Tag: nyt

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.

Oilbama

Krugman makes predictions on just how it is that Obama will be blamed for the oil platform explosion and subsequent mess:

Will it be claims that liberals and/or scientific conspirators sabotaged the rig, to undermine good Americans who want to drillheredrillnow? (Michael Crichton already wrote that novel).

Will it be that oil workers, demoralized by the march of socialism, fell into despair and let the accident happen?

Will it be claims that since this didn’t happen under Bush, it obviously shows that Obamanomics is responsible?

Apparently Rush has already started in on choice #1.

I think my vote is more along the lines of

“…and I think it’s clear that this accident only happened because we aren’t drilling enough. These poor companies are over-working what they have because they can’t make a walkable ring of oil platforms that encircles Florida. This sort of lunatic under-drilling leads directly to the sort of accidents we’ve seen off the coast of Louisiana, Wolf. That, and I might just mention that Biden used the F-word.”

Which, by the way, I’m for installing. So there’s that. Thank me later, Florida.

Wolf’s answer to that statement, you ask?

“Alright, we have to leave it there.”

What the fuck else does he ever say?

The Talking Cure

NYT reports:

Senate Republicans ended three days of resistance on Wednesday and said they were ready to allow debate of legislation to overhaul regulation of the nation’s financial system. The Republicans, who were gathering to make their formal decision, appeared to back down after Democrats threatened to keep the Senate in session through the night to dramatize the the standoff.

It’s almost as though making them talk is a strateegery that might, you know, work.
But, of course, we’ll face the same exact obstructionist horse-shit whenever debate is declared “over” and a move to end it is taken. What then? Won’t somebody tell me what to do then?!?

Make them vote against the bill. No compromises, no walk-backs, no changes.
I’ll say it again, there are TWO CHOICES here. You vote for cloture or you talk about why you are not voting for cloture. Forever. Or until you vote for cloture. Your choice.
You then are rewarded with two similar choices: you vote for the bill or you vote against it. Period.
We have nothing else to do until November of 2010. We plan to make you eat shit every day until then either way. No breaks. Oh, Senator Bunning, you say you need to take a shit? Well, we’re pretty likely to move at that point too.

Of course, it must be noted that the prior paragraph has absolutely no meaning to the Democrat.

…the e-mail messages you should be focusing on are the ones from employees at the credit rating agencies, which bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. […] of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent — 93 percent! — have now been downgraded to junk status.

Paul Krugman, describing the real “shitty deal” that’s barely receiving notice:
the utter scam that is the ratings agencies.

The government blows it again; Cassini mission extension lasts seven years (that’s seven years beyond the already extended six years of service, itself two years longer than anyone anticipated. In orbit around Saturn.)
The final “reference trajectory” calculates all the course corrections and various gravity-assisted adjustments, tracking through those seven years, all the while correlating scientific goals with manpower and funding availability. Out seven years. This path “includes 56 passes over Titan, 155 orbits of Saturn in different inclinations, 12 flybys of Enceladus, 5 flybys of other large moons.” Then the probe will fly into Saturn and be destroyed.

Is there nothing this government can do right?

The basic picture of the federal government you should have in mind is that it’s essentially a huge insurance company with an army; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — all of which spend the great bulk of their funds on making payments, not on administration — plus defense are the big items.

Paul Krugman, demonstrating the sort of simple yet incisive and instructive logic that won him the Nobel Prize.

Cheneyism’s Test

Domestic terrorist plot unsealed:

Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an anti-government uprising.

Presumably the Tea Klan and the right-wing noise machine will come out strongly in support military tribunals, repeated torture, indefinite detention without trial, and all manner of other fundamentally anti-American treatment for this lot of thugs. It’s the only way for the Republic to survive, right? Right? I mean, we can’t be worried if we need to get some Christianists wet and splash them with a little water if that’s what it takes to Protect The Homeland. Right?