Map ‘O the Day: two countries edition
by digby
Plus ca change and all that rot:
That’s a very detailed, county-level map of the 1880 presidential election results, published in 1889.
It’s trite to point it out after all this time, I know, but America has always been two political cultures. So when we see gridlock as we have now, we shouldn’t be so surprised.
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Political grifter on offense
by digby
So Sarah Palin wrote an “op-ed” for Breitbart, which is, I guess, a step above Facebook…
“These Obama administration scandals are a sad and stark reminder that only limited government can ensure liberty. At our core, we Americans just want to be left alone to live freely, peacefully, and productively. Last year the Obama campaign told us that government is something we all ‘belong’ to. I guess they’re right because when the government is powerful enough to target, intimidate, and harass us, we do “belong” to them.
Most of the right wing hysteria is wishful thinking by people who want more than anything to be martyred for the cause. But that is Sarah Palin talking. With the amount of “political” money that’s flowed through her hands over the past few years, I can see why she’d be concerned. The real con artists do have something to fear…
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Fox News host Andrea Tarantos wants her listeners to punch Obama voters in the face
by David Atkins
Fox News host Andrea Tarantos was on the radio delivering that time-honored respectful conservatism:
“He said he would change the country. He said it. He said it. And a lot of people voted for him. And if you see any of those people today, do me a favor: punch them in the face.”…
“To be clear, I didn’t say punch Obama in the face…But if someone voted for him. If anyone that you know who voted for President Obama, smack them down.”
Here’s the audio:
What a charming person. And what a charming “movement” American conservatism is. I feel totally safer as an American knowing that so many are armed, too. Sheepdogs and wolves, amirite?
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Political stunts and political smarts
by digby
There has been a fair amount of jaded criticism from the wonkosphere over Elizabeth Warren’s alleged student loan “stunt” but apparently it’s gaining political steam anyway:
A little more than two weeks after introducing her first bill, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is already seeing a wave of strong support.
Back on May 8, Warren announced her plans to set student loan interest rates at the same level big banks receive from the Federal Reserve. Come July 1, some student loan rates are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, prompting Warren to push for legislation that reduces the level to 0.75 percent.
By Thursday, Warren’s website showcased that more than two dozen organizations have endorsed the measure. Among the notable supporters were major universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and groups like American Federation of Teachers.
Coupled with the support from outside sources is a strong core of political colleagues behind the bill. Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) have joined on as co-sponsors, and Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) has introduced a corresponding House version of the bill.
I realize that Warren’s “stunt” will not fix the problem for all time or change the very face of student debt forever as the wonks seem to believe is necessary for any legislation to be deemed worthy, but this short term fix is well worth doing anyway. I’m quite sure Warren understands the details — she’s quite the wonk herself, obviously. But she also clearly understands the value of using her position and the process to change the way people think about the role of government and develop trust between politicians and their constituents. This is good politics, something is short supply in the Democratic party especially when it comes to making a progressive case on economics. Good for her.
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Hungry
by digby
The following chart measures the growth of hunger over the past few years in Europe and the US:
If you can’t afford food, there’s really nowhere to go but up. That’s why it’s so shocking just how many more hungry people there are now in what were formerly known as the world’s well-off nations. According to a new Pew report released today, almost a quarter of people (24 percent) in the United States and Greece answered “yes” to the question, “Have there been times during the last year when you did not have enough money to buy food your family needed?”
The good news is that the stock market is roaring and the top 1% have been doing really well. So that’s good.
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Infrastructure and unemployment: this just isn’t that complicated.
>by David Atkins
This is what a country in disrepair looks like:
The Washington State Patrol chief says the Interstate 5 bridge collapse into the Skagit (SKA’-jiht) River at Mount Vernon was caused by an oversize truck…
The bridge was not classified as structurally deficient, but a Federal Highway Administration database listed it as being “functionally obsolete” – a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath.
The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.
According to a 2012 Skagit County Public Works Department report, 42 of the county’s 108 bridges are 50 years or older. The document says eight of the bridges are more than 70 years old and two are over 80.
Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state’s bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington’s 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
Shoring up all these bridges would be a major investment of mostly blue collar manpower. And as it turns out, the country has a desperate need for jobs, especially ones that don’t require a college degree.
It would take a perverse, malevolent government not to take the opportunity to fit those two puzzle pieces together. Wouldn’t it?
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First they came for the news anchors …
by digby
I hope everyone realizes that any conservative who’s been audited by the IRS over the past four years now believes it was done at the specific behest of the anti-Christ:
Local St. Louis news anchor Larry Conners was fired on Wednesday for what the station called “taking a personal political position [that created] an appearance of bias.”
After news broke about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups during the 2012 election, Conners took to his KMOV Facebook page to air a personal concern about the scandal. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Conners, who spent 27 years as an anchor at KMOV, suggested that he might have been targeted by the IRS after interviewing President Obama in 2012. Conners wrote:
I don’t accept ‘conspiracy theories,’ but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me. … Can I prove it? At this time, no. But it is a fact that since that April 2012 interview … the IRS has been pressuring me.
He was fired. Which now makes him the Sir Thomas More of the Tea Party. The humanity.
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Monstrous interference
by digby
The House Judiciary sub-committee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing today on H.R. 1797, the so-called District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act sponsored by Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ). This bill would ban women from obtaining abortion care after 20 weeks in the District of Columbia, and Representative Franks has stated that he plans to amend it to apply nationwide.
Here’s some of the testimony:
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Representative Nadler, and other members of the committee. My name is Christy Zink.
Late afternoons in May, my family is on the lookout for Monarch butterflies. It’s spring migration time, and the butterflies have winged their way from Mexico, through Texas, moving, now, up through the country. My daughter learns as we all do, by sharing the stories of what she knows. Monarchs identify food with their feet, she tells me; they sip nectar through proboscis, a word we work together to spell out on paper. In our yard, as we spy out for the Monarchs, her brother keeps his own watch. A toddler, he names what he sees in quick bursts: “Grass.” “Truck.” “Tree.” For me, it’s as if I’m learning along with him, trying out those words anew. My family teaches me every day, and I hold dear the privilege it is to raise my children and be student to their wonder.
All families know this delight in their own way. There are families, like mine, who understand that joy in more complicated ways, earned through hard lessons and harder decisions. I’m here today to share my story with you so that you can understand why this bill that purports to prevent pain is, instead, harmful to families and to women in situations like the one I faced, and why all women in this country need access to safe, quality medical care.
In addition to the pregnancies with my two children, I was also pregnant in 2009. I wondered who my child might grow up to be. Would she inherit her father’s love of the pitcher’s duel in baseball? Would he make a habit of skipping to the last page of a book, peeking at the end, as I do? I looked forward to the ultrasound when we would get a chance to have a look at the baby in utero, to learn a little bit more. I certainly hadn’t imagined that we’d learn terrible news, and that, after that doctors’ visit, my husband and I would have to make the most difficult decision of our lives.
I took extra special care of myself during that pregnancy. I received excellent prenatal attention from an award-winning obstetrician. Previous testing had shown a baby growing on target, with the limbs and organs all in working order. However, when I was 21 weeks pregnant, an MRI revealed that our baby was missing the central connecting structure of the two parts of his brain. A specialist diagnosed the baby with agenesis of the corpus callosum. What allows the brain to function as a whole was simply absent. But that wasn’t all. Part of the baby’s brain had failed to develop. Where the typical human brain presents a lovely, rounded symmetry, our baby had small, globular splotches. In effect, our baby was also missing one side of his brain.
Living in a major city with one of the best children’s hospitals in the country, my husband and I had access to some of the best radiologists, neurologists, and geneticists not just in this city or in the country, but in the world. We asked every question we could. The answers were far from easy to hear, but they were clear. There would be no miracle cure. His body had no capacity to repair this anomaly, and medical science could not solve this tragic situation.
This condition could not have been detected earlier in my pregnancy. Only the brain scan could have found it. The prognosis was unbearable. No one could look at those MRI images and not know, instantly, that something was terribly wrong. If the baby survived the pregnancy, which was not certain, his condition would require surgeries to remove more of what little brain matter he had, to diminish what would otherwise be a state of near-constant seizures.
I am here today to speak out against the so-called Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Its very premise—that it prevents pain—is a lie. If this bill had been passed before my pregnancy, I would have had to carry to term and give birth to a baby whom the doctors concurred had no chance of a life and would have experienced near-constant pain. If he had survived the pregnancy—which was not certain—he might never have left the hospital. My daughter’s life, too, would have been irrevocably hurt by an almost always-absent parent.
The decision I made to have an abortion at almost 22 weeks was made out of love and to spare my son’s pain and suffering.
I am horrified to think that the doctors who compassionately but objectively explained to us the prognosis and our options for medical treatment, and the doctor who helped us terminate the pregnancy, would be prosecuted as criminals under this law for providing basic, safe medical care and expertise. This bill does not represent the best interests of anyone, especially families like mine. What happened to me during pregnancy can happen to any woman, regardless of her health, race, ethnicity, economic status, or where she lives. This proposed law is downright cruel, as it would inflict pain on the families, the women, and the babies it purports to protect.
It’s in honor of my son that I’m here today, speaking on his behalf. I am also fighting for women like me, to have the right to access safe, legal, high-quality abortion care when we need to beyond 20 weeks—especially for those women who could never imagine they’d have to make this choice. Women across this country need to be able to make this very private decision with their partners, their doctors, and trusted counselors. I urge you not to pass this harmful legislation.
I guess it’s a joke that the sub-committee on the constitution and social justice is proposing a bill that directly contravenes numerous Supreme Court rulings, but that’s just how they roll these days.
I suppose it should surprise no one that the sub-committee members all have one (small) thing in common:
*not meaning to diss the good Democrats on the committee who stand up for women’s rights. But that picture does tell a certain story, doesn’t it?
On climate and the environment, America isn’t a “center right” nation
by David Atkins
Once again, we learn that a majority of Americans do care about climate and the environment:
Global warming and clean energy should be priorities for Congress and the president, a majority of Americans said in a recent survey.
In the survey, released Tuesday by Yale and George Mason universities, 70% of American adults say global warming should be a priority for the nation’s leaders, while 87% say leaders should make it a priority to develop sources of clean energy. Those support levels have dropped by 7% and 5% respectively since fall.
Six in 10 Americans want the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of other countries’ emissions efforts, according to the survey. Only 6% say the U.S. should not reduce its greenhouse emissions.
Of course, this doesn’t mean the electorate is informed enough to know what the major climate and environmental issues of the day are:
The study also shows only half of Americans have heard of the Keystone XL pipeline. Among those who have heard of the pipeline, 63% support the project. The study also shows 58% of Americans support expanded drilling for oil and natural gas off the U.S. coast.
Still, the key legislative pieces of climate reduction are popular:
A majority of Americans supports policies like taxing carbon, giving tax rebates to people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels, and funding renewable-energy research, the survey shows.
The big question, as with the gun control debate, is whether the broad majority who support progressive policies will actually care as badly about their beliefs as the strident conservatives do. That disconnect between popular opinion and minority conservative activism is part of what leads legislators to believe that their constituents are more conservative than they really are.
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