November 21, 2008, 12:54PM
A University of Michigan economist, Mark Perry, asks a really dumb question: "Is it right to tax the average worker making $28.50 to bailout workers whose labor cost is over $73 an hour?"
This is dumb because 1) Under Obama tax proposals that average worker won't pay more tax, while the private-jet-flying execs will, and 2) Why shouldn't auto workers make more than average?
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November 16, 2008, 3:13PM
No way to escape the dogged debaters of TPM Cafe.
Post comments here.
November 15, 2008, 7:09PM
"One of our principles is that power corrupts, and you need to disperse it," Senator Jim DeMint said, to a group of GOP officials at a conference in Myrtle Beach.
Raw Story article.Wealth is power, n'est-ce pas? Also, information? Also, access? When have liberals ever been all about concentrating power? Of course, DeMint doesn't really mean what he's saying, I feel. I think he means states as opposed to federal (when it's the other guys in charge). I don't remember much discussion about concentrated power during arguments about FISA, Iraq, intelligence, executive privilege, and so on.
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November 14, 2008, 12:38PM
Kerfuffle in Italy after their high court ruled that a persistently vegetative coma patient could be allowed to die. The Church is of course aghast, and had been firing with all guns at the courts during the long appeal process. But this case exposes the clash of dogma and data.
Church fury as coma woman allowed to die.
A hundred years ago, the woman in question would have been long dead. But our capability of maintaining life also is the capacity to sustain Hell, as the father referred to his life for the past 17 years. And of course there is that tricky beginning-of-life question.
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November 8, 2008, 6:34PM
There were some unique characteristics of TPM Café: First, we had depth of subject in our conversations, second, we had long threads, and third, we had a variety of subjects. The latter was made possible by having Discussion Posts that had to achieve enough votes to even get posted. And once up, they stayed for a very long time. The first was made possible by the second and third points. New visitors tended to comment that they had found nothing to equal TPM on the web, and I haven't heard about any serious competition since.
It was apparent that something had to change, when all ad content was server-delivered, content-linked, and needed fast-loading pages compatible with the system. And changes were made, but at the expense of most of the defining character of the Café.
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November 8, 2008, 10:35AM
There are surely at least a couple of Americans out there who abominate, aghast with revulsion, the prospect of the spawn of interracial marriage as their president. As Barack Obama said in his first presser, he's a mutt, a mix, not hypo-allergenic and not safe for those with genetic disposition to reject, revile, denounce and despise the impure.
Most appropriately, our first non-pink president is not just a minority member of the body politic, but a cross, not just hyphenated but actually dual-nationality. He represents not just the ascension of the formerly lowly, but the apotheosis of the Unum out of our Pluribus. He is a Citizen of the World that happened to live in Chicago.
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November 5, 2008, 8:52PM
New Mexico residents are used to confusion about whether they are actually part of the US. Hawaiians didn't have that worry, until they discovered their state was somewhere exotic. And now New Mexico is Blue, while Hawaii's natal son is the Prez.
Alaska will hear renewed calls from the secessionist Alaska Independence Party. Their leader, Joe Vogler, has been supposedly dead since 1993, but may be revived, having been preserved in an Alaskan glacier. Given arctic warming, it would be an easy PR move to "discover" him, those remains found in a gravel pit notwithstanding.
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November 5, 2008, 12:56AM
No hanging chads, no court challenges, no lingering legitimacy questions. While maybe not landslide electoral numbers, it was large majority as these things go. It was mainly an early majority. Over with, resoundingly, by 12 pm EST, when the president-elect spoke.
Obama was perfect in tone with his acceptance speech, blending in Lincoln quotes seamlessly, using the old woman's experience of history as scaffold for his recounting of our journey.
This is the way things ought to be. Like remembering to breathe, as Obama's sister described meeting him.
November 4, 2008, 9:52PM
Or will the South remain unreconstructed? The entire Northeast has given Obama its approval, but more importantly, working-class populations in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio seem to have finally voted their interests.
The North has again shown the South that its advantage in resources, wealth, and ingenuity is hard to fight. Obama used that advantage to make McCain defend in former strongholds. It was a reverse Southern Strategy, forcing McCain back onto his holdouts of white racists and jingoistic nationalists. Obama said: "You want the South? Fight for it!" And that forced McCain to settle for hoping in the swing states, with only his smearing whisper-ads to try and scare whites away from the obvious choice.
Obama's campaign was simultaneously top-down and bottom-up, with immensely broad financial support. Every small donation implied a volunteer for canvassing or calling. McCain had the equivalent of some plantation scions, contributing their money and a few of their sons, against the People's Army of eager Obama partisans. It should never have been close. Or, put another way, close ain't winning. It may have taken a few years for the North to wear down the South, but it did take Gen. Ulysses Grant to put the rabid dog down, for good.
Except we only thought that was it. We didn't understand that people who think they haven't lost, haven't. The Reconstruction fizzled. And the South has had a significant interest in national politics, which became dominant after Nixon. But not now. So much for Reagan Democrats.
Now can we stop trying to woo the leftovers of Jim Crow? Can we tell them to shut up and join the country, finally, and can we make the flag of traitors illegal? Or at least in really bad taste?
Will the South stay down, this time, never to rise again?
November 3, 2008, 6:22PM
He feels pretty bad about trusting things to run themselves, although that's normal policy for Him (He's actually a Libertarian). But since Evil People gummed things up with vote suppression, flipping etc., He thought it might help if He arranged for better weather than one might otherwise expect in early November temperate zone. How about 70 degrees and sunny in Chicago? Who can argue that's not a miracle?
He wants His people to know that He can't shorten the voting lines without contradicting the other efforts He is engaged in. He anointed One to boost enthusiasm, which would make a liberal victory more complete. He arranged for more awareness, thus larger voter registration, which means long lines. (So does better weather.)
He apologizes for being Busy with these Good Works, and letting Madeleine Dunham slip away before tomorrow. So give the Big Guy a break, and watch the manna from Heaven fill the ballot boxes Tuesday.
October 30, 2008, 7:12PM
Seems like some folks are uncomfortable with effective campaigning. We had many discussions in recent years about whether to fight conservative fire with fire, whether to find phrases and buzzwords to counter GOP propaganda and framing. We argued back and forth about truth vs. emotion, virtue vs. success.
I felt all along that it was possible to politic with truth, but use the right framing and delivery, to use terms that resonated well but were also true, to campaign with integrity while actually selling the product. I felt we did not have to choose between Ralph Nader's hectoring and John Edwards' haircut. I felt it was simply a technique issue, that the right candidate could do it with honor, and also win against the failure of conservative programs.
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October 28, 2008, 11:44AM
Please look carefully at the screen when trying to comment on certain posts. At least one poster is scamming you, avoiding comments, but mainly taking advantage of the re-locating of the "recommend" link, when s/he un-checks the "feedback" boxes.
Is there another blog where trolls can post without receiving comments? Said poster here, who I would not have called a troll before, has been using this choice.
October 27, 2008, 4:58PM
Some things work just fine if we all do them, like exercise, voting for somebody for president, reading a book. Some don't, like many of the basic conservative principles. Entrepreneurship? Sure, let's have a million different types of computer, or telephone systems, or automobiles. It's a prescription for medieval artisan economics. Not that local economies are a terrible thing, but it tends to prevent what we think of as wealth. That comes from a large number of people joining together. Conservatives have no desire for everyone to follow their principles, such as utterly de-regulated business. That would let in too many competitors. And forget trying to get more voters registered.
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October 23, 2008, 8:59AM
God, I'm tired of this. As Gail Collins said in today's NYT, "For John McCain, the best question now is not whether he's going to lose, but what kind of a country he'd wind up with if he won after a campaign even a telemarketer can't love. " She is referring to the guy that couldn't go the last step of placing an ugly smear call for the McCain campaign.. Can anyone imagine the ugly mood that would ensue if, somehow, Obama loses?
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October 21, 2008, 2:53PM
*Using Michelle Bachman's definition.
Yup, I am opposed to America when it acts contrary to its principles and ideals. I am anti-America if that means against inferring that some are just not "real" Americans. I hate the America that took a hundred years to even exert itself enough to guarantee the fundamental right of democracy, the vote, to everyone.
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