I’m sure there are more important things to write about, but this Canadian plan to create an optical illusion of a child in lieu of speed bumps is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. My guess is that they’ll be painted over the first time a little girl in a blue hoodie chasing a pink ball is run over by a desensitized driver.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
Hearing From Both Sides
Rosen’s clearly not a serious person, since he won’t participate in this important national debate.
In other news from our evenhanded media, Politico has decided to hire opinion columnists. Mike Kinsley will play the liberal, while Joe Scarborough takes the role of the conservative.
“Both Mike and Joe will write from an ideological perspective—something our current reporters and columnists do not do—and their work will be labeled accordingly,” Harris and VandeHei wrote. “They’ll both write on what interests them, and will not attempt to coordinate their columns. While they won’t be working in a classic point/counterpoint format (“Mike, you ignorant slut”) they will look for ways to engage each other in conversation from time to time.”
I don’t know what’s more clueless in this passage: the 70’s SNL reference, or the insistence that Politico doesn’t have an ideological perspective. Politco’s ideology was pretty well pegged by Rosen earlier this year.
Update: Here’s another perspective: Fred Phelps’ daughter is pissed because Fred’s already been burning Qurans left and right.
Beautiful Ugliness
I’m skeptical, but I trust the source of this piece arguing that Australia’s version of Ben Nelson, Tony Windsor, cast the deciding vote to enable a Labor coalition government because Labor is planning nationwide fiber broadband. That said, according to the AP, the story is a bit more complicated:
The last two independents to agree to support Gillard’s government, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, are former members of the conservative Nationals party, which is part of Abbott’s coalition.
Gillard rewarded the two rural-based lawmakers by promising 10 billion Australian dollars ($9 billion) in new investment for rural schools and hospitals.
She has also offered Oakeshott a Cabinet post, which he had yet to accept.
Oakeshott said on Tuesday that governing with the support of four lawmakers from outside Labor would be “ugly, but it’s going to be beautiful in its ugliness.”
A guy who can spin like that deserves a Cabinet post, at a minimum.
School/Car Culture
This WSJ piece by Lenore Skenazy examines the the absurdity of the new normal: kids can’t walk to school. In addition to wasting gas and parents’ time, it encourages sedentary behavior. But there’s another side effect that she doesn’t mention: it makes all the teenagers sleep deprived.
It’s the first day of school in my burg, and the streets are lined with sleepy teenagers waiting for the bus. School starts at 7:20 for them, a schedule dictated in part by the need to run buses in shifts so the high, middle and elementary schools can use the same set of buses.
Early start times are bad for teenagers, and school districts that start later report good results, but it’s hard to change a culture that believes that a child walking to school is a kid in grave danger. (via)
Just the Narrative, Ma’am
From the headline (“Obama Against a Compromise on Extension of Bush Tax Cuts“) to the horse race frame and conventional wisdom narrative, this Times front-page article is a pure distillation of the stupid analysis we’re going to see for the next two months:
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.
Mr. Obama’s opposition to allowing the high-end tax cuts to remain in place for even another year or two would be the signal many Congressional Democrats have been awaiting as they prepare for a showdown with Republicans on the issue and ends speculation that the White House might be open to an extension. Democrats say only the president can rally wavering lawmakers who, amid the party’s weakened poll numbers, feel increasingly vulnerable to Republican attacks if they let the top rates lapse at the end of this year as scheduled.
It is not clear that Mr. Obama can prevail given his own diminished popularity, the tepid economic recovery and the divisions within his party. But by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.
Perhaps I’m just a partisan to point this out, but since when is it a “compromise” to give Republicans everything they want, why is it a dirty word (“populism”) to let tax cuts on the rich expire, and can we ever have a mention of Obama’s “diminished popularity” that points out that it still beats other recent presidents facing recessions in their first term?
More importantly, if the new narrative is that everything Obama proposes after Labor Day merits the adjective “election-season”, where has the DC media been for the past 18 months? We’ve had a record level of obstruction from Republicans in hopes that they’d be able to kill or water down the Democrats’ legislative agenda. For the GOP, every day has been the day before election day, yet now we’re supposed to discount the next two months of the Obama administration’s proposals as “election-season” politics.
Daley
I’m no expert on Chicago politics, but I lived there for a few years while Harold Washington was mayor and still remember the day he dropped dead in office. I’m a little surprised that Richard M. isn’t going to follow in Harold and his father’s footsteps, but I will say this: there’s no way in hell that Rahm Emanuel is going to get that job. If you look at the history of Chicago mayors, they’re all local creatures. Harold’s a bit of a special case, since he had a couple of terms in the U.S. House, but he did that because he never believed that he could be mayor. The rest of them were state legislators, or city/county office holders, before ascending to the throne. Rahm just hasn’t greased enough local palms to get the job.
The Fight has Just Begun
I was out running an errand and saw the first bumpersticker for the Republican running in my Congressional district (NY-29, formerly Eric Massa’s). I have yet to see a yard sign or a TV ad from either candidate. I can count the local media stories about the race on both hands with fingers to spare. So, even though the DC media is helpfully throwing in the towel for every Democrat in Congress, this campaign has just begun. And Democrats have done some popular things that should be part of stump speeches. Here’s a taste:
When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save jobs — the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and nurses and police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said no. (Applause.) And the Republican who thinks he’s going to take over as Speaker — (boos) — I’m just saying that’s his opinion — (laughter) — he’s entitled to his opinion. But when he was asked about this, he dismissed those jobs as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving. (Boos.) That’s what he said, I’m quoting — “government jobs.”
Now, think about this. These are the people who teach our children. These are the people who keep our streets safe. These are the people who put their lives on the line, who rush into a burning building. Government jobs? I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving. (Applause.) I think those jobs are worth saving. (Applause.)
By the way, this bill that we passed to save all those jobs, we made sure that bill wouldn’t add to the deficit. You know how we paid for it? By closing one of these ridiculous tax loopholes that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. (Applause.)
I mean, this — this was one of those loopholes that allowed companies to write off taxes they pay to foreign governments –- even though they weren’t paying taxes here in the United States. So middle-class families were footing tax breaks for companies creating jobs somewhere else. I mean, even a lot of America’s biggest corporations agreed that this loophole didn’t make sense, agreed that it needed to be closed, agreed that it wasn’t fair -– but the man who thinks he’s going to be Speaker, he wants to reopen this loophole. (Boos.)
While Democrats could have been doing better during the past few months, the fact remains that John Boehner is not popular, that doing nothing in the middle of an almost-depression is not popular, that sneering at teachers, cops and firemen is not popular, and that tax cuts for those making $250K or more are not popular. There’s a case to be made here, Obama made it, and Democrats will be making it in the next two months. I am not ready to write off the House, because this campaign is just getting started.