I declare this space open thread in the name of questions!

GUESS WHO SAID THE FOLLOWING!?? (answers are below. Don't cheat and scroll down!)

"It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy."

"expressed his disagreement with the conservative argument that tax cuts essentially pay for themselves by generating revenue and productivity among recipients.

"They do not,"

First quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Second quote:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/01/alan-greenspan-extending_n_666549.html

When the conservatives have lost Stockman and Greenspan, the architects of the economic disaster we live in, it's time for something to happen.

Maybe Steve can start a new club for all the guys who, having read the Republic and watched with horror as Cephalus, one foot over the threshold, simply cannot bring himself to realize he's not really that wise after all. Maybe there's some rethinking when you're old old old and about to die.

What're the chances that the wingers on the Supreme Court will have similar changes of heart? Or Arne Duncan, who's still too young and sure of himself to be any good to anyone.

How many lives have been fucked over in the name of some bs Republican plan to turn everything into a profit center? To stop helping people coordinate? To getting and keeping for themselves? To "accountability" that is so far removed from actual people's lives that it is rendered meaningless.

These people have destroyed so much value, it's sickening.

May they all figure it out, speak out, and convince their followers that they aren't suddenly senile. Indeed, they are suddenly clear visioned.

From the kos front page:

"That's the argument they've been touting for years. Remember in 2006, when John Gibson warned that white people needed to have more babies to counteract Hispanic birthrates?

To put it bluntly, we need more babies. Forget about that zero population growth stuff that my poor generation was misled on. Why is this important? Because civilizations need population to survive. So far, we are doing our part here in America but Hispanics can't carry the whole load. The rest of you, get busy. Make babies, or put another way -- a slogan for our times: "procreation not recreation."

This was not just the rant of one crazy conservative on Fox News, though. This is what conservatives believe. They even have a name for it: demographic winter.

Conservatives have taken to using "demographic winter" as a catchphrase for turning the discussion into another battle in the culture war. For many on the Right, demographic winter describes a future of economic catastrophes, the decline of Western Civilization, and the destruction of the "natural" family.

...

Demographic winter -- or "birth dearth" as it is sometimes called -- is the ultimate culture war battle, rooted in the rise of feminism, legalized abortion, the acceptance of homosexuality, illegal immigration, and the growth of minority populations. All of this is supposedly the result of a multi-decade campaign by liberals to undermine "natural law" and the "natural" family.

In other words, our entire civilization is at risk because of abortion and immigrants and equal pay and environmentalists and all the other things that rightwing Christian fundamentalists don’t like.

Be afraid, because one day, there will be more of them than you. They will surround you. And take your jobs. And your money. And steal your elections. And your White House. And your Medicare."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/8/1/889334/-Meet-the-new-victims

Funny how it sounds just like Israeli kookiness about "demographic bombs" and funny how little attention this kind of stuff gets.....

Can we just come to terms with the fact that Israel's behavior, Israel's wicked, retrograde, stupid, racist, land grabbing, dumb fuck, pandering to the right, short sighted, cruel, beyond the pale behavior is so twinned to chunks of the US, is so totally what we'd do that to condemn Israel without instantly and immediately condemning ourselves at every moment is to engage in seriously disingenuous thinking.

Does anyone here think that if the right wing militias had a chance to beat the shit out of some brown skinned people on EITHER SIDE of the US/Mexico border that they wouldn't take a bus load of their own kids along for the ride? Does anyone think that the most racist thugs we produce aren't encouraged by their parents? Does anyone think there isn't a political party in the US whose power rests on racist dog whistles?

Does anyone think there isn't a party in the US who, under the official name RACE TO THE TOP, isn't going to dismantle schools and fuck over brown skinned kids?

The parallels are everywhere. The racism is universal. See it in Israel, for sure. But it's here, too. Twinned.

quotation within a quotation:

" Back in the early 1970s — an era whose tumult we yet may come to regard as benign — social scientists here and in Britain coined the term "moral panic" to describe what can happen when groups of people are seized by an exaggerated fear that other people or communal forces threaten their values or way of life. The scholars described those who promoted the panic's spread as "moral entrepreneurs" — a term that takes on a deep resonance when you consider the commentators and politicians who have attached themselves, and their interests, to the "tea party" and its attendant movements.

In the midst of moral panic, inchoate indignation stands in for reason; accusation and denunciation supplant dialogue and argument; history and facts are rendered malleable, merely adjuncts of the moral entrepreneur's — or should we say provocateur's — rhetorical will. As we now also see, a self-interested mass media with an economic stake in the theatricality of raised and angry voices can transmit moral panic like a pathogen.

Looking around the United States in the summer of 2010, hysterical moral panic seems an apt description of our fevered political condition."

From a comment on a kos diary.

The idea that there's hysteria that overtakes any kind of rational thought, that some way of life is ending, or in the case of this website, that one's own integrity is deeply, finally, and fully threatened by... seems to dominate.

There isn't rational policy debate, there isn't a careful historical or comparative reading. There's no dispassion that might lead to some decent policy. There's just "moral panic".

And it's such self-righteous, indignant, self-certain moral panic, so condemnatory of that which disagrees, so nasty in tone, so panicked panicked panicked, that it's beyond useless and moves towards the utterly counter-productive.

And anyone who takes a less passionate tone is condemned for not doing enough condemning.

Packer's piece on the Senate in the New Yorker is marvelous.

Read it along with "Unorthodox Lawmaking" by Barbara Singer and have hope! The chamber will evolve just enough regarding tactics that legislation will squeeze through in bits and pieces to suit the re-election strategies of the members.

Have hope!

And on lobbying,

http://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-Policy-Change-Wins-Loses/dp/0226039455/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_cart_1

"During the 2008 election season, politicians from both sides of the aisle promised to rid government of lobbyists’ undue influence. For the authors of Lobbying and Policy Change, the most extensive study ever done on the topic, these promises ring hollow—not because politicians fail to keep them but because lobbies are far less influential than political rhetoric suggests.

Based on a comprehensive examination of ninety-eight issues, this volume demonstrates that sixty percent of recent lobbying campaigns failed to change policy despite millions of dollars spent trying. Why? The authors find that resources explain less than five percent of the difference between successful and unsuccessful efforts. Moreover, they show, these attempts must overcome an entrenched Washington system with a tremendous bias in favor of the status quo.

Though elected officials and existing policies carry more weight, lobbies have an impact too, and when advocates for a given issue finally succeed, policy tends to change significantly. The authors argue, however, that the lobbying community so strongly reflects elite interests that it will not fundamentally alter the balance of power unless its makeup shifts dramatically in favor of average Americans’ concerns."

*****
An actual scholarly and nuanced look at when lobbying works and when it doesn't. It's in my cart.....

60% of campaigns failed to change the policy, status quo bias, lack of any lobbying on behalf of the "average" people so when something changes, it tends to change in favor of the elite.

Lots of money spent, but not vast changes in policy, but when it does change, boy does it change.

It's nice to have some data on the issue.

Could I/P be a status quo bias and not a LOBBY bias? Who knows. The freak outs don't even bother to mention the possibility, though.

I know it's a BOOK, and one ought not to read books. I know it complexifies and nuances the cases people make, and everything is so simple that one ought never to give in to complexity. I know it analyzes and so must paralyze as well. I know it fails to demonize the demons. So the failings are evident already.

And I know this post was too hard for people to read as philosophy is just so hard.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080205208.html?hpid=topnews

Really interesting systems look at the BP Gulf mess.

What if there were a point system to help ease the pressure on any individual?

Everyone gets a chance to chalk up some number of risk points for various concerns, but it takes some number of people's concerns before things shut down.

You end up with a NUMBER instead of a worry.

You get more people involved so that no one person ever takes the blame for a shut down.

You can enforce corporate responsiveness to number-based delays.

You can standardize the practice across the industry.

And you get multiple data points so that you have the judgment of crowds instead of the mistake of an individual.

You also no longer need heroes or whistle blowers or anyone to challenge white coat experts a la Milgram.

What the fuck is the Republican issue with the 14 Amendment?

Just. What. The. Fuck.

This was fascinating, thanks for posting it.

Questions, once the 14th joins the 4th in the scrap
heap, the Republican goal will be to force every
citizen to apply for citizenship anew, thereby
culling the herd.

Hopeful signs of hopey changey hope-i-ness:

Even Alan Keyes thinks Lindsey Graham has jumped the shark on the 14th Amendment. Here's hoping for a complete split in the 'pubs and a repfudiation of the fucking batshit wing of the party!

Prop 8 is temporarily dead! I hope those guys know what they're doing when it hits the Supremes. I could half see half the Supremes being against the 14th Amendment if they had a chance.... So where will they be on the fundamental right to marry regardless of procreative status?

BP may or may not have knocked out the spill with this static kill thing long enough to do the bottom kill thing.... "Rockman" on theoildrum.com likes it a bit more than Fishgrease and Bob Cavnar have liked it. Who knows.

A kos diary on vast quantities of hidden bodies -- of dead fish -- CT or truth? When it comes to BP and PR, I won't take bets either way.

Pelosi is calling the House back into session long enough to pass a state bail out that Snowe and Collins thought was acceptable. It doesn't inject extra money as it's being paid for by cuts, but if it saves some classroom misery, it's something.

Chris Dodd loves him some serious filibuster according to a HuffPo piece. The Senate is a funny thing, a thing to behold, a bizarre and brilliant and beautiful creation!

On Sharron Angle, by Sharron Angle:

"Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun found the audio of an April 21 radio interview in which Angle said:

"And these programs that you mentioned -- that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that's really what's happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government."

http://dailyhurricane.com/2010/08/angle-entitlements-are-a-violation-of-the-first-commandment.html

I think Harry Reid will be fine!

(Bob Cavnar also writes for DailyHurricane.com. He's very very skeptical of all of BP's claims about any and everything.)

Could the 14th Amendment thing really be geared towards the CA ruling -- they sued under denial of equal protection according to the decision which I'm skimming.

Lines 14 and 15, page 3.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/prop8-documents/

Imagine the dogwhistle of hating on gays and browns simultaneously.

Wow. What a sick fucking possibility. We're not a people known for knowing stuff. So you get the number 14 in people's heads over the immigration panic shit, and then you add the gay panic to the brown panic. And you get really good 'pub turnout in Nov -- which turnout was supposed to be really good anyway.

Maybe the independents and dems will rally now as well.

Hope Obama has about 3 or 4 more aces up his sleeve.... His arms are pretty long. There's some room.

p. 24 is lovely!

Lines 6-22.

It's not copy/paste-able in the format I'm reading.

Sorry.

pp 40-41 suggest that expertise in witnesses requires a reasonable method, some training in the relevant field, peer review, how the expert gets from a premise to a conclusion (as in, does the expert actually use evidence or prejudice), and even the use of "intellectual rigor,"

What a funny thought all of that is.

Blankenhorn does not make the cut. But he has lots of opinions on what marriage is all about.

Blankenhorn's expertise is built upon "ipse dixit" -- he said it himself! He's his own expert and he just KNOWS these things because he does. Nevermind expertise or evidence or premises and conclusions that bear the proper relationship to one another.

WHOA, and then there's a poli sci prof from Claremont McKenna, w/ a Ph.D. from Berkeley. Wow! Now THERE'S a credential!!!!

Sadly, his credential is more related to general politics in CA and not to gay and lesbian social power in CA. So, yeah, he's fine in his own field, but turns out not to be much of an expert way way outside his field. Certainly not enough of an expert to use his judgment to set policy. (p. 50 of the decision)

Funny, that.

Then there's a very long findings of fact section which point by point runs through the issues at stake, the arguments made, and point by point cites actual evidence.

It takes a shockingly large number of words to do this.

Funny, that.

And then he runs through all the legal issues.

A lot of words, this decision.

"An evolution in the understanding of gender, not a change in marriage" -- p 113.

Domestic partnerships are not separate but equal -- in fact, they are not equal at all. (114-115)

Strict scrutiny, narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest -- oh, I guess not. (p. 117)

Any chance of rationality, then indeed the court would defer to the legislature. But there ain't such a thing here. (118)

There's a sex discrimination component, as well. (120 or so)

And hey, there's no scarcity of marriage licenses or those who write them up, so one couldn't even claim that level of government interest in preferring one over the other.

The whole "purported interest" list is worth reading.

And then the happy happy conclusion.

A lot of words, and he got it right!

Here's hoping!