Conservatives are Politically Correct Robots

Over the years, conservatism has undergone a sort of metamorphosis. And it's a strange metamorphosis because, in true conservative fashion, it involves changing back into something it once was. Where it was once about conformity and "right-thinking," it briefly became about independent thought and the potential of the individual. Ronald Reagan appealed to what was called the "self-actualized person"; a sort of existentialist self-help idea popular at the time that held that your responsibility is to define yourself and concentrate on your own potential, rather than that of the group. In Reagan's world, society was holding you back, you needed freedom to pursue your own ideas, and the state was both that society holding you back and a check on freedom. Take that or leave it for what it was, but the core of Reaganism was a focus on individualism.

Now, here's conservatism today:

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Let's not concentrate on what an obvious fool Michael Steele is. Let's concentrate on how many "individuals" we see here. I'm counting zero. Grover Norquist's questions have the flavor of a pop quiz. He's not interested in any ideas they may have, he's interested in a litmus test, which Republican Party voters can then use to check a candidate for the RNC chair against a scale of ideological purity. For example, they're asked to make a case for "the defense of marriage between one man and one woman." The idea that there would be a dissenter who believes in marriage equality is unthinkable and obviously disallowed. Conservatives are back to mindless conformity and "right-thinking."

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The GOP's $100 Billion Lie

Yesterday, I mentioned that Republicans began their first day of their new House Majority by breaking one of their oaths made in their Sacred Pledge. Where the party had sworn in their "Pledge to America" to make cuts that "will save $100 billion in first year alone," they now say the number -- which they'd apparently reached into their pants to retrieve -- was merely "hypothetical."

But words mean things. The only way that number could be hypothetical would be if the GOP had asked voters, "If we promised you an insanely large, made-up number -- say, $100 billion -- in spending cuts, would you elect us?" But they didn't. At least, not straight out like that. "Will save" means "will save," not "could save." It's a definite statement and, when written in the body of a signed document with the word "pledge" in the title, constitutes a concrete promise. Once again, Republicans -- with the help of a credulous and/or uncritical media -- lied to the American people. Clearly, there was no math behind the figure, no one sat down at a ledger book and added up all the savings. It was merely an impressively large number that could be used for a bait-and-switch.

If you doubt that $100 billion was an invented number, consider that the new House Republican Budget Czar, Paul Ryan, has no idea what they're planning on cutting. "That is what is gonna happen in the appropriations process down the road," he said when asked for specific cuts. "So I can't tell you the answer to that because, as a budget committee person, we simply lower the cap and then those things go down. We're gonna be reducing all domestic discretionary spending. I can't tell you by what amount and which program, but all of it is going to be going down, and the aggregate amount will be back to 2008 levels before the spending binge occurred."

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Repeal and Replace -- Maybe... We'll See...

On the 12th, Republicans will begin to fail to repeal healthcare reform. The GOP campaigned on the deficit, the deficit, the deficit, but the first order of business for the new House GOP Majority will be an attempt to kill a deficit reducing bill. It's not jobs, it's not the economy, it's increasing the deficit. Want proof that Republicans aren't serious about anything other than winning elections? There you go.

The GOP has been talking a lot about a "repeal and replace" strategy, but so far, they haven't come up with any "replace" -- there is no bill other than the repeal bill. This is a bit of a problem, since many of the provisions of healthcare reform have already kicked in. This means that these provisions die. You've paid for them, but they'd go away. It's just a grandstanding, time-wasting stunt with no hope of ever being signed into law. To give you an idea of just what empty PR theater this is, consider the talking point title of the bill: "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" [pdf]. I guess "Kill the Commie Obamacare Act" didn't occur to Eric Cantor.

Still think this is a serious effort? Think again.

Palm Beach Post:

Conservatives have acknowledged that with a Democrat-controlled Senate and Obama in office, their hopes of a successful repeal are limited. But the "repeal" bill is meant to energize their base, attract Tea Party conservatives who abhor the notion of mandatory health insurance, and launch the start of a slow campaign to kill health reform through 1,000 cuts -- primarily by obstructing the spending appropriations needed to implement it.

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Major Insurer Sounds Global Warming Alert

There are a lot of industries that would be adversely affected by global warming -- agriculture, fishing, real estate development, tourism, and timber all come immediately to mind. Shifting weather patterns means greater uncertainty for industries that rely on weather and a rising sea level means the redrawing of maps. As the world changes, the ancient evolutionary law kicks in -- adapt or die. Many of these industries may be able to adapt, but behind them all stands a second industry; the insurance industry.

As we all know from the dragged out healthcare debate, insurance isn't about avoiding risk, so much as it is shared risk. It's simple math -- bad things happen, but they don't happen to everyone. If only X in ten people suffer a heart attack in their lives, for example, those who don't have heart attacks pay into a fund that helps pay for the victim's treatment. It's like a bet -- you bet you'll have a heart attack, even though the odds are against it. And, because the insurer is willing to give you odds, the money is worth it, since the payout is the only way you'd be able to afford the consequences of winning the bet.

This is also the reason why you can't buy insurance for some eventualities. You can't insure your car against rust or the paint on your house against peeling. These are things that happen to almost everyone and are practically unavoidable. You can insure against death, but the bet there is that you'll die earlier than most people, before you've paid in the amount that the insurer pays out, not that you'll die eventually. The concept of insurance is, at its heart, mathematical and rational.

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Smashing the Punditry's Crystal Ball

It's 2011, so throw out your old calendar. Scratch that; recycle your old calendar. It's paper, so start off the new year on the right foot. There's no reason for us to be killing trees just to know what day it is. We've got a world to save and all.

Along with the literal take on "out with the old, in with the new" regarding our calendars, there are several traditions that you can count on during this transition. In the media, these include "listicles" of the top ten worst, top ten best, top ten most important, and top ten most embarrassing whatevers of 2010. These are sometimes good, mostly stupid, and not especially informative.

But another tradition in the media are year-end predictions. What's going to happen in the new year? This is an activity that you should never be talked into engaging in, because it's a surefire embarrassment down the road. If you want measure the worth of a pundit, look at how glibly they toss off predictions and how inaccurate those predictions are. Worse, look at the ways in which they often come true.

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