Things Stupid Americans Believe

Public Policy Polling released the results of a poll on widely-believed conspiracy theories. The key takeaway here is that there sure are a lot of really stupid Americans.

Here are a few gems:

• 58% of Republicans believe that global warming is a hoax. Evidently, Republicans don't know scientists very well. Getting three scientists to agree on where to have lunch would be a feat worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Pulling together 99% of scientists into a coordinated hoax would be an undertaking worthy of a James Bond villain. Then again, maybe they don't realize that James Bond is fiction. After all, look at the channel they watch for their "news."
• (As far as I know, the only people who are trying to pay scientists to have a specific opinion on global warming are on the other side of the argument.)
• 36% of Republicans believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. This is an old chestnut we've discussed here before.
• 22% of Republican voters believe that Obama is the Anti-Christ. Maybe they should take a closer look at Ann Coulter.

Book Review: How to Break a Terrorist

This book is a lively read about the experiences of an interrogator who does not believe in the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (aka torture).

Alexander was effective at extracting more accurate data more quickly than other interrogators using more questionable techniques.

Certainly the author has a point of view, but his years of experience in the field and his history of successful interrogations give him much more credibility than a bunch of blowhard chickenhawk politicians.

Wherever you stand on the issues of national security and the importance of human rights, you should read this book. It is a quick read, and the information is well worth the time.

Book Review: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

If you are looking for a good, comprehensive history of the financial crisis, check out Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail." If you would like a good trader-level history of derivatives or the crash, check out Lewis's "Liar's Poker" or "The Big Short," respectively.

"Colossal Failure" is somewhat interesting as an exploration of the mind of a typical Wall Street trader, but it certainly fails to provide the sort of analysis or history that is promised in the title and the marketing.

This book claims that the whole problem was caused by Roberta Achtenberg, the assistant secretary of HUD who pressured banks to explain why they were failing to lend to qualified minorities. The authors breathlessly inform us that no less a luminary than Jesse Helms had fought against her confirmation and referred to her as "that damn lesbian."

The insertion of that sentence into a brief 7-page explainer of the causes of the crash is a good example of the complete lack of depth shown in this book. The problem was those darned poor people who borrowed money, not the mortgage processors who failed to check backgrounds, the lenders who wrote predatory mortgages that were designed to fail, the investment banks who bought and securitized those mortgages and sold them under false pretenses, and certainly not the fault of people like the author who overleveraged the entire tottering enterprise by writing insurance policies (in the form of CDSs) against the default of mortgages that were always doomed to fail.

That's right, the authors believe that the fault for the crash belongs to minorities and their lesbian champion. No wonder Fox News spent so much time drumming up sales for the book.

In case I'm being too subtle here, let me try being just a bit more clear. This book is a self-serving paean to the career of a Wall Street trader who failed to take his seat before the music stopped.

NRA Resorts to Favorite Tactic: Lying

In the runup to the vote on the Manchin-Toomey amendment, the NRA resorted to a favorite tactic, outright lying, to try to sway the last few swing votes.

The NRA's press release after the amendment's defeat explicitly referenced this lie:

This amendment would have criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest citizens, requiring lifelong friends, neighbors and some family members to get federal government permission to exercise a fundamental right or face prosecution.

In fact, the amendment's actual language protected private transfers (ie, transfers that are not preceded by advertising in venues like publications or the Internet). Let's look at what the language actually said. The following is a specific exemption for transfers to family members:

the transfer is made between spouses, between parents or spouses of parents and their children or spouses of their children, between siblings or spouses of siblings, or between grandparents or spouses of grandparents and their grandchildren or spouses of their grandchildren, or between aunts or uncles or their spouses and their nieces or nephews or their spouses, or between first cousins, if the transferor does not know or have reasonable cause to believe that the transferee is prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm under Federal, State, or local law

So you'd have to be speaking about someone who is at least a second cousin before this exemption did not apply. Is the NRA really going to the mat to protect gun transfers between second cousins?

How about transfers to friends or neighbors? Politifact rated that claim "mostly false." Their opinion states:

The amendment specifically exempted family and friend transfers from the requirement to conduct a criminal background check. But it did extend the requirement to Internet and gun show sales. So only if a friend or family member purchased a gun in one of those settings would the background check requirement kick in. That’s a limited circumstance, to be sure.

Gun Wing-nuts Win Day

Despite the best efforts of Senators Toomey (R-PA) and Manchin (D-WV), a compromise bill representing a sliver of common sense was denied an up-down vote on the Senate floor.

This bill represented an effort to require background checks for gun show and internet gun sales. Some public polls show 90% of the public supporting this type of regulation.

GOP Defends "Socialist" Pork

One unexpected reaction to Obama's budget proposal has GOP legislators opposing privatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

This is ironic because the GOP has repeatedly criticized the TVA program as "socialist" and called for its privatization. But Obama's proposal to save $25 billion by privatizing the program is being opposed by Republican legislators from several Southern states.

Stephen Smith, an advocate for alternative energy, notes the irony.

"For the first time that I'm aware of, you've got a Democratic administration proposing the sale of TVA and simultaneously you've got significant, conservative federal representatives in the House and Senate defending their local socialist project. There's a lot irony in it and little bit of humor actually."

Senate May Approve Some Gun Background Checks

Some gun groups are coming on board a compromise firearms background checks bill.

The compromise was reached between Senators Patrick Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). It requires background checks for purchases at gun shows and Internet sales, but exempts private sales. (Some gun groups had objected that a stricter background check would make it illegal for a father to give his son a heirloom gun.)

(Previous article on this subject: Nobody Plays Politics Better Than The NRA)