Can anyone explain why Dennis Hastert used the Jefferson raid to side with Pelosi?
It seems like an own goal during a penalty kick, which you'd like to think never happens in real life.
UPDATE: I'm sure if it was Tom DeLay who was raided, Nancy Pelosi whould have been first to the barricades.
Step 1: The US does everything possible to create a multilateral alliance to stop Iran from getting nukes.
Step 2: At the last minute, France vetoes the whole thing in exchange for oil drilling rights.
Step 3: All the other countries back out of the alliance, since it is no longer multilateral without France.
Step 4: Bowing to unrelenting international pressure, the US declines to go it alone.
Step 5: Israel warns that an attack on them would be met with an unimaginable response.
Step 6: Iran nukes Tel Aviv because Allah told them to.
Step 6.001: Israel nukes Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, the UAE and Iran some more, using about 100 hydrogen bombs. A hundred million die.
Step 7: Everyone blames Bush and Rumsfeld.
Short reaction: I couldn't watch it, but I read it, and it's pretty much the common ground. It will please those in the middle who support immigration but want control of the borders. It won't please the ship-them-home bunch, and it's a bit wishy-washy on the how of controlling the borders, but it's a pretty good center to the issue.
My one quibble is that we cannot control the border by fences and patrols alone -- we need some special immigration arrangement with Mexico that gives them a larger legal quota than Sierra Leone or Norway. The current regime allows no legal immigration from Mexico unless they have relatives here already, which means you mostly get dependents, not workers. There needs to be some possibility of immigration -- some line to stand in -- for all the others, or we'll be back here in 20 years.
UPDATE: Watched the speech finally. Good God, but Bush can't give a set speech to save his life. I've seen him in impromptu settings, and he's pretty good, but he turns a fine written speech into something rather tedious. Reagan he isn't.
Given that the current administration is the most Christian-oriented group in living memory, it kinda boggles the mind to see that Dr. Dobson and Richard Viguerie are threatening to bolt the party in the mid-terms because they aren't getting enough.
Considering that the chance of another card-carrying Christian getting elected president anytime soon is roughly zero, one wonders why they aren't pulling out all the stops to get more evangelical Republicans into Congress, not fewer. Bush is the best chance they'll ever have, and that chance ends in 2009.
Then again, maybe they'll stay home and the party will do OK anyway -- or even benefit by not having to alienate everyone else pandering to a narrow constituency. Then maybe we can get back to being the party of small government again. This tail has been wagging the dog far too long anyway.
Atrios, by way of Kevin Drum, has posed a few questions for lefty bloggers, to see who's a liberal. A lot of folks on the right are also answering, so here goes my take:
Um, no. Let's see how it plays out first. Bankruptcy should be hard and a bit painful.
No. At least not without a $10 million exclusion. I'd also add a big increase in the gift tax exemption, at least among close family members. The gift tax limits are stuck in the 1960's.
No and hell no.
The devil is likely to run it. The real problem with this is that it always ends up being a government monopoly, with competition banned by law. I could maybe go with something like this: Each state offers basic, limited, medical coverage. Generic drugs, HMO service, some procedures unavailable (e.g. no heart transplants, but no one dies from tuberculosis). No practitioner need participate. Any citizen or legal immigrant may chose to be covered. People who opt for private plans get a state subsidy of the average patient cost in the government system.
I'd rather see states impose weight fees, as one-size-fits-all isn't a good idea. What's good for New York might not be good for Nebraska. The real problem with all of this is that the market cycle is too long. The other problem is that the problem isn't just demand-side. We need to start building refineries, drilling and investing in solar and nuclear. Whether we move to hydrogen or batteries, both are electric and we don't have nearly enough.
How about we find the middle ground that 60% of voters want, rather than this stupid battle between the fringes? Overturn Roe, allow abortion in the first 3 months, then after only in dire situations. How about teaching responsibility?
Considering that the top quartile of households pay more than 83% of income taxes, I'd say it's pretty progressive already. But I'll trade you an increase on the top rates in exchange for an opt-out year. High marginal rates impede upward mobility, so people who have a life-altering income event shouldn't get taxed like Rockefellers.
This sounds good, but freezing out religious organizations is itself discriminatory.
Is someone giving away corporations?
How about just killing the current plan entirely?
No, but you might require them to privately insure the pensions. While we're at this, limit government worker's pensions to some market average, and require universal social security participation.
How is this going to prevent fraud? Mayor Daley had paper ballots. It will all be electronic in 10 or 20 years anyway. I'd be more interested in banning the gerrymander -- make counting the votes matter again.
So do costs. Reduce taxes and the government burden and more families can have a parent at home. Encourage marriage. Encourage employer funded/supplied daycare where needed. But let's not create whole new government monopolies.
OK, if you increase the cap on benefits proportionately. And retroactively.
Make marriage a private matter. Don't know about the immigration thing enough to comment, except that I don't want it so quick that sham marriages become more common.
If you read this blog during the 2004 grocery strike, you'd know that I supported the union striking workers. I'll probably support them again next time. But I cannot support their union, which seems to be run by utter morons who couldn't outthink a bag of rocks.
Case in point: Today I received this UFCW broadside in the mail. Apparently, the union is upset that Albertsons is changing hands and the new owners intend to convert some of their dingy low-end stores into upscale Bristol Farms markets. For the most part, these are substandard, unmaintained Albertsons stores in high-income areas and are having a hard time competing because they cater to the wrong demographics. People have choices and they're choosing Ralph's or Vons or Whole Foods. People who shop at Bristol Farms don't shop at Albertsons, ever.
But Albertsons is a union shop, and Bristol Farms isn't, so the UFCW is sending out mailers alleging that Bristol Farms are dirty, rat-infested traps of Satan and one should avoid them like the plague. It comes off like the old Marx Brothers line about "Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes", but there you have it. I guess basically what they want to say is that the new Bristol Farms stores will be, behind the scenes, what Albertsons is on its face.
Stupid is as stupid does, and this is pretty dumb. If they want public support next time they strike, this is about the most unlikely way to get it. Time for the rank-and-file of the UFCW to fire the morons that lost them the last strike and are trying to lose the next.
According to the NY Times-CBS poll, Americans have a bleaker view the country's direction now than any time in the last 23 years. Of course, 23 years ago was 1983, just before Reagan's Long Boom (1984-1999) started. Sounds like a good contrarian indicator to me.
Intel, avoiding the name "Pentium V" for reasons only they know, has chosen "Core 2 Duo" for their next generation of processors. One wonders if the generation after that will be called "Core 2 Duo II."
Rep Patrick Kennedy, son of Fatso, crashed his car in a single-vehicle accident. Drudge reports that it's the the second accident in as many weeks. Officers say he was drunk, but were ordered to leave the scene. No tests were done. If this were Tom DeLay, it would be all over the NY Times and WaPo. But it isn't and it ain't. Guess it doesn't fit.
Update: The NY Times finally has the story.
One of the reasons I have such a hard time agreeing with the "but they're illegal" argument is that I know that the system of legal immigration is completely, utterly, hopelessly insane. It was apparently designed 80 years ago to shut down the open immigration that existed prior to that point, and it does a good job. Or it would if it could possibly be enforced.
A few items: legal immigration from Mexico is limited to about 26,000 people a year, not counting spouses or minor children of US citizens. Of these 26,000, most of the slots are reserved for other relatives. There is almost no chance any given Mexican can legally immigrate unless they are related to a legal resident. The quota for Mexicans is the same as for Somalis and Nepalese. In short, at present, there is no general immigration to the United States, and what little there is is apportioned without regard to things like geography, need or interest.
We need to change these laws, and drastically. Between the Civil War and the 1920's, immigration was open to nearly all who came. My ancestors, probably your ancestors. Then they closed the game down. It's beyond time we reopened it, and the waves of illegal immigration are the wake-up call. The system is untenable and has been for decades. No wonder they jump the line -- for most of them the line doesn't move. It's not about amnesty, it's really not about legality. It's about whether or not we will allow meaningful immigration again.
Instead of asking why the dog peed on the hydrant, we should be asking why we insist on standing between the hydrant and the dog.
Everyone I've talked to today at work has remarked on the total lack of traffic this morning. I'm not sure that the "Day Without Immigrants" folks wanted to send that message to Los Angeles. Traffic being as brutal as it is in LA, the idea that we could "send them all home" and go back to free-flowing freeways is pretty enticing. Maybe gas prices would go down, too.
I'm only half joking.
UPDATE: At 6pm, the southbound 405 on the Westside was flowing at 65-70MPH. This never happens. My normal 35 minute slog turned into a 12 minute romp, with most of the time spent getting on and off. I could get used to this.