Cleek mentioned that the beer that Dakota Meyer and President Obama shared yesterday was brewed at the White House. Here’s a lot more detail on how that beer came to be, from a blog completely devoted to the food and food policy at the White House. Consider this an open thread and a beer thread.
Late Night Open Thread
Just made it back from the casino. Up a couple hundred on blackjack (actually saw some jackass split 10’s twice and managed to not punch him in the neck), and everyone had a good time.
Open Thread: More Re-Framing
(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
__
Since I worried about this on an earlier post, props to Dave Weigel for following up, and applause to Rep. Kathy Hochul, winner:
All week, I’ve been wondering if the Democratic loss in NY-9 proved that Democrats were losing entitlements as a wedge issue… Why not [ask] Kathy Hochul, the Democrat who won NY-26 largely by clobbering her Republican opponent on the Ryan plan? I asked Hochul about this after a vote this week. Her spin:
“We need to cut the underlying costs of health care, which are making Medicare more expensive. Democrats are in agreement — we talk about this all the time. We have to make sure that we get equity with respect to prescription drugs — the drug prices under Medicare are obscenely high. Why are veterans at VA hospitals paying less for prescription drugs than people who are under Medicare Part D? That’s an area we should go after. Medicare fraud is getting out of control — just look at all the prosecutions on Medicare fraud. I think we should have Medicare cover home health care. Look at the savings we’d have if we covered home health care and tele-health services. Instead, people in rural areas have to go hospitals at the dead of the night. If we look at this holistically, we can cut the underlying costs.”
__
That’s how Democrats can win? “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t want the Medicare beneficiares touched. They can’t afford to have $7000 out of their pockets, as was proposed in the Ryan budget.”
Consider this an Open Thread, because I said so.
Friday Night Open Thread
What kind of mayhem are we getting into tonight?
If one of you reprobates so much as mentions Michael Moore in this thread so help me I will not only ban you, but I will track you down, give you a gypsy beat-down ala Snatch, then rub tuna all over you, tie you to the ground and let Tunch finish you off like Brick Top’s pigs.
Open Thread: “I Wasn’t Born At Harvard”
Nice little upbeat piece from Jill Lawrence at the Atlantic about Elizabeth Warren’s first day on the campaign trail:
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — “Could we get a picture? Let’s do a picture! I love doing pictures!” Elizabeth Warren exclaimed. It was Day One of her U.S. Senate campaign and about Minute Five of her visit to The Student Prince, a German bierhaus bedecked with thousands of beer mugs. And to my surprise, the bespectacled Harvard professor seemed in her element…
__
[S]he will be competitive in ways that people may not expect. First, Warren seems to enjoy campaigning and demonstrates as much warmth and “relatability” as any seasoned pro on the trail. Hardly anyone went untouched of the dozens waiting to greet her at The Student Prince, the fifth and last stop of her announcement tour. I mean that literally — she dispensed hugs and arm-pats to nearly everyone, clasped many hands with both of hers, and seems to have perfected the art of intense eye-contact, the kind that makes people think they are the only person in the room.
__
Few can match Brown’s gripping biography, from his upbringing amid alcoholism, poverty and domestic violence, to his education at Tufts and Boston College law school, to his careers in modeling, the military and politics. Yet Warren, a native of Oklahoma, also has a compelling tale that she often telescopes into a few vivid sentences. After her father had a heart attack, she says, her family existed on “the ragged edge” of the middle class. “We lost our car. We almost lost a house,” she told one man at The Student Prince. She later told reporters that she was babysitting by age 9, waiting tables at 13, married at 19, a mother and elementary school teacher at 22.
__
As for Republicans who dismiss her as a liberal academic, “I grew up hanging on to the edge of the middle class by my fingernails,” Warren said. “All I can say is I’ve been there. I’ve lived this. My family lived one pink slip, one bad diagnosis away from falling off the economic cliff. Yeah, I’ve got a fancy job at Harvard and I’ve gotta tell you, I’m proud of that job. I worked hard to get there. I wasn’t born at Harvard. I was born to a family that had to work for everything it’s got.”
For those aren’t familiar with the Commonwealth, “America’s first Springfield” is one of those battered industrial towns that’s never fully recovered from the original 1950s “offshoring” of manufacturing jobs to the low-wage Southern States. If Warren can connect with Springfield, the professional hand-wringers can stop worrying about the ‘too elitist’ tag.
Eric Cantor Eats Irony for Breakfast
Call me, call me anytime
The other day Matt Yglesias fielded one of those emails that we see all the time asking, what the hell is one person supposed to do? Matt said what I would say, more or less – we live in a participatory democracy, so participate. Phone your congressperson. Write a letter to your newspaper. Show up to town halls and get involved in local government. You know those call-in shows that every wingnut has their truck radio tuned to all day? Call in. Look up Mike Stark to find excellent advice about their schtick and how to use it against them. If you have friends who care, organize them to and make it a group thing. Let people know what you think about things (within reason; I hate bringing up politics at work). The right wing organizing strategy literally hinges on these points. Overwhelming participation at the local level is the only way that they pull off policies that that over and over again poll worse than malaria. It empowers Republican officeholders to act and it gives Democrats second thoughts.
Even his advice to unplug more makes some sense, as long as you use your net connection mostly to get mad at something and then vent your rage in some blog comment section. Signal to noise is a problem online, but it does not change the simple fact that the internet is an excellent organizing tool. Where one person phoning a Congressional office might as well save your breath (more or less), a medium sized blog like this can mobilize hundreds of calls, letters and even a few visits per day if we push hard enough. That kind of volume starts to have a tangible tidal force on the Hill.
President Obama has the good sense to realize this. From what I hear people have followed his lead and phoned in huge numbers. The best thing that you can do right now is ramp up the volume and help turn the tidal pull that most offices are feeling into a rip current that they have to think hard about fighting.
Have a Republican representative? Pick up the phone and ask them to stop acting like children and more like grownup problem solvers. The economy is not some piece on a board game. If you have Democratic representatives then you might ask them to grow a goddamn spine and get behind the one proposal that even tries save their ass and the economy in 2012.
Find your Congresscritter here.
Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Guide for first-timers here.