To understand where we were, and where we are now:

These cute cartoons ran on Saturday mornings as a pro-social, pro-civic bit of public service, in the interests of educating kids (or... edutaining them, at least) and instilling some patriotism in them.

And now?

They wouldn't run. They are "controversial." These cartoons are now rightwing jingoism, and possibly incitements to violence and disorder.

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (170)
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Sometimes you have these bad secondary effects.

Like when your plan is to keep education in a state of permanent crisis, thus requiring constant repair (by which I mean: ever-increasing salaries and benefits), and then one day a law is passed and suddenly there is no crisis.

Horrible!

Why, this is such a bizarre state of affairs, you'd almost think the Walker/GOP plan was not promulgated to destroy public education, but rather to save it, and that the teachers' unions' mission was not to improve education, but rather to keep it in crisis forever so they could make ever-escalating demands upon the taxpayers.

The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it's all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.

In the past, teachers and other staff at Kaukauna were required to pay 10 percent of the cost of their health insurance coverage and none of their pension costs. Now, they'll pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their coverage (still well below rates in much of the private sector) and also contribute 5.8 percent of salary to their pensions. The changes will save the school board an estimated $1.2 million this year, according to board President Todd Arnoldussen.

Now let's talk about corruption. Corruption enabled by the special laws for special pleaders.

Byron York notes that the employee contribution was "generously" offered up by the unions in a last ditch effort to avoid the law.

But it's not merely the employee contribution towards health benefits that's rescued this school district.

It's also that health care benefits are suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, less costly.

Why?

Because the only health care organization the school district was permitted to negotiate with was... a creature of the teachers' union.

In the past, Kaukauna's agreement with the teachers union required the school district to purchase health insurance coverage from something called WEA Trust -- a company created by the Wisconsin teachers union. "It was in the collective bargaining agreement that we could only negotiate with them," says Arnoldussen. "Well, you know what happens when you can only negotiate with one vendor." This year, WEA Trust told Kaukauna that it would face a significant increase in premiums.

Now, the collective bargaining agreement is gone, and the school district is free to shop around for coverage. And all of a sudden, WEA Trust has changed its position. "With these changes, the schools could go out for bids, and lo and behold, WEA Trust said, 'We can match the lowest bid,'" says Republican state Rep. Jim Steineke, who represents the area and supports the Walker changes. At least for the moment, Kaukauna is staying with WEA Trust, but saving substantial amounts of money.

How about that?

There is corruption going on here that we didn't even imagine. Corrupt people can think up too many corrupt schemes for the honest man to keep up with.

At some point you just have to take an ax to the tree.

Oh, and there's more. Teachers will now have to teach six periods a day, rather than five, so... class sizes are being reduced.

Just like the teachers claim they always wanted.

Except they wanted that extra hour off a wee bit more.

Thanks to Gabe (a different Gabe) for alerting me to this.

Public Teachers' Unions

We're paid to make your kids smart, but we're paid better to make them dumb.

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 AM | Comments (101)
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The NRSC has a new ad about Obama's call for leadership.

The President, you see, calling upon others to lead.

This might be a good one to send your on-the-fence friends. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (126)
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I believe it was Antonin Scalia who pithily summed this up in, I think, a concurrence when a nondiscrimination policy in admissions was challenged.

The questions were: 1, is discrimination based on race even constitutional in the first place?

And, 2, even if it is Constitutional, is it also mandatory?

He wrote of question 2: The Constitution cannot mandate what it barely tolerates in the first place.

But many disagree, and we call such people "Democrat appointed federal judges."

Bear in mind, the Michigan Constitution expressly forbids racial preferences. So the claims is being made that the federal Constitution, which barely permits these preferences in the first place, also knocks down state constitutions that forbid them.

Jennifer Gratz, who headed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative ballot proposal, said she doesn't think the ruling is going to stand long term because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled initiatives than ban ran preferences are constitutional.

"To me, this is the epitome of an activist court. These justices held onto this ruling for years and released it the day before the holiday weekend. They were hoping they would catch people off guard and not make the news," said, Gratz, director of the American Civil Rights Institute, a California-based group that advocates against affirmative action.

Ward Connerly, a former University of California regent who was a major backer of Proposal 2 and California's similar Proposition 209, said the ruling means the people have no right to govern their own institutions.

"It's saying the people have no right to insist that everyone be treated equality. It places the ultimate decision in the hands of the university — that they are supreme ones," Connerly said by phone from California. "It's a terrible, terrible decision that will not stand."

I think that's right, so, in a better world, these judges should be impeached.

They know the law. They also don't care.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (115)
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That's the claim. I think that's false.

Bear in mind, this is MSNBC reporting, too.

Here was Romney in New Hampshire on Monday:

The people of New Hampshire have waited long enough. They want to see good jobs. They want to see rising incomes. They want to see an economy thatÂ’s growing again, and the presidentÂ’s failed. He did not cause this recession, but he made it worse.

And he said something similar at the New Hampshire debate earlier this month:

He didnÂ’t create the recession, but he made it worse and longer.

But at his press conference today in Allentown, PA — where he was highlighting a company that had closed, after President Obama touted it benefitting from the stimulus — Romney backtracked on the he-made-it-worse line.

When NBC producer Sue Kroll asked the former Massachusetts governor why he believes that Obama’s policies have made the economy worse — when the economy is now growing (and not shrinking like it was in 2009), when the Dow is climbing (and no longer in a free-fall like it was in ’09), and when the unemployment rate is down a full percentage point from where it was in Oct. ’09 — Romney gave this answer:

I didnÂ’t say that things are worse.

Romney went on to say:

What I said was that economy hasnÂ’t turned around, that youÂ’ve got 20 million Americans out of work, or seriously unemployed; housing values still going down. You have a crisis of foreclosures in this country. The economy, by the way, if you think the economy is great and going well, be my guest.

Yeah this is bullshit. There are two questions here, one more of a matter of opinion (with some fact), the other a mixed question of opinion and fact.

1. Did Obama make the recession longer and deeper and worse by his policies? This is largely a question of opinion. Romney, and virtually all other Republicans, believe the answer is yes.

But for this "gotcha," MSNBC changes the terms of the question:

2. Is the economy currently now worse, in absolute terms, than it was compared to a relevant period, say January 2009? This is actually a bit of an opinion-based question too, but if you're going with certain data (such as GDP growth, or rate of loss of jobs) the question is factual, and the answer is "No."

One can make an argument about that. But it's a long argument, and you wind up setting yourself up for further anklebiting gotchas from the media in making it.

Let me put it this way: If you claim the economy is currently worse in absolute terms than it was during the great fall, the period of rapid job loss and contraction, you'd better have an hourlong power point presentation to break out because the media is immediately going to say, "He's so ignorant, he doesn't know GDP began growing last year." And you'd better be ready to explain why traditional indicators of economic strength or weakness are to be discarded in favor of nontraditional ones.

Note the first question is about a counterfactual scenario: Would the economy be stronger than it actually is but for Obama's incompetency? It compares the current situation to the alt history "current" situation.

The second question is straight-up factual. It compares the real-world current situation to the real-world situation in January 2009.

Different questions. And the fact that Romney can parse between them is a small credit in his favor.

The economy may or may not actually be worse than it was when Obama took office in January 2009; by several methods of measuring the economy, it's not worse per se.

On the other hand, his misbegotten policies have almost certainly destroyed jobs and prevented growth and therefore have prevented a normal economic-rebound recovery, and so yes, he made the recession longer and worse.

Always be careful when citing MSNBC for a "gotcha" involving a Republican candidate.

Extended: I included the rest of Romney's quote. I was trying not to excerpt too much but I guess it's crucial to get that bit in, for context, and to demonstrate that yes, he want on the attack after this.

I actually was just focused on whether or not he backtracked or made inconsistent statements. He did not.

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (123)
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This "study's" numeric conclusions are dumb as ballz, given that we are talking about statistical noise here (key findings include meager 2%, 1%, and 3% differentials, which are almost certainly not statistically significant).

Even though they lack any evidence for this, then, they still are probably right:

"Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard.

"The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam.

Their findings also suggest that Democrats gain nothing from July 4th parades, likely a shocking result for all the Democratic politicians who march in them.

What the left will say is that the right has "hijacked patriotism."

We didn't hijack it. We didn't need to hijack it.

You abandoned it.

We are merely caring for and cherishing what you scorned and then discarded and then derided and then ridiculed.

The right imposes no "rule" that the left cannot celebrate the founding of this nation. The left imposes that "rule" on itself.

Got nothing to do with us.

Occasionally you hear a more old-style liberal (rather than the vicious transnational deviant progressivists of the New Left) scream that he's a patriot, too, and he's offended that patriotism is considered a rightwing value.

But he's screaming in vain. I'll accept that many of the older-school liberals have the patriotic vibe.

But will they accept in turn that most of their political confederates, the left and New Left, hate the idea of patriotism and openly mock it?

We on the right didn't steal patriotism from older-school liberals.

Your nihilistic political confreres on the left stole it from you.

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (108)
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Alive.

He says the tumor was successfully removed, and immediately placed in charge of Venezuela's largest TV network.

Posted by: Ace at 08:15 AM | Comments (85)
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He did say this was a set-up. His French friends, like Bernard Henri-Levy, cautioned it might be a set-up.

It appears it could conceivably be a set-up, or some scheme to get an asylum visa, or just consensual sex gone wrong.

It could also still be rape. She may be lying about unrelated matters (the NYT says the prosecutors say she is), but she could still be telling the truth about this matter.

But the prosecutors are liking looking to drop the case. In fact, the article says they're considering dismissing charges.

The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.

Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.

Senior prosecutors met with lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and provided details about their findings, and the parties are discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges. Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to people involved in criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.

These are the things people typically lie about. But if you're pressing a charge that relies fundamentally on your word, you lie about other matters at your peril.

Thanks to Truman North, in the sidebar.

Edited/Expanded: Commenters note that I bit on DSK's narrative far too hard, and they're right. I have rewritten to note various possibilities.

Long story short, though: Whether she was raped or not, if the prosecutors feel her credibility is in question regarding other matters, they will probably not take this to trial. Given that the charge rests upon her word that the thing was rape and not some other kind of sexual encounter.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 AM | Comments (128)
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Remember, MSNBC hosts are allowed to call some presidents murderous fascists without consequence. But call Obama a "dick" and well buddy you've got problems.

That's the message they're sending and that's the message they intend.

The left is at least taking this with a sense of humor, and when I say "sense of humor," I mean "self-parody."

HereÂ’s why Mark Halperin is a disgrace. ItÂ’s not because he used a mild obscenity to describe our president on Morning Joe, disrespectful as that was. Rather, it was the circumstances of the slur. Right now, the Republican Party is threatening to blow up the world economy unless Democrats agree to savage cuts in spending while refusing any of the revenue increases that all serious economists say are necessary to actually address the national debt. Obama, whose greatest fault in office has been a misplaced faith in the GOPÂ’s capacity for reasonableness, went on television and chided the party for this stance. Apparently, this struck Halperin as unreasonable. His response embodies all thatÂ’s rotten and shallow about D.C.Â’s pundit class, which fetishizes bipartisanship even as it only demands it of one political party.

If you don't get what's wrong with that last sentence -- which does in fact read as true if you're not paying close attention -- is that she means the DC pundit class is too tough on forcing Democrats to be bipartisan, while giving Republicans free reign to make partisan attacks.

"DICK" by ExJon.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 AM | Comments (127)
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Minnesota's government has shut down!

While I was away on my sojourn through the verdant wilds of Jesusland, the news in my homestate was full of dire warnings of governmental shutdown. In spite of the reinvigorated Minnesota GOP, my cynical nature convinced me that the GOP would fold like a cheap suit and give Governor Mark Dayton (Brave Sir Robin, yo-ho!) everything he asked for: taxes, taxes, and more taxes.

Somewhat to my surprise, the state GOP held firm. No new taxes, and they're demanding pretty deep cuts to government spending instead.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:13 AM | Comments (174)
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