Mr. Lieberman, whose term is up in 2012, chose to retire rather than risk being defeated
Probably a powerful potential primary challenger in the Connecticut for Lieberman caucus somewhere…this avoids a nasty convention split.
Author: lemkin
[The N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment was] one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, from the same article as the Bork quote.
[the Second Amendment works] to guarantee the right of states to form militias, not for individuals to bear arms.
Robert Bork, yes that Robert Bork, showing us just how far we’ve moved right on this issue. And, of course, many others. But still: wow.
Those Liberals at the AP
The far-left journalists over at the AP make the hard calls and reports that there is trouble at the mill, everyone:
LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday waded into waters in which past British governments have foundered, promising fundamental changes to the country’s expensive and over-stressed public health care system.
I see. Crazy expensive socialist medical care. Only Lord Jesus can Know how much that stuff costs. Or, you can throw your lot in with pointy-headed statisticians and find out that it costs about $2317 per capita for the UK to provide universal, essentially free care to everyone (free as in beer, it is obviously paid for through various taxes and etc…). The US? We pay $5711 per capita. More than twice as much.
Now, of course, that would all change if we look at percent GDP, right? The US is such a giant economy and all. Actually, no. The US spends ~15% of GDP on healthcare, UK: ~8%. So it’s roughly half as expensive, whether considered as a function of the overall economy or strictly in terms of what’s spent per individual. And but so they all get access to healthcare. In the US, well, the GOP assures us that the market will take care of that any minute now.
Now we come to “over-stressed,” which must mean that outcomes are terrible in Britain when compared to the US, which (as we’re told repeatedly) has the finest care anywhere. They must be choking the streets with bodies over there if they spend half as much and then funnel that through some socialistic nightmare of a healthcare bureaucracy. Not so much: turns out they live longer, have lower infant mortality, and, of course, have universal access to free-as-in-beer healthcare 24/7, all without having to use the ER as their primary care physician or being told to just go die in the streets already. In fact, we typically rank in the low end of developed nations, not even within spitting distance of dread France, and always well behind the UK.
So, AP wrong on “expensive,” wrong on “over-stressed.” But they did get the current PM’s name right (though notably not his party affiliation; can’t go around limning the word “conservative” with “fundamental changes” and “foundered,” now can we?). So there’s that.
One slicker and a pair of rain boots
Michael Chabon considers the President’s speech:
Having struggled all the way through to make my own sense of sorrow and confusion congruent with what I saw happening in Tucson, having found that point of tangency at the rueful and admonitory heart, the father’s heart, of the speech, I fell all the way out again, right at the end. “If there are rain puddles in heaven,” the president said, evoking the words of an unnamed contributor to an album of photos of babies born on 9/11, “Christina is jumping in them today.”
I tried to imagine how I would feel if, having, God forbid, lost my precious daughter, born three months and ten days before Christina Taylor-Green, somebody offered this charming, tidy, corny vignette to me by way of consolation. I mean, come on! There is no heaven, man. The brunt, the ache and the truth of a child’s death is that he or she will never jump in rain puddles again. That joy was taken from her, and along with it ours in the pleasure of all that splashing. Heaven is pure wishfulness, an imaginary solution to the insoluble problem of the contingency and injustice of life.
But I’ve been chewing these words over since last night, and I’ve decided that, in fact, they were appropriate to a memorial for a child, far more appropriate, certainly, than all that rude hallooing. A literal belief in heaven is not required to grasp the power of that corny wish, to feel the way the idea of heaven inverts in order to express all the more plainly everything—wishes, hopes and happiness—that the grieving parents must now put away, along with one slicker and a pair of rain boots.
The Unfollow Button
“I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”
I think there’s more then a few dead kids lately that prove you wrong. Goddamn Pollyanna platitude-spouting optimists. You know what the best part of America’s collapse is? Watching hope founded on nothing fade into the sadness of reality.
Uh, did you even bother to take a look at the whole speech?
Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.
You are free to carp about Presidential use of scripture in this day and age, but there is very little Pollyanna in there. In fact, I’d say that’s the strength of the piece. But feel free to go on living in your sad little world in which everything is a magically irrefutable sign of decay, collapse, and entropy. Some would even call that “simple explanations in the aftermath.” Others would call it the worst brand of faux intellectualism in which all news must be greeted with a world-weary chin rub, an “I seen that one coming,” followed by a “and that’s why I never vote.”
In which case: well played.
Prediction: Obama’s performance tonight is strong, so [conservative pundits] will pivot to attacking the crowd.
Adam Serwer, tweeting a hole right through the fabric of time and space. There really is nothing that will fail to aggrieve the pundocrats ruling our world.
Arguing Tucson
George Packer continues the good fight, incinerating false equivalencies as quickly as he can type:
In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.
I’d argue that this last point is why the Palin team was so furiously scrubbing her various feeds within seconds of the news breaking: the clarity of the situation crystallized immediately and pervasively. And I suspect that no amount of “oh, both sides do it” is really going to take over the long haul.
Well, that and this continuing meme that incoherent, rage-filled political statements somehow make this case distinct from typical Tea Klan output.
Another several of the big lies laid out by a single table. Last I checked, 590+-610=-20. This is something I learned in Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun starring Troy McClure, which did have a decidedly liberal math bias now that I think back…
Full document available if you click. Note to Democrats: print out, laminate, and refer to often.
As if on Cue
Rest assured, gun violence only ever provides reasons to put more guns into circulation and never, ever serves as an argument for stricter regulations or requirements for those who wish to own or carry a gun:
Our model legislation is called the Giffords-Zimmerman Act,“ said Heller. (Giffords staffer Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was killed on Saturday.) "It would require the Arizona Department of Public Safety to provide firearms training, using firearms confiscated by the state, to members of Congress and people who work for them. Facilities would be made available to them in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the training of police and other safety employees.”
Heller speculated that a response like this could prevent future attacks on members of Congress. “I don’t think having a firearm on her would do Congresswoman Giffords any good,” said Heller. “However, if it was known that members of her staff were well armed, that very well could have dissuaded [the shooter].
Arizona is already one of the easiest states in which to purchase and concealed-carry a gun, no licensing required. That easy availability did nothing whatsoever on Saturday, unless you count getting a gun into the hands of a 22 year old with apparent mental illness. The solution, as always: just make guns more available. That’ll solve it.
Now go die in those equally opportune streets like a well-armed man. Preferably by being shot; just don’t expect healthcare if you haven’t pre-paid or are any shade of brown. That is all.
Lemkin 