Via JenJen in the comments, Ben Folds playing chatroulette in front of a live audience:
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
Three Amigos
Three Republican House members have opted-out of their leadership’s ban on earmarks: Don Young, Anh ‘Joseph’ Cao and Ron Paul.
It’s easy to understand why the most crooked and the most vulnerable Republicans would opt out. Paul’s a more interesting case.
The Paul formula for staying in office is simple: he brings home all the pork he can, and he does top-notch constituent service, making sure that everyone his district gets their Social Security checks on time.
There’s nothing wrong with what Paul is doing, but “I bring home pork and keep the government checks flowing” sure wasn’t the centerpiece of his Presidential campaign.
(via)
Steering the Titanic With a Canoe Paddle
This week’s This American Life is devoted to the closing of NUMMI, an auto plant that was a joint venture between Toyota and GM. It’s both touching and infuriating.
The story of how the worst plant in GM was transformed by Toyota’s methods is an affecting tale of human redemption. “Old, fat” UAW members, accustomed to drug abuse and filing grievances, became some of the most efficient workers in the world. They also underwent personal transformations. One guy who had been ashamed of the cars he built put postcards under the windshields of NUMMI-built vehicles he saw around town, asking the owners what they thought of them.
The infuriating part of the program is how it took GM 15 years to learn the NUMMI lessons, mostly due to management, but the UAW played its part. The title of this post comes from one NUMMI manager’s attempt to explain why GM changes do slowly.
The podcast is free through the weekend, and available here [mp3] or through iTunes.
Steering the Titanic With a Canoe PaddlePost + Comments (35)
Meep My Ass
I’ve about had it with the constant “meep meep” references at Sully’s blog. Recall the basic RoadRunner plotline — it’s not that sophisticated:
He’s a jack-off. All he wants to do is “run down the road all day”. Perhaps, on rare occasions, he might “leave you in a heap”, but generally he “never bothers anyone”.
Obama can’t be that way. Running down the road might be his idea of having fun, but he can’t get shit done doing it. And he can’t be blowing up the crazy clowns every day. He has to work with those idiots.
If someone made a cartoon glorifying a careful plodder like Obama, it would be so fucking dull that showing it to children would verge on child abuse.
There is Nothing Fair in This World
Bob Corker says he was “left at the altar” on the financial reform bill three weeks ago.
But Lindsey Graham, who still thinks that Obama’s drilling plan doesn’t go far enough, thinks that it will bring “hundreds of millions of dollars for South Carolina”. He calls it a “move in the right direction.”
As a relentless O-bot/Rahm-bot, I’m sure that my allegiance to the Dear Leader is clouding my vision. Even so, it might still be true that Democrats believe they can get the votes on financial reform in the Senate without more compromises, so Corker left with nothing but tears and broken promises. And they might also know that the energy bill will be a push, so they need to a court drama queen like Graham with drilling and nukes, so he might at least vote for cloture.
I don’t think more drilling is good policy, or even a very clever strategy for compromise, and I doubt that Graham will stick. But politics is ugly when you don’t have a lot of cards to play, and Democrats don’t have many in the Senate.
Brave Sir Robin
Corker, Cornyn and Mark Kirk are running away from repealing healthcare reform.
Cornyn yesterday:
Asked if he advises Republican Senate candidates to call for repealing the law, Cornyn said: “Candidates are going to test the winds in their own states. … In some places, the health care bill is more popular than others.”
“Democrats think by passing the bill they’ll be able to get it behind them and change the subject to something else like jobs,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn at a news briefing Monday. “But this will do the opposite. This will make sure that health care is the number one issue that the election is won or lost on in November.”
Arrrrr
France has a new anti-piracy law (“Hadopi” — not to be confused with “Hutaree”) that disconnects pirates from the Internet after three strikes. A recent study showed that French Internet users are doing less of the kinds of piracy covered by the law (P2P file sharing) and instead are streaming and using download services like Rapidshare.
That’s no surprise, but here’s the interesting part:
The survey also finds that 70 percent of all Internet users surveyed don’t engage in any type of online infringement. Far more users hit legal video sites like YouTube and DailyMotion (48 percent), or go to legal streaming music sites like Deezer (43 percent), or legal download sites like iTunes (22 percent) than engage in any infringing activities.
It’s self-reported, but I think it’s more-or-less true. Most people don’t steal music, even though it’s relatively easy to do. But we’re constantly bombarded by music industry propaganda claiming otherwise, which is used to justify all sorts of draconian proposals. For example, the original Hadopi law would allow disconnects based on three accusations of piracy. The law that finally passed at least requires judicial review.