Brains for a New Day

[elfs]

Congress is Fat

Another Republican dismisses Limbaugh as "just an entertainer."

Gotta love me the Limbaugh. Five Republicans have called Limbaugh either "an entertainer" or otherwise dismissed him as unimportant to the future of the party, and all five have had to apologize to the blowhard.

The Wail of the 1%

This has been going around the Internet, and it's pretty difficult to take the wails seriously. I mean, listen to this guy:

"Without exception, Wall Street guys have gotten accustomed to not being stuck in the city in August. So it becomes a right to have a summer home within an hour or two commute from Manhattan. There's a cost structure of going with your family on summer vacation that's not optional. There's a cost structure of spending $40,000 to send your kids to private school that is not optional. You can't live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000. And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. That was a very populist thing that Obama said. He's being disingenuous. He knows that you can't live in New York on $75,000."

To which Hilzoy points out that the median income in New York is $53,000.

Jo Walton interviews Lois McMaster Bujold about the Vorkosigan series.

The one book Republicans are devouring

The Politico has an article that is "even handed" about Shlaes' book, The Forgotten Man, a book that argues that the New Deal didn't actually work. Avid readers on the right have pushed this book to the top of best-seller lists. The Politico does a he-said, she-said take, saying that economist Paul Krugman and historian Eric Rauchman "have challenged Shlaes' use of data."

John Chait calls the book 'Republican fanfiction.', adding that Shlaes' claim that the Depression didn't end until after the war only supports the New Deal: massive government spending saved America. Clear, solid economic regulatory policy saved America. The high tax margins of post-WW2 didn't hurt America. The longer other nations suffering from the Great Depression waited to implement New Deal-like programs, the longer they suffered from a depressed economy. And so forth. These are not the conclusion Shlaes wants you to draw, but they are the conclusions inherent in the book.