That might not have been the nap that Gotham wanted, but damn if it wasn’t the nap that Gotham needed. Of course, now Gotham has keyboard-shaped welts on its face.
@pamelabrown53: Yeah I had to do a little googling to get to the original twitter feed, Cole should have posted a link. Somebody posted a thing about how people are splooging themselves over this new poll, a journalist asked what splooge means, and got that response.
13.
Jeffro
@Mandalay: 7/4: “It benefits me politically to look tough by standing up to the SCLM”
7/24: “It benefits me politically to look tough by standing up to a RINO”
Speaking of keeping up with important stories in the media, does anyone know the best link to follow Berke Breathed’s new Bloom County strips?
So far what I’ve found is if I go to his FB page and click on the Photos area, I’ll find some “Bloom County 2015” strips interspersed randomly with new photos, old photos, and old strips. Doesn’t seem to be any particular order, and sometimes I’ll have to scroll through a couple dozen pics to find one of the new 2015 ones.
Maybe it’s because I’m only an occasional FB user so I really don’t know what tools it makes available to make this easier. Do I have to subscribe to Breathed or something? Other than FB, I haven’t found anywhere he’s actually releasing these.
Oh..I was mistaken. Jeb doesn’t want to do away with Medicare…he just wants to turn it into a VOUCHER PROGRAM. Silly me for not understanding THAT brilliant idea.
…………………….
Jeb Bush now says he wouldn’t ‘phase out’ Medicare. What he would do is just as wrong
By Paul Waldman July 24 at 12:24 PM
It had to happen sooner or later: a Republican presidential candidate says something suggesting he’d destroy Medicare, the Democrats jump all over him, and he backtracks, saying that’s not what he meant and in fact he only wants to strengthen it. This time it’s Jeb Bush, who said the other day that though we can keep Medicare around for the people who are currently on it, “we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something – because they’re not going to have anything.”
This is an old argument from Republicans, one they also use to justify attacks on Social Security: the program is doomed anyway, so we should go ahead and privatize it. The argument is completely wrong with regard to Social Security, and the truth about Medicare is that the program’s future is looking brighter and brighter — in no small part because of the Affordable Care Act. The argument Bush is making is ten years out of date.
Bush did try to walk back his statement a bit, saying the “phase out” part was taken out of context and he’s only talking about how we “reform our entitlement system.” Here’s his follow-up, which doesn’t change the essence of what he was arguing:
……………….
Bush hasn’t yet released his plan to phase out/reform Medicare, but given these comments it seems likely he’ll embrace something like what Paul Ryan has been advocating for years. It involves changing Medicare from a guaranteed single-payer government insurance plan into a voucher plan, in which the government gives senior citizens a set amount of money with which they can go out and get private health insurance. It saves money by limiting the value of that voucher, so if it’s less than what coverage actually costs, well, tough luck. In that way, it eliminates the central promise of Medicare, which is that every American senior citizen will have health coverage.
Why Scott Walker is so dangerous
By Dana Milbank Opinion writer July 23 at 10:19 PM
SAN DIEGO — “First off,” Scott Walker proclaimed, “we took on the unions, and we won. We won!”
Taking on the unions is usually first off for Walker, the Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate. It is the very rationale for his candidacy. And on Thursday, he took a detour from the campaign trail to appear here before the annual meeting of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators dedicated in large part to defeating unions.
ALEC, which inspired many of Walker’s anti-labor efforts in Wisconsin, drew several hundred union protesters as legislators arrived here this week for its annual conference — and this delighted Walker. “I understand you had a few protesters yesterday,” he told the conservative legislators. “For us, that’s just getting warmed up. That’s nothing. We got 100,000 protesters.”
Walker then went on to celebrate his triumphs over the demonstrators who objected to his dismantling of Wisconsin’s public-sector unions, portraying the pro-union forces as violent thugs. “Those big government interests — they believe they can win by intimidating elected officials,” he said. “There were amazing things they did to try to intimidate us. The good news is we didn’t back down. We remembered the reason we were elected was not to serve the few in our state capitol, but to serve the masses.”
This is the essence of Walker’s appeal — and why he is so dangerous. He is not as outrageous as Donald Trump and Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), but his technique of scapegoating unions for the nation’s ills is no less demagogic. Sixty-five years ago, another man from Wisconsin made himself a national reputation by frightening the country about the menace of communists, though the actual danger they represented was negligible. Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy, but his technique is similar: He suggests that the nation’s ills can be cured by fighting labor unions (foremost among the “big government special interests” hurting America), even though unions represent just 11 percent of the American workforce and have been at a low ebb.
NOT ONE of the GOPers has condemned Trump for his insults towards Latinos.
You don’t think they see the SILENCE from the other GOP Candidates?
Is it just me?
…………………………..
Morning Plum: How Donald Trump could end up helping Republicans
By Greg Sargent July 24 at 9:20 AM
Let’s get started with the read of the morning: This piece by Ed O’Keefe documenting the Hispanic media’s treatment of Donald Trump. The coverage is being seen as a sign of how Trump is damaging the GOP. But I think this actually presents Republicans with an opportunity.
I’ll just quote from it:
Donald Trump’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border dominated the airwaves on Thursday — in English and Spanish.
While the national newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC covered Trump’s visit to Laredo, Tex., coverage of the GOP presidential candidate dominated the national news broadcasts on Univision and Telemundo. Republicans fearful of how Trump is hurting the party’s image with the nation’s fast-growing Latino voting population need only play back Thursday night’s broadcasts as proof….
“The magnate said that the United States needs a wall that divides it from Mexico,” co-anchor Jorge Ramos told viewers at the top of his “Noticiero Univision,” the more popular of the two newscasts…
Jose Diaz-Balart, the co-anchor of “Noticiero Telemundo,” anchored his newscast live from Laredo and told viewers that “Trump declared to the press that he’s certain of the Latino vote and insisted that he hasn’t insulted anyone.”…
During one of the two news conferences Trump held in Texas, Diaz-Balart reminded the candidate that 53,000 Hispanics turn 18 each month and that many are offended by his suggestion that Mexicans crossing the border are rapists or criminals.
That demographic reality is pretty daunting, and the projected growth of the Latino vote share over time has some Republicans calling on the party to change course and get serious about broadening its appeal.
As Charles Pierce often notes when he describes that Kochsucking piece of shit, he “stood up to the unions” by hiding in his office behind an impregnable wall of security personnel. Not exactly storming the beaches of Normandy.
24.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Walker: “Fighting unions is good prep for fighting ISIS”
Cruz: “Unfreezing long-held Iranian assets (as part of the nuke deal) means Obama is funding terrorism”
They’ll make for quite the complementary pair, these two.
25.
Mike J
Another tweet: Theater shooter was a fan of Andrew Sullivan’s favorite book, The Bell Curve.
they continue to vote against their own economic self-interest…
and, I’m supposed to care, because….
FYI: NON-Whites?
61 -29 Democrats….
Uh huh
………………………………………….
The Democratic Party’s problem with blue collar whites, in one chart
By Greg Sargent
It’s now widely predicted that the 2016 election will be fought heavily around the idea that the economy works far better for the wealthy than it does for working and middle class Americans, who are being left behind by stagnating wages, stalled economic opportunity, and a recovery that’s disproportionately rewarding top earners.
One subplot of that storyline centers on a corollary question. Can Democrats perform better among non-college whites in 2016 than they did in 2012, by fielding a candidate (say, Hillary Clinton) who enjoys a greater cultural affinity with those voters than Barack Obama did, and by speaking directly to their sense that the economy has been rigged for many years against them?
The new Washington Post/ABC News poll starkly illustrates the challenge Democrats face in this regard. It turns out that an overwhelming majority of non-college whites believes the U.S. economic system is stacked in favor of the rich — but far more of those voters also think Republicans, not Democrats, have better ideas to address that problem.
The Post/ABC poll finds that 68 percent of Americans think the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy rather than being fair to most Americans (only 27 percent believe the latter). Some 69 percent of white non-college voters believe it favors the wealthy, somewhat higher than the 61 percent of white college-educated voters who believe the same.
But look how non-college whites break down on the question of which party has the better ideas to make the economic system fairer:
Non-college whites overwhelmingly believe the economic system is not fair to most Americans, but substantially more of them prefer GOP ideas on what to do about it. By contrast, other groups are much more evenly divided on this question. Among college-educated whites, Republicans lead by a much smaller 46-38. Independents are almost exactly split. And in a bit of good news for Dems, moderates favor their ideas by 45-34. But among non-college whites, GOP ideas enjoy a 21 point advantage.
Nope, it is all of Univision and Telemundo viewers, too. I noted elsewhere that they are covering Trump very harshly. That mostly Goes under the radar for white USA.
@Mandalay: didn’t Walker leave the firefighters and police unions alone because they are true Americans? I thought he just went after the teachers unions and state university budgets because everyone hated their teachers and profs, right.
@rikyrah:
which is why we have to make this our cheer — everybody now — you say voucher, I say coupon, voucher! Coupon!
34.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: I knew that wasn’t right so I looked it up and it turns out Rubio strongly condemned his remarks, while Jeb! gave a milquetoast statement. Rick Perry said “I was offended.” As far as I can tell, the rest were mum (eta: or agreed with him):
@rikyrah: That demo is gone. Fuggedaboudit. I don’t care if they’re just stubborn cusses, born losers, religious nitwits or kochsuckers. They’ve got their heads up their asses and they like it that way.
Something to remember at canvassing time, as often mr white blue collar R votin’ man is married to reliably D voting woman, and talking to her without getting his back up can be tricky sometimes. (Sometimes she makes more money than him, too, that whole finishing school thing is big.)
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, did his best Donald Trump impersonation Friday, dramatically calling out his own party leader as a “liar.”
40.
Howard Beale IV
ICYMI: Jonathan Pollard’s being released….
41.
Mandalay
@Another Holocene Human: Not only were the responses of the Republican candidates pretty tepid, but they were delayed, waiting to see how the public reacted first. The same thing happened over the confederate flag: they only became outraged after they realized that the rest of the nation was disgusted with both them and the flag.
But the McCain brouha was best of all: the candidates practically trampled over each other to be the first to defend McCain’s honor, only to learn afterwards that their base actually approved of Trump’s attack on McCain.
I suspect Bill Kristol must be advising all of the Republican candidates about when to be outraged and when to be indifferent because they get it wrong every time.
42.
Bobby B.
Worst job of all is mopping up all the journalism in the booths.
I am proud to be a card-carrying member of Local 32035 of the Communications Workers of America.
It was not always thus. The Post is an open shop, and I dropped my membership several years ago when the union was encouraging readers to cancel their subscriptions to protest some management action. I didn’t see much sense in paying dues to accelerate the destruction of the newspaper business.
I don’t expect to gain much personally from rejoining the union faithful, because I’m in the top decile of American wage earners who have prospered in recent years. I signed up because income inequality, after years of worsening, has reached a crisis — and the decline in union membership is partly to blame. Rejoining the labor movement is my small, symbolic protest.
51.
Gimlet
That Lafayette shooter was definitely mentally ill.
He had traits in common with a lot of people as they age. Even keeping a gun away from him, he’s a problem for family, friends and society.
Not sure what can be done for them.
52.
BillinGlendaleCA
@ruemara: Well, at least you don’t walk. Nobody walks in LA.
This is why I took the bus & trains. This shows I’m not an LA person, right?
The trains are generally a good way of avoiding traffic. Buses, not so much, though it’s hard to do one without the other unless you’re fortunate in your destinations.
Well, he got a lot of exposure for his views so he can’t say he wasn’t “heard”:
John Russell Houser, the man police say opened fire inside a Lafayette, La., movie theater on Thursday night, had boasted in an online profile that he made dozens of appearances on television talk shows.
The hosts of those shows said Friday that Houser over-stated his role, but they do remember him as an argument-starting guest who was angry about high taxes and the growing power of women.
“I had him on strictly because he was entertaining,” said Calvin Floyd, the former host of the talk show “Rise and Shine” on WLTZ NBC 38 in Columbus, Ga. “He was radical, and when you’re looking for a person on a live show, taking calls, that’s what you want.”
I love “the growing power of women”. Imagine writing “the growing power of men” :)
I agree with you, generally. I see it all the time but then I only see people who have problems. Unfortunately the gun peoples’ insistence on changing the subject from guns to mental illness makes this whole discussion hard to have.
I just had a kind of shocking experience yesterday. I saw an older man I know well and he has always spoken slowly – I figured he maybe had a stutter at some point because there were long pauses, always. I stopped and talked to him and I was really taken aback. He’s declined a lot. That space he had has lengthened to where he’s clearly impaired. It’s as if he’s losing track mid-pause. I forget that people don’t age evenly, you know what I mean? It’s not predictable. Sometimes there’s big leaps over a short span of time. I hadn’t seen him all winter and there was a dramatic change from Thanksgiving to summer.
Why are teachers only “hero teachers” when it involves evading gunfire?
Because they’re lazy, overpaid unions thugs. Or something. Charter schools are the answer for US America education of the future. Freedumb!
63.
dogwood
@rikyrah:
As far as the Democrats’ problem with non college educated whites, I’d like to see a regional breakdown before hitting the panic button. If you look at Obama’s numbers overall with white voters you’ll see the problem was with southern and deeply red western state voters. He did just fine everywhere else. None of those states will be part of the 2016 election battle, so I don’t give a shit what those white folks do.
64.
Brachiator
It turns out that an overwhelming majority of non-college whites believes the U.S. economic system is stacked in favor of the rich — but far more of those voters also think Republicans, not Democrats, have better ideas to address that problem.
This might make sense. These people know that the Republicans not only stack the deck in their own favor, they also own the deck and the casino and all the furniture in it. Perhaps they think that if they try really hard, or beg, or get lucky, the Republicans might ease up on the odds or possibly even invite them into the game.
The Republicans promise jobs and claim that they know how to bring them, even though they rarely fulfill these claims when they are elected. The Democrats promise jobs, but the infrastructure projects they love sound like temporary make work programs, and not anything that would help a graduating high school or college student or a 45 year old salesman who has been laid off recently, or a Qualcomm engineer soon facing layoff or a 35 year old married woman who has lost her job at an auto dealership.
But this is a guess and I might be totally wrong. But the press, whatever their ideological bent, can’t seem to be bothered to actually find out what people want, or why they feel the way they do. And this also applies in different ways to both political parties, which insist that they know the answer, but might have skipped the part where they show that they understand the problem. And (my bias) where the Democrats may have better answers, they are crappy about explaining them or showing how they might best be implemented to achieve the maximum result.
“I had him on strictly because he was entertaining,” said Calvin Floyd
This is the problem with media in American today. They give a platform to an awful, hateful person because it’s good for ratings. And they wonder why we despise them.
I’m not a teacher and I mostly successfully avoided them as a budding juvenile delinquent/chronic truant despite their earnest efforts, but I have come to hate the whole “hero teacher” , thank a teacher, we love teachers thing.
No, we don’t love them. If we did we’d stop yelling at them and blaming them for everything in the world.
It is bad. I have to say he’s refreshingly honest about it though. He could have said “valid viewpoint, all must be heard, there’s the pro-female side and the anti-female side, blah, blah”. That’s worse than the purely commercial people.
I’m personally sick of people who bitch about taxes. They should have to bring their returns. I don’t think a lot of these people are paying any income taxes. He was a crank and a perennial local candidate. How much income could he have had?
ha ha. This is all I can see from Sargent about Trump might help:
” But perhaps the very rough treatment of Trump in the Latino media will give fodder to those inside the GOP who are arguing for a higher awareness of how Republican policy positions and pronouncements are perceived among Latinos. ”
Yeah. Sure. That’ll happen.
@rikyrah:
One of the GOP’s ideas is to have white guys who show no evidence of having gotten a HS diploma or a GED run a crooked system that favors white guys. That approach might have an appeal for solving all sorts of problems for certain types of white guys in certain parts of the country.
On the Death of Sandra Bland and Our Vulnerable Bodies
JULY 24, 2015
I AM tired of writing about slain black people, particularly when those responsible are police officers, the very people obligated to serve and protect them. I am exhausted. I experience this specific exhaustion with alarming frequency. I am all too aware that I have the luxury of such exhaustion.
One of the greatest lies perpetrated on our culture today is the notion that dash cameras on police cruisers and body cameras on police officers are tools of justice. Video evidence, no matter the source, can document injustice, but rarely does this incontrovertible evidence keep black people safe or prevent future injustices.
Sandra Bland, 28 years old, was pulled over earlier this month in Waller County, Tex., by a state trooper, Brian T. Encinia. She was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. She shouldn’t have been pulled over but she was driving while black, and the reality is that black women and men are pulled over every day for this infraction brought about by the color of their skin.
We know a lot about Ms. Bland now. She was in the prime of her life, about to start a new job at Prairie View A&M University. She had posted on Facebook earlier this year that she was experiencing depression. She was passionate about civil rights and advocacy. According to an autopsy report, she committed suicide in her jail cell after three days. What I find particularly painful is that her bail was $5,000. Certainly, that is a lot of money, but if the public had known, we could have helped her family raise the funds to get her out.
As a black woman, I feel this tragedy through the marrow of my bones. We all should, regardless of the identities we inhabit.
I have come to hate the whole “hero teacher” , thank a teacher, we love teachers thing.
This is supposed to be a capitalist country, and the way we express our gratitude is monetary. If we really value teachers as much as we claim, you’d think we’d pay them that way.
I just had a kind of shocking experience yesterday. I saw an older man I know well…
I’m sorry to hear that. I had a similar experience with a friend at our old retirement home. I knew Ray fairly well, having talked with him almost every day for three months. He was the sharpest WW II vet you might imagine. When I visited the place a couple of weeks ago, though, I found out that Ray had started to get confused, losing things and becoming angry, blaming his best friends for things that were going wrong… His son had to move him into assisted living. But I’d seen him just a month before, and he’d been fine! Changes can happen almost incredibly suddenly, and they can be tragic.
78.
Omnes Omnibus
@mtiffany: I imagine it was annoying this same way that I found people saying thank you for your service annoying when I was a soldier. It is often a cheap throwaway gesture. If you appreciate teachers, give them what they need to do their jobs and give them some respect. If you support soldiers, thank them by not sending them to fight in stupid wars and fully fund the VA so it can help those who need it.
79.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: Even when Dem programs are directly employing them right then they jump to argle bargle.
This GOP love is an article of faith.
Which is why one looks a little lower than the fore brain for motivation here.
Racial resentment is a powerful motivator.
80.
boatboy_srq
@BillinGlendaleCA: Could it be that the smog’s playing tricks with my eyes?
One of the greatest lies perpetrated on our culture today is the notion that dash cameras on police cruisers and body cameras on police officers are tools of justice. Video evidence, no matter the source, can document injustice, but rarely does this incontrovertible evidence keep black people safe or prevent future injustices.
Indeed.
This is the physical level of why libertarianism is so wrong. There’s no prevention; only an attempt at rectification after the fact. The agro giant or big oil outfit poisons your water supply? Take them to court – but in the meantime the damage is done. Same effect here: being observed and recorded by their own equipment doesn’t make the LEOs behave reasonably (although being observed and recorded by other people’s equipment seems to make them behave worse): all it does is document their bad behavior so somebody sometime might see it and mumble something appropriate and sympathetic. One suspects that the dashcams are largely ignored because the LEOs are able to convince themselves (as the PoS that arrested Bland seems to have done) that there’ll be a friendly tech back at the motor pool or in computer forensics that will “adjust” whatever the cam records.
82.
dogwood
@mtiffany:
My teaching gig was great. Generally middle class working class kids. Parents were no problem until we got phones and email. Then they liked to use email to “check in”. which is code for “aren’t you impressed that I’m such a concerned parent?” Fortunately there weren’t too many of them.
83.
Joel
@Kay: Did you ever catch the TAL on the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California?
Consider: obsessed with women gaining power in society
erratic, signs of mental instability
commits his crime during airing of a movie that is everything MRA’s hate–an outspoken feminist comic (!) who is unabashedly heterosexually active
Major Major Major Major
Completely unrelated:
That might not have been the nap that Gotham wanted, but damn if it wasn’t the nap that Gotham needed. Of course, now Gotham has keyboard-shaped welts on its face.
I’m Gotham in this scenario.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Sitting here twiddling my thumbs while waiting for my sister in law to arrive with a carload of kids so we can go to the Science Center.
I don’t know why even people who live in So Cal never believe me about how bad traffic is around here, but they never do. Sigh.
Roger Moore
What is this, competitive bigfooting?
KG
@Mnemosyne (tablet): where is “around here”? and i think most of us native So Cal folks are just used to it… like how 65 degrees is cold.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (tablet): @KG: I think it depends on where you live in SoCal.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: It’s a new Olympic sport.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: It’s a FIBA (Fédération Internationale de Bigfooting Association) match. Don’t we need Richard Mayhew here to referee?
Mandalay
Ted Cruz on July 4:
Ted Cruz on July 24:
So that went pretty well for him. He lasted almost three weeks.
srv
You liberals and your meme things. Maybe the reason so many Americans can’t work with you is because they never know what you are talking about.
So many twits on this twitter thing of yours.
Major Major Major Major
@srv: You don’t know what ‘splooge’ means? Even just from context it could only be a few things.
pamelabrown53
@Major Major Major Major:
What context? I think Cole is hilarious but I’d really appreciate more context and more satiric analysis. Just expand a tad, John Cole?
Major Major Major Major
@pamelabrown53: Yeah I had to do a little googling to get to the original twitter feed, Cole should have posted a link. Somebody posted a thing about how people are splooging themselves over this new poll, a journalist asked what splooge means, and got that response.
Jeffro
@Mandalay: 7/4: “It benefits me politically to look tough by standing up to the SCLM”
7/24: “It benefits me politically to look tough by standing up to a RINO”
His PAC has 47M reasons that says he’s right.
AnonPhenom
@srv:
Here, let me google that for you
Randy P
Speaking of keeping up with important stories in the media, does anyone know the best link to follow Berke Breathed’s new Bloom County strips?
So far what I’ve found is if I go to his FB page and click on the Photos area, I’ll find some “Bloom County 2015” strips interspersed randomly with new photos, old photos, and old strips. Doesn’t seem to be any particular order, and sometimes I’ll have to scroll through a couple dozen pics to find one of the new 2015 ones.
Maybe it’s because I’m only an occasional FB user so I really don’t know what tools it makes available to make this easier. Do I have to subscribe to Breathed or something? Other than FB, I haven’t found anywhere he’s actually releasing these.
Shakezula
Hey now, let’s not tar everyone with the same tire-swingy brush.
Lavocat
Or, rather:
“Facials: It’s like journalism only less messy and far more dignified.”
Funny, I have always called the effluent spewing from the Network News’ Talking Heads’ pieholes “splooge”.
As in, “There goes Brian Williams on a splooge-tear again.”
Sploogerific, dude.
Turgidson
@Mandalay:
To Tailgunner Ted, McConnell is a no-good backstabbing RINO, not a real Republican. So insults can fly freely.
rikyrah
Oh..I was mistaken. Jeb doesn’t want to do away with Medicare…he just wants to turn it into a VOUCHER PROGRAM. Silly me for not understanding THAT brilliant idea.
…………………….
Jeb Bush now says he wouldn’t ‘phase out’ Medicare. What he would do is just as wrong
By Paul Waldman July 24 at 12:24 PM
It had to happen sooner or later: a Republican presidential candidate says something suggesting he’d destroy Medicare, the Democrats jump all over him, and he backtracks, saying that’s not what he meant and in fact he only wants to strengthen it. This time it’s Jeb Bush, who said the other day that though we can keep Medicare around for the people who are currently on it, “we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something – because they’re not going to have anything.”
This is an old argument from Republicans, one they also use to justify attacks on Social Security: the program is doomed anyway, so we should go ahead and privatize it. The argument is completely wrong with regard to Social Security, and the truth about Medicare is that the program’s future is looking brighter and brighter — in no small part because of the Affordable Care Act. The argument Bush is making is ten years out of date.
Bush did try to walk back his statement a bit, saying the “phase out” part was taken out of context and he’s only talking about how we “reform our entitlement system.” Here’s his follow-up, which doesn’t change the essence of what he was arguing:
……………….
Bush hasn’t yet released his plan to phase out/reform Medicare, but given these comments it seems likely he’ll embrace something like what Paul Ryan has been advocating for years. It involves changing Medicare from a guaranteed single-payer government insurance plan into a voucher plan, in which the government gives senior citizens a set amount of money with which they can go out and get private health insurance. It saves money by limiting the value of that voucher, so if it’s less than what coverage actually costs, well, tough luck. In that way, it eliminates the central promise of Medicare, which is that every American senior citizen will have health coverage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/07/24/jeb-bush-now-says-he-wouldnt-phase-out-medicare-what-he-would-do-is-just-as-wrong/
rikyrah
Milbank making sense?
…………………….
Why Scott Walker is so dangerous
By Dana Milbank Opinion writer July 23 at 10:19 PM
SAN DIEGO — “First off,” Scott Walker proclaimed, “we took on the unions, and we won. We won!”
Taking on the unions is usually first off for Walker, the Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate. It is the very rationale for his candidacy. And on Thursday, he took a detour from the campaign trail to appear here before the annual meeting of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators dedicated in large part to defeating unions.
ALEC, which inspired many of Walker’s anti-labor efforts in Wisconsin, drew several hundred union protesters as legislators arrived here this week for its annual conference — and this delighted Walker. “I understand you had a few protesters yesterday,” he told the conservative legislators. “For us, that’s just getting warmed up. That’s nothing. We got 100,000 protesters.”
Walker then went on to celebrate his triumphs over the demonstrators who objected to his dismantling of Wisconsin’s public-sector unions, portraying the pro-union forces as violent thugs. “Those big government interests — they believe they can win by intimidating elected officials,” he said. “There were amazing things they did to try to intimidate us. The good news is we didn’t back down. We remembered the reason we were elected was not to serve the few in our state capitol, but to serve the masses.”
This is the essence of Walker’s appeal — and why he is so dangerous. He is not as outrageous as Donald Trump and Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), but his technique of scapegoating unions for the nation’s ills is no less demagogic. Sixty-five years ago, another man from Wisconsin made himself a national reputation by frightening the country about the menace of communists, though the actual danger they represented was negligible. Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy, but his technique is similar: He suggests that the nation’s ills can be cured by fighting labor unions (foremost among the “big government special interests” hurting America), even though unions represent just 11 percent of the American workforce and have been at a low ebb.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-scott-walker-is-so-dangerous/2015/07/23/8b462bea-3182-11e5-97ae-30a30cca95d7_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b
NobodySpecial
@Randy P: His FB is the only way to follow it. He posts the strips on an irregular schedule as far as day, but always at 6 AM CST.
rikyrah
See, the thing is…
NOT ONE of the GOPers has condemned Trump for his insults towards Latinos.
You don’t think they see the SILENCE from the other GOP Candidates?
Is it just me?
…………………………..
Morning Plum: How Donald Trump could end up helping Republicans
By Greg Sargent July 24 at 9:20 AM
Let’s get started with the read of the morning: This piece by Ed O’Keefe documenting the Hispanic media’s treatment of Donald Trump. The coverage is being seen as a sign of how Trump is damaging the GOP. But I think this actually presents Republicans with an opportunity.
I’ll just quote from it:
Donald Trump’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border dominated the airwaves on Thursday — in English and Spanish.
While the national newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC covered Trump’s visit to Laredo, Tex., coverage of the GOP presidential candidate dominated the national news broadcasts on Univision and Telemundo. Republicans fearful of how Trump is hurting the party’s image with the nation’s fast-growing Latino voting population need only play back Thursday night’s broadcasts as proof….
“The magnate said that the United States needs a wall that divides it from Mexico,” co-anchor Jorge Ramos told viewers at the top of his “Noticiero Univision,” the more popular of the two newscasts…
Jose Diaz-Balart, the co-anchor of “Noticiero Telemundo,” anchored his newscast live from Laredo and told viewers that “Trump declared to the press that he’s certain of the Latino vote and insisted that he hasn’t insulted anyone.”…
During one of the two news conferences Trump held in Texas, Diaz-Balart reminded the candidate that 53,000 Hispanics turn 18 each month and that many are offended by his suggestion that Mexicans crossing the border are rapists or criminals.
That demographic reality is pretty daunting, and the projected growth of the Latino vote share over time has some Republicans calling on the party to change course and get serious about broadening its appeal.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/07/24/morning-plum-how-donald-trump-could-end-up-helping-republicans/
Turgidson
@rikyrah:
As Charles Pierce often notes when he describes that Kochsucking piece of shit, he “stood up to the unions” by hiding in his office behind an impregnable wall of security personnel. Not exactly storming the beaches of Normandy.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Walker: “Fighting unions is good prep for fighting ISIS”
Cruz: “Unfreezing long-held Iranian assets (as part of the nuke deal) means Obama is funding terrorism”
They’ll make for quite the complementary pair, these two.
Mike J
Another tweet: Theater shooter was a fan of Andrew Sullivan’s favorite book, The Bell Curve.
https://twitter.com/Hatewatch/status/624595990176083973/photo/1
rikyrah
they continue to vote against their own economic self-interest…
and, I’m supposed to care, because….
FYI: NON-Whites?
61 -29 Democrats….
Uh huh
………………………………………….
The Democratic Party’s problem with blue collar whites, in one chart
By Greg Sargent
It’s now widely predicted that the 2016 election will be fought heavily around the idea that the economy works far better for the wealthy than it does for working and middle class Americans, who are being left behind by stagnating wages, stalled economic opportunity, and a recovery that’s disproportionately rewarding top earners.
One subplot of that storyline centers on a corollary question. Can Democrats perform better among non-college whites in 2016 than they did in 2012, by fielding a candidate (say, Hillary Clinton) who enjoys a greater cultural affinity with those voters than Barack Obama did, and by speaking directly to their sense that the economy has been rigged for many years against them?
The new Washington Post/ABC News poll starkly illustrates the challenge Democrats face in this regard. It turns out that an overwhelming majority of non-college whites believes the U.S. economic system is stacked in favor of the rich — but far more of those voters also think Republicans, not Democrats, have better ideas to address that problem.
The Post/ABC poll finds that 68 percent of Americans think the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy rather than being fair to most Americans (only 27 percent believe the latter). Some 69 percent of white non-college voters believe it favors the wealthy, somewhat higher than the 61 percent of white college-educated voters who believe the same.
But look how non-college whites break down on the question of which party has the better ideas to make the economic system fairer:
Non-college whites overwhelmingly believe the economic system is not fair to most Americans, but substantially more of them prefer GOP ideas on what to do about it. By contrast, other groups are much more evenly divided on this question. Among college-educated whites, Republicans lead by a much smaller 46-38. Independents are almost exactly split. And in a bit of good news for Dems, moderates favor their ideas by 45-34. But among non-college whites, GOP ideas enjoy a 21 point advantage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/07/22/the-democratic-partys-problem-with-blue-collar-whites-in-one-chart/
Mandalay
@rikyrah: Elizabeth Warren on Scott Walker:
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: Nice burn.
catclub
@rikyrah:
Nope, it is all of Univision and Telemundo viewers, too. I noted elsewhere that they are covering Trump very harshly. That mostly Goes under the radar for white USA.
The Thin Black Duke
@Mandalay: Thank you. That’s a great quote.
Benw
@Mandalay: didn’t Walker leave the firefighters and police unions alone because they are true Americans? I thought he just went after the teachers unions and state university budgets because everyone hated their teachers and profs, right.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Whichever version, it’s gross.
jibeaux
@rikyrah:
which is why we have to make this our cheer — everybody now — you say voucher, I say coupon, voucher! Coupon!
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: I knew that wasn’t right so I looked it up and it turns out Rubio strongly condemned his remarks, while Jeb! gave a milquetoast statement. Rick Perry said “I was offended.” As far as I can tell, the rest were mum (eta: or agreed with him):
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/04/donald-trump-marco-rubio-mexico-immigrants
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/06/trum-j06.html
And Reince Priebus flailed uselessly, as is his wont.
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Lone wolf! Mentally ill! Squirrel!
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: That demo is gone. Fuggedaboudit. I don’t care if they’re just stubborn cusses, born losers, religious nitwits or kochsuckers. They’ve got their heads up their asses and they like it that way.
Something to remember at canvassing time, as often mr white blue collar R votin’ man is married to reliably D voting woman, and talking to her without getting his back up can be tricky sometimes. (Sometimes she makes more money than him, too, that whole finishing school thing is big.)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Holocene Human: Whatever you do, DO NOT say the G word.
Another Holocene Human
Dennis Rodman endorsed Trump.
Baud
MSM or liberal blog?
Howard Beale IV
ICYMI: Jonathan Pollard’s being released….
Mandalay
@Another Holocene Human: Not only were the responses of the Republican candidates pretty tepid, but they were delayed, waiting to see how the public reacted first. The same thing happened over the confederate flag: they only became outraged after they realized that the rest of the nation was disgusted with both them and the flag.
But the McCain brouha was best of all: the candidates practically trampled over each other to be the first to defend McCain’s honor, only to learn afterwards that their base actually approved of Trump’s attack on McCain.
I suspect Bill Kristol must be advising all of the Republican candidates about when to be outraged and when to be indifferent because they get it wrong every time.
Bobby B.
Worst job of all is mopping up all the journalism in the booths.
catclub
@Howard Beale IV: wow! really?
mtiffany
@Another Holocene Human:
Was it a two-fer? Did Dennis bring his bestie Kim Jong-un along as well?
Baud
@Howard Beale IV:
Apparently it’s still speculation. He’s up for parole.
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9036809/jonathan-pollard
ruemara
@Mnemosyne (tablet): This is why I took the bus & trains. This shows I’m not an LA person, right?
Another Holocene Human
@Howard Beale IV: Just saw he’s been in stir for 30. eh, whatever.
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay: lol
JustRuss
@rikyrah: Milbank is, occasionally, quite good. Doesn’t happen often, but not unprecedented.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Like Nicholas Kristof, Dana Millbank has come around a bit on unions:
Gimlet
That Lafayette shooter was definitely mentally ill.
He had traits in common with a lot of people as they age. Even keeping a gun away from him, he’s a problem for family, friends and society.
Not sure what can be done for them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@ruemara: Well, at least you don’t walk. Nobody walks in LA.
Roger Moore
@ruemara:
The trains are generally a good way of avoiding traffic. Buses, not so much, though it’s hard to do one without the other unless you’re fortunate in your destinations.
gogol's wife
@Gimlet:
Oh, right, without the gun he’d be real dangerous to everyone.
Gimlet
@gogol’s wife:
Maybe dangerous, but I said “problem”.
They drive cars, leave stoves lit…
Kay
@Gimlet:
Well, he got a lot of exposure for his views so he can’t say he wasn’t “heard”:
I love “the growing power of women”. Imagine writing “the growing power of men” :)
Gimlet
@Kay:
Haven’t you known family, neighbors or friends of your parents that didn’t age well?
It used to be well known, they would get into an argument over something jump in the car and have an auto accident.
Baud
@Kay:
And Hillary hasn’t even been elected yet!
A guy
A twitter fight ? Lol
Elizabelle
Why are teachers only “hero teachers” when it involves evading gunfire?
Kay
@Gimlet:
I agree with you, generally. I see it all the time but then I only see people who have problems. Unfortunately the gun peoples’ insistence on changing the subject from guns to mental illness makes this whole discussion hard to have.
I just had a kind of shocking experience yesterday. I saw an older man I know well and he has always spoken slowly – I figured he maybe had a stutter at some point because there were long pauses, always. I stopped and talked to him and I was really taken aback. He’s declined a lot. That space he had has lengthened to where he’s clearly impaired. It’s as if he’s losing track mid-pause. I forget that people don’t age evenly, you know what I mean? It’s not predictable. Sometimes there’s big leaps over a short span of time. I hadn’t seen him all winter and there was a dramatic change from Thanksgiving to summer.
mtiffany
@Elizabelle:
Because they’re lazy, overpaid unions thugs. Or something. Charter schools are the answer for US America education of the future. Freedumb!
dogwood
@rikyrah:
As far as the Democrats’ problem with non college educated whites, I’d like to see a regional breakdown before hitting the panic button. If you look at Obama’s numbers overall with white voters you’ll see the problem was with southern and deeply red western state voters. He did just fine everywhere else. None of those states will be part of the 2016 election battle, so I don’t give a shit what those white folks do.
Brachiator
This might make sense. These people know that the Republicans not only stack the deck in their own favor, they also own the deck and the casino and all the furniture in it. Perhaps they think that if they try really hard, or beg, or get lucky, the Republicans might ease up on the odds or possibly even invite them into the game.
The Republicans promise jobs and claim that they know how to bring them, even though they rarely fulfill these claims when they are elected. The Democrats promise jobs, but the infrastructure projects they love sound like temporary make work programs, and not anything that would help a graduating high school or college student or a 45 year old salesman who has been laid off recently, or a Qualcomm engineer soon facing layoff or a 35 year old married woman who has lost her job at an auto dealership.
But this is a guess and I might be totally wrong. But the press, whatever their ideological bent, can’t seem to be bothered to actually find out what people want, or why they feel the way they do. And this also applies in different ways to both political parties, which insist that they know the answer, but might have skipped the part where they show that they understand the problem. And (my bias) where the Democrats may have better answers, they are crappy about explaining them or showing how they might best be implemented to achieve the maximum result.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
This is the problem with media in American today. They give a platform to an awful, hateful person because it’s good for ratings. And they wonder why we despise them.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I’m not a teacher and I mostly successfully avoided them as a budding juvenile delinquent/chronic truant despite their earnest efforts, but I have come to hate the whole “hero teacher” , thank a teacher, we love teachers thing.
No, we don’t love them. If we did we’d stop yelling at them and blaming them for everything in the world.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
It is bad. I have to say he’s refreshingly honest about it though. He could have said “valid viewpoint, all must be heard, there’s the pro-female side and the anti-female side, blah, blah”. That’s worse than the purely commercial people.
I’m personally sick of people who bitch about taxes. They should have to bring their returns. I don’t think a lot of these people are paying any income taxes. He was a crank and a perennial local candidate. How much income could he have had?
jl
@rikyrah:
ha ha. This is all I can see from Sargent about Trump might help:
” But perhaps the very rough treatment of Trump in the Latino media will give fodder to those inside the GOP who are arguing for a higher awareness of how Republican policy positions and pronouncements are perceived among Latinos. ”
Yeah. Sure. That’ll happen.
@rikyrah:
One of the GOP’s ideas is to have white guys who show no evidence of having gotten a HS diploma or a GED run a crooked system that favors white guys. That approach might have an appeal for solving all sorts of problems for certain types of white guys in certain parts of the country.
Edit:
@dogwood:
I agree.
rikyrah
On the Death of Sandra Bland and Our Vulnerable Bodies
JULY 24, 2015
I AM tired of writing about slain black people, particularly when those responsible are police officers, the very people obligated to serve and protect them. I am exhausted. I experience this specific exhaustion with alarming frequency. I am all too aware that I have the luxury of such exhaustion.
One of the greatest lies perpetrated on our culture today is the notion that dash cameras on police cruisers and body cameras on police officers are tools of justice. Video evidence, no matter the source, can document injustice, but rarely does this incontrovertible evidence keep black people safe or prevent future injustices.
Sandra Bland, 28 years old, was pulled over earlier this month in Waller County, Tex., by a state trooper, Brian T. Encinia. She was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. She shouldn’t have been pulled over but she was driving while black, and the reality is that black women and men are pulled over every day for this infraction brought about by the color of their skin.
We know a lot about Ms. Bland now. She was in the prime of her life, about to start a new job at Prairie View A&M University. She had posted on Facebook earlier this year that she was experiencing depression. She was passionate about civil rights and advocacy. According to an autopsy report, she committed suicide in her jail cell after three days. What I find particularly painful is that her bail was $5,000. Certainly, that is a lot of money, but if the public had known, we could have helped her family raise the funds to get her out.
As a black woman, I feel this tragedy through the marrow of my bones. We all should, regardless of the identities we inhabit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/opinion/on-the-death-of-sandra-bland-and-our-vulnerable-bodies.html?_r=0
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: So, you all think splooge, do ya?
Jeffro
@mtiffany:
Actually back in the day, according to Dubya’s secretary of education Rod Paige, they were “members of a terrorist organization”
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-23-paige-remarks_x.htm
So, you know, being considered overpaid thugs by right-wingers is actually a step up these days…(!)
dogwood
@Kay:
As someone who taught high school for 35 years all that teacher appreciation stuff was really annoying.
mtiffany
@Jeffro:
I had forgotten about that. Thanks for the reminder.
Allow me to correct: “‘Becuz they’re edu-fascists terrorists”
Good times…
mtiffany
@dogwood:
What was annoying? The not expecting to have to justify a bad grade to helicopter parents or the not getting shot at?
Origuy
On topic, from today’s comic page: Pardon My Planet
Roger Moore
@Kay:
This is supposed to be a capitalist country, and the way we express our gratitude is monetary. If we really value teachers as much as we claim, you’d think we’d pay them that way.
RSA
@Kay:
I’m sorry to hear that. I had a similar experience with a friend at our old retirement home. I knew Ray fairly well, having talked with him almost every day for three months. He was the sharpest WW II vet you might imagine. When I visited the place a couple of weeks ago, though, I found out that Ray had started to get confused, losing things and becoming angry, blaming his best friends for things that were going wrong… His son had to move him into assisted living. But I’d seen him just a month before, and he’d been fine! Changes can happen almost incredibly suddenly, and they can be tragic.
Omnes Omnibus
@mtiffany: I imagine it was annoying this same way that I found people saying thank you for your service annoying when I was a soldier. It is often a cheap throwaway gesture. If you appreciate teachers, give them what they need to do their jobs and give them some respect. If you support soldiers, thank them by not sending them to fight in stupid wars and fully fund the VA so it can help those who need it.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: Even when Dem programs are directly employing them right then they jump to argle bargle.
This GOP love is an article of faith.
Which is why one looks a little lower than the fore brain for motivation here.
Racial resentment is a powerful motivator.
boatboy_srq
@BillinGlendaleCA: Could it be that the smog’s playing tricks with my eyes?
boatboy_srq
@rikyrah:
Indeed.
This is the physical level of why libertarianism is so wrong. There’s no prevention; only an attempt at rectification after the fact. The agro giant or big oil outfit poisons your water supply? Take them to court – but in the meantime the damage is done. Same effect here: being observed and recorded by their own equipment doesn’t make the LEOs behave reasonably (although being observed and recorded by other people’s equipment seems to make them behave worse): all it does is document their bad behavior so somebody sometime might see it and mumble something appropriate and sympathetic. One suspects that the dashcams are largely ignored because the LEOs are able to convince themselves (as the PoS that arrested Bland seems to have done) that there’ll be a friendly tech back at the motor pool or in computer forensics that will “adjust” whatever the cam records.
dogwood
@mtiffany:
My teaching gig was great. Generally middle class working class kids. Parents were no problem until we got phones and email. Then they liked to use email to “check in”. which is code for “aren’t you impressed that I’m such a concerned parent?” Fortunately there weren’t too many of them.
Joel
@Kay: Did you ever catch the TAL on the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California?
Pretty interesting stuff. Link, here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/561/nummi-2015
Another Holocene Human
Rusty Houser = Eliot Cutler
Consider: obsessed with women gaining power in society
erratic, signs of mental instability
commits his crime during airing of a movie that is everything MRA’s hate–an outspoken feminist comic (!) who is unabashedly heterosexually active
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: I’ve considered and I have no idea what your point is.
Jeffro
@mtiffany: In all fairness to Rod, he was just trying to out-do Ari Fleischer, Mr. “Watch What You Say”