Fables of the reconstruction

Police Brutality is a Fantastic Fundraising Opportunity, Though

Activist orgs and politicians love news frenzies like this because they can blast fundraising emails and people will give, thinking they are "doing something". Yep, you're giving money to people who may or may not do what you want them to with it. Anyway, it's theirs now and it's highly unlikely you'll take the time to find out where your money went.

Nothing is Going to Get Better From the Killings of Brown and Garner

I'm glad people are protesting the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, because it shows there are some decent people left in the world, but - real talk now - nothing is going to improve as a result of all this. The media will run these stories for as long as they hold interest or something else happens that takes the focus away, and that will be it. 

Politically, these cases just entrench the status quo, not challenge it. This is a good, forceful presentation of that view:

Policing in America is not broken. The judicial system is not broken. American society is not broken. All are functioning perfectly, doing exactly what they have done since before some of this nation's most prosperous slave-murdering robber-barons came together to consecrate into statehood the mechanisms of their barbarism. Democracy functions. Politicians, deriving their legitimacy from the public, have discerned the will of the people and used it to design and enact policies that carry it out, among them those that govern the allowable levels of violence which state can visit upon citizen. Taken together with the myriad other indignities, thefts, and cruelties it visits upon black and brown people, and the work common white Americans do on its behalf by telling themselves bald fictions of some deep and true America of apple pies, Jesus, and people being neighborly to each other and betrayed by those few and nonrepresentative bad apples with their isolated acts of meanness, the public will demands and enables a whirring and efficient machine that does what it does for the benefit of those who own it. It processes black and brown bodies into white power.

Right. White conservatives want black and brown people either cowed or dead and white liberals want to think this is something aberrant that can be prevented if we just talk, think, and work together. Black and brown people just want to get to and from work or school without getting pulled over, detained, frisked, beaten, or shot. So who is the constituency for change?

Let's take particular cases. The Ferguson prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, tanked the grand jury so that they'd return a no-bill. Is this going to have negative consequences for him? In 2014, he ran unopposed as a Dem. He got 220,000 votes. In the biggest contested election that year, for county executive, the Rep and the Dem both got around 140,000 votes. Pretty much the same story last time he ran in 2010: That was the race when in St. Louis County Jean Carnahan got 195,000 votes and Roy Blount got 167,000, and McCulloch ran unopposed and got 293,000. That is, McCulloch is almost as popular with Republicans as he is with Democrats. Safe to say that McCulloch is going to have the police union on his side in 2018 and there will be no challengers to his right. Maybe the people who control the Democratic party there will be so outraged over this that they will promote a challenger against McCulloch in the primary? No, because the county is only 23% black and white Dems in St. Louis are on the cops' side.

The Eric Garner prosecutor, Daniel Donovon, also tanked the grand jury. He's a Republican, Staten Island is a swing district which leans R, and it's only 10% black. So blessing the killing of Garner will get him pats on the back, not arrows. He could run for Congress and win pretty easily with this on his resume. He'd win more easily because of it. The more people come out to protest against him, the faster his base will rally around him. Letting a white cop skate for killing a black person just helps your name recognition if you're a Republican politician. 

What will change things? Really, I have no fucking idea, but I like this thing Chris Rock said:

Chris Rock: Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

Q: Right. It’s ridiculous.

Rock: So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

Q: It’s about white people adjusting to a new reality?

Rock: Owning their actions. Not even their actions. The actions of your dad. Yeah, it’s unfair that you can get judged by something you didn’t do, but it’s also unfair that you can inherit money that you didn’t work for.

I'd say that's right; I remember how it was, I was there, I was white, and it was pretty awful. White people are nicer today than they were 40 years ago.  But that took 40 years, and they're not all that nice yet. So in another 4o years, they'll be a little bit nicer, we hope, and it will go on like that until in 400 years or so things actually will be good.  We hope. Maybe.

Be Clear About Confiscating Guns

People who are disgusted by gun violence get peeved by gun nuts' finicky insistence on the correct use of terminology like "automatic" versus "semi-automatic." The gun nuts are just trying to derail the conversation and delegitimize the people who are disgusted. They're not acting in good faith. Booman says:

I don't remember a mass shooting incident in this country where fully automatic weapons were used. I haven't studied them all, and maybe there have been some examples of people using fully automatic weapons to murder people. But certainly the most recent and notorious examples in this country have involved semiautomatic weapons. 

That's right; the number of crimes committed with fully automatic weapons today is probably zero; even in the heyday of the Thompson submachine gun, when you could buy one at your local hardware store, the number of crimes committed with machine guns were vanishingly small. 

One of the solutions that people who are disgusted with gun violence like are assault weapons bans. Here's where the problem of distinctions come in. "Assault weapon" was a gun-industry marketing term coined in the 1980s when gun makers decided to dress up their plain-vanilla semi-automatic rifles and pistols to look like military weapons by painting them black and adding things like pistol grips and flash hiders. These "assault weapons"  look scary, and they're meant to, because the target market wants to own a mean-looking killing device to make themselves feel powerful and dangerous.  And it's no wonder then that that the people who go on shooting rampages are also attracted to these guns, for the same reason.

Functionally, however, an "assault weapon" is indistinguishable from any plain-vanilla semi-automatic gun. So gun nuts have a point when they say assault weapons bans make no sense. Banning cosmetic features like foregrips and pistol grips and flash hiders doesn't make the gun less lethal. One of Booman's commenters makes the same point by quoting a member of Congress on West Wing who thinks the proposed legislation is stupid:

No, this is for show. I think it's an unconscionable waste of the taxpayer's money to have it printed, signed and photocopied, to say nothing of enforced. No, I want the guns, Leo. You write a law that can save some lives. I'll sign it. 

So, assault weapons bans are for show. The gun nuts know this. People who aren't gun nuts but are familiar with guns know it. And people who know how guns work also know that the only way to reduce gun violence is to confiscate semi-automatic weapons. There are just too many guns out there already for a ban on new guns to have any effect.

But the public at large is not in favor of confiscation. The vast majority of gun owners are not military fetishists carressing "external death penises" and the vast majority of weapons are not used in crimes. Most people who own guns do so because it's part of their culture; they own guns for the same reason they drive a certain kind of car, wear certain kinds of clothes, and even vote for a particular political party. These non-crazy people regard the idea that their guns should be confiscated because of mass shootings the same way a car owner would consider the idea that she should lose her car because someone else intentionally caused a massive, fatal traffic accident. 

If you want to make a real reduction in gun violence, you have to start a multi-decade program to make guns culturally unacceptable. It's going to be a long road and you have to make it clear where you are trying to end up. Acknowledging that that is your goal and explaining why it's a goal that people should get behind is the best way to begin. 

 

Speaking Ill of the Dead

I really don't give a shit about any comedian/actor who offs himself. The outpouring of feeling when such things happen are a symptom of a societal illness in which people imagine that (a) the public personas of celebrities are somehow reflective of who they really are as people and (b) individual members of the public have an emotional connection to the celebrity.  

Largely, entertainers are self-centered assholes. Successful ones manipulate and control how they are perceived; this is fundamental to long-term success. Everything they do is contrived and they are never out of character. It's their job to appear to be something they're not. 

People feel a need to think of themselves as somehow connected to celebrities because Americans worship entertainment and can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. Movies, especially, are manipulative tools to make people think they are experiencing real intimacy with the actors. Movies draw people out of their own empty, impoverished lives for a little while, so I understand the appeal. But anyone who tells me that they are grief-stricken because a pampered, cross-addicted asshole Cobained himself seems a little dim to me. 

Russian Says It's Giving Assad Anti-Aircraft Missiles

In response to Britain and France lifting the embargo on arming the Syrian rebels, Russia has announced it's going ahead with selling a very potent anti-aircraft system to the Syrian government. This probably means no U.S. intervention:

Russia will deliver an advanced air defense system to the Syrian government despite Western opposition because it will help deter "hotheads" who back foreign intervention, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday. ...

The S-300s can intercept manned aircraft and guided missiles and their delivery would improve Assad's government's chances of holding out in Damascus.

The S-300 is no joke. Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room wrote 3 weeks ago:

It ranges 125 miles a shot; and can shoot down missiles as well as fighter planes. However unenthusiastic the U.S. military is about a no-fly zone right now, confronting the S-300 would make it instantly worried about losing many, many pilots. “This is a system that scares every Western air force,” Lexington Institute defense analyst Dan Goure once remarked.

The U.S. obviously prefers to use airpower instead of ground forces because, usually, America can establish complete air superiority, virtually eliminating the chance of taking casualties. The S-300 would make that impossible. Manned fighters and bombers, drones, and cruise missiles would all be vulnerable, even if they were attacking targets in Syria while operating outside of its airspace. Combine that with the fact that Russia recently gave Assad sophisticated anti-ship missiles which can hit targets over 180 miles away, and it means the U.S. will not want to risk its carriers in the Mediterranean.

If the idea on the part of Britain and France was to arm the rebels while they and the U.S. provided air cover, they will have to think again.

This is all of a piece with Assad's apparent strategy of taking every opportunity to show the West that he has the upper hand. He crossed the so-called "red line" by using chemical weapons, and when nothing happened, he started using them more. Sen. McCain made a brief trip into the country to meet with rebel leaders, and it's obvious McCain - one of the "hotheads" Russia is talking about - will bang the war drum for American intervention by citing chemical weapons use when he gets back. Assad's spokesmen have been constantly referring to the rebels as terrorists and "al Qaeda" and playing up atrocities - like a rebel posting video of himself eating a human heart - to drive down Western public support for intervention. 

Some Things to Understand About Guns and Gun Control in America

1. America is a major exporter of small arms. The powers that be in government know that and want to keep it that way. They have no intention of banning the manufacture of guns in the U.S.

2. Arms makers like it when gun buyers get scared about "totalitarian gun grabbers" because it drives up the demand for guns and ammo. 

3. The NRA is not a gun-rights group; it is a PR agency for the gun makers. See #2.

4. Measures like an "assault weapons ban" that restrict guns on the basis of cosmetic features like whether it has a bayonet lug are meaningless security theater.

5. A universal background check - that is, banning the private sale of a gun from one person to another - just means that those sales must take place through a gun shop. The shop gets a fee when it performs this service. A universal background check may or may not make you safer, but it will make gun shop owners richer.

That is all. Carry on. 

No Platinum Coin - Now, Let's Get to the Substance

I am not sorry about this development:

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Saturday it will not produce platinum coins as a way of generating $1 trillion in revenue and avoiding a battle in Congress over raising the U.S. debt ceiling.

I've never looked into the relevant statutes and cases, so I have no idea about the legality of minting the coin. I assume it's a "political question" that a federal court is likely to avoid deciding.

I didn't embrace the idea for two reasons: First, while posing little economic risk by itself, I was afraid Republicans would engage in unpredictably irrational behavior in response to the coin that would wreak catastrophic damage. The logical response to the minting of the coin is lifting the debt ceiling to repurchase it. But the national GOP is controlled largely by a group of nutters who do not care what the consequences of their actions are. 

Second, if minting the coin had worked, I think it would have just punted on the very important issue that the national GOP is controlled largely by a group of nutters who do not care what the consequences of their actions are. A showdown over the debt ceiling focuses the public's attention on that. Every time the issue comes to a head, the GOP gets more unpopular. I think the President has noticed that.

I think some people rightly fear that negotiating with the GOP over the debt ceiling risks giving things away that we shouldn't. But I look at it like this: If I am negotiating with a hostage-taker, I am willing to send in some pizza and soda, so long as no one I care about gets shot in the end. If Obama gives them some symbolic victory, like the fiscally meaningless estate tax deal that just went down a couple of weeks ago, I'm fine with it. 

Shotgun Divorces

My opinion is that the only thing that could bring down the rate of gun violence - either in mass murders or the regular kind -  is to reduce the number of guns in the country from the current 300 million to ... something drastically lower.  How would you do that? Ban the sale of new guns and confiscate existing ones. There really is no other way; guns are just inherently dangerous items, like cars, and after you do what you can to reduce unlawful and unsafe use, there is an irreducible lump of risk. Leaving aside the pesky Second Amendment roadblock that the current Supreme Court has created for us, let's think about the political and cultural issues involved in such an effort. 

First, you have to line up enough political support to get Congress to pass the necessary legislation. The NRA aside, about 45% of Americans own at least one gun. The vast majority of them probably feel like they are not the problem, and don't want to give up their weapons. On the other hand, you have a fairly small group of people who would be full-tilt in favor of outlawing guns, with everyone else maybe vaguely supporting it. The gun owners and manufacturers would be highly mobilized and motivated, while the pro-ban forces would have to be self-funded and constantly reminding wavering allies why it was so important to do this. 

Let's say you overcome that obstacle and get the votes necessary to pass a gun ban and confiscation law.  What's the mechanism for identifying and confiscating the guns going to be? As many people don't know, the ATF doesn't have a database of gun owners. Individual gun shops are required to maintain records, but this law will put them out of business, so I doubt all of them will be able to "find" the records you would need to track down the original buyers of guns they have sold. You're going to need to hire a lot more cops and investigators. 

What are the penalties for violating the law going to be? You have to think about how many people are going to become criminals solely by operation of your new law. If 120 million people own guns right now, how many would resist turning in their weapons?  You'd probably have some measure of voluntary compliance. But largely I imagine you'd have to go find the guns and take them by force. What percentage of those incidents will end well? Probably, almost all of them, but the ones which don't ... you get the picture. 

I did leave the Second Amendment to one side, but what about the Fifth Amendment? Confiscating guns is a Taking which requires compensation. How would you determine how much each individual gun seized is worth? What would be the procedure for paying the former owner? How much money are we talking about?

The picture I am trying to paint here is a parallel to the various kinds of prohibition America has tried in the past. Obviously, there are significant differences between guns on one hand and alcohol and drugs on the other - including the fact that it's harder to make your own guns than it is to distill spirits or make drugs. But the same problems come into play. Creating a black market for guns will have unforeseeable consequences. The value of an individual gun will skyrocket. Smuggling will be rampant. And while it is hard to make a gun, it is not impossible.  

Remembrance

Five years ago yesterday, Andy Olmsted was killed by a sniper in Iraq.  It was a tragedy for the people who knew him, and for those of us who followed his blog posts.

Since then, over 20,000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of the U.S. invasion of their country. 

All excellent reasons not to go to war when you don't have to.

When Tragedy Strikes, People Say Stupid Things: The "Let's Confiscate Guns" Edition

In 2007 (seems to be the last comprehensive effort to make an estimate), there were 270,000,000 guns in the United States of America possessed by civilians. Except for the relatively small number of fully automatic weapons (i.e., machine guns), these guns are unregistered. We might be able to find out who the guns were sold to originally, but as we go further back in time that becomes harder, and in any event as guns are sold or stolen the task of further tracing ownership becomes obviously impossible.  Imagine if we suddenly decided to confiscate television sets when almost everyone who owned one didn't want to give them up. That would be the kind of effort that would be required.

I can't help but get lawyerly and add: Even if the Supreme Court decided the Second Amendment didn't protect an individual right to own a gun, confiscating guns would be a taking under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.  How much do you think those 270 million guns are worth? That's how much the United States government would have to pay out to gun owners whose weapons were confiscated.

 

 

I Always Have My Powerful, Black, Ersatz Penis With Me, Just in Case

Duncan's experience is absolutely in accord with mine: People who carry concealed - and let you know it - are just looking for an excuse to use it. If they've been at it for any length of time, they've got at least one story about how they brandished it and made some punk run away in fear, a story they tell with great relish right after they show you their piece.  The psychology of it is a total mystery.

I have experience with firearms and, given my temperment, I'm terrified by the idea of having a gun on me while driving, or at a bar after having a few drinks. So I have excellent reasons not to carry and no really good cause in the other direction.

People who say they have to carry concealed because of where they work or live have a very high standard of proof to meet, from my perspective. "I live in the city" certainly doesn't cut it. "I live in a really bad neighborhood" starts to get them there, but I would first also need to hear about how good they are at spotting trouble before it gets to them. If they don't have any stories about doing that, or worse, say they shouldn't have to avoid some situations, then they fail to have the proper mindset. Also, I have lived in the city for decades, and I know my definition of "really bad" is much different as a result. 

Next, I don't care if they have the "Stand Your Ground" law in their state, if they don't readily acknowledge that their first duty is to retreat in any dangerous situation, then they fail. You are not a superhero. This is not a movie. If someone pulls out a gun and you can get away (with the people you need to protect), then get away.  All else equal, if you don't pull a gun, there is a much lower chance of a gunfight. And fewer gunfights mean fewer dead and wounded people.

There is much more, but the above will eliminate most candidates.

Obama's Tech Team

Profiled here. Interesting read. Impossible to tell how much of it is true or accurate, of course. They're fucking geniuses, especially in retrospect. Of course.

A couple of points:

1. They are all dudes. You could weave a fucking rug with all the facial hair. Why are they all dudes? What happens to women coders who try to get in the door? Maybe they get laughed at or subtly discouraged. Maybe it's a toxic atmosphere.
2. The article claims the tech guys didn't start out as politically engaged but ended up that way in mid-'12. They had built this great machine to do something, and that was to win an election, and then they became afraid of losing. "[L]osing, they felt more and more deeply as the campaign went on, would mean horrible things for the country. They started to worry about the next Supreme Court Justices while they coded." No mention of a single issue they cared about, so I'm taking that with a huge grain of salt. These guys make bank. Politics does not touch their lives except for things like net neutrality. Suddenly they're politically energized? No, probably, they're suddenly aware they won't be profiled in The Atlantic if they lose.

Whatever. I don't give a shit whether the people working for us actually share our goals so long as their incentives are lined up with ours. 

(Via Cole.)

The Democratic Volunteer and Field Organizer Army

Four years ago, I was heavily involved in the Obama campaign in Philadelphia as a volunteer. I registered a lot of people to vote. And I was a slacker compared to many of the people who volunteered with me. I was just one set of hands among thousands in Philly. Even more impressive were the field organizers who were often in their first (woefully-underpaid) campaign job and who were inspiring, smart, and seemingly indefatigable. 

This year, every single person I volunteered with last time did it again. And the junior field organizers from last time were now senior people. How many tens or hundreds of thousands of people across the country are now veteran Democratic operatives? These people all have experience in both winning ('08 and '12) and losing ('10) cycles. They know how it works. Some of them will go on to run for office themselves. All of them will probably be involved in political activism for life and will bring up their families in the same tradition. 

If I were a Republican, that would scare me a lot more than demographics. 

Demographics are Not Destiny

People talking about demographics have the wrong end of the stick. White conservatives don't vote for white conservative candidates because they're white, they vote for them because white supremacy is at the core of American conservatism. So long as Republicans continue to embrace distrust and fear of non-white people and of women, they will continue to lose those constituencies. It's possible conservatives can change (although I don't see how), so this problem is fixable. And I hope they do fix it, because we'd all be better off if the Confederacy finally accepted defeat.

The Rocket Science of Elections

So what have we learned from all this?

1. Money alone will not buy an election, especially when you tell your opponents you're trying to buy the election.

2. Having a based motivated soley by antipathy for the other guy will not win an election. 

3. Having a great ground game, enough money to be competitive, and a base motivated by support for your guy (and antipathy for the other guy) will win an election.

Don't Take the Riverlink Ferry From Philly to Camden for a Concert

A kind of non sequitur to post about on here after such a long hiatus, but if you're going from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, New Jersey, for a concert, don't take the Riverlink ferry that runs from Penns Landing. What a nightmare after the concert lets out. There is only one ferry boat, and it loads and moves very slowly, so you will be guaranteed to be standing in line for hours waiting. Just take PATCO, assuming you're not so suburban that you find walking 1 mile from Camden City Hall to the venue frightening.  Otherwise, drive if you have $25 for parking plus money for the toll. 

Comforting Sound

Plutocracy

70 Years Ago

Two fateful mistakes:

Launching the attack galvanized a nation that had been deeply divided on entering the war and transformed it into 133 million people who, as Barbara Tuchman put it, were so angry they were willing to swim to Japan and strangle anyone they found there.

Second, the military blunder of launching the first and second waves of planes against battleships, rather than the oil tanks and machine shops, when it turned out the aircraft carriers were not in port. Killing the infrastructure at Pearl would have accomplished the same objective as sinking the carriers: It would have knocked America out of the Pacific for a year and made the West Coast vulnerable to attack, allowing Japan to consolidate its gains. Sinking battleships was a strategic nothing, but the Japanese commanders were simplemindedly convinced that destroying the maximum number of ships would achieve the optimal result.

The Unflattering Truth

Avedon Carol provides an illustration of why liberals are so bad at politics:

It's lost in the mists of time for me, but does anyone remember who came up with (and who promoted) the idea that liberal ideology is hard to defend and explain because it's all so "nuanced"?

She calls this "the flattering lie" - I'm not sure why it's supposed to be flattering - and says liberal ideology is easy to understand.

One implication of this argument is that anyone who claims not to understand liberal ideology is arguing in bad faith. Commenters reinforce this:

It's not hard to understand, unless you're dead set against understanding. I call it being aggressively stupid. Other people have a more polite term.

Another is that liberals suck:

It's not a question of liberalism being complex, it's a question of so many liberals not really believing in equality, justice, etc. , that the actual substance of liberalism is worth the effort of fighting for and risking any real personal sacrifice for. That's how liberalism has died.

Talk about "the flattering lie". If there is one, it's that things would be going great if everyone else were as principled and morally good as you.

The problem with Carol's argument is that she's talking about rhetoric, not politics. Rhetoric is essential but not sufficient for effective politics. Rhetoric is about getting people to think what you want them to think. Politics is about getting people to do what you want them to do. We've seen time and again that people who agree with many liberal ideas and policies in general still vote for conservative politicians. That's because conservatives can make their politics simple, while liberals can't.

Consider the following:

• Free-market capitalism is the source of all wealth. Anything that interferes with the free market reduces wealth and therefore all regulation of business:

1. should be carefully crafted to avoid undue interference with the market.
2. should be designed to avoid market failures by promoting dissemination of information, reducing barriers to entry, and countering anti-competitive practices.
3. is evil and should be repealed.

Contrast that with:

• The concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority of people creates a bias in the political system which caters to the interests of those people and undermines the principles of liberty and equality on which the country was founded. Therefore, as a nation we should:

1. promote institutions that counter the creation or persistence of such bias including campaign finance laws, whistleblower statutes, strong independent oversight, and aggressive investigative reporting.
2. create laws and policies to mitigate the concentration of wealth by placing the greatest share of the cost of government on the wealthy using progressive taxation.
3. kill the rich, take their money, and distribute it to the poor.

I think the point is self-evident: Almost no liberals answering the second question would choose the third answer or vote for politicians who took that position. A majority of conservatives answering the first question would do both. Conservative politics are simple and liberal politics are not.

Liberals value fairness, conservatives value power. A message of power is always easier to sell than fairness. As someone wrote:

World's run by fear, you see. Can't sell pipe dreams, can't rule with charity, no good at all. Not in the real world. Promise to build a chap a house, he won't believe you. Threaten to burn his place down, he'll do what you tell him. Fact of life.

Conservatives have built a narrative of virtuous strength versus degenerative weakness that is cohesive and, again, simple, and marketed it relentlessly. Liberals could not concoct and peddle such a simplistic story. Again, we value fairness while the other side does not. We refuse to sell what we wouldn't buy; conservative leaders do it every day. A liberal will never be able to appeal to a voter's baser instincts and remain a liberal; a conservative will never be able to appeal to a voter's better instincts and remain a conservative. But it's easier to appeal to the baser instincts, and that's not flattery or a lie.

Message: They're Nuts

releasing Obama's long-form birth certificate won't quiet the crazies. I would guess the Administration thinks so, too, and thinks the GOP presidential candidates will have to continue to cater to them. The media will consider the settled matter really, really settled, and make fun of Trump, et. al. if they continue to insinuate the contrary.

Worst Aspects of the Blogosphere: Two Examples

Item one:

The law firm that Congressional Republicans hired to defend DOMA dropped the representation, and Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy engages in a little propter hoc, saying that the public outcry among gay groups caused the firm "to discard its integrity when placed under fire." He calls this "the New McCarthyism" and says it's "shameful ... particularly given the nation’s sorry history of efforts to prevent effective legal representation of marginalized groups and unpopular causes." He then has to backpedal when it's pointed out that members of the majority party in the House of Representatives are not exactly an oppressed group, and further when it comes out that the lawyer involved didn't follow proper firm procedure in taking on a new, controversial client.  Nevertheless, he still thinks it's McCarthyism.

Item two:

Digby finds a story that the United States is enacting rules regarding how to get a passport that would be almost impossible to comply with, and posts, "Keeping Them Out ---Or Keeping Us In?" and compares it to the Berlin Wall:

This is Big Brother stuff --- they are setting up a series of roadblocks to use "just in case" they want to deny someone a passport. The question is, who and why? Basically, this will potentially deny US citizens the ability to travel outside the country. It may not be a wall, but it functions pretty effectively as one if they want it to.

In comments, a couple people point out that the proposed form is to be used in cases where someone is applying for a passport for the first time and either (a) claims to be a natural-born citizen born outside the countryor (b) claims to be born in the U.S. but wasn't born in a hospital or whose birth wasn't recorded for more than a year. That is, in a rare situation where someone's right to claim citizenship isn't obvious from the record, amounting to about 75,000 cases every year (out of 14 million passports issued annually). Unlike Adler, Digby doesn't even bother to engage the contrary information and the vast majority of commenters run with the paranoia ball.

Most days there is no point in engaging things posted online, which is why I've largely stopped trying.

Update: This from Conor Friedersdorf is fucking idiotic:

The fact that bureaucrats at the U.S. State Department now feel empowered to demand information this personal, cumbersome and detailed as a condition of permitting an American to leave the country is as alarming an example as I've seen of how these people conceive of the relationship between a government and its citizens. There is only one appropriate response to many of the questions they pose: "It is none of your damned business."

As a condition of receiving a document which will be unquestioningly accepted as proof of your identity, yes, you have to demonstrate that you're eligible. 

Unfortunately, also, too, Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice picks up the scare thread from digby without adding anything. But to their great credit, many commenters at the site push back hard on the conspiracy theory.

DOMA: Fantacism For its Own Sake

The law firm that House Republican hired to defend DOMA decided to drop the representation. The lawyer at the firm who agreed to take the case, Paul Clement, quit, saying:

Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do. The adversary system of justice depends on it, especially in cases where the passions run high.

Which I agree with, wholeheartedly.

He also says:

Efforts to delegitimize any representation for one side of a legal controversy are a profound threat to the rule of law.

Here's the fun part.

Clement will join the firm Bancroft PLLC, a small D.C.-based litigation boutique founded by former assistant U.S. attorney general Viet Dinh.

Who is Viet Dinh? Recall:

[Viet] Dinh, [principal author of the USA PATRIOT Act,] now a Georgetown law professor, urged the CPAC faithful to carve out a Bush exception to their ideological principle of limited government. "The conservative movement has a healthy skepticism of governmental power, but at times, unfortunately, that healthy skepticism needs to yield," Dinh explained, invoking Osama bin Laden.

Dinh brought the crowd to a raucous ovation when he judged: "The threat to Americans' liberty today comes from al Qaeda and its associates and the people who would destroy America and her people, not the brave men and women who work to defend this country!"

(Emphasis supplied.)

So Paul Clement quits over the principle that everyone, including bigots, have the right to due process, and goes to work with Viet Dinh, who doesn't seem to think much of limits on government power when it comes to "national security". And, I'll ask again, just who is Dinh referring to when he mentioned "the people who would destroy America", apart from al Qaeda? Any Americans on that list?

 

 

Actually, Republicans Did Vote to End Medicare

PolitiFact had no basis for saying otherwise. (I've lobbed an email in to them; I'm sure that will make them come around.) I figured the reason for this isn't just a mere fetish for false equivalence. Looking over their "Pants on Fire" ratings, the prior receipients were:

1. Reince Priebus
2. Michelle Bachmann
3. WorldNetDaily
4. Rick Santorum
5. Glenn Beck
6. Chain e-mail
7. Donald Trump
8. Chain e-mail
9. Chain e-mail
10. Tim Pawlenty
11. Bloggers
12. Michelle Bachmann
13. Mike Prendergast
14. CrossroadsGPS
15. American Action Network
16. Dan Coats
17. John Raese
18. Christine O'Donnell
19. Christine O'Donnell

Before we get to a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi. (The chain e-mails, bloggers, and anyone else you don't recognize on the list above are all conservatives.) Clearly, there must be an internal rule at PFact that you can't go more than 20 Republicans before dragging a Democrat in for balance.

 

Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

If an undead, long-haired, doe-eyed hippie comes shamblin' toward you, push someone else in his way and run like hell.

Republican War on the Poor

Assholes:

Under a new budget proposal from State Sen. Bruce Casswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.  ...

His explanation?

“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”

Under his plan, foster children would receive gift cards that could only be used at places like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other second hand clothing stores.

Hey, thrift stores have some nice stuff, but I don't think it's that much cheaper than Wal-Mart. This amounts to another step in the never-ending effort by rightwingers to humiliate the poor, with the bonus that it diverts dollars to religious organizations.  Grasping Christian fundamentalism continues to spread its tenacles.

See the Change

Pet peeve:

Huge surges among Hispanic populations in the Deep South could mean a political sea change over the next two decades, as immigrants become naturalized and they and their American-born children register to vote. ...

This is the correct usage of the phrase, meaning a slow and complete transformation. It just bugs me when people use it to mean a sudden change.

Philly's Stadium Zone

Duncan laments the fact that the Phillies' ballpark was built where it was:

As with many places, my stupid urban hellhole powers that be located the baseball stadium in-the-city-but-not-in-the-city, that is in a mostly isolated stadium complex not near anything else. It is served by the subway, so there's that, but it doesn't inspire people to come before or stay after and spend money in neighboring establishments because, well, there are no neighboring establishments.

Part of the problem is that nobody wanted it in their neighborhood. Locations considered for the baseball stadium included one just north of Chinatown which that community fought successfully. They saw the ballpark as a threat, not an opportunity, mainly because it would change the character of the neighborhood.

People like making more money, but they don't want anything to change to get it.

150th Anniversary of Attack on Ft. Sumter

At 4:30 a.m., April 12, 1861, a rebel cannon fired the first shot of the Civil War at Ft. Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. This act plunged the nation into a war in which over 3 million American men fought each other, and 625,000 people died.

Four months prior, a secession convention in South Carolina had issued a document titled "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" which read in part:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

The intellectual and moral heirs of the Confederacy now control the party of Lincoln and still claim the mantle of the Constitution while seeking the destruction of the union and the enslavement of workers.

 

Marketing [Insert Here] at Work

The perils of email marketing: