Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Yes we did.

The Math Demands It!

Women: They Get Shit Done

Too inconsequential to be sued

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

We still have time to mess this up!

This is a big f—–g deal.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

What fresh hell is this?

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Lighten up, Francis.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The house always wins.

Our job is not to persuade Republicans but to defeat them.

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

No one could have predicted…

We have all the best words.

This Blog Goes to 11…

Just a few bad apples.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

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The 90’s Are Over

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There was some discussion of PAYGO and its controversial presence in the Democrat’s rules package in yesterday’s comments, so I thought you might be interested in Jim Newell’s latest:

With all but one Republican expected to vote against the rules package, Democrats can afford only 19 defections on the floor. Khanna and Ocasio-Cortez’s opposition seemed to signal a potential flood of defections that could force a last-minute rewrite. But neither Khanna nor the Progressive Caucus were actively whipping against the rules package Wednesday, and few others seemed willing to publicly threaten votes against it. Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Mark Pocan, meanwhile, tweeted that he had gotten assurances from Democratic leaders that the new PAYGO rule “will not be an impediment to advancing key progressive priorities in the 116th Congress.” In other words: He had gotten assurances that the rule, when inconvenient, would just be waived by a simple majority vote in the House.

That gets to a bigger point that Pocan also makes in his tweets: The real pay-go problem for progressives is the pay-go law that Congress passed in 2010, not the House’s pay-go rule, which comes and goes and gets waived or circumvented over and over.

The Republicans regularly voted to waive the PAYGO law when voting through their tax cut agenda, but of course as soon as Democrats are in charge in the House, the Senate will have a change of heart. That’s why it’s smart politics to be against PAYGO – it’s just another leverage point that Republicans will use when they want to thwart the Democratic legislative agenda.  Democrats used PAYGO to run a surplus in the 90’s and it got us nowhere politically.  We don’t need to do that again.

Also, as a New Yorker as well as a Democrat, I’m happy that AOC is out making noise about this.  She’s from a solid D district and she should act that way.  There’s a double standard in the media on “disloyalty”.  When you’re a purple district Democrat you can run to every TV camera in town and bleat about legislation you’re opposing because it’s “too liberal”, and nary a tweet is tweeted about how that’s backstabbing Pelosi.  Yet when a deep blue district Democrat opposes a piece of legislation that’s not liberal enough, he or she endures a tinkle shower of tweets telling him or her to STFU and get back in their lane.  I hope that AOC’s example of how they can be primaried from the left will encourage a few other safe seat New York reps (*cough* Brian Higgins *cough*) to be out and proud.

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Chilcot Drops

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A.Y._Jackson_-_A_Copse,_Evening,_1918

This is something I hope Adam will take up in earnest, but we should probably have a thread for the Chilcot report on Tony Blair and the British rush to war in Iraq.  Here’s a link to the Guardian’s coverage.

In brief, and in my reading of the press reports only, it looks like Sir John Chilcot has produced a devastating body of work that effectively condemns both Blair and Bush — and by extension the many more who enabled them in their catastrophic rush to war.

That’s obviously going to hurt, and we’ve already got a taste of the derp to come in David Frum’s claptrap, discussed below.  We’ll see a lot more ass-covering, excuse-bandying, and outright bullshit from all the usual suspects over the next few days.

But what struck me most in the immediate reaction to Chilcot’s report was one snippet from the few minutes of Tony Blair’s press conference that I managed to catch.

There, he admitted the failure to plan for what to do after an initial military victory (you think?) — but he said he stood by his decision to go to war and would make the same decision now, given the intelligence at the time.  He admitted that the intelligence was faulty, but noted that leaders have to decide based on what they know at any given time, which is certainly true.

The problem with that pivot to “bad intelligence” is that it is bullshit.

Those in a position to know understood at the edge of war that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction as generally understood.  I give you a speech that should be much better known than it is, Robin Cook’s personal address to the House of Commons to explain his resignation from Tony Blair’s government:

 

Here’s a text version.

Our leaders knew that the stated reason for war in Iraq was false.  They did it anyway.  There’s plenty of blame to go round — and while it’s not clear how much individual members of Congress or Parliament knew, compared to the heads of government and the cabinets in both the US and the UK, some of that responsibilty certainly accrues to those legislators who went along to get along.

But the central villains of this piece are the leaders who made the choice to cajole and coerce their colleagues and their countries into war.

One last thought:  the upcoming election is between someone who’s learned from the Iraq disaster, and someone who just yesterday hearts him some murderous Saddam.

Image:  A. Y. Jackson, A Copse, Evening 1918, 1918

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Dean 2004, Obama 2008, Sanders 2016 and white liberals

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Just a few quick notes on the current campaign through the eyes of a white liberal who has never felt the Bern.

On fundraising through February 2016:

Sen. Bernard Sanders may have lost a majority of states on Super Tuesday, but he continues to pull ahead of Democratic presidential primary rival Hillary Clinton in the money race.

The Sanders campaign announced Tuesday it raised $42.7 million in February, and the Clinton campaign announced Wednesday morning it raised $30 million during the month.

On the primary campaign demographics in 2016:

There are three times as many nonblack voters as black voters in the Democratic primary electorate. To cancel her strength, Mr. Sanders would need to win nonblack voters by about 20 percentage points, since Mrs. Clinton leads by more than 60 points among black voters.

And now backing things out a bit.

The Dean campaign in 2004 was overwhelmingly white liberals who were looking for a cause.  The Dean campaign was the first time I showed up on an FEC report.

The Obama coalition in the 2008 primary was a combination of white liberals and the African American community plus not getting crushed among the other major groups within the Democratic primary electorate.  The Sanders coalition is primarily white liberals and rural Democrats.  The Clinton 2008 coalition was moderate and conservative Democrats, Latinos and a bit more female then the party as a whole.  Her coalition in 2016 is her 2008 coalition plus the African American bloc.

What we are seeing is the limit of white liberal power within the Democratic coalition.

It is more than sufficient to fund campaigns but it is insufficient to create a durable national majority.  White liberals by themselves are a much larger, and far less crazy analogue to the Paulbots of the Republican Party — more then sufficient to generate a lot of money and advance ideological arguments.  It is well connected to to privileged positions within the media and discussion ecosystem and due to its demographics plus committment of its members, it can fundraise efficiently on the internet at small to medium donor levels.  Internet fundraising allows for a fairly low burn rate on the part of ideological and aspirational campaigns to tap this set of small donors.    These are two very strong political assets.

However white liberals alone or with minor coalition partners, are not able to form a majority within the Democratic Party.  .  White liberals get a whole lot closer to forming a majority than libertarian dude bros but they cap out significantly short of a majority.

 

 

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Buyer’s Remorse From Topeka To Salina

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Turns out GOP Gov. Sam Brownback’s ridiculous austerity program is incredibly unpopular in Kansas a year after being re-elected on a platform of massive tax cuts magically creating revenues.  Hoocoodanode, right?

A new poll from the Docking Institute of Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University shows only 18 percent of Kansans are satisfied with Gov. Sam Brownback’s performance in office, and most (61 percent) think his signature tax policies have either been a “failure” or a “tremendous failure.”

The Fall 2015 “Kansas Speaks” survey also showed a large majority (61 percent) favor expanding Medicaid. Another 84 percent oppose requiring colleges and universities to allow firearms on campus, and 82 percent are skeptical that voter fraud is a significant problem in Kansas.

The survey of 638 Kansas adults was conducted Sept. 14 through Oct. 5, with a margin of error of 3.9 percent.

The survey asked respondents to indicate whether they were very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, neutral, somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with a list of elected officials. Overall, only 18 percent said they were either somewhat or very satisfied with Brownback.

That question is slightly different from the standard polling question, which asks people whether they “approve” or “disapprove” of a person’s performance in office. It wasn’t immediately clear how much impact that subtle difference in wording may have had on the results. One thing that was clear, though: Brownback’s “satisfaction rating” among Kansans was 10 points lower than President Barack Obama’s.

Brownback is losing to Obama in a blood red state.  That’s how bad his austerity regime has been for Kansans, and in fact his platform planks of opposing Medicaid expansion, putting guns on university campuses, and voter suppression laws have been complete losers for the guy.

I’d argue that Brownback has actually replaced Jindal as the most hated governor in the US right now, especially with Jindal’s term up in January.  Kansas on the other hand has three more years of Brownbackonomics to go, and I’m pretty sure his massive tax hike on cigarettes and beer in order to make up for his ever-deepening budget hole may put him in single digits by this time next year.

But once again, Kansas, you brought this on yourself.  You knew exactly what Brownback was going to do, he followed through, and you’re all surprised now that your state is a hellhole?

How about “stop voting Republican” guys?

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The Big Trade-Off

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership is back in the news and back as a 2016 campaign issue for both parties as the final touches on the deal have been worked out.

The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations on Monday agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 percent of the world’s economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership still faces months of debate in Congress and will inject a new flash point into both parties’ presidential contests.

But the accord — a product of nearly eight years of negotiations, including five days of round-the-clock sessions here — is a potentially legacy-making achievement for President Obama, and the capstone for his foreign policy “pivot” toward closer relations with fast-growing eastern Asia, after years of American preoccupation with the Middle East and North Africa.

Mr. Obama spent recent days contacting world leaders to seal the deal. Administration officials have repeatedly pressed their contention that the partnership would build a bulwark against China’s economic influence, and allow the United States and its allies — not Beijing — to set the standards for Pacific commerce.

The Pacific accord would phase out thousands of import tariffs as well as other barriers to international trade. It also would establish uniform rules on corporations’ intellectual property, open the Internet even in communist Vietnam and crack down on wildlife trafficking and environmental abuses.

Several potentially deal-breaking disputes kept the ministers talking through the weekend and forced them repeatedly to reschedule the promised Sunday announcement of the deal into the evening and beyond. Final compromises covered commercial protections for drug makers’ advanced medicines, more open markets for dairy products and sugar, and a slow phaseout — over two to three decades — of the tariffs on Japan’s autos sold in North America.

The question for the assembled is this: does this deal pass Congress?

Lot of factors in play here: Obama’s legacy, Republicans who want this deal passed despite giving Obama a win, Democrats who want this deal scrapped, the 2016 candidates all over the map on this, corporate interests, environmental interests, unions, you name it, everyone has a stake in this deal.

But having gotten this far and the final international deal now done, does this deal pass from sheer inertia of history or does the politics of 2016 mean it can’t?

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Judging By His Enemies

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As Steve M. has noticed, suddenly the Right-Wing Noise Machine is very much taking Bernie Sanders as a real threat.

Maybe I just haven’t noticed it, but this seems new to me. It’s as if Sanders topped Hillary Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire in one poll and the word went out on the right to scramble the jets and start trying to take Sanders down.

I’d have thought the wingers wouldn’t worry about a wild-haired old lefty, but they know it’s a crazy year and a significant portion of the public might go for a candidate who’d have been deemed unacceptable even a year or two ago. They also know that even in defeat Sanders might have a real influence on the way we talk about taxes and government programs and economic inequality.

Right-wingers don’t let grass grow under their feet. I guess they’re going to try to address this threat now.

The Wall Street Journal, FOX News, even the Daily Mail are all going after Sanders this week, doing everything from saying his policies would cost $18 trillion dollars over ten years to Krauthammer attacking him as “insignificant” (why attack him then, Chuck?)  Add too the meatheads at Power Line, who literally are reduced to repeatedly screaming “Bullshit” at lines of Sanders’s speech at Liberty University.

Suddenly attacking Bernie is really, really popular in the epistemic closure bubble. Yeah, I’m still not sold on the Sanders 2016 train (or Hillary for that matter) yet, but if Bernie’s making enemies like these pay attention to what he’s doing, he’s probably on the right track in some fashion.

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Turn The Machines Back On

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The Kroog looks at the state of global markets after Friday’s bad day (and the impending bad day today) and notes there’s something of a global commodities glut.

What’s causing this global glut? Probably a mix of factors. Population growth is slowing worldwide, and for all the hype about the latest technology, it doesn’t seem to be creating either surging productivity or a lot of demand for business investment. The ideology of austerity, which has led to unprecedented weakness in government spending, has added to the problem. And low inflation around the world, which means low interest rates even when economies are booming, has reduced the room to cut rates when economies slump.

Whatever the precise mix of causes, what’s important now is that policy makers take seriously the possibility, I’d say probability, that excess savings and persistent global weakness is the new normal.

My sense is that there’s a deep-seated unwillingness, even among sophisticated officials, to accept this reality. Partly this is about special interests: Wall Street doesn’t want to hear that an unstable world requires strong financial regulation, and politicians who want to kill the welfare state don’t want to hear that government spending and debt aren’t problems in the current environment.

Once again, with interest rates at rock bottom, Republicans refuse to invest in government spending so they can privatize and profitize as much infrastructure as possible (which is the real problem), and they’re shocked that years of Austerity Bombing hasn’t created utopia yet (ask Kansas how that’s going.)

Meanwhile, Trump’s solution is “I’m really rich and I want to go after hedge fund guys“, which makes about as much sense as the rest of his campaign, but I guess that’s the point.

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Life After Death

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Some good news today on the capital punishment front, as Connecticut’s state Supreme Court has ruled the state’s use of the death penalty to be unconstitutional.

After a sweeping two-year review, the state Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment in Connecticut Thursday, saying the state’s death penalty no longer comports with evolved societal values and serves no valid purpose as punishment.

The 4-3 decision would remove 11 convicts from Connecticut’s death row and overturn the latest iteration of the state’s death penalty, a political compromise effective April 2012 that halted executions going forward but allowed death sentences to be imposed on the inmates already sentenced.

The majority decision, written by Justice Richard N. Palmer, found flaws in the death penalty law, which banned “prospective” death sentences, those imposed after the effective date of the law. But the majority wrote that it chose to analyze capital punishment and impose abolition from a broad perspective.

After analysis of the law and “in light of the governing constitutional principles and Connecticut’s unique historical and legal landscape, we are persuaded that, following its prospective abolition, this state’s death penalty no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose,” Palmer wrote.

“”For these reasons, execution of those offenders who committed capital felonies prior to April 25, 2012, would violate the state constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.”

This is excellent news, given all the numerous examples of execution of innocent people, and people exonerated from death row based on DNA and other evidence. There’s just no way the death penalty can be justified anymore, and I’m glad that Connecticut realizes this.

Now if only we could get five SCOTUS votes on a ruling like this…

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They were careless people, Tom and Daisy

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This will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever happen, but it’s a good thought (via):

I have a fantasy. It’s that every politician and pundit who goes on TV to discuss the Iran deal is asked this question first: “Did you support the Iraq War, and how has that experience informed your position?”

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Alaska: Home to oil, polar bears and Medicaid Expansion

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Via Think Progress:

Alaska will become the 30th state to accept Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion, after Gov. Bill Walker (I) announced on Thursday that he will use his executive power to bypass the GOP-controlled legislature and implement the policy on his own.

Walker — a former Republican who has since become an Independent — has been advocating for Medicaid expansion for over a year. Implementing this particular Obamacare provision, which was ruled optional by the Supreme Court in 2012, would extend health coverage to an estimated 40,000 low-income residents in his state.

Decent chance there will be a court fight on the expansion, but establishing facts on the ground that this is what a civilized state does (especially when someone else is paying either the entire bill or the vast majority of it), and more importantly getting the hospital groups on board and used to the revenue will start entrenching the program.

And here is the Republican response to Medicaid expansion in Alaska:

“I think in this time, in these lean years, it’s time for communities to pull together, it’s time for churches to step up, it’s time to help give a hand to each other as individuals. We can be kind as people. It’s not government’s place to be kind,” State Rep. Shelley Hughes (R) said in reference to uninsured Alaskans when the House voted down Medicaid expansion in March.

Counting on churches, private charity, bake sales and magical unicorns flying out of a yeti’s ass has been the working poor health insurance plan for years. That has not worked, but let’s try it again and clap louder. Asshole.

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Never Mind “Rising Again”, It Never Went Anywhere

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In what should surprise precisely no one, an overwhelming majority of white Southerners still see the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride in a new CNN poll.

American public opinion on the Confederate flag remains about where it was 15 years ago, with most describing the flag as a symbol of Southern pride more than one of racism, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. And questions about how far to go to remove references to the Confederacy from public life prompt broad racial divides.

The poll shows that 57% of Americans see the flag more as a symbol of Southern pride than as a symbol of racism, about the same as in 2000 when 59% said they viewed it as a symbol of pride. Opinions of the flag are sharply divided by race, and among whites, views are split by education.

Among African-Americans, 72% see the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism, just 25% of whites agree. In the South, the racial divide is even broader. While 75% of Southern whites describe the flag as a symbol of pride and 18% call it a symbol of racism, those figures are almost exactly reversed among Southern African-Americans, with just 11% seeing it as a sign of pride and 75% viewing it as a symbol of racism.

Among whites, there’s a sharp divide by education, and those with more formal education are less apt to see the flag as a symbol of pride. Among whites with a college degree, 51% say it’s a symbol of pride, 41% one of racism. Among those whites who do not have a college degree, 73% say it’s a sign of Southern pride, 18% racism.

Digging around in the crosstabs, a majority of Southern whites with college degrees are okay with the Confederate flag (51%). And among Democrats 34% find the flag a symbol of pride (77% among Republicans) and 34% of liberals do too (71% among conservatives, 60% among moderates.)

The real killer: 58% of snake people Millennials see the flag as a symbol of pride, which is actually slightly higher than Gen X-ers (56%) or Boomers under 65 (53%).  Seniors, well, They’re at 64%.  I hope we’re well past the whole “Young people aren’t as racist as their parents” nonsense, because Millennials are just as awful. Indoctrination is awesome.

I grew up in North Carolina, and this doesn’t surprise me one damn bit.  People ought to know better.

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Battle Flag Acquisition Strategies

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Early this morning, I was doing some research on the endurance of corporate culture, studying how sometimes the spirit of a smaller, acquired firm can permeate the larger, acquiring organization. It’s not unusual for a big behemoth to acquire a scrappy smaller company solely for the purpose of infusing the moribund giant with fresh blood, and when the companies’ interests align, it can create an unstoppable marketplace force…for a while.

With that dynamic still on my mind, I moseyed over to Booman’s place and read a post that hit upon something that has been bothering me about the focus on the rebel flag in the wake of the domestic terrorist massacre in Charleston:

But the focus on the Confederate Flag can have an unfortunate side effect. What, after all, does that flag mean when it doesn’t simply mean white supremacy?

It’s meaning in those cases in nearly identical to the meaning of the modern conservative movement. It’s about disunion, and hostility to the federal government, and state’s rights. It’s anti-East Coast Establishment and anti-immigrant. It’s about an idealized and false past and preserving outworn and intolerant ideas. It’s about a perverse version of a highly provincial and particularized version of (predominantly) Protestant Christianity that has evolved to serve the interests of power elites in the South. It’s about an aggrieved sense of false persecution where white men are playing on the hardest difficulty setting rather than the easiest, and white Christians are as threatened as black Muslims and gays and Jews.

“Those blacks are raping our women and they have to go.”

That’s what the Confederate Flag is all about, but it’s also the basic message of Fox News and the whole Republican Party since the moment that Richard Nixon promised us law and order.

But it’s not black people who have to go.

It’s this whole Last Cause bullshit mentality that fuels our nation’s politics and lines the pockets of Ted Cruz just as surely as it has been lining the pockets of Walmart executives.

Today, maybe the governor down there had an epiphany. Maybe this massacre was the last straw. But, tomorrow, we’ll all be right back where we began with Congress acting like an occupying Confederate Army.

If we solve a symbolic problem and leave the rest untouched, then what will really change?

You can’t bury the Confederate Flag without, at the same time, burying the Conservative Movement.

Let’s get on with it.

He’s right. For many white people, the rebel flag represented moldy old myths about the antebellum South. But think about how nicely that mythology dovetailed with the lies about the pre-Civil Rights era that paleocons like Pat Buchanan tell themselves.

Like a moribund corporation, the GOP acquired Confederate culture with the Southern strategy, harnessing the racism in the South and its echo nationwide to build the present day Republican Party. That’s why Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That’s why an always-wrong, New York City-born legacy hire who is relentlessly eager to send other people’s kids off to die in glorious causes is tweeting nonsense that his ancestors would find…puzzling:

So, the rebel flag should come down in South Carolina and every other state capitol in the former Confederacy, and with surprising (to me) swiftness, it looks like it will. That will be more than a symbolic victory; it will be the partial righting of a very old wrong.

But there’s a danger in “otherizing” the South in this context. It’s not wrong to condemn its blinkered myth-making and prideful backwardness, but there’s a hazard in moral preening within and outside of Dixie, a risk of declaring a tidy victory when the dinosaurs in the state capitols of the former Confederacy finally sink into the tarpit they’ve thrashed in for 150 years.

The risk is that we’ll lose focus on the modern day “Congress acting like an occupying Confederate Army,” as Booman put it. At its core, the Southern strategy was an attempt to roll back progress by hitching the anti-New Dealers’ star to the creaky old Confederate wagon. Its organizers weren’t all or even mostly slack-jawed yokels waving rebel flags. They included a fiery libertarian business man from Phoenix, a glib B-movie pitchman who hailed from Northern Illinois and a twitchy, paranoid Quaker from California.

To achieve true victory, we have to finally drive a stake through the heart of the Southern strategy, not just the Confederacy. So let’s make expunging the rebel flag from the public square the opening salvo in a larger battle to take our country back. Yes, that’s right, TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK. With no lies and decaying myths about what that means. The flag that represents it isn’t spotless. Its founding was rooted in slavery, genocide and the oppression of women. But unlike its dying counterpart, this flag is worth saving.

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Kung Fu Pope v. Big Carbon

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Via Slate, I came across this little bit of video:

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Per Eric Holtas in Slate, this is the brainchild of some delightfully twisted Brazilian climate change activists.
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My favorite shot?  Dawn-backlit papal Tai-Chi exercise.  IOW:  just watch this.
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PS — the soundtrack could/should have been Inhofe and Santorum skull detonations.

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And Some Might Learn To Adjust

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But then it never was a matter of trust.

President Obama’s argument that Democrats should trust his vision on trade is falling flat on Capitol Hill.

Democrats — even some of Obama’s closest allies — say it’s not enough for the president to pronounce his trade agenda the most progressive in history.

The lawmakers want assurances that the agreements under negotiation, particularly a huge deal being finalized with Pacific Rim nations, will protect U.S. jobs — assurances many say they simply haven’t gotten.

“I take the president at his word that he believes … the argument he’s making, but I think he’s wrong,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said Wednesday.

“The analysis I’ve done comes to a very different conclusion,” he added. “It’s clear that this will, in the long term, not result in the growth of American jobs and an increase in wages.”

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), head of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he’s in talks with administration officials, who have yet to convince him the president’s trade agenda would create jobs in North Carolina.

“I’m still at the place I’ve always been: leaning no,” Butterfield said Wednesday.

“There’s a difference between growing the economy and helping American companies grow the bottom line, and creating jobs,” he added.

Fast track authority legislation in the House is going to be a long, ugly road. House Democrats are overwhelmingly against it, and Orange Julius is going to need to come up with something like 200 Republican votes in order for this to have any chance of passage.  Recent history has shown that depending on his skills at whipping votes is a major loser of a bet.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks is trying to crowdfund a hundred grand as a reward for somebody to leak to them the bulk of the text of the TPP, so there’s that.

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Water You Up To, Obama?

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President Obama is set to release new clean water rules today, in a move that will drive Republicans crazy, because the concept of clean drinking water is clearly Marxist dogma.

The Obama administration is expected in the coming days to announce a major clean water regulation that would restore the federal government’s authority to limit pollution in the nation’s rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands.

Environmentalists have praised the new rule, calling it an important step that would lead to significantly cleaner natural bodies of water and healthier drinking water.

But it has attracted fierce opposition from several business interests, including farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers and a national association of golf course owners. Opponents contend that the rule would stifle economic growth and intrude on property owners’ rights.

Republicans in Congress point to the rule as another example of what they call executive overreach by the Obama administration. Already, they are advancing legislation on Capitol Hill meant to block or delay the rule.

Republicans are at this point so utterly ridiculous that they are relegated to screaming about how the federal government supplying safe drinking water (when multiple states are suffering from the worst drought in centuries, mind you) is worthy of a Second American Revolution.

“Under this outrageously broad new rule, Washington bureaucrats would now have a say in how farmers, and ranchers, and families use their own property,” said Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and the chief author of the Senate bill.

“It would allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate private property just based on things like whether it’s used by animals or birds, or even insects,” he said.

“This rule,” he added, “is not designed to protect the traditional waters of the United States. It is designed to expand the power of Washington bureaucrats.”

Barrasso is full of nonsense, like every other Republican opposed to this. When American corporations are polluting our streams, lakes and rivers and leaving hundreds of thousands without potable water for weeks at a time, maybe the concept of tougher regulations is an idea well overdue.

Meanwhile, Republicans are screaming about how anyone who owns land is going to have to have EPA permits for puddles on their properties. The idiocy is insulting.

Makes a guy want to go have a drink or two.  Of course, you need clean water for that, too.

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