A brief, terrifying thought

So, for this past week I've been trying to think past what could have stopped the Tuscon shooting, because we don't get another shot at that one.  There's something that bothers me quite a bit.

In 2009, Senator John Thune sponsored an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would have made it legal for any person permitted to carry a concealed weapon in any state to carry one in every state.  In states with less permissive gun laws, residents would have had fewer rights than out-of-state visitors from states with more permissive gun laws.  And from everything I can tell, under that legislation, Jared Loughner would have been permitted to carry concealed in New York City.  It failed by two votes.

Yeah, it's really kind of remarkable where the states rights conservatives stand where the chips are down.

We may be able to ban thirty-round extended magazines (not likely), but this shit isn't going away.  Republicans control the House, and they picked up more than two votes in the Senate.  And while you and I may be shocked by the sheer gall of the gun lobby here, what they're looking to replace is only more sensible by a hair.  Massachusetts, for instance, more or less reserves CCW for people who need handguns to do their jobs and people who are receiving death threats.  If CCW reciprocity between the states were based on compatibility of standards, a permit holder from Massachusetts would be able to carry a concealed weapon in most states. But because recognition is based on reciprocity agreements, in many cases, the less restrictive state's left with a choice between, for instance, Massachusetts citizens having fewer rights in Massachusetts than those visiting  from other states, and Massachusetts citizens having fewer rights in other states.  It's usually a no-brainer.  But if someone's life is being threatened in Massachusetts, and there's an actual threat of danger, It's naive to think that the threat would disappear when they go to another state.

Here's an interactive infographic-map that explains how CCW reciprocity works.  It may not be not be a particular priority of yours or mine, but whatever you think about gun control, it's against the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment, which means that even the most moderate gun rights advocates aren't going to stop wanting to do something about it.

This isn't to be taken as an endorsement of expanding concealed carry... There's a fully fleshed-out policy piece that I'm working on, because I ain't got shit else to do, which will no doubt wind up here or on Blogcritics after every place I submit it ignores me.  What I'm suggesting is that unless we change the law in a way we can deal with-- it may one day wind up the other way.

The Aftermath

Editor's note:  This post has been altered to reflect the fact that maybe not everyone can watch the clip (hi, Google Buzz!)

I wasn't going to say a word about the "Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear" here because anything I'd say about it was likely to have been said by somebody else already.  For instance, somebody has already said this

I have two things to say about Jon Stewart's speech. One: bravo. And two: bravo.

I know this wasn't a political event, but I am a liberal -- a capital-L liberal and a small-L liberal -- and that 'you go, I go, you go, I go' principle, I believe it, and I'm really happy that in my country, over 200,000 people turned out to cheer that.

And there have also been some who have criticized the rally's "pox on both of their houses" message as constituting an oversimplification at best, and false equivalence at worst, clips of which are seen here on yesterday's Daily Show:


For the record, I wouldn't even bother saying any of this if I weren't a huge fan of Jon Stewart.

The boxing gag is brilliant.  But as for the rest?

My intention was not to make no moral judgment between competing arguments... It was to suggest that we be perhaps more judicious with our blanket slander

I'm sure anyone who's watched as much Boston Legal as I have knows this:

IF IT'S TRUE, IT ISN'T SLANDER.

I know that he doesn't literally mean slander, the crime, but given the context of the argument being made against him-- that he's equating actual slanderers to people who say mean, true, things-- the words were poorly chosen to say the least.

Right before that quote, Stewart passive-aggressively exclaimed, "Well, I guess the rally was a massive failure."  Which is funny, because the only person  in those clips who thought that the rally was a massive failure was Bill Maher.

If you were going to say that there was a left-wing equivalent of Bill O' Reilly, you'd be wrong, but if you squinted a little and turned your head, you could be forgiven for mistaking Bill Maher for that fictional entity.

So Bill Maher said that your rally wasn't about anything.  He also said that there's no reason to get a flu shot.

The person who I quoted up above there?  It was Rachel Maddow, who didn't even say a word about the rally on the air outside of that quote, and yet a segment in which she voiced her support of her colleague Keith Olbermann appeared on The Daily Show, for reasons passing understanding.  She was talking about how Keith's suspension on the grounds of private donations he made to three Democratic candidates reflects on the narrative prevalent in the media--some of which is driven by Jon Stewart, but most of which isn't-- that there's no real difference between Fox News and MSNBC.  The full transcript can be found here.  That song, as Stewart once told Jim Cramer under similar circumstances, wasn't about him.
 
As for Keith?  Jon took clips from a segment the Monday after the rally in which Keith made the case that Stewart, in putting clips of Countdown alongside those of Glenn Beck in his blame-the-media mashup, was equating sticking up for the powerless with sticking up for the powerful.  That one of those clips was him using the phrase "un-American Bastard" to refer to a man who'd said "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims," and who'd utterly refused to admit that he was wrong in doing so (though all that was shown was "un-American Bastard) is I think instructive.  In any case, here's what Keith had to say in the segment preceding that one on Countdown that night:

The overall message that the tone needs to change, that the volume needs to change, was not lost on any of us. The anger in this news hour was not an original part of it, nor was it an artifice that we added to it. It was a response to a threat to this democracy posed by Mr. Bush, and now by his lineal descendants. The anger happened, it will still happen. It is not for ratings and it is not "get angry first and find a reason later."

But there is an institutionalization of it that may no longer be valid. That is "The Worst Persons in the World" segment, which started as a way -- of all things -- of defending Tucker Carlson. It's satire and whimsy have gradually gotten lost in some anger, so in the spirit of the thing, as of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye towards discontinuing it. We don't know how that works long-term. We might bring it back. We might bring back something similar to it. We might kill it outright. And next week, we'll solicit your input.

But I suppose showing that-- or Rachel's statement in support of Stewart-- would ruin the bit.  Which one could say is fair, for a comedian  But in his inveighing against the problems concerning cable news, he seems to be vigorously co-opting at least one of them:  The tendency to pull quotes out of their original context and arrange them in whatever way most fits your own narrative.  Which he doesn't need to do to make his point, and he doesn't need to do to be funny.

Ok, so I saw that clip from The Daily Show this morning, and wrote most of this post on notebook paper while I was riding the subway into Boston to try and get enrolled in Massachusetts' public option.  The last sentence was going to be:  "Instead of what I embedded here, Stewart should have had one of the three people in the video on his show to discuss what bothered them.  Surely, that would have been more in keeping with the spirit of the rally."

And then, I got home, logged in to twitter, and saw this:

Well, there we go.  Everything else I've said still stands though.  And I'd very much doubt that Rachel's appearance in that segment didn't come up in the back-and-forth before the interview was confirmed.

The Shape of Things to Come

I'd like to plug my friend David Harewood, who has written today's featured article over at InformedPlanet.com.  Check him out.

So as it turns out,  I was right when I predicted a 53-47 split in the Senate (not in any way that was recorded, so I guess you'll have to trust me.  Or not.  Whatever.)  I didn't make a prediction for the House, but if I had, it would have been wrong.  Not that I was particularly surprised.  History dictates big wins for the opposition the first midterm election following a new President's inauguration, as well as during hard economic times.

But consider this:

In the past two years, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, House Democrats passed a truly astounding amount of legislation-- including major reforms such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Credit CARD Act, and  the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  Not to mention the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which just today I discovered was being put to use to repair a stretch Cambridge Street in Somerville, MA that had fallen into such disrepair that its potholes have cost me a bike tire, a wheel and a brake cable.

But I guess John Boehner doesn't want me to have a bike.

In any case, Nancy Pelosi has been regarded by historians as one of the best Speakers of the House in the past hundred years.  In addition to those specific bills I mentioned, she passed 430 bills through the House, all of which had majority support in the Senate, and yet none of which passed.  Because Senate Democrats were too scared to make Republicans own up to their obstructionism and actually read from the phone books to stop them from passing bills covering, among other things, infant nutrition.

The Public Option, which 50% of Republicans supported, died in the Senate.  As did a significant portion of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which it is now abundantly clear wasn't enough.  Unemployment benefit extensions, small business tax credits, a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and additional infrastructure programs all languished due to the Democrats' unwillingness to challenge the notion that requiring 60% of the Senate to pass anything was normal.

And yet?  It's Speaker Pelosi who loses her job title in January, whilst  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid keeps his gavel.

Whiskey.

Tango.

Foxtrot.

So what now?

We have divided government yet again, but unlike in 1994, the Senate remains in Democratic hands.  With the House controlled by the opposition and the Senate still incapable of action, Democrats aren't going to be able to have any kind of a legislative agenda unless the filibuster gets changed.  As luck would have it, the rule's two greatest defenders (Chris Dodd of CT and the late Robert Byrd of WV) are no longer in the Senate.  Evan Bayh, who was the first Senator to ever threaten to filibuster his own party's bill, and indeed was the first to do so before the bill made it to the floor for debate, is also gone, though he seems to have had a deathbed conversion vis a vis autocratic obstructionism.

So where does that leave us?

It takes 50+1 to change Senate rules upon the convening of a new Congress.  And of those in the current Senate, Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Jay Rockefeller, Mark Pryor, Dianne Feinstein, Daniel Akaka, Carl Levin, and Jon Tester are going to need convincing.  Four of them need to vote yes in order for a change to be made.

It's going to be an interesting first session, I tells you.

After that, my advice to Democrats is to pass jobs bill after jobs bill in the Senate.  Simple pieces of legislation whose impact on employment can be easily quantified.  And keep a running tally of the number of jobs that would be added to the economy had it not been for Republicans refusal to move on legislation simply because it was passed by Democrats.  Run three-second TV spots featuring the number and a URL with the details and phone numbers for local Senators and Representatives.  Either something will give, or the American People will know why it didn't.

Drill, Baby, Drill

We could be looking at the worst oil spill in living memory off the Gulf Coast, coming right on the heels of Obama's decision to allow off-shore drilling, which should have come as no surprise to people who were paying attention during the 2008 election season.

There are a lot of people to point fingers at here. You could blame Obama for giving in to pressure in order to save his electoral landslide (and the mandate that came with it). You could blame John McCain, Sarah Palin, Michael Steele, and the rest of the right-wing noise machine for hawking so shamelessly on a wedge issue. You could blame the media for not fully disseminating the numbers on off-shore drilling: That whatever the impact on the environment (which we have now witnessed), a country that uses 25% of the world's oil and only possesses 3% of it cannot drill the way to energy independence.

I blame us.

During the election, sixty percent of voters said that they favored offshore drilling. Suddenly, in the wake of a financial crisis that caught McCain side-by-side with Phil "there's no real recession and people who say there is one are whiners" Gramm on the most important issue of the year. "Drill, baby, drill." became the only substantive issue where the Republican Party was on the same side as the people. So of course they hammered on it, despite the fact that it wouldn't make us any more self-reliant than Obama's much-ridiculed tire guage.


Which isn't to say that I'm letting Steele and Palin off the hook for hawking-- or Obama for folding. By ultimately favoring off-shore drilling, both sides did the truth and their constituents a grave disservice, and there ought to be accountability for it.

But in a democracy, the people rule. It's possible to be at odds with popular opinion in some matters and still win elections, and in fact it's the duty of a statesman . But when a supermajority oppose you on an issue with as much exposure as offshore drilling had in the 2008 Presidential election, it's hard to ignore it.

I don't think we believed it when we were told that drilling was safe. The information was out there.

I think we just didn't care.

The people I spoke to during election season who were pro-drilling weren't basing their position on a cost-benefit analysis. A number of them ridiculed me for caring about the risk to the environment at all.

Those of us who do give a shit about the consequences of our energy consumption need to find a new way forward, because "punch the hippies" is a disturbingly viable political strategy in this country.

And the clock is ticking.