US Politics

"For quite some time, I have been predicting that Obamacare would likely mean higher insurance rates in the individual market for the “young immortals” and others under the age of 40. At the same time, my expectation was that those who fall into the older age ranges would benefit greatly as their premium charges would be lowered thanks to the Affordable Care Act. It is increasingly clear that I had it wrong." - Hieronymous Boosh from Bookmarklet

GMTA - Hieronymous Boosh

"As Gov. Bobby Jindal tries again to fund his controversial school voucher program, new test scores indicate that many of the current students educated with public money in private schools are not thriving. Or at least they aren't yet. Released Wednesday, LEAP scores for third- through eighth-graders show only 40 percent of voucher students scored at or above grade level this past spring. The state average for all students was 69 percent. For accountability purposes, students attending private schools at taxpayer expense take the same standardized tests as their peers in public schools. In 2011, when the voucher program operated only in New Orleans, students averaged 33 percent proficiency. Now seven schools in Jefferson and Orleans parishes have results so low -- less than 25 percent of voucher students proficient for three years running -- that they have been barred from accepting new voucher students in the fall, as per state policy. In Orleans, the schools are Life of Christ... more... - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

Accountability! - Andrew C (✓)

But seriously, what's going to happen to those kids? I would assume schools barred from taking voucher students are going to close -- why would people who could afford them send their kids there? -- and presumably public schools are going to have to take in the displaced students. - Andrew C (✓)

"So what is it with New Republic alumni? First Michael Kinsley, then Charles Lane, weigh in with defenses of austerity that aren't just wrong, but painfully ill-informed. Kinsley not only makes a really bad analogy between current events and the 1970s, he seems not to know anything about what happened in the 1970s either. Lane attacks stimulus advocates for failing to address an argument that I actually discussed, at length, in my last column but one." - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

"And if this leads to hurt feelings - well, this is not a game. We're having a discussion about policies that affect tens of millions of people. And you have no business participating in this discussion if you're so busy trying to sound clever that you can't be bothered to do your homework." - Andrew C (✓)

"PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge ruled Friday that the office of America’s self-proclaimed toughest sheriff systematically singled out Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols, marking the first finding by a court that the agency racially profiles people. The 142-page decision by U.S. District Judge Murray Snow in Phoenix backs up allegations that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s critics have made for years that his officers rely on race in their immigration enforcement. Snow also ruled Arpaio’s deputies unreasonably prolonged the detentions of people who were pulled over." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

In other news, water wet. - Jonas, Leper of FF

"By now, most folks have heard about Rep. Tom Cotton, a rising conservative star from Arkansas who is already being touted as being central to the new young guns -- the old young guns, like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, already apparently disappearing into the mists of Dirksenland -- who will help re-brand the Republicans for the next part of the new millennium. You may also have heard that young Tom Cotton has an interesting position on the concept of "collective guilt," which, of course, did practically no damage in the previous century whatsoever." - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

more from the same HuffPo piece: ""Iranian citizens do not have constitutional rights under the United States Constitution," Cotton said. "I sympathize with their plight if they are harmless, innocent civilians in Iran. I doubt that that is often the case." The Fifth Amendment reads "no person ... shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," and makes no... more... - Andrew C (✓)

[re the Detroit emergency manager suggesting that maybe Detroit's museum collection could be sold off to pay the city's debts:] "Our Galtian Overlords are going to steal everything that isn't nailed down, then everything that is." - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

The emergency manager's spokesperson: ""The creditors can really force the issue," Nowling said. "If you go into court, they can object and say, 'Hey, I'm taking a huge haircut, and you've got a billion dollars worth of art sitting over there.' " Nowling said that some creditors already have asked Orr whether the DIA collection is "on the table." Nowling would not identify which... more... - Andrew C (✓)

"House members writing a bipartisan immigration bill said Thursday they had patched over a dispute that threatened their efforts" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

A single-edition "Chuck Card," good for life, is being stamped in Ramsey's honor. Anytime that Ramsey takes the card into one of the participating restaurants, he'll get a free burger. - Eric from Bookmarklet

"Sen. Bernie Sanders called on Tuesday for an investigation into oil price manipulation. He also proposed a 30-day deadline for federal regulators to use emergency powers to curb excessive speculation in crude oil markets. Over the past five months, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline has gone up by more than 41 cents. The price hikes come at a time when U.S. oil inventories reached a three-decade high while demand for gasoline is lower than four years ago when prices averaged less than $2.30 a gallon. Sanders spoke about rapidly rising gas prices during a Senate floor speech on two amendments he proposed to the farm bill." - Hieronymous Boosh from Bookmarklet

Cub scout leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett selflessly engaged the terrorists in conversation and kept her nerve as one of them told her: “We want to start a war in London tonight.” Mrs Loyau-Kennett, 48, from Cornwall, was one of the first people on the scene after the two Islamic extremists butchered a soldier in Woolwich, south east London. She was photographed by onlookers confronting one of the attackers who was holding a bloodied knife. - Eric from Bookmarklet

"More than 100 conservative economists will call on Congress to approve an immigration overhaul, highlighting the potential economic benefits." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

[In an April 28, 2011 statement while he was a Senate candidate,] ""Rev. [Charles Wallace] Smith must not have understood the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states," Jackson, an African-American, [and the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia] said in his statement. This is a deeply misleading telling of American constitutional history." - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

"The clause was demanded by Southern proponents of slavery as a way of enhancing their congressional representation. They wanted slaves to be counted as full persons but settled on three-fifths. People of African descent would have had no real rights either way. The inclusion of the clause greatly enhanced the South's political power and made it harder to abolish slavery. The clause was effectively eliminated after the Civil War by the Thirteenth Amendment." - Andrew C (✓)

"When the Senate Judiciary Committee meets on Monday to resume marking up an immigration bill, it will have two weeks of solid achievement to build on. The bipartisan “Gang of Eight” that drafted the deal has so far held together. The full committee has rejected an array of amendments designed to cripple or kill the bill, while adopting technical fixes and other amendments to make the system fairer, smarter and more generous." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma voted against the Hurricane Sandy relief package, arguing at the time that the bill was a "slush fund." But on MSNBC this morning he suggested that he would support disaster aid for Oklahoma, because that process will be "totally different."" - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

"The Sandy bill, he said, was unnecessarily expansive. [...] But "that won't happen in Oklahoma," he said, not specifying why he was so sure." - Andrew C (✓)

"Mr. Inhofe's Oklahoma colleague, Senator Tom Coburn, who also voted against Sandy relief, seemed more sensitive to possible allegations of hypocrisy. He stressed that he would "absolutely" demand budget cuts to offset federal assistance. Of course he also promised that "any and all available aid will be delivered without delay." That's exactly as it should be. Residents of New York and New Jersey, however, certainly did not get that treatment. They had to wait out months of Republican obstruction."" - Andrew C (✓)

Cabela’s sells everything from fishing rods to wool slippers. But guns are the real moneymaker, and while fears of future gun restrictions have spurred sales for the entire industry, no company has benefited quite like Cabela’s. Shares have increased by 95% in the last year and are up more than 70% already in 2013. That makes Cabela’s stock the best-performing in the firearms industry and one of the top-performing stocks in the U.S. in the last year. The company’s two biggest shareholders, founders Richard and James Cabela, have seen the value of their combined 25% stake jump to $1.2 billion from $750 million at the start of 2013. About one-third of Cabela’s $3.1 billion in sales last year came from firearms, ammunition and accessories, and a substantial amount of its all-important sales growth came from its gun business. Cabela’s first-quarter 2013 same-store sales growth was 24%, but it was only 9% excluding firearms and ammunition. The company set a new record for first-quarter revenue, which increased 28.7% to $802.5 million. - Eric from Bookmarklet

"We could build the California HSR [a 16+ year project] for this, basically. And we spend it every year [on the war in Afghanistan]." - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

Some figures put California's HSR phase 1 at $68B, so I don't know if he's counting phase 2, transposed the digits, or just assumes phase 1 will overrun its projected costs. - Andrew C (✓)

"What happened is clear. [Jonathan] Karl lied to us [about the stupid Benghazi thing] because he trusted his source. His source, however, burned him, and Karl's lie was exposed. Instead of burning his source to show that he takes this matter seriously and won't be lied to again, he is doubling down and protecting his source, because as we all know with our current media, access is more important to accuracy. If the editors at ABC News had any damned integrity, Karl would be forced to expose his source, apologize, and then take a couple weeks off. Maybe some summer school ethics course." - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

Many factors are acknowledged as contributing to GM’s decline: it juggled too many brands, over-extended its dealer network, failed to respond rapidly to market cues, and struggled to work with its union, the United Auto Workers. But the extent of its problems with the UAW is astonishing—and the problems themselves warrant explanation. Consider some of the onerous arrangements that GM’s management agreed to. Labor costs for a typical UAW worker at a GM plant were by some estimates $73 per hour—compared to the $44 per hour for workers at non-unionized Toyota and Honda plants in the U.S. Or take the infamous “jobs bank”: surplus workers, rather than getting laid off, would receive 95% of their full salaries plus benefits while the company waited to reassign them. But instead of being temporarily idle, thousands of “bankers” would be there for months, if not years, while they watched movies, solved crosswords, and just passed the time. Some senior employees would even pull strings to get... more... - Eric from Bookmarklet

"Doug Altner is analyst and instructor at the Ayn Rand Institute" - and now I understand why he left out those points. - Andrew C (✓)

"The Senate Judiciary Committee will almost certainly pass the sprawling immigration overhaul bill by the end of the week" - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

:-| - Halil

*bump* because... - Halil

Monday's news that struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! bought popular blogging site Tumblr inspired us to find the best foreign policy-related Tumblrs -- loosely defined -- on the ‘net. Several great ones that have come and gone deserve a mention, including the one-time-only Vladentines Day and the sadly obsolete but viral Texts From Hillary, but we chose to focus on those accounts that are (for the most part) still active. Scroll away! - Eric from Bookmarklet

The recent snowfall also broke the daily record for liquid precipitation, lowest maximum temperature for May 17, and a host of other records. - Eric from Bookmarklet

"While voters overall may think Congress' focus should be elsewhere there's no doubt about how mad Republicans are about Benghazi. 41% say they consider this to be the biggest political scandal in American history [...] Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate, by a 74/12 margin that it's worse than Teapot Dome, and by a 70/20 margin that it's worse than Iran Contra." - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

"One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don't actually know where it is. 10% think it's in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess." - Andrew C (✓)

"Prospects for passage of a major immigration bill improved on Thursday when a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives declared they had reached a tentative deal, resolving disputes that had threatened to torpedo negotiations." - LANjackal from Bookmarklet

"Since September, Republicans have claimed the Obama administration covered up the truth about the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya by altering the talking points Susan Rice used on the Sunday morning talk shows. To bolster the story, Republicans misquoted or significantly embellished the emails officials used to draft Rice’s remarks, the CBS Evening News reported Thursday. CBS News’ Major Garrett confirmed that it was a GOP source who leaked the altered emails. The miscast quotes affect at least two emails that include a State Department spokesperson and a White House deputy adviser — the two parties GOP lawmakers insist were trying to engage a cover-up on behalf of the Obama administration to protect the president’s chances of re-election." - Hieronymous Boosh from Bookmarklet

Keep dreaming. :D - Steven Perez

"Recently, a shocking Department of Defense report showed that the estimated number of sexual assaults in the military dramatically increased to a record 26,000 last year. Tragically, only a small number of these crimes were ever reported, let alone brought to trial. Survivors of these vicious crimes are scared to come forward because they doubt that the military and its criminal justice system will protect them and punish the perpetrators. It is no secret why. A full 62 percent of those who reported a sexual assault felt they were then victims again when they were retaliated against. Moreover, senior military officers with no legal training have the power to decide whether a case goes to trial, or even to throw out a military judge or jury's verdict. Our service men and women deserve better." - Hieronymous Boosh from Bookmarklet

Last week Heritage Foundation scholar Jason Richwine, coauthor of a hotly disputed new study on the fiscal costs of comprehensive immigration reform, resigned his position in a hail of controversy over his 2009 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation. In that dissertation Richwine had argued, among other things, that American “Hispanics” are less intelligent than native-born whites as evidenced by their lower average scores on IQ tests. Richwine then attributed Hispanics’ alleged intellectual inferiority at least partly to genetic factors. The Richwine affair is just the latest flap in a long-running dispute over the significance of IQ tests and group differences in IQ scores. It’s easy enough to shut down that debate with cries of racism, but stigmatizing a point of view as morally tainted isn’t the same thing as demonstrating that it’s untrue. Here I want to explain why Richwine’s position is intellectually as well as morally unsound. - Eric from Bookmarklet

OK, but it's the other way around: since others have already demonstrated it's untrue, continuing to hold that point of view _is_ morally tainted. - Andrew C (✓)

Thought I posted this before, I might actually have done so but lost it behind FF's lookback limit. - Andrew C (✓) from Bookmarklet

Terrifying. - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo from iPhone