Revenge of the Reality-Based Community
By BRUCE BARTLETT * November 26, 2012

For more than 30 years, I was very comfortable within the conservative wing of the Republican Party. I still recall supporting Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater as a schoolchild. As a student, I was a member of Young Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom at the height of the Vietnam War, when conservatives on college campuses mostly kept their heads down.

(...)

But as the Bush 43 administration progressed, I developed an increasingly uneasy feeling about its direction. Its tax policy was incoherent, and it had an extremely lackadaisical attitude toward spending. In November 2003, I had an intellectual crisis.

(...)

A couple of weeks before the 2004 election, Suskind wrote a long article for the New York Times Magazine that quoted some of my comments to him that were highly critical of Bush and the drift of Republican policy. The article is best remembered for his quote from an anonymous White House official dismissing critics like me for being "the reality-based community."

The day after the article appeared, my boss called to chew me out, saying that Karl Rove had called him personally to complain about it. I promised to be more circumspect in the future.

Interestingly, a couple of days after the Suskind article appeared, I happened to be at a reception for some right-wing organization that many of my think tank friends were also attending. I assumed I would get a lot of grief for my comments in the Suskind article and was surprised when there was none at all.

Finally, I started asking people about it. Not one person had read it or cared in the slightest what the New York Times had to say about anything. They all viewed it as having as much credibility as Pravda and a similar political philosophy as well. Some were indignant that I would even suspect them of reading a left-wing rag such as the New York Times.

I was flabbergasted.

(...)

After careful research along these lines, I came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s. Previously, I had thought the opposite. But facts were facts and there was no denying my conclusion.

(...)

For the record, no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy's problems than Paul Krugman. The blind hatred for him on the right simply pushed me further away from my old allies and comrades.

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he's barely a liberal--and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

(...)

So here we are, post-election 2012. All the stupidity and closed-mindedness that right-wingers have displayed over the last 10 years has come back to haunt them.

It's quite long, but definitely worth a read.

Wind power

My time is almost up, though.  Currently in NYC.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

Hi All! Hope you all have been having a good Christmas/Holiday season, and also wish you all the bestin 2013!!

Hey, here is a cool article by Eyra Klein in his Washington Post Wonkblog, that shows graphs from different economists...check it out!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/27/2012-the-year-in-graphs/

Peace and cheers!
Bob

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

I'm trying to reach a number in Frankfurt and am getting a strange message

Diese Nummer ist gestört

it's got area code 69  -  is that a cell phone in Germany?

thanks for your help

We are playing Indian poker with people. Everyone writes a name of a known person on a post-it, which they stick on the forehead of the player to their left. Each person can then ask questions to find out who they are - in turn. Play passes to the next player on a 'no' answer. ("Am I a singer?").

You can't be me, I'm taken

Last one of the year ??? We have to make this last 4 days

keep to the Fen Causeway

Just been drinking with Bruno-ken, should anyone remember him. He remembers you all fondly but regrets he's been very busy for the last couple of year and can only drop in very occasionally.

keep to the Fen Causeway

For your interactive reading pleasure; this amazing piece of feature journalism. Not just the story, or the writing, but the interactive graphics seamlessly interwoven.

NY Times: Tunnel Creek

I can't say how advanced a system is needed to enjoy this full screen, please be aware.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Me wondering how long it will take for ET to discover the Idle No More movement which appears to be shaking north amurka, indigenous rising?

i provide no links, we'll see what's found. Sound byte: a woman chief is two weeks into her hunger strike. It resonates around the still free (for how long) net. against certain poison, and broken treaties. Native people seem to be on the modern warpath, and Canada will be only the first casualty. not to mention oil shale, and fracking.

Have any of you already known this was happening? Did you forget that native peoples still sound the call to your own childrens' futures?

In rational and statistical terms, how do i denominate that the water of life is being poisoned?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

A map of the shadow banking system. Apparently the piece above the top line is the actual banking system.

https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/284613365886758912/photo/1

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Farmer who told repo men to strip and get in with boar is found guilty - Courts, National News - Independent.ie

Patrick Mulvey and Justin Tighe, employees of a repossession company called Assets Security in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, had earlier told the court that they feared for their lives after going to JAC Pigs Ltd in Co Longford to repossess items on behalf of GE Money.

A scuffle had taken place in the yard at the pig farm during which Mr Mulvey and Mr Tighe said they were assaulted.

They had told the court in evidence that Donal Connaughton had ordered them to strip and get into the pen with the agitated boar and they feared they were going to be violated by the animal. The animal could be heard on the audio recording.

The two men were heard pleading to be let go and promised Donal Connaughton that they would never return to the premises, but he said he wanted to "teach them a lesson".

The two men were told to strip naked and they would be allowed walk out of the yard and when they refused Donal Connaughton made them get down on their knees and say the 'Our Father' before they were let go, leaving their truck behind.

The two repo men had arrived at the farm to repossess a generator and two power-washers.

He was, however, found guilty of two counts of false imprisonment, two charges of threatening to cause serious harm, one count of assault and two of criminal damage.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Boing Boing

Three decades before Yelp and Craigslist, there was the Community Memory Terminal.

In the early 1970s, Efrem Lipkin, Mark Szpakowski and Lee Felsenstein set up a series of these terminals around San Francisco and Berkeley, providing access to an electronic bulletin board housed by a XDS-940 mainframe computer.

This started out as a social experiment to see if people would be willing to share via computer -- a kind of "information flea market," a "communication system which allows people to make contact with each other on the basis of mutually expressed interest," according to a brochure from the time.

Read for free, write for 25c. And the aesthetics!

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}