(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
.
Good for Matt Yglesias:
The biggest problem the liberal faction of the Democratic Party generally has is getting heard at all, so I’m really glad that David Brooks dedicated a column to explaining his problems with the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget that was released last Thursday. In a way, I think Brooks’ complaints make the case for the CPC budget more strongly than any of the praise I’ve read…
Long story short, I would say the CPC budget has the following main advantages over the Ryan budget:
*More food and medical care for poor children.
*Less air pollution and a meaningful chance to avert the worst consequences of climate change.
*Lower taxes on middle-class and working-poor families.
*Medicare reform focused on reducing the unit price of health care services rather than increasing it.
*More funding for transportation infrastructure and basic research.Brooks says the Ryan budget has the following main advantages over the CPC budget:
*High-income individuals will be less inclined to take vacations or retire and more inclined to work long hours.
In a world where trade-offs are, to an extent, unavoidable, I don’t see that as an enormously difficult choice.
***********
Happy Vernal Equinox to all Balloon Juicers in the northern hemisphere. (Even those of us still digging out from under 11-1/2″ of slush, looking for our frostbitten daffodil buds). What’s on the agenda for the first day of “Spring”?
raven
Looks like a couple of decent days and then a rainy weekend. Perfect for wall-to-wall hoop!
Ben Cisco
Week two of The Move is underway. Production starts back up today. IT is being recognized for our performance under (what has increasingly become understood by all sentient employees) some fairly ballz-out insane conditions. The building itself (just under .5M square feet) is nice, if poorly laid out, and I’ve lost 15 pounds doing laps around it already. The network is the biggest (and best) I’ve ever been associated with, and I am eager to get back to normal ops.
R-Jud
It’s sleeting here in Olde England and looks likely to be that way through Friday morning.
Today I will mostly be waiting for the results of blood tests to tell me WTF is wrong with me. I would really like it to be something fairly straightforward, like a vitamin B12 deficiency. Please fix it thus, Universe, mercy buckets.
Linda Featheringill
Oh, my goodness! The spring equinox!
It certainly sneaked up on me this year.
Good wishes to everyone. In the words of Spock, Live long and prosper.
Schlemizel
They may be dead but they are still animated & wondering the halls of Congress doing everything they can to destroy America. Like Zombies they are doing a lot of damage long after they are dead.
geg6
Fuck spring. We have nothing resembling such a condition. Just saw a 14 day forecast and the highest high temp on it was 45 degrees, maybe on Saturday. Then back to the 30s with a spike here or there to the low 40s. I want to strangle that fat fucking groundhog.
raven
@geg6: Come on over, they are romping all over in the kuzdu pacth out back. Perfect way for a new pup to play!
Baud
Slaves aren’t going to feed themselves. Just ask CPAC.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Waiting for the sun to come up so we can assess the damage from a short but intense hailstorm at around 3:00 am. We put our tomato transplants in the ground last week; expecting to see at least a couple with broken stems.
Not to mention the lettuce, the peas, the potatoes, the carrots, etc.
Baud
Help me out, guys. Do we have a “Kay” and a “kay” who post in the comments here. And which one is the front pager? Kay?
My aging brain can’t process. Thanks.
kay
@Baud:
Hi Baud. I’m both. I was a commenter first so if I’m not logged in as a FP’er it comes up “kay”.
beth
Headline on CNN’s front page: “Finally, Obama goes to Israel”. There’s your liberal media at work.
Baud
@kay:
Thanks, Kay/kay. I’ll be able to sleep at night now. :-)
Anton Sirius
@beth: What, did they run out of rapists to apologize for?
boss bitch
Yeah, the only time MSM hears the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is when they have beef with the administration.
S. cerevisiae
It’s nine degrees and snowing here, with a nice northwest wind to top it off. We had more thaws in January this year than we have seen in March so far so the snow just keeps piling up.
Fucking jetstream.
Baud
@beth:
They’re looking forward to the day when they can say “Finally, Obama is out of office.”
boss bitch
@beth:
Finally, Obama goes to Israel…for the third time.
CNN: Morons.
Todd
@beth:
I hope he’s quadrupled his detail. He’s in more danger there than in Kabul, the danger being extant in the form of racist right wing fascist émigrés from either Eastern Europe or Brooklyn.
raven
@beth: Senor said “The Messiah has returned”.
Keith G
@Baud: Damn, fast service….right?
Thunderstorms in Houston after several cloudless days in the upper 70s.
danielx
Shorter Brooks:
But…but…austerity!
No spring here yet, but it’s a mixed blessing – this time last year we were in the middle of a week of eighty degree days, which according to the local meteorologists was the start of drought weirdness.
I’ll take a semi-normal March, thanks, even if it is too cold. March is supposed to be miserable.
raven
The campus police chief at UCF said that, had the shooters plan gone on as planned his officers would have been able to end it “quickly”. Right.
danielx
@raven:
Also, too – Senor is a tool, assuming it’s Dan Senor we’re talking about.
raven
@danielx: Yes
Suffern ACE
@danielx: the good news is that at 40, he’s married to a media star, so we can look forward to hearing his insights for only another 35 years.
Baud
@Keith G:
I knew Kay would come through.
SiubhanDuinne
@R-Jud: I hope it turns out to be something simple, uncomplicated, and easy to deal with.
Tony J
@R-Jud:
Oh? Not having unexplained panic attacks are you? I only ask because I started getting them in December and recently had my own blood tested to make sure it wasn’t something fatally physical. Turns out I’m in more or less perfect health, which appears to have given my brain licence to freak the feck out and hit me with constant rolling anxiety.
Which is really – REALLY – annoying.
Raven
You CAN tell how your dog is feeling by it’s face.
dmsilev
At a conference, listening to talks. Some poor guy was in the middle of his talk when Windows decided to do a software update on his laptop and the thing switched to the “shutting down to reconfigure Windows” screen.
That never happened with viewgraphs.
JPL
When I turned on TV, I heard Mike Rogers of Michigan explain to Nora O’Donnell that we need to stop Assad now from using chemical weapons. When she asked if Assad used chemical weapons, he answered that there’s a high probability. She wanted a yes or no answer. When she said that the pentagon said it would take 75,000 troops on the ground, he said oh no…
There are many magic ways to secure weapons facilities that her little mind just wouldn’t understand.
Anya
@beth: I am really worried about him. There’s a strain of racism in Israel that rivals gun-toting, confederate loving militias. But, I also worry about all the bowing to Israel and their oppressive policies our government does. How long can we support Israeli right wingers’ unsustainable policies? Also, too, fuck CNN.
Suffern ACE
@JPL: no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no!
Raven
@JPL: “Oh no, I didn’t know that” or “Oh no, it wouldn’t”?
Raven
@JPL: Feinstein was just as bad last night.
gene108
@raven:
I’d like to point out many folks in PA don’t know what kudzu is. As someone, who grew up in the South, I figured everyone knew about kudzu.
To my surprise, during my MBA at Drexel, I thought I made a joke by referencing kudzu. The group mostly consisted of folks from the Philly area. They’d never heard of kudzu.
Schlemizel
@R-Jud:
Nothing like a health related panic attack to make the days more interesting! The odds are it is something simple and you will look back and laugh in time.
Keep us informed please.
J.
And to think I used to like and respect David Brooks.
So which budget will get more people to buy my 100% cotton t-shirts and polo shirts?
(Excuse the shameless plug, but I’ve got a kid to put through college.)
raven
@gene108: I’d never heard of it either 30 years ago. They used to have a chopper pilot/news guy that took arial shots of an abandoned school bus as the kudzu would cover it each year.
Here’s a sign of spring in the yard.
Emma
@R-Jud: I hope they’re checking for vitamin D deficiency. I was diagnosed last year and they put me on a crash intervention of 100,000 units a week for six weeks plus maintenance of 2000 daily. I can’t tell you what an amazing difference it has made.
Here’s hoping it’s something like that. Easily solved.
raven
One cool thing about BJ is that SOMEONE has had everything!
the Conster
@JPL:
Is our media learning?
Todd
@Anya:
Yeah, and some of them have weaseled their way into the security services there.
“The bestest friend and ally America ever had” IS the reason why Mideast policy and energy prices are so screwed. One of the idiot commentors at CNN (I know – redundant) was remarking on how Israel helps American troops in Mideast deployments by breaking down radicals – ignoring completely that the reason for the deployments is the continued fallout from our irrational support of Israel, all to the exclusion of national interest.
Anya
The Guardian is live bloging POTUS’s visit to Israel.
Grumpy Code Monkey
=sigh=
Yeah, the garden took a pretty good beating. Fortunately, the main stems of most of the tomatoes look intact, but they were struggling a little bit as it was.
Worried about the onions; the onion odor was pretty strong, meaning they got hit pretty hard.
Broccoli looks mostly okay, lettuce looks pretty pulverized, the kale is apparently indestructible, and the peas look generally unhappy.
Dammit.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m just going to keep my mouth shut because things have being going too well around my parts and I don’t want to jinx it.
Chris
@Anya:
The real question is, what happens to Israel when we no longer do.
For years they’ve been doubling and tripling down on the “FUCK YOU WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT!” approach to not just the Arab world but the entire planet, figuring they could afford to do it because America had their back. So, whenever America stops (not that this will be anytime soon), they’ll be left high and dry and without a friend in the world. That’s going to make an interesting series of unfortunate events.
JPL
@the Conster: Since the repubs refuse to fund anything, how do they plan on paying for their war. The media will never ask.
ericblair
@Todd:
“Ally. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Yeah, and so? Unlike these guys, I don’t automatically think that high-income individuals are our lights and saviors whose absence would plunge the world into (worse) chaos. In fact, it might be a good idea for people who have already benefited tremendously from the economy to stop fucking with it to add to their already huge piles.
If you’ve got more money than you and your kids and grandkids could ever use, and insist on holing up in offices and conference rooms 250 days a year yelling at people to get yourself even more money, there’s probably something wrong with you.
Chris
@Todd:
Seems like an old story, beyond just Israel, for there to be a marriage of convenience between security/police agencies and racist/right-wing militias, with the latter presenting themselves to the authorities as an additional barrier against the riffraff while the authorities see them as a convenient ally in the underworld that can be tasked with things the cops themselves don’t want to do.
Suffern ACE
@JPL: well, I give in. I oppose Assad potentially using chemical weapons on his people. And since he’s promised me that we will just be in and out…
Anya
@Todd: Let’s see how our bestest friend in the whole wide world reacts to Palestinian youth building tents to draw attention to their blight. Are they gonna go with their usual winning combination of tear gas and bullets or would they exercise restraint while President Obama is there?
Todd
@ericblair:
Co-dependence. It isn’t just for hosts and parasites anymore.
marshall
In my experience, that would not be a positive, so I would actually put that as a benefit of the CPC Budget.
JPL
@Anya: Thanks for the info. The limo glitch seems a tad odd. You would think that the person filling the tank would know what type of fuel it takes.
Now they are flying in another limo from Jordan.
edit from the Guardian One of limos in Obama’s fleet has broken down after reports that it was mistakenly filled with the wrong fuel.
R-Jud
@Tony J: @Emma: @Schlemizel: Thanks, guys. I have pretty classic symptoms of B12-deficiency anemia. It has got to the point where I am sleeping 15 hrs a day, losing my hair, having pins and needles in hands and feet, and having eczema breakouts on my face so I’m hoping they can do something soon. I am the sole earner for our household, and as a contractor, I don’t get sick leave.
The depression isn’t so fun either. Nothing like bursting into tears for fifteen minutes when you can’t find the ginger in the fridge. Though I’m sure Cole can imagine what that’s like, if you swap “ginger” for “mustard”.
JPL
@R-Jud: Hopefully the problem will be solved soon.
Feudalism Now!
Matt Yglesias talking about the left? Why should we listen to the train loving neo-con?
The staggering growth of inequality is going to be the undoing of this nation. I am beginning to see the cracks in nice rural Upstate New York, the haves have tried to play the have nots against each other in so many ways, they are beginning to question. “GunControl is tyranny, and I need to dissolve my police department because it is too expensive! ” Wait, I can’t have Mayberry with a constant disorganized posse settling things. We cut all the kids programs and now they wander the streets getting into mischief, I can’t call the State Troopers again to break up that party. I don’t think a tax cut is going to fix this.
MomSense
David Brooks is completely divorced from the consequences of the policies he espouses. Dear Bieber can’t you please do a Trading Places type experiment with him??? Clearly he will never feel empathy for someone unless he experiences their situation first hand.
MomSense
@danielx:
Dan “where the hell is the missing 7 billion dollars” Senor??
Anya
@JPL: I know..someone should be punished for this. How can you make that kind of a mistake?
bemused
I am lucky to live near an old time movie theater in the little town of Cook, NE Minnesota, one of the rare theaters still operating in the US. Now the Comet Theater which has existed since 1939 needs help in upgrading to digital projection equipment. The Comet Theater needs to raise $80,000 in 55 days through kick starter.
I’m link impaired but you can learn about the Comet Theater and the project:
comettheater.com
comettheater on facebook
kickstarter, save-the-comet-theater
Here in lake country, locals, summer lake residents and tourists love the Comet Theater. It is a unique place with gifts, antiques, awesome coffee shop with a wonderful movie themed mural painted on the side of the theater. My in-laws started their over 70 year romance on first dates seeing movies there.
Check out what makes Comet Theater a one of a kind and why people fall in love with it. Watch the kickstarter video.
Please help if you can.
geg6
@gene108:
Nah, I know what kudzu is. I have friends and relatives who live in the South.
With our dogs (well, we had two until Henry passed and now Koda is coming), we rarely get groundhogs. Deer are a lot more destructive and common in our yard. But that fat fucker who lives in a rodent mansion a few miles north and east of us was supposed to give me an early spring, dammit! Considering that he lives in better conditions than half the population of Punxsutawney, you’d think he’d get it right and earn his goddam keep.
geg6
@Chris:
This cannot happen soon enough, AFAIC. Cut the cord and let them fend for themselves. I’m done with Israel. Hell, half the Jewish people I know are almost at the same point I am.
piratedan
nice to hear that the CPC Budget is being read by someone on the other team, now only if the rest of the media would go ahead and give it air time to poohpooh in public so that the public could then poopoo the media and actually find out what Progressives are proposing it might gain some traction. The public would be a damn sight better served by this rather than the constant stenographers club and overton window moving shenanigans that are the usual staple of our MSM.
max
(Even those of us still digging out from under 11-1/2″ of slush, looking for our frostbitten daffodil buds). What’s on the agenda for the first day of “Spring”?
Avoiding freezing. In the 20’s the rest of the week. The poor plants in the basement are so ready to go outside.
JPL: When I turned on TV, I heard Mike Rogers of Michigan explain to Nora O’Donnell that we need to stop Assad now from using chemical weapons.
This is why turning on cable TV news is a mistake! It’s also strange he says that because I remember that Saddam Hussein used chemicals on Al-Anfal exactly 25 years ago, and we didn’t complain much because we had sorta helped the old boy out because IRAN!
When she asked if Assad used chemical weapons, he answered that there’s a high probability. She wanted a yes or no answer.
Oh, that’s easy: no one knows! He might! They might still be good! He may have just used them… unless it’s a rumor.
When she said that the pentagon said it would take 75,000 troops on the ground, he said oh no…
Lucky if it was limited to 75,000. Oh, wait, I suppose that’s an Iraq-style
fuckupTOTAL SUCCESS. If you want to be uh, ‘secure’, yeah, you gotta figure about 200-250k.There are many magic ways to secure weapons facilities that her little mind just wouldn’t understand.
We could totally send an AC-130 to fly around in a circle blowing away everything that moves and also everything that doesn’t move, just like BENGHAZI! That would fix those darn chemical weapons and their little red wagon too!
max
[‘Whatever else you can say about neo-cons, you can say truly say of them that they know nothing about war.’]
JPL
@Anya: I’m not prone to paranoia but shit.. I would assume that the limo the President rides in is not identified for security reasons so… Okay I’m paranoid.
JPL
@max: True. The only correction is change cable to antenna.
Yutsano
@piratedan: Hippies are only to be punched, not taken seriously. Ever.
Happy Naw Ruz everyone!
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Why when you want lower-income people to work harder, do we have to pay them less, but for higher-income people, wardrobes full of zlotys are not enough to get them off the golf course?
askew
@R-Jud:
I’ve had that problem with B-12 deficiency. You likely don’t process B-12 in your stomach/colon and will have to get shots. I was dangerously low in B-12 but after 4 months of shots I felt perfect again. It truly was amazing.
R-Jud
@askew: This is what I’m guessing and hoping is the case, as it also happened to my mother and grandmother when they were a few years older than I am now.
My husband has bought me liquid B-12 to hold under the tongue, which is supposedly absorbed into the bloodstream. After two weeks it’s not made much difference.
I feel like I’m going senile at 33. I am also listening to Graceland on repeat; I don’t know if that’s indicative of anything.
JustRuss
Oh bullshit. Once you reach a certain income, there’s no direct correlation between hours worked and compensation (CEOs don’t get overtime). When you have more money than you can spend, time becomes a far more valuable than money, and no millionaire is going to skip a vacation so he can bank a couple hundred grand on top of the millions he already has squirreled away.
Brooks is, as usual, spectacularly out of touch, and I for one would like to thank him for pointing out the “flaws” of the progressive budget. Hopefully he’ll dedicate a column to the dangers of single-payer next, followed with a rousing justification of our defense budget.
DFH no.6
The Vernal Equinox is my wedding anniversary.
My wife and I picked the first day of spring on purpose, being young and romantic in those halcyon days long ago (though we were married by a judge – waiting till traffic court was over – and both went back to work the next day).
She’s stuck with me now for 35 years and counting. For me, nothing could be better than that. And nothing is.
Groucho48
I’ve seen that talking point that the rich now have to pay more than a 50% tax rate. Well, I’m retired now, but, when I was working, counting all taxes as that talking point does, I was paying very close to 50%. I wasn’t anywhere close to rich. I didn’t work fewer hours, I worked as much overtime as I could get. Guess the rich ARE different from you and me…they are lazy whiners.
That talking point also uses the typical right wing trick of using the top marginal tax rate as the overall rate, which greatly inflates the rate he or she is actually paying.