The Important Things

Mark Knoller, who has secured his role in the Beltway media’s village of the damned as the idiot savant Rain Man type, but without the wit and charm of Kim Peek, spending his time counting things like the number of times Obama has golfed, how many press conferences he has had, etc., while always managing to work in the wingnut talking points du jour. Tonight, he let us all know what is important:

Hey Mark- Count how many fingers I’m holding up right now.

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Everything Old Is New Again

The Washington Times:

The U.S. Secret Service does more than protect Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — the agency also pays him rent.

Since April, Mr. Biden has collected more than $13,000 from the agency charged with protecting him and his family for use of a rental cottage adjacent to the waterfront home he owns in a Wilmington, Del., suburb.

Mr. Biden, listed not as vice president in federal purchasing documents but as a “vendor,” is eligible for up to $66,000 by the time the government contract expires in the fall of 2013, the records show.

Officials say the arrangement came about when a previous tenant moved out of the cottage and the Secret Service moved in.

Edwin M. Donovan, special agent in charge at the Secret Service’s Office of Government and Public Affairs in Washington, said the agency pays $2,200 in rent per-month, the same amount a previous tenant had paid before moving out.

We’ve been down this road before:

After angry callers kept insisting that the Secret Service is paying enough rent to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton (for space on their property in Chappaqua, N.Y.) to underwrite the Clintons’ mortgage, we checked with the agency that protects presidents, former presidents and their families. Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin told us that the agency is paying the Clintons only around $1,100 a month — a figure based on a government formula and the standard arrangement in such situations.

The right wing has a nonstop bullshit factory, but sometimes they just relabel old products.

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Open Thread: Send In the Clowns

Because I couldn’t find a clip of Collins singing



And besides, who doesn’t love Muppets?

Speaking of which, I am not quite the target demographic for Elizabeth Stevens’ Weekend At Kermie’s: The Muppets’ Strange Life After Death (too old for Sesame Street; but Muppets in Space and Muppet Xmas Carol are among my favorite movies) but I found it both informative and enjoyable nonetheless…

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What it looks like so far

I think it’s too early to tell what this will look like at the end, but this is the NYTimes on the current state of the deal. I pulled out the sections that appear substantive:

There seemed to be broad agreement that any deal reached would include at least $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, of which $1.2 trillion would be approved now. But there was intense jockeying over the terms governing the next steps, including the work of a new bipartisan Congressional committee whose members would be charged with finding more deficit reductions in time for a second increase in the debt ceiling in just a few months.

Failure by that committee would trigger automatic cuts in programs beloved by Democrats and Republicans, respectively, unless Congress later this year passed a Constitutional amendment requiring balanced budgets.

Under the framework that negotiators were discussing today, half of those cuts would come in defense spending, while the other half would be a combination of other domestic spending, like discretionary programs and farm subsidies. Cuts to Medicare would not make up more than 3 percent of the non-military cuts.

We’d need a total number for non-military cuts to know what “not more than 3 per cent” means.

And negotiators agreed that any deal would not include language that could lead to a new formula for the annual cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security beneficiaries, a change that could save more than $100 billion in the first 10 years. While many economists have long said the existing formula overstates inflation, many Democrats oppose any change that would reduce benefits from current law. Dropping the proposal from the White House-Congressional talks reflected in part the influence of Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader, whose negotiating hand has been strengthened, since she will have to deliver a significant number of Democrats votes for House passage of any solution, given the likelihood that Mr. Boehner will face a significant loss of Republican votes.

And it looks like the proposed changes to Social Security are off the table, for now.

Discuss.

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Pit bulls and greyhounds

I don’t have anything political to talk about, but I read this article this morning, and I know you-all know a lot about dogs:

For any animal, a stay at a shelter or dog pound is often a harrowing experience. But for one type of dog, the “pit bull,” admittance to a government-run facility in Ohio such as the Lucas County dog pound is almost a guaranteed ticket to oblivion.

Strict state laws regarding ownership of “pit bulls” coupled with widespread public mistrust of the general breed have made it extremely difficult to find homes for these animals. That, together with an overabundance of “pit bulls” because of overbreeding and abandonment, means that when such dogs enter a pound they are the least likely to leave.There’s just nowhere for them to go,” Ms. Lyle explained recently. “There’s just way too many being born and becoming homeless.”

Similarly, the Toledo Area Humane Society destroys more “pit bull”-type dogs than other kinds of dogs, although officials there maintain this is a result of stricter behavior testing for the animals. Kill rates for “pit bulls” at the Humane Society are 18 percent, compared with the overall dog euthanasia rate of 10.5 percent. The society takes in some of the “pit bulls” from the Lucas County pound as well as from people who surrender them.

The situation is mirrored at pounds and shelters across the country, according to Adam Goldfarb, director of the Pets at Risk program for the Humane Society of the United States. An informal survey conducted by the society found that, on average, 30 percent of dogs entering shelters are “pit bulls”—with the rate shooting past 70 percent in some urban shelters, he said. In turn, kill rates for the dogs are high.

I have had only had one dog. She was a rescue greyhound that my daughter insisted we adopt. She was an absolute pleasure to have around, just the sweetest thing, and she lived with us for 16 years. She died fairly peacefully, when we had to put her down. I don’t know how old she was when we adopted her, but she was full grown, so I think she lived to 18 or so years.

Her racing name was “Helloooo Jilly!” We called her “Jilly”. I used to pretend that she spoke to make my kids laugh. I gave her a southern accent.

You can talk about dogs or anything else you’d like.

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All Your ISP Are Belong to U.S.

This is horrifying:

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year—in case police want to review them in the future—under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall’s elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.

It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill.

Lofgren said the data retention requirements are easily avoided because they only apply to “commercial” providers. Criminals would simply go to libraries or Starbucks coffeehouses and use the Web anonymously, she said, while law-abiding Americans would have their activities recorded.

To make it politically difficult to oppose, proponents of the data retention requirements dubbed the bill the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, even though the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well.

“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

Once again, Democrats and Republicans unite to fight terrorism the drug war kiddie porn and in the process throw your privacy rights out the window. And while some Democrats put up token resistance, the damned bill was sponsored by none other than Debbie Wasserman Schultz. You know her as the chair to the DNC.

It’s really quite a disgusting piece of legislation, and it won’t do jack shit to stop child porn. It will, however, become a treasure trove of data for the Feds to do whatever the fuck that want to do with it, because after all, who doesn’t want to fight terrorism the drug war kiddie porn?

I can’t wait to see if the loudmouth “freedom” lovers in the tea party actually come out on the side of freedom. Although they are probably too focussed on keeping the Koch’s taxes low and making sure Michelle doesn’t have too many calories for lunch.

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Open Thread – Hey, Teacher! Leave our tags alone

And for the love of fucking christ, can you other front pagers stop making stupid fucking categories you only use once?

I don’t know what you’re so grumpy about, Mr Cole.

Isn’t the world a better place for the #notintendedtobeafactualstatement tag category?

And “Sweet Fancy Moses!” makes me laugh every time I see it.

But then, I still don’t have my name in the Contact list, so what do I know?

btw – Open Thread.

Note: No new tags categories were created for the purposes of this post.

[Image: Cupid Chastised – Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622)]

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Watching the Detectives

Brian Oliver at the Guardian has an interesting piece about Norwegian authors whose protagonists face neo-Nazi hate groups in their fiction, starting with Norwegian Jo Nesbø’s The Redbreast. Oliver concentrates on Norwegian authors, but also mentions Swedes like Henning Mankell, who wove far-right extremism into Return of the Dancing Master, as well as some of his Wallander books.

Oliver mentions other Norwegians like Karin Fossum, KO Dahl and Gunnar Staalesen. The only one I’ve read is Nesbø, whose Harry Hole is a morose and conflicted alcoholic, and an interesting protagonist, like Mankell’s Wallander. Maybe some of you have read the others and can offer an evaluation in the comments.

Scandinavian detective fiction is interesting because it deals with broader social issues, and if you’ve been reading it, the notion that a right wing extremist would do something violent in those countries isn’t much of a surprise.

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Death Match: Constitutionalist v Partisan

I think this paragraph by Alex Knapp at OTB gets Obama’s attitude towards policy making about right:

I think this [the Treasury deciding whom to pay] is worrisome. But on the other hand, it goes to a trend in our politics that has been escalating since the 1960s. More and more, Congress has been willing to simply forego its role in making policy to the President. This trend has only been highlighted during the Obama Administration, because Obama, more than any President in recent memory, has been deferential to Congress’ role as policymaker. We saw that in the Health Care Bill and Stimulus Packages, and we’re seeing it now in the debt ceiling fiasco. The result is an almost desperate flailing by Congress to get the President to do something. That’s a bad thing for Constitutional governance.

This is true as far as it goes, though I don’t know how Obama could “do something” when even routine votes like the debt ceiling are seized upon as part of a hostage crisis.

The other side of this dysfunctional relationship is Boehner, who realized that the only way for a semi-moderate Republican (by current standards) to become Speaker was to genuflect in front of his teatard caucus. Steve Benen:

It’s as if Boehner, desperate and afraid, temporarily forgot not only what he was doing, but why he was doing it. The point, after all, is to work towards a solution that would prevent a disaster the Speaker himself says he’s eager to avoid.

Instead, Boehner has spent at least two weeks tending to the self-esteem of right-wing lawmakers, telling them how great and important they are, and reinforcing their belief that they’ll never have to compromise with anyone on anything.

That’s all true, but the hard-core crazy in his caucus makes it hard to lead. Is there any better Republican leader who could get that herd of cats to compromise? Certainly Cantor couldn’t.

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Open Thread: Sunday Garden Chat

From commentor Raven (formerly Stuckinred):

Here’s a close up of the raised beds with flowers, herbs and vegetables. The fencing is “Double Loop Ornamental” fence. You can see the shape at the top, at the bottom it is looped twice to make a very secure barrier against critters. You can also see the rose arbor over the blue gate that I recently built.

Here are the roses this spring:

Here’s a view from the side today. The pines range from 20 to 35 feet, crape myrtles, peaches, figs, apple and magnolias.

Garden and yard 11 years ago when we had the entire area plowed and graded. We terraced just above this section and this is where the pines were planted:

North of Boston, the good news is that I’ve finally harvested half a dozen ripe Black Prince tomatoes. The bad news is that both Black Prince vines seem to be dying back now, for no reason I can figure (they are in different planters & the plants next to each are fine). Last year, the Black Krim ripened ahead of all the rest and promptly withered, but by then the Black Prince was producing, and when the Black Prince collapsed in late August the Japanese Black Trifele were finally ripening. This year, all the tomatoes are behind schedule, but the Krim and Trifele green fruit seem to be setting and ripening neck-and-neck. I’ve decided that 15 years of experience in this particular locale is just not long enough, and also, AGCC suxx. (Speaking of which, here’s hoping TS Don grants Texas bountiful rain and no destruction.)

What’s it like in your gardens, this summer Sunday morning?

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Late Night Open Thread.

I’m off to bed, but I thought I would leave you all with a picture of the new and improved Rosie. All I have to say is “who is ready for bed time,” and she runs to her crate. She gets her treat, I go to bed, and no one bites me in my sleep. She’s a different dog since I crate trained her, and we both have our own separate peace.

It took her a year, but I think I am starting to be trained and am no longer a bad owner. As such, she is a better dog and I like having her around. Funny, that.

And for the love of fucking christ, can you other front pagers stop making stupid fucking categories you only use once?

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Saturday Night Open Thread

Since I have had the reply button fixed, I feel comfortable showing my face again. My friend Brian is in town for a visit (better known to you all as husband of Tammy and father of Sam), and we did our usual cook and drink and gorge routine. every couple of months we get together and make a boatload of food and drink a ton and eat until we are ready to fall over.

We spent the better part of the afternoon making homemade pasta. We made a Bechamel and added a bunch of crab meat, let that cool, and stuffed a ton of ravioli. We froze most of it, but ate a serving with a butter/olive oil sauce with fresh basil. Then we took some Aussie range Tenderloins, and grilled those and ate them. Very good, and with a much more complex flavor than regular tenderloins. At first you get a beefy juice, then it has a gamey, almost mutton-like finish. Finally, we cook veal scallopini with some of the linguini we made, and a sauce with cream and fire-roasted tomatoes and onions and garlic.

We briefly discussed a vegetable course earlier, then giggled and had a scotch.

For dessert I made Irish coffees, and made a nice topping with Frangelico, sugar, and heavy whipping cream. Man, was that good. I could just drink the whipped cream by itself.

At any rate, that is how my day went. It was awesome. Fuck the Republicans, fuck politics.

This song has been running through my head:

Have at it. You do know I love you all even though I have been distracted lately, don’t you? I only beat you because I care.

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Elizabeth Warren, Still Fighting the Good Fight(s)

NYMag’s Daily Intel has the text of Professor Warren’s “classy” exit note to her colleagues at the newborn Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (” ... I leave this agency, but not this fight. The issues we deal with — a middle class that has been squeezed and business models built on tricks and traps — are deeply personal to me, and they always will be. I will cheer as you open a new chapter in our ongoing push for a strong and independent CFPB. You can realize the vision of a 21st century government that holds law-breakers accountable and that enforces basic rules that make markets work honestly… “).

A one-page interview, “38 Minutes with.. Elizabeth Warren” is in NYMag’s August 1 print edition:

... One problem is that the CFPB is not likely to get a director anytime soon. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced that he’ll filibuster any nominee until the agency is given a board designed to veto anything the CFPB might want to do. When I ask for her reaction to McConnell’s demand that it be made “more accountable and transparent to the American people,” Warren whips her head around, incredulous.

“Oh, excuse me? Accountable?” she scoffs. “He wants this agency to be more accountable to the banks. He wants us to have a funding stream that will give the banks lobbying power over this agency. And the second thing he wants with this five-person board, he wants bankers running this place.”

This is the kind of biting, no-apologies criticism that has so endeared Warren to her supporters, who have in turn fanned speculation that she may soon run for Senate, against Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But she is circumspect when asked directly about a potential run, as all Washington stars learn to be, telling me only, “I need to get back to Massachusetts”—a line she’s been using a lot the past few days. When pressed again, she repeats, “I need to go home.”

Instead, Warren points to a shallow vase full of stones given to her this morning at Nancy Pelosi’s regular breakfast for new congressional Democrats, who would love to see her live to fight another day. “On Monday, when someone asked what I was going to do,” Warren explains, “I said, ‘Look, I’ve always done three things: I’ve taught school. I’ve worked on middle-class economic issues. And I’ve thrown rocks.’ ”

And now? She smiles, nudging her new ammunition. “I plan to go back, teach school, work on middle-class economic issues, and throw rocks.”

Keep throwing those rocks, Ms. Warren!

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It really is a war on workers. All workers. Of any kind.

ProPublica has a good comprehensive piece on why parts of the FAA are shut down:

While lawmakers deadlock over long-term deficit reduction plans tied to the raising of the debt ceiling, one federal agency—the Federal Aviation Administration—has been in partial shutdown for nearly a week. Last week, Congress adjourned on Friday without reaching an agreement to extend the operating authority of the FAA, meaning the agency currently doesn’t have the authority to collect taxes on ticket sales, which it uses to pay some 4,000 employees’ salaries. The lost revenue amounts to about $200 million a week.

Initial reports suggested that minus the ticket taxes,consumers could reap some savings on air travel—and some may have at first. But some airlines soon changed their minds and raised their prices so tickets now cost about as much as if the tax were still there. In other words, money that would have gone to funding the FAA has gone straight into the pockets of some major U.S. airlines.

As a result, thousands of workers have been furloughed and may not get paid for days missed. And without FAA officials to oversee airport construction projects, the agency has issued stop-work orders to more than 150 projects across the country, putting thousands more private-sector construction workers temporarily out of work as well.

Several minor disputes have led to this impasse. The first is an industry-backed provision by House Republicans that would make it harder for aviation and railroad workers to unionize, essentially by counting workers who didn’t vote in a union election as having voted against the union. President Obama has threatened to veto any FAA bill containing this measure, but it’s included in the House version of the bill anyway. The second dispute is over a program—called the Essential Air Service Program—that provides subsidies to airlines that fly into tiny airports servicing more than 100 rural communities. House Republicans have tried to reduce those subsidies and phase them out in all states except for Alaska and Hawaii. The move has been opposed by some lawmakers whose states’ subsidies will be ended.

It’s worth noting that the Government Accountability Office has recommended that Congress reexamine whether funds for the Essential Air Service Program are being used efficiently. But it’s also unclear whether the lawmakers who’ve proposed cutting the program care much about it one way or the other. Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican and chairman of the House Transportation committee, assured a conference of airport executives earlier this month that the House added the provision as a bargaining chip to win concessions on the unionization issue, reported Aviation Week. “It’s just a tool,” Mica told the executives.

Thousands of public sector workers on furlough, thousands of private-sector construction workers laid off, and this congressional campaign to destroy labor unions is costing us all 30 million dollars a day.

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Open Thread

Alright, we are working on fixing the reply button. What else is pissing you off that I need to fix?

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