Month: May 2011

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that he may have “lost.” After all, any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Douglas Noel Adams
Happy towel day.

…if there is support for a supplemental [spending bill related to disaster relief for the Joplin, MO tornado], it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
Indeed, there’s never a better time to take hostages and drag out a legislative process than when people lay dying under rubble. Those poor saps should’ve just planned ahead. Also: survivors should get really interested in meteorology, because if the GOP has their way, they’re going to be doing it by themselves pretty soon.

Today’s seniors and near-seniors spent much of their working lives in that postwar world, with their incomes rising, investments gaining, their health increasingly secure, and their retirements predictable. Everyone 55 and younger spent his or her entire working life in an economy where all those trends had stalled or reversed […] The Ryan plan, in other words, delivers to the older generation exactly what they’ve had all their lives — secure and predictable benefits — and to the next generation, more of what they’ve known — insecurity and risk.

Mark Schmitt, writing for The New Republic.
Yep. This sort of “I’ve got mine, time to raise the ladder” thinking pretty much defines the modern GOP. No surprise it’s also trending their mean voter age higher and higher and higher. Sustainable!
Source: tnr.com

Annals of the Memory Hole: Anyone Remember that Crazy Housing Bubble?

Tom Coburn: Any honest view of our debt, deficits, size of government and demographic challenges shows we must make major changes if we are going to pass on the American way of life to our children. Each week seems to bring new warning signs: slower-than-expected growth (already as much as 25 to 33 percent every year, some estimate), higher-than-expected unemployment numbers.
Dean Baker: Actually the current period of high unemployment and slow growth has nothing to do with the budget deficit. It is the result of the collapse of the $8 trillion housing bubble. Unfortunately, Federal Reserve Board chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and other policymakers overlooked this enormous bubble as it was growing. Apparently, Mr. Coburn has not noticed the bubble even now that its collapse has wrecked the economy. […] the housing bubble was [also] probably the most predictable economic crisis in history. Unfortunately, almost no one in a policy position was able to predict it. Contrary to Mr. Coburn’s assertion at the beginning of his [article quoted above], any honest view of the debt, deficits, size of government and demographic challenges shows that we have to fix our health care system. If per person health care expenditures were comparable to what they are in Germany, Canada, or any other wealthy country with a longer life expectancy than the United States we would be looking at budget surpluses, not deficits.

I know I said that [I endorsed Gary Johnson]. But I think I will wait and see where he stands on other things. My bad. Sorry. I still think he is a good guy but so Is Dennis [Kucinich] and if he decided to run I would personally vote for him. If it came down to either him or Gary I’m already committed to Dennis. They both have said they support legal pot.

Willie Nelson walks back that Gary Johnson endorsement. I’d say that pretty much ends old Gary’s chances…

Depths of Hypocrisy

42 Republicans voted to filibuster Goodwin Liu’s judicial nomination today:

The Republicans who said they’d never filibuster a judicial nominee? They filibustered a judicial nominee. The Republican “moderates” who said they found these tactics distasteful? They filibustered Liu, too. When the dust cleared, how many GOP senators were willing to give this nominee an up-or-down vote? Just one: Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

Depths of Hypocrisy

We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.

Nancy Pelosi, once and future Speaker of the House, reprising her prior quote on Social Security.
This is exactly where the Democrats need to be: stating clearly that there will be no significant benefit cuts to Medicare. We will achieve cuts and reduce costs through implementation of the ACA and reforms to existing money-holes like Medicare Part D; this is, in fact, the only durable way to deliver spending reduction: by lowering the overall per-person cost of medical care in the United States.
The next nearest developed country spends about ⅕th what we do per person on healthcare and gets better results by almost any metric you care to use. You control costs by controlling costs and the rate of their growth, not by setting an arbitrary benefits value that you will pay forevermore.
Note to the MSM: healthcare costs and the rate of cost growth are the issues in federal deficit and debt discussions. Why are these never, ever mentioned or asked after? If you’re truly a Serious Person when it comes to deficits, this is where you should be starting and finishing.
Source: Washington Post

They basically said ‘everything but the cannibalism’

Loren Bouchard describes the gestation process of Bob’s Burgers from the initial, cannibalistic pitch to development to pick-up.
Mmmmm, that’s one tasty burger.

The Inherent Foolishness of “War Powers”

Pity the poor War Powers act:

If nothing happens, history will say that the War Powers Act was condemned to a quiet death by a president who had solemnly pledged, on the campaign trail, to put an end to indiscriminate warmaking.

The President has the unilateral authority to end life on Earth at any moment of his choosing with our nuclear arsenal. Unless and until Congress takes that authority away and ties it to normal, Constitutionally regulated war declaration mechanisms then none of the other details really matters (and this is why even the GOP House doesn’t get too worked up about it: War Powers stuff (60 day limits and etc…) is, in essence, a meaningless distraction and Congress knows it). It also seems likely to be unconstitutional, or, at the very least of questionable legality.

Whatever their reasoning on the War Powers Act and its applicability and/or enforcement is, Congress has a simple recourse that’s clearly enumerated in the Constitution: defund Libyan operations and demand the President request a formal declaration of war if he wants to continue. Same goes for Iraq and Afghanistan. There should have been just such a declaration on or about September 12, 2001.

Either hold the country to formal declarations of war in all cases or don’t; but let’s be consistent and honest and admit that holding to a strict Constitutional standard means removing “The Button” from the Oval Office once and for all.
As a bonus, doing so also gives you an excuse to clean up the rampant classification of everything that is currently carried out under the same “imminent and existential nuclear disaster” model of national security. This plainly anti-democratic power, again, was conferred as some sort of necessary evil in Our Nuclear Age. End it now and forever; make the President and anyone else have to prove to a judge or some similar panel that something should be classified because it poses a clear and measurable risk to National Security if revealed, and even then only classify it for a short time period with regular review for declassification.

The Inherent Foolishness of “War Powers”