The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Texas Republicans and critical thinking skills

    The Texas Republican Party is backtracking from the Party platform plank, "Knowledge-Based Education", (that's one for the family archives) which opposes critical thinking skills and has already been approved by a state convention. A party spokesman said the language made it into the platform by mistake, adding that "...the plank should not have included "critical thinking skills" after "values clarification". I'm guessing Texas Republicans will not spend much time thinking about that correction.

    Having spent a great deal of time in Texas and doing business in the state, the overall Platform seems well out of step with the many moderates in the state and perhaps even with the more religious and conservative wing of the Republican party.

    jollyroger's picture

    When Cecil Wlliams preaches Warren Buffett listens, and so do I

    "Judge, do I look crazy? Of course it was loaded!"

     

    I won't bore you with the details, but anyway, instead of the 60 days in jail that the prosecutor was pushing for, my getting caught with a combat tuned Smith & Wesson chief's special ended me up doing 20 hours of community service at Glide Memorial Church, in San Francisco's Tenderloin, back when it was still skid row.

    John Roberts goes rogue?

    Roberts delivered a delight today.

    Not only did he pull out a justification for the mandate, he did it in a way that still slams the overreach of the Commerce Clause, provides insight that it's fungible as a tax, and aligns with liberals for the first time in.... never.

    It's tickling in one sense to see him acting as a real conservative - the mandate *was* an overreach for Commerce - by breathing, the government can make you buy *anything*?

    cmaukonen's picture

    The infantile adults. America's immature elites.

    There has been large number of explanations, reasons and even derogating of the elite and those on the right concerning their behavior and seemingly lack of compassion. Ranging from fascist ideology to even psycho-pathology. Greed, racism, ignorance, close mindedness and even mental illness. And I will agree that in a number of cases that more than a few of these do apply.

    The Supremes approved the mandate

    " Dude I owe you  big time .Come over one day after work and I'm opening a bottle of  Bollingers " FT 6/ 28*

    "I'm opening a Bollingers tonight" Flavius,right here

     

    * as part of a massive fraud to rig the Libor  to Barclays' advantage

    Elusive Trope's picture

    Real Health Care Reform's Biggest Challenge: the 75%ers

    ABC News/Washington Post poll draws this conclusion:

    One key challenge is that while Americans are broadly dissatisfied with the system overall, vastly more – 75 percent – rate their own quality of care favorably. The difficulty thus remains where it’s been all along: Forging solutions to the current system’s problems that don’t leave people fearing they’ll lose what many see as their own good quality of care now.

    jollyroger's picture

    11/7: Scalia dies celebrating Romney election. Ginsburg resigns. David Cole and Liz Warren named to court by lame duck Obama. Repugnants filibuster draws nuclear option. Yagadda problem wit' dat?

    Just to flesh out the scenario, let us suppose that Scalia blew a brain aneurism reaching for a high note while jovially regaling fellow opera buff Ruth Ginsburg with his favorite Scarpia aria. "Presto, Nino, i fortissimo" urges the cagy Ginsburg, taking quick note of Scalia's reddening face. His body has barely hit the floor when she calmly conveys both the awful news and her own resignation to the White House.

    Romney: "Obama wasted his presidency on Obamacare"

    "My opponent, Mr. Romney, said I wasted my presidency on healthcare. That's right, I wasted my presidency trying to bring health care to 30 million people, people in the middle class or trying to get into the middle class. In other words, if you help the middle class, you're wasting your time. 

    Mr. Romney won't waste time on the middle class. 

    That's essentially what he said, isn't it? Kind of reveals more about him than me. 

    The Mandate & Collusion: another Gangsta parade?

    CMaukonen's nicely been tracking Taibbi & Yves Smith's effort on bank collusion on public bonds (transcript here), that stole money from every local initiative over how many years, audaciously justified in court by "the towns got a good enough rate". In their eyes, "market rate" = "bargained collusion rate", and since they're fair enough, the market just works. 

    Imagine how messy it'd be if towns had to compete to get actual highest returns for their bonds? What's wrong with everyone giving hand signals to rotate the winners of bond deals between 3 veteran financial houses?

    cmaukonen's picture

    A Piece of The Action. The Rise of Gangster Capitalism in the Face of Systemic Collapse.

    We have heard a lot over the last four years on how those responsible for the economic/financial crisis of 2008-2009 have gotten away scot-free. That the policies of Bush have been not only replicated by Obama, but enhanced and refined.

    tmccarthy0's picture

    We Need the Stinking Mandate

    We need the mandate.  The Supreme Court will rule on Monday, probably and it seems to me they've either struck the mandate down or the entire law down. Striking the mandate alone is going to have a number of negative effects on the insured and uninsured, the first of course being that 45  - 50 million people will continue to be without health care. But it is much more complex than that, and we have an example of what will happen without the insurance mandate.

    Sign Here: Obama Haters for Obama

    Yeah, I'm rising from disrespect to contempt to despise.

    Perhaps it's people telling me what I should do, but I think it's mostly his actions.

    I woke up with one piece of judicial news and a non-finger-pointing assessment of our Supreme Court problem, and I was convinced: vote Obama, reverse Supreme Court.

    A couple articles later, I revise equation: hold nose, sneer, vote Obama, pray the Supreme Court is enough.

    cmaukonen's picture

    Moody's downgrades 15 major banks

    Well we can't say anyone didn't see this coming. But I still find it interesting, especially the timing.

    Right on the heels of a fairly large corruption case that could...I repeat could, blow the lid off a lot of other fraudulent practices.  And the Euro Zone on a ledge.

    In the US, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are among those marked down.

    Elusive Trope's picture

    A Little Experiment

    As the political discussions heat up with the approaching 2012 elections, I think it is of value to ponder this little experiment.

    We create through the wonders of cloning two candidates to run for the US Representative seat in every district in the country.  The one running on the Democratic ticket would be a shoe in for membership in the Progressive Caucus, whereas the other would sit up shop in the Tea Party Caucus.  Neither of them would be wackos or nutjubs.  Both would be skilled in the game of politics.  A Bernie Sanders vs. Mike Pence sort of battle. 

    It appears that the TPMCafe site has been taken down from the web?

    Trying to go to its url (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com) now automatically redirects you to the the Talking Points Memo home page (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/)

    Did anyone notice a public announcement that this was going to happen? Just curious.

    MrSmith1's picture

    My Rant About The Elephant / Gorilla In The Room ...

    Reading Destor23's excellent blog, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry ... or go howl at the moon.

    So I guess I'll do a bit of all three.

    Richard Day's picture

    THE US OPEN, TIGER & TIN CUP!

    Tin Cup

    I'm watching Tiger.

    My generation grew up with the first underground art form—the comic book. We would see pix with scrawling underneath those pix...kind of like silent films!

    Rmoney: Love in Bain

    Sorry, couldn't resist.

    9 out of 12 people haven't heard of Bain.

    And you can be sure that of the remaining, a lot just think it was about downsizing companies in trouble, not gutting stealing the pensions & dumping the carcasses on the taxpayer (who didn't cover all the shortfall)

    What a wasted opportunity.

    jollyroger's picture

    Romney to Prez: Don't bullshit a bullshitter

    In today's stump speech, a man who is rapidly becoming famous for his willingness to say anything, regardless of it's veracity, manages to stumble upon Obama's chief vulnerability: A propensity to promise big, deliver little, and then shrug off his shortcoming as doing the best he could.

    Thus, focussing on the limping economic recovery, Romney jabs that Obama favors words over action..

    Richard Day's picture

    FOOD STAMPS: SESSIONS AND RAND

     Elmer Fudd.png

    JEFF SESSIONS

    The junior senator from New York proposes to increase food stamp spending even more than the current growth that we've seen, explaining, quote, food stamps are an extraordinary investment because every dollar that you put into the SNAP program, the food stamp program, you get out $1.71, close quote," Sessions said in a Senate floor speech.

    He was referring to estimates touted by the Agriculture Department and Moody's economist Mark Zandi, who say that helping people feed themselves serves to stimulate a bad economy because the money goes to grocery stores, delivery companies and farmers, who in turn spend it back into the economy.

    But Sessions mocked the idea, arguing that it would lead only to more spending.

    "Under this reasoning, we ought to increase the food stamp program 10 times," Sessions said with incredulity. "Why not? We're going to get more money back. Somehow it's going to create more stimulus, and it's going to bring in more money for the treasury and make the economy grow. Why don't we just pay for your clothes, pay for your shoes, pay for your housing?"

    He then suggested it would be immoral to follow that line of logic.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/jeff-sessions-food-stamps-kirsten-gillibrand_n_1595006.html

    I wish to discuss this matter on a personal basis.

    I have always despised Jeff Sessions.

    Always.

    Proof of Genetic Gender Difference

    Recent scientific polling has shown differences between the sexes that can't be explained away by "nurture" vs. "nature" justifications or social upbringing. As this scores new technology that's never been used before, for entirely different benign effect, the resistance of women to its charms lends credence to a fully genetic model of inherited differences between the sexes.

    As prelude (or foreplay, if you insist) to the rest of the analysis, the results first:

    jollyroger's picture

    military age males automatically fair game for drones. An old tradition. Lidice-compare and contrast.

    The facile rule of thumb pursuant to which certain drone deaths are excluded from even the minor inconvenience attendant upon acknowledging that regrettable (though purportedly unavoidable, thus justifiable) "collateral damage" has occurred turns out to have been made public at a particularly inconvenient time.

    Richard Day's picture

    PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS

     

    In Europe, war had been regarded as more or less the normal state of things: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” European societies developed monarchies, bureaucracies and standing armies to fight wars, and regimes of treaties and rules to regulate wars

    Pages