Meh

Comments

2 responses to “Meh”

1. 

   JMPrince

   July 12, 2013

   One more note to add on to the Farm Bill debacle:

   “Yes, You Should Be Totally Outraged By the Farm Bill
   It’s not just a microcosm of congressional insensitivity and bad economics. It’s a small moral play about the role of money in politics”.

   By DEREK THOMPSON of The Atlantic, with excellent Simple! graphs on how money in politics ruined a perfectly functional food & farm policy that was a bedrock of bipartisan agreement for yes, generations. Somewhere Newt’s laughing, still. The sheer idiotic ignominy of the move is breathtaking to behold.

   http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/yes-you-should-be-totally-outraged-by-the-farm-bill/277159/

   And a small NPF for Peaches from same:
   “The History of Typography, in Stop-Motion Animation
   The evolution of fonts through the ages”

   http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/the-history-of-typography-in-stop-motion-animation/277376/

   JMP

2. 

   JMPrince

   July 12, 2013

   No time for an NPF, we got some real crap coming down. Our Continuing Crises:

   Our recurring Nullification crisis, applies ONLY for & to Democratic Prezs:
   James Fallows of The Atlantic notices. (A reader writes):

   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/not-a-filibuster-problem-a-nullification-problem/277740/

   “I actually think “filibuster disaster” is the wrong way of thinking of it. We don’t have a filibuster problem. We have a nullification problem. Abuse of the filibuster is just one aspect of it, and one of several tactics. Mass filibuster of presidential nominees to head organizations like the CFPB, NLRB, etc., isn’t just an abuse of a tactic. It’s a nullification of federal law. What’s really breathtaking about it isn’t the number of filibusters, but the fact that they’ve dropped all pretense of objecting to the nominees themselves: they say explicitly that they are blocking these nominees because they don’t like the laws they would enforce.

   They don’t think the CFPB or the NLRB should exist. They don’t have the votes (which is to say, the democratic legitimacy) to make their existence no longer the law of the land, so they nullify those laws by other means.

   They do the same thing in the House by simply refusing to fund what they don’t like. They can’t get the laws off the books, so they nullify them by other means.”

   Again here’s the graph showing how the filibuster’s been wildly abused all out of proportion to historical norms to stop everything that ‘dusky usurper’ does:

   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/false-equivalence-watch-another-strong-contender/277766/

   And yes, here the NYT even gets this wrong and finds it awfully hard to comprehend somehow. I blame the Ivies for their lack of common sense.

   Just how bad is it? The Radical Repug’s of the US House just voted to defund Food Stamps/SNAP. After 40 years of working just fine inside the Farm Bill, they jettisoned the ‘feeding’ & Foodstamp portion of the bill in favor of an all ‘Industrial Ag. Subsidy Bill’, a gleaming near $200 Billion monstrosity that feeds No One in particular. But it will end the program put together by the Bi-partisan efforts of farm state Sens. George McGovern (SD, D) & Bob Dole (R, KS) during the Nixon administration. That’s now forgone for a pure ‘pay to play’ for their Big Ag industry buds/cronies & campaign donors. It’s the most stunningly craven, stupid and immoral vote taken by the House in awhile. Perhaps in years, but they’re just getting started. The excellent CBPP.Org detailed analysis of the carnage wrought is here:

   cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3988

   JMP