Well, after reading through all the other comments I have to say our junior high school teachers did a pretty good job. Reading the comments on some other blogs…

I know bloggers can’t afford proof-readers, but has everybody forgotten the spelling lessons they got in grade school? I am so tired of thinking, as I read, “Well, I suppose what he really meant was… Let’s see if anything further along tends to confirm that.” Putting in an extra “not,” or leaving one out. And then there’s the problem of homonyms. Genghis Khan’s hoards did not find hordes of gold. The dowager did not discretely speak of several discreet events. I realize everyone’s under time pressure, and I really regret the lack of an edit function on most blogs, but I’ve learned to slow down and read what I’ve typed before I hit the “Submit” button. Well, some of the time anyway. I won’t even go into danglin participles. I’ve given up complaining about cliches, and I’m positively mellow with redundancy. But those damned homonyms…

For goodness sake, if the charges are dropped before trial or they’re acquitted, do you really think that story will be covered by the MSM? And if Rahm’s reputation among leftist activists gets worse, do you really think he cares? He made was given $16 million dollars in a couple of years working at an investment bank. Do you think he’s not going to be given many millions more?

I’ve been asking myself the same question. Why do these fcuks want so much to increase the hardships of millions of people they don’t know, don’t even see? I think the answer is in Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory Of The Liesure Class.” He points out that in all cultures known, starting with early Barbarism, the ruling class regards seizing things by force as more admirable than making things. Certain occupations are “honorable,” (military, religion) and other occupations are dirty. Moreover, the powerful are exalted by demonstrating their power in capricious and arbitrary ways. In other words, it’s a deeply human, irrational thing that probably derives from the ancient reptile brain.

Excellent post that helped me clarify my thinking. I’m strongly tempted to vote for Romney now, because I’m really frightened by what a second term might mean for Obama’s obsession with the “Grand Bargain.” He mentioned casually in January 2009 that he wants to cut Social Security benefits, and the media (including the blogosphere) didn’t catch it, but over the last year it’s become obvious that, no longer fearing an election, Obama will happily destroy the Democrat Party in order to destroy Social Security. If he can do it in his first year, he’ll have three years to work with the Republicans to cement his policy in place. I have no doubt he can get all the Blue Dogs and DLC Senators to go along with him in a grand show of bipartisan statesmanship.

Pfui! The board seats and consulting fees and speaking fees are assured. If he wanted to he could start a hedge fund (boy, would that make some of the Wall Street crybabies cry). But I agree that without the reelection to worry about he might move fully to the right, where he obviously feels more comfortable.

Well, if they’re deliberately throwing it they’re being as incompetent as ever. As incompetent as Democrats, even. At this point Obama is still a couple of points ahead of Romney, but that could change in a heartbeat and Romney could end up winning, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to tell which one of these clowns would be the lesser evil! So I guess it doesn’t really matter and I should just, as the Thais say, cool my heart. Take a deep breath. In a couple of hundred years we’ll look back on this and laugh.

Hey, this is the first reason I’ve seen for hope for a couple of years. If he feels this will be enough, maybe we won’t have to go to war in Iran. I figure if we can just get through another month or two we’ll be safe for four more years. As somebody in the Bush administration commented, when asked why they attacked when they did, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t want to bring a new product out in August.” I was thinking Obama would start his war on Iran about March or April, but maybe he’ll be satisfied with this stupid posturing as a “war president.”

Wel, my first thought was that it was irony, but then I started thinking about some of the Obama defenders I’ve seen commenting on glenn Greenwalds’s posts and I was less sure. It’s not only the right that has some batshit crazy people barking at the moon. “Permanent detention without due process? Lily Ledbetter Act!!! Yay!”

Yeah, but there must be some competent politicians somewhere in the country. Alan Grayson managed to get elected, for goodness sake. You think it’s possible Obama is so enamored of the Gang of 500 that he can’t see how little they understand about how the game is played? I know the Right has spent decades building up the framework of wingnut welfare to support their favored acolytes when they go bankrupt or get voted out of office, but usrely not ALL the people who understand politics have been drafted by the thugs? It’s been going on since 2006! It’s just unbelievable that professional politicians on the left almost all believe that the way to get reelected is to piss on their base and offer everything they want to their enemies.

The one thing I can say with confidence is that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm is not paying attention to the timing of the elections. He’ll bring matters forward when his case his strong enough for his satisfaction and not a minute sooner.

My initial reaction to this was mild disappointment, because I would like to see every possible bit of evidence against Walker get publicized before the election. My next reaction was one of relief. I’ve been aghast at the death of the “rule of law” since Bush vs. Gore, well, actually its slow erosion since Ford pardoned Nixon, and it is good to see a prosecutor actually acting like a responsible officer of the court.

+1

LOL! One of the books that made a great impression on me when I was a kid was Heinlein’s “Coventry.” I don’t remember now if it was one book, more likely part of a collection, but one of the stories in his “Future History” series. Came after the crazy years when the followers of Nehemiah Scudder turned the U.S. into a backward theocracy. People who committed anti-social acts and then refused psychological adjustment (it was illegal to force them) were sent to a place called Coventry so they could no longer harm well-adjusted citizens, and could work out their agressions to their hearts’ content on other violent people. I’m just sorry we’re going to have to go through that whole theocracy thing before we reach such an enlightened state.

For years I’ve wondered why I couldn’t understand WHY these people say such stupid things and other people act like they believe it. I mean, I first noticed it when I was five or six years old and my parents made me go to Sunday School every week and I was appalled that the teachers had such poor critical thinking skills. I’ve recently decided that I have mild Asperger’s syndrome. Not enough to be disabled, it’s just that I don’t properly empathize with other people, my brain lacks the wiring to think like them. But really, when my attention is brought to it, I can’t fathom why people give money to “spiritual leaders” like Rick Warren.

Exactly the point I was going to make. In Citizens United they actually went looking for a chance to impose their agenda. They had the plaintiff resubmit the appeal with specific points that allowed them to rule the way they did. I’m amazed that has been forgotten and allowed to fade into the mists of time instead of being pointed out over and over. In this case everybody looked at a hundred years of settled law and decided that, even though it had some novel points, there was no doubt the mandate was OK under the Commerce Clause. Now everybody’s panicking, even though it will be months before we really know how the radicals vote, just because they decided to act like clowns. Who knows what they were smoking the day of oral arguments? Their behavior was totally bizarre. But I don’t believe they will be in any way deterred from whatever they want to do by a little thing like stare decisis. Oh, yeah, I also think Obama, may he rot in hell, was right to bring up the comparison with Lochner.

On the economics blogs I generally read there is widespread agreement that Larry Summers would be a disaster as the World Bank president, that thank goodness there was virtually no chance anybody close to Obama would disagree with that evaluation, and that it’s a darned shame we are stuck with demanding an American, because the Nigerian woman proposed is, in fact, ideal and would be the best possible appointment. I think I would hold the fact that Kim is not an economist in his favor, but a background in banking would probably have been a good idea.

She is a widely respected moderate who has been willing to break with her party if her conscience demanded it.

I think you have to look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. These are all people who were members of The Federalist Society, idolized by “conservative” legal scholars, who crave the esteem and admiration of the people they see as being “superior,” that is, rich. Think of it as “self-fulfillment.”

Yes, that was a little surprising. I would have more expected that kind of callousness from Kagan, whose minuscule history suggests she is sympathetic to the police power and authoritarian imperial presidential power. The thinking a few months ago was this was a slam dunk, we’d be getting 8-1 to uphold the mandate, and now it looks more like 8-1 to not only strike the mandate but to destroy Medicaid too. I am not often glad to be old, but this works for me.

ALEC is despicable, loathsome, and needs to be destroyed, but I believe they would never, never, never contribute to a defense fund for an environmentalist. We'll just have to wait for the guilty party to be revealed. I'm more interested in finding out the identity of the Congressman and the officer in the prison. Is it a federal prison? Is it actually run by the government, or by Corrections Corporation of America? Where can I find more about whether or not anything was done about the corruption of the land sale? So many questions, so little bandwidth.

Why do they look so much like Jim (?) and Tammy Bakker? Why on earth would anyone send money to a guy who wears a coat like that, or a woman with hair and eye makeup like that? Even the girls in the massage parlors here in Bangkok know better.