Tag: MSM

A little dab’ll do ya

OpenLeft notes just a short list of the things that Rand Paul (and his supporters) think it should be legal for the owner of a private company to fire you for:

  • Not being the same religion as the boss
  • Not having sex with the boss
  • Having children, or not having them
  • Not liking the same sports teams as the boss
  • Not voting for different political candidates than the boss
  • Not eating the same food than the boss
  • Not liking different colors than the boss.

Basically, any reason at all.

This is exactly right, and yet is sadly underappreciated by the general public, or at the very least in the MSM’s depiction of said public. Turns out dread Big Guvmint is responsible for some hugely popular things. Who knew?

And, in another edition of This is Why, it also goes a long way towards explaining The Democat’s current fecklessness. You see, it’s all about inoculation. We know right now that the glibertarians and their friends in the Tea Klan hold a set of wildly unpopular beliefs. Put simply, they think you should Go Die in the Streets. Are you a child whose parents have no money for food? Go die in the streets. Sick? Go die in the streets. And so forth. Turns out most Americans prefer not being relegated to death in the streets.

So you blow them the fuck up with it. Repeatedly. To the extent that Rand Paul and his ilk answer honestly (see: Brown vs. the Board of Education was wrongly decided), they will instantly and permanently alienate vast swathes of Americans, including many or even most “Conservatives.”
To the extent that Rand Paul and his ilk shuck and jive and dissemble about street death relegation, they will alienate that fraction of America that constitutes their primary support (pun definitely intended)…they come off as “just another meely mouthed politician” and/or end up with the most dreaded tag of all: RINO. Either way, it’s a strategy that puts more Democrats in office unless and until the GOP gets a clue. Which, let’s face it, is a long way off into Our Glorious Socialist Future.

The Answer is “No”

Ezra Klein wants answers from Rand Paul:

Can the federal government set the private sector’s minimum wage? Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants? Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors?

These are precisely the sorts of questions that need to be asked of all these Glibertarian fucktards that lately infest the political scene. To save everyone some time: the answer to all of them is NO; now will you just go die in the streets?

What we tend to forget in journalism is that we got in the business to check facts, not just to tell people what Obama said and what Gingrich said. It is groundless to say that Kagan is anti-military. So why not call it groundless? This is badly needed when people are being flooded with information.

Ron Fournier, AP Washington Bureau Chief.
So why not call it groundless indeed? And, all the better, it turns out these “fact check” pieces are actually popular and more frequently clicked. Who knew?
Manna, via The Plum Line

Top 12

John Cole runs it down for us re: just what qualifications are required to be a serious person seeking a judicial appointment:

  1. Titillating David Brooks- no boring career oriented types need apply. Try to squeeze in some college era hijinks to liven up that vita- maybe a possession bust as an undergrad, some racy Facebook pictures, or a term paper supportive of Mao.

  2. Ed Whelan demands a valid driver’s license and there will be a proficiency test to demonstrate “mastery” of the subject.

  3. Paul Campos would like a dissertation on the history of curriculum theory (no slouching and skipping out on the role of hermeneutics and critical theory), a treatise on best pedagogical practices, a complete review of the collected works of John Dewey, and a positive evaluation from every lazy student you may have ever had.

  4. Andrew Sullivan would like proof one way or another of your sexual orientation. I suppose pictures will do, but the apparent gold standards are the assurances of Jeffrey Toobin and Eliot Spitzer.

  5. Somewhat related to #4, K-LO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] has decided that four out of over one hundred justices have been women, and this poses a grave threat to the white male, so no more va-jay-jays- women need not apply.

  6. David Bernstein is tired of Ivy Leaguers, so come on down, Heritage Law students!

  7. Republicans are requiring a history of judicial experience, which could be daunting, considering they will most likely block your appointment to the bench.

  8. Ed Whelan is also requiring that future justices not be residents (current or former) of New York City.

  9. Michael Steele is demanding that you not question the Constitutional Right to practice of slavery.

  10. Lynn Sweet would like a decent batting stance. And no, I’m not kidding. According to recent debates, proof of a good baseball stance could also serve as verification of your sexual status, as required by Sullivan in point number four.

  11. [Andrew] Sullivan is now demanding a record of taking risks and failing to prove a record of life experience.

  12. And Howard Kurtz requires a spouse and children

Jupiter Too

And so it’s come to this. Mighty Jupiter is reacting negatively to the radical socialist agenda that Obama has been forcing on an unsuspecting ‘Merica:

Jupiter has lost one of its prominent stripes, leaving its southern half looking unusually blank. […] Jupiter’s appearance is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere – one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.

But recent images taken by amateur astronomers show that the southern band – called the south equatorial belt – has disappeared.

Naturally, the last time this happened was when Jupiter reacted to warn Our Country of the coming Carter presidency. Failing to heed mighty Jupiter, America went on to elect history’s greatest monster, Jimmy Carter. And we all know how that turned out.

Let’s review the evidence. Jupiter before Obama:

and the tragically denuded, post-Obama Jupiter:

As per usual, the administration’s response to Jupiter is slow; sources in the White House confirm that response, when it finally comes, will be largely centered around temporarily adding an Islamic crescent to Jupiter’s mighty countenance in the hopes of appeasing Obama’s sharia task-masters.

No matter how it plays out now, though, this celestial incident is definitely shaping up to be Obama’s Shoemaker-Levy 9, and his lack of an effective response or even any apparent planning for this event will doom him just as surely as that comet doomed both the Clinton presidency and the then nascent Gore campaign, which took a notably earth-toned, four-buttoned position on the bands of Jupiter, one which the American public wasn’t ready for.

Why newspapers are dying. Your whopping 14% on Editorial is showing, boys.
cc: publishing houses and Rupert Murdoch. See that 52% line item there? That’s why eBooks (and newspapers) should cost less than dead tree books (and newspapers).

Just so we’re clear, in the 21st century, Republican gubernatorial candidates are attacked for accepting modern biology and being only a partial Biblical literalist.

Steve Benen. Why yes, Steve, yes they are. Nothing to see here.

HFT demonstrably does not provide liquidity unless the market is going up and has market-wrecking implications. This is to say nothing about the advantages it gives institutional traders over non-HFT firms or individuals.

unsolicitedanalysis
reblogging nonolet
This strikes me as the critical truth of the recent craziness, and one that I’ve not heard uttered by anyone at any level of the MSM, who were almost universally still peddling various demonstrably false interpretations.
tl;dr: We are fucked

My sweet untouched Miranda

It occurs to me that people like Joementum, the Commonwealth’s own Code Brown, and apparently all of those in the media that slavishly cover them simply don’t understand what the Miranda warning even is.

Here’s what it’s not: conferring you any new rights

Here’s what it is: warning you of the rights you hold, by dint of being a living citizen of these United States and of which you may or may not choose to avail yourself (specifically, this boils down to the right to sit there mute unless and until you’ve spoken to counsel). Beginning to see why they so frequently put that word “warning” in there after the word Miranda?

How is it that these same folks that recite and (incorrectly) parse the Second Amendment ad nauseum (but inevitably, and notably verbatim) don’t understand the most basic concepts regarding what I would deem the single most fundamental right governing our interactions with our pre- and post-W.Bush-administration government?
Ironically, though, does it surprise anyone that gun ownership also happens to be the one Constitutional right that suspected terrorists get to keep under the GOP’s dream setup. Honestly, we should probably make it even easier for the suspected terrorist to buy guns; I’d assume this policy is best achieved through a wide-ranging program of blanket tax cuts.

So, once again for the truly slow and Brian Williams: Mirandizing someone simply ensures that they are fully aware of rights that are operative for all citizens no matter what; it doesn’t confer said rights, and neither do those rights magically begin only subsequent to their being invoked by rote recitation. Just like on all the cop shows!

Because the boundaries of political debate in Washington are also the horizons of the discussion on “Washington Week,” the show has no grace, mystery, edge or dissonant voice. What if the system is broken, the political elite is failing the country, accountability is a mirage and the game is a farce run by well-educated people who manipulate the symbols of the republic? Whenever those things are true, “Washington Week” becomes a lie.

Jay Rosen. Don’t mince words, Jay, tell us what you really think. Oh, and: yep.