Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word

Over the weekend it was revealed that Harvard had searched the emails (actually, just the subject lines) of 16 deans to look for the person who leaked information on a cheating scandal to the New York Times. Yesterday, after the deans got pissed, they got thrown a microscopic bone in the form of a “sorry if you feel that way” statement:

Some have asked why, at the conclusion of that review, the entire group of Resident Deans was not briefed on the review that was conducted, and the outcome. The question is a fair one. Operating without any clear precedent for the conflicting privacy concerns and knowing that no human had looked at any emails during or after the investigation, we made a decision that protected the privacy of the Resident Dean who had made an inadvertent error and allowed the student cases being handled by this Resident Dean to move forward expeditiously. We understand that others may see the situation differently, and we apologize if any Resident Deans feel our communication at the conclusion of the investigation was insufficient.

In other words, in case you thought being a Harvard dean meant that your bosses wouldn’t snoop through your email if they thought they could gain from it, welcome to the real world. And, OBTW, if you’re going to do any leaking, think like Wal-Mart middle manager, instead of a Harvard dean, and get yourself an anonymous Gmail account.

Also, too, if you want to read some grade A bullshit, don’t stop with the excerpt I quoted here, read the whole non-apology apology, because it is a classic of the genre: wordy, ill-reasoned, evasive and condescending.

Help a Brother Out

Does anyone have any idea what this idiot is talking about?

@johngcole so who’s idea was using antifeminist hatecunt @kailijoy to go catfishing? Kosters seem to want to blame it on you.

— cONcUSSIONfaN (@cONcUSSIONfaN) March 10, 2013

@johngcoleyou and folks on your site thought you were clever and actively inabled people to stalk and harass me. I’m sure its funny to you

— cONcUSSIONfaN (@cONcUSSIONfaN) March 10, 2013

I’m completely lost.

Originalism- Tastes Like Wingnuttery

Oh, my:

There were audible gasps in the Supreme Court’s lawyers’ lounge, where audio of the oral argument is pumped in for members of the Supreme Court bar, when Justice Antonin Scalia offered his assessment of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. He called it a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

Racial entitlement? The VRA was put in place to stop racial entitlement- in whites.

Again, IANAL, but how is this anything different from the usual wingnut talking point about black people being the real racists?

One Goes Up, Others Go Down

Obama’s stock is rising:

President Barack Obama enters the latest budget showdown with Congress with his highest job- approval rating in three years and public support for his economic message, while his Republican opponents’ popularity stands at a record low.

Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance in office, his strongest level of support since September 2009, according to a Bloomberg National poll conducted Feb. 15-18. Only 35 percent of the country has a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest rating in a survey that began in September 2009. The party’s brand slipped six percentage points in the last six months, the poll shows.

I know a number of you have been bitching about my lack of posting these days, and I confess, I am in a rut and have been since last summer. Much of it can be chalked up to the stress (and really, there is stress) involved with running a blog. I’m not very thin-skinned, which is good, because people as wrong as frequently as I am should have some pretty damned thick skin, but at the same time, the negative emails and bitching in the comments can tend to wear you down.

But a lot of the lack of posting on my part comes from two things- first, it feels like we are just fighting the same battles over and over and over again, and while the Republicans aren’t winning, it never really feels like we are, either. That’s by design- that is what the GOP wants to do. They want all of us to hate government. They love paralysis- it is the mother’s milk for the conservative cause. They don’t actually give a shit about issues, they care that the Democrats don’t win. It is wearying and just breaks you down after a while. This is a very popular President, but between the media and the Republican dead-enders, nothing seems to move forward. Why isn’t everyone else depressed?

The other thing that makes it harder to blog is how the rules of politics have just changed. I don’t understand how a President this popular is still being knee-capped by his own damned party. He has a god damned mandate, but everything he wants to do is basically knee-capped by conservadems.

It’s just the paralysis that kills me. It’s like groundhog day all over again every fucking time I watch the news. I understand institutional inertia, but criminy. For fuck’s sake, the Republicans are blocking a Republican to be Sec Def. Who the fuck do they want, Avigdor Lieberman? The bullshit and malignancy of the GOP just wears you down. Which is what they want.

Also, I just learned that a very close friend has breast cancer.

The Guns and Butter Divide in One Quick Paragraph

Here you go:

GRAHAM: Well, all i can say is the commander-in-chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk. It is my belief — take Obamacare and put it on the table. You can make $86,000 a year in income and still get a government subsidy under Obamacare. Obamacare is destroying health care in this country and people are leaving the private sector, because their companies cannot afford to offer Obamacare and if you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, look at Obamacare, don’t destroy the military and cut blindly across the board. There are many ways to do it but the president is the commander-in-chief and on his watch we’ll begin to unravel the finest military in the history of the world, at a time when we need it most. The Iranians are watching us, we are allowing people to be destroyed in Syria, and i’m disappointed in our commander-in-chief.

The notion that miniscule cuts to the most bloated military in the world is, in and of itself, offensive to common sense. That this douchebag wants millions of Americans to die without health coverage to keep shuffling three quarters of a trillion to said military really says it all.

Open Thread

In honor of Papa Ratzi leaving his position to spend more time with his family, this open thread is brought to you by the Space Pope, who reminds you not to date robots.

Also, it’s brought to you by the delicious tears of my sad, sad little stalker.  You sustain Zandar with extra hit points and additional damage resistance.

Carry on.

I Suppose This is Simpler Than Having Them Sew Pink Triangles Onto Their Shirts

Yeah, I went full Godwin. So did Tennessee:

Tennessee’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay‘ bill died with the adjournment of the state assembly last year. But now the measure is back — with new, harsher requirements.

The bill, SB 234, still bars Tennessee teachers from discussing any facet of “non-heterosexual” sexuality with children in grades K-8. But the newest iteration also includes a provision requiring teachers or counselors to inform the parents of some students who identify themselves as LGBT.

These people are sick.

When You Can’t Win Fair, You Cheat

Republicans, gotta love the shamelessness:

Look at the map from 2012. Mitt Romney won the 1st (53%), 4th (50%), 5th (53%), 6th (59%), 7th (57%), 9th (63%), and 10th (50%) districts. Barack Obama won the four remaining districts — the 2nd (50%), 3rd (79%), 8th (68%), and 11th (62%). Had the Carrico plan been in place in 2012, Romney would have won nine of Virginia’s electoral votes, and Obama would have won four — even though Obama won the popular vote of the state by nearly 150,000 ballots and four percentage points.

It gets worse. You’ll notice that the 2nd, 4th, and 10th districts were squeakers, with margins between 4,000 and 5,000 votes. Carrico’s theory is that an electoral vote split would make rural areas more vital. But these districts cover the Tidewater region and the exurbs of Washington, D.C. One: Had Obama campaigned to win them, in particular, he wouldn’t have necessarily focused on anything that didn’t work statewide. Two: Had he won them, he would have taken eight electors to Mitt Romney’s five. Winning Virginia wouldn’t have been worth 13 votes. It’d have been like taking New Hampshire or Rhode Island. That’s because this reform is designed to disenfranchise Democrats, not make the state more important.

All votes are equal, but rural white votes are more equal.

I Am a Nightmare Walking, Psychopath Talking

King of my jungle just a gangster stalking:

Two men walked the streets of Portland armed with assault weapons earlier this week because they said they wanted to “educate” residents, who reacted by fleeing and calling police.

Warren Drouin and Steven Boyce told KPTV that they were forced to take drastic measure to make sure people were aware of their Second Amendment rights after 20 children in Connecticut were massacred with same type of AR-15 rifles they were carrying.

“We’re not threatening anyone,” Drouin explained. “We don’t have that type of criminal behavior.”

“This happens to open that line of communication, to let people know that you can defend yourself in a time of crisis or any time that you want to,” Boyce added.

But KPTV’s Kaitlyn Bolduc reported that the demonstration created a “state of panic” in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood.

When did the crazy people get the upper hand in this country?

America’s Favorite Fascist Strikes Again

Apparently Mayor Bloomberg is now a doctor:

Some of the most common and most powerful prescription painkillers on the market will be restricted sharply in the emergency rooms at New York City’s 11 public hospitals, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday in an effort to crack down on what he called a citywide and national epidemic of prescription drug abuse.

Under the new city policy, most public hospital patients will no longer be able to get more than three days’ worth of narcotic painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet. Long-acting painkillers, including OxyContin, a familiar remedy for chronic backache and arthritis, as well as Fentanyl patches and methadone, will not be dispensed at all. And lost, stolen or destroyed prescriptions will not be refilled.

City officials said the policy was aimed at reducing the growing dependency on painkillers and preventing excess amounts of drugs from being taken out of medicine chests and sold on the street or abused by teenagers and others who want to get high.

“Abuse of prescription painkillers in our city has increased alarmingly,” Mr. Bloomberg said in announcing the new policy at Elmhurst Hospital Center, a public hospital in Queens. Over 250,000 New Yorkers over age 12 are abusing prescription painkillers, he said, leading to rising hospital admissions for overdoses and deaths, Medicare fraud by doctors who write false prescriptions and violent crime like “holdups at neighborhood pharmacies.”

But some critics said that poor and uninsured patients sometimes used the emergency room as their primary source of medical care. The restrictions, they said, could deprive doctors in the public hospital system — whose mission it is to treat poor people — of the flexibility that they need to respond to patients.

“Here is my problem with legislative medicine,” said Dr. Alex Rosenau, president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians and senior vice chairman of emergency medicine at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Eastern Pennsylvania. “It prevents me from being a professional and using my judgment.”

When I broke my shoulder, it was eight days from my trip to the emergency room until I saw my specialist who would perform my surgery (and then another week until the surgery was done). If I had been given only three days of painkillers, which five of the eight days it took to see a doctor does Bloomberg think I should have been in excruciating pain?

The Strongest Case for Gun Control You’ll Ever See

Don’t get me wrong, I fully support deporting Piers Morgans, just not for this reason. At any rate, watch this lunatic meltdown on live tv, and keep in mind this is the kind of person who wants unlimited access to guns.

Count the conspiracy theories, if you can. Then, watch this post-interview video Jones posted in which he stated he was afraid of being murdered by Bloomberg’s posse of crazed crackheads.

Our Moral Betters Have Spoken

Lanny Davis, one of the most disgusting human beings to walk the earth, weighs in on the Hagel nomination:

But: Hagel owes it to all Americans, not just to American Jews, to do more than apologize for use of the expression “Jewish lobby” in communicating his concern about its power.

He must understand, first, that there is a difference between Jews who support Israel and the “Israel lobby.”

To suggest that there is a “Jewish lobby” is not only inaccurate, it is highly offensive to the American Jewish community.

Fred Kaplan prefuted (yes I just made that up) him earlier:

But the bugaboo issue—the third rail when it comes to foreign policy—is Israel. As a senator, Hagel once complained to a reporter that “the Jewish lobby” intimidates many lawmakers on Capitol Hill. And he once intoned that he was a senator from Nebraska, not a senator from Israel. These may have been impolitic remarks, but they weren’t false—either in strict substance or in spirit.

No one could deny that AIPAC has an overpowering influence on many lawmakers. Hagel’s sin, in the eyes of some, was to call it the “Jewish lobby” instead of the “Israel lobby.” If this is a sin, AIPAC and its allies have brought it on themselves. For decades, they have thundered that criticism of Israel is thinly disguised anti-Semitism. Yet they cry “anti-Semitism” again when someone inverts the equation (which is what the phrase in question amounts to: If anti-Israel equals anti-Jewish, then pro-Israel equals pro-Jewish). As for saying that he’s a senator from Nebraska, not Israel: Had he or any other senator said this about any other country (“I’m not a senator from France … England … Canada” or wherever), no one would have batted an eye. To accuse him of anti-Semitism on these grounds is to reveal a staggeringly deep paranoia—or a sensitivity far too acute to be allowed any role in American politics.

Why won’t Lanny Davis just go away?

Hell Hath No Fury

Like a wingnut scorned:

New York Republican Rep. Peter King went to war with his Republican colleagues on Wednesday after leaders spiked a Hurricane Sandy relief bill, calling on New Yorkers to stop all donations to GOP House members.

“These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they’re out raising millions of dollars,” King said on Fox News. “They’re in New York all the time filling their pockets with money from New Yorkers. I’m saying right now, anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to Congressional Republicans is out of their minds. Because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace.”

***

“All we’re saying is treat us the same everybody else has been treated,” King said. “And why the Republican party has this bias against New York, bias against New Jersey, bias against the northeast? They wonder why they’re becoming a minority party? Why we’ll be the party of the permanent minority? What they did last night was so immoral, so disgraceful, so irresponsible. We’re supposed to be the party of family values, and you have families starving, families suffering, families spread all over living in substandard housing. This was a disgrace.”

I love that the GOP is in an all out civil war. And this point needs to be repeated over and over and over again:

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) slammed the House GOP on CNN’s “Starting Point,” calling the decision “indefensible.”

“Just when we avoided one cliff, the House Republicans threw us over another one,” Israel said. “We rushed aid to Kabul and Baghdad when they had damage, but when it comes to aid to New York and New Jersey, the House Republican leadership decided we weren’t worth it. It is indefensible.”

The war party has no problem pissing away trillions on wars and the inevitable rebuilding (I’m so old I remember when nation building was a non-starter for Republicans), but they can’t find $60 billion for their own citizenry.

They Need a Man With a Slow Hand

I haven’t checked the comments to Mistermix’s post below, but I am sure some of you remember that this is not the first time the Republicans have decided to screw the country because someone hurt their delicate fee-fee’s:

Just buffoons.

If You Want to Destroy My Sweater

And the GOP continues to lose their shit and become publicly undone:

Across town, democracy was, at best, showing its gritty side as it ground along angrily, noisily and slowly: A weary Speaker John A. Boehner admitted failure in his efforts to avert a fiscal crisis with a bill to increase taxes on millionaires but asserted that his job was not at risk; a top National Rifle Association official bluntly challenged Congress to embrace guns at schools, not control them; and Mr. Obama bowed to the reality that Republicans had blocked his first choice to be the next secretary of state.

Though it has been 45 days since voters emphatically reaffirmed their faith in Mr. Obama, the time since then has shown the president’s power to be severely constrained by a Republican opposition that is bitter about its losses, unmoved by Mr. Obama’s victory and unwilling to compromise on social policy, economics or foreign affairs.

“The stars are all aligning the wrong way in terms of working together,” said Peter Wehner, a former top White House aide to President George W. Bush. “Right now, the political system is not up to the moment and the challenges that we face.”

House Republicans argue that voters handed their members a mandate as well, granting the party control of the House for another two years and with it the right to stick to their own views, even when they clash strongly with the president’s.

And many Republicans remember well when the tables were turned. After Mr. Bush’s re-election in 2004, Democrats eagerly thwarted his push for privatization of Social Security, hobbling Mr. Bush’s domestic agenda in the first year of his second term.

If this was just about the collapse of the Republican party, it would be one thing. But the fact of the matter is they are very dangerous to the country. If they were just lying on the floor unraveled, it would be one thing. But institutionally, they have enough power to do serious harm to the nation.