Ann Coulter's Egypt or How Republicans Deliberately Misrepresent Reality

I apparently missed this last week, but Ann Coulter takes it upon herself to present herself as either an idiot or a liar on Real Time with Bill Maher and successful does both. Check the clip here.

Most notably is Coulter's attempt to make it appear as though the Egyptian revolution happened through US military action and regime change.

Here is some of the dialogue (around 2:50):

COULTER: What do you think about Libya and Egypt, as long as I have you here?
MAHER: What about them?
COULTER: Are in favor with us intervening in these two countries that didn't hit us on 9/11 solely for purposes of regime change?
MAHER: First of all I didn't think we were intervening in Egypt? Are we?
COULTER: We did.
MAHER: What we do? What we do in Egypt?
OTHERS: No we didn't.
HAYES: Intervene or military? There's a difference.
FOREMAN: I mean we talked about it.
COULTER: Yeah.
MAHER: We talked about it. We can talk.
HAYES: Well we talked we didn't send any troops or anything.
COULTER: Well ok we are flying bombs or something.
[Shock by Hayes and all other correspondents say no]
COULTER: We were threatening to [sic] why Mubarak left.
MAHER: No, no we never threatened. No, no.
COULTER: No I think we did.

Notice how her story keeps changing as reality keeps proving her false. Later in the clip (8:00):

COULTER: Well he called for Mubarak to leave.
HAYES: That's not the same as bombing!
COULTER: It's threatening to bomb!
HAYES: That's completely different things!
COULTER: Is Mubarak gone? Did [Obama] take action for regime change?
[...]
COULTER: Manifestly it was being backed up by the threat to bomb.

Watch how the reality (Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama asking for the leave of Mubarak and the end of violence in Egypt) was translated to a disturbing fantasy (full scale military intervention in Egypt equal to Libya). The fact is that the Right has no qualms of spreading such myths and at times even appears to actually believe them. Our only hope is for people like Bill Maher and Christopher Hayes to nip these lies in the bud, lest they blossom to full newscycles, like say the Austerity-Economic Growth fallacy.

[HBO via Medialite]

The Biases of an Arugula Eater or Why Not To So Indiscriminately Cut Spending

While I usually focus on international political issues, this recent newscycle and national joke of a discussion has me particularly worried. Not a day passes when I open my Google Reader and then do not wish to throw my laptop out the window, because of some pundit who argues that national debt is somehow the cause of our unemployment problem.

Now why in particular does this offend me so much, besides its laughable premise? (I will show you how dumb this is in a second) Because the implications of an aggressive contractionary fiscal policy has clear negative effects on my personal life. This is a bias that I find only fair my readers should know. I am a college student from a middle class family. The repealing the Bush era tax cuts for the exceptionally wealthy has no negative effects for me, so I have no qualms with such a decision in budget balancing. However I, along with many others at my juncture in life, have much to lose by a hack and slash approach to budget reduction.

Right now I am working as a research assistant in a medical lab. My mentor got the money to hire me through a National Science Foundation grant. The grant to start our next major project is currently under review by the National Institutes of Health. I can afford my college education only through financial aid and relying on federal subsidized student loans, because Congress already removed the Pell Grants that used to help me. I can only afford graduate education through scholarships financed by the NIH and NSF. So yes, my future is entirely at the mercy of the hands of the Boehner/Cantor/Ryan House.

And there are millions upon millions of others who need vital government services in order to survive. Medicaid had 62 million enrollees in 2008 according to the Congressional Budget Office (you know, that infamous liberal nonpartisan accounting agency put under Nixon). That number has only increased with the continuing Great Recession. Similarly, there are 45 million in Medicare and the baby boomers are just beginning to retire. I am not suggesting that we should not reform these agencies. We should, eventually and not through gutting the entirety of the Great Society.

The worst part of this debate is that it is being played at the basest of human emotions. From Ryan's voucher for Medicare proposal, to Cantor's we must defend the rich's right to tax cuts, and Coburn's vitriol for the sciences, we are engaging in a nonsensical dialogue with a blatant disregard towards history. To take the cake is the fact that both sides, the President and the GOP House, have agreed that this discussion should be framed that National Debt ruins confidence. The academics sit in shock at the inanity and FDR and Keynes roll in their graves as Hoover slowly rises from the grave.

From our esteemed President on October 22, 1928,

"The Democratic administration cooperated with the Republican Party to demobilize many of her activities and the Republican Party from the beginning of its period of power resolutely turned its face away from these ideas and these war practices, back to our fundamental conception of the state and the rights and responsibilities of the individual. Thereby it restored confidence and hope in the American people, it freed and stimulated enterprise, it restored the Government to its position as an umpire instead of a player in the economic game. For these reasons the American people have gone forward in progress while the rest of the world is halting and some countries have even gone backwards. If anyone will study the causes which retarded recuperation of Europe, he will find much of it due to the stifling of private initiative on one hand, and overloading of the Government with business on the other."

Almost exactly a year later on Black Thursday the world saw the greatest economic catastrophe in history. And the sacred confidence of industry and enterprise was not restored by the government trying to keep the international house in fiscal order. It was not until 4 years later with a new administration that our nation would recover.

And so my friends who are still here, let me reward you with a picture of what the aftermath of the New Deal was:

(Click to Enlarge)

I feel almost dirty presenting this as evidence in the confidence fairy (credit to Krugman) discussion. Because, it shows two relatively independent variables in economics vary independently. The orange is percent unemployment from 1950-1999. The blue is the national debt in 2011 dollars using the Consumer Price Index to account for inflation. As for Tea Partiers, please note your Messiah Reagan was the first to break $3 trillion... and $4 trillion.... and $5 trillion. In fact from 1950-1980 we hardly changed our debt and by the end our unemployment skyrocketed. Once Reagan finally started heavy spending, unemployment began to drop. Just in time for his 1984 re-election. Seeing Keynesian Economics worked out from 1982-84, he continued it till the end of his term and unemployment almost dropped down to 5%.

Sadly, this kind of analysis and reasoning has no place in our discussion. Since I can't speak the doublespeak that our politicians use I fear this graph means nothing to the 24/7 media monstrosities. But for those of you who can read graphs and understand numbers, let this be something to think about. I'll let you decide what the urgency of debt reduction is in our economy.

Note: Here is a link to the Excel sheet that has all this data. The CPI data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Calculator, the National Debt data comes from the Treasury, and the Unemployment Data is from the Misery Index which aggregates data from the Bureau of Labor.

Spinach Isn't Bad Either

As a child I never understood people's abject hatred towards spinach. It was a lovely green vegetable filled with a plethora of health properties and a distinctive taste. This most likely stemmed from my Iranian upbringing; spinach is oddly enough a staple of Persian cuisine where it in a combination stew of meat, herbs, and legumes as a common meal. Fast forward a decade and a half and imagine my happy surprise when I learned of a certain eatery named Subway offering it upon their sandwiches. I was delighted. And that brings us to earlier today, as I sat at work, eating a tuna sub with spinach amongst other things on it.

It was then, after much debate and deliberation, that I came to the conclusion that this blog should not die. Let's back up for a second. This blog effectively died upon my entrance into college after being born for mere months. And as every terrible father should, I was ashamed about it. I also realized that I did wish to continue writing. For a short period of time, I wrote for a tech blog but to call what I did as publishing “articles” or even “posts” is a horrible lie. Instead the editor had me write 150 word blurbs on the specs of every mediocre notebook and netbook that had a press release. Writing on other matters was discouraged, because apparently discussing the Great Firewall of China does not earn as much ad money as listing permutations in processor speeds of the new 13” and 15” MSI Wind laptops.

So what is a bored college student to do? I suppose go on Facebook and stalk his friends or look up funny pictures on Reddit and 9Gag. I resist falling so low, so instead I wondered about starting a new writing venture. I looked at Wordpress and Tumblr, both enticing options, but in the end I felt dirty making what would actually have been the fourth blog I have helped author. (Don't bother looking for the first, it has long been banished to the deep recesses of Blogger's abyss) Also, after the Red Rebellion of 2010 (I find it ironic that the Tea Partiers are the same color as those Bolsheviks that they constantly fear), I realized that the world needs an Arugula Eater more than ever. And after speaking to my compatriots in cyberspace, I have decided to take up the mantle once again.

Fear not my fellow brethren of the Interwebs. I shall descend into the Chasm of Crazy and enter their Fortress of Silliness. Trolls in the form of the press, pundit, and politician should best fact check their statements, because such foolish foolishness shall not be tolerated by me. I am the one, the only, the true Arugula Eater. And I have returned.