Today's Reddit

The comments are kinda surprisingly divided. There's plenty of "Yeah but what about..." and "double standard", and an attempt to hijack the thread into "Why are they all so old!?" - which seems a bit non sequitur until I stop and remember that's how a lot of "conservative" argumentation goes.

But there's also quite a bit of criticism that seems rooted in what I can hope is a genuine feeling of "This has gone too far - these idiots are embarrassing".

We can hope, but I'm still wondering why nobody even tried to correct her name. Several commenters referred to her as "Laura". Curious.

Cameras only work to see conservatives
byu/alanboston inConservative

Kids & Books & Parents

1. None of the rights guaranteed in the US Constitution is absolute or unlimited.
2. With every right comes responsibility

"Conservatives" demand the freedom while ignoring the work required to achieve and maintain that freedom.

So who's the fuckin' moocher now?

Opinion
The parents’ rights movement keeps ducking parental responsibilities

The current “parental rights” movement has a dirty little secret: It depicts parents as victims of teachers and librarians. Yet many of the movement’s proposed solutions fob off parental responsibilities onto those public servants.

Listen to enough debates about what books belong in public and school libraries, or about sex education, and a theme emerges: Even as they demand more rights, advocates of book bans and curriculum-dodging appear to wish they could do less parenting.

Take the group of Alaska parents who recently asked their local library to remove books “which are intended to indoctrinate children in LGBTQ+ ideologies” from the children’s section, or put them on a restricted shelf. “Parents who do not wish for their children to stumble across … confusing ideas,” they complained, can’t let their kids browse without close supervision.

Or take this move. Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson introduced a bill requiring vendors who want to sell books in Texas to rate their offerings as “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” based on whether the books are “patently offensive,” “pervasively vulgar,” “obscene” or “educationally unsuitable.” Apparently, it’s not enough for parents to keep an eye on what their children are checking out. Instead, librarians must read the minds of every adult in town, anticipate what each one might find objectionable and pre-censor their shelves accordingly.

Such proposals actually give publishers, librarians and school administrators more power to make moral judgments on behalf of parents, not less.

Instead, parents should explain to their kids what they’re forbidden to check out and why. And let their kids’ librarians know. When she was a school librarian, says Andrea Jamison, Illinois State University College of Education professor, she would enforce parents’ rules. But she insisted they explain their reasoning to their children themselves. Stepping in to impart those values on their behalf would usurp parents’ rights.

In dodging these conversations, parents are also transferring their anxiety about how their children are growing up onto teachers and librarians.

It can’t be that young people express authentic interest in gender, sexuality or current events — or even that they crave junky thrillers and bathroom humor. It must be nefarious librarians pushing guides to puberty such as “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” and trash classics such as V.C. Andrews’s “Flowers in the Attic.” As Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa put it in March with an air of resignation, “I wish they would pick up Shakespeare.” But it’s Captain Underpants and the Fart Quest series that got her son into books.

And it couldn’t be that kids are naturally curious about racism or climate change. Instead, it’s teachers and librarians who are scattering dangerous ideas through their shelves like so many intellectual improvised explosive devices.

In reality it is the very books adults are trying to protect students from that they find most vital. That’s what kids tell Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who runs the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Students experience violence, they experience racism, they experience poverty,” agrees Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school English teacher. “If you’re old enough to experience these things, you’re old enough to read about these things.”

More ducking of parental duty shows up in the furor around sex education and other curriculums. Many school districts require parents to actively opt out their children from lessons that run counter to their values. Instead, some parents want to require that families opt in.

These advocates suggest that children shouldn’t be exposed to the social consequences of feeling singled out. For instance, at a 2022 hearing on a proposed sex-ed curriculum, Daniel Gallic, who chairs the Warren Township, N.J., planning board, complained: “An opt-out of the program makes the children subject to harassment and intimidation.” In 2017, a Palo Alto, Calif., parent protested her daughter hadn’t felt comfortable filling a form to skip a sex-ed class because “she would have been the only student in the class to do so and didn’t want to feel left out.”

Certainly, schools should protect students from bullying or discrimination based on their beliefs. But giving middle and high school students practice at explaining their family’s values seems like a form of education everyone should get behind.

“We do not want to raise snowflakes who are not able to take the realities of the real world,” was how Talarico put it in a March 21 Texas House committee hearing on Patterson’s books bill, flipping conservative rhetoric on its head. “We want to prepare our kids, especially our teens in high school, for what they’re going to face when they’re outside our school laws.”

That preparation takes work. Parents who want to assert their rights ought to be ready to take on their responsibilities.

Punching Hard

More Mr Raskin if you please.

It'd be hard to find another congress critter who embodies the fighting spirit better than Jamie Raskin (D-MD08).

The guy's battling cancer, and he's still got plenty to dunk on clowns like Lauren Boebert.

Our Misadventures In Bucolia

... summary of work by Katherine J. Cramer, who attributes rural resentment to perceptions that rural areas are ignored by policymakers, don’t get their fair share of resources and are disrespected by “city folks.”

As it happens, all three perceptions are largely wrong. ...

Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?

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Rural resentment has become a central fact of American politics — in particular, a pillar of support for the rise of right-wing extremism. As the Republican Party has moved ever further into MAGAland, it has lost votes among educated suburban voters; but this has been offset by a drastic rightward shift in rural areas, which in some places has gone so far that the Democrats who remain face intimidation and are afraid to reveal their party affiliation.

But is this shift permanent? Can anything be done to assuage rural rage?

The answer will depend on two things: whether it’s possible to improve rural lives and restore rural communities, and whether the voters in these communities will give politicians credit for any improvements that do take place.

This week my colleague Thomas B. Edsall surveyed research on the rural Republican shift. I was struck by his summary of work by Katherine J. Cramer, who attributes rural resentment to perceptions that rural areas are ignored by policymakers, don’t get their fair share of resources and are disrespected by “city folks.”

As it happens, all three perceptions are largely wrong. I’m sure that my saying this will generate a tidal wave of hate mail, and lecturing rural Americans about policy reality isn’t going to move their votes. Nonetheless, it’s important to get our facts straight.

The truth is that ever since the New Deal rural America has received special treatment from policymakers. It’s not just farm subsidies, which ballooned under Donald Trump to the point where they accounted for around 40 percent of total farm income. Rural America also benefits from special programs that support housing, utilities and business in general.

In terms of resources, major federal programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, in part because such areas have a disproportionate number of seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare. But even means-tested programs — programs that Republicans often disparage as “welfare” — tilt rural. Notably, at this point rural Americans are more likely than urban Americans to be on Medicaid and receive food stamps.

And because rural America is poorer than urban America, it pays much less per person in federal taxes, so in practice major metropolitan areas hugely subsidize the countryside. These subsidies don’t just support incomes; they support economies: Government and the so-called health care and social assistance sector each employ more people in rural America than agriculture, and what do you think pays for those jobs?

What about rural perceptions of being disrespected? Well, many people have negative views about people with different lifestyles; that’s human nature. There is, however, an unwritten rule in American politics that it’s OK for politicians to seek rural votes by insulting big cities and their residents, but it would be unforgivable for urban politicians to return the favor. “I have to go to New York City soon,” tweeted J.D. Vance during his senatorial campaign. “I have heard it’s disgusting and violent there.” Can you imagine, say, Chuck Schumer saying something similar about rural Ohio, even as a joke?

So the ostensible justifications for rural resentment don’t withstand scrutiny — but that doesn’t mean things are fine. A changing economy has increasingly favored metropolitan areas with large college-educated work forces over small towns. The rural working-age population has been declining, leaving seniors behind. Rural men in their prime working years are much more likely than their metropolitan counterparts to not be working. Rural woes are real.

Ironically, however, the policy agenda of the party most rural voters support would make things even worse, slashing the safety-net programs these voters depend on. And Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to point this out.

But can they also have a positive agenda for rural renewal? As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent recently pointed out, the infrastructure spending bills enacted under President Biden, while primarily intended to address climate change, will also create large numbers of blue-collar jobs in rural areas and small cities. They are, in practice, a form of the “place-based industrial policy” some economists have urged to fight America’s growing geographic disparities.

Will they work? The economic forces that have been hollowing out rural America are deep and not easily countered. But it’s certainly worth trying.

But even if these policies improve rural fortunes, will Democrats get any credit? It’s easy to be cynical. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new governor of Arkansas, has pledged to get the “bureaucratic tyrants” of Washington “out of your wallets”; in 2019 the federal government spent almost twice as much in Arkansas as it collected in taxes, de facto providing the average Arkansas resident with $5,500 in aid. So even if Democratic policies greatly improve rural lives, will rural voters notice?

Still, anything that helps reverse rural America’s decline would be a good thing in itself. And maybe, just maybe, reducing the heartland’s economic desperation will also help reverse its political radicalization.

Today's Quote

Some Shit Coming Our Way

The actual decision isn't due for another month or so, but when it comes down, it's not likely to be a lot different from the leaked draft.

And we're prob'ly going to hear lots of this kind of commentary - which I think is no more overblown or melodramatic than the warnings that started before SCOTUS was packed with a 6-3 majority - and the whole time that packing was underway. This court has been hand-picked to do exactly what it's doing.

We were warned. And now we're being warned again about more shit headed our way.

Get ready. This is going to be a long shitty fight.

Daily Beast:

Gay Marriage Is Next Up on the SCOTUS Chopping Block

RIP, ROE

It’s not just abortion. The logic of this draft decision would also apply to the decisions protecting same-sex marriage, contraception, and more.

I am approximately zero percent surprised by the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, authored by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, that was leaked to Politico.

Not only am I unsurprised—I predicted it, several times, in this publication. And not just me, of course, but everyone in my profession. Overturning Roe is in the Republican Party’s platform. It was the primary criterion that the Federalist Society, funded by religious extremists, used to pick Supreme Court justices for Donald Trump. Together with desegregation, it propelled the Religious Right to get into politics 50 years ago, and vote for Republicans ever since.

So, yes, we all told you this was inevitable. And now it is here.

But “you”—by which I mean the large majority of voters who say that women have a right to control their own bodies—didn’t listen. The Supreme Court ranked at the bottom of Democrats’ concerns in 2016, while it was at the top of Republicans’. Even after the unprecedented and norm-shattering mistreatment of judicial nominee Merrick Garland, many centrist voters didn’t care and some left-wing voters didn’t think it was enough to stomach voting for Hillary Clinton.

So we got Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, and now, if this draft becomes the majority opinion, we’ve got the end of Roe v. Wade.

But that’s only the beginning of the end. If the reasoning of the draft becomes the majority opinion—and it is worth stressing that this is by no means assured, since it is a draft and may well be watered down by other justices—then it applies equally to Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that all marriages (including my same-sex one) are protected by the Constitution; to Lawrence v. Texas, which held that all intimate sexual activity (including same-sex) was too; and to Griswold v. Connecticut, which held that the right to access contraception is as well.

“What can liberals do now? Not much, really. It’s too fucking late.”

All those cases held that certain specific rights to bodily integrity and privacy, though unmentioned in the Constitution, are implicit in the broad guarantees of the 14th Amendment, as long as they were part of the “concept of ordered liberty.” It’s not part of the concept of liberty to police a woman’s uterus or a gay man’s bedroom. There are limits to government power, and no process can be “due process” if it transgresses those limits.

But in so-called Originalism, a once-fringe legal theory that is now the gospel of half the Supreme Court, a right must also be “part of the Nation’s history and traditions” to be protected. Sorry, women and gays, you’re not part of our white-male-dominated history and traditions, so the constitution doesn’t protect you.

To be clear, Justice Alito didn’t leave this to speculation. He specifically mentioned Obergefell and Lawrence as examples of the same faulty reasoning behind Roe.

So, in case folks weren’t listening when all those legal Cassandras warned that Roe was going to be overturned, please listen now: Gay marriage is too. Within a year or two. Unless another justice leaves the court, the constitutional right to marriage for all is going to be overturned. The only question is whether Republicans will have a veto-proof majority (or the presidency in 2024) to ban both abortion and gay marriage anywhere in the nation.

I’m not sure where that leaves my custody of my child, but I can tell you that I am certain that my family will not be protected by the Constitution two years from now.

☞ “My family will not be protected by the Constitution two years from now. ” ☜

So, what can liberals do now?

Not much, really. It’s too fucking late. What liberals should have done in 2016 was ensure that a Democrat won the oval office. They should have arm-twisted their Jill Stein friends, and let their Republican relatives know that, hey, women are people and shouldn’t be forced by the government to carry a fetus (or a blastocyst, or an embryo) inside of their womb. And that those very rights were at stake in 2016, and again in the Senate elections of 2018, and again in 2020, and again in the Senate elections this year.

Of course, I’m sure liberals will hold marches, because that’s what we like to do. March and rally and chant. We like to do things that give ourselves the illusion of power. That’s why liberals reduce their “carbon footprints,” even though that concept is a neo-liberal scam, invented by British Petroleum to dodge collective responsibility for climate change and place it on individuals instead. It’s why liberals think that occupying a public square is a “victory,” even if it accomplishes nothing.

The question is, will liberals continue to sublimate their rage into meaningless acts that make them feel better, or will they exercise actual power, by voting Democrats into office on local, state, and national levels, and by demanding that the desecration of the Supreme Court that took place during the Trump years (and the last of Obama’s) be corrected immediately, by changing the size of the court or enacting term limits or both?

And in the meantime, will liberals donate enough money to pro-abortion organizations so that every woman who wants one can travel to a state where her rights are still respected? Will moderate white women—looking at you, Susan Collins—finally realize that a party that sells out to Christian theocrats is not looking out for their best interests?

I’m ashamed to admit that I still have a little optimism here. As I’ve written before, I think the abortion case and the gun control case (don’t forget that one—half the nation’s gun safety laws are likely to be struck down too) have the capacity to energize two non-overlapping groups essential to the Democrats’ success: young progressives (especially people of color) and moderate white women. Without minimizing the gigantic practical and symbolic damage this decision will do on women across the country, I still have some flickering hope that it will also wake up enough people to make a difference in November.

In the meantime, all I can say to all of my female friends, as we watch your rights be stripped away by Christian extremists placed on the Supreme Court by other Christian extremists, is that I’ll be joining you soon. They’ve never accepted our full humanity, and now they’re putting us back in our places.

Quick Note

We're still getting an awful lot of purity shit from (largely) the Bernie maniacs because "we just can't go on voting against the GOP - we have to have someone we can vote for..."

Hard to argue with it, especially when there seems to be a pretty good case behind it.

But if it's not to be, then it's not to be, and I'm going to stay with the basics: When presented a candidate whom I identify as the lesser of two evils, I'm going to take the opportunity to vote for that lesser of two evils because I know "the other side" will jump at the chance to vote for the greater of the two evils.

Because my preference is for - and will always be for - less evil.

I'll continue to be frustrated and I'll go on bitchin' about it, but I feel I have a duty to resist the best I can, and that resistance manifests itself in voting for a Joe Biden because he's what I've got.

And also too - Frederick Douglass once referred to Abe Lincoln as a "craven, capitulating compromiser...".

Douglass would break with the Abolitionist Party in 1860 to support the Republican nominee because he knew an ally when he saw one, and he thought Lincoln had a real chance to win.

As she was packing to leave Washington in the spring of 1965, Mary Todd came across her husband's favorite walking stick, and told her dressmaker to make a gift of it for Mr Douglass - because she was sure Mr Lincoln would want a truly great friend to have it, and she couldn't think of anyone who would appreciate it more.

It Always Comes Down To This

A conservative is someone who bitches about how the country has become sinful and corrupt and a hellish place unfit for human habitation, and then screams "LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT" as soon as a liberal says we should try to make some improvements.

Another Test

When you test the sentiment of the former by taking the action described in the latter, American "conservatives" are revealed to be hypocrites, or bigoted nativists, or just plain old ordinary whiny-butt pussies.

Cult45

There are always reasons for any given behavior. Those reasons are often ridiculous - at least they seem pretty ridiculous to "normal" people - but it's possible to understand these things.

Bobby Azarian, PhD - Psychology Today:

6. The Power of Mortality Reminders and Perceived Existential Threat

A well-supported theory from social psychology, known as Terror Management Theory, explains why Trump’s fear mongering is doubly effective. The theory is based on the fact that humans have a unique awareness of their own mortality. The inevitably of one’s death creates existential terror and anxiety that is always residing below the surface. In order to manage this terror, humans adopt cultural worldviews — like religions, political ideologies, and national identities — that act as a buffer by instilling life with meaning and value.

Terror Management Theory predicts that when people are reminded of their own mortality, which happens with fear mongering, they will more strongly defend those who share their worldviews and national or ethnic identity, and act out more aggressively towards those who do not. Hundreds of studies have supported this hypothesis, and some have specifically shown that triggering thoughts of death tends to shift people towards the right.

Not only do death reminders increase nationalism, they may influence voting habits in favor of more conservative presidential candidates. And more disturbingly, in a study with American students, scientists found that making mortality salient increased support for extreme military interventions by American forces that could kill thousands of civilians overseas. Interestingly, the effect was present only in conservatives.

By constantly emphasizing existential threat, Trump may be creating a psychological condition that makes the brain respond positively rather than negatively to bigoted statements and divisive rhetoric.

In this video, I explain this in greater detail, and offer a potential solution to the problem.

So, yeah - dude's got a sing-song speaking style that gets pretty annoying pretty fast. For my own bad self, I'm trying to put aside my Sales Guy Training and ignore such things in favor of concentrating on the content.

One thing: it's interesting to me that the theme - perceived existential threat - is a recurring thing, and it meshes well with the old BBC documentary from 2006 (The Power Of Nightmares - Adam Curtis).

Here's your assignment on background:

The antidote, as per usual, is interaction with "the other side". Unfortunately, my experience of those interactions is that in order to have any chance at a meaningful exchange with a Red Hat or some other "conservative", I end up having to do most of the thinking for both us - just so we can have a civil discussion. 

But that almost inevitably means my debate partner is going to accuse me of being some snobby PC elitist even though it's very likely he's someone fully engaged in deliberate ignorance (regarding one topic or another) and refuses even to learn some of the basics of public discourse, eg: Logical Fallacies.

I have to insist that facts are facts. And I have to insist that my insistence on those facts is not justification for anyone to cop out and say "Both Sides Are Just Being Intractable".

Your feeling vulnerable (because of whatever threat you believe is "out there") doesn't negate the moral and ethical norms that have to be in place so we can live together in a civilized manner.

"And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." --JFK

The War On Socialism

Cult45 believes the old formula of assigning scary wording to the Dems is how they'll bulldoze their way through and stay in power.

Call it whatever your fragile little ego requires, but Socialism is a pretty great thing when it shows up and arrests the guy trying to rob your liquor store.

Or when it makes sure a homeless veteran gets a hot meal and enough medical care to keep him from attempting suicide.

Or when it sends a helicopter to rescue your neighbor and his family, who're stranded on their roof because of a flash flood.

Or when it takes some of the burden off some old guy struggling to pay for the 12 or 15 pills he has to take every day to stay alive.

Or when it comes in after a big snow and clears the streets so we can all get to our jobs.

Or when it gathers a few bucks from lots of different people so you can get your car fixed after some dumb fuckin' drunk sideswipes it in the parking lot.

Or or fucking or.

So first off, we have to stop being afraid of words, and start using them to turn this shit back around.

EJ Dionne, WaPo:

“We socialists are trying to save capitalism, and the damned capitalists won’t let us.”

Political scientist Mason B. Williams cited this cheeky but accurate comment by New Deal lawyer Jerome Frank to make a point easily lost in the new war on socialism that President Trump has launched: Socialism goes back a long way in the United States, and it has taken doses of it to keep the market system alive.

Going back to the late 19th century, Americans and Europeans, socialists and liberal reformers, worked together to humanize the system’s workings and to find creative ways to solve problems capitalism alone couldn’t. This has been well documented in separate books written by historians Daniel T. Rodgers and James T. Kloppenberg. “The New Deal,” Rodgers wrote, “was a great, explosive release of the pent-up agenda of the progressive past.”

Capitalism is the closest approximation of the "natural order of things" - and that's good - it works really well. But once in a while, we have to reassert the rules to keep the capitalists from ruining capitalism.

Anyway, the short and sweet version is: I have to take in a number of calories sufficient to fuel the work required to go out and find my next meal. ie: I have to make some kind of profit to sustain my existence.

So I'm a capitalist because god's a capitalist.

But part of the deal - the part always ignored by the Unfettered Free Market pimps - is that god also insists on appropriate regulation to keep things in balance. And also too, god gave me a brain that I can use to sort these things out.

• Blood sugar - Insulin
• Adrenalin - REM sleep
• Shivers - Sweats

These are all really great things, but too much of one &/or not enough of the other makes me - uhh - dead.

Capitalism is a good thing, but without a good regulatory system in place, it becomes exactly the problem this country was founded to defeat.

What's so fuckin' hard to understand about this?

News Broke

Francesca Fiorentini

"Knowledge makes people question power, so it's no wonder politicians try to defund public schools, raise college costs, keep people working too much to educate themselves and stigmatize higher education as elitist. Knowledge is power to us, but to the people who rule us it's a liability."

Yes, it's Al-Jazeera. (bring your own grains of salt)

But here's the thing: I'll try to think through my own haze of ideological purity and see if there might be tiny kernels of reality outside my own little bubble.

Today's Tweet

Oddly enough, almost exactly what "the libruls" have been trying to tell us for 40 years.

"I voted for Trump because I thought he would hurt OTHER people, not me!" is a flourishing genre. https://t.co/x2SfZge7hQ

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) May 13, 2018

Today's Cheapshot

Dr Gail Saltz:

Because my great big Anterior Cingulate Gyrus can beat up your puny little Right Amygdala.

Please note: the ACG is kind of an upper brain thingie (suggesting higher evolutionary status) while the amygdala is in the lower brain - the part that hasn't changed much since we were living in trees and sifting thru buffalo shit looking for a few undigested seeds to eat.

Just sayin'.

And if you watched that whole video, you know most of what you just read is bullshit.

But if you've been to my little blog with any frequency - well, you knew that goin' in.

Anyway, good to have new information on how to get those idiot conservatives to stop being such bullheaded whiny-butt Proto-Apes and listen to my perfectly-reasoned and superior arguments.

Church - n - State

There' a right good bit of this thing that don't go down so well. Worth considering though.

It's Brookings

...and Brookings is "left leaning", but that don't make 'em wrong.

Like Colbert said: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

(I just wish this kind of stuff could come from an author with a name other than Looney, y'know?)

Anyway:

THE ISSUE: House and Senate Republicans are working on a tax bill that will overhaul several parts of the U.S. tax code. By introducing new complexities to the tax code, the new bill creates tax sheltering opportunities for many Americans, especially the wealthy and those with good financial advisers.

- the first 3 points -

• By taxing wage income and business income at different levels, the bill adds complexity to the tax code and creates many new opportunities for more sophisticated and well-advised taxpayers to reduce their tax burdens.
• One of the least desirable parts of the bill is a provision that allows pass-through business owners to deduct 23 percent of their income before they calculate their taxes. This would result in very large differences in the tax burden of taxpayers in very similar circumstances.
• For example, if a plumber makes $60,000 a year as wages paid by an employer, he or she will pay 60 percent more in income taxes than if that plumber had been a sole proprietor or self-employed and takes advantage of the pass-through rate.
• The most sophisticated taxpayers and the highest income taxpayers will have a multiplicity of choices about how to structure their income and businesses in order to reduce taxes the most.

But let's get really real - if these jokers wanted to cut taxes for working families, they'd be  doing exactly that.  It's not about "relief", and anybody living within driving distance of a smart phone knows that.

It's also not about simplifying the Tax Code - not when it installs new ways for Corporations to avoid paying their fair share, which only increases an already pretty severe slant against the Workin' Guy.

These jagoffs are setting a deficit time bomb that they'll be using as the excuse they need to dismantle the main economic safety features which, for a good 80 years, have proven essential to making sure we have a properly-functioning middle class.

Paul Ryan has already tipped his hand by saying 2018 is when they'll be taking a nice big whack at Medicare.

We'll see what happens with Ryan. Rumors about his probable departure have intensified of late, but that could easily be a shot at gaining a bit more leverage - dunno. There are so many flips and turns and double-, triple-, and fourple-crossing that goes on, it's not really possible to keep up.

As always, the sausage-making continues apace.

It's Not An Absolute

...but education counts for quite a bit.

Stanford - BA Public Policy
Rhodes Scholar
Oxford University - PhD Political Science

Dropped out of 2 colleges and a Vo-Tech school

1 college course (theology)

Dropped out after 2 semesters and a summer session

Like Dr Adler said: Your education often starts after your schooling is completed.

But when it's time to learn about something that's complex and weird and has 37 different angles and can't be shoehorned into a simple binary model - when you need to get the story from someone who's been thru some kinda program that isn't just OJT in the entertainment business - which of these people makes up the better, more logical choice?

Nobody Does This Better

driftglass:

I feel compelled to point out that back when Comrade Trump was declaring that his Party would be a Worker's Party, certain internet scoundrel hobos were trying in vain to call Meathead America's attention to the fact that, according to Comrade Trump's own words...

Comrade Trump Sings Songs Of Love

Comrade Trump promises that under his regime he will...

...tell American companies what they can produce and where they can produce it.

...tell American companies who they can hire and how much they will be paid.

...use the power of government to keep American workers working in dying industries despite what the market says.

...conquer inferior countries who have stuff we want.

...weed out the undesirables whoever they may be and wherever they may hide.

...build an axis of strong alliances with other like-minded Strong Menaround the world.

...not be held hostage by the counterrevolutionary forces of bourgeoisie science.

Today's Tweet

Always looking for some good comebacks &/or useful vocabulary:

 

Elizabeth WarrenVerified account‏@elizabethforma

If Scott Walker sees 100,000 teachers & firefighters as his enemies, maybe it's time we take a closer look at his friends.

• RETWEETS 6,140
• FAVORITES 4,925
• 

8:59 AM - 28 Feb 2015

Today's Handy Tip

On how to be a good Librul:

1) Believe as many true things as possible.

2) Don't believe as many false things as possible.

3) Learn how to tell the fucking difference.

Management thanks you - please go back to what you were doing.