Author: Tom Sullivan

Relentless
by Tom Sullivan

I used to describe George W. Bush as a Jack Russell terrier playing tug of war with a knotted rope. Once he sank his teeth into something, he simply would not let go. You could lift him bodily off the ground and watch his butt cut circles in the air as he wrestled with his end of it. But in the end you would tire of the game first, let go, and he’d retire triumphantly to his doggy bed with his prize. I was never sure myself whether I meant that as a cut or a compliment.

This how the right wins and we lose. The thing is, conservatives often beat the left, not simply with money, but with sheer relentlessness. They play tortoise. Liberals choose hare.

At “The Fix” yesterday, Chris Cillizza looked at the national Democrats’ draft “party autopsy” written in the wake of the thumping its candidates suffered in the 2014 mid-term elections. He wasn’t too impressed, except with this:

The Task Force recommends that the DNC – along with the Democratic family of organizations, state parties and allied organizations – create and resource a three-cycle plan that targets and wins back legislative chambers in order to prepare for redistricting efforts. This long-term effort must be aggressive and focused on winning elections at the state and local level. It must also support efforts to take back the House of Representatives.

But even this “long-term effort” – six years – is Short Attention Span Theater compared to the decades that movement conservatives put into getting George W. Bush, their movement’s apotheosis, into the White House, gaining control of Congress, and mounting a final, all-out, Koch- and ALEC-backed, legislative assault in the states on any who might oppose them. Working with those long time horizons is not the left’s strong suit. We’re too flighty and easily discouraged.

Cillizza writes:

Traditionally, Democrats — and, in particular, the party’s major donors — have not been terribly good at either a) seeing the big/long-term political picture or b) getting excited about downballot races. (Republicans, on the other hand, have been brilliant at both.)

Republicans have been kicking Democrats’ butts at the state and local levels (and in judges races), unanswered, for a decade.

There is an ADHD component to lefty politics. We’re attracted ever so briefly to bright, shiny, national races, to candidates with fleeting star-power, and to Beltway theater. Building a state and national bench from the local level doesn’t provide the buzz we crave. For political junkies on the left, how many moods rise and fall based on what did or didn’t happen this week in Washington? They’re up, they’re down, they’re in, they’re out, they’re thrilled, they’re through. I’m not talking about dedicated, hard-core organizers, but the battalions of armchair activists who stay home in off-year elections, who consume politics like pints of Ben and Jerry’s and yell at the TV, but won’t get their hands dirty with the real grunt work. I’ve met many. (And it’s mostly grunt work.) They’ll never win if they won’t get into the game.

Or, as happened the other day, we take ourselves so seriously that we attack allies over minor foibles. Patricia Arquette backstage at the Oscars, for instance. Instead of bashing her on Twitter, Oliver Willis went glass-half-full on Arquette’s pay equity comments. She used “a national stage with an extraordinarily high viewership to elevate an issue of key importance for the progressive coalition.” Thst’s a good thing. Some activists complained that she wasn’t perfection. Yeah? And? Willis writes:

The left has a long long history of shoving its head way up its own butt and ignoring the long fight for progress. It [is] often thanks to visionary leaders, both outside the official halls of power and within it, that the movement has had its discordant energy pointed in the right direction towards great national goals.

Along that way, it seems so often as if the left is not happy because while they got 70-80% of the cake, they didn’t get that 20% so nobody should have cake forever — until the mythical day we can get 100% cake (which is never coming and has never happened, ever in history).

At Huffington Post, Brooke Sopelsa asked the LGBT community yesterday to stop “launching attacks on well-meaning straight people” for not being hip to “the latest LGBTQIA lingo” that she can’t even keep up with herself.

We have enough adversaries working a divide-and-conquer strategy against us to do their work for them. NC Sen. Thom Tillis and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, to give just two examples – not to mention their Kochtopus masters.

If Democrats and the left expect to carry the day, save democracy, or whatever, we need to start training for marathons instead of sprints. It’s not just a different way of doing. It’s a different way of thinking.

Once, as runners milled around before the start of a 10k race, as people compared past times and personal bests, I overheard one conversation that stuck with me. This guy I knew (barely) was telling the runner beside him how a recent race had gone. He said at such-and-such weekend event he had run two-twenty-five (or something). I laughed to myself. Anybody else overhearing him would think that was a pretty good marathon time. Except he wasn’t a marathoner. He was an ultra distance runner. He meant miles.

On the origin of “lynching”
by Tom Sullivan

Two postings this weekend involving lynch mobs led me to an interesting bit of history from the Revolutionary War. Reading the L.A. Times op-ed title, “Southern ‘Hanging Bridge: A monument to Judge Lynch,” made me gasp. It had never occurred to me that lynching derived from someone’s name.

Jason Morgan Ward, associate professor of history at Mississippi State University, begins:

On Feb. 10, the Montgomery, Ala.-based organization Equal Justice Initiative released “Lynching in America,” a searing report that documents 3,959 lynchings in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950. The researchers note that their count exceeds that of previous studies by at least 700 victims. The news media seized on the numbers and paid less attention to what the group characterized as an “astonishing absence” of lynching memorials in communities that boast monuments to Confederate soldiers and architects of the South’s Jim Crow regime.

As it happens, an abandoned, rusted bridge on a dirt road near Shubuta, Mississippi stands as a makeshift monument to the lynchings that occurred there between 1918 and 1942. When Ward asked locals if the new road bypassing the “hanging bridge” had anything to do with its history, a local told him, “People don’t need to see that.”

But Ward’s op-ed did not explain who Judge Lynch was.

It was news last week when Oklahoma legislators voted to cease funding an Advance Placement history course, echoing a key critic of the curriculum who believes “the concept of American exceptionalism has been deliberately scrubbed out of this document.”

At Crooks and Liars, Dave Neiwert suggests that one motivation for the legislation may be that Oklahomans do not want to see their own unflattering history revisited: the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and the Osage Reign of Terror, also from the 1920s. In the first, white lynch mobs obliterated a prosperous black neighborhood – even dropping fire bombs from airplanes (one might consider that exceptional) – and in the second, white fortune hunters exploited and murdered Osage tribal members to gain control over oil rights. Combined, hundreds died. Neiwert explains:

An understanding of Oklahoma history would not be complete without at least some knowledge of these incidents, particularly because they loom so large in the history of race relations in America as a nation.

It also would give young people a clearer and fuller picture of the scope and nature of how history has shaped modern race relations in America. At a bare minimum, it will prevent privileged and sheltered whites from asking ignorantly: “Why haven’t blacks done any better since we ended slavery?” or asking: “Why do Native Americans insist on clinging to their reservations?”

But who was Judge Lynch, and how did his name get attached to extrajudicial killings?

While the Oxford English Dictionary offers no summary judgement, the most likely source seems to be Col. Charles Lynch, a Quaker justice of the peace from Bedford County in the Virginia piedmont, and an officer in the county militia during the Revolutionary War. (His older brother founded the city of Lynchburg.) Threatened in 1780 with the approach of Lord Cornwallis’ troops invading from the south, and facing insurrection from local Loyalists, Colonel Lynch and the county court overstepped their legal authority in jailing Tory conspirators for treason, for which they later threatened to sue Lynch and his associates. Wikipedia explains, “Lynch’s extralegal actions were retroactively legitimized by the Virginia General Assembly in 1782.”

The incidents were notorious enough in colonial Virginia that Judge Lynch, the Quaker, became synonymous with extralegal punishments. Hence, Lynch’s Law.

That’s it. No Stallone movie. Just a footnote to history. Except for the fact that the terrorism “used to enforce racial subordination and segregation” across the South following Reconstruction, homegrown terrorism the Equal Justice Initiative’s new report details, bears Lynch’s name.

Pending the outcome of the FBI’s investigation of the 2014 hanging death of Lennon Lacy in Bladenboro, NC, EJI may have one more lynching to add to its historical(?) report.

Their American spirit is AWOL
by Tom Sullivan

Something about Sunday mornings brings out the preacher in me. I wrote about this yesterday, but this morning I’m still fuming about misguided efforts by right-wing ideologues to abandon our system of public schools for whatever crazy reasons, or because freedom. Listen:

One hundred and sixty thousand rugged individuals didn’t suddenly decide to grab a gun off the mantle, don uniforms, build landing craft, and separately invade Normandy on June 6, 1944 because if big gummint did it, it would be un-American, add to the debt, and we don’t like France anyway.

There are things we do as a people, together, that make us US.

Educating our nation’s children together is one of those things. Support for universal public education in this country predates ratification of the United States Constitution. It’s built into the state constitutions and enabling legislation that brought new states into the Union all the way up to and including Hawaii, the 50th state.

I don’t know what country chest-thumping, would-be patriots who want to abolish public education think they want to live in, but it’s not the United States of America.

My father in-law law fought on the front lines in Europe during WWII. One of the things he said distinguished the American GI from the enemy is that when their tanks and trucks and jeeps broke down, the Germans would abandon their equipment on the field of battle and walk away. But the American boys had grown up tinkering with their cars, trucks and tractors. It was a point of pride for them, he told me, that when their gear broke down, they could fix it and get it running again with whatever they had at hand. Shoelaces. Rubber bands. “Duck” tape. And get back into the fight.

That’s the spirit that won the war. You don’t hear that spirit from public school abolitionists. Freedom, my ass.

The new abolitionists
by Tom Sullivan

Jefferson may never have said an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people, but the idea strikes a chord. The urban legend lives on because the idea speaks to American aspirations that predate the signing of the Constitution. Among some of our American cohort, especially among our right-wing, would-be keepers of the flame, that aspiration is dying.

The movement on the right to abolish public education – that all-American institution – has been growing for some time. Ron Paul wants public schools abolished. So does Rick Santorum. So do T-party types from coast to coast. And, of course, Texas.

Now that fringe, fundamentally un-American idea is being mainlined into public via Fox News.
“There really shouldn’t be public schools, should there?” said “Outnumbered” host Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery during a discussion of the Oklahoma state legislature’s proposal to ban Advanced Placement U.S. History in high schoo for not promoting American exceptionalism. Talking Points Memo notes that this movement is spreading:

Efforts by conservative school board members in Colorado to make the Advanced Placement U.S. History course “more patriotic,” prompted a walk-out by students. Under the changes proposed in Colorado “students would only be taught lessons depicting American heritage in a positive light, and effectively ban any material that could lead to dissent.” In South Carolina conservatives asked the College Board to exclude any material with an “ideological bias,” including evolution. Similar efforts are underway in Georgia and North Carolina.

Amanda Marcotte looked at this and other ways “Republicans are purposefully trying to make Americans more ignorant.” I’ve looked at the ideological basis for eliminating from the university classroom any ideas that cut across the conservative grain.

What the new abolitionists want, it seems, is either a Disneyfied version of America (without “Small World,” of course); a pre-American one before universal, public education was a hallmark of the American experiment; or one that serves narrow interests of business interests in producing serviceable workers who will do but not think. Any of those options presents a pretty bleak vision of America’s future.

Last fall U.S. News examined the tension between broad learning and and education focused on technical skills:

The prevailing wisdom and research indicate a growing emphasis on and necessity for career-ready degrees such as computer science, engineering and finance – often included as part of STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

At the same time, employers readily identify the creative, communicative and problem-solving acumen traditionally associated with liberal arts majors as the most valuable attributes of new hires.

With a sluggish job market and companies still reluctant to reinvest in their workforces, the job prospects for all college grads have actually never been clearer: College graduates with career-ready degrees are best positioned to get hired and earn the quickest return on their educational investment.

But that’s a pretty threadbare method for evaluating an education’s worth, and one the Founders would not have recognized. While studying advanced dynamics, I received a flyer from my old college announcing its 150th anniversary celebration with lectures on medieval arts and sciences interspersed with recorder quartets. Where I was working on my engineering degree, I saw little love of learning for its own sake. Students raised their hands and asked, “Do we need to know this for the test?” The contrast was laughable.

Charlatans and cranks
by Tom Sullivan

Paul Krugman this morning
smacks down three of the right’s preeminent purveyors of supply-side voodoo. The column is sure to leave them fuming.

“Charlatans and cranks,” Krugman suggests, invoking a phrase used by former George W. Bush chief economic adviser, Greg Mankiw. The occasion was Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s appearance at a New York dinner featuring supply-siders Art Laffer (of the eponymous curve), CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, and Stephen Moore, chief economist of the Heritage Foundation. Making obeisance before the high priests of bunk – like questioning climate change, evolution, and the current president’s American bona fides – has become a “right” of passage for Republican presidential contenders.

Reality takes a holiday. Ideology takes precedence. Because, to riff on a song, it’s all about that base. But we’ll come back to Krugman later.

The New York Times also reports this morning on something I’ve mentioned before. The University of North Carolina’s Republican-appointed Board of Governors is closing several academic enters on its campuses dedicated to studying poverty, climate, and social change. It couldn’t also be about ideology, could it? The Times writes:

“It’s clearly not about cost-saving; it’s about political philosophy and the right-wing takeover of North Carolina state government,” said Chris Fitzsimon, director of NC Policy Watch, a liberal group. “And this is one of the biggest remaining pieces that they’re trying to exert their control over.”

A lot like
Wisconsin that way. The UNC Center for Civil Rights is also a target:

Steven B. Long, a member of the advisory group and a former Civitas board member, said that the center had engaged in “inappropriate” activism. He also criticized it for filing costly lawsuits against local governments.

Local governments are also being targeted by a state legislature that frowns upon those who refuse to meekly submit.

Gene Nichols, director of the UNC Poverty Center recommended for closure, responded in print this week:

I have been repeatedly informed, even officially, that my opinion pieces have “caused great ire and dismay” among state officials and that, unless I stopped publishing in The News & Observer, “external forces might combine in the months ahead” to force my dismissal. Today those threats are brought to fruition. The Board of Governors’ tedious, expensive and supremely dishonest review process yields the result it sought all along – closing the Poverty Center. This charade, and the censorship it triggers, demeans the board, the university, academic freedom and the Constitution. It’s also mildly ironic that the university now abolishes the center for the same work that led it to give me the Thomas Jefferson Award a year ago.

The Poverty Center runs on an annual budget of about $120,000. None comes from the state. Grant funding has been secured through 2016. These private dollars will now be returned. UNC will have fewer resources, not more. Two terrific young lawyers will lose their jobs. Student education, employment and publication opportunities will be constricted. Most importantly, North Carolina’s understanding of the challenges of poverty will be weakened. These are significant costs to pay for politicians’ thin skin.

Scott Walker would feel right at home in Art Pope’s North Carolina. So would Kansas Republican, Gov. Sam Brownback, whose aggressive tax cuts cheered by national Republicans have driven his state into a deep fiscal crisis. North Carolina’s Republican Gov. Pat McCrory isn’t quite there yet, but he’s working hard on it.

Back to Krugman. He concludes:

So what does it say about the current state of the G.O.P. that discussion of economic policy is now monopolized by people who have been wrong about everything, have learned nothing from the experience, and can’t even get their numbers straight?

The answer, I’d suggest, runs deeper than economic doctrine. Across the board, the modern American right seems to have abandoned the idea that there is an objective reality out there, even if it’s not what your prejudices say should be happening. What are you going to believe, right-wing doctrine or your own lying eyes? These days, the doctrine wins.

And hands down.

Dominating the battle space
by Tom Sullivan

Citizens United … yadda, yadda, yadda … we’re a plutocracy.

It seems our plutocrats want to buy America’s elections and, increasingly, we’re willing to let them. Their efforts — like Jeb Bush’s — to dominate the political donations battle space may be succeeding. Analyzing the results of “the most expensive midterm election in history,” costing a whopping $3.77 billion, the Center for Responsive Politics’s Russ Choma finds that fewer donors are choosing to participate. That is, fewer donors are giving more:

Every area of traditional campaign finance saw a decline in the number of donors. Despite the increased cost of this election, the records that a number of races set in terms of overall cost and a huge focus on fundraising, there were just 434,256 identifiable individual donors to candidates in the 2014 election. That’s 107,000 fewer than there were in the 2010 election.

The number of individuals giving money to national party committees also declined — although this was not the first time that happened.

Even when it came to outside spending groups, there were fewer donors. In 2010, there were 57,405 individual donors to outside spending groups (including 527s) who gave a total of $104.6 million, or roughly $1,800 apiece. In 2014, there were 53,725 donors to outside groups, whose average donation was $8,011. That’s an increase in the size of the average donation of almost 445 percent.

Aaron Blake sums up at “The Fix”:

-A nearly 20 percent decline in total donors to candidates in just four years

-A more than 6 percent decline in donors to outside groups, even as these outside groups are multiplying thanks to the court rulings

Perhaps America’s common folk are beginning to cry uncle (Pennybags).

The Koch brothers. Of course, the Koch brothers. But they’re ideologues, zealots, holy warriors armed with golden pens, and not your typical greedheads. There are plenty more of the latter in the Midas cult, drunk on their own wealth and, not content to enjoy it privately or to give it away in service to mankind. They need to dominate the rest of us the way they dominate business rivals. Their watches could buy “a six-pack of Rolexes,” etc.

At what point do plutocrats calculate that they’ve reached a point of diminishing returns in spending money to avoid the costs of maintaining a decent society, and/or to suck dry the national treasury to increase their own? Might they then retire from politics and focus on more traditional, sybaritic pleasures?

Maybe not. Power is quite the aphrodisiac.

If it continues, it is a trend that seems destined to break democracy itself. Well, you break it, you bought it, Pennybags. How much will that cost you?

Dishing on federalism
by Tom Sullivan

The T-party’s creative interpretations of the constitution and federalism leave us with some amusing, if paranoid, legislative efforts. (I originally mistyped feralism, which also kinda works in this case.) Eric Stern gave some examples from Montana yesterday at Salon. Here are a few:

1) Prepare for National Ammunition shortage (SB 122). When Obama comes to get our guns and bullets, Montana will be ready. This bill cites the “serious risk” that America might run out of ammunition and exempts Montana’s ammo manufacturers from paying any taxes at all, as an incentive to produce more bullets so we can survive the Obama gun rapture. Its author, Matt Rosendale, was an unsuccessful congressional candidate in 2014 whose campaign ads featured him shooting drones out of the air with a rifle.

2) Establish Armed Militias in Every Town (SB 130). Even if we have enough bullets, Montana could still be in grave danger from the federal government. This bill would protect citizens by creating local paramilitary groups across the state, known as “home guards,” and would allow sheriffs to mobilize these troops for whatever reason they so choose, without the governor’s consent. This concept is supported enthusiastically by militia groups whose members enjoy stockpiling firearms but sometimes go to prison.

3) Require that nipples and areolae be fully concealed; prohibit “simulated genitalia” (HB 365). Our state already has a general law against indecent exposure but Montana’s social conservatives feel it isn’t enough. The new proposal lists body parts. Specifically, it would prohibit “exposing the anus, areola or nipple with anything less than a fully opaque covering.” Better yet, it would forbid the wearing of “any costume or covering that gives the appearance of, or simulates, the genitals, nipple or areola.” So much for my Halloween idea.

Somewhere I have a photo I shot a couple of years back of this sign outside the Radio Shack in the Bitterroot Valley town of Hamilton, Montana:

The tinfoil hats are free to every visitor.

Also striking, Eric Stern is Deputy Secretary of State in Montana. People in the legislature may have lost their minds, but a few in the capitol, at least, haven’t lost their sense of humor.

The politics of resentment
by Tom Sullivan

At Salon, Jim Newell suggests that although Gov. Scott Walker holds a front-runnerish status in the GOP’s 2016 presidential field that may not last, he is still a credible candidate. “Notwithstanding the concern that he has the charisma of a nightstand,” Newell adds.

But he cautions critics to avoid attacking Walker for his lack of a college degree. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean gave Newell the opening by questioning Walker’s academic credentials on Thursday’s “Morning Joe.” That exchange did not go so well for the former DNC chair, making him look in Newell’s estimation like a “snooty liberal snob jerk.”

It’s not a particularly trenchant observation, but the fact that the iconically liberal Vermonter took a swing at Walker’s education and whiffed ought to discourage others on the left from having a go at it. Democrats have enough ground to make up among the white, working class without compounding the problem by sneering at the non-degreed.

Leave attacking people’s education to Walker. He’s a professional. His plan to slash $300 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget is playing to his base:

But to his critics, Mr. Walker, in both his proposed cuts and in the discussion that arose over the Wisconsin Idea, is trying to capitalize on a view that is popular among many conservatives: that state universities have become elite bastions of liberal academics that do not prepare students for work and are a burden on taxpayers.

“This is a budget that serves Scott Walker for president, and it doesn’t serve Wisconsin,” said Jon Erpenbach, a Democratic state senator. “He’s trying to appeal to the most conservative of conservatives, the Republican voters in early-polling states. And there’s 5.5 million people back home saying, ‘Wait a minute.’ ”

The politics of resentment is an art as fine as winemaking on the right. Liberals don’t do it well and shouldn’t try.

Look! Up in the sky!

by Tom Sullivan

Commercial drones. Those GoPro-equipped gadgets for hobbyists, news crews, professional photographers, and drunk, off-duty, intelligence employees. Maybe even for Amazon package deliveries. (In your fever dreams, maybe.) The FAA announced proposed rules governing their use on Sunday:

The U.S. aviation regulator proposed rules on Sunday for commercial drone flights that would lift some restrictions but would still bar activities such as the delivery of packages and inspection of pipelines that have been eyed by companies as a potentially breakthrough use of the technology.

The long-awaited draft rules from the Federal Aviation Administration would require unmanned aircraft pilots to obtain special pilot certificates, stay away from bystanders and fly only during the day. They limit flying speed to 100 miles per hour (160 kph) and the altitude to 500 feet (152 meters) above ground level.

Just a tentative toe in the water, a camel’s nose under the tent. But it’s an announcement that will send eager technophiles rushing to buy the latest in remote-control spy-ware, and encourage what NPR reported last night could be a $2 billion commercial drone sector. These rules also are meant to prepare the public for further expansion of the program and assuage privacy concerns, etc., etc.

Drone testing and approval has been in the pipeline since at least late 2013:

The FAA has already permitted approximately 300 “public organizations” to fly drones, said FAA spokesperson Alison Duquette in an interview with Common Dreams. This includes drones used by law enforcement and Customs and Border Enforcement for the purpose of aerial surveillance.

Duquette said she would not disclose the numbers of drones in U.S. airspace armed with military grade weapons or spying capabilities.

Excuse me? But worry not, officials said Sunday:

“Today’s proposed rule is the next step in integrating unmanned aircraft systems into our nation’s airspace.” FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a conference call with reporters. “We are doing everything that we can to safely integrate these aircraft while ensuring that America remains the leader in aviation safety and technology.”

[snip]

“From entertainment, to energy, to agriculture there are a host of industries interested in using UAS to improve their business,” Anthony Foxx, secretary of the Transportation Department said. “But for us at U.S. DOT the first threshold always is and must be keeping the American people safe as we move to integrate these new types of aircraft into our skies.”

Yes, but. Lest you think — as yesterday’s reports suggest — we’re just talking about hobbyists, Eyewitness News, or even the police flying plastic toys in commercial airspace, there’s a little more to it (from February 2012):

“We’re going to bring aircraft back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’re going to train in the [continental U.S.],” said Steve Pennington, the Air Force’s director of ranges, bases and airspace, and executive director of the Defense Department’s FAA policy board. “So the challenge is how to fly in nonsegregated airspace.”

The Pentagon too has been working with the FAA to open up U.S. airspace to its fleet of big-boy toys, nearly 7,500 combat drones (also from February 2012):

The vast majority of the military’s drones are small — similar to hobby aircraft. The FAA is working on proposed rules for integrating these drones, which are being eyed by law enforcement and private business to provide aerial surveillance. The FAA expects to release the proposal on small drones this spring.

But the Pentagon is concerned about flying hundreds of larger drones, including Global Hawks as well as MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, both made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. in Poway.

And last week Congress approved legislation that requires the FAA to have a plan to integrate drones of all kinds into national airspace on a wide scale by 2015.

The Department of Homeland Security announced its intention to double its fleet of Predators in late 2012. If Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Atomics have their way, there could be 30,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
in U.S. airspace by 2020.

Maybe like me, you first remember the phrase “unmanned aerial vehicles” from George W. Bush’s scaremongering, Cincinnati speech about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and WMDs in October 2002. Back then, we were supposed to soil ourselves and go to war over the prospect of military UAVs in our skies. Ah, but we were young and foolish then.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a Predator!

(h/t Barry Summers)

Is it something in the water?
by Tom Sullivan

Is there something in London’s water? From the Not Gonna Happen Here Dept.:

The Conservative party needs to break its dependence on millionaires, the former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke has told the Observer, amid a growing furore over the tax affairs of the party’s donors.

After a week of some of the most intense fighting between the parties in recent years, Clarke said the Conservatives would be strengthened by loosening the hold of rich men on their financial survival.

He called on David Cameron to cap political donations and increase state funding of political parties to put an end to damaging scandals and rows. The Conservatives have been rocked in the past week by a potentially toxic combination of allegations of tax evasion by clients of the HSBC bank, whose chairman, Lord Green, became a Tory minister; tax avoidance by party donors; and leaked details of the secretive black and white fundraising ball.

Meanwhile here in the Colonies, The Man Who Would Be Bush III is looking to lock in Mitt Romney’s network of presidential campaign donors from the “private equity and investment worlds.” It’s a trick Jeb Bush learned from his no-accountability brother, George. Suck all the air out of the GOP candidates’ Green Room room along with the money:

“It’s absolutely a kind of aggressive shock-and-awe strategy to vacuum up as much of the fund-raising network as you possibly can,” said Dirk Van Dongen, the president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and a prolific Romney fund-raiser now helping Bush. “And they’re having a large measure of success.”

On the other side of the pond, however, the conservative Ken Clarke has had the scales fall from his eyes:

“What happens is that the Conservatives attack the Labour party for being ever more dependent on rather unrepresentative leftwing trade union leaders, and the Labour party spends all its time attacking the Conservative party for being dependent on rather unrepresentative wealthy businessmen. In a way both criticisms are true. And the media sends both up.

“The solution is for the party leaders to get together to agree, put on their tin hats and move to a more sensible and ultimately more defensible system.”

As previously noted, Clarke wants to see a cap on political donations. And it’s not just Tories having attacks of common sense:

Announcing that a Labour government would launch an independent investigation into the culture and practices of HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service] with regard to tax avoidance, [Labour leader Ed] Miliband told a Welsh Labour conference in Swansea: “The government’s failure to tackle tax avoidance is no accident. It has turned a blind eye to tax avoidance because it thinks that so long as a few at the top do well, the country succeeds. It thinks that wealth and power fence people off from responsibility. It thinks the rules only apply to everybody else.”

Imagine that.

Could any of this be contagious? Maybe there’s a vaccine they’re not taking in London that Villagers can not take here.