LaBombo

Although it's clearly not 'giving them a pass", even just the use of the word "triggered" seems to transfer blame for the onset of the initial confrontation, as if B.I. were just a bunch of cool guys hanging out and minding their own business until their hand was forced by boys wearing hats. In point of fact, the idea that the B.I.s needed a "trigger" at all is a non-starter . The B.I.s apparently brought every ounce of their hatred and bigotry with them to the Memorial, since they had already 'shared' it with random passersby that day well before the boys even arrived. So in this case, the MAGA hats don't even explain the "why" of the B.I. group. The hats just explain the "who" with respect to their choice of targets. Given the not only offensive but sometimes violent nature of the B.I. group's bigoted, homophobic hate speech, it seems to me like the "why" of their behavior is better left to a forensic psychologist. And it's unfortunate that Mr. Phillips, by his own account, had no problem with the B.I.s showering the boys with verbal bile, and only chose to intervene when the boys finally started to rebuke them. He dismissed the B.I. torrent of hate speech as them "saying what they had to say".

Could be, but if the stove gets much hotter than it already is, a second shutdown will sink below the front page fold.

Isn't it less likely that Trump will welcome a shutdown now that he realizes it doesn't stop FBI investigations?

Agreed, and as I mentioned in a reply to someone else whose name escapes me as I make the rounds to the different chess boards, I'm not dead set against restructuring the Senate to somehow reflect voting populations of the states, if/when the time comes. And I make no claim to be somehow above the partisan nature of the battle as it applies to the issues in play that frequently serve as the spark (detonator?) for discussion. Even my caution regarding change is more of a high regard for the law of unintended consequences than it is an unflinching belief that the founding fathers put together a timeless blueprint back in the day.

My question about the math of 2/3rds being a minority was regarding the current R/R/D makeup of the White House and the three chambers of Congress. And all that.

I hope you don't mind that I broke this out from your post about structural government imbalance. If you were citing the KFF poll with the 71% approval figure of Medicare-For-All, then the discussion should include the rest of that poll's findings. If not, maybe these numbers are worth looking at anyway. When KFF's poll asked if they would favor or oppose MFA "if they heard that it would do the following" (their words, and I'm not ready to debate the likelihood of the unintended potential outcomes): If it "Eliminated private health insurance companies": 37% If it "Required most Americans to pay more taxes": 37% If it "Threatened the current Medicare program": 32% If it "Lead to delays in getting some tests and treatments": 26% As it stands today, the Bernie model of MFA is the frontrunner on Dem wish lists, and it would eliminate most major coverage components of private insurance within 4 years. So based on just that one intended result of MFA, the polling inverts from two thirds approving into two thirds disapproving of MFA. In other words, even in an example you cite of the majority getting hosed, their wishes are in fact being served by our present system, at least in this one poll. If nothing else I would say that's at least win for the law of unintended consequences in the argument against overhauling the senate to include proportional representation.

Maybe we should save the nuclear options in our political vocabulary for the most extreme necessities? The far left, for example, might be getting more traction with its efforts to ascribe fascism to the Trump administration if it hadn't spent most of the 00's screaming "Bush = Hitler!!!".

No, you didn't, but that outcome is an implicit and undeniable potential danger of diminishing a fundamental factor in the balance of state and federal powers. As much as I want to believe that everyone's passion on the subject goes beyond partisanship and current events, they are inextricably linked in virtually every discussion on the matter. And yes, that argument of partisanship's heavy hand in structural matters of government absolutely cuts both ways, as conservatives invariably dig in to defend the ramparts of the Electoral College like a constitutional Alamo. In the face of an argument that at least coincides with political expediency, all I can do is draw on my terribly limited knowledge of political history and look to the impetus for change in the last major structural overhaul of the Senate, way back in 1913. The 17th Amendment shifted the power to elect senators from state legislatures to voters not because a particular issue, demographic, or party. It happened primarily because of a simple and inarguable logistical failure of multiple state legislatures to break deadlocks and do their job of putting senators' butts in their seats on time. I'm not saying that you can ever hope to keep partisanship out of a discussion about remaking the Senate, or that such a discussion should never take place because of that. I'm just saying that at the moment, we're at a very different point than we were the last time such a drastic change was made, when it was more an agreement that 'This isn't working' than an argument that 'This isn't working the way we want'.

As much as you might want to conflate my reluctance to s#!tcan 200 years of relative success by our current democratic republic with a return to slavery, the issue isn't a cartoonish battle of good vs. evil. And since one of the key purposes of the republic-oriented facets of our government is to protect the rights of the voting minority, it seems to me that the burden of proof to vastly weaken or end that protection has not been met yet.

And I understand that you understand it, as do all the regulars here, I assume. It's an imperfect system to be sure, but I'm not aware of any conclusive, non-partisan proof that the fundamental concept of states' rights in the form of a Senate and electoral college has been or will be a major impediment to democracy. Marijuana, since you mentioned it, is a good example of an issue that shows the value of state statues as opposed to a federally dominated democracy. Individual states have been able to make various provisions for legalization well in advance of anything resembling the national mandate that it will take, as a practical legislative matter, to approve federal laws. In any case, political theory aside, if Democrats are serious about helping rural voters find their way back to them in 2020 it might be a bad plan to promote the idea of reducing the aforementioned Dakotan voters and millions like them to electoral irrelevance. Maybe that's a battle worth fighting now, but my guess is that there's understandably waaaaaaaaaaay more focus on creating the best possible odds of defeating Trump in 2020.

So now we're doing away with the concept of states in order to arrive at a desired agenda?

Two out of three is a minority? And a vote that doesn't go your way is "tyranny"?

Thanks for posting, good read. Asimov might be both proud and disturbed to see one of his most provocative ideas seemingly taking a leap toward fruition. This particular scissor seems to be approaching the end of its run in the Cinema of Righteous Rage, as at least some of the lynch mob start coming to their senses: WHOOPI GOLDBERG: "But is it that we just instantly say that's what it is based on what we see in that moment and then have to walk stuff back when it turns out we're wrong? Why is that? Why do we keep making the same mistake?" JOY BEHAR: "Because we're desperate to get Trump out of office. That's why." When you've lost Joy Behar... That's like Christopher Walken suddenly jumping out of your broom closet and yelling "That was too much cowbell!!!"

You're well informed and open-minded with regard to policy issues, and I salute you for it. But this isn't the same thing. Regardless of that, I'm fine with taking your word that you're conflicted by the situation, and based on that, I also have no problem withdrawing my criticism if that's the case. In return, maybe you could acknowledge that my mistake might stem from the fact that virtually nothing that you wrote suggests even a hint of conflict in your mind, other than whether Catholic school kids or Catholic school chaperones were to blame. Yes, there is the obligatory disclaimer that you refuse to give a pass to a sociopathic hate group whose superpower is pan-offensive verbal assault.. and yet somehow even that seemingly no-brainer sentiment simply devolved into blame for the true villains: the kids in the bad guy hats. That disclaimer doesn't scream 'conflict' to me. It just looks you making it clear that you're not a monster. After that... all of your thoughts on the matter, in both this post and the last, revolve around MAGA hats, race, and the culpability of the Covington kids and chaperones. And those thoughts look to me like your interpretation of the events is reverse-engineered from a pre-existing belief that anyone in a MAGA hat is bad, along with a fervent desire to preserve the initial, false narrative of evil MAGA-clad larvae "mobbing" a Native American Vietnam veteran despite the absolute avalanche of exculpatory evidence that has since come to light. Your repeated mischaracterization of the Covington students as some sort aggressive soccer hooligans in Chelsea colors looking for trouble on Arsenal turf is emphatically not supported by the facts. They did not wade into a Native American demonstration with MAGA hats blazing. They were awaiting the arrival of more students when the "demonstration" came to them, as Mr Phillips allegedly sought to ease or resolve the B.I./Covington standoff by making the odd choice of confronting the targets instead of the attackers. It's interesting that your biggest takeaway was a lost teaching moment of not explaining to the kids why they should flee when Phillips confronted them. Was it so that they would not become vulture media fodder and punching bags for the militant Left? Or were you referring to the larger lesson that they will always hold the low hand in any situation that can possibly be reduced or distorted into identity politics poker? My takeaways, fwiw, were that 1) it was deeply disturbing to see how easily an eager, willfully uncritical media was able to frame a heavily edited sliver of a verbal altercation between multiple groups in order to falsely vilify a single party of children as perpetrators of a hate crime whose significance and malignancy rivaled a terrorist attack on US soil, and 2) how many people and media outlets have clung to the original false narrative as "fake but true" despite its having been thoroughly and utterly discredited. This is twice as long and about ten times as contentious as it was intended to be; apologies on both counts. But as a parent of a child who is now close to the age of the ones in question, it is absolutely appalling and infuriating to me that such an enormous contingent of the media and citizenry of our nation would attempt to smear a bunch of innocent students as Klan members in order to satisfy their palpable hatred of a politician and his supporters, no matter how much I may dislike him.

Anybody who would lump you in with the extremists who posted violent fantasies on Twitter has infinitely more cause to be embarrassed than you. There's no guilt by association in this one. None. In fact, it seems to me that one of the more dramatic aspects of this whole mess is how polarizing it is not to left and right, but within the left itself. After the initial outrage, the additional video revelations quickly caused many (most, I think) people on the left, including some of those here, to undertake the thankless task of drawing attention to how misleading the initial video was. And it could have ended there, with a sort of Ron Burgundy "That escalated quickly!" shrug of the shoulders and a dirty look in the direction of Twitter, followed by a collective return to the nation's more pressing business at hand. But then the Double Down brigade showed up... infuriated by both gloaters on the right and apologetic former angry mob members on the left, screaming for a doxxin', and scouring phone videos like the Zapruder film, hoping to dredge up a damning sound bite of the boys that might rise above the din of constant obscenities from the other group. This group's moral and intellectual standing is nicely summarized by Kathy Griffin posting a picture of a Covington basketball player making the thumb/index finger three point gesture during a game, and breathlessly proclaiming it to be a "Nazi sign".

If all you can do is take a dive and hope for a penalty, then that says all I need to know about the validity of your alleged video revelations, which would, if they actually existed, be booming throughout the mainstream media by now if they showed anything like a credible defense of their initial, eager smears of the students.

Here's your link's description of the Westboroian sociopaths of Black Hebrew who showered obscenities and threats of violence throughout the event: "The Black Hebrews sect, is an American-based evangelistic group that tends to use aggressive provocation to engage with passersby--usually in major cities. They are a regular fixture on street corners in cities like NYC, Phila, and DC." And by posting the link to the rant which you purport to have read, you are undeniably endorsing that wholly dishonest defense of people who even the Leftbots of SPLC categorize as a hate group.

Then post those links and walk us through your unbiased interpretation. Until then, this is just another pathetic, hyper- partisan attempt to smear children and shift the real conversation, which is that what started as essentially a non-event has caused a substantial portion of the Left to become morally and rationally unmoored. All it's missing is a nonsensical blaming of Trump. Edit: My apologies. With death threats still keeping Covington closed (which should please the anti-Catholic bigots in the Hirono/Harris camp) you did manage to cut through to what's reeeally important by hauling butbutbutTrump! and "Faux" (clever for about 20 minutes... in 1998) into this with a separate post.

100 MPH, maybe? My impression was that jsteve96 was referring to the relatively recent evolution of pitching toward harder throwers, along with the resulting shift in innings from starters to relievers. My guess is that the shift means it takes starters longer to reach a given number of innings for them to be 'ready' for the majors. Relievers should then develop faster, but it probably doesn't matter as much because they tend to be sheltered from high-leverage use at the back end of a 7 or 8 man bullpen anyway

JAL is a solid airline though wound very tight about security on my last flight with them. But their tail logo looks like the red thingy on Luke Skywalker's helmet, so maybe call it a wash. KLM is a Delta partner that provided excellent service on my recent flights with them. Lufthansa is fine if you're not the sort who's prone to their name causing you irrational fears that your flight to Amsterdam will make a slight detour en route for a simulated bombing run over London or Coventry. Icelandic... have you ever taken one of those bar hopping shuttle buses for a bachelorette party or sporting event? It's kind of like that, but without the option to ask the driver to pull over and let you out.

"We Democrats know so much [that is true!], that we have to kind of tell everyone how smart we are..." My first reaction to your take on Mazie Hirono's gaffe was ' "Spin!?!" How could anyone come up with a way to 'distort' those words to make them any more damaging for Hirono and her party ?' But setting politics aside for just a second... Honestly, have you ever known anyone personally who bragged about how smart they are? If so... were they? I'd think not, but more to the point... did it make them seem smart ? Or did it just make them seem like a complete and utter j****$$ ? Yes, Hirono started out trying to make a point about head vs. heart, and that's completely fine. But not only did she not stop there, she blew right past her tone-deaf celebration of Democrats' superior intellect and went on to frame it as a burden when they're forced to attempt to enlighten Repubs and independents. Elitism? I think that if you're a Democrat strategist looking ahead to 2020, you watch that clip with your palm on your forehead, hoping that people see it as painting your party as just garden-variety elitists, instead of a party filled with insufferable self-proclaimed Brainiacs who've been dying to explain just how much their heads hurt from the strain of talking down to the rest of us.

Woohoo! I'm young again! My generation's biggest duo is still touring!

Thanks, made the switch. Please don't tell Perkins about this or they'll cut off my free pop refills.

Welcome to the club. Dinner is at five unless we're going out; then it's 4:30. Also, 'aarp' is no longer the sound you make when you accidentally belch.