At The New Yorker, John Cassidy asks What Good is Wall Street? An excerpt:

In the upper reaches of Wall Street, talk of another financial crisis is dismissed as alarmism. Last fall, John Mack, to his credit, was one of the first Wall Street C.E.O.s to say publicly that his industry needed stricter regulation. Now that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the last two remaining big independent Wall Street firms, have converted to bank holding companies, a legal switch that placed them under the regulatory authority of the Federal Reserve, Mack insists that proper supervision is in place. Fed regulators “have more expertise, and they challenge us,” Mack told me. Since the middle of 2007, Morgan Stanley has raised about twenty billion dollars in new capital and cut in half its leverage ratio—the total value of its assets divided by its capital. In addition, it now holds much more of its assets in forms that can be readily converted to cash. Other firms, including Goldman Sachs, have taken similar measures. “It’s a much safer system now,” Mack insisted. “There’s no question.” That’s true. But the history of Wall Street is a series of booms and busts. After each blowup, the firms that survive temporarily shy away from risky ventures and cut back on leverage. Over time, the markets recover their losses, memories fade, spirits revive, and the action starts up again, until, eventually, it goes too far. The mere fact that Wall Street poses less of an immediate threat to the rest of us doesn’t mean it has permanently mended its ways. Perhaps the most shocking thing about recent events was not how rapidly the big Wall Street firms got into trouble but how quickly they returned to profitability and lavished big rewards on themselves. Last year, Goldman Sachs paid more than sixteen billion dollars in compensation, and Morgan Stanley paid out more than fourteen billion dollars. Neither came up with any spectacular new investments or produced anything of tangible value, which leads to the question: When it comes to pay, is there something unique about the financial industry? Thomas Philippon, an economist at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, thinks there is. After studying the large pay differential between financial-sector employees and people in other industries with similar levels of education and experience, he and a colleague, Ariell Reshef of the University of Virginia, concluded that some of it could be explained by growing demand for financial services from technology companies and baby boomers. But Philippon and Reshef determined that up to half of the pay premium was due to something much simpler: people in the financial sector are overpaid. “In most industries, when people are paid too much their firms go bankrupt, and they are no longer paid too much,” he told me. “The exception is when people are paid too much and their firms don’t go broke. That is the finance industry.” On Wall Street dealing desks, profits and losses are evaluated every afternoon when trading ends, and the firms’ positions are “marked to market”—valued on the basis of the closing prices. A trader can borrow money and place a leveraged bet on a certain market. As long as the market goes up, he will appear to be making a steady profit. But if the market eventually turns against him his capital may be wiped out. “You can create a trading strategy that overnight makes lots of money, and it can take months or years to find out whether it is real money or luck or excessive risk-taking,” Philippon explained. “Sometimes, even then it is hard.” Since traders (and their managers) get evaluated on a quarterly basis, they can be paid handsomely for placing bets that ultimately bankrupt their companies. “In most industries, a good idea is rewarded because the company generates profits and real cash flows,” Philippon said. “In finance, it is often just a trading gain. The closer you get to financial markets the easier it is to book funny profits.”

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2004:

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are Alfonso Nevarez, vcmvo2, shayera, grog and claude.

The Rescued Diaries:

• Three Kossacks try to explain why progressives are consistently outgunned by the right: Philoguy tells a story of a talented ad man who had a hand in killing health care reform in What Dad Taught Me About Healthcare and Corporations; KingOneEye unravels a scheme to bolster balance sheets and spread propaganda in Election Flawed: Rupert Murdoch's SCAM To Profit From Political Donations; finally, Indiana Bob comes to the conclusion that if we want to build a Liberal Media Empire - we have to do it ourselves. (Alfonso Nevarez)
• RenaRF shares what this year has meant to her in Thankful. (shayera)
• cskendrick shares the tale of How Dog Came To Live With Man (An Angola Fable). (shayera)
• stevej has some tips for kossacks interested in Low Light Photography. (shayera)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: November 23, 2010.

virgomusic has Top Comments - Lessons in Gratitude Edition.

Open Thread. Use with discretion. Play nice.

The Democratic sweep in California is officially complete, as Republican Steve Cooley has finally conceded to Democrat Kamala Harris in the race to be California's Attorney General:

Steve Cooley conceded defeat today to Kamala Harris in the political slugfest for California attorney general, aides said.

Cooley's concession came 22 days after ballots were cast, with his Democratic opponent, left, holding a lead of about 51,500 votes, representing a lead of about a half percentage points in a race that also attracted four minor candidates.

Harris' victory represents another blow for the Republican Party, which lost statewide races from governor to controller to secretary of state.

This race is important for a few different reasons. First, we've seen how important the role of the Attorney General of California has been in terms of promoting marriage equality--or at least not opposing it. As Attorney General, Jerry Brown refused to defend Proposition 8. Kamala Harris will continue that stance, while Steve Cooley would have opposed it. Furthermore, Kamala Harris is viewed as a rising star in California politics and is often equated with another younger, charismatic mixed-race politician who just happens to be in the White House right now. Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie were desperate to stop Kamala in her tracks and spent over $1 million to defeat her--unprecedented for an Attorney General race here.

But the race is telling for one other reason: it starkly demonstrates the unpopularity of the Republican Party in California. Steve Cooley won election as the District Attorney in Los Angeles County twice--by very comfortable margins. But in his race against Kamala Harris, he lost Los Angeles County by over 14 points.

The difference? His two election victories were nonpartisan races with no party affiliation displayed on the ballot. But in his race against Kamala, the word "Republican" sunk him like an anchor.

Today, President Obama pardoned a couple of turkeys, a relatively new Thanksgiving tradition. But as Mark Knoller of CBS News points out, you stand a much worse chance of getting a pardon out of President Obama if you're a human being:

It's Turkeys 4, People 0.

They're the latest numbers on Barack Obama's presidential pardon scoreboard.

During his first 22 months in office, he has not granted any presidential pardons, though he has publicly pardoned four turkeys including two 45-pound gobblers this morning at a Rose Garden ceremony.

...

The Office of the Pardon Attorney, which receives and processes pardon applications for the president, reports on its website that Mr. Obama has neither granted nor denied any pardon requests during his first 20.5-months in office. There were 494 petitions for pardons received during that period, bringing the total of petitions pending to 1,140. The numbers show 247 pardon petitions were closed on Mr. Obama's watch without presidential action.

It has since been reported but not posted by the Pardon Attorney that Mr. Obama formally denied 71 requests for pardons last month. Some critics, including former Pardon Attorney Margaret Colgate Love, urge Mr. Obama to grant real pardons to deserving recipients.

Maybe come Christmas time, the Pardon Office could get around to giving a break to some living, breathing humans. It is too easy to pardon the dead, as Charlie Crist is doing with the lead singer of The Doors, Jim Morrison. Not that I am against pardoning entertainers, mind you. I was fully supportive of Gov. David Paterson pardoning Slick Rick.

Obama has plenty of time to catch up and give some decent, ordinary people who may have made a mistake a break. The pardon power is the one power the president has that has no check. He is literally an absolute monarch when it comes to pardons.

According to the pardon attorney, here are the numbers of pardons granted by U.S. presidents since 1945:

   * Harry S. Truman - 1913
   * Dwight Eisenhower - 1110
   * John Kennedy - 472
   * Lyndon Johnson - 960
   * Richard Nixon - 863
   * Gerald Ford - 382
   * Jimmy Carter - 534
   * Ronald Reagan - 393
   * George H.W. Bush - 74
   * Bill Clinton - 396
   * George W. Bush - 189

Generally, folks who want honest data from their political opinion polling should applaud the kind of introspection that often comes after election day.

Case in point: the decision a few weeks back by the consortium of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and the Humphrey Institute to review their polling methodologies in the wake of the November 2 balloting.

After all, the MPR/Humphrey poll did forecast a double-digit win for Democrat Mark Dayton, a candidate whose likely victory came by a margin of less than one percentage point.

See if you can spot the problem, however:

[MPR-Humphrey] said in a statement Thursday the process will include an internal review by the Humphrey Institute, and an independent audit by Frank Newport, the editor and chief of Gallup.

The MPR-Humphrey Institute polls were accused of consistently overstating support for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton.

An independent audit?
By Frank Newport?
Of Gallup?
These guys?

Gallup's analysis of several indicators of voter turnout from the weekend poll suggests turnout will be slightly higher than in recent years, at 45%. This would give the Republicans a 55% to 40% lead on the generic ballot, with 5% undecided.

(October 31,2010)

A quick glance at Gallup's front page did not reveal a similar introspective self-evaluation or independent audit pending for their organization, despite polling that was so far off of the mark that the fifteen-point spread they had at the end was the "closest" result that they had in their likely voter screen.

In order to score cheap political points, Republicans are ignoring our military leaders and endangering our national security. As reported by Mary Beth Sheridan of the Washington Post:

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) "essential to our future security." Retired generals have been so concerned about getting it ratified that some have traveled around the country promoting it.

Seven of eight former commanders of U.S. nuclear forces have urged the Senate to approve the treaty.

But Republicans are opposing it, and the right wing Heritage Foundation is lobbying against it with the Cold War-style shrill that it helps Russia.

Retired Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson, the former deputy commander of U.S. nuclear forces, said Friday that it was "quite puzzling to me why all of this support [for New START] . . . is ignored. I don't know what that says about the trust that people have and the confidence they have in our military."

Of course, Republican support of the military is but a myth, to begin with.

In September, Reagan's Secretary of State George P. Shultz and retired Republican Senator and Vietnam Veteran Chuck Hagel joined President Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and retired Democratic Senator Gary Hart to pen an op-ed in the Post:

We were part of a group of 30 former national security leaders from both political parties -- including former secretary of state Colin Powell, former defense secretary Frank Carlucci and former national security adviser Sandy Berger -- who published an open letter in support of the treaty.

And they concluded:

Given the national security stakes and the overwhelming support from the military and national security community, we hope that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will send the treaty to the floor with robust bipartisan backing and that senators will promptly ratify it with the kind of resounding margin such measures have historically enjoyed.

Senate approval of New START would send a strong message to the world that the United States can overcome partisan differences and take concrete, practical action to reduce the nuclear threat and enhance our nation's security.

But Senate Republicans seem only to care about partisanship, not about what the military and other experts say. And our national security may grievously suffer for it.

From The Onion:

Obama Outlines Moral, Philosophical Justifications For Turkey Pardon

Austin American-Statesman:

Jury convicts DeLay in money-laundering case

Tom DeLay, the former U.S. House majority leader whose name became synonymous with the Republicans’ controversial rise to power in the Texas House, was found guilty today of laundering money in connection with the 2002 elections.

Jurors sent a note on yellow legal paper that a verdict had been reached to the judge at 4:46 p.m. They had deliberated since Monday afternoon.

They sent word that they had reached a verdict at 4:46 p.m. today.

DeLay was charged with money laundering and conspiracy to commit money. He faces a possible sentence of 5-99 years in prison and a maximum $10,000 fine on the money laundering charge, and 2-20 years in prison and a possible $10,000 fine on the conspiracy charge.

DeLay was found guilty of conspiring to launder $190,000 of corporate contributions through the Republican National Committee to seven candidates for the Texas House. This wasn't just a state issue, however. DeLay had sought GOP control of the Texas legislature in order to redraw the Congressional district map to the GOP's advantage. When Republicans took control of the state legislature, they redrew the congressional district map under DeLay's direction, leading to a net gain of 12 seats in the U.S. House for the GOP in the 2004 elections.

The problem with Blue Dogs is that they're fundamentally obtuse, so smug and secure in their superiority that they're unable to adjust to shifting political realities.

Here's Arkansas' Rep. Mike Ross, a rare surviving Blue Dog:

Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), one of the Blue Dog Democrats who led the charge against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) remaining Democratic leader Wednesday, said he isn’t worried about threats from the left that centrists who opposed Pelosi will face electoral consequences.

“Labor and MoveOn did that with Sen. [Blanche] Lincoln [D-Ark.] and it worked real well for them didn’t it?” Ross said after emerging from an hours-long meeting of the Democratic caucus that elected Nancy Pelosi minority leader for the upcoming Congress.

The first and most obvious response is that, um, Blanche Lincoln lost. Our goal was to defeat her so that we had a chance of holding the seat. Mike Ross and his establishment buddies won the primary. Hurray for them! But we were right -- Lincoln was a guaranteed loser. It wasn't much of a general election, the results were never in doubt. If Lincoln and Ross and Bill Clinton and the rest of the crowd backing the incumbent hadn't been so pig-headed, we might've salvaged the seat.

So I'm not sure what Ross is crowing about. His candidate lost. Bottom line.

But here's an even more interesting bit of information:

Here’s the thing though that Mike Ross might be a little concerned about while he talks about how badly that election worked out for us progressives…

Bill Halter beat Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas’ Fourth District

That’s Mike Ross’ district. Halter won on Primary night and in the Runoff that followed.

2010 Arkansas Democratic Primary (4th District Only)
Bill Halter – 45%
Blanche Lincoln – 40%

2010 Arkansas Democratic Primary Runoff (4th District Only)
Bill Halter – 52%
Blanche Lincoln – 48%

jsamuel at Blue Arkansas concludes:

So Mike Ross shouldn’t be so confident that the Blue Dogs are safe and are the ones that need to be in congress to save Democrats from themselves. The truth is that Bill Halter’s BEST district was Ross’. That says something about swing districts alright, but not that they prefer wish washy back and forth middle-of-the-roaders as Mike Ross would have us believe. Instead, it shows that his district preferred a real Democrat to an undependable and unlikable one.

When facing talk of a potential primary challenge, incumbents can approach it two ways. They can be gracious and humble and work to diffuse opposition by acknowledging whatever frustrations are fueling it, or they can be Lieberman-esque raging assholes and all but guarantee primary opposition.

Ross is clearly in the latter camp, in a district where Democrats appreciate populist outsiders. Not a smart move.

The Op-Ed Touching the 'third rail' by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson in Monday's Los Angeles Times deserves a special shout-out. The two are co-directors of Social Security Works. As they see it, deficit commission chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles made proposals about Social Security not because it has anything to do with the deficit but because they have it in for the program.

In releasing their plan, the co-chairs went out of their way to make clear that they were proposing changes to Social Security “for its own sake, not for deficit reduction.” This was an acknowledgement that Social Security does not and cannot contribute to the deficit, because it has no borrowing authority and by law cannot pay benefits unless it has sufficient income and reserves to cover their cost. But Simpson and Bowles just couldn’t keep their hands off the program.

Their proposals, raising the age of retirement to 69 from 67 and the age of early retirement from 62 to 64 would have the effect of cutting benefits for these recipients by 6-7 percent. The proposed cuts have been framed by some as attacks on older Americans. And that's true. But they are a worse assault on the younger generation. As Altman and Kingson point out, 20-year-olds now entering the work force would have their Social Security benefits cut by 36 percent compared with Americans retiring now.

The proposal also attacks Americans who, unlike politicians and other millionaires like Simpson and Bowles, don't have cush jobs.

As a new General Accountability Office report concluded, the people who take early retirement often do so because they work in jobs that are too physically demanding to continue or because they have health problems or can no longer find work. Raising the early retirement age will shut out workers who are disproportionately low income and minority, and it will do it when they are most vulnerable, potentially forcing them to seek disability benefits or welfare.

Many progressives warned the minute the names of the commission co-chairs were announced that we'd be headed down this road. Their reputations preceded them. As if it weren't bad enough that stagnant wages for the working classes haven't plagued us for the past 30 years, reducing their eventual Social Security benefits. As if it weren't bad enough that good jobs are being off-shored to cheaper labor markets and Americans forced to accept lower-paying, less-skilled positions - if they can find them - reducing their future Social Security benefits. As if Social Security benefits averaging $13,000 a year weren't already inadequate.

The folks at Social Security Works are asking that we join them next Tuesday, Nov. 30, in a National Call Congress Day to tell our Reps and Senators. The message: Strengthen Social Security, don't cut it. We urge you to be part of that effort.

Lots of whining from big business about "regulatory uncertainty" and other such bullshit. The reality:

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.

Companies are hoarding cash and otherwise refusing to engage in job growth. But to sit there and complain about Obama when he's presided over their strongest growth ever, is the height of absurdity. They should be kissing his feet in gratitude, not gearing up to spend hundreds of millions to defeat him.

Ezra has this snippet from the Financial Times:

The US fiscal commission’s proposals to shrink the US budget deficit should be fully considered in the next Congress, Chris Van Hollen, who will be the leading Democrat on the House budget committee in 2011, told the Financial Times. His comments represent an apparent softening of his party’s stance...Mr Van Hollen’s seemingly more conciliatory tone came a week before the commission reconvenes for final deliberations, amid doubts about its ability to reach a political consensus. But Mr Bowles and Mr Simpson said last week that there may be more "common ground" among the panelists than is assumed.

He continues in the FT story (reg. required):

He said it was "not yet clear" whether a supermajority of 14 votes out of 18 would be reached on the commission and that "we’ll have to see what the final product looks like".

But, he added: "The ideas in the report should get an ample hearing. All aspects of their recommendations should be part of the conversation."

There might be some question that that's a "conciliatory" tone from Van Hollen. It's possible he's calling for a full hearing because the commission's work has been done almost entirely behind closed doors, with very little transparency and even less public input. Congressional hearings on the recommendations of the catfood commission are certainly preferable to the way it's been done so far, and should have been built into the process from the beginning.

• Mike Elk thinks progressive bloggers should stop ignoring the labor movement:

  The labor movement needs to be shaken up out of its losing ways in the same way bloggers shook the Democratic Party out of its losing ways in confronting Bush, which helped lead to electoral victories in 2006 and 2008. Rank-and-file union members desperately need an infusion of the same type of blogger spirit that led to the election of Howard Dean as the head of the DNC and an embrace of his  Internet-centered organizing, as well the 50-state strategy. An infusion of blogger energy into labor causes could teach union members to challenge the ineffective, top down leadership of the labor movement in the same way bloggers challenged the ineffective, top down leadership of the Democratic Party.

• If a chance to make an immoral decision is easy, two new studies suggest, many people who might otherwise stick to the right path may willingly go astray.
• Check out Hack 30, a smackdown of the worst  columnists and cable news commentators over at Salon's War Room.  No. 6 on their list - Mark Thiessen:

  But while the worst thing about Thiessen as a person is his unequivocal support for torture, the worst thing about hiring him to pen an Op-Ed column is that he's a boring, predictable columnist. The man got famous for arguing that plainly illegal treatment of prisoners is in fact both legal and necessary, and then he writes columns about how earmarks are bad. It's like telling Torquemada to film a TV pilot and he comes back with a three-camera sitcom about a lovable fat guy dealing with family life. Seriously, his first Post column was about how Olympic hockey should go back to being all-amateur.

• OK, so tomorrow you'll be all warm and cozy in the bosom of your family, satiated with food, drink and good cheer, and plunked in front of the telly watching your favorite NFL teams. So what could possibly lure you to go on line? How about some live threads on New England at Detroit, New Orleans at Dallas, Cincinnati at New York? We'll also be here with some political stuff.
• Can Sarah Palin see Pyongyang and our North Korean allies from her house?
• Fred Upton, the Minnesota Michigan "moderate" who was in line to take the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee but once committed GOP heresy by saying that greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere might be a problem, is in Dick Armey's crosshairs. The chieftain of FreedomWorks complains at the Web site Down with Upton that the Congressman:

  …is far out of step with the Tea Party movement, the GOP and the American people as a whole. You may have heard Glenn Beck talking about Fred Upton introducing a bill to ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of so-called “environmentally-friendly” alternatives. The truth is, Fred Upton has a Big Government record a mile long, and light bulbs are just the beginning.

• "Just checking to see if my 'girlfriend' was dating someone else, officer." That would be Rep. Tom Hackbarth, a Republican state legislator who was arrested with a loaded gun in a Planned Parenthood parking lot last week. Hackbarth had met the woman on-line, had coffee with her and asked her to dinner. She turned him down, saying she was seeing a female friend in the neighborhood near the clinic:

  "She gave me some line of baloney, and I thought, 'well, she's fibbing to me.' You could tell, and I thought, 'well, I'm going to check it out.' and I went there to see if she was around and her vehicle was not there. And I was just checking on her," he told the local CBS affiliate.

• Departing Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill have their own theories about why the party took a shellacking in the mid-term elections.
• Republican Steve Cooley has conceded the California attorney general's race. That gives the victory to San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and a clean sweep by Democrats of statewide offices.

Here we go, again:

A lesbian flight nurse discharged under "don't ask, don't tell" can rejoin the Air Force Reserve, even as the government appeals a judge's ruling that returned her to the job, her lawyers said Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton ruled in September that former Maj. Margaret Witt must be reinstated because her dismissal advanced no legitimate military goals and thus violated her constitutional rights.

The Justice Department appealed that ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, its deadline for doing so.

The good news is that the DOJ didn't request a stay of Leighton's ruling, which means Witt can continue to have the privilege of serving her country in uniform despite being a minority against whom discrimination is officially allowed. While the Department of Justice of the country she serves in uniform litigates in support of the discrimination.

Greg Sargent captures an interesting concession from Chris Van Hollen:

Van Hollen did endorse two key arguments made by liberals. He said that when it comes down to it, the only real way for Dems to win back independents is to fix the economy. And asked if the too-small stimulus was one of the causes of Dem losses, he said: "The Recovery Act should have been larger and more robust."

I can already hear the cries of people saying "But given the Senate's filibuster rule, they got the biggest stimulus they could have gotten." And given that (a) there were only 58 Democratic Senators when the stimulus was passed (Specter hadn't switched and Franken hadn't been seated) and (b) Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson were two of those Democrats, that's a fair argument to make. But it's an argument about a different point.

When the only thing you can get is a half-loaf, taking a half-loaf is usually the right move. The question is whether you celebrate as if you'd actually gotten a full loaf -- or do you honestly assess what you've gotten, and publicly acknowledge that you still need more.

And yes, that's more of a political question than a policy question. But politics creates the context which constrains what policy options are available. And right now, outside of the Fed, there are virtually no policy options available to stimulate economic growth. That may be the result of a political failure, but the impact of that failure extends far beyond politics. In short, if you care about good policy, good politics matters.

There's a lot been said -- and left to say -- about the new TSA screening procedures. The right is, predictably, discovering a hitherto-unmentioned concern for civil liberties and using the issue to attack Obama. Equally predictably, they're pushing privatization, as if it's who issues the paychecks and not what the policy is that matters. But while many of the objections from the right are disingenuous at best, there are legitimate questions, such as those about whether naked pictures and enhanced groping make us safer or are security theater and an expansion of the police state.

But as you travel this holiday week, here's something to keep in mind: The TSA screener monitoring the scanners, or touching your body, did not make the policy. They're just doing their job, and not one they have a lot of control over:

Unlike their counterparts elsewhere in the civil service, the agency’s employees don’t have collective-bargaining rights yet, which means it’s more difficult for them to negotiate with TSA over working conditions and policies and procedures....

Salaries for TSA screeners start at $17,083, plus locality payments depending on where screeners are stationed.

Nor are they necessarily happy about their part in the new procedures:

I am a professional doing my job, whether I agree with this current policy or not, I am doing my job.  I do not want to be here all day touching penises.

And they're taking a lot of abuse for it:

Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing, one day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments. If something doesn’t change in the next two weeks I don’t know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home and cry after a day of honorably serving my country.

If you’re traveling, remember that while it’s understandable to be upset at the new screening procedures, the TSA officers screening you are not the ones who decided this is how it’s going to be. If you’re going to complain, complain to the management level people who can change things.

Et tu, GOP?

There isn't a place in the world that's safe from those dastardly Secular Progressives!