Achy Breaky Song - Weird Al

Cher Video: Do You Believe

I got this from an article listing Rolling Stone Magazine's "Ten Most Annoying Songs Of All Time" -- I like it!

Scalia On Equal Rights For Women - No!

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in an interview for the magazine California Lawyer on January 3, 2011:

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

But it's true: the U.S. Constitution doesn't protect women from discrimination. That's why an amendment to the Constitution is required. The U.S.-written constitution of Afghanistan mandates more rights for women than does the U.S. Constitution.

Supporters of the war piously claim that one of the aims is to improve the rights of women in Afghanistan -- ironic, no?

June 5, 1913: the running of the Epsom Derby. The favorite was Anmer, owned by King George V. During the race, a young English woman named Emily Davison rushed out in front of the pack in an effort to stop the horse and place a Suffragette flag on the king's horse. The resulting collision fractured her skull.

That was part of the story of women's struggle just for the right to vote, resulting in the U.S. in the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. That's the only right established by the Constitution that women have. Isn't it time for an Equal Rights Amendment? Or rather, isn't it decades past time?

According to a Kaili Joy Gray article in Daily Kos: A poll conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation in 2001 found:

• 96 percent of Americans believe men and women should have equal rights
• 72 percent of Americans believe the Constitution already specifies equal rights for men and women (it doesn't)
• 88 percent of Americans believe the Constitution should specify equal rights for men and women

The Equal Rights Amendment has been re-introduced at the beginning of each new session of Congress for nearly 30 years. Thanks to the controversy surrounding Justice Scalia's January article, this time it may even pass.

Matt Taibbi: The Tea Party

Michele Bachmann: Two Stories

Matt Taibbi took a lot of heat for his nasty tone in this article in Rolling Stone.

He was also accused of stealing some of this long piece, The Chosen One, by G.R. Anderson Jr., in a Minneapolis newspaper.

Data Recovery, Internet History, Startup Applications

These are two articles I want to keep. The first is on hard drive recovery.

The second is on the history of the Internet.

And a list of startup applications.

KO Countdown

Stewart Over Wallace By Unanimous Decision

Quint's USS Indianapolis speech

Just Dave | Myspace Video

Lots Of Software Goodies

An article in PC World:

To help you get the most out of your laptop and stay secure while on the go, we've selected 31 applications and services that are particularly laptop-friendly.

These tools are useful for protecting your laptop, enhancing connectivity, managing files and media, and/or customizing your Windows laptop. And most of them are free.

Skydiving Interlude ...

The Wit And Wisdom Of Ann Coulter

I came across an Ayn Rand piece and started with the idea of assembling a collection of weird Randisms. But I rapidly got diverted when I came upon a bunch of Coulterisms, so Ann hijacked the post: The rest of the quotes are hers, in speeches, radio or TV appearances, and books. Such a lovely person.

• Rand became fascinated with a serial killer named William Hickman.

[Hickman was convicted of the rape, killing, disembowelling and dismembering of a 12-year-old girl he was holding hostage. It was a particularly brutal and sadistic crime. Link to the article Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman. by best-selling author Michael Prescott.]

• Rand wrote that the serial killer was an "ideal man," a superior form of human because he didn't let society impose their morals on him. He didn't worry about what others thought and just did as he pleased. "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," Rand wrote. Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

Coulter:

The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet — it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that's the Biblical view.

God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, "Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours."

When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.

There are a lot of bad Republicans; there are no good Democrats.

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.

Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now.

We should be fingerprinting environmentalists … As for what can be done to convince Americans that we face an enemy that hates America as much as the terrorists, we should put people like Ann Coulter on TV more, stop with the infernal nonsense of thinking liberals are decent but misguided people, and characterize the threat appropriately. … Start by telling the truth about them: They are out to destroy the country.

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 — except Goldwater in '64 — the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.

If Chicago had been hit [on 9/11], I assure you New Yorkers would not have cared. What was stunning when New York was hit was how the rest of America rushed to New York's defense. New Yorkers would have been like, "It's tough for them; now let's go back to our Calvin Klein fashion shows."

When you're allowed to exist on the same continent of the United States of America, protecting you with a nuclear shield around you, you're polite and you support us when we've been attacked on our own soil. They violated that protocol. … They better hope the United States doesn't roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.

I'm getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties. I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning.

Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists.

The Democrats complain about the Republican base being nuts … The nuts are their entire party … They're always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. … Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment.

The Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle. They fill the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.

I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo. But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9-11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.

We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens's creme brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media.

I think our motto should be, post-9-11, "raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences."

Canada has become trouble recently … It’s always the worst Americans who go there … We could have taken them over so easy. But I only want the western part, with the ski areas, the cowboys, and the right wingers. They’re the only good parts of Canada.

We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers' raw dedication and be forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don't make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching tomorrow's future or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren't they too stupid to be teaching our kids?

I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it.

The man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others.

Coulter spoke at the University of Western Ontario in London on Monday, where she told a female Muslim student to "take a camel" as an alternative to flying. Fatima Al-Dhaher was on the receiving end of the comment, which was made after she asked Coulter about previous statements in which Coulter said Muslims shouldn't be allowed on airplanes and should take "flying carpets" instead.

Guns lead to a polite society, as we like to say in the United States. And I think that all of western Canada would agree with me.

Republican Race (To The Bottom)

I had thought to post snapshots of the Republican nomination race from time to time, but while that covers the big picture as I see it, a lot of little stuff -- which adds up -- goes unremarked. So I plan to keep updating this post with day-to-day stuff from each of the "serious" (he said with a straight face) candidates.

We'll start with my last complete consideration of the race, entitled "Daniels Is Out: How The Republican Race Stands Today."

I looked at the race as three tiers. The first was Romney, Pawlenty, Huntsman, and Gingrich. I considered those as the "adult" candidates, with Newt barely hanging on by his fingernails to remain first-tier. I thought it likely that one of the first tier would win, and the race would boil down to two: Romney and not-Romney.

The second tier were people I considered long shots, but having a remote chance: Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Gary Johnson, and Herman Cain. (Why on earth did I put Cain in this tier? As I said: "Not a chance in hell, because too many Republicans are racist." And yet there he is on the list of people with an outside shot. Oh, well.)

The third tier I dismissed: "...none of them can possibly win." That was Palin, Bachmann, Bolton, Giuliani, and Roemer (what? You don't know who that is? He was governor of Louisiana at one time. This is his last appearance on this thread.)

So that's the way I saw it at that time (no particular order in each of the tiers, by the way):

• First tier:  Romney, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Gingrich
• Second tier:  Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Gary Johnson, Herman Cain
• Third tier:  Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Buddy Roemer.

Gingrich seems to have not just slipped from the first tier: Having spent a disastrous week after announcing, he decided to take a leisurely, luxurious Mediterranean cruise for two weeks, and his entire campaign staff decided to take a hike. Newt's gone.

On the second tier, Gary Johnson has all but thrown in the towel. On the third, Bolton and Roemer seem nowhere to be found and Giuliani looks unlikely to enter the race at all.

So that thins out the herd considerably. Here's how I see them  now:

• Romney: intensely hated by the Tea Party and almost universally by the upper echelon of the old-style Republican establishment as well, but still the front-runner, largely because he's heir apparent from 2008
• Tim Pawlenty, who has now outwingnutted the Tea Party with his extreme economic policy proposals
• Jon Huntsman, just as Mormon as Romney, and gaining very little
• Ron Paul, a man of strong principles who won't pander for votes and who therefore cannot win
• Rick Santorum, an astonishingly stupid darling of the right-wing evangelicals, whose political heyday is a decade and more behind them
• Herman Cain, who is making increasingly unhinged statements (The Obamacare bill, at 2700 pages, was too long! When he's elected, bills will be held to a maximum of 3 pages!) is looking increasingly foolish -- and did you notice he's black?
• And that leaves -- God help us all! -- Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

With the anyone-but-Romney crowd in full bloodthirsty cry, with the remarkable unenthusiasm developing for Pawlenty and Huntsman, the situation looks dire indeed. Too distasteful for me to contemplate any further at this point.

Santorum, Palin, or Bachmann?

The horror ... the horror ....

Income Inequality Tidbits

In 2010, Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans held $1.37 trillion in assets: $1,370,000,000,000

That's an average of $3.4 billion each
$3,400,000,000

$1.37 trillion in assets is more than the amount held by the bottom 50% (150+ million people)

*********

In 2007, the richest 1% of Americans owned 34.6% of the country's wealth.

• The next 19% owned 50.5%
• That means the richest 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth.
• The poorest 80% owned 15%

**********

• The lowest quintile (20%) in the U.S. hold 0.1% of the nation's wealth.
• The second-lowest quintile (20%) hold 0.2%

Add them together:  The lowest two quintiles (40%) hold 0.3%

**********

In 1929, the wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled 44% of the wealth.

• After FDR's "New Deal" social programs -- Social Security (old-age pension), mortgage relief,  Glass-Steagall Act (FDIC, insured bank accounts), Wagner Act (established National Labor Relations Board, right to collective bargaining), Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage, limit on hours of work, child labor legislation);
• And after LBJ's "Great Society" programs, creating Medicare and Medicaid, among other socially progressive programs:

In 1976, the wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled 20% of the wealth.

After the trickle-down "voodoo economics" initiated by Ronald Reagan and pursued vigorously by George W. Bush:

In 2007, the wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled 35% of the wealth.

And the gap is widening -- fast.

**********

During the Reagan administration, the percentage of wealth controlled by the wealthiest 1% jumped from around 20% to around 30%

**********

In 2000, the percentage held by the wealthiest 10% owned:

• 70% in the U.S.
• 53% in Canada
• 42% in Finland

**********

Clinton ran a budget surplus:

• $1.9 billion, 1999
• $86.4 billion, 2000

In his first speech to Congress, George W. Bush announced that the national debt would be paid off by 2010

**********

McDonald's U.S. hired 60,000 people on April 19, 2011

• 1 million people applied

**********

Fortune 500 companies generated $10.8 trillion in 2010; profits were up 81% over 2009

**********

Average compensation for Fortune 500 CEOs in 2010 was $19 million

• For a 40-hour week, working 50 weeks, that's $9,500 per hour
• For a 60-hour week, working 50 weeks, that's $6,333 per hour

**********

The U.S. Federal Reserve Board says with boom times and record profits, U.S. corporations have $1.93 trillion available to invest

Kristol Okay With Corporate Tax Rate

June 05, 2011 01:00 PM
Bill Kristol admits the truth: 'The corporate tax rate is not killing big business in America.'
By John Amato

The Trillion Dollar War

Budget Video

This is a one-minute clip illustrating the factors contributing to the U.S. federal budget.



President Clinton achieved surpluses of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000.

In his first major address to Congress, Bush promised that his budget would pay off the national debt in ten years:

My budget has funded a responsible increase in our ongoing operations. It has funded our Nation’s important priorities. It has protected Social Security and Medicare. And our surpluses are big enough that there is still money left over.

Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.

 Well, not quite.

Drafts: Good Stuff I Haven't Gotten Around To!

Bush Tax Cuts Circle Chart
More deficit charts.

Meet Einstein!

Einstein is an African gray parrot, star of the Knoxville Zoo's Bird Show.

Canadian Federal Campaign Financing

Federal campaign financing in the U.S. is an unmitigated disaster and disgrace. The Canadian system seems far superior, but I don't understand how it works, so I'm doing some reading on the subject.

I know that Canadian federal candidates are far more dependent on public funding than are Americans (only presidential candidates are even eligible for public funding, and they may choose to forgo that, as Obama did in 2008; Senate and House candidates receive no public financing at all).

From an article entitled "Campaign Finance In Canada And The U.S.: Policies, Powers, And Prospects" by Clayton D. Peoples, University of Nevada, Reno: "By some estimates, 80% or more of Canadian election expenses are publicly funded."

So American officeholders have a funding base of big donors. If they manage to satisfy those donors during their time in office, most of them will be prepared to ante up for the next election. A relatively unknown challenger, on the other hand, will have to spend a lot of time and energy seeking donors.

That creates a phenomenon which is a great deal more significant in the U.S. than in Canada -- the power of incumbency.

90% or more of U.S. federal elections to the House and Senate are won by incumbents. In Canada, an incumbent does not have that built-in financial head start, and is therefore more vulnerable to a challenger; turnover is a great deal higher in Canada. For example, in the 1997 federal election, incumbents won 70.1% of districts. (That's from the Milligan-Rekkas study linked below.) So incumbency is an advantage in Canada -- simple name recognition, for one reason -- but not as important a factor as it is in the U.S.

I'm starting my examination of this subject with a preconceived bias toward the Canadian system, but the incumbency thing came as a surprise to me, and it's an important feature on the plus side for Canada.
**********
A candidate qualifies for reimbursement of 50% of his election expenses provided the candidate receives at least 15% of the valid votes cast in his electoral district.

Campaign Spending Limits, Incumbent Spending, and Election Outcomes
Kevin Milligan, Department of Economics, University of British Columbia
Marie Rekkas, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University

A base amount of  $2.07 is awarded for the first 15,000 electors. For electors over 15,000 and under 25,000, an additional $1.04 per elector is awarded. Finally, for each elector over 25,000 an additional $0.52 is awarded. The amounts are adjusted each year by an inflation factor. Further adjustments are made according to a very complicated formula. (Trust me; unless you're a professor of political finance, you don't want to go there.)

**********

Another big difference: We don't have fixed election dates in Canada. The party in power never allows their theoretical maximum five-year term expire; they pick a time when they think the political climate is auspicious -- or, on the other hand, they see their fortunes to be going nowhere but down, so they'd better bite the bullet and declare an election now.  Our electioneering is limited to weeks -- the 1997 campaign I'm looking at just now lasted 36 days. Our most recent election, on May 2, was announced on March 26. In the U.S., the 2012 campaign for the Republican nomination is in full swing with a year and a half to go. Members of the U.S. House have two-year terms; they spend virtually their entire term fundraising for the next election. (Senators have a little more breathing room, with six-year terms.)

Republican Plan: Cut (taxes), Cut (government regulation), Cut (spending on social problems)

On today's episode of Washington Week, Speaker John Boehner was reported as saying: "If you talk to job creators around the country, like we have, they'll tell you that the overtaxing, overregulating, and overspending that's going on here in Washington is creating uncertainty and holding them back."

That's the Republican economic plan in a nutshell: Cut, Cut, Cut. Cut taxes, cut government regulation, and cut government spending (on social programs, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, education, and programs for the poor; certainly not on defense, or on subsidies to Big Oil, Big Pharma, or Big Ag). Then the "job creators" -- where have they been since the Clinton administration, anyway? -- will no longer feel uncertain or held back, and those piles of money they've been sitting on will finally start to trickle down, as foretold 30 years ago by St. Ronald of Reagan. Cake and ice cream for everyone!

You think?

Me neither.

Obama's budget, on the other hand -- though it, too, includes some serious cuts -- according to a CNN analysis, proposes increasing by $3 billion to $28 billion funding Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs; $1.35 billion for the president's Race To The Top program, extending it to more school districts; a $17 billion increase for Pell Grant funding; increasing by $3.7 billion to $61.6 billion for civilian research and development; more than $100 billion in funding for state and local infrastructure projects; $4 billion for infrastructure developments in national and regional projects; $6 billion to fund research and development of clean energy technology.

Which is the better choice for America? Putting people back to work on education, research and development, infrastructure, and clean energy -- or Cut, Cut, Cut? Which plan is courageous, bold, and optimistic, and which is timid and weak?

Republican Gospel: Voodoo Economics, Supply Side, Trickle Down, Laffer Curve, Starve the Beast, Taxpayer Protection Pledge

From the Wikipedia article on supply-side economics:

Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce (supply) goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by allowing greater flexibility by reducing regulation. According to the theory, consumers will then benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices. Typical policy recommendations of supply-side economics are lower marginal tax rates and less regulation.

The origin of the term "supply-side economics" (also known as "the trickle-down theory") is in dispute, but it was first used in 1975 or 1976. It was an economic theory that developed during the 1970s as a result of the apparent failure of Keynesian economic policies to deal with the phenomenon of stagflation felt in that period, and with the problems posed by the 1973 oil crisis.

The supply-siders were influenced strongly by the idea of the Laffer curve, 

  which states that tax rates and tax revenues were distinct—that tax rates too high or too low will not maximize tax revenues. Supply-siders felt that in a high tax rate environment, lowering taxes to the right level can raise revenue by causing faster economic growth.

(The diagram of the Laffer Curve represents tax revenues as  tax rates rise from 0% on the left -- obviously generating no tax revenue -- to 100% on the right, which also generate no tax revenue because no one will produce anything if they must pay 100% tax on their income.)

Ronald Reagan embraced the supply-side theory, reducing income tax rates across the board, especially the capital gains tax rates. In the Republican primary race for the presidency in 1980, George H.W. Bush ridiculed supply-side policies as "voodoo economics." (He sheepishly followed those policies as vice president, and showed tepid support for them when he ran and was elected president in 1988.)

Paul Krugman attacked the theory, and Reaganomics, in a book entitled Peddling Prosperity. Krugman said: "When Ronald Reagan was elected, the supply-siders got a chance to try out their ideas. Unfortunately, they failed."

Critics in the Reagan years charged that advocates for lowering taxes didn't really believe their own arguments that they were trying to increase revenues, but rather were trying to "starve the beast" (something that economist Bruce Bartlett has called "the most pernicious fiscal doctrine in history") -- tax cuts would force lower government spending. Paul Samuelson, another Nobel-winning economist, called this notion "the tape worm theory: the idea that the way to get rid of a tape worm is to stab your patient in the stomach."

One noted advocate of "starving the beast" is Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, best known for saying "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Norquist is one of the most powerful and influential unelected men in the U.S. Since 1986, Americans for Tax Reform have sponsored the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", a written promise by legislators and candidates for state or federal office that commits them to oppose tax increases. Currently, 273 Republicans in the House and 40 of 47 Republican Senators have signed the pledge; 1,252 state legislators have done the same.

Economist Paul Krugman summarized the strategy in February 2010: "Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit." He wrote that the "...beast is starving, as planned..." and that "Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan -- and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power."

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, "Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy -- what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

After 30 years of "voodoo economics," there still aren't enough oats on the road to satisfy the number of sparrows struggling for them.

Greatest Hits, May 2011

Report Card On America's Infrastructure from the American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009
The Republican/Tea Party Economic Plan
Don Blankenship Must Go To Jail.
Tidbits
Stuxnet: Articles And Info
George Carlin: Who Really Controls America? Videoclip
Al Franken Draws The U.S. (a 3- or 4-minute videoclip)
Detainee "Suicide" At Guantanamo Bay
The Myth That The U.S. Is Broke
Canada's Shame: Asbestos Production Kills 100,000 A Year
The PATCO Strike, August 3, 1981
My Pet Goat -- Videoclip from Fahrenheit 9/11
Dogs Of War -- Dogs jump from helicopters?
U.S. Infrastructure Crumbling
Obama's Accomplishments
Technology, Education, and the Long, Slow Fade of Big Labour
Obama's Speech On Race, 2008 -- Video and Transcript
Amazing Goshawk Video
Ten Depressing Ways America Is Exceptional
Red State Quandary -- comic video
Mourning Osama bin Laden
Three Missions: Tehran, Mogadishu, and Osama bin Laden
Where Do You Stand Politically? Take A Pew Poll
SNL Does The Republican Candidates

Report Card On America's Infrastructure

The 2009 report card is from the American Society of Civil Engineers; I doubt the Tea Partiers can challenge the integrity of that body.

Grades, with links providing information on each specific subject, are as follows:

Aviation D

Bridges C

Dams D

Drinking Water D-

Energy D+

Hazardous Waste D

Inland Waterways D-

Levees D-

Public Parks and Recreation C-

Rail C-

Roads D-

Schools D

Solid Waste C+

Transit D

Wastewater D-

America's Infrastructure GPA: D
Estimated 5 Year Investment Need: $2.2 Trillion

How would you feel if your child came home with a report card like that?

At the site linked above, you can download a free copy of Can We Come Back From The Brink? America's Infrastructure Crisis. (You have to give a name and email address to receive a copy.) You can also download a document entitled SPECIAL REPORT: The Infrastructure Roundtables: Seeking Solutions to an American Crisis from the April 2010 issue of Civil Engineering Magazine. You can read a PDF file entitled Find Out More About Infrastructure Solutions From Five Cities Across The Country. And in Key Solutions, you can read ASCE Offers 5 Ambitious Ways To Raise The Grades.

According to Jared Bernstein in an article at HuffPo, if there was political will to spend the money, "there are 20+ million un- or underemployed, including construction workers, whose unemployment rate is about 18%."

Mutant E. Coli Strikes Europe - Do Something, Government!

Mutant E. Coli Pegged To Deadly Outbreak In Europe: World Health Organization

This Canadian Press article in the Canadian section of HuffPo says:

So far, the mutant E. coli strain has sickened more than 1,500 people, including 470 who have developed a rare kidney failure complication, and killed 18, including one overnight in Germany, the country hit hardest by the outbreak.

Germany -- and more specifically Hamburg -- seems to be the point of origin, and suspicion is being directed at vegetables contaminated by animal manure. But our globe-hopping ways make the spread of exotic diseases rapid and widespread:

Nearly all the sick people either live in Germany or recently travelled there. Two people who were sickened are now in the United States, and both had recently travelled to Hamburg, Germany, where many of the infections occurred. British officials announced four new cases, including three Britons who recently visited Germany and a German person on holiday in England.

Germany's neighbors are issuing bans on the import of German vegetables; Russia has extended its ban "immediately and indefinitely" to all of the EU. Other EU nations are criticizing this measure as harsh and unnecessary.

But the point is that everybody is depending on government to DO SOMETHING! Neighbors want import bans imposed; Germans want the source of the infection found, isolated, and eradicated. And everybody wants fast, efficient, effective government action.

But in the U.S., everybody conservatives want to cripple and defund the agencies that perform these functions. Here's a statement from Wenonah Huter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, at the Clean Food Earth site dated Wednesday, May 25, 2011:

USDA -SLASHES INSPECTION BUDGET - CUTS LIVESTOCK INSPECTORS

House Subcommittee Budget Bill Would Hurt Consumers, Producers 

WASHINGTON - May 25, 2011 - “Yesterday the House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies approved a budget bill for FY 2012 that undermines the federal government’s ability to protect consumers from unsafe food. It would keep independent farmers and ranchers under the thumb of corporate meatpackers, and would fail to protect hungry people around the world from Wall Street speculation that puts food out of reach for millions.

“The cuts made by the House subcommittee are not about balancing the budget. They are ideological attacks on the ability of government agencies to do their jobs. Slashing the budgets of the agencies responsible for keeping our food supply clean, safe and accessible is short-sighted and irresponsible. The rest of the House and the Senate should reject the cuts to these vital programs laid out in the subcommittee’s bill to make sure the budget bolsters our ability to provide Americans with a food system that is safe for consumers and fair to producers.”

Here's a link to an article by Ron Smith in the Southwest Farm Press dated May 13, 2011: Deep cuts would hurt state ag and health agencies:

Potential deep cuts in two Texas state agency budgets could pose serious challenges to assuring food safety, market enhancement and agricultural economic development.

The Texas Department of Agriculture could see funding cuts ranging from 41 percent to 45 percent, Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said at the Texas Food Safety Conference at Austin.

His counterpart in the Texas Department of Health, David Lakey, M.D., said his department also faces deep cuts, especially for funding approved during the last legislative session to support additional personnel to deal with an increased number of license requests.

The conservative ideological mindset extends not only throughout the area of food and water inspection but is pervasive throughout government. These people believe two things:

1. That government regulation is bad in itself, since the free market must be unfettered;
2. and that regulation requires a bloated bureaucracy that is also an onerous burden on the taxpayer.

Therefore, GOVERNMENT REGULATION MUST BE CUT.

Things like safety inspection and fire insurance are a costly, unneccessary burden -- until you need them.

Citizens United

For interest's sake, I intend to compile a collection of articles related to the disastrous Citizens United v FEC decision by the shamefully corporate Roberts Supreme Court. I'll try to tie them together and comment on them at some later date -- if I have the time and the inclination.

From The Story of Stuff people comes The Story Of Citizens United v. FEC:

1. James Bopp, lead lawyer
2. Virginia decision: unlimited corporate contributions okay
3. Virginia reconsidered: maybe that first decision was wrong

The first is a link to The Man Behind Citizens United Is Just Getting Started by Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones. It's about James Bopp, a lawyer from Terre Haute, Indiana, who argued Citizens United before the Supreme Court and has made it his life's work to allow unrestricted anonymous campaign donations. It's hard to imagine a concept more damaging to the idea of democracy than that elections should be purchased by the highest bidder.

Freedom of Speech -- the First Amendment! The Holiest of Holies!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Mencimer's article says:  "In many cases, including Citizens United, advocates from the ACLU, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the AFL-CIO have filed supporting briefs." How can you say you uphold the ideal of free speech if you have limits on campaign spending?

In my opinion, this argument has two fatal flaws. The first is the contention that money equals speech. I say, let the Koch brothers stand in a public square and shout themselves hoarse; let Koch Industries hire someone with strong vocal cords to do the same on behalf of Koch Industries. No problem.

The second is that gradually, over the years, the notion has slithered its way into the public belief, and therefore into the law, that a corporation is a person. IF A CORPORATION IS A PERSON, ARREST MASSEY ENERGY AND THROW IT IN JAIL UNTIL IT DIES! THEN GET AFTER THE REST OF THESE PSYCHOPATHIC MURDERING CORPORATIONS!

Mencimer says:

One thing no one can dispute is Bopp's impressive record in the courts. Even before Citizens United, he'd won a Supreme Court ruling striking down big chunks of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. He was instrumental in Bush v. Gore, and he successfully beat back a massive lawsuit from the FEC alleging that the Christian Coalition had illegally campaigned on behalf of candidates including Oliver North, Jesse Helms, and Newt Gingrich. And now he's pursuing dozens of other cases that, if successful, could eliminate caps on political contributions, allow campaigns to hide their donors from public view, and kill public-financing laws across the nation.

Bopp has long been an influential player on the political scene.

He was an Indiana cochair of Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign and worked on the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. (It was his legal reasoning that led the Supreme Court to settle the 2000 election in favor of Bush: He represented three Florida voters who claimed that recounting ballots by hand violated their right to equal protection, a position the Supreme Court adopted to justify its intervention in the election.)

Regarding the anonymity aspect of campaign contributions, conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has taken some surprising positions. In oral arguments in one of Bopp's cases, he said: "Democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage. The First Amendment does not protect you from criticism or even nasty phone calls when you take part in the legislative process."

In another of Bopp's recent cases, Scalia wrote in a concurring opinion: "For my part, I do not look forward to a society which, thanks to the Supreme Court, campaigns anonymously...This does not resemble the Home of the Brave."

Bopp has worked on important campaign finance issues with Texas ex-Congressman Tom DeLay, and is presently working on a case that would allow direct corporate donations to candidates —- an offense for which DeLay was convicted and is free pending appeal; presumably a decision in Bopp's favor would allow DeLay to go free. AARGH!

Bopp has argued in New York that the State's political donation limit of $58,000 -- 20 times the federal cap -- is too low.

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The second item on my Citizens United list is the decision of a Virginia judge, Reagan appointee U.S. District Judge James Cacheris, that companies have the same right to donate to political campaigns as do individual citizens.

"(F)or better or worse, Citizens United held that there is no distinction between an individual and a corporation with respect to political speech," Cacheris wrote in his 52-page opinion. "Thus, if an individual can make direct contributions within (the law's) limits, a corporation cannot be banned from doing the same thing."


Matthew Barakat, Associated Press, in an article entitled US judge rules against corporate contribution ban,  says:

Cacheris says that under the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision last year, corporations have the right to give to federal candidates.

The ruling from the federal judge in Virginia is the first of its kind. The Citizens United case had applied only to corporate spending on campaign activities by independent groups, such as ads run by third parties to favor one side, not to direct contributions to the candidates themselves.

 Barakat goes on to cite University of Virginia law professor Daniel Ortiz saying the ruling "pushes the outer limits of the Citizens United logic." Ortiz said he does not expect the ruling to stand.

The Citizens United case makes a distinction, Ortiz said, between independent expenditures by corporations that are not coordinating with a federal candidate's campaign, and direct campaign contributions.

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Well, sure enough, it may not stand; Judge Cacheris apparently is reconsidering his position. In a Seattle Times article entitled Reconsidering corporate money for federal candidates, the lead paragraph reads:

Good news for democracy. A federal judge in Virginia is reconsidering his May ruling on direct corporate contributions in federal elections, a decision that would compound the damage done by the Citizens United case in 2010.

Cacheris has ordered attorneys back to court to reconsider his interpretation of a 2010 high court ruling that made it legal for corporations to support independent, third-party expenditures for or against federal candidates.

Congress long ago agreed corporations should not be able to spend money to directly support candidates for federal office. The Supreme Court upheld the prohibition on direct contributions. The judge in Virginia apparently did not notice.

This reconsideration is welcome. At least he would not compound the grievous mistake of Citizens United.

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This is a link to a very interesting site, the site of the Public Advocate for the City of New York, Bill de Blasio. He and his organization are apparently some kind of New York City ombudsman. This particular page asks the question: Where do the largest corporations in the United States stand on CORPORATE SPENDING IN OUR ELECTIONS?

In view of the infamous Citizens United ruling of the shamelessly corporate Roberts Supreme Court, the right of "corporate free speech" was greatly expanded, leaving U.S. elections even more blatantly bought and sold by corporate money than ever before; and political donations need not be disclosed.

Investigations by de Blasio's office have shed some light on the situation. They have compiled a list of major companies' policies toward political donations. Here are two categories of that list:
Pledged to Keep Corporate Treasury Money Out Of Elections:
These companies have policies that protect voters from unrestricted corporate election spending in spite of the rollbacks created by Citizens United. They have adopted policies of refraining from spending money directly from their company treasury on politics.Corporations in this category include:

• Citigroup
• Colgate-Palmolive
• Dell
• General Electric
• Gilead
• Goldman Sachs
• International Business Machines
• JP Morgan Chase & Co.
• Microsoft
• Morgan Stanley
• Xerox Corporation

Another category is Prepared to Spend Corporate Money in Elections:

These companies have taken steps demonstrating that they will not protect voters from unrestricted corporate election spending in spite of the rollbacks created by Citizens United. They are prepared to spend without limits and without disclosure in our elections.

This category includes:

• 3M
• Target
• Best Buy
• Massey Energy
• International Coal

And the third category is:

Has Not Pledged to Keep Corporate Treasury Money Out Of Elections:
These companies’ policies do not address the rollbacks created by Citizens United. They have no policy prohibiting spending their treasury funds on politics.

This is a much longer list. Let's hope that as time goes by, public opinion forces more of these "undecideds" onto the first list, pledging not to spend their treasury money on elections.

The Republican/Tea Party Economic Plan

Tea Party Republicans were elected in large numbers in November 2010 with the promise of Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. The economy was struggling; while there had been constant private sector growth, that growth was slow and uncertain, and unemployment remained unacceptably high. A "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" platform was a vote-getter, even though the GOP were extremely vague about where these jobs were to come from. Rather than proposing anything concrete at all, their proposals were along the lines of: We will cut taxes on corporations and the rich, thereby unleashing a dynamo of job creation and prosperity for all as the wealth trickles down.

If that policy had worked, the economy would have boomed for the last 30 years and George W. Bush would have presided over the greatest job-creation period in history. Instead, it was one of the worst job-creation periods in history, culminating in the most savage economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The newly elected Tea Partiers took office in January. By now, any kind of job-creation effort has dropped off the radar screen. When out of power, the Republican strategy had been to be The Party Of No. Newly resurgent in the House, they have become The Party Of Cut, Cut, Cut -- but only in the right places! Nothing that would hurt them or their wealthy friends!

Here are the basics of the Tea Party Republican economic plan.

• Cut taxes on corporations and the rich. Repeal the estate tax. Cut taxes on capital gains and dividends. If it's a vote-getter to advocate tax cuts for even "the little people," as Leona Helmsley called them, then sure, why not? "Tax Cuts For All" will probably appeal to those voters who are struggling around the poverty line. But the truth is that the Republicans simply don't care about cutting taxes for waitresses and Wal-Mart clerks; the amount of money in question is not worth quibbling about. Corporations and the rich: That's where the billions are. And that's what they want to get their hands on for themselves and their greedy friends.

• Cut government oversight and regulation of private industry. Eliminate agencies like the EPA that hamper corporate profits. Workplace safety enforced at places like mines, offshore oil rigs, and meatpacking plants? Inspection of food production facilities by the FDA? Child labor laws, which are being relaxed in Maine? Cuts to community development grants, food aid to low-income pregnant women and their children, and grants to community action agencies that serve the poor? Regulatory authorities are bloated bureaucracies whose reason for existence is to enforce oppressive rules by an intrusive nanny state. Their very existence is an affront to the principles of the free market: salaries for make-work government jobs for bureaucrats who throttle industrial competitiveness.
  

• Cut social spending. Social spending, by definition, goes to people who can't afford to look after themselves (or even worse, to people who can afford it but who choose instead to freeload on the bushels of money the government shovels out to one and all). Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps for the poor, school lunch programs, Pell grants to help low-income youth attend college -- all of these are socialist handouts to the unproductive and therefore undeserving. Abolish FEMA and let people care for themselves, as they should in a free society. Starve K-12 public education while increasing funding to private, for-profit schools where the affluent can send their children, thus consolidating their privileged position in the world, while public schools sink ever lower into poverty and chaos and despair. Block funding to NPR and Planned Parenthood.

• Break the unions. End regulation of overtime pay and conditions. Abolish the minimum wage. Let people truly compete for work in a truly free market; a man who has a job and doesn't like the pay or conditions can leave, and those who have no job at all will be lining up to take his place. There are 112,000 teachers and 212,000 millionaires in New Jersey, but it's those greedy teachers with their $50,000 a year salaries and gold-plated pension plans who are bankrupting the state. Boeing's record profits are not enough: They must punish their recalcitrant workers in Washington, who had the temerity to demand decent wages and working conditions, and violate their contractual agreement with those workers by moving a major Dreamliner production line to South Carolina where they can pay non-union wages and -- surprise! -- receive big subsidies from the state government.

• Subsidize big industry. While government subsidies to the poor and struggling are out of the question, subsidies to the obscenely rich and powerful are another matter entirely. Billions in subsidies to oil companies, King Coal, huge factory farms and ethanol producers, Big Pharma patents to keep cheap generics and imported drugs off the market, and of course the biggest of all -- the War Machine -- well, subsidizing the rich so they can remain rich and get richer is taken for granted; cuts in these areas are unthinkable.

• Support Wall Street and the mega-banks to the hilt. Yes, their greed and irresponsibility plunged us into this situation where the taxpayers had to put the country in hock for decades to bail them out; and yes, the Frank-Dodd legislation, designed to prevent such situations in the future, was so watered down it achieves very little; and yes, they are in a position even stronger and more dominant than ever; and yes, exotic derivatives remain unregulated; and yes, they are paying record bonuses while Main Street is struggling to tread water -- and yes, they are our biggest campaign donors, but no, we will not accept any significant limitation on the overwhelming financial clout they wield and which can help us continue to be re-elected. A pox on Elizabeth Warren and her new agency! We are unalterably opposed to a bureau that protects financial consumers, because that would protect them (at least to some extent) from the depredations of Wall Street and the mega-banks.

What economic legislation has the Republican House passed or proposed that has not sought to achieve those ends I've mentioned?

Then there's their cultural and social policy:

• Repression of women's rights to reproductive freedom;
• Denial of science, to be replaced with good old-fashioned Christian faith;
• Indoctrination of children by manipulation of school text-book material to reflect a Christian, conservative slant;
• Infiltration of higher education by such as the Koch brothers, who donate millions to universities in return for vetting professors and setting curricula;
• Demonization of illegal immigrants, yet looking away when those same hardworking decent people care for their kids, clean their swimming pools, tend their gardens, and perform exhausting, soul-destroying labor in their fields and factories in unregulated conditions for less than minimum wage with no workplace rights or protections;
• Denial of basic human rights to those they deem to be "other" -- that is, anyone who is not white, Christian, and heterosexual.

"Take our country back" indeed: back to a time when White was Right and the rich ruled without restriction.

Tidbits

Tea Party darling and austerity hawk Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, took a state helicopter to his son's high school baseball game, landing in a nearby ballfield; the rotund governor was driven in a car the remaining 300 feet to the stands. A spokesman said there was nothing inappropriate about this use of the helicopter.

UPDATE:
Christie has paid $2,251 (a second source cites it as $3,383.79) to the state to cover the cost of this trip; he and his wife left the ball game and flew 75 miles on the chopper to a meeting with "a group of top GOP campaign contributors from Iowa." Apparently Christie has flown on the helicopter 35 times; no report (yet) on whether those trips were, unlike this one, on state business.

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It's not news, but I didn't blog it at the time, and it's a classic. Newt Gingrich (who conducted a six-year affair with his present wife, Callista, behind the back of his second wife, while he condemned Bill Clinton in the harshest of terms for his immoral behavior and urged Clinton's impeachment) had this to say about his past adulterous liaisons:

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

I felt so much passion for my country I just had to ... well, you know.

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I don't like the way things are going on the debt ceiling. Just two or three months ago, even prominent Republicans were saying flat out, without qualification, "The increase has to be passed." (There's a handy quote from Reagan I could trot out if asked to the effect that "It would be insane not to pass the debt ceiling increase" back when he faced the same scenario.)

But now those same prominent Republicans (I'm looking at you, McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor) are playing much harder ball, being jabbed from behind with sharp sticks by wild-eyed Tea Partiers -- who don't give a damn about the U.S. defaulting on its debt or the world economic crisis that would result -- demanding that the bill include outrageous cuts to Medicare and caps on future spending. And Democrats seem to be succumbing.

I wish Obama had come out in January with strong Democratic support in the House and the Senate to say, "We will play no games with the debt ceiling increase. I will veto any such bill that has any Republican riders attached. We will consider the Republicans' demands for caps and cuts during the upcoming debate over the 2012 budget."

Oh, well.
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ABC News has the following quote from Sarah on her non-political tour:

"Each site we're at is just so inspiring and confirming in me and in my family how important it is that we all learn about our foundation so that we can move forward very clearly."

Do you feel inspired and confirmed about that vision of that Sarah with her patriotic finger movin' very clearly forward on that nuclear trigger also? You betcha!
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There's a new NYT op-ed columnist named Joe Nocera. Here's a quote:

It would be nice if we could treat the Ryan plan not as an object of derision but as a launching off point for a serious debate.  That way, maybe for once we could avert a crisis instead of acting shocked when it finally arrives.

Right. Let's treat killing off Medicare as a "launching off point for a serious debate." What would that "serious debate" be about? Killing off Social Security? That could be followed by a "serious debate" about outlawing unions. How courageous!

I'm not a big fan of this Nocera guy so far.
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Dick Cheney, at a public appearance at an "energy event," as reported by the Houston Chronicle:  "I worship the ground that Paul Ryan walks on." Warped theology from an unrepentant Neocon.

Oh, and disgraced former megachurch pastor Ted Haggard has a small movie part in a Christian sex comedy. Oh, and the Westboro Baptist Church were scheduled to demonstrate over Memorial Day weekend in Joplin, Missouri, about how the tornado was God's punishment on the evil citizens of Joplin (especially the homosexuals). But when thousands of angry counterdemonstrators showed up, the Baptist bunch didn't. Oh, and Pat Robertson said this weekend that opposing Islam was just like opposing Nazis. Can't you feel the love?
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William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, contributing editor for The New Republic:

So—to repeat—those of us who reject conservative assaults on government do so for forward-looking, practical reasons, not out of obsolete ideological commitments. We believe that without appropriate government activity, our country will be less efficient and productive as well as less secure and humane. That doesn’t mean that we should resist all proposed reforms, even when they involve long-cherished programs. But we must defend the need for government, staunchly and unapologetically, against the narrow and blinkered attacks that have come to dominate our public discourse.

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Great story, possibly apocryphal: Ronald Reagan, though he had been politically active as president of the Screen Actors Guild, surprised the pundits when he announced his candidacy for governor of California. His first major political interview was with the San Francisco Chronicle, when a reporter visited Reagan at his ranch in Santa Barbara.

The reporter was met by Reagan's political operative, the wily Lyn Nofziger. "Wait a minute," said Nofziger; I'll see if Mr. Reagan is ready." He found Reagan ready for the interview -- dressed in English riding habit.

"That won't do," said Nofziger. Have you got jeans and boots and a cowboy hat?" Reagan had played a cowboy in the movies, but this was when the political image of Reagan-as-cowboy was established. An image of Reagan in that goofy English get-up could have changed the world. (Sigh ....)
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In the aftermath of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's ferocious attack on the public sector unions in his state, when crowds of up to a hundred thousand -- grassroots, not astroturf -- showed up to demonstrate in the snow night after night at the Statehouse in Madison, six Republican senators (and no Democrats) are facing recall elections in July. The 19-14 Republican majority in the Wisconsin Senate could be overturned, along with Walker's repressive legislation.

Walker himself cannot face recall until next January, but the groundwork is being laid.
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This was part of a comment to a post I made in Daily Kos:

The economy is losing need for the people as either labor or consumers.

How well and succinctly put! Outsourcing is replacing U.S./Canadian labor at a fraction of the cost. Marketing is increasingly aimed at those consumers who can afford it: the very wealthy here and the huge numbers of the moderately well-off being created in the developing world.

So who needs us? Well, the ultra-rich will always need people to clean their pools, iron their clothes, shine their shoes, and hold open their doors. But unless you're a lawyer defending their chicanery, or an accountant helping them to avoid paying a fair share of taxes, or a plastic surgeon staving off the effects of age and decadence, it's not going to pay very well -- and there are going to be desperate people lining up behind you for the chance to do your job for less.

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A new poll from Dittman Research in Alaska shows Sarah Palin's favorable/unfavorable rating at 36%/61%. In the recent Senate race in Alaska, Sarah backed Tea Partier Joe Miller, who lost decisively to a write-in opponent, Palin nemesis Lisa Murkowski. This poll put Miller's favorable/unfavorable rating today at 18/73, and Murkowski's at 71/27. Palin as kingmaker? Maybe not so much.

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Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) found that between 2008 and 2010, a dozen major corporations earned a total of $173 billion in profits and paid an average federal income tax rate of -1.5 percent: they actually got money back from the Treasury. Here they are:

• General Electric
• American Electric Power
• Dupont
• Verizon Communications
• Boeing
• Wells Fargo
• FedEx
• Honeywell International
• IBM
• Yahoo
• United Technologies
• Exxon Mobil

Tax reform, anyone? Or do we bow to the Tea Partiers and refuse to raise taxes on corporations in any way, shape, or form?

**********

Donald Trump, still taken seriously enough to appear on Fox & Friends (well, okay, that's not all that great a badge of seriousness), announced that the Ryan budget proposal was "a Republican death wish." Oh, Donald, we'll miss your "Kinsley gaffes": defined by pundit Michael Kinsley as "when a politician accidentally tells the truth."

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Thomas Friedman, NYT columnist, Iraq war cheerleader and Bush economic apologist:

In America, President George W. Bush used the post-9/11 economic dip to push through a second tax cut we could not afford. He followed that with a Medicare prescription drug entitlement we cannot afford and started two wars in the wake of 9/11 without raising taxes to pay for them — all at a time when we should have been saving money in anticipation of the baby boomers’ imminent retirement. As such, our nation’s fiscal hole is deeper than ever and Republicans and Democrats — rather than coming together and generating the political authority needed for us to take our castor oil to compensate for our binge — are just demonizing one another.

 Eight years too late, Tom, but ... whatever.
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Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor, has a piece at HuffPo entitled Tea Party: Drug Tests For Everyone!

In the past week, Florida has passed two laws requiring drug testing: one for welfare recipients and the other for state employees. This is contrary to our friends in the Tea Party's stated concerns: limiting government and protecting constitutional rights. Here's the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Winkler maintains:

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that government-mandated drug testing is a "search" governed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.... Random drug testing is what is known as a "suspicion-less" search. Even without probable cause to believe the person required to pee in a cup has done anything wrong, he or she is forced to turn over bodily fluids for government inspection.

And of course a vast new bureaucracy would have to be created to administer the tests and deal with the results. This legislation strikes a double blow at limiting both government size and intrusion.

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Huckabee's hinting he might not be averse to nomination for vice president.

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Weinergeddon: It's looking more and more to me that the notorious picture is indeed a soft-core picture of the man himself. I'd say it was probably a private, personal picture that was stolen; I very much doubt that Weiner sent the offending tweet to the 21-year-old female college student. There is no doubt we will learn more from the massive media coverage certainly yet to come.

I'm Thinking Of Announcing That I'm Thinking About Making An Announcement

Hunter at Daily Kos has a piece entitled The Many, Many Stages Of Announcing You're Running For President.

Once you've announced, you have to start spending a whole lot of money on a campaign. But if you're coy about it, you can lure the media into covering you -- for free! -- for months.

Hunter outlines the steps the wily old pro Newt Gingrich took, with details, dates, and links. Here's the summary:

1. Getting called "a possible contender" on cable TV, or calling yourself a contender

2. Letting a friend leak that you're "considering a run"

3. Saying yourself that you're "considering a run"

4. Announcing the possible formation of an exploratory committee

5. Announcing the actual formation of that exploratory committee

6. Announcing that over the next few months, you may be announcing

7. Announcing that your announcement may be imminent

8) Announcing that you will, in fact, be announcing something

9. Announcing that you will be announcing something in a certain week or day

10. Announcing the date or time of your announcement

11. Announcing that your announcement will be that you're announcing that you will run

12. Announcing "unofficially" that your announcement for running will be imminent (within 24 hours)

13. Announcing!

"Today I am announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. You can watch my announcement here." http://bit.ly/...

If you're following the Newtster's template, the next step is to make a complete idiot of yourself for a week.