Digiter-ado and Open Thread

 

"Death Defying" - Hoodoo Gurus

Hey all.  Weird weather day here in our nation's capital -- it hit 70 and I walked master Stanley while wearing shorts this morning.  And now it is raining like hell as we prepare for the temperature to drop about 30 degrees overnight.

- My favorite story of the last couple of days had to be this gaffe by Australia's "First Bloke."  One can only imagine the dressing down that Prime Minister Julia Gilliard might have administered to him.  I can only marvel though at the fact that Australia has as its prime minister a) a woman b) who has made clear that she is an atheist c) and that she did not want to have children and (d) who lives with a man to whom she is not married.  Although one can envision a woman reaching the presidency in the U.S. (hopefully in four years), one cannot really imagine that that woman could share publicly any of these other views or practices with Gilliard.  I say "good on her."  And remember, she is from the right wing of the Labor Party. One can only hope we reach this state in American politics while I still draw breath.

- While on the subject of Australian prime ministers, I learned this fun fact about the possibility that one had been devoured by a shark in the not so distant past.  This is one of those stories I have no wish to have debunked.  (And on that note I should say hi to our friend down under Emma.)

- Back to domestic concerns, I remain convinced that we will not see either gun control or immigration reform emerge from the Republican controlled House.  I would be particularly shocked if any kind of gun control passed muster with these clowns.  And I can't see Boehner ignoring the Hastert Rule on this one.  The question remains, will Harry Ried, absent action from the House, subject Landrieu, Begich, Pryor, and Hagan to a gun control vote prior to mid-terms in which all will be deeply vulnerable.  I can't imagine he will.  Meanwhile, we will continue to live in a nation of heavily armed lunatics.  A whole lot of lunatics.   It is very difficult to share the nation with people who would rather have the right to carry assault weapons more than having a right to health care coverage.  We're exceptional alright -- exceptionally stupid.   

- I was a bit shocked by the small drop in GDP last quarter.  One would think that this would be a wake up call to our austerity freaks, but I doubt it.  As much as many of us would like to see a cut in defense spending, I think it is something that needs to be done gradually over a few years, preferably in a stronger economy where other government spending fills the Keynesian vacuum.

- And here's a piece on unionism and the implications of its decline for non-union workers by Erik Loomis with which I totally agree. 

What's up with you? 

 

Comments

[Joe S]

Also, the Australians elected the lead singer of a protest rock band (Midnight Oil)(who also happens to be a bald, googly-eyed giant) as one of their cabinet ministers for climate change.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

I had the pleasure of seeing Midnight Oil on the Diesel and Dust tour in a fairly small theatre here in DC. Wow. An amazing show. Garrett was remarkable. And the band was just tight and musical and rocking.

The Hoodoo Gurus by the way are another fine Australian band from back in the day.

[Eric Wilde]

I started a new job today. Same company. Same boss. Very weird role; but, most oddly, a natural outgrowth of my past at this company. Regardless, it came with nice compensation and I'm celebrating, in no condition to form a complete sentence.

In this contemplative mood, I feel more hopeful than ever before in my political life. Being an outspoken atheist is no longer akin to being a satanist. At least in academia and, most surprisingly, at the office I can be open about my leftist beliefs. Republicans are on the verge of a possibly fatal split.

Most importantly, I won't be spending 2 months every year in India. Not that I have anything against India; but, that's a long time to spend away from home every year.

Although Hillary comes to 2016 with a lot of baggage, I would most appreciate her as a truly historic figure if she did run.

[low-tech cyclist]

Re Hillary, I think she needs to do two key things in the 2016 cycle that she didn't do very well in 2008: (1) make it clear early just why she's running - what her goals would be as President (last time, her primary campaign seemed based on the notion of her inevitability, until all of a sudden she wasn't so inevitable anymore), and (2) keep better company. That means no Mark Penns, no Lanny Davises. It's really hard to trust a pol who has alleged human beings like these in their inner circle.

The good news about a Hillary 2016 candidacy is that by then, there should be only so much difference that can be made by efforts to rouse anti-Hillary hysteria. By then, she will have been a national public figure for a quarter-century, and most people will have a pretty good idea going into 2016 of whether she's a reasonable person by their lights, or not.

[oddjob]

The crazy weather just passed through Boston this morning. It's still windy outside but the rain finished up at about 8:00 AM. Yesterday it reached 60 degrees in Boston.

[oddjob]

One can only hope we reach this state in American politics while I still draw breath.

I don't expect to. They didn't start as a collection of outposts for British religious fanatics the way we did.

[Sir Charles]

Eric,

Congrats on the new job. I would think two months of overseas travel a year -- especially to a place as challenging as India -- while also having a young family at home would be stressful and tiring in the extreme.

l-t c,

I believe that Hillary Clinton is someone who learns lessons incredibly well. She is an exceptionally smart person with a huge work ethic. I think that over the course of the 2008 campaign and in her service as Secretary of State she emerged as someone both very comfortable in her own skin and with a huge range of experience to draw on. I think she would be an extraordinarily formidable candidate this time around.

Watching her on Capitol Hill last week only reinforced that feeling.

oddjob,

So you are saying that being a colony for convicts is superior to being a colony of religious fanatics in terms of future development. I like it.

The temperature is continuing to drop here at a pretty impressive rate. They are expecting us to be in the teens by Saturday.

[low-tech cyclist]

oddjob - I'm not sure how much that has to do with anything. The colonies that were served as escape hatches for 17th-century religious fanatics (e.g. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland) seem to be pretty healthy now with respect to all that. The Southern colonies were started as commercial propositions (Virginia) or prison colonies (Georgia), and the South is the main hotbed of fundie fanaticism.

If origins were more determinative, you'd expect to see Georgia be a lot more like Australia, but it's nothing like it.

[oddjob]

the South is the main hotbed of fundie fanaticism

A lasting legacy of the Great Awakening and the Methodist evangelists (e.g. George Whitefield) who fanned it in the Appalachians. The soil here in the American colonies wasn't yet fully plowed, but it was already receptive to intense religious experiences.

[kathy a.]

well, i am going to remain hopeful about guns. maybe legislation will get stuck, but i really hope not.

interesting that the NRA tactics and testimony are skewered by wapo today. i guess one does not win friends with journalists by having one's bodyguards knock them up against the walls of congress so as to prevent them from talking to the boss. the made-up facts are a nice touch, too -- always sure to impress senators.

gabby giffords' testimony was very moving. it is hard to watch how she struggles to form the words, because of one of those horrible and senseless shootings.

[oddjob]

For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II

(In 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga)

Hat tip, Sully.

[oddjob]

Simultaneously disgusting and fascinating:

Ancient tapeworm eggs found in 270-million-year-old shark poop suggests these parasites may have plagued animals for much longer than previously known, researchers say....

[low-tech cyclist]

oddjob - that's a remarkable story about the isolated Russian family. Gotta admit, when I moused over the link, I was wondering whether it would be to a kin of the Weekly World News, so I was relieved when it was to the Smithsonian magazine!

[low-tech cyclist]

SC - I agree with you that the likelihood of substantive gun control passing this Congress is infinitesimal. The important thing, this time, is simply to make the attempt.

I'm glad to see Josh Marshall talking about the 'non-gun tribe.' Let gun users try to understand us, for a change. Most of us want to live in a world where someone carrying a gun in public is either a law enforcement officer, or someone that a law enforcement officer needs to have a word with.

[nancy]

re Gun control. I don't know guys. I'm hopeful -- anyone with a Twitter feed is getting a day by day, if not hour by hour update of gun death/injury tolls in workplaces, schools, shopping venues, street corners, family rooms -- you know -- everyday life in contemporary USA, and that feed is stupid, shocking, nauseating and incessant . The information is being broadcast in such a way that, even with all its bullying clout, the NRA cannot make a case for *standing its ground* much longer. Who's kidding who? (Hope you saw the mother of 6 who testified yesterday doing her best Mama Bear imitation, insisting on the need for an AR-15 with which to repel multiple intruders, children screaming while she prepares to Rambo up.) Insufferable.

Who can continue to defend a civilian need for assault weapons without showing their hand? Gun$$$$ are good for business -- not for the rest us us, including our police forces. Congress knows that we know that they know. The issue is not going to evaporate this time, and thankfully LaPierre has appeared on the nation's TV screens now.

[Emma]

Hi SC et al,
I wrote a long comment, on my iPad, which is a pain, but Cogitamus eated it. Will try to reconstruct, now I'm on a proper keyboard, which is way quicker.
Apart from the minor furore about the First Bloke's crass remark, the bigger news here this week was the PM breaking with 112 years of tradition and announcing that she'll advise the Governor General to call the election due this year for September 12. In doing so, she gave up the incumbent's traditional advantage in Westminster systems of being able to call a snap election when things look favourable, with a 5 week campaign.
The idea of a 7 month campaign is dispiriting to say the least, but at least she's trapped the Opposition into going to the polls with their current disgusting and highly unpopulr leader. It's not clear if that will be enough to save the government.
Julia Gillard despite her unconventionality (which is not as unconventional here, by the way, where over 70 percent of marrying couples have non-religious ceremones, and have lived together before marriage, and where over 15% of all couples living in marriage-type relationships have never been formally married) still feels it necessary to keep saying that she opposes same-sex marriage. As her exact contemporary, and fellow unmarried atheist (although I have 5 kids, and soon a grandchild), I simply do not believe she actually thinks this. It's baffling.
As for Harold Holt, the announcement of his disappearance in December 1967 is one of my earliest memories of public affairs. My parents, who are Labor people and were against the Vietnam War, hated him, but even they were shocked. There doesn't have to have been a shark in the case though. Holt was vain about his swimming prowess, and evidently not as good as he thought. He went swimming on a wild Bass Strait beach against advice and drowned. More than 50 people do it every year on Australian beaches. I guess the sharks got him in the end, though.

[oddjob]

Why owls don't pass out from lack of blood to the brain when they turn their heads through 270 degrees of rotation (as we would do).

[Sir Charles]

Emma,

Congratulations on the impending grandchild. Even though you are obviously too young.

I long for the day when the U.S. joins other advanced societies and we no longer feel obliged to pay homage to ridiculous religious bunk. I think it is something that may actually happen with shocking rapidity, although when I can only guess.

We here in the U.S. would kill for a campaign that was only seven months long. Our presidential campaigns now seem to be close to two years in length. And yes, they are dispiriting.

Gilliard on gay marriage is similar to where Obama was I think. Everyone who had some sense of him found it hard to believe that he honestly opposed gay marriage. Maybe she will "evolve" on the matter as he did.

In Obama's defense (and Hillary Clinton's as well), I think this is one of those rare issues where public sentiment shifted at almost lightning speed, leaving the electorate ahead of the politicians.

I think you will see two more states here -- Illinois and Rhode Island -- legalize gay marriage shortly. And once Chris Christie is out of there, New Jersey will almost certainly follow suit (sadly, probably in another four years). This will mean over 100 million Americans will be living in jurisdictions where gay marriage is legal, roughly a third of the country.

It will be interesting to see where things go from there, as large numbers of states adopted constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.

And, of course, our Supreme Court, will be weighing in this summer on these matters under the United States Constitution, a scary prospect.

I cannot imagine the U.S. Secret Service letting Obama jump into the surf in Hawaii and going that far out. They would be crucified.

(Sorry about the commenting system -- we all live at its capricious mercy here.)

[Sir Charles]

nancy,

I hope that you and kathy are right in your cautious optimism.

These House Republicans just strike me as so extreme and their constituencies so crazy, that I think they might refuse to act on even very popular measures, like background checks.

We will see I guess.

[oddjob]

It will be interesting to see where things go from there, as large numbers of states adopted constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.

I think it likely that in the not too distant future Delaware will also have marriage equality. That will make for a contiguous band of eastern states with marriage equality running from the District of Columbia (not a state, but it should be) northeast to Maine.

[oddjob]

Scott Brown is not going to be a candidate in the special election.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

It will be interesting to see where things go next after that.

I assume Pennsylvania would be a target if we can get the Republicans out of power.

And I would think post-Illinois that places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota would be decent targets -- again, once we get rid of Republican governors in a couple of those places.

Oregon and Hawaii would seem ripe too. Maybe Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.

It seems to me that getting past 15 to 20 states is going to be difficult for quite a while.

[oddjob]

I think sometime in the last few weeks I've read that there are legislators in Hawaii preparing to introduce marriage equality legislation there in this session of their legislature.

I'm not sure what to expect in Pennsylvania. Unless you include Virginia when talking about the "East" I think it's safe to say Pennsylvania is the most socially conservative state of the East. I agree it will require a removal of Republicans to get marriage equality enacted (& the state lacks both initiative and referendum, so once it happens revoking it would be enormously difficult), but I can't think of another matter more likely to rile up Pennsyltucky's fundamentalist Christian GOP voter base.

[kathy a.]

you know i'm not an econonomics person, but here is something interesting from maddow: a ranking of countries by "economic freedom" by the heritage foundation, which is not notoriously socialist or anything, but here we are at # 10, behind these countries with universal health care and bigger taxes on the rich.

back to guns -- i have the impression that NRA has really isolated itself by insisting on no universal background checks. this makes no sense to most normal people. most normal people can't envision a hunting or self-protection need for multiple fast-shooting rounds, either.

[oddjob]

Here's today's man-bites-dog story:

Mitch McConnell comes out in favor of hemp production.

[low-tech cyclist]

I'm delighted to see Scott Brown drop out of the race for Kerry's Senate seat. Certainly improves our chances of hanging onto that seat.

Wonder if they've done any polling on Markey v. Lynch in the primary? We need a real Democrat in that seat, not a centrist like Lynch.

[low-tech cyclist]

kathy - it does amuse me that the Heritage Foundation ranks us on economic freedom behind (a) a whole bunch of countries with univeral health care systems, and (b) countries like Canada and Denmark which are clearly well to the left of our government.

It's hard to argue that they put any serious thought into those lists. Maybe their interns put together the list while playing beer pong.

[Emma]

The religious thing is the biggest difference between our respective countries, and the ramifications seem to filter into every area. It's downright rude to mention your gods in a political speech here, and even religious politicians avoid mentioning it. I've never heard anyone say 'God bless Australia' -- it just isn't done.

SC, i'm glad to be a young grandparent. My eldest has finished her law degree and decided to have a baby before the career stakes are too high -- she'll get six months leave on half pay from her paralegal job, and then go back and get the solicitor's job she's after. I get to be a 51 year old granny, and my youngest is thrilled to be a 9 year old aunt.

And no weddings thank goodness. Sensible young people, spending $$ on sensible things.

[nancy]

I'm not giving up hope for changes to our gun laws. One of the surgeons who was on duty in Newton on December 14 spoke at a hearing in Connecticut, choking on the words "we did our best." His best was not a match for what he found.

Seems that after allowing all of the NRA operatives to have the floor in Congress, we might expect to hear from our pediatricians as well. The Pediatricians vs. the NRA : how the gun lobby is trying to gag doctors from talking about guns and kids. Graphically painful Slate piece.

[kathy a.]

congrats, emma! i can't even imagine that much leave -- when i was a young lawyer and my son was born in 1986, i took 6 weeks off. i really needed the full 6 weeks, because i had a c-section. and i got that much only by cobbling together saved sick leave and vacation time that i hadn't used. (i could have asked for 3-4 more months of unpaid leave, but at the time i did not want to look like i was tossing my career aside.)

[kathy a.]

nancy, thank you. graphic -- but so is having your kid, your neighbor's kid, anybody's kid -- being blown apart by one of these weapons.

not done reading, but i assume no autopsy photos. anyone who has to see such photos after a gun death might lose their taste for guns. in no way do i advocate invading a family's grief and privacy by making that degree of horror public; but legislators considering gun laws might ought to see such things in the privacy of chambers. to know what the insane person's view of the second amendment looks like, exactly.

[oddjob]

Wonder if they've done any polling on Markey v. Lynch in the primary? We need a real Democrat in that seat, not a centrist like Lynch.

I haven't seen or heard of any, but I can assure you that in the primary Lynch's lack of enthusiasm for abortion rights will make him a long shot as long as he's running against someone like Markey.

[oddjob]

the Heritage Foundation ranks us on economic freedom behind (a) a whole bunch of countries with univeral health care systems, and (b) countries like Canada and Denmark which are clearly well to the left of our government.

It's hard to argue that they put any serious thought into those lists.

Or maybe it was a Freudian slip, supporting the contention that having the government provide a personal security floor makes it more possible for a nation's citizens to live as entrepeneurs.

[oddjob]

And no weddings thank goodness. Sensible young people, spending $$ on sensible things.

You all almost seem Icelandic! :)

[Emma]

Oddjob, and with decent weather too! Although a bit wet lately, what with floods everywhere. Even our climate change denying right wing politicians have gone quiet lately, what with all the weirdness in the weather, 100-year floods every other year and bushfires raging out of control at the same time.

[nancy]

Parking this here since newer open thread is of well-deserved B'day greetings:

Former Navy Seal and best selling author shot to death at a shooting range. Might we soon cease to hear the 'good guy with a gun, stopping a bad guy with a gun' ridiculous NRA bumper sticker philosophy.

[oddjob]

Even our climate change denying right wing politicians have gone quiet lately, what with all the weirdness in the weather, 100-year floods every other year and bushfires raging out of control at the same time.

It's amazing what seriously in-your-face, real-time data can do sometimes.

[kathy a.]

damn, nancy. later reports are that he was trying to "help" a combat vet with ptsd. and the place you do not want a traumatized combat vet is a fucking shooting range where he is hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling those things that will trigger a flashback -- a re-experiencing of the trauma, with full "fight or flight" automatic responses. if you are cruel enough to put a vet through that, you definitely do not want that person holding a loaded weapon.

on another gun-related issue -- balloon juice has some good stuff on the high rate of gun deaths due to suicide, because this particular method used during a low moment is particularly likely to work.

think how you would feel if it was your kid, your sibling, your parent, your spouse, your best friend, leaving their brains scattered about and everyone they knew wondering if they could have stopped it -- then tell me it's a personal choice that only affects the suicidal person.

and, like sandy hook and so many other incidents, a gun suicide might take a bunch of others down with the depressed person.

[kathy a.]

more guns: dad kills teen kids and self. this is an everyday story. there are a lot of everyday gun death stories.

[oddjob]

there are a lot of everyday gun death stories.

Which is why I found Gary Wills' column ("Our Moloch") so apt.

[oddjob]

more guns: student shoots self to death in school bathroom

[kathy a.]

lost a post with links -- i easily found 4 more gun death stories from today, just in my state, and i know they are not all reported in the big news. a potential murder/suicide in OC. transvestite hooker killed in LA, believed to be by a shooter who has gotten other people who were just walking home. man dead by a park in one city near my home; another man shot dead in another nearby city, near a friend's office.