News Machine

ABC and CBS on Tuesday night picked up on the cause of a small anti-health insurance industry protest in DC organized by left-wing labor groups, but instead of denigrating them as the networks with did with much larger Tea Party and anti-ObamaCare rallies, the two newscasts empathized with their cause, each relaying an anecdote about a victim of the current system. Both ABC’s Jonathan Karl and CBS’s Nancy Cordes did, however, proceed to point out the small profit margin for health insurance companies.

“Taking their cue from President Obama, protesters took their complaints about insurance company premiums and excess profits to the insurance industry and the streets,” ABC anchor Diane Sawyer announced. Karl noted the ideology of the “coalition of liberal groups” and recognized “the attacks are pretty harsh. They’re accusing the insurance company CEOs of bribery, money laundering and manslaughter.” But he then showcased “Leslie Boyd, whose son Michael died of colon cancer after he couldn’t get insurance or afford a colonoscopy.”

On CBS, Katie Couric set up the story on how “angry protesters targeted the insurance industry.” Cordes found “eleven-year-old Marcelas Owens” who “flew here from Seattle” because “his mother Tiffany lost her job and the health insurance that went with it after a prolonged illness caused her to miss work. She stopped going to the doctor and died at 27 of pulmonary hypertension.” The kid [in the screen capture] delivered a perfect soundbite: “She ended up passing away because she didn’t have the equal rights to health care as some people with more money.”

As for Sawyer’s “taking their cue from President Obama, protesters took their complaints about insurance company premiums and excess profits to the insurance industry and the streets” formulation, they were also taking their cue from her. In late February she took to World News to demand to know who will “keep insurance companies from jacking up premiums while making huge profits?” and touted “the growing outrage at insurance companies, the ones that raise premiums on ordinary Americans while racking up big profits.”

Monday night: “NBC Applauds Obama’s ‘Fighting’ Mode as He Catches Up with Sawyer’s Insurance Demonization”

The networks weren’t so friendly last year to anti-Obama protesters:

“ABC: Obama Critics ‘Driven By Refusal to Accept Black President’; NBC Trumpets Carter’s Racism Charges”

“CNN’s Situation Room Charges: ‘Racial Tinge to Tea Movement‘”

“Nets Disparage Protests: Getting ‘Ugly’ and ‘Unruly,’ Scold Limbaugh But Skip Pelosi”

A wrap-up of the coverage from April 15, 2009: “Tea Parties Hit with Hostile & Crude Media Response”

The stories on the Tuesday night, March 9 newscasts, transcripts provided by the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth who corrected the closed-captioning against the video:

ABC’s World News:

DIANE SAWYER: And now we go to Washington, the battle over health care reform reaching a heated fever pitch today. Taking their cue from President Obama, protesters took their complaints about insurance company premiums and excess profits to the insurance industry and the streets. And the industry fought right back. Jon Karl watched the confrontation unfold.

JONATHAN KARL: It’s now an all out assault on the insurance companies. The first salvo was fired by the President.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Every year, they raise premiums higher and higher and higher.

KARL: And today, a coalition of liberal groups took to the streets in Washington, marching outside an insurance industry conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DNC CHAIRMAN: This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?

KARL: The attacks are pretty harsh. They’re accusing the insurance company CEOs of bribery, money laundering and manslaughter. Among the marchers, Leslie Boyd, whose son Michael died of colon cancer after he couldn’t get insurance or afford a colonoscopy.

LESLIE BOYD, PROTESTER: I sat with him as he died, and I really thought my heart would stop when his did, and it didn’t. And so I do this now.

KARL: But while the protesters and the White House were blaming the insurers, the insurance companies launched an ad campaign blaming others in the health care sector for skyrocketing costs.

CLIP OF TV AD: Health insurance companies’ costs are only four percent of all health care spending. Doctors, hospitals, medicines and tests are the biggest slices.

ROBERT ZIRKELBACH, AMERICA’S HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS: There’s been almost no focus on the skyrocketing increases in the cost of medical care. You know, our members are seeing increases in hospital costs in some parts of the country by as much as 40 percent. Where’s the focus there?

KARL: For all the White House focus on insurance profits, the top insurance companies actually have a relatively low profit margin – about four percent last year – compared to 20 percent for drug companies and 29 percent for biotech firms. And consider this: While the top five insurance companies raked in $14.7 billion in profit last year, that represents just about one half of one percent of total health care costs. But there’s one number you can expect the White House to hit over and over again in the coming days – 128 percent. That’s the amount that the average American has seen their insurance premiums go up over the last 10 years, Diane, and it’s a number that far surpasses inflation.

DIANE: That’s a question of the premiums there. Thank you, Jon.       

CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: Now to the battle over health care reform and the push for a House vote by the end of next week. Emotions are running high on both sides of the debate, and, in Washington today, angry protesters targeted the insurance industry. Here’s Nancy Cordes.

CLIP OF PROTESTERS: Health care now!

NANCY CORDES: Supporters of health care reform descended not on the Capitol or the White House today-

CLIP OF PROTESTERS: What do we want? Health care!            

CORDES: -but Washington’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel where executives from the nation’s largest insurance companies were holding an annual conference. Eleven-year-old Marcelas Owens flew here from Seattle.        

MARCELAS OWENS, PROTESTER: No other kid should go through the pain that our family’s gone through.

CORDES: His mother Tiffany lost her job and the health insurance that went with it after a prolonged illness caused her to miss work. She stopped going to the doctor and died at 27 of pulmonary hypertension.

OWENS: She ended up passing away because she didn’t have the equal rights to health care as some people with more money.

CORDES: Inside the Ritz, attendees were well aware of the anger directed their way.

KAREN DAVIS, THE COMMONWEALTH FUND: We’re never going to have a rational system in this country if we continue the way we are now.

CORDES: The protesters were taking a page from the President who has made insurers public enemy number one.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people.

CORDES: Now insurers are pushing back.

CLIP OF TV AD: Health insurance companies’ costs are only four percent of all health care spending.

CORDES: They point out that the average profit margin for health plans is just over three percent compared to nearly 19 percent for drug companies. They argue it’s not their greed that’s driving premiums up but sharp increases in the cost of hospital stays, outpatient surgery, emergency room visits and specialty drugs.

KAREN IGNAGNI, AMERICA’S HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS: You know, just this whole notion of "find a villain, aim the rhetoric and go after them," but that doesn’t get anybody covered.

CORDES: But for anxious Democrats, health insurers make for an easy target, especially when they jack up rates by 20 or even 40 percent, Katie.

COURIC: Nancy Cordes reporting from Capitol Hill. Nancy, thank you.

In a clear sign liberal media elites are growing weary of the White House, comedian David Letterman went after President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel Tuesday evening.

During the "Top Ten" segment of the "Late Show," Letterman counted down the signs that Emanuel is nuts.

Before beginning the list, Letterman explained with shocking detail that this was precipitated by Rep. Eric Massa’s (D-N.Y.) assertion that Emanuel once cornered him in the Congressional shower room wearing nothing but an evil grimace.

Maybe most surprising, Letterman managed to lampoon the COS without once referencing to Sarah Palin (video embedded below the fold with transcribed list, h/t Story Balloon):

10. Every morning takes a leak off the Truman balcony
9.  President Obama smokes cigarettes; Rahm eats them
8.  Spotted today at Toyota dealership
7.  He’s leaving Obama to become a special advisor to Richard Nixon
6.  In a fit of rage, he snapped Dennis Kucinich in half
5.  Changing his name to Rahm Emanuel Lewis
4.  Refers to every cabinet official as "Clarkie"
3.  Recently got into heated policy debate with his stapler
2.  You mean, besides walking around D.C. naked?
1.  Even Andy Dick is telling him to chill  

Following "Saturday Night Live’s" pointed attack on the Administration this weekend, it appears broadcast network comedians and their writers are finally beginning to feel comfortable going after this White House. 

You know it. I know it. And everyone disgusted with the culture of corruption in Washington needs to make their voices heard on it. The watchdogs are crippled. CYA is the order of the day. The Beltway has changed nothing since the GOP scandals and is still acting blind, deaf, and dumb toward the Democrat scandals.

USA Today weighs in on the pathetic, corruption-enabling cesspool known as the House Ethics Committee:

What does it take for a member of Congress to get in real trouble with the House ethics committee?

Quite a lot.

In fact, only one lawmaker — Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. — has merited even a wrist slap since Democrats were swept into the majority in 2007 on a wave of voter revulsion to scandals engulfing Republicans in Congress. Back then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through more stringent rules, vowed stricter enforcement and famously promised to “drain the swamp.”

Well, she’s going to need a bigger pump.

So far, the supposedly invigorated bipartisan House ethics committee has:

– Handed down its limpest discipline, an “admonishment,” after finding that Rangel had taken two free trips to Caribbean conferences even though he should have known that big corporations indirectly financed them in violation of House rules.

The committee has yet to finish reviewing Rangel’s more serious ethical problems, such as glaring omissions on his congressional financial disclosure statements. (Pending the outcome, Rangel has taken a “leave of absence” from his powerful post as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.)

– Exonerated five others who took the same trips as Rangel. The committee bought their stories that they didn’t know about corporate sponsorship. Funny, conference photos show lawmakers standing in front of a bunch of corporate logos. Maybe they were blinded by the Caribbean sun.

– Essentially gave lawmakers a go-ahead to solicit campaign donations from business executives and lobbyists who apparently believe they’re paying for federal contracts. Last month, the committee cleared seven members despite the findings by an independent investigative panel that two of them — Reps. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan. — might have tacitly tied requests for campaign donations to legislative earmarks profiting specific companies.

As I pointed out last week, the ethics committee steamrolled the OCE in the Pete Stark case.

USAT adds:

The Democrats like to point out that they created an independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to investigate allegations, recommend action to the ethics committee and issue public reports. But they promptly emasculated their new creation by failing to give it subpoena power and ignoring its findings in several cases, despite evidence that members violated House rules.

No teeth, no reform. No reform, no change. The swamp overfloweth.

Share thoughts on the latest health care poll numbers: 68 percent now oppose passing the plan without GOP support.

Theoretically, the AP’s sample might support reconciliation eventually, if further attempts at compromise with the GOP failed. But that’s academic: There aren’t going to be any further attempts, and frankly I’m skeptical that many who oppose reconciliation now would come around to it down the line. After nine months of this garbage, who seriously believes that just a little more effort at detente will break the impasse? If you don’t want them to go it alone now, you don’t want them to go it alone period, so wavering Dems will simply have to swallow that 68-percent figure. Good luck, kids.

Are Dems stuck with the legislation, or should they just drop it and move on?

(Makestickers.com)

My column shines light on the Hail Mary strategy of the Demcare-peddlers: Quick, hide behind the children! Just a reminder that President Obama will be in St. Charles, Missouri today for a closed-door, invitation-only Kabuki health care speech to high school students and then he’ll be heading off for a fund-raiser with Claire McCaskill. Tea Party activists are organizing two counter-protests — get all the info on the who, what, where, when at Gateway Pundit.

The column notes two new developments — Hill buzz over some Senate Democrat leaders’ plan to attach the nationalization of student loans to the health care reconciliation bill and the use of a new, dubious poster boy for Demcare, Marcelas Owens. The story doesn’t add up, and as usual, anyone who questions the logic and holes in these anecdotes will be labeled a “stalker.” Been there, done that…

***

Desperate Dems cling to human kiddie shield
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Have you noticed something about the audiences that President Obama has cherry-picked to cheer his government health-care takeover road show? They’re getting younger and younger. Today, Obama brings the traveling campaign to St. Charles High School in St. Louis, Missouri for a closed-door, invitation-only speech. If he doesn’t end the endless “No More Time For Talk” talks soon, he’ll be peddling Democrat reconciliation tactics on Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob Squarepants.

But desperate times call for demagogic measures. True to form, the Obama White House is wielding the human kiddie shield as its last-stand defense for Demcare.

On Monday, Obama surrounded himself with a ticketed-only crowd of Arcadia University college students in Pennsylvania (sprinkled with purple-shirted officials from the Service Employees International Union, natch). The Washington-based commander-in-chief traveled outside his Beltway bubble to a campus bubble to trash the political climate which he leads.

“That’s just how Washington is. They can’t help it,” he pontificated as the idealist young students nodded like empty bobbleheads. “They?”

You won’t be surprised by Obama’s biggest applause line of the speech: Peddling a Big Nanny provision in the Senate-passed health care bill that requires insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26. Vowed Santa Obama: “If you’re a young adult, which many of you are, you’ll be able to stay on your parents’ insurance policy until you’re 26 years old.” Whoops and huzzahs erupted from the eager wards of the permanent, ever-expanding Nanny State.

As I’ve reported before, there are now an estimated 20 states that have already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children. The slacker mandates cover “kids” ranging in age from 24 to 31. And it’s these very government health care mandates that contribute to rising health care costs.

But there was no time for higher learning at Arcadia University. Out: education. In: adulation. “I love you!” screamed a cult follower in the stands. “Love you back,” Obama responded.

Now, comes word from The Hill that Senate Democrat leaders want to graft Obama’s single-player plan to nationalize the student loan market onto the Senate health care reconciliation bill. That way, Obama’s college-age foot soldiers can argue that a vote against Demcare is a vote against The Children.

How low can they go? One of President Obama’s youngest lobbyists – 11-year-old Marcelas Owens of Washington state – traveled to D.C. on Tuesday on the dime of astroturf group, HCAN (Health Care for America Now). His 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. According to the family, Ms. Owens – a single mother of three — lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She received emergency care and treatment throughout her illness, but died in 2007.

Young Marcelas – goaded by his left-wing activist grandmother and promoted by Democrat Sen. Patty Murray — is now a regular on the pro-Obamacare circuit and is leading a congressional sit-in until the Democrat plan passes. He admits he doesn’t understand the complexities of health insurance reform and doesn’t “think it’s anyone’s fault” that his mom passed away. “But they could have done more” for her, he says.

It’s a heart-wrenching story, but the tale raises more questions than it answers. Washington state offers a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas’s mom. Why didn’t she enroll? Second, she died nine months after she reportedly lost her health insurance. By the time she lost her coverage through her employer, she was apparently already in dire health straits. It’s not clear that additional doctors’ visits in the subsequent months would have prevented her death.

All that said, the Owens’ case demonstrates the flaws of the employer-based system of health insurance. It needs real reform. Unfortunately, the current crop of Democrat plans would leave the employer-based system fully intact. What we need are grown-ups to start over from scratch and leave the kids on the playground.

What’s a principled stance on the life of an unborn fetus if it means achieving the be-all and end-all victory for liberal ideologues - a government intrusion into health care? According to The Nation’s Chris Hayes, it’s just "one giant obstacle."

Hayes, filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC’s March 9 broadcast of "The Rachel Maddow Show," didn’t seem impressed with Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. Stupak, who has a documented history of having a pro-life position on abortion long before so-called health care reform was even a possibility, has been taking heat from left-wingers in this political battle. But according to MSNBC, it’s just his "15 minutes of fame."

"If health reform is finally going to happen this year, Democrats have one giant obstacle standing in their way, his name is Bart Stupak," Hayes said. "Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak from Michigan has threatened for the last week to pretty much anyone who will listen, to bring down the health reform bill if the anti-abortion language he prefers is not in it. And Bart Stupak says he’s not just speaking for Bart Stupak. He is speaking for the Stupak dozen."

At issue is whether or not Stupak can push through language into a House health care reform bill similar to that in an amendment that passed back in November in the House’s first go-around that won the vital support of pro-life Democrats and even one Republican. Stupak vowed that necessary support would not be there this time to MSNBC’s "Hardball" back on March 3.
"There are at least 12 of us who voted for health care who have indicated to the leadership and others, and unless you fix this abortion language, we can’t vote for a final version of the bill."

This impediment apparently has some on the left frustrated because it would violate a key constituency’s stance. The pro-abortion movement that has some strong Democratic allies in the U.S. House and opposes restrictions on abortion, at least as it pertains to federal funding. Determining precisely what Stupak insists upon had Hayes perplexed.
"As Democrats in the House scramble to find every last vote they can to pass health reform, a 12-vote block committed to voting no just might be the single biggest obstacle they face," Hayes said. "And so Democrats have apparently started negotiating with Congressman Stupak who told reporters yesterday, quote, ‘I’m more optimistic than I was a week ago … I think we can get there.’ So where exactly is there?"

Stupak has maintained his intentions are not to expand or restrict current law on abortion despite receiving strong opposition from those in Congress who maintain any language on this issue would be a setback.

If anyone was looking for a self-righteous extreme feminist, they found one in Angie Jackson. This is a woman who was so proud she was aborting her baby that she announced she would "tweet" her chemical-cocktail abortion live, as it happened, on Twitter. The liberal media found this made-for-TV slaughter fascinating, and not at all a controversy worthy of discussing with two sides.

Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff proclaimed: "One hundred thousand people have watched Angie Jackson’s abortion. Late last month, Jackson posted a video of herself to YouTube, recorded after she took RU-486, a medication used to end pregnancies." Kliff asked only "why shame remains" about the act of killing one’s baby. Jackson was honored for her courage in "demystifying" and "destigmatizing" the procedure: "We need 10,000 more of her," proclaimed Peg Johnston, chair of something called the Abortion Care Network. This desire for 10,000 more unashamed abortions is what "pro-choice" is all about.

Overall, this was just another classic tale from the "news" magazine that lamented 20 years ago that "Sadly, many home [abortion] remedies could damage a fetus instead of kill it." What about the pro-life side?

Newsweek devoted just one sentence to Silent No More, a website where women tell a different abortion story, and now speak publicly of their shame and regret. But women are increasingly coming forward everywhere, just like the original "Jane Roe," Norma McCorvey, publicly admitting the horror of their actions, genuinely penitent – and genuinely forgiven. But their stories aren’t deemed "newsworthy."

CNN interviewed Angie Jackson on the morning of March 8, and they were explicit in rejecting any notion that Jackson deserved a rebuttal. Anchor Kyra Phillips declared after the interview that "as you can imagine, we received a lot of response about even doing this story because abortion is such a controversial issue, and we really didn’t want to get into a debate about abortion, but rather, look at what people are doing now, using social networking."

That’s a unique concept: abortion is so controversial that we feel it’s best to only let one side talk, the side that’s taking a child’s life on camera.

CNN claims these days that they are the sober and neutral center between MSNBC and Fox News, but there was nothing neutral about their sympathy for Angie Jackson. Phillips rushed to proclaim that the most savage part of Jackson’s abortion was the pro-lifer comments.

"These are really harsh," the anchor warned. "But people wrote in and said – they called you all kinds of names, from being a whore to someone who just couldn’t keep her legs closed. They called you a baby killer. I mean, it’s even hard for me to say these things because some of those- the e-mails and the responses were so brutal."

As brutal as an abortion? Worse than that, Phillips never acknowledged that pro-lifers most certainly filled Twitter (and the heavens) with their hopes and prayers for her. CNN cannot deny those e-mails were there.

CNN also showed some of Jackson’s horrific YouTube video, where she admitted that her baby had the "potential" for life, "but it [it!] was more likely to kill me, and you’re not going to shame me….I do not feel sorry that I saved my life. I do not feel sorry that I stayed here for myself, for my boyfriend, for my kid that I’ve already got."

CNN didn’t define that sentiment – or lack of it – as "really harsh." CNN never told their viewers that Jackson’s nom de plume on Twitter is "Anti-Theist Angie." Nor did CNN consider the "brutal" contents of Jackson’s Twitter page to be worth commentary. Here are some examples of statements Jackson "retweeted" as worthy comments about Jesus after she popped up on CNN:

"Who would Jesus do? He’d totally do Anti-Theist Angie just to prove a point to those who sully his/her name."

And: "Where would Jesus donate? To science-based education, and better abortion techniques!"

And: "Jesus hates the little women, all the women of the world."

To their credit, when ABC’s "World News" hyped this story on February 28, they at least allowed conservative Cathy Ruse of the Family Research Council to declare "Your heart breaks for this woman. And I hope that it doesn’t encourage, I hope that what she’s doing won’t encourage others to take this path." ABC’s online story also allowed a few paragraphs of pro-life argument.

ABC weekend anchor Dan Harris noted Jackson was an "outspoken atheist," and quoted her saying "I hope everybody on YouTube has a great and godless day. Peace."

Jackson said she was four weeks pregnant when she aborted her child. The technology now exists to see just about every human feature – eyes, hands, feet, even the human nipple – on a "fetus" one inch in size, and only two weeks older. Peace.

On Tuesday’s The O’Reilly Factor on FNC, during the show’s regular "Pinheads and Patriots" segment, host Bill O’Reilly picked up on Dan Rather’s recent gaffe connecting "articulate" President Obama with "selling watermelons," as the FNC host gave on-screen attribution to NewsBusters as his source while a clip of Rather’s words from Sunday’s Chris Matthews Show played.

O’Reilly then observed the double standard between the likely media interest if a right-leaning personality like himself made such a statement which seems to employ racial stereotyping versus the lack of interest in such words being uttered by the left-leaning Rather.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, March 9, The O’Reilly Factor on FNC:

BILL O’REILLY: On the pinhead front, listen to Dan Rather on President Obama.

DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case – and a lot of independents will buy this argument: Listen, he just hasn’t – look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority, and it took him forever to get it through, and he had to compromise it to death. And a version of, listen, he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate – this is what’s going to be used against him – but he couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him watermelons to flag down the traffic.

O’REILLY: Now, if I had said the word "watermelon" within a 100- mile radius of President Obama, I would have been hammered beyond belief by the liberal press. And you know it. But not a word about Mr. Rather, who really didn’t mean anything derogatory, in my opinion. But you can decide if he’s a pinhead.

The AJC’s Cynthia Tucker blogged today about a testy exchange we had last summer on ABC’s “This Week” regarding government unemployment benefits and the effect that endless extensions have on reducing the incentive to seek a job. Once again, she mistakes standard economic arguments for moral judgments: “Does the right really believe the unemployed are lazy?”

What offended Tucker’s sensibilities was the blunt manner in which I summed up taxpayer-subsidized inducements: “If you put enough government cheese in front of people, they are just going to keep eating it.”

As I said in August and reiterated last week during the Bunning Senate floor showdown, the question is where do we draw the line? There is no such thing as a “temporary” entitlement in Washington and there are precious few politicians willing to challenge the permanent, ever-expanding Nanny State (quoting from the WaPo article: “under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates — the longest period since the program’s inception.”)

None other than Paul Krugman of the Fishwrap of Record acknowledges that generous unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek jobs.

As he put it exactly:

“Everyone agrees that really generous unemployment benefits, by reducing the incentive to seek jobs, can raise the NAIRU” [the minimum rate of unemployment consistent with a stable inflation rate].

“Everyone agrees.” “Everyone?”

Tell it to Ms. Tucker. Or the nutroots and Democrat demagogues who went bananas when Sen. Jon Kyl basically said the same thing last week.

Or, um, perhaps Paul Krugman should tell it to himself. Last August, he sniffed that “Ms. Malkin’s theory of unemployment is no crazier than what’s coming out of some of our leading universities.”

Or out of crazy textbooks like…this one authored by none other than Paul Krugman and noted by the WSJ’s James Taranto:

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”:

Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.

“What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”:

But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”

Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view–but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”

What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics”:

Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries. (emphasis added)

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.

It seems Krugman himself lives in two different universes–the universe of the academic economist and the universe of the bitter partisan columnist. Or maybe this is like that episode of “Star Trek” in which crewmen from the Enterprise switched places with their counterparts from a universe in which everyone was the same, only evil.

Like Spock, the evil Krugman is the one with the beard.

Krugman argues that right now the situation is different because unemployment is high. His position seems to be that the need for short-term stimulus trumps longer-term worries about raising the NAIRU.

The problem, as more learned economists than I will point out, is that once you’ve established that unemployment benefits will be extended during recessions, then that policy gets incorporated into workers’ expectations. And you can’t easily undo those expectations once the economy improves.

But never mind all that. Evil conservatives hate unemployed people! Bad, bad conservatives!

Michael Ramirez imagines a shower encounter with Rahm Emanuel, inspired by a classic of American culture. Note that his vision has the virtue of allowing Rahm to remain fully clothed (not to say, costumed). Does anyone know whether Rahm has a collection of stuffed birds? Or a fruit cellar? Is he turning the White House into the Bates Motel? If I were lurking around Washington, I wouldn’t take any chances. Click to enlarge: