Say what you will about Governor Charles Joseph “Charlie” Crist, Jr, but Democrats and Independents seem to like him a hell of a lot more than Kendrick Meek.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
Open Thread: Desperation
The efforts to stop the Gulf spill are sounding more than vaguely pornographic: BP’s next plan for oil spill includes ‘top hat’ and ‘junk shot’. What’s next? A ‘rusty trombone’ followed by a ‘blumpkin’?
Malicious Compliance
Texas has a new policy about what food schools can serve in their cafeterias. Based on that policy, an elementary school there gave a third-grader a week of detention for possessing a Jolly Rancher candy. Here’s the superintendent’s take:
“Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,” he said.
Of course, the rules said that parents could send whatever shitty food they desired to school with their kids — the school just couldn’t sell it to them. This idiot clearly doesn’t agree with the guidelines, so he decided to make a 10 year-old girl miserable to prove his point.
I learned the term “malicious compliance” from a friend who worked in a Fortune 500 company. Mid-level managers who are butthurt over some new policy will often apply it in the most obtuse manner imaginable, with the aim of undermining the goals of company leadership. In the business world, malicious compliance gets managers fired. In the world of education and government, it gets you a Reason piece about creeping government intervention.
Not Even As Good As a Stopped Clock
Shorter Chunky Reese Witherspoon David Brooks: If Northern liberals weren’t such a bunch of baby killers, they’d have to resort to the shotgun marriages that drag down their noble, white trash brethren in the South.
Let The Speculation Begin
Elena Kagan’s a bit of a blank slate. Larry Lessig thinks she’ll be a powerful negotiator and advocate who can bring different groups together, plus they shared an opera subscription. Glenn Greenwald thinks we could do a hell of a lot better and that progressives need to make this our Harriet Miers moment. (Kagan, of course, is slightly more qualified than Miers, who was just on the faculty at Harvard, not the Dean.)
All of this is dwarfed by burning question that will dominate all known forms of media for the next few weeks: is Kagan teh ghey?
Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Here’s how Reason responds to a new poll showing that Democrats have a more favorable opinion of Libertarians than Republicans:
I suspect the slightly better Democratic numbers may reflect a knowledge gap between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans actually understand what libertarians are for, and they know they hate it. Registered Democrats on the other hand can afford to pick up a few strands of anti-drug-war, pro-gay marriage tinsel without worrying about the radical approach to individualism to which they’re attached. (Which is not to say that actual Democratic politicians are in any way libertarian on drugs, gay marriage, or anything else.) It’s sort of like the way I think the world of people from Bhutan because I’ve never actually met any of them.
You know who I’ve never met? A writer for Reason who was able to set aside hippie punching in order to suggest a constructive engagement strategy with the majority party. Of course, that might actually get an item on the Libertarian agenda enacted into law, and that would mean that the wankers at Reason would have one less thing to whine about.
Watch Out Constipation, Here Comes Obstruction
Normally, I wouldn’t care that some teabagger is going to ride to victory in Utah on the strength of the St George sister-wife demographic. Unfortunately, the new Club for Growth candidate will replace Bob Bennett in the Senate, and probably join Rand Paul there. Expect a blizzard of holds, hours of filibuster on the floor, and support from Republicans like Hatch and McConnell, who are now more than a little afraid of being reduced to tears at post-convention press conferences.
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