Jack and Jill Politics - Latest Comments in Tuesday Open Thread

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

AxelFoley — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:02:42 -0000

You can be shown some of the changes that's come about in these last 10 months, but you'll just dismiss them anyway. You sound just like conservatives and "progressives" who try to be witty with variations on the "Is this change we can believe in?" bullshit.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

RobM — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:58:55 -0000

They will transfer it or it will die. but the idea you will continue to have it for free is what is going to die.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

mon_dieu_ishmael — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:25:43 -0000

What has changed in Washington? Nothing - just new faces covered in lobbyist gravey.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

mon_dieu_ishmael — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:21:29 -0000

Yes print is almost dead. And I will miss my local newspapers.

Content is not free. No free lunch. Someone has to pay for it.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

RobM — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:02:58 -0000

Content comes from somewhere and that costs something to create it. When you pull up a newpaper in real time on the internet your cost and everyone else whom receives it that way pays literally nothing for it. If you had to pay for the paper on the internet directly you would be forced to change your habits and pay the real provider.
I am willing to bet you wouldn't read a damn thing Murdoch prints, puts on TV/radio because you wouldn't pay to read/see/hear you're a n@##$%. But for $50/month and spreading it across a couple of hundred providers for hours on end you are entertained. Hahaha did you see what this racist a@@#$%^ said.
So the argument isn't whether you read a newspaper or not but how you pay for the content of a newspaper if you want it?

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

RobM — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:50:50 -0000

I have to disagree w/ this, "Cost for content being extremely high is another corporate creation to rob Internet users." Much of the content was created long ago and has become a very limited cash cow for them Just think of Turner Movie Classics. Currently w/movies the cost is sky high ($150 million + for Avatar). One down load saps millions from the producers and cost of distribution is nil. if that isn't leeching I don't know what is.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

RobM — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:44:49 -0000

Are you or did you ever watch Alec Guiness as George Smiley on Masterpiece Theatre? The reason I ask is I remembered Alastair Cooke explaining that some of the dialogue was about insulting people. He went on to say Americans will not understand because so much of the talk was class and in England class talk isn't used by people from a different class.
It popped into my head because the line Very Good, Happy Christmas resonated here as insult but in England that is traitor class talk. Pyrce isn't going back to London cause nobody cares(here) what school he went to. It is even more amazing when you think about how important it has become in this country to go the right schools.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

Miranda — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:40:14 -0000

Isnt' it obvious?

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

RobM — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:25:27 -0000

On the whole I think the Army brass understands, the Air force doesn't understand, the rest of the military I am not sure. It is the ability to weed out the intransigent officers is the problem. Can they get it together I would say the odds are 40 60%?

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:11:17 -0000

AFTERNOON OPEN THREAD IS UP

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:58:58 -0000

this is why I reacted so strongly to that Latino who wrote the post about President Obama right after the election, talking about the ' multi-racialism' of the Latino community, like Black folk needed a lecture on being a ' multi-racial' community, and we are the folks who claim everyone from the former head of the NAACP, the late Walter White, to comedian Bernie Mac, and everyone in between. more than often, we can see that racial rainbow breakdown in our own families.

my mother's family is an example of it. my maternal grandfather would have fit in walking the streets of Scotland - without missing a beat.
my maternal grandmother was Black ' as the Ace of Spades',and was often mistaken for the 'servant girl' when she went out with her own mother-a former slave-, when they walked the streets of the South.

between them, they had children ranging from chocolate to an aunt who could have passed for a red-headed White woman, and everything in between.

same parents.

don't even begin to try and tell Black folks about being ' multi-racial'. we accept it, because we've had to, because it's part of who we are. White folks have been a long time ignoring it, and wanting to deny how WE came to be ' multi-racial'.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

Plantsmantx — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:56:51 -0000

Krugman:

Armey of Ignorance

In the midst of a seriously disgusting interview with Dick Armey, the former House majority leader offers his analysis of the financial crisis:

But at what point do we allow the government to order people that you must sell your product to this person or that person, irrespective of any good judgment? We saw what happened in housing when they ordered banks to make loans to people who weren’t qualified. Are we now going to have the same destructive influences in health care because we’re going to order doctors to provide services and so forth?

There’s a persistent delusion, on the part of many pundits, to the effect that we’re actually having a rational political discussion in this country. But we aren’t. The proposition that the Community Reinvestment Act caused all the bad stuff, because government forced helpless bankers into lending to Those People, has been refuted up, down, and sideways. The vast bulk of subprime lending came from institutions not subject to the CRA. Commercial real estate lending, which was mainly lending to rich white developers, not you-know-who, is in much worse shape than subprime home lending. Etc., etc.

But in Dick Armey’s world, in fact on the right as a whole, the affirmative-action-made-them-do-it doctrine isn’t even seen as a hypothesis. It’s just a fact, something everyone knows.

Truly, sometimes I despair.
http://krugman.blogs.nytime...

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:50:40 -0000

the Chicago school system is basically divided into two groups:

Neighborhood schools
The Magnet System

basically, that was the breakdown.

the jockeying for spaces in magnet schools is utterly crazy. watching middle-class parents trying to get their children into a good magnet school is watching clear politics. and, this is for kids who have actually passed the tests and gotten high enough scores.

the craziness truly begins when you have the ' lottery'. there are so many slots in those schools that don't depend on testing, but are like what it's called - a lottery.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

AxelFoley — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:25:49 -0000

Speak on this, rikyrah.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

mon_dieu_ishmael — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:23:19 -0000

I am not familiar with Chicago Magnet schools. Are they for the academically gifted?
What does magnet mean in this context?

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

AxelFoley — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:21:49 -0000

Yeah, you really believed.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:03:45 -0000

HCR is Getting Dicey

by BooMan
Tue Nov 10th, 2009 at 11:25:12 AM EST

It's encouraging that Press Secretary Robert Gibbs threatened to use the budget reconciliation process if the health care bill stalls in the Senate. Other than a brief burst of optimism I had after Senator Paul Kirk was seated as Kennedy's replacement, I have never believed that Obama could pass a public option through the Senate. The only chance I could see for doing that was to first pass a bill through the Senate that didn't have a public option. This would allow Harry Reid to pass all the procedural hurdles up to the point that the Senate had to vote on the Conference Report. At that point, with both Houses having passed a health care reform bill, we'd be waiting for the historic vote on final passage. There would be the maximum possible amount of pressure on Democratic senators not to kill all the hard work made up to that point by denying the Majority Leader a procedural vote to bring the bill up. If a public option was going to survive, it needed to be introduced only at this final point in the process. That wouldn't guarantee passage, but it would provide us with the best chance. And, if some lonely senator like Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson decided to take the heat and kill reform at that point, it would be relatively easy to make the case for using the budget reconciliation process rather than let one or two insurance whores in the caucus stand in the way of historic reform.

Harry Reid decided to go in another direction. He decided to make the public option part of the base bill. As soon as he did that, it killed off all the momentum for a robust public option in the House. The leadership asked the Progressives to prove that they had the votes for it, and they couldn't. It didn't seem to matter too much because the robust public option was never going to pass the Senate anyway. It was, as Pelosi stated repeatedly, a chip to use in the Conference Committee. She wanted a robust public option in hand because she always assumed that the Senate version would lack any public option at all. The idea was that each side would compromise, and the end result would be a public option that was not tied to Medicare reimbursement rates. But, when Reid put exactly that type of public option in the base bill, there was no longer any need for the House to pass the stronger version. It was easier to give nervous centrists a break and only ask them to vote for a non-robust public option that more nearly resembled the Senate version. It shouldn't make much difference in the end. The House and Senate would still wind up in the same place, they'd just start out with less of a divide.

But, of course, things didn't turn out exactly that way. Pelosi didn't gain extra votes once she dropped her push for a robust public option. Instead, the House conservadems got greedy and insisted on adding the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. Even then, Pelosi saw no spike in centrist support. She passed the bill with a mere two more votes than she needed, and one of those votes was from a Republican. It's encouraging that Obama has announced that he finds the Stupak-Pitts language unacceptable, but it's not clear that he can strip it out without losing the support of three congresspeople.

Meanwhile, Reid's gambit appears to be failing, as he can't line up 60 votes for the base bill. Unless something changes, Reid will be forced to withdraw his bill and reintroduce one that has no public option. Failing that, he could give up and go straight to the budget reconciliation process. But, unlike the scenario I crafted, where the blame for failing to pass something with a public option would come at the very end of the process and fall on Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson, in this scenario the failure would come prior to the Conference Committee and fall solely on Reid for miscalculating and failing to lead his caucus. Far from demonstrating overwhelming support for the public option, he would have demonstrated that it was a non-starter in the Senate. Meanwhile, the House barely passed a bill that had ridiculous abortion restrictions and a non-robust public option. How could they be expected to turn around and pass a bill in reconciliation that is much stronger?

I know that the people pushing for a public option in the base Senate bill meant well, and they have convinced themselves that only through their efforts has a public option survived at all. But it is not that simple. The Progressives were pledged to vote against any bill that doesn't have a robust public option, but they showed the emptiness of that threat when they couldn't muster the votes to pass one and they backed down. Reid was pressured into introducing the public option prematurely, over the doubts of the White House, and now he's left holding the bag.

Procedure in complicated and infuriating. But making the wrong calls on procedural moves has now imperiled the passage on any health care reform whatsoever, whether done under reconciliation or not.

http://www.boomantribune.co...

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:59:17 -0000

Bernie Sanders Is A Go On Reconciliation
By: Jon Walker Tuesday November 10, 2009 8:30 am

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told The Hill that he would absolutely back using reconciliation to pass health care reform.

And when asked whether he would support reconciliation in the event Lieberman and other Democrats blocked consideration of the bill, Sanders said: “Absolutely. Look, the trick here is to do the best that we can for the American people.

“And that is quality, affordable healthcare for all of our people,” he added. “If we can’t do it because we don’t get 60 votes, then there are other ways that we have to proceed. And I would strongly support those other ways.”

The important thing about the health care fight is that it is not like most legislative battles in the Senate. Normally, a handful of conservative Democrats and a few Republicans will demand outrageous concessions to get to the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. Progressive senators are left will little recourse. They can try calling their bluff, negotiating some a deal on an unrelated bill, let the bill die (including the provisions they strongly champion), or accept the terrible demands for the greater good of passing something.

Health care reform is different because progressive Democrats have the option of using reconciliation. Reconciliation measures can’t be filibustered, so they only needs a simple majority to pass. Because of the Byrd rule, there are problems with using reconciliation. Kent Conrad has often said it would make “swiss cheese” of the bill. But if Lieberman, Nelson, Bayh, and Lincoln are allowed to control the debate, reform will end up “swiss cheese” anyway. It is starting to look like the holes the Byrd rule will make in the bill would be smaller and more easily fixed.

Sanders is raising the possibility the he might filibuster health care reform if it is too conservative. Normally this would be very difficult stance, but, with health care reform, Sanders can filibuster the bill without risking that nothing will be passed. Obama and Reid are so desperate for a victory that they would be forced to use reconciliation. On this issue, Sanders and other progressives in the Senate have the power to make sure Lieberman does not win.

http://fdlaction.firedoglak...

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:56:22 -0000

CYNTHIA TUCKER
Part II: A bad man, not a bad religion

7:56 am November 10, 2009, by ctucker

You can usually see the warning signs with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, of course. So it is with Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who allegedly went on a killing spree at Ft. Hood, Texas last week, mowing down dozens, killing 13.

Now, after he has already killed many and maimed others, investigators are finding evidence that Hasan was, at the very least, deeply troubled. Perhaps the most obvious sign was a lecture he gave a year and a half ago, in which he warned that Muslims soldiers should be allowed to duck out of fighting against fellow Muslims to avoid “adverse events.”

“It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” he said in the presentation.

The first thing to note is this: Many Muslim Americans who are serving courageously in the U.S. Armed Forces disagree strenously.

Some of the thousands of Muslims in the U.S. military worry that one burst of violence could unravel all of their work to be accepted as loyal, dedicated soldiers, and that their reputation could be another casualty of the attack.
ad_icon

“Just as this guy in Fort Hood doesn’t represent every single Muslim in the world or in this county, the few ignorant or racist people that remain in the military, they are so few and far between, they do not represent the military at large,” said Ashkan Bayatpour, 25, a U.S. Navy veteran and the American-born son of Iranian immigrants.

You can hardly blame them for worrying, since so many commentators and some politicians are rushing to stigmatize all Muslim soldiers.
The second thing to note is this: The military has never fully come to terms with the emotional trauma of war; but, since the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, it has tried to do better, stepping up its efforts to treat combat stress. That may have led officers to overlook Hasan’s own mental problems; after all, the military needed psychiatrists.
It’s now clear the Army has to do a better job of making sure its mental health professionals are up to the task.

http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthi...

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:42:49 -0000

City magnet school admissions get makeover
CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS | Families with kids already in will have a better chance of getting another admitted

ovember 10, 2009

BY ROSALIND ROSSI AND ART GOLAB Staff Reporters

A greater share of prized Chicago magnet school seats would go to the brothers and sisters of current magnet students -- as well as to neighborhood kids -- under a long-awaited magnet admission plan expected to be unveiled this week.

And for the first time in Chicago, the income level and other socio-economic factors in a child's neighborhood would play a role in whether that child is admitted to a magnet school, sources say.

The process for gaining entry into the "jewels'' of the Chicago Public School system is undergoing a massive overhaul.

A judge's September decision to throw out a nearly 30-year-old desegregation consent decree also has thrown overboard the process of using race to decide magnet school admission. Instead, CPS officials want to join about 60 other school districts nationwide that use various socioeconomic factors to create diversity in schools.

However, the new policy is also expected to be more family and neighborhood friendly, sources say.

This school year, more than 25,000 students applied for seats at 37 elementary magnet schools that used race, sibling status and address to decide admissions, data obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times showed. Only 12 percent of all applicants won admission, the data indicated.

And although siblings of existing students had a much greater chance of winning magnet seats, their entry under the old admission policy was not a lock. Only 45 percent of open seats were set aside for them under the old process.

That's been one of the worries of Kay Ragozzino, who lives in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood. Her oldest child, Dante, is now a first-grader at Andrew Jackson Language Magnet. If Dante's 4Â½- year-old brother, Marco, doesn't win the Jackson admission lottery, Ragozzino said, she may have to consider the unthinkable -- moving out of the city.

The logistics of two working parents trying to transport two kids to two different schools would be "untenable,'' said Ragozzino, an education researcher and wife of a University of Illinois at Chicago professor.

"If he [Marco] were not to get in, everything would be on the table,'' Ragozzino said. "It would be extremely hard for us to leave, but not having two kids in the same school would make leaving the city something we'd have to consider.''

However, under the new proposal -- which still faces a series of public hearings and board approval -- siblings would get first dibs at all open magnet seats, not just 45 percent of them, officials said.

Siblings already are faring well in winning entry-level magnet seats with 92 percent winning admission for this school year. The new proposal should boost those numbers even higher, especially at the most competitive schools.

After the sibling lottery, sources said, half of the remaining seats would go to neighborhood kids -- up from a current threshold of 30 percent in most magnet schools.

And the other half of the seats would be decided based on socioeconomic factors -- the most complicated part of the equation.

According to sources, CPS officials hope to look at annually updated census tract data reflecting several socioeconomic variables of the area in which applicants live. That could include the area's median family income; adult education level; percent of single parents; the level of owner-occupied homes; and the percent of children living in homes where a language other than English is spoken.

Median income would not be divided into poor vs. non-poor, but rather be into about four gradations, each carrying different levels of weight, officials said.

Officials are hoping that socioeconomic barometers will help magnet schools stay racially diverse -- one element that Ragozzino now finds especially appealing.

With greater sibling and neighborhood student bodies, Ragozzino said, her sons might be able to go to school with more kids from the neighborhood, and then come home and play with them.

"It's better for communities and families,'' Ragozzino said of the new policy. "It's terrific news.''

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/1874845,...

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Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:41:00 -0000

this is what I want to know too. maybe I don't get it because I'm a civilian, but I would appreciate if someone military would explain how he could be promoted. I always thought Major was something to accomplish - that it wasn't that easy.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

soothsayer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:37:00 -0000

I'm going to repeat it till my fingers fall off:

He was promoted to Major THIS PAST MAY.

Why?

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:25:13 -0000

reading articles like this make me ask again -

was this a setup or gross incompetence?

it's like he had neon lights- GET ME OUTTA THIS ARMY.

Knowing what you know, do you really believe that we have the ' cultural awareness' to do this properly?

be honest.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:12:23 -0000

I hear you. It's absolutely ridiculous. like it's any surprise that, gasp, Michelle Obama has White relatives......most Black folks could do the same.

Just ask folks, plain and simple :

1. look at the populations of the countries in West Africa were most of the American transatlantic slave trade began....LOOK AT THEM.

2. now, look at the ' rainbow' of shades that Black America is.

riddle me this, how the hell did we go from #1 to #2 WITHOUT RACIALLY MIXING.

The Black community in America has ALWAYS been ' multi-racial' - from the first time Massa went down to the slave quarters. it's because of that ' mixing', that 2 Black folk, when they get married and have a baby, don't know what's coming out. they can hope for a child that is healthy and normal, but aside from that, they don't know what will happen...never know when a ' throwback' gene will pop out and grab the kid.

Re: Tuesday Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:10:07 -0000

I still love Don, and Betty - if it was just her, I wouldn't feel that bad. But, she's dragging 3 children along with her, and this is gonna mess those kids up. SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HIM.

Peggy is finally a player, and for some reason, Pete never bothered me as much as he does other folks.