Slowly, all-too-slowly, the press corps is adjusting to the fact that, when it comes to mendacity, the two parties are not symmetric. Grunwald points out why doing so is both hard and essential:
GOP’s up-is-downism puts news reporters in an awkward position. It would seem tendentious to point out Republican hypocrisy on deficits and Medicare and stimulus every time it comes up, because these days it comes up almost every time a Republican leader opens his mouth. But we’re not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Did Mitt infect the GOP with this malady or v/v?
I suspect the fact that an area of Arctic ice greater than the USA melted this year, doesn’t help them catapult their bullshit either.
That vitally visual little chunk of info went out to every newspaper reader in our great drought-encumbered land…
I’m not sure if sending Sean Hannity outside with a flimsy umbrella, into 2013’s first great blizzard to chuckle about global warming, is going to pick up the GOP team any easy yards. We may have reached the point where they can’t “push the envelope of stupid” any further along. We’ll know as soon as it snows a ton somewhere. Which is all to suggest: The GOP are liars and losers, and one’s main obligation in life these days, is doing everything possible to prevent them from allowing the world to drown in a bathtub…
We need a version of the space race for nuclear power. If France can get 85% of its energy from nuclear power it should be a point of national honor for us kapitalist ‘muricans to beat The Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys. Set it up like a WPA program and use our “reserve army of the unemployed” to build out our nuclear capacity as fast as safely possible.
There’s no reason we should still be burning fossil fuels for energy.
I can’t understand why conservatives think that global warming’s disastrous effects will spare their grandchildren.
>>We may have reached the point where they can’t “push the envelope of stupid†any further along.<<
Wishful thinking. Two out of three people are more gullible than you can possibly comprehend.
Look to your left. Look to your right. If it ain't you, it's them.