Two Out of Three Ain't Bad (and Open Thread)

 

"Radiation Vibe" (and 70s schlock medley) - Fountains of Wayne

I saw the full band on Monday (not just Chris and Adam) play an acoustic show (with bass and drums though) and they were quite fabulous.  The 70s medley that evening featured, among other things, note for note performances of Steve' Miller's "Swingtown," Yes's "Roundabout," Kansas's "Dust in the Wind,"and Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like I Do" -- it was pure hideousness, expertly delivered, from the days of my middle teens.   

- Last night's recall election effort in Wisconsin fell short of giving Democrats control of the Wisconisn Senate, which was disappointing.  But like kos, on reflection, I think it was a victory.  These kind of special elections, with lower voter turnouts, are not easy for Democrats to win.  And to pick up two seats in reddish districts in a fight explicitly over collective bargaining rights has got to strike some fear in Republican hearts.

- I ran into one of my colleagues this morning and the very first words he uttered to me were "I canceled the Post two weeks ago, I guess it's time to do the same for the Times."  He was referring to today's ultra hideous efforts by Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd, both of which read like bad self-parodies -- Friedman doing his centrist stroke fantasy schtick and Dowd playing out her daddy issues in a most pathetic fashion in a piece entitled "Withholder in Chief."    Dowd complains of Obama's inability to "spontaneously assuage Americans’ fears" and castigates him for failing to "buck up the country on one of its worst days in history."  Jesus, get a shrink.  Last Friday was one of the worst in the nation's history?!! Clearly Dowd is not burdened by excess knowledge of American history.  Or anything else.  One wonders, is this really the best that our national paper of record can do?  If so, then perhaps the speedy demise of newspapers is to be wished.

- And lastly, is Claire McCaskill kidding?   I used to think her a pretty savvy pol, but when questioned on the possiblity of a jobs bill, she preemptively agrees that Congress will not spend money to create jobs, but rather will "look at patent reform, trade agreements and regulations that are getting in the way of business growth" as a response to unemployment.  Isn't this a transparently silly notion?  Does anyone think that patent reform or trade agreements are going to produce employment in any meaningful numbers?  I understand that we will not be getting WPA style legislation through this Congress, but to simply concede the point and adopt Republican-style talking points on the issue seems a bizarre choice for someone who is likely to be facing a difficult fight in a marginal state in 2012.

What else is going on?   

Comments

[big bad wolf]

SC, you know how sometimes pages load piecemeal, usually starting with the title? you gave me a litle meatloaf scare. i knew it couldn't be, but i sort of have meatloaf PTSD.

it is not necessary to cancel the times. it is necessary only not to read those people on the op-ed page. it is helpful to let the times know that you don't read those people.

i do wish our side was better at voting turnout.

[Davis X. Machina]

McCaskill's answer was straight Refrigerator Policy Magnets™.

You'd get that from 40 Senators -- and half of them are Democrats -- without them even waking all the way up.

Politics is show business for ugly people, after all, and as they say in the theater, her answer reads as reasonable from the sixth row of seats.

Snowe and Collins say things like that all the time, hence their reputation for moderation and sagacity.

[MR Bill]

As I've said, I am grateful that other are willing to read Freidman and some of the other serial offenders, and then mediate them for me. And I am less angry, and feel better.
I don't envy them the task.

[MR Bill]

A lot of people in politics, certainly in Congress, are not so much members of the Democratic or Republican party as members of the Money party, following the power where it seems to go. Nathan Deal could stop being a Democratic Congressman in '96 and become a Republican (staying in office until last year when he became GA governor) without skipping a beat. I bet his routine changed not a whit.
9 GA House representatives switched parties this last election. No one seems to have noticed.
At this point, McCaskill seems to be pretty much a Money party candidate.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

I thought about going there this morning -- then shuddered and immediately put the thought out of my mind. Although it is the sort of thing that Chris and Adam would have appreciated in its full grotesquerie. (Chris Collingwood can also give a perfect note for note account of (Don't Fear) The Reaper.)

[big bad wolf]

i admit to a soft spot for BOC---they were funny, an unusual trait in a 70s rock band.

[Paula B]

oh, THAT meatloaf! yeah, gross.

Don't forget, SC, that most people don't read anything at all or follow the news closely enough to make sense of any analysis, so Friedman, Dowd and friends look like intelligentsia to them. That's all right. You gotta start somewhere.

[MR Bill]

Dowd and friends look like intelligentsia to them.

George Will writes long sentences, and wears a bowtie: QED he is intelligent. (Tucker Carlson, not so much..)

And Will looks constipated, so QED, he's a conservative.

[janinsanfran]

Whether the Wisconsin election was a win or a loss will depend on whether any unions that still have treasuries decide to dig in for the long haul -- or they decide, did that, didn't work, guess we'll do something else ... what I don't know.

I'll feel more hopeful when I see some money players willing to go more than one round.

Anyone have any scuttlebutt on whether the WI campaigns were adequately well run?

[Sir Charles]

janinsanfran,

I think the unions are committed to this fight in Wisconsin. Otherwise, groups like AFSCME risk seeing huge units of employees destroyed by this sort of thing.

My sense is that the campaign was pretty well run. I have seen nothing to suggest otherwise.

[kathy a.]

it's disappointing not to have picked up a third seat in WI, but two is certainly progress. [fingers crossed about 2 dems being challenged next week.] and isn't walker up for a recall next year?

i don't know what mccaskill is thinking. it could be as simple as the political observation that nothing that costs money will get through congress this year -- but you and other observers are absolutely right that she's missing the need to keep talking about jobs, first and foremost. we all need to keep talking jobs.

[Joe S]

Also, in the public sector, unions have a number of options to move the ball partially(even in the face of a relatively hostile administration). Here in Illinois, School Districts would often bargain with NEA locals before the enactment of a LRA because it was easier. Later, state government conducted public bargaining with AFSCME through a governor's executive order (a Repub governor, no less). I have no doubt the Wisconsin unions will chip away politically until they get this turned around. In the meantime, there will be a long guerilla campaign to reestablish bargaining.

[Paula B]

FYI---Interesting story on msnbc.com, written off the publication of an article in Current Directions in Psychological Science:

A UC-Berkeley psychologist says the rich and powerful view economic success, political outcomes and personal outcomes as the result of their own good behavior and work ethic, and tend to forget how family connections, money and education helped. Consequently, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival so they learn “prosocial behaviors.” As a result, they read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need [than the rich].

Who knew? http://on.msnbc.com/q6ZaEQ

[Paula B]

http://nyti.ms/pxMIna

Coupla Republicans actually mouth the word "tax." Is it a crack in the wall or just a smoke screen?

[janinsanfran]

I remain focused on Wisconsin. Nate Silver suggests that a recall of Walker looks doable, but precisely the sort of high risk fight that unions with deep pockets sometimes shy away from. I'm in the camp that we (progressives/liberals, what have you) have to take up one of these tough ones and win it before we'll be taken seriously.

Harry at Crooked Timber is interesting on the on-the-ground aspects of yesterday's races.

[oddjob]

likely to be facing a difficult fight in a marginal state in 2012

Isn't it going to be difficult because of Missouri's tendency to lean rightwards? Gephardt used to win by swinging left, but he only represented part of the St. Louis area. The state as a whole can be merely somewhat left of Kansas & Nebraska, no?

[Joe S]

Missouri's about 13-15 percentage points more Democratic than Kansas or Nebraska. Barack Obama lost Missouri by about 4000 votes out of 2.8 million cast (.1%). Obama lost Kansas and Nebraska by between 13 and 15 points.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

Missouri is historically considered to be a truly represenative state in terms of American electoral behavior. Since 1904 it has voted with the winner in every presidential election except 1956 and 2008, when it narrowly went for McCain. Missouri has a bit of everything demographically and is a classic border state.

janinsanfran,

Thanks for the interesting link.

I think labor will definitely go after Walker -- the big question is when to file the recall petitions. I think those who are thinking strategically favor doing it late enough in 2012 so that the election will coincide with the 2012 general election.

There are some who want to do it as early as possible, but that runs into the possiblity that the election would be held in conjunction with Wisconsin's presidential primary in April 2012, which is going to be a Republican dmoniated affair, since there is unlikely to be a Democratic contest.

[nancy]

McCaskill is also reaching across the aisle in opposing the extension of unemployment benefits. This makes no sense at all. Missouri is sitting at 8.8% unemployment and still reeling from major tornado damages.

[janinsanfran]

Re Wisconsin: I sure hope they go for November 2012 -- out of phase recalls are very difficult. I'm a Californian; I've lived that movie.

[kathy a.]

heh, jan. the governator is an example, although he wasn't exactly as bad as the TP persons.

the confirmation loss of chief justice rose bird and 2 associate justices in 1986 was a disaster. (cal supreme court justices are appointed by the governor, then stand re-election votes every 12 years -- these are normally routine, quiet votes.) the campaign against them was heavily centered on their votes in death penalty cases, but that was just the public set of talking points -- the campaign against them was financed by business interests who did not like their rulings favoring the little guy in civil cases. california's high court remains very, very conservative, 25 years later.

the most notable exception was when they found that the ban on gay marriage violated the state constitution (pre-prop 8). i strongly believe the justices "got it" that time, because they know and work with gay people, they work just kitty-corner from SF city hall, where all those glorious weddings happened.

[nancy]

kathy--Isn't it interesting how much easier it is for the judiciary to "get it" when abstraction meets the reality of one's co-workers, neighbors, friends, family -- we talk a lot around the dinner table about the political nonsense that falls out of life in the cul-de-sac, or worse the "gated-community" (emphasis on "gated "). Became so easy to put all those "others" into a category and be completely bloodless. What you're describing, I think, is one swell lesson of city-life.

Quite sure if you comb through the GOP Tea Party-tolerating demographic, very few (any?) of them are city-dwellers by choice and that "urban" is practically a foul word.

[beckya57]

bbw: I too thought Sir C was going to inflict Meatloaf on us. Sir C, I'm going to have nightmares tonight in which those songs will haunt my dreams; that's an almost perfect list of all of the songs/groups that made me want to pitch my radio out of a window when I was about 15. By the way, I highly recommend Everclear's "AM Radio" to anyone in their mid-50's; it's wonderfully, hilariously nostalgic.

Paula, a lot of that stuff that you cite from that study has been known for some time. For example, we know that the less well-off give more as a percentage of their incomes, with a lot of that going to their churches. Churches of course have been doing more and more social welfare work as the government has been doing less, so that makes a kind of sense. The whole issue of attribution for success or failure is also interesting. There's a general tendency for more successful people to attribute their good outcomes to their own efforts, while less successful people tend to attribute outcomes to luck or chance. However, I think there's also a greater tendency among conservatives to overestimate their own efforts in their successful outcomes, and to over-attribute poor outcomes in others to others' lack or effort or poor character. Liberals tend to see luck as more of a factor in their own success and (lack of) luck as a factor in others' poor outcomes, and I think we tend more to recognize the contributions to our success made by others, including the government. I remember reading a rundown once of all of the governmental programs that had helped Phil Gramm, a very right-wing senator from Texas who also had a PhD in economics, move up from a poor background to his very high position. Of course he wanted to cut those programs drastically: nothing like climbing up the ladder and then pulling it up behind you. I think the greater segregation of neighborhoods and institutions by class plays a (very negative) role in this also (this also relates to kathy's point above). I'm often struck by the fact that my (very right-wing) sister usually only interacts with other wealthy, right-wing Houston lawyers, while my work constantly exposes me to the struggles of lower income and poor people, and I think that must contribute to our very different outlooks on--well, almost everything.

kathy, even though the governator wasn't as bad as a sociopath like Walker, the process that got him into office IMHO was utterly illegitimate, and a similar abuse of the process (with more success) to the Clinton impeachment. In both cases, processes that were meant to address gross malfeasance were used in attempts to overturn democratic elections. It's just another part of the GOP campaign to blow through all of the norms of acceptable political behavior.

[joel hanes]

janinsanfran poses the question :

Anyone have any scuttlebutt on whether the WI campaigns were adequately well run?

Apparently Athenae at First Draft thought that Jessica King (who narrowly defeated Randy Hopper) was a bit timid.

But we won that one. Hopper sure is a piece of work; it will be a better work with him out of office.

I do truly wish that Darling had lost. She so deserves to.

[nancy]

At least McCaskill hasn't being lost in the shuffle. She earned special honors on the Ed Show tonight and her staff is very busy doing clean-up today for her "no unemployment extension" announcement. Primary--please. Why not? What--we now have blue dogs in the Senate. Nuh-uh. Don't see how we can afford that stuff.

[Krubozumo Nyakoye]

In my opinion, the results from Wisconsin are quite disturbing. It seems to indicate that people are not paying attention to the events that directly affect their lives. They are instead distracted by something else and don't bother to assert their own interests.

Some would call it apathy. Worst of all the whole game appears to be just about money. How much was thrown behind the lame ideologs to keep them in positions of power where they can willfully enable their benefactors to the detriment of their consituents, not just the ones who voted against them, but the majority of those fools who voted for them, thinking that the Koch cartel running the country is a good thing.

I'll not go on much further, but we who adhere to a reasoned kind of government, and a society founded on reason, are at risk. We should wake up to that fact and take it on because if we don't, we will become endangered species.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

On the open thread, a thought-provoking piece by Peter Daou on -- well, on political communication of all types, and why Republicans seem so good at it.

Money quote

At the root of the problem is this: the GOP benefits from a superior communications mechanism with which to shape and reshape conventional wisdom. Faced with a public that holds opposing views, politicians can either change their positions to match the public’s views or change the public’s views to match their positions — Republicans almost always choose the latter, bolstered by a highly sophisticated framing and messaging infrastructure crafted and funded over decades.

Climate change gaining traction? No problem, put oil money to use, fund bogus studies, cram misinformation down Americans’ throats using talk radio, Fox, etc., employ the Overton Window to move the dialogue to the radical right, undercut science, attack academics, question reality, and eventually move the needle in their direction. It’s an unseemly process, but it works. Suddenly, magically, global warming is a hoax. People without the slightest scientific grounding make dogmatic pronouncements about it, disdainfully dismissing a mortal threat to their own children and grandchildren.

On the other side you have the Democratic establishment, political leaders, pollsters and strategists who, by and large, are poll addicts, chronically incapable of taking principled stands, obsessed with appealing to independent voters, hostile to progressive advocates, often just as captive to moneyed interests as their Republican counterparts. Mind-bogglingly, it was the White House and Democratic leadership that worked with BP to ‘disappear’ the Gulf spill, for fear it would harm them in the 2010 midterms. Craven doesn’t begin to describe it.

I'm not sure how much of it I agree with, but there isn't a point in a long article that doesn't make me think.

(h/t Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass yet another of 'those state blogs.')

[Sir Charles]

KN,

These kind of elections -- with turnout of about 45% of voters -- are typically difficult for Democrats to win. That is one of the reasons that I think it makes sense to tie the Walker recall effort to the general election in 2012.

Jim,

That's a pretty good piece for Daou.

I think I have recounted this before, but it's worth repeating. I was at a party with a DOJ political appointee, a guy who was one notch below Dawn Johnsen in the hierarchy and someone who owed his advancement to her. I could barely get him to express anything more than mild consternation at her treatment by the Republicans. When I suggested that a major mission for the Administration had to be a shift to the left in the Overton Window, he looked at me like I was a crazy man. He replied, "I don't think that's really going to be a priority for this Administration" as if that were self-evidently a good thing. He was correct of course.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Y'know, sometimes I might go a little over the top, like suggesting the possibility that Lawrence might be repealed. How ridiculous, to think that even the religious crazies would go this far. Thanks to SCOTUS, nobody can be arrested for having gay sae -- or something like simply asking a guy if he was interested...

except in Michigan, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Virginia, West Virginia, and a couple of other states.

In fact, 14 states still have sodomy laws on the books. Some, like in Massachusetts, I'm sure, are merely relics that have been ignored, but not so in other states.

And there are some fascinating 'loopholes' in Lawrence, allowing successful prosecutions of the 'crimes against nature' laws. (For example, >i?Lawrence states it does not 'involve public conduct.' So, if you are a guy and a girl making out in a parked car, or in the woods, you can -- but probably won't be -- arrested, maybe for indecent exposure or the like. But two guys now, if the ops catch them, they can be arrested for a 'crime against nature' statute. (Of course the cops could arrive at the right state of heterosexual foreplay or intercourse and use the same statute -- and a prize for anyone who finds a case where they actually have.)

[oddjob]

"I don't think that's really going to be a priority for this Administration"

Given the man's style, that's something a Howard Dean administration couldn't have helped attempting.

[oddjob]

Some, like in Massachusetts, I'm sure, are merely relics that have been ignored

That is indeed the case. I can't remember when it happened, but I know I've read before that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has pretty much ruled that sodomy law into irrelevancy.

(For those who may be curious, IIRC, the law in question makes it illegal in Massachusetts to have sex in any but the missionary position. IIRC the statute goes back to colonial times and hasn't ever been struck from the books. Heaven only knows why.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

The trouble is not Massachussets, but the states who are actually arresting peuple. There seem to be reliable reports that Cuckoo Cuccinelli -- forgotten him? -- has instructed that gays are still to be arrested and jailed, knowing that the cases will be thrown out -- not at arraignment, but at trial.

Here's a quote reported from a commenter -- 'bilerico' confirmed his statement with him:

also took this chance to complain to the Attorney General concerning a practice of some of Virginia's local law-enforcement jurisdictions, where they continue to make arrests for violations of Virginia's sodomy laws, imprisoning men for violations of those laws, then having the judges dismiss those charges when the men are brought to trial - not at arraignment, but at actual trial. I reminded the Virginia AG's Office of Lawrence v. Texas, and how the Supreme Court had issued a decision which negated all sodomy laws, nationwide.

The AG's Office informed me Virginia has not repealed their sodomy laws, so that arrest under those laws was still justified, and the process in place was correct: local jurisdictions follow the laws on the books, a trial court dismisses those charges to conform with federal court decisions; that was "how the system works."

Then there are places like Louisiana. Here's how the Center for Constitutional Rights describes their statute -- which sounds like Massachusetts, except they enforce theirs:

a 200-year-old statute that condemns non-procreative sex acts and sex acts traditionally associated with homosexuality, solely on grounds of moral disapproval.

And, because of that 'prostitution' loophole in Judge Kennedy's opinion, Louisiana has the option of charging a prostitute with 'ordinary prostitution' or with 'a crime against nature.' Not many women get charged with the latter, but gay sex workers... (In passing, i don't think we've ever discussed how we feel about sex workers, a possible future topic).

What's the difference? Not just in the penalty, which is harsh enough. But prostitutes don't have to go on a 'sex offenders' registry, but people convicted of a 'crime against nature' do.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

This time I really hope that you clicked through to the piece above, the one I linked to with the list of states. Because there is some very valuable stuff later as well, and I can't resist quoting two sections of an article by Christopher R. Leslie, Assistant Professor of Law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law -- unfortunately the original article, from the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Vol. 35 No. 103, Winter 2000 is available though Lexis only:

Sodomy laws exist to brand gay men and lesbians as criminals. Social ordering necessitates the criminalization of sodomy, thereby creating a hierarchy that values heterosexuality over, and often to the exclusion of, homosexuality. This symbolic effect of sodomy laws is not dependent on their enforcement. Even though very few men and virtually no women ever suffer the full range of criminal sanctions permitted under state sodomy laws, these statutes impose "the stigma of criminality upon same-sex eroticism.”

Based on the mischaracterization that sodomy laws apply only to homosexuals, sodomy laws are currently justified as necessary to uphold an anti-gay morality. Any deterrent effect from sodomy laws is secondary to these primary symbolic effects. For their supporters, the laws are "seen not as a prohibition to be enforced as such, but rather as a symbol of societal disapproval.” Supporters argue that "these statutes may serve an important function even if unenforced." But the apparent function is not to condemn homosexual conduct, but homosexual persons. As one commentator put it, "unenforced sodomy laws are the chief systematic way that society as a whole tells gays they are scum.” Indeed, in every state "where sodomy statutes remain on the books, animus against lesbians and gays has been a major, if not the sole, reason for the decision to retain them."

and later

Sodomy laws are kept on the books, even though state governments do not intend to actively enforce them, because the laws send a message to society that homosexuality is unacceptable. Even without actual criminal prosecution, the laws carry meaning. Statutes have significance completely independent of their actual enforcement. Law reflects society and informs it. Current generations enshrine their morality by passing laws and perpetuate their prejudices by handing these laws down to their children. Soon, statutes take on lives of their own, and their very existence justifies their premises and consequent implications.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Oops, just in case, closing blockquotes

[Sir Charles]

Perhaps David Vitter could be called upon to assist in Louisiana.

Jesus, these people are horrible. Especially Cuccinelli.