Battle of the Overpass

And while I also like the Great Big Sea version this is hard to beat:

In talking about the “Negro music” aspect of this panic, dzik makes a spot-on observation about jazz that should be tattooed on the inner eyelids of all cultural snobs:

Of course, the real scandal of Miles, Sun Ra et al was that they took these “deplorable”, “tribal” roots and cultivated an art form capable of engaging with the European classical tradition and commanding respect on its own terms — that is the negro’s revenge and that is the negro’s revenge. To listen to the critics you’d think some people would have been less offended if they’d merely destroyed Western Civilization.

Damn straight.

h/t John Scalzi

Certainly, one would expect them to condemn the shooting of people other than Giffords, in much the same way that the military expresses regret when a strike on a military target kills innocent civilians. But why are they condemning his shooting of Giffords? Why aren’t they doing what politicians usually do when something they support comes to pass – rushing in to get a camera-op and claim all the credit, even when nothing they did actually cased the result?

From Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map and urging her supporters to “RELOAD” to Shannon Angle’s suggesting “Second Amendment remedies” to “take Harry Reid out” if she lost the election to Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck openly exhorting people to violence, reactionaries expressed their wish quite clearly, and they got it. Why are they now having second thoughts?

I can think of only two possibilities. Either they were so stupid and immature before (hurr, look how much this upsets the libruls) and never gave a moment’s thought to what would happen if, in fact, some disgruntled nutjob decided to put the “four boxes” into action, as if they were immature teenagers rhapsodizing about the “cool” violence in their favorite video-game shooter suddenly getting a look at real-life violence. If this is what’s going on – they were just so in love with their own imaginary tough-ass self that it didn’t occur to them for a second that, like, shooting at people just because you’re mad at then is bad – then they have no place in public discourse, and need to slither back under their rocks with the rest of the simple, muck-dwelling lifeforms, and leave political interaction to the humans.

The other possibility is that they’re pleased as punch that Giffords was shot; but they know that a lot of people who used to chuckle over their imaginary gun battles are really in group number one there. That is, it’s not a popular viewpoint to say “We deeply regret and condemn the killing of innocents, but as we said before this incident, if Congress continues as it has been, people are going to shoot Democrats, so take Giffords as a warning.” So instead of proudly standing behind a “crosshairs” political map or leaping into the photo-op to prattle about how right-thinking Americans will come out shooting if the wrong Senator gets elected, they trip over each other to pretend they probably never said any of that stuff and certainly never meant it.

Which is to say, they’re wormsucking cowards who care about nothing but their own political and financial futures, and are too craven to take the credit they’re owed. Unsurprising.

The moderate problem is that the descriptions of each category are oversimplified, in some cases are policy statements having not much to do with reality (such as medical malpractice ‘reform’) or are laughably vague (what are those ‘other’ cuts going to look like, exactly?), and considers nothing but the net effect on the deficit – ignoring externalities, societal costs and, really, anything except ‘deficit, plus/minus’.

The serious problem is that, as you can see from comments not only at Whatever but elsewhere on the Internet, people are completely oblivious to the existence of the moderate problem. “Why, that was easy,” they say. “Why can’t our lawmakers figure this out? It’s not hard!”

Indeed, it’s not hard to push numbers around and come up with a surplus, when you’re working with extremely limited information and don’t have to care one way or the other about anything other than whether the “projected” result helps the deficit. It’s quite a bit harder in the real world, where things like public safety and unemployment are also important considerations.

It’s an economics version of  “My kid could paint that!”

There are many subjects on which reasonable, well-meaning people can disagree, often with no clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ on either person’s part. Birthright citizenship is not one of those subjects.

(h/t unusualmusic)

And I absolutely want people who are stupid enough to believe that to keep their kids out of school that day. For every Wingnut, Jr. who doesn’t have the “work hard and do well” message reinforced, and who’s taught that education is a Commie plot, my kids have that much more of an edge. Rock on, wingnuts!

Oh, wait, the National Organization for Marriage begs to differ:

But we take heart in knowing that this vote was not representative of what Vermonters understand marriage to be. We know that the Vermont Legislature did everything in its power to avoid allowing Vermonters to vote directly on the future of marriage.

No doubt, if Vermont had legalized same-sex marriage through a straight up popular vote of the people, these relics would bemoan how it wasn’t really the will of the people, because, oh, I dunno, homosexual lobby brainwashing satellite rays from beyond the stars? Certainly it can’t be that NOM and their ilk are losing the culture war.

They’re right about concern for their grandchildren, though. It must be a terrible thought to know, somewhere in your cramped, reptilian brain, that the kindest thing your grandkids might say about you is “they couldn’t help being like that, it was the times they grew up in”.

(h/t, Diana Peterfreund)