A Good Move

The Obama Administration is looking to unclog the prisons by reducing the sentences of non-violent drug offenders and stop prosecuting them so strenuously.

Absent action by the do-nothing Congress, this is a pretty good step.

It would be nice to see them re-schedule marijuana as a schedule three drug, but that might require them to get congressional approval and...

Booman wants to know what the administration can do without Congress to advance a more progressive agenda, and this certainly qualifies.  (I suggested killing the Keystone pipeline.)

But we are boxed in to an inert government by the lack of Republicans willing to even negotiate with the Administration.  Even in Clinton's second term, he was able to get CHIP passed.

I fear Obama will be reduced to impermanent executive actions.

The Invisible War

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/8/11/0444/29653

Booman says we're bombing Yemen.  The Guardian says we've carried out 8 strikes in the past two weeks.  Given the information we've been hearing about attacks originating from Yemen, this hardly seems surprising.  Some nitwit at Salon was writing that the whole "terrorist threat" was created to silence the media over the Snowden revelations.

There is a natural tendency towards conspiracy theories.  This is especially true in the Arab world.  Read what the Egyptians are saying about the US today.  Chances are they see Obama behind the Mubarak regime, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the violent squelching of the Brotherhood.  And you can likely get that from one person.

Generally speaking, I'm very leery of conspiracy theories, because they rely on complexity.  I'm a devotee of Occam's Razor.  The idea that the NSA cooked up a threat in Yemen and then the CIA and US military began striking targets in order to justify domestic wiretaps, when the NSA and CIA are NOT claiming that the intercepts they got were domestic... where is the logic in that?

Now, the question as to whether assassinating Al Qaeda members is the appropriate response to this threat is - I suppose - open for debate. Assassination - for lack of a better word - is not an illogical tactic to take against a widespread, non-state actor.  But it does represent a change in American values.

As for the fact that it's drones doing the assassinating, whatever.  Would it make everyone feel better if the missile strike came from an F-16?

The New Gilded Age 2.0

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/opinion/blow-a-town-without-pity.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

I have to say, even I'm a little surprised by some of the numbers Blow presents in his column.  I've always said the main problem with the GOP is a fundamental lack of empathy, but it's sad to see so many Americans believe the same tired, false tropes about poverty and the poor.

I would have thought that the recent economic turmoil would have created some empathy for the poor, but more likely, those that teetered on the edge of bankruptcy were able to pull themselves back because the stimulus saved GM, and they work as a GM dealership.  Or they were able to re-finance their home because the Fed kept interest rates low.  Or they relied on family who weren't struggling.

Basically they benefited from either government measures or family connections, and saw in this their own personal virtue.

Filner

Wow.

Just....

Wow:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/bob-filner-therapy-finished.html

Thirteen In A Row

Go Braves...

Your Daily Context Free Sentence

But the rise of Tea Party conservatism, fueled by white racial panic and zero-sum distributional conflicts in the Great Recession, has turned this minor, once-forgotten figure into an icon for a new generation of nerds who imagine themselves Nietzschean Ubermenschen oppressed by the totalitarian tyranny of the post office and the Social Security administration.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/conservatives_once_ridiculed_ayn_rand/

Your Post-Racial America Update

Protesters in Arizona (*naturally) get real close to the ni-clang moment.  My favorite quote is that one of these protesters hates Obama because of the way he "divided all the races".  Um... yeah.  Because blacks are the real racists keeping the white man down.

Meanwhile, apparently the devil went down to Georgia and registered as a Republican.  Your average Georgia Republican respects racist fat monger Paula Deen more than Martin Luther King, because again, it's blacks that are the real racists.

And Rand Paul, every liberals favorite conservative, has a bit of a racial blindspot.  But don't call him racist!

Proving that it's not just Southerners, someone vandalized the Jackie Robinson statue in Brooklyn.

Your Sentence Of The Day

The real reason, everyone knows and sort of acknowledges, is that debates were a disaster for the party in 2012, an endless circus made up entirely of clowns on a national tour of shame.

You can read the rest here:
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/07/reince_priebus_tries_his_best_to_prevent_more_humiliating_republican_presidential_debates/

The New Gilded Age

http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/08/ill_say_it_lets_celebrate.php?ref=fpblg

This is a fascinating piece of analysis from Josh Marshall.  Basically, he looks at Jeff Bezos buying the WaPo and opining: "Since we're in the new Gilded Age, we just need to assess whether Bezos is Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller."

Newspapers are not profitable and owning them in the 21st century will be something akin to patronizing the arts or libraries in the 19th century.

But newspapers - unlike TV news - tends to commit actual journalism from time to time. They investigate actual stories, develop sources and run scoops.

Since Bezos' business model is squeezing the living crap out of his employees in order to produce a cheap product for the consumer, it will be interesting to see how the WaPo's editorial stance changes.  The Wall Street Journal went from conservative to Tea Party when Murdoch took over, but their reporters still do good reporting.

Now, the WaPo used to be owned by Kaplan testing services, which made it subservient to the idea of privatized education "reform".  So it's not like Bezos is bedding a virgin here.

But Washington DC is like the rest of America.  There is a very, very wealthy top and a struggling middle and bottom.  It will be interesting to see how the Bezos WaPo differs from the Kaplan WaPo.

Your Sentence Of The Week

Apportioning the blame for the death of Newsweek is a bit like assessing the counterfactual of what would happen if you resurrected the captain of the Titanic and put him in charge of pets.com with a central office in circa-2004 Iraq.

Well played.

Summer

I just spent the last two days finishing up a primary source document reader for our AP students.

I'm very pooped.

But it was interesting reading things like Lincoln's Cooper Union Speech, Wilson's war message to Congress, the 'smoking gun tape' and, yes, the Starr Report for the first time.

I just saved the little bastards $150 in textbooks.  Hope they appreciate that.

Punditry In A Nutshell

Coming soon: GOP primary 2016!

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/03/all_the_pundits_are_wrong/

I don't know who Jonathon Bernstein is, but this is the second piece of his at Salon that has me shaking my head.  First, he argued that Ted Cruz could win the Presidency.  Now he's arguing that the GOP could win the White House and the Democrats could win the House before 2022.

His argument is that the "pundits" are wrong when they make a case of demographics trumping candidates.  But it's not pundits making these claims.  It's political scientists like Ruy Teixeira and John Judis.  It's stats guys like Nate Silver and Sam Wang.

They are looking at levels of partisanship and partisan identity and seeing very little movement.  The idea that - somehow - a GOP candidate for president could get more than 35% of the Hispanic vote because of poor economic fundamentals, neglects to consider the level of animosity the GOP rank and file have shown towards Hispanics.  The occasional nice words from GOP Senators from Arizona might preserve those seats, but any GOP candidate who expresses any enthusiasm for immigration reform that embraces a road to legal status simply can't win the nomination.

It was the "pundits" who said that John McCain picking Sarah Palin was going to shake up the race.  It was the "pundits" who said that Obama was too aloof to connect to Rust Belt voters.  It was the "pundits" who said the first debate last fall changed everything.

Ultimately, it was the demographics, the partisan loyalty and the message - which includes ideology - that determines these races.

The GOP - as Krugzilla points out - has gone batshit insane.  They are engaged in a conversation with themselves about Obamacare, Solyandra, Benghazi and Planned Parenthood that has no bearing on the real world experience of millions of Americans.

Bernstein seems to think that all it will take is a respectable (or not - Ted Cruz) candidate who can easily articulate a better "message" and can persuade voters to change their minds.  In other words: Jon Huntsman.

The reason partisan identity is so strong right now is because the parties have legitimate and profound ideological differences.  The House GOP just voted to pretty much end food stamps as we know it in order to keep subsidies flowing to agri-business.  The House GOP has passed countless attempts to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood.  They have passed no efforts to create jobs.

While most Americans are not familiar with the daily workings of Congress and the importance - for instance - of the GOP crapping the bed over its transportation bill the other day, they understand which party stands for which.  This was somewhat what Mitt Romney was trying to say with his 47% comment.  It's not that 47% of Americans are "takers", it's that 47% of Americans aren't going to vote for the GOP until the GOP believes something very, very different (or the Democrats believe something very, very different).

Finally, the structural issues are important.  Democrats live in cities, because cities demonstrate the needs for an activist government and congregate different ethnicities in close proximity to each other.  That concentrates Democratic votes because it reinforces the Democratic ideology.  This also makes it much easier for the GOP to gerrymander the countryside and suburban districts.  They control the House because they controlled the Pennsylvania and Ohio re-districting efforts.

If the GOP continues to refuse to govern, then it is possible that enough House seats could flip to switch the House in 2016, but it is still unlikely.

As for the structural balance of the Presidential race, the Democrats start with a floor of 256 electoral votes.  That includes "swing states" like PA, MI, MN, CO and NV that aren't really swing states.  If Joe Biden wins Ohio, he's president.  If Hillary Clinton wins Florida, she's president.  If Marty O'Malley wins Wisconsin and Iowa, he's president.

The "Pundits" Bernstein claims to refute need a horse race.  And certainly "anything can happen".  A war, a terrorist attack, a pandemic, a depression, an epic scandal.

But outside of a calamitous event, the lines are hardening, not softening.

I Always Liked Benjamin Barber

“First a privatizing ideology rationalizes restricting public goods and public assets of the kind that might allow the public as a whole to rescue from their distress their fellow citizens who are in jeopardy; then the same privatizing ideology celebrates the wealthy philanthropists made possible by the market’s inequalities who earnestly step in to spend some fragment of their market fortunes to do what the public can no longer do for itself. Better philanthropy than nothing, but far better than philanthropy is a democratic public capable of taking care of itself with its own pooled resources and its own prudent planning. The private philanthropist does for others in the larger public what they have not been enabled to do for themselves, as a public; democracy, on the other hand, empowers the public to take care of itself.” 

Ill

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/31/living_in_america_will_drive_you_insane_literally_partner/

I don't know why Americans are experiencing more mental illness.  I don't doubt that it's at least in part because there are more people trained to catch more diseases.  I'm skeptical that Big Pharma is driving this by itself.  I've worked with various mental health professionals over the years and none of them have treated their degrees as a license to be a Pez dispenser for psychotropic meds.

I think there is something fundamentally broken in our society.  When I was in my early 20s, I suffered from depression.  There were a lot of reasons for it, but once I started doing a job I loved and felt was important, I wasn't depressed anymore.  And while I've certainly had my share of "the blues" over the years, I've never felt any episodes of depression since then were anything but transient responses to tough times.

Your life needs purpose and it needs to be full.  Much of what we do in life has little purpose.  I spent an hour yesterday filling out medical release forms for summer camps for the Things.  It was pointless and frustrating.  Most people have jobs like that, and while thankfully I don't I can see how if your job is processing medical forms in a radiologist's office, you might just feel depressed.

A hundred and fifty years ago, most Americans still lived on farms.  Farm work is direct and has immediate purpose.  It is tedious and hard, but it comes with a tangible result: fertilize, water and seed the field and you get food.  Compare that to the abstraction of wage labor.  Do a task that you probably don't see to its conclusion and you get money which you use to get the things you need.

All this applies to schools, too.  My entire job as a teacher is to make learning relevant.  The rest is detail work.  Nobody gives a damn about Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the United States.  But tie tie it in with the recent recession, and suddenly it means something.  Still, I'm kidding myself if I think that connection resonates with all my students.  I only hope I can catch their attention and interest once a day.

Because school, too, is a series of tasks that have no relevance to a person's life.  No wonder kids are depressed when their work is unimaginative and simply dull repetition.

A Companion Piece

This is the logical companion piece to the article by Ezra Klein below.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/07/31/good-times-2/

That's some quality TeeVee journalism, right there.