Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Lunchtime

Kurtz (TPM): Shocked!
Anti-Sotomayor ringleader: I had no idea our race-based smear campaign would bring out such extreme racism.
DemfromCT (DK): Health Care Tuesday
...
  • NYT:

    In the waning days of April, as federal officials were declaring a public health emergency and the world seemed gripped by swine flu panic, two rival supercomputer teams made projections about the epidemic that were surprisingly similar — and surprisingly reassuring. By the end of May, they said, there would be only 2,000 to 2,500 cases in the United States.

    May’s over. They were a bit off.

    On May 15, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were "upwards of 100,000" cases in the country, even though only 7,415 had been confirmed at that point.

    Oops. Well, if you live in the US, it's flu season in May, in all 50 states and DC.


    • Speaking of the panic that wasn't, risk communicator Jody Lanard:

    But Dr. Besser did a spectacular job of framing the initial alarming announcement, and what is most noticeable is that it did not produce any panic.

    Some early and brief "over-reactions" occurred, and were poorly tolerated by officials.

    These reactions, and the initial brief massive public attention were called "hysteria" and "panic" by the media.

    But there was no actual panic -- just the public going through adjustment reactions, which have been disrespected by most officials and the media, as usual.

  • David Brown in the WaPo:

    Influenza experts are acknowledging that they were almost completely surprised by the way the current swine flu outbreak unfolded, so much so it is forcing the world to rethink what a pandemic is and what pandemic preparedness means.

    Virtually every assumption made since planning for a pandemic began in earnest after the deadly "bird flu" outbreak of 2004 in Southeast Asia has been contradicted by the six-week history of swine-origin influenza A (H1N1).

    if you've seen one pandemic, you've seen one pandemic. They're all different and this one's not over. Pandemic planning needs to be for for whatever comes, because something always comes.



Rachel provides a history lesson and a very nuanced discussion on constitutional rights . . .
Domestic attack June 1: An anti-abortion activist gunned down abortion doctor George Tiller in a Kansas church over the weekend. Extremist groups are celebrating his death. How can these acts of violence be stopped? Rachel Maddow is joined by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.

Athenae: The Political Process Has Been Closed

If only someone would give right-wingers the vote.

Wait.

Did that.

Back in '76.

1776, or thereabouts, anyway.

Shit.

If only someone would ... wait, I know! Give right-wingers more votes than everybody else!

THEN everything would be fine!

Using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes does not seem to be very effective in getting them to eschew violence. In fact, it seems to be a very good way of getting more violence. Possibly because those fringes have often turned to violence precisely because they feel that the political process has been closed off to them.

Lady, are you smoking crack? Are you smoking crack while sitting in a cloud of crack-smoke wearing a T-shirt that says I HEART CRACK while waiting for your crackhead boyfriend to come home with more crack that you sent him out to get so that you'd have some crack when you were done with the crack you're smoking now? Seriously? Because last I checked, "not being able to convince somebody else that you're not a fucking lunatic and that your ideas about everything should be adopted by everybody" doesn't qualify as "the political process has been closed off" to you. That's not how this works, that's not how this has ever worked, and to coddle domestic terrorists by saying they were just pushed to it because they weren't handed everything they ever wanted is ... special. Some kind of special. Some kind of something, that's for sure. What the fuck, today? It's like all the stupid were set free from their stupid-farm for some kind of idiot rumspringa of 24 hours.

For eight fucking years anybody to the left of Pinochet had to kick back and watch while sensible centrists and the Coalition of the Involuntarily Committable got together and raped the country and fucked up the whole world. For eight fucking years we were told that marching in the streets with giant puppets was the most horrific form of treason imaginable, was demoralizing our troops and hurting the debate and making the baby Pope Benedict cry. Not once did I ever in that time hear Megan McArdle or any of her other sensible friends discuss how maybe, just maybe, President Bush and his administration had PUSHED us to the edge, where we HAD to make those puppets because we felt the political process was closed to us.

No, back then it was "elections have consequences" and "you lost" and "look upon my works, ye mighty, and fuck off," and anytime anybody had the temerity to say, "erm, dude, if you don't mind I'll be over here with this sign on a stick" they might as well have been plotting to shoe-bomb Air Force One the way the whiners in the nuttersphere howled and shrieked. There was none of this, "you just don't know how hard it is to be on the losing end of everything including your soul" back then. Just them, partying with Free Republic on the White House lawn, waving their big foam fingers in our faces going "nyah nyah nyah."

Now that they're out of power, natch, what choice do they have but to go shoot up church lobbies in the hopes of bagging abortion doctors for their trophy wall of American apostates? Really, what else could they do? It's not like they could vote, or convince other people to listen to them, or organize, or do any of the damn things I feel like we've been doing since before there was dirt in order to get a not-entirely-crazy in-another-life-he'd-be-a-moderate-Republican dude finally elected so a third of the country could act like Satan just put his feet up on their mother's white-clothed dinner table. It's not like they could do anything else, right? They had to start shooting.

Right?

A.


Homeland Security warning June 1: Remember the Department of Homeland Security report that conservatives criticized because part of it focused on right-wing extremist groups? Rachel Maddow describes some of the warning signs contained in the report.

Opening the gate to hate June 1: Frank Schaeffer, author, "Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back" explains to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow how hateful speech leads to violent acts.


Sudbay: The Wash. Post found the only person who thought the Supreme Court case went well for Norm Coleman: Coleman's lawyer

By almost all accounts, Norm Coleman had a rough day at the Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday. The Court heard Coleman's last-ditch appeal to overturn the election results.

For some reason, The Fix a.k.a. Chris Cillizza wanted us to know that Norm Coleman's lawyer was very pleased with the Supreme Court arguments yesterday. Big surprise. But, that's how Cillizza led his report. His headline was "Coleman Campaign: 'Very Encouraged' by Supreme Court Hearing." Funny thing. Coleman's lawyer was pretty much the only one who saw it that way. And, Cillizza was pretty much the only observer to lead with that pro-Coleman angle.

In a post titled, Franken poised to win. Again, Markos noted:

Things look so poorly for Coleman, in fact, that the local CBS news affiliate was unable to find a single legal expert who could spin on behalf of the former senator.
Politico's headline is "Court skeptical of Norm Coleman's arguments":
Republican Norm Coleman’s legal team on Monday faced a skeptical audience of five Minnesota Supreme Court justices, who could be his last lifeline to prevent Democrat Al Franken from being seated as the state’s junior senator.
The New York Times headline states Minnesota Judges are Skeptical in Senate Case:
A lawyer for Norm Coleman, the Republican who is fighting a recount battle with Al Franken, a Democrat, for a Senate seat, faced sharply skeptical questioning on Monday from justices of the Minnesota Supreme Court in a crucial hearing on the case.
We'll hopefully get the decision soon. And, based on what most observers seem to think, it should go Franken's way.



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