I’ve been president at Gap brand for the past three years, and I’ve been living and breathing the changes we’ve been making on our journey to make Gap more relevant to our customers.
You’ve seen this evolution through many of our products, such as the 1969 premium denim and the new black pants, and more modern stores in many locations.

Marka Hansen, President Gap North America, witnessing the remarkable journey of evolution that led her company to 1969 denim and a logo whose little blue box apparently recognizes “corporate heritage.”
I’d say rampant fucktardia like this (and a collective, societal failure to call anyone on it) is a big part of the reason America is falling apart at the (poorly sewn) seams and outsourced one-thread buttons.

Kevin Drum supplies us with a graph that does more to explain the McDonalds thing than anything else I’ve seen. Red bar is current Mini-Med plan. As you can see, under ACA, the vast majority of McDonalds workers get a better deal; those earning minimum wage get a vastly better deal, in that far more comprehensive healthcare is now free for them.
In fact, only those making more than $12/hr, a tiny minority of McDonalds workers, will pay about what they pay now…and but also get a hell of a lot more useful health insurance.

Indeed: what a failure for the ACA. Yet this failure narrative, unintended consequences, and so forth is precisely what we hear from Our Liberal Media. Again and again.

This is just the sort of graph that needs to be trotted out every time this comes up. Simple and easy to understand. But isn’t. And now even self-identified Democrats are turning against a plan they most likely have no idea about other than what they’ve heard on FOXnews. Because those anchors are at least trying to tell the truth of the story, right?
If you don’t think this is a serious problem you haven’t been paying attention. This is why they fail.

Christie to cancel the region’s most crucial infrastructure project; refusing $3B in fed money, cutting 6,000 potential new jobs

ohhleary:

When you’re still stuck on a train stalled on the tracks in New Jersey twenty years from now, blame this grandstanding fatass.

How, though? Democrats, as currently figured, inevitably claim they are only interested in “looking forward.” This stance means that, in 20 years when the bill comes due, the Democrat sitting in the corner office trying to unwind the mess he/she inherited will take the blame for problems created long ago by policies that the GOP will still be pitching (and winning elections with) and a voter-at-large who remains utterly uninformed but sure likes the sound of all those never-ending tax cuts.

The only solution is careful messaging, right across the board, for decades, that informs the public, slowly but surely, about each of these decisions and their inevitable consequences. But, when handed somebody’s house burning down for lack of a $75 annual fee to use fire services, we are instead greeted by the sounds of Democratic silence. When a bridge collapses: sounds of silence. When people get sick because food is production isn’t being inspected and is thus contaminated: sounds of silence. When people die in the streets of the richest nation in the world because they can’t afford food anymore or caught a (fucking) cold: sounds of silence.

This is why they fail.

Christie to cancel the region’s most crucial infrastructure project; refusing $3B in fed money, cutting 6,000 potential new jobs

It’s easier for [Democrats] to believe that their liberal and progressive base is naïve than to acknowledge that we are not alienated for their failure to pass appropriate legislation, but for their failure to fight for such legislation. And our upset with Obama is not that he didn’t accomplish what he couldn’t accomplish, but that he didn’t do the one thing he could do: consistently speak the truth, tell us and the country what was really happening in the corridors of power and what the constraints are that he was facing.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Daily (via brooklynmutt)

Yep, yep, yep, a million times: YEP.

There’s a trap, and it’s the same thing that happened with fiscal stimulus. You do something in the right direction that’s inadequate, and then people say, well, that didn’t work, and instead of increasing the dosage and proving it right, you give the thing up altogether.
All of this is very familiar if you studied Japan in the ‘90s. In fact, we’re doing worse than the Japanese did. Our monetary policy is a bit more aggressive, but our fiscal policy has been less aggressive. We have a larger output gap than they did, and we’ve had a surge in unemployment that they never had, and our political will to act has been exhausted much faster than theirs was. On the current track, we’re going to look at Japan’s lost decade as a success story compared to us.

Paul Krugman bringin’ the optimism.

National DNC ad You Will Never See

Voice: South Fulton firefighters from Obion, Tennessee, last week stood by and watched as a family’s home burned down because their services were available by subscription only, and the family had not paid the $75 fee. Outrageous? That’s not what conservatives think.
Kevin Williamson: …for their trouble, the South Fulton fire department is being treated as though it has done something wrong, rather than having gone out of its way to make services available to people who did not have them before. The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton’s firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives.
Jonah Goldberg: letting the house burn […] will probably save more houses over the long haul. I know that if I opted out of the program before, I would be more likely to opt-in now. No solace to the homeowner, but an important lesson for compassionate conservatives like our own Dan Foster [who came out for saving the house anyway] (Zing!).
John Derbyshire: I am entirely with the South Fulton fire department here. In the terms of Nico Colchester’s great 1996 essay, they are being crunchy rather than soggy […] One of the duties of conservatives in this soggy fallen world is to stand up for crunchiness. For the fire department to have extinguished the Cranicks’ fire would have been soggy, even aside from the considerable degree of sogginess it would have left on the property.
Voice: “Compassionate” conservatism means core serivices like police and fire departments are only for the wealthy. “Compassionate” conservatism means letting your house burn down over a $75 fee. Ask your representatives where they stand on “compassionate” conservatism.

I think the hug lacked dignity. It did not send a message of American power and forcefulness. So I fret about the reaction around the world to this kind of fraternity-like emotionalism in full public view.
Why not just a dignified, stand-up, serious handshake? That’s what Reagan would have done. A strong handshake shows friendship, respect, and even affection. But a big fat hug seems to go over the line.

Larry Kudlow, reacting to the Obama-Rahm-a hug. No, I am not kidding.

The Narrative Is the Narrative

Assuming big Republican gains this November, the media narrative will claim Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. Yet actual progressive policies polled well and continue to poll well. If anything, it’s been failure to act on popular legislation that helped put them in this hole.

–Markos “The Orange Menace” Moulitsas

Not sure how many times we’re going to have to cover this one, but let’s have at it again:

  1. GOP landslide, Senate and House change hands: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. The only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power and the GOP exhibits this by shutting down the government every time he uses it and investigating the composting patterns of the WH garden when he’s not.
  2. GOP gains, Senate Democratic, House barely or even marginally GOP-held: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. The only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power; Democratic Senate pressured to cooperate with whatever inane policy the GOP House wants in name of “bipartisanship,” this pressure is then extended against Obama: “why won’t he work across the aisle??!?!” Obama vetoes said bill: The Democrat just can’t govern/circular firing squad! Signs it: Another Democrat failure that is destroying the country. This, by the way, would be the best possible outcome for the GOP (as it is currently figured) heading into 2012. Just sayin’.
  3. GOP nets some gains, but The Democrat holds House and Senate: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. Their gradually diminishing majority clearly shows that the only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power; clearly the fact that the Democrat held historic majorities and has essentially “won” the last four Congressional elections (in terms of the majority either switching or staying) is beside the point. America demands a far-right governing philosophy and will get it just as soon as ACORN stops stealing elections.
  4. Democrats win every seat, hotly contested or otherwise: Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. The only solution is a far-right governing philosophy. Obama is a seat-warmer for the next GOP president, nothing more, nothing less. He is not even entitled to his Constitutionally mandated veto power. The rise of the Tea Klan proves this; it just hasn’t shown up at the electoral polls yet, so we should ignore the electorate and govern far-right. Likewise the failure of the TARP, which I’m pretty sure was a dismal failure, right? Also: Hitler.