You heard it here first (08-20-13 to be precise)

@ggreenwald If you need to avoid a law against spying on your own citizens, you can just ask a foreign government to do it for you.

— Paul Dirks (@phd9) August 20, 2013

Regarding Eric Holder's new sentencing strategies.

 It's apparently difficult for people to fully comprehend how important this is. It matters not whether it's a DOJ idea or a State idea and sniping over timing is just plain stupid. For decades, the most reliable way politicians could pander for votes is to promise to lock up more of "those" people. The strategy was always unsustainable, but the fact that people can reliably talk about reversing the trend without inviting virulent attacks is HUGE. I never would have believed I'd see it in my lifetime.

Swampland

A Republican Senate?

I want to emphasize that the possibility of Republicans taking over the chamber does NOT change my mind about the filibuster. The only way that Congresscritters are actually held accountable to their constituents is if they pass laws that they don't like. The number one argument against Republican rule is what happens when they have it.

The games people play with votes and procedure targeting nothing than opportunities for soundbites is disgusting. The best way around that is to allow whichever party is in control to actually implement their agenda. Temporary pain is the only way to actually fix what's wrong with current thinking.

Re: Guantanomo

It's worth remembering while the Right Wing rends it's garments over informing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that he has rights under the Constitution, the reason these people can't be dealt with is precisely because Bush ignored the Constitution in dealing with them in the first place. Once you've tortured someone you no longer can use the evidence they provide to try them. And since the policy going in was always err on the side of locking up anyone suspicious, what's left is a massive mess that no one wants responsibility for. 

"Blame Bush" may be regarded as a copout in some circles but anything less is gross negligence.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/01/president-obama-sides-with-his-guantanamo-bay-protesters/#ixzz2S2YtlojE

Re Michael Grunwald

Tread On Me 

There are two threads of though that seem to be missing from the current debate. One is the fact that private actors if they act in concert can be just as threatening to freedom as government. Though I can pee in a cup, free from fear, the fact that I need to even think of such things if I want to fully participate in society is a serious erosion of Freedom. If Government forbids employers from asking me for my Facebook password, then it's pretty clear that the government is DEFENDING my Freedom against Private sector infringement.

The second thing that seems to be severely misunderstood is Miranda. The point of Miranda is to prevent Police from beating confessions out of suspects who may or may not be guilty. It doesn't even prevent police from beating confessions out of people. It just stipulates, that if they do so, they can't use those confessions in court. 

It's a very important right to preserve for obvious reasons, but it the idea that we can't question someone without reading his rights, when we already have more than enough evidence to convict WITHOUT his statements, is to blow the problem up out of proportion. Miranda is an  important right to defend. This is not a good case on which to hang your defense.

For the record......

To make it official, I am not among the one's who's immediately clamoring for stricter gun control laws, but the people who are arguing against them might just change my mind. What a heaping pile of idiocy!

Just sayin.......

As long as news organizations think that the causes of Global Warming are worthy poll questions, misinformation will continue to run rampant. The planet itself really doesn't CARE whether people think temperature trends are caused by human activity or not. Science is not a matter of opinion.

Oops

Those of us who pay attention to the political landscape on a daily basis have trouble understanding the viewpoint of people who don't pay any attention at all. The entire Romney campaign is based on the assumption that his target audience doesn't know any better. His most severe miscalculation was thinking that Ohio autoworkers might be among those who don't pay attention.

TPM Prime

TalkingPointsMemo has a new 'prime' site up. The first thread was full of introductions. Here's mine:

I'm 54 years old. I spent 17 years working in manufacturing, working my way up from QC technician to Production Manager. In that capacity I was instrumental in helping to resist several Union organizing drives. I was convinced that Labor Unions had performed an important service in the past but had outlived their usefulness. Then the company was acquired by a much larger entity. Needless to say, within two years I was busy deciding the order to let people go as we shuttered the plant. Having no particular ties to the area, my wife and I then relocated to the US Virgin Islands where I split my time as an Office Manager by day and a Musician in the evenings. I feel very fortunate, but I nevertheless have strong opinions about how the dire state of our economy is directly related to the fact that we have allowed our manufacturing capacity to be outflanked. It's an issue that NEITHER party seems willing to address in any forceful manner.

More on Romney's tax plan.

It's no secret that I don't think that the deception inherent in Mitt's tax plan is getting enough coverage. He's refused to say how he would offset the revenue losses. But more importantly he's relying on the same "growth fairies" that the GOP has been selling for as long as I've been paying attention to politics (Hint: that's 40 years) Here's the question. If tax cuts invariably lead to growth that in turn leads to more revenue, then why aren't the Bush tax cuts doing JUST THAT for us now? They're still in place. If they worked, then they're still working. If they aren't working then what possible basis do we have to believe that we just need more of the same to make things right?

Fact check?

There's a fundamental problem with Romney's tax plan which is creating havoc among the "fact-checkers" His plan is basically this: 1 Keep all the Bush tax cuts 2 Cut all tax rates by 20 percent across the board 3 ? 4 Continue to collect as much revenue as you had been. As long as CNN et al are willing to pretend that "?" represents an acceptable enunciation of a tax policy then they are going to continue to get their "facts" horribly wrong. This is NOT an acceptable situation!

As long as national reporters are willing to believe 6 impossible things before breakfast, Romney will get away with asserting 6 impossible things before breakfast.

And the Hits keep coming.

There are many different words you can use to describe slandering 146 Million working Americans. Patriotic is not on the list. Wrapping yourself in the flag means nothing if you don't also respect that we are a Government of the People.

Why is Romney getting bad press? Because he's earned it.

The New Rupublic

But the stories about this episode have made Romney look bad because, you know, Romney looked bad. Even staunch conservatives and Republicans, like Peggy Noonan, were taken aback at Romney’s reaction. It was based on false premises and, these conservatives felt, it was wildly inappropriate. (As Sophie Quinton noted in the Atlantic, it was the very nearly the opposite reaction that Ronald Reagan had in 1980, after the failed mission to rescue the Iranian hostages.)

Found Via Eschaton

One of the most blatant paradoxes of today's Republican party is how they like to scream and moan about deficit spending but that the moment anyone mentions that increasing revenues would address the problem they utterly clam up. The following article is a long read but it explains clearly the History behind this particular brand of doublethink: PDF File The money quote comes from Milt Friedman:

There is an important point that needs to be stressed to those who regard themselves as fiscal conservatives. By concentrating on the wrong thing, the deficit, instead of the right thing, total government spending, fiscal conservatives have been the unwitting handmaidens of the big spenders. The typical historical process is that the spenders put through laws which increase government spending. A deficit emerges. The fiscal conservatives scratch their heads and say, “My God, that’s terrible; we have got to do something about that deficit.” So they cooperate with the big spenders in getting taxes imposed. As soon as the new taxes are imposed and passed,the big spenders are off again, and there is another burst in government spending and another deficit. (1978b, 11)

About those taxes.......

The problem with Capital gains taxes, is that its not their rates that determine economic activity, It's the anticipated change in their rates. If rates are scheduled to go up, a flurry of selloffs will follow resulting in stocks losing value and more cash (and cash equivalents) being hoarded. If rates are scheduled to go down, then investors will prefer to sit tight on their appreciated assets, and wait for the taxes to drop before they cash in. The resulting distortions are what cause people to claim that lowering taxes cause revenue windfalls. They're one shot deals that don't continue after the new rates are settled in. I personally find it difficult to justify that people who live on their investments are taxed significantly less than people who earn salaries. I'm all for simplifying the tax code but none of the proposals on the table do anything but make the stratifying of our society even worse than it already is.

Re: The vanishing Middle Class

What's actually killing the middle class is the disparity in standards of living between the USA we know and love and the rest of the developing world. Neither party is actually willing to discuss the problem in detail because neither party has a solution. The difference though is that Obama is at least willing to use phrases like 'investing in education' and such to act a:as if the problem exists and b: as if something can be done about it. Romney OTOH, simply wants to make sure that money earned offshore can be repatriated tax free.

Responding to the quote below:

Whether we like it or not, we're going to move away from manufacturing towards a service based economy There's the problem in a nutshell. Whenever we think of any activity that earns money, we have to ask ourselves, "How does this add value?" Measured in terms of fulfilling actual human needs as opposed to simply drawing attention and cash, the only activities that actually add value are farming, manufacturing and transportation. Everything else is a matter of trading cash for vapor. Thinking that the American economy can make do without actually producing anything is the number one fundamental problem with out current economy. It's also the number one topic that everyone refuses to talk about.

I'll need this for tomorrow.......

Some edumacation for the trolls:

There has been a five percentage-point Democratic advantage, on average, in Fox News polls this year. In this poll, the Democratic edge is nine points. That may or may not be on the high side, although it is similar to other recent national polls conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, which puts Democrats up 11 percentage points and the Pew Research Center, with Democrats up by 13 percent.

That my friends is Fox news taking away the number one excuse the Teaheads offer when confronted with a negative poll. OVERSAMLPLING!!!!!!! Link

Every Day Is Thursday.