Brendan Nyhan

The myths that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that he is somehow associated with Osama bin Laden continue to spread:

The sign in front of a small church in a small town is causing a big controversy in Jonesville, S.C.

Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God.

It reads: “Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?”

Byrd said that the message wasn’t meant to be racial or political.

“It’s simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ,” he said.

When asked if he believes that Barack Obama is Muslim, Byrd said, “I don’t know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim? I don’t know. He says he’s not. I hope he’s not. But I don’t know. And it’s just something to try to stir people’s minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody.”

The New York Times reports that the presidential candidates all appeared on WWE Raw last night. The results, which are summarized in this YouTube clip from the WWE, were not pretty:

The full, cringe-inducing videos of the candidates’ appearances are below the fold (via CQ’s Craig Crawford). Apparently, the way to a WWE fan’s heart is to parrot wrestling catchphrases.

(more…)

Surprisingly, The Rockridge Institute, the think tank of George Lakoff, has shut down. I’m not sad to see them go — I’m no fan of Lakoff or Rockridge, which we criticized in the conclusion to All the President’s Spin — but I would have assumed that Lakoff’s status as the (false) prophet of framing would have made it possible to raise money from big liberal donors.

Barack Obama, who has criticized the politicization of science under George W. Bush, is doing some politicizing of his own. Yesterday, he joined John McCain in pandering to the vocal and well-organized lobby of parents who believe the increase in autism diagnoses is caused by vaccines:

“We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.”
–Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008.

“It’s indisputable that (autism) is on the rise among children, the question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines.”
–John McCain, Texas town hall meeting, February 29, 2008.

Obama is wrong to say that “The science right now is inconclusive.” As the Washington Post Fact Checker points out, “the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion is that there is no proven link between autism and the vaccines which include a mercury-containing preservative known as thimerosal”:

At least five major studies have found no link between autism and thimerosal. A study released by the California Department of Public Health in January found that the autism rate in children rose continued to rise even after vaccine manufacturers stopped using thimerosal in childhood vaccines after 2001.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “there’s no convincing scientific evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.” Similar conclusions have been reached by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Food and Drug Administration.

Update 2/2/15: This post has been widely circulated today after news about Chris Christie and Rand Paul made comments pandering to anti-vaccine sentiment. A video of the appearance that I do not remember having seen at the time this article was written in April 2008 indicates that Obama’s reference to “this person included” was an acknowledgment of an audience member. His language in context also suggests that his statement that “[t]he science right now is inconclusive” is intended to refer to the causes of autism more generally. I still object, however, to describing the science as “inconclusive” in the context of a reference to the vaccines-autism myth. As Sarah Kliff wrote at Vox, Obama “describe[d] the research on vaccines and autism as inconclusive at a point when scientists had found the opposite: that there was no link between the two.”

Today’s New York Times Magazine is a “green issue” that is full of interesting and clever ideas for reducing carbon emissions, especially at the individual level. But the issue is ultimately frustrating to read because most of the ideas (which are often complicated and difficult to implement) will never come into wide use without better incentives. For instance, there’s no way that most individual consumers will ever have the right information to make good decisions about “carbon footprints.” We just need a carbon tax, which uses the price signal to disperse information and align incentives. The whole issue should have been two sentences long.

Can we all agree that ABC’s Charlie Gibson should stop pretending to understand economics? Here’s what he said at the latest Democratic primary debate:

-“Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent and George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent and in each instance when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money.”

-“So why raise it [the capital gains rate] at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected.”

But as the folks at the Center and Budget and Policy Priorities point out, that’s not accurate.

Cutting capital gains rates reduces revenues over the long run. That’s the conclusion of the federal government’s official revenue-estimating agencies, as well as outside experts and the Bush Administration’s own Treasury Department.

-The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that extending the capital gains tax cut enacted in 2003 would cost $100 billion over the next decade. The Administration’s Office of Management and Budget included a similar estimate in the President’s budget.

-After reviewing numerous studies of how investors respond to capital gains tax cuts, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service concluded that cutting capital gains taxes loses revenue over the long run.

-The Bush Administration Treasury Department examined the economic effects of extending the capital gains and dividend tax cuts. Even under the Treasury’s most optimistic scenario about the economic effects of these tax cuts, the tax cuts would not generate anywhere close to enough added economic growth to pay for themselves — and would thus lose money.

Let me state that again. Once again, the supply-side argument has been undercut by the administration’s own economists.

Of course, that didn’t stop John McCain, who has frequently claimed that tax cuts increase revenue, from making the same argument on ABC’s This Week today:

MCCAIN: And [Barack Obama] obviously doesn’t understand the economy, because
history shows every time you have cut capital gains taxes, revenues
have increased, going back to Jack Kennedy.

The Wall Street Journal also made the same claim in an editorial Friday (subscription required). It’s sad to see the mainstream media giving life to this kind of supply-side foolishness.

Update 4/21 1:06 PM — Time’s Justin Fox points to more contradictory evidence from former Bush administration economists (via Mark Thoma):

ut on this particular topic I tend to rely on professors at fancy universities who have served in the current Bush administration, because I figure it’s hard to dismiss their verdict as political. The current consensus of this crowd is pretty well reflected in a 2004 paper by Greg Mankiw, the former chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Matthew Weinzierl, which concluded that “for standard parameter values, half of a capital tax cut is self-financing.”

Last week Tim Russert debunked Bill Clinton’s misleading explanation of Hillary Clinton’s false claims about a trip to Bosnia with a gusto that has been missing for most of the Bush years.

As Josh Marshall points out, that fact-checking gusto was also missing this week when Russert repeated the false claim that a picture of Barack Obama with his hands at his sides was taken during the Pledge of Allegiance.

The common denominator in both cases is that Russert’s actions fit with the prevailing narrative. Everyone is suspicious of Bill Clinton’s factual accuracy, so his statements get extra scrutiny. Similarly, Russert’s question today drew upon the GOP/Clinton narrative about Obama:

David Axelrod, based on the last couple of weeks, many Democrats fear Republicans in the fall will string together an ad which shows Michelle Obama saying that she really never had pride in America until this campaign when Barack Obama was running, Barack Obama with his hands clasped in front of him rather than holding his heart during the pledge of allegiance, Barack Obama not wearing a flag pin, Barack Obama talking about clinging to faith and to guns, suggesting—Barack Obama meeting with Bill Ayers, a former Weather ground under—Weatherman underground figure. Are you concerned that all those kinds of issues could be strung together to create an impression of Obama that would make him almost unelectable to a lot of swing voters?

Most media fact-checking is narrative-driven in this way. Many of the Al Gore “lies” were embellished versions of minor misstatements he made that received great scrutiny from hostile reporters. Because those “lies” reinforced prevailing narratives about Gore, they were parroted by the talking heads. By contrast, as we discussed in All the President’s Spin, President Bush was generally seen as personally honest so his misleading claims about policy received little attention. John McCain is now getting similar treatment.

Still, none of this excuses Josh Marshall’s insinuation that Russert intentionally smeared Obama:

With his supposedly crack research staff, how does Russert manage to make a mistake like that? Where’s the retraction and apology? Or is it intentional?

It’s the latest instance of a long pattern of Marshall suggesting what he can’t prove. Josh, please stop.

A week ago I argued that the creation of the Analyst Institute, which describes itself as “Moneyball for progressive politics,” is an important indication that political organizations are finally starting to take measurement and experimental evaluation seriously. Here’s another sign — a group called Progressive Clarity is looking to hire two political methodologists to do similar work. Watch out, old guard…

I’m not one of those people who sees media bias in every picture choice by newspaper editors, but Chelsea Clinton has been getting a bad deal lately.

First, Politico ran a story on her press aide, Philippe Reines, that included a picture of him standing behind her looking like a psycho:

Then a critical Los Angeles Times story on her taking “[d]ramatic license” in her anecdotes included this unflattering picture:

I understand the incentive for editors to choose the most attention-grabbing picture, especially when it reinforces the theme of the article, but these are just awful.

I couldn’t make myself suffer through yet another silly debate, and it seems like that was a good decision. As Media Matters notes, “[n]umerous media figures have criticized George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson, moderators of the Democratic presidential debate on ABC, or the subject matter of the event, in part or in whole, as ‘shoddy [and] despicable,’ ‘specious and gossipy,’ ‘cringe-worthy,’ ‘banal,’ consisting of ‘tabloid trivia,’ ‘flat-out repulsive,’ ’embarrassing,’ ‘seem[ingly] slanted against [Sen. Barack] Obama,’ ‘shameful,’ and ‘an outrage.’” Reading the list of questions makes clear what a horrifying event it was.

The problem is the intersection of three factors:

1. The media’s commercial incentive to entertain rather than inform;
2. Journalists’ professional incentive to display voice, debate the horse race, and avoid “boring” policy issues;
3. Ongoing efforts by almost ever major figure in network news to avoid being accused of liberal bias (for example, Tim Russert going on Rush Limbaugh’s show, George Stephanopoulos going on Sean Hannity’s show, etc.).

#3 seems to be the most important factor explaining the difference in tone and content between the Republican and Democratic debates. Even Rush Limbaugh admitted yesterday that the questions were harsh.