I was stunned and panic-stricken this morning. I looked outside my window and there was an unmistakable one to two inches of accumulated snow on top of my car. I couldn’t believe my eyes, seeing as how scientists have been telling me for years that the globe is actually warming, yet here it was obviously colder than it was yesterday. These two things stood in clear and obvious contradiction to one another, as any good Conservative talking head could tell you. Or, even if you can’t find a good one, anybody on Fox News could have explained it.
But so far, I haven’t seen any glaciers forming. I’ve been watching all morning and nothing. Even more confusing, I think there’s a chance that it may have warmed up a degree or two since six thirty this morning. So, who is right? Fox News or the global warming scientists? With the weather changing so much, it’s really hard really pin it down. Fortunately, Rachel Maddow had Bill Nye the Science Guy on her show to explain it to me. Looking back, I almost feel as though all those Conservative yakkers were perhaps being a trifle disingenuous. Could that be right?
Thinking for yourself is hard. Here I am, outside in the snow, but there's no glaciers. What's up with that?
It all makes me wonder. Should I not just believe what people tell me? Is it really necessary to educate myself before I speak about a subject? That certainly doesn’t sound right, but I guess I should. It makes me wonder about the tee shirt I just bought from a place called Ban Tee Shirts. I bought it because it has a monkey on it. I like monkeys. And this one seems very happy with his little beret on. Plus the girl on the home page is kinda hot. I support hot chicks.
And I naturally assumed the words underneath said “I like monkeys” or something I could get into, but it now I don’t think so. Now I think it might say “Long Live the Evolution.” I don’t often take such religious stances, but I can’t deny this is a comfy tee shirt: its 100% organic cotton and its red. Apparently, it’s also comfortable to make as well, since unlike all those great tee shirts I get at Walmart, these ones are sweatshop-free. Gosh! And here I was told that the reason stuff was cheap at Walmart was because of the slave labor. But Ban Tees are pretty cheap, too!
So, I think I’m gonna try thinking from now on. I think. What a thought….
NOTE: I did not actually buy this tee shirt. It was generously provided to me by Duncan from Ban in exchange for this poorly-written blog post. Check them out on FaceBook as well as their website..
Rep. Ryan discusses his budget plan. Image: economist.com
Republicans have been getting a lot of flack for not bringing ideas to the table at a time when our nation desperately needs them. But the recent budget proposal by Republican House Budget maven Paul Ryan is a sharp rebuke to the notion that Republicans bring nothing to the table and an outright rejection of the notion that Republicans are so ruled by ideology that they cannot propose ideas outside their narrow scope.
Among its many plans, the Ryan budget proposal calls for nationalizing the Stock Market.
It is true that, in discussing the topic of the Republican plan for Social Security, the phrase generally used is “privatizing Social Security.” But consider what the plan actually proposes. Just as the last proposal under George W. Bush did, the plan allows taxpayers to reroute a portion of their FICA taxes to “personal savings accounts.” So far, it almost seems private, except for the fact that the government isn’t giving your money back to you and they’re not ceasing to remove FICA taxes from your paycheck: you’re still paying taxes.
It is a “personal savings account,” which means according to the plan that it will allow you to pass on your balance to your children. But what do you invest in? Well, according to the plan, you invest in “a series of funds managed by the U.S. government.” Ok, got that? You don’t invest the money yourself, it gets taken out of your paycheck. And you don’t get to pick the funds, the government does. It’s private. Remember that.
So how will the money be disbursed? Do you get to dip into it like your 401k? Well, the plan doesn’t make any mention of that, directly. But after mentioning that they also want to “modernize” the age of retirement (three guesses: would that be “modernizing” it up? Or down?), they do say:
The modernization of the retirement age will not affect the ability of an individual who chooses the personal account system to retire early, as long as his or her account has accumulated enough funds to provide an annuity equivalent to 150 percent of poverty.
For those of you whom, like me, are less familiar with such financial jargon, that would be defined as, “income from capital investment paid in a series of regular payments.” That means that the government isn’t giving you your money back or ceasing FICA payments; it’s only allowing you to invest in the funds that they’ve setup; and apparently, they decide when and how much of “your” money you get back. Sounds pretty private, huh?
So far, this doesn’t seem very private at all. It sounds like the federal government doing with your FICA money something not unlike what the states do with your money by investing it in funds. Except, of course, with the veneer of privacy. But here’s a question: how much money do you think gets invested into the Social Security trust fund every year? How much of the taxes that we pay goes directly into the trust fund – and how much would therefore be invested into the stock market under the Republican plan?
Would you believe $700 billion annually? It is difficult to find the answer to the question “how much new capital is invested in the stock market every year.” After all, which market? The Dow? The NASDAQ? And what constitutes “new” money? But consider this: if one entity comes into the game with three quarters of a trillion dollars to spend every single year – not a fluctuating number like private investment, a stable number from taxation – whom do you think calls the shots in that marketplace? How long before the U.S. government owns a controlling interest in the entire market?
I’m guessing not more than ten years. And Republicans, fiscal hawks that they are, must surely be aware of that. Especially since the plan contains this very interesting chestnut:
Guarantee of Contributions. Individuals who choose to invest in personal accounts will be ensured every dollar they place into an account will be guaranteed, even after inflation. With the recent market downturn, individuals must be assured their retirement is secure. By guaranteeing the dollars put into an account, individuals can be assured that a large-scale market downturn will not cost them their Social Security personal accounts.
Pray tell, who is paying for that? Well, clearly if the government is required to insure every dollar you’ve invested into the stock market, they’re going to need to do everything in their considerable power to prevent that market downturn from ever happening.
Google claims big advances require them to cut off support for IE6. But recent history suggests other motives.
For those of you who are not computer geeks, this may all seem a bit esoteric. But in the power plays between Google and Microsoft, this is big news. I received an email today as an administrator of a Google Apps domain that Google has now officially begun the process of terminating support for Internet Explorer 6.0, an old version of that browser that goes back almost ten years now and whose frustrations have been the bain of many web developers.
This is good news for developers because major support for “Killing IE6” means cover for us to continue developing for modern browsers and a justification for ending our support for the dinosaurs. This website ended it’s support of IE6 not quite a year ago, when the new look of DFE was released. But this news is not all about making us developers feel better, nor is it all about moving the Internet forward. Though Google announces it’s requirement for “faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5,” this is a thin veil for entirely non-technical motives. Recall Google’s recent history with China and the fact that the key to China’s snooping was a security flaw in Internet Explorer that Microsoft was aware of and you begin to see the shape of at least one angle of this new announcement.
Microsoft has released preliminary guidance to mitigate the problem and is working on a formal software update.
So far, Microsoft “has not seen widespread customer impact, rather only targeted and limited attacks exploiting Internet Explorer 6″.
Even without this fact, there has always been ample security justification for ending support for IE6. But that Microsoft was aware of the problem means once again, Microsoft has a big black eye on the basis of security problems. And that means opportunity for Google, whose Android OS and Chrome browsers both stand at the ready to pick up the slack left by wary security admins who by now are getting pretty frustrated with Microsoft’s lack of security meticulousness. Add to this the fact that a major player (Google) just announced that it will no longer be supporting the venerated browser – meaning that not Google-supported pages alone, but entire swaths of the Internet will no longer render correctly – and you’ve got a lot of pressure to dump Internet Explorer at the least… and while they’re at it, maybe Microsoft Operating Systems altogether.
So while a lot of this is technical stuff that only us geeks get into, keep a eye out for Google- and Microsoft-related news in the next year. Things are going to get interesting. Google’s full statement is reprinted below:
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team
I should be less surprised to have to say this than I am: Google’s trials in China have nothing whatsoever to do with censorship. In spite of the often breathless accounts of Google’s fight against the Empire, this is not a David and Goliath hero story. When the issue was censorship or the Great Firewall of China, Google made their choice: sell, sell, sell.
I’m not as altogether opposed to that decision as I know many on both the Right and the Left are. I am of a persuasion that believes that the more money and the more power flows through a society, the more inevitably free that society becomes. At least, to a point. It is certainly self-evident in China’s case that controlling information is a cornerstone of a closed society.
But that is all water under the bridge. The issue before us now is not one of censorship, but of politico-industrial espionage. Threatening to lower the firewalls on Google.cn’s service is merely Google’s way of putting pressure on the Chinese government where it hurts. Google found evidence it claims as fairly indisputable that China launched attacks on the email accounts of Gmail users as well as 34 other companies. The Gmail users were apparently dissidents within and without China’s borders.
For Google, this is a classic pocketbook issue: maintaining the security of Gmail accounts is paramount to maintaining the viability of that revenue source. It is also true that Gmail accounts are tied to a host of other Google products, from Google Docs to Google Talk, iGoogle and many others. The security issue flows well outside the email system and compromises Google’s entire empire right down to the fledgling Android OS.
For the US, currently catching heat from the press for remaining silent on the issue, this is an extremely complex issue for which rash, Bush-era responses are ill-fitted. While many in this country would like to consider China an enemy and weave paranoid stories of conquest, the truth is much stickier. They are certainly a chief rival in a world with a sizable power vacuum – political and economic. They could quickly become an enemy, but for now and in public, they are not.
Plus, every country worth it’s salt is messing around with Cyber-spying. We can’t possibly have clean hands, nor really is it in our national interest to be so driven-snow pure. Throwing stones is not in anyone’s interest, either. Let’s not forget that the Internet’s first iteration was the ARPANet, a wholly military-scientific enterprise of the United States’ design.
But I think that, in the wake of an eight-year administration, our media gets used to a certain way of doing things at the White House. Doubtless the Bush Administration would have had some bellicose words about “Freedom” and “Democracy” within moments of hearing of the suspected attack. I think we can all agree, upon reflection, that’s just stupid.
In the American Colonies, before the Revolution, taxation was done at the whim of a Parliament in which American tax payers had no representation whatsoever. But far worse for many Americans caught a-foul of the law, settling disputes and penalties with the British legal system often meant showing up in court in Merry Old England herself. Such a voyage in those days meant months and years away from the very properties these Americans we trying to maintain, to say nothing of the lost income and extra expense of the voyage, lodging in England and the like. It was precisely these types of extreme hardships – much more so than the taxation itself – that prompted a few well-educated and wealthy Americans to start plotting the Revolution.
The American Revolution can therefore be thought of in a certain context as a radical renegotiation of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Not simply a reinvention of government, but forging of a new principle of power sharing, supported by thousands of legal pleadings in British courts, up to and including the final and most famous Declaration of Independence.
But I don’t recall having reached any such deal with cameras or computers.
More and more municipal governments, including most recently Rochester, have been employing red light cameras and other automated means of handling law enforcement issues. This is raising many legal and ethical concerns among many quarters, as Doug Emblidge points to in his above-linked blog post. My concern may seem oblique, but it seems to me that implicit in the negotiation of law is the fact that law exists as a guidepost towards justice, not an iron-clad set of parameters from within which a computer program is expected to perform.
This is not an abstract concept for philosophy classes, nor is it a plot for some 1970’s “computers take over the world” scenario movie. No set of circumstances which deviates from the law yields any other outcome for a computer than a violation of that law, and even if the issue can be resolved in a court, we once again require that potentially innocent people take time out of their lives to prove thier innocence – or potentially fail to – at the behest of a set of arbitrary laws.
Cops do not issue tickets for every violation they see. They don’t even issue tickets for every person they pull over. Computers contain no subroutines for compassion or clemency.
What the hell is going on in the 23rd? Here we have a district which hasn’t been a Democratic district since the Civil War – when the Democratic Party was the Conservative choice – and we’ve got the whole country up in arms over the results? Trust me: any way the primary turns out, it’ll be a Republican in the 23rd. I’m a big fan of game-day statistics.
So, that’s the big disappointment for Dems. What’s the deal with Republicans? Why is it important to Fred Thompson – whose own presidential aspirations seemed to be such a bore to him – or Sarah Palin – whose gubernatorial responsibilities proved equally tiresome? Is the Baby Jesus scheduled to be born in Watertown? Is Sam Waterson making a movie in Massena?
And the media. The 23rd is a staunch member of the “fly-over” community of which the media is rarely aware. But suddenly, the opinions of residents in sleepy little Speculator are of monumental import. They must be so proud.
Or is the business of reforming health care – and in the case of Republicans, losing that battle – what has become so tiresome?
I’m sure like most of you, I’m watching the movements of the economy – from the daily news to much more local things like Monster searches of jobs in my industry in Rochester. And like most of you, I’m hearing the same whispers, “we’ve gotta have a good Christmas.”
And it is certainly true that many retail companies rely on Christmas for nearly a third of their total yearly income. Not simply down years but every year relies on the Christmas season to keep it afloat; with the economy in as much jeopardy as it is currently, we need some good news from the holidays to keep us from sliding off our tenuous perch at the edge of financial precipice.
But what is strange is the silence in the economic community about what is surely an early-warning bell-weather of our holiday mood, Halloween. Not to put too much of a damper on what is, after all, a pure-entertainment “holiday,” of course. But Halloween’s share of the marketplace has grown exponentially over the last decade. According to this About.com article written in 2006, each of us is likely to spend as much as $60 dollars on Halloween stuff on average. That’s not Christmas territory by any means, but that’s a hell of a lot of money for a single two- to three-hour celebration. Halloween is getting close to Valentine’s Day, where we spend around $122 a person when the economy doesn’t suck.
But as that last link points out, such frivolous expenses can and are easily shed when the economy is bad. Valentine’s and Halloween are even more expendable celebrations than Christmas is. So the question is: what will Halloween sales look like this year and what does that say about the Christmas season?
It remains the top Google search for “ACORN video“: FOX News’ credulous “reporting” of the two kids who posed as a pimp and prostitute and entered various ACORN headquarters to ferret out the wrongdoers among them. The scandal as FOX continues to see it – despite overwhelming law enforcement evidence to the contrary – is that an ACORN volunteer is seen on the video confessing to the murder of her ex-husband. But is that where the story actually is? Or is there some other illumination to be gleaned from this whole affair? We’ve seen lots of video taken from the front of the camera, but let’s take a moment to look at who was behind the camera, posing as a “pimp.”
Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, purveyors of thespian sexual favours.
Meet Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, the two activists who journeyed into the Heart of Darkness, also known as “The Ghetto.” One can hardly imagine a more appropriate pair to pose as two drug-addicted, hard-bitten inner city thugs with a taste for the sex trade. The video they produced shows the realistic method acting and authentic attire they employed in their subterfuge. Who among the volunteers at ACORN, many of whom have spent their lives in the streets where prostitutes ply their wares, could help but fall for their crafty ways?
After all, nothing say’s “hooker” like blond hair, healthy skin, expensive slut-gear and a full set of teeth. I can see this bad, bad, pimpin’ man screaming now, “Bitch betta have my latte!!”
Only FOX News could be so eager to grind their axes as to fall for this ridiculous scam. The only way anyone would go to these two dolts for sexual favours is if they were looking for a sexual act known as “The Full Milk Toast.” When I first heard about some of the video they captured, I was a little worried. But then I saw the third video – the one with the supposed murderer – and then I saw the kids who tried to pull this off and the whole thing just collapsed under its own farcical weight.
It reveals something far more compelling about FOX News viewers and their concept of what “The Ghetto” is that they would be equally willing to fall for this nonsense. You really do have to be from somewhere at least as snow-white as Utah to believe that:
- These two idiots could pass for a “hooker” and a “pimp.”
- That dressing for a Cozumel night club and dressing for a night of heavy prostitute work are the same thing: a slut’s a slut.
- That anything so exact as a “hooker” and a “pimp” really exists in the world: these are not professions for which you get a certification.
- That “hookers” and “pimps” regularly announce themselves as such.
- That “hookers” and “pimps” import their prostitutes from El Salvador; that “hookers” and “pimps” have enough money to fly someone in from El Salvador – coach, one would presume, but even so… – but can’t think of anything better to do with their money than visit ACORN offices in search of cheap rental property.
- That the idle question, “how much do you charge,” is answerable with a set list of charges and services, like your local chimney sweep.
- That people who commit murder routinely share this information with strangers whom they meet for the first time; that murder in “The Ghetto” is a thing for which such a cavalier attitude is commonplace.
But facts don’t seem to matter much to the executives at FOX News, who continue to allow their “journalists” to spew hate about an organization upon whose head not a single conviction has fallen so far. Neither it seems do facts matter to their audience, for whom FOX News serves as a means to reinforce their beliefs at the expense of reality. At issue is the shared socio-political axe FOX and it’s audience have to grind; not facts or even half-assed observation, either of which would have forbade them to cover this “story.”
What is worse is the lemming-like behavior of the Mainstream Media and Democratic politicians, both of whom are being led by the nose for fear of looking weak on voter fraud. Since when as FOX News ever proven itself to be worth of such unqualified and unexamined sourcing? What major news has the FOX News network ever broken that turned out to be legitimate in any way, apart from being handed interviews and White House leaks by a Bush White House that was friendly to it’s cause?
And all of this built on the “work” of a minister’s daughter and an MBA.
A bus in Rochester is never a silent thing; more than just the engines roar as those big, blue boxes make their way from point to point across Monroe County. It is not exactly a roadhouse on wheels, but its full of gossiping women, chatting men and bus regulars bellowing orders to the rookie bus driver. There are also those who, like myself, prefer to blend into their respective seats, absorbing themselves in their books or thoughts until they can make their way off the bus. We silent few always seem to be in the minority, or perhaps that is just my impression.
But not on this day. On this particular day, I was entirely sure that I was on some different kind of bus filled with some different kind of folk than those with whom I’d grown somewhat resentfully familiar in my travels around Rochester. On this day, walking up the stairs of the bus felt like walking down the stairs of a pool: into rising pressure and a remarkable lack of sound beyond the rushing of blood in my ears.
As the bus rolled along, the somehow-muted roar of the engine; the moment’s gear-shifting hesitation; the elephant sigh of air breaks seemed to intensify, not diminish, the silence. Everything moved in a kind of syrupy slow motion and where people normally leaned in and out to speak to one another, they now moved only when a bump in the road forced them to, rocking back and forth briefly like so many potted trees bound for some unnamed office hallway. The thickness of the air felt like a collective concentration – even meditation – on some focal point to which I was not attuned; each person stared out the window motionless, not at the fleeting landscape, but at some distant and singularly personal object which never seemed to leave their view.
It might have made sense to ask someone what was going on. But at the time, it seemed better to let what was surely just an odd moment pass.
My unemployment insurance appointment for that morning had been at 9am. Bus schedules being what they are, that meant I’d been out since about 7am. I’d not seen a single television set all morning. By the time I would arrive home about 10:30 to realize what had happened, it would all be over. I would be standing in front of my little 13″ television set with my mouth agape, trying to process it without success.
In the meanwhile, around 9:30am, just after the second plane crash, I was standing on Waring Rd and waiting for a bus to take me home to another boring day of unemployment. There was supposed to have been a job fair that day at the War Memorial, but that wasn’t supposed to be till 1pm or so. My tie was getting tight around my neck and it was beginning to look like it might be a hot day, standing exposed on the opposite side of the street from the squat little strip mall that the UI office occupied. It had occurred to me neither that the interviewers seemed even less interested than normal in reviewing my job search history, nor that the office was completely empty when they ushered us all out the door.
I didn’t think of any of it until hours later, when I realized that the banal reality I thought I was moving through had changed forever without my knowledge. And in those hours after, between the bouts of panic and astonishment, I felt an oblique Generation X kind of guilt. Guilt that I had seen Video Killed the Radio Star in its MTV debut; guilt that I’d watched O.J. Simpson’s low-speed chase; guilt that I’d watched Van Halen’s pathetic public breakup; guilt that after watching all these useless television moments, believing somehow that I was involved, I’d been absent the one time something really important happened. And that somehow, this time, I wasn’t involved.
When you’re employed as a web designer or tech support person or any other job that requires you to sit in front of a computer all day, you’ve got ample time to read the news. In fact, in intellectually-stressing jobs, escaping for five minutes here or there to stare at the news is not merely a luxury, it’s a job requirement. You have more than enough time to read blogs and you have perhaps just a bit too much time to formulate strong opinions on the issues of the day.
But while you would think that unemployment would offer you that much time and more, my experience so far has been the opposite: whereas I woke up each morning updating my news section of this site, reading news and blogs and beginning to think about articles I might write later in the day, these days I can barely muster the interest to watch morning news. My interests have become hyper-provincial: the economy I care about is my economy; the education I care about is my own education.
Thus I’ve withdrawn from the world of political commentary for the last six months or so. And like stepping suddenly back into winter after months of summer, I’ve found my perspective changed and my impression of where we are has taken a turn for the worse. Or perhaps things really have changed, I don’t know.
But I really don’t remember the animosity and back-biting among Progressives that I see right now. Both on a national level and a local level, there seems to be a shrill insistence that because Barack Obama won the election, nothing less than the most liberal of positions – one the president himself never took – is an acceptable position. All that getting together and working for a better America crap went right out the window the minute people thought themselves entitled. Not getting what you want from your elected representatives is a matter of course for most adults: we accept that we’re not going to get everything, we just want to be sure our rep is at least dealing with us honestly. But for Progressives these days, it’s apparently akin to being abused and slaughtered like… wait for it…. veal.
Now forgive me if I’m sounding a bit shrill, myself. But as a good Leftie, I’m well-aware of what veal cows endure in their short and miserable lives; I really don’t think that missing out on an opportunity to have fully-nationalized health care really stacks up. I don’t think getting yourself rightfully fired for being a careless dipshit, signing your name to anything you please like it won’t come back to bite you in the ass really qualifies. That you were promised something that you (might) not get is in no way related to spending a short lifetime in a box being fed your neighbors. I think making the comparison is really quite offensive.
I was recently lectured in the most patronizing way possible on FaceBook for an article I wrote on Tort Reform…. despite the fact that I never wrote an article on Tort Reform. Worse, this sphincter-winking dickwad didn’t have the class to apologize when it was clear that he had misdirected is ire. Worse still, the article in question was written by Jon Greenbaum, whom this person apparently likes enough not to bother correcting in the same shrill voice. So, it’s not the message, it’s not the meaning, it’s only the messenger that matters. Apparently, this person considers me a dick. He should consider himself lucky not to know how right he is.
All of this would be intolerable if it wasn’t so painfully, nerdfully lame. The guy even kinda looks like The Comic Store Guy.
I didn’t become a Progressive or a blogger because I wanted to have friends. I really don’t give a rat’s ass what Progressives choose to say about each other insofar as it affects them alone. What concerns me is the fact that the acrimony – inter-Progressive and inter-Party – is turning people off of the subject, either of health care reform, or of Barack Obama’s presidency and the promise it still holds. What Progressives seem to forget is that the oldest Conservative trick in the book involves ruining people’s enthusiasm for a subject and depressing support. By going negative in a campaign, a candidate drives down both his and his opponent’s numbers, but Conservative voters will go to the polls when Liberal and Moderate voters will not.
The same holds true for the current health care debate. Are Conservatives ruining their reputation with mainstream voters? You bet. But as the insanity ratchets up, more and more people turn away, which is the point. The question never seems to get asked, but I doubt the slide in Obama’s poll numbers have anything to do with people afraid he’s going to “kill grandma.” The slide is about a lack of confidence and a lack of interest in the ugliness and arguing. “A pox on both their houses,” as they say. I know I’ve all but lost interest, myself.
It’s a big gamble by Republicans and the health care industry that’s depending on them that they can defeat this bill; if not, Republican numbers slide even farther into the toilet in all but their bulwark districts. But Progressives are helping the Republicans out by matching hyperbole with more hyperbole. And this to respond to a Republican Party which is in the minority and shacking up with Orly Taitz? Republicans who can’t stop legislation demand an end to the Public Option and that sparks an internecine bitch-fest among Progressives?
But, what the hell. Far be it from me to tell anyone else what to do with their Internet time….
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As Inspiration: Jethro Tull – Thick As A Brick
via FoxyTunes
