Democracy upsets the chattering classes

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

hillary-clinton with glasses

The chattering classes are clutching pearls over this recent NY Times article, in which the latest Clinton scandal is identified as her campaign’s willingness to have an actual strategy to win. Esmeralda, run and get my smelling salts!

Even Matt Taibbi jumped into the fray yesterday, with a disjointed and rambling rant. (I still can’t identify his main point, other than that he’s a Bernie Sanders supporter who hates the Clintons.)

Lots of smart people took on the Times over that same story, because the reporters were wrong on their premise: Obama’s path wasn’t “much narrower”. He won bigger than Bill Clinton, with more votes and a higher percentage. It almost seems as if the Times was saying that winning with votes from all those colored people somehow taints the process, but the Times is a famed librul paper, so I must be wrong.

Digby dissected the path to the fainting couch thusly:

Ed Kilgore over at the Washington Monthly took issue with [Brian] Beutler’s definition of triangulation explaining that it was actually something that Clinton critics (and one backstabbing advisor — Dick Morris) used to describe the administration’s approach. I can only say that from the standpoint of an observer from afar, the most vexing aspect of the Clinton administration’s approach, whatever you want to call it (and which frustratingly continued in the Obama administration) was the idea that capitulating to Republicans on thorny issues like welfare reform, gun control or abortion would result in “getting them off the table” and lead the public to support liberal programs in the future.

This has never happened. When you give Republicans an inch they will take a mile and it only resulted in moving the political center farther and farther right. The good news is that the Republican Party has now fallen off the cliff and it’s possible that a majority of the country has finally seen them for what they are. The bad news is that they control the Congress and half the country still votes for them.

Beutler goes on to say that Hillary Clinton’s strategy so far seems to indicate that she has adopted a much different approach, presumably based upon the lesson learned in both her husband’s and the Obama administrations:

The nature of the strategy involves staking out a variety of progressive issue positions that enjoy broad support, but it’s not as straightforward as simply identifying the public sentiment and riding it to victory. The key is to embrace these objectives in ways that makes standard Republican counterspin completely unresponsive, and thus airs out the substantive core of their ideas: Rather than vie for conservative support by inching rightward, Clinton is instead reorienting liberal ideas in ways that make the Republican policy agenda come into greater focus.

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NJ Supreme Court rules in favor of Christie in pension case

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

TRENTON, N.J. — The New Jersey Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that public workers do not have a legally enforceable contract to greater pension funding, handing Republican Gov. Chris Christie a significant victory in a yearlong battle with public-sector unions. Even though a 2011 law Christie signed explicitly granted workers a contractual right to pension funding,… Continue reading “NJ Supreme Court rules in favor of Christie in pension case” →

What do the sane people do?

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

10 commandments

The ones who live in states that do nonsense like this?

Republicans in Idaho are pushing a bill to make the Bible a reference book in public school classes teaching science and law, Patheos reports.

Members of the state’s Republican party have published a set of proposed resolutions following a central committee meeting this past weekend among Idaho GOP higher-ups. The policy initiatives the state’s conservative leadership dreamed up include “A Resolution Supporting Bible Use in Idaho Public Schools.”

Republican party chairperson for Idaho County, Marge Arnzen, submitted legislative language to infuse the state’s curriculum with biblical teachings. The proposal, partially captured in screen shots below, begins with a nod to the Christian supreme being :

Screen Shot 2015-06-09 at 3.43.37 PM

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Concluding that theocracy is the rightful law of the land, Arnzen’s bill would see the Bible stand on academic par with textbooks in the state’s biology and government classrooms.

Irony alert

~ susie

bill bratton

Also, Catch-22. Hey, here’s an idea: Stop filing bullshit charges against everyone you stop?

Hiring more non-white officers is difficult because so many would-be recruits have criminal records, the New York police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has said.

“We have a significant population gap among African American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them,” Bratton said in an interview with the Guardian.

Police departments, responding to widespread protests against several high-profile police killings of black men, are boosting efforts to recruit more non-white officers. But budget restrictions, strained relations between police and minority communities and, according to Bratton, a history of indiscriminate policing tactics that disproportionately target black and Latino men complicate the department’s goal of racial parity.
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Cop from swim club incident resigns

~ susie

And that means he gets to keep his pension and benefits, at least for a while. Not good:

Eric Casebolt, the McKinney, Texas, police officer who was caught on video pinning a teenage girl to the ground and pulling his gun on others at a pool party, has resigned from the McKinney Police Department, Chief Of Police Greg Conley announced Tuesday evening.

Casebolt’s lawyer told KDFW earlier on Tuesday that the officer had decided to leave the force. Conley said that Casebolt’s decision to leave was voluntary and that he would continue to collect a pension and benefits.

Conley strongly condemned Casebolt’s actions during the incident and said that the officer, who had been with the department since 2005, was “out of control.”

“As the chief of police, I want to say to our community that the actions of Casebolt, as seen on the video, of the disturbance at the pool, are indefensible. Our policies, our training, our practice do not support his actions,” he said. “He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident.”

Conley also said on Tuesday that charges against 18-year-old Adrian Martin, the only person arrested at the pool party incident, had been dropped.
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Who does this?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

tigercat

Sometimes people accuse me of hating animals, and I don’t. But I do avoid them, due to my allergies. And even if I wasn’t allergic, I probably wouldn’t get an animal because of the high cost of taking care of them. (I have a neighbor who spent more than my car cost to get chemo for her dog.) I’m a responsible person, I don’t take on things I can’t afford.

But this? This is just sickening:

“We just came back from seeing Tiger Tim at the vet. The news is not so good. On top of everything else, his white blood cell count is sky high. The vet is not sure why and sent off more blood for further testing. He is on heavy-duty intravenous antibiotics. The only bit of good news is that he does not have hepatic lipidosis, which is the main concern when cats stop eating. His kidney values are good.”

Tiger is expected to have a feeding tube inserted on Wednesday. He is expected to remain in the hospital for a week.

In a heartless and purely selfish act, seven-year-old Tiger was recently surrendered to New York City Animal Care and Control because his owner purchased a new couch.

Tiger had lived with his family since he was only three-months-old and cried with deeply sorrowful meows as his owner walked away and left him sitting on the counter where unwanted pets are surrendered. Even when the attendant warned the woman that Tiger could be euthanized at anytime, she was unmoved.

On the day, Tiger was scheduled to be euthanized, Magnificat Cat Rescue and Rehoming from Bronx, New York City stepped in to save his life. A volunteer tells more of the tragic story:

“You said you got him when he was just three months old, and that he was now seven. You said he was a good cat, well-behaved and affectionate. That he followed you around and kept you company. That he waited at the door for you every night and that he was so happy when you came home from work. You signed the ACC paperwork, which states that a surrendered animal may be euthanized. Then you left him there and walked away, even though he cried.”

Although Tiger was rescued, his sad story continues. The organization reports Tiger has recovered from his upper respiratory infection, but he refuses to eat and refuses to drink. Volunteers have been force feeding him to keep him hydrated and alive, however he just continues to stay curled up in a ball and just doesn’t want to move.

Medical mystery

~ susie ~ 8 Comments

scotoma2

All of a sudden, my migraines have gotten much more frequent (six in the past month or so) and two of them occurred in the middle of the night. This morning, I woke up, dropped something on the floor, bent to pick it up and there it was: another migraine aura. Shit. And even though it’s gone now, I seem to have a bit of double vision after this one, which is a pain in the ass and has never happened before.

The kind of migraines I get are relatively rare (opthalmic migraines, with no head pain — although oddly, I had pain with the one last week) and so far, I haven’t found a doctor who specializes in them. I’m kind of tired of talking to doctors who only have the vaguest idea what I’m describing — “Talking Out My Ass” syndrome, in which they’re spitballing, rather than admit they don’t know. I read everything I can find on the topic and always know more than they do.

My big concern, as always, is that I’ve gone 20+ years with untreated Lyme disease, which is said to spread into the brain and heart. I did find a dedicated Lyme program at Johns Hopkins that just opened, and while I don’t fit the exact profile (they’re looking for relapsing Lyme patients who have been treated and I never have), maybe I can see someone who knows something.

Assuming my insurance will cover out-of-state consultation, that is.