Politics Plus

I’m still down, but I need to apologize for inaccuracies in yesterday’s articles.  The fact is, I was just feeling too crappy to apply my standard depth of research, so I misunderstood the SCOTUS Short Take that, thankfully, Nameless corrected.  In the names of the Senate opponents of the fourth gun safety measure, I don’t know what happened.  I copied and pasted that list of names directly from the Senate website.  I have corrected the list here, and the list at the Senate’s site is now also corrected.

As I write I’m listening to MSNBC coverage in Boston.  Since the suspect in a firefight with police, who is now in custody. employed bombs, I think it’s a safe bet that he’s one of the people responsible for the bombing.  Update: The two people in the firefight were definitely the two bombing suspects.  One is dead and the other is at large.

Finally, I have some good news.  One of my guys, so far, was successful in his parole hearing and will be released in September.  It’s Critter, who always sends greetings to Critter.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:15 (4;10 average).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In the halls of the United States Senate, dozens of Senators congratulated themselves today for having what one of them called “the courage and grit to stand up to the overwhelming wishes of the American people.”

“We kept hearing, again and again, that ninety per cent of the American people wanted us to vote a certain way,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). “Well, at the end of the day, we decided that we weren’t going to cave in to that kind of special-interest group.”

“It was a gut check, for sure, but we had to draw a line in the sand,” agreed Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S. Carolina). “If we had voted the way the American people wanted us to, it would have sent the message that we’re here in Washington to be nothing more than their elected representatives.”…

The accuracy of this satire makes me want to puke.

From Huffington Post: Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) skewered senators on Wednesday in a fundraising email sent out seconds after the Senate voted down an amendment to expand background checks for gun purchases.

"Moments ago, the U.S. Senate decided to do the unthinkable about gun violence — nothing at all," read the email from anti-gun violence PAC Americans for Responsible Solutions, according to the Arizona Republic. "Over two years ago, when I was shot point-blank in the head, the U.S. Senate chose to do nothing. Four months ago, 20 first-graders lost their lives in a brutal attack on their school, and the U.S. Senate chose to do nothing. It’s clear to me that if members of the U.S. Senate refuse to change the laws to reduce gun violence, then we need to change the members of the U.S. Senate."…

I could not agree more. Republicans should be opposed outright. The Democrats, who voted NO, should be primaried against firearms safety proponents.

From NY Times:

The story so far: At the beginning of 2010, two Harvard economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, circulated a paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” that purported to identify a critical “threshold,” a tipping point, for government indebtedness. Once debt exceeds 90 percent of gross domestic product, they claimed, economic growth drops off sharply.

Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff had credibility thanks to a widely admired earlier book on the history of financial crises, and their timing was impeccable. The paper came out just after Greece went into crisis and played right into the desire of many officials to “pivot” from stimulus to austerity. As a result, the paper instantly became famous; it was, and is, surely the most influential economic analysis of recent years…

…Finally, Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff allowed researchers at the University of Massachusetts to look at their original spreadsheet — and the mystery of the irreproducible results was solved. First, they omitted some data; second, they used unusual and highly questionable statistical procedures; and finally, yes, they made an Excel coding error. Correct these oddities and errors, and you get what other researchers have found: some correlation between high debt and slow growth, with no indication of which is causing which, but no sign at all of that 90 percent “threshold.”…

Click through for the rest of this fine Krugman editorial. In short, the entire basis of Republicans’ insistence on austerity is the result of omitting inconvenient data, cooking the data that is included, and calculation error.

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I’m still sick in bed, but today’s other article was just too important not to write..

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:07 (average 5:50).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: The Supreme Court’s conservatives dealt a major blow Wednesday to the ability of American federal courts to hold violators of international human rights accountable. The court declared that a 1789 law called the Alien Tort Statute does not allow foreigners to sue in American courts to seek redress “for violations of the law of nations occurring outside the United States.”

In the case at issue, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Nigerian citizens alleged that, from 1992 to 1995, multinational oil companies working in Nigeria aided the military dictatorship that tortured and killed protesters who fought the environmental damage caused by the oil operations. These companies did business in the United States. But Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that even where claims of atrocities “touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force” to overcome a presumption that the statute does not apply to actions outside this country.

That presumption radically revises and undermines the way the statute has been applied for a generation. It has been limited by the types of human rights abuses it covers — but not by where they take place. The effect is to greatly narrow the statute’s reach…

The vote was 5-4 with the activist fascist five, Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy goose-stepping for international criminal corporations against basic human rights.

From Think Progress: The Tucson, Arizona Police Department held a gun buyback on the anniversary of the 2011 Tucson mass shooting, with the intention of melting down the 200-plus firearms they received. But now the National Rifle Association, which vowed to put a stop to it, appears poised to get its wish. The Arizona Senate approved a measure 18-12 that prevents local municipalities from destroying the firearms, following the House’s action earlier this year.

State Sen. Rick Murphy (R) said gun buybacks “accomplish nothing other than make people feel good,” and the measure is about “protecting taxpayers.” [Reich Wingers delinked] NRA board member and lobbyist Todd Rathner made a similar claim in January that local government must sell seized or abandoned property according to state law…

What next? Will Arizona Republicans require that the weapons be sold to people who cannot pass background checks?

From Raw Story: Minnesota radio host Bob Davis last week said last Friday he would like to personally tell the families in Newtown, Connecticut whose children were murdered to “go to hell.”

On his show Davis & Emmer, which is broadcast by Twin Cities News Talk AM 1130, he attacked the families of those killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School for speaking in support of stricter gun laws.

I bet a buck that this asshole champions Batshit Bachmann! There is only one word to describe such vile lack of decency: Republican!

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Folk history seems to have forgotten the latter two.

I’m still down, because overdoing it on Saturday set off my COPD yesterday, and I could not sleep.  I’ll catch up on replies ASAP.  Tomorrow.  Happy Infernal Revenue Day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:13 (average 4:24).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: Why It’s Harder To Be A Liberal In 11 Words

Also, it’s easy to invent sophistic lies that sound easy and simple, but the truth is often difficult and complex.

From NY Times: It is an open scandal in Washington that the Federal Election Commission is completely ossified as the referee and penalizer of abuses in national politics.

Karl Rove’s powerful Crossroads GPS money machine cruelly underlined the agency’s impotence last week with a snippy rebuff of a legitimate inquiry from the commission staff about the shadowy sources of the group’s war chest. Crossroads GPS archly replied that continued inquiries on the matter “are unnecessary,” but that if they keep coming, it will offer the same unrevealing response.

This was no niggling issue. The election commission was asking for more details about the operation’s 2012 fourth-quarter report showing more than $50 million in independent expenditures but not a sign of who donated the money. The insulting rebuke to the agency should be thrown back with a unanimous demand that election law be obeyed. But this is the F.E.C., one of the sorrier federal agencies, where standoffs engineered by the three Republican commissioners on the six-seat panel have stymied efforts to write regulations and enforce them.

No matter which way we turn, we see Republicans polishing their expertise in election theft.

From MSNBC: How the wealthy view social programs:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Why do the wealthy want to cut our earned entitlements, for which we have paid all our working lives? It’s clear that the elite donor class, aka the 1%, has declared class warfare on the rest of us. While there are members of the 1% that do support us, they are, sadly, few and far between.

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