John Oliver has the takedown of Donald Trump’s Republican convention you’ve waited for

Last Week Tonight host John Oliver on Sunday concisely summarized the Republican National Convention in one sentence: “He just brought a feeling to a fucking fact fight.” Throughout the convention, Republican speakers – including Donald Trump – argued that the crime rate was skyrocketing, unauthorized immigration is going up, the economy is getting worse, and terrorism is killing a record number of Americans.

The post Feelings Are More Important Than Facts (For Republicans) appeared first on Rationally Thinking Out Loud.

• On the record setting idiocy from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Giuliani: ‘I Jumped Up Out Of My Chair And Cheered’ When Gingrich Said Palestinians Are An ‘Invented People’ | ThinkProgress
• And more Giuliani idiocy on another front: Giuliani: Gingrich like Reagan, best connects to ‘Reagan Democrats’ [VIDEO]
• Giuliani Brings His Knife to Morning Shows to Carve Up Romney – ABC News
• Giuliani ridicules Romney – POLITICO.com
• Elizabeth Warren Comes Out For Full Equality For LGBT People | ThinkProgress
• Where the Ryan-Wyden Medicare Plan Leaves the Entitlement Debate | Swampland | TIME.com
• Combat Operations In Iraq End a Second Time, Gingrich Loses Coveted Gary Busey Endorsement
• The Federal Pie Chart Where Does Your Income Tax Really Go?
• Michele Bachmann Busted By PolitiFact On Claim About PolitiFact (VIDEO)

Politics – Newt Gingrich

• Newt Gingrich: Gay People Choose To Be Gay Like Priests Choose Celibacy | ThinkProgress
• CHARTS: The 10 Craziest Facts About Newt Gingrich’s Tax Plan | ThinkProgress
• Newt Gingrich on Iraq: A Timeline of Questionable Judgment – Conor Friedersdorf – Politics – The Atlantic

Climate & Climate Politics

• Bill Chameides: Global Warming: What Happens When You Factor Out the Other Factors.
• Climate Feedback: Nature Climate Change website – coming soon
• Sen. Franken’s colloquy with Sen. Whitehouse on climate change | Climate Science Watch 
  Here is the full transcript of the colloquy [PDF] as published in the Congressional Record.
• “ClimateGate” News:
  • Britain – Computer Equipment Seized in Climate E-mail Inquiry – NYTimes.com
  • Climategate Investigation Warms Up Globally: UK Police Seize TallBloke’s Computers, DOJ Tells U.S. Denier to Preserve Records | ThinkProgress
  • 3,500 Words On Hacked Climate Emails, But The Weekly Standard Still Comes Up Empty | ThinkProgress

Economics & The Economy

• Study: People Receiving Unemployment Insurance Work Harder To Find Jobs | ThinkProgress
• The $200 Trillion World: Who Owns All the Wealth? – Derek Thompson – Business – The Atlantic (a hat-tip to my friend and building industry colleague Allan Edwards)
• And as a result of another online conversation with Allan where I had to look up the book by Nobel prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict I found this article Joseph Stiglitz’s 4-Point Plan For Fixing The Economy – Business Insider.
  

  Here are some of his suggestions:

  • Repeal tax-cuts for rich Americans.

  • End wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost trillions of dollars.

  • Increase stimulus and programs that would get Americans back to work because it will generate massive tax revenues.

  • A Medicare D, with a provision that allows the government to negotiate prices instead of going with those set by pharmaceuticals. He believes this move alone could save the U.S. trillions.

  • A “Homeowners Chapter 11″ that would allow homeowners to continue to possess their homes, while they restructure their debt and continue to pay down their mortgages. He says, “It doesn’t do any body any good to force these people out of their homes… An economy in which you have homeless people and empty homes doesn’t make any sense, and that’s where we’re going.”

• Wealthiest Americans pay bulk of federal income tax collected | cleveland.com
• What Percentage of Federal Individual Income Taxes Do Rich People Really Pay?
• Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• 9 Things The Rich Don’t Want You To Know About Taxes

Right Wing Journalism

• Little Green Footballs – Andrew Breitbart’s ‘Big Journalism’ Bloggers Use Antisemitic Nazi-Era Cartoon

International News

• France sentences ‘Carlos the Jackal’ to another life term – latimes.com

The post What I’m Reading Thursday, December 15, 2011 appeared first on Rationally Thinking Out Loud.

• Newt Gingrich: I helped defeat communism – Maggie Haberman – POLITICO.com.
• Newt Gingrich: The Obama Re-Election Team Is ‘Determined To Distort Everything They Can’ – ABC News
• Poll watcher: Who is Newt Gingrich’s base? Tea party districts sour on tea party and doggy health care – Behind the Numbers – The Washington Post
• Joe Peyronnin: Obama’s Looking Good
  

  In the words of one long-time Republican, “The Republicans are making President Obama look good.” Well, he makes a very good point about the Republican field of presidential candidates.

• RealClearPolitics – President Obama vs. Republican Candidates
• RealClearPolitics – Election 2012 – General Election: Gingrich vs. Obama… but things can change. the RCP average of the averages is Obama by +5.7
• Obama vs Gingrich A side by side comparison of the two on the issues.
• Another article about Ron Paul calling out Gingrich for his hypocritical flip-flopping: The Anti-Newt Campaign Begins
• Jon Huntsman’s Big Idea – TIME — The long-shot candidate is bolder than Obama about reining in the big banks
• The Day of Savage Web Ads Attacking Republican Front-Runners | FDL News Desk

Climate & Climate Politics

• Global warming: winners and losers in the Arctic’s ‘new normal’ – CSMonitor.com
• Federal report: Arctic much worse since 2006 – USATODAY.com
• Modest Rise in Number Saying There Is ‘Solid Evidence’ of Global Warming | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
• Scientists: Permafrost thaw likely to disrupt global warming predictions | The State Column
• Yet more evidence that shutting down coal plants will not threaten reliability | Grist
• And hanging on to the global warming science denial position we have: Salvaging The Mythology Of Man-Caused Global Warming – Forbes

Evolution (and the politics of it)

• Creationists Whining About “Censorship” « The Skeptical Teacher

The Late William F. Buckley

• A Great Quote:
  

  Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.

• Good night, Mr. Buckley – Couric & Co. – CBS News
  

  Buckley was conservative before conservative was cool. He was brilliant, Ivy League, handsome and very, very, VERY articulate. And he was, well, so very self confident. All of his talent and style combined to rebirth the moribund conservative movement in this country. From his founding of the National Review to the day he stepped down from moderating his signature talk show, “Firing Line.” It is fair to say that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich all owe their place in American history to the man who once famously wrote that he didn’t know anyone smarter than himself. …

  …In a way, it’s sad that people like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are today’s mouthpieces for conservatism. What a far leap they are from the quick witted and smart Buckley. I think it’s fair to say that even Buckley’s ideological enemies admired him and respected him. That’s because Buckley was not a hate monger; he was a serious-minded person who made reasoned and rational arguments for his cause. No apologies to Limbaugh, Savage or their listeners and adherents — they are no substitute for Buckley’s class and intellectualism.

Economics & The Economy

• Economic reports, central banks’ actions fuel huge stock rally – latimes.com
  

  The Dow rises 490 points after strong economic snapshots point to healthy job creation and more robust business activity in the U.S. Actions taken by the Federal Reserve and other central banks to address the Eurozone crisis lessen concerns about a financial system meltdown.

  Economic stimulus for Wall Street. But will it create any jobs? (JJH)

• What The Central Banks Did Today – NYTimes.com
• Mark Thoma on Coordinated Central Bank Intervention
• Geithner: Will Fight Efforts To Block New Financial Regulations – Real Time Economics – WSJ
• The 70% solution | Amplifications Brad Delong—
  

  …when we calculate what the tax rate for the superrich will be, we should not consider the effect of changing their tax rate on their happiness, for we know that it is zero. Rather, the key question must be the effect of changing their tax rate on the well-being of the rest of us.

  From this simple chain of logic follows the conclusion that we have a moral obligation to tax our superrich at the peak of the Laffer Curve: to tax them so heavily that we raise the most possible money from them – to the point beyond which their diversion of energy and enterprise into tax avoidance and sheltering would mean that any extra taxes would not raise but reduce revenue.

  […]

The post What I'm Reading Thursday, December 1, 2011 appeared first on Rationally Thinking Out Loud.

Just what did Gingrich do? I’ll refer you to David Frum’s article: Gingrich: Obama Wants Whitey’s Money for an explanation of the depth of the absurdity of Gingrich (and D’Souza’s cover story in Forbes which Gingrich was affirming).

A couple of years ago here I published a short list of Conservatives I Like (but don’t necessarily agree with) and Therefore Listen To, Gingrich has managed to strike himself off that list.

For more on Gingrich and D’Souza you might also want to read:

• The NonSequitur: Trapped in his father’s time machine
• Think Progress: Andy Card: ‘I Don’t Think That The StatementsNewt Gingrich Made Are Helpful…I’m Disappointed’
• Jay Bookman: Gingrich, et al doing a swan dive into a swimming pool full of crazy
• Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: How Newt Gingrich thinks.
• The Christian Science Monitor: Newt Gingrich: Did he go too far with comments about Obama?
• Newt Gingrich Pandering to Birthers, White House Suggests

I’m sure there will be more on this over the coming week or two.

The post Newt Gingrich goes tea party, no tea bagger whacko and gets struck off my list of conservatives I respect and listen too. appeared first on Rationally Thinking Out Loud.