Tag Archives: summer

Harry Reid’s Hubris? Not So Fast.

by DebbraCranwell Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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This cracks me up. Via Andrew Sullivan, here is Cato’s Roger Pilon cackling over the chickens coming home to roost for Harry Reid:

How sweet it is. Less than a year ago—on November 21st, to be exact—Harry Reid went nuclear….He ended the availability of the filibuster for most executive branch nominations, not by the two-thirds vote that Senate rules had long required but by a simple majority.

….And where will those remaining Democratic senators who voted for Harry Reid’s nuclear option be sitting? Why on the minority side, watching Republicans enjoy their newly acquired power to block controversial Democratic nominees by the vote of a mere majority—all because of Harry’s hubris.

Republicans are now able to block Obama’s nominees by a mere majority! Imagine that!

Just to state the obvious, the nuclear option merely removed the ability for a minority to block presidential appointments. Under every version of Senate rules in history, a majority could always block them. So nothing has changed and Reid is paying no “price” for his hubris.

(Technically, I suppose the price Reid is paying is the ability to filibuster his own president’s nominees. But I’m pretty sure that was never a big part of his playbook.)

There’s something about the institutional filibuster that drives men mad. Over time, it somehow makes “mere majorities” seem almost totalitarian. But mere majorities are the very stuff of democracy, and they’ve always been allowed to block action. That was the case on November 21st of last year, and it’s still the case today.

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Harry Reid’s Hubris? Not So Fast.

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The Filibuster Isn’t Going Away, It’s Just Changing Parties

by ROWDarcisvg Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Danny Vinik says that with Democrats soon to be the minority party in the Senate, Harry Reid will employ the filibuster just as much as Mitch McConnell ever did:

Reid has a history of supporting the filibuster when in the minority and criticizing it when in the majority. There’s no reason to expect that to change with McConnell as majority leader.

And that’s a good thing. If Republicans are going to reap the political benefits of indiscriminate filibustering, then Democrats should do so as well. The advantage of filibustering is that it allows a party to block progress without taking all of the blame for it, for the simple reason that most of the public—and, surprisingly, most of the media—don’t realize that filibusters are basically thwarting majority rule. Presidential vetoes, on the other hand, are easy for the public and media to understand and easy to appropriate blame. If Democrats relinquished the tool now, they’d give up a chance to make the same sort of gains. It’d be the equivalent of unilateral disarmament.

Agreed. In fact, it never even occurred to me that Democrats might use the filibuster any less than Republicans have over the past six years. The GOP has taught a master class in the virtues of obstruction, and there’s no reason to think that Democrats haven’t learned the lesson well. The only question is whether Reid will be able to hold his caucus together as well as McConnell held together his.

Actually, I take that back. That’s not the only question. Here’s the one I’m really curious about: will the media treat Democratic filibusters the same way they treated Republican filibusters? To put this more bluntly, will they treat Dem filibusters as routine yawners barely worth mentioning? Or, alternatively, will they treat them not as expressions of sincere dissent against an agenda they loathe, but as nakedly cynical ploys employed by vengeful and bitter Democrats for no purpose other than exacting retribution against Mitch McConnell? Just asking.

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The Filibuster Isn’t Going Away, It’s Just Changing Parties

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Cellphone Companies Are Working to Track Your Every Move

by MilfordMaddox Posted on November 4, 2014

Mother Jones

Your cellphone company knows what you did today—whether you want them to or not:

Verizon and AT&T have been quietly tracking the Internet activity of more than 100 million cellular customers with what critics have dubbed “supercookies”…. Consumers cannot erase these supercookies or evade them by using browser settings, such as the “private” or “incognito” modes that are popular among users wary of corporate or government surveillance.

….Privacy advocates say that without legal action, in court or by a regulatory agency such as the FCC or FTC, the shift toward supercookies will be impossible to stop. Only encryption can keep a supercookie from tracking a user. Other new tracking technologies are probably coming soon, advocates say.

“There’s a stampede by the cable companies and wireless carriers to expand data collection,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based advocacy group. “They all want to outdo Google.”

Is there any hope for reining in this stuff? I’m pessimistic. The vast majority of users just don’t seem to care, and even if they do, they can usually be bought off with something as trivial as an iTunes download or a $10 Groupon discount. On the flip side, the value of this data to marketers is enormous, which means it can be stopped only by some equally enormous opposing force. But what? Government regulation is the only counterweight of similar power, and there won’t be any government action as long as the public remains indifferent about having their every movement tracked.

So this gets back to basics: How do you get the public to care? Business as usual won’t do it. It’s going to take something big and dramatic that finally crosses a line and starts to make people feel nervous. That hasn’t happened yet, but it might in the future. Stay tuned.

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Cellphone Companies Are Working to Track Your Every Move

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 October 2014

by KassandBirrell Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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I thought cats were supposed to get gradually calmer and more mature as they aged. Not these two. They’re now 11 months old, and apparently they went nuts during my stay in the hospital. Now that I’m back, they’re still going nuts. Every scrap of paper in the house has to be kept at least six feet off the ground or else it gets shredded. When does the calming down part start?

At the moment, I’d settle for training Hilbert not to leap on my stomach unexpectedly. This is not good for people with bad backs. It. Needs. To. Stop.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 October 2014

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Left and Right Agree: Cat-Calling Is Menacing and Disgusting

by Angie41Mucm Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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A few days ago, anti-street-harassment organization Hollaback posted a YouTube video of a woman walking through Manhattan for ten hours and being subjected to repeated and demeaning cat-calls. So what did conservatives think of this? Here’s Christine Sisto at National Review:

Most of the criticisms of this video are basically, “Since when is saying ‘good morning’ harassment?”…. The “harassment” comes from the intent. A woman doesn’t believe that a man genuinely wants to know how how her day is going when he shouts it at her as she walks by him on the street….Anyone with a modicum of common sense who watches the video can see that these men weren’t interested in wishing a random person a pleasant day.

….Whatever the cause of cat-calling may be, it should stop….A societal change is needed, one that can start with a guy not clapping his buddy on the back for telling some girl how much he enjoys her assets. Maybe, someday, we ladies can walk to work in peace.

Here’s Jay Nordlinger:

Christine Sisto has written about “cat-calling.” I’m so glad she has tackled this subject — it’s important. I have witnessed cat-calling my entire life, as we all do. In the main, I have not found it innocent, sweet, and breezy, as in a Warner Bros. cartoon. (“Hey, toots! Nice gams!”) I have found it menacing, disgusting, and semi-assaultive.

And here’s Jonah Goldberg:

I’d note that this practice pre-dates the rise of rap music by decades if not centuries or millennia. The issue isn’t race, it’s manners. Good manners are taught for the most part by good parents, good schools and good peers. I agree with Christine that Hollaback is spitting into the wind here. I also agree that catcalling should stop and that the only thing that can stop it is a societal change. But such a change would require a lot more than a few videos, no matter how viral. And it would also require the progressive Left to take on challenges much stiffer than bullying already well-mannered people to police their micro-aggressive grammar on elite college campuses or in obscure chatrooms. And that’s why I don’t think it will stop anytime soon.

Goldberg, unfortunately, simply can’t pass up the opportunity to somehow shift the blame for continued cat-calling onto the PC left. That’s shopworn and witless. But at least he’s against it. On the whole, then, good for National Review for not pretending that cat-calling is yet another innocent bit of fun that humorless liberals are trying to deny the rest of us. It’s disgusting and it should stop. At least we all agree about that.

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Left and Right Agree: Cat-Calling Is Menacing and Disgusting

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Republicans Attack Democrats For Supporting Republican Demands

by AdrieneTrevascu Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Getting deep into the weeds of local congressional races isn’t my thing, but it’s certainly been intriguing this year watching Republicans attack Democrats for being willing to accept Republican positions on various issues. Until now, the most egregious example of this came from Karl Rove’s Super PAC, which has attacked several Democratic senators for supporting a plan to raise the retirement age of Social Security—an idea that Republicans have been promoting for years. Chutzpah!

But now we have a new contender in the sweepstakes for sheer partisan hypocrisy. Dylan Matthews tells us today that in Arizona a Republican contender is attacking Democrat Ron Barber for…. supporting a budget compromise engineered by tea party darling Paul Ryan.

The flyer, which apparently comes from the Arizona Republican Party, is on the right. Note the Arizona GOP’s thundering denunciation of Ryan’s “bone-chilling” budget, which “cut vital assistance programs.” That’s all true, of course, and many Democrats held their noses and voted for the deal. But there’s no question that all the bone-chilling stuff came straight from the fever swamps of the Republican Party. They’re the ones who refused to extend unemployment benefits and demanded cuts in food assistance.

We’ve heard a lot this election cycle about Democrats running away from President Obama. Are we now going to see stories about Republicans running away from Paul Ryan and his fellow budget ideologues? Probably not. But we should.

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Republicans Attack Democrats For Supporting Republican Demands

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GDP Increases At Not-Bad 3.5% Rate in Third Quarter

by MelanieXFI Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Today’s economic news is fairly good. GDP in the third quarter grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate, which means that the slowdown at the beginning of the year really does look like it was just a blip. Aside from that one quarter, economic growth has been pretty robust for over a year now.

At the same time, inflation continues to be very low, which you can take as either good news (if you’re an inflation hawk) or bad news (if you think the economy could use a couple of years of higher inflation).

We could still use some higher growth after five years of weakness, but at least we’re providing a bit of a counterbalance to Europe, which appears to be going off a cliff at the moment. Count your blessings.

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GDP Increases At Not-Bad 3.5% Rate in Third Quarter

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Chris Christie Needs to Rehearse His Lines Better

by CQZRaymonr Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Paul Waldman comments on Chris Christie’s latest outburst against a heckler:

My favorite part is how Christie keeps calling him “buddy” (reminded me of this). Now try to imagine what would happen if Barack Obama shouted “Sit down and shut up!” at a citizen. Or almost any other prominent politician, for that matter; commentators would immediately start questioning his mental health. But even though it’s been a while, shouting at people was how Chris Christie became a national figure talked about as a potential presidential candidate in the first place….If you standup at a town meeting and ask him an impertinent question about something like the state budget, he’ll shout you down (to the cheers of his supporters).

Here are a few ways to explain this pattern of behavior:

  1. This is a calculated way of showing that he’s a Tough Guy, which Christie knows Republicans love
  2. This is just who Christie is, and if nobody was around he’d still be picking fights with people
  3. Both 1 and 2

I lean toward number 3. It isn’t just play-acting, because Christie obviously gets sincerely pissed off when he’s challenged by people he thinks are beneath him. At the same time, he’s a smart enough politician to know that the cameras are on, and there’s some benefit to reinforcing the persona he has created.

I admit that this is mostly just curiosity on my part, since Christie’s act long ago got nearly as stale as Sarah Palin’s. But take a look at the video. Unlike Waldman, I vote for No. 1. To me, Christie appears entirely under control. I don’t doubt that there’s some real annoyance there (even a Vulcan would get annoyed at your average heckler), but overall Christie’s response gives the impression of being practically scripted. There are even a couple of instances where Christie seems like he forgot his lines and hurriedly tosses them in before heckler guy goes away and ruins his chance to get off his best zingers.

So vote in comments. Is it real anger, or has it just become a well-rehearsed schtick by now? In this case, at least, I vote for schtick.

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Chris Christie Needs to Rehearse His Lines Better

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Why Do Republicans Hate the Beatles?

by AbrahamCorbett Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Over at the Facebook Data Science blog, Winter Mason shows us how personal likes and dislikes line up with political ideology. Democrats like Maya Angelou, The Color Purple, and The Colbert Report. Republicans like Ben Carson, Atlas Shrugged, and Duck Dynasty. It’s all good fun, though I’m a little mystified about why the Empire State Building is such a Democratic-leaning tourist destination. Maybe Republicans just dislike anything related to New York City.

But it’s music that I want some help on. I get that country tends to be right-leaning and Springsteen is left-leaning. But what’s up with the Beatles being so distinctively associated with liberals? It’s no secret that I know squat about music, so help me out here. No snark. I thought the Beatles had long since ascended into a sort of free-floating state of pop elder statehood where they were beloved of all baby boomers equally—and pretty much everyone else too. What do I not know that accounts for continuing Republican antipathy toward the moptops?

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Why Do Republicans Hate the Beatles?

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Quote of the Day: Bush Would Have Punched Putin in the Nose

by NapoleoKluge Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Here is John Boehner, the leader of the House of Representatives and third in line for the presidency:

When you look at this chaos that’s going on, does anybody think that Vladimir Putin would have gone into Crimea had George W. Bush been president of the United States? No! Even Putin is smart enough to know that Bush would have punched him in the nose in about 10 seconds.

Look, I get it: I’m a partisan, and right now I’m blogging through a slight bit of a morphine haze. But WTF? Have our political leaders always talked like this? This is just ridiculously juvenile.

And while we’re on the subject, I note that Boehner also said this: “I talk to world leaders every week. They want America to lead. They’re begging America to lead. Because when America leads and America’s strong, the world is a safer place.” Ten bucks says Boehner is basically lying, unless by “world leaders” he means Paul Ryan and the odd backbencher in London he happens to have played golf with a couple of years ago. As anyone with a pulse knows, world leaders simply have different priorities than we do. It’s the Europeans who are resisting stronger action against Putin. It’s the Turks who aren’t too interested in saving Kobani. It’s the Saudis who want us to devote all our attention to their longtime Shiite enemies. It’s Angela Merkel who’s single-mindedly intent on destroying the European economy. If John Boehner thinks all these folks are eagerly waiting for America to whip them into line, he’s even more delusional than I thought.

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Quote of the Day: Bush Would Have Punched Putin in the Nose

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