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: