what the critics of the court decision are saying is that, no matter the progress made over half a century, they do not trust the South to deal fairly and decently with its black citizens, without a club over its head. They do not believe the South has changed in its heart from the days of segregation.
Yup, Pat, that’s pretty much it.
ETA: The quoted paragraph is about the least offensive part of the column. For you gluttons for punishment, here’s the whole thing.
what the critics of the court decision are saying is that, no matter the progress made over half a century, they do not trust the South to deal fairly and decently with its black citizens, without a club over its head. They do not believe the South has changed in its heart from the days of segregation.
He’s worried about them, sure–but not sufficiently worried to see any of his hard-earned tax dollars used to solve the problem. That would be … sumpin sumpin TYRANNY!
6.
The Other Chuck
@dedc79: It annoys liberals more when he says it. That’s the one and only thing that drives these people.
@burnspbesq: Damn straight we’re saying that. Because the instant the decision was handed down, they hauled out all their previously-illegal tactics to suppress voters. That wasn’t in 1965, it was this fucking week.
8.
jibeaux
“lazy populism” is the right word. People are feeling nickeled and dimed to death, but it’s not specifically milk or bread prices. There was this crazy story a while back, for example. I have a 2000 sq ft house in the city and I will admit to being a little cheap with the A/C and I use those hippie lightbulbs, but my power bill for June was $44 and in July will be $56. It’s one of those “expensive to be poor” situations.
@dedc79: When people use a program like SNAP, they’re moochers that don’t merit consideration.
11.
Yatsuno
Poor Ewick son of Ewick. He just can’t write a nice decent whitesplaining column without that shrill Krugthulu beating up on his free speechisms. Or something. I just wanna know how he remembers to breathe. And more importantly how we could get him to forget for a few minutes.
I am sure the Kaplan Post, the Douthat Times and CNN will all tell us how Shrill this observation is.
I truly hope that DoJ is paying attention. That understaffed Civil Rights section is going to be getting a LOT of work very soon.
13.
scav
Stereotyping states is unfair! Especially if there is a pattern of past and current shenanigans! Stopping and Frisking legislation is me-an.
14.
Yatsuno
@dedc79: Bootstraps man. They gotta pull themselves up by the bootstraps. But apparently that also means complaining about prices. Or something.
15.
libarbarian
EE is a moron … but TF really was being a dick and an example of insulated elite assholery
16.
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: The block quote from Der Pat does encapsulate my viewpoint vis a vis The South.
17.
Ted & Hellen
Man, you all read way too many blogs.
This kind of meta-intrablog navel lint-gazing is…sad.
18.
Poopyman
Point of order, but no one is “correcting” these clowns. They are not interested in being corrected, and will only take Mr. Delong’s points as proof that they were right in the first place. Eric the Eric moreso than most.
(Got a cat squatting on my desktop’s mouse. Makes it hard to object to someone being wrong on the internet.)
Bread and milk? Makes me miss ol’ B.O.B. who had reduced all of economics down to the cost of pizza ingredients.
@jibeaux: This is where Californian’s will laugh and mock North Carolina. Our per capita power consumption hasn’t climbed in 30 years because we buy energy efficient appliances and have a regulatory structure that makes the most profitable situation for power companies to be where consumers use the least power, so my power company actually pays me to cut my usage.
We’ve got 25% renewables (excluding hydro), which while expensive to construct are vastly cheaper than oil/gas/coal to operate once the capital costs are recouped – down around $0.02 per kW/h. And the profits the power companies here recover from those lower operating costs get reinvested into converting more conventional power to renewable. Our power costs are forecast to go down slightly relative to inflation over the next decade.
20.
El Caganer
@Ted & Hellen: Hey, it’s Friday afternoon, things are winding down…..
21.
Liberty60
Krugman better watch his step. He may wake up one morning to discover 5,296 bags of rock salt, flaming bags of dog shit, or god-knows-what delivered to his door.
The RedState Strike Force will not be trifled with!
@The Other Chuck: I’m surprised he’d admit to taking Amtrak. After all it’s PUBLIC transportation. Doesn’t he have a Hummer he can drive on some private highway from NY to DC?
@Ted & Hellen: If it’s that sad, then I’d think commenting on “meta-intrablog navel lint-gazing” would be even sadder
25.
Hoodie
@burnspbesq: My experience was that the heart had changed quite a bit until about 1980, and then started seriously regressing, hastened by the southern strategy and supplemented by racist transplants from places like NY, NJ and MA. A lot of folks don’t realize that the stars and bars has been taken up by several former yankees who have no fucking clue as to the ‘heritage” they supposedly represent. The speaker of the NC state house and the president of the NC senate are both transplants, as are several of the wingnuttier members of both bodies. Now, maybe you get to Alabama and Mississippi, you’ll find more native crackers, but a lot of the others are hatchery raised.
26.
Hoodie
@? Martin: Yeah, and Duke just gained a virtual monopoly on power distribution in NC by buying Progress Energy (the old Carolina Power and Light). Duke (Power) is the evil empire.
So the same person who wants to gut our food stamp program claims he’s worried about poor people who can’t afford bread and milk?
You bleeding hearts don’t get it. If we make being poor very unattractive while we make being rich very attractive then the poor will get off of their asses and get rich. The only reason they’re not doing it now is because t-bones and cell phones.
Yes, this is the general thing I was linking to downthread.
I think this is a really neat trick. First, basically turn the country to shit by defunding schools, ruining the economy, suppressing working class wages by killing unions so income inequality is at pre-Depression levels. THEN complain about the crumbing schools, ruined economy, and crappy wages.
Win election so you can lather, rinse and repeat.
Awesome!
33.
Elizabelle
I don’t read the Huffington Post much, but this article caught my eye:
Why ranked 27? (Australia tops the list; Spain (!!) comes in at 20.)
We don’t have real universal health care.
Weak labor laws undermine unions and give large corporations more power to keep wages and benefits down.
Our minimum wage is pathetic, especially in comparison to other developed nations. (We’re # 13).
Wall Street is out of control.
Higher education puts our kids into debt.
It’s hard to improve your station in life if you’re in prison, often due to drug-related charges that don’t even exist in other developed nations.
Our tax structures favor the rich and their corporations who no longer pay their fair share.
The wealthy dominate politics. Nowhere else in the developed world are the rich and their corporations able to buy elections with such impunity.
Big Money dominates the media.
America encourages globalization of production so that workers here are in constant competition with the lower wage workers all over the world as well as with highly automated technologies.
Author Les Leopold blames financialization for America’s decline.
@? Martin: Duke is also buying up the other players out there. A few years ago the legislature and regulators started to talk about dereg. Don’t hear that any more largely because of Duke’s lobbying.
@? Martin:
You forgot to mention that many of us Californians still have Socialist, municipally owned utilities, like LADWP, that somehow manage to provide power for cheaper than privately owned utilities.
I don’t get this. The price of gas has remained high, bread and milk, pretty much the same. I haven’t seen much change in any of these in almost 10 years.
42.
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic: $2.58/gallon for milk at Costco last weekend.
You don’t get more of a socialized utility than the TVA. Yeah I know, it’s quasi-public at this point, it’s like the post office … still, we have some of the cheapest power rates in the country. We pay under 10 cents a kWh for our electricity in Nashville. I mean, what do I know. We’re all told that’s cheap. What does everyone else pay?
44.
catclub
@TooManyJens: And Ginsburg documented the 1982-2005 record of attempts at backsliding in the south. All innocent accidents.
@burnspbesq: Hey, sorry to go OT, but I got that Joshua Redman disc you mentioned a while back. You were right – good stuff!
47.
gene108
If everyone would just vote Republican, there’d be no need for all of these voter ID laws and long lines in black neighborhoods. If you are going to keep making mistakes by voting for Democrats, I don’t know why you blame state legislatures for trying to limit the damage for your mistakes.
OK if anyone missed my link downthread, right-wing “think tank” dude Tom Anderson climbed aboard the Erick Erickson derp and complained about the price of milk, saying on Twitter:
Tom Anderson @TomTomJAnderson
@JamesOverholt @DylanByers @jbarro SMH, I’m paying over $6 a gallon. That’s a huge increase.
To which Josh Barro responded:
Because I apparently do not value my time as much as I should, I called a Publix supermarket and determined that you can buy a gallon of whole milk for $3.59 in south Florida, where Anderson lives.
That led to Anderson telling me that he’s unwilling to buy store-brand milk. Apparently I’m not the only coastal elitist around here.
So, you know, maybe Erick Erickson buys elitist milk from organic, naturally-lactating French cows or something.
We pay under 10 cents a kWh for our electricity in Nashville. I mean, what do I know. We’re all told that’s cheap. What does everyone else pay?
I think my bill works out to about $0.085/kWh, but I don’t remember if that includes service and distribution charges. I’m pretty sure that’s less than I’d pay SoCal Edison, though, and Edison performed notably worse than Pasadena Municipal Services or LADWP in getting the power back on after our last round of severe weather.
50.
Yatsuno
@? Martin: Most power in WA is hydro, with a couple of other sources (wind farms, a bit of solar, a couple nukes) but I don’t know of any coal or nat gas plants up here. And our power is cheap compared to most places in the country. We should be doing massive solar farms out at Hanford, but that’s still all nuke clean-up now. Maybe in the future though the contractors milk that cash cow like no tomorrow.
“In addition to finding the usual racist rants and interactions with other white power groups, we also found a disturbingly high amount of members who are also involved in campaigning for Ron Paul,” the statement from Anonymous reads. “According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors.”
58.
Omnes Omnibus
This webinar just keeps going and going, but it will include my three ethics hours.
@Southern Beale: Sweet Jeebus, that’s hilarious. He’s unwilling to buy store-brand milk! He needs the good milk! The milk you can’t get at a normal grocery store! HE NEEDS RICH-MAN MILK OR NOTHING AT ALL.
60.
quannlace
It’s always a hoot to take a gander at the NewsMax headlines.
Ann Coulter: “Christie’s dead to me.’
Oh, Ann. How has Chris disappointed you this time?
61.
Elizabelle
OT: President and Mrs. Obama have landed in South Africa.
Great photo at NYTimes: evening arrival, Air Force One in background.
I just love that THAT has happened in my lifetime. PBO arriving as US chief of state to a country formerly riven by apartheid.
I hope that a meeting with Nelson Mandela works out.
The grocery item that to me seems ridiculously expensive is cereal.
They have to pay for all that advertizing somehow. The generic stuff is pretty much indistinguishable from name brand and much cheaper. Or you could always have something healthier, like whole grain toast or fresh fruit. For some of those cereals, you could probably eat healthier by switching to sugar deep fried in lard.
@Roger Moore: Unfortunately EE’s stream of consciousness lacks social conscience.
72.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
Given that Mandela is still hospitalised in critical condition, it might be for the best if he were spared the strain of meeting Obama.
73.
David Hunt
@Yatsuno: I sometime think that this has already happened. It’s just that (depending on your personal views) it either went on too long or didn’t go on long enough.
North Carolina was never as bad as the worst of the Southern states, with regards to race relations. There was an effort to actually invest in the state after WW2, with the formation of the UNC System and funding the DOT to build roads.
I’m not surprised some of the bigger screw balls are transplants. Yankees never had to deal with blacks, on a day to day basis, the way folks did in the South, so there’s as big or bigger a barrier to them accepting minorities, i.e. see Boston school integration in 1975, 21 years after Brown v. Board of Education.
Also, only certain counties in North Carolina had to deal with Sec 5 per-clearance.
In addition, certain political subdivisions (usually counties) in four other states (Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, and North Carolina were covered. It also provided a procedure to terminate this coverage.
Not just paying for advertising, they have to pay for premium shelf space. Otherwise your product gets put on the bottom shelf where no one will see it or buy it. Now THAT’S a racket and a half.
FREEDOM!!!!!
There’s entirely too much stuff out there IMHO. When I go to a “regular” store not the hippie grocery store, I find the vast array of choices overwhelming and defeating. If I’m presented with 50 different brands of cereal I decide, fuckit, I’ll have some goddamned yogurt.
82.
catclub
@Southern Beale: There was a blurb in Political Animal witha title like “Why don’t Southern Senators Demand that TVA be privatized?” It was funny how unpopular such a move would be. They make efforts to distance themselves from even the Study of it that was commissioned.
If being poor is such a money party, where is the financial incentive to get rich?
85.
Yatsuno
@Southern Beale: QUELLE HORREUR!!! No sign of Senator Aqua Buddha showing anywhere? I have this funny feeling that apple will not fall far from that tree.
Coincidentally, I’ve been poring over my electricity use in anticipation of speaking with solar contractors about getting some dang PV panels on my roof (take that, triple-digit weather for the next week!). Our utility installed smart meters so now I have a couple years of usage data, by the hour. My modest goal is keeping our onthly use under the tier 2 threshold, because that’s where the rate nearly doubles. I’ve always wondered what my minimum and maximum consumption is, and when. Now I know.
I expect some supplly issues, statewide related to closing San Onofre, but with the many big solar projects planned and under construction, there should be at least a partial replacement for that supply reasonably soon. I don’t know whether terminating the contract with Ried Gardner (Nevada coal plant) has a greater impact coupled with San Onofre…it might during peak use periods.
More solar, more wind, more fast-start peaking plants, California should be okay so long as we can keep reilable hydro. After the last two winters I wonder about that one.
I’d say that the proper response to anything T&H says is what Nancy Pelosi said when asked to respond to Michele Bachmann’s unhinged ranting: “Who cares?”
If we could get Christie to sit on the stickCoulter, that “dead to me” could easily be reversed.
91.
Amir Khalid
I’m genuinely curious: just how is premium milk different from regular milk for hoi polloi? Is it, like, from a special breed of cows that live in five-star cattle barns and eat only fancy organic cattle feed?
92.
Omnes Omnibus
@ranchandsyrup: NC is disqualifying itself from EUC? WTF?
@Trollhattan: Many people can get this data straight from their utilities. It’s part of a program called ‘Green Button‘ and the data is pretty useful. Need to be somewhat technically competent to use it, but there are apps coming along to help with that.
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m hoping they are just being “sarcastic” like Rand Paul was on the slippery slope from SSM to marrying a liger. I don’t think they thought this through.
I was ignorant about all the data I could get from our utility until accidentally clicking a graph when looking at our on-line account. Zut alors, data heaven!
Naturally, now that everybody has smart meters they’ve petitioned the PUC to go to a time-based rate model, meaning we’ll get hammered 5-7 p.m., just when the AC and fridges are going nuts (in summer).
@Southern Beale:
Part of the problem is that companies feel a need to expand their range of products just to crowd out the competition. It doesn’t matter that nobody really cares about the minor differences between the products; if company A has 6 varieties and company B has only 2, A is going to get more total shelf space than B does.
I think this is a big reason people like shopping at places like Trader Joe’s. They have mostly store brands, so they don’t have a need to have a huge range of brands and varieties, only the ones that people actually care about. Because they don’t have to devote extra shelf space to too many varieties, they can have a smaller store that’s easier to get through. Their produce isn’t great, but it gives you an idea of just how wasteful a regular supermarket is.
Anonymous hacks an Orange County, CA white supremacist group and finds emails linking it to Ron Paul:
Don’t mean to rain on your revelation, and Martin can certainly speak for himself, but this gets a huge “Ya THINK???” from this OC-ite. The white supremacists are why Dana Rohrbacher’s House seat is so safe.
105.
Tone in DC
Wingnuts? THINK?
Now, that is rather humorous. Such a Ripley’s event as this would require, like, functioning neurons.
Na. Ga. Happen.
On the topic, it’s difficult to correct these clowns. They spread their bass ackwardness all over the damn place, at breakneck speed, and reasonable people have to play catch up. They are pretty much FAILblog made flesh.
106.
Ksmiami
@Southern Beale: because the reality of choice is that most cereals are rearranged corn and sugar molecules that leave a customer exhausted and bewildered.
I’m genuinely curious: just how is premium milk different from regular milk for hoi polloi?
It’s probably organic milk, which means it comes from cattle that aren’t routinely given antibiotics and are fed organic hay. It’s modestly more expensive, and a lot of people say they like the flavor better. I’m suspicious that the flavor preference is more because it’s routinely ultrapasteurized to extend its shelf life (and incidentally add a cooked taste that some people like) than because of anything special about the flavor of the milk before treatment.
There are other extra-expensive milks out there. I like the non-homogenized milk. It’s generally treated less than other milk and has a somewhat shorter shelf life, which makes it more expensive. The really expensive stuff- where it’s available at all- is raw milk.
Also, this is exactly why I want to guzzle anti-freeze when some Republican nitwit tells me with great enthusiasm that their brilliant idea is for me to SHOP for my healthcare!!!!
God I fucking hate to shop. That is the absolute LAST thing I want to do when it comes to healthcare. And insurance, too, BTW.
Once upon a mid-day sunny, while I savored Nuts ‘N Honey,
With my Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gal, 128 fl. oz., I swore
As I went on with my lapping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the icebox door.
‘Bad condensor, that,’ I muttered, ‘vibrating the icebox door –
Only this, and nothing more.’
@The prophet Nostradumbass: T&H is impotent in every sense of the word. Unable to affect anything outside of a single blog’s comment threads. Impotent and weak.
Also, this is exactly why I want to guzzle anti-freeze when some Republican nitwit tells me with great enthusiasm that their brilliant idea is for me to SHOP for my healthcare!!!!
The idea of shopping for health insurance is vaguely plausible until you start looking into the details. It would work if there were a minimum standard for what policies covered, which is why PPACA is trying to make sure we have exactly that. Shopping for health care, OTOH, is just crazy. Health care providers can take literally years after a hospital stay to decide exactly how much it cost, so there’s no way in hell that a patient could make an informed purchasing decision in advance. And that’s assuming the patient has a chance to make a decision and isn’t rushed to the hospital unconscious.
115.
MattF
@Jay C: Brooks, describing his first meeting with Obama:
“Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me. […] I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”
116.
MattF
@Jay C: Brooks, describing his first meeting with Obama:
“Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me. […] I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”
Proving yet again, David Brooks is almost absolutely protected against most criticism: primarily by being more of a parody of himself than anyone else could hope to craft….
but … maybe he’s too fat to do it in her favorite position.
Either that, or he’s not into guys who try to pass for gals.
122.
SFAW
@MattF:
What’s truly astounding about that quote is that someone who (theoretically) writes for a living should have a better command of grammer. “Better than me”? Unless less he was trying to say that Obama knew political philosophy better than Obama knew Bobo, that’s a pretty poor command of the language.
Maybe Chunky Bobo will supplant Brooksie after all?
I get Organic Valley here in So Cal. They make a lactose-free version, too, which my tummy sometimes needs (though, generally speaking, organic milk seems to bother my bowels less than mass-produced milk).
burnspbesq
On a related topic, Pat Buchanan says:
Yup, Pat, that’s pretty much it.
ETA: The quoted paragraph is about the least offensive part of the column. For you gluttons for punishment, here’s the whole thing.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-reconstructed-south-under-fire/
dedc79
So the same person who wants to gut our food stamp program claims he’s worried about poor people who can’t afford bread and milk?
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq:
Yep.
ranchandsyrup
Erickkk, while trying to conservasplain himself to the courtier rag of record, Teh Politico, admits that Kthug is right. But Kthug being right is central to his point in a Jonahesque fashion. He has a narrative to pimp and that’s all that is important. http://newswithtags.com/Erick%20Erickson/politico-krugman-hits-erickson-for-fake-populism
burnspbesq
@dedc79:
He’s worried about them, sure–but not sufficiently worried to see any of his hard-earned tax dollars used to solve the problem. That would be … sumpin sumpin TYRANNY!
The Other Chuck
@dedc79: It annoys liberals more when he says it. That’s the one and only thing that drives these people.
TooManyJens
@burnspbesq: Damn straight we’re saying that. Because the instant the decision was handed down, they hauled out all their previously-illegal tactics to suppress voters. That wasn’t in 1965, it was this fucking week.
jibeaux
“lazy populism” is the right word. People are feeling nickeled and dimed to death, but it’s not specifically milk or bread prices. There was this crazy story a while back, for example. I have a 2000 sq ft house in the city and I will admit to being a little cheap with the A/C and I use those hippie lightbulbs, but my power bill for June was $44 and in July will be $56. It’s one of those “expensive to be poor” situations.
IowaOldLady
@The Other Chuck: Also spite. Don’t forget that part.
ranchandsyrup
@dedc79: When people use a program like SNAP, they’re moochers that don’t merit consideration.
Yatsuno
Poor Ewick son of Ewick. He just can’t write a nice decent whitesplaining column without that shrill Krugthulu beating up on his free speechisms. Or something. I just wanna know how he remembers to breathe. And more importantly how we could get him to forget for a few minutes.
Tone in DC
@TooManyJens:
I am sure the Kaplan Post, the Douthat Times and CNN will all tell us how Shrill this observation is.
I truly hope that DoJ is paying attention. That understaffed Civil Rights section is going to be getting a LOT of work very soon.
scav
Stereotyping states is unfair! Especially if there is a pattern of past and current shenanigans! Stopping and Frisking legislation is me-an.
Yatsuno
@dedc79: Bootstraps man. They gotta pull themselves up by the bootstraps. But apparently that also means complaining about prices. Or something.
libarbarian
EE is a moron … but TF really was being a dick and an example of insulated elite assholery
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: The block quote from Der Pat does encapsulate my viewpoint vis a vis The South.
Ted & Hellen
Man, you all read way too many blogs.
This kind of meta-intrablog navel lint-gazing is…sad.
Poopyman
Point of order, but no one is “correcting” these clowns. They are not interested in being corrected, and will only take Mr. Delong’s points as proof that they were right in the first place. Eric the Eric moreso than most.
(Got a cat squatting on my desktop’s mouse. Makes it hard to object to someone being wrong on the internet.)
? Martin
Bread and milk? Makes me miss ol’ B.O.B. who had reduced all of economics down to the cost of pizza ingredients.
@jibeaux: This is where Californian’s will laugh and mock North Carolina. Our per capita power consumption hasn’t climbed in 30 years because we buy energy efficient appliances and have a regulatory structure that makes the most profitable situation for power companies to be where consumers use the least power, so my power company actually pays me to cut my usage.
We’ve got 25% renewables (excluding hydro), which while expensive to construct are vastly cheaper than oil/gas/coal to operate once the capital costs are recouped – down around $0.02 per kW/h. And the profits the power companies here recover from those lower operating costs get reinvested into converting more conventional power to renewable. Our power costs are forecast to go down slightly relative to inflation over the next decade.
El Caganer
@Ted & Hellen: Hey, it’s Friday afternoon, things are winding down…..
Liberty60
Krugman better watch his step. He may wake up one morning to discover 5,296 bags of rock salt, flaming bags of dog shit, or god-knows-what delivered to his door.
The RedState Strike Force will not be trifled with!
dedc79
@The Other Chuck: I’m surprised he’d admit to taking Amtrak. After all it’s PUBLIC transportation. Doesn’t he have a Hummer he can drive on some private highway from NY to DC?
? Martin
Holy crap. My per kW/h rates in SoCal are the same as what Duke energy charges NC residents for their coal power. Man, they are so fucked.
dedc79
@Ted & Hellen: If it’s that sad, then I’d think commenting on “meta-intrablog navel lint-gazing” would be even sadder
Hoodie
@burnspbesq: My experience was that the heart had changed quite a bit until about 1980, and then started seriously regressing, hastened by the southern strategy and supplemented by racist transplants from places like NY, NJ and MA. A lot of folks don’t realize that the stars and bars has been taken up by several former yankees who have no fucking clue as to the ‘heritage” they supposedly represent. The speaker of the NC state house and the president of the NC senate are both transplants, as are several of the wingnuttier members of both bodies. Now, maybe you get to Alabama and Mississippi, you’ll find more native crackers, but a lot of the others are hatchery raised.
Hoodie
@? Martin: Yeah, and Duke just gained a virtual monopoly on power distribution in NC by buying Progress Energy (the old Carolina Power and Light). Duke (Power) is the evil empire.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@dedc79:
You bleeding hearts don’t get it. If we make being poor very unattractive while we make being rich very attractive then the poor will get off of their asses and get rich. The only reason they’re not doing it now is because t-bones and cell phones.
Ted & Hellen
@dedc79:
Maybe.
I’m a melancholic, creative type.
TooManyJens
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Considering how many people really believe this is a depressing enterprise indeed.
MattF
@Ted & Hellen: The correct term is ‘omphaloskepsis’:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphaloskepsis
Roger Moore
@ranchandsyrup:
Erick Erickovich Erickov seems to be experimenting with stream of consciousness blogging.
Southern Beale
Yes, this is the general thing I was linking to downthread.
I think this is a really neat trick. First, basically turn the country to shit by defunding schools, ruining the economy, suppressing working class wages by killing unions so income inequality is at pre-Depression levels. THEN complain about the crumbing schools, ruined economy, and crappy wages.
Win election so you can lather, rinse and repeat.
Awesome!
Elizabelle
I don’t read the Huffington Post much, but this article caught my eye:
Big Lie: America Doesn’t Have #1 Richest Middle-Class in the World… We’re Ranked 27th!
Why ranked 27? (Australia tops the list; Spain (!!) comes in at 20.)
Author Les Leopold blames financialization for America’s decline.
ranchandsyrup
@? Martin: Duke is also buying up the other players out there. A few years ago the legislature and regulators started to talk about dereg. Don’t hear that any more largely because of Duke’s lobbying.
dedc79
@Southern Beale: Public transportation as well.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
You forgot to mention that many of us Californians still have Socialist, municipally owned utilities, like LADWP, that somehow manage to provide power for cheaper than privately owned utilities.
Poopyman
@Elizabelle:
Already filed under “No shit, Sherlock”.
srv
@ranchandsyrup: A feature of the Wingularity is that the closer we get to it, the harder it will be to make sense of anything.
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: I blame Reaganomics and the gutting of the regulatory framework that made financialization possible.
hells littlest angel
I’m sure one or more of the below will explain Erickson’s bread-and-milk inaccuracies:
1. It was a metaphor
2. It was a joke
3. His remarks were taken out of context
SatanicPanic
I don’t get this. The price of gas has remained high, bread and milk, pretty much the same. I haven’t seen much change in any of these in almost 10 years.
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic: $2.58/gallon for milk at Costco last weekend.
Southern Beale
You don’t get more of a socialized utility than the TVA. Yeah I know, it’s quasi-public at this point, it’s like the post office … still, we have some of the cheapest power rates in the country. We pay under 10 cents a kWh for our electricity in Nashville. I mean, what do I know. We’re all told that’s cheap. What does everyone else pay?
catclub
@TooManyJens: And Ginsburg documented the 1982-2005 record of attempts at backsliding in the south. All innocent accidents.
ranchandsyrup
@srv: Heh. The event horizon of the wingularity always seems to approach but never arrives.
Ben Cisco
@burnspbesq: Hey, sorry to go OT, but I got that Joshua Redman disc you mentioned a while back. You were right – good stuff!
gene108
If everyone would just vote Republican, there’d be no need for all of these voter ID laws and long lines in black neighborhoods. If you are going to keep making mistakes by voting for Democrats, I don’t know why you blame state legislatures for trying to limit the damage for your mistakes.
Southern Beale
OK if anyone missed my link downthread, right-wing “think tank” dude Tom Anderson climbed aboard the Erick Erickson derp and complained about the price of milk, saying on Twitter:
To which Josh Barro responded:
So, you know, maybe Erick Erickson buys elitist milk from organic, naturally-lactating French cows or something.
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
I think my bill works out to about $0.085/kWh, but I don’t remember if that includes service and distribution charges. I’m pretty sure that’s less than I’d pay SoCal Edison, though, and Edison performed notably worse than Pasadena Municipal Services or LADWP in getting the power back on after our last round of severe weather.
Yatsuno
@? Martin: Most power in WA is hydro, with a couple of other sources (wind farms, a bit of solar, a couple nukes) but I don’t know of any coal or nat gas plants up here. And our power is cheap compared to most places in the country. We should be doing massive solar farms out at Hanford, but that’s still all nuke clean-up now. Maybe in the future though the contractors milk that cash cow like no tomorrow.
Southern Beale
Shorter Erick Erickson: “Washington is out of touch.”
I mean, dude. We’ve been singing this song since George Bush Sr. thought bar codes were some weird novelty.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat:
And that happened in our lifetime.
Amir Khalid
@Ted & Hellen:
You? Ha!
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: I would have described him as bilious.
FlipYrWhig
The grocery item that to me seems ridiculously expensive is cereal. $4.50 for stuff like Great Grains. Come the fuck on. That has to be pure profit.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus: Or splenetic.
Southern Beale
Whoa!
Anonymous hacks an Orange County, CA white supremacist group and finds emails linking it to Ron Paul:
Omnes Omnibus
This webinar just keeps going and going, but it will include my three ethics hours.
Scott S.
@Southern Beale: Sweet Jeebus, that’s hilarious. He’s unwilling to buy store-brand milk! He needs the good milk! The milk you can’t get at a normal grocery store! HE NEEDS RICH-MAN MILK OR NOTHING AT ALL.
quannlace
It’s always a hoot to take a gander at the NewsMax headlines.
Ann Coulter: “Christie’s dead to me.’
Oh, Ann. How has Chris disappointed you this time?
Elizabelle
OT: President and Mrs. Obama have landed in South Africa.
Great photo at NYTimes: evening arrival, Air Force One in background.
I just love that THAT has happened in my lifetime. PBO arriving as US chief of state to a country formerly riven by apartheid.
I hope that a meeting with Nelson Mandela works out.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
They have to pay for all that advertizing somehow. The generic stuff is pretty much indistinguishable from name brand and much cheaper. Or you could always have something healthier, like whole grain toast or fresh fruit. For some of those cereals, you could probably eat healthier by switching to sugar deep fried in lard.
Scott S.
@Southern Beale: Once a racist motherfucker, always a racist motherfucker.
David Hunt
@dedc79: Doublethink is an important skill for any good member of the Party.
Baud
@Southern Beale:
Information wants to be free.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I rather like the dudes from Anonymous. They have some odd principles, but they seem to follow them.
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
I am shocked, shocked to find connections between white supremacists and Ron Paul.
quannlace
Why would Erick be complaining about the supposed high price of milk and bread unless he found a way to blame Obama for it?
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: I get cereal from Trader Joe’s, or buy national brand stuff only when on sale. I can’t help it. It’s pretty much my favorite food.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Anonymous also hacked rain’s website and found it has strong ties to water and clouds.
ranchandsyrup
@Roger Moore: Unfortunately EE’s stream of consciousness lacks social conscience.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
Given that Mandela is still hospitalised in critical condition, it might be for the best if he were spared the strain of meeting Obama.
David Hunt
@Yatsuno: I sometime think that this has already happened. It’s just that (depending on your personal views) it either went on too long or didn’t go on long enough.
Redshirt
@David Hunt: Doubleplusgood, y’all.
Ted & Hellen
@Amir Khalid:
Ah jeez…here we go.
It’s always the bitter, jealous ones who have suppressed their own creativity all their lives, who lash out.
I enjoy it though.
Besides, I didn’t say what I create is any good. Lots of people pay good money for lousy art though, so I’m happy.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it!
I hear Paula Deen recommends it, what more could you ask for?
gene108
@Hoodie:
North Carolina was never as bad as the worst of the Southern states, with regards to race relations. There was an effort to actually invest in the state after WW2, with the formation of the UNC System and funding the DOT to build roads.
I’m not surprised some of the bigger screw balls are transplants. Yankees never had to deal with blacks, on a day to day basis, the way folks did in the South, so there’s as big or bigger a barrier to them accepting minorities, i.e. see Boston school integration in 1975, 21 years after Brown v. Board of Education.
Also, only certain counties in North Carolina had to deal with Sec 5 per-clearance.
http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/sec_5/about.php
I just hope the NC Democrats can get their shit together and mount some kind of challenge to the GOP Legislature in 2014.
Comrade Dread
@Southern Beale: Come on, he was probably just looking for a few contributors to a newsletter he plans on putting out.
Which he will never read.
Or exercise editorial power over.
Even though his name will be on it.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
There is that.
Although NYTimes reports Mr. Mandela opened his eyes and smiled when he heard Obama was arriving in a few days.
PBO leaving a meeting, or not, to the Mandela family.
SFAW
@Ted & Hellen:
Fixed.
Southern Beale
@Roger Moore:
Not just paying for advertising, they have to pay for premium shelf space. Otherwise your product gets put on the bottom shelf where no one will see it or buy it. Now THAT’S a racket and a half.
FREEDOM!!!!!
There’s entirely too much stuff out there IMHO. When I go to a “regular” store not the hippie grocery store, I find the vast array of choices overwhelming and defeating. If I’m presented with 50 different brands of cereal I decide, fuckit, I’ll have some goddamned yogurt.
catclub
@Southern Beale: There was a blurb in Political Animal witha title like “Why don’t Southern Senators Demand that TVA be privatized?” It was funny how unpopular such a move would be. They make efforts to distance themselves from even the Study of it that was commissioned.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
For the most part, that seems right. I vaguely recall some instance when they hacked a private account, but it might not have been the real Anonymous.
libarbarian
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
To Quote Colbert:
If being poor is such a money party, where is the financial incentive to get rich?
Yatsuno
@Southern Beale: QUELLE HORREUR!!! No sign of Senator Aqua Buddha showing anywhere? I have this funny feeling that apple will not fall far from that tree.
Southern Beale
Gov. Mike Pence is deleteing pro-gay comments from his FB page.
I have a feeling as news of this spreads, they’ll have a hard time keeping up.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Coincidentally, I’ve been poring over my electricity use in anticipation of speaking with solar contractors about getting some dang PV panels on my roof (take that, triple-digit weather for the next week!). Our utility installed smart meters so now I have a couple years of usage data, by the hour. My modest goal is keeping our onthly use under the tier 2 threshold, because that’s where the rate nearly doubles. I’ve always wondered what my minimum and maximum consumption is, and when. Now I know.
I expect some supplly issues, statewide related to closing San Onofre, but with the many big solar projects planned and under construction, there should be at least a partial replacement for that supply reasonably soon. I don’t know whether terminating the contract with Ried Gardner (Nevada coal plant) has a greater impact coupled with San Onofre…it might during peak use periods.
More solar, more wind, more fast-start peaking plants, California should be okay so long as we can keep reilable hydro. After the last two winters I wonder about that one.
ranchandsyrup
If we’re piling on NC, Charles Pierce shows the latest insanity they’re pulling with unemployment benefits: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Bastards_Out_Of_Carolina
The prophet Nostradumbass
I’d say that the proper response to anything T&H says is what Nancy Pelosi said when asked to respond to Michele Bachmann’s unhinged ranting: “Who cares?”
Trollhattan
@quannlace:
If we could get Christie to sit on
the stickCoulter, that “dead to me” could easily be reversed.Amir Khalid
I’m genuinely curious: just how is premium milk different from regular milk for hoi polloi? Is it, like, from a special breed of cows that live in five-star cattle barns and eat only fancy organic cattle feed?
Omnes Omnibus
@ranchandsyrup: NC is disqualifying itself from EUC? WTF?
? Martin
@Trollhattan: Many people can get this data straight from their utilities. It’s part of a program called ‘Green Button‘ and the data is pretty useful. Need to be somewhat technically competent to use it, but there are apps coming along to help with that.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: It appears that they figured they’d get an exemption when they passed the law, and then the exemption never came through. Whoops.
Trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
There’s no milk like Tuscan Whole Milk (handy gallon-size). If you don’t believe me, just look at the Amazon reviews.
http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/product-reviews/B00032G1S0
ranchandsyrup
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m hoping they are just being “sarcastic” like Rand Paul was on the slippery slope from SSM to marrying a liger. I don’t think they thought this through.
Omnes Omnibus
@ranchandsyrup:
Fucking wingnuts never do. People are going pay a real price if this is true.
Trollhattan
@? Martin:
I was ignorant about all the data I could get from our utility until accidentally clicking a graph when looking at our on-line account. Zut alors, data heaven!
Naturally, now that everybody has smart meters they’ve petitioned the PUC to go to a time-based rate model, meaning we’ll get hammered 5-7 p.m., just when the AC and fridges are going nuts (in summer).
Tone in DC
@Omnes Omnibus:
LULz.
But all these sterling examples of uberbutthurt keep proliferating. Like Rand (Ayn) Paul, Jonah Goldberg and George Allen Jr.
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
Part of the problem is that companies feel a need to expand their range of products just to crowd out the competition. It doesn’t matter that nobody really cares about the minor differences between the products; if company A has 6 varieties and company B has only 2, A is going to get more total shelf space than B does.
I think this is a big reason people like shopping at places like Trader Joe’s. They have mostly store brands, so they don’t have a need to have a huge range of brands and varieties, only the ones that people actually care about. Because they don’t have to devote extra shelf space to too many varieties, they can have a smaller store that’s easier to get through. Their produce isn’t great, but it gives you an idea of just how wasteful a regular supermarket is.
Ted & Hellen
@SFAW:
Awww, you’re jealous and bitter too. How adorbs.
ranchandsyrup
@Omnes Omnibus: Sadly, yes. But for the wingnuts it’s the “right” sort of people.
burnspbesq
@Ben Cisco:
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it.
burnspbesq
@Southern Beale:
Don’t mean to rain on your revelation, and Martin can certainly speak for himself, but this gets a huge “Ya THINK???” from this OC-ite. The white supremacists are why Dana Rohrbacher’s House seat is so safe.
Tone in DC
Wingnuts? THINK?
Now, that is rather humorous. Such a Ripley’s event as this would require, like, functioning neurons.
Na. Ga. Happen.
On the topic, it’s difficult to correct these clowns. They spread their bass ackwardness all over the damn place, at breakneck speed, and reasonable people have to play catch up. They are pretty much FAILblog made flesh.
Ksmiami
@Southern Beale: because the reality of choice is that most cereals are rearranged corn and sugar molecules that leave a customer exhausted and bewildered.
burnspbesq
@quannlace:
God forgive me for what I’m about to say, but … maybe he’s too fat to do it in her favorite position.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
It’s probably organic milk, which means it comes from cattle that aren’t routinely given antibiotics and are fed organic hay. It’s modestly more expensive, and a lot of people say they like the flavor better. I’m suspicious that the flavor preference is more because it’s routinely ultrapasteurized to extend its shelf life (and incidentally add a cooked taste that some people like) than because of anything special about the flavor of the milk before treatment.
There are other extra-expensive milks out there. I like the non-homogenized milk. It’s generally treated less than other milk and has a somewhat shorter shelf life, which makes it more expensive. The really expensive stuff- where it’s available at all- is raw milk.
burnspbesq
@Trollhattan:
OK, now we’re gonna have a milk throw-down.
Horizon Organic!
Southern Beale
@Roger Moore:
Also, this is exactly why I want to guzzle anti-freeze when some Republican nitwit tells me with great enthusiasm that their brilliant idea is for me to SHOP for my healthcare!!!!
God I fucking hate to shop. That is the absolute LAST thing I want to do when it comes to healthcare. And insurance, too, BTW.
Trollhattan
@burnspbesq:
It’s on, baby, can your Horizon inspire this?
http://www.amazon.com/review/RXXPVOUH9NLL3/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#RXXPVOUH9NLL3
Jay C
For me, Brad DeLong deserves the prize of the Internets for today just for this:
Not sure what it means, but funny as hell…
Scott S.
@The prophet Nostradumbass: T&H is impotent in every sense of the word. Unable to affect anything outside of a single blog’s comment threads. Impotent and weak.
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
The idea of shopping for health insurance is vaguely plausible until you start looking into the details. It would work if there were a minimum standard for what policies covered, which is why PPACA is trying to make sure we have exactly that. Shopping for health care, OTOH, is just crazy. Health care providers can take literally years after a hospital stay to decide exactly how much it cost, so there’s no way in hell that a patient could make an informed purchasing decision in advance. And that’s assuming the patient has a chance to make a decision and isn’t rushed to the hospital unconscious.
MattF
@Jay C: Brooks, describing his first meeting with Obama:
“Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me. […] I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”
MattF
@Jay C: Brooks, describing his first meeting with Obama:
“Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me. […] I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”
Jay C
@MattF:
O.
M.
F.
G!
That’s where it came from?
Proving yet again, David Brooks is almost absolutely protected against most criticism: primarily by being more of a parody of himself than anyone else could hope to craft….
johnny aquitard
@burnspbesq:
Too fat for pegging?
Omnes Omnibus
@johnny aquitard:
I don’t want to look up pegging, do I?
hells littlest angel
@johnny aquitard:
Ai yi yi. You’d need two extra people just to shoulder his butt cheeks apart.
SFAW
@burnspbesq:
Either that, or he’s not into guys who try to pass for gals.
SFAW
@MattF:
What’s truly astounding about that quote is that someone who (theoretically) writes for a living should have a better command of grammer. “Better than me”? Unless less he was trying to say that Obama knew political philosophy better than Obama knew Bobo, that’s a pretty poor command of the language.
Maybe Chunky Bobo will supplant Brooksie after all?
SFAW
@Ted & Hellen:
Well, coming from a self-taught expert in both areas, as you apparently are, I am honored. Or somethijng.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@burnspbesq:
I loves me some Horizon Organic. Do not care what it costs.
KmCO
@Steeplejack (tablet): Here in Colorado, you cannot beat Organic Valley. Hell, even their 1% is pretty damn tasty.
Mnemosyne
@KmCO:
I get Organic Valley here in So Cal. They make a lactose-free version, too, which my tummy sometimes needs (though, generally speaking, organic milk seems to bother my bowels less than mass-produced milk).
nwithers
@Omnes Omnibus:
No. No you dont.
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
Jealous? Of what?
SFAW
@A Humble Lurker:
Of, y’know, stuff!
Elizabelle
@MattF:
Here’s the link for the Bobo “Obama had creased pants” observation. It’s a Gabriel Sherman profile of Brooks, from The New Republic.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/the-courtship