The West Wing on the debt ceiling. The US is the only country in the world that engages in this absurd posturing. Open thread below....

A lovely tune. Whatcha listening to tonight?

Red Wing
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Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Sunday offered a defense of conservatives on her network who suggested that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could have been faking a concussion in order to delay testimony on attacks in Benghazi, saying that the conspiracy theories were put forth "before she was hospitalized" with a blood clot.

In December, Republicans like former Florida Rep. Allen West and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton — and numerous other Fox News personalities — had repeatedly mocked Clinton by suggesting that her illness was a manufactured “diplomatic illness” or “Benghazi allergy” to avoid testifying before lawmakers.

After the Daily Beast published an article which incorrectly said that Van Susteren was also peddling conspiracy theories about Clinton, the Fox News host took to her blog to demand that the website "CORRECT THIS PRONTO — and do so in a BIG WAY."

"Of course I will accept an apology but I’m more interested in the TRUTH getting out and that I did not make this crack about the Secretary of State," she wrote, stopping short of also calling on conservatives to apologize to Clinton.

On Sunday, ABC News host George Stephanopolous offered Van Susteren another chance to appeal for a retraction from West, Bolton, Laura Ingraham and others.

"I'm responsible for what I say, number one," Van Susteren explained. "Those were all very dated, before she was hospitalized. And there was not much information coming out of the State Department and very early on with those quotes."

"Look, not for one second did I doubt it," she added. "Once these people heard that she was seriously ill, that all changed. The secretary of state will have to -- should answer questions about Benghazi. There's a lot of mystery... I have nothing beyond to say to that."

I admit that I was stunned to see Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein on the guest list for Reliable Sources this week. Mann and Ornstein's book placed very pointed blame on the media for failing Americans in presenting the truth of the extremism of the Republican Party. So how could the king of the false equivalency, Howard Kurtz, handle having on such dead-on criticism on his show?

By pretending that he isn't part of the problem, natch. And then a little blaming-the-messenger suggestion to dismiss the allegations:

KURTZ: Well, this is a striking message coming from the two of you, because you've both been around Washington a long time. You do have a reputation as being kind of centrist, even though you're different kinds of think tanks.

But at the same time, I just have to wonder, maybe you just don't like where the Republican Party has gone. I mean, after all, the people who represent the Republicans here in D.C. were elected by constituents who want them to do what they're doing. And so this is more of an ideological message on your part as opposed to calling out the press for supposed bias.

MANN: It could be, but I don't believe it is. We don't do that kind of analysis and --

KURTZ: You do it right here. The Republicans are extremists. Republicans are radicals.

MANN: But look to see how we back it up. I mean, we really look at arguments made and there's no truth content to them.

Wait...facts backed up by evidence? Thems alien concepts to Kurtz. And to the rest of the Beltway media, which Kurtz never internalizes. In fact, I've never seen him more invested in not internalizing what's being said or following up on questions in an interview. Clearly, Mann and Ornstein have hit too close to home.

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Tea party backed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday insisted only Democrats were threatening default on the debt even though he has vowed not to raise the debt ceiling until Congress passes a balanced budget amendment.

"Let me be very clear about this," Cruz told Fox News host John Roberts. "I do not support default on the debt. We should never default on the debt, and the only players on Washington who are threatening default on the debt are President Barack Obama and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid."

"In any given month, federal tax revenues are approximately 200 billion a month, interest on the debt is 30 to 40 billion dollars a month," the Texas Republican continued. "There is plenty of revenue to service the debt. And any responsible president would have stood at that podium and said, under any circumstance -- whatever happens with the debt ceiling -- we will always pay our debt, we will never default on the debt."

"And the reason the president isn't doing that is he's trying to scare people, he is trying to raise the spectre of a financial apocalypse."

A petition on the Ted Cruz for Senate campaign website calls on Congress to "hold the line" and prevent any debt ceiling increases without a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. constitution.

"I will stand with conservatives across the country in telling Congress not to raise the debt ceiling without a Balanced Budget Amendment," the petition states.

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This Week with George Stephanopoulos notes the passing of one service member, killed in Afghanistan:

US Army PFC Markie T Sims, 20, Citra, FL

According to iCasualties, the total number of allied service members killed in Afghanistan is now 3,253.

In addition, the following notable names lost their lives this week: artist Michael Patrick Cronan, GA state politiican Hugh Gillis, singer Patti Page, American Chickasaw Nation diplomat Charles W. Blackwell, supercentenarian Mamie Rearden, economist Stephen Resnick, Saudi royal Nayef bin Abdulaziz bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and football player Bryan Stoltenberg.

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Dancin' David Gregory had on his favorite washed-up politico on his roundtable: Newt Gingrich. Again.

And Newt is doing his damnedest to put a good spin on the inexcusable fact that the House delayed voting on the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. It wasn't that they didn't care about the good people of New York and New Jersey, mind you, it was because the bill was laden with pork, donchaknow?

I think it's, this will clearly distinguish the two parties. That bill, 64% of it did not spend out in the next two years. 31% of it had nothing, nothing, zero, to do. The train came through and the boys said, "Let's throw the pork on the train." It came out of the Senate as-- exactly why the country's now sick. This is not emergency spending.

[..]

E.J. DIONNE:

--four states, who said they needed that bill--

NEWT GINGRICH:

Yeah, they of course they want any bill. They don't care how much extra the rest of the country spends as long as they get what they want. I understand that. That's local politics in a crisis. I think the House should have passed a purely stripped down reform bill that met everything for Sandy and nothing for the pork. Now the country would have understood clearly doing that. And I think the House is not moving at the speed it needs to.

Well, sure the country would absolutely understand stripping pork out of the bill. I mean, that bill was intended to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy and it would be unconscionable for some Senator to throw some unrelated spending project on top of it, delaying the relief so desperately needed.

Except....

Fox News is continuing its hunt for "pork" in a Hurricane Sandy relief bill blocked by House Speaker John Boehner, claiming that the bill included $600 million for the Environmental Protection Agency to address climate change. But the funds in question actually focused on ensuring affected states' access to clean water, a crucial issue in the wake of the storm - and emblematic of future consequences of climate change.

Rep. Boehner recently canceled a vote on a Sandy relief bill, prompting heavy criticism from some members of his own party. He later reversed course and called for a vote on $9 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program, with another $51 billion in relief spending to be voted on later.

Let's be clear, just because Republicans can't understand why improving wastewater systems or Amtrak lines (heavily used along the Eastern seaboard hit hard by Sandy), doesn't necessarily make it pork. There were undoubtedly extraneous spending projects in the bill (as there are in EVERY bill and one of the few bipartisan actions Congress is capable of), but that's not why Boehner didn't put the bill up for a vote and every single person at that table knew that. But delaying relief for victims who are now dealing with mold and other potentially life-threatening issues because Boehner is afraid of the extreme fringe of his own party is absolutely a dereliction of his duties.

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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) says that gun buyers should face background checks for concealed carry handgun permits but not assault rifles because "it's about freedom."

During a Sunday interview on Fox News, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) explained to guest host John Roberts that even people on the terrorist watch list could purchase assault rifles like the Bushmaster AR-15 that was used to slaughter 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut.

Jordan, however, insisted that "more restrictions on law-abiding Americans is not going to prevent these kind of tragedies."

"We've got to remember the Second Amendment is about freedom," Jordan opined. "And that's what we've got to focus on as we move forward. If there's ways outside of this [background check proposal] that we can help address the situation, fine. But we've got to remember it's about freedom. And, frankly, you've got to remember that bad guys aren't stupid, they're just bad."

"This isn't about restricting people, this is about common-sense provisions," Van Hollen replied. "For example, right now we have a background check but there are big loopholes in the background check. Do you want to get rid of the background checks, the criminal background checks?"

Jordan noted that he had supported background checks and training courses for concealed carry permits.

"So, why not make that universal?" Van Hollen wondered. "Let's join each other in making sure we get rid of the loophole, so that everybody that purchases a gun must have a background check. Would you support that?"

"You've got to remember what the Second Amendment is about: It's about freedom," Jordan remarked.

"So if you've broken the law and committed a violent act, you should be able to go out and buy a semi-automatic assault weapon?" Van Hollen pressed.

"You shouldn't be able to get a concealed carry permit, that's for darn sure," Jordan quipped without answering the question.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) vowed on Sunday that Republicans would force significant spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling even if President Barack Obama had to be "dragged kicking and screaming."

"What we're saying is that the biggest problem facing the country is our excessive spending," McConnell told NBC's David Gregory. "We've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue, and now the question is will the president lead? Why should we have to be bringing him to the table?"

Gregory pointed out that trillions of dollars in spending cuts had been part of last year's Budget Control Act and Republicans had refused to accept significant cuts in entitlement programs as a part of a larger deals offered by Democrats going back to debt ceiling negotiations in 2011.

"You can re-litigate the past if you want to," McConnell laughed. "I wish the president would lead us on the discussion rather than putting himself in the position of having to be dragged kicking and screaming to discuss the single biggest issue facing our future. You know, until we adjust the entitlements so that they meet the demographics of our country, we can't ever solve this problem. The time to solve it is now."

"The president proposed significant entitlement cuts, Simpson-Bowles said he did it, though they would have like him to have gone farther," Gregory observed. "But Republicans would not agree on revenues going back to last summer... You can't say he's been dragged kicking and screaming when he has proposed those entitlement cuts."

"No, he has not!" McConnell shot back. "He hasn't embraced any significant proposal here in public to deal with significant entitlement changes."

The Kentucky Republican also insisted that any additional revenue through tax reform would be off the table going forward.

"That's over," he explained. "I'm in favor of doing tax reform but I think tax reform ought to be revenue neutral as it was back during the Reagan years. We've resolved this issue."

I remember many, many years ago when my dad decided to buy an old house for the rental income. The house itself was built at the turn of the last century and had originally been the servants quarters for a much larger house down the street. It was a charming little cottage, but required a lot of renovation before my dad could lease it out. But the one thing that my dad didn't count on was his largest expense: lead paint removal. The entire house, inside and out, was painted using lead paint. The contractor warned my dad that this 50 year old paint job could be killing us as we stood there, with lead dust flaking off the walls and into our lungs. That was all it took for my dad to remove my brother and I from the site and to sigh that his investment didn't seem as smart as it did at first.

I was reminded of that event when I read Kevin Drum's article this week in Mother Jones' on the correlations of lead toxicity and violent crimes, lower IQs and even ADHD.

The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn't paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.

Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.

So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

And with that we have our molecule: tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive invented by General Motors in the 1920s to prevent knocking and pinging in high-performance engines. As auto sales boomed after World War II, and drivers in powerful new cars increasingly asked service station attendants to "fill 'er up with ethyl," they were unwittingly creating a crime wave two decades

Amazingly simple and yet compelling evidence. Rick Nevin has written a similar piece showing the same correlations in other countries. Per Drum, Nevin forecasts:

• The USA violent crime rate is now down about 50% from its peak in 1991, and I expect that the violent crime rate in Western Europe will be down by about 50% from its peak over the next 20 years, with the largest part of that decline over the next ten years.
• Eastern Europe will follow the same trend, but will take a few years longer because they left gasoline lead levels quite high through the end of the Soviet era.
• Crime will also plummet over the next 10 to 20 years in Latin America, where leaded gasoline use and air lead levels fell sharply from around 1990 through the mid-1990s.

It would be interesting if we took a far more holistic approach to these issues, looking at environmental issues as much as punitive measures.