Hillary Clinton and Republicans' Post-Logical Worldview

Today is the day that Hillary Clinton will no longer be Secretary of State. No more globehopping behind a desk bolted to the deck of a C-17. That's all John Kerry's job now. He'll probably do the job just as ably, but frankly, I don't see him wearing it as well.

But we tend to be remembered best for the last time someone saw us, which means that Clinton's name will most likely bring to mind her final appearance before the senate, where she slapped back grandstanding Republican know-nothings intent on cashing in on a tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. Many of those Republicans probably wish that memory would fade into history, but Clinton's not done with them quite yet.

In an interview with the Associated Press (her final interview as Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton revisited the Benghazi hearing and had unkind things to say -- not only about those she put in their place, but of Republicans in general.


Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is leaving office with a slap at critics of the Obama administration's handling of the September attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. She told The Associated Press that critics of the administration's handling of the attack don't live in an "evidence-based world" and their refusal to "accept the facts" is unfortunate and regrettable for the political system.

[...]

"I was so unhappy with the way that some people refused to accept the facts, refused to accept the findings of an independent Accountability Review Board, politicized everything about this terrible attack," she said. "My job is to admit that we have to make improvements and we're going to."


"There are some people in politics and in the press who can't be confused by the facts," she told the AP. "They just will not live in an evidence-based world. And that's regrettable. It's regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances."

Truer words have never been spoken. One thing that's always fascinated me with the right -- and frustrated me, as well -- has been their tendency to engage in wild speculation, then treat that speculation as rock-solid fact. Without this sort of logical gymnastics, the entire wingnut blogosphere, rightwing talk radio, and conservative media industries would fold overnight. It's almost all they do. And elected officials do it as well.

For example: During the Benghazi hearing, Sen. Rand Paul asked Clinton a truly bizarre question: "[I]s the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?" Clinton managed to avoid asking, "What the hell are you talking about?" and said she had no information about anything like that. People wondered what was up with Paul's weird question -- and then we got our answer.


[Steve Benen:]

...Today, the kooky conspiracy website World Net Daily published a new report, explaining that [Sen. Rand] Paul believes the Obama administration may be "covering up a gun-running scheme in Benghazi that fell apart when jihadists attacked the U.S. mission there."


In an interview with WND, the senator said his "suspicion, although I don't have any proof, is that guns were being smuggled out of Libya, through Turkey and into Syria."


I have a few follow-up questions for Rand Paul. First, if you "don't have any proof," what on earth are you talking about? Second, why do you keep falling for silly conspiracy theories?


The answer to both questions is, "Because he's a Republican. It's what they do." They seem to think this sort of stuff is what is meant when you talk about reasoning. They seem to live in a post-logical world, where whatever explanation best fits what you want to believe is the truest. That's why they constantly fall back on logical mush like this sort of insane, baseless speculation, as well as other logical fallacies like the "slippery slope" argument ("Let gays marry and then people will want to marry their dogs!") or arguments that hinge on mindreading ("What Obama really believes is..."). And let's not even get into their strident anti-science. Republicans aren't just illogical, they use a sort of anti-logic, which -- by all appearances -- they believe is logic.

People this unable to reason are people unable to govern. When everyone's just making up reasons to believe the things they already believe, we wind up running around "solving" a bunch of entirely imaginary problems. We wind up arguing over birther legislation and ways we can limit the non-existent problem of Sharia Law taking over America. We wind up with people making idiotic and completely inaccurate statements about rape and biology. When the NRA's Wayne LaPierre says we shouldn't regulate guns because not everyone will obey the law, all the rightwing bobbleheads are all, "Yup, yup, yup!" -- as if the only laws it makes sense to pass are those that are impossible to break. And we hear arguments that a relative handful of Jews (who like most populations were mostly children and the elderly) could've held off the well-trained and disciplined Nazi war machine if only they'd been armed -- despite the fact that it took more than the combined armies of Europe to finally accomplish that victory. All this stuff makes perfect sense to conservatives, because it confirms what they want to believe. If they really needed 2+2 to equal 5, they'd find a way to argue that it does -- and then they'd mock anyone who disagreed with them as "moonbats" and "libtards."

Hillary Clinton nailed the problem with Republicans dead center. Here's hoping she'll be back to do it again in 2016.

-Wisco

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For the NRA, a Possible Perfect Storm of Bad PR

Yesterday was not a triumph in PR for advocates of zero restrictions on firearms. While NRA boss Waynne LaPierre and other blood lobby types were getting their rhetorical asses handed to them in a Senate hearing on gun violence, gun violence erupted across the land. In Chicago, a 15 year-old girl who performed at the president's inaugural was shot and killed, apparently an innocent bystander in the attempted murder of another. In Phoenix, a man went on an office rampage, injuring two and killing one. And in Alabama, a hostage situation was continuing, as a rightwing anti-government extremist took a 5 year-old autistic boy hostage -- you read that right -- after killing a school bus driver.

While the NRA tools in Washington could find plenty of examples of people using guns to protect themselves, they couldn't manage to come up with any examples which were actually on-topic. The issues being discussed were assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and expanded background checks. In no example the gun nuts offered did any of these figure into a gun owner's defense of their families. And, contrary to the panic you see among rightwing bloggers and pundits, no one's talking about taking anyone's guns away. The debate is whether to stop the sale of certain items and whether to make background checks actually mean something by requiring them with every gun purchase, whether it's in a sporting goods store, a gun show, or a want ad in the Shopper Stopper. So, in a very logical sense, the anti-regulation folks were unable to offer any real world examples to back up their positions. They did a lot of talking, but managed no defense.

Meanwhile, one of the crimes ongoing yesterday may have been a great example of all three of the issues being discussed: assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and meaningful background checks. In the case of the hostage situation, it's reported that the bus driver was shot four times with a 9mm pistol. The most popular 9mm in America is a Glock 17. And the Glock 17 was covered under the assault weapons ban of 1994.


[NPR:]

In 1991, the first Glock shooting spree took place in Texas. Twenty people were killed. Hours after the shooting, members of Congress were debating whether guns like the Glock should be restricted.

"It took awhile, but by 1994, a bill was passed — this is what we remember as the Assault Weapons Bill — and was signed into law by President Clinton," says Barrett. "It had a variety of restrictions. One of them was limiting the pistol magazine capacity to 10 rounds."


Unfortunately, congress in their stupidity grandfathered in guns that were manufactured before the ban took effect. Glock built a bazillion 17s and flooded the market with them, cashing in on wingnut fears that being without a weapon fitting the very narrow definition of an assault weapon was the same as being disarmed. It's a mistake that should not be repeated.

If it turns out that hostage-taker Jimmy Lee Dykes did use a Glock to kill the bus driver, then that means that while NRA stooges were in Washington, failing to come up with a single instance that a person used an assault weapon for defense, a lunatic in Alabama was using an assault weapon to commit a shocking and bloody crime.

Further, if Dykes had lived anywhere but Alabama, his previous run-ins with the law might very well have prevented him from buying a gun. "It was not immediately clear what prompted Dykes to storm the bus, but his motives appear to be related to a menacing charge in December," reports the Southern Poverty Law Center. "That month, Dykes pointed a gun at his neighbor, James Edward Davis Dr., who told the Dothan Eagle that Dykes accused him of driving on his yard. Dykes was scheduled to have a bench trial today on the charge, and an unidentified girl who Dykes released from the bus told reporters that Dykes was referring to his upcoming case." Dykes is also reportedly mentally unstable and suffering from PTSD. Even if he already had the gun, it seems obvious that he shouldn't be allowed to buy ammo.

So, while gun freaks in Washington could not come up with a single example of someone using an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine to defend themselves -- nor could they come up with any example of a background check preventing anyone's self-defense -- a perfect storm of a crime involving all three of those issues may very well have been playing out on news broadcasts around the country.

Once again, we see that reality has a liberal bias.

-Wisco

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Austerity, Spending, and the Stimulative Value of Holes

An Associated Press article out today could be titled, "Everything Republicans say About Economics Proven Wrong." Instead, we get the less entertaining but just as accurate, "US economy shrinks 0.1 pct., 1st time in 3 1/2 years." If that doesn't sound like good news, that's because it is not. Even a minor contraction in an already deflated economy is enough to cause real worry, like a creaking support beam deep inside a coal mine. But one tenth of one percent isn't exactly a plunge into the danger zone and -- good news! -- we know exactly what caused it. Which means, we also know exactly what to do to fix it.


The U.S. economy unexpectedly shrank from October through December for the first time since 2009, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles. The drop occurred despite stronger consumer spending and business investment.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That was a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter.

Economists said the drop in gross domestic product wasn't as bleak as it looked. The weakness was mainly the result of one-time factors. Government spending cuts and slower inventory growth, which can be volatile, subtracted a total of 2.6 percentage points from GDP.


The Reader's Digest Condensed version: austerity sucks. Government spending is the dreaded s-word (i.e., "stimulus") to the US economy. If you cut federal spending, you cut demand, and the economy suffers. Duh.

In fact, it's more than just defense spending cuts that are holding economic growth back. After all, defense spending isn't magically good, while other spending is somehow bad. Demand is demand and if you cut spending, you cut demand -- every time. It's inevitable. Non-defense discretionary spending is at a historic low. The Center for American Progress reports that this spending covers things like "crime prevention and investigation, border protection and immigration enforcement, the federal prison system, and U.S. attorneys and the federal courts, including the Supreme Court." So not wasteful spending in the least.

When we cut all that, we undercut the economy. It's simple: cut government spending and someone, somewhere stops getting paid. They stop spending their money and this sends a ripple effect throughout the economy. They no longer demand products and services -- and everyone on down the line demands fewer as a result. Again, the perfect word to describe the inability to understand this basic and obvious truth is "duh."

Which makes the Republican Party, conservative pundits, and rightwing media the Duh Brigade. And this report puts them all in a little bit of a pickle.

"It’s awfully tempting to argue for a delay in the defense sequester on 'stimulus' grounds -- if you are the kind of politician who hasn’t abundantly estopped any such argument with prior shrieks about deficit spending being the economy’s main problem," explains Ed Kilgore.

But of course, logical inconsistency is never an impediment to the conservative mind. They'll find some way to explain how defense spending is magically good and that money somehow knows it's being spent "the right way." But keep in mind the way the economy really works. They can't really come up with a convincing argument. Economist John Maynard Keynes said you could stimulate the economy by paying someone to dig holes and someone else to fill them in again. And this is absolutely true. The point being that spending is stimulus and it doesn't much matter what kind of labor that spending buys. Think about it; when hole-digger and hole-filler break for lunch, they still head to a burger joint. The money spends exactly the same as if they'd earned it painting bombers or manufacturing Humvee tires.

The point here isn't to advocate wasting money and that wasn't Keynes' point either -- he wasn't seriously suggesting a program of hole-based economic recovery. The point here is to demonstrate the very simple principle that income is income and money doesn't care how it's earned. If we raise defense spending, that's stimulative. If we raise non-defense discretionary spending, that's stimulative. If we pay people to walk around with signs reading "ask me where you can get a job holding one of these signs," that's stimulative. Money doesn't know things. It has no memory of how it was earned. Every federal dollar buys the same amount of burger, which means every federal dollar is as stimulative as the next.

This is all very obvious, which is why conservatives spend so much energy in obscuring it with crazy economic theories that seem to make a lot of sense -- right up until the moment that you really start to think about them. And that's why today's report is doubly bad news for the GOP: a contracting economy is bad for everyone and a report blaming austerity for that economy is bad for the right.

Today will be an extra-heavy spin cycle day, I think.

-Wisco

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Why National Dems May Wind Up Thanking Wisconsin Recallers

As a resident of this state, I really do believe there aren't many good things you can say about Wisconsin Governor Scott "Divide and Conquer" Walker. He's not particularly smart and he's not particularly honest. He's also not particularly courageous.

And courage is something he got some credit for. After his big unionbuster, Walker took a lot of heat. But I'd argue that this was heat he was unprepared for. The scale of the reaction scared the starch out of his drawers and left him obsessed with his own political survival. After all, this is a man a former high-level GOP legislative staffer described as a "giant fiery ball of ambition" -- and ambitions die when the career dies. He's gone from Tea Party Hero to a Romney-like weathervane, pointing in whatever direction the political winds are blowing at the moment. And, while Republicans control the State assembly and senate, this is the result of gerrymandering more than anything. The problem for Scott Walker there is that you can't gerrymander a statewide office. No creatively drawn district lines will save him from overreach and the ground looks very bad for him right now. At a time when Republicans would very much like to see him strike while the iron is hot and return to hard partisanship, Walker's survival instincts push him toward centrism. Rock no boats, make no waves, curb all overreach.

Steve Benen caught a whiff of Walkers newfound political cowardice moderation, this time on the issue of a slow, bloodless coup attempt being waged by the GOP.


Over the weekend, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) offered cautious encouragement to Republicans hoping to rig the 2016 presidential election by changing how his state allocates electoral votes. The conservative governor didn't explicitly endorse the idea, but Walker called it "interesting" and "worth looking at."

Yesterday, the Wisconsin Republican was far more circumspect.


Gov. Scott Walker says he has a "real concern" about a Republican idea to change the way the state awards its electoral votes, conceding the move could make Wisconsin irrelevant in presidential campaigns. [...]

"One of our advantages is, as a swing state, candidates come here. We get to hear from the candidates," said Walker in an interview Saturday at a conservative conference in Washington, D.C. "That's good for voters. If we change that, that would take that away, it would largely make us irrelevant."


That's a far cry from what Walker was saying over the weekend, and it's a welcome change. What's more, it's worth noting that the governor happens to be correct -- if Wisconsin changed to a system in which electoral votes are dictated by gerrymandered district lines, the state would immediately go from key, contested battleground to campaign afterthought.


"This would, incidentally, put Walker at odds with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, a long-time ally of the governor who's also from Wisconsin and who's endorsed the scheme," Benen says.

That's a bit of an understatement. If Walker bails on the scheme, the whole plot falls apart. Wisconsin is essential. He's got everything he needs to do it -- a pet legislature, inoculation against another recall (you only get one shot at that in Wisconsin) -- now should be the perfect time to subvert democracy and use gerrymandering, combined with electoral collage trickery, to install a popular vote loser in the White House. Walker wouldn't be "at odds" with his national party chairman if he caves, he'd be throwing his entire party's plan for national dominance under the bus.

While we're not out of the woods yet, it seems foolish in retrospect for the GOP to rest all their hopes on the narrow shoulders of the opportunistic Scott Walker. And even if Walker decides he can survive it, what's to keep another waffling GOP governor on shaky ground (think Rick Scott) from dropping out of the plot? Walker's set a precedent, no matter what he does going forward. By thinking of his own political survival, he's causing others to do the same. Who wants to be the one taking the heat, while the other governors drop out and run for cover? What would be the point, since without the others, the plan won't work anyway? Why cause rancor needlessly and bootlessly? None of these guys can trust the others now, so any one of them may drop out at the slightest sign of defection or tough sledding.

Anyone who thinks the Wisconsin Recall fight was a failure may well look at this moment as the moment when they were proven wrong. Scott Walker, scared straight and heading into reelection, may now be moderating his own party -- and suffocating what is really a slow-motion coup in its cradle.

-Wisco

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Sen. Ron Johnson: Mouth Over-Used, Ears Neglected

You might have noticed that I was out all last week. I had the second cold of the season, which is weird. Unfortunately, the surest way to give me writer's block is to stuff my sinuses and wrap my head in that weird cloud-of-cotton feeling you get with a rhinovirus. As a result, I managed only to watch a bunch of TV -- along with quite a few episodes of MST3k.

But if you thought I was hiding my face in shame as a Wisconsinite, though, that would've been a good guess. After all, we're the state that elected Sen. Ron Johnson, who John Nichols writes will never "be accused of being the sharpest tack in the box." If you want to instantly grasp Johnson's intellectual power, imagine a diehard Rush Limbaugh fan with the wherewithal to buy a senate seat. That's him. That's the guy in a nutshell. Nearly always steered 100% wrong by his local talk radio station and convinced beyond question that he's 100% right. A blockhead and a blowhard, inexplicably given the title of "Very Important Man."

Nichols' weekend column also says that during the first two years of his first term, Johnson "didn’t do much and wasn’t noticed much. While he ranted and raved about debts and deficits, he voted as a predictable partisan. He rarely dissented from the party line and the media — and most Americans — paid him little mind."

Then this happened...


[Huffington Post:]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got testy on Capitol Hill Wednesday in response to a query from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who called into question her department's accounting of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Facing expected scrutiny from Republicans during her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton appeared to take exception to Johnson's pointed inquiry into the State Department's initial report that the attack had been mounted spontaneously as a reaction to an anti-Islam YouTube video.

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans," Clinton responded, raising her voice at Johnson, who continued to interrupt her. "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk last night who decided to kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator."


In case you haven't seen it, the video is here. Long story short, Johnson was being a hectoring fool. Clinton wasn't repeating the lies he'd heard from Limbaugh, so he kept asking idiotic questions -- then interrupting the answers with more idiotic questions. So Sec. Clinton finally had enough and shut him up and shut him down. After getting a earful from her, Sen. Johnson suddenly had no more questions for Madam Secretary.

Of course, the embarrassment was too much to bear, so he later blamed Clinton for his own ignorance and lack of preparation. "It was theatrics," Johnson told Charlie Sykes -- Milwaukee's local version of Rush Limbaugh. "Again, she didn’t want to answer questions so she makes a big show of it." That doesn't really explain why you shut down your questioning and retreated with your tail between your legs, does it Senator?

Nor does it explain this...


[Talking Points Memo:]

At his secretary of state confirmation hearing Thursday, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) called out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) for missing a classified briefing on the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Johnson pressed Kerry to commit to finding out what, exactly, happened on Sept. 11, 2012 at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

"Well, there was a briefing with tapes, which we all saw, those of us who went to it, which made it crystal clear," Kerry said. "We sat for several hours with our intel folks, who described to us precisely what we were seeing. We saw the events unfold. We had a very complete and detailed description."


There's another video at that link. But the condensed version is that Johnson kept badgering Kerry about why we don't know this and why we don't know that, so Kerry answered they we do know this and that -- and so would Johnson if he could manage to pry himself away from Fox News and attend an actual briefing for once in his life. Once again, Johnson's belief in his mastery of the facts led to his own humiliation. The man is a clown.

A few months back, the congressional newspaper Roll Call quote an anonymous "senior GOP aide" as saying that Johnson rubs even his Republican colleagues the wrong way. "He’s an interesting case study of someone who has talked more than he has listened, lectured more than he has developed relationships with his colleagues, and now he’s having a tough time because of that behavior in advancing his policy goals," the aide said. "It’s kind of like watching a temper tantrum by a 2-year-old in the middle of the grocery store."

I can only imagine how infuriating it must be to be lectured by a dope as wrong on the facts as Johnson has recently proved himself to be. I would avoid him like the plague -- and that would include working with him. Now wonder John Nichols was able to note that Johnson hasn't accomplished much of anything so far.

And thank your lucky stars for that, because this is what Johnson had hoped to accomplish (emphasis mine):


... If Johnson and others like him win, they seem less interested in plunging into specific legislation and more inclined to wage a philosophical messaging war to change the GOP and the nature of governance. Asked what innovative ideas he might push in office, Johnson didn't talk of tax reform or private Social Security accounts, or of anything a conventional senator might do.

Instead, he committed himself to a "re-education of America" and talked about how expectations of government help are spinning wildly out of control, creating “a culture of dependency" that has little appreciation for what it takes for individuals and businesses to thrive. One could easily hear Angle in Nevada and Paul in Kentucky making the same case, with the same intensity, using the same words to win — and planning the same approach if elected.


Mr. Talk-Radio-For-Brains is committed to "reeducating" you. As I said, be thankful he hasn't succeeeded or you'd be as much of a clueless dope as he is.

-Wisco

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