Documentary Recommendation

I got the chance to see Citizenfour yesterday. All I'm going to say is: Go see it if at all possible.  You don't get enough opportunity to see principled, intelligent, brilliant and brave people.  And you'll learn some things you didn't already know.

Money in Politics

Bill Allison, editorial director of the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, talks about Big Money's investment in the 2014 elections and the return on investment indicated by which party won. Here's a chart with the data:

As disheartening as the influence of money in politics may be, Allison points out that power shifts in one or both houses of Congress—in 2006, 2012 and now 2014—show that neither party has figured out how to muster enough money to keep a prolonged hold on power. That could be because neither party has followed an electoral sweep with a pragmatic policy agenda that transcends partisanship.

“Sooner or later, one of the political parties will figure out set of policies that gives them a much longer hold on power,”Allison says.

  Yahoo Finance

That may be too optimistic.

Demographics of the Vote

You could replace "Dems" with "the world" in that statement and still be right.

What the graph indicates is that people under thirty are under the misconception that who is president makes a difference, and people over 60 have been around long enough to know that, at least in their lifetimes, it hasn't.  It could also indicate that the youngsters are more globally minded and the oldsters more locally focused.

Midterms

A show for the ruling class by the ruling class in the presence of the peons.

Debbie Dingell.  Great name for a pol.

What are those?  Dingellberries around her glasses frames?

And things really never change.  Here's Jon Stewart in 2002...

The Daily Show

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h/t God

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Game Goes On

Surely no one is surprised at the results.

Republicans rode a wave of voter discontent to seize control of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, dealing a punishing blow to President Barack Obama that will limit his legislative agenda and may force him to make a course correction for his last two years in office.

  Reuters

Really? What course correction would that be? He has done everything he could to please Republicans throughout his time in office.  Or are you saying that now that he is not virtually, but rather explicitly assured of losing any proposal with a whiff of liberalism or populism in it, he can pretend to fight for it?  But then, why would he even pretend?

Billmon has an interesting take on it:  he says that the thing to notice is how difficult and costly it was for the Republicans to eke out the narrow winning margins that they did.  Of course, you might look at that as more evidence that there isn't two cents worth of difference between the parties.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Terrorist Organization Designation

Shedding a U.S. foreign terrorist designation is a long and complicated undertaking – a feat accomplished by just a handful of the dozens of groups that have landed on the list since its inception in 1997. A designation means that a group has earned the dubious label – and economic sanctions – of being named a “tier-one” foreign terrorist organization. Tier-two members are banned from entry to the United States; tier-three groups are undesignated but closely monitored.

Several organizations have languished on the State Department’s tier-one list even though they’re essentially defunct, with their leaders killed, jailed or engaged in peace talks with the governments they once attacked.

  McClatchy

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

2014 Midterms in a Nutshell

EMail Messes With Plausible Deniability

A 2010 e-mail from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says his department was “waiting for the go-ahead” from the White House before accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod, according to newly released documents, despite Obama administration assertions that her ouster was Vilsack’s decision alone.

The e-mail, which was made public Friday in an ongoing federal court case over the matter, shed more light on the evening of July 19, 2010, when the USDA hastily asked Sherrod to resign after a video showing her making supposed racist remarks surfaced on a conservative Web site. Her dismissal turned into a racial firestorm after it became clear that the video had been edited and her remarks were meant to tell a story of reconciliation.

Both the White House and Vilsack have repeatedly said that the agriculture secretary made the decision to ask for Sherrod’s resignation without White House input.

[...]

The correspondence is evidence in a federal defamation case that Sherrod filed in 2011 against the late blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted the video, and his colleague Larry O’Connor. The Justice Department has been pushing to keep the e-mails sealed but lost Friday afternoon when U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that they did not have to be kept private.

  WaPo

I have one quibble with this article – or maybe it’s with the judicial system.  The article claims that after Breitbart’s sudden and unexpected death in 2012, his wife was substituted in the suit in his place. You can do that now? Is a wife co-owner of a man’s website account as well as his bank account? Is she responsible for what he posted?

Anyway….

Justice Department attorney David Glass replied to the judge that “when there is a reference to the White House was involved, what it means is the White House liaison was involved.”

Those guys will try anything, won’t they? And what? The White House liaison is not a part of the administration? The White House liaison does not liaise on the one end with the White House?

As the administration came under fire, Vilsack reversed course, apologizing and asking [Sherrod] to return to the department — an offer she declined. President Obama also offered Sherrod an apology.

The weasels. Good luck on that lawsuit Shirl.  Make 'em pay.

Fool Me Once...

BAGHDAD, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Iraqi tribal leader Sheik Naeem al-Ga'oud and his men once helped U.S. Marines drive al Qaeda out of their Anbar Province stronghold.

[...]

This week [IS] massacred more than 200 members of his Albu Nimr tribe in retaliation for months of resistance.

Ga'oud says he has good reason to fear many more will be rounded up, shot at close range and dumped in mass graves, with little chance that the Iraqi government or United States will come to the rescue of his tribe or any other any time soon.

"A day before the attack we told them (the government) that we will be targeted by the Islamic State. I talked to the commander of the air force, with several commanders," he told Reuters in an interview.

"We gave them the coordinates of the places where they were, but nobody listened to us," he said. Asked why he believed the government had not helped, he nearly cried and said: "I don't know."

  HuffPo

That’s how we roll. They’re not the first to be abandoned when they needed help.

Too Bad

Condolences to Ray.  And all the Car Talk fans.