and such. They say and do and write enough to force those in power to pay lip service to their arrived at consensus. But that's about as far as it goes. 

No, I'm not talking about an opposing global conspiracy. Real conspiracies are rare, and they're usually stupid, for stupid, shortsighted aims.... 

The real obstacle to change is that power is concentrated in a few hands, yet separated by nations, cultures and geographies, with few formal nodes of interdependence, where common aims can be realized.... 

An attendant obstacle is certainly capitalism. More broadly, the obstacle is our global political economy, with its capitalistic innovations tacked on to feudalistic holdovers and narrow nationalistic structures. 

"There is a lack of global leadership," we hear again and again. True. But from where are the necessary global leaders supposed to emerge? It's asking too much from our global political economic systems. 

Ideally, democracy should save us. The good ideas should convince the majority of what is needed, and republican leaders should pay heed to their wishes. Ideally, yes. But that's naive.

First, we don't have real republican democracy in most countries, either by force of regimes or by failed states of many stripes. Second, even where there is formal democracy, concentrated power (read: wealth) still trumps democracy by various well-understood technical means. (Again: there is no conspiracy here; secrecy is not at all necessary for concentrated power to subvert democracy; the facts are are all well-documented for those who take the time to pay attention.)

So where does that leave us? Up the proverbial creek, I'm afraid. 

The richest nations do tend to be democratic. And democratic polities can exercise their power -- when dramatic events move them. But unfortunately, the world -- and sustainable development -- cannot wait for dramatic events to awaken the confused and slumbering giant of democratic public opinion. By the time the giant comes to, it will be too late.

Yes, I'm talking about global warming. And the death of our oceans and fisheries. And water shortages. And new global pandemics. And massive extinctions. And die-offs of millions if not billions of people. -- And for those ensconced in the relative safety of the developed, democratic world, something beyond mere discomfort and inconvenience, but drastic cuts in standards of living and overall well-being. 

By nature I'm not a pessimist. But I simply do not see how our current political economic system can react -- or should I say, fail to react -- otherwise. Everyone is to blame -- and hence no one. I hope I'm wrong and that smarter, more visionary and leadership-worthy individuals will prove it.

This post was inspired by this book review : http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)61215-6

Our caveman brains like conspiracy theories

Now I'm reading the interesting bestseller on practical psychology You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney that describes the scientifically proven ways that our caveman brains gloss over most information, take foolish logical shortcuts, fool us to protect our fragile egos, and constantly re-write our memories to preserve a "consistent" image of ourselves over time.  

A few of these tricks of the mind are mentioned below, such as confirmation bias. There are many, many others such priming, hindsight bias, apophenia, the availability heuristic and the just-world fallacy, that are hardwired into our subconscious minds by evolution, and very difficult for our relatively younger conscious, rational mind to combat. 

Just about the best we can do is admit that all of us fall prey to these tricks of the mind. 

(Priming seems like the most insidious of them all: literally seeing a picture of something for a fraction of a second, or a certain odor, can trigger the deeper, animal subconscious mind to bias how the "thinking" mind perceives subsequent events or makes "rational" judgments. The crazy thing McRaney repeats over and over, in all these psychological experiments, is how well people explain why they think or act the way they do, and actually believe it themselves -- they don't think they're lying! -- when in fact their stated reasons are total bullshit.)

Apropos, I have my own theory about political conspiracy theories. One of my dear conservative friends has lately begun to fall for many of them. I'll give my best guess why. 

For conservatives, most conspiracy theories boil down to two things: 1) either they want to believe that a corrupt, power-hungry federal government is out to tyrannize freedom-loving Americans, and they'll latch onto any evidence or coincidence to support that view and discard anything that doesn't; or, more disturbingly, 2) their pro-wealthy ideology prevents them from accepting the obvious and perfectly legal ways that the super rich trade money for political influence at the expense of the rest of us; therefore, conservatives must look for more abstruse, far-ranging explanations for why "the system" seems to gang up on us average folks.  

Anyhow, I totally agree with Michael Shermer's conclusion that, "when conspiracy-mongering leads to absurd conclusions and diverts our attention from real, pressing political issues and leads people to become politically apathetic, it can be a dangerous waste of time."

Unfrozen caveman conspiracy theorist.

Conspiracy theories: Why we believe the unbelievable

By Michael Shermer

November 27, 2013 | Los Angeles Times

With the passing of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy last week, and the accompanying fusillade of documentaries purporting to prove there was a conspiracy behind it, we might expect (and hope) that cabalistic conjecturing will wane until the next big anniversary.

Don't count on it. A poll this month found that 61 percent of Americans who responded still believe that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy, despite the fact that the preponderance of evidence points to Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin.

Why do so many people refuse to accept this simple and obvious conclusion? The answer: psychology.

There are three psychological effects at work here, starting with "cognitive dissonance," or the discomfort felt when holding two ideas that are not in harmony. We attempt to reduce the dissonance by altering one of the ideas to be in accord with the other. In this case, the two discordant ideas are (1) JFK as one of the most powerful people on Earth who was (2) killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone loser, a nobody. Camelot brought down by a curmudgeon.

That doesn't feel right. To balance the scale, conspiracy elements are stacked onto the Oswald side: the CIA, the FBI, the KGB, the Mafia, Fidel Castro, Lyndon Johnson and, in Oliver Stone's telling in his film "JFK," the military-industrial complex.

Cognitive dissonance was at work shortly after Princess Diana's death, which was the result of drunk driving, speeding and no seat belt. But princesses are not supposed to die the way thousands of regular people die each year, so the British royal family, the British intelligence services and others had to be fingered as co-conspirators.

By contrast, there is no cognitive dissonance for the Holocaust - one of the worst crimes in history committed by one of the most criminal regimes in history.

A second psychological effect is the "monological belief system," or "a unitary, closed-off worldview in which beliefs come together in a mutually supportive network," in the words of University of Kent researchers Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton in a 2012 paper titled "Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories." A conspiracy theory, they wrote, is "a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal." Once you believe that "one massive, sinister conspiracy could be successfully executed in near-perfect secrecy (it) suggests that many such plots are possible."

With this cabalistic paradigm in place, conspiracies can become "the default explanation for any given event." For example, the Kent researchers found that people who believe that Princess Diana was killed by MI6 were also more likely to believe that the moon landing was a hoax, that HIV was created in a laboratory as a biological weapon and that governments are hiding extraterrestrials. The effect is even more pronounced when the conspiracies contradict one another. People who believed that Diana faked her own death were "marginally more likely" to also believe that she was killed.

A third psychological effect is "confirmation bias," or the tendency to look for and find confirming evidence for what you already believe and to ignore disconfirming evidence. Once you believe, say, that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration, you focus on the handful of anomalies that fateful day and connect them into a seemingly meaningful pattern, while ignoring the massive evidence pointing to Al Qaeda. JFK conspiracy theorists ignore the massive evidence pointing to Oswald while seeking deep meaning in trivial matters, such as the man with the umbrella on the grassy knoll, or the puff of smoke behind the picket fence, or the odd noises echoing around Dealey Plaza. Each become pregnant with meaning when the mind goes in search of cabals.

Such conspiracy-mongering may seem harmless, but there's a dark side. Another study this year by University of Kent researchers found that"exposure to information supporting conspiracy theories reduced participants' intentions to engage in politics, relative to participants who were given information refuting conspiracy theories." They attributed this effect to "feelings of political powerlessness." What can any of us regular folks do if the world is run by a handful of secret societies (like the Illuminati) or families (such as the Rockefellers or Rothschilds) or operatives (think CIA or KGB) operating clandestinely to establish a new world order?

What happens in history matters, and where conspiracies are real - as in the case of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln - we should ferret them out. But when conspiracy-mongering leads to absurd conclusions and diverts our attention from real, pressing political issues and leads people to become politically apathetic, it can be a dangerous waste of time.

Obamacare: Another conservative-lite idea

As I've said before, Obamacare was not what real liberals and progressives wanted: single-payer. In today's op-ed, Zelizer laments that, and warns liberals against "half-baked" liberal policies that are really just conservative-lite ideas.

Obamacare is the classic example. It was first proposed by the uber-conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 90s, then supported by uber-conservative economist Milton Friedman and Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, among 25 conservative leaders, then implemented on the state level by a Republican governor.  

The only problem is that the conservative party in the U.S. has gone farther to the Right since the 90s.  Now its "best & brightest" like Rush Limbaugh believe that the answer is to get rid of health insurance altogether. We should return to the 19th century. Idiots!

Before Obamacare, Obama never even put the single-payer option on the table. Congress never voted on it. Obama began with closed-door negotiations with insurance companies and drug makers to see what they'd agree to. Obamacare is what we got. Now their revenues are hitting all-time highs and projected to rise in 2014 as well, so don't cry for them.

Nevertheless, there are those on the Right today who ridiculously view Obamacare as a big, elaborate socialist conspiracy to usher in single-payer health care. Talk about a disconnect!  On one side, we have dissatisfied liberals lamenting that Obama missed a once-in-a-generation chance to change the healthcare game. On the other side, we have dissatisfied conservatives who say the liberals are pulling a fast one to get what they want eventually. Eventually, in some distant future.... It's as if paranoid conservatives have more faith in the inevitability of liberal ideals than liberals do!

There are two variants on this conspiracy theory, as far as I can pick up. The first variant goes: expanding Medicaid for the poor is just one more step toward single-payer, since the government already pays for more than half of all healthcare in America.  The second one goes: Obamacare is intended to be such a disaster that Americans will throw up their hands, decide private insurance is a mess, and demand single-payer instead.  

I'll give both versions more time than they deserve, if only because millions of talk radio/Tea Party Republicans really believe in them. As for expanding Medicaid, conservatives can breathe a partial sigh of relief, because their Republicans governors already blocked Medicaid expansion to 8 million Americans in their respective states. There is a problem here though, and it's real. GOP governors also refused to set up their own health insurance markets, thus shifting the burden to the federal Healthcare.gov website. This is delaying people getting health insurance who want it, and they might just give up entirely. 

Rick Moran summed up the self-defeating idiocy of Republicans' spiteful, partisan refusal to establish state health insurance exchanges:

[W]hile conservatives think the Obamacare exchanges are overregulated and oversubsidized, they are actually closer to the right-of-center vision for health care reform than the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, which is happening no matter what transpires with Healthcare.gov. So if the exchanges fail and the Medicaid expansion takes effect (and, inevitably, becomes difficult to roll back), we’ll be left with an individual market that’s completely dysfunctional and a more socialized system over all.

The second variant on this conspiracy theory might end up being true... but only by accident, not by design. I mean, do conservatives really believe that Obama is such a secret, selfless socialist ideologue that he has intended all along for his signature piece of eponymous legislation to be a total failure -- a failure that would define his presidential legacy? Talk about taking one for the team!  

Furthermore, if conservatives really believe Obamacare was designed to fail, then... why do they take such glee at every opportunity to declare it a failure?  Aren't they playing right into Obama's diabolical hands?  But ah, says the tinfoil hat crew, Obama didn't intend for it to fail so soon. Because he's so darn incompetent, see? He can't even screw up right. They say Obama intended for us to get good and used to Obamacare first, so that it could fail several years from now, just when we were about to... so that we would... you see then.... Oh, I can't follow this wacky line of reasoning any further.  

Obamacare and the failure of half-baked liberalism

By Julian Zelizer

November 11, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/11/opinion/zelizer-obamacare-liberalism/index.html?hpt=hp_t5

NOAA report: 2012 warmest year ever in U.S.

It goes without saying that all 384 of these scientists, not to mention the NOAA, are on the payroll of George Soros and the global academic-climate hoax complex:

Worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to the 2012 State of the Climate report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The peer-reviewed report, with scientists from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., serving as lead editors, was compiled by 384 scientists from 52 countries (highlights, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice, and sky. 

“Many of the events that made 2012 such an interesting year are part of the long-term trends we see in a changing and varying climate — carbon levels are climbing, sea levels are rising, Arctic sea ice is melting, and our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place," said Acting NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D. 

Seriously though: Mom, please read this and stop assuring me the Earth is cooling:  "Four major independent datasets show 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record, ranking either 8th or 9th, depending upon the dataset used. The United States and Argentina had their warmest year on record."

2012 was one of the 10 warmest years on record globally

August 6, 2013 | NOAA

URL: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130806_stateoftheclimate.html

Rosenberg: Obama wanted to cut safety net all along

Rosenberg "uncovers" an Obama "conspiracy" that Tea Partyers and liberals alike don't want to acknowledge: he's been plotting to cut Social Security and Medicare without raising taxes to Clinton-era levels since BEFORE he was inaugurated, before the Tea Parties even existed.

Then, when Obama proposed cutting Medicare, exactly as Republicans proposed, they attacked him for it. He doesn't understand he's playing a losing game.

Or maybe he doesn't care?:

But, of course, Obama is not going to be running again. He will be collecting speaker's fees from the donor class. And they like what he is doing just fine. Obama's real base, it turns out, is exactly the same as George W Bush's: the have and have-mores. This budget is for them and them alone. To think otherwise is to continue living in denial.

Read it and weep, everyone.

Obama's imaginary budget-cut mandate

By Paul Rosenberg

April 18, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/20134186829216639.html

Sirota's prediction coming true as Boston bombers identified

It didn't take long for David Sirota's dire prediction to come true:

It will probably be much different if the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world. As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted. At that point, it’s easy to imagine conservatives citing Boston as a reason to block immigration reform defense spending cuts and the Afghan War withdrawal and to further expand surveillance and other encroachments on civil liberties.

Already conservatives are saying there is a larger Muslim (this time Chechen Muslim) jihadi conspiracy at work in the U.S.

Speculated conservative Judicial Watch: "There’s no telling how many of these Chechen terrorists have infiltrated the United States or how many opportunities the government has missed to protect the country by deporting them."

I'm sure Russia's President for Life Vladimir Putin is ROTFLHAO right now....

Actually FOX News published a story that was fairly fair-minded, dismissing a larger conspiracy, albeit with a provocative title as FOX is wont to do, but I'm sure it won't last, FOX and the rest of the conservative media will jump on the jihadi conspiracy wagon soon enough.... 

It's still Dubya's America and we're just living in it... including President Obama.

UPDATE (04.21.2013): Here's another anti-Muslim screed in reaction to the alleged Boston bombers from somebody named Andrew McCarthy at the respected National Review Online: "Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away." I still subscribe to elementary school writing lessons, when they taught us to end an essay with a call to action. Here's McCarthy's:

There are all kinds of Islam, including the supremacist kind that is far more widely held than we’re comfortable acknowledging. Until we get beyond that discomfort, until we are prepared to ask, “What Islam?” — and until we are prepared to treat Islamic supremacism as the pariah it should be — Boston’s hellish week will remain our recurring nightmare.

Everybody got that? Got any idea how to act on that?  Neither do I.  And that's why all such conservative op-eds and diatribes are stupid and ultimately racist and/or anti-Muslim, because all they do is stir up suspicion and hatred for innocent Americans who happen to be Muslim.

And here's another one from NRO by Mark Steyn, an on-air substitute for Rush Limbaugh: "The 'Co-exist' Bombers." Steyn jokes how disappointed David Sirota must be that the bombers were indeed immigrants and Muslims. Besides taking a lot of swipes at Massachusetts liberals, the only sensible thing Steyn wrote was this, again, at the end. (Why do conservative pundits always save their one cogent thought for the end?):

On Monday, [April 15], it didn’t feel Islamic: a small death toll at a popular event but not one with the resonance and iconic quality the big-time jihadists like — like 9/11, the embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole. After all, if the jihad crowd wanted to blow up a few people here and there IRA-style they could have been doing it all this last decade.  

Good point! Too bad more blood-and-guts American Islamophobes aren't thinking about this more deeply and honestly. Indeed, how do you draw the connection between the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and these two kids in Boston in 2013? That's more than six degrees of Bacon, to be sure. 

See, that's a big problem for the neocons and Islamophobes, because it's their task to cast any terrorist attacks as part of a larger conspiracy, a global jihad. So far, it's working for many of them simply to make that bald assertion of jihad; but I think more & more folks are starting to wise up to this con that leads us nowhere... or even worse, leads us to places like Iraq.  

Common Core conspiracy!

The tinfoil hat crew -- Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, et al -- are coming out against Common Core. And since the Tea Parties take their lead from the craziest of the crazy conservative talking heads, Common Core has now become the Obama conspiracy du jour for the teabaggers.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan correctly dismissed wacko conservatives' fear mongering as "a conspiracy theory in search of a conspiracy."

Since conservatives give more credence to the messenger than the message, here is an op-ed on the conservative NRO site in favor of Common Core. Enjoy.  

Personally, I haven't taken the time yet to see whether the CC program is well designed or not, but in principle I'm all in favor of establishing a national curriculum for our K-12 students. Our kids in Detroit and Des Moines are not so different that they need completely different standards, set by our elected (read: politicized) local school boards, who often have no training or experience in education. 

Local control over education is so 19th century and has long past outlived its usefulness. Let the  bureaucrats (experts) decide!

The Truth about Common Core 

By Kathleen Porter-Magee & Sol Stern

April 3, 2013 | National Review

URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/344519/truth-about-common-core-kathleen-porter-magee

Exposé: $118 million funneled to climate change deniers!

So here is the real "climate change conspiracy," and it's not about a bunch of scientists who already have tenured jobs at universities, NASA and NOAA "cashing in" on their "biased" climate science.

The real conspiracy is these so-called "donor-advised funds" secretively distributing $118 million to 102 U.S. climate-change deniers, who, as a rule, do not produce fresh scientific data but merely muddy the waters by misinterpreting others' studies, or doing selective meta-analysis. This is not to mention the $ millions that Exxon, the Koch brothers, et al spend openly every year on denying climate change.

So obviously, if your aim is to get rich on bad science, it's more profitable to be a climate-change denier.

Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

By Suzanne Goldenberg

February 14, 2013 | Guardian

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.

"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."

[...] 

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

[...]

The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate sceptic groups that year.

By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channelling just under $30m to a host of conservative organisations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.

The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to one.

"There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only ones."

It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favourite projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.  [...]

Study: The more Repubs know, the crazier they are

Let's recall the famous quote first attributed to American humorist Josh Billings and paraphrased by Ronald Reagan, among others: "It ain't ignorance causes so much trouble; it's folks knowing so much that ain't so."  Check it out:

75 percent of Republicans, but only 56 percent of Democrats, believed in at least one political conspiracy theory. But even more intriguing was the relationship between one's level of political knowledge and one's conspiratorial political beliefs. Among Democrats and independents, having a higher level of political knowledge was correlated with decreased belief in conspiracies. But precisely the opposite was the case for Republicans, where knowledge actually made the problem worse. For each political knowledge question that they answered correctly, Republicans' belief in at least one conspiracy theory tended to increase by 2 percentage points.

Well, we liberals already knew that FOX and talk radio make you stupider. Now we have proof.

Tinfoil: the official headgear of the GOP. Get yours today!

The More Republicans Know About Politics, the More They Believe Conspiracy Theories

By Chris Mooney

January 24, 2013 | Mother Jones

URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/conspiracy-theory-partisan-bias

America: Still crazy after all these years

Having several paranoid family members and friends, I can vouch that the "Paranoid Style in American Politics" is very much alive and mentally unwell.

Still 'paranoid' after all these years

By Todd Leopold

November 4, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/04/politics/paranoid-style-politics-hofstadter/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Rooting against America...and reason

After 8 years of W., Zombie Republicans are tired of cheering U-S-A

Remember when, under President Dubya, Republicans accused Democrats of rooting against America?  As if our psychic energy made all the difference.

Well, now Republicans are clearly rooting against America. One blogger at the conservative American Spectator wrote, "I'm just too angry at the [BLS jobs] report" to write about it.  That's right.  Angry.  At a report. That ostensibly shows good news.  And he's not alone.  

Pickled old One Percenter and ex-CEO of GE, Jack Welch, immediately tweeted that Obama was fixing the data, Chicago-style, (whatever that means), and he refused to take back his accusation when given the chance.  And of course Tea Party favorite, Rep. Allen "Non-Negotiable" West, wasn't buying the report for a second either. It was also no surprise that Rush Limbaugh accused the "Obama regime" of manipulating the BLS data.

Things got absurd with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough & Co. "scratching their heads" over the report, and debating whether the latest unemployment figure shouldn't actually be 8.1 percent instead of 7.8 percent.  Imagine! Debating on live TV a difference of 0.3 percent in the unemployment figures!  Is this what we've come to, folks?  

Finally, there was conspiracy theory nutjobbery. One writer at the conservative Washington Examiner theorized that thousands of unemployed Democrats who were surveyed by the Census Bureau simply lied about being unemployed.  You know, to help Obama.  And something called The Washington Free Beacon did some amazing investigative journalism and uncovered the smoking gun that "at least two" economists at the BLS have donated money to Democrats over the last three elections, although one of them, uh, left the Bureau in July.

This gamut of paranoia to outright disbelief to mild skepticism among Republicans is kind of funny, considering what happened 12 months ago. Cast your mind back. It's a crisp October morning. And Glenn Thrush at Politico, within 45 minutes of the BLS releasing lower than expected jobless numbers, said he "received no fewer than eight GOP press releases blasting away at President Obama for failing to stem the tide of unemployment."

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis pointed out to CNN on Friday: "This is a methodology that's been used for decades. And it is insulting when you hear people just cavalierly say that somehow we're manipulating numbers."

So Republicans have faithfully believed the jobs data based on the exact same methodology up until now, and they have reminded us constantly how bad things were, and when things got a little bit better, suddenly they stopped trusting the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  What rank, self-serving hypocrisy!  That's what they get for fixating on one statistic for three years. Now I predict that they'll start saying the unemployment figure doesn't matter, that the economy is still in the pits, or they're not very high-paying jobs anyway, and so on and so forth.

A few reasonable Republicans and all economists agree that there's nothing fraudulent going on here.  

For a very technical explanation of September's labor participation and unemployment data, see this.

Besides rooting against America, against economic growth and jobs, because it hurts their party's electoral chances, Republicans are once again aligning themselves with kooks, and petulantly setting up camp outside the civilized boundaries of the "reality-based community."  

Rush: Get stupid, c'mon, get retarded, c'mon

Yeah, I've been picking on Rush a lot lately.  On the other hand, he's been talking a lot of retarded smack lately, and he's never so out of his depth as when he discusses foreign policy, especially since Rush is in the hopeless muddle of defending Dubya's foreign policy while trying to pick out the miniscule ways it differs from Obama's.  (And Obama's is more murderous and anti-Muslim by just about any objective measure).

See, Obama's killing bin Laden was an al Qaeda conspiracy, I tell ya'.  It was a c-o-n...spiracy!

Barack Obama Is Libya’s Al-Qaida Chief for Hawaii

By Mobuto Sese Seko

September 14, 2012 | Gawker

URL:  http://gawker.com/5943334/barack-obama-is-libyas-al+qaida-chief-for-hawaii

Mooners and Birthers and Truthers, oh my!

See, the flag is blowing. See? Because on holographic alien moons, there is no wind! BUSTED!

I didn't know that some Moon Landing Truthers (or just Mooners, as I like to call them) don't simply believe Armstrong's moon landing was faked, they believe the entire Moon was faked.  It's an alien hologram, you see?  

Some even believe that Armstrong didn't die of natural causes, he was silenced by Them, because after all these decades he was finally ready to blow the lid off the whole thing.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you Birthers, 9/11 Truthers, and One World Government nuts know that you're in very good company.  I think the Internet was invented especially for you: your little islands of nuttiness are now an archipelago.  If Obama is re-elected, they'll form a small continent.

(RIP, Neil Armstrong.  We know you meant to come clean in the end about aliens conspiring with the Knights Templar to direct world history.)

'Neil Armstrong – LYING PIECE OF MASON SH*T: Good RIDDANCE': Moon Truthers Mourn a Legend

By Max Read

August 27, 2012 | Gawker

URL:  http://gawker.com/5938218/neil-armstrong-+-lying-piece-of-mason-sht-good-riddance-moon-truthers-mourn-a-legend

Texas judge preparing for post-Obama uprising

Stop teasing us and just do it. Please!

It really is the 90s all over again.  I mean, there is not even a whiff of Obama making some move toward the UN, yet the same crazy conspiracy theories are rising up again.  

These people are ridiculous hicks and paranoid freaks.  The problem is that there are too many of them.  So Romney is joining in, encouraging the hysteria.  Once again, he's saying anything to win.  

Tom Head, Texas Judge: Obama Reelection Could Lead To 'Civil War,' I'm Ready To 'Take Up Arms'

By Nick Wing

August 22, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/QqRP7l

Obama the best thing for U.S. gun sales ever

"Some say..."?! That headline is just lib'rul media hesitancy to call a conservative spade a spade. That's like, "Some say Obama's race has something to do with his unpopularity among white Southerners."

Gee, ya think?

"Last year, the FBI received more than 16.3 million inquiries from people running criminal background checks on potential gun buyers. That's up from 12.7 million in 2008 and 11.4 million in 2007, FBI records show."

Perhaps counter-intuitively, federal regulation (or just the whiff of it) is the best boon for gun sales. Clearly, despite Obama's failure to propose any gun control legislation or significant federal regulation, the best thing for the U.S. firearms industry would be a second Obama term. (Just like the best tonic for the growth of "Patriot" groups in the U.S. is a Democrat in the White House!)

Some say Obama re-election fears may be driving gun sales

By Anna M. Tinsley

March 5, 2012 | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/05/140793/some-say-obama-re-election-fears.html#storylink=cpy

U.S. Senators swear to Saudi gov't's role in 9/11

The lib'rul NYT deliberately released this story before Breitbart's murder to distract us from the real conspiracy!

Anyway, for what it's worth to those of you so easily distracted from Obama's crimes by the lamestream media, two former U.S. Senators submitted sworn affadavits about the Saudi government's possible involvement in 9/11. (YAAAAWN! 9/11, that was like, so 10 years ago.)

Saudi Arabia May Be Tied to 9/11, 2 Ex-Senators Say

By Eric Lichtblau

February 29, 2012 | New York Times

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/us/graham-and-kerrey-see-possible-saudi-9-11-link.html?_r=4

Get in early on the hysteria!: Obama had Breitbart 'offed'

I hesitate posting this for folks who are really eager and inclined to believe it.

Then again, why should I put it off a few days/weeks until this thing builds on the rightwing internets and inevitably I get the e-mail forward with an anonymous "article" telling me all about how President Obama killed Andrew Breitbart because he "knew too much"? So let's just get it over with. Here you go, fresh meat for you Obama conspiracy nuts.

UPDATE (03.09.2012): This video, which has been around since at least 2008, is apparently the reason Obama was forced to assassinate Breitbart. Behold the scandalous truth that could bring down a presidency! (Courtesy of YouTube):

25 People Who Think President Obama Killed Andrew Breitbart

A bunch of people seem to believe there's a conspiracy behind Andrew Breitbart's death. The theory is that Breitbart had a video from Obama's college years that Obama didn't want released. So he had to die.

By Matt Stopera

March 1, 2012 | Buzzfeed

URL: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/people-who-think-president-obama-killed-andrew-bre

Medved: Conservatives dead wrong about Obama's intentions

Usually Medved is a sanctimonious bore who sucks at reviewing movies, wants everything to be rated PG, and simply recycles other conservative two-bit pundits' throwaway opinions, but I have to say Medved hit the crazy nail on its nutty head this time. Listen to one of your own, conservatives!

(Thank goodness it's not just pinko-liberals like me sounding the alarm about the other side calling our rightfully elected President some kind of Manchurian candidate and crypto-Islamist/cypto-Marxist who hates his country which he took an oath to defend! By all means you have the right to disagree with his policies, hate the way he looks, or even call him nasty names, but to sincerely believe that he hates his country... where can we find any common ground if that's what you really think?)

Obama Isn't Trying to 'Weaken America'

Some conservatives call the president the political equivalent of a suicide bomber: so consumed with hatred that he's willing to blow himself up in order to inflict casualties on a society he loathes.

By Michael Medved

February 14, 2011 | Wall Street Journal

Some conservative commentators may feel inclined to spend Presidents Day [Washington's Birthday! - J] ruminating over Barack Obama's evil intentions, or denouncing the chief executive as an alien interloper and ideologue perversely determined to damage the republic. Instead, they should consider the history of John Adams's White House prayer and develop a more effective focus for their criticism.

On Nov. 2, 1800, a day after he became the first president to occupy the newly constructed executive mansion, Adams wrote to his wife Abigail: "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."

More than a century later, Franklin Roosevelt ordered the inscription of these words on a mantel piece in the State Dining Room, inviting serious consideration over the extent to which divine providence responded to the earnest entreaty of our second president.

In terms of wisdom, some of Adams's successors who "ruled" under the White House roof most certainly fell short. James Buchanan comes to mind—or Jimmy Carter.

When it comes to honesty, skeptics might also cite heaven's mixed blessings, reviewing a long history of presidential prevarication. Richard Nixon almost certainly lied about Watergate, as did Bill Clinton about his amorous adventures.

But in the deeper sense that Adams longed for "honest men" to occupy the White House, the nation has fared much better: Those who rose to the highest office worked hard, took their responsibilities seriously, and sincerely pursued the nation's good—in order, if nothing else, to secure a positive verdict on their own place in history.

Even the most corruption-tarred presidents, Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding, agonized over the demands of the office and drew scant personal benefit from the scandals involving unworthy associates. They both retained the profound affection of the populace while they lived and drew massive outpourings of grief at their funerals. Both (especially Grant) have begun a recent rise in the estimation of historians.

John F. Kennedy may have suffered from sex addiction (and a host of other secret maladies) while Franklin Pierce drank heavily in the White House (in part in mourning for his 11-year-old son who died before his eyes in a train accident two months before the inauguration). But neither man ignored his duties, and both had previously demonstrated their love of country with courageous military service.

In short, the White House record of more than 200 years shows plenty of bad decisions but no bad men. For all their foibles, every president attempted to rise to the challenges of leadership and never displayed disloyal or treasonous intent.

This history makes some of the current charges about Barack Obama especially distasteful—and destructive to the conservative cause.

One typical column appeared on Feb. 5 at the well-regarded [um, that depends who's doing the regarding - J] American Thinker website, under the heading: "Obama Well Knows What Chaos He Has Unleashed." Victor Sharpe solemnly declares: "My fear is that Obama is not naïve at all, but he instead knows only too well what he is doing, for he is eagerly promoting Islamic power in the world while diminishing the West."

These attitudes thrive well beyond the blogosphere and the right-wing fringe. On Jan. 7, Sarah Palin spoke briefly on Laura Ingraham's radio show, saying, "What I believe that Obama is doing right now—he is hell-bent on weakening America." While acknowledging that "it's gonna get some people all wee-weed up again," she repeated and amplified her charge that "what Obama is doing" is "purposefully weakening America—because he understood that debt weakened America, domestically and internationally, and yet now he supports increasing debt."

The assumption that the president intends to harm or destroy the nation that elected him has become so widespread that the chief advertising pitch for Dinesh D'Souza's best-selling book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage," promises to "reveal Obama for who he really is: a man driven by the anti-colonial ideology of his father and the first American president to actually seek to reduce America's strength, influence and standard of living."

None of the attacks on Mr. Obama's intentions offers an even vaguely plausible explanation of how the evil genius, once he has ruined our "strength, influence and standard of living," hopes to get himself re-elected. In a sense, the president's most paranoid critics pay him a perverse compliment in maintaining that his idealism burns with such pure, all-consuming heat that he remains blissfully unconcerned with minor matters like his electoral future. They label Mr. Obama as the political equivalent of a suicide bomber: so overcome with hatred (or "rage") that he's perfectly willing to blow himself up in order to inflict casualties on a society he loathes.

On his radio show last July 2, the most influential conservative commentator of them all reaffirmed his frequent charge that the president seeks economic suffering "on purpose." Rush Limbaugh explained: "I think we face something we've never faced before in the country—and that is, we're now governed by people who do not like the country." In his view, this hostility to the United States relates to a grudge connected to Mr. Obama's black identity. "There's no question that payback is what this administration is all about, presiding over the decline of the United States of America, and doing so happily."

[For the record, I alerted ya'll to Limbaugh's crazy conspiracy rants when they happened. - J]

Regardless of the questionable pop psychology of this analysis, as a political strategy it qualifies as almost perfectly imbecilic. Republicans already face a formidable challenge in convincing a closely divided electorate that the president pursues wrong-headed policies. They will never succeed in arguing that those initiatives have been cunningly and purposefully designed to wound the republic. In Mr. Obama's case, it's particularly unhelpful to focus on alleged bad intentions and rotten character when every survey shows more favorable views of his personality than his policies.

Moreover, the current insistence in seeing every misstep or setback by the Obama administration as part of a diabolical master plan for national destruction disregards the powerful reverence for the White House that's been part of our national character for two centuries.

Even in times of panic and distress, we hope the Almighty has answered John Adams's prayer. Americans may not see a given president as their advocate, but they're hardly disposed to view him as their enemy—and a furtive, determined enemy at that. For 2012, Republicans face a daunting challenge in running against the president. That challenge becomes impossible if they're also perceived as running against the presidency.

Mr. Medved hosts a daily, nationally syndicated radio show.