Piss Poor Policy

The two main stories of the day are the sequester "patch" to allow planes to take off on time and the growing calls to do "something" in Syria.

These are examples of the short term thinking that grips Washington (and Wall Street, too, as if there were meaningful distance between the two).

The sequester is inconveniencing wealthier people by delaying flights. So they fix that.  Meanwhile, Head Start is in trouble, Meals on Wheels is in trouble, Medicare cancer treatments are in trouble...

But rather than use the FAA problem to force a longer term fix on other aspects of the sequester, the Democrats caved.  Admittedly, they are exceptionally skilled at this.  However, when we look at the Senators who voted against background checks, we see that the public is pissed at them.  My guess is that picking a fight with the Republicans over the sequester would win support for the Democrats.  People instinctively link the GOP with shutdowns and austerity programs, so starving granny would hang on them like an old suit.  Instead, they forfeit today and give up any leverage they have for tomorrow.

With Syria, the increasingly bellicose language from neo-cons in particular has led to greater calls to intervene.  But what exactly would that intervention be?  What would its endpoint look like?  Are we looking at Libya 2.0 or Iraq 2.0?  Who knows?  Just do something!

You can go on and on: the hunger strikers at Gitmo because we refused to shut that place down five years ago when the Senate collectively peed its pants.  The desire to keep building tanks, even though the Army isn't asking for any.  Climate change?  What climate change?

The problem is we have one party who is completely post-policy.  The GOP doesn't govern anymore, they just try and cut taxes.  And the other party is craven.

As Charlie Pierce says so often, "This is your democracy, America.  Cherish it."

Let's See If This Trend Continues

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/29/1205595/-The-evidence-that-opponents-of-expanded-background-checks-made-a-serious-mistake-keeps-mounting

Senators who went against the will of the people are showing declining poll numbers.  Sadly, probably only the Democrats will pay a price in 2014.  But it will be interesting if Reid brings the bill back up and see if anyone changes their tune.  Maybe make a cosmetic change or two and get to 60.

And then watch it die in the House.

Springtime

Had our first really glorious day of spring.  There was an Earth Day fair at school, where we dropped a small fortune, only to spend even more outfitting my son's new turtle with a new home.  Got some yardwork done, stayed away from schoolwork for a day.

Nice.

Anyway, if you missed Nerdprom, here's the highlight:

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/watch-obamas-speech-at-wh-correspondents-dinner-video?ref=fpb

Yeah, Pretty Much

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/4/27/94432/1763

Saturday

Make kids breakfast, get kid's hair cut, teach an hour and fifteen minute class, practice for a musical performance, work the track meet, run the kids over to soccer, finish the track meet, catch the second half of the game, get the boys cleaned up, find a babysitter, go to music night, perform, stay sober, relieve wife around 10pm in the school duty office, finish duty at midnight.

Mi sposa: Teach an hour class, teach a 45 minute class, take boys to swim lessons, go to an away game, coach the game, come back, school duty until I relieve her.

And that's a Saturday.

And we wonder why people burn out.

Just 50?

http://jezebel.com/50-reasons-you-despised-george-w-bushs-presidency-481313794

Betwixt And Between

Waiting for either Chris Berman to shut up during the NFL Draft tonight or the asteroid to come and wipe off all life from this blue planet of ours.

After a few hours of Berman, I might favor the latter.

Been Saying This For Years....

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/gop_quits_public_policy/

Rand Paul Is a Fool

And so is anyone who makes common cause with him.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/23/1204296/-Rand-Paul-reverses-position-supports-drone-killings-of-American-citizens-on-American-soil

The Printernet

As the Koch brothers plot to buy up a bunch of major newspapers (because buying congressmen isn't giving them sufficient yield), the common thought in Left Blogistan is "Let them!  Print is dead."

There is truth to that, but that truth should come with some sadness.

I no longer get many magazine subscriptions.  I used to get The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Men's Journal and National Geographic.  Now I just get Esquire.  And frankly, I read a fair amount of Esquire online already.

This is because I no longer have the time to luxuriate in a New Yorker article on the Bloomsbury commune or alcohol consumption among Peruvian Indians.  So why bother?

But the result is that my reading world has gotten smaller.  Every year I use a George Packer article from The New Yorker on Lagos.  I would venture that it is one of the readings that has the deepest impact on kids, and I never would have found it on my own.

Blogs have the power to embed things, and that's a nice way to broaden your reading world, but that ultimately becomes an example of epistemological closure.  Your reading tastes take you to similar things and you lose that random article on conservation in Siberia that would never have crossed your path if you hadn't cracked open National Geographic.

And if the Koch Suckers buy up newspapers, then that process will accelerate.  True journalism - rare as it is - that investigates and "tells truth to power" is already disappearing.  Turning some of the few decent papers in America into corporate shills will only draw the lines tighter.

So, yes, buying the LA Times is unlikely to create the rapacious libertarian free for all that the Kochs so desperately desire.

But it will impoverish our intellectual life just a little bit faster.

Imminent Threat And Miranda

A lot of pixels are being spilled over what the impact is of not reading Tsarnaev his Miranda rights.

A lot of it is based on speculation and assumptions of worse case motives on the part of the DOJ.  Libertarians - especially on the left - are basically assuming that they are waterboarding Tsarnaev on his hospital bed.  Oh, I'm sorry, did I create a straw man?

Anyway, my main question is this: are any of the questions that they ask Tsarnaev under the "imminent threat" exception admissible in court?  And even if they are, are they necessary?

Finding out if there are other bombs and co-conspirators seems a good idea to me.

However, I hope they Mirandize him as soon as possible to keep Lindsey Graham's request for a special flight to Gitmo from getting any more traction.

Dzohkhar Tsarnaev is a criminal who killed or was complicit in the killing of four Bostonians and the maiming of dozens more.  Today in Seattle, there was a shooting that left five people dead.  Five, in case your math is rusty, is more than four.

Treat Tsarnaev as the criminal he is, not the monster he wishes he might have been.

Annnnnd We're Back

Just got back from Virginia where we picked up Thing One from the indulgent grandparents.  Apparently, he was staying up until 3 AM watching The Exorcist, Caligula and My Pretty Pony.  The horror.

I'm sure that early morning alarm for school will be just peachy.  The good news is he was an excellent grandson, which we knew already.

UPDATE: I'll let Charlie Pierce - emblematic Bostonian that he is - have the last word:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/night-in-watertown-cemetery-042013?click=pp

Returning To Normal

Everything is returning to normal here in Watertown.

Because we are in Connecticut.

Motive

Screw you, Fear.

As the manhunt in Boston hopefully circles in and catches Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the next question inevitably becomes: "Why?"

The elder brother was clearly influenced by an apocalyptic strand of Islam that Al Qaeda heavily referenced.  But the younger brother hasn't been shown to have the same affiliations.  The family - at least the father - is still in Russia.  Dzhokhar appears to be a very intelligent boy (and he's a boy) who's had success here in the United States.  Tamerlan - the elder brother - was clearly more alienated and isolated.

So far five people are dead, including Tamerlan.  I hope that number stays at that level.  (The number in West, Texas will be a multiple of five, sadly.)

The Clinton Administration was derided by the Bush Administration for treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue.  But if we are moving to a new normal of various forms of terrorist attacks - from Jared Loughner-type mentally ill people to lone wolves like Tamerlan Tsarnaev - we need to steel ourselves to the fact that acts of mass violence are not done with.

And they will never be done with.

And we have to respond to them quickly, forcefully but with perspective.  Adam Lanza killed 27 people, including his mother.  We can't pass background checks.  But I fear what may come from a nation periodically traumatized by events like Boston.

This is what I mean by the Israelification of terror in the US.  Israelis live in a constant state of vigilance, but they also live free and normal lives.  We have to get over the bedwetting fear that encompasses many quarters of our body politics if we are going to survive this era in our history.

Almost all types of violent crime are dropping, except for these mass events.  And the very nature of these mass events - their randomness, their awfulness - make them more indelible.

And we can't let that happen.  In his remarks yesterday, President Obama was right.  We can't given in to fear.  We have to run the marathon again next year and the year after that.  Well, not me personally; I'm too fat and my feet are shot.

But the motives of these two young men, one barely more than a boy, will be hugely important in making sure that we react to this crime, not overreact.

UPDATE: I'm not going to try and keep up with this, but this report (half way down the post) about the older brother being a "loser who deserved to die" (and this was his uncle) gibes with my thinking that this alienated, sociopath older brother got his younger brother mixed up in all this.

Stuff

In case you missed the update below, check out this from the Bruins game last night.

Also, the President's remarks were very good today, and I think I may want to expand on the basic idea ingrained in Boston's response - what I might call the Israelification of America's response to terror attacks.

Finally, for giggles:

What She Said

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html?_r=1&

She may not be able to speak well anymore, but Gabby Giffords can sure be eloquent.

What he said, too.  Charlie Pierce is at his best when he's pissed:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/we-are-the-commonwealth-of-massachsuetts-041713

Ten kinds of awesome:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/04/boston_bruins_national_anthem.php?ref=fpblg

Righteously Pissed

I appreciate that he's pissed and he's right: citizens need to get vocal about this.  We all need to care.

Maybe he's setting the ground for it as a wedge issue.  Maybe.

But real filibuster reform would have made this whole outrage moot.

The 90% Solution

The US Senate at work.

Polls show around 90% of Americans approve of background checks for weapons purchases.

The Senate "defeated" a bill to - quite literally - do the least they could do to put in the least restrictive registry possible.  I put quotes around "defeated" because the vote was 54-46 (really 55-45 because Reid had to switch his vote for procedural reasons).

The NRA is a paper tiger, but their reputation won them another battle.  My hope is that people who care enough to keep weapons out of the hands of felons and the mentally ill will stay organized and defeat those who stood against this bill.  In particular, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Rob Portman of Ohio.  Those are not rural majority states where kow-towing to every burp and hiccup from the NRA should be a job requirement.

As for the predictable Democrats who voted against it, good luck raising money here in the northeast.  I hope Jon Tester wins, because he's better than the best Republican.  But I'll be damned if I write him a check like I did six years ago. Tester voted for cloture.  My bad.  Again.

(Edit: first version had Susan Collins voting against it.  She voted for it.)

Get Him A Column In The Washington Post

Patton Oswalt is among the funnier people in the world.  But this mini-essay on Boston is not funny, just awesome.

https://twitter.com/michaelhayes/status/323938816811483136/photo/1

Could Not Agree More

John Cole hasn't posted much on politics recently, preferring to be the internet's premier premature grumpy old man.  But his piece on Boston last night shows why he remains a really important voice on the Internet.  I'm going to cut and paste much of it, because I know he doesn't give a damn.

What happened today was absolutely horrible, make no doubt about it. Another dead child, hundreds wounded, and the worst thing I heard was that a lot of the injured were dealing with leg amputations, and many of them were runners who were in the bleachers after finishing the race. It’s just horrifying.

But I am done watching the coverage. I will, of course, follow the news over the next few days and weeks and months as we actually start to know something, but I am just not watching the death porn and overt rumor mongering on the cable channels. I’ve known journalism students. Many of them are not very bright. They don’t get better as they age and get cozy sinecures at CNN or Fox or MSNBC. I can internally recognize how bad this attack was without having to watch Chris Matthews on a high blood sugar kick saying crazy stupid shit. I simply refuse to let this dominate my life. Again, it is horrible, but I am not going to let the media work me into a froth.

I’m safe. You are safe. 99.999999% of the country is safe. But there never is a completely safe place, and there never will be. I refuse to let the terrorists win, and yes, this was a terrorist attack. We don’t know who did it, but it was a terrorist attack. Any time you plant bombs in a garbage can at a peaceful assembly, it’s terrorism.

But again, people all over the world deal with this every single god damned day. That does not minimize the tragedy, but like I noted earlier, 37 people were killed in Iraq. Today. And it is no longer even on the front page of the New York Times, and when it was earlier, it was just an AP/Reuters feed.

Again, I refuse to be scared. You should, too. I am going to sit here in my house and watch a show or two, then go to bed, and while I can commiserate with the wounded and dead and the horrible grief their loved ones must be experiencing, I am not going to spend the next couple weeks freaking out, because that is what the bombers and the war pig want. Remember, that much of the Patriot Act, which liberals claim to hate, was drafted by Clinton and the National Security State, and yes, Joe Biden, in response to Oklahoma City. We were lucky that we had a Democratic president then, because Republicans blocked much of it.

....

So do me a solid, and let’s talk about that while we sit here, safe at home, and while recognizing something horrible has happened and doing everything we can to help the people of Boston, let’s retain some perspective. You are safe. I am safe. For the most part, especially with the last few decades of declining crime rates, we are the safest we have ever been.

Remember that the next few days during the media frenzy, if you must watch. I would recommend you don’t. And I refuse to give up another right to prevent another “Boston,” but you know there will be calls to “do something.” We still take our god damned shoes off at airports because of a failed attempt. Lord only knows what is going to come down the pipeline now. The only thing we “need” to do is find the perpetrators, try them, convict them, and jail them for the rest of our lives as we go on with ours, and I have full faith that our collected government agencies can do this.

The bomber(s) isn’t the only one who wants you to be afraid. Remember that.

April

Waco. Oklahoma City.  Columbine. Virginia Tech.

Boston.

No Cheater Left Behind

One of the problems with "high stakes testing" is the tremendous pressure it puts on adults to produce certain scores on tests that assess along a narrow band of intelligence and education.  The Atlanta scandal is a great case in point.

Michelle Rhee has been a leading voice for high stakes testing and "holding teachers accountable".  John Merrow - whom I've met, as he's an alum of my school and frequent speaker here - unloads a huge can of whupass on her legacy.

This - in conjunction with a presentation I saw on Friday by Dr. Howard Gardiner on multiple intelligences - further confirms that high stakes testing tends to warp the educational process.  And as the parent of a kid who is quite intelligent in many ways, but struggles in others, I have to say that the sooner we can stab a stake through the heart of this pressure cooker, the better.

Damn....

Watch the video at this link.

Then read Charlie Pierce.

Then try to keep your last meal down.

Calling Central Casting

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/report-ex-official-now-prime-suspect-in-texas

The story is about those Aryan Nations asshats who have been killing law enforcement officials.

Click though and look at the prime suspect.  Tell me he isn't a Hollywood White Supremacist.  And riddle me this: Why do most White Supremacists look so decidedly un-supreme?  Is a frequent diner card at Denny's a membership requirement in the Aryan Nation?

My Senator

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/opinion/sunday/dowd-chris-murphys-gun-control-crucible.html?hp&_r=1&

Can't say enough of how proud I am to be represented by Chris Murphy and not Holy Joe Lieberman.  Anyone who can make Maureen Dowd stay serious for a whole column is a miracle worker.

Shocking Video Of Communist Deprivations!

Fast Start

The Braves are off to a 10-1 start and the Watertown U11 Strykers are off to a 2-0 start with Thing One averaging three goals a game.

Busy Busy Day

So I'll just leave you with the song on the radio this morning that almost made me feel good.

Obama's Grand Bargain Obsession

Jon Chait has a solid analysis of the desire for Obama to craft a "Grand Bargain".

Nut graph:

But here is the problem: Republicans surely grasp this as well. They don’t wantto clear away the black cloud hanging over Obama’s presidency. That black cloud is the only thing they have going for them. The recovery, while slow, is likely to churn along through 2014 and probably 2016. Obama has conducted his foreign policy in a popular way, has generally owned the center on social issues, and, thus far, escaped even the slightest whiff of scandal. For Republicans to stand beside Obama and announce that they have solved the “deficit crisis” would retroactively legitimize the entire Obama presidency. The hated stimulus, Obamacare — all of it could now be justified to skeptical centrist voters as necessary steps to achieve popular goals.

Yes.  This exactly.

Maybe this is one of the Eleven Dimensional Chess moments where Obama knows the GOP will spit the bit.  But I do honestly think they seem to think that this time may be different.  They seem to think the election taught the GOP something.

And I think that's fundamentally foolish.

Me, Me, Me

All they can see is the "i" in "team".

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/4/10/94348/1932

The GOP flacks are beating up on Melissa Harris-Perry because she basically said, "It takes a village."  Booman walks through the whole bullshit at the above link.

The fact is that the GOP is ultimately the party of selfishness.  Rob Portman supports gay marriage now, because his son is gay.  Sherrod Brown is also from Ohio and he supports gay marriage because he's empathetic enough to understand that LGBT couples simply want to be treated as well as everyone else.  It has nothing to do with Brown, but Portman has a self-centered interest in his son's happiness.

The extreme anti-tax rhetoric is less about what the top marginal rate should be, than on the very idea of taxation at all.  Why should MY money go to "X"?

Attacks on Obamacare?   Medicare and Social Security?  Hey, I have insurance and a nice 401K, screw everyone else.

Guns?  Screw the police, I need an AR-15 to protect my wife's Hummel figurines!

This also, frankly, explains why the GOP is becoming increasingly male and white.  Women and minorities are more dependent on community.  We has a psychiatrist talk to the faculty once and he said, "A man walks into a crowded room and wonders who he can physically best and who can best him.  A woman walks into the same room and wonders who can she trust and who she can't trust."  Women's little alliances may not be as stable as male friendships, because the dynamics involved are so myriad and shifting, but they are much more important to women.

And minorities have lived their lives feeling their separateness from the "whole" and the need to retain strong bonds within their group.

This might help explain why Asians - a presumed natural demographic for the GOP because of their general entrepreneurial aspirations - are voting for the Democrats.

Call it selfishness, call it lack of empathy, this defines the GOP.  And it defines over 40% of Americans.  In the right context, it defines all of us; we are capable of selfishness.  But I have a good friend who was a Republican all his life and served in the Arizona state legislature as a Republican.  And he left both because his daughter was a special needs student.  What began as selfishness, became an understanding of the needs of all the other kids in that special needs class.

Being a parent to a special needs kid myself, I have to say that we need all the help we can get.  And we're getting it.  From family, doctors, therapists and, yes, the state - through the school district.

I don't know how my son will turn out in the end.  Predictions are hard, especially about the future.  But I know if it wasn't for our "village" his future would be a lot more cloudy.

And so, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh: Fuck you.  From the bottom of my heart and with all my soul and feeling: die in a fire, you selfish sociopaths.

UPDATE: As always, we are thankful for tbogg:
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2013/04/09/it-takes-an-idiot-to-raze-a-village-budget/

Kenneth The Page Is Having A Bummer Of A Day

Bobby "Kenneth the Page" Jindal has had a crappy few weeks:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/bobby-jindals-political-collapse-is-dangerous-news-for-the-national-gop.php?ref=fpb

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/04/behind_jindals_fall_2.php?ref=fpblg

Basically, he put forth a Paul Ryan dream budget and it turns out people don't actually want to starve Granny.

The states have been called the laboratory of democracy.  Some of those laboratories produce Frankenstein's monsters and before you know it: pitchforks and torches.

UPDATE: This is good, too.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/bobby-jindal-stupid-party-of-one.html

Deep In The Heart Of Texas

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/4/8/162936/4277

While I agree that trying to put Texas into play in 2016 seems ambitious, whereas 2020 seems inevitable, I also think you have to start organizing in heavily Hispanic states, get voters registered and get them to the polls now.

The reason is simply eating into those House races, and maybe even impact redistricting in 2020.

Howard Dean's 50 state strategy needs to mesh with Obama's OFA.  Only then can you reverse the House and see this country properly governed again.

Thatcher And The Killer Cure

Every problem does not need the same solution.

When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minster and abandoned the "collectivist consensus" that had ruled Britain since 1945, she offered a corrective to a British socialist state that had gone off the rails.

All of the excesses that Americans think happen in this country really did happen in Britain.  Unions literally paralyzed the economy, taxes were confiscatory and the state meddled in everything they could.  Thatcher helped end that and put Britain on a more sustainable path.

But just as fabian socialism and Keynesian economics in the '70s tended to pour more fuel on their fires, doubling down on solutions that didn't always seem to be working, Thatcherism (and Reaganism) also began to double down.  They began to inject more and more ideologically driven solutions on problems that their own ideology had created.  In Britain, poll taxes finally brought Thatcher down, because the British system forces much more accountability on its politicians.  Reagan got to retire the doddering old uncle who made cowboys noises at the Russkies.

Thatcherism renewed the British economy, but in largely the same way Reaganism did in this country, by funneling money upwards and devastating the working class.  England and America both have their "Rust Belts" in large part because of the Austrian economics of Thatcher and Reagan.

When I see Obama being raked over the coals for his Chained CPI proposals, I agree that it's a stupid political move, designed to flatter the Deficit Peacocks and Beltway Mandarins, but betrays his base for no other reason that to look "serious".

But I also know from Thatcher, that undying loyalty to an idea - as opposed to the evidence - is not a winning formula.

Sunday Morning Going Down

Nothing.  Not even zombies to talk about.

In unrelated news, I'm coming up on my 30,000 page view.  Presumably this one won't get a lot of hits.

Obama's Having A Rough Week

Time to treat Obama like a pinata. 

While things aren't going exactly swimmingly in my life, Obama's having a bad week, too.

Some of it is trivial - calling Kemala Harris the best looking AG in the country - but there are two other problems.

First, he's kicked off a shitstorm over Chained CPI.  Josh Marshall gives a good take on his possible thinking here.  Obama has a terrible habit of negotiating with himself and this feels like that poor posturing all over again.  He's also called out a full Circular Firing Squad, as Progressives have launched an email blitz against this.  I can hardly blame them, because - while Chained CPI isn't a life or death issue for me - I think his pattern of offering concession to a recalcitrant GOP is just poor politics.

But the real problem he has is that gun safety measures are dying on the vine.  It doesn't look like they have the votes in the Senate for a sensible background check.  Over 90% of Americans support this freaking idea and yet he can't get the Coward Caucus to even give him a majority vote in the Senate.

The rise of the NRA is a fascinating development in American politics.  I think I've written about it before, but here's my take.

In the early '90s, Clinton and the Democrats did two big things: they raised taxes to a responsible level and they passed an assault weapons ban.  They failed to pass any of the big ideas Clinton ran on: health care reform and national service.  But they got taxes and guns passed.

But the economy didn't bounce back as soon as they needed.  Plus, with a Democrat in the White House for the first time since 1980, a regional re-alignment culminated in 1994.  The old cohort of conservative Southern Democrats went down to defeat, because the conservative Southern voters could not longer reconcile voting for local Democrats with the national party.  The Boll Weevils of the '80s became the Newt Gingrichs of the '90s.

And the NRA took credit for that.

An analogy on the Left would be if Planned Parenthood were to take credit for 2012, when in fact 2012 was just another example of demographic based voting trends.

The NRA is a paper tiger, and Newtown was an opportunity to take a match to it.

But the Democrats blew it, and worse, Obama worked really hard on this.  While the failure isn't entirely his fault, this is the sort of legislative loss that can cripple a second term.

Obama needs a win.

Wow

It's not my intent to be "All Ebert, All The Time", but this is simply wonderful.  How awesome to have the gift to eulogize yourself before your passing.

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebert/

Austerity Doesn't Work, Part 983740987408

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/us-economy-adds-88-000-jobs-in-march?ref=fpblg

Repeal the damned sequester.  Of course, there is a functioning majority of nihilists in the House, so....

RIP, Roger Ebert

Just saw that Roger Ebert died.  While no one agrees with everything a critic writes, Ebert could always be counted on to treat the movie as it deserved to be treated.  Cynical crap and mindless codswallop would be ripped to shreds, but he could treat a movie on its own terms, too.

He also started writing about politics during the Iraq War, as well as speaking out earlier on issues of race (his wife is African American).

As someone who loves movies, I'm sad to see his writing end.

UPDATE: I love it when The Onion makes me cry a little (and not from laughing):
http://www.theonion.com/articles/roger-ebert-hails-human-existence-as-a-triumph,31945/

It's amazing how it feels like we all lost a friend we never met.

The New Jim Crow

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/4/4/11537/64950

For decades (1968-2008) Republicans could win national elections by subtly playing on old racial fears and hatred of the "Other" who is stealing all that sweet, sweet welfare riches.

But by 2000, it was apparent that this coalition was under siege, as the GOP drifted further rightward and the country moved slowly leftward - especially on cultural issues.  Booman and others have argued that the strength of the Democrats demographic position is actually masked by Obama's race, which makes it impossible to compete in Appalachia.  We'll see how Hillary does there in 2016.

After the 2000 Florida debacle, the Congress actually, you know, legislated and did its freaking job and passed the Help America Vote Act.  Since 2008, however, the GOP has basically committed itself to restricting the right of Americans to vote.

In a sane and functioning democracy, that would be the end of them as a national political party.

Awesome

So scary...

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-theory-poll-results-.html

-          4% of voters say they believe “lizard people” control our societies by gaining political power

Only 4%?

Conspiracy theories are fun, but they also speak to a need for the human mind to impose order on the world.  The randomness of, say, 9/11 is as terrifying as the event itself.  So we create a conspiracy about the government being behind it, because that gives it some order.

The world is crazy and chaotic.

I blame the lizard people.

Epic

From Zandar at Balloon Juice:

 Sadly, the only thing keeping us from the same situation was the stimulus the President got through.  It was only about half as large as it needed to be, but that’s why we’re dealing with 8% unemployment rather than 12%.  Republicans won’t make the mistake of allowing the economy to improve until they get the reins back, then deficits won’t matter again.

Now that we’re on the sequestration diet, I expect that 8% to start creeping back up towards 9%.  After all, the only reason those overpaid government jobs we’re shedding aren’t being replaced by shiny new awesome higher-paying private sector jobs is shut up and you’re lazy and Obama can’t shoot hoops and Google doodles of Hugo Weaving and Benghazi and food stamps and Obama took Cole’s effing mustard.

Until then, we’ll stall out for the next four years because national debt is immoral (and soon impeachable) so we must eliminate even more government jobs and put people on government safety net programs, and then cut the programs because there’s too many people on them.  Then and only then will millions of jobs suddenly poop out of The Invisible Asshole Of The Free Market.  Sure, they don’t pay enough to not require government help, but that’s why God made sure you have more than 40 hours in a week that you could work through.

Maybe if all those European Poors were working 90 hours a week at (less than) minimum wage while homeschooling their kids, volunteering for church and training for neighborhood firearms defense militias like us Puritan-streak rock-ribbed salt-of-the-earth ‘Muricans, they’d know le freedom.

Read the whole thing.

It Was FRANCIS!

http://news.yahoo.com/parents-speechless-pope-hugged-disabled-son-115148536.html

I don't know why this new guy has me so impressed.  Maybe because he's behaving the way a pastor should and not the head of an international crime syndicate.

So Very Wrong

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/gun-background-checks-senate.php?ref=fpblg

Over 90% of the public support background checks.  But the Coward Caucus in the Democratic Senate won't go along with something because they "fear the wrath of the NRA", despite the fact that a majority of NRA members support a background check!

I get that Republicans suck, but when you can't even get to 50 votes because Max Baucus thinks that the NRA may - possibly - say mean things about him....