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Barack Obama Is Dumb and Lazy

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| Fri Mar. 29, 2013 9:57 AM PDT
Pete Souza/White House photo

Jamelle Bouie points me toward the very conservative John Podhoretz today, who warns his fellow conservatives against their peculiar preoccupation with the idea that Barack Obama is an empty suit:

The weird condescension his opponents display toward him is ludicrously wrongheaded. They seem eager to believe he is a lightweight, and he is not. Obama is very possibly a world-historical political figure, and until those who oppose him come to grips with this fact, they will get him wrong every time.

....It’s not just the comforting delusion that he’s a golf-mad dilettante, but also the reverse-negative image of that delusion—that Obama is a not-so-secret Marxist Kenyan with dictatorial ambitions and a nearly limitless appetite for power. That caricature makes it far too easy for Obama to laugh off the legitimate criticisms of the kind of political leader he really is: a conventional post-1960s left-liberal with limited interest in the private sector and the gut sense that government must and should do more, whatever “more” might mean at any given moment.

This is related to the "continuing parade of weirdly invented, personality-driven scandalettes" that I mentioned yesterday. It's not as if I'm surprised that conservatives routinely try to attack Obama. Sure, I happen to think that issues like Benghazi, Solyndra, and Fast & Furious are hopeless nothingburgers, but they're perfectly understandable, routine kinds of political attacks. Every president is on the receiving end of this kind of stuff, and some of it sticks and some of it doesn't.

But then there's the completely mysterious stuff. Obama was too dumb to write his own autobiography. Obama was an affirmative action baby at Harvard Law. Obama can barely string three words together without a teleprompter. Obama is too lazy to attend national security briefings. Obama gives soaring speeches but there's nothing behind them. Obama lives a life of sybaritic ease punctuated mostly by golf dates and basketball games.

It's just bizarre. Normally, the opposition exaggerates the actual character of the president. Bush was incurious, so liberals called him dumb. Clinton was a child of the sixties, so he became a coke-snorting drug lord running dope out of Mena airfield. Reagan was personable and a little hazy on facts, so he became a doddering grandfather. Etc.

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EPA to Study Flame Retardant Chemicals. Finally.

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| Fri Mar. 29, 2013 9:46 AM PDT

The EPA announced this week that it will study the health and environmental risks of 23 chemicals, with an emphasis on chemical flame retardants that are found in many common products.

Even though they were phased out of baby clothes back in the 1970s due to health concerns, flame retardants are still used in baby cribs and car seats, couches, and electronics. Many have been linked to cancer and neurological and developmental problems, particularly in children. And we use so much of them that they're turning up in our food, too.

The EPA's announcement came just as a new study found extremely high levels of flame retardant chemicals on airplanes—"some of the highest measurements I've ever seen," according to the paper's co-author. This is less of a concern for airline passengers than it is for the pilots and flight attendants, but it does raise questions about yet another way we're being exposed to potentially dangerous chemicals.

The EPA plans to evaluate four common flame retardants—TBB, TBPH, TCEP, and HBCD—under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the 37-year-old law governing chemical regulation. As we've reported here before, that law is both weak and outdated, an issue that the EPA noted in its announcement on Wednesday:

"EPA is committed to more fully understanding the potential risks of flame retardant chemicals, taking action if warranted, and identifying safer substitutes when possible," said James J. Jones, Acting assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. "Though today’s announcement represents a significant step forward on chemical safety, it's important to remember that TSCA, this country’s chemicals management legislation, remains in dire need of reform in order to ensure that all Americans are protected from toxic chemicals in their environment."

TSCA reform advocates point to flame retardants as an example of why current chemical regulations are a total failure. EPA is just now evaluating their safety, after decades of human exposure to these chemicals. "Flame retardants have become exhibit A for our nation's failed chemical policy," said Andy Igrejas, executive director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. "Many have have turned out to be very toxic, and yet they have found their way into our homes and our bodies through their use in consumer products."

Big Banks Getting a Fresh Look After Cyprus

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| Fri Mar. 29, 2013 8:54 AM PDT

Simon Johnson writes today about the scourge of banks that are too big to fail. Cyprus is the latest example of what happens when a megabank fails, and it's fresh on everyone's minds:

The good news at the end of last week was that the Senate unanimously decided that the United States should go in another direction, by ending the funding advantages of megabanks.

....But making last week even more decisive, [Ben] Bernanke’s language shifted significantly....saying in the clearest possible terms during a news conference on March 20: “Too big to fail is not solved and gone,” adding, “It’s still here.” And in case anyone did not fully grasp his message, Mr. Bernanke explained, “Too big to fail was a major source of the crisis, and we will not have successfully responded to the crisis if we do not address that successfully.”

Now that the policy consensus has shifted, how exactly policy plays out remains to be seen....

Hmmm. This seems optimistic. Has the policy consensus really shifted? I hope I'm wrong, but what we're seeing right now seems more like one of those little boomlets that crop up and then disappear regularly. Remember NGDP targeting? For a period of a few weeks when it got mentioned in a set of Fed minutes, the economics blogosphere couldn't get enough of it. But it was never going anywhere, and it never did.

But enough pessimism! If there's any movement at all toward going beyond Dodd-Frank to make banks safer, that's good news. I've always been skeptical, on both political and practical grounds, that big banks can literally be broken up or their size capped, but they can certainly be made safer by requiring much higher capital levels. And you could probably go a long way toward encouraging smaller banks by introducing a formula that set higher capital levels for bigger banks. Who knows what would happen if required capital was a minimum of 10 percent or, say, double your bank's assets as a percentage of U.S. GDP? If a bank the size of Citigroup had to hold twice the capital of a smaller bank, that would certainly provide a big incentive to break up.

I don't know how feasible this kind of thing is on a national basis, and further international action doesn't seem to be in the cards these days. But every little bit helps. We'll see if the coming months produce anything more than a purely symbolic vote on a nonbinding resolution by the Senate.

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for March 29, 2013

Fri Mar. 29, 2013 8:32 AM PDT

U.S. Marines with 1st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company, Combat Logistics Regiment 2, conduct a demolition operation in Helmand province, Afghanistan, March 17, 2013. The EOD Marines properly disposed of unserviceable ammunition and other military items.
U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Anthony L. Ortiz.

 

Our Honeybees Are Still Dying

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| Fri Mar. 29, 2013 7:47 AM PDT

I thought we had made some progress in understanding and fighting colony collapse disorder, the malady that's killing off our honeybees. But apparently not:

A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.

....“They looked so healthy last spring,” said Bill Dahle, 50, who owns Big Sky Honey in Fairview, Mont. “We were so proud of them. Then, about the first of September, they started to fall on their face, to die like crazy. We’ve been doing this 30 years, and we’ve never experienced this kind of loss before.”

This is not good. I didn't realize we were still so deeply in the dark about the cause of this.

Watch: If House Lannister Had a Super-PAC

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| Fri Mar. 29, 2013 7:22 AM PDT

Last year, we noted that HBO's hit show Game of Thrones—which features dragons, sword fights, and zombie armies—is at its core a tale of intense political intrigue. Alliances are forged and broken; backroom deals are cut; principles are sacrificed. It's a dirty game—and not just because there's no indoor plumbing. And we imagined what might happen if super-PACs and dark-money outfits existed in the Seven Kingdoms. The result: political attack ads that went viral. With the third season starting this week—and the show (according to our spies) becoming even bleaker—here are those ads once again. They remain a fitting commentary, for as in the real world, politics in Westeros is not getting any less sleazy.

Daenerys Targaryen: Wrong for Dragons, Wrong for the Realm


Joffrey Baratheon: What a Bastard!


Robb Stark: The Biggest Celebrity in the North

Created, written, and directed by David Corn, Dan Schulman, Nick Baumann, Adam Serwer, Tim Murphy, and Asawin Suebsaeng. Videos edited by Ethan Elliott-Williams and David Mullins. Narrated by Jason Williams. Actors: Jennifer Cutting, Patrick Plunkett, and Stephen Winick.

Read our interview with Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss. And click here to check out other TV and movie features from Mother Jones.

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How Many Cinnabons is 2,000 Calories? How Many Almonds?

Fri Mar. 29, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Here's one for the picky eaters in the crowd: The FDA recommends consuming 2,000 calories a day. You probably eat a variety of different foods to get to that total. But what if you were to eat only one? How much would you need to eat of a given food to get to 2,000? Buzzfeed has the answer:

HT Grist.

82 Percent of Americans Think We Should Do More To Prepare for Climate Change

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| Fri Mar. 29, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
Hamilton Beach, NY after Superstorm Sandy. Pam_Andrade/Flickr

Eighty-two percent of Americans think that we should be doing more to prepare for sea level rise and extreme weather caused by global warming, according to new survey data released by researchers from Stanford University on Thursday. The survey, taken in the wake of the $70 billion in damage caused by Superstorm Sandy, shows strong support for doing more before disasters strike.

The study was conducted by Jon Krosnick, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Among the other findings:

  • 62 percent support strengthening building codes for new structures along the coast
  • 51 percent support barring new buildings from being built near the coast
  • 48 percent support sand dune restoration
  • 33 percent support efforts to maintain beaches with sand replenishment
  • 37 percent support relocating structures away from the coast
  • 33 percent support constructing sea walls

"People are least supportive of policies that try to hold back Mother Nature," Krosnick said. "They think it makes more sense to recognize risk and reduce exposure."

The survey also found that most respondents felt that coastal homeowners and businesses located in high-risk areas should pay for these measures, rather than the government. Most interesting, however, is that they found that even 60 percent of the respondents who don't think that climate change is real supported adaptation measures. Adaptation to … whatever it is they think is causing these rising seas and extreme storms, I guess.

Obama and Republicans Agree on Something!

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 11:03 PM PDT

The Washington Post reports on "possible common ground" between Obama and congressional Republicans on cutting Medicare costs:

In particular, participants say, the president told House Republicans that he was open to combining Medicare’s coverage for hospitals and doctor services....Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, proposed much the same in a speech in February.

....While Mr. Cantor’s proposal got little attention at the time, its echo by Mr. Obama hints at a new route toward compromise — in contrast with the budget that House Republicans passed this month that has no chance of Senate approval.

That sounds like a mighty small area of agreement to me. Any port in a storm, I suppose, but it's a little hard to see how this leads to any kind of larger bargain.

Too Many Damn Charts: A Followup

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| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 7:49 PM PDT

Over at the Atlantic, Elspeth Reeve charts the rise of charts in the blogosphere. In particular, she charts the rise of "In One Chart" posts. I've modified the final bar in her chart to show the true surge in these posts over the past year:

One correction, though. She credits Ezra Klein as the likely inventor of this phenomenon, and that might be true. However, she credits Arthur Delaney for the recent appearance of "signs of a rebellion" against "One Chart" posts, and that's something I'd like to take credit for. It's true that my rebellion last year was technically against "Everything you need to know about [xxx] in two charts," but I think that's close enough.

In case you're curious, I'm only halfway joking about this. I love graphical information, so I hardly have any standing to complain about chart-heavy posts. But it really does seem as if they're being overused these days. Sometimes they're the best way to explain complex topics, but not always.