Democrats win! 25% of Democrats think Bush "intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place because he wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East" (that is much more specific wording than previous polls so there is less "it's fair to say Bush knew" wiggle room) and 12% are not sure. But a full 42% of Republicans are positive the President was not born in the United States and 22% just cannot make up their minds about where the President, who was born in Hawaii, was born.

And self-declared "independents," once you take away the genuine libertarians and socialists and Greens and fascists who make up .01% of the electorate, remain mostly white conservatives who voted for Clinton once.

(We continue to assert that truthers—while stupid and wrong—are not as "bad" as birthers.)

These calorie labels have done precisely nothing to stop us from ordering multiple chili-cheese dogs at Nathan's, but, then, we're also known to have a 135 calorie (and a mere 4.4% alcohol-by-volume) Yuengling for lunch, so maybe consumers can be rational, with more education.

The Big Max [TBM]

The Organisation for Economic Co-operating and Development released their "Society at a Glance" numbers and now we get to confirm all sorts of stereotypes about everyone, with actual numbers and charts and stuff to back it up!

Basically Americans are fat and joyless and we hate the children we keep pumping out. And for some reason we're the only country that's not getting taller anymore. What's even more fun is that all these numbers are pre-recession, so things have totally only gotten worse!

This graph from Think Progress shows that Republican members of congress appeared on cable news way, way more often than Democrats this last Monday through Wednesday. That isn't a great deal of time, but it's telling that the GOP so outweighed Democrats during a period in which incredibly important and divisive legislation was on the line. And, hah, look at liberal MSNBC!

There are perfectly legitimate reasons for the disparity, of course. Conflict is better TV than compromise, so disagreeing with the President is more "newsworthy" than sticking with him. Furthermore bookers and producers at all those networks would probably tell you that they'd love to have Democrats on, but Republicans all return their calls faster. This is also a holdover from the 12 year period in which Republicans did control congress—the Republicans have more TV experience, more relationships with more shows and networks.

But, you know, those legitimate reasons are the stuff that ingrained institutional bias is made of. And so the complaints and politicking of a powerless minority are disproportionately treated as important and relevant, regardless of the fact that their only real strategy for solving America's problems right now is symbolic obstructionism.

(Also big lulz at Fox being the closest to balanced—conflict is good TV, of course their conservative hosts want to argue with liberals congress members!)

Oh no! The financial sector exploded! The market is, uh, failing! "What do we do" is the response of, like, economists. Politicians know the important question is "WHO DO WE BLAME." So liberals jumped on deregulating Conservatives and President Bush and evil Wall Street fatcats and so on. Conservatives, oddly, also blamed most of those people, except for a small but vocal subset who blamed this collapse of everything on... poor black people?

Several days ago, Neil Cavuto, host of Fox News' Your World, proclaimed, "Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."

On WorldNetDaily, a compendium of loopy half-truths, pundit Drew Zahn declared that "when federal regulators demanded parity between racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve a quota would be to begin making intentionally bad lending decisions."

The conservative National Review Online trotted out a favorite whipping boy, the Community Reinvestment Act, claiming that the legislation was the result of "racially inflammatory campaigns" that forced banks to "make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets or credit."

The CRA option has the bonus of pinning blame on black people and Bill Clinton!

But, hah, none of this is true, at all. The CRA just affected banks and thrifts, which are regulated. "The heart of the crisis was caused by unregulated and lightly regulated mortgage brokers and independent mortgage bankers and affiliates that are not subject to the CRA," says law professor Michael Barr. Tyler Cowen puts it thus: "Did policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act significantly worsen the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse? Basically not, although in my view these were bad policies for other reasons." There's your talking point, and he provides some supporting evidence.

Our favorite debunking comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I know very little about economics, but I know quite a bit about people. 1.) Folks who use single cause logic to explain gigantic complicated phenomena are almost always lying, ignorant or children. 2.) Folks who peddle victimology for giants ("the banks were forced to do it") while decrying the victimology of individual humans ("the white man forced me to do it") are also usually just lying. The Blame The Negroes (BTN) theory satisfies both criteria.

He goes on from there on the "ugly history" of the sort of argument the CRA thing represents. As always, he's worth reading.

But, of course, through the fault primarily of greedy lenders, many of the worst subrime loans went to minorities. ("The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research group, examined 50,000 subprime loans nationwide and found that blacks and Hispanics were 30 percent more likely than whites to be charged higher interest rates, even among borrowers with similar credit ratings.") So the crisis hits homeowning minorities disproportionately (culture of ownership!). A good, serious, liberal 'bailout' bill would renegotiate the terms of those mortgages and keep those homeowners out of foreclosure. The Paulson bill didn't have that, but the Dodd-Frank-Paulson bill had some (arguably mostly cosmetic) provisions to protect homeowners.

Still, the bill was largely seen as more helpful to Wall Street than, in the memorable words of last week's Weekend Update, Martin Luther King Boulevard. Black members of Congress felt pressure to oppose the bill from Black talk show hosts and their constituencies, because the bill was seen as, you know, welfare for rich whites while they get nothing. And, hilariously, the white right-wing voters who called on their GOP Members to vote against the bill presumably now think the money was needed to bail out the blacks who got us in this mess. And the Jews who own the banks!

So the Congressional Black Caucus voted 18 pro, 21 against the bailout bill. Which is not quite decisive but it's still telling.

And did work on the Bailout bill really need to stop completely during the Jewish holy days? Even leaving aside the important work of Banking Committee chairman Barney Frank, Jewish congress members voted 20 in favor and 9 against, so presumably their absence would've made the final vote even more decisively against.

(Remember, of course: Black and Jewish congressmen are more likely to be Democrats, and thus more likely to support the bill to begin with. And keep in mind also regional differences!)

SO to sum up, a Democratic bill needs more Black support to win without Republicans, who we should probably just give up on because they think Black people are to blame for this.

We're in stasis. Silly season. It's media Groundhog Day, replaying and debating the same stories and narratives over and over again. Sometimes they'll switch the players around—now McCain's on top! But we're still in the post-primaries hangover. Once that campaign finally ended, Obama got his requisite little bump and then things evened back out. But the campaign stories now are just an excuse to pass the time.

The citizens who care about politics were already energized by the primaries. As those dragged on, the likely voters all made up their minds. The undecideds and uninformed maybe grew briefly interested or invested, but by the end they were burned out. The campaigns they don't want to energize everyone again until the final leg of the battle, so for the most part they're treading water (Obama) or just throwing shit out to see what sticks (McCain).

The majority of Americans, even the ones who probably will vote this year, are not going to pay attention again until the conventions provide something interesting to look at. Those of us who are still obsessing over every little campaign detail are just torturing ourselves. The polls will remain in stasis until Denver and St. Paul, then we get to actually see where this godforsaken nation is heading.

In the meantime, enjoy your stupid Paris Hilton videos and tire gauges and trips to Sturgis and surprisingly pleasant Entertainment Weekly interviews (McCain loves Viva Zapata, the forgotten Elia Kazan/Marlon Brando collaboration. Obama says Shrek 3 was "not as good at the original.").

October 2006: The Inevitable Hillary Avalanche Begins Rolling Down the Mountain of Victory Former Virginia Governor and, for a brief time, the Democratic Party's Great White Hope Mark Warner dropped out of the race before it even began. At the time, rumors of a sex scandal briefly percolated, though he might've just had his hopes dashed by that notoriously terrible Times Magazine cover.

Guess what that meant! Hillary Clinton was now pretty much the "inevitable" nominee. But! "With Sen. Clinton likely to have the endorsement of most of the party liberal bigwigs, labor unions and activists, the expectation has been that one other Democrat will emerge as the anti-Hillary candidate in the presidential primaries." Another but! "Of course, politics abhors a vacuum, and someone will become the anti-Hillary candidate in the primaries. But given a lack of other Southern Democrats of Warner's stature, it is unlikely that candidate will have his potential to change the electoral map."

Also in that October (a year-and-a-half ago! Christ!), Senator Barack Obama said he'd consider a run for the presidency. Conventional wisdom was still divided on whether he was dumb enough to go through with it, but he was now the official anti-Hillary.

And in that same October the first Clinton-related OUTRAGE happened, with Elizabeth Edwards saying she'd had a happier life than Hillary Clinton, code for "better husband" and also "I am not a cuthroat ambitious bitch." At least that's how the Clintons spun it.

December 2006: Which Well-Spoken Fellows Will Decide to Lose To Hillary This Year? Obama's not-quite-campaign was the focus of much speculation. In a Tribune interview, Obama amusingly said that any match-up between him and McCain would be spun as "War hero against snot-nosed rookie." Little did he know it would be spun as "crazy old coot versus secret Muslim!"

It basically went on like that for another couple months—Clinton was still the inevitable candidate, John Edwards was someone you might have to watch out for in Iowa, and Obama was the anti-Hillary (unspoken: he'd end up like Howard Dean).

2007: Still Ridin' the Hillary Express, Next Stop The White House, Again Hillary was still inevitable, according to analyses linked by such guardians of blog conventional wisdom as Andrew Sullivan and Matt Yglesias. She had passionate reservoirs of support. The only people who didn't like her were the internet people who wanted Edwards or Richardson or maybe Obama (once again, shades of 2004 and Howard Dean).

Summer '07: Follow the Money! It Leads, For Some Reason, to Someone Other Than That Inevitable Gal! Then, in July of 2007, something odd happened! "Obama's money puts Clinton's 'inevitable' nomination in doubt" was how CNN put it. Obama's fundraising beat Clinton's throughout the "invisible primary" (the money race the year before any voting). BUT! "Howard Dean won the invisible primary in 2003, but was effectively finished a few weeks later after he came in third in Iowa." Silly internet candidates! Hill's inevitability was now "in doubt", but only pretend doubt.

But Obama kept raising more money, and gaining in the polls in Iowa, and then Hil "stumbled" in the October '07 debate.

Iowa: Hillary Loses Her First Thing Ever Then Obama won in Iowa and suddenly idiots were saying he was inevitable, especially since Clinton came in a miserable third place and surely Obama would go on to sweep New Hampshire.

Why Don't You Cry About It?

The inevitability argument didn't work! So Hillary moved on to "experienced" and also "human." Yes, she is human. She proved this with crying, which led to a lot of fairly offensive commentary and also a stunning New Hampshire victory that wasn't stunning because everyone had predicted it until Obama caught them off guard in Iowa. Then it was an open race! Where "open" means "between two people."

Then there was "I'm your girl" and the comeback narrative and things were swinging back toward Hillary's superior campaign machine and experience and Obama-as-Dean.

Well, That Scary Black Fellow Won Something Once Too, You Know

Obama came in second a couple more times in unimportant states, but then destroyed Hillary in South Carolina—Bill said something about Jesse Jackson and suddenly the campaign was about race! That was perhaps the strongest whiff so far of the "Hillary DESPERATE" narrative.

The Super Friends! But February's Super Duper Tuesday was supposed to end the campaign! For good! Specifically California and New York! It did no such thing. Obama "won" more states, but Clinton seemed to hold on to a delegate lead.

Wait, There's Math Involved? Except! Obama's campaign then did one of the smartest things they've ever done: they told every news outlet that, using "math," they calculated that they had more delegates than Clinton. And it turned out they probably did! This ended up on Drudge and has remained true ever since.

Oh My God Remember When Texas and Ohio Were Supposed to Finally End This Fucking Death March? When Hillary "won" Texas and Ohio a month later, the cable news chatterers all duly scored it in her column, but the next day's stories all pointed out once again that that nasty Obama delegate lead wouldn't go away.

It's Been Over For a Month-and-a-Half But It Would be Sexist to Tell Her On March 4, 2008, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter came out and said, explicitly, that Hillary could "win" every state yet to vote and she'd still never beat Obama's delegate lead. This was the official start of the "Hillary can't win, at all, and she's just in it for [insert conspiracy theory here]" narrative. The best the Clinton campaign could do to fight off that story was to try to woo superdelegates (underhanded! shadowy party bosses subverting democracy!) and try to make Obama melt down (Republican tactics! tearing the party apart!).

SINCE APRIL: Bittergate, Reverend Wright, and Secret Muslim Rumors dogged Obama. West Virginia proved to be full of racists. Bill Clinton had a couple meltdowns. But the narrative was unmistakably shifted as May ended: Hillary was done. Now people just wanted to know why she kept campaigning. Finally, as June began, the Associated Press announced that Barack Obama had officially won the nomination.

Clinton still hasn't conceded, but Obama is expected to give his victory speech tonight regardless.

Then Bill Clinton is expected to shout something angry at anyone who will listen.

Hillary will almost certainly "win." Probably by a little bit or maybe a lot, but Obama is already managing the expectations game, just like Clinton does so well, so it could eventually be spun as anyone's win or loss. Oh, and also, she can't bridge the pledged delegate gap no matter what she does, so all she can really do here is convince Superdelegates that this last week and Pennsylvania's primary proved that Obama's a big failure. She'll need a pretty large margin, probably, especially since she didn't manage to get as much political traction out of this bitter thing as she'd hoped.

But this will all continue more or less unchanged for another two months, probably. And then McCain will win and we will have war with everyone, forever, or at least until McCain is felled by a rage-induced aneurysm and VP Charlie Crist is forced to take over. Then it will basically be a nonstop gay pride parade in America.

Some excerpts:

The Factor remained puzzled by the approach of some zealots. "I think you can dissent about the Iraq war, but do you think it's patriotic to come on TV and accuse the US of mashing a baby's testicles? I think slander is unpatriotic."
-3/19/07

So the [Houston] Chronicle believes that showing coffins will lead to more respect for our valiant troops? A cynic might say this is a ruse, that the Chronicle wants to show coffins to add more emotion to the Iraq debate. An honest reporter might then ask the Chronicle what it has done to respect the U.S. armed forces. The Chronicle contributes to charities, but has not given one penny to any veterans organization.
-2/8/07

Wednesday's Patriot: Sears CEO Aylwin Lewis, who is doing everything to make Sears a friendly place for employees who are military veterans. And the Pinhead: Model Heidi Klum, who pretends her breasts are machine guns in an ad for Victoria's Secret.
-11/28/07