This is where I would play Parliament of Funk Flashlight from youtube, but I can find a recording worth a damn.
Shake your bones.
This post is in: Open Threads
This is where I would play Parliament of Funk Flashlight from youtube, but I can find a recording worth a damn.
Shake your bones.
This post is in: Domestic Politics
It seems that my prescription was right- let it burn, but my understanding of why is completely wrong and I have no clue what I am talking about. I honestly don’t know how, given what you all have written in the comments, anything can be done with that mess until you redo the Constitution. This says it all:
“The California Constitution has been amended or revised more than 500 times. It is now 157 pages. “
That just strikes me as a recipe for fail. Additionally, I learned that you all have term limits, so not only does it only take a 50+1 vote to increase spending and a 2/3 vote to raise money to pay for things, you also have special interests doing bond initiatives for anything that blows their trumpet, property tax laws that make no sense, and then to compound everything, people have no problem raising spending because when the shit hits the fan, they will have been term limited out and it is someone else’s problem. Then, the new people coming in to replace them have no experience and no authority and no way to fix it and the voters all hate them.
Pretty awesome.
I also learned that I need to read Calitics more often and that David Dayen is competing with Steve Benen for the title of “Blogger appearing simultaneously in the most number of blogs at the same time.”
Another thought from this:
The public’s contradictory impulses were laid bare by a recent Field Poll. It found that voters oppose cutbacks in 10 of 12 major categories of state spending, including the biggest, education and healthcare. Yet most voters were unwilling to have their own taxes increased, and they overwhelmingly favored keeping the two-thirds requirement for tax hikes.
Read that again, and it suddenly makes a lot more sense why California is ground zero in the foreclosure/HELOC disaster.
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Democratic Stupidity
Impressive, even by Senate standards:
In a widely expected move, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to block the $80 million President Obama requested to shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The roll call here. The margin was 90-6.
Yesterday, Senate Democratic leaders announced that they wouldn’t hand over the money needed to close the facility until Obama releases a comprehensive plan detailing what the administration will do with remaining detainees. We’ll have more on the breakdown between Congress and the White House later today.
Can we finally put to bed the pipe dream that many of you have that 60 Democratic votes in the Senate will matter? And can you all stop mocking me when I say “When the Democrats become as useless as the Republicans…”
It isn’t a matter of if, it is a matter of how long it will take.
by DougJ| 350 Comments
This post is in: Outrage
This turns my stomach and sounds even worse than what went on with the Catholic Church here:
A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland’s Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades _ and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
Nine years in the making, Wednesday’s 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.
It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.
The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.
Shat on and spat on and raped and abusedPost + Comments (350)
by Tim F| 25 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology
As I mentioned once, my life as a scientist more or less started when I read a book by a woman who built a marine research lab, now Mote Marine Lab in Florida, with her own hands in the 1950s. Among other general awesomeness, Dr. Clark personally dragged 14-foot sharks to a big shark pen to prove that they have color vision, learn surprisingly fast (think golden Retriever, but replace fetch with biting things), use electric fields to make their ‘final approach’ and love the sound of struggling fish almost as much as the smell of blood.
Dr. Clark also struck an early blow for shark conservation when she showed that contrary to the myths of fishermen who slaughtered sharks on general principle, most sharks get along fine with others unless you sound and smell like a struggling, bleeding fish*.
All of this is to say that, granting some artistic license, XKCD pretty much told my story. Also see here.
(*) Do not try to explain this to the great white that took you for a healthy seal, or the tiger, bull or oceanic whitetip that bit you because it’s a day of the week ending in ‘y’.
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Clown Shoes
It just doesn’t stop:
Members of the Republican National Committee appear to have reached a compromise that would let GOP leaders avoid a possible dispute over a controversial resolution that calls on Democrats to re-name their party the “Democrat Socialist party.”
Steele has come out against the resolution, calling it “not an appropriate way to express our views on the issues of the day.” One of Steele’s allies on the committee, Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer, told CNN the resolution is “stupid” and “ridiculous.”
However, New Jersey committeeman David Norcross, one of the sponsors of the resolution, told CNN the language is being massaged so that Steele and others on the committee will be more receptive.
Generally, when parties are out of party they do some soul-searching, and look inward and try to figure out who they are and what they believe in. Imagine if the Democrats had spent 2001-2006 arguing over what silly thing they should rename the Republicans. I just have no idea what these guys are thinking, what they think this will accomplish. It really does look like the only guiding principle they have is that anything that insults or pisses off Democrats must be good.
I don’t get it. I’d really like one of them to state what they think this would accomplish.
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Sorry California, but the rest of us are tired of your BS:
A smattering of California voters on Tuesday soundly rejected five ballot measures designed to keep the state solvent through the rest of the year.
The results dealt a severe setback to the state’s fragile fiscal structure and to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislators who cobbled together the measures as part of a last-minute budget deal passed in February.
The measures, which would have prolonged tax increases, capped state spending, earmarked money for education and involved the state in a complex borrowing scheme against its lottery, were rejected by roughly 60 percent of those who voted. The failure of the measures, combined with falling revenues since the state passed its budget, leaves California with a $21 billion new hole to fill, while foreclosure rates and unemployment remain vexing problems here.
“Tonight we have heard from the voters, and I respect the will of the people who are frustrated with the dysfunction in our budget system,” Governor. Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement. “Now we must move forward from this point to begin to address our fiscal crisis with constructive solutions,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said.
You are a state DOMINATED by Democrats, yet plague us all with the craziest Republicans in the country in Congress, you are lagging behind Iowa in terms of civil rights, and you consistently refuse to outvote the smattering of fanatical anti-tax Republicans who show up to vote down any ballot initiative to balance your budget. Can anyone give me reasons I should feel sympathy?
Right now I tend to agree with McMegan:
There is a surprisingly sizeable blogger contingent arguing that we have to bail them out because however regrettable the events that lead here, we now have no choice. But actually, we do have a choice: we could let them go bankrupt. And we probably should.
I am not under the illusion that this will be fun. For starters, the rest of you sitting smugly out there in your snug homes, preparing to enjoy the spectacle, should prepare to enjoy the higher taxes you’re going to pay as a result. Your states and municipalities will pay higher interest on their bonds if California is allowed to default. Also, the default is going to result in a great deal of personal misery, more than a little of which is going to end up on the books of Federal unemployment insurance and other such programs.
Nothing is going to change until they bottom out.
*** Update ***
Good comments, although a lot of you say I am full of it and don’t understand anything. Here is what I think I understand- your budget grows every year yet it is never enough, you have a fanatical group of Republicans who gum up the budgetary process, but your legislature is so gerrymandered and the 2/3 vote required for tax issues makes it possible to change anything, all the while many of the Democrats are also happy with nothing changing because they are in safely gerrymandered seats and completely beholden to union interests. Is that close?
Sounds like the only thing that can be done is to burn the government to the ground and rebuild.