;)
The Commentariat -- January 9, 2014
Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "On the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson's declaration of a War on Poverty, Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a battle over whether its 40 government programs have succeeded in lifting people from privation or worsened the situation by trapping the poor in dependency. Many of today's fiercest political debates can be traced to the aspirations of the Great Society, the domestic programs it spawned during the 1960s, and the doubts it raised about the role and reach of Washington." ...
... Dana Milbank: "Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty turned 50 on Wednesday. Conservatives marked the semi-centenary by reviving something nearly as old: the War on the War on Poverty.... Other than making food-stamp recipients take nonexistent jobs, the [House Republican Study Committee] had few specific ideas for replacing the War on Poverty.... After 50 years, there are shortcomings in the War on Poverty. But the answer is not to scrap it and to return us to the 19th century." ...
... Nicholas Kristof: "America’s war on poverty turned 50 years old this week, and plenty of people have concluded that, as President Reagan put it: 'We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.' ... Yet a careful look at the evidence suggests that such a view is flat wrong. In fact, the first lesson of the war on poverty is that we can make progress against poverty, but that it's an uphill slog."
Julie Pace of the AP: "President Barack Obama is expected to rein in spying on foreign leaders and is considering restricting National Security Agency access to Americans' phone records, according to people familiar with a White House review of the government's surveillance programs. Obama could unveil his highly anticipated decisions as early as next week."
Sebeeeeeelius! Brett Norman of Politico: "House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa continued his intense push to highlight security risks of HealthCare.gov, accusing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of giving 'false and misleading' testimony to Congress. In a letter Wednesday to Sebelius, he accused the secretary of making false statements on several points based on what he characterized as contradictory testimony by the agency's security testing contractors and CMS's chief information security officer...." CW: Issa is going to force me to stick up for Sebelius.
There Are No Constitutional Absolutes. The always-interesting Lyle Denniston on the Second Amendment.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "... a resurgence by Islamic militants in western Iraq has reminded the world that the war is anything but over. What Mr. Obama ended was the United States military presence in Iraq, but the fighting did not stop when the last troops left in 2011; it simply stopped being a daily concern for most Americans. While attention shifted elsewhere, the war raged on and has now escalated to its most violent phase since the depths of the occupation." ...
... More Bob Gates
Philp Ewing in Politico: "'Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War' belongs to a subgenre of Washington memoirs in which the author emerges as the last honest man or woman in a capital beset by greed and ignorance. The book is also, in large measure, Gates's attempt to answer the question of why on earth he didn't quit if he felt he was surrounded by administration apparatchiks and congressional dolts."
Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times: "... widely quoted bits of the book -- now being dissected on TV -- give the impression that as a whole it is less nuanced and measured than it actually is. In fact, Mr. Gates seems less intent on settling scores here than in trying candidly to lay out his feelings about his tenure at the Pentagon and his ambivalent, sometimes contradictory thoughts about the people he worked with." CW Subtext: Woodward is not a journalist.
... ** "Top Ten Things Bob Gates Was Wrong About, Some Criminal." Juan Cole: "Gates's petty gossip about his former colleagues should put an end to the pusillanimous Democratic Party tradition of appointing Republicans as secretaries of defense in Democratic administrations.... Lest it be forgotten, Gates's career has been checkered and he has been consistently wrong about foreign policy himself.... His lifetime record is not one that gives him a platform to attack Joe Biden."
Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "Robert Gates' new memoir is the first entry in the 'Who lost Afghanistan?' sweepstakes. It will not be the last. The trouble for Gates' memoir -- which, for full disclosure, I haven't yet read -- is that from the vantage point of 2014, it is hard to see how Obama wasn't correct ... and how Gates and the Pentagon aren't guilty of overpromising what the military could accomplish in Afghanistan.... It may be lost in the media din about Gates' criticism, but Obama gave the generals almost everything they asked for."
Charles Pierce: "I mean, is there any possible reason to criticize the president because he injured the rather peripatetic fee-fee of Saint David Petraeus, or to find it unprecedented that a president might wonder whether or not a war he inherited -- and, yes, supported, as a candidate -- wasn't ultimately a futile proposition, or whether his generals were giving him the straight dope."
Matt Gertz of Media Matters: "Woodward's portrayal of the book, which has been adopted by the rest of the media, depicting it as a bombshell attack on the president simply does not follow from the facts at hand."
What's a Fundamentalist to Do? Kate Nocera of BuzzFeed: "Israel adopted this week one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world, and will now provide government funding for non-medical abortions for Israeli women aged 20 to 33. But Washington's most anti-abortion lawmakers are largely silent on the new policy. These same members of Congress are also some of Israel's loudest defenders, highlighting a peculiar aspect of the relationship between many of Israel's ardent U.S. supporters and Israel's domestic political landscape."
Local News
Jason Grant of the Star-Ledger: "The U.S. Attorney for New Jersey has announced his office is reviewing the facts surrounding the decision of Gov. Chris Christie's aides and associates to close lanes leading from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge, in an effort to 'determine whether a federal law was implicated.'"
... Jenna Portnoy of the Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie today apologized to Fort Lee, the people of New Jersey and the state Legislature, and fired a senior aide, Bridget Anne Kelly, one day after e-mails surfaced showing she was intimately involved in George Washington Bridge scandal." ...
... Christie announces in his presser he has fired Bridget Kelly, & he's giving his staff one hour to come forth with other info. Says he first saw e-mails yesterday morning, was "blindsided." Says he's heartbroken that Kelly betrayed his trust. Says he repeatedly asked staff if they had involvement in lane closings. Says he was disturbed by the tone & indifference of his former campaign manager Bill Stepien & asked him to withdraw his name as state party chair & his consultancy to Governors Association. Will go to Fort Lee today to apologize personally to Mayor & to residents of Fort Lee. Says this is the exception, not the rule, of what's happened over the past 4 years of his administration. "I had no knowledge nor involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution & I am stunned by the abject stupidty that was shown here.... This was handled in a callous & indifferent way.... I have 65,000 people working for me every day & I cannot know what each of them is doing, but that doesn't matter.... I am responsible." Says he's not really a friend of David Wildstein; they happened to go to the same large high school where they didn't know each other, never saw each other for decades & only vaguely knew each other later: "He's Baroni's hire, not mine."
New Jersey Gov. Chis Christie is scheduled to hold a press conference at 11 am ET today. The New York Times will have a livefeed here. ...
... CW UPDATE: Just for the fun of it, I'll carry it live here.
I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge. One thing is clear: this type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it.... -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, upon the release of e-mails proving a top aide helped engineer GWB lane closings
Christie & top aide Bridget Kelly in happier days.Shawn Boburg of the New Jersey Record: "... documents obtained by The Record raise serious doubts about months of claims by the [Gov. Chris] Christie administration that the September closures of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were part of a traffic study initiated solely by the Port Authority. Instead, they show that one of the governor's top aides was deeply involved in the decision to choke off the borough's access to the bridge, and they provide the strongest indication yet that it was part of a politically-motivated vendetta -- a notion that Christie has publicly denied. 'Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,' Bridget Anne Kelly, one of three deputies on Christie's senior staff, wrote to David Wildstein, a top Christie executive at the Port Authority, on Aug. 13, about three weeks before the closures. Wildstein, the official who ordered the closures and who resigned last month amid the escalating scandal, wrote back: 'Got it.'" Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the lead. ...
... Update. Linh Tat of the Record: "Emergency responders were delayed in attending to four medical situations -- including one in which a 91-year-old woman lay unconscious -- due to traffic gridlock caused by unannounced closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, according to the head of the boroughs EMS department. The woman later died, borough records show." ... The woman later died, borough records show.
... CW: If there's a scandal here that knocks Christie out of the presidential running, it will be the cover-up, not the crime. I still don't know that this story will have a lasting impact, as some have suggested it would. ...
... For instance, the Star-Ledger Editors: Christie's "attempts to laugh this off now appear to be dishonest, though we can't yet be sure that he personally knew about the correspondence of one of his top aides. Still, Christie bears responsibility either way. If it turns out he did know, he is obviously lying and unfit for office -- let alone a 2016 presidential run. And even if he did not, his officials are liars. If Christie can't control them, how can we trust him as a potential future leader of our country?" ...
... AND Jonathan Chait: "Christie's loyalists ... display an almost comical venality bordering on outright sociopathy. And they will probably destroy Christie's chances in 2016. The bridge story itself, while small in nature, reveals a political culture around Christie of people who have no business holding power." Chait elaborates. ...
... BUT. Steve M. argues that what has really doomed Christie's chances to win the GOP primary is his embrace of New Jersey's DREAM Act: "I think Christie's stance on immigration will have much more impact on his 2016 chances in the GOP primaries than the lane-closure thing, unless somehow that can be linked directly to death or serious harm (at least of a white person) as a result of emergency personnel being ensnared in a traffic jam." ...
... Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has built a remarkable brand in Republican politics around a simple message: that his bluster and brashness, grating as they might be, were driven by a desire to transcend partisan rancor and petty politics in the service of the public good. He would never let himself engage, he once pledged, in the 'type of deceitful political trickery that has gone on in this state for much too long.' But embarrassing revelations about his office's role in shutting down some access lanes to the George Washington Bridge now imperil that carefully cultivated image." ...
... Niraj Chokshi of the Washington Post: "Each of the 16 New Jersey newspaper front pages ... and even a handful of New York ones -- featured the scandal -- often in big, splashy ways." Chokshi posts photos of the papers' front pages. ...
... "Positively Nixonian." Olivia Nuzzi of New York: Richard Merkt, a former Republican ally of Christie's & later rival in the 2009 gubernatorial primary compares Christie to Richard Nixon: Nixon "had no need to engage in an abuse of power to win re-election, and, in fact, he won by a landslide. But Nixon just couldn't help himself.... One might surmise that it was the arrogance of power that did him in, but I suspect it was really his control-freak nature and deep vindictiveness fundamental to his nature. Remind you of anyone we know?" ...
... Gail Collins: "On Wednesday, the governor declared in a brief statement that he was shocked, shocked, shocked, and was determined to hold people 'responsible for their actions.' He has apparently dropped his earlier position that the whole thing was probably just the result of a useful study of traffic patterns.... America has not been this conscious of Fort Lee since the early days of Weekend Update on 'Saturday Night Live,' when Gilda Radner played correspondent Roseanne Roseannadanna, continually answering questions from 'Mr. Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey.'"
This Is Heartbreaking. Brooke Adams & Michael Piper of the Salt Lake Tribune: "The state will not recognize the validity of marriages that occurred before the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a district court judge's decision overturning a ban on gay marriage, the governor's office announced Wednesday. In a letter to state agencies Derek Miller, chief of staff to Gov. Gary Herbert, said those marriages will be 'on hold' while it appeals the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Shelby."
I am a gun owner. It happens. -- Kentucky State Rep. Leslie Combs (D), after accidentally firing her semi-automatic handgun in the state capitol building
Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: "Kentucky State Rep. Leslie Combs (D) accidentally fired her semi-automatic handgun in the state capitol building Tuesday night just before Gov. Steve Beshear (D) gave his state of the state address, WHAS11 reported. Combs was unloading her gun in the Capitol annex office when it went off. The bullet hit the floor and ricocheted toward a bookshelf, according to WHAS11. Rep. Jeff Greer (D) was in the room at the time, but Combs said she was following safety procedure and that nobody was in harm's way.... Nobody was injured." CW: Greer is probably fairly happy he wasn't standing in front of that bookshelf.
Yeah, Socialism Sucks
Alister Doyle of Reuters: "Everyone in Norway became a theoretical crown millionaire on Wednesday in a milestone for the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund that has ballooned thanks to high oil and gas prices. Set up in 1990, the fund owns around 1 percent of the world's stocks, as well as bonds and real estate from London to Boston, making the Nordic nation an exception when others are struggling under a mountain of debts."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Amiri Baraka, a poet and playwright of pulsating rage, whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others, died on Thursday in Newark. He was 79."
Washington Post: 'An Indian diplomat whose arrest sent U.S.-India relations into a tailspin was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on Thursday on charges of visa fraud and making false statements regarding the employment of a domestic worker. The indictment, however, came just hours after the State Department moved to resolve the case in a way that would allow Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York, to leave the country without facing the allegations in court."
New York Times: "A silver thief who has been called the 'burglar to the stars' for breaking into the homes of the rich and sometimes famous has been charged with eight counts of burglary [& is being held in Fulton County, Georgia]. The police said the thief, Blane Nordahl, 51, might be linked to more than a hundred burglaries throughout the South. In each case, the thief took nothing but high-end silver, much of it historic and irreplaceable. The silver pieces, including vintage flatware and Tiffany trays, would then be smashed and shipped to smelters for cash."
Guardian: "A European parliament committee has invited Edward Snowden to testify via video link in its investigation of US surveillance practices."
AP: "Cuban news media say former President Fidel Castro has appeared in public for the first time since April. The Communist Party newspaper Granma reports that the 87-year-old Castro appeared Wednesday night at the opening of a Havana art studio."
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Reader Comments (17)
I think Charlie is more right than wrong about the fall out from Christie's tantrum. It boils down to nobody will give a shit in a couple of weeks.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/chris-christie-dream-act-and-bridge-scandal-010814
We can count on lots of media attention of Gov. Christie. In this case and futures exposures we can count on the Governor being "hoist by his own petard."
Petard, past participle of pedere, to break wind.
Probably a minority opinion, but I think/hope that Chris Christie is toast, done, fini! Even people in New Jersey don't like being duped, though they have tolerated the Mafia for years. Perhaps we will have a new Tee Vee version of The Sopranos, and Christie can be The Boss. Isn't that what really is going on here? Only problem is that Christie is not half the man James Gandolfini was!
Really, Mr. Kristof has to pit the elderly against the young? Today he wrote, "I don’t want anybody to be poor, but, if I have to choose, I’d say it’s more of a priority to help kids than seniors.". He might want to consult RC readers for better ideas of how to help kids in poverty. Akhilleus, in a recent comment, had some fine suggestions of how to finance extending unemployment benefits. And, they didn't include hurting vulnerable populations.
Sure Kristof makes some good points, but his comment about kids vs. elderly pisses me off!
@Julie: Excellent point. This POV is typical of Republicans; e.g., pitting the unemployed against the uninsured (see Mitch McConnell).
Marie
Julie's point about favoring one group of humans over another group is always a sticky wicket if not downright immoral. I would argue that the bridge closing that originated from Christi's castle––a horrific traffic debacle that lasted FOUR days and put hundreds of people in harm's way was an example of not giving a shit about those people in favor of a political move. Whether or not Christi approved this plan or suggested this plan his minions, those closest to him, did and that in my book puts a big black mark on Christi as someone who is not fit for a higher office; in fact, I'd say, he isn't fit for the office he occupies.
Re: Put a safety cone in your pot hole; Come the primaries will all of Jersey be coned off? "No, sorry, nobody allowed on the road."
Re: Comb over; Jez Rep; how often do you change out your bullets? I do it once in the morning and once more at night but that's it. "I'm a gun owner and it happens." Pretty good reason not to carry. "Whoops, that one was my bad, anybody shot?"
I carry a cell phone (NSA approved tracker) and every once in awhile I'll make a butt call but there's no shooting involved.
Kate - I share your point of view about Christie; despite the apparent majority opinion that C will survive this contretemps with approvals intact, I cling to the hope that he won't. I honestly do not understand his appeal, given the many instances of videos showing him verbally abusing average citizens - shouting, sneering, the whole nine yards. From what I read and also looking at election returns, Christie seems to appeal to many Democrats - even more puzzling. I expected to grow wiser with age, but it seems that the number of things that absolutely perplex me are not diminishing!
And the idea that rational people can see this man as a potential head of state just floors me.
Here's the part about Christie's story that doesn't fly: Boburg reports that "Wildstein supplied the records that surfaced Wednesday in response to a [legislative] committee investigating the unannounced closures." Boburg's source is obviously a committee member or committee staff.
But Wildstein is Christie's guy. He had the e-mails all along. All of the other recipients had at least some of the e-mails. And they're all Christie backers/staff. So -- prior to yesterday -- Christie had access to most or all of those e-mails. Even if he had nothing to do with the lane closings & had no idea there was
gamblingdirty political tricks going on at the time of the closings, he has known since the story broke that a minimal internal investigation -- "lemme see the e-mails" -- would have answered the question of whether or not his staff had instigated politically-motivated lane closings.So (a) the whole scheme was his idea, (b) it wasn't his idea but he laughed when he found out about it, OR (c) he chose not to find out about it and, despite this wilful ignorance, asserted the story was untrue. There's no honorable answer that I can see.
Marie
@Victoria D. I share your perplexitiness. Unlike @Kate Madison, I sort of hope Christie is the GOP nominee. If by some horror he were elected, he would be the least bad Republican president from among the likely roster of ideological yahoos. However, I think whoever the Democratic nominee is could beat him just by looping a few of those videos of Christie bashing & bullying ordinary citizens. Add a few shots of ambulances & school buses stuck on the GWB --great!
Marie
I think the Republican Party leadership is going to get the message that politically, Christie is a seriously dangerous guy. If you like scandals, Christie is going to be a never ending supplier.
The War on Poverty was a failure so forget about doing anymore for those undeserving poors.
Says who? Why, Marco Rubio, for one, and all those other well-informed right-wingers who would never think of lying about history to make political points. But is it really lying? Among the many dangers posed by contemporary conservatism (aka the Loony Bin), is its blithe disregard for history. The right considers history to be whatever they say it is. Facts be damned. Right-wing historical revisionism has evolved (can I use that word when talking about the right?) from a cottage industry promoted by the odd--and I do mean odd--wingnut historian (there's an oxymoron, eh?) and think-tank cranks to a burgeoning ideological expurgation of any historical personages and events that discommode approved winger narratives.
But I suppose if your team finds itself constantly on the wrong side of history, and has been for the last 75 years or so, you gotta do something to save face. After all, real historians are out there, running around with their noses to the ground, researching and writing stuff that makes your guys look like a racist, sexist, bigoted, drooling knuckle-draggers.
So what to do? Well, there are several ways you can go. The easiest route is just make shit up. Who will know? Most of your constituents are ignorant morons and the ones who aren't don't care as long as what you make up keeps their hands on the levers of power and piles up the money. So make mendacity your BFF. Sure a few liberals will call you on it but your team has been immensely successful at painting anyone who disagrees with you as a commie Hitler lover who produces gay kiddie porn in the basements of churches they've burned down with the congregation still inside singing "Shall We Gather at the River".
Second, you can call for a rewrite. You can get shills and wingnut historians (there it is again) to simply recast historical facts in any way you like. So now, it was Republicans who supported the Civil Rights movement. It was Republicans who knew what a great man Nelson Mandela was. Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist. So were the settlers at Jamestown (the lesson being that the colony failed because they were all commies, and thus go all socialist experiments), even though Jamestown was created as a capitalist venture by hardcore money men in London.
Facts, schmacts.
The founders were for a Christian nation and small government. A quick glance at the Federalist papers and other minor founding documents (The Constitution, say) says different. Alexander Hamilton was a small government guy? Not according to his letters or any decent biography. In fact, just the opposite.
In Texas, history classes now give Phyllis Schlafly as much time as Thomas Jefferson (that evil separation of church and state guy). And you'd never know that Martin Luther King did anything other than make a few speeches.
The Great Depression? It wasn't caused by capitalism run amok. FDR created it so he could look like a hero and implement....you guessed it: SOCIALISM!
Oh, and Joe McCarthy was an American Hero. Don't listen to those lying liberals. And don't read actual history. Read some book by a Regnery Publishing hack.
The problem, for wingnuts, is that their team has been against most of the greatest advances in America since the beginning and are still trying to turn the clock back on many more. Public education, women's suffrage, voting rights for African-Americans, the 40 hour work week, child labor laws (the current Republican governor of Maine is not too keen on these. Seems he worked in a charnel house when he was 11 and look at how he turned out...), healthcare, OSHA, social security, and so on. The list is a long one.
So it's no wonder the right continues apace with their historical dream factories churning out fantasies about how the right has never been wrong and are the god appointed saviors of America.
Just walk down the history aisle in any big bookstore, especially the chains. You can instantly spot the right-wing "history" books. Many prominently feature "founders" or "patriots" in the titles. Others are things like "Patton: Guts, Glory, and Prayer". You get the idea. It's not that these books might have nothing to offer, it's just that they are the tip of the right-wing effort to reset history to suit their needs. There's nothing wrong with looking at, say, Winston Churchill or the Great Depression, through the lens of conservative ideology. In fact, it's very useful, as long as shit isn't made up out of whole cloth.
Bill O'Reilly, who Roger Ailes famously described as a "book salesman with a TV show" regularly spits out books about "history" full to the brim with historical mistakes, inaccuracies, and out and out lies. If you're going to promulgate a conservative world view, at least have the courage of your convictions and make a strong case bolstered by solid research and well thought out points. Glaring historical inaccuracies and mass produced bullshit do not pave the path to a winning argument.
The problem for the rest of us is the usual one. An ill-informed, poorly educated, spineless, bovine press corps that, with some exceptions, regurgitate right-wing lies on command. There's little effort to rigorously examine Marco Rubio's claim that the war on poverty was an abject failure. It's more fun and certainly far easier to quote pithy lines from Saint Ronald about how we lost the war on poverty so let's concentrate on the rich and start a new war. A war on the poor.
History on demand. Not exactly what R.G. Collingwood had in mind.
Julie's recognition of the problem with Nick Kristof's position and PD's description of that position as immoral got me thinking about a famous philosophy experiment that seeks to test our understanding about morality through the decisions we make.
You may have heard of it since it's had a new life recently. It's called the Trolley Problem, developed by the wonderful Philippa Foot and extended by moral philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson. I'll give you a link to a little morality test operating off the Trolley Problem, but here's the skinny on it.
An out of control trolley car is coming down the tracks. Five people are tied up farther ahead on that track. You see a lever that will divert the train to a siding. You also notice that there is someone standing on that track. Do you divert the train to save the five and kill the one or, does your moral compass tell you that it's never right to cause the death of anyone and let things take their course? And if that's not complicated enough, Ms. Thomson adds the famous Fat Man Problem. In this scenario, there is a fat man standing next to you on the track. The train will hit and kill the five people tied up unless you push the fat man onto the track thereby killing him but stopping the train (would a fat man stop a speeding train? Hey, you buy the premise, you buy the joke.).
What would you do? Let the kids starve to save the old people or vice versa? This is, in effect, what conservatives seek to do when they try to put competing groups of deserving, but, for the GOP, inconsequential people, at risk. I'm surprised that Kristof even thinks this is a topic worth discussing, but that doesn't change the moral question.
Try it yourself:
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
And here's Judith Jarvis Thomson's original paper on Foot's Trolley Problem if you're so inclined:
Would you kill the fat man?
Of course the problem is a lot more complex once you start teasing things out, but it's always interesting to test our ideas through hypothetical thought experiments. Something I'm sure Paul Ryan does at length when developing budgets that create great hardship, pain, and possibly early death for a relatively large number of citizens while comforting and exalting the few already well off.
I watched Christie's, almost two hour, news conference and had a moment of deja vu when he said, "I am not a bully." Nixon's, "I am not a thief" certainly had its consequences.
Contrary to Christie's assertion of his status as non-bullying good guy, I don't think there is any doubt that the guy is, in fact, a bully. Not just that, he's a vindictive punk of a bully. As Mushiba points out, Nixon was exactly what he claimed not to be. Christie too.
And Christie, like so many political bullies, surrounds himself with like minded sycophants who absorb, through some sort of weird political osmosis, their boss' temperament, either that or they were chosen because of their affinity for wise ass vindictiveness.
Either way, once again, it seems that idiots will never learn, from Christie's staff, to Rob Ford, to redneck TV stars advocating child brides, to Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner. In our contemporary digital culture, nothing disappears. Stuff will be around forever. E-mails, pictures, records, videos, tweets, stupid Fox News headlines. No matter how slick you think you are, something will surface to punch you in the face.
How's that jaw feeling, Chris?
The comments about Kristof and his idea "I don’t want anybody to be poor, but, if I have to choose, I’d say it’s more of a priority to help kids than seniors" says a lot. Certainly it is the central thesis of his article and the center of the differences between Democratic policies and Republican policies. The smaller, more well organized, enfranchised population yield the bulk of governmental benefits: whether seniors or defense contractors or oil companies that's the way it is.
I think part of what really pisses off Julie in MA and CW and others is the intractability of changing the binary discussion about cutting one group has to equal advancing another group. It's like at the holiday dinner table where some dumb-ass subject brought up at holiday dinners keeps coming up year after year. The Republican dislike of science will likely over time erode the viability of their simple but effective politics of division. There is a lot of information to backup more progressive policies, it's just not packaged very for consumption.
I understand the visceral appeal of pitting a generation who had amazing employment prospects if they came of age in the 1950s versus everyone else. That generation was born on third base and thought they hit a triple in many parts of the US. I know my dad never spent a day in his life unemployed and once we were old enough, I know my mom could go out and get a job with a pension so now her life is much better. Myself as a person at the very end of the baby boom, I fully expect to be my own personal "death panel" should I get so lucky. Whether you like it or not Kristof has a point underlying it which is that the vast majority of your lifetime health care expenditures are spent in the last year of your life (and whether that is your, your doctors or the insurance business decision is up for debate).
I've heard it said that every good myth has elements of truth that thus make the myth more plausible. Just like Kristof and particularly Republicans live binarily, criticism of American capitalism is caught in stupid binarism where it is only good or bad. Corporatism that mindlessly advances minority authority that can't be discussed as a criticism of "capitalism" really pisses me off. We discuss whether to starve children or seniors instead of talking about how in the richest, greatest country in history we've let such a inane state of politics and business malfeasance come to pass. And don't get me started about the pathetic displays of Jesus H. Christ inside hospital environments a commenter mentioned a couple day.
Re: war; what is it good for?
Who won the war on poverty? The Department of Defense won the war on poverty.
"Fighting wars is expensive, but so is winding them down. As the US prepares to ship most of its weapons, vehicles and other equipment home after more than a decade in Afghanistan, the bill for the move will be a staggering $6bn, officers in charge of the complex process say." The Raw Story
USA! USA! USA!
Think; six big ones to clean-up the party.
Old people, young people; poverty; phefff. Let's hear it for WAR!