Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

In the otherwise intolerable No One Left to Lie To, Hitchens devotes an excellent chapter to the consequences of Clinton's welfare "reform."

It's a success says politicians and the media and no one wants to hear otherwise

Researchers found that most families that escaped poverty remained “near poor.”

And despite widespread hopes that working mothers might serve as role models, studies found few social or educational benefits for their children. (They measured things like children’s aspirations, self-esteem, grades, drug use and arrests.) Nonmarital births continued to rise.

But the image of success formed early and stayed frozen in time.

same ol' same ol'

The other key point is that for all the legitimate complaining about GOP obstruction in the Senate — and there are still 32 nominees pending there — it’s still the case that Obama has hurt his own cause by being too slow to nominate judges and not particularly aggressive in pushing for confirmation. There are still more than 40 judicial vacancies without a nominee. Now, some of this may be because it’s nearing the end of Obama’s term, and there’s no point nominating someone whom the Senate won’t consider; after all, these are real people whose lives enter a professional limbo while they wait, and no one wants to go through the tortures of that particular purgatory without a reasonable chance of winding up on the bench. But the general number of vacancies without a nominee has held steady near 50 for most of Obama’s presidency, and that’s just too high.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-good-and-the-bad-of-obamas-court-picks/2012/04/09/gIQA6Wyu5S_blog.html?hpid=z3

Taibbi catches up to reality

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-obamas-jobs-act-couldnt-suck-worse-20120409

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/08/interview-with-harold-koh-obama-s-defender-of-drone-strikes.html

thought we had a drone/awlaki thread but guess not so here you go - "interview" with OLC head harold koh

How do we deliver justice to the enemy?” Koh asks during a panel, “In Search of Accountability: Justice After Nuremberg,” several weeks ago at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. “I think there are different ways. It can be delivered through trials. Drones also deliver.”

Uh...

On a previous subject:

Ryan and other Republicans are apparently wrapping their proposals within the flag of the 1996 welfare reform.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2012/04/a_safety_net_not_a_hammock036560.php#

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/top-teachers-union-takes-on-corporate-tax-loopholes-to-fund-education.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

How the NEA teachers union would use money from closing corporate loopholes versus how the Obama administration would.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/04/bogus-obamacare-deficit-study.html

Lori Montgomery is the author of several stupid W. Post articles. The article at least includes a suggestion that the study is a skewed right-wing thing, but the headline is all many people will read.

Meanwhile income inequality widens...

obama's weird refusal to sign an executive order prohibiting employers who contract with the federal govt from discriminating based on LGBT identity - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/stop-playing-it-cute-on-gay-rights/2012/04/12/gIQAWRGTDT_blog.html

Man Romney is really planning on giving up the dog owner vote!

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who once strapped his dog to the roof of the family station wagon before embarking on a road trip, has again chosen to thumb his nose at the all-important dog vote by throwing a fundraising birthday party for his wife Ann at the house of Frederick Malek III. While to most people, Malek is just another rich guy who respects Romney's Reaganesque hair, to dogs, Malek is a living terror — when he was a youth, he was arrested for animal cruelty after police discovered that he and some friends had killed and barbecued a dog. What the everloving hell is wrong with Mitt Romney?

Fred Malek III has had a long, illustrious career in politics— he's worked for President Nixon and the first, less-shitty of the Presidents Bush. In 2008, he served as the National Finance Co-Chair of John McCain's Presidential campaign. He's had a formidable business career as well, serving important roles with Mariott and the Carlyle Group and Northwest Airlines. But before any of this, he was just a young, drunk, blood-covered West Point graduate standing around a spit containing a slowly rotating, skinned dog.

In 1959, a police officer in Peoria, Illinois, discovered five young men acting about as suspiciously as a person could act in one of the city's parks. By "suspiciously," I mean like villain being questioned for murder in an episode of CSI: Miami suspiciously— they were covered in blood (as was the inside of their car), and three of them appeared to be burying something. Turns out, the blood was animal blood. And later, officers discovered a skinned dog on a spit elsewhere in the park, a liquor bottle nearby, which is a visual horrific enough to sort of make you wish that the blood on the men's clothes had been human blood.

I don't see how the gay order thing is "weird" -- his opponents will call it ANTI-FREEDOM, case closed.

he's worked for President Nixon

Truly horrifying...

Morbs should employers be allowed to fire ppl when they find out that they're straight? What was that whole softball team kerfuffle I'm only vaguely recalling now?

ya got me, just like with DADT, I'm against anybody having to work.

otm

the john edwards sex tape is in the hands of his mistress, Rielle Hunter

The Huffington Post reports that the tape, which was made during the darkest moment in all of human history, was made while at some point before the summer of 2007, when Edwards was poised to run for President on the Democratic ticket and Rielle Hunter was pregnant with John Edwards' child and living with former aide Andrew Young. Hunter says she threw the tape away but that it was stolen by Young, who refused to surrender it to Hunter. Young is the guy who originally claimed to be the father of Hunter's baby as a way to "take one for Team Edwards." Young later disavowed Hunter's baby and told the news media that Edwards promised Hunter that after his wife Elizabeth died of cancer, he'd marry her on a rooftop in New York City while the Dave Matthews Band played.

x-post re Romney party at Fred Malek's house. Malek is that guy who Nixon asked to count the Jews employed at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and who then lied about it. Conservatives and Malek himself to this day still assert he is no anti-Semite (he's friends with Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League). He's a lobbyist and fundraiser for Republicans everywhere.

Malek has not been entirely honest about his Nixon-era assignment -- he did, indeed, recommend changing the employment status of Jewish employees and reorganizing the department to promote "loyal Republican economists." He's apologized, but he's also failed to tell the truth about what he apologized for.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/the_malek_game.html

The thing I secretly look forward to every presidential election: the moment when Nixon crawls out of the grave.

he darkest moment in all of human history,

Edwards promised Hunter that after his wife Elizabeth died of cancer, he'd marry her on a rooftop in New York City while the Dave Matthews Band played.

Noooooo, not the Dave Matthews Band

Tell me, why are they so bad and hated? On second thought, maybe that should wait for a later time.

Tell me, why are they so bad and hated?

he was a non-entity as a senator and veep candidate

https://distilleryimage3.s3.amazonaws.com/a8ddbf0e859d11e1abb01231381b65e3_7.jpg

(taken with instagram)

i'm squinting at a laptop screen in sunlight so i can't tell but are they gathered to watch some open heart surgery on the bigscreen or what

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/04/10/150349438/gops-rightward-shift-higher-polarization-fills-political-scientist-with-dread?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/04/13/nominate-house_medians_custom.jpg

Feeling underwhelmed by the Fox News Mole

why exactly should we care about an old picture of Bill O'Reilly with his friends and a topless girl

seems more like a publicity stunt to get a book deal then anything genuinely revealing

Dude needs more than a video of Romney & Hannity and a picture of a bathroom stall to get a book deal, right?

not if his goal is just to write a personal "expose" of how terrible it is to work at Fox News

Feeling underwhelmed by the Fox News Mole

this is actually the title of REO Speedwagon's comeback album which is being hailed as a return to form

http://reliablesources.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/15/fox-mole-speaks-out/

http://www.redstate.com/scipio62/2012/04/11/kevin-drum-insult-christians-ignores-definitions-of-words/

They really believe this

what's great about that is the chart he uses shows the poverty rate being cut from about 23% to 13% between 1960 and '70 and bouncing around that mark ever since. so medicare and the great society basically worked, eh dudes?

^^exactly. and hey let's look at those 90s. this chart clearly shows that the Bush tax cuts were a disaster

god these people are so fucking stupid it burns.

These guys really believe that poor single moms can easily just take and commute to minimum wage jobs out in the burbs while having their kids magically taken care of and fed and taken care of health-wise;and this is what Jesus would want

Plus they believe that if they have tv sets at home they are not really poor. Ugh

"lefty extremist kevin drum"

look we all know what team we're on here, but that's not an accurate reading of their objection curmudgeon. "charity" and "government" are two different things.

https://origin.ih.constantcontact.com/fs014/1109296410234/img/4.jpg

ugh

since when is "true" a verb

idk it just sorta trued into being a verb a while ago

I TRUED IT

hahahah what the hell

"He got trued last night" sounds like my kind of neologism