Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones is wondering what the Republicans are doing in Virginia. As you have probably heard, the evenly divided Virginia state senate waited until one Democrat was out of town so that they could ram through a new redistricting plan for the state. But that’s not what Drum is talking about. He’s talking about their plan now to change the way that their electoral college votes are allocated. They want the state to go from winner-take-all to get-votes-of-the-districts-you-win. And that’s what’s strange.

The Republicans clearly don’t care what anyone thinks of them. This is a “might makes right” strategy. And it is one that the Republicans have really embraced the last decade and a half. But why the half measures?

The way that the Virgina Republicans have redrawn the districts, a Democratic presidential candidate would always lose for the foreseeable future. Obama won the state by almost 150,000 votes last year. But if the state was judged by district, Obama would have lost 4-9. With the current Republican plan, Obama would have received 4 electoral college votes, and Romney would have received 9. But why give Obama those 4 votes? Why not just make the state winner-take-all, but based on the winner of the most congressional districts?

Kevin Drum has no answer to that question. I think I do, however. The Republicans want to maintain plausible deniability. They want to be able to claim that the new system is more fair. And by some calculations, it is. After all, Obama would have still received 31% of the electoral college, when he won 51% of the vote. That’s the lot more accurate than the way it was: Romney got 0% of the electoral college but 47% of the vote. The Republicans can point this out to their ignorant base.

There is an obvious counter argument to this, of course: the most equitable thing to do would be to distribute the electoral votes as the closest percentage to popular vote. Going by congressional district is just moving the nonsense of the electoral college to another level: one that now just happens to be to the Republicans’ advantage. The system the Republicans are proposing is clearly meant solely to hurt the Democrats. They will not be able to win the state, regardless of how much they win by in the coming few elections.

This is not about fairness. But the issue of fairness is the key to the Republican strategy. Their base will never hear these arguments against the Republican plan (it helps to have your own “new” network). All they will hear is that the system is being made more fair than it is now. And that will be correct.

Flipping:

These two young, fine senators said it was time to change the rules of the Senate, and we didn’t. And they were right. The rest of us were wrong—or most of us, anyway. What a shame… If there were anything that ever needed changing in this body, it’s the filibuster rule, because it’s been abused, abused and abused.

And Flopping:

I’m not personally, at this stage, ready to get rid of the 60-vote threshold.

H/T Ezra Klein

The Democrats completely folded on filibuster reform.

I had been figuring that this would be Harry Reid’s last term as a senator. And I was fine with that. He could step aside and allow a younger Democrat to take his seat. But now, I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope that Reid just dies. It doesn’t have to be a violent or painful death. But it wouldn’t hurt.

Last year Reid was screaming about how broken the Senate was. He stated publicly that he regretted not fixing the filibuster when he had the chance. But now he says that he isn’t quite ready to get rid of the 60 vote requirement for renaming a fucking post office! He said, “With the history of the Senate, we have to understand the Senate isn’t and shouldn’t be like the House.” Last time I checked, the Senate wasn’t at all like the House. It is already undemocratic. The 300,000 people in Wyoming get two senators, just like the 36 million people in California.This is inside the Beltway bullshit, pure and simple.

And it is all so frustrating! If Reid wasn’t prepared to go with the constitutional (nuclear) option, he should have negotiated different. If he had pushed for the elimination of the filibuster (Which is what I wanted!) then McConnell might have cut a deal with him to only require the talking filibuster. But instead, he threatened just the talking filibuster. And McConnell effectively said this, “My final offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, because you are such a pussy, I know I can walk all over you.”

If this sounds familiar, it should: this is the first term Obama school of negotiating with yourself. But this is worse, because Reid didn’t have to negotiate with anyone. The Democrats could have just taken the ridiculously undemocratic Senate and made it just a tad less undemocratic. But no! We can’t do that! Because Reid cares more about setting a bad (i.e. democratic) precident in the Senate than he cares about his constituency or the whole of the United States.

So fuck Harry Reid! Fuck Carl Levin! Fuck the lot of you! This is why the average man on the street votes Republican: he thinks the Democrats are a bunch of pussies. And he is right.

Update (24 January 2013 12:10 pm)

Ezra Klein on this news, “Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have come to a deal on filibuster reform. The deal is this: the filibuster will not be reformed.”

This was the Calvin and Hobbes comic posted today.

This is the headline of a “Featured” CNN story that caught my eye this morning: Readers sue, say Armstrong book is a lie. I’d give you the link, but the article is short and stupid so you might as well stay here.

They would have enjoyed it less? The inspiration is nullified and any positive effect that a celebrity’s embellished story may have had on their lives doesn’t count? Rob Stutzman and Jonathan Wheeler are perfect examples of Americans’ twisted sense of entitlement and appalling, self-created, and opportunistic victimhood. Their petty greed is surpassed only by their gullible stupidity. No one is always honest. No one is always good. No one gets through life without making a regrettable mistake.

If you look up to someone, do it as an adult, not as a four-year-old. Instead of pretending to be an innocent victim, duped by a celebrity you mistook for an Olympian god, why not grow up and stop being selfish, useless bastards.

Last night on the Colbert Report, I was introduced to The Atlasphere, a dating service for devotees of Ayn Rand’s novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Colbert did a funny bit about the website. He said, “The Atlasphere is the best place for Randians to find the one they love, other than their bathroom mirror.” But it all focused on the egomaniacal aspect of this group. I admit that this is the most defining aspect of the Rand’s movement. But when it comes to sexuality, it is not.

In both The Fountainhead and Night of January 16th, the hero rapes the heroine. Which begs the question: what sane woman would want to meet a man who loved The Fountainhead. A researcher in abnormal psychology? Somehow I doubt it will be a woman who holds “the values of reason, independence, hard work, and personal integrity.”

Yes, yes, Ayn Rand was a deeply troubled person. And it is her commitment to a bizarre mixture of fascism, anarchism, and Hollywood romanticism that makes her so popular among mostly ignorant aspirants. But like Christians, Randians have to do a lot of work to distinguish between what they like and what they don’t. And that’s just fine. You have to do that with any dogmatic system. (And Objectivism is certainly that!) But that doesn’t mean I’d trust anyone dating on the basis of Rand’s creepy pro-rape writings.

Kamau Bell explains that Django Unchained released the n-bomb 109 times. This is a new record. Do you know what was the last record holder? Watch the two and a half minute video and find out!

I love this woman! I’ve never thought as highly of Hilary Clinton as I do now, having watched her take on these ridiculous Republicans. As more and more information has come out, the Republican position on Benghazi has become so narrow that it could fit through the eye of a needle. And Clinton calls Ron Johnson on this bullshit. He asks, “Do you disagree with me that a simple phone call to those evacuees to determine what happened wouldn’t have ascertained immediately that there was no protest?” That is a classic “Monday morning quarterback” question. Clearly, the State Department had more important things to think about other than, “Gee, I wonder what we should say on TV?”

Basically, the Republicans have reduced this entire “controversy” down to, “You gave incorrect information on the Sunday morning talk shows!” So all of the other aspects of the murder of four government employees doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the Republicans are angry that the one remaining thread they have—misinformation reported on Meet the Press—is what is most important. These Republicans think that it is more urgent to get to the bottom of what they consider the treasonous act of misreporting something on Fox News Sunday, than to properly fund the State Department going forward.

So you had a clear contrast: Clinton hammering the House for not dealing with the needs of State versus the Republicans hammering the “controversy” of giving George Stephanopoulos the wrong idea for a day or two. I’ll leave it to you to decide who looked presidential and who looked like a fucking idiot.

If you haven’t seen this exchange between Clinton and Johnson, you owe it to yourself to watch it. It is fantastic!

Hilary Clinton 2016! I’m signing up now!

The Republican leadership seem to have listened to Obama’s claim that they mustn’t crash the economy because, you know, we have to pay our bills. The budget is the time to cut costs, not afterwards when the bills come due. As a result of this realization (or at least the realization of the bad political optics of it) they are now claiming that they will tie the Debt Ceiling raise to a plan to balance the budget in ten years.

Before we get to this plan, let’s take a moment to step back and marvel at the ridiculousness of this bit of political theater. They want to be seen as Very Serious. But first and foremost, debt is not a problem—at least not now and not until the economy is doing a lot better. Even if it were, this congress can only budget for this congress. As we learned all too well during the first years of the Bush Jr administration: fiscal restraint from one administration can easily turn into fiscal recklessness from the next.

Paul Ryan’s Budget: a Primer

Now let’s talk about that budget. Let’s talk about Paul Ryan. You see, John Boehner has turned to him to come up with this budget balancing plan. And that, my friends, is high-larious. Paul Ryan was not even able to balance the budget over 30 years. He certainly won’t be able to do it in ten!

I know there was a lot of reporting on the Ryan Plan and how it balanced the budget. But it was all done with fairy dust. Here’s his plan in about as much detail as he provided:

1. Cut income tax rates (Very specific!)
2. Cut deductions (Vague!)
3. Stimulate the economy (Fairy dust!)
4. Cut spending (Vague!)

Now I understand that Paul Ryan is a follower of Ayn Rand. And that means he understands important Randian concepts like: X = X. But we normally expect a bit more rigor from our budgets. Ryan’s entire plan comes down to this: “I will balance the budget by cutting spending and stimulating the economy.” And if you’ve ever seen a budget, you know it doesn’t look like that. What Paul Ryan has proposed is a statement of purpose. The problem is that we know for the last 30 years, all Republicans have wanted to do that. We are still waiting for the details.

But even a plan this vague can be shown for the nonsense it is. Total taxes are going to remain the same. Under most circumstances, this would have no effect on the economy. But not in this case! As we saw with Romney’s tax plan, this one can’t help but lower taxes at the top and increase them in the middle. So the people who already have more money than they know what to do with (Why else do you think they are paying the government to hold their money?) will have even more. Meanwhile, people who generally spend all of their money will have less. Thus, Ryan’s tax changes will hurt the economy.

But wait, there’s more! Cutting government spending will also hurt the economy. (Just ask people living in the United Kingdom!) So Ryan’s great idea will cause the economy to tank. And thus there will be less tax revenue. And this will mean that all of his unspecified spending cuts will be partially offset. And thus, he will need even more savage spending cuts. But don’t worry! It is certainly the case than in 20 or 30 or 40 years, the economy will recover.

What They’re All Saying

Political watchers are no more impressed than I am. Jonathan Chait notes that the only way that Ryan could make his budget work is to cut about 90% out of our spending on the poor and sick. But he puts his general thoughts very poetically:

Matt Yglesias questions the very idea of balancing the budget. He gets to the heart of what I was talking about this morning, The End of History. Can it possibly be that we are at exactly the right amount of taxation? Mostly, he’s just poking them to note that they have no reasons for their position on the budget. They just “feel” that certain numbers are right.

But mostly everyone else is still focused on Paul Ryan’s problem yesterday: his claim that he never said that people on Social Security and Medicare were “takers” (or the more common Randian term “moochers”). Mother Jones provided this video to jog his memory:

Update (23 January 2013 5:16 pm)

Ezra Klein has a great article that shows just how much of a charlatan Paul Ryan is, What Happened When I Asked Paul Ryan Why He Hates Taxes. It is very much worth reading.

Just for the record, John Boehner is still a very weak Speaker of the House. The House of Representatives voted to suspend the Debt Ceiling through 18 May. This in itself is a chickshit move. Boehner had decided that he didn’t need to make his caucus have to vote to raise the Debt Ceiling; instead, he would just have them ignore it for a while. Why not just “ignore” it forever? And I’m sure that a lot of people in the next set of Republican primaries will ask that very question.

But what makes Boehner look weak is that yet again, he could not get legislation passed without the help of the Democrats. Only 199 Republicans voted for the bill that required at least 230. And this was with the ridiculous unconstitutional[1] “sweetener” of saying the congress doesn’t get paid if it doesn’t pass a budget. The truth is that it is clear that he can’t control his caucus. But the bill did at least fulfill the Hastert Rule, so Boehner has to be pleased about that.

I think we should all be pleased about this vote, however. It shows a willingness on the part of the Republican leadership to work with the Democrats. If Pelosi had whipped the Democratic caucus, Boehner’s bill would have likely gone down in defeat. Boehner had to be a little uneasy about bring the bill up for a vote. And more important: he must have brought it to the floor because he thought that the Democrats would work with him. This doesn’t mean that it will work the other way around, but it is some movement in the right direction. Boehner is using his weakness for good rather than evil.

[1] The 27th Amendment is really clear, “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”