The local Fox affiliate just called Oregon for Obama, 63%-37%…five minutes before another chiron calling Oregon for Obama, 57%-43%.

Nice job, Fox 12.

I seem to be blogging about Oregon a lot lately, but I try to choose the stories which have interest to everyone. (I missed the Obama rally, though, embarrassingly enough. Augustlet got to run the bases at the Triple-A baseball game, so I don’t regret the choice.)

But speaking of youth sports, holy shit.

Jaime Nared is nearly 6-1 and blessed with Michael Jordan-style skills. In games, the 12-year-old can more than hold her own against the boys — dropping three-pointers and sometimes scoring 30 points or more.

And there, according to her coach, lies the problem.

She’s so good, Michael Abraham said, she makes the boys look like scrubs. So she’s been told she can no longer play on boys teams at The Hoop, a private Beaverton basketball facility that runs a league in which Abraham’s teams compete.

Let me just say here that the sports-radio reaction - one of the most accurate bellwethers in the history of opinion - locally has been overwhelmingly supportive of young Ms. Nared. Usually you can find a few devil’s-advocate types who spout some sexist party-line nonsense, but in this case the Hoop doesn’t have a supporter as far as the eye can see.

“If I’d known about it, I wouldn’t have put any of my teams in the league. Besides, she’s been playing on this team since second grade, and she plays on our team when we travel around the region. There’s never been any problem in any event, not one word of complaint.”

Neal Franzer, The Hoop’s director of operations, said Thursday that parents were “adamant” that their complaints have nothing to do with Jaime’s skills.

“They said the problem was the boys were playing differently against her because she was a girl,” he said. “They’d been taught to not push a girl, so they weren’t fouling her hard, and the focus had shifted from playing basketball to noticing a girl was on the floor with them.”

Let me make sure I have this straight. This is basketball and the trouble is the boys don’t want to push her? I might almost understand this argument if she were a wrestler - as a former wrestler myself, I’d like to point out that there’s nowhere in a wrestling singlet for a 12-year-old boy to hide an embarrassing erection - understand the argument, but not support it. But basketball?

Basketball’s a c0ntact sport, fine. But a boy who’s too delicate to whack a girl hard on the arm the way he might a boy - a 6′1″ girl who could probably wipe the floor with him if she were so inclined - that’s not “good breeding”, that’s a dangerous lack of self-preservation skills.

Besides, it’s clear that the real problem is the boys, comparatively, suck at basketball and are sore losers.

“I think the boys on a specific team don’t like me,” she said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

Jaime’s mom, Reiko Williams, said the issue boiled over after a particular game.

“She scored 30 points,” said Williams, who garnered national attention for her daughter’s predicament Thursday after taking the story to the media. “I remember one play. She stole the ball, dribbled up court and made a behind-the-back pass to a teammate. He missed the lay-in, and she grabbed the rebound and put it in. I think it was just too much for some of those parents.

“The next day, she came home and said they wouldn’t let her play with the boys anymore.”

I’ll tell you one thing. If a girl in a situation like this says “I think the boys on a specific team don’t like me” you can take that directly to the bank. And anyone who thinks there’s some room for ambiguity there has never been on the floor in a Jr. High sport, or in the stands, or at a PTA meeting, or at the park. And as the parent of a t-ball player who is routinely outhit by a girl who’s got three inches on him* I am even more familiar with the dynamic at play here (memo to other teams’ coaches: it’s FUCKING T-BALL.)

The Hoop’s protestations of “we’re just enforcing the policy” are the utterest hogwash. New management or not, the proof is incontrovertible:

He said the boys on his team enjoyed playing with Jaime — among a handful of girls to play on his boys teams over the years — because she helped them improve.

“If she were 4-feet-9 and no good, we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” Abraham said. “To appease a small minority of parents, in this day and age, is stupid. This is a decision that really targets her. She’s a well-adjusted kid who happens to be great.

* And on whom he’s got the good taste to have a little bit of a crush.

It is, after all, Chris Matthews. But to steal Atrios’ phrase, more of this, please*:

* And less of all the other shit, Chris.

Am I behind the curve because I’ve never heard of one of these before?

A consumer report contains information about your personal and credit characteristics, character, general reputation, and lifestyle.

And how does the reporting agency get that information? By that most American of methods:

[I]nterviews with an applicant’s or employee’s friends, neighbors, and associates

I’m not crazy, right? This is a frighteningly invasive technique when it comes to employment, right?

However…

While I agree with Brad (and Lauren, as an aside) that the “everyhick” method of reporting on better-than-urban* America is complete bullshit, I think he’s wrong about one thing: The perception of Obama as Muslim is hurting him in West Virginia.

Maybe not as much as the Financial Times implies:

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls.

Brad replies:

Well no, dude, they really don’t.

Only 10% of voters think that Obama is a Muslim. And unless they all happen to be West Virginia Democratic primary voters, I don’t think that Mr. Simpson’s remarks explain anything other than his own psychosis.

Not quite.

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Atrios:

…to put it another way, if you think people should get an extra $40 this summer (an extremely optimistic view of what a gas tax holiday might save them), then give them an extra $40.

I will personally give $40* just to shut somebody up. If I have to listen to one more person-on-the-street spin Obama’s utter good sense and lack of pandering into some sort of reverse inside-the-beltway out-of-touch move, I may just torch an Expedition.

* Offer expires May 4, 2008.

*
That’s right: Gordon Smith, 2-term Senator, fake maverick, is running on a platform of change.

There’s a relatively obscure (at least in the US) musical from the 1990s called The Fix, and as I recovered from the early-morning shock of hearing this bullshit, I recalled a song called I See the Future, in which empty-suit Cal gives his first speech while running for city council:

I see the future,
I see a day when we are one
I see tomorrow
I see us striving for the sun
I see us working toward the promise
and answering the call
I see the future
I see the future
and I see it in the faces of the young

Of course, just like in real life the vacuous media and bored public eat it up.
———
* Transcript of the offending passage: Jeff Merkley, Steve Novick: More of the same, when it’s time for change.

Any other country at any other time, and there’d be nothing complex about this:

Democrat Barack Obama took a hit yesterday when rival Hillary Rodham Clinton put up an Indiana TV ad highlighting his opposition to a summer-long suspension of the gas tax. Today he fought back with an ad that says the suspension would save consumers maybe $25 and wouldn’t bring down prices…

I’m here to tell you the truth. We could suspend the gas tax for 6 months, but that’s not going to bring down gas prices long-term. You’re gonna save about 25, 30 dollars…or half a tank of gas. That’s typical of how Washington works. There’s a problem, everybody’s upset about gas prices – let’s find some short-term, quick-fix, that we can say we did something even though, even though we’re not really doing anything.

Democratic support of the gas tax repeal is kind of typical: “We scoffed at Bush in 2000 for offering everyone ‘only’ a $300 refund, but we’re willing to smear each other over $30.” Democrats: Like Republicans, but 1/10th.

And of course, we wouldn’t even get that $30; the Tax Policy Center says prices would rebound almost “immediately.”

“Unless the goal is to temporarily boost profits for petroleum refineries and foreign producers, the proposal makes no sense,” says Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center.

And at least Hillary wants to replace the money with taxes on the oil companies, as unlikely as that notion is. McCain, as far as I know, offers no such compensation. Either way, as Matthew Yglesias notes, this kind of “[policy] gimmickry” is harmful to America:

But when national leaders act as if they believe current fuel costs are a passing phenomenon to be weathered with short-term measures, then at least some voters are going to believe them and make bad personal and political decisions that we can ill afford. A lot of electoral gambits are nonsense without being actually harmful, but McCain and Clinton are making problems worse just with their rhetoric.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see, say, truck drivers offered a repeal and consumers offered a boost in gas tax, but the average voter who doesn’t drive for a living would have to be crazy to make a gas tax suspension some sort of make-it-or-break-it issue.

The average American voter.

Would have to be…crazy.

Ah, shit.)

That’s a damn big household

There’s times when “domestic dispute” fits the bill. There are many times when it doesn’t. It’s especially not a domestic dispute if the killer and murder victim don’t even live together (trigger warning):

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Like a complete idiot, I didn’t think to take a picture, so here’s a picture of the cover

I’ve been a fan of Barry’s for a long time, so the thing I was looking forward to most about Stumptown Comics Fest was picking up the aborted-tree edition of Hereville. And it’s great, of course. If you’re in Portland, the second day of the Festival is tomorrow (at the Lloyd Center Doubletree), and if you’re not, and the story (girl meets sword) sounds intriguing (and it should), go order it from the web site - several editions are available.

Via Echidne, John McCain kills irony:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who skipped a Senate vote seeking equal pay for women last night in order to campaign for president, said he opposed the measure because it would prompt a flood of lawsuits…The presumptive GOP nominee is visiting poor communities throughout the nation, including towns in Alabama and Appalachia; today he toured New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.

Do you suppose that ensuring female heads of households earned the same amount as their male counterparts might improve the economy of poor communities?

“I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems,” McCain told reporters yesterday. “This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system.”

As Echidne notes,

How would McCain achieve pay equity for women without any lawsuits? Perhaps if women ask very prettily?

SR 4-1239214t4325: RESOLVED, That women will be paid the same as men in equivalent positions, and also that this has always been the case, and that claims of former wage inequality are null and void, and maybe now this will shut women up even though they never had anything to complain about in the first place because they were always having babies and not applying themselves to their careers. Damn kids with their miniskirts.

I obviously do not support this:

Terrible throw, too.

The pamphlets thrown by the male accomplice identified the pair as the “Greenwash Guerillas,” who wrote that they were acting “on behalf of the earth (sic) and all true environmentalists.”

One side of the pamphlet contains an excerpt from a September 2006 review of Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat,” written by Raymond Lotta for the journal “Revolution,” which styles itself as the “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.” The review is highly critical of Friedman, who the review claims cannot see his own errors while “seated in the business class of his analytical jetliner.”

The other side contains five bullet-points explaining why “Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face,” which include reasons like “his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet,” and “for helping turn environmentalism into a fake plastic consumer product for the privileged.”

The pamphlet declares “Thomas Friedman’s ‘Green’ as fake and toxic to human and planetary health as the cool-whip (sic) covering his face.”

Atrios catches a moment of internet hilarity:

Funniest line quoted in the post linked below:

“I would never want to use a search engine aimed at middle-aged, suburban white guys like me; I want the world.”

Atrios’ title, of course, is “The World Was Created Just For You.” And the post he’s referring to is a good one which is talking about a bad one, and contains this about the apparent controversy about web sites and portals targetting the black community:

There is something that it is like to be black in the United States. It is overlaid and undergirded with a lot of other ways it is like to be American, human, male, female, geekish, jocky, rural, urban, suburban, young, old, native-born, immigrant, educated, not, so forth. But it is a thing. If there is something it is like to be something, the culture is going to reflect, support and exploit that, online and off.

I’d add to that something which is already implied in the above but deserves to be overt: There is something that it is like to be white in the United States. The importance of this understanding is, in its way, the reverse of the above quote - There is something that it is like to be white in the United States and it is overlaid and undergird with a lot of other ways to be American - but it is a separate thing. Or it should be. Functionally, rhetorically, popularly, it’s not enough of a thing, and that’s the whole problem. “White” and “American” don’t occupy the same space in my matrix of being but the culture wants me to believe they do - that’s privilege.

If I choose not to, or more specifically if I fail to choose to, I never have to differentiate the two, and in so doing I exercise privilege - I even discriminate - against those given no choice in the matter.

Brad of Sadly, No! (his last name’s Reed! Who knew?) writes on Alternet about Obama’s “elitism” “problem”:

Bloomberg columnist Margaret Colson said that Obama’s low bowling score was a “doozy” of a mistake, since voters apparently want someone who’s good at “looking, acting, or sounding like the locals, eating homemade specialties, even if it’s funnel cake and smoked meat products, or wearing a Teamsters or Yankees cap for the first time.” Yeah, Barack, come on — you don’t want these people to know that your life is a billion times more interesting than theirs! You’re running for president!

You know what to do.

Update: By the way, I’d like to see even one of these armchair bowling coaches judged on their athletic, such as bowling is, skill. Some people choke in their own professional sport in front of a few million people (including TV, obviously). Obama choked at something most Americans do a few times a year in front of, effectively, 300 million people. Frankly, I’m somewhat impressed he didn’t hit one of his secret service agents in the groin on the backswing.

So, remember how some really badly targetted marketing was trying to get me to hear an interview with Art Alexakis?

Well, now I know why.
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Obama:

I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I’m not as expert on…I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more Commander-in-Chief-like. Ironically, this is an area–foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain…

Nobody is entirely prepared for being Commander-in-Chief. The question is when the 3 AM phone call comes do you have somebody who has the judgment, the temperament to ask the right questions, to weigh the costs and benefits of military action, who insists on good intelligence, who is not going to be swayed by the short-term politics. By most criteria, I’ve passed those tests and my two opponents have not.

These remarks are causing quite an uproar, and all I can think is: So this is what a coded dog-whistle sounds like. The racists and the right-wing christians have been using them for so long, I never thought it’d get around to me. But the truth is, somewhere in the depths shallows of my subconscious the rationale goes like this: Anyone who has been involved, in any substantial way, in the Washington approach to foreign policy over the last twenty years is automatically tainted. Never mind Clinton’s war vote and McCain’s…complete warmongering insanity; the point is more basic than that: Experience in American foreign policy decision-making is a disqualifying characteristic, just as Obama is implying.

I’m not naive enough to believe that this opinion will be shared by any large portion of the electorate, and I hope Obama isn’t, either. I’m also not credulous enough to take this claim at face value, but just for a moment my subconscious peacenik sheepdog sat up and begged.

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the 2003 Yoo torture memo, released today, simply confirms what we thought all along: That the DOJ’s logic on torture amounted to the following:

1. General statutory laws do not apply to soldiers.

2. Eighth amendment protections do not apply to POWs: ‘Unlike imprisonment pursuant to a criminal sanction, the detention of enemy combatants involves no sentence judicially imposed or legislatively required and those detained will be released at the end ofthe conflict. Indeed, it has long been established that ‘'’[c]aptivity [in wartime] is neither a punishment nor an act of vengeance,’· but ‘merely a temporary detention which is devoid of all penal character. ‘”‘

3. The only laws applicable to soldiers in times of war are war crimes statutes.

4. However, war crimes protections do not apply to al Qaeda prisoners because they are not POWs.

5. But that doesn’t matter, because there’s no such thing as torture anyway.

Q.E.D.

The section on what is and isn’t torture is just godawful:

The key statutory phrase in the definition of torture is the statement that acts amount’ to torture if they cause “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” In examining the meaning of a statute, its text must be the starting point. Section 2340 makes plain that the infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture. Instead, the pain or suffering must be “severe.” The statute does not, however, define the tenn “severe.” “In the absence of such a definition, we construe a statutory term in accordance with its ordinary’or natural meaning.” The dictionary defines “severe” as “[u]nsparing in exaction, punishment, or censure” or “[I]nflicting discomfort or pain hard to endure; sharp; afflictive; distressing; violent; extreme; as severe pain, anguish, torture.” Thus, the adjective “severe” conveys that the pain or suffering must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure.

This is where the famous “similar to death or organ failure” test comes into play. It’s an interesting rhetorical trick to convert what seems to be a very wide definition of torture, into one which essentially means there is no such thing, but Yoo tries it. It’s all pointless, though, because, thank God, it’s okay to torture people as long as the torturers are in the United States:

Section 2340A of Title 18 makes it a criminal offense for any person “outside the United States [to] commit[] or attempt[] to commit torture…Moreover, we note· that because the statute criminalizes conduct only when it is committed outside the United States…this proviso excluding members of the Armed Forces, those employed by the Armed Forces or the Department of Defense, and those persons accompanying members of the Armed Forces or their employees applies only when their conduct is a felony if committed within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States…Here, the conduct under section 2340A is a felony only when committed outside the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction. Thus, so long as members of the Armed Forces and those accompanying or employed by the Armed Forces are in an area that 18 U.S.C. § 7 defines as part of the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction, they too are within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction for the purposes .of the conduct section 2340A criminalizes. Accordingly, they are considered to be within the United States for purposes of that statute. The criminal prohibition against torture therefore would not apply to their conduct of interrogations at U.S. military bases located in a foreign state.

Seriously.

Live video interview with Art Alexakis today!

If it weren’t such a gimme, this would be sublime headline writing:

‘George Bush is like crusty potato’

I would have said cold corn chowder, but I don’t happen to be synesthetic.

The following commercial aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl:

Bad enough by itself, but then it was followed immediately by this one:

That’s some sick shit right there, even if it didn’t hijack our beloved mascot for its nefarious racist aims. But the idea that these ads were considered appropriate to be aired during the Super Bowl is just about staggering. Especially considering the ad that Fox purportedly rejected, which wasn’t exactly pro-feminist but whose main sin was making a beaver joke. (Actually, compared to past Godaddy.com ads, this one was downright respectful.)

Mad Men, the AMC show which examines the Golden Age of Advertising, shows in great depth the sexism and racism inherent in early 60s advertising. Glad to see things have improved so much.

If you ever find yourself administering a web site (not Pandagon) via a host which offers Fantastico Deluxe as an option for installing programs like Wordpress or Drupal, don’t use it. And if you do use it, for God’s sake don’t allow it to automatically upgrade your installation.

If you do these things, you will lose everything and spend an hour sweating the backup restore process.

I’ll let you know if it works. If you’re up late, share your technical lessons, since I’ll bet at least a few of you are involved in them right now.

If the hostile takeover goes through, I predict that the merged company will be called simply

Microsoft!

When this happens, I expect to see full credit given to my prognosticative powers and business acumen.

Well, at least it’s more realistic than SDI:

The world’s most powerful functional rail gun capable of accelerating projectiles up to Mach 8 has been delivered to the Navy. The new rail gun is a 32-megajoule Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun. The Navy eventually hopes to have 64-megajoule ship mounted rail guns. ‘The lab version doesn’t look particularly menacing — more like a long, belt-fed airport screening device than like a futuristic cannon — but the system will fire rounds at up to Mach 8, drawing on tremendous amounts of electricity to generate the current for each test shot. That, of course, is the problem with rail guns: Like lasers, they’re out of step with modern-day generators and capacitors. Eight and 9-megajoule rail guns have been fired before, but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation.

What’s next, the Redeemer? The Needler? We’re just that much closer to “pwned” becoming official military terminology.

Some of the comments on this article are hilarious, and appear to confirm what most of us probably suspect.

Try asking the Navy how much power a 64MJ shot will take…and their answer should be “about the same as a Nimitz class carrier uses at cruise speed”. In other words, you’ll need a couple of nuclear reactors - and a way to store all the power, then deliver it instantly.

Oh - and after five shots, the railgun will need new rails.

That’s for a single 64MJ shot, folks. Railguns are impractical at best, but at least sainted old Ronnie is getting his pie-eyed weapons.

Auguste’s corollary to Occam’s razor states that any conclusion on this topic must, by defnition, include the assumption “The military is exaggerating the success and/or future applicability of recent tests.”

I don’t know if this is another example of Hillary Clinton nervous-patriarch backlash or if Joe’s been engaging in mid-90s-style pimp fetishism in his spare time, but either way he’s beyond the pale here:

On the January 30 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough said to co-host Mika Brzezinski, “Mika, don’t make me backhand you.”

I’m in the middle of the last episode of Life on Mars Series 2 right now, and I can’t wait till the end to find out: Is there going to be a Series 3? Does the ending even leave room for it? (I don’t need to know details, just TELL ME THERE’S MORE TO COME.)

Update: Well, that was a surprisingly satisfying ending. I still want more from the characters, but I’m much more okay with it than I was before.

So if this isn’t a time-waster from heaven, I don’t know what is.

Make your own album cover! Here’s what you do: The article you get when you click this link is your band title.

The last four words of the last quote on this page is your album title (you will probably need to reload the page if you do more than one, if you’re like me.)

And the third picture, the upper right hand, will be your cover photo.

I’m adding a rule that you have to square off whatever picture you get, so that it’s a realistic album cover.

Via, and a link to more, the awesome artist Jenn Manley Lee.

More of mine after the jump; please post yours in comments, unless you find this activity somehow resistable, which I doubt.

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This:

A Utah retailer of family-friendly tapes and DVDs - Hollywood films with the “dirty parts” cut out of them - has been arrested for trading sex with two 14-year-old girls.

Orem police say Flix Club owner Daniel Dean Thompson, 31, and Issac Lifferth, 24, were booked into the Utah County jail on charges of sexual abuse and unlawful sexual activity with a 14-year-old.

and that:

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $1.4 million fine against 52 ABC Television Network stations over a 2003 broadcast of cop drama NYPD Blue.

The fine is for a scene where a boy surprises a woman as she prepares to take a shower. The scene depicted “multiple, close-up views” of the woman’s “nude buttocks” according to an agency order issued late Friday.

Nope. No relation at all.

The FCC story is particularly obnoxious both because, as Nezua points out,

…nevermind wars of aggression and greed and the rape of the constitution and secret prisons and water torture. Our children can see this and know we approve and won’t fight it because IMPEACHMENT IS OFF THE TABLE or something, but show me your tits and I’ma sue you blind.

but also because, if I’m not mistaken, we’re still waiting for the first fine for an NYPD Blue male ass. And you couldn’t go five minutes in the first few seasons without seeing one of those.

Quickly now, who wrote this:

According to AP, congressional leaders have reached a deal on those economic stimulus checks. And rather than being geared towards helping the economy, they’re apparently geared towards redistributing wealth (that would be our wealth) to the poor. What a surprise. Folks in the middle (i.e, those who are not rich or poor) are screwed by the Democrats (and Republicans) yet again.

Okay, I know I kind of gave it away with my clever title and all, but damn. What kind of entitled, ignorant, overreacting shit is that? Try to keep in mind, he’s burning down the house over a $300 to $600 check. In order to miss out on it, you have to gross $300 every working day**.

Here’s some more from John A.:

That means that if you make $75,000 or more a year, no check for you. Forget that fact that you live in NYC or DC or San Francisco, where prices from property to food are outrageous. No, forget that. Some guy living in a mansion in Topeka making $74,999 a year will get his little gift from the US Treasury and you, living in NYC making $75,001 out of a 300 sq ft studio apartment will get nothing. How about my friend who bought an entire house in Baltimore for $275,000 when that would get you a very small studio in DC.

I’m not saying I’d love to commute from Baltimore to DC, but you can fucking do it. Or from Arlington. Or Brentwood. Or Capitol Hill, if you’re willing to lower yourself to a rowhouse. And I’m definitely not one to micromanage the sacrifices people make in their personal economics, but I’ll happily refrain from shedding a tear over someone who’s going to get upset over the difficulty of affording life in Midtown rather than Jackson Heights, or Noe Valley rather than…well, he may have a point about San Francisco, actually.

That’s because far too often the Democrats don’t give a damn about anybody who isn’t a minority or starving to death (both valid causes to be sure, but are they the ONLY causes out there?).

Look, I don’t care if you live in a co-op made of gold brick smack dab in the geographical center of Highrent Island , there is no circumstance under which an American making $75,000 a year is worthy of the bullshit sentence above. Don’t get me wrong, people at all salary levels can struggle - bankruptcy bill, anyone? Universal health care? - but for fuck’s sake, John. “Both valid causes to be sure”? Don’t break your arm throwing that bone, okay?

The thing is, maybe there’s a discussion to be had.

And don’t think this is only about a stupid $300. It’s about health care. It’s about education. It’s about every single issue you care about. The powers that be simply aren’t in this to help people in the middle. The Republicans want to help the big pharmaceuticals and the big business hospitals, while the Democrats want to help uninsured poor people and kids. And while all of that’s nice, what are the rest of us supposed to do when our premiums hit $2000 a month and, God forbid, something catastrophic hits us?

And you know what? He might be right, but it’s really hard to tell, what with his being covered with the remains of the people he disemboweled on the way to the point. The Democrats definitely don’t give a shit about the middle class, but $600 seems like an awfully strange rock on which to make that point. As one of his commenters mentioned, you have to draw the line somewhere, and nearly 350% of the national median income*** seems like a passable place for it.

Plus, I’m not sure John “Treo” Aravosis has a shit-ton of personal economic credibility.

———————

** Assuming a five day work week, etc. etc.
*** Household income, based on the $150,000 two-person income limit for the proposed tax rebate.

I’ll tell you what:

When we’re all drowning in the Arctic Ocean, I’ll be very relieved to know that it may not have been humans that caused it.

I’ll tell you what else:

I’m simply on the edge of my seat to find out what NBC Nightly News has to tell me about how boys and girls are just different.