House of Eratosthenes

Mitt Romney may have won the first presidential debate, but what stuck in many people’s minds was his threat to fire Big Bird. Apparently, Romney thinks America’s debt problem can be fixed by picking up pennies along Sesame Street.

Pressed to explain how he would balance the federal budget while cutting trillions of dollars in taxes, the allegedly masterful debater offered up just two specifics: He would repeal “Obamacare” (even though the Congressional Budget Office says the healthcare act actually reduces deficit spending) and eliminate the federal subsidy to the Public Broadcasting System.

Directly addressing beleaguered debate moderator Jim Lehrer, the former anchor of the PBS “NewsHour,” Romney said, “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS…. I like PBS, I love Big Bird, I actually like you, too, but I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for.”

Romney went on to say he would save additional money by tossing popular federal programs back to the states (the same states that do not have enough money to operate the programs they already have) and by making “government more efficient” (the same boilerplate assurance that every candidate for even the lowliest office offers up when he has no real clue how to fix a budget).

So, after many long months of campaigning and promising to cut the deficit while also cutting taxes, the single genuine and specific spending reduction Romney has stipulated is the one one-hundredth of a percent of federal expenditures that helps pay for Big Bird, Downton Abbey and the rest of the PBS lineup. Defenders of PBS were quick to point out that eliminating the federal subsidy for public television would trim an amount equal to just six hours – 360 minutes – of spending at the Pentagon.

You want my honest, honest reaction — not as a blogger or political ideologue, but as a citizen? I’ll give it to you, exactly the way it popped into my head: “Downton Abbey too? I’m paying for that?? WTF??”

Big Bird The trouble with the argument really all boils down to just this: In the fourth paragraph there is a defense offered for the continuing spending, at the federal level, on the strength of these programs being “popular.” In the fifth paragraph there is another defense offered on the strength of proportions, the “just a drop in the bucket” line of reasoning. The problem is that when the bucket has been upgraded to such a size that can hold everything that happens to be popular, what you’re left with is a bucket so huge that everything outside or inside is a drop, by comparison. And that’s when you need to bring in an experienced business executive like Romney. Even if you hate him personally, or hate Mormons, or whatever…none of that stuff matters anymore, because the fiscal discipline has gone missing and someone needs to bring it back.

It’s like this. I remember many years ago when Dr. Laura Schlessinger was on the air. A married woman calls her up looking for advice on how to handle her “verbally abusive” husband. Now, Dr. Laura was even more jaded against the idea of lazily conflating verbal abuse with the physical and sexual counterparts, than I am…and I don’t like this idea at all, myself, for the simple reason that the definition of verbal abuse is essentially non-existent, everything spoken could be reasonably included in it. Definitions must define, that is their job, if they don’t define things then they are useless. When everything is included, nothing is.

Well — it emerged that the wife had announced her decision to lose some weight, and then she proceeded to watch her favorite teevee shows, on the couch, eating chips. Like the columnist above defending Sesame Street and Downton Abbey and everything else that’s “popular,” she made the argument of proportions. It’s just chips! She didn’t say there was dip involved. Actually, she didn’t say there wasn’t, either…

Dr. Laura made the obvious point, and it further emerged that this is all the husband was saying, as well: Look lady, you’re either trying or you’re not. When you want to lose some weight, and your idea of passing the time every night is to watch the idiot box eating chips, there’s a problem. Well the same thing applies to these subsidies. We’re either worried about the deficit or we’re not. If we’re still coming up with creative new ways for the federal government to spend the loot that it borrows from China, then we’re not trying, it’s as simple as that.

And I don’t think anybody heard anything different from Governor Romney’s comments last week. Romney’s not losing a single vote over this. He could shoot Big Bird in broad daylight, set the body on fire, piss on the flames, set it on fire again, and it would only help his campaign.

Why are the progressives so out of touch with the rest of America? Because most people are rational thinkers when they’re hurting; they stray away from truth, logic, and common sense if & only if they feel like they can afford to do so. Progressives, on the other hand, are intractably fastened in their minds to the idea that the progressive way is the right way and all other ways are wrong…furthermore, that anyone & everyone who shares their biases and their outlooks on political matters is automatically cool and popular, not only that but smart as well. So they figure — hey let’s play this up! Romney is gonna kill Big Bird! In their little rooms with the big doors locked up tight, and all these “special” people helping them plan everything, I’m sure that makes a lot of sense.

It isn’t going to work because out here in the real world, people go in to Wal Mart and Target and what do they see there? That little slut Elmo, whoring himself out like there’s no tomorrow. So Elmo is a capitalist, but Big Bird somehow has to be on welfare. It doesn’t compute, and ultimately it doesn’t work. And that effectively destroys the whole argument about “all of PBS is six hours of military spending,” the proportion nonsense. The military can’t sell merchandise through Wally World; also, ya know, funding a military is something the federal government is supposed to be doing. Look it up, folks!

There is a long standing pattern going on in the history of American politics, in which the political left is riding high whenever it’s in emotional sync with the rest of the country, and once it loses this tactile bond with the mainstream it loses it real big. In other words, they’re great at calculating the political gain to be exploited when their finger happens to be on America’s pulse, but once the pulse is lost they’re really lousy at finding it again.

I think that trend is continuing here. They’ve lost the pulse and they can’t find it again.

“(even though the Congressional Budget Office says the healthcare act actually reduces deficit spending) “

Again, the CBO just crunches the numbers Congress gives it, using assumptions Congress makes. Garbage in. Garbage out.

And I’m PRETTY SURE that one of the primary, enumerated roles of the federal government is, in fact, defense — and defense is expensive — and none of the enumerated roles of the Federal Government is funding things like Big Bird. It’s not Big Bird himself, it’s the entire notion, the entire school of thought, the worldview that thinks Big Bird should be subsidized by the Federal government.

And nobody’s saying “fire” him. They’re just saying Sesame Street and PBS in general can make it on its own, and it should. And if it can’t … then people aren’t that interested in it and we shouldn’t be funding it by taxing people who don’t give a rats rear end about it.

This from a guy who LOVED Sesame Street.

When a lot of people started questioning the federal funding of PBS/NPR after the firing of Juan Williams, one of the big retorts was “well, not that much of their budget comes from federal funding ….” their point being why so stingy you’d cut this piddly amount? And my immediate reaction was well, cool, then, you don’t really need this piddly amount anyway, then — why the panic?

I just read that Sesame Street alone is worth $140 Million a year in merchandising. If some Nickelodeon Cartoon was making that much and the feds went to subsidize it, the libs would be crying “Corporate Welfare!!!!!”

But apply it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting … and … never mind, nothing to see here.
- philmon | 10/09/2012 @ 07:22
most people are rational thinkers when they’re hurting; they stray away from truth, logic, and common sense if & only if they feel like they can afford to do so.

Bingo. What do these cities have in common: Berkeley, Austin, Portland, Madison, Ann Arbor….? They’re simultaneously among the most progressive, richest, and whitest metro areas in America. In other words, those people who are so full of burning zeal (and collectivist schemes) to help poor people and minorities are also, in their personal lives, those least likely to encounter them. This is the enabling fantasy of liberalism: that everyone can afford to live like I do, because all it takes is money. (“If we took the cost of just one stealth bomber, we could fund midnight bastketball programs in seventeen inner cities for twenty years!”).

In this case, “Sesame Street” is the epitome of clueless lifestyle liberalism. It makes enough money off merchandising to keep the entirety of PBS afloat, but we need to fund it via taxes, because only the government can spread basic numeracy and the importance of believing in yourself.
- Severian | 10/09/2012 @ 09:57

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Romney Could Shoot Big Bird in Broad Daylight, Set the Carcass on Fire, Urinate on it to Put the Flames Out, and Not Lose a Single VoteTuesday, October 9th, 2012

Romney Could Shoot Big Bird in Broad Daylight, Set the Carcass on Fire, Urinate on it to Put the Flames Out, and Not Lose a Single Vote
Tuesday, October 9th, 2012