Thursday Open Thread

 

"Little Queenie" - The Rolling Stones

- I was outraged to learn that not only is Limbaugh going into the Missouri Hall of Fame, but Chuck Berry has been omitted from it, if you will. 

- A front page story in the Times on the continued war on Planned Parenthood in Texas and its terrible effect on poor women.  And no, the phrase "war on women" is not hyperbole. 

- Why do I think that consecutive losses in Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri just might hurt Romney's ability to rise above the fray?  Somehow I don't think further memos on his inevitability are going to help.  The timing of the primary schedule could not be worse for him right now.  I think his likely run of losses here (and I predict he will drop all four contests) is going to really spook Republicans and hurt the narrative that they are trying to establish with the national media that the contest is winding up.

- Yet another article on how ill prepared for retirement Americans are.  Only 17% of workers now have traditional pension plans, with 39% having 401(k)s.  A majority of workers -- 53% -- have neither.  52% of people between the ages of 45 and 54 have less than $25,000 in retirement savings.  Social Security pays benefits on average of $14,700 a year.  How the hell are people going to survive in retirement?   

- And Charles Murray offers the lamest set of policy prescription for declining American mobility I have ever seen in one column.  Eliminate race-based affirmative action, unpaid internships, BA requirements for jobs, and the SAT -- yeah, that will really drive up the wages of high school graduates.  How about national health insurance, labor law reform, raising the minimum wage, a guaranteed national income, subsidized day care, paid parental leave, comprehensive family planning services for free, federally mandated evidence based sex education in all schools, raising taxes in order to lower state university and college tuition, and immigration reform as starters.   

What say you? 

Comments

[jeanne marie]

Socialist.

[low-tech cyclist]

1. The Democrats should push to expand Social Security benefits.

2. They should propose to pay for this through a system of fully auctionable cap-and-trade carbon permits.

Not entirely a non sequitur: 1980 Presidential candidate John Anderson turned 90 last month.

[Joe S]

I say, Happy International Women's Day to our women commenters (especially those who aren't from the United States-- and therefore, truly international).

[oddjob]

"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol. I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded,"
- Pat Robertson

Will wonders never cease?

(Hat tip, Sully.)

[nancy]

In honor of International Women's Day -- it won't get much better than this.

Cheers. :^)

[jeanne marie]

oddjob

Wuh?

nancy,

Love it.

[Sir Charles]

jm,

Shhh! Don't tell anyone.

l-t c,

Ultimately I think that Social Security is going to have to be expanded upon and improved. Otherwise, elderly poverty is going to skyrocket down the road.

[kathy a.]

nancy, that's fab!

[nancy]

jm, kathy -- I sure think it's a keeper. After the last month or so...but...

Aren't we dangerously close to needing to lose our sense of humor about all the jokers on the loose? They are so pushing their luck. The war on women was rather suddenly declared by a tiny fraction of dumb folk and demagogues. They've now gotten everyone's attention. Oh and congrats USCCB -- 'You started it.'

Where is the AMA is on all of this arrogant buffoonery? I await its statement about legislators practicing medicine without a license. How can elected state politicians mandate any physician's treatment under any circumstances? And what happened to HIPAA? I have found it to be unwieldy and over-interpreted, but it was supposed to guarantee a patient's inviolable right to privacy. No?

[kathy a.]

don't know about you, but i have been very seriously humor-impaired lately. need something along the path to keep our heads from 'sploding.

and in that spirit, here's a little something from roy zimmerman about our pal rush. it's a little dated, nov. 2010, but by some miracle still relevant.

[beckya57]

nancy's link just went up on my Facebook page. Also, nancy, as a health care provider I couldn't agree with you more.

[Linkmeister]

I think the AMA is incapable of outrage unless its own ox is being gored.

[Mandos]

I have to say that I do actually agree with the "unpaid internships" and SAT points. I agree that it is utterly lame as a package, but some of the pieces are good. If he could just move a little further in that direction and, oh, recant The Bell Curve...

[Sir Charles]

linkmeister,

Yeah, waiting for the AMA to take a courageous and progressive stand is a fool's errand.

Mandos,

It's not that I don't think Murray has a point with those couple of items -- it's just that I think they are marginal at best.

I have actually seen the unpaid internship and SAT problem illustrated first hand, because I am one of those parents who can afford to do such things for my kid. As a result of intensive SAT prep I saw my son's math score increase by a pretty crucial 90 points. (When I was in high school, I knew one kid who took SAT prep.)

I have also been in a position where he has been able to spend a gap year in unpaid positions and will do the same this summer. It's a huge advantage in terms of both resume building and making helpful connections.

I, on the other hand, always worked for money as a kid, working in the kind of job -- shelf stocking, meat wrapping, grocery delivery, and cashiering -- that working and middle class kids tended to get in those days. In its way that kind of work proved invaluable to me in terms of life skills, but it is not the sort of thing that is prevalent in the milieu in which I currently live.

The kids of the well to do have a huge leg up in this regard. But I have to say, I think there are more compelling things that can be done for people of more modest means -- Murray seems mostly to want to attack the affluent liberals that he perceives to be out of touch.

[low-tech cyclist]

Murray seems mostly to want to attack the affluent liberals that he perceives to be out of touch.

And from his POV, that's probably far more important than actually helping people on the lower rungs find a way up the ladder. Hippie-bashing never goes out of style.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

It's just strange that hippie now constitutes two lawyer couples making $300,000 between them who live in a city and like to go to ethnic restaurants. How leftist!

[oddjob]

(Bashing well-educated prosperous urban liberals also never goes out of style.)

[kathy a.]

i worked my way through college and law school, taking all kinds of unglamorous jobs along the way -- because i had to, my parents did not support me. here's the thing: those jobs were available.

paid jobs for young people are very hard to come by now, even for college graduates. a friend recently told me that when his nonprofit advertises even really crappy jobs, they get at least 100 applications. my daughter did an unpaid internship for 3 months this fall, and i'm doing everything i can to get her out of the house doing volunteer work while she continues to look for a job, any job. my effete liberal sensibilities require that she be doing something useful, and the economy is not much helping her.

i am a huge fan of higher education, because it opens doors to new ideas, and because it required critical thinking -- those experiences and skills are extremely useful to human beings as they move through life, in my opinion. achieving a BA indicates a dedication and sets of skills that one cannot assume from achievement of a HS diploma.

many jobs will not require a specific fund of knowledge that one might acquire in college (my english major with a focus in american lit has not been a prerequisite to any job i've ever had), but my writing skills are above average, i learn new tasks reasonably well, and most importantly, i developed habits of thinking about problems in various ways rather than applying rote solutions.

i cannot understand why certain people are now saying that higher education is unnecessary, suggesting it is a luxurious burden forced on those who will not directly apply a field of study in future work. it is also rather repugnant to dial back the promise of education and its robust promise for improving lives of all who seek that path.

[nancy]

I think the AMA is incapable of outrage unless its own ox is being gored.

AMA has a twitter feed which chirped off and on all day yesterday about International Women's Day and some items someone felt worth connecting to it. Nary a word about the recent assaults on long-established women's health care norms and AMA concerns, positions, thoughts, reactions, etc.

Surely the organization can't hide from this indefinitely.

[nancy]

Prup -- You were going to come home after Super Tuesday. Where'd ya go?

[Linkmeister]

nancy: "Surely the organization can't hide from this indefinitely."

Apparently it can until someone directly asks for a comment, along with appropriate follow-up questions (like, for example, how many members of the AMA are women, and have you asked them what they think of these newly-enacted laws and this furor?"

[nancy]

linkmeister--I've been asking those questions all day on their website. Crickets. If we can *bother* Rush, which has been working as I understand it, we should surely be able to bother the AMA online, and with numbers. Badger away I say. :)

The AMA supposedly speaks carefully, and what's afoot is far from careful.

[jeanne marie]

nancy, where on the AMA website are you commenting?

[nancy]

jeanne marie -- Comments are not public per se, but I've been using the contact information here in addition to responding to their twitter feed. I spent a fair amount of time combing through the newsletter -- looks to me like a conspicuous absence of any discussion about what our GOP pols are up to regarding women and reproductive health *care*. Maybe I missed something.

[nancy]

Centrist and GOP women are rapidly disembarking from this particular '12 boat where being female is suspect. They are finally asking one another the question we've often posed here: how does a woman consider voting Republican today?

[beckya57]

Latinos, women, young people, gays--all joining African-Americans as groups that should be running from the modern GOP in droves--and many of them apparently are.

[Sir Charles]

nancy,

Boy that article made me smile. The degree to which the GOP is allowing its true self to shine through is one of my favorite aspects of this campaign. For an incredibly long time the media has been unwilling to point out what those of us who follow politics closely -- that the Republican Party is an extraordinarily extreme party, dominated by the worst kind of retrograde ideologues. Now its candidates and media supporters like Limbaugh are laying this fact bare.

[nancy]

Back to the top. Little Queenie. omg. Look at those pre-substance abuse complexions. Faces mothers could love. Ah youth. What were they -- all of 19? :-)

[big bad wolf]

nancy, it's the 1969 tour, so only mick taylor is really young, he's 20. mick and keith are 26. bill wyman was old even then---33! :)

[kathy a.]

it's 3/11 in japan -- and for that matter, lots of other places. anniversary of the quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown.

i joke about quakes, but only much littler ones. and ones missing the complications of tsunami and nuclear meltdown.