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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:19 AM | Comments (534)
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HUMP DAAAAAY, YEAAAH.

I didn't actually watch the State of the Union speech or the GOP responses last night. so I'll be spending a bit of today playing catch-up, I guess. Honestly, that guy has exhausted my interest. I have heard from a couple folks already that the GOP responses (all four!) did not satisfy.

The guy who tricked his 7-months pregnant girlfriend into taking an abortion pill was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison.

Virgin Galactic has banned Chinese tourists from its space flights over espionage concerns.

Disney's decision to pull ABC's shows from Hulu and make them available only on Hulu Plus or for free on the website after a week appears to be backfiring. They're just training people to find and download their shows from copyright infringers.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:42 AM | Comments (271)
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Quote of the Day

"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."

-- Harry S. Truman

The American Dream is Dead in the South?

Well that's what a recent article by Matthew OÂ’Brien in Atlantic Monthly seems to claim.

Included in the article is a chart showing the percentage of people whose parents were the bottom 20% of income who made it into the upper 20%. When you look at the vast sea of red in the lower left it paints a pretty dismal picture of Dixie which appears to have about the same economic mobility as feudal Europe.

But this map doesn't correspond at all to the places that people are currently moving to to get a better life. And Stacy McCain calls bullshit on it. His primary rebuttal: West Virginia- the glory land of economic advancement?! No fucking way.

Why does rural Arkansas look like a beacon of upward mobility, while the bustling economies of Atlanta and Charlotte produce no such effect?

Most of all, why does the map referenced by O'Brien show that impoverished Appalachia offers more opportunity for advancement than any of the more prosperous surrounding flatlands?

To use a social science term: Your data is obviously fucked up.

And when people looked into the study they found it uses a strange way of determining economic advancement. Basically they looked at the mean family income levels of kids when they were in high school and then later the children's family income when they were 30 years old. Not too many people are in the top 20% of income levels at 30 even if they're doing very well. And I hope they adjusted the income levels for local costs of living but I wouldn't bet on it.

Short answer: Blue states by far.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:55 PM | Comments (571)
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Not really an open thread because the Star Wars thread, below, is really intended for that purpose.

If you care -- and I don't, that's why I just can't do this -- Allah wrote some crap about this abortion, and Jim Geraghty wrote about the SOTU as DC's F*** You to the rest of the country.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (1551)
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Sometimes a Sudden Betrayal has been telegraphed for so very long one begins to long for the Betrayal to finally just happen.

I guess the GOP is counting on that.

From the New York Times:

The principles say that Republicans do not support a “special path to citizenship,” but make an exception for the “Dreamers,” the immigrants brought into the country illegally as children, quoting a 2013 speech by Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader. “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents,” Mr. Cantor said at the time. “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home.”

Is there a great public demand for Immigration Reform Now? Allah, citing a new Pew poll, thinks not:

Immigration is now 16th on the list of Americans’ top 20 policy priorities. Just 41 percent said it’s a top priority this year — exactly the same percentage who said so five years ago. There’s a lot of interest in this topic among professional politicians because of the changing electorate, but among the public itself, there’s no movement.

Even one of the biggest RINO's on the planet -- MSNBC's pet RINO Joe Scarborough -- thinks this is all a bad political idea.

More than the substance of the Immigration matter itself is the anger over the underlying question: Who controls the GOP? The actual people who make it up and vote it into office, or the establishment figures being paid to staff it and their big-dollar donors, such as the corporate/business cartel?

It's pretty clear it's the latter.

And the GOP is fairly brazen about making this as clear as possible.

When it would really be in their best interests to hide it a little better.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (268)
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"When I heard those words, I called the control room and said this was a big deal."

I am tempted to make a gendered observation about how Andrea Mitchell manages to persist -- nay, flourish -- without a speck of aptitude for her job.

But that would be gendered of me. ()nly because I am not myself a progressive; progressives can make gendered attacks all day long without worry.)

Do not blame on gender what can be more easily explained by lead paint or repeated blows to the head by an ugly stick.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:14 PM | Comments (259)
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Carrie Fisher says she's beginning to shoot her scenes for Star Wars 7 very soon -- in March or April.

In case you didn't hear, the Star Wars 7 script is being rewritten to focus on the original characters. The first draft featured them in a supporting role, passing the torch to the new younger heroes. Abrams decided he wanted one last hurrah with the old characters, so the script will now feature the young characters in brief introductory sort of appearances, while focusing on the older guys.

I don't know. Aging isn't fun.

Peter Mayhew -- Chewbacca -- went through his old pictures and posted a lot of hitherto-unseen photos from the shoots of the various movies.

What's better than Slave Girl Leia? Well, Slave Girl Leia and her twin.

That's her stunt double, of course.

Some people like making Star Wars action figures but put into a different contest or genre. For example, this guy Sillof made some cool Steam Punk Star Wars figures.

Well now he's made Wild West Star Wars figures, which, I gotta be honest, are sort of like the Steam Punk ones, but with less fantasy styling. I don't want to say "realistic," per say, but he imagines Chewbacca as just a big, strong Indian who wears a bear skin (including the head).

And here's his take on Boba Fett.

It's subtle. Like, too subtle.

Below, Bill Hader does some Star Wars impressions.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:49 PM | Comments (142)
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Obama's going to talk about income inequality a fair amount.

He won't, however, be talking about the rising inequality between the Ruling Class and its various major domos and mandarins and the rest of the country that Washington supposedly "serves."

Since the economic collapse of 2008, Washington D.C. and its surrounding areas have remained nearly untouched. In fact, Washington is booming as the rest of the country continues to suffer. The median household income in Washington D.C. is close to $20,000 higher than the median household income in the United States.

...

The wealth that has turned Washington D.C. into a boomtown, while creating an extreme income gap with the rest of the country, is a direct result of massive government spending.

Supporting charts and quotations at Pavlich's article (linked above). She also mentions this...

As Obama continues his income inequality crusade, here's an important reminder: the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest since the Great Depression under his leadership.

This last point is explored thoroughly by the awful crazy gun nuts of the Volokh Conspiracy, now annoying the crap out of emotionally volatile progressives on the pages of the Washington Post.

Jim Lindgren writes:

If we want more income equality, should we return to the economy of George W. Bush?

Other things being equal, income equality is better than inequality. But other things are NOT equal. The easiest way to make incomes more equal in the short run is to have a recession.

Much has been made of growing income inequality since 1979, but very little attention has been paid to which of the four presidental administrations preceding Barack Obama increased income equality and which ones reduced it. In short, the two presidents whose terms involved improving income equality were the two George Bushes and the two whose terms were associated with worsening after-tax income equality were Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. It is probably not an accident that the two presidents in whose administrations the GDP grew the most were the two presidents whose time in office coincided with worsening income equality.

The president under whom the poorest quintile enjoyed the largest increase in after-tax household income was George W. Bush. And the two administrations under whom the richest quintile and richest 1 percent fared the worst were the two Presidents Bush. Among Barack ObamaÂ’s four immediate predecessors, the two biggest income equalizers were George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Just to be clear, I am not pining for the good old days of the economy of George W. Bush.

But George W. Bush was the most successful of our recent past presidents in achieving very substantial increases in incomes for the poorest quintile (+18.4%), while keeping gains for the richest quintile and richest 1 percent at modest levels. For example, under Bush the Younger, the incomes of the richest 1 percent rose only 6.5 percent in eight years, compared to a staggering 84 percent under Clinton and 91 percent under Reagan.

If you would rather have Bill Clinton’s economy than George W. Bush’s economy – and I definitely would – then as a practical matter you probably don’t care overmuch about income equality.

Again, evidence is amassed at the link itself.

Would anyone prefer George W. Bush's shrinking income inequality, with some but not great income growth, over Reagan's or Clinton's growing income inequality, but with great income growth among all income quintiles?

This jibes with the Margaret Thatcher clip I linked earlier. A rising tide will lift all boats -- some more than others.

A somewhat rising tide may lift those boats in roughly equal ways. But virtually everyone will be poorer than they otherwise could be.

Why support that? Why is that such a terrific goal?

Of course, either of these alternatives is superior to the one The Emperor Obama has blessed us with, an economy in which not only is there barely any income growth, but in which almost all of the meager growth is captured entirely by the richest 1%, as almost none of the lower 99% have experienced any income growth whatsoever, and most have actually fallen backwards.

As a rising tide will lift all boats, so will an incompetent tide scuttle them all.

Thanks to @tsrblike and BB.

That's Racist: @benk84 linked this in the morning dump, but it's really good and I'd like to post it again. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (229)
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I actually disagree with him on his two examples of Hurt Feelings fake outrage -- over Andrew Cuomo's "no place for extremists" in New York statement, and Huckabee's clumsy phrasing of "controlling their libidos" as an alternative to birth control -- but his general point is, of course, spot on. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (242)
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Why?

As I'm sure you all know, while the Constitution requires the President to deliver a state of the union report to Congress (Article Two, Section 3, Clause 1), it does not specify that this should be a live speech. And until FDR, I think, the requirement was observed by sending over a written report. (Update: Drew informs me it was Woodrow Wilson who brought the personal address back. Apparently Washington had delivered the address personally, but Thomas Jefferson stopped that practice early, and the personal address did not begin again until the twentieth century.)

It should also be noted that almost all State of the Unions are actually unconstitutional, inasmuch as they are not candid reports on the state of the union at all.

They are political advertisements. Especially in bad times -- and Obama has misgoverned the country in an extended period of bad times -- the State of the Union is as dishonest a document as one could wish.

A "state of the union" report, is, by definition, a document describing the current and near-past conditions of the country, not a prospective hypothetical as to what the President hopes to do (or pretends to hope to do) in the future.

We should simply scrap the process -- and perhaps Congress can help by demanding an actual candid, honest State of the Union report, and holding the President's feet to the fire for false or misleading statements made in pretending to satisfy this Constitutional requirement.

Kevin Williamson is himself sick of the practice.

The annual State of the Union pageant is a hideous, dispiriting, ugly, monotonous, un-American, un-republican, anti-democratic, dreary, backward, monarchical, retch-inducing, depressing, shameful, crypto-imperial display of official self-aggrandizement and piteous toadying, a black Mass during which every unholy order of teacup totalitarian and cringing courtier gathers under the towering dome of a faux-Roman temple to listen to a speech with no content given by a man with no content, to rise and to be seated as is called for by the order of worship — it is a wonder they have not started genuflecting — with one wretched representative of their number squirreled away in some well-upholstered Washington hidey-hole in order to preserve the illusion that those gathered constitute a special class of humanity without whom we could not live.

It’s the most nauseating display in American public life — and I write that as someone who has just returned from a pornographers’ convention.

Margaret Thatcher at Question Time. Why do we allow our Presidents to just order us around and speak uninterrupted as if they were Emperors?

@tsrblike sends this great Thatcher response to a socialist, which could be ably applied to tonight's Carnival of Lies. It's also an example of a more democratic political spectacle-- Thatcher is not shielded from questions or criticisms. Like any other citizen, she is exposed to them.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (291)
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